Across the Spectrum

by Nagle, Pati

  Inside, where there should have been pews, dead folks danced.

  Rotting hands reached across the reel line for the ladies’ chain. Soiled silks rustled as the torn shoes kicked up to balance and came down to swing. The stench of it all hit harder than the grisly scene.

  The caller’s moaning voice prickled across Jenny’s skin.

  “Sashay down the center and back!” wailed the caller. “All join hands and circle four!”

  The dancing corpses circled round and parted. Jenny saw the caller standing where the pulpit should have been. New shock rocked her back. Reverend Cook stooped there, shaking as he blurted out the dance figures for the dead.

  “Everybody swing!” called Reverend Cook, and everybody did. The smell of rotten meat filled the air until there was nothing left to breathe, and Jenny’s tongue shoved itself back and forth inside her mouth trying to clear out the taste of death.

  The fiddler let off one final chord. The corpses bowed, low and solemn, to their partners. Through their crooked bodies, Jenny saw the fiddler stand, tuck his instrument under one arm and applaud the trembling preacher.

  “Oh, excellent, Reverend Cook!” His laughter was clear and deep.

  Jenny swallowed her fear in one lump and started up the center of the defiled sanctuary.

  Every lolling head turned. Rheumy, sodden eyes studied her. She kept her own eyes straight ahead, and kept her feet moving until she stood in front of the fiddler.

  He was taller than most tall men she knew, and thin as the trunks of the pine trees in the forest. He wore a long, black coat over black britches and a starched white shirt and collar. His fair hair was slicked back tight against his scalp. Eyes blacker than cast iron laughed down at Jenny and pale lips turned up to make a pretty smile.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Hawkins.” The fiddler bowed deeply to Jenny. “I’m so glad you could come.” His voice touched her and left her hot. She pictured Tom’s eyes and managed not to flinch.

  “You the one I come to find?” she asked bluntly.

  His smile broadened. “That I am. Do allow me to present myself. In this country, people mostly use the sobriquet of Nick Scratch when they call on me.” He held out one clean, well-tended hand.

  Jenny didn’t move.

  The fiddler shrugged beneath his coat. “I think you know my friend the Reverend Mr. Josiah Cook.” He swept his hand toward the preacher.

  Reverend Cook turned his face away.

  “Evenin’, Reverend Cook,” murmured Jenny.

  The preacher said nothing. His shoulders shuddered.

  “He died about a month back.” The fiddler’s smile tightened up into a smirk. “He was weighed with the same measure he used to weigh others and he was found wanting. Weren’t you Josiah?” The fiddler poked the preacher with his bow. The proud reverend yelped and cowered low.

  Jenny’s back trembled and she couldn’t stop it.

  Scratch chuckled deep in his throat as he turned back to Jenny. “However, I do not believe it’s our Reverend Mr. Cook you’ve come to see me about.”

  “No,” she said, gathering her nerves again. “Have you got my Tom?”

  Scratch arched his golden eyebrows. “Your Tom? You are mistaken, Mrs. Hawkins. He’s my Tom.” Now his smile parted his lips and Jenny saw his white, white teeth. “He traded his soul for the ability to dance better than a certain young lady.” Red fire danced behind the devil’s black eyes. Jenny had to drop her gaze to the floorboards. Scratch chuckled again. The sound traced a line of fire right down Jenny’s spine. “As I kept my end of the bargain, Tom was obliged to keep his.”

  Jenny’s stomach turned over. The corpses gathered behind her in a reeking gaggle to listen to their master and every breath caught in her throat.

  Jenny forced her head up. “What’s your price for his freedom?”

  The fiddler laid a hand on his breast. “Mrs. Hawkins, you wound me. Do you take me for a slave trader? No, ma’am. I paid for goods of quality, freely sold. Tom Hawkins is mine, and I will keep him.” Scratch planted one shiny black boot down firmly.

  Jenny held her ground, although she didn’t know how she managed it.

  “I hear you’re a betting man,” she said. “Will you take a wager? If I win, Tom goes free. If you win, you’ve got my soul as well as his.”

