Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant

by Ramsey Campbell

  He threw himself back and forth against the inside of the carcass, bloodying his arms and legs and back on exposed ribs. There was no reaction from outside that he could discern. How could they not see Bossie shake? He paused and panted through his snotty nose. How to make the men outside realize he was inside the cow? How much more of this torment did they expect him to take?

  Maybe it was Maxon and his pals out there. Maybe they’d come back to release him after all, and this was just more of their idea of fun, to get in that last bit of torture before slitting Bossie open along the seam they’d created with the fishing line. Bert smiled behind the duct tape, sure that it must be them, and that it was only a matter of moments before they’d cut him loose.

  And Grammy would be out there, and so would all those asshats who’d stopped by to make fun of him. He’d give Grammy a swift fucking kick in her support hose, and tell Connie Fucking Lesbo Bitch Maxon and her new cunt girlfriend and her uncle-fucking brother and all the rest what he thought of them.

  The clanking of a chain drove those thoughts from his brain. Shadows moved across the beam of light entering through the anus. The engine was closer, louder, obliterating any possibility of hearing the men outside. On top of the growl of the V-8, there was a high whine. Bossie shifted, moved, lifted. Bert slid back down towards her head as she was raised into the air.

  He stood on the thick, rancid beef of Bossie’s shoulders and peered at the now distant bung hole that was his only view of the world. Past it, he saw a chain wrapped around her back legs, and beyond that, the winch hanging from the John Deere green painted crane that had lifted him and Bossie from the ground. The carcass swung back and forth, making the light dance around him. The whine of the winch stopped, and Bert heard one last thing before his mind gave up on reality.

  “Got no choice, Stu,” a man who didn’t sound at all like Jerry Maxon said. “You find a cow that’s died of anthrax, you just gotta burn her before she can infect the rest of the herd. Don’t even want to get close to her, poor thing, except to loop that chain around her ankles. Poor Old Bossie. Okay, boys, swing her around, into that fire pit. Gotta douse her with gas and burn her up.”

  Bert’s mind gave up its tenuous hold on reality, leaving only one marginally sentient thought echoing in his tormented brain, a line from Poe that should have occurred to him hours before.

  For the love of God, Montressor.

  For the love of God, Maxon.

  For the love of God.

  The cow spun as she was positioned over the fire pit, but Bert didn’t care. He didn’t notice when she was dropped six or eight feet, even though the shock shattered both his legs and one side of his pelvis. The aroma of Texaco was just one more insult to his olfactory, not worth noting.

  The blazing heat that baked him in the oven of Bossie’s body couldn’t reach the place he had retreated into, which was the first merciful thing that had happened to him in almost twenty-four hours.

  * * *

  A few hours later, a bulldozer shoved a ton of dirt onto the bovine and human ashes mingled together.

  Grammy reported him missing, and suggested the names of a few suspects, but there was little enthusiasm on the part of the police over Bert’s disappearance. His enemies were so many, none stood out as potential culprits. After a while, even Grammy realized how much better her life was since he’d gone away, and the world went on just fine without him.

  Every so often, though, an e-mail might pass between one or another of the legions of Bert’s victims and foes, a sly “asshat” or “cuntboy” between friends, just to remind each other of the infant terrible who had brought so many people together in their common hatred of him.

  Not the best legacy anyone could hope for, but neither is it the worst.

  ALCHERA

  DJ Tyrer

  “Sometimes, when the weather is just right like this, the lakebed will trap a layer of mist and it will seem as if the lake is there as it once was.”

  Cammie listened as Rob told her all he knew about the old, dried-up lakebed that lay just a little distance from the house. He, of course, had lived here for years, knew all about the place. Outback-born and bred, Rob was an old hand in the sun-baked heart of Australia. She, on the other hand, was a ‘Pom Sheila’, as he delightfully put it, and everything about the land of the kangaroo was novel to her.

  Here, at a place with a name she couldn’t pronounce, they were right out in the middle of the desert. There was nothing here but rocks and the occasional piece of dead-seeming scrub. Rob told her that when the rains came every few years the area would briefly erupt into a bright and luscious riot of life. But, the rest of the time, it was about as dead as anywhere on the planet could be.

  To the untrained eye, the deserts were of no use to anyone, except the boffins who used them to test the efficacy of A-bombs to vitrify the flesh of Mother Earth. Rob had told her of the great mushroom clouds tall enough to rise above the distant horizon and the ash clouds that had blown in on unexpected winds after the tests.

  Of course, the desert concealed something of worth, or there wouldn’t have been such a good-sized house here. Even had an eccentric been taken with the remoteness of the spot, nothing more than a shack would’ve been plausible this far from civilisation. But, there was gold in the hills – or, had been, till the mines played out – and her grandfather had built this house here on the wealth he gained from the mining operations.

  Rob had been the foreman at the mine and had received a half-share in the house from Cammie’s grandfather, just as she had. Cammie suspected the old man had hoped the joint-inheritance would inspire them to marry. Rob had laughed at the suggestion, but, secretly, she found the prospect not entirely unthinkable; she rather liked him.

