He headed toward the globster, finding his chickens milling aimlessly against the rocky outcropping that separated the two beaches. He was briefly fearful of what they might do under the globster's control when he tried to take them back, but they seemed more dazed than anything else. Perhaps they were near enough to lure, but not dominate. He grabbed them two at a time to ferry back to the rusted cage in the corner of the lean-to. There they all seemed almost normal, clucking and milling as usual, save for a tendency to cluster toward the side of the cage nearest the globster.
The last he retrieved was Roberta. “Don't worry, girl, I'm saving your soul from alien control,” he said, just before lopping off her head.
* * * *
For the first time he could remember, a glass of rum and a spliff were insufficient to lull him to sleep. He stayed awake, tossing and turning despite the ocean breeze, thinking about the globster problem. He kept seeing it in his mind's eye, the circle of crabs around him, and, most of all, the seagull, fixing him with that unnatural stare. The images continued to flash through his mind even as he fell into a restless, haunted sleep, chasing him through his dreams.
He was checking his drift lines, pulling fish after fish off them; sunfish, marlin, red snapper. He tossed each behind him on the beach as he moved on to the next, but when he turned back each had turned strangely translucent. He kept going back to the line, and every time he turned back around, each fish become larger and more like the globster, until a dozen full-sized globsters were stretched out behind him. Then they started to move slowly toward him, still continuing to grow, so that every time he turned around they were closer, until he started to walk out to sea and was in his chair carving birds out of wood. But as he carved, the faces he had already completed started to change, their wooden eyes swiveling to look at him whenever he put them down. He tried to carve their faces off entirely, but a seagull kept snatching the knife from his hand, then started to peck at his eyes when he grabbed his pen, and started crossing through the clauses in the loan agreement, but when he turned each page he saw the same clauses reappearing at the bottom of the next. He kept crossing them out, but soon the red ink was pouring out of the pen and all over his suit. “I can't pick up your cleaning,” said Marnie, sucking on one of her endless Winstons, “I've got yoga this afternoon,” she said, flipping through the channels. But all showed the same expanse of moonlight beach, where he was running after fleeing chickens, each of which deliquesced when he grabbed them, splashing over his toes, only to reform some twenty feet further ahead, still fleeing across the endless beach, his wet feet crunching across the sand as the ocean breeze blew over him—
He let out a cry of pain as something sliced open his left foot. He toppled over and grabbed it, seeing a rusty tin can lid still half embedded in it. As he tugged the lid painfully free, he realized he was no longer dreaming, and that he was standing ten feet away from the globster.
An eerie blue glow radiated from it, and its body no longer seemed quite so undifferentiated, with lumpy nubs the size of basketballs moving around underneath the surface. As they moved, Gabe saw that the blue glow came not from the creature itself, but from the strange runes that seemed to fade and pulse as they moved underneath its surface. As he watched them, he began to feel the same compulsion to let himself sink into the thing, much stronger than it had been that afternoon. He took a single step in its direction, only to be jarred out of his trance by the throbbing pain in his still-bleeding foot.
He tore his gaze away from the globster, and by that strange glow he saw a small army of animals arrayed in a circle around it. There were uncounted crabs, three or four snakes, a pelican, a flamingo, and a scrawny yellow housecat, all staring directly at him.
Gabe turned, only to find the seagull he had seen that morning screeching at him as it blocked his path. Gabe flailed wildly at it, the bird refusing to move as it pecked at his arms and face. He finally grabbed it by its neck and tossed it behind him.
By then he could hear the other creatures coming after him as he fled, a cacophony of screeches and hissing. He ran blindly, his foot still bleeding, batting at invisible foes flapping at his face, stumbling over unseen obstacles in the dark.
* * * *
After what seemed an eternity he collapsed in a heap, his chest heaving, the nightmarish pursuit left behind, the only sounds his own labored breathing and the roar of the distant surf.
Once he was sufficiently recovered to move, he carefully made his way toward the ocean, finally coming out on a beach he recognized, after a few moments, as being on the other side of his own, presumably a safe distance from the globster. He washed his foot in the ocean, just barely able to stifle his screams at the piercing sting of the salt water in his wound, then bound it as best he could with his torn shirt. He felt lightheaded, drained, scared, and dreadfully sober.
