Every Mountain Made Low

by Alex White

  She rushed from the kitchen into the darkened living room. Hiram’s memories bled through her mind, the setting instantly familiar. He hadn’t eaten in his own kitchen during his last day of life, but he’d spent plenty of time amongst his books. A thousand vertical lines, cut through with horizontal bookshelves, greeted her eyes in the moonlight. Their ordered nature brought her peace, like the rows of cotton in her long-lost photograph.

  She rushed to the shelf and pulled out Hiram’s copy of Dracula. It was an old, leather-bound edition, cracked gold leaf where someone had dog-eared the pages. The book had been well loved. Leafing through it, she found dozens of notes scribbled in the margins. Names, dates, places, quantities of money, inventory. She found comments about people, written in Hiram’s surprisingly-clean hand: ‘Has two children.’ ‘Cheating on wife.’ ‘Junkie.’

  She saw a fragile network of people, ready to collapse, given the right push.

  She closed the book, tucked it under her arm and crossed the room to the polished walnut gun cabinet. She opened it to a host of glittering pistols and rifles, all shapes and sizes, neatly lined up along every surface. Hiram’s memory of shooting Quentin with a loud, nine-millimeter handgun troubled her, and her fingers fell on a small, snub-nosed revolver instead: something smaller would do.

  Quentin had been completely surprised, and so genuinely frightened. A teardrop spattered Loxley’s hand, and she shook it off. No time for that, now.

  Her breath fogged as she wiped her face. The ghost’s presence could be felt along her spine like static electricity pulling at her hair. It couldn’t have been more than inches away. Loxley froze, awaiting the agony of its touch. She held her breath, and its horrid aura shrank from her. When she turned to see where it had gone, she saw the open door to the cellar: a jet-black rectangle broken only by a sallow face lurking, almost frightened, within.

  Best hurry on, Lox. Her mother would say it every day when Loxley tried to put on her socks, and her toes would splay so the socks didn’t fit. Come on now, Lox. You gonna tempt the Devil.

  “Sorry,” Loxley said to the ghost.

  She checked the load in the revolver – empty. She found six bullets in a box, snapped the weapon shut and crept back outside with her stolen copy of Dracula.

  The Duchy

  HER FLIGHT ACROSS the lawn felt infinite. The shadows of the night obscured all, save for the lights of Bellebrook, and she could still see the two guards smoking and laughing on the long veranda. That was where Duke had offered Nora her job. It was probably where he’d decided her fate, and without knowing it, his own. Loxley couldn’t get in that way without killing the guards, and that would alert Duke to her presence.

  The manor had many entrances, though, and she was easily able to sneak around to the servants’ door. It was the way Hiram preferred to get in, because it was the closest entrance to his cottage. The house had been designed that way, by necessity, before it had a kitchen installed; the servants cooked in the cottage, and if they burned it down, at least the main house would be spared. Ornate flowers, carved into the cherry wood, blossomed across the servants’ door surface. Loxley ran her fingers over the grain, reminded of the master craftsmanship of her violin. The poplar beauty waited for her back at the Hound’s Tail, if she lived. That was unlikely, though. She’d need Hiram’s help to kill Duke, and that would put her to sleep for a few hours.

  She wrapped her fingers around the freezing brass knob and twisted: locked, of course. She wondered if Hiram could open the lock somehow, and she thought of calling him. If she did, and he couldn’t get inside, she would pass out on the lawn.

  A sudden burst of laughter from one of the guards sent shivers down her spine. She shook the crackles from her fingers and looked around for another way inside. There was a balcony with a low railing along the second story, facing the fields, and it would have a door. The problem was that she’d have to climb the side of the veranda, and she’d almost certainly be spotted.

  Why hadn’t she thought to take Hiram’s key from his body? The memory of Quentin’s feet sliding from the furnace catwalk resurfaced in response.

  Annoyed, she stole down the stone path toward the front of the house. She glanced in windows as she passed, but saw no one. Large lights illuminated Bellebrook’s front, and she found there were very few places to hide unless she wanted to duck into the bushes that ran its length. That might make too much noise.

