CHAPTER 28

 

 

They took Simon in the day.

My shadow sleeps during the day, Jane. No shadows at noon.

They took him to the West Loop, the old meatpacking district, where slaughterhouses metamorphose into art houses. They take him to that nineteenth-century warehouse turned manor house, where the Gastronome Irregulars entertain.

Simon comes in and out, in flashing circles, liquid dreams, but not wormwood dreams. Agitated, the Corbies cry, “You’re drowning, drowning in chemical stew. Don’t worry, Simon. We know what to do.”

More fever dreams and melting-taffy time.

“Well, did he say where it is?” asks a voice that echoes in Simon’s skull.

“No.”

“Give him the serum!”

“We did. And we asked. He just started reciting love poetry.”

“Love poetry?”

“Sir, Patrick never—”

“Now, Ethan. I’ve told you to call me Art.”

“Yes, Art. Uh, Patrick never showed up this morning. That’s another missing. What’s going on out there? When they found Father Gary he was . . . he—”

“Stop right there. I want you to go into the next room, and I want you to actualize yourself until you are bigger than your fear. Then I want you to eat your fear.”

“Yes, Art.”

“I want you to want it. I want you to be so hungry that you cannot wait for another fear to show.”

“Yes, Art. Thank you.”

“Hmm. Mental Thuggee,” Simon slurs.

A face comes into view—a smiling, familiar face. Simon wonders, sleepily, if he’s dozed on his couch watching late-night TV in the dimension of infomercials and A.M. dark. Arthur Drake smiles at Simon with his best self-actualized smile.

“Hello, Simon.”

“You?”

“I think he’s awake enough,” says the self-help guru.

Arthur Drake: ace of cannibals.

“Simon, where is the hammer?” asks Arthur.

A strong fist rocks Simon’s solar plexus.

“Simon, where is the hammer?” asks that powerful smile.

A blade slices the palm of Simon’s left hand.

“Simon, where is the hammer?”

They show Simon a picture of his parents. Then that cheerful personality from late-night TV describes with that same product-selling voice all the horrible things they can do to Simon’s loved ones, pausing only to mention the doctors and medical drips that can keep a body alive through such awful things for long, long periods of time, long enough for almost anyone to watch forty percent of their body eaten in front of them. The living infomercial tells Simon to wait, because that’s not all: there’s also an assortment of encouragements they could visit upon Simon directly in the meantime. A slight man with a pencil-thin mustache smiles friendly at Simon as he places an assortment of objects on the table: pliers, a blowtorch, finely broken glass, an egg-shaped piece of metal with fishhooks, and a jar of some exotic-looking beetles. All these could be yours, Simon. Act now!

Arthur Drake leans in. “I think we will start with—”

“All right,” says Simon. “I’ll tell you where it is.”

“You will? Excellent.”

The slight man with a pencil-thin mustache looks disappointed.

Simon notices, among the others in the room, Alex Drake and Gabe Stephano, Jr. Both look like their fathers.

Gabe: the Question Man. Jack of spades.

Alex: the Crying Man. Jack of hearts.

Alex holds something the size of a small cage by an antique silver handle. Simon can’t see what’s inside the cage. A black velvet cover conceals the contents. Quivering and moaning, Alex holds the black-draped object up to one ear and murmurs something. Then he turns to his father.

“Dad?”

“Not now, Alex.”

“But, Dad—”

“Not—now—Alexander.” Arthur’s eyes never leave Simon. “Stop playing with your toys and take your medicine.”

The younger Drake’s eyes are turning into black doll’s eyes, the Hunger eyes. He carefully puts down his burden, which Simon notices is attached to his waist by a silver chain. Then he shakily opens a plastic bottle and downs a handful of pills, breathes, and goes back to normal. He gently lifts up his prize and, whispering to whatever is hidden inside, leaves the room.

“Mr. Drake, I’ll give you the hammer on one condition,” Simon says. The room turns to laughter.

“You, my friend, are not in a position to make conditions,” Arthur Drake says with no malice.

“I have something you want very badly. I think you need it very soon, and you might want it so badly that you would be willing to give up something you don’t really need anymore in return.”

Arthur looks at the face peering up at him, a face with the expression of a schoolboy trying to trade lunch items. He compulsively looks to his watch. The mountain of confidence shifts a few centimeters. “All right,” he says, amused. “What, pray tell, do you want?”

