Shaken, he watched the news commentator drone on about more local happenings, but he heard little of it. He toyed with the idea of telling Mitzi what had been happening but thought that she would think he was losing his marbles. Mitzi had always depended on him to be strong and pragmatic and rational; he shuddered to think of how she would react to him showing such obvious signs of mental weakness. No, Mitzi should not know anything. Russell was going to have to handle this himself.
But it did bother him that Mitzi was not sharing in his . . . his what? His delusions? His guilt? She was blithely rolling along, having totally forgotten the Spare the Child Program in turn for some new, fleeting, but always enjoyable project. And it was Mitzi who had gotten him into the whole mess in the first place. It wasn’t fair, thought Russell . . .
That night she returned to him and he sat up in bed, transfixed and captivated by her little brown body, wrapped in a shimmering cloak of light. She held something in her hands, which she slowly placed on the covers of his bed, then quickly disappeared.
Russell’s throat was so tight that he could not swallow, could not have uttered a sound if he had wanted to. His hands were trembling badly, keeping pace with the thumping of his heart and his ragged breath. His mind was slipping away from him, and he sat in the darkness, resolved to see a psychiatrist the next day. Take the afternoon off and see one of his golf partners, Dr. Venatoulis.
Then he noticed something on the covers of the bed, something where the image of the girl had placed her hands, and he felt the fear grip him again. Pushing back the sheets, Russell groped about on the softness of the quilt and felt something hard and solid. What the hell . . .?
It was a small, hand-carved box with a fitted top which slid open. Shaking it, something rattled inside, and he feared for a moment that the sound might awaken Mitzi. Quickly, Russell slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom, switching on the fluorescent lights around the mirror, and shutting the door. The box, when he opened it, contained scores of small white sticks, about half the size of kitchen matches, of uneven shapes. They seemed to be polished smooth and resembled ivory . . . or perhaps bone. The thought held him for an instant as Russell stared at the box, realizing fully and for the first time that the presence of the box was physical proof that he was not delusional, that he was not imagining things, and that, somehow, Tnen-Ku had actually been inside his bedroom, ten thousand miles away from her island home.
No! His mind screamed out the rejection of such a thought. And yet he stared at the evidence with eyes that were starting to water and sting from nervous tension.
The little white sticks were scattered across the top of the vanity formica, and as Russell watched them, they began to move. Vibrating ever so slightly at first, tingling as if touched by a slight breeze, the bones—and Russell knew now that they were indeed bones—moved like iron filings over a magnet to form a caricature of a skull.
Screaming involuntarily, he swept the pieces off the counter scattering them across the bathroom tile. It was getting too crazy, too unbelievable!
“Russell, is that you . . .!” Mitzi was knocking loudly at the bathroom door.
“No! . . . I mean, yes, it’s me! Who the hell do you think it would be!”
“Russell, are you all right? What’s the matter with you?” Mitzi tried the knob, but it was locked. “Russell?!”
“Oh Christ, what?! Yes, Mitzi, I’m all right. Go back to bed, will you please? I’ve got an upset stomach that’s all . . .”
“I thought I heard you scream, Russell, are you okay? Why is the door locked? You never lock the bathroom door, Russell.”
“I’ve got some bad gas pains, that’s all. I—I didn’t want to disturb you, honey. I’ll be out in a minute.”
He looked down to the floor and saw that the little bones had been moving while he spoke to his wife, gathering themselves together like a small herd of animals. They were arranging themselves into letters, like tiny runic symbols, which at first were indecipherable. But the more Russell stared at the configurations, he could read the message that was forming:
PUNISH WITH DEATH
He wanted to scream again, and he held the sound in his throat only by the greatest force of will. He could taste bile at the back of his mouth as he bent down and scooped up all the little white pieces, throwing them into the toilet and flushing it repeatedly, until all the bones were sucked into the small porcelain maelstrom.
Luckily, when he returned to bed, Mitzi was already asleep.
