The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

Succulents ^{Conrad Williams}

They went on a long bike ride under a punishing midday sun. Much of it was along well-trodden pathways through scrubby brush. Large swathes of deep sand meant there was little traction; you had to get off and push. Graham was sweating hard by the time they reached Cabo Sardao. He was grateful for the rest; glad too that he’d had to bring up the rear because Felix, his six-year-old son, was struggling more than most. The rest of the group stood around watching their arrival. One of them started a slow handclap that was taken up by the others. He gritted his teeth against the urge to offer a rebuke. Watch your temper, he warned himself. It was something Cherry was often remarking upon.

You ’re getting worse as you grow older… you need to just kick back and not let things irritate you so much… there’s a heart attack up ahead, you know, just waiting for you. Remember that time…

Ricardo, their guide, was talking now in his halting but charming English, about the spits of rock reaching out over the bay. Steep cliffs fell away on either side. Earlier they had watched as intrepid bathers carrying towels inched down the sheer drop, aided only by old ropes left behind by thoughtful climbers. It seemed a big risk to take, no matter that the rewards were your own private beach.

“You walk slowly and carefully if you want to see stork’s nest,” said Ricardo. “If he trips and falls he has wings. You don’t, I think.”

“Do you want to see the nest, Felix?” Graham asked.

“Yeah! Is it storks with the big legs? Or is that herods?”

“Herons. They both have big legs. And so does Sheila over there.”

No need for that, Graham. You’re on holiday. Be friendly.

He thought of Cherry back at the apartment, gorging herself on pastéis de nata and drinking Super Bock by the pool. She had booked them the mountain bike activity as a surprise. Bonding time for you and the ankle-biter, she’d called it. When he asked her why she couldn’t come along too, she grew defensive. You know I can’t deal with heights. I’d hold everybody up.

The other members of the group began moving forward along the narrowing path. Graham took Felix’s hand and followed. He watched Sheila’s backside as she picked her way through the thigh-high grasses. Keep that in your sights and you can’t go wrong, he told himself, then had to stifle laughter. He was thinking of Star Wars for some reason, and of Luke Skywalker guiding his X-wing down to do battle against the Death Star. That’s no moon.

“What are you laughing at, Dad?” Felix asked.

“Nothing. Just mind your step, okay? And keep hold of my hand.”

Graham was envious of those who paid little heed to the precipice. Heat haze smeared the sea-chewed promontories further south. If he squinted he could just make out the car park where they had begun their tour. His boy’s hand loosened in his grip; he reinforced it, and told Felix not to mess around.

Once he could see the nest—an arrestingly large aggregation of criss-crossed sticks that lipped over the edge of the cliff, as if the stork was cocking a snook at its precarious

situation—Graham felt no compunction to get any closer. He didn’t want a photograph; there were no chicks, the stork was not in residence… it resembled little more than an abandoned game of Jack Straws.

“Come on, Felix,” he said. “Let’s get back to our bikes.” He felt his relief grow with every step nearer the trail. So far, this holiday had involved too many of the things he preferred to avoid in everyday life: heights, blistering heat, exertion. He wished he was back at the hotel with Cherry. Felix loved the pool; they could bond themselves silly in there without the worry of punctures, or falling to their deaths, or storks attacking.

Or Sheila’s backside.

Our cruisers can’t repel firepower of that magnitude.

“Are you being okay?” Ricardo asked.

“Fine,” Graham choked, turning around to see the rest of the group queuing up behind them as they inched back along the path. “I must have just breathed in some pollen or something. I’ll be okay in a minute.”

“Take a five,” Ricardo said. “There’s something anyway I want you to look at.”

The group stared at Graham: bovine, sweaty, ill-dressed for the weather and the activity. He could already feel the rough canvas hems of his shorts abrading his skin; there’d be blisters later, or at the very least an ugly red chafing. What happens when middle-aged people get off their arses for a week. Short-sleeved shirts striped with back sweat. Red temples. A sluggishness; a lethargy. He remembered being Felix’s age: football and tag in the back garden for as long as it was light enough to see. Drinks and snacks on the lam. When did you lose that playfulness, that drive? When did you go from let’s play out to let’s lie in?

