The Price of Salt (The Grim Arcana)

by Geoffrey Thorne

“No, I was alone,” I said. “Grim’s out of–”

  “Not the Inconnu,” he said. “The girl.”

  I was about to say I didn’t follow when I suddenly did. Pris. I was all set to serve myself up to that thing in the dark, all set to walk right down its throat, singing, while it digested me, until I thought about Pris. Then I was up and out of there and dying to get into her bed, into her if I could. And this after that fight and how pissed I was at her. I said as much to Mr. Sun and he smiled.

  “Aegis,” he said. “It’s good.”

  Whatever.

  “So you know what that thing is?” I said. “You know what to do to put it down?”

  “Somebody opened a door,” said Mr. Sun. “Something is coming through. This something doesn’t belong here. It knows it doesn’t and it knows it shouldn’t stay but it’s here. To stay it must have form and it must eat.”

  “Well, it’s definitely got some kind of body,” I said. “I shot it.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Sun. “Your hand tells the story.”

  Before I could stop him he reached across the table and grabbed my wounded hand. I almost jerked away from him but, when he touched me, the throbbing stopped. After a second I could move my fingers without the sensation of needles gouging in. After that I felt normal.

  Mr. Sun let go and I looked down at it. I was surprised to see it was still mangled only now it looked more like a leather remnant than a lump of raw meat.

  “No charge,” said Mr. Sun. Then he reached into the box and handed me the carved rod, making sure I took it in the hand he’d just let go.

  “Only in the left, without gloves,” he said in a way that burned it into me. “With gloves for the right.”

  I noticed he wasn’t wearing gloves and mentioned it. He just smiled.

  “So I smack the things with this or what?” I said.

  “There’s only one thing, proselyte,” he said. “One very old very hungry thing.”

  Then he reached for the jar of white stuff and slid it over to me.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “Payment first,” said Mr. Sun.

  “I thought you said no charge,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “For the hand. For this you have to pay.”

  I started to fish around for my wallet and then for the thirty odd bucks that was in it. Mr. Sun shook his head slowly and gently pushed the hand and wallet down.

  “Money won’t do for this,” he said.

  “What then?” I said.

  He put his hand on my chest, right over my heart. The same warm feeling that went through my hand when he fixed it now went through my whole body.

  All of a sudden I was lying on the grass in my grandmother’s backyard. It was summer– it’s always summer when you’re ten years old– and my cousins were all out in the woods playing a game like hide and seek. I just lay there, dreaming up at the sky and, like all kids, thinking the moment would never end.

  The place smelled of honeysuckle and heat and hummed with the noise of all my family. They chattered in the kitchen, whooped like apes in the surrounding woods and talked in low back porch tones about the Market and Une-Yone Bidness and a bunch of other things I couldn’t understand. If there’s a heaven– I’m still not convinced on that score– but if there is, it couldn’t be better than my Gran’s back yard.

  Somebody called my name. I sat up and saw a big slap of teenaged boy coming at me in mid-air. I had just enough time to register the look of insane glee on my cousin Tom’s face before he crashed into me, trying immediately to pin me to the ground.

  We rolled and grappled and I think he was a little surprised to find me not the easy mark I was the summer before. Pretty soon I was on top.

  “Uncle,” I said, twisting his arm hard.

  He said it. Then he was lying there beside me looking up at the white puffs and talking about the things a fourteen year old thinks will interest a ten year old. Out of nowhere he stopped talking, almost stopped breathing it seemed to me, turned my way and said, “You know it’s okay, man.”

  “What’s okay?” I said.

  “You can let this moment go,” he said. “We got tons. This one can go. If it’s important.”

  I almost asked him what the hell he was talking about but, before I could, I was thirty again and standing in the back room of Mr. Sun’s little shop.

  Mr. Sun’s hand was still pressed to my chest and he had this look on his face– like hunger and happiness together– that I never wanted to see again.

