The Best Horror of the Year Volume 13 by Ellen Datlow

Author:Ellen Datlow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: Best_Horror_of_the_Year_Volume_Thirteen
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2021-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

“You’re the garden guys, aren’t you?” The youngish woman wore a fixed-looking smile and, over her lanky figure, a knee-length woollen one-piece of horizontal bands of bright colours. Her companion was in jeans and a black suit jacket, chestnut hair bisected by a turquoise stripe. Salads and herbal teas on their trays. Maurice and Trevor had mostly finished eating.

“Hope to be,” Maurice said, gesturing for the two women to take the empty seats at their table. Cath’s Caff was full, mainly of workers from Mouselode.

Fierce-eyed, Trevor grinned at the women. “Hey Maurice, The Garden Guys sounds better than Viridian Vistas.” He thumbed at Maurice. “‘Viridian‘ was his idea. I wanted ‘green,’ but it had already been taken.”

Maurice stretched his lips towards a smile. The women’s were politely non-committal as they weighed Trevor up. “Trevor,” Trevor said, jabbing his hand across the table. A bit much, Maurice thought, joining in the hand shaking. Three other first names followed.

“We’re Hi-Class Interiors,” Thelma, the darker one, said in an accent more at home in Mouselode House than in Cath’s Caff. She was as unsmiling as her partner was the opposite.

Tessa gamely filled a beat of silence. “We’ve been looking at some old photographs this morning.”

“Any of the garden?” Maurice asked.

“A few. We were thinking of blowing some up for the dining room.”

“We were,” Thelma said, picking at her salad. “They’re pretty ropey. Been in a tea chest for a hundred years, we think. Only found the other day. Workmen were clearing out a dark corner of the basement.”

“They date from the early nineteen-twenties if other old documents and papers are anything to go by,” Tessa said, persisting in her enthusiasm. “That’s when the last family owners lived there, though they were pretty distant. Dunlop, they were called. Couple of sisters, from Bristol. Inherited 1919. Died a few years later in the flu epidemic. They didn’t exactly endear themselves to the local community from what I’ve heard.”

“Incomers rarely do,” Maurice said; a statement for which he’d no particular evidence.

As the conversation moved towards the highs and lows of running middle-sized businesses, Maurice felt restless.

“Have you been in the maze?” He wasn’t sure he’d caught a tone of idle interest.

“They haven’t got time to muck around in mazes, Maurice.” Trevor did an ingratiating eye-roll at the women.

Thelma said, “No, we haven’t.”

While Maurice was trying to work out if she was agreeing they hadn’t time to ‘muck around in mazes’ or confirming that she and Tessa simply hadn’t entered this one, Tessa said:

“But we plan to,” a timidly triumphant smile, “because we’ve . . . got a plan.”

“Got a plan, eh?” Devilish amusement in Trevor’s eyes.

Thelma sighed, eyed Maurice, and said dismissively, “A plan of the maze. It was with the stuff in the basement. Cheating if you ask me. So, who does what?”

Maurice was glad of the swerve away from the subject of the maze.

“Let me guess. You’re the practical one.” Thelma nodded at Trevor, who looked pleased she’d got him so right. Now an exaggerated frown of enquiry at Maurice.

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