The Wanderer (28 page)

If you recall, when the tribeswoman and I found ourselves at the foot of the companion stairs, having sought refuge from the
natives’ bombardment, I shone my torch about us and we saw we stood at one end of a long narrow corridor. It had walls of riveted steel plate, rubber matting lain on the floor, and a low ceiling made still lower by the ducts, conduits, and bundles of cables that ran along it. The air was stale, but draughts issuing from grilles set at intervals in a duct overhead stirred the dust hanging in the air, set the motes eddying; I guessed the ship’s ventilation system had been long dormant, but re-activated by my opening the companion hatch.

We nerved ourselves up, the tribeswoman and I, then set off down the corridor. We soon came to a T-junction. Weary, we decided to pause, rest there a moment, sat down, slumped against the wall. Though I left the torch on, determined we shouldn’t doze, we were drowsed by the heat, the stuffiness, and ended up sleeping a short time.

On waking, I found the tribeswoman with her head upon my shoulder, snoring. I roused her. We went on, choosing our direction on a whim.

After a while, turning a corner, I stepped on something yielding, greasy, skidded. A foul smell rose to my nostrils, I gagged. Shining the torch down at my foot, I saw I’d trodden on a mouldy ham hock. I can only assume the vessel’s hold sealed when it sank, was sunk, or ran aground, and that this prevented corruption somehow. With the outer air admitted for the first time in millennia, decay had proceeded apace.

The ham had been rank, but going on we became aware of a stench far worse. We thought it a larder, hoped for some dried goods still fit for eating. There was also a low droning.

The stink and noise swelled with each step. Then, rounding a corner, we came on a steel door. I turned the handle, it opened, and I stood on the threshold, shone the torch in. By its beam we could see it
was
a larder, but a larder for maggots. It was a large cabin, chockfilled with moiling, thrumming blowflies, with row on row of bunkbeds, with, in each berth, a rotting, flyblown
cadaver.

The sight of all that human carrion thicked our blood. We retched, backed away, turned, fled the way we’d come. Reaching the junction again, we paused, hunched, hands on knees, got our breath back, then pressed on.

After, we wandered the dismal ravelled guts of the freighter a long time, more and more horrored, more and more wretched. Those passageways were grisly with the putrefying dead. Some had apparently succumbed, panicked and agonized, to a fell contagion that swelled the head, made the eyes to bleed. The rest had died of savage violence. Most of the wounds appeared self-inflicted, though were so brutal that was hardly to be believed: in the galley we came across a young woman who’d opened her belly with a long knife, intestines, liver, womb tumbled out, and a man who’d hacked his neck almost through with a cleaver; elsewhere we saw those who’d seemingly smashed their own skulls butting walls. Others were not: we came across a few knots of corpses, folk who’d seeming killed each other in a queasy tangle of orgy and frenzied fray, of lust and bloodlust.

Then we found ourselves in a chamber where weird devices yammered, twittered, snickered, groaned, hissed, yowled, tutted. Some looked misbegotten creatures from the deepest abysses of the oceans, tangled in nets of fine copper wire; others, the glistering entrails of huge beasts set in blocks of amber; others still, granite menhirs or dolmen, graved with arcane runes. The sounds they made had the air of pleas, provocations, insinuations, imprecations, taunts, expressions of annoyance or anguish. We fled this room of machines, ran across an iron gantry suspended high in the air over a monstrous engine, that, beset with bile-green electrical components, bristling with wires and tubing, looked the partially decomposed carcass of some vile behemoth, then went through a vast stowage, where we slowed to a walk, chary lest we knock against one of the piles of crates beetling over our heads and topple it, less because we feared
being crushed, than because the idea of those boxes breaking open and revealing their contents was dread.

Finally, as I’ve written, our torch failing, we discovered this office. And here, many weeks later, we remain, the light of the bulb, flickering, dim and dimming still, and the chirr of the generator that powers it our only palladia against the maddening darkness and silence beyond the door.

X

The aghast hush that fell on the gathering with the last words of Duncan’s tale lasted some time, was only broken by the landlord of the Nightingale signalling last orders, tolling a bell. Then William got to his feet, went up to the bar, and returned with a round of malts and an earthenware jug on a tray. When he set Duncan’s whisky before him, the butcher downed it at one swallow.

‘Cheers,’ he said, voice hoarse with the spirit’s burn. ‘That was kind, I needed that.’

