“This was a handwritten copy, an old diary, with a red leather cover. The woman there said it was the diary of the first guy to explore this part of the country.” Kat looked out into the night, towards the waterhole. Above them the stars prickled, a great carpet of white needles in the dark. The sausages popped in the pan and she flinched.
“What’s wrong?” Ray asked.
“Sorry. Nothing. It’s just that it’s only the two of us out here, and it’s night and all. The lady at the library said that diary was pretty out there. That this area had some horrible things happen in it. The explorer went mad, they reckon – they only found his diary, and it was just filled with gibberish, languages nobody had ever read, that kind of thing. Never saw him again.”
He chuckled. “Oooh. Scary.”
“Shut up. It wasn’t, then. When she was telling me about it. Now that I’ve just got your ugly face for company though...”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll protect you, don’t worry.” He poked the sausages with a knife, and grunted in approval. “Ready. Grab your plate. Want an egg?”
“Nah.”
They ate in silence. The world around them blanketed everything with stillness. Impossibly distant, the stars burned with cold fire.
“God, it’s quiet out here,” Kat said.
“Yeah.”
“If we ever have kids they’d better like the quiet. No way I’d want to raise a child in the city.”
He stiffened, and she looked up from her plate as if she’d sensed it.
“Oh – no, Ray, I didn’t mean –”
“Right. You never do.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be a dick.”
“Yeah, I’m a dick, got it.” He dropped his plate on the ground. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Ray...”
He dumped his plate on the dirt, jerked upright and stalked away.
The scrub trees and the darkness swallowed him, and he walked without knowing where he was headed, wrapped in his own fury. Hands in pockets, he found himself at the edge of the waterhole. He frowned. He didn’t think he’d been walking for long enough. The glow of their fire was lost behind him. To either side, the pockmarked cliffs loomed over the waterhole.
“Kids,” he muttered. “Goddamn kids.” He stooped and picked up a handful of flat stones. “I don’t,” he skimmed one, “want”, another, “kids!”
He watched his stones bounce across the flat water. Ripples spread in the starlight. He looked at the last stone in his hand – an odd one, not like the others. It was black and veined with quartz, and felt strangely cold in his hand. Anger bloomed deep inside him. He clenched his hand around the stone, hard, hissing as its sharp edges cut into his palm. Teeth bared in a snarl, Ray flung the stone out, not bothering to skim it. It splashed into the water. Dark ripples spread away from it and the stone sank, taking his anger with it. He blinked, and drew a shaky breath. Where did that come from? No – he knew. He knew where it came from. He rubbed his eyes.
“Stupid,” he muttered. He’d been stupid. Rude. Cruel. It was time to apologize. He drew a deep breath, released it, and turned back towards camp.
Behind him, the stone continued to sink.
♦
Kat wasn’t sure what woke her. A dream, or – no, it was gone. Ray was breathing deeply and evenly beside her. He’d come back to apologize a couple minutes after storming off. They’d hugged, and she had apologized too, even though they both knew she didn’t need to. She smiled down at him sleeping. If that’s the only fight we have on this trip, she thought, we’ll be lucky. It wasn’t really his fault, how sensitive he got about kids. Being raised by a monster like that...
A low sound came from outside. She froze. It was hard to identify, but once she had, it clung to her ears. A low, mournful call, almost turning into a song at times. She nudged Ray. “Hey,” she whispered. “Ray. Wake up.”
“Mm. S’it morning?”
“No. Can you hear that?”
He rolled over, already sinking back into sleep. Kat shook her head, and sat there hugging her knees until the sound drifted away. She needed to pee.
Outside the tent, the night was silent, save for some gurgling at the waterhole that echoed through the low scrubby trees. The night was moonless, but the stars gave the landscape a pale sheen that was enough to see by. She walked away from the camp and squatted unhappily behind a patch of twisted shrubs. Bloody outdoors. As she stood, the sound began again.
