The Year's Best Horror Stories 15 Part 8

"Oh, it's true, Brian. And the why of it? Because she don't like seeing herself like that anymore. It makes her-"

"Oh," he said. "Oh. I see." And he supposed that seeing his own photograph, taken now, thirty years in the future would probably drop him into an unstoppable depression. "Oh, h.e.l.l."

"It's all right," she a.s.sured him. "I should have known it wouldn't be that easy. Bad pennies, if you know what I mean."

He said nothing more, just gave her a sympathetic look and started up the winding staircase toward his own room on the middle floor. And once inside, he flopped into his armchair and puffed his cheeks, blew out a breath, and set the picture on the table beside him.

"So," he said as he unlaced his shoes and kicked them under the bed. "So that's what you looked like, you old bat. Not bad. Mind telling me what happened?"

He laughed shortly, hoisted himself back up, and stripped to his underwear. There was a basin in one corner, and a mirror over it in which he saw the spreadings of a pair of marvelous bruises-one on his shoulder, another reaching up over his hip. Suddenly he began to tremble, and a chill of perspiration slipped over his chest and back. He coughed, he choked, and he barely made it to the toilet at the end of the hall before he lost his breakfast, and the bit of lunch he'd taken during his walk.

Ten minutes later he lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Delayed reaction, he thought, and almost immediately fell asleep.

Dreamless.

Long.

Waking shortly after sunset when a screech of brakes made him sit up, his breath short and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

"Jesus," he said, reached up and switched on the tiny light affixed to the wall. The floor-to-ceiling windows were open, the curtains drifting with the breeze; the armchair a dark blotch in front of a fireplace bricked over, its shadow on the wall slightly wavering, as if under water.

He rubbed his eyes until they burned, then forced his fingers to relax, groaning when the aches, dull and throbbing, erupted along the side. He wondered if he ought not to see a doctor, and by the time he had decided it wasn't worth it, he was sleeping again.

Dreaming, this time, of phantom taxis and phantom drivers and old Ben Isling crushed to death behind his counter.

He spent most of the following day in the hotel, watching television, eating sandwiches, fussed over by Melody, who told him more than once that if he wanted to get rid of the picture, she could take it out to her friend in Salisbury herself. The other guests wandered in and out of the cozy front room, clucking, shaking their heads, giving him all the sympathy he required, until Melody finally laughed and told him he ought to charge admission.

But Bess didn't come. Bess...o...b..che, a young American like himself, using the city as a way to bury her past. Or so he thought each time she refused him a history, or even a hint. He hoped she was all right; he knew, however, she was more than all right, she was competent and confident and didn't need him for a squire.

On the third day, he walked to get the stiffness from his leg, had dinner and too much to drink at a pub he haunted, and finally, when there was no place to go, went to his bed.

And dreamed of taxis and explosions and something crawling black and wet through his window.

He woke with a start, blinking sleep away without sitting up. A few deep breaths to calm him, and he turned his head to the left, and saw the door to his room several inches ajar.

G.o.d, he thought, and felt himself grow cold, not once moving his gaze from the bit of hallway he could see. There was no one out there, not anymore, but he held his breath anyway, against the odd chance.

This is silly, you know, he told himself when he felt his shoulders trembling; you're just the victim of a beautiful woman who wanted to see your body before asking you to her suite at the Savoy for a night of- Someone screamed.

"Jesus," he said, and leapt to his feet, wincing at the ache in his bruised leg as he stumbled back into his clothes. By the time he was dressed, the hallway was filling with those guests still at home, most of them crowding to the center stairwell. As best he could tell from the babble and the whispers, someone on the floor below had been discovered in his room; murder, it was said, a throat cut and enough blood to paint most of one wall.

A young woman, shorter than he, her long brown hair touched prematurely with strands of gray, swayed a bit as the descriptions grew more graphic, and he put a hand on her back to prevent her from falling.

"I'm all right!" she snapped, then looked over her shoulder. "Oh, sorry, Brian. I thought it was Mr. White."

He smiled, tapped her once with a finger, and they backed away to a free corner. "Mr. White? Thanks a lot, Bess. It's just what I needed."

Her answering smile was more forced than easy, the faint spray of her freckles nearly vanishing in the attempt, and he leaned back against the wall, a hand in a hip pocket. Thurmond White was a lone traveler-fresh from Virginia, though he had no identifiable accent-with one eye out for bargains and the other out for lonely women. Bess, it seemed, was one of his prime candidates for either category, and twice Brian had to rescue her in the lobby by pretending they had a date. White hadn't been gracious, and hadn't given up the fight.

