Something Wicked Anthology, Vol. One

by M. Scott Carter

  This is my punishment, a cold, distant part of him announced, as the flesh continued to fold back up his arm. This is my decision.

  “Not the brightest in the galaxy – your Lord Azazael. Before he dropped the old woman, had he forgotten that Angels’ blood can seal the doors to Hell?” she asked matter-of-factly, as if there weren’t a man crouched in front of her, watching his own flesh slowly consume him. “In the end her sacrifice sealed all your fates. She could have used her wings…oh well. Better luck next time.” She turned away from Buster, and he saw through the haze of pain the forbidden sight – the one no demon in Hell was privileged enough to see – her delicate shoulder blades were a tattoo of scorched and pulped flesh. Even in the throes of his agony he felt a thrill…

  Buster watched his sleeve disappear under a mound of flesh and blood and tendons. It had all peeled back over his arm to his shoulder.

  In the end, we all decide what we deserve.

  17.

  He had walked into the morgue of Jo’burg General Hospital at exactly midnight. The passageways hummed with the refrigeration and the general hush of the dead resting. The nurse on duty had looked up from her desk. A tall, well-dressed black man stood before her. He could be a doctor – but she didn’t think he was.

  Kind eyes, had been her only real impression when she talked to the police later on. Not like the other. The amazing thing was, when the CCTV footage was viewed, there was only the tall, well-dressed man talking to the duty nurse, and no-one else. But Nurse Sally Zaglog insisted there had been another man. One whose eyes she remembered, too.

  “Eyes like…like the coins they put on dead men,” was how she described them. “To keep their eyes closed. Flat, and yellow.” The police chalked this ‘second man’ up to the hysteria and shock they saw all too often at the scenes of bank robberies and hijackings, where an extra villain was imagined by the victim or victims. A second man. But as the footage showed, there had only been one.

  “Sally, I’d like to visit a dear friend of mine. I believe you’re keeping her.”

  Sally had smiled at him. He had that air about him. How could you not smile at him? “Certainly…which one is she?”

  “She was brought in from Sandton…”

  Sally had gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. “The angel,” she whispered. The nice man’s smile had seemed to understand. The second man had looked on impassively – his eyes two amber mirrors.

  Captain Venter paused the tape.

  “What are you saying here?” he asked. A blurry line shivered in the centre of the screen. Sally watched the shape of herself holding her hands up to her face.

  The angel.

  “I…I can’t remember,” she finally said. The policeman’s eyes were all over her face. “Like I said…it was weird to have visitors at midnight…and what happened…you know how shock works, Captain? It messes with your recall and time perception.”

  The captain let it go. Again, he and his sergeant exchanged glances. Sally knew that look. The Little Woman look. Dear God help me, she caught herself thinking.

  They continued viewing the tape. It showed her getting up and leading the man (the men, in her mind) down the corridor, the tall black man looking up directly into the camera. There seemed to be a…shimmer in the viewing room. She saw the Captain’s eyes glaze over. He was standing with one hand on the back of her chair – looming, more like it.– The sergeant blinked a few times.

  The TV showed a different room now. The lights were on dim. Sally saw herself step through the glass double doors, and turn up the lights. The doors to the fridges marched off left and right.

  “Sally,” said the tall black man with the kind eyes, “I’m not going to lie about why we are here.” He reached out and took her hand in his. She felt warmth travel up her arm – the same warmth that one experienced through the lens of childhood, lazy afternoon warmth. “This lady who was brought in this evening…she is a dear, dear friend of mine. My…colleague and I, well we’ve come to take her home. This place, noble and respectful of the dead as it is, is not for her. She needs to come home…” His eyes filled with tears. It startled her. “Can you understand the need to go home?”

  Captain Venter paused the footage again. He bent into the light thrown by the gooseneck lamp. Sally wiped her eyes quickly.

  “What did he say to you?”

  She couldn’t lie to the policeman either. “That he – they were there to take the lady…the dead lady. She needed to go home.”

  Again the searching look. His moustache quivered slightly. She wasn’t sure if he was about to laugh or if he was holding back annoyance. “Is this all normal procedure, Ms Zaglog?” The sarcasm bit her. “Letting strangers take people from the morgue at midnight?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Her fingers played with each other. They were still warm from the man’s touch, hours ago now.

  “Then how do you explain what happened?”

  She looked up at them, aware of the smirk on the face of the sergeant who was writing it all down in a notebook. She was aware of the distant ebb and flow of a hospital waking up as the new day stole in through the windows.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I want to…but how can I explain?” He was leaning in close to her, and she never knew what made her, but she reached up with a hand and touched the side of his face. His eyes glazed immediately. “Your wife…she misses you. Go home to her.” The tears continued to roll down her cheeks. “Go home right now. Your job is important, but she is more so.”

  A chair scraped back, the sergeant had his gun halfway from his holster. “Get your hand off him, lady!”

  The Captain’s eyes widened and he pulled back as if he’d felt the heat of an oven burn his face. He reached up and touched the burning spot on his cheek where she’d touched him. “What is this?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “What is this?”

