Only Forward

by Michael Marshall Smith

  What are Somethings? Well, fucked if I know, actually, hence the name. They’re just bad things. They’re like vicious little powerboats, stirring up the water and creating waves in Jeamland. You don’t see them so much as experience their effects. They’ve always been there, though I think there are more now than there used to be, and they’re certainly much more virulent. Most of the people I’ve led through Jeamland have been suffering the effects of a Something which has randomly latched onto their stream and started stirring them round. There have been cases where a Something has been pushed in someone’s direction, but not often, and not recently. Not for eight years, in fact.

  In the normal run of things I can deal with Somethings fairly effectively, though it’s by no means an exact science. It’s also far from easy, and leaves you unbelievably tired: that’s why I’m fit for nothing for a few days after each job. They’re like invisible sticky spheres, rolling through a room full of dust. The further they go, the more dust they pick up, the heavier they get and the faster they roll. The trick is knowing how to stop them from chasing your client, from rolling through his dust in particular. I’ve got better over the years, more skilled at deflecting them, while they’ve stayed more or less the same.

  But now things would be different. Now they would be stronger, and stickier, and bigger and faster. I would have to face one sooner or later, but I didn’t want it to be now. I was still feeling at a very low ebb after the castle, still nervously looking down every now and then to check I was wearing some trousers. Facing a Something takes a good deal of mental strength and resolve, and though I was recovering from the castle a damn sight quicker than anyone else could have done, I didn’t want to risk taking on more than I could deal with. I don’t own Jeamland any more than anyone else does. There are no special dispensations.

  More to establish that it wasn’t a viable option than through any sense of hope, I lay on my front at the edge of the island and looked down. The column of stone I was on top of was heavily weathered and worn, with a few adequate and tempting niches. The immediate feeling of vertigo that I felt, however, told me what I’d already known. This wasn’t like the column up to the castle. Here, climbing was the issue, and I knew that if I tried clambering down I’d find that the gravity would be working just fine. The footholds I could see were a trick, an attempt to lure me into climbing down. That meant two things. Firstly that whatever was down there was not going to be good news. Secondly, and worse, that Jeamland was beginning to distort as someone tried to bend it to his own ends once more.

  I stood up again and looked into the distance. The Something was now much closer, only about five islands away. There was still nothing to see, but I knew it was coming. There’s something about the air when one is close, something about the way the back of your neck feels. It’s like looking at a haunted spot or watching a graveyard at night: by the pricking of your thumbs you know that something wicked this way comes.

  Shutting my eyes, I concentrated hard and tried to imagine myself somewhere else. It isn’t easy, particularly under pressure, but it can be done, if you dredge up the right memories, press the correct internal buttons. When I opened my eyes, I was still on the island, and the patch of bad was closer still. I tried again, but knew it was useless. It felt like I was trying to jump with my feet tied to the floor.

  In a way it was just as well. There was a chance I was not too far behind Alkland, and it was him I had to look after. Suddenly I felt cold.

  ‘Is this your island, sir?’

  ‘I turned round to see two policemen standing behind me. They were both tall and dressed in dark blue uniforms and black boots, and had tall helmets capped with chrome. They didn’t look in the least endearing. With their identical moustaches and piercing black eyes, they looked like trouble, and I immediately began to feel guilty again.

  ‘Er, no…’ I stammered, cursing myself for not getting away before the Something arrived.

  One of the cops raised his eyebrows. “No, sir?’ he said, somehow getting the ‘sir’ to positively drip with derision.

  ‘Er, no.’ What were they talking about? How could it be my island? The policeman turned to his colleague, whose eyebrows were also flamboyantly raised. They looked like a pair of sarcastic owls.

  ‘Well well well, Constable Perkins,’ he said. ‘What about that then, eh? Gentleman stands here on an island, clear as day, and says it’s not his.’ He folded his arms and looked at me sardonically as Constable Perkins snorted and took out a small notebook, shaking his head.

