by Tricia Reeks
I was falling, endlessly falling, and it did not matter any more. “Yes,” I said. “We have a bargain.” I did not say, as Aname did. But I thought it, all the same.
***
Pamati woke up some time after that, and found both of us standing by her bed. She rubbed at her eyes, yawning, and asked, “Auntie? Is something wrong?”
“No,” I said, gently. “But it’s time to leave. For both of us.”
Eagerness filled her voice. “Has Mommy come?”
Tyreas moved, and came to kneel by her side, looking into her eyes. His face, once again, was expressionless. “No,” he said. “But she made a bargain with me, once. I have come to take you and your aunt to a better life.”
Pamati’s face was set in a frown—the usual frown, for fear that the gift would be taken from her. Her eyes flicked to me, and I nodded.
Tyreas started talking to her in a low voice—I could not hear what he said, but Pamati was listening, entranced, no doubt of a place where the other children would not jeer, or throw stones at her.
I stood by the side of the pallet, silent. I thought of the three of us, walking away from the jati towards Tyreas’s holdings, exchanging one kind of exclusion for another, trading mockeries for silent fear and loathing. I thought of Aname, and of bargains, trying to convince myself I had made the only possible choice.
I prayed that, at the last, its fruit would not be too bitter, nor its weight too much to bear.
The Ghûl (A Nasty Story)
Matt Leivers
There is a sensation in the center of his head that he can’t begin to describe. Once, when he was very small—before he had ever come to this ancient, looming, desolate city where the buildings were so tall and so closely packed that the shadows forever clung like cobwebs tangled in the fetid air—he had lived in a little white house on the side of a mountain. A woman who had probably been his mother had washed him in a huge porcelain bath, so big he imagined it was a ship he could sail to far off lands full of adventure, and he had liked to splash about and get her to work the lather into his hair so that it stood up in spikes on his head, and she would smile and call him Sunbeam. And most of all he had liked it when she let the water out down the hole at one end, and he would sometimes be brave and stick his big toe in while the water was spiraling away and laugh aloud at the sucking sensation while she would cry out in mock alarm and save him from being pulled in with it.
The sensation in his head isn’t really like that, because this is a horrible, dragging, vertiginous thing and all of a sudden, Rook—a muddled bluster of questions wheeling around him like starlings—can’t remember where he is. All he knows is that it is dark, his face and hands are wet with something, there is an indescribable taste in his mouth, and he is very, very afraid. He wants to open his eyes, but they are already open despite the darkness, so he closes them instead and feels his long lashes scrape against something. With an almost-cry, he raises his wet hands to his face, trying to claw away whatever it is that is there.
“Don’t,” someone says in a choked voice he half-recognizes and doesn’t quite like, and they sound almost as scared as he feels. “Please, don’t. Turn around first.”
Rook stumbles when he tries to turn. He feels too small, too light, too much like the whole geometry of his body is wrong. “What . . .” he starts to say. But he hears the voice that comes out of his mouth, and can’t ask.
“Rook?” whoever it is that is there with him says. “Are you alright?”
“What’s happened?” Rook says. “Where am I? Who . . .” His hands twitch up towards his face again, fingers pulling at the thick folds of cloth wound tight around his eyes, searching for the knot.
“Never mind that now.” The fear hasn’t quite faded from this other voice, but it’s being replaced by a relief that is almost palpable. Relief and something else. Something that sounds to Rook like anticipation. “Later, I promise. How do you feel?”
As if my head is splitting in two. Like I just woke up in someone else’s skin. Scared to death. But he realizes that none of these are true. Half a moment ago he was more terrified than he had ever been in his life, dangling on a fraying thread above panic’s gaping maw. But not anymore.
“Incredible,” he breathes. And it’s true. He can feel the life tingling in his fingertips; the arterial surge and venous suck of blood ebbing and flowing with the pounding of the heart jumping under his ribs; every nerve firing, impulses arcing between synapses. “Really, I feel amazing! Like I’m under a spell or drank some philter.” Rook pauses; feels a little hollow space open in his gut. “You didn’t? You didn’t, did you?”
