Every Mountain Made Low

by Alex White

  “When I used to work on the farm, we had cows, and sometimes, I’d have to slaughter one,” he began, thumping the brass gavel against his palm. He said more, but between her gunshot wound and the tape he’d tied her down with, she couldn’t care enough to pick out the order of his sentences. Nothing he said mattered all that much.

  She relaxed her head and let the static inside her skull. Instead of being afraid of it, the sensation felt like a blanket covering her on a frigid night. It would help her to accept what was about to happen. In spite of everything she’d done, everything she’d sacrificed, Duke was still going to take that hammer and brain her.

  Her heartbeat became a counterpoint to the rhythm of his speech. His words were a bass drum, barking pronouncements in another language. Was he mad? It didn’t matter how he felt, not one bit. There was nothing left for him to do to her. She wondered if anyone would ever find the dog-eared copy of Dracula she’d hidden in the bushes.

  He shook her, filling her with agony to displace the static. “This is important.”

  She hummed.

  “Do you want to pray with me? This is your last chance to ask forgiveness.”

  Her mouth felt awkward, so she shook her head no.

  “All right. The Lord can’t save you from yourself.”

  He raised the hammer, and the lights flickered inside the office. He stopped and looked around. They flashed again, going brown for a moment before guttering out entirely. Blue moonlight suffused the office in the absence of electric lights.

  You took something from me, came a low growl.

  Loxley wasn’t sure if she’d heard the voice or only thought it, but Duke spun around, startled. She swung her head from side to side, trying to gather her wits about her and pay attention. The big man smiled at her and licked his lips.

  “Cute trick. Are those your Consortium friends?”

  Scrabbling scratches like tree branches sounded on the window. Duke rushed to his desk and seized his pistol. He leveled it on Loxley’s face and threw back the hammer.

  “Don’t be stupid or I’m going to shoot her,” he called out.

  You took something from me. The air wavered with the thunderous power of the voice, and Loxley swore she could hear the scream of a dying animal in its wake. She knew the one who spoke – Tailypo. Somehow, she’d stolen from him, and he’d come to collect, just as he had all those centuries ago with the farmer. He’d come to kill her for it, to eat her and make her into one of his cautionary tales. At least Duke wouldn’t have the pleasure.

  “What did I steal?” she said.

  Duke smacked her with the butt of his gun, not hard enough to injure her, but enough to startle. “Shut up. What are you talking about?”

  Quentin Mabry. You took him from me. Duke held his ears against the thunderclap speaking to them, and Loxley spied a wispy green vine growing out of the side of the oak desk. It popped out a few leaves, and was soon joined by shoots.

  But she hadn’t stolen Quentin. He’d come of his own accord, and the man who shot him was dead as well. But now Hiram’s bits were inside her, so maybe Tailypo wanted them. Would the beast rip Hiram from her, or just eat her whole? She imagined Tailypo pulling off her head like Nora had with Hiram’s spirit, and she swallowed. The beast was going to destroy every part of her.

  You took a life from me, and I always get back what’s mine, Duke Ashley Wallace.

  “If you want to dance, come on out!” Duke shouted in his booming voice, but it paled in comparison to Tailypo’s. A tree root snaked across the floor, barely missing Duke’s foot as he jumped backward. Pale as a sheet, the big man whipped his weapon back and forth, searching for any target he could find. “Come on! I fear no evil, for the Lord is with me!”

  He ain’t going to save you from a deal you made for yourself.

  “The Devil’s lies!” Duke’s voice creaked. Loxley flinched as he fired a shot into the darkness. In the muzzle flash, she saw a forest sprouting in his office. “I didn’t hurt any Quentin!”

  Then she remembered. “But you did. You brought this on yourself.”

  “Shut up!”

  She looked Duke dead in his terrified eyes. “You told Hiram, ‘If she has anyone with her, that person has to die, too. I don’t care who it is, just take care of them.’” She remembered his words to the killer because she’d lived them.

