Carefully Brian nudged the door inwards with the end of the shock-stick and found himself staring into a tunnel of pointed teeth. He leaped backwards just as a tendril reached up from the floor and lashed out. There was a hissing and the snap of teeth closing on teeth, then it whipped out again, not giving the Dangerman a chance to recover.
With quick movements it forced him back into the hall, where he stumbled over his own feet and crashed into the banister just as a heavy tentacle sliced through the air. It was close enough for him to feel the breeze of it passing overhead.
Pushing himself forward Brian let out a wordless howl and sent a blast of flame at the creature. It howled with pain and pulled away, surprised by the sudden attack. Brian could now see the wretched bulbous shape from which the tendrils extended like the arms of some bloated, nightmare octopus. At the core a series of writhing appendages waggled. They were tiny fingers, wriggling blindly around a fleshy mouth-hole. Then Brian saw Robbie and his flames faltered.
His partner lay sprawled on the ground beneath the demon. Robbie’s left arm was covered in goop up beyond the elbow, eyes the white of skinned eggs rolled back in his head. Brian gagged when he noticed his fellow Dangerman’s mouth was stuffed with skinny tendrils, could see them pulsating behind the skin of his throat. The demon rolled forward on itself, hiding Robbie from view. It splayed its numerous, thrashing limbs wide and roared like a lion standing guard over a kill.
“Let him go,” Brian shouted. He reached forward with the shock-stick but before he could engage the current the demon had wrapped a tendril around it and with a twist, wrenched the weapon away. As it moved Brian caught sight of his partner and quickly directed a stream of one-handed fire low, at the point where Robbie’s arm disappeared into the creature.
Furiously the demon bellowed and swung wildly at Brian who side-stepped deftly in the narrow space. He grabbed one of the tendrils with his free, right hand. As he clenched tight the end opened like a flower’s petals, tiny jaws filled with needle-point teeth began snapping rapidly around empty air not five inches from his face, searching for him. With a snarl Brian turned on that hand’s flame and the creature’s skin blistered, burst then collapsed.
From the centre of the bulbous mass decades of pin-prick eyes snapped open and looked out as if through tar, blinking, staring in anger and despair. The Dangerman kept the stream of flame up, forcing the creature back further into the kitchen.
Avoiding the flailing tentacles Brian directed his fire at the waggling finger shapes. The creature squealed like a dog tagged by a speeding van and released its grip on Robbie. The dripping tendrils came from his mouth with a wet pop. Dropping the assault Brian grabbed a hold of Robbie and wrestled him backwards towards the relative safety of the hallway.
The demon rolled forward immediately, lashing at the ground, chewing up the short distance between them. Brian wrenched the door closed and it shuddered when the creature hit it with a thump, but it held firm.
“What?” Robbie jolted awake.
“Help me,” Brian croaked weakly, his voice raw from shouting. “I need you to lock onto that thing mentally. Numb it up so I can get in a kill-shot.”
Robbie didn’t even know where he was, his mind a tender, exposed wound. There was another smash against the kitchen door and a howl from multiple mouths.
“Come on,” Brian propped his partner up against the wall into a slumped sitting position. Robbie nodded and Brian booted the door open, hands erupting into flame as he stepped into the fight.
Robbie blinked to see the naked, pregnant woman and a hulking, multi-limbed demon existing in the same place, images ghosting over one another. He blinked and refocused. As his partner disappeared into the tangle of flames and tendrils Robbie’s mind reached out, probing. There it was, in amongst all the hurting and the hate, a small silver nugget. Robbie touched it and a cold breeze gusted behind his skull. He closed tight on it. The creature screamed.
Grimacing Brian aimed a sustained burst down its biggest mouth into the soft red belly within. Robbie tightened his hold, refusing to give the demon back any sort of control. Together the Dangermen worked and soon all that remained was a puddle of farting, belching mess which bubbled and boiled on the kitchen floor.
Brian collapsed onto his knees, hands red raw and steaming held limply in front of him.
“You okay back there?” he called hoarsely.
