At least he was still on the photo: the two of us, arms around each other’s shoulders. The best way to get to him was through his work, so I rang the Picture Editor on Life magazine, an irascible man with the hard-edged tones of a New Yorker. He said he had a number for Chet and disappeared from the phone, but when he came back with his contact book he asked me who I was after.
I mentioned Chefs name again, but this time I only got a blank silence. The Picture Editor had never commissioned Chet, had never even heard of him. I asked a secretary to check particular issues that I knew featured Chefs work, but all the pictures were now different to what I remembered, all by other photographers. And when I hung up and examined my snap, I saw only my own face staring back at me.
Beyond everything that was happening, one other thing disturbed me immensely: why was I the only one to remember these people? But that wasn’t true, I realised. At least one other person knew. He had visited Justin’s parents, and with a little digging around I found he’d asked questions in Paris and called Life. Van Diemen was the key, and I started to wonder if he wasn’t perhaps the cause. The spooks had decided to tie up the loose ends, and their cat’s-paw had been set the task.
Over time it came to me. Somehow it was linked to whatever had been uncovered in that mysterious stone corridor in the heart of the Iron Triangle. Van Diemen knew what it was: I think he had always known. When we ran from the tunnels for the chopper and we couldn’t understand why there were no pilots . . . failed to get a handle on the number of troops that came with us . . . they had all been wiped out like Justin, Alain and Chet. We couldn’t remember them because they never existed.
A sizeable portion of my US dollars buys me a trip to the airport in a ten-year-old car loaded with chicken coops. Somehow we make our way through streets packed with people carrying beds from the houses of the rich, or siphoning petrol, or making fluttering paper rain with their now-useless South Vietnamese money.
I fight my way through the crush at the airport gates – people screaming for blood, shouting for help, wanting to know why they’re being abandoned. The MPs let me by when they see my press accreditation, and I run across the tarmac amid the stink of fuel and the hell of engine noise, wondering when I’ll wink out like a star at dawn. Will I feel something coming for me? Cold talons on my neck? Will there be something beyond that instant? Or just a nothing and a never-having-been?
Searching back and forth along the ranks of men in short-sleeved white shirts and black ties and the very few women, make-up free and tear-stained, I start to think Van Diemen has already made good his escape. But then I see that silver hair shining in the sun and he turns and sees me as if I’d shouted him. But he doesn’t run. Instead his face grows briefly bright, and he smiles before becoming deeply sad. He holds out his arms for me.
Away from the crowds, we face each other. I try to stop myself shaking. For some reason, the words won’t come.
“My boy,” he said with surprising gentleness. “They told me you were dying.” He read my face and added quickly, “Of course. You want answers.”
“I want to be saved.” My voice sounded so pathetic, like a child’s.
He rested a paternal hand on my shoulder. “I came to you to explain. Eventually I tracked down your friends too. For one I was too late. But I spoke to the Frenchman and the American before the end.”
“You killed them.”
“No. I tried to make amends.” He looked away to a plane slowly filling with people; desperate to get away, I thought. When he looked back, his eyes were filled with tears. “The Vietnamese have a legend, of vampirical beasts that feed on life itself. Their name translates, very roughly, as The Teeth of the Stars, but the myths only hint at their true nature. Not vampires as you or I would understand them. These things are bound into the very fabric of this reality . . . silent shadows moving behind a painted scenery.”
“They took Justin . . .” I gulped in air to stop myself shaking.
“They can remove a life from existence itself, so that not only does it not exist, it never existed, and never will exist.”
“Then how can I remember them?”
“Your injuries . . .” He shrugged; we both knew it didn’t matter.
“And you?”
He dipped into his jacket and removed the charm I’d found hanging from the doorway of the stone cell. “It keeps me safe, and lets me see the truth. These hung from all the chambers. The Viet Cong removed them when they found that place and freed what had been imprisoned within.”
I recall the reports of how Operation Cedar Falls had failed so badly, because once the US troops went into the Iron Triangle for the climactic battle they found no enemy. It was as if they had melted away, retreated long before the assault began. But I could see now that wasn’t true.
“When intelligence reported that something unbelievable and dangerous had been discovered by the Communists in the heart of the Iron Triangle it was decided to seize this potential weapon for the benefit of the West.”
“A weapon?” I said, dumbfounded. “Something with the kind of power that you’re talking about?”
“We are all for turning, given the right impetus,” he continued in a flat voice. “I am not a stupid man. Yet I am affected by the weaknesses that shape us all. Petty fears make idiots of even the wisest. I wanted to see order imposed on the world. With youth in open rebellion in our homelands, with the forces of chaos sweeping across East Asia, I was prepared to go to great lengths to hold back the tide.” He removed his glasses to wipe his eyes. “But I never realised there were others prepared to go to even greater lengths.”
Another glance at the plane on the runway, nearly full now. I wanted to hit him for his heartlessness and insensitivity.
