Hub - Issue 31

by Brett Tallman / Scott Harrison

  “Yet another enemy,” Fish murmured. “Everywhere you go.”

  Mr. Nine glared at him. “I’m the victim here. I’m the one betrayed.” He leapt to his feet, stood atop the mound and lifted the largest, ugliest instrument from his belt; it was oily gray, twisted and jagged. “I’m ready for you this time.”

  But apparently the creature had also given this encounter some thought. As Mr. Nine brought the flute to his lips, the swarm surrounding it surged forward and closed the distance in an eye-blink. Mr. Nine all but disappeared in an onrush of mosquitoes and dragonflies that stuffed themselves into the flute’s airways and his mouth. Mr. Nine gagged and thrashed until his right leg failed him and he tumbled down the green slope.

  Fish spent a few seconds waving his own arms, trying to fend off the attack, until he realized the swarm had avoided him completely. By then the creature had joined him on the moonlit hill; it may have once been a man, but now its skin was a bilious yellow and its eyes an endless black. An enormously engorged, strawberry-red tongue lolled and lunged from its gaping mouth.

  It gazed vacantly down at the struggling, sputtering Mr. Nine, seemingly unaware of the man standing right next to it. Fish felt a macabre thrill as he watched fat, full mosquitoes return to the creature, alight soft as air on its eager tongue and kiss the red, wet surface with their tiny needle-mouths.

  The thing smelled like an open doorway to death and it made Fish feel more alive than he ever had and though he could not recall Fowler’s memories, he could feel the empty spaces they had left.

  Without giving himself any time to rethink it, Fish hit the creature with as much momentum as he could pack into an uppercut. Its jaws snapped together and its tongue ruptured, falling to the grass in plops and patters.

  The ancient thing saw him then and looked on him with such confusion that Fish would always be haunted by an inexplicable guilt whenever he thought of it. It took a faltering step back, then slowly raised a hand and drew its own eyelids down. All at once, it fell limp and rolled lifelessly down the mound where the grass swallowed it like the waves of a jade sea.

  Fish turned in time to watch the swarm dissipate suddenly, blown away by an intangible wind, leaving behind a gasping Mr. Nine whose skin was an appalling white with tiny red speckles.

  Fish tromped down the hill and dropped a knee across the supine man’s throat. Mr. Nine went bug-eyed and tried to buck him off but Fish didn’t budge. “You’re going to unbuckle that belt and take out your teeth and give them both to me or I’m going to kneel on your neck until you die, okay?”

  Mr. Nine opened his mouth but no sound came out. He hesitated a moment but as his face started to turn crimson, he frantically did as he was told. Fish hefted the belt triumphantly and accepted the teeth with a bit less enthusiasm, then got off Mr. Nine who exploded in a fit of gasps and ragged wheezing.

  When this had subsided, the older man, exhausted, toothless and beaten, rolled over on his side and began to cry silently. Fish watched for a while, fascinated and pitiless.

  Finally, he said, “Stop your blubbering already and get up. You’re still taking me to the Knot. I want to know what all the fuss is about; I want to know what my life is about.”

  “Alright, which one do I use?” Fish rattled the bones hanging from his belt.

  Mr. Nine scowled at his ignorance. He had been mopey and silent for the remainder of the walk to the west entrance of the Garfield Park Conservatory. Even his fedora looked defeated, bent and as encrusted with crushed bugs as his coat was. He pointed a thin finger at a stubby little flute etched with spirals.

  Fish unhooked it, vigorously wiped the mouthpiece with his sleeve and blew a note that made Mr. Nine scowl even harder.

  “Don us play anying!” He sounded like an angry toddler without his teeth.

  “Thanks for the tip,” Fish whispered with a grin, “but it would be easier if you just showed me what fingers to use.” A bit of a risk but under current circumstances he figured Mr. Nine wouldn’t be too hard to fight off if he made a grab for it.

  Mr. Nine reached over and tapped Fish’s fingers in a short sequence. Fish played through it three times before the door softly unlocked. “It worked. Magic is handy.” He took a step back and searched the dark space within the glass for any sign of movement, but all he saw were the looming, prickly silhouettes of desert plants.

