A bee the size of a fat cockroach lumbers toward me, buzzing like a whole canful of blowflies, and I have to duck to avoid it. Even when it’s gone, I can still hear it, as if I hadn’t managed to get out of the way quick enough and somehow it got inside my head. The sun, even through the dust in the air, amplifies the noise and cooks my skull so that everything inside it rattles like loose beans. Off down a long straight street to my right I recognize the party of German tourists standing to attention as they listen to the man in the red shirt with the stomach, the camcorder and the guide book. His words are just a low hum to me amid the constant buzz in my ears. My limbs tingle as if electricity is being passed through them, then they go completely numb and the buzzing gets slower and even louder. At the far end of the long straight street the Germans have frozen in position. The man in the red shirt is in the act of raising the camcorder to his eye, a woman in a wraparound top and shorts is caught in the act of leaning backward—not ungracefully—to correct the fit of her smart training shoe. The air between them and me is thick with shiny dust, glittering in the golden sunshine. The tiny particles are dancing but the figures remain petrified.
Suddenly they’re moving but in a group rather than individually. They are shifted silently to one side like a collection of statues on an invisible moving platform. It’s as if they’re being shunted into another world while I’m left dodging the insects in this one and I want to go with them. Maybe wherever they’re going there won’t be this terrible grinding noise which is giving the inside of my skull such a relentless battering.
By the time some feeling returns to my arms and legs the German tourists have completely disappeared. I stumble over the huge baking slabs, trying to escape the punishment. Pursuing the merest hint of a decrease in the noise level I turn in through an old stone doorway and begin a desperate chase after silence: over boulders, through tangles of nettles and vines where enormous butterflies make sluggish progress through the haze. As the pain levels out and then begins to abate, I know I’m heading in the right direction. A couple more sharp turns past huge grasscovered mounds and collapsed walls where lizards the size of rats gulp at the gritty air; the noise fades right down, the pain ebbs and warm molten peaceful brassy sun flows into my bruised head. I fall to my knees with my hands covering my face, and when I take them away I’m looking directly into the empty gray eyesockets of a petrified man. His face is contorted by the pain he felt as the lava flowed over him. I’m screaming because the man looks so much like me it’s like looking in a mirror and a lizard suddenly flits out of one of the eyes and slips into the gaping mouth. The pain is back and this time it doesn’t go way until I black out.
I’m out for hours because when I come to, rubbing my forehead, the sun casts quite different shadows on the stony face. Dismayingly I have to admit he still looks like me. For several minutes I sit and watch the insects that use his cavities and passages as they would any similar rock formation.
Later I tell Flavia how closely his volcanic features resembled mine.
“It’s quite common to hallucinate after an eruption,” she says, applying a piece of sticky tape to the newspaper covering the driver’s window.
That’s all very well, I think, but I’m 2000 years too late. Or did she mean him? But I don’t want to dwell on it because the faster the newspaper goes up the sooner I can have her.
It clicked with me that I could make the most of Flavia’s carbound vivacity so that her passivity at home would not matter as much.
Through a narrow gap at the top of the windscreen I can see Vesuvius rising and falling as Flavia and I punish the old Fiat’s suspension.
In a few hours’ time I’ll be climbing Vesuvius herself. Flavia’s away somewhere—working, she said—so I’m to tackle the volcano alone, and although I could have taken a cab to the tourist car park halfway up the mountain I decided to walk all the way from Ercolano which, as Herculaneum, was itself covered by the same lava flows that buried Pompeii. The road folds over on itself as I climb. The routine is soon automatic as I maintain a regular ascent and efficient breathing. My mind is rerunning the night before in Flavia’s car. Six times her emotions reached bursting point and boiled over. In the early hours the air in the car was so thick and cloying we had to wind down the window, which meant losing part of our newsprint screen, but the park had emptied hours before.
