Darkest Minds

by Bacon, Stephen

  “Where’s this from?” she demanded, looking at Harrison.

  “I’ve a friend in DFAT, stationed in Lahore. I’ve been telling him about Idris’s family, how they all fled. Mentioned the name of the village and that snagged something in his memory. Sent this from the DFAT intranet, thought it might help.”

  “With what?” Grace asked, though she had already begun to suspect.

  Harrison looked at her, and then she knew.

  “My friend reckons the Pakistani authorities were dupes in a village rivalry between Idris’s family and a nearby village. The usual thing in the War on Terror. Government troops and the family’s rivals surrounded Idris’s village, but somehow they broke out and escaped.” He leaned forward and scrolled up.

  “My friend says here that members from the rival village identified the man as one of theirs, a sheepherder who had gone missing the week before.”

  “And the other photos?” Harrison suddenly looked very, very tired. Wordlessly, he opened the second one and sat back.

  This time it was a scan of a creased, black and white photo. In it were several people, an older couple standing, with several children sitting on a rug at their feet. Grace’s eyes were drawn to the man standing straight and proud, staring defiantly at the camera. Grace saw a date scrawled at the bottom of the picture, then looked back at the man. She breathed in sharply, and looked at Harrison, who nodded.

  “You’re joking, right? Tell me this is a joke.”

  “It might be.” He shrugged. “Though how could my friend possibly know what Idris’s grandfather looked like to mock this up on Photoshop?”

  There, it was out in the open. He had given voice to the impossibility before them, of a man, now dead, but unmistakably Mr. Khan, clearly in his early forties, but shown in a photo dated 1924.

  Unsure, Grace stared at the other attachment, almost afraid to open it. She clicked on it.

  A man hung from a rope lashed to a beam in a dingy cottage, a single strand of light cutting through the shingled ceiling. A shadowy blur hung on the wall behind him. Grace felt a moment of dislocation; she was back in Khan’s cell, with his dead, staring eyes and tongue protruding from swollen lips. Her eyes tracked down the length of red threaded rope, and halted on the knot jammed under the figure’s jaw. She grew dizzy, and grabbed the desk for support.

  “Jesus. Grace, you okay?” Harrison hurriedly clicked the image away, the screen replaced with the incongruous image of him sitting on a sofa with his three children climbing over him. Grace nodded, felt the dizziness recede like waves on a shore.

  “Where are we…”she swallowed hard and started again. “Where are we with the report to the minister?”

  Harrison snorted.

  “There won’t be any report. You’ve seen the news; Baluchistan just went up in flames and there’s rumbling the tribesmen in the FATA are about to join in the fun. The minister will make an announcement in the House next week that all Pakistani refugees are to be given temporary visas and released into the community in a week after that. The Opposition is going to go apeshit about it, but she’s adamant.”

  “Do they know anything about this? Idris and her family, do they know?”

  “No. The department’s terrified they’ll demand their immediate release into the community. The minister emphasised the need for an orderly transition once she makes her announcement.”

  Grace stood, looked distractedly across the cubicles stretched around the floor. The hum of dozens of computers, the arid coolness of the cooling system, the muffled chatter of workers. Utterly ordinary, utterly terrifying. She thought of shadows gathering in the corners, and a dead man swaying in a breeze that wasn’t there.

  “Look,” Grace said, fixing a smile on her face. “I want to go speak with Idris, tidy up a few things before the announcement. You know me, dotting and crossing and all that.”

  Harrison looked at her appraisingly. Her grin widened until the muscles in her cheek hurt. He shook his head.

  “Like I said, there isn’t going to be a report.” He tapped a pen on the top of the mouse, the cast it aside.

  “But I’m like you, I hate loose ends. You’re going to have to speak with her without me. Mary rang before and said our sitter is down with the flu. Which, of course, she gave to our daughter, so I’ll be playing nursemaid while Mary visits her mother.” He shrugged. “You understand how it is.”

  Grace nodded, feeling numb. The idea of speaking with Idris alone terrified her. She stood.

