by Scott Hale
“Appreciate it.” Atticus nodded at Hex, who, with James, was almost close enough to hear their conversation. “This has gotten bigger than I like.”
“She’s a good woman. James looks up to her, like a sister. We need her, and I can tell you like her, so you’re just distrusting her for the hell of it.”
“We’re not tracking Gallows’ most wanted. These are soldiers of Eldrus. It has to be bigger if we’re going to finish… How do you think Deacon ended up in the Membrane?” Atticus changed the subject, as Hex and James were in earshot of them.
Gary shrugged. “That was a long time ago. Story changes depending upon which ghoul you ask.” His speech became rapid, excited, as though he were sharing something important. “He was killed somewhere up north, I know. I heard he used a black chalice to open the gateway to the ‘margins and the folds,’ but who the hell knows where that chalice is, if it even exists? Eldrus, maybe, what with that old coot Amon collecting up relics and all. Would make sense. Few said they’d seen something of the like in Ghostgrave.”
“That’s okay, Gary, I’m not planning on going into the Membrane again,” Atticus said, screwing up his face. “What you and Mr. Haemo did should still work, right? You’re talking like it won’t. That’s the second time today you said something.”
Gary nodded, looked away; nodded and smiled some more. “Yeah, yes, of course. Sorry. Ghouls get anxious after eating. It’s… no, no. It’ll still work, Atticus. Nothing’s changed.”
“Howdy,” Hex said, stomping across the graveyard. She rubbed her stomach. “Better?”
“Yeah,” Gary said. “Thanks, Hex.”
“No problem.”
Staring at James, Atticus said, “How’s the trail looking?”
“Fine,” James said, still sore about when he’d ambushed him on Elijah. “Gets rough, but we’ll manage.”
“All right boys,” Hex said, crossing her arms across the black breastplate. She blew one of her blue braids out of her face. “We’ve got about a day until we hit Carpenter Plantation.” She went around them to the horses. “There’s a good place to camp about thirteen hours from here.”
“You been here a lot?” Atticus stole a glance at one of the Adelaides, which had opened its mouth slightly, to suck in a snake.
“Off and on.” She smiled. “It’s good to know your getaways. My husband understood that. Anyways, let’s get to it.” She slapped one of the horses on its rear. “We need to catch up with the rest.”
Atticus’ hands were fists before he had a reason to use them. “What?” His neck tightened until some of the stitching snapped again. “The rest? Hex, I like you, but if you’re holding something back… I won’t.”
She waved him off and started rummaging through the saddlebags. “You’re my best bet at getting my brother back, like I said in Bedlam. But I financed a team before I met you. I was on my way out when James came storming in, asking after Bon. After you agreed, I told them to hold their position a little longer until we arrived.”
“Didn’t think to mention that earlier?” This woman, he thought, is using me. If I have to kill her, I might lose James for good.
“I… thought I did?” She smiled and mouthed an apology. “There’s at least fifty soldiers stationed there. Probably more, now. Carpenter Plantation is a corpse factory. Bodies are coming in daily from Holy Child knows where. But that’s all we got so far. It’s a big secret they’re doing a shit job of hiding. I like to think we’re a capable bunch, but we aren’t breaking in just the four of us. You’d do anything to get your wife and son back, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then do this, with me, with us. I could be asking you to do a whole lot worse.”
“Hex,” Atticus said. “I saw what they put in one of the bodies. Looked like something straight out of the Nameless Forest.”
“It is,” she said in a cheerily, sardonic way. “They’re trying to grow another one.”
CHAPTER XIII
They built a fire in a fallen Adelaide and huddled closely around it. Its nearby brethren wailed over the desecration, but Hex assured the men this was the only way the trees would learn to respect them. Atticus didn’t put much stock in the statement, so he offered to keep watch while they slept.
“Mighty big of you,” Hex said, face sweating from the fire. “But this is fool-proof, I promise.”
“Eh.” Atticus leaned in a little. “This Adelaide isn’t dead yet. I can hear it whimpering. The only message you’re sending them out there in the dark is that we deserve to be eaten.”
