The Year's Best Horror Stories 15 Part 16

She might have felt some disquiet had she seen her daughter's reception at Satterthwaite. Do even housekeepers, she might have asked, go to the front door? And are they let in quite so respectfully by a man-servant?

"Ah, Thomas," said Mrs. Paget to the great fine gentleman who opened the door to Sukey and herself, a gentleman so fine that Sukey took him for the master, until her G.o.dmother spoke, "you can tell the master that I've brought the little girl. I'll take her to my room and give her some dinner for we're both tired after the journey, but when we've had a bite and sup I'll bring her to see him."

And up the great stairs they went to a room that Sukey thought grand enough for the Queen herself, that Mrs. Paget called her sitting-room, and there they sat and had dinner brought to them. They really did eat roast chicken, with bread sauce and vegetables all complete and after that a sort of creamy pudding. Her G.o.dmother drank wine with the meal, but Sukey, somewhat to her disappointment, drank milk. The grandeur of her surroundings and her mother's warnings about good behavior kept her silent, and her G.o.dmother seemed pleased with her. After their dinner Sukey, under instructions, washed her face and tidied her hair and then went pattering after her G.o.dmother's dark bulk like a pet lamb through the long, ill-lit corridors of Satterthwaite, to meet her new employer.

It was here that she had her first shock. A little before they reached his room Mrs. Paget bent down and murmured that she was not to be afraid, but the master was not quite well and had to sit mainly in the dark for the light hurt his eyes. Sukey was to curtsey as she had been taught, and say yes sir and no sir, and not ask questions. It had not crossed her mind to question the master, but she would dearly have liked to question Mrs. Paget. She was given no time, but hurried into the dark room, dark not only with the night, but m.u.f.fled from floor to ceiling with great long velvet curtains and lit only by a little fire. There was a sickly sweet smell as if someone had been burning pastilles, and underneath that something rather unpleasant that caught at the throat and made Sukey think, for no reason that she could imagine, of Farmer Tyson's beast yard.

Mrs. Paget stopped just inside the door and pushed Sukey forward.

"I've brought the little girl," she said.

A thin, petulant voice from the gloom said: "Well, bring her in, bring her in. Don't stand in the doorway like that!"

Mrs. Paget seemed inclined to send Sukey in alone, but she clung to her skirt and in the end she guided the child across the dark room until they came very close to the wing chair by the fire where the master sat. Sukey curtseyed, then as no one said anything she dared to raise her eyes and look at him. She was almost shocked into an exclamation of surprise. She had been expecting a sick old man huddled up in rugs, wrinkled like grandfather Jewkes. Instead he was young and almost angelically beautiful. True he was pale, and his brilliant golden head hung back in the chair as if he were too tired to hold it upright, but even his pallor was beautiful, like marble. Sukey, forgetting her manners, stared and stared.

At last he spoke, still in that thin, weak voice: "So. This is Sukey."

"Yes sir, if you please sir," said Sukey, bobbing another curtsey to be on the safe side.

The effort of speaking those few words seemed to have exhausted him and there was another long pause.

And then he said a rather strange thing: "And you named her?"

"I named her," said Mrs. Paget in a queer, solemn way, like someone making a response in church.

The master's great blue eyes closed. Sukey half thought he was dead, but Mrs. Paget shook her gently and whispered: "He's gone to sleep. Quietly now!"

And they both tiptoed away. The dim corridor seemed quite bright after that dark room and Sukey blinked. She opened her mouth to ask the dozen questions that were buzzing in her head, beginning with "What's wrong with him then?" and going on to "What did he mean, asking if you named me?", but Mrs. Paget hurried her along so fast that she got no time to ask anything at all.

She took her back to her own rooms. Her bedroom led off the sitting-room, and off that again was a little room which she called a powder room-giving Sukey some uneasiness as she took it to mean the place where the gunpowder was kept-where a truckle bed had been set up. Still giving Sukey no time to talk she told her to get herself undressed and into bed as soon as she liked, for she must be tired. Once she was in bed Mrs. Paget came in, both to take away the candle for fear of fire, and to give her a cup of milk, with honey, to help her sleep. Warm milk and honey must have had a wonderfully soothing power for, in spite of the strangeness of the bed and all those unanswered questions, she fell asleep at once.