“Him,” says Simon, pointing at Gabe.

More laughter.

“You are a character, Simon. I bet you say the most intriguing things. However, I think we’ve indulged you long enough.”

“What does he taste like?” Simon asks.

Arthur’s mouth opens, but he pauses.

“Gabe has eaten so many,” Simon says. “What would it be like to eat him? You have wondered about this before.”

“How interesting—how incredibly innovative of you.” Arthur laughs, a tear in his eye, and his smile turns just a little too big. “All right then. Deal.”

Gabe laughs, but this time he is the only one. A hand holds a pistol in front of Simon’s face, ejects the cartridge, leaving a single bullet in the chamber, and hands it to Simon. Arthur Drake exits the room.

“Art?” says Gabe, chuckling weakly.

Simon takes the gun.

“Art? What are you doing?”

Simon aims.

“Art!”

I would have preferred a scalpel. Eh, Jane?

The bullet enters Gabe’s chest. His eyes bulge more from surprise than pain. He looks down at the hole, confused, because he was playing off the same script as everyone else. Simon deviated. Gabe mouths the name Art. He falls to the floor. Simon has no jack of spades to tear up, but that’s all right. He can tear it up in his mind. Mental Thuggee.

“Old Testament.” Simon says.

The trade was all I could do to move one step closer to completing the promise, Jane. Even if I were doomed, I wanted to show you I hadn’t forgotten.

“Drag that body out of here,” says one of the men. “I’ll keep this creep locked up until they come back with the hammer, just in case he was lying.”

“Then what?” asks his companion.

“Then maybe he’ll find out what’s really going on here.”

 

* * * * *

 

It’s called deus ex machina.

It means “god out of the machine.”

Greek playwrights would resort to it from time to time when they’d worked their heroes into an inescapable corner. A divine power would appear on stage, dropped in by crane or pushed up through a trap door, to resolve the conflict and rescue the ensnared protagonist. Thus is Medea, fresh from her feats of murder and infanticide, whisked away from her husband’s wrath, and Alcestis extricated from the clutches of Death itself.

Simon is not thinking on these finer points of drama as he sits in a room somewhere in the manor house. He is, instead, watching an armed man scowl at him, wondering at his fate. Arthur Drake had come back with Bob—the hammer, not the dildo—an hour or more past. He’d stood in front of Simon, fondling the weapon almost as if it were Nyx’s toy, proving his possession of the thing. Simon had expected then to feel Bob’s wrath, to have his skull shattered by the blood-specked head—even tried to imagine how the shape of one’s perspective would change in the nanoseconds of awareness one would have as one’s head is pulped—but Drake had simply said to keep Simon safe until he returned. He had party guests to attend to.

Drake’s minions are more thorough than Simon’s other recent captors. They tape his wrists in such a way that no sleight of hand is possible. They tape his mouth so that he cannot distract or confuse them. One by one they take turns, sitting across the room from him and scowling. Simon, by way of reply, sits, and waits, and wonders when the end will finally come.

When he notices the wet footprints appear suddenly on the tile floor, his thoughts do not flash to the mechanics of Greek drama, though they do settle for just a moment on the mutant descendants of these ancient entertainments: the silent serials, The Perils of Pauline or, better still, Les Vampires, with their cliffhanger endings and miraculous escapes. And he breathes a sigh of relief as the armed man falls over.

Loki, barefoot and dripping with cold water, helps Simon out of his duct tape bonds.

“How did you find me?” Simon asks.

“Shadowed Mort. Had to jump in the river.” Loki looks disgusted. “He came in through an underground passage.” Loki carefully takes out a mobile phone from a sealed plastic bag. “Time to call the cavalry.” He speed dials a number. “Hello?” he whispers into the phone. “Yeah, I’m in. It’s a big gathering. What? Say again. He sent what? They exist? No! What? Two? Fuck!”

Loki puts away the phone.

“Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!”

“What?”

“The Prince just released two Grims.”

Whatever momentary relief Simon had felt flees at that announcement, driven away more by the primal terror he glimpses in his shadow’s face than a clear understanding of his words.

Sometimes, letting go of the cliff and taking your luck with the rocks below is the cleaner fate.

Sometimes, the god from the machine wants to eat you.

 

* * * * *

 

Loki explained to me, Jane, how some vampires lose the Man and become all Beast, rabid and insane. Usually, they have to be put down, but the Prince keeps some of these creatures, locks them away, makes them love him with his blood. He calls them his Grims. They have no mind left, Jane. They are worse than the ghasts. Hungrier. They’re only used to exterminate.

