by Heide Goody
“We need your help,” she said. “We know you’re a donkey and everything, but the Soulgate is going to close around the world and Professor Omar says you might know a ritual or a spell to stop it.”
There was no notable response from the animals.
Nina huffed. “Pupfish, can you see names anywhere?”
Nina and Pupfish pushed through the crowd of donkeys looking for clues. There was a torch mounted just inside one of the shed, and Nina quickly learned donkeys did not enjoy having a light shone in their faces.
“I thought they would have badges or something. Wait, are you trying to tell me something?” A tall brown donkey had shoved her twice now. She peered into its face, searching for a spark of acknowledgment, but it looked like all of the others. “Are you Mr Grey? Stamp your left foot for yes and your right foot for no.”
“They ain’t gonna know which is left and right,” Pupfish said.
“We have to assume Mr Grey is an educated donkey. Look! Did it move its foot?”
“Ggh! It’s just walking over there.”
Pupfish was right. Another donkey was now leaning into her personal space.
“We can try something else. If Mr Grey is anything like I imagine him to be, he’ll like refined things.” She brought up the digital assistant on her phone. “Play some classical music!”
You don’t have any classical music. Would you like to go to the store?
Nina grunted in frustration. It wasn’t as if she knew any tunes that she could whistle. “Play some rock music!”
OK, playing rock music.
If she couldn’t draw Mr Grey out with something he liked, maybe she could goad him into a reaction with something louder.
She held up her phone and stalked amongst the donkeys. “Which one looks the most annoyed, Pupfish?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Man, I don’t know.”
“I know it’s hard, but concentrate,” urged Nina.
“It’s not that. I don’t think your phone knows what rock music is. Surely that’s Taylor Swift?”
“Yes it is. We don’t need to get into a debate. I’ve got no connectivity.”
“That’s your Taylor Swift music?”
“Maybe.”
“Ggh! Like you think Taylor Swift is rock?” he said and laughed. “Bhul tamade dweeb.”
“We don’t need to discuss whether it’s rock or not. We just need to assume that Mr Grey probably won’t be a fan.”
Pupfish peered into the face of one donkey, then another. He worked his way through them as systematically as he could, given the fact they were milling about in a way that seemed like determined chaos.
“They all look the same,” he declared. “They all got an expression that says ‘I’m going to laugh about you behind your back, soon as you’re not looking.’ Adn-bhul Taylor Swift, dog.”
Nina looked from Pupfish to the nearby donkeys saw what he meant. Each donkey had a unique set of colours and markings, but the same set of basic features. She tried to read the expressions on their faces, but they all looked a bit like Rod when he had a new gadget. It was a look that could best be described as distracted and a little bit over-excited. She failed to pick up on the idea they were all desperate to share a joke, though.
Nina thumbed her phone to turn off Taylor Swift. The donkeys were not responding visibly to the music. “What else can we try? We need a test that a human would be able to pass in a donkey’s body.”
“Maybe he’s gone native,” said Pupfish.
Nina had been nursing the same suspicion. If Mr Grey had forgotten his human side, he would not respond. “Gone deep, you mean,” she said firmly. “If Mr Grey is buried inside one of these then we will get him out. We have to.”
Nina took a step back and started a slow, deliberate clap. “Let’s try this. One two, one two.”
She nodded at Pupfish and he joined in, clapping along with her. Nina stomped her feet in time with the clapping. “One two, one two.”
The two of them kept the rhythmic stomping going for a good couple of minutes, making eye contact with as many donkeys as they could, but none of them showed the slightest inclination to join in, or even pay attention.
“Right, there’s only one thing we can do here,” she said to Pupfish.
“Yeah,” he nodded. He stopped clapping and stomping. “What’s that?”
“We need to take them all. We need to get them back to the vault and Omar can figure out which one is which.”
Pupfish turned from side to side in a silent but agitated mime that tried to convey their isolated location, their lack of transport options, and just how many donkeys there were. “We ain’t gonna fit them on the back of the moped,” he said.
