Year's Best Horror Stories XVIII Part 18

"It's time, brother," she said to Prettyboy. Her voice was nice and gentle. I wondered if they played knuckle poker over to the women's tent, and doubted it, somehow.

"I'm ready," said Prettyboy. He glanced at me. One of his eyes was ready to ooze. I thought, Prettyboy, you should of joined the poker game before this. Show a good enough spirit, and you could be a tent zombie till you fell to pieces or got too weak to cart furniture around; tent zombies got to travel, and see places, even if it was only at night. In the tents, we all knew what to expect of each other; we'd seen it before. Not like the relatives of the Born Agains. Sometimes, if the relations wailed and hallelujah'ed enough, and the Born Agains agitated for it, the Rev left the Born Agains with their folks, and got out of town before corruption set in.

Sometimes I speculated on what happened to them all, wondering who screamed first when something dropped off.

The only other thing Prettyboy had to look forward to if he didn't straighten up and join the tenters was Finals, which looked like the road he was traveling. No sense in him, no fellowship, and too much whine, when he wasn't spouting praise about the life Hereafter, as if he couldn't look at us and see what had happened.

How'd he ever get a wife like Caroline?

"Are you Zeke?" the angel said to me. She stood there holding Prettyboy's hand. I wished it were mine. My nerves were pretty iffy, but my vision still worked fine, and just knowing she was touching me would have meant a lot.

"Yes ma'am."

"The Reverend told me to tell you there's going to be a revival meeting tonight."

Good-bye Prettyboy. "Yes, ma'am," I said. The Rev would need me to make the beginning preparations with the Elixir none of the other zombies knew about.

The angel nodded to me, her eyes bright blue in their nests of bruises. She led Prettyboy off across the browning gra.s.s, under the blanket of sun. In all that light, Prettyboy looked terrible even from behind. The skin on his arms was yellow and patchy, and clumps of his hair were coming out. I ambled after them, figuring to go to the supply tent beyond the meeting tent and get the Elixir mixing.

Caroline waited by the back flap of the meeting tent. Every time I had seen her she was wearing skirts and blouses that covered all of her except hands, face, and feet, no matter how hot it was. This time the blouse was white and the skirt gray, and inside them she was shaped like a woman in a girlie magazine. She wore her red hair twisted in a knot at the back of her neck. Sweat made her forehead shine.

She smiled at Prettyboy. "Walter," she said, holding out a hand.

I looked down at my hands. Right now I had all my ringers and thumbs and most everything else. My skin was yellowish, but it looked all of a piece, and had some vitality to it.

Just before the angel lifted the meeting tent's back flap to usher Prettyboy and Caroline inside, I veered over to them. "Walter," I said to Prettyboy, "you look sickly."

Caroline stared at me. "Are you dead?" she asked.

"Born Again, ma'am," I said. I had watched her before. She clung to her Prettyboy like she really loved him, even when some of him came off in her hand.

I thought about my wife. Of course, she died a while before I did, but even when we was alive together, she never liked to touch me unless we was in bed.

Caroline put out her hand to me. I stood still, and thought, there's something wrong with this one. Maybe the right kind of wrong. She touched my arm. I felt my skin twitch. It had been a long time. I gave her my best smile. I still had most of my teeth.

"Zeke, I want to go in. I want to tell them about the glories of being Born Again," said Prettyboy.

"Fret -- Walter, you don't look so hot. I think you better go lie down." I b.u.t.toned up my shirt, rolled down the sleeves, and tucked in the tails. I hadn't been a Prettyboy since the Rev's early tenting days, though I could have kept the job forever if I had been more worked up about it. Right now I wanted it more than anything I had wanted since I woke to the afterlife.

The angel looked from Prettyboy to me, her eyes troubled. She patted Prettyboy's hand. "Brother, you do look weary," she said.

"But -- but -- " His shoulders sagged.