In her apartment, where I swallowed glass after glass of fresh orange juice, Flavia was once more still and gray. I was thinking about getting her out in the car again but I knew I had to climb the volcano before I left: it had been calling me and this was my last day in the city.
If the air were not so thick with dust, the view from halfway up the mountain would be spectacular. I can just make out a darker shadow which is the center of Naples and a thin line separating the land from the sea. Only the island of Capri is clear in the distance, but its profile is still no more like a woman than the trembling slope beneath my feet. Down here there are trees either side of the road, but I can see that higher up the ground is bare. The sun still manages to break through the thickening air and once caught between the ground and the dust the heat cannot escape. I’ve taken off my shirt and tied it around my neck to soak up some of the sweat. The mountain seems to get no smaller even though I know I’m climbing. The road hugs the side and disappears some way round the back before twisting back on itself to reach the car park and refreshment stand. I have the sense, the higher I get, of the volcano as an egg, its exterior thin and brittle and cracked open at the top. I stop for breath, and lean back, and stretch. The summit and crater are covered by cloud.
Beyond the empty car park the narrow path zigzags into the clouds. I climb with the same sense of purpose that took hold of Flavia and me in the car and I sense that the prize is not so far removed from that sweet and fiery memory which even now stirs me. The earth and trees have been left behind and the slate-gray cloud thickens about me like hospital blankets. The mountain is loose cinders and disintegrated volcanic material, a uniform gray-brown, like a dying horse in a burnt field. I’m suddenly engulfed by a wave of sympathy for Flavia and the years of suffering. They have turned her into a brittle shell, but life lingers within her, a dormant energy that last night we fired up. She deserves longer-lasting happiness and yet I know she wouldn’t even flicker in some other city; Naples is her only home. Some things are rooted too deeply in the earth to shift.
Never in my life have I felt so alone as I feel now, wrapped in cloud, buffeted by sea winds, following a path to a crater. I can’t see more than ten barren yards in any direction.
When I hear the music I think I’ve died or am still asleep in Flavia’s bed and dreaming. Soft notes that gather a little power then fade quickly as the wind blows new ones slightly up or down the scale. I’ve already called Flavia’s name three times before I realize I’m doing it. The name is taken from my lips and wrapped in this soiled cotton wool that surrounds me. Her name rolls on with the cloud over the top of the mountains where the crater must be. It mustn’t fall in.
The source of the music comes into view—an abandoned shack supported by an exoskeleton of tubular steel shafts. The wind plays them like panpipes. A sign still attached to the side of the shack advertises the sale of tickets to the crater. I begin to laugh at the absurdity of such an idea, and wade on past the chiming tubes and up toward the edge. I know it’s up there somewhere although I can’t see it and I stumble blindly onward, scuffing my shoes in coarse, loose material. Then suddenly the ground disappears beneath my feet and I’m clawing at space for a handhold. Somehow I manage to fall back rather than forward and I crouch in the harsh volcanic rubble peering over the edge of the crater. Below me the cloud twists in draughts of warm air. I’m muttering Flavia’s name to myself and thinking I should never have gone to look for her. Then I’m thinking maybe I never did go, but stayed in the insect-ridden hotel instead.
As I watch the updrafts of ash and dust, I see a recognizable group of shapes take vague fo
rm in the clouds. The German tourists—he with the red shirt, the camcorder, the stomach, she of the shorts and smart training shoes, still frozen as an exhibit of statuary—descend through the rising dust as if on a platform. The thicker swirls beneath me envelop them.
They pass into the throat of the giant and are followed by a facsimile of Flavia, falling like a slow bomb. A cast of myself—whether from Pompeii or the hotel, I don’t know—is next, slipping in and out of focus behind curtains of clogging ash.
The last thing I remember is the buffeting and turbulence the 737 went through as it passed over Vesuvius on its descent into Naples, and suddenly the whole crazy city with its strange visions and coating of fine dust—from a waiter’s shoes to the air rattling in lungs—makes perfect sense.
