Old Broken Road

by Alexander, K. M.

  Hannah looked over her shoulder. Charron raised her hand, as did both the Lytle twins. I figured the two of them had plenty of sin to confess.

  “Well, let me fetch the bucket and y’all can drink while I hear confession,” said Norry, disappearing into his chapelwain. He reappeared moments later, clutching a massive iron bucket in his gloved hands. A steel ladle clanged against the side as he moved down the steps in a waddle.

  “As the savior before me, please allow me to give you weary souls the gift of wine,” Norry said with a grunt. He sat the bucket on a small platform that unfolded from the side of the chapelwain and ladled out the homemade wine for the company.

  “I’ll leave you all to it,” said Norry. He looked at Charron. “Come, lass, I’ll hear your confession first while these hooligans drink my wine.”

  Once confessions had been made and each roader had their fill, Norry reappeared outside his small chapel. I finished up issuing orders to a few wain drivers and turned to face him as he approached. “Now let’s trade stories like proper road folk. We can talk inside Saint Chris’ if you’d like.”

  I wasn’t too keen on stepping foot inside a chapel. I shook my head. “Let’s stay out here.”

  Samantha was also suspicious of the old priest. While he had been talking to the twins, she had approached me.

  “I don’t trust him,” she said, glancing backward.

  “You think he’s legit?”

  “Oh, he’s a road priest. He’s just hiding something. You see the way he looks around? He’s always looking west, back the way he came. Down the Broken Road.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” I said as the door to the chapel swung open and Norry followed the Lytles out.

  Only eight of us now remained around the chapelwain. Father Norry, the Shalers, Samantha, Charron, and myself; the rest of the crew had returned to their various duties. It was already midday, so we likely wouldn’t be moving until the following morning.

  “Out here suits me just fine,” said Norry. He lowered himself onto a set of fold-out steps that hung off the rear of the chapelwain. “We can stay out here. How do you like my rust wine?”

  “It was good,” Chance Shaler said, nodding stupidly. Another gaffe. The proper response for the gift of road wine is something like “Thank you father, may it be a blessing unto me.” It’s something real churchy. Honestly, I never get it right, but I certainly don’t say “It was good.”

  Norry smiled weakly at him and seemed to study him for a long time. “This your first time on the road as well, son?”

  “It is,” mumbled Chance. He looked down sadly.

  Norry smiled warmly, ignoring the mistake. “What’s your name?”

  “Chance Shaler.”

  “Ah, are you two siblings, then?” He looked from Shaler to Chance and then back again.

  “Cousins,” Shaler corrected.

  “And who are you two? ” asked Father Norry, looking at Samantha and then at me.

  “I’m Samantha Dubois,” said Samantha, the normal sweetness in her voice absent. I wondered if something about the priest’s mannerisms bothered her. It was curious that she left off her Priestess title. She let her words hang there, as if she expected some recognition.

  “I’m Waldo,” I said. “Waldo Bell.”

  “Ah, it’s your name stenciled on that wain outside?” asked Norry. “This your outfit?”

  I nodded. “My caravan company. Miss Shaler’s goods and cargowains.”

  “Seems like a fine group of souls. A fine group,” Norry said, nodding. “I’m heading to Syringa myself, see if God’s word needs teaching there. Though it’s hard to find anywhere bereft of sinners in this age. It’s all deplorable. Folks worshiping monsters, fish gods, squid, and then there’s those Hasturians.” He paused and flicked his eyes around at all of us. “You’re all fine Reunifieds aren’t you?”

  Everyone but me nodded and mumbled yeses.

  “Good, good.” His voice grew thin for a moment and he seemed to be thinking about something. “You're headed to Lovat, you said?”

  Shaler jumped in before I could respond. “Right. We were late heading out of Syringa. Got caught up in the traffic waiting for the Grovedare span to open up.”

  “It’s closed?” He glanced at me and Samantha and chuckled awkwardly. “I am sorry for my ignorance. The northern territory is a wild and rough place. Few telegraph offices and no telephones. I’ve been on the trail for six, no… seven months. I have hardly seen a living—yes, a living soul.”

