Kzine Issue 11 Read online

  “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

  “We just lost our bargaining chip, Byram and his buddies are getting closer, and the stagecoach is on fire. On top of all that Darjala had us traveling in the wrong direction for a while, which put us behind schedule. I think that about covers it for now.”

  Ruggid let out a whoop and called for Aaron to look. Aaron peeked out and grinned. “It’s about time.” Amelia bounced her way to the driver access panel and looked for herself. A stampede of horseback riders galloped toward her, looking like raiders intent on a destination, which appeared to be a collision course with the stagecoach.

  “Yeehaw.” Ruggid cracked his whip over the horses as the approaching horsemen split and thundered past on either side of the stagecoach toward Byram and his entourage.

  “I hope they’re on our side,” Amelia said.

  Aaron grinned. “You bet they are. When I found out that Byram had beaten us to the library I sent my cart driver back for help while Ruggid and I pursued Byram. We stole this coach from them and you know the rest.”

  “The rest of what? What is going on here? And for that matter, where is here? And how did I get here? I demand some answers.” She coughed as smoke blew into her face through the open side of the coach.

  Aaron, unperturbed, looked out the doorway. “Relax, I recognize the land here. We’re only a few minutes away from the real Book Repository. The High Priestess will explain everything to you when you get there.”

  “Just what is this Book Repository?”

  He gave her a puzzled look but answered nonetheless. “It is a place where all the knowledge of the past is stored so it will not be forgotten. They try to have at least one copy of every non-fiction book printed.”

  While that made perfect sense the answer didn’t satisfy her, but when she tried to get more Aaron bid her to be patient.

  Before long the coach slowed to a stop. Aaron jumped down and held his hand out to her. She brushed her hair from her face with one hand and took his hand with the other. The ride, the whole experience, had been rougher than she thought and sore muscles screamed at her as she stepped to the ground, grateful for Aaron’s help.

  The scene looked familiar, with the Book Repository in the background and the waiting priestess clad in gossamer white, but this time it was all brighter, more vibrant, and the crowd was much larger, with more color and variety, more vitality, and everybody was much louder. When she slid her glasses down to look over them everything blurred a bit but stayed essentially the same.

  “Welcome, Amelina,” the priestess called out in a clear, melodic voice.

  The crowd parted. Aaron gently took her by the arm and led her to the white-clad woman, introducing her as the High Priestess Veda.

  “Hi, nice to meet you, but why does everybody keep calling me Amelina? My name is Amelia.”

  The priestess drew back as if to get a better look. “If you are not Amelina, why do you carry her amulet?” Veda said, pointing at Amelia’s pendant.

  Amelia looked down at it. “I bought it at a garage sale yesterday.”

  “What of the bracelets?”

  “They are heirlooms from my grandmother. I never learned where she go them.”

  “Why were you working at the library tonight?”

  Amelia was beginning to resent the rapid series of questions but she wanted some answers herself so she answered. “The woman who was scheduled was killed in an automobile accident last week. I’ve been filling in for her.” She looked at the faces around her, unsure if they could understand.

  High Priestess Veda did. “That means the agents of the Dark One reached her and Amelina is dead, but you were taken instead so the books still reached us. Higher powers were at work.” She smiled at Amelia. “I’m sure you must have a thousand questions and you deserve some answers. Let’s go inside.”

  Together they went up the steps and through the main doors.

  “Is it safe here?” Amelia asked as she surveyed the lamplit corridor.

  “Of course it is. By now Byram and his men have been taken into custody and the door of opportunity for Darjala’s evil spell is closed. The books are secure.”

  “What spell are you talking about?”

  “The one where Darjala intended to burn all these books and use the release of magical potential as a catalyst to throw humanity into a dark age of ignorance and oppression. Thanks to your assistance we managed to thwart the forces of evil this time.”

  “You mean they’ll try again?”

  “Assuredly, my dear. Evil never rests.”

  “But I didn’t really do anything except go along for the ride.”

