"What happens to the rest of the body?" I asked, wrapped in my thoughts, but Longhorn did not reply, for out of the back room, at that moment, stepped the funeral director, a very imposing man. Most noticeable about him was, however, not his size, but his colours: they were as bright as the complicated patterns of the boxes. His chest ranged from green to lemon, while the knobs of his antennae were as yellow as clementines. He bowed elegantly, and was surrounded by a cloud of scent which I recognised only after a moment: it was undoubtedly musk.
He became absorbed, with Longhorn, in a conversation conducted in low voices, in conclusion of which one of the boxes was chosen from the shelf, round and grass-green, with sky-blue crescent moons.
When the funeral director turned to tap at the cash register, I went up to Longhorn and asked once more: "What happens to the rest of the body?"
I was a little startled at Longhorn's look, for it betrayed irritation, from which I understood immediately that my question was unseemly. All the same, I waited for his answer.
"Do you really want to know?" he asked.
"Why not? I am interested in everything," I said with some hauteur, and when he continued in silence, I asked again, with real curiosity, "Is there something secret about it, then?"
"Very well," said Longhorn, somewhat coolly. Suddenly he stepped up to the funeral director and whispered a couple of words to him, pointing in my direction.
The funeral director looked at me strangely, from head to foot, bowed once more in his cultivated way, and asked me to follow him. I looked interrogatively at Longhorn, and he growled: "Go on, I'll stay here."
The funeral director had already reached the back room and was waiting for me, silent but smiling. He opened a door leading to a badly lit stairway, which smelt of cellars and fish; or that is what I thought then. The funeral director gestured for me to walk in front of him, but when I shook my head he stepped past me into the gloom. My curiosity had now completely disappeared, but I followed the strange figure lower and lower down the steep and uneven stairs, regretting my frivolous wish for information. The deeper we went, the more uncomfortable I felt, above all because of the increasingly strong smell. Finally I stopped, intending to return to ground level without delay, but as it turned out the funeral director was now behind me, so close that his yellow chest was nearly touching my back and his musky vapours mixed with still odder scents. I continued my descent unhappily, for one way or another the man was pushing me forward, gently enough, it is true, but so firmly that it was no longer impossible for me to retreat.
"The fish is rotten," I thought, but the smell of decay had already grown to a stench that filled my lungs with nausea. I scarcely realised that we had arrived in a great vault, and that it was filled with an extraordinary bustling.
I could no longer see my guide anywhere. I felt faint, and pressed my back against the damp stone wall. I already realised that I had been brought into a sepulchre. Before me on the earthen floor lay carcasses without number, but about them was such a ceaseless bustle that at times it looked as if there were still some degree of life in them. Around me moved dozens of creatures that were reminiscent in their appearance of the funeral director, but whose clothing was ― if possible ― still more brilliant. The more closely I examined them and their work, the more they reminded me of the toil of burying beetles.
I had descended into the Hades of Tainaron. I had asked: "What happens to the bodies?," and the answer to my question was now before my eyes. One of the most prosaic and indispensable of the functions of the city of Tainaron was carried out here, shielded from the gaze of passers-by; but as I looked at their toil, my horror gave way and made space for impartial examination, even respect.
I spoke of Hades and a sepulchre, but in reality the space in which I found myself served the opposite purpose: it was a dining room and a nursery. Those who toiled here were not merely workers; they were also, above all, mothers. Now I could see that around every larger form flocked a swarm of smaller creatures, its offspring. As they did the work that had to be done for life in this city to be at all possible, these workers were at the same time feeding their heirs; and if the way in which they did it was not to my taste, where would I find more convincing proof of the never-broken alliance between destruction and florescence, birth and death?
So: there was a carcass, of which one could no longer detect who or what it had been when it was alive, so decomposed were its features. But I no longer felt sick, although I saw one of the mothers poking about in its pile of dross. For that was where the mother sought nourishment for her heirs, her snout buried in the stinking carcass, and look! There glistened a dark droplet, which one of the little ones drank, and after a moment the second received its share, and the third; no one was forgotten.
