Tristan had been walking around Skeldale like the cat who’d got the cream for a few days now. In front of Siegfried, he claimed to have given up smoking and, amazingly, the elder Farnon was starting to believe him. James knew better, though- the second Siegfried was out of the room Tristan would have a fag between his lips once again. What James didn’t understand was how the hell Tristan was doing it.
Feeling so curious he might explode, he finally asked while Siegfried was off tending to a prize horse.
“It’s all a matter of skill, my boy,” said Tristan smugly between puffs. “Sleight of hand. Practice makes perfect, you see?”
“Sure Tris,” James agreed, “but where do you put them?”
The student took another long draw of his cigarette then tapped the end of it on the ashtray and laid it in the palm of his hand. “Just watch.” He said, and the thing vanished.
James gawped, blinking. “Where’s it gone?”
Tristan was grinning. He raised two empty fingers to his lips as though to smoke… and between them appeared the cigarette.
The vet simply stared in disbelief, trying and failing to understand what had just happened. “Alright then, what’s the trick?”
Reaching through empty air, Tristan took a sip from a glass of drink that hadn’t been there moments ago. “To be honest with you, James, I’m not quite sure how to explain it. It’s a recent development, still needs some testing. Here, hold out your hand, will you?”
James obliged, and immediately recoiled when something cold and smooth ran over it, despite there being nothing there. “What the blue blazes was that?!”
“You felt it, did you? Interesting!” This time, both his cigarette and his glass disappeared, and a notebook and pen appeared in their respective places. Tristan flipped the book open and started writing. “Appears to be able to cause physical sensation in other people, therefore indicating that the appendages may become solid at will… there we are.” Tristan grabbed his hand and returned it to the same position as before. “How about now?” He said, watching James expectantly.
James waited, but nothing happened. “How about now, what?”
Immediately, Tristan began jotting things down again, mumbling his apparent findings all the way. “Wonderful!” He beamed, “I’m really pleased I’ve confided in you, James. I’m learning so much!”
“But you haven’t confided in me at all! I’ve still not the slightest idea how you’re doing it all!” Protested James, gesturing at him helplessly.
“Alright, alright…” Tristan sighed, “Well, on Monday I awoke with the nastiest headache- typical for me, I know- but this one was no hangover. It was really awful, James, that’s why I was in such a shoddy mood that day. After a while, I got utterly sick of it, so I decided to do some thinking about what could possibly have caused it to happen.”
“You went to the Drover’s, then.”
“Exactly. I’m afraid I got a little too drunk and knocked a glass off the table… only to catch it without my hands. And without spilling a drop, too!”
“Without your… Tristan, you’re simply not making sense!” The other man acted as though he hadn’t heard him, powering on through his story.
“The second I caught the glass, it was like I just understood. The headache was psychic spillover- extradimensional biolocks disintegrating, allowing me the use of, well…” And he trailed off, suddenly appearing extremely aware of James’ incredulous look. “Right. I’m going to try something. Promise you won’t scream, okay?”
“Why would I…” He trailed off when two- no, six- no, more- undulating tentacles slid into existence surrounding his friend, one holding the cig from earlier, another holding his glass. James’ mouth dropped open, words failing him.
“There you are, James,” Tristan said, gesturing to the things as though they were a perfectly normal sight. “My trick.”
He felt ill. Trying to count them got him nowhere— there were ten and there were fifty and there were only six and there were hundreds, all at the same time. The shifting, writhing motion of them reminded him eerily of a mass of earthworms in the soil after a rainstorm. Not to mention, the more he looked the more he felt he shouldn’t be looking. His head was pounding, eyes straining as they flicked back and forth between each tendril, and he could feel bile beginning to rise in his throat. James clapped a hand over his mouth in an attempt to keep the contents of his stomach.
Then, just as quickly as they’d appeared, the tentacles were gone.
“James, are you alright?” Said Tristan, standing up to check on him. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think— I had no idea they’d have that kind of effect on you.”
James started to nod, then thought better of it as the motion made him feel sicker. Instead, he opted for a muffled “I’m fine!” from behind his palm. He screwed his eyes shut— his head was still aching like hell— and felt the cool sensation of a glass being pressed into his hand.
“Here you are— brandy. Have a sip of that.”
The brandy did wonders, while also having the added effect of making Tristan sound like he was talking utter nonsense— which he most definitely was— when he tried to theorise about James’ reaction. A few minutes later, he was feeling much better (albeit a bit bleary-eyed) and attempting to understand whatever his friend was saying.
“I should have expected it, really. Of course looking at all my limbs would make you sick— there were simply far too many dimensional phases occurring for the human mind to comprehend! All that shifting in and out of time and space… no wonder you got nauseous.”
“Dimensional phases…?” By God, did James feel out of his depth. He’d never heard Tristan speak this way before— like he’d popped right out of a science-fiction novel— but given the nature of what had just occurred, he could only assume the man knew what he was talking about.
“Yes, well, you see, I have discovered that I am present on planes of existence that regular people are not. When I do this…”Something tapped his shoulder and he felt a chill through his spine, like someone had just walked over his grave. “…you can feel it, because I’m doing it on a plane that interacts with the third dimension.”
“So, when you showed me your, erm, tendrils, they were really there all along, but I couldn’t see them because they were on a different plane.” It was starting to make an odd sort of sense.
“Precisely! And in order for me to show them to you, I had to move them into the third dimension from the ninth, which is very easy for me but would be conceptually impossible for anyone else…” and on he went, going off on another tangent and mentioning more bizarre concepts like ‘biological interdimensionality’, which apparently referred to the capacity of some creatures to exist in several different dimensions at once (now that certainly had some implications that he didn’t particularly want to think about) and move between them at will. It was all James could do to nod along, understanding bits and pieces but feeling incredibly lost for most of the conversation.
When Siegfried made his inevitable return, his arrival heralded by the usual barking ruckus, Tristan pulled a newspaper from nowhere and managed to flick the radio on from the settee so fast James barely had the time to blink. The elder Farnon walked in to find Tristan in his natural habitat; lounging, listening to music, and chatting about the gossip column. The seamless transition between discussing world-altering theoretical physics to ‘did you hear about the new film on at the pictures?’ just about had his head spinning.
That seemed to be the end of it for a while. A couple of days later, Siegfried caught Tristan smoking in the surgery again and yelled so loud James was sure his ears would be ringing for the next week.
For the most part, he put the ordeal out of his mind, deciding that to dwell on it would only bring him headaches (and he’d had quite enough of those, thank you), but occasionally Tristan would find him to discuss the intricacies of spatio-temporal dynamics— whatever that meant.
Nothing changed between them. Tristan was Tristan, after all; even with the extra limbs.
Life went on, and nobody noticed that elsewhere in Skeldale House, a golden fob watch had developed a crack.
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