The Best New Horror 2 (59 page)

“Yes, he does, doesn’t he?” They’d had almost this same conversation a hundred times. Each repetition weighed him down more; he’d end up stoop-shouldered the way his father had always said he would if he didn’t stand up straight.

He got up and helped his sister to her chair. He took an afghan from the back of the chair, unfolded it and laid it across her lap. She leaned around him to watch Mozart emerge on his way to the clavichord.

“Look, he’s going to nod to me, Petey,” she said. Peter looked down at her eyes full of delight and his face grew hot. He dodged around his own chair and walked off quickly, hoping to escape before the playing started.

At the door he snatched his coat from a peg, hastily wrestled his way into it on the way out the door.

The cold sliced under his skin. Outside, the orange haze of the sky framed baroque shadows and bombed-out buildings. In the further depths behind him, the keys of the clavichord “spanged” under Mozart’s fingers, the introduction moving into the first verse of the
Regina Coeli
. How lonely the tiny voice sounded. It seemed to echo through the austere environment. Where had all the tourists gone? To the hotels, no doubt, on the other side of Kapuzinerburg, the living side. No bombs had gone off there as of the last Peter had heard. Smoke and lights sparkled in the early twilight over across the river. Hardly any showed down the street here. Or maybe the tourists had gone to the Cathedral Square. He had read about a time bomb there, that killed twenty and brought to life a piece of the “Everyman” play that long ago had been performed there every year. No doubt he’d lost paying customers to that event. To him that was the real cruelty of the bombs—that they wrought their damage without purpose or plan, robbing a life and then robbing the chance to rebuild that life.

The spirit woman sang, “Quia quem meruisti portare . . .”

Peter walked away from the sound. The snow crunched beneath his feet. He pretended to be his father, engaged in conversation with him. “You are fifteen now,” the father said, “too old to play make-believe games anymore. You and your sister can hardly get along now. Where will you go when the money is gone? When the tourists stop coming altogether? You haven’t saved enough, Peter. You’re living like sick people. You have your food delivered, and you never leave the house except to take your sister out sometimes. You’ve grown up afraid. Afraid of the world.”

“I have Mozart,” Peter replied, a little scared by what he was revealing from within. “Maybe we could go with him.”

“Does your Mozart know that he’s here? Does he know that you’re here? Or Susie? No. You’re playing games, Peter. Mozart’s dead, and you and your sister are catching up with him.”

“Stop it,” Peter said. He stopped walking. The “voice” went away. It hadn’t been his father at all. He turned and saw how far from the house he had gone in just a few minutes. He had nearly reached the other end of the street and the arrow sign he had put up. From there, the house looked no different than any of the other uninhabited dwellings surrounding it. Hurriedly, he walked back toward it. Look at the place. Without the sign how could the tourists know in which house Mozart
played? No wonder the crowds had thinned out. He’d been so busy with Susanne’s care that he had let the house rot around him.

As he neared, he could hear Maria Lipp singing repeatedly, “Resurrexit,” then both she and Mozart launched into a series of joyous “Allelujahs”.

Peter closed the door, then stood leaning against it, as if to keep something evil out. His breathing wheezed and little sparkles danced in the air. He couldn’t believe such a short run had drained him so much.

The beautiful voice floated through “Ora pro nobis Deum.” Peter thought,
please, yes, pray for us to God
.

He hung on there until the last “allelujah” was sung. Susanne began clapping gaily. Peter peered through the doorway at her, as Mozart came running only to vanish just before reaching her. He wondered, did Mozart know she was there? Could he, from his side of time, see a bit of the present?

Seeming to sense his presence, Susanne glanced back at him. “Hello, Petey,” she said. “Would you like some of my chocolate lace? It ought to be hard now.”

He nodded. His face had gone dull with dissembling to hide from all the fears that churned inside him. He watched her climb up to shuffle across to the kitchen, obviously in great pain. The feather duster fell from her lap but she made no attempt to pick it up. She looked more withered than when she had sat down, only minutes before. When she was out of sight, he took off his coat and hung it back in the hallway.

“We can share it with Mozart, okay?” she called out to him.

