The True History of the Strange Brigade

by Cassandra Khaw

  “No. No, you understand me.” Miss Velvet wagged that elegant finger, an eye winking shut. “There are no threats here. You cannot threaten someone who has neither authority nor ability to reciprocate in kind. To threaten someone, you must be, in some way, afraid that the other party might be able to do you harm. You’re a lamb, Miss Braithwaite. You are a hircine fetus, expunged from the womb and given a meagre talent in conversation. You are nothing. Therefore, you cannot be threatened, because you are not worth threatening, and I am tired of this discourse. Ask me something more interesting.”

  “Something more interesting? Okay, fine. Why the hell is all this, then?” Gracie demanded, feeling like more was needed of her, a response more profound than slack-jawed observation, than the scream worming at the base of her throat. “Are you planning an invasion or something?”

  “That knowledge,” Miss Velvet said, smacking her lips, “is what they call ‘above your pay grade.’ I like you, Miss Braithwaite. I genuinely do. I really like you. But there are things we can’t talk about. One of them is that. But we can discuss an adjunct purpose. The skin suits, you see, facilitate tourism.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I suppose ‘tourism’ isn’t necessarily accurate. The word suggests pleasure and pleasure alone, which is certainly not true. Most of our clientele are here on work trips, I suppose. Half-work, half-pleasure. I really don’t know how you humans categorize these things. But that is the nature of our arrangements. The skinsuits are multi-purpose, and also modular, I’m proud to say.”

  Miss Velvet blinked. Sideways, as a cat might; the membrane that closed over her cornea was heavy, mottled and ridged in a way that strained against the socket. Gracie winced reflexively, before deciding there was no need. Though it had not been explicitly stated, it was clear: Miss Velvet was one of them.

  “Are we next? Once we get too old, do we join them?” Confronted with an uncertain end, Gracie lost her capacity for all emotions but one: defiance. Fortunately, it was tempered by an inherited sense of practicality. The lie most often told by the rich is that the working class is uneducated, but the truth is substantially more complex: Gracie had no knowledge of Socrates, no grip on Chinese medieval philosophy, and little understanding of the spice trade, but she knew when to speak—and more importantly, when not to.

  Bodies were being boxed into crates; first ironed and then folded along the joints, then folded again, into neat halves and quarters, and finally swathed in paper and stashed away. “No. Yes. Perhaps. Who knows? The world is such an interesting place. But more likely than not, the answer’s no. We’ve found that there is no point in dressing ourselves as plebians. No one pays attention to people like you, I’m afraid. To be blunt: we prefer to inhabit people who matter.”

  People who matter. Gracie’s gorge rose.

  “I’d also like to suggest that you don’t contact the authorities. For one, your story will sound ludicrous. For another, there’s at least a forty-nine-percent chance you might encounter one of ours, and imagine what kind of words they might say about your treasonous behaviour? In case I hadn’t made it clear before, let me say it again: you do not matter at all, Miss Braithwaite. So, be a good girl and do what your family has always done.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Serve.”

  “You really expect me to keep working here?” Indoctrination only went so far, Gracie thought ruefully, itching to do more than prattle. “You think I’m going to do what you say, now that you’ve shown me the terrors of Hell?”

  “Quite frankly, Miss Braithwaite? Yes. No, wait; that’s not right. Let me rephrase, Miss Braithwaite. I don’t expect you to keep working here in the holistic sense of the word. I expect you to wake up tomorrow, give your privates a quick scrub, and then come down here to perform quality-assurance. I wasn’t lying when I said you have deft hands.”

  “Well, I won’t. You can kill me. I’m not afraid. Come on, then, give me the worst that you’ve got. I’ll make sure you never forget—”

  “Ah, this is the part I love the most. Where the mouse tries to negotiate, and the cat bobs its head and waits until its dinner arrives at the correct time. Miss Braithwaite, let me tell you something: you will say ‘yes’ in the end. You will say ‘yes,’ because it is not a question about you. Because as brave as you are, as faithful to the romantic idea that one may die for their beliefs and be lauded by those they leave behind, you are also a woman who loves her family.”