Bess, for her part, allowed him to take her to dinner both times, once more to the theater, once again to a film. Their good-nights were so chaste he wanted to scream.

They said nothing as they watched the dozen or so guests shift around for better views; they tensed when they heard the sirens stop outside, heard footsteps on the carpeted stairs, heard voices raised in authority.

"I don't think I want to talk to the cops," he said at last, and with a nod for her to join him, slipped back into his room.

She took the chair at once; he sat cross-legged on the bed.

"I heard you nearly caught it the other day," she said, staring around the room as if it were light-years different from her own down the hall. "Are you all right?"

He explained what had happened, didn't bother to exaggerate the injuries he'd received. She wasn't that impressed, though she didn't seem to mind that he couldn't stop looking at the T-shirt she wore-a thin one, and of a solid black that accentuated the tan of her bare arms and the curve of her chest. With a few variations, it was what she had worn since the first day he had met her; he a.s.sumed she had several of them and knew what they did.

Then he told her about waking up and finding the door open.

"Oh, my G.o.d," she said, sitting suddenly forward. "Brian, do you realize you could have been a victim? My G.o.d!" She scanned the room again, this time checking the shadows for a lurking killer. "My G.o.d!" And she was grinning.

A flare of light when the wind parted the curtains, and she looked to the side table and saw the picture of Crystal.

"Melody's mother," he said to her unasked question.

"You're kidding. That old bat?"

"So she says."

Bess reached for the frame, changed her mind with a frown, and suggested that he make sure he kept his door locked. When he told her he did, she reminded him it had been open.

"Or opened," she amended with a sly, menacing smile.

"Right," he said. "Now look, I don't know about you, but living dangerously makes me hungry."

"I already ate."

"Eat again."

She looked at him, considered, and nodded, then took his arm, stroked it once, and led him into the hall, where they were stopped by a constable who asked them if they'd mind looking in at the downstairs lounge, just a few questions, no problems, the inspector would take only a moment of their time.

Melody Tyce met them on the landing and looked at him strangely.

The inspector took exactly ten minutes, thanked them, and took their names.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," Bess said as they walked out to the street.

"I'm not surprised," he said. "Sooner or later one of his women was bound to catch on."

"You knew him well?" she asked dubiously.

"No. But White was the kind of guy ... I don't know. The kind of guy who just travels around, seeing what he can get from where he is before going somewhere else. I don't know. Old before his time, you know what I mean?"

"Sure," she said, skipping a step. "Decadent."

He thought about it, and shook his head. "No. Just lost, I think."

"Ah," she said. "Very profound."

Maybe, he thought, and wondered if she knew how much the description seemed to fit him. If she did, she said nothing, and once their meal was over, they walked home in silence, not holding hands, not brushing arms, and when she skipped up the steps to her room he stood in the foyer shaking his head.

Was it something I said? he thought with a grin.

And thought about it again the next morning when Melody acted as if he had just contracted the plague. Her manner was stiff, her eyes blank when she looked at him, and as he headed out for a day trip to the Tower, he looked back and saw her standing in the doorway, arms folded under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

From Traitor's Gate, then, to the armor museum, he walked through the tour and thought of nothing but Bess. She was getting to him. She was taunting him. The idea she was toying with him got him so mad that he returned to the hotel before he was ready and sat on the steps, waiting for her, ready to demand an explanation of her disinterest.

The sun set.

He went up to his room only once, to change clothes, and turned Crystal's face away when her eyes seemed to follow.

Back outside he sat again, hands on knees, seeing a patrol car pa.s.s and remembering Mr. White and Ben. I am, he thought then, pretty d.a.m.n lucky after all.

A light switched on in a room overhead, and he looked up and back, and saw a shadow behind curtains. Melody's mother, and he rolled his shoulders in a shudder.

Bess showed up just after nine, smiled broadly when she realized he'd been waiting just for her, and nodded when all the dialogues he'd imagined came out as an invitation to a late dinner up the street.

They ate at the nearest Garfunkel's, neither of them wanting to walk very far, neither in the mood for anything fancy. She took a place on the wall-length booth, he the aisle chair. The only adventurous thing they attempted was switching plates when he was unable to face the bland meat he'd been served. And neither of them spoke of more than the cool weather, the bright skies, the tourists who seemed to be crowding into everything and not giving the true Anglophiles a chance to indulge, until Bess looked peculiarly at the veal she'd been nibbling.

"Something wrong?"

