The girl’s hand fell from the stranger’s as she backed away.
“What sort of rumor brought you here?” she asked.
“There was a tale of a village,” the stranger said, flipping through his book until he found the pages he was looking for. “A tale older that most of those still living amongst us. One of a great darkness that must be fed. For centuries the citizens of this one village used to disappear, all throughout the year, and no one knew why or to where. Grief and sorrow filled this town. Its prosperity faltered and its numbers dwindled. Late every evening, their people would whisper dark tales by candlelight while they latched their windows shut and barred their doors. Terrible tales, really. Parents warned their children, as all parents do, about the dangers out there in the world, but, being children, all did not listen. The version of the tale that made its way to me spoke of two young friends—the ‘bestest’ of friends, it was said—who disappeared together nearly a quarter century ago.”
“That’s a long time ago,” the young girl said.
“Yes,” the stranger agreed. “Too many lives have passed since last I was here.”
Jadwiga cocked her head at him. “You’ve been here before?”
The stranger nodded. “As a boy, yes. That’s the problem with rumors, with stories, if you don’t write them down. People get the details wrong. Talk of the two missing children spoke of those ‘poor girls,’ and while it’s true that those children were best of friends, not both were girls, no. One was a boy. A young boy who fled when he first saw the horrors down here. A boy who has had to live to adulthood carrying the tremendous guilt of running away, of leaving his friend behind. A boy who has spent a lifetime trying to alleviate that guilt and find a way to combat such evil so he could atone for abandoning his friend. He’s grown older, become a man…” The stranger stopped, lost in contemplative thought, then turned with a cold eyed stare to face the little girl. “But you, Jadwiga, haven’t aged a day in the past twenty-five years since I saw you last, have you?”
The little girl’s smile grew into a wicked grin that threatened to crack her face in two. “I thought your bones smelled familiar,” she said.
The smile on the girl’s face continued to grow to an impossible width, to the point where her skin tore open and the top half of her head fell back. Her hands clawed at the sides of her head, taking purchase on the loose flesh there and peeling it down her body, a creature with more bones than could possibly fit inside the skin crawling free of the girl’s form. When it was done, the creature held up the husk of the girl, examining it as one might a fancy suit they considered buying.
“Oh, I remember your girl,” the creature whispered growled in a deeper, different voice from that of Jadwiga. “I’ve killed thousands in my time, but I do remember. She has, after all, served me well these many years since you left her here. She died in agony, you know. In confusion, with one pathetic thought in her foolish little head—why had her friend abandoned her?” The creature turned the girl’s torn apart face to the stranger. “How could he leave her to die so?”
“Enough!” shouted the stranger, readying his book. “There is no trickery of words you can twist that can cause me more pain than I have caused myself.”
“We’ll see about pain,” the creature said, dropping the empty husk of the girl to the floor of the cave, “when I rend your flesh from your bones. Then I’ll add what’s left of you to my collection.”
The creature stretched its form to its full extent, arms wide and claws open. Dust fell from the ceiling as the walls of the burrow shook and the bones comprising them came free as they moved to join the creature’s body. Like the heavy armor of a knight, they amassed on the figure until the creature rose to twice the height of the stranger. “Fear not. You and your precious Jadwiga will be reunited.”
“I don’t think so,” the stranger said as he pulled the quill from the book’s spine with the hand that held the lantern. “Yours is not the first tale to be recorded in my book. The stories we tell about ourselves are true, binding. Judging from these walls, all the years and sorrows, I am sure there is indeed a much longer tale that wound be both horrific and delicious to unfold, but for my needs, what I have should suffice for my purposes.”
One of the creature’s bone covered arms lashed out at the stranger, who moved, but not quite fast enough. The jagged claws caught on the lantern, pulling it free of his hand and sending it crashing off against the side of the barrow. The flame quickly sputtered and died, submerging the space into sheer darkness.
The stranger backed away from where the creature had stood, then stopped.
The quill. Where was the damned quill?
It had been in the same hand that held the lantern, but now it was gone. Without hesitation the stranger dropped to his knees and began feeling around the dirt floor of the barrow.
Somewhere in the darkness, a young girl’s giggle filled the air and the voice of Jadwiga called out. “You wouldn’t hurt the little girl you abandoned down here so many years ago, now would you?”
Despite the words sending a cold knife into the core of his heart, the stranger continued his search unabated. “If I thought any true part of her remained, no. But it will soothe my soul some simply to lay what’s left of that girl to rest here today.”
“But the mayor and I have come to such a beautiful arrangement,” the creature’s true voice growled out. “I spare his precious people and once a year he quells my hunger by bringing unsuspecting fools to this wretched little town for me to feast upon.”
Bones clacked in the darkness, closer than the stranger wanted, but he didn’t dare stray from the site he desperately searched.
“Your failure of that little girl will be your eulogy,” the creature called out as if to taunt him.
“That failure is one I’ve lived with for far too long,” the stranger said and let out a sigh of relief as his hand fell upon the feathery part of the quill. He quickly snapped it up into his hand. “Now it’s time to write a different ending, one where I don’t back down. We are, after all, the stories we tell. This time there will be no running away.”