  Miss Velvet, so much taller than Gracie remembered, stalked closer. Her tongue still lolled from her smile, florid and obscene. The muscle stroked a route up Gracie’s trembling cheek, even as Miss Velvet leaned down to say:

  “Would you give them up, Miss Braithwaite? Would you condemn your mother to an uneasy birth? Would you let eight brothers nurse on her teats, empty her like a waterskin? And when your father kills himself in despair, would you let those sweet brothers of yours, driven by desperation, whore your poor mother out? And the newborn! I suppose there’s a market for orifices that young. Why, I should think—”

  “Enough!”

  “I won’t lie, Miss Braithwaite. I am enjoying this so much. After all, I am a demon; and demons, by nature, have a predilection for despair. Sadism is embedded into our molecular code, or—oh, don’t mind me.” Miss Velvet withdrew, expression nearly carnal, her delight as blasphemous as anything else in the mill. “I make no apologies for my lusts. I do, however, wish to extend my appreciation. Rarely have I tasted hopelessness so sweet.”

  Miss Velvet’s tongue, unremarkable save for its excessive length, laved across her teeth, before it started to metronome, like the tail of a skinned cat. “Yes, you start here tomorrow.”

  GRACIE CRIED THAT night for the first time in as long as she could remember, while Mrs. Phillips’ cat kept watch, and the women in her dormitory tiptoed and murmured, faces slanted away, the soft rustling of their dresses like whispering ghosts. At some point that evening, Mrs. Phillips came to sit beside Gracie’s shuddering body. She spoke no platitudes over the girl, knowing they’d be neither needed nor welcomed.

  The reason for this was obvious to anyone who had at least an ear, an eye, or some rudimentary ability to decipher human emotion. Gracie was not weeping because she was afraid—or even because she was heartbroken by the horrors of the world—but because she was angry.

  And she cried because sobbing was less suspect than screaming, than fists beating themselves to shrapnel. When she was done, hours after the last candle-wick had been pinched by scarred fingers, Gracie sat up.

  “Burn it,” said Mrs. Phillips.

  AS IT TURNED out, the fire was the easiest part. Two brothers who’d worked both ends of construction, two brothers who made their money in war; you pick things up from siblings like that. No, the problem wasn’t rigging the factory to detonate, or even disguising her endeavours, but something that Gracie hadn’t expected.

  “WHAT DO YOU mean, you don’t want to leave?” Gracie tried not to shout but already, she was catastrophising, listing opportunities for failure, body clenched in anticipation for the moment the door would erupt, disgorging monsters. “You have to go.”

  “Go? Where?” demanded a rail-thin woman—Abigail, Agatha, some name that made Gracie think of radio plays, her accent effortlessly metropolitan—as she wrung her hands, mouth tapering into a frown. “Where d’you want us to go? Back there? Back to our husbands? Our in-laws? You don’t understand at all, Braithwaite. It’s easy for you.”

  Gracie crossed the space between them in three long strides, fingers digging into the woman’s blouse. With one fluid move, Gracie heaved the woman up, pinned her against the wall, bared her teeth, even as she fought down the urge to bludgeon sense into her adversary. Yet despite the manhandling, the other woman held Gracie’s gaze without apprehension, a coolness that further antagonized her.

  “They’re demons.”

  “There are worse things out there.”

  “You tell them, Agatha,” som
eone shouted across the dormitory. “You think Miss Velvet is bad? I don’t. She’s a saint. She saved me from a murdering husband. If it weren’t for Miss Velvet, I’d be dying in that hospital.”

  “There are institutions out there.” Gracie dropped the woman, swearing beneath her breath. None of this was how it was supposed to go. Over the last week, the factory had all but piled its secrets at Gracie’s feet, seeming to exult in her horror, Miss Velvet most of all. Yet it was neither the entrails nor the work that had Gracie so traumatised, for all that they chafed against her moral compass. She had been raised with farmers, and knew that everything came back to blood.

