The Twisted Ones

by T. Kingfisher

  There was a certain logic to this position. The dead twisted one did not take a chunk out of her, despite several solid pokes with the stick. I think Foxy might have been slightly disappointed.

  On the far side of the dead ones was a little space, and then more carvings. I remembered walking through them for a long way, but I wasn’t sure how long it had been. I hadn’t exactly been in my right mind, had I? I’d been singing “Oh, Susanna” and it had gotten a bit strange after that.

  “This is farther than I got,” said Foxy. “I guess we just keep walking, then.”

  So we walked through more carvings, some of them very large indeed, and anchored down in the ground somehow. I didn’t remember those. Had it been some enchantment, some wicked voor, that the hickory was keeping away?

  And then I saw the white stone. It gleamed in the dim light like a tooth. There was the grassy bowl around it and the ferns around the base and the carvings of… something.

  We stopped at the top of the bowl. The stones around the rim leaned inward, toward the stone, and I wondered vaguely if it was acting on their brains the way it had acted on mine.…

  Settle down. They’re rocks. They don’t have brains.

  Although up here in this place, who the hell knows? Maybe they do. In the Green Book, isn’t there a bit where the narrator wonders if her family all got turned to stones? Maybe these are all the people who got stuck up here, the moonshiners and the frat boys and whatnot.

  I squeezed the hickory twig tightly between my fingers, but the thoughts didn’t go away. Apparently that was just me being paranoid, not any kind of magic.

  “Huh!” said Foxy, looking at the stone.

  “Do you feel like you want to go touch it?” I asked hesitantly. “I wanted to, the first time I saw it.…”

  “I do,” she said slowly, “but I ain’t going to. I can feel the wanting to, though. It’s like a pretty boy you know is more trouble than he’s worth.” She folded her arms and glared at the stone, and I pitied any pretty boy who had caused her trouble in the past.

  “This is the second time I’m seeing it,” I said. “I think I’m supposed to be pregnant now.”

  “We’ll get you a test when we get back home, hey?”

  “It’d have to get past the IUD first.” Weird and creepy as the white stone was, I had a hard time imagining it was a match for that. “What about you?”

  “Hon, if I get knocked up, it won’t be magic; it’ll be a goddamn miracle.” She craned her neck, looking around the stone. “What’s on the other side?”

  I shook my head. “This is as far as I got. I saw the stone and things got a little weird.”

  I glanced down at Bongo. He was watching the stone intently, the way he watched cars out the window sometimes—was it going to go past the house, or was it the UPS guy and thus his mortal enemy?

  It was so quiet here. There was no wind to ripple the grass of the bald or move clouds in the heavy gray sky. I couldn’t hear any insects calling, or frogs, or birds.

  No woodpeckers.

  “Let’s go around,” Foxy said finally.

  We skirted the rim of the grass bowl. Bongo continued to watch the stone, his whole body taut, his ears straining forward.

  On the far side, we looked back at the white stone and Foxy gave a single bray of laughter. Bongo yanked on the leash, startled, and then gave her a reproachful glance.

  “Sorry, buddy,” she said to him. “Well. That’s a helluva thing, isn’t it?”

  I stared at Ambrose’s white stone and almost wanted to laugh myself.

  From this side, it was obvious. It was two beings, and they were, not to put too fine a point upon it, screwing like rabbits.

  Well, it wasn’t like it was a surprise. Ambrose’s white stone was clearly kin to this one. I just hadn’t been expecting it to be quite so… vivid.

  They were carved in much the same style as the rest of the stones, deeply scored lines that moved too much when you saw them from the corner of your eye. The top one had great curving horns, like a ram, and he was pulling back the head of his partner by her own horns, which were long and twisting like an antelope’s. Her throat seemed very thick, like a beast’s neck, and her face protruded into a muzzle like a beast, but her body was mostly human, if oddly proportioned.

  Speaking of proportions… well, he had nothing to worry about in that department.

  “That one I’d put in the front yard,” said Foxy cheerfully. “Just to see the mailman’s face.”

