The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

I almost break, then. I almost give him exactly what he wants. The whole, pathetic story. Me getting mugged and beaten bloody by some cranked-up street thug who'd been using the Roosevelt Depot as a warm, dark place to freebase. The laughing Crawlers who found me an hour or so later and shoved cigarettes in my mouth and fed me beer and got me on my feet again. Going up that rotted, collapsing staircase in the dark to find Ezzie and show her my new bruises and bring her down to meet my new friends.

Finding her.

How much of it did she intend? That's the only thing that haunts me. Most of it, clearly. Almost all of it. It was the logical extension, after all, of everything she'd done as an artist, but also as a person. That desperate, driving hunger to get inside other people's stories. To leave traces. To cut deep enough below the surface of absolutely everything to determine, once and for all, whether there was anything in there. Or to prove that there wasn't.

It must have taken her hours.

All around her, arrayed in a perfect square just longer and wider than her body, she'd laid paper. Some of it blank and white, some of it torn from whatever texts were near, or maybe she'd picked them specifically. Probably, she did. I'll never know. Even if I saw, I wouldn't remember.

The only thing I will ever remember about that moment is Ezzie lying atop the paper, stark naked in the icy February dark, head tilted almost onto her right shoulder, the spray of her blood fa

For too long, maybe the critical few seconds, I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything but stare. I thought she was already dead, which was so stupid, I mean, I could see the blood still pumping. That new, red ocean bubbling out of the crack Ezzie had opened in herself and spreading across the paper continents she'd created. But she wasn't moving, didn't seem to be breathing. The color had gone completely out of her; she was whiter than the paper. And she looked… not happy, not even at rest, just… still. I'd never known Ezzie still.

Then she woke up, for the last time. That's when she screamed. She even got out a sentence as I lunged forward. "

Stop it!"

Did she mean staunch the wound? Or get away from her? I didn't care. Slipping and sticking, I dropped onto my knees and plunged my hands onto the open spot, but they went straight through, her skin was like spring ice stretched too thin. It wasn't even warm inside her, just sticky-wet. I could feel the severed strands of artery, or I felt artery, anyway, gristly bits, but trying to grab anything and hold it closed was like trying to tie silly string. I ripped off my coat and started sliding it under her to make a tourniquet, but that just made her scream louder. I'm pretty sure I was screaming, too, and then-God knows how, maybe it was reflex-one of her hands shot up and grabbed my arm.

" Lawrence," she snarled. "It hurts."

And I understood. I still think I really did. It was already too late to save her. If I was going to do anything for her, I had to do it then. I grabbed the first thing handy, and it was as though it had been laid there for me.

The World Book Encyclopedia, 1978. Heavy and frozen hard as a stone.

Lifting it, I looked once more into Ezzie's eyes. I saw the defiance there. The ruthless, obsessive imagination. The unimaginable pain, and-more surprisingly-the panic. Because she thought I wouldn't do it? Because she suddenly knew I would?

I didn't ask. I slammed the book down and smashed in her skull with one blow.

I don't know how long I stayed there. I remember noticing that the blood against my legs wasn't pumping anymore, and stirred only with my own movements. I remember getting cold.

I have no memory of going downstairs. But the people who'd helped me were still there. What a sight I must have been. Beaten purple from my own encounter an hour or so earlier, shirt and pants saturated with Ezzie's blood, fingertips dripping with her brains. Somehow, I must have communicated that they should go upstairs, because some of them did. When they came down, one of them lifted me out of my crouch and said, "Man, you need a hospital."

Then they took me to one. The next morning, the police were by my bed to take my report. It was a long time before I realized they were asking only about the mugging. That they didn't know about Ezzie. I told them they needed to go back to the depot, check the second floor under the phoenix mural.

They found blood there, gouts of it. But no Ezzie. "You're lucky to be alive," they told me the last time they came. I gave them my address, promised I'd let them know where I was, though they didn't ask me to. Then they left me alone.

How did Sarah even find me in the hospital? How did she hear about what had happened? I have no idea. But she's as relentless as her sister was. Also less creative, and less fun. An hour before the doctors discharged me, she called my bedside from her Co

"Where's Ezzie?" she said as soon as she heard my voice.

I hung up on her, unplugged the phone, and waited to be released. When I got back to our loft, there were seventeen messages from Sarah. The last one said, "I'm coming."

I packed my duffel. Just clothes and bathroom stuff and a rye bottle. No notebooks, and definitely no books. Ezzie's empty razor case, but none of the artifacts she'd made. I moved to Battle Creek. When I arrived, I let the Detroit police know my new address. The next time I moved, I did the same. If they ever find anything, or they want to do anything about me, I want them to be able to.

But not Sarah. I can't face Sarah.

I look up at Will, who is still staring at me out of his childlike, teary eyes. Childlike, because he still really believes there's more to his story. Maybe there is.

"I'm sorry," I tell him, and I mean it, in my way. "I didn't see anyone."

He just puts on his hat, then. His shoulders have slumped. Shrugging back into his coat, he turns for the door. He's got it open when I grab him, abruptly.

"You didn't answer my question," I say.

Now he just looks stupid. Blind, befuddled Oedipus again. Or is that me?

"How did you find me, Will?"

"I… don't remember," he says. "Wait, yes I do. There was an e-mail."

"An e-mail." From a cop, maybe? Someone working the chat rooms and message boards in the hopes of solving something?

"It mentioned you and gave me your address."

"From whom?"

"Didn't say. They rarely do." He takes a step outside in the Marquette wind, turns abruptly back. "I think it came from Arizona, though."

Now it's my turn to stare. "Arizona?"

"I'm just guessing. From the e-mail addy. Phoenixgirl. At gmail, I think."

In my hands, the empty rye bottle seems to throb. Pump. Against my chest, the razor case beats.

"Jesus," Will says, "I'm sorry. I almost forgot. She asked me to give you a message if I saw you."

"A message." Are these tears in my eyes? Is this fear? Am I scared of what Ezzie will do when she finds me? Or heartbroken that her last great effort was a failure, that she couldn't, finally, cut her way in. Or out. Or wherever it was she always wanted so desperately to go.

Am I even sure phoenixgirl is Ezzie? If it's Sarah, then Sarah finally knows.

I'm grabbing the frozen doorframe. It's so cold that it burns my bare fingers. I hang on anyway.

"It wasn't much of a message," Will tells me. "I think it was just… it just said, '

Tell him I'll see him soon.'"