by Tim Lebbon
The four things—the demons, the angels, whatever they were—stood around him, holding out their hands as if to draw his attention to this, to that. They gave the impression that they lived there, but to Adam they did not seem to feel at home.
“Where is this place?” Adam said. “Heaven?”
“How is your face?”
“It still hurts.” Adam touched the scratches on his cheek, but the blood had almost ceased flowing now, and already he could feel the wounds scabbing over. They were itching more than burning. He wondered just how long ago the crash had been.
“You are alive, you see,” the voice said, “but we brought you here for a while to show you some things. And to give you a gift. Come with us.”
“But who are you? What are you?”
The things all turned to look at him. They were still transparent but solid, shapes made of flowing glass. Try as he might, he could not discern any features with which to distinguish one from another, yet they all acted in slightly different ways. The one on his far left tilted its head slightly as it watched him; the one to his right leaned forward with unashamed curiosity whenever he spoke.
“Call us Amaranth,” the voice said, “for we are eternal.”
Adam thought about running. He would turn and sprint along the street, shout for help if the things pursued him, slap off their hands if they chose to grasp at him. He would escape them. He wanted to escape them… even though, as yet, they had done him only good.
Am I really here, he thought, or am I floating at the bottom of the sea? Fishes darting into my mouth. Crustaceans plucking at my brain as these final insane thoughts seek their escape.
“For the last time,” Amaranth said, and this time two of them attacked him. One held him down, while the other reached into his mouth and grasped his tongue. Its hand was sickly warm, the skin—or whatever surface sheen it possessed—slick to the touch. It brought his tongue forward and then pricked at it with an extended finger.
The pain was bright, explosive, exquisite. Blood gushed into Adam’s throat as he struggled to stand. The things moved aside to let him up and he spat out a gob of blood, shaking with shock and a strange, subdued fury.
“You are alive,” Amaranth said, “and well, and living here for now. We shall not keep you long because we know you wish to return to your world… to your Alison and Jamie… but the price of our saving you is for you to see some things. Follow us. And do not be afraid. You are one of the lucky ones.”
Adam wanted nothing more than to see his family. His conviction that Alison was dead had gone, had surely been a result of his own impending death. And Jamie—sweet little Jamie, eighteen months old and just discovering himself—how cruel for him to suddenly be without a father. How pointless. Yes, he needed to see them soon.
“Thank you,” Adam said. “Thank you for saving me.”
Amaranth did not reply. Adam was truly alive, the pain in his tongue told him that. This was unreal and impossible, yet he felt completely, undeniably alive. As to whether he really had been saved… time would tell.
One of the things gently took his hand and guided him along the street.
At first Adam thought he could have been in London. The buildings on either side presented tall, grubby facades, with their shop fronts all glazing and posters and flashing neon. A bar spewed music and patrons into the street on one corner, some of them sitting at rickety wooden tables, others standing around, mingling, chatting, laughing. They were all laughing. As he watched, a tall man—hair dyed a bright red, body and legs clad in leather, and sporting a monstrous tattoo of a dragon across his forehead, down the side of his neck and onto his collarbone— bumped into a table and spilled several drinks. Glass smashed. Beer flowed and gurgled between brick paviors. The couple at the table stood, stared at the leather-clad man and smiled. He set his own drinks down on their table, sat and started chatting to them. Adam heard them introducing themselves, and as he and Amaranth passed the bar, the three were laughing and slapping each other’s shoulders as if they had been friends forever.
The tall man looked up and nodded at Adam, then again at each of the things with him. His eyes were wide and bright, his face tanned and strong, and it shone. Not literally, not physically, but his good humor showed through. He was a walking ad for never judging people by their appearances.
