by Guy Adams
I began to see things out there. The never-changing landscape began to take on new colours and shapes, the sand shifting from a pale yellow to a deep red, the white sky darkening to a sickly blue.
“My eyes,” I told him, voice dry in my throat, lips beginning to blister. “Everything looks wrong.”
“It’s not just your eyes,” he replied. “The world is slipping, we’re riding right out to the edge of things.”
This made not a spit of sense to me, but I didn’t care. So little did.
At one point I heard a roar above me and I looked up to see a dark triangle cut its way through the sky. My eyes struggled to focus on it. At first I thought it was a bird, and then I saw its lines were too perfect, the dark structure man-made, black iron. Fans whirred within the frame of its wings and the sound it made as it passed overheard threatened to split my head wide open. My mule began to panic, shifting from side to side, not knowing which way to turn as the sand blew up in clouds around us.
“What is it?” I shouted.
“Echoes,” the old man replied. “Something from one of the other worlds leaking in to ours. Pay it no mind, it’ll soon be gone.”
And he was right. Just as its shadow seemed so deep and heavy we’d never see the light again, there was a grinding sound and it was gone. The sky as empty as before.
“A flying machine,” I said. “Is that what it was?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he insisted, “keep yourself grounded in the here and now, in this world.”
This was easier said than done, with the desert constantly changing colour and shapes rearing in and out of the dunes.
At one point we passed a statue that reached right up into the sky. A grotesque representation of an eagle, its beak wide as if it was crying out towards the sun. At its base there was a sign and, despite being warned away by the old man, I couldn’t resist riding close enough to read what it said:
“23rd June 1890—Reformation Day. Let two worlds become one, united under the great flag of the United States of America.”
I repeated it to the old man, but he didn’t appear in the least interested.
“That’s next year,” I said, “but it looks old...”
“Time stands no more still out here than anything else,” he said. “Just keep riding, keep your focus.”
Easy for him to say. He was carved out of rock, nothing seemed to move him.
I kept sipping at my water, desperately wanting to make it last, but so thirsty beneath that blazing sun that it was all I could do not to drink the bottle dry. I never saw him drink at all, he seemed to give all the water he had to the animals.
After noon we began to see others out there with us. Some on horseback, some on foot.
“Don’t talk to them,” he said. “Don’t even look at them.”
More advice that was all but impossible to follow.
I couldn’t help but glance from time to time. There was a party of about ten or twelve, all wearing suits like they had just stepped off a riverboat. “Who knows where you find it?” the man at the head of the procession said, addressing his fellows. “Death is gone now.”
I wished I could believe him, it felt close enough to me. I had tried to eat, but the food dried my mouth out even further and I couldn’t bear feeling even more thirsty than I had before.
That night, at the old man’s insistence, I tried again.
“You need the sustenance,” he insisted. “The energy. You won’t make it through otherwise.”
I believed him well enough, but still it was like swallowing bullets, the food burning all the way down my throat.
“I don’t think we’ll ever leave,” I said to him just before falling asleep. “I think this is the world now. All there is.”
THE THIRD DAY started with the roar of those flying machines. I opened my eyes to see the sky full of them. They were moving across us in a diagonal, like migrating birds.
In the distance there was a crack like thunder and I watched as flames blossomed on the underside of a machine.
“They’re fighting,” I said, “shooting at one another.”
“War is a constant,” the old man agreed.
“Just like this fucking journey.”
By late morning I had run out of water. I had been doing my best to conserve it, but the heat was too much. My body shook with it, my mouth cracked and bleeding. In some ways it was a relief; as long as there had been water the journey could continue, but now there was none there seemed little point.
I told the old man this. I think I was even smiling, my lips splitting in tiny cracks all along their length.
“We carry on,” he insisted. “You’re not dying out here.”
“We’ll see about that,” I told him. “We’ll just see.”
Still we rode on.
My sense of time was getting as confused as everything else. I kept falling asleep on the back of the mule, experiencing the journey in broken sections like a road seen through the window of a speeding train. I think it was the afternoon when we passed the naked man. His skin was bright red, a bandana tied around his head. Next to him was something that looked an over-developed bicycle, its wheels too thick and its frame packed with machinery and motors.
“You got any gas?” he asked us as we passed.
“Ignore him,” the old man reminded me, though I couldn’t help but look at the man briefly.
“Just some gas!” he shouted. “The bitch has packed up and I’ll never get out of here on foot.”
He continued to shout as we rode on, and I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder as his voice echoed across the dunes. “Gas!” he kept screaming. “Just some gas!”
He was the last thing I remember clearly for awhile. My next memory was of lying on my back on the sand, gazing up at a night sky that swirled with colour, great bands of red and purple and green, shooting over my head.
I think I tried to speak to the old man about it. Maybe to ask him what he thought it was, or just to share the experience. My voice was gone, though; trying to make words was like swallowing glass.
I closed my eyes, so very tired, comforted by the fact that it was unlikely I’d ever wake up.
