Black Light

by Bedford, K. A.

  I was still consumed with everything that had happened and everything I had learned these past few months. Finding my equilibrium again would take time. I still did not know what to make of Antony, other than that he was a peerless actor, a proper bastard, and I could not decide whether I wanted him back because he was my husband and I loved him, or whether I wanted him back because I hated him and wanted to kill him myself. He had destroyed my father; but my father, for his own reasons, had needed to be destroyed, I could see that now. I thought about all those afternoons I spent with Father’s shooting parties, out in the countryside, hunting pheasants. How many of those other men, friends of Father’s, had been who I had been told they were? What schemes had my father been involved in, beyond the ones I now knew about? Would I ever know? I thought of whatever remained of my father’s spirit, on the wing across the stars, along with Julia. While Julia would love it, I knew Father would absolutely hate it.

  Indeed, I was so caught up in this busy world within my head that at first I did not hear the alarming new sound cutting through the bracing wind off the sea.

  I first realised something was seriously amiss when all the sea birds I had been watching abruptly took to the air, squealing and squawking, and flapped further up the beach.

  I said, “That’s odd,” and looked around.

  I looked behind me, where a storm of beach sand, shell fragments, stray bits of seaweed, all whirled hither and yon in a great howling vortex.

  And I heard an engine, something like a spluttering motorcar engine, coughing a little, choking perhaps on all the sand. “What on Earth?”

  In the centre of the whipping vortex of noise and sand, a machine of some unearthly sort had formed, as if from the sand and grit of the beach, as if it were building itself, grain by grain, as I watched. I got up, and stood well back, holding a hand across my eyes and nose.

  Soon I could smell the engine’s exhaust; it reeked of kerosene.

  And there, in the centre of this insane machine, was none other than Gordon Duncombe, wearing goggles, working a bank of levers and pedals inside what I now could see was a sort of gondola, as if his life depended on it. He took a fraction of a moment to wave at me as he attempted to shut the contraption down.

  “Gordon …!” I was stupefied.

  At length, I heard the engine splutter and die. The sandstorm lost its energy and the sand settled back to the ground. I could once again feel the cold wind from the sea at my back. What remained was listing at a slight angle on the beach, and venting clouds of thick black smoke from what I gathered was some sort of exhaust. The acrid smoke stank. It crossed my mind that something inside the machine might explode. Gordon, I could see, was trying to investigate, lifting some sort of hatch — more dense smoke billowed out and was swept away on the breeze. I yelled to him to get out of there while he could.

  He heard me, nodded, looked regretful, and leapt clear, just as the machine exploded.

  I dumped my blankets, raced over and managed to grab him and pull him down the beach, away from the conflagration.

  As we stood there, he pulled off his gloves and lifted his goggles, revealing a clean area around his eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he said, checking me over.

  “I seem to be quite well,” I said, clutching my hat with one hand, over the roar of the sea and the burning machine. “How are you?”

  He was studying his pocket watch, and muttering to himself. I noticed that his pocket watch was highly unusual: there were two extra hands, and three smaller dials embedded in the larger face, whose readings I couldn’t make out. Gordon, his hands shaking, was peering at it as if it was the most important thing in the world. He said, “That was two years, three months and nineteen days! Which would make today … ”

  He told me what he thought should be today’s date, and he was correct. I told him so. “Thank God, Ruth,” he said. “Then it hasn’t happened yet. We still have time.”

  “Gordon? I beg your pardon? You — ”

  Gordon was leading me up the beach away from the conflagration, talking much too fast to make any sense, rambling, talking in circles, repeating himself. “I had to warn you. I had to make sure you had time to prepare. You … ” He was patting his many pockets, searching for something, very distracted. “There’s a crash, a big crash. I had some newspaper clippings in a notebook, I — ” He was unable to find anything in his pockets beside the usual assortment of useless bits and pieces. “My notebook — ” He turned and stared back at his burning machine. “My notebook … ”

  “Gordon,” I said. “Gordon — it’s all right. Slow down. Take a few deep breaths. Yes, that’s it. Whatever it is, it will be all right. So — ”

  “The Navigator works, Ruth. Time travel. It actually worked! My God — it actually worked!”

  Whilst I was overjoyed to see Gordon after all the months of silence and solitude, it was deeply troubling to see my old friend like this, so agitated, so confused. He was still rambling, still digging in his pockets, still trying to tell me about some crash that was coming, some global catastrophe. He sounded, and looked, quite mad, and that was a dreadful thing to see. Had his journey through time affected him?

