by Chuck Wendig
– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below
Mookie lies caught in the grip of a terrible dream, the kind that keeps shifting, worsening – a dream shot through with betrayals from him and against him, a nightmare thick with the feeling of being lost in the dark and without a friend. All the world and what’s beneath it is his foe. Werth cutting his throat. The Boss laughing. Davey, dead in the water tunnels beneath the city, goblins planting eggs in the sockets of his torn-out eyes, his mouth still forming the breathless words necessary to condemn Mookie for his inaction. Grampop, cursing Mookie from the dark, calling him names. Skelly, belly swollen with some half-and-half baby about to be born. Faces of death. A mounting tide of ghostly faces, bulging and spilling on the beach that is Mookie’s mind.
Now he stands at a pig farm. Black-bristled, white-bellied Mangalitsa hogs sniff, snort, and grouse in the green-gray mud. Above his head, a steel sky threatens rain. He smells wild animal musk. Pig piss. Hog shit. Footsteps slapping mud behind him.
Jess. His ex-wife.
“You made a mess of things,” she says.
“I know.”
“You coulda done anything with your life. Coulda stayed a Sandhog.”
“That job wasn’t for me.”
She rolls her eyes. One of her signature moves. Jess always had a little attitude. A little fire at the end of her tongue, a sparked flint in her eyes. That’s why he liked her. She was tough. She needed to be to deal with him. Nora’s got that spark. Maybe too much of it.
“You were just afraid of becoming like your Dad.”
“Who isn’t?”
“You didn’t have to be a Hog. You had choices, Mikey.”
“Mook. Mookie.” A hard wind kicks up. “Not Mikey.”
“You were Mikey to me then, you’re Mikey to me now, and nothing can change that. What’s done is done.” She laughs softly. “You had the chance to be lots of things. I almost got you that garbage man job.”
“I don’t want to be a garbage man.”
“You already are a garbage man, just without the uniform. But fine, OK, whatever. You didn’t want to be the trash-man. What about that job Bobby Pallotta offered you? Bouncer at the – what was that strip club?”
“The Lady Lair. Didn’t pay enough.”
Above, the sky shifts – sudden clouds move swiftly overhead. Faces appear in the clouds, faces he can’t make out. But all of them are in pain.
“Could’ve been a skip tracer. Deshawn Washington was a–”
“He wasn’t the skip tracer. Deshawn was a repo guy. You’re thinkin’ of his brother, Demarcus, from Queens.”
“To-may-to to-mah-to, Mookie. Either of those damn jobs would’ve been–”
“Still not enough money!” he roars. “We had a mortgage! You had to have that… that goddamn Chevy Malibu. We sent Nora to that girl’s school. We needed real cash, not fucking… Monopoly play money.”
“I told you, I would’ve gotten a job.”
“No! No wife of mine gets a job.”
“Big man with big balls doesn’t want his little wifey to work? You’re smarter than that, Mikey. Everyone says you’re dumb, but I see it in your eyes – you’re smarter than that.” Jess walks up, thrusts her finger in his chest. Over her shoulder, he sees a glimpse of something, someone: a tall man in a beige suit. Candlefly. Then he’s gone. Jess keeps talking. “You think because your wife works, what, you’re not a tough guy anymore? Wife brings home some coin your dick will shrink a couple sizes? C’mon, Mikey. I could’ve helped. You never let me help. And then when you left…”
“I kept sending money. You never had to work. I took care of that. All you had to do was handle Nora–”
“She was a good kid. She didn’t need handling. She needed her father.”
“Jess, I know I made mistakes–”
There. Over her shoulder again – Candlefly. Closer this time. Near the red barn with the peeling paint. He starts to push past Jess, but she catches his hand.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Candlefly’s gone. Mookie growls. “There’s… something. I gotta go do something.” I gotta go kill someone. He feels for his cleaver but it’s gone. Right. Damn. Stuck in the floor. But wait – is this a dream? Maybe it’s not. Shit. Shit.
“You leaving us again.”
