The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

MIND GAMES by Adam Meyer

The old woman opened her eyes. Shafts of sunlight peered from between the drapes, illuminating swirls of dust. The sheets were damp with her own sweat. A glance at the clock. 6:37 a.m. At least she’d had a few hours’ sleep. It was hard to sleep these days.

She lifted her head from the pillow and sat up arthritically, old bones aching. She looked around the room, saw heavy oak furniture and rocking chair and a thirteen inch T.V. and photographs on the wall, but the faces staring back at her from the frames were those of strangers, and—

Oh my God, she thought. Where am I?

Afraid to move, afraid to stay still too long, remembering that, there had been someone here last night, forgetting who, knowing only that she didn’t want to meet him again.

Where am I?

The faces: smiling, staring, screaming with their eyes.

Who are you? she asked them silently.

But they were deaf, and their frozen mouths permitted no words anyway.

Oh, dear God where is this where is this where is—

She moaned, a short, pained sound that rose from her tortured soul. She was home. This was her own apartment. She had been lost in her very own bedroom. Herman would have laughed if he had seen her a moment ago, a senile old woman who couldn’t recognize her own name. But Herman was lucky: he had never been old, he was young forever, just like the photos on the wall. Just like in her mind.

Except when she tried to picture his face she couldn’t. She saw only a plane of gray like the one that waited outside the window.

She felt the familiar terror rising up, swallowing her whole, like the whale that swallowed Pinocchio.

Pinocchio. She remembered taking the girls to see that a couple of years ago. Oh, yes. Where were the girls? She had to get them off to school. The bus would be here soon.

She padded out of the bedroom and found herself in the middle of the hallway, wondering where she had meant to go.

Christ, the old woman thought, it’s eating away at my mind, cell by cell, piece by piece.

Only it wasn’t the Alzheimer’s. That was just an excuse the doctors had made to explain something they couldn’t understand. She knew what it really was.

But the old woman tried not to think about that as she shuffled into the kitchen and started to make breakfast.

The old woman’s daughter arrived at one-thirty. She was carrying a brown bag filled with groceries. She set it down on the counter and took a seat at the kitchen table beside her mother, who sat at the window and looked at the motion of people and cars below.

“You left eight messages on my machine this morning, Mom. You sounded worried, afraid. Did something happen?”

The old woman’s gaze was focused out the window, sifting between the dull blue sky stitched with gray clouds, and the figures scurrying along the sidewalk, carrying umbrellas in anticipation of rain. She looked briefly at her daughter and then away, as she said, “What are you talking about, dear? I only called once.”

“When?” The younger woman’s eyes softened, though her tone was still angry.

“Oh… I’m not sure. I don’t know, it was several hours ago at least.

“Five of the messages pleaded me to come over right away, and the other three…” She didn’t seem willing to discuss those.

“Well, Barbara dear, I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble,” the old woman said.

Her daughter gave her a strange look, hurt and angry and regretful. She said, “I’m Sarah. Barbara’s dead, mom. She died almost thirty years ago, remember? The car… I was only five, and she was eight. Jesus, Mom, don’t you even remember that?”

“Of course I do,” the old woman lied. “Of course, how could I forget. Don’t cry, Sarah, don’t cry.”

Sarah wiped the tears from her face with a napkin. “I brought you some groceries, Mom. Should be enough to hold you through the week.

“Thank you, dear, that’s wonderful. Did you bring the spaghetti?”

Yes.”

“Good, I thought we’d have spaghetti for dinner. That was always your favorite.”

“Mom, I—I can’t stay that late, you know that. I’ve got to get back for John and Eddie.”

The old woman smiled, revealing a mouthful of teeth, most of which weren’t real.

“I wish you’d stay, dear. Your father would love it if we could all have dinner together, like the old days.”

“Oh God oh God oh God.”

“What’s the matter?” the old woman asked her daughter.

“Nothing,” Sarah said. “Nothing.”

They sat in companionable silence for almost an hour. Finally, Sarah spoke.

“Mom, have you thought about what I asked you the other day?”

Needles of rain splattered the window, exploding against the glass with a faint pitter-patter sound.

“What did you ask me? I can barely remember my own name, let alone what happened the other day.” The old woman frowned, eyes glistening with internal pain. It was bad enough that she was losing her mind, worse was the realization of it, and the fact that she was helpless to stop it.

“About coming to my house.”

“I’d love to visit. I don’t get out of this damn apartment for weeks at a time. It drives me nuts. I’ll go anywhere.”

“Not to visit,” Sarah said, voice low, compassionate. “To stay.”

