Seven Threads

by Jason Fischer

  He knew the type, this man would rather send trouble on for others to deal with. He left the settler unharmed and unrobbed, and by Now standards that was almost friendly.

  Every now and then, Lanyard spotted bleed-throughs in the distance, a wall on its own with doors and windows, and once a melted skyscraper laying on its side like a great silver worm. There was a stretch of sealed road running parallel to the tradeway, complete with dead traffic lights and street-signs. Before-Time things made most folks nervous, even as they picked through them for scraps and trade. Had he the time, he’d have looked through himself, hoping he was the first to come along since they sprung out of the ground all twisted and funny looking.

  Lanyard was more nervous than most around the bleedthroughs. There were sinister creatures lurking in the grey spaces between Before and Now, monstrous beyond anything this land could offer. They were often drawn to these thin places, eager to snatch those fool enough to linger there.

  “Too many bleedthroughs round here,” Lanyard mumbled, wishing he’d kept some tobacco for himself. He was dying for a smoke. He touched the motor with the back of his hand, felt it heating up.

  There was a little breeze, enough to keep the skiff moving at walking pace, so he rigged up the sails and gave the old engine a rest.

  When he saw a whole row of Before-Time houses, joined together and intact, Lanyard swore. He fumbled for his swag, reached into the filthy bed-roll and pulled out a shotgun wrapped in oilskin. He’d killed old Bauer for this gun, graven with mark and word of the jesus.

  He could feel something there, lurking and watching him, not quite in this world but strong enough to break through. He felt all the usual signs, the crawling skin, throbbing joints and aching teeth. A witch.

  Not much could harm a witch, but this gun could drive the life out of one. It gave him comfort to hold that great metal cannon, till he remembered that he had no shells left.

  Lanyard yanked at the starter cord, ignoring the troubled whine of the engine and realised that the snake was the least of his problems.

  He may have been a witch-sniffer and the last of the jesusmen, but Lanyard Everett wasn’t fool enough to stay.

  #

  “You’re safe now,” Bauer called up to the town-men, huddling behind what they thought was a safe wall. The jesusman held up the severed head of a mad jenny, still snarling and snapping with yellowed fangs at the old man.

  Once people sang the praises of jesusmen across the Now, but a day came when people forgot their many good deeds. And they always, always remembered their one mistake.

  “Another mob gone feral,” Bauer explained after a frightened young lad brought them stale loaves and a handful of shrivelled turnips. Custom called for the towns to provision a jesusman and his prentice, but of late the fare had been poor, the gates always closed.

  “But we saved them,” young Lanyard said. He struggled with the shovel, trying to split the hard clay. The mad jenny screeched at him from under Bauer’s boot, her rotting face consumed with bestial rage.

  “These people, they’ve turned from the Jesus,” and Bauer said this name with the old respect. “If I had good sense I’d leave these wayward daughters to slaughter their fool parents.”

  While Bauer set up a camp-fire and brewed up a soup that would hopefully soften the bread, the prentice kept at his job. When the hole was deep enough he lined it with animal bones, something to distract what was left of the mad jenny’s head in the year or so it would take to die. This would be the final resting place for a little girl stolen from her bed, an innocent soul made into something else.

  “Here,” Bauer said, throwing the head across the campfire. Lanyard caught it by the lank greasy hair, held it clear before it could take a bite out of him.

  “Mark my words, lad,” Bauer said, poking at the bubbling mess in his billy-pot. “This is what happens when folks start casting bones for Papa Lucy and the Lady Bertha.”

  The time of the jesusman had passed, and Lanyard had been recruited right at the end of their glory days, right before the word itself came to mean outlaw and dead man.

  #

  He spotted the snake when it lifted its great head above a rock, its body undulating as it crawled out of a dead billabong. Perhaps it saw the light of the midday sun reflected from his field-glasses; the enormous serpent sank out of sight, waiting for him to move on. Lanyard had driven till it was so dark he couldn’t see the track, but now the snake was within a mile of his campfire. Grandfather must have been moving all day.

