The Year's Best Horror Stories 15 Read online

  Then both the arms came worming out from under the sheet to hold Jill so she couldn’t move any more than Colin and me could, and the head started shaking to get the mask off. I’d have done anything rather than see underneath, the arms looked melted enough. All we could hear was the rubber mask creaking and something flopping round inside it, and the drip on the carpet from Andrew wetting himself. But suddenly Andrew squeaked, the best he could do for talking. “You leave her alone. She didn’t take your apples, I did. You come and get me.”

  The mask slipped as if him under the sheet was putting his head on one side, then the arms dropped Jill and reached out for Andrew. Andrew ran to the door and we saw he’d got his hands free. He ran onto the stairs saying, “Come on, you fat old toad, try and catch me.”

  Him under the sheet went after him and we heard them running down, Andrew’s footsteps and the others that sounded bare and squelchy. Me and Colin ran to Jill when we could move to see if she was all right apart from being sick on the carpet. When I saw she was, I ran down fast so that I wouldn’t think about it, to find Andrew.

  I heard his dad shouting at him behind the tenements. “Did you do this? What’s got into you?” Andrew had got matches from somewhere and set light to the bonfire. His dad didn’t see anything else, but I did, a sheet and something jumping about inside it, under all that fire. Andrew must have crawled through the tunnel he’d made but him in the sheet had got stuck. I watched the sheet flopping about when the flames got to it, then it stopped moving when the tunnel caved in on it. “Come upstairs, I want a few words with you,” Andrew’s dad said, pulling him by his ear. But when we got in the building he let go and just gaped, because Andrew’s hair had gone dead white.

  DEAD WHITE WOMEN by William F. Wu

  William F. Wu’s first published short story, “By the Flicker of the One-Eyed Flame,” sold in 1975, was adapted and performed on stage by East/West Players of Los Angeles in 1977. His more recent fantasy story, “Wong’s Lost and Found Emporium,” was adapted into an episode of the new Twilight Zone television series in 1985. At latest count Wu has sold over twenty pieces of short fiction, appearing in such magazines as Omni, Analog, Amazing, Twilight Zone Magazine, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, in addition to various anthologies. His first novel, MasterPlay, was published this year by Questar, and his second novel, The Cyborg, is set for later this year.

  Born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1951, Wu holds a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan. After a stay in the Los Angeles area, he has recently moved to Kansas. “Dead White Women” was first published in the Kansas small press magazine, Eldritch Tales. Just when you thought it was safe ...

  The magic of the soul was affection and hate, theirs and mine. They liked me and I didn’t hate them. So their deaths were ordained somewhere in the blue-eyed world of silly old tunes and sentimental nonsense.

  Death Angel, can you hear me?

  Cyn was eighteen, like me, all mush on the inside and soft ’n’ squishy on the outside. She was less than five feet tall and from a distance she looked like a basketball with two bowling balls stuck on the front. She had short brown hair. I had known her for years and thought our going out together would be pleasant, but no big deal. On a muggy midwestern summer night, I pulled my daddy’s car up to the front of her family’s house.

  Their front yard was mostly bluegrass, with a patch of thick brown zoisia in one corner away from the driveway. The earth smelled damp and fresh; it was no night to go barefoot unless you wanted to feel smashed slugs oozing up between your toes. Cyn was the same consistency, but she held together pretty well.

  I stood on the porch under a bright white light. After I knocked, I listened to the footsteps inside and waited while a shadow darkened the little peep-hole in the door. I survived the scrutiny, being a rather scrawny plain-looking slant-eyed kid from the high school who was expected anyway, and Cyn’s mother opened the door.

  Cyn’s mother had the same height and build as her daughter, plus a surprisingly cute face that resembled the front of the Roman war galley in “Ben Hur.”

  “Hello, Hello, come in. How are you? Cyn will be ready in just a minute. This way, sit down.”

