Arcane

by Nathan Shumate

  “Hello? Jensen?”

  Someone began typing on a keyboard somewhere deeper in the room. There was no glow visible from a monitor. William stared into the gloom and politely said, “Hi? Sorry if I’m interrupting.”

  The typing stopped. Several uncomfortable seconds passed. The unseen employee noisily cleared his or her throat. William started to explain himself while slowly walking back towards the exit’s rectangle of light. The employee interrupted him with a hacking cough, each exhalation increasing in volume. William detected the clumsy squelch of something moving towards him. It sounded like mud-stuffed burlap sacks lumbering down the aisle. The unmistakable odor of feces filled his nostrils.

  William walked faster, not quite a run—there was no need to be rude to a co-worker, no reason to make their obvious handicap an issue. He should be more sensitive to other people’s disabilities; they were probably walking with a prosthetic leg or a creaky old rolling walker. He didn’t want to offend them but thought it best if he just quietly and quickly slipped out. He passed the mountain of filing cabinets and chairs, then broke into a jog towards the exit. As he passed through the doorway into the less gloomy corridor something enormous crashed loudly behind him. Was that the stack of filing cabinets falling down? William broke into a sprint down the dank corridor, past several unoccupied offices back to his desk.

  When William logged on to his computer to check his messages he saw that Jensen had been in a meeting for the last 45 minutes. He swallowed four more pills to calm his nerves and for a terrifying five-minute stretch forgot the name of his wife and daughter.

  Business Day 4

  The skies were gone. The city was inscrutable, the morning fog sloshed through the streets coating everything with a purplish gray film. William’s morning commute took fifteen minutes longer than usual due to decreased visibility. It didn’t matter much; he’d always arrived at work fifteen to twenty minutes early anyway. A migraine had infected his head, spreading to his jaw and neck. He’d already taken two pills this morning to calm the ache.

  When he arrived at his desk he was surprised to see Jensen slumped in front of his computer so early—he usually sauntered in a good hour after William. If he were less tired and the pain in his skull less disorienting he would have seen that Jensen’s torso wasn’t collapsed like a rotting gourd, his head couldn’t be a bulbous mass with indentations replacing his eyes. Jensen’s mouth most certainly wasn’t a grin stuffed with mold.

  William logged onto his computer and was surprised to see an email from his VP. He stared at his monitor for several minutes, then distracted himself by straining to hear Jensen typing or sipping from his coffee mug. But the cubicle was silent. William knew he dare not look over the wall to say good morning. He opened the email. It was a one-on-one meeting invite for 8:30 a.m., just twenty minutes from now. Remembering that the new VP’s office was a good ten-minute walk away, he grabbed a notebook and left his desk immediately.

  The dank hall leading to the new VP’s office had grown a thin layer of green-tinged fuzz. Or had it been repainted and William’s migraine was confusing him? The air was definitely thicker and more humid than it had been yesterday. Spores were lazily floating about and William thought he saw a few that were as large as his eyeball, but his glasses must have been so dirty he was misinterpreting dirt on his lens. He entered the unlit room with its endless rows of abandoned cubicles.

  The cubicle walls began to shudder slightly as if they’d anticipated William’s arrival—definitely the result of his myokymia acting up again. The desk’s surfaces seemed to glow with a pale luminescence that quivered under the air conditioning’s flow but his growing migraine was the likely culprit for this optical illusion. William surprised himself by making good time; he had another seven minutes until the scheduled meeting.

  He stopped to examine a cubicle more closely but the dim light prevented much clarification. He directed his cell phone’s glow onto the corroded bucket he’d noticed the day before. It seemed to be bolted to the floor. As he glanced into the mouth of the bucket he saw that the bottom had been rusted out, exposing a hole that dropped down into the basement. He gagged and stumbled to one knee as the smell of sewage rose up from within. He tentatively tapped his heel against the bucket and was repulsed by the moist spongy texture. But his curiosity overcame his disgust and he lowered his cell phone’s light closer to the object. It was a fleshy thing, an enormous mushroom with its cap inverted, the stalk’s center hollow and dropping down into the pitch black cellar. He held his breath and peered into the hole, his phone held out like a flashlight. Within its depths, deep in the basement, a river of thick sludge glistened, a flow of what stank like an open cesspool.

