Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

Helen lay awake, staring out the open canvas flap until she saw the dark silhouettes of the elderly couple rise clumsily from their lawn chairs, clasp hands, and make their way inside their own tent. One of the two zipped the flap shut behind them.

She imagined they were on a reunion honeymoon. Alligator Point was run down, but maybe it was a relic of their youth, a hot vacation spot when it was swanky and new.

‘Swanky’ was one of Roy’s words; it reminded Helen of their own early days. Sparkling beaches spread out before high-rise hotels painted flamingo pink, the surf so starkly blue against white she could hardly believe it was real. Roy’s shocking bright smile, his black curls shiny with pomade above sunglasses so dark she couldn’t see his eyes at all. He would reach over and pat her hip with one hand and ask how she’d like to spend her honeymoon in one of those swanky hotels.

For a while after they married she anticipated more days in sunlight that caressed her skin, more nights of dancing in clubs, her bare shoulders fragrant with coconut oil. For a long time after she stopped expecting such days and nights, she hoped for a sign that things would get better, or at least stop getting worse.

On the canvas floor beside the twins’ cot she spied a couple of well-thumbed issues of Photoplay and Screenland . On the cover of one Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were photographed clinging to one another, their mouths open wide. Helen couldn’t tell if they were laughing or screaming. A headline read, “Are Liz and Burton’s Love Binges Killing Them?” A photo insert in the corner featured a redhead named Florinda. Another showed Taylor and Burton looking bronze, drunk, and overweight in swimsuits on a yacht.

Helen hated these magazines. The twins bought them surreptitiously at Kresge’s with change begged off of Roy, and hid them in their room. She guessed they were feeling bold because they were on vacation for the first time. Or maybe they’d simply fallen asleep and forgotten. She hoped the magazines didn’t remind the girls of Roy but she couldn’t be sure without asking. They lay on their cot with arms crooked and entwined. She couldn’t remember a time when she had slept with such innocence and abandon.

The first dream was all broken images of the twins playing: Julie and Debbie on a swing set surrounded by palm trees, their bare feet raking the sand with each pass through the air, stirring up and infuriating a line of large black ants trying to stumble to their nest with what seemed to be bits of paper and broken seashells. In the next dream Helen saw her own eyes reflected in the rearview mirror of the Grand Prix, blackened with bruises; in the mirror she watched the twins bury a bloodstained hammer in the sand. She checked the mirror again, dabbed at her chin with powder, and noticed Richard Burton approaching the car, shambling and drunk, his face filled with rage. She looked down at her hand; it was warm, wet, cupped around a pair of broken teeth.

She felt the sand between her toes and the heat rising up from the ground. One of the ants, lost and abandoned by her tribe, clambered over Helen’s foot. A searing pain in her heel told her she had been stung, and she leapt from the burning leather strap of the swing seat, landing on bare feet running. Soon the burn spread from her heel to her ankle and up her calf. When she touched her leg it folded over in sections and she fell, the hot sand enveloping her until she sank to her hips. All around her the green, fishy water was rising. She saw the twins with their arms dangling over the edge of their cot, fingers dipping in the rank sea.

She bolted upright, screaming, as a tsunami swept the tent. Waves six feet high knocked the canvas sideways, tossed the twins under, and rushed over Helen. Her voice, shouting the names of her daughters, formed bubbles, and the stinking water filled her throat.

She screamed again and awoke to see Julie and Debbie sitting up on their cot, sleepy-eyed and staring at her. She ran her fingers through her hair. Her face and scalp were drenched in sweat.

“What are y’all doing? Mama had a bad dream, is all. Go back to sleep.”

In the morning Helen lay on her cot with her eyes closed, trying to recall the order of these images. Each time she got lost when she pictured her eyes in the rearview mirror of the Grand Prix. Something moved in the middle distance, a long, flat body with scales and muddy green skin sweeping aside the trees as it stumbled toward her, just out of view.

At last she opened her eyes. The tent was as intact as it had been before she fell asleep. The movie magazines lay on the floor but the twins were gone.

She jumped out of bed and slapped the canvas flap aside. Her first thought, more of a frantic hope, was that the twins had gone outside to play. She glanced up the beach at the empty swing sets. She had taken for granted that the town’s name was no longer appropriate, and there was no danger. But of course it was foolish to feel safe; there was always danger. Alarm rising like an approaching siren in her chest, she turned slowly, 360 degrees, careful not to miss any detail of the surrounding campsite.

When the tent of the elderly couple came into view, she gasped. There were the twins, flanking the old people who had resumed sitting in their lawn chairs exactly as they had the day before.

Helen caught her breath, a painful lump forming in her throat. She wanted to run to her daughters but she didn’t want to alarm them. Just as urgently she didn’t want their newfound acquaintances to question her. She couldn’t answer anything they might ask.

Her flip-flops felt grimy, coated with wet sand, by the time she reached the spot where Julie and Debbie stood beside the old couple. Something different from the previous day’s scene troubled her. Once she drew alongside the twins she realized the old people were not looking at the water, and not talking to her daughters. Instead their heads were tilted back, jaws slack. The woman’s chin was dotted with dried saliva.

“What’s the matter with ’em, Mama?” Julie asked. “Are they sick?”

“We just walked over to say ‘hey’ but they were sleepin’,” said Debbie.

“They’re not asleep,” said Julie. “They’re sick. They look sick.”

Helen took each girl by the hand. “Come with me,” she said. “Debbie’s right. They’re takin’ a nap. Old people like to sleep in the sun, is all. So be real quiet, now. Don’t make a fuss. It’s time to go.”

“Told you so,” Debbie taunted Julie with a wagging finger.

Julie slapped her sister’s hand away and said, “I’ll tell Daddy you farted in the back seat!”

“Come on, I said.” Helen led them away, back down the beach to the car.

In a few minutes she had broken down the tent. She rolled it roughly and tossed it into the trunk of the car with the cooler.

“Daddy says don’t roll it up,” Debbie reminded her, still showing off because she thought she’d won the first argument of the day. “He says you’ve got to fold it.”

“Never mind,” said Helen. “He doesn’t care anymore.”

“Yes, he does,” said Debbie.

“He’ll get mad if you do it wrong,” Julie chimed in.

“Shut up, now,” Helen told her. “Get in the car and be quiet.”

Her daughter’s dashed expression cut Helen to the quick. She softened her tone as much as she could and said, “Listen, if y’all act real nice and don’t fight, we’ll stop for pancakes and sausages at the first place we see in Alabama.”