Lost Among the Stars

by Paul Di Filippo

  The Cucibocca laughed like the sound of a tree being riven by lightning, never knowing his boast had been a fatal mistake, filling Rupert with an unstoppable hate-stoked energy.

  Filched from the Cucibocca’s cloak, the bone needle felt cold as ice in Rupert’s grip. He drove it two-handed with all his might into the monster’s chest.

  The Cucibocca’s titanic scream ended in a gout of blood, more blood than a simple stiletto should have evoked, a fountain of shard-filled gore. The monster toppled, emptied like a sack. At this point in his timeline, at least, he was no more.

  Rupert fell into the sea, where small gentle waves laved him clean of the Cucibocca’s filth.

  Daeira raised him up.

  “One last leap, my knight” she said.

  From the very top of the bell tower of Matera’s cathedral, Daeira and Rupert had an unsurpassable view of the nighted city, over which a full moon shined.

  The lights of the Sassi glowed a queer marine color, as of bioluminescence. Small delivery trucks in the piazza below had no wheels and seemed to float a few inches above the eternal pavement. The bizarre clothing of the revelers looked like no fashions Rupert had ever seen. There seemed to be big dark structures rearing across the face of the moon.

  “Tomorrow is just another day in Matera,” Daeira said, cradling Rupert to her bosom. “But all days go on forever.”

  One might think from my introductions that the writer’s life was one of constant invitations and easy acceptances. This tale shows the flipside of such lucky outcomes. The horror writer Simon Strantzas let it be known that he was compiling a volume of stories inspired by the work of the seminal weird writer Robert Aickman. Long a fan of Aickman’s macabre fiction, I was determined to submit something equal to my hero, and so I carefully cobbled together the tale you will read below. Alas, Simon did not deem it worthy of inclusion. No problem, I thought, being a hardened veteran, I will surely place it elsewhere.

  Well, much to my surprise, after about a dozen rejections, I began to get discouraged. Could this story be such a failure that no one wanted it? I would have been totally despondent had not editor Nick Gevers praised it highly, while still deeming it not just right for an issue of Postscripts.

  And so, when Messr. Anderson suggested it might be nice to include in this volume something never-before seen, I said, “Kevin, I have just the thing!”

  If I can’t get a magazine editor to buy it, I’ll just have to sneak it into print somehow!

  The Garden of Pareidolia

  Speegle clumsily tapped out a message on the government-issued tablet of limited capacity which he had been issued upon his release from the House of Recall and Renunciation. Although his apparatus of speech had remained intact throughout his period of incarceration and awareness remediation (unlike his auditory capabilities, which his stringent tutors had not neglected to chastise, whilst also administering other mortifications to his disobedient yet educable flesh), he preferred not to talk these days. Having no customary feedback on what his voice sounded like as he uttered any set of responsive or proactive words, he could only imagine that his new deficit had engendered random burst of loudness or quavering or mispronunciation or slurring in his verbiage. Despite fifty-odd years of solid and instinctive speech formation, days full of words uttered without a second’s hesitation, he could feel a daily waning of his confidence in his powers to make himself understood by audible methods. And so he had elected to sever his relationship with vocality completely, reasoning that a willed terminal gesture at least implied a small measure of pride and control. Such feelings constituted his little storehouse of solace.

  Surely Allison would have understood his determination, and approved his decision to go silent. Although if she had remained by his side, perhaps he might have continued to speak, maintaining, despite any deficits, their long intimate relationship along its familiar lines: whispered endearments, shared laughter, shouted encouragements at sporting stadia, witty banter at parties. But Allison was here no more. Where she existed, if exist she did any longer, was unknown and even immaterial, given Speegle’s new constrained routine. Things lost could not be mourned forever.

  The electronic tablet exhibited limited functionality. Its grayish-green screen—when inactive the color of the flinty littoral sands in the district where Speegle had vacationed as a child—could display the full-color videos necessary for his continuing re-education. These proselytizing snippets, occupied by a cast of earnest young men and women clad in their heterogeneous cadre uniforms and exhibiting amateurish production values at best, booted themselves at regular known intervals throughout the day, without Speegle’s intervention, and demanded his attention upon penalties not good to contemplate. His attention was monitored by the pinhole lens in the upper rim of the slate, a cyclopean informer which Speegle suspected remained active even when the tablet was powered down. Forced to be near the tablet for these virtuous narrowcasts, Speegle remained under the mechanism’s gaze most of the time.