  The fiddler’s smile was like the curve of a butcher’s knife. “You have been correctly informed, Mrs. Hawkins. I do enjoy a wager.” His eyes glittered with their own deep, blood-red light. “And because I also admire bravery, and sass, if I may be so free, I will wager Tom Hawkins’s soul against your own that if you dance this night through in my dance,” he waved the fiddle bow at the sagging mass of dead, “you will not be able to leave the floor when the daylight comes.”

  “I’ll take that bet,” said Jenny straight away.

  At her words, Reverend Cook swung around. “Don’t, Jenny,” he croaked.

  “Quiet!” Scratch pointed the bow at him and the man cried in pain. He staggered backward, his hands covering his face. The corners of Jenny’s eyes stung with tears of pity for him. She remembered him, so tall, so proud, so sure of himself, torn with love of her and hatred of what she was.

  She bit her lip. It was Tom she had to concentrate on now.

  Nick Scratch had turned back to her.

  “Mrs. Hawkins, your spirit does you credit.” He bowed again. “I hope you’ll do Kevin the honor of being his partner.” He made a “come hither” gesture over her head with two fingers.

  A stinking corpse shuffled up to her, moving like a puppet with loose strings. It seized her hand in one dank claw. Jenny gagged as her stomach tried to crawl up her throat. The corpse’s blue uniform, stained with gore and grime, hung in tatters about its grey body. She fought to keep her feet as her partner hauled her out to the center of the floor where the other dead had squared up sets.

  Think about Tom, she told herself as she looked across to the dripping figure that was her partner, breathed in its heavy reek, and felt its slime clinging to her hands. Think about Tom.

  “Honor your partners,” whimpered Reverend Cook.

  The corpses bowed. Jenny dipped a curtsey to her partner and the Devil began to play.

  The music shimmered, it glowed and flickered. It shot straight to Jenny’s heart and made her blood race white hot through her veins.

  “First couple out and swing in the middle!” shrieked Reverend Cook.

  “Shake your big feet to the tune of the fiddle!

  “When you get there, remember my call!

  “Swing to the right and promenade all!”

  The music strangled the preacher’s call and swung it against Jenny’s body. It moved her feet fast and hard, a whip on a slave’s back. She wasn’t telling her body how to move. The music and the wailing call worked her flesh for her while she watched all helpless from the back of her own mind. Carried by the laughing fiddle, the preacher’s voice ordered her to reach and circle, swing and promenade. Desperation sank further through her skin with each touch of her partner’s shredding hands.

  Pain shot up her arm as a bony finger jabbed her. Jenny missed a beat and looked up into the face of a dead woman and saw a boundless sorrow written there. Kevin jerked her wrists to pull her into the promenade. In that moment she realized tears dampened his cold eyes. The music tightened its grip. A boot kicked her ankle, and a pair of moldy fingers pinched her cheek, leaving it sore and damp. Jenny reeled with horror and pain, but also with pity. These creatures were not free. The music held them in its grip, even as it struggled to hold onto her. They were not free, would never be free again. This was the fate that held Tom, and waited for her.

  Fight it, Jenny Hawkins ordered herself. Fight!

  Jenny dug into her soul, past the feeling of whips to remember the feeling of wings, to where earthly fiddle music lay stored up alongside the love of an earthly man.

  Jenny’s spirit rose. The music snatched at her, but she swung free.

  Tom’s eyes watched
her from the warmth of memory. Under his loving gaze, she felt the magic grace that possessed her when she danced to the fiddle music back home.

  Strength flowed into her limbs. Memory built her walls against the dancers sagging beside her. In her mind, Tom’s hands swung her round, not the hands of a rotting corpse. She recognized the dance as “The Irish Washerwoman,” and she ordered her feet to step down and kick up. The fiddle music circled and snarled at her, but it was Jenny Hawkins dancing the dance. The weeping dead reached to punch and pinch her. Jenny slipped between them like a summer breeze.

  The dancing never stopped. The music slowed only to change tunes. The air grew thick and choked with heat and sound and stench and the reverend’s tortured calling. Jenny’s dress soaked through with grave muck and her own sweat. Her heart labored to keep beating in her weary chest. Yet she fought herself free from the music’s snares again and again. The dead manhandled her between them, but she still ducked their clumsy blows. A year of memories of Tom supported her drooping shoulders. A lifetime of dancing carried her leaden body.

