Over the Darkened Landscape - By Derryl Murphy Page 0,87

eat without feeling guilty, Samuel spooned some into a bowl for Fanny Alice and then for himself and then cut off two slices of bread, saving the heel for himself. For the next ten minutes or so there was little sound aside from the slurping of soup and the clanking of spoons against the sides of bowls. Almost everyone seemed to be rushing through this course, hoping to speed up the main offering of the night, most probably.

Knowing he wouldn’t be eating the stew, Samuel procured himself a second bowl of the soup and another chunk of bread in order to mop up its remnants. Thin though it was, it wasn’t at all bad—although the fact that it was free had predisposed him in its favour early on. But soon enough he was done, and the waiter was there to take his dirty dishes away, likely to clean them for reuse with the stew.

There was time then for talk as they waited for the next round. Marliss sat back in his chair and eyeballed Samuel for a moment, a big grin on his face. “Glad to see you’re no longer of a mind to harass or attack me, my friend.”

Samuel shrugged. “What’s done is done. But I don’t think you’ve figured this whole thing out so well.”

Marliss cocked an eyebrow. “How so?”

Samuel looked up at the stage where Ed was ready now, waiting to take the photograph once everyone had received their main course. “Any pictures or stories that go out about this, no matter how pretty they dress things up, are going to make us look like a bunch of illiterate, ill-mannered troglodytes. You’ll attract few people, and the ones you do get will just be more of the same. Buffoons who have no respect for nature or for history, who are only out to make a fast buck, no matter the cost.”

Marliss frowned and leaned forward across the table, glass of whiskey in his right hand. The rest of the hall was dead silent, waiting to hear what came next. “Your opinion in this matter is certainly of interest to me, Samuel, but the fact that I am a successful businessman and you are . . . not, tells me I can value it only so much. I’m sorry that you feel this event will reflect on us so poorly, but that is in fact but one man’s opinion, and it must be weighed against the greater good.”

Samuel rolled his eyes. “Greater good?” He was about to say more, once again feeling free to rant about money and greed and superstition, but the kitchen doors swung open with a crash and in came the waiters bearing bowls of mammoth stew. The hall erupted in applause and cheers, and while Samuel sat back in his chair with his arms folded, knowing that he looked for all the world like a petulant child who was refusing his supper, bowls of piping hot stew filled with carrots and potatoes and small chunks of extinct mammoth were delivered to all the diners.

A bowl was set in front of Fanny Alice and another was almost given to Samuel, but a glare from him had the waiter beating a hasty retreat. Fanny Alice leaned forward and smelled the stew and immediately her face turned white. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She stood, and so did all the other men at the table—Mrs. Marliss was again discomforted and irritated by this attention to a woman such as Fanny Alice—and then Fanny Alice walked away, out the doors to the lobby. Samuel made to follow her, but the others sat back down then everyone else in the hall was now digging in to their stew, and on the stage Ed decided that that was just the moment to take his photograph. Flash powder went off, a noise that was almost immediately followed by a few grunts and then some strange sort of gibberish.

His eyes momentarily blinded by the powerful explosion of light, Samuel stood there, listening as the sounds around him grew increasingly strange and frightening. When the spots cleared from his eyes he saw that a strange sort of miasma had risen up from the tables, like a greenish-yellow fog, and he was worried for a moment that the flash powder had done serious and permanent damage to his eyes.

But then he heard a grunt from the table to his right, and saw that