Boneyard

by Seanan McGuire

  “Right away, sir,” she said, and turned back to the cutting board, already reaching for the knife.

  Apples were often hard to come by in Deseret. The soil didn’t offer them up easily, and the amount of water it could take to tend a single tree—not even to bring it to fruit—was more than even the richest and most holy of citizens could easily afford. They had to be imported at great expense from the heathen territories to the East, where people who knew nothing of godliness toiled in orchards that sounded something like Eden in their greatness and their greenness. Helen hadn’t even tasted an apple before she’d come to Dr. Murphy’s service. When she’d been a girl, her parents had said that there was no need to bring a symbol of temptation into their home, and that had been good enough to explain their lack.

  (It still was, if she were being perfectly honest. Why would anyone want to cultivate a taste for a fruit that symbolized the weakness of woman and the uncleanliness of man? Better to eat prickly pears and good blackberries, and leave the apples to the indolent and the Easterners, who knew no struggle, and no redemption.)

  The knife sliced through the crisp white flesh with ease, sending up a sweet, acidic perfume. Helen arrayed the last of the apple slices on the plate before picking up the tray and turning to offer it to Dr. Murphy.

  He was standing right behind her. This time, her gasp was not feigned, and her flinch was almost enough to knock the tray out of her hands. Dr. Murphy smiled as he took it from her.

  “Thank you, Helen,” he said. “I will not need you for the rest of the afternoon. If you have any personal business, this would be a good time to attend to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and bobbed a curtsey. He was already walking away by the time she straightened. Perhaps that was for the best. She sagged against the counter, heart pounding, and waited for the fear to pass her by.

  Dr. Murphy didn’t look back. He walked out of the kitchen and toward the stairs, head held high, the picture of a man who had never been afraid of anything in his life—or perhaps the picture of a man who had been so afraid, for so long, that he no longer knew how to show it. Fear was weakness in his world, as sure as it was in the world outside the Holy City, and sometimes the only solution was to freeze it out.

  The carpet was soft beneath his feet, plush and yielding. Sometimes he wished it were socially acceptable to have hardwood floors, like the ones he’d grown up with, the ones he still insisted on in the kitchen and the washrooms. They were easier to clean, and they didn’t feel so much like walking on cobwebs. He’d stepped in a terrantula’s burrow when he was a boy, putting his foot clean through the crust of earth that covered it and into the spongy mass within. The beast that had spun the web had been gone or dead, but that hadn’t stopped the terror in the moments when he’d been trapped, before his older brother had doubled back and yanked him free. Carpet was too much like that long-gone burrow, and he hated it.

  (Sadly, he worked for Hellstromme, and a certain amount of “keeping up appearances” was required, even if his doors rarely opened to anyone outside of his household. The master wanted people to believe that all his scientists were good, moral, upstanding men of virtue. Why that meant carpet was less than clear, but Michael had never been a man to argue with those he chose to follow.)

  The stairs were carpeted as well, but more thinly, in a runner rug patterned with roses. It had been Grace’s choice. She’d fallen in love with the design the moment she’d seen it, declaring it a garden for the eyes, and when she’d told him that she had to have it, well, he’d done his duty as a husband and obliged her, hadn’t he? Everything she’d told him she wanted, she’d had, as soon as she’d proven herself deserving. He had never left her wanting. But she had left him, running out the door like a frightened hare as soon as she realized that their life together would be more than dinner parties and dresses. He had needed more from a wife than a pretty ornament for his parlor, and Grace had balked.

  The door at the top of the stairs was locked. Helen had a key, as did Josiah, his doorman. Michael would have been more comfortable if only he had been able to open that door, but he understood the necessity of equipping his household. If there were an emergency—if, God forbid, the house caught fire or something happened to him while he was away—someone would need to be able to get into the second floor and tend to what waited there. He could be a careful jailer. He could not be an absolute one.

