The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “Don’t let them put me away!” Charlie cried.

  “It’s for your own good,” said Jerry, and waved encouragingly as the gorillas hustled Charlie away. But as soon as they were gone, Jerry’s shoulders slumped. “What are you going to do, Doctor?”

  “His prognosis is not encouraging. However, he will be the recipient of the most advanced experimental treatments modern medical technology has to offer.” From his pocket, the doctor drew one end of a set of heavy jumper cables. Sparks flew from the sharp copper teeth as he touched them together, and a small strange grin appeared on his face.

  Charlie’s sad, desperate eyes peered through the slot in the metal door. “You’ve got to get me out of here, Jerry.” His word balloons squeezed through the slot like bubbles from a sinking ship.

  “Hang in there, buddy. Dr Nocerous tells me you’re coming along nicely.”

  “He’s been saying that for weeks.” Charlie shook his head, bringing his blackened horns briefly into view. “But I know the score. I’m not going to get out of here until I show some improvement, but since there’s nothing wrong with me I’m never going to get any better than I am now.”

  “Charlie, you must accept that you have a problem. It’s the first step on the road to recovery.”

  Charlie chuckled ruefully. “I have a problem, all right. I’ve learned that there are worse things than being laughed at.”

  “Nobody’s laughing at you, Charlie. You need to understand that these ‘readers’ are nothing more than a projection of your own feelings of self-doubt and inconsequentiality.”

  “That’s just what the rhino told you to say. But you’re right – nobody’s laughing at me. The readers aren’t laughing at me. And that’s the problem.”

  “I thought you didn’t want them to laugh at you.”

  “I didn’t. But since I’ve been here in this padded cell, tied up in this straitjacket all day long with nothing to do…they’re bored.”

  “Well, that’s an improvement, isn’t it? Maybe now they’ll watch someone else instead.”

  “They’ve tried. But – no insult intended – none of you guys are as funny as I am.” Jerry’s tail bristled. “So they’re leaving. They’re going away completely. And that scares me.”

  “You should be glad to be rid of them!” Jerry fumed.

  Charlie’s eyes closed for a moment. When they opened again, Jerry saw a bit of the old manic fervor. “Listen…do you ever think about the nature of time?”

  “What?”

  “Time. How it passes, from moment to moment. Haven’t you ever noticed how some things change when you aren’t looking at them?”

  “Like the wallpaper?”

  “Exactly. I believe that time is…divided. Into moments, or segments. Within each segment we are alive and awake, but in between…there are gaps. That’s when things change.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?”

  “I think the readers live their lives in the gaps between our time segments. They live in our time too, somehow -I know because they can see us. But in the gaps…they have the universe to themselves.”

  “Charlie, you’re not making any sense.”

  “I know it sounds crazy. But I’m dead serious. And here’s the important part: when the readers aren’t watching us…we don’t exist!”

  Jerry shook his head and turned away, but after a moment’s thought he turned back. “OK. Suppose I accept this theory of yours. Suppose there are gaps between moments. But time still feels continuous to us. See?” He waved a paw rapidly back and forth. “So it doesn’t really matter!”

  “It doesn’t matter as long as they keep coming back. But if too many of them get bored…if they all go away and don’t come back…then the gap will just go on and on, and we’ll never exist again. It’ll be the end of the world, Jerry. Squashed flat in the dark, forever.” Charlie’s eyes were desperate, sincere, pleading. “You’ve got to get me out of here. I’ll joke, I’ll pratfall, I’ll do anything to keep the readers coming back. To keep us all alive. Please.”

  Jerry closed his eyes, unable to bear his friend’s gaze. “There are no readers, Charlie.”

  In the end, he was right.

  MASTER LAO AND

  THE FLYING HORROR

  Lawrence Person

  Lawrence Person (b. 1965) is, along with Paul Di Filippo, the only contributor in this volume who also appeared in the Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction. Person has been producing science fiction and fantasy since his first published story in 1990, though he may be better known for his genre criticism and commentary, partly through his many published essays and reviews but also as editor of the critical magazine Nova Express, which he took over in 1992. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog and Peter Crowther’s Postscripts, from which the following is taken. If you are fans of Chinese horror and fantasy films you are in for a treat.

