The Nameless Dark: A Collection, page 23
James exited the towers out the back entrance like so many shameful secrets before and moved up the wide alley filled with refuse and the skittering of rats. Emerging on the main street several blocks down, he looked back at the main entrance, where the Packard was parked, waiting for orders. James imagined Mr. Barrows sitting inside as he always was, and wondered when the man slept, and with whom. As with Ms. Talmidge, whom he had avoided all day, he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t know Mr. Barrows, yet at the same time knew absolutely nothing about him. James wouldn’t need a ride tonight.
He lifted the wide collar on his jacket tight to his face and headed off into the darkness on foot, the limousine growing smaller and formless behind him. The bells in the street were silent.
Just before dawn, James stealthily re-entered the loft. He was without his hat and jacket, and the bag hung heavier in his hand. His eyes were bloodshot and wider than normal, casting suspiciously around the room. He moved gingerly to the living area, making sure that Calliope was still sleeping on the floor. He saw her small shape wrapped underneath the fur, and breathed a shaky sigh of relief.
He placed the bag just outside the partitioned washroom, and drew himself a bath, cranking the hot water that steamed out of the faucet. James disrobed slowly, as if in pain. His forearms were scratched, and the blue smudge of a new bruise crept along his back. He lowered himself into the scalding water and bit his lip to keep from screaming.
James emerged from the bathroom as the sky lightened outside the windows, wearing a white robe. He was coiffed and scrubbed, but the new look that fired his eyes remained undiminished.
He went to Calliope and stood over the lump under the fur, noticing that it wasn’t rising and falling with the gentle breath of slumber. Worried, he quickly unwrapped the fur and found the stuffed unicorn staring up at him with lifeless eyes above a blank smile.
Hastily dressed and untucked, James ran from the front entrance of the towers, holding the bag while still sliding on his shoes. The sidewalks were empty, as were the streets. The limousine, and Mr. Barrows, were gone. James shook with frustration, anxiety, pacing back and forth in short bursts. Just then, a lone jalopy, back seat stacked with newly printed newspapers, turned the corner and creaked toward him. James darted out into the street and stood in front of the car, which ground to a prolonged, raspy stop on weathered brakes. He rushed to the driver’s side window and grabbed at the man behind the wheel.
“I need your car.”
“So do I.” The man spat chewing tobacco out the window, his gaunt face showing more curiosity than fear
“How much do you want for it?”
“How much you got?”
James fished into his pockets. “Do you know who I am?”
“I certainly do,” the man said with the cock of an eyebrow as unfolded bills began to collect in James’ hand.
The car chugged off up the street as fast as its tired engine would take it, leaving the man standing tall on the curb. He tossed back a fine Moncrief scarf, waving a hand decorated at the wrist with the finest timepiece in the city. “Merry Christmas!”
With the city hunched under its permanent cloud cover far behind, the old rattletrap wheezed up the climbing country roads into the hill country. What took them a few hours just days before was now taking him most of the day. He felt like he was crawling across the dirt on the back of a beetle. Seeking to lighten the load, James tossed newspapers out the window with his free hand, leaving a trail of fluttering pages dancing in the morning breeze like a loose flock of clumsy birds. He didn’t seem to gain any speed at all.
James gritted his teeth as he ground the clutch, trying to squeeze every last bit of power out of the overheated engine that outlived its generation. Smoke began to waft from under the dented hood, but he didn’t ease up. He’d ride this nag dead to the ground.
A few miles out from the long, overgrown driveway he yearned to reach, the car seized and died. James slammed the door so hard it broke free from its frame. He buttoned up his jacket, picked up the bag he brought from this loft, and ran up the narrow track as the car sparked into slow flames behind him. Burning oil and consumed metal shot pitch into the graying sky. The day was dying, giving way to the time of the moon. Everywhere the Moncriefs went, they brought smoke and fire and annihilation with them. James was no exception.
