Solace & Grief

by Foz Meadows

  ‘I thought you said you'd been going to bring me home?’

  ‘A part of you already was home. I'd just have prodded until you snapped back into place – don't ask for a better explanation, because I can't give you one. Sharpsoft, though, he just put you there, book and all. I probably couldn't have managed even this.’ He tapped the cover on her lap.

  ‘Well,’ said Solace, because there wasn't really anything else to be said. There was an awkward silence. Then Glide twitched – not much, but enough that the sudden motion made Solace jump.

  He smiled guiltily. ‘Sorry. I didn't even let you read the thing. You're probably wanting to know what's in there, about your family.’

  ‘Just a bit,’ she admitted. ‘But it can wait one more day.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you mind not telling the others just yet, about Sharpsoft? I've got the strangest feeling. I think he wants to be kept a secret, not because of anything sinister – well, there's a reason, obviously, but I can't quite describe it. It's just … I know him. Or at least, it feels like I should.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Solace took a deep breath. ‘It's like, when he helped me remember my parents, part of him crossed over, too. It was… odd, and a little intimidating, but I don't think he's a threat not now, anyway, not if we keep him to ourselves. I feel bad about it, but he's not really my secret to tell. He's his.’ She turned. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  Glide smiled. After a moment, he nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I trust you.’

  ‘Where are we going again, exactly?’ Manx asked.

  Electra pulled out the piece of paper that Lukin had given them while Solace looked on, scanning it. There were directions and a time, yes, but no building name or number. And the directions themselves were odd.

  ‘We don't know,’ Solace replied, when Electra remained silent. Reflexively, she pushed her hands into her pockets, only to remember too late that doing so would squash Glide's survey. Although Glide himself had opted to stay at home, he had told the others about the surveys being witched. That alone had led to a half-hour discussion on whether or not going was still such a good idea, but in the end, curiosity and boredom had won out over caution, and in that spirit they had left the house. Wordlessly, Solace handed the paper to Manx, who took it with a feigned resignation. He could be the one to give it to Lukin, she decided – assuming they ever found him.

  It was an overcast afternoon, for which Solace was grateful. As the clouds skittered mulishly overhead, they strolled down the broad footpath outside the Town Hall, coming to a halt beside the flat stone stairs. Thoughtfully scratching the side of her neck, Electra glared anew at the directions, as though daring them to make any less sense.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We start from here. We're meant to go down to the train station… I think… yes… down the stairs, and then head through the underground towards the Galleries Victoria.’

  ‘Or, we could just walk across the street and down to the Galleries,’ Evan suggested, not without friendly humour. ‘I can see it from here.’

  ‘No,’ said Electra, frowning a little. ‘I think… I think this is important.’ And then, muttering at the paper, ‘Or else, it had better be.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ said Jess, before Evan could reply. ‘Lead on. It's not like we're pressed for time.’

  Town Hall Station was never deserted, least of all during the day. A crowd of red-and-black clad Goths congregating on the steps began to laugh uproariously as one of their number pulled out a piece of cardboard advertising ‘Free Hugs’ in thick black texta. Solace nudged Jess, who chuckled at the sight of two friendly, curvaceous girls proffering the sign to passers-by.

  ‘They're always there,’ Jess laughed. ‘Well – almost always.’

  Things were just as busy underground, forcing them to string out. After Electra distractedly bumped into one person, eyes glued to the directions, Manx discreetly linked arms with her, steering by proxy and occasionally muttering imprecations as she trod awkwardly on his feet. Nonetheless, the two of them managed to maintain a lead, with Solace, Jess and Evan close behind.

  About midway along, it occurred to Solace that she'd never used the underground tunnels before, prompting her to say as much to Evan.

  ‘See,’ he replied, ‘I'm learning how not to be surprised by you. They're pretty cool. Probably, if you knew the right way to turn, you could walk across Sydney CBD and never have to show your head above ground. You might have to catch the odd train to manage it, but still…’

  ‘I should probably remember that,’ said Solace, ‘seeing as how sunlight isn't exactly my dearest friend.’

  ‘Here!’ Electra interrupted, stopping so suddenly that Manx, who hadn't had any warning, almost fell over.

