Fantasy & Science Fiction - JanFeb 2017

by Spilogale Inc.

  "Then he died."

  "That sure as fuck wasn't the idea. Don't know what went wrong. The real plan was, I swim out with him, make sure he's all set up, then I go back to shore and drive his car to the house so it don't get towed or broken into. This is all around midnight, yeah? Then I'm supposed to drive back at three in the morning and pick him up. Only…"

  "You were too busy ripping him off."

  "Old dude was leaving the island the next day, Brose! Soon's his ritual was pau . So I boosted a few things from his luggage. Books, a watch, an old phone…not worth shit, by the way."

  "You're a fucking idiot. You didn't think he'd have gone after your mom? Get her fired? Make sure she could never find another job cleaning houses? You let her in for a lot of trouble!"

  Cutty clenched his jaw, looking off to one side, as it occurred to him that this had not occurred to him.

  "I just figured…he'd come out, wait around for a while, ditch the scuba gear, and walk back. Wasn't far. Guy was gonna be all enlightened and shit, why should he care if a few, you know, material possessions went missing? Next thing I hear, some kid spots his body in the reef the next morning. I almost shit! Sorta keep waiting for the cops to come around. But so far the only one who seems to care is you. Shoulda known that if books were involved, you'd be all over this thing."

  "If you didn't kill him, then why should you worry? Looks like suicide to everyone else. Or maybe just an accident. Locked himself up and what, dropped the key?"

  "Wasn't no key, brah," Cutty said. "It was a combination lock. And not the old kine, neither. New kine use letters for remember easy, I guess. He made me set it up for him, how I know. I checked his tanks, double-checked the combination. I was doing him fair, Brose. Deciding to steal the stuff was a last-minute thing. Like, fuck it, he's leaving, never gonna see him again, why not, right? But out in the water with him, as he chained himself up, I freaked a little. Just before I head back to shore, I think I see something come out the lava tubes. Don't know what he was conjuring. I mean, I don't believe in that shit so much, but he had me going."

  "So what was the combination? You remember?"

  "Sure. Easy one. Hollow, like the reef."

  "Like your head," Ambrose said, already walking away.

  "Brose! My tenner!"

  Ambrose dropped the bill into the weeds. Kept walking.

  * * *

  HOLLOWS AT DUSK. The sun was still in clouds, somewhere above the horizon, as Ambrose waded into the meager surf. The beach was scattered with the evening's loyal gathering of sunset worshipers. He followed their gaze to the peaks that rose above the water, green eroded pyramids that made him wish he could write like one of the authors of the books he sold. Something about the coastline brought out the poet in him, but he couldn't make it work. There was a huge mound that swept roundly down and sharply up again into a narrow ridge with distinct pinnacles. On certain nights, the old Hawaiians had climbed to the highest point closest to the sea, lit spears, and hurled them off flaming into the night. You didn't have to believe in magic to get carried away with visions in this place, especially at twilight. But if he were a writer, how could he possibly describe it? The massive mound looked like a pregnant belly, that much was obvious. But the jagged ridge of rock between the belly and the sea, what words could do justice to its simultaneous simplicity and complexity? Curves and crenelations? A scattering of fingers? Two fangs and a nose?

  With a shrug, he slipped in up to his chin and started kicking toward the reef. He hadn't brought his spear with him and he wasn't about to spend any real time underwater. The sea was so warm that it barely registered as separate from himself. Amniotic. Along the beach, below the peaks, tiny flashes popped and glinted—wedding pix were happening despite the occasional cloudburst. Rain swept from land to sea, gray sheets dragged across the beach like a bridal train. He thought of Kailani's words again: rain on the ocean, an old woman's tears. How much did they raise the water level? The open sea was vast and wide; this little speck of volcanic rock scarcely registered, let alone the littler specks upon it. What did it all matter? Cutty was a fuckup. And? He felt shitty for old Wetherfell, dying out here alone in the water, abandoned though he wouldn't know it until too late, ripped off by his bought-and-paid-for local friend. Some kama'aina discount…ten percent off the time you've got left. Done. Pau.

