Shades of Nothingness Read online

  SHADES OF NOTHINGNESS

  by

  GARY FRY

  This book is dedicated to a lot of people I’ve interviewed over the last seven years, in my occupational role. You’re all amazing.

  Introduction to

  Shades of Nothingness

  I think most of my fiction can be accurately described as ‘quiet horror’. For me, this means that anything unpleasant in the stories commonly occurs off the page, with events alluded to rather than presented with full-on descriptions.

  I do it this way for two reasons. First, because I have an irrepressible distaste for anything overly gruesome; not for me the body horror of slasher movies or TV documentaries involving surgeons cutting deep. The second reason is that I find horrors presented in too much detail generally ineffective. A common observation about the genre suggests that readers can imagine far worse things than any author can invent, but I’ve always found that unconvincing (if that was true, surely readers should write the damned tales and we authors read them). I think it’s more accurate to say that when readers are unable to comfortably assimilate any strange episode, that’s what scares them. And so an effective writer of horror fiction must tread a delicate line between over-description and offering too little material. I personally believe that the genre’s finest tales give away just enough detail to be powerful.

  Anyway, this is the kind of fiction I’ve always tried to write. And I hope this book is no exception. Nevertheless, people who’ve read my earlier work will, I believe, perceive a shift in focus from what were, in previous stories, overt attempts to address themes and ideas to a more nebulous, integrated approach involving a dream-logic derived as much from intuition as intellectual mediation.

  I won’t go through each tale one by one, mentioning inspirations and rationales. The truth is, I’m getting older now and can’t always remember where this stuff comes from. It’s enough for me that they’re all down on paper. And so here are 17 tales for your dubious pleasure. I hope a few of them take off the top of your head.

  Gary Fry 2013

  OUT OF TIME

  ———

  Jim had always been a hypochondriac, but had recently developed a legitimate medical problem to worry about. A little hardening of the arteries, the specialist had told him after a routine check-up. Jim had been persuaded to get ‘MOT-ed’ by his doctor during a visit with Sheila.

  “You’re a carer now, old chap, ” the doctor had explained. “You need to be in tiptop shape to look after your wife in the manner she’ll require. ” Jim had eventually accepted a pamphlet about diet, stress-avoidance and exercise, and a week later had joined a local hiking group.

  Sheila was in no position to protest, and although the weekly walks would do little to improve her condition, Jim figured the diversion would serve them both well. Better than sitting at home and brooding on fate, the cruelty of the world, or whatever else snuck in at times of despair. He thought that even focusing on his minor ailment might take his mind off what had happened to his wife. They’d both grown old, quickly, and it was terrifying. But what else could you do but march on?

  ——

  On a chilly Saturday morning in autumn, Jim drove himself and Sheila to the small town of Malham. The group had planned a day-long hike in the Yorkshire Dales, and this would be its starting point. After helping his wife out of the hatchback, Jim turned to examine a small cluster of people standing at the entrance to the car park. This was certainly the group they’d come to join; he’d recognised Derek Wilson, whom he knew from all his years on the teaching circuit in Leeds.

  It was Derek who came to greet them, his scholarly eyes flashing in low sunlight gathering above the huge fault in the earth nearby.

  “Hello, sir! Long time, no…Ah, but we don’t use clichés, do we? Let’s just say that it’s good to see you. And please let me introduce our honourable companions. ”

  There were four others, and Jim was happy to shake hands with each. Mark Henson was a retired solicitor. Kevin Benny worked in technology, but was content these days “to sit back and let staff do the lion’s share of the graft”. Peter Connell was an emeritus professor in palaeontology. And Jane Harrison, the only other woman in the group, wore a cross on a chain around her neck.

  Jim knew he shouldn’t trade in stereotypes—he’d spent the greater part of his career persuading children of the validity of this imperative—but thought that single item of jewellery was all he needed to know about her.

  It was Jane who first spoke to Sheila, however.

