Strangers at the Door: Twelve unsettling tales of horror

by Christopher Henderson

  That brought to mind the rumours, that Charon had attempted initial surveys of Europa using robotic probes but that those missions had failed. The probes (there had been three separate attempts according to the stories) had all been lost and nobody knew why, or if they did they weren’t saying. It would explain why the company was using slinkers so early in the mapping process. The bosses must have their reasons for the extra expense….

  ‘My God! How do you manage to stay in the Link, the way you keep zoning out like that?’

  The spiky outline of Ulli’s exasperation was softened by humour. Marsh sent her an apologetic smile as he secured his sample, then began to set up the next location. He still felt Jupiter pulling at his mind, but there was something more now. Something tugging at his soul from far beneath his feet. He sensed near-frozen fluids turn over with sluggish torpor … a lightless realm perceptible to senses alien to vision, through which moved forms that did not quite exist in any physical sense. He could almost –

  ‘Why German?’

  He was on the surface again, standing before a machine that was eating into icy rock. He was supposed to be monitoring the readouts. Reassembling his thoughts, he scanned the display and saw only green lights, then realized he should have replied.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Seriously? Again?’

  An image floated into his mind: a cartoon drawing of a man he knew was himself, with spirals for eyes and a drooling tongue flopping from his mouth.

  ‘Must be good to be paid for sleeping! I said, why German? Yesterday, when you thought I was singing to myself, you asked if it was a German song. Why?’

  The music was there again, swimming in the depths of his memory. He fought his attention back to the present, to where Ulli was teasing him. Playfulness infused her words, but there was genuine curiosity too.

  ‘I just thought it felt German,’ he said. ‘Or Austrian. Something like that.’

  ‘Or you wanted to find out where I lived, hmm?’

  She’d caught him.

  Too late, he realized he’d let that last thought slip out.

  Ulli laughed. ‘Okay, Mr Fergus Marsh, but you first. Where are you from? I’m going to guess … Scotland?’ She decorated the thought with a smiling monster paddling in a fog-shrouded loch.

  For some reason, Marsh found the image disturbing. He suppressed it before replying. ‘Because of my name?’

  ‘Naturally. I’ve only ever met one other Fergus and he was Scottish. So?’

  ‘Close,’ said Marsh, ‘but wrong.’

  ‘Huh. Where then?’

  The music continued to coil just below the surface of his awareness. He forced his attention away.

  ‘Well, okay, my family is from Scotland, at least on Dad’s side. Some fishing village on one of the western islands. But they moved to England, to London, for work, before Dad was born. You were right about the Fergus bit though. It was my granddad’s name. Dad’s too. A family tradition, I guess.’

  A family of which he was the last survivor.

  ‘So. You have Scottish ancestry.’ Ulli sent a lilting image of Marsh’s robot body wearing a kilt. The fabric billowed up as a make-believe gust caught it, and it rose, threatening to expose whatever she imagined lay beneath.

  He continued quickly, before that could happen. ‘For a few generations. Before that the Marshes lived in the States. Somewhere in Massachusetts, I think. On the other side of the Atlantic anyway.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Right now,’ he said, feeling an urge to impress, ‘I have a flat in a very lovely house in Wimbledon Village, in England.’

  ‘Hey, we’re not so far apart!’ sparkled Ulli. ‘I’m in Enfield. Other side of London but only a coach ride away, yes? We should meet up sometime. Have a drink. I’d like to see what you look like in the flesh, Mr Fergus Marsh!’

  Marsh barely managed to shield his dismay. Could their flesh selves really be located so close to each other? Perhaps it wasn’t so remarkable. Slinkers could operate from anywhere but obviously most people lived in areas of high-density population; in cities, in other words, of which relatively few survived. And if you were earning a slinker’s salary, why not move to one of the even fewer cities that were still more-or-less safe?

  Damn it.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, knowing he could never let her see his real face.

  ‘Wonderful! And you were right, by the way.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘My mother’s family is German. We came to England to live with Father’s family.’ A metallic-tasting shadow dulled her words as she continued. ‘We only just made it. The fighting got worse and, you know.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Marsh. ‘I know.’