“There are two of them here. The exits are all being blocked from the outside, and they are already in the building,” Loki whispers before tentatively opening the door to the hall. “The Prince released Grim Three and Grim Seven.”

“Do they have names?” Simon asks.

Loki shakes his head slowly. “There’s nothing left in them that would answer to a name.”

As they creep through the halls, they hear the screams before they see anyone. Sounds of running, sounds of banging, of raw fists pounding desperately at doors and windows somehow held closed from the outside. Screams and pleas and pounding.

A bloody-knuckled woman in fancy dress, well past shock, runs by, followed by several others. No one pays attention to Loki and Simon.

They catch a glimpse of Grim Three as she eviscerates shrieking Gastronome Irregulars in a dining room with yellow wallpaper and choleric-colored lights. Silver trays litter the floor.

It was a party, Jane. I thought they were celebrating Drake’s triumph, his acquisition of the hammer. I thought they were making ready to enact some dread ritual, something apocalyptic that would spread out over the city and the world. But it wasn’t that at all. . . .

The bored and the rich, playing cannibal earlier in the evening, now scream like children. The screams do not last. Grim Three is a little girl—or was, some time before ever after. Her party dress is caked in gore. Her fingers and toes end in long claws that extend nearly twelve inches. She moves like a great heron. With one clawed foot, Grim Three grips the head of a dead Gastronome and pulls him to her mouth, like a bird of prey.

She drops her food and pulls something off of him: a comb. The Grim looks at the comb curiously, begins the palsied motions of combing her hair. She’s not very effective; her hand just moves in staccato rhythms, around the general vicinity of her head.

I think there were fragments of behavioral memory, Jane, little islands of disassociated self, floating in the Beast.

Simon, in the dark, in horrid wonder, notices Grim Three has little objects fastened to her hair: dolls’ heads, dolls’ arms, ribbons, and human fingers, all tied and hanging in her hair as if it were a baby’s mobile. She continues feeding.

How could such a little thing contain so much blood? Eh, Jane?

Loki pulls Simon into another room.

“She’s busy,” he whispers. “Stay in here. They’re scary as fuck, but not bright. I have to go lead them to where they can do the most damage, give us a path to get out. Stay.”

And then he’s gone.

The jagged-toothed seconds gather into conspiracies of long minutes, and Simon listens to the masque of screams. The cries multiply and merge in the halls, dozens of individual voices sounding, through a trick of acoustics, for all the world like one composite utterance shrieked through a giant, creaking throat.

I could only conclude, Jane, that while I was unconscious, something had swallowed us all whole.

He looks about the room. The sable furnishings and glowing, melancholic art are lit in flickering fluorescence by busted black lights. A glowing wheel of cheese, in an advanced state of fermentation, lays spilled and splattered on the floor in a colony of luminous maggots. A human corpse sprawls next to the cheese. The maggots writhe. The body does not.

Simon picks up a glowing maggot.

“Piophila casei,” he says, as if to an old friend. Forensic entomology uses the same family of fly to estimate the time of death in human remains.

Simon puts the maggot down and sneaks off.

 

* * * * *

 

Every door is a horror story that has only to be opened.

One door gapes into a feverish room of crimson illumination and sanguine aesthetics. Fat leeches crawl near an empty chocolate box. Simon finds more revelers prostrate in death, painted red by both liquid and light.

Another door opens into a blue-cast room of phlegmatic sensibility. A fountain dominates the center and glass fixtures cascade constant curtains of water down the walls. Only, the water is contaminated and the walls run bloody. Simon spots an ornate pet-carrying case discarded on a couch, the metal-barred door torn open. Bodies lay on the floor, clad in suits and dresses and rich clothing; all are dead or dying. In the room’s center, near the fountain, rests a line of a half-dozen corpses wearing clothing not as rich, each with a caved-in head. Simon flinches. Near the bodies lurks Bob the hammer, the evil maul, new blood mingling with the old.

They were cattle from Apex Consumers, Jane, brought in for the feast. Arthur Drake finally got to use the hammer. He sang lullabies into their skulls.

But the other guests—they were not killed with Bob. The thing that got them interrupted their enjoyment of the hammer’s kill.

