by A. C. Wise
Cere lifted her hands, shaking free droplets of pale fire that sizzled and vanished into the dark. Where Ellis had lain, only a pile of ash remained. A cry split the air—a bird, a wild animal in pain, a soul in torment. Caleb pulled Rose and Kyle closer.
“What the hell was that?” Kyle asked.
“Del knows what I did.” New lines of exhaustion etched Cere’s mouth, and shadows darkened her eyes. Reluctantly Caleb let go of Kyle and Rose, reaching to help Cere up, but she shook her head.
“I’m staying here. I’ll watch until dawn.” Seeing the doubt that must have been in Caleb’s eyes, she continued. “He won’t be able to touch me.”
Cere dipped a finger in her brother’s ashes, sketching symbols in the dirt around her. When she was finished, she spit in the ash and drew on her skin as well.
“This is his place of power. I’m taking it back.”
“What do we—” Caleb started, but Cere shook her head again.
“Go home. Get some rest. We’ll need to be ready for Del tomorrow.”
She shifted to sit cross-legged, closing her eyes and resting her hands on her knees. She might have been a statue, a ghost, ash-smeared in the darkness. She was a young girl, all knobby knees and fresh from the burned remains of her home. She was the light of a star and the end of the world in the shape of a woman.
Caleb opened his mouth but closed it again. There was nothing else to say.
“I’ll make hot tea.” Rose followed Caleb and Kyle inside. “I doubt any of us are sleeping. We might as well keep each other company.”
Exhaustion and adrenaline warred in Caleb’s system. He slumped into a chair, putting his hand over his eyes. When Rose returned with the tea, Kyle pulled a bottle of brandy out of the cabinet and added a measure to each of their mugs.
“What the hell just happened? Really.” Kyle wrapped his hands around his tea. “What did we see? I mean it’s one thing to read Frazer, but it’s another to see a woman set fire to the corpse of her brother with her bare hands.”
From down the hall, the plastic Caleb had hastily taped over Cere’s shattered window rattled. Leaving aside his tea, he retrieved another glass and poured himself a straight measure of brandy. He didn’t have answers for Kyle, for himself even.
As he took a swallow, a stray memory flitted across Caleb’s mind of Jayleen Culligan’s bicycle, stolen from outside Lewis Middle School during basketball practice. She’d come into the sheriff’s office, clearly upset but putting on her bravest and most serious face, to make her report. Caleb had set aside his work to help her track the bike down himself. The look on her face when they’d finally found it had been pure magic.
He wasn’t his daddy. Maybe not everyone in Lewis liked him, but he could be a damn good sheriff, and he wasn’t going to sit around and wait, hoping Del would show up. They had one resource he hadn’t tried yet—Catfish John. Caleb wasn’t going to let him sulk in his swamp anymore. He was going to drag him out and make him help Cere.
He stood. Rose and Kyle exchanged a look and followed him down the hall to the guest room. The plastic flapped in the wind again.
“What are you—” Kyle started, but Caleb held up a hand.
He was twelve years old again. The carving had been there then when he needed it; it would be here again now. This was what passed for truth in a world that didn’t make sense. Magic. He just had to believe it.
Caleb closed his eyes, concentrating until he felt a shivering sensation in his bones. Music on the edge of hearing. His fingertips brushed the bedside table and passed beyond it. Through. Caleb sucked in a breath, plunging his hand into icy water so cold it burned. As his fingers closed, the slick shape of the carved wood became something else. It writhed, a mass of living things, like trying to hold onto a handful of eels. The song turned deafening. There was a sharp stab of pain like something had bitten him, but he refused to let go.
The squirming stopped, and Caleb yanked his hand free. There was a soft pop like a light bulb breaking, and the world rushed back in with a clamor of voices, Rose and Kyle overlapping each other in alarm.
“—we can’t just let him—”
“—I don’t want to hurt—”
Rose had a grip on his elbow, but she let go as he turned to face her.
“What the actual fuck?” She stared at him.
