by Kali Wallace
It wasn’t like the others. Drawing out the memory of his murders was like pulling something dead and rotten out of sticky swamp mud. There was something deformed about him. Whatever he was beneath his skin had curled into a slippery, wriggling, cowering thing long ago, and all that remained was the echo of other people’s pain. I heard, briefly, a child crying. Not like their victims had cried in Brian Kerr’s memories, manic and pleading, but the way a child weeps when he’s hurt and scared and wants his mother to make it better.
Mr. Willow sucked in one last desperate breath. “You can’t—”
It was easy, in that moment. He was already dying, and I was getting better at it. His eyes widened with raw terror, the fear a person can only feel once, and he was dead.
THIRTY-SIX
A DISORIENTING SHUDDER, an electric snap, and I was overcome by Mr. Willow’s memories.
I was small and scared—
No. This was his memory, not mine.
Edward was small. He was supposed to be asleep. The night was alive with restless wind. It made him anxious and scared, but he couldn’t go to his parents. Mommy might gather him into her arms and press a kiss to his forehead, but Father would send him back to bed.
The word Father echoed dully in Edward’s memories. I knew the man by no other name.
He was awake, hugging his knees to his chest and wishing he had a toy animal to keep him company, and he was watching through the window. That’s when he saw the strangers. They didn’t come up to the door, not like neighbors visiting. They moved as shadows at the edge of the forest, lanky and thin. There were four or five of them.
Edward’s throat was tight. Father didn’t like strangers. They brought bad influences and dangerous ideas into the community.
As Edward watched, one of the shadows detached from the forest and loped across the grass.
It was coming to the house.
Edward slipped from the bed, padded across his room, and crept down the stairs. He was so afraid—how odd fear feels in memories, distant and cool, a collection of symptoms more than visceral instinct—but he was reassured when he heard his mother’s voice. She was already awake, and she had opened the door to greet the stranger.
“It has to be tonight,” she was saying. “I can’t bear it anymore. Come in. It has to be tonight. You don’t have to hurt anybody. Just give me time. It has to be tonight.” The words were jumbled and smudged in the way of conversations recalled from long ago, the order uncertain even when the intent was clear. She was pleading for help, and the stranger was agreeing.
Edward peered around the corner into the kitchen. Mommy was at the back door, whispering to a tall man with a gaunt face and glittering black eyes. I felt the jolt twice: Edward’s shocked fear and my own detached surprise. That wasn’t a human face.
Edward gasped, and his mother spun around. She rushed to him and knelt before him. She had a bruise on her cheek and a black eye; she had been disrespectful to Father after supper. She told Edward to go back to bed and stay there, no matter what he heard, no matter how much noise there was. She made him promise. He nodded solemnly and she kissed his cheek.
“Go back to bed while Mommy talks to some of her old friends,” she said. “I love you, munchkin.”
Behind her the monster leaned in the doorway, a leer twisting its lips.
Edward climbed the steps, but he didn’t go back to his room. He went instead to wake Father. The house was dark, then it was light, and at that point his memory became muddled and disjointed: Men shouted and windows shattered and long shadows cackled, and fires glowed like demon eyes in the night, and everything smelled of blood. Neighbors surged with shotguns. A door slammed; a woman screamed. And screamed, and screamed, and screamed. She pleaded with Edward, with Father, weeping behind the cellar door, she was sorry so sorry she didn’t mean it she was sorry it was a mistake they made her they were evil things she had left them all behind she had Father and Edward and their home now she was so sorry so sorry please open the door please not the darkness so sorry please. Edward was small and sank to be smaller, curling himself into a ball, cheek pressed against the wood, and her voice grew fainter, and Father was a tall broad silhouette at the end of the hall, and he was saying, “She brought them into our home,” and then she wasn’t weeping anymore. She always went quiet, eventually, every time Father punished her, but this time was different. This time she was quiet for so long Father went down to the cellar, and when he came back he was carrying her limp body. Edward thought she was only sleeping until he touched her hand. Her skin was cold and there was blood on her fingers, splinters beneath her fingernails. A roaring filled his head until the house and the hallway and the cellar door were gone in a blinding flash of morning sunlight.
