by Mark Morris
“Did you forget something?” asked Alice.
Caul rocked on his heels for a moment and stared down at the floor. “No. I…”
“Well, I’m outta here. Didn’t you hear the announcement?” said Alice, brushing past him to grab her coat from its hook behind the desk. “If you’re here to yell at me some more, you can save yourself the trouble.”
“No, nothing like that,” said Caul. “I just wondered if you were perhaps thinking along the same lines as myself.” He rocked again, hands shoved nervously in his pants pockets.
Oh god I hope not, thought Alice. “What do you mean, exactly?”
Caul stared right at her. She noticed how pale he looked, how bruised the flesh was around his eyes. “How many of those hidden recordings are there, do you suppose?” he said.
Alice didn’t reply but set her coat down on the desk. That was exactly what she’d been wondering, though she hadn’t realized it until that moment. “As you said earlier, that’s a matter for Professor Hastings or Greta,” she said.
“Is it? Then why haven’t you told them yet?”
“I’ve been busy. Why haven’t you?”
Caul removed his right hand from his pocket. He was holding a gray-handled utility knife. “Suppose more of the cylinders were to be found mysteriously cracked in their cabinets. We would have no choice but to investigate, yes?”
Alice thought about that for a moment. Finally, surprising herself yet again, she nodded and unlocked the desk’s top drawer. “I suppose we’d better make sure none of the others are cracked,” she said, grabbing the key cards.
* * *
By the time the wavering light in the storage room kicked fully on, Alice was already entering the combination on the wax cylinder cage. She pulled the complaining door open and they stood for a moment in the entrance, shadowed cabinets looming before them.
“Which one?” asked Caul.
Alice pulled the string light and pointed to the back of the locker. “Number seven.” The pair approached the cabinet. Breaking the shared silence, Alice opened the cabinet door and took a step back so that Caul could peruse its contents. “Which one should we start with?” he asked.
Alice glanced at the map on the inside of the door, trying to deduce a likely suspect. “That one,” she said, pointing to a cylinder on the middle shelf: County Platte Dispute Notes, November 21, 1899.
It was hard for Alice to reconcile the nit-picking Mr. Caul with the person who stood before her now. This new version reached into the cabinet, grabbed the cardboard tube in question and removed the cylinder within, all without hesitation. Before either of them could change their minds, he sliced right into the dull brown material with his utility knife. Alice held her breath as he pulled off a large chunk and let it drop to the floor.
“Merde,” he said and coughed. Poking out through the hole in the brown layer like a rat was another gray recording, looking as freshly cut as the first. Caul locked eyes with Alice. She nodded. He handed her a twin utility knife.
They limited themselves to the second shelf of cabinet seven, deciding they might still be able to plead insanity if they were caught. By the time they removed the outer layers of brown wax, all eleven remaining cylinders were revealed to contain secret gray recordings beneath.
Caul was wheezing heavily by the time they finished, and bent over to catch his breath for a moment.
“Are you okay?” said Alice. “Do you have an inhaler or something?”
“Not asthma,” said Caul. “If I were… allergic to dust… this building would have killed me long ago.”
“Well, let’s get you out of this room, anyway. Maybe you’re having a mould reaction.”
Alice placed the flayed recordings into an empty cardboard box. As they turned to leave the locker, there was a flash from above as both lights died, dropping the room into instant full dark. “Dammit!” said Alice. “I don’t even have a flashlight in here.”
Caul responded by switching on a pocket flashlight and smiling. “Let there be—”
A horrible wet thudding interrupted him, coming from behind cabinet seven as if something big were trying to move it out of the way. Both Alice and Caul cried out and rushed out of the locker and through the door. The circular hallway beyond was just as dark as the storage room. Caul’s little halo of light barely penetrated the gloom, but they didn’t hesitate.
“What was that?” wheezed Caul, as they ran for the front door of the Salter Collection.
“No idea,” said Alice.
When they reached the door, Alice took the light from Caul and handed him the box of cylinders. She tried to calm herself long enough to swipe the key card and enter the code. Though her right hand was thoroughly shaking, it had performed this particular act so many times that it went into autopilot. There was no response, even though the keypad was unaffected by the blackout. Usually, if she made a mistake on the code, the little red light to the side of the pad would blink. This time, however, nothing.
“What’s… the matter?” said Caul.
“Not sure.” Alice attempted the swipe and code a second time. Still nothing. In the middle of her third attempt, the keypad went dark. This can’t be happening, thought Alice. Security was on its own protected circuit. Even if the whole building were to lose power, the backup generators should instantaneously bring the alarms back online.
“Let me try,” said Caul.
Alice fought down a spike of annoyance and handed over the card, shining the flashlight on the keypad. “What’s your code?” asked Caul.
“Um…”
“Quickly!” he shouted.
“1234.”
Caul frowned, looking extra caustic in the heavy shadows of the flashlight. “Are you insane?!”
“Either try the goddamn card or get out of my way so I can, you pedantic little prick!”
Without a word, Caul turned to make another attempt. Nothing happened. He handed her the card, eyes wet. “It’s no use,” he said.
