Vincent swam around to look again into his face. Ah, they are not. Do you see what I see, then? Serpentine bodies? Four limbs with many joints? Spiderish paws? Tendril-shaped growths from hip and shoulder?
Harry met his eye, and the man nodded.
You do. How interesting. He turned clumsily in place and they treaded water together, gazing up into the nest of gently rotating corpses. No one told you what to expect here, and so you see with a clear mind. But look, what is …
Vincent pushed his way deep into the tangle. Harry hung back, staring at the now horribly, horribly familiar creatures. He felt his recollection of the underground theatre change. His vision of the Angel – the Lion of God, descending the steps in glory and despair – shifted. Like an image from a dream, his memory of the Angel resolved itself and became not Uriel the Protector, not an Angel of the Presence, but … this. One of these.
Oh, Papa, he thought. Where am I? What has happened to me? I cannot even trust my own mind.
Vincent had pulled himself closer to one of the big heavy heads. Fascinated, he shoved aside the chin, revealing another of those grub-like things nestled at the creature’s neck. At the sight of it, Harry realised that one memory had stayed true and clear in his mind: the Angel’s pain had remained, its sense of loss, and its terrible, grinding fear as Tina had presented her offering of one of these dead maggot-things.
Vincent touched the dull curl of the thing’s tail. Why, it is the very twin of the corpse we found by the pond. The time we lured the Bright Man from the woods and had it dragged below … See how its tendrils seem to plug in at the base of the larger creature’s skull? What can that mean? He pressed his forehead to the creature’s spongy skin. So many questions … Tell me your secrets, Bright Man. What are you? How do I keep you alive?
Still clinging to the creature’s corpse, Vincent turned his cheek against its bulging forehead and looked about him in something that resembled despair.
Do you know what this brings to mind? It brings to mind all the creatures the crew would bring on board at every exotic bay or harbour – all the poor lizards and cavies and birds the men would dote on and cosset and in their ignorance murder with rum and ship’s biscuit and salt beef. An endless collection of beautiful creatures killed by ignorance and neglect.
Vincent closed his eyes, his voice growing dim in Harry’s mind.
They were jolly times though, eh? We had some rum times …
Harry caught the man as he slid from his perch. Vincent jerked awake, and pulled free with a scowl. Damn this place! He thrust up with a strong kick, breaking through the topmost reaches of the tentacle forest, into the open space above. Harry followed, only to find the man treading water – once again rapt.
A creature was suspended before them. But this one was not like the others. The wide spread of growths sprouting from its shoulder and hip were stretched out in various directions and attached to the wall. It was raised slightly above its companions, the kelp bed of their tentacles floating about its chest and shoulders.
Do you suppose they were all once similarly attached? Vincent wondered.
Staying clear of the creature’s bowed head, Harry swam up the taut length of one of its tentacles, examining where it joined the wall. There were dimples in the surface, and the tips of the tentacles seemed to fit into them. He allowed himself to drift along the curved wall, finding more of the same indents.
Vincent, there are dimples all over the surface. And look! He pointed. There is a staining over much of the wall – but not in the area where this creature is attached. I wonder …
He twisted to look over his shoulder, frowning up at the thing in its blister prison. The discolouration seemed darker there.
Vincent, I think that blister is the source of this stain. I think it’s spread out from …
Abruptly remembering that Vincent could not hear him, Harry turned, meaning to point these things out in dumb show. With a flare of irritation he realised the man had once again succumbed to the ship’s numbing atmosphere and was drifting, limp and head-hung, in the sea of tentacles.
Wake up, you dumkop! You’re going to bump into that thing’s head.
As if determined to prove Harry right, Vincent’s body bobbed against the suspended creature’s brow.
Gah! thought Harry. Why do you have to keep touching these things? You will catch something and—
His thoughts slammed to a dead end and he came to a terrified halt as the creature lifted its heavy head from its chest.
Mein Gott, he thought. Mein Gott. Vincent, wake up.
