by Scott Hale
“For the Cult?” Aeson asked.
“Everything for the Cult,” Ichor said.
“You fed a flesh fiend to the Witch’s sister,” Bjørn said.
“No, of course not. I fed her a human. What’s more defective than a human? And not really fed. I don’t know what she does with them. We keep the flesh fiends. They’re our angels. They’re our Choir. You can’t hear them. They’re locked up right now, but they’re inside, singing beautiful songs to God. We don’t choose a side, you see. Holy Order, Disciples of the Deep. Doesn’t matter. Pain and Joy are God’s servants. They just want to make God feel welcome when It finally comes. A song brightens everyone’s day. We’re going to have songs being sung everywhere soon.
“Come in, please, come in. I’ll show you. You have to see it for yourself.”
Aeson and Bjørn headed up the porch and stopped at the front door. Several more candles ignited in the windows. Now that the door was open, and they were close enough to the threshold, they could hear something coming from inside the house. Something sorrowful, something wracked with anguish; a haunting chorus that befitted this haunted house. It was screaming, there was no doubt in Aeson’s mind about that, but the way the pained cries came together, they formed a kind of unholy union that turned those terrible notes into something melodic, into something that, like Ichor had promised, sounded like music.
The Witches are parasites, Aeson thought, as Ichor flung back the front door. Attaching themselves to the major religions to build a following of their own. Fuck. But why flesh fiends? You can’t control–
A creature limped across the threshold. A flesh fiend. It was dressed in an Old World suit, something that a man might wear to a dance or a prom, with scuffed-up shoes on its feet and dirty white gloves on its hands. But it was the fiend’s face that Aeson couldn’t tear himself away from. The flesh fiend’s head was grotesque; a pink, encephalitic swell that housed two white eyes and a mouth so torn apart the beast’s diet for the last two weeks had to have been nothing more than bone and glass. It had no hair, but that’s not to say it didn’t make an effort; across its scalp, long, stringy tendons had been nailed into place; they ran from the flesh fiend’s cracked cranium to its crooked neck, and were still wet from the blood of the poor creature they had been stolen from.
“This is Ezra,” Ichor said.
The flesh fiend bowed its head to Aeson and Bjørn. Like an animal sick with rabies, thick slobber poured from its mouth, and left foam across its lips.
“He and Belia will show you to your rooms. Where is Belia?”
Ezra shook its head. The tendons whipped back and forth, slinging bloody specks.
“You… you said a little girl and her mom and dad had been killed here?” Aeson asked, giving everything he had to hide his repulsion. “Did… one of your… Choir escape?”
“No, no.” He snapped his fingers, and Ezra turned and went back inside Gloom. “Pain and Joy wanted to show the Sticks the power God had given to them. They sent their weapon down, and well, I think they got the hint. I mean, here I am, still alive!”
Bjørn was trembling, had been ever since the flesh fiend showed up. He grabbed onto Aeson for support. “Weapon?” he said.
“Yeah, Vrana.”
Aeson’s heart stopped. “V-Vrana?”
“Yeah, you got it. Listen, guys, I’ll tell you more later. I really want to show you the place. Besides, Joy will probably be back soon. So if you don’t mind the Choir singing all night—they have a lot of practice to do—you can ask her anything you’d like. She’s very sweet. Feels like one big, happy family with her around. Better than Lacuna ever turned out.
“So what room do you want to see first? The feeding pit or the fuck pens?” Ichor snorted like a pig, wiped a tear from his eyes. “I’m just joking. They’re the same thing.”
CHAPTER X
For a man who was all bones, the Skeleton wasn’t much when it came to boning. It was midnight, and he and Clementine were in bed. Fleshless digits between her legs, he was using every trick in the book to make her feel anything than the repulsion she must have felt right now with this dead thing inside her. He wanted to stop, but he knew she’d throw a fit if he tried. It wasn’t right to be touching her like this; it wasn’t right to be touching her at all. He had the power of the Black Hour in his fingertips, and here he was, putting death deep in her cradle of life.
