Hold The Dark m-3

by Frank Tuttle

  The Big Bell clanged out midnight.

  Hex-paws scampered sudden up and down my spine. My breath steamed out, hanging in a fog in the still, frigid air.

  A whippoorwill cried out. And another.

  I stopped my pacing, stood still. Because in that dead cold air, between the notes of the whippoorwill’s cry, I smelled, strong and warm, the scent of Darla’s hair.

  “Oh God, no.” I said it aloud. I said it, and I gripped my knife tight. I’d taken one single useless step toward my door when something was hurled hard against it.

  Hurled hard. Then it fell and was still.

  I charged. I cursed and struck the door and fumbled with the bolt. Finally, I flung it open.

  Horror fell inside, head lolling, blood spilling.

  I may have screamed, even then. For an instant, I saw Allie Sands again, expected the ruined form before me to rise jerkily to its feet, moving like a badly played puppet, dark fluids leaking and spewing with each small exertion.

  But this blood was red. Red and still warm.

  Blood covered her nude body, covered skin and wounds alike, left a long smear oozing down my door.

  She had no hands. No hands. Her wrists were gnawed stumps. Her lower jaw was gone, too, grasped, pulled and torn away. Gone like her eyes, like her hair and her ears-bitten or torn but bloody and gone. She had no face.

  And just like Allie Sands, her abdomen hung open-open and empty, save the broken ends of splintered white ribs.

  But I knew. Knew her name. The tiny butterfly tattoo, one she’d shown me in a fit of giggles just two days ago, was there bright and sad beneath the blood at the small of her back.

  I tried to deny it. Tried to tell myself lots of woman have tattoos. Tried to tell myself she had no face, had no way to be identified. But all the while, I knew. Knew it was Darla. Knew it as I knelt down, as I reached out to take her hand, cried out when my fingers closed on the warm stump of her arm.

  I did scream, then. I screamed, and I caught her up. Mama said I was just standing there screaming when she heard and she came and she saw.

  I don’t recall anything else, until Mama pulled the sheets from my bed and took Darla from me and wrapped her in them and laid her out at the foot of my bed.

  All the while, the whippoorwills sang.

  I will speak no more of that night, save to say that I awoke to dim daylight, and the sound of Mama’s brush scrubbing dark blood off my door.

  I rose. I rose, I bathed and I dressed. Mama watched me go to the bathhouse, watched me return, never spoke a word.

  Tomorrow had come. I sat at my desk and recalled my promise from the night before. A bottle of wine, and the wide wicked world be damned.

  And so, I reflected, it was. Damned.

  And more to come.

  The Watch came, with their black wagon, and Mama saw Darla off. The number of bite wounds covering her left no question to her fate. Darla would rise, unless the crematorium’s flames consumed her first. Rise not like Evis, but like Allie Sands-a ruined, shrieking thing gone mad with pain and hunger. Those who slew her had surely known that.

  I listened to the dead wagon rattle off, heard the driver cackle and shout. As the sound of him faded away I closed my eyes, clenched my fists and began to count my breaths.

  Evis sent men, and Mama sent them away. More came, and she flailed at them with her ragged broom and screeched and cussed and they fled.

  Ethel Hoobin came and was admitted. I spoke to him. Mama says I was calm and coherent. That I had assured him my trap was set to spring upon Martha’s abductors, and he was to gather his troops and wait for Mama’s call.

  Ethel may have known about Darla, or maybe not, but he asked his questions and nodded once at my reply. He got up and left without another word.

  Finally, Mama came inside, propped her broom by my door and threw my bolt.

  She sat. I felt her eyes upon me, though I did not open my own.

  “Boy,” she said, at last. “Boy, I’m so sorry.”

  I clenched my jaw.

  “She’d have been good for you. And you’d have been good to her. I seen that much. Didn’t see no further.”

  Mama’s voice broke. She bit back a sob, and I opened my eyes.

  “We’ll never know that.”

  “I saw death a comin’. I swear I never saw it comin’ for her.” She brought up a hand, to mop at her eyes. “Boy, I’m so damned sorry.”

