Clockwork Phoenix 4

by Mike Allen

  It is all true, and every word is a lie. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you about ghosts or devils.

  * * *

  The second time you see her, you think: This can’t be real.

  Because it’s too perfect. It’s the Fourth of July, and you’re at yet another bend in the creek. (With her, it’s always water.)

  The grass is dry, but it remembers rain. The creek—angry here—smells of mud, death, and time. Things have drowned here. Things have been swept away and forgotten. Things sink, and sometimes they rise. But you take the water for granted; you always have.

  A bonfire leaps high, smelling of meat and burnt sugar and wood. There are fireworks, fractured light captured and doubled, each boom-crack echoing your heartbeat and reverberating in your bones.

  You are surrounded by people you see every day. They live behind counters in the local stores; they line porches, and spit tobacco; they drive the bus carrying you to school. Except tonight, they are strangers. Tonight they are demons. And in a world of strangers and demons, you latch onto the only girl you’ve never seen before. The only one you know for sure isn’t real.

  She is solid and warm. The fireworks stain her with cathedral window colors. She smiles, and her teeth turn crimson, emerald, and gold. She is fierce and wild, too hard to hold. But you take her hand.

  She leans her head on your shoulder. Her hair tickles your skin, and you smell her above and beyond the campfire, which is black powder and pine needles. She smells of soap and smoke, but also of water, of deep and sunken things. It’s a creek smell, and breathing it is drowning, but you do it just the same. You think: This is love.

  It’s the Fourth of July, but this is where summer begins.

  * * *

  There’s a story they tell in Lesser Creek about a girl who drowned. She had just turned fifteen, or seventeen, or twenty-one.

  Just shy of fifteen, she was sad all the time, without ever knowing why. There was nothing wrong with her, other than being fifteen—a world of tragedy in its own right.

  The girl was hungry constantly, and never full. When she simply couldn’t stand it anymore, she went down to the creek, filled her pockets with stones, and lay in the deepest part of the water with her eyes open until she drowned.

  If you go to just the right spot, where the water is the coldest and your feet don’t quite touch, you’ll hear her. It’s hard to be still, treading water, but if you hold your breath, make your limbs only a fish-belly flash in slow motion, never rippling the surface, she’ll whisper your name.

  These woods are full of ghosts.

  Near twenty-one, she was a farmer’s daughter. She got in the family way, and her parents locked her up, and forced her to carry the child to term. Maybe the baby was still-born, and maybe she delivered it screaming, bloody, and alive. Either way, she ran away the night it came.

  She ran to the trestle bridge, and threw the baby off just as a train went howling past. Who can say which wailed louder, the baby or the train? Overcome by guilt, she threw herself after the child. Her body rolled down the slope, and the creek carried it away.

  If you stand at the very center of the bridge and drop a penny, when it lands, you’ll hear a baby cry. Except sometimes it’s the lonely mourn of a train vanishing toward the horizon. And sometimes it’s a girl, just shy of twenty-one, weeping for her sins.

  At seventeen, she was murdered. Her killer cut out her eyes, and replaced them with smooth stones. He stitched up her lips with black thread, and left her in the shallowest part of the creek where the water barely covered her.

  The stories say her killer was a drifter, or the devil himself. They say he confessed the same day the murder was done, screaming it all over the town square. When everyone came to see what all the fuss was about, he wept, inconsolable.

  He cut her eyes out, because she wouldn’t stop looking at him. He sewed her lips shut, because she wouldn’t stop whispering his name. They hanged him just the same.

  All of these stories are true. Every one of them is a lie.

  The girls of Lesser Creek leave flowers for the hungry ghost at the water’s edge, and burn candles in her nameless name. The boys bring pretty toys, and line them up all in a row. The old women bake oat cakes, sweetened with blood, and the old men mumble prayers. Each brings their hopes and fears, and such desperate love.

  No matter what they bring, the ghost is hungry still.

  * * *

  The second murder comes late July. In-between, there are a string of assaults, a petty theft, one count of grand larceny, and a host of undocumented sins.

