by Ellen Datlow
It wasn’t long before the doctor found himself alone in a meadow of marsh fern gone red with the season. He’d lost the others a good twenty minutes earlier but could hear the dog barking not too far ahead. The ground was soggy, and he moved slowly, knowing that in a moment he could be in water up to his neck. At first he intended to call out, but on second thought he realized that Gillany might be somewhere close by with a sharp weapon of some kind. He thought silence a better strategy. It’s then that he heard the dog yelp and whimper in a manner that could crack ice. A gun went off. There was a human scream followed hard by a splash.
A brief moment of silence and then more screaming, more shots. The din of the commotion sparked Boyle’s adrenaline, and he so wanted to run away. Finally, he called out, “Shaw!” at the top of his voice, and then stood still, listening to the night over the pounding of his heart. He shivered in the breeze for a long while, and then he heard the crack of brittle twigs and the crunch of dry leaves. “Shaw? Is that you?” he called. But it wasn’t Shaw. A pale figure staggered through the marsh ferns toward him. He backed up into a clearing of sand, wanting to flee but unable to, as fear robbed his energy.
She came toward him in the moonlight, her hair loose in the wind like the tail of a black comet. She wore nothing but carried a hatchet stained with blood. He swept the torch in front of him as a means of warding her off. As she approached, he could see a gunshot wound to the hip, the bloody hole writhing with white worms. “That’s it,” said Boyle. He turned and ran as best he could, which wasn’t all that good. With no idea which direction he was headed, he stumbled forward through the marsh ferns toward where the moonlight showed him a tree line. Not even a hundred yards, and he’d slowed to a hobble, out of breath and caught in the grip of a coughing fit.
It was work to get control of his breathing, but he finally managed. Behind him he heard or thought he heard, even above the sound of the wind, the tread of Gillany. He turned and saw her only yards away. Her breathing was like a whistle, and she limped stiffly. She lifted the weapon when she saw him looking, and he groaned, knowing there’d be no more running. His heart was pounding. She came for him and he crouched away from her. She lifted the hatchet, and from above his head, he saw an arm descend from behind him. At the end of that arm there was a hand aiming a derringer. The finger pulled the trigger just as Gillany was upon him. The pistol exploded with a dull thud, smoke and sparks, and the two balls of shot ripped off her face. There was blood and flesh, and just below the skin there was a tangled layer of worms. She fell on him and he screamed.
Fate Shaw and the doctor made it back to the village at daybreak. Once there, she turned doctor and prescribed a bottle of bourbon for Boyle. When he was comfortable, she called the village together by ringing the bell outside the factory. She told those who gathered how they’d tracked Gillany Kane into the marshes and how she’d attacked Mr. Shaw and the others. A dozen men volunteered to go and search for survivors in the daylight. Fate decided to accompany them as did two of the wives whose husbands had been part of the posse. They uncovered the remains of Brogan’s mangled body, but no sign of any of the men. They searched every day for the better part of a week. Nothing. They followed the creeks and streams in case the bodies had been deposited in the water and swept along with the tranquil current. Nothing.
Finally, the sheriff from Mount Holly arrived and was told the tale just as it happened. Fate and Boyle gave much of the testimony, and the other half was supplied by Mavis, who had made a full recovery from the disease that gripped her sister. She referred to the illness as the suspicions, for the paranoia it engendered with a fury that took over the mind. The sheriff couldn’t make heads nor tails of it and eventually slunk back to Mount Holly to file five missing persons reports. Somewhere in the middle of that very harsh winter, Mavis Kane disappeared. No one was sure exactly when it happened, but everyone was certain it was after the snow came and before it left. She could have slipped away from Cadalbog, but there were also many who weren’t willing to forgive her part of the Halloween mayhem. Maybe the barrens took her, but after that most forgot, leaving only Fate and Boyle to wonder what actually had happened.