  The night flowed on. Jenny’s fading strength was her only way to mark time. The Devil’s playing squeezed, crawled, tangled and tripped. Her bones ached with exhaustion.

  The dead circled round her. Reverend Cook screamed out Scratch’s call.

  Finally, Jenny staggered. A heavy clout caught her on the ear. Dead Kevin yanked on her sagging arm and dragged her into a new line. His mouth moved as he did, and through her pain, Jenny saw him shape the words “I’m sorry.” Her heart fell.

  But for a moment, the music slowed. Jenny made herself look past her partner’s shoulder, out the windows. There, a thin grey line glistened between shadowy trees.

  Dawn! Dawn! The word shouted itself jubilantly inside her numbed mind. Sunup coming on and I’m my own woman! Hang on, Jenny Hawkins. Not long now and you’ll stride right out those doors and Tom is free of Scratch and all his doings!

  “Hands around! First couple out to the right!” Reverend Cook’s voice rattled with pain. Jenny stepped down the outside of the line, barely seeing the floor under her. Dead women poked and elbowed her as she passed. She called up the feeling of Tom’s warm hands on her back, of “The Devil’s Dream,” this dance she danced now, the one where she first felt her heart fly to him.

  Jenny teetered into her place and looked up into her husband’s coffee brown eyes.

  “Gent leave his lady there, go onto the next alone!”

  Tom. It was Tom—solid and real and hunched up in pain. He plodded down the middle of the line, dragged by the music. All the dead watched him, their faces sagging with regret. Once in his place, he took up the hands of a dead woman in a soiled wedding dress. His face creased as he circled with her.

  “Put that lady on your right!” A sob strangled the preacher’s call. “Onto the next and circle four!”

  Jenny let out a wordless cry as the dead woman took Tom still further away down the line. He glanced toward her between the dead. Tears rolled down over his beard.

  “Leave her there and go home alone!”

  Tom stood right across from her. She could smell his earth scent through all the heavy corpse stink. Her eyes burned with tears. She felt the Devil’s music wind itself around her like a noose, like a shroud. She couldn’t soar free. She couldn’t retreat into a memory of dancing with Tom now. Now, Tom stood in front of her and the sorrow in his face filled her soul to the brim.

  “Meet your partners and promenade!”

  She grabbed onto Tom’s dry, strong hands for a blissful second. The music hitched itself up to the call and forced them into a promenade. It shackled Jenny’s ankles, and where the call commanded, there she went. She couldn’t move by her own will anymore. Even as the glimmer of dawn broadened outside, she knew she’d lost. She could no longer move of her will. Her body which had borne her for so long was too tired. As soon as the music stopped, it would lay down and give up her soul. She knew that. It had been too much and had gone on for too long. As soon as the music stopped and the dance was over, she was done for, and Tom with her. The call swung them together and apart again, down the endless line of dead. For one precious instant, it let them take hands and promenade again.

  “I’m sorry,” Jenny gasped to her husband through her tears. “I didn’t mean for you to pay this price, I swear!”

  Tom’s chin shook. “Paid,” he whispered. “Paid in full for the dance and the tune. Pay it again to have you, Jenny.”

  His words touched her despairing soul, and Jenny felt something between hope and fear flutter in her breast. Paid in full, for the dance and tune. Paid in full . . .

  “First couple out to the right!” The call came down and prised their fingers apart, but as their hands released each other, Jenny met Tom’s eye desperately. He saw it too. Tearful hope filled his face.

  When I’ve paid the fiddler, I can pick the tune . . .

  “St. Peter’s March!” hollered Tom all at once. “For mercy’s sake, Reverend! Call St. Peter’s March! Call us home!”

  For one split second, silence fell like an iron bar. Jenny swayed on numb feet and broken knees, saw the naked horror on Reverend Cook’s face as he realized what Tom was asking him to do.

  Then, Reverend Cook’s shoulders straightened themselves even as Nick Scratch ran his bow across the fiddle strings again.

  “Balance and swing!” called out the preacher. The moaning pain was gone. His voice raised itself up the way it used to on Sundays when he lifted his congregation’s hearts to Heaven.

  The call moved Jenny’s feet for her. She spun around in Tom’s arms. Scratch’s music drummed against her soul, but Reverend Cook’s call sang out louder and more true.