He could not bring himself to tell his wife about the delusions he had been suffering, and he was ashamed to call up a psychiatrist, especially someone he played golf with on occasion. Since no real, hard evidence, no proof actually existed, Russell had convinced himself that what had been happening to him was the product of an overworked mind, a heavily wracked, guilty conscience, and too much displaced imagination. And so he tried to ignore the messages which Tnen-Ku sent him: the warning headline on the New York Post which disappeared when he picked up the paper from the subway newsstand; the skull-like configuration of the coffee grounds in his cup at Nedick’s in Grand Central; the pair of dark eyes which seemed to be staring at him through the glass of the speedometer of his Monte Carlo; the familiar, half-whispering voice that he thought he could hear in the telephone in between the beeps of the touch-tone dial; the movie marquee he glanced at from the corner of his eye on 56th Street, which for a moment, until he had looked for a second time, had said: “Tnen-Ku Is Coming!”
Normally Russell Southers would have been greatly disturbed by the portents and omens jumping up unexpectedly from all parts of his everyday life. But he was becoming almost accustomed to the preternatural for one simple reason: he was losing his mind. Simply and totally. He just didn’t care anymore.
Let her come, goddamn it! he thought as he rode the train home that night. Let her come, ’cause I’m sure as shit ready for her . . .
The conductor called out his stop, and he stood up in ritual-commuter fashion, single-filing out of the car and onto the platform with his fellow riders. Descending the staircase to the parking lot below, Russell scanned the amassed cars for his white Monte Carlo where Mitzi would be waiting to pick him up. It was wedged in between a big Ford station wagon and a TR-7, and as Russell approached the familiar vehicle he was shocked to see the dark eyes and long straight hair of Tnen-Ku watching him from behind the wheel. His first impulse was to stop in shock and surprise, but instead he forced himself to walk naturally, even waving and smiling as he approached the car. Better, he thought, not to let the little shit think she had rattled him. He would take the element of surprise and twist it back into her face. Surely the girl would not expect him to act so naturally.
He tried to keep thoughts of Mitzi from his mind, tried not to think about what that young brat might have done with his wife so that she could be replaced behind the wheel. No, it was better to concentrate on what must be done . . .
“Hello, Second-Papa Russell . . .” she said as he opened the passenger’s side door and slid in beside her.
She was smiling and leaning forward as though she would like him to kiss her. The little tramp! Russell looked past her face to her slim neck, then reached out and wrapped his fingers around it. As he began to squeeze and he felt her struggle helplessly under his grip, he smiled slowly, feeling a wellspring of elation bubble through his mind.
“I’ve got you!” he screamed. “I’ve got you now, and you won’t get away this time!”
Tnen-Ku opened her mouth, no longer a tart, sly curve to her young lips, but a silent circle of panic and pain. Russell tightened his grip on her neck and began to yank her back and forth. His hands and forearms were enveloped in a numbness, an absence of sensation, as though he were watching someone else’s hands strangling the darkly tanned woman-child.
As her face seemed to become bloated and puffy, the color of her cheeks turning gray and her bottomless eyes bulging whitely, Russell’s other senses seemed to desert him. The lig
hts from the station parking lot grew dim, and he could barely discern the features of the dying face in front of him. He could hear nothing but the pounding of his own pulse behind his ears and was not aware of the excited shouts of people who were crowding around his Monte Carlo. Nor did he feel the strong, capable hands grabbing him, separating him from his dead wife, pulling him from the car.
Hitting the hard surface of the parking lot, Russell looked up at the ragged oval of faces peering down at him. Someone called for the police as he lay still, feeling the shadows of evening and fear crawl across his eyes. When the sound of the sirens pierced the night, Russell began to scream, spiraling down into the mind-darkness of defeat.
Somewhere in Manhattan, someone opened to a full-page ad in The Times Magazine.
