by Jeff Giles
X walked to the door of his cell and peered down the corridor, hoping a guard would quiet his neighbor. The nearest one, a giant Russian with a lame foot who wore a blue tracksuit and aviator sunglasses for no reason whatsoever, was 30 yards away.
“You heard not a word,” X told Banger, “for I spoke not a word.”
A third voice joined their conversation without warning: “Dissembler, dissembler, dissembler!”
It was Ripper, who occupied the cell to X’s left. To distract herself from her own searing thoughts, Ripper ripped her fingernails from their beds, then waited impatiently for them to grow so she could wrench them out once more. Back in the 19th century, in London, she had watched one of her servants spill soup onto the lap of a dinner guest. She’d stood up from her chair, followed the young woman to the kitchen—and killed her with a single blow of a boiling teakettle. Afterward, she instructed two footmen to deposit the servant’s body on the cobblestones behind the house. She knew the police would be too intimidated by her wealth to question her. Ripper had been 36 for nearly 200 years.
Many of X’s fellow prisoners were wretched men and women whose souls had been transported to the Lowlands when they died. A smaller number, like Banger and Ripper, had been snatched out of their lives by bounty hunters when earthly justice failed to punish them.
Ripper was now pacing in her cell and loudly reciting a poem from her youth: “‘Deceiver, dissembler / Your trousers are alight / From what pole or gallows / Shall they dangle in the night?’”
She was a beautiful, formidable woman. She had trained X to be a bounty hunter, and dozens of others, as well. Lately, however, she seemed separated from insanity by the width of a dime.
X glanced down the corridor again. The Russian guard had heard Ripper ranting, and was on his way, dragging his left foot behind him.
Banger hissed at Ripper: “Jesus, Rip, shut it, would you?”
“But he is a deceiver! I heard his exclamation as well!”
“Okay, fine,” said Banger. “But chill the hell out. And by the way, the real version of that thing is, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire / Hang them from a telephone wire.’ Just sayin’.”
This caused Ripper to cackle.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I shall alert Mr. William Blake to his error when next we meet.”
The Russian arrived and poked his club through the bars of Ripper’s cell.
“Vy sexy lady talk so much?” he said. “Must shut mouth.”
“I already warned her, dude,” said Banger. “I’m on it.”
The guard shuffled over to Banger’s cell.
“I am not needing assistance of dung beetle like you,” he said. “Please to shut up, also.”
“Or what?” said Banger. “You gonna hit me? Oh, that’s right: you can’t. Because your job suuucks. Do you even get health care? You obviously don’t get dental.”
“If anyone is to be struck, it should be moi,” Ripper interjected. “I must insist, I really must.”
The guard cursed, then shuffled back to Ripper’s cell. After a furtive look around, he gave her a quick jab with his club. She was cooing with pleasure when he limped away.
“Nothing for me?” Banger called after him.
“Nyet,” said the guard, “because you are jackass.”
Silence reigned awhile. X lay back on the rocky ground, the bones of his face still glowing with pain. Just as his heart had begun to settle, he heard Banger’s annoying whisper.
“Talk to me, man,” he said. “Tell me your life story. I’ll tell you mine.”
X fought back a wave of anger. He had no desire to talk. He spoke harshly to snuff out the conversation.
“Banger, your story is well-known to me,” he said. “Do you forget that it was I who conveyed you to this place? Or that it was I who trained you to be a bounty hunter just as Ripper trained me? I know your crimes only too well. Hearing them again would only disgust me.”
“Jeez,” said Banger. “Way to be a dick.”
When it was quiet again, X closed his eyes, already regretting his outburst. He had collected 14 souls for the lords of the Lowlands, and Banger was by no means the worst of them. But X hated telling his story: it only reminded him of the injustices of his life.
X had committed no crime.
He was an innocent.
Unlike every other soul he’d ever encountered, he did not know why he had been condemned. He did not know what outrage he had supposedly committed—or even how or when he might have committed it. But rather than making him feel pure, X’s confusion only convinced him that there was something vile and corrupt in his heart that he would one day discover.
The pain beneath his eyes was excruciating now.
It was time.
Even Banger knew it. He was standing at the bars of his cell, gazing out.
“You got company, stud,” he said.
X looked through the bars, his heart like a drum.
A lord had leaped from the stony plain, and was hurtling at him through the air.
The prisoners were forbidden from knowing the lords’ names, as well. But the personage who swept into X’s cell now had a royal, African bearing and was quietly referred to as Regent, out of respect for his proud posture, his great height, and his shining, ebony skin.
X lay down on his back, readying for the ritual that was to come.
Regent came and towered above him, the golden band around his throat and the brilliant blue of his robe shimmering in the darkness.
He lowered his hand over X’s face like a mask, and began intoning a speech X had heard many times before.
“The Lowlands require another soul for its collection,” he intoned. “He is an evil man—unrepentant and unpunished. I bring you his hateful name. Will you receive this name and will you bring the man to me on his knees?”
“I will,” said X.
“Will you defend the secrecy of our world all the while? Will you defend the ancient, inviolable wall between the living and the dead just as bounty hunters have defended it since before time was even scratched in stone?” said Regent.
