Exquisite Corpse. Chapter Six up!

[morgan303]

This is THE Exquisite Corpse Post, and chapters will be added, and linked to here, as they are recieved. I'm making it public, so please feel free to link to it from your own journals, and send people here for comments! It can also be found in my "Memories", or via the tag.

If you would like to join in and haven't put your name down already, let me know!
Chapter 1: morgan303
Chapter 2: stabarinde
Chapter 3: sharplittlteeth
Chapter 4: damien_wise
Chapter 5: lokicarbis
Chapter 6: bell_man



***

Chapter One: morgan303

The train journey had been a long one. He could have driven, but he wanted to get to know the land first, let it talk to him. He'd stared out of the window for what seemed like hours and probably was, lulled by the rhythmic passage of miles under the wheels, the gentle rise and fall of the landscape in middle-distance, always with those mountains in the background. The city had given way to smaller and smaller towns on the outskirts, metal and glass to mud-brick, and finally to a scrubby pine-and-cedar forest that itself backed away toward the hills, leaving the flat land bare. It was this land he'd come for; as the sky got bigger, the horizon further away, certainty grew.

When the train finally stopped, it took some time for Fabian to shake off the lull of steady, forward momentum. Away from the station, and the small cluster of buildings surrounding it that passed for a town, he stretched, squinted into a shimmering horizon. He shouldered his pack, and walked out into the desert.

He walked until the sun dropped low enough to look him in the face, lengthening the shadows and cooling the gilded air. The desert stretched around him, the little huddle of mud-brick buildings and the rail-line left far behind. He’d become used to the silence gradually, after the continuous, rhythmic rattle of the train. Now even the quiet beat of his own footsteps was silent. A bird he didn’t recognise called somewhere above him. Out of the silence he tried to pick the heartbeat of the world.

He dropped the pack, shrugged and rolled the kinks out of shoulders just starting to ache. Unrolled the shelter and put it up. Quietly, efficiently.
He looked at the flat land around him; the mountains and jagged fingers of rock were far in the distance. In the last hour of light, even the pebbles trailed long tails of shadow behind the gold faces they turned to the falling sun. He stood, breathing desert air, feeling the space around him, an emptiness far more full than that of the city he’d left what seemed like days ago. Finally, shadows disappeared, the golden red gently saturated with blue, the mountains darkened. It was time. With the same peaceful gravity that had marked his movements since he’d walked into the desert, Fabian reached into his pack to find the folded piece of hide he'd carried carefully across three continents. He sat, cross-legged, a little way from the shelter, laid the precious bundle in front of him on the sand. Only now did he start to realise that this was where the months of work had led him, days spent in libraries with a white cotton glove on one hand, taking notes with the other, calling in favours to get into the fortress basements of collectors. Days of ritual, just to get to this point. Two little dog-foxes crept closer in the gathering dark, warily watching the intruder, more curious than afraid. Taking a deep breath, Fabian pushed stray strands of hair from his face, and untied the string that bound the bundle. Unfolded it onto the sand. One by one, he lifted the eight stones from their wrapping; gems of different colours, polished, raw, worn smooth by hands. One by one he placed them, each one signifying a different direction. Arizona turquoise for earth, that seemed at home in the sand here; Egyptian Lapis for the sky, that hung in the air where he placed it; gems for the compass points; a smooth black stone, placed last, that faded to translucence as it entered Gyre Time; past, present and future both simultaneous and immaterial, floating in the middle.

And with the deep blue night around him, and even the crickets quiet, Fabian considered the ritual sphere before him, and began, finally, to sing.

*****

Chapter Two: stabarinde

He sang of the plains on which he sat, of the mountains in the distance and the sky above. He sang of lands far distant, of people and places of which he had only read. And finally, he sang of the things between all things. Of the mercurial glue that holds us all together. When he had sung the final stanza, he was ready, finally, to address the questions that had haunted him for several years. But for this, he would need assistance.

He decided that he needed a spirit guide - a co-pilot on his journey of the mind. So, he began to believe that he had one, a spirit that had accompanied him since birth and live with him in death, like those of his parents before him.

He pictured him as a tall warrior, lean and muscular, with clear, piercing blue eyes. He decided this spirit was called Malcolm.