“Look,” said Alice. “I’m really sorry.”
Caul wiped at his eyes with one sleeve. “I realize I am a… thoroughly unlikeable person… but that’s no excuse to—”
Another wet thud. Alice pointed the flashlight into the darkness from where they came, revealing nothing but bookcases and the scuffed marble floor receding into blackness.
“Come on.” Alice grabbed Caul’s sleeve and dragged him away.
* * *
Almost as soon as they had locked themselves in the listening room, the lights came back on. The pair stood, trembling, waiting for whatever it was out there to break down the door. Nothing happened for several minutes. Alice realized she was still clutching the box of wax cylinders to her chest, so she set it down on the table next to the Archéophone.
Caul, still wheezing, stared at the machine for a moment. He removed one of the cylinders from the box and raised an eyebrow at Alice. “I believe… we’re supposed to… play them,” he said.
Alice had a sudden and vivid recollection of the dream that had awakened her the night before. In it, she had been searching through the Salter Collection for something she couldn’t remember, but desperately needed. The hallway had turned to mud beneath her. She’d slipped and fallen into the cold ooze, but before she could pull herself back to her feet there was a tumultuous roar as rushing water filled the hallway. She was swept away by the freezing rapids.
Eventually, Alice had clawed out of the river and up a bank into some trees. She pushed through the dense thicket, branches scratching at her face, until breaking out on the other side into an empty clearing in the middle of an endless moonlit wood. Dogs howled in the dark.
A voice from out of the night had whispered to her and slipped something into her pocket.
Alice took the cylinder from Mr. Caul. It pulsed in her hand like an egg sac and in that moment she remembered what Salter had said to her. “It is returned.”
She smiled and placed the cylinder onto the spindle.
&n
bsp; * * *
Sköll and Hati came at the end of the ninth cylinder. By that point, Mr. Caul had accepted his part in the ritual and did not even scream when they tore him apart. Blood sprayed everywhere, much more than one would expect from such a small man. Alice had to wipe the tenth cylinder on her blouse before playing it, and even then it skipped and had to be played twice.
* * *
The fire started on its own as soon as the twelfth and final cylinder began playing.
* * *
Alice followed the hounds’ tracks through the snow. The mansion was lit up like Christmas. She could see its glow long before she climbed the final hill and looked down upon the massive wooden structure.
A backlit figure stood in the open front doorway.
Alice began laughing. She laughed harder than she had in years, possibly since she was a child in that tiny gray house, before disappointment had curdled her. It hit her how hilarious it was that all the emptiness and longing and lying to herself and worrying—it was all just a shadow cast across fertile ground, a cloud passing before the sun. She could feel her true roots stirring, readying themselves to burst up through the frozen earth of her being.
Alice shucked off her old life like wiping a spiderweb from her sleeve. Her heart was buoyant as she stepped down the snow-covered slope, toward the figure in the doorway.
* * *
She heard the elevator doors slide open just beyond the edge of the woods. Rafael’s gasp was comically loud even from this far back, hidden by the trees. She knew Hastings was with him, though only because she sensed the older man’s horror. Perhaps he had expected the new era, when it came, to be something a little less…
Wild.
She smiled to herself.
“Alice?” Rafael shouted. “Are you in there?”
“No,” she said quietly. She followed the vibrations of their fear to the edge of the wood, where the pair stood on the polished floor with their mouths hanging open, unable to take in what was unfolding before them, what was stretching up to scrabble against the high-domed ceiling.
Sköll and Hati slunk out of the trees to join their master, stopping to sit on either side of her, coiled but obedient.
Hastings edged backward, away from the hounds, away from the trees, toward the still open elevator doors. Rafael took a step toward her and reached out his hand. “Come on, missy, let’s get you out of here,” he said.
She smiled, opened her mouth, and spoke the primordial forest back into existence.
SPEAKING STILL
by Ramsey Campbell
As soon as I opened the door of the Hole Full of Toad I saw Daniel. I’d meant to be first at the pub and have a drink waiting for him, but he was seated near the bar with his back to me and talking on his phone. I was crossing the discoloured carpet between the stout old tables, scarred by cigarettes and at least a decade old, when he noticed me. “Goodbye for now, my love,” he murmured and stood up, pocketing his phone. “You look ready for a drink.”
It was our regular greeting, but I could tell he hoped I hadn’t overheard his other words. Embarrassment made me facetious. “What’s tonight’s tipple?”
“Mummy’s Medicine,” he said and pointed at his tankard. “Not as urinary as it might appear.”
“It’s what the doctor ordered, is it?”
“It’s what this one prescribes.”
Though we’d performed this routine in the past, it felt too deliberate now. “I’ll be the second opinion,” I said to bring it to an end.
When he brought me a yeasty pint I found it palatable enough. We always tried the guest ale and then usually reverted to our favourite. Daniel took a manful gulp and wiped foam from his stubbly upper lip. He’d grown less plump over the last few months, but his skin was lagging behind, so that his roundish face reminded me of a balloon left over from a party, wrinkled but maintaining an unalterable wide-eyed smile that might have contained a mute plea. He kept up the smile as he said,“Ask me the question, Bill.”
