The Year's Best Horror Stories 22 Read online

  “I was afraid to get back in the bag. It felt ... weird.”

  Willie smiled. “It was just your imagination, Andy. That’s not even your bag.”

  “Huh?” Andy peered down at the bag. A label near the top said Arctic Explorer. “But how—”

  “I switched your bag with Jack’s when the two of you were starting for the summit,” said Willie. “I meant to tell you, but I fell asleep”

  “Jack’ll be furious,” said Andy. “He’ll kill me for this!”

  Trembling with cold and fear, he crawled stiffly from the tent. It was early morning; a chilly sun hung in the pale blue sky. He dashed to Jack’s tent and yanked back the flaps, already composing an apology.

  The tent was empty. The sleeping bag, his bag, lay dark and swollen on the floor. There seemed to be no one inside.

  Or almost no one; for emerging from the top was what appeared to be a deflated basketball—only this one had red hair and a human face.

  RESURRECTION by Adam Meyer

  Part of the crop of younger writers who are beginning to appear in The Year’s Best Horror Stories, Adam Meyer explains: “Born St. Patrick’s Day 1972, I have not an ounce of Irish blood in my body. Though my native county is Queens, New York, I now live in Washington, D.C. with my fiancée, two cats, and enough books to fill the Grand Canyon. A graduate of SUNY Albany, I’m now studying for my Master’s in film production at the American University.”

  Meyer’s short fiction has been published in the small press, as have his interviews and reviews; he currently has three novels seeking a publisher. Meyer made a film of “Resurrection” for a video class, and he threatens to send me a copy. Meyer wrote, directed, and edited the film, which starred his former roommate and his current fiancée. Good luck, kids.

  I watch Donna as she sleeps the sleep of the dead, dreams the dreams of eternity. I glance at my watch, see it’s 12:18 A.M., do the arithmetic, and realize that it’s been over four hours since I killed her.

  If the old witch’s chant works, it shouldn’t be long. I’ll give it another hour, I think. If nothing’s happened by then ... what? Go back to the rundown apartment downtown, where the walls reek of cat urine and death? What will I say to her? Demand my money back? Kill her, too?

  I am not a murderer, I tell myself. I care about life, not death.

  I sit in a chair at Donna’s bedside and watch, wait, hope. Her black hair fans out across the pillow, her ice-blue eyes peer out from a face as white as marble, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Her hands lay palm down at her sides. Perhaps it’s my imagination, but I think I can see the faintest trace of a smile on her blood-red lips.

  I get up from the chair, begin to pace. Time check: 12:32. She isn’t going to wake up, I think, and rage fills me. For two hundred bucks, I expect to get a resurrection chant that works. Then I think that maybe it’s better if Donna doesn’t get up. Maybe it’s best if I slip away into the night and forget this whole crazy plan.

  I wonder what Donna will be like when she returns to life. The old woman said there’d be virtually no change in her personality (except for a little post-resurrection shock), she’d be as lucid and sane after death as before. Still, I wonder. I’ve seen the movies, everything from Frankenstein to Re-Animator. I know what can happen when you interfere with the processes of life and death. But, God, I’ve got to know. I must.

  So I wait.

  The phone rings, and I jump. I don’t dare answer it.

  12:56 A.M. Another half-hour, I vow.

  I remember the scene when Boris Karloff, the Frankenstein monster, hurls that little girl into the lake with as much thought as he’d tossed flowers a few seconds before.

  In my mind’s eye I imagine a zombie-Donna with cruel soulless eyes hurling me through the window to a death awaiting me twelve stories below.

  That’s crazy, I tell myself. But I can’t help wondering.

  By 1:14 A.M., I’m furious. That old witch is a phony. She doesn’t know a thing about magic, let alone raising the dead.

  And then I hear the sound of labored breathing from the bed.

  I look up, eyes wide, heart fluttering like a trapped moth.

  Donna coughs, lifts her hands experimentally, curling the fingers, raises her head from the pillow, and looks at me. Her blue eyes appear very dark in the lamp light; she seems disoriented at first. I’m positive she doesn’t recognize me, and that the only thing on her mind is devouring my flesh.

