The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  I don’t need ter stop an ask, I says. Everybody knows that! It’s goin ter Where We’re Goin.

  That’s what I used ter think, says he. An then I changed my mind, an I decided I’d sooner find my own path out than help build yours.

  So you hide in the woods an rob honest folks’ rigs, says I, spittin sideways ter show him I was not impressed. Well you picked the wrong rig ter rob this time, Carter Vaizey. Tis empty.

  It’s got you in it, he says, an his brown eyes was twinkling like the river. You’d be useful ter me Dimpsey, up in the wild camps, fer cuddlins an such.

  I tole him he had a pretty high pinion o himself if he thought I or any other girl would turn from the ways o Rightchus Strateness fer the sake o cuddlin him. Sides which, I was promised now ter Danil Judd, what would be purser when his dad gave up.

  Danil Judd? he says, an I felt meself blushin an wished I hadn’t tole him that bit.

  Anyways, he says, I don’t reckon you’re going ter use that ole murderin piece on me, Dimpsey. An he holds out his hands an starts coming towards me some more.

  An at first I thought he might be right, cos all my ’memberins o those river days was stirrin still an I kep seein him as the laughin boy he’d bin an not this robber he’d become. An then suddenly I ’membered meself an my finger clutched tight on the gun’s trigger an there was a bang that seemed ter make the whoal world glitch. Loud as a splodey goin off it was, an all the birds flung up black out o the trees like flyin splinters. Carter’s friend took fright an ran. I saw him trip on a stump an fall flat on his face, then he was up agen an runnin. The echoes boomed, comin back at us off the hills. An Carter sat there in front o me, knocked on his bum, with a poppy-flower o blood all wet an shiny on the shoulder o the old felt coat he’s wearin an a look on his face like he’s gettin ready ter cry.

  What dyou do that fer? he asks.

  Tole you I would, says I, you shoulda lissened.

  He put his hand ter the place I shot him, which was just under his sholder on the left side. Then he took it away an looked at all the shiny blood. While he was busy doin that I got another round inter the chamber, ready ter shoot him all over agen if he got up an come at me. But he just sat there an after a bit I decided he wasnt gona try nothin so I went round him ter the rig an unlocked it an got back in.

  What are you doin? he yells at me. You can’t just leave me here!

  Don’t see why not, I says.

  I’ll die, Dimpsey!

  I spect yer friends will come an find you, says I, startin up the engine. An if they doant, I’ll stop an bury yer carcass when I come back this way, fer ol time’s sake.

  He shouted summin more, but I was movin by then. The holler o the engine drownd his words an the blue smoke o the exhaust hid his face from me an I was on the Road agen.

  I DROVE ON up that valley all thru that day an most o the next, but it din’t feel so sweet somehow lookin out the pretty places I ’membered, not after runnin inter Carter like that. And after a time I wasn’t sure if I really membered em or not anyway: I’d couldna bin scarce more ’n a babe-in-arms when the Road came thru there. The bridges it went over was lookin old an shabby now. The ash-felt o the Road itself had turned grey with the passin o the years, an cracks ran over it, an the woods an weeds was crowdin in thick an close on either side.

  Then after a while more the Road got to climbin agen, up inter them eastward hills an then wet moorland where a zillion puddles shone in the sun. I ’membered tales the old uns tole o how hard it had bin crossin the high moss, where every hole you dug filled in agen an every spadeful o hardcore you put down was swallered up by the bog. They had done it in the end tho, an here was the proof o it: me bowling along in the rig, goin strate as an arrer cross them high wet places with the sun risin ahead o me an settin behind me.

  I didnt see no more sign o crooked men after that. Didn’t see no sign o nobody. One day I come across another cache, buried by an old campsite, an this 1 had not bin robbed out, but there weren’t no splodeys in it, so I pushed on. The Road was gettin old under me; I reckened I was drivin by now on a stretch my grand-da had helped ter lay. Old an grey like elefant skin it was, an cracked where the Jack Frost had worked his fingers inter it, an potholed where the rain had got in thru them cracks. Now an then the rig ba-DUNKed thru 1 o them potholes, an now an then it went rumblin over a darker patch where some gang sent out with the convoys had made repairs, but even the repairs needed repairin.

