Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4 Read online

  I found my coffee again, sipped it to disguise the smell of the late-morning Stroh’s, and wandered over to where Rick Wenger stood. I caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were large and glassy and held tears that threatened to drop at the first blink, which was not for a good, long minute.

  “My yard’s an open road now, Richard,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean if these kids wanna cut through my yard on their way to school, then they’re welcome to it. I don’t know why it bothered me in the first place. They never mean any harm.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just patted him on the shoulder.

  “Matter of fact. I’m gonna get one of those Neighborhood Watch signs and put it right on the edge of my lawn, maybe another sign, too. One of those they post near schools where the kids cross, maybe stick a light on it. I just want them to feel safe, ya know?”

  He rambled on about plans he had for keeping children safe. None of it made much sense. But I knew he meant well so I listened.

  Most of the backyard at 201 was hidden by pine trees, people working the scene, and a few tarps set up, though you could still make out piles of dirt next to holes dug and little yellow flags that poked up from the ground in a dozen different spots. Other than that, it was hard to see much of anything. Until they took to digging in the side yard. Then everyone seemed to shift that way, slow like. We kind of slithered there. Even Mrs. Chisholm wheeled herself to another window to get a better view. Every one of us wanted to see more, yet we didn’t. We all pretended that we ended up closer by way of chance and not because we’re disgusting humans who peer at things that might keep us up at night for years to come. Human beings are curious creatures. If curiosity kills the cat, it gives humans nightmares.

  One of the workers dug about a foot or so into the ground before he stopped, then tugged on what looked like cloth. The crowd grew quiet, a few whispers was all. I looked over at Mrs. Weimer who had her head bowed in prayer, her lips moving frantically, her arms wrapped around herself. Mr. and Mrs. Fields were in each other’s arms, Mr. Field with a cigarette hanging from his lips, puffing at it fiercely.

  The worker with the shovel called someone over to him and they both tugged at the cloth, then started at it with small garden shovels while another man took photographs.

  “If that’s another one, that’ll be fourteen,” I could hear Ms. Brininstool say.

  I felt sick. Mrs. Weimer started crying. I could hear Rick Wenger make funny noises, like he just couldn’t take it anymore and would break down any second. He turned and walked over to Ralph’s cooler and grabbed a beer. He opened the bottle with his bare hands and downed the beer all at once. He burped quietly into his hand, then got another beer. This time he drank only half and sat down in one of the chairs, stared at his feet. I saw his body shaking. He was breaking indeed.

  The murmur of voices picked up as we waited for what we’d later regret seeing. The men were careful with their shovels and the digging took some time before they called another person over and more photos were taken. A sheet was laid out on the ground, and a body was lifted from the hole. It wasn’t a small body and I don’t think it’d been dead for long. It was all intact—skin, muscle, fat. And judging by the short brown hair I think it was a man. Sadly, it was a relief to see the large, bloated figure rather than the small, frail remains we all anticipated. I watched as it stared at the sky with dirt eyes and knew that any minute we’d smell him.

  They covered the body with a sheet quick like—for our benefit—then tried to crowd around and block our view while they poked and prodded and took more pictures. I watched two cops talk and point here and there and talk some more, speculating, ruminating. They scratched their heads and their chins, and looked dumbfounded. They knew as much as any of us did. Shit.

  Eventually, detectives questioned us, one at a time. They read the same list of questions from a pad of paper and took down notes but couldn’t answer any of our own questions. Mrs. Weimer begged them for any glimmer of hope that this was over, that it wasn’t going to be happening anymore. They said they were doing their best, then shooed her away.

  I know we all wished we’d have seen the bastard in action. We would have done something. I’d once seen a movie where the victims of a serial killer came back from the dead for revenge, tearing his head from his body while he screamed in horror. I longed to see these victims do the same to their captor, their murderer. The children skinning him alive, shoving bamboo chutes beneath his nails, slicing the corners of his mouth and filling the cuts with salt, feeding his still attached feet to a pool of piranha. I wanted the satisfaction of seeing them get their revenge. A slow one, where the eyes of the killer reflected deep regret and terror. Grim thoughts, yes. My way of coping, I suppose. The idea that our quaint little neighborhood would never be the same disturbed me to no end. It would strip our children of their freedom. They would be inside well before dark, checking in obsessively, playing close by and never alone. It would taint the memories of their past. There would always be the house at 201, the urban legend we’d all wish was never true. There were more victims than just the ones being pulled from the earth.

