by Jeff Noon
The parasite had vanished.
Of Fog and Sorrow
Nyquist led Eleanor out of the hotel room, into the corridor. She was weak still and had to be supported most of the way to the elevator. He pressed the button and the door opened. They stepped inside. The girl slumped down against the wall, sliding to the floor. Nyquist wanted to say something, but any words he could think of seemed inadequate.
The car started to descend.
“Come on.” Nyquist reached down to grab the girl’s arm. She came up slowly, without resistance. He held her tightly and said, “Can you remember what happened back there?”
The girl looked at him without replying.
Nyquist started, “I didn’t mean to–”
The girl spat in his face.
He kept silent after that.
The elevator reached the ground floor. They walked out, making their way past the main desk. The receptionist had returned to her post and she called out to him, “Mr Nyquist? Are you leaving us so soon?” He ignored her, moved on to the front door and out, and down the steps. The clock-faced couple stared at them from their terrace, their dials both set in the lopsided frown of twenty-five past seven.
There was no sign of Aisha Kinkaid or her guardians, but he imagined they wouldn’t be far behind, now he had taken Eleanor from them.
The mist folded over on itself, becoming more opaque. The hotel’s revolving sign was barely visible, a diffuse silver neon glow behind a curtain of thick grey and black air. Nyquist hurried over to the shadow men’s car, looking inside; there was no key in the ignition.
“This way.”
He led Eleanor across the hotel’s car park. The road ought to be here somewhere, but all he could see was overgrown vegetation and dirt.
“Where are we going?” the girl asked, her voice drawling.
“Home. Nocturna. Dayzone. Wherever.”
“I’m not feeling too good.”
“I know that. I’ll get you to safety.”
“No. I can’t… I don’t think I can… I can’t seem to move…”
Nyquist felt the girl slipping away from his hold.
“Hang on.”
She made no response, only to pull further away. But Nyquist was ready for her. He grabbed on tight to her wrist. She struggled for a moment and then fell into a faint. Eliza had taken something from her sister already, that was obvious, added to his own desperate treatment of her; Eleanor was badly damaged, in shock, exhausted.
He pulled her along anyway, he had to. But where to go? There was no direction here, and he knew he was far away from the borderlines of either Day or Night.
The fog moved around them, closing in, but he dragged her along, stumbling, keeping his feet somehow.
Voices called from all around, the painful cries of the lost, and dark shapes followed after him with every step. But there was a faint light ahead. He made for it, having no other option, taking Eleanor with him. The soft glow was emitted by yet another of the artificial moons of duskland; this time a large theatrical spotlight that shone down on an open-air auditorium: three rows of banked seats around the circle of a sunken pit, with a vast stage of white sand at its centre to form an amphitheatre. A series of wooden upright poles, perhaps a dozen of them, were set in the earth at regular intervals, forming an inner circle. Lights and flecks of colour glinted on each pole, reflected off the many shards of mirrored glass fixed to the wood. Pools of mist were captured here like tiny clouds in a hollow. The whole circle seemed to hum with some magical, electrical power. This was a charged space.
Nyquist and Eleanor stopped at the theatre’s edge.
The seats were empty. But there was movement below, a figure walking slowly across the flat stage, from one area of sand to another. It was Eliza Kinkaid, a frail luminous figure in a simple white gown.
She was unaware of her tiny audience. And then Nyquist realised that they weren’t the only onlookers: Aisha Kinkaid was sitting on the far side of the circle, her ancient form almost lost in the shadows.
Eliza’s movement faltered on the sand. She was weak, Nyquist saw that now. Weak and ill and growing weaker even as he watched. She was in desperate need of sustenance.
Eleanor shivered at his side, as though in sympathy.