  “Happiness,” he said in a ragged whisper. He pulled back his hand, pulled himself up straight and said, “Payment in full.”

  I had no clue what he was meant by that. In fact I had no clue what just happened. I was standing there thinking about something that I couldn’t remember anymore and then Mr. Sun’s leaning over and leering at me like a hungry pimp. Suddenly the back room was oppressively small and maybe Mr. Sun wasn’t the friendly, helpful guy I thought.

  “Can I go now?” I said.

  “Go,” he said. “Time is short.”

  ***

  The first thing I noticed when I turned onto Eris Place was that the lights were all out. Not just the street lamps either. Every pub I passed was closed and dark, every liquor store barred up for the night.

  I wish I could say none of it bothered me, that I just set my jaw against the expanded shadows and the evacuated streets and went straight in like gangbusters but the truth is I was pretty freaked. It took all I had to keep my shaking hands from smashing the car into the nearest brick wall.

  I circled the block like eight times before I worked up the stones to park.

  I wanted to call Pris one last time to just, you know, hear a friendly voice before– whatever.

  I dialed it. I know I pressed the buttons and I’d swear on a stack that I heard the ring and someone pick up but, after those, all that came out of the phone was a weird mumbley gurgle and static.

  Dead cell.

  Somewhere at the back of my mind I got the feeling that I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone else about this, that what was about to happen between me and the shadow thing was somehow private.

  “It’s touched you,” Mr. Sun had told me when he ushered me out of his store. “It’s had a taste.”

  Yeah. And I guess, in a way, I’d had a taste of it.

  The brownstone was darker than before.

  Even in the half light you could see the boards nailed across the broken windows had been covered over in something black. The bricks looked like they’d been caught in an oil spill. The whole structure could have been dredged up from the bottom of that tar pit they have in L.A..

  The whole street was different, come to mention it. There was some kind of film all over everything. Eris Place looked the way it might just after a first Winter snow if the snow was black and warm and squished when you walked on it.

  I caught myself trembling. Why not? I was shit scared by then. Not only from what I knew was waiting inside the house but also because I still had no clear idea what I was supposed to do about it.

  “You’re the only one who can get near it now,” came Mr. Sun’s voice in my memory. “You are the one to send it away again.”

  “And these are gonna do that?” I said, holding up the stick in one hand and the jar of sandy white stuff in the other.

  Mr. Sun smiled at me– which put me in mind of sharks for some reason– and said, “Form follows function.”

  Great. Riddles and sticks and me walking back into the dark like a freaking idiot.

  The door was just where I’d left it, propped to the side of the front opening. I was happy not to have to actually touch it to get inside. The film that was all over everything wasn’t anything like snow when you got close. It was more like a sea of black maggots all writhing and rolling in some kind of hideous dance. There was a smell coming off the stuff too- like the mud under a septic tank- that I could really have done without.

  I crept forward by inches, n
ot wanting to make any more sound than was absolutely necessary.

  I don’t think I ever missed Grim more than I did at that moment. I thought of him, his eyes lit up, his arm swinging that weird hatchet thing of his, cutting down whatever the hell was stupid enough to poke out a tentacle. Cold and deadly and tough as a crate of concrete nails, that’s Grim.

  But I was the only one for this. Little old me, sneaking in like a burglar. What the hell kind of Fate deals hands like this?

  The air inside was rank and heavy. My clothes were already beginning to stick to my skin though whether it was due to the sheen of sweat I’d developed or the stinking dampness of the brownstone itself, I couldn’t say.

  I ticked off the familiar sights– the shadowy kitchen at the far end of the first hall, the closed doors in the west wall, the open ones on the east, the peeling wallpaper. All of it was just like I’d left it but somehow more still. It was as if, just before I’d walked in, everything was spinning and ripping itself to pieces but was now stopped, waiting for me to pass.