  “Heh,” I said weakly.

  The longer I looked, the less funny it got. Which is odd, because frankly, sex is hilarious. But the carvings were so detailed and the moiré-pattern movement made the bodies undulate and seem to thrust together and I was starting to get dizzy looking at it and I remembered the dream where I pressed myself against the white stone. Was the female beast enjoying it? Her mouth was open in what could have been passion or agony.

  My head ached. I could feel a pulse beating in my right eye and in my temples and between my legs.… Dear God, was I getting turned on by the carving?

  “I gotta sit down,” I said.

  “Not right here,” suggested Foxy, taking my arm. She steered me away from the stone. Once I was no longer looking at it, it got easier. My pulse stopped beating in my ears or anywhere else.

  “What the hell is that thing?” I asked after a few minutes of sitting on the grass with my back to the carving. “I know it’s stupid, but I felt—I felt like—”

  And then I blushed. Which was nuts. The entire situation was completely batshit loony, and here I was blushing because among the batshit loony things was a statue with a big honking dick on it.

  “It’s okay, hon. If I was a few years younger… well.” She shook her head. “I’m old enough to know better, but it’s still got a wallop, doesn’t it?”

  A wallop. Yes. That was as good a description as any.

  Bongo sat down and scratched behind his ear. Apparently it didn’t work on dogs or on males, or at least on males whose testicles were a distant, vet-related memory.

  “I guess old Ambrose was onto something after all,” I said.

  “If he’s expecting us to get preggers from looking at it, he’s still gonna be pretty disappointed. Had those bits out years ago. Not that they were doing me a helluva lot of good anyway, but it’d be a bitch to get cancer in a bit I ain’t using.”

  “I hear you,” I said absently, petting Bongo. “I don’t know. Do you think the girl—whoever she was—actually got pregnant looking at a statue?”

  “Oh, who the hell knows. For all I know, it just got her thinking about it and she went and found some nice young fella to get her in the family way. From the way your granddaddy talked about Ambrose, he’d have found that a lot more shocking than looking at a statue.” Foxy snorted. “Certain sort of man would prob’ly prefer it if sex was all looking at statues and no actual poking.”

  “It is very likely that she did,” said a voice behind us. “And bore a child of it, or more than one.”

  Foxy and I both jerked upright. Bongo—valiant guard dog that he was—looked up and wagged his tail.

  There was a woman standing there. She was very tall and very pale. Even her eyes were pale. Her irises were flecked with red, and her pupils were the faded gray color of the sky.

  “I have borne seven,” she said. “Five drew no breaths. Of the other two… but we will speak of that later.”

  Where had she come from? Why hadn’t we heard her?

  “Who’re you?” said Foxy, her chin jutting out.

  “My name is Anna,” said the woman. She pronounced it with a long first syllable, ahhh-nuh. “I am one of the people of this place.”

  I saw motion out of the corner of my eye. It was the same twisting moiré-pattern as the stones, but when I turned my head, there was a man standing there. He was as tall as she was and I suppose he was handsome, but there was something odd about his skin. He did not speak, but took his place beside the woman. He
was even paler than she was. Both of them had hair that was not so much white as completely colorless, like mist.

  Anna folded her hands together. “You will come with me now,” she said. It was not a request but a statement of fact.

  Foxy tried to push back nevertheless. “What if we don’t?”

  The pale woman shook her head.

  And then I heard it. The click of bones. The hollow rattle of stones knocking together.

  Tok… Tok… Tok…

  Bongo’s wagging stopped, and a whine started up in his throat.

  Shapes began to appear out of the gloom behind her, coming from behind the stones or from inside the earth itself. The air twisted and untwisted until my eyes watered, but I could still see them all too well.

  Effigies. Dozens of them.

  Not on the other side of a window. Not with walls between us.

  Right here.

  Right now.

  Tok… Tok… Tok…

  I sucked in my breath, and honestly did not know if I would ever draw another one.

