by Tom Doyle
I cut my pancakes with an antique silver knife on fine porcelain. They apparently weren’t worried that I’d use the knife on self or others. As usual, they served me too much breakfast, and, as usual, I ate too little—just enough to avoid the threat of forced feeding. I told myself I didn’t want to put on weight and lose my fighting edge.
But that’s the idea, to stop fighting, said the voice of the curse.
Never, kill them all, answered the dungeon voice that enjoyed the memory of bloodshed. I recognized too well the sound of that voice. I had heard it whisper from the subbasement of my home, the House of Morton. I had fought that Left-Hand voice my whole life. Had the curse weakened me enough to lose?
Caught between the argument of my mental aliens, I could barely think. A thump behind me. Two of the attendants were helping someone downstairs with their elaborately tattooed arms. The pale, thin young man wore a thin black tie—an LDS craftsman, no doubt. The Mormon was still breathing; I hadn’t yet killed in my sleep. But my unconscious night-terror assault had hit a target again.
Maybe they thought the massacre was my fault. Maybe they were worried that I’d gone the Left-Hand path of my ancestors, Roderick and Madeline and the rest. Maybe they feared the voice in my head. If this damage kept up, they might have to consider putting me down like a broken horse or a rabid dog.
If I went for the door or a window, they’d have trouble stopping me. But then the Gideons would find me. Those hard-assed special ops trackers probably patrolled the grounds, sniffing the air like bloodhounds, keeping outsiders out and me in. Was the one called Sakakawea here? She had hunted magi on every continent, including Antarctica.
And if I got past the Gideons, where would I go? The other Families, Abram Endicott at their head, had taken the House before. I could seek the Sanctuary and invoke the compact, but that wouldn’t stop their pursuit. Hell, first, I would have to get past the Sanctuary’s guardian, the Appalachian, and she was no fool; compact or no, she wouldn’t let me in.
That killed my already small appetite. I drifted to the study to read from the dusty Harvard Classics that filled several shelves, and to ignore the WWI poetry that some joker had stuck in there. It must be visiting hours. In an army dress blue uniform, my father blocked the doorway. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, Dale. You’re looking thin.”
“Not very hungry,” I said. “You look … unchanged.”
“One of the few advantages of my condition.”
“Being dead as coffin shit?”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass if you start talking smart.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry, son. I’m here to help.”
“Help?” That was new from this ghost. “OK. Can you move over? I’d rather not step through you.” I could touch ghosts, but they triggered an unpleasant sensation, like a combination of cold and wet. I carefully stepped into the study. “You want to help me, Dad? Tell me where I am.”
“I don’t know.” My father sighed, a hollow sound with no air in it. “You know the rules.” I knew: my father was like a recording that couldn’t really tell me anything new, only how things had been. He could help more with Morton family matters, but not much. A sad, rude, and true way to think of my father.
“Sorry, forgot,” I said. “Haven’t seen you for a while. Why did you wait until I was crazy to show up?”
“I’ve been around you a lot,” said Dad. “Why did you wait until now to see me?”
“I have your letters,” I said. “And Grandpa. They’re usually enough.”
“At home?” Dad asked.
“Yeah.”
A silence. My father couldn’t come home. For reasons he wouldn’t discuss, Dad had chosen burial at Arlington instead of the family mausoleum. Grandpa wouldn’t let his ghost past the door.
My keepers could listen to my side of the conversation, so I couldn’t ask him my real question: what did he know about Sphinx, the woman who had sent me on my last mission, and probably set me up?
Instead, I asked, “Did the other Mortons end up like this?”
“Left-Hand? No son of mine is going down Roderick’s road.”
“They say you did,” I said. “Before the end.”
“They? Don’t speak ill of the dead, son. It makes us uppity.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Before the end, I was here. But I didn’t know where I was then, so I can’t help you now.”
“You went nuts?”