  A twist of his key and the lock was open, the door swinging wide to reveal a meticulously clean hallway. The carpet that dominated downstairs was here as well, but covered in a sheet of pressed canvas, giving it almost the consistency of honest wood. It was necessary, to keep the dust down. The curtains that blocked the windows were equally necessary. Some of his medicines reacted poorly to light and needed to be kept in a cool, dry place. Coolness had been the greatest challenge: Deseret was a desert territory, and the sun held dominion over all. Half of his time over these last eight years had been spent in devising more and more clever mechanisms for steam-powered cooling engines. He had them down to the size of a gold bar, tiny and cunning and capable of keeping the house no warmer than a spring afternoon. The trick was proper calibration of the balance of ghost rock and mercury at the engine’s heart, measuring it out in specks no bigger than a grain of sand. The sun held no more dominion here.

  The door at the end of the hall was open, barely more than a crack. Michael stood a little straighter, put a smile onto his face, and proceeded toward it, stopping just outside.

  “My, my, my,” he said. “It looks as if Helen has failed to do her job once more, leaving this door open. I shall have to let her go.”

  There: a sound, distant and faint, but distinct all the same. The enraged squeal of a child hearing her misdeeds blamed on someone else.

  “Oh, my,” he said. “Was it not Helen? Was it, perhaps—you?” He thrust the door grandly open on the last word, revealing the room beyond.

  It was a confection of lace and silk and gauzy netting, all of it white, all of it cleaned daily by Helen, who rotated the draperies according to a set schedule, removing anything that looked even slightly dusty, or dingy, or otherwise imperfect. It was less vanity than it was necessity: there was no way to keep the room truly sterile, not exposed to the rest of the house as it was. All the doctors he’d consulted had told him the same thing, saying that infection came from allowing too much mess near someone who was already ill. He might not be able to stop the infections entirely, but he could create an environment in which they would not thrive.

  The bed was larger than a child’s bed would normally have needed to be, for it was her entire world. The mattress had seen countless tea parties and slow, meandering adventures for her plush toys, which were, like the draperies, replaced on a regular basis. In the middle of it all lay a little girl, dwarfed by the size of the bed around her, and by her own frail frame, which looked utterly breakable, like the slightest touch would shatter her forever. Pillows propped her up, holding her just shy of a seated position, so that she could watch the door or, on good days, the window, where the curtains were opened only on Michael’s word.

  They were closed now. Electric light filled the room, pale and more forgiving than sunlight. He could almost pretend that there was color in her cheeks, which seemed pale as milk even when compared to the white-blonde of her hair. Her eyes, a brown so dark that they could look black to the casual glance, were holes drilled into her face, gazing at him out of eternity.

  “Hello, Papa,” she said, after a pause to catch her breath. “Where’s Miss Peg?”

  “Helen and I thought that it might be best for me to bring your lunch today, pet,” said Michael, walking across the room and settling on the bed next to her. She shifted a hairsbreadth closer, enough that he could feel the heat coming off of her perpetually feverish frame. She was never cold. That, too, had influenced his design for the cooling machines. With her body set on consuming itself to stoke its own inner fires, it only made sense to keep the house as co
ol as possible. It might bring her more toward balance.

  “What is it?” she sat up a little, straining to see.

  “Apples, and cheese, and chicken.”

  “Will you eat with me?” She turned hopeful eyes toward his face, lips drawn into a practiced pout.

  Michael’s heart seemed to swell and shrink at the same time. Fatherhood was nothing like what he had expected it to be. Nothing, it seemed, had been, not since the day he had taken a wife. “There’s not enough for both of us, poppet,” he said. “I will sit with you while you eat, and we can talk about your day. Will that suffice?”

  She frowned, but only a little: the true victory had already been won. “Do you promise not to go away until I finish?” she asked.

  “Only if you promise to eat every scrap and crumb on this plate,” he said.

  “What if I’m not hungry?”

