“But?”
“But they don’t outweigh the bad years, and they don’t outbalance the accidents. The healthy hunters who should be able to bring in enough to see them through the winter, who somehow wander into the wrong patch of wood and wind up split stem to stern. The blighted fields, the spoiled provisions. And you know who thrives throughout it all?”
“The mayor,” guessed Annie.
“And his family. They thrive while everything around them withers. They’re not wendigo. Doesn’t mean they don’t have something of the wendigo’s hunger in them, or that they wouldn’t eat your heart if they thought they could get away with it and still maintain their pretty faces.” Hal spat off to the side, like he was warding himself against the evil eye. “Bastards. Every damn one of them.”
Annie shivered, looking around. The trees closed in on all sides of them, and she realized, with some dismay, that she had no idea where they were. They could have been walking back toward town, or heading in a circle, or any number of other terrible things. She was alone in the woods with a strange, armed man, in the middle of the night, and she had a dreadful suspicion that if she were to scream, only the wendigo—assuming the wendigo were real and not the ravings of a madman—would be close enough to hear.
“Where are we going?” she asked gingerly.
“I suspected you wouldn’t believe me forever,” said Hal. “I know how I sound. I know how little proof I offered you. A man living on his own in the middle of nowhere, well. There can be reasons for that, and not many of them are likely to be good ones. So I brought you here to show you, once and for all, that I’m no liar. Come.”
He motioned her forward. Lacking any other options, Annie followed.
The trees thinned around them. The trees had been thinning for some time, she realized; it was only the darkness that made them seem so uniform and unrelenting. Carefully, they picked their way out of the wood and into a stretch of clear land. The curdled moon glared down, hateful as ever.
Hal continued to walk. Annie continued to follow. When he stopped, so did she, and raised her lantern to behold another bowl like the one that contained The Clearing, or his cabin. Such bowls seemed to be a feature of the local landscape, like the sandstone hills of Deseret.
Her light was not enough to drop more than a few feet below the lip of the bowl. Hal bent, picking up a dry branch. He held it out to the lantern, motioning for her to open the glass. She did, and he slipped the end of the branch inside. It must have been in the open for quite some time; the pitch caught fire with a crackle, filling the air with the smell of smoke and burning pine. It was pleasant after the living, hostile scent of the woods.
“Look,” said Hal, and hurled the branch, end over end, across the bowl. It flew in a long arc, burning as it went, until it fell like a star, illuminating everything around it.
The township it revealed might have been the one she’d walked away from, had anything lived there, or had there been a circus camped at the edge of the bowl. But there was nothing, only buildings sliding into decay and open ground grown choked with weeds. Annie gasped.
“A ghost town?” she whispered.
Hal nodded, expression grim. “They called it ‘The Clearing’ once, before the mayor misjudged how many people they could afford to lose in a single winter. According to the town records, the official maps of the area, this place never existed. Come with me.”
He offered her his hand. After a moment’s frozen hesitation, Annie took it.
Hal knew the route into the ghost town as well as he had known his way through the woods. He walked confidently, never hesitating or looking back, and Annie felt compelled to follow him the same way, setting her feet where his had been only a second before, letting him lead her down, down, down into the darkness. The shadows here were the ordinary kind, but steeped with a strange melancholy, like they understood the sacrifices that had been made in their name. She shivered, suddenly wishing that she had brought a second coat with her when she ran from the circus. Nathanial’s, perhaps.
Oh, Nathanial, will I ever see you again? she thought, and rather suspected that the answer would be a short and simple “no.” It hurt to contemplate. Not as much as it hurt to think that she might never find her daughter, but that was what made it a safe question to ask in the silence behind her eyes. Mr. Blackstone—Nathanial—however much she might love him, and however much she suspected she might have been able to allow herself to love him, had she been given time and the opportunity to do so, was expendable in the end. Her mother’s heart could afford to let him go. She could never do the same for Adeline.
Delly was everything she had. No one who was not a parent could understand how deep that little girl’s roots had sunk into her heart. If she lost her, there would be no more Annie. There would be nothing but a husk that walked like a woman. She might as well follow her captive corn stalker out into the fields and let it plant a scarecrow in her heart.
Annie shuddered, trying to clear away the unpleasant thoughts. When she lifted her head, she found Hal looking at her sympathetically.
“It’s easy to haunt yourself in this place,” he said. “Don’t need no ghosts when you’re standing inside one. Remember that whatever you left up above is still there, waiting for you to come and find it. Nothing you think you see here is true.”
“If this isn’t true, why did you bring me here?”
“Because it’s close enough to show you the things you’ll need to understand,” said Hal. “Come with me.” As before, he walked, and as before, she followed him. She had followed this far. At this point, it truly felt as if there was nothing else that she could do.
The ghost town looked so similar to the living town of The Clearing that every step closer to its outlying buildings made a scream rise higher in Annie’s throat, choking her. How had they been able to conceal this? How had the survivors of whatever tragedy had come here been able to turn their backs and walk away, as if abandoning an entire settlement was nothing?
