These, they stayed.
These, they drowned.
In the end, the house of sandstone and polished wood sank beneath the black waters as easily as the corrugated tin shacks and small wooden abodes, the petrol station and the general store. Even the unnamed man’s blood wasn’t enough to keep such a flood at bay; perhaps age had weakened it. The magic had faded, paled, enfeebled.
The flooding of the valley was another kind of magic, an unintentional one but its power was enough to overwhelm what Nessa had wrought.
Not wash it entirely away, however.
A matter of potential, floating beneath the surface.
But it was there.
And it waited.
A thread that stretched back. A thread that might as easily lead forward. A thread, waiting to be pulled. A thread of blood, thicker than water.
#
“Ganymede’s a shithole.”
The moment the words are out of his mouth, they don’t feel like a joke. They taste flat as they exit his lips and he regrets them. He sounds childish. He rustles the plastic bag from the takeaway shop as if it might cover up. It didn’t take him too long to find her—the rental car (considerably bigger than his, more expensive, less likely to be run off the road) was the giveaway—but the fast food’s cooling rapidly.
She doesn’t answer him, just shifts over so he can sit beside her. He holds the mouth of the bag open so she reach in.
“Sausage roll. Easier to manage than a pie.” He looks sideways at her: skin pale, green eyes bright, crow’s feet deeper than he remembers from a week ago in Brisbane, brows dark as a raven’s wingspan, lips full. He leans over and kisses them: so cold, a little chafed from the wind. How long’s she been here? He touches her face: icy. Reproachful as he says, “Adie.”
She takes two bites of the sausage roll before starting to chew.
“Thanks,” she says around the flaky pastry. “Starved.”
“Couldn’t we have had lunch in town? Together? Couldn’t we have met your family for lunch? Couldn’t we have stayed with your family?” Instead of staying at the Bates Motel, he thinks. Cheaper, he thinks.
“We are with my family,” she says, then polishes off her meal. She doesn’t offer to pay him back because she never does, and she never does because she always pays for the expensive things they share (like Foxglove Cottage). Doesn’t stop him from resenting it.
“Where’s their place?” he asks doubtfully and hunches into his jacket, burying his nose in the scarf.
“Here.”
“Adie.” He doesn’t know why he thinks of his grandmother and her dementia when Adie’s behaving like this. She’s older than him, sure, but not that much older. Not really. He changes tack. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
She’d arrived a few days before him on that pretext. She nods.
“Well. That’s good.”
“I found it before I left, really,” she says, and links an arm around his. There’s not much warmth coming off her; he feels like she’s stealing his. “You had family down here, right?”
“Yeah. Somewhere. Didn’t talk about it much.” He shrugs. He never paid much attention, but remembers Granny whispering, “Best forget,” as her fingers dug into the meat of his upper arm. “What is this place, Adie?”
“This is the drowned town.” There’s a catch in her voice, but no sign of emotion on her face.
“Drowned?”
“To make the dam. They keep calling it a lake like it’s a natural thing, like it might make people forget what was here. But we remember. There was a place called Nessa’s View.”
“Don’t they compensate people when that happens?” he asked and knew from the way she stiffened it was the wrong thing. Again.
“How do you compensate someone for drowning their home? Taking away everything they’ve ever had? The place they’ve bled into, onto?” She turns to look at him and he thinks for a moment she’s stared so long at the lake—dam—that it’s leached into her eyes, they’ve darkened so much.
“I…and they…”
“The government sent officials with offers, then threats. Most of the population took the money and ran. But not everyone wanted to go. They didn’t believe it would happen. Nessa bound us here with blood, gave a promise, and her children believed they were safe.”
“Nessa?”
