by John Shirley
“I remember something about it.”
“Even though he was a famous author and no longer young, he insisted on volunteering as a physician to go to South Africa and take care of wounded and dying soldiers in the Boer War. Right there in the war zone. Got some form of cholera himself from it. You want me to tell you stories about what he’s done in the afterworld?”
“Uh—no. I guess you made your point.”
“You get out there and help him, Fogg, if respect from me matters to you. Maybe it doesn’t, but . . .”
“It does,” I said.
Brummigen turned and walked off toward the village, his lantern swinging at his side, making shining arcs back and forth along the path.
I sighed—and followed Doyle into the darkness.
Doyle was well ahead of me, his lantern light dancing a wicked fairy jig in the trees. I hurried after him, thinking about calling out to him, realizing I’d better not. He wouldn’t stop anyway—and I might scare Moore off.
After a few minutes I thought I saw two lights, and almost called out a warning to Doyle, but then I realized the second light was a reflection of his lantern in the pools of clear swamp water.
I started jogging, pretty awkward with the lantern. My light flared off the pools; it caught in two saucer-shaped eyes, watching me. It was caught up in numerous pairs of golden eyes glinting at me from the surface of a small pond. Frogs, I supposed. At least I hoped so.
I was remembering the Scargel. If that was out there—what else could be in the afterworld?
Something Fiona had said when I’d first met her . . .
And if you wander a long ways out of it, then you have a greater risk of encountering predators. And yes you have died but that doesn’t mean you’ve passed beyond all danger. There is danger here.
“Well that’s just dandy,” I said out loud. “Passed on, dead as a doornail. Should be past caring. Still quite possibly screwed.”
“Is it dandy?” said a distorted voice from the darkness.
I stopped for a moment on the trail and raised my lantern, looked off in the direction I thought the voice had come from. I saw trees, the knees of cypresses lifted as if frozen in mid-dance move; I saw the lantern light angling, prismed down into the water; I saw the silhouettes of frogs and snakes flashing away. I saw a bird flitter by, just a silhouette—a large bird, perhaps an owl. Was that who’d spoken?
Must have imagined it. I hustled on, once more trying to catch up with Doyle.
“Is your doornail dead?” came the voice from the darkness. It was a male voice.
There was something about the voice I recognized. But it was distorted, too. On purpose, I thought . . .
“I know your voice!” I shouted, hoping he’d fall for it and come out of the shadows.
But the only response was scornful laughter.
Okay, fine, I told myself. Don’t hang out here, you damned fool.
I trudged rapidly on, turned a corner, stepped into a pool of water—and drew back, cursing. I got a brief memory from an Istanbul taxi driver whose forgetter spark was sliding around my ankle. Honking cars, narrow streets, people shouting in Turkish.
Then I turned, seeing another light—someone looming up at me.
It was Doyle. “You seem to be lost!”
“Ah—I might be.”
“Come along.” He led the way back along the trail, then to the fork I’d missed. “I heard someone shouting. Your voice and someone else. Couldn’t quite make it all out. Talking to a ringtail sloth, were you?”
“Might’ve been. Not sure. Might have been Bull Moore. Didn’t sound like him though.” I could see lights clustered in a tree, up ahead—motionless lights. “That the tree house?”
“Yes. Lower your voice . . .”
We approached the huge tree slowly. Its base reminded me of an African baobab tree. But it grew out of the swamp, with the raised roots, and in the darkness its foliage looked cubistic. It wasn’t foliage. It was the outline of Moore’s multitiered tree house. Only the middle building had lights in it. Lamps glowed from half-open windows . . .
Doyle put his lamp down and closed the shutter on it. I did the same with mine so that the only light was from Moore’s tree house, about two hundred feet away, and a faint phosphorescence from the swamp pools around it.
Something splashed, and splashed again. Was that someone wading through the water, behind us? I turned and looked. I saw only flickers of light, from forgetters, here and there, and the outlines of trees over feebly glowing pools. Nothing moved.
I turned toward the tree house, hearing Moore muttering, but wasn’t sure what he was saying. Something about the skies, no use watching, not anymore . . . At least I think that’s what he said.
“Doyle . . . maybe if we . . .”
He reached back and clamped one of his big hands over my mouth. “Quiet, Fogg,” he hissed. He drew his hand back and then signaled for me to wait there.
I shook my head. “No!” I whispered.
Doyle was trotting ahead, toward the big tree. The path led between two pools, right up to the trunk of the tree. I saw Doyle climbing the tree, not elegantly but without much apparent effort, and disappearing into the lower tree-house unit.
There was an immediate clinking clatter—Doyle had bumbled into some form of alarm, probably just pieces of metal and glass on a string. I heard him cursing, and then came a shout from Moore. “I knew it!”
The middle section of the tree house shook, as if something was being thumped about. Something large.
I shouldn’t have let him go. If Moore was the one who’d killed Morgan Harris, he could be using the same method to destroy Doyle now; to reduce Conan Doyle to a black shape and a spark.