  She was wasting precious time; the front door would be locked, too. She found a secluded window, unobstructed by shrubbery and just out of the light. The panes were made from old wood: well-painted but clearly showing age. Hiram had to know a way to deal with this. Maybe it was time to call on him after all.

  She closed her eyes and listened.

  She heard nothing. Edgewood was the quietest place in the Hole, undisturbed by the throbbing humanity below. The wind gently nuzzled the empty tree branches with a sigh. The guards continued chattering. Why wouldn’t they shut up? She clenched her teeth and hummed as quietly as she could. She pressed her fingers into her temples and tapped at them lightly, trying to shut out nearby sounds.

  Everything in the Hole belonged to Duke. He was the city’s overseer, and soon, its god. She had to kill him – for Nora and Quentin, as well as all the other forgotten dead he’d run over in his quest. She had to show him he was mortal. Maybe she should just break the window and shoot anyone she found. If she ran for Duke’s bedroom at top speed, she might get a few shots at him before his guards gunned her down. Just imagining the muzzle flashes to come made her hands shake. Without Hiram, she was certainly dead.

  She hadn’t told Jayla goodbye. Gorgeous eyes and full lips warmed her thoughts, but Loxley centered up on one feeling: that of her partner holding her close, arms enfolding her naked body not in an expression of sex, but one of peace. The pressure of Jayla’s embrace brought more comfort than any food or music; Jayla, who waited for her on the eighth ring.

  Clang.

  The bleak, high-pitched noise hung in the air for a moment. Loxley strained to hear the next strike. One of the men laughed again, and she curled her fingers in rage. Calm down, pretty baby. It’s okay.

  Clang.

  This one was louder. She steadied her breathing and pictured Hiram.

  Clang. That smile. Clang. That deadly, easy laugh. Clang. A rumpled suit jacket and a cheap cigarette. Bit by bit, Loxley disappeared into herself as her thoughts became an intoxicating mixture of malice and efficiency.

  She pulled the straight razor from her pocket and flipped it open. “Time to die, you motherfucker.”

  She sliced away a thin strip of wood around the glass, then jammed the razor underneath to pry out the pane. Warm air rushed over her bare skin. She quickly reached inside, unlocked the window and let herself in. Stopping short, she ducked back outside and nestled the copy of Dracula behind a drainpipe. She’d have to fetch it before she left, but she didn’t want to try to carry it around a gunfight.

  There wasn’t going to be a gunfight, though. She’d nip upstairs, jam a pillow over the old prick’s face and pop – good night. Might have to do the missus, too, if she happened to be around. Only time would tell. She made for the stairs, the razor in one hand, revolver in the other.

  She rounded the corner into the grand gallery to find one of the guards enjoying a glass of whiskey at a table before a roaring fire. He hadn’t spotted her, transfixed as he was by the flickering light. Her grip tightened on her blade and she slid close behind him. Five paces... three paces... she could smell his drink. Everything in her body told her to slice his throat right then and there. He was part of this. He worked for Duke, and was just as culpable as everyone else.

  But Nora had worked for Duke in the plastic factory, too. Loxley rested the razor against the man’s throat.

  “I’ll cut your vocal cords before you can scream.”

  He swallowed his last gulp of whiskey and froze. “Okay.”

  “Hello, James,” she said, her cadence bo
rrowed from Hiram. “I work for the Consortium. Do you understand why my friends and I might be here like this, given the things we know about his operations?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We just want Duke. I want you to walk to the back, take your men, and leave. You won’t see us. Don’t try, just walk away. We’ll contact you at a later date to purchase the names of Duke’s co-conspirators. Do you like your friends?”

  Sweat beaded on his brow. “Yeah.”

  “Good. I’m going to let you go. Don’t look at me or I’ll fucking murder you and everyone else in this house. Your boss is a dead man. Don’t be stupid enough to join him.”

  She locked back the hammer on her pistol and took a long stride away. Hiram’s instincts screamed for her to slice the man’s throat – after all, he was a liability – but she stifled them. She’d lied with Hiram’s easy tongue, and it seemed to work well enough. The guard fled. Maybe he would bring the others back, or maybe he would lead them away. It was in someone else’s hands now. The first hints of exhaustion trickled into Loxley’s system like ice water. She needed to conclude her business soon, or she’d be overcome.