  People knew on some level, Fish realized, that this was where places met and paid tribute to that convergence by surrounding it with handfuls of environment from around the globe. He cast a suspicious glance back at Mr. Nine, wondering what, of all the doors between worlds the older man knew of, made this one so special.

  The moon peered down through the glass ceiling as the two men crept into the Desert House and followed a walkway past a row of hedge cacti into the Children’s Garden, where moonlight and shadow made the giant-sized flower and bee displays menacingly surreal.

  Fish was so on edge as they entered the Sweet House that he almost cried out when Mr. Nine grabbed his arm and hissed, “Guard. Come.”

  Fish allowed himself to be dragged off the path and into some sugar cane. He lifted the small gray flute Mr. Nine had used at the hospital and his companion nodded his approval. The focused glare of a flashlight rounded the coconut trees further along the path; it paused as Fish falteringly started playing the two alternating notes, then began moving in their direction again.

  The security guard, a swarthy and squat specimen, swept the flashlight right over them and seemed not to notice. As the man continued on his oblivious route, Mr. Nine motioned for Fish to pick up the tempo. Without thinking, the younger man complied and was shocked to see the guard stumble and fall.

  Fish threw Mr. Nine to the ground and pinned him with a forearm across his throat. “What did you make me do?” he growled.

  “Sleep,” Mr. Nine forced out, “us sleeping.”

  When Fish had checked and was satisfied that the man was indeed sleeping, the two continued through the Palm House, where they had to repeat the spell on another two guards, and into the Fern Room at the center of the conservatory. Centuries old cycads rose to the ceiling in a continuous leafy green mass and bordered the artificial lagoon at the center of the room.

  Mr. Nine took a long, challenging look at Fish as he shrugged off his coat and tossed aside his fedora, then silently began wading into the water. Fish kicked off his shoes and followed, trying to remember every stupid New Age calming mantra he had ever heard as he submerged himself in cold darkness. He spent several moments completely blind underwater, until he spotted a faint red luminescence, a large object below, backlit by some unseen source.

  He swam down and saw great black roots that broke up through the bottom of the lagoon and wound around each other in a tangle. Beneath the Knot, something burned red. Vaguely aware of Mr. Nine drifting beside him, Fish ran his hands across one of the roots’ cold, coarse surface and felt symbols there. Something that wasn’t quite an equation, a sequence of notes or a riddle bloomed in his thoughts and coiled itself around his mind, awaiting his answer.

  Fish surfaced from an ocean of red voices and woke with a wave of disorientation and a burst of fear. He jerked himself upright, realized he was sopping wet and covered in grit, and found himself in a vast spherical cavern. Glittering pools of still water dotted the landscape around him and, impossibly, above him. From each pool rose a black tree with vast, meandering branches and broad green leaves. Each bore fruit but no two the same and none Fish recognized. Vast swarms of fireflies drifted and swirled through the air and the light they cast was both frightening and beautiful.

  “The pool next to you is the way home,” said the familiar, nasal voice.

  Fish turned to see Mr. Nine squeezing excess water from his socks, smiling in his wolfish way. “I see you’ve got your teeth back.”

  Mr. Nine pointed at the belt around the younger man’s waist. “Yes, while you were away in your mind. But I let you keep the flutes; you’ll need them to play your
way out of the conservatory when you go back. Consider them payment for a job well done, Christopher.”

  “You’re not going back?”

  Mr. Nine cackled giddily. “Oh, I am but I won’t need such tools anymore. Things are going my way from now on.” He pulled his socks on, reached into his pocket and produced something that looked much like an apple core. “I’ve already eaten the fruit of our tree. Now all I need is to get the Ancient to write my name in his book and the world will truly be home.”

  Fish began to wonder which of the flutes would be effective against the other man if it came to that. “And what does that mean?”

  Mr. Nine sighed as if he was dealing with the most obstinate child who had ever lived. “Christopher, countless beings may be born into a particular world but it is never home to them. Who is happy? Who is at peace? Which of the countless worlds is not an enemy to the men walking it? I have been to so many and my educated guess is none.”

