Princess of the Night
FOLLOWING HIS AWARD-NOMINATED ANTHOLOGY Apparitions, Canadian Michael Kelly currently has a further two projects as an editor forthcoming: Chilling Tales is a volume featuring Canadian horror writers, while Shadows & Tall Trees is a literary journal of contemporary strange tales. The author’s recent fiction can be found in PostScripts, Space & Time and Supernatural Tales.
About his second story in this volume, Kelly recalls: “The genesis of ‘Princess of the Night’ is a little murky. It was written for an anthology of Halloween tales. Alas, it didn’t make it into the book.
“The tale then sold to a slick new professional magazine, where it promptly languished for four years until the magazine (which published four issues, I believe) folded before publication. I forgot about the story for a while. Then, one day, as I was looking through my files for possible stories to include in a new collection, I chanced upon it again.”
Let’s be grateful he rediscovered the story, because it rounds off this edition of Best New Horror with a nice short, sharp jolt in the EC comics tradition . . .
WARREN HEARD IT, quite plainly, outside his front door; a faint stirring, a sigh, a melancholy moan. He waited . . . waited . . . but no knock came. Then another sound, like shuffling feet.
Warren groaned, dropped the magazine, and lifted his tired bones from the rocker. He shuffled over to the door and pulled it open.
“Trick or treat.”
Warren looked down, puzzled. The first thing he noticed about her was the scar; a livid line that zigzagged from the corner of her mouth to her earlobe. In the wan light of the full moon it pulsed, as if alive. She was a wee pale thing with fine blond hair and cool blue eyes that gazed flatly at him. Couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old, Warren thought. She was dressed in a purple robe, trimmed in gold. A tiara sat on her head. A little princess. She clutched an orange plastic pumpkin that grinned blackly.
Dead leaves skittered on the porch. The wind rushed in, carrying a touch of frost. It smelled like earth and worms and rain. It snatched at his sweater, the wind. It swirled around him, whispering secrets only he knew.
Warren breathed deeply. Burning leaves and peppermint rain. Autumn! A half-smile creased his face. Once – long, long ago – he’d been an autumn person. Once, long ago, he’d been a man who’d smiled.
“Trick or treat.” Her voice was an autumn voice, a voice of fog and rain and green mystery. And Warren hadn’t seen her mouth move.
Warren sighed. He hadn’t left the porch light on, hadn’t left a Jack-O-Lantern in the window. Didn’t they know he never celebrated Halloween? He hadn’t celebrated Halloween in a very long time, not since . . . since . . . Why were they knocking at his door? Then he remembered that there hadn’t actually been a knock. And another memory came bubbling to the surface, one that had lain hidden like a dark stone in a cool riverbed: wet and foggy night; a sudden blur of blond hair; hiss of tyres; a faint thump; and Warren – before driving away – watching through the rain-blurred window as a plastic pumpkin bumped and rolled down the dark, almost empty street.
“Trick or treat.” Her voice was an autumn voice – dead leaves, rich earth and green menace.
Warren shuddered, took a step back. Though her mouth didn’t move, Warren heard a sigh, a miserable moan. And as the little princess took a slow step forward, one dim thought entered Warren’s head:
It wasn’t Halloween.