“You have witnessed this? A failure of our defence mechanism?”
“On TV. Yeah. In fact, most of you’ve ended up that way. All worn out.”
Gail sighs. “It is more than that. If the defence mechanism has failed, that can mean only one thing. It signals the stoppage of brain activity. Those of my kind affected in such a manner are now simply catatonic. Effectively dead.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“I sensed a lessening of the pain,” Gail whispers. “Not my own, but that of my brethren. Now I understand. They suffer less because they are dying. Perhaps that is the only way.”
It might be a fuck-ugly slug, but it’s proper tugging at my heartstrings all the same. Something else pops into my head and I can’t decide whether saying it will make the Blighter feel better or worse.
“They’re not all going ga-ga like that,” I say. “Some of them are just getting blown up and suchlike.”
It’s hard to figure out how the Blighter takes that. It goes all quiet, having a good old think. “Under what circumstances?”
“What do you mean, under what circumstances? Getting shot circumstances, that’s what. One of you got the chop just last night. Caught in the crossfire between two countries who were basically pals right before that. A no-score draw.”
That massive mouth twitches again. Looks almost like a smile.
“I understand. It is a source of no pride to me, but I understand. Rather than suppress their defence mechanism, my brethren have elected to amplify it. They have engendered love to such a degree that humans cannot tolerate the thought of no longer possessing them. When more than one faction is affected in such a way, war can be the only outcome. And war must end in destruction.”
“So... you Blighters are committing suicide?”
“Suicide. Yes.”
I suck in a deep breath and then the stink makes me wish I hadn’t. “Fuck. I’m, well. I’m sorry. I really, really am.”
And I ain’t lying. I reach out towards its shiny snout. It shudders under my hand, even before I touch it. It’s warm, which I guess I didn’t expect. And even though it’s wet as a dog’s tennis ball, the slime isn’t so bad. It’s not sticky or gooey or anything, for all that shine. Once at primary school we got to touch a snake and nobody could believe it was dry, and this is easily as weird as that.
“What about you, then?” I say. “You’ve been cranking out the love yourself. People go all cross-eyed when they get up close.”
“I have performed no amplification. My defence mechanism is simply more powerful by default, a consequence of my seniority. My role is to lead my family. And I have failed.”
I pull my hand away. “Family. So you’re saying you’re like their dad?”
The Blighter doesn’t answer. Gail lets out a quiet moan.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say. “This ain’t your fault, I know. But it’s unreal how much you’ve fucked things up around here. My friend would still be my friend if not for you. My Auntie Alice would still be my Auntie Alice.”
I rub at my eyes with my free hand. No time for tears.
“What is it you actually want?” I say. I can feel anger bubbling up, pushing out the last of the Blighter love.
The Blighter don’t say nothing.
“So I’m special, and we can have our heart-to-heart, and that’s proper lovely and all,” I say. “But what next? You want to talk to the big guys? Get NASA to fire you all up into space again, right? I’ll just get Ten Downing Street on the phone for you, shall I?”
Gail makes a ragged, raspy sound and the Blighter shudders again.
“I understand your meaning, if not your words. You are mocking me. But the answer to each of these questions is ‘No.’ All of these things, if they were achievable, would take time. I do not have time. And I have lost hope for my brethren. I am ashamed, but it is the truth. I care only for myself, now.”
Slime runs off its sides in dollops because of all the wriggling.
Gail’s voice starts getting shakier and shakier. “I do not believe I have the capacity to wait. Even if you were to alert others in the region about my presence, even if I were able to inspire war between rival groups, with my own destruction as the ultimate aim... It would take too much time.”
“So.”
The Blighter’s whole body lurches. It’s nodding.
“The pain is too much,” it says in Gail’s voice. “I beg you. Kill me.”
I step back and put both my hands up to my face. I don’t care about the slime. I don’t care about me right now, all that much. I’m shivering and shivering and shivering.
Pull yourself together, Becky Stone.
