The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Dark Terrors 05]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  ‘Steve . . .’

  ‘Just listen, Klein. It was the end of the semester and we hadn’t . . . been together for weeks. I was starting to browse the classifieds for studio apartments. So it’s right around finals time - and you know, I’ve got a couple, three hundred undergrads and it’s just pure chaos, you’ll pardon the expression - when this perky little sophomore comes to see me. She’s a total airhead, but with one of those teenage bodies that won’t quit. And she’s failing the course and the door’s closed and she knows what she’s doing and I’m unhappy and ... I don’t know, Klein, I just figured what the fuck, you know? I just... it was just an idea, Klein.

  ‘I hated myself for it and I still do. I figured for sure it was the end for us and probably my career. Hell, I thought maybe that’s why I did it. And I won’t lie to you, Klein, it got pretty bad. But it also brought stuff into focus. There was a lot of pain, but we found a way through it. Eventually. And my point is this: in the end I...we decided that it was all just a moment. Just an idea, you see? And we rose above it. We made healing tractable. An idea isn’t real unless you make it so. Choose to make it so. Otherwise it’s only an idea, only an abstraction. I mean, isn’t that what we were talking about?’

  There was silence, and then there was laughter. Distant, dim and very scary.

  ‘Just an idea. Just an idea.’ He said it over and over and was still laughing when he hung up the phone.

  I tried to call him back, but the line was engaged. I crawled back into bed and kissed the tears off Elaine’s face. I tried to go back to sleep, but I kept hearing Klein’s laughter in my head.

  * * * *

  I don’t know what time the phone rang.

  Elaine had gone to bed early, but I stayed up to watch The South Bank Show. Melvin Bragg was interviewing Derrida.

  At about half-eleven, Elaine staggered out of the bedroom clutching her belly. Her face was white as milk, and blood oozed down her thighs. She was crying and moaning and collapsed to the floor before I could get to her. I thought about calling an ambulance, but couldn’t bear the wait. I lifted her up and put her in the car, then sped to the local hospital in a panicked daze.

  Elaine lost the baby, but it was worse than that. Her uterus had become malformed in the pregnancy. It was actually touch and go for a while, although the surgeon didn’t tell me that until later. The doctor also said she had never seen or heard of anything quite like it before, and asked if Elaine had ever worked around radioactive or toxic substances. I couldn’t make any sense of it then, but of course anything and everything is explainable now.

  I left the hospital confused and exhausted, but satisfied that Elaine was going to be okay.

  The police were waiting for me when I got home. A detective accompanied by a pair of PCs. I immediately assumed something had happened to Elaine.

  ‘Steven Rich?’ the detective asked.

  I managed a nod.

  He mumbled his name, but I didn’t catch it. ‘Do you know a Dr Paul Klein?’

  Another nod.

  ‘When did you last have contact with him?’

  ‘A week or two ago. Why? What’s going on? Is this about Elaine? Is Elaine all right?’

  The detective glanced at one of the constables who started back toward the car. ‘I don’t know about any Elaine, sir. But Dr Klein killed his wife and took his own life early this morning. Your phone number was found on his person. Did he call you at any time last night or early today?’

  I never thought of myself as a fainter, but things went black around me. I felt like Dorothy caught up in the twister and carried over the rainbow into some alien landscape. Fortunately the cop caught me by the arm and helped me to a sitting position on the front steps.

  I told him in rambling terms about Elaine and what had happened the previous night. That I knew Klein and Margaritte were having troubles, but that his news was an utter shock. He clucked sympathetically and tried to look interested.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We may want to talk to you some more, but that can wait. Why don’t you get some rest now.’

  The cop helped me inside and guided me to the living room sofa where I collapsed. He closed the front door softly as he left and I fell quickly and deeply asleep.

  Neither of us thought to check the blinking light on the answerphone.

  * * * *

  Our answering machine is an old model - it works well enough that I never saw any reason to buy a fancier one - but it only gives you sixty seconds to leave a message.

  ‘I’ve been running the equations for days, Steve, but they won’t converge. The iterations will go on for ever now.

  ‘I was grading exams the other day, you know? The first-year class. A girl wrote out elaborate calculations for a problem that didn’t require it, a problem with a simple answer. In the end she just put a big “X” through it all and gave up. I saw it as sous rature and gave her full credit.

  ‘It’s coming now, Steve. Almost here. I thought I should warn you. We’re at the base of the S-curve, but the explosion will happen soon. The numbers don’t. . . didn’t lie . . .

  ‘I put her under erasure. Margaritte. I thought it was for the best. The only thing I wish . . .’

  Sixty seconds.

  * * * *

  I remember Klein once told me about something called luminiferous aether. It was an early, discarded notion in physics, like spontaneous generation or phlogiston. Aether was supposed to be the medium which filled all unoccupied space and was the mechanism for transmission of magnetic and electrical forces. Klein said that there had been some promising work verifying its existence and the idea was catching on until Einstein disproved it all with relativity. Klein always repeated the same thing when the topic of relativity came up.

