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

She checks her watch. A full ninety seconds has passed.

“This is my favorite story. Is it true or not? Who can tell? Jesus liked to play with his friends from school. One day he thought that the most fun would be to play on the moon. It was a crescent moon that evening and it was so close, he knew if he jumped high enough from the cliff he could reach it. And so he did. There he was, now he was the man in the moon, sitting back within that crescent as if it were a comfy chair. Come and join me, he called to his friends. Come and jump. Don’t be frightened. Don’t you trust me?”

Three minutes now. She tries to get out of her chair. She has to get down to the pool. She can’t. Nicky’s mother has got her arm. Nicky’s mother has a story to tell.

“The children all fell to their deaths. Their little bodies smashed to pieces at the bottom of the cliff. Jesus was angry about that. He wanted his friends! If he didn’t have friends, who could he play his games with? Who did he have left to impress? So he brought them all back from the dead, every last one of them.” Five minutes. Max’s beaten the high score now. He’s beaten the target Nicky set. Surely they’ll let him come to the surface now? Surely they’ll stop their chanting, their cat calling, their hallelujahs and hosannas?

“Their bodies were broken, of course. And they couldn’t speak any more. But what of that? He didn’t need friends who could speak. His parents were angry. They knew he had to be stopped. The father spoke to him. Hey, superstar. We can’t go around killing our friends and resurrecting them, can we? Then where would we all be? All right? Promise you won’t do it again. But fathers are so weak, aren’t they? They may love the child, but it’s easy to love something when it’s not been inside of you eating away for nine months. It’s down to the mother, always, to discipline it. It’s the mother who knows it, understands it, and can be disgusted by it.”

Eight minutes. Even the children look worried now. They’ve stopped clapping. They’ve stopped their songs. All except Nicky, he sings his heart out, and how his eyes gleam.

“It’s left to the mother. As always. She says, you let those children die right now. You put an end to this, or it’s straight to bed with a smacked bottom. How Jesus sulks! He threatens her. He’ll drown her. He’ll curse her. She’ll never die, she’ll just suffer, she’ll be made to walk the earth forever. But he does what he is told. The children collapse. Their hearts all burst at once, and their faces look so grateful, they fall to the ground and there they rot.”

And now—yes—she sees Max’s body. And for a moment she thinks it’s just the corpse bobbing to the surface, and it’ll be full and bloated—but no, no, up he comes, and he’s laughing, he’s splashing out of the water in triumph! Nine minutes twenty! Nine minutes twenty, and all the boys by the side of the pool are clapping him on the back, and none of them with greater gusto that Nicky, and Max looks so proud.

She wants to cry out she’s proud of him too. She wants to cry out she loves him. She wants him to know he’s her little champion.

“The point I’m making,” says Nicky’s mother. “Is there a point? The point I’m making. If your child is a somebody, or if your child is a nobody. If they have potential, or are a waste of space. If they’re Jesus themselves. If they’re Jesus. Then there’s still only so much a mother can do with them. Were screwed either way.” She gets to her feet. She claps her hands, just the once, and all her children fall silent, and look up to her. Max too, all the children wait to do whatever she says.

“Nicky,” she says. “That’s enough now. Time we all put our playthings away.” Nicky’s face clouds over. He looks like he’ll throw a tantrum. His mouth twists, and he suddenly looks so ugly. But his mother is having none of it. She stands her ground. He gives in.

Once again, all the boys take their places around the perimeter of the swimming pool. Max takes his place too. Maybe he thinks they’re all going to dive in like last time. Maybe he thinks it’ll all be some Busby Berkeley number, and that he’ll get it right this time. And maybe, given the chance, he would.

The first child doesn’t dive. He merely steps into the water, and on contact he dissolves, the remains of his body look thick and granular in the water.

Nicky’s mother watches with her binoculars as each of her children step into the pool and break apart like fine sand. She eats a strawberry. She licks her lips.

It does not take long before it’s Max’s turn. He looks up. He is smiling. He is happy.

“No,” says his mother.

“No?” says the woman.

“Yes,” she replies. It comes out in a whisper.

Max seems to take longer to dissolve, but maybe she’s biased, maybe he’s no more special than any of the other kids.

The swimming pool now seems thick and meaty, like gravy.

Nicky is the last to go in. He refuses to look at his mother, and as he drops down into oblivion with a petulant splash, he’s still having his sulk.

Max’s mother doesn’t know what to say. She puts down her wine glass, she stubs out her cigarette.

The woman turns to her, gently taking her chin by her hand. Kisses her, just once, very softly, on the lips. And says:

“Listen to me. You are not the only mother who cannot love her child. It is all right. It is all right. And this can be your home now, for as long as you like. This can be your home, forever.”

And the woman goes on, “This bedroom is yours. Enjoy.” And leaves her, with a balcony to watch the setting sun from, and some wine to finish, and all of the cigarettes, and all of the delicious strawberries.

She lies in bed. She half expects the woman will come and join her. She half hopes she will. She doesn’t. So, in the very dead of night, she gets up. She feels a little giddy. She cannot tell whether she is drunk or not, maybe she’s in shock, maybe she’s just very tired. She goes downstairs. She thinks the doors might be locked, but they aren’t, she’s free to leave at any time. She finds a discarded bottle of wine, she pours out the dregs, and rinses it clean from the tap. Then into the garden she goes. It is dark, and the swimming pool looks dark too, you’d think it was just water in there if you didn’t know better. She stops down by the pool- side, right at the point where Max went in—it was here, wasn’t it, or hereabouts? She holds the wine bottle under the surface, and lets the water run in. and the water runs over her hands too, and it feels like grit. The bottle is full. She’ll take it home. It is the best she can do.

She sees, too, the birthday card and the birthday present, both unopened, still standing on the table where she left them. On a whim she takes the inflatable Donald Duck in its Disney wrapping paper. She doesn’t bother with the birthday card.

She drives home, holding the bottle careful between her legs, being sure not to spill a drop.

She goes up to Max’s bedroom. The bedroom is a mess, it’s always a mess. Max hasn’t even made the bed. She makes the bed for him, she smooths down the sheets and straightens the pillows. It looks nice. Then—she takes the bottle. She doesn’t know what to do with it. In the light it looks like dirty water—mostly clear, but there are bits of grime floating about in it, you wouldn’t dare drink it. She knows it isn’t Max, but bits of it are probably Max, aren’t they, most likely? She pours it slowly over the bed—the length of it, from the pillow on which Max’s head would lie, down to where his feet would reach. The water just seems to rest on the surface, it doesn’t soak through. She bends close to it. It smells sweet.

She doesn’t know why on Earth she took the Donald Duck, and leaves it on his bedside table.