  She swept up the stairs, her eyes darting to the landing, but she saw no threats. Fifteen seconds since she’d seen James pass through the far door of the gallery. He was at least ten seconds from his friends, so she slowed her pace. Let him have a moment to speak to the others and clear them out. Hiram only remembered three men guarding the house at night, so she hoped there weren’t more. There was also the chance that James hadn’t bought her story, and that he’d be back any moment.

  She waited for a solid minute. Hiram was better with time than she was, but her adrenaline drained away with each tick of the clock. She felt him peeling away from her, and her legs grew heavy. She peeked around the corner and saw no one in the long corridor leading into the east wing. Pistol at the ready, she slunk down the hall to the next intersection. The labyrinth of shapes and colors in Bellebrook would have bothered Loxley, but the killer’s eyes were efficient and quick, never lingering in one place for long.

  Duke’s bedroom was just around the corner. Was his wife sleeping there tonight? Loxley hoped not. Silently, she moved down the hall toward his enormous, gilded double doors. They were gold leaf and white, with an ostentatious pair of crosses on either side.

  Not going to protect you from me.

  She gripped the antique crystal doorknob and began to turn it as quietly as she could. She knew the distance from the door to Duke’s bed. If he was awake, she’d put one in his brainpan. If he lay there asleep, she’d use the pillow to muffle the sound. It was a shame that he wouldn’t see it coming, but this job was tricky enough already.

  Her train of thought was interrupted by splintering wood and ripping pains across her shoulder. Her vision flashed as the back of her head thumped the marble floor. She screamed in agony, pressing her palm to her shoulder. It came back slick with her blood. As the door swung wide to reveal Duke in his pajamas with a smoking pistol, Loxley knew she’d been shot.

  Her concentration imploded, and Hiram’s essence left her like a hand leaving a puppet. Then she remembered all the times she’d let Nora in, and the dreams she’d had after. Would Hiram be there waiting? Primal dread piggybacked on her exhaustion as she spiraled into unconsciousness.

  An Angel

  THE ROOM THAT unfolded around her looked like her apartment in Magic City Heights, but it contained nothing of hers. Unfamiliar furniture filled her home, and bookshelves lined the walls. The place reeked of whiskey blended with stale tobacco smoke, and Loxley hummed, shaking the crackles out. This was not her home, and its uncanny resemblance only frightened her more.

  Cool air slithered across her bare skin, and she gasped. She couldn’t let this happen. She needed to wake up. Shadows drew long in the fading sunlight. Hiram was coming.

  Hiram’s grin formed in the darkened corner before the rest of it, then its two twinkling eyes, then its body emerged into the light, naked and muscular. She snatched a crystal ash tray from a nearby counter and flung it, aiming for the head. The dish struck it squarely in the cheek, but elicited no reaction save for an even wider smile.

  Loxley dashed to the kitchenette and whipped open drawers, searching for any bladed objects she could find. She located a large chef’s knife, but it turned to silver dust in her hand. The steak knives dissolved as she touched them, even the forks disintegrated during her frantic search. She cried out as a hand took hold of her hair and yanked her backward.

  Hiram picked her up by her neck and slammed her onto the table, splintering it underneath her weight. Shards of wood dug into her back and each breath emerged as a scream. The ghost’s fist crashed into her nose, blinding her with pain, and she clawed and kicked at its cold flesh as she tried to crawl away. Another blow to her head made the room dim for a moment.

  She rolled onto her back, and it loomed over her, just as Duke had. It’d stopped hitting her, and its naked form swam in her vision. She closed her eyes and drew her limbs in close.

  The next strike never came. The air flash froze, and her skin rippled with goosebumps. She opened her eyes to find Hiram stock still, incredulously staring at two short rows of fleshy bumps in its chest the size of thimbles. It ran a hand over them, and a vertical slit opened up where its heart should have been. Loxley could see what the bumps were then – another person had shoved their hands through its pale flesh and was pulling it apart from inside.

