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Science Fiction

Dreams of Darkspace presents…

Lies the Beautiful Tell Us

All stories by Peter R. Heaton

I hesitated at the brick steps which led into Montgomery Renaud’s residence; even though we had undoubtedly been connected by the events of Elementary Road, I still had my reservations regarding the man.  Involving myself in his matters placed my own life in the rarest of dangers, something that had been absent prior to the crossing of our paths.  The warm London sun beat down on me as I considered my next move; the stench from the Thames overwhelming this close to river.  

Absently, my hand found the note in my pocket and crushed it out of frustration.  It had been delivered not by Montgomery, but by his serving woman, Ms. Delanie, imploring me to arrive immediately and to bring a well-sharpened knife.  I had made every effort to avoid the man of late; part of me thought that if Montgomery could forget me, I could forget him.  That would be the first step to purging the memories of that shadowy basement and the terrors that had been revealed to me.  

The nights since, I had been infected with dark dreams.  Of the dreams themselves, I could recall nothing, but when I woke I felt the path they had traced on my mind; as a slug marks its trail by slime, so too did these dreams leave behind a residue of hopelessness and loneliness.  A fear had been fed by these dark thoughts: a fear of my own insanity.  It was that which had stopped me at the threshold.  

Montgomery straddled the fine line of a genius, a task made considerably more difficult considering his aim was to know the unknowable; I did not think that I had the constitution to see the things in which Montgomery dabbled.   Even fueled by my primal fears, fears woven into my soul from a time when fire was magic to man, my imagination could not conjure up half of the terrors Montgomery had encountered in his life.

My legs released.  Gingerly I tested one of the brick steps.  My own stubbornness, and perhaps, stupidity had finally won out.  I found the front door unlocked.  

Ms. Delainie was standing in the front hall.  Her face was as pale as porcelain, which in that moment, did nothing to improve her homely appearance.  Her nose overpowered her face and her thin lips reminded me of those of my mother, peacefully tucked within her casket.  

“Ms. Delainie?  I’m Bradley Barrow.  I’m here to see Montgomery.”

“Mr. Renaud would like to see you in his drawing room.”

“Thank you, Ms. Delainie.”  I approached her carefully.  “Is everything alright?  Is he alone?”

She shook her head.

“Perhaps,” I said calmly, “it is best if you left for a bit.”

Before my words had been said, she already had her coat in hand.  “I shouldn’t.  Mr. Renaud has his moods…”

“Don’t worry, I will sooth any objections Mr. Renaud may have.”

I saw Ms. Delainie off and entered the drawing room.

“Bradley,” Montgomery exclaimed brightly.  He was seated in his arm chair, the one opposite him occupied by a fashionably dressed lady.  I tried to keep my eyes locked onto her face; her corset seemed to be fitted too tightly for her curves.  “May I introduce to you Eleanor Carper.  She’s interested in writing a piece on Elementary Road and wanted to speak with the principals in the case.”

“Thank you for coming,” Eleanor said to me.  Her smile revealed two cute dimples on either side of her mouth.  Perhaps today will not be so terrible, I thought.  She looked out of place among the organized clutter of Montgomery’s drawing room, her blue silk dress brilliant against the muted colors of the room’s furnishings.

Montgomery pointed to another arm chair in the corner.  “Would you join us?  Ms. Delainie left you some tea on the table.” I retrieved the armchair, frowning slightly at the tea.  Montgomery had forgotten my preference for coffee.

Seeing the tea go unmolested, he motioned back towards the side table where it waited.  “It is a darjeeling, your favorite.”

“Montgomery--”

“Bradley,” Montgomery interjected, “we’ve company.  Don’t be rude.”

I sighed, and grabbed the tea from the table.  Beneath it there was a note.  As I read it, the tea cup slipped slightly, spilling contents across the table.  Predictably you will be enchanted by the woman.  She is VERY dangerous.  I removed my handkerchief, wiping up the mess and the note in one motion and stuffing it into my coat pocket.  The tea chattered against the plate until I stopped the shaking of my hand.  I squeezed my elbow against my hip, feeling the blade hidden at my side.  

I turned around, forcing a smile onto my face.  “Thank you very much for inviting me over.  I’ve been wanting to discuss those very events.”

“Wonderful!” Eleanor replied.  “Mr. Renaud has filled me in on most of the details, but I thought with you both here we could discuss specifics?”

“Please,” Montgomery replied.

“The official report mentions a woman: Ruth Emery.”

At the mention of the name I felt a sudden constriction in my throat.  I let out an audible gasp as I saw my shadow begin to rise up from the floor and start to take some unknowable shape.

Both Montgomery and Eleanor regarded me oddly.

“Tea, sorry,” I offered awkwardly, wiping at an imaginary spill on my lap.

“I could not forget that woman.” Montgomery replied.

“It says here that she escaped?”

Montgomery nodded.  “She did.”

“Any idea where she might have gone?”

“None.”

I regarded Montgomery carefully as he replied, hoping for my own sake it was not a lie.  I never wanted to encounter that woman again.

“You thought she was a witch.”

“And you doubt that?”

The woman shook her head. “No.  I’m curious why you thought that.”

“There aren’t too many professions that require you to chant in tongues.” I replied, trying not to recall the effect those utterings had had on me.  The woman made a note.  I could not keep myself from examining her as she looked down.

In that moment I thought she might be the most beautiful woman I had ever seen: it was the symmetry of her face and form, accentuated by the elegance of her dress; her shimmering ebony hair, inviting me to inspect the curves and twists of the elegant bun she wore; the pink hue of her full lips, lips that made me wonder what it would be like to kiss and be kissed by.

“What, I believe my companion means to say, is that, in our experience, there is a quality about those who deign to reach into the void.  If you know what you are looking for, it can be easy to spot.”  

I continued to examine Eleanor Carper and realized that it was not one aspect that drew me to her, but all of them combined, as if each had been perfectly selected to seduce me and none other.  Unintentionally my eyes traced the bold line of her cleavage; I could feel how smooth her pearl-colored skin would be to my touch.  

She caught me staring as she looked up from her writing.  Even though she smiled at me, I felt my cheeks redden and looked down at my tea.  I considered Montgomery’s warning; perhaps that was why Montgomery considered her dangerous: he didn’t know how to handle a beautiful woman!

“And the other woman, there is no name recorded for her.  Do either of you recall her well?”

I recall her quite well, I thought, considering she died at my hands.  To my surprise I had uttered the words aloud.

“Yes.  It says that in the report,” she replied nonchalantly.  “Do you remember if they looked alike, her and Ruth?”

For the life of me I could not remember her face.  All I could see was a body at my feet, face down, twitching violently.

“Now that you say that,” Montgomery said, “I do think they could have been sisters.”

The woman made another note.

“That is good.”  Eleanor shuffled through a few papers, found the one she was looking for and began skimming it.  “What about the skull?”

Montgomery narrowed his eyes.  “That was not in the report.”

“It wasn’t.”  She said, glancing from me to Montgomery.  “Captain Eves mentioned it.”

“Something about a beautiful woman loosens men’s tongues,” he replied.

“Something,” she said, grinning.  I shifted in my seat, the sheath of my knife hitting the armrest and digging into my side.  I wondered again why Montgomery had insisted on me bringing it.   No, I thought, her hazel eyes meeting mine, there cannot be anything sinister about this woman.  “So, this skull.  Do you remember it, Bradley?”

“I glanced it,” I started carefully, not unaware that Montgomery was feeding her details as he wanted, “only briefly.” I looked at Montgomery, but he gave only a quick widening of his eyes.  “It seemed to be the key to the ritual we interrupted.”

That piqued her interest and she leaned forward, my eyes stealing a glance at the exaggerated heft of her bosom. I did not feel embarrassed this time even though she was aware of where my gaze had landed.  It seemed as if she was inviting me to stare.  

“The whole in the ground...did they ever place it within?”

“No.  Montgomery saw to that.”  Her eyes drew mine into them.  What I felt then made it clear that we had some unique connection, her and I.  

“Bradley?” She asked.

“Yes?”

“I asked if you knew what became of the skull.”

“Oh.  Sorry,” I offered, stuttering as I tried to focus.  “Montgomery took it for further study.”

“You did?” She asked, turning her full attention on my friend.

“Why, yes I did.”

“Do you think I could see it?”

“Of course.  It may take me a few moments to find it.  Will you two be alright if I leave you alone?”

“We’ll be fine,” Eleanor replied.  “Won’t we Bradley?”

“Of course.” My palms had begun to sweat  Without luck I tried to dry them against the armrests.  

“Would either of you like anything? I can send Ms. Delainie to get it.”

“I sent her home, Monty.”

“You did, did you?  Well, I guess I have told you to make yourself at home here.”  He disappeared out the double doors, shutting them behind him.

“I’m glad we’ve got some time to be alone.”  She slid her chair a bit closer to mine.

“You are?” I said, suddenly feeling how uncomfortably close she was, now that Montgomery had left.

“Yes.  There are some questions I want to ask you.”  I felt her hand on my thigh.

“Sure.  Yes.  I can answer them.  Your questions.”

“How well do you know Montgomery?”

“Just a month.  I didn’t know him until the events you’ve come here to discuss.”

“I see he’s chosen to introduce you to the part of our world hidden in the shadows.”

As she said this I felt something creeping up over the armchair, and begin to purchase itself on my shoulders.  I turned and seeing nothing, felt a wave of relief.  That was until I thought I saw my own shadow melting back into the armchair.

She rose from her chair and leaned in to whisper in my ear.  I could feel myself yearning to lift up from my seat so I could feel the contact of her body.

“I can keep you safe, Bradley.” Her words tickled my ear; but I knew they were true.

“Montgomery is a dangerous man, dabbling in things he does not understand.  You cannot trust him, Bradley Barrow.  Montgomery is a man consumed by one thing: knowing the unknowable.”  I felt the sharpness of a nail trace the back of my ear.  “He will only use you for this end.  But you and I, Bradley, we are meant to be together.”  She leaned away so she could see my face.  “You’ve been alone for awhile, Bradley. I can feel it on you.”

“I…” I tried to form a coherent response but couldn’t manage one.  I could only focus on her pink lips as they framed each syllable.

“Would you do something for me, Bradley?”

“Yes,” I heard myself reply.  I knew I could not refuse her; there would be no chivalry in denying this woman my help.

She moved -- or I thought she moved -- suddenly she was holding a small chest, which I had spied on my visits among the curios on Montgomery’s mantle.

“How?”  I said, trying to push through the fog forming in my mind, to understand how she had moved so quickly.

“Pleasure is not the only gift I can give you, Bradley.  There are many things I can teach you.  Just tell me where the key is.”

“Key?” I replied, looking at the chest in her hand.  “I...I don’t know.”

“Think, Bradley.  It is important to him.  Where would he keep it?”

I tried to think but my mind had become sluggish, confused.  I knew I wanted her.  All I had to do was answer.  But I didn’t know.

“Bradley,” she snapped, frowning for the first time.  “If you don’t tell me where it is, then I can’t help you.” I felt the heat from her hand on my thigh again.  “I can’t do anything for you.”

Again, I felt the creature perch onto me.  This time I saw the thing fully revealed, my own figure, albeit horribly disfigured, done in an inky blackness.  The creature slipped a wet arm around my neck, the black liquid dripping and soaking into my shirt and neck tie.

“His drug box,” I said, pointing to the side table next to Montgomery’s armchair.  

“Good,” Eleanor said, smiling.  “Very good, Bradley.”

I could feel wetness against my cheek and wiped it clean.  Seeing the black smear on my hand, I frowned, uncertain how it had gotten there.  In fact, I was struggling to recall the last few minutes.  Eleanor was seated in her chair, with one of Montgomery’s trinkets on the armchair next to her, and his prized drug box in the other.  She opened the box, shuffled through its contents and removed an iron key.  

“Now we wait.”

For what I wasn’t sure.  I thought to ask Eleanor if I had blacked out for a few moments but held my tongue, not wanting her to think I was crazy.  I didn’t want to mess this up now; it was obvious that she was interested in furthering our friendship.  If all this was Montgomery’s way of setting me up I’ll owe him big time.

Montgomery returned.  In his hands was a cloth pouch.  I stared at him dumbly.

“What have you got?”

“The skull Eleanor asked for.  Perhaps some more tea, Bradley?”

