Year's Best Horror Stories XVIII Part 16

Funny thought. He could visualize the face clearly, that of a man in middle age, with a look of utter terror on his features. David stared at the black rectangle on the page and shivered. Weird.

He sketched several of the accounts to the point where he could finish them at work the next day. It didn't take long. He found himself sitting, daydreaming, and feeling a little s.p.a.cy.

Maybe it was Jennifer. It was so new, what they had together. And this business of just coming over, hopping into bed, then off again, this was new to him too. She had only spent the night once, but he thought she would probably stay over the weekend. He was looking forward to it very, very much.

He stood and began to pace. He was restless, still had some nervous energy to use up. He thought about jogging, but he wasn't really in the mood.

For some reason he thought of the neighbor he hadn't met, a retired fellow, or so said his landlord, living in the twin apartment to David's on the other side of the building. From time to time as he worked, David had heard his neighbor moving around, and the tinny sound of a radio.

He looked at the clock. It was only 9:00. On impulse, David decided to visit his neighbor.

The building was a bit odd. His apartment was the only one that had been restored so far. To reach the other apartment, he had to go down the stairs to the first floor. The place was stripped, the walls patched for painting, the only light a dim yellow bulb by the exterior door. Across the room a second flight of stairs led directly up to the other apartment. He found a switch beside the stairs, and a dim light came on above him. He began cautiously to climb.

The stairs hadn't been fixed yet, and they gave off odd squeaks and moans as he climbed, holding tightly to the makeshift banister that was partly wooden, partly a piece of metal pipe stuck in to cover a break in the railing.

It was very quiet, there at the end of the stairs, and almost dark, because the bulb in an open socket by the door couldn't have been above a forty watt.

He knocked softly on the door, and the sound echoed in the stairwell.

"h.e.l.lo? Mr. Arnold?"

He could hear the shuffling of feet in the room beyond. The door opened a crack. He noticed that there were two chains on the door, on the inside. He saw one faded brown eye, a bit of stubbly jaw.

"Yes?"

"Hi, I'm David Streiber, your new neighbor downstairs. Just thought I'd come up and say 'hi.' "

"You did, did you?"

The eye examined him. The man moved back. Now two dark eyes appeared, above a thickly veined, arched nose, a firm jaw. Arnold's little mustache was dwarfed by the drama of his features.

"You look to be what you say."

"I beg your pardon?"

The door closed, and David heard the chains being withdrawn. The door opened again.

"Come in."

He walked into what must have been the living room. The place was neat, if not terribly affluent. A few overstaffed chairs, an old Magnavox television on a low stand, a lumpy brown sofa. The colors were all dark, with an air of mild age, reinforced by bits of green-brown carpet. He noticed that sheets of dark plastic were taped over the windows, which looked north and west. Probably to keep the heating bills down.

"Sit down," said Mr. Arnold, pointing at the couch. He went into the kitchen as David cautiously eased down onto the broken springs. In a few minutes, Arnold returned with a bottle of bourbon and ice-filled gla.s.ses. He mixed two drinks without asking David if he wanted one. David took the drink, still looking around the place. He noted a decent cupboard in the corner, with some pale bits and pieces of china showing through the dusty gla.s.s.

He sipped the bourbon. It was good old Kentucky whiskey.

Arnold had taken a padded dark green chair opposite the couch. He was watching David with an air of caution. The man was of medium height, but slightly stooped, an effect lessened as he sat. He wore heavy cotton work-clothes, green pants and shirt, with an old double-b.u.t.ton sweater over it. His face, David realized, with surprise, was somewhat like his own basic features; wide bushy eyebrows, slightly long, thick nose, prominent, firm chin. He was also balding, his forehead broad and smooth. If their ages had been closer, they might have genuinely resembled one another.

"Well," said David, as Arnold remained silent. "I just thought I'd come and make contact, let you know who you had for a neighbor."

The older man seemed to relax slightly. He nodded.

