Among You Secret Children

by Jeff Kamen

  Hidden in a cramped and dusty side compartment, he lay huddled in a ball, trembling, breathing through his jacket, until finally the beam approaching him turned away and dwindled into obscurity.

  Still he did not move, did not dare to, and at last his patience was rewarded. A low hiss broke the silence and he heard people slithering towards him, one uttering commands and the other crawling along mutely. They came closer in the blackness and he remained where he was in terror of them pausing, searching with a light, and then they each passed by as an invisible shape wheezing with effort and eventually were gone. By the time he was able to move, he’d lost all feeling in one hand and his spine was burning. He thought he was alone but then a dull pop like a pistolshot came echoing from where they’d gone, and he scrabbled away from the sound and crawled on frantically until he came to a junction. There he stopped. Looked back. Descended the rungs.

  With no idea where he was headed, he followed the shaft to the bottom, dropping to the ground in what smelt like a damp passageway, and which, as he switched on his torch, was confirmed to be so.

  The walls were streaked with rot and a foul breeze was stirring. Cupping the light with his hand he looked around and decided to head into the breeze, thinking it might lead to machinery, a fan, a vent, something to guide him up to the basement. He loped into a run, following the mottled and winding walls along, the uneven floor slippery in places and in others heaped with detritus fallen from the low rugged ceiling. When the passage divided, he barely slowed at all, just ran with the necrotic air wafting into him, cooling his dust-patched brow. Occasionally he checked behind, but there were no lights in that fading warren, and sensing he was on the right track he ran with the torchbeam raised, peering into the chill dark ahead.

  ~O~

  He was some way on, covering his mouth against the taste of the air, when he saw a face.

  A face that was huge and horrible and staring.

  He froze, gasping into his fist.

  Many faces.

  They were painted on the walls, each image framed by a thick black border. With a weak little laugh of relief he continued towards them.

  The pictures were fascinating, disturbingly so. No portraits, these, more like grisly caricatures of figures in torment, all snaky hair and urgent liquid eyes, their features wildly, almost sinisterly distorted. He went on haltingly, turning from one side of the passage to the other, his vision wired to the images, marvelling, channelling every detail. He’d never seen paintings like it — seen anything like it — a gallery of crumbling frescoes composed in rich strong colours that age had scarcely tainted. They were remarkable, and he wondered who else on the base even knew they were there.

  People trapped in postures of the most dreadful suffering. People oversized and ghoulish-looking, some snaggle-toothed or spread-nosed or racked with grimaces. Others clutching themselves, gaping monstrously, howling skywards from extended muzzles, or otherwise weeping like players in some bizarre and arcane tragedy, their clawed hands covering their leering mouths, their ugly ears, their crazed and rolling eyeballs.

  The foul air was thickening in his throat, and coughing, he zipped his jacket collar over his mouth, his eyes swinging from face to agonised face as he progressed. Before long he noticed the painter’s style was changing. There were flames rising before the victims, curling up in yellow leaves, with tongues of twisting fire around the heavy borders that separated each wailing subject from the next. Flames which seemed to grow in scale and ferocity as he continued along, becoming an ongoing roar of reds and oranges and golds and the figures burnt and lost and shrinking as the fires enveloped them, snatched at them, tore them down, until there was simply fire alone, long walls of it that seemed to glower and pulse in the torchlight and which he went hurrying along like a man on fire himself, running as though drawn to something, as though being pulled, and as he ran he asked himself what could have driven the painter to do such work, what dread events had inspired such an awful vision of suffering; and then the pictures changed again.

  The flames were dissolving, giving way to landscapes of another era, images like the ones he’d seen in the Academy, the City museum. Soon he stood before an oldworld citadel, a glittering edifice on a fuming skyline. He went on slowly, deep in reflection. He saw the tall glazed streets of a busy metropolis, the streets running on like canyons. Within them he saw a society overrun with traffic and dense crowds. There were people waving banners, large numbers taking part in violent protests, clad even then in breathing gear. In a number of scenes there were powercuts, in others helicopters and searchlights, scenes of disorder and unrest.