  Why had he paused at the word “living”? I was certain he was hiding something now.

  “Well,” Shaler said. “Lovat and Syringa occupy each side. A standoff ensued and they closed the bridge and all traffic along the road. It has mucked things up considerably in Syringa, as you can imagine.”

  “Well!” said Norry with a chuckle. “I am glad I decided not to take the Big Ninety! So which route have you come by then? Hmmm?”

  “We pulled north up to Meyer's Falls and made crossing there.”

  “How was the crossing? Esther and Elisha—my oxen—aren’t as strong as they used to be.”

  “It’s dry. Little more than a trickle,” I said. Norry was an odd duck, but I had met more eccentric road priests. The call of the cloth often attracts the strangest people.

  “Ah good, good. What else of your journey?” Norry leaned forward, and I could smell the rust wine on him. I wondered if that was because he made it himself, or if he had done some imbibing along with the crew.

  And underneath that, there was another scent, something I couldn’t place.

  “Well, things were quiet enough at the beginning,” said Shaler. “Then a few weeks back, Bell’s scout started seeing strange figures in the hills, and in the evenings, we began hearing bizarre loud noises.”

  “N-noises? What kind of noises?” asked Norry. His voice wavered.

  “Strange noises, father,” said Chance. “Ain’t heard anything like them before. Sounds like a cross between bending metal and a… barking laugh.”

  Norry shuddered. His hands fidgeted.

  Chance continued. “It’s horrible. It followed us for a while, some nights lasting a scant few minutes, others lasting hours.”

  “We lost a roader as well,” I said.

  Norry blinked and whipped his head from Shaler to me. “A soul l-lost? Oh my, oh my. Oh, Saint Christopher p-protect him. What happened?”

  “It was the first night the noise came,” I explained. “The sound lasted well into the evening. The next morning, when we woke, one of our wain drivers was missing, a dauger named Ivari Tin. We found his boots, his shirt, even his shotgun, but he was nowhere to be seen.”

  Norry crossed himself and shook his head. “Poor boy. Poor, poor boy.” He mumbled a prayer to himself.

  “I—” he began, pausing to collect himself. “—I must admit, I meant it when I said I hadn’t expected to see a caravan until I was closer to Meyer's Falls. Not with this road’s reputation. I figured I could risk it. Road priests are welcomed by most anyone, bandit and butcher alike. Others, though...”

  He looked off towards the rear of the small chapel as his voice drifted off.

  “Others though, what?” I asked, wondering if he’d spin the same tale Berk and Agata had told me back in Meyer's Falls.

  “Have you heard of Methow?” Norry asked, his voice cracking. He knotted his thick-knuckled hands together as he asked the question. There was fear in his eyes. This must have been what he had been hiding. I leaned forward.

  “Should we have?” asked Shaler.

  “This isn’t the same stories of roving cannibal packs is it?” said Samantha. It was clear she chose her words carefully. “We heard those tales between Syringa and Meyer's Falls.”

  “Cannibals? No. No! Worse than that. Much worse,” he said. Norry looked small in his road priest robes. He blinked. I wondered if he was fighting back tears.

  “I just came from there. It’s not far; few days to the west in a valley at
the base of the mountains. Sits below an old copper mine in the hills. The Kadath, I believe it’s called. You can see the headframe from the town, if you know where to look.”

  “Headframe?” slurred Chance, interrupting.

  “The mining tower.”

  “And what of it?” said Chance, leaning forward, his eyes as big as saucers.

  “It’s h-hard to explain,” Norry stammered, shaking now. His robes rustled around him. “I hadn’t seen anything like it. Haven’t ever seen so much… so…” His voice broke again. “…I f-fled, headed east, away from that evil place.”

  “What did you see, father?” I asked, a bit more firmly. If there was trouble ahead, we needed to know.

