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

Carnegie bolts half of it in one, feels it burn its way down. Tomorrow, he’ll go to cell thirteen, like so many times before. Dermot will be lying there, naked and pallid as a grub, clothes bagged up in a Tesco plastic carrier, tools already wiped spotless and back in the briefcase.

Carnegie will wake him up and take him to the showers. Get the blood off. When he’s clean and dressed, he’ll drive Dermot home. But first he’ll have to go back into the thirteenth cell, and before they come to hose it down, he’ll have to gather the bones.

There was a raven at the edge of the woods. It was huge — even its beak looked as long as Mia’s fingers. She stared at it and Little Davey laughed at her. Mia wrinkled her nose. Little Davey was younger than her by a year, but he wasn’t that little anymore. He was as tall as she was and twice as loud, and he rode a bike much quicker than she could. He stood in front of her now, him and Sam Oakey and Jack Harris from down the road, and Sarah Farnham who was more like a boy than one of the boys. Mia stared at the raven. She didn’t want to go into the woods, could smell its rank green warmth even from here. It was loaded with dark, with mystery, with her brother’s mocking laughter as he turned his bike towards the trees.

“Come on,” he said. “Last one in’s a chicken.” He started pedalling and the others followed him one by one, Sarah giving one ring of her bicycle bell, but none of them saying a word.

Mia stared after them. Davey knew she didn’t like the woods; she didn’t like the way the branches closed over her head, making it impossible to know which way was in and which was out. She knew he only went in there because of her fear; and because it was forbidden.

The thought of forbidden things reminded Mia of her fairy tales. Somewhere deep in the woods would be a castle circled by thorns that could put you to sleep with a single scratch. She reminded herself that a princess wouldn’t be afraid. Princesses were never afraid, and she was much more a princess than Sarah Farnham.

With that, Mia turned her own bike towards the woods. The raven let out a dry, rasping burr, the sound a chain might make as it slipped from its sprockets. Then the bird took to wing, lifting its heavy bulk into the air. Its eyes were sharp bright points and Mia thought it eyed her as it flew, but couldn’t work out what the look was meant to say. She paused, though, to pick up the thing it left for her — a single, gloss-dark feather — before following the others into the dark.

She heard them up ahead, shouting and laughing. Davey’s laugh was loudest of all, and Mia’s heart sank. For as long as she could remember, she had been wishing that Little Davey was different. Sometimes she had even tried to turn him into something else. One of her first memories was her mother pulling her off him, laughing because Mia loved her brother so very much she wouldn’t stop showering him with kisses. If a frog could be turned into a prince for the simple kissing, Mia had thought, perhaps this mewling thing could be turned into a frog. It stood to reason. It was worth the sour milk smell that clung to her clothes. Worth the feel of his faintly damp, slightly peeling scalp on her lips.

After that, whenever Mia blew out her candles or wished upon a star, she always wished for Davey to change.

Now he stood in front of everybody, leaning out over the place where the banking fell away. They weren’t supposed to come here. Mainly they didn’t want to, because this was where the bigger kids played; sometimes they found cigarette butts or crushed beer cans, still with foul smells trapped inside. There were no big kids here today though; there was only the swing. The swing was a rope tied around a tree branch with three fat knots at different heights, to sit on. And there was Davey, right on the edge of the banking, the rope held in his hand.

“Don’t,” said Mia, and the others laughed. But Mia saw what they didn’t. The rope was too high for him. He could touch it, but he wouldn’t be able to sit; even the lowest knot was barely within his reach. He’d swing wild, holding on with only his hands, and he’d let go. Mia knew what lay beneath. The banking ended. After that it was a sheer drop, nothing but mud walls and broken branches waiting in the bottom. Old leaves and slimy things, long-legged things. She swallowed. It was up to her; she was supposed to look after him. She, after all, was the eldest.

Once, Mia had made a potion out of all the nasty things she could find, dust and dirt and a hair she had found next to the toilet. She mushed them all up with water and gave it to him in their father’s sports bottle, so he couldn’t see what was inside. Then she had wished Little Davey dead.

She hadn’t really wanted him dead. She had knocked the bottle out of his hand before Davey could drink it. He had cried and run to Mum, and Mia got into trouble; or rather, Miranda had. Mia was always ‘Miranda’ when someone was angry with her.

Miranda was Mia’s real name. It wasn’t a name fit for a princess. She knew two other Mirandas, and neither of them looked like princesses. If anyone called Mia Miranda, she wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t even look at them. Even Davey called her Mia. Miranda, if anything, sounded more like the name for a witch. Mia sometimes wondered what happened to the spell she wove that day, when it missed its target and fell to the ground with the bottle.

Little Davey let go of the rope and stepped back. Then, impossibly, he launched himself out over the space. His hands reached, grasping the rope high. It moved with him and his legs followed, trying to catch up. And then he was sitting on it, and not even at its lowest; he was sitting on the middle knot, cheeks burning, his face split by an enormous grin. Mia caught her breath. And she knew she had been right: the rope was too high for him, but Davey, with his courage, had made it fit. He had worked his own magic with his recklessness, taken a little of the world and made himself its king. She found herself grinning too, looked around at the others; but they weren’t looking at Mia. Their eyes were fixed on her brother as he swung higher and higher, and they were all smiling.

Mia put her hands in her pocket and felt the smooth feather. If she stroked it one way it was like glass; if she rubbed it the other it was rough and caught in her fingers. She could feel it splitting, each thread parting from the next in a way she would never be able to put back together. She did it anyway, thinking of the raven and the way it had looked at her. Its beady black eyes.

Mia wanted Davey to be a girl. They would have been princesses together. Of course, all the stories favoured the younger sister, but Mia wouldn’t be like the older girls in tales — proud, haughty, cast aside when the prince came along. Her little sister would have looked up to her, astonished by her beauty and cleverness. The prince wouldn’t have had eyes for anyone but her.

After a while Davey got down from the swing and Sam Oakey had a go, and then Jack said he couldn’t be bothered but Sarah tried it and so Jack did too. Each of them held onto the rope with both hands and pushed out over the drop; no one managed to get seated the way Little Davey had. None of them seemed to expect Mia to try, and she didn’t care. Instead she spread herself on the grass, pretending she wore some great sparkling dress. What princess would go on a swing like that? She waited until it was time to go, and rode back with them through the woods, and the others said goodbye and headed away.