  William saw that what he had thought were bolts holding the pail to the floor were actually an outbreak of purple fungus spreading from the mass’s base like malignant tumors. He stood abruptly as he realized the entire cubicle was undulating with thin hair-like rhizomes. They began to emit a ghostly glow, then faded into blackness again. He felt a wave of anxiety and horror rise in his chest as he accepted that he could no longer blame his migraine for what he was witnessing.

  He knew none of this mattered anymore. He had long resigned himself to this career. He had wanted his wife and daughter to have something to remember him by, something they could actually look back on to substantiate that he wasn’t a complete failure. But they were both gone before he’d done anything memorable. His wife had left a goodbye letter and in it she expounded on her philosophy of life and why she’d decided to take their daughter with her. She’d written that joy is to be found in varying degrees of misery; no intelligent person can ever truly be happy, they can only be less miserable than they were previously. William understood what she had meant. Life was decades of standing neck deep in sewage and happiness is attained when the filth retreats to waist level.

  A baby started to cry from deep within the room. William immediately recognized his daughter’s voice. He ran past a large unlit glass wall which had to be his VP’s office. He ignored the massive glowing form that pushed against the other side of the glass wall and coughed his name repeatedly.

  His daughter’s voice rose in pitch and he knew for certain she was near. Her cries came from a cubicle to his left, within, inside one of the growths. He crouched over the open mushroom and caught a glimpse of something white drift by in the blackness underneath. He ran in the direction the flow took her.

  William ran for hours. He was exhausted from the futility of running from the open mouth of one fungus to another, deeper and deeper into the endless aisles amongst the universe of cubicles. He examined hundreds, thousands of moldering and corroded cubicles, peering into the fungus’s depths to find his daughter. He knew his strength would fade eventually. He knew he was inexorably lost amongst the infinite aisles. It was a hopeless task, searching an endless succession of empty cubicles for his daughter’s face slipping by in the torrents of sewage under his feet.

  After what must have been days of searching William stumbled into a cubicle and fell to his knees; his body could no longer match his determination. He hadn’t heard his daughter’s cries in hours, perhaps longer. He looked inside the fungus’s throat and down in the basement’s filth he saw his baby girl’s face floating, milk-white in the black sick, honey-colored hair curls spread out. The dimensions of the mushroom’s opening and his baby’s head below were incongruous and distorted by a shift in his memory.

  A gust of foulness rose from the depths. His girl’s face, that oh-so-serious face like childhood rushing in a flood of emotion flowing into his head, his baby’s face the most wonderful thing he’d ever remembered. The room seemed to melt into a tainted fog so all that was left was a void and a memory to fill the absence, memory like an island of debris in septic waters. He couldn’t avert his gaze from his baby girl’s eyes because the hole in the floor plunged deeper and the basement’s sewage level rose as the fungus’s fleshy rim stretched to envelop him. I hate myself, I never s
hould have been a father, I’m sweating from the oppressive heat of the office. He struggled to gasp fresh air through the spore-choked air. He couldn’t hear himself breathing anymore. His daughter was far too silent as the sewage gathered around her head and slowly closed over her pristine face.

  MALLECHO

  Stephen Willcott

  “Mallecho Wood? Is that safe?” My wife asks. She reminds me of my mother.

