Desolation

by Derek Landy

  He whistled in admiration. “I mean, they’d have caught you eventually. It’s what they do. Astaroth sets the Hounds on you, they don’t give up till you’re caught, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it. You don’t fight the Hounds. You can’t beat ’em. Never heard of anyone managing that. You can’t hide from ’em, neither. They got your scent. But look at you. You’re still running. That says something about you, little demon. Says you are not to be underestimated. Under different circumstances, I would have been honoured to have stalked and killed you.”

  He put a pair of handcuffs on the table. “But, seeing as how I’m gonna be delivering you to the Shining Demon, I gotta take precautions.”

  The corpses moved on top of Amber, and they stretched out her right arm, pinning it to the tabletop.

  “You’ll be wearing these,” said Mauk. “I don’t like to do it. I was in chains when they caught me and I didn’t much like it, and putting shackles on such a beautiful beast as yourself seems to me a crime of some magnitude. But I ain’t gonna underestimate you.” He opened the cuffs, then laid them to one side. “And with that in mind I gotta think about those claws of yours. No telling what manner of mischief you could get up to with those things. So we’re gonna have to do something about them, too.”

  He picked up the hammer as the corpses flattened her hand fully against the table.

  Amber started to panic. “What are you doing? What are you going to do? Tell them to let go of me. Tell them!”

  Mauk’s free hand pinned her thumb. She turned it into a claw, tried to slash at him, but he laughed, and raised the hammer.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t. I swear I—”

  “This little piggy,” said Mauk, and brought the hammer down.

  Pain rocketed through her and Amber screamed, tried to kick and flail, but the weight of all those bodies on top of her made that impossible. Tears came to her eyes, rolled down her cheeks. The pain was so immense that she almost didn’t feel him singling out her next finger.

  “No!” she cried. “Please!”

  He didn’t bother saying anything this time. With a happy smile on his face, he smashed the bones in that finger, too.

  “You bastard!” Amber howled. She was sobbing. She was actually sobbing. “You bastard, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll rip your—”

  The third finger was smashed and Amber lost her words to the screams that were being ripped from her throat. The fourth followed. Then the fifth. Finally, the corpses released their hold on her. She tried to retract her arm, tried to clutch it close to her, but to do so it’d have had to pass through the tangle of corpses. She held it in mid-air while she cried and struggled to breathe.

  Then the corpses moved again. They had her left hand in their grip.

  “No!” she screamed, trying to keep it underneath her, jammed between her chest and the cheap upholstery. But now they were turning her, turning her on to her back, and as her left arm was being pulled out of the tangle her right arm was being pulled in, and her broken fingers jolted and sent fresh waves of pain straight into her thoughts, blinding them, freezing them, slicing through them and leaving them in tatters. When the wave crested and her thoughts became her own once more, her face was pressed tight into someone’s torso, and she could feel the surface of the table beneath her left palm and Mauk’s grip on her thumb, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

  The hammer found its target and she gasped.

  It found its next target. And the next one. And now she was screaming once more, but it didn’t change anything, because she only had two fingers that weren’t broken and Mauk quickly reduced that to one. Amber fought the urge to puke. If she puked, she’d choke on her own vomit.

  “And this little piggy went wee, wee, wee, all the way home,” said Mauk, and smashed her little finger.

  While she screamed, the corpses climbed off her. One by one, the weight lessened, and she could turn her head now, and breathe in lungfuls of air to help her cry. Someone – Mauk, probably – had her hands in his. His skin was rough. Calloused. She barely felt the handcuffs slide around her wrists. The last corpse climbed off her and she sat up.

  “There,” Mauk said. “That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

  She ran her forearm over her eyes – that movement alone was enough to bring fresh tears – then blinked at him as he sat there, smiling.

  “I didn’t wanna have to do that,” he said. “But I’m a cautious fellow. I see that you have sharp teeth, too. Let’s do each other a favour, okay? You try not to bite me, and I won’t smash each and every one of those pearly whites. I’d hate to have to ruin your beautiful smile. It is beautiful, ain’t it? I bet it is. Smile for me. Go on. Just a little smile.”

