Matt Dovey

Eland was resetting his mother's balancing sculptures when Hexben ran in from the storage room. The robot tilted its long head down while still making eye contact, managing a look of consternation despite its rigid, expressionless face.

"What?" Eland snapped.

"You should be packing those into boxes," Hexben said without inflection. "Our lease ends next week."

"Exactly," Eland said. "It doesn't end today."

This is the story of a coincidence. At any rate I call it a coincidence.

The road where I live is very long and very straight. It's paved with wood and well lighted after dark. The result is that cars and taxis going by during the night... often go quite fast. I don�t blame 'em. They hardly ever wake me unless they stop near the house.

However, about two months ago one did.

"Hey, George."

I remind myself that that is not my name; it never was. I will myself not to react, not to break stride, as I stroll along beside the beach.

Old habits die hard, and the best neuro-reset in the world can't overcome years of routine. Whoever called out could, had they been watching closely, have seen my tiny hesitation. But they are not calling me.

What a colossal crapstorm of a year, the third year of infinite garbage in a row, ever since the lockdowns started. The walls came down around Mischa in March 2020, and here they were, still standing, tall and impenetrable, for Christmas 2022.

Then the man in red showed up, and made his offer, and everything changed.

The cat followed him home.

Tomas Shine spent three and a half minutes in the stairwell hyperventilating. He heard Mrs Helen Acres, the widow from Unit Two, clatter and batter her way out her door, shopping bags in hand. She spotted the cat outside the stairway and reversed soundlessly into her unit.

Tomas sucked in a ragged breath, filling his lungs to the brim, and looked up. The cat waited on the far side of the glass door.

I have had what I believe to be the most remarkable day in my life, and while the events are still fresh in my mind, I wish to put them down on paper as clearly as possible. Let me say at the outset that my name is James Clarence Withencroft.

That night, I bring home buckets of rocks plucked from the shore and spread them across the driftwood table in our dining room.

"Earth bones," I say, when Jo, my partner, asks what they are. "Secret keepers."

We looked at our face in the mirror. Or rather, she looked at me looking at her, even if she couldn't see me. For many years I have looked out of those eyes, biding my time, saving my strength, waiting to speak.

It doesn't have to be like this, I often tell her. You don't have to fight me.

Hooded eyes stare with fierce intensity across the scarred oak table as the creature looms out of the shadows. "I had never thought to see another..." he muses.

I nod my glass of claret in Adam's direction. The dregs glint like drops of spilled blood in the candlelight.

Early mornings, before the tourists show up, Gordon Barrow likes to lean against the hotel roof and watch the trains. There are two of them, each carriage as big as his size seven shoes, and they circle the village at a leisurely pace, with a gap of about nine or ten feet in between them. Today, nearing winter, steam wreathes the whole track, and the engines race onwards through each other's ghost.

A faint ringing of metal on metal, the tink! of a coin glancing against a stone wall, a pause before the soft, final landing, and the day's work begins anew. I briefly consider ignoring the summons, as I do every dank, dark morning, but the memory of my mother's words chide me from my nest of leaves and moss.

I push myself to my hands and knees and feel something squelch under my palm.

She came to me through the scent of lavender, curling about my nose like smoke.

"Honora?" I asked. "My sweet? Is that you?" My eyelids cracked open as my head pounded from a night fueled by alcohol and opium. I remembered nothing, except for stumbling out of a pub and going after...after something...

"Thomas," she whispered, her voice hollow and distant.

May 1941

I'm a child this time. Five or six years old.

Fully clothed under a bed, on a wooden floor. I touch a hand to my throat, but there is nothing there. I examine my hands and arms, astonished by the smoothness of the skin. At last, I crawl out from beneath the bed and leave the room.

The dusk of a November day was falling fast when John Aylsford came out of his lodging in the cobbled street and started to walk briskly along the road which led eastwards by the shore of the bay. He had been at work while the daylight served him, and now, when the gathering darkness weaned him from his easel, he was accustomed to go out for air and exercise and cover half a dozen miles before he returned to his solitary supper.

Douglas Mortimer strode in from the blizzard like a snowblown angel of death, dressed all in black from his cowboy boots to his gaucho hat. The snow gusted in around him until the mechanism slammed the glass door shut, cutting off the squall. But even with the snow gone, there was still a seething dance of particles all over his face and body. The film grain made him seem as rough as sandpaper against a backdrop of pool tables and beer signs in a dimly-lit bar that was rendered in deep, smooth shades.

