by Scott Hale
“I’m so sick of the shelter,” she says.
Mary holds one end of the tarp.
Harper and Jane share the opposite end.
“Same,” Harper says.
“Same,” Jane confirms.
Judas, left holding the basket of food and bottle of wine, watches as they lay out the tarp. Its crinkling sets his nerves on edge. He glances at the trees they’re under—three bulbous, conjoined trunks with clumps of hair for leaves—and then back at the shelter. There’s about thirty or forty feet between them.
“Hey, Jude,” Mary says.
Judas snaps out of it. He smiles at her as a tune plays in his head. She’ll never understand, so he doesn’t bother to tell her.
“Sit, sit. Come on.” Mary waves him over as she and the girls plop down on the tarp.
“Sit, Daddy,” Harper says.
Jane points at the ground and growls, “Sit.”
Judas does as he’s told. Harper plods towards him and sits in his lap, while Jane does the same but with Mary. He’s been with the family for a month. This is the way it’s always been. He also knows that Harper likes hugs, whereas Jane likes kisses on the cheek—and they both can eat and cuss like sailors when their stomachs are empty and their patience has run out.
But they are children. They are mercurial. A fraction of the person they will be in ten year’s time. He knows how to love them without having to know them, because he had girls of his own once. Harper and Jane are not substitutes. He would not do that to them.
It is the woman across from him he has to understand. Mary’s wedding ring is a faded tattoo of interlocking shapes. His wedding band was a piece of copper, the skin underneath very faded. They had made the effort to have the ceremony, however small it might have been. That says a lot, and for Judas, not enough.
Mary reaches for the basket and says, “We have… honey—”
Harper and Jane wiggle.
“—and stale crackers!”
Harper claps.
Jane is less than impressed. “I’m tired of stale crackers,” she pouts.
Mary bounces her up and down with her legs. “I’m tired of ungrateful girls. Maybe we should just eat you.”
Jane squeals in anticipation of the tickles to come.
Judas quickly changes the subject. “We have wine.”
Harper licks her lips like a regular lush.
“For Mommy and Daddy,” he adds.
Now, Harper is pouting; arms crossed across her chest so tightly it has to hurt.
“Maybe just a little for the girls,” Mary says, slyly.
Judas tries to read the situation, but he’s tired. He’s been reading situations for weeks. If he’s going to keep this flesh, he has to let himself be comfortable in it.
“A little,” he says, gesturing with his fingers. “Only a little.”
Mary doles out the honey and stale crackers in equal portions to the girls, and then to him; then to herself. While Harper and Jane are crunching away, Mary takes out four thimbles. Judas figured out Mary used to be a seamstress for a community she and her husband lived in years ago on the west coast. She can stitch with just about anything, and can make clothes out of nothing. In the past, she would’ve been a social media darling. Now, all she has is all she is.
“One for Jane,” Mary says, filling a thimble.
Harper huffs.
“So sorry.” She smirks. “One for Harper.”
Harper lifts her chin. “The oldest.”
“We know,” Judas says, rolling his eyes.
Mary hands Harper the wine-filled thimble.
She goes to down it.
“Wait. Wait until we all have one. Then we’ll toast.”
Jane grabs her mother by the shirt. “We have toast?”
“No, we’ll toast.” Mary fills a thimble for Jane and hands it to her. “Words can mean different things. You’ll see.”
“That’s dumb,” Jane says, taking it.
“Used to be a lot more words,” Judas says.
He doesn’t know Mary’s age. Things get older quicker in this world these days. Without her clothes, after a wash, she looks like she’s in her early forties, but Judas isn’t sure. He didn’t look for long. But if she is, then there’s a chance, as a child, she knew what it was like to lose God.
Harper tips her head back and says, “What happened to them?”
“The words?” Judas puts his arms around her. “Stopped needing them. If there’s no more trees left in the world, and everyone forgets about them, do you need the word ‘tree’?”
“Yes,” Jane says, resolutely. “What if someone finds a tree?”
“Guess we’d have to call it something else.”