  The boy follows the hoof-paw-shoe-hewn path through the branches to cross the shallow water near every day. He can do that, no matter what the stories say. The wavelets glitter bright, wash sweat and grime from his skin. His toes grip slick stones, and he never falls.

  He makes another mark on the boulder’s side. They multiply like rabbits, like flies. They turn the grey stone dense and arcane. There is power here not found in the other graffiti. And the stone itself is rife with meaning, too—stolen kisses, secrets trysts. Oaths are sworn here, fated for breaking. It is all his doing. Or so the oath-breakers and kiss-stealers say. He drove them to it; it’s what devils are for.

  He has a tally of at least a dozen-dozen, and it is only July. The girl’s space is empty.

  He watches her, sometimes, courting her soul slow, taking her time. She is hungry; the boy sees it in her eyes. But sometimes she smiles.

  And when she does, he realizes his belly is empty, too.

  The marks on the stone don’t fill him like they should.

  Once upon a time, he was a musician. Once upon a time, he was good at cards. He was driven out of town, beaten with a stick, hung at midnight. His heart has burned countless times. He has tricked and been tricked, loved the wrong man and the wrong woman. It is always the same in the end.

  Once upon a time, he walked the rails. Once upon a time, a canvas strap bit his shoulder, soaking sweat, gaining dirt. Walking, he ran. He trusted wrong, sleeping in open boxcars, warming his hands by vagrant fires. He gave too much of himself away. He swapped stories, and accidentally told the truth.

  He found himself dead, spit dirt from a shallow grave, and walked again.

  He jumps on stumps and has a quick hand. Dice and cards always fall his way.

  Even though the marks crowding the stone aren’t as triumphant as they should be, the boy makes another one, and drops the sharp stone. The creek vanishes it, a card up a magician’s sleeve.

  This is what the boy and the girl both know, even when they made their deal: It isn’t fair. They have been given roles to play—ghost and devil, hungry to the very end.

  The summer ticks past, far too slow.

  * * *

  There’s a story they tell about the time the devil came to Lesser Creek. The townspeople chased him all along the rails. They caught him, and killed him, cut off his head and buried it upside down. They drove a spike through the ground to make sure he couldn’t pick it up again.

  But will-o-wisps still drift under the trestle bridge in the dead-black of night, the devil’s own lanterns, leading the damned to the water’s edge. And if you walk along the ties at midnight and count thirteen from the moment you pass under the bridge, you’ll hear the devil breathing behind you. If you take one step back, you’ll find the twelfth tie missing and he will reach up and drag you down to hell.

  The first time the devil came to Lesser Creek, he was just a boy, no more than seventeen. He committed a crime, or maybe folks just didn’t like the way he looked at them. Maybe the summer was too hot, and tempers were too short.

  Even though he looked just like an ordinary boy, they pulled up rail spikes, and nailed them right back down through his feet and his hands. When they came back after three days, the body was gone.

  No one brings flowers or blood-sweetened cakes to the old rail line. When old women pass, they spit, and old men still drive an iron spike between the twelfth and th
irteenth ties on moonless nights to this very day.

  It is a lonely place.

  When the devil came to Lesser Creek the second time, he made a deal with a drifter who dared to skim stones along the steel rails just to hear them sing. If the man brought the devil twenty souls by summer’s end, his own would be spared, no matter how he sinned.

  It was a mass-murder summer. A fire and brimstone summer. Preachers thundered through the churches of Lesser Creek, damnation heavy on their tongues. The air clotted thick; wasps drowned in sweat, humming between the pews and banging their heads against the stained glass. Birds fell from trees, hearts baked within the delicate cages of their bones.

  All the fans stopped turning. Ice cream sizzled before it could touch the cone. Soda went flat in every fountain. Cold water forgot to flow, except in the creek where no one dared go. Wives beat their husbands; fathers cursed their daughters. Boys burst into tears for no reason and kicked their dogs.

