Evil Water and Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  Mary Gallagher, our medium, had originally been of the opinion that the commercials were mischievous spirit messages “from the other side”. But when Elsie Levin, our cook at the new McDonald’s in town, suggested, “Perhaps it isn’t really advertising? Perhaps it’s a Government thing? Maybe it’s an experiment in mind-control!” Mary threw the fat in the fire by saying, “And maybe one of us is actually one of them? If it’s people, not spirits, who are doing it—why then, they could have read your small ads as easily as we could, Mr Peck.”

  It took the best part of the next half-hour to try to prove our bona fides to each other; and it was Glenda Scott, our hairdresser, who finally hauled us back on course.

  “Maybe there isn’t any dream-transmitter,” she said. “Not in Appleby, anyway—not in our world. What if there’s another world alongside ours: one where the people really do eat such things? What if they know how to broadcast dreams as entertainment—with commercials on the different dream-channels? And somehow we’ve picked these up. One of our hair-driers used to pick up radio paging at the hospital. ‘Doctor Muhammed to Emergency!’ ”

  Max Edmunds nodded. “A tooth filling sometimes picks up radio shows.”

  Glenda beamed at this confirmation. “So we’re intercepting dream broadcasts from the other world. But not,” she added for the benefit of Mary, “your ‘other world’.”

  “So where is it?” asked Tom Pimm, our butcher. “I don’t see it.”

  “Of course not. How could you? You’re awake, and in our world.”

  Max snapped his fingers. “Ah. You might have a point there! It’s a well-known fact that if you keep somebody awake for long enough, they’ll start hallucinating. People have to dream, and if they can’t get any sleep to do it in, they’ll do it wide awake. Might I suggest that one of us volunteer to stay awake for several days—while the rest of us form a rota to keep him awake? To see what happens.”

  Jon Rhys Jones, our unemployed plumber, raised his hand. “I suppose I’d better be the volunteer. Got nothing better to do, have I? And the wife’s away visiting her mother.”

  “Over to you, Brian,” Max said to me, as Chairman. “We’ll only need one person on duty to start with, but after the first couple of days we’d better have several in attendance.”

  I took a vote on the proposal; but we were in general agreement, so I drew up a rota then and there.

  “Room’s swimming,” mumbled Jon, five days later, as Glenda and Rog (our postman) marched him to and fro across the lounge in his house. “Can’t stand up.”

  So they steered him to the sofa, where Max checked his pulse; then Glenda sat beside him, and periodically slapped him on the cheek like a glamorous interrogator, varying this by pinching and shaking him.

  It was late Saturday night. Besides Glenda, Rog and Max, I was there, and Mary Gallagher and Tom Pimm. Empty lager cans lay about on the carpet, though we weren’t allowing our volunteer to consume any alcohol in case this helped him to pass out. The TV was on, and in the kitchen a radio was playing pop music. All to keep us lively. At twelve o’clock the night-shift was due to arrive.

  And all week long the dream-commercials had continued to besiege us—though not Jon—most recently with outstanding claims for sklesh, a jar of violet paste to be spread on kallopies, as a relish.

  It was eleven-thirty when it happened.

  Suddenly part of the ceiling glowed—and it was as if a cornucopia opened. Or as if a jackpot had paid off in actual fruits. From nowhere, cans and jars and tins and phials fell through, bouncing on the carpet. One can hit Mary on the toe, and she squealed. We all retreated to the walls for a while, dragging Jon with us.

  In fact the shower of produce probably lasted for less than a minute, but by then the middle of the room was ankle-deep in kallopies and sklesh, kalakiko and humbish and other things—enough to fill half a dozen hampers. As soon as the shower ceased Max rushed forward, grabbed up a can of kallopies and popped it open. Immediately, with a little cry, he set it down again and blew on his fingers. Then he hastened to the kitchen and returned with plates and forks. Soon we were all picnicking on the sizzling sausage-fruits—all except for poor Jon, who had staggered back to the sofa and fallen fast asleep. Goodness, kallopies on their own tasted delicious enough; but spread with sklesh they were bliss.

