by Scott Hale
“What is their Vermillion God? A Worm?” Bjørn asked.
“Probably, yeah, I think so. I don’t know. But twelve years ago, they knew something was in that desert and…”
Bjørn took the bastard sword off his lap and placed it between his legs, letting its blade fall against him. “What? What’s wrong?”
“You think that’s why they killed themselves?”
“Listen, I don’t—”
Aeson’s hand, still holding the quill, started to shake so badly, it splattered ink across the bed. He dropped the quill, sat on his hand; red speckles of embarrassment dotted across cheeks. His eyes went huge, and he looked at Bjørn through the tears pouring out of them. He smiled, laughed at nothing in particular, and then pressed his face into his other palm. In the humid darkness of his flesh, he saw the tree that had killed his parents, and there was sand amongst its roots.
More screams came up from the floorboards; guttural groans of ecstasy moved like rats through the walls. Wave after wave of sin and sorrow crashed into the door. The Choir hit an orgiastic crescendo, and then the notes of discord were stripped away, one cry for help at a time, until all that was left was an agonizing aria that closed in on the room, like mourners closing in on a casket, desperate to see Death in any way that they could.
“I can’t do this,” Aeson cried. He stood and went to the small window. “I have to get the fuck out of here.” And then, staring through the window: “Shit. We have to go. We can’t stay here.”
The light from the luna lake was gone, but it was no matter: there were now twenty-five farmers on the front yard of house Gloom, lanterns and torches burning brightly in their hands. Standing there, they looked scarecrows, and like scarecrows, it was clear they meant to scare Ichor and his Choir away, through whatever means possible.
“That’s good,” Bjørn said, leaning in over Aeson’s shoulder. “Better than we could have hoped for.”
Aeson twisted around, his body practically pinned by the Bear’s to the wall. “No, it’s not. They’re going to tear this place apart. Flesh fiends in the basement, those hillbillies in the front yard… We need to get out of here before Ichor comes back.”
Bjørn cleared his throat, backed off him. “You forget what we came here for?”
“No,” Aeson said through his teeth. “You know I haven’t.”
“This isn’t easy. It’s not going to be clean. Ichor’s insane, but if he’s telling the truth and the Witch does show up, or hell, even if it’s only her sister, that may be all we need to rescue Vrana. Let those yokels tear the house apart. Whatever they don’t finish off of the flesh fiends, we’ll take care of.”
Aeson’s mouth dropped open. “I… can’t go back down there.”
“I know you’ve read about flesh fiends, and I’ve seen what they can do.” Bjørn pointed to the door, as if the creatures were behind it. “If they get out, if they start spreading, we aren’t going to have to worry about some Worm coming out of the desert.”
Aeson hated how right Bjørn was about all of this. He turned back to the window; outside, the farmers were still there, not having moved an inch. He fought his thoughts, but his thoughts were stronger; they had been reinforced by sight and sound, taste and smell. He started to feel the hot stench of the basement creep up on him and settle into his pores. He tried to close his eyes, but not even in darkness, especially not in darkness, could he find an escape, for there he saw it, the Choir’s performance on its literal manmade stage.
He didn’t know how long this had been going on here in the Dires, but the fact that the town’s residents hadn’t put it down immediately gave credence to Bjørn’s claims. If these things were to escape, the Dires and the nearby Blasted Woodland would be the perfect environment for an outbreak of flesh fiends.
“The Witch needs to be separated from the Void, right?” Bjørn asked. He spun Aeson around to face him. “That’s where she draws her power from, right?”
“Yeah. If we can do enough damage and stop her from getting back there, we might be able to make a bargain or, I don’t know, break her spell over Vrana.”
“What do you know about Joy?”
Aeson laughed pathetically. “The feeling, or Pain’s sister?”
Bjørn didn’t answer. Instead, he strolled over to Aeson’s bed, picked up the sword, and came back and shoved it into his hands.
“About as much as I do about Pain. So… not much.” He held the sword tightly, felt a little bit better with it in his grip. “Joy has been known to obsess about having a family, whereas Pain creates her own tortured playthings.”
Donning his sword and mask, Bjørn asked, “So the flesh fiends are hers, then?”
“Could be.”