  The gadget’s other mode involved a virtual keyboard whereby Speegle could compose his messages in lieu of speech, which were then displayed on the screen in an invariant font at large size. The bulbous font resembled a childish kind of typeface mostly associated with silly picture books, and had been deliberately chosen, Speegle assumed, to render his dialogue infantile-seeming. The sophisticated humiliations of the regime were infinite.

  Upon the tablet now appeared Speegle’s latest utterance.

  WHY ARE WE STOPPING HERE? I THOUGHT I WAS GOING HOME.

  Seated next to Speegle on the rear bench seat of the official car, a placid and imperturbable Oxbolt studied the message on the slate tilted toward him.

  “Your old residence is counterfactual. This is your new home,” said Speegle’s newest minder.

  Having destroyed Speegle’s hearing, his invigilators had faced a dilemma: how to convey their commands and lessons and recriminations to their subject? Scribbling was slow, tedious and ridiculous, and using a tablet such as he now possessed only slightly less so. Thus, they had enforced upon Speegle a new talent, lip-reading. His mastery of the fresh skill had been quickly acquired under the rigorous promptings of the proctors, and currently, so long as he had a good view of his interlocutor’s face, he could parse any unheard communication perfectly.

  FOR HOW LONG?

  “Oh, my boy, such temerity! How can any definite pronouncement ever be regarded as anything more than an approximation of uncontrollable eventualities?”

  I SEE …

  “It’s the human condition, isn’t it? Acknowledging the constraints of reality is one of the primary lessons you learned, I believe.”

  I SUPPOSE SO.

  “Well, now that that’s settled, let’s just have a look at the old place, shall we? I think you’ll be pleased.”

  Leaving their driver temporarily unemployed and unseen on the far side of an opaque panel, Oxbolt slid his trim bulk out the curbside door and beckoned Speegle to follow by that specific exit.

  “Don’t step out into traffic. That could be dangerous.”

  The neighborhood was one of utter desuetude. Acres and acres of abandoned, boarded-up houses and small flame-licked and ransacked retail establishments, interspersed with empty lots exhibiting flora-choked basements like missing teeth in a grimacing mouth, all the structures falling prey to the ravages of weather and the insinuating tendrils and roots of rampant untended vegetation. Saplings sprouted from rooftops; insect-hosting bogs accumulated rainwater where once children’s playsets had been anchored.

  The macadam of the neighborhood’s roadway grid looked as if tank treads had pulverized it into highly regular moraines: a military glacier, receded now. Motorized traffic was nonexistent; pedestrians likewise.

  Speegle wondered if the threat of being run over by the ghost cars of drag-racing teenagers, hasty spectral delivery trucks or phantom troop carriers justified Oxbolt’s solicitude.

  A tumbledown, peeling picket fence separated t
he weedy, tipsy sidewalk from a front yard where wind- and bird- and critter-deposited seeds had established a jungly empire of anonymous boscage. A path of decorative paving stones traced a green tunnel through the riot. Beyond all this, Speegle could just make out slices of a brick façade.

  Oxbolt drew back a creaking gate. “This way. You’ll be charmed, I’m certain. Isolation equals reflection. No chance of contagion either.”

  Contagion, Speegle pondered, from me or against me?

  At the front stoop, Speegle could gauge the shape and the condition of the house a little better. A simple one-story brick Cape, relatively intact, its bowed picture window grimed with years of dirt, both inside and out. The dirt seemed somehow clean, after its fashion, industrial soot being a less prevalent contaminant these days.

  Having removed a single key from a large ring of such, Oxbolt tendered the key to Speegle. The brass key caught a fragment of sunlight, shining golden for a moment. “Here, take definitive possession right from the start. Sorry there’s no bride to carry over the threshold.”

