Relics

by Tim Lebbon

  Vince held his breath and tilted his head, attempting to hear more clearly. Metal-clad shoes, perhaps. Or heavy clogs of some kind. But the man who’d taken him had run quickly, and he couldn’t imagine anyone maintaining any sort of speed with heavy, clopping shoes.

  Then he could smell the man, past the stench of rot and ruin that he’d been trying to ignore. It was a damp, animal scent, like a wet dog that had rolled in shit, and though horrible it was also strangely comforting. Something alive, instead of the death that had assailed him since being tied here.

  His blindfold was ripped away, causing a spike of pain. His gag was tugged free. Vince gasped and squinted in shock, but wherever he was, it was dim. As his eyesight slowly returned he saw only shadows and the hint of shapes.

  The man paced behind him, just out of sight.

  “Where are we?” Vince asked. His voice was barely a whisper, mouth dried, tongue swollen. His jaw ached, and he could feel the rough terrain of split lips and dried blood.

  “Oh, if you’re going to be that stupid, I might as well just throw you in with the rest.” The voice was deep and strong, but tinged with the gravelly edge of age. Its owner remained out of sight.

  His vision improved, or maybe the light filtering through the high-level windows was increasing, but it revealed the sad truth of Vince’s surroundings. They were in an old swimming facility. It must have been closed for years. Once-white walls were smeared with moss and slime, lines of steel changing rooms were rusted stiff with doors half open or fallen off.

  Higher up, the sloping ceiling had holes in it, some panels tumbled away, others grown black with decay. Two lines of windows ran lengthways high up, at the ridge. Many were smashed, and most of them sprouted weeds that grew in from the roof level outside. On the end wall was an old analog clock and scoreboard swathed in dust-filled webs hanging like children’s forgotten shrieks. This would have been a fun place once, but now it was lost and fallen to ruin.

  Vince was sitting in the pool itself, in the shallow end. Tiles were cracked and missing and black with moss. Ahead of him, in the deep end, a low level of water remained.

  It was from here that the stink came. The water, black and stagnant, was not level. Things protruded.

  “I can’t swim,” Vince said.

  “Neither can they!” the voice said, abruptly hysterical. It was followed by a laugh, brief but high-pitched. It seemed to screech through the man’s throat.

  What are they? Vince wondered. He strained to see, but it was still too gloomy to make out any details. Maybe some of the shapes he saw there were limbs. The place certainly smelled like death.

  “Did you kill them?” he asked.

  “Ask me if I can dance.”

  Vince went to say something else, but thought better of it.

  “Can you dance?”

  “Maybe.” Feet clopped and clapped, chipping slivers from broken ceramic tiles. “Maybe not.”

  “So can we talk face to face?” Vince asked.

  “Oh, I’d like that very much indeed,” the voice said, low and serious once more. The footsteps slowed and moved, and a shape circled around from Vince’s left.

  The man was close to seven feet tall. Exaggerated, almost simian features, a once-strong body now gone slack and covered with coarse, gray hair.

  And the legs of a goat.

  Vince’s eyes went wide and he looked away, doubting what he was seeing. Even after what he had come to know, the truths that had been laid before him, he doubted.

  “What’s wrong?” the man-thing said. “Embarrassed?”

  Vince glanced at him again. Scrappy fur covered his legs and formed a scruffy collar around his hooves. Between those legs hung a cock the likes of which Vince had only ever seen in porn films. It swung like a metronome as he swayed from foot to foot.

  “Oh, useless thing!” the man-thing cried, that maniacal voice once again. He slapped at his cock and it swayed left, right, left again, before its weight hung it straight down. “Too old, too drunk, too angry, I don’t know. But it’s had its fun. It’s had more than its share of fun.”

  “Who are you?” Vince asked, looking at the man’s face. He might have been called ugly, with pronounced features and a bristly beard, but he could also imagine Angela calling him rugged. A lived-in look, she’d say he had. There’s a man who’s lived a life.

