The treader of dust

 I picked myself up and knelt there, first feeling my nose to see if I’d broken it (I had not, as far as I could tell) and then cautiously groping about the floor trying to find the flashlight, which had skittered somewhere during my fall.  I realised that the floor was not free from dust, but that in here the dust layer was perhaps a centimetre thick compared with the ten centimetres in the hallway.  Eventually my questing yet fearful fingers found the flashlight while encountering nothing more disgusting to the touch than dust, and I turned it and got back up.

I allowed myself a smile.  No matter how strange this journey had been so far, I had surely hit the jackpot at last!  This room was a study of some kind.  There was a mullioned window at the far end — surely the one I’d seen on my approach — and a large wooden desk with two pillars of drawers supporting it on either side.  A wooden and leather chair was sat slightly to one side, as though someone had just stood up and left.  The wall to my left was taken over by bookshelves; three in total of varying heights.  There were books and papers crammed onto every shelf and I had to stop myself from eagerly perusing them and look further around still.  On the other side of the room there was a globe on a stand, a fireplace filled with cold grey ash and surrounded with marble tiling and a coatstand.  The coatstand was, to my relief, empty.  Had there been evidence that someone lived here despite the dust in the hallway I think I might have reconsidered looking for Tesstament, at least until morning.

Satisfied that I was alone and that this was surely where the Testament had been stored I looked first on the desk.  There was a dark-red leather blotter placed squarely and centrally and an ink-well to the top left.  A pen rested against the ink-well but the desk was otherwise clear.  I felt a little disappointed that the Testament wasn’t there, but as I thought about I supposed it made little sense to hide the book here and then leave it out in plain sight.  So I turned to the bookshelves.

There I found only calamity.  I barely brushed my fingertip against the spine of the first book, something ornithological, and it crumbled into dust, cracking and dissolving into a trickle, which became a veritable waterfall of desiccated paper and aged ink.  The whole book collapsed in on itself as though it had been sat there for centuries, slowly and invisibly decaying until my careless caress unbound whatever still cohered it and returned to the dust we all come from.  I stepped back, shocked, and a little wary after my coughing fit of inhaling more dust and starting again.  When the book had finished its particulate descent to the floor I tried, as gently as possible, to ease the one next to it out to look at its cover, but it too disintegrated into a cloud of grey powder rather than be observed.

Now I was worried.  If the Testament was in this same condition I could imagine no way to salvage it and my journey here had been entirely in vain.  I looked along the shelf, placing my hands behind my back to avoid touching anything and holding my breath lest any of the works prove even more fragile than those first two, and to my immense relief could not find the Testament among the books there at all.

Shaking slightly now, with the effort of not breathing while staring at spine after spine, praying not to find the Testament in such a state, I moved to the chair and sat down.

The chair collapsed around me in a plume of the selfsame dust, dumping me on the floor as it, reduced to microscopic fragments, showered around me.  I threw myself forwards to escape from the cloud, dreading the damage that a coughing fit might wreak in here, and collided with the coatstand which, with a single loud crack, splintered and collapsed around me as though struck by lightning.

I got to my feet, wiping my hands ineffectually on my trousers, picked up the flashlight which was rolling on the floor and casting strange chiaroscuro on the ceiling, and retreated to the door.  It was obvious to me that this room was like an old photograph — you could see how things were in the past, but touching it caused it to split and fragment, destroying it piecemeal.  There was nothing to be found in here and I did not want to be held responsible for the devastation that I had already caused.

I paused at the door though.  In the hallway my footprints were clearly visible in the dust, like prints in wet cement, but now — and I was sure that they had not been there when I walked across the hall to this door — there were additional marks in the dust.  They were small and at first I thought they were paw-marks, but when I played the flashlight over them and looked more carefully they seemed like human feet only the size of a very small child.  Or perhaps, I considered briefly, someone who had been a victim of foot-binding at some point.  Nonetheless, there were additional paw- or foot-prints in the dust and they appeared to have approached the door and then retreated while I, unknowing, was reducing the contents of this room to dust.

I stood there for several minutes, my heart racing, blood pounding in my ears even though I strained as hard as I could to hear any external sounds at all, at a loss.  Should I call out, and confront whoever — or whatever — else might be in this house of dust?  Should I leave, perhaps wait until morning?  Or should I press on, find the wretched Testament and leave as quickly as possible?

I pressed on, if only because no sounds came to my ears no matter how hard I listened and because I couldn’t quite bring myself to give up on the Testament when I was so close.  Who knew when someone else might crack the ciphers and follow the starlight path here?

I pushed less hard on the other door and it, too, opened easily to reveal a kitchen.  The stone-flagged floor had a thin layer of dust on it, much less than that in the hallway but similar to that in the study.  There was a staircase off to the left leading upwards and a half-ajar door on the right appeared to guard a pantry.  There was a large table, set around with five chairs, in the middle of the floor and on it, laid open as though someone had been reading, was a large book bound in what might have been leather.

An icy hand seemed to clutch at my heart — what if this room was as aged and crumbling as the study?  The book on the table — surely it must be the Testament.  I desperately wanted to run forward and inspect it, but after all my experience so far such an act would undoubtedly cause the floor to cave in, or the ceiling to collapse… I was too close to fall prey to such traps now, surely.