“Fine.” The word squeaked out of his knotted throat.

Susanne came shambling out of the kitchen, nearly doubled over with the effort of supporting her treat. It lay, a dark doily across her hands. Delight glistened in her cataracted eyes, senility blocking pain. “Lookit, isn’t it nice?”

Peter stared at her and saw no one that he recognized. The sister he knew had gone into the kitchen; this creature had emerged, cut loose finally from his memories of her. What had happened to his sister? “Susie,” he lamented. He walked swiftly forward, reaching out to take the chocolate.

Susanne’s brows knitted. She glanced down at her breastbone. “Bee bite,” she said. Uncomprehending, Peter drew up for a moment. Then Susanne swayed and her head went back with a look like that of ecstasy on her face.

Peter cried out and rushed forward. The chocolate lace slid off her hand and dropped. The fragile, woven strands shattered as they hit the floor, scattering fragments in every direction. Peter clutched her to him, his feet crunching on the glassy bits of caramel. “No, Susanne.”

“Petey, I’m funny,” she said. Tellier dragged her to her chair and set her down in it. “Where’s momma, she here?” Her voice had gone thick. One side of her mouth twisted up as if trying to grin.

“She’s coming,” he answered quickly, searching her softening face for a hint of the little sister he could barely remember. “Be here in a minute.”

For all the death he’d experienced, for all that he knew this would come, Peter Tellier retained a childlike incomprehension of how someone so close could slip away while he watched, while he held her.

She was only dozing between performances, he told himself. She often did that. She would be all right. He straightened her up, tucked the afghan across her lap. He found a few large pieces of the chocolate lace and placed them on her lap, too.

Behind him, the clavichord fluttered into being. He turned and stared at it as at some horrible and totally alien object. He could not stand to hear that music again. Not ever again.

He forgot his jacket but climbed down into the snow like a figure out of history himself, in lace and velvet and trousers that buttoned just below the knee. The lights of civilization lay across the water, down the hill. He wondered if he would survive the walk.

Within, the house stood silent for a time.

Dust motes dancing in the sunbeams settled on the clavichord. The girl with the feather duster skipped over to it and began whisking at the surfaces, the keys, the bench, until young Mozart in red waistcoat came marching out and angrily ordered her away. Mozart shooed her along as if herding a cow. She pranced ahead of him, smiling blissfully as if he were proclaiming undying love. Mozart vanished as she settled into the Beidermeier chair with coquettish grace. In the other chair, the ghost of Michael Haydn glanced reprovingly her way.

Mozart returned from behind the chair and headed for the clavichord. To the right of it, with both hands clasped beneath her bosom, Maria Lipp watched him for her cue to begin.

Susanne heard a little noise behind her and looked around to find her older brother closing the doors with great care. He was dressed in a wonderful costume just like Mozart’s, but he put one finger to his lips to silence any outburst she might have had, then tiptoed into the shadows. She glanced surreptitiously at Haydn but he hadn’t noticed Peter’s arrival.

Susanne leaned down and placed her feather duster on the floor. Her feet dangled above it. She gripped the arms of her chair tightly, as if the chair were about to soar into the sky and carry her away to fabulous lands. “Regina coeli,” she named herself, then closed her eyes as Mozart’s slender hands descended upon the keys.

F. P
AUL
W
ILSON
had his first short fiction first published in 1971, while he was still studying to become a doctor. Since then he has gone on to appear in most of the major science fiction and fantasy magazines, and over two million copies of his books are in print in America.

His novels include
The Keep
(unsuccessfully filmed in 1983),
The Tomb, The Touch, Black Wind, The Tery, Sibs, Reborn
and its sequel,
Reprisals
, while his short fiction has been collected in
Soft & Others
.

“Pelts” was originally published as an individual booklet, and all royalties from the novella are being donated by the author to the charity Friends of Animals. An assured chiller that doesn’t let its message get in the way of the horror, it was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award by the Horror Writers of America.

“I
’
M SCARED, PA
.”

“Shush!” Pa said, tossing the word over his shoulder as he walked ahead.

