“No. I thought I was, but…” A shrug. “Guess it doesn’t much matter now, really, what I thought. Or didn’t.”
“So—you just attached yourself to his corpse, that what happened? Grew into the shape of the hole he left, somehow?” Without waiting for a reply: “Is there anything of him still in there at all, in you?”
“Shit, Sean, I don’t know. You saw, when I—back there—” Sean nods. “—well, much as I’d like to think I’m at least some sort of composite, what came out…it felt like bones, to me.”
“Looked like ’em, too.”
“There you go, then.”
Fresh flares went up, spotlighting this odd little triptych: Sean, Arjit’s leavings. The thing, unnecessary clothes discarded—Sean couldn’t remember where they’d gone—and now clad only in its own smeared blood-tracery, a pattern of red tattoos. More yells from the pirates followed, urgent-fearful, as though they somehow recognised it.
“Don’t s’pose you could take ’em all,” Sean suggested, only half-joking.
“Unlikely. But…” It glanced over at the Green Phoenix rig. “Could just get back inside that, and hit the water. Did okay, last time.”
“You could, mate. Simon didn’t come off quite so well, though, did he?”
Swapping banter in the face of death, or worse…much worse. Yet Sean still can’t find it in him to fear, not completely; every breath he draws seems to say it means no harm to him, if no one else. Something chemical, probably, borne on the hot and stinking wind—something it probably doesn’t even need, underwater. Pheromones, designed to attract land-bound prey by making the thing seem loveable? Or spores drifting up his nose to root in his cortex, then bloom and puppet him consumption-wards, the way Brazilian zombie fungi turn ants into living seeders?
“I still want to touch you,” he tells it, helplessly. “Even now.”
“Me too.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Sean—how do I know anything? I just do. Everything Simon knew, most of what you know…what Arjit knew, and Sam-I-Am. And Ric.”
“So that was you, then? The dream?”
It shapes that easy, white-toothed SoCal smile. “Who else?”
On the port boat, someone raises an ArmaLite’s massive barrel, bracing it against their shoulder: the Bad Idea’s off-limits now, apparently, not worth salvaging. Infected, possibly infectious. And they’ll get the contract fee either way, Sean can only think, so long as what’s left of the Phoenix goes down with the rest.
“Too late,” the thing confirms, stepping closer. “But…I really do want you to come with me, Sean. I want you. I think…I kinda want to be you…”
(oh)
(oh God, me too)
…is what Sean replies, in that last second before the rocket ignites. Or maybe he only thinks he does.
The explosion cracks the deck in half; the prow goes up, stern down, Titanic in reverse. And as they fall together Sean grabs his long-drowned demon lover by both elbows—its arms come up like a toddler, like a trap. It latches on.
Together, they step down, holding fast, joined at the lips. Until the trash-strewn waters close, kiss-warm and -soft, over both their heads.
Falling and falling and falling, forever, with nothing left to break against. With no hope of an impact, an ending.
Sean and the thing—heavier than it looked, by far—rode cold currents torn from the ocean’s floor, winding upwards to capture the Knot’s turnover, its increasingly brisk gyre. They nudged past confused sharks, kicked aside scraps of Ric, barely escaped being grazed or brained by various pressure-driven trawler-bits. They sank through fathoms, sharing air, light and air narrowing together in one last spasm—then winking out, the same way each synapse inside Sean’s brain had already begun to flare and crisp and die, like bone-jarred fireflies.
Thinking: I’ll be him, I guess, or he’ll be me; close enough. Too close for even him to tell. So it’ll be as though one of us survives, anyhow…
…as his grip kept on steadily tightening, pulling it ever-closer, bruising it ’til the skin-suit folded back and all he held were Simon Grinnage’s bones, before heaving to enwrap him once more…smothering him in a heat that was fever and spice and slime alike, pulsing organs fluttering like mouths against every part of him as its spiny heart suckered fast to his breastbone, eating its way inside…the mere unfiltered scent of it enough to make his own blood boil in his haemorrhaging eyes, his gouting ears screech like dolphins before they popped and his trouser-caught cock to finally explode, perhaps even literally…
Praying, all the while: Don’t let me go, please. Never let me go. Don’t let me drown.