  The sun broke through the bottom deck of clouds and began to melt against the horizon. There wasn't room between cloud and sea for the whole disk to show itself. He slipped on his mask and chomped the snorkel's mouthpiece.

  The angle of light was severe, the shadows almost black between the rocks. Where the reef dropped off, he saw long, rectangular slabs that looked like toppled dominoes. Geologists said it was a natural formation, but the local space-case Lemurians declared these the remains of an old temple, predating even the ancient menehune of Hawaiian folklore. It had to be pre-Hawaiian because the Hawaiians themselves had never worked with slabs like that; even the ruins attributed to the little people were built up stone by stone.

  Signs of the morning's emergency rescue were evident down below. Ambrose fought the faint current to keep himself in place. Raking marks on the largest slab had cleared it of some of the slime, revealing the vague etchings of humanoid figures and some others that might have been mountains, birds, waves. He took a breath and dived to the slab, looking about in the surrounding rocks. Fish scattered first, then came close in case he stirred up good eats. The surrounding reef was full of holes; it was rare to see a moray eel, even rarer to see an octopus, but he sought something rarer still.

  There it was, hanging limp, a black tube like seaweed looped through a wrist-wide hole. He shot back up to the surface, blew his snorkel clear, then dived down again and went straight to the severed cable.

  It was looped through the rock, pulled snug. It must have been a pain to cut, especially with a body in the way. Poor old Wetherfell. Well, your book was being taken out of circulation, no one else was going to follow in your watery footsteps…if you could call them that. Finsteps? Two fingers and a nose, Ambrose reminded himself. He was not the author of this story but its reader. He needed to see how it ended, even if he was the only one who finished it.

  He followed the cable till he came to the lock and saw the letters, scrambled.

  Once more to the surface. The sun was a fat wedge now, top and bottom bitten off, sinking fast.

  Another deep breath, then back down to the lock.

  He rolled the letters until they came into line: H-O-L-L-O-W.

  The lock popped open.

  What the…?

  With the lock in his hand, free of the chain, he kicked to the surface. He read the word again.

  He had thought for certain that Cutty had fucked the old man when setting the combination. Wetherfell had picked an illiterate assistant and trusted him to spell; that was the ending he'd expected. In a darker moment, Ambrose had wondered if maybe Cutty had spelled it wrong on purpose, to trap the old man here. But Cutty wasn't evil, or even wrong. Somehow he had gotten something right.

  It made no sense.

  Ambrose gazed down between his fins as the sun commenced its final plunge. There had to be some explanation, some other clue. Once more, he dived, kicking back down to the slabs. A last flicker of orange light cut through the shallows, painting the reef with a mesh of green and gold, like a net woven of water that fish had spread to trap humans. The pictoglyphs caught and held the glow, seeming to catch fire from within, convincing him in some dreamy, wish-riddled part of his mind that he could read them, that they had reserved their meaning for just this moment, and just for him. Wetherfell had charged up the spell, then died before completing it—but the ritual needed a living witness, someone to give it completion by coming away with its meaning.

  Ambrose felt himself switch on. Enlightenment or whatever. Like Cutty, he sensed he was stealing away with something that shouldn't belong to him, something revealed in the magic light when he hadn't intended
to look.

  He realized that his mouth was open and the snorkel mouthpiece had drifted out. His mouth gaped, filling with water. In a daze, he was about to suck in seawater as if it were a breath. He sputtered, shoved the rubber piece back between his teeth, panicking as if he had come close to drowning.

  At the same moment, the glyphs went dark. The sun had set. He was left to paddle back to shore in gray dusk, rain passing over him on its way to the open sea, and for some reason he found when he stripped off his mask that he was crying.