"So what are we doing?" said Malcolm.

Fabian thought again about the hours spent poring over texts and codices, artifacts and news feeds.

"It's time to uncover the truth", he said with certainty.

A door opened in reality nearby. Malcolm held it open while Fabian stepped through.

"Could you be a little more specific?" Malcolm closed the door behind them. "I mean, there's all manner of truths, specific ones, and the broader ones about the nature of the universe and such."

There was a corridor with several doors leading off it. The light was low, the walls, purple. The doors, large slabs of slate, were marked with discrete little plaques bearing inscriptions such as;

"What Grandad really did during the war.",

"What really happened to mittens.", and

"Who shot Kennedy.".
Fabian, stared back at him, unblinking.

"Marianne."

Malcolm nodded briefly.

"Seventh on the right then." he said.

*****

Chapter 3: sharplittlteeth

Fabian walked down the corridor and stopped in front of the door. He rested an index finger on the brass handle.

"You could just tell me," he said.

Malcolm shook his head. "That's not how it works."

"No." Fabian smiled. "Of course not."

He turned the handle.

(Back in the desert, his body raises a hand and mimes turning a handle.)

Through the doorway: a living room. Two pink floral couches, crochet doilies on the armrests. A cathode-ray television lurking in the corner. A sideboard covered in framed photographs.

Fabian blinked.

"You recognise this room?" asked Malcolm.

"It's my parents' house." Fabian frowned, then laughed it off. He picked up a photo from the sideboard - two children grinning in a swingset, a boy and a girl.

Malcolm peered over his shoulder. "That's Marianne?"

"Yes."

"Your sister?"

"Sister. Conspirator. Alchemical twin." He ran a finger across her face.

(In the desert, his body strokes the air with a finger.)

"You know what's funny?" asked Fabian. "My sister disappears. So I perform a ritual to find her."

"In the desert," nods Malcolm.

"No, no. Back in Prague. It should have been easy, yes? Twins, bonded by blood and Art. Except it drew up a blank."

Fabian put the photo back. Malcolm watched him, expressionless.

"I try the Montague ritual. Nothing. The rites of Mazi. Nil. Whoever took my sister, they've gone to great lengths to hide her. Well, I can go to great lengths too. Half way around the world, weaving the scrying web behind me. And what do I learn?"

Malcolm said nothing, waiting.

"This room was where it all started, you know. Our journey into the Art. Fish and chips for dinner, football on TV. We hated it. We'd sneak into each other's bedrooms, swap clothes, put on makeup, pretend we were somone else. That's when we chose new names for each other - pretentious names for pretend people. Still..."

He waved a hand at the room.

(In the desert, his body waved its hand, catching the ritual stones in a fist.)

"You can never escape your roots, can you? Every spell has your dirty little thumb print on it."

Malcolm startled. Then the spirit guide leapt at Fabian, hands out to strangle him.

Fabian ducked sideways, agile as a dancer. The spirit crashed into the sideboard, scattering photo frames. It turned, and sunk into a grappling stance.

Fabian held up the ritual stones. The spirit stopped, glowering.

"I mean, really," smiled Fabian. "'Malcolm'? Isn't that a bit mundane for my tastes?"

"Your sister is dead," growled the spirit. "Stop looking for her."

"Oh yes. Very convincing. Tell me where she is, or I'll rip you to tatters."

The spirit's eye glinted, and Fabian realised he'd made a mistake. The creature stood upright, and simply dissolved. It was like a dream: perfect one moment, a meaningless wisp the next.

"Shit."

In the desert, Fabian woke up.

It was deep into the night, and his body was freezing. He creaked up to his feet, brushing sand from his pinstripe trousers. The stars blazed above him. Magic always messed with Fabian's sense of time.

Someone had hacked into his ritual. This was the most powerful magic he knew, and someone had hacked it. They couldn't shut it down completely. But they had enough juju to replace his spirit guide with a fake.

Still, it wasn't a complete failure. Every spell bears the mark of its maker, and calling the fake spirit guide Malcolm was far too clumsy to be intentional. It had to be a clue.

The dog-foxes were still watching him. Fabian smiled at them and they smiled back, the calm, vicious smiles of hunters.

