New Title 1

by Campbell, J R

  “I’m tired,” said Challenger. “I want to rest. I’m dying, despite my best efforts not to. Your twittering gives me a headache, Perriman, and as for you, Mr Quarmby, I fail to see why you need me.”

  “ Who else would I go to?” asked Quarmby, leaning forwards. “The greatest explorer of our time, of our time or any other in fact, taking on a last expedition. A last, greatest expedition, led by our greatest explorer.” The man appeared to be focussing on Challenger’s neck, on the weakly beating pulse, like some youthful nosferatu, all charm and appetite and selfishness.

  “ Think of it,” said Quarmby, pressing whatever advantage he had created for himself, “think of the possibilities if I am proved right! Think of what people will say about you, Professor!” The distant drone of aircraft hummed around the room, the sound of engines and movement and progress.

  “Continue,” said Challenger eventually. “ The process I am suggesting is neither ill-advised, nor blasphemous, because it does not alter anything, it merely adds a minor delay to what happens. The soul’s energy, its charge, can be captured in this.” He indicated a great coil of brass and leather sitting on the floor by Challenger’s chair. Dials, mounted behind glass faces, were set in a row along its front, and a plinth holding a row of small bulbs in metal cowlings sat along its top. The apparatus was perhaps three feet long and two high, held off the floor on a stand of dark wood and burnished metal.

  “ The Dead Soul Battery,” Quarmby said proudly. Perriman saw Challenger wince, although whether at the device’s purpose or its melodramatic name, he wasn’t sure.

  “ The soul is then released from the battery and powers the discs,” continued Quarmby, pointing to a series of brass plates connected to the battery by thick cables. Each plate was topped by an arm like a phonograph, a heavy needle sitting on the surface of the plate. “The discs spin, converting the energy into sound, sound which the soul can manipulate, form as it wishes. The soul will be able to talk to us before it continues its journey! Just think of the possibilities, of the things we could learn!” He sounded like a child. He was a child, Perriman supposed, compared to himself and Challenger. How old was he? Twenty three? Twenty four? Challenger was almost eighty now, his flesh shrivelling daily, Perriman nearly sixty. We’re the past, he thought suddenly, we’re old and slow and facing backwards. What place is there for us now?

  Perriman tried again. “Professor Challenger, George, please think about this. You may not believe that this is blasphemous, but it is still wrong. When you die, you die; we should not take it upon ourselves to meddle with that.”

  “ Perriman,” said Challenger, “you really are an old maid, aren’t you? My wife is dead, I am old, I am reduced to staying in lodgings whilst the world forgets my name, but it has not always been this way. In my life, I have been worshipped as a god by primitive men, faced lizards the size of a London omnibus, watched creatures long thought dead soar above London and known it was my own actions that placed them there. I have faced the dismay, violence, anger and adulation of my peers and colleagues, and in my prime I could have cracked the heads a dozen men and bloodied their coxcombs without breaking sweat. Tell me, if you had had that kind of life, wouldn’t you want to extend it? By whatever means you could?”

  Before Perriman could answer, Challenger had swivelled slightly in his seat, his head bobbing forwards like a snake’s to peer at Quarmby. His eyes, the only part of him that retained any strength, glittered in the gloom. “Do your worst,” he said, wheezing. “Catch me in your Dead Soul Battery if you can. For my part, I shall endeavour to be caught, and to speak through your machine so that the world will not forget me, and will know: Professor Challenger did not stop exploring, returning from beyond even death itself!”

  Perriman put his foot down; he would be present during the procedure, or it would not happen. Challenger might pay for his lodgings and care, but this was still Perriman’s house, and he would know what was going on. Challenger put up very little fight, far less than Perriman expected, and he wondered if the man secretly wanted an audience. By all accounts, he had always been as much showman as scientist, wanting people to watch and listen and be amazed; Quarmby didn’t seem to care one way or another.

