Shadowplays
Stories
by
W.D. Gagliani
Author of Wolf's Trap (Bram Stoker Award nominee),
Wolf's Gambit, Wolf's Bluff, Wolf's Edge, and Savage Nights
Published by W.D. Gagliani at Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 W.D. Gagliani
First E-Book Edition August 2010
Cover by Deena Warner (for "Kneel at the Shrine")
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contact:
Tarkus Press
PO Box 214
Oak Creek, WI 53154
http://www.wdgagliani.com
http://moodelevator.wordpress.com/
Other works by this author:
Wolf's Trap
Wolf's Gambit
Wolf's Bluff
Wolf's Edge (Samhain, 2011)
The Great Belzoni and the Gait of Anubis (novella and short-short)
Shadowplays (Fiction Collection)
Mysteries & Mayhem (with David Benton, Fiction Collection)
Mood Elevator (with David Benton, Short Story)
Dedication
In memory of Joel Ross
Goodbye, my friend…
Also in memory of my dad…
and Alda Gagliani, Aldo DiCorato, Dennis Michel, plus
Eric Woolfson, Richard Wright, Robert B. Parker, Donald Westlake, Stuart Kaminsky,
and so many more whose words and deeds touched me…
Also dedicated to Robert Bloch
and all the other editors who bought my stories over the years.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Some of these eighteen stories also appeared in the first edition of Shadowplays, which was published as an ebook in 2000… long before the ebook market took off! The best of those tales appear here in the second edition as well, along with some newer published and unpublished stories. Some are a bit dated, but still work. Thank you for giving them new life. Warning: adult content. wdg
CONTENTS
"Only Spectres Still Have Pity" (from Ghosts of the IRA)
"Kneel at the Shrine" (from: Ghosts of the IRA)
"In the Shadow of China Mountain"
"The Great Belzoni and the Gait of Anubis"
"The Great Belzoni and the Monster of Goa"
* * * *
ICEWALL
Published in ROBERT BLOCH'S PSYCHOS, edited by Robert Bloch, and in
SHADOWPLAYS (1st edition). Honorable Mention in the
Year's Best Fantasy & Horror (11th edition)
The wind.
Even through the thick Styrofoam padding and internal icewall, you could hear it. You couldn't escape its long, high-pitched wail. It drove ice particles like tiny projectiles, embedding them into the outer skin of the Jamesway hut with the sound of popping corn. The stretched canvas was pitted like that of an orange, and frozen solid.
After six months, the three things that defined my life broke down like this: the wind, the darkness, and the hut. And Frank. I guess that's four. Frank was certainly instrumental in my life, just as I was in his. Hell, in that little space we shared, there was no relief, from the elements or each other.
So why was I there at all? Adventure. Furthering the cause of science. Therapy. Take your pick or take 'em all. Even now I can't guess what went through my mind when I filled out the interminable paperwork that would eventually lead me to that Jamesway hut about two hundred miles "north" of the South Pole in the long winter darkness. I don't know why Antarctica seemed such a good way out of a lousy life. And I don't know why life was so lousy, not even now.
All I know is that after nearly six months on the Ice, Frank changed. About the time he started complaining about those flickering lights out at the edge of the Icewall.
I never saw those lights, but he insisted they flickered there whenever he was alone. He'd drag me out into the near-darkness and point, but there was never anything there. The Icewall's ridge always seemed as impenetrable and mysterious as ever to me, and as lonely. It drove him nuts that I couldn't see them, but I couldn't, and that was that. After weeks of this routine, we started ignoring each other more and more.
This particular day had dawned like the rest of them. No real light. No real difference in the temperature. No real difference in the instrument readings. No real difference in any damned thing. I had just finished checking the instruments in the dome fifty yards from the hut. Almost buried, the dome was an igloo. Or a white wart on dead skin. Take your pick. It's all in the perspective. Five steps led down into its interior, which was lined with shelves of instruments. There was the usual battery of thermometers and barometers, as well as a barograph to chart trends in air pressure. There were hygrometers and psychrometers to check and double-check humidity, which rarely changed, and a rack of electronic devices hooked up to the anemometer mounted on the metal tower outside. Snow gauges and ice crystal collectors sat outside, too. In the center stood our baby, the radio telescope. Banks of programmable listening and recording devices scanned the banded sky for movement. The dome also contained an easy chair and a small supply of food, in case one of us became isolated inside. A tiny stove provided inadequate heat. We used a lantern with a cable strung to the hut and hooked into our generator to provide lighting. There were candles, too, in case the cable were cut or ripped by wind or buried too deep.
This was the last winter for our little dome. After the thaw, after the relief plane came and whisked us away to the warmth of McMurdo and then Christchurch and home, another plane would bring a construction crew and a new dome. Twice as big and sparkling new, it would contain newer versions of all the instruments — in a third of the space — and a weather radar, or so they told us. Camp Ten would grow to include three more Jamesway huts and a big Robertson building, as well as the radar dome and a T-5 to house a larger generator.
Yessir, after Frank and I left, the place would turn into a regular dump, with a personnel roster of at least fifteen and a muddy Main Street. Our location had become big-time, even if we hadn't. That's why Frank and I took our twice-daily measurements with less and less enthusiasm, feeling replaced already. Whatever they'd do here wouldn't include us. After the hut, life was a blank to me. And I knew Frank didn't have much to look forward to, either.