A door flies open and in walks Grim Seven. This Grim is a male, maybe in his teens, but it is hard to tell. His skin is ash gray and his eyes are milky white. His mouth is sewn mostly shut with big, messy stitches. He does not move like Grim Three. His movements are slow, laborious, as slack as the arms hanging at his sides. He doesn’t seem to see Simon, his attention instead on one of his earlier victims, still stubbornly clinging to life. The Grim slouches over and lifts him, whimpering, into the air. He’s a big man, much bigger than the Grim. Simon recognizes him as one of the thugs who had helped interrogate him earlier. The Grim holds the whimpering man’s face close to his own and then the whimpers turn to a higher pitch and the shivering turns to convulsing. At last the man’s dark hair turns white and the struggling stops altogether. Grim Seven cocks his head to the side, considering the curiosity in his hand, before slamming the fresh-made corpse’s head into the ground several times. Finally, the ashen thing lifts the body high overhead and lets the blood trickle down, catching the liquid through a gap in his stitched mouth.

Then the Grim looks up.

Of course there’s really no such thing as deus ex machina, lovelings, not really; its presence would imply a formal plan and perhaps even a playwright. Sometimes the eye thinks it spots patterns where none exist, traces false constellations in the void—only to find that navigating by them surely leads to calamity. In total chaos, order may flicker briefly in the black light, but only a fool mistakes that for true order.

Simon returns the Grim’s mad, empty gaze for only an instant and sees in it an awful truth. Then he does the only thing he can.

I ran, Jane. I ran and ran and ran.

 

* * * * *

 

In the kitchen all is dark. Simon slips into the room as the light from the hallway vanishes with the closing of the swinging door. He heads straight for the counter and the two knives he saw there in the momentary illumination. Not scalpels, but they would do.

In the inky black, two glowing orbs—the cloudy blues and greens of bioluminescence—stare at Simon from the floor on the opposite side of the room. He freezes.

“The Mondays,” caw the Corbies.

The same eyes, Jane. The eyes that came down at me in the dark stall, the night you vanished.

Breathless with dread, Simon stutter-slides along the wall until he feels it. A light switch clicks.

After a lifetime interpreting stories through wounds, Simon instantly reads the savage struggle that had happened moments ago—the broken glass, blood, shattered table, cracked floor tiles, punched-through walls. At the center of the blossoming distraction lays Mort. Crouched on Mort’s chest, like a night terror, is Simon’s shadow.

Mort’s disfigured body bristles with foreign objects that pierce his head, his neck, his body, his limbs: knives, some with broken handles; scissors; a cork screw; a broken bottle; a cleaver; shards of wood; a skewer; a meat hook; an apple corer; and things less identifiable. The Corbies quickly tell Simon the order in which each was stabbed into the body. In the light, Mort reminds Simon of the photos he’s seen of deep-sea creatures, things that never see the sun or the surface, splayed out on a boat or dissection table. Those specimens always excite both horror and sadness in him; their alien symmetries, damaged and partially preserved in some pathetic final pose, made him wonder what they were like when they were whole and in motion, gliding through the crushing pressure of their sunless environs.

Mort was sleeping the big sleep, Jane. Like Rowen.

Loki’s undead flesh is torn and battered as well. An improbably sized bite of flesh is missing from his neck, making his head look as if it could topple like the top of a root-hacked tree. The skin of his forehead is slashed and yanked back, a parody of male pattern baldness and exposed skull. Loki’s mouth hangs open, hovering over Mort’s throat. He pulls back from the body, again and again, but his mouth always returns, drawn by impossible gravities. His body convulses with the tectonic inner struggle—the Man and the Beast—and the fault lines crack. A large glob of saliva flows from Loki’s mouth, spattering Mort’s face.

“Loki?” says Simon.

Simon’s shadow moves faster than sight, turns to look at Simon with no visible transition. Loki clutches Mort’s body greedily, like a cat with a freshly killed bird. The vampire’s mouth quivers, all fangs and drool. The eyes are devoured by black holes that leak out and fill the recesses of his sockets. The visage is not so far off from those of the Grims. Loki makes a noise at Simon that is something like a roar and something like a hiss.

Simon backs out of the kitchen, back into the manor built of hunger and madness.

I’d like to think that monster was my friend, Jane. I’d like to think.

 

* * * * *

 

Alex: the Crying Man. Jack of hearts.

