The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

  Me.

  Jason was certain that this blind corpse would find him, and God knows what would happen next.

  Dave reached the level of the cliff where the still- smouldering corpse of Becky hung. It moved first one direction, and then scampered like a crab toward her. His hand touched her blackened body. It moved quickly, urgently, over her torso, and found what remained of her face, which curiously was untouched by the flames. Gently, like a mother caressing a baby, the hand touched and followed the contours of Becky’s face. The shoulders of the corpse slumped, and then a louder whooshing sound came from the gaping neck. It was almost emotional, a voiceless keen.

  With supernatural strength, Dave’s corpse pushed himself a dozen or more metres away from the cliff and fell, limply, into the sea far below.

  You lied, my friend. You still loved her.

  * * *

  Jason climbed to the summit of Ball’s Pyramid because it seemed the right thing to do. He wasn’t in a fit mental state, but he risked it. Death wasn’t so poor a prospect as he once thought. The wind had picked up a little but he was able to sit at the top of the geologic wonder with some comfort, and observe his surroundings.

  He saw another dingy being lowered from the charter boat into the sea. They have binoculars. They know something is wrong.

  He looked to the northwest and saw Lord Howe Island, twelve miles distant. People live there. And tourists visit regularly. Eight hundred at any one time.

  Jason knew that the turmeric-coloured spores caused the re-animation of Becky and Dave. And the stick insect. How, he had no idea, but he guessed that Ball’s Pyramid’s isolated position, and the very narrow window in each year when the spores appeared on this most desolate of islands, had dramatically curbed its propagation. The three rock climbers were the first in thousands, if not millions, of years, to give it a chance to move on. He guessed that the reanimation of Becky stopped when the spores were all destroyed by the fire and heat.

  He stared at his hands and arms, noting the yellow stains. He looked down at the distant corpse hanging from the cliff, where sea gulls were fighting over Becky’s flesh. The crew of the charter boat would arrive soon, and regardless of how difficult it was, would do what they could to retrieve Becky’s body. They might even be surprised by what they found floating in the ocean.

  Jason checked his climbing gear and mentally charted a route back down that would make use of the anchor points already set in the cliff.

  Jumping from the summit still seemed a sweet and strangely relieving idea, but the thought of reanimating chilled him like nothing on this earth.

  He started the climb down, forgetting how exhausted he was.

  He had a job to do.

  New Chronicles of Andras Thorn

  Cat Sparks

  Andras Thorn was a famous traveller and the uncle for whom I was named. By the year of my birth, three times he’d voyaged all the way up to Carpenter’s Gulf. By my tenth summer his attentions turned inland: beyond the Sand Road and The Verge’s scattered outposts. Beyond Grimpiper and the farthest stone.

  He chronicled his journeys in a book with toughened leather bindings. Not just any leather, mind you; leather cut and cured from a monster’s hide. A thunder lizard, bred for battle. The one he’d killed had been the last of its kind. Or so he said. Uncle Andras’s outrageous boasts were the stuff of local legend, such as the time that chronicle stopped a bullet from piercing his heart.

  Outlandish tales of Uncle Andras peppered my childhood years. All but my mother worshipped the ground he walked on.

  “Don’t you take after him,” she warned, already regretting the name she’d saddled me with. But by then it was far too late. My uncle’s laughter shook the rafters of our family home. Wine flowed and tales grew wilder with the telling. By fifteen I was itching for a chronicle of my own, dismissing the future laid out by my mother’s emporium. I craved relics from the Dead Red Heart, not to mention the pulse-racing exploits that went with them.

  Uncle Andras claimed to have stood upon the walls of Axa, lived amongst the Knartooth clans, crewed a whaler out of Fallow Heel. But those were not the tales that made my own hairs stand on end. My mother’s caravan had often veered near Axa and other of the ancient fortress cities. Each one a still, unchanging monolith: blast-proof ceramic ringed by unexploded mines. Perhaps people lived in them and perhaps they did not. Phantom inhabitants who never showed their faces.

