Hair Side, Flesh Side

by Helen Marshall

  “You are a sweet man,” she says, “but the end has come and gone again, and there is no room for love.”

  You do not know how long you have been flying for. It is one of those slow patches when all the windows are shut, and it seems as if it could be minutes or hours before dawn. But when you lift the edge of the window neither light nor darkness spills onto your knees—instead, it is as if you have not lifted the window at all.

  “Don’t bother looking out there, son,” a voice behind you remarks, a sluggish, molasses-thick voice, but pleasant to listen to, comforting. “Nothing to see anymore.”

  You try to turn in your seat, but there is not quite enough space to do so and the seatbelt light is still illuminated as if you are between bouts of turbulence. Perhaps that is what woke you. You knuckle the arms of your seat but nothing happens, and the plane is still, a solidly moving body.

  “How long have we got left?” you ask companionably. The seats beside you are empty and you find yourself missing the company.

  “Depends on your perspective, I suppose,” he chuckles. “Some people would tell you that our time has already run out. We’ve hit the—what’s it?—tipping point. Disaster’s imminent. Disaster’s already come and gone. How long have any of us got left? Don’t make a lick of difference.”

  You like his bluff cheerfulness, and though you cannot see him, you see an image building itself up in your mind: a wide, red face, one of the few kinds that might wear a moustache and make it look practical. He sounds like he might from the south, some country’s south, where gentility and politeness are bred into the bone. He is the kind of man you wouldn’t share a beer with, not knowing any men like him well enough to do so, but the kind of man, should you see him in a bar, that you might wish you could share a beer with.

  You check your watch, but find it isn’t working. The hands have stopped.

  “Where is the plane going?” you find yourself asking because you discover you do not know and, with his bluff cheerfulness, he must know and he must tell you.

  “Plane’s not going so much as it’s coming, son. It’s coming home. Where else ought a man be flying to?”

  “Please,” you say. “I don’t want to go home.”

  “Everyone wants to go home. That’s what home is. Home is the place you want to be coming to, even when you wish you were leaving it. The world is only so big and a man can only travel so far before he finds himself curving back to where he started from.”

  “No,” you say to him, and you are glad you cannot see him because you are afraid, suddenly, that if you were to turn, you would not see the man you want to see in your mind; you would see something else: a tornado, a bloodslick, a breath of ash, something that was polite only as a mask to violence. “Home is where things stand still. Home is where life is rooted, and restricted, where you cannot move at all.”

  “Oh boy,” he says, “have you got it wrong, son!” He laughs, slaps his knee like the sound of a thunderclap. “Where we are now—with seats pressed close together, and belts locking us in—this is where you can’t move, this is where the moving happens for you.” His voice goes low and soft, like a knife sliding in below the rib. “You can’t stay here. You can’t keep us here. They say I should not touch you, but I will, boy, I will rip you to pieces. There is nothing out there, nothing for a century’s worth of miles, but there is nothing in here.”

  You are not surprised at what he says, not surprised but it scares you nonetheless because you know that he is not lying: you know that you are keeping them here, all of them, but you do not know why and you do not know how. He is so close to your ear: you know the words are only for you to hear, and you can smell the scent of him like cordite, like firecrackers, but still you do not want to move, you do not want to let him free. When the turbulence comes, your knees kick into the side of the plane, and your head knocks back against the seat. He is gone, whoever he was, and you grip the chair until your fingers hurt and the plane stops shuddering, but the light does not click off, and so you do not move. The belt presses against your stomach, jamming against your hip bones. You are happy for the safety it offers.

  It is the boy now. You remember him from the beginning of the flight, when he would not move his legs to let you slip into your seat, when the music from his headphones was so loud that it slid past his ears and into yours. This is the principal rule of air travel: you must never cross the boundaries from Seat A to Seat B, from Seat B to Seat C. These are sacrosanct territories, little floating islands. But the boy next to you does not know this, and does not care. He reminds you of your own son, Thomas—Tommy, he wants you to call him but you don’t like making names easier to swallow so you never do—he’s about the same age, with the same almost-rebellion in his face.

  “You’re still here,” the boy says, flicking a meteor shower of glances up and down your body. “You don’t think, maybe, it’s time now?”

  “Time for what?” you ask, but you know he won’t answer you properly. Thomas never answers properly. He mumbles, he speaks out of the corner of his mouth, and, as a result, everything he says comes at you from an oblique angle, catches you off-guard. But lately, Thomas hasn’t been speaking to you at all. You think, sometimes, that maybe he doesn’t recognize you, you’ve been gone so long, and when you look at him you don’t recognize yourself in his face. It is like he has been cut fully from the cloth of Elspeth.

  “Time to blow this popsicle stand,” he says, “time to shake things up. Time to, you know, get the party started—let ’er roll, let ’er roll.”

  You turn away. He is not Thomas. You don’t have to listen to him.