Three years later, in spring, Fate Shaw reported in her diary on the passing of Dr. Boyle. “I’d go to see him out there at his place on the way to Harrisville. He’d drink and talk, and I’d listen. He was the one individual who didn’t mind hashing over the enigma of the Kane sisters’ disease. He was convinced it was a matter of biology and chemistry, the psychosis of a fevered mind. I, on the other hand, knew better, because I was privy to the end of the story. The helper I’d hired to look after the doctor reported to me that the day the old man died he’d had a visitor, an old woman in tattered clothes with a strange green-tinged complexion. She was accompanied by a black dog. The helper didn’t know how long the old woman had been there, but when he returned the next morning to make a fire and cook breakfast for the doctor, he found Boyle in a chair, head flung back and white worms crawling from his nose and ears, squirming out through his tear ducts.
“The last thing he told me on my final visit to him was, as he put it, ‘His confession.’ It so happened that the reason he’d come to the Pine Barrens in the first place was due to a botched delivery. It was a breech birth, and he was pie-eyed drunk. ‘Twin sisters with the cord wrapped round their necks,’ he said. ‘As they struggled for their freedom, they strangled each other. I was passed out on the floor. Unsettling that the tragedy occurred on All Souls’ Day. The parents wanted to put me in jail, and I fled like a thief in the night.’ I didn’t have the heart to wonder aloud about the twin connection and neither did he. The strangeness we’d been part of was already too complicated.
“Before I left him that day, he gave me, written out in a shaky hand, the recipe for his elixir against the suspicion. ‘Sooner or later, it’ll be back,’ he told me. Twenty years have passed since then, and I’ve long ago misplaced that scrap of paper. But every year at Halloween, I wear a blossom of the witch hazel in honor of Boyle, and oddly enough, it’s beginning to catch on.”
Nos Galan Gaeaf
Kelley Armstrong
Adre, adre, am y cynta’,
Hwch ddu gwta a gipio’r ola’
Home, home, on the double,
The tailless black sow shall snatch the last.
Cainsville, October 31, 1979
SEANNA WALSH WAS NOT PRETTY. Not bright. Not charming or witty. Not good or kind. Yet Lance could not get her out of his head. She’d wormed her way in, that insidious thought he couldn’t escape. He had to, though. Had to pry her out before he went mad. Which meant she needed to die on Nos Galan Gaeaf.
Lance would not actually kill her. That is, he would not wrap his hands around her scrawny neck, nor fire a bullet through her flat chest, nor slit her pale throat and watch her strange blue eyes bug as her lifeblood soaked the ground. He thought about that. He thought about all of it, late at night, replaying the fantasies until he lay shivering and sweat soaked. But then he imagined the reality of it, and the fantasy became a nightmare, handcuffs clamping around his wrists, his mother sobbing, his father staring, wordless for perhaps the first time in his life.
No. Lance would not kill Seanna Walsh himself. But he would bring about her death on Nos Galan Gaeaf…by removing her stone from the bonfire.
—
WHEN THE MORNING of Nos Galan Gaeaf arrived, Lance asked the gargoyles if he should give Seanna one last chance. He counted them on his way to the school bus stop. If they came up with an even number, that would mean yes. Yes, he should give Seanna another chance.
Of course, it was easy to game the system. He walked the long way to the bus stop, knowing that route would give him five gargoyles, meaning no, he did not need to give her another chance. He just had to get the right answer. Like he had to check the door four times after he locked it, to be absolutely sure his father wouldn’t come home and find it open. Check the door four times. Check the gas stove six. Check the lights t
wice.
Even numbers were good omens. They were safe. The number of times to check depended on the severity of the transgression if he made a mistake. Leave on a light, and he’d only get a snarl from his father. An unlocked door would lead to a smack. Leave the gas on? Lance didn’t even want to think what would happen if he did that.
Check, check, and check again, so his whirling mind could rest easy. The same went for any question of importance. It had to be checked against the gargoyles.
In cases like this, Lance would walk a route where he knew how many gargoyles he should see. Yet that was no guarantee in Cainsville, where he could walk past the bank four days in a row and clearly see the gargoyle perched there…and the next day there would be no sign of it. Two days later it would reappear, sneering at him as if to say it’d been there all along and he was a fool if he thought otherwise.