After trickling a dash of water into my Scotch, I sipped it. The peaty savour was a balm. Feeling calmed, I turned to the Scot.

‘Duncan,’ I asked, ‘how old are you?’

‘I don’t right know how to answer you. You see, I was born more than a century and a half ago, but haven’t aged a day since…Well, since
then.’

He took a long pull on his pipe, frowned.

‘Well, in body, anyhow. In spirit I’m as weary as you might suppose.’

William shook his head. ‘You swear?’

‘Yes,’ Duncan said, solemnly. ‘I swear.’

‘Jesus,’ William muttered, then lit a cigarette. His hands shook.

Rashmi turned to the graphic designer. She was grey. ‘Can I scrounge a smoke?’

William, smiling wan, passed her the packet. She took out a cigarette. Then he flicked the flint wheel of his lighter, sparked the flame, held it out to her. Once she’d the cigarette alight, she took two long draws, then, turning to Duncan, squinting at him through the smoke rising from her mouth, asked how he’d spent his long life.

He sat forward in his chair, cradling his stump in his left
hand.

‘Well,’ he began, ‘after crossing the Atlantic, I settled in Boston. At first it was hard, for, with only one arm, I couldn’t any longer perform sleight-of-hand magic, or run rigged card games, and no one would give me a job, for I’d no particular skills and was also, of course, unfitted for manual trades. I had to rely on charity for some weeks, slept rough. But I was lucky in the end, found employment in a shambles, and a bed in its workers’ bunkhouse, taken pity on by the head slaughterman. I worked there several years. During that time, I learnt about meat.’

Here Duncan paused, made a chopping motion with his hand.

‘But, then I started gambling again, got myself badly in the hole to some toughs, and desperate, tried stealing a side of pork to sell on. But I was caught. The slaughterman, in a rage over how I’d repaid his kindness, fired me, threw me out, but also smashed up my knees with a cast-iron killing mallet. It should’ve been a death sentence, being out on the street with ruined legs, but the broken bones healed weirdly fast. Scrabbling around for scraps to eat, though, I barely noticed.

‘After another hard stretch, I was again fortunate, was saved from starving by a grifter who took me on as a shill, to help him work his card-sharping swindle. I was useful to him, for I could teach him the tricks I knew, even though I couldn’t perform them myself. What’s more, people seemed to take the honesty of a one-armed man for granted. But a couple of years later, after arrest and a spell in a labour camp, I gave that life up.’

William, Rashmi, Jane, and I sat listening closely to Duncan’s narrative; Elliot, however, seeming to be paying scant attention, ran his fingers through his hair, stared down at his drink. Something in his manner then was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

‘After being released,’ Duncan went on, ‘I travelled to Colorado, see if I couldn’t get myself hired on at a mine. None would have me, though. I then spent some years stravaiging
about the Old West, but I hated the relentless brutality of frontier life, eventually headed back east. I wound up in New York. Several terrible years followed. I was bedding down in doorways, beneath railway arches, begging and stealing what I could to keep hunger at bay. But, though I suffered dreadfully, I lived on. I was starting to get an inkling my hardiness was unnatural.’

Duncan paused, gingerly tamped the smouldering tobacco in his pipe with his thumb.

‘One night I was set on by a drunken mob. An aged priest found me bleeding in a gutter, took me in, tended me. Before long I made a full recovery. I repaid the minister’s kindness by staying with him, aiding him with those tasks he’d grown too weak for. And when he died, a few years later, I took over his ministry. I was happy a while. I knew by then there was definitely something uncanny about me. I didn’t age, rarely got sick, injuries healed swift…But I hardly cared. Like I say, I was happy.

‘Then I fell in love with one of my flock, a beautiful young woman who returned my affections, and we were married.’

Duncan rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger.

‘But two years later, she died in childbirth. The baby itself was stillborn. The midwife wouldn’t let me see it. She wouldn’t tell me why, but I believe it was hideously deformed. I was distraught, spent months alternating long drinking bouts with days sunk in despondency when I’d remain in my bed.

‘Then I read a newssheet in a bar, a story about the Klondike Gold Rush, about the hardships of the miners there. A few weeks later, I set out for the Yukon. My plan was to wander those frozen lands, offering succour where I could, preaching and ministering to those in need. I hoped it would help me bury my grief.

