Black Light

by Bedford, K. A.

  Julia, squeezed up next to him in the back of the Bentley, looked pleased, and asked him all about his work on the time machine. All the way home, Gordon went on about the complexities of creating a machine that could not only shift about in time, but which offered the potential to, as it were, choose realities, he said. Julia, all agog, made the error of asking, as we turned onto our street, “And what would you do with it first, Mr Duncombe, should you get it to work?”

  Gordon did not yet know. He frowned. “I just thought it would be, you know, handy.” He shrugged, as if “handy” said it all.

  Murray performed well that night, providing us with roast goose and garden vegetables beyond superlatives. We all complimented the chef on her fine work. Murray, of course, protested that the gravy wasn’t right, the meat not quite done all the way through, and many other points, none of which any of us had noticed. One hour in, Julia was still working on seconds. Gordon reported, slapping his belly, that he was “full as a goog!”

  The evening meal over, Sally and Vicky cleared the dishes, and Gordon produced his map of Pelican River, and laid it out over the table. We gathered around.

  “Miss Templesmith,” he ventured, looking at Julia. “Are you still aware of that off-key sensation?”

  “I believe I am,” she said, looking back at him, round-eyed. “I feel all out of sorts, one might say.”

  He ignored the look on her face and glanced back at the map, where he indicated my house, up on Frenchman’s Hill, overlooking the town. “Here’s what I have in mind … ”

  9

  The night rushed and swirled close around us. The Tulip’s canopy kept the worst of the cold wind from infiltrating the car. In the back, Gordon and Julia talked animatedly; she was doing a good job of drawing him out, and keeping him from droning on about machinery. One thing she did ask, however, struck something of a nerve.

  “Mr Duncombe,” she opened.

  Trying, by lamplight, to pore over the spread-out map draped over his lap without getting carsick, Gordon said, “Mmm?”

  “You said last night, when you worked that protection charm for Ruth, that you had made a ‘deal’ with the ‘Powers’ which provide the, so to speak, service, in altering the universe. Is that right?”

  “Of course,” he said, a new tone in his voice. He sounded wary. “Why do you ask, Miss Templesmith?”

  “It’s just … Please, you must excuse me, I shouldn’t be sticking my beak into things like this, but I just have this sense that you and I, Mr Duncombe, that we’re almost kindred spirits. Do you know what I mean?”

  Gordon coughed. “Oh, ah. Right. Yes. Ah. You wanted to ask something?”

  I could hear her smiling. “It’s just, you said that your part of the deal involved you having to give up something.”

  “You want to know what it was I gave up, to complete the terms of the contract?” He sounded rather businesslike, saying this.

  “I hope you don’t mind my curiosity. The sorts of things that I delve into in the course of my practice, sniffing around the other bits of reality and so forth, well I don’t often come across people working actual magic, it’s all rather … what’s the word I’m looking for? Ruth, what’s the word I’m looking for?”

  “You’re fascinated, Julia,” I said, trying not to smile too much.

  “Fascinated, yes! Exactly! Anyway, Mr Duncombe, I — ”

  “A lock of my hair, Miss Templesmith. I had to burn a lock of my hair in a very particular pure flame, while saying certain things I would rather not reveal, if that is quite all right.”

  Julia, surprised at his tone, said, “Oh. All right. Please, I should not have stuck the beak in. I’m a terribly nosy sort; it’s always getting me in trouble. It’s — ”

  Gordon said, gently, “It’s quite all right, Miss Templesmith. I am happy to chat with you about anything you like, and I quite agree that we seem to have interests in common, but there are things about magical practice that are terribly private. It’s rather a difficult business, really. As well, and here you must accept my apology, for all my hobbyist reading and study of certain volumes of lore, I’m still rather a novice, and not very good yet. I can pull apart and rebuild a motorcar engine while blindfolded, but this magic business, it’s almost an art, and requires a similar level of, so to speak, subjective experience.”