The next day came remarkably close to Sukey's dreams of life at Satterthwaite. After a breakfast of bread and milk taken in her G.o.dmother's room, Mrs. Paget told her that, although by rights she should now go to the kitchen to start her new duties, "the whole house is quite at sixes and sevens what with the master being so bad, and Mrs. Colleywood, Cook that is, can't be doing with you down there for a while. So if you'll sit quiet up here and let me see what sort of a hand you are with the needle, like a good girl, maybe you could take a walk in the garden this afternoon. We'll see."

"Is the master going to die?" Sukey inquired cheerfully.

Mrs. Paget took a quick shocked breath. "Why no, bless you, he gets these bad turns regular. He'll be right as ninepence in a day or two."

Sukey tried to see that strange, sick figure "right as ninepence" and failed. Nevertheless she held her tongue and took her G.o.dmother's needlework bag when it was offered, with another bag stuffed with sc.r.a.ps of cloth and bits of ribbon, and settled to work. She was very handy with her needle when she cared to be and she set herself the task of making a little tablecloth in patchwork, each patch edged with ribbon. Working with such pretty stuffs, at her own pace, gazing out of the window when she cared to or taking a turn round the room to admire her G.o.dmother's handsome china ornaments, hardly seemed like work to Sukey and she was able to pa.s.s the morning very agreeably, although about eleven it came on to rain and she could take no more pleasure in the window.

Mrs. Paget brought her a lunch of cold bread and meat and admired her sewing.

"Why I never saw such fine st.i.tches! You could get to be a lady's maid, Sukey, if you work hard and mind your manners."

Sukey was flattered but somehow she did not feel that her G.o.dmother really had her mind on what she was saying. She broke right through Sukey's discussion of whether a glossy green edging or a dull purple one would look best on a patch of crimson silk to say: "I'm afraid the weather's changed, Sukey, as you can see, and you can't walk out this afternoon. I must be about my work so you stay here like a good child. There are some magazines you can look at if you get tired of sewing."

And she hurried off, without waiting for Sukey's answer. Now, Sukey had been unnaturally good for one whole day and a half. She had watched her tongue and minded her manners and studied to please her G.o.dmother. But now, left to her own devices for a whole afternoon it was not surprising that her good behavior should become somewhat strained.

At first she went back to her sewing, flattered by Mrs. Paget's praise of her st.i.tches. But she still could not make up her mind about the edging and began to think that a rest might do her good. Following the housekeeper's instructions she looked round for the magazines she had been given leave to read. They were not immediately visible, so she began to hunt for them, and found at once a much more absorbing task than either reading or sewing. She began to poke and pry through every drawer and cupboard.

If this was an amus.e.m.e.nt in Mrs. Paget's sitting room it was a positive fascination in her bedroom. Sukey was neat-fingered, and knew the penalties of discovery very well. Careful to leave no trace she sorted delicately through drawers full of scented underlinen, took her G.o.dmother's dresses from their hangers to hold them against her own skinny shoulders, and spent a long time over the jewel box, admiring the effect of the glittering stones and shiny metal against her own neck and ears. It was at the bottom of the jewel box that she found a small bra.s.s key. Now, nothing in either room, not even Mrs. Paget's desk, had been locked. Sukey, her curiosity really roused now, determined to find what lock the key fitted.

It was so small that at first she looked for a small box, coming close to disaster when she opened a tiny coffer on the dressing table that proved to be full of face-powder and nearly spilled it all over the floor. When she could not find a box she went back to the desk to search for a locked or better still, a secret drawer. Again there was no such thing. Back she went to the bedroom. All the cupboards there opened easily. She drifted to the middle of the room, uncertain, half willing to give up the search and go back to her sewing. After all, her G.o.dmother would very probably soon be back. The afternoon that had been so dark and rainy was ending in a wild golden sunset. It would soon be night ... and then, in those last golden rays she caught sight of a glitter on the dark paneled wall. Idly she went to see what it might be.

It was, of course, a tiny keyhole. She slipped the key inside, turned it and pulled. The paneling swung open to reveal a hidden cupboard, as tall as a man, but very narrow. Hanging inside was what Sukey took to be a dressing gown of very thin red silk, trimmed with gold. There was more silk on the floor, apparently wrapped around something. And there was a picture painted on the inside of the door, a life-size figure that Sukey characterized as "mucky." Even as she stooped to investigate the silken wrappings on the floor she heard Mrs. Paget's step in the corridor.

