The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Seventeen, page 16
“The way to where?” asked Rick, knowing the answer before Fred said it: “The way to your auntie’s.”
Rick knew the way to his aunt’s place very well. He had travelled it long before he had driven it, the first-time riding in a child’s car-seat behind his parents, fast through Dwight, past the General Store, past the campground . . . and after what seemed like hours but was only minutes, slowing along the two-lane blacktop to find the narrow dirt road to Boynton Lake where it pierced the forest’s edge.
By the time he was old enough to take the wheel, he knew to take that skinny little road from the highway slowly. Even in daylight, Rick knew to take the rutted drive to his aunt’s cottage slower still.
In the dark of night . . . with his boss looming at his back . . . .
“No rush,” said Fred when Rick apologized for the slow crawl over the rocky, root-choked drive to their cottage. “Just get us there in one piece.”
Rick pulled the car up next to the tarp-covered woodpile across from the cottage, and he turned off the engine, and the headlights too, and darkness closed in.
“I’m going to have to get things started up,” said Rick. “There’s a generator in the shed and when I get it going, we can get some lights on. Do you want to wait here?”
“Let’s just go inside,” said Judy, and Fred said: “Don’t bother with the lights.”
Rick undid his seatbelt and got out of the car, fished his phone out of his pocket and turned on the light. It cast a weak glow that didn’t carry far, and he saw by a blue-white firefly flare across the hood of the car, that Saffron had done the same. Her phone light winked and shifted along the car-length.
“Mr. Perkins?” she said, and the light disappeared behind the car. “Fred? Judy?”
Rick swung his own light, until it flashed on the rear driver’s-side door.
It hung open, and when he bent to look inside, he confirmed: the back seat was empty. They were fast, those two.
Rick shut the door and carefully made his way around the back of the car. Saffron met him at the trunk. He put his arms around her, held her tightly enough that he couldn’t tell which one of them was trembling.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her ear.
“Sorry for what?”
“For laughing too loud.”
Saffron laughed, but softly.
“Then ‘twas my wry wit that did us in,” she said.
“I ruined our trip,” he said. “Your first trip up here.”
“Don’t sweat it, love. The pub was nearly empty. There they were. There we were. And Fred’s our boss. We were trapped.”
“From the start.”
“There was no saying no,” she said.
And somewhere in the dark, glass shattered.
Saffron and Rick raised their phones, casting dim blue glare on the tangle of pine branches between the car and the cottage. Rick took her hand and led them along the path. He called out: “Is everyone okay?” and Saffron called out: “Mr. Perkins?”
Their lights found the kitchen door to the cottage closed, and when Rick tried it, locked. He pocketed his phone, fished the keys out, and undid both lock and bolt.
Saffron’s phone-light flickered across his aunt’s old kitchen: the propane stove, the hand-pump faucet over the sink basin . . . .
The ancient refrigerator, its curved single door open—the bent back of Judy Perkins, the top of her head, peeked around its edges.
“It’s not even on!” she said, and from somewhere in the dark beyond the fridge, Fred answered: “What did you expect?”
Judy stood and shut the refrigerator door, her face like a moon as she turned to the light.
“Oh hey. Got anything to eat?”
There were some groceries in the trunk of the car, along with a case of beer, a bottle of gin and three bottles of wine they’d picked up on the way out of the city that morning.
“Nothing,” said Rick. He stepped around Saffron into the kitchen, then gave Judy a wide berth as he moved into the great room. The ceiling was high and there were tall windows and French doors opening onto the deck. Across the lake lights flickered, but there was no moon, so the A-frame outline of the opening was barely visible and the living room was a black abyss.
“So this is the Edmonds ranch.”
Fred Perkins was lying flat on the couch, death-pale legs crossed, his feet propped on one arm while his head rolled toward them on the other. He squinted and his lips pursed as though tasting something bitter.
“Mind turning that away, Saffy? Better yet, off?”
Saffron dropped her hand to her side so the light played across the floor.
“This is the cottage all right,” said Rick. “How did you get in, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Ah, you probably heard. Made a bit of mischief.”