"Go back to the tent and lie down, Walter," I said, as if rest would do him any good.

He turned and shuffled away.

I looked at Caroline. She slid her arm through the crook in mine. It was like the first jolt in the chair. I knew I liked it, and wanted more; didn't mind dying to get it. "You're really dead?" she asked.

"Ma'am."

We went through the tent flap together, walking up the back of the dais between two wings of the choir, which, decked out in white and blue satin, looked like a low cloud. They was mostly alive, and not allowed to talk to us. Caroline and I came up beside the pulpit. "Praise the Lord," cried the Rev, not missing a beat, "see what the power of the Lord Jesus can do, and not just in Heaven, but right here on earth. He who raised Lazarus, He who raised Jairus's daughter, He can raise your dead too. Praise the Lord!" He gripped my shoulder as Amens swept the tent. "Look on a wonder! This man stands before you, a testimony to G.o.d's greatness, born again into eternal Life, reunited with his beloved. Praise the Lord!"

"Praise the Lord!" The noise was like a wind against us.

"I was lost, but now am found," I yelled. "I was blind but now I see. I was dead to life, a sinner in Satan, but now I am alive again through the power of Jesus." The words came back easy. Caroline's hand stroked my side as I spoke, and I felt her touch through my shirt. I felt it. Her fingernails slid along my ribs. "Born again to be with my beloved, Praise G.o.d!" Rib of my rib. Dust of my dust.

When all the singing and sobbing and carrying on was over for the afternoon, and Caroline had gone out to talk to some of the women and tell them about the miracle rebirth of me or Prettyboy, the Rev sidled up to me. "Zeke?" he said.

"What?"

"That was the best performance you ever gave. How come you came back into the fold, boy?"

"I want that woman, Rev. She wants me. Give me the night off and I'll Prettyboy for you again tomorrow."

He tapped his fingers on his white vest and stared off, considering. "You wouldn't run out on me, now would you?"

"You're the man with the special pickles," I said. Most food wouldn't stay down, and without food, we weakened and fell apart even faster. At least, most of us did. The Rev. thought those pickles were the only thing that satisfied our appet.i.tes, and he kept them locked up.

"Have a nice night," he said.

She had a car, a beat-up blue Chevette. It felt strange sitting in a pa.s.senger seat watching a woman drive only a foot away. Oncoming headlights flickered across her face. Who was she, and why did she cling to her husband so long? If she was a true believer in Jesus, how come she was taking a stranger home with her?

She parked the car at a cheap motel on the fringe of town. She led me inside, flicking on the light.

The door had hardly closed behind me when she reached for the b.u.t.tons at the throat of her blouse, staring at me. After opening a couple b.u.t.tons, she pulled the pins out of her hair and shook it out. It was long and heavy. Her eyes watched me as all her clothes and things came off. I felt the life rising in me then. Whether it was the life G.o.d gave or the Rev's blasphemous version, I neither knew nor cared. Caroline had skin so white the veins showed through, little rivers of life.

When she finished undressing, she came for me. I blessed the providence that made me wash that morning, as if I hadn't been doing it every morning since I first saw Caroline hanging on Prettyboy's arm. She leaned so close her hair swung to touch my face as she unb.u.t.toned my shirt, and then her hand was flat on my chest, warmer than the sun. Her eyes met mine and slid away.

"Lie back," she said, pressing me down on the bed. She unlaced my work boots, let them drop, and pulled my pants off. She climbed onto the bed beside me and reached across me to turn off the light.

In the darkness, she said, "I killed him." She let about an acre of silence go by while I thought about that. "He don't even know it. I killed him, and when I heard about the Reverend -- I thought if only I had Walter brought back, it would make everything all right, but it didn't. How can he forgive me for something he don't even know I done?"

I thought about my wife, the last time I saw her. White clothes staining to red, eyes lost in bruises. I had watched the color seep out of her face, and listened to her last breath.

I slid my arm around Caroline's shoulders.

