Project Blackwater: Kharis (Part 1 of 2)

What happens when a hidden past is brought back to life?

This is the first time I’ve participated in a joint story project on Substack. Heck, it’s the first time I’ve actually put my fiction on Substack. I was planning to wait until I had my current WIP in better shape before doing that. But when I saw this project prompt, an old idea came to mind and I couldn’t resist.

Project Blackwater was started by The Chronicler so please check out that first post here! Then scroll down to read my take on it. Enjoy!

Project Blackwater

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I know it’s a mistake as soon as I find myself in the lobby. The space reminds me of the entrance to the Institute of Neurolinguistics, the place I left behind half a world and three decades ago. The grey winter light filtering in from the cobbled streets of the Old Town, the mustardy sofas, the vending machine selling Coke and Monster Munch, the other vending machine with the bad coffee. The reception desk, too, only there’s no-one there.

I hear the echo of my footsteps on the tiled floor. To my right, as I face the reception desk, there’s a door leading down to where the labs would be, if this were really the Institute. I walk round the pillar by the side of the desk and see the other set of doors to the offices. And of course there’s the elevator, that ancient caged affair with the scissor gate you have to haul open manually.

I know it’s a mistake, because this is the part of my subconscious that I locked up and buried years ago. I would never have signed up for this if I’d known. There’s a reason I avoid dreaming. There’s a reason I moved to a different continent and burned my bridges, almost literally, to the past. There’s a reason I live out in the woods and come into the city as little as possible. If I didn’t need that extra cash to buy a new laptop and repair the roof this winter, I’d never have answered that ad.

But here I am, and I need to figure out what to do next. I walk round the lobby again. The emptiness spooks me. I look out the rain-streaked window onto the street, and am tempted to step out that door, when I turn my head and see that the double door to the lab corridor has opened. From where I’m standing, I can’t see much of the corridor on the other side, just the same pale-green flooring and cream-painted wall. But it seems to me that from that corridor a voice is whispering. Whispering the language I tried to burn and bury.

I feel a chill run through my veins. The craving hits me, for the first time in years. It draws me a few steps towards that door without me even realising my feet have moved. I lick my dry lips.

I’m nearly at the threshold when the chain of the elevator behind me clanks into action. The box shudders down through the cage and halts, and the door springs open. And Zoe is there, as she was before everything happened. She hauls the scissor gate open.

“Come with me,” she says.

But the voice, the old man’s voice, whispers again from somewhere deep in the corridor behind me. For a terrible moment I have the freedom to choose, and then I turn my back on Zoe and step into the corridor.

***

It’s April, and I’m standing beneath a huge cherry blossom in the courtyard behind a grimy post-Soviet block of flats. It’s not quite like I remember it, though, because Ciprian is there. In the tree. He looks as gorgeous as he did back then, in those eight months or so that we were together, those days that we were happy. I’ve not seen him since I left. He must be getting old by now. I, with my particular condition, have probably aged less, although I have some hope that eventually I’ll catch up with him. I even found a few white hairs this autumn.

He sees me and jumps down from the tree, and I see that he has wings. Not like an angel’s wings, or at least not like a Christmas-card angel, but more like huge iridescent pigeon’s wings, silver-purple-green like the sea back home. The colour of his eyes.

He looks at me and says something, but the sound is muffled the way it is in dreams sometimes. I see pain in his face, and fear. He steps closer and points, and I see that I’m carrying my old field linguistics kit. He shakes his head and gestures as if to say give it to me, but I can’t.

One of the metal security doors guarding one of the stairwells up to the flats clangs open, but no-one comes out. The door is a dark mouth in the grey-painted concrete. I know where it leads. The old man’s voice echoes down to me, stronger than before. I turn my head and look back at Ciprian just before I step into the dank stairwell. He looks at me in sadness and horror, and calls to me, and I do hear that. He calls my name, the one I left behind. The one I buried with the language. Perdita.

***

It’s the day of the feast. The old man is there, in the same brown trousers and mustard-coloured cardigan he used to wear, and the Paisley-pattern tie. His wife is there, making cabbage-leaf dumplings in the kitchen, and the cramped old apartment smells of boiled cabbage. There’s the basin of blood on the formica sideboard, slowly congealing. There’s the old clock that chimed at odd hours. There are the hundreds of books stacked two deep in the bookshelves, some of them rare first editions that would fetch thousands of pounds on the antiquarian market.

The older son comes in, the one who was so keen for me to learn the language. I’m sitting with the old man, he in one chintzy armchair and me in the other. We’re going over vocabulary from previous sessions. I’ve been learning the language for almost a year now, and I would say I’m at an intermediate level. The old man speaks English well, with just a hint of a Slavic accent, and that helps a lot.

We go onto new vocabulary and I take my recorder out. It becomes a clam or an oyster of some sort that embeds itself into the thin flesh on the back of my right hand and opens like a mouth with a pale tongue.

Apart from the clam thing, the scene is horribly like I remember it. I point at different objects in the room, checking the words. The grandmother clock. The plastic flowers in the vase on the table. Cabbage-leaf dumplings. The basin of blood. Just like before, the old man doesn’t want to talk about that. And just like before, the son tells him not to be silly, and the old man licks his bloodless lips with his oddly pale tongue and I notice that his dentures look somehow different today.