  The dig at Allison’s absence seemed unwontedly cruel, clumsy and blunt to Speegle, who was used to more refined jabs. Did Oxbolt even know Speegle’s history? He had met the bluff, stubble-cheeked fellow only this morning, upon his ultimate release from the House of R&R, after inexhaustible days of paperwork and teasing feints of relative freedom. But surely any parole officer would be officially acquainted with his charge’s CV. Or did the regime imagine that all its enemies shared a universal infamy whose particulars were subsumed in a generic guilt?

  Speegle unlocked the door, whose bolt turned as if recently lubricated, pushed inward and entered, with Oxbolt close behind.

  The front door gave directly upon a parlor. The musty room held all the abandoned accoutrements of the unknown and anonymous departed tenants: overstuffed couch; recliner chairs like somnolent bears ready to hug the unwary Goldilocks; side tables with cup-bottom stains; inoffensive bourgeois art upon the walls; flat-screen TV perched atop a cabinet like a larger version of the tablet’s pinhole camera. Unlike the grimed window, the contents of the room seemed freshly dusted and cleaned for Speegle’s occupancy.

  “Comfortable and inviting, I daresay. You agree? We have your ease in mind. Many a happy evening was spent here, I can assure you, without imparting any particulars. One can just sense the residual bonhomie and domestic quietude.”

  Speegle pondered the assertion, and felt reluctant agreement. After the perpetual hovering manifold menaces of the House of R&R, this abode practically radiated safety and welcome, despite whatever fate its prior inhabitants had met.

  “Alas, my other duties require me to take my reluctant leave of you now. Exploration of the rest of your quarters will be at your own discretion and convenience. You’ll find the larder well stocked, with regular deliveries scheduled. No need for you even to answer the door. You’ll just find a convenient box on the doorstep before supplies even run low. Watch the perishables, though. Treat them kindly. They don’t come cheap these days! Of course, I need not remind you of the terms of your parole …? No, I thought not. Stay close to your new home until your presence is requested elsewhere, and all will be well. Hail the straight and narrow!”

  With that compulsory valedictory, Oxbolt departed.

  Speegle pocketed the fool’s-gold key—though how often he would find a use for it, if not allowed to roam, he could not say—and wandered through the rest of the house. Two small bedrooms, both made up for immediate sleeping (dressers still stuffed with clothing, the female garments retaining the faintest of perfumes; a plethora of toys whose batteries had all run down); a dining room and a modest kitchen constituted the rest of the house. Idly, Speegle snapped alight one of the stove’s gas jets. Miraculous flame sprouted. Was the whole no-man’s-land piped just for him?

  A door off that last-named room led to what must be a rear yard of unknown dimensions, fenced or unfenced. If unfenced, and given the border-erasing abandonment of the neighborhood, Speegle’s personal domain might with no small justification be construed to extend for acres. Could he make that claim to Oxbolt, when found wandering miles from his new abode? A glimpse of lush greenery through the door’s window seemed to imply a similar wildness of vegetation over whatever extension of the land.

  With a hand upon the knob of that exit, Speegle paused. Some sixth sense communicated the presence of another person behind him.

  The elderly woman stood no taller than four feet, petite if not an outright dwarf, but without any malformation of physique. She seemed older than God: her face, framed in a flower-printed headscarf knotted under her lightly whiskered chin, from which cloth cap an incongruous wisp of raven-black hair crept, represented a cartographer’s kingdom of wrinkles, ancient lines denominating both joys and sorrows assembled into a jigsaw puzzle of personal history. The rest of her outfit consisted of a shapeless forest-green wool dress, so dark as to be nearly black, that crested on the insteps of her boxy leather shoes. Speegle could easily picture the orthopedic hosiery and brutalist foundation garments that must lurk beneath.

  Where had this apparition been during Speegle’s tour of the house? In the basement? Trailing him in his shadow, turning when he turned, always just out of sight, like some archetypical vaudeville act?

  “My name is Marisola.”

  Speegle, naturally, had to imagine the quality of the little crone’s voice. But for some reason, he could not attribute any croakiness of age to it, but instead fancied her speaking in a young woman’s dulcet tones.