  And the drifter came, and the drifter went, and bodies piled like leaves in his wake. No one could ever say if he did the killing, or not. But every man, woman, and child in town swore up and down they heard laughter echoing along the train tracks, and it was the devil’s very own.

  * * *

  The next time you see her, you know she is a ghost, because she kisses you. And girls like her don’t kiss you.

  You are sitting side by side, hand in hand, by the creek, always by the creek. Her feet are next to yours, relaxed where yours are tense. Your footprints sink into the mud. Hers are ephemeral, and disappear.

  You grip her hand too tight, and sweat gathers between your palms. Planted in the dirt, feet in the current, you look toward the rock snagging the center of the stream. Graffiti scores it. It is a magical, mystical thing; a totem centering all the summer days in danger of flying off the edge of the world.

  How un-solid these liminal years of your life are. At any moment, at every moment, you are in danger of losing cohesion. The rock in the center of the stream is eternal. It says X was here, and that is real—tribal and shamanistic. Written in stone it can’t be denied. If you vanish, the rock will remain, a record of your being.

  Here and now, she kisses you, and it grounds you, too. It is the culmination of a summer’s worth of desire. It is the inevitable consequence of bridges and fireworks and the muddy banks of creeks. It is the only outcome of frog-song and bug-drone, and all the other milestones of the season.

  And she says, or doesn’t say, but you hear, “All I want is one little piece of your soul. It won’t hurt, not yet. You won’t even know it’s gone until much later. One day, you’ll wake up, not in love with me anymore, old, and looking back on your life, and wonder where that part of you went. It’ll sting for a moment, and you’ll move on. Is that so bad?”

  Her fingers lace yours, and the whole time she looks at the water, not you.

  She says, “I’ll fill you up with me, so you’ll never know anything is missing.”

  She pauses so you think she regrets what comes next. It’s what you’ve always known was coming since you saw her on the bridge.

  She is a hungry ghost.

  Here and now, you love her for her pity. You pity her for her love. It isn’t fair. And so you forgive her, because you’ve been hungry, too.

  She says, “Before you agree, understand that if you give me that piece of your soul, it’s mine forever. That’s how love works. It consumes you. The moment it ends, you can’t see past it to a day down the road when you won’t be split open and bleeding for the whole world to see. In the wound, you can’t see the scar, or even the scab. Memories and hindsight belong to the future. This is here, this is now.”

  You know how this will end. You have always known how this will end.

  You hold her hand, tighter than you’ve held anyone’s hand before, and you agree. You give her your soul.

  The summer seems very short now. You have so little time.

  * * *

  A third murder rolls around mid August, but it holds no joy. The boy is winning by default. He longs for a reversal, a revolt, a turn of fortune. He longs for a trick to grab him by the tail.

  He never asked for this, no more than she did. He is a ghost, and she is a devil. The woods have always been haunted, and so have they.

  Vandalism. Arson. A near-murder that doesn’t quite take. He whispers temptation. He pours jealousy, hate, venom, all into willing ears. In the end, he’s powerless. So is she. They only take what the world gives them.

  He makes another mark, drops the stone in the water. The creek chills him. He wades to shore, wishing the summer would end.

  * * *

  She tells you it is over.

  She told you; she is telling you; she will always be telling you. And. It. Is.

  Welts rise on your skin. Psychological, but so real.

  Of course, it had to happen this way. Nobody loves you, ever loved you, ever will. And part of you knows, bitter, that you are being oh so dramatic, so you laugh. But you cry, too. She warned you, told you what she was doing as she did it, but you handed your soul over anyway, because you wanted it so goddamned bad.

  Even though, deep down, you know, godfuckingdamnit, you will never be good enough to be loved. Someone else will always win, always be better than you. You will always be hungry, while everyone else is full.

  So you walk the trestle bridge, where you can just see the water. You think about the summer, all the people who died, lied, cheated, and stole. The whole fucking town is going to shit, but what do you care? And what would they care if you jumped right now?

  They probably wouldn’t even notice you’d gone.