  Julia sat and said nothing for a long moment. I sensed she had no notion of what she might say next, but that she very much would like to come up with something to keep the conversation going. She had never met a man like Gordon. And, yes, she was a renowned stickybeak. When things interested her, there was no stopping her craving for more and more knowledge. Unfortunately, the ordinary and rather quiet world in which we lived was altogether too dull and unexciting for her. She could not give a toss about politics, cricket scores, popular music — and she would rather not talk about the weather just for the sake of talking. International news of revolutions, war, horrific famine, floods or other disasters stirred her to some degree, and she made a point of donating substantial sums to charitable causes, and once a week back home volunteered with her parish church on various matters. But, the truth was, the things that truly interested her were the things other people did not talk about.

  Gordon, perhaps sensing things were a little on the quiet and awkward side, asked Julia how she slept last night. “I trust there were no ill effects from the … ”

  “To be quite honest, Mr Duncombe, I hardly slept at all. Ruth and I stayed up almost all night chatting away in the kitchen. I lost count of how much cocoa we put away. I say — ”

  He interrupted her. “You couldn’t sleep? Ruth mentioned that you were suffering strange mental disturbances, things all stirred up? Is that right?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. It was lovely sitting up talking with Ruth, but I’m afraid it has left me feeling rather weary and strange now. That huge dinner, too … my goodness!”

  I heard Gordon moving his map around; he asked Julia if she would take charge of the lamp, to make it easier for him to see the map. He said, “Right now we’re on Old Hitchinbury Road, heading south-south-west. Is that right, Ruth?”

  I called back, “It is, yes.”

  Julia said, “I’m not feeling any of that same off-key sort of sensation I told you about, Ruth.”

  Gordon said, “We may have gone too far in this direction.”

  “Head back towards town?” I asked. The road was empty. The electric headlamps on the Tulip showed that we were moving through farmland, with tall white ghost gums looming over the roads. The Tulip’s tyres were handling the gravel road surface better than the heavy Bentley, too, which was pleasing. Much as I liked having Rutherford drive me about, there was still a certain enjoyment to be had out and about like this. Never mind that almost no other woman I knew, either here or back in England, could drive a car.

  I stopped and turned the car, and soon we were heading back towards Pelican River. Right now we were perhaps fifteen miles outside town, and Julia was claiming no particular sense of disturbance. I knew Gordon would be marking this spot on his map with his always-reliable and badly chewed pencil stub. The problem would arise, however, that there were not many other roads leading out of town. There was this one, heading more or less south to Bunbury, and there was the Pelican River Road, which lay to the north and led through Rockingham and back up to Fremantle and Perth. There were only a few small service roads leading east from Pelican River. Gordon’s map suggested there were some “unofficial trails” threading through the local farming districts. I did not relish taking the Tulip into such conditions. Would we need, at some point, simply to get out and walk all night?

  In the back, Gordon and Julia were chattering away once again — or, rather, Julia was chattering about her “other bits” of reality, and Gordon was listening, making attentive noises periodically. I shook my head, hoping Gordon did not mind too much. I rather suspected he might not mind too much at all, as long as Julia kept to topics that were “s
afe”. I had already warned her not to approach Gordon with her tales of the deadworld, offering to try to find Gordon’s late wife Alice as she had offered to find Antony for me. For her such things were an adventure into realms where few others could ever go, exotic and exciting in rather the same way as climbing great mountains, perhaps. But there were profound feelings associated with this particular notion of hers that, never married, she did not seem to appreciate. Once I asked her, when this subject had come up, if she had ever gone looking for her own parents, who had died in a boating accident when she was a schoolgirl. “No, dear, of course not!” she’d said. “That would be grotesque! Good Lord!”

  So Julia chattered on with her stories of ghosts, seances, ominous tea-leaf readings, abandoned houses, and the few times when local police had come for her help with the deadworld, and she had been able to contribute to the investigations. The police, though, regarded her as something a little less than freakish and a little more than disturbing, and did not call on her unless they were completely baffled, and then only with the greatest reluctance.

