Nightshade and Damnations

by Gerald Kersh

  “Your object being, to plant a firm illusion that there has been a prolonged passage of time, when, as a matter of fact, only hours have elapsed,” said the duke.

  “Just so,” said Hyrax. “I have written a carefully annotated ‘procedure’ for your Grace’s perusal. I can make four minutes last forty-eight hours, in the consciousness of the prisoner. I hasten to reassure your Grace that no common hand was laid on his Excellency, your nephew Stanislaus. His table was almost as well furnished as your Grace’s own; only he had the delicacies of the season out of season. And, allowing for certain inevitable margins of error, the young gentleman seemed to live a long month in half an hour. Between your Grace’s breakfast and dinner, he passed approximately a whole year.”

  “Well,” said the duke, “that may teach the pup a lesson, not to plot against his poor old uncle, who used to think the world of him. Well, come to the point. What made Stanislaus betray his friends? They are my enemies, it is true, but . . . well, I think the worse of him notwithstanding.”

  Colonel Hyrax said, “But his Excellency did not betray his friends, your Grace.”

  “Will you tell me what the devil you are talking about?” roared the duke.

  “I mean, he did not betray them wittingly.”

  “Oh? If you have deranged the rascal with your dirty drugs—” began the duke.

  “No, no, your Grace. The drugs were used discreetly, and sparingly, and then only for the first three weeks. Time, time, time was the illusion with which I took the liberty of bedazzling the young gentleman—time as man knows it, through the contemplation of mere external change. Men and fashions seemed to come and go. Once, on my order, a guard let fall a newspaper. It was post-dated fifteen years: I had had one copy only printed before the type was broken up, and it was full of news of people and affairs his Excellency had never heard of.”

  “Most damnably clever!” exclaimed the duke. “And my poor—I mean that wretched fellow who is supposed to be my brother’s son, and couldn’t even keep faith with his fellow-criminals: did he write nothing?”

  “Only some verses, your Grace.”

  “About me?”

  “About worms. But I see that your Grace is anxious to be after the boar, so I will conclude for now. After the young gentleman had been in that chamber about forty days, the door was opened by a young officer in a strange uniform—gray faced with yellow—and an older officer, in the same colors, but having a dolman trimmed with sable, came in, fell on his knees, and hailed your nephew as martyr, savior, and leader. The duke, he said, was dead, the new party was in power, and Stanislaus was to sit on your throne.”

  The duke laughed. “Ha! And I suppose my nephew jumped for joy?”

  “Not so, your Grace. He said—and I quote, so you will forgive me—he said, ‘The old ruffian was kind to me once upon a time.’ Then he said, ‘And all my friends, I suppose, are dead, or old—which is worse.’”

  “Aha!” cried the duke, “we are coming to it, now!”

  “Yes, your Grace. The commanding officer said, ‘If you will tell me whom you mean, your Excellency, I shall immediately ascertain.’” Whereupon, your nephew recited a list of forty names, which are on the paper which I have the honor to place in your Grace’s hand.”

  “Hyrax,” said the duke, “you are hellishly clever! And my nephew—how is he?”

  “I was listening to the proceedings at a concealed aperture, and did not see his Excellency at first. Then, when he came into my range of vision, I was astounded. For where, a few weeks before, I had seen a sanguine young man of twenty-four, I now beheld a decrepit and enfeebled man of sixty!”

  The duke was silent. Colonel Hyrax pointed to the paper upon which the names of the conspirators were written. “Your Grace will hang them?” he asked.

  “No. I shall shock the wits out of them by pardoning them, and make forty friends into the bargain. Where’s Stanislaus?”

  “Asleep, your Grace,” said Colonel Hyrax.

  “You are an astonishingly clever man, Hyrax,” said the duke. “Did I not say that if you cleared this matter up I’d make a nobleman of you?”

  “The work is its own reward, your Grace,” said Hyrax.

  “No, you have earned my gratitude. I hereby confer upon you the Barony of Opa, with all lands, rents, and revenues pertaining thereunto.”

  “Oh, your Grace! Words cannot express—”

  “—Save them, then. Leave me, now.”

  Hyrax having bowed himself out of his presence, the duke called for his secretary. A soberly attired gentleman came in and made his obeisance. “Your Grace?”

