The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror Read online

  THE YEAR’S BEST

  DARK FANTASY & HORROR

  VOLUME TWO

  THE YEAR’S BEST

  DARK FANTASY & HORROR:

  VOLUME TWO

  Edited by

  PAULA GURAN

  Other Anthologies Edited by Paula Guran

  Embraces: Dark Erotica

  Best New Paranormal Romance

  Best New Romantic Fantasy

  Zombies: The Recent Dead

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2010

  Vampires: The Recent Undead

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2011

  Halloween

  New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird

  Brave New Love: 15 Dystopian Tales of Desire

  Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful

  Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012

  Extreme Zombies

  Ghosts: Recent Hauntings

  Rock On: The Greatest Hits of Science Fiction & Fantasy

  Season of Wonder

  Future Games

  Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations

  The Mammoth Book of Angels and Demons

  After the End: Recent Apocalypses

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2013

  Halloween: Mystery, Magic, and the Macabre

  Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales

  Magic City: Recent Spells

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2014

  Time Travel: Recent Trips

  New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird

  Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories by Women

  Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2015

  The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas: 2015

  Warrior Women

  Street Magicks

  The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu: New Lovecraftian Fiction

  Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2016

  The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas: 2016

  The Mammoth Book of the Mummy

  Swords Against Darkness

  Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries & Lore

  New York Fantastic: Fantasy Stories from the City That Never Sleeps

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2017

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2018

  Mythic Journeys: Retold Myths and Legends

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2019

  The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume One

  Far Out: Recent Queer Fantasy & Science Fiction

  Published 2021 by Pyr®

  The Year’s Best Dark Horror & Fantasy: Volume 2. Copyright © 2021 by Paula Guran. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover image © Shutterstock

  Cover design by Jennifer Do

  Cover design © Start Science Fiction

  Inquiries should be addressed to

  Start Science Fiction

  221 River Street, 9th Floor

  Hoboken, New Jersey 07030

  PHONE: 212-431-5455

  WWW.PYRSF.COM

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-64506-032-1 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-64506-033-8 (ebook)

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Elora:

  May you never know true darkness.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: Stranger Days • PAULA GURAN

  Recognition • VICTOR LAVALLE

  Odette • ZEN CHO

  Das Gesicht • DALE BAILEY

  The Sycamore and the Sybil • ALIX E. HARROW

  The Stonemason • DANNY RHODES

  Desiccant • CRAIG LAURANCE GIDNEY

  Open House on Haunted Hill • JOHN WISWELL

  The Genetic Alchemist’s Daughter • ELAINE CUYEGKENG

  Swanskin • ALISON LITTLEWOOD

  The Dead Outside My Door • STEVE RASNIC TEM

  Lusca • SOLEIL KNOWLES

  To Sail the Black • A. C. WISE

  Nobody Lives Here • H. PUEYO

  On Safari in R’lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera • ELIZABETH BEAR

  The Thickening • BRIAN EVENSON

  The Owl Count • ELIZABETH HAND

  Color, Heat, and the Wreck of the Argo • CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

  Ancestries • SHEREE RENÉE THOMAS

  The Sound of the Sea, Too Close • JAMES EVERINGTON

  Drunk Physics • KELLEY ARMSTRONG

  Call Them Children • WENMIMAREBA KLOBAH COLLINS

  Tea with the Earl of Twilight • SONYA TAAFFE

  Wait for Night • STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

  Where the Old Neighbors Go • THOMAS HA

  Dead Bright Star (July 1987) • CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN

  And This is How to Stay Alive • SHINGAI NJERI KAGUNDA

  Lacunae • V. H. LESLIE

  The Girlfriend’s Guide to Gods • MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY

  Monster • NAOMI KRITZER

  Last Night at the Fair • M. RICKERT

  Other Recommendations from 2020

  About the Authors

  Acknowledgements

  About the Editor

  INTRODUCTION: STRANGER DAYS

  PAULA GURAN

  Horror is everywhere. It’s in fairy tales and the evening headlines, it’s in street corner gossip, and the incontrovertible facts of history. It’s in playground ditties (Ring-a-ring o’ roses is a sweet little plague song) . . . it’s on the altar bleeding for our sins . . .

  —CLIVE BARKER, A-Z OF HORROR

  It has been, as I write this, almost exactly one year since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic and the United States entered a lockdown. It has also been almost exactly one year since I began the introduction (“Strange Days”) to the previous volume of this series with this:

  These are unsettling times. The world changed forever as I compiled this anthology, and we don’t yet know what it has changed into. . . . Why, some must be asking, would anyone want to read dark fantasy or horror while a pandemic rages, the economy (and who knows what else) topples, and people are dying and suffering?