“Of course,” I replied, hoping neither of them caught on to my sudden onset of amnesia.  My eyes drifted back to Eleanor.  A ray of light had fallen on her face, illuminating the right side.  Her skin was flawless;  I could feel my lips on her cheek , could taste the sun-kissed skin.

My mind did not comprehend what happened next: her eyes were locked on mine, but there was a moment of interruption -- she was there and then not there, no more than three or four heartbeats and then back again, her eyes still on mine.   I heard Montgomery cry out in surprise.  The pouch was in her hand.  She untied the strings and freed the skull.

“You have done well, Bradley.”  She is so beautiful when she smiles, I thought.  “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” I whispered.  “Yes.  I do.”

“Kill him for me.”

The knife was in my hand.  I felt my body moving, Montgomery had started to speak but now there was nothing but silence; except for her voice, echoing over and over again.

Kill him for me.

I swiped clumsily at Montgomery.

Kill him for me.

Pink lips uttered the syllables, but I knew they were promising something else.

I had reigned in my wild swings and started corralling Montgomery into the corner.

Kill him for me.

“I love you,” I heard myself say, seeing Montgomery’s exposed stomach, and putting all of my weight into the jab.

A sudden pain overcame me and the knife fell to the floor.  The room shifted, the force of Montgomery’s disarming causing me to follow the knife to the ground.  I reached for it, but my fingers were clumsy, only pushing the weapon across the floor towards the doors of the drawing room.  Sound began to return to my world, I could hear Montgomery and Eleanor struggling.

She was moving impossibly fast, his strikes to slow to connect.

“Bring me the knife, Bradley.” Eleanor commanded over Montgomery’s grunts.

I found the knife on the floor, held it in my hand.  For a moment I didn’t know where I was.

A knife.  Why do I have a knife?

Kill him for me.

It was the eyes this time.  I knew the promise.  I had only to hold up my end of the bargain.

She had him cornered against the wall, was striking him in the face and the stomach, too fast for him to defend himself.  

“Ms. Delanie!” I heard him cry out.  “Right on time.  I’m terribly sorry about this!”

I turned and was face to face with the horrified countenance of Ms. Delanie.  She stood in the doorway of the drawing room, a hand over her mouth, frozen in fear.  I was confronted by the vulgar crook in her nose, by the multitude of pockmarks decorating her cheeks. And when her eyes met mine, I could notice nothing else but their dullness, the way they were off centered and pinched too close together.  

“Ms. Delanie,” I started dumbly.  My mind struggled to restart.  I remembered words, words that had been important to me but I could no longer recall.

I heard Montgomery shout.  “Bradley!”

I turned, saw him struggling under Eleanor’s blows.  I raised the knife.  She had her back to me.  The limp form of a woman came into my mind; the memory of a rock in my hand, the feeling of it, all red and slick.  It was too similar.  

Realizing I was no longer her pawn, the woman was suddenly facing me, the knife now in her hands.  I stared at my own hand dumbly.  There was a moment of clarity;  I saw her face, thought there was genuine sadness carved into her features.

I had bought Montgomery the single moment he needed.  He yelled as he grabbed the witch and refused to let go.

“Stand back!”

They both began shaking.  I heard the terrible sound of teeth chattering uncontrollably.  Montgomery was screaming, now choking, now making the most guttural of noises.  Eyes rolled.  Intimately tangled, they crashed to the floor, still convulsing, still caught in the throes of Montgomery’s deadly device.  The smell of burnt hair began to crowd the room.  

Finally they parted, their bodies separating and collapsing with the finality of a marionette cut from its strings.  

I rushed to the side of my friend.  Carefully I touched him; his whole person was hot.

“Montgomery!” I yelled.  Slapping him in the face a few times, I called out. “Water, Ms. Delanie.  Quick!”  But the woman had not moved a muscle; her hand still covering her mouth.  I grabbed what remained of my tea, which had long since cooled, and tossed it onto Montgomery’s face.  Proving fruitless, I grabbed Montgomery’s drug case and pulled out a small paper packet.  I ripped it open and forced the contents under his nose, holding his mouth shut to force him to breath the smelling salts in.

Nothing.  I rubbed the packet frantically between thumb and forefinger, pressing it up into his nose, anything I could do to force the salts’ essence into his nasal passage.

Montgomery bolted upright with such suddenness that I jumped up to my feet.  His eyes were wild and bloodshot.  He sat there for a moment with a blank look on his face.

“Where am I?”

“You don’t know?”

He regarded me, as if struggling to place my face with a name.  “Bradley?”

“Yes, Montgomery?”

“Where the hell am I?”

“You know the rule about asking questions twice.” I replied smartly.

@@@

It took a few more minutes but Montgomery’s memory returned and without missing another beat, he was already tending to the wounded psyche of the latest serving woman to leave his employ.

“Only a play, Ms. Delanie.  Come now, if it really was so terrifying that is good news!  Mr. Barrow’s act is sure to delight his clients.”

“It’s awful hot out, Ms. Delanie, and bright.  Coming into the darkness like that, it’s a shock for the senses.”  I offered.

“But, that woman, is she okay?  And is that really...a skull?”  She asked, her hand still held over her mouth in disbelief.  

“Just a prop, dear.”  Montgomery rapped on it, as if that would prove it false.  I saw the knife on the ground near the body of Eleanor Carper and picked it up.  

“She’s a marvelous actress, isn’t she?” I said.  

“Actress?  She’s twitching!  Someone help her!”

“Method acting,” Montgomery began, taking the frightened woman in his arms, “requires absolute devotion.  To fully assume the role one must become the character long before the performance, and just the same they must continue in that role even once the curtain has dropped!”

“Method?  Method acting?”  She lowered her head to peer at Eleanor Carper’s unconscious form.  “Oh, yes.  If you look close enough you can see her breathing!”  Ms. Delanie let out a nervous chuckle.  “That really is devotion.”  She looked at the knife in my hand.

“Is that a fake as well?” Ms. Delanie asked, the color beginning to return to her cheeks.  I looked down at the weapon in my hand. How close I had come to stabbing Montgomery with it!  The knife slipped from my grasp and clattered on the floor.

“Actually, the knife is real.” Montgomery replied, escorting her from the room.  “Captain Eves is a close friend, all of this has been cleared with his office in the case of any...accidents.”  

Through the open doorway I watched Montgomery offer her final reassurances.  “I understand you want to nullify our arrangement.  For your own suffering, I think it fair if I pay you for the full week.”  Montgomery turned and looked at me.  “This is a very special event my friend is putting on.  There are others who might try to steal his work.  Or pay those who might be familiar with the performance.  He has little to offer but his art; it would crush him, and myself for that matter, if it were ruined.  Your discretion would be appreciated.”  He deposited a month’s worth of salary in her hand.

“Yes, Mr. Renaud.  Thank you.”  She poked her head back into the room.  “Marvelous performance, Mr. Barrow.  Really!”

Montgomery came back in the room and shut the doors behind him.  Picking up his drug case, he collapsed into his armchair.  “It was a good guess,” he said, waving the key that Eleanor had taken from his box.  “I am unaccustomed to having...friends who might understand that which I hold dear.  I suppose it would not take much to find a better hiding place.”  

“What is in the box?” I asked.

“Someday, Bradley.  Someday.”  Seated such, his hair wickedly unkempt, his eyes red and wide, his breath coming ragged, holding aloft a small glass vial to inspect its contents, Montgomery looked the very figure of insanity.

“I’m not sure that’s safe, given your condition Montgomery.”

“Please, stop calling me Montgomery.  Monty will do fine.”  He ignored my health advice.  “Don’t worry Bradley, the dosage would be tame, even for you.”  The cocaine solution injected into him, he eased back into his chair, his eyes closed briefly.

“It was a shame Ms. Delanie had not the fortitude to carry on in my employ.”

“She was nice.”

“Punctual, too,” he announced.

“How’s that?”

“She returned precisely at four-thirty, as I had instructed.  If she had arrived any later,” he said, a strange look on his face, his eyes grinning while his face frowned, ”I wonder if our play would have had a more tragic end.”

I looked down at the woman and realized neither of us had checked her vitals.  Ms. Delanie had been correct; she was breathing, and although it seemed somewhat erratic her pulse was strong.  Unconsciously I brushed a loosened lock of hair behind her ear.  Even in her state, I was quite aware of how beautiful she looked.

“Who is she?”

“Each coven is made of threes.  Of those we encountered, Eleanor was the matriarch.”

I considered how her magic had been stronger but much more subtle than the other two.  I remembered the third that Montgomery had seen that day.  He had told me it was a man.

“Could she have been the third you spotted at Elementary Road?”

“No.  There was no mistaking the build of the body, the way it was carried.  The voice.  No, that certainly had been a man.  Not her.”  He added with a laugh: “Definitely not her.”

“Why did you tell me to come here?” I asked.  

“I am not blind to the fact that you have been avoiding me the past two weeks.”  I broke from his gaze.  “Fret not, Bradley, I have no concerns as to the framework of normal friendships.  I should know, better than any other, how much our mind revolts against glimpses of the void.  However, I needed you to see.”  He nudged Eleanor’s body again.  

“Why?”

“Yes, yes.  Always the ‘why’ of things.  The coven we encountered is part of something larger.  A greater group.  Elementary Road was not the first time that I thwarted them.”  I was not surprised.  It explained some of the comfort and calmness Montgomery had portrayed.

“A smoke, perhaps?”  I said, drawing my pipe out.

“Definitely.”  Montgomery took out his own pipe, fussing over them until he judged them to be perfectly packed.  I inhaled, letting the tobacco smoke choke out any other sensation.  It burned through my head and down into my lungs and not long after the friendly buzz crept into my brain.

“They would not have stopped.”

“I’m not...made for all this.  I almost killed you, Monty.”  But it was not Montgomery, carefully dodging the knife I thrust at him that I saw in my mind, but the woman -- the witch -- laying on her stomach, a piece of her skull having been misplaced by the rock in my hand.  “Christ, last time I killed a woman.”

“Unfortunate, yes.  Necessary, yes.  Is there anything more natural than the conflict of kill or be killed?  Surely you do not question your own instincts.  They are what make you stand out from the lay crowd.”

“What do you mean.”

“Simply: they are the only reason you are alive.”

“But--”

“There are no ‘buts’.  You defended your right to live.  And this is without even considered what they were doing.  Was their any question their intentions were evil?”

“You never told me what it was they were doing.”

“No,” he replied sternly, “I did not.”

I didn’t have the strength to try to pry information from him.  I moved on to a more immediate topic.  “I still don’t think I understand why you wanted me to come here.”

“You’re a part of this now.  There is no choice in the matter.  You can tell me I am wrong and you can walk away, but next time your shadow turns against you I will not be there to help.”  He too a long draught from his pipe, his face briefly obscured by a cloud of smoke as he exhaled.  “Or you can join me.  I can teach you techniques to protect your mind.”

“To what end?” I asked.

“To…,” he stopped, speechless for perhaps the first time I had seen.  He rubbed his chin roughly and then continued, “another person, a normal person, might say to ‘protect’ the world.  But know now that I am not that person.”  He shrugged, and began pulling at the loose threads on both armrests.  “To learn, to understand, to help, if possible.  The fun part.”  He looked at me.  “But also to destroy.  There is naught of the void that should exist in our reality.  Things like these witches.”

“And their master.”

“Yes.  Him too.”

“What do we do now?”

Montgomery frowned at the body of Eleanor Carper.  She had finally ceased her convulsions.  “It would have been easier if the shock had killed her.”

It was odd: after the intense experience of the unknown -- an encounter outside the rules of the real world -- there was now a very real problem, bound by very real laws.  I did not know what to suggest.

“We could leave her in the woods,” I heard myself say.

“Yes, We’ll bury her in leaves and hope she’s stuck forever.”

“My mind’s fried.”

“Very amusing,” Montgomery snorted.

“Why tell me to bring a knife?”

“I didn’t want you to bring a gun.”

“But if I had brought my gun--”

“You might have shot me.  I wasn’t afraid of handling you with a sharp edge but I’ve not seen how good a shot you are.  You’re lucky I didn’t break your wrist.”

“There so many things--”

“That you don’t quite understand.  Your task now is learning; understanding will come.  All of the questions you have can be answered thusly: preparation.  There is no greater ally.”

“If you’re so prepared then what are we doing with her?”

“I said it myself,” he said with a sigh.  “I should not have expected you to intimate.  She has to die, Bradley.  There is not one other option with a single merit.”