  Her demon side wanted to snarl and snap and sneer, but her human side, the ugly, ordinary, weak side, just wanted to be spared any more pain.

  She raised the corners of her mouth in a twitching, pathetic smile.

  “I knew it,” said Mauk. “I’ve often wondered how much better-looking I’d be if Astaroth had made me a demon, instead of bestowing upon me the gifts I’d asked for. I’d be taller for a start, huh?” He chuckled, then slid out of the booth. “Come on now, girlie. The Shining Demon don’t like to wait.”

  It took a few moments, but Amber got out of the booth, stood on shaky legs. The circle of black powder Mauk had made was just big enough for the two of them to stand in.

  “Careful not to scuff the edges,” said Mauk.

  She wanted to turn, run, but the corpses were watching her. She couldn’t fight, not with the handcuffs on and not when the slightest touch would bring her to her knees.

  Mauk held out his hand. “Come on, Amber. Time to give this Devil his due.”

  Amber took her first step, and headlights swooped against the window as a black 1970 Dodge Charger pulled up right beside the front door.

  “Dammit,” said Mauk, ducking slightly.

  The waitress clamped her hand over Amber’s mouth, muffling her cry of pain as she was dragged backwards. The other corpses went back to their seats while Mauk stood at the counter with his cap pulled low, pretending to read the menu.

  The diner door opened, and Milo walked in.

  Tall, clad in blue jeans and cowboy boots and a dark shirt with some grey in his hair and some grey in his stubble, he was usually good-looking enough to make people sit up and take notice. But not tonight. The corpses sat, slumped, heads down.

  Mauk walked up behind him. “Excuse me, sir?”

  Milo turned as Mauk started to swing the hammer. It was halfway to its target when Mauk’s whole body froze and his eyes widened.

  They stood there, both men, looking at each other.

  Milo always kept his gun holstered on his belt, under his shirt. He drew and fired in the time it took Mauk to blink. At point-blank range, Mauk went straight down.

  But then the corpses started to stand up again. Amber tried shouting, tried to tell Milo they were already dead, but the waitress’s corpse tightened its grip. Milo backed away from the lumbering dead, keeping his finger off the trigger.

  Amber opened her mouth wide and bit down on the waitress’s dead hand. Her fangs cut through bone as easily as flesh, and she spat out fingers as the corpses dived on Milo. They wrestled the gun from his hand and held him while Elias Mauk got back to his feet. He hadn’t lost that expression of surprise.

  “You?” he said. “You’re her travelling companion?”

  Milo stopped struggling, and watched as the incredulity spread across Mauk’s face.

  “I heard you’d died,” the killer said. “I heard you’d finally lain down and accepted your miserable fate. What the hell are you doing here? What the hell are you doing with her? Answer me, goddammit!”

  Mauk whacked the hammer into Milo’s head.

  “Milo!” Amber shouted, doing her best to tear free. The waitress pushed her up against the counter, jamming her chest into the corner while her broken fingers jarred against the undersi
de, and Amber whimpered and went still.

  “What’s that?” Mauk said, frowning. “Milo? That’s what you’re calling yourself these days?” He shrugged. “As good a name as any, I guess.”

  The corpses held Milo upright. Blood ran from his hairline, following the contour of his cheekbone to his clenched jaw. His eyes were bright, unclouded by concussion, and they were focused entirely on Elias Mauk, who now had one foot in the circle of powder he’d made.

  Amber’s eyes flickered to the pack of cigarettes on the countertop, and the silver Zippo lighter beside it. She pushed back against the waitress, just enough to bring her hands up. The corpse responded by shoving back even harder, but Amber had already picked up the Zippo between her palms and brought it to her mouth. Her lips closed round the lid and pulled it open.

