In Sunshine Bright and Darkness Deep: An Anthology of Australian Horror Read online

  His own brown eyes stared back at him. The white of his left eye had a distinct red vein shaped like a crooked smile.

  Kurt’s missing fingers tingled. He turned away from the mirror, moving his finger stubs toward the video frame frozen on the screen. The tingle intensified into an itch.

  The face in the video frame blinked, and in its muddy eye, a small red vein cracked its own crooked smile.

  Kurt’s heart thumped in his chest.

  The figure in the video thickened and swelled, and reached its arm, hand and fingers out of the screen toward him.

  A chill shook Kurt’s body, head to toe. He shut his eyes, forced himself to breathe in until his belly swelled, then breathe out again.

  When he opened his eyes, the frozen video frame was filled with blue sky and brown river, and nothing else.

  Kurt turned the monitor off. He snatched his mirror box and hurried out of the office.

  #

  ‘You seem stressed.’ Dr Gadot touched Kurt lightly on his elbow and ushered him into her office. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘No… I mean, yes.’ Kurt frowned and rubbed his fingers across his temples. ‘Everything’s fine. It’s just work stuff.’

  ‘Give me your hand.’ She massaged the muscles and tendons below his knuckle stubs. ‘Are you finding the prosthetics easier to use?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kurt twisted his lips.

  ‘Pain?’

  ‘No, it’s not…’ Kurt barked a laugh. ‘It’s stupid but…’ He hesitated. ‘Have any of your other patients reported seeing something in the mirror, something that’s not, that shouldn’t be… there.’

  ‘Something like?’ She sat back and took her notepad.

  ‘A shadow… or a figure…’

  A faint crease furrowed Dr Gadot’s brow.

  Kurt scratched his head. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being stupid. Researching urban myths and legends makes me overthink things sometimes.’

  Dr Gadot gave a tight smile. ‘Perhaps you’re working a bit too hard, Mr Waldram. You are looking quite fatigued.’

  ‘Twelve-hour work days and up half the night with the baby.’ His foot tapped a fast beat on the carpet.

  ‘Any other symptoms concerning you?’ She tapped her pen on her notepad. ‘Any other visual disturbances? Hearing voices—’

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing like that.’

  ‘If you’re concerned, I can refer you to a psychiatrist.’

  Sure, and they’ll send me the same way as my poor old auntie.

  ‘Pardon?’ Dr Gadot frowned.

  ‘No, really. Like I said, between work stuff and a new baby, I’m not getting much sleep.’ Kurt pressed his good hand against his knee to stop it from jiggling. ‘That’s all it is.’

  ‘Okay.’ Dr Gadot glanced over her shoulder. She pressed her lips into a thin line as she added to her notes. ‘Continue with the mirror box therapy, but if you have any concerns, any at all, call my office.’

  ‘Sure.’ Kurt smiled, and ignored the muddy woman standing behind Dr Gadot’s chair, staring at him with his own eyes.

  #

  ‘What’s this crap?’ Silvie threw the script down on Kurt’s desk.

  Kurt’s shoulders tensed. Needles of pain shot down his arm and into his missing fingers. He flexed his prosthetics and drew in a deep breath.

  ‘It’s the River Slurry story.’ He swivelled around in his chair and faced Silvie. ‘A genuine female mud monster borne out of river floods who steals babies and leaves nothing behind but a slick of mud.’

  ‘This is all you could come up with?’ Silvie’s nostrils flared. ‘Three pages, Kurt. Three flimsy, badly researched pages.’

  ‘Come off it.’ Kurt snorted. ‘Compared to the story you ran on the woman who had spider eggs growing in her eye, this story is rock solid.’

  ‘That story was based on fact. Our main witness, if you recall, was a respected optometrist.’

  ‘She was one of your drinking buddies, and you owed her a spot on the show after losing a bet.’

  ‘Irrelevant!’ Silvie snapped. ‘She presented as a highly credible witness and the story rated through the roof. This,’ she jabbed her finger at the script, ‘is about as convincing as a beardless Santa.’

  Kurt rolled his eyes. In his peripheral vision, he caught a glimpse of the River Slurry peering out from his screen.

  Show yourself, bitch!

