by Scott Hale
“Hmm?” Hex’s sleepy eyes shot open. “Yeah, sorry.” She pointed to the boat that held the newcomers, the three women and two men. “You all have tongues. Use them.”
The skinniest man cleared his throat and said, “Sean. My name’s Sean, sir.”
The Skeleton waved off the formality like a gnat.
“Allister,” the second man said. He was bald, badly sunburned, and piggish. “It’s an honor.”
“Likewise.”
“Maya,” one of the women offered. She looked to be in her fifties, and had about as many scars on her face as Elizabeth did tattoos on her body.
The woman beside her, a mousey brunette with shark eyes, said quietly, “Kristin. We won’t tell anyone about any of this.”
The Skeleton shrugged. They were addressing him like a leader, a role he’d tried and failed miserably at. “If Hex thought you would, you’d be in the ocean talking to the fish, not me.”
Hex nodded and snapped her fingers. “That one,” she said, pointing to the last woman, a leaner version of Warren. “That one is Bruna. Say hi, Bruna.”
Bruna, whose cloak was now obviously too small for her frame, waved at the Skeleton.
“Bruna is a holy roller,” Hex said. “Thinks you’re a demon. I know you don’t need to sleep, but in case you do, watch out for her. She’s got daggers in her eyes for you. Mr. Haemo was one thing, but you’re just too much.”
Bruna’s mouth dropped open, her face going bright red. “You don’t—”
“Shut up, Bruna,” Miranda interrupted, rubbing her nerve-dead arm. “You’re in the middle of the ocean with a living skeleton, a giant mosquito, and a handful of murderers. Just what do you expect to accomplish?”
Hex laughed and winked at Miranda. “These five were all we had on hand when we left Nachtla. Didn’t think the six of us would be enough for Lacuna. Took a chance. Guess it paid off.”
A large wave rolled past, tossing a bit of itself into the Skeleton’s boat. He turned. They were getting close to the mainland, though it seemed they’d sailed far off-course from the dock in the cove outside Nachtla. Turning back around, he asked, “What’s happened to the world, Hex?”
She laughed, her eyes flashing blue. “Where to start? Geharra’s rebellion died out. People just stopped fighting.”
“Do they know I was captured?”
“Not widely. King Edgar didn’t even announce it. People just didn’t care anymore. Geharra stopped supporting the rebellion once he removed a good seventy-five percent of his soldiers from the Heartland. The Night Terrors, my people—it’s a relief to be able to admit it—were fine with that. It’s all they wanted.”
“What about the bodies? The vermillion veins?”
“Still out there. Still being planted, but not as many, or at least, not as out in the open. I kept the Marrow Cabal going after the rebellion died out because I actually give a damn about doing the right thing. There were still some who wanted to fight. So we moved out to Nachtla, far away from Eldrus, and started building up again. We did that awhile. Numbers fluctuated. I’d say we have about one hundred who’re loyal. They think you’re out there, fighting, so don’t ruin it if you meet them.”
The Skeleton’s eyes drifted to the sky, to greet the moon, which, in some ways, reflected himself better than any mirror could. It was worn-down, roughed-up, pale and cold; too distant to reach, but impossible to ignore.
“There’s more like you. Children of Lacuna. And Worms? How did they kill a whole city?”
“I don’t know what the fuck the Worms are.” Hex’s eyes flashed blue again and, for a moment, she disappeared inside herself. Then, she said, “From what you told me, it sounds like Eldrus put Penance up to invading Geharra. I don’t know if King Edgar wanted them to kill everyone, but they did. And one of our villages, Alluvia, too. Whatever they did, it summoned that thing, that Red Worm. Last I heard, it was moving across the continent, but that’s it. I’ve been cut off from news awhile now. Stopped getting so many transmissions, too. And ever since Mara and the others did what they did to the Blue Worm, I haven’t heard anything. Not sure I can even send or receive anymore.
“Used to be I’d hear things all the time. Thought I was crazy. I’d get glimpses when I was a little girl. Even saw the Blue Worm a few times. Didn’t know what it was then. Just figured maybe it was god. But not anymore. Around the time Penance did what they did in Geharra, all the other Children of Lacuna went dark. Like we were cut off from each other.”
