Aickman's Heirs

by Simon Strantzas

  “It is—” but I could not say more. I cast my eyes wildly about the walls, but it was as if they had begun to recede, very slowly, away from me. The space curved: suddenly, they were not drawings, for no drawing could encompass so much space, no drawing could impose form upon such vastness, the chaos of heaven, and set among them in gossamer threads of light…what I could not say…

  …except I saw the charnel grin of a woman, cut-out from the darkness, beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman I had ever seen but already her back had begun to stoop, her thighs run to ragged skin hanging, as a curtain does, upon a shuddering frame. From finger to knuckle, from wrist to elbow, she was perfect; but already her limbs were lengthening, her eyes wandering like errant planets, one grown large and the other squinted, then both empty as if someone had prised them loose from her skull…

  ”I cannot follow you!” I cried out, tearing at the papers he had drawn up, shredding them into a thousand irreconcilable pieces. And then it was as if the madness had passed. My lungs heaved, my pulse pounded, but the world was as I knew it to be: clothed in an impenetrable skin, flat, lacking depth, entirely knowable.

  “Not even for my daughter?” he begged, and at this I felt a strange tugging in my chest. I remembered Pelagia’s scent, her curves, the fine grain of her hair. And more than that. I recalled how it had felt to know that she lay besides me, that she had shared my bed and chosen to stay. But already my memory of her was beginning to tarnish: the scent of her skin was as any woman’s, her curve of her buttocks fine, perhaps, but no finer than a thousand other girls.

  “I will not be so easily corrupted.”

  When he learned I was unmovable, he began to rock back and forth, biting at his knuckles. “You must, you must,” he whimpered. “Please. Don’t you understand? It is we who are corruptible—we should never have given them form!” And then quieter, pleading: “They will have me. They have promised it: They shall set me amongst their ranks forever!”

  It is ever thus with the visionaries of our field: repudiation is never met with anything but hysteria.

  I left the house as soon as I could.

  #

  I did not see Pelagia again, but, I confess, I did not seek her out either. I had never intended a long-term engagement, and I suspect she understood this in time. Most women sort it out for themselves sooner or later.

  And by this time the local paper had printed a picture of my reconstruction. There was nothing revolutionary there, any of Cavanaugh’s lot could have managed easily enough. The object had been a shield, I decided, not some votive offering as my predecessor had claimed. The decorations depicted straight-limbed soldiers, the glorious youths who would fall in battle, each of them a perfect figure of manliness and virility. I felt confident that the excavations of the remaining skeletons would bear that out in good time. Or perhaps I would be proven wrong—it did not matter so long as I had published; no scholarly opinion is eternal.

  In the time that followed I was kept busy with a series of engagements designed to properly fleece the museum’s patrons. It was at one such event that Papadiliou came upon me, disarmed by wine and uncharacteristically convivial. He clapped me on the shoulder, bellowing, “Well done, old chap, that’s that then. Back to England, is it?” His hand was as heavy and unwanted as some massive limpet.

  “Of course,” I told him frostily. Now that my research was winding down, I had decided to accept an invitation to lecture at the Traveller’s Club in London. This was only a minor find, but I had set upon it enough hyperbolic polish to impress those back home.

  But as Papadiliou began to drift off, a sudden curiosity seized hold of me. “Wait!” I said, “My predecessor did not wish to join us? Some of the credit, surely, still belongs to him?”

  “He died last week,.” Papadiliou said, his eyes curiously misty, the Cambridge silk slipping away into something gruffer and more natural, as if he was moved by genuine emotion. “He was a great man. But his mind dulled in time, we could not keep him. We could not sponsor his…theories.”

  “I did not know,” I told him.

  “You would not,” he continued. “But you may visit his grave, if you like. They buried him in the local cemetery.”

  But, of course, I never did.

  And yet, despite my success abroad, when I returned home at last, I felt a profound weariness. The fashions had changed. London was abuzz with excitement. The Russians had launched an orb of polished metal into the heavens—Sputnik, they called it, the traveller. No longer did men of intelligence look to the earth, my father told me, no longer would they scrabble in the dirt after the lost legacy of those races that had come before and perished; it was to the heavens we must turn, to the future…

  In his eyes I detected the familiar glint of fanaticism.

  Perhaps my father was right. Perhaps I have failed to navigate the currents of progress, and, as a consequence, my contributions will be meager. My lecture was sparsely attended, conflicting as it did with a talk given by one of my colleagues at Trinity—a fellow called Hawking. But when I look into the night sky, I do not see what they see: an unspoiled frontier, so long denied to us, now graspable, conquerable. The idea of a lone figure, edged in starlight but untethered, surrounded by darkness, terrifies where it should inspire. I can well imagine the terror in his aspect, a twistedness in his face as if his jaw has come unhinged in some eternal howl. I remember too well the old man’s words—the cosmos seem to me a haunted place, a graveyard.

