by Mark Morris
“Marty,” Swede says. “You don’t get the fuck out my sight, I’ll knock you down, me.”
“Hey now!” Kilkenny sputters indignantly, but Big John puts a hand on his shoulder. The twitchy little cinder monkey sighs and goes in search of another Löwenbräu.
“You okay, Swede?” John asks.
Swede shakes his head. In his sooty face, those piercing blue eyes are haunted. “Not me, John. Not anybody. Not ever again.”
John Qoyawayma, a full-blooded Hopi from the rez in Coconino County, Arizona, takes a swallow of water, enjoying how it cools his ragged throat. He wishes Torch was here, cracking his bad jokes to make the big Scandinavian roar with laughter. John doesn’t know what to say to ease Swede’s pain. His pain is also deep, but he is Hopi; pain has walked with his people for generations, like a cruel and greedy cousin they don’t much like but cannot send away.
Swede looks at him. “Today I have seen the passing of Fenrisúlfr, his mouth open wide, flames burning from his eyes and his nostrils.” He says it as if it’s self-explanatory, irrefutable. Prophecy and fact rolled into one. The acrid char smell getting stronger all the time seems to validate and reinforce his despair.
John swallows hard and says, as much for his own comfort as for Swede’s: “If it is indeed the end, know that a beginning will follow, as a new day follows night.” He wants to say more, to find words that won’t sound as hollow as everything else does on this terrible night—
Then he stops, looking not at Swede but at something suspended between them: a small black spider, climbing its own silken web.
Big John gasps. He did not see the spider descend from the shadows overhead. It has simply… appeared.
Registering his friend’s silence, Swede too spots the spider. He lifts a hand to swat it—
And John catches him by the wrist. Swede blinks in surprise.
“No, brother. Let her be.” Big John’s gaze never wavers. The spider climbs patiently, unfazed by the enormous beings on either side of her. “There have been four worlds,” John continues. “The first three were destroyed by warring and greed. If what you say is true, perhaps we are seeing the end of the Fourth World, and the way will open to the Fifth.”
The spider climbs. Its black body appears to be tattooed with runic patterns, some red, some white, all too small to be seen clearly.
Swede almost looks like his old curious self again. “How, John?”
“The sipapu will open. Someone will be shown the way.”
“What’s the… sipapu?”
“A tunnel. The World Passage. As the end of one world draws near, the sipapu opens to lead humanity into the next. This is the truth of my people. This is the last magic.”
They’re both watching the spider now. Swede’s fingers find Big John’s. They clasp hands tightly. “Good night, Kookyangso’wuuti,” John Qoyawayma says softly. “Remember us.”
Swede, his eyes very wide, glances over as John speaks.
When he looks up again, the spider is gone.
* * *
The sun is coming up over Kawela Bay, and though there’s a chill in the air, David Opuni and Carly Desoto are on their boards again, waiting for their wave. They’re holding hands.
The two of them stayed long after dark, even after the others drifted away. They told the emergency responders and cops what they could, and watched the coroner’s van roll away with the body. Afterward Carly nudged David’s hip with her own. “Where ya staying tonight?”
He shrugged. It was embarrassing, how everyone at Turtle Bay knew everyone else’s business. “Put our boards in the service shed and meet me out back,” she said. He did so, and she snuck him up to the resort’s staff suite. It was an ordinary room, one bed, usual amenities. The resort kept it in case a clerk or housekeeper fell ill or a manager needed a shower during a long weekend shift. Looking around the room, David heard the lock click behind him. When he turned, Carly stepped into his arms and kissed him. They fell onto the bed and made love, frantic and fumbling at first, then slower. Better. Later, talking about the dead creature in the bay, Carly cried, and he held her. They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and woke before dawn. Dressed. Collected their boards. Ran, giddy and giggling, to the beach and paddled out.
And here they sit.
They’re pretty far out. The water is choppy and talkative. High swells. Promising. They wait, enjoying the rising light, the silence, the blended scent of themselves, so very like the sea.
Looking at Carly’s hand in his, David wants to speak, to say things to her he’s been holding in since junior high, but he’s afraid he’ll blow it. He finds her looking at him. She leans over and kisses him. “There’s time for everything,” she says. “Don’t worry.”
Their boards begin to porpoise in the rolling swells, each higher than the last, and when their wave comes they both recognise it a quarter-mile off. That lip of whitish-green foam. That gathering of power. David grins, and Carly claps her hands.
Then they’re on their bellies, paddling hard. They turn back just at the right moment, as the wave rises up and pitches over, and they pop up at the same time – feet firm on their decks, outstretched hands almost close enough to touch – and take off.
And the wave rolls up, up, up. My god, David thinks, it’s the mother of all bombs! It arcs over and around them: a textbook barrel, a tunnel the likes of which neither has ever seen.
Their fingers finally do touch as they knife along, and David shouts laughter at the perfect joy of it.
They ride, letting the tube take them wherever it’s going to take them.
We All Come Home
Simon Bestwick
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Lisa asked.
Lennox was badly tempted to say yes, but finally shook his head.