  Hours went by, more coffee made, more steaks on the grill, and someone finally set a deck of cards on the table. Nobody picked them up. We mingled. We comforted. And we smoked more cigarettes than we should have, puffing away our nerves. Rick Wenger hung his head for another few hours, paced himself a worn path in the grass of his front lawn, then went home, filled with the guilt of every time he’d ever yelled at a child for cutting through the same grass he’d just trampled.

  Then Mrs. Weimer went home. After they’d retrieved the body from the side yard, unless she was exchanging words with one of us, her praying never ceased. And by late afternoon, the last worker was gone and 201 was draped with yellow tape, a sash that screamed keep the hell away, nightmares live here now! Eighteen tiny, numbered flags rippled in the wind—vinyl tombstones marking empty graves that should never have been.

  I helped Lance fold the chairs and Ralph with cleaning up, then we all went home. And those of us with kids put on faux smiles, pretending the day hadn’t been filled with darkness, that it’d been joyous, like every other Halloween. We helped the young ones with their costumes, taking every moment in, treasuring their youthful smiles and innocence, vowing to always keep them safe. Tonight and every night.

  As I led my own child outside, treat bag in his hand, the timer Ralph had set on the string of lights at 201 went on and the house turned purple. Then orange. Then purple. A colorful heartbeat where no life dwelled. The little flags and the crime-scene tape glowed green under the lights, and the sheeted ghosts hung just last week by my own hand swayed in the breeze.

  And then Mrs. Weimer walked down her driveway and toward 201, a large pumpkin in her arms. It was lit. With a swift flick of her wrist, she cut through the tape and the flimsy barricade disappeared. She made her way to the porch steps and set the pumpkin down. Its face smiled with an exaggerated grin, unevenly spaced teeth. Large moon eyes.

  Feet scuffed the road to my left. Rick Wenger held his own pumpkin, its face growing bright. He carried it, sobbing, to the porch and set it on the steps alongside Mrs. Weimer’s. Down the street I caught sight of three more glowing faces bobbing down the street toward 201. Lance, the McPherson boy, and Mrs. Ashton joined the others and added their pumpkins to the growing vigil. If there were appropriately universal Halloween carols to be sung at a time like this, I suppose they would have been heard right then by everyone on the block.

  I grabbed my own jack-o-lantern, my child with his own, and we carried them, lit. As we approached the driveway at 201, I could hear the squeak of Mrs. Chisholm’s wheelchair, in her lap a glowing pumpkin, her husband pushing from behind.

  Every person there during the day showed up that night to pay respects the one way they knew how, to continue hiding the ugly that was 201. And until the city one day levels the house and leaves behind an
empty field, we’ll continue keeping it alive.

  Especially on Halloween.

  <<====>>

  AUTHOR’S STORY NOTE

  Joe Hill has a story in his 20th CENTURY GHOSTS collection called Bobby Conrad Comes Back from the Dead. It takes place on the film set of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and tells the story of some otherwise insignificant characters who played as extras in the film. Hill gave these people a story of their own that had nothing to do with zombies, gore or horror at all and gave them life and meaning, their story otherwise overlooked.

  That tale was a component in the genesis of Vigil. The catalyst, I suppose, was an old news clip I saw of reporters and local residents outside the home of John Wayne Gacy as authorities dug up his cellar, exhuming body after body throughout the day. Neighbors were gathered, bundled in coats, sipping on coffee, chatting, gossiping. Awestricken. Every one of them had a story of their own in the midst of something bigger. And I wondered about those stories and about the damage Gacy had caused not only to the victim’s families but the surrounding neighbors, and about the questions they might have had, hints of guilt and anxiety, and even suspicion among each other. Who can truly be trusted when someone who’d once been awarded Man-of-the-Year for his work in community service was capable of such atrocities?

