by Phil Tucker
Maribel looked about, trying to spot what Isobel was missing. The townhouses presented a solid, unbroken wall of brick facades. There wasn’t much to miss. Looking down the street, she saw the phooka. It was but a dark silhouette in the haze, horns rising up regally above its head. Maribel stilled, and the phooka approached. Isobel was speaking, but at the phooka’s approach she, too, stilled, as if sensing it for the first time. Long strides brought the phooka closer, hirsute and terrible, and then it paused by an iron gate, overrun with ivy and easily seven feet tall, leading into a small alley between the townhouses.
It hadn’t been there before.
“Look,” said Maribel quietly, and pointed.
Isobel gave a start. “That’s… that’s right. That’s it.”
They both approached, Isobel staring blindly through the tall, sallow skinned impossibility that pushed open the gate and stepped inside, holding it open for them. As the gate swung open, seemingly by itself to reveal a narrow passage shrouded in shadow, Isobel slowed.
“Something’s not right,” she said. “Something is going on here.”
“Don’t worry,” said Maribel. She placed a reassuring hand on Isobel’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze and stepped past her, past the phooka, into the alley. “It’s all right. Come on.”
Isobel hesitated. The alley was dark, but clean; if anything it seemed dusty, unused, the walls rising up without windows, the bricks mortared with cement that oozed out between them like jam from between two slices of bread. The phooka had disappeared again, but then Maribel saw him at the end of the alley. A dead-end, the far wall engulfed in ivy so dark it seemed black.
“Maribel,” said the psychic, “That alley wasn’t there a minute ago.”
“I know,” said Maribel, “But it’s here now. The way will open before us as you lead us along it. You’re going to have to let go of your certainties and accept things as they come.”
Still, Isobel hesitated, reaching out with one hand to touch the newly appeared iron gate. She looked up and down the street, and then back to Maribel. “God, what am I getting into,” she said to herself, and with a sudden deep breath, pulled the gate open a little wider and came in after. Maribel waited for her to reach her side, and then reached out and cupped Isobel’s cheek, only realizing as she did it that she was mirroring the psychic’s earlier gesture. Her skin was smooth and warm against her palm, and for a moment Isobel leaned her face into her hand, eyes large, vulnerable. Maribel gave her a brilliant, reckless smile and then turned and walked forward. The sound of uncertain steps followed her. The phooka stepped aside, inclining his head as if she were nobility, and pulled aside the ivy as if it were a curtain to reveal a door that had been hidden behind it. It was tall and arched, made of heavy boards of wood bound by what looked like copper or bronze. Maribel pressed her hands against the wood, felt the age in the cold fibrous surface, weathered and hardened near to stone.
“We’re not alone, are we?” asked Isobel quietly behind her. “Something else is here. What is it? Maribel, what have you done?”
Maribel looked over her shoulder, smiled. “You’re taking me to Kubu,” she said. “That’s all. This door will lead us below.”
“You haven’t been honest with me,” said Isobel, taking a step back. “You haven’t told me everything. What is going on here?”
Maribel closed her fingers around the smooth wooden grip of the door handle. It was stiff, old, and she had to use both hands to pull it down. Then, setting her feet firmly on the cobbles, she pushed, and with a groan of protest, the door opened inwards. She looked back, framed by the darkness beyond. “I need you, Isobel, to take me down there. I need you now like I have never needed anybody else. Will you help me?”
“I…” said Isobel, slowly shaking her head, “I mean, this is the way. But… “
Maribel ignored her faltering words. She understood the helplessness in Isobel’s eyes, understood that, despite her protests, she would follow, committed now by a desire of her own. There was no need to reason with her. Instead, she reached out and took her hand, and with a sad smile drew her in through the door.
Chapter 8
Maya stumbled, almost fell. A terrible cold wrapped around her, and she let out a cry as both her parents winked out of existence. Nothing there, just stunted grass, an undulating slope that rose quickly into a stubby hill. Turning around, she saw that the path was gone, Guillaume was gone, only broken trees and the coagulated sky, the gray wind sawing about her legs and the deep pounding of her heart.
