David shrugged, took a risk: told her how he’d felt compelled to stand in there. She was a woman. She’d understand.
She did, and perhaps more than he’d expected. More than he did. “Well,” she said, “it’s your birthday.”
He shook his head, not comprehending. She smiled, as if it were self-evident. “That’s where it happened, up there in that room. That’s where you were born,” she said, and then winked. “You can live down in that London all you like,” she added. “But this is where you’re from.”
He barely heard anything else she said, and left twenty minutes later. When he reached the end of the village, he did not take the left turn which would lead to the A-road and later back to the M11. Instead he turned right, and kept driving.
He drove for an hour, out into the countryside, out beyond the villages and into the country proper, to where the fens began. To the place where water became as much a part of the world as earth, to where grass and reeds and flatness were all the land had to say.
After a while he turned again, not back on himself, but at an angle, and headed in a different direction. A little later, he did so once more.
He could have driven for hours, for days. He could have looked for weeks and never found it, were it not for the church. That, presumably, had been the point. It had worked, in the end.
It was half-ruined, and stood by itself in the middle of a field. David knew enough to understand this meant it most likely represented the last lingering sign of a lost village. Seen from above, from a low-flying plane, there would have been crop marks to show where domestic buildings had once been, a previous lay of the land. But that had been long, long ago.
When he saw the two remaining walls, the jagged half-steeple, it took his breath away and every unremembered dream came back at once.
He lurched the car over to the side of the road and parked chaotically on the verge. Then he got out, stepped gingerly over the low barbed-wire fence, and started to walk towards the ruin. It was probably private land. He didn’t care. Twice he disappeared up to one knee in the boggy ground. He didn’t care about that either. His mobile phone went once. He didn’t even hear it.
He walked slowly around the church. He knew it only meant one thing to him, that he had only been here once before. He approached it, finally, and stood close up against the wall. The sky was blue above, flecked with cloud. It looked the same wherever you stood, whether inside the remains of the structure or without, and at any point along the walls. But again, he had planned well, and eventually he found the heavy stone.
He went down on one knee and prised his fingers around the sides. Gym savvy told him to protect his back, and he took his time to pull the big flat stone out of place. Underneath was a small metal box.
He lifted it out, and sat down on the grass.
Inside the box was a small old sack, stained with time and wrapped over itself. David waited for a while, wishing for a cigarette, though he had never smoked. He thought about the ceiling in his mother’s bedroom, knowing it not to be the first thing he had ever seen. Finally he opened the bag, and pulled out the envelope inside.
He recognized the handwriting, from a list he had written back in February. The letter said:
To whoever I might beI hope this time it has worked, and I’m young, that I’ve caught me in time. Better still I hope I will find this and smile, knowing it was unnecessary, knowing I can palm anything, make coins appear out of people’s ears, and that I have not come here alone. But just in case:
1) Do things. Do everything. Learn, explore, open the world’s boxes while you’re young and time stretches out infinitely far.
2) Make mistakes, and make them early, not late. Too soon can be undone. Too late cannot.
3) Marry the one who could break your heart.
4) There is no (4). The first three will be enough.
Good luck, Yourself.
Ten minutes later David put the letter back in the bag. He wished he had known to bring the Houdin book with him. He could have put it in there as well, for next time. But if he remembered this late then too, there would be little point. He might as well sell it, hope it would find, someone who would use it in time.
When the stone was back in place he spent a while standing close to the wall of the ruined church, memorizing the shape of the road, the pattern of the water inlets in the distance: anything he might reasonably hope would be here next time. Finally he walked back over to the car, climbed in, and sat for a while looking out at the flat fens.
Then he started the drive back to London, where he knew a surprise party was waiting for him.
John Farris
Story Time With the Bluefield Strangler
John Farris is best known as the author of The Fury (filmed by Brian De Palma in 1978, starring Kirk Douglas and Amy Irving). He followed it with the belated sequels The Fury and the Terror, The Fury and the Power and the forthcoming Avenging Fury.
Described by Stephen King as “America’s premier novelist of terror”, the author’s other books include When Michael Calls (filmed as a TV movie), All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By, Catacombs, Son of the Endless Night, Wildwood, Nightfall, Fiends, Soon She Will Be Gone and Phantom Nights. His short stories have been collected in Scare Tactics and Elvisland, the latter published by California ’s Babbage Press. Farris has also recently collaborated with his son Peter on a screenplay entitled Class of 1347.
It is a pleasure to welcome him to the pages of Best New Horror. As you would expect from an author of his skill and experience, the following story about an imaginary friend has a killer twist…
Six-year-old Alison on the candy-striped swing set in the side yard of the big white house on the hill. Turning her head at the sound of tires on the gravel drive. Daddy’s home. Alison holds Dolly in the crook of one arm, holds the swing chain with her other hand. Alison has many dolls that Daddy and Mommy have given her but Dolly was the first and will always be special, in spite of wear and tear.
Alison turns her head when Daddy calls. He comes across the bright green lawn of the white house on the hill, smiling at her. Daddy smiles a lot. He doesn’t frown. One hand is behind his back. Of course he has a present for her. He brings home something every day. There is one huge tree on the lawn at the top of the hill (Alison sometimes forgets that). The leaves of the tree are dark green. They shade the swing set and play area where she spends her day. Every day. Because it never rains in the daytime on the hill with the big white house.
Daddy sets his briefcase down. Some days he wears a blue suit to work, some days it’s brown. His shoes are always black and shiny. One day Daddy had a mustache but Alison decided she didn’t like it so Daddy doesn’t wear it any more.
“Here’s my girl!” Daddy says, crouching and waiting for her to run into his arms. It’s what he says every afternoon when he comes home.
(“Where does your daddy work?” Lorraine asks Alison, and after a few moments Alison says, “In an office,” as if it isn’t important to her. “Do you know what kind of work he does?” Lorraine asks then. Alison shakes her head with a hint of displeasure. Lorraine smiles, and doesn’t ask more questions.) Alison reaches around Daddy, trying to find out what he has for her. Daddy laughs and teases for the few seconds Alison will put up with it. Then he offers her the present. It’s tissue-wrapped, and tied with a pink ribbon. Alison allows Daddy to hold Dolly, which is a special privilege on the occasion of gift-bringing, while she unwraps her present.