UNDER THE CRUST by Terry Lamsley
Terry Lamsley was born near London on January 28, 1941, and he presently lives in the High Peak of Derbyshire with his wife and family. Many of his stories are set in and around his home town, Buxton, including those in Under the Crust, his first collection of supernatural tales—the title story from which appears here. Lamsley seems to be trying to do to Buxton what Ramsey Campbell has done to Liverpool. I imagine that the authorities will make it look like an accident.
Writing about himself, Lamsley informs us: “Terry has had a vast number of jobs, and sometimes no job at all. In 1989, finding himself at a loose end, he foolishly took up social work. He’s still doing it. He has been writing, with mixed success, as long as he can remember (his memory is not so good). He first seriously attempted the supernatural genre about three years ago, and a number of his stories are due to appear in print in the near future. He is now working on his next regional collection, High Peaks of Fear, and hopes to start a novel when it is complete. His hobbies are playing pool, emptying bottles, and hanging on by the skin of his teeth.”
And now we begin our final descent into the strange and disturbing.
Maurice began to feel ill as he came off the Chapel-en-le-Frith bypass and drove up the A6 to Dove Holes. Suddenly, his palms were damp, and his hands slithered on the steering wheel. He was trying to grip too hard, to compensate for a feeling he had that if he didn’t do so, his hands would start to tremble. Also, he was having trouble with his vision. The edges of things were hazy, and patches of blue sky that showed through the gaps in the high, blousy clouds, looked far too bright, like neon light shining off painted metal. He wanted to stop, but was caught in a line of lorries, and there was nowhere to pull off the road that he could remember. He wiped his hands on his shirt. They became sticky again at once. There was a droning sound somewhere. He wasn’t sure if it was coming from the car engine or inside his skull.
He blinked and shook his head in consternation. He had been feeling uneasy all day, all week even, and there was plenty in his life to feel uneasy about, but he had thought he was fairly fit. Now, it seemed, his body was going to let him down, and play host to some sickness, on top of everything else. He slammed the steering wheel with the heel of his hand in disgust, wound down the side window a couple of inches, and leaned forward tensely against his seat-belt.
As he drove through the tight, dusty village of Dove Holes, he started to experience a sensation of more general disorientation. He saw a narrow turning forking to his left and, on impulse, took it much too fast. The unfamiliar road curved and dipped between two low stone walls and, hardly slowing at all, he rocketed along it for a few hundred yards, feeling almost helpless, as though the car had taken possession of him. He made an effort of concentration, to gain control of the vehicle, but a square, dark shape sprang up to the right of him, as though it had pounced out of the earth, and plunged toward him. He swung the car to the left to avoid whatever it was; it seemed to be a huge black, windowless van; and rode wildly up and along a low, steep, grassy bank. He sensed, rather than saw, the other driver staring down at him. The car scraped against a wall and he had a vague impression of stones tumbling away into a field beyond. The car pulled up sharp at last, its front end pointing to the sky.
Maurice glanced back to see what had happened to the other vehicle, but it had vanished. Could anything that size, traveling that fast, not have gone off the road?
Then he recalled that the van, or whatever it was, had made no attempt to avoid him. It had taken no evasive action in the seconds it had been visible, as though the driver had not even seen him! Thoughts of insurance bleeped on and off in his mind as he freed his seatbelt buckle, opened the door, and stumbled out onto the road.
There was a strong, gusting wind blowing. He gulped air desperately through his half-open mouth, feeling its cold shock on his lungs, and cursed the world in general.
Food poisoning! he thought. The meal earlier on, at the reception. Something, the chicken? the pork pies? had tasted strange, but he had eaten it anyway, in his hunger. The contents of his stomach flipped over painfully, causing him to double up over the car bonnet.