  “You have no choice,” the woman said, as monsters of stone and bone surrounded her. “You have trespassed into deep places, and the only way out is deeper still.”

  18

  I think that Bongo is the only reason I didn’t have a nervous breakdown on the spot.

  There are stories of people enduring horrors—escaping war zones, walking for hundreds of miles barefoot, that sort of thing—because they are being strong for their children. I am not saying it’s the same thing at all. Bongo, as I’ve said before, is not my child; he’s my dog.

  Nevertheless, at that moment, he needed me. He was making that horrible fear-growl, his back was humped up, and his tail was between his legs. I dropped down next to him and put my arms around him to keep him from lunging at an effigy and getting probably killed. He was peeing in terror, which meant he peed on my knee, but you know, I was feeling a little loose-bladdered myself.

  Foxy stood over me and gripped my shoulder. I could hear her breathing, harsh and quick behind me.

  “We’ll leave,” I said. “I’m sorry we bothered you. We’ll go away and not come back.”

  “You will come with me now,” repeated Anna, ignoring me.

  “My dog can’t,” I said. I didn’t look at the effigies. If I didn’t look at the monsters, they couldn’t be real, but there were so many and they were moving and I kept seeing bits of them, even as I tried not to look—hooves and horns and rocks and branches like antlers and old rags stretched over frames that weren’t remotely human—don’t look don’t look if you don’t look they can’t see you—

  “Then you will be killed,” said the man, speaking for the first time. His voice was thinner than I expected and had a quaver in it, like a very old man’s.

  “I’m not refusing,” I said. Foxy’s fingers tightened on my shoulder. “This is not me refusing. We’ll go with you. But my dog’s scared. I’ll carry him.” I was speaking very calmly and rationally. I remember that. If I could just keep everyone talking, they wouldn’t let the things I wasn’t looking at get my dog.

  I said I’ll carry him as if it were that easy. Bongo weighs sixty-odd pounds. I’m not strong enough to carry something that size very far. But I didn’t know what else to say.

  Anna stepped forward until she was only a few feet from Bongo and me. I looked up at her, and she was impossibly tall. I know I was kneeling on the ground, but before I’d thought she was six foot four, maybe a bit more. Now she looked seven feet tall—eight, ten—taller than any human I’d ever seen.

  She did something with her left hand.

  The air around her fingers made another moiré-distortion pattern that drifted toward Bongo.

  “No!” I put out a hand to ward it off.

  It felt like the barest breath of air on my skin as it passed. My hand went through it. The tiny hairs on the back of my fingers stood on end, but that was all.

  “He will take no harm of it,” said Anna. “It is a charm to calm beasts; that is all.”

  She made the gesture again. This time it was faster. The distorted air shimmered around Bongo’s face like a heat haze on the road.

  I felt his trembling ease against my chest. The growl died away into nothing. He gave a short, puzzled whine, as if he could not quite remember why he had been angry, and then he turned his head and licked my face.

  She had just done… what? Magic? Was that magic?

  Of course it was fucking magic. What are you, stupid? What did you think was happening? How did you think the effigy was walking around, if not magic?

  How are all of them walking around, if not magic?

  Well. Yes.

  I did not much like the prospect of someone magicking my dog, but if it meant that nobody got killed and Bongo wasn’t pissing himself in terror, that was what mattered, right? Hell, if I’d had sedatives, I’d have jammed them down his throat and probably taken one myself.

  I stood up. My own legs were shaking. Foxy’s hand on my shoulder squeezed harder.

  “We will go now,” said Anna.

  “Foxy…”

  “Looks like we don’t have much choice,” she said. “C’mon, hon.”

  Anna swept her arm in a slow, dramatic gesture, pointing farther down the hill. She was wearing gray cloth wrapped around her, some kind of robe or sari or toga, something with a lot of folds. The cloth hung down from her arm when she gestured, making her look like some kind of classical statue.

  I focused very hard on her arm and not on the milling shapes just behind it. Sooner or later I was going to have to look at them, but if I did, I was going to become as frozen as poor Bongo had been. I had to not look.

