“I can’t say.”
He nodded and held out one large hand, his too-slim fingers curving gently like seaweed in the tide. “May I hold it, please?”
She set it and the cloth in the center of his palm, hoping he didn’t notice her reluctance to touch his skin. He whipped the towel away, closing his fingers around the amulet and holding it up.
“Oh, aye,” he said. “It does its little job, does it not? Hmmm.” He brought it to his nose, stuck out his tongue for a taste. His eyes rolled back in his head. “Thou has given it blood, Cesaria.”
“It was an accident.”
He chuckled, like a clogged engine coughing its way into life. “Accidents do happen.” His hand snapped shut. “I can tell much of it. What shall I get in return? The book needs its sacrifice if it is to open.”
“What book? Can’t you just tell me?”
“The words cannot be spoken unless cast. Thou must read them, but not say out loud.”
Nothing good could possibly come of this. She saw herself at the door, saw Terrible behind her as they left and climbed back up the hill to his car, saw them hauling ass away from here and back to the city.
Then she saw Slipknot, with his body rotting more every minute and his soul trapped inside the maggoty, desiccated ruin, and she knew she could not go.
“What’s the price?” She picked up her bag, ready to dig into her wallet. For that matter, she was ready to make Terrible dig into his. Bump would be paying both of them back. This was his project, he could use his own damn money.
“Oh. Thou offers money.” Those extra teeth of Tyson’s glowed in the dim light. “The book does not require such cold sacrifice, dear. It asks for something more … Perhaps thou had better see. Wait here.”
Chess and Terrible exchanged glances as he got up and disappeared through that black door, the shiny gold and red fabric of his robe floating behind him.
“You ain’t get this learning any elsewhere?”
She shook her head.
He sighed. “Ain’t liking this, not one bit.”
She was about to reply when Tyson swept back into the room, holding a book flat in front of him. At first Chess thought Tyson had cut himself on something in the other room, that he either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. Then she realized the blood spattering onto his robe and absorbing into the dirt floor wasn’t his.
It was coming from the book.
It dripped dark and clotted from the covers and oozed out from the pages. Chess’s skin crawled. She did not want to read that thing, didn’t want to touch it, didn’t want to go near it. Her palm burned and itched, the tattoos on her arms warmed as the book was brought closer to her.
Tyson nudged a small table with his foot and looked at Terrible. “Will thou bring it over?”
Terrible’s face did not move as he lifted the table and set it in front of Chess, but when his eyes met hers she read the message in them. He felt it, too, didn’t like this any more than she did.
It couldn’t be helped. She tried not to cringe away when Tyson set the bloody book on the table, forcing herself instead to reach for it. Tyson’s hand stopped her.
“Thou is sure? Thou is ready to touch the book?” His eyes gleamed.
“I don’t have a choice, do I?”
Terrible stepped forward. “Give it me.”
“No. This isn’t your—”
“Ain’t having you do it, Chess. It’s why I come along, aye?”
Droplets of blood plunked onto the dirt, loud in the silence while she and Terrible looked at each other.
“One of thee decide, if it pleases,” Tyson said. “Charming as this little moment is, I haven’t got all day to watch.”
Chess reached out, but Terrible was faster. The tips of the fingers on his left hand brushed the cover, and the book flew open, scattering drops of blood everywhere, onto him, onto Chess, onto the walls and furniture.
She barely noticed. She could not tear her eyes away as the pages shifted, fluttered, brushing against Terrible’s hand, then finally falling open, clean and white. The blood was gone.
For a moment, anyway. Then it started again, spreading across the pages in a crimson flood, forming words and symbols that seemed to float above the parchment.
Terrible grunted softly, an uncomfortable sound, one she did not like. His hand, which had been resting on top of the book, seemed to shrink, to flatten, and she realized it was actually sinking in. The blood on the page now was his.
He sank to his knees, his face flushing, his eyes closed.
“Terrible? Terrible?”
