The Unlucky Man

by H T G Hedges

  The beast now knew instinctively what it had to do: to grow new life in the real world and in so doing force its way back into the world of men. Only then could its truth no longer be denied and the walls holding it in check would crumble forever. Two worlds would be forced once more into one.

  For the best part of a lifetime they searched for the right mind to impregnate with this chaos seed, for this one unlucky man.

  In the end, it had been by chance that they found him.

  Horst sat behind his desk, false window now letting in a cold, winter light. In his hand was a clear glass ball, its black contents curling and rippling like smoke. Its presence comforted him: when he held it his consciousness felt expanded; he could feel the life surrounding him through the cold concrete walls, could almost hear the thoughts of the teeming workers, like ants, who populated his buried fortress. Beneath his feet he could feel the air filling empty cells that waited to be filled. He was aware, too, of the empty, soulless silence of his drones, his new army, their minds like blank slates waiting to be written on.

  But they had lost the man Hesker. He had felt the disruption in the usual patterns of the world as the confrontation in the mist had unfolded. He was aware, too, of the changes in the walls of the world, as they grew thinner, stretching out as Hesker and Wychelo, both touched by the beast’s shadow, were drawn together each into the other’s orbit.

  The black vapor in the ball on his desk had darkened and expanded, filling the orb until it appeared as a smooth rock of obsidian, glowing with its own sickly light. The voice in his head was practically purring.

  But then they had lost Hesker. This was a concern.

  No.

  The word whispered from all directions at once, filling his mind. The glass ball grew warm in his palm.

  Soon. The voice whispered. The black smoke twisted and writhed.

  Soon.

  ***

  "What is it with you and stations?"

  This one was old and deserted, slowly crumbling, like everywhere else I had seen of late, into dereliction. At some time in the past an effort had been made to board it up, but those boards had long since been loosened and pried away by vandals or kids or someone else entirely.

  "Believe me, not my first choice," muttered the scruffy private investigator. Whimsy had become even jumpier as we reached the city again, and worse still as we stood in the shadow of the old train station. He jumped at every small noise, every twitch of shadow.

  He’d told us that the tunnels below street level led, in their dark and twisting manner, to an underground silo. This line had long since been decommissioned and fallen into disrepair, but it wasn’t impossible to imagine that it could still be used. You heard stories about people, mainly derelicts and bums that no-one believed, witnessing ghost trains zipping along the old lines in the dead of night. Stranger things had quite definitely happened.

  Whimsy’s contact was planning on making his escape along one of these tracks. He was done, apparently, and what had happened to Mackay was the final straw. He would meet us here - the first place he possibly could - give us everything he had, unburden himself, and then he was out, off to somewhere where he could disappear completely for a long, long time. Apparently the risks represented by walking those old tracks were less concerning than staying put and hoping for the best.

  We pushed our way through the gaps in the fronting and made our way into the deserted building. Inside the air was thick and heavy with some kind of cloying organic smell, like a butterfly house full of rotten fruit. Yet it was oddly cold and water dripped through the decaying roof, running in heavy flows in a few places, where the ongoing rain had proved too much for the shaky construction, and leaving green moss like stains over the clouded, old and broken glass.

  Here and there light lanced in swells, dust swimming thickly in the beams. The whole place screamed of lonely neglect.

  Moving slowly, we made our way down to the platform, through the foyer whose glass roof was thickly caked with dirt from the city outside.

  "Anyone else notice how quiet it is?" Corg whispered, the words ripping jarringly into the silence. He was right - outside the city was waking up, cars were passing, pedestrians were going about their daily routines, joggers jogged, dogs barked, motorists shouted abuse at one another and furiously pounded their horns - yet in here it was deathly still, tomblike, the only sound our footfalls, muffled by a permalayer of dust.

  "It’s like a mausoleum," Loess said.

  "Thanks," Corg muttered, "You’re doing wonders for my nerves."

