by Laird Barron
Father was still in the kitchen when Alia came home. He blew his nose in a tea towel when he noticed Alia in the doorway.
“Vera is ill,” he said. “But we have to take care of her here at home. There’s no room at the hospital.”
Alia scratched at an uneven spot in the doorjamb. “Is she crazy?”
Father sighed. “The doctor says it’s a nervous breakdown, and that it’s brought on some sort of skin condition.” He cleared his throat and crumpled the tea towel in his hands. “We need to make sure she eats and drinks properly. And that she gets some rest.”
Alia looked at her hand, which was gripping the doorjamb so hard the nails were white and red. A sudden warmth spread between her legs as a new trickle of blood emerged.
Father turned the radio on. The announcer was incoherent, but managed to convey that the moon was approaching with increasing speed.
Mother’s dressing gown lay in a heap on the chair next to the balcony door. Mother herself lay naked on the balcony, staring into the sky, a faint smile playing across her face. Alia could see the great wide sea across her chest, and the craters making rings around it. All of the moon’s scarred face was sculpted in relief over Mother’s body. The crater rims had begun to rise up above the surface.
Alia couldn’t make herself step out onto the balcony. Instead, she went down to the courtyard and looked up into the sky. The moon covered the whole square of sky visible between the houses, like a shining ceiling. It had taken on a light of its own, a jaundiced shade of silver. More blood trickled down between Alia’s legs.
With the burning rekindling in her stomach, Alia saw how obvious it was. It was all her fault, no matter what Father said. Something had happened when she started bleeding, some power had emerged in her that she wasn’t aware of, that drew the moon to her like a magnet. And Mother, so sensitive to the skies and the planets, had been driven mad by its presence. There was only one thing to do. She had to save everyone. The thought filled her with a strange mix of terror and anticipation.
Father was on the couch in the living room, leafing through an old photo album. He said nothing when Alia came in and wrapped her arms around him, just leaned his head on her arm and laid his long hand over hers. She detached herself and walked up the stairs to the attic. Mother was as Alia had left her, spread out like a starfish.
Alia crouched beside her still form. “I know why you're ill.”
Mother's bright eyes rolled to the side and met Alia’s gaze.
“I’ll make you well again,” Alia continued. “But you won’t see me again.” Moisture dripped from her eyes into the crater on Mother’s left shoulder, and pooled there.
Mother’s eyes narrowed.
“Goodbye.” Alia bent down and kissed her cheek. It tasted of dust and sour ashes.
The plain spread out beyond the city, dotted here and there by clumps of trees. The autumn wind coming in from the countryside was laden with the smell of windfallen fruit and bit at Alia’s face. The moonlight leached out the colour from the grass. The birds, if any birds remained here, were quiet. There was only the whisper of grass on Alia’s trouser legs, and an underlying noise like thunder. And the moon was really approaching fast, just like the radio man had said: a glowing plain above pressed down like a stony cloud cover. The sight made Alia’s face hot with a shock that spread to her ears and down her chest and back, pushing the air out of her lungs. She had a sudden urge to crouch down and dig herself into the ground. The memory of her mother on the balcony flashed by: her body immobile under the regolith, her despairing eyes. Bravery was perseverance through fear. Alia took another step, and her legs, though shaking, held. She could still breathe somehow.
When Alia could no longer see the city behind her, a lone hill rose from the plain. It was the perfect place. She climbed the hill step by slow step. The inside of her trousers had soaked through with blood that had begun to cool against her skin, the fabric rasping wetly as she walked. At the top of the hill, she lay down and made herself stare straight up. Why did they always describe fear as cold? Fear was searing hot, burning a hole through her stomach, eating through her lungs.
She forced out a whisper. “Here I am,” she told the moon. “I did this. Take me now, do what you’re supposed to.”
Alia closed her eyes and fought to breathe. The muscles in her thighs tingled and twitched. The vibration in her chest rose in volume, and she understood what it was: the sound of the moon moving through space, the music of the spheres.
She had no sensation of time passing. Maybe she’d fainted from fear or bleeding; the sound of footsteps up the hillside woke her. She opened her eyes. Mother stood over her, the terrain across her body in sharp relief against the glowing surface above. The whites of her eyes glistened in twin craters. She held the broken telescope in one hand.
“Go home.” Mother’s voice was dull and raspy.
Alia shook her head. “It’s my fault. I have to make everything okay again.”
Mother cocked her head. “Go home, child. This isn’t about you. It was never about you. It’s my moon.”
She grabbed Alia’s arm so hard it hurt, and dragged her to her feet. “It was always my moon. Go home.”
Mother didn’t stink anymore. She smelled like dust and rocks. Her collarbones had become miniature mountain ranges.
Alia pulled her arm out of her mother’s grasp. “No.”
Mother swung the telescope at her head.
The second round of waking was to a world that somehow tilted. Alia opened her eyes to a mess of bright light. Vomit rose up through her throat. She rolled over on her side and retched. When her stomach finally stopped cramping, she slowly sat up. Her brain seemed to slide around a little in her skull.
