“I’ve met the majority of Augustus’ American friends. He enjoys putting them on display.”
“Mrs. Corning—”
“Not Mrs.,” she said. “This is a house of spinsters. I’m Carling. You’ll not encounter Groa and Vilborg, alas. Come inside from this hateful sunlight. I’ll make you a pudding.” She hesitated and looked Vernon north to south and then smiled an unpleasant little smile that made me happy for some reason. “Your friend can take his ease out here under the magnolia. We don’t allow pets in the cottage.”
“Shut up,” I said to Vernon when he opened his mouth to argue.
Carling led me into the dim interior of the bungalow and barred the door. The air was sour and close. Meat hooks dangled from low rafter beams and forced me to stoop lest I whack my skull. An iron cauldron steamed and burbled upon the banked coals of a hearth. A wide plank table ran along the wall. The table was scarred. I noted an oversized meat cleaver stuck into a plank near a platter full of curdled blood. The floor was filthy. I immediately began to reassess the situation and kept my coat open in case I needed to draw my pistol in a hurry.
“Shakespearean digs you’ve got here, Ma’am,” I said as I brushed dead leaves from a chair and sat. “No thanks on the pudding, if you don’t mind.”
“Your hand is broken. And you seem to be missing a portion of your ear. Your father didn’t get into such trouble.”
“He got himself dead, didn’t he?”
In the next room, a baby cried briefly. Spinsters with a baby. I didn’t like it. My belly hurt and my ear throbbed in time with my spindled fingers and I wondered, the thought drifting out of the blue, if she could smell the blood soaking my undershirt.
Carling’s left eye drooped in either a twitch or a wink. She rummaged in a cabinet and then sprinkled a pinch of what appeared to be tea leaves into a cloudy glass. Down came a bottle of something that gurgled when she shook it. She poured three fingers into the glass and set it before me. Then she leaned against the counter and regarded me, idly drumming her fingers against her thigh. “We weren’t expecting you. However, your appearance isn’t particularly a surprise. Doubtless the magician expressed his good will by revealing Conrad Paxton’s designs upon you. The magician was sincerely fond of your father. He fancies himself an urbane and sophisticated man. Such individuals always have room for one or two brutes in their menagerie of acquaintances.”
“That was Dad, all right,” I said and withdrew a cigarette, pausing before striking the match until she nodded. I smoked for a bit while we stared at one another.
“I’ll read your fortune when you’ve finished,” she said indicating the glass of alcohol and the noisome vapors drifting forth. In the bluish light her features seemed more haggard and vulpine than they had in the bright, clean sunshine. “Although, I think I can guess.”
“Where’s Groa and Vilborg?” I snapped open the Korn switchblade I carried in the breast pocket of my shirt and stirred the thick dark booze with the point. The knife was a small comfort, but I was taking it where I could find it.
“Wise, very wise to remember their names, Johnny, may I call you Johnny?—and to utter them. Names do have power. My sisters are in the cellar finishing the task we’d begun prior to this interruption. You have us at a disadvantage. Were it otherwise . . . But you lead a charmed life, don’t you? There’s not much chance of your return after this, more is the pity.”
“What kind of task would that be?”
“The dark of the moon is upon us tonight. We conduct a ritual of longevity during the reaping season. It requires the most ancient and potent of sacrifices. Three days and three nights of intense labor, of which this morning counts as the first.”
“Cutting apart a hapless virgin, are we?”
Carling ran her thumbnail between her front teeth. A black dog padded into the kitchen from the passage that let from the living room where the cries had emanated and I thought perhaps it had uttered the noise. The dog’s eyes were yellow. It was the length and mass of a Saint Bernard, although its breed suggested that of a wolf. The dog smiled at me. Carling spoke a guttural phrase and unbarred the door and let it out. She shut the door and pressed her forehead against the frame.
“How do you know Paxton?” I said, idly considering her earlier comment about banning pets from the house.
