Abstract Caravan Passes

ABSTRACT

CARAVAN PASSES: STORIES

by Geoffrey Girard

Caravan Passes is a collection of short stories in which “ordinary” persons are put in extraordinary situations via the settings and devices of speculative fiction. Each tale – whether of dark fantasy, science fiction, historical, or horror -- engages fanciful situations and settings to more-openly explore themes and issues concerning modern man. Several arguments run through each story, including issues of violence, the assault on individuality and spiritual searching. In each, the individual faces a crises of defending self, in ever-increasing ripples of societal ferocity and otherworldly/spiritual reckoning.

CARAVAN PASSES: STORIES

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of English

Geoffrey Girard

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2013

Advisor______

Dr. Brian Roley

Reader______

Dr. Joseph Bates

Reader______

Dr. Kay Sloan

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Translatio 1 Collecting James 10 First Communions 16 Where the Shadow Ended 26 Psychomachia 31 Dark Harvest 38 Universal Adaptor 49 H. E. Double Hockey Stick 57 For Restful Death I Cry 64 The Spider Field 70

TRANSLATIO

It hung in the grey sunless sky like an enormous black balloon, bloated and dull, with a dozen rutted tendrils dangling loosely just beneath. Had Watkins not been looking for one, he probably would have missed it completely. It would have become only another dark cloud or treetop lurking at the far corner of his eye. Every city had them by now. Hundreds. Some no bigger than a minivan. Others, he’d heard, were as large as stadiums. The creatures hovered in one spot for hours, days sometimes, drifting almost imperceptibly on some terrible unseen current. As if they were only sleeping. Watching. Waiting. Every so often, they “woke” and someone was killed. No one knew what they were. Or where, exactly, they would next appear or for how long. No one knew where they’d first come from. Or why? No one really wanted to know. Watkins knew. Still, he’d been careful to cross slowly to the opposite side of the street. Just in case. He’d not allowed himself to become too confident. One day, the rules would change. Or, he would simply learn that he’d been wrong all these long years. His own house was only another half block away, and he stayed close to the shadows. Most of the homes were already abandoned – boarded up, burned out – But a few still scurried with life. When he reached his porch, he glanced back, half expecting to see that it had followed him. That, even now, the tendrils were snaking down toward him. One day... No. It remained in the exact same position. Watching or sleeping. Waiting. Watkins stared at it from afar. He shuddered. When they’d first appeared, everyone had stayed inside. But weeks sometimes passed between their attacks, or months. Eventually, life had to go on again. People adapted. As they had long before to death, and the floods, plagues, famine, polio, wars, cancer, AIDS... Life went on. In more recent times, there’d been the swarmings, drought, more war, birth defects... Large-scale. Global. Disease, The Madness, the Long Night, the earth splitting apart... Life went on. And now these things. He remembered the first time he’d watched one sweep suddenly down upon a small crowd of people who’d risked its proximity for some food. One fleshy tentacle had shot out, snatched some middle-aged mother and an old Mexican man into the air. One of the woman’s shoes had flung out over an adjacent roof. Then, the balloon creature had fed, and drops of blood rained again from the dark sky. Almost the same as he’d imagined months before. Almost as he’d written it down. Like he’d been told to. It was closer over the Lopinto house now. It had moved after all. Just enough... Watkins rapped on the door, their secret knock, and soon heard movement inside. The door opened enough and he slipped into the waiting darkness. Inside the house, he handed his

son the small bundle. “Store these,” he said. “Picked up half-a-dozen, and some powdered milk.” The boy nodded. Or trembled. Watkins couldn’t tell which anymore. Alex was only thirteen but he already looked sixty. Gaunt, with dark sunken eyes against pale skin. He should be out playing basketball with friends, Watkins thought. He should be at some mall drinking a Coke and looking at girls. But, most of his son’s friends were dead now. And, the mall had been leveled more than a year ago. The boy looked like something that had clawed out from its grave. “Where’s Mom?” The boy stiffened. He hardly ever spoke anymore. “I’ll be upstairs,” Watkins said, and finished re-securing the door bracings. “If you need me.” He moved past his son and up the stairs to the second floor. Opened another door leading to the attic room. There, more steps, and he moved slowly up each, absently counting the individual squeaks and creaks. Eight steps. He hated the next more than the last. Like walking up to the gallows or his very own stations of the cross. But here, he’d been promised no end, and no Resurrection, at the top. So, each step took effort. And at each, he thought of simply stopping and turning around. For good. For ever. Never again. What will be will be. I simply can’t do this anymore. The muted light from the vaulted attic windows cast his own shadow against the wall behind him. It, too, looked like something from the grave. Too thin, too crooked. It was a fairly empty room, with only a cheap desk against the far wall. A chair and half- empty bookshelf. The computer and its monitor lay in a heap in one of the corners, black cords snaked over it like wild ivy. There hadn’t been any electricity for more than a year now. Watkins sat at the desk and felt the weight of the chair against his back. He stared ahead, at nothing in particular. It could have been hours. Eventually, his eyes drifted down to the journal. It was a simple 8½ x 11 black-covered notepad he’d picked up a few months before at Walgreens. He’d filled more than a dozen over the years. Fourteen, in fact, and he’d stored each in the squat cheap bookshelf beside his desk like a trite serial killer in some movie. He had never been a writer, but he could certainly write down what he’d seen, what he’d heard. Felt. Most of it, anyway. He knew his words always failed to truly capture what he was supposed to express. But, as he had not yet been punished, it seemed he was always close enough. Watkins allowed his fingers to touch the corner of the notepad. It remained closed. He thought again of simply leaving it closed, of standing up and escaping the room forever. But the new dreams had become more vivid. More demanding.

If he didn’t obey soon, he would surely go mad. Or worse... Yes, worse. That had certainly been made clear. There was worse. And, he believed it. Watkins closed his eyes to the memory of everything he’d seen in the past weeks. Nightmares that followed him ever longer into his waking world. Horrific tableaus newly burned into his eyes. He could picture the black-stained fog rolling swiftly down some street. Hundreds of faces and hands roiled and swirled within... Is this the Angel of Death then? The same who’d struck Egypt long before? Ghastly faces. Some were half-rotted away, the exposed bones shining brightly, others still dripping wet with fresh blood... And he recognized every one. Co-workers, neighbors, old lovers and classmates. The blackness now moving with them all over the first house... He opened his eyes. “Please, he said aloud. “Please, I can’t...” There was no one there to answer him. If I don’t... His right hand had grabbed hold of the pen. He suddenly recalled the look on the nurse’s face when Emily was born. In the same year when almost every baby in the world was delivered deformed, misshapen, perverted somehow by Nature, Science or God, Emily had been born perfectly normal. An ordinary, beautiful, baby girl. The nurse had not looked relieved or thankful. She’d looked completely horrified. Later, when they were not touched by “Captain Trips” or the floods or the war or the Madness... Or the things floating outside... He understood. He knew absolutely what his role had been. Was to be. And his reward. Please, God. No. With trembling fingers, he pushed the notebook away across the desk. He brought his hands to his face and cried again. He sobbed. An enormous shadow moved slowly past his window. Watkins did not look and told himself it was only a cloud.

—§—

It had taken many years before Andrew Watkins realized he was killing people. And by then, he’d already killed thousands. There was the tsunami in 2004. The meltdowns in Civaux and Chooz, in Palo Verde. Flooding in Europe. Sun flares over lower China (more than forty million killed in that one alone). He remembered where he was the first time he’d heard about the swarmings, the bees in western Africa. The news footage was all so terrible. And so terribly familiar. One night he couldn’t elude the obvious any longer and reread his notebooks. A collection he’d started only a few years before. One that always made the bad thoughts go away for awhile. Within these books were the detailed descriptions of what he’d seen a moment ago on television. Written months before. By him. On some pages he could not read his own handwriting. On others, the words were written in letters he did not recognize. They were not even English. Symbols that were not Greek or Chinese either. He’d looked into it years after and

discovered they were closest to Babylonian cuneiform, and some in Phoenician. But not quite. This was something else. Something quite new. Or quite old. A language not yet used by men. He’d since found these same symbols on some of his old school work, generic school exercises he’d written at only six years old, ten, then fourteen. Even then, it realized now, he was being groomed for his greater responsibility. For a while, he thought he was simply some kind of modern psychic. That he, a retail distribution manager in Evansville Indiana, could somehow predict the future. Only briefly, afterwards, did he think that he was somehow even creating these disasters himself. But he knew well that it was not he who had the power. He was merely the “creator’s” servant. The translator. And, just as medieval scribes had not been held responsible for the sometimes dangerous and political content of their translations, he, too, was somehow protected from his lifelong recordings. He and his family. As long as the true master remained satisfied. How it worked exactly, he did not know. Nor could he explain why he’d even started writing such things down. Putting these horrible images to paper. One day, it just seemed he would be punished somehow if he did not, that he might go mad, and so he started. Since, he’d read Augustine, Boethius and Aristotle, seeking the true relation between thought and language. Thought becomes language, language becomes reality. Or action. He’d read De trinitate, the Summa of Logic, and Plato’s Cratylus. Worried over the delicate relationship between concepts, words, and actuality. All about symbols and referents and that the link between the two could be made through an interpreter. And so the Jews taught that the first letters were passed from God to Adam in the Garden, or to Abraham when he parted Chaldaea. In Islam, the same letters were given from Allah to Adam, but denied to the angels. In India, the elephant-faced god Ganesh broke off his own tusk and gifted it as a pen to Man. For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. Watkins read his Bible. Was he the only one? Were there others, other translators, spread across the world? Even now, was there some man in Iran or Spain writing down the same images in his own language? And, Watkins wondered, did that same man also want to die? Watkins slipped the curtain aside enough to peak out the window. He could barely stand anymore. He could not remember ascending those eight damned steps. The curtain trembled between his shaking fingers. Below, an unnatural darkness coated the street and barren yards. It crawled beneath forgotten cars and swing sets and lapped against each house like black water, as it had for weeks now. Not exactly as he’d been shown, but not all that different either. The faces still surfaced and stirred within. Thousands of them, strangers mostly. Each was drained of color, like the skulls he’d imagined. The skin stretched, loose, so that the features looked unnaturally twisted within the blackness. Misshapen. Each one forever set in an exaggerated silent scream of absolute agony and terror. Then the LORD put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. He heard movement downstairs. It sounded like enormous rats scurrying beneath the floorboards. His family. He hadn’t seen them for weeks now. Not since the day the black fog had first crept down their street. Then, the four had stood together at the front window. Watching. Waiting. Like one of the balloon things still hovering in the sky above. They’d heard the screams first. Not the wailing of the thousands trapped within the latest blow to man. This was something

much worse. It was the wail of only one man. Or a woman. They couldn’t tell which. It was high pitched and garbled. It would not stop. The wailing lifted above the other sound, a soft hiss of the approaching darkness that sounded like dry sand shifting in a giant bucket. Soon, the hiss had swallowed the scream completely and then that was all they could hear. Watkins’s daughter lay in a heap on the floor, her arms wrapped around her head to keep the “sand” sound away. Watkins also covered his ears but to no avail. There was no escaping it. The darkness had flowed slowly down the street, spread over all the lawns and driveways and then up to the doors of each house. At one house, the Henties, the black flow continued up the front walls and over the roof, then seeped back again like something liquid as the dark streams bled down evenly in the shape of a giant hand. From inside the newly marked house, Watkins soon heard screams again, a sound that went on for hours. Throughout, he and his family remained fixed in place. Watching, waiting. His daughter was still curled on the floor at their feet. She babbled and cooed like a newborn. A perfectly normal baby girl. Eventually, the door across the street opened and someone came out slowly. Someone floated out. Several feet off the ground, held upright in a draped mockery of Christ. Mr. Henties was carried delicately by unseen hands toward the waiting blackness sloshing at the edge of his front porch. Henties looked to be lulled asleep or perhaps already dead. But when the blackness surged over his feet, he was neither. Though his mouth had widened into something not altogether human, no sound escaped his throat. The body spasmed while the blackness moved up over his legs and he was angled deeper into the waiting black stew to join the others. The darkness then continued down the rest of the street. Not passing. Only growing. Yet, it had never once gotten more than halfway up Watkins’s driveway. And, weeks later, when the world was covered, as far as he or anyone else knew, it still hadn’t. Now, he looked out his window at it. One of the balloon things still floated in the distance. It looked to be feeding on one of the survivors who’d finally realized the darkness only took one from each home. Watkins thought he could see still see Henties’ face right in the center of the street. The bones of his teeth and jaw forever frozen in an unfinished scream, his one eye still somehow alive even now, still aware, and blinking up at Watkins. Watkins moved back into the room. He shook his head, laughed. It was a bad sound. Henties. Henties and his roving, damning, eye were nothing. The streets bubbling over with half-dead ghosts and rotted bodies was nothing. Not compared to the rest. Not compared to the latest. These were something else altogether. These... He had not yet found the words for these. Didn’t know if there were such words yet for what he’d seen, what he’d been shown. He wondered if it even mattered anymore. Watkins no longer wrote in English anyway. He wrote almost entirely in that other language. Only a few of the words he recognized, and those alone were enough to terrify him completely. He’d gone somewhat mad a week or so ago. He knew this as well as he knew anything anymore. Hadn’t he burned his other journals and half the room one night? Hadn’t he ripped out bloody clumps of hair to keep some slim hold of “reality.” It was the dreams that were driving him mad. And the giant rats he heard downstairs. Hadn’t he threatened to kill them? And then the dreams had followed him into the waking world so that it became more and more difficult to distinguish between the two. How can I do this...

He’d seen the things, the beings, which lived deep beneath the earth. Twisted, perverted, in ways he could not even begin to understand, let alone explain. Those which lived somewhat between the fabrics of reality. And, he’d seen them unleashed. Seen them rape and hunt. He’d seen them feed. He’d seen them play for a thousand years. ‘Horrible’ was insufficient. ‘Monster’ meant nothing anymore. Watkins had fouled himself, wept, clawed at his own face to keep sane. What in God’s name? An early promise finally fulfilled. And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. The End Days. Tribulation. Armageddon. Seemed the Mayan fuckers had been right after all. Hadn’t they written it all down? He would not. Please... Watkins tried again to drive the returning images from his eyes with the heels of his hands. Still they came. He prayed again to die. All he had to do... There were not yet words to describe the absolute suffering that awaited Mankind. Yet they will be safe. Kate. Alex. Emily. They will... And then the images will stop. For awhile. I can’t... His head, his eyes, filled again. He saw again. “I won’t” he said aloud. “You can’t make me.” His own voice had not even sounded human. The scenes came faster, more detailed. Standing wide awake, his eyes trying to focus on the simple reality of the desk in his office. He still saw. Everything. And that did not change when, to tear the same images out, he finally clawed into his own eyes. It only got worse.

—§—

And the Lord said, Let there be Light... And the Lord set his mark upon Cain... And the Lord said, if I find fifty righteous in Sodom... No more. Watkins lay still on the attic floor. He’d fought for a year now, a week, an hour. He wasn’t sure anymore. And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: Thou shalt speak all that I command thee... And the Lord said unto Moses, write down these words... And the Lord said, I will destroy man from the face of the earth... He’d broken apart the desk and chair, smashed out the windows. Blindly tossed any pens and papers out the windows into the hell below. He’d crawled and babbled in the total darkness of his new blindness. Awaiting punishment. But, he would not write. He would not be responsible for such... Watkins heard their footsteps first. The creek of the very first step. Then the next.

“Please,” he pleaded again. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Kate was first. He heard that perfectly. She was on the third step now. Then, Emily. Her tiny barefooted steps almost lost beneath the other squeaks and creakings. Alex followed last. His steps more labored than the others. They moved so slowly up the steps towards him. He could hear each step. The sixth now. So close... “Don’t do this,” he said. “I have... I have done everything you asked.” I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. The voice in his head now, booming over the ever-approaching steps. He did not know if it was simply his own voice or some other. Some older voice, some more terrible voice. And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. The sound of their footsteps growing ever louder. The images in his head had diminished. But only so that he could hear. And understand. “I’ve done everything for...” his voice trailed off with the sound of the opening door. Their sluggish footfalls shuffled into the room. “No!” he shouted. “Go back! Go away!” He stumbled in the darkness, waving his fists. They’d already moved deeper into the room. He could smell them now, even feel their heat. Watkins could not remember the last time he’d actually seen them. He shuddered for being secretly comforted that he could not. They smelled odd. They moved strangely. He brought his hands up to cover his hollowed and half-crusted sockets. Cold meat hung between his lids. Alex shambled finally into the room, the one foot still dragging, and the door finally shut behind him. The three simply stood still and Watkins could hear only their breathing now. And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was only silence. The breaths were slow and heavy, and half-hidden within Emily’s breathing were peculiar sounds. Almost like other voices chattering in a piercing, higher, language. Watkins thought he heard the echo of laughter too. “Fine,” Watkins laughed, joining the dreadful sound. “I’ll... Alex, Alex, bring me a notebook.” He reached out into the darkness, waving his hands madly about the room again. “Find me... Kate, find my pen. Something to... Please, I...” Still, they stood. Their ragged breaths increased in effort. Strange voices now escaped Alex’s mouth too. A thousand gibbering voices Watkins had heard long before. The same madness which had claimed some fifty million only a year before. That which convinced almost everyone the show was really over. That which he and his family had been protected from. As long as... “I’ll do it,” he cried aloud. “Please... don’t.” Even as he spoke the words, he knew it was already too late. He’d been warned too often of late and the punishment would prove quite evenhanded. “I can still...” He heard a smack, more like a thump. Then another. Feet scattering across the floor. Hands and arms slapping against each other.

Something tearing. Clothes tearing. Scratching. Like giant rats scratching. Something warm and wet suddenly splashed across Watkins’s face. The room’s harsh noises turned more furious. Watkins stumbled toward them. Someone fell. Someone small fell. He heard feet kicking. Large feet kicking. Stomping now. Stomping. The sounds grew wet. Watkins lunged out into nothingness and grabbed hold of someone. “Stop!” he roared. He felt the gaunt body shaking between his arms. The body was slippery. Alex, or Kate. Another still clawing and punching at the first as Watkins turned to protect whoever it was he held. The person in his arms – Alex, he decided – shook free suddenly. Watkins reached out, stepped on something heavy, and tumbled awkwardly to the ground. Fists thumped against solid flesh above him. Something cracked. One of the chair legs, perhaps. But Watkins didn’t think so. The furious sounds moved about the room this way and that. Someone was tossed against a wall. The floorboards groaned—more slapping sounds. First to his left, and then back to the other side, then back again. Moving from side to side, as if he were wearing headphones, across the room. He reached up again, diving forward, hoping to knock them down. Watkins landed on the floor and the commotion was behind him now. He could only listen as the noise, the blows, grew slower, heavier. Something that sounded like tiny marbles scattered across the floor at his feet and then bounced off one of the walls. He reached out and touched what could only be teeth. Another body collapsed to his left. Watkins moved toward the heavy sound. The other had already reached the first. He heard teeth snapping. Something wet tearing open. Fists pounding down again and again and again. Watkins reached out and grabbed hold of a leg. “Kate,” he rasped. “Kate! God, you’re... Stop!” The leg jerked in his grasp, then stilled, the second body collapsing finally beside the other. Watkins dragged himself closer to them. It occurred to him only then that, except for the strange high voices hidden deep in their breath, his family had not made a single sound during. Not once. Almost the same as he’d imagined for others many months before. Almost as he’d put down. Like he’d been told to. The room was completely quiet now. The bodies lay still. He slithered over them. Cradled their heavy, soaked bodies to his own. The room smelled sweet, like candy. Too much candy. He touched bone where skin and muscle had been ripped aside. Warm blood ran over his fingers. Watkins laughed again. Felt sticky tears dripping from the corners of his gutted sockets. “It’s over now,” he said. “It’s over.” He reached his other hand blindly out along the floor and found Emily. Pulled her beside the others. “I am your servant no more,” he stammered, lying his head against the bloody still bodies just beneath. “We are free now. Find someone else—” Images flashed in the darkness again. New images.

They showed another place. An older place. More terrible. Suddenly, the other images seemed all the more describable. Now that he’d truly seen the indescribable. He saw those trapped within, a billion of them, and their new dark masters. And then Watkins was forced to grasp new conceptions of time and existence that come after life. The message was clear. He would remain protected. He and his family. They would know death but would never know this other place. As long as the true creator remained satisfied. As long as he... Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away. He moved slowly over the bodies on the floor. His hands were so very slick and wet. Watkins lifted them to the wall. And wrote.

FIRST COMMUNIONS

A son réveil, minuit, la fenêtre était blanche. Devant le sommeil bleu des rideaux illunés La vission la prit des candeurs du dimanche; Elle avait rêvé rouge. —Rimbaud

After, the bloodstains remained on the driveway for years. Two lopsided blotches joined in the middle that, depending on who said, looked like big butterfly wings or the head of a mouse or two mushroom clouds exploding or maybe someone’s balls. They never really looked like a big misshapen heart. And as the stains grew smaller and fainter over time, you had to really imagine the mouse or balls or heart to really see them anymore. Or, even to see the stains. They’d been darker, of course, when it first happened, on the newly soaked concrete. When you could still see the smallest drops frozen in orbit just outside the two main spheres. When everyone, everyone, took turns riding bikes or walking the dog past the West’s house for another quick look to see where some girl had killed herself. I have seen this driveway. Mrs. West chased them all away sometimes, threatened to call the cops and even called some parents. There’s a story she cursed at Lori Powell for being a “horrible little bitch” and had even thrown a rock at her. Maybe. Everyone later thought the story was very funny, but Lori might have made it up. In the middle of the night, just after, Mrs. West scrubbed the driveway with a big wooden brush and dragged out the hose from her front porch. Someone saw. For all the others, like Alison, who hadn’t seen, there was still a hint of water pooled along the curb the next morning and everyone knew what Mrs. West had done. Lots of kids swore the water was tinged pink. Alison thought so, too.

She is eight when the girl kills herself, and stands on the front porch in a worn flannel nightgown that goes down past her feet. Her toes curl under the cloth, tucked beneath her feet against the night’s chill. Gawking down the street with her sisters toward the West house where the ambulance and police cars pulse in red and blue and gold and red. The lights stretch up into the darkness above and flush the entire block in sudden blooms of unnatural color. It looks just like the Fourth of July would if she were very far away. And, it is beautiful. Alison often thinks of this night. This image of the little girl standing on the porch within the furthest edge of these multihued colors. She recognizes herself completely in the memory, and it is the only memory of herself she likes. Neighbors edge onto their own porches and driveways, a few so bold as to go down to the West house for a closer look. Alison’s brother, who’d been in high school then, joins these few and has ambled down against their mother’s dissuasion for a closer look. He smiles when he gives the report. “Some girl killed herself,” he says, and their mother tsks behind them. “Right on the West’s driveway,” he says. “There’s blood everywhere.” “Raymond Peter!” “What? There is!” “Who?” an older sister asks. “I’ll bet it was Sue Snyder,” says another sister. “She’s dated Brian all year.” “You’re right! She does. I’ll bet it’s Sue Snyder.” This is true.

