by Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, S. G. Browne, Michael Marshall Smith
* * * * *
Dean walked into Harper's hospital room and presented him with a bag of barbecue flavored Ruffles potato chips. He sat in the gray chair beside the bed and looked at the floor. Two sleepless nights and days had passed. Moments of recent brutality mingled with incidents of long ago bloodshed to make a disconcerting loop in his mind, playing endlessly, showing him faces – familiar and strange – all in some pose drawn from the spectrum of anguish. The Violence had left him, but the visions it had brought remained, hardly discernible from Dean's own memories.
More disconcerting was the idea that this thing existed at all. It had violated him, used him. It called itself Violence, but what was it? This mystery haunted him. Naturally phases of disbelief punctuated his thoughts about the entity; it couldn't have been real. But Dean wiped away the skepticism whenever it arose; he wanted the thing to exist. He needed to believe in it.
"You're golden," Harper said, obviously trying to ease Dean's mind, though he was miles away from understanding the source of that unease. "As far as I'm concerned it was a clean shooting. I've already made my statement."
"Thanks," Dean replied.
Dean knew Harper was right. He didn't feel guilty for what had happened to those people. Though his finger had squeezed the trigger it was the Violence that had killed the Boltons. Dean had merely been a witness as the creature used his body to fulfill a duty, to complete the shape of things.
"Weird about that Baker guy, though," Harper commented.
"You heard about that?"
"Dumb ass M.E. Sometimes I think he makes all this shit up as he goes."
Initially, Paul Baker's time of death was placed at sometime on the evening before Charles Clarke's murder. Naturally, when forensics confirmed Baker's ID as Clarke's killer, the medical examiner adjusted his original report, adding twenty-four hours to his estimate. But even with this modification Dean's accounting of events was fucked; it seemed he had left his partner alone with the Boltons to go question a dead man.
Still, his superiors weren't making an issue of it. Harper had backed up Dean's statement every step of the way, going so far as to positively ID Baker as the man standing beside the house across the street from the Boltons, when Dean knew damn well his partner hadn't even seen the guy. Grudgingly, the medical examiner was forced to change his report a second time.
"You need to snap out it," Harper said. "In a couple days you'll have your hearing. I was there. Matthew was there. Neither of us are going to change our stories. You'll be back at your desk by Friday."
Matthew, Dean thought. Jesus, that kid was going to be a wreck.
Maybe the Violence had intervened on behalf of the kid's soul, but the boy still had to live with what had happened to him, would always live with the fact his meth-head parents had rented him out to a diseased freak like Clarke for a few blasts of crystal. Matthew's smile returned to Dean, and he tried to push it out of his head. It too had haunted him these last two days.
The kid was now in the custody of social services. Dean didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
"I saw some weird shit that afternoon," Harper said, "but I also saw both Boltons holding that rifle."
But Bolton dropped the gun before he was shot. Panic drove his wife to it. They didn't have to die.
"I will, of course, leave out all mention of hallucinations."
"Hallucinations?" Dean asked.
Harper smiled and shook his head. "Weirdest thing. Probably a result of trauma, but I could swear that someone was standing next to you when you fired on Bolton. I mean I couldn't see the guy's face or anything. It was like this blue-white smear. This shape. I thought I was seeing ghosts."
Dean's pulse quickened as the blood drained from his face. "You said you saw this thing when I shot Bolton?"
"Sure, I guess."
"Not after?"
"I don't know, Dean. Jesus, I wasn't exactly in the most focused of mental states at the time, what with the pain and the bleeding. I'm not even going to mention it at the hearing, so just relax."
"Was it before or after?" Dean insisted.
"What fucking difference does it make?"
All the difference in the world, Dean thought. The only thing that had made the last two days bearable was the idea that he hadn't been responsible for the Boltons' deaths. He hadn't followed procedure in the shooting, not even close. He'd walked into the house and gunned the couple down. Clean. Cold. Unhampered by the viscous fluid of shifting moralities. He'd believed the Violence was responsible, but now he couldn't be sure.