She leaned over me in the darkness. Her tongue touched my chest. I thought, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is a Heaven.

The Earth Wire.

by Joel Lane.

Walter de la Mare's writings have been an influence on a select group of later horror writers -- among them, Robert Aickman, Ramsey Campbell, M. John Harrison, and Joel Lane. Born in Exeter in 1963, Joel Lane grew up in Birmingham, studied at Cambridge, and is once again living in Birmingham, where he is working as a proofreader. Lane has earlier appeared in The Year's Best Horror Stories: XV with his story, "The Foggy, Foggy Dew." Since then, Lane writes: "I've had stories published in Aklo, Fantasy Tales and Panurge, and poems in various small magazines. 'The Earth Wire' follows on the-matically from 'The Foggy, Foggy Dew': different characters, but a similar idea. The story is dedicated to Mark Cornfield, a disc-jockey, who inspired it."

For the benefit of American readers, the British use "earth" where we would use "ground" in terms of electricity.

And in terms suggested in my introduction to Nina Kiriki Hoffman's story in these pages, Joel Lane is a sniper.

Geoff's first encounter with the unknown had been when he found his parents' house burned out, and the street already in the process of demolition. He hadn't known what to expect, of course, returning so soon after the disturbances.

The area hadn't changed that much. It was north of Birmingham, part of the confusion of little towns and industrial wasteland that was still called the Black Country, after the factory-based conurbation of the old days. The old communities had declined with the closure of the small industries, mostly car-related, that had formed their ground. In spite of projects of redevelopment, no new imprint had really taken hold. Asian small businesses had filled a few of the economic and territorial gaps, like metal in a decaying line of teeth. The present landscape was a mosaic of elements juxtaposed without any kind of underlying pattern. In the gaps, the traces of the past were still visible: the network of disused ca.n.a.ls and railways, dating from the Industrial Revolution.

This much, Geoff had grown up with, and observed on his intermittent visits home over the past seven years. It still made him feel lost, a prisoner of his own adolescence. Even when away, he could sense himself picking through the same jigsaw of pieces that didn't fit together. After the disturbances he'd felt compelled to visit his parents, if only to confirm that that part of his life was still in place. It wouldn't be long before the postal and telephone services were put back to rights, but in the meantime all he could do was take the train up from Surrey. Living in the countryside, he had escaped the worst of the past few months. London, Birmingham and the North had been most badly affected, he knew. The imposition of martial law had coincided with a breakdown of general order. In other major cities, riots had turned into open civil warfare. Now, according to the newspapers, order had been restored; but many travel routes and communications were blocked off. In isolated districts, violence between gangs was still escalating. Meanwhile, the majority of peaceful citizens had gone back to work, waiting for news of the international situation.

On the train, Geoff had been unnerved by the silent young men in green uniforms who restlessly patrolled the carriages for want of anything else to do.

From their faces, you might have thought they were outlaws, not soldiers. But most people looked like that these days; it came from living on your nerves, not knowing what or who could be counted on. Near home, the recent disorder was visible in details: smashed windows, wrecked cars, shops boarded up. Soldiers or armed police stood in little groups on street corners or traffic islands, watching.

There was little activity in the streets; it was a Sunday morning in January, still and clear.

On the corner opposite the street where Geoff had been born, a chorus of ma.s.sed voices sounded from the little church with its metallic Christ nailed to a concrete slab. He couldn't remember that place ever having had much of a congregation. Its narrow stained-gla.s.s windows were protected by wire grids. The voices divided into nervous fragments before unifying for another phase of certainty. As Geoff walked away, the reality filled his view before his mind could make sense of it. The street opposite was mostly burned down. His parents' house was just recognizable, a hulk of carbon boarded up against the daylight. The door and its number were gone. The street was being systematically demolished from the far end; for now, the machines stood idle, seeming too large for the fragile structures they were intended to bring down.

