The Year's Best Horror Stories 15 Part 7

Crowbars tore open the door. Cold rain and wind slashed inside, with sirens wailing their tragic song.

Death Angel: Am I still your own true love?

And the harsh voice whispered sweetly in the tearing, chilling gale: See you in September.

I want- I woke up in a hard bed, staring upward at a white ceiling. It had thousands of tiny cracks, like the magic in my soul. Something was wrapped around my head. The place smelled of isopropyl alcohol.

At first I didn't remember what had happened. When I did, I sat up suddenly and started to get out of bed. Inside my skull, bowling b.a.l.l.s smashed into pins. Tiny scorekeepers started marking Xs.

As I dangled my legs over a metal railing, trying to clear my brain, something stabbed the inside of one elbow. An IV was hooked into me. Carefully, to avoid the certainty of ripped flesh, I pulled off the tape and withdrew the needle. Then I slid off the bed. "For observation" was written on my chart, along with "concussion."

I was in a big ward, but stained white curtains separated me from the adjacent beds. I spent several minutes steadying myself. My knees were quivering, and my head seemed to waver around like a rotting apple about to drop. The flow was cold; I wore only a hospital gown. In front of me, a mirror reflected my image clearly, without waves or ripples. My head was bandaged, scarred, and pale, with lank hair lying flat.

Getting out was easy, after I retched twice in the room. My stomach had nothing to throw up, though. I found my clothes in a drawer and put the hospital gown back on over them. A little comb was in the packet of toilet articles supplied by the hospital. I walked out of the building like I owned the place, with my t-shirt casually draped over the spot where my i.d. tag should have been. Since no one looked closely, they all thought I was an Asian hospital worker of some kind, I supposed, wearing an ugly lab coat.

Or maybe no one noticed me.

A small gust of wind would have blown me over, but I clung to parking meters and old people as I moved down the sidewalk. On the outside, I learned that three days had pa.s.sed-it was the first of September, late in the afternoon. Gail had just been plowed under.

I hitchhiked to my folks' place, made excuses, and went out again. In the garage, I heaved a shovel into the trunk of my mommy's car and took off. At the nearest fast food vendor, I ate a garbage burger and drank something resembling stagnant pond water. Then I threw up for real, ate another burger, and kept it.

At sundown, I pulled up to the top of the hill and stopped at the little cemetery hidden among the suburban homes that had been built around it. It was far older than even the suburban city itself: some of the worn tombstones held vague indentations representing dates from the Civil War. I could hear television sets from inside some of the houses. A phone rang.

I took the shovel from the trunk. It was an old one, with a long handle worn smooth and gray over years of use. The heavy heart-shaped blade was all reddish-brown with rust. I climbed over the chainlink fence into the graveyard in the graying roseate light, hoisting the shovel overhead like a quarterstaff. The chirping of crickets was deafening.

I found the new grave easily, even in the gathered darkness. Yellowish light leaked from houses and streetlights, showing me fresh sod cut into distinct rectangles. The gra.s.s was wet from being watered all day. I wondered if Gail's mother had cried over it. Humidity made the air thick and heavy.

I wondered if slugs favored graveyards.

The sod peeled back easily. The dirt underneath had been tamped down, but was not packed very hard. I bit the shovel into it and stepped hard with one foot. It only went down a little; I was weak and underweight from living off the IV. So I moved the dirt slowly, in small loads on the tip of the shovel.

Hours later, I sat collapsed at the bottom of a relatively deep hole in the ground, soaked with sweat and half-eaten by mosquitoes. It was not deep enough.

The late summer stars above me were clear and bright. Dirt clung to the sweat on my face, arms, and back. My head was pounding with the rhythm of a searchlight. Little unseen creatures were starting to crawl on me.

I forced myself up, leaned for a moment on the shovel, then kept on digging. When I hit the coffin, renewed spirit gave me energy. The big box echoed hollowly as I sc.r.a.ped dirt away from it. By this time, just getting the loose dirt out of the hole was a ch.o.r.e, and I had to rest another four times before the coffin lid was clear. Then, with several tries, I smashed the fastenings with the shovel. I braced myself against the dirt walls in one corner of the hole, and pried it open.

