Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (35 page)

The ceiling collapsed, burying her under all the fire and despair that had gathered for decades on the rotting corpse of the house.

Darkness fell, and she fell with it.

And when she awoke, the house was empty.

She sat by the window, watching the darkness outside. Time passed, but she hardly noticed. Her watch had stopped, and the sun never visited the timeless space of the house on Burden Street. There was no way to mark the passage of the hours, days or weeks, or years, of her confinement. A thorough search of the house had quickly demonstrated the futility of trying to escape: every door and window was locked shut; even the chimney was sealed. And outside the window was nothing at all. There was nowhere to escape to, even if she
could
get out.

There was only the house—all around her, a living thing. Occasionally it whispered to her, but not in words. She received images of people—Caldwell most clearly, the girl called Rebecca Thompson, and five others she did not recognise. One of the strongest images was of a tall, ageless man with black hair and gaunt, almost hollow features. This figure alone came with a name:

Madoc.
The original owner of the house, the man who had given it life in return for faithful service. Who had lived in Adelaide as Gerard Maddock, and under a multitude of other names elsewhere.

The house was like a dog, she realised. A guard-dog patiently waiting for its master to release it from service. A dog that could summon people from the world that had rejected it.

She could feel it watching her, feeding off her, sucking the light from her soul in order to extend its unnatural existence. There was nothing she could do, except die slowly.

You didn’t listen,
whispered the voice of Reluctant Misty into the all-pervading silence.
You opened the door, which was bad enough. You didn’t have to go through, but you did. And now you can’t go back—because you didn’t listen~

Empty of tears, Beth sat at the window.

Waiting.

<>

~ * ~

INTRODUCTION TO:

................................................................THE GIRL-THING

Several of my stories and novels rely heavily on crime fiction, blended with either SF or horror. I am most definitely what I eat, in that regard—the three genres accurately represent my preferred reading habits—and a wonderful diet it is, too. Rob Sawyer once sagely remarked of the crossover between science fiction and crime that: “not only is it an easy crossover, but it’s a natural one. Science fiction and mystery have a great deal in common.” In addition to using mystery as a narrative hook, both science fiction and crime explore the issues of truth and identity in a way that other genres are sometimes reluctant or unable to do.

I’ve always wanted to write a straight crime story, sans monsters or high-tech gadgets. This isn’t one of them. It’s most definitely a horror story, even if it wears its colours under its sleeve. It’s not easy creating new monsters, and it’s not often I write an ending where I definitely do not want to know what happens next, but I like to think that with this story I managed both.

I talk elsewhere in this collection about my short-story drought that spanned the dawning of the new millennium. “The Girl-Thing” was the last story I wrote before the lean years began. It was a bitter-sweet experience for me, because even as I wrote it I knew that it would be my last for a while. And to rub salt into the wound, I thought I’d never written a story quite so well. I feared that I might be making a terrible mistake by giving the habit up.

Earning money so you can eat is never a mistake. Neither is meeting your contractual obligations. At the time I was juggling three very different series with hard deadlines every three months, and naturally that took priority. So perhaps the knowledge that I had to make this last effort count made me invest more in it and try harder to do something different. I regard it now as one of my more determinedly mainstream stories, right up until the denouement, when I hope that my true intentions—and those of the dreadful Girl-Thing—become clear.

~ * ~

THE GIRL-THING

The display lacked cohesion. That was the thought running through Senior Constable Weylin Hollister’s mind as he waited for his partner, Jane Moir, to finish interviewing the proprietor of the porn shop. Everywhere he looked he saw disembodied penises and vaginas, or their substitutes: lines of odd knobs and holes with unlikely attachments, like exhibits from a museum of alien genitalia. It couldn’t be an easy place to shop, he thought, even disregarding the awkwardness most people would feel coming into such an establishment.

Had he been the manager, he would have put dildos up front; they seemed designed to catch the eye, and would naturally segue into butt-plugs and vibrators along the shop’s inner wall. On the other side he would put the magazines and videos, since there was no way their covers would ever blend. Artificial vaginas, lubes, whips, and novelty items were space-fillers, perfect for taking up less intrusive rack space. Bondage costumes and lingerie always looked best above eye-level or in dead corners, where their fantastic natures were suitably framed.

But that was just Hollister’s opinion. The proprietor, Aram, a middle-aged, naturalized Iranian who had enough sense to run the business from out the back and put uni student types behind the front counter, obviously disagreed. Maybe his clientele didn’t care either.

“Was anything stolen?” Senior Constable Moir was asking him, taking notes. A solid woman in her fifties, twenty years Hollister’s senior, she looked the same regardless of her surroundings. The simple practicality of her brown overcoat was as at home in a porn shop as in the Poison Street Station.

“Nothing worth claiming,” said Aram.

“You won’t put in an insurance claim?”

“For the damage, yes; locks aren’t cheap. But the stock ...” He shrugged. “It’s okay. A bit of mess; not hard to clean up.”

“So nothing at all was actually stolen?” she repeated, for clarification. Hollister had noted too that Aram hadn’t answered the question.

“Just one thing.” He shifted a gray-clad buttock from the corner of the counter and indicated that they should follow him deeper into the shop. His left leg was stiff and gave him a slight limp. Half-way along the jumble he stopped and pointed at a relatively large box at eye-level. The box boasted Wet-End Wendy, a surgically enhanced blonde in little more than a pout. Bright colors contrasted sharply with not-quite-real flesh tones in a way guaranteed to unnerve.

“We lost one of these.”

“A blow-up doll?”

“What do you think? Real girls don’t come in boxes.” Aram limped off with a grimace. “Unfortunately.”