  * * * *

  Adrift in brightening orange, thoughts of Ulli washed through him to the remembered pulse of silent music. They saturated his dissipating dream with the warmth of companionship. Nothing sexual, necessarily – merely a version of that sense of belonging that had died with his parents. Nevertheless, as he floated towards wakefulness Marsh knew he was in two minds about actually meeting Ulli in person. She would try to hide her disappointment at his appearance, he felt sure, but he would see it. Whereas confining their encounters to the Link would mean she’d continue to imagine him without the ugliness that was another family inheritance. Far above, locks snicked open and the comfort he was bathing in leaked out until he was fully awake and simply lying on moulded plastic.

  He sighed, the sound a dry wheeze through his parched throat, and climbed out of the womb. The room lights came on as they tracked his movement, and the kettle was already bubbling as he arrived at the kitchen, flexing the aching muscles in his shoulders and yawning as he scratched a patch of dry skin at his neck.

  As he sipped his tea he noticed biscuit crumbs scattered across the worktop. He frowned, certain he remembered cleaning the top the previous evening. He brushed them away, and when his fingers caught the side of the kettle he realized it was several centimetres out from its usual position.

  Further small anomalies struck him as he looked around. His screen was off but the power was still connected even though he always switched that off before working. And the clothes he had left neatly folded on the back of that chair seemed far too crumpled. Had somebody been inside the flat while he’d been slinking?

  Yet his mobile was on the table, and his Wave – the latest model that had cost him almost a month’s earnings – was still there, as were his cards. He checked the window and door locks, and found they were, of course, secure.

  Nothing was wrong; he was just a little out of sorts. It was this cold or whatever it was. Just take it easy, he told himself. Make sure you take plenty of fluids and in a day or so you’ll be as right as rain.

  * * * *

  ‘Ready to head back soon?’

  Looking around, he was startled to note that Ulli had already secured her rig and was prepping to return to the Poseidon. His surprise bled into the Link and he felt her giggle.

  ‘You were miles away!’ she said.

  ‘Aren’t we both?’ he replied, hiding behind humour. He folded the words into a cartoon impression of her lying inside her womb.

  ‘Hey! That looks nothing like me!’

  ‘How am I supposed to know?’ he answered, shielding the emotional current the thought released.

  ‘Well, hurry up. Last one back’s an arschloch!’

  Marsh was about to ask why they were leaving so soon when he realized that his power indicator was flashing gentle amber: the suit was down to 25 per cent. Protocol stated it was time to recharge. He checked his chronometer and was perturbed to learn he had been working on the surface for over three hours. Where had that time gone?

  A silent burst of thrust from Ulli’s suit vaporized a patch of icy surface and she ascended through the glitter. Marsh retracted his rig’s drill, checked his sample containers were locked, and triggered his own thruster, lifting up after her – and something lurched inside. Whether the sensation rel
ated to his physical body or to the suit he couldn’t tell. Disorientation kicked him as he experienced both existences simultaneously, except that he was in three places really, not two: Europa was falling away beneath his feet; he was on Earth inside the womb; and he was sinking (or was he swimming?) through a thick green luminescence composed of something other than light, drawn deeper by a familiar pulsing rhythm.

  There was no loneliness here. That concept could not exist. A billion soundless voices were singing and his essence had become a wave in their music, as effortlessly harmonious as if he had always belonged. He exulted in their kinship, surrendering his individuality as depths unfolded around him, revealing non-physical structures his cognition translated into impressions of weed-wrapped columns and dreams of gargantuan temples, phosphorescent in the endless abyss beyond space-time. In the distant reaches of this new understanding, beyond any need or desire for clarity, lay the knowledge of how this place co-existed with other realms, and how a hive intelligence infinitely older than the stars might be buffeted by cosmic catastrophe, clinging to survival in outposts across unimaginable gulfs of empty cold.

