Below the swirling lights lay a darker patch that seemed to ripple. I saw two ale casks, broken into splinters — the source of this recent outbreak.
Holmes walked forward towards it. I saw he held his fire-bellows in hand. A soft hose led to the tank on his back. He pushed the bellows together and sent a spray of liquid ahead of him. I smelled bleach. The shimmering light flared then faded and the dark green mass retreated.
Holmes kept walking, close enough to reach out towards the green luminescence.
“Careful, Holmes,” I called.
“I must know,” he said, almost a whisper. “Is it an invader, or a missionary?”
Before I could stop him he stepped inside the glow. I was about to step up beside him, but he raised a hand. I heard his voice as if from a great distance.
“Stay back Watson,” he said. “This won’t take but a minute.”
The dancing light played around him and the green carpet at his feet seethed, but still Holmes stood perfectly still. I saw him reach forward with his free hand and play it through the light. A new rainbow followed his movements.
“Fascinating,” I heard him say, then he went completely quiet. The slime at his feet started to creep again, moving towards Holmes. He showed no sign of trying to avoid or avert it. I moved to one side to look at his face. He had a glazed, far off look, lost in reverie.
He had fallen into its snare.
With a yell I leapt forward, just as the slime surged. As he had done for me, I placed a hand on his shoulder. At once the spell was broken … and just in time. The light flared so bright as to be almost blinding. At the same moment the slime surged, again a wave flowing over Holmes’ feet and ankles. He pushed at the bellows, twice, spraying bleach around us. Once again I heard the high fluting screams, deafening in the confines of the hold, as pustules formed and burst all across the creeping carpet.
The slime retreated.
I pulled at Holmes’ shoulder.
“Quick Holmes, let us beat a retreat before it returns.”
“Not yet, Watson, there is something at the heart of this that bends its will against us. I would rather like to have a look at it.”
He projected more bleach in the direction of the slime and it fell back.
It was darker now, the luminescence having shrunk and faded until it ran in a layer less than an inch thick over the surface of the rolling slime. We followed its retreat across the hold until we stood before the burst and broken barrels. The remains of the slime had retreated to the shelter of a curved section that seemed nearly intact.
Holmes motioned me forward and we peered into the gloom.
“Take a close look Watson,” Holmes said. “We may never see its like again.”
A darker patch of green sat there in the midst of the last small puddle of slime, an oval shape like a large dark egg. An oily green sheen ran over it and it pulsed rhythmically, almost as if it were breathing.
“Is this the source of the contagion?” I asked.
Holmes nodded.
“Although I am no longer sure of its intelligence. I detected nothing while under its influence to suggest it is anything other than what it seems.”
I watched the thing pulse.
“And what do you suggest Holmes? We cannot allow this thing to escape into the general population.”
Holmes was deep in thought.
“Indeed Watson. And while the scientists at the University would love to study this, there is a chance that the military would gain hold of it. I have heard of their experiments with Mustard gas. This thing would merely give them another excuse for developing weapons of terrible destruction.”
I could see it in my mind. Whole battalions marching on a field of green, heads raised to the heavens in screams as they melted from the feet up.
My decision was simple.
“End it Holmes. End it here.”
He nodded and squeezed the bellows. The slime surged, one last time, and then fell back, smoking. One final high whistle pierced the air then it was gone.
We stood there for a long time, watching, but all that remained of the terror from beyond was a patch of blackened material among the broken debris of the barrels.
* * * * *
WILLIAM MEIKLE is a Scottish writer with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in a number of professional anthologies. He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace and drinks a lot of beer … some of it from Chiswick.
“From the Tree of Time” by Fred Saberhagen
Illustration by Luke Eidenschink
From the Tree of Time
by Fred Saberhagen (from an idea by Eric Saberhagen)
“Very well then,” said Count Dracula. “If you wish a story of mystification, I can provide one.”
It was a raw, rainy spring night, not long ago, and the two of us were standing on a street corner in a northern city. Folk far madder and perhaps less probable than either the Prince of Wallachia or myself walked those streets as well, but in the presence of my companion I scarcely gave them a thought.
“I will be delighted,” I replied, naturally enough, “to hear whatever tale you may wish to tell.”
Dracula halted at a curb, the wet cold wind stirring his black hair as he stared moodily across the street. He had doubtless paused only to gather his thoughts, but a quartet of youths swaggering along on the other side of the street interpreted our hesitation as timidity. They loitered in their own walk, and one of their number called some obscenity in our direction. My companion did not appear to notice.
“I am sure you are aware,” he began his tale to me, “that with vampires, as with the greater mass of the breathing population, the vast majority are peaceable, law-abiding citizens. We seek no more, essentially, than breathers do: bodily nourishment (any animal blood will do for sustenance); the contemplation of beauty, and affection, as nourishment for the soul; an interesting occupation; a time and place in which to rest (some native soil being, in our case, very important for that purpose).
“It makes me laugh” —he laughed, and across the street four youths simultaneously remembered pressing business elsewhere— “yes, laugh, to contemplate the preposterous attributes that have been bestowed upon my branch of the human race by those breathing legendizers who have never known even one of us at first hand. Of course I am not talking about you, my friend. I mean those who have learned nothing since the last century, when the arch-fool Van Helsing could imagine that the symbols and the substance of religion are to us automatically repellent or even deadly. As you know, that is no more true of us than of — of some of the breathing gangsters who once made this very city legend.”
My friend paused, frowning, doubtless wishing that he had chosen some other comparison. I hastened to assure him that I would do all in my literary power to expunge from human thought the kinds of misinformation that he found so distasteful. He nodded abstractedly.
“Nevertheless,” he went on, “in our society as in yours, the rogue, the criminal, exists. I need not belabor the point that the psychopath who happens also to be a vampire is infinitely more dangerous than his mundane breathing counterpart. Even apart from the fact that very few of your breathing people truly believe that we exist, effective countermeasures against our criminal element, while not impossible, appear to be uncommonly difficult for you to manage. The Cross, as I have said, is no deterrent at all — except perhaps to vampires of such religious nature that their consciences would be painfully affected by the sight: such probably do not pose you a major problem in any event.