by Lavie Tidhar
“You seem to have incurred someone’s displeasure, Preacher,” the Stranger said.
“That would be the General’s man, down under your gondola, General Barnum’s man that is,” the preacher said. “And I thank you kindly, you and providence, for despatching him when you did. I could not have pedalled that wheel for much longer.”
“But why is it that you were about to be executed?” the Stranger said.
“Yeah,” the Kid said, swaggering over to join them. “And where’s your congregation, Preacher? I don’t see any clowns.”
“Yet plenty of tombstones,” the Conjurer observed, more quietly, coming to join them. “Your ministry appears to be nothing more than a graveyard, Preacher.”
“My story is a long and sad one,” the preacher said. “But come inside, strangers. We have little enough, yet what we have we’ll share gladly.”
“I’d like a drink,” the Kid said.
“A big fucking drink,” the Conjurer agreed.
“We may have some moonshine . . . ,” the preacher said. “I could do with a drop myself, now that you come to mention it. Coming this close to death makes a man thirsty.”
The Stranger said nothing. He watched the barren landscape, and the rows and rows of tombstones. He listened to the silence of the wind. Now that the storm had vanished, the air was still, and it had a stuffy, oppressive quality to it, and on his tongue the Stranger thought he could taste the vestiges of substance. He glanced again at the hot air balloon, and at the legs of the dead man that protruded from underneath it. He checked his gun. The preacher’s congregation had vanished inside the mission house, and for a moment the Stranger remained alone under the big and empty sky. Jericho had fallen, but this was the nature of the cities of men. Sooner or later, they fell. Out on the Escapement, stone and shadow endured. He tasted again the substance on his tongue. It was in the air, he decided. An open mine, perhaps. But this was redfeet country now.
Wasn’t it?
He followed the others into the chapel. They walked down the pews and past the altar, and through a wooden door into the sacristy, where the preacher kept the tools of his service, the big red nose and face paint and wigs, and from there through a second door to the secular part of the mission house. A small but pleasant kitchen with a long oak table in the middle, and already on the table was a pot of coffee, and eggs were cooking on the stove, and the smell of it, homely and familiar, awakened in the Stranger some terrible longing, and for a moment he looked away so that the others could not see his face.
The preacher sat at the head of the table and the three men sat down as well. A quiet worn-down man in a worn-out suit brought them plates of eggs and flatbread and beans. The men ate enthusiastically, for this was the first meal they’d had in days.
Sitting side by side, the Kid and the Conjurer did resemble each other. Throughout the long ride in the hot air balloon they had spoken little, and only of practical matters, such as there were. Most of the time on board the Fat Lady they simply played cards. Since both of them constantly cheated, the Stranger had mostly refrained from participating. The two men had bet fortunes neither had, but that did not seem to dissuade them. As far as the Stranger could make out, at the time of their crash-landing the Kid owed the Conjurer two million ducats and the shoulder bone of a fallen Colossus. Or perhaps it was the other way around.
The Stranger ate, too. But he kept a careful eye on the door all the same.
“My name, as I told you earlier, is Jedediah Bailey,” the preacher said, when they had done eating and were drinking their coffee. The coffee was bitter and strong. “I was a wild youth, given to sudden rage and acts of violence which I now regret. When drunk one night I killed a man. It was a fair fight, and he’d swung for me first, but I killed him all the same and he was a judge’s son. The ushers were after me then, and the old man had hired the Pilkingtons to do for me, but I ran, and I ran far and I ran deep into the Doinklands, where even the Pilkingtons wouldn’t go. I wandered, alone. One day I came, starved, half-mad, upon a party of Auguste clowns. Perhaps I was the first man they had ever seen. I tried to speak to them—I begged for food—for help! They looked at me with incomprehension. Finally the boss clown, whether out of pique or pity, I never knew, struck me over the head with a juggler’s club, and I lost consciousness.