She shut and locked the door, put the key back where she had found it, launched herself back into the sitting room and was sitting at her sewing, with nothing but a slightly heightened color to betray her when Mrs. Paget came in.

Sukey came very close to mentioning her discovery. If she had not found the key while meddling with the jewel box she might have done so. It never crossed her mind that Mrs. Paget knew of the hidden cupboard, and its strange contents, and certainly not about the picture. She supposed they had all belonged to a previous owner, probably one of the gentry who were well known to admire that sort of thing, and the key had simply been tidied away by Mrs. Paget. But one thing her mother had impressed on her was that meddling was wrong. It could lead to a box on the ears and bed with no supper. Best, she told herself, to keep quiet.

Her G.o.dmother seemed even more agitated than she had that morning. She praised Sukey's work again, though anyone but a fool could have seen how little she had done of it, then rustled up and down the room, like a large and agitated moth. When at last she settled it was on a chair a good distance from Sukey and though she began to talk to her she seemed curiously unwilling to look her in the face.

"You know, Sukey dear," she began, "that gentlemen, and ladies too, have all sorts of odd ways ..." and then she hesitated for so long that Sukey thought she had finished and put a few more st.i.tches into her patchwork. But then she started again: "Well, the master has got it into his head that he wants to sit out in the garden. Now, with his eyes being so bad he can only go out at nighttime. He'll want things fetched to him, and of course I must wait on him, it's no more than my duty, but I don't care for walking through the grounds alone at night, so I thought that perhaps you, Sukey, could go along with me. You could sleep late tomorrow, you know," she added.

"Yes, I'll walk with you and welcome," said Sukey as she had been taught. "But won't the master take cold?"

"Oh, he'll have a fire," Mrs. Paget said, briskly. Now her message had been delivered she seemed calmer, though she would eat no dinner, and went to lie down for a while when Sukey had eaten hers, promising to call her when it was time to go to the master.

Sukey went back to her sewing. The evening dragged on. It seemed to her that it was almost morning when her G.o.dmother called her, though in fact it was not quite midnight, as she saw by the little traveling clock beside the bed. Mrs. Paget was already wrapped in a black cloak. She wound Sukey in a shawl and gave her a covered basket to carry, then led her not down the main staircase but through some narrow pa.s.sageways and down a steep flight of backstairs, through the empty kitchens and across the stable yard. It was not especially cold, but very dark. The rainclouds had come back and there was neither moon nor star to be seen. Sukey tried to ask a question or two, but she was immediately hushed, and once they were in the park she found she needed all her breath to keep up.

They seemed to walk a very long way, through shrubbery, across a wide expanse of dark gra.s.s, and then downhill, until Sukey smelled stagnant water and saw the lake glimmering ahead. They walked along the lake sh.o.r.e for some way and then at last they glimpsed a fire in the distance. As they got closer Sukey saw that the master had not one fire but four.

They were burning in cast iron braziers, set, though Sukey did not know at the time, at the four points of the compa.s.s, in a strange white building that was mostly pillars. He was feeding one of the fires, and he looked worse than Sukey remembered. He was sweating, and he had clearly not even had the strength to dress properly for outdoors, for he was wearing what she took to be a long white nightshirt that left his arms bare.

"You're late," he said, in his faded voice, "I can hardly hold him."

Mrs. Paget briskly shed her cloak and began feeding another brazier from a little basket that lay beside it. Sukey was shocked to see that she was wearing nothing but the thin silk robe from the secret cupboard.

Heavy wreaths of smoke, some sweet, some acrid billowed across their faces. The master stood up, wiping his face.

"Take the child into the circle," he said.

Mrs. Paget went white. "What!" she hissed, "I know a trick worth two of that! Take her in yourself. I've done my part."

Sukey looked round for the circle they were talking about and saw it, drawn in what looked like brownish chalk on the white marble floor. There seemed no reason why anyone should be as frightened by it as Mrs. Paget and the master so obviously were. Sukey yielded to her curiosity and stepped in of her own accord to see what all the fuss was about.

