The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Sixth Annual Collection

PLAYING WITH M. R. Scofidio

The evening had begun to sour when Vi demanded they play a party game.

The soap actor spoke through a half-chewed bit of cocktail sausage. “Oh, Christ, whatever for? Aren’t you all bored to death as it is? Come out to the garden with me, darling, I’ll show you a party game you won’t forget for a while.”

Scots bastard, Hugh thought, sulking over a canned Club cocktail. He’d just about managed one hand up Tamsin’s black silk pencil skirt when Vi had come storming into the dining room, scrounging for a cigarette. The rest of the party soon followed, in the time-honored tradition of parties. Go looking for attention, everyone ignores you; wander off for a bit of reflection on your own, or to watch the submarine races, and the whole damn world wanders off after you. This room had quickly grown just as smoky as the kitchen and sitting room were, and even noisier. The hostess probably would have preferred her guests stay out of her expensively furnished dining room, but wasn’t there to protest. Rumor had it she was nicely occupied in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

The actor threw Tamsin a stage wink. Hugh couldn’t believe her falling for it; she smiled as though the big fake had presented her with the most precious of jewels. He suffered the death of his erection, but not much, for Hugh was drunker than he’d realized and besides, it was only a small erection.

A man dressed for the evening in a pink, turquoise and black polyester track suit asked his companion if she had seen Jenny in her new beer commercial. The woman, whose upper head was shaved, the lower strands of hair having been tortured into several spikes hung with tiny paper replicas of flags of the world, replied, No, but it seemed that since Jenny had acquired a very minor role in a Beeb One comedy, her personality traits were rapidly progressing from merely annoying to positively insufferable.

“Why must you share your predilection for lung cancer with me?” Hugh asked no one in particular, not really expecting an answer in the din of people all talking just to hear the sound of their own voices.

Vi said very loudly, “All I really wanted, Tam, dear, was a bit of privacy so we could talk. Who are all these fucking people?”

Tamsin giggled as the actor poured wine in her glass.

“I know how to get rid of everybody. Let’s play party games!”

Hugh tried to maneuver himself over to the fridge wherein lay canned cocktails stacked to heaven, this without touching his ex-wife.

“That sounds marvelous. What kind of party games?”

“You would say that, you tart. When I’m trying to get rid of everybody.” “Don’t listen to a word Vi’s saying. She’s out of her mind on drink and pills, has been for years. ” This from a tall man in a wrinkled brown suit, whose beard grew in several different directions and colors.

“What time is it? Are we too late for the pub?”

Hugh was well aware Vi wasn’t at all interested in having Tamsin to herself for a chat. The buddy-buddy thing was an act. She had just figured out that Hugh wanted Tamsin, and how she could cock it up for him; appearing in the dining room looking for cigarettes, that greased-back Edinburgh hambone in tow. Since their divorce last spring, Vi managed to put all her energies into finding ways of thwarting his desires, ruining his uncertain attempts at starting new relationships, reminding him during late-night phone calls of his inability to get himself off the dole and into a job again. He hated answering the phone at night but he hated the new silence in the house even more. He was very weak, he knew, but all he could do was wish things were different, and mere wishing never worked on anything. How often he had sincerely wished Vivien dead. She still held his three piece suit firmly in her grasping little hand, if no longer for pleasure. This she reminded him of now with a malevolent little smile she threw at him, over her shoulder.

“Yes, a party game is definitely in order. See, now it’s working! The room’s only half as full as it was.”

“Because this is the most boring party anyone’s been to in London all year,” said the actor, blowing kisses towards Tamsin’s breasts. “What party game are we going to play?”

Hugh snapped the ring off of a fresh canned cocktail with a great and deliberate violence. “Why not Charades, or Go Piss Up A Rope?”

“Don’t bother to say anything if you’re just having a go, Hugh,” said Vi. “I want real suggestions. Nothing obscure or American. You remember Hugh’s from California,” she announced to the room at large, as if it were a disease.