There was a thick fall of powdery fresh snow over the mountains. The trees bent and groaned beneath the weight. I felt the cold biting at my nose, the damp seep of slush through my socks. The glistening snow was so clean, so bright, Edward had to squint and cover his eyes, and my eyes stung too.
Father broke the trail ahead. He was pulling the wooden box on a sled. In some places he stopped and Edward helped him lift it over a ditch or a log. Edward’s arms were tired and his fingers ached with cold, but he didn’t dare complain.
He was taller now. The same height as his father. Years had passed between memories.
The mountains were quiet in the early morning. It had snowed all night, but the clouds were already breaking. They had left Boulder behind as the plows scraped the roads and the news of a snow day broke to the schoolchildren. Edward would have been excited too, last year, but he was fourteen now and Father didn’t send him to school anymore. It would only teach him lies, Father said.
Before Father took him out of school, Edward would sit in class at the back of the room and look at his classmates bent over their assignments, at the teacher before the blackboard, and he would wonder what evil, rotting faces they hid beneath their masks of human skin. He kept lists of the ones he suspected to be monsters. He imagined catching them in unguarded moments, peeling back their disguises and revealing the poisonous blood and malformed bones beneath.
Father said it was more important than ever to keep to themselves. Edward didn’t understand, and he knew the others in the congregation didn’t either. They wanted to warn people about the monsters in the world. How to recognize them, how to fight them. But Father was in charge. They did as he instructed.
Or they had, before. They weren’t so trusting of Father now. Edward had seen the way they glared and muttered as they scrubbed blood from the floor. They said Father never should have taken her out of her prison in the mountains. They said he should never have trusted the work of God and men to a monster.
They blamed Father for what had happened, even though Edward was the one who had opened the door and let Mother escape. She had been whispering at the door, pleading and whispering, and Edward had remembered another woman, another closed door, and he thought: It’s so unfair that Father keeps her locked away like an animal in a darkened room. It’s wrong. It’s cruel. She deserves better.
She wasn’t his real mother. Edward knew that. His real mother had died. She had betrayed their family and his father by inviting monsters into their home. Father rarely spoke of her, and when he did he only said women were weak and could not be trusted.
Most days Edward barely remembered her at all. He didn’t need her. He had Mother.
But now they had to shut Mother away in the darkness where Father had found her years ago, and it was Edward’s fault. He had opened the door and two of their congregation had died before they caught her again.
“We were wrong to ever release her into the world,” Father had said early that morning, as he steered the car along the snow-covered roads. “She is safer in the mountains. We will tell the others she has perished. They must never know. Promise me, Edward.”
Edward had promised.
On their way into the mountains they had driven past sleeping litt
le Gold Hill that looked like a broken toy town from the Old West. They would have a funeral soon. They would bury an empty box and tell the congregation Mother was gone. Only Edward and Father would know the truth.
The sled hit a hidden branch and there was a thump inside the box. Edward placed his hand on the wooden lid. She couldn’t feel his touch through the wood, but perhaps she could sense him out here, with her, keeping her safe. Perhaps she knew how sorry he was.
When they reached the mine, Father took a ring of keys out of his pocket. The sun was already melting the snow on the tailings pile, seeping into naked patches of gold-brown gravel. In the morning sunlight, in his long dark coat and heavy snow boots, Father was tall and solemn and magnificent.
“This is not your fault,” said Father. He unlocked the gate; it opened with a rusty groan. “You must understand that, Edward. It is my fault. We are gifted with the safekeeping of this great and terrible thing, but I grew careless. She is more ancient than we can imagine, and more cunning, but she has only ever been a tool for us to use in our mission. We were foolish to forget that.”
