The Year's Best Horror Stories 10 Read online

  “Even now, it brings a cold sweat over me, Father, to think of my shocked realisation that I was not on the stairs to the hallway, but in an enclosed staircase leading to the boathouse! It was pitch dark but for the comforting triangle of light from my torch, and an all-pervading odour reminded me horribly of my dream. I knew I must be dreaming now, but I seemed to be wide awake. Could I be sleepwalking? A hard pinch disabused me of that notion. No, however I had started out, I was now awake and passing through a spring door to the rotting timbers of the deserted boathouse. Rats slid off into the water or fled at my approach, and I could see a battered skiff; a tangle of ropes and lobster pots to mark its one-time usage. All was silent now save for the lap, lap of the tidal river into the boathouse pound. I got my back to the nearest wall and shone my torch round about. It made a pool of light on the oily water of the pound that all but mesmerised me. The luminescence remained after I moved the torch away. Was it the moon? Impossible, the building was enclosed. The light broadened and, without further warning, the Wyntour’s nemesis swarmed up on to the planking; a mass of phosphorescent grey-brown legs and whip-like feelers, all a-quiver.

  “Wyntour’s crayfish comparison went some way to categorising it, but ... Did you ever see in Punch some years ago, some extracts of “Unpublished Edward Lear’ verses? No? Well, there was one called ‘The Scroobious Pip’, and Lear’s drawing showed a typically bizarre creature, all legs and arms and feelers ... that sketch was the nearest thing to Wyntour’s demon I can suggest.

  “I screamed out loud as an antenna flexed toward me, and hurled my torch at the loathsome thing. It fell through it and into the pound. Fortunately for me the boathouse door was completely rotten and yielded to my frantic shoulder; otherwise I think I should have gone mad, there and then. I pitched on to the moonlit landing stage and hurled myself up the stone staircase to the stable yard. My frantic bangings aroused the entire house.

  “I had enough sense to keep much of the story to myself; simply alleging (truthfully) that I had woken from sleep to find myself outside in my pyjamas. Exploration upstairs showed that I had clearly fallen asleep on the bed while waiting for the housekeeper to retire, and that I had torn open the door behind the wallpaper. There were several thicknesses of paper overlaid, and the housekeeper had not even suspected its presence.

  “When the others had returned to their interrupted sleep—the girls excited at the secret passage—I told my father enough of the real story that he took us home, two days earlier than planned. I was badly frightened and shaken, but the resilience of youth took care of that, and—fortunately—I dreamed no more of ‘Wyntours’ and of the occupant of the boathouse. Though after re-living all this, I may do so tonight! How much was dream and how much reality (for want of a better word), I did not and do not know. Nor do I particularly care to!” I laughed; a little hollowly, I fear.

  “So you see Father, why I do not care for modelling buildings, and why I cannot see even a cooked lobster on a plate, without a shudder ...”

  Father. O’Connor nodded briefly and pinched up his lips in thought, as he rose to put on his outdoor coat. Absently he shrugged into it, then paused ...

  “I have it,” he said, crossing to his overflowing bookshelves, where he poked about fussily for a moment or two. A triumphant “Aha” came as he rose and came back with a slim, green-covered book in his hands. He showed me the title.

  “Our Lady of the Turquoise Skirt,” I read in an astonished voice.

  He smiled briefly. “The author, Fr Dominic Shane, tells here the story of how the Spanish priests ‘Christianised’ the Aztec gods and myths, even while the conquerors were melting down Aztec gold, much of it as pagan idols and temple furnishings, for sending back to Spain. Now gold was not particularly precious to the Aztec peoples, but Fr Dominic relates ...” (he thumbed briskly through the pages) “how there were vengeful monsters attached to the temples to protect the furnishings; they were ... Ah, yes, minions of Tlaltechuhtli (however you pronounce it!) and ...” (here he read, following the line of print with his finger), “ ‘they could follow despoilers through all the appropriate elements’. Here now, is an artist’s redrawing of a temple mural showing these emissaries of vengeance”, and he indicated a page of sketches.