“What?” Caleb looked between them. Kyle’s face was ashen.
“You just . . .” Kyle paused, swallowed. “You just sort of reached into thin air. Your hand”—he pointed—“was gone.”
Caleb looked at his hand, gripping Cere’s carving. He had a vague recollection of Rose trying to yank his arm out of the nothingness, reliving the past few moments from a different perspective, two realities slightly askew.
“What the fuck is that thing?” Rose pointed.
“It’s our key to finding Catfish John.”
The sky was still dark, just thinking about turning blue-grey as Caleb pulled off the road and parked the car. Even though the sun wasn’t up, heat lingered behind the skin of night, waiting to break. Sweat nagged at the back of his neck and under his arms. Maybe when this was all over, he and Kyle would finally leave Lewis. It wasn’t the first time the thought had occurred to him, but until now, leaving had never seemed feasible. Whether he admitted it or not, all this time he’d been waiting for Cere to return, for Del and Archie to finish what they’d started.
He glanced at Rose as she came around the front of the car. What would she do if he left? Likely take over the department and run things better than he could. Caleb snorted, catching himself too late.
“Something funny, boss?”
“Nothing. Long night.” He pulled the flashlight from his belt, aiming it into the trees.
Caleb started down the incline, Rose and Kyle following. He glanced over his shoulder as their feet crunched over fallen branches. Déjà vu. He kept dragging them on wild-goose chases in the dark. If anything happened to either of them . . .
“With all due respect, boss man, shut up.”
Caleb startled as Rose spoke.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Didn’t have to. You were thinking it loud enough to wake the whole damn woods.”
“You were going to tell us we don’t have to come with you,” Kyle said.
“For the thousandth time,” Rose added.
“We know the risks.”
“So again,” Rose said, “due respect, but shut it.”
“But what if—” Caleb started, unable to help himself.
Rose stopped, pointing her flashlight so it blinded him temporarily. He blinked away grey spots as she lowered it. Her expression was one he’d never seen before.
“This ain’t my first rodeo.” Rose flashed the edge of a grin. “My granny taught me everything she knew.”
“War stories?” Caleb raised an eyebrow.
“Oh yeah.” Rose grinned.
She pointed her flashlight straight ahead again, striding past Caleb. Kyle hurried to catch up.
“I’m definitely going to be there for that conversation. I might even get two thesis papers out of this.”
“Then we all better make damn sure we survive.” Caleb followed them.
The sky turned pale grey, the ground softening. Light reflected off water, coming back from Caleb’s flashlight, and he switched it off. Patches of wetness appeared ahead, trunks rising from the mud.
Further on, the land gave way to pure water, the swamp proper. But here, they were in-between. A liminal space where anything could exist—even a monster.
He’d wrapped Cere’s carving in a cloth, tucked it into the bag he carried slung over his shoulder. Caleb unwrapped it now, feeling it buzz and shiver as he did. He thrust it out like a dowsing rod as he’d seen Cere do once a long time ago.
“Catfish John!”
Something far out in the swamp rolled over, a massive creature turning in its sleep. A spike of fear shot through Caleb, but he tamped it down. Around the carving, his palm dampened with sweat. He licked his lips and tried again.
“I have your song. The one you gave Cere. She needs your help.”
Movement. A light reflecting in the water like a will-o-wisp.
“Hey!” Caleb plunged forward.
Mud splashed his legs, and the ground sucked at his feet. He slipped, catching himself with an arm that sunk to the elbow. The air smelled of rotting things. A faintly metallic smell. Caleb pushed himself up, tossing the flashlight away. Screw it.
When he straightened, Catfish John stood in front of him as though he’d solidified out of the heavy pre-dawn air. Caleb swallowed a shout.
“Cere needs your help. Please.” Caleb found his voice.
He was close enough to touch, but Caleb still couldn’t see Catfish John properly. It was as though the man—or whatever he was—bent the light around himself, refusing Caleb’s gaze. Caleb could only see him in fragments, pieces of an impossible puzzle: a downturned mouth, glossy black eyes, grey skin that had a sheen to it like a pigeon’s wing.