Father had never called her a thing before. The word made acid churn in Edward’s stomach. She was great, and she was terrible, but she wasn’t a thing. She was a gift, a wonder. There were monsters everywhere in the world. They needed her to cure them. Edward couldn’t go back to hunting them like wild animals. There was a better way, and that better way was Mother.
Edward waited until his father’s back was turned and picked a sharp stone the size of a baseball. It sat heavy in his pocket, a solid weight bumping his thigh.
“Help me carry it,” Father said.
Edward ducked his head to hide his scowl. He heard the quiet thump, thump of hooves inside the box and the scratch of claws on wood. He would never forget. He would never make the same mistakes Father had made.
“Yes, Father,” Edward said, and he followed.
THIRTY-SEVEN
NIGHT WAS COMING, and with it a cool whispering breeze.
I felt the rock in my hand and the impact of every blow. I remembered it as though I had killed the man myself only minutes ago. I remembered blood splattering over the wooden box that held the woman who was not a woman, the thing called Mother.
His real mother had died after that terrible night when he was a child. I didn’t know her name. She had only wanted to escape. Get away from her abusive and controlling husband, get away from the trap they called community but probably meant cult. I only knew what Willow had known as a child, so I had no idea how she had known the monsters, what they were or where they came from, only that she had called them old friends. I didn’t even know if she was one of them. She only wanted a chance to slip away in the night. A few fires, a few broken windows. A desperate woman’s desperate plan. It might have worked if Edward hadn’t warned his father.
I wished I knew her name. She deserved to have somebody remember her name.
I left Willow’s body on the forest floor. Everything smelled like blood. I found the keys and the flashlight, and I walked back to the mine.
There were three keys on the ring, and only one was shiny and new. The padlock opened with a click. The gate was heavier than I expected. I braced my feet against the soft gravel, gripped the metal bars, and leaned. I pulled it open just enough for me to slip through.
“Okay,” I said.
Cold, cold air flowed from within the mountain. The hair on the back of my neck rose. I had Violet’s warnings, Brian Kerr’s memories, Mr. Willow’s promises. Unreliable data, all of it. None of it told me what I needed to know.
I pointed the flashlight into the mine and started walking.
There were no metal tracks along the ground, no wooden beams and frames holding back the mountain. All of my ideas about old western mines had come from Looney Tunes and Hollywood, and to my great surprise they hadn’t quite gotten it right. The tunnel was rough, blasted and chipped away in sharp angles, supported in a few spots by rusted bolts in the rock.
Just inside the gate, where daylight still penetrated, there were cans and bottles, food wrappers, used condoms, cigarette butts. A charred fire ring stained the stone floor. That seemed like a terrible idea to me, but I guess if you thought getting drunk and having sex in an abandoned mine was a good idea, you probably thought lighting a campfire was too.
The tunnel sloped downward. After a hundred feet or so there was no light from outside and no trash either. The ceiling was so low in places I had to duck. Brian Kerr must have come out with a sore back and a headache every time. Water seeped through cracks and gathered in puddles. There was no way around so I splashed right through, then my shoes were slick, making every step treacherous.
The flashlight caught a glint of something shiny ahead in the darkness. I stared at it. I wasn’t watching my step. I set my foot on a crooked cut of rock and lost my balance.
I fell, slammed my elbow into the wall so hard I yelped and dropped the flashlight. It rolled away and flickered and I thought, for one terrified moment, the filament would break and I would be left in the darkness. But it still glowed with sickly yellow light. I exhaled with relief.
I climbed to my feet, leaning on the wall for balance. I had twisted my ankle, but I could walk.
Uphill was out. Downhill was in. I hadn’t passed any forks or junctions or obstacles. Even if the light died, I could find my way back. Uphill was out.
The flashlight had rolled to a stop against a pile of broken glass, the remains of a large jar. The shards lay like leaves on the tunnel floor, and the curve of the neck rested against the wall. That was the bright reflection that had caught my eye.
