Mr. Ruins: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 1)

by Grist, Michael John

  Three, four, five, ten pegs. He circles the tower and plucks them one by one, running his hands over the adobe walls as he goes, fingering the ash of so many memories, still alive under his touch. Here is Loralena's first painting of his mind, an intricate rendering of seven tones which she never showed in a gallery, because it was only for them. Here is Art taking her first few steps, then years later helping Mem take his first steps too.

  He weeps, and slumps in the dark bottom floor of the tower. The winding spiral stairs lie at his back, built atop a metal desk which is holding up the central support column, and the air is crowned by bars of morning light shining through the holes he has pulled. Pegs lie in an untidy pile by his side like decapitated heads, next to a long rope that looks like a fuse.

  One finger, he thinks, though he doesn't remember why. Two fingers. It reminds him of crull-meat in a blue-tarp park, slowly unpeeling, and a blue room filled up with photographs like a shrine. Random thoughts buzz in his healing mind, as memories take their place and re-shape who he is. This is Ritry Goligh, he thinks. I am Ritry Goligh.

  I am Ritry Goligh.

  I lie in the dust in the sun-shafted dark, and breathe. These are the confines of my body, the outlines of my life. I can feel it all around me, who I am built into this tower like a thorny knot of bonds, all of them tied in to me. I am a diver, the deepest diver of them all, and I have built the strength of my mind into a physical space.

  Mr. Ruins will see it. He will see the bonds, and the strength, but he will not understand them. I have Lagged his every conception of my strength, because they are my strength, and he does not know them. He does not know the qualities of love and devotion, because he has never loved a thing more than himself. Having them with me makes me strong in ways he will never understand.

  I rub my eyes, feel the scratchy fibers of the rope in my hand. How long did I dive for, and what did I see? I barely remember. There are only glimpses of an invasion, a chord of marines in a dark space fighting soldiers with cannon and long snake-like lengths of intestine that snapped close.

  I am dizzy and exhausted, but I feel him getting closer. Mr. Ruins. Like a fish on the line I am reeling him in, but this fish is a shark, and this shark has teeth that can bite me out of existence, and still take my family with him.

  But they won't. I have shown that. I am stronger than him, stronger than any soul that ever lived, because I have dived through the Solid Core and seen the glory on the other side.

  Let him come. Let them all fucking come.

  I lay my head down, dizzy with fatigue, to wait.

  I wake with him standing in the archway to the tower. It is late evening by the gray light filtering through the peg-hole slits and haloing him from behind. The inside of the tower is murky, filled with dust and memory, blocked out by his outsized shadow.

  He watches me as I blink awake. Across the tower floor, at the top of Candyland's tallest rollercoaster, I can feel the fury in him, raging against a steely exterior calm. He's wearing his gray shark-suit, and he no looks no older than the day I first saw him in the shark-fighting arena. A fitting place, perhaps, just like this.

  All of it come to this. If he dives, he'll see my family. He'll understand why these broken walls all link to me, and where they link back to. He'll see the way to control me again.

  I have to stop him before that happens. I need him to come a little closer.

  "Not bad," he says. His teeth shine in the deepening dark. "It's the first time since Napoleon that anyone fought this hard. I have to respect that."

  I laugh, a sallow barking sound. There is dust of pounded memories in my throat, mixing with mortar-smoke. "You didn't respect it very much for Napoleon."

  He gives a light shrug. "I honor him, as I will honor you. I admit, I never expected him to escape Elba a second time, but he did. He was a rascal, really. Such charisma. You don't remind me of him in that regard."

  "You've come for more than insults."

  "You're right. You did something, but I don't know what it is. You took something from me, and I didn't know how. But now I do."

  I glare up at him, feeling the fear he wants me to feel, waiting for him to take the steps closer he has to take if he wants to finish this with his own hands.