  Challenger’s shadow, staying with The younger man became

  him at all times. He slept in the shadow of the huge plant on a camp bed, watching hawkishly for a deterioration in the older man’s health, went with him to his meals, ate alongside him, and he did not have long to wait. One damp morning, Challenger’s breathing became ragged, as though each breath was a fight and the air too thick to pull into his lungs. His eyes, red-rimmed, fluttered open only occasionally, and he stopped speaking altogether; the only sign of strength in him was his hands, which continually wrung his bedding, twisting it into a surprisingly tight knot. Quarmby worked quickly, wrapping leather straps around Challenger’s chest and head, slipping small brass discs like coins between the straps and Challenger’s skin, wires stretching from them to the battery. He uncovered dials on the front of the battery, span a handle so that a bulb on its top glowed briefly, span each of the discs in the apparatus next to the battery, listening to the metallic sighs they made, making minute adjustments to the positioning of the needles and the armatures. Finally, he sat back in his chair.

  Challenger drew in another breath, let it out with a sound like linen ripping. Drew another, thicker and wetter, let it out. Drool appeared on his lips, his tongue struggling after it weakly. Perriman wiped it with his handkerchief, knowing that there was no point in calling the medics. Challenger’s body was old, well- used, and his time was come. They could give him dignity and peace, but little more.

  Another breath, glutinous and straining; another groaning exhalation. Another breath, but no exhalation. After a moment, Challenger’s body slumped down in his bed and his hands fell away from his sheets. His mouth dropped further open and air loosed from it slowly. His eyes fell open, rolling; Perriman waited a moment and then leaned forward, feeling for a pulse. Nothing beat in either wrist, and he could feel no breath against the back of his hand when he held it in front of the man’s mouth. He felt for the jugular vein, not liking the way the bristled skin felt under his fingertips, and found nothing. “He’s gone,” he murmured, gently brushing the eyelids down. “Godspeed. May the Lord take your soul and keep you safe.” The room was silent, still, dark.

  And then the battery burst into life. The bulbs lining the top began to glow, becoming steadily brighter and brighter until it hurt to look directly at them. Quarmby began to spin the handle rapidly and the various dials across the front of the machine started to move, the needles behind the glass casings jerking and jumping. First one, then all the others, buried themselves to the right, and still Quarmby span the handle and still the bulbs grew brighter. One in the middle of the row blew with a pop, its thin filament snapping and glowing. Another blew, and then another until all of them went the same way in a series of tiny, rapid explosions. The air filled with the smell of burning wire and electricity; a noise sounded, the whine of a motor, the grate of the handle as Quarmby whirled it around, of Quarmby’s frenzied breathing, and Perriman’s own heart staccato in his ears. He was reminded of those days, not long gone, when the air was filled with engines and the ground shook to the beat of falling armaments, when the smell of burning earth and scorched flesh was never far away, and he wanted to scream, to howl his terror.

  Light filled the room, blue and pale, the plant in the corner dancing to wind that only it could feel, its shadow capering across the walls and ceiling, the masks’ hollow eyes gazing on gleefully. Perriman started to pray, couldn’t hear his own voice above the cacophony, stopped. The battery whined, the coiled wires thrumming violently. One of the dials cracked, then another, then another. Quarmby shouted something, triumphant. There was another crack and shards of glass jumped from the last dial, skittering across the floor, catching the blue light and trailing it behind them like spiderwebs. There was a final high-pitched shri
ek and the battery itself appeared to glow for a moment, not hot but cold, the blue of ice and glaciers and the unforgiving ocean, and then everything collapsed in on itself and the room was left, quiet and dark.

  After a moment, Perriman found enough voice to ask, “Has it worked?” desperate to know despite himself. Even to his own ears, he sounded querulous and insecure.

  “ My God,” said Quarmby, ignoring Perriman, “I’ll have to make it bigger. It nearly didn’t hold. Did you see it? Did you see? My God, he nearly blew the whole thing apart! Was that him, I wonder, just him and who he was, or would everyone’s soul have that much power?” As he spoke, he was scrabbling around the end of the battery, attaching wires, connecting it to the apparatus of discs and wired armatures. Once he was satisfied, he sat back in his chair and spoke loudly.