  My stomach contracted for a moment, for—allowing for the Indian art-style—there, among other guises of bird and lizard, was a passable likeness of the crayfish thing. I sat down suddenly.

  The good Father got me a brandy.

  “You know”, he said, “It looks as if the Cardinal murdered by the old Captain might have been Spanish. I wonder where he was taking that stuff? Doubtless we shall never know, but it seemed from the memoir as though he, too, was well aware of being shadowed by the thing which protected the centuries-old golden idols, even though their shape had been changed, purified in the fire as it were, and sanctified. I wonder ... how many predecessors that Cardinal had?”

  After refilling my glass and pressing me to stay until his return, the old Priest was about to leave for his class. He paused with his hand on the door.

  “Since that vengeful creature was still around in some form or other for you to perceive twenty years ago, and fifty years after the last Wyntour perished, it makes me wonder if those ornaments and furnishings are hidden in the boathouse, or at the bottom of the pound.”

  “Not me, it doesn’t”, I cried, ungrammatically.

  He held up a hand. “Well, maybe we should go and see some day”, he said.

  So we did; but that’s another story ...

  THE DARK COUNTRY by Dennis Etchison

  Twenty years after his first professional publication, Dennis Etchison is finally beginning to receive the acclaim he deserves as one of the premier writers of horror fiction. The high quality of his work has never been in question: the lack of recognition has been due in part to the fact that Etchison works primarily in the short story genre—a format not suited to the instant fame attainable through a best-selling novel—and in part to the elusive, introspective, ultimately negativistic nature of his writing, which is too subtle for some readers and too downbeat for others.

  Born March 30, 1943 in Stockton, California, Dennis Etchison presently lives in Los Angeles. Films are a major interest (a characteristic that seems common to horror writers), and Etchison has written a number of as-yet unproduced screenplays—including The Fox and the Forest from a Ray Bradbury story, The Mist from Stephen King’s novella, The Ogre, for Dino de Laurentis, and They based on Etchison’s own story, “The Late Shift.” A horror novel, The Shudder, and a collection of short stories await publication. In 1980 Etchison’s novelization of the John Carpenter film, The Fog, was published, and in 1981 his novelization of Carpenter’s Halloween II appeared—under Etchison’s pseudonym, Jack Martin.

  Writers find inspiration where they may. “The Dark Country,” of all unlikely things, is one of those how-I-spent-my-summer-vacation pieces. It was first published in the outstanding British magazine, Fantasy Tales, and later in the same year was reprinted in the new U.S. magazine, Fantasy Book.

  Martin sat by the pool, the wind drying his hair.

  A fleshy, airborne spider appeared on the edge of the book which he had been reading there. From this angle it cast a long, pointed needle across the yellowing page. The sun was hot and clean; it went straight for his nose. Overweight American children practiced their volleyball on the bird of paradise plants. Weathered rattan furniture gathered dust beyond the peeling diving board.

  Traffic passed on the road. Trucks, campers, bikes.

  The pool that would not be scraped till summer. The wooden chairs that had been ordered up from the States. Banana leaves. Olive trees. A tennis court that might be done next year. A single color TV antenna above the palms. By the slanted cement patio heliotrope daisies, speckled climbing vines. The morning a net of light on the water. Boats fishing in Todos Santos Bay.

  A smell like shrimps Veracruz blowing off the silvered waves.

  And a str
angely familiar island, like a hazy floating giant, where the humpback whales play. Yesterday in Ensenada, the car horns talking and a crab taco in his hand, he had wanted to buy a pair of huaraches and a Mexican shirt. The best tequila in the world for three-and-a-half a liter. Noche Bueno beer, foil labels that always peel before you can read them. Delicados con Filtros cigarettes.

  Bottles of agua mineral. Tehuacan con gas. No retornable.

  He smiled as he thought of churros at the Blow Hole, the maid who even washed his dishes, the Tivoli Night Club with Reno cocktail napkins, mescal flavored with worm, eggs fresh from the nest, chorizo grease in the pan, bar girls with rhinestone-studded Aztec headbands, psychoactive liqueurs, seagulls like the tops of valentines, grilled corvina with lemon, the endless plumes of surf ...