"Good of you. I keep to myself a lot. But it's good to know that... you're my neighbor. What do you do?"

"I'm an artist, er, a commercial artist at the moment."

Arnold nodded.

"Happens to the best of us. I was a poet when I was young. Had some published, too." He pointed to a low set of bookshelves under the television, which seemed to contain some old journals under a layer of dust. "But I had to make a living. Was a proofreader for the Star until my eyes went. Retired out."

"But maybe you still write a little?"

Arnold shrugged. "Maybe...."

David was drinking the bourbon too quickly, but it felt good. He looked around at the room again.

"Do you keep the windows covered for the heat?" he asked, then wondered if it might not be a tactful question.

"Nope, landlord pays the heat here."

Of course, just like in David's own apartment. But the Imp of the Perverse was in him. He couldn't help asking: "So why keep them covered?"

"Reflections. I don't like to look at them. And I have very keen peripheral vision, though my direct vision's faded. Seeing the reflections out of the corner of my eyes distracts me from my book.

"Oh, so you are writing a book!" said David. "I've always wanted to write.

Maybe you'll tell me a little about it?"

Arnold had finished his bourbon. He took David's gla.s.s, went to the kitchen for more ice, and returned with the drinks.

"Your book?" David prompted.

"It's about...." Arnold hesitated. "I really shouldn't tell you about it at all, but... it's on my mind so much...."

Arnold seemed to make up his mind. He'd already drunk half his bourbon.

"It's about reflections. G.o.d! Have you ever noticed how many reflections there are all around us in the city? They're everywhere -- reflections from cars, and people's gla.s.ses, and pools of water, and windows -- especially the windows.

"The thing about reflections is, they're not empty."

"Huh?"

"Did you ever look into a reflection, and see a face -- only the face wasn't yours?"

David nodded. "Sure. Only the face was mine, just distorted. Or maybe the face of somebody just pa.s.sing by." Arnold shook his head. "That's what they'd like us to think. But there is something else there. Something that doesn't like us."

"How do you know?"

Arnold shook his head. His slightly loose gesture told David that the man was getting intoxicated.

"I don't, unless... It's like the windows. Windows are made of gla.s.s, and gla.s.s is made of silica. We melt sand -- quartz -- to get pure silica. And we use quartz crystals to send messages, and to store information in computers.

"Think of all the silica in a window. And of all the windows in a city.

Frequencies can go from a crystal to a crystal -- why not from a window to a window? What if all that silica has a kind of mind of its own -- or suppose it can trap spirits, the spirits of those who've died, and never quite made it away from the earth, like we trap a bit of information in a silica chip? And suppose that this "trapping" effect allows them to build up a kind of awareness from the spirits that are trapped -- a kind of artificial intelligence? And suppose they're hostile to living humanity, because we're still alive, and we have a chance to go -- wherever we go when we die. But they're trapped here in a kind of conscious prison.

"And just suppose, that the weird qualities of reflected light sometimes let us see into their prison, and see their faces... And suppose that they're dangerous."

"Dangerous? How?"

"They take people who know about them."

"How?"

Arnold leaned back and scratched his balding head. He splashed a little whiskey into his empty gla.s.s before answering.

"I don't know. But I knew a man. He drank a lot. He was on the streets a lot.

He used to be a bookmaker until he got to drinking too much to handle the figures.

It was he told me about them. And then, they got him."

David felt himself both intrigued and a little nervous. This talk was weird, but it was interesting.

"Just how could they get him?"

"I don't know. He had a little place, over west of the Circle. But most of the time he just walked around the streets. And one day I met him and we split a bottle, and he told me about them. The next day, he was gone."

"Gone?"

"Gone. Just disappeared. But... I saw him one day. I saw him, in the gla.s.s of a window, as it reflected a streetlight on around midnight. And he was screaming, trying to get out."

David shivered. This was pushing it a bit.

"So what did you do then?"