  “I’m Ballus. Last of the satyrs.” Ballus frowned, creasing that rugged face. “Think I’m the last, anyway. If not, soon will be. Very soon.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “I want… information.” Ballus laughed. “You are number six.” He shrieked. High in the shadowy roof space, several birds shrilled and took flight, flapping invisibly in the grimy dawn.

  “I am not a number,” Vince said. He smiled, hoping to ingratiate himself with this man, this thing, but Ballus began pacing back and forth, skipping now and then in a half-dance. He mumbled to himself.

  Vince strained at his bindings. His shoulders burned, and pins and needles bit into his arms and hands. His wrists felt cool and wet, air breathing on fresh blood.

  “You won’t get free,” Ballus said, suddenly standing still and staring at his captive. He shifted from foot to foot—hoof to hoof—grinding broken tiles beneath. His cock swung. His face grew slack, jaw hanging slightly open. The gray bristles on his chin and around his mouth glimmering with moisture.

  “Look, what do you want with me?” Vince said. “I’m helping you. I saved Lilou, and because of that—”

  “Did you fuck her?”

  “What?” Vince felt a rush of guilt, a heat in his face.

  “Don’t misjudge me, human,” Ballus said. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking we’re all alike. Do you assume that a satyr thinks the same as a nymph bitch? You think this satyr—” he tapped his gray, hairy chest “—thinks the same as any other satyr? Don’t paint me with the same brush. I’m unique. I’m Ballus. I’m the last of my kind.”

  He frowned and looked past Vince, eyes growing vague.

  He’s insane, Vince thought. Fucking hell, I’m prisoner of a mad satyr with a twelve-inch schlong.

  “So where are they?” Ballus asked.

  “Who?”

  “Lilou. Mallian. The others.”

  “I don’t know any Mallian.”

  Ballus snorted, bullish and furious, and stamped his hoof. A tile shattered.

  “Maybe.” The satyr frowned. “Okay. So where is Lilou?”

  Vince shook his head. “Don’t know.” He couldn’t tell him. If Ballus didn’t know, there must be a reason for that. And if there was a reason, he had no wish to give away Lilou’s hiding place. She had kept him safe, and he’d betrayed her by escaping and putting himself in danger. He wouldn’t betray her again.

  “Don’t know?” Ballus asked. “Won’t say?”

  “Same thing,” Vince said.

  “Oh, no, not the same at all.” Ballus came for him, and Vince flinched away in the chair, almost flipping it onto its back. If he did that he’d trap his hands and arms, might even break them if he fell hard enough. He held his breath and shifted his weight forward, tipping the chair onto four legs again.

  Close up, Ballus was even more intimidating. He filled Vince’s field of vision, a thing that should not be living and breathing, so close to him that he could taste its breath. It was stale and old, but strangely not as disgusting as he’d have thought. Like spilled ale the morning after.

  “You don’t know anything, really,” Ballus said. He moved even closer, close enough to kiss. Vince felt the heat of him. “Your knowledge hardly breaks the surface. You’re feeling dislocated from reality, probably. Me being here, talking to you, existing, alive, goes against everything you’ve ever known. Everything you’ve ever been taught. But learning never ends.”

  “I know you’re real.”

  “I know you know. I’m in your space. Right now, I’m your whole world.” Ballus’s face dropped a little, and he indicated the bindings. “And
I’m sorry about this, but it’s more than necessary. You’ll never know how important it really is. How urgent that you tell me what I need to know. It’s a matter of life and death.” He eased himself upright and stepped back, hooves clipping lightly on the broken tiles.

  “Where are they?”

  Vince frowned as if trying to think. He looked away from Ballus toward the edge of the empty pool, trying to ground himself in reality again—but this was reality. His hands really were tied and bleeding, his shoulders really were on fire. He had seen this beast murder someone brutally, in front of his own home. His and Angela’s.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ballus moved again, striding across the pool and back, walking widths.

  “Where are they?”