  “Oh, but you did. If you had stayed in the library we wouldn’t have been able to track the coach through Amelina’s pendant, and it was you who alerted Aaron of the deception at the cave.”

  “Yes, you’re right about that.”

  “Would you be willing to help us again?” Veda opened a door a few inches and stood waiting.

  Amelia considered the rough ride, the life-threatening situations, all her bruises and aches, she thought about Aaron and Ruggid, the tedium of her job, and she felt the glow of pride that was making her feel high. She thought about Aaron again, nodded and said, “Yes.”

  Veda smiled widely at her. “Good. I’ll be in touch.” She gently ushered Amelia through the door.

  The door clicked shut behind her.

  The last echoing rumble of thunder died away.

  Amelia blinked but nothing changed, she was still in the back room of the library. The crates were gone, but had they ever been there? Looking down she saw that her clothes were back to normal, the leather pouch was once again her purse hanging from her shoulder. She looked around. The door behind her had a normal, everyday knob and lock. Nothing in the room was out of the ordinary.

  Had any of it happened?

  Wait, what was that shining under the table? When she bent down to pick it up her aching body told her the ride had certainly been real and her loose hair fell in a curtain around her face. The shine was from gold leaf stamped on the cover and spine of a book bound with genuine leather. The title, in florid, ornate script, read, “Pictorial Dictionary Of Fairie Anatomy.” So the adventure had happened, with Veda tricking her at the end, sending her back without giving her a chance to ask any questions, but Veda had said she would be in touch and Amelia had a feeling somebody would be coming soon for this book, and as long as she kept it close she would get a chance to get some answers.

  LEAP OF FAITH

  by Maureen Bowden

  I study my face. I’ve survived another night. Each time I look in the mirror I expect to see nobody looking back at me. Something’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. People keep disappearing and I have a feeling that my turn is coming soon.

  My mother comes into my bedroom. I watch her reflection as she picks up my copy of Chat from the floor, rolls it up and clouts me across the back of the head with it. “Gwen”, she says, “stop admiring yourself and get dressed.” She closes the door behind her and I hear her footsteps growing fainter as she returns downstairs. I wonder if I’ll ever see her again.

  I spend as little time as possible in the bathroom, and then I scuttle back here and lock the door. I put on my jeans and the t-shirt with ‘Elvis Lives’ emblazoned across the front. My brother, Will, bought it for me at a Rock ‘n’ Roll convention in Blackpool last summer. He’s a conspiracy freak: sees deception everywhere. At least he did. He was the last one to disappear, and now everyone denies he ever existed. “You’re sick in the head, girl,” Mother says. “You never had a brother. With a child like you do you think I’d have chanced having another one?”Actually, she had three. My sister, Lizzie, was the first in our family to disappear.

  Maybe Will was right about UFOs and alien abduction. That was another of his theories, along with Prince Charles killed Princess Diana, the CIA killed JFK, Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare and, of course, Elvis lives, and works for Eddie Stobart under an
assumed name. The King always was a good trucker, but he’s too old now so they’ve given him a desk job. “Where’s your evidence, Will?” I’d say.

  He’d grin. “Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith, Gwen.” I miss Will so much. I hope the aliens are gentle with him.

  Last time Mother and I watched Newsnight, Kirsty Wark was reducing Nick Clegg to tears over some sex scandal cover-up among the fat cats in the Lib Dems. “I wonder where Jeremy Paxman is,” I said. “He hasn’t been on for weeks.”

  “Who?” Mother said. Oh no, I thought. They’ve got Paxo. With a bit of luck he’ll give them hell.

  People are disappearing everywhere. Mother insists that the house next door has been empty since we came to live here. It hasn’t. She used to have coffee with our neighbour, Mrs Finch, every Wednesday afternoon, but the Finches have flown.

  Theresa May is the Prime Minister now. Last week it was David something or other, and she was Home Secretary, but nobody remembers that: except me. Why me? Why can’t I enjoy the worldwide amnesia that keeps a smile on everyone else’s face? I’m kidding myself. I know why. It’s because they’re coming for me soon.