  “Have to give it to them,” admitted Tom Pimm, kissing his fingers. “First rate. Beats any sausage I’ve ever made.”

  And Glenda winked at Mary. “Our first delivery from the other world, eh?”

  The doorbell rang just then. The night-shift had arrived, in time to join in the feast. But there was plenty left over afterwards.

  *

  The rota was a time-consuming business, though, and as for volunteering to be the one who stayed awake, only a few of us could spare several days at a stretch. The bookseller Don Thwaite was next; then Glenda who took a week’s leave from the salon; then Mary Gallagher. By this time we had a fair stack of foodstuffs in my flat, where we had decided to centralize everything and hold all subsequent “wakes”, with me keeping strict inventory. But we were all feeling frayed and exhausted when the whole of the Dream Channel Panel met on that fourth weekend for a stocktaking. Besides, there were several domestic crises brewing, due to all the hours that some members of the panel were absenting themselves mysteriously from home. Though the dream-commercials still continued, teasing us with even more fabulous luxuries.

  Mary stifled a yawn. “Surely there must be a better way! I’m quite black and blue from my stint.”

  “But how else can we get the stuff to materialize?” asked Rog.

  Mary looked around our circle; most of us were seated on the floor. “Twelve of us,” she mused. “If only there were thirteen.”

  “That’s unlucky,” objected Elsie.

  “Why thirteen?” Tom asked.

  “The number of a coven,” said Don Thwaite. “That’s what you’re driving at, isn’t it?” He chuckled fastidiously. “However, I don’t happen to be a witch.”

  “And neither am I!” snapped Mary, indignant. “A medium is no witch.”

  “She might have been,” said Max, “in the Middle Ages.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” said Don, “a medium isn’t anything at all. Mary certainly didn’t conjure up the food; and it isn’t made of ectoplasm. I doubt if it comes from Fairyland—or the Inferno.”

  “All I’m saying,” said Mary, “is that we tried one strange idea already—Mr Edmunds’ notion—and it worked. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only way, or the best. There must be something about the number thirteen …”

  I hesitated; and then confessed. “Actually, there are thirteen of us. There’s a girl at my school who’s been picking up the commercials too.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say?” demanded Tom Pimm. “Good grief, if there’s any easier way to get our hands on the stuff!”

  “I thought she was too young to be involved.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Just the age,” said Don Thwaite wisely, “when children are supposed to produce poltergeist effects. Thanks to all the strains of adolescence, and the sexual volcano stoking up …”

  “Well, you’d better involve her now,” declared Tom.

  “And so say all of us.” Rog, who had dark rings under his eyes, nodded.

  “But I can’t do that! I’m her teacher. How can I possibly invite a girl pupil along to what’ll look like a coven?”

  “Quite easily,” said Glenda, juggling with a jar of sklesh. “She’ll be flattered.”

  “I refuse. It’s too risky.”

  However, the Dream Channel Panel voted me down.

  “This is Mitzi,” said I, leading her into my crowded flat the following Saturday.

  I had kept my invitation as low-key as I could, while still asking her to tell no one; and had stressed that it was to meet friends of mine who were interested in her dreams. But Mitzi turned up at the door wearing a
brief skirt and cheesecloth blouse, with her hair done in a pert ponytail and perfume subtly applied.

  Whatever disappointment may have overcome her when she discovered the Dream Channel Panel in full session promptly vanished as soon as she tasted kallopies with sklesh and crunched some koozels—while I explained what had been happening during the past few weeks.

  “So what do I do?” she asked us, posing in the centre of the room.

  “Ah now, that’s just it, isn’t it?” said Mary. “In my opinion we all ought to join hands and close our eyes.”

  “If she’s supposed to be some sort of virgin witch,” said Rog, eyeing Mitzi hopefully, “don’t we need an altar—a table’ll do—and candlesticks and a hen? And shouldn’t she take her clothes off?”

  “That’ll do,” said I sternly. “We’ll try Mary’s suggestion. And we’ll all chant ‘Pop a can of kallopies’, and the rest of the songs.”