  She opens her mouth, but no words come out for several seconds. Finally she manages to say, “Jay? What—” I watch her expression as the realization comes to her.

  “I was dead,” she says with an expression not unlike awe. She sits up and swings her legs off the bed. Her hands go to her back, reaching for the gaping wound between her shoulder blades. When her hands reappear, they’re covered with sticky, half-dried blood. “I was dead. Wasn’t I?”

  “Yes, you were. But I brought you back.”

  Donna’s eyes narrow suddenly. “Jay, you murdered me.” She says that word like an obscenity, comprehending for the first time the magnitude of what has happened.

  “I know, Donna. I know. How are you feeling?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Any pain?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Dizziness?”

  “No.”

  “How’s your memory?”

  “Okay, I guess. Jay, you ...” She stands up and begins to sob. I expect to see tears, but there are none. I suppose they’ve dried up.

  “Jay,” she wails, “I was dead, DEAD, and I ... how did you, I, what—”

  I want to embrace her, but she backs away as if my madness were contagious. “Why did you do it? And if I was dead, how could you bring me back to life? It’s impossible. This must be a nightmare, it has to be, because this can’t be real.”

  “It is real,” I say. “Very real.”

  “Oh Christ, this is too much. You literally stabbed me in the fucking back!” She laughs, but there is no humor in it.

  “Calm down, Donna. After all, I brought—”

  “You bastard, you loon, just stay away. My own boyfriend! I thought I could trust you, Jay. I loved you, and I thought you loved me, and—” She moans. “You just keep your distance.”

  I take three steps backward. “This far enough?”

  “Fine,” she says.

  “I do love you,” I say.

  A cruel sound leaves her lips, laughter so warped it borders on the maniacal.

  “I never wanted to hurt you.” Suddenly I find myself justifying my actions to her, much as I have been trying to justify them to my own conscience. “But I had to do something. I was so scared. I had to, don’t you see?”

  “Like hell I do.”

  “I’m sorry. I care about you so much, Donna, you can’t imagine. But there are other things to be considered.” My head churns like the inside of a blender. “I needed someone I could trust. Besides, in a way, I’ve given you a kind of gift. You’re a pioneer. Not many people have ever returned from the grave.”

  “I’m honored.” Her voice drips with sarcasm.

  “Please, Donna, try to understand.”

  She covers her face with her hands, like a child playing peek-a-boo. “This is all happening so fast. It’s crazy.” She looks up. “I want to understand, Jay, I truly do. Tell me why. You owe me that much.”

  I shake my head, realizing how absurd this all is, like something out of a John Carpenter flick. A killer explaining his motives to his victim after she’s already dead. Ludicrous.

  “All right, I’ll tell you, though I’m not sure I even know why myself. It started last April, when my father died. You remember that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. I was at the funeral with you, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes. I appreciate it. You helped me get through one of the toughest times of my life. I thought I was over it. Then, about six weeks ago, when Ron died ...” I felt tears build in my eyes but willed them away. “He
was my best friend. We grew up together. I knew AIDS would get him sooner or later, but ... he wasn’t even thirty years old, Donna.”

  “I know.”

  “I started to become obsessed with the idea of death. Every breath I took, I was afraid it would be my last.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Donna asks. “Maybe you should have seen a psychologist. It’s still not too late.”

  “My sister used to see a shrink. I’ve always thought they were for ... weak people. Strong people solve their own problems. And so I told myself I had to find a way to work through the problem, alone.

  “That’s when I realized something. Why was I afraid of death? Why is anyone? Because it’s human nature to fear the unknown. Death is the ultimate unknown. So I decided to find out what it was all about. That’s why I did it, Donna.”

  “Jay, I can’t believe ... you’re ...”

  “Nuts?”

  “I wasn’t going to—”

  “You didn’t have to say it. I can see it in your eyes. But it worked, didn’t it? You were dead, and now you’re not. So tell me, what is the afterlife like? Don’t spare a single detail. I want to know it all.”