  * * *

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER, rambling back into Honukai, streets full of tourists, bars pumping reggae and hula tunes, he parked his scooter in the alley behind the stores. He let himself into the cluttered dark of Castaway Books and up the stairs to his flat above the shop. He had put Wetherfell's book in his safe. Switching on the stove to boil a kettle, he opened the green journal to the very last line and read:

  Preparations are finished for the final observance at Hallows Reef. When next I write, I will be a changed man.

  "Hallows."

  So it hadn't been Cutty after all. Wetherfell thought the name of the reef denoted holiness instead of merely holes. A misunderstanding, but a fundamental one. And fatal.

  Ambrose felt slightly better about Cutty. Slightly worse about everything else.

  Wetherfell hanging there, chained, desperately trying HALLOW over and over, never once switching the A to an O; so fixed on his idea that he never saw the obvious alternative, not even when his air ran out. Or maybe he had waited till the very end to even try the lock, still hoping for his magic breakthrough. Naïve or dogmatic, but either way doomed.

  The answer, somehow, was in the words—or in between them. Wherever Ambrose looked, he saw them. Towers of books rose all over the room, occupied every surface. He still hadn't decided which ones were going downstairs to be sold, to become the book some customer didn't realize they'd been looking for all along, and which were going to stay up here a bit longer, to be picked at and possibly read by Ambrose first. A truly beat-up copy of Moloka'i , atop an only slightly less dog-eared paperback of The Hunger Games . Tristram Shandy , which he'd never started, and 2666 , which he had yet to finish. And these had only just displaced the previous stack, itself topped by Wolf Hall and Night at the Circus . Whatever he decided on tonight, there was no such thing as finality, for tomorrow he would just pull in another haul of lively, silvery, restless book-fish, and one of them would instantly shove the rest aside, its glyphs briefly flickering brighter than all the other words caught in the vast shadow-skeins of the evening shore.

  He settled on The Hunger Games .

  As was far from unusual, he dozed off with his finger marking his place in a passage he would never remember having read when he awoke some unclear amount of time later. Normally at this point he would close whatever book he was reading and switch off the bedside light, but tonight he lay listening for a repeat of whatever sound had woken him. A noise from the sidewalk below his window?

  Rising, he opened the window over the street. It was never fully sealed so the night noises barely increased, but at least now he could put his head out and check the highway in both directions. Across the highway, the shops opposite were dark, quiet, deserted; while beyond the storefronts, the valley peaks were shrouded in rain and mist. Between black blots of cloud, the stars were stunningly bright but did nothing to illuminate the street. Honukai shut down early, and there were no bars except in restaurants, so silence prevailed. Few cars had any reason to come down from the Schefferville Cliffs at this hour. A cool, damp breeze shouldered past him into his flat and he started to retreat, because these winds were hell on books. But then he saw a movement just below, maybe a dog nosing around near the shop entrance. He leaned a bit farther out and saw someone standing on the threshold, holding the door ajar, hoping not to be seen.

  "Hey!" Ambrose cried.

  The figure didn't stir. His first thought was that Cutty, having discovered the journal was worth five hundred dollars, had come back to rip him off. But the stranger was too pale for that.

  "Hold on," he said and threw himself across the room, negotiating his way in the dark, then quickly flying downstairs into the shop. The only light came from the glow of the computer by the register. That was troubling in itself, but at least it didn't blind him as he approached the front door. It was closed now, but not locked, and he opened it.

  The visitor, burglar, or late-night customer was gone. A sudden surge of passing rain swept down the highway and concealed a pallid, naked shape, like a large white frog, limping around the corner, out of sight. Ambrose realized that even though he hadn't passed the threshold, his feet were wet. He backed up and saw that he'd been standing in a puddle.

  Now he hit the lights.

  A watery trail ran from the back of the shop to the front door, and he had tracked through it as he crossed the floor. The rear door to the parking lot was ajar. Maybe he had left it open when he came back from Hollows. He was willing to admit the possibility.