He shook his head. “Ain’t … no …”
“Terrible!” She reached for him, meaning to pull his arm away, but Tyson’s voice stopped her.
“Thou had best get the knowledge,” he said. “Quickly, lest the book kill thy guard before thou do.”
Chapter Twenty
“Often we find ourselves as parents unsure how to guide our children. In those cases we should simply look for the Truth, and we will be correct. Protecting our children is the highest way of serving humanity and Truth.”
—Families and Truth, a Church pamphlet by Elder Barrett
Terrible moaned, a sound so low and frightened it felt like someone rubbing tinfoil against her brain.
“Stop this!”
Tyson shrugged. “His time shortens while thou speaks.”
Fuck! Fuck, shit fuck. Where was her notepad? And her pen? The words in the book had almost finished forming, stretching across the pages like the footprints of bleeding ravens. An image started to form in the center, the amulet, the runes around the edge growing and shrinking.
“No … not me … not me …” Terrible’s body convulsed, folded over on itself, his head bowed. His entire body trembled and shook as he sank farther to the floor, shrinking into a semi fetal position. Red symbols scrolled up his arm, swirling around his elbow and creeping over the slice of bare skin showing at the back of his neck, then back down to spread over the page.
Finally her fingers closed over the pen and pad. She started writing, hardly paying attention, just trying to copy the pages and stop this. If it would stop, if she hadn’t just sacrificed a man’s life just to decipher that stupid amulet. Slipknot could rot forever for all she cared, who cared, just please let this end …
Tretso, yes. To power. And the other one, Etosh, to direct it. More. Vedak, to trap the soul. Arged, to feed from it. Who the fuck had done this, had concocted something so foul? The lettering flowed faster across the parchment now, almost too fast for her to follow.
“That’s good,” she heard Tyson say softly. “So much pain … and strength … the book is pleased …”
“Fuck you,” she managed, but it was drowned out by Terrible’s roar, like a tiger in pain, setting every hair on her body on end.
The last rune formed now, pulsing bigger and thicker, the red marks forming a rune, then a face, then a rune again, the words stretching out even as Chess’s heart thudded and skipped. That face was that of the nightmare man, and his name was Ereshdiran, the stealer of dreams.
“Done!” she shouted. “I’m done! I’m finished, stop this now, stop it please …”
Red ink covered Terrible’s face, fiery bright under his skin, under the tears squeezing out from beneath his closed eyelids.
“No more, no more, no more, not me, please, please don’t.” Over and over, a litany she could not bear to hear any longer.
Terrible’s eyes flew open. Chess screamed. His irises were red, bright glowing red, his pupils nothing but black pinpoints against it. It was in him, oh fuck, whatever it was was inside him, eating him …
Tyson laughed softly as she reached out without thinking and grabbed the book, trying to yank it away.
Tyson’s house disappeared. Instead she was back in a bedroom, a familiar one, though she had not seen it in years, while heavy footsteps clumped across a wooden floor as she pulled the covers tighter over her head. She was only ten, she didn’t want
him in here, didn’t want him to make her do those things again …
A different room, a different father, his beefy fist swinging backward to catch her across the face …
Another hit. A heavy, sweaty female figure climbing into her bed. Her clothes torn. Every image Chess ever wanted to forget flashing before her eyes, and over it all the despair, the pain, the misery and loneliness of never being touched except in anger or lust, of being outside, not belonging to anyone or with anyone, of hating herself so much it made her choke. She couldn’t even feel her body anymore, couldn’t see or hear anything but the voice in her head that reminded her every minute of every day how worthless she was, the voice she tried to dull with drugs and work but never really went away, it never would go away, not until she finally died and went to the silent and cold City beneath the ground, a place she’d always thought bad enough to make life just a tiny bit preferable to it. There was no solace there for her, no peace, just endless days and nights of drifting …
“Noooo,” she sobbed, and just like that it ended. Her knees hurt from hitting the floor. Every muscle in her body ached, but it was done, the book was closed, and Terrible was halfway across the room before she stopped feeling the imprint of his hands on her arms.
