The Book of Kindly Deaths

by Eldritch Black

  But still she ran, her lungs aching, her breath snagging in her throat.

  When Victoria could run no more, she stopped, standing below the meager shelter of a tree, its bark solid at her back. She fought to control her breath, wiping her eyes as the carriage bore over the crest of the hill. The clatter of its wheels seemed so loud in the silent snowfall, the frozen air filled with the steam of the horses’ ragged breaths.

  The carriage came to a halt before her, and the magician jumped from the cab, his cape flapping blackly against the snow. Behind him, Victoria glimpsed Sophia’s pale face through the grimy window.

  “You stupid, stupid girl.” The magician’s eyes narrowed as he bore down on Victoria. “Did you really believe you could just run away from me? Did you think I’d let you go? You signed the book. You agreed to the terms. Do you think I’ll let my daughter suffer that half-life for a moment longer than she needs to?”

  “Please. I shouldn’t have… I want to live. I felt alive this afternoon. Really alive. For the first time in…so long.”

  “Too little, too late. You signed the book and forsook your soul.” He clutched the pouch in his gloved hand and held it before her. “And now you need to give the Devil his due.”

  “You said he wasn’t the Devil!”

  “I don’t know what the Collector is, and I don’t want to. All I know is that it’s not of this earth. But that’s not my concern anymore. It’s yours now.”

  “This is all wrong,” Victoria protested. “Those things you gave me…I swallowed someone’s soul.”

  “I didn’t hear you complain when you got your wish. Yet now that it’s time to settle up, you cry foul and protest. But it’s to no avail, girl. You will relinquish your soul and take the accursed bag and book with you to damnation.”

  As he opened the pouch, Victoria’s eyes were once more drawn to the glow from within. It was so bright that it lit up the trunks of the trees around them. “So beautiful,” she sighed.

  The spell of the colors was broken as the magician closed his eyes and reached a hand towards the crown of her head. When he yanked his hand away, something deep within her cracked. Victoria fell to her knees, clutching her sides. It felt as if something inside had been torn in half.

  The magician clasped an intense blue light between his gloved fingers. Her light, her soul. As she gazed at it, she knew she’d never get it back. That it could never be returned.

  But the craving she felt was so powerful she grabbed for it, her hands clawing at thin air. Tears froze on her face as she stared at the light. It was the brightest, most gorgeous blue she’d ever seen.

  Perfectly oval. Just perfect. Like the eggs she’d swallowed, only brighter.

  The farther it moved from her, the deeper her emptiness grew. And now it felt as if the world had turned gray, the last of its color contained within the glowing jewel in his hand.

  The magician held it over the pouch, its color vivid above the other souls inside. Brighter because it hadn’t been harvested. Yet. But it would be soon enough, when the creature within the bag took it to the room in the charcoal-black house.

  “Please, give my light back,” she begged.

  The magician gave her a brief look of pity and shook his head. He dropped the light into the pouch and, all at once, the creature emerged and snapped her soul between its pincers. Victoria flinched as the creature flew out, two ragged black wings beating furiously as it hovered before her.

  “No!” she screamed, snatching desperately as the creature evaded her, moving just out of reach, as if mocking her.

  It watched her for a moment before wheeling around and landing on a tree trunk, where it skittered across the bark. The tree was diseased, clumps of sickly brown fungus growing from its trunk and at its center, a great black hole. The creature crawled inside, taking her light with it.

  And in that moment, Victoria knew she would never see her soul again.

  At least not until it had been devoured by the monster in the room with the cracked window, its vitality sucked away. Only then would her soul be returned to the pouch. She wondered if she’d know which one had been hers once it was among the other lights in the bag. Victoria sank to her knees, the chill of the snow absent as numbness spread across her.

  The magician placed the pouch and the book of pledged souls in her hands. “Keep them safe, girl. Guard the bag with your life, lest you bring the Collector’s wrath. Find another person, Victoria, seek another to take the burden so you may find peace.”

