The two looked at each other over the old cheap table, Jirra absentmindedly picking at the chipped lacquer.
“So,” said Colby, “are you going to tell me?”
Jirra shook his head. “Follow me. This part I have to sing.”
Jirra and Colby stood atop the hill where Mandu was buried, the stones still perfectly outlining the grave. Colby walked over to the ornately carved tree trunk that served as a headstone and began recognizing even more stories than before. He saw the jar. He recognized Koorong and the Kutji. And he saw himself, standing with Jirra.
Then he took a long swig from his beer. It was all coming together.
And that’s when Jirra began to sing.
17
Then—108 Moons Later
It was past midnight and Mandu Merijedi sat in the rain before a tree stump, carving the last of his visions into the wood. Thunder cracked, roaring through the land, a torrential monsoon kicking into full gear. Dark clouds rolled above, blacking out the sky, belching torrents of rain. He looked around, saw that all the dirt had turned to mud beneath widening puddles, and smiled.
Lightning struck close, lighting the land a bright purple noon. And that’s when Mandu saw him standing on the hill, fifteen feet away, soaked to the bone—Koorong Gaari. Koorong stood tall, angry, growling, pointing stick in his hand.
“Mandu Merijedi!” he shouted over the downpour. “It’s time.”
Mandu nodded, still smiling. “Yes,” he yelled back. “But perhaps you should come closer so we don’t have to yell so loud.”
Koorong shook his head. “Under the circumstances, I don’t think that’s wise.”
“That hardly seems fair, especially under the circumstances.” Then Mandu patted the ground beside him, offering a seat to Koorong. Koorong shook his head, declining. Mandu continued. “You’re here about your son. Do I have time for one more story?”
“I don’t think so,” said Koorong bitterly.
“I’ll tell it anyway. It’s a short one. Crocodile was far from home and dying of both hunger and thirst. He wanted to eat Tortoise, but Tortoise was very clever. ‘Tortoise,’ said Crocodile, ‘I’m very thirsty.’ ‘Drink this water,’ said Tortoise. ‘It is good enough for me, it will be good enough for you.’ But Crocodile said, ‘No, I don’t like salt water. I drink only freshwater.’ ‘So dig a well,’ said Tortoise, not wanting to hear Crocodile’s whining.”
“I know this story,” said Koorong, walking toward Mandu. “This is the one where Crocodile digs a hole and Tortoise convinces Bandicoot to hide in it.”
Mandu nodded, pointing a wise finger at Koorong. “And hungry Crocodile grabbed onto Bandicoot’s tail and wouldn’t let go. Tortoise told him that if he didn’t let go, he would die. But Crocodile was so hungry that he couldn’t bring himself to give up the meal.”
“Yes, yes, yes. And Crocodile died, Bandicoot’s tail still in his hand.”
“You’re very thirsty, Koorong. Very hungry. Perhaps you should dig a hole.” He patted the ground once more, offering a seat. “Come, you look tired.”
Koorong leapt, slamming Mandu’s back into the mud. Pinning him to the ground. Jamming his dagger in between Mandu’s ribs, just beneath the heart. There he cut a perfect semicircle, blood spurting into Koorong’s wrist basket. But there was no soul. Only black, sickly blood.
Mandu still smiled, big and broad, ever the cat that ate the canary, thick drops of rain spattering across his face. “Looking for something?” he asked with a musical lilt.
Koorong flew into a rage, pounding the mud with his fist, shouting. “Where is it? Where the fuck is it? Your soul? Where?”
“Oh, that? I put that in a jar this morning.”
Koorong punched Mandu hard across the jaw, failing once more to remove the smile. “Where’s the jar?”
“I had my student bury it in the backyard this afternoon. I’m sure if you look, you might find it. It’s somewhere around here. Though with all the rain, it might be hard to see any signs of digging. You could always ask my student, but he’s on walkabout. By the time you find him, well—how much time do you have before you need to drink another soul? A day? Two? You spent a lot of spirit getting here. And there are so few Clever Men in Arnhem Land this season. You haven’t had a soul in weeks, have you? You were waiting for mine.”
“I will take a soul from here.”
Mandu nodded. “Oh, good idea. But the whole town went on walkabout to visit relatives. I stayed behind. Too tired to walk without a soul. It really isn’t very pleasant. I don’t know how you do it. Will you stay here? Grasping Bandicoot’s tail?”
Koorong reared back and punched Mandu, breaking his nose. Then he punched him again, knocking out his front teeth. And again. And again. And again.
And still Mandu kept smiling, blood pouring back into his throat.
“Stop smiling! Why are you still smiling?”
“Because I’ve seen how this ends. All of it. I die here. You die in the bush looking for a soul. Both of us dead before it stops raining.” Mandu stared up into the storm. “Not much longer now.”
Koorong gritted his teeth and drove the pointing stick deep into Mandu’s heart, their foreheads pressed together, Koorong watching as the light faded from Mandu’s eyes.
“I hope you haven’t put much stock in seeing your son in the afterlife,” said Mandu, rasping, wheezing his last few breaths, staring unblinking back into Koorong’s eyes. “First of all, without a soul, you don’t get one. Second, your son isn’t there. Colby. He killed him twice.”
Koorong pulled out the dagger and stabbed him again. And again. And again.
And with that, Mandu Merijedi was gone.
