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

“I don’t know where he went…”

“June, please. It’s been a long day. Just go get him.”

“I don’t even know where he went to!”

“Just follow the smoke,” Jamie says.

“Hush!” Your mother slaps at his arm, a playful smile on her face. For a moment, her dour mood has lifted. You use it, slipping into the woods unnoticed. You’ll follow the smoke only as far as you need to, before going in the opposite direction. He can come back on his own.

Five feet in, and the darkness seals up the space behind you, as though the cozy camper and the soft lights never existed at all. Up above, the sky is still blue, but starless and without light. There are no paths or trails here, only ground thick with fallen pine needles and cones, and large ferns that brush at your face as you push through them. No trace of smoke is in the air, you smell only wet earth and pitch and leaves. You should have grabbed a flashlight, but you’ve never been afraid of the dark before, so you push forward. After several thick strands of webbing lash your face, you raise your arm, holding the book up high before you like a shield. It’s a crumbling cloth-bound volume Father gave you years ago, for your seventh birthday. Mythology of Yore. Mythology of your what? you’d joked when you unwrapped the book. Father stopped smiling: later, when you started reading, you stopped smiling as well. The stories are old, very old, and deliciously cruel, and when you touch the illustrations, red and silver bleeds off onto your skin. “This will explain everything,” Father had said when he gave it to you. “This will explain why we do what we do, and why it is not wrong. Why it is as old as mankind itself, beautiful, divine.”

He must not have read all the stories in the book.

“You know where we’re going, don’t you?” Father appears from behind the trees, and you let out a small gasp as you lower the book. He’s barely visible in the gloom, the red tip of the cigarette the only real part of him you can fix your sight on. Yet, you can tell, even in the dark, even from a distance, that some strange mood has seized him, morphing his face into a mask. He wants something, he’s seeking something. You remember what he told you on the piers at Port Angeles. Now is not the time for a smart-ass reply.

“We’re going to the mountains. Into the center of the Olympics, like you said.”

“We’re going into the center.” Smoke billows from his mouth as he speaks, and he crushes the remains of the cigarette with his finger and thumb, carefully so as not to create stray sparks. You watch him slip the butt into his front pocket — Father never approved of littering — and his hand is upon your throat, lifting you up and back into the solid wall of a tree. The book tumbles from your grasp, away into the dense brush. It’s gone, you’ll never find it in the dark. Once again, he places a finger at the center of your forehead. Small coughs erupt from your lips, wet with spittle, as you struggle to breathe, as your feet slide up and down the rough bark, trying to find some place to come to rest.

“And where are you going, where do you go?” Father asks. His voice is a whispered snarl, hard and tight. What little air your lungs clutch at is tinged with warm smoke and rank sweat. “Where do you go when I’m with you? Where are you when the light leaves your eyes and all that darkness pools out of them as you beg me to take you away? What do you see?”

“I — don’t — know.” The words are little more than croaks.

“You don’t know? You don’t know? I treat you like goddess, like a queen, and you slip away like some backstabbing little whore?”

“No — never.”

The finger at your forehead disappears, and you hear the rustle of paper. The map. “Is it here? Oh yes, I see it. I don’t know how you did it, when you drew it, but there it is. I drew my road to where I wanted to go, and she drew hers, and then your little web appeared, shitting itself all over our destinations. Except, I couldn’t figure out how to get my road to the center of your map, to that nice big space inside you, no matter how many roads there were, no matter how many times the lines crossed. I always lost the way to the center of your little Tootsie Pop. And it’s just a fucking piece of paper! ”

“Guess — it’s not — you stupid — fuck.”

The map slams against your face, and there’s a crunch . Blood streams from your nose, and pain explodes like lightning through your skull. And then Father wrenches your shorts and panties down and off your legs in a single motion and his zipper is down and your legs up as he parts them wide and he’s against you and inside you in a single painful thrust, his cock spearing you against the tree like a butterfly.

For a moment he doesn’t move, only breathes hard against your face as the branches rustle overhead, catching the evening wind. It’s true night now, and there is no moon and there are no stars. What is he waiting for? You realize the map is still stuck against your face, stuck in the sweat and tears and blood. You move, listening to the rustling of paper so close you’re your open eyes, your open eyes that see only liquid primordial night, and he begins to thrust. Long, hard strokes slamming your back and head against the rough bark, in and out, again, again, and you can feel it but you can’t help it but you can feel it the old familiar vortex of pleasure forming somewhere deep down inside your traitorous thrusting body and you would give anything to not go there to not feel that and the words form silent in your blood-filled mouth take me away take it away take it all away , and even though you can’t see, you feel it, you feel the blood-brown word expanding, burning through the layers of map, burning through bone and skin. Somewhere, a chain is being pulled, a hole unplugged, and your muscles slacken as the dark of night whorls around, thickens and deepens, as the flat black void opens wide to take you back in, even as something begins to spill out—

The map disappears, and the hand comes down hard against your cheek. You’re back.

“I go everywhere with you. Everywhere! Do you hear me?” Your father’s grip tightens, and you spasm against the tree, struggling as he pins your arms back against the trunk with his hands. Tears and snot drip down your face, plop onto your breasts.

“I go everywhere ,” he says. “You don’t get to leave me behind. And the next time, the next time? — I go with you. The next time, I see everything you see.” He leans in, kissing you hard as he thrusts deeper, harder, his tongue pushing into your mouth, filling it up until all you taste is him, all you breath is the air from his lungs, all you feel is what he feels, what he wants.

He lets go.

You fall, choking on your spit and pain, into the roots of the tree, your shorts and panties bunched at your feet. Father walks away, thin branches snapping under his feet as he zips up his pants. Then the metal rasp of his lighter, followed by the solitary blue-orange flame singing the tobacco into red. “Tomorrow night, when we get there, I’ll be with you. All the way to the end.” A moment of silence as he takes a deep drag, and exhales. You stay huddled in the knotted arms of the tree, hand at your throat, afraid to breath.

“Dinner’s waiting, June-Bug. Hurry up.” He walks away, crashing and cursing as he tries to find his way. It would be funny, if — When you no longer hear the sound of his footsteps, you crawl to your feet, clinging to the bark of the tree for support, then pull your shorts back on with trembling hands. The map is stuck to the bottom of your right sandal. You wipe the blood and dirt off with great care, then fold it small enough to tuck into your panties, small enough to not be noticed by anyone. He’s done for the night, and you’re not touching Jamie again tonight, not with your mother’s smell all over him.