  His eyes widened. The gun shook in his hand. “How did you hear that?”

  “Hiram did exactly what you asked him to. You took Quentin away. It’s your fault.”

  He stumbled backward over a root and caught himself next to the tree that had once been his desk. “Shut up!”

  “But it’s your fault,” she said, leaning forward, able to forget the tape for a blissful moment. “This is all your doing!”

  A rippling, hairy shape formed on the vine-encrusted ceiling, drooping down like a big drop of oil over Duke. In a single graceful motion, it landed on him and removed his pistol hand with a sickening crack of bone. In the terrified screams that followed, it ravaged Duke with teeth and claws, muscle and sinew, pausing to taste his steaming entrails while he still lived.

  Loxley shut her eyes until it was over.

  Warm light scattered against her eyelids, and she opened them to find the office pristine as it had once been, and no sign of Duke: no blood, no meat, nothing. She looked down at her bindings; they’d been slashed open with no harm to her flesh. Her shoulder had been bound in bright white gauze, and she felt no pain. She pulled free of the chair and rubbed her bare wrists in astonishment. Listening carefully, she didn’t hear a soul.

  She fled Bellebrook with all speed, only stopping to collect her precious copy of Dracula from the bushes. She knew the agriculture manual was there, too, but it was time to let it go. It was the last piece of the life she’d once had.

  Never come here again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  No Home

  THE SUN HAD already begun to illuminate the western side of Edgewood. Loxley trudged across the eighth ring, far too cold to care anymore. When she finally came upon the Hound’s Tail a sign on the front doors said, ‘Closed tonight.’ Finding them unlocked, she pushed them open, anyway. She passed the coat check and found the entire staff seated around the stage, the smell of coffee and cigarettes thick in the air.

  “You bitch. You fucking bitch,” shouted Jayla. Tears streamed down her face as she rushed to Loxley and squeezed her as tightly as she could.

  The bullet wound in Loxley’s shoulder snarled in protest, and she squeaked, “Why are you cussing me?”

  Jayla interrupted her with a hard kiss, and the fight drained from Loxley’s muscles. She fell limp, suspended in her lover’s arms, leaning on her strength. Jayla eased her into a chair, and Loxley felt as though she might pass out right then and there. Her limbs came to rest, heavy under the weight of the things she’d done.

  Her breathing slowed, and she heard someone tell the others to give her some room. She turned her head to look at Cap, who was the saddest she’d ever seen him. He slouched in a chair like a sack of flour, his face drawn and beaded with sweat. His kitchen uniform looked even worse than before.

  “I’m sorry about your knife, Cap. I tried to steal you another,” she said. “I lost yours in the guy who killed Quentin.”

  “It’s okay,” he mumbled in reply. “It’s a good place to lose it.”

  Jayla waved the rest of the group away. “Okay, folks. She’s home. Ya’all just go to bed and we’ll figure out what to do later.”

  Wearily, everyone stood to go, except Jayla, who inspected Loxley’s bandaged shoulder. It still hurt, but the passing hours had turned it from a single point of pain into a low ache that covered her entire left side.

  “Your vendetta cost us a lot tonight,” called Tailypo, emerging from the shadows of the stage. “I think you owe all of us for bringing this on our house.”

  “No,” replied Loxley, prompting murmurs from the crowd.

  “If it wasn’t fo
r your damn fool errand, Quentin would still be here.”

  “Tee,” Jayla began, but Loxley silenced her.

  Loxley considered channeling Nora, but then she remembered the dead, white eye and the gnashing teeth. Better to negotiate this on her own. “That isn’t what you told Duke when you ate him.”

  “You had a part in it, too,” Tailypo growled, not even bothering to deny it.

  “Doesn’t matter. Can’t collect on the same debt twice.” She smiled, surveying the wide-eyed crowd. Plenty of them didn’t believe in ghosts, much less whatever Tailypo was. Jayla’s gaze darted between Loxley and her boss, and she stepped between them. Perhaps she was beginning to understand a little of the world Loxley had been living in the whole time.