We found the dead God on the hillside.

We swung into Norton Street with our lights flashing but no siren, the standard burglary-in-progress procedure. As it was I don't think the guy would've noticed us had Constable Lenski and I pulled into the driveway of Number 38 playing Tiger Rag on trombones.

From the Hopkins punch-point to orbital insertion around Herbert's World should have been a relatively short journey, but something is amiss.

And lo, the Princess said: "Motherfucker, I am content."

"But Princess!" said the Knight, from the base of the Princess' tower. His armor-clad ass was parked atop a huge black stallion, which the Princess found not only pompous, but entirely predictable. "You misunderstand; I'm here to save you from--"

"Hold up," said the Princess. "Exactly what part of girl-lives-in-her-own-goddamned-tower implies a need for rescue?"

Last night, I dreamt of the drowned man again.

It starts with a murmur. A prayer, slithering through a sleeping shipmate's lips. Or perhaps a confession, or a memory caught in the fog of the ghostly hours before dawn. It lingers little down here, in the stale air heavy with the stench of urine and unwashed bodies. Soon it rises higher, amidst the sails and the riggings, hungry for fresh air. Then comes the scratching against the ship's hull. Grip by grip, claw-like hands dig into the wood dragging upwards God knows what.

"Well played," muttered Rogers, the majordomo of the Wanderers' Club, amidst the gentlemanly utterances of "Good show," "Hear, hear," and even "Huzzah" as Sir Algernon Hogshead finished his tale with a dramatic flourish.

Though not so socially gregarious as to partake in the verbal bonhomie, I thumped my ivory serpent's-head cane a few times, myself, in collegial support of my frenetic friend as his bizarre, but well-told, tale had come to its breathtaking and remarkable conclusion. Truth told, the hubbub of excited utterances and exclamations regarding Sir Hogshead's fanciful quest were well-said, but, greater truth yet, I had become more and more pensive and apprehensive as the tale progressed.

I knew what was coming next. Not within the story, but after.

Tomorrow they would send a message faster than the speed of light--or not. If they succeeded, they would make history. If they failed, it wouldn't be because of George Conrad's equipment. He left when everyone else did but returned to test each circuit in the prototype of the QE terminal. He got more done when working late.

Ah, you recognize me. I wasn't sure that you would. There are hundreds of officials in your court, and I have noticed that your eyes tend to glaze over when they're introduced to you. No, no offense meant or taken. Just because the likes of me has to remember every country squire and his bastard son that passes through, that's no reason to expect someone of your importance to remember the Supervisor of the Accountants to the Second Under-Treasurer.

Each morning at precisely seven, Georges, famulus to Magus Hugarth Madswom, stabbed his master in the heart. It was a fairly complicated affair as the linens needed to be spared staining and Georges had to make the thrust quickly, lest his master wake up and become angry with him for failing in his duties. He had suggested abjuring the sheets against such stains, but his master claimed that doing so also meant his sweat would pool about his body during the night rather than being absorbed by the sheets, and Georges' master refused to wake up stinking and slimy. So, no abjurations.

A hard man was Ralph Strang, seventh Earl of Beden, seventy years of age on his last birthday, but still upright as a dart, with hair white as snow, but with the devilry of youth still sparkling in his keen dark eyes. He was, indeed, able to follow the hounds with the best of us, and there were few men, even among the youngest and most hot-headed of our riders, who cared to follow him over all the jumps he put his horse at.

"You look like shit."

I cleaned myself up in the room and rinsed my mouth with some whisky from the mini-bar, but I obviously show signs of the afternoon.

"Like you care."

I know that each of you here has already heard some version or other of this tale, and possibly you know it well enough to recount it yourself. But, since you insist, I'll tell you again what I know about the Tenant.

I never pass through Chalk-Newton without turning to regard the neighbouring upland, at a point where a lane crosses the lone straight highway dividing this from the next parish; a sight which does not fail to recall the event that once happened there; and, though it may seem superfluous, at this date, to disinter more memories of village history, the whispers of that spot may claim to be preserved.