“Then it’s not a tree,” Harper says.
Judas smiles. “Guess not.”
“That’s dumb,” Jane repeats.
Mary gives a thimble to Judas. She holds his hand as he takes it. There are designs in her eyes. This means a lot to her. He doesn’t yet know why. It feels like the end of something. It’s a good feeling. He feels it in her fingers, the way she caresses the bones in his wrist. It sparks. It’s sensual.
Judas is the first to break the bond and holds the thimble up. “Ready when you are.”
Mary pours herself a thimble. “Before we toast. Not eat toast…”
She rubs her face against the top of Jane’s head and growls like a monster.
“We should pray.”
Judas lowers the thimble and holds Harper tighter. Sometimes, he forgets that Mary is a Lillian, or some crack of that fractured church. She doesn’t pray nor bring up God often, but when she does, she glows. Her eyes go wide and her mouth shakes, and she speaks in quiet, caustic tongues. Her belief is bottled up. Either she’s too embarrassed to let it out, or she’s too afraid of indulging too much, as if by doing so, one day it’ll be gone for good.
Harper and Jane squirm out of their respective parent’s lap and find a place for themselves on the tarp.
Judas had another look around. The fog was clearing. He can see clear into the distances beyond. If anything had heard the shelter door closing, then they’d know where to find it.
“Bless us, from the Deep, our God and these gifts we are about to consume from Your offering,” Mary says, voice rising higher and higher.
Judas moves to interrupt her, but her eyes are closed and she is closed to him. Even without his senses, he is sure something is watching them. It isn’t far. Maybe where the clouds cling like mold to the sky; beneath them, in that bramble of rubble. Twenty feet away.
“We give thanks to Lillian, God’s Speaker, for she is Its voice and our guide. Though we have sinned, we will soon sup at Its table.” Mary had added that last sentence herself. “Bless us, forgive us. Amen.”
“Amen,” Judas says, glad to have the prayer finished.
“Amen,” Harper says, drawing the thimble to her lips.
Jane is staring into the trees, like she’s seen something.
Mary nudges an “Amen” out of her.
“To us,” Judas says. He extends his thimble. This picnic has run its course.
“Is that the toast?” Jane asks.
“Not a very good one,” Mary says.
Harper agrees.
Judas glances behind them to the fallout shelter’s door. Past it, he makes out the black slit of the Tri-County river. Just beyond it, in the vapors, a holy war rages. He can’t see it, but he knows it’s there, and then he wonders: Why did they really choose this place to settle?
Playfully, anxiously, Judas says, “Go on, then. Show me how it’s done.”
Mary licks her lips and lingers on the thimble in her hand, in all their hands. Is that the tremor of an old addiction that moves through her?
“Tell them how we met,” she says.
“Yeah!” Harper and Jane shout.
Judas glances around to see if anything has heard them. But there is nothing, still. Just the quiet crumbling of the bones of the earth around them.
“You want me to tell it?” she asks.
He looks at her and sees disappointment. This is a well-rehearsed story to which he knows none of the lines. They might have even talked about this day, before the girls came to be. He’s going to have to let her down.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Get us started, and I’ll fill in where you get it wrong.”
Mary snorts. “I’m sure you will. Well, your father and I met when we were very young.”
“Most beautiful thing I ever did see,” Judas adds. You can’t go wrong with something like that.
Mary shakes her head, smiles. “He was and is a charmer. My mommy and daddy didn’t like him very much.”
“Why?” Jane asks.
“Because he was a charmer. They called him a snake charmer.”
“What’s that?” Harper leans in.
“A liar of sorts.”
“You were a liar?” Jane asks him.
He shrugs.
“We all lie to get by, sometimes,” Mary says. “But you two won’t.”
“Because it’s bad,” Harper says.
“Butt kisser,” Jane snaps.
Judas nudges Jane, nearly spilling his thimble.
Mary straightens up at this, then relaxes when not a drop falls.
“Your daddy and I used to live on the other side of this land. Really far away. I thought he was cute, but he was shy. He wouldn’t talk to me.”
