by John Moralee
What was I doing here? What was I doing here?
One torch rolled across the floor and lifted off a few yards in front of me. I caught it as it flew past. I almost lost my grip on the rail as my legs slipped and slid. If I let go I would slam into the far wall like a bullet. The bucket hurtled through the air, crashing into the stairs, then it clattered up them one at a time, finally to fly off into the entrance lobby. Even the altar was rocking. The wind battered the dead girl until she toppled from the crate, then the crate scraped along the floor, stopping when it hit her. Then both were moving inch by inch. The basement was filled with a thick red cloud of spinning dust. I closed my eyes, for the dust was like sandpaper rubbed in my face. The wind roared. I could see the red light through my lids.
Suddenly the wind died, and the red light vanished, just as if it the hole had been closed.
I thought that was what had happened.
Briefly.
I changed my mind soon enough, emitting a pathetic squeak.
There was someone or something coming out of the hole.
It was huge.
It was something that clearly could not fit through the hole.
But it squeezed through, like a tonne of black and red putty. The putty started forming something on the floor, rising up in a column nine, ten feet high. It looked vaguely human - at least there was a head at the top, a mottled lump with dark pits for eyes, many eyes. It looked like a piece of burning coal tossed into cold water, steam rising from fissures in its red and black carapace. Legs and arms snapped out of the lump unlike any I’d seen in nature. Barbed, wicked limbs. Its fingers and toes were like Mack the Knife’s knife. The wind battered its back with no effect.
I switched off the torch. I didn’t want to advertise myself to this demon. (I think I fully emptied my bladder again, but I can’t be sure.)
Its footsteps cracked the ground.
I thought it had seen me.
I expected an instantaneously death. A painful instantaneously death.
But it went towards the crate, smashing the wood with fists and feet. The demon stopped at the dead girl, looking down.
It crouched down and picked her up. Though its action looked gentle, I saw that its fingers embedded into the girl’s flesh. Standing, it lumbered back to the hole, carrying the child like a newlywed across the threshold of their new home.
It passed her body to something else on the other side, then it melted and wormed its way through the hole.
Once it was gone, the wind resumed. It was slightly less powerful than before, as if the hole were closing.
I managed to stand up, brush off the dust and examine my cuts and bruises. All said and done, I’d survived pretty unscathed.
But my story had vanished.
I looked up the stairs, then at the hole. Deciding.
Now most people would have run the hell out of there. But I’m a journalist, and unlike a lot of journalists that actually means something to me. I don’t do it just for the money (though it helps), I do it because I want to find out the Truth with a capital t. My story had just been stolen from this world. Mack the Knife was still in there, wherever there was. And so was the creature or creatures. The hole was offering the opportunity of a lifetime. The stairs offered safety.
Curiosity won.
*
Red light. It was very bright and cast no shadows. I could see the real world through the hole, but it was fading. Then it was gone.
I was on the other side.
This place was soft and organic. Imagine standing inside someone’s colon. This was that the place. Bioluminescent fauna, cherry-red, like a scraped tongue, grew on an ammonia-oozing swamp. The air was hot and sulphurous and hard to breathe, like breathing through a wet flannel. (Try it, you’ll see what I mean.) I took the time to vomit, to purge myself of the tastes and smells. I felt better for the experience. The ground absorbed my vomit with a relish I found disturbing. Wet sucking slurps drained it away.
I was fairly sure I was outside, for I could see no walls or ceiling. My eyes adjusted to the brightness, and I dared to look up.
Above was a red sky, bruised purple by clouds. Two swollen suns burned down. Yes, this wasn’t Kansas any more.
I moved to higher ground, pulling my legs out of the swamp with great difficulty. Hell, the swamp water was like glue. The ground was wet and sticky and the texture of skin. I could see no creatures nearby, which was a good thing. I didn’t want to introduce myself just yet. A handshake in this place could seriously screw you up. The wind brought the smell of charcoal and cooked meat from the direction of a red rock hill, surrounded by a river that came down from a ridge of volcanoes far in the distance. The river looked like blood, but that could have been the red light. A castle or city was on the hill. Smoke rose from the spiked towers. Alien footprints led that way.