“Every mother wants to protect her child in some way, no matter how foul it is. Joy’s the witch we need. You can’t hesitate, Aeson.” He gave the bastard sword a swing. “They’re spellweavers. They can kill us from a mile away.”
“What if they do?” Aeson went to the bed and put on his own mask. “Then what? At least we tried?”
“Yeah? What else you want?”
“Better odds.” He slipped The Blood of Before and the parchment into his bag.
“I don’t want to hear about no Red Death weapons. We both dodged Death once. Once is enough.”
We both dodged Death? Aeson stared at the Bear, and the Bear refused to make eye contact, for it was clear he’d said something he hadn’t meant to. “Bjørn.”
“What?”
“Why did my parents kill themselves? You know, don’t you? Was it the Ossuary? Did they even kill themselves?”
“Thought you were decided on that matter.”
“You have to tell me.”
Bjørn drew a deep breath and held it. Aeson could hear him running his tongue over his teeth, as he often did in deliberation.
But before Bjørn could answer him, there were footsteps coming up the stairs outside the door. Aeson and Bjørn exchanged glances and then readied their weapons.
Three knocks upon the door, weak and slow. And then came a voice behind it, thin and clumsy, like the speaker’s tongue couldn’t figure out how to form its words right. It said, “Sirs, I… am… coming… in.”
The door crept open jump scare slowly. A white hand, marbled with veins and bruises, gripped the side of it. Then, out of the shadows, Ezra, Ichor’s flesh fiend servant, appeared. One eye had slipped out of its socket, a bundle of nerves the only thing keeping it in place. The corners of the flesh fiend’s mouth were yellow and crusted over.
“Sirs…” Ezra went on, the inside of his mouth covered in weeping sores, “Master… Ichor… asked… me… to… retrieve… you.” The flesh fiend continued to stand there, most of his body hidden behind the door, like a pervert peeking in on the unaware. “Dinner… is… ready. He… has… invited… friends.” Ezra pointed one finger toward the window. “He… hopes… you… will… help… them… understand… our… work. Come.”
Ezra turned around. Stabbed into the back of the flesh fiend’s skull with glass and nails was a small pelvic bone. It sat on low on his head, like a fallen crown. “Come…” he said, disappearing into the shadows. “Come… before… Mother… returns.”
If things had gone differently, or if Aeson had been a braver man, he might have found it funny to have a flesh fiend serving him a fat slab of raw meat for dinner. But Aeson was not a brave man, and at this moment, as Ezra and Belia wheeled cart after cart of fly-infested, maggot-filled meals to Ichor’s dinner party, he was not even a man. He was a child on the edge of his seat, on the edge everything, held back only by the presence of Bjørn at his side.
I’m going to die here, he thought. I’m going to die.
Ichor’s dinner party took place in Gloom’s dilapidated dining room. To call it a shithole would be degrading to other shitholes. It was a huge room flanked by cobwebbed windows and cockroached curtains. Chairs lined the dining room; in them, blood splatters like shadows were seated. From the double doo
rs that let out of the room, to the fireplace at its end, picture frames and portraits covered the floor; they had been slashed to pieces, and wiped with every kind of bodily fluid.
But none of that compared to the dinner table. Its surface was a cross between the bottom of a bird cage and an old, unemptied chamber pot. At first, Aeson had thought that parts of it were covered in candle wax, but upon touching it, found that it was grease, and hair. The table could easily sit thirty—enough for all the farmers outside, as well as those inside—but instead it sat eight. There was Aeson, Bjørn, and Ichor; and then there were those five who were the heads of their individual families here in the Dismal Sticks: Rustin Carr from Misery, Dalia Dark from Grief, Agnus Buckles from Woe, Jack Remy from Pang, and Big Scar Pedro from Stitch. The other twenty-two seats were occupied by the cockroaches and bones they lived in.
Their host, Ichor, hadn’t bothered to change out of his nightgown. At this point, it was so dirty and wet that the fabric and the naked skin it was pasted to were indistinguishable from each other. A plate full of overcooked chicken before him, he sat between Rustin Carr, a Holy Order of Penance follower, and Jack Remy, a self-proclaimed Disciple of the Deep. Aeson figured he might have sat between the two men to avoid having them fight like children, but in actuality, Rustin and Jack had chosen those seats themselves—perhaps so one of them could hold Ichor down, while the other carved him up with the dinnerware.