I edged across the floor, eyeing the ceiling as though it had malevolent intent, and I laid a gentle hand on the nearest chair, dreading its dissipation into a cloud of sinking greyness.  The chair remained solid though, and the one next to it, and the table as well.  I reached out to the book and then stopped.  If the book should crumble away, then I should at least read the two pages that lay open here in front of me so that this journey be not in vain.

I read those pages and now I understand what trap Vermistaad laid to protect them.  I will not write here what I read, though the words are burned so firmly in my mind that all I have to do to recall them is close my eyes.  I read them, and I understood them, and I knew then that the book was entirely safe to touch and that I would not be taking it from that strange little house; nor would I be notifying anyone of my discovery of the ciphers.  The purpose of that book is to summon the Treader of Dust and I cannot imagine what ends that might serve.

I returned to my home for one purpose only: to destroy my notes and computer programmes.  Already Vermistaad’s curse is afflicting me; everything I touch ages visibly and if I maintain skin-contact with anything for more than a minute it begins to crumble into a fine grey dust.  Wherever I walk I leave faint dusty footprints behind as though I am burning the ground behind me.  I took a faint, macabre pleasure in destroying the evidence of my discoveries simply by resting my hands upon them and watching them break down into that fine, clinging dust that will eventually summon the Treader.

These words, intrepid reader, you may have, but there is nothing in here that will help you find that strange house, or the secrets of Vermistaad’s ciphers.  Now there is nothing left for me to do but my hands together and pray that there is some god out there that will take my soul before the Treader approaches and seizes it for its own unthinkable purposes.

Where dust goes to die

 I am neither a brave man nor a particularly well-traveled or adventured one.  I fear to argue with the butcher when I ask for lamb and he picks up beef.  I once took the wrong medicine for two months because my doctor handed me a prescription written for someone else and I could not bring myself to challenge his authority and ask for the right one.  So, finding myself on an overgrown Lancashire moor as the sun set, with only a flashlight, some spare batteries, a backup flashlight and a large kitchen knife sheathed in a teatowel lest I accidentally cut myself, a sense of intense dread came over me as slowly and inexorably as the setting of the sun.  The light seeped away and slowly the landscape became a silhouette of itself and the noises of nocturnal animals waking in their abodes made me shiver and quail.  I turned the flashlight on, and quickly turned it off again; reassured that it was working and terrified that the batteries might die before I found my way back to civilisation if I used it unnecessarily.  I clutched the tea-towelled knife tightly in my other hand and stared up at the sky which, despite darkening, seemed not to want to let the stars out.

Vermistaad calls the constellation that I was looking for Vulgaris but it has a better-known name today and I had looked it up, first in a star catalogue and then in a more useful almanac.  I knew to look for it in the east, and as the sun had set I had carefully set my back in that direction so that I was facing the right way, but now I feared to move in case I disoriented myself and could not find the constellation again.  My feet ached and my legs tingled with the onset of pins and needles and my hand ached from gripping the knife that I hoped I would not need to use and I wished that this was already all over and done with so that I could retire to my bed and shelter under the covers from the terrors of night.

Finally the stars winked into existence as though they’d always been there and I looked among them eagerly.  Standing alone and still for so long had chased my fear back and left my desire to do something — anything! — foremost.  I had a moment of cold panic when it seemed like Vulgaris was missing, but then I found a star in the right place and traced another one to its left, and slowly, with growing confidence, I identified it.  I felt a momentary sense of pride, swept away by the pain of the chill in my toes as I started to move.

Keeping Vulgaris over my left shoulder I looked about for the path that Vermistaad had written about and, as I expected, saw nothing at first.  Then it seemed as though there was a faint flicker of light, as though a firefly had signalled, and then another, and when I concentrated on them there was the dim shape of what might be a path across the moor.  When I started walking along it my doubts dissipated; a faint silvery glow seemed to emanate from it — surely the effect of moonlight on dew settling out of the cooling night-air onto a manmade declivity in the ground.  That there was no moon that night didn’t occur to me until much later, but I am sure that starlight would be an adequate substitute.

The path was narrow and twisty and at times I stopped and cast about me for where it had gone for it seemed to disappear and reappear according to whim rather than geography or geometry.  At one point it vanished altogether and I crouched down on the ground, frantically feeling around for anything to guide me, my breath rasping in my throat and my heart pounding in my chest.  I was certain I was about to be set upon and eaten; that Vermistaad’s cryptic words were guarded by more than ciphers and that I had unwittingly fallen into his subtle trap.  Then the path glimmered back into view and my relief was so severe that I think I would have fallen over had I not been already crouched down so low to the ground.  It seemed, momentarily, as though it was going back on itself, but that thought rapidly dispersed as the landscape around me seemed no more familiar than before.

The path led me thus, hither and thither, for a good twenty minutes before a large, dark object loomed ahead of me.  Seeing that path was leading now directly towards it I turned on the flashlight, holding my breath with anxiety, and cast the pale, whitish-yellow circle of light over the thing ahead.  Brick walls revealed themselves, and then a dark, mullioned window.  I had encountered a house of some measure, and I turned the flashlight off and pressed onwards, sure that this must be where Vermistaad had hidden the Testament.

The path led around the house to the right and ended at a small wooden gate constructed from several palings and held together by crosswise-nailed planks.  The gate was latched but not locked and swung open easily onto a short paved path with a garden on one side and a lawn on the other.  The far side of the lawn — scarcely three metres away, was bordered by a high hedge that I could not see over, and the garden was scraggly at best.  A gardener might have commented more favourably on it, but to me it looked if not dead then trying to die quietly and with dignity.  I hesitated at the door — should I knock?  There was a large iron knocker set in the middle of the door; a simple wrought-iron ring that struck a narrow plate beneath it.  When I picked the ring up though the door moved slightly and, leaning on it, it opened fully into darkness.

