I was halfway across the deserted park when the hallucinations began: the hint and glint of rails among the scattering leaves, the sense of a train wind: ozone, steel on steel, feather-flutter in the midst of the cold south-westerly, like a warm breath into chilled hands.
I kept waiting for the attendant sounds, imagined – locomotive! – yes, in the bending, shuddering trees.
And I knew. Just knew.
How Max had died. Rusty’s death. Janice’s.
Leaning out. Tethered. Lucian hauling, misjudging, some error. Max dead, a nail left from his changed blood, wrested out. Every adult human carried at least a two-inch nail’s worth of iron in the blood. Carrying oxygen to the brain or something. What a death! Train pummelling through, laved in train wind, a kiss, a stroke, out goes the iron. The mind, the body, knowing what it lacked, stultified with the knowledge of the clean sweep. Something sharp. Bitter iron taste like blood in the mouth.
I kicked at the leaves, hands in pockets, walking, walking, catching hints of silver lines in the windy day, coming at me from under the trees, glinting in bushes, raw quicksilver, pared chrome, drawing off and off and away, treacherous as razors.
The lines. All the lines.
Somewhere, somewhere, I knew, as I turned out into Buckingham Street, passed sealed, windlocked houses, leaves scattering, blowing out of beleaguered trees, Max’s body lay changed and dead, perhaps in a forgotten tunnel, overlooked in a culvert, someplace where Lucian had done – or not done – his deed.
But Lucian, where?
I turned from Buckingham into Wentworth, circled the park, crossed it again, expecting Lucian at any moment, sitting on a bench, standing under a tree, dead eyes looking straight out, face white, leached, starved. But no, nothing, and the hints of lines faded in the bleak afternoon, vanished altogether.
Yet had told me something. Accelerating affect. The lines leading out.
I phoned Becky from a payphone on the corner, meaning to be brutally direct (“Where did you leave the body, Beck?”), but there was no answer.
I caught a cab to her house, entered by the unlocked back door, and found her dead on the kitchen floor, plundered, changed, eyes wide, her own nail by her right hand, held but dropped in death.
I added it to the others in my pocket, wiped the door handle and left, went back into the windy afternoon and took a bus into the city, went down onto the lowest level of Town Hall Station. No tether for me, just a quick moment of agony, a small tragic ritual in this dead afternoon hour, only a few people about.
If you’ve gotten this far, get to see this much at all, then you know I didn’t do it, of course.
As I waited, peering into darkness, I saw someone looking back at me. Standing on the track, barest hint of shadow in shadow, of eyeshine and pale, pale skin, someone.
Lucian, was my first thought, first certainty. Lucian, you bastard, my second. Not your nail in the kitchen. Some other poor bugger’s to mislead us.
No one else was watching. No one else saw me jump down onto the line, stride into the warm, pulsing throat of the tunnel. No one called after me. I went up to the figure standing in the middle of the track, was about to grab him by the front of his jacket, demand: What have you done? What you done, bastard? Had the words right there, but stopped short.
It was Lucian all right. I saw that in the glow of platform light over my shoulder, in the white of skin and the glitter of sightless, staring eyes. He was staring into light.
It’s hard to say now what he looked like, what the loss of iron had done. What skin I could see was like marble, tight and cold. He just stood, dead, changed, scarecrow upright, arms dangling, but worse, worst of all, his mouth hung open, and through it, from it, came a wind, that wind, and the whisper – locomotive! – of barest noise-in-a-seashell words.
“Not yet, Paul.” Named. Naming me. It did. The Night Train did. This Bogeyman. Bogie-man. “Not yet, little Paul.”
I fled then, turned and ran out of the tunnel, clambered up onto the platform even as the sliding thunder came and – an unforgettable meat-slammed-on-a-table sound – dead Lucian was impaled, carried, dumped and rolled by the silver severed thread of a train – my sweet, unknowing, latest, alibi train.
I took out the box, opened it, saw that the nails were gone.
And knew.
VI 7.38 pm
So, you’ve guessed. Well, I took longer than you, but I worked it out then, refined it tonight, writing this.