  Only one name stirred the fire in my blood: Ankahmada. A city so lost, no-one knew where to look for it. Not even my uncle, for all his rugged talk. Ankahmada: ancient like Axa, without window, door or gate. Some whispered it to be a living thing. Ankahmada: relic of the days before the Ruin. The lure of it set hardened men to fighting. Was Ankahmada the city or the name of the God-King that dwelled within its walls? Both, it was claimed by many travellers.

  I had to find out. I would be the one. My destiny—And it might have been had the blighted storm not cut across my path. Boiling up from nowhere like a jinny from the sands. Stripping me of everything, save for that thunder-lizard-hide-bound chronicle—my illustrious uncle’s parting gift. Something he surely would have wanted me to have, had he chanced to wake when I’d stolen the best of his camels.

  I’d tucked that chronicle inside my shirt as the sand rasped and stung and scratched my face. Cocooned within my traveling cloak and dug in deep beside my camel’s carcass, that chronicle pressed firm against my heart as I waited for death, whispering prayers to Kashah the Dog-Headed Warrior, patron saint of explorers and lost causes.

  But death did not come. The storm blew over, revealing wind-whipped crests that stretched forever. I was lost as any man has ever been, with sun-ravaged skin, lips blistered in the land of my uncle’s stories and surrounded by dunes that sang and shifted: the home of serpentes the length of sailing vessels. Creatures that—according to uncle’s chronicle—would coil and strike to protect their territories.

  The nest of the serpente must be given the widest berth, underlined in heavy ink upon the page. Far more use than the elaborate, garish maps inset between each colourful adventure. Each one laboriously lettered, yet conforming to no familiar geography. Where, precisely, lay Drifted Gully, the Fallen Towers of Cambera or Broken Arch?

  Not a single serpente had crossed my path since I snuck from Evenslough. Setting out in the mist of dawn, my passage was marked by sandskate shells, each one belly-up and empty, picked clean by the rot-black carrion birds that took a curious interest in my journey.

  Such tiny details I had jotted for posterity—my own entries beginning where uncle Andras’s left off—while sheltering in squat, box-like bunkers barely interesting enough to bother sketching. Bunkers dating back before the Ruin, each cobwebbed corner marked with ashen campfire dregs and the bones of explorers who had died beside their dogs. I wondered if the poor fools had been trapped by serpentes, storms or other, stranger things?

  Uncle’s tales were amply laced with the savagery of misborn beasts: unimaginable horrors that called the Dead Red Heartland home. Monstrosities of discreditable birthright: part animal, part human, part machine. Merchant Queen Kamalini was always one for the grotesque and I’d half-presumed he invented them for her pleasure (and her not insignificant coin). His most celebrated exploit, Kalyca by Land and Sea, had been hand-lettered on kid vellum by a brace of fat, expensive monks. The masterpiece, complete with gold leaf and lurid illustration, hung in the dining chamber of Evenslough Palace—so they said. Not that I had never dined there. My uncle was drunk when they cut the ribbon. He’d been drunk every single night since.

  I encountered no such creatures, except for once—that clutch of fossilized eggs. Unidentifiable shrieks past the midnight hour and markings in the shifting sands that might, perhaps, have been the tracks of beasts.

  And then the storm in which I rightly should have perished—yet the winds had blown themselves apart, allowing me to crawl from my dead camel’s side. I was lost, with only faithful Kashah to guide me�
��should I survive till nightfall and should that night be amply spread with stars.

  And so I walked each step on borrowed time. Three days beyond my last meal; half a day since my battered waterskin extruded its last pathetic dribbles. Ankahmada still no closer than a dream. Soon my mind would cloud with cursed mirages. What I hadn’t counted on was smelling them.

  By the elongated shadows of afternoon, the scent of roasting meat was overpowering. It filled my senses and I could think of nothing else. A dream, of course. A waking dream. There was nothing to see but russet dunes, glazed and shapeless in the sun’s relentless glare.

  The wind intensified as I trudged. A blast of spiced aroma hit me squarely in the face. I might have drowned in my own salivations, as gritty with dust, sand and longing as they were.

