"Sure, his aim is a little scattered. He's doing as much damage to you as he is the false queen-"
At that, the candlelight swelled and popped, like dust igniting in the tip of the flame. It was, Goodwell thought, like his master was recoiling at the mention of the pretender.
His lips were dry. It hurt to swallow. The séance had gone far too long. "I'll find a way," he said. "But if you'd just tell me why she was so important-"
"Tell her this," the voice intoned. "Tell her she is not the first. Tell her the other is dead. Her friend killed his first companion without love or mercy in his heart."
"Is that true?"
The voice said nothing for a long time. Yeah, that was what Goodwell figured. But if it worked to separate Mrs Archer from her travelling companion, it'd do. "Anything else?"
The voice barked, "They know you."
Goodwell stopped. "What?"
"They know your name, your face. They will hunt you."
"Who? That bug-thing? We got every egg, every-"
"It has other agents."
"The ones it stole from you?"
"Among others." The voice was fading. "They will hunt you and they will kill you. Be careful-"
At that, the voice snapped out of existence, leaving a ringing in Goodwell's ears. He worked his jaw until his ears popped, then blew out the candles and scraped out the bowl.
The one thing he didn't do was complain. Not down in the basement, not in the same room where the voice had been nesting only moments before. Just because the ritual was over didn't mean his employer was truly exorcised. And after all, who'd taught him those rituals in the first place?
No, there was no way to tell what it could hear, what it could see. He obeyed the voice because he knew it was right. He'd die if the voice asked.
But he'd be damned before he'd ever trust it.
Hannah was already in bed, reading by the light of her side-table lamp, turned away from him as she always was. As he closed the door behind him she shut her book with a hard snap and rolled over, exposing the pale sweep of her back.
Goodwell climbed in beside her, shuffling his socks off underneath the covers. He reached out to touch her bare shoulder, drew back, and finally settled for running a finger down the knobby landscape of her spine. "Hey."
She mumbled something into her pillow and turned off the bedside lamp. In the sudden darkness Goodwell couldn't tell what of her was blanket and what was skin.
"I said hey."
She might've said hey back. Maybe it was just a sigh.
"I had a really, really tough day."
No reply at all. Hannah had slipped into one of her moods, and she was known to stew for days. Maybe weeks. No point apologising at midnight - she'd just find another way to hold it over his head come morning.
He settled back into his lumpy pillow. Now that his eyes were adjusting he could make out a dark patch on the ceiling. Damp breaking through from the attic. He scowled. It didn't matter what he tried, how long he spent replacing tiles or laying down plastic sheets, the rain always won from above and below. Damp pilings and rotten ceilings. Stains on the walls. Moss crawling up the back steps and over his garden boots. Staining his feet and fingers...
He dreamed of the day by the barn, and the three dead boys. Martin, Dylan and Taram, fat-faced kids, the oldest of them just sixteen with their stupid puffy jackets and their battered backpack full of spray cans, fingertips covered in black paint, eyes red from smoking under the bridge. All of them too stupid to know what was happening. Or maybe they knew but didn't believe.
In his dream the gun was already in his hand and his finger was already pulling the trigger... or was the trigger pulling his finger? The two were one and the same, metal bonded to flesh, his skin like spiderwebbing wrapped around the steel.
Dylan was backed up against the wall of the old barn. He licked his lips nervously. Just a boy, no poison in him at all. Wide eyed and scared, the crotch of his jeans dark as Goodwell pushed the pistol into the soft skin of his forehead.
"I didn't want to," Goodwell said. "I swear, I didn't want to. If there was any other way-"
The pistol bucked in his hand. No smell of gunsmoke, not with the rain coming down sideways. Blood slashed the faded pine slats of the barn and Dylan fell in slow motion, mouth agape as if in shock.
"I don't want to," Goodwell whispered. The pistol was twisting in his hand, pulling him around to where the other two boys stood. "I wish I could let you go, I really do."
The trigger-finger tightened. Taram was pleading, hands up over his face, cowering away from the black mouth of the muzzle. "Shit! Oh God, please don't, please-"
"You should run," Goodwell said. "Run, kid. Please." Far overhead, black clouds twisted into the silhouettes of tendons and teeth. "It doesn't have to happen."