“When I awoke, they had gone. Only the marks of their giant feet were left in the ground. But I saw, then. I had been reborn. It was as though a tiny window had opened, and the light poured through into the cell that had been my life up to that point. After days of walking, I reached a monastery on the Maskelyne range. They are snow-peaked mountains above the Copper Fields, far to the east. There I became a novice.”
The Stranger listened for other sounds, but there were none. He heard no birds outside, nothing living. The man finished his coffee but was reluctant to get up from the stool. He stared out of the window into the night. He could see the city skyline beyond the river. The radio was on somewhere in the background. He felt both tired and alert. He couldn’t face going back up to the room, he could not face to see the boy just lying there. He got up, walked past the water fountain where the same lethargic janitor was moving the mop back and forth, back and forth, with a listless determination. Through the revolving doors, and into the night and a blast of cold air. It didn’t revive him. Traffic on the road, the lights moving slowly, like so many eyes of so many buffalos in migration. The man lit a cigarette, drew bitter smoke into his lungs, exhaled. He coughed. You can’t keep going on like this, she’d said the night before. The drinking and . . . this throwing yourself into oblivion. You have to be strong. For him, if not for me.
What is being strong, he said, or wanted to and didn’t. What did it matter. Being weak or strong in yourself made no difference at all. He could not manipulate the clouds to rain nor the traffic to halt nor the boy to heal. But things were different now. He’d not told her that. He had the map now, he’d never had the map before. It could lead him where he needed to go, to cross to cross the great salt lakes marked there and though the tunnel and beyond the Mountains of Darkness to the place where the Ur-shanabi grew. If only he could stop being assailed by distractions and side-quests, and other people telling stories. Stories, always stories! But they were all he had. He tossed the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with his foot. Over the river the city lights shone.
“When I was ordained, I was sent back out into the world to spread the good word as written in the Funny Pages,” the preacher said. His fingers, thick and tan, rested on the surface of the table. “I walked from town to town, visiting the lonely homesteads of the Escapement on the way, preaching the word. Mostly I was mocked and jeered at. More than once I had to make a hasty retreat, or use my pistols to defend myself. Once, I arrived at a place called Benders’ End, named for the family who lived there. A place never touched by a clown’s smile, as they say. Dark and dismal homesteading land, nothing but a flat plain in all directions, as far as the eye could see. What anyone thought they could grow there is anyone’s guess. Fool’s parsley and devil’s snare and thistles. Those bloody Benders had a sort of encampment out there, an inn they called it, and at first they welcomed me pleasantly enough. Their matriarch, Ma Bender, claimed sympathy to Harlequin, and I dare say she may have meant it, for there is a dark side to every clown, and there was none darker than the Bender family. I stayed for dinner, at their urging. The daughter, too, attempted to distract me. It was then that I noticed the scuff marks on the floor, the outline of what I thought a trapdoor directly underneath my chair. As I was looking, Pa Bender swiped at me with a hammer. I was lucky, having swooped down, and he missed. Then the womenfolk came at me with knives. No doubt they planned to cut my throat, rob me, then dump my body in their cellar.
“Strangers . . . I killed again that day. I killed every last one of them and when I was done I opened that trapdoor. How many unwary travellers had wound up down t
here I could not in truth tell you. The stench made me retch. That night I dumped the Benders’ bodies into that same communal grave and when I was finished I set fire to the place and watched it burn.
“I felt cleansed by the fire. In the outline of flames I thought I saw the Harlequin, looking back at me, telling me I’d done the right thing. There is so much wretchedness, on the Escapement as much as in that other place. The innocents die while the wicked celebrate. You have to laugh or you’ll cry. Or so I believe. I have to believe.”
The preacher excused himself abruptly. He rose from the table and for a moment the three men were left alone in the room.
“Barmy as a barn owl,” the Conjurer said.
“I say we rob him and get out of this place,” the Kid said.
“Rob him? Of what?”
“Fair point, Dad.”
“I told you not to call me that!”
