Uncanny

by David Macinnis Gill

  I’m not really sure what I am, either, I thought. “It sure feels like magic.”

  “It’s called glimpsing. Your ears will ring with a loud noise,” he said. “Your vision will go swimmy, and you’ll black out. When you wake up, some terrible event that just happened will not, in fact, have happened. That’s a glimpse, not magic.”

  “Like when I moved the puck in our hockey game?”

  “You moved a what?”

  “A puck, duh. When Siobhan missed the save and I hit rewind and moved the puck ever so slightly. Don’t look at me like that, okay? I know it’s cheating, I just felt responsible because I screwed up—why do you keep shaking your head?”

  “You couldn’t have done that.”

  “Whatever. I did it. I moved the puck, and we won the game.”

  He rubbed his fingers together as if polishing an unseen coin. “You’ve had other glimpses?”

  “The first was when Devie died.” I pointed out the window. “This morning on the street corner, right in my arms. Then, poof, she was alive. Then she died again after she fell off the motorcycle.”

  “But Devon didn’t fall off.” Harken looked at me, his face expressionless. “Did she?”

  I bit my lip and scratched at a stain on the Formica table. He seemed a little unsure of himself, and I liked it better when he was confident. It made me doubt myself less, and I wanted to believe that he could really bring Devon home.

  “That explains a great deal,” he said. “I thought you were a lesser norn like your father and his fathers before him. Then I saw you shimmer at the hockey game, and I knew you were—”

  “Weird?”

  “Special.”

  “I’ve never been special a single day of my life.”

  “You’ve been special your whole life. Until yesterday, you didn’t know it.”

  “And look what it cost me,” I said “My friends and my sister.”

  “Malleus wants treasure, not Devon,” he said. “I can work out a trade. But we have to tread carefully. The Shadowless is frightened.”

  “She didn’t look afraid to me.”

  He tapped the egg box. “She wanted the object from this case.”

  “It’s a family heirloom, not an object.” An heirloom that I had pawned for rent money. I felt like a bad version of Jack trading the cow for beans, except there were no magic beans to throw out the window. “Why does she want it so much?”

  “There’s something I would like to show you,” he said. “Close your eyes.”

  Trust him. “Whatever,” I said and did as he asked.

  He touched my face. “Concentrate on my voice.”

  “It’s kind of hard not to, since you’re talking.”

  “Do you make everything difficult?”

  “I’m a Conning?”

  He went silent, and I tried to concentrate on not talking or thinking about how long his eyelashes were. Then he whispered again, low and deep and soothing: “In 1692,” Harken said, “Tom Burroughs became jailer of the Salem Town dungeons. Old Tom had lost most of his eyesight, a good deal of his hearing, all of his teeth, which was why the court tapped him for duty.”

  Hard as I tried to comply, my eyes just wouldn’t stay shut. His own eyes were closed, and he was touching a bronze necklace hidden by his hoodie. The metal glowed irresistibly, and I reached out to touch it. The instant I did, his eyes flew open, and he groaned, “No!”

  But it was too late. One second, I was looking into his copper-colored eyes, and the next, I was staring down on a very old building covered with dead leaves and a dusting of snow.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  IN the pitch black of midnight, the Hanging Man walked under a canopy of trees, wind whipped the branches, pulling the fall leaves to the ground. They tumbled along a muddy road and through the gate to Salem Jail and stopped at the feet of a sleepy jailer.

  “Jailer,” the executioner whispered.

  Old Tom leaped to his feet. “Who goes there?”

  “Malleus the Hanging Man,” the executioner replied.

  “You’re about late this evening, sir,” he said. “’Tis almost upon the witching hour.”

  “The midnight bells have yet to toll. Has our apprentice arrived with the rope?”

  “He never did,” Old Tom said. “I’ve seen none of his face.”

  “How could you, when you’ve seen naught but the inside of your eyelids? Unbar the door.”