  “Hi. Okay.” I followed her into the living room, walking with my hands in my pockets. The place was small and warm and cozy, with a plush carpet and well-polished wooden lamp tables. The easy chair and the couch were all soft and padded, like Cyn and her mother. I sat down on the couch, grinning fatuously, and looked up at her.

  She looked back, grinning just as idiotically, with her hands folded in front of her. “I think it’s just so nice you two are going out. Oh, here’s Cyn’s daddy. Daddy, this is John.”

  I stood up, as a solid stocky man with a crew cut and a scowl came in from the dining room. He stuck a smokeless pipe between his teeth, faked a smile, and stuck out his hand.

  “How do you do, John.” He made a faint attempt at sounding hearty.

  “Hi,” I muttered, trying not to wince as he crushed the bones in my hand and then twisted the wreckage back and forth a few times experimentally. “Uh, fine—thanks.”

  He promptly lost interest and turned to switch on a big console color tv. With his eyes fixed on the shifting images on the screen, he backed up slowly until he hit the couch and then allowed himself to fall backward onto it. I stuck the remains of my hand back into my pocket.

  His wife smiled and shrugged. “Don’t mind him. He used to kill Japs in the Pacific.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Of course.”

  Cyn came rolling down the hall, smiling nicely. “I know, I know, I’m always late. Shall we go?”

  “Guess we better,” I said. “Bye.”

  “Midnight,” said Cyn’s mother, poking her daughter’s shoulder with an index finger. The finger sank in up to the first knuckle, like when you check the water for cooking rice.

  “I know, I know.” Cyn took my arm and we walked across the lawn.

  “We’re still in time for the movie,” I said.

  “Ugh, look at the slugs,” said Cyn. “Oh, yuck.”

  We went to see “Walk Like a Dragon,” starring Jack Lord. James Shigeta and Mobu McCarthy played Chinese immigrants in the Old West, like my ancestors had been. Shigeta wins the girl but loses the gunfight. Anyway, it was the first time I’d seen a Chinese guy wear a queue and a gun and speak regular English in a movie.

  “Hope your father doesn’t see this,” I said at the end. “He might get trigger-happy.”

  “That’s dumb. Besides, these people in the movie are Chinese.”

  “No, they aren’t. The actors, I mean. They’re Japanese Americans. Besides, it wouldn’t matter to him.”

  “Oh. Well, you’re right; it wouldn’t.”

  I took her to Allen’s Drive-In, where we sat in the car. She ordered a chocolate shake. I had a double cheeseburger, fries, a root beer, and later asked for a piece of cheesecake.

  “Why aren’t you fat?” Cyn asked me.

  “Mmm.” I had a mouthful of food.

  “Nobody ever asks me out,” said Cyn.

  When I could talk, I said, “I never ask anybody out.”

  “Isn’t it nice? We belong together.”

  Warning bells went off in my head, but before I could puke, she threw her arms around me. I went down hard and stayed pinned until the waitress arrived with the cheesecake. Then I sat up, paid, and floored the accelerator. My daddy’s car wouldn’t lay rubber; instead, it backfired twice and stalled out. Even so, Cyn retreated and I headed for her house.

  What did I know? I had thought we would be two old friends going out for a pleasant evening. We had been casual friends for several years in school; how would I know that showing up after dinner meant I was a gentleman caller? I thought I was John Chinaman, local nerd. In fact, I was. Only now I was a nerd with a girlfriend.

  We went out three more times. She spent most of the time talking about how far she would let me go, constantly trying to get me to go for
the minimum. I was too disappointed, finding that an old friend had suddenly started leaving her brains at home whenever we got together. Besides, two thoughts kept occurring to me: her father killed Japs and when white women like slanted eyes, white women die.

  On our fourth date, I succumbed like the nerd I was. I had picked up this cheapie little ring and was going to give it to her. Since I didn’t know how to get rid of her, I figured I might as well do what she wanted.

  We were sitting in the front seat of the car in the parking lot of my grade school. Tall trees hid one corner of it from the street, making it one of the very few spots where cops did not check parked cars with their flashlights. I waited as late as I could.