“I know,” she said, irritated at herself.
“So donkeys,” Pupfish said. “They like horse babies, or what?”
“Course they’re not horse babies, they’re, um—” She paused, not really sure whether a donkey and a horse were related at all.
“Okay, cut-n-shut ponies. Whatever. Ggh! We can ride them, yeah?”
“Yeah, you can ride them. Well I can ride them. You might be a bit big.”
Pupfish gave a donkey an experimental pat on the head. “Will they follow us?”
“No,” said Nina. “We’re going to need to rope them together, then lure them with food.” She headed into the sheds and found some bridles hanging up. “We need to put these on them.”
“You know how to do that?” asked Pupfish, taking the odd, strappy bundle and holding it in various ways against a donkey to see how it might fit.
“I do,” said Nina, showing him. “I had a boy to do this for me when I had to ride a horse. Dick his name was.”
“The horse?”
“The boy. Proper bloody perv he was. Obsessed with my tits.”
“Ha! That’s funny cos you don’t have none.”
“But at least he taught me some horse stuff.”
It took them a good while to get bridles onto all of the donkeys and then find a shiny blue twine to fasten them all together. Pupfish tossed her a flick knife to cut the trailing end of the rope.
Nina had been observing the donkeys, and she had singled out the one that she thought was the most inquisitive. She hoped if she put him at the front he would encourage the others to follow. “You are now the lead donkey,” she told him, as she led it round and tied it to the gate. “I will call you Donk. I hope you and I can get along Donk, because we have a hell of a journey in front of us.”
“Did you find some food to lure them?” asked Pupfish, as they completed work on the donkey train.
“No, there’s none in the sheds. They must keep it somewhere else,” said Nina. “Let’s try with some grass or something. Maybe if we get them moving they will just keep going.”
Pupfish opened the gate as Nina took hold of Donk’s halter.
“Come on, hup!” Nina led Donk through the gate. It was straightforward to begin with as Donk seemed keen to get out and look around.
Pupfish stood by the gate as the other donkeys filed past. He gave some of them an affectionate slap on the rear as they passed. Nina thought perhaps he’d seen it in a film. Whether it was a cowboy film or one of the questionable pornos that the fishboys liked to peddle, she did not care to contemplate.
Nina had a plan for transport which she had not yet shared with Pupfish, on the grounds that it was so absurd he might just stalk off into the night. Walking all the way back into central Birmingham, probably ten miles in all, was the slow and difficult option, but there was an outlandish alternative she might be able to pull off.
She and Pupfish had counted as they’d put the bridles on, and there were twenty-eight donkeys in total. Nina led them through the spooky darkness of Sutton Park. The night sky glowed with the reflections of fires and the sickening luminescence of flying horrors, but here there were pockets of utter blackness on every side.
A chilling howl erupted from the darkness, and Donk froze. Nina could s
ee the rolling eyes of several terrified donkeys who were trying to decide which way to bolt.
“Muda,” said Pupfish, pointing. “Dendooshi.”
Nina saw a large beast slink forward from the shadows. There were more behind it. She lifted the beam of the torch. They were dendooshi all right. She’d seen them in the consular mission Menagerie in Dudley recently, loping beasts with gnashing fangs and spittle-drenched fur. She knew Pupfish and his very unfortunate girlfriend Alanna had encountered them during a brief excursion into hell. Pupfish’s description of them as big-ass wolves was fairly spot on.
“Any handy tips for defeating them?” she whispered urgently.
“Naw, man! Mostly you just gotta keep well out of their way,” said Pupfish.
That was no longer an option, as the pack advanced in a semi-circle. Donkeys must have seemed like a tasty, slow-moving snack to the dendooshi. Nina could not afford to lose a single donkeys, as she still didn’t know which one was Mr Grey.
“Back off!” she yelled at them in her fiercest voice, just in case they might be easily spooked by a woman who was much smaller than they were. Then she remembered the pheromone spray Rod had given her. It was still in her dress pocket. It was supposed to repel wolves, so maybe there was a chance it would work on dendooshi. She reached for her pocket, but Donk chose that moment to bolt in panic, dragging her along.
