Shadows 4
Page 7
"I hope you're joking," Wells said.
"Not at all. It sounds like paradise compared to this country. If someone took charge now I wouldn't care who it was."
Suddenly, Wells remembered his dream: he had been here at his desk and everyone around him had been speaking English, yet he couldn't understand a word. He felt uncomfortable, vulnerable, and at lunchtime he went strolling to avoid more of that sort of thing. It didn't matter where he went—anywhere but here. Before long he saw the sky above the Mediterranean, two shades of piercing blue divided by the razor of the horizon. When he returned to the gray streets he found he was late for work; he couldn't recall having wandered so far.
After dinner he found a broadcast of Greek music. A large scotch and the firelight helped him drift. Soon the lapping of flames, and their warmth, seemed very like Greek sun and sea—though as he began to doze, losing fragments of the music, the wavering of shadows on the walls made them look to be streaming. Perhaps that was why he dreamed he was sitting in a rainstorm. But when he woke, the rain was in the room.
Of course it was just the sound, coming from the speakers. Had the broadcast slipped awry, into static? He thought he could hear water splashing into puddles on linoleum, yet the dial on the waveband was inches away from the broadcast of two nights ago. He had to turn the knob still farther before the noise faded.
He slapped the tuner's switch irritably, then stumped upstairs to bed. At least he might get a good night's sleep, if he didn't lie there brooding about the stereo. He'd paid enough for it; the shop could damn well make it right. Tonight his bedroom seemed even colder, and damp. Still, the whiskey kept him warm, and drowned his thoughts. Soon he was asleep.
When he woke, the first thing he heard was the shifting of rubble. Something must be up the hill, in the ruined factory—a pack of dogs, perhaps, though it sounded larger. Or were the sounds downstairs, in his house? Certainly the sound of rain was.
He hadn't unplugged the stereo. His drowsy swipe must not have switched it off properly. Impatient to deal with it before he woke fully and couldn't get back to sleep, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. As soon as his bare foot touched the floor he cried out, recoiling.
He writhed on the bed, trying to twist the agony out of his foot. He had cramp, that was all; the floor hadn't really felt like drowned linoleum. When he peered at it, the carpet looked exactly as it should.
He stormed downstairs. The dark, or his inability to wake, made the empty rooms look impossibly large. The plaster above the staircase looked not only bare but glistening. Ignoring all this, he strode into the living room.
The stereo dial was lit. The room was crowded with sound, a chorus of rain in a derelict house. In the distance there was another sound, a chanting of voices that sounded worshipful, terrified, desperate for mercy. That dismayed him more than anything else he'd heard. He pulled the plug from the wall socket and made himself go straight back to bed, where he lay sleepless for a long time. Somewhere in the house a tap was dripping.
Lack of sleep kept him on edge at work. He could hardly face the youngest of his clients. Though she had failed at interview after interview, she was almost superstitiously convinced that she would find a job. "Why can't I have one of the strikers' jobs?" she demanded, and he couldn't answer. He sent her to another interview, and wished her luck. He couldn't rob her of her faith, which must be all that kept her going.
He was glad he'd reached the weekend. When he arrived home, having visited Greece on the way, he made a leisurely dinner, then sat by the fire and listened to records. Somehow he didn't want to use the radio.
He couldn't relax. Of course it was only the play of firelight and shadow, but the room seemed to tremble on the edge of total darkness. As he drank more whiskey in search of calm, he felt that the music was straining to reach him, drifting away. In the quieter passages he was distracted by the irregular dripping of a tap, he couldn't tell which. When he felt he might be able to sleep, he trudged upstairs. Tomorrow he would go walking in the country, or take the tuner back to the shop, or both.
But on Saturday it was raining. Perhaps that was just as well; he'd dreamed he was walking in the country, only to realize that the walk was a daydream that had lured him somewhere different and far worse. He lay in bed watching the sunlight, which was rediscovering the pattern of the ancient wallpaper. Then he flung himself out of bed, for the rain he could hear was not outside the house.
Though the stereo wasn't plugged in, the sounds filled the speakers: a gust of wind splattered rain across sagging wallpaper, waterlogged plaster collapsed, a prolonged juicy noise. He dismantled the stereo, which fell silent as soon as he unplugged the speakers, then he stormed out to find a taxi.
At last he found one, speeding down the terraced slopes as if it wasn't worth stopping. It took him back to his house, where the driver stared into space while Wells manhandled the stereo into the taxi. By the time Wells reached the shop he was ready to lose his temper, especially when the engineer returned a few minutes later and told him that nothing was wrong.
Wells controlled himself and insisted on being taken into the repair shop. "This is what's wrong," he said, tuning the stereo to the unidentifiable station. The engineer gazed at him, smugly patient, and Wells could only look away, for Radio Prague came through loud and clear, with no background noise at all.
