The Dark Side of the Road

  The butler showed me to my room, situated right at the furthest end of the corridor. No number on the door; just a stylized portrait of a red rose. Jeeves unlocked the door for me, handed me the key, and then led me into the room.

  ‘This is the Rose Room, sir. So called because of the roses on the wallpaper. All the rooms have their own flower motif. Bluebell, Tulip, Foxglove. And so on.’

  I looked around, doing my best to look as though I wasn’t sure whether I was going to accept the room or not. You have to demonstrate your independence to butlers or they’ll walk all over you. The room was big enough to be airy, but still pleasantly cosy. Nicely aged furnishings and fittings, some modernish prints on the walls. All of it easy enough on the eye. A large four-poster bed took up most of the space, with a mattress big enough for some serious fun and games. I wanted to jump on to it and bounce up and down, just to see the look on the butler’s face, but I had my dignity to think of. My suitcase sat on the bed, open and empty. I looked at Jeeves.

  ‘I have taken the liberty of unpacking for you, sir. Everything has been put away in its proper place.’

  ‘Good thing I didn’t have time to pack any of my usual surprises,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.’

  ‘A gentleman’s gentleman is never embarrassed, sir,’ said Jeeves. ‘Only, sometimes, terribly disappointed.’

  He showed me the door to the adjoining bathroom, and then made a point of indicating the open fire crackling cheerfully in the recessed fireplace.

  ‘There is no central heating in Belcourt Manor, sir. Apparently Mister Belcourt’s predecessors believed such things made you soft. When Mister Belcourt informed me you were on your way, I prepared a fire in here, to take the chill off your room. But I am afraid you will have to keep the fire going yourself. Top it up, when necessary. No staff, you see. They’re all at home, with their families.’

  ‘But not you and the cook,’ I said.

  Jeeves smiled, briefly. ‘Mister Belcourt does pay exceedingly good wages, sir. And we both do love our work.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘But what exactly is your work, Jeeves?’

  ‘I am here to see that everything goes smoothly for Mister Belcourt’s Christmas gathering, sir. Now; I have filled the coal scuttle and laid in a supply of freshly-cut wood, to keep the fire going. There should be more than enough to see you through the night and well into the morning, but do feel free to help yourself to more from the coal bunker, which you will find outside the house, round the back. I’d make what you have last, if I were you, sir.’

  ‘I’m sure this will do fine,’ I said.

  ‘I could arrange for a hot water bottle, if you feel the cold …’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘Tell me … You met the Colonel. What did you think of him?’

  ‘A very impressive gentleman, sir. Very sharp. Very interested in everyone and everything. Just like you, sir.’

  ‘The Colonel invited me to come down here,’ I said carefully, ‘because he believed there was danger here. Some kind of threat … He didn’t say what kind.’

  Jeeves considered that thoughtfully. ‘Danger to himself, or to everyone here?’

  ‘He didn’t say. And now, I can’t ask him.’

  Jeeves stood in thought for a long moment, his dark face impassive, his eyes far away. ‘I will take this under advisement, sir. Now, unless you need me for anything else, I have to speak with Cook about dinner. I would advise you to keep your door locked, for as long as you stay in this house.’

  ‘I always do,’ I said.

  Jeeves nodded and left the Rose Room, his back straight and his head erect. For a butler, he moved very much like a military man. I hefted the heavy old metal key he’d given me. It felt strong and solid. I hoped the lock was, too. Certainly the key made a satisfyingly loud sound as I turned it in the lock.

  It didn’t take me long to find my belongings, scattered through various levels of the massive chest of drawers. My things looked very small, and out of place, in such luxurious surroundings. Everything was neatly folded and arranged. Better than I usually managed. Of course, if I’d known a butler would be putting my things away, I’d have packed my good stuff. Though it had to be said: good was a relative term. I can’t afford to wear clothes that would make me stand out.

