The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  When evening comes, everything is ready. De Rais stands back and exchanges triumphant glances with the head chef, whose face is blue with cold. De Rais dispatches perfumed bowls of dusk to the dining hall, and joins the apprentices for a surreptitious glimpse of the guests as they arrive. His hands are trembling again. He watches as something glides through the great double doors at the end of the vast hall. It stands seven feet high and its armoured head drifts from side to side. Its mandibles exude a faint and musty fragrance. Huge smooth claws rustle beneath its midnight robes. It moves with ponderous, swinging slowness down the hall, and in its wake the air seems suddenly thin and darker, as though it breathes in health and light, and gives out nothing. Another follows through the double doors: female, this time. De Rais catches sight of the long out-thrust jaw and the slotted vertebrae of her throat beneath her hood. She places a delicately jointed foot on the thick carpet and teeters forward. De Rais melts back into the shadows. Three hours to go, before the clock strikes midnight.

  Downstairs again, and silent in his corner of the kitchen, de Rais watches as the dishes of the main course are carried upstairs. The head chef has excelled himself. The foods he has prepared are rarefied to their finest extreme: all blood and essence. De Rais does not like to think where such food has come from, but he doubts that it has been produced by the meatracks at the edges of the city. Wild things, he thinks, reared in the deep growth of the forests which surround Paris, hunted down. The clock ticks on. The seemingly endless parade of dishes is borne from view. At last it is time for dessert.

  De Rais hovers anxiously as the sorbets, each one with its cool, deceptive pool of night around the incarnadined ice, are taken upstairs by the serving staff. Then, still in his dark jacket, he waits for a frozen moment until he is certain that the attention of the head chef is elsewhere, and slips after the serving staff. Apart from a pair of servitors at the far end of the hallway, their glacial gaze fixed on the great bronze doors, the hallway is empty.

  De Rais hastens to the dining hall, his footsteps muffled by the carpet. He puts his eye to the crack of the dining room door. He knows the risk, he thinks, but he still has to see. Inside, it is almost dark. A faint phosphorescence illuminates the high, echoing vaults of the hall. Beneath, the shadowy presences of the Lords of Night dine on the last of the meat essences. There is a susurrus of anticipation as the desserts are passed around the hall by the silent serving staff, who then troop from the hall. De Rais, his hearing fine-tuned by anticipation, hears the tiny crack as the first silver spoon touches the first sorbet, and the minute crunch of mandibles upon ice. De Rais takes a single breath. Followed by the rest of its companions, the Lord swallows a single spoonful of captured evening. And explodes.

  Latent light, ingested by perfect darkness, electrifies every filament of the Lord’s body before it flares up into a great column of brilliance. De Rais, thrown back against the wall, can see nothing but the shattered form of the Lord branded upon his retinas, but he can taste the light which streams out from the dining hall: the hard, clear sunlight of mountain peaks; the roseate depths of sundown over ocean; the golden, glittering brightness of the sun at midsummer noon. It has worked. The Lords are gone in a moment of fire, consumed in the forbidden, latent light so carefully concealed in darkness and ice by the skilful hands of Severin de Rais. And in the eye of his mind de Rais sees that light pouring up from the heart of the banqueting hall, gilding every wall in Paris and running liquid into the river, distributing itself in immaculate proportion until the shell of shadow that covers the world is broken and the hidden sun revealed. Darkness and light, night and day, in balance once again, for everyone.

  Except de Rais. For he knows, as soon as that first blaze of magnificence has passed, that the light has been too much for his shadow-born eyes. Once the flashing echoes have faded from the ruin of his sight, there is only night once more: familiar, relentless, and cold. But as de Rais turns to grope his way along the hallway, he is smiling, for in his imagination and his heart and his soul there is nothing but the sun.