  In any case, another degree would not suit me at this point. One cannot spend one’s time contemplating past failures; the road forks, a path is pursued or not, but always we must shuffle along, letting fall what will by the way. We should not bear so much upon our shoulders. And I am reasonably happy: I am awaiting news of a book contract, the success of which, Cavanaugh assure me, ought to be expected—and there is a young woman of unusual good looks whom I have noticed frequents the corner of the quadrangle directly beneath my window. There are some advantages in keeping one’s gaze close to the earth.

  Two Brothers

  Malcolm Devlin

  The day before William found the boy in the woods, a carriage arrived at Birchlands House.

  While Miss Frith was writing names on the blackboard, D’Artagnian, Louis, Philippe, Aramis, William slipped out of his chair. He ran to the window of the schoolroom in time to see his father step from the carriage onto the gravel drive, which the night’s snow had painted a thin and even white.

  “Father’s home,” William said. Not to his governess who had joined him at the window, but to himself, as though spoken words might corroborate what his eyes doubted.

  In previous years, before Stephen had left for the school, their father’s visits to the house had been rare. He spent most of his time at his club in Mayfair, and visited the house only on occasional holidays or when the shooting season looked promising. He had not been home when Stephen had left for Greyhurst, nor had he returned during the subsequent four months, when William had been alone.

  But now, the day before Stephen was due back for the winter holiday, the boys’ father had come home. And there was something about his arrival which felt wrong to William in a way he could not articulate.

  He ran to the door of the schoolroom and let himself out.

  Miss Frith called after him, her voice rising to a wavering point:

  “Wait until you’re called, William.”

  He ignored her. His father was a cold, unreachable figure and William disliked being in his presence. He had no intention of running to see him, but he was curious to know what had brought him home. He edged part way down the stairs until he could linger behind the uprights of the banisters, remaining mostly hidden from the hall below.

  His father crossed the crimson tiles beneath him, beckoning for his man to follow. Briggs was a stocky fellow, buttoned tight in his uniform as though it would burst off him if he exhaled without care. He carried a heavy valise in each hand and William saw there was a
long-shaped package wrapped in grey cloth and slung over his shoulder. Unlike his father, Briggs sensed William was watching. He glanced up to pinpoint him with dark eyes, and William shrank deeper into the shadows. Briggs turned away but remained a moment longer in the hall to exchange a few quiet words with the Jessie, the maid. When he turned again, William could just about make out the dark wooden stock of a shotgun wrapped neatly inside the package on his back.

  His father didn’t call for him that night, and William was content to be sent to bed early. He lay in his room, staring at the ceiling where shadows flickered from the ivy which fringed his window.

  If Briggs had brought a gun, his father was expecting guests. He’d been known to host modest shooting parties in the fields and woodland to the north of the property. At this time of year, pheasants or partridges were likely game, but in the past few months William hadn’t seen much activity around the gamekeeper’s cottages, the presence of which, usually served as a reliable warning that a hunt was planned. On such occasions, the boys’ freedoms about the house and its grounds would be curtailed. They would be expected to stay out of sight and out of earshot until all the guests had left.

  Restless, William rolled over in his bed. If a shooting party was to happen, then it struck him as unjust. It meant Stephen would return to be ignored by father, to be shut up in the schoolroom with William. It was not the welcome home he deserved.

  #

  Stephen was a year older than William, but the way the two had grown up together, they may as well have been twins. Their mother had died when William had been six, and since then, the boys had been raised by the staff and Miss Frith, a slender, intense woman, who had shrank and shrivelled as the boys had grown older and stronger.

  With their father absent, the boys were left to their own devices, free to explore every inch of the grounds of Birchlands and to make them their own. The house was an austere, angular building, hemmed in by an uneven mosaic of lawns and formal gardens, linked with a network of die-straight gravel pathways which the boys’ imaginations refashioned into Roman roads, the Battle of Waterloo or elephant trails across the Alps.

  Their father’s one stipulation was that the brothers were forbidden from mixing with the children in the nearby village and it was a point on which the village children at least seemed content to respect.

  With no-one else, the brothers became close allies, and if Stephen had not been told he was due to attend Greyhurst, they might have believed themselves inseparable.

  The day before he’d left, Stephen had worn his brave face and it was a poor fit. His eyes were raw from where he’d scratched out the tears he didn’t want the staff to see.

  “If it were down to me,” he said to William, “I wouldn’t go at all.”

  It had not been down to Stephen. Greyhurst was not just a school, Greyhurst was a family duty. William would be sent there the following year, just as their father had attended when he’d been their age and their grandfather before him. There were photographs in the house which showed their father, their grand-father, their uncles and great-uncles looking sober in Greyhurst uniforms. There were long panoramic pictures of significant school years, regiments of pale-faced boys standing to attention. The family coat of arms, they were told, was embroidered on one of the score of pendants which decked the school’s main hall. The brother’s future there had never been in doubt, let alone questioned.

  With Stephen gone, the days had ground on by with little incident. William was ill-equipped at being alone. He had rattled around the house, in search of distraction; wandering the grounds listless. He even come close to breaking his father’s rule and considered crossing the southern field to reach the village, where the voices of the playing children rang like siren song; carried across the farmlands by the leading wind and leaving him only with a keener awareness of his isolation.