  Salem Jail sat near the North River and was built of massive oak timbers hewn by hand, measuring twenty-two yards in width and ninety-three yards in length. It was surrounded by a fence, usually unguarded, meant more to protect the prison from animals than to keep prisoners inside. To escape meant execution if captured, so it was seldom attempted, and once a prisoner escaped, where in the hostile wilderness was a good saint to go?

  Old Tom opened the door and grabbed a torch from the sconce. He lit a second lamp, cupping the ember to shield it from the quickening wind. The smoke drifted toward the Hanging Man, and Malleus stopped abruptly.

  “Keep the torch to yourself,” Malleus said. “Our eyes are at home in the shadows.”

  “This way, if it please you,” Old Tom said, holding a torch close. The yellow light cast shadows in the deep craggy lines of his toothless face. “The Reverend Mather has come a-town,” he said. “He’ll be watching the hangings on the morrow. Forgive an old man for speaking plain, but the Conning girl. How can judges send a child of six years to the gallows?”

  “The devil may take a child’s soul as easily as any.”

  “But an innocent girl, sir.”

  “All earthly creatures are born in sin, are they not? Were you not? Should we ask the Reverend Mather to be a-watching you next?”

  The curiosity drained out of Old Tom’s face as he led Malleus into the common room, where four prisoners were held. One stayed in private quarters, wealthy enough to pay for a decent room. Two others were locked into small cells, the roofs too low to let them stand. The jail was frigid in winter, broiling in summer, and infested with lice, rats, and darkness.

  “A prisoner weeps,” Malleus said. “Is it the child?”

  “No, a woman distressed. I’ll hush her, sir.”

  “Nay, do not. Tears make their own sort of music.”

  The sobs came from the fourth woman’s cell. The door stood open, as she had to stand, being too poor to provide for straw bedding.

  “She has to beg a drink,” Old Tom said. “Judge Hathorne allows that thirst helps a confession.”

  As they passed by the cell, the woman moaned for mercy. “Water,” she said.

  “Nothing for you,” Old Tom said, directing Malleus to a narrow hall that led out of the common room.

  “Leave us,” Malleus told the jailer. “Do not return, no matter what you hear. Take the torch with you.”

  “You’ll see naught a foot in front of your face, sir.”

  “We are at home . . . in the darkness.”

  “As you wish, sir,” the jailer said, seeming glad to be dismissed.

  Malleus turned away and removed her mask. She shook loose her long hair, which cascaded over her shoulders. It was rich and black, the color of midnight, the locks like the finest silk. When she had been a weaver of possibilities, she’d used her own hair instead of thread, plucking strands when she needed them, knowing that they would grow back when she slept.

  “You’re a woman?” the prisoner whispered.

  “Masquerading as a man,” Malleus said. “For only men are permitted to use the noose. Do you like our face? Beautiful, is it not? But beauty is the greatest deceiver, and power is the only bed worth sharing.”

  “Harlot!” The parched woman slammed against the bars. She took hold of one bar and pulled, her spindly arms bulging, groaning with the strain, face bloodred with effort. “Deceiver! Murderer!”

  “Be still now,” Malleus said, and the woman fell silent.

  Malleus held a silver cup to the woman’s face, collected the tears, an
d drank them like mulled wine.

  “Oh how sweet the taste of bitter, bitter tears,” said a young man from the dark corridor.

  Malleus shook the last drop into her hungry mouth. “Ah, you have come at least.”

  “You mean at last.”

  “Do we?”

  Malleus grabbed his face and held it ever so close to the torch. Pitch spat at his skin. His name was Harken, a boy she had found wandering and made her familiar. The villagers knew him as the pretty simpleton who went farm-to-farm selling brooms. They let him into their homes, and there he always found what he was seeking—lesser norns whose power Malleus could consume.

  “Is he not handsome, prisoner? So fair a face and yet so dark a heart? Good thing he wears a hood at the hangings, else the maids of Salem Town would go even more mad with lust.”