  Up ahead through the shimmering haze, blobs of colour began to coalesce. And something else. Something towering and dark that seemed to my fevered eyes like a human face. Onwards I strode, foot after foot, breath after laboured breath, each lungful drinking in the tang of spice, acrid thornbush, burning bricks of dung. Strangers. Fellow travellers lost. I would throw myself upon their—and Kashah’s—mercy. Either they would feed me or they’d kill me. My fate, it seemed, was entirely in their hands.

  The closer to their camp I staggered, the more the scent of roasting flesh intensified, forcing me to gag and swallow. Forcing me to my knees. The giant face came into focus: a stone-hewn, flame-blackened godhead towering over a group of men and women gathered around a fire. Their facial expressions—and that of the god—made fierce by the flickering light.

  “By Oshana’s grace, it’s a youth!” said one of the men, his words slurred casually with drink.

  The weight of their eyes felt heavy upon my skin. The cooking smells were too delicious, the fire too comforting.

  A row of skewers roasted over coals, each one affixed with chunks of glistening meat. My aching throat flooded with saliva.

  “Is he pretty?” asked a second man. “Bet he’s hungry. Where can he have come from?”

  “You’re a desperate dog, Narat,” interjected a female voice. The others laughed.

  “Come and join us,” said the woman, stepping forward. “We’ve had a good day of it out in the dunes. Come share with us the fortunes of Oshana.”

  I blinked sandy grit from my eyes. The thick-set woman wore traveling robes, embroidered and in very fine condition. Hair cascaded around her shoulders, unbraided and relatively clean.

  Hesitantly, I went to her, empty waterskin dangling flaccidly at my side. The woman gestured to a space upon the blanket. She sat and I obediently sat beside her.

  “Following the pilgrim trail?” she asked.

  I nodded weakly, although I’m not sure why. There had been no pilgrims. No trail but occasional, crumbling bunkers scattered with red sand, ash and bone.

  “We’ve been here a day and a night. I am Getta.” She gestured at the others. “That one is my husband, those our sons and their wives. We’ve come all the way from Blessed Silence. Sold everything we owned to get this far.”

  Blessed Silence? I had never heard of it. I nodded. “My uncle . . . ” I’d been intending to explain the whys and wherefores of my condition but the words dried up before they hit the air.

  Getta nodded sympathetically. “The pilgrim trail is not an easy road.” Her words did not seem solely for my ears, but also for the night-shrouded dunes and the sprinkling of stars above our heads.

  Her sympathy was useless. I needed food and drink. I hung my head, lest the spectacle of pathetic longing fill them with uncharitable disgust.

  “Looks like the poor lad could do with a sup of wine,” a male voice boomed from the darkness. The one who had called me pretty. Somebody else laughed, another of the sons. I closed my eyes, knowing that whatever they asked, I would oblige, so desperate was my need for sustenance.

  A dull thud sounded on the sand before me. I opened my eyes to a plump waterskin and Getta’s equally plump fingers poking at it. “Drink!”

  I snatched the ’skin, unstoppered it and gulped. Sweet, sweet water blended with unfamiliar herbs.

  One of the sons pulled a skewer from the flames. I tried not to gawk as he hacked the meat into portions. Each piece landed, wet and glistening, on a tray.

  “You must be starving,” said Getta. “We were almost out of food ourselves. Fortunately Oshana was watching over us.”

  A man speared a hunk of meat as a plate was placed in my hands. “Get that into you, lad. Looks like you could do with it.”

  Another man made a comment I didn’t quite catch. Getta laughed in response. “There was no luck about it! My husband wore an amulet of Oshana while hunting, which I had prepared for him according to the rites of Kharakhan. We are not lucky, son, we are blessed and favoured. Blessed and favoured of the great Oshana.”

  “A whole nest? I call that lucky, blessed or not,” he replied. “Fat ones, too. Fattest things I’ve seen since Blessed Silence.”

  A whole nest.

  My gorge rose in desperation, but I wrestled it back down. “What kind of nest?” I asked, my voice weak and watery. At first I thought no one had heard me.

  “Ten plump, succulent serpente babies,” said Getta proudly. “We shall feast well for a week at least!”

  “You violated a serpente nest? You killed the mother serpente?”