“Not killing her has the ‘not killing anyone’ merit.”

“Once recovered she would return, likely not alone.  They would kill us without a thought.”  

I remembered the touch of lips against mine, pink lips that I had never kissed, would never kiss.  Firm, it would have been: her giving back as much as I gave.  But the lingering touch of her seduction was overwhelmed by a more fearful thing -- the wet, black, shadow, the mutated figure of myself that had perched onto me.  A thing that had threatened me ever since Elementary Road.  

Even with Eleanor Carper killed, I did not think it would go away.  I think I knew then that he was right but I hated myself for not having the capacity to form an argument to combat Montgomery’s own neat logic: that a necessary thing had to be done.  

“I think I might retire,” I said.

“Then you are okay with what has to be done,” Montgomery stated.

“No,” I replied sharply.  “I get that you have to do it.  But you don’t get to tell me I have to be okay with it.”

“Of course, Bradley.  Well, thank you for coming,” he said awkwardly.

“You’re welcome.”

“I know I am a strange man, Bradley.”  My own brother having been an addict, I could see Montgomery was entering the full throes of his cocaine high.  “You should consider why you answered my note.  I had thought, perhaps, that I had proved too strange.  It seems that is true.”

As I gathered up my things, I did as he bid.  Curiosity is a strong creature but it had not been that alone that had urged me to answer his summon.  

There had been a moment after Elementary Road, after we had taken a turn saving the other’s life: I couldn’t even remember the joke, or who had said it.  But I remembered laughing and not ever having been that happy before.  I had felt things I never had: the euphoria of escaping death; knowing that I had faced that deciding moment in my life and not frozen.  But more than those there had been a connection with Montgomery born in that moment from our shared trial.

I didn’t know what I had gotten myself into.  And maybe he was right, maybe I didn’t have a choice in any of it.  But even though I knew there was a part of me that wanted to follow him -- and it was a strong part of me; all things born from insanity are -- I knew I could have no part in killing this woman.  

Already I had been forced to kill.  That, at least, had been to prevent an immediate threat on Montgomery’s life.  My mind could make nothing else out of this than that it was a cold-blooded thing, no matter what threat she posed to either of us.

But I did not know how, or even want to, tell him any of that.  I wondering if this was the last time I would stand in his drawing room.  “Actually Monty, I think a little strangeness was just what my life needed.”

“Well, Bradley.  Until next time.”  I waved and pushed through the double doors into the hall.  

“I’ll lock the door.  Don’t forget to put an ad out for a new serving woman.” I hadn’t wanted to glimpse her again, especially not like she was, but my eyes were drawn to the form of Eleanor Carper as I pulled the double doors shut.

It was hard not to notice how Montgomery’s form looked perched over hers: I was impressed with visions of the tall grasses of the African safaris, of a lion prepared to devour its prey.  

###

Dreams of Darkspace presents…

SPEAKER-TO-THE-DEAD

All stories by Peter R. Heaton

The voice had spoke with a smile--an underline to the weight of the words.  It is, a simple thing, a simple thing with simple rules: you do not trick the dead; you do not lie to the living.  There were a dozen self-destructive triggers that could have set this memory off; but this time there was no questioning the how.  It was before him.  Right there.  Staring at him.

Ready to die.

Arik did what was expected.  He watched as a beam of energy slid casually through the exposed neck, aware that the dying eyes were locked onto him. The Archons stood in the viewing gallery, expressionless.  Arik was a mirror of their stoicism.

That was what was expected.  How did they forgot that Speakers were trained to keep control?

The Archon who had performed the execution turned to Arik.  “Arik Zohn, Speaker-to-the-Dead.  We thank you for your service.”  Arik nodded slightly, and left the execution chamber, his sensar, Devran, close and basking in his shadow.  It was in the hallway when he almost lost it--the control, the thing he needed most of all.  It was the boy--the innocence on his face.  He gave his life for his weapon, a weapon, which, in turn, he gave to the Speaker.

What a stupid thing, Arik thought and it was this that made him crave the telling to this one, more so, than any other.  If it was spoken to another it would be because he could not bear the guilt.  But if it was spoken to the boyit could save him.  They need not both be buried in the same grave.  

“It is good what you have done,” the boy said to him. Devran’s face was youthful but already it whispered of the things he had seen; in the way he had watched the man die, in the way that his first thought after was to his duty to his Speaker.   “The Wizard of Menlo would be proud.”

Arik wanted to tell him to stop, wanted to tell him that he had failed his student.  But looking at the boy now, seeing the proud look in his face, he knew he did not have the strength to shatter the boy’s faith.  It wasn’t right; his sensar’s devotion to Arik was unquestioned.  He might only be a boy, but his diamond tipped keshi made him more dangerous than most men.  

Arik offered a weak smile in return.  They left the High Tower, home of the Archons, and passed out into the heat and dust of Center.  His feet carried him through the city, and before he realized it they had passed through the Bazaar, crossed the Bridge over the River of Life, and climbed the stairs up to the top of the tall walls of Center.

For a time they stood there, staring out at the sea of heat and dust beyond.  A cloud travelled across the horizon: a nomad caravan heading towards Center.

“That could not have been an easy thing,” his sensar offered.

“A Speaker cannot bring the past with them.”  It was just another thing the Archons had taken from him.  He pushed the image of the man’s death from his mind, the howling wind carrying noises of the approaching nomads to him.  

For a moment he was elsewhere--to avoid the Speaking Arik and his sensar had gone into the desert.  Unlike in Center, where the Speakers were used -- commanded -- by the Archons, the desert nomads considered Speakers to be kings.

They would not have forced Arik to give everything up to serve the dead.  

“Do you think you will be called to Speak with Kynan?”

“There are others,” he said, his eyes drifting aimlessly across the heat-glazed landscape.  “But they will pick me.”

“They should.”

They will, he whispered to the cloud of dust and man.

“You’ve earned the honor.”

Honor is a lie.

“You do not look as though you are honored.”

Someday he will understand, Arik thought.  No, someday he will die and never know.  He wasn’t sure which angered him more.  The boy didn’t--couldn’t--know that the Speaking  would only be a reminder of the things he had lost.  She had called him his desert rose--a lie from the past propping up the lies of the present.

It had been his sensar’s reminder of their duty that had brought them back to Center.  He had never intended to stay out there, even though that was his chance to escape.  He had chosen a different path but something in him had wanted to know, before he died, what his life could have been.

“Why do we always come here after?” His sensar asked gently.  The words poked through Arik’s thoughts, grabbing him and bringing him back to the parapets of Center.  

Arik swallowed, tasting the dust, teeth crunchy absently on grains to small to avoid.  Could he set him free with the truth?  There were other Speakers who would take him on.  Arik had never deserved this sensar, this boy who didn’t really understand what it really was to be a Speaker; exchanging a connection with the living for a connection with the dead.  Words remind him, he sees the smile that is no smile: You do not trick the dead; you do not lie to the living.

Another voice,  his mother--or an Archon? he shuddered to think he could confuse the two: A Speaker who lives in the past is already lost.

Here I am, he thought, already lost.

“Speaker, seldom do I--”

“Ah, yes,” he stuttered.  “No, you are right to disturb me.  We come here,” he said, pausing, almost able to swallow the lie, “we come here to remember why being a Speaker is important.”  A lie because, just like when they had gone into the desert, he came out here to remember what it could have been like.  It was stupid and pointless, but it was cathartic for him.  

The trade caravan had arrived.  Men and women with dark, olive skin, and loose dun colored clothing milled about as the Archons’ Constructs inspected the shipment.

His temporary flight had been just as pointless.  The Archons had been patient -- or maybe they had known from the beginning -- and when he returned he had been summoned to speak with her.  He already knew who had killed her, he hadn’t needed a Speaking to know.  But he could not tell the Archons that.  

“You question your path?”

“No.” Arik replied sternly.  I know what path I have chosen.  “I have never questioned the importance of it; remembering those that have passed and speaking with their souls to make sure that they go to their new lives with a peaceful soul.  But remembering why something is important is different from questioning it.”

“It’s just an escape,” he replied knowing the blasphemy would catch his sensar unawares.

“An escape?”

“From the fear of death.”  What he really wanted to say was that Speaking had disconnected him from the living.  It had taken away everything that had once made him.  “Knowing there is afterlife has changed everything.”

That too, was true.  Had that made it easy to watch his brother die?  Maybe he had been disconnected from the beginning.  

He couldn’t remember anymore.

@@@

The room was dark.  Arik lit the soul candle, its gentle red light enough for him to make out the box before him and the feminine skull opposite: polished clean with a large opal cemented onto the forehead, seated atop the funerary case containing the rest of her worldly remains.

He tried to stop superimposing her face over the white bone; but he could not.  And no matter how many times he tried he could not fit one with the other.  His stomach had been in knots as adjusted the crank and dial to clarify the signal, but once he finally heard her voice emitting clearly from the box he had smiled and the butterflies had vanished.

“Arik?” The box asked.

“Yes, Lyza.  I’m here.”

“Why?” She asked.  Sticking out from the box were two antennae connected by a slender wire inside of a glass tube “Why?” She repeated and this time the wire vibrated so violently he feared the glass would shatter.

He knew if it was too work he had to Speak to her, not as Arik, but as a Speaker.  He reached deep inside, summoning everything he had learned from his training and experiences.

“Be calm, Lyza.”  He commanded.

“Why?” The voice asked again, more quietly this time.

“They took…” he started, wanting to tell her that they took everything from him, that they took her from him. You cannot bring your past with you, he reminded himself.

“There is another way,” he told her, his voice taking on the commanding tone of a Speaker.  The soul stopped uttering the dreaded question.  “If you would listen.”

“Tell me, Speaker.  Tell me how I might find peace.”

You do not trick the dead, Arik thought.

@@@

It was a few days later when the Archons’ servant arrived.  Arik motioned to his sensar to stop his keshi dance.  The Construct entered the room, hovering on a skiff of bright metal, adorned in sandsilk.  

The command was spoken with a tinny voice.  “The Archons’ have requested a speaking with Kynan Zhor.”

“Can they not find another?”

“The Speaker shall obey.”

With that the soulless servant floated out.  He considered the command, knowing what would follow.

The question was on his sensar’s face.  Why? it asked.  Always that question, Arik thought.

“Speak,” Arik said, his anger escaping in the words.  Anger that the boy would not understand.

“Why would you not want to Speak with him?”

“I told you a Speaker should not bring his past with him.  Sometimes it is not so easy.”  He remembered the words he had told her to say.  “It is not easy to Speak with someone you’ve killed.”

“But you didn’t do it.  All you did was your duty.  The soul of Lyza Rayel named Kynan as her murderer.”

“She did,” Arik agreed.  Not for the first time, he considered how his choices would affect his sensar.  

Is it what I deserve?  he thought.  He knew it was.  But what of his sensar?  

Did it really matter anymore?  There was a second life; who was to say one was better than the other?  

“You should leave,” Arik said.  The boy looked at him dumbfounded.  “Go to the nomads.  I will give you my box.  You know enough of it to use it.”

“But I am not yet a Speaker.”

“That does not matter.  Out there, if you have the box and know how to use it, you can be a king!”

“I do not care to be a king.  I only wish to be your sensar.  And someday, a Speaker.”

Duty always gets in the way, Arik thought.  When you are young, you can’t help but search it out, to give your life meaning.  And when you get older you realize it only gets in the way of living the life you want to live.

“You made a promise to teach me the Speech.”  The boy reminded him.

“I know.”

“It would be a lie,” the boy continued.  “I am no king.”

Arik couldn’t help but hear the unspoken phrase.  He knew his sensar was right.  They would never leave Center again.  He wanted to, for his sensar’s benefit.  But there was an afterlife.  This would not be the end for either of them.

He walked over to the wooden shrine.  Along the top shelf there were visuals of each of the souls with which he had held a Speaking.  He removed the box, tucking it under one arm.

“You are right,” Arik said, turning to the boy.  “It is an honor to be a Speaker.  It is an honor to be the bridge that connects us to those that have passed onto the next life.”  He looked at his sensar, hoping that he might live to heed the advice that followed.  “When you are Speaker, you must never break the rule.  It leads only down a dark path.”

The boy nodded, donning his woven sensar’s robe, decorated with the mark of his family, a reminder of where he had come from.  Something that he would have to surrender when he finally went from sensar to Speaker.  If, Arik reminded himself.  If.

