by Gemma Files
...very soon, most likely, given it’s October again, and Hallowe’en draws near...
...I will.
BLACK BUSH
Oh, everyone will see, yes, and everyone will know
That boy, you reap what you sow.
—16 Horsepower
After a spell, I found myself on the road once more, tracing that wandering track up over the mountains towards Black Bush way. But the ruts were far too muddy and churned-up for thin-soled prison shoes to weather, so I stuck my thumb out and cocked my hip, waiting on a ride. one stopped soon enough, confirming I still had it.
“They call me Tad,” the driver told me, as I slid myself in. He was all done up in a flannel shirt and a cap that said Free Can of Whoop-Ass with Billy-Bob Teeth—maybe my age or older but hard-traveled, with a recreational user’s roster of barely suppressed tics and the same long build most everyone from the Bush tended to share, all hard muscle and sharp, mismatched teeth. Lot like looking in a mirror, come to think, give or take the dangly bits, which was a draw in itself.
I smiled sidelong, and cast him an upwards look through the long brown shadow of my hair. “Allfair Chatwin’s my name,” I said. “Alleycat, too, sometimes—or A-Cat, if you prefer.”
“Not Gley Chatwin’s gal, that was?”
“The same. Why—you happen to know my Momma? Plenty did.”
Careful: “Know how she was a...wise woman, sure ‘nough.”
“Why, ain’t you nice: What she was was a witch, mister—pure holler, born and bred.”
“Like yourself?”
“Wouldn’t be too likely to say outright, if I was—’less there was something in it for me to do so.”
He nodded once, sage as a judge, which didn’t surprise me as much as it might’ve. For they’re practical folk, thereabouts—and better yet, they do know how to keep their mouths shut.
“Heard you was locked up, is all,” he said, once another long moment had passed; I saw his eyes go wandering off, fingers twitching just a bit on the wheel, like he was trying not to think too long on a series of bad thoughts passing through his skull.
To which I simply shrugged, and replied: “Well, darlin’...I’m out now.”
—
Back in Mennenvale Women’s Penitentiary—M-vale, they call it—the other cons was always shoving all manner of contraband up inside ‘em, from condoms full of smack or pre-paid phone cards to all heinous manner of tools, keys and other potential sharps; a difficult proposition at the best of times, no matter how carefully you might wrap ‘em beforehand. Not me, though: get-back just wasn’t worth the put-out, in my never-anything-like humble opinion. ‘Sides which, and far more to the purpose, it never did seem to fool anyone for long; after all, once people know you come with a ready-made drop-bag stuck ‘tween your nethers, it really is always gonna be the first place anyone ever thinks to look.
Then again, I knew one gal, harder than most, who cut herself a flap and slid the razor-blade that’d made it underneath, like stuffing an envelope; let it heal up good and tight, then tattooed something extra-dark overtop. (Where? In one of those complicated feminine places the Inquisition used to search for witch-marks, and always find ‘em.) Give her but a minute to scratch, and it came sliding back out, quick as you please. I guess that was one situation where it really did help not to care ‘bout pain, or scarring—or much’ve anything else, for that matter, ‘cept making sure she always had a last-ditch exit plan socked away for the proverbial rainy day.
Couldn’t ever quite go there myself, in spite of M-vale’s fine capacity to spread suffering virulent as any clap-dose; guess I’m an optimist at heart, underneath it all. But if I was to make that same call, the only weapons I’d need were the ones I was born with: two kinds of bad mixed up and shook to make a new, all the more toxic for its alchemy. Full of poisons, my very blood, rheum and juices natural spell-ingredients, napalm-components kept separate for transport, yet all-too-easily mixed.
How I got into Mennenvale most know, ‘least ‘round these parts. How I got out’s a tale in itself, but never you mind—we’ll cover that later. Back to me and Tad.
—
The road ran out soon after, so we pulled over and parked awhile in under the lowest-slung trees, as a sudden rain begun to fall. His lap seemed a good place to wait the storm out, so I wound both my hands in his hair and gave myself over, sucking breath from him the way cats do from sleeping babies ‘til at last he gave out a choked cry and went silent, slumped sideways ‘gainst the driver’s side door.