  “First gent, put that lady on your right!”

  The dead stumbled, torn between the music and the call, but Tom held her firm. She felt his hands through the pain and the fear and the horror of the music the Devil called down with his fiddle thundering against every inch of her.

  “Head couple, sashay down the center!” commanded the Reverend Cook.

  They tried. The call gave them the strength to move, but the shambling corpses blocked the way. Scratch rang a screeching chord from his fiddle and the church doors banged shut.

  Jenny glanced back, praying and pleading. She saw the preacher lift up his hands and he was truly calling, calling for the kingdom and the glory, one last time.

  “Listen to my voice and heed you my call! Jenny take your Tom and swing out the hall!”

  The music crashed in like a flood wave. Jenny’s arms tightened up and Tom wrenched her weight around with his. They careened in a tight circle, forcing each other around, fast and faster, too fast to stop.

  The wooden doors smashed against Jenny’s back, then her shoulder and elbows. The first ray of morning caught her cheek and filled Tom’s face.

  She didn’t feel her broken, exhausted body drop. All she felt were her husband’s arms around her as they danced free over the clean earth into the sunshine, and into what comes after all else is done.

  Now, pieces of this story made it back to Jenny’s valley, as stories will. The ones who told the story said Heaven may not have taken her and Tom, but Hell sure didn’t neither.

  And as for the Reverend Cook? Well, they do say the Devil got so mad, he clean kicked the preacher out and left him to fend for himself.

  There’re worse things, I do suppose.

  Solstice

  Jennifer Stevenson

  This story has probably got the most attention of all my short fiction. It was reprinted in chapbook form by Cat Eldridge of Green Man Review and Sleeping Hedgehog, and is reposted there every year at the Winter Solstice accompanied by a podcast of me reading the story. Gene Wolfe said some kind words about it. The poem was picked up by Ellen Kushner for her music blog dunnamany years ago, as well.

  I wrote and submitted three stories to The Horns of Elfland before they accepted one. It was my first attempt to write something absolutely avoiding
past tense. The poem accompanying “Solstice” inspired the story; I had written it years earlier in upstate New York. Many strong poems came out of that mind-bogglingly boring summer, which proves what your brain can do if you unplug it.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  This story is about a small-time rocker full of ambition and careful big plans. She lives for the day when she can come up like thunder on the rest of the herd, so she’s a little stunned to find herself fighting with her boyfriend on the night of the big gig, slamming out of his van and marching across a frosty prairie outside Madison, Wisconsin, her guitar in her hand and her hot, angry breath making her scarf all scummy with ice crumbs as she curses him and her stupidity at coming so far in his company. Why should she have to dump him tonight? Only a doofus breaks up with her boyfriend in a moving vehicle. She vows here and now to make a new start, while she is alone, nowhere, storming across the empty fields, suspended between her humble origins and her destiny. Under the colorless starlight she looks to herself like a stick-drawing person, white parka and grey jeans against the black corn stubble, drawn but not yet painted. The ground is parched for moisture, the loam frost-heaved, last summer’s daisies and black-eyed susans and sweet grass killed by frost and just now crisp with it, though tomorrow under a pale sun they will warm up enough to make her slip with every step, especially if she stays mad enough to stomp all night long the way she is doing now. That would mean spending the night in the fields, however, not, as she would prefer, finding a road to follow to a roadside bar, not, as she expects she must, sleeping in a barn next to some smelly cow. She swears and stomps and swings her ax in the frozen air, scattering sibilants (his name is Stassen, which is a good name for hissing angrily) and gouting steam without regard to the threat of the cold. Her name is Dawn.

  Slip she does. She lands on her bottom, her wind knocked out, and lies back in her parka feeling the heat bleed out of her into the throbbing ground. What a world of stars is up there, she thinks, fields and fields of them, sheep for days. She remembers sheep pouring over the Nebraska plains in galaxies, white on black. The land back home is much flatter than this boggy, lumpy prairie, yet the sheep eat these same stale grasses with their backs to the same stars. These stars. A wave of vertigo swamps her. She sees the heavens turn. This is how stars must feel, she imagines, opening her eyes deliberately as they spin. So big, so slow. Only we frenetic particles can’t see how they run hump-rumped over the vast prairie. We’re moving much too fast.