On the opposite side of the able, two seats away from Aeson’s right, sat Dalia Dark and Agnus Buckles—both of whom were rocking the icon of the Holy Order of Penance on their lapels. Down Bjørn’s way, right next to the Bear, Big Scar Pedro was slouched, a tattoo with the Disciples of the Deep’s symbol on the top of his hand.
They had been seated at the dinner table for fifteen minutes; no one, except for the cockroaches, had done much talking. Outside, the remaining twenty farmers, handfuls of which were from each family, shouted amongst themselves. To Aeson, the debate sounded like a decision between burning Gloom down, or high-tailing it for the hills.
Do what Bjørn said, Aeson told himself. Let them talk. Let them tear each other apart. We’re Night Terrors. We have the advantage. They’re Corrupted, and we’re better than them.
Big Scar Pedro cleared his throat as Ezra and Belia wheeled around the dining table, leaving behind dishes and desserts like the droppings they resembled. Ezra kept bumping into the chairs, spilling his slobber on the shoulders of Dalia and Agnus, but it was Belia, the female flesh fiend servant, who was really struggling. Her left leg was shorter than her right, and her right arm had been bitten off at the elbow; and the dress Ichor had her wearing wasn’t doing her any favors, either. The top half was a corset too large for her bust, and the bottom half a cage crinoline from which most of the fabric had been ripped off. Through the bulbous base, Aeson could see her skinny, scaled legs struggling to keep pace with Ezra.
“Goddamn it,” Belia said, dropping her last plate—a fishbone platter—in front of Pedro. Unlike Ezra, who spoke in partial sentences, “Goddamn it” was about the best Belia could muster. For a member of the Choir meant to praise the glory of God, it was an odd choice of words.
Aeson’s cheek quivered. Somewhere inside his chest, in that maelstrom of madness wreaking havoc on his system, he felt a need to laugh.
Again, Big Scar Pedro cleared his throat. He tongued the scar on his lip, which actually started farther up, at his hairline. “We appreciate what you’ve done for us, but I think I speak for everyone here—”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Dalia Dark mumbled.
“Goddamn it,” Belia said, bumbling toward the double doors.
“—when I say,” Big Scar Pedro continued, “you’re not an honest… man.”
Big Scar Pedro eyed Bjørn, but Bjørn but didn’t budge; he played dead—as dead as the bear whose head he now wore. That was part of the plan, too. The Corrupted would be looking for any kind of semblance of humanity in him and Bjørn, to connect with and to abuse. If they were going to get through, they had to live up to their people’s infamy.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what party you claim to represent,” Agnus added. “Yeah, you did us a solid by knocking off Grandpa Gloom. The fat bastard’s time was up. He just never had the sense to check the clock. But what you did to the family—”
Ichor held up his hand. “Have I not been honest with you? House Gloom was on its last legs. Grandpa Gloom was a rapist and a pederast. I killed him for you, like you asked. And I made something out of the scraps, like you asked.” He laughed, shrugged, and shook his head, and then started digging into the rotting meat oozing on his plate.
Rustin covered his mouth to hold back his vomit.
Jack, one eye rolled back like he was having a seizure, said, “Those ‘scraps’ were children, and some of their parents were our friends.”
“Listen, they’re still here guys,” Ichor said, “in the basement.” He took a chunk of raw meat and choked it down. “I killed Grandpa Gloom, like you asked. I gave you free reign of the property and his fortune, like you asked.”
“Goddamn it,” Belia barked, as she walked in circles.
“I took care of the family members who weren’t too keen on me killing Grandpa Gloom, like you asked.”
Carefully, Dalia rested her hands on the table. She had to be in her seventies; her fingers looked like roots, twisted and gnarled. “We should have killed you years ago. First, you brought in that Disciples of the Deep nonsense—”
Both Jack and Pedro stirred, ready to take offense as if it were their favorite pastime.
“—and now this? Are you mocking us? Mocking our cordiality?”
