Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

Another wasp crawled up through the hole, and the caterpillar’s body began to boil: ten more heads pushed up into the dead skin, biting hole after hole until the caterpillar was nothing more than a heap of dislocated parts, a first meal for a host of sickly-orange wasps with legs sharp as needles.

“Reginald!” Uncle Amir called from the bottom of the stairwell. “Might you—might you come down, please?”

“What’s the trouble?” Father asked from his desk. The shouting from the men downstairs grew louder as Uncle Amir kept the door propped open.

“You should bring the boy with you!” Amir yelled, and then they heard the door slam shut.

Harry pulled himself away from the caterpillar—there were just two wasps left, now; the others had taken off into the midday heat—and he followed Father downstairs.

The mill’s workfloor was chaotic: workers ran back and forth, some with pails of water from spigots outside, others with burlap tarps. The far end of the chamber was starting to fill with black smoke, and the room reeked of burning timber. One of the workers, a tall, broad black man, was yelling at Uncle Amir. His accent was too heavy for Harry to understand much of what he was saying.

Father stood paralyzed at Harry’s side. He gripped the back of Harry’s neck in his hand, squeezing just too tight.

“Should you see what’s wrong?” Harry asked.

“I—I think we should just—”

Uncle Amir jogged over. “It’s one of the processors, Reginald,” he said, his voice hoarse with inhaled smoke. “It’s lit the cane chips somehow. You should get him out of here.”

“Are you sure? I could stay if there’s anything—”

“It’s under control,” Amir retorted. He turned to go back to his men.

Father took Harry by the hand and they started out of the facility. Harry turned just before they got out, though, to see the workfloor one last time. His gaze slid from the billowing smoke to the black worker, who was standing there, watching them go. His face dripped with sweat and was streaked darkly with ash and his eyes went wide and wild with such fear, such rage, that Harry had to turn his face away.

The fires were put out, and the mill and all the cane workers survived. The mill would need some time for repairs, Father explained, but it would be back in no time at all. The fire started due to faulty machinery. All of the processors were years too old, but that wasn’t his fault, he was careful to say, that was something Amir should have told him about long before it had gotten this far.

He spoke with the bluff of bravery, but he was clearly shaken by the incident. He kept to the drawing room, fingertips stained from the endless chain of cigarettes passing through them. He came out for short, silent meals with Harry and Mother, then excused himself.

The image of the mill worker had stayed with Harry, too: he had never seen such terror carved into one man’s face. Father’s immediate retreat from the mill filled him with embarrassment, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk to Father about it, or to be there when Mother found out what had happened.

So he stayed away from the compound. Later in the week, after a day spent in too-hot classrooms thinking about his mother and her love of Frank de Caires, he found himself wandering back toward the Demerara, picking his way along a road he’d walked many times when he was a child. His mother’s house had been down this way, he thought. He had few memories of the place—he’d been so young when Father took him away to live at the compound—but there were still feelings that stayed: the croaking calls of toucans with beaks the color of ripened papaya; the static joy of hearing cricket games in countries across an ocean, broadcast over transistor radio; his mother coming home from work, her apron curry-stained, her smile wider than the river.

As it always did, the beast grew restless. It smelled the river’s sucking mud and the jackfruit trees in bloom; it tasted the brick-red dirt he kicked up from the road and the winds that brought clouds from the west blue with rain. But Harry had pilfered the kitchen before he left for school, taking what little Majid had left after breakfast: a pine tart and a tennis roll. He took a starchy bite out of a tart, and the beast quieted itself.

He came upon a house he thought he remembered. It was a split-level with wide, screenless windows, a green-tiled roof, and small yard full of mango trees. Two boys, one his age and one much younger, played with a ball and cricket bat in the front yard. Harry thought he recognized the older boy. He watched them play for a while, and, when the younger boy went to fetch the ball after a particularly enthusiastic hit, the older boy came over.

“I remember you,” he said, to Harry’s surprise. “You’re Harold, right?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, I don’t remember…”

“We grew up down the street. You’re Auntie Bibi’s kid, yeah?”

“That’s right,” Harry said. He flushed with the embarrassment of not remembering anything about this boy.

“Yeah, I remember. You always looked white. You know, like your father.”

Harry, opened his mouth, unsure of what to say.

“Well, I’m Bobby,” the boy continued, rapid fire. “Want a turn with the bat?”

He offered it over. Harry paused, startled. He wasn’t any good at cricket, and he had very little food left for the beast. It had started its rumblings again; slipping itself around the pit of his stomach, prodding those tender walls with its tongue.

“It’s gonna rain soon,” Bobby said, gesturing with his full eyebrows to the changing sky. “Might as well get a few hits in while you can.”

Harry took the bat, and walked to meet Bobby’s little brother.

He played for fifteen awkward minutes, missing more throws than he should have and failing to catch any of the balls that came his way. The other boys were good sports, though, and Harry found himself laughing more than he had in a long while.

Then, while he stood between the mango trees, watching the younger brother, Abed, pitch to his brother, Harry saw a man coming down the road. He came from the direction of the prison and the mill, dressed in a fine suit and a starched shirt. He walked haltingly, swinging long arms and drunkenly swaying.

The boys stopped their game; the ball went rolling through the grass, into the thickets beyond.

“Do you know who it is?” Harry asked.

“No, I can’t quite—”

The man staggered closer, and Harry saw that there was something wrong with his face. Half was swollen, his left eye nearly shut, and his lips were distended and purpled. Blood had run down his forehead and dried over his eyebrows, caking them.

He came near enough that all three boys could make out the rest of his face: his thin moustache, his teeth so thick his lips could hardly cover them.

They all went running.

“Uncle Amir!” Bobby called as they neared.

He looked at them but there was no recognition in his eyes, no light behind them at all. He half-fell into Bobby’s arms, and the boy couldn’t hold his weight so they collapsed together into the dirt.

“Run and get Bhauji,” Bobby said to his brother. “Run!”

The boy took bolted for the houses far down the road.

“And you, go and get the ferryman’s wife. She’s a nurse,” Bobby said.

Harry balked; his heart stuttered in his throat.

“I don’t know who that is.”

Bobby looked up. He had taken the corner of his shirt, wet it with his tongue, and was wiping blood off of Uncle Amir’s face. Uncle Amir’s one open eye closed.

“Down this road. Left at the fish market, left at the baker—”

Harry was nodding but he was hardly listening. The beast had grown hungrier still; it pulled at the inside of his guts with its practiced fingers; it licked at the base of his throat so he had to swallow, and swallow, and swallow—