The Kimota Anthology (10 page)

WAY BACK WHEN

by David Price

We all have our own dragons to fight. No horse, no sword... no fire-breathing dinosaur: but dragons of the psyche, the kind you have no option but to face.

I hadn’t seen Mair Monaghan in nearly five years. We’d been an item once: nothing serious, but it had been fun while it lasted.

“Jamie Teale,” she greeted me, “And a fine figure of a man you are in that kilt.”

Same sense of humour, same sparkle in the eyes. It was a fine Hogmanay night... a pig roasting on a spit, virgin-white-clad Maids handing out haggis on paper plates... fine malt whisky in plastic tumblers: Pipers playing a refrain on the bagpipes... and a bonfire (to dance around) keeping the chill at bay.

And Mair, Mair, a maid so fair.

“It’s been a long time, Mair.”

“It’s been no time at all, Jamie. And what clan would you be from?”

“Why don’t you find out?”

“And how would I be doing that?”

“Easy: stick your hand up my kilt... and if you grab hold of a quarter-pounder, you’ll know I’m a MacDonald.”

Mair laughed, throwing her head back and bellowing at the top of her voice. She liked a good laugh, did Mair.

“Walk with me, Jamie Teale, and we’ll talk about auld times.”

Snow had fallen in abundance over the Christmas period of 1975. I’m from a rare Scottish family that celebrates both periods, and on the eve of that particular yule-tide I was walking through the woods, gathering holly and listening to Greg Lake singing ‘I believe in Father Christmas’ on the radio at my side.

And that was when I saw Mair for the first time.

“You fair made me jump out of my skin, sneaking up on me like that.”

“You’d not have been so afeared of you hadn’t been poaching from yon farm.”

“I was not poaching. I was just taking a short cut when I spotted that rabbit dead in the trap.”

We walked home together. She was a pretty wee lass - eleven years old, but mature for her age. I was but a step into my teens, less mature to be certain (not so much a bump in my front but a tilt in my kilt), but of an age when I was starting to take an interest in the fairer sex. And Mair, even then, had cheekbones you could hang your sporran on.

She led me across the stream, taking my hand with a natural innocence.

“I should be away to my home,” I told her.

“It’ll no be dark for another hour,” she told me, “and there’s something I want to show you.”

Twenty-three years later we were taking that same walk, still holding hands in that child-like, innocent way.

“Do you remember that day, Jamie?”

“As if I could ever forget.”

“When you first saw that hut...”

“Mud were singing ‘Lonely this Christmas’ on the radio. It looked like a magic hut, something you’d see on a Christmas card. Mind, I was only thirteen at the time.”

The snow hid the fact that it was a rough mud-hut that was falling apart. Still, she led me inside. A fire was dying in the corner, but she soon revived it with twigs. Then, pulling out a swiss knife, she expertly gutted the rabbit, speared it with a stick and roasted it for us.

“You’ve a deft touch with that knife... for a lassie.”

“Eat, Jamie Teale,” said she, placing strips of rabbit upon an enamel plate. The room became warm, pleasantly so. I’d no mind to leave, but time was getting on.

“There’ll be other times, Mair... will there no?”

She just smiled at me.

“Away to your bed, Jamie Teale. And we’ll meet here at midday tomorrow.”

These many years later the hut had collapsed, leaving only a sad, skeletal construction.

“It’s smaller that I remember.”

“You were a wee Scot back then, of course it looks smaller now.”

“I never thought I’d come back.”

She just flashed me that all-knowing smile, but her mouth was no longer a part of her face. The eyes were dark, hollow and worried. Her mouth took on a life of its own, finding amusement in spite of the misery of its mistress.

“Oh, you knew you’d be back. You’ve known it all this time. Think back, Jamie, clear your mind: remember - then know why we had to return.”

And the fog which clouded my mind blew away like tissue on the wind, transporting me back in time. I held my ground, yet the years peeled backwards. I watched the skin on Mair’s face get smoother, the bones reduce in size, the breasts sink as though punctured... and she saw the same regression in me: the traces of grey leave my hair, the receding hairline disappear. The darkness of night faded into the brightness of day and the hut reverse-collapsed... it was 1975 and we were both youngsters again.

“Not like this,” I said,”We can’t face it as children again.”