  It was time for a beer run to the bottling factory in town.

  “Buenos dias!”

  Martin looked up, startled. He was blinded by the light. He fumbled his dark glasses down and moved his head. A man and a woman stood over his chair. The sun was at their backs.

  “Americano?”

  “Yes,” said Martin. He shielded his forehead and tried to see their faces. Their features were blacked in by the glare that spilled around their heads.

  “I told you he was an American,” said the woman. “Are you studying?”

  “What?”

  Martin closed the book self-consciously. It was a paperback edition of In The Penal Colony, the only book he had been able to borrow from any of the neighboring cabins. Possibly it was the only book in Quintas Papagayo. For some reason the thought depressed him profoundly, but he had brought it poolside anyway. It seemed the right thing to do. He could not escape the feeling that he ought to be doing something more than nursing a tan. And the magazines from town were all in Spanish.

  He slipped his sketchbook on top of Kafka and opened it awkwardly.

  “I’m supposed to be working,” he said. “On my drawings. You know how it is.” They didn’t, probably, but he went on. “It’s difficult to get anything done down here.”

  “He’s an artist!” said the woman.

  “My wife thought you were an American student on vacation,” said the man.

  “Our son is a student, you see,” said the woman. Martin didn’t, but nodded sympathetically. She stepped aside to sit on the arm of another deck chair under the corrugated green fiberglass siding. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse and thigh-length shorts. “He was studying for his Master’s Degree in Political Science at UCLA, but now he’s decided not to finish. I tried to tell him he should at least get his teaching credential, but—”

  “Our name’s Winslow,” said the man, extending a muscular hand. “Mr. and Mrs. Winslow.”

  “Jack Martin.”

  “It was the books,” said Mr. Winslow. “Our boy always has books with him, even on visits.” He chuckled and shook his head.

  Martin nodded.

  “You should see his apartment,” said Mrs. Winslow. “So many.” She threw up her hands, as if describing the symptoms of a hopeless affliction.

  There was an embarrassing lull. Martin looked to his feet. He flexed his toes. The right ones were stiff. For something further to do, he uncapped a Pilot Fineliner pen and touched it idly to the paper. Without realizing it, he smiled. This trip must be doing me more good than I’d hoped, he thought. I haven’t been near a college classroom in fifteen years.

  A wave rushed toward the rocks at the other side of the cabins.

  “Staying long?” asked the man, glancing around nervously. He was wearing Bermuda shorts over legs so white they were almost phosphorescent.

  “I’m not sure,” said Martin.

  “May I take a peek at your artwork?” asked the woman.

  He shrugged and smiled.

  She lifted the sketchbook from his lap with infinite delicacy, as the man began talking again.

  He explained that they owned their own motor home, which was now parked on the Point, at the end of the rock beach, above the breakwater. Weekend auto insurance cost them $13.70 in Tijuana. They came down whenever they got the chance. They were both retired, but there were other things to consider—just what, he did not say. But it was not the same as it used to be. He frowned at the moss growing in the bottom of the pool, at the baby weeds poking up through the sand in the canister ashtrays, at the separating layers of the sawed-off diving board.

  Martin could see more questions about to surface behind the man’s tired eyes. He cleared his throat and squirmed in his chair, feeling the sweat from his arms soaking into the unsealed wood. Mr. Winslow was right, of course. Things were not now as they once were. But he did not relish being reminded of it, not now, not here.

  A small figure in white darted into his field of vision, near the edge of the first cabin. It was walking quickly, perhaps in this direction.

  “There’s my maid,” he said, leaning forward. “She must be finished now.” He unstuck his legs from the chaise longue.

  “She has keys?” said the man.

  “I suppose so. Yes, I’m sure she does. Well—”

  “Does she always remember to lock up?”

  He studied the man’s face, but a lifetime of apprehensions were recorded there, too many for Martin to isolate one and read it accurately.

  “I’ll remind her,” he said, rising.

  He picked up his shirt, took a step toward Mrs. Winslow and stood shifting his weight.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the maid put a hand to the side of her face.