  Quentin believed, too – believed in all the strange things she said, believed in her as a person. She was going to miss him. Maybe he’d gone up in the steam with all of the others from the Hole, or maybe he’d became snow last night, a vigil over her trek to Bellebrook.

  Tailypo stared at her with his hard eyes, no trace of his desires evident in his long gaze. She’d grown used to him watching her like a meal, but this was a man considering revenge. She felt proud of herself for seeing so much in his expression. Perhaps she was simply too tired to be distracted by other things.

  “Jayla, take her back to your room,” he spat. “I’ll call a goddamned doctor.”

  The doctor was pushy, and wanted to see all kinds of things that Loxley didn’t want to show him. He kept asking if she’d had relations with strange men, and was unwilling to believe that a ghost had put those marks on her. Jayla stayed in the room with both of them, answering harshly whenever the doctor asked something too personal. After the inspection concluded, Tailypo arrived and paid the doctor “handsomely for both the checkup and silence.” Loxley doubted the doctor ever would have connected her with the mayhem at both the steelworks and Bellebrook. The fellow seemed to think her incapable of the most basic self-care. Perhaps his prejudice served her purposes, but either way, she was glad to see the back of him. Tailypo then told them he was “sure they had some catching up to do” with a laugh and a smile that made Loxley uneasy.

  After the doctor left, Jayla gingerly undressed her and brought her to bed. They didn’t make love, but they lay entangled for hours, Jayla stroking Loxley’s hair without a single question. Loxley wanted to tell her partner what had happened that night, but the words were slippery, and didn’t want to come when she needed them. At long last, she found something she could say.

  “I don’t want to live here, anymore,” she said, tucking her head under Jayla’s arm.

  “Okay. Where do you want to go, darling?”

  “Somewhere good. You can cook.”

  Jayla laughed, her voice gentle. “Is that a fact? What a gracious invitation. And what are you going to do?”

  She nuzzled into Jayla’s armpit, her voice muffled. “Whatever I want to.”

  “I see. Maybe you could help.”

  “Yeah. And I can grow food and play music for you. But I want to leave the Hole.”

  “Where would we go?”

  “Atlanta,” said Loxley. She felt a prickle of nerves in her belly. She’d always wanted to leave, but she’d never thought she could. If Jayla wouldn’t follow, she couldn’t make it alone. She didn’t want to be without the cook ever again.

  “I don’t know anyone in Atlanta.”

  “I know. I don’t want to know anyone.” She listened to her lover’s steady breath.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Jayla’s voice creaked. Her voice still hadn’t recovered from screaming at her. “You really want me to come with you? We ain’t been together very long, baby.”

  “We’re together? I’m your girlfriend?”

  “Why wouldn’t you be?”

  “Nora had a couple of boys, but I don’t know how many were her boyfriend.”

  Her fingers caressed Loxley’s shoulder. “Nah. You’re my girlfriend.”

  Loxley’s chest hurt, but wrapped up in her partner as she was, she didn’t feel any crackles. What if Jayla was kidding about coming with her? “Your girlfriend has to leave the Hole. I want you... You need to come with me. If you don’t –”

  Jayla squeezed her hard. “Okay.”

  The Accounting

  LOXLEY STOOD OUTSIDE a nondescript building on the fifth ring. Faded letters on its brick front read ‘Robert Calhoun, Accountant.’ Hiram had ruminated on this place, and with very little effort, Loxley had found it. She clutched ten torn pages in her hand, and the wind seemed to want them just as much as she did – they were the first ten entries in Hiram’s copy of Dracula.

  She pushed open the glass door to find a dour man sitting behind an extremely plain desk, its only adornment a brass lamp with green glass. The walls were a cream color with water stains in many places. The carpet was a dull brown. Some would have said it was a terrible place to work, but Loxley would have liked it even better if it had no windows.

  The man looked up and smiled, a thin snaggletoothed grin.

