Happily Never After

by Kristen Duvall

  Rat-a-tat-tat…

  Paul didn’t think so. He kissed Isme atop her head, and listened as the tapping came closer, and closer.

  Rat-a-tat-tat…

  Rat-a-tat-tat…

  Rat-a…

  About Adam Millard

  Adam Millard is the author of thirteen novels and more than a hundred short stories, which can be found in various collections and anthologies. Probably best known for his post-apocalyptic fiction, Adam also writes fantasy/horror for children. He created the character Peter Crombie, Teenage Zombie just so he had something decent to read to his son at bedtime. Adam also writes Bizarro fiction for several publishers, who enjoy his tales of flesh-eating clown-beetles and rabies-infected derrieres so much that they keep printing them. His Dead series has been the filling in a Stephen King/Bram Stoker sandwich on Amazon’s bestsellers chart, and the translation rights have recently sold to German publisher, Voodoo Press. When he’s not writing about the nightmarish creatures battling for supremacy in his head, Adam writes for This Is Horror, whose columnists include Shaun Hutson, Simon Bestwick and Simon Marshall-Jones.

  SmallMarg And The Star-Heart

  by Jax Goss

  The children called it the Thing. The adults, when they spoke of it at all, called it the Time. The children, as children do, spoke of it in whispers away from the ears of adults. They spoke of it like legend, folklore, history, truth.

  The adults never spoke of it at all, unless they had to, and then with awkwardness and shame, as though by bringing it up, by naming it, they would bring it back.

  The children played amongst its wreckage, the piles of metal, some still smoking though years had passed. Mountains of rubble with treasures in them. Treasures, you understand, for a child, for a child’s idea of treasure is very different to a grown-up’s.

  She was the smallest of the Ones Who Played. Her legs were shorter than the others, and she spent much time asking them to slow down and wait up. They seldom listened; if she wanted to run with them, she had to learn to keep up. Her second oldest brother would sometimes wait for her, laughing, needling, encouraging her: “Come onnn.”

  She had short legs, and pigtails, and freckles across her nose. She got sunburnt too easily, too quickly – practically a sin since the Thing had come. There were stories of a substance that had stopped the sun from burning. The Layer of Oz One. But the Thing had burnt it up, or at least, enough of it that now there was no protection, and they ran fully covered, all their skin, their eyes, like tiny radioactive suits scampering and clambering around on the rubble.

  With all the protection, she burnt anyway. She would come home, her skin red and peeling, and her mother would weep, and rub lotion into her, and beg her to stay inside like the Good Children did. She would promise solemnly to do so, for she hated to see her mother cry, but when the Ones Who Played would come calling for her brother, she would sneak out too, for the promise of treasure and adventure was too great to ignore.

  It was overcast the day they found It. The Pilot. One boy, one of the oldest, tripped over a bar, and reached out his hand to catch himself, pressed against a button none of them had recognised as a button, and there was a hiss of air, a whoosh of depressurisation, and then, with a squealing of torn metal, the whole thing shook and moved and opened up.

  They all drew back for a moment, glancing at each other, trying to gauge whether it was okay to be scared. She was too curious to be afraid. So she crept up to the hole and looked inside. In the midst of the wires and steel she could see a suit - humanoid, but definitely alien.

  “H-hello?” she said to it.

  One of the other girls laughed. “It’s been decades, it won’t still be a-…”

  She was interrupted by a raucous noise. The other children all ran, scattering into the heaps of rubble. She stayed. Her curiosity was stronger than her fear. After a few moments, she recognised it as coughing, or something like it. There was a long silence. Then she heard a voice. It was speaking in another language, one she did not know.

  She approached again. “Um. Hello? We don’t… Do you speak English?”

  “Engl-issss” the Pilot hissed. There was a long moment. Then the Pilot spoke again.

  “Eearth. Planet 3 of System 569 in the Borath region. Inhabitants: Human. Primitive technology, no known galactical affiliates. Greetings.”

  “Hi. What’s your name?”

  “Identifier: Halimorphaxistenthorpogalmanstiyak 5.”

  She blinked. “May I call you Yak5? I am Margaret Susanna O’Flannagan-Hughes, but they call me SmallMarg.”

  “Designation acceptable.”

  She giggled then. “You talk funny.”

  The Pilot was silent for a second. “Do you mean to imply my speech patterns appear unorthodox? One moment.”

  There was some whirring and beeping.

  “There, that should be better.”

  She nodded. “Yes, now you sound like a person.”

  “I am not a person. I am a star-rider. I crashed, and my systems went into stasis until you released me. I must make repairs before I can get home.”

  “You destroyed the whole world.”

  “I… what?”

  She nodded. “They don’t talk about it. But there were other things. People travelled through the air, and could talk to people on the other side of the world. They say hundreds of people would live in a single building. Now there are only a few hundred left, and no one remembers how to do those things any more. The grownups don’t talk about it. But we know. When you came, the world ended, and only we were left.”

