Book Of Tongues

by Gemma Files

  The smell of the place — burnt wood cut with garbage, plus a chamber-pot whiff of sex’s unmistakable long-stood stink — reminded Chess fiercely of the last time he’d been fever-caught, when small. Inflammation of the appendices, the whorehouse’s live-in barber-cum-abortionist’d called it — a churn of pain, pushing out the side of Chess’s stomach in a sore, swollen curve.

  How he’d kicked and raved! They’d had to hold him down, English Oona getting him briskly lit on smoke and cradling his head as the “doctor” cut into him without benefit of alcohol, let alone ether. Now and then, she’d turn Chess’s head so he could puke in a blue porcelain basin with a chipped rim. It came in endless racking waves of pain and nausea, nausea and pain, eventually blotting him out entirely.

  And much later, resurfacing to the agony of his wound — black stitches through seeping red skin, rucked like a bad seam — he’d been soothed back to sleep by the regular creak and heave of her fucking the Doc a bare hand’s-breadth away, for payment.

  But this was now — the agonies of Mictlan-Xibalba were gone at last. His body lay right there in front of him, intact as ever . . . aside from one little missing part, of course. For fine as it might look from the outside, it lay doubly empty — pithed, a shucked husk.

  You took my heart, you son-of-a-bitch, he thought, “to” Rook — whose very absence, he found, hurt him almost as much. Reached down inside and took it, and then . . . you gave it away to that evil whore from Hell, right in front of me. Let her take the damn thing, and eat it.

  Yet that wasn’t entirely so, either: he’d given his heart away, gladly. Like the fool Oona always called him.

  Yet here a voice intruded, neither thought nor conjuration, so much, as . . . simply there. And said: Aw, quit foolin’ yerself, you great pansy. You never even ’ad no ’eart worth the losin’, to begin with.

  Yet forget that, pelirrojo, conquistador. Forget it all, and listen.

  And gradually — Chess became aware of voices filtering through the chamber-walls, muttering and indefinite. Without making any sort of decision to do so, he sent his consciousness drifting that-a-way, random and thoughtless as any eavesdropping bird. After a moment, the wall itself grew porous, seeping away in foggy sections, revealing — not another room, but the memory of another room, another place.

  Outside Splitfoot’s, the moon hung heavy, bright as the devil’s coin. Under it stood Ed Morrow, looking north — ’til Reverend Rook flickered into being beside him, and offered him an already-lit cigar, which Morrow waved away. And as Rook pulled deep, blew out, the smoke rose up languid into the night sky, catching light from the window Chess knew he himself had lain behind that same night, trapped in that bitch Ixchel’s toils, having his rebellious body put through its paces.

  You should’ve saved me that, you bastard, he thought, with all the crap you’d spewed hitherto concerning love, and loyalty. Would’ve, for sure, you’d ever really cared for me at all.

  “Well, listen to you — big man wiv ’is guns, whinin’ away at lost love like a baby whore. Ain’t too proud now, are ya?”

  She was sitting on the bed, behind him. Or — above him? Beside him. Inside him.

  That same smell as ever, pussy-wash and opium-cookings, acrid on the tongue. Her hair fell rust-red around him, and as she grinned down, he could see the holes where her teeth had once held gold.

  “You . . . you’re damn well dead.”

  “’Cause your fancy-man says I am? Well, ’e’d know, of course.”

  “You wanna get the fuck away from me, old woman. . . .”

  “’Ow old you think I was? ’Ad you when I was only fourteen, and damn if that didn’t knock all the other kids I might’ve borne right out of me. So thanks for that, son, if for bloody nothin’ else.”

  “That what you’re here for? To thank me?”

  “Oh, lovey . . .” She made a moue possibly intended as endearing, which might’ve even looked so, if it hadn’t pulled her face skullishly gaunt. “Ain’t you never thought maybe I went somewheres better — that I might finally be ’appy enough t’say all the things I never ’ad no inclination to, back there? ’Ow I might pray it ain’t far too late to tell my son just ’ow much I always loved ’im?”

  Chess stared — then finally burst out laughing. Insulting, and frankly meant to be — yet Oona’s face didn’t change. Over and over Chess tried to recover himself, then looked on that awful smile, and was helplessly swept up once more. It was only the sight of his own body on the bed below — so passive and still — that finally cooled the hysteria again.