THE NEW RAYS by M. John Harrison
Horror and science fiction are by no means mutually exclusive, and when a story does cross genre lines, the results are often memorably frightening—as witness “The New Rays.” Of course, “The New Rays” is not typical science fiction—but then, M. John Harrison’s fantasy/horror stories can scarcely be termed traditional, either. A question often asked of editors is, “Why did you choose this particular story?” In this case because, after reading “The New Rays” before going to bed, it gave me recurrent nightmares of the most disquieting unpleasantness. Harrison accepted this as a compliment: “I’m glad (if you see what I mean) that ‘The New Rays’ gave you nightmares; it was built out of a couple of mine, and if you can spread it around a little . . .”
When not spreading nightmares about, M. John Harrison amuses himself by running where it’s level and by rock-climbing where it’s not. Born in 1945 near Catesby Hall, Harrison was educated at Rugby and lived for several years in London. Between 1968-75 he served as literary editor of the New Wave science fiction magazine, New Worlds. Harrison sold his first story in 1966 and until recently was primarily considered a science fiction writer, through such well-regarded novels as The Committed Men and The Centauri Device and the collection, The Machine in Shaft Ten. His most recent novel is In Viriconium, the third novel of a sequence that includes The Pastel City and A Storm of Wings. Harrison lives with his wife Di in a cottage in the Holme Valley, on the edge of the Peak District National Park. A new collection of his short fiction would be most welcome.
When I first arrived here it was after a hideous journey. We were ten hours on the train, which stopped and started constantly at provincial stations and empty sidings. It was packed with young conscripted soldiers shouting and singing or else staring desperately out of the windows as if they wished they had the courage to jump. We got one cup of coffee at a halt in the Midlands. In the confusion of getting back into our seats I took out the little gilt traveling clock which W.B. had given me the first time I was ill, and somehow lost it. A young boy pushing his way down the carriage helped us look for it. For a moment he seemed to forget where he was; then he looked round suddenly and lurched off. I was inconsolable. Two nights in succession I had dreamed the name of a street, Agar Grove.
We arrived late in the afternoon, just in time to watch the city dissolve into black rain, water and darkness. During the night I woke up and had to go down the corridor to the lavatory. The hotel was cold and squalid at that hour. There was a gas leak. When I looked out of a window some men were digging up the street. It was still raining.
The next morning I had my preliminary visit to Dr. Alexandre in Camden Town. I was reluctant to leave the hotel, and delayed by pretending I had lost my money along with the clock. “Perhaps the young soldier stole it. Anyway we can’t afford the taxi fare.” Then I went to the wrong address and banged on the door until W.B. lost his temper and we had one of our typical quarrels in the road. I told him that the journey had confused me: but really I was frightened that Dr. Alexandre would prove unsympathetic. In the end he drove off in the taxi, shouting, “I wash my hands of you. It was you who wanted to come here.” I went immediately to the right house and stood on the doorstep, not wanting to go in. After I rang the bell I could hear scampering and laughter inside, followed by a faint drumming sound as if a machine had been switched on and off.
Dr. Alexandre had a beautiful crippled girl who answered the door and acted as interpreter. Through her he told me that he could effect a complete cure. I didn’t believe that for a moment. Everything seemed suddenly useless and shabby—although the clinic itself, with its odd maroon decor and chromium lamps, seemed nice.
To get rid of this depression I had a cup of coffee at the corner, then went to a picture gallery for the rest of the morning. In one or two small rooms at the back they had an exhibition of new artists. I was particularly struck by a picture of a woman of my own age. The background was a buff-colored wall with two trees in front if it; completely flat trees which looked as if they had been pasted on to the wall. Behind this, from a ledge or balcony, two more flat trees emerged. They were all lifeless and stunted. In front of them a youngish woman was sitting listlessly, her sullen unfocused stare the same color as the wall, her throat swollen with goiter. Everything was flat except her throat, which had a massive, sculptural quality.
When I got back to the hotel W.B. had gone, leaving a note which said, “I know you are frightened but you have to have some thought for other people. Write to me when you have settled in.”