  We sat for a long time. Somebody came and pounded on the door. I looked up and saw the black hat Darla had playfully donned just yesterday. I let the man outside knock and shout.

  Mama mumbled something under her breath and the pounding stopped. She mumbled something else and the shadow on my glass turned and fell away.

  “I reckon,” she said, after a long ragged breath. “I reckon you’ll be a goin’ after them what did this thing.”

  I nodded a “yes”.

  Mama squeezed her lips together so they wouldn’t quiver. “I reckon you got to,” she said, after a while. “I don’t reckon it matters none that I still see Death’s shadow, a hangin’ at your door?”

  I nodded “no”.

  Mama stood. I didn’t look up, didn’t see the tears, couldn’t watch another heart break that day.

  “I reckon I can’t argue against that. I reckon them bastards got to die.”

  I listened to the street. Yes, I thought. They’ve got to die. Again. And this time, they’re going to stay dead forever.

  “Promise me one thing, boy. Promise me you won’t go nowhere, won’t do nothin’, till I get back.” She drew in a ragged breath. “I ain’t got no right to ask. Not after what I done. What I didn’t do.” I could hear her grind her teeth. “And I can’t make that up. But there’s one thing I can do. It ain’t right. It ain’t smart. And I reckon it might get us both kilt. But it might get some of them heartless bastards gutted, so I reckon it’s worth the price.”

  I said nothing. I barely heard.

  “Boy, you got to wait. Just this once. Please.”

  I neither moved nor spoke. Everywhere I looked, there was blood-tiny flecks and drips, drying to the color of old rust.

  Mama sobbed, stood, turned and left, and I was alone with all my newborn ghosts.

  Chapter Twelve

  Evis himself came, soon after. In the daylight, no less.

  He was swathed in yards of black-black that covered his black-gloved hands and his booted feet and his black-veiled face. He came and he knocked and he spoke, and I found myself at the door, throwing the bolt, more out of shock than any act of conscious will.

  He bowed. “I came to extend my deepest sympathies. May I enter?”

  I stepped aside. He straightened and darted in out of the sun.

  I made my way back to my side of my desk and sat. I did not speak. After a moment, Evis sat too.

  He pulled the cowl back, and the veil, and regarded me through his dark glasses. Even so covered, he grimaced in the dim light of my office.

  “I confess we were unaware of any close associations. Aside from Mrs. Hog. And we considered her to be at little risk.”

  I’d considered none of these things, and it stung.

  “We’d just met,” I said. “At the Velvet. She was Martha’s friend. She’d been asking around, about Martha. Maybe she asked once too often.”

  And while I had the name Encorla Hisvin to protect me, she had nothing. Nothing but me, and I’d failed her.

  “I am partly to blame, as well,” said Evis, reading my mind. “We applied pressure, as I directed. Pressure to a group of none too stable persons already inured to pointless violence. And now another innocent is dead.”

  “Your man outside. I never saw him.”

  Evis sighed. “He saw nothing. Nothing, until a body struck your door and fell. He remained hidden, hoping the bearer or bearers would reveal himself. He or they did not.”

  “How could he have seen nothing? She didn’t walk to my door. Someone carried her.”

  “S
orcery. A powerful charm of concealment. Or perhaps one that acts to distract onlookers. We have not been able to determine the specific nature of the charm.”

  “You check on your man’s whereabouts the last few new moons? Maybe he didn’t see because he was holding their coats.”

  “I will forgive this insult. You are overwrought. Understandably so.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” My Army knife found its way into my right hand.

  “The man in question was Victor. He was at my side, the last four new moons, raiding suspected meeting places. He has taken no human blood for nearly forty years. Were he to partake now, the effects would be impossible to conceal.” Evis raised his hand. “Please. Your ardor is excusable, to a point. But it was not I who has done this thing.”

  I put the knife down.

  “They didn’t just kill her.” The words came hard and each stuck in my throat.

  “I know. What was done to her was monstrous. Worse than death. Had you not done what was necessary-”

  I heard the dead wagon rattle away again, in the shadows of my soul.

