Tim Lebbon - Fears Unnamed Read online

  FEARS UNNAMED

  by Tim Lebbon

  For Daniel, my little mate

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Remnants

  White one • the color of blood

  two • the color of fear

  three • the color of mourning

  The Unfortunate

  Naming of Parts

  Remnants

  SCOTT ALWAYS LOVED digging down to history. When we were nine years old we would spend time in the local woods, me climbing trees and searching for bird nests and damming the local stream, Scott excavating through the accumulated carpet of leaves and other forest debris in his search for hidden things. Usually he found nothing but mud, muck and crawling things, but on those rare occasions when he went home happy instead of dejected, he would be carrying something of interest. A small skeleton once, easily identifiable were we to ask our parents, though we didn’t because we preferred the mystery. He also found a buried box, about the size of a house brick, and we undertook to smash the lock with a rock. Those few seconds were a magical time—the impact of stone on metal reverberating through the woods, the endless possibilities rich and colored by our childish imaginations—and even when the lid flipped open to reveal nothing but rust, we weren’t truly disappointed. It was empty of treasure or maps or hidden truths, but the box itself was still there, and that was good enough for us. Scott walked home that day happier than I had ever seen him, the box tucked beneath one arm, his small trowel dirtying his trousers where it protruded from a pocket. He was beaming. “There’s always something there,” he said. “Everyone reckons that what we see is it. They forget about all the buried stuff.”

  His progression from school, to university, to a career in archeology was no surprise to anyone. We kept in touch, even though my work took me on a vastly different route. Scott would disappear from my life for years on end, and then I would receive an e-mail or letter out of the blue, inviting me to join him in Bolivia or Uzbekistan or Taiwan. More often than not I would have to decline, but several times a rush of excitement grabbed me. It was often his young, enthusiastic face I thought of as I sat there in my office at home, dreaming, persuading myself that I should go. The wonder in his eyes. The knowledge that when I saw him again that wonder would still be there.

  I was a jealous friend. Jealous when we were nine, and jealous when we were thirty-nine. Scott had always known what he wanted from life, and he pursued it with vigor. I lived my life unfulfilled, and worse, felt that I had no potential to fulfill.

  So I would talk to my wife and children and, with their blessing, jet off to some far-flung corner of the world to spend two weeks in a tent with my old friend. He never changed, only became fuller. Each time I saw him he seemed more alive and I felt more dead, ground down by life and work, impulsiveness slaughtered by necessity. And each time, Scott seemed to be digging much deeper than even he knew. It was not only lost things he was looking for, but things unknown, and even things that had never been. He was looking past history and into the abyss of unadulterated truth.

  He sometimes told me what he had unearthed. I was no longer a child, so I often found it difficult to believe, a leap of imagination that I was not able to make. He would smile and shake his head, and that simple gesture hurt me to the core. He was so used to miracles.

  His final calling came in a series of brief, enigmatic e-mails.

  I’ve found a city that no one has dreamed of in centuries, the first said. I smiled at the words on the screen, my heart quickening in unconscious sympathy with the excitement bleeding from them. I imagined Scott’s eyes wide and childlike in their amazement.

  The following night: It must be a city of ghosts. A thrill went through me. Scott could imbue text on a screen with so much emotion and feeling… but then I knew that my memories of him were providing that effect. He gave me sterile, blank words, and I fleshed them out with his passion.

  Matthew is here.

  Matthew was Scott’s son. Scott had had a brief, passionate affair when he was twenty, and six years later he learned from his ex-lover that he had a child. She only told him because the boy was dying of leukemia.

  This wasn’t even funny.

  What the hell are you talking about? I wrote back, angry and disturbed at the same time. Scott was a dreamer, a thinker, someone whose imagination led him places not only unheard of, but long forgotten. I had never thought of him as a fool.

  Come to me, Peter, Scott mailed back. Please. It was the “please” that convinced me I had to go. I was certain that Scott needed my help, though not in the way he believed. Perhaps, somewhere deep inside me where I did not care to look, there was a smugness. Here was the great adventurer—glamorous, passionate, so rich in intellect and enthusiasm—asking for my help. Not outright, but I could read between his digital lines, perceive a desperation that I had never expected to find. A desperation, and perhaps a fear. Until now he had always invited my presence, not requested it.

  Matthew is here, he had said.

  What could that mean?

  I stood from my computer desk after receiving that last message and walked around my home. My wife was at work, my two children at school, and I should have been working through some submissions. But Scott’s words had fired my comatose imagination, their mystery setting a fire in the dried out landscape of my mind and struggling to light its shadowed corners. I walked from room to room, bathing in the history of my life as it lay revealed in photographs. Here was Janine and me standing by Victoria Falls, our glasses splashed with spray, wide smiles as magical as upside-down rainbows. And here, the two of us in the hospital with our daughter a bloody bundle at her breast, suckling her way into the world. Another picture sat on the dresser in the hallway showing us on our honeymoon, sheltering beneath a heavy palm tree while a tropical storm thundered its way across the small island. Neither of us could remember who had taken the photo.