“It’s fine.” She smiled, dug her heels into the leafy dirt. “We’ll douse it in the morning. Takes more than a fire to do these things in. This is just to tell them we mean business.”
Atticus gave up. “Whatever you say.” He touched the hole in his chest from Blythe’s kunai. The wound he’d had the longest seemed to be healing the slowest. “The Nameless Forest. I don’t see the point.”
“Can’t go wrong with a plan that doesn’t make sense,” James piped up. He’d settled down some since they made camp. They’d called it quits for the night outside a dilapidated cabin and woodshed. Both were too far gone to lie down in, but James took to them all the same.
“Blythe said they were transporting the roots in the bodies to avoid anyone catching on.” Atticus remembered Brinton, the no-good nobody who’d spun this all into motion. “So either the bodies are part of the process, or there’s something else to it.”
Gary cleared his throat as he inched closer to the flames. Ghoul flesh was thick and didn’t hold much heat, so he took advantage of the chance to cop some anytime he could.
“Still doesn’t make sense. Let’s say they are the vermillion veins. As soon as people see them start growing, they’ll tear them out, most likely,” Atticus said.
“Sounds like they’re sending them all over as well,” Hex said. “That’s too wide a net to manage. But in Ichor’s letter, he was convinced they were from the Nameless Forest.”
Gary raised his hand and said, “Think about it. When’s the last time anyone’s seen the veins? The Nameless Forest has about a million stories to its name. Nobody’s gotten much further than the outskirts in who knows how long. We’re going off myths here.”
“Ah,” Hex interrupted, smiling. “Not true. King Edgar had himself a sojourn in that fanciful place.”
“So they say.” Atticus thought on this for a moment. “Does add up with what his soldiers are doing. But how’d he haul all that out of there? And what for? Clementine hacked off Bon’s arm and he used the stuff to grow it back.”
“New resource, maybe. New drug, like you said, to heal.” Hex leaned back, gazed upward into the star-pricked sky. “A new distraction to draw us away from what’s really important.”
“They killed us for it. It’s important.”
Hex’s face went limp. She dropped her head, and the tough woman act went along with it. “Sorry,” she mumbled. And then, standing up: “I have to piss.” She looked at Atticus, took her sword, and then disappeared into the mourning night.
“I miss them,” James said. “I didn’t want to say anything. Figured you didn’t need that. But I miss them, Atticus. I do. You were… are my family. Clementine and Will… when I sleep, they’re all I see. It makes me sick.” James covered his mouth. Tears streaked down his knuckles. “I know you don’t want to hear it. That’s fine. But I’m not just here to help you. I’m here for them, too. To get them b-back.” He shut his eyes tight and started to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m s-s-sorry I left you. All of you.”
James wiped his nose on his arm. Holding his forehead, he whispered, “That night, when we broke into the barn. It was Elijah’s idea. Not mine. I lied to you about that. I was just protecting him. Again, like always. I was going to… to see you that day. But he said we should rob Brinton, first.” He cleared his throat, took a deep breath. “If we hadn’t broken in, none of this would’ve happened.”
He went still, letting his words
wash over Atticus, and then, all at once, began to bawl. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, so… so, so… so.”
Gary moved closer to James, and put his arm around him. James buried his face in the ghoul’s rotted chest and soaked his innards with a flood of tears.
Patting his back, Gary said, “When I went into that kitchen and found all three of you, I thought that, maybe, that was it. I thought it was the end. You, your family, gave me something to live for. And seeing you there, all of you, dead… Almost nothing has hurt as much as that. Thought about killing myself. I did. I wanted to. Holy Child, did I want to.
“This, this is your journey, Atticus, we know that. But know that you’re not doing it alone, whether you like it or not.” Gary paused and closed his eyes. “However it ends, you’ll have us. Right, James?”
James nodded as he pulled away from the ghoul. “Sorry,” he said, smiling. “Needed a good cry.” He pointed to Gary’s ribcage. “I think I got some snot your heart.”