“Jess, I gotta–”
“Doesn’t matter. She’s dead. Look.”
Mookie follows Jess’s stare.
There’s Nora. Face up in the mud. Blood pumping from her gut, pooling in divots of greasy mud. The pigs start sniffing at her. Mookie turns, sees Candlefly smoking a cigar in the distance, smiling. The pigs start to bite at Nora’s feet. One pulls her boot off. Starts eating it. Another starts in on her heel.
Candlefly is laughing now. He’s far away, but that deep laugh carries.
Mookie launches himself over the fence. Into the mud. Boots stuck. He can’t pull them out. The mud is sucking at his feet, drawing him down, down to his knees as the pigs move in and begin to eat Nora, chewing off her fingers, moving to the face and eating her nose and ears and working on her chin. One stoops and laps at the blood like a dog–
A whisper in his ear. Candlefly. “How did it feel to watch your daughter die?”
“How did it feel to watch your daughter die?”
Candlefly slaps the canned ham that is Mookie Pearl’s head. Pat, pat, pat. Harder: whack. The man’s eyelids flutter. His face, shot through with dark striations. Bruise-colored arterial fractals. A side effect of the Snakeface’s poison. Sorago’s in particular.
Three doses. Enough to drop an elephant.
And still Mookie Pearl almost cleaved his skull like a cantaloupe.
Impressive. And a shame. If there was a chance to still bring Pearl into the fold, to make him part of the plan…
An option, no longer. This road only ends at one place. Alas.
“I thought you were going to kill me, I really did.” Here in the wine cellar with Mookie Pearl bound to a chair with honest-to-god heavy gauge chain, Candlefly puffs on a cigar: a Honduran, not a Cuban. A far better smoke. A mouth-feel like velvet. The taste and smell of chocolate, cherry, and, if he may wax poetic, old books. Candlefly is not himself a fan of old books, but his cousin, Grigor – well. Grigor is a book-sniffer of the highest order. “You certainly tried. You’ve made quite a mess of things for us, did you know that? You stopped our first attack on the miner, Morgan. Then you thwarted the attack on Daisypusher. But you’re a speedbump, not a wall. Where is the Ochre? You have it. You must. Our… spies no longer detect its presence in the Underworld.”
Mookie’s eyes finally open all the way.
They see Candlefly and go wide.
The thug tries to say something, but it comes out as frustrated gibberish.
“Ah!” Candlefly says. “You’re upset. Probably because my face looks so pretty again.” He showcases his own visage like a game show hostess framing a prize with elegant hands. “It’s been almost twenty-four hours since you pummeled my face into pâté and I look good as new, don’t I? I cannot share how or why. Old family secret.”
“You’re…” Mookie starts, his lips drooping, but the words slowly forming. “Not human.” A string of drool oozes from his mouth, pools beneath his chin.
“Do you want a prize for figuring that out? I assumed it obvious by now. Perhaps I overestimated your intelligence.”
“Fuck… off.”
“With such startling wit, how could I ever think you stupid?” A cruel twinkle in the man’s eye. “You are right, Mr Pearl. I am not human. Not entirely. My entire family is… of mixed heritage, you might say. The Candlefly roots go very, very deep, indeed – roots that drink from the oldest bloodlines.”
“You’re a… half-and-half.”
“So crass. Hardly. Do I look like an aberration? Some mutation with dolphin flippers and a monkey’s tail? A cock like a lizard’s tongue? A tongue like a goblin’s cock? Please. We are
not the stock of some common shadow, not born of some randy gob-folk or from a Naga with his septic seed. Ours is a far more refined heritage. A proud tree. Strong and tall and with many branches.”
“Fucking… monster… either way.”
“Yes. Perhaps. But don’t act like you’re any better. We’re all monsters here, Mr Pearl. Varying only by degree. Now: I come to ask you a question and I ask it again: where is the Ochre?”
“Up… your mother’s… ass.”