Taram wouldn't run. Taram was held in place just as firmly as Goodwell's finger was soldered to the pistol trigger.
Taram knew it.
He lowered his hands, blinked the rainwater from his eyes, and grinned. "Kill me," he said. "Kill a kid. Right between the eyes. Kill a kid and make your Queen happy."
"No," Goodwell whispered, but his fingers disobeyed.
He pulled the trigger.
He knew what came next. The stone well out the back of the barn. Dragging the bodies one by one, the skin still warm against his palms. Blood trails on the dead grass washed away by the sheeting rain. The low crunching sound that echoed up the well each time one of the dead boys hit the bottom.
It was done. He wanted to slide the well cover back and run for his car but something held him, forced him to peer over the edge, into the black.
Their eyes were open. Shining. Even from the bottom of the well he could see them gleam like polished pennies, reflecting moonlight even though there was no moonlight to reflect.
Six points of light, unblinking and accusing.
"No," Goodwell whispered. He tried to shift the well cover but it was too heavy, carved from stone. "Stop looking." His fingers were curled into claws around the edges of the well cover, pressing indentations into the stone. "Stop looking at me!"
Far below, three mouths opened in unison, showing teeth stained red. A rattling rose from the pit, echoing off the stone.
Goodwell stumbled back as the rattling rose higher. He clawed at his belt for his pistol but it had vanished, leaving only the empty leather holster. He couldn't stand. The air was too heavy.
A pale, bloodless hand curled over the lip of the well.
He woke, breath coming in fits, his right index finger curled around the trigger of an imaginary pistol. Copper on his lips. The dream was still thick in his mouth, in his nostrils.
"Jesus," he whispered. He was no stranger to bad dreams, but that one had reached right into his bowels and twisted. He didn't know whether he wanted to cry or shit himself. "Those fucking kids..."
He waited for his breath to slow. The bedroom was quiet - even with the windows open, the curtains hung still. The rain on the roof was a soothing patter. Hannah hadn't woken, but she'd always been a deep sleeper.
He leaned over her and whispered, "I did what I had to do. You know that." Her face was hidden by her hair. She smelled of vanilla shampoo. He brushed her bare shoulder, skin cold against his knuckles.
"I had to," he whispered. "It was in them. Once it's in you can't get it out. No off switch. There wasn't any other way."
She didn't reply. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, whispering to himself in the dark.
"There wasn't any other way. There just wasn't. No other way.
"I had to."
Chapter 4
After a week spent running from shadow to shadow, heart slamming against her ribs every time a patrol car rumbled past, killing time in the Rosenfeld Mission was physically painful.
Kimberly marched up and down the length of the little back room, wearing out the rubber soles of her boots as she did tight concentric circuits. Every few minutes she paused by the door, resting one hand on t
he knob, contemplating. Then she'd relax, back off, and resume pacing.
She was hungry. She could've killed for a glass of orange juice. But still, it didn't feel right to chase Mrs Rosenfeld down and make demands. Something told her to keep calm and wait.
So she walked, and walked, and walked.
Fitch finally grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down to sit beside him on the mattress. "You're gonna wear a groove into the floor if you keep that up."
"Can't help it. I've got itchy feet."
"You think I don't? Most of war is waiting. You sit, you get fed, you get ready."
"Who said anything about war? I'm going home." Kimberly closed her eyes. She could almost recall the smell of New York, the acid tang on the wind, the sting of 4 am car horns. Pastrami on rye from the deli down the road. Sandwiches wrapped in crackling paper. His hand curling around hers...
Aaron. She had to hold on to the name. It slipped away if she didn't concentrate, didn't whisper it to herself at night. Aaron so quickly became Andrew or Alfred or sometimes nothing at all. A hole in her memories in the shape of a man.
And then, clattering through those memories, came the train. The aroma of grease on the tracks. A burger wrapper sticking against her bare ankle, blown by the oncoming rush of air. The light bearing down...
"I wish I could remember how I got here. I saw the train and then..." Kimberly pounded one fist against the mattress. "Smack. I wake up in bed with a nutcase."