I munched on a frozen chocolate bar from the emergency kit as I took the last of the readings and snapped down covers over the instruments and their dials. Breath clouded the air and blurred my vision slightly. I had stopped using the stove during readings, since it was barely worth the trouble. The measurements were mechanical, and I ignored the numbers — I just wrote them into the log with a damned pencil and forgot they existed. Pens were useless in the intense cold. The ink froze up and eventually burst the thin plastic cylinders. The new equipment would take readings and feed them into a computer, which would then store the data until a weekly satellite hookup requested transmission. It almost didn't need humans to work, and I felt obsolete with that fucking pencil stub grasped awkwardly in triple-gloved fist.
I closed down everything that needed to be and finished the chocolate bar, then climbed the steps and met the wind head on. Both hands wrapped around the nylon safety railing that led from the dome to the hut, I slowly made for home. I kept my head down to avoid the flying ice, which found the vents in the face mask with unerring accuracy. Even with heavy-duty goggles stretched over my eyes, visibility was impaired — not only by the ice, but also by the tiny gouges the particles made. Goggles became useless after a few weeks of constant barrage, and these were almost new. I desperately wanted to keep them that way. I was attached to those goggles, as if they had become my eyes.
Fifty yards is a jaunt almost anywhere in the world, but it took me twenty minutes to negotiate against the wind. Every ten feet, the railing threaded through a flexible whip-like post, and I counted posts as I went along. I had once wondered why the dome was placed so far away. Long ago. The answer always gave me chills, even in fifty below temperatures.
"In case of fire," a member of a long-gone winter's party had told me, while brushing loose locks of hair from his forehead with one hand and scratching a tangled beard with the other. "If a fire starts in the hut and you don't die in it, you want a place to retreat to. Get your ass sheltered, you know. If the fire starts in the dome, same thing. You don't want it to spread, and fifty yards is about right, just to make sure."
He had squinted a little then and drawn his features into a smirk, giving the impression of someone who knew better than to let these things get to him. Then he'd wandered off, scratching his groin. A real poster boy for the Antarctic project.
Fire. I remembered the lectures we'd had on fires.
"There's nothing worse than fire on the Ice," an overweight Major Kane had said with a frown. "If it doesn't kill you, you're almost as good as dead anyway. See, rescue is always days or weeks away, depending on the weather's cooperation. But you know about that, being weather buffs, right?" No one had laughed. "You can't put fires out on the Ice. Extinguishers freeze solid in hours. Those we've designed with antifreeze take a couple of days, but they freeze up, too. There's no such thing as running water, except the small amounts you melt for cooking and drinking. You get my point, I hope. Fire is death. No two ways about it. But, if you can find shelter away from the fire — a decent shelter — you stand a chance. A remote chance, sure, but still better than nothing at all. So take care of your off-camp shelter. It might have to take care of you." He sat abruptly, as if he found his own words distasteful.
Somebody had laughed then, briefly. A nervous sort of laugh-bark that had echoed over our heads and died out. Nobody looked to see who had laughed, because the same chill hung over all of us. The lecture had continued on a much lighter note, how to avoid sexual frustration while wintering in camp. Some wit had labeled that part of the sermon "Pulling the Penguin 101." We put fire out of our minds but it lurked there all the same.
The Jamesway hut is shaped like a half-cylinder and covered with canvas. Inland stations sometimes use two — one slightly bigger — and piggyback them so that there's about a foot and a half of dead air space between the outer skin of one and the inner skin of the other. Inside that space they spray loose snow, which hardens to form a thick, frozen barrier — an icewall — and Styrofoam chips. Keeps most of the wind and cold out. But the newer buildings are much better, don't need the customized improvements, and the next party would get the two-story Robertson variation. I envied those guys. Frank and I were sick of the Jamesway.
I snapped open the outside door, and it flew out of my grip. There were flashes of light in the sky — the approaching polar morning — but it was still dark, about the same as late early evening, if you know what I mean. Take your pick, dark is dark. I pulled the outside door closed, unlatched the inside door, and I was home. The relative warmth caressed my face and began melting the blown snow on my parka and hood. I took off the garment and shook it in the doorway, then pulled off my fur-lined boots and slammed them against the door — snow melts, dampens the boots, and quickly freezes when you visit the dome later. Presto, no toes. Or even feet. We shook out boots and parkas diligently, you can bet on it. The fucking cold gets to you and the dark and so does everything else. Take your pick.
"Close the goddamn door," Frank growled at me. I was used to his mood shifts, so I ignored him. But I did shut and latch the door, as I would have in any case. He'd been nitpicky for a while now. I went to the stove and turned up the heat a little, even though it would still be a frosty fifty or so in the hut. It never gets very warm in there, because you're always trying to conserve fuel. Just in case.
"Trying to poison me?" he baited, but I wouldn't bite. I'd been there way too long to care if he didn't like something I did. And the stove fumes weren't that bad. He was lying in his bunk — his usual position in the last few weeks — and looking up at the curved ceiling, a filthy pillow on his chest. He'd stopped taking readings, too. For a month I'd been carefully forging his initials in the weather log every other reading, so no one would know that Frank had succumbed to the polar Bug. Lord knows I was close myself, but to see Frank acting like that was enough to drive me all the way to buggy if I let it get to me.
The radio was for emergencies only, and our tour wasn't up yet, so we couldn't very well call for a new deck of cards or something. And flights are almost impossible in winter — slots are liable to last less than an hour. Anyway, our old deck was good enough. Frank never played with me any more, so I laid out hand after hand of solitaire for hours. The broken turntable sat silent on a bookshelf. Frank had smashed the useless records a month before, and pieces of vinyl still found their way underfoot. We had no such thing as CD technology at the Pole yet, and cassette tapes became brittle in the cold and snapped. So now we had no music. I bet the next guys would get a CD jukebox. Fuckers.