He grabbed Tyson by the throat and lifted him, flinging the smaller man against the rough-hewn stone like a ball at the end of a tether. Tyson made a small choked sound that could have been a cry or a laugh, his eyes slithering back to solid gray.
“Lemme hit him, Chess,” Terrible moaned, his voice breaking. His right hand fisted and flexed, fisted and flexed, the muscles on his arm bulging as his whole body trembled. “Just let me … you … you fucking …”
“Thou saw things thou did not want to see again.” Tyson smiled like a zipper sliding open. “Bad memories, guard? Was it worth it?”
“Chess …”
“No! No, Terrible, don’t, don’t—wait.” Her leg bumped the table as she got up and crossed the room, leaving a smear of blood soaking into her jeans. “Wait. Who else saw this, Tyson? Who came here before, and made that amulet?”
“I know not—”
“No, you do. You do, that’s why you laughed when you saw it, isn’t it? Who was it? Tell me, or I’ll let him beat you. I’ll let him kill you if he wants to, and I think he does.” She glanced at Terrible, but his eyes were still focused on Tyson with the intensity of a hungry wolf watching a house cat. “Do you want to, Terrible?”
“Aye.”
“Thou cannot kill me. I am more powerful than thou knows.”
Terrible growled.
“You know what I have in my bag, Tyson? Melidia weed. Melidia, and my psychopomp. I can send you and whatever that thing is you’re hosting into one of the spirit prisons so fast you won’t even have time to beg for mercy, and I can let Terrible break every fucking bone in your body first. Now tell me, and we’ll go. Fair evens.”
Terrible tightened his grip on Tyson’s throat. Tyson’s eyes bulged slightly, rolling back into his head. “Like thou,” he gasped. “A dark man, inked like thou … ahhh …”
His arms stretched out at his side, his fingers spreading as his eyes went pure silver. Shit.
“Terrible, let him go!” She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away from Tyson. “Let him go, now!”
Terrible obeyed just as the thing inside Tyson freed itself, flying from the man’s open mouth and into the air over their heads like pale, misty vomit. Chess ducked, pulling Terrible with her. They fell to the dirt in a jumble of arms and legs as the thing formed itself into a face, vaguely human, with huge empty eyes and a mouth that opened as if on hinges.
It spread across the ceiling, growing larger and larger. A long finger of tattered ectoplasm brushed Chess’s cheek, leaving a trail of freezing slime across her skin.
Terrible’s fingers were warm and hard in hers, painfully tight, as he yanked her up and pulled her across the room, throwing his body against the door to break it open. The thing screamed behind them as they ran, but nothing emerged from the ramshackle hut, and after a moment silence fell.
“My bag,” she gasped. “I left my bag in there.”
“Shit. You joking me?”
She shook her head. The wind blew so hard she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, or maybe her lungs were simply frozen in terror. Inked like thou, he’d said. A Church employee? “I have to have it, I have to go back for it.”
“Oh, naw. You stay.”
She couldn’t argue. All she could do was watch as he ran back into the house and emerged a few moments later dangling her bag from one bloody-knuckled hand.
“What did you do to it?”
He looked down. “Ain’t my blood. Couldn’t just let him get off free, aye?” He was breathing too hard, the knuckles of his other hand white.
“Sit down, okay? Just sit here with me for a minute.”
“We oughta go, he cold out now but—”
“Please? Just … just sit with me.”
He sank to the ground beside her, with his legs bent and his arms resting on his knees, while the ocean shifted and whispered before them. The sound soothed her, but she did not think the harsh fire in her stomach would be appeased so easily. Those images, those memories … it all felt again as if it had just happened.
“Thanks. I mean, thanks for doing that for me, I didn’t think, well, I didn’t know it would be—”
“Nothing, Chess.” His shoulders moved in a casual shrug, but he didn’t take his gaze from the water before them. “Why I here.”