She froze, half crouching, her shorts pulled to her knees. Out here, beyond the thin walls of the tent, it was louder. A bird, she told herself. A stupid bird. It came to her how ridiculous she had to look, and she stood more abruptly than she needed to, yanking her shorts up.
A twig cracked under her foot. The low, weird hum softened. There was something haunting about it, almost enchanting. And it was coming from... coming from everywhere. She relaxed, her eyes drifting.
The waterhole shivered under the stars, a rippled black canvas. Kat stood on the shore. How she had come to be there? There was no breeze, but even so the water was rolling with little wavelets, as black and cold as the sky it mirrored. She shivered. The sound was still there, within her mind, throbbing and humming, a mournful and irresistible summons.
This is crazy, she thought. This is a damned pond, not –
With a gentle splash, something broke the surface. She yelped, and sank to her knees. A stone. Impossibly, it was a stone, floating on the water’s surface. Drifting towards her. A weird stench came with it, ancient and decayed. Trembling, she crawled to the very edge of the water. Hollow noises filled her ears. She reached out, fingers shaking, and picked the stone up. A glimpse of dull, white quartz against black and –
A world exploded in her mind.
She saw Ray for a moment, felt his fleeting bitterness. Then others, men and women, with white skin and black, on and on. The vision reeled back through thousands of years, millions, the supplicants no longer even vaguely human. And beneath the water...
Whimpering, helpless, she felt her mind crumble. Her very self was bending, shattering. Somewhere, her body convulsed. Hunger assailed her, hunger to drive her into madness. Finally, she saw what awaited her.
She screamed. There would be pain, and there would be no peace to follow it. As she tumbled into icy darkness,
the depths cracked open beneath her, yawning wider and wider.
♦
Ray woke with the sun high in the sky, holding himself absolutely still. Just below his throat rested a black stone, veined with quartz. He’d known he would find it there. In his dreams, he’d seen a dead man come and place it on his chest. In his dreams, he’d seen Kat, shorn of her name and mind, swallowed first by the water and then by the thing that dwelt beneath it. In his dreams, he’d seen the smile on her empty face slowly eroding in the blackness.
He could not think. Would not think. He got up, struck the tent, and drove toward the city. Alone.
After an hour on the road, under the sweltering sun, he reached the little town they’d passed through only yesterday. The book sale was still going, the banner wilted in the heat. He got out of the car and walked slowly up to the table, where a beaming middle-aged woman waited.
“You have an old book here,” he said. He could hear the dull flatness of his own voice.
She regarded him ironically. “Yes?”
Of course they did. Hundreds of them. “A...” He felt as if his memory was leaking. “A red book. An old journal. I’d like to buy it.”
“Oh, I see. Well, that one’s going to cost you quite a bit, young man.”
“A hundred dollars, I know.” He pulled out his wallet and slid two fifties towards her. “Here you go.”
She looked slightly startled, but the money decided her, and she turned around to dig through a box on a
table behind her. “Ah. Here.” Turning back round, she handed him a carefully-wrapped package. “Be careful with it. It’s in pretty good condition but, well, it’s old. I’d recommend having somebody type it out for you instead of trying to read it.”
“Thanks.” The word felt like lead.
Ray took the package back to the car, and moments later, he was rumbling through the quiet main street, heading towards home. He drove for as long as he could, before pulling over at the side of the road and winding his seat back. The instant he closed his eyes, silence swallowed him, pressing in. Impossibly, he slept.
Kat’s face, faint and wavering, floated into his dreams. He saw it dissolving, fleck by fleck. A whispered call settled into the fabric of his mind and woke him, raw-eyed and sandy-mouthed. Defying the night, he turned the car on, put it into gear, and drove the rest of the way back to the city without pause. Before him, the red sun rose.
