by Scott Hale
Bedlam.
The ghoul says to Mr. Haemo, “Are you the devil?”
And Mr. Haemo says to him, “Don’t I wish.”
The blood-drunk swarm of Mr. Haemo’s children lift from Mary, Harper, and Jane. Lazily, intoxicatedly, they fly over to their master.
“You have something better to do, ghoul?” he asks.
Ghoul? He has been called many things, but seldom what he actually is. And what is he exactly? His needs and their machinations are primal, instinctual. He doesn’t have to know them to know them. Like breathing, eating human flesh is just something that he has to do. Putting on the appearances of those he’s consumed is no different than how he used to get dressed before going into the office every morning. It just makes sense.
“Didn’t think so,” Mr. Haemo says.
The mosquitoes land on Mr. Haemo by the thousands until his shape is lost and theirs becomes his.
Like the presence of Bedlam, the ghoul can’t see what the mosquitoes are doing, but by the way Mr. Haemo jerks and moans, he understands it well enough.
They’re feeding him. Pumping the blood into his body, one tiny proboscis at a time. Now, when the ghoul hears the sloshing inside the giant mosquito’s body, he realizes what’s making the sound.
Mr. Haemo’s children quickly make their deposit, and then they are gone, as if they were never there.
The giant mosquito puts his hands on his hips and says, “All this blood makes me bloaty. It’s going straight to my ass!”
Mr. Haemo laughs. It sounds like two trains colliding.
The ghoul searches his closet for any skin that might, at this moment, save his own.
“I’ve been in the need for company,” Mr. Haemo says, throwing his hood, which is stitched together from tens of human faces, over his head. “Come back to my haunt with me. It’s not far from here.”
The ghoul steadies his breathing. He glances at Mary, Harper, and Jane one last time and promises them he’ll do better next time, with the next family.
“Coming?” Mr. Haemo says, taking the lead.
The ghoul gathers his courage and asks, “Do I have a choice?”
“No,” Mr. Haemo chuckles. “Not at all.”
Mr. Haemo didn’t lie. His haunt wasn’t far from the fallout shelter. It was an old, hollowed-out tree that stood alone and apart from the parasite-infested trunks the ghoul had spied earlier. The tree isn’t like anything he’s seen before. It doesn’t belong. It sits against the misted space like a paper cutout pasted into this world from another. Yet when the ghoul moves closer, the innards of the tree recoil, springing deeper into the dark dimensions contained within.
It isn’t until the ghoul reaches the exposed roots that he sees light. Hundreds, no thousands, no millions of pinpricks of light that stab through the red, shadowy film inside the tree, at its end. They remind him of the stars, and staring at them, a suffocating weight forms upon his chest. Like the day God woke, and the night that God died.
A shadow passes over the ghoul. In the sky, a massive raven flies, beating its molting feathers in slow, hypnotic movements. The Lord animal’s head jerks back and forth with spastic paranoia. It is searching the lands for Night Terrors. They’d just as soon worship it as they would kill it. The raven knows better; the Night Terrors should, but will say they don’t. It makes the ghoul sick to his stomach.
Mr. Haemo stands beside the ghoul and says, “Every day there’s always something new in this world. If all it took was a good, old fashioned genocide to open the gates, it makes you wonder who was holding who back.”
In silence, they watch the raven turn southward, until it is no more than a black speck set against the volcanic mountain range that rises and falls on the rim of the horizon.
The ghoul stares at the mosquito. His heart slows. His pulse becomes a whisper rather than a pleading thud. He stares at the skin on his hands and arms. It is his skin, his true skin; no one else’s. He touches it; the texture of it, like burlap, is strangely satisfying. His fingers probe the hole in his stomach. The bullet casing is still in there, lodged between bones. He keeps it as a souvenir, and he keeps it as a reminder that once he’d been human; not always this way.
“Something on your mind?” Mr. Haemo asks.
The ghoul nods. “This is the first time I’ve been myself around someone and not killed them afterward.”