  Soon, feeling faintly absurd as though we had been translated back to childhood to games of Ring-o-Rosies, we were all shuffling round in a circle singing jingles. This was hardly the picture of a coven of warlock shoplifters. But before long something tribal and primitive seemed to grip us and wash away our embarrassment; and we really swung into the spirit of it. …

  And part of the ceiling glowed.

  No kallopies or koozels rained down, though.

  Instead, what I can only call a “ladder of light” descended. Its side-rails and spokes were fluorescent tubes, but minus the glass.

  “Oh,” gasped Elsie Levin. “Oh.”

  For a moment this seemed the best comment that any of us could make; but then Mary said, “Thirteen rungs: count them.”

  We did, and she was right.

  “What is it, then: Jacob’s Ladder?” asked Jon Rhys Jones in wonder.

  “I don’t notice many angels ascending and descending,” said Don Thwaite.

  “Since nothing’s coming down,” Tom Pimm suggested, “how about one of us nipping up to see?”

  All eyes turned to him. But he shuffled evasively.

  “Bit on the heavy side, aren’t I? Looks fragile to me.” With a professional glance he weighed Mitzi up. “The girl’s the lightest.”

  “And it is my ladder, isn’t it?” Heedless of whether the light might burn or electrocute her, she gripped hold. Quickly she climbed up, pausing once to smooth her skirt, not that this hid much, and vanished through the glow.

  A minute later her hand reached back for balance and her face peered through. She regarded us upside-down.

  “Hey, there’s a real feast waiting! Come on, the lot of you.” Back out of sight she popped.

  “I don’t know about all of us,” mused Jon Rhys Jones. “I read this book about mysterious disappearances, see … and, well, maybe one of us ought to hang on down below. If Tom’s bothered about his weight …”

  However, a hungry look had come over Tom Pimm’s countenance. So in the end, it was our shop assistant Sandra—a shy creature—and Bob the mechanic who stayed below.

  As Chairman, I was the first to follow Mitzi up. A moment later I was emerging through a similar glow in the floor of a simple open-air building: a circle of white columns supporting a cupola. Steps led on to a greensward, with woodland a few hundred yards distant. Twin fountains were spouting and plashing back into alabaster basins. Bird-song filled the air, though I didn’t notice any birds. What I did observe was a whirling kaleidoscope of colours midway between the fountains. At first I took this to be simply rainbows in the spray-drift, since the sun was shining brightly; but really the kaleidoscope was far too busy and vivid. The air smelled of lilies and honeysuckle, though I couldn’t see any flowers either, only neat lawn.

  Other seductive aromas floated from a long alfresco table spread with gourmet goodies—which Mitzi was already sampling.

  As were we all, before long.

  “But where are we?” wondered Glenda as she nibbled a wafer spread with humbish.

  Tom Pimm grandly waved an open flask of ampathuse, and was perhaps about to offer an opinion … when a chime sounded through the glade. About a hundred yards away the air began to glow, and an Aladdin’s palace—somewhere between the Taj Mahal and a Chinese pagoda—emerged from nowhere into solid substance, like a Polaroid picture developing. A band of people wearing skimpy tunics flocked out of it, barefoot, and headed gleefully for our rotunda and the waiting feast. Noticing us, they straggled to a halt.

  Only one man and one young woman continued. She was the image of the young Brigitte Bardot; he was Cary Grant in his middle years.

  As for the others: Omar Sharif, Greta Garbo, Sophia Loren, all looking their very best … I gave up.

  “Golly!” cried Mitzi. She was the only one of us dressed like them. Which must have been why Bardot addressed her first.

  “How here?”

  “We climbed up this ladder out of Mr Peck’s flat—” began Mitzi.

  “Flat?”

  “Fixed homes in heaps,” commented Cary Grant. “Twentieth, twenty-first. Favourite era. Must be ex past-time. Weirdest.”

  “There was this glow on the ceiling. And it’s in there too.” Mitzi pointed at the rotunda.

  Bardot skipped away and mounted the steps. Meanwhile I began explaining to Cary Grant about our dreams of kallopies and koozels; but Bardot returned before I’d quite done.

  “True. Looked down. Surprise for two below!”

  “Do you people have to talk like crossword-puzzle clues?” grumbled Don Thwaite.