  Everybody yells at Orpheus and Lot’s wife. Put yourself in their shoes for five minutes and you’d yell a lot less, I promise you.

  I gathered up Bongo’s leash. He walked next to me, tail and ears up, a dog on a walk that was a bit boring but which held the hope of being interesting. I could hear the effigies walking on the grass. Their feet clicked when they touched stone. My skin was going to crawl off my body soon.

  I locked my eyes on Anna.

  She began to walk in the direction she had pointed. Downslope, into the gloomy twilight. I could see the bare trees in serrated ranks around us. I was starting to think that the trees would never leaf out, that their nature was just to be empty branches and twisting trunks. Perhaps they were parasitic. There’s a fair number of parasitic plants. Beechdrops. Dodder. Indian paintbrush. My aunt would have a field day. Was I thinking about plants so that I wouldn’t think about monsters? You bet your ass I was.

  I don’t know how long we walked. The slope got steeper. I divided my time between staring at my feet and staring at Anna’s back. Her colorless hair seemed very bright in the darkness, like fog on a dark night.

  I didn’t dare look around, but I knew Foxy was behind me. I could hear her breathing.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this, Foxy,” I said.

  “Shit, hon, I shoulda known better than to let either of us get into this.”

  Stones loomed out of the dimness. Three of them, arranged like a doorway. It looked like a scaled-down Stonehenge.

  I did not want to go through those stones.

  Stupid thing to say, obviously. I didn’t want to be anywhere near here. I didn’t want to be following the holler people with their horrific pets crowding around behind me. But I really didn’t want to go through the doorway. It exuded a kind of… not menace, exactly. Remoteness. Like I was about to pass through an airlock into an alien planet. Maybe I could break away and run now, if I tried, and probably the things would kill me, but if I went through those stones, I would be somewhere else and there was no getting back under my own power.

  Anna passed over the stone threshold. Nothing obvious happened. She didn’t vanish or waver or turn strange colors.

  I turned my head and looked behind me.

  There were at least a dozen effigies close behind us. They formed a loo
se semicircle behind Foxy, moving restlessly back and forth. The dim light gleamed on pale bone and sparked on bits of rusted wire.

  The one nearest me was hunched up like a vulture, shorter than I was. Its head was a broad fan shape, made of twigs tied to… Was that a broken shovel blade?

  It turned its head. The twigs were bent and crooked and the hollow places they framed gazed back at me like eyes. There were more than two. There may have been more than ten.

  The rest of its body was draped in roadkill rags. I couldn’t make out details, and I was glad I couldn’t. Suddenly the deer effigy seemed almost tame by comparison.

  It was too dark now to see the rest clearly. That was fine. I had an impression of ragged bodies, limbs made of bone, and branches wrapped in wire and cord, some of them vaguely human or animal shaped, some of them not remotely human at all.

  The twisted ones. The ones the rocks are supposed to resemble, or things made to resemble the rocks.

  I could hear them moving. Bone clicked and branches creaked and things sighed and sloughed and tapped. Something out there sounded, incongruously, like denim rubbing together between someone’s thighs as they walked: shhfff… shhffff… shhhffff…

  If I tried to run, they would be on me at once.

  “Foxy…”

  “I see ’em too, hon.”

  I nodded.

  Sticks and stones…, I thought. Sticks and stones may break my bones…

  I didn’t bother with the second line. Who gave a damn about words now?

  With one hand on Bongo’s collar and one wrapped around the hickory beads, I stepped through the doorway into the voorish dome.

  * * *

  Nothing dramatic happened when I stepped over the threshold. There wasn’t a flash of light or a crack of thunder. It was just a little easier to see suddenly, as if it was not quite so dim.

  When I looked down, there was a path at my feet.

  The grass had been worn away to packed earth. Yellow-orange clay, with tiny pebbles embedded in it. That part was still like the landscape around the house, anyway.

  The bare trees parted around the path. Unlike the wicker tunnel, they grew tall and straight, but it was still a long and winding way down.