  So I gave those people life, creating my own scenario in which similar circumstances were carried out, paying homage to those lost and those who continued to suffer. I imagine things were never the same.

  HAIR AND TEETH

  Deborah Sheldon

  From Aurealis #113

  Editor: Dirk Strasser

  Chimaera Publications

  Blood. So much blood. It runs out of Elaine’s body for weeks at a time, soaking through sanitary pads at a rate she has never experienced before in her life. Some days—on bad days—she can sit on the toilet and listen to her menstrual blood hit the water in a steady drizzle, plip-plip-plip. She is constantly light-headed, woozy, ready to drop. This is menopause, isn’t it? Protracted and heavy periods? A normal, natural event? Yet the medical term menorrhagia is too clinical, far too sterile, to describe this carnage. And pain. So much pain. A nest of starving mice is gnawing through her insides. A crazy notion, but in the dead of night, when the world is smothered and unable to make a single sound, Elaine lies awake, worrying about the possibility of mice.

  For the past year, maybe longer, her husband Malcolm has urged Elaine to tell their doctor. She sees the doctor every three months anyway for her prescription refills, so why not mention the heavy periods? Elaine has refused. The bleeding will soon stop of its own accord. After all, she is fifty-one. How much longer can her exhausted ovaries keep going? But when the blackened clots begin slipping out of her, raw and slick, plump, as engorged as chicken livers, Elaine panics and makes an appointment. Tests follow. Invasive tests.

  And now, here she sits in her doctor’s office, waiting for the results.

  The autumn sun beats weakly through the windowpane. The desk holds a jar of lollipops. A cardboard box of showbags for expectant mothers sits beneath the examination table. Familiar sights. Elaine has come here for some twenty-six years, ever since her one and only pregnancy. Her daughter is grown-up now. Married and gone. Long gone.

  The doctor stares at his computer monitor. One fat hand clasps the mouse, clicking, scrolling. The other hand cups his double chin. He was slim once. Back in the day. A chubby finger, preoccupied, taps at his teeth. Tock, tock, tock. Elaine shifts in the chair, waiting, perspiring, bleeding. The doctor steals glances at her as he reads the test reports. Time crawls by. Elaine bites her lips, clenches her toes inside her shoes.

  The doctor’s eyes squint, widen as if in shock, squint again. Clearly, he can’t believe the information on the screen. Elaine’s stomach lurches. It’s mice. A nest of mice, chewing, hollowing her out. If only Malcolm were here. But he’s at work. He’s always at work. Malcolm fears it may be cancer, which is a much more sensible fear in Elaine’s opinion.

  The doctor sits back in his chair. “You have fibroids,” he proclaims.

  She has heard of the condition but is not sure what it means. “Cancerous?” she says.

  “No. Benign tumours inside the uterus. Inside your womb.”

  She says, “But they’re loose. The tumours move around.”

  The doctor taps at his teeth again. He will not meet her gaze. Elaine’s heart flitters and flops against her ribs. If Malcolm were here, he would tell her to calm down. I am safe, she tells herself, recalling the practised mantra. Not everything is a conspiracy. All is well.

  “Doctor?” she says. “Do the fibroids move around? Like mice trapped in a bag?”

  He stares at her, intently, without blinking, in a way that makes her afraid. Then he arranges his lips into a grin and emits a chuckle—heh-heh-heh— his belly jouncing. “Move? Absolutely not. Fibroids are anchored. They grow out of the womb’s endometrium like mushrooms out of dirt.” He flicks a runnel of sweat from his hairline. “The uterus is very swollen, about the size of a five-month pregnancy. It’ll be a hysterectomy, I’m afraid.”

  Hysterectomy? Elaine stiffens in the chair. Her womb taken out? That special place where she grew her only child to be excised, thrown without care into a medical waste bin? Elaine clenches her jaw to stop the tears from rising. Yet the pain prowls around, nipping and munching. A clot slithers out. No, Elaine cannot keep living like this. Bleeding like this. Her mice-filled womb is trying to kill her. She knows this to be true.

  “All right,” she says, smiling, smiling, smiling. “Yes. A hysterectomy.”

  The doctor pecks, two-fingered, at the computer keyboard. “I’m referring you to a gynaecologist named Smith.”

