Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

Already the estrangement made more sense, though, now that he’d seen the house. He tried to imagine two sisters more different than Sophie’s bright, intimidating mother, vice-president of something-or-other at a big Atlanta bank, and this weird reclusive woman lost like a fairy tale witch in her spooky house in the woods. “Can you remember her at all?” he’d asked.

“Once,” Sophie had told him; she’d been very young – she couldn’t say for sure how young, but once, at some family gathering, maybe a funeral. “She scared me.”

No, that wasn’t right, her mother had insisted. Sophie and her Aunt Rose had never met. “I can’t fathom any circumstance under which that would occur,” her mother had told Kevin with a brittle laugh.

Sophie just shrugged. “She’s lying. Aunt Rose taught me a weird little dance, like a jig or something, but then Mother made me stop doing it when she found out who I learned it from. So I used to do it in secret, in my bedroom.” It was all, she said, that she did remember, and now scary Aunt Rose was dead and she was doing the responsible grown-up thing where her mother could not. I’ll go out there. I’ll look the place over , for crazy scary Aunt Rose had left the dump to Sophie in her will.

Sophie’s mother had been opposed.

“I’m telling you, you don’t even need to deal with it, honey. You stay right where you are. I’ll have people take care of it – get some appraisers out there, get the place sold, have the money deposited straight into your account.”

The harder her mother pushed, the more Sophie’s resolve grew to handle matters her own way. Kevin stayed silent and stayed out of it.

The doors to either side of them leading out of the foyer were closed. “Well,” Sophie said, and reached for the one on her right. Kevin had a moment of uneasiness as she passed into a darkness that swallowed her up. “Good God.” A dim light went on and he joined her just at the doorway of the kitchen, where the rancid smell of spoiled food hit him full on. “Will you look at that,” Sophie said, and he did. All three windows – one over the sink, and two at the front of the house – were covered with cardboard and held in place with black duct tape.

The rest of the room was unremarkable, old but standard appliances, rough wooden cabinets. The refrigerator door stood open, the bulb burned out, and unidentifiable bundles – perhaps packages of meat – littered the floor before it, some of them leaking thin rivulets of dark fluid. Scattered across the counter, lumps that had presumably been fruit or vegetables were grey and furry.

“I’ve worked in kitchens that were almost this unsanitary,” Sophie said, but neither one of them smiled.

He wanted to tell her to stop then, not to go into any more rooms ahead of him. She’d laugh at him, or get annoyed. This place is creepy enough, don’t freak me out .

“Enough seen,” she said, pinching her nose, backing out, pulling the door shut after them. “How I hate to say this, but maybe my mother was right.”

The other door, now. Blackness, but this time he was prepared for it. In the second before Sophie found the switch he heard her finger scrabbling along the wall. It reminded him of something dried out and dead.

“ Well ,” said Sophie, “what have we here?”

“Wow,” he said, struck stupid.

Even without the contrast of the squalid kitchen, the suffocating opulence of the living room would have been striking. Oriental rugs covered every inch of wall space, including, presumably, the windows. His knowledge of old furniture was confined to an occasional stroll through an antique mall back in Seattle, idly wondering what would possess people to pay hundreds of dollars for old Coca-Cola merchandise. But even his unpracticed eye spotted some value in the chaos of clashing eras and continents. A Chinese lacquer cabinet was wedged against one wall, next to it a couple of heavy ornate chairs, and a sleek Art Deco lamp. A mostly clear path meandered through the clutter to the opposite door, but you still had to make yourself compact to get through.

Sophie had already done so, fighting her way past a roll-top desk and tugging at an unremarkable looking occasional table that blocked the next door. He had a passing irrational urge to beg her not to open it. Too late anyway, as miraculous afternoon sunshine fell across her path.

“Auntie’s bedroom,” she said as she stepped through the doorway, and he hurried to join her with a growing anxiety that the first two rooms had left in him, a sense of being lost, buried alive.

The unblocked windows helped him to breathe easier. “I wish you’d stop going ahead of me,” he said. Auntie’s bedroom was as neat and bare as a nun’s cell. A single iron bed, white pillows, white coverlet pulled up tight. One wooden nightstand, empty save for an overflowing ashtray and a crumpled cigarette package. The cigarette butts were ringed with bright red lipstick. They reminded him of how badly he wanted to smoke, and he fumbled for his lighter before remembering he’d left his pack in the car. He crossed to one of the windows.

“I can’t see our car,” he said.

“Of course not. You’re looking out the back of the house.”

But that was nonsense. He ought to be seeing the driveway, and the ruined front yard, but there was only a stretch of bare ground and then a line of trees thickening into forest. He had a sense then that they moved, like curtains fluttering when something stirred on the other side.

“Look,” Sophie said. She lifted a shoebox from the other side of the bed and set it on the night table. He saw her flinch and jump back. The back of her hand caught the ashtray, and it smashed to the floor.

“Shit!” Sophie yelled.

“Are you okay?”

“I thought a spider ran out of the box. What an idiot.”

He came round the side of the bed and saw beads of blood welling up on her legs and sandaled feet where the shattered glass had pierced her skin. “I’m okay,” she said, “it just scared me. There’s probably Band Aids in the bathroom.” She pushed past him and opened the last door. He caught sight of a heavy porcelain sink and a bathtub on feet, then Sophie said, “Ew” and he went in after her. Brown water sputtered from the faucet.

“It’s just because it hasn’t been turned on in a while,” he said, “it’ll clear in a few minutes.”

“No Band-Aids,” she said, “no medicine cabinet, nothing. Apparently Aunt Rose didn’t even use soap. Doesn’t matter. They’re shallow.” Working in a kitchen had left her inured to minor cuts and burns. “Let’s see what’s in the box.”

Let’s not , he wanted to say, but what came out when he followed her back to the bed was, “Three movies featuring a head-in-a-box. Name them.”

“God,” she said, “do you have to be so morbid? Se7en .” She lifted the lid.

“That’s one,” he said, so he wouldn’t shout something stupid and hysterical like Don’t look inside!

“It’s filled with photographs,” she said. “ Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia .”

“That’s head-in-a-bag, not head-in-a-box,” he said desperately.

“Oh, for God’s sake. Picky, aren’t we?” Her voice changed. “That’s weird.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how she got hold of these. It’s all pictures of me .”

So. What’s the story with your mom and your Aunt Rose ? he’d asked.

Mom always said she was a witch .

A witch . . . Like a Wicca-witch? New Agey, blessed be and white magic and all that? Like Teresa ? Teresa was their neighbor back in Seattle.

No, I mean a bad old witch. Yeah, hard to believe, isn’t it? It’s the one subject guaranteed to make my rational mom completely irrational .