“No, it’s not. That was—I don’t even want to think about what that was, and you couldn’t have—”
“Forget it. It’s over now, aye?” Now he glanced at her. She caught a glimpse of his eyes red-rimmed in his pale face before he turned away again. “Over.”
What had he seen? She would never ask. It was private, just as hers had been private. But at the same time she was aware of her curiosity, irritating and unwelcome like a splinter in her finger. She felt she owed him something now, in a way she hadn’t when he’d helped her at the airport … when, she realized, he’d helped her several times over the last few days. And she’d assumed, when they’d come here, that he would do it again. Shit, when had that happened? When had she started trusting him? She should know better than that.
But it was there, nonetheless, mixed with her curiosity. She trusted him, and she owed him.
“You know,” she said, scooping up some sand and letting it fall between her shaking fingers, “ancient people used to think the ocean had healing qualities. They said if you left offerings to it, if you sat before it long enough, all of your problems would wash away in the tide.”
“You think there’s truth in it?”
“No.” Her voice cracked. She owed him something, but she couldn’t carry through the lie. “No, I don’t.”
He nodded. “Me either.”
Waves broke and crashed against the shore as they got up and started trudging back up the hill, taking their time, until Chess’s hair clung to her head and she could not tell anymore if her face was wet with tears or spray.
* * *
A silent drive, two Cepts, and a line later, she sat in the Mortons’ tidy living room and frowned. Nothing. Either these people were particularly good, or the lack of food in her stomach combined with speed and pills was putting her more off-kilter than she should be. Their faces were so distorted by fear it was like looking into a fun-house mirror. Would she see the same bizarre warping of her own features?
Shit, this wasn’t right. She’d never had problems with what she took before, not like this. A little memory fuzz once in a while, sure—it was one reason why she took copious notes—or sometimes asking people to repeat things because she couldn’t get their words to process in her head, but … sitting with them now was like sitting in a wind tunnel.
Something else was different, as well. All the lights were on, though the sun was just setting.
“I don’t know why you?
??re asking all these questions,” Mrs. Morton said, for the third or fourth time. “I haven’t slept in days. Please, when will you be able to get rid of it?”
“We’re working on it. Have you thought of staying somewhere else for a while? A friend’s house, perhaps, or a hotel?”
“We can’t afford a hotel,” Mrs. Morton snapped. Her eyes widened. “I mean, a hotel for weeks would be very expensive.”
Chess didn’t react, or make a note. She didn’t need to—this part was set hard into her brain. “According to the records you gave us, you have approximately ten thousand dollars available on your credit cards. Surely you can stay at a hotel for a while? You would of course be reimbursed by the Church after the Banishment.”
She said it with such confidence, she really did. Just as if she hadn’t found out earlier that one of her fellow Church employees was doing illegal magic to call forth something whose name she’d never heard before. Something that reeked of evil like a dead dog in the street reeked of decay.
And speaking of decay … The image of Slipknot’s rotting flesh, sliced open, marked up like a demented child’s tortured dolly, refused to leave her. What his soul must be suffering as he lay trapped in the stinking wreckage that was once a living, breathing body, was unimaginable. And she was responsible for it, because she hadn’t yet figured out how to release him.
It was hard enough not to think of herself as someone who barely deserved to live, without that kind of shit smeared all over her conscience.
How could one of her coworkers do such a thing? For what felt like the millionth time since leaving the beach she tried to think of illegal ink, forbidden tattoos, the possibility that the culprit might simply be someone who looked like a Church employee.
But no. Tyson knew who he’d seen, would know the difference between genuine Church tattoos and illegal ones. Inked like thou, he’d said, and it couldn’t have meant anything but Church ink.
She hoped he’d been lying. She couldn’t deny the possibility that he hadn’t.
“Yes, well, we’d rather stay in our home and have everything taken care of quickly, instead of being inconvenienced by living in a hotel,” said Mr. Morton. It took Chess a second to remember what they were talking about.