"Want to play some cards?" I asked offhandedly as I shuffled the deck. The cards were a little thin and crinkly, but still did the job. I glanced at the female figures on the back. No regulation cards for us, no sir. I was holding 'Brigitte,' Frank's favorite. "Hey, Frank, it's Brigitte. She's callin' for you."
"Go fuck a penguin."
I shook my head. Not because there weren't any penguins within a hundred miles, and not because I wouldn't if given half the chance, but because his attitude was bugging me.
"Suit yourself," I mumbled, and made do with my own company, not for the first time. I arranged the cards so I could see all the girls. Brigitte, Renee, Michele, Dominique, Angela, and my favorite, Joconde. We had a good time together, and it was Frank's loss.
Later, I looked at my watch. It was going on midday, and my stomach was grumbling. "Look, let's eat. Okay?"
He was still staring up, that pillow on his chest. "Just leave me the hell alone." His voice was barely louder than a whisper, but I heard it. I heard it, all right.
As I said, he was changing. He'd been a nice guy for four months, and then he'd started acting strangely, since those lights he kept insisting he saw out by the Scott Icewall, fifty miles away. I wondered if the shrink at McMurdo could unravel the threads of his mind, but I knew it'd have to wait. And maybe I'd be better off keeping my mouth shut. Like with forging his initials in the book, I could probably cover for him if I tried.
"All right, my friend." I stood and scraped the chair on the plank flooring, trying for sarcasm. "I'll do the cooking. Once again." A corner of the Jamesway was set up as galley. I opened a few cans and mixed a couple freeze-dried things with water hundreds of years old and soon had what seemed like a reasonably pleasant smell drifting around the hut. At least it masked the stale odor we were forced to put up with all winter, which I had recently started to consider intolerable. You'd think old Frank would have shown some enthusiasm. For the effort, at least.
"First thing I 'm gonna do when I get out of this place is get a haircut," I said, while I ate something labeled 'Pork Chops And Applesauce.' It had the look and consistency of puke, so it was better than the 'Beef Stew With Vegetables.' "What about you?"
Frank didn't answer.
"Well, anyway, I'll get my hair cut and my beard trimmed and I'll go out to a real restaurant and order actual food. Not this crap they make us eat." I prodded the opened cans and foil packets. "A natural freezer here and they don't even give us steak, like the boys at McMurdo get every goddamn day. Steak and fucking eggs for the boys, twice a day if they want it."
"You know damn well we ate all the steak," Frank hissed in that funny little whisper of his, like he's not getting any air in his lungs. "I told you not to eat it all so quickly, but you did anyway. Now we're stuck with this shit."
"Shut up, Frank."
"Now we're stuck with stuff that isn't even good laxative."
"Look," I said, "if you can't be nice, then just shut up."
"Sure, you wanted us to eat all the steak, and now we're out, and it's my fucking fault," he said.
"Shut up!" I screamed. I threw an empty can at him, but it bounced off a chair that was in the way. Frank didn't even bother to duck or move. He just lay in his bunk, hugging that pillow, and stared up at the ceiling.
Outside, the wind howled without letup. You can't escape that wind, you know, just like you can't escape each other. I suddenly wanted to hear that relief plane, that fucking great C-l30 roaring overhead and setting down at the strip, and Frank and me waiting and waving.
Something dark rose up in me. I threw the hot food at him and missed. I wasn't hungry anymore. We had no words for each other — they'd all been said.
So life went on. Frank was different, there was no doubt about it. He barely talked to me, and when he did, it was with contempt that he'd somehow concealed for months. I continued to cook for us, but Frank never ate. I guess he must have been eating whenever I was out at the dome. I still took that walk twice daily, and I still forged his initials carefully, as if he were still doing his share for science. What shit! It was all me. I was doing it all in that godforsaken hut and in that dome. I took my readings carefully and recorded them in the log and then signed the entries, drawing either my own initials as I always had or, every other time, drawing Frank's — "FLG." No one would ever know he'd caught the Bug. I couldn't tell on a buddy, even if he was driving me apeshit.
About a week after our last fight, the one about the steak we didn't have, we made up. Or I made up with him, anyway. He was on his back in his bunk again and ignoring me.
"Man, I think this'll be the last tour, buddy, " I said. I hoped we could talk. You know, bury the hatchet, as they say. I mean, we hadn't talked in days. "I just can't take this isolation anymore, and this darkness. And the fucking wind."
To be fair, the sky was getting lighter every day. But noon still seemed sort of like twilight, and the wind screeched through rips in the hut's canvas. Two days before I'd fixed the cup anemometer — a gust of wind somewhere between sixty and seventy miles per hour had knocked the cups right off the damn thing, so I had to climb the bastard and put in one of the replacements. I had begged Frank to give me a hand, but he wouldn't budge. Wouldn't even look at me. So I'd gone out on the Ice and climbed the tower with a safety line that I had to unclip every few steps so I could clip it above me and take a few more steps. Two hours later, I had come crawling into the Jamesway and collapsed on the floor, all my limbs frozen and my face rubbed raw by the wind despite the mask.
"Why bother?" Frank had asked no one in particular from his bunk. While I had to admit that he was partly right, it also made me so angry that I could barely focus my eyes. I'd noticed that happening before, too, like the coming light was bothering my pupils or something.
Well, Frank had his version of the Bug. I might as well be entitled to mine. Take your pick.
"You know what I'm sayin' about the wind? It drives the breath right out of your lungs and digs at the inside of your stomach. Course, you been staying real cozy while I've busted my ass covering for you. So maybe the wind isn't getting to you anymore, eh Frank?" I laughed.