Ricardo was on his knees in shrubbery that looked as if it had come from a science-fiction film set. The ground was carpeted with stunted plants with thick leaves and fat clustered flowers the color of mustard.

“See this?” he said, pulling one of the flowers clear of its receptacle. An aperture in the ovule wept clear fluid over Ricardo’s fingers. He licked it clear.

“Hideous,” spat Sheila, her voice cracking with amused disgust.

“Not at all,” Ricardo insisted. He took hold of the ovule with both hands and teased it open. There was a clearly audible suck. “This plant she is known as ‘Mothers Tears’,” he said. “Because, look, she is so crying all the time.”

He pulled up a few more of the plump hearts and passed them around. Everyone regarded each other blankly. Graham was reminded of the kids in his class when he handed out musical instruments for the first time.

“Now, you are watching,” Ricardo continued. He lifted the parted ovule and sank his mouth into it. Sheila dropped the plant she was holding and turned her back on their guide. Her face was pale and pinched.

Ricardo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Like all tears of the mother, she is sweet.” He looked straight at Graham. “Now you must try.”

It wasn’t a request. Graham had to persuade himself that he would have looked directly at whoever was standing the closest to him. He realized now that Ricardo, though young and lean, was in fact taller and broader than him. He felt a prickle of nervousness—the same loathsome fear that came calling when he had been a child—at the idiotic thought of what the Portuguese man might do if he did not partake of the plant, which now, he recognized, possessed a musky, earthy odor. An animal smell. A human smell, even.

“I don’t—” he began, but Ricardo only smiled—revealing white teeth interleaved with pale grey fragments from the ovule—and pressed Graham’s hand towards his mouth. He saw the others turning away, surreptitiously ditching the plants they had been given, wiping their hands on their shorts and heading back to the bikes.

He took a bite of the flesh and felt his stomach rise to meet it.

“It’s good, yes?”

Graham said nothing, but swallowed the mouthful. It was sweet, but there was a disagreeable taste too, of earth, of rust. But that was nothing next to the texture, which reminded him of the slither of tripe, eaten when he was a child, with onions. Never again.

“If you are in the hot place, and no potable water, this is saving lives.”

They went back to their bikes and Graham concentrated on keeping his breakfast where he’d put it. He was irked that Felix had not watched him swallow the plant. At least Ricardo seemed to hold him in higher regard. He told Graham to hold back, that the three of them would bring up the rear.

“Your wife,” Ricardo said, once they’d struggled through the remaining sandpits and found a more agreeable rhythm. “She no like the bike?”

Graham balked, convinced the man had just likened his wife to a bicycle. But then he factored in Ricardo’s struggle with the language, and saw how the ambiguity had snared him. “She’s not much of a cyclist, no,” he said.

“You like her ass? It’s nice and round, no? Perhaps too much heft.”

“My wife…”

But Ricardo was staring at Sheila’s backside as she struggled with the incline. Graham looked around at Felix, who was concentrating on his pedaling, and watching the butterflies flirt in the hedgerows.

“It’s a little inappropriate, don’t you—”

“Me, I like a big ass. I like the curvy. I’m skinny as rakes but my girlfriend? She’s built like the fucking tank. Your wife. She is the nice shape. Plenty to grab on to when she take you for a big ride.”

Ricardo was close enough now for Graham to be able to see his teeth again. They were small and gray, packed tightly into a mouth that seemed far too capacious for them. His lips sagged, the color of the strawberry daiquiris Cherry ordered before dinner. Juice from the plant had dried to a glaze on his chin. Shock had shrunk Graham’s windpipe straw narrow; he could produce no noise from it.

“You watch your child,” Ricardo said.

Graham hauled on the brakes and slid to a stop; Felix almost collided with his back wheel. He pulled up a few feet ahead, and stared back at his dad, concern pulling all of his features into the center of his face.

Ricardo seemed genuinely nonplussed. “What is it that went wrong? Your bike, it is old and unresponsive?”

Now he read a very definite slight in their guide’s words. Ricardo knew the language better than he was letting on. Graham’s arms and legs were shaking with anger. He felt weak and febrile, as if he were suffering from low blood sugar. “What do you mean, ‘watch my child’?”

“It is in all the news in the Alentejo region. You have heard of O Sedento?”

