“Yes,” I agreed. “You will probably have to stay. The, ah, road you came through has closed up.”
“But am I dead?” he muttered to himself. “Is this Hell?”
God only knows what private torment he was living in now.
“No, you’re not dead,” I said, trying to keep my voice as steady as I could. “But you probably shouldn’t stay in Hills Point. We are only a town of 30. You need to go somewhere bigger.”
I had no other plan but to get him away from us as far as possible. I had to get him away from Tamsin.
“Eh, bigger, you say. And where would that be on this lonely continent?”
“A town of thousands,”’ I said. “There are lots of towns like that. Somewhere you can be lost in the crowd. Somewhere no one can find you.”
“What you say makes good sense,” he said slowly. “So, I’ll need me a horse and a map and some supplies.”
And then I realised what I had just done. We had no horses, only cars. And this man couldn’t drive. He would need to be driven. He would need someone to drive him. He would need me to drive him.
“We don’t have horses,” I began.
“What do you take me for?” he yelled. “If you have no horses, how do you get around? Tell me!”
So, I began to explain cars and how things were different here.
“We are very advanced. Our carriages don’t need horses. But they are hard to drive. I will have to take you.”
He insisted on tying Tamsin up and locking her in the pantry before we left. I knew she was a resourceful woman. I hoped she’d be able to find some way to get out, for God knows when I’d be back. Or if. At least he hadn’t insisted she come with us.
Our car was just an old Falcon, but he seemed impressed enough with it. Afraid, even. He took a turn around the car several times, touching various parts of it. I opened the bonnet and showed him the engine. I tried to give a cursory explanation of how it worked, but I saw his eyes glaze over.
“You will need to sit in the back,” I told him. “And wear a belt.”
“Why must I?” he enquired belligerently.
“It is to keep you safe. These carriages go much faster than a horse.”
I settled him in and put his belt on, being very careful not to actually touch him. Up close, his stench was overpowering. What was it? Sweat, of course, months, years of drying, stale sweat. And a godawful diet of rabbit. And something chemical, too, that I couldn’t readily identify. But it was definitely the worst thing I’d ever smelled in my life.
“Your name,” I asked. “what is it?”
“What’s it to you?” he snarled.
“This will be a long trip,” I said. “We might as well get to know each other.”
He nodded. “William Stanley,” he said. “And you?”
“Jamie Straughan.”’
If he knew me as a real person, I reasoned, he might be less likely to bash my head in.
“Get me to the next town safely, Jamie Straughan,” said William Stanley, “and I will let you go free.”
I had to wonder whether that was true.
I started the engine and headed off down the main road. It’s now or never, I thought. Just before the intersection, I veered left, doing a hairpin turn and taking the dirt road as fast as I could down towards Sweetheart’s Walk, dodging trees and flying over rises, the old girl feeling every bump. I only hoped William Stanley would not realise what I was up to in time to shoot a great hole in the back of my head. I took us straight for the deep well, only jumping from the car at the final moment. I had made sure not to put my own belt on. I rolled over the long grass, winded and dazed. I watched as the car crossed into the well and, once in, push through what appeared to be dense grasslands, on and on. I continued to watch as the air heaved and buckled and the well popped, and man and car vanished. What would William Stanley find, I wondered, in that place, that time?
It took me an hour to get back home. I’d done something to my knee and could hardly put weight on it, and I could feel blood gushing from the back of my head.
“Oh, God,” Tamsin said when she saw me. “I felt it. I thought you’d been taken. Oh, God.”
“I lost the car, Tamsin,” I told her. “Sorry.”
“You silly thing,” she laughed, hugging me, crying. “I never liked that car, anyway.”
I looked his name up later. He had come through wrong, all right, but he had been wrong to begin with. He had been convicted of murder and sent to Australia for life. But he had been suspected of many murders. These days, we would call him a serial killer.