And here, then, was their work: to distil pure nectar from such filth, to extract from the slimy liquid of death health, strength and new life.
How could I ever complain about what took place in the Hades of Tainaron. Truly, it is a laboratory compared to which even the greatest achievements of the alchemists are put to shame; but all that is done there is what the earth achieves every year when it builds a new spring from and on what rotted and died in the autumn.
"Have you seen enough?" someone asked behind me. I turned and saw Longhorn, who was standing at the mouth of the corridor, looking at me in a troubled way. I do not know whether his expression was caused merely by the stench, which my own nose hardly sensed any longer, or whether it was real grief. For his friend had just died, and I had hardly spared a thought for his feelings. But when our eyes met, I, too, felt the bite of suffering.
The kindness of his eyes! How had I never noticed it before. And they were so dazzlingly black, so wise and alive.. But in fact I have seen just such a gaze before, and more than once. I have seen it ― do not be shocked ― in your eyes, too, different as they are. I have encountered it ― or seen it pass me by ― among acquaintances and strangers, at parties, in department stores, in my own home, in trains, on stations and in lecture halls, shops and cafes; in summer, in the great lime trees in the park, where cast-iron benches have been placed for the citizens; and I am sure that at unguarded moments it has also resided in my own eyes.
That it ever disappears! It was the impossible, and unbearable, thing that, as I turned to look behind me and met Longhorn's eyes, was relentless in us both, and the strange meal we were following as onlookers offered no solution.
The soundless glitter of immense treasures ― That it could be extinguished and sink into the cold mass of raw material is if it had not been anything more than the moisture of lachrymal fluid on the surface of the cornea..
"Come away," said Longhorn, with unexpected softness, and we left Hades without looking at each other again.
The Ride of the Gabbleratchet
FROM The Modern World, PUBLISHED AS Dangerous Offspring IN THE UNITED STATES
STEPH SWAINSTON
I WAS STANDING on the cold Osseous steppe, where the horse people come from. It was twilight and silent; the sky darkening blue with few stars. Around me stretched a flat jadeite plain of featureless grass. A marsh with dwarf willow trees surrounded a shallow river; deep clumps of moss soaking with murky water and haunted by midges. Far on the other side of the river a silhouette line of hazy, scarcely visible hills marked the end of the plain.
In the distance I saw a village of the Equinne's black and red corrugated metal barns, looking like plain blocks. Between them was one of their large communal barbecues, a stand on a blackened patch of earth where they roast vegetables. A freezing mist oozed out between the barns to lie low over the grassy tundra.
I couldn't see any Equinnes, ominously because they spend most of their time outdoors and only sleep in their barns. They're so friendly they normally race to greet strangers.
The Vermiform had reassembled ― she stood a head taller than me. She said, "We told Membury and the Equinnes that even when the Gabbleratchet vanishes they must not come o
ut for a few hours."
"Where is it now?" I asked. The Vermiform pointed up to the sky above the hills. I strained to make out a faint grey fleck, moving under the stars at great speed. It turned and seemed to lengthen into a column. I gasped, seeing creatures chasing wildly through the air, weaving around each other.
"It has already seen us," the Vermiform chorused. Worms began to slough off her randomly and burrow into the grass. "When I say run, run. It won't be able to stop. Don't run too soon or it will change course. Be swift. Nothing survives it. If it catches you we won't find one drop of blood left. Beware, it also draws people in."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't look at it for too long. It will mesmerize you."
It was an indistinguishable, broiling crowd, a long train of specks racing along, weaving stitches in and out of the sky. Their movement was absolutely chaotic. They vanished, reappeared a few kilometres on, for the length of three hundred or so metres, and vanished again. I blinked, thinking my eyes were tricking me.
"It is Shifting between here and some other world," said the Vermiform, whose lower worms were increasingly questing about in the grass.