  On he went, drawn to the details of the chaos, the scenes repeating themselves many times until the focus changed once more.

  Now a different landscape appeared in the paintings; news perhaps from afar. He saw dark angular figures camped out between the desert townships, their ratty tents and shelters swarming for long and dusty miles. There were emaciated figures clambering through mountainous rubbish heaps, some no older than children, desperate creatures picking at scraps with which to clothe and feed themselves, whilst in the background stood well-fortified colonies of metal and glass. He went closer to the wall, squinting.

  Not cities, these, but the new plantations. Polished-looking, gleaming in the sun. Growing fodder for the billions; solution for all.

  He took a turning and walked ahead. The images continued as before. For a while he simply flicked the torch along the walls, pausing less frequently now, letting only certain images catch his eye; and then he turned.

  Thinking he’d heard something.

  He shone the torch back the way he’d come, listening, straining his eyes, but nothing stirred. The glowering passage remained silent. He held on a minute more, gnawing uncomfortably at his lip, then on an impulse swung back round. He stood listening again. Nothing.

  Perhaps it was a wall slumping, a light drop of plaster or stone. He fired the beam behind him again on the off-chance of finding something, stood waiting a moment; then he turned and went on, finding himself checking over his shoulder, unpleasantly distracted, until a new image seized his attention.

  It was of a family of three, standing before their house.

  The father was little more than a skeleton, the wife’s features caved and gaunt. Between them stood their only child, bald and odd-looking, unsmiling. He paused, and stood studying them for some time. Despairing trinity, a family that seemed doomed to him, much like his own. The sight of them chiming deeply with an old aching sorrow. He let them stare back at him over their masks, then went to the next fresco they appeared in, the better to understand their grief, their poorly disguised terror.

  In the background was what appeared to be a colossal tree trunk rising to the heavens, a trunk with a thick armoury of spiny leaves protruding from its sides as though it was bristling. In another frame with the same background the family were out walking, the boy being wheeled along in a chair. Further along, other huge growths formed the backdrop to this domestic outing, smashing through the roofs of the plantations they’d been nurtured in. Above them the skies were dark with travelling spores.

  Further up the passage, the family were at home. Things like pods, tall and glistening, stood around the property, sending down tough scaly roots that history would record as reaching down for miles. Tapping the pipelines and sewers, tapping the newly built reservoirs encased in steel.

  In a later scene drought had struck and the family had visibly weakened. Nearby dwellings had subsided into the earth, buried beneath vast tracts of desiccating foliage. In some cases the mighty plants were ...

  He swung with the torch again. Squinting, listening.

  He thought he’d heard a scuffing noise. Not stones this time, not that; a scuffing.

  He stood in growing unease, waiting for something to appear, come looming from the back of the fiery glow, but nothing did. There was nothing there. It was just his nerves, he thought, his nerves in the dark. Or rats. It h
ad to be rats. Hadn’t he been warned about them during his induction period? Surely thousands of them must inhabit the area. All hungry, inquisitive, in pursuit of comfort. Disturbed, perhaps, by the torch. He stood a minute longer, and then satisfied he was alone, he continued exploring. Looking at the frescoes, looking behind. Looking ahead again.

  The next time he stopped it was to understand more about the scenes unfolding before him. He found himself nodding sadly at the plight of the family as they struggled on, dwarfed by their strange surroundings, dwarfed by events. He put out a hand to them. Wanting to help them in some way, however impossible it might be, however much they were stuck there, trapped in their time as though behind glass. But all he could do was observe their misery — then, and a few scenes later, when the roof of the house had crumbled to dust, the walls thickly overgrown. It seemed the new cells had found their way into the deepest pattern of things and unlocked the codes. Unpicked them. Unpacked them. Leaving everything to break and fall.