  ‘It’s not,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t own it, do I?’

  ‘You tell us, sir,’ said Constable Perkins, taking a pace forward and staring hard at me. ‘Are you standing on it, or not?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said, trying not to sound guilty, and failing. ‘In that sense it’s mine, yes.’

  ‘Oh, so now it is yours, is it?’ said the first policeman woundingly, taking a step forward of his own. ‘Mind if we see your licence?’

  ‘What licence? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Are you refusing to co-operate with us, sir?’

  ‘No! I don’t have any licence.’

  ‘Ah-ha,’ said the policeman smugly, and Constable Perkins nodded knowingly in the background, as if this was what they’d suspected all along. ‘Note that down, Constable.’

  ‘Right you are,’ Perkins said, wetting the tip of his pencil with his tongue and starting to take notes. ‘We were proceeding along our beat in the usual fashion when we came upon the suspect, who was, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, absolutely definitely, standing on an island. Suspect at first claimed the island was not his, but then confessed under the telling interrogation of Constable Jenkins.’

  ‘Thank you, Constable Perkins.’

  ‘Not at all, Constable Jenkins: your line of questioning was both apposite and effective.’

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘It’s not my sodding island, all right?’

  The policemen looked at each other with mock astonishment and then took a simultaneous step closer to me. I took a pace back to keep them at arm’s length, conscious that the edge of the island could only be a couple of yards behind me.

  ‘Suspect used foul and intimidating language towards an officer in the pursuance of his duties,’ muttered Constable Jenkins to his colleague, and Perkins noted it down. ‘Right,’ he continued, turning to face me. ‘Think we’d better take down a few details. I’d advise you to tell the truth, sir. Save a lot of trouble later on.’

  I sighed, trying to stay relaxed, trying not to let the guilt get to me. Somethings are gluttons for guilt.

  ‘Right,’ said Constable Perkins. ‘Let’s take it from the top again. How big is your nose?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Deaf, are you, sir?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘How big is it then?’

  ‘You can see how big it is.’

  ‘I’d like to hear it from you, sir.’

  ‘Look, what do you want from me?’ I asked, uselessly. I knew what they wanted. They were a Something, and they wanted to screw me up. But I had to play the game, keep things at this level. If I called its bluff, it would change into something far worse. Jeamland was different now, and I have my bad memories too. There are monsters in here which are mine, you see, and I have my own bubbles which rise sometimes from beneath still waters. They’re not your concern, so don’t expect to hear about them. But they’re there.

  ‘What do we want?’ asked Constable Jenkins of his colleague, revelling in his rhetoric. ‘What do we want?’ He turned viciously towards me and when he thrust his face towards mine I had to take another hurried step backwards to avoid being headbutted. ‘Look, sir, either it’s your island, in which case you have to show us your licence, which you say you don’t have…’

  ‘Don’t have,’ intoned Constable Perkins contrapuntally.

  ‘Or it’s not your island, in which case you’ve nicked it.’

  ‘Nicked it.’r />
  ‘Either way, we’ve got you bang to rights, haven’t we, sonny?’

  ‘Well, I—’ I took another step back as the policeman moved in for the kill.

  ‘Not to mention using bad language to an officer in the line of his duty,’ he continued, counting off on his fingers ostentatiously, ‘refusing to describe the size of your nose, and socialising with the opposite sex without due care and attention.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I think you’d better come with us,’ said Constable Perkins gravely, pocketing his notebook. He took a step towards me, hand out to take my arm, and I took the last possible step backwards.

  ‘Resisting arrest,’ tutted Constable Jenkins, shaking his head. ‘You’re in very deep shit now, sonny.’

  ‘Up to your neck in it.’ Both policemen started to lean towards me.

  ‘Might have to tell your parents about this.’

  ‘It’ll break their hearts.’

  ‘They don’t deserve this.’

  ‘Still, they’ve got to know.’

