Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart, page 1
GennaRose Nethercott
Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart
GennaRose Nethercott is a writer and folklorist. She is the author of a novel, Thistlefoot. Her first book, The Lumberjack’s Dove, was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series, and whether authoring novels, poems, ballads, or even fold-up paper cootie catchers, her projects are all rooted in myth—and what our stories reveal about who we are. She tours widely, performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow), and helps create the podcast Lore. She lives in the woodlands of Vermont, beside an old cemetery.
Also by GennaRose Nethercott
Thistlefoot
Lianna Fled the Cranberry Bog: A Story in Cootie Catchers
The Lumberjack’s Dove
A VINTAGE BOOKS ORIGINAL 2024
Copyright © 2024 by GennaRose Nethercott
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Portions of this work have previously appeared in the following publications:
“A Diviner’s Abecedarian” in The American Scholar; “Sundown at the Eternal Staircase” in BOMB magazine; “Drowning Lessons” in The Literary Review; an early flash-fiction version of “The Autumn Kill” in Wyvern Lit; “The Autumn Kill” in The Massachusetts Review (print only); excerpts from “Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart” in The Spectacle, BOMB magazine, TIMBER, The Massachusetts Review, Phantom Drift, and Tilted House.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nethercott, GennaRose, author.
Title: Fifty beasts to break your heart : & other stories / by GennaRose Nethercott.
Description: First edition. | New York : Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2024.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023017473 (print) | LCCN 2023017474 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Fairy tales. | Short stories.
Classification: LCC PS3614.E5229 F54 2024 (print) | LCC PS3614.E5229 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023017473
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023017474
Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9780593314180
Ebook ISBN 9780593314197
Cover design by Mark Abrams
Cover illustrations by Kelly Louise Judd
Interior illustrations by Bobby DiTrani
vintagebooks.com
ep_prh_6.2_146088462_c0_r0
To the Autumn People.
Blessed Be the Bones!
CONTENTS
Sundown at the Eternal Staircase
A Diviner’s Abecedarian
The Thread Boy
Fox Jaw
The War of Fog
Drowning Lessons
The Autumn Kill
Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart
A Lily Is a Lily
Dear Henrietta
Possessions
Homebody
A Haunted Calendar
The Plums at the End of the World
Acknowledgments
_146088462_
SUNDOWN AT THE ETERNAL STAIRCASE
Do not enter the Eternal Staircase after 8 p.m.
No outside food or drink is permitted within the Eternal Staircase.
Black-soled sneakers, high-heeled shoes, and flip-flops are prohibited inside the Eternal Staircase.
No dogs.
(Yes, we used to allow dogs. Too many dogs shit in the Eternal Staircase.)
If you feel light-headed within the Eternal Staircase, alert a staff member immediately. Eternal Staircase staff can be identified by their blue polo shirts, blue visors, and our official Watch Your Step! lapel pins.
(Do not engage with staff members without official lapel pins. They are likely a Disgraced staff member. Disgraced staff members spent too much time in the Eternal Staircase and were asked to leave. They keep returning anyway. We don’t know how to get rid of them. They are not helpful.)
Absolutely NO RUNNING down into the Eternal Staircase. Running in the Eternal Staircase is a criminal offense and punishable by law.
Do not remain in the Eternal Staircase for more than three consecutive hours.
Do not descend deeper than the yellow ribbons marked Go Back!
Welcome to the Eternal Staircase, and remember—Watch Your Step!
* * *
June worked the afternoon shift. Harebell worked the midnight shift. Their shifts overlapped for three hours at sunset. Sunset was a busy time at the Eternal Staircase and required extra staff. The lilac and coral and opal of the sky would reflect off the blue tiles shelling the stairs, causing the spectacle to melt with dark, multicolored light. Sunset was also when visitors were most likely to trip on the Eternal Staircase, and when the most trash was dropped, and when June and Harebell could most easily vanish into the crowd to drink brandy from Harebell’s flask behind the hotdog stand.
* * *
“Would you rather have eyelashes for teeth or have to work here forever?”
“Could I pluck the eyelashes out or put dentures over them?”
“No.”
“Would other people in the world have eyelash teeth? Would there be a community of eyelash-teeth havers?”
“No. You’d be the only person ever born with eyelash teeth.”
“I’d still go for that.”
“There’s no guarantee things are any better at other jobs.”
“I know.”
Harebell scratched her ear with a bobby pin, then used it to clip back a chunk of powder-pink hair. Twenty feet away, a kid dropped a plastic guzzler cup, spilling neon slushy down the Eternal Staircase.
“Ah, fuck,” said June, jumping up.
Harebell kissed two fingers and held them to the sky. “An offering to the deep!”
