The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

violets and oranges. The coffee in my cup went down slowly. At quarter to eight I moved into the hall and took up a position two meters from the front door. If the postman came, if the letter box was lifted, if a delivery was made, I would see it. There would be no question that I wasn’t fully awake. I squatted and waited, patient in the pursuit of my objective. Nothing happened. I heard someone downstairs lock their door and leave the building. I wondered about Melanie without taking my eyes off the letter box. Did she love me? What would she say in her letter if one should arrive? That she loved me and I should stop worrying or that I had been right all along and she didn’t love me at all?

My haunches tingled with pins and needles then went numb. Straining my ears for sounds with which the postman might betray his approach, I began to notice a hum in the flat. Electrical appliances, storage heaters, the immersion, all would no doubt contribute, but it seemed as if the flat itself were alive and trying to tell me something. It was the first time I had sat and listened so intently. Normally I played a compact disk or boiled a kettle, switched channels or ran a bath. At night when I lay still, I covered my ears with the duvet.

Now, however, for the first time, I was listening to the flat.

I thought that maybe it was telling me not to take my eyes off the letter box. But I couldn’t live like this— watching the letter box every morning.

The humming seemed to acquire a rhythm, a beat, like a clock, as if my flat was in tune with the universe, a quartz clock. The flat was part of the great design. I felt it protecting me, like a mother or the mother’s womb itself. I watched the door. The flat hummed. It felt completely right.

Then the flap lifted slowly and the white corner of a letter slid through into the flat. I heard my heart beating faster. The letter pushed the flap open wider and fell on to the doormat. The metal flap fell back with the familiar rattle.

My body was tense, ready to spring. I wanted to open the letter. I realized I was sweating. The flat was still all right. I crawled forward and picked up the letter. It was a bill. I snapped it down on the narrow bookshelf in disgust and disappointment, and some small degree of relief.

The hum receded until it was barely perceptible, as if the flat was satisfied it had demonstrated to me that all was in order. A letter had arrived—although not the one I would have wanted—and I had been reassured that the world was still functioning as it should. Possibly had I not been watching, the letter box might have banged open and shut while some hateful, terrible communication slipped, not into sight, but between the tracks upon which my life ran, into the void I knew I would have to face one day. How many letters waited there for me? How many unanswered phone calls? How any small hands stretched out unseen? How many open mouths and proclamations of terrifying truths which would destroy the lies of the life that had gone before?

As I dressed I debated whether or not to phone Melanie. I needed to speak to her and get that part of my life back on the right track. Derailed, it could slip into the space where the letters and phone calls waited. But I left it too late to act: she would have gone to work. I realized I was late myself, so I grabbed my jacket and rushed out, locking the door behind me.

The morning was crisp with fragmented memories of winter. The promise of spring lifted my spirits. The world went on and it was good.

Halfway down the road I felt in my pocket for my travel pass and found it wasn’t there. For a moment I considered going on without it and paying a couple of quid on fares. But I could scarcely afford it and I didn’t know what I would be doing after work.

So I turned round and went back.

I unlocked the door and instantly felt the difference. It was like stepping into a stranger’s home. The flat was as quiet as death. No humming. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I had left for the day and in coming back after only two minutes found myself intruding. I felt as if I had penetrated some membrane in reality. Everything seemed colorless in the weak natural light my windows allowed. I stood stock still in the hall listening, but the flat was silent. I began to shiver. The hairs on the back of my neck pricked and gooseflesh crept up my arm.

The volume control on the phone was turned low, but when it rang in the stillness of the gray flat it was the shrillest, most frightening sound in the world. My heart faltered. But I wouldn’t miss the phone this time. I strode into the living room, wading tearfully through the thick air. I reached the phone and picked it up while it was still ringing. I held the receiver to my ear and listened. The flat had become like a photograph printed in a newspaper and the dots were gathering and re-forming and swarming before my eyes.

“Hello?” My voice was toneless and compressed with the suppression of terror.

A voice said, “Go to the door. Quickly. Go to the door!” The voice was familiar but seemed constricted by anxiety.

I could only obey.

The flat knew. I wasn’t supposed to be there so it couldn’t protect me. I shouldn’t have come back when I did. The flat knew everything but could do nothing to help me.

I stepped into the hall just as I heard the letter box bang shut and a letter fell through on to the mat. Had I not got there in time there would have been no letter; just an empty rattle.

I tore at the envelope, though I didn’t need to because I had recognized her handwriting and I knew what the letter would say.

Having crossed over accidentally from one track to another, I was now staring into the space in between.

Just as I had strained the relationship by worrying at it and asking all the wrong questions, so had I colluded now in my own downfall both by making the call and by answering it in time. Too late I realized it had been me also on the other occasions, when I’d hung up to save myself.

From the other room I could hear my own distressed voice on the phone shouting, “No no no!” It’s a bit late for that, I thought bitterly.

LARGESSE by Mark McLaughlin

Mr. Pash, Mr. Pash. Could anyone be more wonderful than Mr. Pash? He was the best employer I ever had—a wise, thrilling person. And so generous.

Bosses are usually such atrocious beings. You have to nod and grin and act as though you are not afraid of them. You must appear to condone their boorish, money-hungry wickedness. You must pretend to be other than yourself. Such was not the case with Mr. Pash.

My work in the Tons of Tapes video store was quite simple. I waited on customers, kept the display boxes in neat rows, vacuumed a bit. Nothing too strenuous. Every now and then Mr. Pash stopped in to check on the store. To peek into the cash register. To offer a word of encouragement.

His eyes were deep, brown, and utterly unfocused. His nose was long and curved like the beak of a bird that eats meat. Thick brown hair, pale skin, a mildly spicy body odor, black stubble no matter what the time of day… and fat. Mr. Pash was fat, yet obliquely so in his bulky sweaters and baggy pants. It was hard to tell where Mr. Pash ended and the sag of his loose outfits began. But make no mistake: his clothes were clean and more or less fashionable.

When he placed his long white fingers on your shoulder, you knew instantly that he cared. If your mother was ill, or if your pet lost a limb in a freakish accident, he would give you the day off without question. If he had candies in his huge pockets, and he usually did, he would give you several nice plastic-wrapped mints. Large and fresh, with red and white swirls. No lint on these pocket treats.

The customers at Tons of Tapes often spent a great deal of money. Our gentlemen rented six or seven tapes at a time. I say “gentlemen” because our female clientele never exceeded a handful of poorly dressed, foreign-looking women of indeterminate age.

There was always plenty of time for me to watch movies during working hours. Mr. Pash did not mind: in fact, he insisted that I watch the movies so that I would be able to tell our gentlemen about them. A salesperson should be thoroughly familiar with his products. The bulk of the inventory was esoteric. To this day, I have no idea where Mr. Pash had acquired such oddities. New videos were never delivered to the store; Mr. Pash brought them personally.