  ‘But wait a minute,’ said Constable Jenkins suddenly, his face no more than a few inches from mine. The pores in his face seemed huge, like a myriad of little wells, and a wisp of minty breath curled up from his dark mouth. I wanted desperately to move back but there was no more room, nowhere to go. ‘We can’t tell his parents, can we?’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Constable Perkins, ‘we can’t.’

  ‘Do you know why?’ demanded Constable Jenkins with vicious glee. ‘Do you know why we can’t tell them?’

  ‘No,’ I said, in a small, frightened voice, hoping to placate them.

  ‘Because they’re dead!’ he shouted at me. They’re DEAD!’

  ‘No!’ I said. “They’re not. They’re still alive.’

  ‘Seen them recently, have you?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Completely dead, they are.’

  ‘Crawling with maggots.’

  ‘Flesh hanging off their bones.’

  ‘And you didn’t even know. Well well well.’

  And suddenly I knew they were telling the truth. My parents were dead.

  I felt my neck spasming, and a sudden terrible feeling of vertigo. I commanded myself to block it, forget it. Deal with it later. But it didn’t work, and I saw my parent’s faces in front of me, their features running like burning candles. The policemen knew they’d hit the mark, and pressed on, leaning further and further towards me.

  ‘Must be, oh, three years since.’

  ‘At least.’

  ‘Be in pretty bad shape by now.’

  ‘Piles of rot, really.’

  ‘And you didn’t even know.’

  ‘Never called.’

  ‘Never wrote.’

  ‘Never said where you were.’

  ‘Didn’t say goodbye.’

  ‘Didn’t go to the funeral.’

  ‘Didn’t tell them that you loved them.’

  ‘Too late now.’

  ‘Far too late.’

  ‘Dear oh dear.’

  ‘Fuck off you, bastards!’ I shouted suddenly, tearing my throat. They took a step backwards, surprised, and the look that flitted across their hard faces did me good.

  The Something hesitated for a moment, realising that I still had some strength, that the power that Rafe had given it might not be enough. That moment was all I needed. The information they’d been so happy to divulge, to throw in my face, had actually turned against them. Rafe had been hoping to capitalise on the guilt he knew I felt about so many things, but he’d done the opposite. Later I would feel guilty, even more guilty than I already did, but for now the pain succeeded when brute mental effort had failed before. It opened a small channel back to a younger me, a me that was harder and much more dangerous.

  Looking over their shoulder I could see that on the far side of the island a narrow bridge, foot-long lengths of wood strung loosely together with rope, stretched precariously to the next island. I can’t help it if that sounds fortuitous, like an escape route from nowhere: that’s the way these things work. You have to forget all this detection, follow-the-clues stuff. Remember I said a long time ago that A-Z plans aren’t possible, that you have to take what you get when you get it? I knew what I was talking about. I usually do. You would do well to take me a bit more seriously.

  The indecision on their faces lasted only a second, but by the time they lunged towards me it was too late. I dodged to the left as a feint, balanced long enough to see the policemen lurch that way, and then slipped round to the right. Constable Perkins skidded right to the edge of the island and stood poised there for a moment, arms pinwheeling. Constable Jenkins reached out and grabbed him, and by the time they were after me again I was halfway across the island, careering towards the bridge.

  It looked terribly unsafe, as if held together by chance more than physics, but it was the best I could hope for in the circumstances and I ran onto it, hands loosely circling the guide ropes. The planks pitched and swayed as I pelted across them, and my heart gave a lurch as I felt one of the supporting ropes snap. I covered the last few yards in two large strides, and the moment my foot touched the next island a similar bridge appeared on the other side. I ran towards it, casting a quick glance back. The two policemen were on the bridge now, running after me with nightmarishly small steps, paces which were about nine inches long but so quick that they covered the ground as fast as mine. I slipped on the wet grass of the island and spilled over onto my knees for a moment.

  ‘We’ll get you, you bastard!’

