Uncanny

by David Macinnis Gill

  I tried to brush past her, to keep running, but she was in front of me again, grabbing my light and shining it into my eyes. The beam blinded me for just a few seconds, and when my sight returned, I was facing the same brick wall, tears running down my face.

  The first blow almost took my head off.

  A fist or an elbow to my jaw. My head snapped, and I stumbled back. Raised the pipe but too late. Another blow, lower back. Another. Stomach. Doubling me over. Hard strikes so fast. So hard. My heart pounded. Head roared. Hand holding the pipe reaching into the dark, finding the wall. The wall. Fingers anchored to the bricks, nails digging into loose masonry. Back against it. If I stay against it, nothing can get behind me. Ears ringing. Chest sucking air. Too much noise. Too much breathing. Holy shitbiscuits! Can’t see. Can’t hear. Get your head in the game, Conning! She could be coming. She could be coming.

  Down! I dropped down. A whoosh above me, grinding metal on bricks, sparks exploding where my throat had been. Crawl! Hands and knees on the floor. Low and fast and going for the corridor. Get into the light. How can it be so dark? So black the dark.

  A swoop. A flutter. Down! I flattened myself, cheek on the ground, dirt in my mouth, crawling like a snake, shining my light on Harken. In the cage. Reach the cage. Get inside. Lock her out.

  Another swoop in the shadows, and then she stepped out.

  Between me and Harken.

  Between me and the cage.

  She flicked her shears. Inviting me. Daring me. “Save him”—she preened—“if you can.”

  Can I? Can I save him and myself? What could I do? Charge her? Attack and drive her back? Get inside the cage somehow and hold Harken as he took his last breath? And when he died in my arms, I’d be trapped with him, like a bird, in a cage.

  “Will she? Will she?” she sang. “Will Willow be hanging from the willow hanging tree?”

  I turned off the light. Put the phone in my pocket. Raised the pipe, set my feet to take the hit, and waited.

  In absolute darkness, I breathed in the dank of the room, whiffs of ammonia in the stale air. The charge of ozone from the switchboard. Heard the hum of electricity. The drip of water from the ceiling. Harken breathing, sharp, then quiet, unsteady. Felt the shadows wrap around me as everything went still.

  Then I felt her reach for me.

  Not with her hands but with shadow. She moved into my mind, and I could see myself through her eyes. She stood between me and the cage, barely moving. I was bright in her vision, a pulsing lantern. So small I was, so weak. No use to her except for my power, and soon, oh, soon, she would strip that from me, too. She would chop off my thumbs and hold them in front of Harken as she rammed her shears through his chest. Then she would have her vengeance. In the meantime there was nothing wrong with a little cat and mouse. So easy. It would be so easy to kill me now. She moved closer at the anticipation of it. Shears instead of a fist. Stabbing through the kidneys. Watch me bleed to death. She licked her lips. That she would enjoy. Oh. So much.

  “Bitch!” I yelled and swung because I could see her now, see her as clearly as she saw me.

  The clang of a pipe against a skull was sweet. Metal hit bone and vibrated all the way up my arm, and I did not give a shit. I hit her again and again, driving her back, away from the cage, away from Harken. Each blow stung my arms, and my ears were ringing with it, and I was screaming, not even words, just sounds of rage.

  My next swing missed. Momentum carried me forward, and even as I realized that I hadn’t missed, that she had dissipated again, I heard the cage door swing open. Then the sounds of struggle and a whistling noise. Her? Was it her? Had I put a hole in her deep enough to kill her?

  The whistling turned to moaning, and I knew that I was wrong.

  “Willow Jane,” Harken gasped.

  Malleus held him by the throat. Standing outside the cage, holding him in the air, a proud hunter showing off a fresh kill. “Such a pretty songbird.” She shook him, a rag doll. “Would you still defend him if you knew he betrayed you, as he betrayed us?”

  I inched toward her. Distract her, I thought, till you’re close enough. “Malleus the Deceiver, that’s what the Sisters called you. Or was it undead ugly bitch? I get confused.”

  She looked at Harken, almost affectionately. “This is your hero?”