But after a few moments the fear left him, to be replaced with a cold, unyielding anger. The globster had attacked him in his home, on his beach, on his island.
Come hell or high water, he was going to kill the thing.
The only question was how.
After his third bout of knocking, the door to the shack swung open, a bleary-eyed Juan staring out at him, the goat-herder leveling an ancient revolver.
“Señor Gabe?” he asked wonderingly.
Gabe, painfully aware he looked even more disheveled than usual, held up ten twenty-dollar bills he had dug out of his secret box half an hour before. “I want to buy twenty gallons of gasoline,” he said, “and a goat.”
The gasoline proved more difficult to obtain than the goat, Juan being down to a meager ten gallons in his farm tank. This necessitated driving into town, only to find the local station, run by a scarred Cuban expatriate, was also out of gas, and wouldn't have any in before the truck arrived at four that afternoon.
Gabe bought one hundred meters of rope, an even longer length of clothesline, four buckets, a hat pin, and, given the wait, another bottle of rum. He spent the rest of the time drinking, eating fried fish and conch, and playing dominos with the local ancients in the public square near the dry fountain.
Juan returned him to the lean-to just before sunset.
* * * *
Exhausted and bleeding once again, Gabe wondered, somewhat abstractly, if he was going to die.
He was back at the globster's beach, slowly playing out the line of rope. At the end of it was Juan's scrawniest goat, wearing a makeshift harness with four buckets filled with gasoline. Into each bucket ran a clothesline, the rest of its length wrapped around the rope, all of which had been soaked in gasoline.
In retrospect it was a crazy plan. Making the harness out of tarp, sticks and rope had proven difficult. Getting the contraption, and the buckets, around the goat had proven next to impossible. He had finally fed it a small meal of beans and just enough pot to clam it down without putting it to sleep.
Now he was slowly playing out his line as the goat, already entranced, walked straight toward the globster. Earlier Gabe had felt the familiar compulsion stealing over him, at which point he had jabbed the hat pin deep into his right thigh. A slow dribble of blood continued to flow down his leg. (At least he'd known enough to avoid his femoral artery.) Every time he felt his mind start to lose focus he'd shift the needle.
Now that the goat was making its plodding way toward the globster (which seemed larger, and its glowing runes brighter, the knobs under its skin starting to stretch and lengthen), all he could think of was how many things might go wrong, how the gasoline might slosh out, or how the view through its possessed minions might alert the globster to the threat. That, and how very, very tired he was. The anger was still there, like a hard lump of glowing coal at the back of a fireplace, but the blood and sleep loss were conspiring to make him immensely weary.
Still, miraculously, the ploy seemed to be working. The goat was mere feet away from the globster now, and Gabe flicked open his lighter.
It wouldn't light.
He
flicked the wheel again, then a third time, without success. The goat was now mere inches away.
In a panic, Gabe flicked the lighter wheel faster and faster, sure from the heft of it that it couldn't be out of fuel.
The goat entered the translucent side of the globster, the runes around it briefly flickering through a polychromatic array. The first bucket on the left side seemed to catch on some sort of resistance, spilling its load of gas at the globster's edge.
Finally, as the front half of the goat sank completely into the globster, the lighter caught. With shaking hands, Gabe applied the flame to the soaked rope. For a few seconds, nothing seemed to happen, and then Gabe had to drop the rope as the flame raced along it.
Just as all but the goat's rear had entered the globster, the burning line reached the pool of spilled gasoline, which promptly ignited, followed shortly by the three remaining buckets still attached to the goat—now almost entirely encased in the globster. The whole amorphous mass went up with a satisfying whoosh. Gabe leaped up for one brief, sweet moment of triumph.
Then his world became pain.