Had he used the entity as an excuse to execute that family because they disgusted him? Was he capable of that?
Harper wanted to know what difference it made. It was the difference between harboring a mystery and being one.
"Please," Dean said. "I have to know. Was it before or after?"
«-ô-»
The Dodd Contrivance
By Lee Thomas
Imagine looking into a raindrop and seeing an entire world at work – the labor and the joy and the pain of its populace; the celebrations and the battles; the shifting currents of climate traversing miniscule continents and infinitesimal oceans – all encased in a liquid pellet with a volume no greater than that of an inconsequential breadcrumb forgotten between stove and larder. With this as your supposition, it is then necessary to discard the premise or become overwhelmed, because surely if such a world can exist in one drop, others must exist as well, and following this hypothesis it stands to reason that the real world, the one occupied by man and beast, king and servant, is likewise sheathed and similarly fragile.
And what should happen when those drops collide? Could gutter streams and filthy puddles be universes unto themselves, where the many worlds come together to struggle anew with fresh species from neighboring worlds, or merely confluences of destroyed planets with uncounted casualties that had briefly thought themselves immortal as they plummeted from cloud to dirt?
Samuel Beaufort smiled at this whimsical notion, sitting in his favorite chair at the window and listening to the rapping rain. It was a familiar fancy, one he revisited often, though only in his thoughts. In the one instance he'd actually voiced the idea to a small group of colleagues at the club, he'd been summarily excoriated with disdainful glares, so he'd learned to consider the theory a personal entertainment rather than a topic of conversation.
Coffee cooled in a china cup resting on the mahogany table beside him, forgotten as he gazed at the precipitation beading on the pane. Rainfall speckled the glass, smearing the light cast by the few lamps still burning in the city beyond. At his feet, the honey-colored hound whimpered and nuzzled his ankle. He looked down into the warm dark eyes and nodded solemnly.
"Of course, it's impossible. It's likely quite insane, but isn't that what makes it such an interesting study?"
The hound responded with a second whimper and a more forceful push at his leg. Then the animal stood, stretched out its front paws and began circling the Persian carpet.
The bitch was still quite young, though her exact age Samuel did not know. One afternoon just over a month ago she had joined him on his stroll through the central park and proved fine company, and since he lived alone – his long-passed wife having died in her twenty-second year – he thought to bring a second heartbeat into the too-quiet home. He'd named the animal Ruby after a particularly scandalous aunt, and though she often still bounded with the unrestrained energy of youth, he found her a pleasant companion in an otherwise empty home.
"You're quite right," Samuel told the dog while pushing himself from the chair. "We should take the next step and examine this phenomenon in greater detail. What kind of scientists would we be if we left all things in the realm of theory and speculation?"
After retrieving Ruby's tether, his own topcoat, hat
and gloves, Samuel withdrew his umbrella from the stand at the front door and allowed Ruby to lead him into the storm. Samuel had always loved the smell of the rain, reveled in the clatter of a particularly forceful storm. When viewed through the pelting drops the buildings around him took on the texture of raw wool – gray, nebulous, and frayed. A climax of thunder cowered the dog, who pulled back on the lead, now uncertain about taking her constitutional in such dreary weather.
"Ruby," he said, "discovery is a terrifying thing, which is why so few have the heart to accomplish it. Now, let's explore."
Though apparently not convinced of her master's supposition, Ruby took a hesitant step toward him. Soon enough, she fell in at his heel, beneath the cover of the umbrella as Samuel guided her to the south.