  Once, this existence had intersected with the world Marsh remembered. This song echoed with memories of a lost affinity with certain of that world’s older inhabitants – beings whose descendants might still be found in the ocean depths of the blue planet so tantalisingly out of reach now. The hollowness around which the pulse throbbed was a yearning to return.

  The part of this essence that had been Marsh swam down through familiar currents, ever deeper towards luminous openings he had known since before his birth. With the surfacing of inherited memory, he recognized this place as another aspect of that which his ancestors had known as Yhanthlei. He could not imagine how he had been away from home so long, and the light swelled, becoming so bright it grew black.

  * * * *

  Jupiter swung into view before his suspended suit, the awesome spectacle burning away already fading thoughts. But the planet was in the wrong position. Nausea rose and almost drowned him as Marsh struggled to concentrate, gradually focusing on an acceptance that his location had shifted; that he was now bobbing weightless inside the Poseidon’s hangar. He sensed Ulli nearby, and with great effort reached an arm to the nearest ceiling handle to rotate himself to face her. She was on the far side, plugging her charging cable into the power bank with professional efficiency.

  ‘Thanks,’ he eventually managed to say.

  ‘For what?’

  For bringing me safely on board, he was about to explain, before realizing Ulli had no idea he had tuned out again.

  He made certain his thoughts were shielded before letting himself wonder what was happening to him. It made no sense. Without his constant concentration he should not have been able to maintain the Link. His consciousness should have snapped back to his sleeping body while the suit switched to standby.

  He should alert his supervisor. There was a serious problem here, one he could not understand. Perhaps he was even endangering himself. But the company’s first reaction would be to protect the mission, which would probably mean taking him off duty. What if they never allowed him back?

  ‘You okay?’ asked Ulli.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said.

  * * * *

  A truck shooshed by, throwing up spray from the road separating Wimbledon Common from the mansions to his right. The pavement was slick with rain and organic growth but he knew he and his wealthy neighbours escaped the worst of the flooding up here on the hill.

  After days of waking wrapped in sweat-damp sheets Marsh felt more alert than he had for some time. Perhaps Mrs Fletcher’s advice for him to get some fresh air had been right. If you could call this fresh.

  A coach hissed past in the truck’s wake, its sigh almost triggering a memory of music. Dead faces gazed blankly from their amber prison as the world pulsed and the machine body carried its cargo of human minds past, then the tide retreated and the coach was merely a vehicle again. A ubiquitous sight these days, since the last of the tunnels had flooded and the Tube network passed into history.

  Marsh had a vague memory of travelling on the London Underground as a child. He thought he could recall warm blasts of dry air, subterranean desert winds erupting from the tunnels, but was no longer certain whether the memory was his own or one he had constructed from an old film. The coach receded into headlight-smeared haze, and Marsh thought of Ulli on the other side of the city. Journeys took longer these days, but a coach trip between Enfield and Wimbledon would be easy enough, and fairly safe.

  Irritated to realize he had just thought of Ulli as a suit, he imagined her in the flesh. A Teutonic beauty perhaps: ice-blonde with a warm twinkle animating sapphire eyes. She would look nothing like that, of course. Just as he would inevitably fail to live up to whatever mental image she had of him.

  He crossed the road, finding himself drawn towards the large pond that dominated this corner of the Common. Its surface shimmered with the drizzle, seeming to pulse with sheer existence. Marsh wondered what being rain might feel like, to merge with the dancing water and expand into –

  ‘Oi oi! What about this one?’

  Three previously unnoticed figures were emerging from the shelter beside the pond. Marsh whirled around, and saw two more grinning thugs swaggering towards him. A full patrol, black waterproofs slick and glistening, armbands bearing the white circle and blood-red sword of Excalbion.

  ‘He looks like a frog!’

  ‘Fuck me, yeah! Look at them eyes! Ugly blighter, in’t ‘e?’

  ‘I.D. Now.’

  Marsh panicked, unable to remember whether he had brought his card with him. He failed to push down remembered tales of beatings and interrogations as he tried to assemble his thoughts, to invent a plausible excuse for having forgotten his card, then realized his hands had found it in his pocket after all. Trembling, he handed it over.