“You sure?” She laid a hand on his arm; warm and soft and very unlike the brittle chill of the October afternoon. “I don’t mind.”
“No,” he said at last. “It’s okay. Probably better if I’m on my own. More chance I’ll remember something.”
Lisa nodded, covered his hand with hers and squeezed lightly. “You can do this. Okay?”
“Yeah. I know.”
She touched his cheek, kissed his lips. “I’m proud of you.”
He squeezed her hands, then unfastened the seatbelt and unlocked the car door. “You sure you’ll be all right here?”
“I’ll be fine.” She grinned and held up her paperback. “Music and a good book. Can’t beat it.”
He smiled back and passed her the car keys. “You’ll need these, then. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Lennox turned quickly away so that she wouldn’t see the smile fade. He’d managed to conceal the effort of keeping it on his face up till now, but he could feel the gates behind him as though they were pressing against his back. Of course, turning away from Lisa meant that he was now facing them.
A mist was gathering, swirling among the bases of the trees and the tangled ferns and brambles that foamed over the parapet of the low wall that stretched along the opposite side of the road in either direction. Above the level of the railings writhed the trees, thick and old and gnarled, boughs still heavy with their remaining, shrivelled leaves.
How long had he been standing here, looking? If he hesitated for too long, Lisa might worry and insist on going in there with him. And while God knew – if there was a God, which Lennox hadn’t believed for thirty-odd years now – he could have used the comfort, he had to go in alone. Lisa had been right about this. It was his best chance to remember, to gain some peace. How many nights had he woken up screaming from nightmares he could never recall on waking? He’d accepted them as his lot in life, until he’d met Lisa. He owed it to her, at least, to try.
Lennox glanced both ways and set out across the road. He needn’t have bothered, as vehicles were few and far between alo
ng here and the road was very straight. The site of the New Hall covered a large, almost perfectly rectangular area, and the main gates were sited along one of the longer sides.
They were heavy and built from wrought iron, painted black, and hung from tall granite posts topped with some snarling heraldic beast whose features time had rendered so pitted that the species could no longer be determined. Beyond them a long straight drive led off into the mist. The trees on either side of it seemed to be curling inwards over it, as if to prey on whoever might disregard the KEEP OUT – PRIVATE PROPERTY signs and stray along it.
A chain and padlock secured the gates, at least nominally, but they stood ajar. The chain had been slackly wound through the bars, leaving a gap more than ample enough for Lennox to slip through.
The air felt colder as soon as he’d done so. That was his imagination, nothing more. He was nervous – he refused to use the word ‘afraid’, even to himself. He looked back. The car was across the road. The light inside was on and he could see Lisa’s profile as she studied her book. He willed her to look up but she didn’t, and he couldn’t just stand here waiting for her to glance at him. He had to press on – even if his nerve didn’t fail, the light soon would.
The drive was potholed, and he switched his gaze between the uneven surface and the woods spreading out on either side. The trees that reared above the boundary wall and alongside the path were the oldest; the ones that spread out through the grounds were considerably younger.
“Wardley New Hall was built in the 1890s by the then Lord Cairncross.” Facts, history, statistics: they were Lennox’s life in the outside world, and they were a comfort to him now. Facts, not feelings: they’d help him through this. “It was intended to replace the existing Cairncross family seat at Wardley Old Hall, but ironically the New Hall burned down in 1943. The grounds have stood empty ever since.”
Empty, at least, except for the trees and other plant life that had sprouted among the ruins. And whatever animals dwelt among them. Lennox heard something crash and flounder away through the undergrowth to his right. A rabbit, he told himself. Or a dog. No, not a dog. A dog on its own could turn feral. An urban deer, perhaps? They’d been sighted in this area.
October dusks were treacherous things. They seemed gradual, which was part of their appeal, the way they slowly drew veils over the landscape, taking colour and definition away by stages while streetlights came on and burnished the drifts of fallen leaves, but in truth they were both insidious and relentless. Every time you turned around there was a little more darkness; the outlines of your surroundings had grown a little hazier.
Lennox could feel panic welling inside him: nonetheless, he pressed on. There was a torch in his pocket, and he had his phone with him. Lisa was no more than a call away, and if he got lost in the woods the police could track him through GPS.
Besides, just for a moment, he’d felt a touch of his old affection for autumn evenings. He hadn’t felt that, nothing even close to it, since that night, so perhaps the cure was working.
“Rob?” a small voice said.
Lennox looked around, startled, then tripped over something. He went into a headlong stagger, arms flailing for balance. For a second he was certain he was going to fly forward and crash to the ground, but his staggering slowed down as it ran out of momentum and he didn’t trip again. He straightened up, breathing hard, and looked about him. Roots were squirming under the tarmacked drive, and in places it had broken and split. Up ahead, he could see young trees that had forced their way up through the ground.
Lennox felt his chest tighten and his breathing grow a little faster and shallower. This was familiar. He remembered this, the way the demarcation between the path and the woods had begun to break down. When he looked into the trees, he was sure he could see squarer, more regular shapes pushing up out of the earth. The remains of walls. He was certain of that.
