Year's Best Horror Stories XVIII Part 13

"Yes, well no, cashier. Nearly the same thing. But a bit different." Her words trailed off, confused, but it didn't matter: Monkton didn't appear to be paying much attention to what she was saying. He was looking where her T-shirt hinted at the divide between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Didn't men realize, she wondered, that women know exactly where their eyes are looking? Maybe they did and they thought women liked it. Could they really be that stupid? She supposed they could -- but their intelligence needn't concern her tonight. There would be a party: she could meet people, have a few drinks, relax, forget her worries, and forget that mocking face that seemed to be following her about. The man was talking to her: "Come on, then, er, Bella. Everyone's here. We can go."

They walked in a large group north up Holloway Road. The night was crisp; Bella pulled her collar up. Cars sped by, burning trails of light onto her retinas; the occasional bus, its steamed-up windows yellow rectangles. A few Asian-owned grocery shops still spread their fruit and vegetables out onto the pavement. A tramp curled himself into a ball in a shop doorway as they walked past on their way to a party. Bella felt a twinge of guilt, but reminded herself that she had troubles of her own and this would help her forget them for a while, might even make them go away, one never knew.

A man with long hair in a ponytail, who had introduced himself as Terry, pa.s.sed a rolled and lighted cigarette to Bella. She took it between thumb and index finger and inhaled deeply. Too deeply, it seemed, for she shuddered a little as she held the smoke in her lungs. Her head swam as she exhaled. Terry was talking to her about his new play, about schematic problems he was having with act three; but she wasn't a very attentive listener. She'd drunk several gla.s.ses of wine, three cups of tea (of very dubious content), and had shared three, or was it four, cigarettes. Anyway, Terry didn't seem to be aware of her inattentiveness; he watched his fingernails as he spoke. He didn't seem to hear when she excused herself to go to the toilet. She looked back from the doorway and saw that he retained the same position, and his lips appeared still to be moving -- she giggled and left the room.

The hall was even more congested than the room she'd just left. She managed to pick her way through people sitting on the floor and reach the stairs.

The toilet was on the first floor and amazingly there was no queue. She locked the door, pushed her jeans and briefs down, and took a seat. It was good to go, a relief.

She wondered if Terry was still talking to his nails. She might not have seen it if it hadn't moved: in the corner to her right, almost hidden by curtains, a disfigured triangular face caught the light with a slight movement. Bella screamed and leapt to her feet, tugging at her jeans. The creature was laughing at her back, she knew, as she yanked the door open and fled downstairs, over the heads in the hall, and out the front door.

She didn't have her coat but wouldn't go back in; she'd come and retrieve it another time. Digging her hands deep in the pockets of her jeans, she trudged homeward. She didn't have far to walk but the cold bit through her thin sweater, making her shiver. The party had been a mistake: she remembered the derelict they'd strode past on Holloway Road and flushed with guilt.

As she turned a corner, she caught a glimpse of someone behind her on the other side of the road. The pursuer drew level on the opposite pavement and kept pace with her. She glanced across and her heart leapt onto her tongue. The grinning head bobbed on a black-clad body, scarcely visible in the dark, which pranced with a lunatic's gaiety. The face turned to her, glowing under the orange lamps, but glowing yellow, and not just the face, the whole head. Sobriety had returned, thanks to the cold, so what caused the apparition of this grinning dancing demon?

There must have been something in the tea; those had looked like very big tea leaves, if leaves at all, at the bottom of her cup. She was hallucinating; that's why the dancing head glowed yellow under the orange lights, which killed color; it wasn't the source of its own light, but the product of whatever drugs Bella had consciously or unconsciously consumed.

Still the head kept pace with her, teetering above its stalk-like body, despite the advance of her rationale. If she turned a corner, it turned also, but kept the same distance between them. A thought fluttered around her skull: was the thing being cautious in not approaching?: was it content to laugh from a safe distance?

Deciding to risk it, Bella dived into a narrow pa.s.sageway, which she had used in daylight as a shortcut. She denied herself the luxury of looking back and so didn't perceive that she was being pursued until she heard footsteps approaching at speed.

They didn't stop at a respectful distance behind her. A hand clamped down on her shoulder and she wheeled round.

"Oh, G.o.d!" It was Monkton from the pub. "What are you playing at? You terrified me."

"Sorry," said the newcomer, breathing alcohol through the mist into her face.

