The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16

by Stephen Jones

  You ready for some wonder, Pete? He could have been reading my mind. And yet again, only my closeness to Scott prevented me from taking his comment as ridicule.

  “Where’s the dig?” I asked. “Where’s the equipment? The washers, the boxed artefacts, the tools?”

  “Ah,” Scott said, throwing up his hands as if he’d been caught cheating at cards. “Well . . . Pete, please mate, I’m not trying to deceive you or catch you out. I just wanted you here to share something with me. Come on, into my tent. We’ll crack a few, then I’ll tell you everything. The time needs to be right.”

  “Matthew,” I said. It was the first time I had mentioned Scott’s most baffling e-mail since my arrival.

  His face dropped and he looked down at his feet. We stayed that way for some time – me sat in the Jeep, slowly frying in the sun; Scott standing a few steps away examining the desert floor – and then he looked up.

  “I haven’t found him yet, but he’s here.”

  I shook my head, frowned.

  “I just need to look further . . . deeper . . .”

  “Scott, has the sun—?”

  “No, it hasn’t, the sun hasn’t touched me!” He almost became angry, but then he calmed, relaxed. “Pete, Matthew is here somewhere, because every dead person who has ever been wronged is here. Somewhere. Under our feet, under this desert. I’ve found the City of the Dead.”

  He turned and walked into one of the larger tents, leaving me alone in the Jeep. The City of the Dead. “A real city?” I said, but Scott seemed not to hear. I may have been alone. Tent flaps wavered for a few seconds in a sudden breeze, snapping angrily at the heat. I looked around and felt the immensity of the place bearing down, crushing me into the small, insignificant speck of sand I was. I was lost here, just as lost as I was at home, and though it was a feeling I had never grown used to, at least here I could find justification. Here, I was lost because the desert made light of so many aspects of life I took to be important. Here there was only water, or no water. Here too there was life, or death . . . and perhaps, if Scott’s weird story held any trace of truth, something connecting the two.

  But I could not believe. I did not have the facility to believe.

  The sun must have driven him mad.

  I jumped from the Jeep and followed him into his tent. Its interior was more well-appointed than it had any right to be, being compartmented into four by hanging swirls of fine material, and carpeted with an outlandish collection of rugs and throw cushions. In one quarter there was even some rudimentary furniture; a cot, a couple of low-slung chairs, and the solar fridge. He was pulling out two bottles of beer, their labels beaded with moisture.

  He popped the caps and offered me a bottle. “To us!” he said. “Nice fuckin’ life!”

  “Absolutely,” I said. We clinked bottles and drank. Only he could use that phrase and sound like he actually meant it.

  “So tell me,” I said. “This city? A real city? Why have you dragged me a million miles from home? Other than to sit and drink beer and see if you’re still a pansy when it comes to booze.”

  “Three bottles and I’m done,” he said, slurping noisily, wiping his chin, sighing in satisfaction. “I wonder if the dead spend their time mourning their senses?”

  “The dead.”

  “Wouldn’t you? If you died and could still think, reason, wouldn’t you miss the sound of a full orchestra or a child’s laugh? Miss the taste of a good steak or a woman’s pussy? Miss the smell of fresh bread or a rose garden?”

  I shrugged, nodded, not knowing quite how to respond.

  “I would,” he said. “Life is so lucky, you just have to wonder at it, don’t you? Even thinking about it makes everything sound, taste and smell so much better.” He looked at me. “Apart from you. Didn’t you shower before you left home? Stinking bastard.”

  “And I suppose the showers are out of action,” I said.

  “Yes, but the Jacuzzi is in the next tent, and the Jacuzzi maids have been told to treat you special.”

  We shared a laugh then, for the first time this visit, and we sank wearily into the low chairs.

  “The city,” I said again. For someone so keen to drag me out here, he was being infuriatingly reticent about revealing his discovery.

