Flower of Scotland

by William Meikle

  It began slowly. He felt stronger and watched, amazed, as the scratches on his body healed, zipping themselves up and locking the redness back in.

  Somewhere there was a splash as the fish returned to the water but Mike didn’t see it, couldn’t see it, was unable to drag his eyes from the changes taking place in his body.

  He grew taller, then taller still, towering over the figure in front of him. He was getting older - fifteen, sixteen, then the old man pulled the stick from his grasp.

  He looked at his palm, at the black streak left by the wood, then looked down into the black expressionless eyes below. Without thinking, he grabbed for the stick again. ‘Still not old enough’ was the thought that passed through his mind.

  As the stick found his hand, the old man smiled and Mike could see a row of perfect white teeth pushing and jostling their way up through the pink gums. He grew ‘Just like Alice’ he thought - and grew and he tried to release the stick but it seemed stuck to his hand. He pulled at it and felt a lancing flare of pain and looked down to see the flesh of his palm and the wood of the stick had become one, inseparable whole.

  The old man didn’t look so old anymore as Mike tried to push him away, tried to give the stick back, but he was beginning to feel weak. His skin darkened and fine lines were beginning to form and he could feel his body shrinking again. He cried, tears of relief ‘I’m going to be all right - it’s going backwards’. But his skin got darker and his legs got weaker and the man in front of him looked more and more like a boy until greyness began to mist his sight.

  The last two things he heard before he heard no more was a light boyish giggle and a distant voice calling his name. The last thing he saw before darkness took him was a boy, a small blonde healthy boy, stepping out of a pair of overalls which were too big for him.

  He was left, in the silence, in the dark, and all he knew how to do was to point the stick.

  ~-oO0Oo-~

  The Strange Case of Dr McIntyre

  Long years have weathered the walls of the tiny church and a gnarled rowan pokes its branches through what was once the roof. Tall, lichen encrusted gravestones thrust up from a cemetery that has become more of an overgrown meadow and the whole place has an air of dissolution and despair.

  But when I first saw it, almost fifty years ago, the graves were well tended and the roof, although battered, still sat flush in its place. I hope that the pages which follow may shed some light on the reason for such a fall from grace.

  My companion - I shall call him Johnson - was drawn there in search of a doctor. James McIntyre was his goal - a medical man who had spent much of his life in Edinburgh. James had been a renaissance man, not only a healer, but a philosopher, a mathematician and a chemist.

  More importantly for our purposes, he was also Johnson's great grandfather. Thus far in our travels we had visited five graveyards in the area, all to no avail. This was our last chance. We knew that McIntyre had lived in this vicinity at the latter end of his life, but had no idea where he might be buried. If we didn't find him then Johnson's search for his forefather

  I would not relish the end of our journeys. Johnson had proved to be an excellent companion, both witty and erudite with a gentle manner that made our journeys seem short and pleasant.

  Nothing seemed to bother him. He was as excited as a schoolboy as we pushed our way through the old rusted gate, and he was still smiling almost an hour later although our search had so far proved fruitless.

  I saw his pale hands tremble each time he moved the grass aside on another gravestone, and with each new disappointment there was only the merest of furrows on his brow.

  As for myself, I had already given up hope and was turning back towards the gate when a voice hailed us from within the small battered church.

  At first I took him for a youth, but as he moved into the light I could see that it was age that had withered him. The backs of his hands were infested with liver spots and his teeth were so yellow as to be almost brown. He was bent forward and was only able to walk with the aid of a stout cane, but his handshake was firm and his eyes were clear and unclouded.

  He bade us 'Good morning' and enquired if he could help us. When Johnson mentioned our search his eyes suddenly showed fear, but then I could see that he had made a decision as he invited us into the small quiet church.

  Little light penetrated the gloom as we were led through to a tiny room at the back of the church, and silence seemed to be the order of the day as the old minister pulled a heavy sea-chest away from the wall.

  "This was left in trust to my father. I must tell you that it seems to have belonged to the man you are seeking. It was to be left here until a descendant came to claim it. It would seem sir, that you are that man."

  His left hand burrowed deep into his vestments and emerged with a large key which he handed to Johnson before turning away.

  "If you need anything, you need only call," he said.

  He left us alone in the room, and it was all Johnson could do to contain his excitement.

  "It's here. It's really here. And it is just as father described it."

  He had never given me a reason for his almost irrational desire to find his ancestor, but I had a feeling that I was about to find out.

  A deep chill settled on my soul, a blackness that could not be shaken. I longed for sunlight and the sound of the sea, but Johnson, in his desire, was already kneeling on the floor beside the chest.

  It was a simply wrought thing, its boards warped and cracked with age but the key fit securely in the lock which turned easily with only the slightest pressure.

  The chest creaked and groaned as we lifted the lid to reveal a closely packed collection of notebooks - leather bound and yellowed with age. I opened several, and they were all covered in the same, crabbed, handwriting, volume after volume of chemical formulae and mathematical equations. I counted thirty of them before we unearthed the rest of the contents.