“My mother, Catalina, were she alive still, would slap that vulgarity out of your mouth, Mr Pearl. Such… profanity only makes you seem more foolish. Vulgarity is the crutch of weaker men. Now, you don’t want to tell me where the Ochre is? Fine. I’ll have the Vollrath suck it out of your head and your heart. What you know, we’ll know. I should’ve done that to begin with, but I wanted you to see my pretty face one more time. Just to let you know that you failed.”
“If the… Boss were alive… he’d skin you like a deer.”
“You mean, Konrad Zoladski?” Candlefly steps back, points to the wall behind him where the Boss sits perfectly still, hands folded in his lap like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Then the Boss hops off the chair like an eager child and walks over to the table. It takes a second to register on Pearl’s face. The look of shock is truly precious to Candlefly.
“B… boss.” That word comes out of Mookie’s mouth, and it is the sound of horror.
“Mookie,” the Boss says. “You disappoint me. I thought you were loyal.”
“I… I am. I didn’t–”
Candlefly nods. The Boss hits Mookie.
The old man hits hard. Harder than any old man has a right to hit, especially when punching some thug whose head is harder than a bowling ball. But Pearl’s head rocks back. His nose mashes flat. Blood pours.
Of course, the old man isn’t really the old man. Not entirely. Not anymore. Candlefly wonders if Mookie realizes that his old master is no longer human.
And never will be again.
Times like this, he wishes he were psychic. Cousin Hiram would come in handy in that instance, but Ernesto is not on speaking terms with most – all? – of the Bellbooks.
Mookie blubbers through blood. Hardly words. Just guttural utterances.
“We’re going to go now,” Candlefly says. “Soon as you have your wits about you – and what copious wits they are, as we’ve learned – we’ll be sending someone else downstairs to have a little chat with you. And then it’ll all be over.”
He pats Mookie atop his big bald head.
The Boss chuckles.
Mookie weeps.
Werth waits for Candlefly at the top of the cellar steps. Pacing. At the far end of the hall, Sorago watches him with those dead serpent eyes. Werth gives the Snakeface a nervous smile, then turns away.
The door clicks. Candlefly steps out.
Werth starts in: “You said Mookie was on the up-and-up. That he would have a chance. That, that, fuck – that we would all get on the same damn page. Candlefly, are you listening to–”
Werth’s breath lodges in his chest.
Candlefly steps aside and another figure emerges from the cellar.
The Boss.
The Boss.
White T-shirt, suspenders, suit pants. In his hand is a black plastic comb, which he runs through his white hair.
Werth tries to say something. All that comes out is a squeak of surprise.
The old man looks… healthy.
No. Not just that – he looks like the Konrad Zoladski from ten years ago. Tighter stomach. A little taller. Broader chest. The wrinkles are not so deep. The eyes are bright and young.
“Werth,” he says, giving a clipped nod and a toothy smile. “Good to see you.”
“B… Boss. You… the cancer…”
The old man winks. “Feeling like a new man. I think I’m gonna beat this thing.”
“How?”
“My friends from the Candlefly family here have some old world medicine. Some real rarified stuff, if that’s the word. Knocked me flat. Felt like I was going to die, but now…” He slaps his chest hard, too hard. “I feel like I just rolled off the Detroit assembly line with all new parts.”
“It’s goddamn good to see you again.” Werth looks to Candlefly who stands there in the hallway looking oddly amused. The man in the suit speaks:
“Did you need something, Mr Werth?”
“I just… I wanted to talk about Mookie.”
“Regrettable,” the Boss says. “But we deemed him disloyal. For killing my grandson and all. Him and that demon daughter of his. Shame. A real shame.”
The old man stares him down.
It’s then that it hits Werth: Zoladski’s eyes don’t look right. They’re clear, bright, sure. But they’re also the wrong color.
His eyes are normally dark. A brown so dark they might as well be black.
These eyes are crystal blue. Blue like Hawaii water.
The Boss pats Werth on the shoulder.
“I’m going to go have a sandwich now.”
Werth nods. “Sure, yeah, of course.”
Candlefly says, “We’ll talk later.”
