by J. P. Sloan
“Katherina? You down there?”
Can’t tell if it’s the wind I hear, or someone moving below.
“Listen, we’re doing this tonight. I got the town buttoned down best I could.” I pause for response, but receive none. “Don’t know if it matters or not to you, but I figure I’d hole up here until sundown. Kate? You down there?”
I crouch lower to press my ear to the wood. My head spins from the motion, and I realize how long it’s been since I ate. Should probably find something to nibble on back inside the house. Should definitely stop haunting this cellar like a damned lovestruck youth.
I give the doors a quick knock, but they rattle so loose it doesn’t make a firm enough noise for me to hear. I reach for the iron ring. No. This is stupid. Profound stupid. If she’s below and I fill her space with sunlight, I’ll be damaging both her and our chances of surviving the night.
But I’ve seen her space. It’s plenty large, and her bed’s tucked away from the cellar doors.
I could enrage the monster inside her, risk having her lose patience with me, or worse.
And yet I’ve seen the monster, and I’ve come to prefer it. Depend on it. I see the beauty in it. I have to see it again, before this starts. I have to have at least one more moment.
With a slow tug, I pull open one of the door leaves. A sliver of light pierces the cellar below. All I see is the rug on the dirt floor. I open the door a little more. Too much sunlight, now. I catch sight of her bureau. This is too far.
So I close it again… after I swing myself down into her parlor.
My boots hit the rug as the door claps shut above me. Something stirs to my right. Lace and silk. A single figure sitting up in her bed, pulling raven locks of hair from her face.
Katherina rubs her eyes and draws a deep breath.
I hold up my hands. “Kate?”
A smile sweeps across her face, and she pulls her covers away to swing her legs around. “You look tired,” she whispers.
“I tried to sleep.”
She stands and takes two steps toward me, reaching out and stroking the outsides of my arms. “You should have come sooner. Rest always finds you here.”
I think of that damn scratchy cot and blink away the intensity of the jasmine and black powder swirling through my nostrils.
I cough and take a step away. “I’ve been trying to help put things together. Trying to keep as many of these people alive as possible.”
She takes another step forward and places a finger on my lips. “They are not your responsibility.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“How often must I remind you that you are only a single man?”
I shrug. “A single man can do a world of hurt on others.”
She runs her hand runs down my chest to my arm. She grips my hand and tugs me back toward the bed. “There are several hours before nightfall. Come lie with me, Denton.”
She pulls me forward, but my feet plant themselves solid as granite.
“What?”
“You are exhausted. You must rest.”
I twist my hand free of her fingers. “What did you call me?”
“What are you―”
“Why did you say that?”
She pulls her hands up to her hips with a smirk and a lift of her brow.
I take another step back.
Her grin melts. “Denton?”
“Stop calling me that. It ain’t fitting.”
She rushes forward and grips my shirt tight, panic filling her face. “No, you do not come here. Never here. You never come here.”
I try to wrestle free of her clutches, but her hands are cold and hard as stone.
“No, no, no…” she repeats, losing her breath.
“What’s crawled into your brain?”
“You never call me Kate. Only he… No. No, no, No!” She releases me, tears flowing from her darkened eyes.
I pull away and catch myself on her bureau, slamming my hands down as my legs lose their strength. With a husky breath and a powerful urge to strike something, I look up into the mirror.
My reflection… lies to me.
What I’m supposed to see, I’m suddenly unsure. But it ain’t him.
It ain’t supposed to be Denton Folger looking back at me.
I paddle away from the mirror, tripping over some damned thing, falling into Kate’s arms.
Kate. No, Katherina. She’s right, when did I start calling her…
What’s happening?
She leans close to me, whispering something in her mother tongue. The words ebb over my head, washing my thoughts like ocean waves. The jasmine is intense and putrid, filling my nose with too much perfume. And the black powder. And blood. And something rotten.
I hear the guns.
