by Michael Rigg
"Why did you bring me here?" Grubbs managed. "Where are my clothes?"
"You don't need them." The ghoul arched an eyebrow. When he spoke, his deep voice resonated with an English accent.
Grubbs blinked at the simplistic response. "Who are you?"
"Curious. You were more so curious about your modesty that you completely forgot your first question."
Grubbs looked around. He started to turn, to move, but the thick warm sludge around him crawled around his skin and made him gag. He looked up at the Ghoul after holding still. "W-Why...?" he whimpered. "Why'd you bring me here?"
"Ah. That's better," the ghoul grinned, showing dark gray teeth, pointed at the outside, nubby fangs. "But how rude of me. I know all about you and you know nothing of me."
Grubbs stared. He didn't try to move or speak.
"My name is Teivel Hearse. And, yes, I am what you mortal tower-dwellers call a 'ghoul'. Ghastly nonsense, if you ask me. Not all of us are the crude gutter-crawling monstrosities you tell your children about." Teivel stretched while still in his crouch, turning his neck to make it pop. The muffled sound echoed in the corridor. "Why, I am a leader of my people, the magistrate, judicator and lord of all of lower Philadelphia."
Grubbs stared. "Y-You don't expect me to bow, do you," he said, glancing down at the deep pool of filth.
Hearse laughed, "Oh, that is delightful, Perek. Oh, absolutely delightful. Oh, I simply must keep you around as entertainment, except.... Well, there is the matter of the smell." He wrinkled his long nose for emphasis.
"You put me here!"
"True. True enough, yes. Do you know why?"
Grubbs blinked. "I'm a prisoner, and this is some ghoulish idea of a sick joke?"
“Delightful sense of humor, what!” His captor laughed, then smiled coldly. "Do you like to laugh, Perek? I do."
"Wha—?"
Hearse said, "Your situation reminds me of a funny joke. It seems a man, much like yourself, was condemned to an eternity in hell. The devil—let's call him Teivel, shall we? After all, it means 'devil' in Yiddish." Hearse spotted a piece of lint on his trouser leg and picked it off before brushing at the fabric and continuing.
"The man was shown three rooms. He would choose one of these as his eternal resting place in hell. The first room was a fiery pit of molten rock, filled with the tortured screams of those burning from the heat, their skin melting into bubbling puddles. The second room was bloodied from wall to wall. Innards of those drawn and quartered by the demon hordes dripped from the ceiling as little horned monsters prodded and gouged screaming souls with their pitch forks." Hearse pointed to Grubs with a long-nailed gray finger. "The third room was much like the one you're in now. It featured a host of souls all standing around chest-deep in filth, each of them holding a saucer and a cup, enjoying tea time." His eyes leveled on Grubbs. "Which do you think the man chose for his eternal punishment?"
Grubbs slightly shook his head, swallowing hard and cringing against his own mouth-drawn breath.
"Go on. Guess."
Glancing around, he finally answered, "Well, I'd guess the last one."
"Right you are! The room of filth, much like your own. No screaming. No burning. No blood. ...So it was there that the man was sentenced." Hearse smiled as he delivered the punch-line. "Before the devil Teivel left, he announced, 'Your break is over. Back on your heads!'"
The ghoul's laughter echoed through the dank corridors and bounced off the walls of Grubbs' cell. Grubbs didn't even sneer at the joke, only watched helplessly until his captor turned his attention back toward him after the rippling laughter subsided.
"Ahh, but enough energizing merriment. Your break is over, Perek. Back on your head.”
“Back—?”
Hearse pointed into the pool of filth. “Dive, you devil.”
Grubbs stood, his eyes widening. He shook his head, partly to deny the command, but also to stave off the sudden rise of bile in his throat. “No. No, please.”
The ghoul smiled and pointed down more insistently.
“But... But, I can't. I-I'll do anything. Don't—”
“Down!”
Grubbs' face scrunched up and he took a long deep breath before moving forward. He swallowed hard, then spit. He drew another long breath, then another before bending his knees and bending forward so his nose—
“Stop!”