“Yes, I helped them contain the power. I thought I was doing the right thing, you see? But the use of it, that was down to them. In the end, they only needed so much of me.” He took a deep juddering breath. “Did you know Kissinger planned to use nuclear weapons here? Can you imagine the loss of civilian life? Those things did not matter to the people I worked for. It was all about order, at any cost. Hard men.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t quite comprehend. “I heard what happened at Kent State University in America. What was happening all over in the name of order. Hard, hard men. They didn’t know how to direct the power. They had to learn to control it. They needed a test before time ran out here in Vietnam . . .”
Realisation dawned on me. We were the test.
“Once I learned what they planned, I attempted to stop it. Naturally, I became an unacceptable burden. I was forced to stay one step ahead.”
“You changed sides?”
“You are talking about politics. I am speaking about moral absolutes. I did not go over to the enemy. I experienced one of those moments when the white light shines into the deep, shadowed parts of oneself. I did not like what I saw. Sometimes there are worse things than an absence of order, as there are worse things than death.”
I eased a little. Perhaps there was hope after all. “So you’re going to kill it? Drive a stake through its heart or something.”
“It cannot be killed. It is part of the universe, beyond you or I or the things we see around us. It can be guided. A little. But not controlled how my former partners wanted to control it.”
The plane was now taxiing up the runway. I could see he hadn’t been anxious to get on board. He’d only come here to watch.
Van Diemen held up the mysterious charm once more. “The key,” he said with smile. “They used to have it . . . and now they do not. Soon those who wanted to do terrible things in the names of their politics will be gone. Indeed, they will never have existed. And the world will be a better place. Yes, Vietnam will be lost. But in the end, is that such a bad thing?”
He was right – there are worse things than failing to impose order. When you confront all the horrors thrown up by reality, all the great spiritual questions, the terrors of the never-ending night, politic
s seems faintly ridiculous. Who cares about this territory or that? Who cares about money and taxes? Moral absolutes, he said. Rules of existence that should never be transgressed.
“What about me?” I could see the answer in his eyes, had known from the moment I’d spoken to him.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Truly. There is no turning back what is set in motion. But know this: I will remember you. I will never forget.”
He holds out his arms and I collapse into them, crying silently for what is about to happen, for what I have lost. My tears are insubstantial, moisture-ghosts that will soon fade and be gone. Like the past. Like the present.
Like the future.
JOEL LANE
Mine
JOEL LANE IS THE AUTHOR of two collections of supernatural horror stories, The Earth Wire (Egerton Press) and The Lost District and Other Stories (Night Shade Books), as well as two novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask (both Serpent’s Tail), and two collections of poems, The Edge of the Screen and Trouble in the Heartland (both Arc). He is currently working on a third novel, Midnight Blue.
“ ‘Mine’ was one of a batch of stories that I wrote for The Lost District,” the author explains. “They all had to do with the myths surrounding death and the afterlife. One of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems influenced this story, which I’d been trying to write for years.
“I’ve been reassured by the amount of offence it has caused.”
NIGHT WAS FALLING as he found the place. He’d have liked to wait until dark, but there wasn’t time. He had a gig that evening. It was a ritual: the first night of every tour. Once that had meant small towns in the Black Country; now it meant cities scattered across Europe. But always, for him, it started with this visit. His songs needed it. His voice needed it. He supposed most punters told themselves something similar. And it was always the same time of year: late autumn, as the trees burnt themselves out like cigarettes and dropped traces of frost on the pavement.
It was the same in every town, in every inner-city district. A shuttered window with a sign above it, lit up so as to be visible from the road at night. Always on a main road, close to other shops: being discreet was less important than ease of parking and access. The front door open, leading to a short entry passage; then a hermetically sealed inner door with a bell. As Mark got out of the car, the fading daylight made the buildings seem older: a modern street became grey and close-built, like the terraces he’d grown up in. He shivered and pulled at the collar of his black jacket.
The door was opened by a thin, pale-faced woman in a mauve gown. “Come in, darling,” she whispered. The sodium light caught her cheekbones for a moment before she turned away. Her hair was tied in a long pony-tail. Her feet made no sound on the vinyl floor of the hallway.
The reception lounge had two sofas, a table with a cash desk, and a blue mercury strip light that was just beginning to flicker. Another three men were waiting, their faces blank with a studied anonymity. “Have you been here before?” the receptionist said. Something in her voice and her blue-lit face made him realise that she was a man. He wondered if he’d come to the wrong kind of place.
“Yes.” It was always easier to say that. He leaned forward. “Is Carole here tonight?”
The receptionist’s sleeves rustled as he flicked through a leather-bound diary. “Yes, darling, she is. And she’s free just now. That’ll be ten pounds for the room.” He tucked the note into the cash-box with a movement like striking a match. “I’ll take you to her.”
Beyond the fringed curtain of the reception room, stairs led down into a basement corridor with several doors. The thin man walked a pace ahead of him, his slipper-clad feet and long gown making him almost seem to float. It was evidently a bigger place than the frontage suggested. They walked on to the end of the corridor, and down another set of stairs. He could smell incense and smoke in the air. It was colder down here, and the wall-set lights were the dead white of a smile in a magazine. These places were rarely strong on ambience. A draught made the receptionist’s sleeves tremble as he stopped at the last door.
