As if I was speaking out loud, something moved out by the horse, something that was picking at whatever scraps were left on the bones made blue by the starlight. There was no moon, I realized, not even the sliver anymore.
All sorts of things can happen in the dark.
When I started to feel faint, I pressed the cut closed and tied it with the clean rag, and then I took everything into the barn.
The devil was hunched over in the yoke. The whole stall smelled of sick; she was surrounded by puddles of the stuff, all sticky and shiny. When I stepped inside she flinched and tried to move away.
“Bargain,” I whispered. I held out the rags and the bowl.
She angled her head at me, as if trying to read something on my face. Her eye was open again but only just, and though her cuts had closed up I could see them still, pale lines that ran all over her.
“Bowl first,” she finally said.
I brought it close to her open mouth and tilted it, just letting the blood dribble in. She drank like she was thirsty. Her cold hand touched mine, bringing the bowl closer, and she drank it all, making me turn it until she got every drop out. I started to take the bowl away but her hand grabbed mine hard and kept the bowl close while she licked it clean with long strokes of her tongue, like a cat. When at last she let me go there were smears of blood on her face; she tried to rub them off with her bound hands and then lick them.
The lines on her face and body were gone.
I gave her the rags and she began sucking. She looked almost healthy, like she had fattened up just from that little bit of blood.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She was silent, sucking on the cloth.
“It’s just—things have been hard since Da died.”
Still she sucked on the cloth. I was trying to think of what to say next when she abruptly spat it out and said, “I have not been beaten like that since I was a child.” Her voice sounded different, low and full. “I swore I would never be beaten like that again.”
“The serpent beat you?” I frowned, trying to imagine it.
At that she laughed, so loud I hushed her. “I have parents, Addy, just like you. A mother. A father who passed. It was my aunt who did the beating in my family, for as long as we let her.” Slowly her tongue ran over her lips. “I don’t let her anymore.”
“You have a family?”
“Of course I have a family. I also have friends, a lover, and a name. I even owned a horse once.” At the last her voice went soft.
I didn’t know what to say. She went back to suckling and I crouched down, rocking on my heels. All of a sudden I could see her people, a whole lot of people who looked like her, who might be missing her. Maybe they just healed fast because they were lucky; maybe the scales on her neck were just a rash, or a birthmark, like the boy in town who had a big red patch on his face.
“This all feels bad.” Her voice was so quiet I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me. “It feels like more than just a land dispute; it feels like an old grudge, maybe even from before your Da.” She gave the rag a lick. “Times are changing, Addy. You can’t just go about killing a man, not anymore. The Bill Boylands can still bend the law because they have money and men, but even that’s coming to an end. There are laws now, laws and officers to enforce them. More’s the pity,” she added, smiling a little.
“Mam says a woman has to take a stand,” I said.
“A stand for what? For a scrap of land? For something that happened years ago?” She shook her head. “The past is gone, Addy. The only thing worth taking a stand for is the future, the best possible future for those you love. Take it from someone who has an awful lot of past behind her.”
I frowned. “Maybe it shouldn’t be one or the other, though. Maybe it should be about balancing them, like everything is supposed to be balanced.”
“Oh yes, I forgot, your father and his bloody balance.” She laughed softly. “God save us from—”
But she stopped short. Her head turned in the yoke, straining the ropes. “They’re coming,” she whispered.
“Who’s coming?”
“At least eight horses—? And some kind of cart, or a wagon.” She looked at me, her eyes black again. “Take the blade out.”
I stood up, uneasy. “I don’t think . . .” But then I heard it too. Faint, like the first hint of a storm coming. It made everything go cold, even the pain in my hand. My mind seemed to empty all at once, I couldn’t think on what to do.
There was a cracking noise, and suddenly a hand seized mine, icy and so strong. She had pulled free of the stall and her hand was free. And then the rag was gone and she was sucking at the cut, biting it and sucking, and I screamed then because nothing had hurt like this before, she was chewing me up and I couldn’t get free, she seemed made of stone. I flailed and pulled and my free hand set upon a fork and I swung it at her. She fell to her side but it didn’t seem to even hurt her; she just began working the yoke off.