“For good?” The old woman’s eyes widened. Her lips parted, but no words came forth. “I… I’d love to, but… I can’t. I can’t leave this old place.

“Mom, I think maybe it would do you some good. I talked it over with John, and he says he’d give up his den for you to use as a bedroom. That way I could be near you, take care of you. I come out here for a little while every day, but it’s not enough. I don’t think you can take care of yourself much longer.”

“Well, as long as I can take care of myself, I want to. I have to. This is my home. I don’t want to leave. I won’t.

“But Mom!”

The old woman gazed at the window, watching the raindrops race each other from the pane to the sill.

“I’d like to go outside,” she said. “Take me out.”

“It’s raining. You’ll catch a cold.”

She chuckled. “That’s what I used to tell you girls when you were little.”

Sarah nodded. She knew.

“Will you go over to the supermarket for me, then? I need some things. I need spaghetti. For dinner.”

“I already did,” Sarah sighed, forcing back the steadily mounting anger and resentment. “I left the stuff on the counter.”

The old woman turned, nodding as if seeing the brown Waldbaum’s bag for the first time.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

Mother and daughter watched each other wearily.

“I’ve got to go, Mom,” Sarah said. “Eddie’ll be getting home from school in a little while.”

“I understand.” But the old woman’s eyes were filled with fear. She didn’t want her daughter to go and leave her alone. She wanted to go back with her, live there instead of here, hoping that things might be better somehow. But they wouldn’t, she knew that. He would find her. He would know.

Sarah started to move away from the table, but her mother’s hand sprang out and clamped her around the wrist. The old woman’s fingers were bony but strong.

“Please,” she said in a husky voice. “Don’t go yet.”

“Look, Mom, I—”

“I want to tell you something.”

“What?” Sarah said impatiently. “What is it?”

Yes, the old woman thought. What? What are you going to tell her? What can you say that will make any kind of sense? She can’t understand. A few years ago, if somebody had told you, would you have believed her?

“Well?” Sarah said, with a mixture of annoyance and concern.

“It’s nothing, dear, nothing really. Just… I love you, Barbara.”

Sarah’s face fell. “I love you too, Mom,” she said.

Darkness. The old woman lay in her bed, curled up like a fetus, pores sweating and her body shivering from the midnight cold. She waited, knowing he was coming, if not this minute then the next, or the one after that, or—

Was that a sound?

She could hear the noise of the wind and rain battering the window from behind the drapes, but over that, she thought she heard something else.

Like the creak of the front door being pushed open.

No, just her imagination. Ghosts don’t use doors. Or did they? And who said he was a ghost? She didn’t know what he was, where he came from. It didn’t matter.

She curled herself tighter, becoming a human ball, as if she could make herself so small she’d be lost in the vast blackness.

The waiting was the worst. Knowing he was coming and not knowing how long. The nights seemed to stretch endlessly, each one taking a few more seconds of the day, and soon there would be no more sunlight, only this dark, both inside her head and out.

The soft tread of feet along the parquet floor of the hallway. She was old and her senses had dulled over the years, but she could hear well enough to know. It was him. He was coming. Finally.

Fear tightened her throat. The old woman told herself that she would ignore him this time. She wouldn’t tell him her secrets, not any more. Because once you told him your secrets he kept them. Forever.

She felt rather than saw the doorknob being turned, and her body stiffened as she watched the door yawn wide. She could only barely glimpse the outline of his body as he emerged from the fabric of the night.

No, please not tonight go away go away I’m a poor old woman why won’t you leave me alone—

“Hello.” His voice was soft, but she heard it clearly; its cold penetrated to her marrow.

A million miles away, rain drummed at the window.

“Hello, Marian.” She didn’t ask how he knew her name. Of course he knew. Soon, he would know everything, and she, nothing.

“Would you like to talk?”

No, she thought. I don’t. But the dark was so huge, so lonely, and she was a frightened child lost within it. Only he could save her from the darkness, he who was the darkness.

Don’t! a more primitive part of her mind screamed. Don’t! He’s just playing games with you, he’s making you feel like that, he—

But she ignored that voice, drowned it.

“Would you like to talk?” he repeated.

“Yes,” the old woman said. “I would.”

“Tell me something, then.”

“Where should I begin? There’s so much…”

“Anywhere. Tell me anything. We’ve got plenty of time.”

She considered this. “Did I ever tell you about the trip Herman and I took to California?”

“I don’t believe so,” he said.

She opened her mouth, and before she could even think, the words fell from her lips, one after the other, like anxious children tumbling over each other’s heels.