The plate in my skull: not plastic or stainless steel, no, not for me. If you looked, you’d find dead black iron. Intimate iron. I’m sure of it. A mirror curved onto thought, raw but never doing harm. Not to me.
How many lives, I wonder, for that piece of metal, just so this demon, this devil, can have its psychopomp, one who goes before? One of many, who knows? Successors, perhaps, to our man at Portobello so long ago.
How many of us, driven to silence? Needing to speak, drawn to tell, what do I do? Go on seeing the glint of rails across parks, in rainy avenues, flashing in the moonlight when there is no moon, twin lines of there, not there quicksilver, feeling the train wind in the tiniest breath and pulse, in the play of dust devils in an empty street?
Go on drawing others to me, those whose blood will be changed in the sharpened dark?
I don’t expect you to believe any of this, if ever it does get out there. Just don’t be surprised. That Becky died. That Dr Day didn’t answer his phone tonight, will probably never answer it again. That I’m still alive.
We all like trains. We do. But how many of us did it take to build this train and its endless thundering bogies? (Bogies, oh yes!) And tracks that go on and on and spill into the ordinary world worn thin? How many nails? How many?
My final opening line? Easy now. Perfect ending.
Let me write it. Let me write it before the words fade again. You would have liked it.
Now I know what Death is.
There.
And here. The knock at the door. Someone – Sue or Carmen, maybe Tilly back again. Or maybe that new guy from the office. Gerry. He said he might drop by. Any old iron.
Even as I close this off, press send one more time, there are rails, hints of lines off down the hall, running into night, but not for me. Not for the Bogie-man.
There’s the far-off sound, a warm familiar pressure in my skull, and the wind is already blowing.
DAVID SUTTON
La Serenissima
DAVID SUTTON HAS been writing and editing in the fantasy and horror genre for nearly a generation. In recognition of this devotion and achievement in the field, he was honoured with his tenth British Fantasy Award in 1994. From editing his own small press magazines and extensive work for the British Fantasy Society during the 1970s, he has been involved in numerous other publications, including the World Fantasy Award-winning Fantasy Tales. More recently, he has edited and produced Voices from Shadow, a non-fiction anthology celebrating the twentieth anniversary of his literary review magazine Shadow. Fiction anthologies under his editorship include New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural (two volumes), The Satyr’s Head & Other Tales of Terror and, jointly with Stephen Jones, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, two volumes of Dark Terrors and five volumes of Dark Voices: The Pan Book of Horror. Aside from completing four horror novels, the latest entitled The Land of Shades, his short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and periodicals, including Best New Horror 2, Final Shadows, Cold Fear, Taste of Fear, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, Shadows Over Innsmouth, The Merlin Chronicles, Skeleton Crew and Beyond.
“There are several strands which inspired ‘La Serenissima’ ”, explains the author. Nicolas Roeg’s film Don’t Look Now, Robert Aickman’s story ‘Never Visit Venice’, Jan Morris’ history The Venetian Empire, and my own love of the city. Venice is instantly recognizable of course, and its romantic atmosphere is well known. Yet Venice can also be mysterious, curious and dangerou
s.
“When I began writing the story, I decided to set it in an earlier time and to concentrate on its single most important element – water. It occurred to me that this sinking city had a submerged, hidden history. When you visit Venice, it’s the canals that immediately catch the attention, from the Grand Canal with its ceaseless shipping, to narrow channels of green water that sluggishly lap at decaying houses. And even when you traverse the constricted streets, the water is somewhere beneath, rotting the ancient log piles on which the city was raised. And beneath, too, perhaps another race of creatures not quite like us . . .”
IT WAS NO USE complaining. Euphrosyne may have loved spacious, well-groomed gardens above all else, but here she would have to put up without them.
“How bare the piazzas look.” She sighed languidly, expecting Polyhymnia to commiserate with her sister for the lack of greenery. If not for that, then for the heat, which she disliked intensely, and of which there was an abundance. But Polyhymnia did not reply to her sister’s comment, unwilling, on this occasion, to be drawn into the argument which she knew would inevitably follow.