She was sitting at the foot of the hill. Over her, just a few metres it seemed, an incandescent desert covered the sky.
The moon had finally arrived.
Afterward, when Father found her, and the moon had returned to its orbit, and the hill was empty, and everyone pretended that the city had been in the grip of some kind of temporary collective madness, Alia refused to talk about what happened, where Mother had gone. About Mother on the top of the hill, where she stood naked and laughing with her hands outstretched toward the moon’s surface. About how she was still laughing as it lowered itself toward the ground, as it pushed her to her knees, as she finally lay flat under its monstrous weight. How she quieted only when the moon landed, and the earth rang like a bell.
John R. Fultz
* * *
THE KEY TO YOUR HEART IS MADE OF BRASS
John R. Fultz lives in the North Bay Area of California but is originally from Kentucky. His “Books of the Shaper” trilogy includes Seven Princes, Seven Kings, and Seven Sorcerers, available everywhere from Orbit Books. His story collection The Revelations of Zang features the adventures of Artifice the Quill and Taizo of Narr in a series of interrelated tales. John’s work has appeared in the magazines Weird Tales, Black Gate, Space & Time, Lightspeed, and in the anthologies Shattered Shields, Way of the Wizard, Cthulhu’s Reign, The Book of Cthulhu II, and Deepest, Darkest Eden: New Tales of Hyperborea. John keeps a blog at johnrfultz.com
Wake up. Something is wrong.
Greasy orange light smears the dark. Only one of your optical lenses is functional. The walls are slabs of corroded metal with rust patterns like dumb staring phantoms. You lie awkwardly across the oily flagstones of an alley where curtains of black chains obscure the night. Bronze lanterns hang from those chains, but most of them are dead. Lightless. Like your left optical.
Struggling to hands and knees, you realize your porcelain face has been shattered. White shards gleam on the alley floor between puddles of greenish scum. You lift a gloved hand to explore your ruined visage; the upper left side took the brunt of the blow. Your fingers brush across the silver skull beneath the missing porcelain.
This won’t do at all. To be seen withou
t one’s face. It could damage your reputation.
It might even be illegal.
That same blow—the one you don’t quite remember—must have dislodged your left optical. There it is now, lying among the porcelain fragments, a thumb-sized orb of blue glass. Removing your gloves, you wipe the scum from its glistening surface and carefully reattach it to the vitreous filaments inside your left socket. Much better. Your depth perception is restored. Inside its silver casement, your tender brain begins processing images from the repaired optical. You slide the blue orb carefully back into place, grateful it wasn’t damaged.
Now at least you can see. And perhaps remember . . .
The girl . . . the Doxie . . . you remember her ceramic face, exquisitely formed with tiny lips painted crimson. The gentle amber of her opticals peeking through the beautiful mask. Her gown, a flowing affair of scarlet satin and black lace. The red fabric hugs the supple curves of her torso before spreading out to engulf her lower body. You met her in the alley, beneath the dead lanterns. By that fact alone, you know what she must be.
She is a Beatific, like you . . . but not like you at all. She’s a prostitute.
Your bodies are sculpted to the same degree of slim perfection, your faces designed for maximum aesthetic value. Yet she is a creature of the streets, the gutters, a plaything of her nameless clients. It dawns on you with a sick familiarity that you are one of those clients.
You snap out of the vision, frightened by rushing memories. Your waistcoat is stained by the filth of the alley, but you brush off the grit as best you can. Near a receptacle of eroded copper tubing you find your top hat. Your expensive walking stick appears to be gone . . . stolen. Perhaps it was the bludgeon that shattered your face; the pommel was a bronze orb sculpted in the likeness of a grinning toad. A formidable weapon, but it had done you no good. Your attacker, however, had found it a useful tool.
The purple neon glow of the street is a watery vision at the end of the alley. Before you can go out there and find another face to wear, you must look presentable. There are certain rules of Beatific conduct, and you must adhere. Reputation is everything in the Urbille.
Checking your neck kerchief, you discover the emptiness in your breast pocket. A shock of panic runs through your lean limbs, and the gears of your joints grind like creaking doors. Your fingers invade the pocket, searching but finding nothing. The key to your heart is gone. Horror rushes down your throat like a bitter oil. The gentle whirring and clicking in your chest cavity is now the sound of ticking dread.
You sink to your knees, searching the alley. Where is the key? You remember inserting it into the narrow slot in your bare chest last morning, turning it full round ninety-nine times, enough to power the gears and cogs and wheels and springs of your Beatific body for another twenty-four hours. Winding the clockwork mechanism that is your living core. The key is made of shining yellow brass, and like all Beatific heart-keys it is one-of-a-kind, a customized symbol of your status.
It’s not here!
You paw at your trousers and find that ironically your pocket watch has not been stolen. It is almost three a.m. You have six hours to get a replacement key made. The alternative is unthinkable . . . winding down to an inanimate collection of useless parts while your brain rapidly dies inside its silver casement.