"The cheese," she said, her face abruptly pale, the freckles suddenly too dark.

He reached over with a fork and took a bit on a tine, tasted it with his tongue, and shrugged. "Seems all right to me."

She gagged and covered her mouth with her napkin, looking apologetic and near frightened at the same time. When she reached for and failed to grab her gla.s.s of water, he half rose and began to search for a waitress, looked back in time to see her slump to one side in the false leather booth. With a cry for help, he kicked back his chair and attempted to stretch her out along the seat. She moaned. He muttered encouragement and chafed her wrists, reached around and grabbed a napkin to dip into water when he saw the perspiration breaking over her brow.

A doctor pushed him aside.

Two minutes later she was dead.

Five minutes after the place was closed down, and within the hour he was standing in front of the hotel, looking up at the lighted window where Melody's mother lived. Questioned and released from the scene, the urge to wander had been suppressed in favor of a sudden macabre curiosity. He supposed, if he were inclined to believe in such things, that the portrait was some sort of good-luck charm; and right now it was difficult not to believe. The taxi, White's murder, the rat poison-tainted food; add them up and they tallied deaths that should have been his. Add them another way, however, and they tallied a run of good fortune that had nothing to do with anyone's likeness. Melody had said it herself, in fact-that she had gotten rid of it because her mother didn't like it. She called it a bad penny, which, to Brian's mind, had nothing at all to do with good luck.

The questions shifted as a shadow approached them.

He stepped back toward the curb, not bothering to look away.

The curtains parted just enough for him to see a slant of face, a slash of vivid blue, before they closed again and the shadow backed away.

He almost went in. He almost ran up the steps and slammed open the door. But a sudden image of Bess' stricken face loomed over the stoop, and he turned away and began walking-past buildings that even in the dark seemed a century out of place, past short-skirted girls who giggled softly in the shadows, past theatergoers in fine clothes, and belligerent shills who told him he'd better not wait, mate, if he didn't want to miss the city's greatest show.

He saw none of the neon, none of the headlamps, none of the faces that turned toward him and away.

Good luck, he thought sourly; what the h.e.l.l kind of good luck was it for Bess, and Mr. White, and old Ben at the shop?

Coincidence.

Poisoned meat.

He was angry at himself for not feeling more sorrow at young Bess's dying, but he had hardly known her except as someone he couldn't have; he felt nothing at all for Thurmond White, in spite of the man's brashness and his ill-mannered ways; and Ben just happened to be standing where he was, at his post in the shop as the taxi crashed through.

Coincidence.

Good luck.

Bad pennies; and he whirled, nearly knocking over an old woman, and broke into a run that soon covered him with sweat, had his shift clinging to his chest, filled his shoes with slimy damp. The dark streets were quiet save for the slap of his soles; the last of the leaves hissed as he pa.s.sed. Twice he had to dodge cars as he crossed in a street's center; once he had to outrun a dog he'd surprised rooting in garbage.

He ran back to the hotel and stood on the pavement, and when Melody came to the door he only glared and nodded.

She had a sweater cloaked over her wide shoulders, and she fussed with the top b.u.t.ton as she came down the steps.

"It's her," he said tightly, pointing at the window.

"I admit, it's unusual."

He could barely see her face, but he could sense her hesitant smile. "Unusual? Christ, Mel, it's impossible!"

She took his hand and tugged. When he resisted, she tugged again. "Won't hurt, Brian. It won't hurt to look."

He shook off her grip, but followed her just the same, into the lobby, up the stairs, through the fire door and around to the front. She knocked and tilted her head, gave him a smile and walked in, and he rode with her on her shadow.

A single bed, a single chair, a dresser on the far wall.

A crystal chandelier that blinded him until he squinted.

Melody stood beside him.

The other woman stood with her back to the curtains.

She wore a red velvet nightdress trimmed in faint gold, a complement to the ebony that spilled over her shoulders. Her face told him she was sixty, perhaps even thirty; her hands told him she was thirty, perhaps even twenty; and she was as far from fat as he was from content.

She was the woman in his picture, framed by the silvered drapes.

"She tries very hard, my granddaughter does," said the woman named Crystal, in a soft, whipping voice. "Her mother was no better."

He heard Melody sobbing; he didn't look around.

"I suspect she took a fancy to you, a little before I did." The smile was brief and cold. "For different reasons, of course. She fancies she loves you."

He did look then, and looked away from the tears; then reached behind him for the doork.n.o.b. "You're crazy," he said.

"You're alive," she told him.