“Mãe!” she cried, cupping her hands about her mouth. “Pae!” Nothing. Nothing. Had they even been there? A trick. Cold certainty like a basket of dead snails in her gut. She had been tricked. She had left the path, despite all Guillaume’s warnings. Fear and adrenaline coursed through her, helped her fight off the fatigue. She hadn’t slept in what felt like weeks. But right now, trembling and shivering with fear and brittle energy, she felt like she could run forever if given cause.
“Guillaume!” she yelled, turning in a slow circle. Where was he? Why hadn’t he followed her off the path? He was a fairy, or a ghost fox, or whatever—surely he wasn’t constrained by the same limits? Was he upset? His pride? “I’m sorry! I’m sorry I left the path, please!”
A growl. No, not a growl; this was to a growl what the rotting carcass of a dead bull is to a steak. Deep throated, clotted, a sound of distilled menace and danger. Maya froze. She felt every hair along her arms and on the back of her neck stand stiff as if an electric current had just run through her. Slowly, she turned around.
The man. The man that had frightened her before, had tried to shock her off the path. Tommy Rawhead. Rawhead and Bloody Bones, a voice whispered in her mind. He was about ten yards away, hunched over, nursing something in his over-large hands. His face was crude, harsh, made a caricature by its brutality. Hawk nose, a wounded slash for a mouth, battered cheekbones over which his leathery skin was stretched tight. Eyes large and jet black like the eyes of a bird. Stringy hair grew from around the sides of his skull and hung to his shoulders. No hair on top. Just glistening red flesh. Raw and wounded, scalped.
Maya took a step back. He was large, would have stood at over seven feet if he straightened up. But he stood hunched, legs bandied, broad shoulders pulled forward. He was smiling at her, the dumb smile of an idiot, blank and cunning and pleased. Long teeth, yellowed, almost tusks. Their edges broken. Dressed in rough, homespun clothing, an overly small jacket that made him appear all the more terrible for being ridiculous.
Tommy Rawhead extended what he was holding in his hands for her to see, unfurling his long fingers slowly. A straight razor, rusted or covered with dry blood. It lay across his palms like a gift, but lest she get the wrong idea he carefully took it up, his smile growing wider, and pulled it through the air slowly as if slitting the wind.
Maya took a second step back. She wasn’t thinking any longer, couldn’t. Couldn’t do anything but stare at the blade, the demented face behind it. Tommy Rawhead leapt forwards, Maya screamed and stumbled back, but he stopped, grin growing wider at the sound of her terror. A feint. He was toying with her.
“Please,” said Maya, knowing it was useless. His grin grew even wider, impossibly wide now. More teeth in his mouth than were possible. Maya took a deep breath. She wouldn’t beg. Wouldn’t plead. Reaching slowly into her purse, she closed her fingers around a small tube.
“Suh-suh-suh,” said Tommy Rawhead, trying to choke out a word through his smile. “Suh-suh-weet and—“ He stopped. Maya had taken a step forward. Though everything in her mind screamed for her to run, to run and never stop, she forced her foot forward as if pulling it out of wet, sucking mud. Tommy cocked his head to one side, sidled closer.
“Come here, caralho,” said Maya breathlessly. “Come here.”
Tommy Rawhead paused, sensing something awry. Eyed her, but then his grin resumed its awful vitality and he surged forward, bandied legs propelling him across the dead grass with shocking s
peed. Maya tore the canister from her purse, pressed the button at the top, and shot a hissing spray of Mace right at his face.
The chemical splashed across his teeth, his great nose, over both berry black eyes. Hissed over his shoulders and back again as she waved it to and fro, and then he was screaming and raking at his eyes, running his sleeve over his face.
Maya didn’t stop to watch. Didn’t question the efficacy of the weapon. She simply turned and ran. Forced her legs to stretch and tear her away, almost flying over the ground. Even as she ran, she pictured him racing after her in leaps and bounds, razor blade swinging.
Where the path had led, she could no longer tell, but the hills were shallow and perhaps from the top of the closest one she would be able to see something, a place to flee to, or maybe the path in the distance, something. Sobbing and gasping, she raced up the slope of the closest hill, past a tottering trunk, sparing a glance over her shoulder. He was after her, but not rushing. His smile was back, and he was loping along, easily keeping up. Enjoying the sight of her running.
