Free The Best New Horror 2 by Ramsay Campbell

help.”
    Michael shook his head, then eased off his elbow to a prone position. “So who else is on your list besides me?”
    Anne opened the folded paper Janet had given her. “Randy Carter, Julia Powell, Cora Grant . . .”
    “Cora’ll drive you ape-shit. She lost half her brain in some gun accident.”
    “. . . and Ardie Whitesell. I might like Cora, Michael. Don’t forget, I don’t know her yet, either.”
    Michael sighed. “I don’t need no shrink. What the fuck’s your name?”
    “Miss Zaccaria.”
    “Yeah, well, I’m okay. I don’t need no shrink. Don’t need one any more than old roomie over there.” Michael tilted his head on his pillow, indicating a curtained corner of the room.
    “Roomie?”
    “Roommate. He don’t need no shrink, neither. I don’t ’cause I got things all figured out in this world. Nothing a little nookie can’t cure.” Michael looked at Anne and winked. “And roomie over there, he don’tneed one ’cause he’s in some kind of damn coma. Not much fun to have around, you know.”
    Anne frowned, only then aware of the mechanical sounds softly emanating from the corner. The drawn curtain was stiff and white, hanging from the ceiling-high rod like a starched shroud. “What’s wrong with your roommate?”
    “Hell, what ain’t wrong? Come over here.” With a hissing of his arm, Michael rose again and clutched the bed switch, tapping buttons in a short series, and the bed spun around. The legless man rolled to the curtain. Anne followed.
    Michael shifted onto his right side and took the curtain in his hook. “Stephen’s been here longer’n me. He ain’t on no shrink’s list.” Michael pulled the curtain back.
    It was not registering what was before her that allowed her to focus on it as long as she did. There were machines there, a good number of them, crowded around a tiny bed like rumbling and humming steel wolves about a lone prey. Aluminum racks stood on clawed feet, heavy bags of various colored liquids hanging from them, oozing their contents into thin, clear tubes. A portable heart monitor beeped. Behind it, a utility sink held to the wall, various antiseptics and lotions and balms cluttering the shelf above. The rails of the bed were pulled up to full height. At one end of the mattress was a thin blanket, folded back and tucked down. And at the other end, a thin pillow. And Stephen.
    Anne’s coat and paper dropped to the floor. “Oh my dear God.”
    “Weird, huh? I call him Head Honcho. I think he must be some doctor’s experiment, you know, keeping him alive and all. Don’t it beat all?”
    On the pillow was a head, with black curled hair. Attached to the head, a neck, and below that a small piece of naked, ragged chest, barely large enough to house a heart and single lung. The chest heaved and shuddered, wires pulsing like obscene fishermen’s lines. That was all there was of Stephen.
    Anne’s heart constricted painfully. She stepped backward.
    “Nurses don’t like him. Can’t stand to touch him, ’though they shave him every three days. Doctor checks him nearly every day. Head Honcho don’t do nothing but breathe. He ain’t much but at least he don’t complain about my music.” Michael looked at Anne.
    Anne turned away. Her stomach clenched, throwing fouled bile into her throat.
    “Hey, you leaving?”
    “I need to see the others,” she managed. And she went out of the west wing to the faculty restroom, where she lost her control and her lunch.
    It was three days before Anne could bring herself to visit the center again. The AP partners were asking her for her volunteer hours chart, and as the newest member of the firm, she couldn’t shrug it off. And so she returned. Her pulse was heavy in her neck and the muscles of her back were tight, but she decided she would not allow herself more than passing acknowledgment of them.
    She talked with Cora in the art room. Cora had little to say, but seemed pleased with the attention Anne gave her