The surface of the marble ripples. A face forms, teeth dancing toward her fingers. She opens her mouth to scream. All that emerges is the low and mournful wail of a distant horn.
Gillian wakes up with a dry gasp. She’s sitting upright, head against the upholstered side of a two-seat bench, her fingers tangled against her throat. Everything in the small private cabin vibrates with each turn of the wheels below. She can tell by the strange quality of the light seeping through the curtain that it’s late in the day, but how late, she doesn’t know. She feels unmoored from the world, adrift. Go back down…. Gillian pulls one stiff hand away from her chin and reaches underneath her dress. Not surprisingly, the fabric is damp. Not even in the mines, when she was so young, so terrified, did she—no. She could sit here and wallow in shame, but keeping busy means she won’t think about the dream, the places it leads her.
In the cramped cabin space, Gillian slips out of her clammy dress and undergarments and shoves them into the small porcelain basin in the lavatory, then pats the upholstered seat down with a towel. She contemplates throwing the dress away, but instead wrings it out and hides it with the towels—she didn’t bring many clothes, and doesn’t want to run the chance of a porter discovering it. The time on the clock by the door tells her she’s slept most of the day away. No matter—she slipped several pieces of fruit and pastry from the Club Room into her pockets. Not that stealing is second nature to her; but survival is.
Two soft knocks at the door. Gillian looks around the cabin: wet dress hidden, new dress on self, blankets piled on seat—she smells her palms. Nothing but soap. She remembers the dream, what her hands did to Shattuck. She stares at all the scars and calluses, mesmerized. What’s underneath that tortured skin that she doesn’t yet know about? She turns her hands around, to inspect the ragged crescents of her nails. All of them, black with dried blood. It takes her a second of horror to remember they’ve always looked like that, stained like stray shards of coal.
Another knock, sharp and insistent. “Gillian?” It’s Emanuel.
“Sorry—come in.”
The door cracks open, and Emanuel’s face appears. “You slept through lunch. I came by earlier, but you were out like a light.”
“I know. We were up so early, and we didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“You changed.”
“I fell asleep in the other dress. It was all wrinkled.”
“Come on.” Emanuel holds out his hand. “I want you to meet our third party.”
“Let me put on my gloves first.”
“What do you need gloves for?”
“My hands are a mess. I want to look proper for once.”
From front to back, the train is largely empty. They were last to board, and Gillian had assumed all the other passengers were already seated, her only explanation for the empty platform beside the train. She was wrong. Empress of Devastation is not an ordinary train. There are few coach cars with general seating, most are made of compartments like hers, interspersed with bench-lined private rooms for four or six passengers. The rooms are as dark as the unlit hallways and appear equally empty, but as Gillian’s eyesight adjusts, she spies movement behind the glass doors, or the flame of a small candle illuminating a body or two. Two of the cars they pass through have no seats at all, only odd-shaped, shallow depressions in their windowless carapaces. It profoundly disturbs her, this silence and lack of light cocooned inside each segment of the rushing machine, this lack of humanized space. It reminds her too much of the mines.
Emanuel pulls a cloth mask up over his mouth and nose before opening the last door. She does the same—there’s no need for their heavy ventilators on the train, but this last car doesn’t have a covered connection. He opens the door, nodding for her to go ahead. The gritty, cinder-sparked air hits them like the bellows of a blast furnace. “She’s expecting you,” he shouts over the noise. “I’ve already seen her, so I’ll wait right here!”
“You’re not even going to introduce me?”
“She wants to see you alone!”
Gillian furrows her brow, but he offers no further explanation. The door across the platform offers no clues, its single window masked in curtaining. “Go on, you’ll be fine,” is all he says, and steps back, closing the door. She stands alone on the quaking metal platform between the cars. Beyond the grime-caked railings, the filth and sleaze of the Trestle District rushes below the tracks in a river of brick and gaslight, while freight trains roar overhead them all, sending smoke and ash raining down through the shaking layers of buildings like snow. She grips the rail and leans over. Ten stories down, the slums rush past at full throttle, a tangled mess of tightly-packed tenements and streets clogged with human and mechanical traffic. Despite the charcoal lining in her mask, whiffs of gasoline, manure and smoke seep into her lungs. An unidentified piece of trash bounces off her cheek—Gillian steps back, taking it as her cue to go inside before she loses an eye. She grabs at the large copper handle, barely able to keep a firm grip. On the third tug, the door slides open, and she stumbles through, tripping over the metal guard as the door slams shut behind her. The world now somewhat muted, Gillian pulls down her mask.
