A Rope of Thorns

by Gemma Files

  Maybe Chess would meet a man entirely like him, one day—like enough to help, yet not too alike to hinder. God knew, pretty little fellows didn’t seem to be any more his meat than pretty little ladies.

  “Just tryin’ to help, is all,” Morrow said, finally.

  “Aw, Jesus—” Chess rolled his eyes, torn between laughter and irritation. “Well, thank you kindly. But . . . it’s more than simple frolics ’tween us these days, ain’t it? You’re a pal, Ed, close as I’ve come to in my whole life. A good man.”

  Which was . . . flattering, in its way.

  Thought the Rev a good man too, though, once upon a time. Didn’t you, Chess?

  Chess looked at him again, green eyes gone dull. “Don’t,” he said.

  A sliver of ice, just touching Morrow’s pulse to its quick: Never forget he can hear you, Ed—whether he wants to, or not.

  He brought his mouth back to Chess’s, then—anything to keep from thinking further on that subject—renewed his efforts, doing as he’d been taught Chess enjoyed, by experience and example. And when the vibrations began to roll up both their spines, he let himself enjoy them, in that brief moment it still felt merely like nerves firing at the smaller man’s skilled touch . . . right up ’til he realized he was hearing the juddering quivers as well, a buzz emanating from walls, ceiling, floor at once, as if the whole room was a reed in some gigantic instrument.

  Startled, he pulled back. “Christ, what the—this an earthquake?!”

  Chess stared at something past Morrow’s head, mouth open. “I don’t . . . think so.”

  Morrow twisted, and gasped.

  Behind the bed’s headboard, the wallpaper’s calm pattern was sliding like unfired clay, blurring from a vague mesh of curlicues to a daguerreotype-sharp tangle of leaves which began to twine even as they resolved, adding a steam-engine hiss to the walls’ bass thrum. Red flowers blossomed and withered, strewed shrunken petals, as grinning skulls pushed themselves up out of the print’s white gaps.

  Smell of bruised greenstalk, flowing sap, a meaty sweetness, honey brewed from carrion: sticky edge-of-stench perfume, signalling growth and decay. Birth. Rebirth. Morrow felt it chime in his pulse like it was trying to get out, reverberating through Chess’s empty chest like a great bell’s tongue, a hollow chigger-skin cocoon.

  Prince of Flowers, Songbird crooned, in both their ears. Does your new skin itch?

  And yeah, he found—him, or Chess?—it did. Just a bit.

  Rip it off, then—run naked, green-bleeding, through this awful world. Run free. . . .

  But the vines were stilling now, voice and buzz alike winding down to silence. Morrow gaped down at Chess, both of ’em breath-caught with hearts hammering, equally off-put.

  “Did . . . all that . . . just happen?” He asked.

  Chess opened his mouth to answer; God knew what, but the point proved moot. Instead, a knock at the door caused him to swear, vociferous as ever. “Shit-fire! What damn now?”

  Without asking permission first, the Colder girl sat down on their single rickety chair, legs neat-crossed at the ankles—almost laughably prim-looking, given the circumstances. Then again, Morrow supposed it was more her room than either of theirs, and always had been.

  “’Fore we go any further, might it be possible for Mister Pargeter to, uh . . . reassume his shirt?” she asked Morrow, keeping her eyes firm on his.

  Chess hissed. “Oh, all things are ‘possible,’ gal,” he said, and a single finger-snap saw him safely “decent” once more; so much so as a mere set of clothes might make him, any road. In return, the girl just nodded—hiding her reaction damn well, if such casual miracles weren’t her daily bread.

  “Thank you,” she said, simply. Chess shrugged.

  “What I’d most like to know is how you spotted us, in the first place,” he replied.

  “Should’ve picked a better fake family name than ‘Chester,’ might be, you wanted to stay inconspicuous.”

  “Might be; Ed ain’t all too quick on the draw, sad to say, when it comes to mendacious matters. But that’s not the whole of it—is it?”

  She took up a fold of her skirt, drew it between two fingers. “It’s true how when first I checked you two in, you and him—” she nodded at Morrow “—seemed just about the same height, same colour hair, eyes, and whatnot. Same arrangement of whiskers, even. But something tickled me even then, and I recalled a tip my Mama taught me. . . .”

  She held up one hand—her left—and slipped the slim gold band off her little finger, a ring custom-made for one whose bones must’ve been even more delicate.

