Authors: James P. Blaylock
“Well, don’t that bake the doggone cake!” Bateman said, just now seeing them. “Looks like your loved ones come home safe after
all. That’s
good
. I
like
to see things work out like that.” He stepped forward and shook Amanda’s hand. “I hear you and the boy been out of town….”
She stepped past him, and Peter grabbed both Amanda and David and hugged them, holding them for a long, long time. Two figures
appeared in the moonlight, high up on the trail to the ridge. They were descending into the canyon—Beth, with old Mr. Ackroyd
leaning heavily on her arm.
Holding on to Amanda and David as if he might lose them again, Peter set out up the trail, the dog Freeway running on ahead,
disappearing into the darkness of the overshadowing oaks.
T
HE WIND BLEW ACROSS THE
S
ANTA
A
NA
M
OUNTAINS
, angling through the canyons and gorges, scouring the arid ridges where the chaparral plants, unnaturally silver in the bright
moonlight, jittered with a sound like dry husks rubbing together. The air swirled with dead leaves and particles of twigs.
Slowly, incessantly, the wind reduced the sage and greasewood and sumac to dry skeletons, tearing away
the brown leaves, snapping off small branches and whirling them away into the sky until nothing remained but gnarled trunks
and stones.
A dark mass like a bundle of old rags rolled between the barren sticks, animated by the wind and emitting the papery rasping
of air forced out of desiccated lungs. It rose slowly, like a gas-filled bag, roughly the shape of a man, his neck broken
and his head lolling to the side, his arms hanging dead like the arms of a marionette. Its feet dragged across the top of
the chaparral, its face lit by the moon now, eyes dark hollows, lips and ears and cheeks devoured by animals. Its foot caught
a bent stick and it jerked to a stop, rocking back and forth momentarily, a dark silhouette against the moonlit sky, and then
the wind tore it loose again, half spinning it around, propelling it along the dirt trail, where it scraped through dust and
gravel.
It hurried along on the wind now, leaning slightly forward, its open mouth mumbling out a dead language of dry leaves and
dirt. The dark canyon spread out beneath it, and in the dim distance shone the lights of scattered houses. At last the trail
ended, and a path declined steeply toward the last of these houses. The thing jerked to a stop and hung there as if on a hook,
inches above the ground, surveying through empty eye sockets the windy, moon-haunted landscape below before descending the
hillside in a rush of wind and shadow.
Klein jerked awake, throwing his arm out to ward off the thing that rushed at him—Pomeroy, Pomeroy’s corpse, bloated and animated
by the wind. He sat in bed breathing hard, his eyes pressed open, staring in horror at the pole lamp in the corner, its shadow
cast by moonlight against the wall behind it. Slowly his breathing calmed and he saw what it was—a dream. Nothing but a shadow
on the wall. Lorna lay beside him on the bed, and the sudden knowledge of that was comforting. He lay back down and closed
his eyes, grateful that she hadn’t waked up.
Years ago he had dreamed night after night about sitting in a dark house that slowly tilted sideways until the chair he sat
in began to slide away across the floor. There had been a tearing noise and a sound like muffled screaming, and more than
once he had awakened at the moment of falling to discover that it was himself screaming, his face buried in his pillow.
He lay now listening to the silence, the night around him familiar again, empty of ghosts. After a time he turned onto his
side and watched Lorna sleep. She was willing to try to make a go of it, and without any halfway measures. When they had gotten
home from Mr. Ackroyd’s house, she had cooked pork chops and scalloped potatoes.
Unable to sleep, he got up finally and looked out the window into the backyard. There was no wind, and the eastern hills were
tinted with dawn light. The trail wound upward toward the ridge, empty of rushing shadows. He picked up his pants and shirt
from the chair and located his slip-on deck shoes under the edge of the bed. It was too good a morning to sleep in. He’d let
Lorna do that. What he would do was clean the pool, then spackle up the pool-house door and get a coat of paint on it. It
was suddenly vital to restore order out of the windblown chaos of the last few days. At nine, whatever he was doing, he’d
put it all down and cook her breakfast—pancakes with canned corn in them, coffee and juice, maybe fry up some bacon. That
was her favorite.