  It was the other women. It was their slope-shouldered exhaustion, their ennui, the way they donned their white masks without complaint, and the way they shambled back to the dormitories hours later, businesslike in their ablutions, no trace of repulsion, no tears. They were alright with this, with being accomplice to the post-production efforts of standardised slaughter, with purling skin and gut into new bodies, homes for the estimable damned.

  “There are places to get help.” Gracie kept going, even though hope was pouring between the slats of her fingers. “You have family—”

  “Sometimes, family’s the problem,” Agatha snapped, quick as a crime, adjusting her wimple. The mask came on next: white, with no ornamentation at all, only pinholes for eyes.

  “I—” Gracie dropped her hands. “Fine. Forget the rest. How can you all sleep at night? All of you. You know what they’ve done. I don’t understand how you can stomach this—this—”

  “Far as I can see, the only thing they’re doing is taking from the rich and giving pensions to the poor.” Agatha shrugged a thin shoulder, securing the mask in place. Her voice clattered against the thick leather, hollowed of anything recognizable. “You’re young, Braithwaite. One day, you won’t be; and when that time comes—well.” A sharp inhalation. “You’ll see why it matters that the demons give receipts.”

  At that, the women began to file out of the dormitory, some adorned with masks, others not, until all that remained was Mrs. Phillips, her cat, and Gracie, her chin drooping.

  “I think there’s something you need to understand, poppet.” Mrs. Phillips—it was her turn at the canteen that day—tied an apron around her waist, pulled a hair net into place. “You’re not going to save us.”

  “Then what’s the damn point?”

  “The point is everyone else. The point is shutting down this operation. The point is cutting a hole into these cock-nosed bastards, because who knows, maybe the sepsis will do them in this time. We’re too far gone, poppet. If there’s anyone still worth saving, they’ll know to leave on their own. But the rest of us, well, it won’t be bad.” The smile faltered, nonetheless, and not for the first time, Gracie found herself wondering exactly how old Mrs. Phillips was, how old any of the other women were.

  “You’ll burn.”

  “We’re just linen and scrap these days.” At Gracie’s startled expression, the old woman laughed, a bark of pale noise. “Don’t look so surprised. You’d never wondered? Why we’re all the same colours, why none of us ever goes home? The demons take from the rich. But they bleed the rest of us, too. It’s just a question of degree, Gracie. It always is.”

  THEY HELPED HER board up the factory. Gracie didn’t expect that either. The women filed out of their dormitories, silent as guilt, their skin ashen and their eyes pale in the moonlight. They looked like the dead to Gracie, who said nothing to them in return as they worked in tandem, applying nail and plywood to the doors.

  The staccato beat of their hammers was barely audible, however. Inside, their employers were throwing a gala, celebrating some deal or another, and the clink of champagne glasses was loud enough to carry into the black-soaked night. Music played, a discordant wailing straight from hell, a bastardization of Mozart and some Irish jig, a little bit of a funerary jingle. Shadows flickered in the windows, bodies spinning in a caricature of waltz.

  When the women were done with their labour, they filed back inside through the one door that Gracie kept free. The latter followed behind.

  Inside, the factory smelled of dried semen and skin, leather steeping in vinegar, and something like old eggs. What little light existed left the edges of the shadows red-rimmed, flame-haloed. Gracie moved slow, fingers gliding over the walls. She’d left kegs in every room, tripwires too; it’d only take a spark.

  A door that Gracie had never seen opened inches from her face, and light cut the darkness into a rectangle. She held her breath. Waited until a silhouette staggered into view, head lolling forward. Gracie could see the stitching along its spine, the needlework exquisite, so fine that you might miss it if you didn’t look where to look. The figure stretched and the skin pulled taut along its forearms, straining over too many bones, too many angles.

  It took Grace a moment to make her decision. These things weren’t even human. She repeated the words to herself as she carried the figure into the darkness, a hand at its throat, a hammer in her fingers. Not even human, she told herself again as the skull concaved into brains.