I can describe Dr. Alexandre quite easily. I have the feeling that he can help people but also the feeling that he is an unscrupulous imposter. He is the kind of man who wears a dark suit. His eyes are blue and demanding, quite unintelligent in the wrong light. He is frightened that soon he will be repatriated or interned. He has a soothing voice but one which, you sense, could easily say; “I cannot have you here disturbing the other patients if you do not give me your full cooperation. We are in this together. You must cooperate with me fully and then we will make good progress together against your disease.” When the lame girl translates for him she unconsciously mimics his fussy gestures.
The new rays are intermittent and difficult to focus. When they come they are sometimes the stealthy gold or russet color of a large, reassuring animal; sometimes a wash of rose like a water-color sunset. (I warm to these particular rays and, despite the knowledge of the pain to follow, allow them to comfort me. I feel no time pass, I feel no physical sensation at all; I am laved, washed quite clean, and experience nothing.) But most of the time they are a blue-black color which fills the bare treatment shed with shadows and imparts to the teeth and spectacles of Dr. Alexandre and his assistant a kind of jetty gloss. They come with a desultory buzzing which you feel in the bones of your jaw; or a drumming noise which rises and falls, the sound of heels drumming briefly on an iron pipe, sometimes near, sometimes unbearably far away. It is the sound of loss, and the giving up of all dignity. Dr. Alexandre and his assistant put on their goggles and nod at one another.
It appears now that they are not even sure where the new rays are from. The discovery was accidental, and took place many years ago in some laboratory where it was ignored. Since he does not yet fully understand the nature of the rays, it’s entirely possible that Dr. Alexandre will kill me sooner than my disease. Standing there in my dressing gown, feeling sore and violated by the laxatives which are an important part of the treatment, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at this idea; but when I tried to explain, the lame girl thought I was making a complaint and refused to translate. I was embarrassed.
At the hotel I sat in the bathroom trying to write a letter. Two cockroaches crawled from under the carpet and crawled back again. “Dear W.B., When I try to imagine you at home in our lovely house all I can remember is one yellow chair and the smell of Vinolia Soap.”
On treatment mornings I get up early and walk through the rainy streets by the river, or travel aimlessly here and there on the Underground, so I have some part of the day to remember unspoiled. We aren’t supposed to eat and drink for five hours before a treatment, but all my good intentions go by the board in warm damp cafes at Baker
Street or Mornington Crescent. At that time of the morning no one speaks to you. All you have for company is the image of yourself in the steamy mirrors behind the counter, a woman younger than middle-aged, in a good coat, drinking another cup of coffee to stop herself fainting on the train.
Off a corridor at the back of the clinic there are two or three pleasant little waiting rooms. They are very modem and aseptic, with contract furniture, aluminum window frames, and a bed over which is stretched a white plastic sheet: but the walls are a cheerful yellow and you can switch on a little radio. You undress here. After a few minutes Dr. Alexandre’s assistant comes in and gives you a kind of bluish milk to drink, explaining that it will clear out your insides and at the same time coat them with a paste which will attract the rays. He goes out of the room and you begin to feel dizzy and nauseous almost immediately. Soon you have to choose between the sink or the little lavatory with its yellow paper on a roll. You can’t lock the door in case you faint. By the time he comes back with the wheelchair you are too tired to stand. He will put your clothes away and help you comb your hair and then wheel you out to the treatment shed.
The shed has a sour concrete floor sloping to a drain in the middle. It is cold and, unlike the waiting rooms, retains the smell of vomit, rubber, and Jeyes fluid. It occupies a muddy open space thirty yards behind the main building. This is for reasons of safety, claims Dr. Alexandre. I suspect he is afraid of accidentally curing passersby, but you cannot risk a joke like this with the crippled girl. “The doctor is so sorry for the present inconvenience to patients,” she translates earnestly. “He hopes they will not complain.” And she gives me a savage stare. In fact I quite like the shabby bit of garden which is the last thing you see before you go into the shed. A few lupins, gone desperately to seed, add something human to the clutter of duckboards thrown down hastily to prevent the wheelchairs and builders’ barrows from bogging down in the mud. There is often a fire burning here, as if a gardener or workman were about, but you never see him.
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