  ‘Hell of an idea,’ he would say.

  Elaine came home from the hospital after a week. We talked about the baby and about Klein and Margaritte. She cried a lot and told me she understood if I didn’t want to stay with her now, but I just told her to hush and held her tight. I didn’t let her hear the phone message, nor did I voice my suspicions, but after a while she pieced it together herself.

  The curve is on the rise: Klein’s explosion has started to detonate and the world has begun to change. It’s hard to keep up with because it’s hard to know what’s real, what you can count on to remain solid, consistent from day to day.

  The world doesn’t meet at right angles any more. All the assumptions that we’ve depended on for so long have crawled out of the rotten woodwork of our lives. The old formulae don’t add up and the new ones are still a mystery. I know it’s what Klein suspected, but I’m also sure that it’s less awful than he feared. It is certain that he overreacted; living sous rature is still better than dying under it.

  Like bugs or fish that spend their lives in the darkness, this sudden flash of bold light has sent all of us scurrying in turbulent new directions. It’s scary, but it’s sort of interesting, too. At times it’s even wondrous. God knows, it’s chaotic, but not without its own subtleties of order.

  Mostly, it’s a hell of an idea.

  * * * *

  Jay Russell’s contribution to Dark Terrors 2, ‘Lily’s Whisper’, was one of two stories from that volume selected by Ellen Datlow for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Tenth Annual Collection. His third novel, Burning Bright, a sequel to Celestial Dogs, was recently published in Britain, while American and French editions of Celestial Dogs and his other novel, Blood, are also scheduled over the next year. ‘“Sous Rature” is the piece of fiction that probably comes most directly from my years in academia,’ recalls Russell. ‘Although I was not in either a scientific discipline or a literature department (it probably shows), I did spend more than my fair share of time immersed in the kind of loopy “post-” theory which figures in the story. In fact, I once seriously intended to write a scholarly essay about cyberpunk and call it “The Prosthetic Aesthetic”. Thanks to whatever gods there be, I never got around to it.’

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  * * * *

  Spanky’s Back In Town

  CHRISTOPHER FOWLER

  1. The History of Rasputin’s Casket

  ‘Can’t we go any faster?’ Dmitry turned around in the seat, punching at the driver’s fur-clad back. Behind him one of the wolves had almost caught up with the rear-runners of the sleigh and was snapping at the end of his flapping scarf.

  ‘This is new snow over old,’ the driver shouted. ‘The tracks have hardened and will turn us over.’

  The horses were terrified, their heads twisting, their eyes rolling back in fear of the baying creatures behind the sleigh. Scarcely daring to look, Dmitry counted seven - now eight - of the wolves, swarming so close that he could feel their hot breath on the icy rushing air. He glanced down at the terrified child in his arms and pulled the bearskin more tightly around her deathly pale face.

  ‘We’ll never make it in time,’ cried Yusupov, ‘it will be dark before we reach Pokrovskoye.’

  They could see the black outline of the town on the horizon, but already the sun was dropping below the tops of the trees. The sleigh clattered and crunched its way across deep-frozen cart tracks, swaying perilously, the wolves howling close behind, falling over each other in their efforts to keep up. One of the largest, a fearsome yellow-eyed beast the size of a Great Dane, suddenly threw itself forward and seized Dmitry’s scarf-end in its jaws. The wool pulled tight, choking him as he clawed at his throat. Yusupov yanked it away from his brother’s neck and pulled hard, feeling the weight of the animal on the other end. ‘See, Dmitry,’ he cried, ‘look in the eyes of our pursuer now!’

  He released the scarf sharply and the creature fell back, tumbling over itself. But it had his scent, and would follow the sleigh into the darkness until its jaws were filled. Dmitry cradled the infant in his arms, protecting her from buffets as the sleigh hammered over a ridge of ice. They had taken her hostage to effect their escape from the private apartments of Rasputin himself, but now they no longer had need of her. After all, the casket was now in their possession, and its value was beyond calculation. He knew that Yusupov was thinking the same thing. Behind them, the wolves were becoming braver, jumping at the rear of the sledge, trying to gain a hold with their forepaws. Thick ribbons of spittle fell along the crimson velvet plush of the seat-back as the animals yelped and barked in frustrated relay.

  ‘They will not stop until they feed,’ he shouted. ‘We must use the child. She slows us down.’

  ‘But she is innocent!’

  ‘If we fail in our mission, many thousands of innocents will perish.’

  ‘Then do it and be damned!’

  Dmitry slipped the wild-eyed girl from the bear-fur. In one scooping motion he raised her above his head, then threw her over the end of the sleigh. She had only just begun to scream as the wolves imploded over her, seizing her limbs in their muscular jaws. The two young Bolsheviks watched for a moment as the animals swarmed around their meal, the sleigh briefly forgotten. The child’s cries were quickly lost beneath the angry snarling of the feed. A sudden splash of blood darkened the evening snow. The driver huddled tighter over his reins, determined not to bear witness to such events. The next time he dared to look back, all he could see was a distant dark stain against the endless whiteness, and the sated wolves slinking away with their heads bowed between their shoulders, ashamed of their own appetites.