  Holding it up, she explained: “Look through one of these, sidelong, and it shows things as they really are; magical creatures, or those you s’pect may be so. That’s ’cause matrimony’s sacred bond peels away all falsehoods.” At Chess’s grin: “Go on ahead and mock. But when I did, first thing I saw was you, Mister Pargeter, the tin-type of all she’d warned me ’bout. A Judas-head with poison eyes, walking widdershins through this world, whose wishes all come true. A man with no shadow.”

  “I got a shadow.”

  “Not all the time, you don’t.”

  This last revelation didn’t seem to surprise Chess quite as much as Morrow might’ve thought it would. Instead, he stopped short—appraising her with simple objective interest, all other passions momentarily suspended.

  “What are you?” Chess asked. “Not a hex—not quite. But still . . . something ’bout you I recognize. A . . . taste.”

  He sniffed hard at her, mouth halfway yawned open—as though she smelled so delicious, he wasn’t sure what-all to do. Yet she just faced him down, resolute.

  “Different, is all,” she said. “No good trying to feed off me, though. I know that much.”

  “Oh no?”

  A tiny head-shake. “All’s you’d do is kill me—that’s what my Mama always said. Wouldn’t like the afterglow too much, either.”

  “Sounds like a lamentable smart woman, your Mama.”

  “I like to think so.”

  “All right. Then . . . what do you see now, lookin’ at me full-on?”

  Miz Colder inhaled delicately, let her eyes drift from his as the lids slid faintly to, mimicking the bare beginnings of what quack Spiritualists called a trance. And suddenly, Morrow felt the same prickling chill he’d had on first coming face-to-face with Asher Rook, more than a year ago—like watching a snake slide slowly ’cross your path: This was no mere confidence-show, some drab provoking ghosts for profit, telling sad and frightened folk what they most wanted to believe, but the truth behind a thousand pretty lies made flesh.

  For years, investigating frauds at Pinkerton’s behest, Morrow’d heard tell of people who saw things both true and inexplicable, secrets too painful to sell but too accurate to ignore. Those who saw trouble coming in dreams, or talked to God, and actually seemed to get answers . . . like Rook never had, but long-dead Sheriff Mesach Love—once champion of Bewelcome, itself turned not exactly miraculously to salt in Rook’s wake—had claimed to. Not hexes, but nowhere near normal folk, neither.

  Seemed like Miz Colder’s absent Mama must’ve been one such rare creature—and if so, no surprise her daughter shared those same gifts. For blood did tell, they said.

  (Yes, soldier. Indubitably.)

  Once more, he braced himself internally against that awful rib-slat noise.

  But heard only Miz Colder’s voice dim down, shedding its humanity by cold degrees, saying, “. . . somebody . . . standing behind you.” Only a hint above a whisper, yet the room so abruptly silent her words struck low, toneless notes, like rag-muffled hammers on a Chinese gong. “Yes. In the dark, behind the Black Mirror—his name a door, unlocked. Opening.

  “Tez . . .

  cat . . .

  li . . .

  poc—”

  Without thinking, Morrow leaped forward and slapped her ’cross the face, hard enough Chess actually started; the girl herself staggered back and blinked, holding her jaw.
But when her eyes found Morrow’s again, they looked more bemused than angry.

  Morrow flushed deep. “Ma’am—I’m very sorry. But I just didn’t feel I could let that go any further.”

  “No,” Miz Colder agreed. She massaged her jaw a moment, grimacing, then added: “I understand, I think. Though . . . you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t thank you for it.”

  “Son of a bitch never told me his damn name,” Chess muttered, at the same time, half to himself. ’Cause it always had to be about him, Morrow thought, exasperated.

  He glanced back Miz Colder’s way a moment later, and was shocked to see her drop a tiny little shrug, as though in sympathy: Oh God, here’s another one. But no confirmation followed, one way or the other; she simply took a further moment, avoiding his eyes while working blood lightly through the fine skin ’long her profile with two fingers, so it’d be less likely to bruise.

  Before starting over, eventually: “Well, be that as it may, Messrs. ‘Chester,’ though those downstairs may not read much, I do, and daily. That’s how I ascertained what your real names might be, and how I know something you might not already’ve figured out, likewise . . . that—rumours and superstition aside—the Weed really must follow people, since it’s sprung up overnight in just about every place you two’ve been reported.”

