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

PUJA D. R. McBride

“You’ll like her,” said Mrs. Compton. “She’s a little eccentric, but she’ll be a good neighbor. ”

“I didn’t think twenty miles would seem so far,” Mr. Bannerjee said.

“Any closer to town and you couldn’t afford it. ”

Bannerjee and Mrs. Compton passed green hills and forest as they drove north out of Schenectady. It was like a Union Pacific Railroad calendar: blue sky, a river, picturesque white houses and old barns.

There was space, air and freedom here Mr. Bannerjee hadn’t known in the hot crush of Brooklyn, or in the mad streets of Calcutta where he grew up.

Bannerjee had come to the United States when he was forty; he’d managed a theater on Flatbush Avenue, never married. He’d saved a little money so he could get out of New York when he retired and enjoy the last years of his modest life. There wasn’t much money—but enough to retire upstate if he was thrifty and found a place he could afford.

With this in mind, he’d come to Mrs. Compton’s real estate office in Schenectady.

“I want a small house,” Bannerjee said. “Somewhere I can live quietly.”

Mrs. Compton was condescending; Mr. Bannerjee was not well dressed and his skin was darker than the carpet on her office floor.

“Mr. Bennyjoe ...” she began.

“Bannerjee, please.”

“Bannerjee, yes. How much money do you have?”

“Why don’t you just show me what you have and I’ll tell you if I’m interested.” Compton pulled out a thick binder from a shelf behind her desk and thumped it down impatiently. She spoke as she turned the plastic sleeves into which had been inserted Polaroid snapshots of property around Schenectady. “Here’s a charming Cape Cod,” she said. “$125,000.”

The house was tiny and there was a tract development nearby. The pond which backed the property looked shallow and brackish. “Excessive,” Bannerjee said.

“Then here’s a colonial with an acre, and the interstate runs along one side. $110,000.”

“No,” Bannerjee said.

“No?”

“No, Mrs. Compton. I don’t want to buy. What do you have for rent?”

Mrs. Compton looked as though Mr. Bannerjee had just thrust his brown hand up her dress.

“Rent?”

“Rent.”

Compton slammed the binder shut and pulled another, considerably thinner, from the shelf.

They looked at two or three places before Bannerjee saw the house next door to Mrs. Hammond: small, unpretentious, twenty miles north of Schenectady near a wooded hill with a small stream.

“Mrs. Hammond grows roses,” Mrs. Compton said. “She has a big gray cat and no neighbors. Nice lady, nice house. She only wants three hundred a month.”

It seemed too reasonable to be true.

But it turned out to be just what Bannerjee wanted. The house was ordinary: a single large bedroom, a sunny kitchen whose window faced Mrs. Hammond’s house, and a white picket fence bisecting the property. Reclined on this picket fence lazily switching his tail and purring loudly enough to be heard across the yard, was Mrs. Hammond’s cat.

“Muffin,” Compton said.

And Mrs. Hammond was nice. A nice American lady with a nice American face: open, and ingenuous. Her eyes were pale and glistened; her hair was white and a little wild, her figure intact. She’d been tending her roses and wore gloves when she shook Mr. Bannerjee’s hand.

Mrs. Compton introduced them.

“You’re from India, then?” Mrs. Hammond asked Mr. Bannerjee. “I’ve never been there. But I saw Ghandi. Let me show you my roses.”

They crossed the lawn. “I’ve raised roses for twenty years,” Mrs. Hammond began, “since my son was killed. I dote on them. They’re my children now.” She cupped one enormous red rose in her hand and smelled it. “Like Heaven.”

“I couldn’t grow them in New York,” Bannerjee said. “The air was bad and the winos kept stepping on them. I like it here ...”

But Mrs. Hammond had drifted away to her roses and her careful, delicate pruning.

Mrs. Compton whispered in his ear. “Her son died in Viet Nam. Maybe she’s a little more eccentric than I remember.”

Mrs. Hammond turned to them.

“When would you like to move in, Mr. Bannerjee?”

It took Bannerjee two weeks to move up from his shabby apartment in New York, and he felt as though he’d been let free from prison. He settled into his little house, arranged his furniture, and fixed a small altar for Kali in one corner of his bedroom.

Bannerjee had worshiped the goddess since he was a child acolyte in the temple at Kalighat. Even though he’d been in America twenty-five years and had lost most of his Asian habits, he’d never felt comfortable giving up the cruel black goddess. She was the deity of disaster and plague, of death and destruction and placating her was assurance of a good, safe life.