  “He sacrificed himself to save my sister.” Closer. The pipe tight against my leg. Closer. “If he did evil, it was for you.”

  “What would you know of evil?” Malleus dropped Harken, simply dropped him, and put her knee to his head. His skin had turned blue, and he was mouthing something as she pressed, hand on his throat, shears raised. “Any sins to confess, familiar?”

  “Don’t do it,” I warned her. This close.

  “Wish . . . I’d never . . . laid eyes . . . on you,” Harken said, choking.

  “If wishes were horses,” Malleus said and plunged the shears into his gut.

  “Harken! No!”

  Harken was laughing. The shears had not missed—the blades were buried inside him—and he was laughing. “Want. Your. Precious heart?” With a jerk of his hand, he sent the egg rolling toward me. “Fetch.”

  The egg tumbled across the bricks like a malformed obsidian marble. I scooped it up. It was warm, and I felt a heartbeat. My pulse? Or the egg?

  She yanked the shears free and flew at me so fast I fell backward, and she was on me, reaching for my throat. I whacked her hand with the pipe, then drove my boots into her stomach. Rolled to my feet, but Harken was suddenly between us. His arms flew wide, right before the shears sank into his chest again. The tips emerged through his back. Malleus pulled them out, and his body crumpled.

  “Harken!” I screamed and caught him as he fell, taking us both to the ground. I pushed the hair away from his face. “Please.”

  “Don’t fret,” he gasped, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. “I’ve lived . . . too long already.”

  “You lived too long a coward,” Malleus said, mocking him. “You die a fool, and your spirit is forever mine.”

  “Kill her,” he said so softly. “Father . . . told you . . . how.”

  “It’s just a freaking poem!”

  “Willow Jane . . . Conning.” He reached for me. “I have your . . . name.”

  He looked into my eyes one last time. Light wept out of him, shimmering and floating, even as Malleus yanked his body out of my grasp. The bronze torc slipped from his neck and clattered to the ground. His body seemed transparent, almost as if he were evaporating with each passing second. His spirit was moving from this world into the next. The only thing that seemed to hold it here was Malleus, who was gripping his thumbs so tightly.

  “Please, no,” I said, getting to my feet and limping toward her, carrying the egg in one hand and the pipe in the other. Harken had sacrificed himself for me, and I couldn’t let Malleus take him. “Let his soul go free, and I’ll give you the egg.”

  Malleus snapped the blades at his thumbs. “Too late! The familiar is bound for the Shadowlands.”

  Not if I could help it. “Come on, Malleus. Take the thing you yearn for.” I raised the egg. “Let Harken go, and I’ll give you what you offered me—eternity.”

  She cocked her head, eyes darting.

  “Choose,” I demanded.

  “Why choose?” she said. “Together we can rule the past, the present, and the future. We can have control of life and death itself! You must only seize the power!”

  Control of life and death? I saw my father lying on the popcorn and soda stained carpet in the movie theatre, the house lights reflecting in the dark blood blooming from his chest. I saw his eyes go wide and heard his teeth chatter. I held his hand and repeated, “Don’t die, don’t die, hang on, hang on.” But he couldn’t, and he died in pain and afraid with my fingers intertwined with his. My father’s blood was on my hands. Bringing him back to life would change nothing. I thought about Harken’s warning about raising the dead, of my sister in a coma, of Kelly hanging from the ceil
ing and smelling like a moldy newspaper. If I gave in to Malleus, their lives would be spent forever in the shadows.

  Kill her, he had said. My father had told me how. Had he? I looked down at my coat where the iron needle was still safely tucked in my lapel. Why?

  “Tempting, is it not?” she said, as if she knew my deepest yearning. “Give us the egg and step into the shadows, where you can truly live.”

  “Release him first,” I said. “You destroyed his life. You can’t take his soul, too.”

  “As you wish.” Malleus released his hands and dropped her bloody shears. The last of Harken’s body dissolved into light. The only thing that remained was the bronze torc resting on the ground. “Now ends his sleep of Shadowless.”

  “His what?” I said. To end the sleep of Shadowless. Weave silver twixt her eyes. The poem! The needle! Yes! That was it! That’s what Dad was trying to tell me!