“No.” Graham shook his head. His breath was as empty as the dry, pallid drift of seedpods collected at the side of the path. “What is it?”

“Not it. A him. A person. O Sedento. Meaning the English, it is the thirsty.”

“The thirsty?”

“This is the correct.”

“Thirsty for what?”

Ricardo licked his lips and his tongue was like an undercooked steak, far too big for his mouth. He winked. “O Sedento de Sangue. The thirsty of—”

“The bloodthirsty,” Graham corrected him.

“It is like the Draculas coming out of Pennsylvania shadows, no?”

Any other time, Graham would have found Ricardo’s abject malapropisms funny; endearing even. Now they gave him the creeps. He pressed on against the pedals, trying to put some distance between him and the guide. His stomach churned.

They completed their bicycle ride at a car park where a minibus was waiting to take them back to their hotel. While the others stood around admiring the view, Graham told Felix to stand with Sheila while he paid a visit to the toilet. Once there, he urinated lustily, but was appalled to see his stream of urine was the color of rust. Hadn’t he drunk a good liter of water that morning, in preparation for this arduous task? Then it must be the plant’s fault. Yes, there was the same mealy smell; it had gone through him like the odor of asparagus. No more bush tucker. He was looking forward to the evening. Steak all the way. And a carafe of wine.

He left the cubicle and washed his hands; he felt his heart perform a little tumble in his chest.

Remember that time…

Stop it. The one thing he hated about Cherry was the way she was constantly harking back. She never seemed to look forward. Forget that he had lost forty pounds over the last six months. Forget that his cholesterol levels were the lowest they’d ever been, or that he treated his body to a mainly Mediterranean diet these days. No. He imagined her at the table tonight casting disgusted looks at his red meat and chips. You’ll not be needing the dessert menu after all that?

Remember that time…

He didn’t need the reminders. It hadn’t even been a proper cardiac arrest. If anything, it was a shot across the bows. He’d been at school, patrolling the playground with his usual cup of tea (milk, two sugars) when the first signs arrived. He’d been annoyed because he’d been asked by the Head to attend a meeting that evening in his stead, and there was also a problem with Felix who was either being bullied or bullying others depending on the rumors knocking around. Also, that morning he and Cherry had somehow got into an argument during sex, and she had pushed him away. There was an ache in his jaw and a pressure growing—like indigestion—around his breastbone. Later he felt breathless climbing the stairs to the gym after work. He’d decided then, feeling mild palpitations, that exercise was not something he should be doing. A visit to the doctor the following morning led to his GP calling for an ambulance.

A cardiologist conducted an ECG and gave him the all-clear, but there were lifestyle choices to make. He made them. Now his mid-morning tea was sugarless and, invariably, green. He cut down on calories and stepped up the exercise. Butter became olive oil. Battered cod became grilled salmon. He ate salad and brown rice. The pints turned into occasional glasses of red wine. The weight fled from him. But Cherry was unimpressed. Maybe it was jealousy; as they both approached middle age, it was she slowly being overcome by avoirdupois.

Remember that time…

He wondered now, as they filed back into the minibus, whether the juice of the plant had carried some kind of poison that was deleterious to the heart. Felix sat next to him, his head against his shoulder, as he thought of his parents (long dead, both heart attacks) and their love of gardening. His father had only ever referred to a plant using its Latin name, just one of the many ways he had tried to trump his only son’s greater academic achievements.

Now he thought of monkshood and belladonna, of sweetshrub and Christmas rose. Oleander and foxglove. As a child he had loved apricots and rhubarb, but his father had wagged a finger, telling him that he was a step away from a horrible death. Rhubarb leaves contained oxalates that could cause kidneys to fail; cyanide lurked within apricot stones, and would put you in a coma from which you would not revive. He often wondered if his weight gain had come from such nightmare threats: bread and cake, as far as he was aware, could be consumed without any danger of toxicity.

He was nudged awake by Ricardo. They had arrived back at the hotel. The sun was low in the sky, but its heat seemed undimmed. It struck Graham that the juice on the guide’s chin was the color of the vernix that had coated Felix’s body at birth. Stiffly he climbed out of the back of the minibus, trying to combat the beats of nausea. Felix was ahead of him, already trotting down the path to the apartments. He could hear splashing and gales of infant laughter from the pool area. Beyond that was a tennis court, and the soft thwock of volleys. There was no sign of Cherry in their rooms, and no note to explain where she might be. Graham chased Felix into a hot shower and they dressed for dinner. He brushed his teeth but the taste of the plant remained, an oily film on the back of his incisors.