The room inside was clearly not a bedroom. It had bare stone walls, and a ceiling that glistened with moisture. Mark couldn’t see where the light was coming from. His own breath was a pale smoke in the air. He could hear a distant echo of a woman’s voice crying out, only the rhythm allowing any distinction between pleasure and pain. So faint, it could have been an overdub from his own memory.
The receptionist gestured to an alcove on the left-hand side. Carole was sitting on a narrow white bed, wearing a silvery dress. She was brushing her long dark hair. The light of a smoky oil lamp picked out the individual strands like the strings inside a piano. The thin man went up to her and bent to whisper something in her ear. She smiled at Mark, then held out her left hand. “That’ll be sixty pounds, please.”
He fumbled with his wallet as the receptionist made himself scarce. As he placed the three twenties in her perfectly white palm, he noticed that the gash in her wrist was still open. Ice crystals were forming in it. He cupped his hands to his mouth and breathed into them. Carole stood up and pulled off her dress. He stared at her like a peeping Tom as she unfastened her bra and slipped off her black knickers. She smiled. “Are you going to undress as well?” His hands shook as he unbuttoned his shirt, unable to look away from her.
They lay on the bed and caressed each other. Mark remembered the first nights they’d spent together, in her basement flat on the edge of the park. She still looked about nineteen; only her eyes were older. The skin of her face was pale and neutral, like scar tissue. His mouth crept across her body, kissing the bony ridges of her shoulders, then moving down to touch her injuries. The cuts she’d made on herself, where the ice had formed like salt. The bruises he’d given her long ago, still blooming like ink blots on the white skin. His tongue made her shiver. She turned in his arms to face the wall, and he spread her legs gently. The voices in the wall cried out to him, trapped echoes of need and release. The rhythm track. His fingers probed her, stirred warmth in her passive flesh.
It was time for the bridge. Carole turned again, reached down by the lamp, tore open a foil packet. Her thin fingers sheathed him, then guided him into her. Just as it had always been. There’d be no need to change positions. He kissed her lightly on the mouth, then pressed his lips to the side of her neck. His fingers gripped her ribs, pressing hard where the bruises were. She cried out with pain. “Sorry,” he whispered. There were tears in her eyes. He reached up and stroked her forehead, running his fingers through the soft dark hair. It felt dry, almost brittle. He bent over her and placed a slow kiss in the hollow of her throat. She moved against him and dug her nails into his back. The final chorus.
Submission wasn’t enough for him: he needed her response. It always took time to get her warmed up. Her soft cries rang in his head, where all the lights were going out. His back arched, and he stared at the side of her face. She looked peaceful. She could almost have been asleep. He’d found her like this.
Still out of breath, Mark pulled on his clothes. The sweat glued him to his shirt; but it didn’t matter, he’d be changing soon enough. Carole sat on the edge of the bed, putting on her underclothes, then stood up to pull on her dress. The flickering oil lamp made the silver fabric look grainy, like ash. He reached out to take her hand. “Come with me.”
She stepped towards him, hesitantly. He looked into her eyes. “Will you follow me?” She nodded. He felt a quiet pang of joy, a tenderness mingled with the November ache of loss. Fire in the dead leaves. He gripped her hand, feeling the bones under the smooth skin. Then he let go and slowly walked towards the doorway. He thought he could hear footsteps behind him.
As he climbed the dark stairs, fatigue began to tug at him. It would be easier to stay down here, sleep for a while. Never mind the gig. But he kept walking. In the hallway, the cries of pleasure from behind the closed doors were a coda to accompany the two of them into the starlit night. He shivered. The moisture i
n his eyes blurred his vision. He stumbled up the second staircase to the lounge. There was no one there but the receptionist, who looked at Mark, then looked at the doorway behind him. He seemed about to say something, but instead just waved them on.
Mark took a deep breath and turned the handle on the inner door, then stepped through. The night was a blue-black curtain at the end of the passageway. He walked on until he could feel the cold air on his face, then turned around. His parting gesture was almost a wave. It could even have been a touch, if she’d been close enough to feel it. But she was already backing off, her face a mask the funeral parlour had been unable to make lifelike. The inner door closed behind her, and Mark was alone on the narrow street.
He waited to cross to where his car was parked. A line of vehicles was crawling past in both directions. Somewhere in the distance, a siren was caught up in the rush hour traffic. The air was stale with exhaust fumes. Mindful of the time, he began to walk between the slowly moving cars. It would be disastrous to be late on the first night of his tour. If you wanted to build a life in music, you had to observe these superstitions. They were part of what it meant to belong.
DAVID J. SCHOW
Obsequy
DAVID J. SCHOW IS A short story writer, novelist, screenwriter (teleplays and features), columnist, essayist, editor, photographer and winner of the World Fantasy and International Horror Guild awards (for short fiction and non-fiction, respectively).
His association with New Line Cinema began with horror icons Freddy Kreuger (A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Nightmares), Leatherface (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III) and the eponymous Critters (Critters 3 and Critters 4). In 1994 he wrote the screenplay for The Crow and has since worked with such directors as Alex Proyas, James Cameron, E. Elias Merhige, Rupert Wainwright, Mick Garris and William Malone.
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