“I will,” said X.
The lord gripped X’s face harder with his taloned hand. X’s skull seemed to ignite. The pain coursed down his neck, traversed his shoulders, and so on until it had consumed him entirely. He could not breathe. He knew from the 14 previous occasions that the terror would pass, yet he could not prevent himself from bucking and kicking. The lord’s hand pressed down harder still.
But X did not think Regent cruel. Even as the lord held him fast, he stroked X’s hair paternally with his other hand, taking care that his nails did not lacerate X’s skin. Soon something behind X’s eyes burst like a dam, and he saw nothing but an overpowering whiteness. When he retrieved his senses, he found himself in the Overworld—on a mountain, in a blizzard.
Regent had set a man’s sins swimming in X’s veins.
X was like a dog who’d been given the scent of his prey.
Now he could hunt.
The man’s name was a boring little brick: Stan. It wasn’t just Stan’s story that rushed through X’s blood, but also the story of everyone whose lives he had infected. There was an old couple called Bert and Betty. There was a boy lost in the woods without a coat or gloves. A pair of dogs.
And a girl.
X could have summoned her face and pictured it with perfect clarity, but he was careful not to. He merely glimpsed her out of the corner of his mind’s eye, and saw enough to know that she was too lovely—too fierce and full of hope—for him to recover from.
five
The girl hovered outside the garage now. She was just standing there, squinting at X and rubbing her nose, her hair askew from sleep. Yet he was so transfixed by her that everything in his body stopped. She had wavy, light brown hair that just barely grazed her shoulders. There was a dark beauty mark on her left cheekbone that drew attention to her eyes, which were wide and glinting and seemed to change from blue to gray even as X
looked at her.
He turned away and coughed savagely. Stan’s sins had been polluting his body ever since Regent set them loose in his bloodstream. Now that X had let Stan go free, the pain had intensified. The Trembling was the lords’ way of ensuring that the bounty hunters would follow orders and return to the Lowlands with their prey.
X had never suffered like this before because he’d never refused his duty before. Still, he knew that his misery—the fever, the pain, the delirium—would only increase unless he renewed his search for Stan. Even if X could endure his sickness, the lords would send another bounty hunter after him—or maybe Regent himself would arrive, seething and bent on vengeance.
When his coughing subsided, X turned back to the girl and her family. The mother was holding her children at a safe distance. Still, the boy managed to break free, and rushed at him. X’s body stiffened reflexively—no one ever approached him unless they meant to do him harm—but the boy only wanted to hug him and to whisper, “You saved my dogs!”
He embraced X so tightly that X gasped.
“Stop it—you’re hurting him,” said the girl. “And you’re being weird.”
“Step away from him, Jonah,” said the mother.
The boy did as he was told. The mother peered around the garage.
“My god, it’s hot in here,” she said. “How is that possible?”
X had warmed the air with a simple rubbing together of his hands. Seeing the mother’s concern, he made a circular motion with his palm and the garage was frigid again in an instant.
“Wow,” said the mother, even more alarmed than before.
“A-mazing!” said the boy.
The girl said nothing. She hadn’t stepped any closer. Was she afraid? Disgusted? X couldn’t blame her. He was repulsive even to himself. He saw her notice the bruises beneath his eyes, then look quickly away. Shame radiated through him. He wished that she and her family would flee. He wished they would burn the garage down around him. He did not want them to bind their fate to his. Now that he had betrayed the lords, he was a body in free fall, gaining momentum as he fell.
X touched the boy’s back gently to let him know that he had not hurt him. He stole another look at the girl, afraid he would see horror in her eyes. Instead, he saw a soft expression that he could not identify. Was that what pity looked like?
He managed to speak, which came as a surprise even to himself. He said four words with as much force as he could muster: “Leave me. Protect yourselves.” Then, so quietly it was as if he were speaking to himself, he said two more: “Jonah. Zoe.”
He began to lose consciousness then, and darkness poured in from every side. He heard one last exchange. The boy said in wonderment: “He knows our names, Mom! How does he know our names?!” And the mother answered—though it was not truly an answer but an exhausted kind of prayer—“I just wish I knew what I was bringing into my house.”
It took Zoe and her family ten minutes to devise a plan for ferrying X inside. As he waited, he drifted in and out of consciousness, like a boat that couldn’t decide whether to sink or float. Each time he came to, he begged them to abandon him. He could not make them understand the dangers. Finally, Jonah and his mother left to fetch something from the house. X and Zoe were alone.
Even in his fever, X could feel the awkwardness of the moment. He felt Zoe’s eyes flit over his face again—his hair, his lips, his eyes—and again he was ashamed to think how he must look to her. He’d seen others like her from a distance before, and they’d never stirred anything in him. But Zoe … He could feel her gaze on him even when he turned away—even when his eyes were closed. Her face gave off such warmth that it was a kind of light. No amount of horror or hatred could make an impression on X anymore—but loveliness and kindness laid him flat.
“Who are you? What are you?” said Zoe, after an agonizing silence. She paused, and laughed to herself. “Do you skateboard?”
