Nowhere: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod

by Ian R. MacLeod

  The hotel lived up to its external lack of promise. The proprietor was a scrawny man of late years in possession of the kind of beard which made you wonder whether its presence was intentional. He looked at Richard as he signed the address book much as one might study the arrival of an unwelcome household pest. The meal Richard ate in the otherwise empty restaurant had been re-heated so often that it was genuinely hard to tell what it might once have been, whilst the service wasn’t so much execrable as non-existent. But he smiled to himself as he climbed into his pyjamas and lay down in the damp grey sheets of his damp grey room. This grim experience would stand up well as a humorous prelude in the many talks he would soon be giving about his discovery. People would smile. They would laugh warmly but respectfully. Even Professor Crane…

  There, in the darkness, as the sea boomed and rain and wind rattled his window, Richard’s smile briefly twitched into a grimace. He was remembering a small, embarrassing interlude which had occurred at the start of the summer recess, not long before the professor had set off on whatever mysterious quest had drawn him. It had been another of those long, slow, afternoons at the museum, and he had sent Mrs Marbish home and locked up early so he could occupy himself with a little sword practice. A few thrusts and parries, and his mind was so far off amid scenes of bloody battle that he hadn’t become immediately aware of a watching presence. What presence, in fact, could there have been, seeing as he, as curator, possessed one of the sole two sets of keys which gave admission to the museum and its precious cabinets?

  When Richard had, sweating and breathless, finally finished his pursuit of an imagined Grendel and twirled toward the half-open door where a tall figure was standing, Professor Crane had simply stepped from the shadows and stooped his long neck and announced that he had a query regarding the ground plan of an excavation which had taken place under the college’s auspices back in the 1880s. He hadn’t even mentioned the fact that Richard had been twirling a near-priceless sword like a child playing at knights-in-armour. Richard, flustered, had at least managed to put the thing away as if he had merely been checking some detail of its making. Then he went to find the papers in question, and the professor pronounced himself much obliged and left. But there was always a sense with Professor Crane that any minor infraction or mistake was carefully noted, analysed and stored until the day that it might prove useful.

  Next morning, despite a night of difficult sleep in which a predatory creature seemed to be circling from the shadow-edges of some interminable space, Richard made a hearty attempt at extracting his breakfast of shrivelled bacon and congealed scrambled egg from its pool of cold fat. After all, one must fortify oneself for the work ahead, much as Belzoni surely did before he invaded the pyramids, Schliemann when he discovered Troy, or Carter when he stumbled into the tomb of Tutankhamun. And, yes, the hotel proprietor did possess an Ordinance Survey map of the area, which Richard was allowed to borrow in exchange for a unnecessarily large deposit. There even proved to be a small shop along Flotterton’s single street which sold a few items of hardware in the long season when it wasn’t purveying buckets and spades. A decent spade, but of a larger and more practical kind, was exactly what Richard had in mind, along with a small lantern and a measuring tape.

  The rain, at least, has ceased this morning, but it was nevertheless a particularly bitter and grey day. Wrestling with the map, then briefly consulting the precious scrap of parchment, Richard confirmed to himself that finding the burial mound shouldn’t be that difficult. A stream, near to the sea… He hunched north around the edge of the pitch and putt course, which somehow felt to be the more promising direction with which to begin.

  Noontime passed without success. The packed lunch of grey bread and something resembling ham which the hotel proprietor had prepared for Richard, along with a few fragments of his beard, was so poor that he would have tossed it to the screeching gulls if he hadn’t been so hungry. North, it appeared, was not the direction he should have chosen. He retraced his steps toward the pitch and putt course as the wind stung into his face.

  He knew exactly what an undisturbed Anglo-Saxon burial mound should look like, but the landscape around Flotterton was so uncertain that he was struggling to make proper sense of it. There were streams winding this way and that toward the shore, certainly. Some of them might even fit the description of being clear. There were also humps and mounds aplenty in the scrubby expanse of grazing land which abutted the dunes and the sea. But there were so many, and it was obvious that this whole coastline was forever shifting.

  As he trudged past a few desolate bathing huts, then squelched on across a filthy stretch of mud using his shovel as a walking stick, Richard remembered the dreams of his childhood days back in Penge. Then he imagined himself seated in glory at the top table at the Welbeck College Annual Founders Dinner, and in a private first class carriage of a Great Northern express train on his way to collect some award. A plaque, perhaps, outside the museum to commemorate the brief time he had served there in undeserved obscurity? Or an entire new museum devoted to his name. For surely a king of Cynewald’s era would have been buried with great riches, which of course was confirmed by that odd little curse. He could expect at very least the man’s armour and ceremonial gear, along with—

  Richard paused. Darkness was already settling and he would soon have to go back to that ghastly hotel, but for a moment he was almost convinced that he was being studied by a tall and oddly avian-seeming presence from the crest of yonder dune. An actual bird? A heron, most probably. Although it did seem unusually large. Were cranes at all common in this part of the world? Richard wondered, as he peered through the thickening gloom and the birdlike figure seemed to puff out in the swelling dusk like a doused candleflame.