“Yeah, just shook,” Robbie fell to a fit of coughing. When it passed he shoved himself upright and, wincing, hauled his battered body over to Brian. “I came in and there was a woman, a pregnant woman, lying on the ground, right where you are.”
“I thought you’d checked out the house before we started? You said there was nothing else here.”
Robbie was at a loss. His stomach burned with that sick feeling of easily avoided disaster not averted.
“I was sure I did. I’m so sorry man. It must have gotten in while I was distracted,” Robbie tapped his temple. “I’d my defences down. Must have seen the doorway was open, slipped right inside and blinkered my eyes. Showed me whatever it needed to, to snare me.” He shook his head, seemed to drift away into sadness.
“Hey,” Brian grabbed a hold of his partner’s arm, “don’t worry about it. Happens man. We both made it, that’s what’s important. Don’t let it get to you. It’s just a job at the end of the day.”
Robbie smiled sadly, helped Brian to his feet and the two of them hobbled over to the sink. They stood like broken soldiers in the ruins of the kitchen listening to the crackle and pop of the demon’s remains continuing to cook. Robbie turned on the tap and was surprised when, after the pipes had done an impression of an old smoker clearing his throat, water spluttered from the faucet. “Here, hold your hands under this.”
“Oh that’s good. Hey, so was Anne alright? I figure that was her on the phone earlier.”
“No, wasn’t her,” Robbie remembered back to what felt like a hundred years ago and chuckled. Brian looked confused. “It was bloody a customer service call from the bank.”
“What? Are you kidding me? We almost got killed because of that?”
Robbie shrugged, wincing at an unexpected twinge in his neck.
“My body feels like it’s made out of bruises.”
“That’ll teach you to keep your mind on the job. We’ll have to get you one of those tinfoil hats to wear next time to stop the beasties from poking around in your grey matter,” Brian patted his partner gently on the back and turned off the tap. “Come on, let’s get this mess cleaned up. The sooner we’re started and so on.”
“Psychotronic.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re called psychotronic helmets, those aluminium hats that stop things from reading your thoughts.”
“That’s it. And I bet you’ll look just darling in one,” Brian winked.
“Hey, before we start do you mind if I use your phone for a second. I need to ring Anne, let her know I won’t make the scan after all. There’s more to clean up than expected,” Robbie gestured at the surrounding slop. “Think mine’s bitten the dirt anyway.”
There on the floor, peeking out of the bubbling mess was the cracked blackened remains of his handset.
“Ouch, I doubt the insurance will cover that,” Brian grinned. Painfully he slid his own phone from a pocket and handed it to Robbie. Before relinquishing it though he smiled and said, “here I got something that’ll give you a laugh.”
“No jokes Brian, please,” Robbie said and winced. “I’ve been through enough Hell already today.”
“Sure thing dude,” his partner replied and smiled. “Tell Anne I said hi.”
THE FLOATING OF THE DEAD
by Louis Palmerino
Blackthorn did not want to watch the fires burning on Linkstone Harbor, the columns of smoke pouring upward from the water like the breath of undersea dragons. She did not want to be out here in the cold with her father. A pungent smell hung about him she recognized but could not identify
. She thought of jumping down to the street, of running away. But she was too small, and the fall was too high––at least four lengths of her, from feet to forehead. She could do nothing but stare. Stare and try to hold her tongue, but also wonder what she did not know.
“Father,” Blackthorn said, “who are those people moving on the water?”
Beneath the flames, Blackthorn’s father had told her, lay the bodies of Linkstone’s dead. The deceased forms of every pauper and beggar and tradesman in the city who had expired without the silver to buy a patch of earth large enough to fit their body, he’d said. Every few moments, though, small bright figures would pass in front of the larger towers of flame, keeping the rafts of bodies ablaze with tall torches.
“Those are the Magrim,” her father said. There was a certain tone of his voice Blackthorn recognized, loud and thick, that she instinctively knew to back away from. “They’re magicians.”
When Blackthorn looked excited, his face darkened. “They’re bad!”
