The Hanging Wives of New England

by Ellis Brightwell

  “Well, it appears you have protection, Shannon,” said Lively. “An office worker with a gun in her skirt. What do you need us for?”

  “We want to know what’s causing all this,” said Lily.

  “Oh, my,” said Lively.

  “Indeed,” said Ford. “Most people don’t want to know. Their sensibilities are commendable. I don’t wish to sound intrusive, but you are arousing suspicion with regard to your… sanity.”

  “My friend Shannon’s husband and children are dead,” said Lily. “They’re not coming back.”

  “Provided you traumatized their brains sufficiently,” said Ford.

  “Ford,” said Lively. “You could be a bit subtler about it.”

  “Everything we’ve seen to this point has been far from subtle,” he said. “There’s no need to sugarcoat that which is manifestly apparent.”

  “Okay, well, you could be nicer about it.”

  “Point taken.” Ford drew himself up. “I respectfully regret to inform you that we are not at liberty to discuss the particulars of our mandate.”

  “We’re here to observe,” said Lively. Ford turned to her with a frown. “What? I didn’t mention the particulars. That’s what we’re here to do: keep an eye on things and report back to people with a vested interest in the security of this area.”

  “If they have a vested interest in keeping this area secure,” said Lily, “they’re doing a terrible job.”

  “We’re doing the best we can given the presence of—” began Lively.

  Ford’s frown intensified.

  “Shannon is a mother who lost her children,” said Lively. “She deserves to know.”

  “While I can appreciate your concern for her family,” said Ford, “and the families of all those affected by recent events, I must caution you against letting your judgment cloud your professional obligations.”

  “We think it’s an entity of unknown origin from the greater Atlantic who marks his turf with flesh-eating fog and poisons trespassers with viscous, black toxins,” said Lively. “But that’s not confirmed.”

  “Which is exactly why we shouldn’t be preaching it as gospel,” said Ford. He heaved with a restrained sigh. “What we do know is that it’s a sentient, intelligent, amphibious being with strong territorial instincts and a predilection for aggressive defensive posturing.”

  “You know those two words don’t mean anything right next to each other,” said Lively. “Aggressive defensive. Sorry. That’s just the bookworm in me.”

  “You and Shannon would get along swimmingly,” said Lily.

  “On the topic of getting along,” said Ford, “I would advise you, if you are indeed adamant in your refusal to leave this area, to secure a secure position with an advantageous vantage as far from the water as possible.”

  “Now you’re just showing off,” said Lively.

  “Nobody’s interested in showing off given the circumstances,” said Ford. “It’s precisely that sort of thing that draws our uninvited guest’s attention.”

  Firecrackers exploded somewhere beyond the maze of obstacles. Ford and Lively didn’t even flinch.

  “We do, from time to time, encounter infected individuals this far out from ground zero,” said Ford. “Given our limited epidemiological knowledge, we are in no position to take chances when faced with unknown threats to our exterior perimeter.”

  “We assume they’re infected and shoot them,” said Lively.

  “If those who are theoretically not infected feel compelled to return to the city’s limits,” said Ford, “our current guests may very well be no safer out there than they would be here.”

  “Are you trying to convince them to stay?” said Lively.

  “I am advising them of the risks,” said Ford. “With that said, I do have a non-disclosure agreement I’d like you two to sign before you come to a decision.”

  “What the fuck?” said Lily.

  “This would indemnify our corporation—your corporation—in the event of loss of property, limb, or life.”

  “I’ll sign it,” I said. “In exchange, I need whatever information you have that might help us send the sea creature somewhere else.”

  “Very good,” said Ford. “I’ll just need you to—wait. Are you implying that you intend to confront the hostile entity? I can assure you the outcome of such an encounter is predictable in one hundred percent of the scenarios we’ve modeled. Human survival is a constant with a value of zero.”

  “I’m not Captain Ahab going after Moby Dick,” I said. “I just want to understand what took my husband and children away and how to prevent it from happening to anyone else.”