  A short lanyard held Speegle’s tablet from his belt. He could only hope any spies received headaches from the jouncing video stream.

  WHO ARE YOU? WHAT IS YOUR FUNCTION HERE?

  Marisola’s expression remained studiously neutral, neither friendly nor hostile. “I am here to clean and cook for you.”

  WHY DID OXBOLT NOT INFORM ME OF YOUR SERVICES?

  “I cannot say.”

  Speegle recalled how, in the Communist states of yore, housing blocks had always manifested an old lady concierge who invariably served as an informer and custodian of morals. No doubt this was Marisola’s true role, to supplement the camera eye of his tablet.

  WAS IT YOU WHO CLEANED THE HOUSE FOR ME?

  “Yes. But I had no time to wash the windows yet. I’ll get to them soon.”

  Speegle felt faintly humiliated and discomfited. He had never experienced the attentions of a servant before, even one who might also be a spy with the power to undermine him.

  I APPRECIATE YOUR EFFORTS.

  “It is simply my nature.”

  I WAS ABOUT TO GO EXPLORE THE BACK YARD.

  “This is perhaps not the proper hour for such an expedition. The sun is setting. Rest is indicated. Then supper. Do you have any preferences?”

  ANYTHING HOT. I HAVE EATEN TOO MANY COLD MEALS OF LATE.

  “I understand. The children’s bedroom is mine. Please feel free to occupy the other.”

  Feeling disinclined to argue or counter Marisola’s advice, Speegle retreated to the assigned bedroom. Having left the House of R&R with no possessions, not even a razor, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the man’s clothing left behind fit him and accommodated his fashion tastes, more or less, such trivial aesthetic preferences as had survived. Previously unnoticed, a bathroom off this master bedroom came equipped with a small range of toiletries.

  Speegle filled the tub with hot water, stripped and sank himself into the unaccustomed luxury. The steaming water brought on drowsiness, and he regained full awareness only when the bath’s temperature became tepid. As he dressed he noted that complete night had fallen.

  The dining room table was set only for one. Barely had Speegle seated himself when Marisola emerged from the kitchen bearing his meal on a tray whose proportions seemed gigantic due to the bearer’s small stature. Soup, chops, vegetables, coffee, and a kind of apple crisp, presented all at once.

  WON’T YOU EAT WITH ME?

  “Thank you,
but I already have.”

  Speegle did not press the matter. Marisola departed on her stubby legs, presumably to scrub pots and pans. He imagined her standing on a chair or stool to reach the sink. He consumed his food with zest, interrupted only by having to watch a lecture on his tablet. The theme was how to recognize paths of doctrinal error. The female proctor, pretty enough save for her tattooed forehead insignia, radiated a radical sternness which an utterly incongruous false frivolity failed to mask.

  A full stomach encouraged sleepiness as much as had the hot soak. Despite the early hour, and without seeking out Marisola to say goodnight, he retreated to the bedroom. He chose a pair of cotton pajamas in a hideous lime green, crawled under the light coverlet and was almost instantly asleep. No dreams intruded till dawn, when he experienced a brief but thrilling voyage on what seemed to be an endless heaving ocean, aboard a ship that oscillated between the size of a teacup and the size of a floating city. The maritime sun was high and hot in the dream, as it was when he awoke.

  Breakfast—pre-sugared and pre-creamed tea, buttered wheat toast and two fried eggs—arrived shortly after he came to the table. Marisola wore the same outfit as yesterday.

  THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK. CAN I HELP WITH SOMETHING?

  “By no means. This is my function. Go explore the garden if you still wish.”

  “Garden” the backyard might once have been, when the former tenants exerted their weekend suburban horticultural skills. But now the space was an utter riot of greenery. Unpruned trees lowered their tangled branches almost to the ground. Shrubs marched arm-in-arm like dutiful soldiers. Flowers had overflowed their beds, and those appropriate to the season presented masses of gaudy color. Speegle could not name them, never having focused much on botany. Underfoot, any traces of cultivated turf had been lost beneath drifts of ancient leaves and incursions of weeds and mosses. Animal paths crisscrossed hither and yon.