The creature seemed to nuzzle Vincent’s body, as if unsure of what he was. Then its head did a repulsive series of jerks and wobbles, and Harry realised the creature was not alive at all, but responding to something living that was attached to it.
There was further spastic struggle somewhere in the region of its neck, and one of the maggot-things uncoiled itself. With a pained jerk, it fell loose and lay against the creature’s chest, as if too weak to do any more.
Harry let himself drift down, carefully down, until he was within reach of Vincent. Just as he reached for Vincent’s slack left arm, the maggot-thing raised its head and nudged in a blind and hopeful way at Vincent’s right hand.
Harry grabbed Vincent, kicking hard to get the two of them away. Too late. The maggot shot forward and, even as Vincent was pulled away, twined itself, fast as a snake, up his arm and around his neck.
So many things happened at once then. The maggot’s connections to the base of the dead creature’s skull stretched taut and snapped free – pop, pop, pop. The creature’s huge body sagged as the tentacles that had connected it to the wall of the ship came loose one after another. Unsupported, the great body rolled and sank to become an indistinguishable part of the tangled dead.
The globe darkened, the bodies began to spin, and Harry found himself dragging Vincent up through a slow-moving whirlpool. He looked up; had one terrified moment to realise that the imprisoned thing overhead was moving faster and with less grace, shivering and halting and juddering against the wall of the blister, as if only now realising its confinement.
There was a revolting squirm against Harry’s chest as the maggot’s Medusa-tail wormed up to spread its fingers into Vincent’s woolly hair. Harry yelled, a bright, violent bubble of air. Vincent bucked. His eyes shot wide. The light! he thought.
They changed direction. Suddenly Harry was not the one propelling them through the pulsing gloom, and all he could do was hang on as Vincent’s body was directed in an abrupt swallow-arc towards an entrance that was opening like the iris of an eye in the flesh of the wall.
Then they were being channelled, twisted, dragged, round and round, up and up: into brightness, past dimness, into brightness again. A quivering moaning – a horrified sense of despair – rose around them as they were pushed through the body of the ship. Then out into dark, dead water; up towards the brightness of the sky; and out to breach like salmon into air and flop, quivering, onto the deserted surface of the sunset-coloured ice.
Storm
‘TINA,’ WHISPERED JOE.
It was difficult to hear him, because her attention was far away: inside the ship, focused on two tiny men drifting through a forest of the dead. They were nearing something. Something very important. The Angel’s breathless hope filled her mind.
Joe whispered again, his breath in her ear. ‘Tina. We left your basket in the theatre.’
She turned her head to look at him. His earnest face was so close, his words painting faded memories over the searing present: the theatre, her home, two women who loved her and had raised her strong.
‘My … my basket?’
‘Yes. My money is still in it, Tina. I want you to have it. I want you to—’
But she was turning away from him, his words dropping into the background as something within the ship lifted its head and opened its eyes; as it struggled free from the one who had loved it and now was dead; as a thought rose loud in a m
ind that had lain dormant for centuries: I am not dead.
Tina surged to her feet. She flung up her arms and, breaking Joe’s connection with her, she roared.
Far below, the Angel did the same.
Joe reached for her, but she had already staggered down the steps, her arms raised, her face turned to the sky, just as the Angel’s face was turned to the ceiling of its prison.
Underwater, a long, desperate creature twisted its way up Vincent’s arm, and Tina’s mind was riven by the Angel’s voice, her mouth stretching to accommodate his scream.
I am here. I am here. Beloved, can you feel me? I am here.
Anchor
JOE LEAPT TO his feet, his hands clapped to his ears.
Wolcroft and his woman seemed stunned into helplessness by the monstrous sound that now fountained from Tina’s mouth, and they simply stood watching as Joe plunged past them down the steps.
The gravel was hopping like peas on a drumhead, the pebbles battering his ankles as he ran across the driveway. Out on the ice, the whiskered man ran and fell and then ran again, heading for the shore as, behind him, the tripod collapsed and fell. There was a booming noise down there: a heavy, ominous rush. For a lunatic moment, the entire lake seemed to bulge.