  “I told them to stay clear,” I say. “They’re just going for a bit, Jan.” She worries like that. But then, her family is not from here. I smile at her and go into the garden. The sun is strong and overhead. The children have left their ball games and toys on the lawn. I go to the rose tree and watch the insects, the flies, the bees, even the ants. Behind the tree is a brown fence and behind that is the embankment. Thick bramble covers its side. It is tall, almost as high as the house. At the top is an abandoned railway line. This was my father’s house, but he never saw the line in use. This house will pass to my children one day, I hope.

  The land around here is old. Old in human terms. Some of the boundaries and copses are mentioned in the doomsday book, but there are sites of pre-history too. Standing stones, earth works, barrows and the like. Sacred groves, probably. You can feel it at night. If you walk on the embankment and look at the stars, at the landscape. The weight of generations, the renewal of the seasons. Forgotten things were done here.

  I don’t walk there as much as I used to. I get cramp in my arm when it’s cold. Jan never really liked it, but Tim and Rebecca do. Jan frowns when they go up there. I joke and tell her the train isn’t due for another hour. She pretends to laugh, but I see her relax when the children return.

  Tim is at an age where everything is an adventure. I see him wake, full of excitement—surprise and possibility await him. Later, when the day has run its course, I find him sleeping, a toy gun still in his hand. Rebecca is serious, a thinker. She watches her younger brother with a frown, but is never far behind him.

  To one side of our house is my neighbor’s house, the other side is a field. My neighbors, the parents of my children’s friends, my own childhood friends, have been a comfort to me over the years. Simon and Sue Talbot. A shared experience holds us together, holds the community together.

  At the far side of the field, where the garden allotments start, is a group of trees. Perhaps ten. One of them is a willow, old and bent as a willow should be. I must have climbed that tree a hundred times as a child. Simon loved to climb it too. Sue and Sara would wait at the bottom. They would call to us, egging us on. The tree trunk split at about ten feet, one branch going straight up, the other curved. The branch that went up was too steep to climb. The curved one was easy to climb. But the straight one, after six feet or so, curved down. At some point these two branches meet. The trick was to climb the easy branch, then cross were they met, then back up the curve to the top of the straight one.

  I lay in the grass, looking up at the unreachable limb, when the trick first came to me. I was about Tim’s age. I saw the crossover—the branches were thin, but I knew it could be done. Simon and I set to it. I remember thinking as I crossed from one limb to the other, the thin branches holding my weight, that I would tell my father of this success. He liked to hear our adventure stories. Then when I made it to the top of the straight branch I saw lots of markings in the bark. Hundreds of nicks and cuts. Some worn and healed, forming thin scars, but others more clear and deep. It was the initials of those who had previously gained the straight branch. It gives me comfort to think of it now, like watching the wind come through the trees at night, a shared experience. At the time, that first time, I was confused and disappointed. Is it an adventure if you are not the first? I don’t know whether it was that first climb or later that I noticed my father’s initials, JW, the same as mine. I noticed more JWs and added my own.

  There were other trees too. The jumping tree, where you had to gauge from what height your courage would allow you to leap. Or the tree that was good for making a swing, its thick horizontal branch dressed like a maypole with old bits of rope and cord.

  You could also watch the adults in the allotments from the trees. My father used to say he was going to “toil in the soil.” He did grow things, and bring things home for my mother to cook, but when I think back, I remember him most sitting by our shed, talking to Simon’s father or one of the other adults, smoking, drinking and smiling.

  I enjoy the allotment now. Jan says it’s where I go to gossip, but it brings me peace to work the hoe, to ask Simon how Sue and the children are doing, or just to doze in the sun.

  Grandfather built that shed. That is what my father told me. Though when he spoke of “grandfather,” I never knew if he meant his or mine. I never knew my grandfather; he died before I was born. As my father died before my son was born. It does not matter. That shed is one of the most comfortable places I go. It looks, smells and feels of my family. It holds more than the small set of tools with which I work the soil. I open the door when the wind is coming from the woods and I feel the memories rush to meet me.