Susan Snyder. The girl who slit her wrists. “Maybe,” her brother says. “I couldn’t tell. There’s a body in the ambulance, though. Covered up.” “That’s so gross.” Her picture will be in the paper and a full page for her in the Thunderbird yearbook that year. Susan Snyder. National Honor Society, French Club, stage crew for Grease. Susan Snyder. The name, for one neighborhood, becomes as fabled as Medusa or Cleopatra. Whispered and passed down for years whenever the bus passes the West house and everyone looks for bloodstains. “Poor thing,” their mother says. “It’s just…oh, I don’t know. Oh, the poor Wests.” She retreats back inside. “This is…this is so sad.” “Fucked up,” her brother marvels, the ghostly lights of red and blue and red blushing behind him. “That’s all this is.” “It’s too weird. I’m going back to bed.” “Brian’s gonna be messed up, I bet,” a middle sister predicts. This was also true. The boy went away for several years to some private school out of state. Everyone said he’d gone crazy or something. That he’d seen her do it from his window and hadn’t done anything. Then, he went to a college for a little while. In all, four years passed since the night of reds and blues and reds, and he then finally returned home again. By then, Alison loved him very much.

The young girl sat on the curb just two houses away. Watching and waiting. Studying her cell phone as if she were just another young teen lost to texting. The phone wasn’t even on. It was spring, a month when the warnings of summer spread to every tree and the world smelled like dirt and worms. It was still cold. He’d been home again for almost two months now but they’d not yet spoken. She’d even gone to his house and knocked on the door, selling her sister’s candy bars for school band. She tried three times and only when she knew he was home. No one ever answered the door. He looked different from his pictures in the yearbook. Four years. He’d grown out his sideburns and had a little soul patch. His hair was much redder than she’d imagined. His car was a midnight blue Pontiac Grand Prix GT and he’d driven right past once when she and her sisters were out front loitering in the driveway. Her parents arguing again. “Was that…?” one sister asked. “Yeah,” said another. “I heard he quit college.” Alison tried to see in the window but he did not look their way. He kept his eyes straight ahead and turned quickly away from them and down the street. He always parked in the garage. Mostly, he just stayed home. So, she waited. Wanting only to talk to him. To hold him. Wanting only to let him know what she knew. That Sue Snyder’s death was a sacrifice. There is lightning and so the pool is closed until further notice. The storm rumbles high in the dark clouds above. The pool club is already half empty while they wait it out away from the others. The summer shower trickles on the shelter’s roof, where it sounds like scurrying

insect legs, millions. The surrounding trees drip shadow. One of the boys spins the cell phone again. They sit in a semi-circle on one of the picnic tables. Her feet dangle over the edge. She and Gina and three boys. The phone stops and Gina kisses the boy. Alison watches with the others. The thought of playing the game is better than the game. The thought of kissing a boy is better than the kiss. The phone is spun. A kiss. The phone is spun. She licks her bottom lip. It’s her now. She leans forward. His tongue moves into her mouth and she closes her eyes against the intrusion. She thinks of Brian West and puts her hand behind the boy’s neck. She knows her oldest sister lost her vir- ginity in a car and that she was drunk and threw up afterward and that she cried all the next morning. She thinks of Brian West and draws the boy deeper inside. She knows her mother can’t stand their father. That she is afraid to leave. Her mother hides her bottomless glass of scotch in the closet. She thinks of Brian West and kisses someone worth dying for. Alison draws back and opens her eyes slowly. Reaches slowly for the phone. As it spins, the fingers of her left hand absently stroke her right wrist. I know why she did it. Get the fuck outta here, he says. ‘Fore I call the cops. I know why she did it. Look, you creepy bitch— She loved you. You’re, you’re messed up, girl, he says. I swear to God… You don’t really mean that. Why you always hanging around out here? I don’t want you to hurt anymore. I want you to understand. You…you’re full of shit, kid. You need to see someone. Just leave me alone. She loved you. For-real love. The kind in stories. Is that right? Yes. That doesn’t make any fucking sense, he says. Now you’re the one who’s full of shit.

Someone like Romeo or Lancelot. Tristan. Paris. Orpheus. Rochester or Heathcliff. Jack Dawson. Brian West. Brian… That someone, anyone, could love someone, anyone, that much. Please, God, please let just this one thing be possible.

She went twice to see the girl’s grave. Stood over the rotting corpse and grass there. One time, flowers lay on the ground also. Old, brown and shrunken. She plucked them free from the grass. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God the headstone reads. I have seen it also. Alison laughed when she first saw this, then cried. The next time she visited, she did just

the opposite. She is not surprised when the girl comes to see her. At midnight in a dream. It must be a dream, yes? The girl floats on a rolling black sea where all the stars sleep. The night strokes her breasts roughly. Her whole body aches for something. For him. For something inside her. She wakes in a stab of pain, sits up in her bed. Her bedroom window shimmers white, moonlit gleaming on the curtains as a vision of the girl emerges from the darkness between the window and the bed. Susan Snyder’s ghost drifts toward her. The ghost is naked, and a narrow ridge of black sutures splits her down the center like a zipper, runs from the bottom of her throat down between her breasts, over her stomach and between her legs. Her arms are outstretched as if to pull Alison close for a hug. The room smells like sweet metal; it smells like blood. One of the ghost’s hands holds a dripping knife. The stitches are pulled free and the black cord dangles beneath cuts that run from her palms to her elbows. The skin between is carved away completely so that the veins shift beneath like clumps of worms. The moonlight glistens on wet muscle and bone, and each gaping forearm looks exactly like a woman’s vagina. At the bottom, thick black Xs remain at her wrists. It makes Alison think of her math class. Of the Xs and Os at the bottom of notes she’s never written. Susan Snyder’s ghost stands beside her bed. The girl dreams red. Blood spills down the dead girl’s arms onto the carpet, where it slowly forms a big misshapen heart. The dripping fingers of one hand reach out to caress her. Susan Snyder’s ghost holds out its arms. Its eyes pulse in red and blue and gold and red. The knife slashes downward twice. Slicing into Alison’s arms. The skin separates. The blood flows down her fingers onto the sheets. Alison screams when she wakes. Grabs her burning wrists. Not a scratch to be found. She slips free from her bed. The blood she finds—on her fingers and the sheets—is still hers. Hot and slick. It trickles down her inner thighs. I don’t know, he says. That’s not true. Oh, I got this for you. You shouldn’t, he says. Maybe. I found it at a used bookstore. It looked interesting. It does, he says. Thanks. It says he quit, um, writing by twenty-one. He wrote all of that by twenty-one. It’s.... That’s astonishing. Some famous guy called him the “baby Shakespeare.” Seriously, you shouldn’t have. But thanks. See. There’s English and then the French side by side. It’s nice. I wasn’t sure…can you read the French? Not really. I…I just know a couple phrases. Someone taught you. Yes. She taught you. Yes. What did you learn? Je t’aime. Je t’aime de, de tout mon coeur. What else? Je t’adore. Tu es mon amour. She taught you this? Amour de ma vie. C’est pour toi que je suis là. À toi, pour toujours What else? That’s all. Je t’aime?

Yes, perfect. Je t’aime. That’s all. He says, Isn’t it? It is the first time she’s ever seen him smile. The camp trailer is parked in Megan’s back yard and one of the boy’s older brothers snuck them beer. They can’t smoke inside because Megan’s mother will know and get mad. Alison has had a beer and is nursing the second. Everyone’s beer cans are collected in a bag at the back of the trailer in case Megan’s mother comes out to check on things. Later, they will toss them out in someone else’s trash can. A boy named Tommy Barnes presses his whole body between Alison’s legs. Presses her back awkwardly on the cushioned bench. She can feel his hard-on against her right thigh. She thinks of blood running over her fingers. His hand moves onto her boob. Gina and Megan are making out with the two other boys. She tries not to watch them. The trailer is dark and smells funny. The boy between her legs smells like beer and wet dirt. He tells her that she is cute, that she is pretty. He tells her that he has liked her for a while now. Megan’s father was fucking someone at his office and left two years ago. Alison asks the boy if he knows any French and he pulls back, grins. Voolayvu kochey avec mwah. His braces are wet. There’s spit caught between when he speaks. She can give her time and body and attention and promises and lies. Alison forces her hand between them and rubs him down there. If she cries, he doesn’t notice.

Are you all right, he says. What happened? Nothing. Sure seems like— Nothing, I said! Forget it. OK. Sorry. What’s it like to be in love? Alison… Real love. I told you, he says. No, you didn’t. You said you didn’t know. I can’t. Words don’t work. It’s everything, isn’t it? I don’t…. Yes, everything. But there aren’t really any words for, for that. God. God means everything. I guess. Yes, that’s right. But God’s just another big word like Everything. But we can praise a God. Give ourselves to it. All, if we really want. He nods. Now you know why she did it. Time passes before he speaks again. A minute, the night, four years. Merci, he says.

I am too far away from this. This hot blood and hot spit. Holding phones to ears as both sleep through the night. Guns to the temple. Naming children ten years too soon. Every minute a

second. Every hour a year. I am too far from first loves. But I have seen this driveway. Where a girl killed herself because she already had everything. Because she’d run out of ways to show that, run out of things to give to that. When every promise, every absolution, of love is truly believed. And so I am never too far from pity. Or envy. Or the possibility, the hope, that I may one day also know God. He tossed pebbles until Alison stood at her window. She wore a flannel nightgown and there was some frost on the corners of her pane. Brian West then sat on her driveway, his legs in a four, the one leg stretched out like he was sitting on a blanket. He cut his left wrist first. He looked up at her for a while. Alison watched. Merci. Her driveway was already black, so she couldn’t make out the slowly forming shape. His head dropped first. Then, the body slumped over to the right. Someone called the police. Alison watched from the window as her night again filled with beautiful colors.

COLLECTING JAMES

Two dozen seemingly identical chips rested atop small black stands, displayed on the shelves like treasure. On the top shelf of the rosewood cabinet was something else, something dark and square: The case. James looked away from it and considered the chips again, reaching into the narrow cabinet to inspect one of the pieces. It was the size of a thick poker chip. An almost perfect circle of bone. He took it off its stand and ran his fingers along the edge. Felt where the chip has been carefully, tenderly smoothed. He clutched it tightly, and suddenly heard the faint sound of strings. An abrupt rush of violins. A growing rhythm that quickly raced through his entire body. He heard notes, chord voices moving. A celebration of... He shook off the chip’s memory and placed it back on the stand. “Pretty fucking cool,” he admitted. “I’m not at liberty, of course, to tell you which orchestra,” Zimmerman explained in his smooth, indifferent voice, “But she chaired first violin for many years and was an associate concertmaster.” The rich man sat in the couch directly across from the cabinet, watching him. He wore a plush black sweater, the lines of age creeping up his fat neck toward grey, neatly- slicked hair. “And you just love that, don’t you?” James smiled. Zimmerman shrugged. “Some men collect cars. Others collect pussy. I, however, am interested in accumulating... something else.” He looked back at cabinet. “Which is why I was so very pleased to hear from you.” “I was ‘in the neighborhood’,” James said. “I remembered your offer and thought I’d check in.” “Remembered the three hundred grand,” Zimmerman countered. “Maybe I just wanted to see what kind of twisted fuck you really were.” Zimmerman now smiled. “Well, I’m afraid I may disappoint in that regard.” “You haven’t yet.” James grabbed another. Another chip of bone. “I’d say you’re doing just fine.” Darker, greyed. Its edges weren’t as smooth, the marks of the instrument’s jagged teeth quite obvious. He didn’t care to know any more just then and put it back. He missed the stand and it rolled briefly on its side like a coin before bumping into the back of the cabinet and collapsing. He laughed, picking it up and set it back in its proper place. “It’s like some kind of ghost,” he said. “Yes,” Zimmerman replied. “Something like that. The stain of a dead spirit, a soul’s echo. I don’t know... You’re the word smith.” “And those?” James indicated several small piles neatly stacked in the cabinet’s bottom compartment. “More ‘common’ pieces, if you will,” Zimmerman replied with a short wave. “Most don’t even work anymore. Predominantly homeless addicts and whores from when the collection began. Couldn’t tell you much more about them.” “Perhaps their names?” “Names? No. Not for those. What’s the difference?” “I would have remembered their names,” James said, turning his eyes back to Zimmerman. “I’d want to remember them.” The collector grunted. “Only ten thousand dollars each for most of those. Nothing of great interest or value there. Trust me. But you’re not exactly getting ten grand, are you?”

“I guess not.” James looked down at the small chest sitting beside the cabinet. An honest-to-god treasure chest. Three hundred grand in hundred dollar bills and gold coins. “I now pay to obtain the exact pieces I want.” Zimmerman leaned back in his chair, sipped his wine. “For the collection, it’s worth it. That’s why I contacted you.” “You got the wrong guy,” James said. “But here you are just the same.” “Yeah, here I am just the same.” Zimmerman only smiled again and James turned back to the cabinet, grabbing the small walnut box. It was lighter than expected and closed, and he carefully set it on a small round table next to the cabinet to get a better look. He opened it. The top revealed a dim mirror built into the lid. The bottom was lined in velvet, several different tools resting serenely in their assigned case beds. The scalpel was just six inches long and appeared sharp and clean, ready to clear away the skin. “How long have you been doing this, Zimmerman?” “Twenty years, I suppose,” Zimmerman stood leisurely and silently added several logs to the fire. “Man’s been using a trephine of some sort or another for more than ten thousand.” “A subtle remedy for madness and demon-possession?” “Once upon a time,” Zimmerman agreed. “Also an alleged quick fix for things like epilepsy, headaches, and syphilis. But this is something a bit more.” “Because the patient performs the surgery himself?” “Yes.” James studied a small Hey’s saw, nothing more than a miniature axe with a curved saw- toothed edge, for first cuts into the skull. “Any slips?” “Several.” Zimmerman stoked the fire, pushing the new logs into place. James looked at him, suddenly dark eyed and dangerous. “Tell me one.” “And you called me a ‘twisted fuck’?” He waited. “Very well,” Zimmerman set the fire poker back. “One of the first ones. Another street kid. Ten bucks to suck, forty to have at his ass. So, I offered him five grand to cut a hole in his own head.” James eyed him and Zimmerman held out his hands, peacefully. “I didn’t touch a single hair on his head. They agree to the terms. They volunteer for the operation. And he performed the procedure.” “So...” James pressed. “What happened.” “Went too deep, that’s all. Wasn’t the last time it’s happened. It’s tough, I suppose. Knowing exactly when to stop. When to stop cutting.” “It happens.” “We’d gotten a hotel room,” Zimmerman explained, “And the first cuts weren’t too bad. I’d bought some liquor. Gave him a shot of Dolantine to take the edge off. He bled a great deal, many do, but I kept him standing in the bathtub. Turned the water on every now and again to wash the blood away. You want a memory, Truitt?” Zimmerman turned. “I remember him laughing a lot. Funny stuff, right? The first few times he stopped cutting, I just brought out more cash. Just kept laying out hundreds. The sink was filled with them.” James turned and watched the fire, a great granite orifice casting dark shadows and anguish throughout the room. Even in the firelight, especially in the firelight, the room was ugly. Old dark furniture. Old dark rugs. The whole place was ugly. The entire fortress, he could think

of no better word, was a gaudy, towering structure of rough stone and sharp angles of broken buttresses and lofty turrets. Old and dark. He remembered Zimmerman saying something about it being a French monastery more than two centuries before. The time-eaten rock, patched unevenly with black ivy and dripstone concretion. The few windows were bare slits of dull light framed in thick lumber that pocked the sides of the mansion. The place was dead, he decided. And wondered some if he was already dead too. “The area is numb by then, swollen lifeless. The nerves already seared and withdrawing from the assault.” Zimmerman filled his wine glass again. “So, it’s cut through by now, an uneven rut in the skull. And he keeps turning the blade, twisting it. Round and round, the circle falls into its groove, a slick channel of bone. And he’s twisting and I notice his laughter has become something quite extraordinary. Like those laughs you only read about and never are really supposed to hear. One of those guys at the end of a good Lovecraft. He starts laughing like that, and I know he’s close. Close to getting all the way through. Pounds of soft pink and gray tissue wrapped in a tough skin, padded by a bath of cerebral spinal fluid.” Zimmerman continued. “I’m told you can feel it. Like cutting a log. You just know. Time to pry out the chip, you see? But he did not. Maybe the booze or the Dolantine. I don’t know. If he weren’t laughing like that, I’ve thought. If he’d just stopped laughing like... like that. But he turned it again. It must have cut into his brain then because the damned laughing stopped immediately.” The trephine instrument itself was in two pieces. The first, a short metal rod ending in what looked like a squat socket wrench with jagged teeth. The other was a wood handle which James crossed at the top in a T and secured with the supplied grooved pin. He took hold of the handle tightly and got a feel for it in his hand. Tried his middle finger on either side, looking for the best fit. “I shouted at him to stop. But he turned the blade again. Blood, I hoped. But something darker than blood, actually, started running out of the hole. I knew then he’d ruined everything. The chip was already useless. Somehow his wrist turned still again and the sound that came from his skull was nothing I’d heard before. A slurp. Some dreadful rupture of blood escaping and grey matter giving way to the alien force of steel. His entire body flopped suddenly and, just like that, he spilled out of the bath tub. Lunged at me, the blade skittering across the floor. His body quaked against me, arms flailing.” “I pushed him aside easily and he fell backwards over the tub. Naked, covered in his own blood. His eyes were wide, pried open by a stronger power. But there was no more life in these eyes. I was looking at an honest-to-god zombie. A thing that grabbed at my legs, hungered to destroy me. And so I kicked it. Kicked its face until it let go of me. The face splattered against my foot, the nose crunching. Teeth burst from its mouth. Finally it lay in the tub, its legs hanging over the edge and inside, the wet and dark shape of a spoiled operation. Eyes still open, dark sap oozing from the hole in its head. The body twitched for quite some time, a death spasm that lasted fifteen minutes.” “Messy business,” James said. “How much to clean it up?” Zimmerman nodded. “Cost almost nothing at all.” “That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?” “Some are born with money. Others are born with looks. Some,” Zimmerman said looking at James. “Are blessed with something else...” “Good hair, perhaps,” James said. “But I’m not what you’re looking for.” Zimmerman laughed. “My little tale didn’t frighten you, now, did it, Mr. Truitt?”

“To tell the truth, it may have increased my interest.” “I’d hoped it might. And as far as your creative talents, why don’t you just let me be the judge of that. I know your work too well.” He pointed to the small stack of books on the table. “I don’t make my selections frivolously.” “Surely, a man of your obvious means and taste is capable of acquiring the same from a more celebrated poet.” Zimmerman reached towards the table. He snorted a pleased, quiet laugh and grabbed one of the books. He opened the book, flipped to one of the pages and read the passage out loud, “Clocks strike, dog bites, fires light in thick black breath and smoke-filled sky. Worms crawl, engine calls, angels fall as their wings turn black in smoke-filled sky.” He closed the book and looked at the back. “An ‘electrifying new spirit,’” he read. “’Mr. Truitt achieves the heroic and ruin of man simultaneously in a voice for this age.” “They clearly don’t know shit either,” James said. “I was writing song lyrics.” He dropped the book on the table. “I enjoy your work a great deal. I have two poets already in the collection, but your voice is the missing piece.” Holding out his other hand, James pushed the business end of the completed trephine instrument into his palm and the serrated teeth pricked his skin. He turned his wrist clockwise, lightly and the teeth grabbed hold, tearing away the flesh easily. He winced and pulled the tool aside to inspect his hand. A perfect jagged-edged circle was cut into the palm, the blood just then finding its way to the air. “And that’s why you want me?” “If I may remain candid.” “Why stop?” “The offer is best received by those at a certain point in their career. The ballerina who blew out her knee. The heroine-burned pianist. The forgotten playwright. Insolvent, erstwhile.” “The forgotten poet,” James finished the thought and Zimmerman again smiled politely. “Broke. A loser.” “I hardly recognized you standing outside my door. You’ve really been digging deep, lad.” “I’ve heard that’s where all the best treasures are buried.” Zimmerman ignored him. “I know about the various jobs,” he said. “Your meaningless, fool jobs.” He scratched his chin. “Your wife left you. Your address has changed no less than six times in the past three years. Rotting away in that pit of a city.” “If you know all this, then you must also know that I no longer write.” “The forgotten poet. Forgotten because the public no longer cares. Or forgotten because you no longer care. The end result is the same.” James set the trephine aside and ran his fingers across the last two pieces. A thin metal bone rasp to pry the chip free from the skull once the trephine had completely cut through. The same would be used to smooth the chip’s edges or even the edges of the new hole. Lastly, a small brush for any resultant bone dust at the end of the procedure. Clean. “I told you, I’m not a poet. That’s not really my thing...” He breathed deeply. “I’d once hoped that writing would provide the best conduit for my thoughts, my inner self.” He shrugged. “But, it did not. I was wrong.” Zimmerman motioned for him to take his chair again and James sat down. “You may no longer write but you still have that... that something,” the man said earnestly. “That which made your work, made you, so unique. Which makes so few special.” “And the addicts and whores?” James wiped his bloodied hand on his pants.

Zimmerman shook his head. “Not the same. How could it be? At first, all chips do have a small rush, certainly. But it’s gone in a second and there’s nothing of consequence within. A glimpse of how it felt when Daddy took off for good? Or what it’s like to spread my legs for a few hits at a crack pipe? What do I need that for?” James laughed. “You get off on that too, Zimmerman. You aren’t foolin’ anybody.” “At first, sure. Once I figured out that it really worked. That something lived on these chips. That I could… But there just wasn’t anything there. And what was there, didn’t stay long. Eventually, maybe a week later, those kinds of chips give off nothing at all.” “What would yours show, I wonder,” James asked. Zimmerman noticed for the fist time that he had carried the serrated trephine blade back to the table and still held it in his hand. “Nothing, I’m afraid, Mr. Truitt. Nothing. I’ve found that most people, from the school teacher to the policeman, are quite ordinary, after all.” “Most people are fortunate in that way.” “So, unless inheriting a fortune is a talent --” “As random and damning as any.” Zimmerman nodded. “And so my collection is now exclusively of those who create. Those who touch the world through a true art. The writers, artists and actors. Composers. Why, I even have a professional clown. A clown for God’s sake! Can you imagine?” “A clown with a hole in his head? Yes, I can imagine that perfectly. “ Zimmerman laughed, eyes intent on James. “The actual bone grows back, of course. Eventually fills in with new cartilage. Isn’t the body amazing? In a year, it won’t be noticeable to others at all.” Zimmerman grinned suddenly. “A certain actor I met many years ago, who is now on a top sitcom, comes to mind.” “That explains a lot,” James smiled. Zimmerman leaned forward. “I won’t lie to you, Truitt. You would lose something more than bone tonight. A bit of what makes you special that will never come back.” He rang a small bell on a table next to the couch. “Of course,” continued Zimmerman, “There’ll always be the hope that it might.” James settled back into his chair and finished his own glass of wine, the trephine blade resting in his lap, and waited for a servant to appear. A house like this gotta have servants, he thought. Instead, a woman entered the room. Thin and younger than Zimmerman, perhaps beautiful if not for the lifeless eyes. James watched her and decided she had once been someone worth watching. But only many years before. Zimmerman stood to kiss her cheek. “My wife, Brigitte,” he introduced. “Brigitte,” James said. “If you’ll both excuse me,” Zimmerman said. “I won’t be but a moment. Brigitte will be kind enough to keep you company until I get back.” The woman nodded and the collector stepped from the room. As soon as he’d gone, she turned from James and stared at the fire. It occurred to James that the woman was as ancient and dark, as dead, as anything else detained in the house. James wandered slowly over to the cabinet and Zimmerman’s wife now watched him with each step. He looked over the display of bones, picked one randomly, half-convinced that it had called out to him somehow. He lifted it off its stand. It was ashen colored and cold to the touch. Grainy.