“They seemed to think so.” Dad shimmered like a heat mirage. “Look, between the happy memories and the craft security, I’m a little tired. We’ll talk later. In the meantime, think about how to lie low—”
“Like you, Dad?”
“—and would you say hi to your mother for me?”
“She’s remarried, Dad, I don’t think—”
“What?” My father shook his head in confusion. “Oh, right. Never mind.” And he was gone.
Not for the first time, I wondered about my mother.
* * *
In one of the upstairs rooms, Endicott reported in to Hutchinson. She looked as beat up as he felt from their constant containment of Morton’s outbursts. Yes, practitioners were valuable, and ones with Morton’s power were rarer still, but they had given Morton more energy for his recovery than any other spiritual soldier had ever received. Time to ease Hutch toward the inevitable conclusion.
“Ma’am,” said Endicott, “he still isn’t under control. The general is concerned.”
“We’re all concerned, Major,” said Hutchinson. Her voice held steady with command, but her eyes were slits of fatigue.
“Five weeks,” said Endicott, “and we still don’t know if he can recover, or if he’s been permanently compromised.”
Hutchinson’s sharp jaw tensed, relaxed, tensed again. “Time to see what he’ll do under pressure. We’re bringing a new shrink into the craft secret. Let’s give him to Morton.”
* * *
They took me in the middle of the night, out of the first dreamless sleep I’d had in months. They must have used drugs or craft so I wouldn’t unconsciously hurt my awakeners. They took me upstairs to what looked like a dentist office, if one’s dentist had the equipment for waterboarding and electroshock. Interrogation? They must think I’d gone Left-Hand. But that didn’t make sense: if they thought I had gone that rotten, they should kill me thoroughly now. And if they were serious about torture before murder, surely they’d use craft.
The goons sat me firmly down in the chair and strapped me in, then left the room. A man in a doctor’s white jacket and oversized mustache turned on an old tape recorder. “I want to hear about the mission, Dale.”
“You already know about the mission.”
“I need the truth.”
Those in the know about craft were a small community. I hadn’t seen this doctor before. “Are you cleared to hear about what I do?”
“That’s not for you to decide. The sooner you cooperate, the sooner you can leave here.”
I studied the doctor, and found him wanting. His sins were trivial, and he had no craft. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”
“Then I’m authorized to use harsh techniques.”
“You’re going to torture me?” I laughed. I spoke toward the recording equipment and those listening outside. “You get all that? He’s trying to push me around. If you don’t want him to know, you’d better stop this right now.” Then I turned to the doctor, all humor gone. “OK. Joke’s on you, pal.”
“Tell me about the mission, Dale,” said the doctor.
“No, let’s start at the beginning. My ancestor, Thomas Morton, was the first great American craftsman.”
“What did he make?” asked the doctor.
“I’m getting to that. He arrived in Massachusetts in 1624, and found that, in this new land, he had strange new powers. He could alter the weather. He could see the sins of men, and could influence their will. He could fight and kill with pret
ernatural efficiency.”
“Who, um, told you these stories?”
“My father,” I said.
“Your father? My records say that—”
“Thomas Morton,” I continued, “tried to form a new society of native and European. He took several Indian wives, and they taught each other much magic, or what we call craft. But the Puritans stopped him, shipped him back to England—twice.”
“I see,” said the doctor. “So, Puritans versus your polygamous ancestor. Do you feel the Puritans are against you, Dale?”
“Oh they are, they are. But, for the sake of the nation, we’ve come to a modus vivendi.” I too much enjoyed skewing my story to this prick’s psychological worldview, but I’d get around to the punch line soon. “So, Morton passed his abilities to his part-native descendants.”
“And you’re one of these magical descendants?”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m a craftsman.”
“Dale, if you have these abilities—”
“If, doctor? Are you calling me a liar?” More psycho role play. So obvious.
“What, you say some backwards Latin mumbo jumbo…”
“Shut up,” I said. Compulsion wasn’t my usual strength, but this mundane doctor was easy.