The hunt turned towards us in a curve; its trail receded into the distance. Closer, at its fore, individual dots resolved as jet-black horses and hounds. The horses were larger than the greatest destriers and between, around, in front of their flying hooves ran hounds bigger than wolves. Black manes and tails streamed and tattered, unnaturally long. The dogs' eyes burned, reflecting starlight, the horses' coats shone. There were countless animals ― or what looked like animals ― acting as one being, possessed of only one sense: to kill. Hooves scraped the air, claws raked as they flew. They reared like the froth on the wave, and behind them the arc of identical horses and hounds stretched in their wake.
They were shrieking like a myriad newborn babies. Dulled by distance it sounded almost plaintive. Closer, their size grew, their screaming swelled. As I stared at them, they changed. Yellow-white flickers showed here and there in the tight pack. All at different rates but quickly, their hides were rotting and peeling away. Some were already skeletons, empty ribs and bone legs. The hounds' slobbering mouths decayed to black void maws and sharp white teeth curving back to the ears. Above them, the horses transformed between articulated skeletons and full-fleshed beasts. Their skulls nodded on vertebral columns as they ran. Closer, their high, empty eyesockets drew me in. As I watched, the skeleton rebuilt to a stallion ― rotten white eyes; glazed recently
dead eyes; aware and living eyes rolled to focus on us.
The horse's flanks dulled and festered; strips dropped off its forelegs and vanished. Bones galloped, then sinews appeared binding them, muscle plumped, veins sprang forth branching over them. Skin regrew; it was whole again, red-stained hooves gleaming. The hounds' tongues lolled, their ears flapped as they rushed through hissing displaced air. All cycled randomly from flesh to bone. Tails lashed like whips, the wind whistled through their rib cages, claws flexed on paw bones like dice. Then fur patched them over and the loose skin under their bellies again rippled in the slipstream. Horses' tails billowed. Their skulls' empty gaps between front and back teeth turned blindly in the air. The Gabbleratchet charged headlong.
I shouted, "They're rotting into skeletons and back!"
"We said they're not stable in time!"
"Fucking ― what are they? What are they doing?"
"We wish we knew." The Vermiform sank down into the ground until just her head was visible, like a toadstool, and then only the top half of her head, her eyes turned up to the sky. Her worms were grubbing between the icy soil grains and leaving me. They kept talking, but their voices were fewer, so faint I could scarcely hear. "The Gabbleratchet was old before the first brick was laid in Epsilon, or Vista or even Hacilith; aeons ago when Rhydanne were human and Awian precursors could fly ― "
"Stop! Please! I don't understand! You've seen it before, haven't you?"
"Our first glimpse of the Gabbleratchet was as long before the dawn of life on your world, as the dawn of life on your world is before the present moment."
Never dying, never tiring, gorged with bloodlust, chasing day and night. The Gabbleratchet surged on, faster than anything I had ever seen. "How do you think I can outrun that?"
"You can't. But you are more nimble; you must outmanoeuvre it."
I saw Cyan on one of the leading horses! She rode its broad back, decaying ribs. Her blonde hair tussled. Her fingers clutched the prongs of its vertebrae, her arms stiff. She looked sick and worn with terror and exhilaration. I tried to focus on her horse; its withers were straps of dark pink muscle and its globe eyes set tight in pitted flesh. The hounds jumped and jostled each other running around its plunging hooves.
On the backs of many other horses rode skeletons human and non-human, and corpses of various ages. They were long dead of fear or hunger but still riding, held astride by their wind-dried hands. Some horses had many sets of finger-bones entwined in their manes; some carried arms bumping from tangled hands, but the rest of the body had fallen away. They had abducted hundreds over the millennia.
The Gabbleratchet arced straight above me and plunged down vertically. White flashes in the seething storm were the teeth of those in lead. The moonlight caught eyes and hooves in tiny pulses of reflection.
I had never seen anything fly vertically downward. It shouldn't be able to. It wasn't obeying any physical rules.
Cyan clung on. I wondered if she was still sane.