“How have you been?”
“I’d prefer to forget most of that if you don’t mind. I’ve seen colleagues lose patients, but that’s nothing like the same.” Daniel opened his eyes wider still, which looked like a bid to take more of a hold on the moment if not to drive back any moisture. “The job’s helping now,” he said, “but that wasn’t the question I thought you’d have.”
“I’d better let you tell me what it ought to be.”
“Weren’t you wondering who I was talking to when you came in?”
“Honestly, Daniel, that’s none of my business. If you’ve found someone—”
“You think I’d be involved with someone else so soon. Or do you think I already was?”
“I’m sorry for presuming. I must have misheard.”
“I don’t think so. Perhaps you missed the obvious.” As if taking pity on me Daniel said,“I was talking to Dorothy, Bill.”
I thought this was quite a distance from the obvious, but stopped my mouth with a drink. “No need to be confused,” Daniel said. “She’s still there. Would you like to hear?”
“Please,” I said, though it didn’t feel much like an invitation.
He took out his phone and opened an album to show me a photograph. “That’s the last I have of her. She wanted me to take it, so I did.”
It had the skewed look of a hasty shot. His wife was sitting up in a hospital bed. She’d lost far more weight than Daniel and was virtually bald, but was matching if not besting the smile I imagined he’d given her. “I wasn’t talking to her there tonight, though,” Daniel said. “Bend your ear to this.”
He brought up a list of calls received, and I leaned towards the phone as he retrieved one. “Don’t bother visiting me this afternoon,” Dorothy said. “They’ll be having a look. I expect I’ll be out of it this evening, so I may not be worth your journey then either.”
I found I’d grown shy of meeting Daniel’s eyes, especially when he said,“That’s the last I ever heard from her. I went in, and I didn’t leave her after that till the end.”
“You did say.”
“That isn’t all I’ve kept. I’m only glad I haven’t erased anything since last year.”
The calls skimmed up the screen until he touched a listing with a moist forefinger. This time his wife was telling him which supermarket aisle she was in and which items he should find elsewhere in the store. “She sounds more like she used to, doesn’t she?” Daniel said.
Her voice was far stronger and brisker than it had been in the call from the hospital. As I tried not to feel too saddened by his need to preserve every trace of her Daniel said, “But that isn’t really her either.”
It seemed unsafe to say more than “How is that, Daniel?”
“She built herself up around the self she never quite got rid of. Sometimes I think the children we all used to be are lying in wait inside us, maybe hoping we won’t rouse them.” As he returned the phone to his pocket he said,“Thank God she’s free of her mother at last.”
“I thought her mother died years ago.”
“Not in Dorothy’s mind,” Daniel said and shut his eyes so hard that he might have been trying to crush a memory. “Tell me an exciting tale of accountancy, Bill.”
This was another of our old jokes that I hadn’t heard for weeks. I did my best to generate suspense from a call I’d made on a client’s behalf to the tax collector, and then I was glad to hear news from the medical world. When the pub shut we went in opposite directions, having established that we’d meet next week. I glanced back to see that Daniel had stopped beneath a streetlamp and taken out his phone, but I couldn’t tell whether he was speaking.
My wife Jane was in bed and on the way to sleep. “How was your friend?” she said most of.
“Missing Dorothy.”
“Well, I should expect so. I hope you’ll miss me too.”
I rather wished her sleepiness hadn’t let that slip out, though of course she only meant if she was first to go
when the inevitable came, surely quite a few years hence. I’d managed to put all this out of my head by the time I joined her, and Daniel’s situation had gone too. I can’t say I thought about him much in the ensuing week, but when Monday came around I looked forward to catching up with him. Given his concern for all his patients, I was hoping a week’s work might have helped him.
The pub was in sight when I saw him outside. Since he was talking on his phone, I wasn’t sure whether to hang back, especially since I couldn’t see his face. I compromised by making for the entrance, which he wasn’t far from, and heard him say “You’ll be all right, Dorothy. You’ve still got the right kind of strength.”
As I tried to steal into the pub the door creaked. Daniel turned, belatedly hitching up his smile, and shoved the phone into his pocket. “Yes, I’m ready for a drink.”
He dodged into the pub at once, so that I wondered if he meant to restrict the conversation we might have had. When I brought two pints of Hound’s Howl to the table, however, he was ready to talk. “Some of the doctors who are coming up,” he said, “you’d wonder if they need a doctor. There’s a call to reclassify schizophrenia as a spectrum instead of a disease.”
“That isn’t your area, though.”
“I know more than I’d like to about it.” He downed a cloudy mouthful as though to douse his fierceness. “I’m just glad they weren’t taking that approach,” he said, “when they diagnosed Dorothy’s mother.”
“I didn’t know she had that problem, Daniel.”
“Dorothy never wanted it discussed, even with friends. Her mother brought her up never to talk about her. Even I didn’t realise what was wrong till her mother couldn’t hide it any more.”