  “Hi there, ” she said with an amused tone, which might mean something other than what it implied. “I think we’re being overlooked, sister. What’s your name?”

  “There’s someone else with us, ” Sheila replied, and glanced away from Jane but not at the others.

  Jim sighed and felt it was time to tell the truth. “My wife has Alzheimer’s, ” he said, holding her hand a little tighter. “It’s pretty advanced. ”

  “Spider!” Sheila cried, pointing at the foot of a nearby wall where nothing other than a few tufts of grass were visible.

  “Oh, she doesn’t like sp—”

  “Spider!” Sheila repeated, clinging to Jim’s arm as if she was still the girl he’d once known, back in Leeds as teenagers about a million years ago.

  Derek had obviously decided to assume leadership of the group. “You’ll be okay with us, dear, ” he said, his voice perhaps too loud. “Lots of fresh air and rigorous exercise—that’s the way. ” Then to the others, he added, “Shall we set out?”

  And since nobody protested, the man started walking into the heart of the town, beyond which lay barren, deceptively beautiful moorland.

  Everyone followed.

  ——

  Once they’d reached a pathway on the outskirts of Malham, Kevin—the technology guy—produced a small gadget from one jacket pocket. “Why don’t we go to the cove’s edge?” he proposed, activating the machine, which gave a short tinkle of music. “My sat-nav here’ll guarantee us orientation, and there’s plenty of time, yes?”

  Jim thought about replying, “Plenty of time for you maybe…” but managed to temper his emotion. He gripped his wife’s hand tightly as another pain tugged at his chest.

  The truth was that he wanted to venture to the top of this fascinating fault. It was hundreds of yards high, a severe drop. He took perverse pleasure in comparing this slippage to the one in Sheila’s brain. The only difference was that experts had figured out what had caused the fault, yet didn’t have a clue about the medical condition.

  A consensus had already been reached while he’d been thinking. The group was already trudging across a field, headed for a rocky plateau. No other people were out this early, and the town could no longer be seen behind them. The land here was millions of years old. It frightened Jim.

  The cove’s top was composed of great slabs of whitish rock divided into chunks by foot-wide cavities. Inside each groove, complicated webs were stretched, most bearing arachnid tenants too unpleasant to observe for long. Jim clutched Sheila, drawing her attention away from the spiders. He wasn’t about to give up on her yet, and indeed never would.

  While the other group members moved towards the brink of the fault, Jim couldn’t help reflecting on a distant yet vivid memory. It involved him and Sheila as fourteen-year-olds, she flinching back from an insect on a country wall near their homes, him taking this opportunity to hug her, despite little in their past hinting at such intimacy…and then their first kiss. During the following weeks, he’d looked repeatedly out of his bedroom window at hers across the road. One night he’d seen her arranging books on shelves, her slender belly exposed under a loose shirt as she reached up. Had he ever witnessed a finer sight tha
n this? Had his whole life revolved around that image? He thought that was probably true, and the realisation was heartbreaking.

  He looked at her now, at her eyes gazing uncomprehendingly across this ancient landscape. What was she thinking? Despite being unable to articulate her feelings, could she recall similar memories to his? Did these scuttle around in her brain like…like spiders? Or was she just as dead as he’d recently experienced her, a living zombie you couldn’t even put a bullet into?

  Jim was growing bitter again and knew he ought to focus on practical things, like keeping fit, moving on, encouraging new interests.

  He said to Derek, “Shouldn’t we be making tracks? Sheila gets restless after a while. I’d like to keep moving…if that’s okay with everyone else, of course. ”

  There was a chorus of agreement, of understanding where there could be no understanding, and then the group returned to its previous path, crossing hills that appeared as innocuous as most serial killers were reputed to look.

