Mammoth Book of Best New Horror by Stephen Jones

waitress came to take my order she was frazzled, like nobody should look at five in the morning. I said, "I don't have any money, but maybe we can work something out." Either she was from around here, and I'd get some breakfast, or she wasn't, and I'd get thrown out.

     
        She got that faraway look like they do, and said, "Let's work something out."

        I nodded. "Where you from?"

        "Grew up in Temecula."

        "Ah. The Inland Empire. Pretty black walnut trees down that way."

        She smiled, the way people do when you prod them into a nice memory.

        People have different ideas about what "home" means. For her, home meant a good chunk of California, at least, since Temecula was down south a ways. I'd never been there, but I'd probably go eventually. For some people, home just means one town, and if they stray from there, they feel like foreigners in strange territory. For others, home is a neighbourhood, or a block, or a street, or one room in one house where they grew up. And for some, home is nowhere, and me, I have a hard time talking to people like that.

        "What can I offer you?" I said. My stomach rumbled. I'd never eaten before, at least, not with these teeth, this tongue, this stomach. I couldn't even remember what food tasted like. Things of the body are the first things I forget.

        She told me, and I knew it was true, because I wasn't talking to her conscious mind, the part that's capable of lies and self-deception. I was talking to the deep down part of her, the part that stays awake at night, worrying, and making bargains with any gods she can imagine. She had a son, and he was in some shitty public school, and she was afraid he'd get hurt, beat up, hassled by the gangs, maybe even join a gang, though he was a good kid, really.

        "Okay," I said. "Give me breakfast, and I'll make sure your son is safe."

        She said yes, of course, and maybe that seems like a lopsided bargain, keeping a kid safe through years of school in exchange for a plate of eggs and sausage and toast and a glass of OJ, but if it's in my power to give, and doesn't cost more than I can afford, I don't worry much about parity.

        The waitress snapped out of that deep down state and took my order, knowing she'd pay for it, not sure why, but probably not fretting about it - and for the first time in however long, she wasn't worried about her boy getting stabbed in the school parking lot.

        Breakfast was fine, too. Tasted as good as the first meal always does, I imagine.

        The neighbourhood I settled on wasn't in the worst part of Oakland, or the best - it was on the east side of Lake Merritt, maybe a mile from the water, in among a maze of residential streets that mingled million-dollar homes and old stucco apartment complexes. I walked there, over hills and curving streets with cul-de-sacs, through little roundabouts with towering redwoods in the middle, tiny triangular parks in places where three streets all ran into one another, and past terraced gardens and surprise staircases providing steep shortcuts down the hills. A good place, or it could have been, but there was a canker along one street, spider webbing out into the neighbourhoods nearby, blood and crying and death somewhere in the near past, and lurking in the likely future.

        First thing I needed was a place to stay. I picked a big house with a neat lawn but no flowers, out on the edge of the street that felt bad. I knocked, wondering what day it was, if I was likely to find anyone home at all. An old man opened the door and frowned. Was he suspicious because I was black, because I was smiling, because of bad things that had happened around here? "Yes?"

        "I'm just looking for a room to rent for a few weeks," I said. "I can make it worth your while, if you've got the space."

        "Nope," he said, and closed the door in my face.

        Guess he wasn't from around