The Doxie . . . she must have taken the key. But that makes no sense. She . . . or someone with her . . . clubbed you over the head with your own walking stick and stole your heart key. Why would anyone else want it? It will not wind the heart of any other Beatific. Its only value is the daily function it plays in keeping you, and only you, alive. This is the course of your existence: Wake, wind the heart-key, get dressed, and go about the business of your day.
You had never considered the possibility of a day without your key.
You have never considered what that would mean.
Duplicating one’s heart-key is a High Crime. Beatifics have been dragged off to prison for contemplating it aloud. The Potentates’ decree was One Key for One Heart. “We must preserve our individuality or risk becoming soulless copies of one another.” The words of Tribune Anteus, as broadcast on high-frequency transistor during the last key duplication scandal.
Fear breaks the icy stillness of your reverie.
The key isn’t here, so there is only one option.
You must solicit the Keymaker.
And you have six hours.
You pull the top hat down low to disguise your shattered cheek. At this late hour no one of any consequence is likely to be about. At least not in this quarter of the Urbille, where Beatifics seldom wander. Here among the decaying spires of ancient metal, the bulwarks of rust and corrosion, the moldering and brittle bones of bygone industrialism. Decrepit factories have become squatter’s kingdoms, and iron bridges span brackish waterways where finned, scaly things slither and swim.
Lanterns gleam atop iron posts, the flames of viridian gas dancing in their soiled globes. This is the Rusted Zone, where the metals of previous ages have gathered like flotsam washed upon a dirty beach. You would never come here in the light of day. But you have needs, and your wife has been dead thirty years. A man . . . even a Beatific man . . . can only hold out so long.
As you shuffle into the deserted street your elastic skin tightens. The sign of a brewing rabidity in the atmosphere. A storm will break soon.
Your time with the Doxie comes back to you now. A shameful memory of fulfilling base desires. This isn’t the first time you’ve crawled among the rust to seek the company of whores. You always feel pity for them, even as you enjoy the pleasures of their trade. You remember this one well . . . your gloved fingers against the base of her skull, the golden glow of her opticals behind the porcelain facade. Revulsion intrudes as you remember the slick softness of her thoughts . . . the way your consciousness slid hungrily into hers. You almost feel sorry for her, and all her kind, those who open their minds to the nearest paying stranger. Until you remember what she did to you . . . broke your face and stole the key to your heart.
Her psyche was a red and pulsing universe. You soared there like some winged beast, looking down upon the nooks and crannies of intellect from the lofty cloud-realm of her thoughtsphere. You did not consider the countless number of other men who had invaded her mentality. Somehow this never matters in the throes of psychic ecstasy.
You played with stray impulses, gnawed on the raw assumptions of her personal reality, dominated her cognition. Such a satisfying conquest of the female mind by the lusty intelligence of the male. She was sweet, this one . . . yet something untouchable lingered beyond the curtains of her memory . . . something she refused to share with any client, including you. Your thoughts slammed against those gates like battering rams . . . you wanted to know her every secret. You wanted to claim her utterly, never caring that you might discover what caused her to fall from grace, why this Beatific maiden became a Doxie trollop. In the heady grip of your blind need, you strove to penetrate deeper.
That’s when it must have happened . . . someone in that dingy alley grabbed your bronze-topped cane and brought it down against your forehead with all force. The mental link was broken immediately as you lost consciousness. Your mind yanked from hers as your body fell to the filthy flagstones. She must have had a partner. But why? What could she . . . they . . . possibly gain by stealing your heart-key? If they wanted you dead, they could have killed you right there.
The wind picks up, pelting you with clouds of sandy rust. The twisting street (you never caught the name) is narrow, and few other figures move in the pre-rabid gloom. Outside the doorway of a ramshackle saloon a pair of Clatterpox ramble noisily. The neon placard above the door reads THE DISTENDED BLADDER. Three more Clatterpox lumber across the street ahead of you, heading for the tavern. Their cylindrical bodies rumble and clang, supported by thin iron legs and metal-slab feet. Their chest furnaces burn hot, exuding foul vapors and smokes from the vario
us holes, tubes, and vents placed about their grotesque frames. They turn oval heads toward you as you walk past, staring with flat optical lenses of grey glass.
Poor souls. You do not envy their mean existence, hearts fueled by chunks of burning anthracite, their days spent working mindless jobs just to afford the black rocks that keep them ambulatory. They are the poor of the Urbille, the wretched working class. If they recognize you as a Beatific, they may assault you. Class distinctions are dangerous among the rust. If they knew you were the head of House Honore, what would they do? Tear you apart and sell your gears for scrap?
Now it comes to you: Could the Doxie have known? She might have been someone important at one time. She might even be an ancestral enemy. Someone your father or grandfather ruined in some forgotten business dealing. Could the theft of your heart-key be some form of belated revenge?
One of the Clatterpox shouts something as you hurry past, but you turn the corner without looking back. The sound of their rattling bodies follows you down the street, but you turn and turn again, finally losing them in the shadows of a lightless thoroughfare. Here the sky is clear, and you see the swirling constellations of night. Unfortunately, this welcome sight does you no good because the rabidity has arrived.