And at once she knew. The floor seemed to open in a sickening downward spiral and at the same time it could not be opening because she did not fall, although she felt all the horrible sensations of falling. Yet it must be opening for Something was coming through it. Sukey felt herself being engulfed in this Something in the most horrible way. The physical sensations might be compared to being drowned in freezing sewage, that burned like acid while it froze. The mental were indescribable, but included a sort of sickness of the mind that she was sure would have sent her mad if it had gone on a moment longer. For it stopped quite suddenly. The Thing rejected her, literally hurling her outside the circle, beyond the light of the braziers.

She landed on her face in the gra.s.s. For a moment she lay still, until the sound of her G.o.dmother's screams spurred her into action. She stood up, some instinct warning her not to look behind, and ran for the house. But however fast she ran, however often she fell, and stumbled up again and ran on, she did not lose her grip on that christening gift from her Aunt Deborah, that cross of dubious metal but undoubted power that she found herself clutching so tightly in her hand.

The scandal, when it broke next morning, was only concerned with the master who had been found beside the lake, half naked and wholly dead, and Mrs. Paget who was still just alive, but "quite silly like" and wearing what appeared to be a red silk nightdress of the most indecent sort. The discovery in the lake of a collection of bones that seemed to have belonged to quite a number of young girls was hushed up. And Sukey never talked.

She never told anyone, either, of what she found in her G.o.dmother's secret cupboard. In fact, she burned it before any one could see it, which was a pity perhaps. A contract with the devil's own signature might have interested a number of people. But Sukey felt justified. No one likes to make public that she has been sold to Satan by her own G.o.dmother, and that there appeared to be no escape clause.

The master's will was made public, and caused quite a lot of gossip. He gave instructions that he should be buried in a room built on to the family mausoleum especially for him. He was to be sitting in a chair, fully dressed, in his everyday clothes, with a bottle in his hand. The floor was to be sprinkled with certain herbs and a quant.i.ty of broken gla.s.s. The gossips said that all this was to prevent the devil collecting his body. His soul had already been lost that night by the lake when he failed to deliver whatever he had agreed to provide, every seven years, in return for long life, riches and beauty.

It was all a lot of nonsense, of course. Sukey had been sent to a less glamorous but safer place, grown up, married, and tried to forget. Over the years she had managed to persuade herself that everything had indeed been some sort of nightmare, the product of an overactive imagination ...

But now Mrs. Rothiemay had been forced to reconsider. It had been the half forgotten name of Satterthwaite that had drawn her eye to the newspaper item with its unpromising headline: "So much for tradition." It told, reasonably accurately, what it described as the legend of how the master of Satterthwaite had been buried, and described how that little room had been opened recently by a curious historian, wishing to check the accuracy of what he called "folk memory."

Of course, he had found that the story had been all nonsense. The room was quite empty.

The devil, Mrs. Rothiemay could see, was not so easily cheated.

"PALE TREMBLING YOUTH".

by W.H. Pugmire and Jessica Amanda Salmonson.

W.H. Pugmire (a.k.a. Wilum Hogfrog Pugmire) is well known to members of Lovecraftian fandom for his many contributions to the fan press. Born in Seattle, Washington on May 3, 1951, Pugmire began seriously writing fiction in the early '70s after serving two years in Ireland as a Mormon missionary. Disgusted with his early tales, he stopped writing for seven years, at which time he became involved in the local Seattle punk underground, publishing his fanzine, Punk l.u.s.t, for five years. At the urging of Salmonson, he has recently returned to writing fiction. Pugmire says that his hobbies are "dressing up like Boy George and cruising construction sites."

Jessica Amanda Salmonson is another wild talent from Seattle, and a writer who has moved from the small press to the big leagues, but who still finds time for fiction and poetry for the fan publications-in fact, she edits the small press magazines, Fantasy Macabre and Fantasy & Terror. She has written a number of fantasy novels, edited fantasy series (Amazons and Heroic Visions), and a horror novel is forthcoming.

The following collaborative effort appeared in Dennis Etchison's Cutting Edge, a groundbreaking anthology of contemporary horror. Not all horrors are drowned in blood.

d.y.k.es, kikes, spics, micks, f.a.gs, drags, gooks, spooks ... more of us are outsiders than aren't; and that's what the dear young ones too often fail to see. They think they've learned it all by age fifteen. Perhaps they have. But they're not the only ones who've learned it.