  Further on, the child had been buried in the yard. The father was weeping beside the grave while the woman remained in the ruined house, a figure bedridden and grey. He sighed deeply, lone witness to their downfall. A few frescos later she lay outstretched before a window. Framing the view of a wasteland overhung with smoke.

  She was gazing upwards. Huge aircraft were overflying the land like ravens of disaster, but it seemed she would not watch them. Or was unable to, was too weak, or blind perhaps; or already dead. He turned away wearily, flicking his torch about to find similar events repeated in other paintings. Another family, another country, another sad decline. The towering megaflora lurching, hardening, solidifying. Standing across the earth like fields of upraised stones, raggedly-leafed stelae dry as matchwood. Standing as though simply waiting. Waiting for the spark.

  Depressed, he looked about for something more uplifting to see, and noticed across the passage something had been written. He went over in the hope that it might give him something positive, more nurturing to reflect upon as he headed away, but when he read the text he frowned. The lines were composed in a vicious black scrawl.

  I

  I am claw. I am shell.

  I am beak. The furred eyelid.

  I am scales I am bone.

  Ungual.

  I

  I jumped from the first fire.

  The snarl licking the afterbirth, frosty morning.

  Red heat spilling. The steam.

  I am thorn. I am tail.

  I am biting. I am gnarled things.

  The whorl of black-green branches.

  I saw the young white sun, the present past.

  I was old when the old things were brought here

  Old when they were made.

  And I

  I am the dance in your blood

  Born of utter night.

  And you.

  What are you?

  What are you now? What thing?

  Which?

  He was reading it through again when he became aware of someone watching him. He turned queasily to find a tall and imposing figure observing him a few frames along. And as his eyes met those painted eyes he wished he had not come that way, for it was watching him in a manner that he did not like and which chilled him. He tried to turn away, to study other images nearby, but the thought of those particular eyes on his back was something he did not wish to contemplate. As if to convince himself it was just a picture after all, he went across to confront it, wearing a taut smirk he had to fight to maintain.

  The figure was crossing a field, and like some slouching priest of desolation it walked through a land where the hills were on fire and the sun hung in the smokeclouds like a blackened coin. A dark and solitary figure in that hazing dusk, and yet not one to pity, but to fear, for there was something cruel in those eyes, and in that cold and ageless face, albeit slightly averted. He searched its face unwillingly, finding neither woman nor man there, yet something of both, its strange androgynous features half hidden by a mane that trailed across its countenance as though to obscure its identity. As if its actions in some way required it to go about disguised. He tried again to move away, but found he could not. He was frozen there.

  As a cold worm of fear turned in his chest he caught a new smell coming, stale and sweet and damp in the tainted air, and with a snort he managed to wrench his gaze away and look to where the unfresh breeze was wafting from, stirring through the passage like the whisper of some ancient atrocity.

  Then he heard it again. The noise. A scuffing that was more like ...

  Clop ... clip ...

  ‘Ah … hello?’ he said, cupping the torch lens.

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’ he repeated, aware of a bright quaver in his voice.

  Clop ... clip ...

  He took a few steps backwards, aware of the eyes upon him from the wall, humourless eyes that brought back his dreams and the terrible blackness turning his way within a trailing hood.

  ‘H-Hello?’ he croaked, and as the scuffing continued, growing nearer, a sound that was dead and hollow, he noticed two slit orbs glinting in the darkness.

  He levelled the beam, shaking, and a pair of glassy yellow eyes lit up.

  He gasped, the torch juddering in his fist as a horned creature with a filthy black coat of hair emerged from the shadows.

  He shook his head mechanically.

  It was a goat, thickset, moving with a stilted motion on its shaggy legs. It came at him swaying.

  ‘No. No …’

  The rank smell of mud and ditches grew stronger. There were clags of dust hanging from its hair, swinging on the wadded strands like little bells. Its hooves rasped on the ground and it plodded on steadily and stopped just a few yards away from him. The shadowed outline of its horns tilted aside and he saw it turn its strange and bestial head as if to take good measure of him, its yellow eyes glinting.