  Did I answer the question? If you weren’t perspicacious enough to read last year’s anthology (tsk!) you can still buy the book and find out. Or read that introduction on my website (paulaguran.com).

  I’m not the only one to have had similar thoughts. A recent study’s title—“Pandemic Practice: Horror Fans and Morbidly Curious Individuals Are More Psychologically Resilient During the COVID-19 Pandemic”—sums up its results and answer to the question. The researchers found that “horror fiction may not lead you to find ways to enjoy life during a pandemic, it might help you learn how to deal with the fear and anxiety that stems from something like a pandemic.”*

  This may be true, and it ties into the traditional view of horror: we enjoy it because it gives us a type of closure—the bad stuff, the monsters, the evil is destroyed or at least controlled. Order or some semblance of it is restored.

  Restoring order, however, is not always the aim of modern dark fiction. As Gina Wisker writes in her 2004 essay, “Demisting the Mirror: contemporary British women’s horror,” “Horror explores the fissures that open in our everyday lives and destabilizes our complacency about norms and rules . . .” It also has a “politicized role as exposer of social and cultural deceits and discomforts . . .”

  Horror can comfort and give us a feeling of control but is also challenges and discomforts, even in these challenging and uncomfortable times.

  Horror, I’m sure someone has noted, is nothing if not paradoxical.

  Before we go too much further, it’s probably best to mention (as I do almost annually) that I’m not offering a definition of dark fantasy. Or horror for that matter. You can read last year’s introduction on that point or, more directly, the very first introduction to this series from The Year’s Best Horror and Dark Fantasy: 2010—“What The Hell Do You Mean By ‘Dark Fantasy And Horror?’”—also republished on the aforementioned website.

  And, of course, a reminder that although this is Volume Two, it is really Volume Twelve as the series started in 2010 (covering stories first published in 2009). The title change is due to a publisher change (from Prime Books to Pyr Books).

  Back to less practical matters . . .

  During the last year, the horrific daily intruded on the mundane. But that’s the thing about horror—and dark fantasy, weird fiction, or what have you—it is rooted not only in the fantastic of nightmares and the imagination but in everyday real life.

  But, given the circumstances, has my/our perception of what horror changed in the last year?

  I don’t have an answer, of course. Maybe after time has passed there will eventually be one. But in the very short-term retrospective—after reading hundreds of stories, selecting thirty, and offering another two hundred as “recommended,” I have some random observations.

  • It wasn’t until after I started assembling this volume that I realized how often homes, houses,
and other domiciles played important roles in many of the selected stories. None of them are traditional “haunted house” tales, but the concept of “home” popped up more often than I had initially realized. Considering most of us have been home more than usual lately, this is . . . interesting.

  • I often choose stories set in the future and I did so again this year—about half a dozen times. But in some cases, the futures involved seem so close, so logical, that I’m not sure they can really be considered science fiction. In a few cases, there is more of the supernatural involved in the future than science.

  • Along those lines, although the stories are not all science fictional, three stories involve the human genetic code and three climate change. Again, because the stories are all wildly different, I didn’t realize this until final compilation.

  • My purview for these volumes is expansive. I’ve never concentrated on “horror” per se, never really sought stories guaranteed to scare and certainly not those that merely shock. My schtick tends toward tales that disturb, unsettle, disrupt, discomfort, intrude, etc. That’s not changed, but I wonder if there was an overall trend this last year toward, well, just “dark” as opposed to “horror.” Or maybe it is just that there is a wider range of publications now featuring “dark” but not necessarily “horror” fiction.

  • Along those lines, if you look at the sources of selected and recommended works—which you should and then seek them out—you’ll find a wide variety of publications. Many of them are not places one would expect to find horror or dark fantasy, yet there it is. Is darkness creeping deeper into literature or do I just find it because I am looking?

  • In the last few years, genre fiction has (finally) become more diverse and more publishing opportunities have become available for writers who are not white, do not have an exclusively Western perspective, are not heterosexual, and who are not cisgender male. Consequently, the cultural milieu and characters portrayed have broadened. This positive trend has continued in the last year and, as always, is reflected in my selections. Have I chosen more of it? I don’t know, but I feel I have a great deal more to choose from.

  • I didn’t realize until after biographies were assembled that about twenty of the thirty stories included are by writers who identify as women. I don’t think this the first time the contents have had a female majority, but I think that is the largest margin.

  • An aspect of both the preceding point and what Wisker refers to as “politicized,” are the couple of blatantly feminist stories and several others with more subtle messages of that type. Again, nothing new for me or this series, but maybe (or maybe not) notable.

  • Far too early for this one, but I warned you this was random. Dystopic and other science fiction often supposes governmental upheaval—although I don’t think anyone ever imagined a president of the United States denying he was defeated in a free, fair, and secure election and then urging a mob to attack Congress—but after the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol by Trump-supporting insurrectionists, one can’t but wonder if this will play into dark fiction now.