  “You got old,” Mauk said to Milo. “Got some grey in that hair. See, you should’ve done what I done – you should’ve died first. That way, you don’t age – you get to stay young and beautiful forever. Like me.” He laughed.

  Amber tilted the Zippo, pressed the wheel against the countertop, remembered all the stories she’d ever heard about how these lighters were supposed to start first time, every time, and then she shot her arms out straight. The grooved wheel dragged and sparked and the lighter lit.

  She set it carefully down on the counter.

  “I’m not gonna say it’s good to see you,” said Mauk. “Obviously, it ain’t. But it is good that you’re here. The instructions were: delivering the demon girl’s travelling companion is optional. As in I don’t have to include you in the package if I don’t feel like it. So I can kill you right here and right now. I can bash your brains in. How’s that make you feel, you taciturn son of a bitch? That gonna get a reaction outta you? Or how about this? I can take my time, break every bone in your body before putting you outta your misery, or you could beg for mercy and get it over with, lickety-split. So what’s it gonna be? You gonna let me kill you slowly, or you gonna beg your old friend Elias for a quick death?”

  “Well,” Milo said at last, “this is awkward.”

  “What is?”

  “I actually have no idea who you are.”

  Mauk laughed. “Bullshit.”

  “I’m serious,” said Milo. “Should I remember you? I feel like I should, but …”

  “Okay, I’m confused,” Mauk responded. “Are you lying to delay the inevitable, or are you just determined to be an asshole about this?”

  Milo shrugged, which only pissed Mauk off even more.

  With the hammer raised and ready for a swing, Mauk said, “You wanna try remembering me, or should I just get to cracking open your skull? All the same to me, buddy boy. All of a sudden, my curiosity over how you found yourself on that side of the line has faded to the square root of nothing.”

  “Have you always talked so much?” Milo asked. “I think I’d have remembered someone who talks so much.”

  Mauk’s lip curled. “I’m gonna enjoy this.”

  Amber gritted her teeth, then twisted and rammed a shoulder into the dead waitress. The jolt to her hands made her cry out, but she used that pain to stomp on the corpse’s knee. The waitress toppled away from Amber.

  “Somebody grab her!” yelled Mauk, but Amber was already closing her hands around the lighter, feeling the flames lick her palms, and as the corpses reached for her she dropped, sending the Zippo spinning across the floor.

  It met the circle and the powder went up in blue flames, and before Mauk had even looked down the circle was complete.

  “Oh goddamn—” was all he had time to say before he vanished.

  Free of his influence, the dead bodies crumpled to the floor. Milo stood, scuffing the circle with his boot, and the flames went out.

  He hurried over to Amber and helped her stand. He stared at her bloody, twisted fingers.

  “Jesus,” he whispered.

  She sagged against him and he held her weight. “I don’t feel well,” she mumbled.

  “I’ll get you to a doctor,” he said. “But first you’re going to have to change back.”

  “No. No, it’ll hurt too much.”

  “We don’t have a choice. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll heal. I’ll heal by myself.”

  “Your fingers need to be reset. If we leave them, they’ll heal wrong. We need a doctor to do it right. I’m sorry. You have to do this.”

  She tried arguing, but no words would come. Milo was right. She knew he was.

  She reverted. The transformation itself, the shortening of all the bones in her body, both broken and intact, made her cry out.

  But now the true pain came at her. No longer blocked by her demon form, it rushed at her all at once and burst behind her eyes. Her vision swam and the world tilted, but instead of falling to the ground she was lifted off her feet. The last thing she was aware of was Milo carrying her to the door, and then she blacked out.

  WHEN THE NIGHT FINALLY slouched its way across the horizon, Virgil was there to greet it grudgingly, his old bones shivering in the chill. There was a time, long ago, when he would have looked forward to the night, back when he could spend it sleeping soundly. There was a time, even longer ago, when he could have spent his nights doing other stuff, too – drinking and carousing and getting into trouble.

  These days, the only trouble he got into was when his thoughts got mixed up in his head, and the only sleep that came to him was light, irritated and sparse.

