Michael Scott Hand

Tick, clunk, and all those other sounds of a dreary afternoon where the volume on the television is turned down to a barely audible murmur and the world outside the window passes by with the hiss of upswept rain: pitter-patter, whoosh.

More rain meant less customers. Malin sighed (prettily, she hoped), adding another noise to the hazy daze. She wouldn’t mind having someone to talk to on a day like this, to have something new to occupy her mind for a moment or two… anything to save her from having to read about the grape-seed diet, another pregnant celebrity, or those awful copy-pasted horoscopes all over again.

On the television screen behind the counter, a crowd of people were laughing, which meant that somebody had said something funny or that they’d won a prize. There was an advertisement about depilatory cream. Then another that showed a cat wearing a captain’s hat. The cat was singing a song about fish and the open ocean. Then that commercial gave way to yet another: claiming NOW was the time to get the ripped abs you’ve always dreamed of.

Malin leaned against the counter and inspected her fingernails, distracted for a moment by the way the french tips caught the sheen of the hanging light above her left shoulder, burnishing half of each nail in golden light.

Tingle. That was the sound of a customer, the wind howling as the door opened and quickly hushed into obeisance as it whispered closed. Malin saw his shoes first. Black, almost featureless boots. He also wore grey-black pants and a lumpy brown jacket that bore dozens of strange patches. The patches looked like little flags, but seemed to be the wrong shape.

Rain sluiced off of him, leaving a river in his wake. He had dark-grey hair and a few scars, but it was impossible to tell his age, other than that he had to be somewhere between thirty-five and ancient. Malin smiled at him, or at least she tried. But she could tell that his was a face unaccustomed to smiling: his eyes simmered with a strange keenness.

“What can I get you?” she asked as the man came closer. Then he became distracted by the television. The commercials had ended and the screen now showed talented children with talented pets.

“Excuse me, Miss,” said the stranger. “Would you mind switching to the news?”

Malin complied. “Sure,” she said. “But only if you buy a coffee, or something to eat.
The muffins are good.”

Malin pushed a button and the picture on the screen changed to that of a deadpan face reading from a teleprompter. Diplomatic bungles, struggling families, a medical technology break through, a medical emergency. Next… sport. After that, the weather.

Malin sighed (prettily, she hoped) and turned back to the customer. She didn’t care if his was a face unaccustomed to smiles, because hers was not.

“The… muffins, you said?” the man was giving the appearance of speaking to her, but Malin could tell that he was really watching the television out of the corner of his eye.

“Blueberry are my favourite, but we also have pumpkin and spinach, wholemeal, chocolate, mixed berry, choc-chip, and…” her voice trailed off as she realised any pretence that the man was still listening had slipped away. He was staring over her shoulder at the television screen. Gradually Malin’s awareness tuned into the tinny voice playing from the televison speaker, not deadpan anymore, but sounding somehow different…

We’re not sure what to make of these reports, but… bear with me, we have a lot of reports coming in. It seems like there has been—unconfirmed—explosions and… sightings? In several places now, and…

“He found us,” said the man in the jacket, in a way that made it clear he was not talking to Malin. Talking to yourself was the first sign of madness, that’s what Malin’s old Nana used to say.

“Who?” said Malin, her own voice sounded different to normal, as though it was playing from a second television in a different corner of the room. Images played out on the screen: engine parts floating in the sky, a distance shot of a field where black plumes of smoke were rising, and tall, dark figures stalking unnaturally towards the cameras.

The man reached across the counter and grabbed Malin’s shoulder. Somewhere around here there was supposed to be one of those panic switches that you hit if you were being robbed, but Malin wasn’t sure the service was even connected anymore (and she was even less sure she was being robbed).

“Listen,” the man’s breath rasped warmly in her ear. Up close Malin found that she could smell him, an unearthly mixture of war and magic. “You have just become the single most important person in the universe. I need you to do something for me, the next time this happens.”

“Next time?” there was a noise outside now, a strange whirring chirping noise that
was becoming louder than the wind. “I don’t understand, I…”

The man kept talking, but Malin didn’t hear anything else. The front windows of the café exploded inwards, glass dicing through the air like a blizzard of deadly snowflakes. Malin was flung against the rear wall of the café. Muffins tumbled in every direction.

Malin looked out through the front windows and realised the entire building had been
lifted into the air. Now it was slowly being tipped on its side, so that the broken windows were directly below them; deadly shards glinting between them the ground below.

Malin began to slide, as did tables and chairs and even the refrigerator that stocked cold drinks. Almost everything fell out of the shop, spiralling to the ground below. Somehow, Malin realised that the television was still playing:

…act of terrorism or war, some are even suggesting…

And then even the television was dragged out of its power socket, the cord whipping past Malin as it plummeted. She clung to the front counter and found herself staring down into the eyes of the stranger below. He was trying to pull himself up, but it was useless. Malin knew that she didn’t have the strength to help him and was forced to watch as his knuckles turned white and his grip began to falter.

“Remember,” he said. “Next time.”