Maybe true, maybe not, but better, Bannerjee thought, to worship her with skepticism than abandon her and risk trouble. So he offered every morning a little rice, a flower, a dash of cologne, occasionally a piece of fruit. Nothing too terrible had ever happened to him, so perhaps there was something to it.

Mrs. Hammond called over the fence one day to invite Bannerjee for lemonade on her front porch. It was July and the day was sultry.

Bannerjee found Mrs. Hammond swinging in her comfortable old porch swing with Muffin beside her. A small wicker table was set with a pitcher and two tall glasses of ice. Sweat drooled down the sides of the glass pitcher.

“Mr. Bannerjee,” Mrs. Hammond began when he sat down, “you must have had an interesting life growing up in India.”

“I suppose I did.”

“What part of India are you from?”

“I was born in Calcutta.”

“I see,” Mrs. Hammond said. “You know, my son Frank was killed in Viet Nam.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“And now my Henry’s dead, too.” Mrs. Hammond shook her head and looked across the yard to her roses. “All the men in my life are dead.”

Bannerjee was a little embarrassed. He wanted to excuse himself.

“But I have my roses and Muffin,” she said dreamily. “Cats and roses, roses and cats.”

“Well,” Bannerjee said. “I’m next door. You’re not entirely alone. If there’s anything I can do . . .”

Before he could finish, Mrs. Hammond drained her lemonade with a loud gulp. Then she chewed her ice. Her teeth ground and grated.

Bannerjee sipped his lemonade and looked at the roses again. They were vivid in the afternoon sun, like little bloody eruptions.

“Cats and roses,” Mrs. Hammond said again as though it were a chant.

And then she took a large bite from her lemonade glass.

Bannerjee stared.

He watched her bite through the glass again.

She cut her tongue; she ground blood and glass between her teeth. Her gaze was distant and pink drool crept down her chin and along her jaw.

Muffin hissed.

When Mrs. Hammond had eaten the last of her glass, she dabbed at her red mouth with a white handkerchief until the blood stopped.

She turned to Bannerjee. “You know, I hate old ladies who sit around talking about their troubles. Don’t you, Mr. Bannerjee?”

Bannerjee was fascinated by a crusty bit of dried blood at the corner of Mrs. Hammond’s mouth, and he watched it dance as she spoke.

“What?” he asked.

“I asked if you hate old ladies who sit around and talk about everything that’s wrong. ”

“I suppose I do.” He paused. “Mrs. Hammond, are you all right?”

Her smile was sincere and affectionate. “Why, yes. Why do you ask?”

Bannerjee shook his head.

“Now don’t you worry about me, Mr. Bannerjee,” Mrs. Hammond said. Muffin had moved to the furthest corner of the porch swing. “I’ve got my roses and Muffin and my lovely house. Everything I need. And a devoted new neighbor.”

Mr. Bannerjee wondered if he’d just hallucinated. But there was a deep cut on Mrs. Hammond’s lip, a bloody handkerchief in her hand, and only one lemonade glass.

Bannerjee set his glass down and rose to go.

“So soon?” Mrs. Hammond asked. “We were just getting to know one another.”

“I’m afraid I still have unpacking to do,” Bannerjee lied. “Please excuse me, Mrs. Hammond. Perhaps you’ll come for tea one day.” He prayed she wouldn’t accept.

“If you need help, Mr. Bannerjee, just call me.” Then she added, “And if I want anything, I’ll come to you.”

For the next couple of days Bannerjee tried sorting out what had happened.

Was eating glass something Mrs. Hammond did customarily? Did she do it compulsively or did she plan it to put him off? Eating glass was an unreasonable thing to do, but not unheard of in circuses and certain religions. Besides, Bannerjee was from India and was no stranger to strange things.

At the market one day Mr. Bannerjee paused to read an article in the National Enquirer: “Dad Downs Razor Blades and Light Bulbs.” A color photograph pictured a middle-aged gentleman with a mouthful of razor blades and a plate of light bulbs set before him like a feast.

Maybe Mrs. Hammond wasn’t so strange after all.

The middle of August passed and rain swept in the afternoons eastward over the wooded hills. Mrs. Hammond’s roses blossomed profusely and she brought Bannerjee an armful twice a week.

She stroked their soft petals.

“Roses have always been my favorite,” she said.

“Sad that Schenectady is too cold to grow jasmine,” Bannerjee said, recalling the fragrant nights of his childhood in Calcutta.