  A few days before Lizzie vanished, she said to Will and me, “People are missing and nobody cares because they don’t remember them.”

  I said, “Have you been on the wacky baccy, Liz?” Will said nothing. I could sense his conspiracy gearbox slotting into warp drive. Then she was gone and we forgot her.

  One by one Mrs Finch’s fledglings disappeared but we forgot them, too. She stopped coming over on Wednesday afternoon and my mother said she couldn’t understand why we’d stocked up with so much coffee. I didn’t understand either, but Will did.

  He’d also regained his memory of Lizzie and all the others who’d gone. “It’s the aliens, Gwen,” he said. “They’re taking us one by one and erasing everyone else’s memory.”

  “Then how come you remember all these people that nobody’s ever heard of?”

  “When our memory comes back they take us. I’ll be next. You’ll see.” Another batty theory, I thought; but now he’s gone, and I remember him. Forgotten faces pound their way out of my subconscious and I weep for Lizzie, for the little Finches, and for Jeremy Paxman. I weep for all the missing but not missed. I weep for my crazy, much-loved brother, but most of my tears are for myself.

  My restored memory means, that like Elvis, I’m about to leave the building, but not to join Eddie Stobart and the boys. I hope my locked bedroom door will keep the aliens out when they come for me. I feel scared and alone.

  “Gwen, Gwen, look up.” I hear Will’s voice in the air above my head. I can see what looks like a whirlpool of rainbow-coloured gas. An arm is poking through it. It’s Will’s arm. His head follows. “Take my hand,” he says. “I’ll pull you through.”

  I try to scream but terror has constricted my throat. “You’re not Will,” I croak. “You’re an alien. Go away. Leave me alone.”

  “You’re wrong,” he says. “The aliens have got you. They’ve put everyone on an artificial world that they’ve created. The missing people are the ones who’ve escaped. Don’t be frightened. Take my hand.”

  A million questions tumble over each other in my brain. “How do they escape? Who pulled the first one through that thing?”

  “When our memory comes back we start to see the portals. You can climb through them but it’s not easy without help and not everyone survives. Come on. Trust me.”

  “It seems more likely to me that this is the real world and you’re not really Will. You’re an alien. Why should I believe you?”

  “Follow your instinct, Gwen, and take a leap of faith.”

  I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. Maybe I’m just going mad, but whatever this place is, I don’t want to be here without my brother. I reach out. He grasps my wrist and pulls me through.

  ON CONTI STREET WITH THE KINTNER DAME

  by Katharine Coldiron

  It wasn’t Mardi Gras the night I accompanied the Kintner dame to Mama Merle’s in the French Quarter, but it might as well have been. Any night’s good for a party in the Big Easy, and my head was still pounding from a personal demonstration of this philosophy at Louie’s the prior evening. On the corner, some pretty young things shook their tailfeathers to the heated strains of a boogie-woogie band blasting from a cigarette-choked club, but that scene quieted mercifully as we walked further down the block.

  Wendy Kintner, black-haired and porcelain-skinned, had sashayed into my office a week earlier with all the makings of a job I didn’t want. She told me there was someone in the Quarter she needed to see, a trade she needed to make. She wanted an escort. It was an hour’s work, tops, she said, and she’d pay me well for my time.

  The someone was Mama Merle, was the hang-up. She was pretty notorious in the lower quarters for her particular brand of problem-solving. If you wanted aspirin, you went to a pharmacist; if you wanted to strike someone mysteriously blind, you went to Mama Merle.

  “You really want to mix with the likes of her?” I’d asked the Kintner dame.

  She shrugged in reply. “She has what I need. A certain coat.”

  “And you can’t live without getting that coat back?”

  “No,” she said. “I wasn’t willing to dig it up, but now that someone has, I need it.”

  I hoped, but doubted, that she meant “dig it up” metaphorically. “What’s so special about the coat?”

  “Sentimental value.”

  Uh huh. But I knew I wasn’t going to get too many straight answers from her. She kept looking anywhere else but at me when she was talking, fiddling with her cigarette.