– excerpt from “Malin”

“You go first,” said Mal as he teetered on the precipice. Below, the Cloudscape broiled and sparked, shot through with flickers of brilliance.

For an Outworlder, the view would have been dizzying, at best. Maddening was far more likely. But the citizens of the floating city were used to living above the clouds.

However used to it they may have been, none fancied the thought of falling into the Cloudscape and disappearing forever with little more than a fading scream; which was why most of them stayed far above the clouds, on the high terraces, where they were protected by railings and barriers and large nets stretched out to catch them if they fell.

The wind whistled and cracked around the Low-Dwellers. Imbibed with thoughts of self-preservation, little Mal licked his lips and repeated:

“You go first.”

Born from a single candle, the God of Golden Light spilt out of the window and onto wet cobblestone. Unsteady, waxy reflections passed over Him as leathery boots tromped the winding corridors of the city. And wherever they went He followed: trapped in gas lamps, reflected onto belt buckles and shimmering in the glassy stares of the drunk and the hungry and those who were too much of one to remember what the other was.

Behind a façade of iron and glass an old man sat hunched over a desk carved out of jungle wood. He made scratchings on paper with a metal-tipped pen. The words that he scribed were not of the Queen’s language and few in Caladon would have been able to decipher the ornate symbols that he swathed expertly across the page.

Still, if you were to look closely, you would have seen the strain in the old man’s arm—an urgency in the tension of his wrist. For the letter he wrote was filled with strange portents, rising tensions and unlikely possibilities.

There was something like the sound of the rustling of leaves pressed up against the door by a sudden, violent breeze and the old man grew tense. The pen tumbled from his fingers as a pair of strong, gloved hands gripped him around the neck.

The gloves melted the life out of him in a matter of moments. His body slumped ungracefully to the floor. The murderer held up the letter, glacial eyes scanning the page, then dipped the corner of the parchment into the flame and watched as the letters dissolved into ash, unread by their intended recipient—though perhaps not forever, because fire never forgets.

With one final motion, the murderer snuffed out the candle and the storefront fell into darkness.

– excerpt from “Alex Magnus Vs. The Thuul”

Trees–gnarled and knotted–bleed poison sap.

Swamps–from which foul vapours rise–coalescing into the phantom shapes of those WHO WERE CONSUMED,

by the fires. Still raging. Explosions lighting up the horizon.

And it is,

against this BACKDROP OF MUSHROOM CLOUDS

that

a car speeds along the highway, motor roaring,

and three dark beasts pursue the man inside it.

Racing, sweating, the driver has one hand on the steering wheel and

the other is outstretched,

ENTWINED,

in a revolver that he fires, until

all six chambers are empty.

One of the beasts falls away and takes the door with it. Outside

the wind howls

and the roof buckles as another of the creatures

TRIES TO GET INSIDE

and kill the one some call,

THE WEAPON-MASTER,

and others:

THE-MAN-WHO-CAN-KILL-ANYTHING.

Another creature climbs onto the hood of the car, jagged claws

SHREDDING

the metal and,

PUNCTURING,

the engine.

And now–another dark shape looms–an abandoned building,

so common in the Midlands

The car is careening, out of control.

WOOD SPLINTERS and the building explodes,

The creatures scream as the flames consume them.

But what of THE-MAN-WHO-CAN-KILL-ANYTHING?

A short distance away, he rises from the shadows and

dusts himself off.

He checks his jacket pocket,

making sure he still has the medicine

(he does)

and his eyes scan the building, now ablaze.

He sifts through the rubble until he finds a length of metal pipe, and he

tests its weight with a few swings.

It’ll do.

He walks away into the wasteland.

Let me tell you a story, rockabilly riverfish, ‘bout a man named Bon Jon Bovi, who they called the Most Notorious Killer in the East. You ain’t heard o’ him? Can’t say I’m surprised. But back in the ‘80s his name was on all the newspapers at once, seemed like.

That was after they caught him o’course. ‘Fore then, nobody knew what went on in those woods.

It all started when the mining companies moved into the north of Wiltshire and the grain providers moved south into Burrows. Some of the land in the east was turned into grazing land and slaughterhouses, providing employment for the good townsfolk.

These businesses bought most of the land across Twigfield County, y’see, and most of the landowners at that time were only too willin’ to sell, seein’ as there was a great depression coming—and by the time you can see a great depression comin’ you’ve gotta understand that it’s already here and probably has been for a while.

Those poor girls never saw it coming.

Truth is, we still don’t know how many of ‘em are still buried out there in the woods, eaten away to scraps by the worms and the critters who don’t know the difference between human an’ any other sort of meat.

Where was I? That’s right. The companies took over—Meadlow and Transit and one with some damn fool robatic sounding name: Instacron. They bought out the land to the east of Bon Jon’s woods. Another company—Ferrier’s Mill—bought the land to the south.

Whether Bon Jon refused to sell, or if it simply weren’t worth their effort to take him to court, what ended up was a little patch of wood—no more’n five or six acres—became invisible, squashed between four companies and their restricted access roads. And nobody paid any attention to what went on there, although they should have.