(I don’t want to drown, not now)
(not like this)
(not)
(without you)
Down there, in the deep and dark, where everything blended with everything else. Down where trash became treasure, and vice versa. Where flesh was eaten, over and over again, in endless communion; where prey and predator alike became bone, fossil, sand. Where currents bore him away in every direction at once, hoping against hope that nothing was ever lost, only changed. That the ocean, though a cornucopia of miracles and horrors—like death, like love—
(for all that it had a floor, one which he might never reach)
—might yet prove to have no real bottom.
ALISON LITTLEWOOD
THE ENTERTAINMENT ARRIVES
ALISON LITTLEWOOD’s latest novel is The Crow Garden, a tale of obsession set amidst Victorian asylums and séance rooms. It follows The Hidden People, a Victorian tale about the murder of a young girl suspected of being a fairy changeling.
The author’s other novels include A Cold Season, A Cold Silence, Path of Needles, The Unquiet House and Zombie Apocalypse! Acapulcalypse Now. She is currently working on her next book, a folkloric winter ghost story. Her short fiction has been collected in Quieter Paths and Five Feathered Tales, and she is a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Short Fiction.
She lives with her partner, Fergus, in Yorkshire, England, in a house of creaking doors and crooked walls. She has inky fingers and a growing collection of fountain pens, and is often to be found wandering the hills and dales in the wake of two hugely enthusiastic Dalmatians.
“When I was asked to contribute to the Darker Companions anthology celebrating the work of Ramsey Campbell, I was delighted,” says Littlewood, “not only because Ramsey is one of the foremost talents in our field, but because he’s a welcoming presence at events, a great supporter of new writers and a friend.
“I always loved his short story ‘The Entertainment’, a macabre affair of a man who stumbles into a run-down seaside hotel and is mistaken for the mysterious “entertainment”. I started wondering…what happened to the real entertainment that night? Where did that end up, and what was its purpose?
“This is the result. I’d really like to thank Ramsey for the inspiration, and for his generosity in allowing me to venture into his world.”
THE PROFESSOR DROVE slowly down the rain-lashed promenade, passing sign after dispirited sign that marked the boarding houses still clinging to whatever sorry living this place could afford. Westingsea in early May, and the angry sky flung handfuls of rain at its houses and pavements and the battered old black Wolseley he drove, drowning out any other sound. He could see the sea, black and heaving to his right, shifting in as surly a fashion as it always did, but only the rain was listening to any murmur it made. He knew without looking that the belligerent clouds, fierce as he’d ever seen them, were indifferent to whatever lay beneath. Of humanity there was no sign, unless it was the mean slivers of light trying to escape the windows of the blank-faced, three storey properties along the front.
None of it mattered to the Professor. In fact, it was probably better this way; there was no one to see him arrive and no one to see him leave. He required no witnesses, no applause; there would be enough of that later. He knew where he was going and he knew what he would find when he got there,
since it was always the same. The jaded, the worn out and the mad: that was who he had come for. Momentarily, he closed his eyes. After the strife, he thought, after the rain, the entertainment. He could almost smell their clothes, redolent of over-boiled potatoes and their own unloved skin. He could almost feel the texture of it on his hands, and his fingers, resting on the steering wheel, twitched—though sometimes it seemed to him that the car responded to his thoughts, or someone else’s, rather than his touch.