  “Do you lust only for tears now, master?” Harken asked. “Have you so quickly forgotten the child? Did you not say the blood of a callow Uncanny was the sweetest of all?”

  “Do not mock us, Harken. You are our familiar, and you serve at our pleasure, for our pleasure.”

  Harken bowed low. “Then follow your humble servant, master. I know what you enjoy the most.”

  He led her down another corridor, this one more constricting and darker than the first. He reached the end and unlocked the cell with practiced ease, though he had no key. The door to this cell was hand-hewn oak, thick and heavy, held up by iron barrel hinges.

  The door swung open, and Malleus entered.

  On a pallet of loose straw, a flaxen-haired girl lay. She had bedding and food but was kept in irons. At first she seemed to be sleeping, but her breaths were short and ragged, and she coughed pitifully.

  Malleus bent down and pricked the child’s thumb. She licked the blood from the wound and shuddered. “The taste! The power! Like honey mead on our tongue. Oh, how long we have searched for a child like this! With her blood, we shall become as strong as the Fates! They will know our strength!”

  The child mewled, like a frail kitten curled in a ball, dying in a dark, dank cell, alone.

  “When you die, sweet child,” Malleus said and licked again, “you will go to a special place, where you shan’t be troubled by dreams again . . . eh?” She sniffed and recoiled. “Familiar, what have you done?”

  “Betrayed you, master.” Harken slammed the cell door. “Or should I say, m’lady?”

  “Prattling fool! Why can’t you leave me—oh.”

  Malleus rose, hand drawn back to strike her servant, but when she turned, it was to find three women in white robes instead.

  “Greetings, Sisters,” she said. “Skuld, how fair your face. Urth, how . . . wise you look. And Verth—”

  “Hold your tongue, deceiver,” Urth said. “No more of your lies will we hear.”

  “Lies?” Malleus said. “I have told no falsehoods.”

  “We shall become as strong as the Fates!” Urth said, repeating Malleus’s boast. “Familiar, bring forth the pressing board. Let confession be pressed from her lips.”

  “M’lady, there are no such boards at hand.” Harken turned to the cell door. He pulled the pins from the iron hinges and lifted the heavy door off its barrels. “This one will have to serve.”

  Malleus fell to her knees. “Mercy!”

  “Mercy was asked by every lesser norn you slayed,” Skuld said. “You granted them none and stole their souls. Why should we show it to you?”

  “Stop!” Malleus grabbed the flaxen-haired child by the throat. “Here lies a norn, a child full of great magic. If you loved the cunning folk so much, then let us go, and her life will be spared.”

  “Do you think us fools?” Urth said. “Her blood is tainted. She is bound to you, and even in death, her spirit will be yours to feed on.”

  “Accept your fate,” Skuld demanded.

  “We will suffer no poisoner to live.”

  “No?” With a twist of her hands, Malleus snapped the child’s neck, then bit her own thumb to expose a shimmering thread. “Too late! She is dead, and I shall escape you yet.”

  But before Malleus could bite the thread, Urth grabbed her hand. “Sisters! Bind her! Let her be Unmade!”

  As Verth pinned her to the ground, Skuld drew the thread out of the Shadowless’s thumb. She pulled yard after yard, wrapping it like a skein around Malleus’s outstretched hands. With each inch of gossamer lost, Malleus struggled less and less, until she lay unmoving.

  “Familiar,” Urth commanded, “the pressing board!”

  “M’lady,” Harken said and let the heavy oak door drop on the Shadowless.

  One by one the Sisters stood on the door. The wood groaned from their great weight, and one by one Malleus’s ribs cracked.

  “Familiar, let her be shorn,” Skuld said.

  “No!” Malleus wailed. “Not our beautiful hair!”

  “Yes, mistress,” Harken said and used Malleus’s own shears to chop her hair to the scalp. Where the shears sliced her skin, the blood sizzled, and thick pus oozed out. Then, when Malleus could stand the torture no more, the Sisters demanded her confession.

