Slasher Girls & Monster Boys

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  “You’re not trying to take what’s mine, are you, Mowich?”

  “No,” Mowich said.

  Sain laughed, and with his free hand he grabbed Nara by the wrist, yanking her toward him.

  “Let her go,” Mowich said to his brother.

  “From now on she stays with me,” Sain said. “She—”

  Nara slipped from his grasp and started running. But Sain, his face a grimace of rage, was on her heels. Mowich sprinted after them, but stopped just as suddenly. Nara ran not away but toward the others—toward her prison.

  “Nara, no!” he called, scrambling up the slope to the clearing. But when she came into view again, he found himself struggling to take in the sight. Sain was a good distance from her, entranced by what could only be called a transformation. She stood at the very center of the ring of trees, and although she was still small, there issued from her an unmistakable power, strange and pulsating. She seemed capable of stirring the depths of earth with a movement of her hand.

  “What’s she doing?” one of the Fairlish twins called.

  They all grew quiet, and as if pulled, started walking toward her.

  “What are you doing, girl?” Sain called to her, his voice low and careful.

  She closed her eyes and bent her head forward. She spoke quiet words in a foreign tongue, her lips moving, and then with a slow, graceful gesture, she raised her hands in a circle over her head.

  “She’s crazy,” laughed one of the twins as he quickened his pace, closing in on her.

  But Mowich knew better. It was a sacred tongue she spoke, a powerful tongue, and the song she sang was the shaman’s song. This girl was no ordinary girl.

  “Stay away from her,” he tried to warn. But then something rose up behind the Fairlish twin, something dark and taller than any man. Mowich tried to call out again, but the words stuck in his throat. Whatever it was, this thing, it was made of shadow, made of night. It seemed to ache and swell as it rose up ever higher, its opacity splitting the moonlight like a knife. Mowich backed away. “Behind you!” he finally managed to call out. The twin sneered, but it was enough to make him look over his shoulder, and as he did and saw the darkness swelling up behind him, he went utterly still.

  Mowich turned. He meant to warn Nara, but she stood staring down into the snow as if she could see the future there.

  “Nara?” His voice broke.

  Slowly, she raised her eyes to him.

  “Run,” she said. “Run now.”

  He didn’t. He couldn’t. He was unable to tear his eyes from the monstrous shadow come alive. Looking at it was like looking into the face of God.

  It began to undulate, moving forward, fast now. It wrapped its inky darkness around the Fairlish boy until he seemed almost to vanish. There was a sound like tendons popping, a gurgled scream, and then nothing but blood puddled at the foot of the darkness, a crimson stain glinting in the swell of the moonlight, soaking the snow.

  High above Mowich and the others, an icy wind screamed through the trees.

  And then it started.

  Four more shadows rising, five in all. The Five. The Ones Who Stand Still. Called from deep inside the core of the earth. Called forth for the rite.

  The others were screaming, suddenly stirred, but Sain was staring at Nara, his face blank. And then, ignoring the towering darkness descending upon him, he pulled out his knife. Raising it high above he head, he rushed at her, a terrible screech rising from his pitch-stained soul.

  Nara did not flinch. She closed her eyes. Behind her lids, she saw snow falling on fields of green, saw the dream she’d held in her heart since birth.

  But then the sound of a struggle.

  She opened her eyes to see Sain on the ground, Mowich above him, the knife now in his hand. “No!” she screamed, too late. She watched Mowich slit Sain’s throat with one clean stroke.

  Mowich dropped the blade into the snow and struggled away from the body. He looked at her with haunted eyes, a brother’s blood now upon his hands. “He was going to kill you,” he said.

  “No,” she cried out as the shadows grew taller, grew closer. “You were supposed to run. I told you to run!”

  Mowich looked at her, lost. And then he saw the five shadows. The one now sated, the puddle of blood at its feet, stood still. The four others moved in silence, closing in. Five shadows. Five boys. And as the shadow meant for Sain grew ever nearer, Mowich understood. He looked at her with terrified eyes.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh god,” he gasped as the darkness enfolded him. Around him the others’ screams rose in the air like smoke. Nara looked away as the creatures began to feed.