“Take it out,” she gasped. “Addy, take the fucking blade out!”
I barely heard her. I was pressing my hand tight, too scared to even look at it, it felt so raw. Her lips were shiny with my blood. You’ll take our throats, Mam had said.
“Addy!” She was hanging off the ropes, trying to stay upright. “Addy, listen to me. I promise you I won’t let anything happen to you. I give you my word. I can stop them, I can stop them all, but you have to take the blade out. For the love of your Mam and your goats and everything you hold dear, take the blade out.”
I didn’t know what to do. Everything seemed to be happening at once. I could hear the horses and a few shouts now and Mam calling my name and the animals were bleating and squawking and I could still smell the dead horse and what was I supposed to do?
“Addy, please.”
I tried, then. I tried to see her as Mam saw her, like a rabid dog to sic on people. But all I could see was how her hands were trembling, and Isaac’s little feet, and the way the horse had to be dragged like it knew what was coming. Whatever this all was, it wasn’t balance, much less anything good or right.
I got behind her and seized the handle and pulled as hard as I could, but she shrieked and waved her hand.
“No,” she gasped. “Open it, you have to open it.”
I felt the handle until I found the bump and pressed it. She wailed behind gritted teeth and then I pulled while she gasped “harder, harder” and I put my foot on her back and rocked it back and forth like a stuck spade until it suddenly came free in a spray of blood.
With a cry I flung the knife aside and started to run for the door but she seized my ankle and I fell. She pulled me back as I screamed and hollered for Mam, then grabbed my chin and pulled my head against her chest.
“Forgive me,” she whispered.
And then she bit my neck, and the pain flared sharp and stabbing and then everything went soft, soft, like a blanket had been dropped over me. All soft. It seemed only a minute or maybe it was hours when she finally let me go and I dropped onto the ground. I watched as her boot stepped over me, only to twist and stumble; she fell on top of me and I felt her weight but no pain, no pain. She got to her knees and began crawling towards the barn door. Just before the doorway she pulled herself up using the post and carefully unhooked one of the sickles. She stood for a moment, wobbling like a newborn kid; and then she kicked the door open and fell forward into the night.
6.
Everything was foggy, though it wasn’t the time for fog. My hand was throbbing sore and my neck ached. I got to my feet but I couldn’t see the barn doors, and then I saw them, only they kept swaying. I managed to walk to them by looking through them, at the space between them, which was glowing with a bright orange light.
I stepped out into a world on fire. Everywhere was shimmering with heat and flame; the smoke covered the stars. There was screaming, close and far off all at once, from everywhere and nowhere. I looked behind me and the barn was licked with flame, the hills sparking red.
<
br /> It was hell. We had called the devil down and I had let her loose and she had brought us all to hell.
I made my heavy legs walk. The smoke caught in my throat, setting me to coughing. The goat pen stood open and empty. There were shapes in the far corner, small and still. I looked at them and I knew they were gone, yet I kept hearing them bleating like Isaac had bleated, all mixed up with the shouts and screams of the men and the echoing gunshots and a woman crying or laughing or both—
Mam.
There was no more house; there was only fire, curling around the beams and the chimney Da had laid stone by stone. I opened my mouth to call to Mam but started coughing. A hand caught me by the arm and spun me around. Before me stood a man, sooty and wild-eyed. He shook me hard over and over.
“I got the kid!” he hollered.
My head was snapping against my neck; my teeth flew up and bit my tongue hard. Blood filled my mouth. He swung me one way and another, peering into the smoke and flame.