Rick stepped toward the window and just by the French doors, felt the crunch of broken glass underfoot. The pane next to the left doorhandle was empty, and Rick felt shards at the edge. The door was still off its latch, and Rick pulled it shut.
“You were in a hurry, I see,” he said.
“My bad,” said Judy.
“We were in a hurry,” said Fred, “to get inside. Now Saffy my dear, I meant what I said.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Turn that Goddamn light off.”
Saffron fumbled for the off switch, and in the second or two it took her to find it, light flashed across the rest of the place: the shelves of books and boardgames, the steep ladder to the sleeping loft, the doors to the two spare bedrooms . . . the shattered window, and finally, the constellations of broken glass that sparkled on the floor around Rick’s feet.
“Thank you,” said Fred in the fresh dark. “And thank you, Rick, for putting us up, seeing us safe. Very lucky to’ve run into you both today.”
Rick looked at the lights across the lake. He wondered, were they new? The far side of the lake was pretty wild as he recalled. Rocks and cliffs on the shore and a thick mane of forest on top . . . going back for miles.
“Sorry about the window,” said Judy. “You’re not going to sue us, are you?”
She was beside him—not touching this time, but close enough that she could get the message when Rick shook his head.
“Thanks,” she said. “You should come back from the window.”
Rick shook his head again, looked back out at the water.
“Huh,” he said aloud.
Another mystery solved: The lights across the water weren’t new cottages that’d somehow gone up on the cliff over the summer. The lights were moving. There were three of them, not far off the water by their shimmering reflections.
“No really,” she said. “Hide yourself.”
“What is it?” said Fred, and Rick heard a familiar creaking of the springs in the old sofa.
There came another sound across the lake: a splashing, as from paddles. The lights spread farther apart, then grew nearer one another. Now Judy’s hand did fall on Rick’s arm, and she squeezed hard above the elbow and their feet crunched on the glass as her cold, sharp fingers tugged him backward.
In the dark behind them, Fred Perkins let out something like a moan.
Rick did not look back.
They were torches. At the prows of boats—long row boats. They made a rasping sound as one after another, they hit the rocky beach in front of the cabin. Someone climbed out.
“The old man found us,” whispered Judy.
“Don’t let him hear you call him that,” whispered Fred.
The old man, then.
Rick thought he was tall, or would have been were he not bent so. Because of that, it was hard to say exactly how tall.
He held a torch in one hand—in the other, a long paddle, blade dragged through the shallow water and onto the beach. But paddles and torches came in many sizes, and while these ones seemed like toys in his grip . . . who could say?
The torchlight fell on his face. It was a round face, and maybe a giant one. Like the face of a moon, half-lit by the late-summer sun at the end of that torch.
His hair was bone-white, or maybe really as red as the fire made it look . . . cut close to his skull, the ends flickering like tiny, flaming suns. His mouth a pinched sphincter, eyes angry black stones under tangled brows, in that huge, ancient face creased and cratered by decades . . . by eons, maybe.
He looked to the cottage, and that tight little mouth unfolded into a thin, toothless smile.
“Oh father,” wailed Fred, and Judy wailed along with him: “Dad!” and as the old man drew closer, as the other boats emptied of the rest of his round-faced, dark-eyed young, the light of their fires grew to a luminous, annihilating blaze.
The morning sky was dark in comparison.
Pillows of low cloud covered the late summer sun, and the wind off the lake was icy enough for fleeces. Saffron was surprised at the chill. Unlike Rick she had not spent much time around the lakes and woods north of Barrie, had no sense of the old rhythms of this land and its seasons.
Rick made coffee in the French press, found old plastic plates and mugs and a tray for them. They took their breakfast through the wreckage of the night’s abduction—the re-acquisition—in the great room and onto the deck, sipped coffee and watched the steel-grey water where it began to ripple.
“Brother and sister,” said Saffron, shaking her head. “Huh.”
“Should have guessed,” said Rick.
“Would have been a long shot, given the age difference.”