Clementine let out a moan. It sounded genuine, but the Skeleton didn’t have any ears anymore, so the jury was still out on that. He leaned in closer, his lidless eyes beaming down on his wife’s glistening neck. She wrapped her hands around the back of his skull and pressed his face to her flesh. He knew what she wanted, so he opened his sneering mouth and let his black tongue loose over her breast. She let out another moan. It would be over soon, like it always was, and in the end, everything would be the same.
The Skeleton lifted his head away from Clementine’s chest. She was staring at him, a smile a small crack in her otherwise frigid face. Her eyes were dull, distant; still set on some sick sight back in the Membrane. The Skeleton cupped her face, ran his fingers over her lips. She bit at them playfully, but only because she knew that was what he was expecting her to do, and what she would have done before she died years ago.
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?” Clementine asked, rubbing his spinal column.
“Being with you is enough.” The Skeleton climbed off her and settled into his spot on the other side of the bed. “Clem?”
She wiped herself off with a sheet—hygiene wasn’t exactly something she got hung up on anymore—and rested her head against his ribcage. A few inches above her head, the Black Hour’s heart sat in a cocoon of the very same black moss that had spread to some of his ribs. He tried to shift her away from the foul growth, but like with most things, Clementine would not be moved.
“Yes?” she said, pulling the blanket up to her neck.
“What do you see when I touch you?”
Clementine groaned. She flicked a rib with her finger and shook her head. “Enough. Ask me something else. We’ve talked that topic to death.”
The Skeleton’s bloodshot eyes wandered around the room. Red waves, sanguine refractions from Gallows’ blood lake outside, were coming through the window and washing along the walls. There was a bookshelf and a desk; some rug they had wrung a fraction of the Red Worm out of, and a chest of drawers that was filled with Clementine’s clothes, on account of the Skeleton not needing clothes himself. It had been Clementine’s idea to make the room look like their room back home, but she gave up that ghost about a week into the project. She said she didn’t have the time, but the Skeleton knew it wasn’t time she was lacking. The woman had all the time in the world. It was memories she had a shortage of. Her body had come back from the Membrane, but not much else.
“Will’s still raw about me grounding him,” the Skeleton said.
Clementine sighed. She threw an arm around him and held onto his bones tightly. “I think—” she yawned, “—he’s a little more upset with R’lyeh than anyone else.”
“He just can’t go on anymore missions. He likes her, don’t he?”
“Will likes any pretty little thing that shows him an ounce of attention. Don’t you like her? You sent her out on something important. Can she fight that good?”
There was a commotion on Gallows’ platform. It sounded like several of the cabalists were getting into it about something. The Skeleton had half a mind to break it up, but this wasn’t the farmhouse; this wasn’t home.
“Don’t know. She’s a Night Terror, though. The only one we got. If she can snag Audra, then we’ll be in good shape.”
“Yeah. How you plan on using her?”
“Don’t know. This was mostly Hex’s idea. If King Edgar catches wind of his sister here, he’s going to rain hell down on us.”
“How is she?”
The Black Hour’s heart twitched. Instinctively, he clutched his chest, as if the thing
were giving him a heart attack. The damn thing wanted to speak to him, but this was his time with his wife. Like everything else, it would have to wait.
“Don’t know—”
Clementine snorted. Looking up at him, she said, “Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know. Is that all you know how to say?”
“Don’t know.”
“Bah.” She nestled her head harder against him. “She isn’t right. Hex, I mean.”
The Skeleton pulled Clementine into a hug and held her there. “Don’t I know it.”
“It’s been weeks now. People follow you, Atticus, but I think they’re getting antsy wondering where Hex is at. Most sicknesses would’ve passed by now. You need a new excuse.”
A new excuse? The Skeleton wondered to himself what excuse would fly if he started flaying Hex. Their relationship was a complicated one; one that swayed back and forth between cross-eyed hate and begrudging tolerance. Hex wasn’t a bad woman; what she wanted was just, and what she had created with the Marrow Cabal was commendable. But she had taken advantage of the Skeleton. She had seen him for the monster he was and the bloodlusts he possessed, and used this knowledge against him every chance she had. The Skeleton was too valuable to cut loose, and he understood that. Their connection had been built upon using one another. Now, she was useless to him, and she had infinite uses for him, the Skeleton, their undead lord and savior.