  "Come on," Whimsy whispered urgently. I noticed he was popping with sweat. It was running in rivulets from under the brim of his porkpie hat.

  "Down here," he said, gesturing at a set of wide marble stairs.

  The feeling was starting again, that pumping at my temples, pressure building, pricking at my skin. The air was growing thick with static once more.

  At the bottom of the staircase was a long platform, bridging two deep tunnels: twin nebulous black holes. I took a step towards the gaping mouth of the right hand tunnel, a deep circle of yawning , gritty darkness.

  "Which way?" Loess said, then, "Hesker - you OK?"

  I only half heard, my focus was almost completely lost in the tunnel’s entrance. I felt it calling to me, gaping like a hungry mouth, waiting. Waiting for me to slip and tumble in, to be swallowed by the darkness. Suddenly I felt cold, icy wind emanating from the murky depth, whispering out like fetid, decayed breath.

  And there was a noise.

  This at least I knew wasn’t in my head, because Corg’s head whipped round to stare into the blackness too. When he turned back his gaze was like flint.

  "I thought there were no trains down here," he said, voice like shards of glass.

  "Shit," Whimsy whimpered. "Shit."

  "What the fuck’s going on?" Corg hissed.

  "Your man’s sold us down the line," Loess muttered.

  The noise was louder now, a rising roar in the throat of the tunnel, fire in the belly of the beast.

  Whimsy suddenly burst back to life. "Go," he hissed. "Now - there’s still time." He was backing up as he spoke, almost at the foot of the stairs.

  "Wait," Loess said, unsure, moving after him.

  "Damn right we should go," Corg growled in agreement, though he didn’t move.

  "Come on!" Whimsy said again. "He wouldn’t have given me up easily, he’s got to be dead too, there’s nothing for us here now." He had reached the bottom step and suddenly lost all sense of composure, turned and bolted up the marble.

  "Wait!" Loess shouted after him, giving chase up the staircase.

  The roar was filling the station by now. I knew I should run too but I couldn’t. Everything I was was tied into that sound, it was in my head and in my blood. My eyes were glued to the tunnel mouth and any second I knew something was going to emerge from the darkness.

  Something.

  Anything.

  Then it was gone, the reverie broke like water against the shore, bright light flared in my eyes and I was myself again, but it was too late.

  The train bellowed into the station, screaming to a tortured halt in front of me. It was just a single dirty old carriage but it was packed to capacity, full of vacant eyed grimly identical figures in matching gray boiler-suits. Each one of them stood too motionless and rigid to be right, each of them was armed, each of them was deadly.

  At their head, colourless eyes glinting in triumph, stood Wychelo.

  "Fucking run Goddamn it!" Corg bellowed, grabbing at my arm and dragging me into action. Finally my legs came back under my control just as the train doors were sliding open with a hiss and the carriage’s passengers began streaming out onto the platform.

  We ran. Without direction or thought we ran, somehow not in the direction we had come – the direction that Whimsy had gone and Loess had followed in – we were turned about and heading down the platform and by the time we realised it was too late.

  We
stumbled down a dark corridor, the sound of heavy footfalls close behind us. My blood was loud in my ears, pumping as we raced downwards, feet slapping against the chipped and faded green tiled diamonds on the floor.

  At the end of the corridor stood an old elevator - the type which is really just a cage on a pulley system. Our only option, we hurtled into it, smacking into the back lattice wall of the cage, making the whole structure shake and roll alarmingly. I spun, punching wildly at the buttons. The doors slid in slightly with a dull metallic wheeze then stopped dead. I tried again then hammered all the other useless buttons whilst Corg wrenched at the front of the cage, trying to create some kind of a barrier between us and the small army in the corridor bearing down on our iron prison. They were rusted in place.

  The first of our pursuers had made it level with the doors. With a curse, Corg smashed a fist with all his strength straight into his face and he went down, blood coursing from a ruined nose in the centre of an entirely impassive face. The others simply flowed around him, blithely ignoring their fallen companion as he passed beneath their booted, shiny feet.

