by Catie Rhodes
“It was too late for you the day I was murdered.” He fastened the last strap across my legs. “Mama shoulda left you at the mental hospital.”
The door swung open, and heels clacked across the linoleum. My mother’s face appeared over me, dirt sifting from her hair. “Your grandmother never could listen to reason.”
“That’s all right,” came a familiar voice from my other side. Eddie Kennedy leaned over me and fastened something to my forehead. “We’ll fix it all up right now.”
“No, no. I’ll be good.” My words came fast, so fast they barely had syllables. “I’ll do better. Don’t. Whatever this is, don’t.” I knew what it was, deep in my mind. I remembered hearing Memaw hollering about it when she came to get me from the hospital. You quacks sure ain’t giving my granddaughter electroshock therapy.
Fear burned in my stomach and sizzled the rest of the way through me. No. They couldn’t do this to me. Wasn’t there some form I had to sign? Wait a minute. That’s all wrong. What was I forgetting? I saw myself standing in a circle with my friends and family. Before I could remember what it was all about, Eddie leaned over and shoved a piece of rubber between my teeth.
“You got me killed, Peri Jean.” He stared into my face, eyes blazing. “I hope this hurts like hell.”
I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but my mouth was full of rubber. My mother turned the dial on the white machine, and I heard the hum as the electricity came to life. It jolted through my body like liquid fire. I stiffened and strained against it, thinking it was going to kill me, and then it stopped. I opened my eyes and remembered what my panic and fear had erased. My tormenters leaned over me, faces expectant.
I pushed the rubber out of my mouth with my tongue. “You aren’t real. None of you.”
The faces of my loved ones faded and disappeared, leaving me to stare up at the cracks in the ceiling.
“This isn’t real. It didn’t happen. Memaw got me out of the hospital and took me home.” I waited for the restraints holding me down to melt away, for the hospital around me to turn into the scarred landscape of my magical core. The door creaked open. Footsteps approached.
The Coachman leaned over me. “It’s real to you, and that’s all that matters.” He turned the dial on the machine. The electricity hit my body. The Coachman turned off the current, waited a few seconds, and did it again. Over and over. “Tell me when you give up.”
The current of pain arced through me. I didn’t know how many more times I could stand it. My body begged me to give up. I’d be dead, and I’d never have to worry again about anybody or anything. Normal wouldn’t matter. Neither would the loneliness that plagued me even when people surrounded me. The thoughts lost coherence and turned into a mindless chant, give up, give up, give up.
Priscilla Herrera’s voice spoke from somewhere just out of reach. “Call the man from the dark outposts now. Monster or not, he is your only hope.”
I didn’t want her to be right, but I knew she was. Against my better judgment, I closed my eyes and pictured the thing I’d last seen eating the Coachman’s earthly body from the head down. Darkness awoke in my blood, because that’s where he’d been all along, and whispered through me.
Please help me. I thought the words as hard as I could. The intermittent shocks and the hospital room went somewhere far away, but this time I didn’t fall. I just shifted to another reality.
I CAME to in a dark place. Somewhere nearby, water lapped against rocks or a beach. The smell hit my nose, and I knew where I was. My eyes adjusted to a sliver of moon hovering over an endless expanse of water. A beach of sugar white sand stretched before it. Something splashed in the dark water, coming closer and closer.
A white pig rose out of the tide and shook like a dog. Droplets of water sprayed. The pig trotted toward me. Bones rippled under its skin as it came. Its back legs lengthened, and it began to walk upright. Its face narrowed. The snout shrank into a regular nose. Bit by bit, the pig became a man, his hairless skin wrinkled and waterlogged. A black suit formed over the man’s nakedness. Water began to drip from the hems. Pruney stopped a few feet from me.
“Peri Jean Mace.” His words ended in a squelching oink. “It has been a time since our last face-to-face chat. Did the treasure fulfill all your dreams?”
The Coachman was electrocuting my consciousness to death, and Pruney wanted to hash over old times? What a freak. I didn’t have the nerve to disrespect him. “Some, I guess.”