I force myself to look straight at it. If I’m going to do what it wants, I need it to know I’m doing it because I understand. And say what you want about Blighters, but everything it’s said makes a shitload of sense.
I look back at Gail. I think about her all hopeless and crying, back at the flat. Now, even though the words coming out of her mouth are sad as anything I’ve ever heard in my life, Gail’s slack mouth—the expression on her face—makes her look like she’s having an endless orgasm. There’s no way she’ll be able to forget this happy feeling, now she’s had a full-on taste of it. She’ll do whatever it takes to keep coming back, if she can.
Killing the Blighter is a plan I can get on board with.
15
THE BLIGHTER HAS the bright idea of making the circle of calm bigger, just for now. If there’s anyone out here waiting in the cold, it don’t hardly matter no more. Even so, I check around all over before I walk out of the bothy. Sure enough, there’s a couple of cops up there on the ridge. Arms up in the air, like a surrender or a prayer.
I can see something else, too, something I half-saw the first time I came here with Gail. A way away from the bothy doors, there’s a load of soil that’s been like dug up or something. Before, I thought it was the Blighter’s crash-landing site, but no. It’s different. It’s not like something’s landed here, but more like something’s been ferreting around, like a mole or a dog looking for bones. The soil’s been yanked up in clumps still with the grass on top. Underneath there’s the glint of hard rock.
It means something, I know it. But right now I got things that need doing.
After a while I start running, not so much because of the cops but because I don’t want to go slow enough to see Auntie Alice’s mashed-up body.
Just like I expected, in the boot of Auntie Alice’s Volvo, there’s a plastic canister of weedkiller and a coil of hosepipe from her gardening side job. Just like before, with Dad.
It’s like she left it all there for me. Like she wants me to do this. Except she don’t know what I’m up to, because she’s over there stone cold dead. And the thing is, it’s not how it was back in 1999, either. Auntie Alice didn’t know. She weren’t part of any of this, then or now. It weren’t her fault.
I tip out the weedkiller. The smell catches in my throat, much worse than the Blighter stink. Makes me feel all faint.
“Have a drink, darling,” is maybe what Dad says, back then, to Mum. “Let’s talk this whole thing through.”
I’m not the same as him.
Dad lifts his slipper and whacks and whacks. Woozy wasps smeared all over the lino.
I’m not the same as him.
This is different.
Wasps aren’t people and neither’s Blighters. So it isn’t murder, but that’s not what this is about, anyway. It’s about the reasons behind the killing. Dad killed them wasps just because he could. Same with Mum. And then the only way out of the mess was to do himself in, too.
The reasons I’m doing what I’m doing aren’t nothing like Dad’s reasons.
I’m better than him.
I open up the petrol cap and stick in the end of the hose. I suck until petrol starts pouring out and into the canister.
It’s getting colder and colder out here, but as soon as I get back inside the circle of calm I can’t hardly feel it
no more.
I try not to look properly at the Blighter while I’m spraying the petrol all around. It’s still shuddering, but it don’t speak. It’s tricky squeezing past it to get all the way around inside the bothy. When I get back to its front end my jeans and jumper are covered in its slime.
Gail don’t move a muscle when I rummage around in her pockets for her Zippo.
She just says, “I thank you, human.”
I turn and face the Blighter full on.
I shrug.
“You made a mistake,” I say.
I push Gail away from the doors of the bothy. All that love I had for her should have turned into hate the moment she bumped off Auntie Alice, I know, but all I got right now is sadness and more sadness. And one thing I know for certain is, I ain’t going to burn her up.
Her mouth twitches and twitches even though she’s still grinning. The real Gail—my Gail—is in there, still. And I know for sure she don’t feel just sad the way I feel. She hates me already for what I’m about to do.
I light the lighter and chuck it inside the bothy.