He ran for what seemed like days. Unaccustomed to such physical exertion, he heaved and stumbled in his slick bottomed shoes, concentrating on keeping his legs churning, moving forward, moving upward. Explosions of white shot across James’ eyes, only angering him further, feeding the inferno that sustained him. Smoke and fire. The quest…
Rounding a bend that somehow looked familiar, James noticed a collection of crows and buzzards squawking in the trees above a small glade just off the road. Dozens more were fussing over a large shape propped up against a massive uprooted tree, partially burned in the fallen leaves and pine needles. The blood froze in James’ veins. Calliope…Mr. Barrows…
James dashed off the road and clambered over fallen logs, trying to push the image of a gargantuan hand closing around a wan, fragile neck. He dove through brambles and battled back the huge black birds that cawed and shrieked at the wild-eyed intruder. James bent to the corpse, and let out a shout of relief when he discovered that it was someone who had obviously been dead for a few weeks. Maybe a month. The meat of the face was chewed off and the eyes long since plucked. Stringy strands of long white hair were left untouched, like a stylized wig adorning a partially skinned skeleton dressed mockingly in an old fashioned black dress, as if a prop for All Hallow’s Eve. It was the body of a woman, but an elderly one, and only half, as the lower portion of the corpse under the ribs had been completely removed. The right hand was devoured to the wrist, the left was shriveled into a claw. Dangling from one of the remaining fingers was a ring stamped with the image of a mermaid.
James, in his exhausted delirium, rose mutely to his feet, grabbed the bag, and returned to the trail. His mind pulsed as quickly as his heart. The sun was nearly down.
An hour later, James had to nearly crawl up the driveway, tamped down by the recent creep of wide, luxury tires. His body was giving out on him, but what lived below it wouldn’t allow him to stop. He saw Augustus scowling down at him and dipped into another hidden reserve. Almost there…
He broke into the clearing, and found the Packard parked on the edge of the mossy yard. Mr. Barrows stood with his back to him, facing the house. A faint and flickering light filled the windows. The bizarre trees around the property seemed closer somehow, leaning in and holding their breath amid the deathly quiet. The yellow staring eyes from the knotted trunk burned through the dusk to watch this stumbling new arrival.
James staggered his way to Mr. Barrows, heaving and gulping for breath. He grabbed the larger man by the shoulder and tried to turn him. He was unsuccessful, so he angled in front of him, finding it difficult to look imposing on legs turned to jelly.
“Why…did you…bring her back here?” James gasped.
“Why did you take her from here?” Mr. Barrows’s voice was a rumbling baritone. James took a step back. “She doesn’t belong with us.” Mr. Barrows leaned forward and allowed James a look into his usually hidden, deep-set black eyes that glared at him balefully. “She doesn’t belong with you.”
James fell back toward the house, searching through the branches for the moon. Mr. Barrows crossed his arms but didn’t pursue. James spun and entered the front door, closing and locking it behind him.
The entire dwelling was lit with black guttering candles that he hadn’t noticed before, casting everything in leaping, threatening shadows. As James walked to the back room, a rhythmic sound from outside stopped him. For a moment, he only heard the pounding of his own heart in his ears, made louder inside this thickly silent place. Then nothing. The creak of a metal chain deeper in the structure brought him back to action, and he ran to the back room, where he discovered Calliope crouched inside the suspended cage, arranging her belongings with rote efficiency, mumbling to herself in that strange, inscrutable language.
“Calliope!”
Shaken from her trance, she spun toward him like a frightened animal, not recognizing him at first. She whimpered and backed up into the corner, cowering at the sterling bars.
“Calliope, it’s me. Mr.— It’s James.”
“James?” Neither the name nor the face seemed to penetrate her fog of fear.
“Let me in. I have something to tell you.”
She struggled to remember. “I know you…”
“Yes, you do. I’m Mr. Moncrief, from Olympus. Remember?”
“Yes, Mr. Moncrief... Walking in the sky.”
He stood below the cage. “Please allow me inside. I have such news for you.”
