by Brian Keene
They moved quickly and cautiously, trying to appear as if they belonged. Several men glanced their way, but none took a second look.
“How far to your place?” Bryan asked.
“A couple of miles,” Jane said. “Out of the docks area, then south to the Mission District.”
“Streets should still be pretty quiet,” Bryan said. “Maybe we can—”
“There!” Jane whispered. She had seen Gavriil running from behind a storage building further along the dock, and several police came with him. At first she thought they were actually chasing him, and she hoped that the danger to her and Bryan might have been shifted. Then she realized that they were all running to reach the ship, and it was Gavriil who moved the fastest. Yet another way in which she had underestimated him. He was a big man and heavy around the waist, but that did not mean he wasn’t fit.
They ducked behind several wagons loaded with goods, crouching so that she could see the running men through the wheels. She glanced at Bryan and they both remained motionless, fearing that any sudden movement might attract attention. Gavriil would be hoping they were all still aboard ship, but he would also be alert. If he saw them, Jane knew, he would barely break his stride.
The men ran along the dock and disappeared behind piled cargo. Urgency bit at Jane. As soon as they were out of sight she moved off at a crouch, ignoring Bryan’s whispered warning to give them more time. Franca was sick and might not have time.
A moment too late, Jane thought again. She straightened and started running, hearing Bryan sprinting to catch up. He was a fit man—she knew that well enough—but her own exertions were driven by desperation. He would have to keep up.
She almost ran into the policeman. He emerged around the side of a storage unit as she ran for the corner. A big man, fat, red in the face and struggling with the effort, he gasped as she skidded, slipped, and finally fell. Jane’s instinct was to protect her head and body, but good sense prevailed, and her arms hugged tight around the valise.
To have it smashed open now … She almost laughed at the idea. None of them knew for sure which jar this was, and yet she intended to present it to her sick daughter, open it, exposing the world to whatever lay within in an effort to cure one person’s ills.
“Careful, Ma’am,” the policeman said. “Here, let me—” He held out a hand but Jane knocked it aside, scampering back on her behind and pushing herself upright against the wall.
“Don’t!” she said. The policeman’s eyes went wide, then narrowed again, his expression cooler and more considered than before. She might have fooled him, she supposed, if she’d reacted better. But now she had raised his suspicions, and his eyes flickered down to the bag clutched against her chest.
“Jane, no,” Bryan said. He pleaded. And as she drew the gun from the bag, she wondered just what he thought her capable of.
“Anything,” she whispered, pointing the gun at the man’s chest. Her hand shook, but his fear was very real. “I’ll do anything for her. You understand?”
The policeman didn’t, but he nodded anyway.
“Go that way,” she said, nodding across the dock to where the others had disappeared. “Don’t look back. I’ll know if you do. You believe that?”
He did not, but he nodded again. Then he went, hurrying, and Jane knew he would be feeling a hot spot on his back just waiting for the bullet. She pitied him for a moment, but Bryan gave her no longer. He grabbed her arm and pulled her around the building. She thought he might take the gun from her, try to assume control, but he did not. He knew what she was doing and how determined she was.
“Fast as we can,” he said. “We probably don’t have very long.”
They ran, no longer caring what the arriving dockworkers thought of them.
Two minutes after she sent the policeman on his way, Jane heard a terrible scream, rising from terror to agony before being cut off at its height.
“What the hell was that?” Bryan asked.
An awful thought occurred to her. “We’re being followed,” she said. “The killer. After this.” She tapped the jar.
“After it or protecting it?”
“You really believe that curse?”
“If someone else believes it and acts on it, that makes it true.”
They left the docks behind and entered a network of streets, and Jane considered what Bryan had said. Patrick and Cesare had translated and read the curses carved into the catacomb walls, so was there a possibility one of them had taken it to heart? The dangers of what they had found had been discussed again and again, and while none of them openly professed belief in the supernatural aspects of the jar, she knew they all harbored secret hopes. Her, most of all. Why else would she be doing what she was doing now?
But they had all agreed that there might be very sound scientific reasons why the jar should only be opened in a controlled, sealed environment. If it was the so-called ‘good’ jar, then maybe it would contain tinctures and medicines from long ago, many of which had faded from memory in the intervening centuries. They could prove useful again—imagine a cure for polio, or the plague. But if it was the bad jar, it might have been filled with all manner of infections, illnesses, and germs. One inhalation of the jar’s ancient contents could seal the fate of humankind.
She knew the three specialists well, and Bryan more than she had known any man since Michael had left her. But it was still entirely possible that Patrick or Cesare had taken it upon himself to protect the jar. Perhaps even as far as murder.
It was a mile to her home, maybe a little less. Her stomach ached with excitement at seeing Franca again, and the boiling terror that she would be that moment too late. Nothing mattered now but Franca, and the jar, and although Jane knew all the dangers that hung around it, her vision was blinkered, tunneled towards her daughter being well again. That was all that mattered, and the rest of the world could go to hell.
“Something’s following us!” Bryan said.
Jane spun around and looked where he was pointing, back along the street. They had passed people on their way to or home from work, and to some extent being in the vicinity of others had given her a sense of safety. But no more.