The Stranger listened to them bickering. The map was in his pocket. He knew his way now. He was getting closer. The Stranger had been travelling for a long time, but perhaps he was no longer destined to travel for such a long time more. Only a little farther, he thought. Though he had begun to feel that he was running out of time.
“I walked the Escapement for a long while,” the Preacher said. When had he come back to the table? The air felt too still, the familiar cooking smells felt cloying. “Spreading the word of the Funny Pages, eliminating evil with extreme unction. In that time I saw Colossi move across the sands, I heard the awful silence of the pupae umbrarum as their shadows pooled in haunted valleys. I gathered true believers unto me. Some, veterans of the Titanomachy. Others were former bounty hunters and outlaws, clown killers who had found redemption. Together we ventured beyond the Thickening and into a remote and unexplored part of the Doinklands, and it was here that I at last set up my mission. With my own two hands I built this house of faith, my people and I, and it is here that we dwelt, among the clowns, for all that they treated us much as a circus-goer might treat an ostrich. I had hoped for a long and tranquil life here, to end my days here, under the infinite sky, far from the world of men. But that was not to be.”
It really was so very hot in the room. The smell of grease made the Stranger nauseous. He said, “Excuse me,” and stepped outside. He could not hear a living thing, no birds, no crickets. All he could taste was substance on his tongue. The man paced outside the hospital. He thought he saw the same shadowy figure as before and went towards it, out by the shrubberies. The Stranger walked amidst the tombstones in the graveyard, looking at the names. here lies master jessup, esq., lately of this parish, who was kind to clowns. The same one-eyed woman from earlier approached him.
“You must help us,” she whispered. “The General has enslaved all the clowns, he’s taken them for slave labour.”
“Lady,” the Stranger said, “my path lies away from here and to the Mountains of Darkness, wherever they may be. I have no time for the affairs of men and clowns.”
“You have kind eyes,” she said. “And I seem to recall a stranger, much like yourself, distracted from the purpose of his quest once to exact justice for a troupe of massacred clowns. . . .”
She raised her face to him then, and winked.
“Temperanza?” He’d not seen her since she vanished on the train. “What are you doing here?”
“There has been unrest,” she said. “The Colossi and pupae are renegotiating the balance, and the Major Arcana are once more loose upon the world. Justice and the Devil are up to their old tricks once again. I’m after the Devil’s fortune, myself. General Barnum’s.” She winked again. Her eye was very blue. “Don’t get in my way. It’s taken me forever to infiltrate the preacher’s congregation, and I had hoped today to make the switch and go with the General’s men to Hole. But you ruined that plan . . . so I’ll have to do it the hard way.”
“Do what?”
“Kill the General and steal his fortune. Were you not listening? Oh, and you might want to go back inside. The preacher’s just about to murder your friends.”
She punched him in the shoulder and disappeared down the row of tombstones. He stared after her, then rushed back into the kitchen.
The Kid and the Conjurer were half-asleep in their chairs. The preacher held a hammer and two of his congregation women were creeping up on the men with razor blades in their hands. He could see now the outlines of a trapdoor underneath the chairs. He drew his gun and fired.
The women died first, and they died quietly and without a fuss. The preacher was hit in the shoulder and he fell back but he was like a mountain. The Stranger shot him again, and then again.
“You were the Benders?” he said.
The preacher, on the floor, smiled through the pain. “A preacher like that did once come through our home,” he said. “His story was as fatuous as his mission so we killed him and ate his flesh, though it was gamey. Listen, stranger. There’s a seam of substance that reaches all the way under this house. My brother, damn his soul, controls the mine. Go to Hole. Kill him, for me, for he stole my clowns for his own and robbed me of my share and tried to have me hanged. . . . I can give you money.”
“I don’t need money.”
“Then fetch me my medicine.” He coughed, and blood frothed out of his mouth. “There is a . . . leather satchel in the sacristy, hidden in the book. Bring it to me. It has the last vestige of dried petals from the Plant of Heartbeat. Not enough to revive me, but to offer comfort. . . . Yet I do not need it. I welcome pain. Take it, instead, for your payment. You have the look of a man who . . . needs it more.” He tried to laugh, puked out more blood and then, with a final heave of his chest, expelled the last of his breath and died.
