The last twenty feet took him an age to best. At the summit, he cast around, although there was nothing here to do; he was simply standing at the top of a big rock formation. The feeling of climax wouldn"t come. Frustration joined the stew of other bad emotions; violence flared in his limbs, but he didn"t have anything to strike out at. He tried to enjoy the view, but each of the panorama"s 360 degrees was swamped by cloud. The rain possessed such substance that it could have been something to be gathered in a fist and swept aside to reveal fine weather.
Rick clambered on to the summit. Manser saw Tabitha gasping behind, following his lean backside to yet another moment of humiliation.
"This is meant to be a holiday for me," Manser lowed.
Rick spread his hands. His short-sleeved denim shirt clung wetly to him. His boyish curls had flattened and darkened on his skin. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"
Manser said, over the thrumming rain, "You"re no different from your forebears."
He gulped breath. Wind blew grit into his face. The cloud overhead had borrowed some color from the night. Lightning tumbled around inside, looking for a way out. "Terra nullius, the first Europeans said of this land. It belongs to no one. And how long had the Aborigines been here? Tens of thousands of years? Well, you can forget it where Tabby...where Tabitha is concerned. She is off limits. Hear me? She is my property. Keep off!"
"I"m just a guide. I"m just doing my job." Rick looked worried. The sight of it appeased Manser; he had claimed back control. Rick continued, "I"m not interested in your bird. I"m interested in telling you of the legends-"
"Don"t talk like that with me!" Manser bellowed. "Look at her. Look at her! You"re telling me you"re not interested in her?"
Tabitha had stayed back from the confrontation. Rain had soaked her. She looked tired, a little frightened. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s had become clearly visible through the thin halter top. Her lips had reddened with adrenaline. "I"d f.u.c.k her," Manser said. "I"d f.u.c.k her right now. Wouldn"t you?"
Rick said weakly, "The legends-"
"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to the legends," Manser said. "I know stuff. We don"t need you. I know things." He was bleating. Close to tears. Tabitha was already there, crying into her hands. "I know stuff. Like Namarangini." He was shedding sweat that seemed hardly to touch the ground before it was absorbed into the old, old rock. "He can a.s.sume any shape. A spirit of the Dreaming. Namarangini." He turned out to the sweep of land as it was slowly dissolved by the dense rain. "Namarangani."
He comes in a storm, his name as insidious, as softly threatening as the troubled skies that contain him. A pair of sisters gather sh.e.l.lfish for dinner and, eyeing the approaching storm, swear and spit at the tumbling prow of black cloud as it cuts toward them. Swollen with rain, and fury at their disregard of his potency, Namarangini swoops and gathers the younger woman in his arms. There and then he forces himself upon her, but his straining p.r.i.c.k is turned back at the place where she becomes parted. Is he too big? Is she too dry?
He takes her back to his domain and attempts congress once more. Now he discovers that a cycad nut, a tool for grinding ochres, is blocking the entrance to her c.u.n.t. Removing it, he copulates with her and discards her.
The sister returns to her husband. Upon discovering that the stone is missing, he pushes a heated stick into her, piercing her stomach and killing her. Now the remaining sister cries for her dead kin. As she cries, the rains come, a deluge that continues for weeks.
Rick and Tabitha lay atop the rock. Rick"s neck was broken, a bruise flooding the stubbled area below his left ear to his throat. The job on Tabitha had been more thorough. A tendon or two was all that kept her head attached to the neck. Her windpipe was exposed and torn, like some sun-bleached hose gashed open by a Strimmer. The flesh below her chin had snagged and folded, drawing the bottom lip back from her teeth. One eye was slightly closed. She looked as though she had just taken a suck of a lemon.
Manser approached, despite the blood riling out of her that turned her hair to sticky hanks and deepened the sandstone"s hue; the sudden farts of air that escaped her; the repulsive twitch of her left hand as though she were trying to shed her engagement ring. He did the job for her, treading on her wrist and jerking off the band, flinging it out to the billabong.