  There was an old shelf of books in the living room, various first editions I had collected over the years. I liked to think of myself as something of a detective, hauling out my guide to British bookshops every time we found ourselves in a strange town or city, exploring a few here and there, searching old cobwebbed shelves and delving deep into overflowing bargain bins in my search for that elusive rare tome. My collection filled one glass-fronted shelf and was worth over ten thousand pounds.

  Worthless. Meaningless. If this was all I had to show for a life…

  A dried nut, as large as my fist, sat on the fireplace. I had climbed a tree for it in Australia, supposedly braving spiders and snakes to grab a piece of that country for myself. Janine had been watching, camera at the ready in case I slipped and fell. I had been in no danger at all.

  I tried to think of the most daring thing I had ever done. I had abseiled over three hundred feet down the side of a cliff. It was raining, the rock was slippery and, in places, loose. I had a safety line attached, and an expert climber stood on top of the cliff slowly feeding me rope. I had raised five hundred pounds for charity. At the time, I had felt on the edge.

  Scott once showed me his collection of scars. Shark off the coast of South Africa, snake in Paraguay, a goring from running with the bulls in Spain, a bullet in his hip from a brush with Chinese soldiers in Tibet, the ragged wound in his throat where he had given himself a tracheotomy after being stung by a deadly scorpion, airways closing, life fading away in his poisoned blood, his knife so sharp and sure. He had a tattoo on one shoulder blade, put there by an old woman in Haiti who claimed it would keep him alive when death came knocking. On the other shoulder, a gypsy woman in Ireland had painted a bird, hugely feathered and colorful, the carrier of Scott’s soul. The
ink had never faded, and sometimes it still looked wet. Scott could not explain that, but it did not concern him. He simply accepted it. He had a wooden mask dating from one of the great Egyptian dynasties, a Roman soldier’s spear tip found in Jerusalem and dating from around the time of Christ’s crucifixion, and around his neck hung a charm, a diamond inset in white gold, the heart of the diamond impossibly black with the sealed blood of a saint.

  I had some photographs and memories, trinkets, meager evidence showing that the most adventurous thing I had done was to go on holiday and book the hotel and flights myself.

  “Damn you, Scott,” I whispered at the empty house. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the memories and dreams he must have every single night of his life. When Janine came home I would talk to her, and she would give me her blessing to go and stay with Scott for a week or two.

  Perhaps the fact that I wanted to steal a dream sealed the fate of that journey from the start.

  Scott was waiting for me at what passed as the airport. I had changed three times since Heathrow, each transfer resulting in me sitting aboard a smaller, more dilapidated aircraft, and I finally flew into an airport somewhere in Ogaden in an antique that must have begun service before World War Two. There were eighteen seats in the cabin, fifteen of which remained empty. The other two passengers spared me not a glance. They were enrapt in the frantic conversation that came through the open doorway from the flight deck. Not understanding the language, I watched them for any reaction that should give me cause for concern. I had the distinct impression that the whole flight skirted the brink of disaster, and that the intermittent shouts of glee from the pilot or co-pilot marked another severe problem somehow overcome. As the propellers spun down and the tang of burning filtered into the cabin, the two other passengers swapped strangers’ smiles.

  “Peter!” Scott shouted as I descended the rickety set of steps. He ran across the landing strip, kicking up puffs of dust. “Peter! Christ, mate, it’s bloody good to see you!”

  I could only smile. Here he was again, my old friend who somehow instilled a very private, very deep jealousy in me, and I couldn’t help but love him.

  “You too,” I said. I held out my hand for a shake, but he dodged it, ducking in for a hug, his arms strong, his scent that of someone used to a hard life. I hugged him back, certain that my ribs would crack within seconds.

  “How’s Janine?” he asked. “The kids? How are they?”

  “Janine sends her love,” I said, even though she hadn’t. “Gary’s starting comprehensive school this year, and Sandy’s taking her exams.”

  “Shit me. Time, eh? Time, my old mate. Time slips away.”

  I looked at Scott then, really looked at him, and though his skin was leathered by the sun, his hair graying and thinning rapidly, his jowls drooping lower and lower each time I saw him, he had the manner and bearing of someone much younger. I felt old, even though I tried to keep in shape. Scott had a sense of awe to keep him youthful, and he found wonder every day, in everyday things.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nice fuckin’ life.”

  Scott smiled at our old catchphrase, but he did not respond. He was looking at me, appraising me much more openly than I had just assessed him. “You need to see what I’ve found, Peter,” he said.

  Someone shouted behind us, one of the other passengers, and a group of people standing at the edge of the runway waved and shouted back. The laughter belonged in the hot dry air, but so did the sudden sense of import between Scott and me, hanging there with the laughter like its solid, immovable counterpoint. Scott’s eyes did not shift from mine. I waited for him to say more, but he was silent. He smiled, but there was a sadness there as well, so deep that I wondered if he was aware of its existence.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Scott seemed to snap out of a brief trance. He looked around, pointed out the ramshackle shed that served as an airport arrivals and departures lounge, the watchtower where an old man sat with a table-top radio, the collection of huts and shelters that lined the airport perimeter on both sides, people wandering among them like shadows ignoring the sun. The whole place looked run-down, wasting away, and as Scott spoke he was exuberant, a brighter spark in the glow of the day.