Tamsin and I still think about leaving. But others are joining us here, people like us, couples, families, those with few options. Soon, the town will be a real town. It will have more shops and, eventually, a school and its own police station. But time still overlaps. Once, I heard the clop-clop of a large horse behind me. I turned to see nothing. And some nights, I swear there’s a carriage driving right past our bedroom window. And I’m sure I saw something hovering one night, all still and silvery, right above our roof, only to veer off sharply, disappearing in an instant into the dark sky. Who knows what will come next? In this damaged part of the world, we walk lightly.
VENICE BURNING
By A.C. Wise
A.C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal, and currently lives in the Philadelphia area. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction and Strange Horizons, among others. She is co-editor of the online ‘zine, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology. She can be found online at www.acwise.net.
A FLOATING CITY, a sinking city, a drowned city; there isn’t much difference, really. When R’lyeh rose, it rose everywhere, everywhen. Threads spiral out, down, in, stitching past to present to future.
There are ways to walk between, not particularly hidden, if you’re willing to lose a part of yourself. Most people aren’t; it’s my specialty.
I stand on a pier, eyes shaded against the water’s glare. It’s 2015, by the smell—diesel and cooked meat, early enough that such things still exist—and the particular pale-jade of the canal. It might as well be 2017, or 3051. But this year is where my client is, so I wait, sweating inside a black, leather jacket, watching slick weeds stir below lapping waves.
The sun burns white-hot. Across the water, atop a basilica whose name no longer matters, Mary stretches marble arms over a maze of twisted streets. Legend claims that, when the basilica was built, the statue turned miraculously toward the water to guard the boats in the canal. The day R’lyeh rose, she turned her back on the water forever and wept tears—sticky and ruby-dark—that weren’t quite blood.
A hand touches my arm, nails perfectly manicured and painted sea-shell pink. I’m surprised the Senator came herself. A frightened mother looking for her lost son is one thing; a politician desperate to protect her career is another. I wonder: Does the Senator know which she is?
Sunlight catches the diamond net of hairspray holding every blonde strand in place. Her lips press thin, leaving unkind wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, marring otherwise-perfect skin. Nails, lips and suit all match; only the Senator’s eyes betray her.
From her perspective, it’s just beginning. R’lyeh is a shadow beneath the waves and there is still hope. But I’ve seen tendrils slide through the canals of the city, sinuous, licking the stones and tasting the ancient walls. They want nothing. The Senator still thinks she can bargain with the Risen Ones, strike a deal and become a new Moses to her people.
I focus on the Senator’s nails, striking against my black leather. I know this about her: Her life will end in a church, green water rising between the pews, light reflecting against the ceiling in shifting patterns. She will die screaming, bound hand and foot, while her blood is pulled through her skin by sheer force of will.
I don’t offer to shake her hand. “Do you have a photo of your son?”
The slim case tucked beneath her arm matches nails, lips and suit. She hands me a g
lossy, professional-looking headshot. Her son looks nothing like her. Mr. Senator is an actor, younger than the Senator by at least ten years, dark of hair and eye like his son, but prettier by far.
Marco, the son, gazes back at me from the photograph. Slick-oiled hair hangs to the collar of a leather jacket, an open-necked white shirt beneath it. He has deep-brown eyes and the faintest of scars—acne, despite the medicine and the cosmetic surgery his parents could easily afford. I hide the edge of a smile at Marco’s tiny act of rebellion.
“You understand this is a matter that requires the utmost discretion.” The Senator holds out an envelope. She tries for frost, the same control she displays on the Senate floor, but her voice fails.
“I’ll be in touch,” I say, looking at a point beyond the Senator’s left shoulder.
A subtle tugging wraps threads around my spine. I’m amazed at the Senator’s self-control, her talent for denial. How can she not feel what the world has become? How can she resist the temptation to slip into the future? She has the perfect pretense—looking for her son. She could see how it all ends.
I pocket the envelope and Marco’s photo, and step past the Senator. Her mouth opens, snaps audibly closed; she isn’t used to being dismissed. My bootheels click as I walk away, thinking about her son.