  “Of course you’re not some crazy sea captain,” said Lively. “Ford just means to say that understanding what killed you isn’t going to make you any less dead.”

  “Oh, shit!” came a cry.

  The ground shook with violent trembling that brought the others to a crouch against the van’s oversized wheels. I took up a fetal position against the pavement. A strangled scream from further up the bridge sent me scrambling to Lily’s side. The bridge shifted with a heavy thrust. The shaking subsided. Agent Lively left the side of the van to stand on top of one of the barricade’s parked cars.

  “That tendril is massive!” she said. “Ford, this exceeds our projections big time. You have to come look at this!”

  “Agent Lively,” said Ford, “I strongly suggest you come down from that vehicle at once.”

  An enormous, black, headless snake with suction cups the size of office buildings fell from the clouds and crushed a section of the bridge into dust, sending the tall supporting towers toppling with their connected cables flailing behind them like the wedding dress train of an otherworldly spirit. The bridge buckled and heaved as though it might drop out from under us at any moment. The rusted-out car frame serving as Agent Lively’s perch began to slide down the slope of a sagging chunk of pavement. As she scrambled up the car’s trunk, her display tablet joined a parking lot’s worth of vehicles along with two red laser pointers in plummeting down into the water below. I rushed to help her despite Lily’s harried protestations. Just as I reached her, Lively jumped from the falling car and caught an iron girding bar.

  “Lily!” shouted Ford. “Shannon! The hostile entity may be preparing another assault. You are hereby advised to evacuate immediately!”

  I went down on to my stomach at the pavement’s rough, broken edge. Out in the water, a dome the size of a stadium floated amid thick fog. How large was this creature that its limbs traveled so far and landed with such force that a suspension bridge half a mile long broke in two as if it were nothing? I offered Lively my hand. As she reached for it, she slipped and caught herself on the thin rod to which her other hand clung. Feathery snow turned to stinging sleet.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’ll fall if I don’t hold on with both hands.”

  Fingers bunched up my sweater at my neck and shoulder. Lily’s jasmine-scented perfume burned in my nostrils.

  “We have to go,” she said. “You stay here, we die.”

  “So does she,” I said. “Hold on to me. I’ll climb down onto that chunk of pavement and grab her.”

  “To hell with that,” said Lily. “It could fall away at any moment.”

  She rolled up her shirt sleeves, flattened herself against the ground, and reached down to Lively. Lively stretched herself out and grabbed Lily’s elbow. Her hand slid down Lily’s forearm, yet Lily made no effort to keep her from losing her grip. The heaving black dome on the horizon was growing larger by the second. Lively’s black sneakers scraped against concrete as she struggled to find a foothold. Lily seemed to be preoccupied with buttoning her shirt sleeves while Lively fought for her life.

  “Hold on to me,” I said to Lily, “or I’ll do it by myself.”

  “Goddamn it,” said Lily.

  Her fingers squeezed my turtleneck collar and waistband as I climbed down onto a slightly sloping chunk of tar that shifted in the wh
ipping wind. I took Lively’s left hand, then her right hand, and pulled with all my might. Her shoes scrabbled against the broken bridge’s rough edges. The sea monster was so close that his black form blotted out the gray sky.

  “She has black ink on her arms,” Lily said to my ear. “Under her sleeves. The same stuff that got your husband. You know what that means.”

  Whether Agent Lively’s arms ran black with ink, I couldn’t tell. I searched Lily’s eyes for the truth of her words. A vast emptiness stared back at me from the depths of her brown irids.

  “It’s you or her, Shannon,” she said. “And you know who I would take.”

  I released Lively’s hands. Wide, disbelieving eyes froze me in place as she fell with outstretched arms into the fog below. The gathered mist thinned and receded into the recesses of the skyline, leaving me to bear witness to a cascade of rippling foam down in the water. Neither the sea creature’s massive form nor Lively’s lifeless body were anywhere to be seen. Stinging sleet became soft snow crystals.