“My sisters and I have ever been great fans of Eadweard’s photography. Absolute genius, and quite the conversationalist. I have some postcards he sent us from his travels. Very thoughtful in his own, idiosyncratic way. Quite loyal to those who showed the same to him. Conrad is Eadweard Muybridge’s dead wife’s son, a few minutes the elder of his brother, Florado. The Paxtons took him to replace their own infant who’d died at birth the very night Muybridge’s boys came into the world. Florado spent his youth in the institution. No talent to speak of. Worthless.”
“But there must’ve been some question of paternity in Muybridge’s mind. He left them to an institution in the first place. Kind of a rotten trick, you ask me.”
“Eadweard tried to convince himself the children were the get of that retired colonel his wife had been humping.”
“But they weren’t.”
“Oh, no—they belonged to Eadweard.”
“Yet, one remained at the orphanage, and Conrad was adopted. Why did Muybridge come back into the kid’s life? Guilt? Couldn’t be guilt since he left the twin to rot.”
“You couldn’t understand. Conrad was special, possessed of a peculiar darkness that Eadweard recognized and later, after traveling in Central America doing goddess knows what. The boy was key to something very large and very important. We all knew that. Don’t ask and I’ll tell you no lies. Take it up with Conrad when you see him.”
“I don’t believe Paxton murdered my father,” I said. The baby in the other room moaned and I resisted the urge to look in that direction.
“Oh, then this is a social call? I would’ve fixed my hair, naughty boy.”
“I’m here because he sent a pair of guns after me in Seattle. I didn’t appreciate the gesture. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe he did blip my father. Two reasons to buzz him. Helios says you know the book on this guy. So, I come to you before I go to him.”
“Reconnaissance is always wisest. Murder is not precisely what occurred. Conrad drained your father’s life energy, siphoned it away via soul taking. You know of what I speak—photography, if done in a prescribed and ritualistic manner, can steal the subject’s life force. This had a side consequence of effecting Mr. Cope’s death. To be honest, Conrad didn’t do it personally. He isn’t talented in that area. He’s a dilettante of the black arts. He had it done by proxy, much the way your employer Mr. Arden has you do the dirty work for him.”
She was insane, obviously. Barking mad and probably very dangerous. God alone knew how many types of poison she had stashed up her sleeve. That cauldron of soup was likely fuming with nightshade, and my booze . . . I pushed it aside and brushed the blade against my pants leg. “Voodoo?” I said, just making conversation, wondering if I should rough her up a bit, if that was even wise, what with her dog and the naked guy roaming around. No confidence in Vernon whatsoever.
“There are many faiths at the crossroads here in the Hollow,” Carling said, bending to stir the pot and good god her shoulders were broad as a logger’s. “Voodoo is not one of them. I can’t tell you who did in your father, only that it was done and that Conrad ordered it so. I recommend you make haste to the Paxton estate and do what you do best—rub the little shit out before he does for you. He tried once, he’ll definitely take another crack at it.”
“Awfully harsh words for your old chum,” I said to her brawny backside. “Two of you must have had a lovers’ quarrel.”
“He’s more of a godson. I don’t have a problem with Conrad. He’s vicious and vengeful and wants my head on a stick, but I don’t hold that against him in the slightest.”
“Then why are you so interested in seeing him get blipped?”
; “You seem like a nice boy, Johnny.” Carling turned slowly and there was something amiss with her face that I couldn’t quite figure out. That nasty grin was back, though. “Speaking of treachery and violence, that other fellow you brought is no good. I wager he’ll bite.”
“Think so?” I said. “He’s just along for the ride.”
“Bah. Let us bargain. Leave your friend with us and I’ll give you a present. I make knick-knacks, charms, trinkets and such. What you really need if you’re going to visit the Paxton estate is a talisman to ward off the diabolic. It wouldn’t do to go traipsing in there as you are.”
“I agree. I’ll be sure to pack a shotgun.”
She cackled. Actually and truly cackled. “Yes, yes, for the best. Here’s a secret few know—I wasn’t always a spinster. In another life I traveled to India and China and laid with many, many men, handsomer than you even. They were younger and unspoiled. I nearly, very, very nearly married a rich Chinaman who owned a great deal of Hainan.”
“Didn’t work out, eh? Sorry to hear it, Ms. Corning.”