Geoff walked back to the church and let the communal voice fill his head for a few moments. Then he went back down the road, checking its name, confirming that his parents' home was among those burned out, even if he had misidentified the building itself. Beyond the demolition machines, two lines of shops pointed back toward the town center. From that direction, an old man was walking an Alsatian along the road; Geoff greeted him. "Do you know what happened up there in Tulson Road?" he asked.

"There was a fire," was the answer, "don't know how. That was in November, you know. When all the trouble was. Nothing could get through the b.l.o.o.d.y roads, with all the crowds and the fighting. Could have been that that started it. A petrol bomb. Or the army trying to show who was boss. Only kids, half of them."

"Were many people killed?" Geoff thought of the silent Christmas that had followed the uprisings, most of the postal service suspended. There was no reliable way of getting in touch with anyone in the cities, and snowstorms made all the travel problems worse. People were said to have starved in some areas.

"You mean in the fire? n.o.body took much notice at the time. I think they evacuated most of the houses, though. But G.o.d knows where they can all have ended up. In those army hostels you read about now, maybe. Why, you from round here?"

"Yes," Geoff said. "My parents lived in Tulson Road. Their house is gone."

The old man stared at him, as if really seeing him for the first time. "That's a shame. They could still be around, you know. You want to make enquiries. Try some of the hospitals, maybe. They wouldn't be there any more, but you might be able to trace them. Good luck." The Alsatian edged past Geoff suspiciously and accompanied his owner toward the remains of Tulson Road. Geoff headed back toward the town center. But the further he walked, the more his own past seemed to detach itself from him. It was all at the edge of his vision, coming apart, instead of being part of himself. The landscape itself felt unreal and enclosed on its own hidden purposes. Advertising boards screened off patches of wasteland; posters claimed the walls of derelict buildings. He walked around the town center for an hour, unable to convince himself that he had once lived here.

At the end of the morning, people emerged from the churches and disappeared into their homes. n.o.body was even playing football in the park. Geoff walked pa.s.sed the line of poplar trees there, held onto the railings and looked over the expanse of thin gra.s.s that was lightly tinted with frost. He wished he could take cover inside his own childhood. He had never felt lost then.

The same impulse directed him onto the ca.n.a.l system, and an endless stony network that led nowhere but onto renewed outgrowths of itself. At least there were no soldiers here. Railings, factory walls and rough, impa.s.sable slopes narrowed the towpath; the water was dark and static, reflecting nothing. Here and there a few thin patches of ice hardened the surface. Geoff wandered in a vague, purposeless state through dirty stone tunnels and over small iron bridges.

Eventually, that stretch of ca.n.a.l ended at a wooden lock. Above this, a boy was standing on a footbridge and looking down onto half a mile or so of water. Geoff climbed up to share the view. He felt weary and confused. It was mid-afternoon and he had not eaten since morning. That, and a hint of the coming darkness, made the ca.n.a.l below appear black and without limit, a gap in the world.

The youth was looking at him. He was about seventeen, of average height and build, wearing black jeans and a waterproof gray jacket with a zip. He looked vaguely familiar, perhaps like someone whom Geoff had been to school with. His hair was black and cropped short but unevenly; his face was pale, as though he were unused to daylight. "You're in trouble, aren't you?" he said. Geoff gazed down at the dark water. The wooden handrail of the bridge shook as he leant on it.

He looked back; the boy's face held a complex burden of patience and sadness. His eyes were an unusually deep blue, the color of stained gla.s.s. "Why not talk to me?"

"What's been going on here?" Geoff said. "I haven't been back here since all the trouble in November. My parent's house is burned down. I don't know where they are. But everything's upside down and I simply... don't know where to start..."He pulled at the handrail as if he could tear it free as a weapon. His chest was shaking with a grief still locked in his body. His face tightened, but only the cold reached it; and there was no feeling of relief, only the annoyance of having lost his self-control in front of a stranger.