June pulled a rag from the staff kit in her fanny pack and headed toward the spill. Harebell didn’t move to help.
The Eternal Staircase contains an undetermined number of blue granite steps, arranged in a circular well, roughly the circumference of a football field. Every individual navy stair is slicked with a mosaic of 1,424 small blue tiles, each the size of a fingernail. The well grows narrower the deeper you descend. Mathematicians claim that the Eternal Staircase’s gradual narrowing must be an optical illusion, as the Eternal Staircase never seems to fully taper off. No one has ever reached the bottom of the Eternal Staircase. There may or may not be a bottom to the Eternal Staircase, but if there is one, the Eternal Staircase certainly does not want anyone to know.
* * *
No one worked at the Staircase for more than a summer. Well, almost no one. Weird things happened to people who stayed too long. Ennui. Bouts of dizziness. Violent dreams. Dreams about animals with multiple heads or no heads at all. Suspicious numbers of molar cavities. There were all sorts of urban legends about the Eternal Staircase. Where it came from. Where it led. What it could do to you if you weren’t careful. June and Harebell thought it was bullshit. Maybe the weird dreams thing was true, but beyond that, everyone quit by September because it was just a gross place to work.
Charlie, the manager, wore the same paisley button-down every day and called all women “Sweetie” instead of their names. He owned a plot of land out west that he claimed was a genuine gold mine (he had yet to find a single flake of gold), and he was always making people look at photos of the acreage on his phone. Charlie paid minimum wage and not a cent more, and only hired girls he thought were hot. Half the time the paychecks bounced, and he had to wait until the hotdog stand had enough money to pay the employees from the register.
Then there was the work itself: huffing up and down the Staircase, mopping up ketchup and Cheeto spills, getting yelled at by road-tripping tourists who threatened to sue after stubbing a sandaled toe on a stone step. It could have been labeled “character building” if it weren’t so sleazy.
Harebell was the exception to the summer rule. While June had been there only since school let out, Harebell had worked there a year and a half.
“It’s temporary, though,” she insisted, rolling a joint in the shadow of the hotdog stand. She licked the paper edge, sealed it shut. “I’m gonna move to Portland, open a tattoo shop. I bought a tattoo gun online, been practicing on grapefruits. I’ll do one on you if you want.”
“Yeah?” June said. “What should I get?”
“Whatever you want, baby. Whatever you want. I have to practice—then, when I’m good enough, I’m out of here.”
Peanut Dave popped his head out of the hotdog stand. “Can I get one?”
When he wasn’t slinging concessions, Peanut Dave drove a van with Guinness World Record Peanut Butter Eater, 1992 painted on the side. There was a slot cut into the van where people could leave dona
“Sure, D. But I get to choose what you’re getting. And you can’t look till I’m done.”
“Skin’s skin,” he said. “We’re all gonna rot one day anyway. Draw a dick on me, I don’t care.”
“Give him a peanut,” June said. “Or a hotdog.”
“A little something to remember me by before I go.” Harebell winked at him.
* * *
There was a small casino on the south side of town and a gaggle of small art galleries feathering Main Street, but nothing measured up to the Eternal Staircase. Most of the town’s economy relied on tourists trickling off the highway to gawk at the spiral of tiled steps, which gaped like an animal’s maw. It was the town’s pride and its curse. While the residents relied on the Eternal Staircase for financial security, they had to spend their lives pretending to care about it. There were shops selling postcards of the Staircase, little shot glasses with the Staircase etched into the side, key chains that read Watch Your Step! Even the high school mascot was a single rectangular navy stair named Trip—a poor rival for the neighboring town’s Killer the Whale. The Eternal Staircase seemed to cast a blue haze over the whole region, and you couldn’t get out from under it until you crossed the county line.
June and Harebell had lived near the Staircase their whole lives. They had dozens of friends who’d quit jobs at the Eternal Staircase and left for the city. Most boomeranged back. People raised near the Eternal Staircase had a hard time adjusting to life without it. Townies hated the Staircase, but whenever they went too far they felt like something was missing. The land elsewhere made too much sense. There was nothing to fall down and keep falling.
* * *
There were two ways to tell what Harebell was thinking. First: ask her. Second, if the first didn’t work (it rarely did): check her hair. Harebell had developed a complex and deliberate visual code based on the Danger Babe semi-permanent hair dye catalog. If she was happy or flirty, her hair was Cotton Candy Pink. If she was restless: Lemonade Ice Pop. On Stoplight Red days, she’d yell at you without provocation and steal lawn ornaments from strangers’ houses to sell on eBay. Blizzard Blue was when she was horniest, though it could also mean she’d overslept, or just binged a good TV show. Slime-Time Green days were suspiciously friendly, with a monkey’s paw generosity. Those days never ended well. One Slime-Time Green incident involved Harebell inviting the whole Staircase staff out to dinner, only to vanish from the falafel shop when the bill arrived. She didn’t apologize—frankly, she thought they should have taken one look at her and known better. Anyone who couldn’t predict Harebell’s future actions based on her past cosmetic choices simply wasn’t paying attention and deserved whatever was coming.
