Shadowplays Read online

  Shadowplays

  Stories

  by

  W.D. Gagliani

  Author of Wolf’s Trap (Bram Stoker Award nominee),

  Wolf’s Gambit, Wolf’s Bluff, Wolf’s Edge, and Savage Nights

  Published by W.D. Gagliani

  Copyright © 2010 W.D. Gagliani

  First E-Book Edition August 2010

  Cover by Deena Warner (for “Kneel at the Shrine”)

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contact:

  Tarkus Press

  PO Box 214

  Oak Creek, WI 53154

  http://www.williamdgagliani.com

  Other works by this author:

  Wolf’s Trap

  Wolf’s Gambit

  Wolf’s Bluff

  Wolf’s Edge

  The Great Belzoni and the Gait of Anubis (novella and short-short)

  Shadowplays (Fiction Collection)

  Dedication

  In memory of Joel Ross

  Goodbye, my friend…

  Also in memory of my dad…

  and Alda Gagliani, Aldo DiCorato, Dennis Michel, plus

  Eric Woolfson, Richard Wright, Robert B. Parker, Donald Westlake, Stuart Kaminsky,

  and so many more whose words and deeds touched me…

  Also dedicated to Robert Bloch

  and all the other editors who bought my stories over the years.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Some of these eighteen stories also appeared in the first edition of Shadowplays, which was published as an ebook in 2000… long before the ebook market took off! The best of those tales appear here in the second edition as well, along with some newer published and unpublished stories. Some are a bit dated, but still work. Thank you for giving them new life. Warning: adult content. wdg

  CONTENTS

  “Icewall”

  “Lead Me Into Temptation”

  “Only Spectres Still Have Pity” (from Ghosts of the IRA)

  “Kneel at the Shrine” (from: Ghosts of the IRA)

  “Motion Purifies”

  “Make a Stone of Your Heart”

  “In the Shadow of China Mountain”

  “Port of Call”

  “Starbird”

  “Deep Tunnel”

  “Institution Waltz”

  “In His Blindness To See”

  “Carried on the Wind”

  “The Serpent Said”

  “The Great Belzoni and the Gait of Anubis”

  “The Great Belzoni and the Monster of Goa”

  “We Were Like Lions”

  “Until Hell Calls Our Names”

  Author Bio

  Copyright notes

  * * * *

  ICEWALL

  Published in ROBERT BLOCH’S PSYCHOS, edited by Robert Bloch, and in

  SHADOWPLAYS (1st edition). Honorable Mention in the

  Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (11th edition)

  The wind.

  Even through the thick Styrofoam padding and internal icewall, you could hear it. You couldn’t escape its long, high-pitched wail. It drove ice particles like tiny projectiles, embedding them into the outer skin of the Jamesway hut with the sound of popping corn. The stretched canvas was pitted like that of an orange, and frozen solid.

  After six months, the three things that defined my life broke down like this: the wind, the darkness, and the hut. And Frank. I guess that’s four. Frank was certainly instrumental in my life, just as I was in his. Hell, in that little space we shared, there was no relief, from the elements or each other.

  So why was I there at all? Adventure. Furthering the cause of science. Therapy. Take your pick or take ‘em all. Even now I can’t guess what went through my mind when I filled out the interminable paperwork that would eventually lead me to that Jamesway hut about two hundred miles “north” of the South Pole in the long winter darkness. I don’t know why Antarctica seemed such a good way out of a lousy life. And I don’t know why life was so lousy, not even now.

  All I know is that after nearly six months on the Ice, Frank changed. About the time he started complaining about those flickering lights out at the edge of the Icewall.

  I never saw those lights, but he insisted they flickered there whenever he was alone. He’d drag me out into the near-darkness and point, but there was never anything there. The Icewall’s ridge always seemed as impenetrable and mysterious as ever to me, and as lonely. It drove him nuts that I couldn’t see them, but I couldn’t, and that was that. After weeks of this routine, we started ignoring each other more and more.

  This particular day had dawned like the rest of them. No real light. No real difference in the temperature. No real difference in the instrument readings. No real difference in any damned thing. I had just finished checking the instruments in the dome fifty yards from the hut. Almost buried, the dome was an igloo. Or a white wart on dead skin. Take your pick. It’s all in the perspective. Five steps led down into its interior, which was lined with shelves of instruments. There was the usual battery of thermometers and barometers, as well as a barograph to chart trends in air pressure. There were hygrometers and psychrometers to check and double-check humidity, which rarely changed, and a rack of electronic devices hooked up to the anemometer mounted on the metal tower outside. Snow gauges and ice crystal collectors sat outside, too. In the center stood our baby, the radio telescope. Banks of programmable listening and recording devices scanned the banded sky for movement. The dome also contained an easy chair and a small supply of food, in case one of us became isolated inside. A tiny stove provided inadequate heat. We used a lantern with a cable strung to the hut and hooked into our generator to provide lighting. There were candles, too, in case the cable were cut or ripped by wind or buried too deep.

