The Last Line Series One

by David Elias Jenkins

  Jason glanced up once at the shelf then looked shyly away. As if afraid of those trees.

  “Deadwood techniques are used for bonsai. Specimens of aged trees often have dead wood present. They are ash white. They are the corpses of once trees. They allow for a different artwork. Modified.”

  Ariel knew he would have to directly address the thing he had been avoiding since his arrival, but he wanted to wait a few more moments.

  “You can force them into shapes a living thing would not allow?”

  Necromancy of vegetable matter. He’s warped and degraded these beautiful living things into abhorrences against nature. He’s coerced dead bark the way the darkest wizard coerces dead flesh to create offences. Yet still I must find out more. I cannot bring myself to shoot this child as I have been ordered. Not without seeing his unintentional crime first. The STG haven’t programmed me that well yet.

  “Jason.”

  “Yes Ariel Speedman.”

  “When you had the picture in your mind for these ones, what did you see?”

  “My picture could move.”

  “Move where?”

  Jason seemed to ponder this for a moment, unblinkingly.

  “Don’t know. When I think, my think moves in normal directions, like forward and back or sideways. With those ones, it could move other ways. Not forward or back. Other ways. Don’t have names. Just other ways in between directions. ”

  Ariel stared at the boy’s strange creations.

  The dead wood bonsai were impossible.

  One of them had been trimmed and twisted into only two dimensions. When Ariel stepped to the side and observed it, it simply did not exist. Next to it was a Japanese white pine that had been carefully pruned into at least eight dimensions and which took up more space in the room and in Ariel’s brain than physical form allowed.

  The tree next to this grew entirely inward from the mid trunk upwards, bending in the fabric of space around it to create creases and branches of wrinkled reality, a puckered scar in a flowerpot.

  Another was a crumpled spiral that extended in a completely straight line like a spear. Ariel’s brain could not accept the paradox so just shifted between the two, making the bonsai spring out and back like a bristling Christmas hooter.

  It was extraordinary. Ariel had seen World Trees before obviously, had made careful study of them.

  He knew what the unstable thaumaturgic conduits between worlds looked like. Not vast machines with infinite cogs, nor elaborate alters scrawled with forgotten runes. Life was the key.

  These organic doorways that twisted and grew, knotholes into other dimensions, were the means the Unseelie had been seeking for centuries to cross over uninhibited into our world. If they could master such a craft, no longer would they need to resort to the gambit of squeezing themselves piecemeal through the Thinspots of the world. More often than not they would come through minus an arm or a brain. Nameless horrors spasming in fetal death throes on the shores of a world they had planned to conquer.

  With World Trees, they could burst through legion into our quiet little corner of the Universe, bringing all their warping magic with them. It would be finished, all of it.

  Ariel felt his hand slip into his jacket, caress the handle of the automatic pistol holstered there. The skinny boy was staring at him with his unblinking black eyes. He was drawn to the movement in a way that reminded Ariel of a cat.

  Ariel let his hand slip back out by his side.

  Not yet. There has to be another way.

  Ariel smiled at the boy and then turned to more closely investigate the trees.

  He moved around the sprouting thaumaturgic structures, his brain trying to adapt to their magical shapes. Upon closer inspection, he could see that each tree, no matter how bizarrely executed, possessed a small warped hollow in the trunk, exactly like a full sized World Tree. Ariel leaned forward to the nearest one, leaned down, and moved his eye closer to the dark little hole.

  He was no more than six inches away, the gelatinous orb of his eyes drying in a cold breeze that blew out from the void in the tree. The closer he got, the more dread he began to feel in his belly. Ariel knew with absolute certainty that the dark little knothole in the bough of the bonsai tree stretched back way further than the dimension of the trunk would allow. It was not a knothole at all.

  It was a peephole into the endless Deep. Ariel could definitely feel the cold breeze now, and could smell the faint stench of rot. He also thought he could hear something. Rhythmic ventilation that sounded like panting.

  A tongue suddenly shot out of the knothole and lurched up and down. A long sticky grey thing, it tasted the air, searching for the source of fresh meat.

  Ariel’s head shot back, the tongue missing the surface of his open eye by millimeters. He watched as the tongue quivered pathetically and then shot back into the tree.

  Ariel glanced at the next delicately tapered pine tree on the shelf. As he did so a jaundiced eye appeared at the tiny knothole, staring out at him imploringly. The eye had once been human but no longer. Some corruption had grown within it, a nascent lust for violence and a primal hunger. Ariel had studied almost every foul creature the Unseelie Court had ever spewed forth but he suddenly found himself as confused as he was scared. From the hole in the trunk of the next tree a long thin finger slowly emerged, then the grey-black hand of a transforming creature. The knothole was too small for the hand but it forced its way through, the slender bones bending and cracking beneath the skin. One fingernail caught on a ridge of bark and slowly tore off backwards as the little hand wormed out into the room.

  And yet…it was not yet fully removed from what it once was. The hand was grasping and ugly, but it was also small. Too small to be an adult’s hand.

  Ariel stood transfixed in horror staring at the row of dead wood bonsai, and spoke softly over his shoulder.

