“What you say makes good sense,” he said slowly. “So, I’ll need me a horse and a map and some supplies.”
And then I realised what I had just done. We had no horses, only cars. And this man couldn’t drive. He would need to be driven. He would need someone to drive him. He would need me to drive him.
“We don’t have horses,” I began.
“What do you take me for?” he yelled. “If you have no horses, how do you get around? Tell me!”
So, I began to explain cars and how things were different here.
“We are very advanced. Our carriages don’t need horses. But they are hard to drive. I will have to take you.”
He insisted on tying Tamsin up and locking her in the pantry before we left. I knew she was a resourceful woman. I hoped she’d be able to find some way to get out, for God knows when I’d be back. Or if. At least he hadn’t insisted she come with us.
Our car was just an old Falcon, but he seemed impressed enough with it. Afraid, even. He took a turn around the car several times, touching various parts of it. I opened the bonnet and showed him the engine. I tried to give a cursory explanation of how it worked, but I saw his eyes glaze over.
“You will need to sit in the back,” I told him. “And wear a belt.”
“Why must I?” he enquired belligerently.
“It is to keep you safe. These carriages go much faster than a horse.”
I settled him in and put his belt on, being very careful not to actually touch him. Up close, his stench was overpowering. What was it? Sweat, of course, months, years of drying, stale sweat. And a godawful diet of rabbit. And something chemical, too, that I couldn’t readily identify. But it was definitely the worst thing I’d ever smelled in my life.
“Your name,” I asked. “what is it?”
“What’s it to you?” he snarled.
“This will be a long trip,” I said. “We might as well get to know each other.”
He nodded. “William Stanley,” he said. “And you?”
“Jamie Straughan.”’
If he knew me as a real person, I reasoned, he might be less likely to bash my head in.
“Get me to the next town safely, Jamie Straughan,” said William Stanley, “and I will let you go free.”
I had to wonder whether that was true.
I started the engine and headed off down the main road. It’s now or never, I thought. Just before the intersection, I veered left, doing a hairpin turn and taking the dirt road as fast as I could down towards Sweetheart’s Walk, dodging trees and flying over rises, the old girl feeling every bump. I only hoped William Stanley would not realise what I was up to in time to shoot a great hole in the back of my head. I took us straight for the deep well, only jumping from the car at the final moment. I had made sure not to put my own belt on. I rolled over the long grass, winded and dazed. I watched as the car crossed into the well and, once in, push through what appeared to be dense grasslands, on and on. I continued to watch as the air heaved and buckled and the well popped, and man and car vanished. What would William Stanley find, I wondered, in that place, that time?
It took me an hour to get back home. I’d done something to my knee and could hardly put weight on it, and I could feel blood gushing from the back of my head.
“Oh, God,” Tamsin said when she saw me. “I felt it. I thought you’d been taken. Oh, God.”
“I lost the car, Tamsin,” I told her. “Sorry.”
“You silly thing,” she laughed, hugging me, crying. “I never liked that car, anyway.”
I looked his name up later. He had come through wrong, all right, but he had been wrong to begin with. He had been convicted of murder and sent to Australia for life. But he had been suspected of many murders. These days, we would call him a serial killer.
Tamsin and I still think about leaving. But others are joining us here, people like us, couples, families, those with few options. Soon, the town will be a real town. It will have more shops and, eventually, a school and its own police station. But time still overlaps. Once, I heard the clop-clop of a large horse behind me. I turned to see nothing. And some nights, I swear there’s a carriage driving right past our bedroom window. And I’m sure I saw something hovering one night, all still and silvery, right above our roof, only to veer off sharply, disappearing in an instant into the dark sky. Who knows what will come next? In this damaged part of the world, we walk lightly.
VENICE BURNING
By A.C. Wise
A.C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal, and currently lives in the Philadelphia area. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction and Strange Horizons, among others. She is co-editor of the online ‘zine, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology. She can be found online at www.acwise.net.
A FLOATING CITY, a sinking city, a drowned city; there isn’t much difference, really. When R’lyeh rose, it rose everywhere, everywhen. Threads spiral out, down, in, stitching past to present to future.
There are ways to walk between, not particularly hidden, if you’re willing to lose a part of yourself. Most people aren’t; it’s my specialty.
I stand on a pier, eyes shaded against the water’s glare. It’s 2015, by the smell—diesel and cooked meat, early enough that such things still exist—and the particular pale-jade of the canal. It might as well be 2017, or 3051. But this year is where my client is, so I wait, sweating inside a black, leather jacket, watching slick weeds stir below lapping waves.
The sun burns white-hot. Across the water, atop a basilica whose name no longer matters, Mary stretches marble arms over a maze of twisted streets. Legend claims that, when the basilica was built, the statue turned miraculously toward the water to guard the boats in the canal. The day R’lyeh rose, she turned her back on the water forever and wept tears—sticky and ruby-dark—that weren’t quite blood.
A hand touches my arm, nails perfectly manicured and painted sea-shell pink. I’m surprised the Senator came herself. A frightened mother looking for her lost son is one thing; a politician desperate to protect her career is another. I wonder: Does the Senator know which she is?
Sunlight catches the diamond net of hairspray holding every blonde strand in place. Her lips press thin, leaving unkind wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, marring otherwise-perfect skin. Nails, lips and suit all match; only the Senator’s eyes betray her.
From her perspective, it’s just beginning. R’lyeh is a shadow beneath the waves and there is still hope. But I’ve seen tendrils slide through the canals of the city, sinuous, licking the stones and tasting the ancient walls. They want nothing. The Senator still thinks she can bargain with the Risen Ones, strike a deal and become a new Moses to her people.
I focus on the Senator’s nails, striking against my black leather. I know this about her: Her life will end in a church, green water rising between the pews, light reflecting against the ceiling in shifting patterns. She will die screaming, bound hand and foot, while her blood is pulled through her skin by sheer force of will.
I don’t offer to shake her hand. “Do you have a photo of your son?”
The slim case tucked beneath her arm matches nails, lips and suit. She hands me a glossy, professional-looking headshot. Her son looks nothing like her. Mr. Senator is an actor, younger than the Senator by at least ten years, dark of hair and eye like his son, but prettier by far.
Marco, the son, gazes back at me from the photograph. Slick-oiled hair hangs to the collar of a leather jacket, an open-necked white shirt beneath it. He has deep-brown eyes and the faintest of scars—acne, despite the medicine and the cosmetic surgery his parents could easily afford. I hide the edge of a smile at Marco’s tiny act of rebellion.