“Bill!” he hollered again. “Bill, I got the kid! Bill—”
Something bright shot across his throat and it opened up and it was full of blood. My mouth was full of blood. He tried to speak and instead he fell over, his hand still gripping my arm, his tongue sticking out like Isaac’s. I started screaming then, I screamed as I never had before. The devil swung the sickle up and down into his chest. She was covered in blood. Blood sprayed out of the man as she wrenched the sickle up and brought it down again. Cold air ran over my belly and I looked down at the red cut in my nightshirt. Someone was screaming and screaming and it was me, I was turning inside out with screaming. I tore more at my shirt but I wasn’t cut, the sickle had only caught the fabric.
“Addy.” The devil’s voice was huge and echoing in the night. She bent and reached into the blood, her hand disappeared in the blood, and when she pulled it out with a grunt there was something round and wet in her palm. She held it out to me. “See? That’s all a man is inside. No evil, no divinity, not even your god-damn balance. Just flesh. That’s why your Da and his people failed: because they could never bring themselves to believe this. This is all there is.”
Seizing my cut hand, she pressed the organ into it, still warm, and my voice broke then from screaming. I dropped it and covered my eyes, waiting to feel her hands on me. But there was nothing. I peeked through my fingers, then lowered my hands.
The devil was gone.
The man at my feet looked different. With his kerchief twisted I could see how frightened he was and how young, as young as me. Everywhere now I saw the bodies of men: men in pieces, men with heads staved in and throats cut, men sprawled and men lying so peaceful they might have been asleep.
There was no more howling now, but I heard the crying laughter again and walked towards it.
The yard was another world. Everything was gusting smoke and ash. I wiped my face and my hand came away smeared with blood and ash. The cut on my hand throbbed and my neck too. Somewhere far away a man screamed and began pleading, and I turned one way and another but the wind carried him away. Only the crying laughter seemed fixed.
Soon I came upon a trail in the dirt and followed it to the beech tree. It seemed like I had walked for miles, but when I looked around there were the ruins of the house and barn, as close as they had always been.
Under the beech tree was a body and Mam was standing over him, her skirts hiked up and her foot on his face. I saw Bill Boyland’s fancy gold watch hanging from his clothes. Her face screwed up and her leg flexed as she pressed down. She was giggling and weeping all at once.
As I drew close, something cracked, and her foot sank lower.
She looked at me and then back at the man. Her face was wet. “I never knew,” she said. “Look at how soft a man is. I never knew.”
Beneath her foot all was red and black. She took her foot away and laughed again, that strange, weeping laugh, and it was that morning with Da all over again.
“Look, Addy.” She nudged at his face with the toe of her shoe and Bill Boyland’s eyeball pushed forward. I shrieked and she laughed. “An eye for an eye, how do you like that? An eye for an eye. Sometimes God does answer our prayers.”
“Mam,” I said. I could barely speak for trembling. “Mam, we have to do something.”
“You let her out, Adelaide Norton,” she said. “You disobeyed me and you went to her and you let her out.”
“Mam,” I said again. “Mam, we need to . . .” But I couldn’t think of what we needed to do. I kept looking at where Bill Boyland’s face had been, at that one shiny eyeball.
“I had a plan,” Mam said. “I was going to tell them I had a woman in my barn, I was going to offer her to Bill Boyland as a payoff, to spare you and I. He would go in to have her and she would kill him.” She pointed at my neck. “Now you got her taint on you, and there ain’t no fixing that.”
“She couldn’t drink that other blood!” My heart was pounding. “She couldn’t drink it and you knew it! She would have died if I hadn’t—” I broke off then, because suddenly the thought filled my head and it was awful. “Or did you know I was going out there to her?”
Mam just looked at me. The fist filled my throat, pressing down so much I felt sick; I opened my mouth but nothing would come out, not words or tears. Slow and careful, Mam reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out the revolver and aimed it at me. The barrel was so large. It was as large as a scream, as large as the hole we had buried Da in.
She stepped over Bill Boyland’s legs and I closed my eyes but nothing happened. When I opened them again the barrel was pointing just past my ear, and I turned and looked over my shoulder.
The devil stood there, Mam’s whip in her hand. Her eyes were black. Two long pointed teeth filled her mouth, stained dark against the white bone.