  “Jason?”

  “Yes Ariel Speedman?”

  “Who told you how to make these trees?”

  Jason did not look up from his latest creation.

  “The Christmas Goblin man.”

  Ariel had a dawning realization that make his flesh creep.

  “Jason, were these trees Christmas presents?”

  “Yes. I made them. For my friends. The boys here at the school.”

  “There are five trees Jason.”

  “I have five friends.”

  “You gave these trees to each of your friends here?”

  Jason stopped snipping.

  “Yes. It’s the expected thing at Christmas, to give gifts to your friends.”

  “But they’re back here now. In your room.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your friends? They haven’t asked for them back?”

  “No. The Goblin Man gave them back to me as presents. He put my friends inside them so we could play together. They’re better friends now.”

  Ariel’s heart sank as he looked at the five eldritch little trees for what they really were.

  Oubliettes.

  Miniature world trees that led only to one of the Deep’s countless subterranean prison cells. An eternal hell for the inmates, who could only peer forever out to the world they had left behind through a single tiny peephole in the cell wall, warped and changed by the Deep’s dark magic. These were trapped children. They may have been delinquents, violent and unstable, but they were children all the same. Behind Ariel, Jason began to softly sing.

  He will take me shake me

  Make me join his raggedy band

  Look out for the goblin man

  Look out for that hook in his hand

  Ariel’s curiosity got the better of him. He slowly removed one of his leather gloves and stepped towards the shelf of impossible trees. He reached out to touch one of them.

  “Don’t touch it Ariel Speedman.”

  Ariel stayed his hand, turned to the boy, who was now looking at him with genuine concern.

  “Why not Jason?”

  “If you touc
h it you’ll go away too. You’ll end up being one of my friends forever. I..I think you’d be a good friend, but you have an important job. And books to read.”

  Ariel slowly withdrew a shaking hand.

  Don’t think I’m ready for eternity in an Unseelie oubliette quite yet. Thanks kid.

  “Yes. Yes I do. Lots of books.”

  Ariel turned to face the disturbed boy. Once again he felt a wave of sympathy for a poor creature, locked away and forgotten by society and whatever family he may have had. His only caregivers were jaded turnkeys with tattooed forearms.

  He knew then he didn’t have it in him to follow his orders. He’s take whatever punishment was coming to him.

  “Do you like it here Jason? Are you happy here? You seem like a very creative young man. You must feel very trapped in a place like this sometimes.”

  “I have places I can go. In my brain. And I have my trees.”

  “I was a bit like that too when I was your age. Things weren’t so great around me at school or home, but I could go some amazing places in my brain.”

  “You like books.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Books are from paper paper from wood wood from trees. I like trees.”

  “They’re like stories to you.”

  “They take me away. This one I’m making, it takes me away.”

  Ariel smiled nervously at the skinny boy.

  “Jason I need to go and speak to the men outside. But I’ll be back shortly ok.”

  The boy was engrossed in his latest tree and barely acknowledged Ariel. In absent minded tone he spoke.

  “I get lost in my work.”

  Ariel nodded.

  “So do I, son. So do I.”

  Then he turned and walked in a slow measured pace out of the room.

  Waiting for him outside was the burly orderlies and Detective Chalmers. Ariel glanced back behind him into the room. Jason was lost in his own world, busily pruning his tree and singing. Ariel took off his glasses and began to nervously polish them. He gently closed the door behind him and spoke in low tones.

  “The children that have gone missing from their rooms. He says they were his friends. That he gave them each a tree as a Christmas present. I’m afraid something terrible has happened to them. Something I’m not permitted to fully discuss. ”

  Stan paled and his eyes widened. “His friends? Doctor, that gang of miniature psychopaths made Jason’s life a living hell since he arrived here.”

  “He was bullied?”

  Gary nodded and lit a cigarette. “Horrifically so. They did things to him, abused him in ways only kids could think up. Made him eat stuff, humiliated him. We had to segregate him, keep him away from the others. His mental condition, he doesn’t fully understand and he lashes out himself in what started as self-defense and ended up just offence.”

  “Does he think he was being bullied and abused?”

  “That’s the tragedy of it Doc. He thought those evil little bastards were his friends. Like a puppy you can burn with cigarettes and still comes back wagging its tail. I feel responsible. We all do in a way.”

  “You couldn’t have intervened sooner? “

  Jim rattled the metal grate on the window with frustrated hand.

  “This place. It’s damage management more than treatment. They don’t have legal guardians, no other facility wants them. It’s stuck in the dark ages but we don’t get funding because everyone regards these kids as lost causes. It’s just an attic to hide the deformed brother no one wants to admit exists. And yes, we’re all to blame.”

  Detective Chalmers sighed and flipped open his notebook.

  “Right, I’ve had just about enough of this spooky shit. I need to get in there and take a statement off that boy, and I need to start bagging some of that stuff he has as evidence.”

  Ariel stepped in front of the door and fixed Chalmers in the eye.

  “Whatever you do detective. Whatever you do, do not touch those trees. They don’t belong here.”

  “In this hospital?”

  “In this world.”