  But one thing he hadn't done was drip water all over the inventory. Damp patches caught his eye all the way from the back door to the front counter. Small puddles trembled on the covers of books, dripped down the sides of paperback stacks. Next to the register, it looked as if someone had spilled a glass of water over the laminated maps, and the floor behind the counter was so puddled that he thought maybe the explanation for all of this was that some old, corroded pipe had finally burst in the ancient building. But then why had it stopped leaking?

  The computer screen caught his eye again, reminding him that there was probably more to it than plumbing. It should not have been aglow when he came down into the shop. It would have been in sleep mode all night, unless someone disturbed it.

  But the screen was not only on, it was still open to the collectors' forum, where he had been typing earlier. Ambrose touched the keys and his fingers came away damp. Leaning close to the screen, he saw that a post had been made, according to the computer clock, only moments ago.

  Whoever made the post had done so from this computer, taking advantage of his login.

  Castaway2.0

  Dealer

  Posts: 276 Re: Wetherfell's Reef Runics

  «Reply #7»

  Fluke? My plan wrked altho mperfectl. I need

  feign deat to aid in my unchaning. I retrn only

  to rtriev my prizd BOOK, and yu shal hear frm

  me no more whil te contintnts occpy thr curnt

  postion.

  Yr Nwly Amphbs Assoc,

  WSW

  As Ambrose watched, another post appeared immediately following:

  Bibliossifer

  Antiquarian

  Posts: 4,410 Re: Wetherfell's Reef Runics

  «Reply #8»

  Drunken posting may result in forum privi-

  leges being revoked, young Mr. Sabala. Don't

  embarrass your uncle. Serious discussion

  only. Now excuse me while I go get ham-

  mered.

  Ambrose refrained from responding, refrained from deleting the offending post. He might well want it as evidence. But of what? A hacker? Burglary? The obvious target of the intruder was safe in the safe upstairs and the stairs were perfectly dry. And what of the dampened stacks around the shop? There was little of value set out, the first-edition case was locked, and nothing appeared to be missing. He kept no cash in the shop and the register drawer was untouched. No inventory out of place. Except.…

  Ah. Yes.

  Near the register, he had sorted Auntie's books into two stacks, one for sale, the other to be hauled off for recycling. As soon as he saw the stacks, he shivered and swore: "Uncle Byron, the fuck you get me into?"

  Much as Wetherfell's body would be reported missing from the morgue the next morning by the Tauai Tides , one memorable title was mysteriously absent from the top of the recycling stack:

  Wetherfell's own inscribed water-stained copy of Lord Ravenscar's Revenge .<
br />
  * * *

  Kingship

  By Mary Soon Lee | 55 words

  Before King Xau slew a demon,

  before the wild horses came to him,

  before he was crowned,

  before his sword was forged,

  before the palace foundations were laid,

  before his kingdom had a name,

  before the dragon who ordained his destiny

  hatched from out her shell,

  before those things:

  this tree,

  this silver apricot tree

  whose autumn leaves

  he helps his youngest heap

  into a pile of gold.

  * * *

  BOOKS TO LOOK FOR

  By Charles de Lint | 3472 words

  The Perdition Score, by Richard Kadrey, Harper Voyager, 2016, $25.99.

  IT'S BEEN A while since I've read a Sandman Slim book—Richard Kadrey's ongoing character who first appeared in 2009's eponymous introduction. I remember liking the brash vigor of the series, but I didn't keep up with it. (Probably for the simple reason that there are just too many books out there and when you're reading for a column, favorites can fall by the wayside as you cast your net a little wider to make sure you're not endlessly reviewing the same handful of authors.)

  But The Perdition Score —the latest entry in the series—showed up in my P.O. Box and I was curious as to what the character had been up to. Turns out things haven't changed so much for James Stark, a.k.a. Sandman Slim. He still lives above the Maximum Overdrive video store that he co-owns with his frenemy Kasabian. He still drinks at the punk tiki bar Bamboo House of Dolls. He still has a hot demonic girlfriend named Candy. And he's still got plenty of attitude.