When the intercom on his desk buzzed, Marc's head snapped up, instantly awake. He'd been dozing in his chair. His finger stabbed the button that told the boss he was on his way. He stood up and straightened his rumpled gray suit before glancing at his watch. One seventeen AM. It figures. The boss tried to cut him as much slack as he could, but humans just couldn't keep the same pace as the Vrith, who came from the sunny side of a tidally locked planet and didn't sleep at all.

Summer nights in Beijing were brutal: hot, muggy, the air thick as the puddles left on the road after a shower, covered in iridescent patches of gasoline. We felt like dumplings being steamed, slowly, inside the room we were renting.

The doorbell rings.

"Hello? Anybody home?"

A woman's voice. Well-spoken, which worries me; in this area, anyone with an education is some kind of official.

I'm lying on the sofa and my mind's fluttering back and forth, settling on memories from before Shaun got ill.

Every morning I harvested the most luscious blooms from the gardens for display in the showroom. Today the quince blazed with bright orange blossom, so I cut a few twigs. As I carried them inside, I sniffed the flowers to check the engineered pheromones. A wave of longing overtook me: a sudden urge to do something mischievous and subversive.

As we waited for customers, I stared out of the showroom window into the garden full of celebrities sprouting from the soil. This early in spring, most of the plants hadn't yet reached resemblance: the flower-buds were tiny blank faces, gradually developing features. Only the cyclamen--Harriet's self-portrait--was in full bloom.

Dom doesn't lose his temper as easily as his brother, so normally he's the one who deals with it when shit goes pear-shaped. But shit has been going pear-shaped a lot lately, and by the time Dom gets to the warehouse, Marc is already in full swing. Literally--he's gone after poor Jimmy with a nine iron.

Mark's next door neighbour and business partner Pat kept telling him that power flowed through his veins. He took a breath and closed his eyes, trying to will the power back out again and into the ash wand in his outstretched hand. He pointed it at Pat's door. A narrow beam of blue light squeezed out of the end and hit the lock. Nothing happened. Sighing, he folded the wand and put it in his pocket. He took out his key and let himself into her house.

I watch with hope as Ms. Figgle-DeBitt samples a slice of caramelized banana upside-down cake. She takes a nibble and seems pleased. She sweeps cybernetic fingers through the shock of gray hair that sits on the human half of her face, a gesture I've learned is contemplative. She takes a larger bite, chews, and grimaces. She spits it out into a trash can.

I met Molly in a real dive outside Zeta 5, called Braker. The kinda joint that sold untaxed synthetics. Clientele smoked but Braker never bothered to filter their atmosphere. When you could breathe, it smelled like grease and heated metal. It was on a moon, always in shadow. Red bioluminescent bulbs years past their expiration, provided the ambient lighting. I was just there to refuel my Boxer. In retrospect, she probably followed me there.

What is a Reborn?

A Reborn is an artist-enhanced baby doll that looks and feels lifelike. Artists create Reborns as one-of-a-kind collectibles, often from ordinary play dolls transformed into art suitable for hands-off display--or hands-on cuddling.

While reasonably durable, Reborns are not children's toys. Rough play may damage them.

The two siblings exchanged a look of grim comprehension over the breakfast table when the butler laid the broadsheet in front of them. The Morning Post's headline was painfully familiar to them now. In stark black and white, the proclamation that yet another child had gone missing on the shores of Lake Conmere drove away any hint of an appetite the two of them might have had.

The crack in the window let in the ghosts. They came with the night breeze, whistling their mourning songs and carrying with them the stink of rotten water that lay across the paddocks, down past the crooked fence that bent and bowed where the earth had sunk away to let the sea creep closer. Where the salt ate the grass brown, then grey, before the water swallowed it up.

There was once an earnest Puritan who held it wrong to dance. And for his principles he labored hard, his was a zealous life. And there loved him all of those who hated the dance; and those that loved the dance respected him too; they said "He is a pure, good man and acts according to his lights."

The heavy mauls swung inward, the only thunder in the soft morning rain. The priests watched, trembling. The small man from Arabia stared hungrily at the widening hole.

The bricks sealing the cell shivered, and Amren watched his father's jaw tremble under the blow. Tremble as it never had in two desperate battles. Not even when the men of his auxilia fell about him in desperate retreat had Amren seen Sir Bedwyr's face show fear. Until now. And the Roman Legate looked on, sneering.