Grubbs looked up, his eyes wide.
Hearse muttered, “Do you always do what you're told, no matter by whom or no matter the cost to your own self worth?”
“I—”
Hearse waved idly at the air. “Shall we discuss your fate, Perek?"
Grubbs nodded slightly, his chin quivering as he stood upright.
"Oh, fear not, my friend. I have a use for you. And you shall live so long as I find you useful. As an Acquisitions Officer for a major corporation, I take it you are used to that line of survival, are you not?"
He nodded, resolve slowly returning now that he could see a way out of the pit. "I have to always be one step ahead, sir."
Hearse smiled at the form of address. "Please. You're working for me now. You may address me as 'my lord'."
Grubbs' head jerked up and down. "My lord."
"Very good.... Now," Hearse took a deep breath. "Tell me of this person Thorne & Wolfe are pursuing.... And tell me why." Hearse suddenly raised an eyebrow. “You do realize she has the mark, don't you? It's the sense of the mark that first made me look up, and then... like Manna from the heavens... your name fell into my hands.” Hearse smirked, then he steepled his fingers and touched them to his chin. “So... Tell me everything you know.”
“A-And what if what I have to tell you isn't what you'd h-hoped... my lord?”
Hearse parted his hands and clapped them back together. “Then your break really will be over.”
~~~~~~~
"Pandora, wait!" Wilco rolled off the bed and waddled after his daughter, "Please listen to me."
She stood in the middle of their cluttered living room. The main part of the apartment housed a small kitchenette with stacks of dirty pots and pans and a small round dinette table piled high with airplane parts, tools, large pans of black grease or oil and several coffee cups and cans stained brown with Pandora's chewing tobacco. An eight-foot airplane rudder leaned against the wall next to the door. The rest of the room included a sagging couch, a roll-top desk with a softly whistling ham radio and a broken wooden bench with a Greyhound bus logo next to the wide sliding-glass door that opened onto a broken terrace with no railings. Several of Wilco's empty whiskey bottles and cigar butts littered the small concrete ledge where the man would sit at night and watch the air traffic.
With nowhere to really go, Pandora turned and wiped the tears from her face. "Don't you realize I'd do anything for you? You're the one who saved me from the Imperials, who took me out of that laboratory and made me a free woman. You're the one who saved me when mother couldn't." Unable to say more, burying her face in her hands, Pandora lowered herself to the floor and cried.
Wilco stood in the doorway, his own eyes glistening, and scratched his beard. He spoke softly, barely audible over her sobs. "Oh, Dorothea, I had just always hoped to see you continue to grow up into the, well, fine young woman you are... now. Just... not in the blink of an eye." He stepped up to her and knelt at her side, wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "Oh, little doe, I know why you did it. I do. And I know you've carried the weight of yer mother's death for the past six years as well."
She met his eyes and blinked. “I miss Momma so much.”
They fell into each other's arms.
The Glass & Christian Genetics Company occupied one fifth of the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia until the Confederacy seized all the G&C assets in the last Civil War. It was in the hidden black-painted corridors of Glass & Christian, a hundred feet underground, that the Empire unveiled and tested its genetic experiments and mind-altering drug therapies. It was here that scores of children—from infan
ts to pre-teens—were either sold by their parents for exorbitant amounts of money, Corporate Idents or visas, or kidnapped in the night by G&C agents. Dorothea Rink was barely past her eleventh birthday when the agents took her. She never told her father about what happened inside, but he guessed by the scars and metal rivets in her shaved head that they tortured the poor girl as they tried to turn her into a magic-wielding abomination.
They succeeded, just as they had with the rest of the army they spawned. But, since the witch-creating process was a painful one, and since very few of the girls were mature enough to understand the "great gift" the Empire was giving them, stories of break-outs and runaways were just as rampant as desperate parents or relatives who tried to take back their children, and the failed attempts of a group known as FOYL (Free Our Young Ladies). The FOYL headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky was razed only a month after it was founded, every member arrested for treason against the Empire and summarily executed before the building had finished burning down.