  But you don’t. You won’t. And you turn away.

  And maybe someone looks back at the sound of something heavy never hitting the rails. And maybe they don’t. Because everyone knows these woods, that water, those trees, these rails, are haunted anyway.

  * * *

  She makes a mark on the stone, one shaky line. He stands on the shore, arms crossed, watching. He wants to smile, but it makes his cheeks hurt, as if the rock-hard bubblegum left splinters in his skin. His feet, planted in the mud, ache. He remembers running; she remembers drowning. In the end, it is the same.

  In this moment, he loves her for her pity, and he pities her for her love. Could she, would she, ever pity him?

  By the stone, she wants to weep, but she smiles, and it tastes of tears. She looks at him, standing in a slant of sunlight, watching her.

  One soul, her tally.

  He reaches for her, their fingers almost touching.

  It is never enough.

  His side of the stone is crowded; she has one single soul to her name. It is sweet, oh so sweet, but it won’t sustain her to winter’s end. His souls, crowded thick as they are, are candy-floss, melting on the tongue and never touching his belly.

  They have played this game before, and no one ever wins.

  She is sick to death of hunger and drowning. He is sick to death of treachery and spit-sealed deals. But they are what they have always been, and what they always will be.

  These are the stories they tell you about hungry ghosts, and hungry devils. Every one of them is a lie, and all of them are true.

  He reaches for her; she takes his hand. His fingers pass right through hers, leaving her hungrier still. His sigh is the echo of a lonely train running the rails out of town; hers, cold water running over stones.

  The season ticks over to fall. A leaf drifts down, caught by the current and swept away, and they look to the bridge just visible through the thinning trees. They know, they both know, next summer they will stand there and start all over again.

  And they ache, hoping next time they will remember, next time, they’ll get it right.

  WHAT STILL ABIDES

  Marie Brennan

  Let me tell a tale of my father’s kin, for in me runs their blood, and so to me falls this burden: to keep the knowledge, the old-thought, the shape of how it began, as my father gave i
t to me.

  * * *

  Harvest-time it was, the time of reaping and of dying, when his breath stopped and his blood stilled, and they laid his body in the ground. He had a name then, that now is gone; my father knew it but told me not, saying it died with his life, and to speak it now would blight the speaker’s tongue.

  He died at harvest and they laid him in the ground, axe at his side and barrow built over his head. After that came winter, wolf-cold and sharp. It was a time of hunger, of bellies clenching hard and even kin looking upon one another with an unkind eye. Men tholed ill luck in those long nights: sickness and wound, horses lame and kine lost. Then came spring with storms, grimful rains to drown the fields, and the ground that was his grave became black with mud.

  One night a man, Leofnoth by name, son of Leofmaer, hied to the eorl’s hall to drink among the thanes, as was his wont, and a shame unto his wife. But when he came there, they saw he was white as bone with fear and his hands shook like leaves in the wind, though he had not yet taken ale. When they asked what had frighted him so, he said he had seen a man standing upon the grave.

  For this they laughed at him, and gave him a cup to drink. But rest Leofnoth would not, holding that he told only truth, and furthermore that the man was no thing of this world. And so in the teeth of a storm, three men rode out to see what of what he spake.

  Stood a dréag upon the brow of his barrow, feet mud-deep, neither shifting nor breathing.

  Warriors they were, bold thanes of the eorl, who had seen that man buried and would swear their oath that he was dead. Yet there stood the lich: frost-shrunken his limbs and grey as old snow, like a curse upon the ground. Bold might they be, but near him none would go, for fear of this unearthly thing. Instead they settled that they would fetch a god-man, whose holy words would lay the wight once more.

  But when came the god-man with them to the barrow at the mist-shrouded break of day, cast down he could not what had risen from that earth, for the thing was mightier than he. Whatever words said he, the bone-home neither shifted nor breathed, nor gave any show it saw the thanes and the god-man. Dead had he been, and so was he still, even upon the height of the barrow instead of in its heart.