  There was a long sad, silence, and when the Pilot spoke again, there was something like grief in its voice. “I regret that deeply. Earth was on the cusp... I must have set you back so far. I can remedy some of it. The damage to the environment. I can restore the ozone, and the weather as I leave.”

  Weather. It was a thing of legend. Water that came from the sky, falling, free for anyone, instead of needing to be mined and siphoned from underground streams.

  “I need something. Can you help me?”

  She nodded, with the absolute assurance of a child.

  “I’ll need the star-heart of my vessel, which appears to be missing.”

  “Star-heart?”

  “It will look like a jewel. A shining object.”

  “Ohh.” She crouched. “It is Gone.”

  “Gone?”

  She nodded. “Yes. The Mayor took it. It was very shiny, and beautiful, and he wanted it, so he took it.”

  “Can we get it back?”

  “It is Gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  She frowned. She did not understand what he meant. Everyone knew once something or someone was Gone, there was no where, there was no coming back from Gone. She stood up, and pointed to the big building on the horizon.

  “You know. GONE.”

  “It is in the building?”

  “The Mayor takes what he wants. And once it is Gone, it stays Gone. Like your star-heart. Like my father. Nothing comes back from Gone. Everyone knows that.”

  There was a pause. “I don’t.” There was something in the Pilot’s voice, just for a second, something like determination and anger that made her pause.

  “SmallMarg? I need you to be very brave for me. If you can do it, you will help your world. If I can get the star-heart back, I can restore your ozone and weather patterns. The sun will not be as poisonous as it is now. It will rain again. I am very sorry for the damage I did. I can’t fix your society, but I can repair the environmental damage, which may help.”

  She nodded. “That would be nice.”

  “But you’ll need to go into that building and bring me back my star-heart.”

  She shook her head. It was impossible.

  “SmallMarg. This is not impossible. I will tell you how.”

  oo00oo

  She stood at the base of Gone and looked up. It went up forever into the sky. The Pilot had said that there were seven floors. She did
not know how he had known that; no one who went into Gone ever came out, she knew that. He had also known the star-heart was on the seventh floor.

  She was not sure that, if she went in, she would come out. She was afraid, of course, and she wished she had told her mother where she was going. But it was too late for that, and she couldn’t refuse. If he was right, she could save the world. Bring back the Weather and the Oz One. She couldn’t say no.

  So she moved forward, and followed the building around the side. There were big open doors at the front, with an empty lobby inside. Sometimes the Ones Who Played would dare each other to run up to the doors, so they had all peeked inside and seen the large front desk, dusty and abandoned. But The Pilot had said not to go in the front doors. There was another on the side.

  When she got there, she pushed gently on it, and it creaked open, just as The Pilot had said it would. He’d said something about how the “security system appears to be disarmed”. She’d thought but not said that there was no need for security on a building everyone was too afraid to go near.

  She slipped inside before she could think about what she was doing. It smelt like dust and abandonment. In front of her was a metal staircase leading up. Her footstep rung out on the first step, loud, too loud, and she froze, and waited for a million years to see if someone would come. Nothing continued to happen, so she slipped her shoes off, and began padding as quietly as she could up the stairs to the first landing.

  Here the door to the next set of stairs was locked. The Pilot had said that might happen, and told her what to do. She peeked into the corridor, and saw a long row of abandoned doors. She wondered if there was anyone here. It seemed empty. The Pilot had said there would be another set of stairs somewhere, one without doors, that was more open and dangerous, but would “work in a pinch”. She wasn’t sure what a pinch was.

  She took a deep breath and walked out into the horribly exposed corridor. Silence roared in her ears, and she walked as quickly and quietly as she could along it, until she found the staircase he had said would be there. She walked up it as fast as she could, peeking out carefully onto the landing of the third floor as she did so.

  She was just thinking that this was not as hard as she thought it would be when she heard a noise. It was a low mournful noise, a terrible, sad, heartbreaking noise, and she jumped back down the stairs a little at the sound. After a few moments, the noise continued, but nothing else happened, so she peeked around the stairwell and down the corridor. There was nothing to see.

  She walked along it slowly, quietly, following the sound. It took her to a door. The door was closed, so she rested her ear against it, listening to the mournful sound with her eyes closed. It sounded like loneliness. It went on for a long time, and then stopped, suddenly. She heard the noise of someone standing up, and pushed away from the door, ready to run. She wasn’t fast enough, and the door swung open, revealing a tiny old shrivelled man. He blinked at her for a moment, while she gaped at him in return.

  “Who-” he began, in confusion.

  “Please-” she said at the exact same moment.

  They both stopped, and then the little man grabbed her arm, and pulled her inside, pulling the door shut behind her.

  “Who are you?” he creaked at her, his voice old and unused. “What are you doing here? No one comes here.”

  “I’m SmallMarg,” she replied. She was afraid now, afraid the man would tell the Mayor she was here, afraid he would hurt her, make it so she could never get the star-heart and go home.

  He must have seen how afraid she was, because his face softened. His skin was frail, like paper, she thought he must be hundreds of years old. But when he smiled, his eyes smiled too, and made him a lot less scary.