"Look," the boy said, "I can tell you something about how things have gone here. Maybe I can help you reconnect yourself. All I do these days is watch and listen. And talk to people. I've lost my parents, too. They died three years ago. I live in their flat, partly. And partly on the ca.n.a.l, in a boat. That's where I sleep. It's out of harm's way... You look like you've been awake all night. Did you just get here today?"

"Yes, this morning. I've been walking around for hours. I'll have to go back.

Can't stay at my parents', can I?"

The boy thought for a moment. "I'll take you round to the flat. You can sit down there and talk for a bit. I'll find you something to eat. You look hungry. My name's Mark, by the way." He led Geoff downhill onto a crowded estate of little terraced houses, a few decades old. The house facing it shadowed Mark's house; it had an air of preserved age, which it no doubt owed to the perpetual lack of light.

His flat was the upper floor of the house; the stairs began a few feet back from the front door. "You can't really tell what's new and what's old round here, can you?"

Mark said. "Whatever they build turns just like everything else in a few years."

Upstairs it was cold and dim. "There's no electric here," Mark explained. "I use batteries for most things -- radio, torch, clock. There's a paraffin cooker here, and a heater on the boat. Otherwise nothing." He coughed. The floor was scattered with bits of electrical circuits: wires, batteries, fuses and less identifiable components. "That's my hobby. I mend radios, things like that. I used to have a Citizens' Band radio. But everything like that has been outlawed now. So I'm trying to fix the radio on my boat to pick up stray frequencies. I lie there at night, wandering over the airwaves. Listening for all the drifting voices of the lost ones."

He struck a match and lit the paraffin stove in the corner of the room. Its bluish light circled his dark head for a moment like an aura.

Geoff sat in a dusty chair and fought off all the questions that cl.u.s.tered around him. He focused on the wavering cone of light: blue at its heart, then purple, mauve, flickering red at its edges. Mark's eyes were points of color in a blurred face. He took off his coat; underneath, he was wearing a pale shirt and braces. His arms and hands were thin in proportion to his body. He carried on talking; evidently glad to have company, as he heated up a tin of soup. Geoff listened, bemused, to this voice that seemed to consist of a throng of submerged partial voices, that talked with and against itself.

The soup boiled; Mark poured it into a cup, drank a mouthful, and pa.s.sed the rest to Geoff. "Electricity is fascinating," he was saying. "It does almost everything in the city. People live by it, yet they've got no idea how it works. And it can do all kinds of damage as well. You'll probably see the Wheel tonight. But an electric current is like any kind of power. It has a natural tendency to hurt people." He picked up a plug from the floorboards and opened it swiftly with a screwdriver. "You know what the middle wire is? The earth wire. Right. The plug can work without it. It's just a safety device. The conscience of the circuit. True?"

Geoff asked what the Wheel was. "You'll know when you see it," was the only answer.

The room darkened, shrinking around the flame of the stove. "Some awful things are happening," Mark said quietly. "Give me time, I might understand them.

I'm just a watcher and a listener. n.o.body has any peace these days. Before the soldiers came in, there were gangs fighting the police. Now, there's like another army. Young people with no power, only a charge. And a need to hurt. They've called on resources no community should know about. I think all the things that kept people together have been turned against them. There's no community now.

Only the mob. Anyone who's different gets... reversed. Made into carbon. Imagine shouting No, denying at the top of your voice. Then imagine doing that No to someone. Last, imagine being that No forever, all the way through." The voice dissolved into a fit of coughing. Mark's body was contorted with the force of it. When the boy looked up, his face was luminous with sweat. He pulled on his coat and zipped it up.