  “Colonel Hyrax is now Colonel, the Baron Opa. Make a note of it.”

  “Yes, your Grace.”

  The duke paced the floor, tugging at his beard. “And write me an order to the Lord Provost,” he said. “Write as follows:—‘Bearing in mind the new dignity of Colonel Hyrax, whom we have recently created Baron of Opa, you will procure a silk cord and hang him forthwith’.” Scrawling his signature at the foot of this document, and impressing the warm wax with his great carnelian ring, the duke muttered, “One could no longer sleep with such a man awake. He is too clever by half.”

  A nameless cold had crept into his heart. He looked long and anxiously at the morning sun, and listened with more than usual attention to the portentous ticking of the great bronze clock. Presently, he said to his secretary, “Dismiss the men. I hunt no boar today.”

  “Yes, your Grace.”

  “I desire to see Stanislaus.”

  “Shall he be sent for?”

  “No. I go to him.”

  The secretary, a good-hearted man, ventured to ask, “Oh please, your Grace—is it your gracious intention magnanimously to pardon the unhappy young gentleman?”

  The duke growled, “No. My Grace’s intention is humbly to beg the unlucky young gentleman, out of his magnanimity, to pardon me.”

  The proprietor said, “You gave this person five dollars, you say?”

  “He asked twenty,” said the editor. “I advanced him five.”

  “You throw my dollars about like rice at a wedding, my friend. Yes, you have my leave to print. Let the fellow have five dollars more, if he presses. A Latin title is a drug, sir, a drug. Take a title out of context,” said Mr. Bozman. “Out of context, out of context. And since I am paying for the job and writing it too, sign it Bozman—John Helliwell Bozman. Incidentally, you owe me five dollars.”

  So saying, the proprietor of The Baltimore General Press walked sedately out of doors.

  VOICES IN THE DUST OF ANNAN

  I landed on the northeast coast, with tinned goods and other trade goods such as steel knives, beads, and sweet chocolate, intending to make my way to the ruins of Annan.

  A chieftain of the savages of the Central Belt warned me not to go to The Bad Place. That was his name for the ancient ruins of the forgotten city of Annan, a hundred miles to the southeast. Some of the tribesmen called it The Dead Place, or The Dark Place. He called it The Bad Place. He was a grim, but honorable old ruffian, squat and hairy and covered with scars. Over a pot of evil-smelling black beer—they brew it twice a year, with solemn ceremony, and everyone gets hideously drunk—he grew communicative, and, as the liquor took hold of him, boastful. He showed me his tattooing: every mark meant something, so that his history was pricked out on his skin. When a chieftain of the Central Belt dies he is flayed, and his hide is hung up in the hut that is reserved for holy objects: so he lives in human memory. Showing his broken teeth in a snarling smile, he pointed to a skillfully executed fish on his left arm: it proved that he had won a great victory over the Fish-Eaters of the north. A wild pig on his chest celebrated the massacre of the Pig Men of the northwest. He hiccuped a bloody story, caressing a black-and-red dog that lay at his feet and watched me with murderous yellow
eyes. . . . Oh, the distances he had travelled, the men he had killed, the women he had ravished, the riches he had plundered! He knew everything. He liked me—had I not given him a fine steel knife? So he would give me some good advice.

  “I could keep you here if I liked,” he said, “but you are my friend, and if you want to go you may go. I will even send ten armed men with you. You may need them. If you are traveling southwards you must pass through the country of the Red Men. They eat men when they can catch them, and move fast: they come and go. Have no fear, however, of the Bird Men. For a handful of beads and a little wire—especially wire—they will do anything. My men will not go with you to The Bad Place. Nobody ever goes to The Bad Place. Even I would not go to The Bad Place, and I am the bravest man in the world. Why must you go? Stay. Live under my protection. I will give you a wife. Look. You can have her—” He jerked a spatulate thumb in the direction of a big, swarthy girl with greased hair who squatted, almost naked, a couple of yards away. “—She is one of mine. But you can have her. No man has touched her yet. Marry her. Stay.”

  I said: “Tell me, why have you—even you, Chief—stayed away from that place?”

  He grew grave. “I fear no man and no beast,” he said.

  “But—?”