He felt a calming vacuum spread within him. He could no longer hear the roar of the storm, even though it was crashing around him, pulverizing the rock, forcing the trees to genuflect in its presence. Where was everybody? He scampered to the edge of the rock and looked down, but it was like staring into mud. "Dirk!" he called, but his unfamiliarity with the name took some of the gusto from his voice. The storm took the rest of it, tearing it to ribbons and losing it instantaneously.
When he turned back to the bodies, Rick had gone.
Rockfall. He jerked his head up just as the head of a figure sank from view.
"f.u.c.ker!" barked Manser. "You kill my girl?" He was after him in a flash, juddering down the incline, following the tenebrous descent of the figure as it skittered and slid along the path on the opposite face of the rock. A dense wall of rainforest rose to meet them. "Rick!"
The other wasn"t letting up. He tore into the leading edge of trees and was swallowed by shadow. Manser followed seconds later, barging through the vines until the darkness demanded his respect and slowed him to walking pace. He stopped, trying to load his lungs with the hot, musky air and hollered the guide"s name again. The boughs absorbed the call immediately. All sound was dead here, save for the rain, which he could just hear, causing mischief in the canopy way above him. A neatly coiled carpet python oozed over the Y of a branch like something from a Dali landscape. Movement again, up ahead. A darkness sifting through the slivers of light and shade, an image in a zoetrope.
Manser lunged through the undergrowth. Juts of sandstone emerged from the green and there was art here too. Scratches and curls of color, depicting the strange congress of animals he could not determine. A forest of handprints laid claim to the paintings, they reached out to him across time. Manser swallowed thickly, antic.i.p.ating their touch, and pushed himself to go more quickly.
He was no longer sure he was on Rick"s trail. The chatter and gargle of hidden creatures would hush as though the orchestra was silenced by the rise of a baton. Just as suddenly, the surge of noise would begin again, more intense than ever. It might have been the sound of the forest breathing.
Exhausted, Manser burst into a clearing. Rain found its way in here, misting the surroundings to such an extent that all seemed solid; it appeared there were no gaps for Manser to move through. A wall of sandstone rose and fell away at his side, like the prow of a submarine breaking the surface. An imbroglio of figures and faces and fables concealed the true appearance of the rock. Up ahead, a great banyan fig blocked his path. Its roots fell about him like great ropes cast from a ship in distress. The condemned trunks of neighboring trees were just visible through the stranglers, as if they had given themselves to this monster. And then Manser noticed Rick, standing just to the side of the tree. He was breathing hard, his back to him, as if he too had been defeated by the forest, and the seemingly inescapable nature of the clearing.
"Rick?" Manser tried to call, but his voice was the pathetic mewl of a newborn cat. Manser saw how the figure was not actually facing away from him any more. A face had emerged through what he had believed was the back of Rick"s head. The eyes were great dead punctures that boasted all the glimmer of dried tar. Manser had been convinced the figure was fully clothed, but this man now, drifting toward him, was naked. His torso was slashed with white pigment.
Manser backed off. "Ah," he said. "Now then."
What was left of Rick fell away like discarded rind. Fully formed, the figure came at him. The punishment to fit the crime, Manser thought, as he batted into the rock behind him. The lips of the other peeled back to reveal an awfulness beyond Manser"s imagination.
With a great effort of will, Manser turned away and, sinking to his knees, lifted his shirt. In the rock, he saw a figure much like himself, prostrate before a spirit from the Dreaming. The best cuts of his flesh had been gilded.
The ancient, parched grindstones beneath him drank l.u.s.tily of the rain. Soon they would be full of color once more.
About Conrad Williams.
Conrad Williams is the author of the novels Head Injuries, London Revenant, The Unblemished, One and Decay Inevitable; the novellas Nearly People, Game, The Scalding Rooms and Rain and a collection of short fiction, Use Once then Destroy. He lives in Manchester in the United Kingdom. He is a recipient of the British Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award. His new novel is Blonde on a Stick.