Joe grabbed Tina around her waist. She was rigid as a holy statue, her arms stiffly upflung, her head back to accommodate the noise that spewed from her. As he dragged her back to the house, Wolcroft stumbled down the steps to help.
The world was shivering with the noise coming from her – the stones and wood and glass vibrating. This is what an earthquake feels like, thought Joe. The world is going to shatter.
But the steps amazed him by not cracking, and the roof remained intact over his head as Wolcroft helped him wrestle Tina into the house.
The woman followed them, fascinated.
Joe yelled above the noise, ‘Get Miss Ursula!’
The woman did not, of course, go, so Joe pushed Wolcroft.
‘Go! Get Miss Ursula!’
Wolcroft hesitated, clutching Tina.
‘Do it!’ ordered Joe. ‘Or Tina will have your guts.’
Wolcroft strode away, but the woman remained, watching as Joe jostled Tina through the half-open double doors of a candle-filled ballroom.
Everything rattled: windows, walls, doors. Dust sifted down from the shivering ceilings. The noise coming from Tina was so loud Joe had to shout to be heard over it, but Tina showed no signs of knowing he was there.
She began to fall, and he could only help control her descent. She was difficult to hold. Her body had become so rigid. Her beautiful hair was in her face. Joe pushed it from her mouth and her eyes and held her as tight as her convulsing body would allow, trying to anchor her as he had done before.
The woman’s shadow was visible through the glass panels of the ballroom door, as if she was standing in the hall outside listening. Through the rattling windows, Joe saw Wolcroft running towards the lake. Down on the ice, a geyser of water shot to the sky.
Night Falling
CORNELIUS RUSHED PAST Luke and out onto the rumbling ice, calling for Vincent. Vast quantities of water had been thrown up by the geyser and now lay on the surface. It reflected the lurid sunset like a mirror, and Cornelius found himself sloshing ankle-deep above his distorted reflection as he made his way towards his friend.
Out by the ruined tripod, the American boy was rolling to his hands and knees, heaving in air and shaking sodden curls from his eyes. Vincent was at his side, arching and flopping like a fish, his hands to his head. Something was wrapped about his face – his shirt, perhaps, thrown up in the violence of the explosion. It looked as if it were suffocating him.
Hold fast, Vincent. I am coming!
There was no answer, and with a flash of horror, Cornelius realised Vincent’s mind was still a silent void to him. It had been over a hundred and fifty years since the talent had developed between them, and Cornelius had forgotten what it was like to be so solitary. It was terrifying.
His legs slid from under him, the ice came up to hammer his chin, and he saw stars. By the time he found his feet again, the boy was hunched over Vincent, tearing at the fabric that swaddled him. At his back, the water roiled and bubbled within the jagged hole the geyser had thrown them from. It rumbled like a steam train beneath the ice.
‘What is happening, boy?’
The American could not seem to hear above the unearthly noise that vibrated all around them, and he continued manhandling Vincent, shouting at him: ‘Help me, dumkop! Don’t just flop about!’
Cornelius began fighting his way across. ‘You insolent dog!’ he roared. ‘I will thrash you senseless!’
At that moment the fabric tore free of Vincent’s face and the boy, lurching to his feet, spun and flung it. His intention was clearly to get it as far from himself as possible, and, all unawares, he hurled it right into Cornelius’ path.
The sight of the thing – long and pale and sinuous, trailing a veil of tentacles like some ghastly octopus – stopped Cornelius in his tracks, and he stood gaping as it sailed through the air to land with a living splash at his feet.
The thing twisted and shivered, sending rings of brightness radiating across the water’s surface. Cornelius took a step back. In the water at his feet his own face stared up at him, reflected in sharp detail, the sky a scarlet flare above his head. Aside from the creature’s feeble disturbances, the water had become still as glass.