  Chess stiffened. “Not here, though,” he countered. “Think I’m right, on that account.”

  “No. Not yet.”

  Not much to say to that, though knowing it’d never stopped Chess anytime previous. Still, when he went to rebut, Morrow shushed him; Chess cast his eyes up, and let him.

  “We’re listening,” Morrow said.

  “First choice—I don’t guess you know how to send it on its way again, do you? Rumour has it you can kill Weed by spilling blood. That true?”

  Chess laughed harshly. “For all the good it’ll do your pissant little town, yeah. In a manner of speaking.”

  The girl’s mouth thinned, and Morrow jumped in. “It’s a pagan working, a prayer in tribute to that thing you saw: let blood in the name of the Skinless Man, and the Weed turns brown, green grass grows fresh over wherever it’s spread. But . . .” He heard his own voice crack, and forced it steady. “I’ve seen it happen. It’s . . . no natural thing. Better it never comes to that.”

  Miz Colder considered, and nodded. “All right, then. Second choice—you need to get out of here, just as bad as all of us need you gone. So let’s work on that a minute.” She rose, hands clasped, and began to pace. “I’m not too like to report you to the authorities, since odds are, you’d do damage on your way out. I don’t want that. You either, probably.”

  Chess snorted. “Hell, I don’t mind. Ain’t like we ain’t shot our way free before.”

  “Maybe. But what you probably don’t know is there’s going to be a wedding all day tomorrow—Marshal Kloves’, town law, with all his friends come in to celebrate.”

  Morrow rubbed his forehead. “Aw, God damn . . .”

  “Town was nearing full already,” the girl went on, “and with Mouth-of-Praise’s flux set on top, we’re stuffed to bursting. Not to mention the Sheriff’s got constituents panicked Weed will set in any moment, so there’s patrols everywhere, eyes well-peeled for any hint of green and red, which makes trying to sneak out unnoticed probably a foredoomed endeavour.” She paused at the window, twitching the curtains close-to. “And so . . .”

  Chess shrugged. “So? Your hootenanny goes off as planned or not, don’t mean a damn thing to me, little girl, or Ed, besides. Though you sure must play a mean hand of poker, given your skill at schemin’.”

  Miz Colder fixed him, voice even, eyes cold. “I don’t believe you’ve cause to condescend to me, Mister Pargeter.”

  Chess’s eyes narrowed, and Morrow jumped in again. “It’s, uh . . . it’s nothin’ personal, Miz Col—”

  “Yancey.”

  Morrow blinked. “Pardon?”

  “Experiance, that’s my name. Yancey to my friends—or to those I share secrets with.” She gestured. “You were saying?”

  “Yeah, Ed, what were you sayin’?” Chess turned Morrow’s way, mouth still set in that mean little knot. “’Bout to plead pardon from Miz Yancey for my manners?”

  Morrow gritted his teeth. “Look, Chess here don’t deal too well with those of the fairer persuasion, in the main,” he told her. “Which might be ’cause, uh . . .”

  “I know ’bout him and Reverend Rook, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Um, well . . . good, but no. I meant ’cause his Ma was—uh—”

  Here euphemism failed him, polite or otherwise.

  Chess laughed outright. “Oh, don’t be shy, Ed; if this one’s smart enough not to choke on the word ‘queer,’ ‘whore’ can’t be far behind.” Abruptly, Chess was off the bed, backing Yancey up swift ’til her shoulders met the wall. “My thoughts on pussy aside, though, gal—just how you plan on workin’ this particular miracle, exactly? ’Cause I can make gold outta shit, these days, and I’m fairly stumped.”

  Yancey had to moisten her lips. “A far larger glamour,” she suggested. “Same’s when you checked in, but bolder: hide in plain sight. Come as guests, then leave with the rest.”

  Chess scoffed. “Or get found out and swung, whichever comes first.”

  “Well, that’s where the hexation comes in, I’d guess.” Yancey stepped away from the wall, smoothing her blouse down, and the way the fabric tightened around her put a sudden dryness in Morrow’s mouth bid fair to confirm that Chess’s bed-play, however enjoyable, hadn’t entirely spoiled his original tastes. “Accounts of the Reverend’s exploits suggest he was capable of remaking whole towns, if he needed to—am I right in guessing you’re more than his match, in that direction?”