Some parents succeeded. William and Jacqueline Rink were one of the few groups of parents who managed the heroic act, but only because of Jacqueline's knowledge of the Imperial Postal System and William's experience as a pilot and soldier with the Confederacy.
Witches created by Glass & Christian were stripped of their proper names because a charm or hex directed at them could easily be deflected if their identity was hidden. G&C witches, like those made at other corporations, were given "callsigns" or nicknames to hide their identities and protect them from the hexes of other witches. Florence Weathers became Flower. Dorothea Rink became Pandora, and so on.
Pandora liked her new name (though she hated it over the years that followed when her father would tease her by calling her "Pandy"), and she relished the curious power she could now wield, but she wouldn't help the "bad men in the black suits." They hurt her, treated her like a "thing" and spoke coldly to her, always telling her what to do and not to do and never answering the questions about her parents. She wanted to be with her daddy and momma. She wanted to show them what she could do.
Using her magic to create a mental link with her parents, Pandora worked at escaping the Pentagon from the inside while her parents worked from the outside. In her parents' minds she found the truth behind what the Empire was doing with girls (and the boys, who were taken someplace far away), and how they wanted to turn them into weapons to use against Confederate soldiers and enemy corporations.
Everyone who worked at Glass & Christian wore Warders, copper headbands that kept the young witches from getting into their minds. Ironically, they didn't need to have their minds read. They talked constantly in front of the girls. Since the witches were all "things" to them, it never occurred to some of the workers around them that anything they said might be used against them. Pandora caught a simple conversation about an expected package delivery and that was all she needed.
The breakout took nine minutes.
The Rinks were a mile away from the Pentagon when the pursuing agents caught up with them. There was an exchange of dialogue on an empty country road that Pandora barely remembers. It ended with something like, "Very well. You can keep her." Then the man speaking pointed a gun at Pandora and pulled the trigger. Jacqueline dove in front of her daughter to protect her and was instantly killed. As a bullet tore through her father's arm next, Pandora screamed and crossed her fingers, "STOP!"
The agents froze in thick layers of ice. They died of hypothermia in mid-July on the Virginia road before their cocoons melted. She didn't mean to kill them, just stop them. Whether or not the deaths would add life to her own remained to be seen.
Wilco and Pandora spent the next six years in hiding. He taught his daughter how to fly a plane and she quickly surpassed him as a skilled pilot. He taught her how to defend herself, how to use various weapons, and with the aid of Captain Landry, got Pandora added to the ranks within the Confederate Air Cavalry as one of their aces. Agents of Glass & Christian—and independent bounty hunters with the Empire—continued to pursue Wilco and Pandora, which is why they took up residence in Philadelphia. The northern state gave them what they needed: a place to hide tucked within an Imperial state, right under the noses of the Empire itself.
Remembering the day her mother was gunned down trying to shield her, Pandora looked up, her beautiful olive skin creased and wet with tears. "They shot her down, Daddy, right in front of me."
"She died helping to save you, helping me to save you. I miss her too, little doe."
Pandora sniffed back her tears and met his eyes. In a more even tone, only slightly cracked with emotion, she said, "And now you know why I had to bring you back. I had to save you... because I couldn't save her."
Wilco held his daughter tight and rocked slightly. "I love you, Pandy."
"I hate that name."
"I know, sweetie. I know."
After the tears dried up, it was Pandora's turn to question her father about all that transpired back at the Tesla Bridge, and about his arrest. He told her about Perek Grubbs and who he worked for, his link to Frederick Denk and the attack at the Tesla Bridge, and she told him about the Thorne & Wolfe men she gunned down, and the ghoul who took Grubbs away. While she spoke, Wilco stared into space. Sometimes his lips moved but no sound came out. A few times he whimpered to himself.
He sat on the Greyhound bench. Pandora knelt next to him. "Daddy? ...Wilco?"
He broke out of another trance and looked at her.
"What did you see? When you were ...cold? What did you see?"
Wilco swallowed and said, "I know what happened to Alice."