“Let’s find Mummy,” he said.

Cherry wasn’t at the poolside, though a lounger was adorned with proof of her occupancy: a novel by her beloved Patricia Cornwell; a drained glass carrying her plum-colored lip imprint; the silk scarf with which she tied back her hair. He found her at the bar, another strawberry daiquiri before her, laughing too loudly at the things a much younger bartender was saying.

“We made it,” he said, and sat alongside her. One split second. But he noticed it: the expression falling; her flirting over.

Cherry fussed over Felix for a while, telling him what a big boy he was for cycling so far, and for looking after Daddy. They agreed that he could have twenty minutes in the pool before dinner. Cherry took her drink to the poolside table and Graham joined her after ordering a martini for himself. “Productive afternoon?” he asked, as he sat down.

“No need to be snippy.”

“I’m not being snippy,” he said. He shifted in his seat and felt the efforts of the day leap in his muscles. His thighs sang, but it was an agreeable pain, a righteous pain. Tomorrow morning might be a different matter though.

“Did you overdo it today?” Cherry asked.

“Define ‘overdo.’ You booked the exertion… sorry, excursion. Maybe you were hoping it would be too much for me and I wouldn’t make it back. Then you could laugh at shit bartender jokes to your heart’s content.”

“I do worry about you, no matter what you might think.” Graham took a deep swallow of his drink. Ice cold. And what was it they used to say back during his student days, he and the others in the cocktail club? Drier than the dust from a druid’s drill-stick. The guy might have been trying it on with his wife, but he was an excellent barman. The martini suffused him with good will, not least because it helped to mask the flavor of the plant. He gazed at his wife, at the expression on her face, that will we, won’t we look. She seemed ready for a scrap. Was there ever a dinner eaten that benefited from a fug of bad domestic air?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was a good day. I had fun. Felix had fun. We missed you, that’s all.”

“It sounds like it,” she said, but it was mock admonishment, tinged with triumph at having eked out the first apology. She smiled and touched the back of his hand. “Ten minutes more, though, and I’d have been in with that bartender.”

They finished their drinks and lured Felix from the pool with promises of chocolate ice cream. Dinner was good, and Cherry did not comment on the amount of wine he pointedly consumed.

Graham carried Felix—who had been nodding off into his dessert—back to their apartment. His mood was souring again; he could still taste the mother’s tears plant, despite the slick of pepper sauce that had accompanied his steak.

Cherry was already in her sleeping attire, and it was the kind she wore to signal to him that she was not receptive to any kind of night maneuvers. Plain Jane knickers in beige. An unflattering sleep bra underneath one of her skintight yoga tops that was accessible only if you had access to a variety of chisels and pliers. He left her to her nocturnal rituals of cleansers, toners, and moisturizers and returned to the bar.

He was pleased to see that Cherry’s barman was off duty and had been replaced by a woman. He thought of turning on the old charm, but realized he was too tired and agitated. And he just did not feel like flirting. Pain lanced his sides, like the colic he had suffered from greatly as a child. He should have just gone to bed and tried to sleep it off, but the churning of his insides had made him jittery. Some late night fresh air—and fresh it was; cliffs of cloud were rising out to sea, signaling a storm’s approach—might do his efforts to relax later the world of good.

He ordered a glass of tonic water in the hope that the quinine’s analgesic effects would counter his symptoms. He took the drink into a far corner of the dining room where a TV was showing grainy repeats of the evening’s football match. He couldn’t tell who was playing, or what the venue was, let alone what they were playing for. But it was something to focus on while his guts seethed and the wind tested the strength of the building with growing muscle.

“Tastes good.”

Graham jerked in his seat; he was not alone. What he thought was a nest of shadow turned out to be a man leaning against the wall, arms folded. He too was watching the game and Graham had sat directly in his line of sight.

“I’m sorry,” Graham said, meaning it as an apology for blocking his view, but the man took it as a request to clarify his statement.