I turned the flashlight on and looked for a light-switch beyond the door, reasoning that if anyone lived here they would surely notice my intrusion and make themselves known.  Then all I needed from them was the Testament, whose value they undoubtedly did not know, and I would be gone.  I was trying so hard to convince myself of this that it took me a couple of minutes to realise that there was no light-switch anywhere on the wall by the door.

I stepped into what was a narrow hallway with a door to my left and a door at the end and a cloud of dust swirled up.  I leapt back, sure that this was a diabolic conjuring, a demon spirit set to guard the Testament from would-be thieves and inhaled sharply.  Acrid grey dust was sucked into my lungs and my coughing fit was so loud and long that the tubercular inhabitants of Thomas Mann’s sanatorium would have applauded me.  Every time I coughed myself to asphyxia I wheezingly sucked in a desperate breath that dragged more dust from the air into my lungs.  Only by staggering backwards into the night air until I reached the gate did I finally get free from the dust-cloud and was able to choke off my coughing and recover, leaning on the gate like a geriatric and clutching my aching chest with the hand holding the flashlight.  Though I never noticed myself letting go of it, I am sure that that is where I lost the knife.

Finally, wiping tears from my eyes and sniffing mucus back into my raw throat, I recovered enough to try again.  Now pointing the flashlight at the floor I saw that the house was covered in dust: where I had stepped were two scuffed footprints in dust so thick and ancient that it had felted down into a kind of carpet.  I knelt and carefully poked a finger down into it; I got as far as the knuckle and still did not feel the floor beneath it.  The door however, glided over the surface barely touching it, and by dint of more poking around I discovered that there were steps inside, hidden beneath the dust, and that the floor of the house was lower than the surrounding ground.

I almost gave up at that point, wondering if the Testrament could really have been left in a place this decrepit and filthy.  What sane mind could conceive of this as a safe place for something as valuable as the Testament of Carnamagos?  And then a wheedling little internal voice asked me how sane I thought Vermistaad was when he was writing in multiple languages and ciphers in order to hide something he thought important enough to write a book on.

I placed my feet as delicately and carefully in the dust as possible, picking them up high and setting them down again gently and slowly so as to disturb the dust as little as possible and took the five steps needed to get to the first door.  I pushed on it harder than I probably should have done, because I was certain that more thick dust would lie behind it and probably stop it from opening.  So when the door moved easily and silently, I fell through it and landed on my face.

Vermistaad's book

 As dust falls

It was a Tuesday in June when I cracked the third of Vermistaad’s ciphers and could, after months of struggling, read the second chapter of his magnum opus: Diaries of Carnamagos.  

The first chapter was written in a mixture of Latin and Greek, and though scholars disagreed on the intent behind it, all agreed that it was disturbing material and that Vermistaad must have written it shortly before, or perhaps even slightly after, he was committed to the New Bethlehem Asylum.  All subsequent chapters were seemingly gibberish but many had postulated that they might be written in code.  Several scholars, including deGriff, had investigated the possibility and had discovered the first cipher — an achievement in itself as it turned out that Vermistaad, confusingly, had switched to writing in French.  Sadly the cipher appeared to apply to random sentences throughout the chapter and did not appear to work for any later chapters; the inability to make progress was why many scholars had given up at this point.  It further didn’t help that the deciphered and translated lines were, if anything, more disturbing than the previous chapter.

The second cipher was uncovered by me last year.  I considered letting the scholarly community know about this breakthrough but the additional lines, bringing the total decipherment to a little over half the text of the chapter, was both chilling and thrilling at the same time.  It seemed that Vermistaad had, as the book alluded to, owned a copy of the Testament of Carnamagos and had read it.  That strange tome, of which all copies and editions are considered lost, would be worth a fortune to the occultists and collectors and, as venal as it may be, I did not want to risk letting someone else beat me to such a prize.  Being a scholar does not bring wealth and fortune in general and I relished the idea that I might be able to afford to spend my days in study in a warmer climate with other people looking after the mundane drudgery of life for me.  It seemed a just reward for my efforts to decipher Vermistaad’s text.

The third cipher fell to my efforts (and my computers) only when I considered that Vermistaad might have chosen yet another language to have written in.  Neither Dutch nor German yielded any results, but curiously Portuguese turned out to be the missing link.  When I woke that Tuesday morning and found my computer placidly sitting there with the full, undeciphered text on the screen and an initial translation — poor, as is to be expected when using online translation tools — waiting to be read I nearly fainted.  I forced myself to make a cup of tea and then sat down to drink it and read what Vermistaad had to say.

Even knowing that Vermistaad was quite likely mad when he wrote this the chapter was barely coherent and hints and allusions were so thick that it was hard to locate a single sentence that concretely described anything.  My tea grew cold as I sat there, sifting through his words, trying to make sense of something it was quite clear he had failed to make sense of.  I was certain after a couple of hours that his experience with the Testament had affected him quite severely, and for the substantially worse, but beyond that there was little to go on.  I reached the final page, sat back and stretched, and then was astonished to find that the text was practically lucid!  For four paragraphs Vermistaad explained where he’d found the Testament and that he’d decided, after studying it, that it was not safe to leave it lying around where anyone might claim it.

