James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

I run after her. The sand shifts and grinds under my feet. I don’t try to catch up with her. I know where she’s going.

She’s standing beside the old hanging tree. She’s looking out over the dark water.

I grab her by the hair and turn her towards me. Her eyes are wet. I kiss the tears off her cheeks. It tastes like the lake.

( kira )

She turns around and I grasp her hand. She looks over her shoulder, her eyes large and sorrowful, and pulls her fingers slowly out from between mine.

Her feet are in the lake and the water foams against her ankles. She looks at it sadly and takes a step back.

‘Don’t go.’

The water bubbles hungrily around her legs, oozes into the material of the dress and sucks it tight against her skin.

‘Stay with me.’

I can see she wants to, but she turns around and walks deeper into the lake. The water swirls around her waist. The white fabric clings to her body as if the lake is greedy to have her. The water spits up against the ends of her hair.

I walk after her. It’s as if the water is holding me back. I use my hands and force my way ahead.

She looks around and her eyes beg me to go back. But I’m almost to her. She disappears under the water, as if something has grabbed her ankles and pulled her under.

I dive after her, search with my hands, but grab only water, cold and heavy. I run out of breath. I have to swim to the surface, but then I dive again and keep searching. I don’t even know which side the shore is on anymore.

And then my fingers touch something. Material. I grab it, clutch it tightly. It’s her. I get hold of her arm and pull, but she won’t come to the surface. It’s the lake. The lake doesn’t want to let her go. My lungs burn, but I clutch her wrist firmly because if I let her go I’ll never get her back again. My fingers hurt and at the same time start to go numb from the cold. The lake is too strong. I can’t . . . Her arm slips between my fingers and I scream my last bit of oxygen away.

Something pulls me under. I flail my arms, but it has no effect. A weight presses against my chest. Panic takes over. I swallow water, the rich mineral taste of the lake

( kira )

see only black around me. My arms are too heavy and tired to flail. The burning in my lungs is far away. I just sink, slowly, down, down, down into the cold.

Pain cuts deep into my arm and something pulls me up. My head breaks through the surface and I pant and cough and choke. It takes a while for me to breathe normally again. And then I see the grayish object beside me. I see the teeth and the forepaws treading water.

Not an object. Sebastian. I grin back at him.

Around us the dark water is still.

I stand on the sand and watch the sun come up over the lake. The rays can’t penetrate its surface. The lake doesn’t share her secrets easily.

Sebastian licks my fingers.

I smile and rub his head. ‘Come on. You get a special breakfast today.’

I still don’t know how Sebastian got out the sliding door last night. I don’t think I had closed it all the way, but the space was too narrow for him to fit through.

Sebastian sits and watches me while I grill boerewors in a pan. I set his portion down in front of him and he devours it like it’s the first time I’ve ever fed him.

While I tidy up a little, he jumps up, barks once and wags his tail. He looks towards the sliding door.

A little girl runs up to the door and starts to smile. ‘Nemo!’ Sebastian runs towards her and licks her face. She giggles and throws her arms around him.

A man appears behind her. He knocks on the sliding door.

He tells me how they’ve looked for Nemo everywhere and how many tears they’ve cried over him the past couple days. The thing that really strikes me is when I hear how far Sebastian came to find me.

I kneel down and rub his head for the last time. ‘So, Nemo, then.’ I smile and whisper in his ear: ‘Thanks.’

I stand on the porch and watch them go. Sebastian looks back once and barks. Even if his teeth marks hadn’t left scars on my left arm, I wouldn’t ever forget him.

He presses his muzzle against the little girl to steer her farther from the water’s edge.

I close the door to Tamason, the soft purling of the lake behind me. It’s time to go back to Stellenbosch, to tell Deloris Mouton that it’s over. And if that derails my career at Stellenbosch University, there are always other schools.

I walk across the sand to where the water begins. The lake lies stretched out before me, shiny but opaque. I squat down, cup my hands and scoop some water. I suck it into my mouth, close my eyes, and I remember her

( kira )

fingers, light against my forehead that first evening, her

( kira )

mouth, cool against my neck, her

( kira )

cheek, soft and wet against my lips.

I let the last of the water drip back into the lake, stand up, and walk to the car.

Author’s Note: The poetic excerpts are taken from the following poems in Die Mooiste Afrikaanse Liefdesgedigte , compiled by Fanie Oliver: Jeanne Goosen, ‘Nog nooit het ek mooier geskilder’, Rosa Keet, ‘My pols sing ’n minnelied’, and Elisabeth Eybers, ‘Eerste liefde’.

Of the Scandinavian countries, Denmark probably has the most active contemporary horror scene, including a number of authors who have had at least some of their work appear in English, such as Steen Langstrup, Michael Kamp, A. Silvestri, and Teddy Vork. In fact, there’s so much horror fiction being published in Denmark that there’s even a Danish Horror Society ( Dansk Horror Selskab ) that gives out an award each year for the best work of Danish horror. The 2017 award went to a volume of short stories by our next author, Lars Ahn. In deeming Ahn’s book ‘a worthy winner of this year’s award’, the jury noted that the collection ‘twists the horror genre’s tools in surprising directions’ and said the author ‘manages to make a short story unfold like a novel and inspires re-­reading’. He is the author of a novel, Rød Høst (Red Harvest) , and his short stories have appeared in over thirty anthologies. He has also won the Niels Klim Prize for best Danish science fiction story twice. In ‘Donation’, Ahn gives us perhaps the most frightening monster in this book, in the unlikely form of a seemingly innocent young boy.

It was the loveliest of mornings.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt better. Every­thing had gone beyond expectations yesterday. She had said yes immediately and seemed genuinely surprised, and he amazed himself by shedding a tear when he realized how happy she looked.

I should have done it a long time ago , he thought, before they started calling friends and family.

They had spent the rest of the day talking and constantly touching each other, as if they wanted to assure themselves that it was actually real and not a dream. If they weren’t holding hands, she was lying in his lap while he caressed her hair, and at regular intervals they broke out in laughter because they couldn’t believe they were finally ready to do it after having talked about it for so long. After dinner and red wine, they rewatched their favorite film before taking their intimate contact to a new level in the bedroom.

He still felt a little sore as he sat there at the dining table checking the latest congratulations on his phone. He could hear her humming in the kitchen as she prepared their brunch. He had offered to help, but she had ordered him to stay seated and read the thick Sunday edition of the news­paper, which still lay unopened before him.