Read Online Tim Lebbon - Fears Unnamed by Tim Lebbon - Free Book Online
Authors: Tim Lebbon
Ads: Link
this place, but I was lying to myself. In fleeing, Scott had taken his open mind with him, leaving me with my own weak, insipid perception of things.
I found a small courtyard, the fossilized remains of plants clinging solidly to the walls. The well at the center was dry as my mouth. There were no dead here and no remains on the ground, so for a time I could pretend that I was alone. I sat beneath an overhanging balcony. There was no shade from the unvarying bluish light, but the balcony gave me the psychological impression of being hidden away from prying eyes. So I sat there, held my head in my hands and looked down at my feet, striving to forget that the dust around them was in a place that could not be.
There were dead people all around me. And the blue light, the light of the dead, giving me no day or night, brightness or darkness, cold or heat …..
I believed none of it, because I
could
not. I was more willing to accept that I was mad, or dead myself.
My breathing became slower, gentler and more calmed, and eventually I fell asleep.
Upon waking there was no telling how much time had passed. I was still not hungry or thirsty. I had not dreamed. I was in the same position in which I had dropped off. Time eluded me.
“Scott!” I shouted once, loud, but the sound terrified me more than being alone. It felt so wrong. Even though my voice sailed away, I had the distinct sense that it was ricocheting from walls and angles I could not see, not from these buildings that stood around me. The resonance sounded wrong.
My old friend did not answer. Perhaps he’d been as dead as this place all along.
I leaned back and closed my eyes, and a sudden breeze blew a handful of dust across my face, a hundred images screaming and destroying the relative peace of the moment, assaulting my senses with smells and sounds and views from too many different places and times to take in. Each scrap of dust stung, and each sting was a past life striving to make itself and its suffering known. I opened my mouth to cry out and felt grit on my tongue and between my teeth. Held there by my saliva, these old ghosts had time to make themselves and their reasons for being here known—
She ran along the dock, the animals chasing her, jeering and laughing and tripping as they tried to drag their trousers down, readying themselves—
Where had that breeze come from
?—
A man stood against a wall and stared down the barrel of a dozen guns, hating them, hating what they were doing, hating their uncaring eyes as they saw a rat in front of them, not a man, not a human being—
Something must have caused it
!—
She should never have left him, never, not when he could do this, not when he could stroke his wrists this way and open the skin, the flesh, the veins, she should never have left him, never—
There had been no movement before, nothing, and now a wind to blow the dust over me
?—
The rattle of machine-gun fire tore the air above him, just as his stomach had been torn asunder, and the sand was soaking up his life as he cried out for help that would not come—
There were more, more, so many images crowding in and flooding my mind that for some time, seconds or days, I forgot just who I was. I stood and ran and raged, shaking my head, running blind, and each impact with a wall only gave me more painful deaths to see, more wronged lives ripped away by unfairness at best, evil at worst. I remember faces watching me, and for a time these faces seemed even more alive than I felt, true observers rather than mere echoes of who and what they had once been.
For a while, I was just like them.
Perhaps that was their way of trying to chase me away.
I walked. Through the city, past the barren buildings, dodging fleeting shapes of dead people where I could. Some of them glanced at me, and one even smiled. I always tried to look the other way.
Eventually, after hours spent walking, I found myself at the base of a cliff, and without thinking I
I found a small courtyard, the fossilized remains of plants clinging solidly to the walls. The well at the center was dry as my mouth. There were no dead here and no remains on the ground, so for a time I could pretend that I was alone. I sat beneath an overhanging balcony. There was no shade from the unvarying bluish light, but the balcony gave me the psychological impression of being hidden away from prying eyes. So I sat there, held my head in my hands and looked down at my feet, striving to forget that the dust around them was in a place that could not be.
There were dead people all around me. And the blue light, the light of the dead, giving me no day or night, brightness or darkness, cold or heat …..
I believed none of it, because I
could
not. I was more willing to accept that I was mad, or dead myself.
My breathing became slower, gentler and more calmed, and eventually I fell asleep.
Upon waking there was no telling how much time had passed. I was still not hungry or thirsty. I had not dreamed. I was in the same position in which I had dropped off. Time eluded me.
“Scott!” I shouted once, loud, but the sound terrified me more than being alone. It felt so wrong. Even though my voice sailed away, I had the distinct sense that it was ricocheting from walls and angles I could not see, not from these buildings that stood around me. The resonance sounded wrong.
My old friend did not answer. Perhaps he’d been as dead as this place all along.
I leaned back and closed my eyes, and a sudden breeze blew a handful of dust across my face, a hundred images screaming and destroying the relative peace of the moment, assaulting my senses with smells and sounds and views from too many different places and times to take in. Each scrap of dust stung, and each sting was a past life striving to make itself and its suffering known. I opened my mouth to cry out and felt grit on my tongue and between my teeth. Held there by my saliva, these old ghosts had time to make themselves and their reasons for being here known—
She ran along the dock, the animals chasing her, jeering and laughing and tripping as they tried to drag their trousers down, readying themselves—
Where had that breeze come from
?—
A man stood against a wall and stared down the barrel of a dozen guns, hating them, hating what they were doing, hating their uncaring eyes as they saw a rat in front of them, not a man, not a human being—
Something must have caused it
!—
She should never have left him, never, not when he could do this, not when he could stroke his wrists this way and open the skin, the flesh, the veins, she should never have left him, never—
There had been no movement before, nothing, and now a wind to blow the dust over me
?—
The rattle of machine-gun fire tore the air above him, just as his stomach had been torn asunder, and the sand was soaking up his life as he cried out for help that would not come—
There were more, more, so many images crowding in and flooding my mind that for some time, seconds or days, I forgot just who I was. I stood and ran and raged, shaking my head, running blind, and each impact with a wall only gave me more painful deaths to see, more wronged lives ripped away by unfairness at best, evil at worst. I remember faces watching me, and for a time these faces seemed even more alive than I felt, true observers rather than mere echoes of who and what they had once been.
For a while, I was just like them.
Perhaps that was their way of trying to chase me away.
I walked. Through the city, past the barren buildings, dodging fleeting shapes of dead people where I could. Some of them glanced at me, and one even smiled. I always tried to look the other way.
Eventually, after hours spent walking, I found myself at the base of a cliff, and without thinking I
Similar Books
