Or, in some cases, stand by as they do the killing themselves.
I never went back to the house. They took care of loose ends themselves. Before I could stub out the cigarette on the stoop, the kids began howling, screaming about how a bad man had come and put their daddy on ice, screaming about their ma, who was sleeping in her halo of red. In less than an hour, buttons and newshawks were swarming the street, lighting up the sky like it was Bonfire Night.
They called the kids heroes, heroes for being brave enough to watch their stepdad die, heroes for surviving their mother.
I stayed for a spell, indistinguishable from the neighbors who poured out of their houses to gawk at the spectacle. The boys didn’t ID me, much to my surprise. I thought Abel would have said something when his eyes washed over my face. But he only frowned and looked away. James was catatonic from the shock. Poor kid; sometimes life cuts you a bad deal.
As for me, I took the scenic route home. Partly because there’s nothing like a slow drive after a hard case, with pit stops for a bottle of Jack and a bellyful of jerk. Partly because a stolen car’s something to be relished.
And also partly because my hands won’t stop shaking like they’re palsied, the muscles raw and red under tissue-paper skin. My body was more battered than I had initially thought, reduced to palpitating nerve endings and ribbons of meat, a worn-down husk of scars. But it’d heal. Rest.
I just needed to rest.
: EPILOGUE
“So, you want to tell me which part of what you said was true?”
Sasha raises her head, a feline grin curling into place. “I remember you.”
“I bet you do.”
The restaurant is empty when I walk in, the tables cleared out, the floors swept, the chairs neatly stacked away. Sasha props herself against a counter, hands braced behind her. She cocks a hip like a challenge. “We’re closed, y’know?”
I glance outside the glass door. Even the neon sign has been switched off. The only lighting we have is the strobing of passing cars, and the orange bleed-out of the street lamps. “Not here for food.”
She smiles like she knew it already. But then again, we both did. It’s clear as day why I’m here, dripping blood and someone else’s gore, shaking like a Parkinson’s patient. “You going to answer my question?”
Sasha hops up on the counter and daintily crosses her legs, elegant and infuriating. Gone is her varsity jacket and the crinkly uniform, replaced by tank top and jeans and toned flesh, the national costume of any young adult. But it’s not her skin that catches my eye, it’s what on it.
Tattoos. Archaic symbols of fecund power, inscriptions of soil and blood and birth. Wrist up and neck down, every part of her is infused with those intricate patterns, a flood of frantic, furious spirals.
Shub-Niggurath’s marks.
The signs cut in Abel’s tongue finally made sense.
I feel the air gush out of my lungs.
Fucking hell.
Sasha lets loose a grin. “What question is that?”
“How much of what I saw is true?”
“Enough.” She shrugs and taps the side of her nose, the universal sign for secret.
“What about the thing you said about the riots? And the epidemic of altered chavs?”
“True, and also true.”
“And they’re all McKinsey’s fault then?”
Sasha cocks her head, a birdlike motion, somehow more distressing for its delicacy. “Not exactly.”
I hobble closer, careful to keep enough room between us to prevent her from getting a jump to me. What gets to me is the fact that there’s nothing to read. As far as my senses are concerned, Sasha’s human, powerless, fragile.
As far as I’m concerned, she’s clearly not.
“Not exactly how?”
She bisects her mouth with a raised index finger, and smiles and smiles, while saying nothing at all. I take the hint. Sasha isn’t going to spill.
I bite down on the urge to curse, not wanting to give her or her mistress the pleasure of seeing me squirm. Inhale. Exhale. Baby steps. My ghost shrivels further into itself.
“Back to more important business. Riddle me this: why would a dame like you let a mook like McKinsey knock you around? Unless you didn’t and were, in fact, manufacturing memories for the benefit of little old me.”
Her smile brightens.
“Funny you should say that.”
I spit black blood on the floor and grimace. “Come on, Sasha. Play it straight with me.”
“No.”
Dames.
“Do I have to bribe you with flowers? Is that what it’d take? Because I will go out and pick you some daisies, if I have to. I—”
Sasha decants from her perch, easy as a summer day, all long limbs and that sly, steady smile. “It’s not that simple, John.”
“I never told you my name.”
“We both know that doesn’t matter.”
She got me there.
I take another stab. “If you’re one of old Shubby’s cultists, why’d you need me? My kind never had anything to do with her or any of her siblings.”
Sasha’s eyes grow abstract even as the skin on the back of my forearms pimples and the hairs rise, like someone is running electromagnetic waves over me. She sighs and blinks out of her fugue, about thirty seconds later. “That answer is above your pay grade.”
“Try me.”
