Morpheus Tales: The Best Weird Fiction Volume 4 Ebook

Introduction

Putting these books together is amazing for me. We first published these stories way back in 2011, and looking back it’s fantastic that we received such high-quality submissions. To those who submitted, whether your work was accepted or not, you helped make Morpheus Tales what it is and we thank you for it. Every submission raises the standard of the finished product.

The stories collected here are the best of the best. Morpheus Tales was getting over a hundred submissions a week, and we only had space for 8-12 stories per issue, four times a year. More intelligent people than I can work out the percentage of success, but if you were published by us you did pretty damn well!

Things have changed a lot since the first issue was published; for a start we now publish two magazines, including the free Morpheus Tales Supplement. We’ve also published a series of special issue, and this is our sixth book. We hope to publish even more. Our excellent proof-reader Sheri White has taken over editor for Morpheus Tales Magazine, and without her we wouldn’t still be here.

Without our contributors, supporters, and readers we wouldn’t still be here and you wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands. Thank you to everyone for their help, support, and contributions. And come join us:

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To more goosebumps…

Adam Bradley

Other Years By Gary Budgen

Bartlett threw a five and two and moved Boot. It landed on Pall Mall. That was all right, Boot owned Pall Mall. Now it was Top Hat’s turn. He picked up the dice and held them, looking across the board. There were red hotels all along the Oxford Street and Regent Street complex; could be tricky.

Rachel had once nagged him about playing Monopoly alone. But didn’t people play chess against themselves?

Now Rachel was long gone; shacked up with Bartlett’s old school friend Simon. She had never been to this particular flat, this particular year. He looked around, at the walls pocked with damp, through the kitchen door at the washing-up he had never attempted. Soon it would be time to move on; there were plenty of empty flats in this version of 2005.

He threw the dice and moved Top Hat and landed on Liverpool Street Station. For a moment he started, picked up the nickel-tin model and stared at it. Then he laughed. He was due at Liverpool Street in about half an hour.

# # #

Imagine time, the Presence had said. Each passing year is like a square on a board. Now imagine cards stacked on each of those squares, stacked upwards infinitely. The succession of squares on the board is not altered in any way but the cards stacked on top are the extra slices of time, the extra years that exist unseen at an angle to the linear progression of time.

# # #

Outside Liverpool Street Station in a prosperous version of 2002, Simon saw Bartlett approach. In this version of reality they hadn’t seen each other for years. Simon’s sharp suit was emblematic of the steel and glass opulence all around.

Simon greeted him with a warm smile. Bartlett pulled the hammer from his pocket and swung it into Simon’s head, pummelled him as he lay on the ground. Then he switched back to another year before anyone could intervene.

# # #

Bartlett was a Unique. He only existed in one particular time-line and so had been given license, by the Presence, to wander though all the others. The time-line in which he originated was base-time, the succession of squares on the board, not the other years that existed at an angle to them. Base-time must never be violated, that was the rule wasn’t it? The one principle that must be maintained. The Presence had, so far, ignored all his murders of Simon, because the original Simon still existed in base-time spawning constant alternate versions of himself every time he made a decision. But the Presence must know about the hammers, knives, guns and bludgeons, about all the various killings. But as long as Bartlett went about his missions across the varying realities nothing was ever said.

Bartlett made the call from the Angel Tavern. After the usual hissing, the Presence asked him what he had been doing and the double vodka helped him lie about a non-existent riot he hadn’t seen down the Old Kent Road. He’d have to spend some token time doing some real work, go and observe the manifestations of the crisis-ridden multiverse: demonstrations, street battles and public executions; the sort of events that the Presence had a taste for.

He spent the rest of the day in the Angel Tavern taking advantage of the special offer on doubles, knowing that his thoughts would wander down familiar ways, other years.

The stupidest thing was that it was Bartlett who had introduced Rachel to Simon in the first place, at a school reunion that he’d taken her to. Everything about Simon oozed success, sweated money. Bartlett assumed Rachel would feel the same about the man as he did. Simon’s appearance summed him up, a neatly tailored suit that might have been understated except for the diamond tiepin and cufflinks. The equation of desirability, sexual prowess with wealth was beneath Rachel though. Surely.

It was only as the evening wore on and Rachel gave the cold shoulder to the little digs about his old school friend Simon, that Bartlett became slowly flushed with unease. The warm pints filled him with a tepid fatigue until he found himself quietly ranting to Rachel about the bastard, unable to change. Then he returned from one of his many visits to the bar to find Rachel and Simon entwined in a chat about Falling Chairs, a film Bartlett had refused to take her to, on the grounds of its pseudo-intellectual aspirations, its glitz and lack of substance. No wonder he bloody likes it, Bartlett had said, in the taxi argument home. The screech of the cab pulling up to their flat coincided with Rachel’s own. At least, she screamed, Simon was interested in something other than himself.

Two months later Rachel and Simon would be living together. Some time after, Bartlett was contacted by the Presence. The anonymous phone calls began with just hissing, then began to echo back Bartlett’s desperate who’s there, who’s there. Then the Presence began to talk.