  × × ×

  The Hunter found her at the center of the circle of blood. She was on her knees, face in her hands. The shadows, their offering accepted, stood still and tall, inert. He approached with his hunting knife.

  “I don’t want to fight you, old man,” she said, her voice so calm and clear, it gave him pause. “You can put away your blade.”

  He stood still, his eyes trained on her. A shaman girl, able to sing out the darkness, to call it forth in dreams of snow and make it do her bidding. A forbidden rite, one her people had officially renounced long ago. It was the duty of the Hunter’s people to see that hers kept their word. It was his job to rain down justice when they did not.

  “You can come easy, or you can die right here in the snow,” he said.

  She nodded once. “What’s done is done. I have no reason to fight. I will come with you. I will face the punishment.”

  “They were only boys,” he said, looking around at the carnage, and then he spat. “Stalked them and killed them, you did. Offered them up like meat.”

  “They were no innocents. I made sure of that when I called them here, when I sent the vision. If their souls had been pure, they wouldn’t have answered. Yes, I stalked and killed them, but what were they going to do to me?”

  The Hunter grunted. “Blood sacrifice is blood sacrifice. Your people have been warned before.”

  She nodded. “There is no use in upbraiding me. It is done. The spirits have received their offering, and they’ve granted my prayer. The weeds will grow. The girls will live. Order is restored and bloodshed and war will not come to my people. I have protected them all as I was sworn at birth to do.” She hesitated as if struggling past some difficult emotion. “And . . . and I can give my father the message. Our oath is completed and he can rest. We all can rest.”

  He knew her father. He’d had to spill the old shaman’s blood the previous spring. The Hunter ran his finger along the row of smooth white teeth.

  “You should know better, a girl like you. The darkness must stay hidden, must be kept separate. Your ancestors paid the price for mixing with those devils. Driven mad, driven to feast upon one another’s flesh.”

  She nodded. “But you will take them now, won’t you?” She looked up at him. “You will take them. Bury them deep in the ice so they can do no more harm?”

  “Aye,” he said. And then he looked around at the bloodshed, and shook his head. “And then I take you to your judgment.”

  Keeping the girl in his sights, he set his case on the ground and undid the latches. Next to the blades, five glass bottles, each stoppered with rough cork. He pulled on the heavy work gloves. Slowly, methodically, he did what he’d been trained to do. Carefully, he collected them, luring each into its bottle, careful not to look too deeply into their quicksilver eyes as they pulled in, shrank down, accepting their confines.

  When he had finished his task, he latched the heavy metal box and removed his gloves. His blade in his hand, he looked at the shaman child. She would meet her punishment with chin held high. He shook his head and put his knife away, and offered her his hand. He had to admire her courage, i
f nothing else.

  He helped her to her feet, his hands the last gentle ones she’d ever know. The hangman wore rough leather and smelled of pig sweat.

  Arms crossed, head bowed, Nara walked slowly through the snow, and with greater purpose even than the Hunter, she took her first steps toward the edge of the world and the gallows awaiting her there.

  × × ×

  Far to the south, Mowich’s father awoke with a start. Something had changed. Something irreversible. And then he felt it deep in his bones. His boys. They were gone. All of them.

  Crying out, he sprang from bed and ran down the hall to Izlette’s room. The covers were pulled back; the bed was empty. A strange silence hung in the air.

  A thrust to his gut and the fear swelled there again. Not her too. Not little Izlette. Not yet. Hands to his eyes, he cried out. What had they done? His boys. What had they done?

  “Izzy!” he called out.