  This was the last winter for our little dome. After the thaw, after the relief plane came and whisked us away to the warmth of McMurdo and then Christchurch and home, another plane would bring a construction crew and a new dome. Twice as big and sparkling new, it would contain newer versions of all the instruments - in a third of the space - and a weather radar, or so they told us. Camp Ten would grow to include three more Jamesway huts and a big Robertson building, as well as the radar dome and a T-5 to house a larger generator.

  Yessir, after Frank and I left, the place would turn into a regular dump, with a personnel roster of at least fifteen and a muddy Main Street. Our location had become big-time, even if we hadn’t. That’s why Frank and I took our twice-daily measurements with less and less enthusiasm, feeling replaced already. Whatever they’d do here wouldn’t include us. After the hut, life was a blank to me. And I knew Frank didn’t have much to look forward to, either.

  I munched on a frozen chocolate bar from the emergency kit as I took the last of the readings and snapped down covers over the instruments and their dials. Breath clouded the air and blurred my vision slightly.
I had stopped using the stove during readings, since it was barely worth the trouble. The measurements were mechanical, and I ignored the numbers - I just wrote them into the log with a damned pencil and forgot they existed. Pens were useless in the intense cold. The ink froze up and eventually burst the thin plastic cylinders. The new equipment would take readings and feed them into a computer, which would then store the data until a weekly satellite hookup requested transmission. It almost didn’t need humans to work, and I felt obsolete with that fucking pencil stub grasped awkwardly in triple-gloved fist.

  I closed down everything that needed to be and finished the chocolate bar, then climbed the steps and met the wind head on. Both hands wrapped around the nylon safety railing that led from the dome to the hut, I slowly made for home. I kept my head down to avoid the flying ice, which found the vents in the face mask with unerring accuracy. Even with heavy-duty goggles stretched over my eyes, visibility was impaired - not only by the ice, but also by the tiny gouges the particles made. Goggles became useless after a few weeks of constant barrage, and these were almost new. I desperately wanted to keep them that way. I was attached to those goggles, as if they had become my eyes.

  Fifty yards is a jaunt almost anywhere in the world, but it took me twenty minutes to negotiate against the wind. Every ten feet, the railing threaded through a flexible whip-like post, and I counted posts as I went along. I had once wondered why the dome was placed so far away. Long ago. The answer always gave me chills, even in fifty below temperatures.

  “In case of fire,” a member of a long-gone winter’s party had told me, while brushing loose locks of hair from his forehead with one hand and scratching a tangled beard with the other. “If a fire starts in the hut and you don’t die in it, you want a place to retreat to. Get your ass sheltered, you know. If the fire starts in the dome, same thing. You don’t want it to spread, and fifty yards is about right, just to make sure.”

  He had squinted a little then and drawn his features into a smirk, giving the impression of someone who knew better than to let these things get to him. Then he’d wandered off, scratching his groin. A real poster boy for the Antarctic project.

  Fire. I remembered the lectures we’d had on fires.

  “There’s nothing worse than fire on the Ice,” an overweight Major Kane had said with a frown. “If it doesn’t kill you, you’re almost as good as dead anyway. See, rescue is always days or weeks away, depending on the weather’s cooperation. But you know about that, being weather buffs, right?” No one had laughed. “You can’t put fires out on the Ice. Extinguishers freeze solid in hours. Those we’ve designed with antifreeze take a couple of days, but they freeze up, too. There’s no such thing as running water, except the small amounts you melt for cooking and drinking. You get my point, I hope. Fire is death. No two ways about it. But, if you can find shelter away from the fire - a decent shelter - you stand a chance. A remote chance, sure, but still better than nothing at all. So take care of your off-camp shelter. It might have to take care of you.” He sat abruptly, as if he found his own words distasteful.

  Somebody had laughed then, briefly. A nervous sort of laugh-bark that had echoed over our heads and died out. Nobody looked to see who had laughed, because the same chill hung over all of us. The lecture had continued on a much lighter note, how to avoid sexual frustration while wintering in camp. Some wit had labeled that part of the sermon “Pulling the Penguin 101.” We put fire out of our minds but it lurked there all the same.

  The Jamesway hut is shaped like a half-cylinder and covered with canvas. Inland stations sometimes use two - one slightly bigger - and piggyback them so that there’s about a foot and a half of dead air space between the outer skin of one and the inner skin of the other. Inside that space they spray loose snow, which hardens to form a thick, frozen barrier - an icewall - and Styrofoam chips. Keeps most of the wind and cold out. But the newer buildings are much better, don’t need the customized improvements, and the next party would get the two-story Robertson variation. I envied those guys. Frank and I were sick of the Jamesway.

  I snapped open the outside door, and it flew out of my grip. There were flashes of light in the sky - the approaching polar morning - but it was still dark, about the same as late early evening, if you know what I mean. Take your pick, dark is dark. I pulled the outside door closed, unlatched the inside door, and I was home. The relative warmth caressed my face and began melting the blown snow on my parka and hood. I took off the garment and shook it in the doorway, then pulled off my fur-lined boots and slammed them against the door - snow melts, dampens the boots, and quickly freezes when you visit the dome later. Presto, no toes. Or even feet. We shook out boots and parkas diligently, you can bet on it. The fucking cold gets to you and the dark and so does everything else. Take your pick.