  “Don’t worry about it. Go home and be with your daughter. I only want to ask Idris a few more questions. I hate loose ends as well. It’ll nag at me until I drive you crazy.”

  He nodded, smiling. Feeling a false sense of relief, Grace returned to her desk to gather her things.

  “Do us a favour. E-mail me those photos. Idris might be able to help with them.”

  Harrison nodded absently, his attention fixed on the screen. Turning, Grace walked away, and wondered what Idris’s reaction would be.

  #

  “I’ve never seen this man before,” Idris said. Grace watched her carefully, the younger woman returning the look.

  Grace sighed, and swung the laptop back. She caught a glimpse of herself in a small mirror sitting on a desk – she looked tired and, she had to admit it, a little afraid.

  Not having booked a conference room, Grace had been forced to speak to Idris in her quarters. Grace had been disbelieving when the guard took her straight to Khan’s room, a sensation that worsened when she realised Idris had taken up residence in the old man’s room. Even now, looking around, Grace couldn’t shrug off the memory of the creaking belt as the body slowly twisted to and fro.

  “That’s a pity,” Grace said, logging off. She lowered the screen. “I had hoped to learn more about your Grandfather, as a way of helping with the case.”

  Idris leaned forward, her eyes eager.

  “We will soon be released? I cannot tell you how wonderful it would be. These grey walls, they press in on us.”

  Grace looked around. “I can see how that would be, Idris, they aren’t…”

  Grace’s voice trailed off. Glancing about the room, she saw again the furniture – broken or worn pieces donated by half a dozen charities, that Idris had brought with her. Sagging couch, laminated desk, a dresser that leaned to one side, partially masking a stain on the wall.

  Speechless, Grace stared at the stain. At first, it seemed to be a flaw in the concrete, worsened by the shoddy paint job. But then, she remembered the shadow cast by Khan’s body, how it had shifted with every twist and turn of his suspended body. The fluorescent lighting fizzed. The stain shifted. Grace thought if she stared long enough at it, it would start to grow, inching wider and wider and darker and darker until it swallowed the wall, then the room, then herself.

  “Grace?”

  Grace flinched. Her heart thumped, and she could feel a surging sensation behind her temples.

  “Sorry. Drifted off there. Busy week at work. I-” Grace realised she was babbling and clamped her mouth shut. She watched Idris turn slightly and look at the dresser. Grace hoped that whatever look Idris had on her face, it would be gone when she turned back to her.

  “I miss my Grandfather very much,” Idris said, her voice sounding as if it came from a long way off. Grace smelled Idris’s scent again, spicy and beguiling. She turned and Grace saw a desperate hunger in her eyes.

  “Please tell me that we are to be released. I cannot tell you how much this place weighs on us. I long to be outside, to feel the breeze on my face, to be free.”

  Grace thought about the imminent announcement from the department. She opened her mouth to mention it, but anger, and a kind of fear, made her say something else entirely.

  “Patience, Idris. That’s all I can offer you.”

  “Patience?” sneered Idris. “What do you know of it? Outside, you lead your life, free, while I rot in here.” Idris leaned forward, her hooded eyes dark and unsettling. “But n
ot forever, do you understand? Not forever. And when I am free…” Idris smiled at Grace, and her eyes filled with hunger.

  Angry now, Grace stood, sending her chair shrieking across the concrete floor.

  “And what will you be outside, Idris? You think my people will accept you with open arms? They fear you, do you know that? They’ll turn their backs on you, and what then? You’ll have to stay with your family, marry someone you hate and die lonely and bitter.” Grace gasped for air and felt sweat bead on her face.

  The scent of spice enveloped her, and the stink of ozone filled the air. Grace watched Idris’s face darken, and her bravado melted away. With a lurch, she started for the door, her legs heavy. For a moment, she felt trapped in an old dream from her childhood – at the far end of a dark room with the door wide and beckoning, but somehow unable to get to it no matter how she tried – and shuddered.

  Then, the sensation dissolved as she bumped into the cold metal door. Frantic, she clutched at the handle and wrenched it open. Clutching the frame, she turned to look at Idris one last time.