"Enough to make you think you'd gone crazy?"
"Almost. But you know what's weird? Someone pushed me. That's the sort of thing you think you'd remember, right? But I don't, not unless I concentrate. Otherwise it feels like I just... threw myself on to the tracks."
Fitch nodded. "Like it was your fault."
"Exactly. Is it the town doing that?"
Fitch didn't meet her eyes. His gaze was fixed on the backs of his hands, like he could read some sort of truth in the whorls and scars there, the puckered burn marks left by what Kimberly assumed were his explosive experiments. "You know how people get sad when it rains? I think that's how this town keeps everyone down. Nobody ever launched a revolution in the rain. Water torture breaks you eventually-"
The doorknob squeaked, and Kimberly jumped to her feet as Mrs Rosenfeld came in.
After all the piss and vinegar spat her way, Kimberly had never expected to see Mrs Rosenfeld looking contrite. But here she was, broom in hand, head low, staring at her feet as she eased through the doorway.
"Evening," she coughed. "Dinner service is closed. You settling in?"
"I've been nicer places." Kimberly slapped the mattress, sending a plume of mould spores and dead skin into the air. "It's a step up from the back seat of that car, so thank you."
"Well, good." Rosenfeld still hadn't met Kimberly's eyes. "Maybe I was being rude, earlier. It's hard keeping this place spinnin'. Easy to let it all weigh on you. God bless the Raconte girls, they work hard, but they can't run the Mission if I get tired or sick."
The Raconte girls? The twins serving the soup, Kimberly recalled. "So you'll help me get home?"
"I didn't say that, girl. But I can give advice. Not so much that I'll feel guilty if you get yourselves killed, but..." She sighed. "You know the routine, Fitch. Bowl and blood, chop chop."
Kimberly watched, uncomprehending, as Mrs Rosenfeld set a small porcelain soup-bowl in the middle of the floor and took a safety-pin from the sleeve of her knitted top. She pressed the pin into the tip of her left index finger, and Kimberly winced as steel slid into flesh without resistance.
Two bright pearls of blood splashed into the bottom of the bowl. "You now." She passed the pin to Fitch, who stabbed himself in the palm of his hand without hesitation. "And you, Miss Archer."
Kimberly tried to hide her disgust as she took the pin. "Don't you have a clean one?"
"I don't have the flu or nothing."
"What about..." Kimberly shuddered. "Never mind." She closed her eyes as she pricked the tip of her pinkie and shook a single drop of blood into the bowl. "Abracadabra. Do I get a lollipop?"
Mrs Rosenfeld hunched over the bowl, squinting at the three separate blood-slicks. She stirred them lazily with one finger until they became a single rapidly-drying smear. "Blood is power," she said. "Everyone knows that. Even little children. That's why they cry when they skin their knees." She whispered into the bowl, lips fluttering. "Any part of a body will do, really. Blood, fingernails, earlobes, eyeballs... They remember where they came from. They knows where they're going."
Rosenfeld closed her eyes, and for a moment the only sound in the room was the whistle of her breathing through a blocked nose. Her nasal whine grew louder and louder still until Kimberly found herself grinding her teeth.
The blood popped.
A single bubble bloomed and burst. The barbecue tang of cooking meat filled the room. Kimberly jerked back, a curse caught on her lips. "The fuck-"
"Seen this done before," Fitch murmured. "Never with so little, though. Man I spoke to, he took a whole pint. But Rosenfeld..."
Mrs Rosenfeld sucked air between her teeth. "Came from here to there to here to there to here. Hear the train coming. Man who pushed you, can't see his face... no, too early. You know this already."
Kimberly shuddered as Mrs Rosenfeld's hands curled into skinny, bloodless fists. "What's she doing?"
"Seeing the path," Fitch replied. "Not easy, to wring the truth out of a drop of blood. Just you wait."
"Big dreams," Rosenfeld muttered. "Everyone dreaming of the same place. Girls screaming in the public baths. Dreams of little school desks all white with mould. Pencils in tins. Smiling lady in a photograph. Blackboards with nonsense words. The convent and the Queen."