Eventually, he reached the block where he and Kat lived. He parked the car in the cool dark of the garage, and rested his clammy forehead on the steering wheel. He’d hoped, faintly, that the humdrum chaos of the city would reassure him, drag his mind away from the wild places that lurked in his dreams. Instead, the very mundanity of it grated on him. The engines and voices and electronic hums blended together into a shrill urban scream. It was a desperate pretence. The city – humanity, life itself – was just a husk, a crust over an endless black well that went down, and down, and down. Ray cradled his face in his hands and cried softly.
Up some unremembered number of stairs, he found himself facing the door of their – his – flat. His hands shook as he opened it, but only a little. Eyes dry, he walked inside and dropped his travel-bag to the floor. The furniture, the walls, the gleaming white fridge in the kitchen, it was all so mockingly normal. As if reality meant something.
Kat’s touch was everywhere. Her heels, discarded in a corner. Her handbag, stuffed with makeup and tissues and coins, slumped on the stupid wicker chair she’d bought at a garage sale because she thought it would add some rustic colour to their bland little home. Ray’s knees shook, and he collapsed onto the couch and cried, really cried. Sobs shuddered through him like earthquakes. Devastated, exhausted, and terrified in equal measure, he was powerless to stop sleep from claiming him.
Kat’s face hung there in his dreams, melting, degrading. He could see her meat, her bones, the emptiness left behind when she had gone. He felt the waiting hunger around her, the agony and fury of imprisonment. Despite all the miles, he was aware of its terrible regard, and he knew with awful certainly that Blackwell was waiting for him.
He woke in the darkness, with resignation cold in his mind. Nothing he could do would alter his path. He was going back. Even so, he would not go unprepared. Ray sat up, flipped on a lamp, and grabbed his travel bag. Opening the old diary carefully, he began to read.
When he was done, it was past noon. His eyes were red and gritty, and his hands shook like an old man’s. He put the diary down, and lay still on the couch for a long moment. Then his expression hardened. Snatching Kat’s old laptop from the coffee table, he flipped it open and began to type. Somewhere, he thought, there’s an answer. There has to be. Something like this could not be wholly secret. Somewhere, people knew the truth and they would be able to tell him what to do.
That childlike faith sustained him only briefly. Oh, the knowledge was there. Over the hours and the days that followed, Ray pored over formless terabytes of madness, seeking the thin threads of truth. He found people who genuinely believed the world was ruled by well-disguised lizards, people who believed Christ’s bloodline yet dwelt in the shadows, people who believed in aliens and ghosts and presidential vampires. Buried beneath it all, tiny shrieks in a chaotic maelstrom, were the desperate pleas of the few who had seen what he had seen.
The days went on, and so did his search. His phone rang and beeped, and eventually stopped after he flung it against the wall. He slept only when exhaustion forced him to, and every time he did, he saw Kat, eroding cell by cell into the darkness. Nothing terrified him more than the moment when those visions ceased to make him weep.
One day, there was a knock at the door. Ray started, blinking the world into focus. He shook his head, and bent back to the computer screen. The knock came again, louder. “Mr. Cooper? Are you in there?”
It had been a long time since he’d heard a spoken word, and it hit him like icy water. He shook his head and stood. His stomach rumbled painfully, and he became aware that he stank. With his head feeling packed with prickly straw, he answered the door.
A taller man wearing a suit stood on the other side. “Raymond Cooper?”
“...” Ray’s throat was like sandpaper. He swallowed. “Yes?”
“I’m Detective Windsor. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
Ray shook his head. “No. Now’s fine.” His voice was rusted shut.
“May I come in?”
“Do you... do you have a warrant?”
A pause. “No. This is fine. Mr. Cooper, I’m here regarding the whereabouts of Katherine Jermain. I understand she lives with you?”
Ray swallowed. “Yeah. She w – is – she was my girlfriend.”
“Is or was?”
He looked down. “Was.”
The detective nodded and jotted something in his notepad. “Is she here now?”
“No.”
“Because she was due back at work three days ago. She’s been reported missing.”