And suddenly he knows who it is there with him.
“Hoek . . . ?”
Hoek laughs, and something runs ever so quickly up the back of Rook’s neck, setting every little hair on end. “No!” Hoek protests, still laughing, “I haven’t done anything. Not to you. You’d remember, right?”
It’s an odd question, but Rook doesn’t really care, because all he can think about is what the sound of Hoek’s voice is doing to him, the way his pulse has quickened and his breath is catching in his throat. His tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth and his dick painfully stiff. He’s trying to untie the cloth around his eyes, but the knot has been pulled incredibly tight, and his hands are still slick with whatever it is, and his fingers are trembling. “Why did you tie this so tight?” he mutters. “Come here and help me!”
“I didn’t tie it,” Hoek says, and for a moment Rook almost starts to wonder, but then Hoek’s long fingers are tangled in his hair and it’s hurting but he likes it and finally the knot gives way and Hoek is wiping Rook’s face with the cloth. Rook still doesn’t know what the nasty stuff is, but the cloth hits the stone wall with an unpleasant, heavy smat when Hoek casts it away.
“You can open your eyes now,” Hoek says in a funny little voice that almost sounds like he’s trying not to cry.
Rook does. “What the. . .” he breathes, seeing where he is, but then he sees Hoek and forgets about everything else.
Hoek’s eyes widen slightly at the urgency of the kiss, at how quickly Rook’s tongue has gotten into his mouth, at the feel of his still-slick fingers against his skin. Hoek starts to recoil a little at the feel of the clammy stuff on him, but then he remembers that this is what he wanted and the only way he was going to get it, so he just grits his teeth, and when Rook mutters “What? Don’t you want it?” into his ear, biting the lobe, he groans and nods.
And when Rook is on his knees in the dirt, and Hoek has his fingers tangled in his hair again, Rook assumes that the sobs and moans that fill his ears are pleasure. And so they are—some of them—but every now and then Hoek, pinned against the ornate marble column that flanks one side of the steps leading up out of the mausoleum, glances up from what is being done to him and sees what is lying on top of the sarcophagus at the back of the chamber.
***
Of the problems facing the scions of the ancient noble families of that decaying city, boredom was perhaps the most immediate. Relieved of the need to work, their days spread out before them in endless opportunity. Everything was possible, and therein lay the rub, for everything had been done. Generation upon generation of noblewomen and noblemen had sampled every pleasure that their imaginations could suggest. No decadence had proved too sybaritic, no outrage too unhallowed for the refined palates of that place. Everything was available, and of everything they had availed themselves.
The books chronicling their depravities rose in rotting heaps from every dusty surface in every forgotten library in the city. Mansions which had once stood amidst gardens, the beauty of which would snatch the very breath from the throats of the less fortunate (literally, in one case, for the fourteenth Lord Vendrygol had bred a rose which suffocated anyone who stooped to smell it), now moldered to ruin surrounded by statuary celebrating acts of unimaginable iniquity. For a year or two it had been the height of good breeding to retain on one’s staff a sculptor able (o
r willing) to capture correctly the angle of a human leg broken in three places, the mixture of agony and rapture on a face. The retired dowager baroness of Fand had scored a considerable victory with a fountain centerpiece depicting her turning her ninth husband inside out.
But these pleasures were old, and stale, and long had been, and Hoek had been starting to think that life was an empty thing devoid of meaning and that the only interesting thing left for him to do was to devise an entertaining death for himself.
***
“Oh, your pardon.” Hoek is smiling, but it is a forced, stretched thing, and he is all the while silently offering prayers to every deity he can recall. “I was hoping to find the Professor?”
“Lord Gregson is out.” The scowling boy glances at Hoek for the briefest of moments, but that is all it takes. He’s dressed in the same heavy black gown as every member of the Institute—Hoek has one himself, somewhere—but it is frayed and tatty, and the boy has had to roll the too-long sleeves back. He has it belted around him with an old bit of rope.