Within a few paces the street changed, so quickly that Adam felt as though it were actually shifting around him. He could see nothing strange, but suddenly the buildings were lower, the masonry lighter, eaves adorned with ancient gargoyles growling grotesquely at the buildings opposite, old wooden windows rotting in their frames, pigeons huddling along sills. He could have moved from London to Italy in the space of a second. And if anything the street felt more real, more meant-to-be than he had ever experienced. It was as if nature itself had built this place specifically for these people to inhabit, carving it out of the landscape as perfectly as possible, and even though the windows were rotting and the buildings had cracks scarring their surfaces like old battle wounds, these things made it even more perfect.
“It’s like a painting,” Adam said.
“It is art, true.” The thing holding his hand let go and another took its place, this one warmer, its flesh silkier. “This way.”
The sudden music of smashing glass filled the street, followed by a scream and a sickening thud as something hit the road behind them. Adam spun around, heart racing, scalp stretching as he tried not to imagine what he was about to see.
What he did see was certainly not what he expected.
A woman was laying stretched over the high gutter, half on the pavement, half on the road. As he watched, she stood and brushed diamond-shards of broken glass from her clothes. She picked them from her face too, but they had not torn the skin. Her limbs had not suffered in her tumble from the second-story window, her suit trousers and jacket were undamaged, her skull was whole. In fact, as she ruffled up her hair, stretched her back with a groan and glanced up at where she had fallen from, she looked positively radiant. An extreme sports fan perhaps? Maybe this was just a stunt she was used to doing day-in, day-out?
She saw Adam watching her and threw him a disarmingly calm smile. “That was lucky,” she said.
“What the hell’s lucky about falling from a window?”
She shrugged. Looked around. Waved at someone farther along the street. “I didn’t die,” she said, not even looking at Adam anymore. And without saying another word she walked past him and Amaranth to a small Italian cafe.
Amaranth steered Adam past the cafe and into a side alley. Again, scenery changed without actually shifting, as if flickering from place to place in the instant that it took him to blink. This new setting was straight out of all the American cops-and-robbers television shows he had ever seen. There was a gutter running down the center of the alley overflowing with rubbish and excrement, boxes piled high against one wall just begging a speeding car to send them flying, pull-down fire escapes hanging above head height, promising disaster. Doorways were hidden back under the shadows of walls, and in some of those shadows darker shadows shifted.
Someone rolled from a doorway into their path. Adam stopped, caught his breath, ready for the gleam of metal and the demand for money.
Amaranth paused as well. Were they scared?
And then he realized something else. People had seen him and Amaranth; he had noticed them looking—looking and smiling—and they were not out of place.
“This isn’t real,” he said, and a shape stood before him.
The man wore a long coat. His hair was an explosion of dirt and fleas and other insects, his shoes had burst and his toes stuck out, as if seeking escape from the wretched body they belonged to.
He looked up.
“My friend!” he said, although Adam had never seen him before. “My friend, how are you? Welcome here, welcome everywhere, I’m sure. Oh, so I see they’ve found you too?” He nodded at the shapes around Adam and they shifted slightly
, as if embarrassed at being noticed. “They’re angels, you know,” the man said quietly. “Look at me. Down-and-out, you’d guess? Ready to blow you or stab you for the money to buy a bottle of paint stripper.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Adam said, but only because he knew, already, that he was wrong.
There was something far stranger, far more wonderful at work here.
“Maybe years ago.” The man nodded. “But not anymore. See, I’m one of the lucky ones. Take a look!” He opened his coat to display a glimmering, golden suit. It looked ridiculous but comfortable. The man himself looked comfortable. In fact, Adam had rarely seen anyone looking so contented with his lot, so at home with where and what he was.
“It’s… nice,” Adam said.
“It’s fucking awful! Garish and grotesque, but if that’s what I want to be sometimes, hey, who’s to deny me that? Nobody, right? In the perfect world, nobody. In the perfect world, I can do and be what I want to do and be, whenever I want. Yesterday I was making love with a princess. Tomorrow I may decide to crash a car. Today… today I’m just reliving how I used to be. I hated it, of course; who wouldn’t? Today, here… in the perfect world, it’s not so bad.”