  “Close the goddamn door,” Frank growled at me. I was used to his mood shifts, so I ignored him. But I did shut and latch the door, as I would have in any case. He’d been nitpicky for a while now. I went to the stove and turned up the heat a little, even though it would still be a frosty fifty or so in the hut. It never gets very warm in there, because you’re always trying to conserve fuel. Just in case.

  “Trying to poison me?” he baited, but I wouldn’t bite. I’d been there way too long to care if he didn’t like something I did. And the stove fumes weren’t that bad. He was lying in his bunk - his usual position in the last few weeks - and looking up at the curved ceiling, a filthy pillow on his chest. He’d stopped taking readings, too. For a month I’d been carefully forging his initials in the weather log every other reading, so no one would know that Frank had succumbed to the polar Bug. Lord knows I was close myself, but to see Frank acting like that was enough to drive me all the way to buggy if I let it get to me.

  The radio was for emergencies only, and our tour wasn’t up yet, so we couldn’t very well call for a new deck of cards or something. And flights are almost impossible in winter - slots are liable to last less than an hour. Anyway, our old deck was good enough. Frank never played with me any more, so I laid out hand after hand of solitaire for hours. The broken turntable sat silent on a bookshelf. Frank had smashed the useless records a month before, and pieces of vinyl still found their way underfoot. We had no such thing as CD technology at the Pole yet, and cassette tapes became brittle in the cold and snapped. So now we had no music. I bet the next guys would get a CD jukebox. Fuckers.

  “Want to play some cards?” I asked offhandedly as I shuffled the deck. The cards were a little thin and crinkly, but still did the job. I glanced at the female figures on the back. No regulation cards for us, no sir. I was holding ‘Brigitte,’ Frank’s favorite. “Hey, Frank, it’s Brigitte. She’s callin’ for you.”

  “Go fuck a penguin.”

  I shook my head. Not because there weren’t any penguins within a hundred miles, and not because I wouldn’t if given half the chance, but because his attitude was bugging me.

  “Suit yourself,” I mumbled, and made do with my own company, not for the first time. I arranged the cards so I could see all the girls. Brigitte, Renee, Michele, Dominique, Angela, and my favorite, Joconde. We had a good time together, and it was Frank’s loss.

  Later, I looked at my watch. It was going on midday, and my stomach was grumbling. “Look, let’s eat. Okay?”

  He was still staring up, that pillow on his chest. “Just leave me the hell alone.” His voice was barely louder than a whisper, but I heard it. I heard it, all right.

  As I said, he was changing. He’d been a nice guy for four months, and then he’d started acting strangely, since those lights he kept insisting he saw out by the Scott Icewall, fifty miles away. I wondered if the shrink at McMurdo could unravel the threads of his mind, but I knew it’d have to wait. And maybe I’d be better off keeping my mouth shut. Like with forging his initials in the book, I could probably cover for him if I tried.

  “All right, my friend.” I stood and scraped the chair on the plank flooring, trying for sarcasm
. “I’ll do the cooking. Once again.” A corner of the Jamesway was set up as galley. I opened a few cans and mixed a couple freeze-dried things with water hundreds of years old and soon had what seemed like a reasonably pleasant smell drifting around the hut. At least it masked the stale odor we were forced to put up with all winter, which I had recently started to consider intolerable. You’d think old Frank would have shown some enthusiasm. For the effort, at least.

  “First thing I ‘m gonna do when I get out of this place is get a haircut,” I said, while I ate something labeled ‘Pork Chops And Applesauce.’ It had the look and consistency of puke, so it was better than the ‘Beef Stew With Vegetables.’ “What about you?”

  Frank didn’t answer.

  “Well, anyway, I’ll get my hair cut and my beard trimmed and I’ll go out to a real restaurant and order actual food. Not this crap they make us eat.” I prodded the opened cans and foil packets. “A natural freezer here and they don’t even give us steak, like the boys at McMurdo get every goddamn day. Steak and fucking eggs for the boys, twice a day if they want it.”

  “You know damn well we ate all the steak,” Frank hissed in that funny little whisper of his, like he’s not getting any air in his lungs. “I told you not to eat it all so quickly, but you did anyway. Now we’re stuck with this shit.”

  “Shut up, Frank.”

  “Now we’re stuck with stuff that isn’t even good laxative.”

  “Look,” I said, “if you can’t be nice, then just shut up.”

  “Sure, you wanted us to eat all the steak, and now we’re out, and it’s my fucking fault,” he said.

  “Shut up!” I screamed. I threw an empty can at him, but it bounced off a chair that was in the way. Frank didn’t even bother to duck or move. He just lay in his bunk, hugging that pillow, and stared up at the ceiling.

  Outside, the wind howled without letup. You can’t escape that wind, you know, just like you can’t escape each other. I suddenly wanted to hear that relief plane, that fucking great C-l30 roaring overhead and setting down at the strip, and Frank and me waiting and waving.