  After a wile it started ter make me sad, seein the Road all crackled an patchworked so. It ’minded me of things I’d heard the old uns tell, of how the ash-felt of nowadays weren’t so good as ash-felt used to be in the long-back. I’d always thought that was just how old uns talk, making out everythin was better when they was kids, but rattlin over them cracks and pot holes started me to wonderin.

  Sides, it was lonely up there, an Carter Vaizey’s crooked lies was echoin in my brainpan still: where is the Road goin? What is it fer?

  An then 1 day the Road started ter drop agen an I realised I was leavin the moors behind me, an I was glad ter see the last o em. Down thru woods I went, an as the night drew in I saw lights ahead o me, laid on the darkniss there like a girt bunch o dropped sequins. Sometimes the lights was hid from me by folds an wrinklins o the land, an then theyd shine out closer an briter than before.

  I stopped fer a bit around midnight, but I dint sleep long, an set out agen soon as I woke. Come first light I was driving inter a girt camp, so big it made our camp at Frunt End look like a den children make, playin in the bushes. There was smoke hangin everywhere an the noise o work goin on sumwhere, an all the big trucks an tankers parked up. I thought at first I must o come ter Where We Started, tho I could not tell how I had got there so quick.

  I soon found my mistake tho. When I stopped the rig an climbed out an asked a woman there if this was Where We Started she just laughed at me an said Bless you, girl, course it ant. Turned out it was called Depot, this place I’d come ter. It was another girt campsite edging westwards like our own, an it was where all the ash-felt an tar an spare parts an stuff was gathered an made ready fer the convoys ter take it on ter Frunt End.

  Mardi was this woman’s name, an she seemed friendly enough once she’d stopped laughin. I showed her Foreman Skrevening’s letter asking fer more splodey an she went with me ter an office where another Foreman looked at it an whacked it with a rubber stamp an tole me I was a brave girl fer comin all that way an how they would start loadin my rig that very day with splodey, an some wood chips an provisionins fer the journey back.

  Then Mardi says come ter my hut we’ll find some grub fer you an a place ter sleep. So I follows her across the tyre-tracked mud, past parked-up rigs an jeeps an diggas, an it felt so like Frunt End it made me homesick. Even the work-noise was the same, comin from over yonder beyond the huts an motor pools an all that smoke; the growlin o the diggas an the chink an scrape o picks an shovels, an men singin. An that hot ash-felt smell hangin over everythin, same as at home.

  What is the work they do here? I asks Mardi, when we’re in her hut an she’s fixing some stew fer me. Are they repairin the Road?

  Mung other things, she says.

  Seems ter me the Road won’t never be finished, I said. By the time it gets ter Where We’re Goin the whoal lot’l need repairin.

  Now that’s not Strate talk, says Mardi. You’re tired an don’t see things clear. Eat up now, an I’ll make up a bunk fer you.

  So I slept the rest o that day away, an when I woke it was evenin. Mardi was out sumwhere an I was alone, so I went out o the hut ter get some air.

  The sun was going down behind them girt moors I’d driven over, an the line o the Road was stretchin out towards it, an all I could think on was how many generations o my kin had lived an died a-buildin o that Road, an how I hoped Where We’re Goin would turn out ter be worth it when we got there.

  The sound o the work was still goin on. It made me curious ter see what they was doin, cos with all
them diggas growlin an pickaxes chipping away it sounded ter me like some pretty big repairs. So I went down tween the huts an tents an rows o vehicles an soon I came ter where they was workin.

  An I didnt understand it at first. It made no sense ter me. All them men an women hacking an hewin at the fine flat ash-felt o the Road, what our grand-das an our grand-da’s grand-das laid. Hackin an hewin at it they was, an liftin up girt chunks o the blacktop, an passin it back ter others who slung it inter big meltin vats, from which that hot ash-felt smell was comin. An shovellin up the hardcore underneath an passin that inter big waitin hoppers too.

  They wasn’t repairin the Road! They was takin it up!

