The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories Part 13

Una, who had come to ponder her troubles amidst the relics of yesteryear, found herself seated on the oileroid table top listening enthralled to the words of specimen 223367/Qlt/MZ as they spilled from him. She did not even own a Sonic, for they were out of date. Thus the brittie metres and the shrill cadence of Adam's conversation was a revelation to her. What he said was not only sincere, it also rythmed.

Una went home, tossed and turned on her pensive couch, and returned the next day with a recodex.

Adam had resigned himself to another twenty-three years of silence. He was sitting hunched over, drinking fluid from the auto filler through a plastic straw when Una came strolling through the door.

She switched off his Sonic, switched on her recodex, opened the grille, said 'Are you alright?', and Adam started to talk.

He did not observe the humming recodex on the oileroid table beside his patient listener, nor notice the shudders of glee that chased across her intellectual brow as his sparkling sentences flowed through the grille.

Two and three quarter hours later Una departed and Adam, nursing a sore throat and quite exhausted, plugged himself back into the Sonic and went to sleep.

It was the first of many happy interludes. Una and her recodex became a familiar sight in the building, slipping through the viewdor to fade from sight in the draughty walk-lins of the bas.e.m.e.nt. No one knew quite where she went or what she was doing. As she was a nonent.i.ty, no one bothered to find out.

Fourteen months later Una's great work was viewdorated. It proved an immediate success. She captured the common spleen, they said. She spoke with the poetry of the people. Sentiment came back with a rush. Una's frank and open-hearted declarations expressed the bloom of youth and purity, the sadness of rejected pa.s.sion, the mellowness of a lonely faun at sunset and other like and allied things with a brittle brilliant clarity. 'Are You Alright?' became the motif of a generation within a month of viewdoration.

Una was in demand. It followed that her visits to Adam and his green bottle were less frequent. Down in the depths of the little cream room there was no one to admire her, and besides she was becoming bored with his one-sided conversational style.

So Una stayed away.

Adam, who was totally surprised when she first appeared, took it philosophically. He soon grew accustomed to his renewed loneliness. He replugged his Sonic in his ear and sat back to sing away the years.

It is not fair to say that Una forgot her old chum completely.

Once, in a mild heat-wave whilst pa.s.sing through Pasadena on a Soviet American Goodwill Goalongtur, she did pause to wonder how he fared in his green bottle and despatched a request to the Vitarum (of which she was now a full vice president) that specimen 223367/Qlt/MZ should be rehoused in a sumptuous case in the main hall, where she hoped his life might be a brighter, fuller one. It is not nice to a.s.sume that she thought in terms of possible future material from his new vistas. For she did not. At that time she had many spools of recodex to prune as a result of her months of patience in the cream room.

Although mystified, the Directorate of the Vitarum responded to the request of their brightest jewel with alacrity. Although she had not explained her motive (indeed she could not) they had specimen 223367/Qlt/MZ installed in a brand new case on the top landing, between the bust of Nero and the rotund Moon thing. Adam had soft lighting and people to look at, although there was no grille to speak through. But Adam was unhappy. They had installed an Ultraviewer in his gla.s.s case and he watched it fitfully and without interest. His old-fas.h.i.+oned Sonic equipment they left on shelf 43Q downstairs, along with his green bottle, which was pitifully outmoded.

Adam sat in the corner of his s.p.a.cious case and sulked. People had a distressing habit of pressing their faces against his gla.s.s and mouthing at him. The Directorate had omitted to lable him properly and it is possible that the public took him for someone else. Perhaps it was that the ten per cent of the population which now had rubber trees in the family didn't like to talk about it, and wanted Adam suppressed. The new people had fine frames and remarkable durability and it cannot be said that Adam was the sort they would have chosen for a forefather. Adam was not handsome, and so they disowned him. Perhaps not disowned. they simply did not cause his ident.i.ty to become known (although they must have sensed it from his rubbery look) and therefore debarred him from his rightful place in the sympathies of humankind. Beside Adam the bust of Nero looked reasonably like everybody else and the Moon thing was expected to be a thing and had no common root with his audience, and so was excused. Adam alone was a travesty, for Adam reflected themselves.

Although things were pretty bad, there was a compensation.

