The thing under the blankets

The blankets resisted momentarily, then slipped back.  Long strands of something white stretched out between the blankets and the cocoon-like shape beneath them and then snapped, floating lazily in the air until they fell to the bed again.  Beneath the blankets was a mummified thing.

Jim let the blankets fall and leaned heavily on the cane.  He squeezed his lips shut, refusing to make a sound, and tried hard to slow his breathing, which, through his nose, sounded like a racehorse that had come in first.  He stepped backwards, and again, until he bumped up against the portrait, which put an arm around his waist.

Now he screamed, unable to keep it in any more and pulled away, slashing at the arm with the cane.  There was no strength in it and it fell limply back.  It was the deformed arm, the tentacular hand that had reached for him, and as he stared at it, the pinprick eyes in the swollen head moved jerkily from side to side, and the head began to turn as well.  Jim could see that whatever the thing was, it was pulling itself slowly out of the painting and into the room.

He made for the door and slammed it behind him.  He reached for the key, and then remembered that this door had no lock; the other door on the other side of the attic had the lock.  Looking around him he saw the hole that he’d come in by, and without hesitation he ran over to it, ducking down as the roof sloped down, and standing up again through the hole and pulling himself out on to the roof.  Without really thinking, he slid down the roof, half-hearing the clatter of more tiles coming loose and sliding down with him until he reached the eaves, and then his feet caught in the guttering and slowed his descent.  The guttering groaned, cast iron pulling against the stays that pinned it to the brickwork, but it held and he stopped moving.  He cast the cane over the side, and then followed it, clambering down the side of the house as he’d come up, using the broad window frames and sills, and the crumbling brickwork to provide hand- and foot-holds.  He jumped the last few feet, stumbled slightly, and picked the cane up again.  Then he ran out of the garden and across the street, where he paused for a moment and looked back.  Up on the roof something dark and writhing was silhouetted against the sky, and he whimpered as he ran back up into the village.

When he reached the first streetlamp he made himself stop and lean against it, getting his breath back and trying to make himself stop sobbing.  There were no tears, though his eyes felt dry and hot, and he looked back the way he’d come, dreading seeing the swollen, bloated man from the portrait lumbering up the road in pursuit.  But the road was empty, and at the end of the road the roof of the house was free from odd eruptions.  He watched it for ten minutes, and no-one appeared, and so he concluded that whatever had emerged from the portrait had stayed within the house.

Only then did he look down at the cane and wonder why he’d taken it with him.

William Black

The house had been abandoned for fifteen years.  The windows were boarded up, the door was locked and padlocked; someone had driven metal eyehooks the size of a hand into the doorframe and the door and padlocked them together.  Even the chimney had been blocked up; Jim had been on the roof and seen for himself.  While he was up there, crouching low to avoid being seen by anyone carelessly looking up at the skyline, he’d discovered that the roof tiles were loose.  A couple had slipped his feet beneath him, and when he fell, grabbing at the peak of the roof with his good hand, more still had slipped away.  He’d waited there, hanging on as he heard the tiles fall into the overgrown garden below and hoped that no-one else had heard them.  When, minutes later when his arm felt as though it was on fire, there were still no voices or footsteps below, he’d tucked his legs up, got his feet back underneath him and taken the weight off his arm.  Then, half-crouching, half-lying on the roof, he’d looked at the damage.  A hole into the attic looked back at him.

Peering over the edge of the roof he could see that the street was clear, which wasn’t that surprising; the sun was starting to set and no-one came down this end of the village much at night.  There wasn’t a need too; apart from the abandoned house there was a shed used for shearing sheep, some kind of old stone ring that children played around after school, and a dirt path that led out into the cow pasture and then disappeared.  Satisfied, he pulled more of the tiles loose, dropping them through into the attic so as to avoid any more noise that might be heard.  The house was abandoned, it wasn’t like anyone was going to complain that he was messing up the attic.  And this way, if anyone did come and find it later, it wouldn’t look like anyone had been trying to get in.