  He said, “I had a notebook. All the newspaper clippings I could find, I pasted them in the notebook, I wrote copious notes, don’t you see? I had to show you evidence, Ruth. I knew neither you nor anyone else would believe me without evidence.” Again, he was staring back at the wreck. I started to understand. “You left it in your machine?”

  He started to run back to the wreck, but stopped after a few steps, his hands clutching his knees, gasping in pain, swearing under his breath. I caught up to him, and held him. “It’s all right, Gordon.”

  “No. It’s not all right. You don’t understand. I saw it all. I was there. The whole world ruined. The whole world. But I don’t remember the details, you see. I don’t remember what caused it, how it happened. I had it all documented. But my mind—it feels scrambled, as if part of me is still there, but I can’t reach it. Ruth, we have to prepare! We have to tell people.”

  I was not at all sure what to make of all this, but I felt the most profound sadness. My dear old Gordon Duncombe, reduced to this.

  He said, “Let me just go back to the Navigator.”

  “It’s too dangerous. It could go up again.”

  “The notebook was carefully wrapped. It might be — ”

  “Gordon. Look at me. I will not have it. You are not well, and now that you’re back, I have no desire to lose you once more. Once … Once was enough.” I nearly broke down, saying that. He looked up at me.

  “I really must apologise, Ruth. When I saw you last. I was … ” He shook his head, and stared for a moment at the weed-strewn sand between us.

  I smiled. “I really meant it when I said you should take my arm.”

  He was still shaking his head, still frustrated, and trying to peer at his unusual pocket watch. He said something I could not hear. I noticed a lot of dog dander on his clothes.

  I said, “I beg your pardon?”

  After an anxious moment, Gordon suddenly hugged me. He hugged me like few people ever have, and like he certainly never had. In my ear, he said, his voice was not steady, “I thought I’d lost you … ”

  “Never, Gordon. Never.” My eyes stung, and I wiped them.

  When he let me go, he looked me up and down, and I could see he was embarrassed. He said, “In any case, if any limbs were to be sacrificed, it would have had to be one of mine.”

  “Oh,” I said, but as I thought about it, I could see his point. “And, the thing is, it was my choice to be there, with you that night. I had no-one else to blame. It was unjust of me to … ” His voice faltered, and he looked away, towards the burning machine.

  “Two years, you say?”

  “What? Oh, yes. Quite so. I had to tell you about the crash, Ruth. You — ”

  “Yes, you said.” I was thinking about the last time someone close to me felt they had to
see me as soon as possible with urgent news, and a chill went through me that had nothing to do with the stiff wind from the sea. “You honestly can’t remember what it was, this crash?”

  “It’s as if it were at the very tip of my mind.” He slapped his leg with his leather flying cap, still staring at the wreck. It was only too easy to imagine him going straight home tonight and starting work on a new time machine.

  At length, Gordon stood there staring at me, all his pockets turned out, empty, the most desolate look on his face I had ever seen. “Gordon, whatever it is, whatever this crash is, it will be all right. Do you hear me? It will be fine. We will survive, you and me. Yes? We will stand fast.”

  “Ruth, you don’t understand — it’s … dear God I’ve been such a fool.”

  “Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter. You’re here. You made it back here, and you’ve warned me. We can prepare, as I say. It’s all right, Gordon.”

  “It was important, Ruth. I had to reach you.”

  “Gordon, it will be all right. Come on, let’s go back to the house, have a cuppa — ”

  “How could I have been so stupid!”

  I gathered my blankets and we walked away up the beach towards the Tulip. Gordon stopped me, pale, even shocked. He said, “What do we do about the other me?”

  I turned and looked at him, then the problem became clear. “The other Gordon. Yes, of course. Oh dear. Yes.”

  There were now two Gordon Duncombes here in Pelican River: this one with me, who had come from the future; and the other, who was already here, and no doubt at his property, possibly even now working on his time-machine project. And who still refused to speak to me. It hurt, that silence.

  “Should we go and see him, do you think?” I said.

  Gordon was thinking hard. “I don’t remember you coming to visit with this version of me in tow.”