  They were upon us, reaching unseeing hands zombie-like into our cage. We lashed out at them but they were relentless. I took one down but, as he fell back, another immediately took his place. I managed to snap another one’s grasping fingers but shear weight of numbers pressed their advantage and we were forced down under their greater groping mass, flailing and kicking against them. It was like fighting mannequins made flesh for all the reaction they showed, like fighting the swell of the ocean for all the difference we made.

  We were dragged from the elevator, back into the tunnel by impossibly strong hands, and forced down under Wychelo’s cold gaze. He smiled at me.

  "A purpose made army of willing slaves," he said, though it was hard to say what he thought of the notion. "An unimaginative bunch I grant you," he continued, "But marvelous at taking orders, and obedient to the last - as long as they get their medicine."

  The words hung in the air. "Would you like a demonstration?"

  "No," I said, and can honestly say that I meant it.

  A wolf like grin spread across Wychelo’s face. "That’s a shame," he said, and then, addressing the unmoving mass of bodies behind him, "Discipline them."

  And they did, if not with enthusiasm I thought, as consciousness was beaten from me, then at least with grim efficiency.

  ***

  I surged into waking and into a low featureless room, dimly lit by a row of tannin coloured strip lighting. I was sat in a generic plastic chair, hands tied to the armrest with white packaging zip-locks. Across the length of a long steel table Corg was similarly trussed, slowly clawing his way back into the land of the waking too. A deep purple bruise blossomed over the left of his jaw and his eye on the same side looked swollen and puffy. From the ache in my limbs, I could guess that I probably looked similar.

  "Welcome back," Wychelo said blandly from somewhere behind me.

  The only door to the room opened and someone else slipped inside.

  "Chelo," the newcomer said, nodding curtly past me. He was expensively dressed in pinstripe pants and an immaculate white shirt, hair cut just so. He looked every inch the businessman but there was something soft around his edges. He was in good shape but you could tell he ate just a bit too well, maybe whitened his teeth, was just a bit too glossy.

  Wychelo said nothing, but I could tell from the sudden frostiness emanating over my shoulder that he was displeased by this interruption.

  "So these are our guests," the newcomer observed, with an air of proprietary smugness. "Times were I heard you could kill a man the first time," he shot past me, a cocky smile dimpling up his smooth face.

  "Good afternoon gentlemen," he said switching his attention to the two of us, "And welcome to my offices - not the most dynamic of floors you’ll appreciate but we can’t have the two of you scaring the public now can we?" He ended this introduction with a small chuckle that hung in the air before dying pitifully.

  Across from me, Corg rolled his eyes dramatically. "Who’s this self satisfied prick?" he directed at me across the length of table. Despite myself I caught a grin on my face in the reflective surface. Just like Corg to pick a fight whilst tied to a chair.

  "But of course, where are my manners?" the businessman continued, though from the look on his face you would think he’d been slapped; clearly he wasn’t used to people answering him back.

  "Allow me to introduce myself: Allman Perry. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?" He thrust out his hand, his slightly round, smug face crinkling into a smile once more. Gold glinted on his fingers and at his wrist. "Oh, of course," he said in mock surprise when neither could meet his proffered shake.

  "You know I think I have heard of him," Corg continued blithely, still addressing himself to me, "Wasn’t he in the news for beating up his pool-boy or something?"

  "I think it was a parking attendant, but yeah, I think so," I said.

  "Yeah," Corg said reflectively, "I’m starting to miss that guy." This with a nod towards the brooding presence of Wychelo, "At least he was good at menacing us." His face split into a painful grin, exposing teeth rouged with blood, but it felt good to be doing something even if it was the questionably sensible provocation of our captors.

  Perry’s face had curdled like soured milk. I got the sense that Allman Perry was a bully but also a coward who now seemed on the verge of a petulant rampage.

  "Enough," Wychelo intoned darkly. "Let’s get this done." There was a distinct note of distaste in his voice, something which surprised me coming from the passionless statue.