Blackness gaped beneath the lid. The smooth padded satin of the coffin's interior only glistened on the sides; the bottom of the coffin, and its contents, were gone. I stood bent over the opening, motionless, staring into a deep hole.

Harsh, whispered laughter blew cold into my ear. I spun and then stiffened in horror. Above me floated the bare grinning skull, the death's head ringed with just enough scalp to hang wispy golden hair, of the Death Angel. She hovered in my face on ratty white wings, with a smudged and tattered white gown flapping empty beneath her chattering jaw. Her breath sounded like a phonograph needle sliding across an old 45.

Stepping back in revulsion, I gripped the handle of the shovel and swung it hard, giving it all the strength I had left, pulling on the swing like a home-run slugger. The huge old blade of the shovel shattered the skull like it was cheap plastic and a faint whimpered cry escaped on the night wind. Yet on the slopes of soil around me, tiny bits of bone began to wriggle and grow anew.

I dropped the shovel into the hole and heard it land somewhere below the coffin. A high, melodic, peaceful singing came from within the earth. I jumped.

I hit cold, packed earth not far down. The shock of landing hurt both my legs, and I fell. Pale light streamed down from above. A huge darkened tunnel stretched before me.

The serene singing was clearer now and I thought I recognized the voices. As they approached, they stopped singing in unison and began to take turns.

"I wanted my baby ..."

"I miss him ..."

"I can't live ..."

Four vague shapes were walking toward me in the dim yellow light. A cool breeze floated from them, smelling foul to the point of sweetness.

As they came closer, the silhouettes came clear in the diffused glow from above me. Their shapes were familiar. Darkness hid their faces, but I saw them open their arms.

The singing had no words, now, but only a peaceful melody. I rose to meet them. Overhead, the strange light was gradually going out.

Yes, they could hear me; yes, they could see me. As though when slanted eyes like white women, slanted eyes die-only they don't, really. Death Angels came singing me a song, and I was home.

CRYSTAL.

by Charles L. Grant.

According to the introduction to "Crystal" in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, where Charles L. Grant's first story appeared in 1968, this is Grant's 100th short story sale. Not bad for a former New Jersey high school English teacher-and, considering the high quality of those 100 stories, a record any writer must envy. Not good enough for Grant, who is also a novelist and anthologist of note. To date he has written or edited over forty books, in addition to another twenty or so under various pseudonyms. Recent novels include The Pet and For Fear of the Dark; recent anthologies include After Midnight, Greystone Bay #3, and Shadows 10.

Born in Newark, New Jersey on September 12, 1942, Charles L. Grant shares with Ramsey Campbell a fascination with contemporary urban horrors (What is it about being born in depressing industrial cities?), although Grant's chosen milieu leans toward the middle-cla.s.s, suburban bedroom-community of the American Northeast. But forget about that, since "Crystal" is set in the Bloomsbury area of London, as anyone who has ever strolled past Russell Square toward the British Museum will quickly recognize. Grant, like some other American authors, enjoys stopping in this part of London. So far he's always made it back to New Jersey.

The shop wasn't a very smart one as shops in the district went, but Brian had weeks ago learned that it catered mostly to tourists and the occasional country family in town for a holiday, and so needed only a bit of flash, a few items with the royal family on them, and a dozen different street maps from which to choose the best way of getting lost.

Now, Brian, he thought then in a silent scold, that's not the way to think, is it? This is London, boy, and you're practically a native. You're not going to get lost, you're not going to be shortchanged, you're not going to be taken for a foreigner at all. Until, that is, you open your fat Yank mouth.

His reflection in the shop window smiled wryly at him, and he nodded to it just as a young man and his girl wandered by, saw him, and gave him a puzzled look, the boy lifting an eyebrow and the girl shoving a laugh into her palm. Startled, he watched them until, if he wanted to watch them further, he'd have to look directly at their backs; so he stuffed his hands into his pockets and returned to his contemplation of the display.

Seeing nothing.

Hearing nothing of the homewardbound traffic grumbling past him on High Holborn.