Ray nodded. “Okay.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Um. About – what’s the date?”
“The twenty-sixth.”
“Oh. Uh, about two weeks ago.”
“What was she doing?”
Ray’s eyes teared up. “She–” He shook his head. I’m sorry, Kat. “She left me. I took her into Ralston. She got on a bus and left.”
The detective’s pen flicked across his pad. “What time was that?”
“Afternoon. I don’t know, about three.”
“Why did she leave?”
“We had a fight.”
The detective looked up sharply. “What about?”
“Is that really important?”
“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise, Mr. Cooper.”
Ray looked away. “She wanted – she wants kids. I don’t. Do the damn math.”
“It’s all right, Mr. Cooper. I’m sorry I had to pry. And that was the last time you saw her?”
He nodded.
“All right. Thank you for your time.” Windsor put his pen in his shirt pocket and looked at him. “You know, most guys who go on a binge when their woman leaves them stink of booze. You on something else?”
He met the detective’s eyes. “Is that any of your business?”
The detective glanced at his notepad and smiled. “Well. Not yet, Mr. Cooper. But I wouldn’t leave town if I were you.”
Ray swung the door shut and rested his head against the laminated wood. They’ll be back. It didn’t matter. He knew everything he needed to know, now. He grabbed his car-keys and his wallet, and left.
♦
The sun was sinking when Ray arrived at the waterhole again. It was still and quiet, the water as black as oblivion. He killed the engine, enjoying the honesty of the silence around him. Opening the car door, he stepped out onto the gritty sand. Below him, Blackwell waited, biding its time. He stumbled along the cliffs, down the steep rocky defile, exhaustion biting hard. He forced himself to ignore it.
When he got to the edge of the pool, he sat down heavily and dipped his feet in the water. It was blessedly cool. The quartz-banded stone was right there, beside him, as he’d known it would be. He picked it up, and clenched it in his fist. Sharp pain soaked into his hand and up his arm. He grinned, pouring his self-loa
thing into it. Then he held it out and released his grip, dropping the stone into the water.
For a moment, on the far side of the pool, he thought he saw Kat standing there, beautiful in the dusk. A momentary flicker, and she vanished. He nodded to himself, tears pouring down his cheeks. Ignoring the rocks, he lay down on his side, looking out over the cold waters. As the sun vanished, he closed his eyes.
INK
by Iain Lowson
Quiet words ripped into the silence. “I’m not done yet.”
Francis Dupont actually flinched, startled at the intrusion. Hot shame flooded him, and he immediately rallied his defences. He realised that he’d been slumped slightly, mouth open in amazement. Snapping himself ramrod straight, he mustered his irritation, and pursed his lips in the disapproving sneer feared by the nation’s artists.
Moving slowly, deliberately, Francis gave Greg Porter’s comment a dismissive shrug. He kept his eyes on the huge piece in front of him, though. It wouldn’t do to... do to... He shook his head briskly. It wouldn’t do to let Porter see he’d been shocked. It was just a little, of course, but even so, it was unthinkable.
“No artist is ever finished with their work,” he said. “It’s a shame they bother starting, usually. Still, I can’t see what more you could possibly do to rescue... this.” He studied the piece carefully, despite the disinterested hand he flapped at it. Somewhere in there, as he looked through... looked to find... looked... He’d see the error, the mistake there always, inevitably was. That would be the thing he clung to later, the foundation of his acerbic deconstruction of Porter’s folly. It was in there. Somewhere.
In his peripheral vision, he saw the artist walk past him, and took the opportunity to turn back to fully face the mammoth work. The paper was handmade, as was usual for Greg Porter, but on a scale many magnitudes greater than anything the man had attempted before. A single sheet ten metres long and six metres high, it curved along its length, and tipped in slightly at the top. It utterly dominated the main hall of the Tate Gallery, forcing the chairs and tables to jumble at the sidelines.
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