IN THE MEADOW.
by Tim Jeffreys.
The sun set above the town, obscured by cloud. Shafts of light, cutting through gaps in the cloud, pointed toward the landscape below. To Jim, as he gazed from the train window, it seemed as if his eyes were being drawn to the place he was leaving, to the shops, the townhouses, the factories; all that he had known for the fourteen years of his life, all that was familiar. He was excited to be going away for a while, but mixed with this was an element of dread. He glanced at Ste and Kelvin, his two friends and traveling companions, who were busy settling themselves in their seats. Out the window, the horizon turned murky orange and yellow. The onset of night was drawing the color from the day, turning all first to gray shadow, then slowly darkening. The train pulled forward into the shifting landscape, the gathering dusk.
He fell asleep before Crewe. He woke once when the train was stopped outside a station. Another train flashed by, shaking the carriage in its wake, rousing sleepy pa.s.sengers, making Jim think of a loosed wild animal, roaring and maniacal, a beast thundering into the night in pursuit of some prey. Dark thoughts. He pressed his head into his seat and slept again.
The sun had risen again by the time Jim was roused from sleep. A glance out of the window told him little. The landscape was lost to fog. There was nothing to see except the beginnings of fields, specters of trees. Jim straightened himself, staring out of the window, blinking. The train crawled along. He saw a calf emerge out of the fog, wandering the path at the edge of the tracks.
"Where are we?"
Ste answered him, grinning and excited. "Almost at the station. You better get ready. It"s our stop."
Jim continued looking out of the window. "I can"t see anything."
Kelvin was pulling the rucksacks from the rack above. Ste was busy reaching up to another rack, where they had stashed the tent. "This will clear. It"s not even six yet."
Crookhaven station was small and deserted, an island in the fog. The train was soon gone from sight, but its departing clackity-clacks took longer to fade. Jim bemusedly followed after his friends, who appeared to have decided which way they were headed. He had the tent poles jammed under one arm and a box of fishing equipment in his other hand.
"Guys!" he called, seeing his friends hurrying on ahead. He glanced down at the road.
"Guys, I think the town is that way."
"Town!" said Ste with a laugh. "We"re not going to town, Jim. We came here to get away from everything, didn"t we? We came here to get lost."
"Where are you going then?"
Ste had crossed the road and mounted a fence that lined the edge of some gra.s.sland. In the fog, it was impossible to see what was beyond. Ste pointed into the field nonetheless. "That way!"
His first kiss.
He opened his eyes.
A girl was crouched above him. She was smiling. Eyes like the sea at dusk. Hair long and flowing. A child"s mouth. A child"s laughter. A gauzy dress that had slipped from one shoulder.
He felt...fear.
Something in the way she was looking at him, like he was her treasure-a found object, a plaything.
He gasped, sitting half upright. Then he blinked, baffled. He was alone. The flaps of the tent were open, but it was impossible anyone could have slipped away so quickly.
A dream, then?
His first kiss had been a dream.
He felt relief.
"s.h.i.t," he murmured, falling flat. He lay dozing for a few moments inside his sleeping bag, recalling the dream, remembering the girl and her soft kiss before those thoughts vanished with the day. Besides his anxiety, there were other arousals: vague, pleasant electrical currents that settled in his loins. His heart was beating in his ears, but he let his mind drift awhile. Perhaps, he thought idly, if he fell asleep again the dream would restart, it would set to rolling again in his mind. Now he knew it was only a dream, he was willing to go along with it.
Then: "Morning, Jim! Wakey-wakey! Hands off c.o.c.ks and on socks!"
Jim looked down to see Kelvin"s round face pocking through the tent flaps.
"Get lost."
"Charming! I"m getting breakfast ready. I"m starving. You better get up or you"ll miss out."
"Kel," Jim said. He struggled to free his arms from the sleeping bag and sit up. "Who"s out there? Is there...anyone out there?"