  Lily pulled me up onto the bridge and walked with me to one of those useless, armored vans. There, Agent Ford stared out at the sea monster’s massive, retreating form. Though his forehead was wet with chilly snow, his expression was as blank as Lily’s had been.

  “Fascinating climatology,” he said. He held his hands behind his back and stood up straight. “I understand how upset you must be. You did what you thought was right. And, indeed, the ends justified the means: we appear to have appeased the sea creature for the time being. I wish I could tell you that I knew how, but this is where our search for answers diverges. We can escort you through the tunnel on the west end of the city proper. From there, you’re on your own.”

  “That’s the Yamata way,” said Lily.

  I joined her in the back of the van amid an array of neon green screens and button-dense panels. She patted my knee.

  “You did the right thing,” she said.

  I folded my hands and looked down at my lap.

  “There is no ‘right thing’,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Lily. “We’re still friends. I mean that.”

  To Agent Lively, who would never live to see her own life come to fruition, my friendship meant nothing.

  7

  Hills

  “Alyssa Lively,” said Ford as he dropped us off in the hills overlooking the sea. “Twenty-four years old. Master’s in Research and Experimental Psychology from Bates College. Second child of three. Unmarried, debt-free. Talkative. Friendly. Too friendly, perhaps, but in retrospect, I think I would have learned to live with it. I hope that helps you make peace.”

  Lily took her gun from her waistband and checked the magazine.

  “Got any bullets to help me make peace?” she said.

  “Unfortunately, we do not possess ammunition for anything smaller than a rifle,” said Ford.

  Lily slid the top part of the gun toward her. It got stuck halfway and wouldn’t slide back into place no matter how much she smacked it or swore at it.

  “Maybe I should name my gun after you, Ford,” she said. “I think I’ll call it The Agent. You know why?”

  “Out of an appreciation for the fine service it provides you under difficult circumstances?”

  “No, because it doesn’t do shit and you can’t fire it.”

  She tossed her gun to the ground. The impact knocked its sliding mechanism back into place. Ford picked it up with both hands as if it were a laboratory specimen.

  “I am not authorized to use or carry firearms,” he said, “but I would advise you to keep it on your person should you locate ammunition such as that found in the bait and tackle shop near the docks frequented by active fishermen. We have reports that they’ve been going out into the water without arousing the antagonism of the hostile entity. You might find the answers you’re looking for there.”

  Lily snatched the gun from him and shoved it into her skirt.

  “Thanks for not being completely useless,” she said.

  “And thank you for your valuable opinion,” said Ford. “This is where we part ways. Best of luck to you.”

  His black van disappeared down the winding road. Lily flicked the barrette on her wrist against her skin.

  “So,” she said, “are you still hellbent on staring into the abyss?”

  “I don’t want anyone else to have to do the same.”

  “Fantastic.”

  Snow blanketed sloping hills and steep ridges dotted with leafless oaks and elms. In the distance, one scraggly tree branch bore a doll-like figure hanging from a rope. I pointed it out to Lily. She muttered and shook her head.

  “What do you think it is?” I said. “Another warning sign? Some creature that lives in the mountains?”

  “Probably just a scarecrow,” she said. She frowned and stamped her pumps in the snow as she hugged herself. “Maybe it keeps the shambling dead away. I know I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Let’s go find someplace warm. Or at least somewhere that’s not so damn cold. How much snow are we supposed to get, anyways?”

  “Enough to cancel school and keep the buses off the road,” I said.

  “Then let’s hope we can make it to the docks without pissing anyone off,” she said. “Or anything.”

  Paved lanes snaked through sweeping, rocky hills that had been dynamited into submission fifty years ago by the local mining company. Where the road veered toward the coast, Lily found what she was looking for: a fire burned in the back hatch of a tipped-over city bus lying in the middle of a narrow, arched tunnel. We warmed ourselves until the snow turned from fluffy white to the kind of gray ash that might come from a volcano.