  CHARLIE THE PURPLE GIRAFFE

  WAS ACTING STRANGELY

  David D Levine

  Like the previous author, David Levine has been selling short fiction since 2001. Several of his stories have been nominated for awards and he won the Hugo Award for best short story with “Tk’tk’tk”, published in 2005. He lives in Portland, Oregon and, with his wife, produces the fanzine Bento.

  Also like the previous story, this tale first appeared in Realms of Fantasy, one of the best magazines for a wide range of original fantasy fiction. The story questions the very nature of reality.

  His website is www.spiritone.com/~dlevine/sf/index.html

  Jerry the orange squirrel was walking down the sidewalk one day when he saw some word balloons floating above the hedge beside him. It was the voice of his friend Charlie the purple giraffe. “A man has to have a proper garden, doesn’t he?” Charlie was saying. “And what makes a proper garden? Proper plants! And what do you need for proper plants?“

  After each question, Charlie seemed to be waiting for an answer. But no response was visible.

  “You need proper dirt!” Charlie continued. “And what do you have to have for proper dirt?”

  Intrigued, Jerry scampered to the top of the hedge and stared down. What he saw made little lines of surprise come out of his head.

  “You have to have proper worms!” Bent double, Charlie was busily tying a Windsor knot around the neck of a common garden worm. Beside him, a large tin can – its ragged-edged lid tilted at a rakish angle – squirmed with hundreds of worms in tiny top hats, spats, and bustles.

  It wasn’t the worms that surprised Jerry, though – Charlie did that sort of thing all the time. It was the fact that Charlie was speaking into thin air.

  “Who ya talkin’ to, Charlie?” said Jerry.

  Charlie was so startled that his eyes momentarily jumped out of his head. But he quickly regained his composure. “The worms?”

  “Worms don’t have ears.”

  “Uh… I was talkin’ to you, Jerry.”

  “You didn’t even know I was here.”

  “Sure I did! I was just pretendin’ I didn’t.”

  “Uh huh.” Jerry’s words dripped frost. One linen-clad worm raised a parasol against the drips.

  “As a matter of fact, I was just about to invite you in for tea. Care to join me?”

  “Yeah. We can have a nice chat.”

  They walked from the yard into Charlie’s cozy one-room bungalow. It was pink today, with cheerful curves to its walls and roof, and was surrounded by smiling purple flowers. The entire interior was wallpapered in blue and yellow stripes, which clashed with the green and black stripes of Charlie’s suit.

  Charlie poured tea for the two of them, holding the tiny teapot delicately between white-gloved finger and thumb. A musical note came from the pot as he set it down. He seated himself and raised his cup, pinky raised – though he did not drink, for his arms were too short to reach his head. “What brings you out on this fine morning?” he asked. His words were sprinkled with rainbows and candy canes.

  Jerry sipped his tea for a moment. “Charlie…you have to admit you’ve been acting a little strange lately.”

  “Strange?” Charlie’s eyes darted to one side, then returned to Jerry.

  Jerry set down his cup. “You’ve been talking to yourself.”

  “Me? Talk to myself?” He slapped his knee and laughed, not very convincingly. “Why should I talk to myself, when you’re so much more interesting than I am?”

  “I’ve seen you do it. Like just now.”

  “I told you, I was talking to you.”

  “What about last week, when you were working on your car? I saw you from three blocks away. Every once in a while you’d wave your wrench and pontificate. It was like you were trying to convince someone of something, but there was nobody there.”

  “I was…rehearsing. I’m giving a speech to the Rotary
Club next week.”

  Jerry hopped up on the table. “Charlie, there is no Rotary Club in this town.”

  “It’s in…another town.”

  “What other town?”

  Charlie passed his cup from hand to hand. He stared fixedly at a point on the wall. It was as though he were staring out a window, but there wasn’t even a painting there – just the wallpaper, which was now patterned in pink and white polka-dots. His expression was grim, almost angry. Finally he brought his head down to Jerry’s level, cupped his glove to his mouth, and whispered “I wasn’t talking to myself.”