  ‘What?’ Silvie’s voice increased in pitch from screech to banshee. ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘Nothing.’ A pit of dread opened up in Kurt’s guts.

  Did I really say that out loud?

  ‘What are you mumbling about?’

  A bolt of pain shot through Kurt’s absent fingers. He reached into his bottom drawer and grabbed his mirror box. He set it up on his desk and shoved his injured hand inside.

  ‘What the hell are you doing now?’

  ‘Dealing with my pain.’ Kurt scaled his whole fingers up and down the mirror as the River Slurry slid from screen to mirror to behind Silvie and around again, leaving a thin slick of grey-brown mud in her wake.

  ‘Put that stupid contraption away and get to work.’ Silvie grabbed at the mirror box. The River Slurry clamped herself behind Kurt’s back and pushed Silvie away.

  Silvie stumbled. ‘You arsehole!’ She screwed up her face. ‘What’s that stench? Ugh!’ She sniffed and clamped her hand over her mouth as she backed away toward the window. ‘Have you… soiled yourself?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ The River Slurry’s dank stench filled Kurt’s nostrils. ‘It’s the river.’

  ‘The river?’ Silvie slammed her open palm against the window. ‘The river is down there, Kurt. Behind glass. Behind the expressway.’ She slammed her palm again. ‘We cannot smell the river up here.’

  Her words echoed around the silent office. Kurt lowered his eyes to the floor and followed the trail of muddy footprints from his desk to the window. The River Slurry’s shadowy figure stained grey-brown against the blue sky. Her mouth peeled open in a leering grin.

  ‘You’ve got ‘til ten o’clock tomorrow morning to fix that script!’ Silvie thumped her palm against the window again. ‘Fix it or you’re fired.’ She pulled her hand away from the window and stared at the grey shadow staining her hand as Kurt walked away.

  #

  Naomi pushed the study door open, and Lucas’ screams filled the room.

  ‘You have to take him.’ Naomi sagged against the door frame. ‘Take him out in the car, in the pram. Just take him.’ She burst into tears.

  The hairs on the back of Kurt’s neck stiffened. The River Slurry’s dank stench of stagnant mud wafted from the paused video frame on his screen.

  ‘Ten more minutes, Naomi. I’m almost done.’

  ‘You said that two hours ago.’ Naomi sobbed. ‘Please Kurt, I can’t… I can’t…’

  ‘Fine.’ He stood and pushed the chair behind him; it skittered on its rollers and hit the desk with a thump that sent Lucas’ cries up another ten decibels. ‘Come here, little man.’ He took Lucas from his wife’s arms.

  She stepped back, and a flicker of doubt crossed her red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Go to bed. I’ll look after him.’ Kurt pushed his elbow out toward Naomi, nudging her into the hall. He shut the study door, and snibbed the lock.

  ‘Hush, hush.’ Kurt rocked his baby in his arms. ‘Hush, little baby.’

  A shiver rippled across Kurt’s back. The putrid stink of stagnant mud, effluence, and countless scraps of flood-borne flotsam and jetsam hung in the air.

  Kurt breathed it in, and the stench filled his lungs.

  ‘Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.’

  He faced the screen, rocking Lucas in his arms.

  ‘And if that mockingbird don’t sing, daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.’

  The River Slurry’s shadow pulsed in the paused video. Kurt swung his baby to and fro, watching as the shadow figure slid from the screen and poured onto
the faded crimson rug on the office floor.

  ‘And if that diamond ring turns brass, daddy’s gonna buy you a looking glass.’

  The shadow stained the rug an oily grey-brown. The table lamp glowed dully across the stain, and the heat of its light revealed a wrinkled scummy skin. Small brown bubbles collided together, doubling and tripling and quadrupling like cells, and the stain bubbled and popped and gathered itself together into a shape.

  ‘And if that looking glass gets broke, daddy’s gonna get you a river-mud ghost.’

  The mud slick surged and stretched, and the stench of foetid mud filled the room. Kurt held Lucas tight against his chest, humming the lullaby, and the baby’s cries quietened into sobs, then hiccups, as Kurt watched the River Slurry rise from the swampy pool, the mud taking shape into her legs, her torso, her neck and arms and head.