I snapped some photographs. If I ever got out of this world the pictures would scare the hell out of my editor and provide proof of my tale. Now I was here I knew I had to find a way out. Exclusive or no exclusive.
A sound: squelching, behind me.
I turned around just as Mack the Knife pulled himself out of the swamp. He spat out a glob of jelly and shook himself like a half-drowned dog.
“Who are you?” he asked, as if my appearance were the thing out of the ordinary, not this strange world.
I forgot my name.
Mack the Knife looked around. “Where’s the bloodway gone?”
“What?”
“The way out, the bloodway!” He breathed deeply, as a teacher would when explaining something to a child. “I had to hide when those monsters approached. Then when I was sure they’d gone I heard something else ... that was you, right?”
I nodded.
He swore.
“Je-sus! If you hadn’t come through the bloodway would have stayed open for four weeks. Now I’m stuck here forever.” He stared at me. “And it’s all your fault. What are you? A detective?”
Should I lie? I thought.
“No, a journalist.”
“A journalist.” He sounded disgusted. “They’re worse.” The knife was in his hand. “I suppose you wanted to catch the great Mack the Knife. Or maybe you just wanted an interview? You guys make me sick.”
“We’re just doing a job,” I said. As if I had to justify myself to that maniac. I backed away, carefully. “Why did ... you kill those girls?”
“It’s the only way to open the bloodway, of course.” He could see I was puzzled. “The blood of a human opens a doorway to other worlds, if you know the ritual as practised by the Blood Ones, the ancient beings who rule the universe.” It sounded like the ranting of a loony, but I knew some of it was true. “Unfortunately, this time it’s opened it to this ... hell-hole. That’s the trouble, you can’t pick the destination. Well, maybe you can, but I haven’t figure out how yet. There are worlds where every whim is granted. But I’m still looking for the perfect one. My world.” He looked wistful. His mood suddenly flipped to malicious. “Mmmm. I have an idea ...”
“You do?”
“Of course. You’ll do fine, Mr Journalist.” His teeth shone. “It looks as if I’m going to have to kill you to get back to Earth. No hard feelings.”
I wondered how fast I could run on the soft ground.
Mack the Knife lunged at me.
Luckily, his legs were knee-deep in the swamp. He could not move. I pitched the torch at him. It struck his head a hard blow. He growled, blowing out a nostril filled with blood. I headed for the hill as he pulled free his feet. I was probably running to a death worse than the one Mack intended, but you don’t stop to analyse things when a knife-wielding madman is chasing you.
You run.
I reached the river and plunged headlong into the water. It was foul and salty, stinging my skin like acid. I swam to the far shore, reached it, spitting out the water as I climbed the bank. Mack the Knife was close behind, promising me a painful death. My legs burned with the effort. There was a r
ough road ahead, a path worn flat by the pounding of alien feet. I powered up the hill, realising that the hill was much higher than I’d thought. In a world without straight lines it was harder to judge distances. I had a funny feeling gravity was double Earth’s, the way it dragged on my legs and arms and pressed down on my head. But now wasn’t the time for a physics lesson, I just had to keep going up and up. What I found difficult, Mack the Knife would also find difficult. I could hear him grunting and wheezing. He’d given up on the verbal abuse to concentrate on his running.
Uh-oh. There was a rock in my way.
No. Not a rock.
One of those things.
I stumbled to a halt.
“Given up, have you?” Mack said. He stopped running to walk up the hill, to finish me off at his leisure. Sweat dripped off his lank hair. He had not seen the creature.
I laughed at the insanity of it all.
Between a rock and a hard place.