She had seen ghost towns before. Some were sad things, dandelion fluff buildings and broken streets, starved to death by a change of fortune, drying slowly in the desert heat. They were a litany of dead wells and terrible illnesses, and even the circus orphans wouldn’t loot their rickety old structures for fear of waking the ghosts that haunted them. Others were terrifying in subtle ways, their walls riddled with bullets, their wells reeking with bodies that had never been laid to rest. Towns could die in an instant or over the course of years. Much like a person, she supposed. There were a million ways to die, if you weren’t careful.
This town, though …
This town hadn’t died of natural causes, or even been murdered. This town had been sacrificed, its throat slit by its own people in the name of placating some unspeakable and unspoken divinity. Walking through its streets was like stepping onto unholy ground. Her skin shivered until it felt as if it would fly off her body entirely, slithering away and becoming its own creature. The shadows were too dark. They were thin as normal shadows, but Annie half-thought that was only so they could creep up on a body without being seen until it was too late.
Glass still glittered in some of the windows of the houses around them. Not much—maybe every other pane—but still enough to tell her that they had left quickly, not taking any more than they could carry, and had never returned. Glass was precious. Here in the West, glass was a sign of comfort and civilization, a marker of wealth that few could afford to obtain, much less afford to leave behind. Glass meant having enough, not just to survive, but to put on airs again. Putting on airs was important. Having a Sunday dress, or a pot of white sugar, or a glass window, it meant that there was enough.
And these people had walked away, and they had left their glass windows behind.
“What happened here?” she asked. She didn’t mean to whisper, but she did so all the same, the darkness seeming to swallow her voice, until there was almost nothing left of it. Even the darkness here was hungry.
/> Hungry: yes. That was it. The woods, the shadows, even that damned curdled moon, they were all hungry in a way that she hadn’t been able to put her finger on until she’d heard her voice gulped down by the quiet. They wanted something she couldn’t give them, because if she started to give, they would take, and they wouldn’t stop taking until there was nothing left of her. This was a place with no concept of enough. Glass meant nothing here. The idea it defined was impossible.
“The stores ran out.” Hal walked beside her. He looked … resigned, like the hungry shadows had devoured so much of him that they had no power over what remained. He was a shadow himself, of the man he’d been before. “The mayor said that someone must have been stealing, that there had been enough when the winter started, and if we were running out in mid-January, it had to be because someone had decided that their family deserved to live in comfort while everyone else suffered. That was bullshit, pardon my French, ma’am, and everyone knew it. No one in the town was comfortable except for the mayor himself, him and his damned family.”
Annie, who had seen a great deal of bullshit lying by the side of the road during her time with the circus—and had, yes, seen her share of damnation as well—said nothing. Hal needed little prompting to start his stories. She was already coming to understand that it was best if she just let him go. She would learn what she needed to know, and that knowledge would lead her to Adeline.
If she’s still alive, whispered the voice of the hungry shadows all around her, and she shuddered, and was silent.
“Their boy was fat,” said Hal in a reflective tone, like he couldn’t believe the words. “Did I tell you that already? Cutest little thing you ever saw, not three years old and fat as a Christmas goose. He didn’t bruise when he fell down, just skinned up his palms and bounced right back to his feet. My Poppy, you could count her ribs through her dress, and she had every scrap that we could give her, and there’s the mayor, pointing fingers, saying that someone in town was stealing from the rest of us, someone in town was acting against the greater good. It wasn’t the boy’s fault. Children should be fat. That’s what gets them through the winter. But every time I saw him running, laughing, all bundled up in good furs and with his belly like a promise of seeing the spring, I near wanted to split his skull. I’d always known envy. A man can’t live in a hard world and not know envy once in a while, however much he might wish otherwise. I’d never known what it was to covet before.”
The buildings around them were changing as they walked, growing green with moss and speckled with the leering, poisonous caps of toadstools. Annie saw colors she would have sworn Nature didn’t understand, and she shivered again.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked. Surely not to see the mayor’s son: she’d seen him already, back in The Clearing, a strapping boy almost Martin’s age. He’d outgrown his boyish fatness and found a stout, well-fed handsomeness in his adulthood.
“The same place a man always takes a woman,” said Hal. His smile was a white slash in the night. “I’m taking you to church.”
Interlude the Second
Helen looked up sharply at the sound of a closing door. It was a whisper, a murmur, barely standing out against the rest of the household noise, but it made the skin on her breasts and belly tighten all the same, pulling her upright, into the polished, perfect posture that Dr. Murphy expected from all the servants in his employ. It was an honor to work in the home of such a great man. It was a privilege to serve his every want and whim. It was for the sake of her family, who benefited from her position, and from the status of having a daughter embedded in the household of one of Hellstromme’s best men. Why, without her holding her position, they would all have been destitute years ago, what with Papa’s debts—shameful things that they were—and Mama’s poor choices of associate.