  Kurt looked into the eyes of the River Slurry, and saw his own eyes looking back at him.

  The River Slurry held her arms out, and Kurt saw his own arms being held out toward him. The River Slurry stretched her hands and fingers out, and Kurt saw they were his hands, his fingers, all ten of them, whole and strong.

  His left hand tingled and itched, and a bolt of pain shot up from his knuckles and stabbed through his missing fingers. The pain throbbed and burned in the empty spaces where his fingers once were. Kurt pressed Lucas against his chest, struggling to hold him as he doubled over.

  The sewer stench of the River Slurry coated Kurt’s nostrils and throat as she shuffled toward him with outstretched arms, hands, and fingers.

  Lucas arched his back and screamed.

  The pain in Kurt’s absent fingers squeezed and crushed his missing bones. He stared into the River Slurry’s face, his face.

  ‘Kurt, let me in!’ Naomi’s fists pounded on the locked door.

  Kurt gazed into his mud-brown eyes, and his heart squelched and sucked as one with the River Slurry’s.

  ‘Kurt!’ Naomi’s body thumped against the door.

  Lucas stiffened his legs. His small red face wouldn’t stop screaming.

  ‘Kurt! Open the door!’ A hard object smashed against it, splintering the wood.

  A gush of air sucked at Kurt’s eardrums. His ears emptied of sound, then filled with the roar of rushing water. The chill of deep mud slicked up his fingers and hands, numbing them, as Lucas rolled into the arms of the River Slurry.

  The door gave way. Naomi rushed into the room.

  Kurt looked down at his muddy hands with their ten intact fingers. They were empty.

  He did not hear Naomi scream.

  TRIAGE

  Jason Nahrung

  For Andy

  Nosplentyn hunched further into his coat as he approached the hospital entrance. The cloying scent of antiseptic washed over him. He pulled his hood tighter and wished he could dampen his enhanced senses. Nose twitching, eyes squinting, he took shallow breaths through his mouth as he entered the brightly lit foyer.

  Sorrow oozed from this place. The grief penetrated his psychic defences like the air conditioning seeping through his coat. No amount of antiseptic could cleanse the reek of despair.

  He wasn’t helping. Most came here hoping to get better; he had come to kill.

  A brain tweak got him past the guards manning the metal detector and x-ray machine. He was in no mood to answer annoying questions about what he was doing here at two in the morning.

  The Council had given him this assignment, as much a test of his continuing loyalty as an acknowledgement of the detective skills he’d acquired in his former life. He’d never expected his training would one day be used for assassination. The Council didn’t like trespassers poaching their food supply, any more than they tolerated disobedience.

  Nosplentyn headed for the lift.

  He waited with his back to a wall and wished he had worn his robe. A legacy from the master who’d trained him; he found it a comfort, a way of marking his removal from the world he had known. Nosplentyn had thought it would have been too conspicuous for this mission, but in retrospect, he supposed the image of a monk walking the halls of a hospital might not be so out of place. But if someone looked under his hood, they would not believe he should be walking around at all.

  Ping!

  He jumped, though the lift’s bell sounded muted in the early morning stillness. Embarrassed by his nervous reaction, he quickly stepped in and punched the button for the fourth floor.

  This was his third night staking out the hospital, and hopefully the last. The sorrow was getting harder to purge.

  Admittedly, there were flashes of hope, and great love too. The nurses exuded compassion, though some burned more brightly than others. At the end of the day, though, they were just delaying the inevitable, curing one ill so another could take its place, even if it was just old age. It was no different inside the hospital than out, really; just the people outside weren’t so aware of their condition. They used different forms of pain management — booze, shopping, sex, television — but deep down, they knew they all shared the same prognosis.

  Not his problem, not anymore. Not since he’d been turned. If he could go back to that moment, with the choice between a painful death or this immortality, which option would he take? Neither held much appeal compared to option C — be a father, be a husband. Be a good cop with enough sense not to stick his nose into the wrong conspiracy.

  Nosplentyn felt the world around him growing thin and quickly reined in his regrets. Spirits pulled back into their own realm, taunted by his proximity, frustrated by his withdrawal.