He dropped to the ground screaming, every part of his body in an unimaginable, inhuman agony. He rolled over, unconsciously pulling his hair as unfathomable images raced through his mind. Vistas of decayed cyclopean architecture warming under a green sun, of a garden of ambulatory blue and gold plants raising their ropey tendrils in supplication while tantalizing alien aromas wafted off them, of the lifeless voids of interstellar space, of bizarre machines of metal and glass rising taller than any skyscraper, meshing parts rotating in and out of dimensions unseen, of unearthly creatures ambling across an arctic waste, their multiplicity of strangely slender yet amorphous limbs seeming to flow and reform as they moved, of a countless horde of furry creatures fleeing an alien city ablaze, a horrible, hundred-eyed face towering above the flames, of impossibly vast entities stretching for miles beneath the ocean's depths.
After what seemed an eternity of pain, the feeling started to ebb as the images shattered, coming ever faster and less coherent, the crystalline roar of a mind immeasurably vaster than his own shattering into a thousand pieces, then again, and again, each shard smaller and less mindful than the last, until finally a black, cold silence descended upon him and he was alone in the night, listening to the pounding surf and crackling flames.
* * * *
Just before noon, Gabe managed to rouse his aching, fatigued body up and out of the lean-to, then released eleven restless chickens into the Caribbean sun. That accomplished, he poured himself two fingers of rum, lit a spliff, and took inventory of his battered body. He had two quarter-sized second-degree burns on the palms of his hands, his right thigh kept up a constant, dull ache, and his left foot sent a jab of pain all the way up his leg every time he put his weight on it. Later in the day he'd have to change the bandages on all three, but for now he was content to drink and smoke his breakfast while gazing into the endless blue morning.
When he felt strong enough, he hobbled slowly over to the globster's beach, finding nothing but charred buckets and rope remnants, a large burned circle of putrefying, grayish sludge rapidly melting into the sand, and a single burned goat's hoof. A few fiddler crabs scurried with dull normalcy across the beach.
After a few minutes, the stench become more than he could stand, and as he turned to go, he saw the seagull that had been eyeing him before, flopping spastically at the edge of the ocean. When he walked over to take a closer look, the thing turned and gazed at him for a moment before its eyes lost focus and its neck spastically jerked away. It flopped another couple of feet down, none of its limbs seeming to move in coordination with the others, different parts of its body seeming to twitch of their own accord.
Gabe watched it continue to spasm and twitch for a few moments, then reached down and snapped its neck.
Copyright (c) 2008 Lawrence Person
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* * *
Novella: THE HOB CARPET
by Ian R. MacLeod
Ian R. MacLeod has published four novels and three short story collections, and has a new novel, Song of Time, due out from PS Publishing this year. His work has been widely translated and received many awards. He lives in the riverside town of Bewdley, in England. “The Hob Carpet” came from an idea for an alternate earth that he'd been entertaining for many years, and finally took shape when, in the way in which stories have, it sucked in another couple of ideas that he'd been saving for something else. Ian has a personal website at www.ianrmacleod.com.
A word of warning: there are scenes in this story that may be disturbing to some readers.
I'm a monster, an aberration. I've never really known what it means to be human. You could try to trace what I am back to the life that supposedly formed me. Try, and most probably fail. In that, at least, reader, and even though you may try to deny it, I'm much like you.
I was raised in a family of moderate influence and reasonable wealth. My father's line were successful merchants—men who had once plied the Great North Water, but calculated long before I was born that there was more money to be earned trading along its banks. My mother's side were paler-skinned than is common, and perhaps more savage and unpredictable in their moods as a result. That was her, certainly; a waxing, waning Moon to orbit my father's calmer earth. Her lineage was of the temple guards, and her father was proud of the spear-wound which a skirmish in his youth had inflicted. I remember him baring his shoulder as we sat in the lazy aftermath of a processional feast, inviting me to place my finger in the cratered dimple in his shoulder. It was like touching a second navel; another part of my birth. In those peaceful times, the wound had most probably been inflicted during training. The man drank to excess, and grew bitter performing duties that were entirely ceremonial. I still believe that there was intent in the riding accident that brought about his early death.
I imagine it was this very unlikeness which first attracted my parents to each other, and which eventually drove them apart. That probably also explains why I was the only fruit of their union, although, as I of all people should understand, it is dangerous to peer too deeply into truths of love—if any such truths exist. But, for whatever reasons, I grew up largely alone, and somewhat pampered, and perhaps had more freedom to roam my own thoughts and obsessions than was good for me. That, at least, has often been said.