“Sounds suspicious,” the Skeleton said.
“Yeah.” Hex’s voice sounded hoarse. Not one for talking, all this talking was taking its toll. “Thing is, it’s not something you’re aware of, being a telepath. They have to teach you, unlock it. People send and receive without really realizing it until someone like Mara helps them hone the ability. Like I said, I’d hear or see things all the time. I’ve met a few—Ichor’s one of them—and they did, too. Guessing some Children of Lacuna still don’t know what they’re capable of all these years later, because no one told them. Didn’t stop them though from using it all the same. With all them pieces, that’s how I remembered Lacuna and the Blue Worm. Now we just have to figure out what the hell it was, what the hell this Red Worm is, and if there’s more coming our way.”
The Skeleton noticed his hand drifting to the Black Hour’s heart. He stopped it and played it off, although everyone noticed, anyway. “You think King Edgar wanted this to happen? For these creatures to wake up?”
“They sure sound like something the Nameless Forest could spit out.” She sighed and shook her head. “Hell, but if Mara and two scrawny girls can take one down, maybe we don’t have so much to worry about.”
After many starts and stops and somehow going in circles, the Marrow Cabal finally made landfall. Physically and mentally exhausted—the latter more so than the former for the Skeleton—they dragged themselves up the coast and found shelter in a shallow cave. The Skeleton offered to keep watch. Because only Mr. Haemo could match his stamina at this moment, they let him do just that.
He spent most of the night patrolling outside the cave, talking to himself in his head. He told Clementine and Will how much he loved them, and they talked about what they wanted to do when he finally brought them out of the Membrane. At some point, far down the coast from where they camped, he noticed a small spot in the dark, a fire on the beach. It was back the way Nachtla would’ve been. If he had to guess, it was probably the same Night Terrors who had put an end to the Blue Worm. He considered waking Hex, but with the Black Hour’s heart in its seemingly decayed state, he decided against any further delays.
They worked their way towards Gallows in the weeks that followed. The Skeleton, Gary, and Mr. Haemo had spoken at length about the best way to use the heart, open a portal to the Membrane, and get his family out.
“We’ll treat it like a blood well,” the mosquito said, agitatedly.
The Skeleton was making everyone repeat the plan on an hourly basis.
“You didn’t see the Membrane when you were tinkering with it? Might be because time runs different down there. I don’t know. We’ll go back to your house, gather up anything personal, if the locals haven’t already hocked your stuff. We’ll treat it like a blood well. Do everything we can to make your visions as pointed as possible.” Mr. Haemo turned and tore off his skin suit, growing several inches and several times more sinister. “And then you get rid of it.”
The Skeleton started pushing them hard on the last day as they entered the swampy outskirts of the town. They were about eight hours out from Mr. Haemo’s haunt, though the bug didn’t sound too homesick when Gary brought that fact up.
“We need to rest,” Hex said, forcing them to stop on the only dry patch of land for the last few miles. “You’ve waited this long, Atticus. We’ve stuck by you this whole time. You telling me you can’t let us get some sleep before your big day?”
The Skeleton roamed around the dry thicket, like a feral beast looking for
something to maim. “We’re so close,” he shouted, his words echoing through the swamp, waking up half the place.
“Then go!” She threw her hands up. “Take bug boy here. You don’t need us to do what you have to do. We’re just people. We’ll get in your way.”
As the rest of the Marrow Cabal settled in for the night, the Skeleton decided to stay. Hex wasn’t usually like this, but he understood why she was, because she was trying to prove a point. She recognized his impatience, probably remembered his bloodlusts. Calling him out, seeing how he responded, it was all a litmus test, to see how much human was left in that scourged soul of his.
At daybreak, before the others had woken, Hex started screaming in her sleep. Thinking a snake or a gator had got to her, the Skeleton rushed over to save her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. Her eyes were still shut, but she was screaming. A nightmare? He touched her face as he searched what he could of her for wounds. “Hex, what’s wrong?”
Slowly, her eyes opened. The Skeleton gasped as he saw them. They were a radiant blue, surely bright enough to blind her. But as the rest of the Marrow Cabal crowded in to see what had gone wrong, her eyes started to dim. She stopped screaming and started breathing again.