  ‘Get a grip,’ Nosplentyn whispered as he crept down an empty corridor to ward 4C. This was where the worst of the worst came for their chemo. The spirit plane loomed close here, lurking behind the framed prints decorating the scuffed, off-white walls. Nosplentyn didn’t look at the pictures too closely. Not even the alluring aroma of blood bags could dismiss the unnerving sensation of being watched from behind the landscapes.

  A sign at the entrance told visitors to wash their hands and ensure mobile phones were turned off. Nosplentyn couldn’t prevent feeling a twinge of hypocrisy as he rubbed the sweet-smelling soap into the scarred skin of his hands. As if having clean hands would make any difference when he’d found his quarry.

  The sole nurse at the duty station was working her second shift in a row. Her tired mind readily accepted Nosplentyn’s mental suggestion to ignore him as he stalked to the door of room eight and glanced through. No one there but the sleeping patient, his name written in marking pen on a tag above his bed, easy to read in the room’s ambient light.

  Nosplentyn slipped inside.

  The patient already bore the mark. The wound had been supernaturally healed, but Nosplentyn could see its afterimage, there on the inside of his arm. The rogue vampire had taken blood straight from the vein, rather than pollute the taste by withdrawing from the Hickman’s line permanently inserted in the man’s chest.

  ‘How are you feeling tonight, Mr Smith?’ Nosplentyn whispered, running a quick eye over the blood results pinned to a clip board. ‘Still mortal, I see.’

  The patient had received blood earlier; Nosplentyn could smell it, see it in the patient’s re-invigorated complexion. Now a bag of Lasix dripped from the IV stand along with another of antibiotics, both pumping through the multiple mouths of the Hickman’s. The patient had a catheter, too, to catch the results of the Lasix once the fluid started running. The thought of having a tube inserted in his prick made Nosplentyn squirm, though he’d left such mundane concerns behind him.

  Photos on the corkboard near the bed made a welcome distraction. Some new ones had been added since Nosplentyn’s visit the previous night. Two little girls; one dressed like a fairy, the other with her face painted as a butterfly. Mr Smith’s daughters, Nosplentyn presumed. Too young to draw more than stick figures and swirling lines of crayon, but old enough to know which blobs were daddy and mummy.

  Nosplentyn turned away from the pictures, wondering if his own child ha
d learned to draw any better. How old? Three, now? That made it four years since he had stumbled into the vampire world and, unwittingly, been made a part of it. His wife had been pregnant when he’d died. He hoped she told their daughter about him, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough. How could the child remember a father she had never known?

  He had been allowed to see his daughter once, the better to know what he risked should he fail to follow orders. He swore that situation would change, but for now, he had no choice but to obey.

  Nosplentyn watched the young man breathing unevenly in his morphine sleep. His maroon and gold beanie had slipped to the side, revealing a pale, unnaturally bald scalp. Not even the recent infusion of platelets could disguise the sunken cheeks, the hollow eyes, the thin lips. Muscles sagged like molten plastic. Death was close, a shadow reaching through from the other side.

  In a moment of self-pity, Nosplentyn felt jealous. That release from fear, from responsibility… from the weight of the great game where the rules were totally biased against the players. But he looked again at the drawings and photographs, and knew that the burden of duty was welcomed. Pain was the price of joy and this man had paid it willingly.

  Nosplentyn dodged a clump of limp helium balloons that proclaimed a recent birthday as he pulled a chair into the darkest corner. A teddy bear with a red bow stared silently from the window sill, surrounded by get well cards. Like throwing paper planes at a cyclone, but it was important for the patient to know he wasn’t facing the storm alone. Loneliness could kill as sure as cancer.

  Sitting huddled in the corner, Nosplentyn tried to draw comfort as he pulled shadows around himself. He hoped the rogue would come tonight. Not only was he tired of this place, but the Council was getting frustrated at the lack of progress. A source of food as rich as the hospital could not be compromised.

  Finally, he heard the sound of the ward nurse approaching. A different one to last night. Please, let it be her…

  She was a pretty girl, appearing too finely boned for hefting the handicapped bodies of adults around beds and showers. Red curls framed her peaches-and-cream complexion. She smelled of lilies; lilies and blood.