“And now we are reunited at your request.” He showed me his needle tipped teeth, the same ones I’d seen crunch into the Coachman’s skull. My skin tightened and flinched at the sight of those teeth.
I had no answer for him. If there were any other way, or if I had time to brainstorm with Mysti, I wouldn’t do this. Wade Hill’s fear of this thing told me all I needed to know.
“I see you are still undecided in accepting my help.” Pruney came toward me, and I shrank away. Undeterred, he slapped one pulpy hand to my forehead. “See what the Coachman plans.”
Zora and I lay unconscious at the middle of a circle, surrounded by people chanting. My head was turned to one side, my eyes open and glazed, not a shred of sanity in them. My chest rose and fell ever so slightly.
Metal clinked together and squalled, and my feet began to rise, hoisted by a pulley system somewhere out of sight. They raised me until my limp body hung upside down with my arms extended over my head.
The chanting increased in volume. “Now we offer the sacrifice of this powerful blood.”
A woman, face hidden in the shadows cast by the undulating firelight, came forward, an athame held aloft. Danielle knelt beside me. Fucking traitor. She flicked the knife under my throat in one smooth, experienced motion.
My skin opened, and blood flowed thick and heavy, pattering onto the old wood floor. It spread in a wide puddle, extending to flow over Zora’s chubby little hand.
The last drops of blood dripped from my neck, and the blood swelled, taking an almost human shape. It hovered over Zora several seconds. The chanting picked up again, and the candlelight hissed and fluttered. The blood covered Zora’s face and drained into her nose, eyes, and ears.
The chanters droned on. “With this blood shall he live. With this blood shall he live.”
Zora’s little body jittered like a bag of snakes. The skin on her arms dried and withered as though being sucked from within. The deterioration continued until she was nothing but bones with dried eyes wide and staring and her lips pulled back from her baby teeth, which had turned black.
“Now the final sacrifices,” Danielle boomed.
A murmur went through the chanters, and a man wearing a dark hood was dragged into the circle. Danielle whipped the hood off the man’s head, revealing Cecil’s horrified face. He took one look at me, then Zora, and began to tremble.
“No,” he moaned. Danielle used the same practiced motion to open his throat. A twenty-something woman rushed forward to catch the blood.
Two twenty-something men dragged Finn into the circle, bound at the arms and ankles. They tossed him on the ground next to his daughter's shaking form. “What did you people do to my daughter?” he screamed. Nobody answered. Danielle cut his throat. Another idiot with another bucket collected the arterial spray.
One by one, my friends were dragged into the circle. The knowledge of their impending deaths shone bright in their wild eyes. One by one, they died. My mind melted down at the sight of Wade. He’d been drugged or knocked out. His head flopped as four grunting people threw him in the dirt. Some broken, agonized part of my mind began to scream.
Danielle crept over to Zora’s dried up body and stuffed a handful of sickly green, spongy stuff into her mouth. Nobody had to tell me what it was. The Lazarus Root. So they had managed to get some.
Zora’s body cracked open, and an adult sized head rose from her abdomen. His neck and shoulders formed from nothing. The Coachman raised his head, and the brutal smile I’d come to hate quirked his lips. “Wash me i
n their blood so that I may live.”
The Coachman's coven came forward and splashed the blood of my friends over the Coachman and what was left of Zora. He climbed out of her body, naked like a newborn, and raised his arms over his head.
“Please, no,” I whimpered.
“If you give up, this will happen.” Pruney’s voice whispered through my mind, squealing like unoiled gears. “Don’t you want to see the fruit of your decision?”
“No,” I sobbed. “I don’t want to see anything else.”
“Then you’re ready to deal with me?” His damp hand rested on my shoulder.
I wasn’t. He scared me. Making a deal with him, letting him help, terrified me.
“Oh, don’t be afraid. Your family has dealt with me for centuries.” He came closer, and his fishy smell enveloped me. “It was I who bound the raven to them. We made a deal.”
“I need to know what you want up front.” Chills wracked my body, clacked my teeth together. “And what you’re going to do to me.”
