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“But, but,” the young man said, his scythe, I now noticed, slung across his back, the long curved blade glinting over his right shoulder in the watery light from the moon that peeked through the clouds at intervals. I almost expected his lip to start quivering. “But I’ve tried to go everywhere, I can’t get away and,” he paused and averted his gaze, almost embarrassed.
I couldn’t help myself. I was curious, and the words came tumbling out before I could think. “And what?”
The Reaper raised his eyes, dark even in the lamp that hung above the front door, brightening the front steps and around which a large moth was noisily bumping into the lantern.
The Reaper mumbled something under his breath that I couldn’t hear. “What?” I repeated again, almost impatiently.
“I have an appointment that I’m supposed to make,” he glanced anxiously at his watch underneath the sleeve of his dark top that blended with the rest of his black clothes.
“You mean,” I started to say, lowering my voice, but was cut off when Tonkin appeared at my shoulder. “Who’s there?” he said, curious but in a bored tone. I knew this has interrupted his video game playing.
“No one,” I said sharply. “Just someone who’s lost and looking to find his way out of here,” I explained, quickly.
“Oh,” Tonkin replied with barely a glance at the grim reaper standing on our doorstep. “Did you tell him that GPS doesn’t work here?” he said, trying to be helpful.
I sighed in annoyance. “Yes, I did.”
Tonkin was already turning away to head back into the living room. “Okay,” he said over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” I said hurriedly. “You were saying you have an appointment…do you mean an “appointment” I bent my fingers into air quotes for emphasis.
The Reaper looked shocked. “Wh-,” he stuttered. “What do you mean?” he took a step back and down a step.
I gestured to his scythe. “I know you’re a reaper. I can see your scythe. My mum always said…” I trailed off.
The Reaper’s dark eyebrows rose to almost meet his dark spiked hair. “Your mum said what?”
“Oh nevermind,” I shook my head. “It’s just superstition.” My mouth twisted at the corner into a smile.
“So,” I said bluntly. “You’re going to kill someone?”
The boy, for that’s all that he was, looked shocked. “No! I don’t kill people. I take their souls, there’s a big difference.”
I shrugged, not wanting to debate the point. “Well where are you looking for?”
He took a small scrap of paper from the pocket of his black jeans and thrust it at me. I took it, read the address written there and dropped the paper. I gasped. “You’re wanting 1832 Hummingbird Lane?” My voice was quiet with fear.
“Yes?” he replied. “What’s the problem?”
I shook my head, stunned. Tonight was getting weirder and weirder. First a grim reaper shows up at the door, then it turns out he’s looking for a haunted house.
A Long Way Down
When I awoke, it seemed like it would be just like any other day. But by one in the afternoon, I found myself deep underground chasing down the supposed existence of an ancient manuscript that had been lost for centuries. As an archaeologist, I felt at home working in the ground, but not deep inside the earth. My claustrophobia reared its ugly head as we shuffled into the small metal cage, the door ratcheting closed behind us with a loud final clank. After what seemed like an eternity, the door rattled open and we were deposited unceremoniously out into the dark, with one large lamp swinging disconcertingly high above, it’s light barely strong enough to reach us on the ground. I lifted the covers of my dark lantern and twisted the knob, light flaring to life. I lifted my lantern and the darkness slid away somewhat, revealing gears and pendulums swaying and moving hypnotically above my head, the drone of machinery an ever present background noise. The rock walls of the cavern arched above us gracefully, shaped and molded by man. I shook my head though I didn’t think any could see. No, not by man, I thought, correcting myself. By mecchas; machines made in the shape of man.
A voice next to me made me jump and I swung my lantern in front of me as a barrier.
“Sorry to startle you,” the man in said in a smooth, flawless voice that made him instantly recognizable as a meccha. That, and the fact that my light made his eyes glow like new copper pennies. I gathered my wits as best I could. The dark made me jumpy. “It’s fine,” I said, trying to get my voice under control that was being hijacked by my nerves.