  “I guess there's no easy way about it,” the priest said more to himself than the group. He forced a weak smile and took a deep breath before continuing. “I saw a forest. A forest of the dead. A forest of bodies, impaled on stakes. Crucified on crosses. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. I smelled the rot before I saw them clearly. I didn’t dare approach. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like the town’s population just… went mad… and began killing each another. Men. Women. Children. All ages. Naked, impaled. I couldn’t bear it. When I r-realized what I was seeing… I fled.” He sniffled. “What could I d-do? What could I say to a town that did such awful things to people?”

  I looked at Shaler, who stared silently at the priest, her jaw set. I turned to Samantha, who looked both shocked and intrigued. I could tell she wanted to poke and probe at this story. See if it fit, if it was true. I did as well. It couldn’t be true. It was more roader tales, right?

  “You’re sure it wasn’t some ruse?” I asked, now understanding what Agata and Berk had mentioned earlier. A forest of the dead. If what Norry said was true, it wasn’t a fantasy of some ghost-haunted forest, but a mass of actual crucified dead.

  “I had been there before! To Methow. Just a few years ago! They were lovely, honest God-fearing men, maero, and dimanian. Working the land and laughing at the stories told about their old road. It’s the thing I love about the northern towns. Fearless and hearty. Now…” Norry’s voice trailed off and he began to weep into his gloved hands, his shoulders shaking in heavy sobs.

  Samantha stepped closer and squatted next to him, looking at me as she reached out a hand to comfort the old fellow. Her face was drawn, the muscles around her lips tight.

  Norry looked up, starting at her touch. “I was scared. I was so s-scared. I should have stayed. I should have pulled them all down and administrated last rites. Buried them like good Reunifieds. That is my duty as a priest. Instead, I ran. I left them hanging there. Their bodies bloating in the sun; food for the ravens and the buzzards.”

  “You did what any sane person would have done,” said Samantha.

  “M-maybe,” Norry said weakly. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I didn’t take the cloth to be sane. I took it to do what’s right.”

  He looked up, focused on each of us in turn, his yellowing old eyes filled with tears.

  “Please turn back,” he said. “Don’t go the way I just came.”

  “We can’t,” Shaler said, almost too quickly. My stomach turned.

  “You must!” Norry pleaded, reaching out and gripping one of Shaler’s hands. She recoiled slightly at the old priest’s insistence.

  “We can’t. There are clients waiting and orders to fulfill.”

  “Orders? Damn your orders! Are orders worth your lives?” Norry nearly shouted, turning to address us all. “Y-you can’t go on, don’t you see? We can’t be out here. None of us should be out here. The road ahead is not meant to be traveled by living souls. It is a wicked place. Condemned. God is not here. God has long abandoned this road. God has long abandoned us.”

  Samantha tensed visibly.

  Norry continued. “It’s true what they say about this road. The Broken Road is gone. God has forsaken it, just as he has forsaken Methow. It is no longer a place of God.” He met my eyes. “It is a place of perdition.”

  ELEVEN

  A WARM RAIN STARTED TO FALL in the heat of the late afternoon. It would make the coming evening muggy and unpleasant. The caravan watched the road priest’s chapel wobble away, casting its long, pointed shadow before it as the sun set. Eventually the crew scattered, leaving just Shaler and I standing vigil. The diminishing form of the chapel crested a hill and disappeared on the other side, heading east. Away from Methow. Away from the scene that had so tormented the terrified old priest.

  “What a wainload of bullshit,” Shaler said. She shook her head and sighed. “I wonder if he really thinks that story works on people?”

  I was still sorting out my feelings. The rational Waldo Bell didn’t believe the story, but something else inside of me did. It was strange. I tell myself I don’t believe in the Firsts, I don’t believe in gods or demigods, or any of that. It serves little use for me on the trail; it doesn’t put food in my company’s belly or boots on our feet. So why was I struggling with old Norry’s tale?

  It sounded like the sort of scene you’d see in a horror picture. Hundreds of impaled and crucified victims left exposed to the elements. Like a warning. I shuddered again just thinking about it. My mind had gone immediately to Tin. Would we find him hanging among those bodies?

  When I didn't respond, Shaler turned and looked at me with a sour expression. “It’s foolishness. Just a drunk old man, driven mad from years on the road. He spends too many nights dipping into that rust wine.”