Over the weeks Adam did try to strike up acquaintances as best he could. The absence of the grille and the mouthing faces put him off humans, and the bust of Nero was not talkative, but the pink and purple moon thing Jhad a way of gesturing with its mandibles which was at once touching and affectionate.

Side by side in their gla.s.s cases they sat, periodically winking and gesticulating in the silence of their sound-proofed existences. They came to have a common bond, a sympathy that was divorced from the others outside and from which the bust of Nero was excluded by a common decision. Adam had never heard of Nero and the Moon thing had no reason to regard him with other than suspicion, considering what he'd had to put up with.

Ten years pa.s.sed on the landing. Ten years of leisurely gla.s.s tapping between the two cases, of Sonic-less life. Ten years that saw annual viewdoration of Una's work, annual acclaim of her style which remained identical and therefore pleasing right from 'Are You Alright?' to her tenth work, 'Bottle-green'. Ten years which also produced a gradual clutter of exhibits on the floors of the Vitarum.

There came a day when Adam, unlabelled, his past forgotten, was caught up in a silent revolution. White-coated men came and removed him from his gla.s.s case in a Plutrone bag and wheeled him away to the old-fas.h.i.+oned walklins of the bas.e.m.e.nt. A last despairing glance over his shoulder left him with a vision of the faithful Moon thing tapping the gla.s.s with all three hundred and forty-eight mandibles, rubbing its pink and purple body against the side of its case, opening and shutting its large eye in a gesture of farewell.

Even when they brought him to shelf 43Q in the little cream room and reinterred him in his bottle Adam's faith was not restored. The parting with the pink and purple Moon thing was too much, even for a Sython. The once beloved Sonic plug hung idly by his side, for he now had no use for it. Now and then he did feed fitfully from his tube, even listlessly cleaned down the inside of the gla.s.s bottle, but it was no fun. They had put great calf volumes on either side of shelf 43 Q, and they refused to communicate.

He was thirty-four and alone in the world.

Adam cast about in his mind for something to do and the Sonic emotions which had become his reasoning told him to pine. So pine he did, but there was n.o.body there to notice. The chubby 223367/Qlt/MZ of yesteryear gradually faded. The memory of sweetly groping mandibles filled his thoughts, the poetry of their vapid weaving, the sweet insinuations. In the Moon thing and the Moon thing alone Adam had found faithfulness. The members of the Central Committee had betrayed him, the scientists and the Ultra viewers; Nero had not even taken any notice. Una, who had seemed to hold the key to his personality, had faded away from his world. The Moon thing alone had been true.

Or so it seemed.

Sad and sorry he sat in his bottle on his thirty-fifth birthday. Wistfully he practised gestures against the gla.s.s. He did not hear the grille sc.r.a.pe back, nor see the pale blue eyes that gazed at him earnestly through contact lenses.

The cream recodex spools had at last run out.

Una, disguised as her old self, had slipped through the walklins of the Vitarum bas.e.m.e.nt, battered recodex at the ready.

'Are you alright?' she asked, hopefully.

Adam looked up. Through the side of the bottle he could see Una's pale face and her trim figure encased in a sky blue working overall. Her hair was short and neat, extremely functional. She looked as if she was harmless, and Adam could not remember bearing any grudge.

But from somewhere deep inside him swelled a reply in Esperanto, which he thought he had long forgotten.

'Are you alright?' she said again, with an eye on her royalties and her finger on the tab of the recodex, but also a simple dignity.

He told her all, rapidly. But he told her all by his new method, gesticulation. Although his expressions were rich and varied in his fas.h.i.+on, they were not for viewdoration. Adam wanted his Moon thing by him. Perhaps itwas base humanity coming out in him at last or perhaps it was merely Una's imagination, but it seemed to her that Adam was striking a bargain. When she hopefully switched his Sonic on and off he included it in his gestures, but without putting it to its proper use. What he was after she did not know; but without it she was not going to get him replugged to the Sonic, and no Sonic meant no inspiration, and nothing for the recodex spool.

Distraught, Una roamed the Vitarum. She went from the land plane to the Vista Platform and mooched through the Vulcan globe, but no solution suggested itself. At last she came to the landing where she looked at Nero for inspiration, and found none. But close by, though separated from Nero by the Chromocreature, was the sad puff ball of the Moon thing, pink and purple and out of sorts, all three hundred and forty-eight mandibles wagging dispiritedly.