  “So, what? Whatever your doing will rewrite reality to your benefit?”

  Mr. Nine tsked him. “Nothing so melodramatic. There won’t be fiery pits full of my enemies and statues of me as far as the eye can see but events will subtly shape themselves to give me the best possible life. Look, before the real you tied the Knot, many men had found this place and lived flawless lives as a result.”

  Fish shook his head. “That can’t be without effect. Who knows what kind of ripples those changes made? And do you seriously think you deserve this?”

  “Nobody gets what they deserve,” Mr. Nine snapped. “The very existence of that word is shear absurdity.” He stalked away, apparently done humoring him.

  Fish lifted his eyes to the fat red spheres dangling from the low-hanging branches overhead. He leapt, snatched one and bit into it before he even had a clear idea of what his plan was. It was crunchy and very tart and somehow vacillated between being delicious and unpleasant. He ate the rest of it as he hurried to catch up to Mr. Nine.

  It was a long walk and Fish knew they must be climbing the curve of the chamber but felt no change in gravity’s pull. They seem to come upon their destination all at once; the Ancient was nowhere to be seen until they passed a thick cluster of the world trees and suddenly there it was.

  It sat on a stool next to a table, both of intricate ironwork, pouring over a huge volume that a man would have trouble even lifting. A black, hooded cloak hid most of its body except for the taloned hands, the long segmented tail curling and uncurling idly behind it, and the massively jawed snout sticking out of its hood. If standing, it would have been nearly nine feet tall.

  Fish cried out and turned to run but stopped when he heard Mr. Nine’s howling laughter. “Oh Christopher, I forgot what it’s like to be so provincial. This is the Ancient, the slithering shepherd of man, the angel of the cold-blooded; he is a facilitator of history and believe me when I tell you he is a friend to man. He stands between us and much that would harm us.”

  Despite these assurances, Fish couldn’t keep from jumping when the creature fluidly rose from its seat and disappeared into the large domed hut behind it.

  “It’s impossible not to get the cold sweats around him, isn’t it?” Mr. Nine murmured, mockingly. “There is a story that tells of a world completely taken by a plague of madness. It says he walked that place and killed everything he found there, by himself, simply emptied the world out.”

  He fell silent as the Ancient returned, sat back down on its stool and placed a large birdcage under a satin cloth on the table. A voice, high and reedy, called from the cage, “You have eaten the fruit?”

  “I have,” Mr. Nine answered.

  The Ancient lifted a large, sharp quill and held out an open hand. The voice in the cage asked, “And what is your name?”

  “Mr. Nine,” he answered, gingerly placing his hand in the Ancient’s.

  “But what kind of name is that?” Fish cried out. “Who gave it to him? Is that even his real name?”

  “Shut up!” Mr. Nine roared at him and turned his attention back to the Ancient, only to find the creature motionless, waiting. “It… is the only name I have ever known. It was given to me by the man who taught me the worlds and the arts. It’s real, I swear it.”

  “What was the man’s name?” Fish asked.

  Mr. Nine looked pained when the voice in the cage repeated the question. “What was the man’s name?”

  “Mr. Eight! But what does it matter?”

  Fish approached the Ancient warily, looked into the shadowed hood where he thought its eyes were and was glad he couldn’t see them. He said, “He set this in motion over twenty years ago and he still needs it. What’s he been doing with all that time? Why can’t he change?”

  Mr. Nine flew into a rage. “Enemies keep thwarting me! People like you who won’t just-”

  The Ancient’s sudden motion was faster than any living thing Fish had ever seen. The great jaws snapped and Mr. Nine was gone from the shoulders up. His body tottered and fell.

  “And do you know yourself?” the voice in the cage asked Fish.

  Fish forced his gaze away from the corpse and thought a moment. “Sometimes I think so but I get surprised an awful lot.”

  The Ancient held out its hand. It was warm and dry and when it pierced his palm with its quill, it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. The Ancient leaned over the tome, poised to write, a thick droplet of blood falling from the quill.