They're wise youngsters, no doubt about it, and I wish them all survival, of one kind or another, though few of them will have it. They're out there on the streets at night; they've spiked their hair and dyed it; they've put roofing nails through their earlobes and scratched their lovers' initials in the whites of their eyes. And they're such beauties, these children. I have empathy for them, though by their standards, at thirty, I'm an old man. Am I a dirty old man? Perhaps. But I keep my hands to myself and am outraged by the constant exploitation I have seen. I help who I can, when I can. They laugh at me for it; I don't mind. Much as they hate to admit it, they appreciate the helping hand; they a.s.suredly need it.

The new bands have power. They have raw, wild, gorgeous, naive energy. The temporary nature of these bands, the transience of the sound they create, the ephemeral nature of their performances and their youth has a literal and symbolic truth to it that breaks my heart. Ah, the dear young ones! Their own parents hate them. Their parents hate themselves. How morosely, pathetically beautiful it all is!

But I have my criticisms. I don't tell them what to do with their lives, but I do tell them they're not the first and only ones to know. They all think they've invented it; invented everything. Twelve-year-old artists of the street-don't ever doubt that some of them are geniuses-their music, dress, and Xerox flyers are undeniably brilliant works of art. Stripped of technical gaudiness and the veneer of social dishonesty, these kids and their art alienate people because of the reality that's exposed.

Reality is pain.

But none of it is new. A punk who's a good friend, a good kid, I gave him a rare old dada poster for his birthday. He loved it. He thought it was something new. "No, sir," I told him. "It was printed before World War I." He was impressed. He got some white paste and smeared it onto the window of an uptown jewelry store. What brilliance! It breaks my heart.

So there's nothing new. Least of all pain. It's the oldest thing around. I want to tell them, "Yes, you're outsiders. Yes, this thing you're feeling really is pain. But you're not alone." Or you're not alone in being alone. A poison-bad planet. For everyone.

On the north side of Lake Union, visible from about any high point in and around the city, is a little spot called Gas Works Park. Considering how visible it is on the lake's edge, it's rather out of the way. It has the appearance of war's aftermath-a bombed factory. When the gasworks closed shop several decades back, no one knew what to do with that extraordinary network of chimneys and pipes and silos. For years they sat rusting. Then someone had the fat idea of painting the whole thing, laying a lawn, and calling it a park. It looks good. It looks monstrous. It is urban decadence at its best and worst. It's not much frequented at night.

A pathetic old f.a.ggot took me across on his sailboat. He's not only pathetic, but rich; spent his whole life "buying" his way to the inside. But he's an outsider, too. We met in a downtown park in the days of my own alienated childhood, when he wasn't much younger but his gums were less black; and we've pretended we're friends ever since.

I'd been on his boat most of the late afternoon and early evening, until the sun was going down. Then I said, "I don't need to go back into town. Let me ash.o.r.e at Gas Works Park."

He let me off. I stood on the concrete landing and waved to the old man, who looked almost heroic pulling at the rigging-but not quite.

The sun had set. The last streaks of orange were visible beyond the city's silhouette. The skysc.r.a.pers south of the lake were shining like boxes full of stars. I turned my back, climbed the gra.s.sy knoll, and gazed toward the antiquated gasworks. The garish paint had been rendered invisible by the darkness.

I breathed deeply of the cold, clean evening air and felt invigorated. The decayed structure before me was huge, the skeleton of a gargantuan beast. Its iron pipes, winding steel stairs and catwalks, variety of ladders, planks, chains, and tanks had a very real aesthetic charm. "Danger-keep off," a sign read on a chain-link fence. Even in the darkness, the evidence of the structure's conquerors-their graffiti-was palely visible on the surface of its heights.

Hearing footsteps in the gravel behind me, I turned and saw a tall skinhead punk shambling toward the fence. He nodded and smiled at me, then leaned toward the fence, curling fingers around the links. I thought I detected a sadness in his eyes. He was looking upward into one particular part of the gasworks, with such intensity that I could not help but follow his gaze. It seemed that he was staring at a particular steel stairway that led up and into a long pipe.