“Come on, John. You know you’re out of your depth here.”
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.
I shrug. “Can’t blame a man for trying.”
She smiles the detached, reverent grin of the high or the religious, just teeth and folded-back lips, and continues her slide toward me. “No. But you understand why you’re not getting answers, right?”
“Right.” I pop a cigarette from the box, and make a big show of igniting the tip. NO SMOKING signs glare at me from around the restaurant, but given the circumstances, I’m not feeling particularly rule-abiding. Besides, Sasha isn’t kicking up a fuss.
Her mouth twitches. She stops, inches from touching, close enough that my field of vision is her, only her. In the near darkness, her face is a cipher. And much, much older than I thought she was.
“You are a fascinating creature, do you know that?”
“I’ve been told I have my charms.”
“You are the last of your kind on this planet.”
“What about it?” I exhale tobacco and defiance into her face.
“A coward.”
The truth stings less than I thought it would. I shrug and tip my skull, enumerating my options. “I’d like to think it’s more of a case of knowing what I want.”
“And what do you want, Mr. Persons?”
Sasha—the body strains to think of her as “the dame,” “the skirt,” or any of the other metaphors familiar to noir, but nothing fits the understated gravity of her person—plants a slim hand on my chest. The presence of the All-Mother permeates through the contact, sex-sweat, black woods, cold mountains, and grave soil.
And curiosity.
I feel a trill of ice barrel through my nervous system. This is a new and unwelcome development. It’s one thing to mouth off at a cultist; it’s another to have Shub-Niggurath’s personal attention.
“I want what the body wants: to live.”
“But your people are doing exactly that ninety-seven million years into the future.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t like bugs.”
“What an ironic thing for you to say.”
“You know me, Sasha.” I gingerly lace my fingers with hers, and then push her hand away. She doesn’t resist, but she doesn’t let go either, tightening her grip. “I’m full of clever words.”
“Indeed.”
And then She speaks.
Shub-Niggurath doesn’t bother taking over Sasha’s mouth. Too mundane, I guess. Instead, she circulates the words through the young woman’s cells, a chorus of fifty billion transmitted through the exchange of air and
the throb of Sasha’s pulse, the sloughing of epidermal layers. It isn’t so much a sound as it is a blunt force.
The truth.
I shiver. You don’t say no to dames of that caliber. I close my eyes and try not to think about the All-Mother, black as pitch and bigger than worlds, Her Many Eyes blinking like headlamps between the tree line.
Watching me.
Listening.
Waiting.
“Because I like this place. Because this body’s a dead man walking. Because I can’t imagine existing in a world of endless darkness, dirt, and Yithian academics. Do you know how boring it gets? The pursuit of knowledge ain’t all it’s cracked up to—” The words become a desperate babble, a twenty-syllable pileup on the highway of truth. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to stop the deluge. “So much talking. Like you would not believe, sister. Endless hypotheses. No matter how much we discuss a subject, no Yith ever seems capable of—”
Cease.
I shut up.
“Life is cyclic,” Sasha intones, backing away, her voice swaying with the cadence of revelation. “With every death comes a thousand new beginnings, and with every fresh start comes the demise of something old. You know this.
“Should know this, at least.” Sasha purses her lips. “But it’s clear that you’re, how we say, a bit mawkish. Sentimental.”
The body. She meant the body and its broken mind, curled up in the cup of my skull. I bristle but I don’t say anything. For one, I can’t make heads or tails of her taunting, whether she’s angling to get a rise or just Shub-crazy. None of what she’s saying connects. They’re facts, pieces of the truth. Without order or context, they might as well be a mad saint’s gibbering, or the vestiges of a dead man’s compassion.
And two, Shub-Niggurath hadn’t greenlit vocal expression yet.
“You can talk.”
There we go.
“What exactly are you doing with the kid? Contrary to the biblical name, Abel doesn’t look like the religious type. Sure, he’s kind of young—”
Sasha cracks an amused grin. A shimmer of memory pulsates through her skin: men and women draped in fresh skins, still beaded with a patina of blood; a living fire, alive with the voice of the All-Mother, a thunder of bacchanal affection. “Something that will be good for him. I can promise you that.”
The vision wrenches at my insides like a hook. The body isn’t happy with this development, and neither am I. But what can we do but nod mutely? The silence doesn’t last, though. Foolhardy courage, or maybe it takes me a moment to gather my thoughts and my courage. “And his brother?”
“If he obeys Abel, certainly.”
“Too bad about their mom, eh?”
“Casualties happen.” Sasha dips her head and I am almost, almost fooled into believing she cares.