I grabbed up my lantern, unshuttered it, and ran toward the tree, shouting, “Moore, stop! He’s not alone here!”
The middle section shook again. An outer wall split so that light speared out into the night. A group of dark birds flew up from a branch, crying out in protest.
“Not alone here! Damn you! Out, out!” screeched the birds.
Something heavy, something big, came tumbling from the smashed-open tree house. It fell through foliage and small branches, cracking them, sending out a burst of leaves, and then struck the water with an enormous splash.
“Oh fuck . . .” I was almost to the tree trunk, running to the still rollicking surface of the water. Mud plumed up from the bottom. Then a muddy figure rose slowly up, as if exuded by the mud—only to fall back again.
“Fogg? Don’t get too close to him!” called Doyle from above.
I looked up, saw him backlit by the glow from the ruptured tree house. “Doyle?”
Moore was up on his feet again, sloshing waist high through the water to the tree—where he hunkered down, and crept under the arches of the raised roots.
He hid back there, in the shadows under the tree trunk, clutching at the roots like a man in a jail cell grabbing at the bars. “Stay away from me! I don’t know where she is! Don’t let him do it to me again!”
“You don’t know where Touie Doyle is, Moore?” I asked. Maybe he was off balance enough to tell what he knew.
“I don’t know! I just saw her for a second, when the glow things went past her! I didn’t see who she was! She was going toward the mansion! Get away from here! You can tell your masters that I’ll go underground now, and they won’t be able to reach me!”
Moore retreated back into the shadows. I could barely see him back there.
“Okay, Bull,” I said. “I’ll tell them that.”
Doyle was just climbing down the ladder, dropping to the ground by the tree trunk. “Bloody fool thinks he’s Peter Pan. Barrie would be horrified. He need not have panicked so.”
“Did you threaten to drub him too?”
“No. I thre
atened to beat him black and blue.”
“You okay?”
“Scarcely injured at all. A scrape here and there. Come along if you’re coming. I . . .”
He squinted into the darkness—then smiled.
“What is it?” I asked. I peered off in that same direction, and then I saw it.
At first I thought it must be reflected light from a cloud of forgetters. It was about forty yards off, and hovering in the air between two trees, perhaps fifty feet over the water. But then I saw clearly it was all one creature, one thing, fluctuating in space. I thought at first it must be the afterworld’s aurora borealis—but it was too close, too distinctly glowing there, between the trees. It was like an aurora, and then again it was almost like a giant luminescent jellyfish, reticulating, fluttering in place—reflected clearly in the water down below. “Is that . . . some kinda swamp animal? Or . . . a fox fire kind of thing?”
“No sir. That is not. That is a phenomenon we see rarely. I’ve seen it once before. But likely this isn’t the same one. Look into it, as much as you can, from here. Clear your mind and really look.”
I looked . . . and its shape seemed to alter, as if my looking gave it shape. It became a human being, a nude young male made of translucent white glow, just floating there, looking at us, with a backdrop of aurora. It was as if the aurora were . . . wings.
And it seemed to me the creature was looking directly at me. “Doyle! Is that an angel?”
Doyle gave out a pleased chuckle. “Closest thing you’ll likely ever see to one! That is a human being who has evolved, to vibrate harmoniously with a higher level: the ‘solar’ level. They may or may not be around us, here, but if they are, it is quite a different place to them. They don’t interfere with us, ah—so far as I know. They seem to appear as an omen.”
I could feel something in the air—a benevolence. Not quite a benediction. It was too objective for that. I felt its awareness of us, and I felt its inherent compassion. “Is it . . . a good omen?”
He made an inarticulate murmur in his throat as he considered. “It’s a significant omen. Tell me—does it look as if he’s looking right at you?”
“Yes. It does, to me. Maybe it’s an illusion.”
“No, I do not believe so. It looks to me as if he’s looking at you.”
“Is he . . . Summoning?”
“That’s not how it happens.”
“Then why?”
“It’s just that . . . something significant has happened. You made a significant choice, Fogg. I don’t know what that choice was. But it’s good.” He fell silent for a moment, gazing at the apparition. Then burst out with a monosyllabic sound of disappointment, “Oh!”
The evolved spirit was fading into its aurora . . . which was backing away. It seemed to flick away . . . into everything at once. The world seemed lightning-flash lit, for a split second, by its vanishing.
Then it was gone. I heard birds murmur sadly, somewhere. “Gone for now . . . gone for now . . .”
Doyle shook his head. “That was extraordinary. We just see it so rarely. Only once before did I . . . ah well. We must go about our business. We have a task—there’s always a task, Fogg. Always. Small or large it may be. But always a task.”
He seemed to shake himself a trifle, then lunged back along the trail.
And I followed. On the way Doyle picked up his lantern, unshuttering it.
We hustled on and he didn’t speak again for ten minutes. Suddenly he picked up his pace as he said, “You heard what Moore said, about Touie? Consider the implications, Fogg. We must be off! We must get to Merchant’s private castle with all possible speed.”