  Mrs. Winslow closed the pad, smoothed the cover and handed it back. “Thank you,” she said oddly.

  Martin took it and offered his hand. He realized at once that his skin had become uncomfortably moist, but Mr. Winslow gripped it firmly and held it. He confronted Martin soberly, as if about to impart a bit of fatherly advice.

  “They say he comes down out of the hills,” said Winslow, his eyes unblinking. Martin half-turned to the low, tan range that lay beyond the other side of the highway. When he turned back, the man’s eyes were waiting. “He’s been doing it for years. It’s something of a legend around here. They can’t seem to catch him. We never took it seriously, until now.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Why, last night, while we were asleep, he stole an envelope of traveler’s checks and a whole carton of cigarettes from behind our heads. Can you beat that? Right inside the camper! Of course we never bothered to lock up. Why should we? Everyone’s very decent around here. We’ve never had any trouble ourselves. Until this trip. It’s hard to believe.”

  “Yes, it is.” Martin attempted to pull back as a tingling began in his stomach. But the man continued to pump his hand, almost desperately, Martin thought.

  “The best advice I can give you, young man, is to lock your doors at night. From now on. You never know.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  “He comes out after the sun goes down.” He would not let go of Martin’s hand. “I figure he must hit the beach three-four in the morning, when all the lights are out. Slips right in. No one notices. And then it’s too late.”

  Martin pretended to struggle with the books so that he could drop his hand. “Well, I hope you’re able to enjoy the rest of your vacation.” He eyed the maid. “Now I’d better—”

  “We’re warning everybody along the beach,” said Winslow.

  “Maybe you should report it.”

  “That don’t do no good. They listen to your story, but there’s nothing they can do.”

  “Good luck to you, then,” said Martin.

  “Thank you again,” said the woman peculiarly. “And don’t forget. You lock your door tonight!”

  “I will,” said Martin, hurrying away. I won’t, that is. Will, won’t, what did it matter? He side-stepped the dazzling flowers of an ice plant and ascended the cracked steps of the pool enclosure. He crossed the paved drive and slowed.

  The maid had passed the last of the beachfront houses and was about to inter
sect his path. He waited for her to greet him as she always did. I should at least pretend to talk to her, he thought, in case the Winslows are still watching. He felt their eyes, or someone’s, close at his back.

  “Buenos dias,” he said cheerfully.

  She did not return the greeting. She did not look up. She wagged her head and trotted past, clutching her uniform at the neck.

  He paused and stared after her. He wondered in passing about her downcast eyes, and about the silent doorways of the other cabins, though it was already past ten o’clock. And then he noticed the scent of ozone that now laced the air, though no thunderhead was visible yet on the horizon, only a gathering fog far down the coastline, wisps of it beginning to striate the wide, pale sky above the sagging telephone poles. And he wondered about the unsteadiness in Mrs. Winslow’s voice as she had handed back the sketchbook. It was not until he was back at the beach that he remembered: the pages he had shown her were blank. There were no sketches at all yet in the pad, only the tiny flowing blot he had made with his pen on the first sheet while they talked, like a miniature misshapen head or something else, something else, stark and unreadable on the crisp white sulfite paper.

  He was relieved to see that the private beach had finally come alive with its usual quota of sunbathers. Many of them had probably arisen early, shortly after he left for the quiet of the pool, and immediately swarmed to the surf with no thought of TV or the morning paper, habits they had left checked at the border sixty miles from here. A scattered few lagged back, propped out on their patios, sipping coffee and keeping an eye on the children who were bounding through the spume. The cries of the children and of the gulls cut sharply through the waves which, disappointingly, were beginning to sound to Martin like nothing so much as an enormous screenful of ball bearings.

  There was the retired rent-a-cop on holiday with his girl friend, stretched out on a towel and intent on his leg exercises. There was the middle-aged divorcee from two doors down, bent over the tidepools, hunting for moonstones among jealous clusters of aquamarine anemones. And there was Will, making time with the blonde in the blue tank top. He seemed to be explaining to her some sort of diagram in the slicked sand between the polished stones. Martin toed into his worn rubber sandals and went down to join them.