  “What is your name?,” asked the voice.

  Fish wondered on his short, unhappy life and thought there probably wasn’t a power in the universe that could make him fit with people, that could make him happy. So he said, “Christopher Fowler. Put down Christopher Fowler.”

  It took a couple weeks to find her, but he did, living in a trim little blue house on the outskirts of Chicago. She was meditating in her back yard when he first approached her, sitting in a circle of small stones, burning incense. She still had the waist-long iron gray hair he remembered.

  “Emma Fowler?” Fish asked.

  The old woman opened her eyes, gaped in surprise and then smiled broadly. “Christopher! Figured out who I was, eh?”

  He sat down, cross-legged, next to her and nodded. “I found out who I am or was or whatever. There was a wedding ring on the old man’s hand and I remembered one on the woman who took such a strange interest in me way back when. So I looked for you under his name.”

  She pursed her lips and asked gently, “Are you okay?”

  “Well, one of the stories you told me came in very handy. You could have told me a lot more, though.”

  She took her straw sunhat off and fanned herself with it. “Not without deciding your path for you. I wanted to help you without destroying your second chance.”

  “But don’t you care that your husband is sleeping his life away? You know… I ate the fruit and put his name in the book but he’s still sleeping and I’m still here.”

  She reached out and touched his face. “I remember when he looked like you. For some people, though, time erodes more than just their bodies. Sometimes we move away from our best selves. Towards the end of our time together, I loved Chris more for who he could have been than who he was. I would look at him and see something beautiful marred in ways I couldn’t repair. Nobody could.

  “And now there’s you; so maybe he’s getting what he wants.” She withdrew her hand, set her hat high on her head. “You do what you want to, honey, but let the old man sleep.”

  Review

  Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Collector’s Edition reviewed by Scott Harrison

  Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

  Starring Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves

  Sony Pictures

  £15.99

  Since it’s original publication in 1897 Bram Stoker’s gothic horror masterpiece, Dracula, has been the subject of over 150 movie and television adaptations, spin-offs and spoofs. Some of these, such as FW Murnau’s Nosferatu and Universal’s massively over-rated 1
931 Dracula have attained ‘classic’ status, while others – Hammer’s diminishing Dracula Saga and the criminally under-valued 1979 Frank Langella vehicle – have been largely overlooked. By the time celebrated film director Francis Ford Coppola announced in late 1991 that his next film project would be yet another adaptation of Dracula interest in Stoker’s vampire novel was sadly on the wane and the news was met with extreme disinterest. Yet, on it’s release a year later, the film became such a huge box office success that it once more revived a great interest in the 100 year old literary classic.

  Sadly, time has not been kind to Coppola’s Dracula. While it still retains the ability to amaze and stun with it’s sumptuous visuals and lavish set pieces, other aspects have not aged so well in the 15 years since it’s original theatrical release. Given that director Coppola and screenwriter James V. Hart continually insisted that they wanted to remain faithful to Stoker’s novel it is somewhat baffling as to why the film constantly veers away from the original text towards Hollywood clichés and historical confusion. There is a tendency for writers and directors to put too much emphasis on Dracula’s connection with the historical figure of Vlad the Impaler, an association that Stoker himself had never intended for his titular character (the novel was virtually complete when Stoker stumbled across accounts of Vlad Tepes’ life and decided to incorporate certain historical events into the Count’s ‘history’), and director Coppola is no exception. Coming across like a comic-book superhero’s origin story the prologue sees Vlad Dracula, denouncing God after returning from the wars to find the love of his life has committed suicide and the church has turned its back on him. Grafting onto Stoker’s story a rather bizarre subplot of true love reincarnated across the centuries the film flashes forward some 400 years and begins to get itself back on track, that is until Dracula reaches London and Hart’s subplot begins to derail the very essence of Stoker’s story. Add into this mix some very dodgy acting (Keanu Reeves please step forward and take a bow) and some English accents of the Dick-Van-Dyke-circa-Mary-Poppins variety and the film begins to flounder like a drowning man going down for the third time.