“We have to. It has to be just the same, don’t you realize that?”

The body of a child but the voice of a woman - yet this was no illusion. “Into the hut, Jamie. We must go through it all exactly as we did before.”

A fire burned in the corner, the bones of a long-dead rabbit lay beside it; unwashed enamel plates, the remains of a simple feast - 1975... today!

“Take my hand, Jamie.”

“Mair...”

“Take it. It has to be just right. You can’t change the script at this late stage.”

She tilted her head towards me, her lips gently brushing mine.

“Softly, Jamie Teale.”

We stepped outside, soft footfalls lost to the sound of the gentlest of breezes.

Soft lights, effervescent colours, an aroma of something sweet.

I turned to Mair.

“Wee Lassie, no!”

Her mouth opened into an impossibly wide chasm, her neck sank into her shoulders as her arms and legs seemed to weld themselves together: worms and maggots wriggled within her mouth, her eyes dried out, her skin toughened and stretched into a leather-like texture: she toppled forward, face hitting the ground, shattering like a glass doll... just so many pieces of Mair. Just so many pieces.

A slap stung the side of my face.

“Clear your mind, Jamie. Deny what you are seeing. Deny it Jamie, deny it.”

A degree of normality returned... in as much as it could under these circumstances. We headed for the glen. The grass chittered like dying birds at our feet, a warning to undo the regression; an image of Mair floated before me, evilly grinning like a chipmonk with a banana jammed sideways in its mouth.

“Awa’ wi’ ye, images o’ the minds eye,” cried I, and Mair’s mouth shrivelled to the most worried of frowns.

The Glen spread before us, white as the Christmas that Bing Crosby had always dreamed of, spacious and unfettered as the surface of the moon. Just as it had been... is!

And again it came... black, cloudlike, dense as a nebula. In panic I reached for her shoulder.

“Stand your ground, Jamie. We’ll no run for it this time.

And it span, twisted and snaked towards us like a stubby tornado. In a moment of defiance, Mair shook her fist at it... and in the next we were engulfed, tumbling end over end as though entrapped in a spin-drier. Our hands were wrenched, we parted, span away from each other as the tumbling Nemesis took us from our world.

I looked down upon my ten-year-old self; sitting atop the stairs, a plate of haggis before me. The meat was moving, pulsating, expanding. Then it burst, spewing forth a teeming colony of maggots.

Then I was eighteen, a glass of Glenfarclas in my fist; my first drink as a man. The liquid bubbles, a sharks head breaks the surface.

Back a year:

Seventeen-year-old Jamie Teale is about to have sex with a thirty-two-year old widow. She is naked upon the bed, legs spread, head tilted demurely to one side. I have a huge erection and fear that I will come too soon. I slide over her naked flesh, her hand reaches for my cock, I begin to lower myself...

And her cunt bursts open, fangs protruding, lethal and sharp. A daemon’s head grins at me from within.

“Talk about a horny cunt, hey Jamie!”

Then the nightmare ends and I am face-down in the snow.

“Jamieee!!”

A tall man has her by the hand, he is pulling her away.

The car!

I must stop them getting into the car.

I run but they seem to get further and further away: climbing into the car, the engine starts. It pulls away but I do not stop running after it, for I know that it will not go far.

With a sense of destiny I watch it turn the corner, hit a patch of black-ice and spin out of control... spinning, spinning - into the path of the bus.

Sickening crash, tearing metal... the car is thrown across the road like a kicked football. The man - Mair’s Father - is dead, but Mair, trapped within, is in a state almost worse than death. But if she can just reach out to me... if she can just...

I crawl to the wreck on hands and knees, peer inside. Mair’s head is tilted back, blood trickles down from an ear. I reach out... “Take my hand, Mair. For God’s sake, take it!”

This time she must reach out to me; I can never come this far again.

“MAIR!!!”

The eyes flicker, a rush of warm air enters the cab, breath steams from her mouth.

“Take my hand, Mair. This is your last chance; I’ll never be able to get this far into your head again!”

She groans, her eyes flicker open.

“Cold.”

Her arm moves, fingers uncurl.

“That’s it, Mair, reach for me.”

Her arm moves, snaking towards me. I am being pulled backwards.

“Mair...”