The gray static of rain against the black backdrop of night soothed him. Streetlamp flames spluttered, flashing yellow auroras in the gloom. Carriages crossed the boulevard ahead, but the streets were otherwise unoccupied, and Samuel's fascination with worlds within the rain transformed into a new fancy. Turning away to allow Ruby some privacy while she relieved herself beside a stoop, Samuel began to consider what being truly alone might be like. What if the entire city, the entire world, were to be emptied of humanity, leaving only himself and his fine companion to wander smooth roads and grassy dales, seeing the important locations of the earth without the hindrance of a populace? Would such desolation prove soothing or maddening?
Ever since Leslie's death some ten years past, Samuel had been alone. Parents long dead and no siblings, his only remaining family consisted of an Uncle who lived in Charleston and another in Albany, along with a number of cousins with whom he'd socialized extensively in his youth but had seen rarely in recent years. His social circle was quite large, but his friendships few. The men at the club were such rigid creatures, never questioning their status or the social structure that allowed them it, but rather blustering on without a hint of inquisitiveness, reaffirming their position and denigrating those who fell beneath it. Samuel knew they considered him an odd-duck, perhaps even crazy for all of his chatter about what might be rather than extolling the virtues and vices of day-to-day existence. The only member of the club who truly intrigued him, though he could not claim friendship with the man, was one Hubert Dodd, a bearish braggart with a penchant for inappropriate often scandalous humor and the ability to weave gilded lies that engaged with their sheer brazenness. Though not close to the man, Samuel admired Dodd's imagination and listened intently whenever the man regaled the salon with one of his outlandish tales.
Often, Samuel had thought to invite Hubert Dodd to his home for a meal. He found the man at turns overbearing and standoffish, yet always fascinating. He'd thought to question the man in some detail about the adventures he'd recounted, perhaps even catch Dodd in a lie, though not to embarrass the man, but rather to show that Samuel thought the stories remarkable, regardless of their veracity. He felt a kinship with Dodd. They both had suffered the hushed derision of their conservative peers, yet both were established enough in the society to remain on the guest lists for all of the right gatherings. But he'd never managed a proper introduction, let alone extended a social invitation.
Ruby's pleading whine and her wet haunches against his trousers alerted Samuel to her desire to leave his fanciful experiment behind and return to the warmth of the fire. He was about to acquiesce when a great bolt of lightning ripped the sky above them and a cannon-shot of thunder peeled.
His terrified hound backed away, ducking low to the ground, and before Samuel could calm her skittish nerves, Ruby had escaped her tether. The honey-colored hound barked furiously at the sky. Whimpered. Then she set off in a blinding tear, leaving Samuel with a damp leather strap and a look of surprise on his face. A gust of wind pulled hard against the bowl of his umbrella, sending him back a step, but this concession to motion proved to be a necessary goading. He ran after his dog, into the storm, through dim, empty streets, lit only by flickering lamps and flashes of lightning.
In the distance he heard the muffled yaps of his companion, and they guided him, but the clatter of the weather muddled his sense of direction. He turned right, certain Ruby's voice had risen from that direction, only to have the familiar bark rise at a great distance to his back. The poor creature was obviously traumatized by the storm, running aimlessly for someplace warm and dry, a place she would perceive as safe. If she were a rational animal she'd return home, flee to the north where an old soup bone and the roar on Samuel's hearth would assure her comfort, but for all of her fine companionship, Ruby was not a great thinker and instead had to rely on inaccurate instinct for guidance.
Samuel followed her on a winding path beneath tall brick homes. Caught sight of her twice, dashing like she had a fox in her nose, ignoring his calls and vanishing around a distant corner.
Finally he came upon his dear hound in an alley between two grand structures – a large, fashionable house and another building which, save for its intricate architectural detail, including a cornice of brass about the eaves, he might have taken to be a carriage house or stable. The corridor between them ended in a high stone wall, and rain coursed over the barrier, giving it the appearance of a great perspiring beast. The door to the house stood open, as did the one to the detached building. A dull glow oozed from the opening on his right, providing a trifling illumination to the scene before him.