  “I need a rifle,” he mumbled. He’d scraped together enough tobacco crumbs to get a smoke going, a thin paper cylinder stuck to his bottom lip. It didn’t help his nerves any. The smoke trailed straight into the air, telling Lanyard what he already knew, that there was no wind at all.

  Tiring of the standoff, he tried to start the motor. It coughed once, twice, three times. Lanyard felt faint with panic. He pulled the ripcord, faster and faster. For a moment he thought it had worked, but it spluttered briefly and stalled.

  “Come on, come on,” Lanyard said. He lifted up the field glasses to see that the snake had abandoned its hiding place, was sliding across the baked earth towards the tradeway. It knew he was stranded.

  He thumbed the focus dial on his field-glasses and saw the ruin of the creature’s face, a great weeping hollow where its eye once was. Grandfather was furious.

  “Start! Damn dust-bound junk.” He ripped at the starter cord, again and again, the danger of the cord snapping outweighed by the approach of death swiftly gliding towards him.

  Then there was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard, the coughing and rattling of that bloody machine, and he was in the seat and racing away.

  “Get stuffed!” he called over his shoulder. The snake kept pace with him for a few moments, but gradually the gap widened until he could barely see the creature, a tiny dot somewhere behind him, tirelessly pursuing him.

  An hour later he saw the windfarm. Perhaps twenty or thirty windmills spun lazily atop a mesa, and the only way up to them was a steep switchback. He turned from the tradeway and took to the scrub, engine growling as he bounced across the rocks and through a field of spiky yakka. Lanyard had to get to the top of that mesa before the motor finally died, and hope he could drive off or kill the great serpent.

  He hit the first incline, a stretch that looked like it had been blasted out of the rock with dynamite. On the first tight turn, the motor sounded crook, like a handful of ball bearings were bouncing around inside. Lanyard squeezed the throttle to full, and the engine missed a beat, almost stalled.

  “Come on,” he moaned. Shifting the steer-stick left and right, he tried to climb the skiff over the loose scree and around the grooves of water run-offs. He was about half-way up when the motor gave a final death-rattle. Lanyard was out and running, the skiff rolling backwards and flipping over to bounce back down the hill, spilling his gear all over the place. He spared a glance to see that the wind-cart narrowly missed the snake, wriggling up the side of the mesa.

  Each breath burning in his lungs, Lanyard pounded up the pathway, praying that he wouldn’t snap an ankle or slip off the narrow switchback and into the mouth of Grandfather. He stopped dead, right near the top. Some stupid bugger had blocked the path with a crazy mess of tiger wire and chicken mesh, nailed to a great wooden frame.

  He swore, reaching for his gun. The snake would be on him in moments. It was tempting to put a bullet through his own stupid skull, but a last stand was more Lanyard’s style.

  Resigned to this end, he didn’t notice the sound of the frame shifting, a footstep behind him. He almost put a round through the old man’s head but he relaxed, smiled.

  “Get in here, you stupid man,” Thomas Cobbler said. “Bringing snakes right to my front door.”

  He helped the tinkerman shift the barricade back into place, and a few seconds later the snake was striking at it, great yellow fangs pulling at the mesh. The barrier wouldn’t hold it long, an
d it ignored the sting of the tiger-wire. Lanyard made to shoot it but Cobbler put a hand on his arm, pulled him back.

  “Save your bullets,” he said. “I’ve a better way.”

  He threw a lever and the snake convulsed violently, smoke and sparks filling the air. Lanyard saw a thick black cable reaching back from the gate, to a messy network of batteries and the wires which ran up each windmill.

  Cobbler turned the fence off. The snake fell from the wire, smoke pouring from its mouth.

  “Grandfather, you look stone cold dead,” Lanyard told the serpent, and the tinkerman looked at him strange. The limp weight of the monster snake dragged it down the hill, rolling and bouncing and smashing into rocks with horrific force till the last scaly coil vanished from sight.

  “Electricity,” Cobbler said, gesturing to the windmills. “Well, Mister Lanyard Everett. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “It sure has,” Lanyard said, holding his gun against the tinkerman’s temple.