*****

Chapter 4: damien_wise

The hot afternoon has given-way to a humid night. The windows have
been thrown wide-open but the greying curtains hang limply in the
calm.

This place reeks of him. It swamps the senses.
Drift closer.
There he is, eyes closed, sitting cross-legged inside a ring of white
sand on an old, lumpy rug.

Through the window, now. The apartment is cluttered with a mixture of
trinkets from around the world and the trash of a modern, take-away
life. How can someone so widely read and such a seasoned traveler
live in such a squat? A greasy paper bag with a golden 'M' lies
crumpled on the floor. The coffee-table is strewn with mugs and
discarded cans. Piled-up library books sprout unpaid bills as
bookmarks, the ripening colour of successive "Overdue"-reminders
systematically indicating the urgency with which each book needs to be
returned. Uncommon priorities and practices, but it goes to explain
how one so young has come so far.

The coffee-table has been dragged aside recently to create room on the
rug, since there is little other free space on the stained carpet.
Wall-to-wall used to be a luxury but now he hears the latest thing is
to rip it all up show the boards like a pauper.
"'Rental Brown,'" Malcolm sniffs quietly at his private joke about the carpet.
A record-player that must have seemed fabulous when Boy George was a
cultural icon adorns a wall-unit against one wall. Cables run from
behind the shelves and across the floor. Cables everywhere. An
extension cable for the broken-down air-conditioner wedged into the
other window. There's even one snaking from the discarded
vacuum-cleaner, around the feet of a coat-stand and then through the
gap beneath what - judging by the locks - must be the front door.

Beyond that, Malcolm senses a prone form slumped against a wall in the
tenement's central corridor This apartment, this whole building, is a
dive. Such is the way. Malcolm tells himself he's not one to judge;
afterall, he's seen the best and worst facets of humanity for two
centuries.

More cables for the television, cell-phone-charger, table-lamp and the
telephone, which is off the hook and emitting no sound. All this
braided copper looping around the room makes him nervous. Don't
disturb a thing. More cables for the television. And for the box
plugged into the television, which itself sprouts more cables, each
terminating with an even smaller box. Babushka dolls and rats' nests
for the Digital Age. And a background hum that never goes away.
It was better when power flowed invisibly. Always was. Real power, that is.

Malcolm observes that Fabian hasn't finished unpacking his gear from
last week's journey into the desert. From the bulging pack spills a
handful of feathers, something wrapped in oilskin, several kinds of
dried leaves in plastic ziplock bags, dyed rags, a slim box of
polished cherrywood, and an empty four-quart pseudo-military canteen
covered in red desert dust.
"How can you live like this?"

Fabian's eyes are still closed, his breathing slow and even. Surely,
Malcolm thinks, he must sense me here, yet he does nothing. Fabian's
lips are moving slowly, tiny strings of saliva trying to glue them
shut as he noiselessly mouths syllables. Must have been at it all
day, maybe longer.

"You shouldn't have tried again so soon," Malcolm chides, growing
bolder. "I sensed you miles off, and now I know where you live."

Something catches Malcolm's eye. He silently picks he way over to an
antique mirror near the door. Beveled edges and a frame the colour of
dark chocolate; it must be the only thing in this room matching the
building. Tucked into the frame of is a snapshot of the Pyramids.
Ironic how Fabian has a photo of an ancient monument to the dead as a
permanent, tangible reminder, when the photo's curling and browning
with age. But it's not Fabian standing in front of the landmark in
Giza, it's a young couple. Treasured keepsakes resonate the best.
Malcolm gently brushes his fingertips against the photo.
"--sunglasses straight from the old Batman television series,"
Fabian's voice echos from the past as he jokes to a friend...but,
inside, he's reminded of how much Marianne looked like her - looks
like her mother. Fabian, you're a sentimental fool.

Careful, now. Step into the circle but don't touch him.
Make the circle your own.

Fabian shifts in his trance and his breathing quickens, but he continues.

Feed the circle. Now I'm part of it and it's part of me.
Bolster the circle.
You can't harm me now, yet you sit mute and defenceless.

Fabian is holding his breath.