  “I like your office,” said Loxley.

  “Thank you,” he replied with a polished, easy voice. “May I help you somehow?”

  “My name is Loxley Fiddleback,” she said, starting the conversation in as sensible a place as any.

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  She shuffled her feet nervously. “You work for the Consortium.”

  He shook his head slowly and folded his hands on the desk. “I’m afraid not, dear. This is a privately-held office. Now is there something you need?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “That’s a very rude thing to say, madam.”

  “It’s okay. I would lie, too,” she said, handing him the pages.

  She felt an immediate pang of guilt as she did so. Duke might have been a killer, but if he’d been telling the truth, he was only trying to feed everyone. The Consortium did little to take care of people and even less to save them, yet folks toiled away in its name. What if Duke had succeeded? Would the Hole have been better, even for a time? She thought of Nora and Quentin, steeling herself as she let go of the papers; no part of Duke’s conspiracy deserved to survive.

  He slipped a pair of glasses over his eyes and stared down his nose at the pages. “And what’s this?”

  “Duke Wallace was going around behind your back, planning to throw out the Con. There’s the proof.”

  He tapped the stack with an ornate fountain pen. “Really? You should give this to the authorities. That sounds very important.”

  “I know you work for them. You were going to make a deal with Hiram McClintock.”

  His smile disappeared. He removed his hands from his desk, where she could no longer see them, and sat up straighter. He probably had a gun under there. She pointed to the pages, stopping on the first margin.

  “It ought to be easy to find out if Duke has been hiding stuff from you with these,” she said. “I know he has.”

  “Maybe I should call him and ask.”

  “You’re never going to find him. He’s dead.”

  He cocked his head. “Did you kill him?”

  “No. Well, sort of I did.”

  “Why shouldn’t I call for help? Have you arrested?”

  Loxley nodded. “I can see why you would, but I have the names of the other conspirators in Nashville and Atlanta. I don’t have a lot of demands.”

  “You think we’re going to pay you?”

  “You were going to pay Hiram nearly two million dollars. It was all he could think about until the night I killed him. Did your friends tell you he was dead?”

  He reached up with one hand and straightened some papers on his desk. “That was mentioned to me, yes. They have the body.”

  “Can I have the knife?” she asked, her voice a little louder than she wanted.

  He grimaced. “Is it yours?”

  “I used it, but I was borrowing it.”

  “From whom?”

  It
would’ve been a great parting gift for Cap, but she could see it might be difficult to get. “Never mind.”

  His polite smile reappeared, though his mouth quivered at the corners. He flipped to a blank page in his ledger and picked up his pen. “How much do you want, and how do we contact you?”

  She motioned to the desk. “Do you want me to write for you so you can keep your hand on your gun? I think that would be smarter of you, even though I don’t want to hurt you. You saw what I did to Hiram.”

  “Little girl, there are three very large men in the back. Maybe I should call them and we can torture the information out of you.”

  His curt manner actually put her at ease. She was so used to people saying one thing and meaning another, but this man spoke as plainly as possible. His office helped shield her from distractions, and together, they made her words clean and easy.

  “That would be stupid because I don’t want much. Also, I don’t know most of it because it’s in a book.”

  “Two million dollars is a lot for un-validated information.”

  “I just want a hundred thousand, and I’m going to leave town forever. You’re never going to see me again. I hate the Consortium. I hate Duke Wallace. I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I just want to get my money and leave.”

  “And where will you go? We’re everywhere.”

  “I just want out of the Hole.”

  “I think you’ll find every other city to be much the same as this one.”

  “No. Tailypo won’t be anywhere else. Neither will Duke’s men.”

  He adjusted his glasses. “A hundred thousand seems like a fair estimate, if Hiram’s intelligence is any good.”

  “It’s very good. Duke killed several of my friends because of it.”

  “Do these friends of yours have names?”

  She started to answer, but thought better of it. She rubbed her palm on her shirt so she wouldn’t flap it. “No.”