Feast and Famine

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  We got to the next opening. Walther stepped inside, torch moving. I looked to see if Harmondersly was close enough to rush, but he was two lines back. The time to jump him would be at the entrance, I knew, but it would be tight. His hair might be white but he held himself well, moved easily. I reckoned he was another old army bird. A stray shot would go badly for me or for Walther.

  I followed Walther in, very tense, looking back. I bumped into him, because he was stopping to stare. I looked where his torch went.

  It was another room of dead men, although the gaps were larger, an entire row and a half in one case. I knew Walther would be trying to count back the years, but just then I didn’t want to know.

  This room was more of a cave. At our end it had been shaped a bit, propped up. At the other end it was just the natural rock, and the natural rock was doing something unpleasant. It disappeared. The far end of the cave just fell away, a twenty-foot chasm that was utterly, completely dark.

  There was a click next to my head. It was Harmondersly cocking his revolver. He was easily close enough that I could make a grab for it, but what the films don’t teach you is that, reactions aside, it’s quicker to pull a trigger than move for a gun. I’d missed my chance. The old boy had come up behind us quicker than I’d thought. He nodded, and Walther and I moved along a bit.

  “So what’s the story?” Walther asked? “You owe me that much.”

  “Because of what we did to you? We owe you nothing,” Harmondersly said. “For finding your way here, however… Perhaps you should tell me your conclusions to date. It would save time.”

  “The Dissipation Club is continuing a tradition of murder that goes back… a very long time,” Walther said. I was making sure to stay between him and the gun, so he had to speak almost under my armpit.

  “And our victims are…?”

  “Members of the club, it would seem. I’d guess new members, who are promised some social advantage when they join, and then done away with.”

  “And why would we do such a thing?” Harmondersly asked.

  “Cheap thrills?” Walther suggested. “Or maybe you are a cult. Maybe you think you’re bringing the second coming.”

  “Does it matter?” I said.

  Harmondersly’s smile was just visible in the light of his lowered torch. “Mr Cohen knows that it matters. ‘Why?’ is always the most important question. How long, Mr Cohen?”

  Walther gave a kind of hopeless laugh. “Well all things being equal, Mr Harmondersly, there’s space for enough bodies to take us back to around fifteen-hundred BC, but I don’t believe it.”

  “Your logic is impeccable,” Harmondersly congratulated him. “However, all things are not equal, and the interval between formal meetings of the Club was only standardised around the time of the Crusades.” At Walther’s brief nod he added, “Before then the interval was frequently longer than seven years. Our tradition cannot be dated with accuracy, but it came to these isles before metalworking did. My earliest counterparts watched Stonehenge being built. You are looking at the honoured dead of over five thousand years.”

  Walther said nothing, and so Harmondersly added. “Kindly make your way to the edge, Mr Cohen.”

  “Well of course. The best view from the good seats,” Walther almost mumbled. He was doing it, too, making his subdued way towards that chasm. Of all things I didn’t want to go any nearer, but at the same time I wouldn’t leave Walther unprotected, for what little good I could do.

  “He’s going to push us in!” I hissed.

  “Is that what you think?” Harmondersly asked, not confirming or denying. He followed us at a leisurely pace. I tried to work out whether we could wait until he was at the far end from the entrance and then just hurdle our way to freedom, but he would get far too much of a chance to shoot us, and it was a good bet that he was a good shot. I had to hope he’d come close again.

  Walther was at the end by this point, with me three corpses behind him. Close to, the pit was huge. The cold draft was coming from it, too, and it smelled funny. It smelled bad, but not any smell I could put a name to, not anything I’d ever smelled before.

  “What, then?” Walther asked, on the edge of the abyss. Harmondersly’s torch lit him up like a firework in his white suit. He looked back at the old man. “What then? I’m here. You’ve got a gun. It’s the end. But tell me. What have you got down there?”

  “The reason for all of this, Mr. Cohen,” Harmondersly said. “What its name is I cannot say, but the Romans called it Dispater.”

