The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection
- Автор: Датлоу Эллен, Виндлинг Терри
- Год: 1992
- Язык: английский
- Год: St.Martin’s Press
- Жанр: Ужасы
Электронная книга - «The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection». Краткое содержание книги:
He sat down in the enormous armchair that faced the couch. He crossed his legs, meticulously adjusted his pantleg. He wasn’t a very big man; he was as thin as anybody I’d ever met under a bridge or in a shelter, as if, like them, he was always hungry—though I doubted it was because he couldn’t afford food. For some reason, I’d thought he’d be bigger. I wondered what Oliver, who thought he knew everything there was to know about him, would think of him in person. “I ain’t smart enough to go to some hot-shit yuppie school,” Oliver had sneered. “You’re the schoolgirl. You go, and then you come back and tell us.” But I was never going back. I hadn’t loved Oliver; I just let him think I did. He wasn’t very powerful; for a while he could keep me safer than I could keep myself, but now I was ready for more.
There was a long silence. I noticed that I couldn’t hear anything from the street or from the rest of the building, only his breathing and mine. Wondering about that, I pressed the back of my fist against the wall over my head; the wall was spongy and gave a little, like living tissue, and before I could stop myself I’d gasped and jerked my hand away.
He saw me do that, too, of course, and I knew he was keeping score. This was some creepy kind of exam. He sat there quietly with his thin white hands looking very thin and white against the wide chartreuse arms of the chair, and he looked at me calmly without saying anything. I was used to that. There was this chick in a doorway up across from Columbia who looked at you that way; you knew she saw everything about you and kept a list in her head, but I’d never heard her say anything, even the night she came after me with her nails and teeth and stole my sandwich—whole, still wrapped in wax paper—that I’d found on a table in a sidewalk cafe that lunchtime and been saving all day. The next day I went to her doorway and just sat on the stoop beside her and stared at her, to see what she’d do. She didn’t do anything, so finally I gave up.
I didn’t give up this time. I sat as quietly as he did and stared back at him. I didn’t exactly look him in the eye; his eyes were too much for me. But I did stare at his face, and all of a sudden I was seeing a tiny drop of bright red—blood, I supposed—on the point of one of his teeth.
He spoke first, but not because I’d won anything. “What is your name?”
I couldn’t think of any reason not to tell him. “Marie.”
“And your surname?”
That was none of his business, and I wasn't part of that family anymore anyway. So I said, “Bathory,” just to see what his reaction would be, sort of the way I’d sometimes shit on the sidewalk in front of some snooty restaurant.
He chuckled. He was laughing at me. “And why do you wish to attend the scholomance, Marie Bathory?”
I was ready for that one. I said what Oliver had told me to say, although I didn’t always follow his orders no matter what he did to me. “Hey,” I shrugged, “beats living on a heat grate, y’know?”
His face sharpened like a blade, and in one swift sharp motion he had stood up. “You are wasting my time.”
I panicked. I’d overplayed the tough and ended up sounding stupid. As usual, Oliver didn’t know what he was talking about. I told him, too soon and too eagerly, “When my grandmother died they drove a nail through her forehead.”
“Interesting,” he said, and I relaxed a little. “Why?”
I was confused by that, and my temper flared. I put my feet down on the thick carpet, leaned forward, even raised my voice. “What do you mean, why? Why do you think? They thought she was a vampire.”
He nodded. “And was she?”
I started to give him some smart-ass answer, but then I was remembering my grandmother and having to fight back tears. She’d loved me. I remembered a lot of whippings, a few times locked in a dark rustling closet, but I’d deserved that. I also remembered feeling safe with her, and noticed, and understanding that my grandma was the most powerful person in the whole world and that if I was good and did what she told me I could grow up to be just like her.
But she died. She hadn’t been powerful enough. Some lady in a shawl came and hammered a nail through her forehead. I remembered the shiny nailhead among the soft wrinkles between her eyes. My father had pulled her yellow-white hair down low, trying to hide the nail, but he’d made no move to pull it out. That’s how I knew she was really dead, and no one would ever love me again.
Sometimes, though, I looked at the New York City buildings I’d lived among all my life, and saw them the way she must have seen them when her own grandmother brought her here from Rumania. Mountains, they became, and the alleys crevasses, and lightning could be made to strike from the lake in Central Park or from the crowded ocean beaches as powerfully as from any isolated Carpathian pool deeper than a dream.
“Yeah, she was.” I’d never said it out loud before, though I’d always secretly believed it. Foolishly, I added, “I miss her.”
“Interesting. And your grandmother the vampire told you about the scholomance, did she?”
“No. Oliver did.” That was a lie, partly. She’d told me a little—about the scholomance, about the tenth scholar, but when I kept asking her about them she’d shut up, as if she was sorry she’d told me anything at all. Then Oliver came along, and he told me more, and I wanted to be that tenth scholar, and would be, because I had to be for me and my baby.
He didn’t ask who Oliver was. It wasn’t as if he already knew; he just didn’t care. So much for Oliver’s power; I smiled to myself. When Oliver died, I wondered, would there be a shooting star? And would anybody notice it among all the city lights?
“Who is the father of your child?”
“I don’t know.” That was the truth, but I wouldn’t have told him if I had known. On an impulse, watching his face, I added, “You can be if you want.” His face changed. Not much, but enough that I knew I’d scored a point. He smiled, showing more of his teeth under the moustache.
“Nobody gave my grandmother a candle while she was dying,” I heard myself say. “So she died without light. She always said that was the worst thing that could happen to anybody, to die without light. ”
He understood what I meant better than I did. “And that is why you want to study at our school.”
“I guess.” The tenth scholar wouldn’t die without a light, I was pretty sure of that. It was hard to believe, but maybe the tenth scholar wouldn’t die at all.
He was moving around the room. Gliding, really; I half-expected him to vaporize at any second. I wondered if he really could do that, and if he could teach me; I wondered what I’d do if he left me, too. “Not a bad reason to apply,” he said. “But you must understand that you will be expected to study diligently. To apply yourself. ”
“I’m not stupid,” I said, feeling stupid.
“Only ten scholars are accepted into each class.”
“I know. And one stays. As payment.”
“Correct. So far, I see, you have done your homework.”
“I’ll be the one to stay,” I said boldly.
“Ah, my dear, but I make that choice.”
“You’ll choose me.”
He came too close to me again and peered down from his great height. The drop of blood was gone; his teeth gleamed. “Marie Bathary, do you know who I am?”
“Vlad Tepes,” I said, giving the first name Oliver’s broad Brooklyn “a” and pronouncing the last name “Teeps,” the way Oliver did.
He exploded into laughter and I was mortified. “Tsepesh!” he exclaimed. “It is pronounced ‘Tsepesh’!” I tried and failed to say it right. He bent like a huge shiny insect and took my face in his cold hands. “Marie. Say it. Vlad Tepes, the Impaler. ”