  I couldn’t beleev it. I went runnin down between the work gangs, with the smoke stingin my eyes an the men callin out cheek ter me. What are you doin? I asked 1 who was busy heavin chunks o ash-felt inter the vats

  Recylin says he. This stuff’s needed fer the Roadbuildin. When we’ve recycled enough we’ll pack it all inter the trucks an it’ll be sent up ter Frunt End. Then we’ll press on, recyclin the next stretch.

  I WENT PAST him, down thru the smoke an the dust an the growlins o the diggas ter where the Road stopped. Back End, I suppose you’d call that place. Oh Carter Vaizey, I says ter meself, you was right an I was wrong. Cos where the work o the recyclin gangs had finished there was nothin left no more that you could call a Road. You could just see the scar o the roadbed, that was all, stretchin away eastward, back over the curve o the world towards Where We Started. Just a line thru the grass, an mebbe here an there there an old cuttin, or stone piers crumblin on a river bank where a bridge had stood.

  Just the ghost of a Road.

  Nuthin more.

  FADE TO GOLD

  BENJANUN SRIDUANGKAEW

  Lavie Tidhar introduced me to Benjanun’s fiction and I’m so glad he did. The story that follows is a journey into Thailand’s past and its mythology. It is also an exploration of desire and the tragedy that conformity can bring. It’s an extraordinarily rich and exotic story, beautifully told.

  THEY SAY THE afterlife is a wheel and that is true, but I am between, and so for me the way is a line. It unspools interminably into a horizon that shows the soft gold of dawn, always just a little out of reach.

  Before the war this was only packed earth and grass and dirt to me; before the war I trod this path from home to capital thinking of the sweetness of rare fruits. Now that my back is to Ayutthaya, the ground is sometimes baked salt where nothing grows and sometimes wet mud bubbling with the voices of the dead. Inside my arteries there is blood which throbs and pumps, and my belly growls at emptiness as might a bad-tempered dog. But it is difficult to be sure, after so much soldiering, that one is still alive. It is difficult to be certain this is not all a fever dream.

  It can be difficult to remember who you are, having watched Queen Suriyothai die.

  These are the common ailments of any soldier, though few will admit them.

  A BURNT VILLAGE, a burnt temple. I see such often, these days, defaced by the Phma who melted off the gold and stole every metal coin. Sometimes in their savagery they kill the monks, even though theirs and ours wear much the same saffron. The Phma have faces no different than any mother’s son, four limbs and a head each, but it strains belief that anything human could have slaughtered holy men. Do they not have luang-por like second fathers, who taught them to read and write? Are some of them not orphans taken in by a temple, to shelter beneath the steeple and the bodhi shade?

  Slaughter is what might have happened here, or else flight, for I find neither a living voice nor a body thick with flies. Toward the end everyone fled for Ayutthaya until the walls strained at the seams, until every house and hovel splintered at the edges. It should have been comforting, so many people, but when there was so much desperation all I could feel was desperation in turn, a sour and unrelenting fear that turned everything I ate – and even the king’s soldiers hadn’t much to eat – into rotten meat on the tongue, with an aftertaste of cinders.

  I take shelter where I find it, in spite of ghosts that must’ve seeped into the fissured walls and the desecrated murals. In spite of knowing that Phma soldiers have been here too, that the air bears the stink of their sweat, the reek of their filth. Being a soldier has taught me to forget delicacy.

  It has also taught me to put on sleep light as dead petals, to be shaken off and scattered at a blink. So when the mud makes sucking noises I am already awake; when the woman comes into view I have a hand around the carved wood of a hilt.

  She must have seen the blade glint, for there is a hiss of breath.

  “I thought you might be a thief,” she says.

  “What could a thief rob from a place already thieved to every final clod of dirt?”

  “There is always one last bit of painted glass, one last talisman.” She closes the distance, her apparent fear set aside. “One last child to murder.”

  “Have you lost one, then?” There’s still room in my breast for softness, still room to be cut by another’s hurt.

  “It’s a season for losing children.” The luster of her lips and hair seems brighter than dawn’s light warrants. “You can only be passing by. Which way calls you?”