A family vacation in a city of masks and illusory streets—the perfect place to hide, the perfect place to disappear. Twenty-six and vanished—of course Marco doesn’t want to be found. Even photographed, the desire to run shines clear in Marco’s eyes. Desperation and fear, they bring a flicker of memory, which I push aside. There is no place far enough, but he’ll still try, fleeing forward to test the notion that the future is infinite.
I know where to start—Harry’s Bar. I step forward, and slide cross-wise, surrendering to shattered light, burning stars and the aching space between. Tentacles as insubstantial as breath slide beneath my skin. They want nothing, but they take what I have to give. Cold, cold, cold, they grip my spine, caress my skull, and scoop out the heart of me.
If they were beings to be reasoned with, I would ask them to take everything. It doesn’t work that way.
Firelight flickers. My scars itch, stretching tight across my back. I hold the memories up as an offering, but the tentacles find their own prize. I don’t know what they take from me; I only feel the familiar, hollow ache when it’s gone.
It’s 2071 when I enter the bar. The light is green, but the waiters still wear immaculate white jackets and ties, a terrible joke. I slide into a seat.
“A double.” I don’t specify of what, but it hardly matters.
Behind the bar, where mirrored shelves used to hold bottles of liquor, pendulous nets hold a jumble of perpetually dripping starfish, conch shells, mussels, and clams. Breathing, wavering things cling to the wall. Occasionally, the waiters pause, offering their fingers, as if feeding choice morsels to a favourite pet. Fragments of shadow stretch in tacky strands, linking the waiters’ hands to the creatures on the wall as they draw away. The air smells of brine. Things at the corner of my eye shift, skirl, unfold impossible dimensions, and retreat—deep-sea anemones shy of the light.
The bartender slides a drink in front of me. Misery haunts his gaze. This is our life now, our life then—this is the life to come. His mouth doesn’t move when he breathes. His nostrils don’t stir. If I didn’t know to look, I wouldn’t see the gills slitting his throat above his starched collar, nictating almost imperceptibly. His eyes bulge, moist, blood-shot. I place a bill on the bar and add a stack of silver-gold coins, a generous tip.
I wait a moment, then place Marco’s picture next to the coins. The bartender’s skin sweats oil and sorrow. People determined to vanish come to Harry’s Bar and, for the right price, the miserable waiters in their starched, white uniforms show them how.
“When?” I ask.
“Can’t say.” The bartender’s voice is frog-hoarse.
I know he means ‘can’t’, not ‘won’t’. Everything can be bought and sold here: sugar-sweet cubes that melt on the tongue and bring oblivion; death; pleasure; escape; even answers. The man behind the bar taught Marco how to leave, but didn’t ask questions—a good bartender to the last.
“Thanks.” I down my drink in one shot.
The liquor unfolds in my mouth, sending a spike through my lungs. My eyes water. I walk back outside.
It’s dark. The stars are right. But the stars have always been right.
Where would I go if I were Marco? A useless question. He knows what he’s running from—a suffocating life of expectation, his parents’ blind oblivion a shadow pressed between his shoulder blades. Some people can feel the future coming; others refuse to believe in anything but the infinite Now. The future reached out blind tentacles, snaring my heart. Marco chose R’lyeh’s ways; R’lyeh’s ways chose me.
Firelight flickers. A horse whinnies—a soft, breathy sound. The scent of wet leather and dry hay overwhelms me. Lips trace mine, arching my throat, shivering across my belly. I gather sweat on the tip of my tongue, briny-sweet like the sea. The horse’s whicker turns to a scream. My scars tingle, hot and cold at the same time. Fragments tumble, edges sharp like splinters of bone lodged beneath my skin. Some things can’t be outrun, taken, or let go.
Suddenly, I don’t give a fuck about Marco. And I have all the time in the world.
I walk along the water’s edge, where there used to be a restaurant. Once—after R’lyeh, but before now—the entire city burned. The canals turned to oil and fire swept from rooftop to rooftop, sparing nothing.
Centuries of human existence, wiped out in the blink of an eye. I was there. I will be there again.