“Look,” said a very slight man in spectacles and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle jacket, “this whole area is supposed to be built over plague sites. Why don’t we have a seance?”

“Bril-liant,” said Vi.

“And you could write a story about it, Nigel.”

“I don’t write ghost stories, I write splatterpunk fantasy. ”

“Well, anyway, we can’t have a seance because no one here knows how,” said the man with the beard. “It’s supposed to be quite dangerous unless you have an experienced medium running things.”

“Rot,” said Nigel. He reminded Hugh of a worm inside a big shiny black apple skin, with studs on it. “All you need is a round table, and a candle, and some people to form a circle. Really, John.”

“Would our hostess mind?”

“Who cares?” The actress named Jenny cradled a marble lighter in fluid hands. A tiny blue flame clicked up, illuminating her features and the angle of the cigarette as her mouth twisted its tip down into the fire, reflecting tiny dots of fire in her darkened eyes.

“Jenny, you’ve become insufferable since you’ve started working again.”

“You just wish you were, Nigel. Working, that is. At anything.”

Wrong thing to say to a writer, Hugh thought, watching Nigel’s shoulders stiffen.

“I don’t know if any spirits would want to come to our seance, with all this carping going on,” said Tamsin softly. Hugh tried to catch her eye again, without success. Earlier, she’d been eager enough to run off with him, talking quietly and then later ardently returning his kiss in a darkened hallway, tongue swiff and teasing, tender breasts arching into his hands. Now she seemed to not want to know. It was a shame, for they were so much alike, sensitive, interested in the same things, art and wildlife and jazz.

He was beginning to get used to it, this far-reaching influence of his ex-wife on his existence. In Wood Green Shopping City, at parties given by mutual friends, even going to the sweet shop up the street to buy an Evening Standard—she always seemed to be there, with her crude jokes and painfully loud voice, like a curse. So here he was still wishing there were something he could do to be rid of her, but not having the least idea what. Except to maybe blot her out of his thoughts with alcohol. And to go on wishing, wishing healthy Vi would just turn around and drop dead.

“Right. Everybody around the table. Who’s going to find us a candle?”

“There must be candles, probably in that cupboard. Hugh, you have a look, go on now, there’s a lovely man.”

Why don’t you do it yourself, he said. But only in his head. He found himself mechanically moving toward the shelves of china and crystal. The sound of trembling valuables shimmered on the air as he jiggled the drawers out, one by one. God how he hated that woman he had married.

“Are there any rules to this?”

“Of course there’re rules, you idiot. Haven’t you ever watched a horror movie in your life?” Vi’s laughter prevented her remark from becoming an insult. “You have to have a medium; you have to have all the lights turned off—and you have to not break the circle you’ve made with your hands before the spirits have finished speaking. ”

“What a load of old wank. ”

“What if we need to use the loo?”

“Go pee now. I don’t want you spoiling my game.”

Hugh sat back in his chair, looking at Vi through narrowed eyes. In the soft light of the candle flame he could see reminders of why he had fallen in love with her: her gleaming dark helmet of hair, the grace of her movements, her sexual exuberance. He opened his eyes wide. He made himself look at the pouches of fat beginning to lodge around her jaw and chin, fleshing out her cheeks where the skin had started to roughen and pock; he saw how her hair had dulled, and her eyes had faded, lacking focus now even though she was sober. Her cigarette jutted from her frown, stray ash skittering across the polished surface of their hostess’ mahogany table.

They ringed themselves around it, clasping hands. Hugh found himself opposite Tamsin. The actor’s hand came from behind her neck to settle comfortably in the nest of her fingers. Vi appointed herself medium. She raised her arms dramatically, the hands she gripped following into the air, perhaps against their will—but everyone was taking Vi’s dictum quite seriously and would not break the circle, even though the only spirits present now swirled over the bottom of Hugh’s cocktail can.

“Eenie-meenie, chilly-beanie, the spirits are about to speak!”