  There were two loose manuscripts, the first, in a fine stylish script, seemed to be a letter to Dr McIntyre and the second, in the same hand as the first, either a much longer letter or a tale of some length. I was unable to see the front page as Johnson immediately snatched the bundle of papers away and hid them deep in his coat. He would have done the same with the letter if he had not been stopped by the sight of something glinting at the bottom of the chest.

  By moving the last of the journals aside he uncovered a small glass vessel, the sort a medical man might use to carry potions to the ailing. And inside the vessel, the most vile sickly fluid that glowed a lambent green in the dim light. Johnson's eyes reflected that gleam and, for the first time in our acquaintance, I saw something which I did not like - a cold malice of thought.

  He unscrewed the top of the jar, breaking the seal in the process and, before I could stop him, he tipped the noxious contents down his throat.I dashed the vessel from his lips with a cry but the look he gave me was so full of rage that I stepped back. He reached towards me but his hands began to tremble, a convulsion racking his body. He fell backwards, his head striking the floor with a dull thud, and white flecks of foam flew from his lips.

  I went to the door and called for the old minister. I had barely turned back to the room when I was struck hard from behind and blackness threatened to creep in at the edges of my sight. I only caught a glimpse of Johnson as he pushed me aside, but he was no longer the upright figure that I had come to know. His back was bent, his knuckles reached almost to the ground and, although the light was dim, the thick black hairs on the back of his hands could be clearly seen.

  As he disappeared from view I made to follow but the blow I had taken had enfeebled me and I could only manage several slow steps before the blackness finally took me. As I fell to the hard floor it seemed that I heard a scream, a long howl as of a wild creature in pain.

  I was awakened by the rough hand of a policeman, and it was many long hours before they believed my story. But there was no blood on my hands or my clothes,
and whatever had killed the old minister had inflicted such wounds as to strike his head from his body.

  In the end they were forced to give me my freedom. I believe the letter may have had something to do with it - the letter I still had in my hand when the police found me.

  My Dear Doctor

  Please pardon this intrusion into your privacy.

  Several years ago I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance in Edinburgh, and I was most impressed with your theories concerning the descent of man and the awakening of the primitive aspects of our natures.

  As you may know, I have been having some success as a humble scribe, and I have taken the liberty of incorporating part of your theory into my current work.

  It will only be a penny dreadful, but I am proud of it nonetheless.

  I have enclosed my original draft of the story for your perusal. Of course, if you disagree with the content, or if I have misrepresented you in some way, then the work will go no further.

  I await your reply

  Yours in good faith

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  ~-oO0Oo-~

  Rickman’s Plasma

  He would call it "Soundscapes of the City", and it would make him his fortune, of that Rickman was certain.

  How could it fail?

  All it had taken was a reconfigured dream machine. Courtesy of Dreamsoft Productions, a particularly skilled burglar, and the latest software from MYTH OS, Rickman’s visions of bringing his music to the world were now that much closer to reality.

  For the past forty nights he’d sampled and tweaked, taking the raw sounds that streamed into his loft apartment from the city outside. He merged them with his dream compositions and formed them into a holographic construct of sound and light and ionised gas, an ever-moving plasma bubble that hung like a giant amoeba in the centre of his room.

  As they swam, his creations sang, orchestrated overtures to the dark beauty of the night.

  It had been a long hard journey to this point. During those first few days everything was sharp and jagged, harsh mechanical discordances that, while they had a certain musical quality, were not what he needed… not if he was going to take the world by storm. The plasma had roiled and torn, refusing to take a permanent shape and Rickman despaired of what the city was telling him. Everything was ugly, mean-spirited. The music of the city spoke only of despair and apathy and his dreams didn’t make a dent when he overlaid them.

  Then he had his epiphany.

  Aptly, it came to him in a dream.

  It starts with thin whistling, like a simple peasant’s flute played at a far distance. At first all is black. The flute stops, and the first star flares in the darkness. And with it comes the first chord, a deep A-minor that sets the darkness spinning. The blackness resolves itself into spinning masses of gas that coalesce and thicken great clouds of matter reaching critical mass and exploding into a symphony. Stars wheel overhead in a great dance, the music of the spheres cavorting in his head.

  Rickman jumped from his bed and pointed his antenna upwards to the sky.

  Almost immediately he got results.

  The plasma formed a sphere, a ball of silver held in the holographic array. At first it just hung there in space, giving out a deep bass hum that rattled his teeth and set all the glassware in the apartment ringing.

  Things changed quickly when he overlaid his dreams.

  Shapes formed in the plasma, concretions that slid and slithered, rainbow light shimmering over their surface like oil on water. They sang as they swam, and Rickman soon found that by moving the antennae he was able to get the plasma to merge or to multiply, each collision or split giving off a new chord, the plasma taking on solid form.

  But it still wasn’t right.

  The really good stuff only really started to happen this very night. He played back his previous recordings while keeping the antenna pointed skywards.

  The plasma roiled.

  The sounds became louder, more insistent, especially when he pointed at a certain patch of sky.