Even in complete darkness, the stranger could easily set quill to page, and almost as easily, spell out one simple word.
Lamp.
A glow erupted from the pages in the stranger’s hand and he reached for them—through them, into them—pulling up until the named object rose from the book and hung from his hand.
The bone creature stood poised far too close to his left side, ready to leap, but it paused as it saw the stranger’s feat. “What sorcery is this?” it hissed out.
“I’ve dedicated my life to stopping that which threatens humanity just so I could return here, learning all in the arcane world that I could. The Yaga, Barbagazi, Melusine, even banshees. All in preparation for a return to this cathedral of bones, all to vanquish you.” Setting the lamp down, he pressed the tip of his quill to the tome’s page.
The words came fast and furious, flying from the stranger’s quill to the pages of the book. In response, the creature cried out in agony, huge piles of bones sloughing off its form and scattering to the dirt floor of the barrow.
“In these pages, your story ends,” he said.
Despite the panic on the bone creature’s face, it was the sweet girl’s voice that spoke sadly and softly from it. “You would not harm so youthful and innocent a creature such as I. You promised no harm would come to me, remember?”
“No harm will come to you,” the stranger said, his quill unwavering. “Or to this village for that matter. I’ll give you the safety I promised. You’ll be perfectly preserved, immortal, forever in the tale within the pages of this book. With every retelling you’ll live on and on and on.”
“Trickster,” the creature growled, as what remained of its form tensed to pounce.
“No, but I’ve fought my fair share of them in my journey back to this village, and if I’ve gleaned a thing or two from them along the way, so be it.”
Skirting the formless husk of the girl, the stranger composed himself and gathered up the book, checking to make sure the pages within were just that: pages. Much to his relief, they were nothing more, so with the last of his lamp’s oil, he put Jadwiga’s remains to rest and worked his way back to the surface of the barrow, where he found a shocked mayor and an assembly of curious-faced villagers waiting.
“You seem surprised to see me, mayor,” the stranger said, dusting off his book.
The mayor craned his neck to look past him into the burrow, anxious. “Where is the girl?” he asked.
“You needn’t worry about her or the threat to your village anymore,” the stranger said, and closed his book before lowering it back into his satchel.
Some of the villagers grew agitated and the old woman who had pecked at the stranger earlier shouted out to him. “What have you done to the girl?”
The stranger reached out a bony hand to the mayor and lifted the man’s chin until their eyes met. “They don’t know, do they?” he whispered to him. “Do you wish to tell them or shall I?”
The mayor’s eyes filled with fright. “Please, no,” he pleaded, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “I had no choice. I sent innocent people—strangers—to their deaths. Yes, I may have saved my own townsfolk by doing so, but those deaths sit with me all the harder. Please, don’t hurt me.”
“Hurt you?” the stranger repeated. “My dear mayor, do not worry. I do not think I could inflict on you a greater pain than the one you have no doubt inflicted on yourself. Believe me, I know a thing or two about regret. If I have to live with my pain, then so will you yours.”
The stranger pushed past the mayor and started back through the graveyard, but the confused and oblivious villagers crowded around him, blocking his way.
One eyebrow rose on the stranger’s face. “Really?” the stranger asked. “Tell me, do any of you truly find it wise to tangle with the person who just took on a centuries old threat to your village and lived to tell the tale?”
After a quick moment of group contemplation, the crowd fell back as one, allowing the stranger a clear path on his journey out of the cemetery to his hut on the far side of the village.
“So what now?” the mayor called as he chased after him, desperate to keep up.
“Your village is safe,” the stranger said. “Isn’t that what matters most?”
“Yes, but your price. What about your price?”
“I do not require coin or riches,” the stranger said. “No. There is payment enough in what I did for myself here tonight. As far as what my services have cost you, I’ve recorded the events of this forgettable little town of yours in my book of marvelous tales. In doing so, the story, your legend—or curse, if you will—becomes mine.”
“But how is that possible?” the mayor asked.
“Did I not arrive in a shack propelled by the legs of a gigantic chicken?” the stranger said before shaking his head as he ascended the rope ladder back up to his hut. “Yet you ask me about my book instead? Never you mind, Mister Mayor, but trust me when I tell you that with time the tale will fade from all of your memories. Every grandmother who whispered it to their child in bed to scare them into obedience, every over-concerned mother or father who wished to frighten their spawn into compliant obedience… all of it will fade and become mine for all time, recorded here in my book alone.The truth will fade, as will, I hope, the guilt you feel for sending so many to that horrible fate below.”
“Will you forget, too?” the mayor called up to him.
The stranger gave a sad shake of his head. “It is my burden to remember,” he said, “but for my part in this tale, there is hope both vengeance and redemption will help quell what drove me here.”
“What will you do now?”
The stranger gave a grim smile. “I do not know,” he said, “but there are still many a blank page in my tome, and perhaps I will find solace—or at the very least, distraction—in the challenge of filling them. As for your village, I should think a chapel of skulls would be quite a draw to outsiders, now that there’s nothing in it to devour them. Call it an ossuary like the dozen or so scattered throughout Europe.”