“Lucky me. Feels nice, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“It’s a new world we live in.” Mr. Haemo climbs into the tree and beckons the ghoul to follow. “The Old World’s gone. Go on, set that proverbial torch down. You let it guide you, you’re going to get lost.”
The ghoul grips the tree’s opening. It’s rough, scabby; healed once, maybe, but torn open again, like a surgical scar. It isn’t wood, either, this tree, and that isn’t bark that covers it. He can’t place the material, nor its scent, but the feel of it calls to mind the inside of passion fruit: hard seeds, like imprisoned insects, encased in viscous cells. The tree shouldn’t be able to stand on its own given what is made of, and yet something keeps it together. Science surmounted by sheer will.
When the ghoul steps inside the tree, he is in another place entirely. The red, shadowy, light-pricked film he’d seen at the back of the tree is now above. Where there should’ve been bark, there were vistas. Sprawling fields of golden grass splattered with crimson from the bleeding sky. Rolling hills checked by bottomless pits. When he looks closely, he can see that this place is like a honeycomb—its walkways narrow, its pitfalls numerous. And when he looks even closer, he realizes they are not alone here in this alien world. Across the fields, crowning the highest hill, sits the eerie image of a convent against a twelve-moon sky; each one in a different lunar phase.
He’s forgotten Mr. Haemo beside him, but the bug can’t stay silent for long.
“Have a seat,” he says.
The ghoul turns. Between him and the portal he came through is a small, crackling fire surrounded by large, smoothed boulders—primitive chairs.
Mr. Haemo takes a seat by the fire. He throws the skin cloak over his sick, insect body. The flesh it’s made of is much thicker than the ghoul realized. It runs four inches deep, and the stitching between the discolored patches varies from new to old. The mosquito has had this cloak for a very long time, and it hasn’t stopped adding to it ever since.
For two years, the ghoul has been so careful, so cautious. He wonders how he got here, if he would’ve got here, regardless. Staring through the portal that lets out into his world, a part of him sinks, like an eroded cliff finally falling into the sea. Ever since he woke, he’s been carrying on as if this New World were the Old, moving from family to family, from flesh to flesh in search of purpose and peace. He accepted and adapted but he never appreciated this cruel, phantasmagorical way of things. If he had, his own skin cloak wouldn’t be so thick, like Mr. Haemo’s. If he had, Mary, Jane, and Harper… Elizabeth and Mitchell… Cary… Sarah and Dillion… Jasmine… Erin… Bailey and Ayleanna… Setsuko… Luciana and Paulo… Katie… Christina… Mark; Ava, Zoey, and Faye—they might still be alive.
The ghoul sits opposite Mr. Haemo. The boulders are more comfortable than he would’ve thought, but sitting on them, this close to the fire, he is shivering. He crosses his arms, moves closer to the flames, but it does him no good. The fire is freezing. The only heat that comes from it is the itching heat he feels spreading across his body like lichen; that warm omen of frostbite to come.
But Mr. Haemo does not move.
And neither does the ghoul.
The engorged bloodsucker wiggles his feet like he couldn’t be more comfortable here. Smaller mosquitoes phase in and out around his head. Thousands of different lights play out across Mr. Haemo’s eyes, as if he’s looking at a thousand different scenes all at once.
The ghoul glances back at the portal and finally says, “Where are we?”
Mr. Haemo jerks awake, as if he’d dozed off. His proboscis grows like an e
rection. His gaze lingers on the ghoul, like he’s forgotten he was here and now only sees prey.
“Where is this?” The ghoul starts to stand. “Where—”
“Exuviae,” Mr. Haemo says. His eyes go black, and when they open, they shine with only the light of the blood-red sky above. “What do you think?”
The ghoul shakes his head. “What is that? French?”
“Latin, you mongo.”
“Is this where you’re from?”
Mr. Haemo nods.
The ghoul moves closer to the cold fire and says, “Why’d you bring me here?”
“Boredom,” Mr. Haemo says.
But the ghoul suspects it may be closer to loneliness.
“I’m a blood keeper. Every drop is a record. Lives aren’t long these days, but you’ve fared well enough, especially for a ghoul. Your kind is almost extinct.”
