Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

“Mother, no!”

The heavy man dropped the gun and ran away.

The disturbance was finished.

Alone, Adrianne unloaded the one bullet, placing the weaponry into a closet. And exhausted, she sat at the desk, watching a live view from a probe launched last month and already halfway to Neptune.

Time passed.

And someone else came to visit.

The first boy was back, an older sister holding his hand.

“This is her,” he said with conviction. “That’s our Empress.”

Adrianne didn’t have the legs to stand. That’s why their faces were at the same level when she said, “Yes, it’s your Empress. Sitting in her glory.”

She laughed hard.

The children laughed with her, to be friendly.

Touching her head once more, she said, “The monster inside my head. It’s pushing at the best nerves.”

They stopped.

“A talent for comedy,” she said, her laugh growing dark and slow. “That’s what the gods give you, if they want to be kind, right before you die.”

JEFFREY FORD(www.well-builtcity.com) is the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson Award winning author of the novels The Shadow Year, The Physiognomy, The Girl in the Glass and The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque . His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life , and Crackpot Palace . His new collection, A Natural History of Hell, will be released by Small Beer Press in July of 2016.

HENRY SENSED RESIGNATION in the posture of the Christmas tree. It slouched toward the living room window as if peering out. There was no way he could plug it in, cheer it up. The thing was dryer than the Sandman’s mustache, its spine a stick of kindling. The least vibration brought a shower of needles. Ornaments fell of their own accord. Some broke, which he had to sweep and vacuum, initiating the descent of more needles, more ornaments. The cat took some as toys and batted them around the kitchen floor. Glittering evidence in the field indicated Bothwell, the dog, had acquired a taste for tinsel.

Mero had told him not to take it down. She had a special way she wrapped the ornaments when boxing them. He wasn’t about to argue for doing it by himself. At the end of that first week she was away in China, though, the presence of the tree became an imposition. He described it in his Friday journal as, ‘A distant cousin, once accused of pyromania, arriving for an indefinite visit.’

In the middle of his work, in the middle of the grocery store, when walking with the dog around the lake, the spirit of that sagging pine was always waiting by the front window in the living room of his thoughts. Then Mero finally called on FaceTime from Shanghai. Her image was distorted as if he was seeing her through rippling water. In a heartbeat, the picture froze, but she kept talking. He told her he missed her and she said the same. She said Shanghai was amazing, enormous, and that she liked the young woman who was her translator and guide. She asked about Bothwell. Henry spoke about the freezing wind, the snow. She told him to be careful driving, and then he told her about the tree. “It’s shot,” he said. “I gotta take it down.”

Suddenly the call cut out, and he couldn’t get her back. He wanted to tell her he loved her and hear her voice some more, but in a way he understood. It was like dialing another world. The distance between Ohio and Shanghai made him shiver. He called Bothwell and the Border Collie appeared. “Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked. The dog’s green eyes were intense and it cocked its head to the side as if to say, “What do you think?” So Henry put his coat and hat and mittens on, and they went out, over the snow, across the yard, through the orchard, past the garden, into the farmer’s winter fields that surrounded the property. Corn stubble and snow stretched out to the horizon in three directions. It was sundown, orange and pink in the west, a deep royal blue to the east where he spotted the moon.

They headed toward the wind break of white oak about a quarter mile into the field. The frozen gusts that blew across the open land sliced right through him, and he struggled to hold closed his jacket with the broken zipper. They entered the thicket of giant old trees. Under the clacking, empty branches last light turned to mist and shadow. He sat down on a fallen log and looked to the west. Bothwell sniffed around and then sat behind him to escape the gusts that eddied in among the trees. Henry had a hell of a time lighting a cigarette. Once he got it going, though, he made an executive decision. The first part was to open a bottle of wine when he got back to the house. The second was to dismantle the tree and get rid of it by the following afternoon.

He saw how he would do it. Put the ornaments in a pile on the dining room table. Cover them with a table cloth to hide them from the cat, and leave them there till Mero got back. Pull the lights. Grab the cursed tinsel off in handfuls. Kick the tree in the spleen and wrestle it to the floor. Remove the base. Drag the corpse through the dining room, the kitchen, to the sliding door. Deposit the remains out back in the snow. Burn incense to mask the odor of rotted Christmas. Sweep and vacuum. Two hours for the whole ordeal, he figured and spoke into the wind, “Adios, mother fucker.” Then Bothwell made a strange noise.

Henry felt something behind him. He stood up quickly and turned, glimpsing what looked in the dimmest of light like a wolf. Gray and tan, bushy coat. It skulked around a tree and disappeared. He knew there were no wolves in Ohio, but the creature was too big for a coyote. The idea of it sneaking around in the dark sent a shot of adrenalin through him. His heart pounded. He called the dog to him and they left the trees in a rush. Somewhere between the smoke and the wolf, night had dropped. Unable to see where he was stepping, he twisted his leg on corn stubble and his knee began to ache. He hobbled toward the light of the house, peering over his shoulder every few yards. By the time he reached the kitchen, he could hardly walk. He pulled the cork on a bottle of Malbec, standing on one leg.

Grabbing the glass and bottle, he hopped into the living room. The tree was waiting for him. As he sat on the couch, a shower of needles fell and then an ornament. It hit a branch on the way down and broke, shattering into three jagged scoops and a handful of glitter. He watched it happen, knew it was the ornament Mero had bought for their first Christmas together. He decided in an instant, he’d wait till spring to tell her. Bothwell came in and curled up by his feet. He drank wine and turned on the TV.

He woke suddenly hours later to the dark, in bed. His mouth was dry. He had no recollection of having gotten off the couch and come upstairs. Looking at the clock, he saw it was only 3:13. He laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. That’s when he realized there was a quiet but distinct rhythmic noise coming up from downstairs. He could barely hear it, like a voice whispering too loud. The first thing he did was call to Bothwell for courage. The dog was already at his side of the bed. Henry sat up, put his feet on the floor, and listened. The voice continued, mumbling on, and then broke out into a cry for help. One long extended scream, diminishing into silence, followed by a loud thud.

Henry jumped up, his heart racing, his hair, what there was of it, tingling. He reached for the wooden baton he kept behind the night table next to the bed. At the top of the stairs, he let the dog go first. He stepped slowly, protecting his bad knee and not in any hurry to see what was going on. Before he reached the bottom step, it struck him that the noise must have been coming from the TV he’d never turned off. This made him braver and, holding his weapon in front of him, he limped boldly into the living room.