Nyquist watched, fascinated, as one area of the stage came to life, displaying a tableau of some kind. Figures moved within it, but not of flesh and blood; they seemed more like ghosts, or living shadows. Whatever they were, Eliza was energised by their presence. Quickly she made her way over to view them more clearly. Her body suddenly bent double and jerked violently, and then came back upright, renewed, standing tall. For a moment at least. But soon she weakened once more, almost immediately.
Another tableau came to life, and she headed over to it, desperately, driven by some kind of hunger, her feet dragging in the white sand.
Nyquist watched it all from the edge of the sunken area. He was focused too closely on the spectacle, not seeing until it was too late that Eleanor had started to move, to walk down the steps towards the stage. He was too late to stop her.
“Eleanor…” The theatre’s atmosphere hushed his voice to a whisper.
In a daze she walked onto the flat white earth, joining her sister. There was still some bond between them, forged by Aisha’s magic.
Nyquist followed warily.
As soon as he touched the white sand with his feet he knew he had entered a new time zone, unlike any he had experienced in his life, even stranger than the full dark of midnight; there, time had slowed to a dead stop; whereas here he stepped out of normal time entirely, into a new realm where the past and the present coexisted, caught in the same circle of illuminated earth. And he felt himself visited by all the other versions of himself, from boyhood, to maturity: they lived inside him in a chattering of voices and thoughts.
The moon dazzled his eyes.
Vaguely, through the noise of his own senses, he was aware of the three women in their different positions, only as blurs in the light, darker shapes in the mist-filled space: Aisha Kinkaid was still on the far bank of seats; Eleanor was standing close by Eliza, as yet another tableau came to life. They were both enthralled by what they saw there, in the shimmer. Nyquist was close enough himself now to see that these dreamlike visions were projected onto the stage, possibly from the mirrored uprights.
He watched the dream unfurl, his eyes wide.
It was a murder scene.
A young man staggered back as a knife entered his flesh. Around him stood a roomful of people, all of them shocked at the sight they were witnessing, unable to move to help their friend. A woman cried out in fear.
Dominic Kinkaid was the murderer, the wielder of the knife.
The whole episode lasted a few seconds only, and then repeated itself on some kind of endless loop.
Nyquist recognised the scene: he had read about it in the Beacon Fire, one of the recent Quicksilver killings. A man killed at his own birthday party, right in front of his guests, his friends and relatives, and yet not one person there present could recall a single detail of the fatal act. Nyquist was watching that murder take place, here in this pit of sand, amid fog and electric moonlight: the same murder, the lost moments of time, happening over and over and over again. And Eliza Kinkaid drank deeply of the sight, the spell, of whatever frightful energies the murder gave off.
The tableau darkened. And another took its place.
Eliza rushed over to it, her mouth spewing out animalistic grunts and mewlings. She was nothing more or less than a ravenous creature in search of food.
Nyquist and Eleanor followed her. Now they saw a small portion of a crowded market place. Fahrenheit Square. A young shopper, a woman, a kaleidoscope falling from her hand as Dominic Kinkaid stabbed her repeatedly. Her husband at her side, unable to do a single thing to help his wife, unable to save her.
Nyquist knew the victim’s name was Jenny James. Again, he had read the news reports: her friends called her Jay Jay. By all a
ccounts she was well-liked, with a bright future ahead of her. But now she fell to the ground, clutching the wound in her stomach. A little boy looked on, a little boy holding a lantern in the shape of a star. He watched as the victim died, just a few feet away from his wide-eyed gaze.
This episode took longer to play out, a minute and a half of captured agony.
Eliza screamed in delight. Her body convulsed.
Nyquist tried to clear his head, but the stage held him within its field of visions as other tableaux came to life, nine or ten of them, more even, each one the record of a terrible crime. And at last he understood – all of Quicksilver’s stolen minutes of time ended up here, stored in this theatre, to be viewed over and over as needed. This is why the moments could not be remembered; they had been transported to this place. Dusk acted as the memory bank of pain and death, all gathered together for a teenage girl’s pleasure. And by these deaths, to bring her life.