  #

  He’d only been a year in Bauer’s service when he murdered his master. One minute they’d been sitting around a cook-fire, and Bauer had been telling stories of people he’d once known. All dead now.

  What with the comraderie of camping in the outdoors and the prospect of the juicy critter roasting on a spit, Lanyard was almost surprised to find himself cradling a jagged stone in his hands. He leapt across the cook-fire, knocking the meat into the ashes, and wrestling with the old man he drove the rock into Bauer’s skull again and again.

  Finally the jesusman was dead, his face a bloody ruin, his body bent and broken across the log they’d both dragged over for a seat.

  “I can’t do it,” Lanyard sobbed, the rock sliding out of his fingers. “Can’t do it anymore.”

  During the struggle old Bauer had snatched up his jesusman’s shotgun, a holy weapon the likes of which would never be made again in this world. But he was holding it by the barrel, not the stock. Even at his bloody end, it seemed that he was offering his prentice the weapon. A gift.

  Lanyard had killed a man once before, but felt filthy with the shame of this cowardly act. He knew what was to come. An endless parade of monsters would still sniff him out, know him for a jesusman and an enemy. At that moment, Lanyard realised that this bloody freedom had truly brought him nothing.

  Lanyard prised away the dead man’s fingers, and gripped the enormous gun. It was heavy, and the gun felt cold and mean.

  #

  “I can’t fix it,” Cobbler complained, throwing down a spanner with disgust. “Motor’s burnt right out.”

  “Well you figure a way of fixing it, else you’ll be towing me where we’re going,” Lanyard told him. He’d put the gun away hours ago, the threat established. He was much quicker than the old tinkerman and they both knew it.

  “You bastard. I shouldn’t help you. Snake will come get us both soon enough.” There’d been no dead serpent down the bottom, just a bloody trail leading through the yakka.

  “That’s no way to speak to an old friend,” Lanyard said, and the old man grizzled to himself and tinkered with the outboard. Finally he stripped the whole thing from its housing and dumped it on the ground.

  “Useless,” he said. “Just a wind-cart now, unless you got another motor in your swag.”

  Cobbler had a horse and buggy for when he did his rounds of the farms and the shacks, because “tinkermen know better than to rely on bleedthrough gadgets”. The animal was well-fed and strong; Lanyard decided it was his now. Cobbler went into the buggy, trussed tightly. His stores were full of tins scavenged by grateful settlers and Lanyard took the lot. He found and discarded the old man’s rifle, a rusty old .303 that was missing the bolt, but with joy he pocketed a few shotgun shells found in the mountains of junk.

  “Last I heard you were running grog to the natives,” Cobbler said as they rode up the tradeway. “Gareth boot you out of his little enterprise?”

  “Something like that,” Lanyard said.

  “A long way from Riverland to Inland. A long way to break town-law. You know they’ll hang you for touching a tinkerman.”

  “I don’t go into the towns much,” Lanyard said.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Man with a bag of coin. Shut your mouth.”

  Lanyard kept the horse at a good clip, hoping that the snake was too wounded to follow at its usual mile-eating pace. Cobbler’s horse was a fine animal, well-behaved and sturdy. He made sure to rest it several times a day, and gave it as much water as it could guzzle.

  Lanyard had lashed the frame of the motorless skiff to the back of the buggy, its rear wheels bouncing along behind them. He’d too much attachment to the wind-cart to junk it in the middle of nowhere.

  “Look there,” Cobbler said. One moment they were looking on a stretch of cracked red clay, the next a misshapen slice of building pierced the earth, one corner of a broken gable pointing angrily at the sky. The pie-shaped section of building swayed but didn’t fall. A bleedthrough.

  “Go on, you back-stabbing bastard,” Cobbler raved as Lanyard halted the horse. “I hope it falls on top of you.”

  “You know, Cobbler, I’d gag you but I like the company,” Lanyard said with false cheer. He felt wrong all over, and knew that this was a possible crossing point. There was the hint of something nearby, perhaps a distant pair of eyes watching.