James knelt down beside her, one of Mr. Haemo’s children sucking on his forehead. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Hex took a moment to respond. She slapped her lips, curled her hands until Miranda filled them with a flagon of water. After she gulped down most of it, she poured the rest over her face, took a deep breath, and said, “Sorry. I don’t know what happened.”
“Your eyes,” the Skeleton started.
She nodded. She wiped the sweat off her chest and started nervously twisting her hair. “I saw something. But I think it was just a nightmare. Holy Child, it felt awful.”
“What’d you see?” Mr. Haemo asked, not one to miss out on a juicy bit of despair.
Using James’ shoulder for support, she came to her feet. Squinting, the morning sun in her glazed-over eyes, she said, “A gray place. Mountains and pits. And then there was this… these things. One was this pale woman barely wearing anything at all. And the other was some kind of… horror. It was at the woman’s side. It looked half-human, half-bird, like a raven. The woman was petting it.” She took another deep breath, exhaled hard. “And there was this necklace around the raven’s neck. Blue gem. Kept shining in my eyes. Couldn’t stand to look at it.”
“Was it a vision?” the Skeleton asked.
Hex shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to make of it.”
CHAPTER XXXI
By the time they got to Gallows, the Red Worm was already there. Like a covetous centipede, it had curled itself around the town. From the ten thousand faces that covered its bulbous head, blood poured out in thick, unending streams, reducing most of Gallows to a muddy pit of deepening gore. As people tried to escape, the creature drummed the ground with its thousands of severed human legs. The vibrations knocked people off their feet, sending them face-first into the mire of filth that had become their home. And while they lay there, struggling to be free of the blood-soaked and sucking earth, the Red Worm would close in with its thousands of writhing, severed arms and bring them into its crimson embrace.
Standing on the sun-soaked outskirts, the sick run-off pouring past their feet, the Marrow Cabal couldn’t help but simply watch the scene in awe.
“Mother Abbess,” Bruna whispered. She made the sign of Penance and started to pray.
“Back into the swamp,” Hex said. “It hasn’t seen us.”
James rubbed the nubs on his hand where his fingers had been. “Is that it?”
Already retreating, Gary said, “Has to be. Come on, let’s go.”
The Skeleton shook his head. “No.”
“What?” Elizabeth punched his arm. “You’re kidding, yeah?”
“He’s insane, don’t bother,” Miranda said.
“What are you thinking, Atticus?” Mr. Haemo muscled his way in between the Skeleton and Hex. Being back home, he had neglected to put on his skin suit. After all, he had appearances to maintain.
“He’s not thinking a god damn thing.” Hex nodded at Warren. “We’re leaving. If we’re quick, we can get Clementine and Will out at the farm.”
The Skeleton interrupted, saying, “What would be the point? Bring them back with that thing tearing through the town? Through the world? I will not bring them back to have them die again!”
“We can hide until it passes,” Maya said. Her and Allister were already a few feet from the group, taking the initiative.
“No,” the Skeleton repeated. “Hex, how much do you care about your cause?”
She puffed out her chest. “What you say?”
For a moment, he found himself channeling King Edgar as he proposed, “You want to make a difference? You want the Marrow Cabal to mean something? You want people to—”
The Red Worm let out a hiss. Lightning quick, it whipped its gore-encrusted trunk. Houses exploded across Gallows, sending massive amounts of debris and corpses into the air.
“You want people to follow you?” the Skeleton shouted over the destruction.
“What’re you saying? Kill it?” Hex laughed. She looked at Sean and Kristin, who’d gone pale at the suggestion. “You’re insane. I see what you’re saying, but we have nothing.”
“We have the heart.” The Skeleton took out the Black Hour’s throbbing heart and held it in his gloved hand. “We have everything.”
Screams. Loud, strained, almost-familiar screams lurched into the outskirts. They weren’t screams of terror, of horror. They were primal pleas, deep, hard, and grating. The Red Worm was reducing the Skeleton’s town to ruin, and his neighbors’ minds to nothing.
It was hard to hold court so close to a massacre, so the Skeleton put away the heart and simply said, “I’m going.”
Warren grabbed his cloak. “Gravedigger, what’s wrong with you, man? Do you even want your family back?”