# # #

You are a worm Bartlett. If time can be perceived spatially then understand that I know you as you exist across it. To me you are a giant worm; each of your segments is your existence at any one point in time. Your perception will only ever be one of those segments. Because there are no duplicates of you, I comprehend your totality and so allow you to roam time. You are my agent now Bartlett and will always do my will.

# # #

The day after Liverpool Street Bartlett was in the back ways of Whitechapel, crossing a street and feeling the scabbed surface of the not yet tarmaced road in the hot summer of 1989. Already he was sweating inside the trench coat as he placed his head against the fence where he knew there would be a hole. For a second he was overcome with the smell of creosote, sickening sweet familiarity, choking him with his childhood.

At the back of the line he could see young Simon talking to another boy, a small boy in a shirt that was too big for him. Simon would be selling him football cards that, it turned out, had been bullied from an infant.

In the pocket of his trench coat he could feel the weight of the hammer, felt his hand glide along the shaft with sweat.

It wasn’t easy killing a child. But Bartlett knew this child would become the man who took Rachel away. Anyway it was only another version of Simon, it wasn’t really murder at all.

Afterwards Bartlett imagined the headlines about the maniac going berserk.

The public would be so helpful.

The police were always so good in cases like this.

In another year the phone rang as he was passing a telephone box. After the initial hissing Bartlett waited for the Presence to speak. But the hissing grew louder. Bartlett felt his head being filled with whisperings, just below the level of decipherment. Somehow though he knew they were instructions, co-ordinates.

# # #

In the Angel Tavern again Bartlett spent the day drinking until he could just manage the triangular route from bar to toilet to table. He staggered home through a heavy downpour. Back in his flat he slumped into an armchair and looked over the Monopoly board, its neat little chunks of time, its red and green buildings could be such fine places to live.

When at last he managed to rise he folded in the board as though closing a book, all the houses and hotels, cards and money, Top Hat and Boot, falling to the centre in a landslide. He rose unsteadily and making his way over to the window he threw the whole lot out, the pieces scattering and the board falling to be soaked by the rain.

In the morning he came into the living room and saw that the Monopoly board was gone and that he was further away from understanding his situation than he had ever been.

# # #

It was a clear morning in Islington where the Presence’s instructions had compelled him to come; for some reason he was still in base-time. When he came to rest he realised there must be some mistake, it couldn’t have been the Presence that had compelled him to come here but his own obsessions because he was hiding behind a bush opposite the house that Simon and Rachel shared.

He had no weapon about him but for some reason he had bought a newspaper at King’s Cross. He hadn’t glanced at it during the whole journey. Now its purpose was clear. It was an old trick. He began to fold the paper, kept folding until he had made a hard brick. He held it close and could give it enough force to easily break Simon’s ribs before finishing him off with his bare hands.

Killing someone in base-time would mean that all his or her alternatives would also be annihilated from that point on. It was mass-murder. Mass-murder although the act was the death of one man. Bartlett would resolve the conflict by focusing on that single act.

He hadn’t expected Rachel to answer the door, didn’t want to see her, but of course it was obvious she would be here. She looked him over for a split-second before recognising him whilst he breathed in her familiar scent, a deluge of lost time.

Sean, I… almost didn’t recognise you… she stuttered. Did she gag at the too sweet odour of his unwashed body?

I’ve come to see Simon. There’s something I want to ask him about, eh, about someone at school.

He’s not here, she seemed to hesitate, her head slightly bobbing in indecision. Then a nervous smile broke the surface of her face. Look why don’t you come in. I’ll call him on the mobile and find out what time he’ll be back. You can have a cup of tea or something.

You look like you could use one, she didn’t need to add.

Whilst she pottered about in the kitchen he took off his coat and kicked it under the coffee table and sat down in what proved to be an uncomfortable antique armchair.

When Rachel put down the tray Bartlett suddenly found words spilling from his mouth: Why did you leave me?

Her face showed she’d been expecting this; there was almost a look of relief that its delivery was smoother than expected.

Sean please…

He noticed now that her accent was softer, less real London in it.

Look, he said, I’m not here to have a go. Anyway how can I blame you with all this… he indicated the house, the room, the antique chair. Are you happy with him?

You think I’m just in for the fixtures and fittings?

Then why?

It wasn’t him. Well not the way you think. You always did see things like that didn’t you? You seemed to carry an attitude around with you, as though you were on some sort of trajectory to fuck up and go haywire. Everything I said I could see you measuring up, assessing as though there were some secret meaning to it. Even after we finished I could see it. I heard all about you. You drank and got into fights at any excuse. You know Simon says that he sees you sometimes. Watching him. Odd moments, years apart. Then he says maybe he was just imagining it. But he isn’t is he?

Her voice had risen in pitch without changing hardly at all in volume. When she finished she stared into her cup.

Bartlett looked at her. She had changed from the woman he had known, expensive clothes and the styled hair.

So you think things couldn’t have worked out any differently? he asked and almost laughed out loud at his own question; after years of wandering the paths of other people’s alternative lives he knew he never had any other life than the one he had led. The Presence had chosen him because of this uniqueness, the fact that nothing he ever did spawned a divergent path. Time was always collapsing for him, not in any great avalanche but in a simple day-to-day way, the cards