  • Stories directly inspired by the pandemic did not, of course, start being published until later in 2020. That said, we (suitably) start volume two with a COVID-19-based tale by victor Lavalle who was commissioned (along with twenty-eight others) by the New York Times to “write new short stories inspired by the moment.” They were “inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s ‘The Decameron,’ written as the plague ravaged Florence” in the fourteenth century.

  And that’s probably an excellent note on which to end the introducing and start with the reading.

  Paula Guran

  National Respect Your Cat Day 2021

  * Scrivner, C., Johnson, J. A., kjeldgaard-Christiansen, J., & Clasen, M. (2021). Pandemic practice: Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personality and individual differences, 168, 110397. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110397

  RECOGNITION

  VICTOR LAVALLE

  Not easy to find a good apartment in New York City, so imagine finding a good building. No, this isn’t a story about me buying a building. I’m talking about the people, of course. I found a good apartment, and a great building, in Washington Heights. Six-story tenement on the corner of 180th and Fort Washington Avenue; a one-bedroom apartment, which was plenty for me. Moved in December 2019. You might already see where this is going. The virus hit, and within four months half the building had emptied out. Some of my neighbors fled to second homes or to stay with their parents outside the city; others, the older ones, the poorer ones, disappeared into the hospital twelve blocks away. I’d moved into a crowded building and suddenly I lived in an empty house.

  And then I met Mirta.

  “Do you believe in past lives?”

  We were in the lobby, waiting for the elevator. This was right after the lockdown started. She asked, but I didn’t say anything. Which isn’t the same as saying I didn’t respond. I gave my tight little smile while looking down at my feet. I’m not rude, just fantastically shy. That condition doesn’t go away, not even during a pandemic. I’m a Black woman, and people act surprised when they discover some of us can be awkward, too.

  “There’s no one else here,” Mirta continued. “So I must be talking to you.”

  Her tone managed to be both direct and, somehow, still playful. As the elevator arrived, I looked toward her, and that’s when I saw her shoes. Black-and-white pointed oxfords; the white portion had been painted to look like piano keys. Despite the lockdown, Mirta had taken the trouble to slip on a pair of shoes that nice. I was returning from the supermarket wearing my raggedy old slides.

  I pulled the elevator door open and finally looked at her face.

  “There she is,” Mirta said, the way you might compliment a shy bird for settling on your finger.

  Mirta might’ve been twenty years older than me. I turned forty the same month I moved into the building. My mom and dad called to sing “Happy Birthday” from Pittsburgh. Despite the news, they didn’t ask me to come home. And I didn’t make the request. When we’re together, they ask questions about my life, my plans, that turn me into a grouchy teenager again. My father ordered me a bunch of basics though; he had them shipped. It’s how he has always loved me—by making sure I’m well supplied.

  “I tried to get toilet paper,” Mirta said in the elevator. “But these people are panicking, so I couldn’t find any. They think a clean butt is going to save them from the virus?”

  Mirta watched me; the elevator reached the fourth floor. She stepped out and held the door open.

  “You don’t laugh at my jokes, and you won’t even tell me your name?”

  Now I smiled because it had turned into a game.

  “A challenge then,” she said. “I will see you again.” She pointed down the hall. “I am in Number 41.”

  She let the elevator door go, and I rode up to the sixth floor, unpacked the things I’d bought. At that time I still thought it would all be over by April. It’s laughable now. I went into the bathroom. One of the things my dad sent me was thirty-two rolls of toilet paper. I slipped back down to the fourth floor and left three rolls in front of Mirta’s door.

  * * *

  A month later, I was used to logging in to my “remote office,” the grid of screens—all our little heads—looked like the open office we once worked in; I probably spoke with my co-workers about as much now as I did then. When the doorbell rang, I leapt at the chance to get away from my laptop. Maybe it’s Mirta. I slipped on a pair of buckled loafers; they were raggedy, too, but better than the slippers I wore the last time she saw me.

  But it wasn’t her.

  It was the super, Andrés. Nearly sixty, born in Puerto Rico, he had a tattoo of a leopard crawling up his neck.

  “Still here,” he said, sounding pleasant behind his blue mask.

  “Nowhere else to go.”

  He nodded and snorted, a mix between a laugh and a cough. “The city says I got to check every apartment now. Every day.”

  He carried a bag that rattled like a sack of metal snakes. When I looked, he pulled it open: silver spray-paint cans. “I don’t get a answer, and I got to use this.”

  Andrés stepped to the side. Down the hall; Apartment 66. The green door had been defaced with a giant silver “V.” So fresh, the letter still dripped.