Cornelius looked up into silence. The terrible noise had ceased as soon as the creature had been ripped from Vincent.
All of a sudden, the water level began to drop. The pond, retreating back the way it had come, spiralled with the gentlest of gurgles through the hole in the ice.
The boy crouched again by Vincent’s side. ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Hey, are you okay?’
Vincent bellowed and sat bolt upright, his arms straight ahead as if reaching for something. He saw the boy and grabbed his shoulders. To Cornelius’ amazement, he was grinning.
‘The light!’ he cried. ‘Did you see it? The seer spoke of light, did she not? We must question her! Where have you put the symbiote, boy?’
Feverishly excited, he began swishing his hands about in the retreating water, searching.
‘Where is it? Tell me we have it!’
The boy seemed just as excited. He was running his hands through Vincent’s hair, examining him, shouting questions.
‘That thing had its little suckers all over you! What did it feel like? Did it hurt? What the hell was it? What the hell were we inside down there?’
Vincent grabbed him again. ‘So many questions! And finally, the chance of answers!’
‘We’re alive!’ The boy leapt up and began a hideous, clumsy, slipping dance on the ice. ‘We’re alive!’
Vincent laughed. ‘Where is my symbiote, boy?’
‘It’s over there!’ The boy helped him climb to his feet, and they waded though the shallows, each supporting the other on the slippery surface.
The grinning boy was shuddering already with cold. Vincent steamed like a live coal in the snow.
He called out as they came abreast with Cornelius, not even bothering to slow as they passed by, ‘Such an adventure we’ve had, cully! You would not believe it!’
Can you hear me? asked Cornelius.
Vincent waved his hand. Yes, yes! Everything is fine. Where is—
‘There it is,’ cried the boy. ‘Look at it! It’s still alive!’
‘Do not touch it, boy. Where are my clothes? We could bundle it in my shirt, perhaps … Cornelius, lend us your jacket!’
‘Here is my shirt!’ cried the boy. ‘Bobbing about right here. We can use it!’
They laughed and slipped about together as they retrieved the shirt, high on adventure and the taste of survival. Cornelius stood apart and watched them, their reflections refracting and colliding beneath them as they worked to capture the object of their fascination.
‘Luke!’ bellowed Vincent. ‘Luke!
Fetch a big specimen jar. Hurry! You will find one in my laboratory! And dry clothes – this boy must not get cold.’
Cornelius watched them walk away from him, the light already seeping from the sky, the fog-softened shadows thickening as the sun began to set.
The Thing We’ve Found
‘VICENTE, WHAT DOES this creature mean for us?’
Vincent barely registered Raquel’s question. He could not take his eyes from the huge specimen jar Luke had set on the floor in the centre of the room, nor the creature that now rested within it.
The American boy and he had debated theories as they carried the creature up from the boating pond. Should they put it back into water? If Vincent’s theory was correct, and it was some form of cosmic animal, crashed here from the stars, was water even an appropriate element for it? Perhaps it had been slowly drowning all this time. Perhaps it was this, and not poison from the so-called Contagion, that had killed its companions?
To and fro, to and fro the debate had gone between them, as they had pulled on dry trousers, tied laces, buttoned shirts, put on waistcoats. Talking, talking, talking. Raquel re-lit the candles, and their shadows flared high against the ceiling of the ballroom, their patience with each other fraying as excitement faded to exhaustion.
In the end, it had been Cornelius who made the decision. He must have slipped away while they were arguing, and he’d silenced them both by returning with a well bucket, from which he filled the enormous jar. He had lifted the creature and, without a word, tipped it from its shirt swaddling into the water.
As if with relief, the creature had spread to fill the shivering element, its tentacles reaching and gently touching the borders of its confinement, its grotesque body curling and uncurling as it drifted within. Cornelius had slapped the bucket down and retreated to the door, where he’d leaned, his arms crossed, his frown riveted on Vincent.
‘There,’ he’d said. ‘Now what?’
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