  “Then I must conclude that my presence dampens your appetite and remove myself as the cause of the problem.” He made as if to stand.

  Her hand shot out with surprising speed, grasping his elbow. He stopped immediately. She could be swift—remarkably so, given how thin her limbs were, how devoid of muscle—but she was not strong, and she was so much more delicate than she seemed. If he hurt her unintentionally, he would never forgive himself.

  “No, Papa, I’ll eat,” she said, eyes wide and pleading.

  “All right,” he replied, and settled back on the bed, reaching over to smooth her hair with one hand. She smiled at him. He smiled back. “Hello, my Annabelle.”

  “Hello, Papa,” she replied. She let go of his arm and reached for the tray, making little grasping motions with her hands.

  Michael picked it up and placed it gently across her thighs, propping it so that most of its weight was supported by its wooden legs, which had soft felt on their bottoms, to keep them from bruising her. She bruised so easily these days. More easily all the time, it sometimes seemed, no matter what he did to try to make things better for her.

  “Is this all right?” he asked.

  She shifted slightly. “I’m well, Papa.”

  “Good.” He stroked her hair before leaning back to watch her eat.

  Annabelle moved with that same eerie quickness when she grasped her food, consuming it in small, neat bites that she scarce seemed to chew before swallowing. She had little sense of taste, thanks to some of the treatments she had received; all food was simply sustenance to her, intended to fuel her broken, breaking body. Still, there were things to be learned in what she chose. She had never been distracted by tastes or preferences, and selected her meals purely on the basis of the signals she received from her stomach. Today, she began with the chicken, moved on to the cheese, and finally, almost grudgingly, began to eat her apples.

  “Don’t you like them, pet?” he asked.

  “They taste like medicine,” she said.

  Given how numb her tongue was, that meant that she disliked the tingle of the acid in the fruit. Interesting. “Can you eat them anyway?” he asked. “For me? I would very much appreciate it.”

  Annabelle nodded and continued dutifully eating her apples.

  Michael watched her, stomach twisting, already regretting what he would have to do. She was such a delicate child, had always been a delicate child. She deserved so much better than the life she’d had so far. She deserved green fields and blue horizons, she deserved to run and play and be as free as the children of the families around them, the ones he sometimes saw kicking a ball in the street or flying kites on the butte. Annabelle had done nothing wrong, nothing that should have seen God confining her to this cottony prison of a room, to her fragile cocoon of a body.

  He had done wrong, oh, yes; he had been a sinner in the days before he’d settled down and taken a wife, pledging to be true to her and to the teachings of the Church, to do what he could to serve state and Science at the same time. Dr. Hellstromme was a great man. Being chosen as one of his protégés was an honor almost beyond dreaming of, so impossible that Michael had scarcely dared to hope for it before it had been given to him. That, alone, should have been enough for him. He had had a beautiful wife and the patronage of a great man.

  But no. He had wanted more. He had wanted children, and when Grace had failed to provide them in the natural manner of things, he had turned to the one mistress who had never done him ill or let him down, the constant that had defined his entire adult life: to Science, glorious and shining and profane. He wondered, sometimes, how the Church could justify its co-existence with Science and all Her wonders, for She was so clearly a divinity in Her own right, something that each and every man who prayed at Her beakers and burners set before the grace of God Almighty. Even Dr. Hellstromme was a part of the sacrilege, for what could he possibly be apart from the high priest of their chosen, pagan goddess?

  Science, and Dr. Hellstromme, had guided his hand, had helped him mix the medicines and measure the treatments that would enable Grace to do her wifely duty and provide him with an heir. She had been willing, at first, afraid of being put aside or joined by a sister-wife if she remained too long barren. No one would have questioned him for either one, and indeed, taking a second bride would have been in many ways easier. But he had always liked to run a tidy household, and the men he knew with more than one wife seemed to be forever embroiled in this petty dispute or that marital quarrel. He and Grace had long since worked out their peace, and he saw no reason to unsettle that, not when children would already change the delicate balance in their own way. Children always did. Grace was the woman he loved. Grace was the woman he had wanted to be the mother of his children.