Activities at the Eternal Staircase:
Slinky launches begin at the Exhibit Banister every 45 minutes.
Staircase aerobics classes are held twice daily, at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.
Lectures on the Eternal Staircase’s history and design are on the third Thursday of every month.
(Nothing is known about the history of the Eternal Staircase prior to its purchase by the current owners in 1989. Do not attend the lecture if you plan to ask any questions we cannot answer.)
Visitors who experience the sudden urge to descend deep into the Eternal Staircase—very deep, deeper than our staff can follow—must vacate the attraction immediately. Return to your car. Drive far away. Do not stop, even for tolls. Go home.
* * *
“I’ve been working on something.”
Harebell dropped a backpack with a broken zipper into June’s lap. The opening was tacked shut with a dozen safety pins, which she left June to unclip, one by one. Inside the bag was a baby. That’s what June thought at first anyway. She took it out, turned it around in her hands. It was a lump of clay the size of a basketball. Still soft. And it was human, in some ways—it had a face, certainly, with a button nose and dopey eyes. But it also had four stub horns poking out of its forehead, and the beginnings of dark, squishy wings.
“It’s a demon kid,” said Harebell.
“Yeah. I got that.” June covered its face with the bag.
“Cool, right? I’ve been getting into sculpture. Thought I could leave it on a doorstep somewhere uptown. Spook some yuppies on their way to work in the morning.”
“Maybe they’d adopt it,” June said. “Raise it as their own.”
“You know where I got the clay, though?” Harebell lifted an eyebrow and slid her mouth to the left of her face. It was a look June had come to recognize, for the sake of survival more than intimacy. It meant Harebell was up to some real weird shit.
“…Where?”
Harebell pointed down into the Eternal Staircase. June knew what she meant—she meant deep in the Staircase. Past the park limits. Into parts of the Staircase that would get you Disgraced immediately if Charlie knew you’d gone down there.
“Hare, don’t get yourself fired. If I have to spend all day hanging out with Peanut Dave instead of you I’ll throw myself down the stairs.”
“But look, it’s so cute!” Harebell uncovered the clay baby and nuzzled her nose against its clay nose. A dot of red earth smeared off on her. She wiped it on June.
The trouble had started a week earlier. Harebell was short on rent. She started taking on doubles. The normal six-hour shifts already spanned twice the doctor-recommended length of time to spend in the Eternal Staircase, and now Harebell was there twelve hours a day at least three times a week. She started slipping up. Forgetting to take her birth control pill. Leaving bleach in her hair too long on Lunar Platinum days. Missing appointments. But it wasn’t like Harebell worked hard. She always shrugged the real dirty work onto whoever else was around. Now she had twice the time for workplace neglect. She was bored. She started wandering deeper and deeper into the Eternal Staircase to pass the time. Started bringing artifacts back up with her—shards of pottery, a fistful of metal guitar strings, a gold-plated pocket mirror. Things that had been lost to the Staircase years, maybe decades, before. Sometimes, bones. Her broken backpack grew heavy with junk, rattling like a tambourine as she moved up and down the stairs. Whenever she returned from below, her pupils were stretched so wide, the whole of her eyes were black. Obsidian orbs.
“What’s even down there that’s so worth it?” asked June.
“Nothing,” said Harebell. “I mean, actual nothing. Can you imagine? Nothing that goes on forever…”
“There’s got to be a bottom eventually,” June said.
“Does there?” asked Harebell.
* * *
Once, June saw a man fall on the Eternal Staircase and snap a leg so clean that the bone folded in half as if there were an extra knee. When she touched the leg, it was rubbery and warm like a hot-water bottle. The man refused to be carried out until he had watched the sunset. Charlie gave the man a lifetime visitor’s pass to the Eternal Staircase. June hoped he would never come back.
Visitors: Note the four large clocks posted around the perimeter of the Eternal Staircase. Please check regularly to avoid overstaying the three-hour recommended visitation limit.
Sometimes, what feels like five minutes within the Eternal Staircase is actually hours. Sometimes, what feels like hours is actually many, many days. Before we installed the clocks, there was no way to tell if you had been in the Eternal Staircase for an afternoon or multiple years. The Eternal Staircase is just that fun!
* * *
Some people think the Eternal Staircase leads down to hell. Officially, this has been neither confirmed nor denied.
