Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

during your times of trial ,

when you see only one set of footprints in the sand,

that was when I carried you .

At first, it seemed the poem had it dead wrong: Maybe during your times of trial, you felt so damn heavy because God was perched up on your shoulders, kicking you in the ribs, driving you forward and cackling all the while.

But maybe that wasn’t it at all. If Lyle was the one doing the carrying, maybe that made him God. He liked that idea quite a lot, as his muscles flexed and the void new moon rose, as he stalked the dark, abandoned fields, steed to this great and unbounded rider.

He liked that because God got to pass judgment, and make that judgment real in the world.

Lyle could see the cabin, his wife’s family place. The windows glowed warmly through the thin curtains. There were two cars in the driveway. The lights switched out, one by one. Bedtime.

“C’mon, big fella,” the witch cajoled, her heels digging into his flanks. “This is gonna be some fun.”

Inside the house, in the shadows under the sink, there were tools: stout wire, pliers, a dull saw, a hammer, a steel nail punch. Lyle didn’t know how he knew this, but he did, the same as a hawk can count the mice in a field by their fluttering heartbeats, the way God knows the content of your heart.

The gun felt inevitable in his hand. And that felt good. That good feeling was all the better, knowing that an awful lot could happen between now and the inevitable .

For the first time in a long time, Lyle Morimoto was really looking forward to something.

Peter’s little French nursemaid was just the type of rosy young thing Helen liked, but there was something strange about her mouth. She was shy and wouldn’t speak, but that was no matter. Helen could keep the conversation going all by herself.

“Our journey was awful. Paris to Strasbourg clattered along fast enough, but the leg to Munich would have been quicker by cart. And Salzburg! The train was outpaced by a donkey.”

Helen laughed at her own joke. Mimi tied a knot on a neat patch of darning and began working on another stocking.

Helen had first seen the nursemaid’s pretty face that morning, looking down from one of the house’s highest windows as she and Bärchen Lambrecht rowed across the lake with their luggage crammed in a tippy little skiff. Even at a distance, Helen could tell she was a beauty.

Bärchen had retreated to the library as soon as they walked through the front door, no doubt to cry in private over his brother’s death after holding in his grief through the long trip from Paris. Helen had been left with the choice to sit in the kitchen with two dour servants, lurk alone in the moldering front parlor, or carry her coffee cup up the narrow spiral staircase and see that beauty up close.

The climb was only a little higher than the Parisian garret Helen had lived in the past three months, but the stairs were so steep she had been puffing hard by the time she got to the top. The effort was worthwhile, though. If the best cure for a broken heart was a new young love, Helen suspected hers would be soon mended.

“We had a melancholy journey. Herr Lambrecht was deeply saddened to arrive here at his childhood home without his brother to welcome him. He didn’t want to leave Paris.” Helen sipped her cooling coffee. “Have you ever been to Paris?”

Mimi kept her head down. So shy. Couldn’t even bring herself to answer a simple question.

Peter sat on the rug and stacked the gilded letter blocks Bärchen had brought him. For a newly-orphaned child, he seemed content enough, but he was pale, his bloodless skin nearly translucent against the deep blue velvet of his jacket. He seemed far too big for nursery toys—six or seven years old, she thought. Nearly old enough to be sent away to school, but what did Helen know about children? In any case, he seemed a good-natured, quiet boy. Nimble, graceful, even. He took care to keep the blocks on the rug when he toppled the stack.

She ought to ask him to put the blocks in alphabet order, see how much his mother had taught him before she had passed away. But not today, and probably not tomorrow, either. A motherless, fatherless boy deserved a holiday, and she was tired from travel. The servants here were bound to be old-fashioned, but none of them would judge her for relaxing in a sunny window with a cup of coffee after a long journey.

They would judge her, though, if they thought she was Bärchen’s mistress. She would be at Meresee all summer, so she needed to be on good terms with them—and especially with Mimi.

“We traveled in separate cars, of course. Herr Lambrecht is a proper, old-fashioned sort of gentleman.” Helen stifled a laugh. Bärchen was nothing of the sort, but certainly no danger to any woman. “The ladies’ coach was comfortable and elegant, but just as slow as the rest of the train.”

Still no reaction. It was a feeble joke, but Helen doubted the nursemaid ever heard better. Perhaps the girl was simple. But so lovely. Roses and snow and dark, dark hair. Eighteen or twenty, no more. What a shame about her mouth. Bad teeth perhaps.

Helen twisted in her seat and looked out the window. The Meresee was a narrow blade of lake hemmed in tight by the Bavarian Alps. Their peaks tore into the summer sky like teeth on a ragged jaw, doubled in the mirror surface of the lake below. It was just the sort of alpine vista that sent English tourists skittering across the Alps with their easels and folding chairs, pencils, and watercolors.

The view of the house itself was unmatched. Helen had been expecting something grand, but as they had rowed up the lake, she was surprised she hadn’t seen Bärchen’s family home reproduced in every print shop from London to Berlin, alongside famous views of Schloss Neuschwanstein and Schloss Hohenschwangau. Schloss Meresee was a miniature version of those grand castles—tall and narrow, as if someone had carved off a piece of Neuschwanstein’s oldest wing and set it down on the edge of the lake. Only four storeys, but with no other structure for scale it towered above the shore, the rake of its rooflines echoing the peaks above, gray stone walls picked out in relief against the steep, forested mountainside. Not a true castle—no keep or tower. But add a turret or two, and that’s what the tourists would call it.

No tourists here to admire it, though. Too remote. No roads, no neighbors, no inns or hotels. From what Helen could see as she sat high in the fourth floor nursery window, the valley was deserted. Not even a hut or cabin on the lakeshore.

She’d never been to a place so isolated. Winter would make it even more lonely, but by then she would be long gone. Back in London, at worst, unless her luck changed.

When she turned from the window, Peter had disappeared. The door swung on its hinges.

“Where did Peter go?” Helen asked.

Mimi didn’t answer.

“To fetch a toy, perhaps?”

Mimi bent closer to her needle. Helen carried her coffee cup to the door and called out softly in German. “Peter, come back to the nursery this instant.” When there was no answer, she repeated it in French.

“I suppose Peter does this often,” Helen said. “He thinks it’s fun to hide from you.”

Mimi’s lips quivered. “Oui,” she said.

“Come along then, show me his hiding places.”

The nursemaid ignored her. Helen resisted the urge to pluck the darning from Mimi’s hands.

“If I were newly orphaned, I might hide too, just to see if anyone cared enough to search for me. Won’t you help me look?” Helen smiled, pouring all her charm into the request. A not inconsiderable amount, to judge by the effect she had on Parisian women, but it was no use. Mimi might be made of stone.