  My few toilet things had been neatly arranged on a handy side table, ready for use. They all looked very poor relation, set against the faded opulence of the Rose Room. I peered into the adjoining bathroom. It all appeared functional enough, if very last century. The bath looked big enough to swim laps in.

  I sat down on the end of the four poster bed, my feet swinging freely without touching the floor. I looked up at the ceiling, with its plaster decorations and single shaded electric light, and thought about the two empty floors of rooms above me. There’s always something spooky about empty rooms that no one lives in any more. Packed full of dust and shadows and abandoned memories. Just ghosts of rooms, really. I did wonder whether I should go up and check them out for myself, just in case the Colonel had managed to avoid Jeeves and was hiding out in one of them. Could the danger here really be so great that he felt the need to hide away from everyone, in the dark and the quiet? It didn’t seem likely. I’d never known the Colonel to be afraid of anything. There was the small problem of all the upstairs doors being locked, but he and I knew ways around that. And after all … I only had Jeeves’ word for it that he’d checked all the rooms. I had no reason to trust him.

  Or any of the people down in the drawing room. I was here for the Colonel. No one else.

  I shrugged angrily. I didn’t want any of this. The people, the place, the situation. I hated not knowing what was going on, or what I was here for. The Colonel should have made contact with me the moment I arrived, if things really were as desperate as he implied. Since he hadn’t, I had to assume it was because he couldn’t. That he was in some way being prevented, perhaps even held captive. And the person responsible for that … would have to be very strong and very experienced. The Colonel might be in his forties now, but he was still a first-class field agent in his own right, when the situation demanded. I’d seen him in action. He was fast and he was sneaky, and I would have bet on him against pretty much anyone I knew.

  Since the Colonel wasn’t here to tell me what to do, I’d just have to work it out for myself. Question all the guests, and mine hosts, and see what they had to say for themselves. They weren’t exactly short on secrets and their own precious little intrigues. They all had connections that they didn’t want the others to know about. Alex Khan and Melanie Belcourt, for example. They both wanted Walter to retire from running his company, apparently for their own separate reasons … but did their relationship go deeper than that?

  And I really wasn’t happy that two of the people in this small gathering had known me before, in different parts of my past. Khan at Black Heir, in the eighties. And Diana in Paris, in ’sixty-nine. It could be a coincidence. Stranger things have happened, in my life. Or, it could all have been carefully arranged, to lure me into a trap. There are always people looking for me. Wanting to get their hands on me …

  I sat on the end of the bed, swinging my feet idly, sinking comfortably into the deep deep mattress. Listening to the wind howl and the locked shutters rattle outside my window. There was something very comforting about being safe and warm and cosy inside, while bad weather prowled around outside, unable to get at me. I stared into the leaping flames of the banked fire at the other end of the room, listened to them crackle … The air was deliciously warm, and the bed was almost indecently comfortable. I wanted so very much to be able to just lie down and rest, to stretch out and relax, let the aches of the day’s hard driving just slip away … but I didn’t dare. I was too tired. I had to stay awake and alert until I figured out where the Colonel was and what the hell was really going on here at Belcourt Manor.

  And then; I had a dream that wasn’t a dream.

  Another place, another time. Far and fa
r away, and close as yesterday. A raging sea, with waves big as mountains. Heavy dark purple waters slamming against a massive overbearing cliff, made up of smooth and almost organic shapes. A huge structure stood on top of the cliff, strange and overpowering. All metal slabs and shining surfaces, with vicious spikes and unnatural protrusions, following no pattern or purpose I could make any sense of. Some parts of the structure weren’t there all of the time, fading or folding in and out, new parts replacing old in some terribly intricate endless cycle. The whole thing rose up and up, almost beyond bearing, on a scale beyond human acceptance. Towers blossomed like flowers as they stabbed the sky. Vivid piercing lights came and went, in explosions of colours.

