The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  “We are creatures of mimicry, you see. Amon Ashcroft was the poor bloke who finally let us out, and when he did, I took his name. I took his form. I took all the whispers with me. I took all the mouths that I could fit inside this skin suit, too. And finally formed, and on two feet, I took to the world I had only seen from shadows and sand. I took a look at it and wanted more. I laid the vermillion vein where I could, our lifeblood, and created children where I went. I was preparing the way, you understand. We all have a master. The Vermillion God is mine. It had freed me, but in return, I had to free It. Free It, the God who could easily do so with a bat of Its innumerable eyes. Imagine the pressure!

  “So many rituals, so many deaths. After so many years of stumbles, I thought the world was ready. I sought out a girl. Her name was Lillian. She was gifted. She could speak to the Vermillion God. I couldn’t do that. I could only listen, carry out Its will. But she could somehow hold a conversation with heaven. So I sought her out and told her the truth of the world, the truth that humanity had masqueraded as a lie.

  “That’s when it happened, Edgar. It was glorious, at first. Lillian and I, with her gift and my centuries of hard work, we summoned the Vermillion God from its slumber. We woke God, and we gave God to the humans. But this God, the only God, was not what they had in mind, or what they wanted. God sat upon the Earth, and while some worshiped, others bombed It. You see, I had prepared the world, but I hadn’t prepared the people. I’m not a man, so it is an easy oversight. But God hasn’t the stomach for such blasphemies. So It left humanity, to return to Its slumber once more.

  “I am very old, you see, and though I may or may not be able to die, I am not ready to stop. The world is ready, and the people, though they don’t realize it, are willing. I was wrong, and for my miscalculation, God abandoned us. I see that you don’t believe me, but I am telling you the truth of it. Edgar, look at me. Can you not think of a better way to save this world? A God, my lord! Here on Earth. Here to put an end to all your peoples’ wants and needs. Humanity has wanted this moment since the dawn of time. I’m offering it to you. Take it. Be what you promised yourself you would be.”

  With a struggle, Edgar finally pushed himself to his feet. “Go fuck yourself.”

  Amon sighed. He held out the remainder of the vermillion vein he had been eating. “It doesn’t matter what you believe, until you believe as I do. Eat this.”

  “Fuck you.” Edgar started to exit the room. “You’re not Amon. I’ve known him since I was born. We may not see each other more than in passing nowadays, but you’re not him.”

  “You’ve never known Amon. No one has known Amon Ashcroft for untold years.” He shook the vein, encouraging him to take it. “Edgar, I need you to go to the Nameless Forest.”

  After the pure insanity this man had just vomited onto his lap, Edgar couldn’t help but ask, “Why?”

  Amon laughed and came to his feet. He lifted his robes over his head and threw them to the ground. Beneath, he was mostly bone and black flesh, and covered in the very same vermillion veins from which he had been eating and claimed to have come from the Nameless Forest. Except these veins were colorless, dried out—a sign, perhaps, of his finite mortality.

  “You will eat this,” he said, throwing the vermillion vein he held in Edgar’s face. “After all, where do you think the Crossbreed gets its qualities of manipulation?” He hobbled toward Edgar, his flesh creaking like charred wood. “Eat it. It’s going to help you forget for a while all the terrible things you’re about to do for me.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Edgar woke with a headache, and the feeling that something had been shoved down his throat. Everything around him was gray, sticky. When he tried to reach out, he only did so in thought, because his hands couldn’t move. He was cocooned, covered in the same thick webbing he had seen oozing from the abomination’s wrists. Where the strands met his flesh, there was a strange, tingling sensation. He might have even enjoyed the sensation, too, if it were not for the fact the strands were slowly eating away at his skin.

  Voices. Movement. Edgar leaned forward the best that he could. Mind-numbing claustrophobia washed over him. Through a tear in the sac, he saw on the other side a scene of despair.

  More cocoons, dangling as he was, from the branches of trees, and there were more of the abominations—Arachne, he realized—skittering under them, over them, periodically stopping to drip their hissing spit into them. The sacs that had been there longer than the rest were red in color, and when an Arachne crumpled beneath it and punctured a hole in one of the red cocoon’s bottoms, he saw why.