At this, he spun around. He planted his fingers in the big man’s chest and dug till they started to get wet. “I can’t bring them back to die again. I can’t sit here and watch these people, even I didn’t much care for them, be killed. I’ve known most of them all my life.” He let go and pushed Warren back.
Looking at Hex, he then said, “Who’s to say Eldrus or Penance or whoever is controlling this thing isn’t trying to destroy Gallows to make another one? Hell of a way to take over a continent. You think anyone’s going to fight back with two or three of these things running around?”
The Red Worm grabbed a handful of children from the streets and shoved them into itself. At first, they didn’t fit, so the gore-beast crushed them until they would.
“But they will fight back, with us, if we’ve shown we can stop the Worms.”
“We?” Hex snarled. “You actually give a damn now? Last time I checked, this has only been about your family.”
“I’m not bringing them from one hell just to throw them into another,” he said. “I’m sure there’s something in the Black Hour to kill it.”
James pleaded, “Atticus, you can’t. That takes too much time.”
“No, not if I’m not searching for something. I’ll just grab what it shows me.”
“What do you want us for, then?” Miranda, gripping her bad arm, asked. “Bait?”
“To get people out. To do what the Marrow Cabal is supposed to do.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “You were gone for a year and a half, yeah? And deader than dead. You don’t get to lead anyone anymore.”
Hex grumbled. She fingered the hilt of her sword. “The heart won’t show you the Membrane, will it? I heard you say that to Mr. Haemo.”
The Skeleton went stiff. He exchanged glances with the giant mosquito, who realized, along with Hex, his intentions all along.
Mr. Haemo snapped his fingers. A million of his mosquito minions shivered into existence and sat like a suffocating cloud
above them. “You want to turn Gallows into a blood well.”
“I want to save it—”
“With this much of the sweet stuff, I can drop you at your family’s feet.”
“We kill it, I get Clementine and Will back, and you get your following,” the Skeleton said.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Mr. Haemo appealed to Hex.
“Shut the fuck up, bug,” she said.
Mr. Haemo stepped up to her, loomed over her, the top of his proboscis touching her scalp. “Using the Black Hour seemed like a good idea at first, but not anymore. He uses that heart to tear into a place like the Membrane… a lot of bad things could come spilling out. Last thing we need is another me.”
Gary was grinding his teeth so hard one shattered in his mouth. “You don’t give a shit. You just want the blood.”
Mr. Haemo laughed. “We all just want something, ghoul. Let’s just be honest with ourselves and go ahead and get it.”
There wasn’t much to the plan, but they tried to carry it out all the same. Miranda and James, on account of being paralyzed and maimed, took off for the Skeleton’s farm, to gather up any personal belongings.
Warren and the new recruits went southward, where most of the damage was done, to rescue anyone still trapped in the wreckage.
Mr. Haemo, with his children in tow, plunged into the thick of the slaughter, to begin the ritual.
Those that were left—Gary, Hex, and Elizabeth—were those that stood beside the Skeleton now, beside Poe’s bar, staring up at the grandeur of the walking grave that overshadowed them.
“We shouldn’t be this close,” Elizabeth said. She held onto Hex as waves of blood crashed against their knees.
“I have to see it to know it,” the Skeleton said. And see it, he did.
The Red Worm towered over them, its upper half reared up, stretching a good sixty feet into the air. With its head still turned towards the center of town, where it continued to vomit torrents of gore, the Skeleton had a chance to glimpse its underbelly. Like the centipede it resembled, the Red Worm’s body was divided into seams and segments. Each segment, fifteen, maybe twenty feet in width, was a hard shell of human sediment. In each division, reams of skin, piles of bones, and swathes of muscle formed the beast’s crimson carapace. The paste that held it all together was a mix of pulverized entrails, coagulated blood, and a kind of eldritch glaze. In between each segment were the seams that connected them. They consisted of thousands of animal carcasses and their innards. But what somehow caught the Skeleton’s eyes were the wet patches within the seams, where a second body, perhaps the Red Worm’s true body, worked tirelessly to accommodate the monster’s spastic movements. Everything had a weakness, and the Red Worm’s was the body beyond the bodies.