  She couldn’t have replied even if she’d wanted to. She could only watch as the magician walked back to the carriage. And then a dull thud came from within as Sophia’s lifeless body slumped against the window.

  The magician stood for a moment, his head dipped in the twilight, and then slowly he climbed upon the carriage, took the reins in his gloved hands and snapped them. Victoria watched emptily as the carriage rolled away, a dark blur in the growing night. She stood on the hill, oblivious to the bite of the cold, and glanced back to her house.

  The lights still shone in the windows, but she knew she would find no warmth within. Already the pouch felt heavy in her pocket, the harvested souls weighing her down. She wondered how long it would be until the creature returned with the remains of her soul. How long it would take her to find someone else to take on the burden.

  Victoria trudged down the hill, her darkening eyes fixed on the distant lights of the village below, the snow around her ankles as white as a cloud.

  Eliza closed the book for a moment, leaving her finger inside to mark her place. “What a hideous story.”

  Despite her instant dislike of the nastiness and malice of Victoria Stapleton at the beginning of the tale, by the end she felt strangely moved by the girl’s horrible fate. It didn’t seem fair. After all, Victoria had woken up to herself. She’d realized her mistakes. She’d wanted to live and perhaps to make amends, and now her life and soul had been viciously snatched away.

  Of course, it was a moral story. For despite Eliza’s mother’s ban on all forms of fiction, she recalled the Grimm’s Fairy Tales she’d managed to read when she was younger, and she knew a lot of the old stories served as cautionary tales. Surely this was just another such story.

  But it felt like more than that. Like the one before, it felt like an account of something that had actually happened.

  Following the end of the story was another block of writing, another addendum. She wondered if it was a theme of the book, to follow each story with an imagined document from the writer.

  Eliza began to read, silencing the tiny voice inside her head urging her to stop.

  Immediately after taking the role of custodian of The Book of Kindly Deaths, via the Grimwytch guild, I knew there must be a more effective way of tracing breaches up and down the country. At least, other than using their rather archaic compass.

  So I paid a handsome sum to employ an agent in each city who, in turn, employed informants in the towns and villages across our land. And within days of anything unholy or monstrous occurring, I was told.

  Which is how I came to learn of poor Victoria Stapleton. There had been several sightings of her just outside a small village. Always at dusk and always offering a person’s heart’s desires in trade for the price of a soul.

  Thankfully, the people of the village were superstitious, and not one took her offer. The moment I was told of this Devilish event, I set out for Upper Caddlebury with my assistant, Sarah.

  Upper Caddlebury was a small village with a welcoming inn, thatched roofs, and a sense of general cheer—quite the opposite of the dark occurrences within its midst.

  My informant took me to the place on the road where Victoria had been sighted, and the three of us waited. As twilight fell across the woods, she appeared, winding her way through the trees. Her clothes were in tatters, her hair lank, and her face pale and drawn.

  “Please sir, please madam, what do you wish for? What does your heart desire? I’ll grant you anything
if you’ll just give up a little something you have no need for.” Her filthy hands grasped my sleeve.

  I took Victoria to the inn and requested Sarah help bathe and dress her before dinner. The poor girl barely ate the food, her lifeless eyes staring into the distance, and it took some time to draw her story from her. But eventually, as I wrote it into The Book of Kindly Deaths, the whole sorry tale was told.

  “We shall end your burden,” I told her. “But it will mean summoning the Collector.”

  “What is the Collector?” she asked, flinching as she said its name. “Is it a demon?”

  “I’m not certain,” I told her. “But yes, it’s probably a demon, although not in a biblical sense. I believe it’s most likely a lesser demon known as a hoardspike. They like to collect things. Especially things precious to humans. Like souls.”

  “My soul’s in the pouch.” Victoria pointed to the bag. “But it doesn’t sing to me anymore.”