The pity of it was, Polyhymnia thought, that Mr and Mrs Fortiscue – their guardians – did not bear the brunt of Euphrosyne’s unending complaints. In their presence she always proffered her angelic smile, or her simpering countenance. The Duchess knew her true temperament though, but then the Duchess was their mother. In any case, Polyhymnia remembered sadly, Mother was not here to observe and curtail Euphrosyne’s starkly riven moods.
Euphrosyne opened a turquoise fan and played air agitatedly across her reddened face, arching her long white neck one way and then the other, the fan flickering as if it were a butterfly eager for the nectar from an exotic flower.
From where they both sat, Polyhymnia could see the church on the Isola di San Giorgio. The light above and around it was curiously pink, reminiscent of her sister’s flushed cheeks. The dark and choppy water of the canale di San Marco slapped the pali to which the gondolas and vaporetti were moored. Polyhymnia thought the agitation of the waves a very suitable manifestation of her sister’s exasperation; deeply restrained beneath, but flapping at the surface. She watched the black, wrought iron scrollwork at the prow of each boat nod a curtsey, one after another, as if in agreement with her thoughts. She decided they looked both ugly and sinister with their sombre livery.
Euphrosyne’s ceaseless fan was making Polyhymnia feel hot and tired. Her voluminous white dress swathed her from neck to foot. Beneath, her undergarments clung stickily, like the hot, wet lips of some demonic incubus. A straw hat shaded her eyes, but her long blonde hair was escaping from its clasp and fell distractingly about her neck and face.
“You’re very warm, sister, shall we retire to the hotel for a nap?” Polyhymnia asked, innocently enough she imagined.
“Don’t pretend with me, Pol!” The fan clicked shut brusquely. “The sunshine, the temperature, are fine by me!” She paused, eyeing her sister from under her own straw hat, its dark green colour and wider brim playing sensuous shadows over her pale lips. “And don’t you recall, we are to meet the Fortiscues at one, at the Rialto.”
Ah, yes, Polyhymnia remembered, watching her sibling’s mouth. Abruptly she was unsure if her sister was still – as she – a virgin. Euphrosyne’s lips teased. In fact, wasn’t that the heart of their rivalry? Euphrosyne exuded intrigue and sensuality, with that sidelong glance of her large green eyes, the curve of her mouth. Perhaps she ought to admit she was jealous of her sister’s apparent worldliness? Perhaps it was her, and not Euphrosyne, who really possessed a malevolent nature? In any event, surely it was only right that identical twins enjoy romanticism at the same time? It was so very difficult for Polyhymnia to accept her sister’s apparent maturity.
A commotion along the riva diverted Polyhymnia’s attention away from her sister, though it was not clear what the men, who were either loading or unloading a barge, were arguing about. A case of cabbages was scattered on the quayside in the quarrel and some of the men began to kick them into the water. A light-hearted tournament abruptly began as one of the vegetables, now stripped of its outer leaves, became an impromptu football to be vigorously tackled. Voices raised in anger now shouted encouragement to one another. She would never be able to understand these people. They blended west with east, lisping and pale skinned. Byzantine and Latin temperaments combined: mystery. As mysterious as the city itself, she was inclined to think.
The Fortiscues’ unending tour continued during the blistering heat of the afternoon. Polyhymnia was aware that this city, more than any other they had visited, was of particular interest to the Fortiscues. As though it had been their birthplace. The two young women were led to the Ca’Rezzonico with its black and gold furniture.
Black again, Polyhymnia noted dismally. Black was the favourite colour of these people. She began to feel as if a shroud was beginning to envelope her, smooth as black silk, sliding her stiffened body into its coffin.
They had entered the palazzo through a courtyard onto a building site. The entrance was undergoing renovations and the floor was a mass of dangerously uneven planks of wood perched over the excavated cellar below. A dank smell drifted up and Polyhymnia imagined the sound of malignant water, eddies from the Grand Canal, slopping and licking at the hidden foundations, searching her out.
Rudolf Fortiscue took great delight in trying to inspire his two charges with the works of Tiepolo and Guardi that marched forever along the walls of the palazzo. Euphrosyne cooed interestedly at the paintings. Just as her sister expected, sucking up to Rudolf in an unseemly manner, which she was certain Matilda Fortiscue must notice, sooner or later.