“But just where are we?” Adam asked, hoping—realizing—that perhaps this man could tell him what Amaranth would not. “I was in a plane crash, I was sinking, I was dying—”
“Right,” the man said, nodding and blinking slowly. “And then you were rescued. And they brought you here for a look around. Well… you’re one of the lucky ones. We’re all lucky ones here.”
There was the sound of something moving quickly down the alley, still hidden by shadows but approaching rapidly. For an instant Adam thought it could be gun-fire and he prepared to dive for cover, but then he saw the magnificent shape emerge into the sunlight.
“Hold up!” the man said with a distinctly Cockney accent.” ‘Ere comes my ride.”
Adam and Amaranth stood aside, and Adam watched aghast as the unicorn galloped along the alley. It did not slow down—did not even seem to notice the man—but he grabbed on to its mane as it ran, swung himself easily up onto its back and rode it out into the street. It paused for a moment and reared up, and Adam was certain it was a show just for him. The man in the golden suit waved an imaginary hat back at Adam, then nudged the unicorn with his knees and they disappeared along the street.
He heard the staccato beat of hooves for a long time.
For the first time he wondered whether it was all a display put on for him, and him alone. The red-haired man… the jumper… the down-and-out. They had all looked at him. Somehow, it was all too perfect.
He pressed his sore tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“Do you get the idea?” Amaranth asked.
“What idea?”
The things milled around him, touching him, and now their touch was more pleasant than repulsive. His skin jumped wherever they made contact. He found himself aroused and he went with the feeling. It did not feel shameful or inappropriate. It felt just right. While he was here, why not enjoy it?
“The idea that good luck is a gift,” Amaranth said.
A talent or a present? Adam wanted to ask, but already they were pulling him farther along the alley toward whatever lay beyond its far end.
He smelled the water before he saw it, rich and cloying, heavy with effluent and rubbish. As they emerged from the mouth of the alley and turned a corner, the lake came into view. It was huge, not just a city lake, more like a sea. Adam was reminded briefly of Venice, but there were no gondoliers here, and the waters were rougher and more violent than Venice ever experienced. And there were things among the waves, far out from the shore, shiny gray things breaking the surface and screeching before heading back down to whatever depths they came from.
A woman walked past them whistling, nodded a hello, indicated the lake with a nod and looked skyward, as if to say: oh dear, that lake, huh? She wore so much jewelery on her fingers and wrists that Adam was sure she would sink, were she to enter the waters. But she never would, no one in their right mind would, because to go in there would be to die.
Things are in there, Adam thought. Shattered aircraft, perhaps? Bodies of passengers I chatted with being ripped and torn and eaten? Where am I now? Where, really, am I?
“We stand on the shore of bad luck,” Amaranth said. “Out there… the island, do you see?… there live the unlucky ones.”
Now that it had been pointed out to him, Adam could see the island, although he was sure it had not been there before. You never notice a damn thing until it’s pointed out to you, Alison would say to him, and she was right, he was not very observant. But this island was huge—growing larger—and eventually, even though nothing seemed to have actually changed, the lake was a moat and the island filled most of his field of vision.
Sounds reached him then, although they were dulled and weary with distance. Screams, shouts, cries, the rending crunch of buildings collapsing, an explosion, the roar of flames taking hold somewhere out of sight. Adam edged closer to the shore of the moat, straining to see through the hazy air, struggling to make out what was happening on the island. There were signs erected all along its shore. Some of them seemed to be moving. Some of them…
They were not signs. They were crucifixes, and most of them were occupied. Heads lolled on shoulders, knees moved weakly as the victims tried to shift their weight, move the pain around their bodies so that it did not burn its way through their flesh.
Beneath some of the crosses, fires had been set.
“It’s Hell!” Adam gasped, turning around to glare at the four things with him.