  ——

  The conversation began after they’d travelled about a mile. Mark, the ex-solicitor, started it. “I trust you remembered to bring the map, Del’…”

  “Have it right here in my satchel, my friend. ”

  “What do we need a map for?” asked Kevin, brandishing his sat-nav system. “We’ll never get lost with one of these marvels. Even now, amid all this…nothingness, it’s picking us up by satellite. Just a case of typing ‘Malham’ into its ‘navigate to’ box, and we’re sorted. ”

  “If it’s guidance you’re after, ” Jane added, “then look no further than G…”

  “I’d rather place my trust in science, if it’s all the same to you, ” said Peter the palaeontologist, and that was when Jim decided to make a contribution.

  “I had a thought the other day that really spooked me. ”

  It was getting on for lunchtime; the sky was a crimson sheet draped across the purple-green horizon. Rocks ruined the flatness of the surroundings and somewhere out of sight a stream trickled. But the trampled path ahead served as a reminder that other people had been here recently, and perhaps that was why Derek asked Jim, “Do you want to share it with us, mate?”

  Maybe the ex-teacher had been mindful of Sheila, who sniffed the air as if detecting something nearby, which caused her nose to wrinkle with distaste. Whatever the truth was, Jim needed no more persuasion to reveal his unsettling notion. It had disturbed him recently; he supposed these were the kind of ruminations a man in his position couldn’t help but entertain. And as the group continued trudging along a preordained route, he began.

  “Well, let me put it this way. There are seven of us here today and our average age is…what? Sixty? Sixty-five?”

  A murmur of agreement followed, marred only by something rustling at what must be a fair distance. Perhaps the persistent breeze had brought these sounds, distorting them in the process: the soft, damp noises resembled legs moving…but surely that was just echoes of the group’s own strides pacing on.

  Then Jim continued. “Okay, we’re all contemporaries, I realise that, but imagine if we’d lived, as it were, head to toe. I mean, imagine that when one was born, another had just died, and when that person was born, another had died, and so on…until we reach the birth of the first person: the first of we seven. ” He paused a moment and then asked, “What year would it be?”

  While experiencing another twinge in his chest, Jim overheard his wife mumbling. Was she doing the mental calculation he’d proposed, just as the others appeared to be? Surely not. In truth, he had the impression that she was staving off anxiety, the way she had before her illness, an involuntary expression of nebulous fears. It had apparently worked for her. Never for him, though.

  Seconds later, Mark said, “It’s 2013 now. Sixty times seven makes 420. It would be approximately 1593, then, wouldn’t it?”

  Looking either puzzled or unsettled, Kevin glanced at Jim. “Where’re you heading with all this, pal?”

  “I’m simply making the point that time is deceptive. 1593 sounds like a long time ago, but it’s actually no more than the sum of all our ages added together. You see?” There was another pause, which nobody filled, so Jim added, “Well, I thought it was creepy. ”

  “I get it, ” Jane said, her tone merciful. “And if there were, er, let’s see now, if there were about a hundred here today and we were all lined up end to end, it’d be like a…like a ladder taking us right back to the creation of the world. ”

  “How do you work that one out?” asked Peter, shaking his head.

  “6000 years, ” replied Jane, and then the sky groaned with something like imminent thunder.

  “I’m afraid your foolish assumptions undercut your mathematics, my dear. Even if we want to trace back the origins of only our species—of Homo sapiens—we’d need…oh, shall we say, about four thousand of us. The birth of mankind was probably around 250, 000 years ago. And God alone knows how many we’d require to go even further back…”

  Something disagreed, scrabbling frantically nearby, but as nobody could see it, the discussion continued.

  “And before you leap upon my figure of speech, Jane, ” Peter added quickly, “allow me to suggest that God is extinct. Someone killed him—Nietzsche, wasn’t it?”

  “Darwin, actually, ” Derek said.

  “It may have been Copernicus, ” added Kevin, wrestling again with his sat-nav system.