But I did.
To begin with, I thought the flying machines had returned. Then I realised the thunder was exactly that, a storm raging above us. Lightning scratched white lines between the stars, trying to cut the darkness into sheets like a tailor sketching out material for a suit.
Then it began to rain, and the water hitting my face was the most miraculous thing I had ever experienced.
Every single raindrop that hit my dry, blistered skin felt wonderful.
We’re trying to find Heaven, I thought. I reckon it’s here.
The old man opened the canteens so they could catch some of the rain, warning me to be careful. I was so dehydrated that drinking too much could do me more harm than good. It was hard to resist, but I let the rainwater fall in my mouth, then sloshed it around and spit it back out onto the sand.
Eventually he let me take a few sips. It tasted sweet and clean. Heaven indeed.
It continued until dawn. When the sun rose, it brought clouds of steam from the water-soaked sand as we continued on our way.
The canteens weren’t full, but they held enough to keep us going for a little longer. Yesterday I had lost the will to move another step, but life clings, and while I was still weak and sore, I began to hope we might see the end of the desert. The humidity nearly robbed me of that hope. It was like riding through a Turkish bath, our clothes soaked and clinging to us like hot towels.
The sun continued to rise higher in a sky that had turned the colour of an infected wound. The old man still showed no sign of suffering, the same unstoppable bastard he had always been. Occasionally he offered words of comfort, assurances that we would soon be through, that Wormwood was close. I chose to believe him, he wasn’t a man to lie for the sake of another’s comfort. By mid-afternoon on that third day I began to wonder. The
thought of spending another night in the desert, wet clothes freezing around me as the darkness fell, was almost more than I could stand.
Ahead of us the sky suddenly filled with what, at first, I took to be birds. Black shapes fluttering towards us in the air. As they came closer I saw they were bits of paper caught on a wind that I couldn’t even feel. I snatched one as it passed me and tried to force my eyes to focus on what was written on it.
“It’s a picture of you,” I told my companion, holding the sheet up.
He was wearing a suit, which seemed as misplaced as putting a necktie on an iguana. Above the picture, it said VOTE: REFORMATION; beneath, FOR A UNITED WORLD.
“I don’t want to know,” he said, refusing to look. “What will be will be.”
I let the poster loose and it soared away above me, vanishing into the brightness of the sun.
Just as night began to fall, we saw the edge of the desert. Mountains rose ahead of us, the first sign of a break in the sand since we had entered days ago.
“We’ll keep going,” he said. “I’d rather sleep under real stars.”
When I had entered the desert, the air had changed the moment I set foot on the sand, and leaving was the same in reverse. A wall of fresh air suddenly passed over me and the sky cleared. The mule pulled us onto solid ground again and a strong wind whipped across us.
“Now we can rest,” he said.
THE ROAD TO
WORMWOOD
THE INVENTOR
AND THE MONKS
CHAPTER SIX
A GENIUS, TWO PARTNERS AND A DUPE
ELISABETH FORSET WAS getting more than a little tired of the attentions of Roderick Quartershaft, Adventurer and Darling of the Popular Press.
They had spent their first night in a hotel in Omaha, the pre-arranged transport having failed to arrive as promised. After an hour of standing outside the train station, they had given in to the obvious and resigned themselves to a delay in their schedule. Her father had spent a couple of hours in the local telegraph office, shouting at the operator at such volume it was a wonder his voice hadn’t carried out over the wires. Of course, none of it was the operator’s fault, something he made clear time and again when the mad Englishman seemed inclined to visit physical violence on him.
“I can only send the message, sir,” he had insisted. “The fiery vengeance you can visit on them yourself, should you ever meet face to face.”
Retiring to a suite of rooms at the Cozzens House Hotel, news had finally reached them that the expected transport would arrive first thing in the morning.
After an acceptable evening meal, Elisabeth had retired to her room, as much to avoid the constant talking of Quartershaft as the tedious company of the monks. The move successfully achieved the latter, but the former proved more tenacious. This was helped no end by the hotel having provided him with the room next to hers, complete with an adjoining door.
“My lady!” he announced, bursting in for the fourth time in half an hour. “It occurs to me that you may benefit from some advice on local customs.”
“I’m sure,” she replied, setting down her book with an irritated slap, “that in Omaha, as with everywhere else in the Western world, the customs are fairly similar. For example: a gentleman would not simply burst into a stranger’s bedroom without first having the courtesy to knock.”
“Ah! But you’re no stranger.”
“And you’re no gentleman, but one would hope the rule still stands.”
“Forgive me, but it was open...”
“It was not. It was locked. I ensured as much myself.”
“Damned cheap locks, a lady must feel secure while travelling. Perhaps you will allow me to take a look at it and see if it cannot be set to good order?”
“As you’re the person I most wish to keep out, that hardly seems necessary. Go to your room and we’ll forget all about it.”