Her breaths were being torn up her throat by the time she reached the top of the hill. Scrabbling over the final rise, she staggered upright and moved forward, turning in a desperate circle, trying to spot something. A great forest to her left, a graveyard for trees, gray spines of dead trunks grouped together to form an endless black ocean of rotting timber. More hills all around. The sky, so low and close she felt she could reach up and touch the sullen clouds.
There. A small house. A cottage. No thought. Maya simply forced herself to run, falling forward as much as running as she made her way down the steeper far side of the hill. With Tommy Rawhead behind her, she ran, legs like thick branches tied together by loose elastic bands, her feet slapping the grass, her lungs burning, her vision beginning to swim. Across the grass she raced, and behind her she could hear Tommy’s stuttering cries of pleasure.
The cottage pulled into view. Single storied, made of horizontal logs, small windows with quartered, bottle glass panes. A chimney from which thin smoke arose. Front door, stout and shut. Hope surged in her chest. Another look over her shoulder, and then she screamed and threw herself onto the ground, rolling and banging her elbow, her shoulder jarring on the dirt, coming up in a scrabble of limbs as Rawhead’s razor swept through the space where her throat had been. His bubbling, clotted laughter, and then, instead of running away once more, fury exploded in her chest at the sound of his delight and she leapt at him.
He stank, stank of raw meat gone bad and stale sweat and dirt, but that was all sublimated by the sharp, intense shock of the Mace as she pressed the button down again. Liquid fizzed into the air, but this time Tommy was ready and simply swiped his razor through the air, neatly knocking the canister from her hand with the dull edge of the blade, nearly breaking her fingers in the process.
Fatigue and terror fused into sudden anger. This was ridiculous. Absurd. Livid, suddenly too lightheaded and furious to care, she screamed at the gangly horror before her. Balled her fists up and yelled her outrage at him. This somber land, that stupid fox, tricking her with her parents—it all came bubbling up and blasted out of her mouth in a ferocious yell.
And strangely enough, Tommy Rawhead fell back. Seemed diminished by her anger, his eyes losing their gleam. For a moment, Maya thought she heard the sound of golden bells pealing around her, resonating within her yell, and felt as if she could simply point a finger at Tommy and blast him from the surface of this strange land. But then the tolling of the bells passed, a wave of dizziness washed over her, and Tommy straightened.
Cold, sober fear washed over her. The thing had a razor. She had just yelled at it. Yelling was not considered an efficient form of combat. She was clearly going mad. One step, a wild turn, and she was running again. The cottage was close. Fifteen yards, ten, and then she threw herself at the door, began hammering at it with her fists, turned to look over her shoulder at where Tommy Rawhead had followed, still uncertain, but drawn by the scent of her fear.
The door opened and Maya fell forward into the arms of a surprisingly strong and wiry child. Regaining her balance, she turned and slammed the door closed.
“Ach, now there’s no need to be banging me door like that, is there?” said the child in a surprisingly angry tone. Turning, putting her back to the stout wooden boards, Maya looked at the kid and started. She was too tired to scream.
The boy was actually a well-dressed old man, with skin the color of nutmeg and wispy white hair about his ears and hanging from the end of his jaw. No taller than three feet, he was startlingly ugly, with the kind of face that might make you scream were you to catch it watching you through the kitchen window one night when you went down to get a glass of water. He had no nose but rather two broad slits, and his mouth was puckered and lacking most of its teeth. His eyes were large and seemed to bulge from his head, but that was only because of how sunken they were in his prominent skull. Emaciated and wrinkled, it was only the stern, reproving look mixed with exasperated kindness that kept her from panicking. That and the fact that it was his door between her and Rawhead outside.
“I’m sorry, I just—wanted to close the door—on that thing outside.”
“Ach, that silly boggle? Whipper wapping his cutter about like he’s out for a shave?” The old man flapped both hands at her in dismissal and turned to walk back into the room, leaving her at the door. Only then did Maya look past him, and gaze about the inside of the cottage. It was larger within than it looked without. A fire burned with audible crackles and pops in the hearth, and all was orange, yellow and brown in hue, from the thick rugs that lay under the heavy furniture to the painted walls to a gorgeous tapestry of an old farm, replete with oxen pulling a plough through a broad chocolate field and men threshing hay.