“But roses,” Mrs. Hammond said. “There’s no comparison.”

Bannerjee laid a rose out for Kali each morning in gratitude for the good fortune of his quiet, comfortable life.

Bannerjee noticed, too, a subtle change in Mrs. Hammond when the rain came. He couldn’t make out what that change was—it wasn’t physical and she was still pleasant when she spoke to him. But there was a distance in her manner now as though she regarded him from the top of a high hill. And there was an uncomfortable linger in her stare which made Bannerjee anxious.

He added a few minutes to his morning devotions and kept his glassware locked up.

One afternoon when clouds rolled over the sun, Mr. Bannerjee went out to get his mail from the box in front of his house. On his way back, he glanced at Mrs. Hammond’s yard. The sun came out at that moment, blinding him, and he shaded his eyes.

He thought he saw something large scuttling through Mrs. Hammond’s rose garden. Something white and red.

Perhaps a dog had gotten in.

Then the sun slipped once again behind the clouds, and in the shade Bannerjee saw Mrs. Hammond squatted like an ape among her rose bushes. She purred like a delighted child, snapped off a long, thick, thorny branch and chewed it like celery.

Bannerjee’s heart skipped.

Mrs. Hammond had already stripped her bushes of their blooms and was gnawing the shrubs themselves now.

Muffin sat in his customary spot on the fence watching Bannerjee watch Mrs. Hammond.

Suddenly Mrs. Hammond paused, sniffed the wind, and turned around.

Bannerjee dropped his mail and stooped to retrieve it. He hoped Mrs. Hammond hadn’t seen him.

But when he stood up she was staring at him with half a thorny branch hanging from her bloody mouth. Blood smeared her chin and throat; thorns had torn her hands and scored her face. Blood seeped from the ragged gashes.

But it wasn’t that which made Bannerjee’s skin crawl.

It was her grin, her smile, the strange curl of Mrs. Hammond’s lips that was part sneer, part surprise, part . . .

Desire.

Bannerjee called silently on Kali Ma to protect him.

As calmly as he could, Bannerjee waved, then retreated into his house. He paused inside the door and peered through the window.

Mrs. Hammond had turned back to her botanical feast and Bannerjee heard her munching. His own mouth watered.

In the days which followed, Bannerjee regained much of the religious devotion he thought he’d lost. He moved Kali’s altar from his bedroom to a prominent spot in his living room near the television. He lit jasmine candles. He performed puja twice a day now as he had when he was a child in Calcutta, and he meditated after lunch on the gruesome picture of Kali tacked to the wall. The goddess wore a girdle of human skulls; in one of her four black hands she carried a sword to destroy evil, and in another she carried a dripping severed head.

Her tongue was long and red and fearsome.

Bannerjee was beginning to be a little afraid.

By the first of September when nothing else seemed to have gone wrong next door, Bannerjee decided Kali had responded to his prayers and put things right with Mrs. Hammond. He began feeling cautiously paternal toward the old woman: but for himself and Muffin there was no one around for miles, and surely Mrs. Hammond was lonely.

Bannerjee knew loneliness, too.

Besides, this was America: live and let live. If Mrs. Hammond confined her appetites to glass and rose bushes, it was really none of Bannerjee’s business. He should strive to be friendly, even if she was a little peculiar.

Bannerjee was a good cook. Maybe he could cook something to share with Mrs. Hammond, something Indian, something exotic and spicy.

He spent one whole afternoon cooking a mutton curry; he stood in his little kitchen stirring the green, steamy sauce.

In another pot the mutton simmered.

He swallowed his fear and called Mrs. Hammond.

“Well, Mr. Bannerjee,” she said. “Where on earth have you been? Are you ill?” Her voice was bright.

“Oh no, Mrs. Hammond. I like to be alone. But I thought perhaps you’d like to take dinner with me this evening. I’ve made curry. ”

“Curry, Mr. Bannerjee, how delightful! I’ve never had it. Shall I come over?”

“No. I’ll bring it to you in about an hour.”

“I’ll be on my front porch,” Mrs. Hammond said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

Bannerjee prodded the mutton with a fork and sampled the curry. He decided he must learn to be a better neighbor. Too many years in New York had made him suspicious and uncharitable.

As he poured the sauce and mutton into dishes to carry over to Mrs. Hammond’s house, Bannerjee heard an abrupt shriek. It raised his hackles, but when he looked outside, he saw nothing unusual.