I push away from her, but she grips me hard around my shoulders and leans close with her monster’s face, chanting her spell. It isn’t taking; I can tell somehow. My brain is buzzing with too much rattling chaos for her incantation to find purchase.
Why is Denton Folger in that mirror?
Where are those guns coming from?
I don’t lose my mind, but I do lose my eyesight. Everything’s gone black. Maybe her spell is working? Maybe she’s killing me?
Am I dead?
The guns are pounding in the distance. Artillery. The clouds of smoke drift over my face. Have to keep moving.
Have to crawl out of here.
I twist over, freeing my hands from the leather strap that got wrapped around my elbows. Gun strap. I toss the weapon aside, scrambling back into the brush.
The brush. Heavy-laden with night-blooming jasmine. It’s night. The clouds of artillery smoke fill with moonlight. The moon’s a beauty, hanging like a pearl over this killing field.
Something moves in the moonlit smoke, a figure crawling over the corpses splayed across the meadow. Probably a wild dog. There are so many bodies. I’ve seen too many, already. At least these have been dead for a good day already, and the night chill will keep them from putrefying too quickly. That will make scavenging a bit easier. I’m in sore need of fresh boots and a good canteen if I’m lucky. Problem is, looks like I’m not the only one out here.
That’s no dog. It’s another scavenger like me. I pull myself upright, gripping a sapling that’s crowning out of the jasmine brush. I ease back into the meadow, trying not to catch this stranger’s attention. Could be a Reb. Could be a starving, displaced local. Either is equally dangerous, and I’d rather not be noticed. This is a fresh killing field, and the battle’s still boiling over the hill. No one’s policing bodies just yet. I have good cover in this smoke and fog, and if I’m going to make Memphis by this time tomorrow, I must move with alacrity.
I nudge the nearest soldier, a fellow Union soldier, and get no response. Sometimes they’re faking. Sometimes they’re just barely gripping on to life. I can’t, in what’s left of my better conscience, rob a dying man with him looking into my face. That would be inhuman. I check his person. Someone’s already got his boots. Or rather, by the look of the state of his feet, he’s been marching without boots for a week at least. No canteen, either. I move on.
The process picks up. I’ve been at this for a week, now. Ever since I ran out of Lewisburg. I hate to admit it, but I’m getting good at this. Too good, perhaps. I move too swiftly and too far into the field.
The stranger spots me.
He’s hunkered over the same body. What’s so particularly interesting on that person that it’s taken this long to pull away? He raises his head.
Not he… she. She raises her head.
And that face. The face isn’t… It’s…
What is that thing? It’s not human! No kind of human I’ve ever seen. Charcoal skin. Needle teeth. Eyes as black as tar, hovering over a thin, bony face. But as she stands to her feet, I recognize it’s a woman. Her figure is hard to mistake in the moonlight.
Before I can run, or turn, or even think of what to do, she’s on me. Hand arou
nd my throat. That monstrous face inches from mine.
And yet, less monstrous. The skin softens into flesh tones. The eyes pull into two dark brown irises, blinking slowly at me. We stumble backward together, me over my confounded feet, her gliding with inhuman grace.
She speaks to me. I don’t understand these words. Some foreign language. Is it French? No, something almost Slavic. The harsh consonants smooth over trilled purrs as she chants something. Something sweet. Mellow. Like the night-blooming jasmine.
I can’t feel my feet. Or my hands. Could I be dying? This thing is killing me!
I can’t even move a finger.
“We’re not dying, Lin,” a familiar voice calls from the corner. Corner of what? There ain’t no corners. Just darkness.
“Denton?” I wheeze.
He steps into the light. Some kind of light, from where I have no idea. Neither moonlight nor sunlight. No flame. Just… he’s there. He’s here. In this silence.
“Might want to relax, Lin.”
I try to move, and it works. I stand up and twist around to check the creature. Not a creature. Kate. It was Kate in that field! But she’s gone, now. It’s just me and Denton, and his face is as sour as I’ve ever seen it.
“What’s going on?”