‘You’re probably wondering how, given everything, I’d retained my faith. But remember that, back then, religious conviction was much more widespread. I believed my trials
punishment for my former dissipated lifestyle, thought I needed to atone by evangelizing, making myself a vehicle for God’s message, thought God had made me undergo the horrors beneath the Necropolis to awaken me to the true faith and the awful things awaiting sinners, and kept me from ageing, made me hardy, so I could better spread his word. I’m ashamed now to recall the things I believed and the pious bollocks I spouted in those days.’

He gave a wry grin.

‘I spent some years as an itinerant priest in Alaska and Canada after that. Met many fascinating folks during that time, stampeders, that’s what we called gold rush prospectors back then, seeing as how they acted like spooked cattle, Indians, sorry, Native Americans, poets and writers, and rum fellows, as had wayward and cruel habits, who lived as if they were beyond the law’s reach, which I suppose they were, man’s law anyhow.

‘I tried to impress on folk their faith in gold was misplaced, to urge kindness, but few listened, and dejection returned to me. My soul fell again into a pit. And, in the end, I overcame pious scruples, and cast myself into a canyon, a hundred miles or so east of Juneau.

‘I struck the walls of the ravine as I fell, tumbled, then thudded down at the bottom. I blacked out. When I came to, I found I couldn’t stir. I believe not one of my bones remained unbroken. My head was twisted at an unnatural angle, all I could see were my innards flung in loops on the rock. My belly had burst when I’d hit.’

Duncan paused, supped his beer.

‘I lay for two days in that sun-shunned place, in agony the while, as the weird healing of my body took place, as bones knitted, skin healed.’

He shuddered.

‘On the afternoon of the first day, I was fair scunnert when my guts slithered fast back inside me. It was repulsive, and a horrid
sensation. After, though, I’d reason to be glad it happened so quick. That night a lone coyote came snuffling round. I dread to think what I’d have suffered if it had got its teeth into my entrails!’

Making his hand into a canine maw, Duncan snapped at the air, then grinned.

‘When I felt strong enough, I headed for the nearest town, crawling and stumbling. When I reached the place, the name of it escapes me, I holed up in a cheap hotel room for a week. At the end of that time, I was hale once more.’

Raising his hand to his mouth, Duncan blew a fanfare through his fist.

‘Step right up,’ he said, in a carny barker voice. ‘Step right up and witness the amazing, invincible Scotsman! Hurt him and his wounds will heal themselves before your very eyes!’

Duncan paused, drew breath, grew serious once more.

‘Lying in that dim hotel room, I thought about Glasgow a lot, pined for my birthplace. When recovered, I returned east to New York, sought a berth on a ship bound for that fair city. I’d money to pay for the trip, I’d panned a bit of gold, so found one fairly swift. That was in 1906. I’ve stayed in Scotland ever since. Just change my name, job, friends, every few years. Easier to avoid attracting notice than you’d think.’

Duncan then sat back in his chair, took his pipe from his mouth, put it, still smouldering, down in an ashtray.

‘Have you ever seen that man Walker again?’ I asked.

‘On my return to Glasgow, I spent the first few years seeking him out. But I’ve never seen him again. And I’ve never been back in the Necropolis. Even to see it from a distance raises a shudder. But that drunk. Here tonight. That’s Walker, I’m sure of it.’

Just then, Elliot began to shuddering. I thought, for an instant, he was having a fit, then realized he was juddering with silent mirth. Duncan turned, looked at him, bemused.

‘What? What is it?’

Elliot composed himself, wiped his eyes, took up Duncan’s briar, smoked it. Duncan went to snatch it from him, but Elliot leaned back out of reach.

‘I’ve always enjoyed a good pipe,’ he said. ‘Truly one of this world’s greatest pleasures.’

Then, turning to the butcher, he smiled fondly, ‘Ah, Duncan. You were my first success.’

‘What do you mean? And give me back my pipe!’

Duncan reached out again to grab the pipe, but Elliot seized his hand, gripped it. I heard bones crack, Duncan yowled, then Elliot loosed his hold. Duncan drew back his hand, put it in the pit of his stump. I saw it was mangled, fingers crooked.

Casting a glance about to see if anyone had, hearing Duncan’s howl, looked over, I saw that, though there were still a few drinkers in the public bar, we were alone in the saloon; even the rowdy birthday party had moved on.