“You’re doing good,” Clementine went on, speaking in the syllables of sleep. “You’re doing… good.”
The Skeleton waited a minute until his wife was out; and then he moved her off him and onto her side. Clementine slept a lot these days. She used most of her energy on tiny tasks that didn’t amount to much. It was only when she was asleep that the Skeleton could really get a look at her. He could see the texture of her skin, the thoughts coming out as creases across her brow. He could smell her to make sure she wasn’t rotting or that something wasn’t growing inside her. Sometimes, Clementine would speak in her sleep, and the Skeleton would listen to those dream-driven ramblings, for in them were unguarded truths.
His wife assured him every day that nothing was wrong with her, but he knew better. You didn’t go to bed with a pile of bones and the Black Hour itself and come out unchanged. Not a day had gone by that the Skeleton hadn’t considered leaving Clementine and Will, but what he couldn’t figure was what would hurt them more. Staying with them? Or abandoning them for good? Sometimes he wondered if they could die, and if they couldn’t, sometimes he wondered if he would love them more for it.
“I got to go,” the Skeleton whispered an hour later, when Clementine was good and comatose. He kissed her cheek with his sneering teeth.
“Check on Will,” Clementine said, from somewhere deep inside a dream.
The Skeleton threw on his tattered cloak, fastened it, and slipped out of the bedroom. Outside, in the hall, a lantern was suspended from the ceiling, the candle inside it all but gone out. This “home” of theirs had been made out of the remains of the town hall. It was the largest building in Gallows, and even though they shared it with Hex, it was still by far the emptiest place in town. The Skeleton and his clan had their own corner, and the blue-haired Lacunan had hers; the rest was for the bugs and the cobwebs that caught them. It wasn’t a place meant for roots; they wouldn’t take.
Atticus stopped outside Will’s room. The door was shut, but there was a little light coming out from underneath it. He reached for the doorknob and—
Bound and gagged, Hex is yours for the taking. Bleed her until she’s yours, or until she won’t bleed anymore.
“Quiet,” The Skeleton snarled to the Black Hour inside him.
He turned the doorknob and let himself into his son’s room. The fourteen-year-old was sleeping fitfully in his bed. Holding onto his pillow, with the sheets snaking between his legs, Will shivered and said nonsensical things under his breath. He was sweating badly. Every few seconds, he would reach out to the wall beside his bed and beat his fist against it. Three slow thuds. Thump, thump, thump. A pause, and then three more. Thump, thump, thump—the same sound the shepherds would make every time they had banged their crooks on the ground.
“Hey,” the Skeleton said, going to the side of his son’s bed.
Will jerked awake. His eyes fought to blink out the crust at their edges. With a shout, he pressed himself against the wall, because even now, the sight of the Skeleton was still too much of a shock.
“Dad?” Will let out a nervous laugh. “What… what’s wrong?”
The Skeleton shook his head. He did a once-over of Will’s room. It had no windows, nor closets; just four bare walls with an empty floor in between. The only thing Will had to call his own was his bed and his clothes, which he kept under it. Like the Skeleton and Clementine, he had brought nothing here. Everything they’d ever had, it was still back at the farmhouse, in the kitchen where they’d died.
“About to head-off,” the Skeleton finally said.
Will yawned, scratched at the stubble on his face. “To work? You’re always working.”
“Yeah.” The Skeleton sat on the edge of Will’s bed. “Can’t sleep, even if I wanted to.”
“Mom wants you with her at night.”
“Too much going on to stay in bed with your mother. She understands.”
Will nodded, even though it was obvious by the look on his face he didn’t agree with his dad. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. That happened a lot these days to him; efforts undone by the slightest unseen thing. The Skeleton had the Black Hour whispering insanity to him most of the time, that’s what distracted him. What distracted Will, though? What did he hear whispering in his mind?
“You, uh, dream about shepherds a lot?” the Skeleton asked.