  His website is athome.austin.rr.com/lperson/index.html

  On the day Old Man Zhang was murdered, Orange Blossom was teaching me the ritual she called Butterfly Drinking Nectar.

  Her mother had nicknamed her Orange Blossom because she was born the day of her village’s Orange Blossom ritual. The other apprentices at the White Crane Temple called her Shaking Melons for current performances of far more interesting rituals.

  Minutes earlier, I had made good use of her namesakes in a ritual called Bear Jumping Two Mountains, which I had found quite engrossing, though not half so much as Butterfly Drinking Nectar. Orange Blossom loved me for my strong and handsome body, my growing mastery of magic and kung fu, and my ability to pay her five coins every other week. I loved her not only for her namesakes, but also for her lovely peasant beauty, her delightful giggle, and her carefully honed talents, many of which had been learned in Shanghai.

  Just then she was about to show me her most powerful and sacred ritual, Magic Sword Entering the Lotus, when our lovely interlude was most cruelly interrupted.

  “Idiot! Dolt! Moron!” I heard a dreaded voice yell behind me, each word punctuated by a bamboo staff’s painfully familiar blow to my naked back. I leapt off the bed, all the magic draining from my sword as I shielded my head from the wrathful blows of Master Lao.

  “Harlot! Strumpet! Whore!” he yelled, wielding his bamboo against Orange Blossoms exposed bottom. (Thanks to ample padding there, his blows inflicted no lasting harm.) “I have told you before not to tempt my apprentices with your wickedness!”

  “Their money is as good as anyone else’s!” yelled Orange Blossom defiantly. It saddened me to hear her reduce our transcendent ecstasy to mere commerce, but I had more pressing concerns to worry about, as Master Lao turned his wrath, and staff, back to me.

  “You were supposed to be back from the market half an hour ago!” he yelled, inflicting a most painful blow to my raised forearm. “And here I find you shirking your duties and cavorting with harlots!”

  “Mercy, Master!” I yelled. “My spirit is willing but my flesh is weak!”

  “Not nearly so weak as it will be after I get through with you!” he said, raising the staff again.

  “What in the Nine Hells are you doing in here?” asked Dancing Petals from the doorway. Dancing Petals was the establishment’s proprietress, though the other apprentices called her Lumbering Whale.

  “He beat me with a bamboo cane!” yelled Orange Blossom.

  “That’s five coins extra, and only by appointment!” said Dancing Petals.

  “Corrupt panderer! I am only here to retrieve my apprentice! We have no intention of staying in your vile den of iniquity!”

  “That’s not what you said the last time you were here!” Dancing Petals replied, causing my master’s face to turn the most amazing shade of pale.

  “Come, Chou Lin, we must leave this place immediately,” said Master Lao, drawing himself up and speaking in the calm, dignified voice he used on rich businessmen. “Such houses of wickedness are often a magnet for evil spirits.”

&nb
sp; In my experience such houses are more often magnets for middle-aged husbands and government officials, but in this, as in so many things, I acceded to my master’s greater wisdom. With a single, mournful glance at the lovely Orange Blossom, I struggled into my clothes, grabbed my bundle, and followed Master Lao out into the street.

  “Chou Lin, what are the Three Great Sins for a temple apprentice?” he asked.

  “Idleness, Drunkenness, and Lustfulness,” I recited dutifully.

  “And you have indulged in each during the last three days!” he said, striking my back another painful blow.

  “Mercy, Master, mercy!” I cried. It seemed unfair for him to bring up Drunkenness, since the bottle had been Kua Qing’s. Likewise, the Idleness had been a direct result of the Drunkenness, since next morning the sunlight had burned my eyes like hot pokers. I knew that when I became a White Crane priest, my chief duties would be battling evil and sin. While I understood evil, I still had an inadequate grasp of sin, and thus sought to study it at every opportunity.