Then, with Mandu finally dead, Koorong rose to his feet, swearing loudly, and wandered off into the rain, searching for a soul he would never find.
18
Now
“So where was it?” asked Colby.
“What?”
“The jar? Where did you bury it?”
Jirra looked at the ground, in both sadness and wonder. “I didn’t want to dig up the backyard, so I buried it up here—figured that it wouldn’t be that big a deal. I mean, I didn’t know what was in it. Mandu was sitting next to it the whole time, patting it each time he taunted Koorong.”
Colby smiled weakly at Mandu’s final joke. “So you buried him with the jar?”
“In the dirt with his soul.”
“Together again.” Colby looked off into the distance wistfully.
“Colby, Mandu never told a story that didn’t have a second, secret meaning. Whether warning or prophecy.”
“You think I’m Bandicoot,” Colby said, nodding.
“Let’s say ‘hoping’ and leave it at that.”
“So I did kill him, in a way.”
“Yeah, bru. You did. In a way. But in a way, that deadly bastard is still here, still working his way through our lives. It’ll be decades before his story has run its course.”
“I guess it’s up to us now to finish Mandu’s story.”
“It is,” said Jirra. “But we better make it a good one, okay? You know how he always loved a good story.”
Acknowledgments
This book doesn’t entirely feel like a book to me. It is the culmination of several years of quiet nights while I was waiting for a script to come in, or waiting for a job to start up, or simply nights I had off in which some story or character was scratching at the back of my brain, refusing to leave me alone until I put them on the page. These are ideas I woke up to from dreams or the small inspirations that arrived after a long walk. But making it from my head to the page is one thing; making it from the page to a book is another. And once again, like all the books before it, this came about with the help and support of a number of incredible people to whom I owe debts I feel I can never truly repay. They are wonderful people, one and all, with whom I hope, over the years, to find some way to settle our balance.
Jason Murphy for the scotch, and helping me to find
the courage; Rod Paddock for all the breakfast and support; Peter Hall for the wisdom; Will Goss for the coffee, corrections, and keeping me in check. Their early notes all proved invaluable.
Diana Gill, Simon Spanton, Rachel Winterbottom, and Jen Brehl for fighting for me and this book, and for helping shape it into what it has become. Peter McGuigan, a rock star of an agent who once showed me more swagger in two weeks than I’ve seen out of most people in a lifetime. David Macilvain, the man who brought me Peter, and whose advice always clears the static.
Scott Derrickson, my writing partner, my friend who held the door open for me, and who took me on a series of strange adventures. We also make movies. And, you know, wrote one of these stories together.
Jessica, who loves her writer, whose writer loves her more than breath, and who never, ever, lets me give up. You remain everything.
And for the tireless efforts of Deputy So-and-So of the local police department, without whose research this book wouldn’t be possible.
Glossary
Arnhem Land: A region in the Northern Territory of Australia populated almost entirely by Aboriginal peoples.
Bullroarer: An ancient ritual musical instrument and a device historically used for communicating over vast distances. It is a wood slat at the end of a cord, spun over the head to create a loud whistling sound.
Djang: The energy of a place that can be used to connect with the powers of a place.
Dreamstuff: The raw energy of creation that is around us at all times. All spirit and magic is formed by manipulating it.
Fairy Time: A realm beyond our own, inhabited by spirits and fairies, in which time flows erratically, sometimes faster, sometimes slower than our own world.
Kutji: Australian shadow spirits formed from the souls of the dead who have not yet fulfilled their life’s desires.
Rooted: (slang) Fucked.
Strong/Strongest Eye: Powerful/most powerful magic. Used to describe an Aboriginal magician.
Yashar: A Djinn bound to Colby by a wish. During this part of Colby’s story, he is deep asleep and has left him with Mandu for safekeeping and training.
About the Author
C. ROBERT CARGILL is the author of Sea of Rust, Dreams and Shadows, and Queen of the Dark Things. He has written for Ain’t It Cool News for nearly a decade under the pseudonym Massawyrm, served as a staff writer for Film.com and Hollywood.com, and appeared as the animated character Carlyle on Spill.com. He is the screenwriter of Marvel’s Doctor Strange, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and cowriter of the horror films Sinister and Sinister 2. He lives with his wife in Austin, Texas.
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Also by C. Robert Cargill
Novels
Sea of Rust
Queen of the Dark Things
Dreams and Shadows
Copyright
“A Clean White Room” by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill was originally published in The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares: The Haunted City, edited by Jason Blum, published by Doubleday, 2015.
“I Am the Night You Never Speak Of” was originally published in Midian Unmade: Tales of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, edited by Joseph Nassise and Del Howison, published by Tor Books, 2015.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
we are where the nightmares go. Copyright © 2018 by C. Robert Cargill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Harper Voyager and design are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers LLC.
first edition
Cover design by Owen Corrigan
Cover art by John Picacio
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cargill, C. Robert, 1975- author.
Title: We are where the nightmares go : and other stories / C. Robert Cargill.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Harper Voyager, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018006153| ISBN 9780062405869 (Hardcover) | ISBN 9780062405876 (Trade PB) | ISBN 9780062848857 (Audio) | ISBN 9780062848949 (Audio Demand) | ISBN 9780062405883 (E-Book)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Short Stories (single author). | FICTION / Horror.
Classification: LCC PS3603.A7449 A6 2018 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006153
Digital Edition JUNE 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-240588-3
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-240586-9
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