“He raised monkeys. I hate monkeys worse than Christ.” She went through the door into the next room and I put my hand on the pistol from reflex and perhaps a touch of fear, but she returned with nothing more sinister than a shriveled black leaf in her open palm. Not a leaf, I discovered upon receiving it, but a dry cocoon. She dropped it into my shirt pocket, just leaned over and did it without asking, and up close she smelled of spice and dirt and unwashed flesh.
“Thanks,” I said recoiling from the proximity of her many large, sharp teeth.
“Drink your whiskey and run along.”
I stared at the glass. It smelled worse than turpentine.
“Drink your fucking whiskey,” she said.
And I did, automatic as you please. It burned like acid.
She snatched the empty glass and regarded the constellation of dregs at the bottom. She grinned, sharp as a pickaxe. “He’s throwing a party in a couple of nights. Does one every week. Costumes, pretty girls, rich trappers and furriers, our rustic nobility. It augers well for you to attend.”
I finally got my breath back. “In that case, the furriers’ ball it is.”
She smiled and patted my cheek. “Good luck. Keep the charm on your person. Else . . . ” She smiled sadly and straightened to her full height. “Might want to keep this visit between you and me.”
Vernon was missing when I hit the street. The cab driver shrugged and said he hadn’t seen anything. No reason not to believe him, but I dragged him by the hair from the car and belted him around some on the off chance he was lying. Guy wasn’t lying, though. There wasn’t any way I’d go back into that abattoir of a cottage to hunt for the lost snowbird, so I decided on a plausible story to tell the boys. Vernon was the type slated to end it face down in a ditch, anyway. Wouldn’t be too hard to sell the tale and frankly, watching Bly stew and fret would be a treat.
Never did see Vernon again.
Dick and Bly hadn’t gotten very close to the Paxton mansion. The estate was guarded by a bramble-covered stone wall out of “Sleeping Beauty,” a half mile of wildwood and overgrown gardens, then croquet courses, polo fields, and a small barracks that housed a contingent of fifteen or so backwoods thugs armed with shotguns and dogs. God alone knew where Paxton had recruited such a gang. I figured they must be either locals pressed into service or real talent from out of state. No way to tell without tangling with them, though.
Dick had cased the joint with field glasses and concluded a daylight approach would be risky as hell. Retreat and regrouping seemed the preferable course, thus we decided to cool our heels and get skunk drunk.
The boys had caught wind of a nasty speakeasy in a cellar near Belson Creek in neighboring Olde Towne. A girl Bly had picked up in the parking lot of Luster’s one and only hardware store claimed men with real hard bark on them hung around there. Abigail and Bly were real chummy, it seemed, and he told her we were looking to put the arm on a certain country gentleman. The girl suggested low-at-the-heel scoundrels who tenanted the dive might be helpful.
The speakeasy was called Satan’s Bung and the password at the door was Van Iblis, all of this Dick had discovered from his own temporary girls, Wanda and Clementine, which made me think they’d spent most of the day reconnoitering a watering hole rather than pursuing our mission with any zeal. In any event, we sashayed into that den of iniquity with sweet little chippies who still had most of their teeth, a deck of unmarked cards, and a bottle of sour mash. There were a few tough guys hanging around, as advertised; lumberjacks in wool coats and sawdust-sprinkled caps and cork boots; the meanest of the lot even hoisted his axe onto the bar. One gander at my crew and they looked the other way right smartly. Some good old boys came down from the hills or out of the swamp, hitched their overalls and commenced to picking banjos, banging drums, and harmonizing in an angelic chorus that belied their sodden, bloated, and warty features, their shaggy beards and knurled scalps. They clogged barefoot, stamping like bulls ready for battle.
Dick, seven sails to the wind, wondered aloud what could be done in the face of determined and violent opposition entrenched at the Paxton estate and I laughed and told him not to worry too much, this was a vacation. Relax and enjoy himself—I’d think of something. I always thought of something.
Truth of it was, I’d lost a bit of my stomach for the game after tea and cake at the Corning Sisters’ house and the resultant disappearance of Vernon. If it hadn’t been for the rifling of my home, the attack by The Long and The Short, the mystery of whether Paxton really bopped Dad would’ve remained a mystery. Thus, despite my reassurances to the contrary, I wasn’t drinking and plotting a clever plan of assault or infiltration of the estate, but rather simply drinking and finagling a way to get my ashes hauled by one of the chippies.