Then he tells me the word for pig’s blood, which is what’s in the basin, and then he explains the words for cow’s blood and chicken’s blood, and I see how the blood prefix modifies the noun for the animal. So I try the same pattern for human blood. And now I see the old man’s pale face grow paler, and the son smile an odd and suddenly cruel smile, and the son tells me no, for humans they use a different word, and he tells me, and I repeat it. And I feel the first stirrings of a strange thirst.

The feast is on the table. The smell of cabbage has been overlaid with the fragrance of roasted pork. The source of the fragrance, a whole suckling pig complete with tail and trotters, sits on a heavy silver platter in the centre, with a small apple in its mouth. The sun has just set, and through the condensation-streaked windows to the west the sky above the smog-stained block opposite is a rich orange.

The lights have been turned off, and candles lit. There’s a huge branching silver candelabra in the middle of the dining table, next to the suckling pig, and smaller candlesticks arrayed around all the bookcases and in all the windowsills. The soft yellow light falls in pools on the glasses filled with rich red wine and on the antique silverware.

“It reminds us of the old days, back home,” says the old man.

I feel very hungry.

“Almost ready,” says the older son, appearing from the tiny kitchen. His face glows like candlewax, but his dark clothes fade into the gloom of an unlit corner.

Suddenly, the outer door of the apartment bursts open. It’s the younger son, whose name I’ve forgotten.

“Sweetie, you’re home!” cries his mother joyfully. She kisses her boy on both cheeks.

“I’m not staying,” he said. “I just came to ask you again. To beg you. Stop.”

He looked at me. “Please come with me, miss. It’s best not to stay for the feast.”

I know he’s right, because I know what’s going to happen. Because I didn’t listen that time. I will my feet to move towards the door, but I only take a tiny shuffle and then the hunger and thirst overcomes me.

“Let’s eat,” says the old man. He gives me one of the crystal glasses of wine. He tries to give another to his younger son, but he refuses and disappears.

“A toast!” says the old man. “To family and friends, old and new, absent and present. To fûlchr!”

“To fûlchr!” we echo, and drink, and the clam thing on my hand echoes it too. The wine is like port, heavy and sweet, and when I’ve drunk I feel even thirstier.

We sit round the table, the four of us. Then the suckling pig opens its eyes. It has pale eyelids with delicate lashes, like a child’s, and it struggles a little to open them because the roasting has made them a little crispy. It speaks, but is muffled by the apple in its mouth. It somehow spits it out, and croaks two words. Get out.

***

Then the plates are gone and instead of the pig, Zoe is there, lying asleep on the table. She’s wearing a lacy white gown, almost like a bride’s, almost like the lacy white tablecloth underneath her.

My thirst is stronger than ever. The old man takes the silver knife with the ivory handle, and pierces the tiny hole at the base of her exposed neck. He passes it to his son, who pierces her left wrist, then the old lady pierces her right wrist. The tiny beads of blood well up, and they drink. I can’t move.

Then the old man beckons to me, and I bend and put my lips to Zoe’s blood, and I suck like a newborn until he puts a hand on my shoulder and says “Enough”.

I lift my head and lick my lips. I think that in the corner of the room, beyond the candlelight, a dark figure is standing, but then it disappears back into the shadows.

Then I look down at my friend, and I cry out in horror. It’s worse this time than when it happened in real life, and not just because in reality the pig didn’t speak and Ciprian didn’t have wings. It’s worse because this time I knew, and I still did it.

Like before, the old man says “Don’t worry. Your friend will be fine. She’ll wake up tomorrow morning and feel nothing worse than a hangover.”

“Welcome to the family,” says the older son. “Welcome to the fûlchr. You’re one of us now.”

“Yes,” says the old man, a little sadly. “Yes, you’re one of us. But this is just the beginning. Our language, our culture, is rich and deep and you’ve only scratched the surface. I’ll keep teaching you as long as I can, but my time, surprising as it may sound, is limited. But I think your fluency and vocabulary can still grow a lot before you go back to your country.”

“But this…” I wave at Zoe on the table. “What are you? What am I?”

The old man snorted. “Don’t worry. The blood is only a minor part of the fûlchr, and it’s one that we have adapted significantly since, oh, since round about the rise of the Holy Roman Empire.”

“Then..”

“The main thing is the language,” says the son. “That’s what we want to preserve and spread. That’s the heart of our culture. That’s what’s dying.”

Like before, I clutch at the small gold cross on its chain round my neck. It feels as cool and comforting as ever.

“You don’t believe that rot people write about garlic and crucifixes and such?” asked the old man. They all laugh. The old man laughs especially hard, a wheezy old-man laugh. “You know,” he goes on, “Once, when I was still a young man and foolish, I met that fellow Stoker in a bar in London. Thought he might be sympathetic to our cause. But he took what I told him and turned into that garbled nonsense that people have been spewing ever since.