  “Professor Challenger, can you hear me? Are you there?” There was no response. Quarmby looked expectantly at the machinery, but Perriman found himself looking at Challenger’s corpse, half expecting it to move, for its head to rise from its sideways loll and for it to start speaking. Shadows draped across the dead man’s skin, the shapes of the plant’s foliage slithering their way through his beard and across the broad expanse of forehead.

  “Professor Challenger?” said Quarmby again. Perriman looked around. Nothing moved, nothing sounded. There was nothing he could see, but he nonetheless felt as though there was someone there; there air was heavy, as though a thunderstorm was on its way, expectation and intent thickening the atmosphere. Imagination, he told himself. Young men’s fancies. Nonsense.

  And then the discs started spinning. It was only one at first, slowly, but then two other joined it. Perriman watched as they turned, gliding around slowly. The noise of the needles dragging across their surfaces was thin and reedy, almost too quiet to hear. Quarmby saw them and clapped his hands together, practically bouncing in his chair. “Professor Challenger,” he said for the third time, “are you there? Please, speak to us if you can.”

  “I’m here,” came a voice. It was high, metallic, the words somehow without pause as though they spoken in one long, continuous exhale. It wasn’t Challenger, not exactly, but it was similar, Challenger’s voice warped by inexpert reproduction.

  By needles against brass.

  “Where? Where are you?” asked Quarmby, scribbling into his notebook. “ Here,” said the voice, the word drawing out for several seconds. More of the discs were spinning now, sparks beginning to play across their surfaces. The sparks were blue, Perriman saw, not orange, leaping from disc to disc rather than falling to the floor.

  “What can you see? What can you hear?” asked Quarmby. “ Nothing,” said the voice, said Challenger, for it was unmistakeably him now, Challenger’s voice coming from the mechanism attached to the Dead Soul Battery. “There’s nothing.”

  The battery was whining again, also sparking as it loosed the charge it had stored. The discs span, getting faster, rattling against the needles. “There’s a light,” said Challenger, his voice stronger now, louder, deeper. “And colours.”

  “Colours in the light?”

  “No, the light is nothing, the colours are here where I am.”

  “Where are you? Where, Professor, please tell us!” “I’m here,” said Challenger again. The discs sped up, going so fast that there surface was a blur. The needles bumped up and down, the arms holding them shivering. “I’m here.”

  “ Go to the light,” said Perriman. The battery’s whine was creeping up now, the gauges on its front flickering again, this time in descending jerks as the charge contained within it fell. “Go on, Professor, go on. Go to your reward.”

  “ Reward,” said Challenger, the word stretching out like the squeal of a braking vehicle or the grinding of millstones. “Reward.”

  “Go to it, Professor, please, before it’s too late.” The gauges were almost at zero now, the battery sputtering. The discs were spinning too fast to see, the needles screaming as the surface whipped by below them. Quarmby was writing frantically, trying to record all that was happening. More sparks leapt across the machinery, filling the room with a flickering light that set the plant a-dancingagain and filled the masks’ empty sockets with baleful blue eyes.

  “I’m here,” said Challenger again and one of the discs slipped its bearing, jumping from its mount and careering across the room with a noise like a whip cracking. Perriman ducked as it shot past him and Quarmby shrieked. The battery made a final, electric wheeze, blue flames appearing momentarily around it and playing along the coiled wire and wooden legs. Another disc shot free in a hail of sparks, the high mosquito-buzz from the others growing louder. One of the armatures broke, snapping backwards; another was yanked sideways by the speed of the revolving plate below it, the needle scratching across the brass face with a noise like a cat’s midnight yowl.