“I . . .” Hoek says, and pauses. He can’t think what to say, or rather, he can’t choose from the millions of words that are suddenly writhing around him like maggots on a rotting carcass.
“What?” The boy glances at him again, disinterest giving way to suspicion. “He’s not here, alright?”
“Who are you?” Hoek breathes, a hand groping for the doorpost. His heart is hammering in his chest and his knees have turned to water, and he has read deeply enough in books of forbidden lore to know that either he is suffering from the Sylpharian Pox or he has fallen in love. But his tongue isn’t forked, so it can’t be the pox. “I love you!” he gasps, wondering.
The boy’s laughter is bright and sharp, and so are the swords he draws out from under the tatty hand-me-down cloak. “That isn’t a good idea,” he says. “Lord Gregson will be back on All Hallows’ Day. Come back then.”
***
Hoek’s no fool. He has read deeply enough in books of forbidden lore to know that love is a dangerous and twisting thing, which is largely why no one in their right mind has bothered with it for centuries. At first he isn’t sure, but once he hasn’t slept for three nights running he begins to feel more certain. He paces the crooked corridors of his mansion, and the shadowy image of the boy slips around every corner before he reaches it, melts into the shadows hanging in every alcove, glances over Hoek’s shoulder into every mirror.
The wind that sobs around the twisted turrets seems to call the boy’s name, but then Hoek remembers that he doesn’t know what it is. For a day or two he pores over grimoires, searching for scrying spells and the symbols that will bind the mind of a man into the body of a bat—he has the bat on hand, and there is no shortage of starveling wretches who will do anything for a meal—but in the end he just walks into the foyer of the Institute and asks the First Clerk of Doors. And then the wind that sobs around the highest towers of his mansion seems to whisper Rook most satisfactorily, and the fires that roar in the chimneys, and now he has a name to moan in his sleepless tormented dreams.
***
Being in love is hard on Hoek, and not only because no one really remembers how to do it.
To his great surprise, he finds that it is a skill that is very easy to acquire. And to his great horror, he finds that he has absolutely no control over it at all. Normally, the pastimes of the scions of the noble houses are like clothes, to be donned on a whim and cast aside as easily. But not this. No matter how he tries, he cannot get the image of the boy out of his mind. No matter how he tries, he cannot keep himself from the corridors of the Institute, hoping to catch sight of the slight figure busy about some unknown task, or eating in the refectory, or huddled in his cloak against the rain as he crosses the courtyard on his way home at night. But Hoek never sees him.
Ever and anon he finds his thoughts returning to the room at the top of the tallest tower where usually Lord Gregson keeps himself locked away with his papers and experiments, and it is not too long before a dreadful suspicion dawns on him. The relief he feels when he kicks the door to Gregson’s room out of its frame and finds the ashes cold on the hearth, the window shuttered, no sign of anyone having been there in weeks, is a little unsettling, and only slowly replaced by an agony of doubt.
Rook isn’t there. In his mind’s eye, Hoek has only ever imagined Rook in two places, and he isn’t in either of them. Which means that somewhere in the labyrinth of the city he is somewhere else, and Hoek has no idea at all where that might be, or who he might be with, or what he might be doing. The idea that he might be somewhere, doing something, with someone is torment for Hoek, and for the next three days he pores over grimoires, searching for scrying spells and the symbols that will let him see through the eyes of the hideously carved lanterns that are beginning to appear across the city as All Hallows’ Eve draws near. But it’s no good. Wherever he looks, Rook isn’t.
Hoek can’t eat. He wanders the corridors of the Institute, clutching at the sleeves of the black-coated Fellows, hooked fingers catching in the folds of their cloaks, and demands to know where Rook has gone. He can’t sleep, and his wild rolling eyes skate over the once-familiar faces of his friends and peers, searching for someone who is never there. Some of them try to draw him aside and speak with him, but all he will ever ask is where Rook is.
***
The city sprawls across the lower slopes of five hills, and above the mansions that clamber halfway up the highest is another city, cold, and dark, and almost uninhabited, at least by the living. Only now, in the days leading up to All Hallows’ Eve, does anyone go there, to pour libations to the dead and pray that they stay where they belong.
