by Michael Rigg
Landry said, "You're the one behind this! I hear tell it was you who fetched out my boy from the meetings! Bradford Thorne told me his self it was a woman that led my boy astray; a Property whore!" He glanced over his shoulder to Clayton. "Fetch my Colt, boy!"
Clayton didn't flinch and only paused a second before turning toward the house to fetch his father's pistol.
Parts of that got through to my brain. Bradford Thorne—obviously of the company Bryce was visiting in New York—called Jefferson Landry about me? How the hell did...? Then it hit me. The attacks at the SkyTrain platform. Perek Grubbs, the agent. The weasel must have reported back to his boss and now Thorne was using that information to kick the Landry family business while it was down.
Adeline rushed down toward me and her father. "Daddy! You wouldn't dare!"
"She's a whore witch working for Thorne! My Colt, boy! Hurry before she vexes us all like she done Bryce!"
Lucien opened his mouth, but it was Bryce who spoke as he got back on his feet. "Alice is not a witch, Daddy and she's no corporate agent! A Teller cleared her of witchcraft."
Adeline pushed between us, her back toward me. I could smell the sweat and animal dander on her. She must have been hard at work before the sun even came up. She looked in her father's eye and said, "You plan to shoot a stranger on our front stoop while momma's asleep inside?"
Landry glared at her, his teeth grinding. "Adeline."
"And after I'd spent the better part of this summer white washin' this monstrosity of a front stoop all by m'self with no help from Bry nor Clay?"
I swear Jefferson Landry almost smiled. Whatever her skills at disarming the violent, Adeline Landry sure earned a medal this morning. As Bryce and Lucien looked on, agape, Landry continued to stare down at his daughter while she glared up at him.
Finally, he dropped the newspaper and spoke in a calm voice. He told Adeline, "You'll take responsibility of the Property. Get it cleaned up and out of Seven Orchards." He looked at Lucien. "And you, sir, are still fired."
He glanced over Adeline's head to me but didn't say anything. He turned before anyone could say anything against him and headed up toward Bryce. Adeline held her ground with her back against me just as Clayton emerged with the long silver pistol.
To Bryce, Landry said, "Change into a presentable suit and fetch a pilot. We're goin' to Baton Rouge."
"Daddy—"
"Now, boy! I need to show you what you done before I disown you."
Bryce didn't even offer me a glance. I could tell he was embarrassed if not completely humiliated by the ordeal. He waited until his father pulled Clayton back into the house before turning toward Adeline, Lucien and I. "Thank you, Addy." To Lucien, he said, "As I promised, sir, you'll now be in my employ. Your first order of business will be to make sure Alice remains safe. That clear?"
Lucien cleared his throat. "Bryce—"
"Is that clear!?"
"Yes, Captain Landry."
Adeline said, "It's your job to fix what you done, Bry. Run on now and do it."
That's when Bryce finally glanced at me, briefly, before hanging his head and going inside.
Adeline turned to me as Lucien stepped closer. To him, she said, "Lucien, I expect you should scarce y'self until daddy and Bry have gone."
"Yes, Mum."
"I will send for you presently. In the meanwhile's I'll see to our guest."
"Yes, Mum."
She stared at him. He didn't move. "Well, go on now. Scoot 'efore I pick up daddy's Times and lay into your hide."
"But Alice is—"
"Scoot!"
"Yes, Mum." Tipping his bowler, Lucien moved off quickly toward the side of the house, toward the end Adeline had come from.
“Disowned?” I frowned, echoing Jefferson Landry's last words.
Adeline smiled at me and shook her head. She ran the back of her hand across her forehead. “Aw. He didn't mean it.”
When Lucien was out of earshot, Adeline smiled brightly at me. She presented her hand. "I'm Bryce's sister, Adeline Landry, and keeper of the sanity of the estate. You may call me Addy. Please excuse my presence. I must look a fright." She swatted at a patch of dust on her dungarees with her other hand as I clasped hers. It was warm and feminine but the muscles that flexed her grip were strong and there were calluses on her fingertips. "I'm Alice."