Frank mumbled something that I couldn't catch.
"What?"
"I said why don't you just shut up and leave me alone."
"Okay, Frank. Have it your way. Just a couple more weeks of this, and we'll be out of each other's greasy hair. Right?" I asked the girls.
But they wouldn't answer. They were getting just like Frank.
So I cooked for both of us again and watched Frank's food get cold across the table from me. Another peace offering wasted. Thank God we were going to see real daylight soon.
The next day, Frank tried to kill me.
It happened during the night reading. I took down numbers and ate a chocolate bar and forged his initials again. I'd been writing that the "day" readings were mine and the "night" his. I figured this system would do to cover his dereliction of duty. Frank was still a buddy, Bug or no Bug, and I wasn't going to let him get in trouble when we got back to McMurdo. Jesus, when were we going to get back? I shrugged, then checked my — his — initials, and closed the logbook with a snap. It was about half-filled with tiny penciled entries, all in my careful hand and with both our initials displayed near the dates.
Wait. I sat up straight. Feverishly, I riffled through the log's blank pages. A date was circled in red, a date that was coming up. I'd been damned careful with the initials, but I had neglected to disguise my own handwriting in the actual entries. What would they make of that? It was too late to change them, unless ...
Unless I brought Frank the logbook and we went over it together. That was it. We'd go back, and he'd just write in the entries after I erased them. Simple. I unzipped my parka and shoved the logbook inside, between the heavy sweater and woolen shirt. Then I slid the face mask up and over my nose and mouth, and snapped the new goggles over my eyes. I could barely see, but I had little choice. The wind was gusting at sixty-five, and ice chips were digging into anything too soft to withstand the assault. The red paint had long since been flecked off the instrument tower, and every other surface was as pockmarked as my face.
So I doused the lantern and stepped up, into the ice storm. It wasn't a whiteout, since that condition occurs when there's hardly any wind at all, but it was close enough. A whiteout is reflection that turns everything to milk and blends horizon with sky until you might as well be swimming in a bath of the stuff. Right then the horizon didn't even exist, and the hut might as well have been perched on the dark side of the moon. The only thing linking me to that warm Jamesway was the nylon safety line railing, strung from hut to dome and flapping like a flag on its thin posts.
I took hold of the line with both mittened hands and began the trek. I tried to breathe through my nose, since drawing in breath could easily bruise a lung. I pulled myself along, warmed only by the thought of hot soup — okay, hot salted water some half-wit had once christened soup while delirious or drunk or both — and some chocolate and the girls. Step after difficult step, the crunch of the snow under my boots lost as soon as it was created, I counted posts and slowly reached the halfway mark — a three-foot stretch of line dyed brilliant red. It was almost as comforting to see as the door of the Jamesway would be.
With my arms doing the work and my mind trying to propel me forward to the hut, the stove on high, the hot soupy stuff and my hands warm as they cupped the mug, I suddenly found that the line was limp — much more limp than it should have been between posts.
I pulled faster and heard my breath rattling in my throat — or, rather, felt it rattling there — and my steps got longer and quicker and the ice drove into my open mouth and I almost didn't care because I could see something just barely but it was coming up and I was home, I was almost —
Frank had untied the nylon railing and somehow brought it back around and what was in front of me now wasn't the Jamesway but the dome. I had spent a half hour walking and was exactly where I had started from.
For the first time, I contemplated death. I was at the dome.
I looked back, toward where the hut would be, and saw for the first time that the line of posts did curve slightly to the right. There was no way I could find the hut in the storm, not without the railing to guide me.
Panting from exertion, the bruises in my lungs and nostrils throbbing, I straddled the railing and fell into the doorway and down the five steps. My face mask was gone, torn off sometime during the walk. My nose and lips were numb. My cheeks were slabs of marble.
Hands trembling, I flicked the switch on the lantern and watched a whole lot of nothing happen. I turned it a dozen times, the click of the switch loud even above the wind outside. I followed the cable out the door and started pulling, wrapping the thin wire around my hand and elbow. It was cold and stiff, but it came. It came all too easily. The snipped end reached my hands and I saw the metal poking through the clean cut. In a rush of anger, I threw the useless cable out the door and turned back into the dome. I lit the stove and forced myself to calm down and think —
Calm down and think.
It was obvious. Frank had tried to kill me. He hadn't actually failed yet, I realized as I tasted vomit at the back of my throat. I was alive, yes, but as long as he was there, in the Jamesway, and I was here, there wasn't much I could hope for beyond a cold resting place. The Bug had finally driven him to the edge, and now he was after me, and I was dead because there were still two weeks until the relief plane would come and it was still night and I started to cry.
Tears froze in my beard, pinching as they pulled the individual hairs away from my skin.
Maybe I could survive — wait out the storm — and make it back to the hut. It wasn't impossible.
But what if the weather continued like this for weeks?
Antarctic weather is characteristically unpredictable — hell, I knew that — and a weeklong storm was nothing new, especially during the tail end of winter. And a two-week storm didn't stretch the limits of my imagination much, if you know what I mean. Even then, the relief plane might have to wait another week for a long enough slot to bring up our replacements and the Camp Ten expansion materials. I might have to survive in the dome for three weeks or more.