Then the two of them are gone. Werth feels alone until he remembers Sorago – he looks to the Naga, and sees the Snakeface staring at him. Wicked smile plastered on the serpent’s face.
Nora rests for a little while. Regaining strength.
But then, above her – the air shifts. She feels a presence. Like someone is standing in the room with her.
She lifts her head. Pain gathering in her gut like water collecting in low places.
A black shape, black as night, stands by her bed.
Dead dark eyes that flash like quarters watch over her.
She thinks, It’s a nightmare, a hallucination, but it’s not. She sees it. The Blue allows her to see it.
“Wh… what are you?”
A voice in her mind:
WE ARE VOLLRATH.
“What… do you want?”
WE WANT TO SEE YOUR MIND.
Then the thing leaps upon her.
Ghost-scalpels cut into her. Invisible fingers probe.
Visions emerge like pages from a book flipping past, faster and faster until they tear out of the book: a school play, a skinned knee, her parents fighting, shattered plates, a broken microwave, her father storming out the door, a funeral, her graduation with no one there to congratulate her, the check from the lawyer, her first hit of Blue, her first gun, a gut-shot old goat, her father’s face of fear and disappointment and rage.
She tries to push back, tries to find a psychic handhold in the storm of images – it’s like fighting through wind and rain, through cutting ice and hammering hail. But the Blue lends her fortitude, and she pushes on – her own mind pushing back against the trespasser, and then it’s like she pokes a hole in a dark sheet–
A whisper through static, snippets of voice through a screeching frequency –
It’s like the door falling off an airplane in flight: a sucking vacuum. New visions pull her forward then draw her down. Like hands out of grave-earth grabbing. The horror of a dead city, this city, New York: a gutted carcass. Hollow buildings, windows like frightened eyes. Creatures moving among the streets. Survivors screaming. A car on fire. An infant’s wail cut suddenly short. Shadow things stalking alleys. Goblins running in packs, faces smeared with blood. Snake-men coiled around lampposts. And just below the surface, the worms crawl. Worms bigger than city buses. Big as buildings. Worms that pass underneath and tent the street, sending manhole covers blown skyward.
Werth paces the second floor hallway. Haversham stands nearby, idly fingering a button on his cuff. Werth keeps his voice low. “This is fucked up, Haversham.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Some weird shit is going on.”
“I… know.”
“The Boss ain’t the Boss.”
“We don’t know that.”
Werth stops pacing. “We do know that,” he h
isses through his teeth. “We do. You didn’t see his eyes.”
“I didn’t see him at all.”
“Well, he’s here. Downstairs. Go have a look.”
Haversham doesn’t budge. All he says is, “Maybe it’s good the Boss is back.”
“Good? It’s not him. And did you see what they did to Mookie? Shit, Haversham, we’re on the hook here. This is on us. We’re the last ones to have any chance to do anything.” He hears his own words, knows he’s barely making any sense. “The girl. The little… Mookie’s daughter. She dead?”
Haversham shakes his head. “No. She’s alive. For now. The Vollrath wanted time with her.”
“What the fuck are those things?”
“I don’t know.”
“This isn’t how we do things.”
“Maybe this is the new order.”
“It isn’t. Can’t be. Won’t be.” He stops.”You have a gun, Haversham?”
The question hangs between them like dangling spider.
Finally, Haversham nods. “Yes.”
“Good, because you might need it when the shit hits the–”
From the study, a phone rings. A simple old-school rotary ring. Werth recognizes it: it’s the ring of Mookie’s cell phone. That’s where they threw Mookie’s stuff. Stuff Werth’s supposed to have already gone through, but he hasn’t because… it feels like the final nail in the coffin of his bond with the big lug. He goes into the study, picks up the phone from under the leather satchel Mookie had slung over his shoulder, next to the cleaver–
He answers it. “Who is this?”
On the other end, a female voice: “Who is this?”
She sounds familiar. Her voice tickles some part of his brain–
“You,” he says, suddenly realizing. Skelly. The queen bee of the Get-Em-Girls. The one who ran him through the wringer.