  I leaned back in my squeaky chair and looked at the desk blotter. I didn’t want to meet Mama Merle. I didn’t want to meet anyone who was friendly with Mama Merle. I didn’t want to meet anyone who’d touched Mama Merle with a ten-foot pole. But the Kintner dame looked good, she looked like rent money, and she did say it’d only be an hour. How bad could it be?

  “Almost there,” she said, now that we were on Conti Street. She walked steadily enough on the cracked pavement, but her voice shook and shrilled.

  “You all right, honey?” Not that I cared much. But she’d only paid me half up front.

  “Sure,” she tossed at me with a nervous grin. She adjusted the burden slung over her arm: two wool tunics with brass buttons, Confederate gray, moth-eaten and stuffed in a garment bag that crackled as she walked. “Say, does it seem quiet to you? Too quiet, compared to half a block back?”

  It did, actually, but I wasn’t there to swap spook stories. “It’s just the jitters,” I told her. “Relax. Half an hour, this’ll be over and you’ll have what you want.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Sure.” Just then she slipped – she was wearing black suede pumps with high heels, and the slick, uneven street couldn’t have been easy to navigate – and I caught her at the elbow. Her skin, above her black gloves and below the sleeve of her white silk blouse, was cold, even though it was a soupy Louisiana night. “I’m all right,” she said, and tugged her elbow free gently.

  I watched her walk away. Aside from the bundle she carried, there wasn’t a thing about her that was bulky. She was delicate all over. The silk blouse I mentioned, but she had on a black silk skirt, too, pleated, the kind that rustles in whispers, trying to tell you secrets about what’s underneath. The seams in her stockings were perfectly straight, and even though the aroma of trouble clouded the air around her, I couldn’t help following those seams all the way up under that whispering skirt. Her hair was black silk too, and she had on a soft gray fedora with a generous brim that hid one green eye. I thought I might have snapped her elbow if I’d hung on too hard; if she fell in the street, she might have broken up like a gingerbread girl. I was sweating in my lightest tan linen suit down here in the Quarter, pushing my hat up over damp hair, but she looked and felt too cool.

  She stopped and half-turned. “Come on, Mr. McHugh. Don’t quit on me now.”


  “I’m not.” I caught up. “Just checking the street a minute.”

  “There’s no one here,” she observed.

  “Yeah.” There wasn’t. Clean as Louie’s on a Wednesday morning, up and down the block. Even the balconies were empty. It made me uneasy.

  “There it is,” she said, and pointed across the street at a door that had been painted a garish orange. A hand-lettered sign on wrinkled typing paper was tacked up: MAMA MERLE’S.

  I stood there a moment longer. Jack McHugh doesn’t know fear, but the last time I got myself into a situation like this, my partner wound up dead. It was only the wrath of my landlady that’d convinced me to take the Kintner dame’s money and come out here with her in the first place. I’d rather have been peeping on cheating husbands or patrolling the Seventh Ward for a lost dog.

  “So, the deal is,” I said, “we go in there, you see Mama Merle, make the trade, and I watch the door. Then we go.”

  “Right.” She adjusted the coats noisily and checked the tiny watch on her left wrist. “It’s only quarter of twelve, so we should be safe.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “Midnight.”

  “What’s dangerous about midnight?”

  She gave me a smile. It would have scared me if I hadn’t known better. “You live in New Orleans, Mr. McHugh. You can’t be insensible to the power of midnight.”

  With that, she strode across the street toward Mama Merle’s. I followed close behind, trying to ignore the elevated hairs on the back of my neck. She rapped precisely on the orange door, twice.

  A skinny little black boy pulled the door open. He looked at me first, and I nodded, but he hardly seemed to see me. As soon as he spotted the garment bag over Wendy’s arm, though, he opened the door wider and cocked his head briskly, inviting us in with a gesture about ten years too old for him. Beyond the doorway was only darkness.

  The Kintner dame went first, still walking steady. I followed her and the kid shut the door, reappearing in front of us like a jack-in-the-box. “Thisaway,” he said.