“I’ll be out of here in a jiffy,” Mack said. “Say good-bye.”
“NO!” I screamed.
The rock creature stirred. Its body pulsed with a tracery of scarlet. I did a crazy thing then. I walked up to it and pointed down the hill at Mack the Knife. I said, as calm as I could muster: “He’s the one you want. He killed her. He’s the murderer.”
The rock rose to its full height. Scalpel blades glittered.
Mack the Knife froze.
The knife in his hand was proof of my words.
The creature ignored me - and launched itself after Mack. Its strides were massive, thundering blows. Mack dropped his knife and fled. Mack was faster than the stone creature, but the beast was better equipped at moving on the spongy ground. Its claws fastened with each step, spewing up rents of earth in its wake. It caught up with Mack in twenty seconds. One hand plunged into Mack’s back and burst out of his chest. The creature held him over its head as he kicked and thrashed, blood showering its head and upper torso. Mack’s internal organs slopped out of his back, the blue of his spleen a flash of contrast in the red. Then it dropped Mack’s broken body and folded itself up and went back to sleep as if nothing had happened.
It was going to let me live.
Hesitantly, I collected the knife.
Then I fished my wet notepad from my coat pocket and approached the dead man. I didn’t know his real name, or care. He did not deserve notoriety. All that mattered was I had to replicate his ritual. I cut open his chest and spread the blood as far as it would spread. Then I read the words I’d copied down. At the end of the ritual nothing happened.
I examined the knife and soon realised the words were a meaningless part of Mack’s psychosis: the knife had a sliding groove which activated the bloodway, providing the blood from a recently living person was on its blade. By pointing the blade at the blood it created a connection. A bloodway.
The blood started to glow. God bless human blood. Such marvellous properties.
A bloodway opened on Mack’s eviscerated body. I jumped through ... and found myself dropping ten feet into the basement of the tower-block. I landed badly, twisting my ankle, but I was grateful to be alive and in one piece. Mack’s body fell through the hole on top of me, soaking me with stinking viscera. He was not in one piece.
The bloodway shrank behind us and popped out of existence.
*
That was what happened six months back. There have been no more murders. The police believe Mack the Knife has gone to ground, and I suppose that is true. The tower-block has been destroyed and its sad history with it.
I still have Mack’s knife.
I have a theory about how it works. It creates tiny wormholes using human blood as a medium. It wasn’t mysticism. It was alien technology. Its alien inventors evidently carried a supply of humans for just such a purpose. They were obviously not the aliens I saw on that weird planet. It makes me worry the Blood Ones might come back to retrieve their device. The knife is under my pillow, just in case I need a quick escape.
I could post it anonymously to the police, but it would not solve things. Nothing could explain the murders. After all, my hands touched the knife. I would become the suspect.
However, I showed my editor the photographs: she thought they were computer graphics. She told me - get this - to get a real story, not to make one up. The evidence I collected is useless. There are too many hoaxes out there to have the real thing accepted.
*
Incidentally, the headmaster of a local school has gone missing. The police are investigating his disappearance, but I know they won’t discover where he’s gone. I recognised his picture ... and guess who it was? That’s right. His bones will have dissolved in a swamp thousands of light-years away. Mack the Knife was having too many extra-curricular activities, it seems.
I keep thinking about his words, about the worlds waiting through the bloodways. Worlds that aren’t grey and boring, like this one. Worlds where the fantastic is only one bloodway away.
I’ve experiment with my own blood: it just doesn’t work. Neither does animal blood, or blood from a donor. It looks as though the only way a bloodway will open is if I sacrifice someone.
I’d just have to kill someone, anyone.
It’s an appalling thought.
But ...
I could choose someone evil, couldn’t I?
It wouldn’t be that hard, would it?