One thing led to another, a second bottle of rotgut to a third, and Clementine climbed into my lap and nuzzled my neck and unbuttoned my pants and slipped her hand inside. Meanwhile a huge man in a red and black-checkered coat and coonskin cap pranced, nimble as a Russian ballerina, and wheedled a strange tune on a flute of lacquered black ivory. This flautist was a hirsute, wiry fellow with a jagged visage hacked from a stone, truly more beast than man by his gesticulations and the manner he gyrated his crotch, thrusting to the beat, and likely the product of generations of inbreeding, yet he piped with an evil and sinuous grace that captured the admiration of me, my companions, the entire roomful of seedy and desperate characters. The lug seemed to fixate upon me, glaring and smirking as he clicked his heels and puffed his cheeks and capered among the tables like a faun.
I conjectured aloud as to his odd behavior, upon which Dick replied in a slur that if I wanted him to give the bird a thrashing, just make the sign. My girl, deep into her cups, mumbled that the flautist was named Dan Blackwood, last scion of a venerable Ransom Hollow family renowned as hunters and furriers without peer, but these days runners of moonshine. A rapist and murderer who’d skated out of prison by decree of the prince of Darkness Hissownself, or so the fireside talk went. A fearful and loathsome brute, his friends were few and of similar malignant ilk and were known as the Blackwood Boys. Her friend Abigail, paused from licking Bly’s earlobe to concur.
Dan Blackwood trilled his oddly sinister tune while a pair of hillbillies accompanied him with banjo and fiddle and a brawny lad with golden locks shouldered aside the piano player and pawed the ivories to create a kind of screeching cacophony not unlike a train wreck while the paper lanterns dripped down blood-red light and the cellar audience clenched into a tighter knot and swayed on their feet, their stools and stumps, stamping time against the muddy floor. From that cacophony a dark and primitive rhythm emerged as each instrument fell into line with its brother and soon that wattled and toad-like orchestra found unity with their piper and produced a song that put ice in my loins and welded me to my seat. Each staccato burst from the snare drum, each shrill from the flute, each discordant clink from the piano,
each nails on slate shriek of violin and fiddle, pierced my brain, caused a sweet, agonizing lurch of my innards, and patient Clementine jerked my cock, out of joint, so to speak.
The song ended with a bang and a crash and the crowd swooned. More tunes followed and more people entered that cramped space and added to the sensation we were supplicants or convicts in a special circle of hell, such was the ripe taint of filthy work clothes and matted hair and belched booze like sulfurous counterpoint to the maniacal contortions of the performers, the rich foul effluvium of their concert.
During an intermission, I extricated myself from industrious Clementine and made my way up the stairs into the alley to piss against the side of the building. The darkness was profound, moonless as Carling had stated, and the stars were covered by a thin veil of cloud. Despite my best efforts, I wasn’t particularly impaired and thus wary and ready for trouble when the door opened and a group of men, one bearing a lantern that oozed the hideous red glow, spilled forth and mounted the stairs. The trio stopped at the sight of me and raised the lantern high so that it scattered a nest of rats into the hinder of the lane. I turned to face them, hand on pistol, and I smiled and hoped Dick or Bly might come tripping up the steps at any moment.
But there was no menace evinced by this group, at least not aimed at me. The leader was the handsome blond lad who’d hammered the piano into submission. He saluted me with two fingers and said, “Hey, now city feller. My name’s Candy. How’n ya like our burg?” The young man didn’t wait for an answer, but grunted at his comrades, the toad-like fiddler and banjo picker who might’ve once been conjoined and later separated with an axe blow, then said to me in his thick, unfamiliar accent, “So, chum, the telegraph sez you in Ransom Holler on dirty business. My boss knows who yer gunnin’ for and he’d be pleased as punch to make yer acquaintance.”
“That’s right civilized. I was thinking of closing this joint down, though . . . ”
“Naw, naw, ol’ son. Ya gotta pay the piper round this neck of the woods.”
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2013 Edition Page 66