“Donk! Stop! This is going to get you killed, you’re playing right into their hands!”
Nina discovered she was not as strong as a donkey and it continued to haul her along in its determination to run away.
“Donk, I really don’t want to get rough with you, but you’re leaving me no choice.” Nina scrambled forward and smacked him hard on the nose. This was something that she’d seen Dick do when a horse nipped his hand. Donk stopped and looked up at her.
“What? I’m trying to save our lives, you idiot.”
Now she could reach her pocket, she pulled out the spray can. The nearest dendooshi were so close she could see the glistening drool hanging from their mouths. She popped the top and aimed it. Then she paused. What was a pheromone spray supposed to do, exactly? It sounded like something for stopping wolves pooing in the garden, now that she stopped to think about it. She tried to read the text on the can without compromising her aim, but it was too dark. She waited a few more seconds and then lunged forward with a blood curdling scream and sprayed the nearest dendooshi in its eyes. It hissed and shrank back, pawing at its face. It stumbled into one of the other dendooshi and turned blindly to attack it. Nina seized the opportunity to blast another that was within reach, then she dragged Donk forward, skirting round the pack.
She was about to yell to Pupfish when there came the pop-bang of gunfire. The samakha had decided now was the time to get violent. She didn’t know how much damage a bullet would do to a six-foot wall of wolf, but Pupfish had taken it from one of Kathy’s Forward Management goons; maybe it was loaded with blue Venislarn-killers.
“Pupfish! Guard the rear of the donkey train!” she yelled.
They made their way out of the park and onto the roads of suburban Sutton Coldfield. The dendooshi were still following, more warily now. Pupfish had the good sense to ration his shots. Many Birmingham folk were familiar with the sound of random gunshots in the night, but she doubted that kind of experience extended to genteel Sutton Coldfield. No one came out of their houses. No one came to investigate. Hiding or dead, she couldn’t tell.
Carcosa
Rod opened his eyes, saw white stars in a black sky and immediately knew he was far from home. He half-entertained the notion his brain saw those constellations and knew they were not any constellation visible from Earth. But, no, the truth was much simpler. The sky above was black, and the sky of home was never truly black. This was the sky as seen from the Moon; from space: black and speckled with cold unlovely stars. Rod felt painfully lonely just looking at it.
Something prickled his back and arms through his shirt. Rod sat up. Brittle, colourless grass rustled and disintegrated beneath him. Crumbling headstones, headless statues and half-complete or half-demolished masonry littered the field around him.
“Graveyard,” he told himself.
Speaking made him think of who he might be listening, and he looked around. There was no one in sight. The King in Crimson was not with him. He patted himself and checked the ground.
“Bugger’s got my jacket,” he muttered.
There was no wind, but for a moment something carried voices to him: the cher-ta-cher-ta-cher of conversation. Brushing fragments of dead grass from the seat of his trousers, Rod looked round for the source. Some distance away, obscured by various headstones, there was movement. Beyond was a high wall, a street and city buildings. The buildings were old, some with medieval arches, others with the forthright square stonework of Victorian institutions. None seemed to be intact or complete. Rod had seen bombed cities up close in Iraq and this looked similar, although not quite the same.
He tramped across the thick, dry grass towards the sounds of talking. Something shifted nearby, low to the ground. It possessed a near-human skull coated in a thick, translucent gloop that bulged away to create a long, boneless, slug-like body. It probably had an unpronounceable Venislarn name – Nina or Morag would know it – but Rod was content to think of it as a giant slimy skull-slug. It slid between gravestones towards him. Its skull mouth was wide open, ready to bite down on him, even though it was still several feet away. It inched closer, its back arching like a cresting wave, pouncing upon him in nature documentary slow motion.
“Back off, mate,” said Rod and moved away from it with ease.