Pruney snapped his fingers, and we were back on the beach in front of the moonlit water. “I’ll widen the hole in the scar tissue caused by the spell Fern Wilhelmina Gregg placed upon you. This will let enough of your power through to beat the Coachman.” He raised one still dripping finger. “But beware. You’ll not have the full measure of your power. This is just a—what do you mortals call it? A quick fix. You must stop the spell from continuing to grow and remove it.”
“What do you want in return?” The smell of him was making me sick.
“Two things. The first is simple and immediate. You must deliver the twelve souls helping the Coachman to me.” He rested his shining black eyes on me until I nodded. “The second will be a task that will cause neither you nor your loved ones any harm. But you must do it when I ask, regardless of your feelings about it.”
The second thing was the killer. I couldn’t agree to do an unknown service for this thing. Could I? Zora. I have to save her.
He bared his teeth at me in a smile as he waited for his answer.
I tried to think it over, to analyze what it might entail, but I had no choice. This was the only way to save Zora and to save my own sorry skin. “I agree to both.”
In front of me appeared the disk I’d taken from Samantha’s things. Pruney handed me a jeweled dagger.
“Your blood,” he said.
I slashed my finger and let the drops splatter on the disk. They sizzled when they hit, and Pruney hissed, a snake tongue flickering from his mouth. When the third drop hit, he turned and embraced me. I wanted to scream at the dead, damp smell of him and at the feel of his wetness seeping into me.
“Everything will be fine.” His cold whisper made my ear go numb.
THIS CLOSE, I couldn’t help focusing on my new ally’s ugliness. His skin had the crosshatch pattern of pork skin. In the corners of his eyes was the same black gunk of animals.
“You must let me into your body so I can widen the crack in your scar tissue.” His breath, humid, rotten sewer mixed with burning garbage, turned my stomach. If we were inside my head, why couldn’t I be spared his olfactory essence? “This is the only way you’ll have enough power to beat the Coachman.”
My heart stuttered. I’d felt okay when I thought the deal was done. Realizing I had one more barrier to drop, one more thing to give up, spooked me. I had one last chance to run from this awful thing, and I couldn’t afford to take it. My deal with him was my last chance to save Zora.
I couldn’t invite a thing I called Pruney into my body to perform psychic surgery on me. Memaw taught me better than that. “I don’t know your name,” I whispered, voice quaking.
The thing chuckled. “My name is—” He spoke a word that sounded more like grunts and squeals than words. Then he said, “But Priscilla Alafare Herrera called me Sol, and you can too.”
“Sol…” I trailed off and screwed up my courage. “Will you come into my body and break open the scar tissue keeping me from the power of Priscilla Herrera’s mantle?”
“Understand this might kill you.” His lips looked like slabs of liver in the moonlight.
Of course there was a catch. I nodded my assent. Why the hell not? The Coachman’s followers would kill me anyway. Why not do this and maybe live to fight another day?
Sol’s back bowed, and his body rippled. His face flattened and elongated. His clothes puddled onto the ground. I inched closer. Something underneath the clothes moved. Don’t let that be what I think it is. A dark colored snake, thick as my arm and as long as one of my legs, slithered out of the pile of clothes and watched me with its cold eyes.
“Sol?” I peered into the snake’s eyes, trying to find anything I could of the monster I already knew. I’d only seen his pig to quasi-human trick. This quasi-human to snake trick was new.
The snake drew back its triangular shaped head. That and the shape of its body made me think this was a water moccasin, one of East Texas’s venomous snakes. These things scared the taco meat right out of me. Sweat popped out all over my scalp. Please no. Don’t bite.
I scooted away from the snake. The inside of my mouth dry as a prude at a porn movie, nerves trying to crawl out of my skin, I forced myself to stay still. Maybe it wouldn’t bite if I quit moving.
“Please don’t,” I whispered. Few animals scared me. Snakes managed to make the cut. I could imagine nothing worse than that long sinewy body unfolding and flying at me, those fangs piercing my skin and forcing poison into me. The idea made me do a full body shiver. It was enough.