  “Don’t be like that, pops,” he says. “This is how it always goes: the world comes crashing down and then, zip, it’s all back to the beginning again. Some of ’em, they just dragged on and on until the aches in their joints had aches in their joints, if you catch my drift. But not me, no sir, hot and fast—that’s how I flew, and when I went down—” He makes machine gun noises and jogs his hands as if he is firing at German bombers. “—well, it was just, you know, blammo, down in smoke and flames!” He nudges you in the arm, another invasion of space. “This is how it’s gotta be, it’s why you’re here, pops, it’s why we’re all here. When you’ve got to the end, all you can do flip her ’round and head straight back to the beginning again.”

  More silence from you. He hums a few bars from “Got the World on a String” and you try to imagine this wiry kid listening to Frank Sinatra, but the image doesn’t work.

  “Well,” he says after some time, after the silence has become a living thing between you. “My old man was the same. He thought he wanted to go, thought he wanted to get out of the rat race, his own private prison block, and so he sent me out. Maybe I blew it, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just found the only way to go was up”—he paused—“until, of course, the only way to go was back down again.

  “You treat your son well? You listen to him? You know, back then—back when you were on the ground?”

  You try to think about Thomas, but now that you focus on him, you can’t really remember the sound of his voice. Did you listen? Did he ever speak? It seems like back then, you, Elspeth and Thomas lived in silence.

  “Nah, you don’t know, do you? Of course, you wouldn’t. It’s all slipping away from you now. Memory, place, space, it’s all just a cloud and we are driving on through—driving past, leaving it in the dust.”

  Yes, you think, that is exactly how it feels. You are flying into oblivion. And you don’t want it to stop just yet. You want to leave them behind. You want the last time you saw them, when Elspeth walked you to the door, and Thomas handed you your suitcase, neither speaking, both tight-lipped, same-faced, to feel like an ending.

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” he whispers to you, arms jostling alongside yours. “This is an old story, so old that my father told it to me back when it meant something different. Once upon a time, there was no earth, nothing, zip, zilch, n
ada, and the universe was empty except for, you know, all these birds, thousands of the things just zooming through the ether, through this infinite sky. Anyway, the lark, his old man bites the dust—metaphorically, ’cause there ain’t no dust, that’s the point—but because there isn’t any earth they don’t know what to do with the body. So, finally the lark, he buries his father in the back of his head, that’s the only real estate around.

  “My pops used to tell me that was the beginning of memory, that was how you honoured your elders, back then. You respected them. You kept ’em with you. But you know what I think?” He pauses, took a breath and let it whistle out through his teeth. “I think that was the beginning of forgetting. Because there ain’t no voice you can ignore better than the one in your own damn skull, isn’t that right?

  “The others,” he says, looking away now, that teenage boredom started to creep back into his voice, “they want you to land this thing, to let it all start again—you’ve carried them this far, sitting in the back of your skull, all these stories from the old country, all the dreams and visions and old gods and new gods you’ve picked up along the way—but I say, why let it start again? Who needs all these stories? Fly on, my friend, fly on. Nowhere to go but up, nowhere to go but nowhere at all, never touch the ground, isn’t that right?”

  The plane is not empty, but it feels empty now: darkness shrouds row upon row of seats that could be filled with ghosts for all you know. But this thought does not frighten you—thoughts seldom do, you’ve been a thinker all your life, known for your brains. The thought of ghosts sinks comfortably into your mind, where you let it roll around like a dried seed in a pod, rattling away, but comfortable. You try to think back on Elspeth and the boy, Thomas, but surely they have gone now, surely they are dead and buried somewhere, or else they are alive and the house is filled with the noise of a new man—husband, father—they would not wait so long as you have been flying; you know they would not wait because they told you, then, that there would be no more waiting. Ten years was enough, more than enough time to come home. But you do not want to go home, and you are happier this way, with them happy. Or dead. But silent, at least, in your thoughts.

  You think on beginnings, and endings, and the many stories you have told yourself, stories as a way of remembering, stories as a way of forgetting.

  You think the boy, the one beside you, is probably right. There is a way to end this, and it involves letting yourself touch the ground, letting the universe begin again, and time move forward as it has surely been moving backwards since the flight began. Away from disintegration.

  All around you are the hungry eyes of the maybe-ghosts. The old man and his son, the one who was not afraid enough. The beautiful woman. The dangerous one with violence at his centre. You know what it is they want of you.

  But it is so beautiful, this feeling of flying, of moving and standing still, the need not to decide, the need not to begin again. So you close your eyes and you dream the old gods powerless, fastened into their seats, waiting upon you and your clever brain to let them free. Maybe, you think, maybe soon you will touch down and feel the tarmac grinding underneath the wheels of the plane. Maybe soon you will face the homecoming, and that moment when you search the faces of the crowd gathering at the exit, and know, for sure, what you have lost. If you have lost anything at all. If there was anything to lose.

  You take a breath, let the air fill your lungs until you feel weightless, adrift, flying.

  Maybe soon.

  Not yet.