And then the inchoate mixing of thoughts returned and the last few paragraphs, those that should tell me where he hid the Testament, were as opaque and illucid as all the rest of the chapter.

I poured the tea away, made another cup, and sat down again.  The promise of having the Testament in my hands — or rather, a secure bank vault guarded night and day — was too much to pass up.  I had broken two of the ciphers that Vermistaad had used to hide things; I could find a way to pierce the veil of his confusion and locate the Testament itself.

It took a full week of dead-ends, blind alleys and stumbling around as though in a darkened room full of sharp and mobile objects.  Every time I thought I was making progress with one allusion another one would bring me up sharply and force me to admit that I was wrong.  The hints seemed to link to each other but when I tried following a path through them I invariably found myself turned around and going backwards.  Even when I assumed, improbable though it was, that each hint was intended to be used more than once I made no progress.  But slowly I found small things that were invariable and as I pieced them together the text started to show a greater cohesion than I believed possible.  When I set my pen down Tuesday evening, one week after deciphering the text, I had the strangest set of instructions I have ever been given: under the light of the full moon, when a certain constellation was high enough in the sky, there was a path to be found that would lead to the place where Vermistaad had placed the Testament.

It sounds magical, and it may have been intended that way, but written out coldly and devoid of Vermistaad’s mazing words, I understood it to mean that it was like Stonehenge.  Vermistaad’s path was visible always if you knew what you were looking for, but until then you had to be there at the right time when the light was right and then you could see the way to go.  I did not believe for a moment that strange gods would open diabolical ways for me to tread, or that Vermistaad had (as he appeared to claim at one point) hidden the book outside of time and space; only that I would be pushing through trees and bushes that overgrew a forgotten path in the Lancashire countryside.

I shuddered.  I do not like hiking.

Pete and the Knee-high

 The meadow was green, though with clover not with grass.  There were cows moving around at the far end of it where a small stand of trees offered shade from the still-hot autumn sunshine and while they looked over, brown eyes gazing disinterestedly at Pete, they showed no inclination to leave the shade and investigate him.  He eyed them back, more cautiously: cows were big and, more importantly, valuable.  No matter how he might claim he was defending himself the local courts would be sure to demand that he paid for the costs of an injured or dead animal.  When he was sure that they weren’t interested in him he glared at the clover as though it had done him a personal wrong, and stalked through it across the meadow.

Insects darted up into the air, jewel like eyes and filigree wings fluttering and sparkling in the sunlight, as he walked stiffly, aggressively, across the ground cover.  He ignored them; a week ago he’d been trekking his way through a swamp and the insects there were viciously bloodthirsty creatures that had sapped his will to swat everything that moved.  These seemed happy to get out of his way and return to their business, whatever it might be, after he had passed and he was stoically delighted about that.  A smell, one he couldn’t place but assumed was that of crushed clover, rose up around him making him think of green things and freshness and he felt his shoulders relax just a little and his gait became less of a stalk and more of a stroll.

The end of the meadow came far too soon and a waist-high stone wall barred his progress until he vaulted it, one hand gripping a large rough weatherworn stone and his feet landing smartly on the mud-and-rocks path on the other side.  There was a slight squelch; clearly the path wasn’t entirely dry.  He made sure he had his balance, let go of the wall and looked around.

“Where the bloody hell is this Shire, then?” he muttered.  The path, and it was clearly something used mostly for driving cattle along and couldn’t be graced with a better name, led round a corner in one direction where more tall, old trees grew obscuring his view, and back around the edge of the meadow in the other direction.  It wasn’t quite the way he’d come, but it was close enough that he wasn’t going that way without something to justify it, and there was no sign of buildings, no smoke from fires or chimneys, and nothing but the likelihood of ending up back in the swamp.

“Onwards,” he muttered.  He had an idea that talking to himself like this was a sign of madness but there was no-one to ask about it except for perhaps the cows and he didn’t like to think about what it might mean if they answered him.  Even if they just moo-ed.

The path bent only reluctantly round the tree, narrowing substantially and making it feel like the tree was somehow an obstruction and an inconvenience. He edged by, his rough leather jacket, much weathered from his travels, rubbing scratchily against the bark of the tree trunk and wondered how the farmer who owned the cows ever got them past this.  Then the tree was gone again and he could see the stone walls that divided the land up into fields, meadows and paddocks and hinted at humans somewhere about, and the path that led up a gentle slope and then over the top.  With little else to do he sighed and stomped up the hill to see what could be seen from the top.

There was another stand of trees at the top and the path led up just to one side of them.  He stopped, resting a hand on the waist-thick trunk of a tree with yellow-green leaves that seemed to be fluttering in a breeze Pete couldn’t feel and looked out.  Finally there was signs of life, though they were odd: there were half-sized houses that seemed to be dug into the earth here there and everywhere.  Paths, mostly with low stone walls to the sides of them, did run through but rather than defining the settlement they seemed to be habitual routes between doors.  The whole thing had a distinctly organic feel to it that seemed unnatural to Pete.

“You can get lost now,” said a gruff voice from somewhere near the ground.  Pete looked around first, and only then down.  There was a short man with a shock of curly brown hair peering up at him and sucking on a briar pipe.

“Sauron’s breath!” Pete jumped backwards, one hand reaching for the hilt of a sword that wasn’t there.  “A bloody knee-high!”