  ‘What's so great about here?’ asked Evan. Solace was wondering the same thing, but chose not to say so.

  ‘This door,’ said Electra, reaching out to tap it.

  Solace studied the door. They were standing some way away from a set of escalators, stretching like glass-and-metal Jacob's ladders up to the rest of the Galleries. Underfoot, the square beige tiles looked no different to any others; apart from Electra's insistence, in fact, the site was completely unremarkable. On either side of them were shops selling games, bread, flowers, books, haircuts – for all Solace knew, given that this was her first time in a real shopping centre for years, there could well be a booth promising pony rides and ganja. But, of all the places they might have gone, Electra had led them to an unobtrusive door marked WARNING: ELECTRICITY.

  ‘Do we go in?’ asked Jess, reaching up to casually trace the lettering.

  ‘Yes,’ said Electra, firmly. ‘It says so right here.’ She brandished the instructions by way of emphasis.

  ‘Come on,’ said Evan, ‘you're telling me that maintenance just leaves these kinds of doors open? Twenty bucks says it's locked.’

  ‘I'll take that bet,’ said Jess quickly, as though snatching a bargain book from a sale table before anyone else could.

  ‘Fine!’ said Evan, triumphantly. ‘See?’ He turned the handle.

  Silently, the door swung inwards, revealing nothing but darkness.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, in a much smaller voice.

  ‘Victory is mine!’ crowed Jess. ‘But fair's fair – I know you're broke. You can pay me back in instalments.’

  ‘Fabulous,’ muttered Evan.

  ‘Come on,’ Electra said. When no one else moved, she humphed and led the way. Briefly, her gold hair glimmered against the weird dark of the doorway before vanishing from view, an angel's halo slipping into the night.

  With only a little wariness, Solace followed. Logically, she knew, they should have been able to see some of what lay before them, if only because of the light at their backs. But moving through the doorway was like passing into midnight, an almost physical sensation that raised goose bumps on her arms. Groping blindly forward – even her acute senses seemed useless here – she heard the others entering. The door made a gentle thump as it closed behind Evan, who swore.

  Suddenly, Electra shrieked; Solace jumped, wondering why, until she felt something brush her shoulder. Trembling only slightly – there was an unnatural oppressiveness to the total dark, to the hole in the wall that couldn't possibly be as long as it was – she reached up and grabbed the thing that had touched her. It was thick, rubbery –

  ‘They're cables,’ she said out loud. ‘Electrical cables, hanging from the ceiling.’

  ‘Oh, thank bollocks for that,’ muttered Evan. ‘For one moment there I thought it was something strange.’

  ‘I can see light,’ said Electra.

  Solace squinted and saw that she was, in a sense, right. A glowing white pinprick hung in the impenetrable distance, getting gradually larger the closer they came to it.

  ‘What is it?’ murmured Jess. ‘A lamp?’

  ‘No,’ said Solace. ‘Something weirder.’

  Not far off, a perfect circle of white light hung in the air, emitting a soft, lu
minous glow barely strong enough to see by. Drawn to it, the five of them spread out in a loose semicircle before the light-source, which seemed to be about the same diameter as an inflatable beach ball. Peering curiously behind the apparition, Solace saw that there was no back to it. In fact, behind the circle it didn't seem to exist. Which made no sense. Perversely, she tried to look at it side on, attempting to catch the edge of the thing that surely lay between here and not here. It was impossible; the line was finer than one of Electra's hairs, refusing to stay still, and the effort only served to earn Solace a headache, as if she were trying to focus through someone else's prescription lenses.

  ‘I think we're meant to climb in,’ Electra said, breaking the silence.

  ‘That's crazy –’ Evan began to say, but Jess glared at him. He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Whatever,’ he grumbled instead.

  Solace turned to Jess and whispered, ‘Why's he being so sour today?’

  ‘Apart from my taking his money? I think Phoebe turned him down. Eventually. Crucially, you might say.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Female conspirators,’ Evan muttered darkly. ‘All right then, fine – I'll go first.’

  ‘You will?’ asked Electra, surprised.

