The Best Horror of the Year, volume 3 by Ellen Datlow

Author:Ellen Datlow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2011-06-01T06:00:00+00:00

This is a difficult time for all of us. Anne makes jewelry in the basement studio, which Sheilah is forbidden to enter, while I work on my second book (The Possibilities for Enchantment in a World at War with the Self, the Other, and the Infinite) in my upstairs office, also forbidden. Sheilah follows this rule so completely that, one morning, I find her lying curled against the door, like a good dog.

“Why don’t you go play?”

She looks up at me, her eyes bright and wide as pennies. “You mean outside?” she asks.

I shake my head. Sadly. “No, Sheilah, not outside.”

She purses her lips into rosebud shape. “I wanna go outside.”

Every time she mentions the outdoors I picture the little bodies, the dark eyes, the strange combination of her singing and their small screams. “We’ve already

talked about this, Sheilah. No.”

“Why not why not why not?” she wails.

“You know why,” I say, and am surprised by how mean I sound. She stops her whining. She stares at me. I can’t tell if her expression is one of insolence, or horror. I step around her, carefully shutting the door behind me. My office window overlooks the backyard. I press up on the sash, hard. These are old windows, with screens and stormers that we change each spring and fall, a massive undertaking we had not considered when we bought the place, frantic to make our escape. I breathe in the scent of dirt, roses, leaves, grass, the green, loamy scent of summer, but my reverie is interrupted by droning, low and near. Hanging from the eave, like some dark tumor, is the hornet’s nest.

I am both repelled and fascinated by the hornets, their golden wings quivering as they work their way around the orb. Sheilah is no longer screaming, perhaps she’s gone to bother Anne, or maybe she’s actually playing with her crystals or her chemistry set. I breathe in until I become restless and can’t stand still any longer, then I pull down the sash. The effect is immediate; stifled in my own home. I inspect the room carefully, checking the corners, the ceiling, the hiding places behind the furniture.

We are striving for something like normal. The thought of having a “normal” child would once have struck us as a failing. Now it is our hope. The honey butter melts across the biscuits and we wash our hands under the tap as we stare out the closed window, remembering how we used to lick each other’s sticky fingers. When she comes into the kitchen, wearing that nightgown, her hair a wild cloud around her sleep-pink face, we greet her joyfully. She pushes us away with her tiny, dangerous hands. She sighs like an old woman. She demands white bread (who knows where she was introduced to this vile concoction) toasted and slathered with sugary peanut butter. She chews with her mouth open, her pearled teeth coated with oily brown, and squints at us. “I wanna go outside.”

We shake our heads.

“Why not

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.