Home From the Sea Read online

  HOME FROM THE SEA

  And Other Stories

  William Meikle

  Contents

  SymbiOS

  Carnacki: The Island Of Doctor Monroe

  The Terror that Came to Dounreay

  Inquisitor

  The Tenants of Ladywell Manor

  Carnacki: The Larkhall Barrow

  The Invisible Menace

  Sherlock Holmes: The Color that Came to Chiswick

  Professor Challenger: Ripples in the Ether

  The Doom that Came to Dunfield

  Home From the Sea

  Amoeboid

  From Between

  #Dreaming

  Acknowledgements

  SymbiOS

  I tongued the switch in the palate implant and tasted pus at the back of my throat. The side eye-bar came up opaque rather than translucent. It was already unreadable while walking around, and it now it had started to fade in and out of focus.

  It's not going last much longer.

  And when it went, that would be it for me, my last link to the glittering prizes severed. I can't say I was too surprised. I had already fallen most of the way down; one final step wasn't going to change matters any.

  I had picked my way through the discarded garbage on the tunnel floor for half an hour to get here. I hadn't been in the station since the Metro closed down fifteen years ago, but it still smelled like piss and shit; it was just less well lit now. My contact had told me to go to the far end of the platform and wait. So I waited. If the implant had been working it wouldn't have been so bad as I'd have at least had access to some waves, but left to my own devices I jumped at every movement, every shadow.

  And people used to live like this all the time?

  I forced myself to stand my ground. I was about to give up everything I had on a Hail Mary deal to get me back on the ladder. I couldn't fuck this up.

  To say that I was a survivor of the '59 crash would be disingenuous. It's true that I still had a job twenty four hours after the magnetic pulse from the sun wiped out ninety percent of the infrastructure without warning, but I was still a victim; it just took longer for me to fall.

  But I'm here now.

  From where I stood I could see the tower where I used to spend my life; a needle like pinnacle, a fuck-you monument to the first half of the century when things were, if not exactly rosy, at least comfortable. Some, a few, of my co-workers were still there, still sorting data and disseminating it to anyone who would pay. Me, I was down with the dispossessed, hustling dream juice on corners and looking for an angle.

  Tonight was the night it was all going to change for the better.

  I first heard about the biotes in a bar down by the docks. Biotech at the cutting-edge, untested but already on sale if you knew who to ask. The biotes were said to be a genetically-engineered variant on the flatworm – only bigger, uglier and much more useful. They remember things. The chemicals in their bodies are analogous to the enzymes and neural transmitters of the human brain. They sit on the back of your neck, feeder slipped painlessly into the bloodstream, sensor into the medulla oblongata, and they feed. . . on blood and memories. Then there's the thing I was interested in; the by-product that only became apparent when you moved them between hosts. The biotes would keep feeding; but it was a two way process, and the original host's memories became accessible. . . to anyone with the money to pay for them.

  I'd placed an order last week. I knew that there was an unwilling host involved, some poor sap, a wave trader pulled from his place in the scheme of things, fitted with a biote in some dark room for a week then discarded. I was trying not to think of him – survival of the fittest and all that happy shit. All I wanted was the chance for a step back on the ladder.

  I was close to giving up when a shuffling figure appeared at the far end of the platform. At first I took him for a subway mole, but when he got closer I recognised my contact. Or rather, I didn't recognise him; the hard street-smart man I'd done business with the week before had gone, replaced by a zoned out moist-eyed loser. Too much dream-juice was my best guess, but I was past caring about others' predicaments. I held out my hand and he flash-swiped his payment. Just like that, everything I owned was gone. In exchange he handed over a moist lump of what felt like fresh beef and turned away.

  "Hey wait. What do I do now?"

  He turned back, slowly, as if moving underwater.

  "Slap it on the back of your neck. And wait."

  That was all the instruction I got, but as it turned out, it was all I needed.

  *

  Slapping it on the back of my neck was the easy part. In retrospect I should have waited until I got back to the fifty cubic-foot box I called home, but having paid my money, I took my chance. As I've said, it felt like a chunk of meat, but it was strangely warm to the touch, and a ripple ran through it as I lifted it behind my head. I felt the feeder needle slide in, moist heat at the nape of my neck.

  Then I went away.

  My head swam, and it seemed as if the walls of the subway melted and ran, receding into a great distance until there was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness. I was alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and a pounding beat from below.

  Shapes moved in the dark, wispy shadows with no substance, shadows that capered and whirled as their dance grew ever more frenetic. I tasted salt water in my mouth, and was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew ever stronger I cared little. I gave myself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the dark.

  I came back lying in my box with no memory of having got there. I tongued the palate implant but nothing happened. Seems it wasn't just me that had gone away. My mind felt heavy with too much crammed in and too little space to accommodate it. I presumed that's what caused my blackout. I'd been warned there would be a period of assimilation; it was just a matter of riding it out until the new memories fused with my own. I counted myself lucky that instinct had brought me home – not for the first time either. Dream juice and I were old friends, and blackouts nothing new in my experience.