  “Should I cuff her?” The sergeant sounded unsure. After a moment, the Captain gathered himself and held up a hand. “No…’sfine. Sit down, Sergeant.” He turned back to the screen and played the rest of the tape. There would be no more pausing it. His eyes did not meet hers again.

  The third door on the right was pulled open, and a tray large enough to support a human body slid out. A body bag lay on the tray. The tall man pulled the zipper downward. She stood near the feet, which held the name tag. It simply read: Engel.

  Angel.

  “I can’t let you do this…” Her voice was weak, with no real conviction. “We should not be here. This is against regulations.”

  She felt the presence of the other – remaining in the shadows.

  “She did a great thing for all of us today,” the tall man said, looking down at the body. Sally couldn’t see any wings like the paramedics had claimed. But she knew by the large crowd of people gathered outside the hospital with their candle-lit vigil and their singing that this body had caused them all to believe something had happened. Some brush with the Divine. She looked up at the man, and wondered if this was a continuation of that encounter.

  “Are you an angel too?” she whispered.

  The dark figure stepped forward, ninja eyes burning. It reached out a hand and placed it on the tray. The lights overhead dimmed, and the camera footage hissed as the picture turned to static.

  The Captain turned to look at Sally. His eyes remained fixed above her head.

  “What happened?”

  She found she couldn’t stop weeping. “It’s like I said – they took her away. They took her home.”

  18.

  “Once you see them…you can’t unsee them, like. You make out?”

  “These are the angels?”

  “And the demons. They don’t look so different, you know.”

  “Is that what your boss…Mr Morera – is? A demon?”

  “I don’t know about him…he just stole from us. We work hard, you know! For such little money! And he takes it from us!”

  “Was that the reason you attacked him?”

/>   Silence.

  “Kenny?”

  “Ja…”

  “Was that the reason for you attacking him?”

  “Suppose so…I don’t remember…it felt right. It felt like he should be hurt for stealing. You make out?”

  “Kenny…how did you know your boss was stealing tips from the waiters?”

  “I was told.”

  “By whom?”

  “I was told here…gut instinct! You check? I’d seen him out the corner of my eye taking the money.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “The cops? You nuts or something, lady? The cops are more corrupt than the crooks! It’s freekin’ chaos out there!”

  “What can you remember?”

  Silence.

  “What can you remember, Kenny?”

  “Flies.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I remember the smell of…dead animals…and flies.”

  “What else?”

  “A…dead man in a suit.”

  “One of the missing businessmen?”

  “I’ro know! Maybe…But he was walking funny…like he had new legs growing out of him. They…wasn’t human legs.”

  “Go on.”

  “He spoke to me. Said I could be his servant if I wanted to be. Said I had a hand to the keys…all I had to do was make a blood sacrifice. That way I could open the doors–”

  “Doors. To what?”

  “Hell, lady. Haven’t you been paying attention? Hell.”

  “This is what the businessman…Riaan Van der Vyver, said to you?”

  “He wasn’t called Riaan anymore, lady…see, what I now see everywhere is doors…doors going in and doors going out. And the keys are just…lying around. If more of us knew this–”

  “Did you kill Riaan Van der Vyver, Kenny?”

  “No, uh-uh. Not me. That guy was already dead. Dead as a doorway…” Laughter. “Beelzebub was already using him as a doorway.”

  “The Lord of the Flies.”

  “Now you’re getting it. You’re a sharp one. Not just a pretty face.”

  The tape clicked.

  “The rest is just the same thing over and over again.”

  “The Devil made me do it,” the policeman said. He frowned. “Nothing fits. The suicide of a woman who jumped from Scission’s window. An attempted murder of the restaurant owner, and the disappearance of two businessmen. Where is Kenny now?”

  The psychiatrist looked into the policeman’s eyes. “He’s being kept under observation. We’ve given him a sedative. He says we won’t be able to stop the angels or the demons from finding him.”

  The cop made a noise of disgust. “Speaking of angels…I’m hearing strange things from the on-the-scene people. There are claims this suicide lady had wings.”

  Her eyebrow arched. “Wings?”

  “Captain Venter himself is down at Jo’burg Gen checking out the apparent disappearance of this woman. Someone came and took the body away.”

  “What do you mean? Took the body away?”

  “Spirited it away. Past staff, past security. Captain Venter tells me there is some strange CCTV footage – but it doesn’t explain anything – what are you thinking?”

  “Something Kenny said: ‘There are doorways everywhere’…what does it mean?”

  “I’m not sure…but one thing I do know. Keep an eye on Kenny. He is now our only link to what went on at Scission. I’m not having him find a doorway out of this station.”

  19.

  As it happened, the doorway found Kenny.

  He awoke on his bunk bed.

  A voice: Kenny…

  Kenny looked around; sleep had scurried off.

  Kenny…the keys to the kingdom await. Are you my loyal servant?

  “They don’t believe me,” he said, eyes darting around. His own cell was dark, but there was a passage light that hummed with fluorescent consistency.