Caleb briefly had the impression that an actual fish stood reared up on its tail, nine feet tall, with a mouth wide enough to swallow him whole. In the next instant, Catfish John was just a man, his skin mottled and pale. A shadow traced the line of his jaw, gills, or a scar.
All the stories he and Kyle had tracked down, the legends and folktales and songs passed down from generation to generation. A lost god, an exiled devil, a simple man who’d outlived his natural lifespan. In this moment, he could easily believe all of the accounts were true. How many of the stories were seeds sown by Catfish John himself? Myth as camouflage to keep himself hidden?
Archie Royce had dedicated his life to destroying Catfish John like his father before him and so on back. But it wasn’t wickedness Caleb saw in those infinitely black eyes, only grief, inexplicable loss, loneliness.
“I’m sorry.” Caleb stretched out his hand. It hovered in the space between them.
Catfish John shook his head. Caleb could see a little of what Cere had been talking about. Catfish John was thin in places, almost translucent. There were cracks, holes where strange stars showed through.
“I waited for her.”
Caleb wasn’t sure whether he heard the words or simply imagined them. Catfish John’s lips didn’t seem to move, but Caleb understood nonetheless. He saw a line of shadowy figures, Archie Royce and his kin. Each iteration grew more blurred, more fractured. A whole line dedicated to hate, to destruction. And Cere, the bright spot at the end.
Catfish John’s story was inextricably linked with the Royces. If he hadn’t existed, would they have willed him into being to have something to fight? Something to loathe? Whatever he was, Catfish John blamed himself; Caleb could see it.
“There must be something I can do.” Caleb’s hand remained in the air between them. The rest of the world had dropped away. There was only Catfish John.
Another shake of his head. There were volumes in Catfish John’s motion—it said not yet and too late and maybe even never. Startled, Caleb dropped his hand. A spike of pure cold shot through him, his heart breaking.
“If we help Cere, if we stop Archie and Del, then no one will be hunting you. You can disappear. We can tell more stories to help you hide, throw people off your trail.” Caleb realized he was babbling.
He glanced over his shoulder, but he couldn’t see Kyle and Rose. He tried not to picture them frantically searching for him, hearing their distorted, panicked voices as they’d tried to pull his arm free from the hole in the world.
Catfish John’s voice, or the idea of it, came again—low and sonorous like the swamp itself speaking to Caleb’s bones. At the same time, it was a strained whisper from a wounded throat.
“She already burns.”
Catfish John pointed. The webbed skin joining his fingers glistened. Caleb saw the sky brighten, not sunrise but a glow like flames.
His breath stuttered.
“Cere.”
Of course, she’d done it again, sent him away, so she could fight Del on her own. How could he have been so stupid? Light shifted through Catfish John’s eyes, galaxies unfurling. Caleb held his breath—an instant, a lifetime.
“Her song.”
For a moment, Caleb could only stare, uncomprehending, and then he remembered the figurine clutched in his hands. He held it out. Catfish John touched the carving with one finger.
The song—universes dying and being born and the stars so bright so cold so beautiful—slammed into Caleb. It took his breath away, consuming him until it was everything. It shredded him, and for a moment, Caleb wanted nothing more than to let go, let the music unweave him and scatter him. But . . .
Cere.
He sucked in a breath. It burned all the way down. The swamp spread around him; he could feel it, trees stretching up to the sky, roots sunk deep in the water. Beyond that, Lewis. He could see all of it, hold it all in his hand, and it was so small. The earth spun, and everywhere else was dark and stars and . . . oh.
Space and time folded around him. He thought of Kyle and Rose, cast their names like a net into the screaming dark, snagging them and pulling them with him.
Caleb hit the ground on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. In the dark, in-between, he’d seen the things from Cere’s visions, her reality. Just beyond his reach. They existed, a breath away from the everyday world he knew.
