The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2012 (volume 3) by Liz Grzyb

Author:Liz Grzyb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: new zealand, award winning, australian, australian fiction, australian speculative fiction
Publisher: Ticonderoga Publications

“Is it?” the kid asked, and we were standing in a vast empty

ballroom with two cobweb-draped chandelier. The kid had laid her hand on my arm, and it struck me that her touch had ended both visions.

“Is it what?” I asked.

“Better to be alone? Better not to trust anyone?”

I looked at her. “You can hear what I am thinking?” “Only when you’re remembering,” she said.

I shifted away from the kid, unsettled at the thought of her having access to my inner monologue, unsettled by the visions I had experienced, both of which seemed to show me making decisions I had not realized at the time I was making. I had always felt as if I had been sidelined by life, cheated out of the things other people seemed to get as a matter of course. Was it possible I had chosen the course of my life? And what did any of this have to do with the demon and an amethyst egg? Unless the kid was right and the whole point was to get me caught up in analysing the past.

“Let’s go,” I said. Outside there was a red blush on the horizon; if that was east, and if this place obeyed at least some of the laws of the known universe, it meant the Dreadful Dawn

was approaching. I looked at the kid. “Can you feel yet where the egg is?”

“Up,” she said.

We got almost the whole way to the top before she pointed to a glass door at the end of a short set of steps running down from the main stair. Once again the door swung open as we approached, but this time when we stepped inside, I reached out to take the kid’s hand. I thought I had figured out that it would stop me having a vision, but instead I found myself in a kitchen I didn’t recognize. There was a small child with a shaggy mop of hair playing with a rag doll under the table. I realized I was under the table with the kid. Suddenly two sets of legs came in, one after the other. Both wore suit trousers and shiny black shoes.

“What about the kid?” one man said.

“Welfare will take charge until they sort it out with the relatives. They’re not keen on getting involved. Can’t hardly blame them for thinking twice about taking on the kid of two drug addicts.”

“Some kids got no luck.”

“You never know,” the other said. “Maybe the parents taking off and leaving it is the best thing that could have happened. Sounds cold, but who knows what would have happened if they’d stayed around. I mean, parents that would leave a kid like a sack of clothes they didn’t want.”

“Pity the relatives won’t step up,” said the other man.

The kid sitting beside me looked at me with eyes that were a pale honey yellow at the centre, running to butterscotch at the edges. It was the kid from the plane. Her eyes were so sad it made my chest ache.

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.