  “I don’t recall him doin’ anything like that, and I was there. But yeah, for myself, I could probably cast up something damn enduring, long as it was simple.”

  “All right, then . . . how ’bout you magnify the headiness of the spirits being served out—get ’em fuddled so extra-quick, extra-potent, the Good Lord himself could ride through on a white horse and they wouldn’t notice.” Her mouth slanted slightly, cutting a wry angle which came surprisingly close to some of Chess’s own favourite expressions. “I can assure you, you won’t have to exert yourself too strongly in order to end up with a full day’s head start, at the very least.”

  “So your plan is for me to do all the work, in other words.”

  “Why, yes, given you’re by far the more powerful, ’tween the two of us. Would that be too much of a problem?”

  Sweet, tart, final: Chess goggled a half-instant at her, then couldn’t quite stop himself from exploding in more laughter—of a far more genuine variety, this time ’round.

  “Oh, you really are somethin’,” he allowed, finally. “Must be some damn good friend of yours this lawman’s marrying, I suppose, for you to go to so much trouble keeping her bride-day blood-free.”

  She already had one hand on the doorknob, but that turned her back, nodding. “Oh yes,” she said, “the very best imaginable. By which I mean myself.”

  With no hint of preparation, it was like Morrow’s slap had been returned to him six-fold, and again, she seemed to know it.

  For she paused, looking up from under her lashes—those clean grey eyes so deceptively mild, for the clockwork mind he now sensed lurked behind ’em—to say, lightly enough, “For all I’m the only one who knows what we’ll owe you, I’ll make sure my kin and kin-to-be welcome you kindly, Mister Morrow . . . Mister Pargeter. And I’ll expect to see you in the throng, tomorrow.”

  She nodded over at Chess, who returned the favour, if begrudgingly. As though impressed, in the end, by his own inability to scare her—or her inability to be scared, even under such trying circumstances. And she was gone a second on, with a switch of skirts, a rustle of petticoats, the discreet click-to of door meeting jamb.

  Chess looked back to see Morrow’s mouth hung far enough o
pen to catch flies, making him laugh yet one more time, long and loud.

  “Oh ho,” he said. “Well, well.”

  Morrow drew himself up, shrugging it off. “Well what?” He demanded.

  “Might be you got sorta sweet on her, all those days I was sleepin’ it off.”

  “Wasn’t that long, and you know it. ’Sides which . . .” Morrow coloured. “Well,” he wound up, “that wouldn’t make a lick of sense, if so. Would it?”

  Chess shrugged, glancing over at the dresser drawer where his belt and guns lay hid; Morrow saw his fingers quiver, palms itchy like he ached to hold ’em, if only for practice—or comfort, of a kind.

  “Rarely does,” he replied.

  Night fell lead-heavy, uneasily abrupt, as though the sun might never rise again.

  Hoffstedt’s Hoard lulled itself to sleep by degrees under its darkness, murmuring slumberous, a beehive awaiting the morrow’s stick. Elsewhere, the world’s newer terrors came clambering up through Mictlan-Xibalba’s widening crack: Songbird’s dog with human hands, sweatless empty men made from the wood of the coral tree, their wives carved from the chalky cores of bulrushes. Small female gods swarming in the moon’s darkness, like gnats; weeping women giving birth to jade-scaled monsters at the crossroads. Eddies of all kinds, flurrying back and forth across the desert—blood mixed with mud, poisons breeding. The drought which precedes a flood. Ash, falling from the sky.

  And salt, too, snaking through the desert toward Hoffstedt’s Hoard—hotly calcinate, scorching to the touch, turning sand to glass. Salt, flowing from one more creature’s whitened footsteps like an awful road, drawing ever closer.

  This glistering vision paused at the town’s limits, found a likely enough spot, knelt to make its prayers. Then settled in, to wait.

  Chapter Six

  Yancey Colder’s wedding went the way those things mostly did, from what little Chess had gathered on vague scattered report. Her and Kloves stood up before a mixed congregation in the clapboard-walled church, local preacher officiating, checking his Bible every few words—not even a pale shade on how impressive Ash Rook’d once loomed, intoning verse from memory, voice a crack-less iron bell. The vows went by in a babble: cleave together, sever never—have and hold, faithful always, by God’s grace, amen. Y’all take each other? Ring, kiss; done.