“Very funny, Hugh. Do you mind?”

“What happens next, Vi?”

“We close our eyes, and wait.”

For the first time Hugh noticed the grandfather clock next to the dish cupboard, and that it ticked, for in the ensuing silence its ticking was monstrously loud. He was having a hard time sitting straight in his chair, and now that they were all holding hands there was a niggling but insistent itch plaguing his nose, and he badly wanted a cigarette.

“Aren’t we supposed to ask questions?”

“Shhhhh.”

“No, I mean really. I mean, how are we supposed to raise any ghosts of whatever unless we ask them is anybody there, that sort of thing?”

“Raise spirits. Oi! That’s a laugh. Old Vi can barely raise herself out of bed in the morning.”

There was a skitter of laughter around the table. Then Tamsin spoke, very softly. “I don’t like this much. Maybe we should stop.”

“IS ANYBODY THERE?” Vi bellowed, ignoring her. “Is. . .there. . .anybody ... in the room?”

“Best not to wake the dead,” intoned Nigel, in his very best Hammer voice.

Vi snapped, “We must know if anybody is there!”

There was someone’s sharp intake of breath as the candle flame shot straight up, then wavered, elongating itself, a slender pillar of fire rising slowly towards the ceiling. Hugh had just opened his eyes preparatory to standing up to leave but then he saw Vi’s shut eyes through the flame, her mouth working soundlessly, and he sat back in his chair, fascinated. Now there was a voice that seemed to come from somewhere under the table, weak and thin and high, she’s very good at this and I never even knew, but the voice began to grow stronger as the flame rose higher; and faintly, as though very far away, there was the steady insistent ringing of a bell. The hand on his right dug its nails into his skin, almost causing him to yelp. Now there were words. One word. He thought it was bum, said over over and over again, a mumbled sobbing chant. Then the voice broke, falling, distorting like the voice does on a record stopped mid-revolution with a clumsy finger, its tones dropping to an unnatural deepness and Hugh had known Vi sixteen years and he knew she was not capable of this and his hair stood straight up on his head as the voice cried, Burnt in the streets, burnt, the whole pile, you cannot breathe clean air for the ashes of the dead floating in it. Shall London ever smell sweet again? Ay burn burn burn.”

Hugh saw the candle flame bend and stream towards Vi, entering her open mouth. She sat motionless as fire illuminated her face from within, tiny spurts of yellow sparking her nostrils, red flushing her skin like blood rising inside her skull; fire twisted out of her ears, encircling her neck, sheeting her entire body so that she sat motionless in the flame’s burning heart.

Jenny began to whimper. Hugh hushed her sharply. “Not now.”

Everyone stared as Vi s mouth opened; her tongue, yellow and unburnt, licked red teeth. Burn burn burn,’ said the voice, its bass music intertwined with the faint ringing of the bell. The medium’s lips did not move.

Stop it, someone said. “Stop it, Vi, please. Someone stop her.”

“It’s not Vi.”

No it s not, thought Hugh, and we mustn't break the circle. Vi sat with her eyes closed, a human torch, the inhuman voice issuing, horrible and thin, from her open mouth. He never knew what he was doing until he was already out of his chair and the force of his movement had freed his hands from the others’ with a sweaty, smacking sound as he cried out, “We must know: is there anybody there?” He saw the people on either side of him as though they were something he was dreaming; he saw their hands fall back onto the polished round surface of the table, and he staggered back when Vi’s eyes snapped open and looked straight, accusingly at him. But the look lasted only for the briefest of moments. She burst into real flame before anything else could happen. He felt heat blazing on his face and his ex-wife’s screams were nearly intolerable as she burnt alive in front of all of them, unable to move herself as though she had been tied to that chair, and though they tried they couldn’t put the fire out. It burnt with a bright and steady glow until there was nothing left but a few blackened bones, and a terrible reeking smell that the hostess was never again able to get out of her house.