  How many times had he made the trip to the bathroom the previous night? Five? Six? Pretty soon he’d need to keep a bedpan close by, just to make sure he didn’t embarrass himself. Either that or just bite the damn bullet and check into one of those retirement homes, places with Lodge or Manor or Tranquil in their names. God’s Waiting Room would be more apt.

  Even though they were headed into summer, he turned up the heat on the thermostat. There was cold, he’d found out, and then there was Alaska cold. He didn’t like being cold. Never had. He was a California kid, born and raised in the sun. And here he was, living out his winter years in goddamn Alaska. Was it smart? No, but then neither were the decisions that had brought him here.

  His house was a shrine to the life he’d once led. His awards, all five of them, took up two shelves in the display cabinet. The movies he’d been in – cheap things, mostly, aside from Inferno at 30,000 Feet – were documented in the framed posters on the walls, but it was his TV work for which he’d won the greatest acclaim. A cult hit before anyone knew what a cult hit was, When Strikes the Shroud had brought werewolves and vampires and terrible gypsy curses into the living rooms of America for three wonderful seasons in the early 1970’s and, in the centre of it all, had been Virgil Abernathy, playing the eponymous Shroud, the masked, besuited, two-fisted seeker of truth in a world mired in nightmare.

  Three glorious years. Talk of a movie. And then tastes changed and attention spans wandered and the Shroud was at last felled – not by killer or crazy or creature, but by ratings. Or rather the lack of them.

  Not that he was bitter. Not that he allowed thoughts of what might have been to intrude upon his daily life. Not that he allowed himself to dream of yesterday instead of facing up to his mistakes of today, which were legion. No, none of that for Virgil Abernathy, once a hero to boys of every age and a seducer of women. No, to Virgil Abernathy there was only today. There was only the cold emptiness of today in a town that had never particularly wanted him, in a life that was growing ever more tired of him.

  “Maudlin nonsense,” he muttered to his cold, quiet house.

  And what had they replaced him with, he wondered (and not for the first time)? A quick perusal of the TV channels answered that little question. Reality television and twenty-four-hour news. Game shows and competitions where all your dreams came true if the people at home liked you enough to vote. Rich people doing ugly things. Poor people doing stupid things. And the shows? The scripted shows? Populated by actors with sharp cheekbones who did nothing but smoulder or grima
ce in equal measure. Where was the art? Where was the substance? He flicked over to a commercial for a pill whose never-ending list of possible side effects included death, then turned off the TV.

  His doctor had told him, for the sake of his heart, not to cause himself any unnecessary agitation. But then his doctor was an idiot.

  Virgil turned off the lights. Time for bed. Another day over with. Another one under his belt. He was building up quite a collection. Had more days than he could count. He wasn’t quite sure what he would do with them, once he’d collected them all. Maybe he’d set them free. Maybe he’d go to Edison’s Shard, the rocky outcrop overlooking the disused quarry in the hills behind his house, and throw the days to the wind, watch them flutter and fly and disappear. Or maybe he’d just stuff them in a jar and bury them in the backyard. Either one would suffice. No one would be using them again.

  He was headed for his bedroom, but stopped, as he always did, by the window in the living room, and peered through the curtains. He glowered at the house beside his, with its porch lights that blazed with the force of a thousand suns every time a damn grizzly wandered into the backyard. How many times had he complained to that damn fool Snyder? In his younger days, there was no one who would dare say no to him, not when Virgil’s ice-blue eyes started to narrow. But that was then, and things had changed. Robert Snyder was a man in his forties, singularly unimpressive and a convicted felon to boot, and yet he felt confident enough to smirk away Virgil’s complaints. A boor of a man.

  Virgil could see him right now, watching TV. Kimmel or Fallon or one of those. They were all the same to Virgil. Monologuers, the lot of them. Snyder sat in his undershirt with a beer in his hand. He looked warm. Virgil despised him.

  He was just about to let the curtain fall back when movement caught his eye. There was someone else in the house.