"Charmed, Alice." She released my grip and pointed toward a door in the west wing of the house, opposite the side Lucien retreated to. "Why don't you tell me all about yourself while I prepare you a bath, a warm meal and some proper clothes. You must simply be exhausted from your ordeals overnight."
I nodded and walked beside her toward the west wing. Up close, Adeline Landry was more womanly than girlish. Almost my height and thin, yet muscular, her large brown eyes sparkled with flecks of gold and a faint sprinkle of freckles decorated her cheeks. When she smiled, her face lined to show her maturity, though her smile was so bright and perfect it was easy to see the teenage girl under all that responsibility. When she spoke she came off as a younger, more innocent version of Lady McFerran. I glanced back toward the main entrance of the house. "Will Bryce and his father be all right?"
Addy glanced at me. She slowed her pace so we could talk while the morning sun warmed our backs. "Well, I'll tell ya this much, lovely Alice. This is sure as shootin' the biggest storm I ever did see bluster through here." She searched my eyes, so I stopped and faced her. Her smile drooped. "Do you know what's been done?"
I glanced again toward the front of the house. "Well.... Lucien and Bryce argued a lot about some contracts he was supposed to sign." I bit my lower lip. "I'll be honest with you, Adeline—"
"Call me Addy," she winked.
"Addy... I'll be honest with you, I've been worried about it since I first heard them. I know it's something big, but I don't know how big... and I'm afraid everyone thinks I'm more important than I really am. I even thought I was some kind of sleeper agent for this Thorne & Wolfe group.”
“A sleeper agent!” Addy laughed and clapped her hands. “How very devious!” It was obvious by her outburst she didn't believe it and found it more 'charming' than anything. This was all crazy. Maybe I'm crazy too.
I shrugged. “I just have amnesia." I withheld other aspects of the truth: that I was becoming fairly certain this wasn't even my reality, and that hooded men branded me with electric forks. For all I knew, this was the most incredible dream—or nightmare—anyone has ever had.
Addy scrunched up her lips on one side of her face as she narrowed her eyes to the front door of the house. "Daddy kept us all up late last night once Lady McFerran called to give us ups on all the what-alls."
"Ups?"
She smiled at me with a look that showed she found my innocence cute. "Ya know. All of what's been goin' on. She told us what Bryce told her, that they'd rescued a damsel at the Trade Towers. She said that he said that they was bringin' you home to the Seven." Adeline shrugged. "From what I hear, them contracts Bry was supposed to sign would have kept Thorne & Wolfe from takin' charge of some sea property of daddy's."
"Sea property?" It was actually Perek Grubbs who mentioned it, but I didn't want to have to explain everything to Addy. I'm sure in time I'll end up telling her the whole story, but now I was just interested in getting to the bottom line that led to me witnessing Bryce's beating on the front porch of the Landry estate.
Addy hooked her arm around mine and we resumed walking as she patted my hand. "It's some kind of archeological discovery. Daddy's been big on tryin' to weasel out all the ancient finds n' sell 'em off—mostly to Confederate interests, don't ya know. Lots of metaphysical stuff, mythical junk, spiritual business, even witchy stuff. It gives daddy's company an edge over the Yankee corporations. Personally,
I think a lot of it is malarkey—though I'd never tell that to Daddy. Supposedly, he's got—or had—the deed to Atlantis."
“Atlantis? The Atlantis?” Metaphysical stuff? Mythical junk? Spiritual business? The Landry family business is—what—witchcraft? Dealing in witchcraft? And what's with this Atlantis stuff? Surely, these people don't think it's real. I may have amnesia, but I seemed to know deep down that didn't exist. Do they sell myths?
Addy nodded and shrugged a shoulder as if she didn't quite believe it herself.
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I nodded and listened, hoping I could pick up on something that gave me more clues as to where I might be from, or shed more light on where I am now, or tell me more about a world where companies deal in metaphysical wholesale.
"The Landry Holdings Company. It's what Daddy does. He controls a world-wide network of specialists and scientists, diggers and experts. It's amazin' the money Daddy's made off his discoveries. He's employed archeologists and bounty hunters the world over to find his trinkets over the last fourteen years."