Moir gravely wrote the name in her notebook while Hollister watched from a few feet away. Thus far they had only confirmed the statement Aram had given the previous day, apart from the doll, but she was treating it as seriously as if the information was fresh. Perhaps she was seeing something Hollister wasn’t.

“Do you think this connects?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Wey.” She looked up. “Aram is clear on how he thinks it happened.” Two nights ago, the last person out of the shop had forgotten to activate the alarm behind them, leaving the premises unsecured for an hour. In that time, it was broken into. “The thief must’ve been watching to know it was safe to force the back door—but why take only a doll? Why not the money in the till, or at least spray some paint around?”

Hollister didn’t bother questioning whether Aram knew his stock. With shop-lifting and staff pilfering an ever-present threat, everyone on Poison Street knew precisely what their shelves contained. He imagined him lying awake, counting Ben Wa balls to get to sleep.

“Why indeed?” He wiped the dust off a display toilet, made out of clear perspex. “But I don’t think we’re going to find anything new here, Jane.”

“I agree, now. It was worth looking, though.”

While Moir wrapped up the interview, Hollister stretched his legs outside, under the flashing SEXXX-O-RAMA sign. Poison Street cut like an arrow through the rotten heart of Amberley Park. The usual crowd of tourists and locals rushed past him. Few of them looked up, intent on errands or avoiding catching someone else’s eye. He recognized a number of faces: mostly the workers, dealers and users who prowled Poison Street at all hours. He had thought them soulless creatures at first, predators and prey engaged in a dance of mutual destruction as old as history. Only gradually, over a year working the street, had he learned compassion. Each was an individual, a real person caught up in a dangerous game. If some of them did end up dead on the inside, that was the game’s fault, not theirs. They were all victims.

He watched each and every one of the faces passing him, thinking:
And one of you could be a serial killer.
The Amberley Slayer was still at large, and he was known to be a local. Was he the smart-dressed businessman on his way back from lunch—or the slouching neo-punk trying to get into a strip joint for free? The killer could be any one of the many around him, for all Hollister knew.
You may think your game is different to the others here
, he thought,
but it’s not. It’ll get you in the end. It’s only a matter of time.
Or so he hoped.

A motionless figure on the other side of the road caught his attention. Beady, black eyes stared at him from beneath a battered, orange bicycle helmet. Curly gray hair grew in wild profusion across the old man’s face and out the collar of a patched Salvation Army great-coat. A tatty brown satchel hung over one shoulder, pressed close against his side. His hands were stuck firmly in the pockets of many-holed tracksuit pants, but Hollister could see his fingers moving restlessly, as though rummaging through change. His lips matched the cadence of his fingers, although the words he uttered were inaudible over the passing traffic.

Hollister acknowledged the man’s stare with a polite nod. His was a familiar face, although Hollister had never noticed his eyes before. They were more alert than he would’ve expected. The other weirdoes wandering the streets tended to look away when confronted, like everyone else, but more as though the real world didn’t exist for them than because they were pretending to have other things to do.

Hollister waited for a gap in the traffic, then stepped off the curb.

“Where do you think you’re going?” The shop door jingled shut behind Moir.

Hollister indicated the old man on the other side of the road, who had turned aside and started walking away. “I thought I’d talk to him.”

“Old Jellyhead? I doubt he can help us.”

“The kid who was working that night says he didn’t see anyone unusual hanging around the shop. What if he saw someone
usual
and forgot about it?”

“The usuals around here would’ve taken the money for sure.” Moir indicated that Hollister should come with her. “Save yourself the bother, Wey. We’ve got better things to do with our time.”

Hollister watched the old man shuffle down the street. Moir had been on Poison Street a lot longer than him, and the fact that she knew the old guy’s nickname added credence to what she said. But he couldn’t help feeling as though they were letting something slip. “He might’ve seen something.”

“Even if he did, it’d never stand up in court. We’ve tried before.” Her blue eyes studied him closely. Then she sighed. “But if you really want to ... “

“Back in a sec.” Hollister dodged through the traffic to the other side of the road. Jellyhead had reached a corner and turned down a side street as he approached. Hollister caught a whiff of sweat and excrement as he put a hand on the old man’s shoulder.

“Excuse me.”

The bearded face tilted up to look at him. Hollister was surprised at the disparity between their heights. Jellyhead was barely as tall as Moir, whom he had never thought of as short before.

“She cries,” the old man said.

“I’m sorry?” Jellyhead’s eyes, unlike before, were vague, unrecognizing, seeming to look through Hollister and at the brickwork behind him. But his speech was calm and precise, as though continuing a conversation Hollister had forgotten starting.

“She is impatient.”

“I was wondering,” Hollister said, forging on regardless, “if I could ask you about the night of the twenty-fifth. That’s two nights ago. One of the shops up there”—he pointed back the way they had come—”was broken into. Something was stolen, and we’d really like to find out who did it. I don’t suppose you saw anything?”

“She doesn’t want to be hard.” The rheumy old eyes filled with water. For a moment Hollister thought the old man might burst into tears. “She does what she has to do.”

“I don’t understand.
Did
you see something? Do you know someone who might have?”

“She doesn’t like the darkness.”

The old man broke eye contact and turned to shuffle off down the street. Hollister gave in and let him go. Whoever the old man was talking to, it wasn’t him.

“Hassling old crazies will get us nowhere,” Moir said as they walked back to the station. “He’s not hurting anyone. Best to leave him alone.”

Hollister had no reason to disagree, but the tears in the old man’s eyes—tears not of sadness but desperation—haunted him the rest of the day.