  Then it opened its jaw. And as it worked its teeth together, there came a sharp grinding sound that he feared and detested.

  Dtch-dtch-dt-dt-dt ...

  It lowered its head again. Snorting.

  And then it charged.

  Turning with a sob, he ran with the frescoes looming in wild and senseless collision with one another, ran with the darkness ahead of him pierced and mortified by the torchbeam. He ran through raging blurs of fire and smoke and with children shrieking in dismay and everything in terrifying crimson bloom and galleries of half-human faces leering and the great ogreish mouths wailing in lamentation, a matrix of anguished and burning souls whose soundless cries were everywhere and all around and who seemed to bellow and roar at him like voices only the mad were condemned to hear. As though cajoled by them he sprinted down the turnings and the walls wound on and he cut away down a dusty side passage and glanced back in hope but the goat was coming after him.

  Wet eyes searching the gloom for an exit point and nothing showed in that frantic light and in the corners of his vision the dots were streaming out in tiny pebbled rays, and when finally a cry broke from his lips it was a child’s cry, high and horrible. He fled down the crumbling passages with no sense of time or bearing or reason, was simply running, a tragic propulsion of limbs.

  Thinking he could hear hooves approaching, he looked in every direction, slashing the torch around, but was unable to see the creature, see anything. He went on stumbling, reeling, not knowing where to go. Then he heard raw hooves clattering at his back and he turned to see it darting out from the shadows, still with its head down, still chasing him.

  As if acknowledging his presence it bleated, a harsh and searing noise that rose and fell and rose again, and he was running with fear in his mouth like the taste of blood and nothing in front of him but an endless brownish gloom and nothing to do but run or be caught and like those terrible dreams be at its mercy. He ran on wheezing, clutching his side, and when he searched ahead again he spotted something falling to the ground from above.

  They were papers of some kind, loose sheets that waf
ted and flapped as they dropped from a large circular hole like the one he’d descended from. He ran to them, and without reading a word knew them to be Lütt-Ebbins’ leaflets. He looked up, panting. Within the hole was a metal ladder. What he did next was without thinking. In one great electric bound he threw himself at the facing wall and boosted himself off it and threw up a hand and seized the bottom rung and clung on. He swung back and forth, gathering momentum for another go. Taking the torch between his teeth, he threw up his other hand and gripped the rung above and pulled and kicked and hauled himself out of the passage.

  As he climbed away he heard more harsh bleating, and choking back a cry he climbed faster, praying to remain safe and whole and able to complete his task for the sake of his friends. The goat appeared below him, circling, stepping on the leaflets as it looked up. As it bleated again, he thought he heard a cold demonic laughter in its noise, and with it echoing coldly up at him he scrambled away towards a tiny circle of light.

  Chapter 25 — At The Maga Camp

  Waking one afternoon with bright and jagged screams in her head, she knows she can’t go on. There has to be an ultimatum. They will share a home with guests and laughter, his children welcome at any time, or forever live apart. The brutality and secrecy will end, or she will have nothing more to do with him.

  It is almost dark by the time she reaches the camp. A handful of hunters are gathered at the fire, and on approaching them, she is told he is due back in a few hours. Rosa insists she stays to join them, making space for her on a log next to Tomas, her longtime lover. She sits gratefully but contributes little to the conversation. Food comes by on broad wooden dishes but she doesn’t touch it. Later, from politeness, she takes a sip of a tea-coloured punch being served from a heavy bowl. When she asks what it’s made from, Rosa giggles, saying, ‘Just try it,’ and she tries another sip and it tastes foul. She’s about to make her excuses and leave when a few other hunters appear. One lobs a flask at a blond hunter called Karl, who in failing to catch it lets out a high-pitched baying laugh that sets off some of the others. As the banters rolls on around him, she smiles, watching on quietly. The punch comes back again and the noise and chatter rises to a new pitch, one that seems to bond the clan in a way that makes it impossible to do anything but remain where she is and do her best to enjoy their company.