  “Oh?”

  Charlie peered theatrically from side to side, then leaned in even closer. “I was talking to the readers.”

  Jerry crossed his arms on his chest. “There’s nobody here by that name.”

  “It’s not a name. It’s…what they do. Readers. People who read.”

  “Who read what?”

  A change came over Charlie then, like a cloud passing in front of the sun. He placed his hands flat in his lap, straightened his neck, and took a deep breath. “Us,” he said at last. “They read us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Charlie stood up and began to pace, his hands tightly clenched behind his back. His strides were long, and the house was tiny; he could only take two or three steps in each direction before having to turn around. “Jerry,” he began, then paused. “Look…do you ever ask yourself, why am I here? What is the meaning of life?”

  “Sure. Sometimes. Doesn’t everyone?”

  Charlie stopped pacing, turned suddenly and leaned down to Jerry again. “We make them laugh.” His tone was deadly serious.

  “Them.”

  “The readers. We were created to entertain them.”

  Jerry waved his tiny paws in a broad gesture of negation. “Whoa there, big guy. Jerry the squirrel is nobody’s creation and nobody’s patsy. I’m here for me.”

  “Sorry, Jerry, but it’s the honest truth. We’re just characters in a comic book.”

  Jerry fixed Charlie with a hard, beady stare. “Prove it.”

  Charlie’s eyes closed and his shoulders slumped. He turned away from Jerry. “Icant.”

  “Then how do you know it’s true?”

  “I’ve always known, I think, in the back of my head somewhere. But then one day…“He turned back to Jerry, and his eyes were two black pits of fear and despair. “I had just said good-bye to Hermione the hedgehog, I turned back to go into my house, and then…suddenly everything was black. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. I was squashed flat. But somehow I knew that all around me, piled above and below me like a huge stack of pancakes, was everyone and everything I have ever cared about. They were all squashed flat too, but I was the only one who knew it. That went on for a moment that seemed like forever. And then I was right back in my house, as though nothing had happened.”

  A thought balloon appeared above Jerry’s head: “He’s bonkers!”

  “I know it sounds crazy. But it was as real as anything. And ever since then… I know we’re being read, and we’re being laughed at.”

  “I get it,” Jerry said with false cheer. “When you talk to yourself you are telling them jokes!”

  “No!” Charlies hands bunched into fists, and he pounded the air ineffectually. “I’m trying to explain myself!”

  Jerry scratched his head, and a few question marks came out. “You certainly aren’t doing a very good job of it now.”

  “Well, for instance…last week, when I was working on my car. I was just putting the engine back in for the third time, and I was explaining to the readers that this was a very delicate operation and had to be performed with the utmost care. Not funny at all.”

  “Charlie, you were pounding it in place with a sledge hammer. That’s pretty funny. And calling it a delicate operation just makes it funnier.”

  Charlie stood stock-still for a moment, his lip quivering. Then he collapsed into his chair, his purple neck arching high as he dropped his head into his hands. “I know!” he sobbed, big blue teardrops running down between his fingers. “No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try to be serious, it comes out hilarious. And I’m tired of them laughing at me!”

  Jerry offered his handkerchief, and Charlie blew his nose in it with an immense orange HONK.

  “These ‘readers’…can you hear them? Can you see them?”

  “No.” He didn’t raise his head from his hands.

  “Then how do you know they’re laughing at you?”

  “I just know. The same way I know they’re there.”

  “Where are they, exactly?”

  “Right now? Over there.”

  Jerry followed Charlie’s pointing finger, but there was nothing there but the green and white flowered wallpaper. At least it was prettier than the pink and white polka-dots that had been there before. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Neither do I. But they’re there. They’re always there.”

  “Always?”

  “Well, most of the time.” He lifted his head and tried to return the sodden handkerchief, but Jerry gestured to keep it. “I don’t think they watch anyone else. I mean, they’re watching you now, because you’re with me. And they might watch you for a while after you leave here. But eventually they’ll come back to me. I’m the main character in their little comic book.”