  Voice still shaky: “Oh thank Christ, you ain’t her at all. Can’t be.”

  “Can’t I?” Smile still unchanging, more and more maskish by the moment. “Didn’t I never make a joke, then?”

  “Not when it was on yourself. So if you ain’t her, then . . . just who the fuck are you?”

  Oona reached out, put a too-long finger on his chin; Chess tried to twist away, but couldn’t. The contact, he realized too late — along with a pressure that forced his regard back downwards again, into that time-echo slice of past where Rook and Morrow still held their secret confab — were both things of spirit rather than flesh, impossible to fight off, except through magic.

  And I ain’t no hex.

  “Names later, little one. I fink you might not want to miss this.”

  So: Rook and Morrow looking up at the window, behind which Ixchel had Chess at her mercy.

  “Why would you do that to him?” Morrow asked, wearing that same half-puzzled frown always made Chess want to punch it whenever he saw it, because Ed was far too smart to play dumb as often as he did. “Let her — ”

  “’Cause she needs it.” Rook replied.

  “And you need her. To make yourself a damn god, too.”

  “You really are a sight smarter than you look, Ed — but yeah. And no. I need her . . . to make Chess a god.”

  The hell?

  “Oh, he ain’t much enamoured of the idea right now,” Rook continued, like he hadn’t heard Chess — and why would Chess expect him to? “But that’ll change. He’ll be a god, I’ll be his priest-king; hers too. It’ll be choice.”

  “And her.” Morrow jerked his head at the window above. “What does she get out of it?”

  “Oh, the usual . . . blood, and lots of it. That’s what her kind like best. How’d it go, by the by? You and him, I mean.” As Morrow blushed: “Yeah, I knew. But don’t think I’m jealous, Ed; you gave him what he needed, in the moment. And now — you won’t be so quick to want shed of us after all, either, will ya?”

  “What do you want, Reverend?”

  “I’m playin’ it by ear, somewhat. Goin’ where the currents take me. All hexes can, or could, but most don’t listen. So — you send Kees for the Pinkertons yet?”

  Morrow reared back, and Chess could see in his eyes it was true. White-hot fury: Morrow, a Pink? He’d fucked a damn Pink?

  You son of a bitch, Chess raved to himself. Minute I wake, I’m gonna —

  “Aw, shit! Okay, I give the hell up.” Morrow threw out his hands. “Why d’you let me do anything, exactly? Why ain’t I dead a hundred times over, by now?”

  “’Cause I need you upright, Ed.” Rook came close, put a comradely hand on Morrow’s shoulder. “Better yet . . . ’cause Chess does. I need you for him — to want to serve him, protect him, bad as I do.”

  “Why can’t you do it?”

  “All you need to know is I can’t, Ed. Not right now.” Rook looked away, eyes shadowed. “I lay down with dogs, and now I gotta deal with the fleas . . . you understand me?”

  “Not even a little damn bit.”

  Rook sighed. “Well, it don’t matter too much, really. We all of us only do what needs doing, or what we’re made to do.” He glanced at Morrow. “You as much as anyone, Ed, for what that’s worth.”

  Morrow frowned. “What — what d’you mean?”

  “I mean, that what he needed last night . . . well, that was what I n
eeded too. To make this whole thing work. So — ” Rook tapped the coat-pocket which held the mojo-bag “ — I might’ve helped things along, with you and him. Just a bit.”

  “You made us do that? Both of us?”

  “Ahhhh, I said I helped, is all.” Rook waggled a reproving finger at Morrow, whose hands had bunched into fists. “Didn’t need that much pushin’, truth be told, for either of you. So what’s really gonna drive you mad, Edward Morrow, is wonderin’ just how much of that night was me . . . and how much was you.”

  For a moment it seemed Morrow might just let fly at Rook, spells be damned — but Rook just tipped his hat and walked away, whistling. Morrow watched him go.

  Then he walked over to the wall of Splitfoot Joe’s and punched it so hard the skin on his knuckles burst.

  “Oona” shook her head, sadly. “So men are born fools and stay fools, steered ’round by their pricks ’til the day they die. Too bad the only way knowin’ that might ’elp you would be if you wasn’t one.” She gave him a considering look. “Poor little bastard. If you ’ad been a girl, least I’d’ve been able to teach you ’ow love’s nothin’ but a mug’s game. As it is, you’ll go on doin’ whatever the little ’ead tells you to, ’til you learn better.”

