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

There were the usual howls as I sliced my way through a pack of boundary wolves (you fold yourself in half, you get a sharp edge) but I soon left them behind. Boundary wolves think they're the protectors of the cosmos but they're just dumb animals. Soon I was between the strings. Time stopped for everything but me and for an instant-just an instant-I heard the distant silence of the still point.

"Jimmy," I whispered. "Are you there?"

Then the boundary was rushing at me again. I cut through another wolf-pack and slipped sideways through a fresh crack in reality's wall, all the while with a golem in my pocket and a girl in pieces round my neck.

I landed with a crash on a dust-covered floor and smelt rat droppings.

Why have you entered my domain?

The voice came from the corner. It wasn't a room, just a dark place with corners. The corners moved. The voice bounced off a ceiling that wasn't a ceiling, just something soft and unspeakable hanging over our heads. The words were punctuated by wet thuds. Something dripping that sounded like jelly, but wasn't.

"I need a favour," I said into the darkness. Beside me, Byron trembled like a sack of plaster.

Favour? Who are you that I owe you a favour?

"Last summer, remember? The missing kid? Pornographic ransom notes and severed fingers in the mail? Cops thought it was you. I convinced them it wasn't."

Ah, that favour. Tell me, was the poor little dear where I said he would be?

"You know he was. Funny how you knew where to find all the pieces."

I explained that at the time. I am not a killer. I am simply… attuned to those who kill.

"Yeah, I know."

You shudder?

"A creep's a creep, innocent or not."

Is it with such flattery that you seek a favour? I should turn you from here with your skin burned off and your tongue split in two!

I felt Byron's clammy breath on my ear.

"What is this place," he whispered. "Who're you talking to?"

"Her name is… " I began. Then I addressed the voice. "Say, why don't you introduce yourself?"

The dark place got brighter. I saw the ceiling and wished I hadn't: it was made of rat-tails all woven together. Most still had the rats attached. It was like some crazy rodent jigsaw: tails strangling necks, tails plaited with drawn intestines, tails threaded through empty eye sockets. The mutilated rats dripped blood and pus on the dusty floor. And they squirmed.

A hunched figure stepped into the light. She was gaunt and yellow, wrapped in red rags. Filthy hair made syrupy trails down her sunken chest. She grinned and cackled, showing black crone's teeth; her breath was so rotten it ran down her chin like blackberry juice.

She scratched her cheek with nails like sewing needles.

Greetings. My name is Arachne.

The golem took a step forward. "Uh, pleased to meet you, Arachne. My name's Byron." Then, so help me, he stuck out his hand.

"Let's not waste time," I said, stepping in front of him. "Arachne, there's something I need you to do." Glancing at Byron, I hissed, "Don't let her touch you."

"Why not?" said Byron.

"Venom."

Very well, said Arachne. Call in your favour and begone! Your company is already tiresome. Although, I am curious… this man of clay… does he grow hard when fired?

I dragged the garbage can forward. Arachne stretched her scrawny neck and peered inside.

Dead already. So sad. If she still breathed, I might help you find her killer. But you have left it too late.

"No," I said. "There's something you can do. You know that."

Arachne's face turned black with surprise. She ran needle-claws through lank hair; giant fleas jumped like field-mice before the scythe.

I am a weaver of silk, not miracles.

"You telling me you can't do it?"

I did not say that. But if I do what you ask, it is you who will owe me a favour.

I thought about it. Arachne's not someone you want to be in debt to. On the other hand, she tends to stay home. I figured so long as I kept my distance, I'd never have to make good on the promise.

Of course, it didn't quite work out like that.

"All right," I said. "Do this and I'll owe you one."

"Do what?" said Byron.

"So what's her story?" whispered Byron. "She gives me the creeps."

We'd retreated to a safe corner. Well, as safe as any corners are in Arachne's domain.

"Dirty tricks in the underwear underworld," I said. "Arachne used to run an illegal pantyhose sweatshop down by the river. The sweatshop was in direct competition with the shiny new factory Pallas Athene set up in the Diana's Glade Business Park. Now, as you know, Pallas Athene used to be queen of black market lingerie before she turned respectable and became mayor. These days, all PA's businesses are strictly legit. But Arachne never cleaned up her act. So, anyway, story goes Arachne was trying to undercut Pallas Athene on this wholesale lingerie deal. PA caught Arachne in the middle of the night handing over a truckload of bootleg silk teddies under the Green Knight Bridge. Now, PA might look like a doll and she might be mayor but she's got one hell of a temper. There's not many cross her and live to tell the tale. Arachne's one of the few."

"What did Pallas Athene do?"

"Turned Arachne into a spider, banished her into a self-reticulating semi-dimensional oubliette and revoked her weaver's licence."

"But… she don't look like a spider."

"That's just the oubliette at work. As long we're here our perceptions are regulated by Arachne's personal reality grid. Arachne is a spider but she still thinks of herself as a woman. So that's what we see."

Byron shuddered. "Don't like spiders."

"Who does?"

Arachne was waving her hands over the top of the garbage can. Her hands moved fast; as they moved, those needle-claws got longer. Soon the needles were longer than the fingers that held them.

Arachne plunged her hands in the garbage can. Her shoulders worked like pistons. Blood sprayed from the can, painting her face. Arachne's claws knitted the air with streaks of silver light; she looked like a crazed washer-woman up to her elbows in some ghastly laundry basket. The garbage can sang like a steel band. And all the while the patchwork rats looked down with sad eyes, because they knew exactly what was going on.

At last it was over. Arachne pulled her arms out. Her needle-claws were back to normal. Her arms were as red as the rags she wore. Her chin was black with condensed breath.

And the garbage can was shaking.

I took a cautious step towards the can. This time it was Byron who held me back.

"Don't wanna see," he whimpered.

Arachne lifted one scrawny leg and kicked the garbage can over. For the second time that day, the girl spilled out. Only this time she was all in one piece. Above my head, all the rats sighed in unison. Behind me, I heard a colossal thump as Byron fainted.

I had to admit, Arachne had done a beautiful job. Everything was in place, and the girl was a real peach: long legs and a tiny waist, and everything else responding nicely to gravity as she picked herself up. Not a drop of blood on her. Trouble was, good though the needlework was, you could see all the joins.

Eleven thousand, three hundred and ninety-five discrete pieces, said Arachne. A triumph, even for me.

I wondered if the girl would see it that way. It's one thing coming back from the dead. It's another finding you look like a patchwork quilt. I wondered if I'd done the right thing.

"I'm alive," said the girl. She held up her arm, examined the red, cross-stitched scars. She looked down at the rest of her naked body. It looked like a road atlas, each highway drawn in herringbone weave. "That's pretty neat," she said. "I always figured I'd get tattoos one day. A girl like me can earn ten times as much with tattoos. I just hate needles. But now it's done, and I didn't feel a thing. How cool is that?"