  “Paranoid,” he said, but broke out the jesusman’s shotgun just the same, primed both barrels. He now had one round left in his pocket and hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  “Only a mug passes up good forage,” Lanyard told Cobbler, and ignoring the twisted door he stepped through an open wall and into the past.

  It might have been a book-store, or a library. Shelf upon shelf of books, here in the Now where one book was worth more than a man’s life. Lanyard knew his letters but not much more. He grabbed a fat handful of books, tucked them under his arm.

  “A bloody fortune,” he said.

  “Jesusman,” he heard in his head, the mind-raping static of a witch. He dropped the books, pointed the gun left and right.

  “You’re a cunning one,” Lanyard managed. It was almost there, watching him from its grey nest, in between all worlds and times. Hungry.

  “Show yourself,” Lanyard said. “I’ve mark and word and I’ll shoot you deader than dead.”

  There was laughter, the witchy kind that made him want to tear his brain out of his skull, and then the sensation of the creature withdrawing.

  #

  Lanyard spent many years trying to understand why he betrayed a good man. It might have made sense had Bauer been a monster, had he been anything but a doomed holdover from a kinder age. It was the most pointless of murders.

  Perhaps it was fear that first set Lanyard on this dark path, from wretch to hero to killer. Fear of not living up to the old man’s legacy, fear of an endless invisible army that he as a jesusman was fated to struggle against. Knowing that no-one cared anymore, that the jesusmen were finished.

  Even then Lanyard must have known that he could not run from his master, any more than he could run from his own nature. Bauer’s murder was a futile attempt to escape from himself.

  All that was left to him now were lonely days, his only company the hungry monsters that came for him. Seems that Bauer had given him more than a gun, a trade to ply. He’d passed on this most certain legacy, the promise of a violent, lonely end.

  #

  “There,” Lanyard said, pointing at the beacon. The natives had crafted these by arts unknown, glass spires that littered all the lands from Riverland to Inland and perhaps further. By day they drew in the sunlight, and when night fell they lit the old ways. This spire was old, and gave a sickly red glow like the dying embers of a campfire.

  A man was waiting there for them, and Lanyard knew he’d been checking the tradeway every night, just before dusk. A crooked man if ever he saw one, wearing a patchwork outfit of rags with a neat new waistcoat over the whole mess. He
had a necklace of finger bones and gave them a gap-toothed grin.

  “You Lanyard?” he said, and Lanyard nodded. The crooked man looked into the buggy, saw Cobbler all tied up. He licked his lips and rubbed at his crotch, and the tinkerman let out a terrified moan.

  “Good, you brung him. Follow me,” and the man picked up a rusty old bicycle from behind the spire. There was a little track running off from the tradeway, and the man pedalled down it, waiting for them at the first rise.

  “You monster,” Cobbler sobbed. “You’re giving me to a crooked mob.”

  “I’d like to say it’s just business. But I have my reasons, tinkerman. A little coin in the right hands and I heard whispers, that it was you led that town-patrol to us. There’s blood on your hands, Cobbler.”

  Cobbler could say nothing because Lanyard was absolutely correct, he had crossed the wrong people and now it had caught up with him. Lanyard clicked his tongue and the horse walked forward, following the trail.

  Their guide led them through a salt-flat, the trail punctuated by the occasional skeleton. There was no good land for miles, and no reason anyone would want to be here.

  Except for the bleedthroughs. Lanyard had never seen so many. Before-Time buildings poked out of the dead ground at random intervals, but grew thicker and thicker until twisted ruins surrounded them. Wary, Lanyard lay the jesusman gun across his lap, watching for trouble. The goat track they were following sometimes ran across Before-Time roads, the horse’s shoes ringing against the rippled bitumen.

  As dusk gave way to night the big yellow moon made the ruins along the horizon look like a mouthful of crooked teeth. He could see campfires.

  “That’s our mob,” said the fellow on the bicycle, eyeing off Lanyard’s shotgun. “Better put your gun away mate.”

  They reached the camp, a collection of shanties and lean-tos on the edge of a great salt-lake, everything a curdled-milk colour under the light of that sickly moon.