“The taste. It is good.”

“I’d prefer there was some gin to go with it, but yes, it’s a refreshing drink.”

“Not your glass. The juice in the body. The meal of it.”

Now Graham saw that the man held a newspaper in one fist. He brandished it. Graham couldn’t translate the headline, but he recognized some of the words he had already heard today.

O Sedento.

“Ricardo?”

The guide offered a loose salute in return.

“You sound as if you admire him,” Graham said.

“Who said it was him?”

“A woman then. Whoever it is.”

“Who said woman?”

“Then what? A witch? A curse? A bad dream?” Graham wished he’d go away. He wanted to watch grainy football on a shit TV, drink his tonic water and go to bed.

“I don’t know,” Ricardo said. “Maybe all of those things. Maybe none. Maybe O Sedento is the appetite we all carry. The best of us keep it hidden, no?” He folded his newspaper and slotted it into his back pocket. He touched a finger to his forehead. “I sorry. I don’t mean to annoy. Have a good night. Do not go to bed thirsty, yes?”

Any other day and Graham—who hated confrontation, hated the feeling he might have slighted someone in some vague, infuriatingly British way—would have offered some sop in reply, bought the guide a drink, invited him to stay.

But he was glad to see the back of him. The door banged shut and through the window he saw Ricardo’s hair leap in the wind before the shadows consumed him.

Graham finished his drink and headed back to the apartment. Rain was in the air now, a fine mist that the wind seemingly would not allow to settle anywhere. It seethed around him. He was soaked by the time he reached the door.

He toweled himself dry and sat in the chair. Sleep came on like a rehearsal of death. He had not felt like climbing the stairs to bed; the meat from his dinner sat heavily in his stomach as if his teeth had not macerated it first. His hands gripping the arms of the chair, looking too much like the bleached white carapaces of dead crabs they’d seen in the harbor earlier that week. His sweat was dry glue on his skin. His gut rumbled; it was as if the plant had spoiled him for any sort of nourishment.

For some reason he was thinking of the first time he had seen Cherry, on a quadrangle in the university where they had both studied. He was coming to the end of his first year of some Mickey Mouse degree that would prepare him for no job at all; she was cramming for her finals, with a placement at a City bank already secured… but that was knowledge for the future. All that he knew at that moment was the back of her neck and that she was curled on the grass and the pile of textbooks by her side. The sweep of her neck, unusually long, the way her hair was up, stray strands teased by the breeze, the dimples either side of her spine…

He stared at those dimples until he was sure she could feel the weight of his scrutiny; she sat up, her head twitching. She planted a hand in the grass and pivoted on it. Insane dream logic showed him Felix within the circle of her arms, though he was seven years away from being born.

Everything around them shivered, as if he was watching it on a TV screen with a bad reception. And then the mown grass was gone, and he was alone with his family, on the nearby beach where an ancient ship was rusting into the shingle. She dragged Felix away, the both of them casting fearful glances back over their shoulders. They disappeared inside a giant rent on the ship’s port side. He followed, but every time he called their names, the juices in his throat caused him to gag.

He pressed his hands to his eyes and pushed until he saw shoals of color sweeping across that inner dark and when he opened his eyes again he was alone in the room and it was full night, and the storm had matured, was battering the coast and their door was flapping open in the wind.

Alien flavors rose in his craw.

“Cherry?” he called out.

There was no answer. He thought she might have drunk a little too much and decided to reignite the flame he’d seen hopping between her eyes and those of the young bartender. Or maybe she’d decided to go for a midnight dip in the pool. Or maybe she’d just conked out after her long day of leisure.

He closed the door and clattered up to the bedrooms. Empty. Felix’s bed was a mess of blankets, as if he’d suffered restless dreams. Or, his mind mauled itself, he’d struggled with an assailant as he was snatched from his bed.

He checked the bathroom in the insane hope that they’d decided to have a late shower together, but every room was empty. He returned to the lower level, almost tripping on the spiral staircase, and flew into the rain. He called out but his voice was spirited away by the thrashing wind. Shutters all across the complex were rattling in their frames, or, where they had not been secured properly, were crashing rhythmically like stoked metal hearts. The trees seemed aghast. The pool area was empty. All the loungers had been tied down but some of the large cushions had been blown free and floated in the water.