* * * *
Our homestead and its grounds covered many acres. It rose—still rises, for all I know—above the banks of the same river that had brought my family its wealth, beyond Eight Span Bridge and upstream from Dhiol. It was a pretty place, if anywhere so large can be called simply pretty, emerging from the cliffs like the prow of some unimaginable vessel on thick, golden-stone ramparts which had become bedecked with mosses and flowering ivies since they had lost their military function, and were a roost and feeding ground for many varieties of bat and bird. The battlements, viewing towers and high perimeter walkways along which I wandered were decorated with flags and ceramics, fruiting arbours and fishpools. The arrowslits which had once been constructed for purposes of defense were set with filigree metals and stained glass. There were spectacular views of the Great North Water and all its barges and sails passing far below. The towers of Dhiol hazed the middle distance and the vast forests of Severland reared beyond to meet the peaks of the Roof of the World, which still shone white with snow at the height of summer even in those more beneficent times. Turning to the inward side of the battlements revealed the gameboard neatness of a typical middle class homestead, with its ditches and canals filled with all the patterns of the sky and the trees which shaded them. At some point as the eye proceeded inwards along this dazzling patchwork of the produce fields toward the main house which rose at its center, those fields became gardens, although the moment of transition was hard to discern.
My family homestead now seems like a kind of heaven. Of course, I then took it entirely for granted, but if there was one thing which I ignored
more than any other, it was the presence of the hobs. Walk along the avenues that spanned the manicured distances toward our house, and their stooped backs would be as common as the swallows which then wheeled in the summer twilights. They were the first thing I saw each morning as their hands parted the vast curtains of my bedroom. Pinching out the candles and lanterns as the shadows deepened until they became shadow themselves, they were the last thing I glimpsed at night. But imagine for a moment, reader, that all of this is new to you—then think of a part of your existence which is always there, something which you would notice if the effort seemed worth such foolishness but which you never do. Imagine the smell of your own flesh, or the taste of your own tongue, or the blink of your eyelids, or the feel of your own toes. Then think of the hobs.
* * * *
Like you, I was raised in their presence. I was never close enough to my mother to ask her whether one suckled me, but I imagine that that statement in itself provides an answer; most likely, I grew plump affixed to the nipple of some nameless surrogate hob. Certainly, the hands of numerous hobs would have dealt with all the messier tasks which the rearing of a baby requires. Then, as tradition demands on the brightening of my thirtieth Moon, and in a ceremony which I cannot even remember, I was presented with the first of what my parents no doubt fondly imagined would be the beginnings of a large retinue in the shape of two young hobs.
I imagine you expect me to record how I developed an especially strong and sentimental bond with these creatures, but I honestly did not. I called them Goo and Gog. Babyish sounds which, to an imperious three- year-old, seemed to fit their mute and trusting natures. In retrospect, I can see how cleverly they learned to understand my moods—to sense whatever I wanted long before I had made the appropriate hobbish gesture; often, in fact, before I had even fully decided what I wanted myself. But they were typical of their sort. Blue-eyed. Pale. Slope-headed. Guiltily deferential. Stooped. Tonguelessly mute, of course, and entirely lacking in any sense of gender, although I was too young to understand the meaning of the shiny scarring I sometimes glimpsed within their slack mouths and beneath their crude kilts. I was, as the saying goes, like any other child with a new hob. On the few occasions when I didn't take Goo and Gog entirely for granted, I passed the time by signing them to perform pointless and undignified tasks. Get. Put down. Bring back. Take away. Roll over. Wave feet. Eat shit. Pant like dog. Bring back. When I think now of my two silent and mostly ignored companions, I cannot summon the misty-eyed nostalgia which I know many humans seem to feel for their first attendants, be they called Pip and Pop, or Boo and Baa. All I feel is a sense of emptiness, and a vague guilt, which strengthens to something resembling disgust when I remember the many times when either Goo or Gog—have I mentioned that I never troubled to tell them apart?—was bound and flogged as punishment for my own misdemeanors until their backs streamed with blood.
Asimov's SF, June 2008 Page 15