Ruby crouched facing the corner between the outbuilding and the wall. Her growls were all but eaten by the torrential clatter, but she seemed to have cornered something, perhaps a cat or one of the raccoons that scavenged the city's waste. He hoped it wasn't a rat. Samuel loathed the creatures and a chill ran over his neck and spine as he considered having to face one.
But as he moved closer to the scene, a flash of lightning bathed the alley and Samuel gasped. The bleaching light revealed Ruby's prey in brief, vivid detail. It was no rat. But exactly what this creature was he could not say.
Though the size of an average cat, and possessing some feline traits about the head, this beast was hairless and the color of muddy water. Its legs jointed awkwardly, reminding him of sketches he'd seen of the crocodiles said to roam the Nile Valley. The unnaturalness of the animal lodged in Samuel's throat and knitted a web of uncertainty in his mind. His curiosity insisted he carefully observe and catalog this beast; understand something of its composition, but a potent dread kept him at a distance.
He called for Ruby, wanting to keep his precious pet from the mouth and claws of this sinister oddity, but she disregarded his appeals, focusing her full attention on the thing she'd cornered. Seeing no option, Samuel stepped forward, affixing a sliding loop in the tether so that it would secure tightly to the dog's neck unlike the manufactured collar attached at its end, which had proven something less than reliable.
Just as he reached Ruby, her head whipped up as if finally hearing her name being called. Samuel lunged forward, repulsed at the idea of getting too close to the unnamable creature, but instead of managing to slip the lead around the dog's head, the loop passed through wet air. Ruby eluded his attempt at capture and raced to the side disappearing through an open door in the building on his left.
Samuel backed away from the corner, uncertain if its occupant might find him less threatening than his hound had been. He shuffled several steps until he stood inside the threshold. Lantern light glowed at the far end of the hallway, and he saw Ruby at its center. He searched for the panel of the door but found nothing save splintered planks, barely clutching twisted hinges. The state of the door disappointed him as he should have liked a means to lock out the creature in the alley, but since this option had been denied him, he decided to collect Ruby quickly and get her home.
Setting off toward the dog, who sat at the edge of the dim light, Samuel fell under the distinct impression that he walked on a balcony, rather than an expanse of floor. To his left the wall seemed to end at h
is waist, forming a banister, and though he had no clear sight of the space beyond – merely shapes of gray atop sheets of black – he felt certain it stretched out and down from him. At his club, they had wired one of the studies with electric light in a rare concession to progress, and though this man-made incandescence was neither as soothing nor as dependable as the gas-lit fixtures, he thought it would be nice to bring illumination to this peculiar and unfamiliar space with the simple turning of a knob, but having no such modern novelty, Samuel bolstered himself and made his way toward the muted light ahead.
Yet he was forced to pause, because another shape had joined that of his hound. This form was decidedly human, though quite small.
"There's the pretty Milly," a girl's excited voice cried. "There's my ever-so good girl."
Samuel detected a lilt of brogue in the words, likely one of the Irish working as a servant for the owner of the adjacent home. But why was she claiming familiarity with Samuel's pet? Was it simply the exuberance many youths showed toward domestic animals, or had Ruby once belonged to this girl and gone stray only to find her way back after a month in Samuel's care?
"Excuse me?" he said forcefully, so as to be heard over the marching rain. "Miss?"
He now stood close enough to see the girl, but was surprised to find it wasn't a girl at all, but rather a fully-grown woman, though quite certainly petite. Her hair was the color of carrot soup and her skin as white as bone.
"The dog's mine," the woman snapped, clutching tightly to Ruby's neck. "You piss off home. He don't need you no more."
The vulgarity startled Samuel, and he puffed up with outrage as he was not accustomed to being addressed so harshly from the likes of a servant, but the woman's claim gave him ammunition. "You have no rights to that dog," he charged. "Clearly, you don't even know its gender. You said 'he' doesn't need me, and it's quite apparent the animal is a female."