"Are you finally aware I'm here?" Malcolm leans over Fabians shoulder
and whispers in his ear, careful to avoid making physical contact yet,
lest he snap Fabian back here. "Who needs spells when there's a more
direct approach?" A knife appears in Malcolm's hand.

Outside, the figure in the hall stirs. Most likely a drunk reaching
for his bottle.

Fabian's hand flaps briefly against the air, as though it's the only
part of him not paralysed.

"Name one thing that can save you now," Malcolm grins. The tip of the
knife hovers above Fabian's neck, halfway between his Adam's apple and
right earlobe. Fabian's hand stops trying to swat at Malcolm and
extends a finger at the wall beneath the window.

"Hoover," Fabian's voice floats across the still air of the room as
Malcolm prepares to thrust his knife.

"What?" Malcolm pauses and flicks his gaze in puzzlement to the
telephone on the side-table.

"Hoover" Fabian repeats, as the vacuum-cleaner near his knee roars to
life. White sand disappears into its steel maw, breaking the circle.
Fabian's spirit projection winks-out at the same instant as it starts
to rise to its feet. The front door bangs open and Fabian, pocketing
his cell-phone, strides in.

Malcolm squats on the rug, reeling from the backlash of the field
around him collapsing.

"You - not you, Malcolm - you, I know you can hear me through Malcolm
and see me. Said I'd rip you to tatters, and I will if that's what it
takes to find Marianne. You," he informs Malcolm, "You're not going
anywhere. Under the rug's another circle. Made from the very desert
sand that you walked on only days ago." Malcolm avoids Fabian's gaze
and his eyes come to rest on the canteen.

"Well?" The spirit gives a thin-lipped smile, looks away and prods
experimentally with a toe at the lumpy rug. "Talk about convoluted."

"You may be ancient and powerful, but this is my turf, my city, my
home: my strength. Risky trap to set-up, but it's not as though I'd
--" Malcolm sneers and starts to say something, but no more sound
emerges. Then comes a grimace. His face distorts and begins to run
like a melting candle.

"Haven't finished yet, Malcolm. Need you a little longer." Malcolm's
limbs, once strong, now began to wither and fold, making him look
all-knees-and-elbows. "Not long now, can't let go like that," says
Fabian quietly, circling around and staring at Malcolm's eyes, trying
to grasp a purchase, trying to burrow through them. "It was a mistake
for you to come here, and it was a mistake to send Malcolm. You've
got to be nimble, work with spirits who move with the times."

The taunt registers as a flicker of emotion in Malcolm's fading eyes.
Fabian had what he needs - a reaction over the link, a frayed thread
to grasp and follow. Gauging the pace of Malcolm's energy
spooling-out, Fabian leans closer and continues in measured tones:
"Einstein, explaining the principle of radio, once said: 'You see,
wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail
in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand
this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here,
they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.'
"There is a cat afterall. Of sorts. And the wire he spoke of - the
wire is like the psychic skein between you and this wretched spirit."
He gestures at the crumpled, fading form of Malcolm. "There is a
cat, and now she's chasing you down."

Fabian lets go and Malcolm expires. Departs. Whatever.

Moonlight gleams on the window sill.
Outside, dusk is fading and the deepening shadows bleed together like
the rainwater that's started gurgling down a curbside grate far below.
Light glitters off a puddle and darts to the chromed fender of a
passing car. It mingles with the green of shop-front neon and
tail-light red, then moves on. The reflection momentarily dazzles a
middle-aged man as he shelters under an awning. He glances away
quickly, glasses glinting as he tilts his head. It lands silently on
the rain-slicked windows of a passing train. In the gap between
carriages, a pair of green eyes glows faintly, beneath them a small
patch of white fur. She pauses and glances around, sniffing the air
and fixing a new bearing on its prey.
An adaptable spirit, fit for the modern age.
Rain-flecked highlights ripple from one train-carriage to the next,
then leap and bound through the city with a purpose.

***

Chapter 5: lokicarbis

It's just a cat.

Form is not merely function, but feeling as well.

It's just a cat. It's not just a cat.

It dances between raindrops, running up wires and down fire escapes, its fur electric white and yet somehow not attracting the eye. A small, scruffy-looking white cat. If you saw it, it would cower before your gaze. Beaten and deceived by humans too many times, untrusting and fearful. But when no human looks, no human sees, things are different. Its head is held erect, its shoulders no longer slump, and every line of its being speaks of intent. It is not the hunted, but the hunter. It's not just a cat.