Steel blades flashed behind gray cloaks lifting on the horizon. He heard the police helicopter moments after it blatted overhead and watched it, momentarily distracted, amazed that the pilot had braved the violent winds tonight. A spotlight on the choppers belly created a beam busy with rain. It picked out the fevered tops of trees, the roofs, the edges of the cliffs. Had someone been found out there? A body on the crags? His gorge rose again and he tried to let it come: he wanted his stomach to rid itself of the textures and tastes of the plant. But its coagulated syrup was not ready to leave him just yet.

He ran through the hotel grounds to the tennis courts at the rear. In one corner was a gate, which led on to a sandy path to the beach. He was there in minutes, and could see the foam-topped combers on the sea as if they were lit from within. The helicopter was hovering as best it could above the hillside that sloped down to the cliff edge. Figures were arranged upon it, like toy soldiers on a blanket. There were half a dozen black shadows and a single figure in an acid white T-shirt. Even at this distance, Graham could see that it was Ricardo: the wavy hair, the limp posture. He held something in his hands. The uncertain spotlight flashed around and over it, but would not settle. Was it… no, Christ, no. Was it Felix’s jumper?

Ricardo turned to look at him. And then raised his hand as if to wave. And then he dropped, as if he had been instantly deboned. A moment later and the sound of gunfire reached him. The light shifted on the hill; he could no longer see what was happening. The police helicopter was returning along the coast. It passed directly overhead and its light picked out the rusting remains of the ship from his dream.

Was that a figure, slipping back into one of the fissures in the hull? He was torn between going to the hill to confirm what he thought he had seen, and continuing his search for his family. If it was Felix’s jumper, then so what? Maybe Felix had taken it off that morning because he was too hot. Perhaps Ricardo had simply been trying to return it. His mind could not cope with the narratives he was forcing upon everything; he had to cling to the positives. The alternative was too hideous to contemplate.

Graham stumbled back along the rocky outcrop, conscious that the ground fell away from him to needles of rock some thirty feet below. The rain slashed almost horizontally across the path, stinging his face. Here was the channel leading down to the beach where the rusted ship was incrementally disintegrating into the shingle. He passed into a zone of relative calm. Now the wind was negated he could hear the rattle of rain on the decaying hull, the crisp attack of the waves upon the stones.

Lightning jagged around the inlet. The aperture in the bulkhead where the figure had sought shelter was ink black. Iron ribs edged it, splayed inward: presumably this had been where the ship was fatally breached. He approached, conscious that the flowers Ricardo had entreated him to suck were arranged around the failing metal hull as if they were somehow taking nourishment from the oil sweating from the sumps, the soot in the stack, the endless, psoriatic rust.

At the hole he paused. Another level of quiet accumulated. There was a high stench of iron and diesel and rotting marine life. He could hear his breath, ragged in his throat, echoing in the cavernous chamber, unless it was that of another he could not yet see. He bit that thought off at the root and spat it away. He called his wife’s name and it fell dead at his feet, as if poisoned by this air.

He was about to move into the ship and beggar the dangers when lightning arced once more across the night. It lit up the inside of the hull for a millisecond, but that was enough for him to be able to see what looked like the limp remains of a body hanging from a metal spar thrusting down from the ceiling. He was put in mind of filled coat hooks in winter bars. Though darkness had rushed back into the space, it remained imprinted on his retina. Emptied… drained… Or maybe just a coat after all, he hoped. But no: there were crimson-tipped knuckles, where something had been chewing. He imagined the grind of tiny metacarpals in pistoning jaws. A sound like bar snacks being munched.

He staggered backwards and slipped on one of the plant leaves. He fell into a nest of swollen stems. The smell of mother’s tears rose like a terrible seduction. His mouth flooded with juices, all red and raw. To deny them, he tore up a fistful of flowers and sank his teeth into their centers. That sweet, brackish slime burst across his tongue and he drank it down. Now his stomach railed against the stew of textures mingling in his gut and he felt his back arch violently as he regurgitated his meal. Before darkness became absolute, he was able to gaze upon his mess and discern, within the half-digested lumps and granules, the wet gleam of a wedding band upon what was left of a finger.