  But there was no answer. Steadying himself, he started down the dark corridor, trying to prepare himself for whatever he might find. That was when he felt it—the cool breeze against his face. It brought an odor with it, strange and sweet. The kitchen door was open. He surged through it and out into the yard. He followed the smell to its source. He stood, stunned by what he saw. Not twenty yards from the house knelt Izlette, chest high in a sea of green reeds, her face bright, shining. But it wasn’t Izzy. It couldn’t be, for there was color in her cheeks. She was chewing on something.

  “Look, Papa,” she laughed, holding out her arms as if to receive a blessing.

  Thunder groaned across the sky and a moment later, soft white powder began to drift down, dusting the green with brilliant white crystals. Snow. Snow like angels’ wings. Izlette stuck out her tongue and caught an icy white flake. Closing her eyes, she smiled.

  And then he understood. The green in the fields as far as the eye could see. Healing witchgrass stretching out into the distance, growing, soaring up toward the sky and out toward waters as if sown there by a magic hand. He couldn’t have known the sacrifice that had brought it forth, couldn’t have known how the shaman girl had given her own life to save a thousand others. Nor could he have known that the penance paid was the blood of his own sons. All he saw was his daughter’s smile. All he saw was the gift of salvation, born of a sacred dream of snow.

  STITCHES*

  A. G. HOWARD

  Prologue

  The first time the wrens sang at night was three years ago, when I used a rusty saw to cut off Pa’s left foot. The birds drowned out his screams.

  Wrens don’t normally sing after sunset, but I wasn’t surprised by it.

  Birds are known as spirit carriers in mountain lore. When someone dies, birds of all kinds carry them back and forth between this world and the afterlife, so folk can keep watch over their living loved ones, even after they’re gone. I figured these wrens heard how loud Pa was wailing, and gathered in expectation of a fresh delivery.

  At least fifty of them sat under the eaves of the slanted garden shed—my makeshift operating room. Dark skies folded around our mountain like a boy’s hand covering an anthill. Regular folk would assume that the storm had driven the birds to seek shelter, but there’d never been anything “regular” about me or mine.

  My identical twin sister, Clover, and little brother, Oakley, weren’t allowed to watch Pa’s dismemberment. Even at age thirteen and a half, Clover was too squeamish, and Oakley, being seven years younger, was too tender. I’d left Clover in charge of things in our tiny cottage some ten yards away. Upon my last look, they hunched in the farthest corner, a quilt wrapped tight around their heads as they shivered at the thunder in the distance.

  Pa didn’t scream long before he passed out. He was strong that way. A rock, Ma used to say; a rock that needed his edges filed. She was the only one who could tame his temper. When she disappeared on my and Clover’s thirteenth birthday, and Pa’s drunken rampages spiraled out of control, it fell on me to file him down.

  By the time I turned sixteen, my surgical instruments and abilities had improved. I’d taken Pa’s other foot and his eyes. His tongue and ears, too.

  I soon came to realize that rain always accompanied dismembering days, as did the wrens. I suspected they were tied somehow to The Collector, the boy who claimed the parts and gave us our cash. Seemed like both the weather and the birds knew when he was gonna pay a visit. Or maybe it was the other way around, and they told him when it was time. Whatever the case, at the scent of rain and the rustle of feathers, I made the first cut, because I knew he was on his way.

  1: Hollow Bones

  We first met The Collector when I was thirteen and a half, the day after Pa drank two bottles of tequila and popped Clover so hard, her front teeth fell into the chicken soup. When she fainted from shock and pain, I took over supper duty. I added some sage, the herb of my namesake, and boiled the broth on the stovetop without even fishing out Clover’s incisors, letting the aroma of comfort and blood fill the air. There was a part of me that hoped those teeth might come to life in Pa’s belly and eat him from the inside out. Oakley hadn’t grown big enough to merit any beatings yet, but by the next year, he’d be the age Clover and I were when we first encountered Pa’s wrath. So, while Pa guzzled a steaming bowlful, I imagined those incisors going to work on his innards.

  Pa ate every bit of dinner, leaving us nothing. He always ate like he was starving, but couldn’t gain a pound. He’d never been a very stout man, and had become even thinner over the months since Ma’s absence, frail and hollow-boned like a bird. But he was still as mean as a feral bobcat when he drank.

