Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

“When… when was this?”

“Sixty-three?” she says it as if she’s not sure, as if Aunt Miriam hadn’t drilled it into her.

“You’re not old enough…”

“To have seen it?” She stares at him and for a few seconds he thinks she is. She’s older and older. Then she grins, a spark of humor in a taut face. “No, my aunt told me. She watched. Her mother was one of those who stayed. And mine.”

“Why? Why stay?”

“They didn’t want to leave so they chose to sink, to be taken.” She sighs. “May as well ask why come back? Blood draws you places you don’t know or understand. You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Coz you asked me.” And he’s regretting it, oh so much.

That grin again. She touches his hand. “My family’s here. Yours is too. Your grandmother was a Kane.”

“Nah, Teague.”

“She married a Teague—after she’d married a Bowen, and a Smith. Was born a Kane. Here. Tried to hide but I found her—you.”

He shakes his head. “So? Are you telling me I’m fucking my cousin?”

“Pretty distant, but yes. But that’s not the point.”

“By all means, let’s get to the point.” He can’t keep the tone out of his voice. He’s regretting everything about this trip, about meeting her. Everything.

“The point is they remained. They’re shadows beneath the waters, the bones of the land. They were already held here by blood, choosing to die here gave their deaths meaning and power. Blood’s thicker than water, and their blood’s a thread that can be tugged at to create a path that might lead back . They’re at one end, we’re at the other. You and I? We’re the ones all the bloodlines end in. They need us.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Adie. What are you on? Let’s just go back to the BnB and you can have a rest.”

She gets up and walks to the water’s edge. He follows with a sigh. And Adie takes out a knife. Nothing special about it—not the knife Nessa used on her sacrifice all those years ago, no grand history to it—it’s just neat and tidy, a Swiss Army knife, with that red handle and white cross.

“Adie, what are you doing?” Michael’s voice wavers.

He’s bigger than her but she’s quicker, got an older head; she’s watched him these months together and taken note. She knows what he’ll do, how he’ll react, so she’s ready when he raises his hands, palms out as if that might protect him. He’s a bit of a coward, but it’s not his courage she needs. She slashes up, catches one of those vulnerable palms, leaves a deep slice there, watches with satisfaction as the blood oozes dark and rich from the furrow in his flesh. He shouts and she slashes again, this time at her own hand.

“Oh, shut up,” she says matter-of-factly, although the cut does hurt. She grabs his injured limb and slaps their wounds together. Adie squeezes—he whimpers—so their blood mixes and drips quickly into the still liquid of the dam.

“Blood is thicker than water,” she mutters as if it’s a spell (and it is) then starts to recite a list of names that mean nothing to Michael, but she cycles through them, then repeats again and again.

The water nearest where they stand begins to bubble, sweeping out across the surface, turning into white horses that gallop all the way to the far side—but those horses are carried by a blood-red wave and Adie can smell a whiff of iron in the shifting air. Then the water moves like a tidal wave dragging back, back, back, and finally charges forward, toward the dam wall. Adie and Michael watch, hand in hand; the tsunami hits and the concrete bursts out in enormous chunks as if charges had been laid and detonated. And the water follows it, pouring through the breach so quickly it takes Adie’s breath away. Her aunt told her what to do, but it didn’t mean she believed— truly believed—it would happen. It takes a lot less time than she thought.

Somewhere, downstream, Ganymede is being hit by a wall of water held back for years and years. Michael thinks of the frosty woman at bed-and-breakfast, wonders if her expression will change as the flood closes over her head.

And now, in front of them—these two children in whose veins the blood has come to rest—lies Nessa’s View, uncovered for the first time in years. Houses—those that are intact—are covered with the green of algae and weed, windows are dark with silt and mud. The remains of the petrol station looks like a dinosaur skeleton. Everything still, barely the flap of fish struggling in the rapidly shrinking puddles. Everything is a held breath, a frozen moment.

But then…

Oh then, the doors begin to open, with swollen wood and fractured frames, and things—green and bony, the fish-bellied dead—walk out, blinking in a sunlight they’d forgotten.

Adie stares, empty, her burden, her duty done. The names of the drowned suddenly forgotten. She’s made them saved .

Michael, still holding her hand, says in a strangled voice, “Oh, Adie. What the fuck have you done?”

“Time to meet the family, Michael.”

In physics, the “observer effect” is the theory that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure, in some manner.

Murphy leaned around Jensen to get a better look through the smoked-glass partition. On the other side, a dumpy, middle-aged woman sat at her console. She had unusually dark hair, short and permed, with a purple butterfly clasp fastened to one side. It looked remarkably like a wig.

“We call this part of the facility The God Complex,” Jensen said dryly. “That’s a pun.”

Murphy sighed and scratched at his wrist, where the manacles had rubbed the skin raw.

Of the pair, Jensen was taller and thinner. He had a clipboard under one arm and was wearing a white lab coat. He looked so much the typical scientist, Murphy wondered if the man had ever considered becoming anything else. Murphy, on the other hand, resembled an Irish bricklayer—short, squat and ginger—and the name didn’t help.

He squinted through the window at the woman. She wore a gold badge that said “Edith” in small black letters. With a handle like that, it was no surprise she was middle-aged, Murphy thought. Edith had a small microphone on the desk in front of her and was talking into it. Two wires, one red and one white, wound from the back of her head into a bank of steel panels set in the roof. Sets of lights above her head winked on and off and the whole apparatus gave a low hum.

“It’s really quite fascinating.” Jensen’s voice was slow and emotionless, as if he mentally read over everything before saying it. “It’s almost like you… plug yourself in. You… plug yourself in, yes. Plug yourself into the computer.”

“And you can see what’s going on in the past?” Murphy asked.

“You see, yes. No. Yes,” Jensen replied hesitantly. “You… experience. You… You… Yes, you see, in a way. Sort of.”

Murphy sighed again. He had long ago given up expecting straight answers from anyone in authority. Jensen turned a dial on the panel beside him and the woman’s voice suddenly became audible. She sounded like she’d been smoking since she was twelve. Continuously.

“I’m on horseback behind three medieval knights,” she narrated. “They’re called Bors, Percival and Galahad—I know that ’cause they have names stencilled on the back of their armor, just like the players in the soccer cup final I was watching last night. So that’s handy.”