  “Stop cringing, you pathetic little insect! Your conduct is unbecoming a temple apprentice. Did you get the rice paper for the prayer offerings?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “Did you get the joss sticks?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “Did you get all three kinds of rice?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “Did you get the steamed buns?”

  “No master!”

  Master Lao raised his staff again.

  “I was unable to! Zu Bing’s shop has closed!” And indeed, the latter was true. Rumor linked Zu Bing and his debts to several notorious gambling house owners with a mound of live ants in a most unpleasant fashion.

  “Come then. There is a new place we can get sticky buns.”

  Spring Moon’s noodle house had opened in what had once been the carpentry shop of Kao Ling. Kao Ling had been one of the first victims of the plague of snakes, an incident I have already related in great detail elsewhere.

  From the many smiling customers assembled there, it seemed that no one missed Zu Bing. With an attractive atrium extending to the new second story, a bamboo-propped skylight letting in a flood of sunshine, bright tile floors and the beautiful screen paintings adorning the walls, Spring Moon’s noodle house presented a most pleasing and cheerful atmosphere, and I resolved to take Orange Blossom there as soon as Master Lao’s wrath (and watchfulness) had faded.

  “Are you here for lunch?” asked a melodious voice. I turned and instantly all thoughts of Orange Blossom left my mind.

  In our province, it is said that the Emperor of Heaven is attended by the nine most beautiful women in the world, each raised to Godhood that they might serve him on his dragon throne. However, on that day I knew he could have been attended by only eight. One must have slipped away back to earth while he was sleeping, for surely there could not be nine more beautiful women in all of Heaven and Earth than Autumn Wind.

  “No, we are here to pick up some steamed buns,” said Master Lao, smiling. This in and of itself was a sure sign of Autumn Wind’s divinity, since I could count the number of times Master Lao had smiled in my presence on the fingers of a single hand. “Are you Spring Moon?”

  “No, I am Autumn Wind, her daughter. Mother is helping out in the kitchen. Let me go get her.”

  I gazed longingly after her as her divine form glided as softly as her namesake back to the kitchen. Master Lao must have noticed my gaze. He held his staff across my chest and spoke in a grave tone.

  “Chou Lin, I know what you’re thinking, and I order you to stop at once!”

  “Huh?” I replied cleverly.

  “You have already fallen into lustfulness once today. Do not compound your sin with a second offense!”

  “What?” was my witty retort.

  “Autumn Wind is not one of Dancing Petals’ girls! To pursue the wicked thoughts about her that I know are racing through your head can lead only to dishonor and ruin!”

  “Hmm?” I said eloquently.

  Master Lao lowered his staff and leaned forward on it. “Ah, youth,” he sighed wistfully.

  At that moment, Autumn Wind floated back to us. “Mother says she will be out here shortly.”

  Once more I mustered the masterful rhetorical skills I had so recently displayed. “Hello,” I said, smiling.

  “Hello,” she said, smiling back so brightly I feared I would melt before her radiance. “Are you two from the village? I haven’t seen you in here before.”

  “We are from the White Crane Temple. I am Master Lao, and this is my apprentice, Chou Lin.”

  “Hello,” I said again, the sight of Autumn Wind evidently having driven all other words from my brain.

  “Why don’t you…” she began, to say, but just then our reverie was broken by a hideous, piercing scream.

  Belying his white hair, Master Lao was instantly off and running in the direction of the terrible sound, and soon I, and half the village, followed in his wake.

  The scream sounded once again, straight ahead, and Master Lao headed for Old Man Zhang’s house.

  In his youth, Zhang had made his fortune as a junk captain upon the Yangtzee, after which he had retired back to the village for a life of gambling and idle drunkenness, sins for which he was both condemned and envied in equal measure.

  Spring Flower (who was now, if truth be told, more of an autumn weed) had been his cleaning woman, and it was she who stood just a few feet inside the door to Zhang’s house, screaming again and again. Master Lao was through the door in an instant, then stopped, his face ashen. I was only a few steps behind.

  “Chou Lin, escort her outside and bar the door,” he said. I nodded dumbly and guided the still screaming Spring Flower out the door against the pressing throng, the terrible image of Old Man Zhang’s body burned into my mind.