  And all of this under a bottle green sky, with a fierce white sun, and three small moons that went shooting across the cloudless heavens. There were sounds all around that I couldn’t identify or understand, but were still horribly familiar for all that. A series of images flashed before my unblinking eyes; strange shapes, hauntingly familiar scenes; freakish, nightmarish, disturbing. A great Voice spoke my name … and it wasn’t ‘Ishmael’.

  Something made me scream. Something made me feel sick. Something made me feel horribly lonely, and sad, for people and places lost.

  The dream that was not a dream changed abruptly. Became something more recent. I was inside a place I immediately recognized, but could no longer remember the name of. As though its true name and nature had been concealed from me; hovering forever just on the tip of my mental tongue.

  The interior of an artificial place. Not a building, but still a constructed thing. A shimmering phosphorescent glow squirmed up and down great curving walls, ridged like bone or coral, while complex machineries with more than three spatial dimensions rose up around me, doing things I couldn’t understand or appreciate, but that I nevertheless knew were desperately important and significant. Things were happening all around me, with impossible speed. I was held in place, restrained, while terrible long needles plunged into me from every side, sinking in deep. Doing things to me. I felt no pain, but I could feel them working. And I couldn’t look down. I wasn’t allowed to look down, in this dream or memory. Because I wasn’t supposed to see what I looked like.

  A machine voice spoke to me, giving me information and instructions, and I couldn’t understand any of it. I said something in return, and my voice didn’t sound at all human.

  I came back to myself lying full length on the bed, twitching and trembling, my face covered in a cold sweat. Exhausted, physically and mentally. Sometimes I think these intrusions are memories, and sometimes I think they’re cover memories, to disguise something worse. They hit me out of nowhere, without warning, and they hit me hard. And I can’t escape the feeling that somewhere deep inside, the old me is trying to tell the new me something. Trying desperately to warn me, about something I need to remember …

  So. Time to tell the truth, at last. Or what I have come to believe is the truth.

  I am an alien, passing for human. My starship fell out of the sky over South West England, back in 1963. It hit hard, digging a great hole in the ground. I no longer remember why we crashed, but I think something bad happened, high above the clouds, but under the stars. The rest of my crew were killed in the crash. I was the only survivor. I remember that much, even if I can’t remember who or what the rest of my crew were. My ship’s mechanisms remade me, rewrote my physical form right down to the DNA, so that I could appear human. So I could pass as one of you, unnoticed, undetected, until my ship’s distress beacon could be answered by my own people. So they could come and find me, and pick me up, and take me home again.

  The shape change is standard procedure, in an emergency. Because you must never know we walk among you.

  But because my ship had crashed so very badly, the transformation mechanisms malfunctioned. They gave me a human body, but then they wiped most of my memories. I no longer know who or what I was, before the crash. I don’t know where I came from. I remember staggering away from the crash site, out into my new world, overcome by human thoughts and senses. By the time I was back in control of myself I was miles away, lost and disorientated. I have no idea now where my ship crashed. No point even looking for it, even if I could retrace my steps to roughly the right area. The ship would have followed its standard procedures and buried itself deep underground, hidden behind powerful shields and protections.

  Because we aren’t supposed to be here. I remember that.

  No rescue has ever come. After so many years, I doubt it ever will. Presumably the ship’s distress beacon was also damaged in the crash.

  I have been making my way alone on this Earth, passing for human, for over fifty years now. Never ageing, always looking exactly the same. The transformation machines did good work. Always moving on, hiding in plain sight, staying one step ahead of the human authorities. But it’s become increasingly hard for me to stay under the radar, in this increasingly computerized world, with its ever-changing needs for confirmation of identity. So down the years I have had no choice but to work for many and various powerful subterranean agencies, in return for their protection. For the names and IDs they provide, backed up by all the necessary paperwork, to give me the appearance of a life, and a background.

