by Frank Tuttle
I lifted an eyebrow, felt the widow’s gaze upon me and made my face relax. Jefrey guzzled coffee, his eyes closed, his thin frame spread limp over his chair.
I turned back to Mama’s letter. “This storm is his doing. Look outside at it, and you’ll know something of his rage. Take a good look, boy. If you’ve got any fool notions about running outside and grabbing him, you look at that sky and you think again.”
“I was hoping you’d have time to find the truth and bring it to light,” Mama wrote. “I was hoping you could lay Ebed Merlat to rest before he came like this. But there ain’t time. Not anymore. He’s coming, and you can’t stop it. So you stay with the widow. Stay and do what needs doing. Stay and do what she can’t, or won’t, do. You’ll know when the time comes.”
I turned the page. I was expecting more words, all done up in Mama’s best Wise Old Crone style. Instead, there was nothing on the paper but an intricate doodle, crooked and wandering in the middle of the page.
My eyes blurred, and a sudden sharp ache pounded in my temple, and I felt an instant of dizziness, as if the widow’s overstuffed sitting chair suddenly rose up and spun me twice about.
The doodle on the page writhed and blurred.
I tore my eyes away, covered the second page with the first and bit back a curse word, but it was too late. I felt cat-paws down my spine and knew the feeling, from my days in the Army. I’d been hexed, only this time it wasn’t for night-sight or bug-away, cast by a grumpy field sorcerer on our wide and shuffling ranks.
No, this time it was by Mama and her third-rate hex sign. I blinked and lowered the letter, felt the widow’s piercing gaze upon me and tried to soften my scowl but had no luck.
Mama, I thought, this time you’ve stepped over the line.
“What is it?” asked the widow. “Bad news?”
I shook my head. My vision was clearing, and the pounding in my head subsided, but I could still feel Mama’s hex tip-toeing across the skin on my neck.
“Mrs. Hog has her usual advice to me,” I said. I folded the letter. “And, as usual, I find that our opinions differ.”
The widow smiled, as though I’d just said something funny, or something Mama predicted I’d say in her letter to the widow.
Thunder rolled and I jumped, because in the blast I thought I heard a voice, almost heard a word.
Mama’s hex tweaked my nose, made it itch. I frowned and shoved the letter back in its envelope. Jefrey opened his eyes and turned them toward me.
“Bad storm a comin’,” he said idly. “Dead man’s rain.”
I glared at him, realized he hadn’t spoken a second time. Mama’s hex whirled and preened.
I thanked the widow for the coffee, claimed a need for a wash and made for the stairs, resisting the urge to stomp and mutter.
Thunder rolled, each peal more like a shout than the one before it. Shadows flew, scampering beside me down the dark halls, beckoning and inviting at each turn, crooking their fingers at each closed and quiet door. As I walked, I passed through places both warm and cold, heard snatches of music, jumped at a loud and broken sob.
“Thank you Mama,” I said aloud, upon entering the empty ballroom. “Just what I needed. A headful of things that aren’t there.”
I blinked, and the floor was full of dancers, all twirling and dipping in time to music drowned out by the thunder.
I charged up the stairs to splash water in my eyes and think of ways to repay Mama her thoughtful generosity.
I bathed in a cast-iron bathtub, changed clothes and paced around my room, hoping Mama’s hex would wear off before I had to go back downstairs, or that I could at least figure out what she’d done to me. Had no luck on either front. I could still see shadows leap at the edge of my vision after bathing, but I couldn’t see any obvious structure in the nature of the hex. Pinching the bridge of my nose didn’t help, either, which gave rise to the disturbing notion that Mama knew something about hex-signs that the Army sorcery corps didn’t.
I plopped down on my bed and opened my duffel. Thunder grumbled and coughed. I frowned, wondering if Mama’s hex was extending to my hearing as well, because I could almost make out voices in the thunder and the smash of rain.
I found my bag within the bag, opened it, pulled out the things I’d hoped I wouldn’t need. I had a lead-weighted knocking stick-easy to conceal under a jacket, yet quietly effective on hostile noggins; just the thing for strolls through my neighborhood just before Curfew. That, my Army knife, a pair of brass knuckles and a single unused Army-issue flash-spell wafer that might or might not light up when I broke it in half.