“A bit confusing, isn’t it? I’m getting used to this myself.”
“The Hell are you talking about?”
“You’re angry.”
“Fuck right, I’m angry.”
He nods, holding out his hands. “As am I.”
“What did you do to me?”
“It wasn’t me, Lin. That’s the God’s honest truth, or rational equivalent thereof. In fact, I’m as much a victim in this as you are. More so, I’d wager,” he adds with a snarl.
“That a fact?”
He shoves his hands into his vest pockets and steps around me. I watch his face, giving me sideways looks like he’s expecting me to take a swing at him. Hell, I might.
I ask, “Is this Richterman’s doing?”
He shakes his head. “No, but he is complicit.”
“Start making sense, Denton.”
A new voice booms from behind me. A terrible, immaculate voice. “He’s trying, you dolt.”
I turn to find Richterman glaring at me.
“You.”
“And you, as it turns out,” he replies with half a grin. “Denton’s just a half step ahead of you, so don’t give the poor boy any more grief than he’s earned.”
I try to move aside to keep the two of them in my sight, but it proves impossible. They can’t stand together. I can’t see them at the same time. I just have to keep looking left, then right, then left. It’s dizzying.
“I’m not you,” I grumble. “I’m Linthicum Odell.”
“You are not, in fact,” Richterman replies. “Linthicum Odell is dead.”
“Am I?”
Denton pulls at my sleeve, and I jerk my arm away.
“Lin, you’re very much alive. We all are. We’re just trapped here.”
“Where’s here?”
Richterman thunders with his almighty presence, sending a shutter through my rib cage. I turn to him.
“His head.”
“His?”
Richterman nods. I turn to find Denton rubbing the bridge of his nose as if working out a particularly noisome problem.
“It seems we are all symptoms of one broken mind,” Denton mutters. “Symptoms, like a rash or a headache. The root of the illness, well, that’s a matter more metaphysical than physical.”
“I’m you?”
He nods with an air of longsuffering.
I turn to Richterman. “And you?”
Richterman makes a slow, mocking clap. “You had me and Denton figured out a week ago, Odell. Now you just have to fold one more person into this flock and you’ll have the breadth of it.”
“No.”
“Fine. Just refuse to accept it. God knows he did,” he snorts as he points over my shoulder to Denton.
Denton shakes his head. “Who could blame a man? You saw it, Lin. Just now. I can still smell the damned jasmine. That night? In the field outside of Lewisburg?”
“I saw her,” I whisper.
“That was the first time we set eyes on Kate. She was there, feeding. Trying to stay alive.”
“Feeding on corpses?”
“No,” he blurts. “Not corpses. The ones slipping away. Seems that’s how she survived after Charleston. Hidden by the war.”
“Wait,” I say. “I thought you didn’t believe in any of this.”
“It’s become clear to me in the last few moments. I’m beginning to see the truth.”
“Then explain it to me.”
Richterman barks, “Good luck.”
Denton throws a dismissive hand toward Richterman and says, “She told us before. She tried to make us forget. Make me forget. There was no ‘us’ then. It seems she’s never been particularly capable with the skill of thrall. I can’t be sure if it was the distractions of the battlefield, her hunger, or simply a poorly timed but honest error, but she broke my brain. Our brain.” His face twists into an angry sob. “And she lied to us. For years, she’s lied.”
Richterman slides in front of me, and Denton fades into the darkness. “Not that any of that matters. You made it to Wyoming, you settled down, and then the mine collapsed.”
Sunlight boils into my vision, and dust fills my nose. I stand outside the pressroom, turning left and right, finding my feet as townsfolk storm past me. Hitchens pauses in front of me, his face ashes.
“What’s all the commotion?” I ask in Denton’s timbre.
Hitchens coughs. “Mine’s caved in!”
“Anyone in there?”
His brow creases, and I have my answer. I rush after the others, spotting that aging chestnut I’d purchased off the Army surplus those years ago. Ripper fidgets as I rush to saddle him up.
