When I saw the seaside cliff of Megan McGibbons’s plot, I was wise enough to backtrack and go around it. I didn’t care how far out of my way that took me; whoever her neighbors were, they couldn’t be worse than she was. I managed to get through the woods of the plot next door without being seen, and was still congratulating myself on avoiding Megan when I stepped onto a city street. Too late, I remembered my last encounter with Harvey Phelps. (He was my brother. Probably didn’t stop you fucking him.)
I turned around and started walking back the way I came, gingerly, the way you walk past the room of a sleeping baby. I hadn’t gotten very far into the plot before I realized where I was. With luck I’d be able to walk right back out again before Harvey knew I was there.
Across the yellow brick of the building on my right was a big red scrawl: whores and liers beware! your judgment is nye! Not much for spelling, old Harvey, but his point was clear enough. I reminded myself that it was only paint, could only be paint. If you couldn’t conjure people, you couldn’t conjure blood, could you?
Liers beware. Harvey had never been kind to whores in life, but this desire to see liars judged was new. Liars were Jeffrey’s thing. And there, flopping out of a dumpster, was a bruised and bloated arm, with a heart nailed to its wrist.
It’s not real. He conjured that. It’s nothing more than a bit of scenery, like those rubber hands people get at Halloween. But my slow careful walk devolved into a run pretty quickly after that. As my steps quickened I felt something bumping against my hip and reached down to put my hand over Tom’s knife. He’d handed it back to me at the house, and without thinking I’d returned it to my belt. Well, good. At least I was armed.
I got out of the plot without running into Harvey, but what I had run into was disturbing enough: Jeffrey was settling into his new home just fine, it seemed. Making friends. Building his own little axis of evil, maybe.
Cyrus didn’t look surprised to see me when I stumbled into his yard I don’t know how much later, well past the point of being able to convince myself that tired was a concept of the physical world, irrelevant here. He was exactly as I’d seen him last: sitting in a beat up lawn chair, surrounded by his weird statues, drinking a beer as the sun started to set. He took a noisy slurp and nodded his greeting.
“Cyrus.” I unfolded my own lawn chair opposite him, sat down, and leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. “I need your help.”
He burped with no effort to cover (or even close) his mouth. “Figures. You were always a hard worker, but planning things on your own was never your strong point, was it?”
“I guess not.”
“I assume this is about that fiend you sent in here not too long ago?”
So Harvey wasn’t the only neighbor getting to know Jeffrey. “Among others, yes. You’ve met him?”
Cyrus leaned over and pulled another beer off the six pack beneath his chair. I waited for him to pop it open, not taking offense that he didn’t offer me one. I hadn’t expected him to. He settled back and took another long drink, then said, “Haven’t run into him myself, but heard a thing or two. Someone came to warn me.”
“Warn you?”
“Seems this new fiend heard about Drayne. Seems he didn’t like it.”
“Ah. Well, then you’ll want to get rid of him, won’t you?”
“Wouldn’t mind knowing he was gone.”
“Good.” I explained everything to Cyrus, all that had happened with Helen and Roderick and Jeffrey, and how I wanted to confront and destroy them all. The good news was, I still had Tom’s knife. There would be no need to go back there and beg him to let me use it. “And you’ve got a knife too, so that makes two weapons that can kill them for real,” I finished.
“Just those three, eh?” Cyrus asked. “You’ve decided in your wisdom that they deserve to be snuffed out of existence more than anyone else here.”
“I’m not here to play judge to everyone, Cyrus. I’m just here to fix this mess. It’s not right for me to just leave them here to be your problem.”
“But you could say that about half the people here,” Cyrus pointed out.
“These three are different.”
“Different how?”
“Because Helen and Roderick won’t stop until either they’ve killed me or I’ve killed them, so we might as well get it over with. And Jeffrey is a fiend. He’s more powerful than anyone else here, and more evil for that matter. It’s like tossing a wolf in with lambs.”
Cyrus croaked his hoarse raven’s laugh. “These ain’t lambs.”
“Well, they’re not all wolves.”