The snake struck. Time slowed for me. The snake’s pure white mouth opened impossibly wide. Its fangs looked like huge curved needles. My thoughts sparred and tripped over each other, all trying to tell me to move, to run, but I knew it was too late. The snake hit my neck hard and closed its jaws.
Its venom burned my skin and forged through my bloodstream like lava in my veins. I fell back on the sandy shore and watched the ripples on the water and the moonlight dancing over them. Sol, or whatever his name was, had fooled me. He’d killed me here in the dark outposts and would probably take over my body himself.
The center of my chest throbbed. The venom had found my heart. It wouldn’t be long now. Facing psychic death, conflicting emotions ran through me. Anger at my own stupidity prevailed. Nobody would be able to help Zora. The Coachman would kill my family and friends and win the day. A seizure ripped through me. Spit flooded my mouth and leaked out. My vision began to cloud.
I drifted back through the layers of my consciousness and came to a stop in front of the festering blob covering my magical core. The mantle glowed on top of it, the crown jewel I couldn’t access. I became aware of a chilly hand gripping mine.
“What a mess,” Sol said from next to me, his suit dripping brackish water on the floor of my soul. “You’ll have a battle getting rid of this. Take it a little at a time.”
“But how? You said devour it. How?”
Sol chuckled. “I don’t do two-fer-ones. If you want my advice, negotiate for it.” He rubbed his stomach, which emitted a sick gurgle. “I’m hungry. Brace yourself. This won’t feel good.” Without giving me a chance to change my mind, his hand slipped from mine, and he hurtled into the accumulated scar tissue from the horror of my life. His mouth opened wide, like the snake’s had, and he bit down.
Blinding pain shot through my skull and radiated to the roots of my teeth. It hurt the same way my dream electroconvulsive therapy had. I pitched to my knees and screamed. The pain spread through my jaw and into my sinuses, packing them with hot sauce and salt. Moisture leaked from my eyes and nose. It could have been tears. It could have been blood. Either one would have made sense.
Sol’s head moved as he ate through the membrane. The mantle came to investigate, nudging at Sol like a hungry pet. It curved around him. Did the part of it that was still Priscilla Herrera remember him? Was she glad to see him? Probably. She wasn’t like me. Nothing scared her.
The pain multiplied in intensi
ty as it moved through the rest of my body. My joints throbbed. Cold chills consumed me. Only Sol’s wiggling feet were still visible. The pain spread to my stomach, lancing through my body and pushing out the last of my self-control. I curled into a ball and sucked breaths through my clenched teeth. My calves and feet cramped, but my stomach hurt too bad to straighten out and relieve them.
I screamed, tearing my throat raw, and not caring. I did it until I ran out of breath. Then I drew another breath and did it again. I don’t know how long I lay there yelling, but I became aware the pain was gone. I let out a ragged breath. A hand appeared in front of my face.
“Come. Your Coachman realizes what has happened and has gone deep into the protective webbing.” Sol pulled my hand off my stomach. “Come now if you want your last chance to beat him.”
I climbed to my feet and followed Sol to the hole on shaky legs, the pain receding to a deep throb. The mantle, now a silver white with threads of gold running through it, flowed into the hole. I hesitated before the hole, not sure if it was okay to touch it. Sol gave a frustrated grunt and shoved me into it.
I fell through my worst memories. Felicia, my lifelong nemesis grabbed at me from an open toilet stall. I slapped her hand away. My mother snuck up behind my father, ready to cut his throat. I passed right through her. My ex-husband reared back his fist. I ducked and ran around him, focused instead on the Coachman, thinking of his runes, of the way he looked as Samantha bested him. Far away, I heard running footsteps. Sol was right. The Coachman knew I was coming for him. If he thought he could get away, he was wrong. I was about to rise up on him. Beat his ass righteously.
I followed the sound of the footfalls through dark hallways and moonless nights, through screams and crying. Our chase ended at the center of me, in front of a big, locked door.
“If I open this door, you’ll die.” The Coachman held up a key.
“Do it then.” I walked slowly toward him, savoring the fear on his face. When I got close enough, I snatched the key and unlocked the door myself, praying I hadn’t overplayed my hand.