He suddenly wanted to look over his shoulder at the things on the old and clawed back seat, but he didn’t need to look. He could feel them, as if their eyes were fixed on his shoulder blades, boring into him. Punch had woken, then. He must be nearly there; he saw the spark of irritation from a neon sign to his left, HO EL, it said, the “T” too spent to play its part any longer, and he spun the wheel, or it spun under his hands; he wasn’t sure which. The even movement of wheels on road gave way to the jolt and judder of potholes and the car drew to a halt facing a crumbling brick wall, drenched and rain-darkened. He stared at it. He still didn’t want to turn around, though he never eluded what he did; it was his—what? Duty? That seemed too mild a word, for duty could be shirked. It’s who he was. He was the entertainment, and he was here to entertain, and entertain he would. After the rain…
But for now the rain showed no sign of ceasing. It hammered on the roof and spat at the windows, and he switched off the engine and thus the wipers, and the deluge blurred the world entirely. He realised he hadn’t even looked for the name of the hotel, but he had no need to do so; it had called him here and he had answered, just as he always did, even when the day wasn’t special, as this one was.
He pushed open the car door, his right sleeve soaked through at once, but that didn’t give him pause. Rain seemed to follow him even in the height of summer, and at least this smelled right: of ozone and tarmac and, peculiarly, of dust. He stepped out, retrieving the heavy duffel bag from the back seat before heading for the hotel entrance. He heard the cackle of the neon sign and turned to see that the “O” had also given up the ghost. A matching spurt of electricity ran down his spine, and he savoured it; he hadn’t felt anything like it for a long time. It was a special night indeed. The shadow of an echo of a smile tried and failed to touch his lips, and he reflected that such a thing hadn’t happened for a long time either.
The glass doors slid aside at his approach—unusual for the establishments he frequented—and the rain was suddenly cut off and other sounds, human sounds, returned. From an opening to one side came the clink of glasses. Somewhere someone was vacuuming, which made him frown, and he stared down at the dust-free carpet. His shoes were as wet as if he’d emerged from the sea and he shifted them, watching the moisture darken the floor with something like satisfaction. Then a voice, a cheery voice, said: “Can I help you, sir?”
A young woman with sleek hair pulled back against her head was seated behind a reception desk, smiling at him with reddened lips. The desk was grey, as was her uniform, and the wall behind her, and indeed that too-clean carpet. It looked anonymous; the hotels he frequented were often shabby and dirty, but they were never anonymous. The Professor frowned in answer, but he felt a sudden jolt of—what? Hunger? Eagerness?—from within his bag, and the contents shifted as if they were settling, or perhaps its opposite. He walked towards the girl and simply said, “Snell?”
His voice was dry and cracked. In truth he was unused to using it; his real voice, anyway. Sometimes he used his clown voice, or his jolly comedian voice, but not today. Generally, until it was time, he didn’t need to; he certainly didn’t like to.
“Welcome, Mr. Snell. One night, is it?” She wrinkled her nose as if she could smell something unpleasant, then covered her expression by parting those red-painted lips once more. It wasn’t quite a smile.
“No.” He leaned in closer until he could sense her wanting to recoil, needing to recoil, and he stared at her and he did not blink. “The manager. Snell. Booked the entertainment. Snell.”
Her forehead folded into wrinkles. “Our manager—Miss Smith—she’s not on tonight, I’m afraid sir, but I don’t—”
“Snell.”
His voice was implacable, and she knew it was implacable, he could see it in the way her eyes struggled to focus when she raised them to meet his. “Of course. I’ll get someone for you, sir. I’ll only be a moment.”
She was as good as her word, trotting into the room from whence he’d heard the sound of glasses and returning a few seconds later with a gangling lad in dark, ill-fitting trousers and a waistcoat with grey panels down the front. He looked puzzled, was muttering something to her, but he fell silent when he stood in front of the Professor, who stared at the pock-marks in his skin until he was forced to look away.
“I’m sorry,” the lad began, but suddenly another voice rang out behind him, so bright and full of excitement and somehow pure that they all turned to look.
“Punch!” the voice cried. It belonged to a small boy of maybe six or seven, his hair curling and golden, and he grinned and pointed at the Professor’s bag.
The Professor looked, though as soon as he saw the shadow of a hand reaching across the carpet towards the child he knew what he would see. The crimson sugarloaf hat with its jolly green tassel had escaped the fastening and was poking from the top of the bag, along with the beaked nose, the hooked chin, the single avaricious eye, staring and endlessly blue.