The doctor’s mouth flapped, but nothing came out. He reached for his throat, covered his lips, a dumb show of muteness.
“No, not Latin,” I said. “Despite the papist tendencies of my Cavalier ancestor, we Mortons have never seen the charm of Latin. Magic is sensitive work, and it’s best to mean exactly what you say. That means Webster’s English. Which you seem to be lacking. Speak.”
“Hypnosis.” The first word exploded from the doctor’s mouth. “I’m a suggestible subject. But that’s not magic.”
“Maybe not.” Good. Now for the scarlet-letter treatment. “Neither were your experiments on students, you fuck. Your late-night sexual exploration seminars with undergrads, did they get college credit for those? And that one patient—you let her snuff herself. Very convenient. All good practice for the harsh techniques.”
The doctor stood up, enraged and in my face. “Bullshit. You’re insane. You’ve got no powers.” He pulled a hypodermic off a tray, and seemed to calm. “Let’s get serious. You’ll tell me about the mission now.”
Now it was my turn for anger. “Sit.” The doctor sat down hard on the floor, the hypo clacked at his side. “Drugs and craft don’t mix. You’re almost right about my powers. I’ve been crippled. My last target was a sorcerer. He allowed me to kill him, then gave his postmortem craft unusual power through the blood sacrifice that he caused my own men to perform. He’s cursed me, and it’s tearing me apart. And that’s what put me here, in this improvised rubber house for a shell-shocked craftsman. Not just psychological guilt, but blood craft. Do you understand now, you fucking joke?”
The doctor looked at me in amazement. “Um, um…”
The chair rattled beneath me. I felt like lightning in a bottle. Murder him, insisted the dungeon voice, for starters. The curse retorted, Then kill yourself, for starters.
My superiors were testing me, and failure meant death. I found my center, and played to the unseen gallery again. “I was on that mission for a reason. Farsight should have seen this setup. Somebody wants me out of the game.”
Now, to end on a light, good ol’ Dale Morton note. “I think we’re done for the day, don’t you? Please help me undo these straps. Outstanding.” I rubbed my wrists. I had tensed against the restraints more than I’d realized. I stood up. “They’re gonna explain everything later, I expect, but you might as well hear it from me. Even if I hadn’t stopped you, they were never ever gonna allow you to administer serious psychoactives or pain. You know why that is, doctor?”
The doctor shook his head. I said, “Please speak for the microphone, doctor.”
“No.”
“Because my family scares the shit out of them.” I laughed. “I don’t blame ’em. We once produced pure evil, and they’re terrified we’ll do it again. But we’re useful. So they’ll never really hurt me, unless they mean to kill me.” I turned to go, but my disgust at this American’s willingness to torture harmonized with the darkness inside me, and I needed to give voice to both.
“Doctor,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Don’t let me see your fucking face again. Ever.”
* * *
“Satisfied?” asked Hutch, shutting off the tape.
“He sounds more than a little paranoid,” said Endicott.
Hutch raised her brows ironically, but Endicott refused to take the bait. “He still wants to quit,” he said.
“Horse shit,” said Hutch. “He’ll change his mind.”
Endicott nodded, but thought, And when he leaves, he’ll be the general’s problem, and you won’t be able to protect him anymore.
* * *
The next day, I went back to the old schedule. Night terrors, breakfast, my father in the study. Today, Dad smiled sadly. “Looks like you’ve got a visitor coming. I’ll get out of the way.”
A familiar man stood at attention in the study’s doorway. Sergeant Zee. “Hello, sir. I hope you don’t mind my stopping by.”
I must have gaped. “Sir?” repeated Zee.
I pulled myself together. “No, Sergeant, I don’t mind at all.” I managed a smile. “Please, at ease. Have a seat. I’m not exactly on duty here.”
“Thank you, sir.” Zee sat on the edge of an overstuffed chair, somehow preserving his military posture. I sat on the small sofa.
