Horribly, he was not alone in his silent hemorrhaging.
Blinking away blood and sweat as he pushed back against the moss-covered stone and struggled to his feet, he saw that the wall he had slammed into was wet. Reaching out, he ran his fingers down the rock. When he drew them back, they were sticky and sopping. Not with water—it had not rained all day, and it had not rained while he had been underground.
His fingers were covered with more blood. Blood that was not his. It was then that he understood. The walls were not weeping.
They were bleeding.
Eyes wide, holding his gore-soaked hand out away from his body as if mere contact with it would irrevocably find him completely coated with the thick, dark, alien fluid, he struggled to his feet. The moon was rising fast, fast enough to enable him to see the courtyard, the central buildings, and the enclosing inner walls without the aid of his dropped flashlight. Everywhere he could see, the ancient, laboriously worked masonry was soaking wet. Every surface leaked dark red fluid. It oozed from crevices between the stones, bubbled lugubriously from pits in the courtyard, flowed in rivulets and pinched waterfalls from the cornices and carvings that decorated the main structures.
Blood soaked the buildings, pooled up in the stable, filled the fissures and clefts in the paving stones. Ancient blood, but not forgotten. It was the thick liquid ghost of all the blood that had been shed in this place down through the centuries. As it spread outward to submerge the courtyard in all its salty crimson wetness, the chains continued to hump and writhe their way toward him through the rising liquid. Some continued to rise up like snakes, but others—others formed different shapes.
Behind him, a pair of small shackles near the ground connected by chains to another pair higher up were attached in turn to a much larger shackle in the center where—a head might fit, he realized in horror. That was when understanding struck him through all the blood and noise, terror and night, in which he had become engulfed.
Lives and labor and treasure had not been expended to raise this fortress deep in the jungle to protect trade in gold, or in diamonds, or even in ivory. Castles, the European exploiters and their chiefly native allies had euphemistically called such places. Perhaps to mask the real purpose for which they had been constructed. They had been built to protect, yes. As well as to guard and regulate and look after the most valuable trade commodity of them all.
Slaves.
He could hear the other sounds now. They were soft and subtle and almost imperceptible, but he could hear them. The hopeless whisperings, the agonized moans, the desperate final cries that rose above the clanking and rattling of the pursuing chains. The echoes of the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, who had been brought this way, manacled together at the feet and at the neck on their long, sad, one-way march to the waiting distant sea. Torn from their villages by war or raiding parties only to be held here until the time came to send them in armed convoy to the coast. There they would be packed aboard ships bound for Brazil, for the islands of the Caribbean, for the south of North America, never to return. Many would never make it. They would perish from disease or malnutrition or overcrowding during the horrific Middle Passage. Many would not even get that far.
Instead, they would die here, crammed together in subterranean pens of stone and iron, asphyxiated by their comrades in the nightmarish heat and the unimaginable stench of the dungeons. No wonder Yacouba had not wanted to come that last half mile. No wonder he had not wanted to walk those final yards. No wonder.
Cort forced himself to turn, to stay upright. Surely Yacouba had not fled at the sound of Shelly’s screams. Surely not! Yacouba would still be waiting for him in the camp in the forest. Once he was free of the noisome walls and beyond their suffocating stone grasp, he would finally heed the wise counsel of his knowing guide. They would not stay anywhere near here, proximate to this hellhole of horror and death, but would use the light of the moon to lead them away. Across the nearest river, however far that might lie, yes. There they could finally rest, safely distant from the flesh-crawling moaning and the unyielding iron and the weeping, bleeding walls. Shelly—poor broken, dead Shelly—in the darkness below, she had fallen into a pit and broken her neck, he would tell the authorities. Yacouba would corroborate the explanation. Yacouba would not question. Yacouba would go along with anything that let them flee this place and collect the rest of his fee.
Cort went down for the second time just as he emerged outside the gaping portal.
The shackle that snapped shut around his right ankle was attached to a chain whose individual hot-forged links were as thick as sausages. Whining like a trapped dog, he pulled at it frantically until his already bleeding fingers were torn and raw, and more than one nail hung loose and bloody. As he dug at the first chain, a second manacle clamped tight around his left wrist and contracted, dragging him backward while practically lifting him off his feet. The back of his head bounced when it hit the unyielding pavement.
Vision blurring, he looked up and managed to half-focus on the yellow circle of the rising moon. Something blotted it out. It was a heavy neck shackle, four inches wide and half an inch thick, solid wrought iron, supported in an upright position by a coil of bloody black chain. Below it, other chains extended off to left and right. The silhouette they formed was nearly recognizable as that of a human body, a representation in hovering, twisting, restraining iron that stood as a symbol for the thousands who had passed this way, long ago.
The chain that was now secured to his right wrist pulled hard. Very hard. Cort screamed as his shoulder was dislocated. Rolling, moaning Yacouba’s name, he tried to crawl back toward the beckoning gateway. In contrast to the intrusive slaving castle that was a hulking artificial blot on the landscape, the fetid surrounding jungle now seemed innocent, pristine, pure. It tempted him. It smelled of refuge.
