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

Mr. Wary handcuffed Franco in a closet and strung him up on tiptoes by means of keeping the belt around his neck and the other end secured to a rusty hook dangling from a chain. Mr. Wary left the door partially ajar. He suggested that Franco remain mum or else matters would go poorly for him, and worse for Carol, who was soon to arrive for her weekly appointment.

The closet was narrow and stuffed with coats and mothballed suits, but roofless — the space above rose vertically into blackness like a mineshaft. While Franco struggled to avoid hanging himself, he had ample opportunity to puzzle over how this closet could possess such a dimension. Occasionally, reddish light pulsed from the darkness and Franco relived his recent nightmare.

Afternoon bled into red evening and the stars emerged in the sliver of sky through the window behind the couch. Franco was in a state of partial delirium when Carol knocked on the door. Mr. Wary smoothed his shaggy hair and quickly donned a smoking jacket. Carol came in, severe and rushed as usual. He took her coat and fixed drinks and Franco slowly strangled, his view curtailed by the angle of the closet door.

Franco only heard and saw fragments of the next half hour, preoccupied as he was with basic survival. He fell unconscious for brief moments, revived by the pressure at his throat, the searing in his lungs. He contemplated murder. A few feet away, his lover and the magician finished their drinks. Mr. Wary told her to make herself comfortable while he put on a recording of scratchy woodwind music. He drew the curtain and clicked on a lamp. He cleared his throat and began to speak in a low, sonorous tone. Carol mumbled, obviously responding to his words.

In due course, Mr. Wary shut off the record player and the apartment fell quiet but for Carol’s breathing. He said, “Come, my dear. Come with me,” and took Carol’s hand and led her, as if she were sleepwalking, to a blank span of the wall. Mr. Wary brushed aside a strip of brittle paper and revealed what Franco took to be a dark water stain, until Carol pressed her eye against it and he realized the stain was actually a peephole. A peephole to where, though? That particular wall didn’t abut another apartment — it was an outer wall overlooking the rear square and beyond the square, a ravine.

Carol shuddered and her arms hung slack. Mr. Wary stroked her hair. He muttered in her ear and turned slightly to grin at Franco. A few minutes later, he took her shoulders and gently guided her away from the wall. They exchanged inaudible murmurs. Carol wrote him a check and, seeming to secure her faculties, gathered her coat and bade Mr. Wary a brisk farewell on her way out.

“Your turn,” he said upon turning his attention to Franco. He unclasped the belt and led him to the wall, its peeling flap of ancient paper. The peephole oozed a red glow. “All this flesh is but a projection. We are the dream of something greater and more dreadful than you could imagine. To gaze into the abyss is to recognize the dreamer and, in recognition, to wake. Not all at once. Soon, however.” He inexorably forced Franco’s eye against the hole and its awful radiance.

Franco came to, slumped on the coach. Mr. Wary smoked a cigarette and watched him intently. The liquid noises of his own heart, the thump of his pulse, were too loud and he clutched his temples. He recalled a glimpse of Carol’s face as dredged from nightmarish limbo. The shape of it, its atavistic lust and ravenous fury terrified him even as a tattered memory. Immense as some forsaken monument, and its teeth — He retched on his shoes.

“It’ll pass,” Mr. Wary said. The phone, a black rotary, rang. He answered, then listened for several moments. He extended it to Franco. “For you.”

Franco accepted the phone and held it awkwardly with his good hand. Across a vast distance, Jacob Wilson said, “Franco? Sorry man, but you’re done. I’ll have my accountant cut you a check. Kiss-kiss.” Across a vast distance, a continent and the Atlantic Ocean, Jacob Wilson hung up.

Mr. Wary took the phone from Franco. “A shame about your job. Nonetheless, I’m sure a man of your ability will land on his feet.” He helped Franco rise and propelled him to the door. “Off you go. Sweets to the sweet.”

Franco shuffled down the badly lighted hall. A vortex of fire roared in the center of his mind. He stepped into the stairwell. There were no stairs, only a black chasm, and he plummeted, shrieking, tumbling.

“Holy shit! Wake up, dude!” Carol shook his arm. They were in her crummy bed in her crummy apartment. The dark pressed against the window. “You okay? You okay?”

He opened and closed his mouth, biting back more screams. She turned on the bedside lamp and bloody light flooded his vision. He said, “I’m … okay.” Tears of pain streamed down his cheeks.

“It’s three in the fucking morning. I didn’t hear you come in. Why the hell are you still dressed?” She unknotted his tie, began to unbutton his shirt. “Wow, you’re sweaty. Sure you’re okay? Damn — you drunk, or what?”

“I wish. Got anything?” He wiped his eyes. The lamp had now emitted its normal, butter-yellow light.

“Some Stoli in the freezer.” She went into the kitchen and fixed him a tall glass of vodka. He guzzled it like water and she laughed and grabbed the mostly empty glass from his good hand. “Whoa, Trigger. You’re starting to worry me.” She gasped, finally noticing the lumped and swollen wreck of his right hand. “Oh my God. You’ve been fighting!”

He felt better. His heart settled down. He took off his pants and fell on the bed. “Nothing to worry about. I had a few too many at the bar. Came here and crashed, I guess. Sorry to wake you.”

“Actually, I’m glad you did.”

“Why is that?” His eyelids were heavy and the warmth of the booze was doing its magic.

“You won’t believe the nightmare I was having. I was walking around in a city. Spain or Italy. One of those places where the streets are narrow and the buildings are like something from a medieval film. I could see through people’s skin. X-ray vision. There’s another thing. If I squinted just right, there were these … sort of bloody tendrils hooked to their skulls, their shoulders, and whatnot. The tendrils disappeared into creepy holes in the air hanging above them. The fucking tentacles squirmed, like they were alive.”

He’d gone cold. The pleasant alcohol rush congealed in the pit of his stomach. The tendrils, the holes of oozing darkness — he pictured them clearly as if he’d seen them prior to Carol’s revelation.

She said, “Right before you woke me with all that racket, there was an eclipse. The moon covered the sun. A perfect black disc with fire around the edges. Fucking awesome. Then, there was this sound. Can’t describe it. Sort of a vibration. All the people standing in the square flew up toward the eclipse. The tendrils dragged them away. It was like the Rapture, Frankie. Except, nobody was very happy. They screamed like motherfuckers until they were specks. Wham! Here you were. The screams must’ve been yours.”

“I rolled over onto my fingers. Hurt like hell.”

“Wanna go to the clinic? Looks bad.”

“In the morning.”

“Fine, tough guy.”

Franco tucked his broken hand close to his face. He lay still, listening for the telltale vibration of doom to pass through his bones.

Carol was driving the car into Olympia’s outlying farmland. The day was blue and shiny. A girlfriend had given Carol a picnic set for her birthday — a wicker basket, insulated pack, checkered cloth, thermos, and parasol. Her sunglasses disguised her expression. She always wore them.