“No,” Amaranth said, “we have explained. Those over there are the unlucky ones, but they are not dead. Not yet. Many of them will be soon… unlucky ones always die… but first, there is pain and suffering.”
Adam felt tears burning behind his eyes. He did not understand any of this. Sinking into the Atlantic, dying, being a nameless statistic on an airline’s list of victims, that he understood. Losing Alison and Jamie, even— never seeing them again—that he could understand.
But not this.
“I want my family,” he said. “If you’ve saved me like you say, I want my family. I don’t want to be here. I don’t know where here is.”
“Do you ever, truly?”
“Oh, Jesus,” Adam gasped in despair, dropping to his knees and noticing as he did so that the shore was scattered with pale white bones. Washed up from the island of the unlucky ones, no doubt.
He closed his eyes.
And tumbled into the moat.
He had been expecting fresh water—polluted by refuse perhaps, rancid with death—but inland water nonetheless. His first mouthful was brine.
Beneath him, the aircraft seat. Around his waist the seatbelt, which would ensure that he sank to his death. Above him, the wide blue sky he had fallen from.
Under his arms and around his legs, hands lifting him to safety.
“Here’s a live one!” a voice shouted, and it was gruff and excited, not like Amaranth or the people he had heard back there in the land of the lucky. This one held a whole range of experience.
“Unlucky,” Adam muttered, spitting out sea water and feeling a dozen pains bite into him at the same instant. “Bad luck…”
“No, mate,” said a voice with an Irish lilt from somewhere far away. “You’re as lucky as fuck. Everyone else is dead.”
Adam tried to speak, to ask for Alison and Jamie because he knew he was about to die. He had already visited Heaven and slipped back again for his final breath. But the bright sunlight faded to black and the voices receded. Already, he was leaving once more…
As he passed out he fisted his hands so that nothing could hold on to them.
The next time he awakened, Alison was staring down at him. There had been no dreams, no feelings, no sensations. It felt as if a second had passed since he had been in the sea, but he knew instantly that it was much longer. T
here was a ceiling and fluorescent lights, and the cloying stench of antiseptic, and the metallic grumble of trolley wheels on vinyl flooring.
And there was Alison leaning over him, hair haloed by a bright light.
“Honey,” she said. She began to cry.
Adam reached up to her and tried to talk, but his throat was dry and rough. He rasped instead, just making a noise, happy that he could do anything to let her know he was still alive.
“Alive,” he croaked eventually. “You’re alive.”
She looked down at him and frowned, but the tears were too powerful and her face took on the shine of relief once more. “Yes, you’re alive. Oh honey, I was so terrified, I saw the news and I knew you were dead, I just knew… and I came here. Mum didn’t want me to, but I just had to be here when they started… when they started bringing in the bodies. And the worst thing,” she whispered, touching his cheek, “… I wanted them to find your body. I couldn’t live knowing you were still out there somewhere. In the sea.” She buried her face in the sheets covering him and swung her arm across his stomach, hugging him tight, a hug so tight that he would never forget it.
This is what love is, he thought to himself. Never wanting to let go. He put his hand behind her head and revelled in the feel of her hair between his fingers.
“Come on,” he said, “it’s all right now. We’re both all right now.” A terrible thought came out of nowhere. In seconds, it became a certainty. My leg!
“I am all right, aren’t I? Alison, am I hurt? Am I damaged?”
She looked up and grinned at him, red-rimmed eyes and snotty nose giving her a strange childlike quality. “You’re fine! They said it was a miracle, you’re hardly touched. Bruises here and there, a few scratches on your face and you bit your tongue quite badly. But you escaped… well, you’re on the front page of the papers. I kept them! Jamie, he’s got a scrapbook!”
“Scrapbook? How long have I been here?”
“Only two days,” Alison said. She sat down on the bed, never relinquishing contact with him, eye or hand. He wondered whether she’d ever let go again.