He wrapped his hand around the chip. The sensation and images came immediately. A burst of senses. Of movement. Dancing. The rhythm moving through his ears and body. His very heart lifting to the tempo which moved through him. Or had the music moved towards him. He felt lifted, cool air rushing through his face. Strong hands locked at his hips. These hands did not attack him, didn’t squeeze and pinch. These hands supported and caressed. They became one with his skin, with his movement, gentle. Strong. His body shuddered against their press, the heat of another body pushed against his own. His own muscles taut and strong, he slipped away from the hands, not too far, an instrument of the music. Leaping across the stage, leaping across the field. As if God himself were dancing through him, leaping beside him, celebrating life… celebrating James Truitt. “Jesus Christ,” he stammered and let go of the chip. He stood before the cabinet, trembling. Throughout, Zimmerman’s wife had watched. Both terror and wonder in her face. His breaths were quick and short. He thought of reaching for another chip. Tried to decide which one to grab next. “Would you like another drink?” the woman asked suddenly, with a soft, dispirited voice. “Do you need anything?” She’d fallen back into her trained routine as hostess. “No, thanks” James said. “Which one is yours?” She looked directly at him, a spark of life in her eyes for the first time. “Which...” He waited. “I was a magnificent coloratura soprano,” she said, her gaze drifting toward the cabinet. “The next Callas, some said. I performed in the world’s greatest houses.” “And your price?” he asked. “This,” the woman said. “All of it. More than two billion and... But when he’s gone...” “The collection.” “I can still sing,” she said. “But that something which always made it, somehow, more than singing. That’s what sits on his shelf now.” She dared another look at the cabinet. “One day it will be mine again.” “To hold like the others?” James said, “For brief flashes of what you once had.” “No, no!” She glared at him now, eyes wide, wild. “I thought of all that,” she grinned. “I did! I did.” Her hand reached up and pulled aside greying hair to reveal the hole in her head. A perfect circle the size of a poker chip. It was yellowed and crusted over, the old wound filled with something, and despite his best efforts to the contrary, James turned away for a moment in disgust. “Wax,” the woman explained. “After... After my operation, I filled it with wax.” The grin now faded and she turned to watch the fire again. “That way, when this is all mine... I can put it back,” she murmured. It came out as a plea, a prayer almost. “I can put it back.” He wondered if she’d ever truly believed such a thing were possible. Zimmerman reentered the room. “Well, well. Getting along nicely then? Good. Looks like everyone is getting to know each other just fine. Did she tell you to run?” he asked. James shook his head, watching Zimmerman’s wife. “Not yet.” “Unexpected. Brigitte always does. But no one has yet.” He’d grabbed one of Truitt’s books. “Did you laugh when they cut you open? Did you laugh when they took your cradle away? And when you’re lying with a girl that you just couldn’t love. Did you laugh? Did you laugh? Did you hope?” He closed the book. “I sometimes suspect you might actually like Man, Mr. Truitt.”

“I like the ideal of Man.” James stood and crossed to the cabinet again, placed the trephine blade back into the case. “And am only disappointed. It’s that disappointment I have always sought release from through my craft. Whatever that craft may be…” He tapped several of the chips lightly again, petting them almost. “Is that really what you want in your... Your collection?” “Yes.” James turned to him. “Then I agree,” he said. Zimmerman nodded, his eyes smiling. “Wonderful.” He crossed the room and firmly shook James’ hand. “Wonderful.” “A few things, first.” James pushed the strand of hair from his eyes. “Yes,” Zimmerman’s voice was cautious, biter. “Where’s Brigitte’s’ chip?” “Her...” Zimmerman looked at his wife briefly and turned on James. “That’s not your –” “Sure it is,” James crossed the room in three quick steps and took hold of the woman’s hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s find it.” “Truitt!” Zimmerman raged, stomping across the room after them. “Sit down,” James growled. “Or I’ll rip your eyes out.” Zimmerman studied him for only a moment and then took his seat. “You won’t find it,” he said. “No. Isn’t it here?” “No.” Brigitte whirled on him, eyes wide with fury. “You –” “Let’s just find out.” James reached into the case. “Please...” the woman said. “Please, what?” James looked in her eyes. “It’s now or never, darling. Decisions have been made.” He reached up to touch her head and she pulled away. James grabbed hold of her neck, just beneath her head. It was half-gentle, as if he were going to give her their first Hollywood romantic kiss. She turned back with his force and he slipped his hand up to push back her hair, revealing the hole. “Don’t,” Zimmerman said quietly. James ignored him and, holding back her hair with his four fingers, sought the hole with his thumb. He rubbed the top of it, the wax thick, stiff, but warm to the touch. He stroked it, watching her, wondering what his touch might do, and she froze next to him, eyes closed. His thumb sunk deeper, pushing in just a fraction. How far, he thought, How far can I press before the black stuff comes out and she’s jerking on the floor at my feet. He made a circular motion, testing the width of the wound. He moved in his thumb as if he were moving between a woman’s legs, slow circular movements pressing deeper with each rotation. She responded in kind. Chest lifting, the feminine indent just below her back shifting inward. She breathed deeply against his probing hand. Shuddered against his prying, intrusive... and confident touch. The thumb pressed further, the wax curling over the joint, collecting at his knuckle. It spread to his second finger now, both warm and tacky. His circle widened, dared to press outward. He found the edges. Edges of bone. Brigitte’s skull. He countered his swirling now, the outline of the hole clear to his hand. He felt something that wasn’t wax and the woman jolted beside him. “Truitt...” he heard Zimmerman say his name. It was a warning of some kind.

He pulled his hand away and she gasped. Short. The touch broken and lost between them. She turned to him, eyes passive and sleepy. James inspected the hole, saw for the first time what he thought was... was inside her. He cleared away what remained of the wax and looked at the old cut. She quivered again beside him and he pulled her closer, tilted her head against his. “Yes,” she said beside him. Still and languid. He bent forward and brought his mouth to the hole. “Truitt!” Zimmerman jumped from his seat. He hadn’t moved another inch. He stood rooted watching The kiss was short, James’s lips pressing around the edges of the hole. The tongue darted inside briefly. Flickering against her. She collapsed against him and his hand dropped to her waist to hold her steady against him. He turned away and kept hold of her as they stepped closer to the cabinet. “Do you know which one,” he asked. She shook her head no. He studied the cabinet for a moment, then reached out. Selected one of the chips. “I do,” he said. He brought it up to her head and she shrank away from him again. “Brigitte,” he appealed. She lifted her chin proudly and stepped towards him again. “Don’t you need to hold it?” she asked. “To know for sure?” “No,” he said and held it up to her head again. This time, she didn’t move. She stood like one of the statues in her front yard, waiting. James slid the chip back into place. He guided it carefully and it wedged in smoothly, fitting easily enough. He carefully pressed until it was set fully down in the hole. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right. I... There’s something” “Looks like we found it,” he looked at Zimmerman. James turned back and watched the woman. Looking unenthusiastically for something in her eyes that would tell him everything was fixed again. That it had worked. Would she simply break into song? He expected to see and hear nothing. “Nothing,” she said. “There was a flash. It was really me again. The whole me.” “I’m happy for you,” James brushed the hair from her face. “But only for a moment,” she muttered. “I can’t remember now...” “I thought as much,” James touched her face gently. “Maybe it just takes more time,” she gasped. “Maybe...” “Enough of this,” Zimmerman demanded. “You apparently have what you wanted,” he snapped. “Now I will have what was promised.” James smiled. “My own chip in your filthy collection.” “Filthy? You will be immortalized,” Zimmerman said. “That thing which makes you so special, your greatest talent, will become something real. More real then any chapbook, award or verse. You will share your true self with another human. What more could any artist want?” “To share my true self with God? With myself.” “Fine, fine,” said Zimmerman. “Brigitte, I...” He stumbled over his words. The woman hovered like a ghost in the corner, something lost in her eyes. James saw too that she was fading. “Darling,” Zimmerman managed, and he choked on the word. He too now recognized the creature that stood across the room. “If you’ll excuse us now.”

Brigitte slowly turned and walked bit by bit towards the door. When she was halfway across the room, James caught her. He grabbed the woman, his slight hands seizing her head and neck in one swift move. With another, he’d jerked his right arm and there was a terrible crack. Her body slumped to the floor. Zimmerman had remained frozen throughout. But as James stood breathing heavily, looking at his own palms, the rich man moved for the door. “Sit,” James told him, raising a hand. Zimmerman whirled on him, staring with the confused eyes of a child. “What… What have you done?” “I told you I wasn’t a poet.” Zimmerman blinked. “You...” “My wife didn’t leave me. I...” Zimmerman trembled, his jaw now slack, the soft, full lips quivering. His legs gave way beneath him, and he collapsed to the couch. “She was the third. There have been others since... Eight. No, nine, ten, now, I suppose.” James shrugged. “I’ve tried to move. To get away from certain kinds of people, but…” he smiled slightly. “But I suppose my own collection has also grown over the years.” “You’re... You... You can’t do this,” Zimmerman said weakly. “You can’t.” But still, he didn’t move. They never did, James thought amusingly, and so he kept talking. He had time. He always did. “Art did not satisfy. Poetry did not, could not, satisfy,” he said. “So I returned to what I’d found before as a younger man.” A small smile. A memory. “To discover a truer talent, a truer craft, once again. I’ve even combined them, recently in fact, to see of it could… satisfy. I realize and admit now freely,” he held his gaze. “It did not.” His hand wrapped around Zimmerman’s throat. “I still hope that I’m wrong about this. I still like to think there’s something else... something else that makes me ‘unique.’” James held the scalpel again. Zimmerman sneered at him, shaking beneath him. “Now what Truitt? You’ll kill me too and steal all the money. Is that it?” “Now we operate,” James replied. “A million dollars,” Zimmerman wept. “Two million.” He grabbed hold and brought the blade over Zimmerman’s head in one swift movement, running it from between his eyes to the back of his neck. Zimmerman screamed and James kept cutting. Over and across the ears. The blade was quite sharp, and aside Zimmerman’s shrieking, the skin pulled back easily. He dragged him across the floor towards the cabinet, towards the case of tools. It wasn’t easy. Zimmerman was a heavier man and squirmed like a child having a tantrum. James kicked him several times and the squirming slowed enough. He held him to the floor, using his full weight to hold him down and still. Dove into the case with his free hand, reaching for the saw. The small saw moved across the skull, slipping in the oily blood. He moved across again and the teeth grabbed hold. A thin line forming across the bone. Back again. And the line had become a shallow groove. Zimmerman twisted beneath and James leaned against him, pinning him motionless again by sheer will. The sawing continued throughout. “That looks good enough,” he said. Zimmerman literally whimpered now under him.

James lay the Hey’s saw aside on the table and grabbed hold of the trephine itself. He set the circular blade against the cut, made sure the edge lined up with the channel of bone he’d made. He grabbed the T’d top and turned once. The instrument caught the groove just fine and the turn sunk deep into Zimmerman’s wet and dark skull. James pulled the trephine away. Wiped the blood away from the area he was operating and inspected his work. The indent of a perfect circle in the skull. Perfect. He put the blade over the spot again and turned. Turned. Turned. Zimmerman lay completely still beneath him. James grabbed the steel rasp and slid it into the ridge between skull and ship. Carefully. He found just the right spot. He lifted, turning the wrist and the bone lifted. Pried free, he reached out and grabbed it gently. “Look at that,” he said. “Fine,” Zimmerman hissed beneath him. “Truitt, fine.” James didn’t know if it was the pain, fear or blood running in Zimmerman’s face, but the words were sloppy, drunken and wet. The twisted mouth garbled, “So now... Now you have my chip. Is that all—“ “I don’t want your damned chip,” James laughed. “You told me it wouldn’t show a thing. And I believe you.” He tossed the bone into the fire. “This is just practice,” he told him. Zimmerman’s eyes widened, the blood dripping off his brow and onto his cheeks. James pushed him back to the ground, held him still to the ground. Found another spot in the skull. And started sawing at it.

—§—

The first eight times, he’d done quite well. Really got the hang of it. Slipped on the ninth, though. So little bone by then. Cut too deep, he guessed. He stood quite alone now in front of the cabinet again and with a handful of chips in his hand. He clutched the first chip off of the small stack. An instinctive burst of colors, light, shadow, smell of paint, his hand seizing the brush, the canvas, beauty... Grabbed another. Words, empathy, moving across the stage, laughter, warm light, applause, reflection... Another. Movement, breathing, tempo, the weight of a hand against him, blending, dance forms structured around the nine rasas, elation... James let the remaining chips in the stack fall from his fingers. He reached into the case of tools and took hold of the scalpel. Looking in the mirror, he made the first incision.

WHERE THE SHADOW ENDED

Tom was familiar to the darkness, an adopted son. He woke to it each morning and scurried over its dim empty streets, then immediately climbed back into it again to work in pitch black flues for hours. Wedged in endless shadow, reaching tiny hands into the dark unknown to scrape clean the insides of London’s chimneys. His skin, hair and clothes were soot-dyed and black. It was rumored to be bad luck to step on a chimney sweep’s shadow, and Tom supposed that was because it was never really clear where the shadow ended and the boy began. And so, as he hung within the unique nothingness of unnatural night, stuck fast between the narrow walls of stone and crusted soot, the darkness itself did not alarm him. What frightened him was that this same darkness now wanted to kill him. An animal of some kind, he’d thought, hoped, at first. The boy had certainly raked out enough dried carcasses of pigeons and cats to justify the thought. He remembered the two bee hives and the magpie’s nest, when he’d climbed up to the top of the chimney with each egg and carefully laid them on the top bricks. Bringing down only the nest for his master and the customer to see that he’d done his job. But the thing that stirred in the darkness just beneath him was not a magpie. Tom tasted sweat on his parched lips but had grown quite numb to the heat, a sticky, gritty warmth that gripped his entire body. Face wet, the calico climbing cap completely drawn over his head and tucked in at the neck. The hood drew into his mouth and the tart taste of soot stabbed at his tongue. His lungs pushed feebly against the unnatural air and he choked on each hard breath. Cries for help had been muted and swallowed by the darkness itself. His body was twisted, cramped. One arm remained close to the side of his body with the palm turned outwards, pressing against the side of the flue. The other arm was extended above his head, holding the scraper. The walls squeezed hard against his very bones, his knees and back jammed perfectly so that movement down was now impossible. He tried again and found himself lodged as tightly as ever. A foggy hole for sure, he shivered. Soot on all sides now, except for below, where he could still wiggle his bare feet some. Below, where he’d first heard the sounds. The low scratching sounds. Muted and dawdling at first. So quiet that Tom thought he’d only imagined them. The boy stilled his breathing, heartbeat thumping in his ears, and listened vigilantly. Yes, he thought, there was something there. Something scraping, something deliberate. And as the minutes crept forward, as hours passed, the noise grew progressively louder until he recognized it clearly. The sound of black nails clawing against the side off the flue. Growing louder, stronger... more angry. Another sweep, he tried to convince himself. Sent to free him. But he knew better than that. Though only seven, Tom wasn’t naive. As far as the world believed, he’d never been to this house or sent up its flues. The foreman had probably already declared the fourth flue beyond repair, suggesting it be closed off in favor of the others, and had surely deserted him for good. The foreman was running jobs on the fox, forcing the boys to work extra houses each day, making connections of his own with some of the master’s customers. And when Tom’s friend, Billy, threatened to turn the foreman in, old John had taken care of the boy quick as a wink. He’d slammed Billy’s head against the top of the chimney, the crunch more than expected, and had finally tossed the boy off the roof altogether. The master was unhappy to learn that Billy had ‘fallen’, a valuable climbing boy for sure.

Perhaps the master would also be unhappy to learn that Lil’ Tom had ‘run off’. Tom hoped so. Eventually, he heard words. Rather, sounds much like words that crept along the sides of the caked flue and echoed in his very mind. The noise was deep and multi-tonal, at least three separate voices speaking at once, and chillingly familiar. Tom could make out no phrases, no single word, but as the hours, as the days, dragged onward, he eventually found meaning in the voice. Only emotions and ideas carried in the dark tones of the reply. Trespass. Sinner. Abyss. The darkness, his once friend, wanted him, commanded him, away. And it was irritated that Tom remained. And growing angrier with each passing hour. “Leave me be.” Tom groaned again. His own words came out as a whisper of heat. “Why won’t you just leave me to die here?” He could smell it. Something foul, rotting in the stillness of the bleak chimney. It touched him again. A poke at the bottom of his bare foot. Something that had grown sharper with each passing day, sharp and more like a stab. The master didn’t provide shoes for the boys and the few times he’d solicited a pair from a kind customer, the shoes had been sold within the hour. How many hours now, he wondered. He was pretty sure it had been several days and supposed he should be hungry. His last meal, like most mornings, had been nothing but ale. He’d dipped his mug into the large tankard, the liquor black as night and moldy on top with age. “Open your shoulders and let it down, lads,” one of the journeymen laughed. Something like fingers grazed across the top of his foot again, grabbing around his ankle. Like soggy twigs, something rutted and wet at the touch. He shuddered out loud, the sharp cry caught quick in his hood, and he jerked his foot away again. Earlier in the week, the darkness had retreated when he kicked out at it, gone away for several hours before returning again to prod at him gingerly. Now, his kicks no longer worked. The ghostly claws simply reached out once more and furiously scratched at his lower leg before vanishing again into the black flue. He’d met a journeyman sweep who’d once piked a chimney where someone had burnt a murdered man. Each swipe of the rake had brought the dreadful soot down upon him, the corpse’s very ashes coating his hood and skin. Throughout, the journeyman told Tom, he’d felt that he was wasn’t alone in the chimney. That someone, or something, was watching him. Balefully watching. In the end, the sweep had tossed the full soot bag into the river for fear of what was still inside. Tom suspected now that it was the darkness itself that had watched him. A night demon of some kind. Though he’d only been brought to church twice, he knew about demons. He’d heard stories and even seen one, he supposed. The master’s trading card, the calling card passed out to prospects, had a picture of one. An illustration of the master and two sweepers in front of a house, the sun shining bright, a fine smoke coming out the tip of the chimney. And in the smoke, Tom saw a skull for sure. The deep hollow sockets of its eyes leering out at him. A grotesque face, the snout and fangs of something like a gargoyle. He’d shown the card once to Billy and said just as much, and his new friend had laughed at him. But Billy was murdered now anyway and Tom, well... He’d by now accepted his own fate. To simply die, caught halfway up a chimney in a coffin of soot. Tom sniffled some, the tears warm and slick on his face. He should have liked very much to see his mother one more time. When she’d last visited her sister, his father had sold him outright for two guineas. More than enough for some hot spiced gingerbread and a nice baked potato. Perhaps some meat pudding or a bit of trodder. It seemed he’d forgotten the taste of food all together and only thought of these treats by habit.

Shivering in terror, Tom closed his eyes and waited for the darkness to return.

—§—

Its mouth closed down upon Tom’s lower leg, biting to the bone. The boy screamed, the sound completely filling the blackness around him. He kicked out violently, automatically, his leg in a spasm of pain. He thought he felt teeth, jagged fangs against his skin, ripping into the muscle, pulling away with strips of skin. Something warm suddenly ran down his foot. Tom knew that it was his own blood. Below, he felt cold pressed against his foot, sucking at the fresh blood that ran from his leg. Feeding on it. Slurping sounds mixed against his own shrieks. Its mouth lurched forward again, biting down onto his toes. Tiny bones snapped. Tom shook back and forth violently, his entire body twisting from side to side to pull away. His shoulders wedged further, the jagged sides of the flue digging into both arms. He felt small hands grab hold of his other leg. Pulling his foot down towards black jaws. Tom kicked out, jerking his feet spastically against the horrible feel of bony nails. He jabbed out his right hand, the fingers cold and lifeless. Trembling, the hand reached out to take hold of the scraper again where it remained jammed in the soot above. He took hold of the tool, and, wrists cracking in agony, stabbed again at the filth over head. Some soot spilled down onto his hood. The hand struck out again, blindly jabbing into the blackness above. He felt the blade sink deeper than before. His hand sunk for the first time up to the wrist. His legs freed some and Tom realized for the first time that that the thing had stopped gnawing in his feet. Instead it, too, was clawing at the soot. Clearing it away so that it could get up higher, he now understood. To get to his legs, to his body and face. It had fed on his feet enough and now wanted more. Tom lunged forward again, his left hand pressing against the side of the wall, pushing his weight upward only a hair. The scraper struck out again, jamming into the clot of darkness. It tore away and fell in clumps onto his face. Suddenly above, a pinpoint of light. Even through his hood, he could just make it out. The top of the chimney where sunlight dared to spill into the dark flue. Too far away. And this was the foggiest of holes... solid darkness on every side. A ton of soot and brick in between himself and the freedom of daylight. No, Tom thought, it’s impossible. The blackness below snarled suddenly beneath him. Growled like some wolf from a story he’d heard. He felt its terrible weight shift below him, moving closer. Something sharp and icy pushed through the soot and latched hold of the sides of his legs. Tom stabbed again and more of the darkness cleared away. He wiggled his neck and he felt the clots tickle down his side, catching against his back. Much more and he would only be wedged in deeper. He pushed off again with his left hand, his knees pushing against the flues at the same time. He lifted some, just enough. He’d moved. Tom’s feet pushed against the flue, and he brought his free hand up just a bit, locking his wrist against the new space in the terrible darkness. He punched his scraper again into the black and the darkness broke away again, crumbling down over his face. Below, the dark moved once more and Tom could feel its claws sinking into the flesh of his legs. Piercing like nails into his skin. He jumped up again, every muscle lurching against the terrible weight of the walls around him, and jabbed out once more with all his strength. Something cracked and his wrist

shot back in agony. He’d hit stone. He closed his eyes in despair as the other half of the scraper tumbled down onto his face, snapped in two. He quickly gripped the end in his fingers, raking at the soot again. His knuckles split open, the calloused ebony-stained skin tearing away with each stroke. He shifted the weight painfully against his legs again and lifted, ignoring the spasm in his back. Tom brought his second hand up again, shimmied to the side just enough that the soot sprinkled along his back and poked his head a foot higher than it had been before. Tom had climbed up and down tighter chimneys than this one a hundred times, scampering up the flues with only his knees and free hand as fast as any boy he knew. But the darkness blocked him again, the sticky soot. He dropped the broken scraper all together and dug only with his nails. Scratching at the darkness, his nails burrowed into the black chalky filth. The hole opened more. The light above grew clearer, more real, more possible. It peeked down the long dark burrow for him. Not yet brave enough to completely invade the realm of soot and darkness, not yet close enough to claim him as its own. His fingers had become nubs, fingernails split away, worn almost to bone. Still, Tom dug. He pushed up again and the uneven mortar and brick, that had caught the soot to begin with, tore into his back and shoulders. Shredding away his shirt and slashing his arms and back. Tom had felt pain before. He’d been cut while coring, cleaning away the remaining debris and mortar of new chimneys. He’d been burned by fires left lit and flaming chimney stacks. He’d been beaten with ropes. But in his seven long years, Tom had never known agony or torture like this. His back and the sides of his arms became hot, slippery in his own blood. The chimney seared into his flesh, pierced his very blood. But the alternative crept just below. And Tom knew the alternative was far worse. It too had moved, following him up the chimney. Tom knew it was not enough that he had climbed a few feet. It wanted him entirely gone. Away from its lair. He pulled at rough mortar, wrenched it from the chimney and boosted himself still higher. Moving easier, his back and arms torn open, the blood slippery against the chimney’s hard edges. His head broke through and he ripped the hood from his face, wanting to feel the light on his face. Still too far away, he pushed with his legs until his shoulders jammed again. His hand tore at the soot again, breaking off mortar with his bloody wet fingers. The boy moved his head up and down, now using his chin and teeth to push and clear away the soot and clear room for his chest. Below, the thing snarled and howled after him. The back split open and pain ran down entire body. Something raked down his back and whether it was some monster’s crusty claws or a protruding brick, he didn’t know. He didn’t care. He lifted upwards again. The light was closer now. Glowing at the top of the chimney, a perfect square of delivery and radiance. Soot fell in his face. He spit the grime out, gritty in his mouth. Eyes fluttering madly. The light hurt now. He’d grown so used to the dark. So very secure in its blanket of silence and emptiness. Even though his friend now hated him. He turned his head away from the top, blood frothing on his chalky lips. Unsure if he could climb any further. Unwilling... Again the thing struck at him. Claws and daggers tearing into his tiny body. Words and thoughts of such hate and anger filled his head again.