“My ever-so-great grandmother. She made this place. The day of the flood, there was a cursory sweep of the town, but I don’t think they really cared. The inhabitants had been so troublesome—sabotage, legal battles, whatever they could do—that no one really cared if they’d left or not. So the stubborn old-timers, young-timers, those with nowhere else to go remained behind their closed doors and drawn curtains, refusing to believe the morning would end in death. The waters rose and Nessa’s kin finished with their faces pressed to ceilings, pushed into corners where cobwebs had waited unspoiled for years, against crown moldings that had once been the height of fashion. Gasping for a final skerrick of air. There was no point running.”
“When…when was this?”
“Sixty-three?” she says it as if she’s not sure, as if Aunt Miriam hadn’t drilled it into her.
“You’re not old enough…”
“To have seen it?” She stares at him and for a few seconds he thinks she is. She’s older and older. Then she grins, a spark of humor in a taut face. “No, my aunt told me. She watched. Her mother was one of those who stayed. And mine.”
“Why? Why stay?”
“They didn’t want to leave so they chose to sink, to be taken.” She sighs. “May as well ask why come back? Blood draws you places you don’t know or understand. You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Coz you asked me.” And he’s regretting it, oh so much.
That grin again. She touches his hand. “My family’s here. Yours is too. Your grandmother was a Kane.”
“Nah, Teague.”
“She married a Teague—after she’d married a Bowen, and a Smith. Was born a Kane. Here. Tried to hide but I found her—you.”
He shakes his head. “So? Are you telling me I’m fucking my cousin?”
“Pretty distant, but yes. But that’s not the point.”
“By all means, let’s get to the point.” He can’t keep the tone out of his voice. He’s regretting everything about this trip, about meeting her. Everything.
“The point is they remained. They’re shadows beneath the waters, the bones of the land. They were already held here by blood, choosing to die here gave their deaths meaning and power. Blood’s thicker than water, and their blood’s a thread that can be tugged at to create a path that might lead back. They’re at one end, we’re at the other. You and I? We’re the ones all the bloodlines end in. They need us.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Adie. What are you on? Let’s just go back to the BnB and you can have a rest.”
She gets up and walks to the water’s edge. He follows with a sigh. And Adie takes out a knife. Nothing special about it—not the knife Nessa used on her sacrifice all those years ago, no grand history to it—it’s just neat and tidy, a Swiss Army knife, with that red handle and white cross.
“Adie, what are you doing?” Michael’s voice wavers.
He’s bigger than her but she’s quicker, got an older head; she’s watched him these months together and taken note. She knows what he’ll do, how he’ll react, so she’s ready when he raises his hands, palms out as if that might protect him. He’s a bit of a coward, but it’s not his courage she needs. She slashes up, catches one of those vulnerable palms, leaves a deep slice there, watches with satisfaction as the blood oozes dark and rich from the furrow in his flesh. He shouts and she slashes again, this time at her own hand.
“Oh, shut up,” she says matter-of-factly, although the cut does hurt. She grabs his injured limb and slaps their wounds together. Adie squeezes—he whimpers—so their blood mixes and drips quickly into the still liquid of the dam.
“Blood is thicker than wa
ter,” she mutters as if it’s a spell (and it is) then starts to recite a list of names that mean nothing to Michael, but she cycles through them, then repeats again and again.
The water nearest where they stand begins to bubble, sweeping out across the surface, turning into white horses that gallop all the way to the far side—but those horses are carried by a blood-red wave and Adie can smell a whiff of iron in the shifting air. Then the water moves like a tidal wave dragging back, back, back, and finally charges forward, toward the dam wall. Adie and Michael watch, hand in hand; the tsunami hits and the concrete bursts out in enormous chunks as if charges had been laid and detonated. And the water follows it, pouring through the breach so quickly it takes Adie’s breath away. Her aunt told her what to do, but it didn’t mean she believed—truly believed—it would happen. It takes a lot less time than she thought.
Somewhere, downstream, Ganymede is being hit by a wall of water held back for years and years. Michael thinks of the frosty woman at bed-and-breakfast, wonders if her expression will change as the flood closes over her head.