  Getta smiled, triumphant. “There was no mother. They were unguarded. The amulet of Oshana—”

  Giddy with loss, I let my plate drop to the rug. “The mother will be back for them,” I whispered. “If you’ve eaten the flesh of her young, she will know it. She will smell her babies on your breath, the scent of them oozing from your pores.” I pushed the plate away from me. The hardest thing I’ve had ever had to do.

  Getta smiled condescendingly. “Ordinarily, perhaps that would be so. But Oshana protects her faithful children. None who wear her amulet will come to harm.” She paused suddenly, considering me closely in the firelight. Her face was large and round and soft. “You are not a follower? No wonder you’re so frightened!” She put her own plate down and clapped her hands. “Maja! This young man is without protection! Bring one of the sacred relics from my jewel chest.”

  Pleased that an alarming situation was in the process of being rectified, Getta resumed her eating. Thick lips smacked in delight as she devoured bite after bite. “’Twas the divining of Oshana led us this far into the Red, you know.” She chewed with her mouth open. “We stumbled upon the pilgrim trail by accident—or so we thought.” She nodded at the fire-blackened face towering above. “They say this is the likeness of a famed king in these parts. Ankahmada. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

  Ankahmada. My heart skipped.

  “We are simple boneshell traders seeking a new supply for buttons,” Getta continued. “Barely any gets traded south these days, you know. Supply was choked, so we came to dig it up ourselves. This stretch of sand is thick with ancient bones.”

  Simple was right. I tried to clamber to my feet but a wave of nausea held me to the rug. Nothing had ever smelled so delicious as the roasting serpente flesh. Getta’s extended family shovelled fingerfulls into their mouths. Thick juice dripped and dribbled through beards and over chins.

  Uncle said. . . Uncle Andras wasn’t here. Uncle Andras—that fat old fraud—had probably never been so hungry he couldn’t think straight. If Uncle Andras was so smart, how come he never got rich like Kamalini? His stories were all camel dung, made up to fool the elderly, young and stupid.

  I lunged at my plate, shoving meat into my mouth, afraid it might crawl back upon its bones.

  “That’s the spirit,” said Getta, washing her mouthful down with a hearty swig. Drying her lips on the back of her hand as one of the wives passed her something wrapped in cloth.

  She handed it to me. “You must wear this amulet at all times, even when you think you shouldn’t need it. Oshana will protect you like she protects us all.”

  Accepting the trink
et, I slipped it onto my wrist, then swallowed the last morsel on my plate. After all, I had not seen any serpents, save that one small clutch of fossilized eggs—which were likely older than the dunes themselves.

  One of Getta’s smiling sons speared me another dripping chunk. I nodded as he carved it into segments, ate until my bulging stomach ached. Nestled back on the comfortable rugs, I studied my companions by firelight. Who were these people? Wealthy, or at least they once had been, that much was clear from the clothing on their backs. But boneshell was an armorers’ commodity, far too valuable to waste on the frivolity of buttons. Getta chattered at great length, her stories embellished with sweeping movements of her arms. How had the lot of them made it this far without being robbed and murdered?

  “I have never heard of Oshana,” I admitted eventually, my hand resting across my stuffed-full belly.

  “Really?” said Getta, pausing her conversation. ‘Wherever do you come from? I find that almost impossible to believe.’

  “Born and raised in Makasa,” I replied, a story that was only half a lie. I’d been hoping to impress, but she’d clearly never even heard of it.

  “Your family are merchants? Wine or cloth, perhaps?”

  I nodded. “My uncle is a famous traveller. Andras Thorn—perhaps you’ve heard his name?”

  Getta smiled kindly and shook her head. I noted the subtle upturn of the corner of her lips as she evaluated my social caste and found it, thankfully, beneath her own.

  * * *

  The sound of men and women shrieking jolted me from slumber. I sat up, confused, at first believing myself back in that wretched old Grimpiper boarding house.

  A fresh scream sent me scrambling to a wary crouch. The leaden weight of half-digested meat brought memories flooding to the fore. The fire had shrunk to little more than embers. Constellations and a sliver moon splashed light across the sand.

  The family of Oshana worshippers ran screaming in all directions, tripping over cooking pots, their own feet and discarded weaponry.