  The patrol leader leered. ‘Got ourselves a haggis eater, boys.’

  Fear hammered at Marsh – but the world was receding, becoming something distinct from his tumbling thoughts. With detached regret, he wondered how life might have been had his family stayed in Scotland, where the resurgent xenophobia of his parents’ generation had found less fertile ground than here in England. One of the thugs was screaming at him now, he realized, yelling that this was a warning, that they would kill him should they ever see him again, the expression ‘ginger twat’ underlining the prejudice that fuelled these patrols. They had not seen beneath his hood; his red hair had disappeared in his teens, his baldness another unwelcome family inheritance.

  A boot to the back of Marsh’s knee dropped him to the wet grass. The rain was a solid wall now, and as a fist thunked into the back of his skull he welcomed the water’s song soaking into him. It flooded his mind, surging in, the pressure building until it burst forth as a psychic scream, a searing, soundless plea that this torrent would sharpen to acid and burn this planet clean.

  * * * *

  He dreamed of the sea, black under starlight, and of the hiss of waves on shingle. He dreamed of floating above an alien terrain of crystalline rock and hard-edged shadows. He dreamed of plunging through weed-wreathed depths, sinking among the bewildering angles of an impossibly vast and timeless city. His body was warm flesh and it was icy metal and it was something beyond conception; past, present, and future all as one as his thoughts rolled in the Jovian tide.

  His body ached from the beating of – had it been the day before? He didn’t remember, and in any case his metal body was incapable of experiencing pain. Contradictory existences superimposed themselves until a ripple of panic re-pinned his attention to this reality, where he was working on the surface of Europa and in which it was vital he kept a grip on his thoughts. He had made a terrible mistake not admitting he was having problems with the Link.

  The void vibrated to Europa’s song. Marsh tried to ignore its incessant rhythm, directing attention to his suit readouts, struggling to understand the dig
its that told him how long he had been on-shift. He needed help. Against the gas giant’s swirled luminosity hung a solitary human-shaped silhouette.

  ‘Ulli ….’

  There was no reply. The distant suit hung motionless, tethered to the moon’s surface.

  ‘Control … Can …’

  Word images flowed in, but their meaning dribbled away too soon. He pressed his concentration down.

  ‘Where … Lisicki? … Alone.’

  A new wave of information crashed in, breaking on his dull thoughts and he clutched at meanings, seizing a few. His partner would be with him soon, they were saying. Get on with the job.

  ‘Help me,’ he tried to send but now he was dreaming he was in Wimbledon, ankle deep in the muddy water of the pond as lightning lit the downpour. It was yesterday, he thought. But there had been no lightning yesterday. A lone face swam in, contorted yet familiar amid its slick black waterproofs and its hatred, and though it mouthed threats Marsh felt safer than at any time since the death of his parents. It was the security of being among family who would protect their own.

  He watched his hands take hold of the other being and he watched its features alter in the instant before they disappeared beneath a churning surface. He watched as the thrashing continued and he watched until only the thick shower of rain still fizzed the otherwise calm water. The song coiled in his mind and now he was on Europa once more and somehow he was still operating his drill rig. Powdered frozen rock blossomed and eddied in slow motion, and the sight unlocked the terror of not understanding what was happening.

  Then Ulli was there, her suit alive again, drifting towards him like an angel. Relief washed over him. He reached out to her.

  ‘Alright, mate?’

  It was not her. Words arrived, opening and bouncing around with brusque male bonhomie, and the stranger seemed unconcerned by Marsh’s lack of response. Obviously an experienced and highly talented slinker, the stranger’s meanings effortlessly pierced the fog of Marsh’s failing focus. Ulli was gone, the images said. Her work permit had been questioned and the company had played safe, terminating her contract. Can’t blame ‘em these days, this somebody named Jeff opined with good cheer. And having no permit made her technically illegal so she was already being deported. Not that he was complaining – first gig he’d had this year!