Bryan’s use of the word something instead of someone rang so true.
A shadow moved along the street. It flitted back and forth across the road, seeking the darkness between buildings, avoiding angular patches of light thrown by oil lamps, moving quickly and smoothly. It passed a small group of men and only two of them paused and looked up, as if none of them had seen it and only a few heard or sensed something amiss.
“What do we do?” Bryan asked, scared. He put his hand to his throat, subconsciously trying to shield it from the blade.
“We run,” she said. “Follow me. We can shake it.”
But whatever it was, she was nowhere near certain of that.
She knew these streets well, and the alleys and yards behind the streets even better. She had been born and brought up in San Francisco, and while as a child she hadn’t lived in this neighborhood, she’d had friends here. They had stolen fish from the dock markets and fruit from street vendors, and a fast and secret getaway route had always been vital. Sure, a few of them had been caught one time or another. But she dug down now in her memories, seeking those retained maps and hoping things hadn’t changed much in the intervening years. It had been some time since she’d needed an escape route from anything.
“This way! Follow me, keep fast and low, and don’t look back.” She slung the valise handles over one shoulder and pulled out the gun, unconcerned whether anyone saw it. She was too damn close to home to care about anything other than getting there.
Jane ducked between two ramshackle wooden houses, nudging against a gate with her shoulder when she saw it ajar, rushing across a yard and out through another gate. She heard Bryan behind her, breathing hard but keeping up, and a rush of gratitude washed through her. She wasn’t sure that she loved him, but right then she felt that she owed him everyth
ing.
They emerged into a narrow alley, dark and shadowed in the pre-dawn, and she immediately turned right. Memories formed a map she followed subconsciously, sensing the ghost-whispers of old friends urging her on. She kicked through something wet and stinking, heard the rattle of chains, and then a dog leapt at them, barking and foaming at the end of its chain. Jane kicked out and connected with its side, but it was a big beast and felt no pain. They dashed past without suffering a bite and the hound barked them along the alleyway.
Reaching a wall, Jane pocketed the gun and searched for familiar handholds. They were still there, all these years later, and climbing the wall felt like a dream. There was no hesitation. She pulled with her hands, pushed with her feet, and reaching the top she looked over into the small square on the other side. The trees there seemed taller, and there were several automobiles parked outside some of the houses, but otherwise it was as it had been twenty years before.
Just as she swung her legs over and dropped down the other side, Bryan cried out.
“Jane, it’s—”
She hit the ground and turned, pulling the gun and aiming at the top of the wall. I’m so close to home! she thought, waiting for Bryan to appear, or the shadow, or both of them struggling to reach her first.
Something growled. Bryan shouted, and she heard him dragged down from his hold on the wall, striking the ground hard.
And all that mattered was her dear, dying daughter.
“Bryan, don’t give it to him!” she shouted. Then she turned and ran, almost home, nearly there, and behind her on the other side of the wall, following a brief pause, she heard her lover’s scream turn into a sickening gurgle as his throat was torn open.
Sorry sorry sorry, she thought, but there was nothing she could do. Bryan would have died anyway, and giving herself just a few more seconds … surely he’d have wanted that?
Swallowing down the stale, poisonous guilt, she crossed the square, and just as she ducked into the street that led to the block where she lived, glanced back.
A shape was hanging from the top of the wall. Dark, small, and as it dropped into the weak glare of an oil lamp she saw the wizened, wrinkled features of an impossibly old woman.
But when she ran it was with an unnatural athleticism.
Jane braced herself against the wall, lifted the gun, and fired three times. The woman staggered and veered to the left, then tripped over a tree root and fell.
Voices called from elsewhere. A door slammed, and a child screamed, and someone else started shouting. Jane ignored them all and kept her eyes on the old, old woman. She was sprawled in the dust, writhing like a wind-up toy reaching the end of its time.
Then she lifted her head and looked directly at Jane. In the half-light she couldn’t be sure, but she thought the woman smiled.
She fired one more time and saw the woman’s head flip back. Glancing across the square at the wall, knowing that Bryan lay dead beyond, she hurried along the street towards her block, and home.
Franca heard singing, somehow both distant and close, in the same way that her body felt both dreadfully heavy and impossibly light. Her limbs were thin and her body slender, but her bones seemed to drag her down, making every muscle ache. Something within her seemed so wispy and airy that in her fleeting moments of wakefulness she thought she might fly away.
Like tonight.
Her eyes fluttered open in the dark. Damp with sweat, chilly with fever, she blinked several times, trying to focus. Her thoughts blurred along with her vision and she wondered if she might be dreaming—must be dreaming, because in a splash of moonlight in the corner of the room stood her mother, staring at her, whispering something that sounded almost like a song.
Oh, my darling, my baby girl, my beautiful sweetheart. Oh, Franca, I’m sorry, so sorry. I never should have left you but I’m back now, Mama’s home, and I will make you well. You know I’d do anything for you, even give my own life. Oh, my darling, I’m sorry.
“Mama,” Franca whispered, or thought she did. Had her lips moved? Had any sound emerged? She wasn’t sure.