Kelvin frowned at him. "Ste"s gone for a walk down to that river we pa.s.sed yesterday. He couldn"t wait. He wants to see how the land lies. I told him we"d have breakfast ready by the time he gets back, so get up. Come on, get to it."
"Get out then. I need to get dressed. Or have you come to watch?"
Kelvin huffed as he withdrew from the tent. As Jim groped around for his clothes, he heard Kelvin muttering to himself outside, probably collecting sticks for the fire. He was soon dressed and out of the tent, blinking in the early sun.
"Clear," he said to himself, recalling the previous day when they had walked and walked into the fog, on the instructions of Ste-who kept promising it would clear-until Kelvin said he could walk no more. They had pitched their tent in the place they"d been standing, which Jim now saw was the middle of a meadow. To one side, there were the beginnings of a wood, to the other only dips and slopes of gra.s.s. He couldn"t see any buildings.
"Get the tin opener!" Kelvin called to him from a short distance away where he was seated, trying to build a fire. Turning back to the tent, Jim noticed a trodden circle in the gra.s.s. He followed the circle around the tent. It was so neat and precise he doubted Ste or Kelvin had made it. Looking about the field for similar markings, he immediately found two more nearby.
Kelvin called again: "Tin opener! Please!"
"There"s circles in the gra.s.s. Have you seen them? Did you notice them last night?"
"Jim," Kelvin said, out of patience. "Just get the tin opener, will you? I"m about to starve to death."
"Sure you are," Jim muttered.
Kelvin had the fire smoldering. When Jim joined him, the two of them picked through the selection of packets and tins they had brought in their backpacks.
"You realize we have no idea where we are?" Jim said.
Kelvin grinned. "I know! Isn"t it amazing?" Then when he saw that Jim wasn"t smiling; he pointed toward the trees at the edge of the field. "Don"t worry, Jim. Town"s that way."
"How do you know that? I can"t see anything."
"It"s behind those trees. Relax. Enjoy yourself."
"Ste"s been a while."
"Yeah, well...you know what he"s like. Fancy a smoke?"
Jim glared at the cigarette pack Kelvin offered him. "Where did you get those?"
"Found them. In my mum"s ap.r.o.n pocket. She"ll kill me if she finds out. Which is why I did it. Want one?"
"No thanks."
Kelvin shrugged, lighting one cigarette in the fire. Jim heard a shout from across the field.
"Here"s Ste now."
Jim frowned at Kelvin. "What"s he yelling about?"
And then Jim turned to watch Ste dashing toward them. Every now and then Ste would spring into the air, making whooping noises as he did. He was out of breath by the time he reached the fire. Immediately, he pitched something into the gra.s.s before Kelvin.
"Christ, Ste!" Kelvin sprang to his feet and reared away.
Ste stood stooped forward, his hands propped on his knees, gathering his breath, but grinning. Jim looked at what had been thrown to the ground.
"Where did you find that?" Jim felt a shiver of revulsion.
"In the next field. It was just sitting there."
Jim looked closer at the object. "That"s human. I know it is. It"s part of a human skull. That"s a jaw bone! You better get rid of it, Ste."
"Don"t be daft. It"s a souvenir."
"It"s a human bone! And do you realize we have no idea where we are?"
"Cool it, Jim. It"s an animal bone. A sheep or a dog or something."
Kelvin was gingerly turning the skull with his foot. "He might be right, Ste. It does look human."
"Okay, well-if it bothers you that much." Ste picked the bone up and tossed it far from them. "Happy now?"
"You"re sick," Kelvin muttered, returning his attention to the saucepan smoking on the fire.
Jim stood quite still for a few moments. He felt a slight chill, though the sun was climbing higher overhead. He was thinking of his dream, though now he felt more disturbed by it than thrilled. Now the idea of waking up to find a stranger in the tent with him did not seem so appealing. Shaking off the memory, he sat down in the gra.s.s with the others, thinking how the day was turning out to be nice, and about how they could always rely on Ste to spoil a perfectly nice day by dragging something nasty out into the open.