"Run!" shouted the Vermiform.
The Gabbleratchet's wild joy seized me. I wanted to chase and catch. I wanted the bursting pride of success, the thrill of killing! Their power transfixed me. I loved them! I hated them! I wanted to be one! I tasted blood in my mouth and I accepted it eagerly. My open smile became a snarl.
The dogs' muzzles salivated and their baying tongues curled. They were just above my head. I saw the undersides of the hooves striking down.
"Run!" screamed the Vermiform.
I jumped forward, sprinting at full pelt. The hunt's howling burst the air. Its gale blew my hair over my eyes and I glanced back, into the wind to clear it.
The lead beasts plunged into the ground behind me, and through it. The air and ground surface distorted out around them in a double ripple, as if it was gelatinous. The whole hunt trammelled straight down into the earth and forked sparks leapt up around it, crackling out among the grass. It was a solid crush of animal bodies and bone. I saw flashes of detail: fur between paw pads, dirty scapulae, suppurating viscera.
The corpses the horses were carrying hit the ground and stayed on top. They broke up, some fell to dust and the creatures following went through them too. Cyan's horse was next; it plunged headfirst into the earth, throwing her against the ground hard. She lay lifeless. The stampede of manes and buttocks continued through her. The column shrank; the last few plummeted at the ground and disappeared into it. Two final violet sparks sidewound across the plain, ceased. All was eerily quiet.
The Vermiform emerged beside me but its voices were awed. "It'll take a minute to turn around. Quick!"
I ran to the area the Gabbleratchet had passed through, expecting to see a dent in the frozen soil but not one of the grass blades had been bent; the only marks were my own footprints. The hairs on my arms stood up and the air smelt chemical, the same as when I once visited a peel tower that had been struck by lightning. There was no reek of corruption or animals, just the tang of spark-split air.
I turned Cyan over carefully. She had been flung against the ground at high speed ― faster than I could fly ― and I thought she was dead, but she was breathing.
"I can't see any broken bones. Not that it matters if that thing's driven her mad."
"Pick her up," said the Vermiform.
I did so and Cyan jolted awake, gasped, open-mouthed. "Jant? What are you doing here?"
"Just keep still." The Vermiform sprang up from under my feet and wrapped around us. More worms appeare
d, adding to the thread, beginning at my ankles then up to my waist, binding us tightly together.
Cyan waggled her head at the deserted tundra. She screamed, "Do you have to follow me everywhere? Even into my nightmares?"
The worms nearest her face grouped together into a hand and slapped her.
Cyan spluttered, "How dare ― !"
The hand slapped her again, harder.
"Thanks," I said.
A horse burst from the ground, bent forelegs first. It pawed the grass without touching it. Its enormous rear hooves paced apart. Long hair feathered over them; its fetlock bones swayed as it put its weight on them and reared.
Cyan wailed, "What does it want?"
Its fore hooves gouged the air, its long head turned from side to side. It couldn't understand what we were. It sensed us, with whatever senses it had, and it shrieked at us. It could not know its own power nor regulate its voice to our level. It gave us its full unearthly scream, right into my face.
The Vermiform tightened around my legs.
Its tongue curled, its jaw widened, it was bone; no tongue but the jaw dotted with holes for blood vessels and peaks for ligament connections. Its incisors clamped together, the veins appeared running into the bone, the muscles flowered and rotting horseflesh became a whole beast again. It turned its mad, rolling eye on me. Sparks crackled over us, tingling. Hounds and horses began springing up around us. No soil stuck to them; they had treated the earth as if it was another form of air.
The horse arched its neck. I looked up into the convoluted rolled cartilage in its nasal passages. Its jutting nose bones thrust towards me, its jaw wide to bite my face. Slab teeth in living gums came down ―
― The Vermiform snatched us away ―
Its coils withdrew and dropped me on a hard surface. I sat up and crowed like a cock, "Hoo-hoo! That was a neat move, Worm-fest!"
The New Weird Page 29