  He cussed at me till I handed off the keys. From the picture window, I watched him swerve down the dirt road in his Chevy truck, kicking up weeds and grass as the tires spun this way and that. Just before following the curve through the magnolia trees and vanishing from sight, he dipped his head out the window and spewed up his supper.

  I remember thinking what a waste of food that was, and that my high hopes for Clover’s teeth had been for nothing.

  The sun set over the trees, bringing shadows to life. Pa was to be gone all night.

  My sister did her best to entertain us, despite the gray bruise that swelled her mouth and chin until it looked like a rotten plum. She insisted on making treats and having a slumber party.

  The inside of our cupboard and fridge had more cobwebs than food, but we always made do. Before our ma disappeared a few months earlier, she taught us how to make gingerbread without eggs, and homemade cocoa using chocolate bars and water.

  I used to watch her hands as she stirred and folded and whipped, bending ingredients to her will. Those same hands that were rough from hours spent tending the garden, yet still had a soft touch when someone was hurt or sad. She always took off her bird-shaped wedding ring when she baked because she feared she’d get it dirty with the batter. I loved seeing the white imprint that her ring had rubbed onto her skin . . . like a dove tattooed above her knuckle.

  I tried not to think of how I missed Ma as Clover heated the cocoa and I stirred gingerbread batter, then shaped it into perfect boys and girls to be baked. It was mid-summer, and the old black stove heated the cottage till the stench of our sweaty bodies overpowered any discomfort we felt at being home alone.

  I forced down the gritty, spiced cookies and scalded my throat on overly sweet chocolate water without complaint. I figured by letting Clover ease our hurt, it could take the bite out of her throbbing lip and gums. With full bellies, we undressed to our skivvies and opened the windows to let in the cool evening scent of pines and mountain air.

  When it came time to sleep, Clover and I stripped the beds, tossed quilts and pillows on the floor beneath the picture window, and snuggled Oakley atop the pile to tell him stories.

  I started with Frankenstein. I’d always liked the idea of people giving up their parts to make a new person who could outshin
e them. Maybe I was too graphic about the blood and chopped limbs and cracking bones, because Clover got as green as the plant she’s named after, and Oakley as stiff as a tree.

  Me? I was ready for dreamland.

  A shame my story scared Oakley so much. He moaned for more cocoa and a happy fairy tale before he would calm enough to count stars and go to sleep.

  Clover—with the added charm of her fat-lipped lisp—told of a young princess who’d once been struck by lightning. She had auburn hair with a white-blond streak and blue eyes. This princess met a prince who swept her off her glass-slippered feet with a diamond ring shaped like a bird, and promises of a happy ever after. He rescued her from slaving in a bakery in a town infested with pastry-craving dragons, and carried her to the mountains, where they lived in a cottage-shaped castle. Together, they raised parakeets and fuzzy potbellied pigs to sell to pet stores.

  Since Oakley was only six when Ma disappeared, I don’t know if he picked up on the similarities, but the cotton-candy lies Clover wrapped around the truth made my mouth dry and my teeth ache as if I had cavities. In the fairy tale, the prince and princess lived forever without any woes. In the real version, the prince had tended to our animals while he was drunk out of his mind. He forgot to latch the chicken coops. Later that night—while he slept off his liquor—high winds rattled the coops till the gates fell open and all the hens escaped into the yard. An electrical storm scorched the sky and caught fire to the hog house. The hogs ran out in flames and trampled the chickens until they were singed, hollow-boned corpses.

  When the princess ran out to open the gate so the hogs could escape the spreading fire, she was struck by lightning, giving her another streak in her auburn hair and breaking something in her mind. She came into the cottage, screamed at the prince in some indecipherable tongue that failed to wake him, then disappeared into the night. The heavens opened up a flood of rain that doused the fire, but it must’ve swallowed Ma too. For she was never to be seen again.