Remembering the spots on her back and the cold chill of recognition that crawled up her spine, Pandora said, "So do I. We have to warn Bryce."
The dwarf shook his head. "No. We have to stop that ghoul."
Pandora frowned. "The ghoul? Why? I mean besides me wanting to split his skull like he split yours, what does he have to do with this?"
He leveled his eyes at her. "Think. Why would a ghoul take Perek Grubbs, the Acquisitions Officer of Thorne & Wolfe?"
"Ransom?"
Wilco closed one eye to a crease. "What would a ghoul want with money?"
"What would a ghoul want with property acquisition?" Pandora shrugged at her own question. "They've only been known to come out and take people. Why...?" Then it hit her. "But how would he know about Alice? I sensed something, but I figured it was just because she was a stranger."
Wilco matched her shrug. "The same way you would know? Mind reading, ESP? Perhaps he could smell her importance or sense the mark? Perhaps this particular ghoul was lying in wait for someone like her."
Pandora slumped and chewed her lower lip. "I never felt an aura from her." She shook her head. "And I didn't sense the mark myself until I saw it."
"Maybe she doesn't have an aura. Maybe she's different."
She nodded. "That alone would attract a ghoul. Maybe he'd sensed something odd about her, even before I saw the spots on her back."
"He'll want her, and what she represents."
Pandora looked at her father. "We have to stop 'im."
Wilco smiled. "Still my girl. I'll fire up the Canary."
She kissed his fuzzy cheek. "I'll get my bag." Jumping to her feet, she took two long strides over piles of oily rags to the collections of duffels and satchels under the dinette table.
Wilco stood with a grunt. "Hey."
Pandora turned as she snatched up a tool bag from the floor. It was a dark gray bag with a skull and crossbones on the flap.
He pointed to her feet. "My boots?"
Pandora pouted and her shoulders slumped. "Mine don't fit no more."
"We'll get ya some proper ones..." He snickered under his breath, "Bigfoot."
"Hey. I'm twenty-seven. I'm not deaf."
Pandora smiled. It felt good to hear her father's laugh again.
CHAPTER 15, “Addy”
By the time we arrived at Seven Orchards, the sun was up and a slight humid
breeze pushed the moist air toward the east.
Wide iron gates swung open. An arch of tall letters that read "Landry's 7 Orchards ~ est. 1809" stretched across the gates. The estate was phenomenal and exactly what I'd expected. A half-mile long cobblestone drive stretched toward an enormous white plantation house, tall white pillars glowed in the morning sunlight and birds flew back and forth between the fourteen gigantic oaks flanking the drive.
Far off to the right and left were colorful fields of apple orchards and orange groves. The air smelled sweet, like damp maple. "The sugar cane," Bryce told me over his shoulder as he noticed me sniffing the air. He pointed beyond the east side of the house toward the acres, I supposed, that grew the cane.
Lydia McFerran, fanning herself next to Bryce, asked him loud enough for me to hear, "Does the poor dear have any proper clothing?"
The way she said 'proper' made me feel dirtier than I already was.
"I would expect Adeline has something she can wear. They are about the same size."
"Oh, Bryce, you are a caution," Lydia said, gently slapping his arm with the collapsed fan before flipping it open to resume cooling herself. "You have no sense for what a woman should wear, and I dare say, neither does your tomboy of a sister."
"She'll be cared for by and by," Bryce smiled at his fiancee then over his shoulder toward me. I half-smiled back. To Lydia, he said, "We'll have Doc Richards by to take a look at her this afternoon."
This was news to me. When had he planned that? Just now? I suddenly felt like a plantation horse, just purchased at the county fair, and the vet was on his way over to check my teeth. "Doctor?" I asked as the motorized carriage began the wide turn around the enormous fountain in front of the estate.
"Doc Richards is an old friend of the family, Alice, only a few miles west o' here. Maybe he can help." He started out condescending but finished with a raised eyebrow and softened tone, almost like he didn't realize until his second sentence that he was talking to someone with whom he'd just spent a hair-raising night.