Karl Wagner - The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

“Madeleine?”

There was one Sabatier missing from the magnetic rack. The world turned around again and Peter was filled with caution. He took a matching knife down and gripped it.

It had been inevitable. Sooner or later, Madeleine would turn dangerous.

He explored, cautiously.

The front room was anally perfect, cushions just so on the drum-tight sofa-bed, his framed Graham Greene Penguin covers neatly aligned on the walls, all the magazines tidied away and stacked up. The television was on, and one of a stack of videotapes was playing.

On the screen was a blotchy image of a razorblade sinking into a girl’s eyeball, ketchupy gore welling up around the halved olive as a synthesized drone rose in a shriek.

Peter held out his knife as if it could protect him from the picture.

There was a stack of cassette boxes on top of the television, neatly squared, photocopied covers yelling tides. The Cincinnati Flamethrower Holocaust, They Eat Your Eyes, Black and Decker Orgy, Rapist Cult.

He shut off the video, but the slasher music still came from his sound system.

He stepped into the bedroom and found it perfectly tidy. Except for the headless doll on the bedspread, its torso sawed open and stuffed with red rags. It was his much-used prop, even more abused than usual.

She came quietly out of his closet and got his arm up behind him, forcing him down on the floor. She wore a black leotard and an IRA ski mask, and her body was hard and skilled as she battered him against the carpet. He lost his knife with the first slam and yelped as she hauled him up.

She threw him onto the bed, then let him go and took the time to peel off her mask, shaking out her wing of night-black hair. He knew she was going to kill him. She put the Sabatier to his throat, and smiled. First, she was going to torture him. For a long time.

Pain had been constant for all his life. He wouldn’t have believed pain could be prolonged so long without the subject dying.

Madeleine worked efficiently, tirelessly, dispassionately. She hurt him. With her hands and household implements, she hurt him. She had been methodical about it, skinning the insulation from wires and using low-wattage electricity, wetting him down with water from the bathroom sink between each jolt.

As she worked, she played two singles over and over and over, Little Jimmy Osmond’s “Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool” and Aled Jones’ “The Snowman.”

Even pain became boring after a while.

Finally, she was ready to end it. She picked up one of his steak knives, and pulled back for a neat thrust.

Before he died, he wanted to hear Brahms, the “Ode to Joy,” Chuck Berry, Eric Satie. Not Little Fucking Aled Osmond’s Long-Haired Snowman From Jones.

Madeleine’s elbow kinked and she paused. Throughout it all, her face had been a paper blank. Now, he saw an expression…

Could it have been a full week?

Night had come and gone several times. There had been periods of sleep and rest between the busy-work. She had been taking care to keep him alive.

He had never seen her change before.

Her hair might be bleaching. Her skin might be tanning. She might be wriggling inside uncomfortable clothes.

She dropped the Sabatier and stood away from the bed. Knowing this chance might never come again, he picked up the knife with nailless fingers and worked it into her unresisting throat.

A week later, Madeleine was still on his bed, in a circle of dried blood. He’d taken out the knife, cleaned it, and clanged it to its rack in the kitchen. There were flies in the bedroom, and her skin was already yellow in patches and starting to give, suggesting the skeleton beneath useless meat.

He had stayed in the flat with her, recovering slowly. He’d used up all the iodine and bandages in the bathroom cabinet. He daren’t go out. And he didn’t even like to leave the bedroom.

Madeleine must not be left alone.

She was the broken doll now. He’d made many sketches of her, and the bedroom was carpeted with them. He would draw her slack, empty face as it was, and then try to superimpose one of her personalities on it.

Madeleine, Maddie, Mad.

He had to stay with her for more than a week. He had to. It must be a week now. Something was moving under her face.

Peter waited for the next change.

Life was nearly perfect for Joshua Benjamin Yosevs until the summer of his thirty-fourth year. He had his wife, Socorro, and the two boys, Kevin and Harlow. Both his parents were still alive, although he hadn’t spoken to his father in ten years.

And then, during one hot Saturday in August, a small pogrom from seventeenth century Poland invaded his mind. The cavalry rampaged, raped, and murdered seventeen Jews. The next year, his thirty-fifth, in August a nineteenth century Russian pogrom attacked him. There were more, at shortening intervals, with skips in the chronology. But always the butcheries came from the past and moved ever closer to the present.

Again it was August. Joshua was thirty-six when things took a violent lurch toward the worst.

In his backyard, Joshua rocked slowly in the hammock listening to Kevin teasing Harlow with a frisbee. The boys could get along together for all of three minutes before Harlow cried. Joshua had scolded Kevin countless times, but Kevin always teased and teased until Harlow cried. It was building now.

“Get it, boy,” Kevin said.

Harlow yipped like a dog, his yelps fading as he ran from the arching sycamores which held the hammock. The world’s best kids—Joshua knew they would learn to get along some day. It would just take them some time.

Time to get up and stop the teasing, Joshua decided, but Socorro responded first, shouted, “Don’t get him too hot, Kevin.” She wasn’t going to wait for Kevin to make Harlow cry.

Joshua turned his head and started the hammock swinging. A blur in the distance had to be Harlow, wobbling. He was funny to watch as he ran. He was getting the knack. He had learned to run before he walked, taking short, fast trips before falling. As he learned to slow down, though, he forgot how to run. Only now was it coming back to him.

Socorro was wearing shorts in the heat, and Joshua noticed the map pattern of the varicose veins near her knee. The faint blue barely showed under the nut-brown tone. Why, when they made love, or when he stroked her legs, did the veins not ruffle the surface? The wonderful surface. Her legs, when shaven, were smooth. Perfectly smooth and yet offering the perfect degree of resistance. Even with the varicose veins, her legs were something to behold. To hold. One, dangling over the table, bounced slowly against the bench. Later, he thought. When the boys are asleep. Saturday night. He’d been too tired last night. Thirty-six and too tired!

“Kevin!” Socorro shouted. “Let him have it.” Wrong choice of words, Joshua corrected silently.

“Oh, Mom,” Kevin said. “He’s better than a dog.”

“No fleas,” Joshua offered. As usual, Socorro ignored Joshua’s attempt at humor. She had talked to him about joking when she was trying to discipline. Lectured him.

“That’s enough, Kevin. When he gets that one, that’s it. I don’t want him too hot.”

“Can I call Jeremy to play?” Kevin asked.

“Ask your father.”

Joshua kept his eyes closed, not wanting to have to say “no” to his son. He heard Kevin approaching.

“He’s resting his eyes,” Kevin said.

Uncle Morry, Joshua thought, the family tradition, “rested his eyes” after dinner in the recliner. He never slept there, only rested his eyes, snoring like a steam radiator. Uncle Morry who always brought candy bars when he visited. The candy bars made Mother mad. But Joshua’s father would defend his brother Morry, not his wife.