"I didn't think. But then I'm hardly in a state to be thinking. You left so suddenly.

Good party. Why d'you leave?"

"I, er... I had a headache, needed some air," Bella said, looking over Monkton's shoulder but seeing nothing in the orange mist.

"Right. Well. You going home, then? Got far to go? Can't let you go on your own."

Monkton was eager and Bella would be glad of company, in the general sense if not the particular. The threat she felt from the face seemed to have grown since its disappearance and replacement by Monkton.

"Thanks," she said. "It's not far."

One thing had led to another. Bella's grat.i.tude to Monkton for walking her home, not fully expressed, for she couldn't tell him about the face; and Monkton's a.s.sumption that Bella would be grateful to him for looking after her. She'd invited him to come in and offered him the choice of cold beer or black coffee. He'd chosen beer, so she took two beers out of the fridge, thinking, what the h.e.l.l, she was lonely. "Don't worry about it, Brian," Bella had tried to comfort him. "You've had a lot to drink."

"It's not the d.a.m.n drink," he'd said sharply. The delay had been caused by Monkton's inability to come, despite his sustained erection. Since he didn't immediately put the blame on Bella, as she imagined most men would if they thought they could get away with it, she reasoned that it must have been a continuing problem, which Monkton was aware of and duly upset by. Bella was determined not to let the episode be a total failure.

Her aggression hadn't worked, so she would invite a change in the balance of power. She cajoled Monkton to rise above the problem and by so doing end it. He had sat astride her and entered, no less firm in his intention than before. If he'd kept his eyes closed it might have been all right, but he'd opened them to sneak a look.

The uncovered window was above the head of the bed. Watching through half- closed eyes Bella knew Monkton had seen someone watching him from the opposite pavement. Laughing at him.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," shouted Monkton.

Bella knew. She only opened her eyes properly because she was supposed to. Dismay welled up inside her. A twitching insinuation of complicity plucked at her mind, born out of a responsibility felt. This must have read on her face: it was the only explanation for Monkton hitting her, as he did, three times across the face.

"You don't f.u.c.k with me!" he shouted. "n.o.body f.u.c.ks with me!" How one's real face showed itself. "Laughing at me. b.i.t.c.h! Don't laugh at me!" he added with venom as he clambered from the bed and reached for his clothes. Bella felt consciousness disintegrating. She heard him mutter thickly about her not having seen the last of him, as he left the flat with a slamming of doors. Pulling herself over, she looked out of the window: the man who'd hit her marched away, otherwise the street was deserted.

The crack in the wall opened wider than before and seemed to drown the room with its absence. Bella turned to the window. Tarpaulins stretched over skips drooped tails, which were derelicts whose coats flapped as they congregated to watch her. Through the lifeless mob a vital angry presence stalked. It was only a matter of time before he stepped through the divide in the wall on a mission of vengeance for his useless erection.

Bella walked the streets looking for a job. No one needed a cashier. One restaurant offered her part-time dishwashing, which she refused. Back on Holloway Road a tramp asked her to help him with his bus fare so he could get to hospital. She brushed it aside, as she had all previous requests. But once imprisoned in the orange misty darkness of the side streets, she felt guilty. She shouldn't have turned down the job; she should have helped the tramp. Society and its governing powers wouldn't help him -- on her shoulders she felt their absolved responsibility weighing heavily, like the pound coin in her pocket. She would turn back and look for the tramp to give him what little she had, but the sharp report of footsteps reverberated in her wake. It could be anyone. Or it could be Monkton, angry after his humiliation, seeking revenge, the only way masculine aggression knew how. She took a circuitous route and lost her pursuer, if indeed there had ever been one.

Bella no longer trusted the veneer of reality, which had once sufficed to seduce her into belief, acceptance, and submission. Within a week she saw its corners turning up, patches worn thin, like an old photograph on a book cover. She went back to the Archway Tower. The streets were crawling with derelicts, they were multiplying, the world was spinning its last; what about the other people around me, she questioned, is it ending for them as well?