  Chalmers spread his hands in defeat and shrugged.

  “Right fuck it then if they’re going to send a clairvoyant in to solve murders now, it’s above my head. What can I do eh? What can I do?”

  Jim put a hand on Chalmers’ shoulder.

  “Paul. This is above our pay grade and we know it. All of us.”

  A dated wall mounted telephone rang and Stan answered it. His brow knotted in concern and he nodded to the voice on the other end.

  “Lads, we’re needed down on the east wing, it’s all hand to the pumps. Some of the kids have gone haywire, started smashing the place up. One of them has been stabbed. It’s orange alert we’re all needed right now.”

  Gary tucked in his tunic and squared his shoulders.

  “Doctor Speedman, as you just heard there’s been a security incident. It happens, often on a weekly basis round here it’s like a pressure cooker in here but we have to go and deal with it right now. I want you to stay here for your own safety, do you understand?”

  “I do. What I need to deal with is right here.”

  Detective Chalmers took off his suit jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

  “Need an extra body?”

  Gary frowned at him then broke into a grin.

  “Fucking knew this was all a ruse to get back here. Yeah, with these little psychos we need all the hands we can get.”

  Then Gary turned to Ariel with a curious look in his eye.

  “I knew it was all true, Doctor Speedman. The things that have been happening in the world. It is happening isn’t it?”

  Ariel replaced his glasses and regarded the burly orderly with his icy eyes.

  Christ they need to know. They need to know who we’re at war with.

  “Yes. I’m not supposed to tell you that of course. But yes, yes it is. We’re facing a threat, terrorism I suppose, that’s what my employers at the Ministry define it as anyway. Something very serious is coming, and a lot of things that have stayed secret for a very long time may be about to become public.”

  “Any advice for us ordinary folks on the ground?”

  “Read. Read a lot of books. Always worked for me.”

  Gary nodded and with that they all turned and made their way through a locked security door and down the stairs to the east wing.

  Ariel stood alone in the deserted corridor of Marksley Willows. The rain battered down outside the window, and he mused that there were some jobs even more stressful than his own.

  A sudden crash from the room behind him.

  Ariel spun and opened the door then ran back into the room.

  Jason was not anywhere to be found. The metal mesh on the window had been forced open and the window swung wide. Rain and wind blew in to gather in a pool upon the faded linoleum floor. Something had been placed on the windowsill that in his alarm Ariel failed to fully notice. One strange tree among hundreds in the room.

  Ariel rushed to the open window and leaned out in panic.

  “Jason?”

  The room was six floors up and there was no broken ragdoll of a body lying on the concrete far below.

  In confusion, Ariel spun around, checking behind doors and under the bed, in that curious way of looking for people in places people could not possibly be. He almost considered looking in the cabinet drawers. In the corner on the little table, the boy’s only record had been placed on the dated turntable. The needle hissed and crackled as the record began to play.

  Then Ariel noticed the tree on the windowsill.

  For a moment his brain was unable to take in its complexity, the sheer level of thaumaturgic workmanship that had gone into making it. Ariel knew instantly that this was the tree that Jason had been trimming all the while they had been talking.

  Why had I never looked at it before?

  The door closed silently behind Ariel as the music began.

  The ragtime goblin man

&nb
sp; He comes around and softly sings a ragtime tune

  In the shadows of the room behind Ariel a figure quietly rose. A squat untrimmed stumpy tree with crooked limbs, graceless and lethal. Bad wood bad soil bad blood. It grew and grew, dead wood cracking quiet. Bark eyelids fluttered back and baleful pupils peered out.

  I know he followed me

  He’ll catch me sure

  And they’ll be a ragtime swoon.

  He’s beside me, hide me hide me

  I can feel his breath, oh I’m scared to death

  Ariel stared at the little tree on the windowsill, silhouetted in the forced-open window against the dark moonlit countryside seeped with December rain. A few metres behind him, a long spindly limb extended from a rapidly growing twisted body. In its long gnarled fingers it held a hook.

  A Meathook.

  Look out for that hook in his hand

  That great big hook in his hand.

  There he is there he is there he is there!

  Ariel shook his head in perplexed wonder at the impossible little Bonsai tree that sat in triumphant perfection on the windowsill. He had in all his life never seen anything so beautiful, so complex, so utterly wreathed in secrets and answers.

  It was not made of dead wood. It was a living breathing negotiation with nature. It was not a jailer’s key like the aberrations the poor boy had been coerced into making by an Unseelie sprite. It was a magic passport in spiny green.

  And in that moment Ariel had absolutely no doubt that Jason was nowhere to be found in the crumbling old institution of Marksley Willows. Like all the best prison escapees, he had dug a tunnel right in front of the faces of the guards and not one of them had an inkling of its purpose. He had everything short of a poster of Rita Hayworth.

  Despite everything Ariel laughed to himself.

  His perfect little tree had been trimmed and turned just so, been shaped between the planes, until it grew at an angle no one had ever heard of, into a place few had ever seen.

  The thing padded slowly up behind Ariel on creeping feet. It licked its wet lips.

  He will take me shake me

  Make me join his raggedy band

  Look out for the goblin man