The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

pooka. Or maybe I was talking to my hallucinatory self. Did it matter?

Derrick shook his head. "No, I come because you of the slyness are. You say, 'No bargains!' but then you be the clever one and go through the cha

"I don't understand," I said.

"You be joking all the way through, I see. Okay! But the penguins, you give them the freedom! You get them out of the prison and to going home! Hooray!"

I remembered. "No bargain," I had said, and this creature, this pooka, had let Da

"So I keep the bargains!" Derrick shouted. "We make the deals! Is done! Done deal! I see you at the Christmases with the ex-wives of your anger. I confess, I be the spy on the wall. I see your

true wishes, and I obey them. And no troubles for you, be so assured of this."

"What have you done to Da

bright blue!-and teeth every which way like a ragged shark's mouth and, from this mouth, a high, keening sound that was, I'm sure, laughter.

Derrick's head exploded with a bang, so loud that my eardrums seemed to have burst in sympathy. I fell back and watched as Derrick, headless, ran in circles, making a

huh, huh, huh, sound, flapping his arms like some big water bird slowly building for take-off, before he came to rest with his back to the wall, and slid down the wall, legs straight out in front of him, convulsing briefly, and finally growing utterly still, above him a great swatch of bright red like a thick exclamation point ending in his body.

I went back into the bedroom. I didn't have any plan, exactly, but I didn't need one because the phone rang. I answered it. It was Da

Da

I walked to the refrigerator and opened the door. The fridge was empty except for a six pack of beer and Gunther's head. I poured the six pack out in the sink, and went back and regarded Gunther's head again.

I don't feel good about this. I mean, I'm not a complete asshole, and I realize that my problems with Gunther weren't Gunther's fault. I could have explained that to that stupid pooka if he'd taken the time to ask.

I do have to say that even in death Gunther had managed to hold on to his deeply refined, disapproving air. He wasn't wearing a horrified grimace; he seemed sort of serene. I guess I'm saying that he didn't appear to have suffered. I double-bagged him in black plastic trash bags and took him down to my car.

They never did find Gunther's body. They won't find his head, either.

I know I had a part in Gunther's demise, but it would be hard to explain the nature of my involvement to the police, and I'm not going to try. You're my sponsor, and I trust you. This is fifth step stuff, and I know it won't go any further.

I know one thing: I'm done with drinking. I'm back to a meeting a day, two-a-day on weekends. I know I'm powerless over alcohol. And I know I don't want to ever see Derrick Thorn again, and I'm pretty sure I won't. Oh, I don't think he is dead. In fact, I'm certain his departure was just another one of his jokes.

Remember that hospital meeting you took me to last week? There was this guy sitting across the room in a hospital gown. He stared at me throughout the meeting, and he headed straight for me when it ended. He looked bad, the left side of his face scraped raw and something seriously wrong with one of his legs so that he moved up and down and left and right like some busted wind-up toy. The worst thing, when he got up close-and he got

close, his face six inches from mine-was the death in his eyes, the cold-water craziness at the bottom of those muddy, red-rimmed pupils. Or maybe the phlegmy sound of his voice was worse, I don't know. Maybe it was the sum of his infirmities, the weight of ruined days, the dank reek of his breath. No, probably the worst was what he said: "I know you. We got a friend in common. He says, 'Don't be a stranger.' He says maybe he'll see you around, and you can share a few beers and have good times." He shambled off, just another wretched, booze-ruined derelict. But I had to sit back down in a chair and ride out the vertigo, because I didn't think it was a case of mistaken identity.

If I take a drink, he'll be waiting. I'll walk into a bar somewhere. I'll sit down on one of the bar stools. I'll look up at the television, and I'll see a lot of penguins tobogganing on their bellies down an ice slope, and behind me, I'll hear his voice. "Oh, the happy penguins!" he will shout.

Pookas are called up by alcohol, by the darkness that blooms in an alcoholic's soul after that first drink, and with AA and these steps I think I can avoid that drink.

Maybe I'm arrogant, but I'm honestly not that worried about my sobriety. I am, I guess, still a little worried about global warming, and I still wonder what we'll say to the penguins when the end times are upon us.

Esmeralda: The First Book Depository Story by Glen Hirshberg

"I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead… "

– Arthur Conan Doyle,

Through the Magic Door

We first heard about them the way one hears about everything these days: on the web. Some self-styled "urban explorer," wired on whatever and driven by transgressive urges most people claim they get over in high school, snuck into his 532nd abandoned building in the Detroit metropolitan area. Fortunately, he brought his digital camera and an extra memory card.

Within hours, the first Flickr page went up. Within weeks, the first wiki/blogspot/Facebook groups appeared. The histories of that initial depository were always stitched together out of tall tales and myths. Someone could have found some Roosevelt School District official and asked, but no one did. Soon, the first Crawlers-no one seems to know where that name came from-began braving the empty streets to start exploring and mapping the place. Not long after that came the first trespassing arrests, and the first disappearances. Before too long, the various strands of lore surrounding the Roosevelt Book Depository had coalesced into a story composed of enough truth to become the truth, as far as anyone who studies such things in centuries to come-and publishes them in whatever digital or ethereal or cerebral format one publishes in those times-will ever be able to tell: