by John Pelan
I sat on the floor, extricating the book from my ore bag. It seemed even more repugnant than when I'd held it in the tent the night before. Perhaps the moist air penetrated its cover, or maybe the environment—my heightened senses—affected me, but the tome felt heavier, more gruesome.
“How much oil do you have for your lamp, Montgomery?” I knew exactly how much he had: no more than half an hour's worth.
Rocks rattled on the floor. He grunted in pain. I imagined he was trying to remove the fall. Had he seen the cavern at Ber-nice's end? Even a man of limited imagination might conjure up a monster from such a place, and Montgomery was far from limited. I wondered, too, if the bad air had cleared out. The air's movement was brisk enough, but there could still be patches. If they were concentrated enough, they might render him unconscious, possibly kill him.
The book rested on my lap. My single candle cast enough illumination for me to see a few feet of tunnel back to the shaft. All tunnels look the same when you are by yourself. The walls around glow with light, the tiny minerals catching the flame, reflecting it in glisters, but the light fails so soon, and the circle's middle, the tunnel's center stretching in both directions, is darkness like an eye's pupil, surrounded with color, centered in black.
I began reading the words. Somehow they were different underground. Even a rational man like myself can be affected by the mine's solitude, by odd echoes and tinkly drips tapping into unseen pools. Any miner can tell you that a mine is not a quiet place. The silence itself creaks.
“What is that you say?” Montgomery shouted. He sounded frightened and continued to struggle. Stones clattered on his side.
I spoke a bit louder. For this to work, he had to hear what I was reading and realize what it was. The sentences hurt my throat. Saying them was like vomiting.
When I reached the spell's end, I started over.
I finished the second time; there was no sound on the other side. Either Montgomery was resting, or he was listening. He'd said to me once, Plant an imp in a man's head, and he'll walk always in darkness. If he was scared to the bone, so scared he'd flee the mines, then his men would be safe.
“Is that the Spanish book?” he yelled.
I took up the chant. Somehow it was easier to say now, and the rhythm fell more naturally.
“Don't read from that one, Jonas! It's not safe, Jonas!” He swore vehemently.
My eyes no longer strained to see the words on the page. Without stopping, I looked up. The candle flamed brighter, unnaturally radiant, and the wax gave way before the assault. It wouldn't last a minute at that rate. Shaking, I drew another from the bag. When lit, it, too, burned like phosphorous. By the light of the twin suns, the pages became transparent, and the text hung suspended, all the words visible at once, but it didn't matter; I wasn't reading anymore. My voice became powerful, not rny own, and the spell boomed the tunnel's length.
Montgomery screamed through the stone, his imprecations no longer coherent.
Then, suddenly, all became still. The chanting stopped; I did not stop it. It was as if a presence that had taken me had left. Montgomery cut off a curse in mid-utterance. Since I'd entered Bernice, the candles' flame had bent toward the entrance as the breeze exited the mountain. Now they stood straight up. Then they tilted the other way, as if a new tunnel had opened on Montgomery's side, pulling greedily at the air.
Something was coming.
Montgomery screamed again, a pathetic whine like a kicked mongrel.
“Let me out, boy! Let me out, you goddamned nigger!”
The wind pushed at my back and whistled through the rubble. Whatever lived on the other side drew everything toward it. Fine sand peppered my neck, then disappeared into the broken rock. The first candle went out.
Fear gripped me. The entirety of my being demanded I run away. I felt it in my muscles and bones, an instinctive aversion, but I forced myself to stay. The thing that approached could not be of this world. I imagined it rising from the cavity, flowing into the opening I'd made, filling the small shaft. By lamplight, what did Montgomery see? He uttered a nonhuman screech, then a soggy gasp. Green-limb snapping. Hollow slurping, and Montgomery continued to scream, a mindless, noisy babble.
Finally, there were only wet noises. Moist rippings. Damp slaps.
Rocks slipped from the top of the pile, and the jumbled stack lurched toward me. Twelve feet of rock, four feet wide and high, chocked tightly against the mine's wall slid a foot toward me. There were two or three tons of rock blocking the mine, and it moved!
Frantically, I turned and scrambled down the tunnel on all fours, stood too soon, whapped my head against the ceiling, reeled from wall to wall until I collapsed at the mouth of the tunnel. Behind me, rocks tumbled. The thing beyond was dismantling the blockage. I reached the bucket and climbed in. Weakly I pulled the bell cord twice and prayed that Charlie Crump could pull me up before the thing from the mountain broke through.
No trip in my life was ever longer. As the bucket crept up the shaft; the wind vacuumed me back, whistling by. Slowly, ever so slowly the light at the surface grew larger, while every second I expected a clawed hand or a tentacle to drape itself over the edge, and when I reached the top, I didn't talk to Charlie. Instead, I staggered up the slope to the powder cache.
The explosion shook the entire valley.
By the time I made my way to the tents, a crowd had gathered, a hundred miners, picks resting on their shoulders or shovels at their sides, expecting to hear the news.
“Was anyone in the mine?” someone shouted. “Do they need rescuing?”
I must have presented quite a picture. Blood from the bump on my head streaked my face, my fine coat was torn. Dark smudges marked my white shirt, from starched collar to the belt. They waited for my answer.
“The colonel was in the dig, but no one is alive,” I said, finally. “There's no mine left.”
Shaking their heads, they slowly dispersed. Soon only the Idaho Springs sheriff stood there, his hands deep in his unwashed pockets.
“I came by today to talk to Montgomery,” he said. “Don't seem like I'll get the chance now.” No purpose was reflected in eyes shaded under his hat, and I didn't care why he had come. My hands started quivering. My legs lost their strength. I sat on the ground. He sat beside me. A hundred yards downhill, Clear Creek roiled in sullen, muddy, sun-drenched muttering.
“Nobody will miss the bastard,” he said.
I tucked my head between my knees, on the verge of sickness. I'd left a monster in the mines. Poor Montgomery. I'd only meant to scare him. What would happen when the next prospector broke through into the cavity? Did the lurker on the threshold always wait there, or did it only appear when someone read the spell? Had it gone back to the nether regions past the stars that Cervantes's book talked about? I could still hear it pulling rocks down, coming toward me.
In the meantime the sun pressed like a warm kiss on my shoulders. The sheriff sat with his hands wrapped round the top of his hobnailed boots.
Finally he said, “Guess you'll have to find another employer. Don't know what luck you'll have, being you are… what was it you said you were again?”
I looked up. There are awful things in the world, beneath it, beyond it. The sheriff waited for an answer. I'd thought of him as uneducated, unwashed, white American, but now his fingers laced firmly across his boots, and his hat shaded curious eyes. He had arms, legs, and a familiar torso. Our differences were small. Whatever he was, he wasn't claws or tentacles or a rending thing that rose when called. He wasn't a part of the real invisible empire.
“I'm human,” I said.
A VICTORIAN POT DRESSER
L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims
The girl took a deep breath to steady her nerves before approaching the room. Sixteen years old and dressed in a simple white cotton shift, she looked virginal, which appearance was accurate. Her long brown hair had been washed and brushed until it shone in the gaslight. Tonight she had been allowed a bath and
, as she lifted her hand to knock on the door, she could smell the delicately perfumed soap on her skin.
Luxuries such as baths were rare in her home, an orderly institution run with a pious hand by her father, the village rector, who preached that cleanliness came from within and only by absolute devotion to God would purity be attained.
But the entire day had been special. She was awakened at five o'clock, when all the other family members were still asleep. The rector's wife, who had married him shortly after the death of the girl's natural mother, took her downstairs to the kitchen, and, instead of the usual breakfast of thin broth supplemented with a wedge of dry bread, she was given two boiled eggs with bread cut thinly and spread liberally with butter. This, she thought, as she dipped a piece of bread into the creamy yellow yolk, is true extravagance. Since then she had been spoiled to an extent that exceeded all her birthday treats and surpassed even the extravagances occasionally enjoyed at Christmas.