The mechanical man patted me sympathetically on the shoulder. I flinched and then winced at my instinctive reaction: repulsion. I hoped he hadn’t noticed, and his impassive, smooth features gave nothing away. He smiled brightly. “We are a long way down,” he explained. “Further than anyone has reached before. But it is necessary, since we are running out of space above ground. There is only so much of the surface left, but down here, inside, it is an untapped resource!” He flung his arms wide, gesturing to the empty cavern that, by the sounds of machines far in the distance, went on for a long way.
I nodded, anxious. “I can understand that but, I’m just here for a manuscript. I heard that one of the machines had accidentally exposed it when digging?”
“Ah, you must be the esteemed archaeologist Mr Wagstaff,” the meccha said, shaking my hand heartily.
I resisted the temptation to pull my hand from his. “Doctor Wagstaff.”
The copper of his eyes seemed to dim slightly, but that might have been my nerves again, playing tricks on me so far down below the earth. It was unnatural to be underground. Only corpses were destined for a life in the earth, not the living! And I made my feelings known to the meccha.
“Simon,” the automaton said. “Simon Clarendon.”
My eyebrows rose at the name. “Clarendon? As in –”
The machine interrupted me, a scowl curling my mouth. “Doctor Joseph Clarendon, the famed inventor, yes. He is my father.”
“You mean creator,” I said without thinking, forgetting my manners. But did un-real people need to be treated so? Unlike us living, breathing men? The thought raced through my mind.
Mr. Clarendon shrugged, brushing away my comment with a wave of his hand.
“Come,” he said, leading the way through the dark without any light to guide him. He must be able to see like a cat, or other creature of the night, I thought as I lifted my lamp to keep him in my own sight.
I had taken roughly five hundred paces when the ground and walls around us began to shake. Massive stones bigger than any carriage began to fall.
I moved to run towards where I thought Simon Clarendon had gone, and an arm blocked my way, pushing me back. “Careful,” he said calmly, pointing with his free hand downwards. We stood at the edge of a chasm, my toes, almost brushing empty air.
“What should we do?” I said, my voice rising with panic.
“Take my hand,” he said, unscrewing it and placing it in mine. I stared at him, dumbfounded. “But, it’s your hand!” I whispered horrified. “Don’t you need it?”
He answered by opening the pouch at his waist and bringing out another hand which he promptly stuck back on with a few quick turns. He flexed his new fingers, wiggling them in my face. “Good as new!” he smiled. He gestured to the hand he’d just given me. “Besides, you never know when another might…” he paused, struggling to hold in laughter, “come in handy.” The last word flew out on a burst of a laugh that he had failed to reign in.
“What-?” I was confused. “We need to get out of here!” I said, as a large chunk of the ceiling fell past us down into the hole so close I could feel the wind of it as it fell.
“Yes,” Simon said. “Follow me. Use my hand. Like this,” he pressed at a point on to top of his hand right at the start of his wrist, and his hand moved out on a stalk, like a metal rope.
I looked at him, then looked at his hand, and then the hand he had given me, in disbelief.
“You mean to say we’re going down there?”
Simon nodded, gold eyes glinting. “Trust me.”
The earth beneath my feet moved more violently. What choice did I have?
“Hook my hand onto the edge, like this,” he said, demonstrating.
I did as instructed and watched Simon press his wrist and lower himself over the edge. I followed suit, praying his hand would hold.
Utter darkness enveloped me. It was a long way down.
Ripe For the Picking
Oliver stood at the edge of the world the cold wind pulled and tugged at his hair and he wrapped his coat tighter around himself, as if the thin material would be a barrier to the biting chill that mother nature gloried at here. He stared down at the dark, stormy water; his toes instinctively curled in his shoes, as if trying to grip the edge of the cliff on which he stood, through the tough soles.
He scanned to the left, and then right, and the world was only water. Behind, down the hill he had climbed to reach the cliff, that the residents of Pendu Plat called the end of the world, sat the sleepy town that clung to the cliff edge – at a somewhat healthy distance.
The sky was darkening, turning the same grey-bruised colour as the water far below. Oliver stood still and rigid against the buffeting wind awaiting the call. Before he even heard the voice call out his name he had turned and started to move back down the narrow winding path that lead to the cliff edge.
He strode past Margil without so much as a glance. “I know, I know,” he said, irritated, waving a hand behind him in Margil’s direction.