  "It explains all this," he says, gesturing at the tower around us. "This crazy contraption. Is it a lens, Ritry? You focused your considerable skill. You dove the Molten Core, and the Solid Core, you breached the aetheric bridge, and you stole something from me through it like a thief in the night."

  I stare back, defying him. It only makes him angrier, bringing the rage to the surface and boiling off him like eruptive flares off the Molten Core.

  "What did you take, Ritry? What have you stolen from me?"

  I smile at him. "It wasn't yours. It never was."

  His eyes flare wide, and I think for a moment I have pushed him too far and he will simply Lag me lying here, in the ruins of the ruin of my life. He is still far stronger than I. But he is too curious for that, too hungry. With visible effort he calms himself, takes another step closer into the gloom.

  "You see the pins you have in me, Ritry? Tweak them a little in the right way, and I can be forced to explode. But perhaps that is what you want? A quick ending. I won't grant it." He's calmer already, the shark tucked away deep in his belly, the smooth gray veneer back. "It's what Napoleon begged for in the end, as I fucked the spirit out of his beloved Josephine while he could only languish on his shitty island, just like you. I had to send a message, you see. The utter depths of his defeat were delicious. But where's your Josephine now, Ritry? I could swear I had it, had something, but it's gone. Is that what you took?"

  I don't say anything. I feel the rough plaster-spat timber under my side, the tangled coarseness of the rope still in my hand. A few more steps only.

  "You'll never have them again," I say, and shuffle backward a little, toward the metal foundation desk.

  His grin spreads wide. "And how will you stop me? I'll say it again, I'm impressed, but to what end? You've bought a few hours for yourself. But now it's really about professional respect. You don't make a snake cough up its dinner, then expect it to be friendly. You don't steal flies from the web and expect forgiveness."

  "I thought you were a shark," I say.

  He chuckles. "You'll beg again, don't worry. I know how to make it happen." He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a glistening silver and glass object. It is a medical syringe. Even in the dim light, I can see the heavy silver liquid in the chamber, as certain as a bullet.

  It is liquid engram, but a dose a thousand times larger than I've ever dealt. It could be language, skill, memory, it doesn't matter anymore since the DNA-coded strands must have been mixing for hours. It is a cocktail that will flood my mind in an instant, far too much for me to hide from and fight off. It will surge past the scarification wall my parents built around my Solid Core and sweep me away like a tsunami.

  I shuffle backward, sweating cold and hard. My fear is very real, and he luxuriates in it. "Oh Ritry. You were always so unprepared. What shark retreats? They would stop breathing, and they would die. For those like you and me, there is only forward." He takes a step closer. I brace myself beneath the desk. So close.

  He holds the syringe out to the side so it catches the last of the dying light. "This is from your office, by the way. I had to raid every cupboard to get enough. But son, I'll blast those memories out of you if I have to. If I can't have them, then neither can you."

  Another step, so close. "I don't think it will be fast. It certainly won't be pleasant, because you'll still be in there, won't you? How far can you retreat, before they'll get you? It'll be like a moat you can't cross, trapping you deeper than the EMR on your subglacic. You'll have to give up yourself one piece at a time to the Lag, until it's all gone. Can you even imagine what that would be like?"

  He grins. "Horrible, I think. But then you would know, you've lost more to the Lag than anyone else alive,
and still there's more to take." He laughs. "When will you see you're just chum to me, Ritry? You're a resource I get to tap, because I'm the real shark, I'm the apex predator, and what are you? Some under-bitch male who flips belly up and just hopes, Ritry, just fucking hopes he doesn't get his guts torn out."

  Another step. So close I can almost reach out and touch him from my hiding place under the desk. He squats on his haunches to better see me.

  "Unless."

  He squeezes the syringe, so a tiny drip of thick silver liquid oozes from the diamond-tuber tip. His voice drops low and rough. "Unless you teach me how to dive through the core. That would be worth something to me. A change of execution, maybe even a little mercy. Can you imagine the possibilities, Ritry? Can you imagine the power?"