Now it was early evening, with the shimmers of dusk masking the onset of darkness. She rapped on the stout oak door with her knuckles.
“Enter,” said a voice from within.
She opened the door and stepped into the gloomy interior of the rector's study.
McQueen led me through the labyrinthine aisles between the furniture stacked high in his cavernous warehouse.
“I think I might just have something to appeal to you,” he said, glancing back over hs shoulder at me.
“You said that last week,” I said. “And I wasted a two-hour drive getting down here for nothing.” The dust in the place was swirling through the air, playing havoc with my sinuses. It added to my sense of irritation.
“Well, we've done a couple of houses since then, and an auction over Dorchester way. Picked up a few choice pieces.”
Billy McQueen, like his father before him, specialized in house clearances —buying furniture and other household items for a pittance and selling them on at a high markup. He dealt mostly with the antique trade and, over the years, had built up a thriving business. Some of the finest pieces of furniture that graced the halls and rooms of some of the grandest houses in the local area had sat gathering dust in the McQueen warehouse at one time 01 another. For antiques dealers and for interior designers like me the place was a treasure trove, but to let McQueen know it would do serious damage to our wallets.
We reached the end of an aisle and turned right into another, this one featuring mainly bedroom furniture.
“Now what do you think of this?” McQueen had stopped beside an art deco dressing table—a nice piece, classic deco style, finished in a swirling walnut veneer.
“Very nice,” I said. “Can you move those?” I said, pointing to the wardrobes that leaned against one another in precarious support behind the dressing table.
Without hesitation McQueen put his shoulder to one of the obscuring pieces of furniture and pushed it aside. It looked as if my suspicions were about to be confirmed and I felt a tingle in my fingertips. It was a familiar feeling, one I always get when I come across a piece of furniture that's exactly right for my purposes. They need not be valuable pieces, or rare, not even antique, so long as they are right.
The second wardrobe squealed and grinded its way across the concrete floor, and the hidden gem was revealed in all its glory.
“Victorian pot dresser,” McQueen said. “Brought it in on Wednesday.”
A thick layer of dust covered its richly polished oak, and spiders' webs hung from the intricate carvings of corn dollies. The centerpiece, an elaborately carved effigy of a Green Man, was coated with grime, years of wax polish and dust mingling to form a crust that obscured the finer details and flattened the wrinkles and lines, giving it a bland, almost featureless appearance. There were three drawers, all decorated with engraved German silver escutcheons depicting rural scenes. These held the handles, fashioned from the same metal and worked to represent twisted stalks of wheat.
A half-eaten sandwich sat on the dresser in its plastic container, the ham looking decidedly green, the bread showing signs of extreme distress. “Don't you ever clean this place?” I said critically.
“ ‘Pile it high and never dust.’ That's what the old man used to say. The punters like it like this. Makes them feel they're getting a bargain, no matter how much they pay over the odds for it. Now what do you think of the dresser?” He didn't mention that he had stretched his father's concepts a little with a website for the business and sales done over the Internet, as well.
What I thought was that the dresser was exactly right for the kitchen of the house I was currently working on. However, there was no chance I was going to let McQueen know it. “It's okay.” I strived for enigmatic nonchalance.
“Six hundred,” he said.
I started to walk away, back down the aisle, returning my interest to the art deco dressing table. As diversionary tactics go it wasn't that original. I doubt McQueen was fooled for a moment, but he expected me to play the game. Victorian pot dressers don't come up on the market that often. Over the years they have been used for all manner of purposes in people's houses, but they were originally designed and built to store and display pots. Which was precisely why its place in the kitchen I was currently creating was important to me.
“Five-fifty. That's my bottom line.” Suddenly he looked distracted. He turned his head to one side and cupped a hand to his ear. “Can you hear music? Sounds like someone playing an organ.”
I ignored him for a moment, then, with a frown, faced him again. “It's not original,” I said. “And no, I can't hear a thing.”
