Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

As we stepped into the corridor, the temperature dropped several degrees. Maybe it was the stone, but it didn’t feel right.

“What is that?”

“Metaphysics. The imposition of the rules of logic and reason on the illogical and irrational.”

“You see, Professor, this is why Americans think Europeans come from a different planet. Same words, different language. I come from there and I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

He held an arm across my chest to stop me.

“What is it?”

He hushed me urgently. I peered into the dark ahead; for some reason he had covered the torch with his hand.

“Did you hear something?” I hissed.

“Go cautiously,” he said, as if I was thinking of doing anything else.

I should have gone back. Every sense was telling me to do that; everything I knew about Vietnam warned me about venturing into the unknown. But I was in the grip of the moment and my own fabulous self-image.

We moved ahead together. Chambers lay on either side of the corridor, bare stone boxes that I would have taken for prison cells if they had any doors. Van Diemen placed the torch on the flags to half-light the whole area before proceeding to examine one of the small rooms. I carried on along the corridor and was disappointed to find it came up against a bare stone wall. That was all it was, a corridor with a few rooms on either side. No buried city from Vietnam’s ancient past. No hidden “secrets and mysteries”. As dull as the rest of the tunnel complex. The whole expedition was turning into a damp squib.

“There’s nothing here,” I said. “Let’s get back to the others.” Van Diemen mumbled some distracted reply from the depths of one of the chambers. And then my eyes fell on something out of the ordinary. Hanging from the lintel of the final chamber on the right was what at first looked like a wind-chime. It was a mixture of stones of varying sizes and hard wood, carved into unusual shapes, hung on pieces of wire that showed no signs of corrosion. I carefully lifted it down from its hook and carried it back to Van Diemen.

“What do you make of this?” I was surprised that it was quite robust despite its appearance of fragility.

Van Diemen emerged from the chamber, still distracted. But when he saw what I was holding he became animated. “For God’s sake, put it back!”

“What’s the big deal?”

He snatched it from me and attempted to push past, then stopped in his tracks, his face rigid.

At first I thought it was my eyes adjusting from the torchlight to the gloom, but pin-pricks of luminescence were coalescing in the dark, like fireflies coming together. A definite shape, its outline indistinct.

With surprising strength, Van Diemen grabbed my shirt and threw me behind him. I went down hard on the stone flags and as I hauled myself back to my feet he was already forcing me out of the corridor.

“Get away from here,” he rasped. “Back to the helicopter. Tell the others.”

The tiny, flickering lights were now moving towards us. I didn’t know what I was seeing, but the Professor’s anxiety was catching. I ran across the outer room and dived into the first tunnel.

In the hi-tension atmosphere my panic flared easily. Barely thinking, I scrambled, the claustrophobia fuelling my rising emotions. When I finally burst out into the light, I must have looked like some wild man.

Justin, Chet and Alain were sitting around drinking water from a canteen while a few of the grunts ensured the area remained secure. The spook, the General and the other officers stood to one side, talking conspiratorially. “Get out of here!” I yelled. “Back to the chopper!”

The Pack knew me well enough to heed my warning. Justin grabbed me and pulled me with him as we ran towards the tree-line.

The men surrounded the tunnel entrance, guns pointing into the dark hole. That was the last I saw of them.

We didn’t stop until we made it back to the chopper, crashing to our knees breathless before breaking into anxious laughter.

“You idiot!” Justin roared. “I bet there was nothing down there!”

“There was!” I protested. “Some kind of . . . some kind . . .”

Justin laughed some more at my disorientation; to be honest, I really didn’t know why I had run so hard. Imagination; or instinct?

Yet Chet was growing agitated. “What is wrong, brother?” Alain asked.

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Chet pointed a wavering finger at the chopper. “How could that get here if there weren’t any pilots?”

As I stared into the empty chopper, I knew exactly what Chet meant, though it was only later when understanding came.

Justin ran his hand through his long hair, puzzled. “He’s right. There were no pilots on board. Who was flying it?”

“I can’t remember . . .” Alain tapped his temple. “How many came with us? Twenty-five?”

“Twenty-four,” I corrected.

“Twenty-three,” Justin said.

Chet collapsed into a seated position, holding his head in his hands.

“Definitely, twenty-two,” I said. My head was hurting. Had I breathed in some gas? Had we all been affected? I stumbled away from the chopper, trying to get a hold of myself. The sound of running came from the tree-line and I hurried towards it to usher the others back to the chopper.

And that was when the blast stopped my world.

I’ve turned Van Diemen’s room over, but there’s no sign to suggest whether he was there today or a week ago. But as I sit amid the chaos of his Saigon life, a frightened young Vietnamese man appears at the door. I jump up, grab him by the shoulders.

“Professor Van Diemen?” I bark.

He shakes his head, his eyes wondering if it would be better if I killed him before the Communists get here.

“Old man, silver hair?”

“Mr Harker?”

“If that’s what he’s calling himself.”

“Gone. To the airport.”

Typical of his kind. Work their magic, stir up their brew of misery, and then get out when everything starts to fall apart rather than face the repercussions of their actions. I push my way out of the door and run into the crazed city.

Feeble memories. The illusion we construct with our consciousness is such a fragile thing, easily disrupted, altered, warped. But the body on the other hand is a remarkably hardy piece of engineering. One of the grunts coming back to the chopper had stepped on a mine; apparently there were hundreds in that area and it was a miracle we’d all avoided them on the way to the tunnel system.

Talking of miracles . . . Shrapnel took me apart. I was split open from groin to chest. Another piece hit me in the head and went straight out of the back, taking with it a third of my brain. Now you may think it’s impossible to survive having lost that much grey matter, but I can assure you that is not the case. I could cite cases of people who led fulfilling lives only for an autopsy to discover they had malformed brains the size of a walnut, but suffice to say that I did survive, though it was touch and go for a long time.

Only fragments of the subsequent weeks come back to me. Lying on a bed in a field hospital with corpses stacked up all around, jazzed on pain and morphine. People saying, “He’ll never make it,” over and over in easy earshot as if I were already gone.

I remember Justin at the bedside, crying, saying something about being forced to go back home, but he’d keep in touch, check up on me.

And at one point I recall a wrinkled face leaning over me, a shock of silver hair. Van Diemen; I’m pretty sure I wasn’t dreaming. He said he was sorry in a way that, too, suggested I was already dead. I think he sat by my bed for a while, just talking to himself. Snippets come back. Something about fighting chaos . . . winning the war . . . Who cares?