We renew ourselves in our own special ways, I thought, according to our natures. And I shivered all over at the feel of his brief candle passing me by, night-bound—familiar but not, considering how long it’d been since I indulged myself in this particular way. It left me sated yet slightly sad, for he hadn’t seemed a bad sort, in his way. But then again, I’d seen a dark spot hovering over his face in the rearview, and a flat white one in either eye like the inverse shadow of two silver pennies waiting to touch down and seal his lids across: Bad tidings already on their way, and soonish. Perhaps I’d simply slid my way between this moment and that, bringing fate’s promise to full flower only a skootch or two before its due time.
Had him some fair-to-middling product still left in his glove compartment, though. So I took that, along with what little cash money his wallet held, and a gun so old it might’ve fought for Patton, and walked on up the trail that I knew lay hid behind that massy curtain of waterlogged leaves.
—
Now, here’s the thing. Holler witchery starts deep in the body, same’s everything else—life and death, fruit and filth, a constant push-pull of meat and bone versus energy and entropy; it’s fueled by spit and blood and juice, always swallowing something here to shit it forth somewhere else. Everything gained through this tradition is paid for, and the price is always the same—flesh, and plenty of it.
Which is why, my Momma used to claim, we are the true root and branch of all subsequent witchery, even the hoity Latinate hierarchical yammer my half-sister Samaire Cornish practiced—that tall, blonde rake of a gal, covered all over in arcane tattoos meant to guard ‘gainst the pull of her own demon heritage. Samaire, taught to hate everything she was and borne along in her other half-sister’s wake, playing the hunter’s game, spending out her life’s coin on fatal-hot pursuit of the same wicked things she ought to embrace as her truest kin. That’s if she knew what was best for her, which she all-too-obviously didn’t...
(Ah, but I aimed to change all that, eventually. If I possibly could.)
One kiss alone I’d ever had from my Princess, got under duress, during the escape she and I—and Dionne Cornish, who’d once threatened to cut my tits off if I didn’t stay away—had supernaturally connived, by matchmaking our two traditions together, to win all three of us out through M-vale’s iron walls. Yet here she was still, run through me like some pleasant disease; finding her would be hard, I had no doubt, yet more than worth the effort. And I had my ways and means.
I well remember the day the Warden called me in to tell me my Momma was dead at last. How they’d found her laid up in that hovel of a house, all swole up and black and covered in flies, with ‘coons gnawing away at the bare meat of her feet. Someone had cut the tall crown of hair that used to fall straight to her thighs when unbound and carried it away, to use in witch-balls, or other such tokens. Someone else had cut away her nose and mouth-skin like Tobit did for Ashmodai, to show his devil-rid love the lips she’d hung on last night, and break the spell she lay under for good. And in between her eyes some third had cut a cross to bleed her of all her power. I could only hope it hadn’t helped him much—that she’d given at least as good as she’d got in those last moments, leapt up high with her claws out like any nighthawk, before they finally pulled her down.
Since then, through the vine, I’d heard how neighbours had broken our homestead down for parts and crushed each brick of it with a rock, burnt what was left, then plowed the ash over
with salt. But my Momma they’d paid a sin-eater to carry away on his back, hoping she’d ride him ‘til she found herself a proper place to rest, and leave them all the hell alone. Him they’d found face-down at the edge of a swamp the next spring, a mask of half-froze mud cutting off his air, and the assumption had been that what was left of Gley Chatwin’s body now lay somewhere underneath that same mucky water. Which at least made it as good a place as any other to start looking.
I wanted words with her, you see—one word, in particular: the name she’d used to call my Daddy up, so’s he could get me on her. For being that he was the same creature’d once got Samaire Cornish on her own mother Moriam, I felt for sure I’d be able to use that connection to trace like a reel whose either end was a hook sunk deep into both our flesh, and pull us together once more. And after that?