“So don’t worry. You’ve not lost your eternal soul. Back in the village, I’ve even been to mass from time to time, for funerals and such. And you’re not immortal, though if you keep learning you might live longer than your contemporaries. And as long as there’s a few of us alive and the language is alive, the fûlchr is alive.”

***
The old man’s face freezes, mouth half open with his next sentence unborn. I know he’s going to explain next about his younger son and how he’s rejected the fûlchr, and that eventually they help me take Zoe back to Ciprian’s place, and I sit awake all night looking over my notes and fighting the terrible thirst. And I know that after that I burn my notes and throw my laptop into the black water of the river and I go back to the Institute and delete everything, and I persuade Scott the server admin to show me where the backups are kept and I break in one night and take an axe to the database server. But now, in the candlelit apartment that still smells of roast pork, everything’s frozen. The old man is frozen, and his wife, and the son. Even the candle flames have frozen. And then a dark shape steps out from the shadows.

“Remarkable,” it says. The shape comes into the circle of candlelight, and I recognize him. Dr Robert Karasevdas, the head of Elysium. I’d not met him personally, but his face was on all the company’s materials and he had featured prominently in the video we’d had to watch before signing the consent forms and taking the pill.

“Remarkable,” he says again, with a smile not unlike the older son’s. “Quite fascinating.”

He looks me up and down, eyes glittering in the candlelight as he examines me.

“We don’t usually interrupt like this, but there were certain abnormalities in your readings. And unfortunately, that included the linguistic processing. That language you were speaking is somehow not in our database. Hence the personal presence.” He gives a slight and slightly mocking bow. “Tell me, please, what were you speaking just now?”

I shake my head. I’m still clutching the cross around my neck.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You’ll not remember any of this when you wake. What language is it?”

“No,” I manage, my voice harsh in my own ears.

“Tell me.”

I shake my head again, stronger. “I don’t think so.”

He steps round the end of the table, towards me. “Why not?” he asks, his eyes narrowing.

“None of your business.”

He looks me up and down again. He seems bigger than he was a minute ago.

“I will have this,” he said, “whether you think it’s my business or not. This is bigger than you, or me, or any of us.”

“No.”

“I saw what you did just now. And we can tell, you know” — he looks at the tablet he’s holding — “we can see which parts of your dream are true memories and which are simply the excesses of your subconscious.”

I’m not sure if he’s lying or not, but I feel my blood run cold.

“And I’ve seen your medical records,” he went on. “I’ve seen your date of birth, and I’ve seen your cardio stats and your telomere measurements, and none of these, frankly, are what I’d expect for a woman of almost sixty. Not to mention your overall appearance, though I admit that’s harder to go by these days.”

He takes a step closer, and licks his lips. “Do you know how important this could be for our research?”

I feel myself trembling. “I’d never have agreed to this if I’d known this would happen,” I manage.

He shrugs. “Science can’t wait for those kinds of scruples.”

“No. I’m withdrawing from participation in this study.”

His face is filled with malevolence. “Suit yourself,” he hisses. “Looks like we’ll have to do it the hard way.” He turns and heads for the door to the stairwell. I try to follow, but can only move in slow motion, like someone underwater. I notice the candles flicker back into motion, and the people in the room begin to move again, but also in slow motion. I try to call out, Jesus Son of God have mercy on me, a sinner, but I’m unable to produce any sound.

***
The door slams, and I’m suddenly free to move again. I throw myself forward, grab the door handle, and pull. Nothing happens. The deadbolt is locked. The older son is behind me. He places a clammy hand on my arm. I fumble with the lock and get it open, shaking him off. I burst out into the stairwell and slam the door behind me.

“Go,” says a voice. “I’ll hold them off.” It’s the younger son. He braces himself against the door, and I run.

At first, there’s no sign of Dr Karasevdas in the courtyard. Then I see Ciprian. He’s slumped on the ground near the cherry tree, clutching his abdomen. Blood is pulsing from a gunshot wound. His wings are bedraggled and dirty. Even in that moment, I feel the desire for that blood.

“That way,” he moans. I run for the gate. I can’t let Karasevdas get away. I can’t let him find out about the fûlchr. I can’t allow the language to get out. I can’t let others suffer my fate.

I’m back in the lab corridor in the Institute of Neurolinguistics. There’s a dark shape ahead of me, silhouetted against the light at the other end. I try to run, but no matter how hard I try, the corridor never seems to get shorter. Only when the dark shape disappears through the door to the lobby do time and space seem to normalize. But when I get to the door, it’s immensely heavy. It takes all my strength to push it open, and when I do Dr Karasevdas is gone.

Zoe is still there, in the elevator. The scissor gate has been locked and she’s rattling it angrily. I stagger over and touch her fingertips through the grille.

“He’s gone,” she said. “Out there.” She points at the door to the street.

I feel the tears well in my eyes.

“What have I done?” I whisper.

“You have to stop him,” she says. “You have to go now and stop him.”

“What have I done?” I say again.

“Kharis,” she says, using the name she never knew me by, the name I took for my new life. “Kharis, never mind that just now. Go.”

“I love you,” I say. I walk to the outer door and push it open, and for a moment I see the winter rain falling on the cobblestones. And then I step through.