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

The house was over a hundred years old, and he’d never heard of a ‘wet basement’ before they’d bought it. Back in Jersey, where they’d come from, the words – wet basement – were a deal breaker. Old farmhouses weren’t built with rec rooms or indoor ping pong tables in mind, though. The basement was basically a foundational necessity, a place to store things raised up on pallets. Water was expected at certain times of the year. Henry had to duck as he stepped beneath the lintel. There was one dim lightbulb hanging from a chain in the middle of the main part of a concrete chamber.

He used the baton to rip down a prodigious cobweb, and made his way from one appliance to the next, laying his hand lightly on it to see if it trembled with life. The water heater was fine, the dehumidifier showed signs of life, and then he touched the furnace. It was silent, no vibration and stone cold. “That ain’t good,” he said. The dog sat on the bottom step, as if reluctant to put a paw down and commit to the underground. Henry flipped on the flashlight and moved to the dark back of the cellar and the adjoining concrete closet without a door, a narrow space where the fuse box hung.

Often, during spring, the water rose in that niche as high as 4 or 5 inches, and he’d once seen a toad hop out of it into the greater basement. Luckily the ground outside was frozen and the floor dry. He ran the beam of the flashlight over the different fuses to see if one had popped, but they were all unmarked and he really had no idea what he was looking for. Mero was the one who always dealt with the fuses.

“We’re gonna freeze our asses off tonight,” he said. When he stepped back into the basement, he noticed Bothwell retreating up the stairs. “Traitor,” he shouted, and meant to follow as quickly as possible. As he made his way for the steps, though, he realized he had no idea where Turtle had gotten to. He aimed the tepid beam into dark corners and made the psss psss psss noise Mero always used to summon the cat. After two dozen psss’s, he called out, “You can stay down here all winter.” As he made for the steps, he heard a meow. He turned and aimed the beam at a spot on the wall next to the water heater.

He’d forgotten it was there, a roughly foot and a half by one foot hole in the concrete of the wall that led into the foundation. Why it was there, he had no idea. He wondered if perhaps a pipe had been shoved through there from outside at some point. Maybe a poorly covered over coal chute? He stepped up to it and shone the light inside. Turtle’s green eyes caught the weak glow and made the most of it. She was about 4 feet into the tunnel. He gave it a Psss, psss, psss . A meow answered. “Come on, Turtle,” he said. “Come on.” Every time he made the psss noise the cat meowed but stayed where it was. “I hate you,” he said to it. The bright green eyes blinked.

When the cat moved, she moved slowly. She appeared at the opening and leaped down onto the floor. That’s when he distinctly heard the porch door open with a bang, heard the whoosh of the storm enter the kitchen above. He was sure of it. He could feel the burst of adrenalin shoot through him, yet he was stiff with fear. There was no spit to swallow. The harder he gripped the baton, the less he believed he would be able to wield it if he had to. Bothwell backed down the stairs into view. His hackles were up and he was growling. Henry heard footsteps and dropped the flashlight. He managed to creep to the bottom of the steps. “If you leave now, I won’t shoot you,” he shouted. “The police are on the way.”

There was more movement above, but he couldn’t track it. Just one slow clomping footstep after another. Out of some perverted impulse, he made his move. Gripping the baton, he reared it over his head and lurched up the stairs on his bad knee in a woefully executed surprise attack. Using his elbows on the door jambs, he propelled himself in a stumble down the hall and into the kitchen, Bothwell barking at his side. “Swing for the fence,” Henry whispered.

The door was wide open and the cold air swept in around him. He went to it immediately and shut it. Only one step ahead of paralyzing fear, he knew he couldn’t rest, but plunged into room after room, expecting the intruder in every one. In the downstairs bedroom, he instructed Bothwell to look under the bed. They checked all the closets. When Turtle jumped out from behind the shower curtain, Henry flailed with the baton and destroyed a towel rack.

Upstairs, out of breath, his knee screaming, he made the rounds of all the rooms but found no one. Half relieved, he said, “What a night,” to the dog as they made their way down from the second floor. Back in the kitchen, he looked for his phone and found it on the counter. Without putting the baton down, he dialed the police. There was a long span of silence and then the line sparked with static. He tried to get through twice more and gave up. “Here’s another forklift full of shit,” he told Bothwell, tossing the phone on the counter. The dog’s expression as much as said, “You’re getting a little dramatic now.” Henry nodded in agreement and paused to think it through. That’s when he noticed something he’d missed earlier. The kitchen floor was littered with brown needles. He’d been so intent on attack, he’d trod right through them, never looking down.

He gripped the baton and Bothwell tensed. The trail of brown needles led off into the dining room. Man and dog moved slowly, quietly toward the darkened entrance. He could have sworn he’d left all the lights on downstairs. He stopped and listened. Just the wind. Lifting the baton, he flipped on the switch. Instinctively crouching, he tensed against an assault if only from the sudden light. When Bothwell didn’t bark, Henry knew there was no one there. The house was perfectly still.

“Nothing,” he said to the dog, and decided to make a pot of coffee. Before he could move, though, some speck of brightness caught his eye, and he looked down at the dining room table. The dark green cloth appeared a miniature landscape what with the ornaments trapped beneath it. He stepped closer. There were brown needles scattered amid the rolling hills, and in one of the more prominent valleys lay, side by side, the two missing icicles he’d abandoned on the tree. He reached out but didn’t touch them.

“Come on, now,” he said to the ceiling.

He muttered through two glasses of wine; his breath, vapor. The kitchen was especially freezing, and the cold finally drove him to forsake the bottle. He wrapped up in three blankets and propped himself in a corner of the couch with the lights out. The baton lay only inches away on the coffee table. Bothwell was next to him curled in a ball, and Turtle stretched out along the rim of the pillow he rested his head on. After quite a while, his eyes adjusted and he could see past the window, the snow coming down. At some point he heard the heater kick back on and the dog gave a whimper of appreciation. When he shut his eyes to better hear the voices in the wind, sleep took him like an avalanche, and he wound up in the back seat of a cab, streaking along the main street of Shanghai, going to meet Mero for lunch.

IAN MCDONALD(@IANMCDONALD) lives in Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast. He sold his first story in 1983 and bought a guitar with the proceeds, perhaps the only rock ’n’ roll thing he ever did. Since then he’s written sixteen novels, including River of Gods , Brasyl , and The Dervish House , three story collections and diverse other pieces, and has been nominated for every major science fiction/ fantasy award – and even won a couple. His current novel is Luna: New Moon . The middle volume of the trilogy, Luna: Wolf Moon, is due later in 2016.