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

But he was glad to see the back of him. The door banged shut and through the window he saw Ricardo’s hair leap in the wind before the shadows consumed him.

Graham finished his drink and headed back to the apartment. Rain was in the air now, a fine mist that the wind seemingly would not allow to settle anywhere. It seethed around him. He was soaked by the time he reached the door.

He toweled himself dry and sat in the chair. Sleep came on like a rehearsal of death. He had not felt like climbing the stairs to bed; the meat from his dinner sat heavily in his stomach as if his teeth had not macerated it first. His hands gripping the arms of the chair, looking too much like the bleached white carapaces of dead crabs they’d seen in the harbor earlier that week. His sweat was dry glue on his skin. His gut rumbled; it was as if the plant had spoiled him for any sort of nourishment.

For some reason he was thinking of the first time he had seen Cherry, on a quadrangle in the university where they had both studied. He was coming to the end of his first year of some Mickey Mouse degree that would prepare him for no job at all; she was cramming for her finals, with a placement at a City bank already secured… but that was knowledge for the future. All that he knew at that moment was the back of her neck and that she was curled on the grass and the pile of textbooks by her side. The sweep of her neck, unusually long, the way her hair was up, stray strands teased by the breeze, the dimples either side of her spine…

He stared at those dimples until he was sure she could feel the weight of his scrutiny; she sat up, her head twitching. She planted a hand in the grass and pivoted on it. Insane dream logic showed him Felix within the circle of her arms, though he was seven years away from being born.

Everything around them shivered, as if he was watching it on a TV screen with a bad reception. And then the mown grass was gone, and he was alone with his family, on the nearby beach where an ancient ship was rusting into the shingle. She dragged Felix away, the both of them casting fearful glances back over their shoulders. They disappeared inside a giant rent on the ship’s port side. He followed, but every time he called their names, the juices in his throat caused him to gag.

He pressed his hands to his eyes and pushed until he saw shoals of color sweeping across that inner dark and when he opened his eyes again he was alone in the room and it was full night, and the storm had matured, was battering the coast and their door was flapping open in the wind.

Alien flavors rose in his craw.

“Cherry?” he called out.

There was no answer. He thought she might have drunk a little too much and decided to reignite the flame he’d seen hopping between her eyes and those of the young bartender. Or maybe she’d decided to go for a midnight dip in the pool. Or maybe she’d just conked out after her long day of leisure.

He closed the door and clattered up to the bedrooms. Empty. Felix’s bed was a mess of blankets, as if he’d suffered restless dreams. Or, his mind mauled itself, he’d struggled with an assailant as he was snatched from his bed.

He checked the bathroom in the insane hope that they’d decided to have a late shower together, but every room was empty. He returned to the lower level, almost tripping on the spiral staircase, and flew into the rain. He called out but his voice was spirited away by the thrashing wind. Shutters all across the complex were rattling in their frames, or, where they had not been secured properly, were crashing rhythmically like stoked metal hearts. The trees seemed aghast. The pool area was empty. All the loungers had been tied down but some of the large cushions had been blown free and floated in the water.

Steel blades flashed behind gray cloaks lifting on the horizon. He heard the police helicopter moments after it blatted overhead and watched it, momentarily distracted, amazed that the pilot had braved the violent winds tonight. A spotlight on the choppers belly created a beam busy with rain. It picked out the fevered tops of trees, the roofs, the edges of the cliffs. Had someone been found out there? A body on the crags? His gorge rose again and he tried to let it come: he wanted his stomach to rid itself of the textures and tastes of the plant. But its coagulated syrup was not ready to leave him just yet.

He ran through the hotel grounds to the tennis courts at the rear. In one corner was a gate, which led on to a sandy path to the beach. He was there in minutes, and could see the foam-topped combers on the sea as if they were lit from within. The helicopter was hovering as best it could above the hillside that sloped down to the cliff edge. Figures were arranged upon it, like toy soldiers on a blanket. There were half a dozen black shadows and a single figure in an acid white T-shirt. Even at this distance, Graham could see that it was Ricardo: the wavy hair, the limp posture. He held something in his hands. The uncertain spotlight flashed around and over it, but would not settle. Was it… no, Christ, no. Was it Felix’s jumper?

Ricardo turned to look at him. And then raised his hand as if to wave. And then he dropped, as if he had been instantly deboned. A moment later and the sound of gunfire reached him. The light shifted on the hill; he could no longer see what was happening. The police helicopter was returning along the coast. It passed directly overhead and its light picked out the rusting remains of the ship from his dream.

Was that a figure, slipping back into one of the fissures in the hull? He was torn between going to the hill to confirm what he thought he had seen, and continuing his search for his family. If it was Felix’s jumper, then so what? Maybe Felix had taken it off that morning because he was too hot. Perhaps Ricardo had simply been trying to return it. His mind could not cope with the narratives he was forcing upon everything; he had to cling to the positives. The alternative was too hideous to contemplate.

Graham stumbled back along the rocky outcrop, conscious that the ground fell away from him to needles of rock some thirty feet below. The rain slashed almost horizontally across the path, stinging his face. Here was the channel leading down to the beach where the rusted ship was incrementally disintegrating into the shingle. He passed into a zone of relative calm. Now the wind was negated he could hear the rattle of rain on the decaying hull, the crisp attack of the waves upon the stones.

Lightning jagged around the inlet. The aperture in the bulkhead where the figure had sought shelter was ink black. Iron ribs edged it, splayed inward: presumably this had been where the ship was fatally breached. He approached, conscious that the flowers Ricardo had entreated him to suck were arranged around the failing metal hull as if they were somehow taking nourishment from the oil sweating from the sumps, the soot in the stack, the endless, psoriatic rust.

At the hole he paused. Another level of quiet accumulated. There was a high stench of iron and diesel and rotting marine life. He could hear his breath, ragged in his throat, echoing in the cavernous chamber, unless it was that of another he could not yet see. He bit that thought off at the root and spat it away. He called his wife’s name and it fell dead at his feet, as if poisoned by this air.

He was about to move into the ship and beggar the dangers when lightning arced once more across the night. It lit up the inside of the hull for a millisecond, but that was enough for him to be able to see what looked like the limp remains of a body hanging from a metal spar thrusting down from the ceiling. He was put in mind of filled coat hooks in winter bars. Though darkness had rushed back into the space, it remained imprinted on his retina. Emptied… drained… Or maybe just a coat after all, he hoped. But no: there were crimson-tipped knuckles, where something had been chewing. He imagined the grind of tiny metacarpals in pistoning jaws. A sound like bar snacks being munched.