  Did I say I felt eyes on me? I did. Hundreds of little eyes tracking me from the dark. I couldn’t see them but, dammit, I could sure as hell feel them there. Hackles never lie.

  I put all that away and took a step towards the stairs.

  “Nuu idd,” said a slurry ugly voice beside me. I jumped back– spinning to see what had made the sound– and immediately wished I hadn’t.

  There was lump there in the darkest part of the hall, a human shaped, female shaped lump of something that shook and rolled with the slightest noise. The first glimpse of it head on, even hidden a little by the cover of shadows, was enough to tell he not to look that way again.

  I tried to edge past it, up the stairs, but, whenever I moved an inch, the lump did too. At one point the thing got itself under the only patch of moonlight that had managed to creep in through the cracks in the walls.

  The light glinted on its pale skin, drawing my eye in spite of my need to never look that way.

  It was a person still, sort of. It was ghost white and sporting boils so big they looked like they’d pop any second. The whole thing was like an unfinished sculpture of clay– still wet clay at that.

  I could have handled that, you know. I could have just squeezed past the lump and gone on up the stairs. I could have written it off as One More Awful Freaking Thing I’ve Been Subjected to Since Meeting Grim. I could have except that I saw its eyes– one eye, really. It was big and blue and human enough for me to recognize.

  “Nuu id,” it– she– slurred at me again. “Nuu yooo’d kum bakk.”

  It was Queen Babs. Guess her little disappearing act didn’t get her far enough away. Either that or the shadow thing’s appetite had a stronger pull than that powdered tub of guts could resist. It had pulled her back from wherever she’d run, sucked her back into the house, into the dark where it could make the same meal of her that it had made of her boy.

  She’d only made it this far before the blackness sucked out her innards like soft cooked marrow. Just like Bobby the Bug, she was being consumed by that same burning filth that had tried– was still trying– to get me. All that was left was the bulbous outline of her body, a giant ice cream sundae, melting into the floor.

  “Yeah, good for you, Queenie,” I said, moving past her up the stairs. “Gold star.” The last glimpse I got of her bubbling, liquid face was almost enough to send me screaming back the other way.

  I kept my eyes locked on the landing above and moved up. The air hung on me like black molasses as I climbed. Every creak of a board, every scrape of my heel put me in mind of long needle-like teeth, grinding.

  Then I was at the top staring ahead into that insanely long hall. At the far end, blackness in the black, was the entrance to the dead cathedral.

  Like the house, more than the house, it had changed. The last time through the arch had been a simple thing, just the wooden frame you’d expect in place like this; cheap oak cut and glued into straight lines. Now it was a giant carved thing, thick, maybe made of stone or cement and covered with some kind of oval shaped bumps about the size of dog heads.

  My breath caught in my throat and again I had to take a second to convince my feet not to blast off for the exit.

  “Only you,” came Mr. Sun’s voice in my head. Like I needed to be reminded.

  The fact that I’d made it this far without getting slurped up like Babs and the Bug was enough to send the message that it was me or it was nobody who was going to do this thing.

  I forced myself forward, my fingers clenching tight to the stick in my left hand. The dark was everywhere, high and wide and under and, I thought, sucking softly at the soles of my shoes.

  When I got closer to the entrance I could see that the ovals were actually faces. Tiny shrunken faces carved into the archway screaming silently at me as I passed them by. Were they male? Female? I couldn’t tell. But they were real enough looking that I was glad to put them behind me.

  The fire still burned away at the center of the room, but bigger and brighter than I remembered. More fuel had been brought in, I guess, though who or what had collected it was something I just didn’t want to dwell on.

  I could see a baby stroller melting and popping and the edge of what looked like the base of one of those old-fashioned wooden rolling office chairs. Still the added kindling, though it made the fire grow, did nothing at all to push back the dark. If anything it made the shadows thicker, more solid.

  I moved in closer, hoping to steal some warmth back for my bones.

  No sale.