Until a face in the window caught his attention. A young woman, striking in a dark-haired, pallid sort of way, and he smiled again, hopes rising, until he realized with a derisive snort it was a picture he was looking at. And not a very good one, at that. Oval, in fading color, framed in cheap silver.

He leaned closer.

No. Not cheap at all. In fact, the frame only appeared to be simple, but there around the edges were etchings of long-stemmed roses, so delicately done the sunlight blotted them out until he moved his shadow over their stems. He c.o.c.ked his head and leaned closer still; he felt his left hand bunching around the roll of money he kept in his trousers; and when a horn blared behind him, he jumped and moved instantly and casually into the store.

The shopkeeper was a rotund man and thickly mustached. He remained behind the rear counter when Brian asked about the picture, saying that if he were interested, he was more than welcome to take it out of the window and bring it into the light. Brian shrugged. He didn't want to appear too stupid, nor too interested. Nevertheless, he made his way slowly back along the narrow aisle, angling sideways between a group of women chattering in Texas-Southern accents about how darling everything was and wouldn't Cousin Annie just love a picture of that adorable Prince Andrew. Carefully, he reached around a newspaper display and picked up the frame.

It was heavy, much heavier than it had a right to be.

He turned it around and looked at the portrait.

Narrow face; narrow chin; wide, dark eyes that matched the dark hair curling under her jaw. The hint of a lace-trimmed velvet bodice. Bare shoulders. Nothing more.

Attractive, he decided, but with an odd distance in her gaze.

He hefted it. Tilted it to the light when he felt the shopkeeper watching. Frowned as if in concentration and debate, shrugged as if in reluctant decision, and carried it back, waiting patiently as the women fussed with the unfamiliar coinage, finally giving up and handing the man some bills, their faces sharp in daring him not to give them their due.

Brian grinned, and the man grinned back over a blue-tinted head. One of the ladies turned around and glared, obviously taking him for a local and extending the dare to him.

But he only nodded politely and handed over the picture as soon as the women moved on, chattering again, exclaiming, and wondering aloud why the English, with all their experience, didn't have money like the Americans, it would make things so much easier all around, don't you think?

"You must get tired of it, Mr. Isling," Brian said sympathetically as he pulled out his roll and coins and gave him the correct amount.

"Not so much anymore, Mr. Victor," was the smiling answer. "At least I don't have to put my feet up in a hotel, do I, when the day is over."

"Oh, they're not that bad." But his expression put the lie to it, and the man laughed, put the purchase in a paper bag, and thanked him for the sale.

Halfway up the aisle, Brian turned. "Do you know who she is?" he asked.

"Who?"

He held up the bag.

"No. Not really, that is. There's a name on the back. Crystal. I reckon that's either her or the artist."

"Do you get many of them?"

Isling hesitated, then shook his head. "Only one of that lot, far as I know. We get them now and then, the odd piece. Sometimes they last until I junk them; sometimes they go as soon as I put them out."

"And this one?"

"Put it out this morning."

"It must have known I was coming."

The shopkeeper's laughter followed him to the street, where he turned left, elbows in to protect his ribs from his dubious prize, trying to decide if he should go back to his room now, or find someplace to eat and examine his folly there. Wherever it was, it would have to be someplace quiet, someplace that would allow him peace, to figure out why the h.e.l.l he'd spent so much on a whim.

He slid the frame just far enough out of the bag to take a puzzled look, heard someone scream a warning, and looked up in time to see a black, square-framed taxi jump the curb and head straight for him. He shouted and leapt to one side, lost his balance and fell over the curbing into the street. The taxi plowed on, scattering pedestrians and postcard displays until it slammed through the window of the shop he'd just left. There was a man's yell, a faint whump, a whiff of gas, and suddenly the pavement was alive with smoke and fire.

Brian immediately crossed his arms protectively over his head, half expecting that any moment some fiery shard of metal would soon crash down on him, that gla.s.s lances would shred him. And he stayed on his side until he heard someone asking him if he was all right. Cautiously, he lowered his arms. Sirens were already blaring, and through the thick smoke he could see figures rushing about the shop with fire extinguishers hissing.

