Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 5 by Robert Shearman

Author:Robert Shearman [Shearman, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN

ALISON LITTLEWOOD

The Entertainment Arrives

The professor drove slowly down the rainlashed promenade, passing sign after dispirited sign that marked the boarding houses still clinging to whatever sorry living this place could afford. Westingsea in early May, and the angry sky flung handfuls of rain at its houses and pavements and the battered old black Wolseley he drove, drowning out any other sound. He could see the sea, black and heaving to his right, shifting in as surly a fashion as it always did, but only the rain was listening to any murmur it made. He knew without looking that the belligerent clouds, fierce as he’d ever seen them, were indifferent to whatever lay beneath. Of humanity there was no sign, unless it was the mean slivers of light trying to escape the windows of the blank-faced, three storey properties along the front.

None of it mattered to the Professor. In fact, it was probably better this way; there was no one to see him arrive and no one to see him leave. He required no witnesses, no applause; there would be enough of that later. He knew where he was going and he knew what he would find when he got there, since it was always the same. The jaded, the worn out and the mad: that was who he had come for. Momentarily, he closed his eyes. After the strife, he thought, after the rain, the entertainment. He could almost smell their clothes, redolent of overboiled potatoes and their own unloved skin. He could almost feel the texture of it on his hands, and his fingers, resting on the steering wheel, twitched—though sometimes it seemed to him that the car responded to his thoughts, or someone else’s, rather than his touch. He suddenly wanted to look over his shoulder at the things on the old and clawed back seat, but he didn’t need to look. He could feel them, as if their eyes were fixed on his shoulder blades, boring into him. Punch had woken, then. He must be nearly there; he saw the spark of irritation from a neon sign to his left, HO EL, it said, the T too spent to play its part any longer, and he spun the wheel, or it spun under his hands; he wasn’t sure which. The even movement of wheels on road gave way to the jolt and judder of potholes and the car drew to a halt facing a crumbling brick wall, drenched and rain-darkened. He stared at it. He still didn’t want to turn around, though he never eluded what he did; it was his—what? Duty? That seemed too mild a word, for duty could be shirked. It’s who he was. He was the entertainment, and he was here to entertain, and entertain he would. After the rain …

But for now the rain showed no sign of ceasing. It hammered on the roof and spat at the windows, and he switched off the engine and thus the wipers, and the deluge blurred the world entirely.

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