  ‘Yeah, I can be brave. I just don't feel like it most of the time, that's all.’ He rolled his eyes dramatically at Solace. ‘Wish me luck, then.’ When no one did, he sighed again, heavily, closed his eyes and then, in a single, surprisingly fluid motion, dove through the heart of the circle.

  And vanished.

  ‘Right,’ said Manx. ‘I'm going next, before I lose my nerve, or before it could be reasonably claimed that Evan is less of a wuss than me.’

  One by one, they wriggled, climbed, or, in Electra's case, pulled themselves through the gap; despite its visual impermanence, the inside edge of the circle proved oddly and unexpectedly tangible. Solace went last. Briefly, the skin at the nape of her neck tingled, but the feeling was subsumed by the similar kind of temporary, whooshing dissonance she'd felt upon exiting Lukin's office.

  And then they were, once more, in the professor's realm. In a manner of speaking.

  Looking about them, the five friends bunched together.

  ‘Not to put too fine a point on it,’ Evan muttered, ‘but where the sodding hell are we?’

  Dungeons, Castles & Other Anachronisms

  They were standing in the middle of what was basically a dungeon. The walls were made of ancient, slime-dark stone occasionally pocked by metal torch-brackets and the odd dangling chain, too real to look exactly like a scene from a low-budget Dracula film, but slightly too frightening to bring anything else comfortably to mind. In the middle of the room, which was square, sat a hulking double-sided laboratory bench made from solid timber, concrete and raw stone, dominated by a series of glass beakers, the contents of which bubbled and glowed in an alarmingly volatile fashion, and small, metallic contraptions that looked like they were either about to take flight or go ping! and fall to pieces. The overall appearance was alchemical: a juxtaposition of sturdy, heavy materials and shiny, smoking liquids.

  Evan coughed nervously. There were two doors behind the bench: big, heavy, oaken things with metal bars set in the top. With the exception of two tall wooden stools and an innocuous, broken-down, floral-patterned armchair, the dungeon was empty.

  ‘Who else is wondering how something like this exists in Sydney?’ Manx asked, breaking the silence. With precise, almost comic slowness, everyone raised a hand.

  ‘Maybe we came the wrong way?’ asked Solace, turning to Electra, who was frowning at the directions.

  ‘I don't think so – it doesn't look like it, but –’

  One of the doors clicked, groaned and began to swing open. Everyone held their breath and then, as one, let it out again. It was Lukin, entering backwards in order to hold the door open; his hands were evidently busy with a tray, on which sat several phials of dark red liquid. The skin at the nape of Solace's neck began to tingle again. The phials were firmly stoppered, but she knew – she could smell – what was in them, a thick, salty, metallic presence unmistakable for anything else.

  ‘That's blood,’ she whispered.

  At the sound of her voice, Lukin spun around, almost dropping his tray. Deprived of pressure, the door swung shut with a fierce, resounding bang! that succeeded in frightening a squeak from both Electra and Evan.

  ‘Oh!’ said the professor, hurrying to the bench and setting down the phials. He wiped his palms frenetically on his lab coat as he walked over to the group, grinning manically like a weasel on ecstasy. ‘You're here!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jess, flatly. ‘And where, might I ask, is “here”, exactly?’

  ‘Good question!’ Lukin enthused. ‘Excellent question. Of course, it'd take too long to go into the metaphysics of how or why, but essentially, we're underneath Hyde Park.’

  ‘Under Hyde Park,’ Evan repeated, more than a little incredulous. ‘We can't be! There's tunnels and stations and trains and… and damn water mains under Hyde Park! Not – and I say this with feeling – there are not any medieval dungeons.’

  ‘Wrong!’ said Lukin, cheerfully. ‘There is, in fact, one dungeon under Hyde Park, in which you are currently standing. Of course, it wasn't always here. We had to bring it with us.’

  ‘We? I thought you were academics? I thought you were from here!’ Evan blustered, looking comically outraged. Lukin shrugged vaguely and fluttered a hand, a man unconcerned with mere formal distinctions and nit-picking beyond his field of expertise.