  Richard shivered. If he stood here any longer, he would probably find himself sinking irrevocably into the mud. Tired and disappointed, he dragged himself back toward the few lights of Flotterton. Taking in what remained of the view as he reascended the low rise beside the bathing huts, he was still determined not to give up. And there, over toward the low lands of Lincolnshire, the last of the westering sun flashed briefly toward him through a final gap in the clouds like a final signal of hope.

  The effect was briefly beautiful. Richard could almost imagine why the great warriors of that distant and much misunderstood age might have chosen to inter their king here, where the incoming tide roared its grief—

  His gaze caught on something. Such was the clarity of the light thrown by the setting sun that, like a lantern held at an acute angle to reveal the hidden indentations in a sheet of paper, the landscape spoke to him in a language as clear as modern English. In fact, to Richard, it was far clearer. It was suddenly obvious that the many mounds and hillocks which had so confused his day were lumped into their present irregular shapes by the simple forces of nature. But there was one mound which, although relatively small, was different. Astonishing, really, that no-one had ever noticed it before. Although the fact that it had was now part of the pitch and putt course might have something to do with that.

  The sun had vanished, but Richard was in no mood to return to his hotel. Like most things here, the course was closed for the winter, but its peeling picket fenced presented no obstacle. After some struggle with the wind, he lit his lantern and inspected the mound, which rose to something like twice head height, and was perhaps twenty yards across at its base. The makers of the course had used the mound as a hazard along the fairway of the 18th hole. But standing beside it, Richard was more certain than ever that he had found something ancient and extraordinary.

  This was no time for measuring, for trial holes and exploratory trenches. This was his moment alone, and he was determined to take it. He glanced toward the few lights of Flotterton. He was close to what might loosely be termed civilisation, but he doubted if anyone would notice him at work here. Hefting his spade, he starting digging.

  At first, he struck ordinary turf. Then, he came to a hard-packed aggregation of
quartz stones laid in an approximate circle. This placing of an outline of stones being a common characteristic of Saxon burial mounds. Next, he began to encounter darker lumps amid the sandy soil. Indicative of burning—funerary incineration also being a common Saxon practice. Everything about this mound proclaimed its authenticity. His only fear was that some grave-robber had got to its treasure before him.

  Richard laboured. The wind had stilled and a full moon had risen and the scene in which he worked, with the dark earth heaped across the silvered turf of the 18th fairway, acquired the clarity of an old woodcut. The opening on which he was working, a rough trench about two feet wide and three deep cut into the seaward side, became a tunnel. Soon, he was crawling in and out, scooping earth with his hands instead of using the spade. A little dangerous, perhaps, but he felt sure he could manage to scurry out at the first signs of major slippage.

  Unlike Neolithic tombs, he was not expecting to find any solid structure at the mound’s core. There would simply be more earth, and then the funerary remains themselves, surrounded perhaps by the bones of those who had been sacrificed in the deceased’s cause. So it was a surprise to Richard when his hands suddenly fell through into what felt like empty space. He gasped, and heard the sound re-echoed in a stuttering growl as he wriggled backwards to take hold of his lantern. Then, on elbows, knees and belly, and by now entirely coated in dirt, he wriggled back inside the mound and held the lantern out.

  What Richard Talbot saw when light first spilled into the darkness of lost centuries must rank amid the great moments of modern archaeology. The many artefacts which comprised what became known as the Flotterton Horde would have surely have gleamed even in that loamy hole. The famous golden-bossed shield. That exquisite dragonfly brooch. The many fine daggers and swords. The great Saxon mailcoat. All in all, there was enough here to change the way the world viewed the pre-Christian kingdoms.

  As to what else happened in those moments of discovery, there is much that is not entirely clear. Many residents of Flotterton reported being awakened by a ghastly howling, which one described a sounding like a huge, wounded cat. The hotel proprietor was, to his credit, one of the first to put on his boots and investigate the horrifying noise, which seemed to emanate from the pitch and putt course. There, he reported that he saw a man staggering about the hillock beside the 18th fairway in the moonlight, seemingly struggling with something which he described as resembling a blur of shadows.

  By the time the local doctor arrived, and then the police, and despite the horror of Richard’s condition, wiser councils were already starting to prevail. There was, it must be said, some ill-advised speculation that Richard had somehow triggered an ancient form of booby trap when he poked his head into that mound. But any amateur historian of the era would have confirmed that that was not the Saxon way. Nor could device so ancient conceivably have functioned to such terrible effect. No, the general consensus was and always will be that Richard Talbot, perhaps in a spate of madness caused by his excitement and near-asphyxia, somehow managed to claw off most of his own face.

  In the circumstances, and with Richard incapable of anything but sobbing screams, it was some hours before the police were able to establish whom they should contact. By next day, however, the first of the dons from Welbeck College were arriving, and they immediately saw the immense value of the discovery their colleague had made. The press came soon after, and the sightseers from the Midland towns not long after that. For the residents of Flotterton—and the hotel proprietor especially, although the man remained strangely subdued—there can scarcely have been better times.