He quivered in madness, not sure where the shadows of the chimney ended and the sweep Tom began. He pushed again. And climbed. And climbed. Until he reached the top. Then, peeking down into the darkness, he could see it. The tiny, still black hand held high... its skeletal fingers. The hooded head, frayed and moldy, framed on all sides with old soot. Familiar again... The angry thoughts fallen as cold and quiet as the rest of the flue. “Good bye, Tom,” he said. And climbed. Then the light embraced him fully.

PSYCHOMACHIA Vincendi praesens ratio est, si comminus ipsas virtutum facies liceat notare. -- Prudentius

1. Patientia Each night, except Sundays, the boy nests in one of two porch chairs and quietly watches his father and brother clean up at an old barrel filled with rain water from the roof. Mother won’t ever let either back into the house for dinner until they have. Always says Cleanliness is next to Godliness and that a man can’t root with pigs and still keep a clean nose. And so, soiled work clothes always stack up again for the next day. And weary hands scrub away another day’s dark labor. And the barrel water always turns black. It’s 1918, September 6th. Both men move strangely tonight. Father stares at his thick hands and lower arms as if he’s never seen hands or arms before. Slowly turning them over and over and over again. His mouth hangs kinda open as he smoothes the water and soap over the earth-blackened skin, stroking more than cleaning up. Then touching his dirty cheeks and chin like a blind man as the barrel’s cold water trickles down to carve tortuous grey rivers down his blackened neck and chest. The brother cleans just the opposite and scours his skin like he’s whetting an axe blade or sanding a small piece of wood. Patches on his arms and a few knuckles are already scraped red. Other areas remain ignored, still completely black with coal dust. He hasn’t even taken of his jacket or hat yet. Neither man speaks. Something happened in the mine, the boy decides, studying the two. The grimy face blank beneath the leather bill of his father’s dirty cloth cap. Empty. The fiery man’s eyes queerly sleepy tonight. Dead. His mouth, hands. Must have been something Bad. Another overhead collapsed, maybe, slate fall, shattered sandstone. Or a runaway coal gon careening down the track back into the mine. Someone probably got killed. Lost a hand. Some other miner’s face half-smashed. His father always comes home extra quiet on these nights. The two smallest fingers on his father’s left hand are clipped off just above the knuckles, a story from twenty years before. Who this time? Some other father or brother. The boy watches and waits without a sound. Eyes the lightning bugs emerging in the dark woods just behind the tracks which run parallel to his house. Thinks of his upcoming chores. Dragging the fire, letting the cat back in, blowing out the oil lamps, resetting kindling for the morning. Ordinarily, his father leaves him a small piece of cake or some horehound candy to find in his lunch bucket and nibble on while waiting during their nightly ritual. But there is no lunch bucket tonight. Forgotten back at the coalmine, looks like. Another sign something has happened. When he is twelve next summer, he will go to work with them. Ten hours a day. Sure is hungry. He tries to sniff dinner cooking inside. The hog fat dipped on the skillets. Fried potatoes, maybe. Biscuits. He smells only the usual wood smoke and coffee. Something else on the cool dusk air now. A funk. The stink of old sweat. His father and brother, sour. Like they are sick. Finally, his father shuffles away from the barrel into the house. He passes the boy without a word. The barrel has not taken away the smell, though his brother continues to scrub away. Scraping at the skin. The boy watches him for awhile, thinks of asking him What Happened, but then moves from the porch too. His brother hasn’t even looked at him. Inside, his father has taken his usual spot at the table as Mother bestows cornbread and a bowl each of soup beans and fried potatoes. The girls sit in their chairs waiting for prayer to begin. And for their brother outside.

The boy slides into his chair and studies his father more. The man has placed his hands up on the table as if waiting for food, but the food is already there. His eyes move again to his hands, stares at nothing. “Somethin’ happen?” his mother asks. They wait together but no reply comes from the man. “Darryl?” she tries again. “Cold,” his father replies finally and rubs his thumbs against his fingers. “What’s that?” “It’s still so god damned cold.” Rubbing, rubbing. “What’s that boy doing?” His mother moves on from ‘Somethin’ Happen’, gets up from the table. “The gravy’s what’s getting cold now. Paul? Paul!” She’s moved straight for the porch. Their father just stares at his hands and the boy passes quick looks of confusion with his sisters. The older one stifles an insolent laugh. Screaming. Their mother is now…screaming. The boy jumps. The smiling sister’s eyes now as big and bright as a carbide lamp. Their father has not moved. His face the same. Untouched. More shrieks from the front porch. But his father accords dead eyes. Nothing. The boy slips from his chair. Outside, in the darkness, his mother is now sobbing. Gasping for air. He stands in the frame behind the screen door measuring her sounds. Mother has fallen back and collapsed against the chairs where he watches his father and brother each night. His brother still lingers over the barrel, and the light from the house casts through the door onto him. The boy’s own shadow hiding some of it. At first, it just looks like his brother has put his work shirt back on and that the shirt’s sleeves are ripped. Dangling loosely between his elbows and wrists. Then the boy understands it is flaps of skin. Hanging over the barrel. Uneven shreds between other lumps of dripping muscle. His brother’s fingers even now gouging into the other arm. Scrubbing. Ripping. The porch floor is spattered in small round shadows. His brother’s eyes are narrow and glassy with determination. He is might nigh smiling. The wailing by the chairs doesn’t even sound like their mother anymore. Inside, his sisters are now crying. A flash of glistening wet bone. Still, his brother…washes. A hand on his shoulder, pushing him aside. His father. Moving out to the porch. He would…His father only reaches for his earth-stained overalls and hat. Dresses. Pays no attention to his oldest son at the barrel at all. Mother’s wailing has ceased. Her silence somehow even worse. The boy now clings to the doorframe to steady himself. His father now grabs a lamp and empty lunch bucket, ignoring the snapping of his firstborn’s fingers. The boy and his mother watch together as the man steps slowly off the porch into the emergent darkness. His lumbering shadow moves slowly west toward the head of the holler, back toward the mines. No words spoken. The boy’s brother steeps both arms fully into the barrel, and rain water and blood flow as one over its sides. Mostly blood. The puddle grows out slowly toward the boy and shapes across their porch a shimmering black stain. It looks just like coal.

2. Industria The newest run within the Number Three Mine has a bad overhead, and the water is ten inches deep in some spots. Three dead mules now litter the low-sloped tunnel. None of that seems to matter. It’s quality coal and, even without the mules, most of the men are still pullin out

ten tons a day at fifteen cents per ton. Yesterday, Edgar’d pulled fifteen from the earth, draggin each load topside himself after they’d killed the mules. Hasn’t gone home when the company steam whistle blew for second or third shift. There’s still too much to be done here. The whole earth stuffed, pregnant. Bloated with coal. He isn’t the only one workin extra shifts for the Freedom K.Y. Coal Company. Diggin until he just caint stand another minute. Replacin some of the others who hadn’t yet returned. Tunnels are crowded with miners shufflin past this way or the other with picks and carts. It is more than two miles to the surface. Some now carry single lumps by hand. Many of their lamps have already burned out and men keep on workin, now in total darkness. Edgar knocks away another thick shard of night with the pick and retrieves it from the cavern floor. This hunk drips like the rest, covered in the thinnest sheen of what they all can only think of as ice. Unseen vapor, like breath, rises a fer piece beneath the earth to unhurriedly freeze again within the unendin walls of coal. It is so fuckin cold, it burns through gloves and skin, through bone. Through everythin Edgar dumps the shard into his pushcart, then bends to retrieve his pick. The movement is as natural as breathin, and the blood and ooze from his blisters trickle and tickle down his wrists. A foot away, Riley Spurlock lays slumped with his back against one of several roof- support timbers. Dropped lifeless like a discarded rag doll. He’s left the mine just twice in the past week and has spoken only in gibberish. He hasn’t moved in hours and holds the pistol up to his own face, just above the bridge of his nose, just like he’s prayin. He’s been sittin like this for hours now. The Colt his father’d brought home after time with Company F and the 47th. He’s shown it to Edgar many times before. It’d killed two Rebels in Tennessee, Spurlock has claimed, and shot a few rounds at the “battle” of Catron’s Creek. But the river’d been too high that day and nothin much had come of that. Catron’s Creek…Can almost see it. Caint remember exactly when he, himself, has last seen home. Ever since they’d opened the new quarry, after the very first wagons and gondolas were filled. When the mules and pony wouldn’t budge no matter how hard you beat them. When they noticed there weren’t any rats down here. When some of the men didn’t never come back. He’s heard some things, gossip, but don’t really know. Not really. There is still too much to be done here. The old Colt finally fires. When the pushcart fills again, Edgar will need to roll it over Spurlock’s legs.

3. Humilitas Company camps were empty of anything not directly related to coal. Every building, every tool, and each living soul. The Freedom K.Y. Coal Company was founded in 1914 and managed a dozen such camps along the Wallins Creek and down thru Puckett Ridge. All combined, the Company employed just over one hundred men, pulling in sixty thousand tons year, and was in land negotiations to double that in 1919 [Note: It never happened. Freedom K.Y. Coal Company closed that same Spring.] In most camps, there was a three-story tipple at the head of the hollow where coal was collected from different mines and sorted by quality and size into coal gondolas for shipment down the W & B.M. railroad. Everything else grew out from that. The ancillary train tracks and donkey trails. The piles of slack coal. The one-room company store and miners houses that dot both sides of the hollow. The houses, each one painted yellow with red trim, were always brushed over in a fine coating of coal dust. Sometimes black, but the next glance a strange yellow, like when you smash a lightning bug. It depended on how the sunlight caught.

The community church, in what had been the flagship camp of Rockport, was above the tipple and painted white, yet always looked grey. On Sundays, miners from the other surrounding hollows walked or wagoned many miles to reach it. Families marched into the camp on the rails to keep out of the mud, on tracks which still ran right next to the old church. Boys sometimes played among the cars there, pulling the L-shaped breaks for a hiss of air to get nasty stares and a scolding from any nearby men. If too much air was released, the car could simply roll uncontrollably back to the bottom of the tipple where someone might be killed. This miniscule possibility, naturally, was part of the boys’ excitement while their mothers gossiped at the waterpump and smaller children played for a short bit before heading home again. Further above the tipple were several two-story homes called “Silk Stocking Row,” where management and their families lived. Beyond that, only more trees--the leaves which gave the barest trace of turning--and more hills. There, the boys sometimes spied Black Shepherd. A shadowy muleskinner who could run his team of Percheron horses up any hollow in any weather in half the time as the next best carrier in three counties. He lived in the hills alone and came into camps only to pick up and deliver company supplies and shipments from other villages in his wagons and high-runner sled. [Note: Court records in Lejunior say he was also a bootlegger.] He was either part Cherokee. Or part Shawnee. Or part black man, maybe. Either way, the man had never set foot in a coal mine, will only once in his life, and yet his skin was always as dark as night. Most, even the men who’d worked with him, considered him a bit of a monster. A man best to keep away from. The bigger boys sometimes yelled ‘nigger’ and threw railway rocks toward him, but none was ever close enough to hit. He just stared back and usually moved on again whenever church started. Reverend Enoch Osborne said when church started. For seven years, he’d given the gathered coal camps sermons such as (to name only a few): Rules for Thinking alongside the Good Book, The Fixed Costs of Resurrection, Dancing with The Prince of Lies, The Value of Souls, The Virgin Birth of Evil, The Seventh Hallelujah, Fasting and Faith, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Vanquishing the Cardinal Sins, Accepting Our Divine Responsibilities, and something called the Contest of Souls. Osborne often spoke a hundred words in a single slow breath and always pronounced Hell as ‘Ayell with two syllables and without the H. “That weeeeah, my brathes and sistas, may altogaytha of the same mind and conformnity with the Church and Holy Bible, if they shouldda term anythin’ to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought, in like manner, pronounce it to be black, for we mus’ without-a-doubt believe the Speerit of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Speerit of the Church, by which Speerit we are’all governed and directed from the damnations of ‘Ayell to the Lord’s Salvation, be the same!” Originally from Tennessee, Osborne was a stocky Baptist who chewed Shoe Peg tobacco and could spit it in your eye from twenty feet away. He’d once accused Owen Ledford of adultery in front of the whole congregation and actually shamed the man into a public confession. He’d whipped Solomon Fouch once while simultaneously scolding the parents for neglecting his Christian upbringing. There was a rumor he’d stabbed a man in Nolansburg. Even the roughest boys lined up quickly when he finally stepped outside to call everyone into service Still, one Sunday in September, Osborne could not get their Salvation started on time. Some of the adults had been arguing. And their voices, despite Osborne’s reproach, eventually grew louder and more violent into the biggest shine anyone’d ever seen. Men threw punches. Someone’s jaw shattered when a large rock was thrown, and others wrapped a dirty rag around the man’s head to hold it in place.

The cause had been the men from Mine Three. The few who’d actually shown up for church. Others remained working back in the mine and, after the commotion was settled, Enoch Osborne gave the whole congregation a three-hour sermon regarding the Sabbath. Before that, however, all eyes were on these four men. They were wrong. All four still wore their work clothes, each filthier than the last. Stiff with dried sweat. Drenched in coal. Their faces and arms darker than Black Sheperd’s. Like walking shadows. Hair greasy and matted with dirt. Disheveled. Unshaven. From the smell, clearly none had bathed in a week or more. Some had cuts on their hands and faces. One face covered in red oozing cysts. Their wives and children embarrassed, certainly. The rest of the congregation both dismayed and appalled. Reverend Osborne riled to a chilling silence. The four men themselves, it was later recalled, didn’t seem to care at all. As if they hadn’t the faintest idea what everyone else was fussing about. Didn’t even fight back when the hostility started. Ultimately, they were driven away. Back to their own camp, their families in tow but at a distance. When church was finally over that day, the rest of the congregation stepped back outside. One boy, who walked alone with his mother and sisters because his father was one of the men still working, and his brother was home sick, noticed this: Black Shepherd still in the woods above the church. The criminal muleskinner who looked like he was made from coal. He’d not moved in three hours and was still watching them all.

4. Temperare Edgar has not eaten in thirteen days. His shirt and jacket drape oddly now and the bones of his clavicle and sternum show. The exact shape of bones in his arms and wrists show. Here a while back, his pants slipped off. Skin collectin at his knees and elbows. The chill of wet coal courses through his whole body. He drops another handful of coal at the mouth of Mine Three and then shambles back toward the darkness below. His body needs nourishment again. The grass and bushes just outside the mouth of the mine are already picked bare. He does not know that the word Hell--or ‘Ayell as his minister oft calls it--derives from primordial sounds like helle, hellja, and hölle, and from the Hebrew word sheol. Or that these words, forgotten words created by dozen different lands, all translate easily to mean "hole" and “cavern” and "hollow” and “to burrow.” Or even that each and every one also has a secondary meaning: “to hide.” He’s never heard these words before. And yet, he understands. Two others already squat over the bloated mule carcass. Flies coat its putrid flesh and their green eyes glint like mysterious African jewels. He kneels.

5. Caritas The boy hides in the woods. He knows about bobcats and bears and paynters and wild hogs. And Indian ghosts and witches. He is more afraid of home. Mother does not talk anymore. His sisters just cry and are filthy. His brother is still propped in one of the chairs on the front porch. Sits there each day and night. Never moving, like something resting in its crypt. And no one else will move him. It rains on him. The bandages on his arms are sticky and yellow. The porch floor is still stained black like coal. Their father does not return.

Their holler is twenty-six miles from the main road. They have eaten all of the canned food. The train does not come anymore. He hears that the mines are shut down until further notice. That management in Rockport says it is only typhoid. Another man walks into their house a week ago. Mr. Schaffer. A Hungarian who doesn’t speak any English. He is completely naked and looks just like a skeleton. Deep black sockets for eyes and a jawbone and skull etched just beneath his coal-blacked skin. He takes food and sleeps in their parent’s bed. He leaves after a few hours, taking their only milk cow. Two days later, it is another man. The boy does not know him and he hides in the latrine behind the house. For two days he hides and does not even come out when he hears his sisters screaming. They, and his mom, and the man are not there when he finally comes out. He runs to find his father but all of the men at the mines and wandering about camp now look the same. It takes another day before he finds the two small fingers on a left hand clipped off just above the knuckles. He finds them on a man he does not truly recognize just outside the mine. His father is a night thing completely covered in ancient dust from miles beneath the world. The clothes tattered and black. Bones already protruding in barbed angles out of his coated skin. His father does not recognize him either. Just stares as he would at any boy, any thing, any lump of coal. The boy is now hungry and roots in a cold stream for crawdads. It has rained, a biddy drownder that fell on him all night, and a dense fog rises in the surrounding hills. On mornings like this, his father used to say that the groundhogs were making coffee over a fire. He misses his father. He misses setting rabbit boxes in holes with his brother. And tying Mother’s sewing thread around June bug legs. And playin to hunt for Indians with his friends. And then pretendin to be Jesse James. And his mother’s chocolate gravy. And spending a single coin of copper scrip at the company store for a chilly imp or birch beer and some peanuts. Making silly faces at his sisters. He misses the whole world. He reaches back into the icy water and turns another rock. Nothing. He thinks of the wives' saw that you can turn a horsehair into a snake by putting it under a creek rock. Just like his father turned when they put him under the earth. This is precisely what the boy is thinking about when Black Shepherd grabs him.

6. Castitas Females were herded into the mine. Each woman and girl placed into two clumsily crafted pens there. Those who tried to flee were killed there in the dark. The others were not harmed and used only for procreation. It was, they thought, just as God intended.

7. Humanitas Black Shepherd looks exactly like The Devil. Or what the boy imagines The Devil would be. The muleskinner’s skin is truly grey. And his eyes glow like stars. Wears a frayed oilcloth slicker. His hair is black and long beneath a wide brim hat, and it frames his rounded face which has many scars. He feeds the boy, who sleeps for two days. When the boy wakes, Black Shepherd offers him a pone of cornbread and some coffee. Black Shepherd talks quietly to the boy. Men

sometimes go where they should not, he says. Men sometimes go too deep. The boy is terrified of the man but eats all the same, and listens to every word. Hell is real. Its falsehoods creep slowly, eternally, from the darkness into light. The greatest deception ever played on man. That which makes man majestic somehow deemed sin. That which makes us loathsome becomes virtue. The seven deadly sins aren’t. Imagine, he leads, The Prince of Lies imprisoned in the darkest pit of Earth. A hundred miles below the ground. A thousand. Frozen. Empty. Smiling. His great lie creeping slowly, eternally, from the absolute darkness into The Book, The World. And, just perhaps, that same lie is sometimes carried. He and the boy approach the mine at dawn. The entrance gapes. The timbers on either side are fangs. Hot cold breath rolls out the entrance like a fog. The blackness within runs straight down. The creatures milling about do not seem to notice their arrival or intentions. Their own preservation now lost to some icy notion of total humility. While the boy and Black Shepherd prepare, the creatures continue only to dig. The Percherons resist at first. They will not enter the tunnels. One horse rears, goes mad and is killed. But Black Shepherd is the best hauler in three counties and he Gees and Haws all damn day until the coal is slowly stuffed back into the earth. Carts and wagon and small gondolas fill the passageway, which now runs some five miles into the earth. The boy enters the darkness beside him to place dynamite and charges they’ve stolen from the mine supplies and from the company store in Rockport. Narrow tunnels and forty-foot rooms packed with explosives. The creatures move around him. Shrunken black things that ought never again to crawl aboveground. The boy does not look for his father. Strange sounds echo through every tunnel. Voices, maybe. Moaning and wails far below. Black Shepherd must kill his other horses. He and the boy are exhausted from the day’s work, but there is still too much to be done here. In October moonlight, they move slowly above the tipple where the last gondola waits empty. They fill it with the rest of the powder. The track runs toward the mine. Fire. The boy releases the brake. A hiss of air.

8. Pychomachia Tall grey weeds grow between the railroad tracks and cross ties. The rotted remains of an old tipple loom over the place like a giant grey spider. The houses are empty and boarded over like its empty egg sacks. Years before, typhoid fever wiped out this camp. There was also a mine explosion and collapse that killed as many as thirty miners. Some say it was more than that. Some say the place is haunted. A girl and her grandmother enter the deserted camp. It is 1931. Hoover says we shall soon, with the help of God, banish poverty, and he has promised a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. The old woman has seen a truck a few times. The girl has never. The girl is fighting a cold and is grumpy about having to accompany her grandmother on this errand. Her grandmother reminds her that sick persons should have sick persons’ manners. The girl stays quiet and twirls the empty bucket at her side to pass the time. They have come for the strippings. A small gleaming black mountain of coal. The smaller portions of coal once deemed not good enough for shipment. Discarded. Forgotten. Perfect for nearby stoves. Many have taken from the pile already. For many years, it has, it will, cook meals and warm homes across the county. It always burns bright and long. The girl finds it cold to touch.

DARK HARVEST

No one knew what it was at first, the black thing lying in Tomas Walker’s barley field, and guesses and opinion collected for three days before anyone even dared touch it. On that third day, surrounded by hushed words of both encouragement and warning, Leo Barth carefully used his longest walking stick to roll the thing to its side so they could all get a better look. Then, though none of them had ever seen one before, they somehow knew exactly what it was. A crow-black hooded cloak hid most of the long body, its legs and arms limp and twisted in peculiar directions, broken, looking just as if one of the girls had dropped her cloth moppet. The bulky cloak was weatherworn, torn in several places, revealing dark alien armor and spots of leprous grey skin underneath. A hood and drape obscured most of its head, a metallic black and silver faceguard masking the bit of face that did show with the grisly grimace of alloy fangs. A Dark Lord. Revenant. Witchman. Some children had found one of its gloves, an enormous gauntlet with as many as fifteen intricate plates, the long fingers in scales riveted to first-rate leather. The metacarpal along the back of the hand was decorated with silver and strange lettering. And though none of them could read the language, or any language for that matter, they somehow knew exactly what the words spoke of. The End Wars. Shadowland. The Other. Words best saved for after-dinner gossip or fairytales. They grouped around it, the people of Crossfield. The men stood up close watching in silence, the women chased back a ways. Twelve families, fourteen if you counted Crazy Spencer, who’d moved up into the hills, and the Beadlewicks, who lived some miles out and never took cause to visit. Each family worked almost twenty acres, good farmland half sown in barley, half in wheat, peas and oats. But work in the fields had stopped. It looked odd in the daylight. A mound of black cloth, the scant shape of a body made possible only by the pieces of armor they could make out. At certain angles, it almost vanished. “What if it ain’t dead?” Tomas ventured, breaking the quiet. “Then he’ll kill every one of us,” Fisk said. “That’s what they do.” The smell was dreadful, the thing decaying in the mid-day sun. Only it wasn't the expected stink of something dead and rotting. It was a peculiar smell, a strong stench of scorched bone or clay, something burnt. The flies kept away from it. Leo Barth tapped it again with his stick, “It’s plenty dead.” “Shouldn’t we make sure?” Fowler White scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. “I mean, burn it or something?” They’d heard something of the End Wars, an alliance of some kind against a terrible army of some kind. But whether that was a war that had happened long ago, or was happening, or might soon happen, they didn’t know exactly. Their own manor lord had been gone for years representing one king or another and they weren’t sure how, if at all, the two related. “We ain’t burning nothing,” Tomas Walker warned. Howell, who reported directly to the steward, held out both hands in a panic. “No, no, no burning. Let’s just think about this first.” They retreated to silence and watched it quietly for more than an hour before the talking broke out again. They debated once more on where it had come from. Had Walker’s plow simply dug it up? Had it fallen from the sky, tossed from some terrible winged beast it used as a steed? Had

some wizard’s spell placed it there? They debated whether they should contact the steward or send Howell to the castle for instructions. They argued over what to call it and whether Dark Lords were kings or demonic knights or some kind of sinister holy man. There was only one thing they could all agree upon. This was the most important thing that had ever happened to any of them.