  Jim’s chest suffered another twinge, and for a moment he believed that Sheila would comfort him as he clutched his sternum. This expectation went back further, however; despite his nascent hypochondriasis, his mum had often reassured him he wasn’t seriously ill. It disturbed him to think that this was why he’d subconsciously developed the problem, to gain affection from others.

  “There, there, James, get a good night’s sleep and it’ll be better in the morning, ” his mum had always said. It was funny how vivid memory was, how human time could be mischievous…Indeed, that was the point he’d been trying to make, so how had his comment prompted such a pompous squabble?

  It had started to rain. They should all take shelter and eat the lunch they’d packed in their bags. Thankfully, the fractious debate seemed to be over.

  And of course the thing crawling alongside them, unseen and languid, was well pleased. It didn’t issue another sound…at least, none so soon; none earlier than it needed to.

  ——

  At three o’clock, they decided to turn back. Kevin had persuaded them to take an alternative route to the official one from the website Derek had accessed, and as he’d brought a sat-nav system and—more importantly—Derek had a paper map to serve as a backup, they’d all consented to this change of direction.

  An hour later, however, they were regretting it.

  “I can’t understand it, ” Kevin told them, shaking his gadget. “It says that Malham is directly up ahead, but…but…”

  But there was nothing. The moors were spread before them like a giant web stirring in a gathering wind. That was an effect of smarting eyes, of course, but panic had set in anyway. Jane was particularly vehement in her exhortations.

  “Oh, somebody help us, ” she said, gripping the cross around her neck.

  “Hey, calm down, ” said Mark, his voice steady. “Let’s not get carried away. ”

  A ragged shape beside a rock to their left threatened to do just that…but it was just a tree boasting naked limbs and rattling like bones.

  Mark quickly finished, “There’s got to be a logical solution to our problem. ”

  “Fear not, folks, ” Kevin exclaimed, and with his free hand produced a mobile phone from one jacket pocket. He proceeded to dial three identical digits—999, presumably—and then listened to the handset, wearing a smug expression…which faltered seconds later. Looking embarrassed, he terminated the call and put away the phone. “Curse it. No reception. ”

  “Spider!” called Sheila, and Jim had to settle her down as something stirred nearby with almost intan
gible restlessness. Surely whatever it had been hadn’t blocked the telephone call…

  Jim glanced at Derek and Kevin, who’d begun to confer, frowning respectively over their preferred forms of guidance.

  Peter stepped across to Jim. “What was all that about earlier, my friend? The touch of impending mortality? Well, we’re all in the same boat…an allusion to the Ark that dear Ms Harrison would perhaps seize too readily upon, eh?”

  The religious woman hadn’t heard this joke, and Jim hadn’t felt like laughing anyway. His attention had turned again to his wife. Her scrawny body, once so elegant, was unable to walk much further. Something must be done.

  “Any luck, guys?” Jim asked the navigators.

  “It looks like we went wrong sometime after lunch, ” Kevin replied, clearly trying to salvage a little self-respect.

  “I reckon that if we keep heading south, we’ll reach Malham eventually, ” Derek added, possibly feeling vindicated with the paper map in one hand. “The land’s deceptive out here. That flatness over there…”—he pointed—“…is actually a gradual decline. ”

  Sounds like the life-course itself, thought Jim, but kept this to himself as they all recommenced walking across a planet nobody really understood.

  ——

  They were lost. It was getting darker. And now they were unable to see whatever might draw closer as their resolve faltered.

  Then an argument struck up, with Jane at its helm.

  “I can’t believe this is happening to us! Kevin, you fool. And you, Derek, should have known better!”

  “So much for your faith, ” Peter said, far from helpfully in Jim’s opinion. Nevertheless, the academic went swiftly on. “Of course we shouldn’t expect anything more from someone who refuses to face up to facts. ”

  “Hold on a minute, Pete, ” interrupted Mark, his face resolute. “That’s hardly fair. It’s a fact that we’re lost, after all. Not much we can do about that—even with the most accurate theories in the world. ”