Shores of the Marrow

by Patrick Logan

  What happened to me? What happened—

  But the sound of the door opening behind him caused his head to whip around.

  In from the night stepped a man dressed in dark green rags. He looked up when he saw Cal, but instead of being startled, he offered a horrible smile complete with teeth caked with dirt and grime.

  “Oh, hey there. Sorry ‘bout that. Was just taking a piss. What can I help you with?”

  Chapter 35

  “Don’t come near us,” Cal warned. “We don’t have anything—no money, no drugs.”

  The man in the rags chuckled. It was a grating sound, one that made Cal uncomfortable. That, coupled with the fact that the man seemed to be trailing a strange yellow glow as he moved past them and deeper into the library, was enough to raise concern.

  “Oh, but you want something, don’t you? I mean, maybe it’s knowledge… a history lesson, perhaps?” the man spoke in a slow, patronizing manner.

  Cal squinted hard and with a groan, rose to his feet.

  History lesson?

  The words sounded oddly familiar…

  “Also, this is my home. So, it’s quite rude for you to shout at me when I get back from taking a piss.”

  Cal wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected a slight hint of a Californian accent. It was difficult to tell with his teeth so caked full of shit as they were.

  “Who are you?” he gasped.

  The man froze.

  “Ah, you know who I am, Callum Godfrey formally of this beautiful town,” he replied with a chuckle.

  “It can’t be,” Cal gasped.

  The smile fell off the man’s face and he strode forward so suddenly that despite everything, Cal cowered.

  “What? You don’t recognize me?” he asked. His breath was rank, and Cal felt his stomach lurch.

  The man’s hands shot up and for a second, Cal thought that he was going to throttle him. Instead, the man covered his own face with his tattered gloves. He paused, there was a bright flash of the strange yellow glow, then he pulled them away again.

  The brown smile was gone. The eyes, the pale blue eyes were the same, but everything else was different.

  “What the fuck…” Cal muttered as he staggered backward. He tripped on the corner of the travois and fell hard on his ass.

  The man’s face was young and smooth, and he had long blond hair that fell to his shoulders.

  It was Seth Parsons.

  “How did you—what did you—how—”

  The man laughed, this time in a melodic timber.

  “Oh god, after all you’ve seen, this is what you have a hard time believing?”

  Cal found himself at a loss for words.

  The man’s face…it had changed.

  Instantly.

  “Alright, how about this then? This one is going to blow your fucking mind.”

  Seth brought his still gloved hands in front of his face and covered it for another second.

  When he pulled them away, he was once again a different person. He was fatter, with a huge, sagging chin that hung down like a peach-colored rooster waddle, and he had short black hair that was slicked against his skull.

  Even though Cal had never seen this person before, something deep down told him who it was.

  It was Mayor Steven Partridge.

  The mayor laughed, sending his chins quivering.

  “Yep, that’s me, too. Steven Partridge.”

  Cal blinked, and then tried to swallow, but his mouth felt so dry that he found himself unable.

  “You… you were there? At the Pit? All those years ago?”

  The man shrugged, passed his hands in front of his face, and his features seamlessly returned to those of the bum who had walked through the door moments ago. It all happened so fast that if Cal had been pressed, he might have agreed that none of the face-changing had happened, that it was all just an exhaustion- and drug-fueled hallucination.

  “I’ve been many people during my long years on this world and others, Cal. Many different people, and not all of them were—how can I say this—model citizens.”

  Cal tried to swallow, but again failed. When he spoke next, his voice had a tacky quality that under other circumstances would have driven him crazy.

  Except he was convinced he was already insane. Or, in the very least, extremely deranged.

  “You threw McCabe in The Pit?” Cal asked. “Why?”

  The man waved his question away with a gloved hand.

  “That’s all in the past, but if you must know—and I figure you might judging by the way your eyes are bulging out of your head—Father McCabe wasn’t all that he seemed.”

  Seth, or whoever he was, strode toward Cal and leaned down to whisper in his ear.

  “Breaking news, Callum: not all priests are good people; not all priests are of Father Callahan’s quality. Besides, a sacrifice needed to be made.”

  He pulled away and chuckled.

  Cal shook his head, trying to clear it, but this only served to make his world spin even more.

  What the hell did Dr. Transky give me?

  “I’m here for the book…” he managed to croak.

  “Of course, you are,” Seth replied, moving toward the bookshelf. He leaned down and reached for something that wasn’t there. “You know, that girl Chloe… I should be getting a holding fee for all the books I’ve stored over the years. Yours, his…”

  He pressed the wood not three inches from where Cal had slammed his fists down moments ago. Something clicked and a panel slid out. Inside, a familiar book with a green cover was revealed.

  “How’s the old hag doing, anyway?” Seth said as he turned back to face him.

  Cal averted his eyes.

  “Shit,” Seth whispered. “Another fucking sacrifice, huh.”

  Cal looked up as Seth approached, and noticed that he was shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he offered, but Seth ignored this comment. Clearly, he was used to loss.

  Cal couldn’t decide if this was a good or a bad thing.

  “Here,” Seth said, holding the book out to him. “You’re going to need this.”