Otherwise only poets venture there, or the mad, and of the few who do visit the great necropolis, most who go in as the former come out as the latter. Hoek thinks of himself as neither, simply because he only thinks of Rook. He wanders amongst the dank and gloomy buildings, and now it is the cold folds of the marble statues he clutches and demands of the frozen faces and unseeing eyes that they tell him where Rook has gone. None reply, for even if they knew they could not tell him. But still he wanders the paved lanes, catching at feet that are crumbling to dust, at fingers that come away in his. “Where has Rook gone?” he begs of angels and kings and cats and gods.
“Who is Rook?” one asks back in a voice like an arm being crushed beneath a cartwheel, and climbs down off its plinth.
Hoek has read deeply enough in books of forbidden lore to know a Ghûl when he sees one, even if all the pictures he has ever seen have been mere shadows compared to the reality that confronts him. The books in his library showed hideous creatures burrowing through graves, clutching at carrion with lank, distorted limbs, brutish heads with fanged snouts ripping into dead flesh. Ugly and terrifying, things to scare children into obedience.
The thing in front of him now is entirely different. Terrifying, without doubt, but the distorted limbs are graceful, the bright globes of the eyes glittering and black in the moonlight, the skin patterned like oil on the surface of a rain barrel. It uncoils its long tongue and drags it up the length of Hoek’s arm.
“Ohhhh!” It gives a low throaty chuckle, like gravel falling off a wheel. “You taste of despair! He’s a fool not to want you, but I’m glad he doesn’t. Stay for a while, lover, and I’ll make you forget.”
For a split second, Hoek wonders if forgetting would be better than this endless want, but then the Ghûl wraps the tip of its tongue around one of its tusks, worrying at a scrap of something that’s caught there.
“No?” it croaks. “Well then, think on this. Bring him to me on All Hallows’ Eve, and he’ll want you like you want him. How does that sound?”
***
Hoek develops a new obsession. Now, when he wanders the streets of the city, waylaying every passing stranger and demanding of them to know where Rook has gone, their blank expressions elicit another question. Many had been ready to take pity on the poor crazed man who staggered thr
ough the city, the cry of “Where is Rook?” forever on his lips. But only insults and blows meet his questions about the Ghûl, and more than once he is pelted with excrement.
And almost of their own will, like a wheel caught in a rut, his feet lead him back towards the Institute. The Third Clerk of Doors refuses to recognize him and will not let him in, only shaking his head and laying a gentle hand on his shoulder when Hoek asks him where Rook has gone.
“Come, sir,” the Third Clerk of Doors says, “do not block the stairs. Perhaps you will fall, and then what will happen?”
Hoek doesn’t know, or care. “How can the Ghûl make him want me?” he asks, and flinches as the Third Clerk of Doors narrows his eyes and sucks his breath in sharply.
“Do not speak of such things!” the Clerk hisses, glancing about. “Not here.” He steps closer to Hoek and drops his voice to a low murmur. “You should speak to the Professor.”
“Gregson?” Hoek mutters, and the Third Clerk of Doors nods.
“But he is not back until All Hallows’ Day,” Hoek says.
“Not back in his office, no.” The Third Clerk of Doors scratches at the back of his head. “Wait just a second and I’ll see if I can’t find someone to take you to him.”
He vanishes into a dark doorway under the stairs, and a moment later comes back, Rook only a step behind him.
***
“Please,” Hoek begs.
“I can’t,” says Rook, and quickens his step.
“But I’ve been trying to find you,” Hoek pleads.
“I don’t even know who you are,” Rook insists.
“I can’t lose you again,” Hoek says, and brings the rock that’s clenched in his fist down on the back of Rook’s head.
***
“So, in short,” the Professor intones, “the legend states that the Ghûl takes on the form of the one who has been consumed.” He squints suspiciously at the wild-eyed man. “And now, sir, tell me, you are who? And what is your interest in such an arcane matter?”