—§—

The men gathered outside the barn each day just after sunset. They stuffed pipes and shook out the day's field pains, waiting for the invite, for the legroom, to come in and see it again. Tomas and some others had eventually worked up the nerve to drag the thing across the field to his barn. After several hours of trying, they'd finally lassoed its left foot and had two mules tow the body the mile back. It weighed more than they’d first thought, all the armor and weapons it still carried. It hadn't moved once, dragged like an unearthed log, the mules jumpy and bawling throughout the chore. They hauled the lifeless body into the barn, flat on its back, the cape from its cloak in a bundle behind it, arms raised and flaccid above its head. That was almost three weeks ago. They still weren’t sure it if was dead or not. They’d banged on pots and shouted from the doorway to wake it up. Leo Barth had nudged it a few more times with his staff. While it hadn’t moved, it also hadn’t rotted any. And the stink wasn’t any more terrible than how the thing had smelled in an open field. They came up with more ideas on where it had come from and what had happened to it, tales of dragons and wizards. But none of them knew very much of those far-away things. They took better account of its clothing, weapons and body. Discussed its black, dagger-tipped boots. Talked over the braided belt cinched around its waist, the ornate sheath and various short swords. Other times, they spoke about anything but the creature, and it just lay in the background. The children played just outside, and most of the wives had gathered too, chatting and working on a huge quilt for the fall festival. They’d been allowed to see the thing only a few times since it was put in the barn. The men barred the doors during the day while working and Thomas Walker’s sons took turns guarding the barn. Most honored the agreement and the Walker boys had to chase away only one or two. Just after sunset, the men controlled the doorway again. Half a dozen men stood in the barn. Another group just outside the doorway waiting for their turn to hover just within. There wasn’t room for all of them, as no one wanted to step much deeper into the barn, closer to the thing. On a dare, Verti Ritsop had gotten closer and touched its boot with his bare hand. Just tapped the side before racing for his life and diving through the opened barn door into the arms of the others, who howled with genuine laughter and thrill. Veri worked the field hard the next few days. The others worked more easily too, merrily replaying his mad dash across the barn and leap into the crowd. Couldn’t wait to gather again to see what might happen next. And Verti didn’t disappoint. One night, he wanted the sword. They all wanted the sword. There were rings too. And daggers and chains at its boots and waist. And its helmet and the second gauntlet. But the sword… it was special somehow. Inspiring. And worth more than enough to finally buy the land outright ten times over.

"I'm not saying he shouldn't," Howell was explaining again. "I just don’t know if that’s something you want to be fooling with.” Verti crouched low and moved in measured steps towards the thing. The hay under his boots hissed and crunched with each movement and he stopped to shoot an irritated look at them. The room had fallen silent, the group's endless prattle, snorts and sighs replaced with only his crunching. His eyes begged that they resume their usual clamor and the group responded all at once in an explosive rush of unrelated weather and livestock observations. Having each spent their one preloaded sentence, the room fell absolutely silent again just five seconds later. Verti shook his head in disgust and froze, close enough to touch the thing. He steadied himself in the final crouch he'd use to lift away the sword. The black thing still hadn't moved, would probably never move. Up this close, it looked more dead to Verti than it ever had before. And up close, the sword looked finer too. The hilt was all he could make out but that was plenty. He saw silver there, and crystal in the pommel maybe. The top shaped as the skull of some kind of lizard, a dragon Verti supposed, the jaws tapering up to the tip and baring fangs, scarlet jewels worked into the dark narrow eye sockets. The hilt was wrapped in rich black cloth and some kind of golden wire, the crossguard thick and sumptuous in the weld and design. The worth of the pommel alone would last generations. He reached slowly for the blade, his eyes never leaving the motionless thing beside him. His arm bent out, fingers stretching closer to the prize. He took one last quiet breath and curved his fingers around the pommel… "Look out, Verti!" Verti fell away backwards with a high-pitched shriek his daughter might have made, his heart and gut jerked instantaneously outward and then back down to land somewhere beneath his toes. He lay in the hay on his back, trembling. Awaiting death. The initial shout from the back of the barn was replaced with booming laughter from the entire group. "Damn it, Fisk, you almost killed me," someone grumbled between guffaws. "You allright, Vertty-Boy?" another voice called to him. He was. And carefully sat up straight to see that the thing hadn’t moved at all. Dead as hell to sleep through all of that. "Idiots," he said and grabbed hold of the sword. Then he started screaming. The middle and ring finger vanished instantly, the dragon skull’s jaws at the top of the sword springing away from the hilt and pouncing down on his hand. Just as quickly, the dragon’s snout opened again and lunged forward a second time, snapping off the pinky with an undistinguished chomp at the second knuckle. Verti fell backward, cradling the remnants of his right hand against his chest. The remaining thumb and forefinger twitched nervously, pinchers, blood rushing down his arm. Amid the confusion and screeching, the barn emptied. Fowler White stopped long enough to grab the back of Verti’s shirt to drag him like a sack of grain into the yard. “What the hell!” Leo Barth shouted. “What’d he do?” “The witchman grabbed him,” someone panted. “Pulled his hand clear off.” “Looked to me like the sword bit him,” another said. “The sword,” Verti muttered between moans. “The sword.” They wrapped his arm. “I told you to leave it alone,” Howell said. Verti lunged at him, and half a dozen men jumped to break them apart.

Thomas Walker looked up at his barn where several of the children and wives had snuck by in the confusion, crowding just outside the door. They squealed and pointed. “Hey, now!” he shouted, “Get away from there.” “But it’s leaving,” one of the boys said turning. Thomas and the others charged back to the barn. It lay absolutely still in the blood-speckled hay, arms pulled close to its head, rolled over onto its stomach. The thing had moved.

—§—

The bowls of water they’d laid out were emptied. Vegetables taken from their personal gardens were also offered and they too soon vanished. Drew Firman had killed one of his chickens and flipped it across the barn at the thing. The next morning, they found bones only, picked clean. For a short time, those who contributed food were given first rights into the barn, but by the end of the week, everyone was arriving with handfuls of vegetables or bread. No one had seen it move again since that first night. The women and children who’d witnessed the event themselves were called upon each day to retell the story. How exactly did it move? Did you see its eyes? Was it coming towards the door or crawling away? In exchange for the stories of “When It Moved,” several of the wives were now invited into the barn too, and the coordination of who was allowed in, and for how long, got more difficult. Ultimately, it was determined that the men would keep the doorway at night and the women and children could work things out for themselves during the day. All of Crossfield had agreed to keep the find to themselves, but whispered words are heard afar. A few weeks later, strangers arrived from over the hill, two older boys who’d taken their father’s only horse to make the trip and see if the tales were true. Most suspected the Beadlewicks for letting the word out but the boys wouldn’t say. For the price of a small dagger, they were given board and almost an entire night in the front row to look at the thing. The two lingered in Crossfield another three days, simply listening to the many tales of how it was found, when it moved and the night the sword sprang to life. They planned to return again soon. This night, the men stood around discussing its boots again, the topic of conversation for almost a full week. Blackened leather reinforced with chain metal at the ankles, heel and shins. There were barbed metal balls at the sides, spurs of some kind, and silver blades peeked out of the tip of the toes. They wondered what kind of men, what creatures, those blades had ever kicked into. They imagined castle sieges and midnight assassinations. Argued over whether the blades came out further. Did it kick in with them, or slice across? Several of the men stage- fought each other for evidence and consideration. Would the best kick be at the legs of its opponent or up towards the face? Through the spurs, they talked again over the beasts it may have rode. Some remembered tales that said Witchmen rode dragons of some kind, enormous black monsters that nested in storm clouds and swept in on the cold winds of midnight. Its boots carried the dirt of many untold stories, stains of grey ash and spots of crimson clay splattered along the heels. They thought on the places it had probably journeyed to, the lands it had seen. Distant seas and mountain ranges, magnificent kingdoms and jungles they’d never even heard of. Some suspected it may have even traveled to other whole worlds, shadowy places beyond this world where only demons and black magicians lived. Most of the men had found time to brush their own boots recently with soap and some oil.

“Needs a wider plate to hold it right,” Leo Barth told the others. Max Backer had just modified his own boots to include a small blade in the tip. “It wobbles already.” “Well it ain’t done yet, is it?” Max replied. “I’m gonna get some nails in town. Maybe get the smith to work on it. Maybe.” “You kick anything yet?” “Not yet.” “I was thinking about some new boots myself this spring.” Just outside, the children played a new favorite game called “Witchman,” taking turns creeping about the yard and tagging the others who’d fall down dead. “Well, these boots have lasted me all of twenty years and they got another twenty for sure.” “Or so his wife tells him.” The room laughed. Max Backer just gasped, mouth hanging open, staring at the black thing. They all turned at once and saw it too. It was moving. Its fingers and wrist had turned, flopped to the side, trembling slightly, the arm trying to rise. The head had turned to them directly, its face black and empty. “Shit, shit, shit,” someone managed. They stepped back from the room but the women and other men had already packed in behind the door to see what was happening. Trapped, the men waited, frozen. “He’ll kill every one of us,” Fisk whispered. “That’s what they do.” “Max, kick him.” Someone suggested. Max honestly wasn’t sure if they meant Fisk or the thing on the floor. Its arm moved up bit by bit, bent at the wrist, the black wrappings flowing back down to the hay-covered ground. The hand lifted with obvious effort and pointed straight at Leo Barth. Barth’s legs gave out, trembling as he grabbed the old table beside him to keep himself from simply collapsing to the ground. “He wants Leo…” Leo Barth turned disconsolate eyes to the others, his gaze glassy and wide. “You shouldn’t kept poking at him with that stick,” Fisk offered. Barth frowned, thinking on that point. “Run Leo!” “He can’t.” “Why the hell not?” “Cause he won’t let him. Isn’t that right, Leo?” Leo thought to answer. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I could, but… What if… I don’t know.” The long dark finger pointed out again, curling, calling him forward. Barth turned back to face the thing, and stepped towards it. It was the furthest anyone had ventured into the barn since the night with Verti Ritsop and the sword. “Don’t do it, Leo!” Drew Firman moved forward to pull Barth back, but several of the others held him off. Barth shuffled across the barn slowly, his legs straight and unnatural. The crowd took hushed turns warning each other to stay quiet. He stood next to the thing now. Stared straight ahead, not looking at it, and they could see his whole upper body was trembling some. He took several deep breaths, then stopped all

together as the long fingers closed around his calf. He kept rigid, he and the others awaiting the imminent mutilations. Then Barth’s head slowly dropped to stare down at his own legs. He breathed again and with a graceless sidestep, moved away from the thing. After pushing him aside, the black hand fell away from his leg and the dark finger pointed out again, stretching further, more steady. Panic wrapped the back of the room, each of the men looking around to see who it was now pointing at. No one was directly in the finger’s path. Firman saw it first. “It wants the bowl!” he shouted. Next to where Leo Barth had originally stood was a short table and wood water bowl. “It wants the water.” “What do we do?” “Well, maybe give it some water!” Firman snapped. The wood bowl was quickly refilled, water sloshing everywhere. “Now walk it over.” “You do it.” Twenty voices suddenly joined the debate over who should present the bowl. “I’ll do it,” Leo Barth called out. They turned to gawk at him. “What? I’ll do it. Just give me the damn water.” He strode back across the barn with determined steps and took the bowl. “I’ll go too,” Verti Ritsop said, reaching out awkwardly with his still-wrapped hand. They moved towards it together and laid the bowl down on the floor. Verti used his maimed hand to push it closer, no more than a few inches from the black thing's reaching hand. They stepped away as it grabbed hold of the water and steadily worked it across the floor and towards its head. Spindly fingers clutched the bowl and lifted enough, dipping it at last into the blackness inside its hood. Others in the room had braved a few steps closer. Women and some of the older children had taken up spots in the back of the room and doorway. Absolute silence fell on the crowd, their own excited breathing and the sounds of the forgotten world outside the barn door vanished. They heard only the crunch of the hay beneath its back, the faded slurping sounds that came from beneath the hood, its own labored breaths. Their minds attempted to wrap around what they were seeing but couldn’t. It was so much more than they could have ever imagined. The thing pushed the bowl aside and spoke. Several in the crowd, women and men, cried out and fainted into the arms of the tightly packed group. The sound was deep and multi-tonal, at least three separate voices speaking at once, and surprisingly melodic. They’d all expected sounds jagged and bestial. They blinked at it, waiting. It spoke again, different sounds, but in the same euphonic command. “It’s puttin’ a spell on us!” Howell gulped, quickly covering his ears. Half the room jumped back thru the doorway. Those who remained were trapped. "No he isn't, you idiot… That's just talking," Leo Barth chided. "Right?" He added quickly to the others who remained. They hung together waiting, watching. It finally thought of their language and spoke in broken terms they recognized, the voice somehow darker and more threatening. It thanked them.

—§—

From what they could tell, Nerissa White had gone to its bed willingly. They found her at the foot of the mattress, stretched out on her stomach and incoherent. She was naked and they covered her in a blanket before carrying her from the barn. Every so often, she giggled softly. The thing gave no sign of movement throughout her removal. It slept quietly. Quilts the women had made for the room were left laying on the floor. There were three of them, hand- stitched, the women working on them together as they sat outside each night or inside the barn during the day. They’d worked in patterns and images with patches and stitching, squares of adventures the thing may have once had, snippets of places it may have once traveled to. Embroidery of dragons and castles, regal banners flying, a commanding sword carried by a black fist. Malina Putnam’s square imagined the thing riding a white unicorn. “Because I always wanted to stitch a unicorn,” she said, shrugging. They all agreed it was some of the nicest work they’d ever done. Nerissa’s dress was found neatly folded on the short table. The bed had been Howell’s. His was the only home in Crossfield that had one and the others convinced him it would be best if they moved it to the barn. The straw-filled mattress was worn and stained, but the women had cleaned it up fine and restuffed it. The mattress had lain empty in the room for two weeks before it had moved to it. It was still badly wounded and moved very little, no more than once a day. But they gathered just the same. To watch. The times it did move become ongoing fodder for countless retellings and speculation. They took turns bringing it food and water, the plates and bowls laid down beside the bed. It continued to eat and drink. Sweet smelling pots of homespun remedy smoked in narrow wisps next to its bed. More travelers came to Crossfield. Several young men, friends of the first who’d visited, arrived and paid for their admission and board by repairing hedgerows during their stay. An older man turned up one morning but, ultimately, he was too afraid to enter the barn. Instead, he stayed on almost two full weeks listening to the wide-ranging stories and helped build the new front porch. The next week, a small caravan of merchants had gone a hundred miles out of their way to get a look. Thomas Walker and his wife took payment in some clothing and a brass ring for room and a night to watch it. The others soon convinced Walker that it would be best if everyone took some sort of active financial ownership of the barn and in any boarding that would go on in Walker’s home ongoing. A prudent farmer puts aside grain and coin for hard times. The farmers of Crossfield pooled theirs together for additional food for travelers and materials to reinforce the barn, its doors and a wide porch onto the front of the barn with a dozen new chairs and a table. They also built a simple casing to display its gauntlet and the bowl it had drunk from when it first spoke. They stood before the case now, silent. It was too soon to wrap their minds around Nerissa White. “I guess you can give it that dinner now,” someone suggested. Drew Firman had snared a good sized hare and he and his wife cleaned and cooked it to present that night. They’d marinated it in a cabbage broth for a full day and even boiled some beets to go with it. The aroma was mouthwatering, meals of meat occasional at best. Firman approached the thing slowly – it was the closest he’d yet been – and laid the plate down beside the bed. Its black hand suddenly jumped forward wrapping first around Firman’s wrist before sliding down to the plate. It grabbed the hare and tore off a large chunk of the steaming meat to pull into the blackness of its faceguard. Firman had edged slowly away from the bed, heart thumping, urging his knees not to buckle. A wide wet patch had formed on his leg.

The thing’s hand pulled back from the hood and reached down into the folds of its black cloak. Gradually, the knotted fingers and wrist withdrew. It held something shiny and silver. A coin. It lobbed the piece across the room, where it bounced off of Firman’s trembling hands to the floor. Firman scurried to pick it up. The others watched in noiseless wonder, gathering around to get a look at the new find. The black thing had already fallen still again. Later that night, it was officially announced that women were no longer permitted in the barn.

—§—

The coin made its rounds until everyone in Crossfield got one or two good looks. One side showed a round ball of flame, something like the sun, crossed over with two swords. New blankets with this symbol where in production by the following night. The other side featured a symbol from some unfamiliar language. Other coins had come too. Two. And a bracelet of some kind. Payment in exchange for the meals and care, they assumed. They’d brought buckets in so it could wash itself. They caught fish in the stream and cooked for it. They gave it milk and their fattest eggs. They kept the door shut and reboarded the barn to make it as dark as possible during the day. It seemed to prefer night. It moved a little more in the darkness, its breathing a little more steady. They kept candles lit on the display case, which now also featured the three coins and wristlet, for what little light they needed to see it. It was getting better, they decided. But not well enough, yet. In the candle-lit shadows, Leo Barth approached warily. He carried his favorite pipe and a small pouch of tobacco. Whether or not such a creature would smoke a pipe was something they’d argued over for two weeks. They were determined to settle the matter. Barth laid the pipe and pouch on the side of the bed, just inches from the black thing. Very few of the men dared to get close anymore. Most lingered by the doorway. This close, its breathing was strenuous and cracked. Barth stepped away again slowly. He watched as the dark fingers spread from out of the shadows to seize the pouch. He turned to smile at the others. It was then that Fowler White, Nerissa’s husband, burst into the room. Still no one but Nerissa knew for sure what had happened that day, as she’d only spoken in senseless mumbles since. Fowler pushed past the group before anyone even had the wherewithal to see who it was. Then everyone started screaming. Fowler lunged with a guttural cry of his own, crashing against the bed as both hands slashed an old iron short sword across the thing's chest. The blade shattered, the tuneful pop of the initial break followed by pieces pinging off the wall and scuttling across the floor. The thing grunted, rolling to its side. Even so, one black hand had wrapped instantaneously around Fowler's face and head, pinning the man to the floor. The rest of the room had either hit the floor themselves or run from the room. And other than Fowler’s sobs and the thing's labored breathing, the room was now silent. Slowly, the men took turns shaking off the slack-jawed confusion of the past ten seconds and the silence vanished in an explosion of words. "What the hell?"

"-- where you thinking, Fowler?" "He's gonna kill him." "Gotta help him." "Is it dead?" They charged the bed, and the thing sprang up suddenly. Its free hand cocked awkwardly, and several beams of light cut across the darkened room. Two men dropped to the ground and the thing hissed fiercely at the rest in warning. The room froze, then backed up. The thing stood in a crouched position, watching them. It still held Fowler's head and reached down with its free hand to take the splintered sword from him. It inspected the blade briefly before discarding it softly at the foot of the bed. It explained that their blades could not hurt it. Said there were more metals in the world than steel and the word "steel" was said with a belittling sneer. It reached over and patted its own sword, the dragon’s snout snapping on cue in warning to those who still had all their fingers. The two men who'd fallen were pulled to the back of the room. Each had a six inch circular blade half-embedded in their right knee caps. It tossed Fowler across the room like a half-empty sack of rye. His face had been slashed, the deep tear of five nails raked down from his forehead to just below the chin. It hissed again at them and then collapsed back into the bed. It didn’t move again for many days and no one entered the barn again for a long, long time.

—§—

They watched from the cracked doorway, no more than three at a time. The water and plates of food were slid into the room from a safe distance. The display case had been moved to the front porch. It stirred more. Sat up in the bed some nights, attempted to stand others. It muttered to itself, a sort of chanting. The men suspected it was a spell of some kind. Some remarkable magic to heal itself. They watched as it weaved an even greater magic in its hands. Shapes and images danced across its fingers, as it turned and twisted its hands in the darkness. It formed the shape of a ball in the air, and something stirred within that shape. They saw armies there and tall citadels. There were lumbering men, giant in size. There were animals with wings and men rode them. Lights jumped gently from its palms, blue and ethereal in the shadows. The colors crept outward in the dark and danced along the ceiling and walls, then across its black hood. It lifted its arms and the lights altered to violet, then swirled to red, changing, shifting. Green firefly lights, white sparks that looked like tiny dragons, buzzed gaily in circles and long ovals above its hands, dazzling and seeming to alight on its shoulders. They shuddered. Several families had stopped visiting the barn. They were too afraid. It stood beside the bed, hunched and crooked, the scenes that had played out across its hands fading into the blackness. A Dark Lord. Revenant. Witchman. The powers it now showed were too terrible… too beautiful. Too… Too divine. The End Wars. Shadowland. The Other. These things had become harder to grasp, difficult to think around. It took effort to look at it. It limped crookedly across the room and dropped several coins and a blue gem onto the short table. It told them it was leaving the next night.

—§—

The Dark Lord stood in the moonlight, whispering to the horse he’d chosen, filling its heart with magic. It was the only mount of size in the village and, even with his spell, wouldn’t hold up for more than a week at the planned pace. But it was a start. The people of Crossfield stood around him, watching quietly. The men taking turns anxiously looking from one another and then back to watch him again. The woman and children further back, huddled together in the night’s shadows, watching. “Where would you go?” Leo Barth asked, breaking the silence. “How far?” It reached out a hand and Barth stood still, waiting. It tapped him on the shoulder as if comforting a child. “We had hoped that you…You would…” “You might want to stay,” Tomas Walker finished. It turned away and tied down a blanket Leo Barth pulled the dagger from his hip. He stepped forward, elbow frozen oddly, the knife gripped tight. The Witchman sighed and turned to face him. It told them to return to their fields, and grabbed hold of the saddle. “Stop,” Barth said. The black thing snickered, a low stuttered woof. More blades appeared. Each man and some of the older boys, sixteen men in all, pulled daggers and short swords into the open. The thing shook its head, leveling them with an admonishing stare. He tapped his own blade, warning. It turned away to mount the horse. Fowler White struck first, his dagger sinking to the hilt into the thing’s back. It screeched and dropped away from the horse. It turned on them, head turned in puzzlement. They charged together. It turned effortlessly, its own sword springing from the sheath and lopping off Drew Firman’s head with a good part of his shoulder too. With a second cut, the Beadlewick's eldest son was cut straight down the middle. The thing's boot kicked out, the blade in the toe cutting clean through Fisk’s shin bone. The rest of them pressed forward, a dozen knives and short swords stabbing into the thing. It staggered away from the horse, and they continued jabbing. Some blades snapped, shattered against armor or bone. Others cut deep. It whirled suddenly, its dark cape spinning, a black mass twisting in the moonlight, becoming one with the night’s shadows. Had there not been so many watching, they might have lost it. But there were many eyes. The women closing the perimeter, wielding torches. The men chased after the whirling blackness and, though some arms and hands were lost in the pursuit, as the thing’s shorter blades sporadically leapt from the movement, they kept at it. Stabbing. And the twirling slowed. Eventually, it stopped and the black thing staggered to one knee before them. It moved very slowly, arms pulled tightly to its body, hunched over. Its hand groped over the shoulder, retrieving one of several blades that still poked from its back. It took hold of it and pressed its long black fingers against the cool metal. It looked up at them, dismayed.