  The days had dragged, and as they mounted up behind him, the anticipation of Stephen’s return had grown into something unmanageable. But with the anticipation, there was the bud of something competitive which had yet to bloom. He knew his brother would not have been idle over the past four months, he would come home full of stories about Greyhurst, his teachers, and his new friends, but William had nothing to say in return. He’d done almost nothing since Stephen had been away. Certainly nothing new; nothing that Stephen might find interesting, let alone be jealous of.

  For the remaining weeks, this understanding galvanised William. He set about finding diversions for himself, if only so he would have something to tell Stephen about, to prove how he could cope on his own.

  He took walks around the gardens, finding the longest path which did not cross itself; He asked the gardener, Mr Granville, for a patch of earth to work with and they had planted potatoes together in neat little rows. So that he might look brave, he slipped out before supper one evening and threw his uncle’s leather-bound King James, spinning and flapping like a startled Jackdaw, so it landed behind the crenelation over the south portico. So he might look agile, he clambered the vine, hand-over-hand, at the side of the door to retrieve it again.

  At night, he would lie in bed imagining what more he could have done while left alone in the house, and by the time his father had arrived at Birchlands that afternoon, he’d fashioned a complex mythology of stories and anecdotes which never happened. It was a stockpile of cultivated lies to feed Stephen over the course of the holiday. He would ration them and use them to counter whatever true stories Stephen told. And in this way, Stephen would never know that William had been lonely at all.

  #

  The following morning, Jessie woke William early and busied herself spreading his freshly pressed Sunday suit across the dresser.

  “Your father wants you to breakfast with him,” she said. Ushering him up and out of bed, clucking over him with an impatient frown. Jessie was from the village, she was young and inexperienced but keen and inexpensive. She had a round freckled face and stubborn ginger curls that would not all be pinned back no matter how she tried.

  William had asked her once about the children in the village, and now she would talk about little else. She told him about how they played in the snow. They would wrap up warm, and gather amongst it, drawn to it like moths.

  “The whole lawn out there is untouched,” she said, nodding at the window. “If we was in the village, we wouldn’t let all that lovely snow go to waste now. We’d have made a man of it, tall as you. Taller.”

  “I was saving it for Stephen,” William said. It felt like a foolish reason when he said it out loud. He didn’t look up at her. He imagined she didn’t know what it was like to be left to play alone.

  His father and Miss Frith were in the breakfast room when he arrived. Miss Frith looked pale, sitting upright and silent, more discomforted by his father than William was. His father was reading the newspaper and although he glanced up when his youngest son came in, he didn’t say a word. William took his place at the table and waited.

  Breakfast had been laid out and the three ate in silence, toasted bread and cold sliced meat. The newspaper held his father’s attention. He ate around it, refolding it with great expansive flaps, which whomped and cracked like a fire under a clear flue.

  When he was done, he folded the paper and set it aside. He looked at William directly.

  “Your brother, Stephen, is due to return today on the 2:12 train,” he said. “I propose we meet him at the station.”

  It wasn’t a question but his eyes held William as though he was expecting an answer. Thoughts tumbled over each other in William’s head but none lingered long enough to make any sense. His father didn’t talk to him, his father didn’t talk to Stephen. And yet—

  “Yes,” William said. “Of course.”

  #

  The train station rang with conflicting noise and industry. For all the steam and smoke, the winter had taken a claim on it. The glass of the roof was muted by a mottled layer of snow and a barbed wind cut across the platforms picking at th
e coats of the porters.

  Standing and waiting, the cold made William retreat inside himself, pulling his coat tight about him and ducking his head as far as he could beneath his raised collar. On any other occasion, Miss Frith would have subjected him to a stern lecture about the importance of posture, but the cold had got to her too. She had shrivelled within her heavy coat and her sensible shoes, and her breath came out in short little puffs which lingered about her like a veil.

  Only William’s father seemed unaffected. His own posture was good, the sort of thing Miss Frith would approve of with a curt nod and a pursed-lipped smile. He stood straight-backed and patient; his features, those solid, dependable lines and contours you often saw on the marble busts of well-bred Englishmen. He looked across the platform with a quiet confidence and a sense of expectancy which William thought misplaced. If anyone should be looking forward to Stephen’s return, it should be the brother who had missed him so desperately and not the father who had barely acknowledged him for the first twelve years of his life.

  When the train arrived, it appeared vast and monstrous to William’s eyes, a black hole of iron and noise screaming as it slowed its speed. It hawked gouts of steam across the platform, making murky grey ghosts of the disembarking passengers and the railwaymen alike.

  Stephen emerged from the hubbub surrounding him with the newly acquired air of one who understood his place in the world. He looked taller, more confident, unintimidated by the bitter cold.

  He smiled when he saw them waiting for him, but it was not the lopsided grin which William remembered but a thin smile he didn’t recognise, and it was not directed at him personally. When William turned, he saw the same smile reflected on his father’s face. It was a cold expression; colder than the snow and the wind, and it was then William understood that while his brother had come home, he would remain alone.