  “But.” He gulped some more black beer. “There are things.”

  “What things?”

  “Things. Little people.” He meant fairies. “I’ll fight anything I can see. But what of that which man cannot see? Who fights that? Stay away from The Bad Place. Marry her . . . Stay here. Feel her—fat! Don’t go. Nobody goes. . . . Hup! I like you. You are my friend. You must stay here.”

  I gave him a can of peaches. He crowed like a baby. “You are my friend,” he said, “and if you want to go, then go. But if you get away, come back.”

  “If?” I said.

  “If.”

  “I don’t believe in fairies,” I said.

  His eyebrows knotted, his fists knotted, and he bared his teeth. “Are you saying that what I say is not true?” he shouted.

  “King, Great Chief,” I said, “I believe, I believe. What you say is true.”

  “If I had not given my word I should have had you killed for that,” he grunted. “But I have gi-given my word. . . . Hup! My-my word is a word. I . . . you . . . go, go!”

  Next morning he was ill. I gave him magnesia in a pot of water, for which he expressed gratitude. That day I set out with ten squat, sullen warriors; killers, men without fear.

  But when we came in sight of the place that was called The Bad Place, The Dark Place, or The Dead Place, they stopped. For no consideration would they walk another step forward. I offered each man a steel knife. Their terror was stronger than their desire. “Not even for that,” said their leader.

  I went on alone.

  It was a dead place because there was no life in it; and therefore it was also a dark place. No grass grew there. It had come to nothingness. Not even the coarse, hardy weeds that find a root-hold in the uncooled ashes of burnt-out buildings pushed their leaves out of its desolation. Under the seasonal rain it must have been a quagmire. Now, baked by the August sun, it was a sort of ash-heap, studded with gray excrescences that resembled enormous cinders. A dreary, dark gray, powdery valley went down; a melancholy dust-heap of a hill crept up and away. As I looked I saw something writhe and come up out of the hillside—it came down toward me with a sickening, wriggling run, and it was pale gray like a ghost. I drew my pistol. Then the gray thing pirouetted and danced. It was nothing but dust, picked up by a current of warm air. The cold hand that had got hold of my heart relaxed, and my heart fell back into my stomach, where it had already sunk.

  I went down. This place was so dead that I was grateful for the company of the flies that had followed me. The sun struck like a floodlight out of a clean blue sky; every crumb of grit threw a clear-cut black shadow in the dust. A bird passed, down and up, quick as the flick of a whip, on the trail of a desperate dragonfly. Yet here, in a white-hot summer afternoon, I felt that I was going down, step by step, into the black night of the soul. This was a bad place.

  The dust clung to me. I moved slowly, between half-buried slabs of shattered granite. Evening was coming. A breeze that felt like a hot breath on my neck stirred the ruins of the ancient city; dust devils twisted and flirted and fell; the sun gray-red. At last I found something that had been a wall, and pitched my tent close to it. Somehow it was good to have a wall behind me. There was nothing to be afraid of—there was absolutely nothing. Yet I was afraid. What is it that makes a comfortable man go out with a pickaxe to poke among the ruins of ancient cities? I was sick with nameless terror. But fear breeds pride. I could not go back. And I was tired, desperately tired. If I did not sleep I would break.

  I ate and lay down. Sleep was picking me away, leaf by leaf. Bad place . . . dead place . . . dark place . . . little people. . . .

  Before I fell asleep I thought I heard somebody singing a queer, wailing song:—Oh-oooo, oh-oooo, oh-oooo! It rose and descended—it conveyed terror. It might have been an owl, or some other night-bird; or it might have been the wind in the ruins; or a half-dream. It sounded almost human, though. I started awake, clutching my pistol. I could have sworn that the wail was forming words. What words? They sounded like some debased sort of Arabic:—

  Ookil’ karabin

  Ookil’ karabin

  Isapara mibanara

  Ikil’ karabin

  Ookil’ karabin

  As I sat up the noise stopped. Yes, I thought, I was dreaming; I lay back and went to sleep. Centuries of silence lay in the dust.

  All the same, in that abominable loneliness I felt that I was not alone. I awoke five times before dawn, to listen. There was nothing. Even the flies had gone away. Yet when day broke I observed that something strange had happened.

