Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

Melissa came back with cookies on a tray. Newsome waved a hand — twisted and scarred in the accident — at her irritably. “No one’s in the mood for baked goods, ’Lissa.”

Here was another thing Kat MacDonald had discovered about the mega-rich, those dollar-babies who had amassed assets beyond ordinary comprehension: they felt very confident about speaking for everyone in the room.

Melissa gave her little Mona Lisa smile, then turned (almost pirouetted) and left the room. Glided from the room. She had to be at least forty-five, but looked younger. She wasn’t sexy; nothing so vulgar. Rather there was an ice-queen glamour about her that made Kat think of Ingrid Bergman. Icy or not, Kat supposed men would wonder how that chestnut hair would look freed from its clips, and lying all mussed up on a pillow. How her coral lipstick would look smeared on her teeth and up one cheek. Kat, who considered herself dumpy, told herself at least once a day that she wasn’t jealous of that smooth, cool face. Or that heart-shaped bottom.

Kat returned to the other side of the bed and prepared to lift Newsome’s left leg until he yelled at her again to stop, goddammit, did she want to kill him? If you were another patient, I’d tell you the facts of life , she thought. I’d tell you to stop looking for shortcuts, because there are none. Not even for the sixth-richest man in the world. You have me — I’d help you if you’d let me — but as long as you keep looking for a way to pay yourself out of the shit, you’re on your own.

She placed the pad under his knee. Grasped the hanging bags that should have been turning back into muscle by now. Began to bend the leg. Waited for him to scream at her to stop. And she would. Because five thousand dollars a week added up to a cool quarter-mil a year. Did he know that part of what he was buying was her silence? How could he not?

Now tell them about the doctors. Geneva, London, Madrid, Mexico City, et cetera, et cetera.

“I’ve been to doctors all over the world,” he told them. Speaking primarily to Rideout now. Rideout still hadn’t said a word, just sat there with the red wattles, his overshaved neck hanging over his buttoned-to-the-neck country preacher shirt. He was wearing big yellow workboots. The heel of one almost touched his black lunchbox. “Teleconferencing would be the easier way to go, given my condition, but of course that doesn’t cut it in cases like mine. So I’ve gone in person, in spite of the pain it causes me. We’ve been everywhere, haven’t we, Kat?”

“Indeed we have,” she said, very slowly continuing to bend the leg. On which he would have been walking by now, if he weren’t such a child about the pain. Such a spoiled baby. On crutches, yes, but walking. And in another year, he would have been able to throw the crutches away. Only in another year he would still be here in this two hundred thousand dollar state-of-the-art hospital bed. And she would still be with him. Still taking his hush-money. How much would be enough? Two million? She told herself that now, but she’d told herself half a million would be enough not so long ago, and had since moved the goalposts. Money was wretched that way.

“We’ve seen specialists in Mexico, Geneva, London, Rome, Paris… where else, Kat?”

“Vienna,” she said. “And San Francisco, of course.”

Newsome snorted. “Doctor there told me I was manufacturing my own pain. ‘To keep from doing the hard work of rehabilitation,’ he said. But he was a Paki. And a queer. A queer Paki, how’s that for a combo?” He gave a brief bark of laughter, then peered at Rideout. “I’m not offending you, am I, Reverend?”

Rideout rotated his head side-to-side in a negative gesture. Twice. Very slowly.

“Good, good. Stop, Kat, that’s enough.”

“A little more,” she coaxed.

“Stop, I said. That’s all I can take.”

She let the leg subside and began to manipulate his left arm. That he allowed. He often told people both of his arms had also been broken, but this wasn’t true. The left one had only been sprained. He also told people he was lucky not to be in a wheelchair, but the all-the-bells-and-whistles hospital bed suggested strongly that this was luck he had no intention of capitalising on in the near future. The all-the-bells-and-whistles hospital bed was his wheelchair. It rolled. He had ridden all over the world in it.

Neuropathic pain , Kat thought. It’s a great mystery. Perhaps insoluble. The drugs no longer work.

“The consensus is that I’m suffering from neuropathic pain.”

And cowardice.

“It’s a great mystery.”

Also a good excuse .

“Perhaps insoluble.”

Especially when you don’t try .

“The drugs no longer work and the doctors can’t help me. That’s why I’ve brought you here, Reverend Rideout. Your references in the matter of… er… healing… are very strong.”

Rideout stood up. Kat hadn’t realised how tall he was. His shadow scared up behind him on the wall even higher. Almost to the ceiling. His eyes, sunken deep in their sockets, regarded Newsome solemnly. He had charisma, of that there could be no doubt. It didn’t surprise her, the charlatans of the world couldn’t get along without it, but she hadn’t realised how much or how strong it was until he got to his feet and towered over them. Jensen was actually craning his neck to see him. There was movement in the corner of Kat’s eye. She looked and saw Melissa standing in the doorway. So now they were all here except for Tonya, the cook.

Outside, the wind rose to a shriek. The glass in the windows rattled.

“I don’t heal,” Rideout said. He was from Arkansas, Kat believed — that was where Newsome’s latest Gulfstream IV had picked him up, at least — but his voice was accentless. And flat.

“No?” Newsome looked disappointed. Petulant. Maybe, Kat thought, a little scared. “I sent a team of investigators, and they assure me that in many cases—”

“I expel .”

Up went the shaggy eyebrows. “I beg your pardon.”

Rideout came to the bed and stood there with his long-fingered hands laced loosely together at the level of his flat crotch. His deep-set eyes looked sombrely down at the man in the bed. “I exterminate the pest from the wounded body it’s feeding on, just as a bug exterminator would exterminate pests — termites, for instance — feeding on a house.”

Now , Kat thought, I have heard absolutely everything . But Newsome was fascinated. Like a kid watching a three-card monte expert on a streetcorner , she thought.

“You’ve been possessed, sir.”

“Yes,” Newsome said. “That’s what it feels like. Especially at night. The nights are… very long.”

“Every man or woman who suffers pain is possessed, of course, but in some unfortunate people — you are one — the problem goes deeper. The possession isn’t a transient thing but a permanent condition. One that worsens. Doctors don’t believe, because they are men of science. But you believe, don’t you? Because you’re the one who’s suffering.”

“Yous bet,” Newsome breathed. Kat, sitting beside him on her stool, had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes.

“In these unfortunates, pain opens the way for a demon god. It’s small, but dangerous. It feeds on a special kind of hurt produced only by certain special people.”

Genius , Kat thought, he’s going to love that .

“Once the god finds its way in, pain becomes agony. It feeds just as termites feed on wood. And it will eat until you are all used up. Then it will cast you aside, sir, and move on.”

Kat surprised herself by saying, “What god would that be? Certainly not the one you preach about. That one is the God of love. Or so I grew up believing.”