“Well...” Quartershaft made to sit on the corner of her bed, lost his balance and tumbled to the floor.
“I see you’ve been drinking again?” said Elisabeth. “Though in truth I can’t say I have noticed a time when you haven’t.”
“Nonsense,” came Quartershaft’s muffled voice. “Beyond the occasional medicinal draft, I never touch a drop. It dulls the nerves, and that is something that I, as a hunter and adventurer, can ill afford. I was merely taking the opportunity to surprise anyone that might be hiding beneath your bed.”
“And is there?”
“Is there what, my lady?”
“Anyone hiding under there?”
“Careful inspection proves that all is safe.” He pulled himself up and sat down, more carefully this time. “Are there any other tasks I can perform for my most beautiful companion?”
“Certainly. You can leave the room and make a concerted effort to stay out of it this time.”
“Are you sure? It can be terribly lonely while travelling; it’s a shame not to make the most of each other. There is such an abject lack of civilised company in this country.”
“I certainly haven’t found any,” she countered.
She looked at him and worked hard to be objective. She knew that many ladies considered him the very height of attractiveness. He cut an assertive profile and would certainly have been handsome in his day. Now, with years of poor diet and alcohol abuse, he was a puffy, bloodshot mess; a shadow of the man he used to be, who still stood bold on the covers of his books. He was, in her opinion, repulsive, inside and out.
“Mr Quartershaft,” she said, “I shall say this only once more. You are a member of our party purely because of financial expediency. I tolerate you as I tolerate a number of practical limitations that encumber our progress. I do not, however, like you very much.”
“You barely know me!” he retorted.
“I know enough. You’re a fool and a pest, a lecher and a drunk. I may not be able to ban you from the expedition, but I can most certainly ban you from my room. So get out before I call reception and demand they have you removed.”
“Only trying to be a help,” he said, his voice quiet. “If you wish to be alone, you need but ask.”
He made his way out of the room. Once he was gone, she took the precaution of slipping a chair beneath the handle of the door. Feeling more secure, she prepared for bed.
She was not well-travelled, as Quartershaft frequently reminded her. But then, neither was he, whatever claims he made to the contrary. This did not make her a fool, nor someone that needed constant supervision.
She was sure that Quartershaft’s motives were far more basic than that. He hoped to get her into bed. He was certainly not the first to try, nor was he the only man to fail. Society demanded that a lady of her standing be the height of purity. This was not altogether the case, for her, but even so, she was not inclined to let him get close enough to breathe on her, let alone gain access to her undergarments.
Next door she heard a thundering crash and guessed that drink had finally got the better of him.
Truth be told, he would be the very least of her discomforts on the road ahead.
When her father had first suggested this expedition, her thoughts had been entirely negative. She had known all about Wormwood and her father’s obsession with it. He was a man who infected his home with the contents of his head. Walking into his study was like taking a stroll across the contours of his cerebellum, the room littered with research papers, schematic drawings, maps, stuffed animals and more ironwork than would be found in a modestly-sized blacksmith’s. It was precisely because her father was quite incapable of running a household without it eventually collapsing under its own weight that she still lived with him and did her best to manage the affairs of the estate. Many daughters would resent such a station, hankering after marriage and families of their own. Elisabeth was not that sort of woman.
“But how could I live with myself if I didn’t at least try to find it?” her father had announced over dinner. “I should never forgive myself.”
S
he understood that, of course. Just as she understood that she could not allow him to travel alone, any more than she could expect him not to blow up the house if she gave up her residence.
Wormwood had been a subject of conversation since she had been very young. Her mother, passed these thirteen years, had possessed no patience for the subject, so her father, always a man who needed to talk an idea out rather than let it stew inside his own brain, had looked to her.
“Just imagine,” he would say as she lay in her bed. “To set your eyes on Heaven. To walk its streets or corridors, to breathe its air. To think Paradise could be within the reach of anyone clever enough and brave enough to track it down.”
She had never believed it was. Even as a child, she had viewed her father’s stories as fictions.
He would tell her of the time it had been sighted in the Cotswolds, a tiny village appearing overnight, its stone houses immaculate and yet empty, its lush square and pond beautiful but free of fish or fowl. A picture of a village. A model in fact.
Folk from nearby had descended into its streets, exploring every nook and cranny of the impossible place, trying all the doors, peering through all the windows.
The work of the devil, some said; the work of God, claimed others.
“Nobody ever seems quite sure who is responsible for what,” her father had laughed, “in that most complex of spiritual relationships.”
And then, as swiftly as it had appeared, it had vanished, but not without taking several of the curious explorers with it. Anyone still left walking the paths between the houses when it dissipated into air had disappeared with it, victims of an infernal impossibility that was the talk of the area centuries later.
Not that anyone ever had evidence. The tales of Wormwood were never more than that. Eyewitness reports—and scant few of those—passed on down the generations, twisted no doubt, their facts irrevocably altered, until it existed as nothing more than an outdated and unpopular myth.