  “The hoardspike removes the soul’s vitality before it passes the remains back. While these husks are of no use to the hoardspike, they’re potent magic for us. They can be used as bait, to offer potential victims anything they want. And the demon thrives on the fear carried by the bearer of the pouch. Terror is just one more thing it collects. We need to end this cycle tonight.”

  “There’s something else in the pouch,” Victoria said. “A creature.”

  “It’s called a fetcher. It hatches within the hoardspike, burrowing from its chest in the place a heart should be. The fetcher has the strongest affinity for its master, both parasite and host thriving on the actions of the other. The hoardspike nourishes the fetcher, and the fetcher does its bidding, collecting whatever it desires. We shall use this fetcher to bring the hoardspike to us. In its own dimension, it would be formidable, but ours shall weaken it.”

  “You’re bringing the Collector here?” Victoria asked, scratching her arm until her nails drew blood.

  I placed a hand over hers. “Don’t worry, I can deal with the hoardspike. And before dawn rises, you will be free of your burden.”

  “Will I get my soul back?” The tiniest spark of hope gleamed in Victoria’s eyes.

  “You will get back what the hoardspike rejects. But I’m afraid it will be of no use to you.”

  “Will I die?”

  “There are things I can do that will make your life more bearable,” I explained. “But first we must bring the demon to us, and for that we shall need to find a more suitable place. Do you know of any buildings that lie abandoned? Tumbledown and deserted? These are the places the occupants of the Grimwytch favor.”

  “The occupants of the Grimwytch?” Victoria asked.

  “The things we call monsters and demons,” Sarah explained as she wrote an account of our meeting in her journal.

  “But I don’t want to meet monsters or demons,” Victoria protested. “And I don’t want to see the Collector.”

  “You may not have a choice,” I replied. “The Collector can come to our dimension at any time to collect its book and pouch. Would you rather meet it with us by your side, or on your own?”

  “There’s a place where I sleep,” Victoria said. “It’s as you said, abandoned and tumbledown. It’s an old building in the woods, and I’ve never seen anyone else there. But I’ve seen tracks and animal bones.”

  “It’s probably used by poachers and hunters in the summer months. I will gather my equipment, and we shall be on our way,” I told her, rising from the table.

  “You want to summon this thing at night?” Victoria asked. And I could see it wasn’t just emptiness that consumed her, but also fear.

  “I do. You’re safe with us, Victoria. I’ve dispatched more monsters than I care to remember. Now wait here until I return. Finish your supper; you will need all the energy you can muster.”

  The house Victoria brought us to was perfect for my purposes. It was a low, squat building with walls choked by ivy and a pervasive stench of rot and mold.

  We lit a fire in the middle of the room and swept the floor as best we could, clearing away detritus and muck. I took my bag and removed several magical seals, which would hopefully bind the hoardspike within the four derelict walls. Sarah took a piece of chalk and inscribed symbols on the wall, glyphs and spells to weaken the creature once it passed into our realm. And then I took the old bones we’d collected from outside and placed them in a crude circle.

  Finally, by the light of the fire, I asked Victoria for the pouch and book. She held on to them for a moment, a doubtful look on her face as I gently took them from her.

  I placed the book in my bag and removed a pair of iron tongs. “When I nod, Sarah, I want you to open the pouch. Make sure you hold it away from you.”

  Sarah nodded grimly and did as I requested.

  I could see the glow of souls within the bag long before she opened it, and when she did, the colors and the light were almost overwhelming. I was hypnotized for a moment as the souls shone like tiny, jewel-like eggs.

  But the spell was broken when I caught sight of a barbed black tail sinking inside the bag.

  Quickly I thrust my tongs inside, and from within came a dreadful din, like a living beast placed in a pot of boiling water. The bag writhed and spun in Sarah’s hands as the fetcher desperately fought to free itself, and all at once I pulled it forth, holding it high above the pouch. It continued to shriek, a terrible sound bursting from its maw as the tongs clung tighter to its tail, its tiny feet twitching as its wings flapped. I threw it to the cold, hard ground with all my might.