The first thing she notices is that the car is far narrower than any of the others, by almost half, giving it the effect of a slightly larger hallway rather than a true passenger car. The space is gutted, empty save for an iron box in the center, similar in shape and size to a child’s coffin. Each corner of the lid has a hook and chain fastened to it: all four chains meet in a pyramid halfway to the ceiling, merging into one that continues, presumably, through and out the roof. In front of the box sits a large block of Onyx Camello. It is uncarved.
A pale hand at the far end of the car motions for her to come closer. Gillian barely makes out two figures, seated in chairs at the back. Green curtains are drawn across each of the long windows, giving the car the appearance of an aquarium, or those tanks at a carnaval she took Jasper to many years ago, with women floating in gallons of algae-choked scum, acting out underwater fantasies of mermaiden consorts bound and wed to the Great Dreamer. As with the carnaval tank, there are no lights in here, only the slow creep of light and shadow, the illusion of movement and life and a story where there is none. She tries to give the box a wide berth, but there’s little room, and a faint, unfamiliar odor of chemicals hits her lungs as she sidles past it. Whatever is inside, it burns.
A curious, familiar squishing sound rises and falls, accompanied by the definite scent of ocean water. From the back of the car, a young, pale-skinned man in an ill-fitting suit emerges from the gloom, squeezing the spray bottle trigger every several seconds to let the saline mist float across the aisle onto the bulging, coelacanthic face of the other figure, the third member of their team: a woman, a chimera, a grotesque. Gillian stops, her mouth open in soft shock. She has heard of Obsidia’s newer residents, half human and half something else, dredged up from the ocean along with the pieces of their reassembling city, but thought it might be only more fantastical rumors, so hard to tell apart from fantastical truth. This creature sitting before her and gaping with puffed, wet lips, is the truth.
“Emanuel sent me.”
The chimera blinks. Eyes like cenotes, perfect circles in the jungle of her flesh, pure fathomless grey, like winter clouds. She’s blind, Gillian realizes—or at the least, what the creature is capable of seeing lies beyond the sight of any human. Gillian imagines pushing her finger right through the jellied surface all the way to her last knuckle and never reach the curving wall of the skull, that those eyes only start in the surface of the chimera’s face, but end someplace beyond the ends of time itself. Gillian grabs her twitching fingers in a tight vise, holding them close to her breast. The creature, perhaps, influencing her thoughts. Why else would she think such a thing?
“If you’re waiting for her to say something, she doesn’t speak.” The young man puts down the spray bottle, and begins cracking the joints of his knobby fingers. “At least, very rar
ely. It’s difficult enough for her to breath, let alone form words. Not unless—well, you know.” He picks up the bottle again, and begins spraying the chimera’s face.
Gillian steps forward. “Yes, I was told. My name is Gillian Jessamine.”
The man looks up, a slight smirk on his face. “I know who you are. We know all about you. Emanuel told us.”
Gillian feels the heat rising in her cheeks. “Really.”
“You bring the body of God to life.” He points to the woman’s lap. Gillian leans forward, and her curiosity transforms: the chimera’s crooked, elongated fingers hold the square of marble she carved for Emanuel last night, tracing the outline of the leaf in endless repetition. Repulsion washes through Gillian’s frame. It’s as if she’s watching the chimera fondle a piece of her innermost self.
“I carve headstones and markers. I’m an artisan.”
“So that’s what you call it.” He waits, as if expecting her to challenge his comment, then sets the bottle into a satchel at his feet. His hair is long, the color and consistency of dirty straw and tied in a tail at the back of his neck. Gillian notes the jagged half-moons of his nails, the permanent smudges in the creases of his face.
“What mine were you at?”
“What?” He rummages through the satchel, not looking back at her.