  “The city.” He nodded. “I don’t know if it’s a real city, Pete. It’s really here, really under our feet, and later I’ll show you how I know that. The relic I handed you in the car is one of a few I’ve found, all of them . . . the same. Distant.”

  “It didn’t feel all there.”

  “I think it was a ghost,” he said, frowning, concentrating. “I think it was a part of someone who died a long time ago, but a piece that was buried or lost to the ages. The other things I’ve found point to that too.”

  “But have you actually found this place? Or are you surmising?”

  “I’ve found enough to tell me that it’s really here. For sure.”

  “These bits of ghosts?” I felt slightly foolish verbalising what Scott had said. It was patently wrong, there was some other explanation, but he could state these outlandish ideas comfortably. They did not sound so real coming from my sceptical self.

  “Them, and more. I saw a part of the city revealed by a sink hole. Haven’t been able to get close yet, the sand is too fluid. But there’s nothing else it can be other than a buried ruin. Blocks, joints. I’ll show you soon.” He stared at me, challenging me to doubt.

  “But why hasn’t anyone else ever come here, found this stuff?”

  Scott took another long drink from his bottle, emptying it, and then tilted his chair back and stared up at the tent ceiling. The sun cast weird shapes across the canvas, emphasising irregularities in its surface and casting shadows where sand had blown and been trapped, gathered in folds and creases. Scott looked as though he was trying to make sense.

  “Scott?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why no one has found those scraps of things before, or seen the ruin, or pieced together the evidence that’s just lying around for me to find. And for a while, this made me doubt the truth of what I’d discovered. It couldn’t be so easy, I thought. I couldn’t have just stumbled across it. The evidence was so real, and the existence of the city here is so right, that others must have come to the same conclusions. A hundred others, a thousand.”

  “Are you quite sure no one has?”

  “No,” he said. “Not positive. Perhaps others have found the place, but never had a chance to reveal any of their findings.”

  I drank my beer and glanced around the tent. The closer I looked, the more I saw Scott’s identity and personality stamped on the interior. A pile of books stood in one corner, all of them reference, no fiction. What’s the point of reading something that isn’t true? he’d once said to me, and I’d hated myself for not being able to come up with a good reason. Me, someone who worked in publishing, incapable of defending the purpose of my life. A belt lay carelessly thrown down on the rugs, various brushes, chisels and other implements of his trade tied to it. And the rugs themselves, far from being locally made, seemed to speak a variety of styles and cultures. Some told stories within their weaves, others held only patterns, and one or two seemed to perform both tasks with deceptive simplicity. The realisation that this man, my friend, did not actually have a home hit me then, strong and hard. He carried his home with him. After all these years, all this time, I guessed that I had assumed Scott would “come home” one day, not realising that he lived there every day of his life.

  I missed my wife and kids then, sharply and brightly. But the feeling, though intense, was brief, and it soon faded into a background fog as Scott opened another bottle for each of us.

  “I think I found this place for a reason,” he said at last. “I can’t say I was led here – I led myself if anything, looking, delving, searching into old histories and older tales – but I think it was meant to be.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve started to believe in fate.�
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  “Only if it’s self-made,” he said, grinning. “I was fated to find this place, and you were fated to join me here, to search more fully. But only because that’s what both of us wanted. Me to find Matthew, and you to give your life an injection of life.”

  I felt slighted, but I knew that he was right. In what he said about me, at least. As to Matthew, I could not begin to imagine.

  “Where better for the city of the dead than nestling in the cradle of humanity?” he said. “Ethiopia is where the first people walked, where Homo Sapiens came into being. What better place?”

  Something slammed against the side of the tent, sending the canvas stretching and snapping against the poles. I jumped to my feet and Scott glanced up, bottle poised at his mouth. “Sounds like we’re in for a bit of a blow,” he said.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Wind. Storm coming in. You’d best get your things inside, we’ll share this tent. Sand storms can be a bit disconcerting the first time you’re caught in one, especially in a tent. Magnifies sound.”

