by Ray Cluley
“But your story...”
“Yeah. I know.” Johnny smiles with a shake of his head. “Lacks the relevance of a celebrity wedding.”
Louisa slides down from her seat. “Johnny, I’ve got to go.”
Johnny, though, grabs her by the arm.
“Do you know how many years I worked for that company? Doing what they told me, going where they sent me, telling the story they wanted me to tell? And they cut me loose.” He laughs. “Didn’t see that coming. All those years. All that blood, sweat, and tears.” He grimaces a humourless smile.
“Johnny -”
“Make them see,” he says. “Show them a real story from out here. It doesn’t have to be mine.”
Louisa nods, remembers he’s blind, and says, “I will,” though for now she’s more concerned with finding Dean and covering what she can of Asianne Sahnoun’s reception.
Johnny releases her and slumps in his seat. “By 2025 this country’s oil output will have doubled.” He suddenly seems so much older with the statement. Ancient, even. “Oil is poison. We should be digging wells for water out there.” And when he struggles to stand he is shaky on his feet. Louisa steadies him and thinks perhaps it isn’t his age. Perhaps it’s the DTs. Her uncle had been an alcoholic – is an alcoholic, she supposes – and he gets the shakes whenever tries to quit. Delirium tremens. Hell, perhaps it was the DTs in the desert and the guy hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe it was a mirage. Heat stroke. Or maybe he’s just a crazy old drunk who, bitter at the loss of his job, has constructed an elaborate fantasy to help him cope.
“Your drink,” she says before he can leave.
“Haven’t touched a drop in two years,” Johnny says. “Two years, thirty four days, and seventeen, eighteen, hours. But who’s counting, right?” Nevertheless, he reaches for the glass, finds it after an awkward nudge, and brings it to his mouth. He tips it back and downs the liquid in one swallow, holding it at his mouth for the slow dregs. He’s clumsy putting the glass down when he’s done and knocks it over. There’s a murky residue left behind, thick, slick, and pungent.
“Is that…? Did you just drink…?”
When Johnny reaches for her face, she lets him. There’s a puckered circle of scar tissue on his palm. She thinks he means to touch her in a way typical of the blind but he only caresses her cheek and the side of her neck. She’s damp there with sweat but his touch is dry, fingers like sticks of kindling at her throat. He smiles. His teeth are coated, browned and blackened by what he’s just consumed. “Louisa,” he says, “I’m an oil man.”
With that, he leaves her, shuffling slowly through the hotel bar. She sees him put his fingers to his mouth to lick away her sweat and then he’s gone, spilled out into the dark of night that has descended upon Algiers.
“Jesus, Lou, where the hell -”
“Sorry Dean.”
“We’ve got about two minutes before… Hey, are you okay?”
The crowds gathered at the foot of the Ketchaoua Mosque steps are waiting impatiently for their glimpse of Asianne Sahnoun. She’s due to appear on the portico to pose for pictures between the beautiful marble columns. The striking arches above, the elaborate minarets, the Byzantine and Moorish influences… it’s all meant to lend a further sense of grandeur to the special occasion. Because the Sahnouns, they’re only surface features. There’s nothing underneath.
Louisa looks around at the faces in the crowd. The area has been atmospherically lit, illuminating the mosque perfectly but casting much of the square into shadow, casting shadows across the faces of those who wait so that darkness pools where their eyes should be.
“Louisa?”
“Hm? Sorry. I’m all right.”
“Well okay then. If you stand just -”
“Dean, do you want to cover a real story?”
He turns his face to look out from behind the camera. “What, better than this?”
She can tell he’s interested, and not just because of his sarcasm. She can see it in his eyes. Nothing speaks louder than somebody’s eyes.
“Who, what, and where?” he asks her.
A murmur of excitement passes through the crowd. They’ve caught a glimpse of the resplendent Asianne Sahnoun and her immaculate husband, fame and fortune personified, but Dean actually lowers the camera instead of looking for the shot. He’s seen something in Louisa’s eyes, too.
Louisa nods south. “Out there,” she says. “In the Sahara.”
Dean looks south as if he can see right through the city, through the walls, and out to the landscape beyond.
“Well,” he says, “we’re going to need some guides.”
.
Biographies & Story Notes
Ray Cluley is a British Fantasy Award winner for Best Short Story. His work has been published in Black Static, Interzone and Crimewave from TTA Press, Shadows & Tall Trees from Undertow Press, and Icarus from Lethe Press, as well as featuring in a variety of anthologies. Some of these stories have been reprinted for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year (volumes 3 and 6) and Steve Berman’s Wilde Stories 2013: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction. A couple have also been translated into French and Polish. His most recent work includes Water For Drowning from This Is Horror and Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow from Spectral Press while his collection, Probably Monsters, has just been released by ChiZine Press. You can find out more at probablymonsters.wordpress.com.
Story Notes:
This story was inspired, initially, by a couple of National Geographic articles, one about the Tuareg and another about the oil business. Another influence was Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, most specifically that curse to tell and retell a story, as well as the compulsion to hear it through to the bitter end, however fantastical the details. As for the zombies, I just wanted to do something a little different. When you consider how much of our body is water, and you add that to the desert setting, it seemed only natural that these undead nomads should wander with a thirst rather than a hunger. Although what’s a zombie story without a bit of brain-munching? I had to get that in there. Besides, I expect the brain is a bit wet and mushy…
Ray Cluley
Swansea 2015
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Fogbound From 5, Alt-Dead, Alt-Zombie. Siblings, Anatomy of Death, Demons & Devilry and Dead Water
all © Hersham Horror Books 2010-2015
Coming next 2015 from
Hersham Horror Books
The curse of the monster
by
Johnny mains &
BRYN FORTEY
The 5th in a series of 6 brand new THEMED novelettes BY 6 EXCITING AUTHORS
Also available now:
The Curse of the Mummy by Maynard Sims
The Curse of the Wolf by Paul Kane
The Cruse of the Ghost by Marie O’Regan
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