Una wasn't of Russian peasant stock for nothing. There was something in the wag of the despairing mandibles that told all she needed to know.

She disappeared into the Dorval arcade, discarded her overall, fluffed her hair, powdered her nose and departed for the offices of the Directorate. It was a strange request, but they were not likely to disagree with Una, who was now all-powerful.

The Moon thing was stuck in a Plutrone bag and carried down through the echoing walklins to the cream room and shelf 43 Q.

The Moon thing had, as Moon things do, curled its mandibles into its tummy and swallowed its eye. When they plopped it into Adam's bottle it di4 not stir.

It was not a big bottle, but it was big enough. Una was a woman of discretion. She placed a curtain over shelf 43Q and they went away and closed up the cream room.

Adam, frantic with delight, tapped the gla.s.s.

Mandible by mandible the Moon thing responded. Bits of pink and purple emerged slowly as it uncurled and swelled, tinged a faint green for it was chameleonic by nature. To Adam's delight it grew and grew till at last the large cold eye in the middle of its throat opened, and it winked at him.

It rolled toward him. It shot out forty-nine mandibles and wrapped them round his throat, spat another twenty-two around each limb, attached the slitting edges to his tender neuron skin and made a meal of his pig urine blood. It opened its middle and dropped him into its digestive cavity where it stung him with septic suckers, bent and snapped his rubber bones, munched him tenderly with smooth pink flesh edges.

It had waited a long time for a square meal, and it was hungry.

In the morning Una came on tip toe to the shelf. She pulled back the curtain and cleared the grille of Adam's bottle.

Some tattered rubber adhered to the mandibles. A pool of digestive fluid in the bottom of the bottle contained a discarded piece of Adam's eye, but Una did her best to contain herself.

After all, the Moon thing was listening to the Sonic.

'Are you,' she said, hopefully, 'alright?'

THE ISLAND OF REGRETS.

By Elizabeth Walter.

The Coq D'or, a modest hostelry with an excellent cuisine some twenty-five kilometres east of Quimper, is not crowded in the last week of September; it is too near the end of the year. At the beginning of October the shutters go up for the winter and the proprietor and his wife (who does the cooking) hibernate. The previous week is thus a preparation for this withdrawal; an invisible dust sheet lies everywhere. Not but what they are still exceedingly hospitable - business is business, after all - but only those visitors who think it smart to be out of season brave their welcome, or perhaps a casual traveller pa.s.sing through.

Peter Quint and his fiancee, Dora Matthews, belonged in both categories. They had deliberately chosen the end of September for their holidays, and they were motoring in Normandy and Brittany. From Dieppe they had come slowly southwards; Lorient had been their farthest south-east call and they were on their way back via Quimper to St Malo when they stopped at the Coq d'Or.

It had been Peter's idea to holiday in late September and to choose the Atlantic coast of France. Dora, who was still too recently engaged to feel it wise to a.s.sert independence, had contentedly acquiesced. It was the first holiday since their engagement had been announced to their surprised small world. They were spending if in getting better acquainted. Such was their relations.h.i.+p.

Their worlds, though surprised, were enthusiastically in favour of their marriage. 'Dora,' said Peter's friends, 'is just the girl for him. Sound, sensible, intelligent, yet not bad-looking - the perfect counter-weight to Peter's intellect and nerves.' Tn Peter,' said Dora's world - that is to say, Dora's mother - 'Dora has found a man who needs her love. She can devote herself to him without reservation. It's already obvious how much he owes to her.'

Dora's devotion, which had begun before the engagement (and there were some who said that Dora had proposed), was not so much a dreamy-eyed hero-wors.h.i.+p as a determination to influence and mould. She recognised - how could she fail to - the superiority of her fiance's brain, but a position in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries did not seem to her to accord with Peter's worth. Had his opinion been asked, Peter would no doubt have agreed with her, but Dora, beginning as she meant to go on, did not canva.s.s his views on this or any other matter. It would never have occurred to either of them that she might be wrong.