  My socks had disappeared.

  In the dust, that powdery dust in which the petal of a flower would have left its imprint, there were no tracks. Yet the flap of my tent was unfastened, and my socks were gone.

  For the next three days I sifted the detritus of that dead city, fumbling and feeling after crumbs of evidence, and listening to the silence. My pickaxe pecked out nothing but chips of stone and strange echoes. On the second day I unearthed some fragments of crumbling glass and shards of white, glazed pottery, together with a handful of narrow pieces of iron which fell to nothing as I touched them. I also found a small dish of patterned porcelain, inscribed with five letters—R E S E N—part of some inscription. It was sad and strange that this poor thing should have survived the smashing of the huge edifices and noble monuments of that great city. But all the time, I felt that someone, or something, was watching me an inch beyond my field of vision. On the third day I found a red drinking-vessel, intact, and a cooking-pot of some light, white metal, with marks of burning on the bottom of it and some charred powder inside. The housewife to whom this pot belonged was cooking some sort of stew, no doubt, when the wrath of God struck the city.

  When the blow fell, that city must have ceased to be in less time than it takes to clap your hands: it fell like the cities of the plain when the fire came down from heaven. Here, as in the ruins of Pompeii, one might discover curiously pathetic ashes and highly individual dust. I found the calcined skeleton of a woman, clutching, in the charred vestiges of loving arms, the skeletal outline of a newly-born child. As I touched these remains they broke like burnt paper. Not far away, half-buried in a sort of volcanic cinder, four twisted lumps of animal charcoal lay in the form of a cross, the center of which was a shapeless mass of glass: this had been a sociable drinking-party. This lump of glass melted and ran into a blob, the outlines of which suggest the map of Africa. But in the equatorial part of it so to speak one could distinguish the base of a bottle. I also found a tiny square of thin, woven stuff. It must have been a handkerc
hief, a woman’s handkerchief. Some whimsy of chance let it stay intact. In one corner of it was embroidered a Roman letter A. Who was A? I seem to see some fussy, fastidious gentlewoman, discreetly perfumed—a benevolent tyrant at home, but every inch a lady. Deploring the decadence of the age, she dabbed this delicate twenty-five square inches of gauzy nothingness at one sensitive nostril. Then—psst! She and the house in which she lived were swept away in one lick of frightful heat. And the handkerchief fluttered down on her ashes.

  Nearby, untouched by time and disaster, stood a low wall of clay bricks. On this wall was an inscription in chalk. A child must have scrawled it. It said: Lidia is a dirty pig. Below it lay the unidentifiable remains of three human beings. As I looked, the air-currents stirred the dust. Swaying and undulating like a ballet dancer, a fine gray powdery corkscrew spun up and threw itself at my feet.

  That night, again, I thought I heard singing. But what was there to sing? Birds? There were no birds. Nevertheless, I lay awake. I was uneasy. There was no moon. I saw that my watch said 12:45. After that I must have slipped into the shallow end of sleep, because I opened my eyes—instinct warned me to keep still—and saw that more than two hours had passed. I felt rather than heard a little furtive sound. I lay quiet and listened. Fear and watchfulness had sharpened my ears. In spite of the beating of my heart I heard a tink-tink of metal against metal. My flashlight was under my left hand; my pistol was in my right. I breathed deeply. The metal clinked again. Now I knew where to look. I aimed the flashlight at the noise, switched on a broad beam of bright light, and leapt up with a roar of that mad rage that comes out of fear. Something was caught in the light. The light paralyzed it: the thing was glued in the shining, white puddle—it had enormous eyes. I fired at it—I mean, I aimed at it and pressed my trigger, but had forgotten to lift my safety-catch. Holding the thing in the flashlight beam, I struck at it with the barrel of the pistol. I was cruel because I was afraid. It squealed, and something cracked. Then I had it by the neck. If it was not a rat it smelled like a rat. Oh-oooo, oh-oooo, oh-oooo! it wailed, and I heard something scuffle outside. Another voice wailed oh-oooo, oh-oooo, oh-oooo! A third voice picked it up. In five seconds, the hot, dark night was full of a most woebegone crying. Five seconds later there was silence, except for the gasping of the cold little creature under my hand.