  “How old are you?” Vince asked. He really was interested, but he also hoped that asking questions might distract his captor. He sensed a solid ego in this man-thing, something large that could be teased and stroked. He couldn’t help looking at the satyr’s flaccid, swinging dick. Useless thing, Ballus had said, and what was a satyr without his cock?

  Ballus paused in his pacing and stared again.

  “Where are they?”

  “Look, honestly, I don’t know where they are,” Vince said. “I got away in the night, I was worried about Angela, and it was dark and—”

  “You should be worried,” Ballus said.

  “Why?” A ripple of fear. “What do you mean?”

  “Where are they?”

  “Why should I be worried about Angela? They won’t hurt her, because they think she’ll lead them to me.” It was what he had banked on, and why he had drawn back when he saw her. Perhaps much later, if Mary Rock’s people didn’t catch up with him, then maybe they might see her as a target for revenge, but not yet. For now, he was still their prime focus. It was his blood they craved.

  “Who do you work for?” Vince asked, and Ballus froze for a moment before releasing one of his high-pitched shrieks again. He skipped across the pool, fragmented tiles flipping up behind him and catching the growing light. Vince didn’t think it would ever be fully light in here, because the windows were too overgrown and smeared with filth, and he was glad. He wasn’t sure he wanted to make out this place in any detail.

  Ballus stopped and stared at him again. “Where are they?”

  Vince shook his head and looked down at his knees.

  The satyr mumbled to himself, a sound like rocks rolled in a box. He turned his back on Vince and ran along the pool, down toward the deep end where stinking shadows still held out against the dawn. He splashed into the shallow waters there and, moments later, as if breaking the slick surface released it, a new wave of stink washed over Vince.

  He struggled, took shallow breaths, bit his torn, bloodied lips, and then leaned forward and puked anyway. Not much came up. He was soon retching, and between each straining cry he heard Ballus’s delighted shrieks.

  Something hit the floor a few feet from him, landing with a wet thud.

  Vince heaved again and spat, groaning as his restrained limbs pulsed with pain.

  Another thud, this one closer, and something splashed across his bare feet.

  Puke dribbling from his mouth and nose, he tried to focus on Ballus, twenty yards away in the deep end and leaning this way and that as he plucked objects from the rancid, watery stew. The satyr froze, then dashed to the left, as if he’d seen whatever he had been searching for.

  “Here!” he said, plucking something from the water, turning, and holding it up triumphantly. “This!” He threw, and the object sailed through the air.

  Vince cringed, trying to pull his head down and shoulders up. The thing struck his right cheek and shoulder. It was wet, heavy, slick, sticky, and when it tumbled to his lap and then to the floor, he smelled its unbelievable awfulness.

  When he looked, he saw the wing. It was leathery, folded, its veins raised and solid. A slick film covered it, glimmering in the weak dawn light. Its leading edge was heavier and thicker, maybe as wide as a toddler’s arm. The skin was riddled with holes, but where it remained whole there were dark, regular patterns. Tattoos. And at its end was a clawed hand.

  Vince stared at the hand. It wore several golden rings.

  “Her name was Bindi,” Ballus said.

  “Did you kill her?” Vince asked.

  “Ask me if I can dance.”

  Vince did not look up. He stared at the hand, the accordioned wing, and did not look away even when he heard Ballus splashing in the rank waters, talking to himself and whooping in delight as he found something else.

  Several other parts thumped and splatted down. None of them struck him. Ballus heaved something much heavier and it didn’t even come halfway.

  “I still don’t know where they are,” Vince said. The more Ballus tried to terrify him, the more certain he became that he could never reveal the location of Lilou’s hideaway. He didn’t know who or what Mallian was, but he remembered what Lilou had said that last time they spoke. “Promise that you won’t try to see who you’re talking to.”

  “Where are they?” Ballus was splashing his way from the horror-filled water and walking back toward the shallow end. His furred legs were dripping, and he kicked aside some of the body parts he had hauled out and thrown in Vince’s direction.