The mayor’s face was a mask of confusion. “Ossuary?”
“A shrine,” the stranger said. “Cover up what really happened here the old way, the way they’ve done for thousands of years: blame the church. Say it’s a mass grave of those who have passed, be it the Thirty Year’s War or cholera, plague, syphilis… what have you.”
The stranger turned, and the hut on legs turned with him, striding out of town.
“And if they don’t believe me?” the mayor called out after him, but already the hut was a good field length away from Czermna.
“Tell them to seek out the man with the chicken-legged hut,” the stranger called back, patting the satchel at his side. “Will I have a story for them.”
ALL THE BRIDGES BURNED
Clay Sanger
NOTHING ILLUSTRATED A thief’s predicament quite like watching his partner get fed to dogs. All to the tune of the laughter of the gangsters they’d robbed, whose senses of humor proved fouler than the rotten slaughterhouse stink in the air.
Josiah Starling licked his lips and tried not to vomit.
Thomas, his friend and partner, a big brawler of a man, kicked and screamed profanities as a man called Skoren carved tender bits off for the hounds. Thomas dangled by his wrists from chains thrown through a rafter overhead, his toes brushing the hay strewn floor of the rundown cattle pen. Powerless to escape, but lively enough to make the whole affair entertaining.
Skoren. That was a problem—a deadly one. Handsome, easy-going, good-natured. And because of that, people underestimated the mad fucker all the time. If you didn’t know he was a murderous devil, you’d never have guessed it over evening ale. Starling had himself misjudged that one. To disastrous effect.
Skoren had one question. And even in the asking, it seemed rhetorical. “Where’s my gold, Starling?”
Every carefully prepared lie evaporated in the face of those four words, taking with them Starling’s hope in kind. No tiptoeing around it then. No doubt why they were here.
There was a reason the question sounded rhetorical. He didn’t have the money and he had no idea where to get it. He knew this, and the murderous gangster with the bloody knife knew it. All the chuckling scoundrels in the room seemed to know it too. Everyone except for Thomas, that was. That poor bastard knew just enough to get fed to the dogs. Sure, he had plenty of his own sins to answer for, but this wasn’t one of them.
Skoren’s wicked little knife flicked and sliced Thomas’s nostril like splitting an orange peel.
The man jerked and sputtered. “Give him the fucking coin, Starling!” Thomas’s chest heaved, and his eyes went wide and wild like a terrified horse.
“Oh, he can’t,” Skoren said, poking butcher-like fingertips along Thomas’s bare skin looking for what he might slice off next. “Tell him why you can’t, Starling.”
The thief gave a nervous laugh taking in the dilapidated room. There were eight of them. Eight gangsters he’d robbed, one by one, now accompanied by their favorite goons. The only door, guarded. Skoren, with his smile and his knife, made nine. “I wish I knew what was going on here. But, I don’t.”
Skoren tapped the back of the little blade against the single gold ring on his index finger in a thoughtful tempo. Tink, tink, tink. Then he nodded, straightening his bloody apron. “All right then. Here. I’ll help.” He snicked the blade throu
gh the middle of Thomas’s nipple and the man screamed in fresh agony. The gangster waited for his convulsion of pain to calm before he continued. “Do you remember a raven-haired beauty, a singer and dancer come to us from the deserts of Valasega? Your partner had such a shine for her.”
The simmering hate rising in Thomas’s eyes said that he did. Her name came out a growl. “Sadene.”
“I lost no less than nine thousand kingsmark to Sadene and Starling here,” Skoren said, prodding a spot he considered for dog fodder before deciding to move on to some other target. “How did I lose all that money, Starling?” He looked over his shoulder at the nervous thief. “How did you lose all that money?”
“I wish I could tell you,” Starling replied, cold dread tightening his voice. Skoren knew. The bastard knew.
The gangster turned back to his work. “See, I actually believe that. You have no fucking idea where my gold is. You have no fucking idea where Sadene is.”
“I don’t,” Starling admitted. Even then, in the face of a far worse fate than a broken heart, his stomach knotted at the thought of her.
Skoren looked up at his current victim as if sharing a companionly understanding. “This is what happens when you try to run a con above your weight. The conman gets conned.”
Thomas glared at his partner. “Did your cock get us killed?” he snarled, spittle flying from his bloody lips.
Chuckles, hoots, and jeers circled the gathering of gangsters. Starling felt every insult, every barb, every mocking chuckle like a jab to somewhere tender. That place where he stored what little remained of his pride now bled out like a slit pig in the stockyard mud. “Not exactly,” he replied.
Skoren perked up, a man eager to contradict. “Oh. Yes. That’s exactly what got you killed, actually.”
“You little cunt!” Thomas growled bucking against his bonds. The fit made the rafter overhead creak and groan, bringing with it a wretched shower of grime and old rat shit. The sweet stink of it filled the stale air. Starling could taste it.
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