“I worked in Gwaunclawdd, then transferred to Anthracite Internacional. Didn’t you used to work in the mines, too?”
“Sorry.” He flashes her a stiff, tight smile. “Don’t know what gave you that idea. I’ve never been anywhere underground, not even a basement.”
“Ah. My mistake.” Gillian studies him. His pallor isn’t Welsh ancestry, it’s lack of sun: he fairly glitters with anthracite embedded under his skin. He’s never worn a suit before, she realizes. An underground animal, dressed up as a human being. Gillian knows exactly what that looks like. She saw it in mirrors and window panes for years. But she never lied about her origins. He’s right, he’s no miner. That only means he’s something else.
“Here, put this on.” The man holds out a respirator—a full face mask, with the goggles attached.
“There aren’t any straps.”
“It’s a newer model. It doesn’t need straps, you just place it against your face. Go on.”
Gillian doesn’t move. The man’s eyes narrow, but instead of pressing the point, he stands and places it on the vacated seat. “Well, it’s here if you want it. She’ll speak to you when I leave.”
“What about the water?” Gillian points to the satchel, now under his arm. “Do you need me to spray her face?”
“No, she can’t use it while she’s working. It impedes her abilities.”
“Her psychic abilities? I didn’t know water could—”
The man cuts her off. “She’s not a psychic.”
“Then what’s her ability?”
“What’s yours?”
Neither of them speak. Finally, he turns and walks down the car to the door. Gillian watches him leave, not sure if she should be relieved. When the door swings shut, she picks up the respirator and sits down. The chimera stares at her, mouth opening and closing with soft pops. Her breath sounds raspy and labored.
“Are you—is it difficult for you to breathe in this air? I’m sorry, he left with your squirting bottle—” Gillian points in the direction of the door. The chimera shrugs, and shakes her head. A short bark erupts from her chest—is she laughing? Gillian allows herself a sort of half-smile in return. “Yes, he seemed a bit absentminded, didn’t he? Rather strange.” Her words feel self-conscious; they drop out of her mouth like birds hitting the ground. Is this how women sound when they have conversations with each other? She’s never had a woman friend, so it’s difficult to know—although, this hardly seems such a moment of intimate female camaraderie, and the creature before her is no woman.
The chimera coughs again—she wasn’t laughing. A thread of drool spools out of her mouth and hits her flat breasts. She’s dressed in a plain belted smock that’s almost transparent, and Gillian notices the mottled flesh, the strange configurations of bones straining against the bruised skin, as if ready to split it wide open. The rheumy fog of her eyes isn’t just blindness, but malnutrition, dehydration, disease. She’s dying, but Gillian can’t stop staring into the creature’s ink eyes.
“I disthgust you.”
“No—no, not at all! I didn’t mean to stare, I’m just concerned for you, that you’re all right.”
“Ith’s all righdt.” The chimera raises her hands, a gesture dripping with futility, and a touch of self-deprecation. “Honesthly, I disthgust myselph.”
“No.” Gillian is emphatic. “You do not disgust me at all. I’m—I just—I don’t know how to help you—” The breath hitches out of Gillian’s lungs, along with sentences spilling from her mouth in a rush of nerves. “I used to work in the mines, and sometimes they’d have me dress the wounds because I’m a girl, but even then I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right, everyone screamed no matter what. I used a sewing needle, just a regular needle. It was horrible. Even when I was in accidents, and the mine fire, no one could help me, and I didn’t know what to do.” Gillian presses her hand against her forehead. Some strange emotion is building behind her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“S’all righd.” A hand more like a fin slips onto Gillian’s tight fist, resting on her shaking knee. The chimera pats her gently, smiling. She has few teeth. “S’all righd. You are doing fighn. You are fighn.”
“I’m doing fine,” Gillian echoes her. “Doing fine. I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Whadth elsthe happendth in the mineths?”
Empress of Devastation roars down the tracks, pulling cars and rolling stock behind her like a widow’s veil. Once again, Gillian feels her heart fall into sync with the beat of the engines. Hot tears roll into her mouth, and the salt stirs primordial memories. The chimera’s eyes open wider. Her breath is the ocean, and all the little secrets of Gillian’s life are floating up, up from the benthic deep into the naked waves, cresting and tumbling.