Awed with the thought, I checked the supply cabinet. Fuel for at least a week, maybe two if I stretched it. Not bad, since I had rarely used the stove while taking readings. Food was another matter. I'd steadily nibbled on the emergency rations and chocolate until there was little left. The bottom of the storage locker peered at me emptily. There was a scattering of chocolate bars and protein supplements. A few days at most, especially at such temperature extremes, where the body requires some four times its normal caloric intake. I could hear that fucking fat major lecturing in my mind, and it wasn't pleasant. I wasn't in very good shape, foodwise. Water wasn't a problem, except that I'd use up fuel melting it out of the doorway ice.
I unpeeled and ate a candy bar.
Then I sat and tried to think clearly.
Take a new set of readings. See what the weather looks like. Pressure, same as before. Temperature, minus sixty-three Fahrenheit. Winds, fifty-eight, gusting to sixty-five. Hell, the standard charts don't even bother with windspeed over forty, and the coldest windchill's at winds forty and minus sixty: an incredible minus one forty-eight.
Give or take a few worthless degrees, that's what I faced out on the Ice.
My only chance was to wait out the storm and hope that it wouldn't last much longer.
I glanced at the wooden floor and counted empty chocolate wrappers, the remains of dozens of visits. It seemed I'd had as much a hand in my own death as Frank, that bastard. I turned the stove as far down as I could so it would still heat a small circumference and curled up in the shabby easy chair. Sometime later, I fell asleep.
Dreaming.
And saw flashes and scenes of my two winter tours on the Ice and of what came before and saw too much and cried in my sleep. A mysterious figure repeatedly took my life in his hands and strung it around in a circle and led me to where I had started. Each time, I rushed out into the dark to stop him with hands numbed by the cold wind.
And each time, I watched as my fingers fell off, one by one, leaving raw white stumps with which I could no longer grasp the limp rope. And when I caught a glimpse of the figure, my own face peered back at me from inside the fur-lined hood.
I shuddered and moaned, but let myself dream on and off, preferring the release of nightmares to the real cold inside the dome.
I occasionally awoke and remembered and the wail of the wind was one long sound outside as the ice drove itself in a frenzy and smashed into whatever obstacle man had so foolishly placed in its way. And I saw that man was foolish in thinking that any such place could be tamed, and, if anything, I sympathized with Frank for having felt that way just a few weeks sooner than me, that's all.
Frank had got the Bug, and I was going to die because of it. But maybe I deserved to die. Something was telling me that, too.
I drifted in and out of sleep for hours or days, I'm not sure. When I remembered, I ate chocolate and turned up the stove with trembling fingers that fumbled at the tiny notched wheel.
The wind. Always the fucking wind.
I wanted a haircut. I cried and the tears froze.
Like watching someone else wake up, I slowly opened my eyes and came to the realization that the wind — though it still screamed and hooted through the cracks of the
dome — had lessened somewhat. It was downright quiet.
Hands I couldn't feel shook as I covered exposed skin and lifted myself out of the chair I'd considered my final resting place. Frost crackled and rained about my feet as my stiffened parka tore away from the chair fabric.
When I stepped through the doorway, I knew what I would find. The wind had indeed died sometime during the "night," and the new ice had settled. Two feet of hard, granular snow spilled into the dome, dribbling down the steps like water, and I ignored it. Leaving the door open, I stood on the Ice and saw that the nylon railing and posts were altogether gone, blown away after all. Now there was no proof.
The anemometer was cupless again. Wires that fed the dials inside the dome were flapping limply, their insulation ripped ragged. The snow gauges were buried. I couldn't have cared any less.
Now that the air was clear again, the hut was visible fifty yards away. A little lower on the brightening horizon, maybe, and more rounded on top than before, but certainly there. It hadn't blown away. By my reckoning, I had spent five days in the dome.
My boots crunched almost happily in the new icy snow as I made for home.
Off to my right, the polar morning peeked over the Scott Icewall. I stopped to watch as the thin rays painted the sky bands of pink and violet. I looked through the clouds of my breath, hoping to see the flickering Frank had seen for weeks, but there was nothing. Just ice and snow and wind, and the coming day.
There was no smoke coming from the pipe chimney. Breath streamed out in front of me, and for the first time I felt the spring that would soon taint the air with a near-warmth. The relief plane might already have been a dot in the sky. I reached the hut and spent a few minutes clearing the doorway of new fall. Then I went in.
It was dark, darker than outside. There was no light, no lantern or candle. There was no heat. My breath came in ragged little gasps, and my vision blurred as I looked around. Where was Frank? Where could he have gone?
I felt around for the panel that led to the tiny alcove where the generator sat, silent. A flexible metal pipe led from the generator to a jagged opening carved into the wall, through the layers of ice and skin, and out. For the exhaust. Check the fuel gauge. Empty. Fuel gurgled as I poured, careful to not spill a drop or to give fumes time to gather. Then I started the generator and waited as the lights in the Jamesway flickered and gained intensity. I closed the panel and entered the main room.
Frank was on the bunk.
My first thought was that he was being pretty damned callous, lying there like that, not giving a damn about my life or death. My second thought was that I should kill him for it. My third thought was almost unthinkable, but I couldn't keep it out of my mind as I dripped water or fuel — fuel — all the way to the bunk.
He hadn't moved. Not since before the storm. Maybe not for weeks.
Maybe not for weeks.
The grease-stained pillow was on his chest. I touched his face. It was solid. The pillow was encrusted, had frozen solid, too. His eyes were open and staring.
A sound gurgled out of my lips. If he had sat up then, or winked, or moved a white hand, I would have run screaming from that hut and welcomed the slash of wind-driven ice particles down my throat. I turned away from Frank and went to the table, unzipping the parka and pulling out the logbook. The pages were frozen closed — nightmare sweat had frozen them together. I tore at the paper edges with clawing fingers and felt sharp pain as ice stabbed the soft skin under my nails. Forcing the covers open, I looked at the entries I had written, those with Frank's initials and mine. Weeks.