  “The egg,” Malleus said.

  “The egg,” I said and, backing toward the switchboard cage, tossed it.

  Malleus clawed the air frantically as the egg arced and fell toward her, as if it would never come. Her eyes went wide, so wide, and she cupped her hands to catch it. The fire behind her irises burned, and she licked her lips in anticipation as it fell softly into her palms.

  She lifted the egg triumphantly, ecstatically.

  A wave of electric darkness swept over her. She laughed, and her flesh began to regenerate around her bones. Patches of skin stretched tight over her face, and the straggling strands of silver hair that speckled her head grew thicker, longer, and darker.

  “Spontaneous regeneration?” I said. “Seriously? What’s next?”

  “For you?” Malleus said. “Agony and death.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, biting my thumb and pulling a strand of gossamer long enough to maybe kill me. “Cause death is what’s next for you.”

  “Are you a fool, little one?” A thin, forked tongue darted from Malleus’s mouth, and her eyes narrowed, her regenerating body trembling with ecstasy. “Weaving gossamer in my presence?”

  To end the sleep of Shadowless. “Want a taste?” I said, backing into the chain link. “Come get it.”

  She couldn’t help herself. The gossamer was driving her mad with desire, and she shuffled after me, her face rapt, mesmerized by the glistening strand that clung to my thumb. Praying that this was what Harken had tried to tell me, I plucked the long bodkin needle from my coat and threaded the gossamer through its broad eye.

  “The last time we ate gossamer,” Malleus said, “your little dead girl died.”

  She laughed, and something inside me snapped. I forgot the gash on my neck, the pains in my back, the blows she had given me, and I rammed my left shoulder into her chest. She fell backward, but I grabbed her shroud and swung her around, pushing her back against the switchboard cage. I drove an elbow into her temple and snapped her head back. With the noise of metal threads shearing off, the chain-link gate swung inward, and Malleus fell hard against the row of knife switches.

  “Get up,” I said and followed her inside.

  Her flesh was almost whole, her hair as wild and thorny as a blackberry bush. She was more ravishing than Harken had said, her beauty seemingly fed by the egg in her hand.

  I paused there, perched between the cage and the tunnel. My head was pounding, and I heard ringing from far off, like a church bell. She smiled and started moving a hand to her rib cage—the hand with the heart.

  “No!” I screamed, and before the heart reached her chest, I grabbed a handful of feathered hair and slammed her head against the box.

  Again.

  And again.

  “Stop,” she croaked. “Please.”

  And again. Until her eyes rolled back. Then I slapped her arm against the switchboard and stabbed her with the bodkin, piercing both her hand and the heart.

  The obsidian cracked.

  Malleus let out a low, deep moan and fought to free her hand, but she could not. She could not. Weave silver twixt her eyes. I wrapped the gossamer from her hand to her face. Watched it eat through her skin, a wick dipped in acid. Her new flesh began to molt, dripping like wax from her lovely face.

  “My face,” she moaned. “My beautiful face.”

  “Sucks to be you,” I said. There was nothing left but to cut the thread. I picked up the tailor’s shears.

  “Stop! Do not cut the thread, we beg you,” Malleus mewled. “You shall be damned to eternal life without kin, without a future, without hope.”

  “But you’ll be dead, and I can live with that.”

  “Do not make this choice! You shall be Unmade!”

  “No,” I said, suddenly so weary I could hardly stand. “You’re Unmade.”

  Cut gossamer threads with sparks coalesced. With a quiet snick, I cut the gossamer.

  The whole switchboard hummed, and the hair on my arms stood straight up. As I jumped back, sparks flew through the air, and liquid steel poured through the gossamer.

  Malleus became an inferno. Her shroud turned to ash, and the fire spread to her hair, then skin, as she began to melt like a tallow candle.

  “Sister,” Malleus rasped with her last breath as one eye rolled back into her head. “Have mercy.”

  “I’m so not your sister, bitch,” I said and licked my thumb.