I sighed and shoved things in pockets. Mama’s hex showed me a glimpse of flames when I touched the flash-spell, and when I put my knife in its ankle-sheath I smelled the warm wet stench of a Troll tunnel again.
I jerked my hand away, rose, straightened my shirt. The rain smashed against my window, driven by a burst of wind that howled and blew and beat like a coastal gale. Lightning sent skeletal shadows snaking across the floor, and the hex made them linger.
I made for the door. I passed a window, and thought about what Mama had said-that this storm was Ebed Merlat’s, that to see his rage and fury, one need only look to the sky.
Mama’s hex showed me anguished faces in the windswept clouds. I walked away and shut the door fast behind me.
The storm grew worse. The daylight all but failed. Jefrey, the Widow Merlat, and I gathered in the Gold Room and watched the rain and the lightning and listened to a loud, old, silver goblin-clock tick off the moments.
There wasn’t much talk. Each of us seemed content to stare out at the storm, which had become as mesmerizing as any blazing campfire. I tried a few early prods and digs about the will and the children, but got nothing but glares and nods from the widow and grunts and sighs from Jefrey, so I let it drop.
The kids remained in their rooms, aside from Elizabet’s single foray downstairs for coffee and cold cuts from the kitchen. She even dressed for the occasion-high-slit skirt and cross-tied peasant blouse she hadn’t had time to finish lacing all the way-and hinted that she might need help with the tray. Jefrey ignored her, and Mama’s hex showed me skull and hollow eyes through the too-white skin of her face, so I affected a sudden interest in the window and she stalked off, glaring at my back.
The dogs raised doggy Hell once, just before dark. Jefrey groaned, rose and bade me sit.
“It’s only that fool grocer Vernon,” he said. “Right on time. Anybody with any sense would wait till tomorrow.” He sighed and rose. “Now I’ll have to unload it in this mess.”
I went with him, flash-paper concealed in my left hand. But it was only a wagon, a driver and a week’s worth of cabbages and carrots. I stood in the door while Jefrey and the driver hauled in crates, but no one and nothing entered the yard or the House but us and assorted green leafies.
The leaden sky grew darker. Jefrey and I made the rounds, checked every window, checked every door. I noted that of late, housecleaning at the Merlat estate meant gathering up piles of dirty laundry or dirty dishes and shoving them in stacks behind locked doors. I pretended not to notice and Jefrey pretended he didn’t care. And if either of us noticed that we were unconsciously preparing for trouble neither of us mentioned it.
The storm raged on, and Mama’s hex had me jumping at shadows. Jefrey had ghosts of his own, I suppose. I saw him turn quickly away from a mirror once, face ash pale, eyes wild.
“Nasty storm,” he said, shaking off whatever he’d seen. “Reckon it’ll blow itself out right soon.”
I didn’t think so, but I just nodded and lit a fresh candle.
Chapter Five
The goblin-clock clicked and spun and gonged out the first hour of the night.
I sat and watched the lightening.
The storm raged and flailed and beat. There was scarce silence now, between the peals of thunder. The Merlat lawn was lit by lightening, showing blood-oaks bending and whipping and tossing. Paper-trash and bits
of debris rode the wind, scampering across the grass in herds, tangling in the fireflower beds and thrashing, trapped and melting, in the face of the furious rain.
But Ebed Merlat did not walk. Sometimes I saw shadows fly, but they were just that-shadows, and rain and storm. I wondered why Mama’s pet hex wasn’t turning the lawn into a spook show.
Probably, I reflected, because it was too busy turning House Merlat into one. Seated in my chair in the Gold Room, I heard snatches of faraway music, heard laughter and footfalls and once even a baby’s cry from beyond the gold-gilt door. I smelled lilacs and a heady perfume and once the stench of meat rotting. Sounds and scents all faded when I turned my attention to them. Phantoms?
Some of the voices were familiar. Some of the music I knew.