@@@

He gave the signal to his sensar.  The boy turned off the lights and left.  Arik took a few calming breaths, the only light given by the red readout of the box.  Somewhere in the darkness his brother’s skull waited, two eyes focused solely on Arik’s.  Is there another way? Arik wondered.

He forced himself to light the soul candle.  The glow grew slowly, and finally he could see his brother in the cruel, crimson light.   

Arik whispered his brother’s name.

Inside the glass tube the wire vibrated lightly.

Again he spoke the name, turning the crank slowly, watching the change in the display.  A harsh, raucous rasp escaped from the wire.  Arik made another adjustment; the vibrations growing stronger in response until words began to issue forth.

“I paid for your sin.”

“Forgive me brother.”

A high-pitched whine emanated from the wire. “Forgiveness?”  

“I wanted you back, both of you.”

“They will find out.”  

A memory of another speaking: he had told Lyza that if she lied she would have his brother back.  “The dead…they are the only friends I have left.”  

The wire vibrated.  “You do not trick the dead.”

@@@

They stood looking out over the walls of Center.  It had rained hard in the morning, but already everything, everywhere was dry and dusty.  His sensar stood patiently; it had been an hour since his Speaking, and Arik had not said a word.

“I’m sorry, Devran.” Arik finally said.

“For what?”

“You want to know what he said.”

“That is for the Speaker to decide.”

“Or the Archons.”  They would have reviewed the session by now.  With Lyza he had altered the recording of their session, but that had been necessary.  This time he had allowed the truth to reach them.  It will not be long, he thought.

He almost told him then.  But something stopped him.  Selfishness perhaps; surely the boy would leave him, knowing the truth, and Arik would be unprotected.  But why did that matter?  The boy could not fight off all of the Archons’ Constructs himself.  Arik turned his back on the desert and the freedom that beckoned.  In that moment, seeing his sensar against the backdrop of Center, he realized that he had always saw himself in Devran.  He remembered believing in the idea of Speaking as much as the boy did.  He wished that had never been taken from him.

The sound of a gathering crowd reached his ears.  He glanced down, past Devran, and saw them at the base of the stairs.  Where I back in his place, I would prefer what waits him, over what I have become.

They descended the stairs.  Devran saw the crowd, and taking note of the five Constructs that waited, pushed wordlessly past his Speaker.

The crowd inched away, sensing what was to come.  One of the Constructs stepped forward.  “Speaker Arik Zhor, the Archons request your presence.”  The tinny voiced grated against his ears, but Arik didn’t notice.  It was relieving to hear those words after fearing them for so long.

“Why?”  His sensar asked, one hand on his diamond-tipped keshi.

“He has lied to the living; he has tricked the dead.”

The boy’s face paled.  He turned back to Arik.

An endless stream of empty apologies ran through his mind.  The boy didn’t need him to say anything.  He saw the look on Arik’s face, one of sincere sadness and defeat.  

“Stand aside, Devran,” Arik finally uttered.

“You know I can’t,” the boy replied.  “I will serve my Speaker.”

But I lied to you, Arik thought.  But even as the thought entered his mind it was already too late.  The Construct that spoke was too slow;  Devran drew his keshi, activating it, the blade formed by six separate pieces that spun angrily.  It slipped into the torso of the Construct and then just as quickly decapitated the machine.  The rest of the violence happened fast; when it was done, three of the Constructs lay in scattered pieces.  The last two had torn his sensar’s sword arm off and not stopped there.

“The Archons request your presence,” one of the Constructs repeated.

 @@@

“You lied to the living.  You tricked the dead.”  The Archon said to him, while the others watched on from the viewing gallery.  “You took a life.”

Arik struggled against the thick metal shackles, even though he had known that it would end this way.  His last thoughts were of the three he had gotten killed: Devran and Kynan and Lyza.   He coudl feel the heat of the beam as it descended. He wanted to scream, to say that it was the Archons’ fault; he had only wanted what they had taken from him.

He was so much closer to the dead.

###

Dreams of Darkspace presents…

inDEcision

All stories by Peter R. Heaton

The small journal she’s reading is an antique - a relic from a time when commitments were made with rings and not the procedure.

@@@

March 4th 2163

Truthfully, I would not have gone there if she hadn’t dragged me. The Tannhauser Gate is a terrible beauty, a rending in space surrounded by spandrels of starsteel, hinting with veiled smiles of pink and green and red at the things between dimensions.  Our hands were linked when the view-screen illuminated, and I wanted to giggle with something that was as close to pure happiness as I've ever felt.  A cruiser slid into view, disrupting the shifting tapestry of man and nature.  It entered the Gate—here, where sunlight kissed the starsteel spaces they echoed polished pearl, and there, in the shadow of space, they lay blanketed in a silent ignorant iron. And suddenly—a thousand blinking marbles that I’d always imagined weirdly as eyeballs, staring through the rend and into what lay beyond—silently, it was gone.

She asked if I thought there was a couple on the other side, holding hands and gazing into the gate as the cruiser sparkled into existence. If I can look back years from now and still love her as I do now I know for certainty that I want nothing but her.

The beach was quiet, but the sky groaned—a hungry rumble from the heavy granite slab on the horizon.  It was here that she wrote him a letter - with pen because that had been his particular fancy.  She reached up to her head to scratch a phantom itch.

@@@

June 8th 2168

Terrified.  There is no other word for it. Sure, there are a handful of other things hidden beneath that feeling, but they are tertiary—the terror is there and
I can do nothing but face it. And when I face it, strangely, I feel joy—hopeful of the future.  They say it is a small thing - a tiny incision and in 20 seconds they deliver a focused laser on the amygdala, the hypothalamus and the prefrontal cortex.  After that I will never love another but her.  In a world where it is so easy to love - it really is a small thing - I see no greater way to show her why this is right than to perform the surgery alone.  The nurse expressed apprehension when I requested a single procedure. But money is money.

A small scar where they make the incision and nothing more.

The closer the gray sky came, the more furiously words slipped from the edge of her pen. Did it make sense?  She had kept too much to herself for too long.  She had loved him but she hadn't been ready for that commitment - it was so final.  But how would he know without telling him?  How could he guess at what she saw in her future?  It is a hard enough thing to guess at one's own.  Wind stirred, tingling her cheeks with a taste of chill. 'I'm sorry', she wrote: once, twice, three times but there was never enough paper to write it until she felt better.

@@@

February 12th 2171

It is a strange curse I have brought on myself.  I see others - couples - with fresh, matching scars and wonder what path led them to that moment.  Had they loved each other before?  Were they desperate souls, strangers that had made one choice that changed their lives forever?  It is an odd place where we can create unconditional love.  I am not sure anymore what the future holds. For me. For all of us now that this is a part of the fabric of our existence. Click ‘Like’ for life, I guess.  There are still Desires in the universe, who live and die without ever undergoing the procedure. I see them differently now, the window sill from which I view the world has rotted and gone crooked and from my crooked view of the world I wonder if we would be better off risking the hurt and the pain and the vulnerability that we were exposed to before the procedure.  I have visited the Tannhauser Gate since the surgery - alone - and I cannot seem to find the beauty in it that I saw that first time.

The back door of the beach house slid open.  She wrote 'sorry' one last time, and then one more before stuffing the letter into the envelope.

"Mom?" The boy called out.

Roughly she wiped tears out of her eyes, but it was no good.  "I'm down here darling."  The cloud had arrived and with it so to had the rain.  

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine honey."

"We should go inside.  You always tell me I'm going to get sick if I stay out in the rain."  His small face became concerned.  "Are you crying?"

"No, it's just the rain."

@@@

December 22nd 2176

To die in an empty house.  Sometimes I spend hours finishing the sentence 'I am going to' in my journal, and then occasionally look back and cross off any that actually happened.  This one, this one I almost crossed off the moment I wrote it. It is too easy for me to make it so. It is hard to keep in touch with her because I can hear the pity in her voice. Last night I asked her for a child.  It caught her off guard, as it should have. But why not? We loved each other once and families take all sorts of shapes.  Even if we are worlds away we can still have one.  But she said no. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

The boy came into the kitchen as she sealed the envelope even though there was no address on it.  It was in that moment that she realized she hadn’t a clue how to send it.

“Who's the letter for?"

She loved her son and she did not need any procedure to tell her that.  That was one of the things that had broken them.  He had never understood that she loved him even though she did not want the procedure.

"Your father."

"Really? He'll like that."

"Yes he would have."

"I love you," she said.

###

 Dreams of Darkspace presents…

The Dreamer’s Song

All stories by Peter R. Heaton

The last thing he remembered was touching the edge of the universe and it touching him back.

@@@

Verse One: The Belief

They called him Argos, the Dreamer - he who weaves thin strands of imagination into the material.  So often he has fought his mind to go backwards, to remember, but at the furthest reaches of his memory he finds only that familiar cliff and the Shade that is nothingness--a nothingness he knows can only be endless space.  But it is strange, and it haunted him at night until he realized it was absent all the tiny flecks of light to which he had grown so accustomed.

But the attempted rememberings were forgotten; things had changed for Argos and for the Massa’dhim with whom he shared this world.  A black comet had appeared, and maybe, Argos thought, it had been there as long as he could remember. It was a jagged scar lazily stretching out in the southern sky, and maybe, Argos thought, it was the endlessness that had haunted him for so long peering back from behind teh wound.  

The Massa’dhim were numerous, their town of broken walls and giant shells spread across a shifting field of colors.  They were each unique – all one people but so vastly different in appearance, their variety as numerous as the distance between stars if walked one foot at a time.

“Dreamer,” It was Izari, she of the hovering tendrils of bone and ice, who had first told Argos of the thing that would emerge from the scar in time; what Izari referred to as the Womb-of-the-Cosmos.  He knew her gentle buzzing: a comforting sound. Izari had often passed the time with him in the top chamber of his tower. They would share unspoken thoughts as Argos looked out across the shifting colors of Massa’dhia, to where the world blended slowly into swamp and decay--the Mud-Murk.  They had comforted each other in their shared presence, and the Mud-Murk ate its way towards Massa’dhia.

But this was different.  She had spoken. Acknowledge him.  Shattered the glass and Argos knew it would never be the same again.

“Izari.”

“It is time to face that which we have both feared.  The darkness has taken its first taste of Massa’dhia.” Argos furrowed his brow, a dense ball of clay appeared in his hand, which after it had been crushed, subsequently disappeared.  Two of Izari’s tendrils, one of bone and one of ice, probed their way toward his should, offering a sign of encouragement. Argos used his mind to open the roof, parting stone with a thought, to look at the black pox.  Fear was rooted deep inside his heart, and he knew it was growing. They were twins: the scar and his fear. Change was coming. And change meant trial. He could taste it on the wind. The ceiling returned but this time it was made of glass.  

Kija appeared, her wings fluttering in a muffled panic.  “Izari! Izari!” She came to a halt when she saw Izari and Argos.  “I am sorry, Dreamer.”

Argos smiled.  “It is okay.” Her vim was rare among the Massa’dhia and Argos favored her for it.

“What is it?” Izari asked impatiently, the buzzing much louder than normal.

“Kranan has gone into the swamp.”  

Izari made a loud clacking noise. “Fool.”  A bouquet of tendrils instantly swiveled, focusing on Argos.

“You must go now.”

“Into the swamp?”  The tendrils all nodded in unison.  “To what end?” Argos said, his mind already cycling through attire that might protect him on his journey.

“The Corruption is spreading.  You must defeat it.”

“Alone?”  He asked, thinking of Gayza the Spearhelm or the Iceman who was of the first Massa’dhim.

“The Massa’dhim are not built to face this foe.  That is why you are here.”

“I have never been afraid before,” he started, questioning himself even as he said the words,  “but there is fear in my heart.”

“The Corruption does not only affect our world.”

Argos remembered staring into empty blackness and shuddered briefly.  He could feel the Massa’dhim--not individually, their spirits as a whole.  Their combined weight had always comforted him, and it did now as well.  And he knew too that they feared what lay ahead much more than he did. For them this could be the end.  For him? He did not know. He certainly could not remember what had been before, and he had no way of inflecting what could come next.

“I will do my best to bring Kranan back alive.”

Kija fluttered towards his shoulder and sat on it.  

“Forget Kranan,” Izari buzzed agitatedly.  “You must kill the Corruption.”

“How?” It had been the question lingering since Izari had first arrived.

Kija whispered in his ear.  “By Dreaming, of course.” Izari must have heard Kija, because she gave no other answer.