The Stranger went to the sacristy. He opened the book and saw that the Funny Pages had been cut through and a small hiding place had been made and inside it was the satchel. He opened it, carefully. There was only a smidge in there. The man rode the elevator back up to the floor and went into the boy’s room. Was it his imagination, or did the boy’s breathing ease, just now, did some colour return to his face? He sat in the chair, resuming his vigil. It was only a smidge, dry leaves, close to dust. The Stranger closed the satchel carefully and went back into the kitchen, where the preacher’s body had disappeared. He dragged first the Kid and then the Conjurer outside, where the air was cleaner, and watched them recover.
“That son of a . . . !” the Conjurer said. He massaged his throat.
“He wanted to hire me,” the Stranger said. “Hire us, I suppose. To kill his brother.”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“He has a fortune.”
“Oh. Well, did you accept the job?”
“Yes,” the Stranger said. “I suppose I did.”
“All right,” the Conjurer said. He rubbed his head and blinked. “All right, then, good.”
The three men rode out of the mission later that day, on three docile horses that didn’t have names. Before they left, they set the church on fire. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
The Kid and the Conjurer still looked a little woozy. They swayed in the saddles, this way and that. But it would pass, the Stranger thought. Most things did, sooner or later.
Low-lying hills, far in the distance. The shrubbery was sparse. The more they rode the stronger did the smell of substance linger. Ghostly cars swept past the lonely prairies, ghost men walked past ghostly shops, ghost traffic lights, ghost city streets. Far, far in the distance, the Stranger imagined he could smell salt. Imagined he could see dark rising mountains.
Onwards they rode, until they came to Hole.
TEN:
HOLE
They heard and they saw it for miles before they reached the place. The fires burned endlessly, bright white flames hungrily devouring the horizon. They looked like albino lizards crawling on a vast black screen. There were no stars above Hole. The sk
y was written and erased endlessly. Only occasionally they would see a ghost plane from that other place fly through and disappear. The Stranger wondered if the passengers inside could see the Escapement. Perhaps, cruising at high altitude, someone would look out of their window, expecting clouds and stars, only to be granted a glimpse of this other place, an image to carry with them through all the years ahead, a moment of wonder at something inexplicable.
The burning fires were fuelled by substance. More substance than the Stranger had ever imagined could be found in one place. The fires were like the thieves’ lights one found in prospector towns, but on an unprecedented, industrial scale. It made the Stranger uneasy. There were many blights and snares and traps on the Escapement, buried debris from bygone ages, and the unfathomable machinations of pupae and Colossi in their endless war. Yet they were all of the Escapement, and woven into its fabric. This was something else, a hole in the matter of the world. He had never before seen a region where the walls between this and that other place were so thin. Even in prospector towns where they mined the seams of substance, such as could be found, the concentration was only relatively small. Mining towns were like half-open windows . . . but this place, the Stranger thought, was more like a door.
Then there was the noise. The thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . like the beating of a giant, living heart buried underground. It sent tremors through the earth. It vibrated in the Stranger’s bones. After a time, he almost began to think it was his own heart that was beating, out of body.
They rode in uneasy silence. The Kid chewed on a stick of jerky. The Conjurer kept rolling ducats between his fingers. The Stranger just watched, and thought. The man sat in the room all alone but for his thoughts and he looked at the boy, who was not sleeping and not awake. He thought that the dry leaves of the Ur-shanabi might have given him comfort. It was hard to know, in truth. The Stranger blinked and the world swam back into focus. They rode until the sound swallowed them and they became as one with it. Until the white fires erased every trace of shadow, and within it could be seen the streets and houses of that other place, and the people who dwelt there, for all that they moved the way ghosts do, and did not make a sound, and seemed unaware that they were being passed through.