  “-she would have risen. In that state, you could not have helped her, or spared her the pain.”

  I thought of the crematoriums. Thought of new black smoke and fine grey ash, boiling out of the tall brick smokestacks.

  “She is free now,” said Evis, as if he knew my thoughts. “The pain is gone. They may not touch her, ever again.”

  Nor I, I thought. Nor I.

  “And now we must end this. They have identified you as their tormentor. They dared not slay you, for fear of the wrath of Hisvin. But this they have dared. Despite the risk. It demonstrates recklessness, a disregard for even their own safety.” He shook his head. “There is no more dangerous creature than one which fails to realize its own mortality.”

  “The Thin Man.” I’d not really been listening. “Think he’ll still show?”

  “I believe so. Consider. He and his other human compatriots would have never ordered, nor authorized, an attack on Miss Tomas. I doubt that they even know. Indeed, I hope that they do not.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because such actions are certain to lead toward exposure,” said Evis, speaking slowly, as though explaining steam engines to a slow-witted child. “And exposure will damn the day folk more swiftly and finally than any of the halfdead. Think about it, Mr. Markhat. The halfdead have their Houses-where, though, will the day folk turn, should any of this come out?”

  I nodded. It did make sense. Day folk plot. Halfdead bite and rend. Biting and rending gets noticed. And should I or someone like me announce to the world that a handful of priests and a few dozen halfdead had conspired to slaughter the daughters of the honest working poor, the flames wouldn’t die down for years.

  “Dissent in the ranks.”

  “Indeed. In fact, were we to simply step back, to take no further action at all, I suspect that the entire organization would simply collapse-messily-in a week. Two at the most.” He shrugged. “But for Miss Hoobin, I might suggest just such a thing.”

  I leaned back. There was still a smear of Darla’s blood on the edge of my desk.

  “We aren’t going to forget Martha Hoobin.” Or Darla Tomas, though I did not speak the words aloud.

  Evis nodded, regarding me through his dark lenses. He’d heard the words I hadn’t spoken. And I in turn heard him bite back an admonition against a blinding passion for vengeance.

  I stared him down. I used to wonder, down in the tunnels, where the fear went. Never figured it out. One minute you’re terrified. One minute you’re not, though death is there, waiting silent in the dark.

  The fear just goes away. And so it had, again, something cold, unblinking and unfeeling taking its place.

  “Very well,” said Evis. “Then we have plans to make, do we not?”

  We did, and we did. When he left, a good hour later, it was all settled, and we would be taking Martha Hoobin home before sunrise.

  Evis would have a small army at his side-an army he kept out of sight. He would be watching me watch Innigot’s Alehouse, known far and wide as the place to go after Curfew for a quiet beer or an even quieter conversation. And if the Thin Man showed, Evis would come in a certain small span of time later, and we’d all sit and talk about combs and new moons and Martha Hoobin.

  That was the plan, at least as far as Evis knew. Mine involved an army of my own, an army of Hoobins and other fine examples of New People citizenry. I didn’t think Evis would approve, so I didn’t bring it up.

  And if we didn’t find the Thin Man, didn’t learn Martha Hoobin’s whereabouts-well, perhaps I’d just share what I’d learned with the Hoobins. Perhaps I’d just suggest we took a stroll across the Brown, and started lighting fires until we found someone who was willing to talk.

  I was sure Evis wouldn’t like that.

  Gone with fear was caring. Let them burn, said the cold hollow voice deep within. Let them all burn.

  Evis stood. “My deepest sympathies. And my vow. You shall stand face-to-face against those who injured her. I shall see to that.”

  I stood too.

  “I’ll see them dead. All of them.”

  He beheld me, something like sorrow on his face.

  “Yes,” he said. “I believe you shall do just that.”

  And then he was gone, out my door and into his carriage and away.

  I sat, watched and waited for dark.

  Sometime after Evis left, Hooga and Hooga showed up at my door. They stationed themselves on either side of it and stooped wordlessly into that “I’m waiting to pounce” stance you see all over Rannit. So quiet were they that I didn’t know they were there until Mama came shambling back and I heard them hooting back and forth.