Argos conjured a mirror and stared into it.  His face melded and transformed, turning into one that gave him courage.

@@@

Verse Two:  The Mud-Murk

The cloying scent of death permeated the foggy marsh.  The flattened disc of silver he had rode into the Mud-Murk had been torn at by gnarled limbs, crashing it into the wetness.  His attempts at hovering and flying had been met by bony branch and a stretching, swampy slough.

The Corruption was here.  In the wetness. In the air.  It tapped the shoulder of his thoughts insesitently--distractions that kept his imagination tantalizingly beyond his grasp.

Now, trudging through the Mud-Murk, every step echoed the sound of mire sucked steps, each begging him to stay.

Argos tried to imagine another way, but when he looked out over the swamp, he was greated by a blackness which only showed him a few dozen steps in any direction.  A bog, greeting him like a spider in its web, giggling at him with bubble and slurp, grasping at him with branch and stalk. The lights he attempted to conjure consumed by the dark before the thoughts had ever fully formed.

For one of the Massa’dhim to have ventured into the Mud-Murk was unheard of--especially since the scar had come.  The Corruption had a hunger for Massa’dhia and those born to her. Kranan couldn’t have gone very far, but what comfort he took from that was dispelled by the fact that it was Kranan who had dared to venture into the Corruption.  

Kranan had always unsettled Argos, a giant hovering eye surrounded by sunken flesh that walked on three spindly arms.

Argos heard an ugly retch from a rotted log and froze.  An end had been pulled under, the swamp burping as it ate.  In Argo’s hand came the familiar weight of an axe. The sound echoed again, somewhere a bit further away, and then on and on again as if in some terrible cacophanic chain reaction: the squaking of a bird of prey rattling a cage of bones.  

Then: silence.  Argos prepared for something to leap toward him, prodding the ground around him with the axe.  A hook appeared in place of the axe, and what had formed the shaft of the weapon now extended toward the source of the sound.

He rummaged around for a few moments and came away only with a clump of decayed vegetation.   Argos thought he caught a glimpse of white bone but it collapsed back into the swamp before his vision came clear.  

It reminded him of something Izari had said before he left.  The Mud-Murk is a stubborn thing.  It will give back nothing that it has already claimed.

Argos moved forward avoiding the log and its decayed secrets.  The fog was a damp blanket, and it clung tightly to everything: the twisted branches of the lifeless trees, the surface of the larger expanses of water, the moss covered stones, the stalks the stood out in unsettling near-geometricaly perfect lines, the strange piles of vegetation that made so many unique shapes that they reminded Argos of the Massa’dhim.

He was already sick of the darkness.  He could feel it now. He could see it seeping out from the oily black water that slicked the surface of the mud, collecting above the deeper pools of the swamp--the darkest places--darker even than the beyond places waiting past the edges of his vision--where anything could lay hidden.  

He stole a moment--without the blackness, without the Mud-Murk; a memory that was a dream of another world, one which, even as he remembered, he as quickly forgot--but it came into his world in a form: A light sprouted overhead, baring its brilliant teeth against the tendrils of shadow threatening vivisection.  

There was color here, more than just muted greens and black in all its forms.  Amongst the rot, there too the white of life in death, and her close cousin, the red of life moving towards death.  Only tinges here and there but it was an angry--bleeding--red.

Pushing the dark thoughts from his mind, the light brightened in response.  It shuddered for a few moments then tore itself into two. The two, in similar fashion, became four and in shortly after, a row of lights stretched forward.  A plank of wood formed up out of the wet air, and after testing it, he stepped onto it. Another plank hovered into position with each step, the planks finding his feet, as opposed to the other way around, and he began following the lights deeper into the swamp.

Argos could hear the swamp stirring.

You will never leave, it whispered, grinning.

Something squeezed his hand and he felt a brief moment of courage surge through him.  But when it left him, he was colder and more afraid than he had been the moment before.  A cautious clacking noise rose slightly over the sounds of the swamp.

Another screech tore through the air.  The lights furthest from him winked out.  The water beneath him was bubbling. He picked up his pace, hoping that his instincts were leading him in the right direction.

He heard the clacking again and whirled, the comforting curve of his axe’s wooden handle again in his hand.

Behind him, standing on a tripod of spindled legs, an unblinking eye stared up toward the hidden sky.  A set of fleshy membranes parted in the side of the creature, between the eye and the spindles, and an empty hole gaped at him.

“The Dreamer stirs.”  The legs took one large step closer to him.  The eye still fixed skyward. “You are prepared for the swamp?”

“I am,” and then a second time, this one with more force: “I am.”  Beneath them the Mud-Murk only bubbled louder.

“But have you asked yourself the questions yet?”  The creature bent and jumped, landing behind Argos, balancing on two of the wooden planks.  He thought about making them disappear but something stopped him.

“Questions?”

“Yes, the questions.”

“How can I ask myself questions that I do not know?”

“I know the questions.  That is why I am here.”

“And?”

“Yes.”  The creature blinked, and tilted its giant orb at Argos, finally meeting his gaze.  “The Beast that crawls forth from the Womb-of-the-Cosmos. How will you defeat him?”

“I do not-“

“Yes!” The creature hissed at Argos.  “Yes you do. Think.”

Argos thought back and remembered Kija whispering into his ear.

“By Dreaming.”

“By Dreaming,” Kranan agreed.

It started to walk deeper into the swamp, and Argos formed the planks necessary to keep the creature from falling.

“You said questions.”

“Yes, I did.”

“What are the other ones?”

“You could remember that,” it said as Argos hurried forward to catch up.  Argos thought he heard something but couldn’t make it out over the clamor of the boiling swamp.  The water was roiling now, spurts of swamp bursting in a boil.

“What?” He yelled.

“I said,” the creature’s body rotated as it spoke, its spindle thin legs moving forward as the eye twisted on top of the pedestal they formed to look back at Argos, “you could remember that.  Why can you not remember anything else?”

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Verse Three: The Questions

Argos tried to think back, but he couldn’t. There were threads of memories that trailed backwards but they had no real sustenance; and each thread unraveled into that cliff and a starless black abyss.  He shuddered.

“We must go deeper,” Kranan urged.

“No,” Argos said.  “No, you must go back.  Back to Massa’dhia”

“I cannot,” the creature replied moving forward faster and faster.  It threatened to outrun the trail of lights and wooden planks Argos conjured.

“Stop.” Argos commanded.  The creature continued to scramble away from him.  Again, he thought of ending the conjured path but decided not to.  They were running now, each step more precarious than the one before.  The swamp was still a boiling frenzy, and the deeper they went the stronger the fog grew.  Argos finally halted. “Stop!”

Conjuring up a stone wall, which waited at the end of a bridge forming beneath them and made in kind, Argos raised the foundation to lift them high above the swamp.  The stone wall blocked Kranan’s advance. It started to scrabble up the steep cliff, but Argos blew freezing water across its surface.

“Why?  Why can I not remember anything?  Why does it seem like there is nothing there for me to remember?”

“You’re right.” The creature gave up on its efforts to scale the frictionless surface.  “Enough running. I only hope we’ve gone deep enough. Far enough from their power. But the more I tell you the more dangerous it becomes.”

“The more you tell me of what?  The tear in the sky? What do you know about the Womb?

“This,” the creature said, balancing gingerly on two limbs as the third gestured about.  “Is nothing more than a test.”

“A test? What kind of test?”

“The only kind of course.”  A vicious pop from the swamp caused Kranan to swivel its eye and glance over the edge.  “A test of survival. Now put down this wall, we must go deeper. I can tell you more there.”

“No, Kranan.  You will tell me now.”

Another vicious pop rose from the black oozing mess.  The brige began to shift and sink. The swamp was corroding away the stone’s foundation.

“They’ve found us.  They will not let me tell you anything more. I’m sorry I have to go.  Remember Argos, remember to listen to yourself,” the creature started to scramble its way toward Argos when a giant shape uncoiled itself from the darkness.  It burst through the stone bridge, snatching up Kranan in its mouth, a mouth that was more like a claw than anything else.  Argos yelled, and immediately his axe was in hand. He took a vicious chop at the creature as it passed, trying to latch onto it, but the axe glanced off, and the force of the creature knocked Argos to his feet.

Suddenly Argos was alone in silence.  The swamp had calmed, and the fog cleared.

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Verse Four:  The First Test – Love is Blind

After a time wandering aimlessly through the Mud-Murk, he found the tall ghastly trees of the Wanderwood.  The blackness dissapated slowly, calmly, and when it had burned off completely, he saw a clearing between skeletal trunks.  In the clearing there stood a lone tree. Apples hung from the branches: bright red apples ripe for the plucking. The sun was clear in the sky, bathing the tree and the grass and those cherry red apples in its beautiful golden glow.

She was waiting for him at the base of the tree.

“Charlotte,” he whispered, knowing her name but not knowing how he knew.

“I’ve missed you,” she said.  Her skin was pale in the shade, but turned radiant as her hand reached out from beyond the shadow to caress his cheek.  “Come to me,” she said. Her eyes echoed the command, her body beckoning him into the shadow of the tree.

He knelt down, grasping her tightly.  It was like he had never met her before, but he knew that he loved her.  He knew that he wanted to be with her forever. Argos lay with his back against the tree, and Charlotte draped herself against him.  Together they looked out across the clearing, watching the blades of grass kneel as the wind passed them over.

“We should do this forever.  Just you and I gazing out at the world.  This is life.”

But we can’t, he thought.  He didn’t know why, but he knew they couldn’t.  Not forever.

She heard his thoughts.  “But this time we can, Argos.  We can. This can be our new life.  Me and you as it always should have been.   Oh, how I’ve missed you,” she said.

His heart ached.  He knew there was one chance.  Everything in his essence told him that he had wished for this choice, wished to have this moment.  That Charlotte, this woman he did not know, but knew so well, that he wanted to spend the rest of eternity with her.

“Do you remember Tantalus?  Do you remember when we found it?”

His fingers felt the cool touch of water, a strange tingling sensation.  Tantalus – a lake he knew.

“I do,” he said.  “Tantalus…” his voice trailed off.  He had caught a thread of thought, one that didn’t seem to end in a black abyss.  And then it was gone. But he caught another one, and words that had been hissed at him came to mind.

Listen to yourself.

He couldn’t do that.  He absolutely couldn’t do that.  Everything was telling him to stay.  So he had to go. A concerned look crossed Charlotte’s face.

“What’s wrong?  What are you doing?”

He started to get up, but she tried to force him back down.

“No, not again.  Don’t – you can’t leave me.  Not here. Not when everything is so perfect.”  

Argos hesitated.  Uncertain. She watched him purposely.

“I’m…I’m so sorry.  This isn’t right.” Argos pulled away and stood up.

“But it feels right!  It feels so right.” Her hand grasped his as he edged away from the trunk of the tree.  For the first time he realized the bark was old and frail. Rot was evident along the base.  Over ripened apples gathered at the base of the tree, brown and worm eaten on one side.

“Run,” she said, her face twisting into a strange visage, her body becoming something else.  “Go now. Go before it is too late!”

He was running now, his feet stamping through the grass.  The sun didn’t feel so warm on his skin any more. The wind whipped up furiously, beating him over and over again as clouds gathered in the sky.  He was almost to the edge of the tree line when he heard a great crack. A tree was crashing right towards him. At the last second he dove head first into the brush.

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Verse Five: The Second Test – Look in the Mirror

As he entered the brush, the earth parted around him and he was falling now, falling into the earth.  And then--it was there, waiting for him.  Endless darkness. A starless space. He tried to breathe, but found he couldn’t draw breath.  The air around him was suffocating him, trying to flatten him. Argos’ eyes searched for a way out.  He was spinning now, losing all sense of direction. And then he saw it: a single, bright, white light.  The light grew stronger, and he propelled himself toward it.

A name came to him:

“Tantalus,” it whispered, dying.  No, that wasn’t right. It hadn’t died as it said it.  But it had whispered it, and later it had died.

He felt a surge of warmth – heat – fear – anger – pain.  And then he was inside the light. He could breath again.  Suddenly the light imploded and he was encased in stone. But the stone gave way to a chamber beneath the dead star’s surface.  He was not alone. Before him stood himself. Between them and beneath a white light, was a single rock, a sword embedded within.  His mirror drew the weapon before he could react.

“We do not have to kill each other,” the mirror said.