“You’d said our blades weren’t good enough,” Fowler White said. Its head cocked, oddly. “So we made them better.” It looked down again to consider the dagger in its hand. Leo Barth inspected his own sword in the moonlight. “We took all that stuff you been giving us. The coins and jewelry. And those weird circle things.” “And your gauntlet!” Tomas Walker added “Yes, the gauntlet. Lots of good metal there. Took it all into town and had it melted down and mixed with our own steel. Cost a fine share but, then, just one of your coins went far.” It sat still a long time, breathing deeply. They crowded around it, waiting. It laughed for a moment. Then it lifted one crooked arm, the hand twisting in the night. Whether it had more weapons or was starting a spell, they would never know. They lunged at it once more. All of them. And kept stabbing until it was dead.

—§—

It was another three days before anyone dared touch it again. Then, using two mules, they dragged it back to the barn.

UNIVERSAL ADAPTOR

“Please don’t,” Paul said, then treated 345-00023b with another thousand directed beams of hyper-radiation. The man’s mind punched back at it, betrayed and angry, and Paul ended up taking some of the jolt himself. The new pods they shared didn’t burn like the older models, but the rest of it was still there. A flash of loss, despair and defeat. Floating, hollow. Please let me die. Paul was only getting a taste of what his patient got, and it was terrible. But he didn’t try shaking it off because he knew that only time could make it go away and that it hurt like hell to rush the process. He relaxed and simply let the computer-driven despair settle in. Then he reminded himself it was just part of the job. 345-00023b jerked violently in his float tank. It was essentially the same Paul worked in. The two fat pods stood tall beside each other like enormous steel placentas, a jumble of connected cords and wires running out the backs. Paul’s partner supervised just outside, his workstation and the injected tracers monitoring everything from muscle tension to the oxygen and nutrients in their cells. Another bank of computers stuffed with stereotactical atlases, metabolic markers and advanced neural imaging techniques whirred and twinkled beside him. They could perform functional neurosurgery on any of 345-00023b’s intellectual or emotionally brain spheres and, in another department, already had. But, as for that thing which traditional surgery couldn’t get to, that something that kept the neurosurgeons and their resonance imagining drives stumped, that’s where the treph pods come in. The pods and Paul. They’d spent the better part of the past two days convincing 345-00023b that Paul, too, knew magic. Not the wizard stuff in the fairy tales he read his children, but the sleight-of-hand tricks that made cards and balls vanish and reappear. It took some reading and a couple days of practice but Paul now knew just enough. In Paul’s mind, he pictured the scarf again. Took one corner between his left thumb and fingers and grabbed the hem in the center with his other hand. He twirled it tightly between his two hands and held up his left hand. His indicators clicked again. He could feel 345-00023b responding to his thoughts and drew his left thumb gently downward against the center of the scarf and his fingers… The man reached for, something-in-him reached for, the scarf. Wanted to share in Paul’s exercise. The tracers immediately bore down again, hastily racing across the wires between them, targeting just the right spots in 345-00023b’s brain. Unmapable nuclei and fibers they couldn’t find otherwise. “Please don’t,” Paul said again and triggered another round of agony into the most extraordinary parts of the man’s mind. 345-00023b instantly lost the image of the scarf, the notion scraped from his mind. He had no choice but to let it go and the pod, in turn, rewarded him with liquid positive reinforcements. It didn’t matter. All the Cortisol and ACTH on the planet couldn’t hide the fact that something in him had just died a bit more. His readings spiked again, the absolute defeat crawling throughout his entire body like worms gnawing through a corpse, digging deep. He’d kill himself now if Paul let him. Just a few more hours, Paul thought. Then the orientation would be complete.

—§—

After dinner with his family, Paul retired to the home office and prepared for the next day’s assignment. Case 454-534651 was returning for a second round. He studied the file again, the personal rondelles prints and tomography charts from the previous sessions. It had been twenty years since the man’s first treatment and Paul shuddered to imagine what it had been like then, before the science had improved. Another musician, percussion. Other planets cultivated and manufactured professional entertainment as needed. TT3 didn’t need amateurs. The Report said he’d started tapping at his desk again. Harmless enough really, not interfering with work yet, but he had a history and the tapping was getting more elaborate. He called up the computer for previous notes on percussion instruments, reviewed the history, various styles and rhythms. Quick facts on Buddy Rich and Alan Dawson, video of Puente, Bonham, Peart, and Olatunji. 454-534651 was originally from Morocco, leaned towards his ancestral instruments, and Paul asked the computer to locate a handful of different images and rhythms for the Arabic darabuka drum. While the computer compiled its results, Paul moved across the room to find a suitable drum from the collection of supplies he’d acquired over the years. He found a cedar African Djembe he’d once operated with and, sitting back down to review what the computer had found, tried a few darabuka beats. They came easily enough. He had a decent natural rhythm and had always worked well with the musician cases. While he wasn’t as good as 454-534651, he didn’t need to be. He just needed to be good enough that the link would take. Paul reached over to pull more info on Middle Eastern music theory and found several texts and recordings. He came upon Islamic traditions that held musical arts as a sinful distraction and made a note of the idea for further discussion with the patient. He then tried out several more rhythms before looking up and noticing Nathan. The boy had managed to sneak by Kathryn and was standing in the office door, his tiny body huddled back against the doorframe. “What’s that?” his son asked. Not sure how long he’d been standing there. Probably too long, Paul thought. “For work,” he replied. Paul needed to be careful with Nathan. The boy had more than once playfully, innocently, turned a sentence into actual notes, into juvenile sing-song. He sometimes found the natural beats and patterns in the noise of every day life, and repeated them with low sounds in his mouth. Not an issue yet. Just a child’s bad habit. One his father once had. Nothing that couldn’t be flattened with a low-level endoscopy once the boy started his internship. Paul put down the drum quickly, stacked it beside the rest. The paint brushes, a small piano keyboard, various sports balls, tools, books, journals, scores, sculptures, art crafts and musical instruments. A year’s worth of company-supplied materials for his own training. “I’ll be done in an hour to put you to bed,” he said. His youngest smiled and padded away. Paul looked back to the computer and started reviewing the rhythms again.

—§—

454-534651 was a man of fifty, healthy and strong. He’d immigrated from Earth twenty five years before and worked in one of the product development divisions. With a combination of drugs, counseling and minor functional neurosurgery, TT3 had restructured everything from

his diet and religion to his moods and speech pattern. They’d even done some minor surgery on his nose and skin pigment. He sat in a comfortable chair, waiting. Paul’s partner, Hamilton, worked behind him, double-checking the settings on one of the pod’s linear accelerators for the re-treatment. “I don’t understand why…” The man’s voice grew irritated, angry. He caught himself, paused to acknowledge the slip, and then asked flatly, “What’s the harm?” Hamilton took it. “Decrease in productivity, distractions, personal jealousies. Wasted personal time and energy, increase in job dissatisfaction, increased marital discord…” The words sounded like bullshit even to Paul. His partner was only quoting the brochure. “Homogeny improves production by more than five hundred percent. A century of human resource analysis -- ” “Forget that,” Paul said, waving Hamilton off. 454-534651 watched him. “You knew there was a compromise when you petitioned to live here.” Paul spoke slowly, evenly. “Yes,” the man admitted. “You are well paid.” “Yes.” “Guaranteed employment for life.” “Yes.” “Your family wants for nothing.” He nodded. “Your world has no crime. No disease.” Nod. “So, then,” Paul said taking the chair next to his. “Let me ask you. What’s the harm?” 454-534651 breathed deeply, eyes dropping to an empty area past Paul where he could think through the answer. Paul gave him almost a full minute to think through it. “Well?” The man shrugged. It wasn’t something one could easily put into words. Those who had before often found their own words both pompous and juvenile and then usually relinquished. “Come on,” Paul stood and patted the man on the shoulder hoping to lend some manner of support to the surrender he’d just made again.

—§—

He imagined a darabuka drum with a heavy cast aluminum body and bronze rings. It had synthetic skin with a good, pure sound and he started with a basic rhythm, one he’d learned the night before, called a maqsuum. 454-534651’s mind nodded, a quick spike on the treph pod’s display, impressed that Paul even knew the instrument and its most common of patterns. It had taken just under an hour to get to this point. Both men now shared the same thoughts, the same feeling, sights and sounds, while lost in pods void of feeling, sight and sound. Each suspended in a pool of synthetic zero gravity, insulated from external sound and light, the temperature and gravity just so. All boundaries of the body dissolved, vanished. Their nervous systems had run out of info to process and a suitable theta state had set in for both men. Paul maintained the rhythm for a while before changing into a baladii, a more folksy and complicated version of the first beat. Something 454-534651 would have played as a child. The heavy down beats with his right hand, fill beats and other accents with his left. Paul found the

proper accents, falling into a common four beat segment that turned the pattern into something almost hypnotic beyond even their induced theta states. In 454-534651’s own mind, there was another darabuka drum and he’d ultimately started tapping along. He added a seven-beat rhythm beneath the first, more complex than anything Paul had found in his research. The patterns worked well together and Paul recognized it as a variation of a Moroccon polyrhythm called a sahib… sha’ Paul struggled for the term. “Sha’bia.” The correct term came suddenly to his mind, provided supportively by 454- 534651. They were unmistakably linked. Hamilton followed the session readings carefully on his monitor, made the same assessment, and waited for Paul to pull the trigger. Inside the pod, the beat was unnatural sounding to Paul’s western ear. The most specific accent falling oddly, and he struggled to keep up his own rapping. His fingers tripped, struggling to find the subtle timing and syncopation the strange accent pattern required. 454-534651, feeling how close Paul was to reaching the sound, repeated his pattern, hoping to coach Paul. He tapped out on the lower -- ‘What’s the harm?’ “Please don’t,” Paul said. The beams raced through the pod, following the opening Paul had just tunneled, and struck the homed area. 454-534651 thrashed backwards, the readings in his pod soaring. His mind instinctively let go of the image, of the rhythms and the pod rewarded him instantly with a synthetic brew of endorphins. Hamilton watched the spike-drop-spike in direct readings and smiled. So far, so good, he thought. Repeats usually went quickly. Paul resumed immediately, choosing a pleasant eleven-beat rhythm. He held the imagined drum in his imagined lap, under his left arm and it felt good there. He relaxed more and found a strong polyrhythm in the alternating measures that reminded him of something in Muwashshat, a form of spoken-sung Arabic poetry he’d studied while operating on a Egyptian poet. It worked, well, and 454-534651 responded with a fill on a six beat -- “Please…” -- grove that hung playfully on the treble beat instead of the left hand’s driving bass. Hamilton sat up straight, aware of the pause. “Please don’t,” Paul completed. Again. Neural markers targeted and lasers fired. The man shuddered in his pod, his stats springing up with clear signs of agony and anguish. The charge continued, 454-534651’s legs kicking out with a noticeable thud on the outside of his pod. Pain surged through his body. Yet the drumming continued. Barely perceptible, quiet, weak. But 454-534651 hadn’t stopped. The hands trembling, merely trying to keep the simple maqsuum rhythm going. Paul mechanically followed procedure and worked to keep the connection open. The machines would simply recharge, retarget, and then strike 454-534651 again. He picked up the four-beat rhythm the man had fought so hard to keep and tried something else with it, something he remembered from another case. Something he’d carried in his head long after the operation was over. He tried a fill Jimmy Cobb used on Kind of Blue, a rare classical piece that had come in handy on more than one case. It was childish to try it, perhaps offensive, but it worked. Well. And he sensed that 454-534651 agreed, both recognizing the piece and appreciating the wit and courage it had taken to try it over the maqsuum. The patient responded playfully by falling into a western jazz groove, triplets, hard on the three count.

Paul’s mind raced with more fills, songs, themes he knew he could bring to the table. The other drummer would surely... His own pod suddenly trigged a reminder, lights flashed in warning, a fail safe incase the treph fell too deep. No, Paul raged. I can’t... Warning past. The pod, or Hamilton, jolted him lightly again. It felt as if something alive were boring through both his eyes. He felt the tiny legs scratching towards the back of his skull, the warm blood gushing over cheeks and mouth. And then Paul did his job.

—§—

They sat on the deck, overlooking half the city. “Do you want to talk about it?” Katheryn asked. He shook his head. 454-534651 had died quickly, violently. Though not the first time such a thing had happened, Paul had not been directly involved before. This time, he helped unload the bloated and broken corpse from the pod. Saw how the man had torn out his own eyes. Driven his thumbs deep to the lowest knuckle. His wife watched him sit in silence for a long time before he spoke. “I’m good at a hundred different things,” he said. “Yes,” she agreed. “You learn quickly.” “But then what?” His wife simply stared back at him. “Because what I’m learning means nothing to me. It can’t. I’m not allowed…” He stood. “I bounce from one thing to the next, simply adapting to whatever the next project, whatever TT3 Corp., whatever the world wants me to become for that particular day.” “And you do your job well,” she said reaching out to take his hand. “You’re a very productive citizen for TT3, a father, a husband…” She stood now and crossed the space between them to put her arms around his waist. “Darling. Paul… You need to talk with Director Conner,” she said. “We knew this position would only last for a few years. No trephanor works much longer. Maybe it’s time to work as a screener or backup. To accept the position in --” He pulled away from her. “Did you know that trephanor is from the ancient Greek word meaning to bore.” She looked away. “To bore into another man’s mind.” He shook his head. “But it’s so much more than that. When they’re done the digging, tearing a hole into another person’s mind… Maybe the only thing…” He struggled with his own thoughts. “And they, we, drive it out or burn it or… I’m not even sure how it works exactly. But whatever that thing was, it’s gone.” The communicator lit up. It was Hamilton. “Yes.” “Emergency case. Just sent the files to your account. Review and be ready for tomorrow’s pre-op.” “Yes.” “Today was really something, huh?” “Yes” Paul replied and switched off the communicator.

—§—

She was nine years old, and her father was the new V.P. of one of the account service divisions. The entire family had immigrated from Ares IV and it had been determined that her particular talent would one day prove a distraction. Her name was Dasra and she could make stories, holographic pictures, materialize in her hands. Paul had already pulled together and studied a handful of feeds on the craft. While traditionally an Ares IV entertainment, it was something some could learn. With a few more hours practice, he would know enough to make the link work. He sat across from her and smiled when he asked her to do her trick for him. She turned her hands over, and cupped them just above the table. Her eyes moved slowly about the room, moving back and forth between the walls and her fingers. Paul watched as she simply collected the light. She’d drawn several shades of it to her hands, pulling it from somewhere in the room and collecting it in the cups of her hands in the form of small bright shards. Paul had seen video of the craft, but had never seen the light collect so quickly. He next watched as she took the same light in her hands and squeezing her fingers ever so slightly, managed to shape it into various shapes. He saw the forms, people began to take shape. They became clearer with each passing movement. Ever so often, she’d look away from her hands and draw more light into the supply – using it to bring even more detail to the shapes in her palms. He gazed back where Hamilton sat waiting at the monitors. Mr. Conner, the staff director stood just behind him, staring back. And Paul knew, then, that he too was being tested. He turned again to the girl and clearly saw the inch-tall shapes of an old woman, a boy and a cow standing in her hands. Recognized it immediately as the start of a classic Earth fairy tale. She next brought the whole story to life, creating wizards and trolls and singing harps all from the radiance trapped within her fingers. And with each test, scare and victory the boy met in his story, Paul felt it too. Felt it as if he himself were in the story. He knew this was part of the craft but to experience it first hand… It was wonderful. What a marvelous talent, he thought, smiling at the girl. She smiled back carefully and he noticed the lights dimming, in anticipation of the first session. What’s the harm?, he thought again. She started screaming when they locked her into the pod.

—§—

He’d pulled the old piano keyboard from the stack against the wall and laid it upon the desk, sitting before it. It remained OFF. Katheryn stood in the doorway behind him. “Paul?” He didn’t reply. “Paul, darling, why… Why are you home?” Silence. “Did something happen again?” her voice quavered and it hurt him some to hear the fear in her voice. “I’m fine,” he replied. He pushed the keyboard ON. “Why…” So many questions.

“If I could just be alone for awhile,” he said turning to her. “Research?” she asked. She hoped. “No,” Paul confessed. “I just… I just want to.” Because I can. Her top lip curled some. It was her confused look and, once before, one of her more adorable expressions, but now Paul simply saw how close she was to being truly ugly. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I didn’t think you would,” he replied calmly. Her eyes narrowed, unsure. Angry at his quiet insult, and terrified by the possible explanation of his company. She began to speak, the argument’s paths suddenly clear before her. He would be treated or exiled. And if exiled, she and the boys would leave him. She looked at him and saw something in his eyes, something that clearly, coldly, no longer cared if she were in the room. Something that said he would never again allow himself to be cured. She thought better of speaking to him, and retreated. Then, Paul was alone. His hand trembled some as he reached up and selected numeric patches with sounds of piano and strings. He then held his head in his hands and simply stared at the keys for several minutes. Eyes moving over the repeated pattern of the five black keys and seven white, he pictured relationships across those keys, scales from various cultures and times. He saw patterns he’d studied before and now wanted to hear them. Paul began to play. Notes came to mind, simple patterns and melodies from previous assignments. The notes were clumsy, clunky, his fingers fighting for a sound he hadn’t yet given them permission to find. He’d operated on many musicians over the last years, his mind suddenly filling with memories of their craft. He heard a violin. Some kind of woodwind. And drums. Straightforward rhythmic patterns, familiar and haunting. More strings filled in the back of his mind and he remembered his studies of orchestration and counterpoint. Chords came to mind. Time-honored patterns used in different styles, fifty different cultures and worlds. He settled in to one he liked, worked on random chord progressions, soon building on a theme in minor keys. Something in him felt it was time for a change in the music, some sort of chorus, and he intuitively moved from the minor key to the fifth of a Major mode in the same progression. It sounded right. He didn’t know if it came from his years of studying such things or something else, something that had always been inside. Paul didn’t care. He only cared that it sounded right. His fingers, his mind, never stopped moving, each theme, each song blending into the next. He shifted from minor to major keys, augmented and pentatonic scales. Kept finding ideas that he liked, areas he wanted, needed, to explore. Parallel octaves and fifths. He fought through the rough spots, notes that didn’t sound quite right, played the pattern again trying different sounds, found the ones that did work for him. His left hand drove rhythms and underlying lines of musical thought, his right hand providing flourishes of interest and melody that went on for more than an hour. He looked up. Lost, waking up. Nathan watched from the doorway. “Dad?” Paul breathed hard, shaking. “Yeah?” “Dad,” his youngest son said again moving closer. Paul discreetly wiped the tears from his eyes, and turned to the boy. “Yes?” “Can I try?” the boy asked.

Paul looked at him but his son didn’t return his stare. Instead, Nathan focused on the keyboard piano, his eyes on the keys, both eager and curious. Paul slid his chair out of the way to make room for him. “Please do,” he said.

H. E. DOUBLE HOCKEY STICK

Everyone on the team hated the twins. And not just the other players. Anyone who had anything even remotely to do with the Red Raiders hated them too. The coaches, all of the parents, refs, the kids they played against, the Zamboni guy, even the little old grandma who volunteered in the rink’s snack shop. The two boys were frail, pink-faced halfwits. Even for ten-year-olds who’d clearly never played hockey before, they stunk at everything from stick handling to shooting and, if possible, skated even worse. They didn’t know the rules or pay attention during practice. They couldn’t remember plays or formations. They didn’t even lace their stupid skates right. To make matters worse, Cory also suspected they were both demons straight from the pits of hell. Their sunken eyes were cold, dumb and lifeless. But every so often, Cory saw something twinkle in them. Some malevolent spark of understanding or interest that came only when something bad had just happened. When one of the other kids took a hard check or a puck to the chest, or when twin Brett lost control of his stick and hit Danny Maher in the chin. Or when Coach Anderson somehow slipped on the ice and Brian, the other one, had skated over his hand. The two brothers actually laughed when that happened. Cory came off the ice for his last line change. “Schmidt,” his coach said calmly. “Finish your checks or put a dress on.” Cory racked his stick, ignoring him, and took a seat. The Red Raiders, suddenly one of the worst teams in the Canton Chill Youth Hockey Association, were down 4-1 anyway. With only a few ticks left, and thanks to league rules, the nine-fingered coach had no choice but to put them in. Brett and Brian. The twins. Cory numbly watched the remainder of the game, counting the collective groans and laughs from the crowd. Within three minutes, they’d lost 7-1. After the game, he stood outside the rink beside Pete Arcari, friend and goalie, and watched as the black minivan rolled up to pick up the twins. No one had met their parents yet, never seen them at a game or practice. The van simply pulled up, with its tinted dark windows, and the side door opened up just enough for the two to load. The brothers turned and smiled thinly, annoyingly, at Cory. It was, like all of their grins, the kind of smile most people just wanted to smack. They vanished into the darkness of the van and sped away. “Demons?” Pete Arcari repeated, shaking his head. “You gotta quit reading so much.” “Then what’s your explanation?” Cory demanded. “They suck.” “No, no,” Cory shook his head. “There’s something else going on here. No one sucks that bad. The whole team now stinks somehow. Seven goals? You didn’t let seven pucks past the entire second half of last season. The coaches are getting nastier. Everyone’s always getting hurt. They… They… There’s gotta be a way to stop them.” “Ask your scary sister. She’s into all that witch crap.” “A Quija board from Toys R Us and a bunch of weird junk from Hot Topic. What kind of witch is that?” “The only kind you know.”

—§—

Between his father’s extensive library and his sister’s video collection, Cory had been raised with generous portions of Poe, Evil Dead, Lovecraft, Hellraiser, and TiVod Buffy, and certainly had an idea or two of how to dispose of demons. His sister, Allie, eyed him with a sideways glance. She lay in her bed reading again, dressed head to toe and black. And actually, even head and toe were black. Hair dyed, black boots, another suburban Goth princess. “You’re an idiot,” she said. “Helpful. But seriously, why not?” “Cause dad doesn’t even own a chainsaw and there’s no way mom’s gonna let you take the axe to practice.” “I saw a little hatchet up at Ace Hardware. It was just twelve bucks and I could fit it in my gym bag easy.” Allie rolled her eyes. “Well, before you start whacking off any heads,” she sighed, “I’d make damn sure those two are really demons.” She looked at him. “What if they’re just assholes?” “A concern,” he admitted. “There’s gotta be some kind of test.” “Any horns? Pointy tail?” “Nothing quite that Doré.” She groaned. “What a strange little boy. How about holy water?” “See if they, like, sizzle and stuff?” “Let me know how it goes, Father Dipshit.”