“Stay away!” he shrieks. In a library, the green-tinged lights bathe everything in ectoplasm. Alex’s hands and mouth are caked with drying blood that is not his. He crouches over what Simon had mistaken earlier for a cage, but with the velvet cover gone, he can see that it is more like a lantern or a small fish tank, all antique silver and glass. And floating inside are a pair of golden eyes and a heart. Simon gasps.

I’d found you at last. Eh, Jane?

Alex’s eyes are now completely gone over to black doll’s eyes. His mouth stretches too, too wide. Shaking hands fumble with a plastic pill bottle, popping open the top, but dropping the contents. The pills rain over the container, hit the wooden floor, and scatter like sanity. “So sorry,” he murmurs to his floating prizes. “Would you like me to punish him for making me spill those nasty pills on you?” Alex loops the chain around his neck and left shoulder, securing his prize on his back. His grimacing smile is much too large for his face.

Simon holds tight to the knives he’d taken from the kitchen. His own expression becomes fixed, something other than entirely human, as he advances with razor-sharp purpose.

Alex’s mouth distends to his chest, filling with rows of teeth, skin going from pale to chalk white. He wails and charges Simon.

Claws.

Teeth.

Blades.

They meet in a vicious clash of ghast and ghoul. Alex is fast, but Loki’s blood makes Simon faster and he ducks away. Simon evades and slashes, again and again, slicing white flesh. But the warm gift of undead blood fades quickly. Simon slows. Even with his awkward, precious burden, Alex does not.

White claws rip into his chest.

Simon’s feet leave the floor. He readies a strike, but stops himself when the silver casket shifts into his way, the golden eyes rolling lazily in the clear liquid.

Talons sink between his ribs.

Then another set of eyes fill his vision—a pair of black doll’s eyes—and Simon jams the knives into them. Alex shrieks, squeezing his claws inside Simon’s chest. Simon raises his arms and slams his open palms into the knife handles, driving them deep into the monstrous skull. Alex collapses.

Simon, on the floor, coughs up blood. He’s bleeding out from the chest wound, yet he smiles.

I was so happy, Jane. I won your Valentine.

The torn-up scarecrow unhooks the silver chain from Alex’s waist and loops it around his neck. He smiles weakly at the blobs of flesh floating behind the thick glass. Here, at last, are fish he cannot kill. Then, cradling the silver casket as best he can, he crawls across the ectoplasmic library to the body of Arthur Drake.

Even in death, the self-help guru has perfect teeth.

The rest of Arthur Drake has not fared as well. His throat has been torn out, his stomach ripped open and chewed.

Alex did it, Jane. The son ate the father. The family of Drake swallowed its own tale. Flesh of the flesh eating itself. I could hear the voice of the thing I glimpsed—the naked hunger god, the gibbering Whisper in the River. It sang, “Ashes to ashes, meat to meat. Everything has to eat.”

Simon scrabbles to Arthur’s side. He knows he should probably try to leave, to escape with his prize for whatever short time he has left, but he has to know—all the secrets, all the answers. They’re all in Arthur Drake. The whole grandiose plot, every detail, lies in the folds, fluids, and chunks of this man’s anatomy. Icky Knock cackles in the back of Simon’s memory. It is all within reach. All he has to do is cut.

Wheezing, nearly laughing, Simon tears open the corpse’s shirt.

“You can’t get away that easy, Art. Not from me. Tell me how all the pieces fit. Make them fit!”

The pathologist slashes a messy Y.

“You hid a secret in your locket, but I know how to open it.”

With a great effort and a loud crack, Simon pulls the rib cage open—like prying stubborn hands clutching a mystery.

“Subject: Arthur Drake.”

Simon plunges his trembling fingers into the still-warm chest cavity. His body shakes with the green electricity.

The Corbies caw and sing: “Drake fell down and broke his crown—and Simon came tumbling after.”

 

* * * * *

 

Where are we?

Sleep has no place to call its own.

The dark waves sigh on through forever. Simon and Arthur Drake sit in a rowboat, bobbing in an ebony river.

“Who are you?” asks Drake.

“This is your autopsy,” Simon says, “but I ask the questions.”

Somewhere, very distant, maybe in a dream—Simon is vaguely aware of his hands yanking out intestines by the foot.

“What were you doing tonight?” Simon asks. “What was the ritual all this was building toward? What did we stop?”