I half turned to face the bunk, hoping to see — to understand — and Frank spoke.
"About goddamn time you got back. Get the stove lit and make it fast. I'm sick of you and I'm sick of this wind. And those lights out by the Icewall have been driving me nuts. Night after night, those damned lights flickerin' on and off like some sort of code."
Funny, for the first time in weeks I couldn't hear the wind at all.
I lit the stove and faced Frank.
"You drove me apeshit," I said.
"You always were apeshit, " he retorted. It was a neat trick. His blue lips didn't move at all. My stomach tightened.
"I hate your fucking guts!" I shouted. "I hate you, and I hate this place."
He laughed and that was enough for me. I leaped on him and dragged him off the bunk. He made a solid thunk as he hit the planks. I pried the pillow from its perch on his chest and felt stiffened material tearing there. I threw the pillow across the room, into the galley. Then I went to the stove and turned it way up, watching the flames grow taller and taller.
I had to melt the ice off the pillow.
Flames licked upward. Suddenly, I felt a spark strike my beard and smacked out its little yellow tongue, and the smell of burnt hair filled my nostrils. I dropped the pillow and watched as more sparks jumped and ignited the woolen blankets on the nearby bunk, the wet planks.
"There is nothing worse than fire when you're on the Ice."
"If you don't die in it, you're as good as dead anyway."
"Take care of your shelter, and it'll take care of you."
"There is nothing worse than fire."
"Frank!" I shouted. "Fire! Frank!"
There was no answer. His clothes had caught, and smoke was forming rapidly in the center of the room. There was a smell, sickly sweet and somehow revolting, that clung to my nostrils. The stink of burning polyester and Styrofoam gagged me.
"Carbon monoxide is probably already forming." It was fat Major Kane, sitting on my bunk. His face wore a bored look. The lecture was too much even for him.
"Take care of your shelter, and it'll take care of you."
I grabbed a box of rations from the galley and hefted it out the door. The fire glowed now, even from outside. I went back in to find gloves and a new face mask and to get Frank. But it was too late for him; he was on fire.
I felt liquid in my eyes.
"Frank!" I shouted one last time, and then the place was ablaze and I had no choice but to get out. I grabbed the box and felt it slip out of my clumsy grip, then managed to cradle it in my arms and stumbled a few shaky steps toward the dome, following the line of recent footprints. My way was lit by the flames behind me, which were now licking through the roof and into the cold polar air. I watched for a moment, enthralled, then followed those quickly fading footprints to where they led. To the dome. Maybe later I'd head for the Scott Icewall.
In a week or so, if the weather held, the relief plane would come. Meantime, the dome would be shelter enough. Fifty yards was indeed the right distance. I wanted to thank the Major, but he was gone. And the girls were gone. And Frank. I already missed Frank. He was a buddy. Even if he did complain too much about those lights I never saw.
I left him there, in the Jamesway hut. With the wind.
* * *
LEAD ME INTO TEMPTATION
Published in SHADOWPLAYS and WICKED KARNIVAL; Honorable Mention in
the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror (14th edition)
A Minor
She fades a little when I touch her when I dream.
Not so most people can tell, but they notice that she's a little pale. Just a bit more pale than the last time they saw her. You can see it in their eyes, though they're too polite to tell her. They look at me and tilt their heads slightly, her artist friends, implying that I should take better care of her.
So I avoid dreaming.
I stare at the photographs — at her photographs — of me and others and see the images shiver as I fill in the parts no longer there, coloring bland, flat backgrounds with the lush strokes of memory. The colors are only temporary, and the brush-strokes, too, disappear and leave behind sepia-toned emptiness. I stare at the photographs and scratch the palm of my hand roughly, feeling the hard points of dried blood.
E Minor
"Good night," she said, stepping out of the car. And she meant it not as a parting greeting, but as an assessment — a verdict rendered on hours and minutes joined together briefly to form a shared experience.
I laughed softly to myself. "Yeah." The car door clicked gently. I resisted the urge to say something sarcastic.
Watching her cross the rain-polished street to her front lawn, I felt a shiver. I shook it off and saw her unlock the door, then turn to wave. I waved back, and she went inside. Moments later a light flicked on in the house. The kitchen, then the living room. Then they both went off and I knew that she was pacing, a massive glass of milk clutched in her right hand and a chocolate chip cookie sheltered in the left. So badly I wanted to share in that ritual, the same ritual that made her pale complexion blush ever so slightly whenever I found the audacity to mention it in front of her friends.
Instead, I was alone.
I shook again, the trembling starting near my lower back and working its way up to my neck and skull. This time it was violent. Brutal.
"God," I thought. "Not again." Or thought I thought. The words might have slipped from my lips, but I couldn't be sure. I put the car in gear and drove away slowly, letting the low rumble of the engine coax me almost to sleep. A shudder wracked my insides and I wished for the hundredth time that Milwaukee offered more convenient cliffs. The steering wheel was a snake in my hands, and the itch to swerve overpowering.
It was raining into the car and the cold droplets stung my face. But I didn't roll up the window.
No traffic snarled the streets; they reminded me vaguely of a deserted movie set, where filming has been canceled because of the rain. A Miami Vice rerun, where the wet streets reflect dim lights and slow-motion Italian chrome heading for some film noir rip-off scene.
Mostly, the wet streets just reminded me of cold loneliness and pure self-hatred.
It was night, and I was going home.