Fingers connect, palms. We hold hands and are drawn from the vortex together, spinning backwards... but this time I have brought her out of the void with me.

Now she can wake up.

Mair is learning to walk again on limbs that have not been used for more than twenty years. The Doctor’s are amazed at this miracle: a woman who has been in a coma since childhood, now awakes. She is alert, and she knows ME: for over twenty years I have been her only friend. Now that friendship has given her her life back.

There IS a way out of the cold, dark void.

[Originally published in Kimota 13, Autumn 2000]

ALTERNATIVE HOSPITAL

by Neal Asher

Drunk as a skunk Gary may have been, but he was walking in a straight line down the centre of the pavement, no deviation, hands thrust into his jacket pockets and a rollie stuck to his bottom lip. By the time he had covered the four miles to home he reckoned to be sober enough to get his key in the door on the first or second stab, then it would be a stack of bacon sandwiches and a cup of coffee, and either
Terminator
or
Aliens
on the video. No going to bed. He preferred the sofa now. What he did not reckon on was the Jim’s Cosworth mounting the pavement twenty feet behind him. Jim had offered him a lift but Gary had told him to forget it since the guy had already fallen off his bar stool once that evening. In retrospect he would have liked to have been inside the car. The impact that snapped his right leg was subsequently followed by the impact of the back of his head on the windscreen. Consciousness had fled by the time he landed in the ditch.

“You’re okay now. You’re going to be alright.”

Gary had his doubts. The roof of the ambulance showed a tendency to travel in a different direction from the ambulance itself.

Blackout.

“Everything’s fine.”

Bright lights and aseptic walls. The taste of vomit in his mouth. The back of his head felt as if his skull had been stripped away and his bare brain dipped in salt. His leg broadcast severe injury but did not seem to hurt as much. It felt about the size of a telegraph pole.

“We’re going to put you out now.”

Gary had a ridiculous image of them carrying him outside the hospital and putting down a saucer of milk for him. Surgical spirit and a rubbing at his right arm. He did not feel the needle go in. Fine. He waited for oblivion, and as is always the case, he missed it when it came.

“Gary? Gary, are you alright?”

Gary smiled weakly up at Jill and repressed the urge to give the obvious answer. She had a habit of asking stupid questions and making unreasonable demands. Not much longer now until the final settlement. It had only taken five years.

“Is there anything you want?”

How about a lack of pain, an unbroken leg, and a wife who did not have a coin-operated vagina? They spoke for about ten minutes, not to each other, but to some no-space that hung between them. When she was gone there were drugs, there was food he could not stomach, hazy boredom, and a terrible fear of the bedpan. The eight pints he’d had the night before had their usual effect on his bowel and there was no escape. He swore thereafter to eat as little as possible while he was in hospital as it had been just as bad as he had expected. Then he slept, hoping it would all go away. A week passed and he learnt to use crutches. Then one morning he woke with the same mumbler in the bed opposite him, but something had changed.

Something was horribly wrong.

Anne was on the home run when her mobile started its high-pitched bleeping for her attention. She stopped and leant against an oak tree to catch her breath for a moment. It was just like those bastards to catch her now. They knew she always went for a five miler at this time in the morning.

“Anne Grey here,” she said into the phone.

“We have an event – report to East Essex Unit immediately.”

“Is that you Mike?”

“Yes, it is, Anne, and this is a Code One. We do have an event and this is not a drill. I repeat: This is not a drill.”

Anne felt her stomach turn over and the surge of adrenaline made her light-headed. She pocketed the phone and sprinted the last mile to home. On reaching the gravel drive before her cottage she checked her watch. Five minutes. Not bad considering the amount of muscle she carried. In a few minutes more she was behind the wheel of her Jaguar XJS and heading at top speed towards the A12. A screen on the dash traced out her route for her. It was continually updated by the latest traffic information.

Anne turned on her car set and spoke: “Anne here – do you have any details yet?”

“We’ve got a few bits and pieces coming in,” said Mike. “I’ll fill you in as I receive them. How long before you get here?”

Anne checked the figure at the side of the screen. “Twenty-six minutes barring mishaps.”

Coming off the roundabout Anne did not bother changing up. She floored the accelerator, flew past a truck on the slip road, and was doing ninety down the A12 before the driver blew his horn. The figure at the side of the screen dropped to twenty-four minutes. She always tried to beat the computer and arrive with a minute to spare. There was a whole page about it in her psyche report.