Calliope peered down at him for several moments, as the mist drained from her eyes. She smiled shyly, stood, and walked to the cage door. Taking the key from under her blouse, she leaned in close and unlocked it. “Hurry,” she warned, fastening the rope from her bedroll to a clip on the doorframe and lowering it to the floor.
James slung the bag over his shoulder, gripped the rope and climbed up with difficulty, the squared enclosure swaying under his weight and struggle, iron chain links protesting above. He pulled himself into the cage. Calliope retrieved the rope, shut the door and locked it, concealing the dangling key under her top.
James sat back, resting his legs for the first time in hours. “I need to tell you something. Two things, actually. One bad, and one very, very good.”
Calliope was still suspicious, and narrowed her eyes. “Bad first.”
James took a deep breath and nodded, deciding how to continue. “I found your grandmother.”
She gasped and put her hands to her mouth. “I don’t believe you.”
James set the mermaid ring on the table. Calliope took one look at it and screamed with delight. “You did find her! How can that possibly be bad? What did she say? Where has she been?”
“I discovered her in the woods.”
“How wonderful! Is she okay? Did she ask about me?”
“No, I’m afraid she didn’t.”
Calliope looked around frantically. “Where is she? Grandmother!” she called out to the gloom. “Grandmother, I’m in the Safety Place, like I’m supposed to! Where are you?” Hearing nothing and becoming confused, Calliope looked at James. “Where is she?”
“She’s…” He squeezed her hand. “She met with Mr. Lupus.” James’ grimace brought Calliope to her knees with a tortured sob.
“No. No!” She wailed through her tears. “Gods damn the beast! Gods damn the beast to the Outer Gates!”
“But I met with him, too.”
She turned to him, eyes red and tears streaking her face. “You…what?”
“I killed Mr. Lupus.” He unzipped the bag and pulled out the matted, blood smeared head of Mr. Leopold and placed it on the dainty tea table. Deflated eyes leaked from their sockets, a fattened tongue pressed between missing teeth. James placed the serrated letter opener that once opened her letter next to the head and sat back. “I stole his life with silver.”
She stammered, forcing the words through her mouth. “Y-Y-You… W-When?”
“Last night. While you slept.”
Calliope couldn’t form another word, and just sat on her knees, staring at the head that leaned on a bloated jowl fringed with roughly torn shreds of skin and tendon.
“I took him down into his basement,” James said in a hollow voice. “Where he had stacks of children’s clothing, pictures on the walls. So many pictures, from so many places…” James shuddered and wiped his eyes, fighting laughter as he tried to stay mentally balanced while facing the full brunt of memory. “He begged for his life, the coward… He lied. He told me his wife was bitten on a trip to Asia. He said she was pregnant, and ran off into the woods. He said he was innocent… Looking around at his cellar, and what was collected there… Looking into his eyes, I knew he wasn’t.” James turned to the head. “So I killed him… I killed him for you.”
Calliope approached the severed head and sniffed. Her eyes grew. “It is him…”
“Now you’re free.”
Calliope flew into James’ arms. “I am?”
“You’re free to do whatever you want. Live wherever you want. Be with whomever you want.”
She pulled back and looked closely at James, holding on to his lapels like the little girl everyone took her for and forced her to be, instead of the grown woman that she was. He brushed the hair back away from her face, gently removing tiny strands that stuck to the tears dampening her cheeks. He touched her full, quivering lips. He leaned in, closing his eyes, while hers stayed open.
“Shhh,” she whispered. “Do you hear that?” She disengaged from him and stood, looking toward the darkened window.
Now James heard it. The beating of drums. The syncopation was wild, primal, yet somehow not totally unfamiliar. It was the rhythmic anticipation that fueled a Witch’s Sabbat, serial psychopaths, and eaters of the dead as they descended 66 stone steps into the waiting charnel house. It unnerved him. It excited him, speaking to certain antediluvian rites abandoned by modern man that still dusted his most basic genetic makeup.