My drinks that evening hadn't really calmed — liquor rarely achieves its mythical medicinal status for me — but I did feel a pleasant glow surrounding my head. The windshield wipers shucked and shecked in front of my eyes, beating a steady rhythm and lulling me to sleep. I could feel my eyes glaze and the lids closing like window shades on rusty tracks, and a faint hum worked its way into my head from one side to the other before settling into a steady needle behind my left ear.
The hum increased in volume and intensity, and I felt myself spinning. The curved snake in my hands stiffened, and there was only the hum, boring into my head.
"No!" I shouted, and hit the thumbtack mounted face-up on the dashboard with my open palm. The pain was sharp and severe, and the blood welled up quickly in the tiny wound.
The humming stopped immediately, and my eyes cleared a bit. A quick look in the greenish light of the dash told me I was dripping blood rapidly. A dozen other tiny wounds stared back at me defiantly with their miniature brown scab-eyes. I turned back to the windshield, disgusted.
B Minor
In my dream I stood before a gallery wall on which hung a long series of photographs set in thick, gold-edged frames. There was no sound in the gallery, and light cascaded onto each portrait as if from a hidden fixture. Shadows darkened the edges of my sight, and my own shadow seemed to fall on the images as I scanned them with burning eyes. They were not Jackie's prize-winning photographs, though they showed her love of conspicuous minimalism. I was not surprised to see the images move like video broadcast on gaudy, French Provincial televisions. People engaged in some simple aspect of life — walking in front of Hassam's Grocery, sitting on the crooked green bench at Red Arrow Park, and riding a banana-seat Schwinn up and down the hilly trails behind the park. Older kids, riding the bus to Kampman High School, talking about last week's Six Million Dollar Man episode. Sitting in a history class, watching the school's only black faculty member struggle to contain his temper and control an unruly group of spoiled, smug white kids. These were photographs that might have illustrated the book of my life, peopled by those I had known. Lab partners and college roommates and colleagues and students and friends and lovers and family members. All tied together by one thin string, one strand of strangling wire, forming a noose. Handshakes, hugs, kisses, caresses, intimacy. Even as I watched in my dream, these people in the images that were photographs and weren't, all gradually faded to shadows and my own image grew brighter.
Ever brighter, like an aura.
My curse. Doesn't everyone have a curse?
F# Minor
It was still raining, and I was still the only one on the road. Thank God for that.
I flipped on the radio, which was a mistake. The music seemed to massage every brain cell and put it gently to sleep, and I could feel the glow beginning to return. I punched the program button and went from tinkling New Age to Rock and Roll Oldies — Chuck Berry pounded his way into my skull. But the glow was forcing its way back. I punched plastic and a heavy metal ballad, reminding me that I was "Unforgiven," stroked the glow further into my head and then my open palm smacked the thumbtack and the metal spike slid into tender skin and ripped flesh anew, and the wetness made my grip sticky on the wheel.
I forced myself to reach out again and stabbed at the button. Metallica was silenced, and the quiet was more enjoyable than anything I have ever experienced, or so I convinced myself as the pain in my palm settled into an annoying throb.
Then I was putting the key into the lock, the rest of the drive a blur, and nothing mattered anymore. But that wasn't completely true.
The condo's lights blazed into my eyes as I opened the door. Better, so I could not succumb to the delights of darkness and the many enveloping fingers that touch and tease and tempt and try to corrupt me to dream.
The bright fluorescents made me blink and I went in. Closed the door. A tiny point set in the doorjamb caught my eye, the dried stain around it darkening the light woodwork.
The television sound was muted to a drone. I looked vacantly at the big square picture for a while. A newscaster was speaking words I would never hear, or care to, as superimposed drawings jabbed his left shoulder. I watched him open and close his mouth at a rapid pace, then finally turned away from the set and stripped off my clothes, throwing them in a pile on the cocktail table. Change and belt buckle clattered on the scarred wood, near the metal point set into the table's edge and its surrounding circular stain. I stepped toward the studio set-up, which occupies a large portion of my living room.
Naked, I hunched before the Mac and felt it come alive under my fingers. I flicked power switches and brought faders up on my old-fashioned console. Then I was maneuvering through menus and watching slick Performer windows gaping open, like glimpses into someone's soul. I traveled back and forth from cursor and data buttons on the Proteus, one slim module in a rack of many, setting up the sounds that I heard in my head that night.
Cellos, low and rumbling. Timpani, like thunderclaps. Pipe organ, ethereal, almost crystalline.
My left hand stabbed the keys of the digital piano, and I laid a track on the sequencer. Organ, sparse chords. I would fill in more of the space later. Right then notes fell from my fingers and became MIDI note-on and note-off data, following my nuances perfectly into the computer's memory, black horizontal bars showing my progress through the melody that occupied my head and both scarred hands.
Switch to track two; play back track one and add a new layer. Cellos, for depth. Keep it dark. Left hand only.
Next track. Percussion, like a heartbeat. Steady, filling in the spaces between the existing notes. Weaving between the crystal and the rumble, building. Crescendo. Orgasm. Afterglow.
A few keystrokes and the tiny monitors were playing all of it back to me. Sixteen bars of hellish self-revelation. Sixteen bars of the darkness that lay inside me, coiled, waiting to snag an innocent victim in my dreams. In my nightmares.
I chose not to Save at the prompt, and the software folded in upon itself. Mocking.
I laughed. My music was too dark even for my next Incubus release.