  “Maybe time isn’t fixed.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea. The two of us meeting, him and me. But then — although, what if …? Damn it all, Ruth. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Leave it to me. I’ll invite him to dinner tonight. You can tell him about your time machine. The pair of you can start thinking about this crash.” I was not at all sure what to make of Gordon’s news. It was inconceivable enough that he had actually travelled in time, let alone returned from a world lying in ruins from some nebulous catastrophe only two years away. A new war, perhaps? So soon? It was possible, I supposed, but again, it all seemed so unlikely, so remote. Was the future set? Were we doomed to that fate? Or could we avert Gordon’s catastrophe? It was the stuff of philosophic nightmares.

  We’d reached the Tulip. I was exhausted from the long slog through the sand. I listened again to the roar and thump of the surf, and the cries of the seabirds. The endless sea, grey and churning, stretched as far as the eye could see, like the future. There was a Great Library in Thanatos, that nurse had told me. If Antony were there in the deadworld — the universe of the dead — he would be listed there. My head was filling with plans.

  We got into the Tulip. I started the engine.

  Then Gordon asked something he had clearly been wanting to ask, but lacked the courage, perhaps. “What was it like, being dead?”

  I smiled, thinking about running for my life from the commandos, about the explosion of raspberry-ness in my mouth, about the weird quality of the light in the city, the unbearable heat of humiliation when I fell over in the middle of Purvis’s department store.

  “It made me feel alive.”

  I looked out the window down onto the beach and the burning machine. “What should we do about the wreckage, do you think?”

  Gordon said, sounding like his old self again, “I’ll speak to the fire brigade in the morning.”

  Acknowledgements

  This book, like all books, has had many friends in the course of its long life. When it came to specific research details, several people and organisations really helped me out, including the St John Ambulance service; the WA Police Historian, Peter Conole, who gave me a great deal of information about police work in 1920s Western Australia; the British Government’s Ministry of Defence, who, when asked by some doofus writer in Australia about how they did certain things during the First World War, were only too happy to help, and sent two potted histories of the organisation, which answered all questions. As always, I am amazed at what people will tell you if you just ask them.

  There is no real-world town of Pelican River in Western Australia, but there is the seaside town of Mandurah, one of my favourite spots in the world, and which served as a very loose model for the fictitious Pelican River. In putting together my portrayal of Pelican River I mined the heck out of a volume of local history, Mandurah: Water Under the Bridge, by Jill Burgess (1988, City of Mandurah), which provided many colourful and intriguing stories about the town’s past (including the bit about cattle wandering loose in town from time to time). Other valuable resources were the Facebook groups Lost Perth and Lost Mandurah, which are filled with vintage photographs from the period in question, and which did a great deal by way of showing the look of the historical Mandurah. Pelican River, as shown in this book, is considerably more developed.

  Speaking of Facebook: I cannot thank enough my friends and supporters, many of them also writers, for their tireless support and encouragement of me and my writing efforts and struggles over many years. You folks are a big part of why I’m still here, and still plugging away. This goes double for my Canadian and American friends (including those on Twitter), whom I hardly ever see in real life, for hanging in there with me, a constant source of enthusiasm and love.

  My thanks also to Fremantle Press, who gave this book a good home, and in particular to Publisher Georgia Richter and Editor Extraordinaire Naama Amram (who did wonders not only in editing the manuscript but also as a volunteer research assistant, helping out with countless details small and large throughout the editing process). My thanks to them also for not freaking out about the idea of elves and all the supernatural woo-woo in the book. This finished volume would not look nearly so good without their peerless contributions. Any mistakes remaining are mine.

  I would also like to thank my literary agent, Ineke Prochazka, for negotiating the deal with Fremantle Press; and Robert J. Sawyer for helping me fully grok the contract details.

  Last, and most importantly, my wife Michelle and my parents Marie and Ken Bedford kept me pushing through. I could not have made it this far without them.

  First published 2015 by

  FREMANTLE PRESS

  25 Quarry Street, Fremantle 6160

  (PO Box 158, North Fremantle 6159)

  Western Australia

  www.fremantlepress.com.au

  Also available as a pbook.

  Copyright © K. A. Bedford, 2015

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Consultant editor Georgia Richter

  Editor Naama Amram

  Cover design Ally Crimp

  Cover photograph ‘1920s Silhouette of woman standing in doorway carrying candle holder’, ClassicStock 846-02797418

  Printed by Everbest Printing Company, China

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Bedford, K. A. (K. Adrian), 1963– author

  Black light / K. A. Bedford

  ISBN 9781925161410 (paperback)

  Paranormal fiction—detective and mystery stories

  A 823.4

  Fremantle Press is supported by the State Government through the Department of Culture and the Arts. Publication of this title was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

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  Bedford, K. A., Black Light