  The lane leads from the allotments to the stream. There are trees on either side of the lane. The lane crosses the stream at the small stone bridge, then on to the cemetery. I think every child in the community has fallen in that stream at one time or another. We would walk along the bank, climbing past the tangle of trees and bushes. Or try to cross the stream, stepping on the stones that broke the surface. Some of the stones have names, like Narrowfoot or Rocking Stone.

  I leave the garden and walk along the side of the house. The Talbots’ garden is empty. Simon will be getting ready. My father told me you cannot prepare, only accept.

  The cemetery, the last thing before the woods, is a good place to play hide-and-seek. I see Tim, Rebecca and their friends playing there from time to time, hear them teasing each other: “Better run or the winter king will catch you!” Or daring one of their friends to climb the barrows. It is the oldest place within the community. When I go there, I look at my father’s grave. The head stone is crumbling. There is no longer any surface left unused to write a name. Tiny carved letters cover the front and back. They are not needed. It is a marker for my family. That is enough.

  Standing in the graveyard, at night, I listen to the wind coming from the woods. It is the song of the community. It speaks of our families, our belonging. Those things that came to the sight of my father came to me, will come to my own children.

  At the front of the house I step into the lane and look for the children to come. The sun is still hot and for the first time today I feel afraid. Jan will understand.

  When my father came to us that day he looked tired. Maybe because I have expected this day for so long, I didn’t cry as Simon did. I heard him. I saw it in his face, though he would not speak of it.

  My father told us that, for that special day, we could go into the woods, to Mallecho Wood. This was normally forbidden, but that day we could. I was so excited. Such an adventure.

  I remember it was a hot day, like today. Strange that the woods were so cold. We had raced to the woods, but once inside we went slowly. Myself, Sara, Simon, Eric, John and Sue. We dared each other on. All scared to go forward, but too excited to go back.

  We saw the pool by the glimmer of light. Not wide, no more than one of the barrows. The wood was thick overhead, allowing little light, but the surface was bright, quivering. At the edge we looked into the water. There was no reflection, as if we were not there. John dropped a stone into the water. There was no splash, just a gulp as the stone entered the liquid and was gone. At that moment I wished I had not come. Wished I were at home. I felt the wind, cold against my neck. The thick leaf litter ground beneath my shoes, slick and rotten. I was twisting, caught in the choking gloom. I could hear Simon and Eric calling. Calling for their fathers. I felt my arm collide against another. A hand grasped at me for support. It was Sara, I saw her tumble forward, her arms outstretched to break her fall. The blue arms came from the
surface of the water to receive her. Then she was pulled under, with the same gulping sounds as the stone.

  We ran, we were all running.

  My father was at the gate waiting. All the parents were in the lane waiting. As I am waiting.

  GOD OF THE KILN

  Eric Francis

  Peace be upon you this morning, my brother. I see you and I alone are brave enough to clap our eyes upon this thing, this menace of the Eastern Sea.

  Or fools enough, as our shipmates would say.

  I? Oh yes, I’ve seen it before. Gone so far as to make landfall and stand beneath it, but that was with a captain and crew of the One True Faith. Islanders like our ship’s master and his men are still beholden to those superstitions that pass for religion in these waters. But I trust that one day the revelations of the Prophet, peace be upon him, will open their eyes.

  Oh, I’ll grant you that, my brother—they are as strong in their own beliefs as you or I are in the One True Faith. But do not confuse belief with faith. Faith is the measure of the civilized mind and it begets wisdom, while belief… belief springs from emotion, not intellect. It begets fanaticism, and fanaticism begets what we shall soon see perched upon one of these little islands.

  Its name? It has none. The islanders fear that naming it will give it power over them. They only speak of the settlement whose people created this monstrosity, a lyrical trilling which in our language amounts to “the village that devoured itself.” But during its time of glory it used to be known, in lands even more distant than our own, as Blossom of the Hillside….

  Blossom of the Hillside owed its existence to porcelain.