by Scott Hale
And then Will asked, “What is it, Dad?”
“Maybe you all would be better off without me.” He stumbled onto the road, the moonlit ribbon of white. “I’m not anything like what I was. Look at me.”
“You think any of us are what we used to be?” Clementine pushed him. “You think I’m that shallow? You weren’t exactly the cream of the crop way back when.”
“You can’t give up on us,” Will begged. “What is wrong with you?”
“Keep going, love,” Clementine whispered. “Bring us back.”
Having grown up in Gallows, it surprised the Skeleton to think he’d never visited the Nameless Forest. But as he approached it, he was glad he hadn’t. He wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it then. In fact, he wasn’t sure most could. It was a place of myth and madness that, for many, had become nothing more than a campfire tale. People feared it, yes, but only because they filled it with their fears. They knew it only by nouns and the tenuous terrors that strung them together. He was like them once, but not anymore. When he looked at the Nameless Forest now, he didn’t see its massive size, didn’t notice the way it moved when there was no wind to move it. He didn’t see abstract horrors or folklore freak shows. Instead, he saw King Edgar moving through the trees, a cape of vermillion veins trailing behind him. Instead, he saw the Dread Clock chiming out wrath and ruin, and hordes of creatures clamoring at the borders to be set free. Instead of a forest, he saw a weapon, one which could cleave humans like scabs off the continent.
The Nameless Forest loomed over the Skeleton as he made his careful approach. Abandoned wagons and pilfered crates were scattered across the outskirts of the Forest. Small piles of rotten food had been left in the fresh footprints in the mud. There were a few tents, too; torn open, they’d been stripped of whatever was inside.
“Eldrus’ supply lines,” he mumbled. He tried to find signs of any soldiers, but there was no life here, himself included.
Bending wood begged for his attention. Before him, the Nameless Forest’s trees had parted. A warm gust that smelled faintly of flowers blew through the new passage. The Skeleton took the hint like a shot of whiskey. Cringing, he went reluctantly into the place where he should’ve always been.
The Binding Road was where Lotus had promised: right in front of him. It started at his feet and stretched indefinitely to infinite green ahead. He did a quick search for the vermillion veins, but they were nowhere to be found. He did spot a gathering of dandelions with lightning storms instead of flower heads, but they were off the beaten path, so he ignored them and let common sense take the wheel.
It didn’t take long for the Skeleton to lose track of time in the Nameless Forest. He’d entered in the afternoon. Hours later, the sun still hadn’t moved. Granted, it had developed a growth that protruded from its side, like an orbiting moon, but he didn’t really know what to make of that.
He’d seen several people as well, in his periphery, or he’d heard them, at his back. The Skeleton ignored them the best he could, but the longer he did so, the more of them there seemed to be, until they were everywhere, except right in front of him. They started to whisper his name, touch his neck. He could hear them run past, even though no one did. He twitched as he heard blades sharpening against stone, teeth grinding on bone. Hands touched the back of his skull. He felt fluid filling it up from the inside, the pressure of it pressing on his eyes.
Finally, he spun around, crying, “What do you want?”
They gave no answer, however, because they’d vanished. In their place, they’d left headstones. More than he could count. He found himself drifting from the Binding Road to read their inscriptions.
The Skeleton went to the closest headstone. It read in bloody scrawl: Jessie Miller, death by Gravedigger. He stumbled, falling back on his hands. On the opposite side of the road, another headstone read: Blythe Keller, death by Gravedigger. He ran up and down the road. On each headstone the death of someone he’d known had been written onto it. And he was always to blame.
“That’s not right,” he said. Deeper into the Forest, many more headstones sat in cold, silent judgment. “I didn’t kill that many people.”
“But you did,” a voice whispered.
The Skeleton spun in place. Great hills of headstones had formed behind him. The rotted corpses of children protruded from the pregnant mounds. All their eyes, bulging and maggoty, were on him.
“I didn’t kill no kids!”