There were those who lived in Junkyard and said that everyone who walked the gilded streets of the Holy City proper lived charmed lives, that if they had just been fortunate enough to have been born into the life of the Saved and not been sinners from the start, they would never have wanted for anything. Helen supposed that was true enough, in its way. The troubles that she had lain out before her were nothing compared to starvation and damnation and the illnesses that seemed to plague those who lived in the shadow of the smokestacks. She was blessed with good fortune and she was blessed in the eyes of the Lord, and those were two very different things that went by the same name, as so many things in this world did. She could not complain about her lot in life. It would have been shameful to do so.
But sometimes, she wished that it were not so difficult to be saved.
Dr. Murphy was a great man. A refined man, delicate and mannerly. He considered himself refined in all ways, among them the art of moving quietly through his own home, that he might hear the smooth tick and turn of the clocks on the walls, or the hum of the fine steam-powered devices he built in his spare time and set as curiosities on shelves and bureaus. Helen agreed heartily whenever he asked if he had startled her, but the truth was, that small lie was one she had decided God would forgive her. It was rude to scream in the presence of the man who paid her, and so when she heard him approach the kitchen doorway, she continued chopping potatoes for the soup, giving no sign that she knew he was there.
“Helen,” said Dr. Murphy. There was a coiled smugness in his pronunciation of her name, an almost shameful pride. He was proud of himself for sneaking up on her like a common thief.
If what he wanted was a performance, she would grant it to him, if only for the sake of keeping the peace. She squeaked and jumped, dropping the knife she had been using. It clattered harmlessly on the cutting board. Had she been genuinely surprised, she might have cut herself, or dropped the knife on the floor, where she would have risked scratching the wood. Dr. Murphy couldn’t stand to have his house in disrepair. She would have been on her hands and knees for days, sanding out the scratch as penance for her disrespect.
No. Lying was the right choice here. Lying allowed her to do as her employer wished, without causing extra work for herself, extra work that would take her away from the essential need to serve him.
“Sir!” She pressed a hand to her chest, as if to slow her beating heart. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t hear you.”
“Is her lunch prepared?” He nodded toward the counter, where a small plate waited, already prepared with slices of cheese, and apple, and cold boiled chicken. No salt or spices, alas. Only good, plain, easily digested fare. The poor lamb. Some days she could have only oatmeal, or cold boiled potatoes, and those were the worst of all.
“I was going to take it up in a few minutes, sir,” said Helen. “I was finishing slicing her apples.”
“I’ll take it to her.”
“Sir?” Helen caught herself before she could ask anything else. If he wanted her to understand, he would explain.
Working in the house of a great man like Dr. Murphy had seemed like such an honor when the job was offered to her, and maybe it was; maybe she was a sinner, harboring thoughts like the ones she sometimes had. All men were sinners, that was what the Elders said, and women were weaker than men—why, look at what Miss Grace had done, and she the most pampered and privileged woman in all the world! It was only natural that Helen might find herself harboring thoughts that were less than good, less than gracious, less than worthy of her station. Yes. Only natural.
“I will be taking her lunch to her today,” said Dr. Murphy. His tone was patient, but there was a glitter in his eye that warned her of thin ice beneath her feet: she was trying his nerves. “Your services will not be required.”
“Yes, sir,” said Helen, and bobbed a quick curtsey. She might harbor improper thoughts, but no one would ever accuse her of being a fool. She knew when to fall into line. “Shall I finish the apples?”
“You might as well; we need to tempt her,” he said. “When I took her measures this morning, she was listless. I doubt she’ll have much of an appetite.”
Helen had
her own opinions about that as well. It was impossible not to, really, and she didn’t feel bad about them. Still, she kept her peace, only nodding and saying, “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, Helen,” he said. “Whatever would we do without you?” His tone was still patient, still perfectly appropriate, and yet it was impossible not to hear the warning that lurked behind it. Her place in this household, as an unmarried woman who had neither aspirations toward nor the possibility of becoming the master’s wife, was a low one. She forgot that at her peril.
“I really don’t know, sir,” she lied. He would do as he had always done: he would forget her name inside the week. He would open his doors to another daughter of a middling-well-off family, one who needed a job that was neither beneath her nor too good for her, and someone else would slice the apples, and if she were lucky, she would be sent home.
If she were unlucky …
She was not the first to hold her position, only the longest-lasting. Dr. Murphy was a great man. Discontinuity upset him, distracted from his work. She kept her job in part because he did not wish the fuss and bother of replacing her, and in part because she was clever enough to know that she could be replaced. From what the other members of the household had said, those who were dismissed were rarely seen again in the Holy City, although their families were well-compensated for their loss. It wasn’t that the doctor was a bad man, no, not in the least. It was simply that he had important work to protect, and it wouldn’t do to have loose-tongued former employees spilling his secrets to anyone who flattered their egos.
“The apples, Helen,” he said, and there was a gentleness in his tone that spoke to an understanding of her thoughts—what the thoughts of any woman in her position would have been, really.
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