Another shackle clamped shut around his left ankle. Chains snapped taut. He felt himself being pulled backward along the ground, across the hard stones, his unwilling passage lubricated by a layer of blood that was not wholly his own. He tried to dig the tips of his raw fingers into the ground, but the rock allowed for no such purchase. The gateway receded in his vision, growing smaller and smaller in the moonlight as his sobbing, desperate form was dragged back into the castle.
From high above, the moon looked down, its soft light glistening off the dark liquid that now pooled freely in the open courtyard, shining on the back of the single screaming figure that was being pulled inexorably across the stones toward a single dark, arched opening in the inner wall. The moon had been witness to such sights for hundreds of years and knew that no one escaped from such a place. One could only be marched out, single file, and that sorrowful spectacle had not been played out beneath its glow for a very long time indeed.
The legs of the figure disappeared into that dark, unfeeling maw. Then the torso, then the head. A last hopeless howl accompanied the disappearance of arms and hands and finally fingers. All movement within the ancient castle walls ceased. Except for the weeping. And the bleeding.
As long as the walls stood, it would never stop.
* * * *
[Author’s note: The description of northeastern Gabon derives from some time I spent in the Ivindo region of that wonderful, underpopulated country. As for the castle itself, it is based on visits made to actual slave castles in Ghana, particularly Cape Coast Castle. Not so beautiful . . . but instructive. The low entrances, living quarters, chains, shackles, overhead grate, sunless corridors described in the story are, I regret to say, all too real.]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to the following:
Publisher: Joe Monti for acquiring and editing the book, and to managing editor Jeannie Ng, production lead Elizabeth Blake-Linn, and the rest of the team at Saga Press.
Art/Design: Special thanks to Mike Mignola for providing an original cover illustration. You were the only artist we could envision handling the cover and the fact that you took time out of your s
chedule to make this happen has taken this project to a whole new level. Thanks also to Michael McCartney for adding in the beautiful design elements, and to Matthew Kalamidas for talking to Mike Mignola on our behalf.
Proofreader: Amanda Velosa.
Agent: Seth Fishman, for getting behind this incredibly whacky project midstream and running with it like the superagent he is. To any writers out there, you’d be lucky to have Seth in your corner.
Special thanks: to Jaym Gates, one of the original coeditors on this project. Other commitments forced her to drop out before the anthology found its ultimate home, but her contributions early on should not and will not be overlooked. Jaym, thanks so much for all the time and effort you put into this book. Any other editor would be lucky to coedit a book with you. Thanks also to Theodora Goss and Livia Llewellyn, who were part of the original random conversation on Facebook that sparked the idea for this book. And thanks too to Ken Liu and Ken Schneyer for taking time out of their schedules to pontificate upon legal matters.
Mentors: John thanks Gordon Van Gelder and Ellen Datlow for being great mentors and friends. Doug thanks Jeanne Cavelos, Shawna McCarthy, and Warren Lapine for exactly the same. We couldn’t have done this without your tutelage.
Family: John thanks his amazing wife, Christie; his stepdaughters, Grace and Ltte; his mom, Marianne; and his sister, Becky, for all their love and support. Doug thanks his parents, Joyce and Gary, and his brother, Brian, for exactly the same.
Friends: Robert Bland, Desirina Boskovich, Christopher M. Cevasco, Matt and Jordan London, David Barr Kirtley, Nicole Mikoleski, Jesse Sneddon, and Michael Spensieri, for being there for us when we’re anthologizing, and for putting up with us when we nattered about the project incessantly.
Readers: John and Doug both thank all the readers and reviewers of this anthology, as well as the readers and reviewers who loved our other anthologies, making it possible to do more.
Doug would also like to extend a special thanks to his coeditor, John. It’s always a pleasure working with such a talented and professional friend, but being as you came into this project some months after it was already underway and contributed so many excellent ideas to make this book that much more awesome, your contributions are even more appreciated than usual. Thank you, John. I continue to admire your craft, drive, and dedication.
Writers: And last, but certainly not least: a big thanks to all of the authors who appear in this anthology.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
LAIRD BARRON is the author of several books, including The Croning, Occultation, and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. His work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in upstate New York.
DESIRINA BOSKOVICH’s (desirinaboskovich.com) short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Kaleidotrope, PodCastle, Drabblecast, and anthologies such as The Way of the Wizard, Aliens: Recent Encounters, and The Apocalypse Triptych. Her nonfiction pieces on music, literature, and culture have appeared in Lightspeed, Weird Fiction Review, Huffington Post, Wonderbook, and The Steampunk Bible. She is also the editor of It Came From the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction (Cheeky Frawg, 2013), and, together with Jeff VanderMeer, coauthor of The Steampunk User’s Manual (Abrams Image, 2014).
ADAM-TROY CASTRO’s twenty-six books to date include, among others, four Spider-Man novels, three novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and six middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of that very strange but very heroic young boy Gustav Gloom. The penultimate installment in the Gustav Gloom series, Gustav Gloom and the Inn of Shadows (Grosset and Dunlap), saw print in August 2015. The finale, in which Gustav and company complete their quest for his father and their epic battle against the forces of the vile Lord Obsidian, will appear in August 2016. Adam’s darker short fiction for grownups is highlighted by his most recent collection, Her Husband’s Hands and Other Stories (Prime Books). Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). He lives in Florida with his wife Judi and either three or four cats, depending on what day you’re counting and whether Gilbert’s escaped this week.