Rose and Kyle knelt beside him. They were back on Archie Royce’s land, and all around them, the world burned.
“Holy shit!” Rose scrambled up.
Caleb stood, catching her as she took a step and plunged into water up to the knee. He yanked her back. All around the place where Archie Royce’s house had stood, the ground had turned to swamp, mud-brown waters reflecting the burning sky. A scaled back broke the water, something impossibly long turning without quite surfacing.
“Shit shit shit.” Rose gripped Caleb’s arm, and Caleb reached for Kyle with his other arm, needing the reassurance of him.
“We have to get to Cere.” A burning wind whipped past them, heavy with ash. Caleb had to shout to be heard.
Strips of sky peeled away. Like Ellis Royce’s skin sloughing away beneath Caleb’s fingers.
“Cere!” Caleb shouted into the maelstrom.
Something thrashed in the water behind them, but he refused to turn. The phantom walls of a burned house flickered into existence, past and present collapsing into one. Caleb tripped over a burnt beam that wasn’t there, and Kyle helped him to his feet.
“Cere!”
A low sound like thunder, rising to a growl. An animal sound. A bone-cracking sound. Lightning shivered across the not-sky, illuminating trees filled with bodies hanging by their ankles, fingers trailing in the swamp for the creatures there to feed.
“Over there.” Kyle pointed.
The wet, tearing sound continued, growing louder, becoming a roar. There were words in it, low and guttural. It was a moment before Caleb realized it was a human voice speaking but in a way no human voice should.
Caleb could just make out a figure. Swollen, too large for the confines of its flesh. One moment, it was emaciated, its matted black hair streaked with grey. The next, it unfolded, a monstrous head scraping the sky, red and black and lightning-struck. A sick-yellow eye rolled and glared at them. Teeth like broken tombstones, and limbs that folded and bent in the wrong way, too many of them, reaching outside and inside the world all at once.
A manifestation of Del and Archie Royce melded into one terrible being.
The wind pushing at them vanished, and Caleb stumbled.
The sudden silence only lasted a moment, and then the world roared at them. Caleb clapped his hands over his ears, twe
lve years old again. Utter darkness swamped him. He lost track of Kyle and Rose; panic slammed through him. He was facedown in the mud, breathing the swamp, drowning.
He tried to shout their names and drew in a lungful of silt instead. He coughed, choking, and then his vision cleared. He pushed himself upright.
The real Del Royce crouched over his father’s body. Like Ellis, Archie should have rotted years ago, but the corpse was fresh, unnaturally preserved. Despite the stiff, waxen color of his skin, at any moment he might open his eyes. When he did, they would be ivory, twin to the monstrous eye rolling in the sky above father and son.
Del had made himself into a cage of flesh, a conduit. The thing warping and changing his body, growing new dimensions and brushing against the sky, that was Archie waking up, coming home.
“Caleb!” Caleb turned to see Kyle pinned to the earth by an invisible force, struggling to raise one arm to point at something just beyond Archie Royce’s body.
Cere.
Caleb jerked toward her without actually moving, a kick in his chest, a scream wanting to break free. A glow clung to her skin, and her body rose, hanging in the air. She made a faint sound like someone trying to wake from a bad dream. Relief and anger flooded through him. Cere was alive, but she was clearly in pain.
“What did you do to her?” He ground out the words, each one a stone pushed out of his throat.
Del ignored him, speaking words that stuttered like thunder. His body rocked, and the thing that was Archie Royce twisted above him. Had he ever been human? Caleb wanted to squeeze his eyes shut, but he couldn’t. Words that weren’t words buzzed and crawled against his skin.
Turning slowly in the air, Cere’s body twitched. All the memories Archie had forced into her poured back out, feeding him. A woman with pale skin screamed her birth pains, filling the air with the coppery-thick scent of blood. Her body rotted, decomposing into the swamp. The air sizzled, ozone, a storm trapped inside dank, fetid walls. Another woman now, holding a squalling newborn against her body, fighting as Archie ripped it from her and smashed its skull against a stone.