  Yusupov studied the horizon once more, trying to discern the lights of the approaching town. He was twenty-three, and had already felt the hand of death close over him. He prayed that Casparov would be waiting at the bridge, that he had found a way of evading their pursuer. It was essential for them to find a hiding place for the casket in Pokrovskoye.

  ‘Perhaps we are safe now,’ said Dmitry as the sleigh turned towards the smoking chimneys of the town. ‘May we have the strength to do what must be done.’

  * * * *

  ‘Our story begins in the reign of Tsar Nicholas II, in the year 1908,’ said Dr Harold Masters, studying his uninterested students as they lolled in their seats. ‘Starving Bolsheviks fled across Russia with a precious cargo; a jewelled casket fashioned by Karl Fabergé and stolen from Rasputin himself, its contents unknown - and yet the men in the sleigh were willing to die to preserve it. Their flight from Rasputin’s secret shrine at St Petersburg was doomed, but before they were brutally murdered in mysterious circumstances, we know that the casket was passed on, to make its way in time to New York.

  ‘In the late 1920s a family of wealthy Franco-Russian emigrants who had escaped to America on the eve of the October revolution sailed on the SS Britannique to Liverpool. The ship’s passenger inventory tells us that the jewel-box was in their possession then, listed as inherited family property. But following the tragedy on board their ship . . .’

  * * * *

  The sun had set an hour ago, but the sea was still blacker than the sky. Alexandrovich Novikov stood watching the churning wake of the ship, his gloved left hand clasping the wooden railing. Powerful turbines throbbed far beneath his feet, and he rode the waves, balancing as the liner crested the rolling swell of the sea. Back in the state room his wife, his brother and his children chattered excitedly about their new life in England, trying to imagine what, for them, was quite unimaginable. They would have new names, he had decided, European names that others would be able to pronounce without difficulty. They were being given a second chance, and this time the family would prosper and grow. There remained but one task for him to accomplish; the removal of the final obstacle to their safety. He reached inside his coat and withdrew the Fabergé casket. The value of the jewelled casing meant nothing to him, for its loss was but a small price to pay for the safekeeping of his family.

  He weighed it in his hand, worried that the rising wind might catch and smash it against the side of the ship. He had drawn back his arm, ready to hurl it into the tumbling foam below, when someone snatched at his coattail, spinning him around and causing him to lose balance on the tilting wet deck. Before he could draw breath, the stars filled his vision and he saw the railing pass beneath his legs, then the great black steel side of the ship, as the sound of the monstrous churning propellors pounded up around him.

  Sinking into the ocean, Alexandrovich Novikov was dragged under by the great spinning blades and cleft in two, the pieces of his body lost for ever in the frothing white foam. On the deck he had left, the unthrown casket slid beneath a stairwell with the rolling of the ship and was retrieved by a passing steward, whereupon the alarm was raised and a frantic search begun for its missing owner.

  * * * *

  ‘And so we arrive in London,’ continued Dr Masters. ‘The bereaved Franco-Russian family who moved there from Liverpool in 1928 planned to build property in the city - but their assets were badly damaged in the financial crash of the following year. The headquarters of their empire, a magnificent building on the north bank of the Thames designed by the great Lubetkin, went unfinished. There, the trail of Rasputin’s jewelled box finally goes cold. We have to presume that it was sold off to the owner of a private collection as the family fought debts and a series of appalling personal tragedies . . .’

  * * * *

  The building beside the old Billingsgate Market had never been properly finished, and now its poorly-set foundations had been pulled up to clear the site and make way for a new Japanese banking syndicate. It was during the third month of digging, just prior to the new concrete foundations being poured into their moulds, that the little casket, wrapped in an oilskin cloth and several layers of mildewed woven straw, was unearthed. The find was briefly mentioned on the six o’clock news that night, and excited speculation from experts about what might be discovered inside.

  Before the box could be opened, however, it was sent to the British Museum to be cleaned and X-rayed. From the ornamentation of an exposed corner section of the casing it was already assumed to have been manufactured by a Russian jeweller, possibly the great Fabergé himself, which mad
e it extremely valuable and placed it in the ownership of the royal court of Tsar Nicholas. It was, perhaps, too early to hope that the box might contain documents pertaining to that fascinating, tragic family.

  The casket was entrusted to an unlikely recipient, a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Amy Dale who worked at the museum. In usual circumstances such a high-profile find would have been offered for examination to one of the more experienced senior staff, but Amy was having an affair with a hypertense married man named Miles Bernardier who functioned as the present director of the excavation, and Miles was able to take a procedural shortcut that allowed him to assign the find himself. This was not as dishonest as it sounds, for Amy was fast becoming recognized as a luminary in her field, and as her own department head was overseas for two months advising an excavation in Saudi Arabia, the pleasurable task of uncovering the casket’s secrets fell to her.