“Silly boggle?” asked Maya, leaving the door reluctantly, wanting to keep her shoulder to it. “Rawhead and Bloody Bones is a silly boggle?”
The old man puttered around a large armchair and went to the fire where a black iron kettle was suspended over the flames. He picked up a stick, poked the kettle once or twice, and then turned to fix her with his beady eye.
“Ach, that Tommy is knowt more than a closet bogey, fit for frightening the children and making a fool of his self. Just you pay him no mind.”
“But…” said Maya, drifting over to the armchair. “But he seemed… he seemed really dangerous.” How could this little man not understand exactly how lethal that demented monster outside was? A demented monster, she realized, who had not attempted to get inside yet. And who had reacted rather surprisingly to getting yelled at.
“Ah no, there’s much worse out there to be afeared of, girl. Tommy Rawhead is trouble enough, but he pales when you go comparing him to the likes of the kelpie or Jack in Irons.”
“Oh,” said Maya, not reassured at all. “Well, good then.” The kettle began to keen, and the little man propped his stick against the stone wall and pattered over to a cupboard. Stone walls, realized Maya. They had been wood when she had—never mind.
“My name is Maya,” she said. “I’m from New York, but really Brazil. Guillaume brought me here, but I lost him when I stepped off the path. I don’t know where I was going, but I’m so tired I can’t even think straight.” She moved over to the armchair and plopped down into it. It was deliciously comfortable. The fabric was rich and thick and soft, the padding seeming to inhale her into the folds of the chair, and she felt like she was floating out of her body.
The little man, who had been busy pulling out glass bottles filled with spices, turned and fixed her with his gaze once more. “Oh aye?” He asked. “Well, that be mighty interesting. My name’s Tim Tom Tot.”
“Tim Tom Tot,” said Maya drowsily. Had he drugged her? No, he hadn’t even given her tea yet. Maybe in this land you got drugged before you drank the tea. She struggled to sit up, failed. So tired. It seemed years ago that Chang had tried to kiss her at the restaurant. The streets of Chinatown seemed like a surreal, Technicol
or dream, intangible and vague. Nothing was more real than the warmth of the fire, the enveloping comfort of the faded orange armchair, the comforting smell of wood smoke and the thick stone walls between her and Tommy.
Tim Tom Tot said something, but Maya couldn’t make it out. She felt like she was sinking into warm honey. She closed her eyes, and slept.
Maya awoke curled up in the armchair, a heavy brown blanket that smelled of dry leaves draped over her. It was warm, and she felt luxuriously rested, without the resultant cramps and aches that usually came from falling asleep in a chair. It was as if she had developed the ability of a cat to drape herself sinuously over anything and be comfortable. She didn’t stir immediately. Lay still, feeling safe, breathing in the smells of autumn.
The fact that she was there, in the faded orange armchair under this deliciously thick blanket meant that it hadn’t been a dream. She stirred at last, pulled the edge of the blanket down, looked out over the room. Tim Tom Tot was gone, the room was empty, the fire having burned down low. But faint sunlight came in through the bottle glass windows, painting streaks of green and blue where it splashed on the walls and floor.
Rising, Maya paused to fold the blanket and then stretched. The room seemed to have grown smaller, more compact and homey. Raking her fingers through her hair, wishing for a brush and a mirror, she moved slowly to one of the windows. The furniture was old but solidly built, built to last the passing of the decades, centuries, perhaps. Stout and framed with wood, they all looked comfortable and a pleasure to use. A well-worn circular table of cinnamon colored wood, ringed by four small stools. Sideboards and shelves covered with knickknacks, curiously curled branches and overly large nuts and pinecones. A rocking chair by one window, a couple of cupboards by the wall, and the gorgeous, full sized tapestry depicting the idealized, bucolic life.
Maya looked around for her purse, saw it set next to a freshly baked loaf of bread on the table. Walking over, she saw a crock of butter, what looked like honey, and a pitcher of cream. She hesitated; it would be rude to serve herself without Tim Tom Tot’s permission. So instead she simply sat, pulled open her purse, and checked its contents idly. Shockingly, her pre-paid cell had no reception.