“You’ve been watching me?”
The mosquito’s compound eyes flash a multitude of lights and colors. “I watch a lot of things, guy.”
“I, uh, thought only female mosquitoes sucked blood,” the ghoul says.
“That’s right,” Mr. Haemo says. “But looking at me, is my gender really the worst of your concerns right now?”
“No.”
“Smart ass.” Mr. Haemo leans back and laughs. His laugh is like razor blades sawing teeth. “Why are you still alive? For me, there’s always blood to keep, but just what are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, Bug, but we just met. You really expect me to bare my soul to you?”
“I always get to first base on the first date.” Mr. Haemo makes a fist; blood leaks out of it. “That’s good you have a personality. Here I was, worried you were a drip. But answer my question.”
Black smudges, like eraser marks, begin to form around Mr. Haemo. They are not his children, but something else. Appendages, almost, reaching in from another plane.
Another piece of the ghoul sinks inside him. The black smudges boil on the air, like tar. He feels words being teased from his mind, dragged up his throat and across his tongue—hooked on a line that runs from his mouth to the reeling unreality bubbling around the bug.
“I d-don’t know,” he stammers. “Just g-getting by.”
Mr. Haemo shrugs. The black smudges vanish.
The ghoul gasps and falls back against the boulder. His brain itches from where the words were wrenched from it. Despite having eaten last night, he is ravenous. He sees the blood in the mosquito’s hand and wants to take it off at the wrist.
“As long as a ghoul hibernates, it can live almost forever,” Mr. Haemo says. “You planning on getting by forever?”
The ghoul stifles his hunger. “I thought it was eating people that did that.”
“Poor thing. You don’t even know what you are.”
“When I sleep, I forget things.”
“That’s the price of a long life. You keep the flesh of those you eat, but you forget why they’re there.” Mr. Haemo snorts. “Everything has a price.”
“What did you just do to me?”
“I demonstrated my power. You got uppity. I had to put you down.”
“You’re toying with me.”
“Duh,” Mr. Haemo says. He leans forward on his knees. “And I have a soft spot for rare things. They have the best blood. I’d like to see you succeed.”
“At what? Being a family man?” The ghoul shakes his head.
“Is that what you want to be?”
“It’s what I was.”
From the distant convent, a bell tolls. The sound pulsates across Exuviae. The golden grass parts, flattens; and parts of the honeycombed fields fall away into the red cavities below.
The ghoul sharpens his senses; he smells flesh from the convent, oiled and incensed. He asks, “What is this? Really?”
“A moment in time,” Mr. Haemo says, cryptically. “Pay the nuns no never mind. They’re going to be doing the same thing for eternity.”
“Is this where you’re really from?”
Mr. Haemo nods. Blood sloshes inside his belly. “Are you the first to come here, ghoul? No, I’ve had many.”
Survival instincts kick in. The ghoul slips into his skin closet and begins looking for a life to hide behind.
“Something is happening in Bedlam tomorrow. The fighting there is going to end.”
“A lot of talent,” the ghoul whispers, about ready to put on his Judas suit.
“Exactly. A lot of corpses. A lot of blood. A little for me, a little for you. That’s a lot of disguises. Hey, ghoul, does the blood speak to you when you drink it? Does the flesh make promises to you when you eat it?”
The ghoul shakes his head. “It tells me nothing.”
“Do you want it to? No more guessing. No more slipping into lives. You can possess them.”
Did he want it? The ghoul considers the mosquito’s offer. In truth, he wants nothing more than the life he had, before the bullet in his belly and the three corpses in the hall. He asks himself what he’s been searching for this entire time, but he can’t say. He had slept for so long that some memories were lost to him, and others refused to form. He searches inside himself all the lives on all their hangers and sees no patterns in their fabrics. He’s told himself time and time again he was a family man, but in the end, was he nothing more than a hungry man? The need to eat had always taken precedence over the need to live. He lived out of guilt.