Today, all five of the gargoyles he expected to see were there, and on counting the last, he shuddered in relief. The question had been answered. He did not need to give Seanna another chance. Then, as he approached the bus stop, he heard Seanna’s smug voice say, “I spy with my little eye, one hidden gargoyle.”
“Where?” Keith said as he peered around. “I don’t see anything.”
“For ten bucks, you will.”
“Fuck you, Seanna.”
“You wish, zit face.”
The other kids laughed. They always did, no matter how unimaginative her insults, no matter how many times they’d been the targets of them. It was as if she held them all under her sway. But none so much as Lance.
“Give you five for it, Seanna,” Abby said.
“Make it six plus your Twinkies.”
Abby handed over the bills and the snack, and Seanna whispered instructions. Abby gave a slow look around, careful not to tip off the others. Then she chortled. “Got it! One more for my May Day list.”
Lance tried not to look for the gargoyle. He desperately tried. But his heart started to pound, his mouth going dry, and he knew if he didn’t look, he’d spend the day obsessing over it. He would give a quick glance, and if he didn’t immediately see—
He spotted it peeking from under a roof edge, its color blending with the stonework, and he could tell himself that’s why he’d never seen it before. It was the comfortable answer. It was not, however, the truth. As for what was the truth? He didn’t know. No one did. No one cared. To them, it was no different than a rainbow, a glimpse of everyday magic. To him, it was an uncomfortable reminder of factors he could not control, could not predict. The odd boy out, as always.
That unexpected sixth gargoyle meant he had to give Seanna one last chance. He spent the next five minutes frantically searching for another gargoyle to change the answer. When the bus came, he reluctantly followed the other kids on, still gaping about.
No gargoyles were coming to save him. They’d given their answer. One last chance.
He went to slide into the seat with Seanna. She thumped her backpack down on it and gave him a sneer.
“As if,” she said. “Back of the bus, loser Lance.”
He took the seat behind her. A couple of kids chortled. Abby jerked her chin, warning him to abandon his course.
“Excuse me,” Seanna said. “The restraining order says fifty feet.”
“You got a restraining order?” Keith said.
“I wrote a restraining order. Either this loser leaves me alone or I kick his ass. Again.”
More chortles.
“I’ll move,” Lance said. “As soon as you give me back my money.”
The chortles turned to open guffaws.
“You’d have more luck getting blood from a gargoyle,” Keith said. “If Seanna conned you out of your pocket money, consider it payment for a lesson learned: don’t mess with a Walsh.”
Seanna settled into her seat with that smug smile. A few other kids high-fived each other. Walshes, all of them. One of the oldest families in Cainsville. And not an upstanding citizen in the lot of them.
Seanna and her kin proudly claimed an ancestry of con artists, pirates, and thieves, and in Cainsville, Walshes were treated with as much respect as doctors, lawyers, and priests. Don’t mess with them, and they wouldn’t mess with you. It was the barest whiff of a moral code, and somehow, that was good enough.
“She didn’t con me,” Lance said. “She picked my pocket.”
“Because you were stalking me again,” Seanna said. “Violating the terms of my restraining order. Consider it a fine. If you don’t want to pay, don’t get close enough.”
Even Abby nodded at that, giving Lance a look of mingled sympathy and exasperation. The boy who kept sticking his finger in the electrical outlet and expecting a different result.
“So you won’t return the money?” he said.
“Hell and no. Now get your skinny ass to the back of the bus before I kick it there.”
Lance slid from the seat and walked to the back. Only once he’d passed all the other kids did he allow himself a tiny smile of satisfaction.
He’d given her a chance, as the gargoyles decreed. And she’d blown it.
Tonight, he would take her stone from the bonfire.