  Elaine’s smile dies. “Why can’t I see my regular gyno?”

  The printer sounds. The doctor withdraws the page and hands it over. She takes it, blindly.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Elaine says, voice rising. “I want my regular gyno.”

  The doctor regards her from the corner of his eye. “How are your meds?” he says. “Still keeping all those strange thoughts under control?”

  She nods, scrunches up the referral, stuffs it into her handbag.

  “I can always increase the dosages,” he says, hanging his forefingers over the keyboard again. “Double doses might help.”

  “No. I’m fine. Thank you.”

  Elaine stands, releasing a hot flood. If she doesn’t change her sanitary pad now, right now, it will overflow. Dizzy, she crosses the room and scrabbles for the doorknob.

  In a rush, the doctor says, “Your fibroids aren’t mobile. What you’re experiencing is referred pain. The tumours can’t move. It’s impossible. Do you understand?”

  She glances around. The doctor’s sweating face is set. A vein pulses in his temple. Both meaty hands are clenched. Liar. She is on to him. But she must not let him know that she knows.

  “Yes, thank you.” Elaine backs out of the room. “I understand completely.”

  As soon as Elaine gets home, she studies the referral letter. DR JOHN SMITH. Obviously, a pseudonym. The letters after his name are meaningless: MBBS, FRCOG, FRANZCOG, DDU. Yet what can Elaine do? Keep bleeding to death? She has a sherry. It is 10.39 am. She drinks another. Her pills have the same red-rimmed sticker on each box: This medicine may cause DROWSINESS and may increase the effects of alcohol. She only drinks when Malcolm is at work. In the evening, she has black tea, mint tea, rooibos. A little sherry won’t hurt, doesn’t hurt. A glass here and there helps her to calm down. That’s what Malcolm wants, isn’t it? A normal, stable, pleasant wife. A calm wife.

  She calls the number on Dr John Smith’s referral letter. A man answers, “Hello?”

  This is not what she expects. No one in a professional setting answers the phone in such a casual manner. Perhaps she has the wrong number.

  “Hello?” the man says again. “This is Dr Smith. Is anybody there?”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “Mrs Elaine Grey.”


  “Excellent. Let’s make the appointment for tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

  Elaine agrees and hangs up, breathless. Over dinner, she tries to explain what has happened but Malcolm reaches across the kitchen table and pats her hand.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “Specialists usually have long waiting times, sure, but this bloke must have had a cancellation. Stop reading too much into it, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says. “Of course.”

  Dr Smith’s clinic is located in the midst of a tacky strip of shops. Wedged between a tattoo parlour and a FOR LEASE sign is a door bearing the weathered inscription DR JOHN SMITH, WOMEN’S HEALTH, BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

  Elaine hesitates. Perhaps she should leave. But the tearing pains in her womb change her mind. As it turns out, these pains are not caused by hungry mice. Last night in bed, kept awake by the chomping and chawing, she had a vision of the actual culprits. Limbless and eyeless little monsters, round as meatballs, purplish-black and tufted with random crops of hair, equipped with teeth. How they got inside her womb, she has no idea.

  Elaine pushes against DR JOHN SMITH’s door. It opens onto a dusty, musty smell and a single flight of carpeted stairs. She climbs. Atop the landing, there is no waiting room, no receptionist. Nothing but a plain wooden door. She clutches her handbag to her swollen abdomen, clenching her toes inside her shoes. Blood and clots run, run, run from her in an endless fall, soaking the sanitary pad. Spots dance in her vision. This ordeal must end. It has to end. She will rid herself of the multitudes, of the hair and teeth. Otherwise, the monsters will chew right through her womb and escape. Kidneys, liver, pancreas: no organ would be safe. Her doctor must have foreseen this possibility in her test results. That would explain his nervous tics—the tapping of incisors, the side-eye, the sweating—and his referral to the mysterious Dr John Smith. Medical treatment for monsters requires a special doctor, an outlier, a surgeon with his office crammed between a tattoo parlour and a FOR LEASE sign, a gynaecologist without clientele or receptionist. Elaine knocks. Seconds pass.