  I looked at her, seeing the hardness in the angles of her face. I blinked. It was difficult to tell what she wanted. For once, I had no response. Was I supposed to tell her everything was all right? That we’d find nothing on the road ahead? That Norry made up the tale? I couldn’t answer that.

  Memories of Lovat nipped at my heels. Specters of dead friends haunted the halls of my past. August, bright eyes behind his nickel mask. Tad’s wide shrewd features drawn in quiet contemplation as he studied an interesting pair of spectacles. Fran’s smile as she brought her flute to her lips and began to play. I had inadvertently pulled them into a scheme that had resulted in their deaths. What right did I have to lead another group of souls into the unknown?

  My feet felt frozen. I was unable to move. If the priest was right…. The thoughts playing through my head for the last hour felt foreign to me. So wrong. It was hard to imagine I was really thinking it.

  You should have never left Lovat. You aren’t fit to lead. You need to turn around. Return to Syringa and wait out the closure. You have to run.

  It was true. Accepting that made it clear to me. I didn’t deserve leadership. Now more than ever, I wanted to turn around and go back. Too much. This was all too much.

  I should have turned around when the noise, that awful moaning howl of rusty laughter ripped the sky. We should have stopped. Even when I had lost someone else, lost Tin—a member of my company—I had pressed on. Then came the priest with his tale of a forest of bodies. Would I listen to this last warning, or would I ignore it as well?

  You want to run. I did. I did want to run. The thought reverberated through me. My chest felt hollow.

  Shaler studied me, waiting for a response.

  “We should go back,” I said. The words stumbled out of me, my voice flat. Fear overwhelmed any guilt I had over abandoning Tin. I ignored the fact that I was leaving one of my crew behind.

  Shaler sneered and stepped back, sizing me up.

  Just leave. Leave me to my thoughts; let me figure out a way out of this, I thought.

  “You, too?”

  I stared back. Said nothing.

  Shaler sighed. “You know, I’d expect this from Chance. He’s young and stupid. I don’t expect it from my caravan master.”

  Her tone was cold and her words sharp. But she didn’t understand. Didn’t know what I knew, hadn’t seen what I had seen.

  She was deaf to the warnings all around us. She existed in a world she only thought she understood, and she wo
uld lead us to ruin.

  I had to fix this. It wasn’t just the caravan or our livelihood that was in danger, it was our lives as well.

  Swallowing, I stepped forward, raising my hands in a pacifying gesture. I needed to calm her down. We were on the other side of the big river that divided the Territories. We could push south. There were no roads, but we could make them. It would take time, but better a month or two than facing whatever was on this road. It would be better than risking our lives.

  “No. We’re not turning around, we’re not going back. We’re not getting off this road. We’re going to move on. Press forward. We’ll prove the tales are a bunch of bullshit, we’ll blow past Methow—if it even exists—and press forward into Lovat. Simple as that.”

  “Miss Sha—” I began, the words catching in my throat before they slipped away from me. Something had cracked. And I fell through.

  A monster had awakened. A writhing, gibbering, creature from ages past. A hideous yellow thing. Tentacles, eyes. A horrible beak that snapped as it thrashed about. I had been telling myself I didn’t believe in the Firsts. Yet… I had seen one. Seen one with my own eyes.

  Until this moment, my memories of the incident at Lovat had been foggy. Tin’s disappearance had thinned the ice. Father Norry had cracked it. Something about the priest had cut through the fog. The fear that bubbled up from my conversation with Shaler had triggered something. A deluge. Clarity. I could remember what I had seen in that tunnel.

  “I need to take a piss.” Shaler interrupted my thoughts. “Get the camp in gear and pull yourself together. Tomorrow morning, I expect us to wake and move on. If you try to sow discord among my crew, so help me, I will see you and your company tried and all your assets seized for breach of contract.”

  She didn’t ask if I understood. She didn’t wait for a response. Her shoulder collided with mine as she brushed past me towards the camp. I turned and watched her go, long blonde braid whipping behind her as she stomped past Taft, her cousins, and Wensem.