Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2 Read online

  The skull sits on the moss-blackened stool, greasy smoke seeping from its fissures and polluting the air. The broken language of Hell is a physical pressure. A blood vessel ruptures in my right eye and my vision goes cloudy and pink. Time fractures again. Tobias moves next to me, approaching the skull, but I can’t tell what it’s doing to him: he skips in time like I’m watching him through strobe lights, even though the light in here remains a constant, sizzling glare. I try not to vomit. Things are moving around in my brain like maggots in old meat.

  The air seems to bend into the skull. I see it on the stool, blackening the world around it, and I try to imagine who it once belonged to: the chained Black Iron Monk, shielded by a metal box from the burning horrors of the world he moved through. Until something came along and opened the box like a tin can, and Hell poured inside.

  Who was it? What order would undertake such a pilgrimage? And to what end?

  Tobias is saying something to me. I have to study him to figure out what.

  The poor scrawny bastard is blistering all over his body. His lips peel back from his bloody teeth.

  “Tell it what you want,” he says.

  So I do.

  *

  The boy is streaked with mud and gore. He is twelve, maybe thirteen. Steam rises from his body like wind-struck flags. I don’t know where he appears from, or how; he’s just there, two iron boxes dangling like huge lanterns from a chain in his hand. I wonder, briefly, what a child his age had done to be consigned to Hell. But then, it doesn’t really matter.

  I open one of the boxes and tell the boy to put the skull inside. He does. The skin bubbles on his hands where he touches it, but he makes no sign of pain.

  I close the door on it, and it’s like a light going out. Time slips back into it groove. The light recedes to a natural level. My skin stops burning, the desire to commit violence dissipates like smoke. I can feel where I’ve been scratching my own arms again. My eye is gummed shut with blood.

  When we stumble back into the main room, Patrick is on his feet with the gun in his hand. Johnny is sitting on the bed, the bony rim of his open skull grown further upward, elongating his head and giving him an alien grace. The fire in the bowl of his head burned briskly, crackling and shedding a warm light. Patrick looks at me, then at the boy with the iron boxes. “You got them,” he says. “Where’s the skull?”

  I take the chain from the boy. The boxes are heavy together; the boy must be stronger than he looks. Something to remember. “In one of these. If it can keep that shit out, I’m betting it can keep it locked in, too. I think it’s safe to move.”

  “And those’ll get us past the thing outside?”

  “If what Johnny said is true.”

  “It is,” Johnny says. “But now there’s only one extra box.”

  “That’s right,” I say, and swing them with every vestige of my failing strength at Patrick’s head, where they land with a wet crunch. He staggers to his right a few steps, the left side of his face broken like crockery, and he puts a hand into the rancid scramble of his own brain. “I’ll go get it,” he says, “I’ll go.”

  “You’re dead,” I tell him gently. “You stupid bastard.”

  He accepts this gracefully and collapses to his knees, and then onto his face. Dark blood pours from his head as though from a spilled glass. I scoop up the gun, which feels clumsy in my hand. I never got the hang of guns.

  Tobias stands in shock. “I can’t believe you did that,” he says.

  “Shut up. Are there any clothes in that dresser? Put something on the kid. We’re going back to the city.” While he’s doing that, I look at Johnny. “I’m not going to be able to see. Will you be able to guide me out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” I say, and shoot Tobias in the back of the head.

  For once, somebody dies without an argument.

  *

  I don’t know much about the trip back. I open a slot on the base of the box and fit it over my head. I am consumed in darkness. I’m led out to the skiff by Johnny and the boy. The boy rides with me, and Johnny gets into the water, dragging us behind him. Fire unfurls from his head, the sides of which are developing baroque flourishes. His personality is diminished, and I can’t tell if it’s because he mourns Tobias, or because that is changing too, developing into something cold and barren.

  The journey takes several hours. I know we pass the corpse flowers, the staring eyes and bloodless faces pressing from the foliage. I am sure that the creature unleashes its earthbreaking cry, and that any living thing that hears it hemorrhages its life away, into the still waters. I know that night falls.