“It’s in a hospital,” said Mike. “They are clearing the area now. Bomb scenario. I have no details yet, but it looks like a snatch.”

“Outsider?”

“Likely.”

“Damn!”

Anne checked her rear-view mirror and saw a police car tailing her. She was now doing a hundred and twenty.

“Mike, I’ve picked up a bogey. See to it.”

Mike swore. The blue light started and the police car’s headlights began flashing. Anne kept her foot down and as soon as she hit an open stretch she pulled to the middle of the road so they could not pass. A minute passed. Two minutes. Abruptly the blue light went out and the police car dropped back.

“They didn’t like that,” said Mike.

Anne nodded to herself. They had considered using police cars for this stage of an operation. The trouble was that in trials they found the abrupt slowing of other drivers slowed them down too. Anne took the slip road at a hundred and decelerated just enough to take the mini roundabout without losing it. The police car stayed on the carriageway. Quarter of an hour.

“More information in: two bodies have gone missing, right off the world-line.”

Anne saved any reply until she was past a trundling JCB. She dropped down to fifty for the back roads. Lanes strewn with leaves and spattered sweet chestnuts. Traction not so good. She slowed to forty and observed red toadstools growing on the verges. They looked unreal. She shuddered.

“They have the area clear now. Davidson and Smith are in. McDonald and Jason are twenty minutes away.”

Anne drew to a halt in front of steel gates that were already opening. Stone eagles glared down at her. She accelerated onto the asphalt drive, observed by a soldier with a Rottweiler on a lead and an assault rifle cradled before him. An automatic gun on a balcony traced her progress up the drive to the house. She leapt out of her car with the reading on her screen at one minute forty seconds. Mike met her at the door and followed her in with the motor of his wheelchair humming to keep up with her. He looked young and vulnerable, his blond hair tied back in a pony-tail out of the way of the comunit on his head.

“Davidson and Smith are getting the van out,” he said.

Anne nodded as she ducked into a room off the corridor and began stripping off her track suit.

Mike looked into intense blue eyes below cropped black hair. She stripped naked, unselfconsciously. She had the musculature of a body-builder and had not lost a trace of femininity. He cursed the lack of reaction below his waist.

“Do you think we’ll have to go in?” she asked as she pulled on the tight cotton undersuit.

“Almost certainly. We’ve no proof it’s an Outsider, but that the blister formed from a hospital is indicative. It will probably try and use one of the bodies to lead it back through. You know what that means.”

Anne nodded. Of course she knew. It meant extreme prejudice. The area would be nuked if the Outsider got through, for there was no other solution. Mike observed the practiced ease with which she pulled on an overall bulky with Kevlar, then boots, and a helmet with comunit and drop-down dark-visor. To finish she strapped on her own hand gun, and Mike noted that the standard-issue Browning remained in her locker. She preferred her .44 Desert Eagle automatic, loaded with blue tips. Davidson had once jokingly called it her elephant gun, and had not been far from the truth.

“Right, let’s go.”

Mike headed back to the op’s room. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“Nurse! Nurse!”

The prat had been whinging for the last half an hour and Gary was getting tired of it. His leg hurt and they had not given him anything to ease the pain. His head ached and he felt sick. Where the hell were the nurses? He gazed across at the prat and wondered what his problem was, then he saw the supported arm and the glint of metal along it. There were pins entering the arm down its length. Gary supposed it hurt a fair bit. He turned his attention to the only other patient he could see: a big guy, lying back staring at the ceiling. It looked as if, under the sheets, his legs were shorter than they ought to be. Gary lay back and closed his eyes. He drifted for a moment, then opened his eyes when he heard movement.

The nurse was standing over the prat’s bed. He held some pills in his good hand and she was holding out a plastic cup for him. He was staring at her face with a look of horror as he took the pills and washed them down. The nurse turned to Gary.

“I’ll be getting yours in a moment,” she said.

Perhaps she had been injured and this was the result of plastic surgery. Perhaps she had been burnt or something... Her face appeared to be made of soft plastic, and her eyes were flat and dry. Gary could see no nostrils and no ears and her hair looked false. When she opened her mouth the inside of it was bright pink and it glistened. There were no teeth.