Wells roamed the shop rather desperately, tuning stereos in an attempt to find the rain. The engineer took pity on him, or determined to get rid of him. "It may be a freak reception. You may only be able to pick it up in the area where you live."
At once Wells felt much better. He'd heard of odder things, of broadcasts that possessed people's hearing aids, telephones, even refrigerators. To the engineer's disgust, he left the stereo to be overhauled; then he went strolling in the hills, where spring was just beginning. The moist grass was flecked with rainbows, the sun seemed almost as bright as Greece.
That night he was surprised how alone he felt without the stereo. It must be its absence which made the house seem still emptier. At least he could relax with a book, if only he could locate the dripping tap. Perhaps it was in the bathroom, where the light bulb—years old, no doubt—had failed. The bathroom walls glistened in the dark.
Soon he went to bed, for he was shivering. No doubt the cold and the damp would get worse until he attended to them. In bed his introverted warmth lulled him. A slide show of Greek landscapes played in his head. Starts of sleep interrupted the slides.
When uninterrupted sleep came it was darker, so that he couldn't see his way on the street along which he was creeping. At least the rain had stopped, and there was silence except for the muffled drumming of his heart. When his feet slipped on rubble, the shrill clatter sounded vindictively loud. His panic had made him forget what he mustn't do. There was a car a few yards ahead of him, a vague hump in the darkness; if he crouched behind that he might be safe. But he lost his balance as he reached it, and tried to support himself against its blubbery side. No, it wasn't a car, for something like a head rose out of it at once, panting thickly. The shapes that came scrabbling out of the houses beyond the rubbly gardens on both sides must have been its hands.
He woke and tried to stop shivering. No point in opening his eyes; that would only hold him back from sleep. But why was it so cold in the room? Why were the bedclothes clinging to him like wallpaper? Perhaps his sense that something was wrong was another reason to shiver.
When at last he forced his eyes open he saw the night sky, hardly relieved by a handful of stars, above him where the roof should be.
He couldn't think, because that would paralyze him. He thrust his feet into his shoes, which were already soaking. He dragged his sodden jacket and trousers on over his pajamas, then he fled. Now he could hear the rain, the lingering drops that splashed on linoleum, carpet, bare boards. On the stairs he almost fell headlong, for they were covered with fallen plaster. His sounds echoed in all the derelict rooms.
At las
t he reached the front door, which appeared still to be his, unlike the house. The street was dark; perhaps vandals had put out the lamp. He reeled out into the darkness, for he couldn't bear to stay in the house. He had still forgotten what he mustn't do; he slammed the front door behind him.
He heard rubble falling. When he grabbed at the door, it was already blocked from within. It lurched when he threw himself against it, but that was all; even though it was off its hinges, it was immovable. He mustn't waste time in struggling with it, but what else could he do? At one end of the unknown street, amid a chorus of unhurried breathing, something was feeling for him along the broken facades.
* * *
According to the rules of writing, one has to struggle for any number of years, "paying dues," collecting rejections, gaining experience. Only a handful of writers manage to break through immediately, and fewer than that do so before they're twenty. I won't mention Deirdre Kugelmeyer's age, but it's young enough for me to wonder what I was doing wrong all those years. This is her first sale; unquestionably, it won't be her last.
* * *
THRESHOLD by Deirdre L. Kugelmeyer
Mist rose from the river and crept over the retaining walls. It went up and down the streets and avenues along the river and cut down other roads until, silently, it had covered the entire city.
It was a huge maze with only the tracing of the river to follow as a clear-cut path. What little afternoon light there was began to grow dimmer and fade out the city. Night and mist mixed together and became one. Up one avenue by the river this mixture crawled until it became darkness.
Rain bathed the darkness. Very gently it soothed everything the city was made of and animated a very unusual door on the avenue. The darkness went on, leaving the rain to its work.
Quietly, the rain awoke each object of the carved stone and ironshod wood. No longer were they cold and hard, but smooth and warm. On three human figures hair grew, skin felt the rush of blood, muscle adhered to bone. Vines that crawled around and up the stone sprouted green, shiny leaves. Scales emerged on the sleek body of the salamander doorhandle. Each fine detail attained life, including the oval, slanted glass eyes that were directly above the lintel.
The major feature of the wooden door and its stone frame was the head of a young woman. Her slender neck supported the same kind of face. Wrapped around her neck was the head and snapping jaws of a wolf.
The companions of the lady were two statuettes perched on either side of her in the stone corners. They were nymphlike—one male and the other female, both clothed in the leaves that grew around them; they were servants of the bodiless woman-wolf.
A man walked down the street. From her place above the doorway the woman saw him. The rain had taken the blindness from her glass eyes, and she saw for the first time. She watched him grope his way through the darkness and rain, and her newly acquired hearing listened to his undecipherable mumbling. He wore no jacket to protect him from the wetness, and he saw nothing but his shoes.