He stepped out into the morning, smelling the cool, oak-scented air off the hills, filling his lungs with it, letting it chase
out the ghosts and the cobwebs. Taking the pool net off its hooks, he went to work, skimming dead leaves from the still surface
of the water.
“I
T WAS A CASE OF SOMETHING CALLED HYPO-VALIMIC
shock,” Ackroyd said, coming in from the kitchen with a pitcher of lemonade. “That’s what Dr. Stone said. He took one of
the pellets out of her spleen. The man’s a day-and-night genius. He drives an automobile with a wooden frame that’s apparently
being eaten by termites. Sounds like organ pipes when it gets up to speed.” He set the pitcher down on the table and then
picked up two espresso-sized teacups from on top of one of the bookcases, carrying them over to where Bobby and David arranged
ranks of tin soldiers on the floor. “These might work as some kind of vehicle,” he said.
“Maybe for the general’s bathtub,” Peter said helpfully.
“The general doesn’t take baths,” Bobby said. “He takes showers. These are alien spacecraft.” He set a plastic alien in each
of the cups so that they looked out over the rims.
“I think these kinds of ships are called ‘nosers,’ ” David said. “They set their own course by radio signal, and you put money
into them to make them go. I read about them in a book.”
“They only accept gold,” Bobby said. “This mountain is a gold mine, and the aliens want to rob it in order to have enough
money to get home again.”
One of the Navajo rugs lay bunched up on the floor, contoured like a wind-eroded mountain. Soldiers aimed rifles over the
parapets of gullies and trenches; others lay
hidden in the shadows of shallow caves. A company of foot soldiers marched along a high-road that descended toward a village
built of playing cards, some of the structures three tiers high. The fireplace bellows lay aimed at the village, two more
aliens standing on the wooden handle.
“When we get the soldiers hidden in the village,” David said, “the aliens turn on the hurricane mechanism.”
The door opened and Beth came in, carrying a basket full of feathery-looking weeds. “Anise, nettle tops, watercress, spearmint,
and black walnuts,” she announced, holding the basket out. “If we can find a hammer, Peter, maybe you could crack the walnuts.”
“Hammer’s hanging in the front closet,” Mr. Ackroyd said. “I’ll mix up a vinaigrette and put the muffins in the oven.”
“What are
we
going to eat?” Bobby asked, looking at the stuff in the basket. “How about pizza or something? Peter can drive out and get
it.”
“Cheeseburgers!” David said.
Peter looked up hopefully, but Beth was already shaking her head.
“I’ve got sandwich makings,” Mr. Ackroyd said from the kitchen. “How about toasted cheese?”
“Sure.” Bobby turned back to the aliens, getting them set to work the bellows, and David very carefully stood a soldier inside
the second-story doorway of a card house.
Across the road the sun shone through the canopy of alder leaves over the creek, illuminating the willows and wild figs and
sparkling on the moving water. A cluster of roses bowed in front of the window, dropping snowy petals onto the front porch
in a wind that blew softly from the west now, heralding a change of weather. And away off to the north, above the sunlit ridge,
scattered white clouds drifted up the afternoon sky.
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James P. Blaylock (1950 - )
James Paul Blaylock was born in Long Beach, California, in 1950, and attended California State University, where he received an MA. He was befriended and mentored by Philip K. Dick, along with his contemporaries K.W. Jeter and Tim Powers, and is regarded – along with Powers and Jeter – as one of the founding fathers of the steampunk movement. Winner of two World Fantasy Awards and a Philip K. Dick Award, he is currently director of the Creative Writing Conservatory at the Orange County High School of the Arts, where Tim Powers is Writer in Residence.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © James P. Blaylock 1994
All rights reserved.
The right of James Blaylock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11765 5
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.