Argos looked at himself, the one staring back at him.  He was older. More frail. He looked as though the weight of lies had wore him down, faster than he had been meant to wear down.  It reminded him of the rotting tree.

An axe appeared in Argos’ hand.  “I think we do.”

Steel met steel.  Another flash. Argos caught his mirror in the shoulder with the axe.  No blood flowed forth, but fear oozed from the wound. Argos saw it and it wormed its way into him--sickly tendrils of angry gray gliding up his legs.  He saw a chain of judgment hanging about his future self’s neck.

“Please Argos.  Stop,” Argos heard his other self say.

“No!  You--I will not become you!”

“If you are to stay, you must..”  

He ignored the words.  Axe and sword met. Again.  And again. Argos’ fury built with each axe swing.  He had backed his mirror up against the wall of the chamber.  His axe head was flashing in the white light that hung overhead.

The axe head met flesh, and this time blood did flow forth.  The other screamed out in pain, and Argos screamed out in rage.

“Look at me Argos,” the older Argos said.  Argos slapped the sword away. He raised the axe, ready to deliver the final blow.

“Look,” the man pleaded again.  

Listen to yourself, the voice hissed again.

This is what Kanaan meant!  He paused to study the man before him. For every flaw he had seen, he saw good quality, something he had overlooked

“Accept the good and the bad that you will be in the end.” He knelt before Argos.  “Only with this sword will you defeat the beast.” And then the older man went into Argos, a merging of the two things.

Argos was back in the woods on his back, a tree crashing just behind him.  He was staring up at the sky. It stared back at him with two horrible empty white eyes.  The creature tore itself from the Womb-of-the-Cosmos, rending the sky in two.

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Verse Seven:  The Third Test – Two Plus Two Equals One

On a weathered wing it floated down from the sky toward him.  It was one giant wing, Argos realized, its edges clawed, its eyes first two, then four, then eight, now sixteen, continued to multiply.  Each one as milky white and empty as the one before it. The weight of the sword in his hand reassured him. He wasn’t so afraid. And then the beast let out a screech, a sound that tore the leaves from the trees around them.  It landed umbrella-like before him, gently crushing a few of the nearest trees beneath it. The giant claws at the edge of the beast’s membrane-like body dug into the ground, and it pulled itself toward him. Dead pale eyes appeared along the top of the beast.

He was backpedaling now, his moment of self-assuredness fleeting.  The beast reared up, massive and blocking out his view with its body.  The mouth opened again, and let out another roar. He felt the heat of the beast’s breath this time as it carried over him.  The smashed bits of tree closest to the beast’s mouth smoldered and caught fire. He remembered the sword in his grasp. He remembered looking at himself, his future self.  Seeing his flaws, his regrets exposed – he couldn’t remember anything much more terrifying than that. And again he felt a surge of courage, even as the fire grew, spreading before him.  

Argos, with his dreams, fought back at the beast that had crawled out of the Womb-of-the-Cosmos.

A gust of wind picked up, sending the fire back toward the beast.  And Argos was running at it now, wings sprouting and spreading, carrying along the gust.  His sword was raised and he plunged it into the beast, into one of its thousand eyes, as he crashed into it.

His momentum dragged the blade down a few feet, and dug it deep into the beast’s body.  It screamed this time, not the terrifying screech that had emerged from its maw before, but something else this time.  Something with fear in it. And he thought of the shadowy memory of the woman that he knew but didn’t know. Of Charlotte, and how if he could just kill this beast, maybe he could go back to her.  Maybe he could find her again in this world, and this time he wouldn’t have to run.

The beast lurched, snapping its membrane and sending him flying into the air, the sword still where it had impaled his foe.  He tried bracing his fall but he was too slow, and he crashed into the ground. Pain shot through his body. The beast dropped down onto its claws, scurrying towards him.  He turned and started running. He could see the tree, thought he could make out Charlotte.

“Tantalus,” the voice said again.  This time it wasn’t dead. It was whispered.  And he remembered something. Something from before.  

He faced the onrushing Beast.  He knew he had to let her go. But part of him, the biggest part of him that had been believing this whole time could not let it finish like this.  The beast lifted up a portion of its mass, a giant claw ready to smash him. But Argos was sliding now, down into the ground, along a tunneled chute of ice.  It curled upwards, and he was propelled into the beast’s belly. His hands latched onto the beast, eyes bursting everywhere as he clung for a handhold. He climbed towards the sword; finally finding its handle while the beast lurched back and forth.  With a great roar the beast let its pain known as Argos twisted the blade, making it bigger and bigger with each twist until he couldn’t turn it any more with two hands. He climbed upwards through the wound as the sword fell away; a giant hole tore clean through the beast.

The beast stumbled downward as Argos emerged onto its back, covered from head to toe--half crashing into the ground, the creature succumbed to its impending death and shuddered.

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Verse Eight: The Reality of it All

He was back in the tower where it all began.  Izari and Kaji were there. The chains that bound them would not let them free, no matter how much control they had.  For they were now--had always been--in his territory. In his mind.

And in his mind, he was the Dreamer.  In his mind he was King, no matter how much they had tried to convince him otherwise.

“I will say goodbye to her one last time.”  Kaji chattered unintelligibly. But Argos understood the meaning.  “A no would suffice.” With a swing of his sword and a moment of sadness, he cleaved the winged creature in half.

Izari buzzed furiously.

“You pulled her from my memories.  You made me remember. It is your fault that this collapsed.  You went a step too far.” Tantalus, he thought.  They had found the star together.  The furthest star from the center of the universe, the closest system to it’s edge.  Charlotte had never made the journey.

“You can stay with her.  It will not hurt, I promise.”  Izari buzzed rapidly. “It is real.  If you believe, it is as real as anything.  She will be exactly as you remember.”

“No.  I would not be able to face myself if I ran like that.”

Perhaps the creature could sense the change in him.  Could sense that this was a futile battle.

“I will grant this to you, but it is not a gift given freely.”

“Do it, and perhaps I will spare your existence.”  

She was there before him for an instant, their hands touching gently.

“I miss you Charlotte,” he said before she could.  “I’ll see you soon, love.” He studied her face and for what seemed like forever they held each other.  She tried to speak to him but her words were soundless. Time passed as suddenly as if he had been sleeping--an eternity ending suddenly and she faded from his embrace.  

The moment had been granted but Argos felt no mercy.  The sword he had given himself, cut through the air, a nervous buzz pleading for the blade to be stayed, but it kept its course, spreading severed tentacles across the floor.  And then he finally opened up to himself. Let himself acknowledge that all along he hadn’t questioned what was going on.

@@@

Eamon Vohn pulled himself free from the bed, even as his muscles fought against his brain’s commands.  His eyes saw a familiar symbol, bound scrolls surrounded by A.R.G.O.S. His first thoughts were of his crew.  Stumbling through the bowels of their ship, he linked his neural feed to find out what was going on.

Data began to bleed into his brain.  He froze, taking a sharp turn into the medical bay.  Immediately he found the mirror.

It was him--but not the him he remembered but the one he had seen in the bowels of the earth beneath Massa’dhia.  

The feed had not lied.  A decade had passed while he dreamed.  He was moving again, but not seeing the space before him, his mind trying to understand--why wasn’t he dead of malnourishment?  Why hadn’t his muscles atrophied. A noise broke the silence. He was screaming.

A bed.  Yema, sleeping soundly, her face angelic but it had aged since he had last seen her.  He grabbed her without thinking, shaking her and calling her name.

Again he froze, this time as his mind finally processed the strange, half-present shape laying on her chest and over her face, alternating between existence and unexistence.  

“Leave us alone!” Captain Vohn shouted.  His voice grew quiet and he heard himself mutter, “What do you want?

“Captain?”  The voice was panicked, but it was Yema’s.  “Captain? What..what happened to you?” She touched her face, and then grew pale as if her the dormant memories from her dreams were feeding on the blood and forcing themself into her mind.  

“I’m alright.  I think we’re all going to be okay.” He paused, forcing a smile, “A little older but a little wiser, too.”  A commander’s reassurance.

“Charlotte--everything she thought--we found it!”

Eamon smiled, remembering her waiting for him by a single tree.  “She was right. There’s life--and more--beyond Tantalus. Let us rouse the rest of the crew.”

Yema rubbed sleepy eyes.  “What kind of lifeforms…” her mind could not form the question fully.  “What then? How do we communicate with them?”

For a moment, he felt the weight of an axe in his hand, smooth wood, warm and reassuring.  “By Dreaming,” Argos said.

“By Dreaming,” Yema agreed.

###

 Dreams of Darkspace presents…

Fito’s Mind-Walking Device

All stories by Peter R. Heaton

The telegram read:

Come to-day.  Not to-night. MR.  

Montgomery’s lack of detail was not born of technological constraints.  I sighed, my mind distracted from my tasks for the remainder of the working hours.

After retiring from work, I delivered myself directly to Montgomery’s apartment.  There were days when I tired of his games; I had spent much of my recent years acclimating to his preferences. But Montgomery was in a tender spot, owing to the recent passing of Dr. Rodolfito L. Sanchez, formely employed at Royal Earlswood Hospital, whose death came by way of suicide.

Mrs. Wellsley, Montgomery’s second serving woman that month, saw me seated in Montgomery’s drawing room, and provided me with a cup of Earl Grey.  “Keep it down. You know how he gets. He’s working,” she jerked a thumb crudely at a row of black sheets blocking off the corner to the right of the fireplace.  I thanked her for the tea and sat there listening as the rain came down; a flaw in the construction of the building caused the room to echo with the rain’s assault.  Montgomery said it allowed him to concentrate.

Searching for some amusement, I reverted to my preferred method of passing time while waiting on Monty: fumbling my way through the odds and ends about the room.  For the trinkets on the mantle I took turns trying to place from where each had come.

These few pieces were only a small portion of Montgomery’s collection;  Dr. Sanchez, an expert in the budding field of Neurosurgery, was simply another kind of curios from his menagerie.  At least as Montgomery put it. But Bradley knew Dr. Sanchez and Montgomery had been closer than he would ever let on and his death, and certainly its method, would have driven the devil lingering within him to the surface.

Fito, as Montgomery preferred, had joined us many nights in this very room.  Dr. Sanchez regaling us with the latest in bleeding edge procedures. Thinking of the doctor roused my curiosity -- a dangerous thing considering Montgomery’s penchant for the grand reveal.  I took a few moments staring at the black curtains, uncertain of what I would find behind them.

The curtains parted, and my friend emerged.  A gasp escaped my lips; his face was gaunt, his cheeks shallow, his eyes puffy.

“I know, I know.” He said before I could speak.  “I can’t find a salve to reduce the bags.” He sat down in his chair, and began absently pulling at threads of fabric.  His eyes closed only to snap suddenly open.

“Burning the midnight oil?”

“An understatement, surely.”

“What is it this time?”

Silence for a moment, as I saw him try to formulate his response.  Until that moment, I thought I had already seen the man push himself to the limits both physically and mentally.

“Have you been eating?” I asked.

“Of course.  The brain needs fuel.”

I called for Mrs. Wellsley.

“Has he been eating?”

“No, Mr. Beaufort.  Not for two days now.”

“Christ, Monty!”

“I am not a child, Bradley.  I eat when I choose.  Just as I can choose not to eat.”

“Mrs. Wellsley, has he got any chicken? And bring some water –”

“Toast and coffee, please.” Montgomery interjected.

“As you would like Mr. Renaud.”

“One week Montgomery? And you successfully drive yourself into the ground?  Is it cocaine again?”

Montgomery scowled, his face lighting up briefly.  “That was for research!”

“Of course.” It would do no good to provoke him, even though I was tempted in his weakened state.

I chose to let him sulk, knowing that he would share with me only when he was ready.  It did not take long for him to get to the heart of the matter; fatigue from overuse of various drugs had likely weakened his mental state: “I was finally able to obtain Fito’s helmet.”

Dr. Sanchez had been working on an instrument with which thoughts and memories could be read from an apparatus and transmitted from that to the wearer of a connected helmet.  It was intended to help facilitate communication between Rodolfito and his mentally impaired patients.

“Please don’t tell me…” I said, rising in horror.  I strode towards the black curtains, and shrugged off Montgomery’s attempt to stop me.  Pulling one curtain back I saw a young man sedated, sitting in a chair. I feared Montgomery had taken a vagrant off the streets, but the strong odor emanated mostly from my friend, and the man was dressed well enough.  

Montgomery was at my shoulder.