  He brought the stink with him.

  Vince heaved again, and when he’d finished bringing up nothing, Ballus was standing before him. In his hand he carried a heavy, splintered bone.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” the satyr said.

  15

  Back in their apartment, with dawn smearing the streets and rush-hour traffic building, Angela listened to her neighbours making love and remembered Vince’s gentle touch, his mischievous smile, his loving, and she could not believe that he was a killer.

  She sat on their bed with her hands clenched between her knees and tried to make real everything she had seen and heard. In this place it all seemed so surreal, yet she had no doubts. She trusted her senses and memory. She believed in what she had witnessed and been told. She had to. There was no other way to move on.

  On the floor in the corner lay Vince’s underwear and tee shirt from the last time he had stripped off in this room, and she could not comprehend picking them up and dumping them in the washing basket. That was too mundane.

  The bookshelves in the alcove needed dusting. So pointless. So banal.

  Above her the couple cried and grunted together, and the frenetic creaking of bed springs ceased. Angela actually heard Vince say, “And the judges go wild!”

  “Oh, Vince, what the hell have you done to me?” she whispered into the otherwise silent flat. Then she stood, marched into the kitchen, and switched on the kettle. She needed coffee. She hadn’t slept and tiredness made things worse, but she didn’t feel at all tired. She felt like someone who had to take control of things, not be controlled.

  As the kettle boiled and the electric coffee grinder grumbled, she stared at the kitchen chalkboard. She and Vince would leave messages on there—funny, rude, loving. There was nothing on there now. Their future was a blank, and it was up to her how it would be written.

  Mary Rock would be having her followed. That was a given. She reached into her pocket and took out the piece of paper that Kris had given her, then entered the number into her phone. She doubted that she’d ever call it. Being followed was a concern, but it was one she would address later. She found the card Claudette had given her, and tapped that number into her phone’s memory, as well.

  The kettle boiled and she let it settle for thirty seconds before pouring the water onto the coffee. The smell rose, familiar and calming, and she remembered the smell of the fairy’s room, the scars across its body that might have been new or a thousand years old.

  Angela knew she couldn’t remain here for too long. Whatever the truth about Vince, finding him was her priority, and perh
aps her first step back toward some kind of normality.

  That was what she wanted. To wake next to Vince, drink tea in their small back garden, see him out to work and ready herself for a day’s study.

  Except his work was nothing to do with normal.

  “Fuck it,” she said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” She swore as she walked through to the front room, moved the blinds aside and looked out onto the street. Stretching, she could just see where she had witnessed the killing. So brutal, so horrible, Angela was certain the killer had not been Vince. The shape she had seen was too tall and broad, and besides, he didn’t have such brutality in him. There was so much he had lied about, so many aspects of his life that she hadn’t known and still barely understood, but that, at least, was something she believed.

  Her lover was not a man of violence.

  She tried to see whatever was left of the victim, but there were parked cars in the way. Maybe pedestrians would think the bloody smear on the road was the result of a cat or dog being run over, or an urban fox. Most people would simply avert their gaze and carry on with their day. The bigger the city, the more spilled blood became someone else’s problem. Never more so than in London.

  It was too late for her to call the police. Even if she did, what could she tell them? The truth would get her kicked out onto the street, or arrested for filing a false report. A selection of the truth would be harder to confer, and in her current state she had no confidence in her ability to spin a tale. Besides, it would gain her nothing. She didn’t know who or what had been killed, by whom or by what.

  The secret world she had entered danced to a different song.

  She went back through to the kitchen, poured her coffee, took the mug into the back garden, sat down, and started drinking. Thinking. Planning.

  Even before she’d finished the drink, she knew what had to happen first. Finding Vince was something she needed to do on her own. Everything and everyone else could fuck off. She had the names Professor Joslin had given her, but it suddenly seemed naive to believe she could track Vince in some covert way. It wasn’t as if he’d vanished to avoid paying a fine.