  He is looking off into the distance. Now would be the perfect time, but he's a little off-center. Just a little further.

  He looks back at me with the wonder in his eyes. "I could Lag them all at once. I could shave the world a single vast stroke at a time. Come, don't be selfish Ritry, tell me. I'll make it quick I promise. No syringe. I'll kill you myself, with my own hands. It's more than Napoleon got."

  "What about Don Zachary's son?"

  He laughs. "Who cares about that idiotic sap? I fitted him for a suit, and he put it on. You however are different. You're special. I can't lie to you, Ritry. I want the bridge more than I want to see you suffer."

  He stares at me, and I stare back. I can feel how eager he is, how hungry, and I know that it will never end. Like a shark, he will continue until he dies, and perhaps with the bridge he will never die. It is better to give everything I have to the Lag than to leave him alive in the world.

  "Fuck you," I say.

  He smiles. "Very well," he says, and lunges forth with both his syringe and his mind at the same time.

  It is almost enough. His mind freezes every part of me, the syringe flashes toward my eye, but there's enough of Far in me left to do what I have to.

  I yank the rope in my hand, and something gives.

  The syringe bursts through the corner of my eye and penetrates down along the optic nerve to the engram dumping spot. I feel Ruins' wild abandon as he starts to depress the lever, pumping millions of points of data into my mind.

  Then the tower collapses. It comes with a roar as so much mortar and brick and wood comes loose off its moorings, now that the keystone has been removed. The whole rollercoaster below us trembles as the walls, stairs, floors and ceiling come crashing down like a tsunami wave over the Calico wall, crushing Mr. Ruins flat beneath it, hammering off the metal desk above me like the Lag beating at the door, tumbling and smashing and falling.

  Control of my body returns as Mr. Ruins ebbs to unconsciousness, buried beneath a heap of solid bonds. I lurch backward and pluck at the syringe in my eye, blink out the excess, and close my eyes to fend off the beginning of the engram attack.

  As the last pattering chunks of my construction crack and thump off the rubble pile over Mr. Ruins and my desk, blocking out the last of the dusk light, I dive into the outer depths of my own Molten Core and summon the Lag.

  It is my beast now. I explode it to immense proportions and set it upon the surging flood of data threatening to extinguish the lava. It opens its vast mouth and begins to eat.

  Hours pass, while the world turns with me and Mr. Ruins at the center. The Lag works quickly and efficiently and I feed it like a trusted pet, leashed and collared. Every item shorn and cut makes me stronger, its incipient bonds broken and converted to energy.

  I feel Mr. Ruins dying slowly beside me. He can barely breathe, and his blood is leaking out. He reaches out to me through the rubble and dust, but I pat his hand away. He reaches out with his mind, but his strength is gone. He can barely think.

  At last, the engram is gone. The silver liquid is empty now, will be metabolized by my body. I open my eyes in the darkness, lit by only a few faint cracks of moonlight through chinks in the rubble pile.

  A trap.

  Mr. Ruins is staring at me, dark blood on his lips, caked with dust and froth. He tries to laugh, and I feel his pain as it becomes a cry of pain.

  "Spider," he says. "Not a shark. You did well, Ritry. I'm proud of you."

  I stare at him through the dust, and lift the syringe in my hand.

  "You don't get to talk to me anymore. You don't get to say anything."

  He sees the syringe and his eyes go white and wide. I feel his fear bloom, even as his body relinquishes its hold on his bladder. I hear the liquid dripping down through the rollercoaster timbers.

  "You can't have them," he whispers in a hoarse cry. "They're all mine."

  I reach out with my body and mind, holding him in place. He goes cold with rage and terror, frozen in my grip as I press the needle into his eye.

  "There are thousands of us," he says. "We own this world. You think you can do this and escape? They'll come for you. They'll all come for you Ritry, every last fucking one, because they all know you now."

  I kneel closer, one hand on his hot and dusty head, one holding the syringe, and look into his gray predator eye.