  He sat facing the door, dark bloodstains down the front of his blue silk shirt and a bloody crater where his neck had been.

  When we arrived back at the temple, Master Lao was in a foul mood. Not only had he administered purification rights to Zhang’s body, but he had to wait nearly an hour for Policeman Ho to show up to examine it. Ho, who owed his job entirely to his uncle’s position as assistant tax collector for the province, had done his usual cursory, bumbling job.

  “This man has obviously been the victim of a crime of violence!” he said.

  “Your powers of observation are unparalleled, Honorable Ho,” said Master Lao.

  All of these delays meant we, and the food, arrived back at the temple two hours later than Master Lao had planned on starting preparation for the feast.

  “Master Lao,” said Kua Qing, rushing up as we entered the temple, “we heard about the murder! What has happened?”

  “Later!” bellowed Master Lao, thrusting the chicken cage into Kua Qing’s hands. “We must start on the feast. Kill and pluck these chickens immediately!”

  “But Master, why me?” asked Kua Qing in the honeyed voice he always used when attempting to evade honest work. “It is Chou Lin who should pluck the chickens in atonement for the sin of lustfulness.” In a small village, news travels fast.

  “No, you will pluck the chickens,” said Master Lao sternly. “Chou Lin needs to perform a more important task.”

  At this, I puffed up my chest and smiled at Kua Qing. It is always heartening to have my position as Master Lao’s Number One Apprentice confirmed.

  “Chou Lin, start cleaning the chamber pots.”

  My smile faded.

  Master Lao asserts that all work is honorable, and thus there is no shame in cleaning chamber pots. However, some honors smell better than others.

  It was three days prior to the midsummer festival, time for The Feast of the Chicken, to be followed by The Feast of the Duck, The Feast of the Goose, and finally, on solstice eve, The Feast of the White Crane. (The last, being our namesake, was the only one not consumed.) It was a time to create charms to ward off pestilence, bad weather, and evil spiri
ts.

  After finishing the odious task and performing a purifying ritual with water and salt, Master Lao sent me back to the kitchen to help our cook Jade Willow with the preparations. Due to an unfortunate incident involving a simple fire spell and a pot of cooking oil, Jade Willow held an irrational and entirely unwarranted grudge against me. Upon entering, she gave me a deep frown, then set me tending no less than six pots.

  After a good hour of vigorous stirring, Old Zhong, the temple servant, finally came to relieve me, and Master Lao had me change into my ceremonial robes of gold and cinnabar.

  For the feast, the oldest apprentices sat closest to Master Lao, so I sat immediately to his right while Kua Qing sat to his left. Further down the table were Ba Le, Lai Wang, Dai Li, and Bang Zhou. At the end of the table were the four “tadpoles,” the novitiates pledged to the temple just a month before. There had originally been six, but two had already hobbled home in splints, unable to stand up to Master Lao’s rigorous training methods.

  Once we were seated, Master Lao struck a small silver gong, then began the ritual invocation against evil.

  When he reached the third stanza, someone chuckled.

  Master Lao paused, then resumed the chant, looking from face to face, trying to determine the culprit. Because of certain unfortunate incidents in the past, I was frequently the subject of his scrutiny in such matters, but this time the voice was clearly too deep and far away to be my own.

  The rest of the invocation passed without incident, until Master Lao finished up by burning a prayer offering. Then the same voice coughed.

  Master Lao looked around again, craning his head to see if anyone was lurking around the rest of the temple, to no avail. Still perturbed, he rang the dinner gong, and Jade Willow and Old Zhong came out of kitchen bearing the feast.

  Any lingering uneasiness over the odd voices dissipated as the steaming platters were laid before us. Though the temple diet usually consisted of meager portions of rice and fish, feast days always offered up a sumptuous and dizzying variety of food, as well as an opportunity to imbibe the rice and plum wine usually forbidden us. Moreover, on such days eating and drinking as much as possible was considered a sacred duty, a way of showing respect to the Celestial Masters, from whom all bounty flows. It was upon these occasions that my own devotion was unsurpassed.