Phantoms, perhaps-but whose?
This was Ebed Merlat’s storm, according to Mama. I listened to voices I knew weren’t there, and I began to wonder just what else had blown in with Lord Merlat’s angry tempest.
Voices joined the thunder. Mama’s hex stirred, and I almost made out the words.
“This is crazy,” I said, and I bounded out of my chair and stretched. Lightening struck right in the yard, rattling glass and ringing my ears, but Jefrey didn’t budge. In fact, he began to snore.
“Wake up,” I said, clapping my hands. “Wake up or I’m liable to start looking for jewelry to steal.”
Nothing.
I walked over to him, put my hands on his right shoulder, shook him. Shook him again, harder this time.
His head lolled, fell chin-down on his chest.
On the floor, on the far side of his chair, his coffee-cup lay where he’d dropped it. Something black and thick like tar had oozed out of it and pooled in a shiny black drop on the floor.
Even the widow’s coffee shouldn’t have done that.
I slapped Jefrey, hard. His head just flopped, but his eyelids never moved.
Thunder broke again, shook the House so hard lamp-flames flickered. I checked Jefrey’s pulse, found it and peeled back an eyelid to check his pupils.
While I did so, all the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and though my back was to the window I knew in my bones that if I turned, if I looked, that Ebed Merlat was just beyond the three-bolt glass, waiting to meet my gaze.
“Two years in the grave,” came a whisper. “Dead mouth wide open.”
I bent and picked Jefrey up and heaved him over my shoulder. “Go,” said a voice, close by my ear. “Just go.”
The voice was that of the Sarge. The window at my back radiated cold, like a chunk of a Northland glacier shoved up tight against the House, white ice resting on the window-glass.
“Saving up a scream,” came a whisper.
A child’s hand slipped into mine. I looked to my feet, saw nothing, heard a soft giggle.
The hand in mine tugged me toward the door.
I went. I flung the gold door open, banged Jefrey’s head on the jamb lunging through and banged it again when I pulled the door shut.
The Hall went left and right. It was lit by two lines of new white candles, each standing in a brass dragon’s-claw set, eye-level along the walls.
One by one, starting at the left end of the Hall, the candles began to go out.
I turned and charged to my right.
“I cannot,” came a shout. I heard it, though it was faint and shrill and it sounded in the midst of an awful blast of thunder. It came from above. From the sick-room, locked and shut, the key buried with Ebed Merlat.
“I cannot,” it came again. “I love you.”
And this time, in the thunder, I heard the words “You must.”
Jefrey’s head struck a candle-holder. “Sorry,” I muttered. Then the Hall opened into the tile-floored foyer, and I stepped well away from the door and hid myself as best I could in the shadows at the edge of the candlelight.
Jefrey was as limp as a sack, but his breathing was steady and his pulse was strong. I thanked fate I’d only sipped the widow’s bitter coffee and hoped it had been laced with a sedative and not a poison.
Jefrey was getting heavy. I shifted him around, and I was deciding what to do next when I heard the sound of someone chopping wood.
I shook my head and pinched my nose. The sound of music from the ballroom faded, but the chopping sound continued.
Meaning it was real. Meaning that someone upstairs had an axe, and unless they were carving garden-gnomes, I figured they were chopping at a door.
The widow’s door.
All the servants gone. Jefrey and Markhat left insensate by drugged coffee. The widow alone in her room, too frightened to flee outside the House, too weak to fend off villains within.
Say you were a jilted heir. Say you decided the widow couldn’t file a new will if she, for instance, accidentally fell down three or four flights of hard granite stairs while fleeing from a revenant that everyone knows doesn’t exist. What if you told the Watch that Jefrey quit and left the country? What if you told them a finder named Markhat had departed the day before, after arguing with the widow and storming away, his pockets full of her money?
They’d shake their heads, make “there, there” sounds and quietly collect their inheritance tax and that, as they say, would be that.
“I cannot,” came the shout again. It was a woman’s voice. “You must,” spoke the voice in the thunder. “If you love me you must.”
And crash, came down the axe.