  Walther choked on that and I had to ask twice before he’d tell me.

  “The Father of Wealth,” he said. “God of the underworld, to the Romans.” He managed a little grin in my direction. “You’re thinking it was Mickey Mouse’s dog, aren’t you?” because we’d had that conversation before. “They got Pluto from the Greeks, but from north and west Europe… they got Dispater. The Dispation Society. The Dissipation Club. Oh very clever.”

  “I’m glad you approve,” Mr Harmondersly said.

  “And he’s down there is he?”

  “Yes.”

  “You seem very certain. What does he look like?”

  “No mortal eye has seen Dispater for two thousand years,” Harmondersly said. “The earliest and only description says it is a thing of all shapes and no shape, a horror of shadows. I paraphrase, of course.”

  “Of course. So how do you know he hasn’t died or moved on, old Dizzy?” Walther’s irreverence was wasted. Harmondersly was unflapped.

  “Because of the evidence you have passed by. Why do you think there are gaps in the ranks of the dead, Mr Cohen? Because when Dispater wakes, he is hungry.”

  With the pit at our backs, with that constant, sour breath coming out of it, I let out a bit of a whimper at that point. Walther’s hand found mine and squeezed.

  “Dispator came from the skies, the writings say, like a mountain of fire, and it is hungry. It sleeps for many generations. Sometimes it wakes.” Harmondersly was saying this like it was a church reading. “When awake, Dispator is drawn to its sigil, stamped in gold, and it feeds, consuming always the freshest first and working its way back, through the years of our sacrifices, until it is sated. Sometimes its hunger is swiftly assuaged, and sometimes it feeds long and long. The space I am now standing in represents at least two centuries of offerings, at one sitting.”

  “Why leave the gaps empty? Poor economy of space.” Walther was trying to be calm, but his voice was ragged.

  “Where Dispater has fed,” Harmondersly said, “No corpse will rest easily.”

  I let out another sound.

  “And so you run your little murder club to feed it,” Walther said. “And what gives you the right? Because you’re rich? Because you can?”

  “Yes!” Harmondersly was fierce with it. “Because nobody else can. For five thousand years those who govern and rule have appeased this hunger, whether they be Britons or Romans, Saxons or Normans, Englishmen or Great Britons once again. The secret is kept because it is too awful for the world to know that this devouring thing lies here beneath the earth, and must have human flesh when it wakes. The practices of the Britons that so appalled the Roman invaders had their origins here, but when the Romans understood them, their governors and generals kept them, and kept them underground. These men around you are kings, Mr Cohen. They are senators and chieftains and noblemen of the British Isles, and they are not unwitting victims. Each one knew the risk he ran, to protect Britain from the devouring hunger of Dispater. Through the centuries we have kept faith. We have put ourselves forward for this service, the rulers and the wealthy, the Dissipation Club. The men whose names you passed to me, Mr Cohen, are not victims, they are heroes, who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country and this world. Dispater is called the father of wealth, but like so many gods he devours his children.”

  “I’d have thought you’d just take tramps from the streets,” Walther said, and at last Harmondersly looked insulted.

 
“Our trust is a sacred one. We are not murderers. We are those with the wealth and power to keep this greatest of secrets, and for that wealth and power, we pay the price, every seven years.”

  “And others pay the price, for your secrecy,” Walther almost whispered.

  “Do you not think the secret justifies such payment?” Harmondersly asked him.

  Walther was quiet a long time before I heard him sigh. “God help me,” he said. “Maybe it does. How many people know about this?”

  “The members of the Club only, and they are chosen carefully. The most responsible, the most entrenched, the most honourable, the most reliable. They are sounded out well before they are approached. Almost always they are drawn from the highest echelons of society, so that they have power with which to defend their sleeping charge from inquisitive men, such as you.”

  “Ah yes, me. And what now? You want Michael and I to pop down there and see if Dizzy’s sleeping peacefully?”