  Into the abomination’s mouth, a thick, sick mixture of hot blood, melted flesh, and bubbling bone sputtered into its waiting mouth. The Arachne drank and drank until the sac was reduced to a drip, and then crawled away, leaving the cocoon to hang there, like a deflated lung.

  The strange, tingling sensation from the flesh-eating strands graduated from a hot pain to an unbearable agony. Shifting as much as he could, Edgar realized he still had the dagger from Lotus at his side. He bent his wrist, and pricked his fingers on the tip of it. His body broke into convulsions as he struggled against his sticky fetters. It made the strands burn quicker, hotter, into his skin, but every time he bucked, they threatened to break.

  His arm looser now, he gripped the dagger, but as he did, he watched parts of his hair fall in front of his face, singed by the webs from his scalp.

  “Martin, Martin, Martin.”

  Edgar heard someone shouting a name outside his cocoon. He shifted the dagger towards his wrist and began to saw through the webbing there.

  “Martin, this has been a long time coming.”

  Again, Edgar brought his eye to the rip in the cocoon. Past the swinging, screaming sacs, beyond the constant stream of Arachne running through the trees, he saw a man being dragged across the ground by an Arachne much larger than the others.

  “I’ve often wondered about your taste,” the large Arachne said. It stopped and dropped the man he kept calling Martin. Small spiders poured out of the Arachne’s reptilian cock hanging between its legs.

  “They won’t follow you, Anansi,” Martin bellowed. He wobbled to his feet in defiance, and then buckled over in defeat.

  “They don’t have a choice. That’s not how it works, and you know it, Martin. If I didn’t do this, then that intruder would have. Your death was inevitable. Mine is not.” Anansi clicked its fangs. All the Arachne in the forest froze. “Look on, my spawn! We have their ruler, Chapel is ours!”

  With all Arachne eyes fixed on their leader and his prey, Edgar cut furiously at his bonds. Anansi, leader of the Arachne, and also the namesake of the growths that had sealed his wounds from the carrion birds. He laughed; he might have even cared if he wasn’t about to be eaten.

  Edgar freed his hands and arms. He put his hands behind his back, cupped the dagger’s handle and tip and sawed upwards, cutting the bindings along his spine. Carefully, so as not to entangle himself further, he cut along his legs and feet. Stabbing and slicing the front of the cocoon, swathes of it fell away, like paper peeling from a wall, and with that, he now had a gap large enough through which he could escape.

  “The meat sacs are yours, my spawn,” Anansi said. He was still staring Martin down, the man whom Edgar had no doubt now was the man he was supposed to have killed in Chapel. “Let down the others, for we’ll need them. They will not refuse us. By law, they are conquered!”

  Anansi touched Martin’s chin, whispered something to him, and then tore his head off. Blood sprayed and spluttered into the air. Anansi laughed and tipped his head back. He opened his mouth wide, so that the scarlet drops could fall as rain onto his flicking tongue.

  Under the cover of the cheering, sneering chorus, Edgar decided to escape. With a loud thump and a wheeze, Edgar fell out of the cocoon, arms bending under himself with the impact. His skin was tender and raw from where the strands had burned it, but the air outside the cocoon was cool and soothed it some. He scu
rried backward, minding the sacs that swung overhead. Here stood a moment to do something heroic, to save people, like he had always wanted to do. But he had been through enough to know the difference between heroism and stupidity, so he mouthed an apology to the meat sacs and ran into the nearby overgrowth.

  “Anathema is next, my spawn!” Anansi released Martin’s corpse, letting it crumple to the ground. “But what need have we for old birds in the kitchen?”

  The Arachne clicked and hissed and scuttled. The forest floor became a carpet of arms and legs.

  “See how fortunate you are, Chapel, that we spared you?”

  Anathema, Chapel, Atlach, and Blackwood. Two have died. Two are left. I have to do it. I have to kill him. A cold sweat dripped down Edgar’s back as he gazed up at the Arachne’s leader. Suddenly, the dagger in his hand didn’t seem so useful. Where had his sword gone?