“But they’re magic,” Blackthorn said. “Why do we have to burn everyone? Can’t they just make everyone disappear?”
The darkness passed from her father’s face. “Oh, but magic can’t do that,” he said. “Magic is just used for tricks, to make little girls like you laugh.”
The terrace where Blackthorn and her father watched the boats burn could barely fit them both. It was formed by the roof of the house below theirs, a step on a long stairway of houses that climbed down to the water. A rickety wooden railing was the only thing keeping them from a long tumble to the street below.
Blackthorn and her father were not the only ones watching the fires from afar. Many others had climbed out of their windows to watch the floating of the dead, as they did every turn of the moon, as her father said they had done for years and years.
“That’s like a story,” she said.
“What story?”
“The story of the Eagle and the Salmon.”
Her father’s eyes crinkled. “How does that one go?”
“Well, an eagle caught a salmon in the river,” Blackthorn recited. “The eagle flew high over the city, but couldn’t find a place to roost and enjoy his meal. He flew around for hours and hours, and just as his wings became tired, he flew over a courtyard, where there was a magician.”
Blackthorn saw her father’s face change, but she had already started the story. She had to continue.
“The magician conjured a tree, which grew out of the ground from nothing. The eagle was able to land––”
A concussive blow threw Blackthorn’s face sideways. She recognized the sensation of weightlessness, of dizziness as if she stood at a great height, before she felt the pain––the stinging of it, sharp, hot, devouring. Familiar.
“Magicians cannot do that!” her father slurred as he stood over her. “They are tricksters. Every last fucking one of them!”
Blackthorn tried to fight the pain, but her struggle only left her angry. Angry as she had never been before at her father, at herself. She gave a last shudder of resistance, and fell to her knees.
She did not know how long she sat there crying, or if she had passed out for a time. She felt cold and exposed, as if the eagle from her story would swoop down at any minute and have her for supper instead.
When her eyes finally cleared, she noticed that the moon had inched farther overhead. The fires on the water had burned lower. She also saw that her father was still crying, laying there and blubbering apologies through his whiskers.
“I’m… sorry,” he sniffed. “I’m so sorry, love. I was afraid. Not thinking” Blackthorn noticed that the loudness and thickness had faded from her father’s voice. His smile was inviting. His eyes, she noticed too, were white, rather than red and bloodshot. She moved slowly away from her corner of the terrace.
“I am afraid too, sometimes,” Blackthorn said.
“Don’t be,” her father said. “The magicians will trick you. They will lie to you. They will use you. But they cannot make you disappear.”
Blackthorn repeated that final line in her head.
“They cannot make me disappear,” she said aloud.
“No, they cannot,” her father repeated. “They can take your money. They can take your home. But they cannot do that.”
Blackthorn thought about it. “Would you make me disappear if you could?”
Her father gave her one of those looks where one eye was bigger than the other, his left glassy and large, his right beady with focus.
“What makes you think I would do that, darling?”
* * *
Blackthorn scampered back and forth across the sun-drenched terrace, doubling over like a crone as she grabbed her stomach. It had ached with hunger pangs all night. She felt jealous of the stuffed cloth doll she carried with her wherever she went for not needing to eat.
The door to the terrace behind Blackthorn was locked. Her father had staggered around all morning, groaning and holding his forehead, and had told her that he was expecting visitors.
“Not a sound,” he’d mumbled, mussing Blackthorn’s hair as he’d closed the door into the house behind him. “And I truly do mean it today. I am also expecting an unwanted guest, who you are not to let in or talk to no matter what. You got it?”
Blackthorn nodded wordlessly, and he’d smiled as he’d retreated inside. He gave her one last peek through the slatted window in the door that was the only place the sun came into their home. He had not left her any food.
A week had passed since the floating of the dead, and while the ashes from the funeral pyres had washed away within a day, she still saw one or two of the Magrim boatmen plying their way across the harbor. The tall magicians in their dust-colored cloaks stood upright in their boats, and with their long poles and narrow wakes, they looked like fingers dragged across the surface of a puddle. Every so often, one would dive beneath the surface, jumping feet-first like a prisoner. They would emerge a minute later, their hands sparkling with gold and silver. Gold and silver that would buy meat and bread. Gold and silver that she did not have.