  I needed their protection because you can’t be the kind of person I am, and do the kind of things I can do, without being noticed. I have moved from place to place and from organization to organization, down the years; and there are a lot of people out there looking for me. Because they want to interrogate me, or vivisect me. One of the reasons I joined Black Heir was to search their files on alien visitations, for some information on who or what I might be, but I never found anything useful. And of course I did feel safer on the inside, looking out … I did good work, searching out the aliens hiding among us. Because it takes one to know one.

  Some of my jobs I liked more than others. I tried to do things I could be proud of. If I was going to be a man, I wanted to be a good man. So wherever I went, and whoever I worked for, or whoever I was supposed to be, there was always a line I wouldn’t cross. Things I wouldn’t do. And then it would be time for me to move on again. Become someone else again.

  I’ve spent the last fifteen years working for the Colonel and his Organization. Doing good and necessary work. The longest I’ve ever stayed with one person, or one organization. The Colonel kept me busy and kept me protected. Because no one ever messed with the Colonel’s people. I suppose … I should have asked more questions. But I trusted the Colonel; and I owed him so much …

  There. My story, such as it is. An alien, passing for human. Of course, there is another explanation for all of this. I could be crazy. Completely loony-tunes, with a head full of hallucinations. Making up incredible stories to explain a simple case of amnesia. I have seriously considered this explanation, from time to time. But; there still remain all the things I can do that normal people can’t. The things I see and notice, that other people don’t. And, I really don’t age.

  I pulled myself forward until I was sitting on the end of the bed again, and studied my reflection in the mirror on the dresser at the opposite end of the room. A very human face looked back at me; one that hasn’t changed in the least since I first saw it in a mirror, in 1963.

  I remembered Alex Khan from when we both worked for Black Heir, from 1982 to 1987. We’d seemed the same age, then. He was … intelligent, arrogant, very keen to get on. To succeed. He always saw his time in Black Heir as merely a stepping stone, on the way to inevitable greatness. But when he finally did leave it was just two steps ahead of being discovered and disgraced. Because he just couldn’t wait. He had to go for the gold ring, and to hell with the consequences.

  And I remembered Diana Helm, as she was then: a beautiful young Englishwoman, who gave up ballet to dance at the Crazy Horse, in Paris. A real scandal, in those far off days of 1969. We were lovers, for a while. I honestly hadn’t recognized her at first in the drawing room. She’d changed so much, and I had
n’t. We were happy together, for a while. I left her because she started asking too many questions about my past. Where was I from, who were my family … And she started to talk about our future, when I knew, even then, we couldn’t have one. I hadn’t learned to lie so easily, in those days. So I did what I always did when I felt threatened; I ran away. Didn’t even leave her a note. After all; what could I say? Sorry; I’m not what you thought I was? I had to learn the hard way that I can never allow anyone to get close to me. That it’s safer for everyone, if I stay alone.

  So many people come and go in my life that I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised if some of them reappear. Mostly they don’t recognize me. When they think they do, it’s easy enough for me to pass as my father, or grandfather. It’s one of the reasons I keep moving; so they won’t notice that they’ve aged but I haven’t. I move on because I can’t afford to look back. Because human beings have lives, with a beginning and middle and an ending; while I’m … just passing through.

  Though I have to say, it did amuse the hell out of me that the Colonel’s mother should turn out to be one of my old loves.

  I’ve been tormented by the dreams, or flashbacks, or whatever the hell they are, all my human life. Glimpses of the world that was once mine. Of the ship that brought me here. The dreams rarely make any sense, and they’ve never been any help. I find it hard to hang on to them; they fade so quickly. I have tried writing them down immediately afterwards, but when I read back what I’ve written, it’s always gibberish. I destroy the notes, immediately after reading. No sense in leaving ammunition behind for those who are always on my trail.

  I had a sort of feeling that I might have visited Belcourt Manor before. Some of it did seem familiar. But I’m used to feeling that way. I’ve been to so many places down the years that the memories just jumble together. I’ve always found it easy to move on; to leave people and things and places behind. I can’t afford to get attached, because it’s so painful when I have to give it up.