  “They heard about Miss Darla,” said Mama, after telling me they were there. “They don’t know nothin’, ’cept that Martha is gone and Miss Darla is dead. They said they decided somebody needs killin’, and they figure stayin’ close to you is the best way to catch up to ’em.”

  She sat. I stood and stretched. Mama brushed back her hair and let out a long exhausted yawn.

  It was only then I noticed how small she looked and how tired. Her eyes were red and puffy and her wild grey mane was tangled and matted. Her wrinkled old fingers shook as they gripped her tattered sack tightly closed.

  She let out a breath and thumped her sack down hard atop my desk.

  “Shut up,” she said, before I could speak. “I brung you something.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t care, didn’t care to know, didn’t need any backstreet mojo.

  “This ain’t what you think. I told you once I didn’t know the names of them what casts black mojo. I knows a name now.” She shuddered. “I knows it, and they knows mine.”

  Mama gulped air and set her jaw. “There’s things that oughtn’t to be. Things that ain’t got no business comin’ out of what-ever dark hole they was born at the bottom of. Wicked old things that ain’t got no place in this world.”

  “Do tell.”

  Mama’s eyes narrowed, and when she parted her lips a hiss escaped.

  “I do tell just that.” She shook the bag. “This is one of them wicked things. I reckon I ought to burn it. I reckon I ought to let you go out there tonight and get kilt. But I reckon I ain’t as good a person as I thought. Cause I want them bastards dead. I want you alive. And if that’s gonna happen, boy, it’s gonna happen because of this.”

  She let go the mouth of the bag, turned it up, cast a rag-wrapped bundle the size of my clenched fist onto my desk.

  “The one what give it to me called it a huldra. Reckon it’s a foreign word.”

  She looked away, threw her bag down onto the floor.

  “Take it,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Take it, and tell it your name, and Angels help us both.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  She glared up at me.

  “Damn you, boy, you do! You need anything you can get. What
you gonna do, you walk into a room and find twenty of them sharp-toothed bastards? What you gonna do?”

  She reached out, caught the bundle a slap with the back of her hand, sent it sliding toward me.

  “I know you’re hurtin’, boy. I see that dead look in your eyes. I know all you can think about is findin’ them what hurt Miss Darla. But you got to think about after you find ’em. Cause it ain’t gonna matter how mad you are, or what they done, or how much they deserve to die. They’ll laugh. They’ll take hold of you and they’ll tear your damned fool head off. Is that what you want, boy? Is that how you’ll avenge her? By bleedin’ at their feet while they decide who eats first?”

  She pointed at the bundle. “You take it. You take it up and tell it your name. It knows why you need it. It knows what to do.” She drew in a breath. “I don’t rightly know if you’ll ever be rid of it, after. But I reckon we can figure that out tomorrow. If’n we get a tomorrow.”

  I took up the bundle, began to unroll the rags, realized they were Orthodox grave-clothes stained with thick dark fluids still moist to the touch.

  Mama turned her face away, fished in her pockets, came up with what looked like a tiny dried owl.

  Inside the rags, deep within the turning, was a tortoise shell. A worn, scratched, fist-sized tortoise shell, the openings sealed with new black wax.

  “Don’t touch it,” said Mama, still not looking, as I unwound the final turning. “Don’t you never ever touch it with your bare hands.”

  I shrugged, opened a drawer, found a clean handkerchief. I took the shell up with the cloth, turning it this way and that.

  It was heavy. Too heavy for its size, unless it were filled with lead. It was also too cold, not quite like a chunk of snow, but nearly so.

  “You got to tell it your name,” said Mama. She gripped her dead owl close to her chin.

  “What the Hell.” I knew she wouldn’t leave until I’d done so.

  I raised the thing, spoke my name-my secret birthing name-to it.

  It shook in my hand, but only briefly.

  Mama began to cry. “Forgive us both,” she said. Though if she prayed, I knew not to who. “We done what we had to do.”