  “Go!” cried Perriman, “Go on, Challenger, go to the light!” The was a final cracking and wrenching sound as another disc and arm tore loose, this one scything their way into the plant’s branches. A ball of blue flame belched across the remaining parts of machinery, smelling of cordite and ozone and burning leather. It sent shadows lurching up the walls, Perriman and Quarmby written huge and distorted. The broken bulb filaments on top of the coil flared savagely for a brief moment, the discs span wildly, more blue sparks leapt and the voice came again, “I’m here,” louder, longer, drawing itself out of the noise of the machinery. There was one last burst of activity, noise and light and electric stench, and then things began to slow.

  The last to stop were the discs; most of the ones that remained were askew on their mechanisms now, leaning drunkenly under arms that were bent and broken. As the sound of them tapered off to nothing, Perriman looked over at Quarmby, who appeared to be going into shock.

  “Did you see?” Quarmby said. “Did you hear?” “ Yes,” said Perriman, “I did. It’s done now, though, thank God. This is at an end, Mr Quarmby, and good riddance to it. I would recommend that you leave your experiment alone, and be grateful that more damage wasn’t done.” He looked around the room; one of the discs had lodged into the wall, half-buried, and another had torn a long strip across the ceiling and taken a chunk out of the dado rail.

  “ We held him,” said Quarmby, seeming not to hear Perriman. “He communicated with us. We had Professor Challenger here, after he had died.”

  “Yes,” said Perriman, “and now he’s has gone on. Let us be thankful for that, at least.” “ Gone on?” roared Challenger’s voice. “Gone on, to that pale and insipid light, and leave behind all this colour? Leave behind this world, and all the things in it that I haven’t seen? Oh, Perriman, you really are an old woman, aren’t you?” One of the discs started to spin, stuttered, and then picked up speed. Another joined it, another. Another. The spear on the desk leapt upright and buried itself into the ceiling, the shaft quivering, and the masks shook on the walls. Quarmby, a look of terror on his face, reached over and yanked the wires from the machine. Ozone and firefly sparks crackled as they came away, showering the floor and the catching in the cuffs of Quarmby’s pants. There was another flash of blue flame, another high shriek, the air in the room pressing in on them, and then there was silence again.

  “ A residual charge,” said Quarmby eventually, sounding uncertain, “earthing itself. The battery is disconnected now. He is gone.”

  “Nonsense,” said Challenger loudly. “I am Professor Edward Challenger, and I rely on no machine. I am going nowhere!” The room filled with booming laughter.

  RIVER OF BONES

  by Paul Lewis A shrieking gale stalked the cottage, finding its way through gaps in the old stone walls and making the fire gutter and dance in the hearth. It was long past midnight yet I lay awake. It was not so much the hard stone floor on which we had made our beds that denied me sleep but the memory of what we saw whenever we went outside. If I closed my eyes I could see them, the cold bare remains of the men, women and children who had called this island home. Now it was only thei
r grave.

  We had been here four days and our nerves were raw. Each night brought a tangible air of dread, a feeling that something monstrous was waiting, poised to strike the moment we let our guard down. Nonsense, of course, at least from a scientific viewpoint, as both Challenger and Summerlee had made clear. But they felt it too, I could tell.

  I was gripped by an illogical but forceful notion that whatever was going to happen would happen tonight. I was feverish, having caught a chill. I needed air but dared not go out.

  My companions and I risked death by unknown means if we stayed and death by drowning if we attempted to leave. The Rose of Scotland was not due to return for another six days and the small boat we had at our disposal would be pounded into driftwood by the fearsome Atlantic waves.

  I wished I had never listened to Challenger, that I had never set foot on this cursed island. Hard to believe that little more than a week ago I was at home in London, dressing for an evening at the Savage Club…

  When I answered the knock at the door it was to find Austin, Professor Challenger’s chauffeur and occasional butler, standing there. Saying nothing, as was his wont, he handed me a folded sheet on which a terse message had been scrawled in wiry writing. Reading it I feared the worst and, abandoning my plans for the evening, pulled on a warm coat before following Austin down the steps to the waiting car.