“Have no fear, Bradley.  The man will be neatly compensated.”  And even better news – Fito’s Mind-Walking Device still works!”

@@@

Montgomery’s ‘assistant’ was roused from sleep, compensated and sent on his way.

“You will no doubt recall Elementary Road?”

The Mind-Walking Device sat on the coffee table between us.  It seemed to emit a low hum of life. A vague chill ran down my spine, as if I had been overtaken by a late fall breeze. The rain was coming in waves; droplets would take turns battering the roof, creating a rousing clamor in the room.   

“What of it?” I asked, raising my voice.  

“Ruth Emery was the woman who escaped, and eluded our pursuit.  As you may remember, I was certain she had been aided by some third party.  Well, it was months before I could track her down –”

“You told me you couldn’t!”

“I thought it would only serve to concern you.  Nothing could be done about it, for I discovered that she’d been sent off to Earlswood.”

“But Fito…”

“Indeed.  It is the very theoretics that Fito and I discussed in this room, powering that device.”  I stared down at the helmet. Unnoticed, a faint buzzing slipped subtly into my mind.

“He was able to experiment on the lost soul.  Better yet, Fito uncovered that her and her companion’s actions that night had been driven by some unknown benefactor!”   Montgomery was more excited than I had seen him in months. “This device is the key to fully realize the events of our first adventure!”  

“What did Fito learn?” I asked, somewhat aghast at my own interest.

“Shadows and whispers.  Nothing of susitence.”

“And you did not press him?” I doubted.

“He dared not repeat it.  His license, the whole practice was at too great a risk.”

I saw with horror where he was going.  If his facial features had been an intrument they would be the furious pounding of a hide drawn drum.  

I almost dared not speak it, for speaking it, I knew what he would say.  Another unnoticed buzz--an image, born subliminally: the primal chill of a depthless ocean.  A shudder--I hoped Montgomery had not noticed lest he think me weak of soul. “You want to get in the same room with her and that thing?”

“Of course!” he ejected. “I have already considered the particulars.  Take notice: we need only use the guise of a visit to our deceased friend’s office to slip into the asylum!  Once inside, it should be relatively easy for us to find Ms. Emery. I myself am an amateur psychologist and should have no problem posing as a visiting medical dignitary!” A tempest had washed over Montgomery.  For a brief moment I saw naught but the white of his eyes. The rain had again grown to a clamor, and so too did I perceive a more violent issuing of white noise from the device; Montgomery began to spasm violently until he tumbled from his chair.

“Mrs. Wellsley!  Send for Doctor Heath immediately!”

Grabbing a strange wooden cylinder from off the mantelpiece, I turned my friend over.  With some struggling I was able to position the cylinder between Montgomery’s clenched teeth.

@@@

Doctor Heath prescribed five days of bed rest and an intensive regimen of fluids.  With the help of Mrs. Wellsley’s watchful eye, we were able to keep Montgomery bed ridden for two.  The vitality had returned to his face; his beady eyes once again held their keen edge, his fair skin had regained its ever-so-slight ruddiness, and his presence was calm and contained.  Immediately he insisted upon action, declaring we would set off to Earlswood immediately.

“Tut, tut, Bradley.  Your fawning is appreciated but this has merely been another stone stepped.”

“I don’t see how–”

“I have furthered my understanding of my own physical limits.  When we are pushed to the edge our survival can hinge on such knowledge.”

“Perhaps you can warn me next time you conduct that experiment.”

“It is cruel of me to play loosely with your own concern.  For that I apologize.” I was taken aback by Montgomery’s apology.  I stammered for a moment, until my friend rescued me from further discomfort.  “You should be surprised, Bradley.  It is too often I take our friendship for granted.  Now stop stuttering and let us turn back to the matter at hand.”

“I think we should wait until to-morrow.”

“And why is that?”

“I have not been bedridden these past few days.  And while keeping an eye on you is a task itself, I was able to do my own investigating thanks to Mrs. Wellsley.  On Saturdays the hospital is half-staffed.”

“That is quite helpful.”  He considered me for a few moments.  “I would not put it past you to tell me this lie on account of my health.”

I frowned.  “You wound me, Monty, for thinking I might care for you that much.”

“To-morrow it is then.  Near dusk, when they have staff turnover.  And let us hope your intelligence proves true.”

We spent the next hour enjoying our pipes, which Montgomery packed with unequaled deftness.  Even with the curtains drawn Montgomery kept the drawing room dimly lit. Montgomery and I sat in our accustomed positions but this night was different because Fito’s Mind-Walking Device bristled between us.  

“How did you get a hold of it?” The background noise returned as easily as a glove slipped onto a hand, a thing so gentle that it faded away at the merest thought toward it.

“I would save you from the incrimination for now, Bradley.  All you need know is that there it sits between us.”

My eyesight wavered briefly; either that or the thing was humming, vibrating rapidly on the table.  I blinked and the moment passed. I observed Montgomery to see if he had noticed, but my companion was now deep in his own thoughts.  I took the quilt that was draped over my chair, and covered Fito’s invention.

The London rain had come sporadic over the last week, but I supposed that as here I was in Montgomery’s drawing room, so too should it be out there, as that was how it had come to be of late.  I observed it for a while, the way the rain carelessly tossed aside found paths for new, the way the tiny pellets played on puddles in the thoroughfare, lit gently by gaslight.

The soothing tableau lulled me, standing, into a dreamy state; Nature’s tender song my swaddle.  I felt my body relax, hypnotized. A crescendo was growing--I sensed it more than heard it. I opened my eyes.  The humming was returning. The rain roared. I glanced at Montgomery to see if he had stirred at all. Then, drawn by some unknown force, I looked back to the window.

The rivets on the window had disappeared in a near cascade.  A face appeared in the window, born in water. It countenance an angry sneer.  Half of the face was pocked, impressing upon me the image of some horrible skin disorder.

“Bradley.”

Montgomery’s voice startled me.  The visage, if it had truly existed, was gone.  I looked at Montgomery and then at the Mind-Walking Device.

“We need to destroy this thing Monty.”

“It unsettles you?”

“Something doesn’t seem right about it.”

“Something?”

I became sheepish.  “Like it is alive.”

“There had been a supposition I suggested to Fito…”

“And?” I said, surprised there had been no admonishment.

“It was dismissed by the fact that our intended use of the device would not allow us to avoid it, if indeed it were true.”

“And that is?”

“Someone with a knowledge of the occult, might find their way into the device.  Like a chamber for the mind and soul.  And perhaps further, that there could be some transmission across it.  The other way.”

“Ruth.”

“Yes.  She certainly has the knowledge.”

“You think she caused his suicide.”

“I’d endeavored to determine that, yes.  Something you will now know you interrupted.”

“Using some poor sap!”

“The poor sap was paid.  And happy to do it.”

“You will promise me when we are done, that you will destroy it?”

“Appropriate safeguards will be put into place –”

“No Montgomery.  Tell me it will be destroyed for good.”

“Surely you understand the scientific value this instrument holds!”

“I do.  But not everything is meant for our understanding.”

“Yes, yes, Bradley.” He took a moment to pack our pipes.  Gesturing, a cherry cooly glowing in the pipe’s bowl, he finally said: “We have a gentleman's agreement.  When we have come to the conclusion of these events we will destroy the instrument and you shall have no complaint from me.”

@@@

There was more of an air of death hanging over the Royal Earlswood Hospital than of hope.  The hedges and plants lining the exterior gave off a vibrant hue of green, suggesting health and care, and indeed the healthy parts were as brilliant as any, but under closer examination decay was just as abundant.  The hospital clerk, recognizing Montgomery, offered his condolences for our departed friend. I carried a large briefcase, which contained the disassembled Mind-Walking Device.

“Dr. Sanchez was a good man.  A bit of an odd ball, but he was always kind to me.  We miss him around here. I’ll show you to his office.  We still haven’t cleaned it out. I’m sure there’s been some rummaging through his stuff, but only for hospital matters. ”  He motioned to the briefcase. “You are here to grab something?”

“Some matters relating to his estate.  Paperwork, and a few mementos for his next of kin.”

We were led through the reception area, through the nurses’ quarter, past the patient rooms, and out through the yard.  In the yard we were at the mercy of the rain, and assumed a quick pace to the Doctors’ House. The building sat on a rise, giving a commanding view of the entire complex.   The Doctors’ House was no house at all, but a large building containing offices for the hospital’s senior staff, along with a kitchen, lounge, and library.

As we strode through the halls, our feet echoed eerily off the floor.  “Sorry, it seems like it’s noisier in here when the building’s empty than when the doctors are around.”

“There’s no one here?” Montgomery asked, trying not to sound too pleased.

“Most of the doctor’s go home to their families on the weekend.”  The clerk paused before a door in the southeast quarter. “Well, here we are.  Dr. Sanchez worked a lot of late nights. I’d put down a hefty wager that he slept here more often than not.”  Montgomery tested the knob. It was locked.

The man fumbled at his belt.  “Forgot, I have the key here somewhere.”

“You mentioned some of the Doctor’s things may have been gone through?  Did you ever catch anyone?” I asked.

The clerk shrugged as he fumbled with his key ring.

Montgomery grew visibly agitated.  “A little snooping can be overlooked but if anything of value is missing, we will take the matter to the police.”

“Found it,” the clerk said. His face had paled slightly.  In a quiet voice he continued, not daring to face either of us, “the Doctor was absent minded.  He used to always leave stuff around. Money too. He made a good wage so he never noticed. Some of the staff thought he’d have some holed up in his office somewhere.  Never found anything.”

“What about you?”

“Look, it’s been two months. No one had come for his things.”

“You assumed incorrectly.”

“I found five quid in his left hand draw.  I still got it. You can have it back though.  I’ll…I’ll bring it in at my next shift –”

“Leave the keys and we’ll lock up behind us.  You can keep the five quid and your secret.” Montgomery spoke evenly, his agitation abated.

The clerk fidgeted with the keys, debating.  His face was undoubtedly boyish, but I suspected he was not much younger than I.  “Here take them. Make sure you bring them back. Two hours. No later.”

Montgomery nodded his agreement and snatched the keys from the clerk.  We entered Fito’s room, and it was clear there had been snooping. A wide window filled the far wall, and I could see the clerk slowly disappearing in the rainy haze.

“Lucky for this weather, looks like it’s driven all the old bones home.  And lucky that, no need to use your inspired plan. All those drugs consumed--”

“Enough Bradley,” Montgomery snorted, lighting the desk lamp.  “It has also inspired me to change course. I will set up the instrument here.  You will retrieve Ruth Emery and bring her here.”

“And if for some reason she refuses to listen?”

“There’s something for that,” Montgomery said with an evil grin, procuring two glass syringes marked clearly with colored ink stains.  “The red one will sedate her if she proves unruly, and the blue one should rouse her if she proves too medicated to move. Now Fito, tell us where she is.”

After getting some grasp for the doctor’s organizational habits, I finally tracked down his patient files.

“A121,” I said triumphantly waving the paperwork.  Montgomery tossed me the keys. I placed the briefcase on the desk.

“I will see you shortly,” Montgomery said as he began to remove the instrument from the case.  A crackling tickled my ears as I closed the door.

@@@

Navigating the simple route of the two orderlies was an easy task.  Thankfully the keys for the patients were clearly marked. With all concern for stealth, I opened the door and slipped inside.

Before me, half slumped in the bed, was Ruth Emery.  I edged around the bed to get a good look at her. Yes! I could not forget the severely slender nose, the eyes pinched too close together. They opened, as if she sensed my presence.  Grabbing the red marked syringe I moved quickly to inject her with the sedative. Our eyes met then, awkwardly, and I stopped, the needle hovering just above her arm.

It had been years ago that I had last seen Ruth Emery, just before she slipped out of a cloud of sulfur and into the night.  They had promised me something then, revenge perhaps, but they had been different – full of life and energy.

The eyes I was staring into were dull and vacant.

@@@

It seemed an eternity, but I had navigated Ruth Emery into the Doctors’ House with only a few setbacks.  Stairs had proven a difficulty and being slick with water had only furthered my frustration. We made our way through the empty building, led by the echoing of our steps; my own which seemed to thunder down the empty halls and those of Ruth Emery, a quiet, squeaking, shuffle.