  She says nothing, just stares at the beige carpet.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “I ... what’s going to happen to me?” she asks miserably. “How am I going to live now that I’ve been ... dead?”

  I pause. “Same as before. Besides the only person who knows you were dead is me. Nobody will even suspect.”

  She seems to consider this for a moment. “But what about this?” She turns around, giving me a glimpse of the torn blouse and the gouged flesh beneath, the bone-white of her vertebrae. I look away, feeling my stomach lurch.

  “What about it?”

  “How can I live a normal life with a hole in my back?”

  My mind races. “I’ll fix it.”

  “You? How?”

  “Magic,” I lie.

  “Magic,” she says dubiously.

  “I resurrected you, didn’t I? Believe me, a little stab wound is nothing compared to raising the dead.”

  Donna sighs, satisfied for a moment.

  “Now, I want you to tell me everything you remember about tonight.”

  A frown creases her brow. “Well, you knocked at the door, saying you had to talk to me, and it sounded urgent, so I opened the door and you—”

  “I know that,” I say impatiently. “Tell me what you remember ... after I stabbed you.”

  “Well, I remember that the pain in my back was really bad, it burned, as if someone had set me on fire, and I thought it would never end, but then it did, I guess. It’s like when you fall asleep, you know it happened, but you can’t pinpoint the exact moment.”

  “What else?”

  “There isn’t much else. The pain was gone, somehow, and the next thing I knew I opened my eyes and I was here.” She shrugs.

  “That’s it?”

  “In a nutshell, yes.”

  Stay calm, I think. Coax it out of her. Don’t panic. Not yet.

  “What about all the time when you were actually dead?” I ask. “Don’t you remember anything? Even something that might seem insignificant?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “If anything did happen, then I can’t remember what it was. Maybe I was in heaven, but then when you brought me back it vanished from my memory, like a dream.”

  My hand goes to the scissors in my back pocket. “You’re saying you had a dream?”

  “I’m saying that I don’t know! Are you deaf? I don’t know, I just don’t fucking know!”

  “Or maybe you do know and just aren’t telling me.” I take a step towards Donna. Either she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “Maybe you’re being spiteful, you cold, dead cunt. Maybe that’s it.”

  “No,” she says, leaping across the bed, crawling, eyeing the bedroom door. “Nooooo!”

  She lunges, but I’m too fast for her. I grab her wrist as she reaches for the doorknob and twist her arm just enough so that she can feel how fragile tendons really are. A low squeal escapes her, then nothing, not even the rustle of her breath. She is as silent as a corpse.

  “Are you going to tell me, now?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Donna gasps. “Nothing.”

  “We’ll see,” I say, and bring my right hand out from behind my back. The scissors gleam in the lamplight, their stainless steel surface shiny enough to show me my own reflection. I bring them up so Donna can see them, and I savor the look of horror in her big blue eyes.

  Then I bury the blade in her socket while she stares up at me in one-eyed agony and terror. Gore gushes out, splashing my hand, staining the carpet. After a minute I let go of her arm and the scissors. Donna’s body slumps to the floor. The blood flows long after the look of life is gone from her remaining eye, and I wait until it’s halted to remove the blades.

  I lift her body back onto the bed and go into the bathroom to wash myself and vomit.

  When I return, I kneel on the carpet and say the chant for the second time.

  Afterwards I sit down in a chair by the bed. The only thing to do now is wait.

  I LIVE TO WASH HER by Joey Froehlich

  Joey Froehlich is one of the foremost gonzo madmen of the small press scene. No mean achievement. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii on November 13, 1954, Froehlich is best known for the hundreds of his poems, most of which could easily fit onto a matchbook cover, which have appeared in countless small press publications. He has also published two small press magazines, Whispered Legends and Violent Legends, and is at work on a third, Live Mysteries. Froehlich has spent most of his life in Kentucky and can now be found crawling around Frankfort. He is currently at work on a novel, The Eyes of a Saint, and he has compiled a collection of his poems entitled The Fuel of Tender Years, for which Stephen King has offered to write an introduction. Any publishers reading this?