Gary waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. Hasn’t worked in ages.”
Atticus sat there in silence, the flames of the fire licking his feet. His friends were waiting for him to say something, but what could he tell them? It hadn’t even crossed his mind the effect the deaths of Clementine and Will would’ve had on them. He’d brought them for their company and for their skills, not for the investment; for the connection to his wife and son.
He shouldered the hurt like he would’ve a corpse—on his own and with every intention of burying it himself. But he wasn’t the Gravedigger anymore. He’d outgrown that role, just as he had the role of Hangman for Poe in the days best left forgotten. He was Atticus now, a mere human without a local legend behind which he could hide. Immortal, maybe, sure, but what did that matter if he lost his humanity along the way?
Atticus sat there in silence. Shedding the last of his old, thick skin he said, “Thank you. This is about all of us doing what’s right. You didn’t do nothing wrong, James. You never did. And I’m sorry I made you feel like that. And Gary… you son of a bitch.” He smiled at the ghoul. “I can’t repay you enough. I wouldn’t be here if not for you, both of you. I don’t know what’s going to happen when this is over. I don’t know if that’s when my time will run out. But I know that, when we bring them back, they’ll be okay, because they have you two to keep them out of trou—”
Gary’s grin became a grimace as he said, “Atticus? What?”
Behind James, about four feet away, a shepherd stood, the Adelaide around it gone quiet. It tipped its crook forward, pointing its bloody top Atticus’ way.
“Oh shit,” Gary and James said in unison, looking back.
“You can see it?” Atticus wondered where Hex had wandered off to. He grabbed his sword and machete. “You can see it?”
Paralyzed, James and Gary sat there, mouths agape, as though in the presence of a deity.
“You can see it?” Atticus shouted, snapping his head to the left as Hex came out of the bushes.
Buttons unbuttoned, she shouted, “What in the fuck is that?” She grabbed her sword and held it in both hands.
“That’s it, that’s the shepherd.”
A clammy gale blew through the Deceit. The trees flattened as it rushed toward the shepherd. When the wind hit it, the creature’s hair parted and, in one slowed second, Atticus saw, for the first time, its face.
The shepherd’s eyes and mouth were sewn shut. Its forehead had been split down the middle. Inside the gash, there were trinkets, mementos. A lock of red hair, an old toy. A piece of parchment, and part of a painting, too. The painting he recognized—it’d be the same Mr. Haemo had used to track him in the Membrane—and then he remembered the other items as well. Clementine’s hair, and a toy of Will’s Atticus had made himself. There was something else in the gulf, something oval-shaped, like an egg or an organ, or a curled-up infant.
But before he could make sense of it, sinewy streaks of color shot from the ground and wrung the shepherd out of existence.
“Are you okay?” Hex asked no one in particular.
What was that in its head? “When it had me alone, it was ruthless. Maybe it was a warning just now. Or maybe it knew it couldn’t kill us all.”
“Maybe it can only hurt you,” Gary whispered.
“We’ll stay up.” James nodded.
“Won’t sleep none anyways,” Hex said.
Gary crossed his arms and put his back to the fire, going sentry-like for the night ahead. “You’d do the same for us. Get some rest, Atticus.”
Their intentions, good as they may have been, were no match against the fatigue. Half past the Black Hour, they began to drop like flies. James first, then Hex. Gary held out the longest, but mid-sentence, mid-joke, the ghoul’s resolve gave and forty winks turned into forty thousand.
Atticus was sitting with both hands on both of his weapons when he heard Hex mumble, “You don’t smell so good.”
He looked over at the woman, who was face-first in the bags they’d brought, which she now used as pillows. A blanket was in a tangle around her ankles. She’d been slowly kicking it off over the course of the night.
“I think you caught a whiff of yourself is all,” Atticus said.
“Mmm.” Hex licked her lips and forced one eye open. “Could be that.” She stretched out her arms. “You’re rotting somewhere. Let me see you.”
It was his legs. The long ride through the Deceit had left them swollen and raw. Pulling his pus-soaked pant leg back, he spotted a patchwork of splotches across his skin. The smell of piss and rotten meat sent his stomach reeling.