  The lights fizzed again, and the mark on the wall darkened. Idris’s smile spoke of secrets and blood.

  Dragging the door shut, Grace fled down the corridor, chased by echoes and Idris’s mocking laughter.

  #

  The sound of her mobile ringing on her bedside table dragged Grace up from a sleep clotted with dreams of darkness threaded with red.

  “Hello,” she said groggily, eyes gummed shut.

  An urgent voice sounded tinnily in her ear. For a few seconds, she couldn’t understand what was being said to her.

  “Say that again.” She rubbed her eyes open, and looked blearily at the clock.

  “Jesus, she’s done what?”

  #

  They met in the car park. Galah’s in the trees lining the driveway shrieked in the heat, the sound echoing desolately across the empty square of bitumen.

  “How long she been barricaded in that room?” Grace demanded as Harrison hurried up to her.

  “I know as much as you do,” he said, his face red. “Come on, we’re wasting time out here.

  Inside, a siren wailed distantly and security personnel hurried about. They were met inside the barriers by the chief warden, a short, narrow faced man with slicked back hair that reminded Grace of a rat.

  “I don’t know what the bloody hell you said to her last night, but you can bloody well fix it, okay? She’s raising hell back there and if you don’t do something, we’ll have a riot on our hands.”

  They hurried down the corridors with the sounds of banging and screaming nipping at their heels. Doors clanged shut, and guards hurried about with batons drawn. Crossing through a common room, Grace saw an old woman hunched in a corner, her arms clasped over her head. Her face was a picture of pure fright.

  “Afriti,” she called after them, her thin voice rising to a shriek. “Afriti.”

  They reached the section holding Idris’s family. The few lights still working sparked and fizzed, sending jittering shadows along the walls. Up ahead, a press of people stood in front of a door, surrounding several guards who pounded on it. Grace heard what sounded like muffled shouting coming from the door.

  The guard who had followed them, hung back. When Harrison beckoned him to force a path through, the man shook his head, eyes wide with panic. Snorting in disgust, Harrison tucked his tie into his shirt and pushed straight into the crowd, forcing open a path.

  Grace expected resistance, but the press of people moved aside. Each of them seemed to look at her with a strange sort of hunger. She saw a need there, a thwarted desire. An itch grew in her mind then started to pulse. Through the door, she heard the chanting.

  The words rose above the pounding fists. Hollow, the words rose and fell, at once liquid, then harsh and demanding. A light burst down the corridor, a rain of glass tinkling to the floor. Some of the people around her muttered and one or two cast an angry glance her way. But Harrison kept up the gentle pressure, and soon they were just behind the guards, who had succeeded in forcing the door open.

  “Don’t know what the bloody hell she’s got up against the door,” one of the guards said, his face dripping with perspiration. Grace realised the air conditioners had stopped, and the humidity had worsened.

  “What’s she doing?” Grace said, raising her voice. The crowd behind her had begun to murmur, and to her surprise she realised they were responding to Idris, a chorus following her lead.

  “No idea,” one of the guards said, shaking his head. “Sounds like some sort of religious thing. Buggered if I know what it is.”

  “Afriti.” The word whispered itself in her mind, and the itch grew worse. Grace felt a sudden, terrible fear, and she clutched at Harrison.

  “Get that door open,” she yelled, her nerves shredded. “For Christ’s sake, get it open.”

  Harrison looked down at her, confused, unsure. There was a loud groaning noise, like metal buckling, and Grace felt the floor convulse beneath her feet. The people around them moaned in response and she was disconcerted to see them cover their faces with their hands, though they maintained their chorus.

  “Got it,” one of the guards yelled and the door shuddered back, revealing a narrow gap.

  Darkness spilled out of the room, mingled with the heady, spicy scent Grace recognised as Idris’s. The chanting had risen to a shriek, insistent, demanding, laced with unleashed rage. The hair on Grace’s arms stood straight. The itch worsened. Grace wormed passed Harrison and shrugged off his hand. He called out to her, and she ignored him, drawn to the darkness pulsing in the gap.