I retrieved the flashlight and hurried past.
The second gate was orange with rust, and its iron grid was dented and warped. This time there was no doubt about it: it had been struck from the inside. I knew the hinges would creak when I pushed it open; Brian Kerr had winced every time. One of his victims, an older woman, had laughed at him.
There was a large round rock just outside the gate that had obviously been set there for the purpose of holding it open. I rolled the rock into place and let the gate fall against it.
The scent of the mountain’s exhalations grew stronger as I descended. At first I thought it was only stale air, but it was more than that. It was mold and damp and the dark corners of my grandmother’s cellar where strange flat mushrooms used to grow. Meadow and I had dared each other to poke them with a broom handle, half expecting them to recoil. I kept walking and the smell grew worse, like a sick room closed up for too long, or the unwashed clothes and sour scent you catch when you pass a homeless man on the street and can barely see a human beneath the layers of jackets and sweatshirts as thick as plates of armor.
It was oldness, illness, and sweet fruit rotting in an alley Dumpster. I imagined a garbage dump down there in the darkness, carted in from the surface in wheelbarrows of breaking plastic bags, a thought so absurd laughter bubbled and nearly escaped before I caught it. I gagged and breathed through my mouth, but that only meant I could taste it on my tongue.
So I stopped breathing. It didn’t cut out the smell entirely, but it helped.
I had no sense of how far I was walking. I didn’t know how long I had been underground. The surface could have been a thousand yards or a thousand miles behind me.
Beyond the second gate I found the first skeleton.
It wasn’t a complete skeleton anymore. It was a pile of bones strewn along the tunnel, tangled in scraps of cloth that had once been clothes. Skull, ribs, pelvis, clavicle, the dirty white knobs of a scattered spine. I didn’t recognize the clothes. Whoever it had been, they hadn’t earned a permanent place in Brian Kerr’s memories.
The rotten stench grew stronger with every step. I was looking forward, not down, and I kicked the second skull before I saw it. It skittered down the tunnel like a soccer ball, knocking from side to side, until it stopped against the third skeleton, which wasn’t so much a skeleton as a mummified corpse. Its d
esiccated, blackened flesh pulled away from its teeth in a comical grin. Its arms were reaching uphill, toward me, but somebody had carelessly knocked one of its hands free. It still wore a watch on one wrist. Plastic, pink. There was a darker smear on the dark stone around the body. It didn’t look like a girl anymore. It didn’t look like anything except a corpse.
I stopped counting after that.
I could hear them in the incomplete memories I had taken from Brian Kerr, but I couldn’t match the screams and pleas to the withered corpses and loose bones and dried blood. There was no sound except my footsteps and my own thudding heart, but my mind was a cacophony of fear and anger. A man screamed over and over again that he would do anything, anything, please, anything. A child cried for her father. A young woman shouted a stream of creative expletives until her voice gave out. Hands scrabbled on stone, blood flowed and pooled, and one by one they died.
The third gate looked much like the second: iron, rusted, solid but bent outward. It had been rammed repeatedly, with great force, from the inside. The stench was so strong it made my eyes water and my stomach turn.
There was no body slumped against the gate. I could see Father’s corpse so clearly in Mr. Willow’s memory I was momentarily confused to find it gone, even though it had been more than forty years. The man had collapsed in an ungainly heap and Edward, fourteen years old with blood on his hands, had continued on his own, dragging the box with the creature inside. I had no memory of what he had done with his father’s body.
Beyond the gate there was another jar. This one was unbroken and upright, and after it, marching into the darkness, clusters of them set up against the walls of the tunnel. They were stacked three or four high in places, in squat little pyramids, glass jars of all shapes and sizes. Nothing in Brian Kerr’s or Mr. Willow’s memories told me how the jars had gotten there, and that unsettled me as much as the relentless darkness.