"Do? What could I do? I hid, that's what. 'Cause they knew about me. I just hid in my house and ate the food I had, and stayed hid, until they forgot about me.

And then, when I went out again, I just didn't look at 'em."

"I shouldn't be telling you this," he went on. "They might be after me now.

There might be some way they could listen."

Arnold's voice was getting foggy. The rapid drinking had gone to David's head as well.

"Can I get a drink of water?" he asked.

"Sure."

He took his gla.s.s into the kitchen, rinsed it and got a drink of the rusty tap water. It seemed like the pipes weren't used much. The one window to the kitchen had been covered with the same black plastic as was used in the living room, and as he pa.s.sed the little bathroom; he saw the paler spot on the wall where the mirror had been taken down.

He walked back into the living room. Arnold seemed to be dozing. Rather than disturb him, David let himself out, softly closing the door behind him.

Most of the next day at work had been typically boring -- up until the windstorm. As he sketched in the narrow white office, David's sinuses had told him that some kind of storm was near -- that, and the hollowness of the sounds through his half-opened window.

Then, about an hour before quitting time, the wind came up suddenly, a quick, fierce storm filled with hail that threatened to crash through the window. He slammed the window shut, blotted the water from his drawing table, and tried to see into the blue-green fury outside. The rain was intense, blurring visibility. He saw cars slowed to a crawl in the street below, heard occasional crashes, as of something blown down by the wind.

Then, almost as quickly as it had come, the storm faded to a light drizzle, which quickly ended.

He opened the window, breathed the storm-cleansed air.

By then, it was time to go home.

David liked to walk into work when the weather was clear. He'd walked that morning, and now was enjoying the eight-block trek back to his apartment.

The city had a pleasant, scrubbed look to it, though here and there a sign had been blown down, a garbage can overturned, a window broken out by the storm.

The trees had a green-gold furring of new leaves against their glistening dark trunks. The metallic and gla.s.s surfaces of the buildings were bright and reflective.

As he walked, he found himself noticing just how many reflections there are in a city, from the windows of the buildings, the windows of pa.s.sing cars, the pools in the streets from the afternoon shower -- even people's gla.s.ses, bits of metal on cars and building dressing, have some kind of reflection. Of course, if poor old Arnold's theory were correct, it was only the gla.s.s you had to worry about...

And just what did you see when you looked into a reflection? He and Jennifer had once discussed the matter in detail. You saw an image of something that was real -- the sky, a face, a building, a tree -- distorted by a combination of your personal angle of inspection, the reflective qualities of the surface, and whatever distortion was due to the particular type of medium and the angle of the opaque surface behind it.

Jennifer found reflections a kind of artistic challenge, with a touch of science thrown in. It was certainly a healthier att.i.tude than Arnold's.

David was in for a surprise when he opened the door to his apartment.

Jennifer had used the key he'd given her. In front of the long window was an easel, and on it, a painting. The oil was still wet. The scene appeared to be a "student ghetto" kind of neighborhood a few blocks to the northeast. He thought that he recognized the type of red-brick facings, if not the actual location. By the light in the painting, it was just after dark -- or very early dawn, still a thin line of paleness in the sky.

The scene was wonderful, a clear sense of ident.i.ty shrouding the old houses, the small store on the corner of the block. Could she have painted it so fast? No, she must have been working on it before, and had brought it over to complete at his apartment.

He sat down and looked at the painting for a moment. There was a sharply angled window of the little store at the left foreground that had been left blank, but for a vaguely sketched-in face. It puzzled him a little.

Then the feeling came back, the feeling of happiness. The easel with the painting was a very good sign. It seemed to indicate that she might be building a presence here. He certainly wouldn't object.

He had made a ham, tomato and lettuce sandwich, and was halfway through it and a beer, when he realized that he'd been hearing heavy footfalls on the stairs on the other side of the house for several minutes.

It seemed odd, that people would be going up and down his elderly neighbor's stairs like that.

Then he heard a set of heavy footsteps ascending his stairs.