When the hole was big enough he slipped through; the attic was long and the roof was slanted on both sides so it wasn’t much of a drop.  He crouched, and waddled a little into the middle of the room where he could stand up properly, and looked around.

It was disappointing; there were some tea-chests that contained dust and dead spiders, and there were a couple of piles of newspapers bound with frayed cord that snapped limply when he touched it.  He moved around, his feet stirring up dust from the reddish carpet on the floor, and then realised that if anyone did come in here now they’d see that someone had been here.  He started dragging his feet, scuffing out the footprints so that hopefully it would look like a largish animal had done it.  Further in there was a rocking horse that creaked and squealed when he touched it, swaying about too many axes to be in good condition.  Against the end wall was a door with a key in the lock, and next to that a fireplace.  Some cast-iron tools were still propped up against it, and there was cold, grey, lacy ash in the grate as well.

He tried the door, and to his surprise found it locked.  He started to turn the key, and then paused and looked at it.  How could it be in the lock on this side if the door were locked?  He turned back, and looked around the attic again, unsure now of what he might find, and if he wanted to.

There was another door at the other end, this time without a keyhole.  He pushed it, and it swung open silently, revealing a rectangle of darkness beyond.  He felt beside the door out of habit and found a light-switch.  He depressed it, not expecting it to work, and jumped, startled, when two small lamps flickered several times, strobing yellow light across the room, and finally came on.  The light they gave was weak and a brownish yellow colour, casting everything in the room in sepia, but he quickly saw that the room had no windows so the light was unlikely to give him away.

The room was tiny, maybe ten feet square.  There was a bed pushed up against the far wall, tight in to the slope of the roof so that anyone sleeping in it couldn’t sit up without banging their head, and on the other wall, next to the door, was a full-length portrait of William Black.

Jim looked at it, seeing the little brass plaque at the bottom with the name, William Black engraved on it, and the years of his life, 1886-1938.  The man was ugly, swollen-faced with mottled skin and bulging eyes that were more white than iris.  Tiny little pinpricks of black were presumably his pupils.  He was dressed in a dark suit that seemed to be straining to contain his bulk, and he was standing but leaning on a cane.  The hand that gripped the cane was normal, if pudgy, but the other hand, laid across his stomach, was missing all but two fingers, and those fingers were fused together and looked almost tentacular.  Jim shivered, and looked down at his own bad hand; missing the littlest two fingers at the knuckles before the palm, and his thumb crooked and almost immobile.  They were different, but close enough to make him shiver.

Suddenly he realised that the cane in the picture was leaning against the frame of the picture.  He picked it up, discovering that it was surprisingly heavy; it felt like it would do damage to someone if they were hit with it.  It was slightly warm to the touch, and fit well in his hand.  He leaned his weight on it, and though the floorboard creaked a little, the cane was silent and stoic.

Then he looked over at the bed, and noticed for the first time that the blankets were mounded up slightly.  Suddenly nervous, he made himself breathe steadily, counting under his breath until he reached ten.  Then, his nerves still all ajangle, but his hand steady and his mind braced for what he might find, he pulled the blankets back.

Bliss

Emily Landsinger founded her eponymous colony in ’97, three years before the Bliss happened.  She was spending money inherited after the death of her second husband, whose business interests both revolted and financed her.  Unwilling to give up the luxuriously decadent lifestyle that the sale of weapons allowed her, but morally opposed to what she considered indiscriminate slaughter, she bought several islands in the Indonesian archipelago and created the Landsinger colony.  The rules of admission were artistic talent only, though these were relaxed a little when she decided that she wanted shops and boutiques available too.  Artists came to the colony by private jet or yacht, and paid nothing for the travel costs.  Artists were supposed to leave the colony that way too, but Emily declared that no-one wished to leave after they’d arrived, and brooked no dissent to her opinion, for all that there were artists who now considered themselves kidnapped, or stranded, or shanghaied or any one of a number of other words that came out over cocktails at dinner.