  [ Ejorum gratia est hoc opusculum ]

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The encouragement, companionship, praise, support, cursing, feeding, browbeating and handholding of many people have made this book possible. First among these must be Sandra Kasturi who has been a constant source of inspiration, dinner and good advice (all of which have directly contributed to the making of this book) and Robert Shearman—you showed me what it can be like to be a writer. I owe you so much for giving me the confidence to write this. And, of course, thanks go to the good folk of ChiZine Publications—Brett Savory, Matt Moore, Erik Mohr, Sam Beiko, Danny Evarts, and Beverly Bambury—for being the best kind of family and makers of fine, fine books. Also, to Chris Roberts who has worked tirelessly to make this a truly gorgeous book. Lastly, Laura Marshall, who always deserves special mention and often gets the final word. If one person has helped me survive the mayhem of my life then it is you.

  Further thanks go to the following people for kindnesses shown and friendships given: Nancy Baker; Bob Boyczuk; Peter Buchanan; Tony Burgess; Mike Carey; Julie Czerneda; Gemma Files; Ben Fortescue; Amanda Foubister; Alexandra Gillespie; Sèphera Girón; Emma Gorst; Simon Horobin; Andrew House; Michael Johnstone; John Langan; Claude Lalumière; Tim Lebbon; Kari Maaren; my parents Rosemary and Roy; my brother Justin, his wife Valerie, and their children Caitlyn and Miles; Clare Marshall; Jennifer McDermott; Yves Menard; Stephen Michell; David Nickle; Kathleen Ogden; Stephen Powell; Chris Pugh; Sophie Roberts; Michael Rowe; Tom St. Amand; Paul Tremblay; Halli Villegas; Daniel Wakelin.

  Finally, I would like to thank the staff and instructors of Clarion West 2012: Mary Rosenblum; Stephen Graham Jones; George R. R. Martin; Connie Willis; Kelly Link; Gavin Grant; Chuck Palahniuk; Les Howle; and Neile Graham. And, of course, my fellow classmates: Brenta Blevins (earthy rum); Bryan Camp (sweet gin); Indrapramit Das (dark vodka); Sarah Dodd (sweet port); M. Huw Evans (scotch); Laura Friis (brandy); James G. Harper (isinglass); Alyc Helms (slivovicz); James Herndon (cognac); Nik Houser (Turkish vodka); Henry Lien (huangjiu); Georgina Kamsika (red wine); Kim Neville (tequila); Cory Skerry (also tequila!); Carlie St. George (bitter whiskey); Greg West (astringent liqueur); Blythe Woolston (strong whiskey). You all taught me so much, with such kindness, grace and good humour.

  I gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for supporting a draft of Hair Side, Flesh Side through the Grants for Creative Writing Program, the Ontario Arts Council for a Writers Works in Progress Grant and the Toronto Arts Council for a Level Two Writers Grant. I would furthermore like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for their support of my academic research into English manuscripts of the fourteenth century through a Canada Graduate Scholarship and a Michael Smith Foreign Supplement for travel to Oxford, the undertaking of which provided much inspiration for this book.

  A version of “A Texture Like Velvet” was published as “Skin” in Future Lovecraft (December 2011, Innsmouth Free Press). This story was inspired by a brilliant talk given by Bruce Holsinger at the New Chaucer Society Congress in Siena in 2010, which was published as “Parchment Ethics: A Statement of More Than Modest Concern,” New Medieval Literatures 12, 2010.

  [ about the ]

  AUTHOR

  Aurora-winning poet Helen Marshall (manuscriptgal.com) is an author, editor, and self-proclaimed bibliophile. As a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s prestigious Centre for Medieval Studies, she has presented widely in England, Canada and the United States on topics ranging from the width of medieval punctuation to fourteenth-century romances.

  In 2011, she published a collection of poetry with Kelp Queen Press called Skeleton Leaves (skeleton-leaves.net) that “[took] the children’s classic, [stripped] away the flesh, and [revealed] the dark heart of Peter Pan beating beneath.” The collection was jury-selected for the Preliminary Ballot of the Bram Stoker Award for excellence in Horror, nominated for a Rhysling Award for Science Fiction Poetry, and won the Aurora Award for best Canadian speculative poem.

  Her poetry and fiction have been published in a range of magazines including The Chiaroscuro, Paper Crow, Abyss & Apex, the long-running Tesseracts series and an anthology of Lovecraftian horror. She is a graduate of Clarion West 2012.

  [ about the ]

  ARTIST

  Chris Roberts is Dead Clown Art. Among other things, he is a freelance artist, using mixed media and found objects to mask his utter lack of creative ability. Guess that al
so makes him a con artist. Chris has made mischief for Another Sky Press, Orange Alert Press, Dog Horn Publishing, Black Coffee Press, Kelp Queen Press, PS Publishing and ChiZine Publications; for authors Will Elliott, Andy Duncan, Tobias Seamon, Seb Doubinsky, Ray Bradbury and the wildly talented Helen Marshall. He also made the list of recommendations (“long list”) for the 2012 British Fantasy Awards.

  Chris would like to thank Helen for (foolishly) trusting him with the gobs of inside artwork he made for her stunning collection which you hold in your hands. This collection is something special because Helen is something special. Thanks also to his pretty and “planetary” wife, Kelly, and their cute and clever daughter, Amelia; for putting up with his moody hijinks, and for giving him the time needed to make all the silly things that he makes that were most certainly not here before.

  You can watch Chris misbehave online at deadclownart.com, or on Twitter @deadclownart.

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