“You’re not tainted, Addy,” she said in her strange huge voice. “But you need to walk away now. Your Mam and I have unfinished business.”
“No!” I looked from one to the other. “Please. You can go now, we said you could go when you stopped them. Can’t she, Mam?”
Mam said nothing, only cocked the trigger.
“I made a promise to myself a long time ago.” The devil was staring at Mam. “And a woman is nothing without her word.”
“Amen,” Mam said. “And now we see you for what you really are.”
The devil pointed at Bill Boyland. “Amen.”
It happened all at once, then. Mam shoved me and fired and the whip snaked out, catching Mam’s wrist and sending the revolver flying into the air. We all three cried out and fell to the ground; the shot echoed against the hills.
Mam’s wrist was bleeding. She began crawling in the dirt, looking for the revolver. “Find the gun,” she whispered. “Hurry, Addy.”
The devil was on her hands and knees, hunched over, her sides heaving; and then she staggered to her feet.
“Please,” I said.
“Addy, find the god-damned gun!” Mam cried.
“Please just go,” I said.
The devil looked at me with those black, flat eyes. She pressed her fingers into her chest, all the way inside. With a grimace she twisted and dug and when she held up her hand again it was glistening black. Blood dripped off her fingers that held up Mam’s bullet like it was something precious.
She flicked it at Mam; it sailed through the air and struck Mam in the face.
“Shitty poison by shitty alchemists,” she said, but her voice was thick like she was sick again.
“It’ll burn you up,” Mam said. She was shaking; I had never seen Mam shake before. “You’re done for, serpent! You’re going back to hell where you came from!”
“My name is Elisabeth,” the devil said, “and the only hells are the ones we make.”
The whip rose up, catching smoke as it shot curling into the sky. When it came down Mam hunched over, covering her head with her hands.
“Stop it!” I got to my feet; it was then that I saw the revolver at the base of the beech tre
e.
Again the whip cracked. I ran as fast I could and seized the revolver. My hands were shaking as I swung it around. She was almost on top of Mam, swinging the whip up and down.
Not once did Mam cry out.
“Stop it or I’ll shoot!” I yelled.
The devil went still, looking at me, the whip dangling from her hand.
“Shoot her,” Mam hissed. “Shoot her dead.”
I steadied the revolver, sighting the devil square in the face. “Go away,” I said loudly. “Just go. You did what we asked, now we’re keeping our promise.”
“For the love of God, Addy, shoot the bitch!”
I glanced at Mam. Her mouth was hanging funny; the whip had caught her in the face. I turned back to the devil who hadn’t moved, who just looked at me with the same steady gaze. I curled my finger around the trigger.
“Elisabeth,” I said. “Please, please just go.”
“God-damn it!” Mam yelled. “What’s wrong with you? She’s just an animal, put her down!”
There was a shot, and a second and a third, though I hadn’t done anything. I looked at the revolver and suddenly the devil was spinning me around and holding my hands and together we squeezed. The man behind us bucked and fell. The devil pointed again, squeezing my finger a second time, so hard I thought it would break. His body jumped and went still.
I looked over at Mam and she was facedown in the dirt and I knew she was dead. I knew she was dead. All the air left the world. I reached for her only my hand was all cut up still, I would taint her with my touch. Everything seemed wrong. I looked at Mam’s wet hair and I looked at the cuts on my hand. I knew. I knew.
Liquid splashed on the ground. It took all my strength to turn away from Mam and look at her. The devil had a flask and she was pouring water on where Mam had shot her. My arm rose up and I aimed the revolver at her head.
The devil went still. “Addy,” she said, “your mother was a cruel, frightened woman—”
“I told you to leave.” My voice sounded different, deeper than I had ever heard it before, almost like I was the devil now.
Slowly she raised her hands. “There will be more coming, by daybreak if not sooner. We need to strip the bodies, make it look like a robbery—”
To Us May Grace Be Given Page 4