"Let's go," he said. "I'll show you where my boat is. We'll be back in time to see the Wheel." Geoff stood up and followed Mark back downstairs and through the narrow streets toward the ca.n.a.l. By now, he was worried about Mark's condition as well as about whatever they were going to witness. But the sense of displacement still clung to him, leaving him helpless. A single white streetlamp illuminated the stretch of ca.n.a.l where Mark's boat was moored, a few yards below road level. It was a short black barge with windows around a central cabin; navy blue curtains were drawn along the sides. Mark and Geoff climbed onto the barge and sat on the roof, waiting for it to stop rocking. By now, night was settling all around. In the lamplight, the ripples spreading on the ca.n.a.l surface looked like silver wires.

"I sleep here at night," the boy said. "It's quiet and peaceful out here. Just me and the radio, and the ca.n.a.l water transmitting the murmurs from the past. I keep lots of old things inside, by the bunk. Notebooks, photographs, tapes, newspapers.

Everything I can remember, everything people tell me, ends up here." They could see along the shining distance of still water to the next bridge; and to one side, the flaking wall of a disused factory. To the other side, a railway cutting fell down into the darkness. The street-lamp outlined the whitewashed metal footbridge that linked them to the road, several yards overhead; from below, it seemed too bright and delicate to be real.

Mark stared intently into the surrounding gloom. "I could walk along here with you," he muttered, "and tell you who built everything, and when. How every bridge was designed, how they set the stones, who opened the factories and who shut them down. I heard a song about it once. You know it? Their mark on this land is stilt seen and still laid, the way for a commerce where vast fortunes were made. The supply of an Empire where the sun never set, which is now deep in darkness but the railway's there yet. It's true. This area's another residue where the glacier of profit stopped and melted a little before it pa.s.sed on, a long time ago. If you lie here long enough, you can hear the stone and metal still going on about it."

His eyes were the same intense blue as the paraffin flame, dissolving into black at their centers.

Looking out onto the ca.n.a.l, as the last traces of daylight turned to iron, Geoff began to see a few unstable outlines. As they moved they took up light and became more complex, more nearly alive. They struggled and turned into figures.

Now he could see men working on the bridge and the railway, opening the lock at the head of the ca.n.a.l, crowding out of the factory doors. Water poured into the ca.n.a.l from the open lock; waste flowed down from the channels in the factory wall. Off to the side, he could see women coming home from their jobs, cleaning and cooking in their houses; he could see children playing in the web of streets, and throwing stones into the ca.n.a.l. There was something almost terrible in the intensity of this scene, composed as it was of grains of color moving against the common darkness of water and sky. Geoff closed his eyes and heard the violent beating of his own heart.

In a few moments everything became quiet and still again. Geoff sat up, and felt the boat tremble. Mark was blinking into the lamplight, confused. "G.o.d, that was a strange dream," he murmured, and gripped Geoff s hand momentarily.

"We'll fall off here if we're not careful." As clumsily as if the cold had got into their limbs, the two climbed down onto the towpath. Something slowed Geoff s movements and made him feel distant from this situation. Had he been able to find the words, he might have called it the possessive hold of memory, the way it resisted change. But it made no sense for him to feel like that about his parents, now of all times. Nor about Mark, when he'd only known him a few hours.

He needed to be alone for a minute, to regain his perspective. "Do you want something to eat?" he asked the boy. Mark shook his head; he was busy fastening the boat's moorings. Geoff remembered pa.s.sing a shop just up the road. "Wait here," he said.

"I'll be back in a few minutes." Out of sight of the ca.n.a.l, he had a feeling of relief. The small Asian-run chip shop had several other customers. A group of teenagers stood round a video game, one playing, the others watching. Geoff waited by the counter, rea.s.sured by the sense of anonymity. He could hear the distant contention of voices; they were in his head, he imagined, until he noticed the shop's owner looking past him at the window. The narrow street was filled with people. Hurriedly, the teenagers left the shop to join them. Geoff crossed to the gla.s.s door and looked out. They weren't soldiers, just a crowd of youths all going in the same direction. He could hear angry voices, but no chorus.

As rapidly as it had filled, the road emptied again. "Where are they going?"