When the Bliss hit, at 4am on the 1^st of December, Emily had an aneurism and died.  She was hosting her Advent Ball at the time and had walked out onto a marble platform above the swimming pool holding aloft a champagne flute and tossing her hair behind her like a wave of autumn fire.  She froze in mid-step, and people close to the platform swore they saw her eyes cross.  The champagne flute fell from her nerveless fingers and smashed on the marble, the ringing, shrill sound echoing from the low compound buildings where the party was being held.  Everyone held their breath, wondering what she was doing, and then her front foot came down on the marble and her leg kept going, her knee bending outwards as though she were kneeling.  Then her head came down to her knee and she pitched forward further still, sliding along the polished white marble until her head dropped off the head and for a moment it looked like she was done falling.  Then she spasmed, jerking forwards and pushing her shoulders and breasts off the platform, and gravity seized her like a lover and pulled her into the swimming pool with a crystal splash.  Tiny water droplets seemed to hang in the air like coloured jewels and then fell back, covering her as she sank gracelessly to the bottom, her dress sodden and heavy and weighing her down.

I was behind the bar, serving drinks to people who weren’t entirely sure that they wanted to be there and had a perfect view of the performance because the bar was set up on a bridge over the swimming pool, a little before the rocks that separated it from the sea.  I was topless, as demanded by the party’s rules, holding in my gut which was starting to lose definition because Emily’s parties carried on through the night and the next day leaving me with no time to get to the gym or exercise; I would go home at 11 in the morning, sleep for five hours and have to get up and be back at the compound to clean-up and set-up for the next night’s party.  I placed my cocktail shaker when she fell into the water and said a silent prayer of thanks in my head to any god or gods that might be listening, and hoped that her death might mean that we could all go home.

Of course, we had no idea what the Bliss was, or would bring.  We didn’t know then that it would prevent all air-travel for five years, and even after that time the repairs and rebuilding of the airlines would mean that it was another three before any but the ultra-rich or the armed forces could afford flights.  And we had no idea that it would mean that Emily Landsinger would sit up from her coffin during her own funeral, shake her head from side to side as though trying to shift a headache, and complain about the taste of formaldehyde in her mouth.  Her sister, who had already called in the lawyers to try and break the covenants protecting the colony, was in the front pew listening attentively to the priest.  She rose to her feet, her mouth falling open and her hands clutching her chest, having a heart attack at the sight of her sister rising up from the dead.  When, another three days later, Emily’s sister sat up from her own coffin at her own funeral and asked why there wasn’t more crying, we began to get an inkling of what the Bliss was about.

No deaths, no births.  Stasis, in a way.  Bliss.

Some things died, the food chain didn’t end.  But nothing that died of old age stayed dead for more than three days before it stood itself back up and started walking around again.  There was no rejuvenation, no new youthfulness or reinvigoration.  Just an unwillingness to die and decompose like a good corpse.  Emily acted like she’d had a stroke; she slurred her words, she had trouble understanding people who spoke too quickly or all at once.  She wouldn’t admit it, but her vision had been affected as well, and she frequently mistook people for objects and objects for people when she wasn’t at a party and pretending she was drunk.  Her sister, Abilene, couldn’t run, or walk for long periods, and had to avoid stairs unless she could take them very slowly.  It was supposed to be a secret, but her doctor told me that his best guess was that she’d had six more deaths in the first year of the Bliss and would be happier if she could just die now.

If you weren’t a dead man walking though, the Bliss had its moments.  The feeling of permanent happiness that seemed to come just from breathing made life much easier.  People didn’t argue much, or get into fights.  People helped each other out more, and made more concessions for each other.  They looked after animals better, and worried more about what they were eating (though that might have been because you didn’t want your food waking up while you were eating it).  Even those of us trapped in the Landsinger colony with a pair of undead sisters imposing their will on us were happier than we had been.

The artists still wanted to leave though.