“So, they let you out of quarantine,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” said Zee. “It was a difficult month.”
“Yeah, I understand. You’ve probably noticed my accommodations.” I patted the sofa. “The padding is nicer, but it’s a cell all the same. And not much company.”
“Yes, sir,” said Zee. “That’s part of why I wanted to see you.”
“I appreciate that, Zee. I’m glad to see you. But how did you know?”
“Well, sir, as I tried to tell you, I’d served on a few missions like yours,” said Zee. “They gave me the order to kill you, rather than let you be captured.”
“Yes, I guessed that. Still, to get permission to come here…”
Zee said, “I didn’t need permission, sir.”
I felt a cold hand reaching for my heart. “How’s that?” A stupid question.
“I’m dead, sir,” said Zee. “I’m sorry, I thought your father would have mentioned it.”
“No,” I croaked. “Must have slipped his mind.” Shit. I easily missed the ghostly about ghosts. I had once spent a whole evening with a friend at a bar before finding out the next day that he had been dead for weeks. “Your death,” I said. “Something to do with our mission?”
“Yes. I remembered it all, over and over again.”
“You killed yourself,” I said.
“Seemed to make sense at the time. I left a note. ‘I’m sorry.’ That was it. I left behind my wife and kids.” Zee’s image flickered as his calm lapsed. “Seemed to make sense at the time.”
“What’s happened to the others?”
“They’re more or less OK. They don’t remember much. They’ve been discharged or placed on light duty. They don’t quite understand why, but their survival instincts told them not to fight it too hard. So why are you fighting it, sir?”
“I tried to resign,” I said. “They won’t let me go.”
The ghost considered. “Then think about this, sir. Was it worth it? Your target was protecting a little shit town that no one cared about—not us or them. He just wanted us to stay away. You show up, and it makes him crazy, makes him sacrifice them all, just to stop you.”
“I think about it all the time.”
“Well, think about this too. I have my last orders. I’m not going to let you feel any better until you’ve stopped, sir.”
“You’d serve a terrorist sorcerer?”
“Oh no, sir. I’ve be
en watching you, and listening. It’s you who’s going over to the enemy.” Zee grinned, face full of rage and malice. “This is for me.”
I felt it all over again, the man, the woman, the dog, the child, the deaths of a whole town. The scream came to my throat, but I wouldn’t let it out.
Instead, I walked through Zee and went to the doctor on duty. In the measured tones of desperate need, I said, “I need to speak with Colonel Hutchinson.”
* * *
“Isn’t it time you got over what happened?” asked Hutchinson.
The steady pulse of death, death, death, still beat in the veins of my skull. “This isn’t about the mission, ma’am. It’s about me needing to resign. This treatment you’ve arranged isn’t working.”
“What about the night terrors?” asked Hutchinson. “You’ve … been causing some difficulties in your sleep. We can’t have that on the outside.”
“I know, ma’am. I have reason to believe my sleep problems will cease to hurt others once I’ve left the military. And if they don’t, the Family House should contain them.”
Hutchinson shook her head. “This is something the target did to you, isn’t it? Why don’t you fight it?”
“If it were just a curse, a craft time bomb, I would, ma’am,” I said. “But it’s beyond that now. When the massacre happened, something in me … wasn’t upset.”
For the first time in my presence, Hutch’s eyes betrayed surprise. “The Left-Hand Mortons are dead and gone,” she whispered.
“And they’re going to stay that way,” I said.
Hutchinson said, “No craft soldier has ever quit in time of war.”
“War? Feh.”
“But what about the Right side of your family? The Morton legacy.”
“What legacy? How are you going to get your baby Mortons if I’m too bugged out to take a girl on a date?”
Hutchinson sighed. “Do we really need more Mortons?” She stopped my objection with a wave. “Our superiors agree that we do. And that’s the one reason we’re agreeing to this.” She opened her briefcase. “We have a special discharge for craft soldiers.”