“That’s hobbit to anyone who doesn’t want to be cut down to size,” said the hobbit taking his pipe out of his mouth.  “And I mean that entirely literally, just in case you’re having trouble with your thinking.”

“You’re all supposed to be dead!”

“Then I’m a ghost.  Boo!”

Pete shook himself, but didn’t approach the hobbit.  He was fairly certain that they weren’t a ghost but he’d seen some odd things on his journey, especially through the swamp, and wasn’t keen on meeting any more.

“I met a knee — a hobbit,” he said.  “They’re called knee-highs in the Lowlands, you know.  He was a bit odd.”

“There’re no hobbits in the Lowlands,” said the hobbit with the pipe.  He inhaled from it and a smell of blackcurrant rose up on the air.  “Hobbits don’t leave the Shire much, except maybe those over at Bree and they’re not real hobbits.  Halflings, they are, and a bit special with it.”  He tapped the side of his forehead as he said special and looked at Pete as though he should know what that meant.

“It was just the one,” said Pete.  “A traveller.  Well, a mercenary, actually.  Said his name was… something strange.  Happy, or Sneezy, or something like that.  Only had one arm.  Kept going on about the Shire and Froggo and a grand elf wizard.”

The hobbit with the pipe stared down at the Shire and smoked his pipe quietly.  After a minute or so, when Pete was wondering if he was just ignoring him, he said in a thoughtful voice, “Would that be Frodo by any chance?  And perhaps Gandalf the wizard?”

Pete thought about it. “Maybe,” he said, reluctantly.  “Froggo had a bag of some kind, I recall that.  And the Shire was empty, all the knee-highs were killed by some trees.  Though that had to be Happy raving as trees don’t kill people unless they fall on them.”

“Frodo Baggins,” said the hobbit.  He took the pipe out of his mouth and carefully tapped it out on a flat stone that looked like it was used a lot for the purpose.  “Oh dear, oh dear.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

“Look, I’m just here to see if the Shire exists,” said Pete.  He hesitated.  “And Happy might have said something about a valuable ring.  So if you just hand a nice ring over, say gold, or maybe silver, I’ll take it and go and we’ll say no more, right?  I’ve had to kill a lot of things on my way here, and will probably have to kill more on the way back. A knee-high or six isn’t really going to bother me.”  For a moment he had a flashback to the swamp and the thing that had an orc’s head and six legs and strange arms that seemed to grab at things that weren’t there but somehow were and had limped off with his sword sticking out of its chest.

“Look,” said the hobbit sounding sad.  “It’s a bit more complicated than you think.”

“I don’t think much,” said Pete.  “I just do.  And I really, really want to go home right now.  So ring, cash, whatever.  Just find something to make it worth my while and I’ll be on my way.  Pick someone you don’t like and I’ll throw in killing them for you too.”

“No,” said the hobbit.  “You make a convincing argument, I’ll give you that, but it’s not me you need to talk to.”

“You’ll do,” said Pete.  “Do I have get my knife out?”

“No,” said the hobbit.  “And it won’t do you much good, neither.  That wizard you mentioned?  Well, he’s here.  And he’s already collected up all the valuable stuff.”

Pete drummed his fingers on his empty scabbard.  “That sounds like stalling to me,” he said.

“It’s the truth.  Gandalf the Magnificent, Gandalf the White, whatever he’s calling himself this morning, is holed up, hah, in the Inn of the Shire and is holding the whole Shire hostage.  You want to kill someone?  Go kill him.  But he’s been killed once, by a Balrog no less, and he came back, so you need to do a better job of it than the Balrog did.”

Pete stopped drumming his fingers and eyed the hobbit warily.  The hobbit eyed him back just as warily.

“Happy might have mentioned PTSD,” he said.

“That’d be the only thing he didn’t lie to you about then,” said the hobbit.

“Right,” said Pete.  “Right.  Only… I shouldn’t go believing any knee-highs then, should I?”

The hobbit glared at him.  “You’re only making trouble for yourself calling us that,” he said.  “How’d you like it if I called you Whitey Too-tall, huh?”

Pete nodded.  “I’d probably cut your throat.”  He drew his knife.  “And every way I look at this, that’s probably the right thing to do at this point anyway.”

No-one need be spared

 The beach at Baida fil-Einek was short and wide and had pristine white sand in a rough oval contained by the sea and limestone escarpments.  The waves were small and gentle and the beach quite gradual which would have made it ideal for parents and children.  The sun was pretty much exactly overhead and the sky was a deep azure that was common for much of the summer.  The heat wasn’t yet at its worst, but it was hot enough to make the sea look increasingly inviting.

At the back of the beach, dug into the escarpment so that yellow-white limestone, marred here and there by blue-green lichen, overhung the terrace, was a café.  Expensive designer chairs were set cautiously around equally expensive tables; no table had more than three chairs at it, and the chairs were always spaced as far apart as possible.  Two of the tables were occupied other than Chretien’s: one had the Minister of Finance in deep conversation with suited men who Chretien did not recognise, and the other had one of the two Ministers of the Interior sat with her Deputy.  Potted plants were laid between the tables to form sound baffles; Chretien could see, if a little indistinctly, the people at the other tables, but their conversations were murmurs at most.  Occasionally a word might escape the maze of greenery and fall into his ears but rarely enough that they were essentially meaningless.

He sipped a non-alcoholic cocktail and tapped at the iPad nestled in his lap.  Messages from the security details for both Ministers present were updating in real time.  Soon he learned that the Minister of the Interior had been coming here with each of her Deputies all week under the pretence of conducting performance reviews and that the Finance Minister had declined to update his security detail with any more information than that he was meeting important foreigners.