"What kinds of trinkets has he found?" I asked, wondering what kind of money could be made from selling archeological digs and “mythical junk” to museums.
"Oh, the last one was some old gold box he said was what held the Ten Commandments of Moses his self."
I stopped in my tracks. Adeline took two steps and turned to meet my gaping stare. I knew what she was talking about. This world may be strange to me, the flag different than I remember, but certain references were clear. I forced my jaw to close. "It sounds like you're talking about the Ark of the Covenant."
She nodded as though I'd just asked if she ate breakfast. With a shrug, she said, "It ain't much to see. Daddy sold it to Crane & Loft about a month ago. The Ark, as well as a few other things, he'd been sellin' off to Yankee Corps to buy more Confederate inroads, more control. Atlantis was a keeper, though. Not sure why."
"Wait. Sold it?" My jaw fell open again.
As I stared at Adeline her face broke from a slow grin into a bright smile, then she giggled. "Oh, Alice, you are a treasure. Didn't you know I was pullin' your leg?"
My shoulders slumped as I blew out a breath and grinned, shaking my head and touching my fingers to my suddenly achy temple. "Oh.... Things have been so weird for me the past day I just don't know what to believe anymore."
Addy turned to lead the way into the west wing. Over her shoulder, she said with an idle wave of her hand, "He'd never sell his precious Ark, just like he'd never sell his precious, underwater city."
CHAPTER 16, “Human Life”
Perek Grubbs was a new man, almost literally.
He had once heard you have to sink to the bottom before you can rise to the top, and that's pretty much exactly what happened.
He actually smiled at the irony.
The ghoul, Teivel Hearse, left him standing in the human filth for what seemed like hours. Existing on very little sleep, Grubbs struggled to remain standing. He'd weep and scream and beg, but it seemed no one heard him. No other ghouls came to eat him and put him out of his misery. His ribs ached. His face ached. At one point he slipped on the slimy surface beneath his feet and sank up to his neck before catching himself and struggling to keep his nose and mouth away from the black pungent surface. He had managed to feel his way to a wall in the darkness, hoping to lean against it and rest, but even the walls were slimy with filth.
Then, finally, all the tears and strength gone, his body and mind too weak to sustain him, Perek Grubbs slipped and sank beneath the surface.
Break over.
Even as his mouth opened in an involuntary gasp, and even as a small part of his brain warned him that he'd be inhaling waste instead of air, everything around him vanished and instantly re-formed into something else.
He had found himself, still naked, standing on shaky legs in what appeared to be a dark throne room. A red carpet and tall gilded throne were the only bright and clean things in the room. Everything else was dank and gray, the air wreaked of mildew, though the smell of the septic prison was still strong in his nose. A thick layer of dust covered rows of broken shelves, glassless jewelry cases and fake potted trees. Boarded windows provided thin bands of gray light across the warehouse-sized room. A faded JC Penney logo, the P askew, identified the location. The Penney building in downtown Philadelphia was less than a mile from the Universal Electric building where the police had arrested him.
Hissing sounds echoed in the room, scuttles, a raspy yawn. In the shadows, all around him, Perek Grubbs knew the ghouls waited to pounce.
A black form on the throne squirmed and Grubbs could make out Teivel Hearse, sitting with his weight shifted to one side, his chin resting on his right hand as the long nails of his left tapped impatiently on the arm of the throne. "Ah, my dear Perek," Hearse smiled exposing a row of gray nubby fangs. His voice was soft, soothing, but also somehow cold and uncomfortably warm at the same time.
Grubbs flinched at the voice but stood his ground. He looked down at himself as a chill in the room erupted goose flesh all over his body. Not only had he been transported out of the sewer cell, he was also clean as though fresh from a steamy shower. Raising his eyes to Hearse, Grubbs covered himself modestly with his hands.
Hearse smiled at that, his eyes lingering on Grubbs' hands before meeting his eyes. "Such an interesting breed, you humans are."
Grubbs cleared his throat, but his hoarse voice still cracked when he spoke. "You're human too. Well, you were."
"Were," Hearse echoed. "You made us this way."