He was entering the grounds of the New Hall. That must be why he’d imagined he’d heard someone call his name. It had sounded very like a voice, that of a lad the age he and Doug and Terry had been. But it would have been something else – a bird, maybe, or an animal. Yes, he was sure, almost sure, it hadn’t been what he’d thought he’d heard. Well, it couldn’t have been, could it?
The New Hall had been a big, rambling place, he remembered that. The young Lord Cairncross had been determined to innovate, to incorporate every new and interesting and clever-sounding idea he could think of into the Hall’s design. But Lennox remembered that only from books and old pictures. There was no other way he could, because the Hall had burned down over thirty years before he’d even been born. Eight people had died in the fire, he recalled – another random factoid bobbing up to the surface of his thoughts – including Lord Cairncross himself, by then an elderly recluse considered half-mad by the locals, and his young, heavily-pregnant second wife.
Lennox’s chest was tight and his stomach so hollow he thought it might cramp. That would be an ignominious end to his little trip down Memory Lane. He breathed out and went on. It wasn’t dark yet, even if his surroundings were several shades darker than they’d been when he entered. Some of that would be down to the tree cover.
He was close to remembering. It was like having a name on the tip of your tongue: nearly, nearly knowing it but not quite. Lennox wasn’t sure what was worse – the uncertainty or the prospect of recalling what had for so long been blotted out.
The temptation to turn and run back to the car was suddenly very strong. Lisa would understand, of course she would. They could come back again. How many times had she told him that the impulse to heal had to come from him, that it couldn’t be forced? Enough times, both when she’d been his therapist and after she’d become so much more to him.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried, repeatedly, to recall what had happened that day. Not just with Lisa, either, but at the time, with the police and their psychiatrists. But nothing could crack open the vault. The vault, that was how Lisa had described it: “Sometimes what we do with memories is lock them away where they can’t hurt us. Like putting them in a vault. The same way you’d store a loaded gun, if you had one. So that they’re safe.”
But sometimes, she’d added, you needed to open the safe, because your experiences were who you are. They’re what made you the person you become. So when you’re bigger and older, when you’re strong enough, you have to find a way to open the vault and see what’s in there.
The path was almost completely gone now. There were only the dim woods and the humped, irregular shapes of the broken walls. Lennox dug in his pocket for the torch and switched it on.
“All right, Robbo?”
He swung around, slashing the torch-beam through the gathering dusk-haze like a knife. For a second he glimpsed a child’s face, but then there was nothing. Nothing. Never had been. His heart was hammering. He took deep breaths.
Doug had called him Robbo. No one else had, or did. And no one had called him Rob in years. Even that day they’d gone into the grounds, Terry had been virtually the only one who still did. Lennox had been the clever one in their group, the one who read books and knew about stuff. That had been why Doug and Terry had used to protect him from the other kids at school; he could always be relied on to know something interesting, or useful.
Why had they gone into the grounds that day? He was close to remembering. And then he did. Yes. A den, that was what they’d been talking about. Because no one came here; all these woods, so many interesting things to discover, and no one came. Parents forbade it. Not that that usually stopped kids, especially not round their way, but they’d been, as far as he knew, the first to use the woods as a playground. And the last.
A den, then. All right. Lennox straightened up and shone his torch through the trees. Where might they have gone, then?
Movement. He spun and shone his torch at it, but found only the crumpled remains of some wilted ferns lolling b
ack into the position something had disturbed them from. Rabbits, he reminded himself; a dog, or urban deer. Or a small, hunched figure in a robe made out of sacking.
Why had he thought of that? It couldn’t be a memory, even if he had pictured it in these exact surroundings, and with such absolute clarity that every detail could be recalled, as if he’d been holding a photograph of it. The figure in his memory’s eye – not memory, imagination, it had to be imagination – was small enough to be a child, but too squat and broad. And one of its hands was visible, except that it couldn’t be called a hand at all. It was something thinner and sharper, bristling with black fur, gleaming and sharp.
No, that was imagination, even though an over-active imagination had never been one of his weaknesses in the past. He had to focus on the details instead. The surroundings. The facts.
The facts, then. He began to recite, as if by rote: “On the evening of the 31st October, 1988, three boys were seen entering the grounds of Wardley New Hall. They often slept over at one another’s houses, and so it was not until the following morning that their parents, realising none of them had come home, raised the alarm. The grounds of the New Hall were searched extensively, but no sign of the missing boys was found. One of the children...” He gulped for breath because his throat was so constricted, and a wave of emotion, not only fear this time but grief, threatened to drown all coherent thought. But he forced it down and carried on. Facts. Details. He had to cling to those, not even in the hope of remembering anything now, but simply to anchor himself to reality. He should not have come here. Thirty years was nothing, nothing, not to something like this. But now he was here, and he had to push on.
“One of the children,” he repeated, “thirteen-year-old –” he faltered again, but swallowed and continued “– Robert Lennox, was discovered a week later in nearby woodland, alive but badly malnourished and with no memory of the events of the past week. The other two children, Terence Wilson and Douglas Thirley, were never found.”