  I know the flame of our new guide lights the undersides of the cypress, runs out before us across the water, fills the dark like the final lantern in a fallen world.

  I make a quiet and steady passage there.

  *

  Eugene is in his office. The bar is closed upstairs and the man at the door lets us in without a word. He makes no comment about my companions, or the iron boxes hanging from a chain. The world he lives in is already breaking from its old shape. The new one has space for wonders.

  Eugene is sitting behind his desk in his dark. I can tell he’s drunk. It smells like he’s been here since we left, almost twenty-four hours ago now. The only light comes from the fire rising from Johnny’s empty skull. It illuminates a pale structure on Eugene’s desk: a huge antler, or a tree made of bone. There are human teeth protruding along some of its tines, and a long crack near the wider base of it reveals a raw, red meat, where a mouth opens and closes.

  “Where’s Patrick?” he says.

  “Dead,” I say. “Tobias, too.”

  “And the atlas?”

  “I burned it.”

  He nods, as though he’d been expecting that very thing. After a moment he gestures at the bone tree. “This is my son,” he says. “Say hi, Max.”

  The mouth shrieks. It stops to draw in a gasping breath, then repeats the sound. The cry is sustained for several seconds before stuttering into a sob, and then going silent again.

  “He keeps growing. He’s going to be a big boy before it’s all over.”

  “Yeah. I can see that.”

  “Who’re your friends, Jack?”

  I have to think about that before I answer. “I really don’t know,” I say, finally.

  “So what do you want? You want me to tell you you’re off the hook? You want me to tell you you’re free to go?”

  “You told me that before. It turned out to be bullshit.”

  “Yeah, well. That’s the world we live in, right?”

  “You’re on notice, Eugene. Leave me alone. Don’t come to my door anymore. I’m sorry things didn’t work out here. I’m sorry about your son. But you have to stay away. I’m only going to say it once.”

  He smiles at me. He must have to summon it from far away, but he smiles at me. “I’ll take that under advisement, Jack. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  We turn and walk back up the stairs. It’s a long walk back to my bookstore, where I’m anxious to get to work on the atlas. But I have a light to guide me, and I know this place well.

  SIOBHAN CARROLL

  –

  Wendigo Nights

  Day Eleven

  LATELY I’VE BEEN thinking about eating my children.

  When Olivia tugs at her glossy curls, I think about her hair in my mouth. Paper-dry, tasting of smoke and strawberry shampoo. The strands would break between my teeth. The sound they’d make—a tiny crunch, like a foot falling through snow—that sound would fill me. I would not be so hungry after that.

  I allow myself the hair. It is better than the other things I imagine eating.

  Macleay says, “I’m going to try again this afternoon. I think today’s the day.” We nod as though we believe him.

  I study Macleay’s hands. They’re large and dirt-streaked. I imagine crunching through his knuckles and rolling the tattered joint on my tongue like a marble.


  “What about you, Hui?” Sanderson’s tone is a bit too casual. “Any news on that canister?”

  I shrug. I don’t want to open my mouth. I’m afraid of what might happen.

  The arctic wind howls through our silence. It’s blizzarding outside the research station, –36 Celsius by the thermometer, god-knows-what once you factor in wind chill. The kind of weather even the locals complain about.

  “They’ll send a plane as soon as the weather clears,” Bannerjee mutters. She’s been saying the same thing for a week now.

  “Yeah.” Macleay doesn’t look at her. “I’ll try again this afternoon.”

  “You okay, Hui?” I can feel Sanderson’s eyes on me. He knows something’s off.

  Carefully, very carefully, I part my lips. Not much. Just enough to reply. And I know this is my chance—maybe my last chance—to warn them.

  Olivia giggles in the corner. The thought darts into my head: If not Macleay, then her.

  “Fine,” I mutter. “I’m fine.”

  After a moment, Sanderson nods.

  That was on day eleven.