“Alright,” the ghoul says. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”
Mr. Haemo says, “Good,” and throws the skin cloak’s hood over his head. His wings push out of his back with a pained struggle and flutter until he’s flying. “Get out.”
The ghoul doesn’t question him. He quickly stands and heads towards the portal. Reaching it, his world just out of reach, he stops and stares at the bug over his shoulder.
“What happens to you when there’s no more blood left?”
Annoyed, Mr. Haemo says, “The same thing that happens to you.”
“Are you too weak to feed on your own?”
Mr. Haemo strokes his proboscis in silence.
The ghoul nods, satisfied, and slips through the portal.
On the other side, back in the wasteland of Bitter Springs, he hurries to the corpses of Mary, Jane, and Harper and drags the tarp they’re laying on back to the fallout shelter.
He spends the rest of the night crying as he eats them.
8
The ghoul wakes in the dead of night and decides to run. If he stays, he knows what he’ll become: a blood slave. The stories around the human settlements are too consistent to be anything but true. If Mr. Haemo doesn’t kill you, he’ll conscript you to do his bidding. Those he chooses are injected with infected blood and made puppets to carry out a series of ritual murders. When the task is completed, which can take from days to years, the slave is abandoned. Even so, they still continue to kill for their master, because the tainted transfusions leave them irreversibly insane.
The ghoul has done well enough so far on his own. If he’s going to kill, it’s going to be on his own terms.
There isn’t much left of Mary, and Harper and Jane are bones. He’d binged like a bear winding down for a long hibernation. As a result, he is sluggish, both in movement and in thought, and wired. He stumbles around the fallout shelter in the dark. He breaks things, steps on their shards. The pain will come later, when this sugar-high-like-shield comes down.
He takes nothing. He needs nothing. His memories are in his mind, and the girls in his heart with many others. He leaves no footprints so he can’t be followed. It keeps him safe, even if he keeps going in circles.
The ghoul climbs the ladder, gets to the top, and stops. His stomach sloshes like Mr. Haemo’s had. Stomach acid and clumps of partially digested human push up his throat. He stifles the urge to vomit and swallows the meat. He overdid it. He didn’t even have to.
Carefully, the ghoul unlocks the door at the top of the ladder and pushes it open. If there was one good thing to co
me out of God’s wrath, it was that it made the nights dark like they were supposed to be. There was no saw-toothed skyline to flood the night with its millions of beaming, blinking, begging lights. There were no clogged highways awash in pools of red and amber. Gone were the billboards. Gone were the televisions filling up living rooms and bedrooms with commercial-stuffed filler. Gone were the pale faces in the shadows, their eyes illuminated, their minds inundated by the phones in their hands—too focused on the distilled world to pay the one around them much mind.
The forty-year-old man the ghoul had once been would’ve appreciated the technological scourging. He climbs out of the shelter, shaking his head at himself. If only his wife could see him now, she’d say he’d gotten everything he ever—
The dark is dark, and then it’s not. Fire sweeps across the north, arcing over the crest of the ridges there. One swell after another, it grows, until the fires lift into the sky in spasming orbs.
There are vibrations, too, in the ground. He bends down and puts his hand to the cold soil to feel them. They thud in his fingertips, and chase one another around the bones in his feet. The vibrations are slow, the deep decibels of a funeral dirge. He knows them well.
The ghoul stands. Beneath the raging orbs, there are figures. It’s torches they are holding, but they stand so close to one another, the fires are feeding off one another, creating an unbroken stream of flames. They are marching eastward, following the rumbling, wheeled contraptions that the ghoul can only catch in shadowy glimpses.
He listens for prayers on the air, thinking they may be Lillians, but instead hears:
“Woke me up, too.”
The ghoul goes sideways.
Mr. Haemo is standing beside him, his skin cloak pulled tightly around his severe, and yet swollen frame.
“The early bug gets the blood, that’s what my mother used to say.”
The ghoul curses himself for not having left sooner.
“That’s a lie.” Mr. Haemo clicks his claws together. “I don’t have any parents. Crawled out of the same womb all of this did.”
