Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

From a private letter of Elizabeth Buell to her daughter Mary-Kate, held within the Garroway family

My darling, I believe they are coming soon. Last night I heard them, ever so far off, up in the peaks-I smell them now, their scent travels on the thin spring wind. Tomorrow they will arrive, and they will find you.

It will be the cruellest and most bitter thing to leave you, crueller even than the burying of my own dear husband, your loving father John Buell. I saw his body once Hiderick had done with it: oh, my child, pray you never have to look on such a sight! Hard it was to look upon; till now, the hardest thing in that long season of sadness and hardship that began with the death of your grandmother, Julia Stocklasa, at the commencement of all our wanderings.

Your father, as he lay raving in his cabin by the lakeside, called this a godless place; and then cursed himself for a blasphemer. God has abandoned us, he screamed into the night; better say that God was never here, my darling. Better say that we rode beyond His grace into some strange and ancient land, where the old gods still hold sway, where blood and death and the animal passions yet contend for mastery of the earth. Your grandmother knew it, Mary-Kate; as she lay on her deathbed she whispered it in my ear. Remember, she said, you will change at need. You will change, she said, and I did not know what she meant at first. Then she told me of the shapeshifter women of her homeland, those that go out into the woods on nights when the moon is full, and the change comes upon them. She told me what to do if I wished to survive the peril she foresaw, and to protect you. I did not believe her at first, but perhaps only in the uttermost desperation can such things ring true. I did what she told me, and everything changed, my darling-everything, save my love for you.

I thought I could come back, after it was done. For it was only to protect you, my darling, that I did what I did that night of the full moon when Hiderick came for us; little did I care for my own life, only for yours, since to stay alive would be to keep you safe from harm, and that was all that mattered to me. How could I know that what is done, is done, once and for all; that

there can be no changing back? How could I live among men again, after such a fearful alteration? Now I have other family, and must leave you to your own kind.

They wait for me among the trees, my new kin, tongues lolling from their strong jaws as they grin and pant, coats wet from the melting snow. How it feels to run with them, to fling myself into snowbanks and roll and play and lie together-this you can never know, my darling. Josephus, who helped save you, knew: straight away I recognized him, after the deed was done and the rest of the wolves came down to the camp to look upon the slaughter. I looked into his eyes as I lay there full changed, streaked and clotted still with Hiderick's reeking blood, and he looked back into mine. This time I did not turn away.

Did I do wrong? I did what I had to do. Did I betray my dear husband? At least I did not fail our beautiful and most perfect daughter, first in both our affections and ever dearest to us. So how bitter, my darling, to leave you for these men to find. They will take you across the mountains, whither your father and I cannot follow: we shall remain here as you ride away. At least you shall find your home in the new Eden: east of Eden is fit enough for such as we, who have the stain of blood on us.

Perhaps this land, that has so much escaped God's grace, may still be subject to His justice; perhaps I will be punished for what I have done. As if there could be a worse punishment than knowing you to be alive and well in that promised land beyond the mountains, and I not able to see you, or hold you in my arms and hear your pretty laugh.

Hark! They are coming down from the mountain. I must go, and leave you now. All my love goes with you. Be good, my darling; be kind, be honest, be faithful, and know that your Mama will love you always. Listen for me, nights when you lie abed and the moon is up. The pack are waiting for me. I must go-

I was watching a nature documentary on the small television I'd taken into exile with me. Several thousand hapless Emperor penguins huddled together on a vast plain of snow while blasts of ice-laden air furrowed their feathers. Tough little birds, sleek little stoics that made my flimsy misfortunes (unemployed, divorced, alcoholic) seem like the hothouse complaints of a pampered child. But wait… perhaps these birds weren't even roughing it. If I could zero in on a single bird amid this huddled mass, if I could read its mind, I might find it thinking: "This is great, the lot of us here, comrades, all for one and one for all. Would you look at the way the sun blazes on the ice! Beautiful! What a magnificent day to huddle together. And there's a nice breeze, too!"

I live over a bar, and when my own thoughts get too much for me, I go down to the bar and Evil Ed, the bartender, draws me a free beer from the tap. This should not be mistaken for generosity. Later, he runs my tab up extravagantly, claiming I've bought beers for people I don't remember and who, I suspect, are the imaginary spawn of Evil Ed's accounting practices.

Evil Ed and I both have apartments above the bar. I rented my apartment through Evil Ed, who was representing our landlord, Quality Rentals, Inc. QR resides, as do we, in Newark, New Jersey, or, at least, that's where QR's post office box is located.

Evil Ed is an ex-con, his muscled arms covered with primitive tattoos, the strangest of which is a heart among many knives with the initials A.B. in the heart's center and a little banner over that with the single word WHITE printed on it. Why a black man would wish to have an Aryan Brotherhood tattoo is beyond me, but I don't know him well enough to ask. Evil Ed keeps to himself, and he doesn't feel compelled to engage in the sort of small talk that passes for social interaction between strangers. I appreciate his self-containment. Surely the virtue of silence, of allowing others their space, should be taught in kindergarten. Such schooling shouldn't have to wait until prison.

Anyway. It was a Saturday, which might suggest a crowd, but this wasn't a Saturday-night kind of bar. This was more the sort of bar you went to because you had gone to it the day before.

The place could get a little rowdy sometimes, and Evil Ed had nailed a holster up under the counter near the cash register. Lodged inside that holster was a Walther P38 that looked old enough to have been pried from a Nazi's cold dead fingers. As far as I knew, no one had ever tried to rob the place. Evil Ed's demeanor did not suggest a man willing to hand over cash without a fight.

This Saturday night, the bar (which, by the way, has no name, being identified only by the vertical neon letters B-A-R) was sparsely populated with regulars (Rat Lady, Freddie Famous-Long-Ago, Bullshit George, and The Nameless Perv). There were a couple of Goth kids, happy to be miserable, and three bulky guys wearing dresses, transvestite empowerment night, I guess, and, somewhere in the shadows, Derrick Thorn, waiting to meet me, waiting to befriend me.

The television over the bar had the same penguin show on, and now a seal was chasing a penguin through the water. The seal, its mouth wide and bristling with pointy teeth, shot through the ocean, shedding iridescent bubbles, its eyes black, demonic, the eyes of some angry ghost-child from a Japanese horror flick. I had never seen seals from this perspective. Scary stuff!

A voice that was not mine seemed to pluck the thought from my head: "It does not seem right, a seal animal to eat a penguins, the both of them slippery, swimmy things that should be happy brothers together in the oceans."