Judas says, “You intimidated me,” and that seems to work.
“My family did a little better than his. That’s also why they didn’t like him. But I watched him a lot, and I knew he was sweet.”
“And I was sweet on you.”
Mary touches her neck, like she’s checking for a pulse. “Your daddy saved me from a bad man.”
She has Judas’ attention.
“The bad man… wanted to hurt me.” Mary pauses. “And your daddy saved me. He pushed him off the Tower.”
The Tower? Judas pretends to be strong.
“You killed a man, Daddy?” Harper asks.
“I suppose,” Judas says, eyes locked on Mary’s.
“That day, we promised never to let the other one get hurt.” Mary raises the thimble. “A toast to no more hurting. A toast to the happy days in Heaven.”
Judas raises his thimble.
Harper and Jane do the same.
“This is a good day,” Judas says.
Now, there is something shambling in felled Maidenwood. He doesn’t want to cause an alarm. He can’t have the girls panicking.
“Good as they can get.” Mary draws the thimble to her mouth.
Everyone follows her example.
“A promise is a promise, Jude.”
Judas nods, thought to what, he isn’t sure.
Mary downs the wine.
Harper and Jane down the wine.
Judas tips his head back, lets the wine run down the side of his face where they can’t see it. Human food and drink don’t sit well with him on a full stomach.
Harper and Jane act dramatically, coughing and grabbing at their throat. “Ew,” they say, and “Gross!”
Mary shushes them. “Thank you for this, Jude.”
“Yeah,” he says, and then: “I hate to do this, but we should get inside.”
“Right here’s fine,” she says.
“No, I think there’s something out there.” Judas stands. “We…”
Jane coughs, grabs at her throat.
Harper laughs at her, and seconds later, she’s doing the same.
“Hey, hey. Girls, quit it.” Judas goes to his knees.
They are rolling on their backs.
“S-stop it.”
Jane is spitting up blood.
Harper is clinging to her little sister while her eyes roll back in her skull.
“Oh, god.” Judas picks up Harper. She smashes into his body with violent tremors. “Mary. Get Jane. Get her inside!”
Mary doesn’t move.
Judas steps off the tarp, turns when he realizes Mary isn’t moving, and Jane has stopped altogether.
Harper goes limp in his arms.
Mary starts to tremble.
“Mary?” He’s breathing hard. His lungs hurt. His face stings from where the wine stained it.
Mary shuffles forward on her knees, pulls Jane’s dead body against her. “It’s okay, Jude. It’s okay. It’s done now.”
Judas’ mouth drops open. “What did you do?”
“Me?” Foam comes out of her mouth. “We promised each other. On a perfect day, after so much hurt, we wouldn’t hurt anymore. We wouldn’t let them hurt. It’s okay. God understands. We’ll see It soon and explain everything!”
Judas drops to his knees. Carefully, he lays Harper out. She’s cold and covered in blood and spit. Her eyes are lightless. She stares into the heavens for the God from below.
“The wine…” he whispers.
Mary coughs. She grabs her stomach and buckles over. One hand after the other plants onto the tarp. Sweaty palm prints are left behind.
“You didn’t forget, did you?” She leans over Jane’s body, coveting it. “We p-promised.” She falls. Her face hits the tarp. She groans. Blood oozes out of her mouth.
Judas rises. He backs away. He didn’t know. He didn’t know. He tried to understand each of them the best he could, but it had never been like this before.
“Where… are you… going?” Each word is a monumental struggle for her to speak. “Don’t… let me… go without… you.”
This was their moment. This was their moment, and he’s taken it from them. Judas keeps going backwards.
Mary looks up, her face covered in blood, one eye shut, the other bloodshot. She hates him, and she will hate him, until she makes it to Heaven and finds him there.
And then she slumps over, and she dies.
Judas gasps. He tears off the mask and takes on his own rigid flesh.
“I’m sorry,” he says to the girls. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have let her if I had known.” He grabs his stringy hair, picks at the scars on his scalp. “If I had…”
Buzzing breaks from the last of the fog.