  Soon we were in sight of the few lights of Pelican River — and almost immediately Julia stopped in mid-sentence. “Oh!” she gasped. “Oh dear … ”

  Gordon said, “Miss Templesmith?”

  “Julia? Are you …?”

  She said, “Oh, oh dear. Please — stop — the — car, would you?”

  “Ruth?”

  “I heard!” I hit the brakes. Fortunately we had not been travelling too quickly; the speed gauge had been steady on twenty miles per hour. We came to rest on the side of the road. Gordon was already out of his door and had darted around to help Julia out. I’d never seen him move so fast.

  She leaned against Gordon and against the frame of the Tulip. The engine ticked. Heavy south-westerly winds rushed over us, stirring the lofty canopies of the white ghost gums. The sky was not completely suffocated with cloud; a few constellations were visible: the Broken Crown; the Sceptre; and part of the Begging Dog.

  Julia was soon able to speak again. “I say, that rather hit like a train! My goodness me!” She was holding her head, as if afraid it might topple from her shoulders. “I do wish it would stop moving like that … ”

  “Miss Templesmith? Do you see something …?”

  “The world, Mr Duncombe, the whole ruddy world!”

  Gordon produced a small silver hipflask. “I have some twelve-year-old brandy here, if you think that — ”

  Before I could suggest that this might not be a good idea, Julia took it from him and took a long draught, after which she looked at first refreshed, but then much worse than before. “Oh dear … ” She gave Gordon back his flask. He looked at it as if it had betrayed him. He went to have some, but then remembered his manners: “Ruth?”

  I had a feeling I should keep my wits about me, and declined.

  On Gordon’s map, we were six miles from the town boundary. The ground all through here was quite flat; millions of years of weather had hammered this landscape into submission. There were no real mountains in the entire continent, certainly nothing that would match even the more modest alps of Europe. Here, our mountains were mere rounded humps The land fairly stank of profound age. The trees and vegetation looked so unlike anything from England or Europe. Back in England, we did not have trees whose bark was always peeling away like dead skin. We did not have bushes that thrived on almost no water at all, or which sported such riotous colours in the springtime. Plants in England were pretty and bright, but their colours blended tastefully.

  Julia said, “It’s not far from here.”

  And then she passed out.

  Dr Lawrence Munz, who seemed as ancient and worn down as the land, was the only doctor in Pelican River, with rooms on Sullivan Street, not far from the church. The doctor lived in a small adjoining flat, with his monstrously fat Siamese cat, Willoughby. Dr Munz, I had learned, had delivered almost everyone living in the town, and many more who were no longer with us.

  Gordon stayed with Julia in the Tulip while I hammered on his surgery door. The red electric light bulb next to the door cast everything in a strange, unearthly light. It was so cold I could see my breath.

  I heard him muttering as he came to the door. When he pulled the door open, and saw me standing there in my driving gear, at first he looked annoyed. Then he saw Julia.

  “It’s my Aunt Julia,” I said, feeling about twelve years old, “she’s had something of a turn.”

  He nodded in a resigned sort of way. “Bring her in, then, we’ll have a bit of a look at her. And hurry up, you’re letting a cold draught in.” He was clad in a tartan dressing gown and faded brown slippers.

  Gordon and I brought Julia inside. She was starting to come round. The house, small but extremely tidy, smelled “good” in a way that is hard to characterise. Once through the door, I felt much better about everything. The drive back to town, racing as fast as I dared push the Tulip on the gravel, was fraught with panic. Gordon, in the back, did what he could to keep Julia warm, breathing, and upright enough so she wouldn’t swallow her tongue.

  We helped Julia up on the narrow, hard bed in the surgery office. She was prattling on and on in a flat, almost incoherent tone, apologising for taking up the doctor’s time at this late hour, and how she wouldn’t have bothered him but for the fact that she was feeling “ever so peculiar”.

  Dr Munz told her to open her mouth and say “Ah”. He stuck a tongue depressor down her throat, which had the virtue of shutting her up for the moment. He made “hmm” noises, and put a cold thermometer under her tongue. “And keep your trap shut!” he said, perhaps unnecessarily gruff, even considering the hour.