“Maybe she’s older than she looks,” said Rick, and Saffron said, “Maybe hard living aged Fred,” and when she tried to check birthdays on her phone, she huffed, “Still no signal,” and put it away. Saffron frowned.
“How old would their . . . dad have to be?”
“Fancy dad,” said Rick as the ripples spread and water rolled, and a familiar form rose from Lake Boynton. “It’s a proper Muskoka mystery.”
Saffron started to laugh, but it caught in her throat when she followed Rick’s gaze to the lake.
“But you know,” said Rick, “Auntie’s been up here forever.”
He waved, and as she shook the skunk weed off her shoulders and spat phlegmy algae onto the shore, Auntie waved back.
“I’m sure she can shed some light.”
ONLY CHILDREN
GEMMA FILES
This morning I woke up blind, face-down; I emerged, thrashing, out of a nest of ghosts. Outside, it was blowing snow; inside, the windows were condensation-frosted and dripping at the base. The dehumidifier blasted. I got up, peed out all my juices, then drank two huge glasses of replacement water. The daily cycle. Lights on everywhere, burning through the night. None of yesterday’s chores done. I loaded the dishwasher, started it up, loaded the washer-dryer and did likewise. This whining, uterine churn and slosh against metal walls. I don’t know if it’s the level best way to start a day, but it’s mine.
Busywork does distract from fear, though, if nothing else. And on some level, I’m still afraid—on some level, I’m always afraid. Everyone who has a kid knows about that.
Everyone who ever was a kid knows about that.
No matter where you live, anywhere around the world, there’s a story that gets told about something coming to take your kids. Google that shit, if you don’t believe me.
In Algeria it’s the H’awouahoua, his body composed of different animal parts and eyes like blobs of flaming spit, plus a long, dragging coat made from the clothes of all the children he ate. In Germany it’s the Butzemann, both noisy and faceless, a cloak-wrapped corner-darkness dweller that jumps out to attack kids who stay up past their bedtime. In Spain, parents sometimes give their naughty children away to the Hombre del Saco, while in Indonesia bad mothers and fathers get theirs taken by Wewe Gombel, who keeps the kids safe in her nest and leaves the parents to waste away without them. And then there’s the Haitian Métminwi, an incredibly long-legged specter that walks around scooping up anyone still roaming the streets after midnight. Nobody knows exactly what he does with them, but since they’re never seen again, it’s probably not so great.
“These are all boogeymen,” I tell my son. “That’s a very specific kind of monster.” “Boogeymen like boogeyman, bugge, boggart, boggeldy-bo,” he agrees. “Bugge’s probably the oldest—it’s from, like, Anglo-Saxon times. Just means ‘something scary.’”
“That’s right.”
“And they all eat kids.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes they just steal them.”
“But only kids, right?”
“Right.”
My son loves monsters. He takes them very seriously, just like I do. So he takes a moment, thinking long and hard, before he asks the next question.
“How old do you have to be before you’re not a kid anymore, Mom?”
Ask your Dad, I want to say, but don’t. Answering, instead: “Legally? Up here, you’re an adult when you turn nineteen—that’s when you can drive, and vote, and drink. But I think you’re probably not a kid once you’re a teenager, personally. I mean, you can have sex when you’re sixteen, right? With another sixteen-year-old.”
“Uck! As if. So . . . twelve, then.”
“Pretty sure.”
“Kinda need to be more than sure, Mom.”
“Well, I agree.” I smile. “That’s what the monster drills are for.”
When I was eight, there was a friend of mine who knew everything, or seemed to. I think we’ve all had a friend like that, probably.
He was small, skinny. Never at school. He only came around when the parents weren’t there; outside, usually. On the playground; at the park. We had a great set of parks around where I grew up, on either side of the ravine. You could get off at Summerhill TTC station, start walking and get right within reaching distance of home before you ever had to get onto the street.
There’s only one park where I live now, and I do take my son there when he asks, but he knows the rules: How he has to be situationally aware, 360 degrees, from the time we enter to the time we leave. Can’t just get caught up in shit. Has to keep with me, flank my stride, neither too close nor too far away. And take photos as he goes, with his phone, just like I do.
