Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

Three steps toward the staircase, Lindsome made the mistake of glancing behind her.

The entire front wall, lined floor to ceiling with cages and bars, bore an unliving library of vivifieds, every creature too large for its pen. Stoats stood shoulder-to-shoulder with badgers and owls, and serpents had no room to uncurl in their tiny cubes. Rabbit fur comingled with hawk feathers. Paws tapped and noses twitched and bodies lurched gently from side to side, but that great wall of shifting corpses, scales and hide and stripes, made no sound. Each rotting throat was silent.

Three hundred pairs of eyes watched Lindsome, flashing yellow and green, white and red. She fell into a table, hitting her shoulder against the stone.

Get up. Run away . She daren’t breathe. You silly fool. The ground was sloping outside. Remember? This is a basement .

You cannot be here .

A door squealed open. A trickle of light dribbled down the steps. Lindsome dove away from the table and behind the staircase’s concealing bulk.

The door at the top opened fully. Candlelight flowed down the steps now, making hundreds of vivified eyes sparkle. “The sea lion, I think,” said a voice. It was papery and thin, like a flake of ash that would crumble at the barest touch. “At the far end.”

“Really, Albion,” said Chaswick, stepping down onto the flagstones. He held high a five-branched candelabrum, his shadow stretching behind him. “We’re overpreparing, don’t you think?”

“Oh no, not hardly.” An old, old man shuffled in Chaswick’s wake. His head, wreathed in a wispy halo of white and framed by sizeable ears, seemed bowed under the weight of constant thought across many decades. His knobby fingers would not stop undulating, like twin spiders in a restless sleep. “One last test, before Thursday. I’m certain that a Kell Stitch at the brain stem, instead of a Raymund, will surprise us.”

Chaswick’s back heaved in a sigh. “I maintain that the original protocol would have sufficed. The first time around—”

“I was lucky,” interrupted the man. “Very, very lucky. That ghastly knot was nothing but shaking hands and fortunate bungling. And besides—” He sighed, too, but instead of deflating, the exhalation appeared to lift him up. “Think of the advances, Chaswick. The discoveries I’ve made since then. How all these newer elements might work in concert — well. We cannot be too careful. I don’t have to tell you what’s at stake.”

The two men moved into the blackness of the room’s far end. The candelabrum revealed that the distant third of the wall was hidden behind a heavy black curtain.

“Of course, Doctor Dandridge,” said Chaswick.

“The sea lion,” Dr. Dandridge repeated.

Chaswick passed the candelabrum to his superior. When he turned to grip the curtain, Lindsome noticed what he was wearing.

Waders?

The curtain hissed partway aside upon its track. The candlelight fell upon tanks, tanks and tanks and tanks, each filled with an evil, yellow ing liquid. Each held a shrunken animal corpse, embalmed and barely recognizable. The lowest third of the wall was but a single tank, stretching back behind the half-closed curtain.

A great, bloated shadow rolled within.

Lindsome shivered. She had never seen the dead creature’s likeness. It must have been a specimen from the continent to the east, but whatever it was, it was not what they wanted, because Chaswick knelt by a tank on the second shelf, obscuring the monstrosity. He fitted a length of rubber hose to a stopcock at the bottom of his chosen tank, then ran the hose along the floor and out the open door. “Door’s blown loose again. That useless Thomlin — I’ve asked him to fix the latch thrice this week. I swear to Ghost, I’d stick him in one of the tanks myself if he weren’t a man and would leave behind anything more useful than ghostgrease.”

Chaswick returned and opened the stopcock. The end of the hose, limp over the edge of the patio, dribbled its foul load into the weeds. The large corpse within the tank settled to the bottom as it drained, a limp, matted mess. Chaswick did something to the glass to make it open outward, like the door to an oven.

He gathered the dead thing to his chest and stood. Ichor ran in rivulets down his waders. “I don’t mean to rush you, but—”

“Of course.” Candelabrum in tow, Dr. Dandridge shuffled back to the stairs. “I’ll do my best to hurry.”

They ascended the steps, pulling the light with them and the squealing door shut.

Lindsome fled outside. After that chamber of horrors, the sticking burdock, Raven’s Kiss, and cruel thorns of the sunlit world were the hallmarks of Paradise.

At seven o’clock, some unseen, stentorian timepiece tolled the hour. Lindsome, who had elected to spend the rest of the afternoon in the library in a fort constructed from the oldest, fattest, dullest (and surely therefore safest) books she could find, reluctantly emerged to search for the dining room.

The murmur of voices and clink of silverware guided her steps into a room on the first floor nearly large enough to be a proper banquet hall. Only the far end of the long table, near the wall abutting the kitchen, was occupied. A fire on the wall’s hearth cast the head of the table in shadow while illuminating Chaswick’s disdain.

“You are late,” Chaswick said. “Don’t you know what they say about first impressions?”

Lindsome slunk across the floor. “I’m sorry, Mister Chaswick.”

From the shadows of a wingback chair, the master of the house leaned forward. “No matter,” said Dr. Dandridge. “Good evening. I am Professor Albion Edgarton Dandridge. Our meeting is well. Please pardon me for not arising; I’m an old man, and my bones grow reluctant, even at the welcome sight of a face so fresh and kind as yours.”

Lindsome had not expected this. “I … thank you, sir.”

“Uncle Albion will do. Come, sit, sit.”

Opposite Chaswick, Lindsome pulled out her own massive chair with some difficulty, working it over the threadbare carpet in small scoots. “Thank you, sir. Our meeting is well.”

Chaswick snorted. “Mind her, Doctor. She’s got a streak in her.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it. Comes from my side.” The old man smiled at her. His teeth were surprisingly intact. “Are you making yourself at home, my dear?”

Lindsome served herself a ladle full of shapeless brown stew. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t mumble,” said Chaswick, picking debris from his teeth with his fingernails. “It’s uncouth.”

“I am delighted that you’re staying with us,” continued Dr. Dandridge. Outside of the nightmarish basement, he looked ordinary and gentle. His halo of hair, Lindsome now saw, wandered off his head into a pair of bedraggled dundrearies, and the fine wrinkles around his eyes made him look kind. His clothes were dusty and ill-fitting, tailored for a more robust man at least thirty years his junior. She could not imagine a less threatening person.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Uncle. I am dear old Uncle—” Dr. Dandridge coughed, a dry, wheezing sound and put an embroidered handkerchief to his mouth. Chaswick nudged the old man’s water glass closer. “Albion,” he managed, taking a sip from the glass. “Thank you, Chaswick.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“And how is your papa?”

Lindsome did not want to think of him, arm in arm with Mama, strolling up the pier to the great boat and laughing, his long legs wavering under a film of tears. “He is very well, thank you.”

“Excellent, excellent. And your mama?”

“Also well.”

“Good, good.” The doctor nibbled at his stew, apparently unfazed by its utter lack of flavor. “I trust that the staff have been kind, and have answered all of your questions.”