  “So what happened?” he said, looking at me from behind his desk.

  I glanced at Gordon, who looked anxious. How to explain what we were doing? At last, a thought. “We were out trying to find a good spot to watch a meteor shower.”

  The doctor looked at Gordon, who was well-known for his odd interests. “Your doing I suppose, Mr Duncombe?”

  “Ah, yes, Doctor. All my fault. Terrible night.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought there’d be much to see tonight. The next big meteor shower isn’t due for another three weeks or so, isn’t it?” He gave Gordon a hard look, who brazened it out, and said nothing. Julia, still woozy, and holding her head, made faint moaning noises.

  “Anyway,” I said, to fill the silence, “we were out driving around the countryside, and we were coming back home, when this happened. She said she felt rather ill, and then passed out.”

  The doctor was inspecting Julia’s eyes with a small electric light. “Has this happened before? Anything like this?”

  I explained that Julia had had that incident during the flight out here, and that she had spent a few days in hospital up in Perth.

  He said, looking at Julia with some interest now. “The doctors there said epilepsy, did they?”

  “They were not entirely sure, but that was their opinion. The symptoms passed, however, and she’s been fine since arriving here.”

  “Until tonight,” Munz said. He retrieved his thermometer and inspected it. “Hmm … ” he said, and set about taking Julia’s pulse and checked her respiration. “Hmm … ”

  “Am I going to be all right, Doctor?”

  “Is your head still giving you curry, Miss Templesmith?” He nodded at her, seeing she was still holding the back of her head.

  “It’s just rather on the sore side, if you know what I mean. And my eyesight, that’s a bit … ” She moved her head slightly from side to side. “A bit strange.”

  “How does this attack feel compared to the one you had on the flight?”

  “Not as bad — but then, with that one, I was unconscious a lot longer. And I’d been enjoying a nip or two of cognac during the flight, because of my nerves, you understand.”

  “So you’d say this attack tonight feels different to the one you had on the aircraft.”

  “Somewhat, yes, Doctor. Is it
serious?”

  He looked worn out. “No, Miss Templesmith. Your temperature is up slightly, but that could be nothing, and your pulse is also slightly elevated, but that too could be due to a number of innocuous things … ” He was tapping his old fountain pen against his chin, and looked very thoughtful.

  “Doctor?” Julia asked, as if wondering why she hadn’t been sorted out yet.

  “I’d like to get another opinion, Miss Templesmith, and we might see about admitting you to the hospital up in Rockingham for a day or so, so we can run some tests.”

  Julia looked shocked. She glanced at me.

  “Are you sure that’s prudent, Doctor?” I asked.

  He was already bustling us out into the waiting room so he could have some privacy while he used the telephone to arrange everything. To me, though, he said, “Just wait out here, thank you, Mrs Black. I’ll be with you in a few moments.”

  So we sat and waited, Julia between Gordon and me. She was whispering quite loudly, “This isn’t good, Ruth. I just know it. This is all happening at the wrong time, and I won’t be here to look after you!”

  I tried to put her mind at ease. “It’s just for a day or two, Julia. It won’t be too bad. We’ll come up and see you, and keep you informed. It’ll be fine!”

  She looked at me with a disturbing fierceness. “Ruth, I felt it tonight.”

  “Felt what,” I asked, feeling foolish as soon as the question left my mouth.

  Julia went on, “Going out earlier, along that road, I felt nothing. Nothing at all. No disquieting feelings of any kind — which itself was rather strange, you must admit. Anyway, coming back, it hit me like a Number Nine bus. Do you see?”

  Gordon nodded, as did I.

  Julia said, “Something happened tonight. Something arrived.”

  10

  By the time I dropped Gordon at his house and brought the Tulip home, it was a little after three in the morning. The night howled through the treetops; from far out to sea, I heard the crack of thunder. Leaves whirled in hectic circles around my feet as I crunched up to the front door.