“Do I—?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I have a blurting problem.”
Again the awkwardness was everywhere. X wanted so badly to speak to her, to make her comfortable, to let her see something in him that was not wretched.
“I do not … skateboard,” he said.
She laughed for some reason, shook her head, and put her face in her hands. She stared out into the darkness to see if her mother and Jonah were on their way back. They were not.
“Zoe,” said X, wondering if he had the energy to speak the words swarming in his head. “You must abandon me. I am not like you. You have seen what I am capable of—and creatures even more dangerous will come after me soon. They will demand that I recapture Stan, and they will destroy anyone whose shadow falls across their path. Zoe, truly, I can offer you nothing but peril.”
She knelt by his side.
The closer she came, the more his fever cooled. He had never experienced the phenomenon before.
“You saved my brother and me,” Zoe said. “And I can handle a little peril.” She smiled faintly. “What’s your name? I don’t even know your name.”
“I do not have one,” he said.
“That’s messed up,” she said. “Okay, listen, whoever you are, we are not going to let you freeze to death out here. You helped Jonah and me when you didn’t have to, and you didn’t kill Stan when you could have—and that’s when I saw what you are capable of.”
“Zoe, I beseech you—”
“No. There will be no beseeching.”
Her voice was stern now. He feared he had angered her, but saw that she was struggling with many emotions.
“My family’s had a shit year,” she said, then stopped to gather herself.
“You need not speak if it brings you pain,” he said.
“No, I want to,” she said. She started again, speaking slowly, carefully: “We’ve had a shit year. There was nothing we could do about it, but there is something we can do about you. So we’re going to help you, no matter what you say—or how weirdly you say it.”
X searched her mind to see if her will was as strong as it seemed. He moved slowly, feeling his way into her thoughts, like he was parting branches. Almost immediately, she shivered and shot him a warning look.
“Stop it,” she said. “There will be no mind-melding—or whatever that is. You have to promise. Not with me or my family.”
“I give you my word,” he said. He added—he was not sure if he should—“And I have never been able to do it with anyone but you.”
This seemed to surprise her, and she smiled.
The awkwardness was lifting, dissipating like smoke.
“What will you call me?” he said.
“I’ll think of something,” she said.
The front door slammed in the distance—a dead sound with no echo. X turned to watch Jonah and his mother cross the drive. Jonah ran excitedly. He was carrying a round, red sled. He was holding it in front of him, like a shield.
Together, they pulled X to the house. With every bump and jolt, he arched his back in agony. Once inside, they maneuvered the sled through the kitchen, then the living room. Zoe and her mom tugged at the rope, while Jonah cleared the path and shouted frantic, sometimes contradictory, instructions.
At the bottom of the staircase, they managed to get X to his feet, like a team of workers lifting a statue. Zoe and her mother held his arms to steady him, and Jonah shoved as hard as he could from behind to prevent him from toppling backward. After five nerve-wracking minutes, they reached the landing. Jonah wanted X to sleep in his room with him, and when his mother hesitated, he began chanting, “Sleepover! Sleepover! Sleepover!” In the end, it was decided that X would sleep in Jonah’s bed, even though it was small and shaped like a ladybug. The Bissells would all share the floor. The mother didn’t want her children alone with him.
Zoe helped X onto the bed, putting a palm against his chest to steady him. X closed his eyes to hide his surprise. His shirt had a rough V at the throat, and Zoe’s right forefinger had landed on the patch of b
are skin. For the next few moments all he could feel—all he was aware of in the world—were the tiny movements of her hand as she inched her finger back onto cloth.
X was still dizzy and weak. The moment Zoe took her hand away he fell back onto the mattress with such a thud that the ladybug’s antennae twitched. Zoe unlaced his boots and put them under the bed. When she went to hang his overcoat in a closet, he shook his head no.
Zoe smiled.
“Security blanket?” she said.
X did not recognize the phrase, but he could tell there was kindness in it.
Zoe placed her palm on X’s chest again—avoiding his exposed skin so carefully that he felt her touch even more keenly than before—and said, with a strange kind of sweetness, “Good night, moon.”
As she turned away, he reached out to touch her arm. Had he not been in a fog and half out of his senses, he’d never have had the nerve.
“Why endanger yourselves?” he said. “Why do all this for me?”
Zoe looked down at where his hand lightly gripped her. She gave him a smile, a trace of light in the darkness.
“There’s nothing good on TV,” she said.
Jonah fell asleep first and began battling someone or something in his dreams. Zoe’s mom tossed on the floor awhile—she gave a little yelp every time she rolled onto a toy that Jonah had left on the carpet—then slipped off as well, one arm draped lovingly over her son.
X lay quietly, unable to rest despite his exhaustion. He turned to face the window next to the bed. A frantic beetle was flitting back and forth between the panes of glass, trapped forever with the wide world in full view. X knew what it felt like to be that bug. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine escaping the Lowlands and living. Truly living. He pictured himself with Zoe in the summertime when the world wasn’t hardened by ice and swallowed in snow. When there was no Trembling. No fear.