There were other skull-slugs in the graveyard, all equally slow and unhurried. In the dark of the night they weren’t easy to spot until they moved against the grey gravestones or the ash-white grass.
The sounds of conversation came from a family of four sitting in an open space between rows of graves. A tatty patterned blanket lay on the ground, and the four of them sat on it around a wicker picnic basket. The mother and young daughter were buttoned up in long dresses with heavy frilled petticoats, the son in a rough-weave jacket and short trousers. The father wore a suit and high-collared shirt. All four wore linen masks across their mouths and noses, held in place with elasticated strips around their ears.
The girl held her empty hand to her mouth. Her jaw moved up and down behind the mask.
“May I have another sandwich, mother?” asked the boy.
“Do not speak with your mouth full,” the woman replied with prim formality. She leaned forward to open the wooden lid of picnic basket, reached in, and placed nothing at all on the boy’s plate. The boy set upon the imaginary sandwich with gusto.
It was make-believe, child’s play, yet there was no playfulness or warmth in their eyes or voices.
The father raised a cane and pointed into the distance. “The ships would come in across the lake and moor up there. Of course, you can’t see them now.”
The mother nodded but did not turn to look.
“Mummy,” said the daughter. “The thing.”
She pointed towards Rod but, he realised, not at him. A skull-slug was by Rod’s feet, pooling its viscous goo beneath the bone face, giving it height and mass.
“Yes,” said the mother. “Now shush.”
She turned her attention from the creature. She didn’t even see Rod. She picked up a light china cup and saucer. Rod couldn’t see if there was imaginary tea in the cup to go with the imaginary sandwiches.
“Aren’t you going to move?” said Rod. “Don’t you think you should … run, or something?”
The father’s moustache twitched as though irritated, but otherwise no one seemed to be aware of him.
The skull-slug’s skull was now at a level with Rod’s waist, and so close it could lash out and attack him, if it moved at anything faster than, well, a slug’s pace. Rod stepped away from it. A hand took hold of his shoulder.
He shuddered in surpr
ise and tried to turn to look round, but the King in Crimson held him tight. A diseased and bandaged foot lashed out and connected with the skull-slug’s jaw. It snapped shut with the click of teeth.
“This one’s mine,” said the King in Crimson.
The family of four continued to eat their invisible lunch and paid no heed to the arrival of the King in Crimson.
“Can’t they see us?” said Rod. “Are they ghosts?” The daughter looked at Rod out of the corner of her eye while she ate. Rod thought for a moment. “Are we the ghosts?”
“No such luck for you, patron,” said the King, clicking his tongue and drawing Rod back and away. “Now…”
He spun Rod round. Rod was faced with the King in Crimson looming large, seeming to grow taller on tapering legs, like some weird camera effect. His breath was a long inward gasp, a deep breath before the plunge.
“What do you think you’re doing?” said Rod.
The King flicked at the edge of his bandage mask and it slipped off one side, revealing his mouth. The teeth, in his bloody and lipless mouth, were cracked and translucent with age, a mouth of nicotine fingernails. “You have your wishes, patron.”
Rod was shaking his head. “No, no. You don’t get to cheat me like that.”
The looming King in Crimson paused in his supernatural looming. “Cheat? Cheat?” He spat the words as though spitting out an unpleasant taste.
“You promised me three wishes,” said Rod.
“Three indeed, valued customer.” The King held up ancient bony digits. “The gem to your friend. Unnatural strength. And you wished to be away from that tomb in which you were trapped. Three!”
“What strength?” said Rod. “You cheated me and you know it. I could not move those stones.”
“The strength to knock—”
“To knock out a god with a single punch, aye. I see no gods and I’ve not punched anyone. That wish has not been delivered.”
“The wish was for the strength.”
“Unproven,” said Rod with a forced tone of conviction. He had never been a gifted persuader. His general inclination was to let truth and common decency speak on his behalf and hope people would be similarly decent and fall into line. Actually, trying wheedle his way out of a bargain with a Venislarn demi-god or whatever did not play to his strengths.