“You’re thinking of that fella you came here with last time, aren’t you? Don’t want him having to spend eternity with that fiend.”
I shrugged. I’d been thinking of Gemma, but Cyrus was right. My plan was to bring Tom home, but who knew if he’d come with me now. I didn’t want to leave him here with Jeffrey, or Helen either.
I rested my forehead on my hands and let my hair fall over my face so he couldn’t see how he was getting to me. I was too tired to argue with Cyrus. Tired in every way. “Cyrus, this is what I’m doing. It’s not up for debate. The only question is whether or not you’ll help me.”
“That finger looks a mess.”
With my hands on my head I’d put my finger on display, swollen, with a very ugly shade of black peeking out from under the bandage. I shrugged.
“You taught them the ritual,” Cyrus said. “What’s to stop them from just going back to your world before you get the chance to do anything to them?” He was seeing the same problem I worried about when I first arrived, but I’d had some time to consider it since.
“They probably could. But they won’t. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m here.”
Cyrus stood up and folded his chair. “Well, it just happens that our motivations are in line with one another.” He leaned the chair against the side of his house and picked up his six pack from the scrubby grass. “This is my home now, and that Jeffrey will ruin it just as bad as Drayne did. And he’s gunning for me besides.”
I folded my own chair, set it beside his, and waited.
He sighed. “I suppose you better come in for a sammich.”
SEVENTEEN
* * *
I couldn’t measure time in liverwurst sandwiches or plots we walked through, but some time later Cyrus and I were sitting in the swamp, in the same rickety lawn chairs (he’d conjured them on the spot). We’d come here in response to my question about how we’d find Helen, Roderick, and Jeffrey. Cyrus said we didn’t have to. They wanted to kill me, and I was a live person who could be sensed here. They’d find me. Especially on neutral ground with nobody’s boundaries or wards to hide me.
I had Tom’s knife and Cyrus had his. But it would be three against two, and I’d fought these particular three enough times now to know that those odds were going to be tough to beat.
As it turned out, I was wrong about that. It wasn’t three against two at all. It was six against two.
I guessed they understood that there was to be a showdown, because they came walking toward us like gunfighters in an old Western, all in a line. It would have been funny if they’d been any less terrifying and gross.
The gross was mostly Roderick. He was scampering more like a dog than a little boy. Even his smile was like a dog’s grin, the kind they get when their heads are hanging out a car window, wide, joyful. Exposing all those disgusting black teeth. Helen was beside him, looking as dignified as ever, her mouth just hinting at a smile and her blond hair coming out of her bun in tendrils around her face like a halo. She strongly resembled the avenging angel on her tombstone.
Harvey was there. He wagged his tongue at me in that way gross guys in bars do. I decided to kill him first. Megan McGibbons was walking next to him, and on the other side of her was someone else I recognized, although it took me a bit to place his hulking, hairless form: it was Drayne’s lackey, the one we’d l
ast seen fleeing from the fiend’s lair, down but not, apparently, out. He had a new fiend now.
And there, in the center of them all, was that fiend. Like Roderick, he looked different here. His eyes were red, his mouth bloody. Smoke rose from his footsteps like clouds of dust. For a second I wondered why he was wearing a chainmail shirt. Then they got a few steps closer and I realized he wasn’t. Jeffrey’s armor was made entirely of human teeth.
He grinned at me, his own maw toothless, tongueless, a pit of blood. It had what I assumed was the intended effect: I was scared shitless. I gripped Tom’s knife and waited.
Waited for what? I don’t know. I guess I was still in old-Western-showdown mode. I figured we’d stop in front of each other, exchange a few insults, give one another a last chance to surrender, that sort of thing. But our opposition felt no such compunction. As soon as they got close enough for me to see the detail of that hideous toothmail shirt, Roderick shot forward.
It got confusing after that. Roderick was on me, doing his usual Roderick-bitey thing. I heard Cyrus grunt, saw his arm swinging, the blade of his pocket knife poking out from his pudgy fist. I could feel Helen pressing into my mind. I slashed blindly with Tom’s knife.