16
WHAT DO YOU expect? Gail didn’t forgive me for all that. Didn’t have a word to say to me once she came round and realised her precious Blighter was cooked. She blinked and blinked and then she saw that burning building and the cops all racing towards it and then I dragged her away and she just bawled. I wish I could say she was feeling guilty about Auntie Alice, even just a tiny bit, but I know there ain’t no way. Gail was selfish through and through.
Dropping her off back at her house was all sorts of weird, after everything that happened that day, but I don’t know what else I could have done. She sure as hell wasn’t getting back into my flat. And I figured that the only people that knew Gail was ever part of all this were already dead.
Maybe she just carried on with her normal life, but who knows? I never went into the Beast again. I don’t know if Ralphie ever showed up.
So that’s that.
To be honest, I don’t even think about Gail all that much. Auntie Alice neither, even though her story’s way, way sadder, because it had so much less going on in it.
I got too many other thoughts whizzing around, see.
I met this bloke once. He shot a kid who burgled his shop. Self-defence, more or less. Said he never got over the feeling of killing another human. So how do you think I feel, then? A Blighter’s tons bigger than a human.
I bet you Dad never fretted for a second about them wasps. I know they’re smaller, but the point still stands.
I try not to think about it. I keep moving.
At first I figured I was looking for something. Another Gail, or at least somewhere to live. But it’s hard picking somewhere. I can cash Dad’s cheques from banks in any town in the country.
So I keep moving.
Took me months before I worked out what I was actually doing.
The more you look, the more you listen, the more you hear the rumours. Everyone knows about San Francisco and Lisbon and Hamburg and Saskatchewan and them other famous ones. But then somebody will drop a hint about some farm on some Scottish island, where two families got a Blighter to themselves. And someone else tells you about one that wriggled way down into a cave in Snowdonia.
I go from town to town and village to village. I don’t stay in one place more than a couple of nights.
In each new place I head straight to the local pub, even though I’ve stopped drinking.
Because that’s where you see the clues.
You see the huddled groups. You see the suspicious looks. They’re all sizing you up.
I swear them Blighters are everywhere.
So there you go. I’m looking for Blighters. But I know that still don’t explain why. The first few months I told myself it’s a fresh taste of the happy calm I want. Later I told myself I want to help because them Blighters are in pain just like me.
But it’s not any of that.
That word ‘help.’ It’s got a nasty ring to it. You don’t help things by killing them.
And I’m not totally sure I killed that bothy Blighter because I wanted to help, anyway. I killed it because it had a hold on Gail and because it was sad and because it asked me nicely to do it, which made actually doing it a whole lot easier.
It gets worse.
I enjoyed killing it. Just like Dad enjoyed killing them wasps.
I’m my father’s daughter. That chews me up.
At night, when all them bad thoughts whizz around, I tell myself one thing over and over. I tell myself why it was that I enjoyed killing that Blighter.
I enjoyed killing it because killing it stopped people from cheating. Gail, them farmers and the cops, too. If I had my way, every one of them Blighters would fly off into space right this second, just like they was supposed to.
Everyone’s got nasty dark stuff in their heads, see. Everyone’s a victim. But you’ve got to stand and face it. Blighter calm’s not real calm. It’s cheating.
I know what you’re thinking. I’m a cheat too, just in a different way. But the more I travel round the country, the more I’m sure I’m not actually running away from anything. I got my sad past and that’s what got me here. And now I know where I’m going.
The last few weeks I’ve been hearing this new kind of rumour. A new idea. Get people talking enough and they tell you things. They tell you about Blighters that got lucky and landed on softer ground. Blighters who were able to push down with their ugly snouts, pushing and pushing until maybe they got all the way properly underground.
I hear more rumours about Blighters than most folks do, and who knows which ones are right. But then I think about that big old hole outside the bothy at Tarn Crag. Maybe that Blighter—my Blighter—really was digging away, before any farmer found it. Digging and digging and digging and hoping the pull of its heavy-as-hell body would take it down, down, down.
Getting away from us. Away from people.