  Day Nine

  They say people who’ve received a terminal diagnosis brood over history. They go looking for mistakes: theirs or someone else’s. They try to identify the moment things started to go wrong.

  I can think of two possibilities. In my mind, I flip them like a coin.

  The first possibility: eleven days ago.

  Bannerjee set something dull and gray on my work bench. “Check this out.” She looked flushed, proud as an angler who’s caught his first salmon. “It was in the ice, about a meter down.”

  I picked it up. A gray canister, about the size of a paint can, weighing about two kilos. It was made out of a clouded, dull metal, striated with rings.

  “What is it?” I wasn’t interested, just being polite. Nothing about the canister suggested danger.

  “No idea.” Bannerjee leaned forward. “But I saw another can down there. And clothing.” She was practically squirming with excitement.

  “Clothing?”

  “A wool coat.” She grinned. “I stopped drilling. Shifted the borehole. We need to call this in.” Seeing my confusion, she added: “Could be old.”

  Now something connected. “How old?”

  “Dunno. But…it could be old.”

  I turned the canister over. Once, maybe, we’d have shrugged our shoulders over a frozen coat. But not these days. The scramble for the melting Arctic is on, and governments look to history to strengthen their territorial claims. Canada has resumed the nineteenth century’s search for Franklin. Hell, a few years ago, Russia planted a flag on the sea-bed beneath the North Pole. A flag. Like in the Eddie Izzard skit. Everything old is new again.

  “Franklin et al.,” I said. “They wore wool coats, didn’t they?” Like me, Bannerjee wore Canada Goose, the unofficial uniform of the frigid zone. Her coat was blazing red; a slot for the Arctic Rescue tag gaped emptily on her back.

  “Yeah.” Bannerjee’s eyes glittered with what I assumed was excitement.

  Now, looking back, I wonder if I was wrong about the look in Bannerjee’s eyes. If, like the slow crack of lake-ice underfoot, things were already getting out of hand.

  Day Twelve

  “We need to talk about Bannerjee,” Sanderson says in a low voice.

  I grunt. So far I have managed to get through the morning without opening my mouth. I am thirsty, but the hunger is much, much worse. It claws at my insides like a wild animal stuffed in a cage. If I open my mouth, I fear it will get out.

  “I can’t find her anywhere,” says Macleay of the edible fingers. “I thought…I thought she might have tried for the mine. But when I checked the snowmobiles I found this.” He opens his dirty hands to reveal a tangle of black wires.

  “She butchered the machines.” Sanderson’s voice sounds wet and heavy, like warm-weather snow.

  It takes me a moment to register what they’re saying. I raise my eyebrows at Macleay.

  “I can’t repair this,” Macleay says in disgust. His eyes are frightened. “We’re stuck here until the plane comes. Or until the satellite phone starts working again.” He makes no mention of trying the phone again this afternoon.

  The blizzard moans through our walls. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ethan and Olivia watching us. Dohng, Suug Yee, I would say, were I to call them by their Cantonese names. Unlucky names. I try to smile at the children reassuringly, but my heart is sinking.

  We are in more trouble than I can bear to think about. Some facts I can face head-on: the damaged snowmobiles, the missing plane. Others I can only sneak glances at.

  Fact: I was the first person to touch the canister after Bannerjee.

  Fact: Something is wrong.

  Fact: I do not, and never have, had any children.

  “Well,” Sanderson says eventually. “Keep an eye out for her.” He looks deflated, as though he has finally realized what I have suspected for eleven days now.

  Escape is no longer an option.

  Day Nine

  The second possibility: five years ago.

  My then-girlfriend, Anna, wanted to see the Anthropology museum. One of her college friends was in Vancouver for a conference. So I drove her and the other folklorists to the weird borderland-city of UBC.

  I circled the Bill Reid sculpture while Anna and Joel reminisced about grad school. I’ve always loved wood, and the honey-glow of the giant raven appealed to me. Not so the rest of the museum. A bunch of masks with distorted faces and stringy grass hair.