Nyquist stopped moving. He trembled and looked on in wonder as the room on the edge of twilight materialised only a few yards in front of him. He stepped closer, utterly spellbound. He was back there again, in the house on Angelcroft Lane, the upstairs bedroom. Fog streaming in through the window, Eleanor standing there, her father Dominic Kinkaid on the bed, the knife in his hand, this same knife he used in all his killings. Nyquist himself by the open doorway of the room, a moth batting against his face, yet watching, watching, as he now watched on the theatre stage, watching as a figure emerged from out of the mist, to grab the knife from Kinkaid’s hand, to turn the knife on Kinkaid, slicing it fiercely across his neck, and then plunging it deep in the flesh.
The room howled. A mouth opening…
Blood. Blood, fog and screams.
Kinkaid’s body in the death throes, his eyes lit with shock.
Eleanor crying out in despair. Nyquist frozen by the doorway, a helpless spectator of these few stolen minutes of time.
Nyquist moving to help the victim.
Eleanor picking up the knife from the bed. Staring at the blade, the colours it held as they mingled, silver and red: the wonder of it in her gaze, the strangeness.
The murderer slipping away, back into the fog, vanishing.
The same person was at Nyquist’s back now, speaking softly: “Of course, he had to be the next victim. Dominic knew that.”
Nyquist turned to see Aisha Kinkaid standing a short distance away.
He said, “You killed him?”
She answered plainly, “I did. My son had to die for two reasons.”
Nyquist didn’t let her relish the tale. He took it upon himself, saying, “He turned against the idea, is that it? He didn’t want Eleanor to die, he didn’t want her to visit the dusk, just to save Eliza, or the fog, whatever it might be.”
She merely stared back at him in response, and he knew he’d got it right.
The other reason was more obvious, and in its way, even crueler. “And who better to give life to a child than the father? He must have had so much life force to pass on, so much more than the random strangers you and he killed under the Quicksilver guise.”
Now she spoke. “Yes. Precisely. But Eleanor is the real prize, the only true sacrificial lamb. Once she dies, Eliza will live into her old age.” A knife appeared in Aisha’s hand. “Her death will be staged here over and over, a fitting act of kindness from one sister to another.”
By now the entire area was filled with thirty or so different murder scenes, going back through the decades, some with Aisha as the perpetrator; others, the more recent, with Dominic Kinkaid as the killer. And yet within this parade of evil, Eleanor was enthralled only by the spectacle of her father’s death, captured and displayed repeatedly in the swirls of light and fog and sorrow. Her face was bereft of feelings, her eyes glazed. Eliza stood close by, the twins bound together in spirit.
Aisha smiled seeing this and she called out to the whole of Dusk, a wordless banshee-like cry that caused the swirls of fog to flit back and forth like startled creatures of the air.
Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
The cry was answered.
Nyquist turned in a circle. Figures were appearing around the edge of the theatre, many of them, all standing close together and looking down towards the stage. Some of them were guardians, wearing their masks of smoke; others were the black-eyed workers, trapped in their own spell; others were the guests he had seen at the Silver Star hotel.
The strange audience closed around the pit, trapping the figures within their gaze.
Aisha walked slowly towards Eleanor and Eliza, the knife ready.
“Let us begin.”
Nyquist moved quickly, or as quickly as he could, fighting against the zone’s closed circle of time. He grabbed Eleanor’s arms, tried to pull her away. She wouldn’t move, her eyes still transfixed by the sight of the tableau. He moved his hand back and forth in front of her face, saying her name. “Eleanor.” She stirred and turned to look at him as Nyquist spoke urgently: “Aisha killed your father. Not me, not you. Not himself. Your grandmother did it!”
She nodded wearily. “Yes… I see that… I understand…”
Now she moved with him, towards the banks of seats. They climbed together to the edge of the pit but the guardians with their batons were there, the workers with their ravaged faces, the hotel guests with their clocks and seed pods.