  “Well,” I said, “would you, uh, be interested in a little, real cheapie ring?”

  “Sure!” She brightened so much, I felt guilty.

  “Here,” I said.

  “Ooh.” She took it and stuck it onto her little finger. It went past the first knuckle, but not the second. She had to take it off again. “I love it. Thank you, you’re wonderful.”

  I got a hug and a kiss while I started the car. At the stroke of twelve, my daddy’s car failed one more time, turning into a pumpkin. Or else it was killed by the jolts it took trying to cross a set of railroad tracks.

  “Get out. Better get to a tow truck, quick,” I said. “Hurry.”

  We both jumped out and started on foot. The vibration in the ground was subtle at first, and we kept walking. Then the earth began to shake, and the rumble of a train was unmistakable. I hustled her farther down the road; the car was doomed. We turned to watch.

  “Oh, no,” she cried. “I left the ring in the car!” She started to run back.

  “Wait. Wait. Wait!”

  She went running back, bobbing and waddling faster than I had ever thought she could. I was running flat out behind her, and gaining, but she was already at the car. Ahead of me, she yanked open the passenger door and threw herself inside. A deadly white light illuminated the whole scene and a great booming sepulchral note from the train sailed across the sky in harmonious company with the rhythmic rumbling of the tracks. The huge diesel smashed into the car and sent chunks flying in all directions.

  I felt sick. That night, the next day, at the funeral, for months after, I felt very sick. I had not known her very well—eighteen-year-olds rarely know each other very well—and I hadn’t liked her much lately. But I was sick.

  I want my baby back.

  Then for a while I walked around feeling tough. I had survived the accidental death of a girlfriend, and that seemed tragically romantic. Next I decided that I had grown up from this experience, but I hadn’t, especially. Just a little, to an ordinary extent for such an event. Then I got well.

  Blue Eyes was coming to me, from out of the skies on flight something-or-other—but that was just a nickname.

  Ann’s eyes were a striking blue that set off her huge frizzy triangle of red-orange hair. The freckles were a bonus.

  Ann was no accident. I went after her deliberately in college, being only half a nerd now. She thought I acted silly but cute, like a puppy.

  I was sitting in one of the lounges in the dormitory. The place was jammed with all the dateless and homeless flotsam of a Saturday night, scruffy and loud and not very drunk. Laughing, hairy, barefoot students tumbled and sprawled across the furniture and all over the floor. Two games of Scrabble were in progress on the red carpet and the stereo speakers imbedded in the wall thumped and whined in acidic rhythms.

  The dizzy redhead cartwheeled across the top of the couch, celebrating the blaring music. Ann finished with a headstand that exhibited a luscious silhouette, and then she let herself gently fall into my lap. We knew each other some.

  “Hi,” she shouted in my ear, laughing. “How are ya?”

  “Oh-fine,” I yelled back, making the response a one-word sound. I started getting us untangled and saw that one of the Scrabble games was breaking up. “Wanna play Scrabble?”

  “Oh, boy.” With childlike enthusiasm, she leaped to the floor and scrambled to one of the boards. Some of the other players were leaving; some were staying for another round.

  I followed Ann to the floor, squinting through marijuana smoke at the board. She handed me a little wooden rack and we all started picking letters.

  The game started quickly. The first turns we all had seemed dull to me, but Ann kept studying all the new developments with a half-genuine, half-self-parodying excitement.

  “Fops,” she read off the board.

  I looked at my letters. “Oxymoron. That’s a word.” I placed it on the board by including an o already down along one side, thereby catching two triple-word-score squares. It was worth around fifty points, plus a fifty-point bonus for using all my letters.

  “You’re pretty smart for a half-nerd.” Ann yelled in my ear and grabbed me by the throat with one hand. Then she stood up and I followed, to minimize the likelihood of a crushed windpipe. She patted me on the head with her other hand and took me upstairs to her room for a nasty retribution.