“Corruption as usual,” murmured Chretien to himself.  He touched the button on the top edge of the iPad to turn it off and sipped his drink again.  The sea produced more noise than the other conversations and he rather liked the soft rushing of the tiny waves breaking on the beach and the lacy patterns of foam they created.  Each design lasted mere seconds before breaking up and fading away, but there was always another to replace it.

The iPad lit up briefly; a new message had arrived to tell him something banal about European football results.  He noted only that the first team was AC Milan; this meant that Mahrie im-Mantis, Mistress of the Treasury, was arriving for their scheduled meeting.  Twenty-five minutes late, but a lack of punctuality was one of the hallmarks of the im-Mantis family.  He walked inside, carrying his drink, and when he returned holding two drinks he found Mahrie approaching the terrace across the white sands.

He returned to his table, where the iPad was now discretely tucked in at the side of his chair, and set the drinks down.

Mahrie was short and dressed as though she were taller.  Despite everything her tailor attempted her skirt was too long and too heavy for the heat, her blouse was overbroad in the shoulders and her chest was flatter than she wanted it to be.  She had a green jacket slung over her arm and a black leather handbag dangled from her fingers and she gave the impression of having learned how to dress from a book.

“Cretin,” she said.  She never bothered to use Chretien’s actual name and barely even bothered to look at him now; her eyes were on the drink.  “Did William make this?”

“Yes,” said Chretien as she called out to the barman loudly, ignoring him and drowning his response.

“William?  Did you make this?”

When the affirmative reply came from the bar, muffled by the plants and seating arrangements, she sat and tasted it.  Her lips pursed a little; Mahrie im-Mantis only really liked Champagne and so had all other alcoholic drinks made equally as acidic.

“Why are we meeting here?” she said.  She met Chretien’s gaze briefly then looked away again.  She clearly disliked him but all of his attempts to find out what the cause was had met dead ends.

Chretien placed the stained envelope containing the demands that Allabar im-Mantis had refused on the table in front of her, and then took a clear plastic case from his pocket and set that down next to it.  Her son’s shrivelled finger was nestled inside it in cotton wool.

“Qasqar’s finger?”  She sneered and returned to her drink.

“The demands in the letter are quite clear,” said Chretien.  While Allabar refused to read almost everything his ex-wife was compulsive about gathering information.  “Allabar has provided his response.  I am curious only if you have anything to add.”

“I agree with Allabar that the perpetrators of this crime need to be found and brought to justice,” she said.  “The Fort is appropriate.  Other than that, I do not see why we are meeting here.”

Chretien sat back and tasted his drink.  The barman had topped it up with water so that it looked fresh; now, diluted, it was less pleasant.  The Mistress of the Treasury looked at him after the silence drew out to a surprising level, and then she looked around more carefully.

“Ah,” she said.  “I see that Mehrab is here, with people I have not been informed about.  This… finger is a pointer, isn’t it, little Cretin?  You think you’re so clever, so sneaky, and yet all I have to do is ask a question and I find the answer.”  She sipped her drink; despite seeming to only sip the glass was already half-empty.  “I can replace you any time I like, Cretin.  You’re only still here because my hus— ex-husband — finds you useful.  You should remember that.”

“My concern,” said Chretien, “is simply to ask if your ex-husband should be advised against his current course of action.  Such advice would carry more weight if it came from an office equal to his own.”  It was, he reflected, nice to be able to use proper words instead of having to choose from a restricted list more suited to tabloid newspapers.

“You are not to tell him that I want anything other than what I just said!” Mahrie’s reply was as fast as a striking snake.  She was now watching her Finance Minister, moving her head this way and that to try and get a better view of the people he was entertaining.  “I want Qasqar revenged and that is it.”

“The letter is quite clear that they may attempt to harm Qasqar again if no ground is given,” said Chretien.

“Empty threats.”

“They have managed to show signs of competence.”  Chretien rubbed his hands together beneath the table.  Playing mental chess was certainly more interesting than listening to the blunt stupidities of Allabar im-Mantis but, he reflected, it would be nice if sometimes he could just be blunt with Mahrie.  Bluntness however reminded her of her ex-husband and made her recalcitrant. 

“Rubbish!  Qasqar was stupid and paid the price.  You’ve increased his security?  You’ve certainly increased mi— ah, Mehrab is getting up!”  She half-rose, hesitating until the Minister of Finance had gone inside.  “Don’t wait for me.”

Chretien set his still-mostly-full drink aside and picked up the iPad.  He waited until he heard hints of Mahrie introducing herself to Mehrab’s companions and then unlocked it.  He opened the browser and went to a bookmarked page, selecting an article from it seemingly at random and then sent an encrypted message containing only the link.  To all intents and purposes it looked like he was simply commenting on the outcome of a chess tournament in Las Vegas.  The coded message, to those who understood the code, was simply no-one need be spared.

Mr Scarecrow

 There was silence in the house.  Halibut — a stupid name, given to him by stupid parents — stood in the entrance hall, listening for any sound at all.  There was a steep wooden flight of stairs in front of him, and a narrow hallway ran past it to a closed, green-painted door at the end.  Unusually for houses of this build there were no other doors off the hallway, but the recesses where they had been, now bricked up and wallpapered over, remained.  They formed odd niches and someone had stood chipped stone plinths in each one.  Atop the closest was a pair of scuffed brown leather shoes and even though James had been wearing blue shoes Halibut got a sense of dread just from looking at them.