  NO ONE BUT a cat stood with Gracie Braithwaite on the gentle hill that night, after she’d bolted the doors of the factory and lit the fuse. The air had smelled of salt and textile and skins curling in the heat. Linen and soot, Gracie thought to herself, crouching to stroke the tom’s lean spine. Linen and salt and fat, crisping in an inferno. Gracie, although she did not know it then, would never eat meat cooked on a grill again. Nothing that carried with it the taste of charcoal.

  She stood and bit down on a green apple. Mrs. Phillips had made her promise.

  “Are you Gracie Braithwaite?”

  Gracie looked over her shoulder, tensing, watching as a silhouette loomed closer. The voice was male, its pronunciation crisp in that way that made her instantly distrust its owner. “Depends on who’s asking.”

  “Sergeant Colin Jurgens.”

  “That means absolutely nothing to me.”

  The newcomer marched closer. He had a soldier’s poise, a soldier’s walk. Gracie could hear the rattle of a sabre in its scabbard. Old-fashioned, Gracie thought wryly, turning to face whatever was coming next. The man didn’t look like anything that she’d expected. Smaller, slim at the shoulders, with long hair messily restrained in a ponytail. Older, too, than Gracie had expected, and stranger still, more incandescently alive than she thought possible. She’d become accustomed to thinking of soldiers as tired men, chewed down by time, morassed by the things they’d seen.

  But this stranger fairly bounced with glee.

  “Quite right,” he said. To Gracie’s confused horror, he began waggling his eyebrows. “That’s because I represent an entirely unknown organization.”

  “If you’re here because of the fire, I—” Gracie paused, halfway towards articulating something brusque, before she shrugged, hands jammed into the pockets of her overalls. She glared. “Sodding hell. I’m tired. I don’t care. You from the station? The halls of Hell? Whatever. Do what you will. I’m done. I did my share.”

  “Do what—” The man spluttered. It took Gracie a moment to realize that he was, much to her chagrin, laughing at her. “Ma’am. Ma’am, you mistake me. I’m not here for anything of the sort.”

  “You’re not a demon, then?”

  Colin pulled at his moustache, looking so positively aggrieved at the suggestion that Gracie almost laughed. He shook his head. His uniform was unlike anything that Gracie had seen and briefly, giddily, she wondered if he might be an envoy from Heaven, sent to congratulate her on her actions.

  “Absolutely not.” Probably not, Gracie decided; that hangdog look was nothing celestial. “We fight demons, in the Strange Brigade.”

  “Sorry, I think I might have misheard.” Gracie took another bite from her apple. The cat circled her ankles again before padding over to Colin, tail coiled questioningly. The soldier promptly went down on one knee, patted him without embarrassment. “Did you say the Strange Brigad
e?”

  “Yes.” Something in the burning factory split in half, gave way, came crashing down into the blaze. “The Strange Brigade. Actually, officially, we operate under the much less interesting moniker of the Department of Antiquities. Politicians; I’m sure you understand.”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  A flush crawled over his bridge of his nose, settled along his gaunt cheeks. “Hrm. Yes, quite. That’d make sense. Sorry. That was rather presumptuous of me. Age, you understand. Age has its privileges, also its problems.”

  “You’re still not making any sense.” Gracie ventured closer, feeling out of her depth. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Strange Brigade, my girl, is the British Empire’s first and last defence against supernatural threats that would, uhm, threaten the Crown. We are proud, we are few. We have faced man-eating lions. We have confronted mummies, vampires, no small number of hellions, and even pruned a garden overrun with carnivorous roses.”

  “Right.” Gracie frowned. “And what’s this got to do with me? Don’t tell me. You want me to join with you, then?”

  “Spot on!”

  “I see.” Gracie breathed in. “The position. Does it come with benefits? I expect a posthumous pension plan that extends to all my family members, including any and all adjunct relatives, such as in-laws and cousins.”

  And Colin laughed, brassy and rich, a sound like a future coming together. “My girl, I can already tell we’ll get along famously.”

  Ripples In A Polluted Pool

  Jonathan L. Howard

  THE CAPTAIN WAS nearly at the end of his support shift, and was considering which bistro he should visit to slake his thirst and assuage his appetite when the corporal attending the observation point called, softly yet urgently: “Sir! He’s on the move!”