He carried the dinner he’d cooked on a teak tray. When he reached Mrs. Hammond’s front steps, he saw her sitting on the porch swing with her knitting bag in her lap. The porch rail hid her face, but Bannerjee heard her mumbling and growling.

When he gained the porch and saw Mrs. Hammond, she was perfectly still. But an enormous lump swelled in her throat.

And the lump moved.

Between her teeth Bannerjee saw Muffin’s tail switch violently before it disappeared into Mrs. Hammond’s mouth.

Mr. Bannerjee went back to Mrs. Compton’s real estate office the next day.

“Mr. Banjo,” Compton said. She made it clear his visit was an unwelcome distraction. She had also changed her hair; it was an explosion of henna.

“Bannerjee,” said Mr. Bannerjee. “I’m no longer happy at Mrs. Hammond’s. I wish to move.”

“Why?”

“Her cat keeps me awake.”

“I doubt you’ll find anything cheaper,” Compton said. “We can look but it’ll be a waste of time.”

And it was: there was nothing else in Compton’s binders that Bannerjee could afford, and none of the other agents Bannerjee visited that day could help.

He was stuck.

Bannerjee felt Kali had deceived him. Perhaps she laughed at him; he felt abandoned and adrift.

But worse was the change Bannerjee noticed in himself. He’d always been proud of his tolerance, of his generosity toward the plague of human nature, but he no longer felt tolerant or sympathetic where Mrs. Hammond was concerned. And despite Bannerjee’s eastern inclination to find the obtuse and bizarre credible, he found he could not accept the obtuse and bizarre out of context. In India Mrs. Hammond by now would have gained a following, and devotees would have raised a temple in her honor.

But in Schenectady she was just plain frightening.

He sat in the dark safety of his curtained living room watching and listening. He noted that Mrs. Hammond had stopped going out and there were terrible noises from her house. He heard loud groans, the crack of shattering stone, the sharp splinter of wood. He could see Mrs. Hammond’s silhouette at night cast on the drawn shades of her windows, passing restlessly from room to room.

One night Mrs. Hammond’s lights went out and they never came back on. September melted into October, and autumn blazed along the hills. Evenings grew longer and crisper; the stars were brighter and the wind whistled along the marshy banks of the stream behind Bannerjee’s house.

But Bannerjee saw no smoke from Mrs. Hammond’s chimney though temperatures outside dropped below freezing.

At seven o’clock one morning the phone woke Bannerjee.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Banjo?” The voice of an old woman, but not Mrs. Hammond. “Bannerjee.”

“Yes. I’m Gladys, Florence Hammond’s sister.”

“I didn’t know she had a sister. ”

“She has three of them, Mr. Banshee.”

“Can I help you?”

“Well, none of us has heard from Florence in a long time and we can’t get her on the phone. It rings, but she doesn’t answer. ”

“She’s over there,” Bannerjee said. “I can hear her.”

“She gave me your phone number in case of emergency and we’re worried. She hasn’t been the same since her husband died. Would you do us a favor?” Bannerjee was afraid he knew what she was going to ask.

“Would you go over and see if she’s all right? Ask her to call us or answer her phone. ”

Bannerjee was silent.

“Mr. Bannerjee? We’d be very grateful.”

“Is it necessary?”

“I’m afraid it is. I live in Dubuque. I can’t do it myself.”

“Very well.”

“And then you’ll call me back?” Gladys asked. “Here’s my number.”

Bannerjee sat on the edge of his bed watching the picture of Kali on the living room wall through the opened door of his bedroom. Give me courage, Mother, he prayed. I'm your poor servant.

He dressed and went next door. There were loud crashes from inside, but when he rapped they stopped. He hunched his shoulders and shivered.

"Mrs. Hammond?” he called. "Your sister telephoned. She’s worried. Are you all right?”

Silence.

"Mrs. Hammond? Are you sick? Should I call a doctor? I heard you in there.”

Nothing.

He knocked but Mrs. Hammond ignored him.

He put his hand on the cold brass knob.

He turned it.

The door swung on empty air.

Mrs. Hammond’s house was a shell, and if Bannerjee had stepped over the threshold he’d have plummeted to the basement.

He held on to the doorframe with both hands and saw Mrs. Hammond standing on the concrete floor ten feet below.

Her mouth was so stuffed with wood and nails that she couldn’t close it. Her face was bruised and distorted, her lips black and swollen. She resumed chewing, and her teeth made a horrible, rocky sound as she bit through nails and ground wood into paste.

She swallowed.

She smiled.

"Come in, Mr. Bannerjee,” she croaked. "Long time no see.”