Somewhere off to my left there was a cry of rage, then a scream of pain that was so horrible I almost doubled over in sympathy. And then the smell, just like when Tom killed Drayne, that unspeakable stench of sulfur and rotten meat and smoke. I turned to see what was happening, distracted just long enough for Harvey to tackle me. I rolled awkwardly in the sticky mud, trying to get the knife out from under me.
Whatever was happening was behind me now, but it seemed Harvey had a great view, because in the next second he was off me, reeling back as if burned, his terrified eyes on my knife.
I jumped up and chanced a second glance over my shoulder. Cyrus stood alone, looking gray and sick. His hand was shaking. Something that looked awfully like blood coated his knife. He’d gotten one of them, then. Not wanting to keep my eyes off Harvey any longer, I turned back around.
As I advanced on Harvey, who was now turning to run from me, there was a shriek, high pitched but male. Both Harvey and I looked toward it. You couldn’t not look toward it. It was the kind of shriek that commanded attention, even if you were busy trying to send gross perverts to the great beyond.
Jeffrey was backing away from a snarling wolfhound made of fire. As I watched, it nipped at his side, drawing another scream of pain. But I didn’t have time to contemplate this scene any further. There was yet another scream, this one as low as the other was high. I knew that voice. It was Tom.
I slashed at Harvey again, more to get him out of my way than anything else, but he was running to Jeffrey’s aid anyway. When he was gone I had a clear view of Roderick, clamped to Tom’s chest, his claws digging into Tom’s shoulders. The muscles in Tom’s neck were taut with the effort to keep it away from Roderick’s snapping teeth.
Someone grabbed me from behind, pulling me back. “Tom!” His eye flitted toward me just in time to see me throw the knife. It landed on the ground at his feet. With one last grunting effort he dislodged Roderick and dove for it.
I didn’t get the chance to see how that turned out, because Helen’s hands were clamped around my throat, and she was squeezing. There was a puff of breath against my neck as she laughed softly. I struggled to re-acclimate myself to the rules of the netherworld, to rearrange the situation into something a little nicer than being strangled. Maybe I could fly away. Maybe I could drop an anvil on Helen’s head, like in a cartoon. Maybe I could break that bitch’s fingers off one by one.
Maybe I had been a little too hasty in giving that knife away.
Which was when I remembered. Like Tom, but also like the knife. I didn’t need a weapon. I was a weapon.
I slammed my head backward and felt it hit Helen’s nose. As I’d hoped, it surprised her into loosening her grip. I dropped down out of it, rolled out of her reach, then stood again. She was coming at me. I ran forward to meet her.
I grabbed her around the neck and squeezed as hard as I could. But she was stronger than I was, in more ways than one. While she pushed and clawed wildly for my face, I felt her in my head, the sudden, uninvited thought that I didn’t want to do this, I didn’t want to hurt her. In spite of myself, I felt my grip start to loosen.
I tightened my hands again, determined to fight her, but it was no use. Strangling was too slow. I’d never be able to resist her long enough to kill her. Not to mention that if our theories about me turning myself wholly over to the physical were correct, all she had to do was conjure a knife and stab me, and I would probably die for real. I had to do something before she figured that out.
The phrase desperate times call for desperate measures was invented for what I did next. It wasn’t a decision. (I hope I could never make such a decision on purpose.) It was a reaction, bred purely of instinct, born in the most savage, animal part that lives in all of us. I was a mad dog, a wolf. And I did what cornered wolves do.
I darted my head forward, and sank my teeth into Helen Turner’s throat.
There was hot blood, and shrieking, and then the shrieking got bubbly. She taught me to do this. It wasn’t really a conscious thought, only something I understood as her life drained away, spilling over my chin and shirt and hands. I’m her student now and I’ve taken something of her into myself, and I’ll never be rid of it.
And then it was over. Or that part of it anyway.
I felt Helen’s body go slack beneath my fingers and mouth. I backed off, spitting her blood, and watched her slump to the ground. For a fraction of a moment, there was silence.
