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

“Did you get what you wanted from Lily Argo?” Benny asked me. “She wasn’t just a ghost?” I told him I hadn’t really known what I wanted but I was certain, despite everything, I had met Lily Argo. But probably I was going to scrap the story. My Head of Department would be pissed but that was how these things went. Sometimes you thought you had something and you didn’t.

What she had told me felt too invasive to write about. What I had wanted, I realized, was not just her story but a glimpse of her secret self. I didn’t have a right to it. And that’s what had made me want it even more. Maybe we all have a secret self: some of us keep it chained in the basement of our minds while others like St. John learn how to feed it.

“Well,” he said, “it was good to see you anyway. Give my love to Luca. You tell him to take proper care of you.”

I promised I would.

While I waited for my flight to board I watched the news. We were all watching the news. We couldn’t help it. Tense security officers patrolled the hallways with machine guns at the ready, just in case. There were fewer travelers those days, fewer coming in, fewer getting out. But I felt a kind of solidarity with the others as I eyes were glued to the screens. We were liminal people moving from one reality to another. We were going home.

So we watched the footage of explosions in Yemen. Pleas from refugees who had found themselves trapped in abandoned tenements, living in filth. It was only when I saw the story about the bomb that had gone off on a train along the Victorian Line that I remembered Luca still hadn’t called me back.

I was watching them pulling survivors out of the rubble and the blood gelled to ice in my veins. I couldn’t move. It had happened then. It had happened. Time seemed to slow. Luca mostly worked from Cambridge but the NGO had offices in London. He went there from time to time. When had I last heard from him? Who could I call to check? But by that point the attendant was calling me forward. I didn’t move. She called me again and the people behind me began to murmur. I must have had a dazed expression on my face, a look they didn’t like. The attendant called me a third time as an officer drew near. It was only then I was able to move. I showed them my passport and made my way down the ramp.

Inside the plane most of the seats were empty. The air was canned, stale tasting in my mouth. I wondered if I might have a panic attack but out on the runway I didn’t dare check my phone again. The hostesses were murmuring to each other. I could tell they were twitchy. But I already a strange calm was taking hold of me—a sense of icy horror. There was something inevitable about what was happening. There was nothing I could do to stop it. Whatever had happened had happened.

And this feeling? It wasn’t the same as all those St. John books I had read. There I could find purpose, structure—meaning in all the bad things that had happened. But outside there was only chaos. The unraveling of beautiful things into violence. It signified nothing.

As the plane taxied down the runway I settled back in my chair and tried to sleep.

Once in a while a memory of Max will pop into her head, and she won’t quite know what to do with it. Totally unbidden, and triggered by nothing in particular, and sometimes she won’t mind, she’ll let the memory play out like a little movie. That time, one Christmas, when they’d given Max his first bike—it had taken Tom ages to wrap it up, and once it was done it was just so obvious, the wrapping paper did nothing to disguise what was underneath at all; “We’ll have to do it again,” she’d said, “but this time we’ll put lumps and bumps in,” and Tom hadn’t minded, they’d done it again, together, and in the end the present for Max under the tree looked like nothing on earth, and certainly nothing like a bicycle; that Christmas morning they told him to save that present for last though he was itching to open it, and he wasn’t disappointed. Oh, she still remembers that exquisite look of joy and surprise on his face when he realized Santa had brought him the bike he wanted after all. Or—there was that memory of when they were on holiday, where was it, Cornwall? It was warm, anyway. And they were all sitting out in the beer garden, Max had a lemonade. There was a wasp. It landed on Max. They shooed it off, and the wasp went onto the table, and Tom upturned his empty pint glass and put it on top. And Max was crying, and she was suddenly so frightened—had he been stung? Where was he stung? Would he have an allergic reaction? But he wasn’t stung at all—“The poor buzzie,” he kept saying, “the poor buzzie.” The poor buzzie was trapped, flying around its beery prison looking for some way out, bashing its body against the sides of the glass. Max was howling now, he said, “Please let the buzzie out, it’s so scared,” and Tom took the glass away, and the wasp didn’t sting anyone, it flew off, and Max laughed, all tears forgotten, and went back to his lemonade.

Or, of course—there was that memory, the first memory. The doctor putting Max into her arms. And her realizing that it was really all over, the whole giving birth thing, and it hadn’t been quite as difficult or painful as she’d feared. And Tom was grinning. And she’d spend so long privately worrying about this very moment—but when I’m actually there with it, with my own child, what happens if I don’t like it? Don’t want it? Can feel nothing for it? Max crying, and she crying herself with relief, that this tiny human being in her arms that had come from inside her and was a part of her was something she loved with all her heart, and she would love it forever, until the day she died.

Sometimes she’s so moved by the memories that it takes her a little while to realize that nothing is wrong, nothing is lost—that it’s Tom who’s moved out, and Max is still there, and alive, and well, and probably playing computer games in his bedroom. And it would only take a moment to go and see him, and look at him, and give him a hug. And she might even do this. And she might not.

Max is in trouble at school again. It isn’t his fault. (Oh, it is never his fault.) She shouldn’t be too concerned, but would she mind coming in some time and having a little chat with the head of year? This Tuesday? Wonderful.

The head of year, a decidedly ugly woman called Mrs. Trent, invites her to sit down, and asks her if she’d like a cup of tea.

Max is being bullied. Yes, that little spate of bullying that had taken place in the spring term had been dealt with; this was a different spate of bullying altogether. Mrs. Trent is just wondering if something at home is the matter. She knows there’s been problems, Max isn’t very forthcoming, but… Would she like some sugar? Here, she’ll pass the sugar. There you are.

“He still sees his father every other weekend,” she says. “That’s quite a lot. That’s more than some kids get when their fathers live at home.”

“How long has it been since you and your husband separated?” asks Mrs. Trent. She tells her. “And was it amicable?” Are they ever amicable, really?

“We just worry,” says Mrs. Trent. “Because Max is a good boy. But we just think. That with the amount of bullying he gets. We just wonder. Is he in some way inviting it?”

Of course he’s inviting it, she thinks. He’s weak. He’s weak, just like his father is. He’s one of life’s fuckups. You can see it written all over his face. Like his father, he’s never going to be anyone, or achieve anything. It’s like he’s got a sign on his back saying “Kick Hard Here.” What she says is, “What do you mean?”

Mrs. Trent gives a cautious smile. “Max doesn’t seem to have any friends. Not a single friend at all. Does he have friends at home?”