  “We confess!” Malleus cried. “We have killed hundreds of lesser norns to take their power. You have Unmade us, now spare our life!”

  “Confession may save your life,” Urth said. “But your sins demand a blood price.”

  “The price to be paid in blood,” Skuld said.

  “And your heart made stone,” Verth said.

  “Harken, my child,” Malleus pleaded. “Please. What promises the Sisters have made, I shall reward you the same and twice again.”

  “You cannot promise a clear conscience,” Harken said. “Nor cleanse a twice-rotted soul.”

  At the Sisters’ command, Harken cut out Malleus’s heart and plunged an iron bodkin through it. The heart turned as hard as a diamond, as black as coal, and with that act of betrayal, Harken sealed his fate.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  I jumped as Harken pushed my hands away from his neck. The room seemed brighter than before, and I felt more calm. My thoughts had stopped winding round and round like thread on a bobbin.

  “Wow. That’s one cool magic trick,” I said. “Don’t tell me it’s not magic.”

  “Oh, it’s magical enough,” he said and tried to smirk, but his face wasn’t having it. “But not your magic and not mine. How . . .”

  “How what?”

  “Why did you touch the torc?”

  “Is that a thing? Oh, you mean I wasn’t supposed to?”

  “It was supposed to kill you, like it does—”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “—every other creature that has made contact with it.”

  “And it didn’t kill me.”

  “No, it did not.”

  “That’s good, right? The Fates gave it to you, so maybe it means that they like me?”

  “The Fates don’t like anyone.”

  He picked up his teacup and stared at the leaves in the bottom, as if there were answers hidden in them. I started to take a sip, and he lunged across the table and grabbed my mug.

  “No!” The stoneware shattered in his hand. “You’ve had enough tea for one evening.”

  “Hey! That was my favorite mug.”

  His demeanor changed, along with his expression, and I could almost see him sorting things out. He stared at the broken pieces of the mug, rubbing his chin. Then he leaned toward me, still brooding, until he was uncomfortably close—uncomfortable in a good way that made me feel flushed and warm. “Sorry I broke your favorite,” he said.

  “Nah,” I said and actually laughed before pulling back. “I’m just giving you shit. It came from the dollar store.”

  He smiled.

  Trust him, my dad’s words whispered, and in that moment I decided I could. “So what happened to the casket after that? How did you end up serving my family? Wait, the jailer called that little girl Conning.”

  “The child would be your great-aunt. Eleventh great-aunt, if I recall correctly
.”

  “She died?”

  “The jailer took her body and buried her in a pauper’s grave.”

  “And you helped that monster kill her?”

  “I did no such thing!”

  “How many Connings have you killed?”

  “None!” he said and looked truly hurt by the question, which made me trust him even more. “I vowed to protect your family!”

  “You call this protection?”

  “I helped Malleus hunt norns,” he said. “I admit that, but I drew the line at killing children. The Fates gave me laws to follow: Guard Malleus’s grave. Send the dead to the afterlife. Protect the Conning family. Train any Uncanny born of them. I buried Malleus’s casket in a secret tomb, and if she was discovered, I was to rebury her.” He snapped his fingers. “Too late for that now, eh?”

  “You did this when? Every generation?” I said, looking at him sideways. He looked completely truthful, which made me question him. Guys were always most devilish when they looked like angels.

  I reached for his cup to carry it to the sink, and he reached for my hand.

  I let him take it.

  “I rose every time a Conning reached age sixteen,” he said before letting me go. “To tell the same story I just told you. I warned them to guard the egg with their lives, to never take it out in public, and never let a stranger touch it. Exactly that, nothing more.”

  “Right,” I said and scoffed. “And I’m—”

  “An interdimensional being capable of manipulating time.” He picked up the egg box and turned it over. He had graceful hands, but they were marked with scars on the knuckles. He’d been a fighter and maybe still was. I watched his hands moving, the muscles and tendons and the scars. “Which idea is more fanciful?”

  “I’m a Doctor Who without a Tardis,” I said. “Point taken.”