Gary nodded mutely. “Fine... Fine...”

She walked away with short quick steps, her hands out before her as if she could not see so well. With gritted teeth Gary hoisted himself upright and pushed pillows up behind him. He glanced from the cubicle, across the corridor to the plate glass windows. Everything appeared quite normal, other than the nurse. He turned to speak to the prat and saw he was lying back, convulsed, his eyes rolled up into his head.

“Nurse! Nurse!”

Gary searched for and found the call button next to his bed. He reached out to press it, but it crawled higher up the wall, out of his reach. The nurse did not come. The guy opposite seemed to deflate after a moment and close his eyes. Gary wondered if he had died or was just asleep. He broke out into a cold sweat and scanned about himself. What was next? Someone had slipped him a tab or something worse. He couldn’t remember eating any mushrooms, but then he’d had a bash on the head. He glared suspiciously at the bottle of Lucozade his ex had left him. The bitch!

“Breakfast!”

The trolley pusher appeared fairly normal until you inspected her hands. They seemed to be coated with polythene and there were no fingernails, just slots in the top of her fingers from which the tips of claws occasionally peeked. Gary tried to ignore this as she gazed across to the big feller with the short legs.

“Pork for dinner,” she said.

The big feller was terrified, and watched her carefully as she pushed her trolley away. Gary spooned grey glutinous porridge into his mouth. Only he had been served any food. The stuff filled his empty stomach but seemed to taste of cardboard. The pterodactyl flew past outside when he was scraping the bowl clean. He watched it for a moment then shook his head. He remembered drinking magic mushroom tea once and seeing helicopters flying out of the television. However, this did not feel quite the same as he felt completely awake. Had Jill slipped him a designer drug? He decided that if it was a drug he would walk it off. Anyway, he also wanted to use the toilet. It took him a few minutes to don his dressing gown and precariously position himself on his crutches, then he lurched out of the cubicle and into the corridor.

“Alf?”

It was not Alf in the bed in the next cubicle along. Gary was confused. Alf was supposed to be in for the next week. Had they moved him? Had he snuffed it? The man that looked up at him grinned engagingly through obvious pain.

“Name’s Derek...”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Gary, balancing himself and reaching out to shake a sweat-damp hand. “What you in for?”

“Stomach... Guts... I think it might be cancer...”

“Oh... well, I’ll see you in a minute, I’ve got to get to the toilet.”

Gary set off for the toilet, feeling Derek’s eyes boring into his back. He had not meant to be rude, but all of a sudden he was desperate for a crap. He pushed through the door into the toilets with all speed, then sat himself with relief on a porcelain throne. As he crapped something swirled underneath him so he finished quickly and stood up. When he peered into the toilet pan there was nothing there. After dropping in a wad of shitty toilet-paper he backed away. There was something threatening, something... not right. Abruptly a tentacle draped in wet toilet paper rose out of the toilet. Gary got out of there as quickly as he could.

“There’s something not right here,” said Derek.

Gary leant against the wall breathing deeply, evenly. “What? What did you say?”

“There’s something not right here.”

Gary let out a hysterical laugh.

“Not right,” he giggled. “Not right... Excuse me nurse but why are you made of plastic? Gosh, isn’t that a big seagull.” He giggled again and headed for his bed. He suddenly felt very tired. He slept.

“Dinner!”

It was the same woman with the same hands, and Gary now knew he was not hallucinating; he had just gone completely mad. She gave him a plate of pork and gravy then pushed her trolley away. Gary noticed objects on the lower shelf covered with a white cloth. Blood was soaking through the cloth. He ate his meat and found it very rich. There were no potatoes or vegetables. When he finished he looked around. The big feller’s legs seemed to be even shorter. The guy in the bed opposite was writhing about and moaning with his eyes rolled up into his head again.

“Hey! Hey! What’s the matter with you?”

“He’ll be next,” said the big feller.

“What do you mean?”

“They don’t like it if you complain, if you cause trouble. I did, and look what’s happening.”

He folded back his sheet and showed legs amputated at the knee. There were no dressings, just blunt pink unbleeding flesh with neatly sawn leg-bones protruding. Gary swallowed bile and turned back to the complainer.