The little girl closed her eyes again. Fever, she thought. I’m dreaming.
I’m dying.
A hand on her arm. The touch alone hurt her. She took a sharp breath, thinking she might have stopped breathing altogether and only that touch—the pain of contact—had brought her back to life. I could have died in my sleep. That wouldn’t have been so bad. Better than the pain.
Her eyes opened. The blurry silhouette above her couldn’t have been her mother. Mama was away. Away, as she so often was. Something heavy lay on the bed beside Franca and she let her head loll, glancing down to see the dark shape of her mother’s valise. Her chest clutched, breath rattling with phlegm, and she struggled not to cough because coughing sent spikes of pain through her and made her cry. She didn’t want to cry in a dream.
“My love,” her mother said.
Franca had no breath to reply.
Her mama reached into the valise and drew out something wrapped in thick cloth, gray in the moonlit room. Her hands trembling, she slipped the cloth away and revealed the strange piece of pottery within. Franca wheezed and began to cough and her mother said no, no, stay with me darling as pain lanced through her chest and the phlegm rattled and tears came to her eyes. Her vision went dark and for a moment she saw nothing at all.
The stink of her own sickness made the little girl groan in revulsion.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw the jar in her mother’s hands. Ceramic, but ancient. Mama worked with artifacts at the museum. Franca didn’t recognize the symbols on the jar—her mother always tried to teach her things and sometimes she paid attention, but these weren’t like any of the things she’d seen before. She blinked, vision blurring again, and then through the fog she saw that her mother was trying to open the jar, digging her fingernails into the crusty seal around the lid.
Then she saw the thin, black-hooded figure rise in the moonlight beyond her mother.
The figure reached spindly, bloodstained, shaking fingers toward her mother’s shoulder and Franca felt the breath seize in her chest, fear lancing through her where the pain had been and filling her lungs with a scream she could not voice. The hood shifted and she saw the face of the old woman beneath the hood, the ancient woman, a crone with gleaming yellow eyes, like a panther’s. On her forehead was a terrible wound, splintered bone, but she seemed unconcerned.
The hand fell on her mother’s shoulder.
“You must not,” the crone said.
Her mother screamed and flinched away from the clutching hand, and the jar fell from her grasp. It bounced against the edge of Franca’s mattress and then struck the floor with the sort of dry clink that only came from the sound of something cracking.
Breaking.
Franca heard a faint hiss, like a dying gasp, and wrinkled her nose at the peculiar stink that filled her bedroom.
Her mother cried out, but the crone’s hawk-like screech tore through the suffocating air as she batted her mother aside. Franca wheezed, calling for help as Mama struck the wall with a different sort of crack, thicker and wetter, but just as much the sound of something breaking.
The picture frames on the walls rattled. The whole room jolted once, so hard that lines threaded the glass of both windows. Franca’s eyes widened, adrenaline surging and focusing her vision as the whole bed quaked beneath her and she felt the world buck. Her hands clutched at the blanket and she mustered a cry.
“Mama!”
Her mother was trying to stand, clutching her chest, one hand on the wall. The floor shook again and she collapsed. She wheezed and coughed. In the moonlight, despite the juddering of the room, Franca saw blood on her mother’s chin.
The crone whirled on Mama, whispering a chant that might have echoed the song that had first woken Franca. But these were not her mother’s words, nor were they full of love. They carried a promise of fury and terror.
The crone swept towards her
mother and slammed her into the wall again, hard. Then she slumped to the floor and stared down at the jar. In those old eyes, Franca saw a glimmer of despair beneath the rage.
“Mama,” Franca whispered, but Mama did not reply. She sat slumped at the foot of the wall, crying.
“What have you done?” the crone said, but she remained staring at the jar. When she looked up the despair was still there, but so was something else. Resignation.
“Your mother earned this for you,” she said as she drew a rusted, gnarled knife from her cloak and drew it across her own throat.
Blood gushed, dark in the faint light. The ancient woman shuddered, dropped the knife, and pressed a hand to her throat. Then she started smearing her own blood onto the jar, staining the symbols and the thick grey seal, and she pressed it along the crack in the jar’s side. Gasping, blood bubbling at her throat, she continued to work until her movements slowed and the flow of blood lessened.
The room stopped shaking.
Franca gasped. For the first time she realized that the low light in the room came not from the moon but from dawn’s early light. She stared at the face half hidden by that black hood, then at the jar, and she saw that the cracks had been sealed with quickly drying crimson lines, blood that was no longer blood but a threaded vein of marbling in the ceramic.
The girl inhaled. She heard the thick, choking voice of her mother and turned to see her trying again to rise to her feet.
“Mama,” Franca said, leveraging herself up on one elbow and reaching out, sorrow washing over her.
A strange light glittered in her mother’s eyes. Franca thought it seemed like relief. Like happiness. Her mama tried to stand but could not. Something inside her was broken, and only her eyes still held signs of life. And then, as Franca watched, even they were extinguished.
“Take it,” the crone said. She was offering the jar in both hands, crouched close to the floor in case she dropped it. Blood bubbled at her throat as she spoke, and the second time there were no real words, only the hiss of air.