  Chess frowned, having heard all this before — too many times to count, or register.

  “What’s that noise?” he asked, instead.

  The real Oona, embarked on a philosophical tear, would’ve slapped him for interrupting; this one just grinned. And replied, “A fair question. What’s it sound like?”

  Several phrases popped into Chess’s head at once, all equally unlikely. In rough order — slammin’ door . . . a wood bell tolling . . . something . . . rotten.

  Back and forth, in and out, a decomposing heart’s mushy beat. It had started low-down, but now it mounted steady, so the walls fair rung with it. Don’t rightly know, he thought — had halfway opened his mouth to say — but stopped. Because his eyes had gone lower, drifted to “Oona’s” skinny chest, and seen.

  And now she was looking down too. “Ah, that,” she said, unsurprised. “Want a better look, do ya?”

  She shrugged her skinny shoulders, let the fabric fall away. Revealing — a torso like an awful wax-rendering, anatomically denuded: bloodless neck, skin to her cleavage, and from thence on down nothing but a set of flapping ribcage-sides all wet red and whitish yellow, gristle-strung haphazardly together only at the bisected breastbone, the glistening spinal column. Guts coiled inside, and above that the heart, hung like a fruit — bright, hot, fluttering with life. Smoking with it.

  He felt the sight of it in his own empty chest, like a fist. Felt his own response to it setting brain and gut afire, and found himself not cringing away in disgust, but reaching forward, fascinated, almost desperate. Wanting to feel that sheer pulsing force under his fingers, unbarred by fat and skin.

  “Reach in, little brother, if you wish.” By pitch and timbre it was still Oona’s voice, but the Limey drawl was fading, washing away into an accent like ink stirred into blood. “Reach in, and perhaps I will give you a new heart, to fill the hole.”

  Her smile was half invitation, half mockery — and it was the mockery that broke his daze, reminding Chess far too sharply of what no longer lay beneath his own scars. So he flushed, scowling, stopping his hand in mid-air . . . while, inches from his fingertips, cradled under dripping bones, the heart beat a little faster — as if amused, or excited.

  The bony arches of the ribcage reminded Chess for a moment of the whorled-dome walnut halves old Chang used to run games for the waiting pikers, back at the whorehouse. The salient point of suchlike endeavours, whispered slyly to him one night while setting it up, having been: Trick, boy-ah, is not put ball under one shell, make gweilo pick other shell. Trick is —

  “ — make sure there’s no ball in the game, at all,” Chess murmured, almost under his breath. “That every shell’s empty, no matter what they pick — so you can make ’em always lay something out, but get nothin’ back in return.”

  Then added, voice rising again: “As you’d goddamn well know already, you actually were my Ma — ’cause she’s the exact bitch first gave me any version of that same advice, her own damn self. So you can keep your ‘new’ heart; old one’ll do me just fine, once I find out where to go get it.”

  “Oona” stared at him, that sugary smile well-gone now, for good.

  The movement of her upper body was so small that Chess almost didn’t see it in time. It was the noise alone warned him, a dampish whicker, as the open ribs suddenly spread wide — then lashed back together, almost chipping each other with the force of it, to mesh sharp as a shut clam-shell.

  “Jesus!” he shouted, whipping his hand back with only a cunthair’s width to spare, feeling what had once seemed normal bone slice the air coldly over his skin. Because it was all black and matte and glassy now, like tar-smoked quartz, and made a horrible glutinous sound as its razor-edges sheared the heart in half, mid-beat.

  Wide-eyed, Chess recoiled, cradling his hand to his chest.

  Stone grated on stone as the obsidian rib-blades slid over and through each other, like interlocking fingers. This is the church, this is the steeple, Chess heard faintly sing-songing, in his mind. Open the doors —

  A wavering pane of flat smooth blackness assembled itself before him, his own face dimly visible in its glassine dark. For a beat of the heart neither now had, he recognized himself.

  Then — change.

  Crimson feathers, gold, ivory-hued bone and strips of reddish-dark leather adorned him. A long black wig streamed glossy hair from his head, and a pale, oddly tailored coat clung tight around shoulders, wrists and waist. He seemed to have four hands, and his face — his face, still — looked slack and empty.