She pushed past a tramp choosing his dinner from a dustbin, and stepped onto the platform of a bus. She sat upstairs and watched the pavement creep by. A one-legged tramp hauled himself through the crowds on crutches. The bus stood for an age at traffic lights. The Tower loomed ahead, poking its head into the slate roof of clouds. Bella got off and walked. Footsteps resounded at her back: she stopped and turned and an anonymous swarm of people surged past her. She turned back again and watched the ground as she walked. Into her field of vision came a man beneath whose army greatcoat only one foot showed, and that didn't touch the ground. Now it did; now it didn't. His crutches echoed like nails in shoes. Abruptly he swung round on his metal sticks and extended a begging hand in Bella's direction. But she felt threatened and couldn't even bring herself to look at him. All she saw as she skirted his crutches and left him hanging there were the tattered military ribbons on his greatcoat.

She stood outside the Tower and gazed up at its vastness. The Bl was in her pocket, but any meaning it may have once had no longer existed. The door swung open easily beneath her hand. She scorned the hypocrisy of the lifts and found the staircase. Footsteps followed her up the stairs, stopping when she did, they were her own. She needn't fear footsteps in any case; only herself, her own worst enemy.

Out of breath at the ninth floor, she rested her forehead against the whitewashed plastered wall. Her own footsteps still reverberated around the corners. Beneath her hand in the wall she felt a crack, which opened, at her touch.

Black spilled onto the white and the footsteps grew louder. "Accidental damage should be reported immediately to line manager." The crack gaped ever wider.

Bella fled upstairs and banged through the swing doors on the tenth floor. A door across the landing stood open; she ran to it and into a familiar room. Empty of people, filled with benches, vacant counter windows and one solitary chair.

"Report to receptionist ten minutes after your appointment time if your name has not been called." The door on the other side of the room opened and into the room came a man wearing a sober suit and a grinning triangular mask for a face. Bella groped for the chair and propelled it at the window. The area of impact splintered and she climbed onto the window ledge, kicking at the gla.s.s. "It is dangerous to allow children on the window sill."

She had to find him -- not that he was of any particular importance -- but she would be able to impose a token amount of order, to put one little thing right. She couldn't hope to solve anything, but could maybe purge a little of her guilt. It seemed to her that if she could remove a part of the guilt, there being still time, she might wipe some of the smile from the laughing face.

There were so many derelicts, however, so many homeless, she could look forever. Dragging her shattered leg impeded her, all the more so for the lack of support in her spine, which she estimated to have snapped in three places. Instinct drew her on. Loss of blood onto the pavement was alarming pedestrians, but she could neither stop nor hide in a doorway.

Fifty yards away she caught sight of his back. His crutches glinted in the harsh sunlight; his foot scuffed the ground uselessly. She dug into her pocket for coins, but her hand sank into a raw gash. She knew as she tore her hand free of the muscle that it was too little too late. The tramp turned round and raised a crutch in defense. She knew what face she would see if she looked, even though it didn't belong there. So she wouldn't validate its existence by looking; she wouldn't give it the pleasure. Instead, she would have the last laugh and accept the responsibility.

She tore at her own eyes with her nails and blood ran into the hollows of her cheeks, accentuating the geometry described by the two b.l.o.o.d.y sockets in relation to the smashed hanging jaw.

The Confessional.

by Patrick McLeod.

Patrick McLeod was born in Gainesville, Texas in 1944, went to school mostly in Texas and Louisiana, and received his Ph.D. in English from Rice University in 1973. Since then he has been teaching at Jacksonville University in Florida, where he introduced the first courses in science fiction and fantasy ever taught there. McLeod writes: "This coming semester I am teaching a Freshman Honors course in Comp & Lit which begins with Frankenstein, includes The Sirens of t.i.tan, and concludes with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. My more traditional colleagues tolerate me fairly well."

Until about three years ago McLeod's writing had been confined to "the usual literary papers and criticism that scarcely anyone ever hears or reads except for other bored academics." Since then he has been trying his hand at writing fiction, and has produced eleven stories and about two hundred pages of a novel. "The Confessional" is his first published story.

Fr. Thompson belched slightly as he made a half-genuflection in the general direction of the altar. The sour taste of scotch rose up to burn the back of his throat as he crossed the sanctuary and headed down the side aisle of the church toward the confessional. He fumbled discreetly through the pockets of his ca.s.sock, feeling for the breath freshener as he glanced over the nearly empty pews to ascertain the number of penitents he might expect.

Not too many (thank G.o.d), he sighed, and felt a twinge of guilt at the thought. It was early Sat.u.r.day evening, and he would be hearing confessions for an hour and a half. Since St. Catherine's was an urban church, buried and half- forgotten in the growing ghetto of the old city, the weekend evening was the only practical time for its diminishing number of parishioners to name their sins to the pastor and seek his blessing. They didn't have time to spare the rest of the week, thought Fr. Thompson wryly, or the inclination.