Once they were on the second floor, Polyhymnia felt safer. But here the normally restrained Matilda Fortiscue began to wax enthusiastic over the forty or more paintings by Pietro Longhi, describing in detail the life they depicted quite eloquently for themselves. Polyhymnia was as unimpressed as her sister, and only when Rudolf lingered over The Saturnalia, interrupting Matilda, talking animatedly himself, did Euphrosyne resume her wide-eyed posturing at the man’s side. Polyhymnia harrumphed as might the Duchess in a moment of pique. It was sickening to watch her sister’s brazen flirtatiousness.
The work on which Rudolf was concentrating was a huge canvas, almost totally washed in the morbid shades of night. At once Polyhymnia hated it, but she preferred to concentrate on it than on her repellent sister. The depiction was of some unknown part of the city, during the annual carnival. Everyone in the foreground of the painting was wearing gaudy clothes, and grotesque masks, and their bearing suggested pleasure and excess. Polyhymnia thought it horrible that the artist had used the most ill-proportioned, unsightly and unnervingly horrible masks, which somehow nevertheless perfectly fitted the human faces beneath them. And not satisfied with the subtle terror engendered by the hedonistic figures, the background was crammed with plague victims. Their faces were also disguised, but this time by the ravages of the pestilence. When not perched in gondolas, they were emerging from the slick waters of the canal. And even in the blackest distance of the painting, Polyhymnia thought she could see many vile corpses swimming towards her. It was as if the contaminated dead were intent on joining the festival, if not to escape from the very canvas which confined them.
Rudolf ceased speaking, Polyhymnia pleased that she was no longer expected to gaze upon that awful scene. It suggested that the degeneration of the carnival into hysteria and brutality – her history on this matter was well remembered – was somehow connected to the plague in 1630. But the precise meaning of the artist eluded her and she had not taken in a word of Rudolf’s description or explanation.
Polyhymnia shivered. Perhaps it was better left as a mystery.
Finally, Matilda was able to complete her interrupted soliloquy. “Children, this is marvellous! The Duchess will be so pleased with your fascination! Oh, and you will wish to forever abide in the arms of La Serenissima!”
What on earth was she talking about
? Polyhymnia wondered. She almost snorted at the woman. Matilda wasn’t English, after all, so the way she spoke sometimes did not make complete sense. In order to stave off an attack of the giggles, Polyhymnia turned away and saw, to her surprise, Rudolf’s hand caressing her sister’s bottom, his fingers pressing the fabric of her dress firmly between her buttocks. Polyhymnia shot a glance at his wife, who was still admiring one of the paintings, unaware of the indiscretion. Then to Rudolf again, but now his hand was demurely resting in its companion at his waist.
Euphrosyne was smirking and pouting by turns. It was revolting.
“My dear?” Rudolf addressed his wife.
“Yes, Rudolf?” she replied, not taking her eyes off Longhi’s The Rhinoceros.
“Tonight I shall be dining at the Lido. Will you manage?” His thin, long moustaches twitched as he spoke, his lips moving into a small pout as if he were tasting some rare vintage.
Polyhymnia knew that he meant gambling as well as dining, at some ostentatious Lido hotel, though it was unclear whether his wife understood this. Inevitably the result would be a boring dinner at their own hotel’s restaurant. Though at present Polyhymnia was very pleased they would be without Rudolf’s company. She was enraged with his impropriety. She was even more angry with Euphrosyne in allowing those long, hairy, masculine fingers to touch her so intimately.
“Certainly, dear,” Matilda replied evenly. “The girls and I shall retire early. It will have been a day exhausting.” She turned to face the twins, silk skirts hissing. “I think you will dispose yourselves?” she said to them.
Polyhymnia tried to keep her lips arrow straight.
“Of course!” she blurted at last, it was the only way to submerge an outburst of giggling. From the corner of her eye she watched as Euphrosyne nodded, she too unable to open her lips for fear of the derogatory braying which would be released.
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