  “Occasionally however,” Mr Harmondersly said, as if Walther hadn’t spoken, “There are those who, despite all our efforts, uncover the truth of the Dissipation Club. I am not a villain in some American film, Mr Cohen. If I had wanted to kill you then I would not have bothered with all this explanation.”

  Another heavy pause before, “Are you offering…”

  “I am offering you membership in the Club,” Mr Harmondersly said carefully. “With your persistence, I feel that you have earned it.”

  “It’s a trick,” I said immediately. “You can bet who’ll be sitting next to Jim Junior come the time.”

  “It would be an overly complex plot if I intended to let your friend go only to arrange his death in seven years’ time,” said Mr Harmondersly with the contempt of a rich man for his inferiors. “Mr Cohen, you are an educated man. You are a man whose mind is strong. You come recommended by your clients. You are of good family, though fallen on hard times.”

  Walther grinned at that, without humour, and he must have been thinking of his father. Harmondersly meant him to, as proof that Walther he was being open at last. “Our duty is sacred, as I hope I have imposed upon you,” he went on. “You would have no greater chance than I, to be the chosen one. Mr Cohen?”

  Walther paused a long time, on the brink of that. “What,” he asked at last, “About Michael?”

  “Mr Liupowiktz does not meet with the entry requirements of the Dissipation Club,” Harmondersly said, and I felt Walther bunch up beside me, ready to spit in the eye of Dispater if he had to, but the old man was going on. “Mr Liupowiktz can however take a place on the staff. He would seem to have the qualities of capability and loyalty that we require. Perhaps he would even serve at the next club meeting, if he still suspects foul play.”

  “You want me to be your waiter?” I spat at him. He regarded me coldly.

  “Is it so demeaning?” he asked. “Your name, Mr Liupowiktz, would at least not go into the silver cup, as mine has done many times. Mr Cohen, have you an answer for me? If you are considering your family fortunes, these can of course be repaired.”

  Walther let out a brief, hard laugh. “Oh I’ll not take charity, Mr Harmondersly. I’ll take from you exactly what Vanderfell offered us, because he won’t pay up when I draw a blank on his son. I’ll take a promotion for a friend of mine, who’s been short of one for a long time. Other than that, I won’t take a penny from you.” He looked at me, and I’m not sure whether he was apologising or not. “But I’ll take your offer. How could I not?”

  I was waiting to find out if it was a trick, but Harmondersly put his gun away right then. He and Walther were from the same world. They had an understanding I couldn’t break into.

  “Tell me though,” Walther said. “I’ve always been sensitive, to all manner of things. I’m standing here next to a pit that’s full of stargod, and… nothing.”

  “You were born in this country, Mr Cohen,” Harmondersly said. “You have lived in the psychic footprint of Dispater all your life. In order to escape it, to feel the lack of it, you would have to journey to Eastern Europe or Africa or cross the Atlantic. And there you would feel the touch of other beings of the same nature and magnitude. The thing that sleeps beneath the Pyramids is called Apep, by the ancient priesthood that has always guarded it. The others we cannot name. Their guardians are secret enough to evade even our searches, but they are tended, for if they were even unleashed upon the world then believe me, everybody would know.”

  He was walking back now, making his practised way up and down, and Walther was following him. Being stupid, though, I turned and looked down into the pit with my torch.

  I was expecting just rock and a drop, but at the very edge of the light, where it was thinned down to almost nothing, I saw something shiny and slick, and it moved.

  I followed right after the others, after that.

  We blew Vanderfell off, and he didn’t seem surprised. He obviously didn’t think much of us. Not a satisfied customer. We went back to our lives, and all the little irritants stopped, of course. DS Hawker got her promotion.

  And in a few years’ time, Walther has a dinner appointment, and they’ll have to find a way to fit me into one of those red waiter’s jackets, because there’s no damn way I trust any of those rich bastards.