Will’s jaw slightly dropped. He glanced around the room, as if he were trying to find something by which he could change the subject. He yawned, rubbed his feet together, but quickly gave up the tired act when he clearly realized the Skeleton wasn’t having it.
“You dream about the Black Hour a lot?” Will shot back, living up to his current curse of adolescence.
The Skeleton ignored him. “How long you been having these dreams.”
A lie: “I don’t know.” And then: “Since you got us out of the Membrane.”
“What’re the shepherds doing in your dream?”
Will laughed uncomfortably. “They watch me. Like, they, uh, look right at me. Like they can see me through the dream. We’re in some hot place in the dream. I’ve never seen it. The sky is really gray, almost black. There isn’t a lot around. Just me and the shepherd.”
“Just the one?”
“One, yeah.”
The Skeleton scratched his ribcage like an ape. “You seen another shepherd since Bedlam with R’lyeh?”
Will tightened his mouth. He puffed out his chest, as if preparing himself for a beating. He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to.
“Where Will?” the Skeleton went on. “When and where?”
“Outside Gallows.” He swallowed hard. “I… saw Mom talking to one once.”
The Skeleton shot out his hand and took Will by the arm. He squeezed him so tightly he left bone prints on the boy’s pale skin. These two were—
Clementine and Will came back wrong, and on the wrong side. They are the shepherds’ crooks now, and while your back is turned, they are going to ground you into dust.
“God damn it,” the Skeleton said, letting go of his son.
Will rubbed his arm as tears welled on his eyelids. He shook off scenes from the Black Hour.
“What do you mean… talking to one?”
“I… that’s what it looked like. I don’t know. I didn’t… I just saw the two of them out of the corner of my eye. When I turned around, it was gone.”
The Skeleton felt a heat in his bones. Ever since he’d started housing the Black Hour’s heart in his chest, it seemed as if new flesh were forming over him; invisible flesh fitted with invisible v
eins and arteries that throbbed with time and all the Black Hour’s putrid permutations.
“What did your mom do? What did she look like?” The Skeleton got to his feet, so Will was out of his reach.
“It was a few weeks ago. I don’t know. It was only for a—” Will dropped his head. “It looked like she was laughing.”
I can’t do this. The Skeleton turned away from Will, wished him goodnight, and headed through the doorway.
Halfway into the hall, Will cried, “When are you going to let me out of here?”
Laughing, the Skeleton turned around and said, “Boy, you must be joking. After what you just told me? Why you want to tempt fate?”
“The hell are you going to do with us? Keep us chained to you forever?”
“You don’t understand—”
“I don’t care!” Will gritted his teeth. “None of us are living. Hell, you can’t, so I’ll cut you some slack.”
“You’ll cut me some slack?”
He has the Membrane inside him. He is a carrier.
Will leaned over the side of his bed, to where the candle sat beside it. He gave the Skeleton the cruelest look he could muster and then blew out the flame.
The Skeleton stood there in the hallway, the after image of his son’s hatred hot in his brain. It should’ve hurt, but it didn’t, not even when he pretended that it did. Pain wasn’t something he experienced much anymore; like a man in a desert looking for water, he had to work for it. But like a desert is dry, the Skeleton’s scarring was deep. Sooner or later, the well was going to run out.
He had Hex held up in her room, which in the last two weeks had been repurposed into a cell. There was one way into the room, and it was double-locked and double-guarded by the Marrow Cabal’s finest. She hadn’t said much of anything these last few weeks; she’d come down with a bad case of guilt, and like a bookworm, it had chewed up most of her words.
The Skeleton skirted through the house like a wraith. Cobwebs and corners, that’s all the place had going for it. It was two stories of nothingness; a brightly lit warehouse that held a few bodies and bated breaths. Part of it was their condition, this emptiness, and part of it was his strategy. When building it, they had chosen the creakiest wood and noisiest doors; everything was an alarm. There were no hiding places, nor was there anything to become attached to. Their home was a cage meant to catch shepherds. It never really occurred to the Skeleton until now that he was using his family and himself as bait.