There was only a handful of penitents scattered here and there -- some kneeling, others sitting patiently. Most of them he recognized at a quick glance as he approached the door to the confessional on the side aisle. Not one of those present was under the age of thirty, he knew. h.e.l.l, not even forty. He easily dismissed any guilt he might have felt this time. He was a minister to the middle- aged and old, and he resented it. These people didn't need him. They wanted only rea.s.surance and security, and he wasn't in the business of selling those particular commodities. Not at St. Catherine's, anyway. Another housing project or two, and the church itself would probably have to go.

He played with the little container of spray mist in his pocket as he reached with his other hand for the door handle to the priest's receptacle. Once inside, he thought with bitter irony, and a little squirt would forgive his evil breath and banish all evidence of the liquor he needed to fortify himself for the weekly ordeal of hearing other people's wickedness. A touch of the finger, a whiff of sugar sweetness, and he was almost good as new. G.o.d help me, he prayed, not for the first time.

Just as he was entering the confessional, he heard a noise at the back of the church which caused him to hesitate a moment. Looking back over the wooden pews and down the central nave, he could see a heavy-set man outlined against the twilight, itself framed by the heavy oaken doors of the church entranceway. As they swung to, the figure advanced haltingly into the dim lighting and stopped at the holy water fount. He stood there, eyeing the marble basin as though unsure of its function there or perhaps his own. It took a moment for Fr. Thompson to recognize him.

He had never seen him before in the church. His wife and daughter always came by themselves. Occasionally, over the years, the priest had seen them together outside at various places in the neighborhood, the man and his daughter.

The wife was seldom with them. Once the priest had even taken the liberty of introducing himself. The man had seemed unimpressed at the time. On this evening's news, however, his grief had made his face almost unrecognizable on television, like those of non-celebrities usually are. The cameras had only been cursory in their glimpses of him anyway, much preferring the scene of the tragedy itself and the familiar comments of police and newscasters. Parents are too stunned in such circ.u.mstances for good press, and they won't stand still for the cameras.

But Fr. Thompson had recognized him anyway.

Jesus Christ, he now muttered silently, and stepped quickly into the darkness of the confessional box. He sank back into the heavy cushioned chair, automati- cally raising the atomizer to his mouth, and listened for the approach of the penitents on either side. Not Arceneaux, he implored. Please G.o.d, not Arceneaux.

He tried to listen for the big man's footsteps, but they were lost in the shuffle of those moving through the wooden benches and down the aisles to take their turn at the penitent's window on either side of him.

For the next thirty minutes, Fr. Thompson went through the usual Sat.u.r.day evening routine. Leaning back with his head propped in one hand, he would slide the wooden grate aside and incline himself slightly toward the voice, which would drone automatically the formula of repentance. "Bless me, father, for I have sinned...." The purple curtain between him and the sinner stirred slightly with the expelled litany of offenses, by now so deadeningly dull and trivial to the priest's ears that he grew angry at their plaintive insistence. His parishioners as a whole, at least those who bothered to come to him, were so bereft of comfort and imagination that they were incapable of real sin. He heard over and over again the same petty self-denunciations of the men. I drank too much, I cursed and used G.o.d's name in vain, I slapped the wife around again, I looked at dirty magazines and played with myself, I missed Ma.s.s last Sunday because I was hung over. The women's confessions sounded more like complaints: I had to sneak some groceries when I went shopping because we've been so low on money, my husband and I had a quarrel because I didn't want to do it with him I was so tired and all and I'm still afraid of getting pregnant again, I used the diaphragm when we had s.e.x because I don't know what else I can do I certainly can't have no more children, I get so angry I don't know what to do.

For all of them Fr. Thompson had the same prescription he had doled out weekly over the past ten years. Try to be a good Catholic, try to remember that G.o.d and his Blessed Mother love you, and say three Our Father's and three Hail Mary's. And while the person on the other side of the fluttering curtain would rattle out the perfunctory Act of Contrition, Fr. Thompson would raise his hand in blessing and murmur his own part of the ritual. "I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son...." Dear G.o.d, he thought wearily, staring numbly into the darkness of his cubicle, what an absolute travesty. He needed a drink.