Still, there’s rarely anything else to say once a skirt drops a bombshell like that. “Fine. In that case, I’ll be going then. I’ve got a piggy bank to redeem.”
Sasha dips into a fluid, mocking curtsey as she spins on her heel and hops away, like a little bird stretched out tall, fingers slipping from mine. Her laughter rings out, sweet and knowing. “One last thing before you go, Mr. Persons.”
I am almost at the door when she speaks, rain already speckling my face. Outside, the world is cold and black, an abyss of bad decisions, stirred up by the encroaching rain. “And what’s that?”
“If you know what’s good for you, don’t come back to London.”
I freeze. That was a threat if I ever heard one. Not direct from Shub-Niggurath’s mouth, sure, but definitely a significant threat, given that Sasha appears authorized to carry her warnings. I rake my eyes over her carefree, enigmatic expression, full of playful, darting shadows.
Fuck. This.
A wet, wheezing laugh jumpstarts in my throat, before cresting into a full-fledged guffaw. It whoops upward, full of hysteria, even as I bend over double from the effort. After all this, after the betrayal and the double-crossing, the machinations. After all this madness, do they still expect me to bow?
The sound keeps boiling through the silent restaurant, Sasha watching quietly on, before it finally trickles into a wobbling halt. I straighten and meet Sasha’s gaze, wiping the tears from my eyes, even as she tilts her head slow.
I flick the cigarette at her like a last word.
“Don’t count on it.”
Her laughter, hyena-shrill and strange, stalks my long walk back home.
* * *
I stand in the bathroom of my office and stare into the mirror, thumbs threaded through belt loops like a gunslinger at high noon. The bruised, torn-up visage in the mirror regards me solemnly in return, its mouth pulled into a line.
“We did good,” I announce to the emptiness.
My ghost doesn’t reply.
Abel’s piggy bank sits on the sink between my toothbrush cup and hand lotion, its dead-eyed grin and dead black eyes pregnant with judgment. The kid’s word was good. Better than many grown men. He’d come to my office the very next day, holding the damn porcelain boar in one hand and James in the other. Without saying a word, he placed it down on my desk. No fuss, no muss. A clean transaction.
I’d expected him to ask about their mother. To yell at me, to hit me, to do or say something. The coroners would have found the bullet lodged in her brain. But he didn’t. Only stared at me with those huge, old-man eyes for what felt like an eternity before they left, hand in hand, grave as marriage, silent as ghosts.
“We did good,” I repeat, but again, the body doesn’t answer.
Then, a knocking strikes up on the front door, a confident rat-ta-ta-ta, like the music of hammers on bone.
Acknowledgments
When my editor asked if I wanted to do an acknowledgments page, I said yes, most definitely. (At least, that’s what memory supplies. The truth was probably less definitive and more, “I think so? Maybe? Let me get back to you?”) Cliché as it sounds, there are a ton of people I’d like to say thank you to, though.
To C. C. Finlay, who still hasn’t accepted a story I’ve written: thank you for saying no to the first version of this. You told me that this tale needed room to breathe. You’re right. It needed about 11,000 more words.
To Carl and Lee: thank you for taking a chance on me. Thank you for loving this as much as I did. Especially Carl. For squelching all the rough edges. And for all the comments in the margins.
To the real-life inspiration for John Persons: thank you for giving my character his looks, his tenacity, and his willingness to go up against anything. The evil bits of Persons, though? That’s not you. That’s just my imagination, I swear. Honest.
To the boys at the heart of this story: I’m sorry for everything that has happened to you. The world is a dark place, and it tears at me that you had to walk through its shadows at such an age. But there are people who love you and there are people who will do anything to you. And if they are not there, I hope you remember that there are no monsters that will not bleed. This life belongs to you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
About the Author
CASSANDRA KHAW writes a lot. Sometimes, she writes press releases and excited emails for Singaporean micropublisher Ysbryd Games. Sometimes, she writes for technology and video-game outlets such as Eurogamer, Ars Technica, The Verge, and Engadget. Mostly, though, she writes about the intersection between nightmares and truth, drawing inspiration from Southeast Asian mythology and stories from people she has met. She occasionally spends time in a Muay Thai gym punching people and pads.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
1: MURDER, MY SWEET
2: THIS SIDE OF THE LAW
3: RAW DEAL
: INTERLUDE
4: I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES
5: BORN TO KILL
6: THE RED HOUSE
: EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
HAMMERS ON BONE
Copyright © 2016 by Zoe Khaw Joo Ee
Cover illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Carl Engle-Laird
All rights reserved.
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9270-1 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9271-8 (trade paperback)
First Edition: October 2016
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, ext. 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
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