“The death of the sun, and the rise of the moon,” Calliope said as she stood, positioned herself in the middle of the cage and began to remove her clothing. “We have to take off our clothes, and sit perfectly still inside this circle.” On the floor of the cage was painted a pentacle, surrounded by a circle. An ‘X’ was painted in the exact center of the design, placing it perfectly equidistant from the bars on every side. “You must sit in the medial of the ring, as his arms are long, and have great reach, all the better to rend you with.”
“Calliope…”
She tore off a piece of cloth from her silken slip and stuffed it into her ears. “You must plug your ears and close your eyes, so you neither hear nor see the things he does to trick you.”
“Calliope, he’s dead!”
She stopped, casting her gaze on the decomposing head on the table. The realization sank in, and she leaned into his chest, closing her eyes, almost talking to herself in quiet relief. “The drums tricked me last moon, calling me out into the mountains. I never made it into my cage.”
James closed his eyes, imagining her walking amid a dewy forest meadow, her hair animated by a gentle wind. She was his Fairy Queen.
“Grandmother found me and hid me away from him in the forest near the Forbidden Trail. The next morning, when I awoke, I was back here, and she was gone. He must have taken her instead of me… Poor Grandmother…” She wept softly.
James opened his eyes, processing her words. He lifted her away from him as the hair stood up on the back of his neck. She looked at him through heavy, wet lids, falling into a daze. Behind them, outside the window, the clouds parted and the light of a full moon streamed into the house, lighting up both of them in a ghostly sheen that sucked out all the color and replaced it with a lifeless pallor. Her skin became porcelain. Her eyes went hammerhead black in the colorless beam. “I’m all alone now,” she said, her voice growing husky, edged with an impish snarl. “Will you stay with me forever?”
James released her and backed up. Calliope’s face was backlit and shadowed, framed by that swirl of serpentine curls that now writhed over a featureless void.
“What is it, my dear?” she growled. “You are my dear, aren’t you?” She seemed to enlarge, or perhaps James was shrinking, trading places with her, becoming the frightened child. It was difficult to tell, as the beating drums churned his stomach. “For I am yours, and you are mine. ‘Ring around the rosy’…”
James was suddenly gripped with the urge to escape, and crawled to the cage door. It was locked. The bronze key flashed mockingly in the moonlight, just below Calliope’s rapidly widening mouth that emerged on either side of her face. “Looking for this?” she growled, ripping the chain from around her neck, opening her mouth too wide and tossing it down her throat. Her tongue licked her stretched, splitting lips, eyes flashing yellow. The cream of her skin was sucked up by an emerging cloak of fur.
“You did it…” James gasped. “You killed your grandmother.”
“Spout ye not these lies.” Calliope barked with a grotesque articulation that echoed and rasped as if trailing away into a hellish abyss. She moved toward him slowly, hunting by inches, bursting through her underclothes as she expanded in a jerking, bone cracking hunch. The cage swayed on the creaking chain, and the severed head rolled next to James.
“And I killed your father.”
A hyena’s cackle rippled from her broadening, furry chest as she moved closer to him, savoring the moment. Her—Its spine popped, lurching it forward onto its hands that crunched into club-like paws. The creature’s nose and jaw, dripping bloody mucous, stretched outward with a rending sound, forming into a canine snout that stopped inches from his quivering face. James, suffocating on his own constricting madness, fought through the grip of paralyzing terror to express the one thought that scattered his brain like a bullet.
“Y-You’re Mr. Lu—”
The monster roared and lunged, and James screamed, just before the upper half of his body disappeared into gaping jaws.
Outside, Mr. Barrows stood motionless as a shriek of absolute horror escaped the fairy tale house. The last, muffled scream was cut short, followed by a profound silence. The drumming had stopped. A primal howl filled the air.
At the edge of the forest, the three squatty swine creatures stood and watched, motionless.
After a moment, Mr. Barrows nodded his head, grunted, and got into the car, its suspension groaning under his great bulk. He fired up the engine, dropped it into gear, and drove slowly back up the driveway without turning on the headlamps. The moon lit the way.
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