  "You don't know me at all," I say, and drive the plunger in. A million million points of data swarm into his mind. His dark eyes widen, and he mouths meaningless sounds as his brain is flushed clean.

  CODA

  I ride the Wall line back to the city. It is night, and in the dark glass of the train window I see myself reflected back.

  Ritry Goligh. This is who I am. Ex-Arctic skirmisher, ex-skulk graysmith, now husband and father and a Calico citizen.

  I brush the dust on my suit away. I pull out the node from Mei-An, and key in a number I memorized long ago. It rings, and I feel them out there waiting, my Loralena, my Mem and Art, because for them this is still the nightmare, every bad moment Lagged away by Mr. Ruins after he did it, ready for the next to take its place.

  They are still waiting for me to return. They have been waiting for me to come home for a year.

  And now I'm coming. The node rings, and I reach out to their bonds through the air. The node rings, and the first glimmer of the morning sun rises up over the tsunami wall, eclipsing my reflection and the tears in my eyes with glowing orange light.

  The node rings, and I'm finally going home.

  GET FREE EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!!

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed Mr. Ruins. I had a blast writing it, especially the ruins locations- some of which I've been to real life versions of (CANDYLAND is based on the abandoned Nara Dreamland in Japan - check out my book Adventures in Abandoned Japan to see it).

  Occasionally I send newsletters with details of new releases, giveaways, and special offers for the Ignifer Cycle, the Ruins Sonata, and my other books. Sign up I'll give you all this free stuff:

  A free copy of my top-selling weird short story collection, Bone Diamond, which has an average review score of 4.5 out of 5.

  Five high-resolution photos of gorgeous abandoned ruins that have inspired my writing, for your own personal use (desktop image, art for your house, etc…). Exclusive to my mailing list – you can't get these images anywhere else.

  UPCOMING- A short story of Ritry Goligh's time in the skirmishes (Ritry is the main character of The Ruins Sonata, my science fiction trilogy). Available free to this list first!

  Sign up here.

  You can also-

  CONNECT

  I'd love to hear what you thought of Ritry's journey. Your reviews on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk will be greatly appreciated (check here if those links don't work). I also welcome and respond to all direct emails at michaeljohngrist@hotmail.com

  Finally- is Rit's story over and happily-ever-after? In a word, no. Things are going to get crazy for him and the chord in the sequel, King Ruin, book 2 in The Ruins Sonata. There's an excerpt from King Ruin (and a sneak peek of the cover) just a few pages on.

  Thank you again for reading Mr. Ruins!

  Michael John Grist.

  AC
KNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Rob Nugen for proof-reading, to my Dad for encouragement, and to my wife SY for never failing to believe that this is the book they're going to make into a movie. Thanks for the faith!

  Also thanks to all the ruins I went to myself, in my days as a ruins explorer in Japan. They can't read this of course, but I'm pushing my appreciation out over the aetheric bonds, so perhaps they'll get the message.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michael John Grist is a 34-year old British writer and ruins photographer who lived in Tokyo, Japan for 11 years, and now lives in London, England.

  He writes dark surreal science fiction and fantasy, and explores and photographs abandoned places around the world, such as ruined theme parks, military bases, underground bunkers, and ghost towns. These explores have drawn millions of visitors to his website michaeljohngrist.com, and often provide inspiration for his fiction.

  OTHER WORKS

  Ruins Sonata

  #1 Mr. Ruins

  #2 King Ruin

  #3 God of Ruin (upcoming)

  Ignifer Cycle

  #1 Ignifer's Rise

  #2 Ignifer's Fall (upcoming)

  #3 Ignifer's Life (upcoming)

  Short fiction

  The Bells of Subsidence - 9 science fiction stories

  Bone Diamond - 9 weird fiction stories

  Non-fiction

  Adventures in Abandoned Japan – Exploring Japan's Modern Ruins

  EXTRAS