McQueen looked affronted. “Now, Colin, don't try pulling that one. Of course it's an original. It's got a maker's label, and the original bill oi sale is in one of those drawers. So don't give me the old it's-a-fake cobblers.”
He pulled at one of the drawers, grasped a piece of paper lying within, and then swore heatedly. The hand he held in the air for my inspection dripped blood from a ragged gash on the knuckles. Blood smeared the dusty surface of the dresser.
“Here, take this.” He thrust the paper into my hand. “I'm going to find a sticking plaster.”
I walked back over to the dresser and studied it again. It was tall, more than six feet high. “I didn't say it was a fake. I just said it wasn't original. Victorian pot dressers were made without a back to the shelves. This one has a back, and if you look closely you can see that there is still sap seeping from one of the knots. Ergo, it's not original. Two hundred.”
I was concerned the blood would mark the wood, so I put the paper into my jacket pocket and took out a handkerchief and leaned over to wipe the dresser clean. But the surface of the wood was untouched. It was still covered in dust, still as grimy as before, but the blood had gone, without leaving a mark, as if it had soaked into the wood.
“Five hundred, and that's my last word.” McQueen was back.
The bargaining went on for another ten minutes until we agreed on a price that suited me. With an agreement to have the dresser delivered the next day, I left McQueen grumbling into his beard. I had no sympathy for him, as both he and I knew that he'd made a healthy profit from the deal. As I climbed into my car he was standing in the doorway of his warehouse, head to one side again, hand again cupping his ear. Then he shook his head and disappeared back into the gloom.
Sally Roberts lived in a fashionable part of Islington; in a large, three-story Edwardian house in a quiet mews, which she shared with her husband, Milos, a Czech emigre theatre director, and two Irish wolfhounds called Gielgud and Richardson. It was she who had commissioned me to design her a new kitchen and dining room. I arrived at the house early the next morning so I could prepare the kitchen for the arrival of the dresser. Sally greeted me at the door with Richardson, who nuzzled the pocket of my jacket, sniffing out a roll of mints, the tidbits I had been feeding the dogs throughout the duration of my work at the house.
Sally, as always, looked freshly scrubbed; her English rose complexion flawless and beautif
ul, all this without a hint of makeup and at seven-thirty in the morning. It was a face that had made her the darling of the tabloid press and society magazines during her brief but sensational career as a fashion model. She had retired from the catwalk at thirty when she met and fell in love with Milos, but even now, five years later, she would have no trouble launching a comeback. Not that she had any desire to. She loved domestic life and was more than happy to plav the devoted wife to the man who had stolen her heart.
I followed Sally through to the kitchen. In my absence the day before the electrician had been there to finish wiring the lights and to fit the industrial-size oven chosen by Milos in order to indulge his culinary enthusiasms. The kitchen, as I had designed it, was an eclectic mixture of old and new: an antique pine refectory table with matching settles occupied a place in the center of the quarry-tiled floor, setting off the sleek, modern designs of the cooker, the fridge, and other appliances.
I learned a long time ago that the key to good interior design is sympathetic lighting. I held my breath as I flicked the switch down, praying that my plans for the lights in the kitchen would live up to expectations. I was not disappointed. There were no harsh, flickering fluorescent tubes, no glaring tungsten bulbs, just soft, concealed halogen lights that infused the kitchen with a glowing ambience. The cooking area was brighter and more practical, but the overall effect was calming and restful. I was delighted, as was Sally, which was the main thing.
“We tried it all out last night, after the electrician had gone. Milos cooked me a Czech dish with lamb and rice —it's got a name but I can't pronounce it. You should have seen him, Colin. Like a child with a new toy.” She went across to the kettle and switched it on. She moved with an almost feline grace, an economy of movement that made her appear to glide over the quarry tiles. “Tell me about the dresser. I can't wait to see it,” she said. “You sounded very excited when you phoned me yesterday.” As she stood by the kitchen window, the early morning sun kissed the top of her head, making her short blond hair glow like a halo. Milos was a very lucky man, and I needed to be careful if my feelings were to remain cloaked.