“Stop?” Drake looks confused. “It was just a Gastronome Irregulars meeting. A dinner. I was showing them what I’d accomplished. A meal featuring a few members of Apex Consumers. They were fattened up on vices and lives, and we were going to dine on the crackling. Exponential zoophagy. The ultimate consumption. My crowning recipe. They all would have been so impressed.”

“No,” says Simon. “What was the bigger plan? What did we stop?”

“Bigger plan? You stopped my life. I was going to rise so high. Just a few more years—”

“The plot, Drake. What was the plot? What was the hammer for? What’s its secret?”

“I don’t know.”

“You killed so many to get it. You must know.”

And somewhere, maybe in a dream—Simon is vaguely aware of squeezing a liver until something comes out.

“I don’t know,” says Drake. “The Voice in the Water told me to get it.”

Simon rows along the dark channels that stretch after ever-after, and his passenger tells him the story of a boy named Arthur, a boy who was always afraid. Arthur was afraid in the night and afraid in the day. He was afraid when he was alone and afraid with company. The fear was always there, from before he could remember and on into adulthood. Fear lurked at the edge of his vision and behind him, and Arthur could never turn his head fast enough to see it. It slithered over his every hope and thought. Yet he could not name it, never knew what it was he feared. He never had an answer to the shame of another urine-stained bed.

But one day, Arthur heard the Voice in the Water. At first it was just a faint cadence in the sound of the liquid coming out of the tap, but Arthur listened and eventually could make out a distinct voice. It befriended Arthur and gave him guidance, promised to make him unafraid, and all Arthur had to do to worship it was eat. Everything Arthur learned, he learned in pursuit of killing the fear. Each thing he consumed was another thing he no longer had to dread. It was in this way that the Voice in the Water showed Arthur how not to be afraid of people.

Arthur learned to do the little things the Voice told him to do. He grew in success and stature, and yet the fear remained. When would he not be afraid? Soon, the Voice promised. Very soon. And so Arthur consumed and grew. He formed his self-help empire. He joined the Gastronome Irregulars. He consumed.

The Voice told Arthur to get a hammer, the kind used in the old stockyards. The hammer had its own bedtime stories and had belonged to many people, most recently a serial killer. Arthur met a blood drinker named Mort, who also could hear the Voice, though he had heard it first in the river and said it had many mouths. He called it the Chorus of Wyrms. Mort warned that another blood drinker, Rowen, knew of the Voice, or the Chorus, and could hurt it with her magic. And so they plotted.

“No, no, no,” says Simon. “That’s just more history. What was the endgame? What was all this building toward? This all has to connect: the hammer, the ghasts, the vampires, the three dead men who questioned me, the thing in the bog, the static voice in the fast-food clown face, Ichabod Knock and all the oddities he recorded, Jane Doe. How do they all fit together? Put the pieces together! Make it all fit!”

And somewhere, in a dream, Simon is vaguely aware of ripping out organ after organ, angrily tossing each one away.

“Careful,” says Arthur, who is now a little boy. “You’re rocking the boat.”

“Oh,” says Simon, who is also a little boy. “Sorry.”

Little Simon sits and begins rowing. Both he and Little Arthur are in clothing that is much too big for them.

“What plot did you think there was?” asks little Arthur. “Did you really think you were saving the world?”

“Yeah,” says Little Simon, self-consciously. “Maybe . . .”

Little Arthur giggles. Then he tells Simon every detail of his life, every sin, every love, every evil deed, every joy, every single thing that is Arthur Drake—for there is naught but time in the Dead Water.

The two boys float down the ebony river that flows on and on after ever-after. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

 

* * * * *

 

“Put the pieces together,” Simon mumbles as he comes to, hands sliding out of the ruined mess that is Arthur Drake. “Put the pieces together.”

Simon, covered in gore, bends down so his face is next to Arthur’s.

“Put the pieces together . . . please.”

Simon sits up. He runs a bloody hand through his hair. He notices his own bleeding wounds. He can still hear the echo of Ichabod laughing.

I finally understood Mr. Knock’s joke. Eh, Jane?

“No answers,” pants Simon. “The shadows run too deep. The voices from the river, from the dark—they are many.” He looks down at the cadaver, feeling the stirrings of love for his latest patient—

“No!” says Simon. He gets to his knees, raises a knife. This is an awful man. A killer. Worse, he was instrumental in Jane’s death. Simon decides to dismember the corpse and piss on the remains to desecrate them. But every cadaver has to break Simon’s heart, and all he wants to do is hug the scared child hidden inside this meat locket.