Nyquist was knocked back. Eleanor stumbled with him.
He moved around the middle row of the seated area, seeking a way through.
There was none.
The circle closed even tighter as more workers and guardians arrived.
There was no way out.
Aisha called to them with her banshee wail.
The guardians led the way, descending to the highest levels of seats.
Eleanor clung to Nyquist. They fell back to the stage area, where Aisha waited with the knife held outstretched before her.
And then he saw it, a small piece of cloth clutched in a worker’s hand. That was all, a small patch of blue and white linen scarcely visible in a clenched fist. Nyquist pictured the human eye design embroidered on the cloth.
“This way! Follow me.”
He led Eleanor back up the steps. And the circle parted there, as the field worker he had helped broke ranks.
Nyquist moved towards the gap.
And then stumbled.
Fell back.
Something… what was wrong?
Something had happened. He was suddenly dizzy.
But there was no pain, no yet.
Only blood. The sight of it, red and startling. Blood on his hand where he pressed it against his side. His mind reeled. The circle whirled around him, a blur of shapes, a clash of voices, all the ghosts, all the victims crying out at once in their final moments of agony, forever repeated. The flash of the blade in the old woman’s hand, caught under the spotlight.
Now the pain. Piercing through him.
Eleanor was at his side, in charge now, taking his hand and pulling up him back up towards the break in the circle. They pushed through, forcing a gap, as the wordless dusk-ridden screech of Aisha sounded behind them, a wailing wound of a voice.
“Run, Nyquist!”
He ran. Following Eleanor’s call, her orders, her shape darting ahead.
A thick cloud of fog closed around them.
And they ran on, further, becoming lost, knowing one direction only; away from the terrible screams of Aisha.
Blood on his skin, his clothes.
He didn’t want to look at it, nor to think about it, only to keep moving.
All was fog and moonless skies and black earth and desolation.
The breath dry in his lungs, his throat, hard drawn.
The slow hissing sound of twilight.
His father’s acoustic recordings of the dusk’s edge: the same mysterious sound heard so often as the wax discs spun round. The young boy listening back to the discs later, on his own, hoping to hear the lost sound of his mother’s voice
in the…
No. Enough of that. Keep going!
No roads underfoot, no signs to follow. No maps, no knowledge.
They might well be going round in circles, but he had no time to think of such things.
There was only the need to keep moving, to escape.
They ran, the girl ahead, the wounded man behind.
Ghostly figures hovered in the mist.
Whispers of despair all around.
A guardian lurched at them, his face of swirling shadows split by a shriek of anger. He rammed into Nyquist and they both fell to the cold damp ground, where they rolled over, a tumble of fists and snarls, over as suddenly as it had begun when Eleanor howled and grunted and brought a large rock down hard on the back of the shadow man’s head.
Nyquist staggered to his feet.
She dropped the bloodied rock. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
They could see only a few feet all around.
Neither of them moved.
Now the dusk seemed entirely made of silence.
The fog touched at their faces, stung their eyes, got inside their mouths, their nostrils, travelling down into their bodies.
Nyquist felt weak, suddenly. Life was ebbing away. He wanted nothing more than to fall to the ground. He put his hand to his side and touched at the knife wound.
He grimaced with pain.
Eleanor looked at the wound for him. “Aisha did this. I saw her.”
“Yes.”
“We need to get help. Get you to hospital.”
He laughed at this, he couldn’t help it. “I think we’re lost, Eleanor.”
She looked at him and said gently, “Take my hand.”
He did so.
She walked on slowly, at ease. Nyquist was entirely under her guide. They moved through the fog. Apparitions hovered beyond the corner of his vision, vanishing whenever he turned his head. He had to concentrate, keep looking ahead, moving ahead…
A terrible sound pierced the silvery grey air around them.
It was the sound of Aisha’s voice, a shriek.