  She fell to her knees and skinned them on the rough concrete. The pain was made distant by the sight that confronted her.

  The far wall throbbed blackly. Within the wall, impossibly distant, a darker shadow twisted. Mesmerised, Grace inched forward, then the chanting reached its highest pitch. A long silence followed, then the shadow fanned outwards, consuming the concrete and replacing it with a frigid darkness that echoed emptily through her mind.

  And there stood Idris, her hair wild and unbound, her hands in the air, gold glinting on her fingers. Her back was to Grace, but she sensed the wild, triumphant joy contorting her face.

  Then something shuddered in the deepest portion of the darkness, and a word screamed through Grace’s crumbling mind.

  Trap.

  Idris saw it too, that shape, that contortion in the darkness that writhed and unfurled itself through the abyssal depths. Where Idris hoped to tread, to use as an escape into the bright outer world, came a writhing darkness. Grace saw her shudder, and heard a single, anguished sob of utter despair. Then something in that darkness reached for Idris.

  The moaning from the corridor became a shriek of panic, and there seemed to be a stampede, of detainees and guards alike. Grace ached to look back, to look back and see the world, her world, safe and ordered and sane. But her body wouldn’t respond, leaving her trapped to see what came for Idris.

  Idris turned and now Grace did see her face. Grace screamed at the horror there. She cringed away from the beseeching hand reaching for her, then screamed again when a tentacle of darkness emerged from the wall and wound itself around Idris’s leg.

  A shudder ran up her body. She cast one last anguished look at Grace, who dimly sensed the iciness enveloping her. Blood ran from her eyes and a guttural gasp was all that escaped from Idris’s tortured throat. Then the tentacle flexed, lifted her into the air, and dragged her into the darkness. For a moment, the utter blackness shimmered like a pool of oil, before it vanished, and the concrete wall returned.

  And all that was left, after Harrison had dragged Grace shrieking away from the dark, echoing room, was the faint smell of spice, sere and delicate. In time, that too faded away.

  Robert Mammone was born in Australia. Robert isn’t to be confused with the other Robert Mammone, the noted Australian television and film actor.

  Robert has tried his hand at writing since at least
the late 1980s, when he won an encouragement award for a short piece of fantasy whose name he can no longer remember. A long barren period followed until 2009, when Robert decided it wasn’t worth dying wondering, and turned his hand once more to writing, this time, horror fiction. Of late, he has turned his mind to writing some more fantasy, which has always been his first love.

  Robert’s horror and fantasy short fiction has appeared in Doctor Who Magazine, the British Fantasy Society’s 2010 Winter Journal, Midnight Echo, Pseudopod, Filthy Creations and Rogue Blades Entertainment’s upcoming anthology, Assassins.

  One day, Robert hopes to write a novel, but for that he needs two things – an idea. And your soul.

  The Great Divide

  Clayton Stealback

  Shadows grow dark in the corners of my room. I watch as they slowly creep over everything, washing objects of grandeur and splendour in shades of uninspiring grey. Everything looks the same now: worthless and washed out junk, without substance or life. Even the vibrant painting of Loch Ness, with its masterfully rendered waters and imposing ridges, looks nothing more than a crude etching, a pale imitation of its former self. Rather than inspire, my collections disperse unprecedented feelings of emptiness and solitude, along with a prying desperation which seems intent on drilling its way into the very core of my being. The whole charade is sickening. Really, it is.

  During these times of arduous stress, I sit and ponder the fragility of the human mind, and here, sitting in my room as the creeping darkness swamps me, I can almost feel the cracks in my own psyche; cracks that this darkness will soon invade and take purchase in. At one time I’d been fearful of this...amalgamation, but that had been a long time ago, and back then, I’d tried to fight it. Now, I open up and let it happen. I open up and let it in. It’s so much easier this way. And it isn’t scary at all. In fact, I find it calming to allow the darkness to come between me and the banalities of life. Only when cocooned in this black curtain do I get a true sense of eternity. Most things in the world are transient, but darkness and emptiness are forever.