  I had started to prepare for sleep when the first of the new memories clicked into place. I was on a beach, it was sunny, and there was a blonde at my side. None of these three were mine, but I had them now. I settled down and waited for more, happy in the knowledge that I'd spent my money well.

  Over the next two weeks I remembered all the details of where to get the latest waves, how to pull them, and who would pay for them. I also knew who would pay highly for my new skills. I borrowed a suit from my last friend, had a shave, and took to the spire. An hour later I left with a job but more than that, I was back in the game, back on the ladder.

  Soon I was able to leave the box and move into an apartment on the thirtieth floor; still some way below where I once had been, but more than adequate – for now. My donor proved to have been nearly as good as me at identifying the high-rollers, and soon I had new clients, new credits rolling in on an hourly basis.

  The dreams were a small price to pay, but they were becoming alarmingly more frequent and of longer duration each night, always the same ocean depths, always the dance in the dark.

  I started to fear sleep. It got to the stage where, despite having been given dire warnings against trying, I attempted to remove the biote. I only tried once, but that was enough. At the first hint of a tug I was fed a new memory, a flash so vivid that it left me panting and sweaty for an hour. It is hard to describe what I saw in my mind; a rolling chaos where souls screamed, a city of stone in the deep blue yonder whose angles and geometry seemed somehow wrong, and the impression of movement as something stirred.

  It left me nauseous and unwilling to try again.


  But the dreams would not leave me alone. I took to other, extreme, forms of self-medication in an attempt to drown out the dream-time thoughts but that only served to dull my daytime mind to the extent that I started losing touch on the very job I'd given so much to attain.

  Something had to give. . . and two weeks into the job matters came to a head.

  I woke in the morning, not in my shiny new apartment block, but back in the box under the overpass. My hands were dirty, fingernails torn to the quick, and my shoulders ached as if I'd spent the night doing bench presses. Worse than that though, it felt like I had lost the biote as I couldn't feel the weight of it at my neck. A couple of probes with trembling hands proved me false – it was still there, but it was smaller, strangely shrunken and deflated. Even as I prodded at it I felt it suck at me, and swell beneath my fingers as it fed.

  I managed to get home, cleaned up and into work only a few minutes late, but all morning I noticed I was drawing stares from the others around me. I wasn't fitting in, wasn't part of the crowd. If I wasn't careful I'd be on that downward slope again all too soon.

  I decided attack was the best policy. I got my work out of the way quickly, making enough credits that I could afford a few hours on my own time. I used it in searching for anything and everything known about the biotes.

  It didn't take long.

  I already knew it was genetically engineered. The fact that the source material was a mixture of flatworm and a strange tar-like substance found in Antarctica seemed neither here nor there. What did have me worried was that I could find no indication on any of the waves of the biotes patents. If they were to be brought into the mainstream, the paperwork should have been filed, the science should have been peer-reviewed, and federal approved medical tests would have been done. There was nothing.

  I did find details on the initial research team. But the six scientists involved had all fallen off the grid, lost down a rabbit hole. All that remained of that research were scattered reports from ground level of how to buy the things on the black market; but I knew that already too.

  There was only one further item of interest, but that was the one that had me worried. There were no waves, anywhere, from anyone attached to a biote. Either I had the only one left in existence. . . or something was happening to everyone else in my situation. I didn't particularly like either option.

  *

  The next night I took precautions before sleep. The biote might be in control of some of my memories, but I was in control of the pharmacology. I had more than enough experience to dose myself just enough to maintain a semi-waking state. I kept my day-clothes on and lay down on the bed.

  I didn't have to wait long.

  Although I could still see the walls of the room and the lights of the city beyond the balcony, I could also see dim shadows, dancing in the deep blue of some distant ocean. I felt the allure of the dance, felt the compulsion take me as I rose from the bed. I tried to fight it, but the biote had full control of my motor functions. I was a mere passenger as we went out of the apartment, down the elevator, and back to the places I had worked so hard to escape.

  We went deep, down into the old subway to where dream-weed and sex are currency and the high pinnacle of commerce above is a mythic realm talked of only in whispers if at all. By now I saw that others walked around me, all slack-eyed and slightly stiff in their movements, as if unused to their own limbs. The tell tale bulge under their clothes at the neck told me that I had definitely been wrong about being the only biote carrier in existence. The fact that scores of us walked ever deeper into the subway did little to quell a growing apprehension.

  When we finally stopped I realized I knew where I had been brought. We were in the deepest station of the old system, the one directly under the base of the towering spire. It had been abandoned even before the flare knocked the old-world to hell, the tube superceded by the above ground walkways. Things had been left to fester down here.

  And it was immediately obvious that when we had moved out, something else had moved in. I felt it, a thumping rhythm in my head and gut, the beat of the dance in which we were held.