“How do you know what to take photos of?” he asks.
“I just feel it. You can, too, I bet—try snapping anything that interests you, anything that makes you want to look at it twice. That’s a good place to start.”
He nods, internalizing the idea; I can see it rumble around inside him, hitting against the sides of his mental pinball machine, ringing up points. God, I love that guy.
“Think I could be good at it someday, like you?”
I shrug. “Well, you’re smart enough, and you don’t wear glasses yet, so . . . good enough, I guess.” Then, tapping my own specs, and smiling: “Better than me, eventually.”
“Mom, you know what I mean. Like . . . people paying me for photos type good?”
“Sure, why not? It’s more about luck than anything else—being in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong one.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it, baby. Go run.”
I hold back, watching him, tracking him with my lens. Thinking about that friend of mine from when I was eight again, the same way I so often do; how I could never quite determine what he looked like, aside from being so thin. Like his face was just . . . blurred; a vague smear of pink on beige even in the most direct sunlight. He had eyes, obviously, since I recall how sly they were, how they slid away from mine in a manner both flirtatious and unreliable; he had a mouth, always quirked and smirking, lips pulled back over narrow teeth. But what color his gaze was, whether or not he had braces like Em or a widening gap between the front bottom two like Peter . . . to this day, I don’t know. Not even if his hair was dark or blond, or dark blond (as my hairdresser calls mine, even though it’s straight-ass brown, and always has been).
An impression of a person, that’s how I remember him. He was good at that, even close up.
Better than other things I’ve seen trying to do the same thing since, by far.
Because yes, my son’s right: People do pay me for my photos. Well enough to keep us in a nice little one-bedroom downtown; at least with his Dad chipping in on child support. We came together quickly in university and blew apart just as quick, though less explosively than my word choice makes that sound. It doesn’t matter, much; I always knew I’d have a child one day, more likely a boy than a girl, according to some strange inkling in the pit of my mental stomach. So I guess my son’s father was just a means to an end in some ways, but it’s not as if I didn’t say I loved him at the time, and not as if I didn’t mean it. I just didn’t really know what love was, yet.
That only happened when our kid was born—my kid. Mine.
I don’t talk about monsters with my ex. He doesn’t believe in stuff like that, and getting him to the point where he did believe in it would take far too long for him to be useful. That’s okay, though. I have my son, and he has me. He will always have me.
Most people find my photos disturbing, even the ones who pay me for them. They think I’ve made them that way. Sometimes they want to know how; sometimes they tell me not to tell them, because that would spoil the effect. I stay quiet, either way.
I mean, it’s not like I can’t mock up photos, obviously. That’s actually how I make the big bucks, every once in a while—emergency money, accident money, bug-out money, fuck-off money. It’s always good to have, even if all I usually do is stick it in a Tangerine account and let it accumulate.
The equivalent of hands-off sex work, by my artsy-fartsiest friends’ standards, but I don’t care what they think. Not so long as they get me what I need.
I’m the only person in Toronto who specializes in arranging photo spreads that look like crime scene photos, so far as I know, let alone in taking pictures for people with a death fetish—people who fantasize about what their love objects would look like if they were dead, or about what they’d look like if they were dead themselves. I source out all the stuff I’m not qualified for to a select crew of models and effects artists; people who can’t get work this high-paying any other way. One of them is this awesome self-taught body-painter who does YouTube videos, for example, making herself into a series of living optical illusions. Another’s her favorite muse/hookup, a woman who’s six foot six and 123 pounds with extreme body tissue laxity due to Marfan Syndrome. I set up the scenes, my friends prepare or pose in them, I take the snaps, and we all get paid, never knowing who wants them or why. It’s all done anonymously, over the web, with the help of yet another friend. After which I modify them enough to be unrecognizable outside of the wank-book of their commissioner, superimposing the facial features and bodily signifiers of whoever the customer wants to see . . . like that.