I lowered Jefrey to the floor, slipped off my shoes, picked him up again and padded across the dark ballroom. There was a cloak-closet just on the other side. I found it, got it open, and buried Jefrey beneath a pile of rugs I found in the back.
Music rose up when I turned, and in a flash-lit instant the room was full of dancers. They turned and they stepped and they twirled, and each face they lifted toward me was that of a grinning skull.
I blinked, and the floor was empty.
I reached down, took my knife from its ankle-sheath and closed the door on Jefrey’s muffled snores.
Footsteps sounded from down the darkened hall I’d just quit. They stopped at the Gold Room, and weak light filled the hall when someone opened the door to the lamp-lit room and stepped inside.
“Too late, kids,” I whispered. “Maybe another time.”
I darted across the ballroom floor. The air was chill in places, and once something cold stroked my neck, but I reached the foot of the stairs and charged up it sock-foot.
Halfway to the second floor, I heard toenails clack and scrape on the stones at my feet. Dog toenails. I pinched my nose, but the scritch and scrape continued, and were joined by panting.
“Thufe?”
Something warm and wet butted my right forearm and drew away. The dog-stink intensified, became at once familiar.
“Petey?”
Petey had been my dog, in the Army. In the tunnels. In the dark.
I pinched my nose. Petey was dead.
I smelled wet dog. You can’t mistake the scent of a big dog just come in from the rain.
Petey butted my forearm again. Time to get to work, boss, that meant. He’d always done that, when he thought my attention was wavering.
“Damn you, Mama,” I said.
Petey butted me, yipped. No time to get wistful. Not here in the dark.
I sprang up the steps, two at a time, quiet as a ghost in my sock feet. It’s only Mama’s hex, I thought. It’s only Mama’s hex, and a storm, and three long sips of the widow’s drugged coffee. I’ll be seeing Regents and dragons next.
I could hear the axe bite oak clearly now, and I knew that it, at least, was real.
Petey, he of the brave heart and the warm tongue and the white ring around his good left eye, Petey who lay buried in a weed-choked ditch five hundred miles and a dozen long years away, raced ahead and showed me the way.
Drugs or hex or haunts or all, by the time I reached the fourth floor-the widow’s floor-the dark was alive about me.
Petey was a dark bundle of
shadows trotting steady at my feet. Voices spoke out beside me, others sang, others whispered or cursed or wailed or cried. Faces formed in the flames of the few lit candles that lined the walls, their mouths open, imploring, silent and small and gone with a blink or a flicker.
I’d pinched my nose so many times it had begun to bleed. I’d not noticed until I saw blood on my hand, and it was only then that I realized my fingers were going numb.
I shook my head.
“I cannot,” said a voice that silenced all the others. “I cannot, do not ask that of me, oh God I cannot.”
Petey butted my arm, halted and made a low, soft growl.
We left the stairs. The axe-blows stopped. I followed Petey’s stiff-legged stalk to an intersection of halls, laid myself flat and careful against the wall. After making sure I wouldn’t dislodge any decorations-this was no time to knock down a portrait of old Aunt Hattie-I sidled up to the corner and pinched my nose hard one last time and listened.
“You idiot,” hissed Elizabet. “Why didn’t you just get the key?”
“She never let it out of her sight,” replied Othur. “How was I supposed to get it? Why didn’t you?”
“I’ll be through it in a minute,” spoke another voice, one I didn’t know. “Damned door must be two feet thick.”
Judging that they were sufficiently far away, and that the hall between us was dark, I peeped around the corner.
Othur and Elizabet stood together, an axe-swing’s distance from a bald behemoth of a man, who stood panting, leaning upon his axe.
I pulled my head back before anyone saw.
“Get back to work,” snapped Elizabet. “We don’t want them waking up before we’re done.”
The big man grunted, and an instant later the axe fell.
“Talo and Abda ought to be back by now,” said Othur. “Think they had any trouble?”
“With who? Jefrey, or that idiot from the Narrows?’ Elizabet snorted. “They’re both as dead as Daddy by now,” she said with that same laugh I’d heard that first day on the stairs. “Think they’ll come back to get you, too?”