The silence dragged on until his own breathing seemed loud and when he held his breath, the pounding of blood in his ears seemed to deafen him to all other noises.  He tensed, realising that he was either alone in the house, or whoever else was there was better at waiting than he was, and took a step towards the brown shoes.

Underfoot a floor-board creaked.  He stopped immediately and started listening again.  The house was supposed to be empty, but the shoes on the plinth also suggested that it hadn’t been empty all that long ago.  Would the creak be interpreted as the house settling by anyone here, or would they come and investigate.  He felt his heart thump in his chest, almost unpleasantly hard, and wished that he were braver.

The floor was brown and bare and looked as though it had never been carpeted.  There was just on it, but not enough for him to look for footprints — not that he’d even thought about that, he realised.  The wallpaper was white with a faint yellow pattern on it; where the sunlight through the window to the side of the door struck it it glimmered, but he couldn’t make the pattern out.  Yellow on white seemed like a poor-contrast choice.

He made himself take another step.  The floor remained silent now, and he reached the plinth without any more creaks or groans or worrying noises.

The plinth was rough sandstone bricks piled up in a rectangular column with a  larger red tile on top.  He thought it might have been a paving slab before its current job.  The edges were slightly discoloured, in some places paler and in some places darker, as though plants had grown around it and been peeled away.  The shoes were neatly placed side by side.

He picked one up and looked inside it, pulling the tongue up to get a better look.  He found the size — European 38 — printed in tiny gold letters that were barely worn away.  He turned the shoe over again, looking at it more carefully now, and saw that while the uppers were scuffed the sole looked almost new and the laces were still stiff with disuse.  James wore a European 41 though, so they couldn’t be his.

Halibut set the shoe back down and the plinth grated for a second.  He started, stepping back, and the plinth, as though freed by his movement, started to turn on top of the pillar of bricks.  The grating of stone against stone seemed painfully loud in the silence and he instinctively retreated again until he was back by the door, facing the stairs and staring at the plinth.  It stopped turning after it had moved through ninety degrees.

“Hey mister,” said a voice and he started so violently that his leg jerked and he almost fell over.  He stumbled, throwing out a hand and catching himself against the door.  “You ok, mister?”

The voice seemed to be coming from above him and when he looked at the stairs he saw a young boy, perhaps nine or ten, standing at the top.  He looked at the boy’s feet next, and was unsurprised to see that he was wearing only socks.

“I’m fine,” he said.  His voice was firm and calm and didn’t indicate that he was clenching as hard as possible to avoid wetting himself.  “I just wasn’t expecting to see… a ghost.”

The boy took a step down the stairs and there was a creak as he did so.  “I’m not a ghost, mister.  Why’d you want to call me names like that?”

“You’re a ghost,” said Halibut.  Everyone knew that the kids that came into this house never left.  The Scarecrow saw to that.  “Everyone knows the kids in this house are ghosts.”

“You’re mean, mister,” said the boy, taking another step down the stairs.  His shadow seemed to be growing longer as he did, but Halibut knew that the light was coming in the wrong direction for that shadow to be real.  He reached behind him for the door handle.  His fingers skittered across painted wood for far too long, then found the satisfying coldness of the iron handle.  “Mr Scarecrow wouldn’t let you say things like that if he was here.”

“He’s not at home?”  Halibut’s heart jumped and he fought to control his excitement.  Perhaps he had arrived before the Scarecrow; if James wasn’t here yet then there might still be a way to save him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!”  The boy stuck his tongue out at Halibut and took another step.  The staircase seemed to groan under the weight, even though Halibut was sure that a ghost should be weightless.

“You just said he wasn’t,” said Halibut.

“So you’re deaf as well as stupid?”  The boy sounded more adult now and Halibut realised that he’d grown taller too.  It was as though he was aging as he descended the stairs.  Halibut gripped the door handle tightly and wondered if he’d know when it was time to run.

“I just came looking for a pair of shoes,” said Halibut.  “Looks like you’ve not found them though.”

“There are shoes right there,” said the boy.  His voice deepened suddenly as though breaking and he took another step down.  There were, Halibut counted, only four steps left.  Unless the boy jumped down the rest.  “You were looking at them, weren’t you?  You must be really stupid.”

Halibut pulled on the door handle deciding that it was time to get out.  The door didn’t move.

“Doors have locks, you know,” said the boy.  He stepped down again and he no longer looked like a young boy at all: now he was a man in his early twenties and looked like he worked out regularly.  Halibut tugged on the door again, hoping it was just stuck, but he could hear a rattle behind him that might just be a lock jiggling against the doorframe.  The sense of dread from earlier returned like night falling and seemed to seize him a freezing cold grip.

“Well, would you look at that,” said the figure on the staircase casually.  He stepped down the last two steps as one.  “Looks like Mr Scarecrow is at home, after all.  Why don’t you say hello to me, Halibut?”

Choosing sides

 “What is the meaning of this?”

Allabar im-Mantis held up a red-stained envelope in one hand and then, with a disdain that his advisor could only envy, the middle finger of his only son.  The finger had been neatly amputated from the man’s hand and the stump end had dried and shrivelled somewhat.

“A demand,” said Chretien, im-Mantis’s advisor-without-portfolio, “and a middle finger.  I expect you’re supposed to take it metaphorically, though the fact it comes from your son would seem to make it less offensive that you would otherwise expect.”