  Yet even as Chess realized that the person in that mirror was wearing his own flayed skin as a cloak (his staring eyes rimmed not in red paint but the naked flesh left behind after their violent striptease), the image changed again. Now the headdress was a bright and virulent turquoise, and a monstrous head reared over it, while the figure clutched a serpent made of fire and considered him with a face similar to Chess’s own, but older — a man past thirty, his wars all behind him, and settled into ruling . . . what?

  Some place I ain’t never seen, and ain’t too like to.

  A further ripple of light and colour brought change, once more. Now the man was white-haired, white-feathered, a pectoral like a conch shell cut in half dangling on his chest and books and scrolls tucked beneath one arm. Yet the face, the face . . . was still Chess’s, old as he had never thought ever to be. Venerable, respectable, even. Respected.

  And behind all the faces, he heard cries and chants in a language unrecognizable, the frenzied howls of thousands in ecstatic adoration. Felt the huge, tremendous pulse of the earth’s long slow turnings, the piling up of seasons upon seasons into centuries. The taste of blood at the base of his tongue, salty-sweet as Rook’s seed, but richer, hotter, smoother.

  Blur yet again, and now the face in that reflection was nothing near Chess at all, barely human: black-skinned, monstrously tall, knives of night-coloured stone sheathed everywhere. A buzzing corona of blue flame lifting from its slumped head. And one foot, one foot . . . was gone. In its place, an oblong plaque of stone, ornately carved. Like that thing — hell, it was the thing! Same one Rook had torn down Selina Ah Toy’s to get hold of. . . .

  Smoking Mirror.

  And with that, it was no mirror at all anymore. “Oona’s” head was gone, her slender white arms now long and coal-coloured, the monstrous face he’d seen reflecting his now rearing tall above him. The thing sat on his bed, huge and inhuman and steaming, and still all Chess felt was that leap in his heart, that excitement, that alien, utterly natural-seeming joy.

  This is me. I’m with my own, at last. I have come home.

  He fought it down, though, tooth and goddamn nail. ’Cause if there was one thing Chess Pargeter had learned never to trust
, it was happiness.

  “You’re her kind,” he said, “that bitch of Rook’s, Ixchel, or whatever. Ain’t ya.”

  The enormous face tilted, pensive. “Might could be,” it replied, tone — and jargon — now mimicking his.

  “Thought she said all y’all were — ”

  “Asleep? Well, that was her error. She woke me. With you.” Chess blinked. “She tried to make you into me, little brother. One of me, anyhow. But you ain’t made to cooperate, for which I love you dearly — so now you’re only half me, and I am awake once more, wholly. Which, given I woke her in similar fashion, once, will be interesting, yes. Perhaps even satisfying, eventually.”

  Which made sweet fuck-all sense to Chess. “How many of you are there? You got a name?”

  “Oh, many.” The thing chuckled like the largest railroad engine in all the world grinding forward into motion, indicating its reflective stone foot. “Some call me, on account of this — ”

  “Smoking Mirror.” Chess scowled, suddenly faint, and struggled for his next idea. “Yeah, uh . . . I remember the Rev showin’ me that . . . thought that was just the thing, though — the plaque, what-friggin’-have-you.”

  “That was a Smoking Mirror, carved in my sister’s image, by worshippers so far removed from our glory days as to confuse us for each other. The Smoking Mirror — ”

  “ — is you.”

  “Yes, little brother. And now . . .” Shockingly, the thing laid its hand on Chess’s shoulder, fatherly gentle. “. . . you, too.”

  Chess’s head swum and throbbed like that bisected heart. His mouth was wickedly dry, tongue all buds, barely cogent. “Getcher meat-hooks offa me,” he said, or tried to — muzzily at best.

  Such ridiculous creatures we are, in the end, the Smoking Mirror continued, as though Chess hadn’t even spoke — and was it even speaking, as such? Not out loud, at any rate.

  Oh Christ shit fire, my head, my head.

  So powerful. So unrestrained. Yet so dependent on the very things we all too often kill with kindness, to survive. We blunder from Sun to Sun, seeking after humanity, nurturing it, destroying it. All the while refusing to accept that without it, we — the blood engine’s crew, centrepiece of an entire universe — are nothing.