Closer Garland bent to him, her hands on his neck. Her fingers crooked, their tips pressed.
The lamplight shone on her red lips. They parted. Her teeth showed long and sharp. She crooned to him. She stopped. Her mouth opened above his neck.
Outside, voices spoke, faint, inhuman.
Garland rose quickly and went to the door. She opened it a crack.
Shapes hung there, gaunt and in ragged clothes. “Well,” she whispered fiercely, “can’t you wait?”
“Let me in,” said one of them. Eyes gleamed palely. “Let me in,” said another. “Hungry, hungry—”
“Can’t you wait?” asked Garland again. “After I’m finished, you can have him. Have what’s left.”
She closed the door on their pleas, and hurried back to where Larry lay ready, motionless, dreaming, on the bed.
I HAE DREAM’D A DREARY DREAM
by John Alfred Taylor
One of the rewards as editor of a continuing anthology series is to watch the emergence of new talent. In reading each year’s crop of horror fiction, I find that my selections generally are stories either by established authors—more or less regular contributors to each year’s publications—or by newcomers and writers outside the field, whose presence in the horror genre is simply a guest appearance. Occasionally I come upon a new writer and sense that here is a name to watch. John Alfred Taylor is one such writer.
Taylor was born in Springfield, Missouri, on September 12, 1931 and grew up in one place or another across southern Missouri. He earned a B.A. from the University of Missouri and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, where he was in the Writer’s Workshop under Donald Justice and others. During his teaching career Taylor has lived in New Hampshire, Texas and New York, and he now teaches English at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania. Taylor has had some 300 poems published in various little magazines over the years, and recently he has had stories in
Harold Percy took the rain as a matter of course. When he left the Black Bull that morning, Angus Donnan had warned of a possible storm, and he’d said he was prepared. Percy always tried to be.
Perhaps it was reaction against his inevitable nickname: he was not and never would be a “Hotspur.”
Under his mac he wore a fine wool shirt, his moleskin trousers had lasted him half a dozen vacations, inside his waterproof boots he wore two pair of socks, and in his rubberized duck musette bag were sandwiches, binoculars, notebook, clasp knife, a guidebook to the Isle of Skye, MacAlpine’s Gaelic Dictionary, and a small nickel-plated flask of what he supposed some of the natives still insisted on spelling
So when the mist turned to drizzle and the drizzle turned to rain, he buttoned his mac and pulled down the brim of his Irish tweed hat. He’d seen worse weather last year, following out Riastrick’s
At first the rain barely decreased visibility. It was supposed to be possible to see North Uist across the Minch on a clear day, but Percy wondered if the local definition of a clear day was synonymous with the Second Coming. Earlier the waves of the Minch had glittered, the mists and sun formed momentary castles from beams of gold and blocks of pearl, but now the rain had shut down. Only occasionally through its shifting could he see the leaden waves of the Minch below the western slope.
And then the real storm struck, a line squall roaring in like a black wall, and Percy had to clutch his hat before he lost it, while the wind came in from every side. It was blinding, paralyzing, like being thrown into a cold douche fully clothed in the dark, but he still retained enough sense of direction to find his way back to the outcropping he had just passed. Perhaps there was an overhang or some shelter from the wind.
He staggered grotesquely against the wind, one hand holding his hat on, blinking the water out of his eyes and blundering off the path into the heather, but finally he reached the outcropping. It was lower than he remembered and could give no shelter. Perhaps the side to the sea downhill? He leaned against the rock as he descended; it was steep, and the rain-wet stones were treacherous underfoot.
Below was another level of the outcropping, and between the two a cleft barely wide enough for a man. He lowered himself into it, his feet ankle-deep in the water rushing down it like a drain. It was too shallow to give him any shelter from the wind without stooping almost double, and he slipped and came down on hands and knees.
He could see further without the rain blowing in his eyes; the cleft deepened ahead, the sides almost leaning together like a roof. Once under that, he was out of the rain, back against one side, squatting with his feet in the sluice boiling down the floor, a solid sheet of rain a few inches from his face. Percy settled himself to wait out the fury of the squall; at this rate it couldn’t be long.
The cleft seemed to go farther down; he’d see as soon as the rain let up.
By the time the curtain of rain split into separate streams and trickles, his cramped position had become uncomfortable, and he rose with relief, careless of the drops still coming through the slot above. The cleft did go on, the sides nearly meeting more than once, and then he came to a bend. An interesting place, he never would have discovered it without the storm; he’d passed right by it a minute before.
The turn brought unexpected spaciousness; the cleft opened out, and he was standing on a ledge like a porch looking out at the sea and sky. The hidden way traversed the whole outcropping.
The rain had stopped, the sun was breaking through ragged clouds. Lunch time, Percy decided, and found a half-dry spot. Using his mac as a cushion, he sat with his legs dangling over and ate one of his sandwiches. Curious stone down there on the slope—then his practiced eye picked out an almost hidden line leading up toward his seat. That stone had been put there, perhaps as a marker, and that was a trail connecting with this cleft.
Suddenly excited, he stuffed the sandwich wrappings back into his bag, put on his mac again, and started to descend. The rocks below the ledge made a steep, narrow stair, just possibly by design. The way was overgrown, but Percy, who had cut his teeth on
It was even steeper below the stone, and the trail switched back across the slope. Another fifty yards, and Percy had to stop where a slide had taken a nearly vertical bite. As far as he could go today. He’d have to bring a rope tomorrow.
In the bar at the back of the inn after dinner, Harold asked Angus Donnan about the place he’d found. Angus’s usually expressive eyes were still. “I really don’t know of any path like that, Mr. Percy.”
“Perhaps I haven’t described where I found it clearly—”
“Oh no sir. I recognize the place.”
Percy wondered if Angus knew more than he was telling, especially when Angus said something in Gaelic to the two islanders he was serving at the other end of the bar, and both glanced sidewise at Percy. One of them answered, repeating a phrase Angus had used. Percy repeated it to himself so as not to forget it while he finished his whisky.
In his room Percy opened his MacAlpine. Even with his new-found understanding of the vagaries of Gaelic orthography, it took Percy ten minutes, and then he wasn’t sure. But that was what it sounded like. Sinister.
Perhaps tomorrow Angus Donnan would be more forthcoming.
As he drifted toward sleep the words came into his mind unbidden:
