Gideon

by Alex Gordon

  No—let me bring it to you.

  Invisible hands grabbed Lauren’s shoulders and rammed her against the fence. A force closed in around her, a wall of black that funneled and roared as though she stood in the midst of a tornado.

  The faces formed in the darkness, gray and grinning, bodies rank and decayed. They reached for her, the grasping hands of her nightmares, brushed her face, left acid burn in their wake.

  Then something took hold of her—she felt herself lifted off the ground, feet and arms dangling, a puppet on a cursed string, as bony hands tugged at her and wailed her name.

  I have tried to be kind, little witch, but it isn’t my nature. Now see what else I can be. Another smile in the shadows, colder and more cruel. I tell you for the last time, I can give so much. Or I can take away what little you have and more besides. I’ve waited long enough. The fate of Gideon rests with you.

  With that, the darkness vanished and the figures with it. The roaring ceased. Whatever held Lauren dropped her and she fell hard, slammed against the fence on the way down, banged her head on the railing. Lay in the dirt, gasping and shaking, face burning. Swallowed, and tasted blood. Looked up at the sky as clouds blocked the stars.

  Lauren banged on the back door of the Waycross house for five minutes before someone answered. First she heard a heavy footfall. Then came the rustle of the shade and Corey’s worried face in the window, the clatter of chains and dead bolts.

  “You can’t come in. I know I sound like a sniveling coward, and maybe I am. But I’m under orders and she will bind me if I disobey.” Corey glanced over his shoulder, then joined Lauren on the back step and carefully shut the door. Bent close to her, and winced. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “He was here.” Lauren brushed dirt from her clothes, then pointed toward the shed. “Blaine.”

  Corey shook his head. “Mistress set wards—”

  “They’re not working.” Lauren leaned on the stair railing, shivering as the damp chill seeped through her shirt. “What is she planning?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Dylan. Please.”

  “She—” Corey gnawed his lower lip. He had aged ten years since the morning, his face pale and grooved with fatigue, his eyes dull. Gideon’s price, paid in installments over a rapidly dwindling life-span. “She’s digging through old books. Papers she keeps locked away. She won’t tell me, but I think it has something to do with your dad.”

  “I’d say that’s a given.” Lauren slid down the railing and sat on the step, hugged her knees to her chest. “Blaine said I held it all in my hands. There’s a curse or spell or something that binds him to Gideon. A Mullin cast it, and a Mullin needs to break it.”

  Corey sat down next to her, then scooted closer to the house until he hid in the shadow. “So what do you think?” He kept one eye on the upper windows, pressing against the house when one light went out or another went on. “Is that something you can do?”

  “No. I don’t want to release him. Releasing him would be the end.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he just gave me a taste.” Lauren folded a bloody tissue until she found a clean spot, and held it to her nose. “How can you ask me that—is that something I can do? People have died.”

  “I didn’t mean—” Corey buried his face in his hands, then lowered them and turned to her. “Do you have any idea what you look like right now? You’ve got cuts all over your face, your nose is bleeding—”

  “I’m aware of that, thanks.”

  “—and your eyes are—” Corey swallowed hard. “I can tell what you saw from the look in your eyes.”

  Lauren rubbed her ears, which itched as though infected. She could still hear it, so loud in the quiet dark. The never-ending chitter. “Blaine has followers. The unclean dead. If he’s freed, they’re coming along for the ride. They’ll overrun us.” She waited for Corey to answer, turned to find him studying her, his expression pained.

  “Mistress calls you a conduit.” He looked toward the barn. “Look, I’m sorry. But she remembers what happened back then, and she knows the part your dad played, and there are reasons she wants you bottled up.” He stood. “I need to get back inside before she wonders where I am.”

  Lauren struggled to her feet as battered muscles cramped and complained. “You’re just a nicer version of Judith and the rest of them.”

  “That’s because you’re not listening. I’m worried about you.”

  “Yeah, sure you are.” Lauren limped down the steps. “Mistress Waycross is the last one left of the group that fought Blaine thirty-seven years ago. All the others are missing or dead. I want to help. Tell her that. She knows where I am if she wants to talk to me.” She stuffed her hands in her pockets, trudged across the yard to her new home.

  “Lauren.”

  Lauren kept walking, even as the footsteps grew louder and the hand gripped her shoulder, then let go as though she burned to the touch. A few strides farther. Then she stopped. “What?”

  “I just think—” Corey maneuvered until he stood in front of her. “You didn’t know anything about any of this for so long and now you’re here and—” He extracted one of her hands from her pocket, then the other, held them, rubbed warmth back into them. “I—admire you, that’s all. Because some folks would have tried to ignore it and others would have gone crazy. And you walked right into the lion’s den.” He hesitated. Then he leaned close and kissed her lightly on the lips, brought with him hints of coffee and simple human warmth. “I wish things were different.” He kissed her hands, held them as he walked away, only let go when he had no choice. “I’ll tell her what you said, but I don’t think it’ll do any good.” He walked backward toward the house. “See you in the morning.”

  “Yeah.” Lauren clasped her hands to save the warmth, the sensation of Corey’s touch.

  “I wish you were inside with us.”

  “I have work to do anyway.”

  “You sound like the Mistress.” Corey flashed a smile, and for that moment things seemed normal. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, turned, and trotted back to the house, through the bars of illumination from the windows, light to dark to light.

  LAUREN TRIED TO secure the shed. But the flimsy bolt lock rattled out of its slide if she so much as bumped the door, and after the third try, she gave up. Not like it would keep anything out, anyway. At least, not anything that mattered.

  She had pushed the air mattress in the corner farthest from the door. She had also draped a towel over the window, liberated an ancient coffeemaker from the back of the cabinet and cleaned it, then scrubbed the sink and single-burner hot plate. Nervous energy. Returning a little order to a disordered world.

  Finally, she dug the bag of wire circlets out of the suitcase. The room still reeked of Waycross’s ward, which Lauren suspected was meant to counteract whatever evil had piggybacked onto what she had come to think of as the “ghost book” even though it felt as real as every other book she had ever held.

  They just didn’t look hard enough—I don’t care what Waycross said. Lauren scattered the circlets over the floor, in the half bath, on the tiny windowsill, and across the mattress. Three terrified teenagers and a little girl—how thorough could they have been? She paused to sniff the air, felt a slight jolt when she realized the herbal reek had lessened, become barely detectable. Odor fatigue. She couldn’t smell it anymore because it had overwhelmed her nose.

  Then Waycross’s words came back to her. That calming voice. Thinking and influence. That’s what gave a spell its power. The singer, not the song.

  “It’s not the words, it’s the will,” Lauren chanted, steam puffing from her mouth in time. Damn, but the shed was cold. Waycross had offered the use of a space heater, but the fear of falling asleep and being awakened by flames had concerned Lauren enough that she refused. She took a shower, the water as hot as she could stand, then dressed in layers. Flannel pajamas over long underwear. Thick socks. A wool cap.
>
  Lauren got into her improvised bed, burrowed beneath blankets that still had stalks of hay clinging to them, told herself she had slept in worse places. Hell, memories of some of her camping excursions still gave her the shakes. At least here she had walls, a roof. Running water and electric power. The only difference between this shed and a five-star hotel was the absence of an ice machine and the little chocolates on her pillow.

  And maybe the soundproofing. Lauren rested her head against the rough-hewn wall. She sensed the presence of something on the other side, perhaps several somethings, heard the light patter of feet, a higher-pitched version of the never-ending buzzing that filled her head.

  Then she flinched as something sounded closer to her ear. Light scratching, like claws brushing against the wood.

  Animals. They were out in the middle of the woods, after all. Of course critters would wander in at night to pillage and scavenge. Raccoon. Possum. Coyote. Feral cat.

  But this seemed different. Lauren couldn’t put her finger on how, but . . . It knows I’m here. She pulled the blankets more tightly around herself. It came here for me.

  “I know you’re—there.” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed, waited, tried again. “Are you part of this?” The scraping sounds continued, and she eyed the spot where the walls met the floor and wondered how well joined they were, whether something could force itself in between. “Did you help kill good people?” The scraping slowed. “Do you want to kill me?”

  Silence, like the split second after a thunderclap, the minutes before an earthquake.

  “No, you don’t. You know your boss wouldn’t like it.” Lauren picked up the ghost book, opened it, reread the inscription written by a man almost a hundred and fifty years ago. “He wants me alive to the end, so I can watch. So he can hang everything that happens around my neck. ‘Not my fault—you made me—if you had just given me what I wanted from the first, none of this would have happened.’ Except that it would have happened anyway because he hates Gideon more than anyone or anything, living or dead. He’ll toy with it like a cat until he gets bored, and then—”

  —and then he would make a world of Gideons, filled with deaths and disappearances, stonings in quiet fields and rustlings in bushes and the midnight scrape of claws across a windowpane. A world where nothing was as it seemed, where the living fought the angry dead, while those stuck between worlds, all those Connie Petersburys who refused to give in, struggled to keep from being sucked into the abyss. A world without peace. Without rest. A world in which there was nowhere to hide, where even death provided no escape.

  She turned to the ghost book’s title page, a few lines of block text—

  The Book of the Lady of Endor

  Howell Printers

  Gideon, Illinois

  1852

  Howell. Waycross’s maiden name. Old families, old books. But how did this one survive a fire, followed by almost forty years exposure to heat and cold and damp?

  Lauren paged carefully. The interior leaves were all made from the same tissuelike paper and split into columns filled with single-spaced text, the font so tiny that she had to drag the lamp close and tilt the shade so she could reread the story of the Lady. She kept her father’s book alongside as she read, every so often checking it, noting the differences. A few of the words. A more archaic tone.

  As the silence from outside continued, sounds from inside filtered through to take their place. Lauren had laundered her filthy clothes by wearing them in the shower, then hung them over the curtain rod, and the patpat of water dripping onto the floor of the stall now filled the shed. The soft tick of the alarm clock that Corey had scrounged for her from the main house. The slide of paper as she turned pages, and read the 1852 version of the journeys of the Lady of Endor.

  Then she turned the page, and stared.

  Instructions for the binding of demons and those forced to do their bidding.

  She had seen nothing like this in her father’s book. She would have remembered. Page upon page of instructions on how to control demons, and the humans they enslaved.

  Binding. There was that word again. The removal of power. Neutralization, like the spell that Waycross cast on Deena and the other women.

  To bind the outsider, gather friends in an elder-spread place—

  To bind a sister-in-law or other female relation by marriage, twist a lock of her hair through a ring woven of straw as you say her name—

  To bind a dead son, add three drops of sweat to the strip of cloth cut from the shroud—

  To bind a husband, living or dead—

  —a wife

  —a stillborn infant

  —a friend . . .

  Lauren paged through the lists, as matter-of-fact as a computer manual, yet weirder than anything she had ever read.

  To bind a demon is to bind all who serve it; to bind one that serves weakens the demon, but not until all who serve it are bound is the demon itself bound.

  Lauren checked the title page of her father’s book, found no notation that it had been edited or abridged. A Cateman translated it. Somehow that didn’t surprise her. You, Leaf Cateman. It’s something to do with you.

  Lauren stopped, rubbed her eyes. Her head felt heavy, sinuses aching from the chill and her body aching from Blaine’s battering. She checked the clock: 3:17 A.M. Closed the ghost book and set it near her pillow next to her father’s. Turned off the lamp and tunneled under the blankets.

  She heard once more the faint chitter and scratch of whatever lurked outside. Imagined setting a match to it and watching it burn to a cinder. Not the most pleasant thought she ever had, but the idea of striking back against the dark settled her enough that she could close her eyes, and sleep.

  Pounding. Louder than the chitter and the footsteps. It shook the walls, vibrated along the floor.

  “Are you awake?”

  The banging shook loose the lock—Lauren could hear the metal clatter, the sound of the door opening.

  “It’s Virginia Waycross—are you awake?”

  “I am now.” Lauren opened her eyes, then pulled the blanket over her head as the full force of morning light hit her in the face. “What time is it?”

  “Eight fifteen.” Waycross sniffed. “Is this the time you usually wake up back in Seattle?” She wore jeans and a yellow sweater topped with a tan vest, boots, and the superior air of the lifetime early riser.

  “When I fall asleep after four, yes.” Lauren ratcheted into a sitting position, hampered by the mushiness of the mattress and bruised ribs that grabbed if she moved too quickly. She worked her twisted pajamas back into place, dragged the cap off her head. “Did something happen?”

  Waycross surveyed Lauren’s scraped-up face. “I could ask you the same question.” She walked to the counter, taking care to avoid the scattered circlets, and made quick work of setting up the coffeemaker.

  “I had a visitor last night, remember? After dinner.”

  Waycross wheeled. “Blaine was here? On my land?”

  “I told Dylan last night. I told him to tell you.”

  “I ordered him not to disturb me.” Waycross traced the Lady’s eye on her forehead.

  “You threatened him with binding. He listened.” Lauren worked her aching shoulders, and sighed. She liked Corey, and could like him even more without much effort. But his unquestioning obedience had begun to irritate. “He could’ve told you this morning.”

  “He left before I got up. Went to get his things, I imagine.” Waycross took a seat at the small table set in the corner nearest the door. “What did he want? Blaine.”

  “He’s cursed. He wants me to lift it.”

  “Do you have any idea how?”

  “No. He did say that he was bound here by earth, air, water, and flame. Does that help?”

  “Maybe.” Waycross passed her hand over her face, then jerked her chin toward Lauren. “From the look of things, he threatened you.”

  “Me. My friends. And Gideon.” Lauren watched Waycross, f
ace so drawn. “You’re planning something, I can tell. What are you going to do?”

  Waycross didn’t answer. Instead, she rose and walked to the bed. “This came for you.” She pulled an envelope out of her vest pocket, heavy cream paper edged in black.

  “Mail? This early?” The envelope crackled in Lauren’s hand, thick as cardboard but satin-smooth. She turned it over, but found no stamps or address. Just her name, in flowing black script. Miss Lauren Mullin.

  “Personal delivery. One of Leaf Cateman’s men. He’s waiting for an answer.”

  “Outside?”

  “In the driveway. Leaf doesn’t attend my convocations, his messenger boys can sit in my damn driveway.”

  Lauren opened the envelope, pulled out a card bordered in gold and filled with line after line of ornate calligraphy. “It’s an invitation.”

  “I gathered that.”

  “To dinner. Six o’clock tonight.” Lauren looked over at her suitcase. “I didn’t bring anything to wear to a dinner.” She worked her neck, inhaled the rousing aroma of brewing coffee. “Tell me about the Great Fire.”

  “I’m sorry?” Waycross waited for the coffeemaker to finish its chorus. Then she rose and returned to the kitchen area. “How do you take yours?”

  “That powder creamer. Sugar.” Lauren set the invitation aside, worked to her knees, then stood slowly.

  “What has the fire got to do with Leaf’s invitation?”

  “Just humor me, please.”

  “Very well.” Waycross walked to Lauren and handed her a mug, then returned to the table with her own. “We didn’t all believe it. That a Mullin started it. Eliza Mullin—she was the only Mullin still living in Gideon then. The one that stories say started it all. She lived alone, in a big house on the edge of town. She . . . experimented, I guess you could call it. Communicated with her demon masters, most thought. Whether by accident or design, she brought down the fires of wrath. Gideon burned, along with Chicago and a few other places, in October, eighteen and seventy-one.”