  “You never said anything about sand storms.” I felt the familiar fear rising inside, the one that hit me keen and hard when I was removed from my normal place, the company of normal people. The fear that said I was lost.

  “Didn’t say much at all,” he said. “If I had, would you have come?”

  “Of course!” I said. “Of course I would.”

  “Even though you think I’ve lost the plot?”

  I considered lying to my friend then, but he would have known. He already knew the truth. “That was the main reason.”

  He smiled. “You’re a good mate. I’m a lucky man. I may only have a few possessions to my name, but I’m rich in friends.”

  I was unfeasibly flattered by his comment, and I went on to say something trite in response – thanks, or so am I – when another gust of wind hit the tent. It seemed to suck the air from inside, drawing in the tent walls, pulling down the ceiling, shrinking the canopy as if to allow the desert sand and air to move closer. The whole structure leaned and strained for a few seconds that seemed like minutes, and then the gale lessened, the tent relaxed, and I glared down at Scott.

  “Are we likely to be left homeless by this?” I said.

  “Nope. Tent’s meant to move and shift with the wind.” His eyes were wide, seeing something far more distant than I knew, and I saw the familiar excitement there, the knowledge that there was more going on than we could ever hope to understand. That kind of ignorance never offended Scott. It merely gave him more cause to wonder.

  I ducked outside to drag in my luggage, squinting against the sand being blown around by the rising wind. I stood there for a while, hand shielding my eyes, looking out towards the horizon to see whether I could see the storm. All around, the skies seemed to have darkened from light blue to a grubby, uniform grey. The sun was a smudge heading down to the western horizon, a smear of yellow like a daffodil whipped in the wind. Out past the camp I could see dust dancing above the ground, playing in spirals across the plain where the wind was being twisted by the heat. They flicked to and fro. Snapping at the ground. Whipping up more dust and sand to add to their mass.

  And then, in the distance, floating above the horizon, there was a ghastly flash of light that lit the insides of the grey mass.

  I gasped, felt grit on my teeth and in my eyes, and a few seconds later a long, low roar rolled in across the desert. It started subdued as a rumbling stomach, but increased in volume until it shook the ground beneath my feet and smashed my ears. Another flash displayed just how dark it had suddenly become. The resultant thunder merged with the first. The sky was screaming at me.

  Just as I turned to go back into the tent the wind came down with a vengeance. What I had thought a gale was only a precursor to this onslaught. Sand was ripped up and blasted into my face, my ears, my hair and eyes and mouth. The sound was tremendous; wind, thunder, and grit coursing across the tent walls.

  Inside, Scott had stood up and was opening two more bottles of beer. “Bit of a howler!”

  “Is it always like this?” I had to shout just to be heard, and even then I could have been mumbling.

  “Never seen one like this before! Here. More beer!” He held out the bottle and I went to him, accepting it, grateful for the dulling effect of the alcohol.

  The storm came down. It was so loud that we could not hear ourselves talk, let alone each other, so we sat together and listened. I was terrified. The aural onslaught was so extreme that I wanted to scream, challenge its ferocity with some of my own. It beat into the tent, seemingly increasing in volume all the time, and it was all for me, aimed at me, targeted at me and me alone.

  Scott sat wide-eyed and astonished, an inscrutable smile on his face as he stared at the canopy shifting above us.

  It went on for a long time, becoming more fearsome with each passing minute. The roar turned into something that sounded alive, a snarling thing, crunching down into the ground in a hideous rhythm. The storm was running towards us across the desert, legs so long that the footfalls were minutes apart. It was not an image that I relished, but deep down I found some satisfaction in the stirring of my mostly dormant imagination. Thousands of tons of sand picked up by the storm abraded the whole landscape. It was powered against the canvas, setting the whole structure vibrating into a blur.

  Something hit the tent. It slid slowly across the surface, visible as a dark shadow against the slightly lighter background. Its edges shimmered in the wind, and it took several long seconds to pass over the tent’s domed roof, finally being sucked away into the storm with a whip-like crack.