“Great.” I was nervous about approaching the mansion, especially at night. “The mansion. Just . . . great.” Higgs. I didn’t trust Higgs. Maybe this time it’d be a punji pit with sharpened stakes.
“Just great,” said a voice from the darkness. “Dandy!”
Doyle and I skidded to a stop and exchanged glances. “That’s what I heard, earlier,” I whispered. I wondered for a moment if it could be something from the aurora creature we’d seen. But no. That being had been clearly benevolent. I could feel it.
This thing felt just the opposite. I felt its malignance.
“Oh yes, he heard it earlier,” said the voice from the darkness. As if my whispering didn’t matter at all—it had heard me anyway.
Doyle nodded for me to go on ahead—I figured he was going to let the thing dog me, let me lead it away as he tried to sneak up on it. He turned and stepped to the edge of the trail, leaning back a little as if preparing to wade into the water.
I grabbed his arm and held him back, shaking my head. “Not this time, Doyle,” I said. “I’m going myself.”
Then, carrying my lantern, I turned, took a short run, and leapt off the trail feetfirst into the water.
It was waist deep here, warm and fragrant, but the mud was slippery and I barely managed to keep upright. I nearly dumped the lantern into the water.
I got myself steadied and heard Doyle call to me from behind, but I was listening to the thing’s sloshing, its urgent movement off in the woods. It gave me a direction to go in.
I set off in pursuit, wading fast as I could.
I felt frogs, disturbed by my feet as they slipped along my crotch, up between my legs. It was altogether too intimate a contact from nature.
I kept sloshing on.
This is stupid, I thought, as I got farther and farther from the trail. Probably just one of those talking ringtail things.
But what if it wasn’t? And what if it was trying to lure me off into the swamp? Who knew what was out there? How far did the swamp go on? Fifty miles? For all I knew it could go on for hundreds of miles.
I saw the thing then—its movement seemed to activate the faint phosphorescence in the water, making glowing rings as it sloshed along, about forty yards ahead of me. Its movements seemed especially clumsy. Was it luring me on, that way?
It turned, then, and looked back at me—and there was another light, two glows where its eyes should be, in the outline of a man. It stared at me. I needed an act of will to come moving toward it. But I kept going.
The mocking thing made a low, scornful, sniggering sound.
Then it turned away, took several especially big steps. I followed, making myself move as fast as I could without slipping or dropping the lantern.
I pursued it for a few minutes, splashing on, not able to get along rapidly—but I could see I was closing the distance.
Then the mocking thing tripped in the slippery mud, and fell with a splash.
There was a hissing sound; I saw lights, blurred by the water, as it looked around . . .
I kept going, and suddenly the mocking thing was there, in front of me. I almost ran into it.
It was half sunken in the water, stretched out just a few steps from a raised trail. A little steam rose from the surface of the pool above it.
“Doyle!” I shouted, waving the lantern. “There’s a trail here!”
I heard him call back to me, some sort of assent.
In the lantern’s glow, the remains of the mocking thing seemed to be slowly sinking to the mud. It was a partly formed man-shape. A coarse, dark, badly textured shape . . .
I held my lantern over it in my right hand, reached down and pulled the thing up with the other—the dark shape came easily. It seemed to have lost a lot of its weight. It was wiry under my fingers.
I started climbing up onto the trail, slipping back once, then dug in and lurched upward. The water seemed reluctant to release me, but then I was up, dragging the man shape up onto the trail. I laid it down and turned it over, just as Doyle’s lantern light came floating along toward me. It took a moment for me to see him carrying it.
“Fogg? Did you catch him?”
“I caught whatever it was. I don’t think it’s still a him, or what it was, at all . . .”
I set my lantern down near the thing’s head. It wore no clothing—it was the crude outline of a man, a little larger than me, made of slightly steaming wires. Its eyes were empty, hollow. It had no nose, or chin; instead of a mouth, it had something like a small megaphone. There was no sign of a soul spark.
“Is this someone who’s just . . . died?” I asked. “Like Morgan Harris?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Doyle said. “Notice the absence of the material you so memorably called ‘snail tracks.’ ”
“Could’ve been washed off by the water.”
“It’s quite concentrated, water-resistant material. If any did come loose there would be some on the pool . . .” He went to look, using his lantern. “As I thought, it is not there. You will recollect the image in the journals—the formulation of an artificial man, by ordinary human spirits. Or rather, the attempt. Formulation and deformulation of living things, carried out by human spirits, requires an admixture of that material—it is, I believe, Dynamic Ectoplasm, drained from deformulated beings . . . or from a seam of the material deposited below. You will recall that ectoplasm is a spiritual material that forms the basis of souls materializing at séances, via mediumship . . . There were many photographs of it . . .”
“Ectoplasm. A seam of ectoplasm . . . below. Under the ground? Like oil?”
“Just so! Like oil! But it is quite difficult to reach! And it is not easily charged with life energy. To provide large-scale formulating power a man must use raw spirit energy—the actual crackling force of life. This he combines with ectoplasm should he wish to create creatures . . . living, moving things. Like the Golem of Hebrew legend.”