  Gone was the snarky grin, replaced by the same panic it’d shown during its own death. Its inhuman skin parted under stress like fresh dough. No blood sprayed from its wounds, but it seemed to contain layers and layers of itself, like an onion. With a deafening scream, it was ripped in two. Then, Loxley saw her savior.

  It looked like Nora, but all wrong. The legs and arms were too off-kilter, too sinewy. Stringy hair draped its face, only a single white eye visible through the strands. This was the ghost that haunted Nora’s apartment, not the one who’d come to warm Loxley’s dreams. Loxley scuttled back along the floor until her back hit the wall, gasping for air the whole way.

  Hiram groaned. Even torn asunder, it could still make noises, and its expression was far from peaceful. Nora brought a massive foot down upon the ghost’s neck and seized Hiram by the head with hands far too large to be human. The sound of tearing meat filled the air alongside a scream rising in pitch. With a snap, Hiram’s head came away from its body, the dead, white skin shivering and convulsing.

  Nora shoved fingers into Hiram’s mouth and tore away its jaw before plunging fingers into its eye sockets. Another huge pull, and the head was shredded beyond all recognition, pieces flopping to the ground with sickening thuds.

  Then Nora picked up the largest chunk and began to eat.

  Loxley swallowed reflexively as the ghost turned to regard her with its cold, white eye. For a fleeting second, she understood exactly what it was thinking:

  Do not call me. Do not think of me. Never come here again.

  Loxley only nodded. Then a stinging slap turned her head.

  I.O.U.

  ANOTHER SLAP, AND Loxley blinked herself back into Bellebrook. Burning pain spread over her shoulder, and she felt dizzy and nauseous. Duke’s second floor office surrounded her, its posh elegance the same as when Nora had made her phone call there. The man himself stood large over her, strands of white hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He wore an untied housecoat over his flannel pajamas, and a tuft of white chest hair poked out from his unbuttoned collar. Her eyes traveled the length of his arm to where he clutched a brass gavel in his meaty fist.

  “You know who gave me this?” he asked her, his voice flat, lacking the lilt he’d affected with her in every prior encounter. “The city. The mayor’s office did.”

  Her arms felt stiff, and when she looked down, she discovered she’d been taped to a chair. She jolted at the sight, and the duct tape yanked her skin. The wound on her shoulder lit up, sucking her breath away. She tried to b
ring her arm across to tear the tape off – she wasn’t supposed to have tape on her skin – but the other hand was firmly bound. She scratched on the wooden arms of the chair and hooted, trying to shake the crackles out, but they wouldn’t go away. Ants marched over her calves and into the hollow of her knees, and when she went to stomp them off, she couldn’t move her legs.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Get... get...” She yanked her arms as hard as she could – so hard it felt like her hands would come off – but the tape didn’t budge. Her gunshot wound seared across her entire left side. She screamed as loud and long as she could.

  Duke slapped her, a petty tap after Hiram’s ghost, but it still shocked her. “Who do you work for?”

  She heard the crackle of plastic under his feet and looked down. His carpet was covered with the same plastic sheeting that Nora used to make at the factory. “Don Fowler. He owns an apothecary on the third ring.”

  “That’s a lie.” He struck her again, and this one jangled her.

  His face had turned red, his cheeks growing taut like the skin of a pepper. She used to grow peppers in another life. She remembered the way they made her mouth feel, like Duke slapping her tongue. She imagined thousands of little Dukes beating up her tongue as she chewed, and laughed aloud.

  “You’re not taking this seriously?” Duke stood up a little straighter and smoothed back his hair. “I heard you tell James you worked for the Consortium. I heard you call him by name. Where are they? Are they coming here now? How much time do I have?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I have microphones in every room of this house.”

  She remembered him saying that to Nora. “I don’t work for –” The prickle of tape on her arm interrupted her train of thought. She had tape instead of skin, and the chair did, too, so was she part of the chair? She wrenched her body back and forth, but he’d even bound her hips. Her mind grew fuzzy, and her mouth didn’t want to make words anymore.