After that, Dionne or no Dionne, I reckoned that blood would tell. True family, spawned in the same Pit, ‘stead of raised up apart in separate Social Services petri dishes. Blood would out, come up hard like a flash flood, and Lady Di would find her tough little self swept away in its wake, witch-killing knives and all.
The swamp was up the hill, just over a ridge and through some trees, where the moss dipped low and cracks brought up a welcome whiff of sulphur. If I could just get there, I felt, things would fall right into place.
Except that, when I did...what-all I’d been after was just plain gone. Whole place and my Momma’s body, together.
—
I’d been caught in Alabama, that last time, but one step from the Trail’s end...recalled that much clearly, though not a lot else. Back then, crank and liquor’d been my poison, with the occasional side of junk to bring me down; truckers were my source of transportation, recreation, prey. Kept myself high enough to forget I could do magic, or want to, beyond the usual: glamouring, bewitchment, knowing at a glance where best to put my fingers—whether a man (or a woman) was worth my efforts, and for how long. A couple times I sent the Law ‘round me on the highway, or made fools think my thumb and forefinger could shoot bullets, but eventually, that just wasn’t enough; kicks got hard to find, and the price of keepin’ myself entertained went up, accordingly.
Back at M-vale, the prison shrink asked me once if I was sorry for what I’d done, all the trouble and harm I’d caused, the people I’d hurt, while expressing myself the best way I knew how. I knew what he wanted to hear, ‘course, but I figured hard truth was probably the best policy for both of us, in the long run.
“That’d be not at all, doctor,” was my reply. “Not one little bit. Ain’t thought of them since, even for an instant, and don’t expect to do so.”
‘Cause yeah, I’ve been beat down and fucked a good few times, just like I’ve done the same elsewhere, to others; sowed my unfair share of pain, some of which I do regret, so far’s I’m able. Still, I ain’t been too hard done by, in the main, and most’ve what I got, I frankly asked for. I know what I am—something wicked from a long line of such and proud of it, like Jezebel, or Lilith. Like that great whore of Babylon who consorts with the Beast at End Times, whose house shall be overthrown and never more inhabited, except by owls and satyrs and dragons.
Only person folks ‘round me ever fool’s themselves, assuming I don’t.
I can’t remember now, exactly, what it was that first set me off. Maybe just Momma’s own bad example, for watching her conduct herself was always as much pain as joy to me. Like most witches, she lived a half-life at best, lazy and dirt-poor and subject to fate and the State’s whims as any other during the daytime, only to gain and revel in terrible power at night. But even then, her craft waxed and waned all month long, moon-wise. She never did learn to read or cipher, nor owned more’n two dresses at a time, nor shed her essential liking for hard booze and handsome, stupid men whose passions ran cruel as her own. Wasn’t much of a housekeeper, neither. Hell, I didn’t know what it was to sleep up off the floor ‘til I run off and begged refuge in my friend Orpah Cleves’s not-Daddy’s trailer, and look how that turned out.
“There’s something right bad in you, you Devil’s whore-piece!” her Momma yelled at me as she drove me off, throwing rocks—little thirteen-year-old gal with eyes blacked and split scalp oozing blood, and her a full-grown woman makin’ horns, like she thought I’d curse her where I stood. “Worse’n Gley by far, and that’s sayin’ something!”
I spat, and grinned to see her cringe from it. “What’s in me, Gley Chatwin ain’t seen but the once since it laid down atop her!” I threw back. “My Daddy’s a prince of the power of the air, bitch; I got more jolt in the littlest part of me than most in this holler’ll see ‘fore they’re bones in the ground. And it was that no-‘count man of yours first laid his hands on me, not the other way ‘round—shouldn’t’ve tried to take the trip, he couldn’t pay the fare.”
“Don’t you never come back ‘round here, you know what’s good for you!”
“Don’t look to. But if you know what’s best, you better damn well hope I don’t!”
And I never did, ‘til now.
—
Standing on the flats where that swamp used to be, my prison shoes crammed down inside poor Tad the driver’s boots like insoles and their tight-laced tops rubbing a blister on either ankle, I narrowed my eyes and swore outright: “Well, I’ll be God-damned for sure if I ain’t already, which I damn well know I am.”