  For a moment, Cal could only stare at the paperback. He tried to reach for it, to take, after all, this was the reason he had come back to Mooreshead, but his arms and hands simply failed to obey.

  Seth pressed his lips together and then reached out and grabbed Cal’s wrist and raised his hand. Then he shoved the book between his blistered fingers.

  “Don’t be a pussy, take the book,” he whispered, the air coming out of his mouth like fumes from a toxic waste dump.

  Cal squeezed the cover and was transported back to his youth, to the time when he was scribbling away in the book thinking he was under some sort of spell, under the influence of toxic mold spores, perhaps.

  He shook his head then moved toward the door.

  Seth chuckled.

  “You forgetting something?” he asked, nudging his chin toward Robert and the travois. “Best not leave him here… besides, I think you’re going to need him, too.”

  Cal licked his lips, trying, and failing, to moisten them. He tucked the book into the belt of his pants and leaned down to grab the travois handles.

  “Yeah, that’s one book that I’m not touching ever again, no matter how much—“ he stopped himself before saying Chloe’s name. “Anyways, good touch on the magic mushrooms, too. Those things always help, let me tell you.”

  Chapter 36

  Cal made it to The Pit in a daze under the shroud of darkness. Seth had been right; he felt high, as if he had swallowed an entire ounce of magic mushrooms.

  But he wasn’t complaining. If anything, the drugs helped numb some of what he was feeling.

  Unbelievably, he had made it to Mooreshead, and had acquired his book from the shape-shifting curator. And now he was here, at The Pit, waiting for…

  For what? What’s next, Cal? Ye of the master plan? What are you supposed to do now?

  He remembered Direc
tor Ames’s words, his encouragement to hurry, that Shelly and the baby wouldn’t last through the night.

  Cal set Robert and the travois down on the edge of The Pit, and looked around. Night was upon them, but the moon was full and bright, offering more than enough illumination for… whatever it was he was supposed to do next.

  What felt like eons ago, back when he and Robert and Shelly had been living together in the Harlop Estate, he had shouted at Robert to stop acting like a boss, to stop ordering them around.

  Robert had said that he was out, that he wanted none of this life, that all he wanted was to grieve the loss of his wife and daughter. But Shelly and Cal had insisted, had gone as far as to say that they would go on hunting ghosts with or without him.

  Now, back at his childhood haunt, he wanted nothing more than for Robert’s eyes to flick open and for the man to speak, to tell him what to do next.

  Shit, he didn’t care if Robert ordered him to count every grain of sand in The Pit; he’d do it.

  He’d groom Wrigley Field with a pair of nail clippers, drain Lake Huron with a straw, build a life-size replica of the goddamn Great Wall of China with Play-Doe if the man would only just wake the fuck up!

  Cal wasn’t cut out for this leadership business, for being responsible for making final decisions, regardless of what Chloe had said. It was too much pressure for a man who never even completed high school.

  Something in the back of his mind, however, reminded him that Robert wasn’t some sort of Ivy League genius. He was a retired accountant, after all. Hell, technically, he wasn’t even retired; he’d been fired.

  Cal closed his eyes and shook his head.

  Chloe told me to take over, that I should lead the guardians. She must know something, doesn’t she?

  But he was hard pressed to put much stock in the words of a woman who had given herself up to the Goat’s long dead and rotting minions.

  He opened his eyes, hoping that something had appeared in front of him—a scroll, a magic bean for fuck’s sake—clueing him in to what to do next.

  But there was only the moon above and sleeping Robert at his side.

  Dejected, Cal flopped into a seated position like a petulant child. As he did, something dug painfully into his stomach and he looked down.

  The book! Of course!

  Cal pulled the book—his book—from his waistband and held it in both hands. It felt smaller than he remembered, lighter, but he couldn’t be certain as his hands were still numb. The cover, previously unblemished, now bore a title and the name of the author.

  He ran his fingers over the gold-embossed letters as he read the words: The Marrow.

  And then beneath that: Callum Godfrey.

  The letters felt so strange, both on his tongue and beneath his blistered fingers, that he had to read them a second and third time before they really started to sink in.

  I wrote this, he thought absently. I have no idea how, no clue why, but I wrote this.

  Then he pulled the cover open and started to read.

  Chapter 37

  There weren’t many words in The Marrow. If anything, it was written more like an engineering manual than any sort of literary novel.

  The book described a series of tunnels buried deep in the earth, tunnels that extended outward from the center like spokes on a wheel. And like the tire portion of a wheel, the spokes were also connected to each other in a circular fashion.

  Cal read the names of the places inscribed beneath each of the spokes, some of which he knew, while others he had never heard of before.

  Mooreshead, Stumphole Swamp, Askergan County, Sacred Heart.

  There were more, too—nine in total by his count—but the pencil markings had faded over the years and he found himself unable to make out all the names.

  Mooreshead… all these years, and there was a tunnel beneath the city. Mooreshead… the most boring town on Earth just got a little more interesting.

  Cal raised his eyes, and stared out over the old Forrester Gravel Pit. The place brought back horrible memories, most of which he had blocked out, but when his gaze fell on the rusted backhoe bucket, complete with red stains coating the fingers, his body clenched.