Ichor snorted. He picked his nose; he seemed disappointed when nothing came out to eat. “You hypocrites. All of you. No one cared what happened here until Pain’s pet killed that little girl.”
“Flora!” Big Scar Pedro flew forward; his arms shot across the table to wring Ichor’s neck, but fell short. “Her name was Flora!”
Pain’s pet? Aeson’s stomach sank. He turned toward Bjørn and noticed the man’s fingers looped tightly around the straps in his armor.
“Flora? Fauna? Who gives a shit?” Ichor stood up, leaned in. “I gave you the closest connection with God all you shitkickers are ever going to get. Pedro, I saw your spies, heard about your plans to sabotage my house. I had to remind you about all the forces we are dealing with here.”
Belia fell into the curtains, sending a shower of insects every-which-way. “Goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it,” she moaned, as Ezra hurried over to help her out.
Ichor turned to the Holy Order of Penance’s side of the table: “Dalia… Agnus… Rustin—you think God cares about you out here in the Sticks? Away from everything, no good to anyone? Stuck in your ways? Not even following the right path It’s laid out?”
Rustin rubbed his temples. “The Holy Order is the oldest religion, and the true religion. God gave us the luna lake. We have survived because—”
Ichor spit on Rustin’s plate. To the Disciples of the Deep’s side of the table: “Big Scar Pedro… Jack… we’re all new to the true God, but have to do more than change the flag we fly. Holy Order or Disciples? It doesn’t matter to Pain and Joy, and it shouldn’t matter. Pain and Joy have come up from heaven to test our faith, to show us the way.”
Jack Remy pulled his fork out of the maggot-ridden mutton. “We even gave you Charlotte Breckin, Grant Erickson, and Eric Grantson. I want to see them. You said they were sick, that the Sisters could heal them. I want to see them. Where are they?”
The other Children of Lacuna who live here, Aeson thought.
“With the Choir, where we all will be one day soon, I hope,” Ichor said.
Pain’s pet? The phrase reverberated through Aeson’s skull. Pain’s pet killed the little girl? Questions coagulated in his throat. Was it Vrana? Did she look like a raven? Someone, say something!
“If you want to kill me Dalia, then do it.” Ichor sat back down. “You’v
e had plenty of time to do it.”
All at once, the heads of Misery, Grief, Woe, Pang, and Stitch looked at Aeson and Bjørn. And not a second later, Aeson’s and Bjørn’s hands were wrapped around the hilts of their sheathed swords. They had brought their weapons to dinner (and Aeson, The Blood of Before). In this part of the continent, no one seemed to mind much.
There was so much sweat in Aeson’s mask, he was practically drowning in it. His eyes darted back and forth between Dalia, Agnus, and Rustin, and Jack and Pedro. If he had to kill someone, who would he kill first? The old women, Dalia and Agnus? Or one of the three men, who each had dark, diabetic splotches around their necks, like the rings of a tree. It would be easy. Ichor wouldn’t stop him. Bjørn would only encourage him. Without thinking, he slid his sword slightly out of its sheathe. He didn’t want to kill, didn’t want to know if he could kill. But if they thought they had no choice but to attack…
“I told you Night Terrors would come, didn’t I? I told you I had a connection with them, just like I have a connection with Eldrus.”
Ichor clapped his hands together like a pompous aristocrat; Ezra and Belia went hobbling out of the room.
“Joy and Pain are powerful, I think even you can agree to that, Dalia.”
Dalia Dark shook her head, most likely to spite him.
“I promised you more bodies to work the fields, and they’re ready. You call them flesh fiends? Maybe so, but look at how we can control them. You can keep your way of life here in the Dismal Sticks, and you can keep worshiping God any way you choose. But the Sisters have demands, and we must meet them.” Ichor smiled, going hard underneath his nightgown. To Aeson and Bjørn he said, “Right, guys?”
“Why are they here?” Big Scar Pedro asked, his voice shaking. He almost reached out to touch Bjørn’s bicep.
“If it wasn’t for the Night Terrors, we would have never made contact with the Sisters. They are our betters, aren’t they? Uncorrupted and all that? Who better to guide us to the gates of heaven? And we needn’t die! The Sisters know Death personally. Our ferries will be paid for in full.”