And then something came rushing out of Helen Turner’s body, something a little like the apparitions I saw in my own world, milky-smoky. This was the source of what I’d smelled twice before, the smell of a soul that had sat too long where it didn’t belong, and rotted there, now set free of the container that held it.
It was mostly amorphous, but I could just make out something like Helen’s face at the top. It opened its mouth wide, and screamed.
I’d been half-conscious when Tom killed Drayne, and I’d missed what Cyrus had done a few minutes before. But between the screaming and the smell and how sick Tom had looked afterward, the way his eyes went dead when he tried to talk about it, I thought a death in the netherworld would be a gory, nasty business.
But there at the very end, it was not. It was so much worse than that.
This was what I’d thought I was doing all along: forcing an unwilling soul to move on. And in that moment when she was propelled into whatever came next, still struggling against it, all her will and desire to hang on was laid bare. I didn’t experience it as actual sights and sounds and feelings. It was more like memories, or thoughts: Helen’s thoughts, amplified by the force of their release, slamming into me as that scream washed over me. I saw Roderick’s blue eyes and chubby cheeks and felt her love for him just like she felt it. I laughed back at his first laugh with her. I felt her desperate desire to keep him safe as she had felt it, a desire that grew to an unbearable peak just before it crashed into the most desolate feeling imaginable. I watched him die. I felt her mind snap. I felt the swell of all that remained in her then, taking over that soul. Rage. Hate. Vengeance.
And then Helen was gone. I was on the ground, weeping, rubbing her blood off my face until I was clawing at it, opening scratches at the corners of my lips and in my chin, mixing my own blood with hers. The smell was gone. She was gone. It was over.
I’d never experienced anything so awful. And now I proposed to do it again. To a three-year-old boy. I was suddenly sure that I couldn’t do to Roderick what I’d just done to Helen. It was impossible. Maybe that would be Helen’s final bit of mind-control, to save her son at last.
Whatever bubble of silence and thought I’d been existing in burst, and the sounds came back around me. Harvey was nowhere to be seen. Megan McGibbons was shrieking and running, splattering mud behind her. Cyrus
was chasing her.
I caught a flash of blue dress and turned to see Gemma, the fire-hound in front of her, still going after Jeffrey. The hound kept biting, and Jeffrey kept backing off. I remembered the book in Martha Corey’s house (if such a place existed—the real world seemed more like a story just then, something I’d imagined as a child, maybe) that said the hound was a fiend’s natural enemy. I remembered something else too, something Cyrus said: What you’ll find about most people is, they’re more afraid of pain than they are of death. Gemma was stalling Jeffrey with pain, keeping him busy while we took out his friends one by one. But he couldn’t be stalled forever.
And then I felt something fly by my head. Something else banged into me. I looked up and saw Tom, flying away from Roderick, who was leaping after him. Roderick held Tom’s knife, impossibly large in his tiny hands.
I jumped, managing to fly just long enough to tackle Roderick. We both came crashing to the ground, me struggling to get the knife, him struggling to stab me with it. I saw Tom just over Roderick’s shoulder. I rolled Roderick over and yanked at one of his arms, pulling one hand from the knife.
Tom’s foot came down on the other hand, crushing it into the muck of the swamp, while in one smooth motion he took the knife away before Roderick even realized what was happening. No time for moral dilemma; no time to consider that this was just a little boy. Tom stabbed him in the throat.
We both got the blast of it as Roderick’s soul was torn away against his will.
Mr. Mason says Rena is having her puppies any day now, and I get first pick. It’s about time she had them. It’s taken ever so long and Mama said I just had to be patient but patient is for church, not for weeks and weeks of waiting for puppies. I hope my puppy has the same black coat as Rena. Rena’s coat is soft. I will name my puppy Stewart, for Uncle Stewart. Or else I’ll call him Walnut Cake. Mama is making walnut cake. We can have some after supper. Why is Father coming across the yard? It isn’t time for supper yet. Walnut cake is my favorite. What is Father doing? That’s the knife he uses to cut the pigs’ throats, but we haven’t got any pigs ready for cutting, it’s too cold. What do you think I should name my puppy, Father?
Ghost in the Canteen (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 1) Page 23