And now, in front of them—these two children in whose veins the blood has come to rest—lies Nessa’s View, uncovered for the first time in years. Houses—those that are intact—are covered with the green of algae and weed, windows are dark with silt and mud. The remains of the petrol station looks like a dinosaur skeleton. Everything still, barely the flap of fish struggling in the rapidly shrinking puddles. Everything is a held breath, a frozen moment.
But then…
Oh then, the doors begin to open, with swollen wood and fractured frames, and things—green and bony, the fish-bellied dead—walk out, blinking in a sunlight they’d forgotten.
Adie stares, empty, her burden, her duty done. The names of the drowned suddenly forgotten. She’s made them saved.
Michael, still holding her hand, says in a strangled voice, “Oh, Adie. What the fuck have you done?”
“Time to meet the family, Michael.”
The God Complex
By Jan-Andrew Henderson
In physics, the “observer effect” is the theory that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure, in some manner.
Murphy leaned around Jensen to get a better look through the smoked-glass partition. On the other side, a dumpy, middle-aged woman sat at her console. She had unusually dark hair, short and permed, with a purple butterfly clasp fastened to one side. It looked remarkably like a wig.
“We call this part of the facility The God Complex,” Jensen said dryly. “That’s a pun.”
Murphy sighed and scratched at his wrist, where the manacles had rubbed the skin raw.
Of the pair, Jensen was taller and thinner. He had a clipboard under one arm and was wearing a white lab coat. He looked so much the typical scientist, Murphy wondered if the man had ever considered becoming anything else. Murphy, on the other hand, resembled an Irish bricklayer—short, squat and ginger—and the name didn’t help.
He squinted through the window at the woman. She wore a gold badge that said “Edith” in small black letters. With a handle like that, it was no surprise she was middle-aged, Murphy thought. Edith had a small microphone on the desk in front of her and was talking into it. Two wires, one red and one white, wound from the back of her head into a bank of steel panels set in the roof. Sets of lights above her head winked on and off and the whole apparatus gave a low hum.
“It’s really quite fascinating.” Jensen’s voice was slow and emotionless, as if he mentally read over everything before saying it. “It’s almost like you…plug yourself in. You…plug yourself in, yes. Plug yourself into the computer.”
“And you can see what’s going on in the past?” Murphy asked.
“You see, yes. No. Yes,” Jensen replied hesitantly. “You… experience. You…You…Yes, you see, in a way. Sort of.”
Murphy sighed again. He had long ago given up expecting straight answers from anyone in authority. Jensen turned a dial on the panel beside him and the woman’s voice suddenly became audible. She sounded like she’d been smoking since she was twelve. Continuously.
“I’m on horseback behind three medieval knights,” she narrated. “They’re called Bors, Percival and Galahad—I know that ’cause they have names stencilled on the back of their armor, just like the players in the soccer cup final I was watching last night. So that’s handy.”
Jensen visibly ground his teeth.
“It’s dark. It’s night. They’re approaching an old ruined castle, though there’s a light coming from one of the windows. Percival is eating a chicken leg and it’s pissing the other two off, ’cause he keeps wiping his hands on their mounts’ butts. Bors has gotten really narked and threatened to stick his mace right up Percival’s culet, whatever that is…”
“Too descriptive!” Jensen snapped at the glass, though it was obvious Edith couldn’t hear him.
“How does this set up work, then?” Murphy tried again.
“The computer…it’s a quantum computer. It can calculate infinite possibilities. See?”
Murphy didn’t see.
“Well,” Jenson continued, “they say that, if you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t understand quantum physics. So it’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“OK. Eh…We can use the computer to break down all matter into its basic components and study their trajectories.” The scientist traced the imaginary fragments with his fingers, looking a bit like the world’s palest rapper. “How they move, you know? Where they go. And…once you know how something moves and where it goes, you can tell where it once…was. Our quantum computer does that, yes.”