  In return for her share of the surrounding lands and a decent bank balance with which to manage them, Cammie had come to Australia to fulfil the stipulation that she spend at least a quarter of the year in the sandblasted, once-yellow, gothic-inspired wood-board house. There wasn’t exactly much to do out here, but she guessed that with inherited wealth she could afford to fill her time with books and records, or hosting soirees for the society friends she was certain she would soon make. Three months a year, especially if divided up, would pass easily. Particularly if things developed with Rob.

  Back in England, Cammie had been a shop girl on low wages in a nation still slaved to rationing, one that had won a war only to lose the peace. Down Under, everything seemed plentiful and she had the money to afford it. Just as her grandfather had done half-a-century before, she had abandoned everything she knew to start a new life on the far side of the world.

  Unlike him, she hadn’t abandoned a young family and left them destitute whilst building a fortune: James Atheling might have started with nothing, but he had soon climbed the greasy pole to wealth and power. Not a single penny had seen its way to her mother or aunt. She supposed this inheritance was a belated apology of sorts. Or, maybe some kind of ‘I told you so’, given his requirement that she emulate his relocation to Australia in order to inherit.

  “Your grandfather was a strange old coot,” Rob told her, “a good boss, decent and fair, who knew mining inside out, but strange, nonetheless.”

  He’d often told her that, but had never been too clear on why he said it: “It was his manner, how he was, you know?”

  She didn’t. The most she could establish was that he had been inordinately fascinated with the lakebed.

  “Used to sit out here on the veranda staring at it for hours,” Rob said. “Not sure why, it doesn’t look much different to anywhere else around here, just flatter.”

  He was right, yet she could almost understand her grandfather’s obsession with it. She couldn’t explain it, but there was something about it that called to her. Perhaps it was because the hard-baked ground was a lighter colour than the land around it so that it reflected the light of the moon and stars, giving it an ethereal quality by night. When the mist gathered upon it, a rarity in t
hese parched, scorched lands, it looked even more magical. As Rob said, it looked as if the lake was actually there: a cloud lake.

  Sitting on the veranda in the swing-chair where her grandfather had once sat, the long-dead lake filling her view, she asked Rob why the lake and the others like it in the region had dried up.

  He looked up from his bottle of beer and said, “Well, that’s hard to say ...”

  “Don’t you know?”

  He laughed. “I don’t think anybody knows, not for certain. I guess the climate just got drier. I read that it’s dry out here because of the mountains back east, so maybe the lakes were here before the mountains. I have heard folks say that there was a great drought or some disaster that just dried them up. Your grandfather used to say there were cities out on their shores that died when the lakes died, but I can’t say I credit it. Although there were some odd towers, like enormous termites might have built, out by where they were doing the tests. They looked a bit like buildings, I guess. But, really, they were just natural outcroppings. Maybe those were what he was thinking of.”

  “Seeing it like this, I could imagine there is a city on the far shore.” Cammie paused, staring intently for a while. “It almost looks as if there is one out there, as if I can see lights. I guess the moon is reflecting off something.”

  Rob’s only reply was a snore and, then, the sound of his bottle slipping from his fingers to roll across the floorboards and out onto the sand.

  Cammie gave a little laugh to realise that he was sleeping. She supposed he found her notions silly and boring; Rob was not the sort of person to view the world romantically. He was practical to the core. Appreciating the unusualness of these conditions was about as far as he was likely to go. She couldn’t see him imagining cities in the desert night.

  Only, the strange thing was that, the more she looked out across the lake, the more she got the impression that there were buildings out there with lights in their windows. She even thought she could hear the distant sounds of nocturnal city life echoing through the silence across the lakebed.

  “It can’t be real,” she murmured to herself. The problem was that denial only served to crystallise her doubts about what she was seeing. It really did look like there was a city out there, regardless of how impossible it seemed. It had to be a trick of the light, or maybe she was asleep, too, and dreaming.

  Yes, there were definitely lights out there across the lake. There was a house, a large house.

  There wasn’t one there, not really, she was certain of that, had walked all around the fossil shores of the lakebed and seen no other buildings anywhere in the area.

  Nonetheless, she could see one now. Could it be a reflection of the mansion on the mist? Maybe. That made the most sense. More so than some ghostly building. Yet, the longer she stared, the more solid it seemed, the more real.

  Then, she realised that she was no longer sitting on the veranda, but standing on a quayside, beside a lake with cloudy breakers bursting mistily against the shore. The building opposite had to be the mansion itself; the more she looked out across the foamy lake, the clearer she could see it. The peculiar outline was unmistaken. How had she got over here; over to this place that didn’t exist? She had to be dreaming!

  Slowly, Cammie became aware that she stood in a city beside the lake of clouds. Was this place Alchera? She recalled Rob using that word when talking about the lake, but couldn’t recall the context. Was this a memory or a dream? It seemed more real than her dreams usually were, yet had a numinous quality that reality lacked. She couldn’t recall an experience quite like this. It was strange and intoxicating.