  "What’s the matter?" Perry said acidly, still smarting from Corg’s dismissal. "Lost your taste for the work?"

  Wychelo stepped forwards and into my field of vision for the first time. "I can kill without thought," he said coldly, "With knife or gun or even my hands. It’s clean, efficient." There was something odd about his features as he withdrew two syringes from his pocket and flipped off their caps. In their depths, blackness roiled nebulously. At the sight of it my pulse began to race.

  "This, however, leaves a sour taste in my mouth."

  "Shit," Corg whispered, eyes gone big and glued to the needles.

  Wychelo tapped a syringe contemplatively with a nail, his washed out eyes fixed on their unknowable depth. I wondered if he felt it shifting the way I did.

  Perry reached out a greedy paw. "I’ll do the fat one," he said, eyes gleaming with a nasty light - we’ll see who’s laughing now, they said - empty of empathy or compassion. For a moment I thought Wychelo might refuse, certainly he seemed reluctant to pander to Perry’s petulance.

  I think Perry must have seen it too, for his next words were loaded. "Careful Wychelo, remember you’re just Control’s pet dog."

  "And you remember," Wychelo countered evenly, "That I could slit your throat in that big office of yours while you contemplate your expensive penthouse view and you wouldn’t even know until your next meal." But he handed over the needle all the same.

  "Perhaps this time," Wychelo said, advancing on me, deadly needle held dangerously between his fingers, "You might have the decency to stay dead."

  Strong hands clamped down on the back of my neck, forcing down my head until my bruised face was pressed hard against the table. It felt icy cold against my tender face. I shifted my weight, tried to find purchase against the floor but it was polished plastic, my shoes sliding helplessly against it. I strained against the plastic wrist restraints but they just bit deeper into my flesh.

  There was nothing I could do.

  With an effort I twisted my head and locked on to Corg’s eyes, blue and scared yet defiant to the last, on the other side of the gulf of smooth, cold steel.

  "Just my luck to get whacked by this pussy," he grunted to me through his struggles. I saw the needle at his neck, the plunger depressing, the rush of shadow as the chamber emptied.

  "Hold on!" I gasped, "I’ve been here before… I’ve lived through
this." But Corg’s eyes were already displacing, losing focus. He was swimming away on a noxious tide of toxins.

  "Not like this you haven’t," Allman Perry said smugly from somewhere I couldn’t see and I swallowed the words and knew hate.

  Then I felt the stab of pain in my own neck and the burning grind of the chemicals entering into my bloodstream. Fight it, I told myself. Fight it to stay alive. But it was too late. The sky was falling all over again. The world was collapsing around me, coming apart at the seams, devolving into particulate entropy.

  The last thing I knew was the chill surface against my cheek and Corg’s empty stare. Then, as my last vestiges of lucidity melted away, I heard the door open once again.

  "You two can go," a voice said.

  And I succumbed.

  ***

  For the longest time there was nothing, then slowly nothing turned into darkness, which is different, deep and unfathomable. Then that too eased and bubbled into a new kind of pitch, like deep, deep water, think as honey, at once stupefying and smothering.

  No sense of me.

  Gradually - and yet timelessly - this too changed, flowing like liquid, at first complete in its blackness, then melting into random colour. They sparked and blossomed like sunspots, the eyelid memory of staring onto the sun. Neon over the empty landscape of a night-dark desert.

  Then all at once that was done and I was spewed, whole and myself, a person once more, individual, onto the shore.

  For a long while I lay pressed into the wet sand, the sea lapping against my inert form, pulling at me with each withdrawing wave. I knew that if I chose to I could lose myself once more, slip back into that dark ocean and be claimed by its fathomless depths.

  Slowly, agonizingly, I began pulling myself to my feet. The sand, unwilling to let me go, caught at my heels, tried to swallow my outstretched hands. I shuddered at the thought of being lost in that endless clutching void and pushed on.