  I learned in time that Ann’s bright reddish mane of frizz darkened slightly and went tame when it got wet. A year later it was plastered against her head from the spray in my apartment shower. Her hair ran in waves down the sides of her head as she stood with her soapy face tilted up at me, blinking against the water coming at her eyes from over my shoulder.

  “I’m finished,” she said loudly, over the sound of the water. Her voice reverberated among the tiles. “Lemme get in the water.”

  I moved around and let her stand under the spray. Her freckles were sun-darkened, but she was literally white in the places never open to the sun. I had a pronounced swimsuit line myself, but the effect was less noticeable. She was incredibly sensuous, but also looked kind of funny. I started soaping myself to quit thinking about it.

  “You got soap in your eyes, dummy.” She grabbed the shower nozzle and hosed off my face with it. Then she moved it down to get the rest of me.

  “Yow! Watch it.”

  “Oop—sorry. Is that better?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, you’ve still got soap caught next to your eyes.” She reached up to brush her finger at the outside corner of one eye. “It’s caught in this little foldy-slanty place.”

  “Yeah, that happens.”

  “I got it.”

  She cleared the other one, too, and finished rinsing us both.

  “You’re not bad for a half-nerd,” she yelled in my ear. Then she turned off the water and grabbed me, not by the throat, with one hand. Then she got out and I followed, dripping and quivering, hitching forward to minimize the likelihood of ripped flesh. She tossed a towel over my head with her other hand and took me into the other room for a careful re-examination.

  Ann and I stayed together for most of several years. I was never in the military and we didn’t discuss getting married, but: when white women like, et cetera, die.

  I stood beneath the tower of a tiny airport, one neither cleared for jets nor sprayed for roaches. The searchlight circled the sky in silent unending swings, a beacon for flight 1203. Inside the low terminal building, a handful of small-town folks sat waiting in overalls, raincoats, plastic windbreakers, and dirty work clothes. I stared into the sky for Ann for an hour and a half, into a darkness more deadly than the vainest—

  My thoughts were interrupted by an airline guy who came around to tell us all. Somewhere off in the distance, a storm had arisen quickly. Blue Eyes and her red hair and her grabbing hand would not be coming in for a landing, anywhere.

  Death Angel, can you see me?

  This time was no better, but it was different. I was older and meaner and I had gone through this before. Instead of getting sick, I got angry. I had really wanted Ann, most of the time.

  I want my baby back.

  I stayed angry long enough to kick out the windows of my apartment, chase all the cats out of the alley, and lose all of my sensitive, fainthearted friends. The
only ones left were the dense, unfeeling brutes. We had a good time there for a while.

  Ann. Just another pretty redhead with brains and integrity.

  Even after a few years had passed, and I was as much back to normal as I was going to get, I had lost my interest in romance.

  I looked into the muddy water.

  I looked into the muddy water.

  I looked—

  Actually, I’m still not sure whose face I saw. I didn’t think I looked that lonely.

  Alice did.

  Alice just kind of showed up. I was prowling the winter night spots that week, with little money and less interest. I did it for something to do. Alice was a seven-year-old in an adult’s body, an expatriate New Yorker by her accent, with curly brown hair. Two-thirds of her weight was below her waist. She tried to balance it by swelling her head.

  “I have an I.Q. of 147,” she told me at a bar.

  I was sitting on a stool leaning over a Seven-Up and staring into the mirror behind the rows of bottles against the far wall. “Huh?” I said.

  “You look smart. Are you an engineer? But I’m smarter.” She smiled condescendingly and turned on her stool to survey the crowd behind us. “I like the bridge of your nose—it’s so little.”

  I went back to staring at myself in the mirror. The glass was cheap and flawed; if I raised myself up and down slightly on the stool, the image stretched and flowed and compressed like the reflections in fun-house mirrors. I was having a good time.

  “I’m only interested in monogamous, long-term relationships,” she said. “I’m trying to meet a good man. I’m Alice.”