  Does it matter? The only thing that matters is that you have proven yourself worthy. Kenny, do you want to leave your cell?

  “Yes! They scheme I’m mal!” He frowned. “I could be, actually. But I know what I know.”

  Then be ready.

  And there it was – a sound, like the hum of the fluorescent lights. A sound that had been there all along – the buzzing of flies. His eyes picked them out in the gloom. Two of them, each with a long hair attached to it. The guy! The guy at the restaurant. He’d had four of these buggers attached to him. Kenny had pointed them out to the other waiters…but they had not seen anything different about the American.

  Because they did not believe. He lifted his hands and plucked at the two fine threads. Immediately, he felt a weightlessness steal over his body. He lifted. Damned if he didn’t! Like the world’s strangest hot air balloon powered by two tiny engines, he levitated off the bed. He crossed his legs, arms stretched above him.

  It’s time to go, said the voice. It was a lot more seductive, that voice. He knew it belonged to the creature he’d seen half-in and half-out of the businessman. The doorway.

  “Where–?”

  There are doorways everywhere.

  20.

  The car idled at an intersection, black, with angel wings on the hood. This was the deadest part of the night. When the world seemed to be inhaling deeply. The exhale would come soon. And with it, the first chilly dawn birdcall.

  The shadowy figure sat at the wheel, his breath misting in the cold air that crept through the lowered window. His eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror. His strange hands held the wheel – they were scarred with the endless years of souls not wanting to leave this world. Everything about his form spoke of readiness. He’d watched the lights change from green to amber to red so many times he’d given up counting.

  The occupant in the back seat sat calmly, holding a cell phone. Every now and then he’d check it…a pointless waiting ritual, like counting how many times traffic lights changed.

  Finally the phone vibrated.

  The occupant exhaled – and the world outside began to wake up. The first bird made its song heard.

  1 MESSAGE RECEIVED.

  He opened it – read it. A smile appeared on his face. He put the phone on the seat beside him.

  “Let’s go home,” he said.

  The amber eyes in the rear-view mirror dipped in assent, and the car pulled off. The occupant looked out of his fogged-up window at the shapes of buildings. Of forgotten corners and intersections. Of people even now moving among the rubbish.

  The message still shone in the darkness of the backseat:

  Can’t wait for our next date. You choose the venue. I’ll bring the glamour. Until then…a lifetime of lifetimes. LxM

  MINDFLOW

  by Cedar Sanderson

  Curiosity is what led my predecessors into the wild unknown - curiosity and a driving desire for notoriety. Well, perhaps not for notoriety. Certainly, it seems that explorers in the Victorian age desired notoriety, but for every one trumpeting his deeds in newspapers and pulp novels, ten never returned, having found a sweeter life. But B. Sterling Merton did want fame. Oh, he wanted nothing more than notoriety, and most especially the sort of fame you get when you see or do something no-one else has ever seen. And it is because of him that I am here.

  B. Sterling Merton - man of vision, they said, when he proposed a colony ship from Earth to find a planet fit for humans. Brand new technologies made it possible, he trumpeted, and he would volunteer to lead the expedition. Yes, he was qualified - governor of a state of the United States of America - at least, he and all the other politicians believed he was. The USA was the biggest contributor to the project, and they maintained the right to put their man in charge. So he became the figurehead, and I the power behind the throne. I was his wife, the estimable Mrs. Merton, also known for breakthrough studies in what the human physiognomy would endure - but that was before all this.

  No, that is not bitterness in my voice, simply resignation. I will never see my home pl
anet again nor, I believe, will my children’s children. Of the ten planets we have surveyed thus far, only two are habitable, and one is a desert - we would not have lived long there. I am glad the decision does not go to a committee. I think I would have had difficulty persuading the others that we must still go on. It has been so long - so very, very long.

  I have been captain of this colony ship - the Lewis and Clark - for... ah, yes, three hundred years now. How can this be, you ask? Quite simple. When my body was put into cold-sleep, they uploaded my brain, along with ten others, into computers. The ship itself has been my body all these long, cold years, and an empty shell it is, indeed. We perform our physical functions by means of waldoes, and the rest is brain sweat, as I once would have said. My mind has flowed on and on, through the stretches of empty space, to the frightening anticipation of a new planet, onward past all the failures...

  What? Oh yes, that other planet fit for humans. It was a dream come true for the colonists. Breathable air and drinkable water, vegetation nontoxic overall, and temperatures within tolerance ranges... as a matter of fact, they were somewhat warmer than Earth. We sent down the automatic landers, and they reported back steadily, streams of images that delighted our eyes: waving vegetation and rolling oceans, rich plains and some towering mountains. We woke a scout and prepared his ship - that intrepid man, who had volunteered centuries before to become the first to land on some planet unknown to all previous men...

  It would have been Merton himself, if Merton had not volunteered to be the first governor of the planet already. But instead it was a quiet man, one who eschewed human company as a matter of habit, and one whom we had had to search out with some difficulty when we were preparing to leave Earth.