The Black Chip Game
Mardi Gras tourists lounged around the black pianist playing the Steinway in the lobby, listening to an organic Louis Armstrong composition, all unaware their thoughts reached Lisa as loud as the jazz music. From the quieter bar, Lisa sipped icy mineral water and tried listening to her own thoughts. The briefcase on her lap contained ten million dollars in US Government bonds, and a single black gambling chip. The chip was rarer than the bonds, only a hundred existed, each handed down generation to generation. You needed to be telepathic to have one. And you needed it to enter the Black Chip game.
It was her first time here in the Paramour Hotel. First and last, one way or the other. She sipped the drink, brooding. Coming here was probably the biggest mistake in her twenty years of life. If anything went wrong, she knew she would not be leaving the hotel, not through the lobby, anyway.
Lisa decided to take her own thoughts off the life and death game she would soon face in the Black Chip game, so she listened to the tourists’ thoughts. Today, more than usual, her skills were sensitised to each thought in the room. First, there was the Brit wearing a sparkling tuxedo, giving her sly looks when he thought his girlfriend wasn’t looking at him.
Wow, she’s looking at me! What a looker. I bet she’s not frigid like Marcia ...
Lisa picked up his girlfriend’s thoughts, too.
Dave’s flirting with that red-headed slut. Who does she think she is? God’s gift? Dave, you had better start looking my way.
Marcia nudged Dave in the ribs. The happy couple sat silently, watching the pianist. Marcia imagined the pianist naked. So did Dave. Lisa could tell that they’d never see their wedding in four weeks, with so many secrets between them. She blocked their thoughts out of her head, but received unwanted messages from another mind.
These guys are loaded, man. The Big Easy is gonna be easy, easy, easy. Look at Fatso, wallet stickin outa his pocket like it’s wantin to jump. So fat he ain’t gonna feel it’s gone. Man drinks like a fish. Yeah, that’s right - order another drink, you fat freak. Your wallet’s gonna be mine, just you wait.
Lisa filled the pickpocket’s mind with an image of several cops, all waiting for him to make a move so they could shoot him full of holes. He jumped up as if his backside burned.
Don’t even think about stealing that man’s wallet, Lisa thought to him.
He hurried through the revolving doors and onto the street, leaving the hotel in search of a Greyhound station and a therapist.
Lisa couldn’t stop a little smile, but her mood darkened.
The pianist was bored out of his head.
>
Do I really do this for two dollars an hour? I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I should be playing Carnegie Hall. Just let me have a break.
None of the tourists were Black Chip players in disguise, unless one was sufficiently skilled to project a fake personality. Lisa suspected that she had been given the wrong address. Which was ridiculous. It had to be here.
A man with silver-white hair stepped out of the wrought-iron elevator, quickly setting his gaze on Lisa. He smiled coldly. No thoughts emanated from him at all; he was blocking. Leisurely, he walked towards her and selected a stool. He smelt of French aftershave and expensive cigars. “The game requires an entry fee of one million. Do you have it?”
She tapped the briefcase. “Are all the others here?”
He grinned. “Why don’t you read my mind and find out?”
“You’re blocking,” she said. “I presume you are Mr Lavoisier, the organiser.”
“And you are?”
“A player. Just a player.”
“Discretion is my middle name.”
Lavoisier pulled the elevator doors shut and pressed for the third floor, pressing it twice before anything happened. The elevator ascended in fits and starts, moving so slowly it was as if someone were pulling the cable from above, inch by inch, stopping to gather breath after each pull.
“We’ve used the hotel for a hundred years,” he said.
“I know.”
As Lisa left the lobby behind the thoughts of the tourists became barely detectable whispers, weakening with distance until she was surrounded by an all pervading silence, both external and internal. It was strange to have no alien thoughts drifting around her head, and it took her breath away. There had to be some very powerful telepaths on the third floor.
Vaguely, she felt the exploratory touch of Lavoisier’s mind ... He was very good and might have probed her memories undetected if she had not been alert. She blocked him in an instant. He paled, obviously embarrassed by his faux pas.