  A loud cracking sound came from deep within the fetcher, provoking another hideous cry.

  I unsheathed my knife in a trice and leaped down, cleaving off its head and flicking it into the fire with my blade. It continued to scream inside the flames for a moment, until I threw its writhing body beside it.

  And then the temperature in the room dropped.

  The hoardspike was crossing over.

  The shadows lengthened in the corners of the room and broke away, flowing across the floor like rivulets of dark water and gathering within the circle of bones.

  The hoardspike grew before us, a male, far larger than any other I’d encountered. He towered at least three feet over me, wearing a heavily stained shirt and a pair of tattered, brown woolen trousers. These were his only concessions to humanity.

  His feet were bare, horrible things covered in warts, their yellowed toenails curled many times over. His thin face carried a look of fury, his putrid green flesh covered in boils and liver spots. He raised a long finger, pointing to me as he hissed, “The air is…too clean.”

  “It must be a change from your squalor, hoardspike. Do you know why you’ve been summoned?” I asked, one hand on my knife, the other on the holster of my pistol.

  “Summoned?” He laughed with a sound like a hacking cough. “You didn’t summon me. I heard the cry of my fetcher.” He gazed at the fire and a fleeting glimpse of pity crossed his gnarled face. “You killed it, human. You killed my fetcher!” He thrust a finger into the bloody red hole in his chest where the creature had once lived.

  “I did. It had no business in this realm, as you well know. And neither do you. I’ve seen your journal, hoardspike, and I know how many souls you’ve taken.” I pointed to Victoria, who was cowering in the corner. “You will face your punishment, but first you will free the girl.”

  “I shall do no such thing.” He licked his lips and gave her a smile. “Even though her soul was quite delicious.”

  “You will free her from the burden you’ve imposed, and I shall destroy your book of pledged souls. What remains of them shall be buried in a sacred place. And then I shall end your miserable existence, for I cannot permit you to live.”

  “I thought it would be the Midnight Prison for me,” he said, with no little amusement. “That’s how our law works, unless I’m mistaken?”

  “Only if the Midnight Prison was my judgment. But you’ve destroyed many, many lives, and I feel not an i
nkling of mercy for you.”

  “Then I am in a corner, little writer. Holed up like a rat. What incentive do I have to agree with your wishes if I face execution at the end of them?”

  “I can make your passing painless.”

  “And the girl?” He grinned at Victoria. “What will happen to her?”

  “That’s no concern of yours.” I held the gun openly now.

  “Listen to me…Victoria,” he said. “You had your wish, and I gave you power, and so you are bound to me. This writer will destroy you. He wears a velvet glove, but believe me, it hides an iron hand. Take the journal and pouch and go and fetch me a soul; then, and only then, will I release you from your endless wandering.”

  I aimed the gun at the vile creature’s head, but before I could release the trigger, he moved with an inhuman speed, and my weapon was thrown across the room, discharging into the wall. I ran forward, unsheathing my knife, and slashed at the hoardspike, opening a great wound in his side. Vile, sticky, indigo blood poured from the gash as he howled. Before I could bring my blade down across his loathsome throat, he hit me across the face with the back of his hand and sent me crashing to the ground.

  To my horror and against all instruction, Sarah ran forward to grab my gun, and the hoardspike bore down on her, lifting her into the air and shaking her before throwing her aside.

  And then he moved towards Victoria.

  She stood before the fire, the vile creature’s book of pledged souls in her hand.

  The hoardspike stopped, a look of horror crossing his cracked old face. “That’s my property, girl.”

  “But you gave it to me to look after, remember?” Victoria replied, a tone of insolent fury creeping into her voice. “Or have you forgotten my burden?”

  The hoardspike laughed. “Do you think burning my book will save any of the souls inside, least of all your own? It’s too late. I have them all, deep, deep inside.” He rubbed a grotesque finger over his belly.