A loud hiss echoed from Grubbs' left and he turned to see a thin, gangly ghoul leap onto an overturned display case. Like Hearse, its eyes were red. Unlike Hearse, it wore tattered rags instead of a gentleman's suit. Its teeth were so long they pushed open the black maw of a mouth and drool hung in long strands from its rows of sharpened teeth.
"One of my loyal subjects," Hearse smiled with an idle wave of his hand, drawing Grubbs' attention back to him. "He's harmless to you, Perek. They all are." Hearse stretched in his throne and lifted his left leg, placing his foot on the seat cushion and appearing to slouch languidly in the golden chair. "I'm surprised you held up for as long as you did before surrendering to your rather distasteful fate." He pursed his lips and made a 'tisk' sound. "I am so sorry about that, but you held up for quite some time before exhaustion took you... Admirable, that."
Not knowing how to respond, Grubbs glanced at the ghoul squatting on the display case before turning his attention back to the one on the throne in the black velvet suit.
Hearse said, "Relax, my pet." He gestured to Grubbs' hands. "Don't hide yourself from me. You will find that in my service there is nothing for you to hide."
Trembling slightly, Grubbs relaxed himself. He let his arms dangle at his sides and slumped his shoulders, cowering before the demands of the Lord of the Ghouls. When he saw that Hearse was staring at his body with wide lecherous eyes, he looked down and away. Spotting a dust-encased teddy bear on the floor, he centered his attention on that.
Hearse said, "Don't be ashamed, my pet Perek. I am going to give you the greatest experience any human has ever had the pleasure of enjoying." He flicked his wrist, the ruffled cuff of his sleeve flashing, and produced a rectangle of paper like a magician pulling a card from his sleeve. "Your Acquisition Papers."
Grubbs looked up.
"...And your identification. And..." Hearse's eyes shifted to Grubbs' right forearm. "A gift."
Flinching at a sudden sting that ripped from the crook of his elbow to his carpal tunnel, Grubbs raised his arm and widened his eyes in the dim light. There, on his forearm, was a Corporate Ident tattoo.
"Welcome to the Hearse & Grubbs Corporation, Perek. Oh—" Hearse waved a hand as if thinking of
something to add of little consequence, "You'll find your ribs and face are healed as well."
Grubbs' mind reeled. Here, standing naked in an abandoned JC Penney, surrounded by flesh-eating ghouls and their madman of a lord, he was bequeathed simultaneously with everything he'd ever wanted and never wanted at all. He touched his re-formed nose, his un-puffed cheekbones, he ran his fingers down the xylophone of his rib cage. Service to the ghoul surely meant inevitable death, but he wouldn't die here. Not yet. Not today.
No, Teivel Hearse gave him a Corporate Ident because he meant to set him free, to have him perform some task. Who knows, Grubbs mused, if I play my cards right. If I serve Mr. Hearse well—as I served Mssrs. Thorne and Wolfe—perhaps I'll be richly rewarded. Perhaps more than anyone if magics like this were any indication. Hell, Hearse could snap his fingers and fill this room with gold.
He allowed himself a smile.
"Oh," Hearse breathed, "It does this old heart good to see a smile on my pet."
The smile vanished as Grubbs felt the ghoul's eyes on him again. "W-What is this for?"
Hearse raised a pointed eyebrow.
Grubbs caught his misstep and corrected. "My lord." He swallowed, "What is this for, my lord?"
Hearse's smile was wide and filled with the conniving of all the world's treachery rolled into one. "A thank-you, my dear Perek. ...Thank you for telling me about Lord Landry, about the acquisition of Atlantic property, and about the ... what did you call her? Property?"
Grubbs nodded. "Yeah. Landry traveled with a Property, my lord. It's the reason he—"
Hearse waved a hand, his eyes slowly traveled Grubbs' body before settling on his eyes again. "Yes," he hissed. "It surprises me that none of you knows the danger of the one you seek."
"Danger?" Grubbs swallowed. "My lord?"
Hearse stood slowly with the grace of a male ballerina and approached Perek Grubbs. His velvet suit made no sound as he walked, and he played a long nailed finger over his lower lip as he approached. "The woman you're all seeking, the nameless one kidnapped by the Confederates. I cannot believe you have no clue what she is."