  “Cross word?” Bardot looked mildly puzzled. “No, no anger. Psychophysical weak spot detected. Maybe excessive reality alteration?”

  Cary Grant nudged her. “Time travellers lured by Dream-food. Great endorsement!”

  “I don’t know whether I’m dreaming or awake,” said Mitzi.

  Cary Grant touched the palm of his hand to her forehead, as if to feel whether she was fevered.

  “Frustration level seven,” he told Bardot. “Desire level twelve! Fantasy level ten. Figures!”

  “A hole in time,” said Bardot. “Troublesome.”

  “Nonsense. Harmless. Imagine summoning great pre-Dream humans. From era of sleep and hard reality. Spearshaker, for instance. ‘Imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, turns them to shapes, gives to airy nothing a local habitation,’ eh? Erase memory afterwards. Safe.”

  “Remind you: cannot erase subconscious memory. Besides, more likely summon black-dreamers than white. Wizards, witches, wildfolk. Recall: number thirteen.”

  “Just what has the number thirteen got to do with all this?” I interrupted them.

  “Easy,” said Bardot. “Thirteen-sided resonance crystals implanted here,” and she touched her own forehead. “Help us tap the Power. Of Reality Flow. Energy into matter; matter into energy. Whole universe oscillates in and out of reality at every moment, as though all is but a dream in the cosmic mind. So catch it on the hop; alter bits as you wish. Change self-form. Cook up dreamfood, as could never be otherwise. Whole thing highly commercial, of course. Big Comp-brain co-ordinates all minds through crystals. Dream-patterns patented and licensed. Otherwise anarchy.”

  “Do you mean you can change reality at will? You can make imaginary things real?”

  Bardot nodded. “World is all a dream. Science of it thus …”

  And she explained, but I couldn’t understand a word of her explanation. She was just getting on to the economics of it all—mental market forces, psychophysical supply and demand—when Cary Grant took pity. He clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Eat, drink, be merry.” He waved to the rest of the people who had turned themselves into film stars of our era.

  “Hang on,” Max Edmunds said, “if this is a world of dreams made real, then what does the world really look like?”

  “Underneath? Under layer on layer of dream? Like geological deposits pressing down?” Cary Grant shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it’s a fossil. Dead stone.”

  But already Garbo and company were f
looding past to the banquet, and tugging us along with them.

  Tom Pimm slapped his belly.

  “Full up,” he announced tipsily.

  “Time for Aphros, then,” said Bardot.

  “Afters? I couldn’t eat another crumb.”

  “Aphros. Aphrodisiacs.” She whistled a sequence of notes, and out of the busy kaleidoscope between the fountains, clouds of heady vapour began to spray.

  I must draw a discreet cloak over what took place on the greensward next. Suffice it to say that we were quite weary by the time those future people escorted us back inside the rotunda, to the glow.

  Escorted? Marched us, almost.

  “What century is this, anyway?” Max Edmunds thought to ask as they were popping him down the hole; but Bardot only patted him on the head and thrust him out of sight.

  Tom Pimm licked his lips. “Do you always finish your meals like that?” Bardot winked, and down he went too.

  Next was Mitzi, but Cary Grant felt her forehead first. “Frustration level zero. Desire level one,” he told Bardot.

  She laughed. “Better go last. Hole might close early.”

  One by one we were hastily popped through the glow. Down in my flat it turned out that Bob and shy Sandra were hurriedly pulling on their clothes in some embarrassment, with their backs turned. Aphro-gas must have drifted through …

  Last of all came Mitzi. As her feet touched the carpet the ladder began to fade, and the ceiling darkened over. Soon there was only painted plaster above.

  Tom Pimm rubbed his hands. “Right! Next Saturday, everyone?”

  But during the next week I dreamed nothing memorable, and on the Saturday I found that this was true of the others too.

  The thirteen of us still linked hands, danced round the room and sang jingles. But no glow appeared. No food fell. No ladder descended. In the end we had to give up.

  “It’s Mitzi’s fault,” declared Mary Gallagher. “She should have stayed pure. A virgin. It’s like Mr Edmunds said a while back … What did they call her up there? A sexus, was it?”