—§—

The foyer was dark and still, the midday sun fighting through stained glass doors. Cory laid the second empty Gatorade bottle into the wide dish of holy water and looked around the church uneasily. He’d already stuffed one full bottle into his book bag. “Can I help you?” a voice asked. Cory froze, busted. He hoped it wasn’t God. “No, that’s all right,” he replied calmly, discreetly removing the half-filled bottle. “Just needed some… some water.” The priest watched him. “That’s rather unique water, son. Not a toy. May I ask what you’re doing with it?” “Well,” Cory went for it. “It’s for demons.” The priests’ lips curled. The few strands of hair on his head curled. His eyes crossed. “I think we’d better call your parents,” he managed. “I’m serious” Cory pressed. “There are these two kids. And anyhow, we happen to think, well, I think, that they might be minions from hell and so my sister –” “Oh no,” the priest squeezed his own forehead. “Well, it’s possible you know. You’re the guys who came up with this stuff. The triple temptation of Christ and all. I mean, you don’t think those same evil spirits could appear as a little kid?” Cory jumped. “Ooh! Maybe they’re just kid demons.” “Son, the concept of The Devil is complex enough without adding comic book minions who –” Cory waved a finger. “Our name is legion, for we are many.” The priest stopped, impressed. “Did you…? Wait a minute.” He studied the boy. “Where’d you learn that?” he asked. “Exorcist Three.”

“Get out.”

—§—

They’d finished drills on crossovers and backwards skating before Coach called for a break. Cory and Pete got right to work. “Delicious,” the goalie beamed. “What flavor is it?” “Vanilla,” Cory smiled back taking a seat on the bench and holding up the Gatorade bottle. “Yum, yum.” Myke Waldin, who sported a cast on his right arm from when Brian, or Brett, had fallen, tripping him and breaking his wrist, skated up for a taste. “Let me –” “Beat it, lefty,” snapped Pete, turning to the twins. “How ‘bout you guys?” “It’s really good.” Cory shook his head like a Marty Turco bobble-head doll. Brian, or Brett, accepted the bottle and stared at Cory from under the narrowing slits of his eyes. The demon sniffed the top of the bottle and then handed it to his brother. Brett, or Brian, then took a sniff, his nose twitching like a rabbit and turned to also stare directly at Cory. Then he smiled. “Thank you, Cory,” he said in a high twitchy sing-song voice. “Let me have it,” his brother squeaked suddenly and grabbed the bottle. “No, me!” “No, me!” “No, me!” They shouted back and forth, grabbing and shoving as the bottle passed repeatedly between them. Pete and Cory stared at each other, mouths gaping. “Quick fix,” Cory called out diving into his bag and holding out the second half-full bottle. “Got another.” “Yay!” the boys shouted in unison. Coach Anderson skated over to the action. “Okay, settle down, guys,” he told them. “Yay!” the twins shouted again shaking the bottles of holy water. He reached for the bottles. “Brian, Brett, that’s enough --” Next thing Cory knew, both twins had jumped atop the bench and were pouring the entire contents of both bottles onto their coach’s head amid high-pitched shrieks of “Yay, Coach!” and “We’re number one, we’re number one!” Cory sat wondering what a good chainsaw would cost.

—§—

“A coma,” Cory repeated standing in his sister’s doorway. “They found him Dead Zoned in the rink’s parking lot.” Allie’s black lips twisted. “You’re not serious.” “As a coma,” Pete Arcari confirmed. “Everyone’s talking about it.” “Let me guess.” “That’s right,” bounced Cory. “He kept The Twins after practice last night. Made ‘em do extra drills for the Gatorade routine.” “And what are they saying about it?” “Nothing, I guess. No one even knows where they live. Ya know,” he turned to Pete, “Have you ever seen them at school?” “Maybe they’re home schooled,” the goalie offered. “That’d explain a lot.” “You need to get a closer look,” Allie said. “Poke around their house or something. Maybe a sleepover. Get Mom to put together a playdate.” “Are you serious?” Cory gasped, “You want me to hang with these monsters?”

“Kurt Cobain once quipped ‘A friend is nothing but a known enemy.’” Cory made a face. “Don’t quote, tell me what you know,” he sighed. Allie’s eyes narrowed, thinking. “Didn’t Emerson say that?” Her brother grinned. “Retard.” She slammed the door and locked it. Cory stood quietly staring at the shut door, thinking through what his next step should be. It seemed he would have to worm his way into the twins’, the demons’, own lair. But if they were dangerous and powerful at the rink, powerful and terrible enough to put Coach Anderson into a coma, God only knew what waited him in their very home. Chances were that he wouldn’t escape that pit alive. He turned to his friend. “Who the hell is Kurt Cobain?” he asked. Pete shrugged.

—§—

He cornered them after practice, just as the black minivan was pulling up. “Hey, Brian, Brett,” he managed. “Wait up. My mom’s gonna be late. Any chance your, um, mom could, um, give me a lift home?” The twins turned to each other and smiled as the van door slid open and the two boys vanished quickly inside. Cory stood waiting on the sidewalk, his stick, skates and pads slung over his back with the comforting heft of reality. He stared into the blackness of the opened side door, marveling at the terrible unknown just beyond. But not too much marveling… “Okay, then,” he breathed out, “Guess I’ll just see you guys on Saturday.” Thank God. Brian’s face appeared out of the darkness. Or maybe Brett. He could never tell the difference. Whichever one it was, Cory screamed. “Come on,” the face said. Cory looked back to where several of the other players waited for their parents and Assistant Coach Miller discreetly lit a smoke. No one returned Cory’s gaze. He hoped his mom would select a nice picture for his back-of-the-milk-carton shot, and slowly fed his equipment through the van door. He followed the gear into the darkness, struggling to put together what he was stepping into. The empty shell of a moving van. No seats or cushioning, the twins simply sat on the floor, legs crossed, staring at him coldly. Cory piled his stuff next to theirs and crouched on a floor covered in candy wrappers, empty TacoBell bags, Gameboy games, and several dog-eared issues of both Giant Jugs and Hustler. And while virtually the exact same description could just as easily have been given to Pete Arcari’s brother’s room, there was an additional tangible threat Cory just couldn’t shake. The minivan started to move. At once, the temperature inside jumped at least twenty degrees and the walls shimmered, almost fading. Cory wiped sweat away from his eyes and looked to the front of the van. There, he saw something … something odd. Propped on the steering wheel, several thin sticks where a mother’s fingers would be. Her shoulders crooked and stooped, a wide ratty sweatshirt concealing something gnarled and horrible beneath. The hair was straw, coarse and jagged stalks jutting from what must have been its head. It turned slightly and spoke. The voice sounded like dirt being shifted in a cardboard box and, though Cory sometimes watched Larry King Live, he still couldn’t make out the words. The twins laughed behind him.

He turned and saw four eyes glowing red. “Since we’re friends now…” the boys said in unison and he jumped at their voice. “We can confirm your suspicions and let you in on another little secret. We’re just getting started.” “Why are you telling me this?” Cory looked for the van door but to no surprise, it had vanished. “Aren’t you just going to kill me now?” They grinned. “We haven’t quite found that loophole yet.”

—§—

“You okay?” Allie asked. “I guess.” He sat quietly in his room, a pile of books at his feet. “According to Talmudic computation, there are 7,405,926 demons,” he told her. “Shouldn’t you be playing X-Box or something?” “It appears we know where at least two of them are.” They sat quietly together for awhile before Cory spoke again. “Allie?” “Yeah.” “I’ve also found several medieval Grimoires that suggest a demonic pact, if done right, will protect the person who summoned the spirit as well as the summoner’s entire bloodline.” She breathed deeply. “Allie?” “Yeah.” “Anything you’d like to tell me?”

—§—

The day-long tournament brought two dozen teams and stands filled with parents, siblings and friends. It was a full house when the killing began. It started when the twins were finally put in the game. First, the puck completely vanished. As the crowd hushed, the players discovered the puck hadn’t been lost at all but had merely turned invisible. The brothers took turns slapping it across the ice and both refs were soon down for good, each having taken the puck to the throat and face respectively. Players both dove to the ice and scrambled into the stands, which then somehow collapsed and the Canton Chill Youth Moms’ Club plummeted to the floor crushing the two teams waiting to play next. The little old grandma who volunteered in the rink’s snack shop stumbled into the chaos, and the puck reached into the crowd striking home one final time. Fire suddenly spread through the stands and two entire squads, the Green Geckos and the Blue Ninjas, tumbled from what was left of the seats and spilled out onto the ice. The crowd moved a hundred different way at once in panic as the flames spread. The rest of the Red Raiders cleared the ice. The Twins lingered in the center of the rink merrily watching the building burn around them. Smoke bellowed, fire blazed, and the crowd screamed and stampeded over each other in ways never before heard or seen in the suburbs. Cory skated out to meet them, the ice at his feet growing softer as the heat in the building rose and the rink’s cooling units malfunctioned. “I know how you were summoned,” Cory said, “But how’d you end up playing hockey with a bunch of fifth graders?”

“During your sister’s summoning, we passed a place filled with screaming, rage, fear and aggression,” one of the demons explained. “And that was just the parents in the stands,” his brother finished. “This rink is a demonic gold mine. And, ultimately, we wanted to be Red Raiders to keep close to your sister via you.” “Any luck with that loophole?” he asked. “It’s a timing thing,” one replied admiring they’re handiwork in the endless chaos and screeching behind Cory. “But the pact with your sister runs out eventually.” “Or she ends it herself,” a voice added. Cory and the twins turned to that voice and Allie stepped out onto the ice. “It’s time for you two to go back.” Brett and Brian giggled. “But we don’t want to yet. As we told our new friend Cory, we’re just getting started.” “Getting warmed up,” one of them added, and they both broke into hysterical laughter again. “You’re not getting away with this,” Allie said. The first demon sneered. “You should have thought of that before Googleing incantations off the internet. Bigger than you two realize --” “Well,” Cory spat, “Here’s something you two should have ‘thought about’ before torching the entire rink.” “And what’s that?” “All the ice is melting.” “And…” “Think Gatorade.” The twins looked at each other. “Hello, boys!” the priest, the same who’d chased Cory from the church, pulled onto the ice, standing high and solo atop the rink’s Zamboni. The twins turned back to Cory, frantic, confused. “That’s right,” he said. “See, Father Fields did his business late last night. Blessed the whole place in just a couple of minutes.” The demons looked down, the ice dissolving under their skates. “So now,” Cory continued, “You’re kinda standing dead center in a rink of holy water.” All at once, and moving together, the twins bolted to escape. But the ice proved unstable and slippery in a new way, and they both spilled to the ground. It became painfully evident, mostly to the twins, that their skating still hadn’t improved. While their gloves and uniforms protected much, the splash of the combined fall spattered their faces in the rink’s water. The skin it touched immediately browned and bubbled. The two demons howled in agony and rage. “Ouch,” Cory smiled, casually weaving backwards away from them. Brian and Brett lunged at him suddenly but their skates gave out again in the slush as they collapsed once more to the rink’s floor. “You guys really do suck,” Cory said, shaking his head. Brett, or Brian, looked up, “It’s not like we’re used to the ice, you know.” Cory considered the point and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give you that.” Brett, or Brian, smiled one final time, the kind of smile most people wanted to smack, and then the Zamboni rolled over its legs. Cory and Allie climbed on board beside Father Fields and, ignoring the smoke, they each took turns running back and forth over the two demons with the Zamboni. Squashing their small

bodies into the holy slush until there was absolutely nothing left and the firemen dragged the three of them from the building.

—§—

Little League had a much smaller turn out in the spring. And when Coach Lee introduced Cory to a new kid named Stephen, he found something odd in the pitcher’s eyes. Some malevolent spark of understanding or interest that came only when something bad had just happened. The first practice, Stephen beaned six kids, two in the face. At practice the next week, Allie drove and Cory brought the axe.

FOR RESTFUL DEATH I CRY

Note: All headings taken from Assisted Living: Needs, Practices, and Policies in Residential Care for the Elderly (Hardcover) by S. Zimmerman PhD (USA Author 1378-1472 AH), published 1422. Credit: Madrid Archives (Intelligence Council Permit tp/0801867053 10/06/1931AH]

The Changing Health Care Environment [pp 9‐22]

A four‐story C3 still inhabited by dozens of the undead. You’ve wandered each floor to make a quick head count, double‐checked their number before hauling in any equipment. Enough cloth to wrap all the bodies, canisters for the old fuel cells. Charges and nitroglycerin for the building. Other teams have already been through to strip out the copper wire, op fibers, and any viraglass. Now it’s your turn. In two weeks, the crushers will roll in to recycle whatever worthwhile concrete and timber remain above, then flatten the rest to finish burying the recently departed. Not many here. One hundred and six. Fourth floor is already clear. All the cartridges—helium‐cooled reactors the size of a fist—are secured in the truck for future disposal. All bodies brought to the lower level. Each one neatly cleaned and wrapped and positioned to RSC code. You’ve taken a couple days. There’s no real rush. They’ve been here some three hundred years. What’s another week? There were eight residual C3s in this zone. All but one was work you could do alone, and did. Peteyr and Jefferson helped with that other one. This is the last before you’re expected north to join up with them again and a larger team for the big New Cleveland job. A pair of tombs with a hundred floors each. Dark and terrible crypts from another time. It’ll take ten of you all summer.

Creating a Therapeutic Environment: Models [pp 53‐77] God watches as you bring another into the room. He does not take his eyes off you. Sits ® in his LifeChair exactly where you parked him two days before. White beard and tubes. His cartridge core throbs, like his eyes, with the dim glow of something still clutching at life. You will do him last. The chair’s rear monitor flashes that God’s name was Evan Cooper. That he was born August 1, 2114, and admitted to the Truefund Continuing Care Community on July 18, 2209. All monitor dates still use the Middle Western calendar, completely unaware re international adoption of the Hijri civil calendar in 1850. The chair’s monitor tells the names and addresses of all known relatives. Sons, grandsons, and great‐grandsons. They are all dead now. Every one. Those who thought they were preserving something they loved, helping tens of thousands of Evan Coopers live comfortably just a little longer. Maybe a cure would be found, they thought. Or maybe they just didn’t have the courage to let go. Either way, you smile, they’re all gone and here we are. They couldn’t even wait until your birthday, you say into his ear. The monitor says he was a surgeon of some kind and served in the U.S. Navy fifteen years and played piano and mountain climbed competitively well into his eighties. He is a deity, an abomination, from the last Golden Age of man. An age that briefly conquered hunger and ignorance and disease and even subjugated death. For a time. You will do him last. Maybe he’ll kill you then.

Resident Characteristics [pp 144‐172] This next is a woman again. You know this only because her chair’s monitor claims so. Otherwise, sexless. As wrinkled and besprent with wisps of ashen hair as the one you call God. Folds of grey skin hang over her skull in a hundred individual deep‐rutted flaps. The body is nude; any clothes once worn have decomposed two hundred years ago. Only the wires and tubes remain, joining her and the chair. Joining present and past. Withered breasts are only two more flaps. Some sort of lavender fungus grows up the right side of this area into her face. It looks like a deep, fuzzy bruise. You drink. Her lips are gone. Worlds before, she was a mark of scientific realization and hope. Proof that man could humanely and economically support itself beyond a single century. Nanotechnology, bionics, gene therapy. More cures and miracles awaiting discovery each year. But then came the Sickness and the wars. Again, man took a step backward. A second Dark Age and another two hundred years to scrape back to something recognizable as society. Three generations later, move back into the old cities to continue Man’s rebirth. Hope is a waking nightmare.

The Physical Environment [pp 173‐197] One tube for tracheal/bronchial secretions. One for nasopharyngeal torques. Another wire for cerebral venous return. Twenty more, thin as yard‐long needles, to deliverer nanobarbiturates ® and antiseptics and cathartics and nitroGen and minchloral hydrates. Nanomagnets to fight atrophy. Sensors to monitor everything from hemoglobin levels to decubitus ulcers and thrombosis of the extremities, to self‐prescribe and repair with synthetic calories and marrow and synthluminum and phosphorus and methylcellulose. You learned all of this in a two‐week course at RSC headquarters. Only spent an afternoon on this part. All you’ll do is take the wires and tubes out. Most of the training was spent on the art of dismantling nuclear cartridge cores and a refresher class in building demolition. Also two days to review proper burial laws. Some deep and terrible sound escapes her rotted maw. No tongues. Something the curative chairs hadn’t protected. Froth trickles over the rusted nubs of pins drilled into her lower jaw. The smell. You drink. The cartridge core lies in the lower back of the carrier. Its ever‐ present glow casts a golden hue on the dirty floor. When you remove it, she will finally die.

The Process of Care [pp 198‐221] You remove it. The direct‐cycle generator locks. The deep and terrible sounds grow more intense. You step around to the front of the carrier again to watch. The regulations are simple. If she lives without the aid of forbidden sciences, she lives. You’ve seen it happen only once. A man lived for twelve whole minutes, even lifted up from his chair and walked a few steps before collapsing. Methantheline bromide, paregorics, pectins stop. Ventilation and cortex spurs stop. Her eyes widen. Sharpen. Glisten like black jewels in the shadowed lobby. In the Name of God, the Merciful, Compassionate. The body shudders. Dies, really dies, at last. Three hundred years.

State Policy and Regulations [pp 9‐33] Continue the authorized prayers. Oh God, forgive our living and our dead. Secure the cartridge. Ten MWe of silicone‐coated fuel particles, enough to power a small community for several years. Or a single chair for a lifetime. More than a lifetime. If left alone, one might con-

ceivably run another five hundred years. Another thousand. Quite beyond, you assume, what the st masterminds of the late 21 century had ever considered. Imam Shafi or some other cleric once said That which does not destroy, makes stronger, and you often wonder why that is a good thing. Stronger for what? For still more pain. Tilt her forward to take hold of the cords and tubes that snake behind. Disconnect. The C3 buildings are feared, worshipped. Cursed places. Most have been burned to the ground, vandalized for centuries. You’ve buried some who died terribly at the hands of the newly budding humanity. The new administration wants a more humane removal of these abominations completed within two years. The pallid skin and chair have fused in several spots and you reach for the dissolving paste. Lay her flat on the prep board. Cover the genitals and then wash the body. Exposed bone at both knees and all the fingertips. Vermin have gnawed her feet. Fresh cloth laid over the corpse, water poured over all, siphoned away by the board. Reach for another kafan to wrap the body. White cotton cloth. Prayers again as you align her with the other bodies. All heads facing west, per RSC code. Restoration Services Corps. One of a hundred relief agencies created to continue civilization’s loping resurgence. Almost a million strong now. Public works crews involved in everything from building new roads and schools to contamination removal. Any citizen between fifteen and forty can enroll and employment is up to 70% for the first time in a generation. At first, you just worked cleanup crews, reclaiming old cities back from the dead to become part of the promised future. You soon volunteered to study demolition. It paid a little more, but that’s not why you did it. Eventually, RSC attentions finally turned to the nuclearly‐hazardous C3s and you volunteered again. Upstairs once more for another chair. There are now forty‐three. Many still move about randomly through the halls and rooms, and several move in slow circles and patterns that have etched narrow ruts into the floor. A single pearl‐colored ball nestles beneath the chair and swivels like a giant eye. Watching. Deciding where to look, turn, next, based on some model programmed centuries ago. On this floor, one of the ancient carriers transports a full skeleton. Nothing but bones that hunch in the seat and dangle over the armrests. Each time it passes, you gaze at its thick, discolored ribs and the dark empty skull sockets. Each time it passes, you could ® swear it’s laughing. Drink. Tell yourself its only the shriekings of a departing LifeChair . You take hold of another and lead it to the ramp. Not sure what time it is. Tired. Ten more before you call it quits for the day. No one at the RSC will expect more. Or less. No one is waiting for you back in Ottawa. The difference between today and tomorrow and yesterday and tomorrow is microscopic. The difference between him and her and you and I is microscopic.

Key Topics in Assisted Living [pp 1‐8] You lie beside them. Try to sleep. Maybe some terrible disease from another century still lingers within their decaying flesh. Maybe one of the reactors will trigger and explode the city block. Maybe the roving skeleton will collide into the nitroglycerin cart. Maybe the building will collapse. You turn in the darkness. The light from God’s chair illuminates the floor. What were they thinking? This farce of life. Is now any different? You run fingers across your own shadow on the floor. Think of her. Reach for the canteen of still drink. Seven years since she was assigned to another. You still think of her when you try to sleep. Stare up at the black rafters overhead. Columns on the upper floors are already drilled and packed with nitroglycerin and TNT. Smaller columns and walls are wrapped in detonating cord and geotextile fabrics. When

the lower level is completely filled with bodies, you will push the button and four floors will collapse and turn the chamber into a tomb. God makes burbling noises just above. Fuck you too, you say. And sleep at last.

Aging in Place [pp 224‐40] In the morning, more bodies. The difference between now and then is invisible. The difference between them and God and me is invisible. Did you know each other, you ask God, while preparing another. Did Evan Cooper ever share breakfast or a game of cards with—you check—with Patrick Gilronan? Does it hurt you to watch an old friend finally die? Or are you happy for him? Each job, the jobs you work alone, you try to pick One. One Evan Cooper. One God. To mock, entice. To anger. You will do him last. And just maybe…. In Harrisburg, a female named Hsu‐Ming Lim long ago managed to claw your face before dying. There remain faint scars on your left cheek. In Dover, a man whose monitor was broken spit something like black tar at you. Some foul substance three hundred years dead. Still, you live.

Staffing Problems and Strategies in Assisted Living [pp 78‐91] You think of jumping again. But you’re only a dozen meters up. And it is still a sin. O ye who believe, do not kill yourselves for truly God has been to you most merciful. If any do this in rancor, soon shall we cast him into the fire. A sin for eternity. You look out from a pair of stripped window casements on the west side of the building. The sun sets low over the ruined city, the sky cast in ancient blood. You see a dozen other worksites. The charade of rebirth. How long before it all just burns to ashes again? Think of pushing the detonator now. Right now. Of ingesting dissolving paste. Slitting your wrists, throat. Tripping one of the reactors. All of them. Think of jumping again. Night’s wind cool on your face. And it is still a sin. Nor take life, which God has made sacred…. You will sleep again, and rise again, and work again. The difference between days is imagined. The difference between us is imagined. The dead city in darkness below will rise again. Lift up, coughing dust and rot, like something breaking free from its grave. Like a hundred cities before. Man will sleep again, and rise again, and work again. The King is dead, long live the King. Crawling like a dead thing from infinite dark ages toward the promises of hope and salvation. Forever.

Connectedness in Residential Care: A Qualitative Perspective [pp 292‐316] Tomorrow, you tell God. One of us dies tomorrow. His grey eyes burn brightly. He hates you now, too. You sleep like the dead.