  Soon he had a repeating beat going, with a modulated chorus above it that rose in intensity, and rose again as the plasma started to pulse.

  He set his recorders going and started experimenting, feeding the recordings back to the plasma through his one thousand watt speakers, merging the sounds the compositions from his dreams.

  Within the hour the globe of plasma was responding to his dream overlays. When he played the recordings back at full volume the plasma swelled. The music grew, the chords overlaying each other in an orchestrated dance.

  Rickman was so excited that he didn’t notice that the walls of his apartment beat in time to the music.

  Nor did he spot that when he turned his back, the plasma ball grew, stretching like an inflating balloon. Cobalt blue colours flashed and it surged.

  Rickman was its first victim.

  The cops arrived ten minutes later in response to a neighbour’s complaints about the noise.

  When they burst in the door a plasma ball of rainbow colours rose to dance in the air in front of them, a swirling aura of gold and purple and black.

  The sound started.

  It was low at first, almost inaudible, but it rose to a crescendo until their ears were buffeted with raucous, mocking, piping; a cacophony of high fluting that crashed discordantly over them.

  Then the smell hit them, the foetid, unmistakable odour of death that caught at the back of the throat and threatened to send their guts into spasm.

  The cops ran.

  They didn’t look back, and all the time the crazed fluting danced in the air around them. They called for help; but each shout only brought a fresh surge in the plasma. The air above the plasma crackled with electricity, blue static running over the formless mass.

  It dragged itself across the floor leaving a grey glistening streak of slime behind it.

  Within the protoplasm things moved, detached bones flowing, scraps of clothing fused with unidentifiable pieces of flesh. The surface boiled in numerous small lesions that bubbled and split like pieces of over-ripe fruit.

  But worst of all was the source of the fluting. A huge, red, meaty maw pulsed wetly in time with the cacophony.

  The younger of the cops made it to the elevator and slammed the button. He screamed, frustrated, as the doors were slow in starting to move. He let them open just enough to slip inside before he turned to look for his partner.

  She was less than two yards from him, arms outstretched, pleading. He began to move towards her when she stopped and was jerked backwards like a marionette. Her mouth opened wide into a scream and she fell forward, her right hand hitting the down button even as he stretched out vainly.

  The door began to close and, no matter how much he strained at it, he was unable to stop it from shutting completely and he could do nothing but watch the events in the hallway beyond through the small window.

  The plasma had caught her by the ankle. Oily colours flowed across her body, the protoplasm gripping her tight.

  She struggled hard to no avail.

  Their eyes met, just once. Her mouth opened as if she was trying to speak, and that was when the swirling blob engulfed her head and the noises from her throat ceased to sound human.

  The protoplasm surged again, and suddenly the window of the cab was coated with slime.

  The cop gagged and fought hard to keep down the bile as a human foot, still trailing bloody threads behind it, floated across his view.

  She was the second victim.

  The cop spent the next fifteen minutes persuading his superiors that there was a problem in the tower block. In that time the plasma ate the little old lady in number 621 who played her radio too loud, the three kids jamming on electric guitars in 437 and the family in 223 who had been watching the latest Disney animation on their 60 inch TV screen.

  By the time the cop’s backup team arrived it had already filled the whole of the ground floor public area. The cop made sure he was first back t
hrough the door, but what met him made his step back immediately.

  The floor was covered by a shimmering rainbow blob nearly four feet thick. There were things embedded in it - blood and hair and bones and eyes, all jumbled like a manic jigsaw, fused and running in to one another as if assembled by a demented sculptor. And in the middle of the floor something rose up out of the mass, a forearm stripped to the bone, skeletal fingers reaching for the roof. On each fingertip a grey, opaque eyeball stared blindly out at him.

  That wasn’t the worst thing though. The worst thing was the way the bones of the wrist cracked and groaned as the hand turned, the fingers flexing and bending as all five eyes rolled in bony sockets and stared straight at him. The mocking cacophony of high fluting crashed discordantly over him.

  He raised his gun and fired.

  The noise echoed loudly in the hallway.

  The plasma surged again, enfolding the cop until he fell into it, like a drowning man going down for the last time. The plasma rolled forward forcing its way out onto the sidewalk beyond.

  The backup team saw what happened to the cop. They started in with their own weapons.

  The air filled with the noise of gunfire.

  The plasma surged and took them.

  Sirens blared as the squad cars of more backup teams arrived in the street.

  The plasma surged and took them too.

  The Mayor got involved ten minutes later. Assembled in his room were the chief of police, the Mayor’s press officer and the chief of the fire service.

  "So what is it doing now?" the Mayor asked.

  "Still growing," the chief of police answered. "And still feeding." The policeman was white as a sheet, and visibly trembling.

  "How many casualties?" the Mayor whispered.

  "Too many to count," the press officer said. "It has covered three blocks… and we don’t know if anybody is still alive in the area."

  "That’s it," the Mayor said. "Call in the National Guard… and somebody close that window!"

  Outside, the crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.