“Mother Hubbard,” Simon swears.

He falls into a sitting position. His breath comes ragged. There are things loose in his chest.

“I’m afraid I’m not very good at this vengeance business,” he says to the Corbies. He lies down on the floor. Just out of arm’s reach, he can see the silver casket.

“I’m sorry, Jane,” says Simon. “I forgot what was important.” He rolls over and pulls himself towards her heart and eyes. Though he’s weak and exhausted, the movement is easy. With so much gore on the floor, he slides. Simon hugs the silver-and-glass casket to his chest. He coughs up red and smiles. He sits up, but immediately lies back down.

“Just a little rest,” he says.

The sounds of carnage and chaos have ceased. The manor house is quiet. All the lights have gone out. All the revelers are dead.

Simon looks Jane in the eyes.

“I won your heart, Jane.”

Simon kisses the glass.

Eye.

Heart.

You.

Jane.





 

 

EPILOGUE



I’ll come to you tonight, dear, when it’s late,

You will not see me; you may feel a chill.

I’ll wait until you sleep, then take my fill,

And that will be your future on a plate.

They’ll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate.

— Neil Gaiman, “Reading the Entrails: a Rondel”

 

 

And that is how I won your Valentine.

Eh, Jane?

It is cold and dark in here.

I hold your hand. The skin has gone cold, but the embalming oil smells sweet. I trace the lines of your face, the muscles so relaxed. I trace the stitches that hold you together. The stitches are the binding, and the binding is a promise I sewed. I feel guilty, somehow selfish, that I am the only one who can feel the touch. But I can hug you and try to share my warmth. I don’t need all of it. This is not an ideal relationship. Is it ever?

The refrigerator unit hums.

I made your glass case a little bigger. Now we can both lie here together, for a while. We can look at each other eye to eye, if I position the silver casket holding your golden orbs just right. Or I can rest your heart on your chest.

Did you know that the heart of Robert the Bruce, the warrior king of Scotland, was placed in a similar casket and worn into battle? Would you like to hear the story? Carrying out the king’s final wish, two knights, one wearing the heart, the other holding the key, brought the organ to the Crusades to atone the dead king’s sins. Only one knight returned alive, holding the key and wearing the heart, hanging from his neck. His name was Sir Symon Locard. Symon changed his name to Lockhart, adding a heart and fetterlock to the family coat of arms, and the motto Corda Serrata Pando: “I open locked hearts.”

My shadow found me holding your locket on the floor, and his blood healed me. My shadow misled me, but that’s to be expected. His card is the Fool. Misdirection. There was no apocalyptic plot, only predators getting rid of rival predators, purging each other from a world of ever-shifting darkness. I still see my shadow from time to time. He knows better than to try to draw me into his plans. Or perhaps that, in itself, is a ploy.

My mother called today. She wants to meet you.

Alexi was right. There is not one voice in the river, there are thousands—the ten thousand terrible things swimming in the water that is chaos. The food chain is not constant. Even the river changes direction. Some nights you are a scarecrow god gobbling the moon from the sky. Some nights you are a victimized little boy tearing open shower curtains. Slapstick is the mirror of how to survive this spook world: roll with the punch, tumble when thrown, go with the awful flow. To rigidly resist is to shatter. I am Charlie Chaplin prat-falling with monsters.

Myer Twiss is still at large; children still rhyme his name to their rope jumping. Bubbly Creek still bubbles.

Alexi was wrong, too. Everything does not return to the river. There are voices in the earth and sky and in the static hiss of plastic faces. There are things that hide behind the shadows of atoms, but which are also so huge the lines of their bodies spell geomancy. The river is Alexi’s whole world, and so her only story is the river. Each of us thinks we are the big story, but we are, all of us, just twisted interludes bumping into each other in the dark.

I watch infomercials now, and I wonder.

Mr. Knock was right in his riddle. We cling to conspiracy because the alternative might be worse. There is no way to solve the mystery because it is woven of ten thousand black strands working toward different ends. Chaos. Sometimes looking for patterns leads to madness.

I could tuck you in, Jane, every night, kiss you on the cheek and promise you the world is not ending. There are too many sets of hungry eyes and teeth in the dark, and they need us too much to ever let it end.