  Richard Talbot survived whatever ordeal he had suffered, although he was never again whole or sane. After the immediate medical problems of his loss of flesh, sight and proper speech had been dealt with, he lived his remaining few years at a specialist nursing home at the grateful college’s expense. It was not, as it happens, so very far up the coast from Flotterton, at Sutton on Sea. Even there, though, his manner and what remained of countenance were such that he had to be kept well away from the other residents. Nor was he ever able to tolerate the presence of the establishment’s fat and amiable ginger cat. Occasionally, one of the more sympathetic dons would summon the will to visit him, and try to marshal their revulsion at his manner, appearance and continued gurgling screams. One, a junior professor who succeeded Richard as curator of the now much-expanded and enormously popular museum, and an up-and-coming expert in Anglo-Saxon linguistics, took the time to study the parchment of ever-mysterious provenance which had been found in the pocket of Richard’s coat. He was heard to comment how strange it was that the curse contained in the fragment could be best translated into modern English by the term loss of face, although this was hardly the type of speculation which would ever reach the academic press.

  As for Professor Crane, he reappeared at Welbeck College a week or so after Richard’s discovery. For once, he had returned from his researches empty-handed, although his presence and experience was vital in dealing with all the popular and academic interest, which was at fever pitch by then.

  Careers blossomed at Welbeck in the years that followed. There were several best-sellers, visits to the now-famous coastal excavations by Cabinet ministers, and an item on Pate News. If there was one discovery which forever cemented the college’s position in world academia, it was that of the Flotterton Horde. But, perhaps oddly given his reputation, this was the one advance in the science of archaeology for which the great Professor Crane, now Member of the Order of Merit and a Lord, would never take the slightest credit.

  Afterword

  Another of my favourite quotes about creativity comes from John Lennon. It went along the lines of him saying that when they started out the Beatles were simply trying to sound like the black American R&B groups of the era, and being bad at it was how they developed their own sound. It’s not uncommon for me to have another author, style or theme in my mind as I approach a new project. Sometimes, it sticks, sometimes, it doesn’t, and most often of all I probably forget that part of the initial process, or am copying something subconsciously without even meaning to, or the imitation is so poor it becomes something else. “The Crane Method,” therefore, rather stands out, at least to me, as an example of one of my stories which not only adopts the style of a certain writer, but also their use of setting, tone and theme, and sticks with it throughout.

  M. R. James, of course, is pretty much the epitome of a certain kind of English ghost story—witty and urbane, but with icy claws—and the problem with doing a halfway decent job at imitating him with any level of success is that your work is likely to seem weak in comparison. Still, to my mind, M. R. James is so good that even a half-decent stab at trying to recreate some of his eerie magic is worth the effort.

  THE WISDOM OF THE GROUP

  Buy. And buy again. Then sell. Yes. Sell.

  My trading floor is a glass smartcube on the second floor of my house set amid the pines and crags of the Cascade Mountains, here in Washington State. A river races beneath, but for now the roar of water is replaced by the clamour of voices, and some of them are still human, and a very few—a trickle of sharing—belong to the other members of my group. We may not know each other well in the traditional sense, but the trust we share on the trading floor is deep and implicit. The hunches, the impulses, the decisions which arise are as natural, and as innately feral, as a kitten’s when it plays with a ball of wool.

  So we shed our shares in Neurosat when the market still seems to think they’re on the up, and gobble up some more of Xenocon at a plummeting price when all the so-called smart money—which these days mostly means bank-bots—is desperate to sell. We shift and we shuffle. The numbers spin and swirl. We deal.

  Which brings us to the puzzle of our continued investment in the shares of a company called Canco, which have been bouncing along the bottom for several days now—aeons in market terms—and still show no sign of going up. A small tussle of wills ensues between the stickers an
d the sellers, although it’s not that uncommon for our group to split briefly into divergent mode. But why did we buy these shares if something positive wasn’t going to happen? It makes no sense. And wasn’t there, the dim thought arises, some kind of rumour on the feeds? Or at least, there soon will be. So not just stick. No. Not just hold. But push forward and buy and buy while we still have the chance. At the end of this frenzy, we have invested the best part of four hundred million dollars in a basket-case mining corporation based in the People’s Republic of the Congo. Not a huge investment by our standards—perhaps a quarter of our free assets—but nevertheless a significant one, and I feel a small flush of triumph, almost as if I’m the one who’s pushed this through, although that’s never how this works.

  Then we’re done, and the fizz, the buzz, fades from my smartcube like the lost thrill of orgasm as the sense of sharing runs out. Better than sex? Perhaps. Far more profitable, as well. The roar of the river is returning, along with the loom of the mist-swirled pines. But I’m still just standing here as the final connections dwindle, and it’s briefly as if there is no smartglass, no ceiling or walls, no group and no protection, and I’m falling through whiteness—impossibly cold and alone.

  “Went okay, did it, Samuel?” Luke is fixing breakfast in the kitchen, his still slightly sleep-tumescent cock swaying against the Hermes robe I bought him back when we were staying at that little place in Saint Germain-des-Prés. He neatly balances a tray of croissants, coffee and orange juice on the crook of his arm as he shuts the fridge door.