The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

She didn’t know if the thing was truly a god or just some weird kind of leech, but it was fast. It came out from under the bed, rolled along Rideout’s shoulder, onto Melissa’s hand, and up her arm. Melissa tried to shake it off and couldn’t. Some kind of sticky stuff on those stubby little spikes, the part of Kat’s brain that would still work told the part — the much larger part — that still wouldn’t. Like the glue on a fly’s feet.

Melissa had seen where the thing came from and even in her panic was wise enough to cover her own mouth with both hands. The thing skittered up her neck, over her cheek, and squatted on her left eye. The wind screamed and Melissa screamed with it. It was the cry of a woman drowning in the kind of pain the charts in the hospitals can never describe. The charts go from one to ten; Melissa’s agony was well over one hundred — that of someone being boiled alive. She staggered backwards, clawing at the thing on her eye. It was pulsing faster now, and Kat could hear a low, liquid sound as the thing resumed feeding. It was a slushy sound.

It doesn’t care who it eats, she thought, just as if this made sense. Kat realised she was walking toward the screaming, flailing woman, and observed this phenomenon with interest.

“Hold still! Melissa, HOLD STILL!”

Melissa paid no attention. She continued to back up. She struck the thick branch now visiting the room and went sprawling. Kat went to one knee beside her and brought the broomhandle smartly down on Melissa’s face. Down on the thing that was feeding on Melissa’s eye.

There was a splatting sound, and suddenly the thing was sliding limply down the housekeeper’s cheek, leaving a wet trail of slime behind. It moved across the leaf-littered floor, intending to hide under the branch the way it had hidden under the bed. Kat sprang to her feet and stepped on it. She felt it splatter beneath her sturdy New Balance walking shoe. Green stuff shot out in both directions, as if she had stepped on a small balloon filled with snot.

Kat went down again, this time on both knees, and took Melissa in her arms. At first Melissa struggled, and Kat felt a fist graze her ear. Then Melissa subsided, breathing harshly. “Is it gone? Kat, is it gone?”

“I feel better,” Newsome said wonderingly from behind them, in some other world.

“Yes, it’s gone,” Kat said. She peered into Melissa’s face. The eye the thing had landed on was bloodshot, but otherwise it looked all right. “Can you see?”

“Yes. It’s blurry, but clearing. Kat… the pain… it was all through me. It was like the end of the world.”

“Somebody needs to flush my eyes!” Jensen yelled. He sounded indignant.

“Flush your own eyes,” Newsome said cheerily. “You’ve got two good legs, don’t you? I think I might, too, once Kat throws them back into gear. Somebody check on Rideout. I think the poor sonofabitch might be dead.”

Melissa was staring up at Kat, one eye blue, the other red and leaking tears. “The pain… Kat, you have no idea of the pain.”

“Yes,” Kat said. “Actually, I do. Now.” She left Melissa sitting by the branch and went to Rideout. She checked for a pulse and found nothing, not even the wild waver of a heart that is still trying its best. Rideout’s pain, it seemed, was over.

The generator went out.

“Fuck,” Newsome said, still sounding cheery. “I paid seventy thousand dollars for that Jap piece of shit.”

“I need someone to flush my eyes!” Jensen bellowed “Kat!”

Kat opened her mouth to reply, then didn’t. In the new darkness, something had crawled onto the back of her hand.

STAY Leah Bobet

She felt the storm come in, in her kneecaps, then her thighs. By eight o’clock, it blew from the north into Sunrise, January-hard and fine like sand, and Cora’s hip was aching.

She asked Johnny Red for a smoke break and limped out back to the storeroom, kneading the hip with her right hand while her left cupped the cigarette. The storeroom was cold and cluttered, a tiny junkyard of boxes and broken chairs, but normally it was quiet; the rattle of pots in Johnny Red’s kitchen didn’t quite reach through the door. Tonight, though, the back door banged like an angry drunk; the snow hissed and ground at metal, brick, bone. Cora lit a second thin-rolled smoke off the first and listened to the rattle of the heartbroke wind.

When she came back through the storeroom door, half her tables had up and left.

“Better service across the street?” she asked. The plates were half-full, still steaming. There was nothing across the street. There was nowhere else to eat in the whole town: just the service stations, the Tutchos’ grocery, and the snow.