Mrs. Wilson was asleep, her head turned toward the wall, away from Richards. Mrs. Jenks lay on her back, her eyes closed, breathing deeply under the sheet and blanket. Richards very gently shook her, but she did not awaken. He put the wash cloth over her mouth, then put tape over it and around her head, lifting it from the pillow. By the time he had finished putting tape around her wrists, she was starting to stir, and he wrenched her arms up, and wound the tape around the top two legs of the bed.
He was relieved to see that Mrs. Jenks did not kick with her as yet unsecured legs. She tried, but whatever kept her in a wheelchair also prevented her from thrashing about, and Richards realized that there was no need to tape her legs. They would stay in whatever position he put them. All in all, it seemed quite safe. There were whines and moans from beneath the wash cloth, but nothing that would carry to the next room, and sleeping Mrs. Wilson was stone deaf, mercifully for her and Richards both.
But before Richards took out Anderson’s fudge knife, he did one more thing. He walked to the window and opened it. Even at midnight, the air was unseasonably warm, and Richards thought he could scent the promise of spring in it. He stood there for a long time, marveling at the way life occasionally worked out, how the little things blended together so that loose ends could be tied up, so that an old man could die happy, possessed by yesterday’s memories, while creating new ones. He sighed, remembering, measuring out his years in crimson drops, uncounted seams of flesh, marking the red and yellow days that had brought him to this final, perfect day.
Then he smiled, and turned for the last time to his occupation, his heart’s work, his soul’s dream. He worked on into the night, not realizing that Mrs. Wilson had awakened, turned, and observed his ministrations with as much concern and as much knowledge of what was happening as the wide-eyed, expressionless, ceramic moon. Had he known, he might have welcomed the audience, but his attention was so fixed on Mrs. Jenks that he did not.
So Mrs. Wilson and the moon continued to watch until the darkness faded and Richards’s heart burst with the passion that his frail body could no longer bear, and sunbeams appeared on the ceiling, worked their way down the wall, and lit the tableau of joy and death just in time for Marianne to see it as she entered the room, screaming and dropping the little tray that held pills in paper cups. The scream brought others into the room, and Anderson, leaning on his walker, saw and trembled.
“He’ll burn in hell,” Anderson said, not knowing with what ease Richards had died on this glorious morning, this most perfect of days.
SEE HOW THEY RUN
by Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell has appeared in virtually every volume of The Year’s Best Horror Stories since the first volume (including those edited by my two predecessors, Richard Davis and Gerald W. Page). I for one am growing tired of writing introductions to his stories each year. I mean, what can I tell you that is new? Did you know that Campbell once owned a wine-drinking rabbit named Flopsy? Died of liver failure. Don’t know if they et it.
Born in Liverpool on January 4, 1946, Campbell has gone from teenaged Arkham House prodigy and protégé to one of the foremost horror writers ever. Much of this at the expense of his native Liverpool, which he has repeatedly used as setting for his twisted explorations of the strange and disturbing. Point of fact, last year Tor Books published a new collection of Campbell’s stories, Strange Things and Stranger Places. Campbell now lives in Merseyside with wife and two maniac children. He has had numerous anthologies (which he has edited), short story collections (which he has written), and novels (beginning with The Doll Who Ate His Mother). Don’t venture out in Liverpool after dark. Asked about his latest project, Campbell reports: “Right now I’m working on a new novel, The One Safe Place. Sounds like a fishmonger.” That’s an English joke. Doubt the novel is.
Throughout the reading of the charges Foulsham felt as if the man in the dock was watching him. December sunshine like ice transmuted into illumination slanted through the high windows of the courtroom, spotlighting the murderer. With his round slightly pouting face and large dark moist eyes Fishwick resembled a schoolboy caught red-handed, Foulsham thought, except that surely no schoolboy would have confronted the prospect of retribution with such a look of imperfectly concealed amusement mingled with impatience.
The indictment was completed. “How do you plead?”
“Not guilty,” Fishwick said in a high clear voice with just a hint of mischievous emphasis on the first word. Foulsham had the impression that he was tempted to take a bow, but instead Fishwick folded his arms and glanced from the prosecuting counsel to the defense, cueing their speeches so deftly that Foulsham felt his own lips twitch.
“… a series of atrocities so cold-blooded that the jury may find it almost impossible to believe that any human being could be capable of them…” “… evidence that a brilliant mind was tragically damaged by a lifetime of abuse…” Fishwick met both submissions with precisely the same attitude, eyebrows slightly raised, a forefinger drumming on his upper arm as though he were commenting in code on the proceedings. His look of lofty patience didn’t change as one of the policemen who had arrested him gave evidence, and Foulsham sensed that Fishwick was eager to get to the meat of the case. But the judge adjourned the trial for the day, and Fishwick contented himself with a faint anticipatory smirk.
The jurors were escorted past the horde of reporters and through the business district to their hotel. Rather to Foulsham’s surprise, none of his fellow jurors mentioned Fishwick, neither over dinner nor afterward, when the jury congregated in the cavernous lounge as if they were reluctant to be alone. Few of the jurors showed much enthusiasm for breakfast, so that Foulsham felt slightly guilty for clearing his plate. He was the last to leave the table and the first to reach the door of the hotel, telling himself that he wanted to be done with the day’s ordeal. Even the sight of a newsvendor’s placard which proclaimed FISHWICK JURY SEE HORROR PICTURES TODAY failed to deter him.
Several of the jurors emitted sounds of distress as the pictures were passed along the front row. A tobacconist shook his head over them, a gesture which seemed on the point of growing uncontrollable. Some of Foulsham’s companions on the back row craned forward for a preview, but Foulsham restrained himself; they were here to be dispassionate, after all. As the pictures came toward him, their progress marked by growls of outrage and murmurs of dismay, he began to feel unprepared, in danger of performing clumsily in front of the massed audience. When at last the pictures reached him, he gazed at them for some time without looking up.
They weren’t as bad as he had secretly feared. Indeed, what struck him most was their economy and skill. With just a few strokes of a black felt-tipped pen, and the occasional embellishment of red, Fishwick had captured everything he wanted to convey about his subjects: the grotesqueness which had overtaken their gait as they attempted to escape once he’d severed a muscle; the way the crippled dance of each victim gradually turned into a crawl—into less than that once Fishwick had dealt with both arms. No doubt he’d been as skillful with the blade as he was with the pen. Foulsham was reexamining the pictures when the optician next to him nudged him. “The rest of us have to look, too, you know.”
Foulsham waited several seconds before looking up. Everyone in the courtroom was watching the optician now—everyone but Fishwick. This time there was no question that the man in the dock was gazing straight at Foulsham, whose face stiffened into a mask he wanted to believe was expressionless. He was struggling to look away when the last juror gave an appalled cry and began to crumple the pictures. The judge hammered an admonition, the usher rushed to reclaim the evidence, and Fishwick stared at Foulsham as if they were sharing a joke. The flurry of activity let Foulsham look away, and he did his best to copy the judge’s expression of rebuke tempered with sympathy for the distressed woman.