  I scrambled to my feet again, hearing the squeak of shoes on damp vegetation and feeling a veneer of water on my stinging hands. For a moment I had a sudden, random twist of thought, something about being late. I ran on, concentrating on that thought, soaking it up. I don’t have a huge lateness problem, it’s never been one of my big neuroses. There was that one time in the hotel room, but that’s old news now, old, irrelevant news. The nightmare in the castle was worse than it should have been. The feelings I was getting didn’t feel like they were all mine.

  I leapt onto the bridge and scampered along it, trying to place my feet near the sides where it should be stronger. The bridge began to sway markedly from side to side, rocking so violently it nearly pitched me off, but I made it to the next island and saw another bridge appear. Seeing that I was still an island ahead of the police, I ran for the other side. Islands stretched out into the distance in front of me, and I wondered how many I was going to have to cross, how many bridges were going to appear.

  Suddenly I felt that in the far distance, just beyond the furthest island in the infinite distance, there was a meeting I was supposed to be at. It wasn’t my fault I was late. Something bad had happened, something I should have stopped. I shook my head to try to dislodge the feeling, because it wasn’t mine. Then I got the merest splinter of a memory, a less than a second glimpse of blonde hair in the sunshine, a little girl’s laugh and an iron rocking horse with an odd face and I knew for sure what I had begun to suspect. I was heading in the right direction. Our dreams had intermingled, and I was being cross-patched, mixed up, messed around by dying vestiges of Alkland’s dreams, which were lingering on the air like smoke in a hazy room.

  As soon as I stepped on the next bridge I knew it was in worse shape than the others. The planks were a mixture of dark, rotten branches and pale dried-out husks. Each careful step was a noise, a wet crump or a twisted crack, and I had to slow down to find a rhythm to carry me over the breaking footsteps. The light, never bright, was failing quickly and the huffing of the red-faced policemen pursued me like a runaway train.

  A branch gave out of rhythm and I had to swing to one side to avoid plummeting through the gap it created, then rotate swiftly to the other side as the breaking spread. The policemen, faces glowing with fury in the darkness, were halfway across the island now, getting closer. Another crack beneath my feet and the rhythm was lost, and all I could do was pull myself a
long the reducing remains of the bridge by my hands, clutching the rope and trying to pull the island closer. I was still yards away when a tall man appeared in front of me, standing at the end of the bridge in a black coat. He was bending down slightly, as if talking to someone only a few feet high. I heard a snatch of huddled conversation and halted a moment too long, not knowing what was me and what wasn’t.

  ‘No, please don’t.’

  ‘Which one of you first, I wonder?’

  ‘I’ll tell.’

  ‘No, you won’t, or I’ll kill you both.’

  The noise of the policemen pounded in my ears and I felt the bridge finally forget the prayer it was held together by. As what had been substance became nothing and left me spinning in the air, I thought I heard the sound of a sneeze.

  Everything was blue and out of focus. Not out of focus, exactly, but double-imaged. Hazy light streamed through the windows, but the light was coming from nowhere, and it was not making anything less dark.

  I staggered vaguely to my feet, on an arbitrary assumption as to which way was up. Thick mist covered the floor, swirling and climbing of its own volition in a breezeless crypt. My leg gave way temporarily, swinging me round to face a man standing looking at me. For a moment I was sure he was going to have no head, but then I saw that it was only me. The mirror was tall, at least door height and as I stared at it I saw a flicker of movement from behind. I turned and caught a glimpse of someone disappearing round a corner, a tall woman in a white gown tinged blue, a volley of hair and no face, her steps tiny and spastic. I lunged towards the corner but it led into darkness, a dead end of wall. Feeling an unplaceable grief I pushed against the wall, but it would not give. Turning back I saw that beyond the mirror on the wall was an archway. I lurched towards it and stepped out.

  Into a meadow, a rolling blue meadow of high grass with pinpoints of white rounded beneath a blue-black sky. The meadow was beautiful but dead, and no birds sang there. I cut my way into the high grass, reeling and staggering, carving a ragged path out into the dark afternoon.