He forced himself upright and went to inspect the damage. One of the fronts lights was smashed, the left wing dented, and there were scratches, some deep, along that side. He’d lost a lot of paint. Still, it could have been worse. The wall he had hit some dozens of yards back must have been ready to collapse, or the car would have been in a very bad way.
He sat down on the grass bank and waited for his heart to stop racing. His head felt clearer, but things still didn’t look quite right; the world was still hazy and slightly out of kilter.
Next to him the car clicked and sighed as the engine cooled. After a while he glanced underneath to check that nothing was leaking, got back inside, and carefully backed onto the tarmac. He continued along the little back road at about ten miles an hour until a further spasm in his stomach made him shut his eyes in agony, and he had to stop again.
He got out, slammed the door behind him, and looked around.
He was near the top of a hill. Open countryside lay spread around him on all sides. Ahead of him a row of scraggy, dark-leafed trees stretched to the right towards acres of torn-up fields and pyramids of raw earth; a scene of tortured ugliness. In front of them a deeply scarred path of churned mud led to a set of old diggings, called the Victory Quarry, that had partly been turned into a tip by the Borough Council. A multitude of large skips, painted drab brown, sprawled away at all angles beyond the end of the line of trees; a porta-cabin guarded the entrance at the other side. A skimpy gate of wire grill on an iron frame gaped wide to give access to dust carts and private vehicles arriving from time to time with cargoes of every kind of rubbish.
He wandered down the path, thinking he would take advantage of the shelter of the trees to relieve his bladder.
It was not easy going. The mud was scored with the tire marks of huge machines, that had to be stepped in and out of with care. The rain of the previous weeks had sunk deep, turning the mangled soil oleaginous, but the mix of sunshine and strong wind of the last three days had formed a crust overall that looked solid, but gave way under his feet, precipitating him awkwardly into the mire below. His light town shoes became heavily caked with clumps of dirt, like thick black paste, and his progress was marked by an uneven sequence of gross squelching sounds that complemented the sensations he was experiencing in his belly.
He grabbed at a half-broken branch and pulled himself along it into a space between two trees. He noticed that their trunks on the pathward side had been hacked and wounded by passing vehicles. Great scabs of bark were missing, revealing the plants’ fibrous flesh. Crosses, in faded orange paint, had been daubed on the trees, presumably to indicate that they were to be preserved. Stumps of others, less fortunate, remained here and there, like the broken pillars on tombs.
Immediately at the rear of the trees, shrubs and flowers grew in the shaded dimness. He stepped a little way in among them, relieved himself, and stooped to wipe the mud from his shoes with a clump of grass.
Above him, something moved heavily among the branches. For moments there was silence, then the bird, or wha
tever it was, shifted clumsily again. It made a sudden, rattling, cackling sound that made him start. ‘Like the noise a toy machine gun would make if it laughed!’ he thought, and wondered at his own wild simile. But it was reasonably accurate! There was something taunting and mechanical in the creature’s call that unnerved him in his weakened, jittery state. He looked up in the direction of the sound, but the sun was shining directly through the leaves above him, punching blinding slivers of light through an otherwise featureless silhouette. It was impossible to distinguish anything in particular.
There was movement above again. A shower of twigs descended around him, and something else fell, that hit the ground by his feet. After the briefest hesitation, when he felt a stab of regret that he had ever stepped in among the trees, he bent down and picked it up. It was a purple-brown, egg-shaped object, a little more than three inches long. Surprisingly heavy, and icy cold, it looked more like some kind of fruit, but not, he thought, edible! There was something distinctly unappetising about it. It looked old; dry; preserved.
After rolling it on his palm, Maurice went back onto the path again to get a better look at it.
Both ends were quite smooth, with no indication that they had ever been joined to any plant.
Not a seed, he thought. And not an egg; far too heavy and too hard. Anyway, an egg would have smashed on its fall from the tree. He pressed harder and harder, and it seemed to give a bit. He closed both hands over it, to obtain more pressure, and gripped them together.
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