  My hand jerked back as if I had grabbed a live wire. My spine arched, and I heard a sound like a train in a tunnel, and then for a few seconds the lights whipped around and around. With the familiar rush of sounds and color, I fell out of the glimpse.

  And the Shadowless shall die.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  ALL that that was left of Malleus was an ash-black skeleton.

  “I never did like loose ends,” I said, shaking from the glimpse, and picked up the bronze torc.

  The metal felt cold in my hand. I started to put it around my own neck. To wear it like Harken had, when blood started pouring from my nose. I struggled to breathe as I staunched the flow with Harken’s handkerchief. I’m coming Unmade, I thought. I had cut the gossamer, and now I would suffer the consequences. My life would be eternal. Maybe I could no longer glimpse, but my sister would live, and I had kept my promise to my father.

  Rubbing the cold metal in my hands, I turned to go and gasped. Three tall women in white robes loomed over me. The hems of the robes reached the floor, and their sleeves covered their hands. Their faces were hidden by their hoods, but not their silver hair, which looked like gossamer.

  “Sisters?” I whispered.

  “Uncanny,” they said in unison.

  “I am Urth.”

  “I am Skuld.”

  “I am Verth.”

  “Um, I’m Willow Jane? The Uncanny, I guess,” I said. “Are you here for Malleus?”

  “The Shadowless is no more,” Urth said.

  “But,” I said and held up the torc, “what about Harken?”

  Skuld pointed at me. “To the family of the flaxen child he was yoked, spirit to sprit, until the day the Uncanny should return.”

  “The torc that bound him was removed,” Verth said. “His soul has been reconciled.”

  “So it is written,” the Sisters chanted. “So it is done.”

  “But that’s not fair,” I said. “He sacrificed himself for me and my sister. I wanted him . . . to live.”

  “Time and fate have no concern for your desires,” Urth said, her voice cold and distant.

  “Because I’m Unmade, right?” I said and made air quotes. “Damned to an eternal life, whatever the hell that means,” I said. “What happens to me now?”

  “A long life, perhaps, but not eternal,” she scoffed. “The price you paid is losing your power.” Then her demeanor changed, and her voice softened. “Yet we are not heartless ourselves. Name one boon of us, and it shall be done.”

  “A boon? Like a favor?”

  They nodded, and their gossamer hair glistened in the light. It reminded me of my thumb and the power that I’d given away to
beat Malleus. I could ask for it back. Having the power to manipulate time could come in handy, once I mastered it.

  Or I could cut to the chase and ask for my birthday wish to be answered: My dad to be alive, to be father and husband again. To wake up in the morning and have him cooking breakfast, singing at the top of his lungs, to wrap his arms around me and make me safe again.

  It was a sweet dream but impossible. My wish couldn’t be selfish. If I’d learned one thing, it was that selfish wishes always went bad.

  “The souls lost in the Shadowlands,” I said. “Bring them back. Bring them all back.”

  The Sisters were silent. Some unseen breeze rippled their white gowns as they leaned close to one another. For a moment, I thought they would deny my wish and tell me to choose something more doable.

  Then they all three bowed. “So it is written,” they chanted. “So it is done.”

  The torc turned warm. Fireflies of lights danced from the metal, wrapping around my hand, and my fingertips spat light like sparklers. The sparks multiplied, gathered themselves like a swarm in the air. Then the swarm seemed to pulse. The light turned solid, then died out, leaving behind a human with a very familiar face.

  “Harken,” I whispered.

  Harken smiled at me but didn’t speak, so I nodded and smiled back. What could I say that meant more?

  “Where’s Devon?” I asked the Sisters.

  “The child has returned to where she belongs,” Urth said. “The rest must go onward.”

  “The rest?” I said. “And what do you mean, to where she belongs? Home?”

  “The rest must go onward,” Urth said again.

  Sparks crackled again. From out of the veil stepped Will Patrick, Flanagan, and Kelly. None of them spoke, but they all opened their hands.

  “What do they want?” I asked.

  “Although you freed them,” she said, “they cannot continue the journey yet.”

  “Can’t go on? Why?”

  “They must pay for their passage,” she said.

  Harken rubbed his fingers together, then opened his hand.