Gary shivered in the frozen predawn dimness and scanned the surrounding pines and brush for the thousandth time. He was heading for his twentieth year and knew he shouldn’t be getting the willies like this but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t like this place.

“What if we get caught?”

“Only way we’ll get caught is if you keep yappin’, boy,” Pa said. “We’re almost there. Wouldna brought you along ’cept I can’t do all the carryin’ myself! Now hesh up!”

Their feet crunched though the half-inch shroud of frozen snow that layered the sandy ground. Gary pressed his lips tightly together, kept an extra tight grip on the Louisville Slugger, and followed Pa through the brush. But he didn’t like this one bit. Not that he didn’t favor hunting and trapping. He liked them fine. Loved them, in fact. But he and Pa were on Zeb Foster’s land today. And everybody knew that was bad news.

Old Foster owned thousands of acres in the Jersey Pine Barrens and didn’t allow nobody to hunt them. Had “Posted” signs all around the perimeter. Always been that way with the Fosters. Pa said old Foster’s granpa had started the no-trespassing foolishness and that the family was likely to hold to the damn stupid tradition till Judgment Day. Pa didn’t think he should be fenced out of any part of the Barrens. Gary could go along with that most anywheres except old Foster’s property.

There were stories . . . tales of the Jersey Devil roaming the woods here, of people poaching Foster’s land and never being seen again. Those who disappeared weren’t fools from Newark or Trenton who regularly got lost in the Pines and wandered in circles till they died. These were experienced trackers and hunters, Pineys just like Pa . . . and Gary.

Never seen again.

“Pa, what if we don’t come out of here?” He hated the whiny sound in his voice and tried to change it. “What if somethin’ gets us?”

“Ain’t nothin gonna get us! Didn’t I come in here yesterday and set the traps? And didn’t I come out okay?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah, but
nothin’!
The Fosters done a good job of spreadin’ stories for generations to scare folk off. But they don’t scare me. I know bullshit when I hear it.”

“Is it much farther?”

“No. Right yonder over the next rise. A whole area crawlin’ with coon tracks.”

Gary noticed they were passing through a thick line of calf-high vegetation, dead now; looked as if it’d been dark and ferny before winterkill had turned it brittle. It ran off straight as a hunting arrow into the scrub pines on either side of them.

“Looky this, Pa. Look how straight this stuff runs. Almost like it was planted.”

Pa snorted. “That wasn’t planted. That’s spleenwort—ebony spleenwort. Only place it grows around here is where somebody’s used lime to set footings for a foundation. Soil’s too acid for it otherwise. Find it growin’ over all the vanished towns.”

Gary knew there were lots of vanished towns in the Barrens, but this must have been one hell of a foundation. It was close to six feet wide and ran as far as he could see in either direction.

“What you think used to stand here, Pa?”

“Who knows, who cares? People was buildin’ in the Barrens afore the Revolutionary War. And I hear tell there was crumblin’ ruins already here when the Indians arrived. There’s some real old stuff around these parts but we ain’t about to dig it up. We’re here for coon. Now hesh up till we get to the traps!”

Gary couldn’t believe their luck. Every damn leg-hold trap had a coon in it! Big fat ones with thick, silky coats the likes of which he’d never seen. A few were already dead, but most of them were still alive, lying on their sides, their black eyes wide with fear and pain; panting, bloody, exhausted from trying to pull loose from the teeth of the traps, still tugging weakly at the chains that linked the trap to its stake.

He and Pa took care of the tuckered-out ones first by crushing their throats. Gary flipped them onto their backs and watched their striped tails come up protectively over their bellies. I
ain’t after your belly, Mr Coon
. He put his heel right over the windpipe, and kicked down hard. If he was in the right spot he heard a satisfying
crunch
as the cartilage collapsed. The coons wheezed and thrashed and flopped around awhile in the traps trying to draw some air past the crushed spot but soon enough they choked to death. Gary had had some trouble doing the throat crush when he started at it years ago, but he was used to it by now. It was just the way it was done. All the trappers did it.

But you couldn’t try that on the ones that still had some pepper in them. They wouldn’t hold still enough for you to place your heel. That was where the Gary and his Slugger came in. He swung at one as it snapped at him.