Again, the voice whispered, “But you have. But you will.”
The Skeleton covered his face, but because he had no flesh to hide behind, he saw everything.
“You have thinned the flock,” the voice said. “And now you have come home, where all wolves belong.”
The Skeleton dropped to his knees and buried his skull in the dirt. “No,” he said, thinking of every person he’d murdered for Poe, for Clementine and Will.
“No!” he said, thinking of the rebellion members who’d died for Geharra’s cause and his need.
He reared back, muddy tears in his eyes. The headstones were gone. The body hills, too.
He stumbled upon Threadbare a few hours—or weeks, he couldn’t tell—later. Lotus’ village was too busy working the lumber to take notice of him. Besides, chances were a walking, talking skeleton didn’t exactly incite surprise here like it would back home. But what did surprise him was the presence of Eldrus’ soldiers. They were there, they’d made it to the place, but they weren’t occupying the village. They were working the fields, the lumberyard, and helping the villagers construct new homes. There wasn’t any animosity between them. A part of him wondered if this had been what King Edgar wanted for the Heartland all along. And if so, why had he been successful here when, at the same time, he’d failed so miserably in Bedlam and Hrothas?
Anathema rose out of the land a few weeks—or years, he couldn’t tell—later. The crumbling spires and crooked walls that comprised the church were covered in thick spider webs. Large carrion birds circled the sky, while robed figures worked in their shadows below, hauling crates from Anathema’s cellar. As the Skeleton drew closer, the belfry bellowed out a low, droning tone. The front of the church opened. A congregation came pouring out.
“Halt,” a hooded woman shouted at the front of the line. She held up her hand. The congregation behind her stopped. “Who are you?”
The Skeleton pointed to himself and played stupid. “Me?”
“Wait here,” he heard the hooded woman whisper.
She crossed the churchyard, avoiding the spider webs slung across it. When she was up close to the Skeleton, she said, “Oh,” and got all soft on him. “Sorry about that.”
He flinched as something wet splatted on his head. He glanced up and saw the carrion birds were now only ten or so feet above them. Their stomach mouths were fully extended and drooling everywhere.
“You don’t need to worry about them. We like our food to have a little more meat on the bone.” The woman lowered her hood and a mess of mousy hair spilled out. She was young, heavyset. Cannibalism, it seemed, was a good way to pack on pounds. “I’m Mother Michelle, leader of Anathema. Is there anything I can do for you?”
The Skeleton stared at Mother Michelle’s congregation on Anathema’s threshold. “You all expecting me?”
She shrugged. “Where are you trying to go?”
He nodded at the webs that seemed to be holding the church together. “Guys got a bug problem?”
Mother Michelle laughed. “New neighbors.”
“You with Eldrus?”
“Of course,” she said. She looked sick when she mumbled, “Edgar is our king.”
The carrion birds quieted as they lifted higher into the sky.
“You don’t seem too happy about that.”
Mother Michelle forced a smile.
“I’m going to the Orphanage,” the Skeleton admitted. His eyes followed the Binding Road, to where it split into five different directions past the church. “That going to be a problem
?”
“No.” A tear ran down her cheek. “Not at all.” She turned and pointed to the farthest road, where the shadows were thick and the Forest dense. “That’s the road you want. It’s a good thing you don’t have any blood left in your body.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because they might actually listen to what you have to say, rather than fight to be the first one to suck you dry.” Mother Michelle put on her hood and headed back towards Anathema.
A few minutes out of Anathema, like Lotus had promised, it seemed as though the Skeleton was somewhere else entirely. The sky had thickened and turned black, as though tar had been smeared across it. What little light there was came from the red stars trapped in the churning firmament. By their crimson courtesy, he found he stood at the edge of a wide and seamless swamp. The Nameless Forest, if he was even in it anymore, was nowhere to be found.
“Don’t go anywhere.” The Skeleton was talking to the Binding Road. It was still there, at his feet, but the roaming fog made it hard to keep track of its course.