  “Is this safe?” I said.

  “What, an engine fire?” said Lily. “Compared to all the other ways in which we could die horribly, I suppose so.”

  “You think everyone made it out of this bus all right?”

  Lily stepped up onto the curb and peered down the length of the bus.

  “Well,” she said, “they made it out.”

  Thirty, perhaps forty men and women in snow-frosted suits and blouses lay sprawled on the road amid wind-swirled gray and white flakes. Lily led me between legs splayed at unnatural angles and palms scarred with gravel. I didn’t want to look at them, but there was something about those mannequin-like bodies that made them seem not quite dead.

  It was when they climbed to their feet with rasping groans that I understood why.

  Lily didn’t even wait for me. She sprinted along the length of the bus right out of the tunnel. I chased after her. Hatches on the roof shed their restraining bars and swung all the way open to admit passengers with misshapen skulls whose brains had not been “sufficiently traumatized” to render them permanently comatose. Something grabbed my ankle—I fell and struck my palms against a hard blanket of snow that stung cold into my flesh. Skeletal hands pulled me toward a leathery, eyeless skull whose rotten teeth gnashed with foaming hunger. I stomped my heel against his nose holes as hard as I could, but it wasn’t enough to keep his long, writhing fingers from sliding my pant leg up to my shin. The razor-sharp teeth that sunk into my calf burned like fire and sent searing pain through my veins. Again, I thrust my leg into the bony nostrils above his grinding teeth. He relented, giving me enough time to withdraw my leg from the black ichor that ran down his wretched face and melted the powdery snow into simmering liquid.

  Lily was already halfway up the road. My calf was bleeding. I didn’t want her to see the bite mark and leave me behind. I slid my pant leg back down to my ankle and ran to catch up with her. My jaw clenched at the fiery pain in my shin. The passengers from the bus stood outside the tunnel, calling out with throaty cries and clawing with their arms as if they were trying to climb an invisible wall. Lily turned around to look for me. She hurried back and took my arm.

  “Did one of them get you?” she said.

  “I think I sprained my ankle,” I said.

  “Your leg’s all
bloody. Let me see it.”

  “We should wait until we get somewhere safe. Maybe they’ll have a first aid kit at the bait shop.”

  “Those things aren’t exactly chasing us, but I suppose you’re right. If the fishermen near the bait shop are still active, maybe the infection didn’t spread that far and people haven’t needed to hoard supplies.”

  “Maybe not all of them wandered off into that man-eating fog.”

  “Yeah, maybe not everything in a five-mile radius has been completely annihilated. Glad to hear you being so optimistic. Do you need help walking?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re limping like you’re not fine.”

  “Let’s just get going.”

  Where the road narrowed into the “downtown” area of Queensport in the Hills, an electrical pole bore an unnatural thickness near its base that became clearer as we approached. From a metal foothold hung a length of rope fastened to the neck of an emaciated form wearing long, blonde hair. She had on a cream-colored blouse and light brown slacks. Lily jostled the woman’s legs with the butt of her gun.

  “Pretty fancy outfit for a scarecrow,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

  “Maybe she’s why the road is clear,” I said. “No tire marks. No footprints apart from ours. And those things in the bus didn’t follow us.”

  “Not right away, they didn’t. They’d be easier to lose in the woods if they change their minds.”

  “We should follow the road.”

  “All right, let’s leave a fresh trail for hungry corpses to follow.”

  The road took us to an intersection whose church and bar would qualify it as a town if the city of Queensport hadn’t seen fit to claim the ore mines up in the hills. The three bodies hanging from the stoplight’s crossbar were enough to convince Lily that we needed to take a shortcut through the woods after all. I followed her along a lonesome trail between powder-branched trees to an abandoned resort cabin empty of life. Not far from its modest parking lot stood a tower of wooden steps and landings that led up to a ridge high above our heads.

  “Old burial ground up there,” said Lily. “Let’s not hang around long enough to wake the dead this time.”