  “What is this place?” she asked herself.

  “This is Carcosa, the greatest city in the world,” a voice replied and she turned in surprise to see a young woman in a flowing yellow robe of some diaphanous material, also staring out across the lake.

  “How did I get here?” Cammie asked.

  “You were always here on the lake shore,” the woman repeated in the nonsensical way characters so often did in dreams.

  “But, I was in the mansion across the lake.” Was it foolishness to quibble in a dream?

  “There is nothing across the lake but empty fields,” the young woman said. “Although there are those who claim to have seen a phantom city out there, like our own, only a shadow.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What is there to understand? This is your home and has always been. What more need you know than that?”

  “No, it isn’t. I’ve never been here before.” Yet, even as she said that, Cammie felt uncertainty creep over her. Surely she had dwelt here forever? Or, had she been here in her dreams? After a short pause of confusion, she went on. “No, no, that’s right. I lived in the mansion across the lake. I’ve never been here before. This place doesn’t exist. This is just a dream.”

  “Cammie, why do you say such things? You’ve always lived here with me.”

  “No, I haven’t! I don’t even know who you are!”

  “Cammie!” the young woman gasped in shock. “That’s a cruel thing to say!”

  “Who are you?”

  “It’s me, Cassie! Honestly, what is wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know...” Where did she belong? Here or across the lake in that phantom mansion? Which was real and which was not? Was either real? She shook her head, attempting to clear it, recall her past.

  “Come walk with me ...” The woman held out her hand and she took it, walking with her through the shadowy city of soaring towers.

  It was like the freakish offspring of London and New York as she had seen them in photos and on the movie screen, possessing the great age of the former and the skyscraping buildings of the latter. It was a bizarre amalgam; bizarre yet strangely familiar. The towers seemed so great of height that they passed behind the swollen belly of the ivory moon.

  “I can’t stay here,” Cammie said, at last, her voice plaintive. She knew she had to leave, yet part of her was pained at the thought.

  “Oh, Cammie, there’s no need to be this way.”

  “I have to leave; I have to go home.”

  “There is nowhere else; this is your home.”

  “It isn’t, Cassie. Oh, I wish that it were, but it isn’t; it isn’t...”

  “Well, decide not now, Cammie. Let the red dawn surmise what we shall do, when the twin suns sink beneath the lake and all life is through...”

  She was silent for a while as they walked through the empty streets of the funereal city, attempting to make sense of that. Eventually, she had to ask, “What does that mean?”

  “That is how our passion play ends.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the twin suns descend and boil away the lake in a coruscation of flame, this city shall cease to exist and all life here shall end.

  “I don’t understand...”

  “You shall shortly. See, there to the north, the twin suns burst into fiery dawn.”

  She turned her gaze northwards and, amidst the towers, she did, indeed, see two fiery red suns blaze into existence. With a horrific inevitability, the two balls of flame fell towards the lake as waves of heat rippled out towards them. Cammie felt her skin blister and bubble and slough away, just as the cloud lake boiled away in a hiss of steam, the rising clouds joining ash and dust to form twin mushroom-shaped plumes.

  “We die in Lost Carcosa,” she thought she heard Cassie say before her consciousness evaporated in flame.

  * * *

  “Now, where has that dopey Sheila got herself to?” Rob wondered.

  He’d woken to find himself on the veranda alone and her bed unslept in. It was now noon and he was beginning to worry.

  “I guess I’d better go looking for her ...” he muttered, and headed for the battered old skeleton of a Model T that served him for transport. He was trying to imagine just how far she might have gone since last he saw her. He’d have to spiral out from the house and hope he could spot her.
>
  Finally, Rob spied her, spread-eagled upon the lakebed on the far side of the sunbaked expanse. He hopped out of the car and ran to her side, then recoiled in horror as he saw her burnt and blistered skin. She must have lain there beneath the burning sun all morning. He had never known someone to be so badly burnt this quickly.

  Cautiously, he checked for pulse or breath, but there was none; Cammie was dead.

  He sighed. It was a crying shame, she’d been a real nice Sheila, for a Pom. The weird thing was that the blistering reminded him of a geezer he’d once seen who’d been badly burnt in a fire. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said she had died in a blaze. Bizarre!

  Behind him, to the north, a distant mushroom cloud stood sentinel on the horizon, another test underway. Before him, Cammie was as dead as the lake on which she lay.

  THE DANK

  Doug Blakeslee

  You know there’s trouble when a gnome hands you a mysterious package.

  “What’s up with the mystery gift?” I asked. “My birthday isn’t until January.”

  “It’s a delivery,” said Bernie.

  He wasn’t really a gnome, at least not that he would admit to. A bit over four feet tall, with a mop of messy white hair and long sideburns … the only things missing were a long nose and jaunty cap to go with his wizened features.

  “I don’t recall anything on the schedule,” I said, wracking my brain to see if I had missed any last minute changes.

  That was our business, here at Rogue Transport and Logistics. Part of it, anyway. The job board showed everyone else out on various calls, leaving me – Theo March, changeling and man in charge – the only one available.