  The fire was burning okay but the dark ate all the heat it kicked out just the same as it did the light.

  I watched the stroller collapse into itself as the flames licked it to pieces.

  The fingers of my wounded hand started to itch. It seemed like the wooden stick they were wrapped around suddenly weighed a freaking ton.

  Something, the same giant rolling thing as before, moved in the shadows around me, circling.

  I gripped the stick tight, treating it like I was hanging off a cliff somewhere and it was the only rope.

  The sweat was cold on me and I could feel my heart trying to break out right through my freaking breast bone.

  I was so scared it was nearly all I was– just the fear and enough flesh and bone to keep it in one place.

  My head was still filled with visions of teeth– millions of long, stone black teeth lining a mouth that was miles wide.

  The longer I looked into the shadows beyond the fire, the more I thought I could see some of that mouth– one corner maybe– resolving itself out of the black.

  The mouth in my mind grinned and opened wide and I got that feeling you get when the hot chick crosses the bar to ask you to dance.

  The shadows in front of me rolled and swelled, moving in. There were shapes in there, shapes that were all smiling curves and open hands. And was there music playing? Somewhere in the distance I heard the remains of a Goth girl’s voice moaning and wailing.

  “Why nodd?” the voice said. “Why nodd meee?”

  But the mouth didn’t answer, just smiled that insanely huge open smile where the teeth hung down like giant black icicles.

  I could just walk under those teeth, I thought. I could just walk under them, lay myself between the rows and let them come down.

  They should come down. They should come down fast and hard and chew whatever was between them into hot runny pulp.

  That’s all it wanted, really, just a meal.

  But not just any meal. Not Babs the Ice Cream girl or Bobby the Bug and his cockroach shell. Not even Vinnie Dietz whose body was the first thing nibbled and sucked down.

  No. It wanted a good meal, something to savor.

  Me.

  It wanted me. And, after me, the whole wide world. And that was all right because it was.

  I took a step forward. It felt good so I took another one and another after that.

  The dark rippled in front of me, opening into it
self, inviting.

  You came back, it seemed to say. Now we’ll be together.”

  That’s what I wanted, again, to be part of that endless chewing black. All it would take was a few more steps and I’d be inside, happy, eaten. Only the damned stick was so heavy in my hand that it slowed me down. It was like the thing had turned into a freaking anvil while I wasn’t looking.

  A feeling came over me, told me to just let the stick go, to let everything go and keep walking. I’d come so far already, hadn’t I? Just lighten the load and take a couple more steps and then I could feel those beautiful gleaming teeth.

  Trouble was my fingers wouldn’t budge. No matter what I told them they stayed clenched around the stupid piece of cedar or whatever and wouldn’t let go.

  The dark rippled around me, in an angry way it seemed to me. In my mind the corners of the smiling mouth tipped down.

  “Get rid of it,” the dark was eager. Drooling. ”Get rid of it, now. Then we can be together.”

  Which was what I wanted.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t let the thing go.

  I held it up in front of me– hauled it up, really. It was that heavy by then. The veins on my destroyed hand were stiff with blood and the knuckles were locked so tight they looked to crack through the tendons any second.

  There wasn’t anything different about it. It was just an old bit of carved wood– badly carved, now that I looked close. The faces were just two or three cuts in the surface each, the runes or whatever, were even less. It was nothing– nothing that should weigh as much as good sized Rotweiller that was for sure. But there was something there, under the varnish maybe. Something...

  Get rid of it, came that hungry voice in my head. It’s just a stick. It’s meaningless. It’s keeping us apart. Get rid of it. Break it. Smash it.

  Hey. I tried, okay. I would have dropped the stick and stamped it into kindling but I couldn’t let go. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t make the damned hand do what the hell I told it to do.

  “Open, you sons of bitches!” I screamed at the fingers. I was hysterical all of a sudden, frantic, shaking the hand back and forth violently, pounding it on the floor. “Open! Open!”