  That much he recalled; no amount of therapy, denial, or time and space could make him forget what happened that night.

  Hank… I’m sorry, Hank.

  Cal shook his head before emotions overtook him, and he turned his attention back to the book.

  It wasn’t completely devoid of words, although the prose was more point-form than narrative.

  On the first page, which was mostly covered with a drawing of a sterile tunnel, was a description of the tiled interior, complete with details of the thickness of the walls, the diameter of the opening. There was also a name and number at the top of the page. The name was Mooreshead and the number was four, which was circled in the upper right-hand corner.

  Cal flipped the page, and looked at the tunnel ascribed with the name ‘Askergan County’ and the number ‘2’.

  He made a brief mental note, then continued through the pages, stopping at Sacred Heart next.

  This tunnel was marked with a ‘6’. Just reading that name, Sacred Heart, made his pulse rate quicken, and evoked visions of the horrible winged creature emerging from Sean’s withered chest

  Cal skipped further ahead, ignoring the names of places he did not know, and then stopped when he came to a drawing of a large holding tank full of some sort of liquid. Suspended inside the tank was a man, nude, with tubes coming from his nose and mouth which extended upward.

  There was a name tag near the bottom, Cal saw, but the lettering was too small and too faded to make out.

  And yet, for some reason, the face, even with the tubes covering the lower half, was incredibly detailed. For a moment, Cal thought the suspended man actually looked like him. He leaned in close to get a better look and sure enough, he recognized his eyes, his ears, the lines that ran from the corners of his nose to his mouth. Even his hair looked similar to the way he used to style it, in spite of being submerged in liquid.

  Cal shook his head, and the image seemed to swirl before his eyes. With this came another bout of nausea.

  “You’re just high,” he whispered out loud. “That quack Dr. Transky fed you some drugs and now you’re losing it. It’s not me… why would it be me?”

  And yet despite his verbal admonition, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that this was him floating inside the tank.

  Cal was about to shut the book when a pregnant drop of rain landed on the page. The liquid landed directly on the face of the person in the tank, instantly distorting his features.

  Cal looked upward and squinted.

  The sky was completely clear, devoid of any clouds, and the moon still shining bright.

  “What the hell?”

  Cal turned back to the page and saw that instead of obscuring the face, the raindrop had changed it.

  I’ll be damned…

  Somehow, it looked like Shelly now, with her thick, red lips, her short blond hair. He was reminded briefly of how the Curator had changed his appearance, had gone from a vagrant to a surfer to a prestigious mayor from nearly a century ago simply by waving his hands in front of his face.

  And then he recalled what Carson had blathered about, what at the time Cal had considered the simple ramblings of a lunatic: the self, and how giving it up meant—

  Another raindrop fell, only this time it landed on Cal’s nose instead of the page.

  Once again, he turned his eyes upward, only this time he was met by a deluge of rain.

  “Shit!” he swore, slamming the book closed and tucking it into his waistband. He pulled his grimy t-shirt over top and then went to Robert at his side, trying his best to shield him from the brunt of the downpour.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  In seconds, Cal was soaked through to the bone. It was as if the sky had suddenly just opened, and God Almighty had emptied a celestial bucketful right here in Moor
eshead, right on The Pit, on Cal himself.

  I’ve got to get Robert out of the rain, he thought, reaching for the travois handles.

  He glanced around, hoping to find some foliage to duck under instead of having to drag the travois all the way back to what had once been Mr. Willingham’s forest.

  There was an outcropping of bushes to his left, he noted, and was about to start toward them when he saw something across from him, on the other side of The Pit.

  A shape, a form.

  And then a voice filtered to him over the quarry. A voice that made his heart stop cold.

  “Cal? Is that you, Cal?”

  Cal dropped the travois.

  Chapter 38

  “It’s coming anytime now.”

  Shelly’s eyes rolled back in her head and she moaned, feeling the pressure inside her build to new heights.

  Oh, the baby was coming alright, but it wasn’t coming out of her vagina. It felt as if it was going to tear its way out of her stomach.

  “And when it comes? What then?” a different voice asked.

  Shelly allowed her head to roll in that direction, and through half-open and fluttering lids, she made out a familiar face.

  It was the face of Carson Black, and the bastard was smiling.

  “Then we bind the child of two guardians to the living and the dead. We open the gates.”

  Shelly saw Carson nod in her periphery.

  “And what about Bella and the orphans? What if they’re not back in time?”

  There was a sudden crunch inside her, somewhere in the general vicinity of her belly button, and Shelly shrieked.

  “Get it out!” she screamed. “Get it out!”

  A dry chuckle filled the room.

  “Oh, it’ll come out, sweetie, but you can’t rush these things.”

  For several agonizing minutes, the only sound in the room was Shelly’s own staggered breathing. And then Carson repeated his question.

  “What about Bella and the orphans?”

  “They’re gone, Carson. They served us well, but now they’re gone. As is Robert—I thought we could change him, make him come to his senses, but, alas, he always was a mama’s boy.”