“I didn’t have much to treat you with back in Bedlam. Supplies were getting scarce. Honestly, didn’t even know if I should. You looked dangerous.” She sat up, tied her hair back, and got serious. “Got to cut out the necrosis. The way James described them, the snakes sounded like Malingas. It’s a strange venom, theirs. Kills flesh quick, but lingers after treatment. We might have to do this again. You ready?”
“Here?” Atticus wondered how many more times he’d have to die until infection and pain were no longer a part of the equation. “I suppose.”
Hex yawned and gave herself a few slaps to the face. She tore into the bags she’d slept on and pulled out a black case. “Old World doctors used these. Handy to have around.” She undid its clasps and pulled it open. “This is what I was before I left the south. A healer. It’s what they told me to be.”
“Your family did?” Atticus sprawled his legs out, while Hex did a quick inventory of what she’d packed. “Where’s home?”
“Angheuawl. Say that five times fast. It’s a little place in the swamps before Kistvaen’s foothills. Not much to it. You keep moving through or you’re there in it forever. One of those places.” She closed the case, came over, opened the case, knelt beside him, and took out a thin scalpel. “Nothing like a little flaying to bring friends together.”
“How old are you?”
She pulled out a vial, doused the scalpel in what Atticus identified as a sanitizing solution. “Twenty-seven. You?”
“Thirty-five and some change.”
“Strip,” Hex said, waving the scalpel. “Don’t worry.” She nodded at James and Gary. “They’ll be out till morning.”
Atticus undid his pants and, carefully, so as to not irritate his legs further, slipped out of them. “Not much gets to you, huh?”
“Not much, no.”
“On account of your upbringing?”
“That, and what was passed down to me.” She licked her teeth. “Ichor’s the same. We weren’t really all that close until I was married. Then I couldn’t shake him. Guess he felt he had to protect me.”
Atticus twitched as she touched his legs. They looked like pincushions. Any other time, he’d be counting bite marks, tallying up the fangs for future boastings. But with Clementine gone, he didn’t much see a reason to.
Hex lingered on a black patch of skin near Atticus’ knee. “Nicholas Harrington was m
y husband.”
“Sounds familiar. Can’t say from where.”
“That was the case with most. Drove him mad. Never got to be the big-shot he’d hoped to be.”
She continued to chart his flesh, testing each stretch with the tips of her fingers. The smell was getting to her. She kept holding her breath, until she couldn’t.
“Your other wounds look good, on your neck and shoulder. Just the legs have gone bad.”
“Do what you have to. It’s a mystery to me what I’m capable of healing anymore.”
His heart skipped as she started to quietly count the places she needed to remove.
“Giant snake was one thing. The Night Terrors chasing after it… Never known one to let a human go.”
“Seen plenty back home.” She mouthed the word twelve. She prodded the last of Atticus’ necrotic flesh, making him cringe. “Seen plenty kill us ‘Corrupted.’” She laughed and held out her crimson arms. “I guess they didn’t know what to do with me.”
“I appreciate what you’ve done for us, Hex.” Atticus took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the thick, burning bark taste of the campfire. “We’ll get Ichor back. I apologize for mistrusting you.”
“Getting a man to take his pants off is one thing, but getting a man to let you cut into him… I figured I had your trust, Atticus.”
She put the scalpel to his skin and scraped away some dark crust. With her other hand, she pulled out a thick rag and threw it at his chest.
“Bite down and don’t pass out. I need you keeping an eye on things in case that shepherd friend of yours decides to show up again.”
“I’ll trade you this rag for some anesthetic.”
“That’s for all of us after the plantation. This won’t kill you, so I can’t bring myself to waste it. You understand?” She shrugged. “Most likely, this won’t hurt. It’s dead tissue. No feeling. Problem with Malingas venom is that it heightens the sensations around the decayed site, to avoid its removal.”
Atticus balled up the rag. “Then be precise, or I’m going to start singing.” He wedged it in his mouth.