He heard Margil’s foot steps follow closely behind him. The dirt path transformed into stones as the buildings sprouted up on either side – squat, stocky buildings, huddling together as if sheltering from the wind that tortured anything foolish enough to live along the cliffs of the coast of the Empire.
“What were you doing?” Margil’s words were dragged away with the wind, so Oliver had a hard time hearing him.
A pocket watch was thrust into Oliver’s face from behind him.
“You’re almost late!” Margil said, anxious.
Oliver whirled around, causing Margil to take a step back, quickly, tripping on one of the large unevenly spaced cobble stones. “I said, I know!” he shouted over the groan of the wind which had increased.
“But-“ Margil started. Oliver ignored him and picked up his pace.
He pulled his pocket watch out from the small pocket his vest. “I know I’m late for court,” he said to himself, the wind hiding his words from anyone nearby.
He pounded up the hard, wide steps of the building. The marble above, supported by rows of columns stated the obvious in deeply carved letters: Court Pendu Plat.
His feet slapped loudly against the smooth shining marble and then pushed the large wooden doors open with a bang. A roomful of faces looked sharply in his direction.
A man, raised above them all from a chair on a dais, stared down, glaring at Oliver over thin-rimmed narrow glasses.
“What is the meaning of this, Mr Cargill?” Judge Superior Martingale said, his voice clipped with barely contained anger.
Oliver had no excuse, and said so. The edge of the world called to him, and he lost track of time when looking out at the water stretching to the horizon and beyond.
“You do realize what day it is, Cargill?” Martingale said.
Oliver nodded. He did indeed. Everyone in town knew what today was. Today was the day that Pendu Plat disappeared. It was being wiped from all maps in the Empire. People believed it was cursed. Probably because a large number of people died, or disappeared from Pendu Plat. Most, Oliver thought, flung themselves from the cliffs in the dark of night. After all, it wasn’t the town’s fault where it was situated, was it?
The founder, someone by the name of Plat of course, though Oliver couldn’t remember who exactly, he had little interest in history had his reasons for placing a town in such an isolated part of the country.
People disappeared, it was true, but how was erasing the town’s existence on everything from maps, to pamphlets, to road signs that lead carriage here going to stop that? Oliver wondered as he took his seat at the table on the right hand side of the court room. It wasn’t just visitors to the town that seemed to disappear, but residents as well. People who claimed to hear voices, calling to them on the wind, from the waters below. Sometimes, people whispered in hushed tones in taverns, they heard singing. Singing or wailing, it was hard to differentiate.
That’s what Oliver heard, anyway. The singing. He glanced to the table situated a few feet away from the one at which he sat, and looked at the large man sitting in the chair too small for him. The man he was fighting against. It was a cool day, but the man, a representative for one of the founding family members of Pendu Plat, was sweating profusely. He stood and cleared his throat. “The reputation of our town has been tarnished. We need to erase it from people’s memories. Doing that will save lives.”
Oliver smiled widely and bit back a laugh. “No, it won’t.” The court room faces turned to stare at him as one. “We shouldn’t hide. We should be proud. We should encourage visitors!”
A voice piped up from somewhere in the back of the room. “But people are dying.”
Oliver raised a finger, halting the person from saying more. “No. People are disappearing. There’s a difference. Pendu Plat has been chosen.”
“Chosen?” Judge Martingale and the Plat family representative said at the same time, confusion etched on their faces.
“Yes,” Oliver said confidently. “Come, let me show you,” he said moving toward the tall double doors before anyone had a chance to respond. Margil hovered anxiously at the door and followed Oliver, taking the place of his shadow.
“Where are you going?” Margil said as Oliver strode swiftly up the narrow, winding path towards the end of the world.
“I’m going to prove a point,” he said, clearly, fighting the tremor in his voice. He reached the edge, his toes instinctively curling in his shoes. A pebble fell.
He turned and faced the assembled faces of the court staring back at him.
He waited, listening, until he heard it. A high keening sound.
“Listen.” He cupped a hand to his ear. “They’re singing,” he said, as he faced them all, and then leaned backwards, letting the wind catch him in its arms.