The kneeling bench on the far side of the confessional groaned suddenly and the thin part.i.tion separating the priest from the person on the other side shook slightly as though it were being leaned against. The priest immediately knew who it was. The dread he felt on seeing the man at the church door had been misplaced, but not really forgotten, over the past thirty minutes. More than ever, thought Fr.

Thompson as he pushed the small-latticed grate aside from the hanging veil, he wanted that drink.

The man on the other side had only partially pulled the curtain together behind him, and from the light seeping in Fr. Thompson could discern more than the usual gray outline. From the other side, the priest was practically invisible, a dark blur at best. The kneeling man said nothing for a moment or two, but his head kept moving back and forth as though he were trying to isolate the priest from the darkness, which concealed him. As Fr. Thompson leaned forward, he caught the beery smell of the man's breath, like the memory of last call in a two a.m. bar.

"Is that you, Fr. Thompson?"

"Yes, Mr. Arceneaux. Are you here to make your confession?" returned the priest hopelessly.

"You knew it was me, huh?" came the reply. "Can you see me or what?

How'd you know?" He gave the priest a moment and continued, "I can hardly see you. How come?"

"I saw you in the doorway earlier, Louis," the priest said carefully, "when I was coming down the aisle here."

"Why do you call me Louis, huh? What gives you the right? You don't know me." Before the priest could answer, he went on, "What do I call you? Thompson?

Father?" He made a feeble snort. "That's a joke, isn't it? You and me are probably the same age or so. How old are you anyway?"

"Mr. Arceneaux," the priest tried feebly, "this is a confessional. Why are you here?"

"Come on. I asked you a simple question. How old are you?"

"Forty-five," he sighed.

"I got a couple on you then," said the big man. "The white hair fooled me."

He paused a moment, as if a.s.similating the information. "That still don't make you a father though, does it? A father has a child. Like I did." He was silent again before her name choked out of him in a half-sob. "My Anna Marie."

The priest sat still.

Arceneaux shifted his weight on the other side, and the confessional box shuddered with the effort.

"You knew my Anna Marie, Thompson?"

After a moment's hesitation came the quiet reply. "She talked to me occasionally."

"Yeah, I know she did. She used to say she liked you, her and her mother."

There was the sound of despair in his feeble laugh. "What did she tell you anyway?" The priest tried to suppress the chill he felt. He could see the bulky shape of the man's heaving shoulders.

"Are you here to make your confession, Mr. Arceneaux?" he said desperately, finally giving way to the faint shudder he had felt coming on.

"Yes, I am." The man had looked up with the words, and the priest was once again a.s.saulted by the stench of his breath.

"Do you remember how to begin?" he offered, trying to stomach his distaste.

"Oh yeah," replied Arceneaux, again with a weak snort, "oh yeah." He shifted again on the tiny pew, which creaked its protest, and Fr. Thompson could see him turn aside and reach into his pocket for something. When he had settled again, the ritual began.

"Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I don't know how long it's been since my last confession." He was quiet for a moment. "It don't matter anyhow."

Fr. Thompson didn't want to look at the bulky, indistinct form on the other side of the small curtain. He put his hand to his head, shielding his eyes while he looked straight ahead into the darkness of his own compartment.

"You see," continued the voice only a foot or two away, "I'm gonna kill myself in just a minute or two. So what the h.e.l.l does it matter?"

The priest didn't move, nor did he say anything. At another time he might have been frightened or shocked or angry. Now he was only weary. Nothing in human nature could surprise him any more.

"Don't you believe me, Thompson?" the man went on. "I mean it. Can you see what I got here?" There was the sound of something heavy shaken against the open latticework. "This is a .38 magnum, man. There ain't goin' to be nothing left of my face when I'm through."

The priest remained silent, and waited.

"Don't you want to know why? Or maybe you're too scared yourself. Think I might kill you too, is that it?" When there was no reply, the man bellowed at him, "Listen to me!"

"I am," the priest said quietly. "Try to keep your voice down, please. You'll alarm the others in the church."

"To h.e.l.l with them. They'll have plenty to be alarmed about in a second." He was breathing quickly. "I killed her, Thompson. My own baby." The priest could hear the struggle in his voice to catch the sobs before they spilled out. "I didn't strangle her, I mean. I didn't murder her. But I killed her all the same. I ruined her."

He no longer bothered to implore the priest's attention.