  “This is no place for wonders,” he said quietly. “This country has its paradise, but it’s a distance from here. I can’t mention it until we’re closer.” And then he turned and started walking away.

  “Scott!” I said. “Why did you ask me to come?”

  “You’ll see,” he said, almost dismissively. He did not even turn to me when he spoke. “This is the cradle of civilization, you know. This place.” He waved his arm around and moved on.

  I looked around at the plane, the pilots gesticulating at one of the steaming engine compartments, the joyful reunion over by the airport buildings. In the sky dark shapes rode the currents. They were too high to make out properly, and I frowned at the childish memories of vultures in old films, circling, waiting on a fresh death.

  My luggage had been unceremoniously dumped on the ground beneath the open luggage compartment. I grabbed the holdall, snapped open the handle on the suitcase and followed Scott toward the potholed car park. The heat had hit me. I was melting.

  “Thanks for the help with my luggage!” I called lightly, hoping for an abusive response, hoping for normality.

  But Scott only raised his hand and waved back at me without turning around. “I’ll tell you when we get nearer,” he said. “I can’t tell you yet. Not yet. Not here.” The family watched me walk from the runway, but they ignored Scott. Perhaps they knew him. More likely, he looked like he belonged.

  Scott had an old World War Two jeep, left over from that conflict and probably not serviced since. It screeched at us as he started it up, a high-pitched whine intermingled with the sound of something hard spinning around inside the engine, ricocheting, trying to find its way out. A cloud of smoke erupted from the vehicle’s back end.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” Scott said, “I’ve cursed it. Wouldn’t, dare let me down.” He grinned madly, smashed the gearstick into first and slammed his foot on the gas.

  My first instinct was to look for a seat belt, but if there had ever been one it was long since gone. Instead I grabbed on to my seat with one hand, the rusted window frame with the other, trying to ride out the jolts and bounces. The road was rough as a plowed field, not even bearing the ruts of frequent use.

  “Fun, eh?” Scott shouted, laughing as the underside of the jeep crunched against the ground and sent a solid shudder through the whole chassis.

  Perhaps we were in a town, but there was not much to see. The most salubrious building we passed was an old church, its tower tall and bell-less, walls rough-rendered and pocked here and there with what could have been bullet holes. Empty windows hid a dark interior, untouched by the strong sun. Contrasting this seemingly unused shell was the church’s garden, fenced in with a clean white picket fence. It held a profusion of bright shrubs, lush and thriving even through the dust that had settled on their leaves, gorgeous orchids nestling at the bases of thick green stems; green and purple, blue and red. They could have been artificial, such were the colors. An incredibly old man approached the church as we passed by, carrying a plastic water container on his shoulder, its contents spewing from a rent in its base. He looked our way but did not appear to see us.

  “Where are we going?” I shouted.

  “The desert!” Scott replied. “Hot as Hell, beautiful as Heaven! Hope you brought your sunblock.”

  I nodded, though he was paying little attention. I had coated myself on the plane, drawing a single amused glance from one of my fellow passengers. Perhaps the sun was the least I had to worry about, and maybe he knew.

  We soon passed out of the small settlement. The shacks and rubbish-strewn streets ended abruptly, as did any sign of cultivation. What few sad fruit trees and root crops I had seen had no place past the town’s outer boundary;
now, there was only the wilds. The road suddenly seemed to smooth out and calm down, as if pleased to be leaving civilization behind, and before us lay the desert.

  I had been aware of its presence for some minutes. It could be seen beyond the town, hunched down, spread as far as the eye could see. Its smell permeated the air; hot and dry, barren and cruel. I could even feel its weight, its distance, its vastness affecting my emotional tides like the sky at night, or the sea on a stormy day. But now for the first time I really noticed it. I saw its beauty and danger, its mystery and shapely curves. And I perceived the sharp edges that waited for those unacquainted with its harsh truth.

  Now that the road had levelled to merely uncomfortable—and Scott had dropped his speed as if mourning the potholes left behind—I had a chance to talk.

  “Scott, you have me confused.”

  “It’ll all become clear,” he said. “Or… clearer. More obvious.” He shook his head, trying to rattle loose whatever he was trying to say. “Just wait and let me show you, Pete.”

  I nodded, tried to return his smile, but the sun must have stretched my skin. I uncapped the lid of my sunblock and coated my face and arms once more, taking off my cap and rubbing it into my scalp. It grated and scratched. Glancing at the mess on my hand, I saw that a thousand grains of sand had become mixed in, turning the cream into an effective exfoliant.

  “Ha!” Scott laughed. “Just like being at the beach. You get used to the sand eventually, just like you get used to being thirsty, sweaty, tired. You can get used to anything, really. Remember going to the beach as a kid? That time when our families went together, you wanted to go canoeing, but I dragged you over to explore the rock pools and caves?”

  “You got me into so much trouble.”

  “I was a kid, what was I supposed to know about tides?” He laughed again, wild, uninhibited, untempered by normal worries like mortgages and jobs and love. I loved him and hated him, and for the thousandth time I wondered how that could be.