"Do you need help?"

He didn't object when hands cupped under his arms and pulled gently, until he gathered his feet beneath him and stood. He swayed a bit, and coughed. Someone brushed grime from his denim jacket, a piece of something from his hair, then led him away from the scene, talking all the while about the danger of living in the city these days, and if it wasn't the d.a.m.ned IRA or the d.a.m.ned Arabs, it was the d.a.m.ned taxis going wrong and he'd be d.a.m.ned if he didn't think the d.a.m.ned Apocalypse was coming.

Brian's eyes stopped their watering, but his right leg still hurt where he'd cracked it on the street, and his right shoulder felt as if it had been yanked from its socket. He groaned and gripped his arm, tensing with the antic.i.p.ation of feeling the flow of blood.

"You need a doctor?"

After a moment he shook his head, closed his eyes tightly, and willed the pain to go away, come back later when he wasn't shaking so much. When he opened them again, his benefactor was gone and the police were already cordoning off the area. He walked off, still a bit wobbly but able to convince those who saw him that he wasn't drunk or crazy.

And it wasn't until he'd cut through Russell Square several minutes later and was heading toward his place near the university that he realized the bag was still clamped under his sore arm. A sign, he decided, and leaned against the nearest lamppost, took the picture out, and smiled at the woman.

"Crystal," he said, "why do I get the feeling you've just saved my life?"

"Don't flatter yourself, boy. It was a mistake."

Brian nearly dropped the package at the voice, then whirled and scowled. "Melody," he said, "you could have taken ten years off me, sneaking up like that."

Melody Tyce only laughed, parts and sections of her rippling in accompaniment as she tried to get a closer look at what he was holding in his hand. "You talking to pictures now, Brian?"

Quickly, he tucked Crystal back into her bag and tucked it back under his arm. "None of your business."

She laughed again and pushed coquettishly at the ma.s.s of blond hair that ill-framed her pudgy face. She was much too large for so much atop her head, and, he thought, for the snug clothes she wore. It made her seem as if she were trying too hard, which he knew wasn't the case where he was concerned. She was a good-natured woman who had taken him under her wing, sending him to the restaurants where meals were good and just as good with their prices, to the shops where his clothes wouldn't look as if they'd fallen off the rack, and to the clubs where he might, were he more aggressive, even meet a young lady.

"Oh, come on," she persisted. "What do you have? Not one of those things, is it?"

"No," he said with a grin. "Something I picked up in a shop, that's all."

"Ah. A souvenir."

"Yes. Sort of."

She nodded. "Better. You're forgiven, then, for talking to yourself."

"I wasn't talking-" He made to ease her away, to give him some room, and the package slipped to the pavement. Instantly she pounced on it, and since the picture had slipped out of its covering, she was able to take a good look as she handed it back.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned," she said.

"What?" He moved to her side and peered at the woman's face over her shoulder. "You know her?"

"I should." Her thumb ran along the frame, tracing the roses, while she sighed. "Where'd you get it, Brian?"

He told her.

She sighed again.

"Hey, what?" he said as she pushed it back into his hands and walked off. "C'mon, Mel, what gives?"

Midway down the block she stopped, shaking her head and looking up at the clean white facade of what had once been a Georgian townhouse, was now only one of several bed-and-breakfast hotels that lined the narrow street.

"Mel, what do you mean, you should know her?" Then he followed her gaze into the top-floor window, over the narrow entrance. "No," he said. "No, you're kidding."

"Clear as day, it's her."

They took the steps together, and he held the door, frowning but not wanting to push her with more questions. What she was claiming was clearly absurd-that the picture was of her mother, who lived in a large room two floors above the entrance and seldom showed herself to any of the guests. It couldn't be. She was, by his estimation after the one time he had seen her, well over eighty and almost as large as Melody herself.

At the back of the square foyer now used as a lobby was a large desk. Melody hurried behind it and dropped into a wing-back chair, slapped her hands on the blotter, stared at him without expression. "I gave that to Ben two weeks ago," she said. "Told him to take it to a friend that has a shop in Salisbury. He promised me he would."

"But why, if it's true?"