  * * *

  This was my first ever professionally published short story, for Dead But Dreaming II, a Lovecraftian anthology from Miskatonic River Press. In that, the story is the fifth of a series starring the psychic investigator Walther Cohen and his close friend (and Watson/narrator) Michael. Several of Walther’s exploits have since seen print, in Spectral’s The 13 Ghosts of Christmas, Anarchy’s Vivisepulture and one in an upcoming anthology produced by the Fantasy Faction website. One day, time and inspiration permitting, it would be nice to produce enough of Walther’s adventures for a collection of his own, but for now, this is one of his best.

  This is also a story produced for my writing group, the York-based Deadliners, which I joined around 2002, several years before Empire in Black and Gold came out, and whose varied story themes and conditions helped expand my writing no end. Another Deadliners piece that has reached print is my “The Fall of Lady Sealight” that NewCon Press published in their anthology Dark Currents.

  Rapture

  “At long last, it has been revealed to me,” said Mr Brown earnestly. “I have seen the light!”

  He was a plump, moustached man, an account manager for one of the high street banks. I knew him by sight, by the occasional exchanged greeting, by common use of the same tube station. He was an unlikely figure to be doorstepping me at nine in the morning on a Thursday.

  “After so many years in the Wilderness,” Mr Brown exclaimed, “He has seen fit to reveal to me His truth!”

  I wasn’t sure that North London quite counted as the Wilderness, with or without the uppercase letter that Mr Brown had audibly given it, but perhaps he was referring to the banking profession. He was waving a torn piece of paper at me urgently, as they so often did. Out of misplaced pity and the last dregs of our acquaintance I captured it and held it still enough to read. It was a page torn from some glossy magazine, so I was expecting a fairly high-class revelation, but it turned out to be an advertisement for a foot spa.

  “For lo!” Mr Brown declaimed, encouraged, “Whoever should walk into God’s presence, let him first look to his feet, for is it not written that only the cleanly of foot shall be permitted to enter Heaven?”

  Yes, I had to admit, it was so written. It would have been churlish of me to point out that it was written there in biro, and undoubtedly in Mr Brown’s neat bank-manager’s script. “Why don’t you go convert Mr Chandrapur, across the street?” I suggested.

  “That heretic?” Mr Brown protested, and stalked off, waving his tattered page dramatically, a brown-suited Charlton Heston down from the Mount. It was true, I had heard Mr Chandrapur shouting something out of his top window last night, exhorting the world to rise up and follow him to somewhere. I had put a pillo
w over my head, and so had missed the vital details of God’s great message.

  I shambled back inside and made breakfast, wondering what today would bring. The window, opened against a morning that was promising to be oppressively hot, let in the sound of at least three shouting voices, but it’s astonishing what you can get used to.

  No work to commute to. No work for me since the venerable Mr Tallbury had declared himself the last true prophet of Odin, and set out to avert the end of the world by spreading the importance of proper manicure. In his absence, wracked by divinely-inspired absenteeism, his little firm of investment counsellors had quietly closed its doors. I was glad. In the last few days before the end I had never been quite sure whether my clients would match my financial advice with stern exhortations to follow them to enlightenment. Our last few customers had endured an equally uneven time. In the booth next to mine I had heard, actually heard, the moment when a colleague of mine had turned from explaining the merits of ISA’s to denouncing vegetable juice health drinks as the very urine of Satan. It was an unsettled time, as we say in the trade. It was hard to say that any investment, material or spiritual, would be the right choice for the future.

  I mooched about the house for as long as I could stand, putting off the inevitable. Mid-morning I went out. To walk down Kingsbury High Street in those times was an education. The Rapture was in full flow. You couldn’t throw a brick without hitting at least two of the chosen. A house down our road had been spray painted with Chinese characters in red, no doubt denouncing the occupants as heathens. Three days ago a family had been inexpertly firebombed. I say inexpertly, because the makeshift Molotov had scorched the front door and the hallway, but had gone out before doing much damage. The whole self-made, amateur aspect of it was the main saving grace. Like Mr Brown, none of them were cut out to be the ultimate messengers of divine grace.