  “The last murder was in the 1960s,” Joel said.

  That jerked my attention back to their conversation. “What?”

  “Creepy,” Anna agreed. Her skin was almost the same color as the yellow cedar. Ethereal.

  She turned to me. “They left the uncle to babysit their kids.” Her words were aimed in my general direction, but her eyes drifted past mine. Another one of the disconnections that had become common between us. “When they came back, he’d built a fire on the lawn. He was roasting his nephew’s body. And crying about it.”

  The mask that reared up behind them was ugly. Lips peeled back from redlined teeth. Black eyes staring nowhere.

  “Did you hear about that bus murder in Winnipeg?” Joel said, out of nowhere.

  Anna grimaced. The news was full of the Greyhound murder, which fascinated and repelled us. It was the sort of thing our Vancouver friends avoided talking about.

  But Joel was from New York. “Beheading and cannibalism,” he continued, staring at the mask. “I’m just saying. Maybe wendigo psychosis is still with us.”

  “Wendigo?” I could feel the conversation rushing past me, the way they usually did when Anna and her grad-school comrades got together.

  “Yeah.” Joel’s face got the bright, careful look I imagined he must wear when teaching. “You’ve heard of the wendigo?”

  And that was it. The moment of infection.

  Day ???

  I am finding it difficult to keep track of time.

  This is a common complaint in the Arctic. The land of the midnight sun. It disorders everything.

  Still. Time is becoming difficult. I watch the old plastic clock on the wall to make sure the seconds are still advancing.

  I hear sounds from the kitchenette. But I will not get up. I will not investigate.

  Things must be kept in order. Or else.

  Day Twelve

  My children are playing with leftover office paper. Olivia is showing Ethan how to fold the green-and-white sheets into dolls. They decorate their creations with pencil: people don’t bring pens to our latitude.

  Ethan batters the dolls against each other, making them fight. It disturbs me, but I don’t know why.

  Outside the wind is raging. I try not to think about Anna’s description of a deranged uncle roasting kids on the lawn. I don’t even know the whole story. The gaps in my knowledge make it worse, somehow.

  “Hui.”

  I hear Etha
n drop his pencil. Olivia’s eyes widen and I follow her gaze to where Bannerjee stands, dripping and wide-eyed. Dried blood cakes the side of her head.

  The sudden, frozen silence of my children’s fear gives me the strength to take Bannerjee gently by the arm. I steer her out of the small dorm room.

  “What are you doing?” I spit through clenched teeth. I want to rip her throat out. “What have you done?”

  Bannerjee shakes her head. She’s always been a small, anxious woman. Now she’s trembling like someone’s running a current through her.

  “Macleay,” Bannerjee manages. There’s something wrong with her eyes. “I found him by the snowmobiles. He…was tearing them apart. He tried to kill me, Hui.”

  I feel the same way I did in the museum all those years ago. Things are rushing past me faster than I can handle.

  “Macleay?”

  Bannerjee nods. She’s crying now, big, fat tears that track mascara and blood down her face. “You have to help me. He’s looking for me.”

  I feel dizzy. I can’t remember the last time I ate. I feel my mouth move—“How can I help?”—although I’m not sure I trust Bannerjee. I’m not sure I trust Macleay either. Something about the way he held those wires.

  Here’s a question I never thought about when I flew up here: If the world goes haywire, is there anyone in this station you can trust?

  “It’s the canister,” Bannerjee says hoarsely. That look in her eyes. “We need to get it out of here. We need to give it back.”

  I nod as though this makes sense. Part of me—a part I can barely keep track of right now—agrees, but wants to warn her. Because here’s the thing about extracting resources. It’s always easier to take something out of the land than it is to put it back.

  But suddenly I am too tired to say anything.

  “Sure,” my mouth says. And I watch myself follow Bannerjee down the hallway. She keeps glancing back at the way we came. She’s dragging her left leg a little.

  As we enter the field lab, Bannerjee whispers something that gives me pause. “We’ve angered the vetala.”