Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

They found the roof access tucked off a hallway inside, like a closet with a ladder affixed to the wall, stuffy as a chimney the higher they climbed. A trapdoor put them topside. The bell still hung mounted on a wooden headstock, no sign of the rope used for ringing it. Sofia gave it a rap with her knuckles to summon a sad, hollow clunk.

The bell sounded as dead as everything else looked, as far as he could see.

They were on an observation deck with nothing left to observe, a seared land scraped thin across a rocky world in a dozen shades of brown, barren of everything but scattered shacks and ruins. To the east, a line of green struggled to overcome, life trying to hang on beside an arroyo , maybe. He wished it well.

The sky, the blue of dreams, was the only vibrant thing to see. They hadn’t killed the sky yet. Give them time, and enough guns and blades and poison, and they would find a way.

Sofia saw it first, pointing it out in the distance, nearly at the limits of his vision. His soul knew what it was before his mind let him believe his eyes. Even lost amid a simmering hellscape stretching for the horizon, it towered against the rugged desert hills, crossed gullies and washes in a single step, this striding colossus with bone for a face and a scythe in its hands and hunger in whatever passed for its heart.

She was, he realized, too terrible and too true not to have been real all along. And he feared she wouldn’t stop until she’d visited every square inch of this land and gathered up her due.

Something had gone wrong here. Hundreds of years ago, or maybe thousands. No wonder it had always wanted their blood. That was where the memory lingered most.

They watched until its saint passed from view, beyond the farthest hills, then turned to each other again. Sofia touched his face like she’d never truly seen it before, and when he touched hers, the thing that hurt most was knowing that under the skin, the two of them looked more alike than not, and the same as everybody else.

When the Grand Prix stopped kicking up rooster tails of red dust at every junction Helen announced they had left Georgia behind and were officially on their first vacation. Following beat-up signs and billboards, the rest of the drive would take them further south to the Gulf Coast of Florida.

In the back seat Helen’s twin daughters Julie and Debbie had been arguing for the last forty miles. The girls were out of Planter’s Peanuts and Pepsi-Cola, bored with playing ‘I Spy,’ and sick of variations on Barbie and Francie ensembles; their eight-year-old imagination stretched to breaking over the long trek south from the outskirts of Atlanta.

The route Helen chose had little to do with scenic value. She figured the lack of notable landmarks contributed to the girls’ boredom but she was willing to weather their snotty remarks and impatience, so long as it meant they could stick to back roads not found on the map. This was better than risking the preferred path of tourists and patrol cars along Highway 98.

For the eleventh time Julie asked, “Are we there yet?”

Helen shot back the brightest answer she could offer. “Where the heck is ‘there’?” A glance in the side view mirror was startling: blonde bob raked back from her face and tucked behind her ears, eyes underscored by shadows, the remnant of a purple bruise not quite faded beneath makeup.

Late in the afternoon Helen pulled over and parked under a sign for a campground with the same name as the nearest town, Alligator Point. At the check-in cabin a man with a mustache so thin it might have been drawn with an eyebrow pencil, and a nametag that identified him as Dorsey Corcoran, pointed to a map. He referred to the place beside his blackened thumbnail as ‘a private cove.’ He reeked of tobacco and his crooked grin revealed a row of yellow teeth dotted with gold fillings. He was the kind of man Helen’s husband Roy would have called a ‘swamp hick.’

“Y’all are gonna be mighty cozy,” Dorsey Corcoran said. “Yes ma’am. That there’s a preferred spot. If y’all had come down any closer to the season, it’d be gone.”

“It’s fine,” said Helen. She checked over her shoulder to make sure the girls were staying put in the car.

“Say, is that a ’64 or a ’65?” Dorsey asked, jutting his chin toward the Grand Prix outside.

Helen froze. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, you’ve kept it in good shape. Nice color, too. What do you call that shiny green…?”

“Moss,” she said. “I think it’s called moss.” She initialed the register and handed over cash for two nights.

Fifteen minutes later, after locating their campsite, she squinted through the dusty windshield at row after row of mangy palm trees with peeling trunks. Down the beach at the next site an elderly couple in swimsuits sat in lawn chairs staring at the brackish water. They rested silently and still with flabby arms limp at their sides, fingertips almost touching the sand.

Helen took note of the scenery and wondered if Dorsey knew the meaning of either ‘private’ or ‘cove.’ The beach formed a large C-shape and included a playground with two swing sets, all of it surrounded by the ancient, shedding palms. This tiny enclave occupied the southern tip of the larger campground where more prosperous visitors rented cabins or parked their trailers during tourist season.

“Look at us. Three gals on a spree!” Helen said as brightly as she could. “When you’re on vacation, anything can happen.”

The girls said nothing. Julie collected their overnight bag from the floor while Debbie gathered up their Barbie dolls and magazines.

They managed to haul the tent out of the trunk but had trouble pitching it. The fine, dun-colored sand kept giving way underfoot on the narrow beach. There were no waves, no surf, only a dull sort of gurgle each time the foamy water rolled up a few inches and back again.

Helen glanced over her shoulder while they struggled with the pole and the stiff canvas. Each time the girls caught her looking around she pretended to be estimating the space they needed.

“Smells like rotten fish,” said Julie, wrinkling her nose and pointing to the shoreline.

“Stinky,” said Debbie.

“Daddy wouldn’t like this place at all!” Julie declared. “I bet he’s glad he didn’t come.”

“That’s how the gulf smells,” Helen told them. “Y’all are here to see the sights and learn about the world and be sophisticated. Watch out. Only ignorant people complain wherever they go.”

The twins took a break to drink the Pepsi-Colas she’d bought at the check-in cabin, and eat cheese sandwiches from the small portable cooler. While they ate, the girls stood as they often did, heads inclined toward one another, whispering God knows what about their elderly neighbors.

Helen stopped hammering a foot-long metal spike into the ground, and raked the hair from her eyes with her free hand. She stood for a minute and surveyed the beach with a dull sense of unease, trying to decide if the feeling was spurred by the viscous gurgle of the shoreline or the call of gulls, like chattering monkeys, overhead.

Sunset turned the shore into ribbons of royal blue and teal. Entwined clouds of periwinkle and fire-orange stretched for miles toward a crimson, falling light between the trees.

They had only two folding cots, placed at right angles inside the tent. The twins shared one of them, sending delicate snores into the air and pushing at one another gently with swimming motions, their hands and feet trying to clear an imaginary space.