For years I had put the darkness in my soul down on tape for myself — what else could one do when everyone who meant anything to him eventually disappeared forever? But a local indie label had shown interest in my dark musings, and had produced three compact discs of what I called my Progressive Gothic Symphonic Sonic Sculptures — which stores creatively stocked under New Age. Jackie was the photographer who had done the covers, and our relationship had grown quickly despite my fears that one day she would begin to disappear. I had fooled myself into thinking that I could avoid dreaming about her, protecting her from the fate so many others had suffered. The only way I kept my contacts at the label from disappearing was by playing the recluse, and conducting business only by phone — not much chance of dreaming about their voices. But Jackie, well, I wanted to see her. And as a cover artist, she was forced to consult with me in person.
Loving her came easily enough — keeping her alive was another matter.
Now my soul was so tortured that the next Incubus release would make funeral marches seem like happy ditties by comparison. And the music that had poured forth tonight was too dark even for me.
The irony. I giggled silently as the television droned on in absolute silence.
Sleep bid me enter, bid me return to its arms.
"Lead me into temptation," I said. It was a quote from a song from long ago.
And I knew that my body would follow. I felt the relaxation beginning in my thighs and run up my torso, down my arms. It was a dream, building inside. I wouldn't know what it was until afterwards, when it was too late. I shook my head in defiance.
No.
The computer screen mocked me with its empty leer and cold appraisal.
No!
My flesh parted violently on the upward-pointed thumbtack, and I groaned with the waking pain.
I pushed away from the rack synthesizers, lowered myself onto the vinyl seat of the chrome rowing machine in the far corner of the room, and began to stroke. The sweat trickled off my skin as soon as I started the rhythmic movements. It oozed from every pore and ran freely down my slick body, dripping and spotting the light carpet underneath.
I rowed until my arms and legs ached, the muscles taut and stiff with fatigue. And then I rowed some more, my breathing reduced to a ragged discord of gasps. I stroked until — my gasps clutching vainly at elusive air — I nearly collapsed out of the seat, which was slippery with sweat from my buttocks. I lay on the floor, spent, and let my heartbeat slow, giving my pulse a chance to catch up and stop hammering at my brain between beats.
This wasn't enough. I still couldn't sleep without dreaming. Total exhaustion was the key, but I was far from that desirable state. The hum was starting again, that same humming that always indicated a dream formulating somewhere in the recess of my brain. I cursed the ceiling.
Then I reached over and smacked my palm onto the thumbtack spear on the cocktail table, twice in rapid succession, stifling the scream with a whimper and a groan.
Tears of pain wet my cheeks.
C# Minor
The picture stands out from the others in the collection. It shows my mother and father standing with me near the ice dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan one winter, long ago. Someone in a parked car had taken the shot for us, smiling at our adventurousness. It was cold and windy, and huge grey masses of clouds obscured the winter sun. He'd smiled, too, because we wanted Rolf, our Black Labrador, in the picture. There he stands, looking away from us, a dog-shaped stain on a background of white and grey. His tail points at my father, who stands bundled in an old-fashioned cloth winter coat and ersatz pilot's hat with the flaps hanging down over his ears. My mother hugs herself in a fashionless, dumpy parka. Her hair is bound up in a scarf, and you can see she's cold and would rather be home, warm in her kitchen. I'm wearing an olive drab snorkel parka, the kind with orange lining and fake fur around the hood. I'm not wearing the hood because I'm at the age when you need to safeguard your image, so my cheeks are speckled red and white. I seem detached, staring off in the distance. This picture reminds me of a period, a certain time.
I blink and feel the tears squeeze from between my lids. For now I can see again that I am the only one in the picture. Only light spots mark their places on the film, a grey mass near us marks the faithful Rolf, last to go because of some obscure biological difference between his kind and mine.
I don't really know what my kind is, but I have suspicions. Who has ever heard of a dream vampire? Why am I not light-sensitive? Why don't I crave blood? At least the cursed creatures in the movies all know what to expect. They know what to do. I learn daily, but it's always too late. Too damn late.
And now I weep as I look at this altered picture that no longer reflects life as it was, only life as it is. Strangely, this is one portrait that does not adorn the wall of my dream gallery.
G# Minor
"It can't be more than insomnia," Jackie had said over her Comfort old-fashioned. "Just take some sleeping pills, like Sominex or Tylenol PM or something, and you'll be all right." Her glossy pink lips formed a straight line, as if to emphasize her disapproval. Her tongue snaked out to dab at the corner of her mouth. Whether she disapproved of insomnia or Tylenol or Sominex, I couldn't tell. Her stubbornness might have been endearing, if only ... well, I considered it part of her artist's psychological make-up. Nonetheless, I could only love her.
"I've tried." I said. "But it's not that I can't sleep – my problem is that I can't handle what happens whenever I do." I shook my head. It was useless. I knew what it sounded like, and how I sounded saying the words.
"Everybody dreams, Paul." She sipped her drink, implying the simple solution I was just too self-absorbed to see.
Everybody dreams ...
"These aren't ordinary dreams, dammit!" I gulped down half of my wilting rum and tonic. "They're — nightmares, nightmares that you just can't imagine. They aren't the typical scary nightmares. They affect people, everyone around me." I sobbed as the thought lanced my brain. "They affect you, Jackie, even though you don't know it. They do."
I covered my face with my scarred hands. I thought of how pale she'd looked when we met earlier. The light brick walls, source of Milwaukee's "Cream City" label, were darker than her complexion. Her features were becoming translucent — occasionally I thought I could see through the edges of her silhouette, when she made a sudden motion and the blur made her outline disappear. If not for the bright lipstick, I knew that her lips would have been transparent. I knew it was happening, and I couldn't reverse it.