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

“But why?” said Julian. He wanted to grab her, shake her by the shoulders. He wanted to. She was his wife, that’s what he was supposed to do. He couldn’t even touch her. He couldn’t even go near. “Why? What have they done?”

“Love,” said Karen. She turned to him. “Oh, yes, they know what they’ve done.”

She saluted them. “And you,” she said to Julian, “you must salute them too. No. Not like that. That’s not a salute. Hand steady. Like me. Yes. Yes.”

She gave him the gun. The dolls all had their backs to him, at least he didn’t have to see their faces.

He thought of his father. He thought of his brothers. Then, he didn’t think of anything.

He fired into the crowd. He’d never fired a gun before, but it was easy, there was nothing to it. He ran out of bullets, so Karen reloaded the gun. He fired into the crowd again. He thought there might be screams. There were no screams. He thought there might be blood … and the brown of the grass seemed fresher and wetter and seemed to pool out lazily towards him.

And Karen reloaded his gun. And he fired into the crowd, just once more, please, God, just one last time. Let them be still. Let them stop twitching. The twitching stopped.

“It’s over,” said Karen.

“Yes,” he said. He tried to hand her back the gun, but she wouldn’t take it — it’s yours now, you’re the man of the house. “Yes,” he said again.

He began to cry. He didn’t make a sound.

“Don’t,” said Karen. “If you cry, the deaths won’t be clean.”

And he tried to stop, but now the tears found a voice, he bawled like a little girl.

She said, “I will not have you dishonour them.”

She left him then. She picked up her one surviving doll, and went, and left him all alone in the woods. He didn’t try to follow her. He stared at the bodies in the clearing, wondered if he should clear them up, make things tidier. He didn’t. He clutched the gun, waited it for to cool, and eventually it did. And when he thought to turn about, he didn’t know where to go, he didn’t know he’d be able to find his way back. But the branches parted for him easily, as if ushering him fast on his way, as if they didn’t want him either.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He hadn’t taken a key. He’d had to ring his own doorbell. When his wife answered, he felt an absurd urge to explain who he was. He’d stopped crying, but his face was still red and puffy. He held out his gun to her, and she hesitated, then at last took it from him.

“Sorry,” he said again.

“You did your best,” she said. “I’m sorry too. But next time it’ll be different.”

“Yes,” he said. “Next time.”

“Won’t you come in?” she said politely, and he thanked her, and did.

She took him upstairs. The doll was sitting on the bed, watching. She moved it to the dressing table. She stripped her husband. She ran her fingers over his soft smooth body, she’d kept it neat and shaved.

“I’m sorry,” he said one more time; and then, as if it were the same thing, “I love you.”

And she said nothing to that, but smiled kindly. And she took him then, and before he knew what he was about, he was inside her, and he knew he ought to feel something, and he knew he ought to be doing something to help. He tried to gyrate a little. “No, no,” she said, “I’ll do it,” and so he let her be. He let her do all the work, and he looked up at her face and searched for any sign of passion there, or tenderness, but it was so hard —and he turned to the side, and there was the fat doll, and it was smiling, and its eyes were twinkling, and there, there, on that greasy plastic face, there was all the tenderness he could ask for.

Eventually she rolled off. He thought he should hug her. He put his arms around her, felt how strong she was. He felt like crying again. He supposed that would be a bad idea.

“I love you,” she said. “I am very patient. I have learned to love you.”

She fetched a hairbrush. She played at his hair. “My sweetheart,” she said, “my angel cake.” She turned him over, spanked his bottom hard with the brush until the cheeks were red as rouge. “My big baby doll.”

And this time he did cry, it was as if she’d given him permission. And it felt so good.

He looked across at the doll, still smiling at him, and he hated her, and he wanted to hurt her, he wanted to take his gun and shove the barrel right inside her mouth and blast a hole through the back of her head. He wanted to take his gun and bludgeon with it, blow after blow, and he knew how good that would feel, the skull smashing, the wetness. And this time he wouldn’t cry. He would be a real man.

“I love you,” she said again. “With all my heart.”

She pulled back from him, and looked him in the face, sizing him up, as she had that first time they’d met. She gave him a salute.

He giggled at that, he tried to raise his own arm to salute back, but it wouldn’t do it, he was so very silly.

There was a blur of something brown at the foot of the bed; something just out of the corner of his eye, and the blur seemed to still, and the brown looked like a jacket maybe, trousers, a uniform. He tried to cry out — in fear, or at least in surprise? — but there was no air left in him. There was the smell of mud, so much mud. Who’d known mud could smell? And a voice to the blur, a voice in spite of all. “Is it time?”

He didn’t see his wife’s reaction, nor hear her reply. His head jerked, and he was looking at the doll again, and she was the queen doll, the best doll, so pretty in her wedding dress. She was his queen. And he thought she was smiling even wider, and that she was pleased he was offering her such sweet tribute.

Maggie tapped her cigarette twice on the pack before putting the filter to her mouth, an affectation she’d picked up years ago when she first started smoking. She’d seen it in a movie; it packed the tobacco tighter or something. Whatever the reason, it was as much a part of her habit now as sneaking up to the roof to enjoy it. Her lighter was a cheap throwaway but it did the job. She cupped the flame, brought it to her cigarette, and sucked in the day’s first glorious breath of nicotine. Pocketing the lighter, she took the cigarette from her lips and exhaled the smoke with a sigh.

The block of flats she lived in was fifteen floors high with a view of urban sprawl and a sky that was early morning grey. Not that she came up for the view. She did like the air, though, away from the traffic and the fast food smells. Up here, the only pollution was of her own making, clinging to her clothes and making her father tut and grumble. “Your health,” he’d say, meaning his. He’d say it the same way he said, “There’s no need, I’ll do it” and “You should get out and find a husband.” He didn’t mean it.

The roof had a low wall running around it. It wasn’t the greatest safety precaution, coming up only as far as Maggie’s thighs, but she supposed it stopped someone simply stepping off the edge. If you wanted to do that you at least had to make some effort. In her younger years she’d considered it, but only in the absent way she supposed most teenagers did. Now her suicide of choice came one drag at a time. With every breath, she died a little.

There were two small buildings on the roof. One housed the stairwell. The other was some kind of storage facility, its door chained shut. Maybe there was a generator in there or tools or something. Otherwise the roof was nothing but scattered puddles and low walls.