You couldn’t blame them for trying.
They say there’s only one way to tell if that type of underground Blighter’s really there. If you happen to wander where a Blighter dug itself down and got itself buried far below, you’ll feel it. Just a taste, enough to know you’re near it, nothing that’ll give you much of a buzz. But those places stay calm for good, for real.
Once I heard that rumour, I stuck to tramping around in more out-of-the-way parts. I’m a countryside lass, these days. First I stayed inland, maybe thinking of Sadgill and the like. But now I’ve noticed I’m shifting further and further out, without really planning it.
So.
I’m my father’s daughter, alright, but I’m my mother’s daughter too.
When I get tired of being on the move I’m heading to the coast.
I’ll find me a proper calm spot and I’ll face out to sea.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIM MAJOR’s time-travel thriller novel, You Don’t Belong Here, will be published by Snowbooks in September 2016. His first novella, Carus & Mitch, was shortlisted for a This Is Horror Award and his short stories have featured in Interzone, Perihelion, Every Day Fiction and numerous anthologies. He is the Editor of the SF magazine, The Singularity.
Find out more at Cosy Catastrophes.
RAGS, BONES AND TEA LEAVES
TIM MAJOR
PART ONE
1
Leeds, 1967
THE DOOR SWUNG open with a shove, and Eli backed into the small flat, his hands full with two large boxes. Hal stepped past him, his eyes on the carton in his own hands.
“Musty,” said Hal’s mum, sniffing the air as she entered. “Mr Foster said it hasn’t been lived in for months.”
“At least it’s clean.” Eli set down the boxes to prop the door open. He put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s nice. You’ll like it more when it’s filled with your things. Hal, let’s get some more stuff out the van.”
Hal ignored him and opened the box he’d been carrying. He lifted out the photo of his fa
ther and placed it on the mantelpiece, looking out at the drab living room.
“Oh, not there,” Hal’s mum said.
Hal left the picture where it was and went down to get more boxes out of the van. He walked quickly, staying ahead of Eli so he couldn’t talk to him. When he came back, the picture was still up and his mother was in the kitchen cleaning the countertops.
They spent the morning unpacking, finding places for all their things. When they weren’t looking, Hal would spy on Eli and his mum out of the corner of his eye. The man was forever near her, giving a helping hand, finding excuses to touch her arm or back. At every touch Hal would feel a small flash of irritation. Even when he wasn’t looking, Eli made Hal angry; overhearing him suggest places for their things, the way he’d laugh at his mum’s jokes, or talk to her in soft tones.
Eventually, unable to hide his temper, Hal took a box of his things and went to his new room.
IT WAS SMALL and dimly lit. The one window looked out onto the estate, and the identical homes opposite. Each one a two-bedroom concrete allotment. The Quarry Hill estate was a swarm of flats—nearly a thousand of them, according to the welcome brochure, ‘offering modern living for its 3,000 residents.’ It made Hal feel small and trapped.
“Hal?” A knock at his door. “Are you in there, Hal?”
Eli opened the door and came in. “I’ve got something for you, Hal. It’s your father’s, but he didn’t want it, so I held onto it for him.”
Hal turned, but didn’t say anything.
Eli held up a shoebox. “It’s photos of him, and some other things from the war.”
Hal felt the prickle of goosebumps. They had almost never talked about the war in Hal’s old house. Anytime it came up, Hal’s father would become angry; or worse, he would go silent, sometimes for days.
Taking a seat at the end of Hal’s bed, Eli opened the box and took out a small stack of photos. “This is one from our old unit,” he said, holding it out. Hal took it with care, letting it lie lightly in his hands. “It was taken at the end of our training. You see your dad on one knee in the front row? That’s me stood behind him, look. Right from the beginning, we were together.” Hal barely recognised his father, he wasn’t thin, his hair was neatly trimmed, and there was a warmth to his expression. He wasn’t smiling, but he looked… lively.
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