  I was given no time to think. My biote took me into the main hall of the station and to where a wall of rubble marked where a tunnel had once been. I was put to work, and no amount of pushing mentally against the control had any effect. I shifted rubble and moved rock until I was too tired to do any more. My legs moved me to one side and a tall chap in a very expensive suit that was soon to be ruined took my place.

  Tiredness washed over me, and I let the biote have its way. I fell into blackness where there was only the dance, the beat, and dancing shadows.

  *

  I woke back in the box, once again with clothes and hands in a state of disrepair. The biote also seemed to have suffered, being once more strangely limp and smaller than before. It quickly fed and became plump again, leaving me feeling drained and more than slightly violated.

  I made my way back to the apartment, more aware than ever of the contrast between the depths and the heights. I got more strange looks when I finally got to work, but I was past caring by now. This had to stop before I was dragged back down.

  The waves were little to no help. Whatever the biotes were up to, it wasn't on the radar of anyone that mattered up here. There was only one further snippet of information, and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Apparently the material from Antarctica that had gone into the biotes making was rather mysterious in itself, being capable of a degree of primitive intelligence and showing social interactions when in close contact with more of its kind. There was even a name for it, one that sounding outlandish to my modern mind. They called it Shoggoth.

  I was getting nowhere. I considered informing the authorities, such as existed, but I knew well the futility of trying to get the system involved in anything from below. I may as well ask for the moon.

  It quickly became a moot point anyway.

  I came awake with a start, sitting at my desk and staring at a set of wave results I had no memory of compiling. What I did remember, and what was still offering me its seductive emptiness, was that I had been drifting, there in the blue beyond, dancing with the shadows. And, truthfully, at that precise moment I preferred there to here. I had to force my attention back to the job at hand, and it didn't help to find that I had seemed to be awake and answering questions all the time I had been lost in the dance. Doug two cubes over even complimented me on a particularly fine confluence of waves I – or rather the biote - had sent over the air

  The biote was getting stronger. If anything could be done it would have to be soon.

  I dug deeper, looking for possible connections. Aside from the disappearance of people with biotes I looked into other cases of people going off-grid, judging that there might be many who had got attached to a biote without telling anyone or having it noticed.

  That's when the numbers started to frighten me; there were more than a thousand on that list, and a time-trend analysis showed the number to be growing at an exponential rate. When I cross-referenced my findings to a search of bodies found below there was a one-to-one correlation; people get a biote, people go missing a few weeks later, people turn up dead and used-up a month or so after that.

  *

  I resorted to more pharmacology, upping the dosage in an attempt to gain some kind of control over the biote's activities. All I achieved was a clearer look at what was happening to me.

  It started in the same manner as the night before; a call to action that I could not ignore as the biote took control of my faculties. My newly drugged state allowed me only a small amount of resistance, enough to make the walk down to the deeps drag but not enough to stop the descent.

  Once again I was led to the deepest level in the old station under the spire. Work had obviously been continuing with some pace since my last visit. The blocked tunnel was almost clear, and even under the biote's control as I was, I smelled fresh air coming through from the other side; salty air.r />
  The pull of the dance was much stronger now, and it was all I could do to resist its charms. I forced myself to remain aware as my body went to work shifting rock and rubble. After a time tiredness inevitably set in, but rather than give in to it, the drugs allowed me to watch.

  My biote split with a moist tear I felt rather than heard. Half of its bulk fell to the ground at my feet and started to slither away, heading down into the depths of the newly opened tunnel. And deep in the tunnel something huge moved and trembled in anticipation.

  It is hard to explain this next part; I have trouble coming to terms with it myself. But part of me was slithering down the dark tunnel with the biote, part of my consciousness, my soul if you will, sucked out, stolen and taken down into the dark. And as I slithered there, others slithered with me, tens of us, all intent on one task, like spermatozoa after a vast egg.

  We found it in the bottom foundations of the spire, sprawled there like a huge cephalopod, tentacles wrapped around the columns that sustained the mighty works of men, a vast corpulent body shivering as we surged in joy and were assimilated, into the soft darkness, into the dance.

  *

  I woke back in the box in the morning, but there was now a curious doubling sensation; part of me was still down there, with the dweller in the darkness, dancing in the dark, perfectly at peace.

  I considered making my way back to the office, but in truth I knew it was futile.

  The dance will have me one way or the other. This way at least I get a choice in the matter.

  Now excuse me, the man ahead has become tired. It is my turn to dig.

  Carnacki – The Island of Doctor Munroe

  The card of invitation arrived on Tuesday afternoon. "I have a new tale," was written on it, and that was more than enough encouragement for me to rearrange any plans I might have. On Friday evening I arrived at seven prompt at Carnacki's lodgings in Chelsea at 427, Cheyne Walk.

  Carnacki took my coat and motioned me inside where I found the three others already there. It was not long before Carnacki, Arkwright, Jessop, Taylor and I were all seated at the dining table.