  If anything deserves to be killed, it’s him. But how?

  As Anansi started to spin webs around where Martin had fallen, his Arachne spawn swarmed to release and ravage the cocooned. Those who hadn’t already been reduced to thick viscera were released, and those that had were guzzled by the abominations that drank from their red prisons.

  Edgar, taking advantage of the commotion, snuck away, back the way they had come, back to the broken skyscraper and the weapons it held.

  To Edgar, the silence of Chapel’s fields was in some ways more disturbing than the discord he had left behind. He hurried through the tall grass. Mutilated bodies of the first to fight back clogged his path. With every step he took, the toppled skyscraper village rose higher above him, until, when he was close enough to touch it, the skyscraper was the sky itself.

  He circled the village until he found a window. Looking in, he wasn’t sure where to begin. Though he didn’t know what the building originally held in the Old World, he knew that what he saw now wasn’t what had been intended at the time.

  Edgar climbed into the unconventional village through a broken window and set down on its carpeted roads. Threadbare supplied the lumber, Anathema, the food; this place, he reasoned by the advanced state of things, provided the technology, the tools to make it all possible. But it was so hard to look at it, to make sense of. It was a series of hallways, staircases, and elevator banks, refurbished into something they were never meant to be. There were no clouds in this so-called village’s sky; just a white, textured ceiling punctuated by water damage and broken lightbulbs. There was no grass to walk through in Chapel’s narrow fields; just carpet and tile with benches here and drinking fountains there. To call this place a village would be like calling Ghostgrave a town. It just didn’t make any sense.

  In each domicile he passed, which varied in size between closet and conference room, Old World artifacts were on display, in use. A television had become a bowl, a refrigerator, a pantry. Wiring had been reduced to ropes, and computers to science experiments. Each “house” and “storefront” was filled with these dead objects; objects that could live again, if only they had their sparking lifeblood.

  Yet, not all was without use. Old World clothing, furniture, books, and magazines were everywhere, offering comforts that rivaled those of royalty, and knowledge that bested any Archivist’s.

  How quickly the continent would progress, Edgar thought, if this place existed outside the Nameless Forest, for cleverer minds than his own to dissect and disperse their secrets. How quickly the continent would progress, Edgar thought, but would it be towards enlightenment or entropy?

  In the end, it didn’t matter. He was here, not there, in the outside world, and he had a job to do.

  ‘I don’t know. I think murder is like a potion. Just takes the right amount of ingredients to make it.’ Audra’s words went through his mind. ‘Two or three things to justify something you would never consider.’

  Edgar had returned to Chapel for one purpose and one purpose only: to find a gun and put a bullet in the spider lord’s head.

  He had seen the legless man with the pistol, and he had heard the gunshots through the halls of Chapel itself. There had to be more firearms. Although he wasn’t sure how to make use of such a weapon, the threat of death often makes of most quick learners.

  He was scouring the halls, ducking in and out of what had to be the commercial district, when he heard a pathetic voice whisper, “Please.”

  Edgar turned and turned, but it wasn’t until he had convinced himself it had been his imagination that he saw her: a little girl, hiding underneath a stall in the bathroom beside him. She couldn’t have been any older than twelve, and she was dying.

  “It hurts so badly,” the little girl said. She showed him her bloodstained hands.

  Edgar ran into the bathroom—a kind of library—and flung back the stall door. He saw her inside, curled up by the flowerpot toilet, the bloody star of a fatal wound pinned above her heart.

  His throat tightened. Something stirred in his chest. “Oh, no.”

  “I can’t. I can’t…” Speaking was a struggle, so she gave it up and stared up with her wide, brown eyes into Edgar’s.

  “Let me help you. I have things.” Edgar went to the ground, propped her up against the stall. He searched himself for the curatives he had gathered days ago. “Don’t say anything. Please. I can help. Just let me.”

  The little girl squeezed his hand, and shook her head. Sweat slid in slow beads down her damp hair. She was ready for death; she just needed someone to show her the way.