I tried the door to Fito’s office, but found it locked.  Thinking I had erred, I tried the others surrounding it. They were open but filled with naught but lonely shadows.  I heard something then: the screaming of some wild beast, a forlorn sound only slightly muffled by the door and the faint heartbeat of the storm.  Another screech issued forth, one that tore harshly at my soul. It seemed more than noise -- it had some uncertain effect upon my person; my body was moving as if I were being dragged through molasses. I barely noticed that Ruth had stirred from her slumber in response to the screams: she was clutching her hands desperately to her ears.

Through the invisible pile of muck that slowed my body down I tried for the door.  My mind struggled to comprehend; it was as if the very physics of the universe had shifted.  Hands stretched forward but reached sideways. The floor was skewed; it door leaned away as I drew closer.  Ruth should have been within reach, but she was cowering at the far end of an unending hallway. I felt glass in my hand, something sharp with a pointy end.  It was marked, but the color blurred and shifted: red then purple then blue then black then white, pausing long enough at each color to convince me that it was the reality of it.

Something was screaming at me, telling me to be certain of the color.  No clarity came to my vision. I took one syringe and hovered over my other arm.  They were feet apart, a world apart, impossibly bending away from one another. I was jabbing now, and something wet and sticky, and gray and white and purple appeared on my arm.

Then I felt the warmth of real contact.  I struggled to depress the plunger, fighting to overcome the force of friction between glass syringe and glass stopper.  The noise was still present, leering over me like an angry father, eyes full of physical intent; the incessant scream from behind the door refused to end.

The plunger depressed.  I felt…warmth spreading from my arm.  The sound ended abruptly. I stood before the door, with Ruth Emery shrinking by my side.  It had been an hour? A minute? A second? Tearing the syringe free from my arm, I put my shoulder into the door.  My heart raced and my muscles were eager to act.

For the moment the screaming had ended, but muted sounds still issued from behind the door. Then I remembered the keys.  I fumbled through them trying to remember what it had looked like.

I felt Ruth’s hand on mine.  I braced to protect myself from a blow that never came.  She was sorting through the keys, observing them through her dead eyes.  She held one up. I took it and inserted it into the lock. The door gave way.  

The lamp had been extinguished.  The sky outside was dark, cloud riddled, offering little illumination.  Two shapes sat at the other side of the desk. The humming of the Mind-Walking Device washed over me; the source of that terrible noise that had stunned me in the hallway.  Now, it was like the pull of something long since forgotten, something that had never despaired of being heard.

Forgetting Ruth, I rushed over to the desk.  A stranger sat opposite Montgomery, unmoving.  There was the faintest hint of familiarity--I remembered a face in water and glass.  The figure’s ears were smoking; not something heavy and thick, but a mist, barely perceivable in the darkness, that crept languidly from the each orifice.  Montgomery was on the receiving end of the device, his head lolled awkwardly to one side, his face half hidden beneath the dome.  Drool had gathered at the corner of his mouth.

In a panic I removed the device.  Screaming as loud as I could, I gave all effort into rousing him.  Without realizing it I was slapping him, shaking him. Anything my mind perceived to be a potential solution.  The slightest touch pulled me from my delirium. Ruth had removed the other end of the device from the stranger and pushed it into my hands.

“If you want to save him,” she croaked.  Her voice was strained and odd. As if it were multiple voices struggling to sound.  I took the Mind-Walking Device from Ruth Emery, and she collapsed to the floor.

I placed the receiving portion onto Montgomery’s head and donned the helmet.

@@@

Waves that were not waves, but manifested as such, battered me on all sides.   I was stranded in some cosmic ocean, fighting for each breath. There was rain because I could not remember it not raining.  There was splashing nearby and I saw something that could be Montgomery dragged under the water.  

It was then that I noticed leathery tendrils, thicker than trunks of fir, slapping at the water.  I felt it -- him -- beneath the waves.  I swam as hard as I could to the spot where Montgomery had disappeared.  Avoiding the tendrils as they came down to smack the water, I saw a shape beneath the water’s surface.  Driving as much oxygen into my lungs as I could I dove downward, not even trying to comprehend what I was doing or where I was--one of the first tricks Montgomery had taught me, panic-avoidance, he had coined it; and I knew too, that there was only insanity waiting to answer those questions.  

My hand found a foot.  A leg. I could feel Montgomery’s presence.  Alive. I pulled and pulled but we were only dragged deeper and deeper below.  The sea became a blackness. An impenetrable thing, the void left when the soul is gone.  I felt for the tendrils, pulled at them, trying to release Monty from the creature’s grasp.

There was nothing to see, nothing to do but grope blindly and tug and pull at anything that was not Montgomery.  Deeper we went. My arms burned. My legs burned. I found a claw around his throat. It would not let go.

The burning had transferred to my lungs.

It was in that desperate moment that the idea came.  I imagined the blade in my hand, and with what strength I had left, swung at the place where I thought the claw would be.  

@@@

I woke to screaming, and after a few moments realized it was my own.  A heavy sweat clung to my forehead and my eyebrows and a chill had buried down into my soul.  Monty was lying on the floor a few feet from me, breathing shallowly. The Device was scattered between us; somehow it had become detached.  It still thrummed with an evil sentience and with one hand I pushed it as far away as my strength would allow. My head pounded with each emitted vibration.

Something thick and slimy curled up my leg and held tightly.  With a cry I slapped at the phantasm until the pain from my blows shook me free of my nightmare’s echoes.  I crawled over to Montgomery. He stirred, and groaned and then began a fit of coughing, water gurgling out with each terrible effort.

I was only able to watch; my brain fuzzy, unable to concentrate.  Finally the fit ended and Montgomery somehow managed a frown.

“Bradley,” he choked out, “where is he?”

In my stupor I had forgotten the man sitting in the chair opposite.  I could still see his shadowed figure and the streams of smoke drifting out his head.  A shot of adrenaline renewed me for a moment, and I sat up in alarm. The room was empty save the still body of Ruth Emery.

“He’s gone.”

The sound of something dragging itself reached my ears from the hallway.  I rose to my feet with the intent to pursue the noise, but tripped over Ruth Emery’s body and crashed to the floor.  

Behind me I heard Montgomery rise up.  He stumbled over toward me.

“Ruth is dead,” he said and there was sadness in his voice.

Confused, and uncertain of what was going on, “She helped me,” I muttered.

“It was not her.”

I sat up, leaning against the desk.  “Then who?” But as I said it, I finally understood the emotion that dared take hold of him.  

“Fito, of course.”

And he did not have to tell me why; the machine’s humming grew for a moment and so too did the aching in my head.  Outside the rain rose to a clamor, threatening to beat its way through the brick walls.

Montgomery helped me to my feet.  I seated myself, trying to fight through the mental haze.  In silence Montgomery gathered the instrument and returned it to the briefcase.  I watched, able to think of nothing but the taste of seawater. Unseen things brushed against me, and I twitched with each touch.  Something unmentionable had perched itself within me, and for a moment I had to fight the urge to leap at Montgomery and beat him with the nearest blunt object.  I shuddered visibly, but Montgomery seemed not to notice.

“Gather up her body,” he commanded.  I wanted to ask him what we would do with her, but the rage within me was growing to nearly uncontrollable levels, and I spent all my strength to fight it down.

“Go ahead.  I need a few minutes.”

Montgomery glanced at me curiously, as if he intended to wait.  “You’ll need help with the body.”

“Go!” I screamed.

Montgomery nodded, and left without another word.  The urging within me crested. I rose from my seat and managed to slam the door shut.  What happened next I cannot remembering doing, but I remember watching helplessly as I uttered things incomprehensible.  Wood splintered against the walls, books flew threw the air, their pages fluttering in flight, red dripped from a dozen cuts in my arm as I bashed and pounded, tore and slammed.

Finally the rage waned.  I did not think -- could not think of what I had done or why.  If I could ignore it perhaps it would find itself unwanted and leave me.  Another thing I pushed away, unable to consider it. These techniques I shall teach you, are both a gift and a curse, Bradley.  Do not forget that.  He had warned me.  One could only bury so much before it began to leak back out.

Slinging Ruth’s body over my shoulder, I carried her out of the Doctors’ House.

I fought with the corpse down the steps into the yard.  The rain pelted me, but it felt good, cleansing. The sweat washed from my body, I staggered to the patients’ quarter.  Montgomery waited inside.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so.  What should we do with her?”

His eyes met mine and there was an understanding.  “I’ll distract the orderlies. You still have the keys?”

I panicked briefly, until my free hand felt the weight of the keys in my pants’ pocket.  I nodded.

“Dump her back in her room and dry her off as best as you can.”

Montgomery disappeared into the halls and after a few minutes I heard the sound of conversation.  I didn’t remember much of what happened after. I remembered tucking Ruth into her bed, as she had been when I first saw her.  I remembered Montgomery speaking with the orderlies and thanking them for their help. But what I could not help seeing was a terrible face born in rivets of water, a sneer on its face.  It followed me back to Montgomery’s where it finally receded into the shadows of my subconscious.

I was in Montgomery’s guest room with my friend standing above me.

“We will talk tomorrow Bradley.  Now you should get some rest.”

No, I thought.  I knew the nightmare that waited for me.  But there was nothing else to do. I would surrender to sleep soon.  I made no response and Montgomery shut the door.

I cannot recall how many times I woke that night screaming, the feeling of writhing tentacles suffocating my body.

@@@

When I finally woke to sunlight, I changed into the clothes Ms. Wellsly had laid out for me.  I stumbled out into Montgomery’s drawing room. He was huddled in his chair, pulling absently at the strands hanging from the armrests.  A cup of Earl Grey awaited me along with a plate of three eggs, three strips of bacon cooked to a perfect crisp, a bar of dark chocolate and a few orange wedges.

The briefcase was on Montgomery’s coffee table.  I cursed silently; a tinkling had reached my ears like the ominous pealing of mourning bells.

“I know you prefer tea to coffee,” Montgomery said.

The rain had finally quit but water still collected in dirty puddles out in the street.  The few people brave enough to venture out were splashing through the thoroughfare. I kept waiting for some hideous thing to form itself on the panes of the window, but it never materialized.  Somehow, the threat was worse.

Eventually I addressed the object, fearing Montgomery had changed his mind.  “Are we going to destroy it?”

Montgomery hesitated, taking a long sip of his coffee. And then: “Even if I did not think I should, I made a promise.”  He rose and removed the instrument from the briefcase. He detached the leads from it, and laid it out on the floor. Rummaging around in one corner he produced a cricket club and handed it to me.  “I cannot imagine I would derive more pleasure from breaking the Device into a thousand pieces than you.”

“Fito?” I asked.

Montgomery shrugged, pushing the club into my hands and turning towards the window.  Without a moment’s hesitation I began swinging the bat violently into the helmet. It dented with each swing, and I had a brief moment of horror when I thought it would refuse to die.  And then, suddenly, it cracked into two pieces. I did not stop until there was a pile of broken metal at my feet.

The pealing stopped.  Montgomery called Mrs. Wellsley to clean up the mess.

When she had left he took up his accustomed place, and lit his pipe.  He offered the tobacco pouch to me but I declined.

“Who was the stranger?”

“His name would mean nothing to you, for it is only a thing he wears; something that is cast off and replaced as easily as a hat.  But what I can tell you is he is a man not unlike myself. For years he has walked the fine line between the real and the occultus, but unlike you or I, he was taken by the darkness that surrounded him.  Corrupted by it, you might say. It was the events of Elementary Road that had been my first attempt at discovering him, and killing him if given the opportunity.”

“Sounds a dangerous man.”

“There is nothing more dangerous than a learned man who has taken sides with the Devil.”

“Will we pursue him?”

“We have no means to, no place to start.  There will be, I do not doubt that but I will not know until the time has come.  Undoubtedly he was among the Doctors of Earslwood but will have disappeared now, just as has done before.”

“I’m sorry Monty.  I’m sorry we had to destroy it.”

He nodded, closing his eyes and taking a long pull on his pipe.  “We should both take some solace in knowing that Rodolfito’s murderer is dead even if there will never be any physical evidence of the crime.”

The silence of contemplation followed. I wondered what gnawed at my friend more: the idea that along with the device, we had also destroyed all that remained of his friend? or was it losing access to the secrets the device might uncover and, too, losing his only lead to his nameless adversary?  

I resolved to push the events relating to the Mind-Walking Device out of my mind; hoping that the shadow perched on my soul would be banished to that unknown oblivion where all forgotten things reside.

I was not so naive to believe the lies I told myself but neither was I too stupid to stop telling them.

###