The sound of his deep sigh made me look at him again. He had taken a pack of cigarettes from a pocket in his black leather jacket. "Smoke?" he offered, holding the pack toward me.

"No, thank you," I replied. Kindness and gentility, contrasted against a violent image, no longer surprised me in these youths.

"Something else, ain't it?" he said, nodding at the structure.

"It is," I replied, not in a mood for conversation.

He continued: "My band and I used to come here at midnight to record tapes of us banging on parts of it. f.u.c.king inspiration! You get some really cool sounds."

"You're in a punk band?" I asked lamely.

"Naw. Industrial band. Kind of an offshot of punk and hard-core, a lot of screaming and banging on pipes and weird electronic sounds. Put it all together and it makes an intense noise."

"Hmmm," I said, having trouble imagining why anyone would want to sit around banging on pipes and screaming. I must, occasionally, admit to a gap between this generation and mine.

"But we broke up," he continued in a quiet voice. "Our singer hanged himself. Up there." He turned to gaze once more at that particular section of the structure. I felt a chill. Talk of death was unpleasant to me, and this was too sudden an introduction of the subject.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Yeah, it's sad. He had a great voice. He could scream and make you feel like you'd die. Then he could sing so tenderly you couldn't hold back tears. But he was messed up. His dad was always getting drunk and beating on him, so he took to the streets. Came to live with me and some others in an abandoned building. We called him Imp, he was so small. He'd never eat, just drink coffee and do a lot of speed. He shook all the time and he had so little color to his skin that some of us took to calling him the 'pale trembling youth,' which he didn't like as much as Imp."

He paused to take a drag from his cigarette. The night had grown especially dark. The gasworks stood silently before us and seemed to listen to the young man's tale.

"He really loved this place. Used to come at night with a wrench or hammer to investigate sounds. He slept here a lot. He'd bring his girls here."

He stopped again, his face sad.

"His last girlfriend killed herself with sleeping pills. He loved her like none of the others. A few days later he was found up there, swinging from that pipe, his studded belt around his broken neck."

"How old was he?"

"Sixteen." After a pause, he tossed his cigarette to the ground and shoved his hands into pockets. "Well, it's getting cold. Think I'll head on back to the District and find me some anarchy and beer." He smiled kindly. I returned his smile. "Nice talking to you." We nodded to each other. He turned and stalked into the darkness.

It had indeed grown cold, but as I turned to look once more at the weird structure, I felt drawn near. Looking with dismay at the fence before me, I took hold of it and began to climb.

When I reached the top of the fence, I moaned softly at the difficulty climbing over and down the other side. I felt cold air against my neck. Looking at a section of the gasworks where the punk had taken his life, I thought I saw a shadowy figure watching me. Then the shadows blended and the image was gone.

Wind played with my hair. With sudden resolve, I climbed over the top of the fence, almost falling down the other side.

I stood near a huge rusted pipe. It was perhaps forty feet long and five feet high. I felt a thrill of boyish excitement, for I have had a love of tunnels since I was small. Going to one end of the pipe, I stood to look inside.

I entered.

My footfalls echoed weirdly as my boots. .h.i.t the metal surface. The sides felt cold and rough. When I reached the middle, I sat down, bending knees to chest, listening to the sounds of evening. Then I heard a pinging, coming from the end of the pipe that I had entered. I looked and saw a small person standing there, looking at me. From its stance I took it to be a boy. The figure held something in its hand, which it slowly, nonchalantly struck against the pipe. Then my vision seemed to blur. I rubbed my eyes with shaky fingers; when I looked again, I saw nothing.

I sat for what seemed endless moments. Finally, I raised myself on unsteady legs.

From above came a sudden banging, a horrible and ferocious sound, as though a madman were leaping from place to place and violently striking at pipes and metal surfaces with something large. The sound of it shook the pipe I was in. I felt the reverberations like a throbbing pain in my skull. Shouting in alarm, I fell to my knees, covering my ears with moist palms. On and on it went, until I was sure that I would lose my mind.

Then it stopped. For a few moments all I could hear was the ringing in my ears. Then another sound came to me: low sobbing. I had never heard such misery and loneliness in a voice. It tore my heart to listen to it. It froze my soul. Gradually it faded into silence.