Since coming down from Oxford with a First in Cla.s.sics, Peter had pursued a decidedly deviating course. A brief acquaintance with the schoolboy recipients of his learning had convinced him (and the staff) that teaching was not for him. An even briefer foray into the management trainee jungle had resulted in an equally rapid retreat. In desperation he sat the Civil Service Examination, and had ended behind a desk in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. This employment, though not arduous was uncongenial, neither Ag. nor Fish, being much concerned with Higher Things. During the previous winter Peter had suffered a mild nervous breakdown. This was politely credited to overwork.

It was while recovering from it that he had first met Dora Matthews, staying with her widowed mother in the same seaside private hotel. The boarders - no one but the management could have thought of them as residents - were all more or less under Dora's spell. She was young and they, poor dears, were ageing; she was nimbler on her feet than they. This naturally made it difficult to avoid her ministrations; only the spryest and the fiercest got away. The pale young man who appeared among them on Maundy Thursday evening was at once a scapegoat and an answer to prayer. One and all, the boarders conspired to throw the young people together. Never was matchmaking more co-operatively carried out. Not surprisingly, Peter saw a good deal of Dora. Three weeks after he returned to London, their engagement was announced.

Dora was all for hurrying on the wedding, but Peter proved unexpectedly firm. Some instinct of self-preservation warned him that he would be surrendering body and soul. About the body he was not so troubled, being s.e.xually repressed and confused. But the soul - the soul was an entirely different matter; he wanted for a while longer to be able to call it his own.

It was with the intention of deflecting Dora that he had proposed this holiday abroad, alleging that they did not yet know each other as a prospective married couple should. At the back of his mind he half hoped that Dora would raise objections which would enable him to break the engagement off; but as a less naive man might have expected, she was only too ready to agree. Peter owned a 1961 Ford Zephyr and both he and Dora could drive. A motoring holiday seemed to offer the ideal of leisurely progress and enforced proximity.

Thus they drove one evening from Lorient to Quimper and put up at the Coq d'Or. The weather, which had been bad throughout the holiday, had excelled itself and the rain was streaming down. The equinoctial gales had set in punctually that autumn. Too often the landscape was obscured by trailing clouds and ropes of rain. As for the seascape, it boiled and thundered and spurted, and the spray and sea-mist hung above it like steam.

In the bar, while the proprietor's wife was cooking their dinner, Peter enquired about the sights of Keroualhac. He was not surprised to learn that they were virtually standard: a savage and magnificent coastline, and a chapel dedicated to some local Breton saint. The proprietor seemed to feel that no apology was needed; it was not for these that people came to Keroualhac. But he was a good-hearted host and set out to entertain the. lady, whose French was so much better than the man's. Peter, struggling to follow a language with which he was not perfectly familiar, was astonished to hear Dora ask: 'What is that island off the coast that you can see from the hill above the village?'

'That, madame, is the He des Regrets.'

'The lie des Regrets. Did you hear that, Peter? The place is called the Island of Regrets.'

'What are you talking about? What island? I never saw one.'

'You were driving, dear. You had your eyes on the road.'

'And the weather, monsieur, would have prevented you from seeing it. It is astonis.h.i.+ng that it was visible to madame.'

'I saw it only for a moment,' Dora informed him. 'There was a lull in the squall, the mist lifted, and it was there. It looked so near I wanted to put out my hand and touch it. Like a child's toy left floating by the beach.'

'The distance is deceptive,' the proprietor said darkly, 'and the tide-rip has been the death of many a boat. At certain times it is as though all the waters of the Channel were being funnelled through one narrow rocky slit.'

'The kind of place one would regret trying to get to,' Peter murmured. 'No wonder it's called the Island of Regrets.'

'No, monsieur, that is not the reason for its t.i.tle. The island is a magic place. You understand?'

'You mean there are superst.i.tions about it,' Dora corrected.

The proprietor frowned. 'As you prefer, madame. We Bretons say it is a magic island. It grants the first wish you make when you first set foot there, but grants it in such a way that you will wish it had not been granted. This is why it is called the Island of Regrets.'

'How quaint,' Dora said. 'I do love peasant superst.i.tions. Does anyone live on it?'

'A boat calls once a week,' the proprietor said with some ambiguity. 'Weather permitting, that is.'