AMANDA DOWNUM is an American fantasy author currently living in Austin, Texas. She is most known for her Necromancer Chronicles: The Drowning City, The Bone Palace, and Kingdoms of Dust. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and Realms of Fantasy. She has been nominated for the James Tiptree Jr. Award and the Spectrum Award.
GEMMA FILES, a former film critic and teacher–turned–horror author, is probably best known for her Weird Western Hexslinger series (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns, and A Tree of Bones, all from ChiZine Publications). She has also published two short fiction collections (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart), two chapbooks of speculative poetry, and a story cycle (We Will All Go Down Together: Stories of the Five-Family Coven). In 1999, her story “The Emperor’s Old Bones” won the International Horror Guild’s Best Short Fiction Award. Her next novel, Experimental Film, is now available from CZP.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER is the bestselling author of more than a hundred and twenty novels, and is perhaps most famous for his Commonwealth series, which began in 1971 with the novel The Tar-Aiym Krang. His most recent series is the transhumanism trilogy the Tipping Point. Foster’s work has been translated into more than fifty languages and has won awards in Spain and Russia in addition to the United States. He is also well known for his film novelizations, the most recent of which is Star Trek Into Darkness. He is currently at work on several new novels and film projects.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN (christophergolden.com) is the New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Snowblind, Of Saints and Shadows, The Myth Hunters, The Boys Are Back in Town, Strangewood, and the thriller Tin Men. He has cowritten three illustrated novels with Mike Mignola, the first of which, Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, was the launching pad for the Eisner Award–nominated comic book series, Baltimore. His graphic novels include the Cemetery Girl trilogy, coauthored with Charlaine Harris. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies The New Dead, The Monster’s Corner, and Dark Duets, among others. Golden has also written and cowritten comic books, video games, screenplays, and a network television pilot. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world.
SIMON R. GREEN lives in a small town in the English countryside, and has written over fifty novels, including the Deathstalker books (space opera), the Secret Histories (featuring Shaman Bond, the very secret agent), the Nightside series (a private eye who operates in the Twilight Zone, solving cases of the weird and uncanny), the Ghost Finders series (traditional ghost stories in a modern setting), and the Ishmael Jones mysteries (Agatha Christie with a weird touch). His first film, Judas Ghost, has just appeared on DVD. He’s going to take a rest any time now.
MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY (mariadahvanaheadley.com) is the author of the young adult skyship novel Magonia from HarperCollins, the novel Queen of Kings, the memoir The Year of Yes, and coauthor with Kat Howard of the short horror novella The End of the Sentence. With Neil Gaiman, she is the New York Times–bestselling coeditor of the monster anthology Unnatural Creatures, benefitting 826DC. Her Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards–nominated short fiction has recently appeared in Lightspeed (“Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream,” “The Traditional”), on Tor.com, The Toast, Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Apex Magazine, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Subterranean Online, Uncanny, Glitter & Mayhem, and Jurassic London’s The Lowest Heaven and The Book of the Dead, as well as in a number of Year’s Bests, most recently Year’s Best Weird. She lives in Bro
oklyn with a collection of beasts, an anvil, and a speakeasy bar through the cellar doors. Find her on her website or on Twitter at @mariadahvana.
GRADY HENDRIX has written about the confederate flag for Playboy Magazine, terrible movie novelizations for Film Comment, and both Jean-Claude Van Damme AND ninja death swarms for Slate. He’s covered machine gun collector conventions, written award shows for Chinese television, and spent years answering the phone for a parapsychological research organization. His stories about UFO cults, killer Chinese parasites, Cthulhu dating your mom, and super-genius apes have appeared in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Pseudopod, and The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination. He is the author of Horrorstör, about a haunted IKEA, and in 2016 his second novel, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, will be available.
NANCY HOLDER (nancyholder.com) is a New York Times bestselling author (The Wicked Saga) of approximately eighty novels and two hundred short stories, essays, and articles. She has received five Bram Stoker Awards, a Scribe Award, and a Young Adult Pioneer Award. Recent works include The Rules (Delacorte, June 2015) and Demons of the Hellmouth, coauthored with Rupert Giles (Titan Books, September 2015). She is the vice president of the Horror Writers Association, and a member of the faculty for the MFA in Creative Writing program offered through the University of Southern Maine. A columnist for SFWA and the HWA, she also writes and edits comic books and graphic novels for Moonstone Books. She lives in San Diego. Tweet her at @nancyholder.
JOHN LANGAN is the author of three collections: Sefira and Other Betrayals (Hippocampus 2016), The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (Hippocampus 2013), and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime 2008). He has written a novel, House of Windows (Night Shade 2009), and, with Paul Tremblay, coedited an anthology, Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (Prime 2011). He lives with his wife and younger son in upstate New York.
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