  “What the hell was that?” I shouted

  “One of the other tents, I guess.”

  “I thought you said they were meant to bend, could withstand this?”

  “We weren’t in that one.” His comment made no sense. I guessed I had misheard.

  We attempted some more shouted conversation, but two out of every three words were stolen by the storm. I imagined these lost thoughts blown together, mixed and matched into things neither of us had ever meant to say. Scott’s tent seemed to be withstanding the battering, its poles bending and twisting just as he’d said they were designed to, though I never once felt safe. As far as I was concerned we were forever on the verge of doom. The tent would be whipped away into the grey storm and we would be left bare, exposed, tumbling across the desert in a cloud of rugs and cushions and clothes, sand scoring our skin until the flesh showed through, blinded, deafened, eventually buried wherever the storm chose to dump us.

  Scott never looked anything less than amazed. His excitement did not flicker. He continued drinking, and to my surprise so did I, still able to enjoy the beer even in such desperate circumstances. Part of it was the lulling effect of the alcohol, but perhaps I was also taking on some of Scott’s awe through our companionable silence.

  The lightning flashes continued, shimmering across the tents outer walls and casting strange shadows, swirling, dancing dust devils celebrating the wind. The thunder came almost immediately. It was a long time before the period between lightning and thunder began to grow again. I imagined the storm waiting above our tent, examining us, interested in these petty humans that had decided to pitch against its power.

  Still the sands scoured the tent, driven by the horrendous gales. I shouted at Scott several times to ask whether the canvas could withstand such a battering, but he did not answer. He knew I was asking something but he merely smiled, eyes sparkling, bringing the bottle to his lips once more. He existed in his own little space.

  There was no point in trying to sleep. I checked my watch regularly, but day and night had become confused, and when the time began to make no sense I stopped checking. Perhaps night fell, because the dark storm became that much darker, but lightning gave us brief moments of illumination here and there. Scott lit some electric lanterns around the tent, solar batteries charged during the day to keep the day with us through the long, dark de
sert nights. And it grew perceptibly cooler. I opened my luggage and rummaged around for a jumper and a pair of combat trousers, standing to change, with my head only inches from the convex canvas ceiling. For some reason it seemed so much louder than when I was sitting down.

  Eventually, after hours that felt like days, the storm began to abate. We only realized how much it had lessened when we found that we could converse comfortably by raising our voices only slightly.

  “How long do these usually last?” I asked.

  Scott shrugged. “As I said, never seen one like this before. But I think that was short.”

  I looked at my watch, but still it made no sense.

  “Hours,” he said. “Maybe six.” He glanced at the empty beer bottles strewn around the floor of his tent. “Maybe more.”

  I suddenly realized how much I needed to urinate. I looked around the tent but there was no sign of a bucket or a partitioned toilet area.

  “Two tents along,” Scott said. “If it’s still there.” He pointed the way without standing. He suddenly looked very drunk, even though minutes before he had been alert and observant.

  I stared at him. I was scared, terrified of the desert and the prospect of leaving the tent on my own, but I could not articulate that idea.

  He knew. “Come on,” he said, standing and swaying slowly towards me. “Shit, listen to that. Like it never was.”

  The storm had all but died down. There was a continuous, low hissing of sand slipping slowly from the dome tent. But even that faded away after only a few more seconds, and we were left with our own heavy breathing.

  The silence was shocking. My stomach rumbled, and I was ridiculously embarrassed.

  “Like it never was,” Scott said again. “Let’s go and see what it’s left us.”

  We exited the tent into a blood-red dusk.

  And we saw what the storm had left behind.

  The landscape had changed beyond recognition.

  Where the watering hole had been, a sand dune now lay. Where the neighbouring tents had been pitched there was now a wind-patterned expanse of loose sand. And the horizon that had once been apparent, viewed across packed sand and low, gentle mounds, was now hidden behind something new.