  ‘It's a long story,’ he said, and then proceeded to change the subject. ‘Now, if you'll follow me, our main facilities are through this door. Come along!’

  ‘Wait,’ said Manx, reaching into his pocket. ‘We've got another survey for you.’

  ‘Really? Let me see!’

  The professor reached out as eagerly as a child receiving a birthday present, almost snatching it from Manx's hand. As he'd done before in the classroom, he stopped all else and kept them waiting as he read it, scanning the page with ferocious intent.

  ‘Interesting,’ he murmured when he was done. Carefully smoothing out the paper, he folded it neatly and tucked it into the inside front pocket of his lab coat. ‘Very interesting. Follow me!’ His tone changed abruptly between the two remarks, the introspection swapped in an instant for what seemed his usual, manic energy. Exchanging glances, Manx and Solace led on, with Electra, Jess and Evan bunched behind.

  Lukin reached the door and held it open for them, ushering them onwards.

  ‘Just through here!’ he said.

  Solace never saw the other side of the threshold. No sooner had her foot touched the join between the rooms than her head began to swim. Fire lanced through her. She swooned and hit the floor hard, like a piece of dropped meat.

  Thud.

  ‘She's awake.’

  Solace groaned. Her eyes were gummed shut and her tongue felt rubbery and oversized, comic in its fatness. She couldn't even lick her lips.

  ‘Should I sedate her again?’ A second voice. It sounded like Lukin, but with certain subtle differences. Or were her ears malfunctioning, too? With all the strangeness wrapping and warping her body, it was too hard to tell; harder still to trust her senses. Where is everyone? she thought frantically, unable to move. What felt like broad leather straps were pressed tightly across her forehead, legs and torso, as though she were Frankenstein's monster bolted to the slab. It wasn't a pretty metaphor. She shuddered.

  ‘No,’ said the first, decidedly unfamiliar voice. ‘Let her come to. I think it's time that she and I had a chat.’

  ‘As you will, my lord,’ said the not-quite-Lukin.

  Solace heard movement. Someone was standing very, very close to her, close enough that she could feel their breath on her cheek, smell the rank warmth that emanated from it, meat-laden and foul, like a dog with rotten teeth. She would have recoiled, but her restraints made it impossible. Instead, she grimaced. The
stranger laughed, low and rounded. For some reason, the image of Lukin's lab bench came to mind; in particular, the strange, shimmering chemicals, bubbles popping in their centres with muted, viscous – but nonetheless threatening – silence.

  ‘You are,’ the stranger continued, whispering now, ‘exactly what I want. I've been searching for you, far longer and farther away than the deep night from dawn. You call to me like the moon. That makes me… tidal. An undertow. A silvery riptide, bearing you away. There's nobody like you, Solace. Or like me. But I can hear the tremor of your heart. You're scared. You shouldn't be. I wouldn't like that. Please don't be scared, little Solace.’

  Something – Solace hoped like hell it was a hand – caressed her cheek. The voice was husky without dryness, deep without depth. It was a voice designed to speak in murmurs, low and full of secrets – and something else, a hint of otherness that made her skin prickle in warning. Desperately, she wanted to cry out, yell, say anything to break the frightening pause that followed his awful touch, but her body wouldn't obey. She didn't know what was happening, couldn't see. Nothing would respond.

  It was then she remembered the faceless man, and almost choked. It's him. The assumption was irrational, she knew, and yet even her Vampire Cynic was silent. This man, whoever he was, had followed her from the group home, down the alley, through the city and into her dreams, all the while remaining invisible – and now he'd caught her. With supreme effort, Solace forced her tongue into gear and gasped out a question.

  ‘Who are… you?’

  Horrifyingly, she didn't sound like herself: the words were thick, slurred, almost guttural, as though they'd been bruised by dint of passage through her suddenly clumsy lips.

  The faceless man laughed again. Bubble, bubble. ‘A part of you already knows my name. As for the rest… you'll understand soon enough. Or remember.’

  Definitely male, she decided, seeking comfort in things she already knew. In a bid to gain some kind of handle on the situation, she forced herself to focus on his words, no matter how much they disturbed her, and despite the strength of her revulsion to his presence.