Admission and Retention Policies [pp 304‐7] At the first hint of morning, you rise and work all day. You do not stop for food or drink. You do not stop when it grows dark again. You clean and wrap the dead by torchlight. Ignore the skeleton still rolling about on the third floor. Exhausted. Double‐check the TNT charges. The

detonator sits waiting. Maybe sleep and finish the burial in the morning. No, you’re sleepy, fatigued. There’s more chance for a mistake now. More chance for a misstep. An inadvertent death. All floors emptied, you move to the basement for the final time. God sits waiting for you. Just you and me now. Only more burbles and sounds in response. Smack his face. He jolts in his chair. Live? Die? Stop fucking around in the middle, and pick just one. The cartridge core lies in the lower back of the carrier. Its ever‐present glow casts a golden hue on the dirty floor. When you remove it, he will finally die. You remove it. The direct‐cycle generator locks and you step around to the front of the carrier to watch. His eyes widen. Sharpen. The body shudders. Moves to lift from the carrier. Tilt him forward to get a hold of the cords and tubes that snake behind. Disconnect. The Death Angel. Say the sanctioned prayers. Oh God, if he was a doer of good, then increase his good deeds, and if he was a wrongdoer, then overlook his bad deeds. O God, forgive him and give him the strength to say the right thing. Give him the strength. Evan Cooper falls forward. Leans forward. Lay a hand on his chest to push him back down. You’ll be dead in just a minute, you tell him. He waves your hand away. You laugh. First self‐propelled movement in centuries. Now what, God? You lay the cartridge aside for later. Take a seat, drink some more. Watch as he struggles to escape. Five minutes. Struggles to breathe. Ten. The struggle to get up. To live. Your knees curl up like you are a child sitting around one of the settlement fires. Another drink. Wipe your hand with the back of your mouth. God grips the armrests for leverage. Inhuman exertions. Or, all too human. Pushes himself forward. Naked skin rips. He leans forward again. There’s no real rush. He’s been here some three hundred years. What’s another few minutes? The charade of life. His eyes remain fixed on yours. He does want to kill you. The furrowed face shakes in agony, exertion. One leg moves forward on its own. Bones splinter and crack. Still he rises, crawling like a dead thing toward the promise of resurrection. God stands. Evan Cooper stands. For the first time in more than three hundred years. You’re sobbing now. And laughing. The canteen of booze is empty. He staggers toward you. The difference between you is wholly clear. Do not move when he collapses upon you. When the jagged claws dig. The fists drop. The unearthly weight. Ancient. Urgent. Something in its hand now. The canister comes down. Again.

Emerging Issues in Residential Care/Assisted Living [pp 317‐33] Wake. After the blast. After the four‐story C3 tumbles. Covers all. No light filters from ® above though the debris. The glow of a single active LifeChair casts across the basement. Half the chamber is collapsed, buried. Seventy‐three bodies remain in long rows on the ground beneath you. Evan Cooper. A surgeon. He is not among them. Half a million pounds of rubble now separate this tomb from the rest of the world. In a week, the RSC crushers will roll in to recycle whatever worthwhile concrete and timber remain above, then flatten the rest to finish burying the recently departed. There is no chance of ever being found. You look down upon the long rows of dead from your chair. Your back and sides burn and ache. Slit open. You’re nude. Only the wires and tubes remain, joining you and the chair. Joining past and future. To disconnect them now yourself would bring death. Suicide. Sin. Hell.

For eternity. Or maybe only another thousand years. A choice you might make tomorrow. In the Name of God, dear God, the Merciful, Compassionate….

THE SPIDER FIELD

In a large dirt field, three boys hunted for tarantulas. The biggest boy, Ignacio, carried the shoebox which held their day’s catch. The other two, a frail mulatto everyone called El Mono and the new boy, Foster, each lugged a plaster-stained bucket of rain water just behind him. Foster’s bucket was very heavy, still mostly full, and every step he took, a little water sloshed over the sides and the handle cut deeper into his fingers. He thought the hard thin metal would eventually saw through his skin to bone and switched to two hands again. The bucket bumped off his knees, spilling even more. Ignacio gave him a nasty look and El Mono made a silly face. Foster swapped the bucket to his other hand and hurried after them. They’d caught just two spiders so far today, and they weren’t very big. Still, Ignacio kept his hand locked tightly on the box’s lid and bottom as he held it sideways beneath one arm like a football. Corners of the box were reinforced with silver duct tape. Whenever the boys moved to find the next hole, Foster could sometimes hear the fat hairy bodies sliding back and forth inside the box and the sound took his mind a little off the stabbing pain in his fingers. It was dusk, the best time for hunting. At night, the spiders crawled far away from their underground lairs to feed and were lost to the dark. And in daylight, they dug too deep or hid in places un-findable. Foster did not fully understand where they went during these bright hours, but he knew the water trick only worked at dusk. He brushed an itch from his hair, as if something were on him, but it was nothing. In the deepening sunset, all of Texas looked like it was on fire. The surrounding block houses and rusted fences. The two rusted goalposts and rusted two-tier stands. His new friends, also. There were probably two hundred spider holes spread throughout the field, each impossible to distinguish from the rocks and shadow until you looked very carefully. Some were hidden within the small islands of tall yellow grass, others along the old fencing. Most of these holes did not really have a spider inside. Many were old, abandoned. Or had never been fully formed. If spiders lived in every hole… Foster couldn’t imagine it. No one could ever go to such a place. Not ever. To search, the three boys always spread out slowly from each other and then abruptly snapped back together whenever someone shouted. “Allí,” Ignacio now pointed, and Foster rushed into position with his bucket because El Mono had poured three times in a row. Water slopped over Foster’s sneakers again. The spider hole was about the size of a quarter, which is the size the boys most liked to find because the best tarantulas came from those. Many of the other holes dotting the field were only as big as a dime, and others large enough to drop down a golf ball. Nothing good ever came of the really big ones, however. You poured and poured the water and nothing ever came out. It was as if the hole went straight to the center of the earth, or to hell itself. The water never filled and nothing ever crawled free. Still, each time, the boys half expected something the size of a small dog to burst from such holes, and the promise of giant finds remained a genuine possibility.

Foster put one hand on the bottom of the bucket and tipped it so the water poured into the hole. “Lentamente,” said Ignacio beside him. “Lentamente.” Foster poured slower and the water spilled down, he imagined, like a crashing wave. “Bien,” Ignacio waved his hand to stop. “Bien,” El Mono echoed. “That’s good.” Foster turned the bucket back into place. It was still very heavy in his hands. The hole was topped with water for a second and then it lowered suddenly, surely filling hidden spider caves and tunnels beneath. He imagined the cavernous passages ran for miles in every direction just beneath all the houses of Eagle Pass and he poured again without waiting for the command. The water filled to the top again. It stayed level this time and he lowered the bucket all the way to the ground at his feet. Several bubbles broke the surface and lifted up like tiny glass balloons. The last air pockets from below or a tarantula gulping for breath. You could never know which. Foster squeezed his aching fingers tightly into a fist. Some dogs barked nearby. “La luz,” Ignacio said. Foster drew the flashlight from his back pocket and aimed it. It was still light enough outside that he could barely see the beam on the edges of the spider hole. Inside, however, the water glistened like oil in the flashlight and two more bubbles rose slowly to the top. Popped. The water had lowered again. El Mono, who’d laid his bucket down too, crowded closer. “Mira,” he pointed. Foster saw it too. A pair of teeny black gems glinting up at them from inside the hole. Black diamonds framed in the coarse brown hair of its legs on all sides. It was a sight that had not yet ceased to both disgust and excite him. He pulled the flashlight away a little to help draw it out. “More water,” Ignacio said in English, and Foster flooded the hole again. He knew some spiders could hold their breath a very long time. Others sometimes chose to drown, to die, over crawling out. He hoped the water would simply flush this one into the open, and that it would not have to choose. “Aquí viene,” Ignacio said beside him. Foster did not understand the other boy’s words but read Ignacio’s face and meaning well enough and took a step back from the hole. First one spider leg appeared, quickly followed by another. And four more. Black tipped and hooking over the rim. A ball of warm squirming hair that both squeezed and erupted from the dark hole all at once like black toothpaste. Foster had tensed, ready to move if it somehow jumped up at them. At him. The spider was maybe the size of a baseball. It stood frozen and perched just outside the hole, reared up on its back leg and lifting several feet at the boys aggressively. El Mono laughed stupidly and acted as if he were boxing it. Foster wasn’t even really sure how dangerous tarantulas were, but was afraid to ask. Ignacio claimed he’d been bit once and that it’d felt like a thick screw driver pushing slowly into his arm. Slower than you’d ever imagine, he’d grinned with pride when he showed the small scar, somehow thicker than actual fangs.

Ignacio joggled the shoebox and then quickly pulled off the lid to scoop the spider up inside. He made it look so easy. Like a magician. One moment the spider was standing in the grass, the next it had vanished. And now they had three. When they had seven more, they would go to the old woman and she would pay them again. Foster had used his first two shares to purchase Spanish comic books and pop. He and El Mono wanted to see the newest catch again now that it was trapped safely in the box. Ignacio never let them. The sun had almost set. Foster could see the lights along the far border glowing brighter. He had to be home by dark for late dinner and bed. “I gotta go,” he said. Ignacio made a face as if to argue but then just shrugged. “Leave the bucket,” he said. “We find one more.” Foster lifted the bucket and brought it to the other boy. “Mañana,” he said to them. Ignacio nodded. El Mono hadn’t really been listening. He walked away from them to the stacked concrete blocks where he could easily hop the fence. When he turned back, he could see their flashlights still scanning the ground. The far corners of the field had already turned black in shadow. How many spiders now hid in that same expanding darkness? At night, he knew, it was their turn to hunt.

—§—

His father was late and they had dinner without him again. It was another “freebie” night, his mother said. He and his sister ate toasted waffles. His mother drank a beer and stood by the sink again looking out the window. She muttered that their father was “rude” and “selfish.” The boy thought he was at work. “Mom?” She had not heard him. “Mom?” “You want another waffle?” “Can I have something to drink?” “Sorry.” She pulled a glass from the cupboard and laid it on the counter. “You can get some milk.” He put the glass on the table so he could reach better and poured. He wondered if Ignacio and El Mono had caught any more spiders after he’d left. His mother took the milk from him and put it away. She sat down with them. He thought she looked very tired. “And what did you do all day?” she asked him. She slept all the time. “Nothing,” he said.

—§—

The three boys sat together on the stools along the window of Peter Piper Pizza, having each bought one slice and a Coke. Air conditioning was their only true goal. Half the time, they just sat quietly and watched the cars go by. The other half, they talked about things like soccer and SouthPark and how much they hated Marco Paleta, a neighborhood boy who was a crybaby. The three switched easily between Spanish and English, and Foster just nodded whenever he didn’t understand. Tried to look sincere and interested. Sometimes, he could tell that Ignacio was making fun of him because El Mono would turn and laugh. Foster took another sip of Coke but it was only metallic-tasting ice water now. The owner watched suspiciously. Whenever he turned away, El Mono gave him the finger and they all laughed. After, when the sun started to drop again, they went back to Ignacio’s house to get the flashlights, buckets and shoebox. In the back yard, Ignacio’s big brother, Frankie, and another guy, worked on Frankie’s car. They were both drinking beer. The car was always jacked up or on blocks. It was a ‘89 Topaz with a V6, but Foster didn’t know what that meant. It was teal and made of rust. Foster did not like Ignacio’s brother because he always looked angry and always called him “Bolillo Boy” for being white. One day, the three boys had tossed dried dog turds on the hood of Frankie’s car. Frankie caught them and smashed Ignacio’s face against the shit-covered hood. Ignacio got a bloody nose and Foster had been surprised to see him cry. “What the fuck you want, putos?” Frankie looked up from the engine and glared at the three boys. He held the hostile pose for a couple seconds and then winked at his friend. “Fuck you,” Ignacio said and moved past them and back to the big barrel of water. Foster followed closely behind. Broken glass nested in cement along the top of all the surrounding walls, where it glistened in the sunlight in many different colors. “Hey, Bolillo Boy, ¿Quiubo?” Foster ignored Ignacio’s brother and grabbed his bucket to dip into the water barrel. He looked for tiny black widows along the rim of the barrel, because they often made nests there. It looked safe. Frankie and his friend had followed the three boys back to the water barrel. Ignacio’s brother had a big scar on his face from a dirt-bike accident that went from his cheek all the way down to his neck. The other man was small and had long greasy hair. He looked sleepy. “Güacha,” Frankie said. “Hey, monkey guy. Bolillo Boy. Güacha.” The other man had pulled out his penis. It looked very strange. “Esta infectado,’ Frankie smiled. “Se rellenó la polla de canicas.” The man turned so they could see. “He put the marbles in the cock,” Frankie explained to Foster. “Fuck the pussy better.” He thrust his hips and grabbed an invisible girl. “Feel good, Bolillo.” “Fuck you,” Ignacio said again. “Putos.” Frankie laughed. The man redid his pants. It seemed he was in much pain.

The big paint bucket which held their accumulated catches rested within the shade between the right wall and garage. They’d used El Mono’s knife to slash tiny air holes into the top and Foster would swear he saw bodies crawling there just beneath the lid. He picked up his water bucket and headed for the field. He had not waited for the others.

—§—

His father drove the truck over the Rio Grande into Piedras Negras and there was not much traffic because it was still very early in the morning. He liked the Mexican side because it looked even more different than Missouri and all the signs were in Spanish. They always stopped at the Eagle Pass McDonalds on the way in for an early breakfast together. His mother and sister did not like to go, so it was just the two of them. “Men only” on this side of the river, his father joked. They would spend the morning at his father’s new plant and then go to a late lunch at a food cart that made the best spicy chicken flautas and sold pop in glass bottles. His father said the pop tasted better here because it had real sugar and he thought so too. “How your new friends doing, pal?” his father asked while they drove. “Good.” “Your mom said you got in a fight?” “Not really.” “That’s good. Nice to have a couple of good friends before school starts.” The boy liked to count all the signs for dentists. It was nothing he’d ever noticed in Missouri, but they seemed to be everywhere down here. “Yup.” “It’s always strange moving somewhere new. Tough to start.” “Yeah.” He’d counted five already. “I know it’s been hard on you guys. I know that.” He shrugged. “It’s very important for my job to be here.” “I know.” “This assembly plant will be GM’s biggest in Mexico in a few years. You’ll understand all this completely someday. Your mother… You know we love you.” His father looked down at him. “I know it’s been kinda crazy around the house, and your mom and I argue sometimes, but… That’s just because it’s new. Adults argue sometimes. Mommy and I love each other, and you and your sister, very much. You know that, right?” He knew he should look at his father but wasn’t sure what to say. He’d always been a little terrified when they were alone. Never exactly sure of what to say or do. “Right?” his father asked. “Everything is going to be fine, pal.” The boy nodded and turned away to the window. Dentista. Six, he thought. Everything is going to be fine.

—§—

The boys had gotten a late start and the field was darker than usual. They stood around one of the larger holes and, for once, there was something inside. Something black and alive and terrible, but it would not yet come out. An evil thing in spider form. They’d emptied both buckets already. Ignacio used a stick. Sometimes, a tarantula would grab hold and you could draw it out. Ignacio jammed the stick down again. “Tómala, cabrón!” he cursed. “Just kill it,” Foster said. Something raced up his leg. He screamed, jumped back. El Mono laughed. He held a long blade of grass. Ignacio smiled at El Mono. “Panocha,” he said. Foster shoved El Mono away. “Ojete! You’re an asshole.” It was dark and he should go home but he did not want to yet. His mother would probably not care. “La luz,” Ignacio said. Foster pulled the flashlight again and held it down the hole. Inside, it looked like the largest spider they’d yet found. It backed away. He wondered if his father would be home tonight before bed? He moved the light halfway out. The spider seemed to follow. “La luz,” Ignacio said again. Foster ignored him, moved the light away from the hole so that it cast only its own scarlet sunset on the edges of the dark hollow. The spider moved within. “Fuck,” El Mono said. Foster could feel his heart pounding. It was absolutely the biggest spider ever. Two legs pushed out, tapped the edges of the hole. Each leg was as long as his hand. Ignacio thrust his stick at the spider and it latched hold briefly. Then retreated. “Stop,” Foster said and shone the light directly into the hole again. The spider withdrew completely. “Verga!” Ignacio turned angrily. Foster put the light on his face briefly and then back to the side of the hole. The tarantula followed the light out again. Its black unearthly eyes watching the three boys. Foster moved the beam just to the side of the hole and the spider came out after it. In the light, there were flashes of bronze and gold in its hair. Its bulbous end like an eclipsed moon or a giant Arabian jewel. Foster wanted to vomit. The tarantula was the size of a small plate, or a toasted waffle. It was the most horrible thing he’d ever seen. He put the flashlight beam directly on it again. The spider froze. Caught in the harsh alien light. The three boys had circled around it, the creature caught in the center of the spotlight, framed in total darkness. The black fangs stuffed with poison opened wide. The bloated belly filled with a thousand kills. Foster thought of stomping on it. The sickening crunch and the warm dark fluids squishing out everywhere. His stomach turned.

“Ay Wey,” Ignacio marveled. He brought the box down and worked at the lid. “Ven aqui.” The spider crept forward a step. El Mono shrieked playfully. Ignacio laughed. Foster switched off the flashlight. The other two boys screamed now, and cursed at him. Everyone ran in different directions away from wherever the spider now was. They took high steps so as to not accidentally step down next to it or one of its many brothers. Praying to not step into one of the larger holes. Foster ran too. As fast as his trembling legs could carry him. But home was the only place he could think to go.

—§—

That same night, he had a nightmare that the big tarantula had followed him all the way home. Trailed after his scent and scurried patiently down the streets of Eagle Pass to find him. He woke and saw it on the ceiling just above his bed, its eight hairy legs extended wide like a monstrous hand. There was thick webbing everywhere and several bodies partly cocooned in the corners of the room. His own parents. And Ignacio too, his arms bobbing weirdly long, covered in dark hair and segmented. Frankie, Ignacio’s brother, lay wrapped against the wall just beside the bed. His eye sockets were caverns filled with thousands of small round grey eggs. The boy tried to move but found he was wrapped in webbing too. His parents’ jaws gaped wide and in each mouth nestled a pair of black gems glinting out from the frame of coarse brown legs. When the great spider finally dropped down, the awful weight covered him completely. His screams woke no one and he trembled alone in the dark for too long.

—§— Sallow light from the garage bulb crept down the driveway but the rest of the street was mostly dark. His bike upended onto handlebars and seat, the back tire and chain still loose and awaiting a third hand. Everything else accomplished. Filling the tires, adjusting brakes, crank arms, tightening the handlebar and trick pegs, even lubing the crank bearings like his dad showed him once in Missouri. He shielded his eyes against the approaching headlights until they went off. “Hey, pal,” his father left the truck in the driveway, climbed free. “Whatja doing?” The boy shrugged. “Where’s Mom?” “Asleep, I think.” His father shook his head, checked his watch. “When she put Tess to bed?” “I think.”

“This what you’ve been doing?” He asked and retrieved a socket wrench from the floor, stared into the house. “No. A little.” “You eat dinner yet?” He tapped the back wheel. “What’s with this?” “Chain was kinda loose. I made cereal.” “When I was a kid, we’d pull our bikes apart and put ‘em together again just to have something to do. Now it’s just video games, I guess. Here…” He handed over the wrench. “I’ll pull it back.” The boy tightened the wheel nuts, glinting in black alloy, and then stood back while his father righted the bike again. “Think I’ll make some cereal too. Up you go.” He felt his father was waiting for him to get on the bike, so he did. “How’s that now?” his father asked. “Good.” “Good?” he mussed the top of his head. “You wanna take it for a spin?” “Tomorrow.” “Tomorrow, sure. Maybe we’ll… On Saturday, we should maybe check out that one waterpark we always pass.” “Okay.” “I’ve heard they don’t even have lifeguards there. Sort of every man for himself. Could be fun, huh?” “Sure.” His father wiggled the brakes along the handlebar. “Yeah, we should do that.” His father stared back down the driveway while he waited to climb off his bike so they could go into the house. They stood just like that for a long time.

—§—

The old woman who paid for spiders lived on Kifuri Street by the train tracks. Foster had never gone with Ignacio to the house before but now wished to see someone who intentionally filled her home with such things, someone who -- Ignacio claimed -- could turn their dark harvest into various powders and drinks of medicine. He’d always assumed the woman was Mexican and was surprised when an old white woman finally came out onto the porch and spoke to Ignacio quickly in Spanish. She glanced over Foster briefly as Ignacio worked off the perforated bucket top. She stooped to looked inside, grunted quietly in undecipherable judgment. Reached a bare hand into the box where, it seemed to Foster, she’d nudged and rearranged several of the tangled spiders. She tilted the larger bucket slightly, coaxing one of the hairy forms gently into her free hand and then pulled it free. The spider rested peacefully in her hand, several long legs dangling just over the sides of her wrinkled fingers. The woman lifted her hand for Foster to get a better look. That he should recognize and appreciate the spider itself, or the ease with which she now held it, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps both. But, he felt her eyes

moving slowly over his own face, awaiting his reaction. Before he had one, she reached back into the bucket to put the spider back with all the others. She smiled thinly at both boys and moved back into her house with the bucket. Foster risked moving for a better look inside, but found beyond the screen door only darkness and the hint of clutter behind her retreating form. How many spiders had the woman collected and handled over the years, he wondered. He’d asked Ignacio if she were a witch of some kind, but Ignacio said not. Still, Foster thought the house smelled faintly of cigarettes and gingerbread. When she returned, the bucket was empty again, as if it had always been, and she handed it to Ignacio. She handed their money to Foster. “Gracias,” Ignacio said for both of them, fitting the lid back on the bucket. “You want more?” She nodded. “We’ll catch a hundred,” Foster bragged and didn’t know why he’d spoken up. The old woman looked at him, smiled. “Yes,” she said. “In time.” When he and Ignacio were a block from the woman’s house, Ignacio took back all the prize money. Foster didn’t really care. He never went to the house again.

—§—

“Just stop,” his mother laughed. “I honestly don’t care anymore.” “You promised me a year.” “Then we’ve both lied.” “You can’t do this. We’re not going to -- ” “Oh, please. You don’t give a fuck about them anyway. Or me. Think of it as more time for the plant. You could even move in now.” “I’m not doing this again. I’m just not.” “I’m not asking you to do anything.” “This is for them, for us. You think I wanted this fucking transfer?” “You’re a big boy, Michael. You always do what you want.” “Clearly. You demand we stay in the U.S., so fine, here we are. Never mind it takes me almost two fucking hours to get to work.” Two hours. Six dentists. “Aw, poor baby,” Her voice sounded odd. Mean. Loose. “Anna…” “Don’t,” she said. “Get away from me.” Foster ran down the street into a blinding late-day sun. Dogs barked as he passed.

—§—

Ignacio or El Mono weren’t at the schoolyard or outside their homes, and he was afraid to go to their doors. They weren’t at the field either because both buckets and the hoebox were behind Ignacio’s house. He was glad. Foster took only the bucket and went to the field alone. He found a spider hole right away and poured. Nothing. Another, and nothing. He was still crying. He put his flashlight down the next hole. Empty. Twilight now embraced the whole field again. He tried to imagine hundreds of hairy legs scurrying over the dirt and grass toward him. Yet, in reality, he saw nothing. He went back to the large hole they’d found days before. The one with the biggest spider yet. He emptied the rest of the bucket into it. Nothing. Foster tossed the bucket and collapsed down to his hands and knees next to the empty hole. Put his fingers down into it, pulling away the wet cool dirt. He ripped apart the top of the opening. His finger nails clawing the earth like tiny shovels. The hole was empty. Whatever had once lived inside was now gone. He thought of the other spider holes spread across the field all around him. He wondered how many were empty? And how many more harbored dark things that were, even now, preparing to crawl free into the world. There was no way to know for sure unless you checked them all. Every damn one. And who would ever do that? Not him. So no one ever knows how many, he thought. Or exactly which ones? He ran his finger along the ridge of the large spider hole. No one really wants to know. In the morning, everything would be just fine. He lay down, curled on his side, and watched the sun creep slowly back into the ground.