  “East, to Prachinburi.”

  “The same direction, then.” She gathers her braid in one hand, twisting it. “Might we not share company?”

  I have collected myself, spine straight, eyes clear. In the back of my mind phantom flies buzz. There is no escaping the noise. No battle-hardened veteran ever tells you it is the flies that haunt you most, over the cannon fire and your fellows’ screams, over the throb and burn of your own veins. “You would trust a strange soldier?”

  “When she is a woman, why not?”

  My alarm must have been immediate, for she laughs.

  “Even officers go bare-chested the moment they’re free from uniform. You remain as neat behind yours as a captain newly promoted and pledged to His Majesty.” Her head moves from side to side. “I’ll not pry – too much. I want only safety, for if you’ve survived the Phma you must be as fit to the business of combat as any man.”

  I should ask how she has been unscathed so far. I should ask from whence she came, and where she was going other than in the same vague direction as I am. But in the army I’ve been solitary out of need, and there comes a point where a person must hear another human voice or break upon the cliff-face of loneliness. My secret is already laid bare to her, so where’s the harm?

  We set out at daybreak, keeping parallel to but avoiding the road, for not all soldiers recently unyoked from duty are vessels of honor, and I’ve heard news of Phma stragglers along this way, ready to avenge themselves upon any Tai.

  She breaks open one of her bamboo tubes as we walk, and hands me half the sweet roasted rice. Her name is Ploy, a widow, and when she hears my name is Thidakesorn she smirks at the florid grandeur of it. “A princess’s name,” she says.

  “My parents had expectations.” Years living with an aunt who married upward, wife of a merchant grown wealthy on trade with the Jeen. So successful he’s sailed to the Middle Kingdom twice, and his fortune tripled by a wife shrewd with numbers and investment. She would tutor me, it was hoped.

  “Instead you took up the sword.”

  How do I say that I went to the capital to learn to be a lady and fell in love with the queen despite the hopeless stupidity of that; how do I say it was for this love that I fought and that when she fell it shattered me? How do I say that I resent the king’s continued life, for she was the braver of the two, the finer being, and that he did not deserve a wife as incandescent as she? So I seal my lips and pronounce none of these wounds. Better they suppurate than my shame be cast into the day.

  She may have the secret of my gender, but this is mine alone to nurse.

  The day brightens and Ploy acquires a clarity of features. Before, I thought her soft and plain; now there is an angle to her eyes and mouth I’ve failed to notice in the dim light.
Sharp from nose-tip to chin-tilt. It does not make her beautiful, if such a comment may be leveled from someone as blunt-featured as I, but she would snag the attention and hold it fast. A little like the queen. The dead queen, whom I must not think about, whom I must bury under the blackest soil of memory.

  When I shut my eyes I see elephants draped in black and silver, trumpeting for death. I see the edge of a glaive passing through flesh and bone, opening a queen inside out.

  NOON CLAIMS THE sky with fingers bright and fever-hot. It is a month for rain, but I harbor a childish fancy that the season has upended for Queen Suriyothai’s demise.

  Between my waking delirium transmuting earth to a sanguine river and us stopping to drink from a pool, we hear the Phma.

  Away from the shields bearing the king’s crest, away from his banners and helms, it can be difficult to tell Phma deserters from our own men. Loinclothed and bare-chested like any Ayutthaya soldier, bearing much the same type of blade. There is a wild look to them that I can spot even as we take to hiding, and I wonder if the penalty for desertion is as harsh for them as for us. Harsher: victors can afford generosity that losers may not.

  When they are gone Ploy murmurs, “I thought you’d challenge them, for are these not your sworn enemies and murderous animals?”

  “There were five of them, and one of me.”

  Her sneer is vicious. “If I needed confirmation you were a woman before, I would’ve required none now.”

  “What did you lose to the Phma?”

  “A family.” Her mouth tightens; she says no more.

  I study her more closely for signs of who she is or might have been. Widow says little, designates merely a specific sorrow. Strange that we will confess but one loss at a time – I am a widow, I am an orphan; how to say in one concise word I’ve lost everything?