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

William goes the fallow field one last time. It’s been a week since he last saw Misty. A week since anything new has grown. Earl is snoring in his lawn chair, yet William still walks around to the other side of the field to avoid him. He has to get down on his knees and crawl through the fence to reach the field. It is so crowded with statues there is barely room to move. William wedges himself between the unfinished bridge and a heavy hand that reaches toward the sky. He climbs up a series of concentric golden circles and uses the elevation to find one small patch of empty earth, there behind the first statue of green glass.

William is winded now, breathing hard. He is crying, too, but only a little. Only small tears drip from the tip of his nose and fall onto the rich brown earth, and the earth takes that, too, and will use it. William rips his shirt on a barb from a stone statue and there is a scrape on his leg that he doesn’t remember getting, but the wound burns now.

William makes his way to the empty spot of earth. This is the only way he can set things right. He has planted bottles and wood and coins and all manner of small things and they have come back. They have been bigger, too, and better than they have been before. They have been something worth looking at. And he will be, too. He will cover himself whole, close his mouth and his eyes, and let the dirt do its work. He will come back changed. Misty won’t be afraid of him anymore and his mother won’t bring another man home. This will fix the wrong inside of him and everything will be okay.

William starts to dig, and he doesn’t stop, not even when his fingernails bend backward and chip away. Even when he hits rocks and has to pry them from the earth and toss them over his shoulder. Even when the rocks become heavy roots tangled together like vines, thick and twisting away in all directions. The sun is bright and hard above him when William finally stops digging. He is standing on a bed of roots, under which a great chasm stretches. The air coming up from the darkness is musty, but warm, and he doesn’t know how the ground has been holding itself up all this time.

“Hello?” he says, and a voice answers, but it is not his own. It’s his mother walking through the grass, calling his name. William looks into the darkness beneath him, at the place where the dark becomes something else, not light exactly, but close.

William reaches up to the surface. He takes a handful of dirt and pulls it down. He doesn’t stop bringing the earth down around him until he can’t hear his mother anymore. He doesn’t stop until he is planted, whole, in the dark earth.

18.02.19 (Clinic: BAR55, 14.02.19)

Consultant: Dr. Barriga

Ophthalmology—Direct Line: 020 5489 9000/ Fax: 020 5487 5291

Minard Surgery Group, Minard Road, SE6 5UX

Dear Dr. Wilson,

Hannah Somerville (06.07.93)

Flat 01, 3 Broadfield Rd, SE6 5UP

NHS No.: 566 455 6123

Thank you for referring this young lady, whose optician suspected optic disc cupping. Her visual acuity is 6/6 in the right eye and 6/4 in the left. Both of the eyes are white and quiet. Intraocular pressure readings are 18mm/Hg in the right and 16mm/Hg in the left. She has open anterior chamber angles in both. The CD ratios are about 0.5. There is no significant visual field defect.

Her eyesight does not appear to be deteriorating. Her chief complaint is that of intermittent visual disturbance, but this was absent in clinic. There is no family history of glaucoma. I have not started her on any medication. Unless she has any further problems, she will be reviewed in the eye clinic in twelve months following a repeat visual fields test and central corneal thickness assessment.

19.08.19 (Clinic: BAR55, 15.08.19)

Consultant: Dr. Barriga

Ophthalmology—Direct Line: 020 5489 9000/ Fax: 020 5487 5291

Minard Surgery Group, Minard Road, SE6 5UX

Dear Dr. Wilson,

Hannah Somerville (06.07.93)

Flat 01, 3 Broadfield Rd, SE6 5UP

NHS No.: 566 455 6123

This patient was reviewed in the eye clinic today at her own request. Her visual acuity is 6/6 in the right eye and 6/5 in the left. The eyes are white and quiet. The CD ratio remains about 0.5 in both. There is no significant visual field defect and no evidence of glaucoma.

We have seen this young lady at least three times in the last six months, and can ascertain no physical cause for her complaints of intermittent visual disturbance and periods of “complete blindness.” These are reported as having lasted up to two hours on occasion, and she believes that their frequency is increasing.

I am of the opinion that we can do no more for her. I have referred her for psychological evaluation and discharged her from the eye clinic, with the advice to see her optician on an annual basis.

“I mean, all that fuckin’ gabbin’ and over-sharin’ like, everyone thinkin’ they’re bein’ all civilized again, and look how quickly that went the way of everythin’ else when they thought one had got in tonight.” He rocked back on his heels; the dirt crackled against his boots. The fire warmed her face and she leaned closer to it. She was always so bloody cold.

“Sharin’s never a good idea anyways. That posh divvy, he’s half mad on that Debbie one, the auld arse don’t know half as much as he thinks he does, Jimmy is more fuckin’ terrified of wild dogs than anythin’ could actually kill us. That’s all it is, ain’t it? Listenin’, findin’ out what makes folk tick, what makes ’em shit themselves. Survival instinct—if you’re smart like. Say nothin’ and let everyone else do the talkin’.”

He was from Liverpool and he was on his own. He had terrible teeth; often she could smell his breath before he even spoke. His name was Robbo. That was all she knew about him. That, and he did a whole lot of talking for someone so against it. He liked talking to her; she had no idea why.

“Why don’t you leave then?” she asked. It had started to snow: cold, glancing touches against her fire-warmed cheeks. She could hear the growing mutters and cries of dismay on the other side of the parked vans. They always built at least four fires now, one in each corner like a mobile Roman infantry camp.

“Nowhere to go is there? And folk need folk, like. That’s just survival instinct too, ain’t it? Some folks, they got that more than other folks. And, I mean, it’s not like you know which kind you’re gonna be till it happens, ay? Soft lads like Jimmy are scared of their own shadow, then you got the likes of Bob fuckin’ Marley runnin’ straight at everythin’ like a proper weapon. Debbie and that other bird—the Scottish one…”

“Sarah.”

“Right. Sarah. I mean, what have they done since we all hooked up, eh?”

“They’re just scared.”

“ I’m fuckin’ scared. Don’t stop me helpin’ out, goin’ on patrol. I mean, explain that, ay? You look at the animal kingdom, right? It’s not like Peter fuckin’ Rabbit wakes up one night and thinks, fuck it, what’s the point? I can’t be arsed runnin’ away from anythin’ that wants to ’ave me for brekkie. Might as well give up and die like. Or just cry meself to sleep in me nice comfy VW.”

She smiled. “It’s not the same.” He was rattled. He was always wired, always opinionated, but the events of the day and then the wild dog that had snuck past the fires had got to him. His sweat was fresh, but it smelled bad; it reminded her of the days when no one had understood what was going on. When everyone had been trying so desperately to get away from a thing that they hadn’t yet realized was everywhere.