Being unfamiliar with his surroundings, he glanced up to look around. The door immediately caught his eye. He stopped in front of it and stood looking at all its living qualities. It gave him the feeling of being all alone and very tired and tense. She watched him from above, rain tears streaming down her face. The two figures on either side of her called down in mimicking voices, saying she could never have anything human.
He stood looking at the wooden door and its frame. The two oval panes of glass above the door stared at him from their coffin. Looking back into those eyes, he saw haunting images of his life, and scenes of what made him wander this night. He turned away and whispered to himself, "Who would live in a place with a door like that?"
Both cherubs were looking down at him and laughing. She wanted him, the first human being she had ever seen. But then she was only stone, a head without a body.
No, she thought, she had a body, although it was not made from the same substance as his. Her body was the building, and she had muscle and bone and tissue, also. And that was the difference between them—stone and flesh.
Everything about the door fascinated him. Its figures, its leaves, its hinges, the whole and each individual part. If he looked at it long enough, it became another creature—living, taking its existence from the innards of the structure. She smiled at him when he looked up at her, but the rain distorted his vision. Water dripped from his hair onto his nose, then down his chin. He laughed because it tickled the inside of his ear.
She had no voice to call to him or laugh with him. It began to rain harder, and a tearful wind forced the door open. It swung inward, revealing a narrow hallway and a stone-paved courtyard beyond. Before going inside, it occurred to him briefly that it looked very much like a mouth that would swallow him when he entered. He scampered inside and closed the door, and she could feel him stepping across the stone, wet shoes leaving puddles as he moved along. The courtyard was just as wet as outside, so he stayed in the hallway, walking back and forth to get dry.
Each footstep made her shiver. The weather had never bothered her before, for her stone mask had kept her from it. This time was different. She was afraid—of the rain, the wind, and the strange man who was inside her. The two statuettes were quiet, for they too felt it. She did not like him standing there inside the hallway.
There was an indignant show of lightning, which lit up her eyes. Below her, the startled man jumped to the window. Glass and rain spattered over him before he was thrown back by a lunge at his throat. Stone-sharp teeth bit deep.
When the rain stopped, the man was gone. Only the broken glass from the door remained. There was a little red fringe around the wolf's mouth, and the eyes seemed solemnly human.
* * *
Alan Ryan returns to Shadows in one of his infrequent trips into the macabre. A nasty bit, this one is, far removed from the more gentle pieces he produces in the field of science fiction. His first novel, Panther!, is now out and doing well, and he is currently working on a mainstream thriller, a sf anthology, and basking in his nomination for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
* * *
A VISIT TO BRIGHTON by Alan Ryan
I'm quite an ordinary man, really, and dislike very much anything that disrupts the normal schedule or the carefully ordered plan of my life. I therefore found it very disturbing, initially, when my superior at the bank asked me to go down to Brighton for the weekend. Imagine conducting banking business on a weekend. And doing it outside the City, where it properly belongs. And in a frivolous place like Brighton, with its piers and its bathers and what people call amusements—works of the devil of idleness, I call them.
Although I was deeply disturbed at this extraordinary disruption in my life, I quickly acquiesced in my superior's wishes. My work from the bank in the department that deals with large funds and trusts is extremely important and often quite delicate, and some of my colleagues have, on occasion, been sent by the bank to tidy up the financial affairs of some careless client in the home counties, matters that sometimes I was aware required their presence overnight. The bank, of course, had never sent me on any of these jaunts. My superior, Mr. Fotheringill, knows very well my intense dislike for disruption and irregularity in any form, and in particular my dislike for travel. I seldom see any need to be away from the two poles of my existence—my office at the headquarters of the bank in the City, and my modest but comfortable flat in Notting Hill. That ride in the Underground twice daily is quite enough travel for me. Therefore, when Mr. Fotheringill personally requested, through his secretary, that I go down to Brighton to settle some matters of bank business with a valued client, I supposed at once—and rightly, I think—that the matter required my own sort of experience and expertise. Mr. Fotheringill is well aware of my fondness for order and propriety in all things, and no doubt it was those very penchants of mine that caused him to make this extraordinary request. I replied, through his secretary, that I was prepared to place myself fully at the service of the bank.
On Thursday, I searched out Anthony's number and rang him up. He was rather surprised, of course, but readily agreed that I should be a guest in his home. We never got on all that well as children, but I am, after all, his brother. Arrangements were made. I would have to go down from Victoria Station on Friday evening, despite the terrible crowds, as my business required a meeting with the client very early on Saturday morning.
I was, of course, looking forward to none of it other than the business part, but they do say the sea air is good for one, and also Brighton is reputed to have some quite attractive and neatly kept flower displays. I rather enjoy looking at flowers. So, I thought, perhaps the trip would be just bearable after all.