  “Let me tell you a story.” The old man laughed. I knew him, but he was not my friend. It was strange and weird, the way he danced ... with his hair greased back and wet. His lips moved slowly and his wonderful words owned a flavor I could not forget, the dance romance of a toothpick broken at the tip. “Those were the days,” he said as if it meant something and I kinda figured that to him it did.

  For a moment I thought he might have seen a monster the way he flicked his little eyes and lifted his greasy hand to one side, the left. There was fear in those old eyes but it quickly disappeared as he laughed again. I was sure the old man had seen something I hadn’t. Possibly couldn’t. It was a haunted look ... I think a fear of death. A regret that passed like some weird wind. The old man looked sick. “You never know where they must go,” he coughed. He went on and on, a vibrant speech that could have been a song. And then he said, “I live to wash her,” and I understood the rest. It was a story I’d heard before but that didn’t stop him from continuing as he picked up the mirror and tears formed ... then began to flow. Yeah. First a waterfall and then a river, the tears that showed. The tears were old. It hurt me to watch this as I suspect you know. I think there was still this deep pain somewhere inside him, and it welled up in those sad eyes because he could not forget the girl he had known for more than fifty years. And it just came out. A tango of emotions , mixed with doubt. It just seemed weird. To me, at least at that time, it did. I saw what those deep scars of time had done to him and could have cried as well but I held back and listened now.

  “I met her at the grocery story,” he explained. “She was buying broccoli if I remember correctly. And of course I do! No—I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Her blonde hair danced as she walked down the aisle. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I didn’t know what to say. But she smiled. God—she was beautiful and young and wild. Words weren’t needed. The air hung silent. I stood there, with her not far away. She had stopped to pick up that broccoli—lunch or supper—it didn’t matter. She didn’t talk. But I was mad about he
r. No one else was around. We shared the aisle, just her and I. The moment that will last forever as her blonde hair fell and her eyes met mine. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite like that since. And before that I didn’t know what love was. It was just a word you understand. It had no meaning. None whatsoever before I met the girl, a fate as kind as any fate could be. Before that day I was not alive. But since—with her—every day has meant so much to me. So much, you see. I even learned to like broccoli. She could fix broccoli like no one else. Maybe that’s a part of it. I don’t know.” The old man was getting into it as he rambled on. It was easy to see that he still loved that girl. He finally sat at the table.

  The old man looked down. His bloodshot eyes moved slowly. He forced a smile. A strained reunion. The past had come back to haunt him or so it seemed. Fond memories danced like a rampant dream, growing luxuriantly as he spoke the words that drifted like a bitter tea. Something had been lost and it was easy to see that the old man had never really liked broccoli. Even if he said as much. It wasn’t that broccoli so much though that haunted him, but the girl he had met fifty years before in the grocery store. Fifty years. And he still talked as if it was yesterday. When he had met the girl and fell in love and started eating broccoli. The whole affair bothered me.

  It wasn’t normal to dwell in the past like that. I was sure the girl was dead. I had gone to the funeral only the week before. And here he was going on about her as if she was still alive. Going on about when he first met her, talking about her blonde hair and blue eyes and what he lived for as if that mattered. The whole damn thing was nearly enough to make you cry though we know old people can be like that, living in the past and the sort. That still doesn’t mean it’s not strange. Or that it’s healthy. They get a little crazy sometimes. And that’s too bad, indeed!

  Sometimes it’s hard to understand why they go loony tunes. But they often do. This being a point in fact. The way the old man was living in the past. Yet his story fascinated me (in a way) I must admit. There was more to it than that, ya see. And as he sat down he continued, the story unfolding like a bizarre strange dream. His despair becoming more evident with every word. The old man looked frail. Almost dead himself! It almost hurt me to see him go on that way though I don’t think I could have stopped him even if I wanted to. And I had no reason to do that. No reason at all. I thought there might be more to the story. Something he hadn’t told me. So I stayed. And I listened to the weird scarecrow speech. The old man meant nothing to me and yet when his eyes sparkled (only occasionally) it sent a shiver through me. There was no doubt he still loved her though she had been dead for more than a week.