  Grace was the one who had, at his request, consumed the tinctures and suffered through the procedures, until he knew what it was to feel like God Himself, creator of all life. He had watched his wife’s belly swell, and he had been so proud that he had felt as if his head would burst. Even Dr. Hellstromme had been proud of him, singling him out for praise, holding him up as an example for the rest of the scientists in Hellstromme’s employ. Dr. Michael Murphy was going places.

  Then the babies had been born, two of them, so entangled that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

  Then he had realized the price of his hubris, as Grace had screamed and the battle for his daughters had begun.

  Idly, absently, he reached out and stroked Annabelle’s hair again, thinking of his other daughter, his lovely Pearl, who was still alive, and strong, and healthy, and hale. Who would save her sister, and in saving Annabelle, save him.

  “We are going on an adventure, my poppet,” he said, and there was nothing in his eyes but hope.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The church stood at the edge of town, surrounded by a fence that shouldn’t have been necessary in a place like this, where no one would even dream of desecrating holy ground. Only when they drew closer—close enough for the lantern’s watery light to chase back the shadows—did she realize what the fence was for: it was there to define the graveyard.

  Annie gasped, her free hand going involuntarily to her mouth, trapping the sound inside. There were so many headstones standing in shaky, uneven rows. Many of them were cracked; all of them were coated in thick layers of stringy moss. Without them, there would have been nothing to mark the placement of the dead. There were no graves. There were only holes in the earth, deep pits from which unspeakable things had been dragged.

  “You’re probably trying to tell yourself that they moved the dead when they left this place behind,” said Hal. His voice was gruff. “It would be the Christian thing to do, taking the dead with you. Don’t let yourself believe that lie. They didn’t move a damn thing. The wendigo did this.”

  “Why…” Annie stopped herself, slow horror twisting and untwisting in the pit of her stomach. Why would the wendigo desecrate the graves?

  Because they were hungry and the graves contained bodies, and to the wendigo, the bodies of the dead were more meat for the bellies of the beasts.
/>   Slowly, almost as in a dream, Annie walked closer to the church. The gate had been broken off its hinges; the shattered remnants shifted with the breeze, making a soft creaking sound. She stepped through, onto what should have been holy ground, and felt no holiness there. Only cold, and the ever-impending threat of the winter yet to come. She walked to the edge of the first grave.

  From this close, it was impossible to ignore the roughness of the edges, or the claw marks gouged into the dirt around the hole. Some great beast had dug this pit, delving ever downward to find the terrible meat concealed within. She had never really thought of humans in terms of meat before. Oh, she knew that man was made of flesh, and that there were plenty of creatures in the West who would be happy to devour the unwary—coyotes and buzzards, catamounts and nibblers. It was never safe to walk in the world. But she had considered places like this to be sacrosanct, so well defended that there was no need to be afraid.

  “Families, transformed by the fruits of their own hunger, returned here to unearth their dead,” said Hal from behind her. “Mothers who had laid their children to rest not two winters prior scrabbled through the earth and clawed open their coffins, taking their babes back into their bodies.”

  “Why are you showing me this?” whispered Annie.

  “Because you didn’t believe me when I just told you about it. You thought me a mad old man, rambling about what he’d lost. A warning is only as good as the one who gives it.”

  The grave smelled of wet fur and sour earth, instead of good, clean dirt. It was not the fact that someone had been buried here that had tainted the ground. It was the fact that the someone had been removed, ripped away from what should have been eternal peace.

  “They just … what?” Annie shook her head. “I don’t understand how this is possible. I don’t understand how any of this is possible.”

  Hal grasped her elbow, steering her gently away from the grave. “Come with me,” he said. “There’s more for you to see.”