Blackthorn waved her doll at the street urchins and older boys who walked past on the sloping street below, yelling at them for food. The ones she knew, she cursed when they had nothing to offer.
“Blackthorn’s too busy fondling her dolls!” said an older boy, a baker’s apprentice who came to their door every week to deliver food to her father, who refused to walk to get it himself.
“There’s nothing wrong with that!” Blackthorn shouted back earnestly. The boy sniggered, and threw her the moldy end of a loaf of rye.
Let me come with you, she thought of saying, but did not. She filled her mouth with bread instead of words.
* * *
Her father’s guests made heavy footsteps when they arrived. Within minutes she heard the shouts of men’s voices, the grunt of shuffling chairs, the clatter of dice.
Blackthorn tried to distract herself from the noise. She looked down at her doll, which had darker hair than she did. The black hair, her father had told her, came from a horse’s tail, cut off when it had looked the other way. The eyes were dull brass buttons which had fallen off his coat; the nose was the severed round end of a mead cork. The stuffing and stitching, ragged and uneven, he had done himself as well, or so he had said. The doll had no arms, no legs, no mouth.
The voices rose from the kitchen. “How old is she?” an unfamiliar one asked.
“Eight. Maybe nine, fuck me but I don’t know,” her father said.
“She’s getting there.”
“Getting where?”
Blackthorn heard the dice clatter again. Whichever horse her father had stolen tail hair from had been dark as night. She imagined it galloping through the night, unseen.
“Where else?” the same voice said. “Why even keep her around if not to have a little fun?…”
Blackthorn heard her father laugh, but something sounded wrong. His laugh was a loud peal whenever she told him a funny sto
ry. This was a wheeze, as if forced from his chest.
“Look, I don’t know,” her father said. “I could just go throw a coin at any harlot…”
“The same way you’d eat someone’s pissed-on leftovers off the street!” the other voice retorted. “The butchers sell fresh meat for more money for a reason.”
“You’re fucking losing,” her father sounded angry now. “Roll again.”
They played for another half hour while Blackthorn separated strands of the doll’s hair until it fanned out as if suspended in water. The shouts of the men inside ––some happy, some angry––became louder and less understandable the longer they played, taking on that thick and declamatory quality she knew well.
“You owe me next time,” the unfamiliar voice shouted. “That silver better not be make-believe next week. Debts will be paid!”
“I’ll have the money,” Blackthorn heard her father mumble, “I’ll have the… money…”
There were many shuffling footsteps, then fewer, then at last Blackthorn heard only one set of feet tramping around the house. The steps were uneven. She recognized her father’s groan, heard the creak of his pallet as he laid down. A grumbling snore came through the window.
The door into the house was still locked. Her father might be asleep all afternoon. The chewy end of rye had not satisfied her, and her stomach began to grumble anew. Blackthorn passed the time by reciting the Story of the Eagle and the Salmon again, holding her doll by its doughy midsection and flapping it like wings to pretend.
“An eagle caught a salmon in the river…” she began.
She pictured the eagle flying over the city, wishing she could fly alongside it. Over the roof of her house and the houses above it, she could almost see it winding great circles between the tall silvery fingers of Linkstone’s citadel, perched on the city’s knee just where it began to bend down towards the water. She could see it swooping down over the narrow sloping streets, towards the long buildings by the docks that held riches shipped from other lands. She could see it passing over the heads of the urchin boys in their alleys, causing them––especially the ones she didn’t like––to flee in fright. Then she could see it turning downhill and casting its eagle eyes on the steely soldiers of the Prince’s Police, who kept deathly still, then on the shouting dockworkers, the velvet-coated merchant captains, and a lonely Magrim lookout, nearly invisible against the cobbled avenue in a tan cloak and matching hat.
Kzine Issue 22 Page 6