“Do you see it?” he asked himself, pretending to be Will.
“See what? Can’t see much in this fog.”
“The house.”
The Skeleton imagined Clementine and Will standing at his side. They were pointing at something in the distance.
“Atticus,” Clementine said. “Wait until you get out of the Nameless Forest before you use the Dread Clock.”
“I’ll take it to Nachtla,” he said. He kissed the air where he told himself his wife’s cheek would be. “I’ll make that mosquito help me make it work.”
Will smiled. “I love you, Dad.”
The Skeleton smiled back, or at least tried to. “I love you, too, Will.”
The further the Skeleton plunged into the swamp, the clearer it became “house” wasn’t a strong enough word to describe the Orphanage. It was a three-story mansion, all red-brick and black mortar. The windows were barred, and the property itself protected by the ten-foot, wrought iron fence that surrounded it.
“You don’t want to go in there.”
The Skeleton stumbled off the Binding Road and quickly stepped back onto it. He swiped at the fog and said, “Who’s there?”
A little girl, doing it’s damndest to sound seductive, whispered, “Whoever you want.”
A wave of rapturous moans broke over the Skeleton. The sweaty exhalations seeped into his bones. Warmth radiated through his ribcage, swelling in his loins. Again, he stumbled from the Binding Road. But this time, when he’d gathered himself, it was nowhere to be found.
“Atticus. Gravedigger. Skeleton.”
Panicked, he went down and crawled on the ground. Where’s the road, god damn it?
“So many names, so many roles.”
Holy fucking Child, he thought. The fog swooped in and blinded him in its embrace. This isn’t happening.
“You need only one name. One role.”
The Skeleton lost control of his arms as the fog rolled under them and lifted him to and off his feet. He clawed at it, bit at it, but like him, the fog felt no pain and gave no mercy.
“You’ve forgotten happiness. Be a lover again, Skeleton of the Gravedigger, Atticus, and let us love you in return.”
The fog lifted him high into the red-starred sky. A mildewed wind rushed in and swept the rest of it away, to show him what he’d been missing. All across the swamp, bodies writhed in the inky waters, displaying in bloody, orgiastic bliss the sexual limits their flesh could endure. There were hundreds of them, thousands of them. They were all, in some way, connected to one another. By hand and foot, mouth and tongue, and every form of possible penetration, the men and women formed a chain of lust around the swamp that refused to be broken.
“Clementine’s in there. Will, too, if you fancy that sort of thing,” the voice continued. “Come into our waters.”
The Skeleton shouted, “Get off!” and flung himself in the fog until it finally let him go. He plummeted onto the Binding Road. His feet hit the ground sideways, shattering immediately.
“You’re not stopping me,” he said, crawling forward, the fog having dropped him at the Orphanage’s gate.
A soft laughter rang out across the swamp. The little girl said, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
All of a sudden, the Orphanage’s wrought iron fences started to rattle. The front gates shook and, with a whine, slowly crept open, leaving just enough space for the Skeleton to squeeze through.
“Come in,” the little girl said. “We’re all so excited to meet you.”
CHAPTER XXVII
Crawling towards the Orphanage, the Skeleton’s fingers closed around the edge of a sign that had sunk into the mud. The front of it was heavily faded, but after a moment, he could make out what it said.
“Our Ladies of Sorrow Academy,” he read, tracing the silver lettering. He remembered Elizabeth’s story about the Bad Mother at this same school who had treated her and the other Deadly Beauties so poorly; the Bad Mother she’d had tattooed into her skin. He sighed and kept crawling, repeating “son of a bitch” over and over again under his breath.
By the time he reached the Orphanage, his feet had healed and he was able to walk again. The moans from the swamp grew louder, but he knew a trap when he heard one. Under different circumstances, when he wasn’t a walking pile of bones, he probably would’ve fallen for it. But the flaying had taken more than his skin. It’d left him with purpose, and that was about it.
“Knock, knock,” the little girl said. Her voice was leathery, chirpy, like a bat and its wings.