  “Don’t be scared, child. It has just been so long since anyone came here. I thought there was no one left in the world. And then you walk in, as if it’s nothing, and listen at my door. It is strange. Now tell me, why are you here?”

  “I came for the star-heart.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

  “The what?” the man asked.

  She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I think it’s meant to be a secret.”

  “A secret star-heart? What is a star-heart?”

  She began to cry, sitting down in a chair nearby. She sobbed, her little shoulders shaking. “I’ve ruined everything now. I was supposed to come and get it and then the Pilot would fix everything and bring back the Weather, and now you’ve caught me, and you’re going to make me be Gone too like everything else in here, and my mommy doesn’t even know where I am and I’ve messed it all up.”

  The man looked shocked for a moment, as if he’d forgotten how to deal with someone else’s emotions. Then he sat down beside her and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.

  “There, there. I am sure it is not as bad as all that. Let me help you. I have lived here for a long time. If what you are looking for is in this building, I am sure I can help.”

  SmallMarg sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She turned to him and said, “But, aren’t you Gone too?”

  “Gone?” The man was puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Everyone knows. If you go into Gone you never come out.”

  “This building is Gone?”

  SmallMarg nodded. The man frowned.

  “Certainly, I don’t go out any more, but that’s because I thought everything was destroyed. I have a garden in one of the other rooms that supplies my needs. I’ve not been to the upper floors in a long time. The elevators don’t work any more, and my legs are not what they once were.”

  “But what about the Mayor?”

  “The Mayor?”

  SmallMarg looked at the man like he was crazy. “Yes. He is in charge. When the Thing came, he took over, told everyone what to do. Everyone was grateful. But then he got mean, and started taking people, and they were Gone. And then he took things too – special things, things he liked. No one could stop him. All the things were Gone. They came here, and then never came back.”

  The man frowned for a moment, and then he laughed, suddenly. “Oh! You mean The General. Yes, he was a bit forceful. He lived on the seventh floor. He died, child. Many years ago. You mean people out there, they still fear him?”

  She nodded. “The grownups don’t talk about it, but we tell the stories. Everyone knows to stay away from Gone.”

  “This building?”

  She nodded.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because, I…” she fell silent.

  “Ah. It was a secret. Well let me see. You said something about a star-heart? I don’t know what that is, but I would guess given what else you’ve told me that the General took something important, and now you’ve come to find it?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, if it’s here it will be in his apartment. Seventh floor, number 6. He did like knick-knacks. I don’t think any of them were particularly valuable though. Except maybe the things he used as tax during the Time. In any case, that’s where it will be, this star-heart of yours. If it’s here at all. I can’t come up with you, but you should have no trouble getting it. Just be careful on floor six. There used to be something there. Some kind of animal I think. I haven’t heard it in a while, but it may still be lurking about, living on rodents.”

  She stood. “Thank you for your help.”

  She started towards the door. Then she paused.

  “What was the noise? The thing I heard?”

  “This.” He picked up a strange object and held it to his lips. The noise came out again.

  “What is it?”

  “A bassoon. I learnt to play it when I was very young. All the songs I remember are sad though. I suppose that’s fitting. It may be the only working musical instrument in the world now.”

  She smiled. “I liked it.”

  As she walked towards the stairs, she heard the man’s bassoon start up again.

  oo00oo

  S
he climbed to the fourth and fifth floors with no accident, but as she approached the sixth, she remembered what the man had said, and began to get very nervous. She climbed the stairs slower and slower, but it didn’t matter, she still reached the sixth floor before she felt ready for it.

  She peered around the corner into the corridor. Everything seemed still and silent. She knew she should just hightail it up to the next floor as fast as possible, but she was very curious about this animal the bassoon-man had mentioned.

  Maybe I’ll just take a small walk, she thought, even as she knew that was crazy. Get the star-heart, get out. That was what she should do. She was congratulating herself on her sensible decision even as her feet carried her down the corridor. She listened for a moment at each door, but all was silent. Then, just as she was convincing herself that it was time to go, there was nothing here, she heard a whine. It was pitiful, and didn’t sound dangerous, just sad and sore. It came from two doors down.

  Part of her brain was screaming at her to leave, now, go up to the seventh floor, do what she came here for. But another part knew that if whatever-it-was was in pain or in trouble, she should help. So she opened the door.

  Whatever-it-was was crouched under a table in the kitchen. It was dark, and dust hung in the air. The thing growled a mewling painful growl. She could see matted fur, and two shining eyes. It took up the whole space beneath the table.

  There were no more animals, not like this. There were stories about places where animals had been, before the Thing. People had kept them, in their homes, or in special places called Zoos. She’d once found a book with pictures, and had spent a long time poring over them.

  This did not look like something that would have been kept in a home. This looked more like a Zoo Animal. She crouched. She did not know how you were supposed to deal with animals, so she treated it like she would a small hurt child.

  “Hi. Are you okay?”

  The thing growled again, but stayed where it was. It seemed more afraid than malevolent.