Free Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories by Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Tremblay, Mercedes M. Yardley, Richard Thomas, Damien Angelica Walters, Kevin Lucia Page A

foot of the steps—
    A man was bending over the bed; he was lifting a stethoscope from the boy’s chest.
    Then he was passing his hand over the boy’s eyes, first one and then the other.
    And Hannah knew, then: this was why you stayed forever, because after this, where could you ever go?
    The sound that tore from Hannah’s throat was both hers and not hers; the sound had substance, a beak and feathers, and it left her, hunting.
    ***
    She stepped from the room back into the hallway. He was thumping up the steps. Outside the fireworks boomed and sizzled and whined, and Hannah heard the people of the town clapping and cheering—the same women who’d brought her flowers and casseroles and held her hand in church, who told her, You have to endure, who told her, It’ll be all right; but they didn’t have to be with him, they didn’t have to share a bed with him, even now, lying awake in the night thinking of the pistol he kept in the nightstand, waiting for him to fall asleep—
    Not one of them wanted to see what was happening to her. What she had to endure.
    She followed the woman down the hallway, as far as she could from the stairs. The woman pointed at the floor, and Hannah saw, then, the sagging, rotted floorboards in the center of the hall; she edged around them to the left, then stood with her back pressed against the charred wallpaper.
    The fireworks sounded like gunshots, like her heart beating.
    She could only see the light on his forehead as he reached the top of the steps. Just as he could see hers, at the end of the hall, blinding and obscuring.
    His voice was clotted, at once angry and terrified.
    Hannah? Is that you?
    She thought of him in the tent, pressing her down.
    It’s me, she said. I’m here.
    He walked to her, his footsteps heavy. The floorboards cracked and broke beneath him, and he dropped away into darkness as though yanked there by a hand.
    ***
    She descended the stairs, her palm flat against the ashy wallpaper. She could barely breathe; her throat was coated with dust and smoke.
    Outside Kyle and Beth were laughing, calling for them.
    She was tempted to go to them right now, to tell them there’d been an accident. But she had to see. She owed him that.
    She picked a path through the living room to the rear of the house. Her feet and hands tingled, as though waking. Her headlamp revealed the charred carpet, the scars in the burned beams and exposed bracing, the rot and muck. She entered the back hallway, went to the doorway of the room with the stained bed. But the bed was gone—there was only a jumble of wood and plaster in the center of the room, and on top of it was Mason, his limbs as broken as the boards beneath him. A cut across his forehead had slicked his face with blood. In his fear he looked younger than he was. A boy, not much older than her.
    The woman was kneeling beside him.
    Please, he said. Don’t.
    ***
    She was running from the house, now, toward Kyle’s and Beth’s voices; her footfalls and her body had weight again; what a relief it was to be herself again, to fill her lungs with air, and she told herself she must always remember it; the woman had given her this; it was a gift.
    She’d given a gift in return, too. She must always remember that as well.
    Mason, his breath quickening; the laughter and fireworks in the distance; the woman bending close, her hair made of smoke.
    Mason seeing her face, knowing her, truly knowing her, as she reached down and gently passed her hand over each of his eyes.

WATER THY BONES
    Mercedes M. Yardley
    There’s a loveliness to bones. Their shape. Their weight. Their strength and fragility.
    A body uses them to run. Uses them to stand timidly against a wall. They hold a person upright, if they’re working correctly. They’re a framework for an entire system, a complete body, and the significance of that is very nearly overwhelming
    Yet at the same time, bones are so exceptionally frail. They can be broken. Sawed through. Pulverized.