By the time twenty of us reach the mine, Toomey’s already handed out picks and shovels. The sun’s boiling hot, but there are men in that hole. If they’re still alive, they have to know we’re coming. Immediately I spot a poor system forming on the front rocks.
“No! Stop piling it up in the flat like that. Look, two of you with picks here and here. You four, grab that cart and start loading. We’ll dump the rest into the ravine.”
We work hard, panic running through our veins as the sun starts its descent behind the forest hills. At least, by sunset, the panic is still running through my blood. I’ve lost two men to exhaustion, and I can tell by the lackadaisical pick strikes I’m about to lose the rest to dinner and their beds.
By the time the stars come out, Kate’s found me and has joined in. She’s hefting the stones with a hearty, Old World strength of limb. I knew she’d worked a plantation in the South, but before that I suspect she’s been a farm maid in her home country. She never shies from work when she can offer it. Amazing woman.
I’m forced to ease my efforts to take some supper, a neat bundle of bread and elk jerky Kate brings me. I don’t allow my rest to take too deep a hold. I have to keep working.
Sunrise brings a fresh crew of faces and energy to help clear the rubble, and the extra hands get us well into the front of the mine. Unfortunately we find a fresh cave-in not far down the throat, and most of the men start staring over their heads in trepidation. I don’t get more than two more days out of them, and by the third day I’m alone. I rest during the day. On the fourth day, Kate carries me home after I collapse.
It’s two days before I return, and even then over Kate’s protestations. She’s convinced they’re all dead, or will be by the time any man could clear the rock.
Work goes slow alone, and even I admit it feels hopeless. I can’t sleep thinking about the men trapped in the darkness, wondering if they’ve been abandoned. I can’t bear the thought that they have been.
Two weeks. It takes two weeks until I pull that one stubborn hunk of granite that sends a backslide into the shaft. Som
ething rumbles deep underground. Secondary collapse. This time, it works to my advantage. The throat of the mine slants aside, drawing a river of rubble tumbling into the main shaft. The boulders and gravel create a steep ramp of handholds. I strike a lamp and push inward. Sun’s still up outside, so I can’t expect Kate to help.
I realize there’s not much chance of finding survivors, but I have to descend as deep as I dare to be sure. Can’t have worn my hands to the bones just to stop now.
When I’ve climbed down farther than I felt was possible and still not be in Hell itself, the smell hits me.
Death, thick and putrid.
A wet path leads sideways into a branch from the main shaft. The smell takes a dramatic, malodorous turn, filling my nostrils with waves of blood and excrement. I keel over to gag, then cover my mouth with the front of my shirt. As I stumble over a larger rock, my foot crunches into something. I shake my leg and kick it off. Raising the lantern enough to spill a little more light onto the ground, I spot the remains of a gore-strewn rib cage.
I freeze.
I’d expected bodies down here, but this isn’t a corpse. It’s just bits, picked nearly clean by something. Rats, maybe?
Catching my breath, I stumble forward. It isn’t long until I spot more bones, all with rotting fleshy remains. Looks like they were stacked nice and neat until the recent earth shift that let me into the mine. I realize the runoff draining down the branch isn’t water at all. It’s blood.
What had happened down here? Rats don’t stack bones.
I hear breathing. Raspy, labored breathing.
The lantern light falls over a hand reaching up from a heap of rubble. The fingers move, jerking, reaching out for something.
I set down the lantern and kick some gravel loose before a heavier stone shifts aside to spill more of the wall out over my legs. I brace and pull on the arm. Another hand erupts from the rubble and slaps down on the stone. A face pulls up out of the wreckage.
I know this man. He’s an old prospector that came south from the Black Hills to work the mine. Name’s Magner, if I recall. His eyes are wide, wild, filled with some animal quality that sends ice through my insides. His voluminous beard is stained red, heavy with bits of gravel and moist gristle. He pants as he pulls himself free, standing on wobbly legs.