Yesterday I read a news story on the Internet that said Ichabod Knock’s newest book is due to be published soon, though it is still unclear whether it should be declared a posthumous work.

I found the Obsidian Sanctuary. Little Robin, their canary, sat in the front hall of their new meeting place. She saw me and screamed loudly through her rubber gorilla mask. I’ve never heard her voice except in screams. I fled. There are prices and there are doors you can’t come back out of. I catch rumors online. I’m part of their mythos now—the entrails reader. I am a troll with my very own bridge, and I hear them trip-trapping above.

But I have you, Jane. In your glass case, you look like a fairy tale heroine awaiting the rejuvenating kiss.

I walked by another of those fast food restaurants. No one remembers when they were ever open. The plastic clown head talked to me again. There were secrets and tempting promises in the hissing static.Mertvaya voda—I’ve played so long in the Dead Water, but Grandsnaps said the Living Water also flows under the World Tree. Every day, the strange words, symbols, and equations cut into my walls make more sense. It’s like an old song I can’t quite remember. I can hum it now, I can almost sing it sometimes, and more and more it sounds like, “Zhivaya voda.”

Is it true or does the demon static taunt me?

It doesn’t matter. None of those things matter. All that matters is that my absinthe Thermos is empty. Soon my hand will enter the Y-shaped keyhole that opens the door to the place we can meet.

My belly is full of moths, and the Corbies are nervous.

Corda Serrata Pando, Jane.

I hope we dance.

 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

JOSHUA ALAN DOETSCH once built a flesh golem out of grave-robbed parts and leftover Halloween candy. By strange chance, this golem is fueled by rejection slips. Every day it begs and it pleads, “Please, kind sir, keep me alive!” And so Joshua writes. You can thank White Wolf for making the poor golem go hungry for another day.

 

Joshua is from October Country, Illinois, but currently writes video game dialogue in Montreal. He has a fondness for fedoras, does a mean Christopher Walken impersonation, and, once upon a road trip dreary, wrote a blues song about necrophilia.

 

 

 

 

DEDICATION

For Chad and for John and for Papa.

You are missed.

I hope there are Kindles or Nooks for you to see this from—wherever you are.

 

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

All acknowledgment starts with my parents. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for your unwavering faith in my very impractical life choices—no one was as surprised as me when they started paying off. (I have to say, though, that I am a little resentful of the ideal parenting and lack of childhood tragedy in the home; it really hurts my angsty writer street cred.) And to my younger siblings, Nick and Danielle, for making me tell them the ever-adapting, increasingly violent version of that fairy tale every single bedtime. (Goldilocks got what she deserved, in the end.)

 

To Nancy Perkins, for though I’ve had many teachers, you are my mentor, and that is not a term I use lightly. To Joanna Beth Tweedy, David Logan, Chad Baldwin, Donna Mullen, Stacey Anderson Laatsch, Edward Myers, and everyone in the UIS writing crew—hanging out with you folks and sharing our craft were some of the best times of my life. To Dave, Adrienne, Val, Genenda, Zack, Aimee, Claire, Ken, and Torrie, for taking the time to read my stuff and give me feedback. To the Twilight Tales crew—I miss the Red Lion Pub so much I had to put its ghost into one of the chapters. To Mr. Nance, for kicking me out of Basic English in high school.

 

To my editor, James Lowder, for having to deal with an amateur messily stumbling through his first novel. Any good bits in this book likely have their origin in his guidance.

 

To White Wolf Publishing, both for holding the contest that started this novel (and getting our mutant lovechild out into the light of day) and for producing the material that has tickled my imagination for years. One day, a high school version of me held a copy of Vampire: The Masquerade (2nd ed.) in his hands; marveled at the feel of the weighty tome, the promise of darkling wonders within; and he knew (knew) that opening this book was important—opening a door.

 

To White Wolf’s many fans—with a special thanks to Marshall Finch, for lending a scalpel-sharp set of proofing eyes. And thanks to those I have gamed with and those with whom I may yet game. Grab your dice, lovelings, and lets you and me tell a story.

 

And finally, to Proto Me, the wide-eyed guy who entered that novel contest several years back. Thanks for all the sweat and blood. You do some cool work, man, but I have to say: I’m a better writer than you, I get tired of fixing your mistakes, and you still owe me your half of last month’s rent.

 

Quote from “Reading the Entrails: A Rondel” by Neil Gaiman, © 1997 by Neil Gaiman; used by permission of the author.