'The weather doesn't permit much at present, does it?' Peter said glumly, looking at the las.h.i.+ng rain.

'Courage, monsieur. With us, there is no telling. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are different days. The weather of one day bears no relation to that of another. Tomorrow may be a beautiful day.'

'If it is,' Dora said, 'I vote we go to the island.'

'Impossible, madame. It would be dangerous to go alone, and none of our local boatmen will take you. They say the island is an unlucky place.'

'Why? You've only got to make sure your first wish is something innocuous.'

'No, the superst.i.tion, as you call it, is more complex than that. They say that the island-dwellers - the unseen dwellers - do not wish to have their privacy disfurbed. Any violation of their territory is punished. Any theft, however small, will mean your death. Three years ago a boy landed there and ate some blackberries. He died, madame. Here in Keroualhac he died that very night. You can go and see his gravestone in the churchyard.'

Dora smiled. 'I'll believe you without that. But don't you think there's a rational explanation? He probably ate poisonous berries by mistake.'

'That is what the doctor said, madame. But not a soul in Keroualhac believes it. Poisonous berries do not look like blackberries. A local lad would not make such a mistake. It is more likely that the island-dwellers were angry at his stealing and punished him according to their law.'

'Who are these island-dwellers?' Peter asked curiously.

The proprietor spread his hands and shook his head. 'In Brittany, monsieur, we have many legends. We are an old race and I think our forebears are never truly dead. For myself, I prefer not to enquire too closely into the nature of the island-dwellers and I prefer to keep my distance from the lie des Regrets. If you are wise, monsieur and madame, you will also. And now my wife is calling. Dinner is served.'

The proprietor proved a good prophet. The next day was a perfect autumn day. Peter, descending in the morning, found Dora studying a large map in the hall.

'We shall be able to go to the island,' she informed him. 'There's an excellent landing-place just here.' Her finger indicated a point on the north-east tip of the island, where Peter judged the channel to be not more than half a mile wide.

Ts it safe?' he asked uneasily, recalling the proprietor's words about 'a narrow, rocky slit'.

'Perfectly,' Dora a.s.sured him. 'The tide is on the turn now. By the time we've had breakfast the danger will be over. It's only when the water builds up to a certain level that the funnelling effect is produced. As you see, I've been making some enquiries. There's nothing to worry about.'

'I don't want to go,' Peter said firmly.

'Nonsense, darling,' said Dora, who did. 'If you don't believe me, go and talk to the boatmen. It isn't the tide-rip that puts them off.'

It was not the tide-rip that put Peter off, either. Dora suspected this.

'Of course,' she went on, 'if you're superst.i.tious. ' Her tone implied that superst.i.tion was beneath contempt.

'I just don't see any point in going there,' Peter muttered.

'It looks enchanting,' Dora contradicted. 'If we miss this chance it will certainly be the Island of Regrets.'

Peter said no more and they set off after breakfast. He half hoped it might be impossible to hire a boat, but this hope was balanced by the fear that Dora would already have arranged this. He was beginning to know his fiancee pretty well.

Overnight the world had been washed free of impurity; all colours had a clean and s.h.i.+ning look. The sky was limpid blue and cloudless, a paler reflection of the colour of the sea. Autumnal tints set off a lingering summer greenness. Around the cliffs the breakers crumbled into foam. The island did indeed look to be within touching distance - a plaything that had been idly cast away.

The houses of the village, narrow and flat-fronted, led down to the jetty and the sh.o.r.e, where the ma.s.s of tumbled boulders and rock formations bore witness to the fury of past storms. Trails of ribbon-weed glistened in the sunlight, twined with great branches of bladder-wrack. On the hard several boats were drawn up for inspection and a net was being repaired.

The short cut to the harbour lies through the churchyard, where on the sheltered north and east sides of the grey stone building the dead of Keroualhac sleep. Plain headstones and occasional crosses give briefly the names and dates of the dead. The gra.s.s is scythed every summer; some of the older headstones lean. As Peter and Dora hurried down the pathway, a figure straightened up among the stones. He was standing in the remotest corner of the churchyard, where the herbage was drenched with rain. He had hitched his soutane up above his ankles in an effort to keep it dry, and he held half concealed behind him a branch of mountain ash with orange berries like beads.