“That’s what I’d heard, all right, if you’re who I think,” a voice replied. “So...are you?”
I turned, and there was a girl standing under a lightning-struck locust tree with her puffy jacket’s hood up and hands dug deep in both pockets. From what-all I could glimpse of her she struck me as blonde, or maybe just mouse with possibilities; her eyes were the same sort of blue as her thousand-times-washed men’s jeans, worn high and belted tight. Except that they were hard instead of soft, as imperturbable as cross-cut stone.
I nodded. “And who’d you be?” I asked.
“Doll Tearsheet.”
“A good old name. Would that be of the Step-Stair Tearsheets?”
“The same, though we ain’t been out that way since six-six or six-eight, to hear my Grandmomma tell it. I was looking to find my brother in there—Harlan Tearsheet.”
“When’d he pass?”
“Now, that I don’t know. But I dreamed of water three nights runnin’, dark and mucky and still, with poison oak roots all through it. So I figured this might be where he was laid, probably staked down with ash.” She looked down. “He was a cunning man, or tried to be.”
“You don’t say.” I shook my head. “No man born who likes it when there’s something they don’t get to touch, is there? But those of Adam just ain’t fit for what we do.”
“I know it. He didn’t.”
“You got the Mark on you yet, Doll?”
“No ma’am, and I don’t look to have one, either. I don’t need that sort of trouble.”
“Sound right knowledgeable, though, for someone ain’t interested.”
“I got some grammarye from an aunt of mine had Hoppard blood. ‘Nough to know not to mess with it, anyhow.”
“For fear of the Fire?”
“Naw, not as such. Just seems to take a toll, is all.”
“It does that,” I agreed. “Still, this here’s a hard world for them got given a gift, and don’t use it.”
“True, but this here’s a hard world regardless, ain’t it?” She gave me a sly look, from under pale lashes. “Does seem like we’re bound in the same direction, though.”
“Does, at that. Care to travel in company awhile, Miss Doll?”
“If you do, sure.”
“Well, then.”
We walked a while in silence; I thought hard on what to do next, and she let me.
“To move a whole tract of land like that...” I said, trying the idea of it out aloud. “Take a full coven, to start with, and one of the Fallen to help. But that leaves traces, and I don’t see none.” I frowned, reminding myself how no
t everyone was quick as my Momma’d been to lie down wide-legged for anything had horns; some young witches, in particular, found the thought of it demeaning. “So—witchery without goety, and plenty of it; these gals were pilin’ what they had together and usin’ it like a toolbox. But thirteen alone wouldn’t be enough. A coven of covens, then, like twenty-six strong, or thirty-nine...damn. That’s a lot of airborne pussy.”
Doll nodded. “That’s what Harlan said that bitch Orpah Cleves was schemin’ on, last time we spoke. Said she wanted to unionize.”
“Oh yeah?” I snorted. “And what then—collect dues? Do up a newsletter?”
“If he was privy to her full plans, he ain’t passed that part on to me. Just how he was goin’ t’court day after tomorrow, send her t’jail if he could; that’d cut the head off the snake. other ones’d go back to skin-changin’ and callin’ up storms after, or sendin’ scarce animals after folk interfere with their crops. Weed, mostly—that was what he was plannin’ on gettin’ her put away with.”
“Folk ‘round here don’t like it much when you truck with the Law, as I recall.”
“That’s still true. But sometimes...sometimes you gotta take help where you can.”
I laughed. “And he thought to get away with it, given the numbers? Gal. I’d guess you already full-well know just how bad one witch can be, let alone a whole army of ‘em.”
Her shoulders rose, making her hood bulge like a ruff, mouth all one white line. “Told you already how he only thought he was cunning.”
I almost shrugged myself, but thought better. From what-all she’d described, this Harlan Tearsheet sounded like someone worthy of respect, to me: Irrefutably wrong-headed, yet ambitious, too—for magic took effort, no matter what those barren of it might think. Took sacrifice, most often literal.