“Quite a feat.”
“It’s a big computer.” Jensen was still watching Edith, who had begun speaking again.
“Percival is bursting for the toilet but it takes forever to unfasten all those straps. And Bors is still in a monumental huff, so Galahad is going in alone. I’m following him. There’s a strong smell of sulfur. He’s entering a little room and there’s a really old bloke there, sitting by a fire. He looks a bit like Sean Connery and, for some reason, he’s surrounded by old-fashioned goblets. A couple of them seem to be solid gold and some are crusted with jewels.”
The woman pulled a wad of gum from her mouth and stuck it under the console. She suddenly sounded a lot clearer.
“He’s asking Galahad to pick which relic he thinks is the Holy Grail. Holy shit! Says if he gets it wrong he’ll die. That’s a hell of a risk just to get a cuppa.”
“This is an awful lot like the plot of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” Murphy said suspiciously.
“She watches a lot of TV.” Jensen raised his bony shoulders in resignation. “What can you do?”
“Then, why are you using her?” Murphy picked at a smear on the pane, a motion made more difficult by his metal cuffs.
“Ah. That’s the tricky part.” Jenson stroked his chin. “As I said, the quantum computer analyzes the trajectories of every bit of material in the world and then projects backwards. And so…we can chart exactly where each particle was located at any given moment…right back to the dawn of time, if you like.”
“That’s amazing.” Murphy gave a low whistle. “The possibilities must be endless.”
“Actually we haven’t found a useful application for it at all,” Jensen admitted. “We can’t even make a bomb. Ce’st la vie, I suppose. Scientists are a bit like explorers. Some find America. Some discover Lapland.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Who discovered Lapland?”
“Beats me.” The scientist glanced sideways at Murphy, probably to gauge if his interest was genuine. “If you really want to know, we can find out.”
He pointed into the booth.
“See, that’s what Sonja there does. Builds up a complete map of the past. She can see history.”
/>
“Sonja does all that?” Murphy looked at the woman with new admiration. “So, why does her badge say Edith?”
“Sonja’s the name of the computer,” Jensen replied scathingly. “Edith is a religious nutter. But…if she can discover something valuable, like the final resting place of the Grail or…a bit of the True Cross? Well…that would give us the money to keep running for years.”
Edith began speaking again. “Galahad is having a good look at all the different cups. He’s hovering over the fancy ones. Not surprising, really. They must be worth a fortune.”
“This is our real stumbling block,” Jensen whispered, so as not to drown out the woman’s commentary. “In order to properly monitor history, our Witnesses, as we call them, need to hook themselves directly into the quantum computer. They have a symbiotic relationship, you might call it. They link together. Yes. Fuse.”
“Isn’t that a bit dangerous?” Murphy looked at the wires protruding from Edith’s head and gave a shudder.
“That’s why we use people like her.”
“You don’t like women much, do you?”
“I love women,” Jensen snapped. “I just don’t like Edith.”
“Still…this is fantastic.” Murphy wasn’t about to get in the middle of a personality clash. “You could learn so much about…Everything.”
“That was the idea, yes,” Jensen agreed. “But like every new project, it has a few…em…glitches.”
“The wrinkly dude is reminding him that the Grail was used by Our Lord at the Last Supper.” Edith carried on, oblivious at being the focus of attention. Murphy assumed the window only worked one way.
“Hey, you old fucker! Stop helping him out. No cheating!” She snapped her fingers indignantly. “Now Galahad’s studying the plain wooden ones. That seems a better bet, but I’m still not sure it’s right.”
“See, it’s like she’s actually there,” Jensen hissed behind his hand.
“Glitches?” Murphy asked.
“Sort of.” Jensen grimaced. “According to Edith, when Judas kissed Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ punched him in the mouth.” He rolled his eyes. “How do you think a revelation like that would go down with the Christian community?”
Relics, Wrecks and Ruins Page 4