Venice, as always, survived. It rose from the ashes, born anew in brick and stone and marble, in deference to the old ways. It was also resurrected in glass and steel, in deference to ways old-yet-new. Finally, it shambled back from the dead, with walls that bled and seethed, flickered and writhed, in deference to the way things are now and always will be. Venice—an impossible city, impossible to kill.
I turn inward, crossing a bridge made of glass. A canal creeps, sluggish, beneath it. Lights glimmer on the water’s surface; things sleep in its depths. Venice floats, it sinks, it is drowning, it is drowned. And it survives. So do I.
I’ve been to the underwater city where Venice used to be. I’ve kick-pulled through cathedrals lit by the unearthly, phosphorescent glow of things best left unseen. I’ve worshiped at unholy altars, caressed by tendrils of night, studded by unnatural stars. I’ve witnessed the twisted images of saints spider-walking up church walls, their mouths open in silent screams. I’ve kissed the greened marble lips of the Mary who wept tears that weren’t blood, as she watched the fish nibble her children’s bones. I’ve seen Venice in all its guises, peeked behind all its masks, witnessed all its states of decay. Venice survives, no matter how ugly its scars.
My feet guide me through twisting ways to a little restaurant off Calle Mandola. It’s almost unchanged since the old days, except for the light, and the sick-green smell, and the taste of salt in the air. They still serve a killer martini—an olive and a twist. Inside, the sound hits me like a wall. My heart skitters, painful.
Guilt persists, even when I’ve given up love.
The place is nearly empty, but Josie sings as if the restaurant is full. Her voice is heartbreak: smoke and burnt amber and chocolate so dark it draws blood. It suits the restaurant’s mood, and mine. Waiters move listlessly between tables, bringing baskets of bread, plates of limp vegetables in heavy, oily sauce, and pasta—everything but meat, which ran out long ago, and fish, which is forbidden.
I tried to bring Josie fresh meat once—unspoiled, untainted. She wouldn’t touch it. The thought of anything that had been in-between made her shudder and gag.
I remember—as much as I want to forget—how I held Josie’s hands. Her moss-green eyes glowed with fear. I asked her to trust me. We stepped in-between.
Just as soon, we were jerked back, as if
R’lyeh’s ways had spit us out. Josie pulled away from me, the brief touch of otherness enough to shatter her already fragile mind. I followed her back. I could have kept running, but I didn’t even think twice.
We were staying in a hotel next to the theatre on Calle Fenice, in a room with walls the colour of blood, patterned in threads of pale gold and delicate lines of mold. The shower had stopped working long ago, but the toilet still flushed and, against all reason, the sheets were clean. When I stepped out of the between, Josie lay curled on the floor, clinging to the Turkish carpet rucked beneath her folded body as if it were the only thing holding her to this world.
“It burns. Ara, it burns.”
I crouched beside her and touched her, feeling the sharp ridges of her spine through clothing and skin.
“Make it stop.” She rocked and whimpered.
I lifted her sweater, peeling it as though from a wound. Tattoos, inked long before R’lyeh rose, writhed across Josie’s flesh. Black ink against skin the colour of fired clay, lashing, twisting, moving in ways nothing ever should.
“Make it stop. It hurts. Make it stop.” Josie turned her face, just enough to show tears and stark terror.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I don’t know how.”
There were so many places I wanted to show her. I wanted to take her deep—somewhere off the coast of Mexico, to another drowned world full of turquoise water and old bones. I wanted to hold her hand, even through thick rubber gloves, and gesture to her through the enforced silence of breathing tubes and masks, hoping she’d understand.
She shuddered at the mere mention and I went alone. I let the stillness envelop me; I drifted. Vast things floated beside me; an eye the size of Luxemburg opened below me in the deep. I should have been terrified, but I felt only peace as it looked into me and through me.
I used to think there were some sins too terrible even for R’lyeh, some offerings the spaces between would always refuse. But in that moment, I understood: Sin is a human concept. I did what I did to remain human. I buried sin deep at my core. I could walk the ways between a hundred, thousand times, and it would never change the deepest, most fundamental part of me.
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