  Edgar nodded, even though he didn’t agree with what she was asking. “Can you help me? I’m going to kill Anansi. I’m going to save your people, but I need a weapon. Something to hit him from far away. I saw someone with a gun.”

  The little girl shook her head. All the color had left her face. “Are you the… the assassin from Anathema?” Her teeth chattered out a desperate code for release. “I… there—” She coughed up blood. “There may be something in the lobby.” She coughed, lost consciousness for a moment. “Ahead, and left.” The little girl lingered on Edgar’s dagger.

  “No, no.” He brought the girl close to him and held her. “No, go the right way. I’ll stay with you.”

  This is what it means to help people, he thought. To see and do what no one else wants to see and do. This is how we’ll save Eldrus. Not with the Crossbreed, but kindness. Patience.

  “Death won’t come,” the little girl said. “It’s in there.” Her hand hovered over her heart. “The spiders put it in me. It…” Her lips trembled, webs of spit between them. “I can’t… until it comes out. Please, sir. You’re an assassin, right? P-please.” She closed her eyes and wept, and as she wept, the bloody star grew larger on her panting chest.

  Edgar did it quickly, because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have at all. He took the dagger and, holding her as tightly as he could, slit the little girl’s throat. In his arms, she went quickly, quietly, but he did not. He sat there awhile, bawling into his blood-drenched fists, wondering what he had done and how it had been so easy to convince him to do it in the first place.

  By the time Edgar found the lobby, his dagger was as clean as it was going to get, and even then, it wasn’t clean enough. There were no bodies in the lobby, but the place was covered in all the pieces that they were made up of. Swords, daggers, bows and arrows, and pieces of armor were also scattered across the chunky floor and gory barricades.

  Edgar wiped the sting from his eyes. He overturned the armaments, the barricades. “It has to be here. It has to be here.” A sword required him to get too close, a bow a skill he didn’t possess. He kicked a helmet across the lobby and belted, “Where is it? Where the fuck is it?”

  He covered his face and broke down.

  Why did she call me an assassin? Edgar dropped to his knees. The Nameless Forest had finally worn him down. How did she know? Word couldn’t have spread so fast.

  He put his fists to his eyes, as though to dam the tears. Is that why I’m here? Does this go beyond Crestfallen? There had been assassins in Ghostgrave
, and now there was an assassin here, in the Nameless Forest, murdering those who ruled it. His forehead throbbed, a tumorous pain behind it.

  Why would anyone care what happens here? And why the hell would anyone choose me of all people to do this?

  Edgar stood up. “The man had to have died in the field. Hopefully, he still has the pistol.” He paused. He caught sight of something—a long, slender container propped up against a pillar in the lobby. “Son of a bitch,” he said, heading toward it. “Son of a bitch.”

  Edgar marched through the fields of Chapel with a bolt-action rifle over his shoulder. The bullets in his pocket clinked against one another. The gun was an older model than the ones he had read about.

  Looking at it, he couldn’t understand why humanity had failed to recreate the design. It seemed simple enough, and yet, even then, he couldn’t fathom its construction; it was as though the concept had been scratched from his mind.

  Edgar went to one knee and clumsily loaded a bullet into the rifle’s chamber. “I can’t miss. What did they call it?” He stood up, and put the rifle into the pocket of his shoulder. That seemed right, after all. “Recoil?”

  He turned and aimed at the horse-abandoned wagons of Jed and Jes. Gritting his teeth, he targeted the driver’s seat and squeezed the trigger.

  A loud crack, and a cloud of smoke. Edgar’s heart leapt into his throat as the bullet whizzed across the field and blew through the side of the wagon, not the driver’s seat. He kneaded his shoulder from where the rifle had kicked it, and popped the ringing from his ears. He had missed his mark, but not by much.

  “Wow,” he said, inspecting the rifle. He felt giddy and, for the first time since being in the forest, capable. “I can see the appeal.” He loaded another bullet into the heated chamber and hurried back into the forest. If he waited any longer to practice, he might miss his chance to kill Anansi.