And the figure he heard shambling comes shambling nearer.
Mosquitoes, nowhere and now everywhere, descend upon the dead like he might have and start drinking.
The shambling shape, closer now, is cloaked and hooded, and out of its cloak, wings explode. The shape lifts off the ground and flies towards him.
The ghoul closes his eyes and waits. All the blood he has he’s stolen. But it’s blood all the same.
9
The six-foot, skin-cloaked mosquito buzzes past the ghoul and lands beside Mary, Harper, and Jane. Its gangly legs seem too skinny to hold its engorged frame, and yet the severe, black limbs do just that. A sloshing sound, like that of liquid in a barrel, emanates from the creature’s yellow-splotched belly. A prehensile proboscis uncurls from the dark shadows inside its flesh hood and extends until it’s two feet long. Then, laughing, and with clawed hands, the mosquito throws back its hood, revealing the massive, ruby-like eyes that encompass most of its head.
Mr. Haemo, rubbing his stomach, nods at the corpses and says to the ghoul, “You going to finish this?”
The ghoul makes fists.
Mr. Haemo throws a hand into the air with dramatic flair. “Waste not, want not!”
Mosquitoes form overhead like storm clouds. The ghoul wants to tell him to stop, but he has no claim to these corpses, and no right to try and leapfrog his way up the food chain. Ever since he clawed his way out of the ground, the ghoul has been trying to avoid encounters with inhuman things. They want allegiances he can’t give, and they remind him of what he can’t be.
The bloodsucking swarm forms a funnel not unlike their draining appendages and dives for the woman, for the girls.
The ghoul reaches outwards, as if to stop them, but he does not. He wonders if he could have, and then, as the insects stab thousands of weeping holes into each body, he won
ders if he should have. Inside him, he keeps the skins of his sins. There are many, and despite how many lives he eats, he is never full. Just this once, it may be okay to let these three go for good.
He turns away. Mr. Haemo, in his silence, seems satisfied. Those in the area, especially those from the swamps around the Night Terror’s village of Traesk, are said to pay blood tributes to the giant mosquito. Let this be his tribute. He can’t die just yet. He hasn’t figured out what he’s living for.
“Where are you off to, sourpuss?” Mr. Haemo calls after him.
The ghoul doesn’t turn around. He hears the mosquito lift off the ground with its massive, ragged wings. He’s offended it.
“Moving on,” he says.
The mosquito draws nearer. Its shadow swallows his. No matter where he goes, which way he turns, he can’t be free of it.
“You’re going the wrong way,” Mr. Haemo says.
The ghoul stops inches from the fallout shelter. Mr. Haemo’s two-foot long proboscis sticks into the side of his throat. It doesn’t draw blood, and he doesn’t draw a breath.
“All the talent is back that-a-way.”
Mr. Haemo’s words rattle down the proboscis in terrifying vibrations.
The ghoul was a human once; he still has a heart, he still can feel. Aside from his appetite and appearance, and his cannibalism-induced chameleon abilities, he is much the same as he had been that day his killers put him in the ground. He knows Mr. Haemo only by name and reputation. Either one is enough to make him quake, and to make him pray to God to come back and do him this one last favor.
He turns.
Mr. Haemo drops to the ground, steps to the side. His wings ruffle as they slip back into the slits of the skin cloak.
The ghoul knows what the mosquito is getting at, but his eyes stop short of that sight and rest on Mary, Harper, and Jane, instead. On the tarp, pale and covered in red polka-dots, they are at peace. Their eyes are pearls; their lips a slight shade of vermillion. Wine and honey surround them. The ghoul hopes they got to where they were going.
He looks past what might have been his family, into the distance, where a field of tree trunks are host to pink parasitic growths, and farther still; to the Tri-County river and the dismal stretches beyond, where the land is a like watercolor palette: a hard crust of indescribable mixtures, old and new, painted overtop by the fresh red that runs in rivers and rivulets all around it. He can’t see it from here, but he knows it’s here.