The Skeleton ignored her and pulled on the gigantic wooden doors. They refused to give. It was only until he gave up on going in this way that they started to creak open on their own.
“Knock, knock,” the little girl persisted. Her voice came through the widening doorway. She was somewhere inside.
The Skeleton grumbled. “Who’s there?”
The little girl giggled and said, “You’re stupid.”
Fog poured like an avalanche over the front of the Orphanage and filled the swamp until it was completely covered. The moans continued to rise higher and higher in pitch until they twisted into screams.
“Are you coming in or what?” the little girl asked snidely.
The Skeleton nodded and entered the Orphanage. Immediately, the front doors slammed shut behind him and locked. He didn’t go much further because, inside, the mansion was pitch-black.
Thinking the little girl enjoyed bantering, he said, “Spare some light?”
The little girl laughed. “For you, anything.”
One by one, small flames came to life above him. At first, he thought the candles on which they burned were floating in the air. But as more light filled the room, he saw that wasn’t the case at all. There were bodies, hundreds of them, bound and hanging together from the ceiling like a grotesque chandelier. And it was in each of their hands, atop untold years of hardened wax, that these candles burned.
“What do you think?”
The Skeleton jumped backward as he noticed the little girl at his side. She was small, pale, with white hair done up in thick braids. She wore a long, dark blue dress with a red collar. Dirty rags were tightly wrapped around her hands. The little girl looked like a student of the place, and couldn’t have been any older than twelve or thirteen.
With her smiling eyes fixed on the dead above, she said, “My name is Gemma. What’s yours?”
“Atticus.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Atticus.”
The Skeleton continued to take in his surroundings. Inside the building, it was all doom and gloom. The walls were dark green; golden words in the deader-than-dead language of Latin were written across them. Sharp, wooden adornments and busts jutted out from every possible perch, making the mansion itself look more like a weapon of torture than anything else. A few feet from where he stood, the central staircase ran upward to the second floor, and doubled back to the third. What waited on the
upper levels was difficult tell, because of the large, violet curtains draped over the balconies and catwalks there.
“It’s nice to meet you, Atticus,” the little girl persisted, sounding overly polite.
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Gemma.”
She smiled. “You’ve had better days, I take it?”
“Something like that.” He pointed to the corpses. “Who’re they?”
“Those are our moms and dads,” Gemma said, joy in her voice where hurt should’ve been.
“What’d they do?”
“They gave up on us. Mine are up there, too.” Finally, she looked over at the Skeleton. “After everything I did for them, they still didn’t learn their lesson. Can I call you Skeleton? I know what it’s like to be reminded of something you only want to forget, so Skeleton?”
“That’s fine,” he said. She’s enjoying this, he thought.
Gemma took his hand. She fingered his bones, giggled at their texture. “The Dread Clock means a lot to me.”
“So you know why I’m here?”
“Lotus sent you to get it.”
The Skeleton dropped her hand. Something sharp had pricked his own. “Lotus is locked up in Ghostgrave. How the hell you know that?”
Gemma laughed and rubbed her hands together. “Because that was the plan? Atticus, I mean, Skeleton, listen: When a monster starts leading rebellions and winning the respect of humans, other monsters, monsters like ourselves, take notice.”
He ground his teeth. “Figured I was being used.”
Gemma wrinkled her nose. “I doubt it, but, yeah, you are. Sort of.”
“King Edgar put Lotus up to this, then? Telling me about the Dread Clock and sending me in after it?”
Gemma nodded.
“How the hell do you know that?”
“We’re in the Nameless Forest, dude. Is it all that hard to believe Lotus can communicate with us?”
“Sounds like a bullshit answer.”
“Sounds like the only one you’re getting.” She nudged him. “Skeleton, it’s not all bad.”
“Lotus was beaten to a pulp—” Something glided through the air above, landed on one of the balconies, out of sight. “—I had to beg her to tell me about the clock.”