From behind the locked door of his bedroom, Bannerjee dialed Gladys.

"Mr. Benchmark?” she said. “How’s Florence?”

"Your sister’s fine. She said she’ll call you.”

"You sound out of breath, Mr. Banksheet.”

"Bannerjee, goddamn it.”

Gladys drew her breath sharply. "I see. Thank you.”

Bannerjee went into his bathroom and threw up.

Winter settled among the naked trees and dying fields. Bannerjee listened to the patter of cold rain on his roof and watched drab English sparrows peck in the ruins of Mrs. Hammond’s rose garden.

Bannerjee prayed for a miracle and wondered why Kali, the spiritual mother of his childhood, the namesake of his birthplace, had abandoned him.

He trapped a sparrow in the front yard with a string and a box, and sacrificed it to Kali in his living room: he twisted its head off with his bare hands. It pecked and screamed till the end and Bannerjee left its bloody pieces on his altar.

Bannerjee stripped and bathed in the stream behind his house as he had done in the Ganges at Varanasi. Only now there was a snow flurry and he caught a bad cold.

In his fever Bannerjee imagined India, the velvety green slopes of tea plantations in the Himalayas around Darjeeling; the slow, muddy Hooghly as it wound across the scorched plains of Calcutta and through the great mildewy pile of the city itself. He recalled a garden in Calcutta, walled off from the noise and dirt of the Chowringhee, a garden with a clear fountain, a macaw in a bamboo cage, a small green snake lurking in the shade of a banyan tree.

But here in upstate New York there was no color, no light, no warmth. Mrs. Hammond was silent and her house was dark.

Bannerjee imagined her walking round and round in her cold basement.

He had a morbid curiosity about what her bowel movements must look like. And he wondered when her appetite might bring her up from the hole which had been her cellar. Maybe she’d crawl up the inside walls of her house like a white-haired termite. Perhaps one cold afternoon he’d see Mrs. Hammond’s face poke through a widening hole in the wall as she gnawed her way through it.

Would she smile then?

Would she recognize Mr. Bannerjee and speak to him, working her mandibles in a parody of speech?

And when she finished off her own house, there was her dead lawn, the trees, and her garage still to go.

And why not the earth itself?

Bannerjee imagined her snuffling along the ground on her tattered stomach, her mouth opened like a shovel, scooping up the frozen black earth like chocolate ice cream, round and round, deeper and deeper.

One still, starry night Bannerjee fell asleep in his chair and dreamed of Kali.

The goddess reared up from a bleeding plain and reached for him with a thin, bloody hand. Her eyes were shot with red and yellow, and swimming in her black, bottomless pupils were a headless gray cat and sparrows with human faces. She shuddered; she closed her eyes. Her thin red tongue darted from between her fangs. She massaged herself.

She trembled and the earth quaked.

Bannerjee awoke immediately and slowly began to understand. How could he have been so stupid not to have realized before?

Bannerjee had seen goats sacrificed in the sunny courtyard of Kalighat south of Calcutta; even tied together and awaiting the priest’s knife against their throats, the goats had mounted one another.

He’d seen a devotee of Kali immolate himself on the banks of Lai Diggee, the smoky red flames dancing across the rank water.

And in secret places on the Maidan after midnight on certain nights of the year, Kali received the flesh of abandoned babies.

How could Bannerjee have trifled with the goddess and thought it was she who trifled with him?

Bannerjee bathed and shaved and dressed. He put on his coat and overshoes because it was cold and the snow was deep.

He walked to Mrs. Hammond’s house.

He mounted the steps to her front porch.

He opened her front door and balanced himself on the threshold. The stench inside was incredible.

It was gloomy down there but the sun was rising and cast a little light. Something moved from a dark corner of the basement.

Mrs. Hammond stared up at Bannerjee from her pit.

She was hideous: drawn, yellow, bruised, and crusted with blood. Her clothes were shreds and Bannerjee saw the dried, flat bags of her breasts. Her hair was matted and filthy, her legs thin and oozing with sores. Black toenails showed through holes in her tennis shoes, and scattered at her feet were the half-eaten bodies of brown rats.

Mrs. Hammond grinned and moved her lips as though trying to speak, but no words came. Just a soughing breath through her broken teeth.

Her mouth watered.

Bannerjee breathed deeply the rank air which rose from the creature below.

He closed his eyes, pictured the warm, walled garden of his childhood, offered a single, simple prayer to Kali.

Then he jumped.