“Mr. Punch!” the boy said again, his voice disturbing the very air, which seemed to reconfigure itself around them. “Is there a show? Is Judy in there? Can we go, Mummy, can we?”
The child looked up at the slender woman with the fond gaze who was holding his hand, and she smiled back at him. “We’ll see.”
“We will,” the Professor said, but it was like being in the car, that odd feeling that he wasn’t always the one steering, the one forming his lips into words. It was better when he had the swazzle in his mouth. Everything he said felt right then, even though the sound emerged as a series of shrieks and rasps and vibrations, words that no one else could understand. He realised he didn’t know if Judy was in the bag, as the boy had asked. Sometimes it was the earlier one, the older one: Joan. Sometimes it was the newer one—the one he never quite knew where she came from: Old Ruthless.
The waist-coated lad who’d only managed to say I’m sorry drew a sigh. “I suppose we could—in a corner of the bar, if it’s just a booth.”
The Professor answered him with a look.
“Just the one show, is it? Just one? Because we’re kind of busy.”
“And dinner.”
The boy looked puzzled. “I’m afraid service just finished. Chef might be able to plate something up for you, before he goes.”
The Professor scowled. “I’ll be fed.”
He nodded in relief. “Our manager—she left no information about paying you—”
“I’ll be paid.” The Professor started to walk across that grey, too-smooth carpet, leaving the youth to follow in his wake. A special night, and nothing was ready: he did not suppose his theatre would be set up waiting for him, as it usually was, nor his watery soup turning tepid upon the table. It was lucky he always carried his booth; and his puppets—his special puppets—were always at hand, as they should be, or he wouldn’t deserve the name Professor, or Punchman, or, as some were wont to call the entertainment, Beach Uncle. And without such a name, what would he be? He supposed, once, he had borne some other moniker, but if he had, he could no longer remember it.
The space opened around him, larger than he had expected; perhaps the night was special after all. The walls were painted a slightly paler grey, too bright, but it was flaking in the corners and the edges of the sofas were scuffed. The bar was grey too, and the high ceiling, lost to the dim lighting, was a deeper shade. He saw at once where he would set up his booth. There was a little nook off to one side, too small to be of use for anything else, where he knew the floors would not have been swept and the dim
corners would have been abandoned to the spiders or whatever else cared to take up residence there. Yes: that was the way to do it.
He did not look at the faces of the occupants of the room, not yet. It wasn’t time. But his gaze went towards the wall of windows, which were dark, reflecting back the interior of the bar and the deeper shadow where he stood. He nodded with satisfaction. The rain, finally, had stopped.
In the long pause, in the silence and the darkness, the Professor waited. He was on his knees, his back bent; the bag was at his feet with Mr. Punch still supine, half-in and half-out of the opening. Above the Professor’s head was the little waiting stage and beyond that was the bar, entirely stilled, its patrons gathered in to a row of chairs hastily brought forward by the lad who’d said I’m sorry.
Outside the booth nobody spoke, but he could picture their faces, all turned expectantly to the little rectangular opening draped in fabric that had once been brightly striped in red and white. Without looking, the Professor slipped the swazzle from his pocket and into his mouth, tasting the old, cold bone, and he held it in position with his tongue. He could still sense the excitement creeping from the bag and towards his hands. It was the night. Early in May on the seafront, and not just any day in May: it was the 9th, the evening that was recognised throughout the land as Mr. Punch’s birthday.
In answer to that thought a faint wheezing, a little like a laugh, emerged into the quiet. He was not sure if it came from his own breath passing through the swazzle or the bag on the floor or from the air around him. It didn’t matter. Soon they would begin and everything else would end. It was almost time. He reached down, his fingers seeking out Mr. Punch’s hat, passing over the soft nap of its fabric and finding the opening into which he would slip his fingers. He couldn’t see it but he pictured the soft brown substance; its touch felt like skin against his hand as he pulled it home.
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