It's just a cat.

It's nearly more than Malcolm - is that his name? in the shifting of forms he's no longer sure - can manage to hold on to his sense of self. To be a cat, here in this city, is to be a cat of the city. Adaptability is his strength, but in the face of a superior strength, it can be the worst of weaknesses. But the cat's form is useful, as is its single-mindedness in the hunt. There is a danger, however, of losing the purpose of the hunt - not the target, but the why of the target. A cat's mind is small, and it's a fight just to keep two thoughts in it at once.

But then, no one ever said that impersonating a spirit guide was going to be easy.

It's not just a cat, it the pretence of a cat for other, distinctly non-feline purposes.

It's just a cat, and there are a million more just like it in this city.

It's not just a cat, but it will be if the hunt drags on too much longer...

***

Chapter 6: bell_man

Most thirteen-year-olds would be spending their break lolling on beaches or trekking through the hills, skinning their knees red at skate parks or blasting away at some PlayStation aliens. Most thirteen-year-olds. Fabian knew he wasn't most thirteen-year-olds--and neither was his sister.

"Around here! Catch up you dork!" Her cry to him from up ahead echoed down the stormwater pipe and died away, swallowed up by the thin encrustation of orange fungus overhead and the trickle of water at his feet. Fabian peered forward, but all he could see up the tunnel was the occasional flare of her flash light. Dammit. She'd turned a corner or something and was just out of his line of sight.

Repressing the urge to holler after her he flicked his own torch back on and started splashing his way on to wherever she was. He tried to pretend that the butterflies in his stomach were hers, but he knew that, however much intuition they shared, the nerves were his own. He was no coward--he knew that for sure--but compared to Marianne, Fabian felt like he had a yellow streak a mile wide. She was always forging ahead and he was always playing catch-up. One day she was going to go too far and he wasn't going to be able to follow, he just knew it.

It suddenly occurred to Fabian that he wasn't really sure whether this trek through the sewer pipe had been his idea or hers. Oh, the suggestion had come from his lips, his breath, but he wasn't sure he hadn't been... manipulated. He stopped, let his head drop, let his torch light spill on to his feet. On impulse he squatted down and ran his fingers carelessly through the slime growing beneath the trickle of water. Something tiny, grey and wormlike wriggled free of the verdant sludge, slithered its way over the top of his hand and disappeared back into the ooze behind him. Manipulated. Yeah.

"Are you coming or are you just going to play in the slime?" She was starting to sound whiny now. Not good. He shook his hand clean, then made a point of stomping and splashing his way towards her. He was trying to sulk, but his heart wasn't really in it. Something had drawn the pair of them down here. It was tugging at them both right now. He didn't know what it was, but it... it interfered. The feeling was ugly, but compelling, and had him alternately worried and fascinated. He felt like he was playing with a scab he probably shouldn't tear off.

Noisily, he continued up the pipe. He reached the corner with a frown set on his face ready to meet her glare... but she wasn't looking at him. She was looking at what the reflected glow of her flash light had caught. Painted on to the wall of the pipe, it was nearly as tall as he. In deep indigo, contrasting strangely with the drab concrete and the patches of polychromatic fungus, it was a glyph or sigil of some kind, though not one of the many hundreds he and Marianne had studied or copied. Or used. Leaning forward at a funny angle to compensate for the curve of the pipe, Marianne stretched out and touched one of the glyph's lines. She began tracing the curves and intersections. Fabian pressed his lips together hard, but he found himself slowly nodding.

Not taking his eyes from it, Fabian stepped forward himself and gingerly laid a hand on the rough, painted surface. He was breathing slow but his heart was pounding. Marianne maintained a look of awe and serenity as her fingers kept tracing the pattern. "It has a aura," she murmured. Fabian's eyes flicked to her involuntarily, but he saw nothing. "Violet..." she trailed off. Fabian felt that he would not be able to lift his hand from the wall now, even if he wanted too. And--he swallowed hard--he did not want to. Marianne closed her eyes and breathed in.

"Exquisite," she exhaled.

***