“I was a year younger than my son Jasper is now when I got pregnant. A foreman led me into one of the dead tunnels of Anthracite Internacional, where I canaried for methane and carbon dioxide. He knocked me up hard and good. I was barely twelve, but I wanted it, I was able, I knew what I was doing. Pregnant women aren’t allowed in the mines, and if I ever wanted out, it’d have to be with child, or in a burlap sack sewn shut like a sack of coal. I’d already been with some of the miners, boys my age or a little older, just fooling around. You know. But the foreman. I fixed on like a star. I can’t—I can’t describe him, I hardly remember his face, or if he even had one. He was an obscenity. But it was like fucking a mountain. Like fucking the world. He could read the rock as well as me, he always knew where to find the thickest seams. There was gossip that he had a touch of grotesque in him. Maybe that’s what drew me to him, some bit of unreadable earth running through his veins. I never saw him after that, after that one time. I kept away from him. His mouth—I didn’t want him to find out. I gave birth down there. I never told Jasper. I took my son and left everything else behind.”
“Whathd elthe did you leaphe behinthd?”
It’s like her old dream. Following the rails into the tunnel, into blissful, endless night.
“Blood. Placenta. Bits of flesh. She was already dead. There was nothing I could do.”
“Dithd you giphe her a nambe?”
“Peridot, green for the leaves. Peridot Addiena. She came out first. I left her in the stones.”
The box chains rattle, grow taut. The spell broken, Gillian sags over her lap, and lets out a ragged breath. Just a little ways further in, and she would have been there. But where?
“Don’ be scarethd.” The chimera releases her hand, and sits back in her seat. “Justh puth on thad—” she points to the respirator “—anthd sith there. I’ll be fighn.
”
“Why should I be scared? What’s going to happen?”
“You tolth me the truth of yourthelph. Ith’s my thurn now.”
“To tell the truth of yourself?”
To tell the truth of you.
The chains slide down, draping over the lid: and then rise in a screeching clatter, taking the slack and the lid to the ceiling. As the car turns red from the light of bright flames, the chimera leans forward, breathing in the fumes.
Gillian has no time to react: she places the respirator against her face. At once, she feels the edges seal against her skin, locking it in place with a prickling heat. Four sharp jabs make her cry out in pain, but the heavy filters mute the sound. She opens her eyes, blinking the tears away as she adjusts to the smoky glass of the goggles. The iron box appears as a blur, thin liquid bubbling and popping inside. Gasoline, perhaps, or a fine grade of oil, it’s hard to tell. The heat, she can feel, and the air undulates in waves as fumes flood the room; but there’s no trace of smoke. Gillian touches the two round appendages of the mask where the charcoal filters sit, and takes a deep breath. No trace of chemicals enters her lungs—not that it would harm her, if it did. Nonetheless, Gillian feels her breathing grow shallow. “I’m sorry,” she says, unsure if she can be heard behind the weight of the respirator. She backs away from the chimera, slow and deliberate. “I can’t stay here. I have to get out.”
Stop, the chimera speaks in a marble-cold voice—Haveli Selwara, to be precise. The creature’s pupils contract, and Gillian sees new colors form in her eyes, traces of gold Alimoglu Travertine.
You have abilities you have not yet mined.
Shapes form and move behind the green curtains, as though ghosts hover outside the car, surrounding it an unbroken chain.
You are the distinct line through P that does not intersect I.
Light spills into the car from all sides as the green curtains slither up into folds at the top of the ceiling. Outside, in the ash-colored evening air, the Trestle District rushes past, choking in electrical wires and steel girders, barely visible beyond the glare of electrical lights pouring through the glass. A car within a car, Gillian realizes—the smaller one surrounded by a brightly-lit walkway created between the two nesting carriages. Men and women line the walkway, observing her. She cannot see their faces. They appear only as masked silhouettes, sinister bodies without human mouths or eyes. Gillian wonders if Emanuel is among them, then stops herself. No, she does not wonder at all.
Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors Page 22