—
FOR THE OTHER KIDS, tonight was Halloween. It was for some in Cainsville, too. Some of those who wished to celebrate October 31 that way piled into cars to visit family in Chicago and go trick-or-treating. For others, the town elders hired a bus to take them to a nearby town that had agreed to welcome any children of Cainsville who wished to celebrate the more common holiday. The bus left before dinner, filled with kids in costumes, their chaperones bringing bags full of candy to donate to the host town.
Lance watched the bus pull away, and he did not wish for one moment to be on it. Even when he was a little kid, he’d never wanted that. In this, he was not the odd boy out. He wanted to stay and celebrate Nos Galan Gaeaf. If he felt anything watching the bus leave, it was pity for the children on it, noses pressed to the glass, mournfully watching the town fade as the bus carried them away.
Every family was welcome to stay, but Lance had heard it whispered that the newer families were not encouraged to join Nos Galan Gaeaf. Few wanted to—the adults, anyway. What made Cainsville delightfully eccentric most of the year changed at the holidays. Pagan holidays, outsiders whispered. May Day. Solstice. And the most discomfiting of all: Nos Galan Gaeaf. No, they were happy to stick to their modern Halloween, ignore its pagan roots, and pretend it was all about princess dresses and candy corn.
The first of November was Calan Gaeaf. The beginning of winter. Marking the boundary was Nos Galan Gaeaf, or Spirit Night, when the veil between the human world and the otherworld was thinnest. A night to be indoors. But before that, when the evening was still young, it was a time for celebration.
It began with the harvest feast. Tables were set up all along Main Street, right in the road. Everyone ate for hours, and then the children played twco fala, bobbing for marked apples that would earn them prizes. The teens hung around acting bored, but when the elders came by with “extra” candy and trinkets, all apathy evaporated, everyone partaking with, “Thank you, ma’am,” and, “Thank you, sir.”
When the apples were done, the bonfire began. Lance could feel the heat from the massive fire three doors down. Seanna stood less than ten feet away from him, having apparently decided not to enforce her restraining order. He watched the light of the bonfire lick her pale face and imagined it was real flames instead. Imagined her bound to a stake, the fire burning at her feet.
Burned as a witch. An apt punishment. That’s what she was—a witch transformed into a foul, poisonous mist that had insidiously crept through an open window one night to be inhaled in his sleep. Until then, she’d been just another kid, brattier than most, braver than most, but not special. Certainly not special. Then last summer she went away to visit relatives, and when she came back, he saw her as if for the first time, and he could not look away, however hard he tried.
She’d bewitched
him. That was the only answer. And so burning would be apt. Unlikely, but he could hope.
As the bonfire roared and one elder told a story, another brought around a basket of smooth stones. Lance held his breath as he watched Seanna. She was thirteen, which made this her first time participating in the rite of Coelcerth. She could abstain. Then he’d have to think of another way to rid himself of the witch.
Seanna took a stone without hesitation. She plucked the felt-tip marker from Abby’s hand. Abby only sighed and waited as Seanna wrote her name on the stone and then took the marker back to finish her own. When it was Lance’s turn, he wrote his name in careful block letters.
Once all of the rocks had been distributed, the town elders proceeded to the bonfire, one by one, and laid their stones around it. Then the townspeople lined up. It was a solemn procession, a silent one, but with an air of hope. Come morning, when they found their rock still in place, they’d breathe a sigh of relief and hug their family and celebrate, as if life had handed them a guarantee. You will live another year.
Lance waited until all the other kids had set down their stones. He made a mental note of where Seanna put hers. Then he laid his a few feet away. He tapped it to the ground twice first. Two for yes. Two for a positive result. If he fumbled, he’d do four. He didn’t fumble. Two taps and down it went, nestled among the others.
When all the rocks had been placed, one of the elders stood before the fire, raised her wrinkled arms, and shouted,
“Adre, adre, am y cynta’, Hwch ddu gwta a gipio’r ola’.”
It was Welsh, like Nos Galan Gaeaf and Calan Gaeaf and Coelcerth and everything else about Cainsville. Founded by Welsh immigrants, it held on to that identity like the townspeople clutched those rocks—a talisman against the uncertainty of the world.