Queen. It'd been a long time since Kimberly had thought about the graffiti scrawled across the tunnel out of town, the kids in puffy day-glo jackets spraypainting on the belly of the water-tower up in the woods. THE TRUE QUEEN LIVES! She'd dismissed it as adolescent punk bullshit at the time, some Sex Pistols revival crap, but now...
"I see you there." Rosenfeld's voice had dropped to a low scrape. "Convent is the womb. Navel of the world. Axis mundi. Everyone dreams of that place. It's a door and the door goes both ways. I see you there, young lady. I see fire. See you screaming in the rain. Nothing but death and lies waiting for you."
Rosenfeld's eyes snapped open, fixing on Kimberly. "And that's all I got."
Kimberly's throat was so dry she couldn't reply. Smoke wended between them; the blood had burned down to a hard crust on the bottom of the porcelain bowl.
The bowl was tucked away, as was the safety pin, now wiped clean on Rosenfeld's sleeve. Kimberly watched the process in silent, horrified fascination. A prick of the skin, a rambling fortune teller... it was almost too theatrical.
And yet, she wanted to believe.
"Mrs Rosenfeld..."
Rosenfeld paused, still reattaching her shawl with the safety pin. "Mm?"
"I don't mean to be rude, honestly. Fitch says you're a seer, but I didn't see anything that I couldn't get for ten bucks in a carnival tarot booth."
Rosenfeld's spotted lips curled into a sly grin. "Suspicious girl. I like that. Pays not to trust. Let me lay it out plain: the Pentacost Convent is where arrivals get spit out. A door, and I've never seen a door where you can't step through both ways. You want to get home, that's your target. But I'm warning you, it's not gonna open just because you ask nice. No, this will take delicacy."
"You saw the future?"
"No such thing as the future. Just shades of possibilities. Nothing runs straight in this town, young lady. Especially not time. You'll understand that soon enough."
"So the fire, the screaming-"
"I know what you want me to say. Wish I could tell you one way or the other. All I know is maybes." She turned to Fitch, who was perched on the edge of the mattress, tense, unblinking. His left hand, the one with the nub of a sixth finger, was deep in the hip pocket of his coat. Kimberly could'
ve sworn she saw something squirming against the fabric, pressing taut into the stitches. "You ain't got nothing to contribute?"
Fitch didn't look up. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Figure you owe us an explanation either way. Who's the Queen?"
"Wish I knew. Not all the things I see make sense."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't care. You take what you get."
Fitch's lips were thin white lines. "The convent, huh? I always knew that place was bad. Looking at it across the river is like sucking on a loose tooth. Same as the tug I felt when you arrived," he said, looking to Kimberly. "Makes sense, now. Big old door. Who woulda thought?"
"This doesn't make any sense. You're telling me I walk in there and... what? Beam me up, Scotty?"
"Suppose you'll see once you're inside," Rosenfeld said. "Thing is, you rush in there, you won't be coming out in one piece. Not with all the crowbars and pipe bombs in the world. Yeah, I know what you got up to in here, Fitch. Don't think I can't smell it when you're telling me lies."
Fitch's hands tensed inside the pockets of his ragged coat. "You're not telling me what I need to hear."
"I didn't want you dead, Fitch. You've smelled the sickness. You know what's waiting in there. No, don't give me that face. I've stuck my neck out for you too many times. Lied to the police, and Lord knows that won't wash off easy. You owe me a bit of time and attention, you hear?"
Fitch ducked his head, and Kimberly could barely believe his mumbled apology. "Yes, Mrs Rosenfeld," like some primary-school kid being ordered to stand in the corner or risk detention. "Whatever you know, whatever'll help-"
"Listen, then. I can feel when someone's about to arrive, same as you. I get the tug so strong my heart's gonna pop. That's when the door opens. I can tell you when the feeling's coming in time for you to get to the convent. Take some binoculars, watch from a distance. Maybe you get a peek in the front doors, maybe you don't. But at least you get an idea of what you're up against, instead of playing the hero and getting your head torn off. Then we wait for another arrival. You learn a little more. Find a back way, some weakness."
Rust: Two Page 4