  Jerry’s tail bristled. “Why you? Why not me?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did. That’s just the way it is, I guess.”

  Jerry paced back and forth on the table for a time, thinking. Finally he spoke. “I think you ought to talk with Dr Nocerous about this.”

  Charlie shook his head, a slow rueful motion. “Okay…but I don’t think it will do any good.”

  Doctor Nocerous’s office walls were completely covered in diplomas, from such institutions as THE SCHOOL OF AARD VARKS and WAZUP WITU. The doctor himself was a stout gray rhino, nearly as wide as he was tall, whose wire-rimmed glasses perched incongruously at the top of his horn. He wore a white lab coat, and a small round mirror was strapped to his forehead. He never used the mirror in any way.

  “Hmm,” he said as he held his stethoscope to the side of Charlie’s neck, and “Hmm” again as he stood on a stepladder to peer down Charlie’s throat, and “Hmm” one more time as he held Charlie’s lapel between two fingers and looked at his watch.

  “Well, doctor,” said Jerry when the exam was finished, “what’s wrong with him?”

  “My examination has discovered no physical infirmities whatsoever. Superficially, he is salubrious as an equine.”

  “What?” said Charlie.

  “Healthy as a horse,” explained the doctor.

  “I told you.”

  “But he’s seeing things!” said Jerry.

  “Indeed. These phantasmagorical manifestations are most worrisome,” the doctor muttered, puffing on his pipe. A few small pink bubbles emerged as he pondered. “I recommend that we keep your friend under observation.”

  “How ironic,” Charlie said to the wall, then returned his gaze to the doctor. “I am not seeing things, or hearing things! I just know things. Is that so bad?”

  Jerry jumped up on the doctor’s desk. “Charlie, listen to me. I’m your friend, right? I’ve never steered you wrong?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then get this through your thick purple skull: there are no ‘readers’. You are not the main character’ in anyone’s comical book.’ You’re just a person like anyone else, and you’re here to muddle through your life the same as the rest of us. Nothing more.”

  “The veracity of your diminutive companion’s statement is incontrovertible,” said the doctor, waving his pipe. “These megalomaniacal misapprehensions must be immediately terminated. They jeopardize your physical integrity and the overall stability of the community.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a danger to yourself and others.”

  Charlie jumped out of his seat. “I’m
no danger to anyone! So what if I talk to myself? That doesn’t mean I’m going to pick up a big mallet and start flattening people!”

  “Solipsistic delusions are frequently merely the initial manifestation of a general insensitivity to the legitimacy, even the existence, of external personalities. If allowed to go unchecked, these tendencies could escalate into antisocial or even injurious behavior!”

  “What?”

  “He thinks you might pick up a big mallet and start flattening people,” said Jerry.

  Charlie stood with his feet planted wide and his fists clenched. The white fabric of his gloves was bunched and strained. He stared at the wall. “You think this is funny, don’t you?”

  “Nobody’s making any jokes here, Charlie,” said Jerry. “We’re serious.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you.” He turned around, pointed at a different spot on the wall. “This has all been arranged for your amusement! Are you happy?”

  Jerry and Dr Nocerous looked at each other.

  Charlie pulled a big mallet from his pocket and began pounding on the wall. “Are you laughing now? Huh? Are you?” The WHAM of the mallet on the wall was huge and black. “Just let me get out there and I’ll show you what comedy is all about!”

  “This situation necessitates immediate incarceration!” said the doctor as he ran behind his desk.

  “Ditto!” said Jerry as he dived under a chair.

  The doctor pressed a button under the desk; no sound came out, but a few small lightning bolts appeared. Moments later two enormous gorillas, their white coats stretched taut over bulging muscles, burst through the door. There was a swirl of motion, and when it cleared Charlie was on the floor, trussed in a straitjacket.