“What?  Speak normally!”  Allabar had spent much of his adult life spending money that, strictly speaking, wasn’t his, and he had enjoyed it.  He was obese, struggled to get in and out of bed by himself, and got short of breath just walking from one office to another.  He travelled everywhere in a bullet-proof limousine and was growing steadily more fearful of the world around him.  He was also getting steadily more impatient with everyone and everything.

“It’s both a warning and an insult,” said Chretien.  He waited for im-Mantis to think about that.

“I get the insult,” said Allabar testily.  “I think I can see when someone’s giving me the middle finger!”

“This is your son’s middle finger,” said Chretien.  He waited again, resisting the urge to drum his fingers on the folder of paperwork he was carrying.

“My son wouldn’t dare give me the middle finger!”

Chretien nodded.  “And that is the insult, Sir.  Your son is, if you like, being forced to give you the middle finger.”

“Bah!”

“And it is s-also a warning,” said Chretien, narrowly avoiding saying ‘simultaneously’.  “That if you do not take the demand in the letter seriously then your son might come to more harm.”

“Where is the little idiot?”  Allabar looked around the long, narrow office as though expecting Qasqar to be hiding beneath a desk or in a cupboard.  Chretien allowed himself a tiny smile at the thought that if Qasqar were here he would almost certainly be trying to hide from his father.  “Why have I only got his finger?”

“Qasqar is still at the hospital,” said Chretien.  He had received a report an hour earlier from one of Qasqar’s security guards that the man was refusing to leave until he was certain his father had calmed down.  “I believe they are dealing with his… injury.”

“They’d better be regrowing his damn finger!  Why’s it taking so long?”

“I have no idea,” said Chretien.  “I can ask for an upda—“

“Leave it!  What is this demand about?”

Chretien nodded again, mostly to himself.  He had expected Allabar’s concern for his son to last for less time than it had.  “As you have read yourself,” he said, knowing that Allabar rarely took the time to read things, “the letter is a demand for changes in the way the country is run.”

“I’m not stepping down!”

“Quite.  In fact, the demands are more about socio-political policies, and the release of Jacques Humtaine from prison.”

“Absolutely not!” Allabar’s face reddened.  “He conspired against me!  And he’s still not told us who his conspirators are.  He can stay there and rot for all I care.”

“And the policies?” Chretien didn’t bother trying to explain the demands as he was sure what Allabar’s response would be.

“Nothing doing!”  Allabar glared about the office as though still trying to find his son hiding somewhere.  “I’m giving in to nothing.  Double the security on Qasqar and myself and find out how they managed to get to him.  And then have the people who let it happen sent to the Fort.”

“I have already taken the liberty of increasing security about you and your family,” said Chretien.  Allabar im-Mantis was separated, officially, from his wife but had been unable to remove her as Mistress of the Treasury and so some of his everyday frustration came from their sniping at each other as they attempted to run the country.  “However, I cannot send Qasqar to the Fort.”

“Of course you can’t!  I didn’t tell you to, I told you to send whoever failed to protect him!”

“That would be he himself, Sir.  He dismissed his security guards, went to the Hotel Amadeo, and drank heavily there.”

“So blame someone in the hotel.”  Allabar stamped over to a window and stared out of it.  Chretien shifted uncomfortably where he was standing; the window actually offered a view of the Hotel Amadeo and he wasn’t sure if Allabar knew that or it was just chance.  “They have security themselves, don’t they?”

“They do,” said Chretien.  He had spent several hours earlier that day reviewing the security cameras in the hotel, and talking to the guards and the barstaff.  “Unfortunately the incident cannot be placed with them.”

“Of course it can!  Just make something up!”

Chretien sighed.  “Sir,” he said firmly, “your son was alone in a locked bathroom when he was assaulted and his finger removed.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, did everything they could to keep him safe and he still managed to lose a finger.  The only person I can reasonably blame here is Qasqar.  His security guards would have joined him in the bathroom if they had been there.”

Allabar turned away from the window and Chretien noticed that the reddening of his face had increased and his neck was almost purple.

“Make.  Something.  Up.”

“I see,” said Chretien.  “Yes, I shall do that.”  Privately he decided that he would make up having made something up.  Allabar rarely checked unless there was money involved.

“At last,” said Allabar.  His shoulders sank a little as though he were relaxing.  “I don’t know why I keep you around, Cretin.  Sometimes you’re as bad as Mahrie.”

Chretien said nothing.  Allabar often called him ‘cretin’ and occasionally told him it was just a little joke between old friends.

“Laugh.”

Chretien forced a laugh that might have been a cough.

“This is boring,” said Allabar.  He dropped the letter and the finger on a nearby desk.  “Find out who’s behind this and put them in the Fort.  And quickly, I don’t want to have to see security guards everywhere I go.”

“Indeed,” said Chretien impassively.  “There is the small matter of other paperwork—“

“Later,” said Allabar.  He walked over to the door and just before he reached it, he looked back.  “You’re annoying me.  Make it tomorrow.”

“Very good, Sir,” said Chretien as the door closed behind Allabar.  He waited, unmoving for two minutes according to his phone and then sat down in an empty chair.  He scrolled through several news reports on his phone before selecting one that seemed innocuous, something about the rise in inflation rates and the cost of living, and sent a link to it to a number he had to type into his phone from memory.  The real meaning behind the message was that he had picked a side.