The Siren House

by Andrew Post

  “Your plan involve having to scratch?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.” I picked a grain of sand out of the socket, flicked it away, and concentrated to close the opening in my hand. It shut slowly.

  “Then we should probably get a move on. Looks like those things won’t be hanging around much longer.”

  * * *

  Night came and we found a halfway decent canoe caught in some flotsam. We would’ve taken Thadius’s boat—the project that’d kept him from more than a few dinners I’d made during our weeks of living the shack life waiting for the Smocks’ random raids around Duluth to quiet down—but it wasn’t seaworthy. Tonight, the canoe would have to do.

  Thadius waded out to get it. Standing on the beach, I stared out at the rig with a heavy heart. The fight between Suzanne and Clifford had really done a number on the place. It once stood straight and defiant in its watery surroundings, but now it was canted like an old man preparing to break wind.

  We took turns rowing out.

  When we got to the rig, there was my green fiberglass rowboat we’d taken out what felt like a lifetime ago. It was tied to the cleat, banging against the metal dock. I’d missed her. I was thankful she hadn’t broken her tie and drifted away; we’d need two boats for my plan.

  Inside, the floors were all leaning; the entire place had been scoured for any trace of us. My parents’ room was trashed. Everything that’d been in the kitchen cupboards was now cast to the floor. The walk-in pantry’s door had been left open, and everything inside had gone to rot. It hurt me, seeing my home in ruins. Still, it wasn’t important. This was merely a venue to complete this fight, to send one last zigzag at the Smocks to end the chase for good.

  We headed out onto the destroyed helipad garden.

  Across the bridges and catwalks to the other side of the rig.

  Down stairs, through hatches.

  To the cauldron room.

  It was obvious they’d found it, since the cauldron itself was gone. There was just a blank spot in the floor from which it’d been harvested, open water and cold wind rushing up through the hole. We put some plastic over it to keep the chill out, plugged in a space heater, and set up there.

  When it came time to begin, I turned to Thadius. “Shall we?”

  Thadius didn’t answer right away. It couldn’t be easy thinking that with just a pass of your friend’s hand you’d be rendered into molecular dust. Here was a man who had tinkered with cauldrons and harvesters for so long and never felt what it was like, except for one thumb he’d accidentally taken off himself. It was like he’d been a career composer but never been in the room while something of his was performed.

  “I’ll be gentle,” I said with a smile.

  “I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about you harvesting me and, before you can get me back together again, them finding out you’re still hooked up to their gear and beating you to the punch. I don’t ever want to be back in the Regolatore temple again.”

  “Better to get started now, then. Work fast.” I’d jazzed up in my head already what I wanted to do with Thadius’s fixins. I’d harvest him, and not a second would pass before I’d start putting him back together.

  “All right, well, if you say so.” Thadius put out his arms and closed his eyes. “I’m ready for my close-up.”

  Gimme.

  The catalog showed him in there, his recipe, his floating angel finding its place alongside Clifford, automatically paired.

  The rig, for that split second while I worked out in my mind what I wanted to do, was once again as it’d been for those eleven years: quiet and lonely. The wind tore through the place, finding the holes dotting the walls. It howled, and I could hear voices in it again immediately. They weren’t just my parents this time, or my sister asking if I wanted to come along. It was Clifford begging for forgiveness. Thadius saying all he wanted to do was help me avoid his mistakes. Suzanne’s understanding voice close and whispered and loud and quiet at the same time right in my ear.

  I bowed my head and began jazzing Clifford’s mind and experiences into a shell with the years of Thadius’s life printed on it. All his wrinkles and his bowling-pin silhouette brought on by bad diet, too much sorrow-drowning, and years wrongly pushed on him by the WTF. Post-A life had done nothing for his complexion, and this was what Clifford would now be able to run a hand across and feel. That the people he’d been with, double-crossed, and then tried to buy his way back into—what they had done to his versh twin. He’d wear his compatriot’s cruelty.

  I held my hands out, sockets tearing open. I winced, but it didn’t break my concentration.

  Here, have this.

  A skeleton, dancing up into formation, one bone at a time.

  Tendons, ligaments, muscles, fat, veins, flesh.

  Hair, freckles, wrinkles, clothes.

  Inside Thadius’s body: the mind of the Betrayer.

  When his eyes began to flutter and life had started to come back into him, I fetched a frying pan from the workbench. I craned the pan back and brained him with it. Not hard enough to kill him, mind you; just hard enough to keep him from trying to harvest me or attempt to run off. I laid him down on the floor, pulled him toward the wall, and lashed his wrist to a pipe, double-checking my knot. It felt wrong, hitting Thadius like that. But I couldn’t think of this heap of reconstructed fixins as him. If I’d done my jazzing correctly, Clifford would be in there.

  I turned away, put my hands out at the open spot on the floor.

  Clifford’s body, once complete, shuddered and slumped over, having to catch himself before spilling to the floor. He put a hand to his chest—then looked at his hand. He wiggled the thumb. He looked up at me. Wiggled the thumb again. Smiled.

  I put out my hand. “Tell me about asparagus.”

  “Cass? What the hell?”

  “I said, tell me about asparagus. If you’re really Thadius, then you’ll know what I mean.”

  He got himself standing straight. He ran a hand down his front, marveling at how flat his abdomen was now. His hands went up to his hair, his fingers combing back through its dark fullness again and again and again.

  “Say it.”

  “You were bein’ serious?” He noticed his original coil, tied to a wall pipe on the floor with a bleeding forehead. Then the frying pan. “Did you really have to do that to me?”

  “That’s not you. That’s Clifford now. Unless I did something wrong and you’re still in there. Now say it. I refuse to let him sleep with me again, in any definition of the phrase.”

  “You slept with him?”

  “Yes. Bad life choice, I know. Now tell me about goddamn asparagus, Thadius. Now.”

  “All right. Fine, fine.” He cleared his throat, bent back his head, and took in a deep breath. “I am here, my dear lady, to tell you that I am selling some asparagus . . .”

  I lowered my hand. “Good enough.”

  “You don’t want to do the whole thing?”

  “No. It’s you.” I clack-thumped forward, put my arms around him. I let the crutches fall to the sides, one hitting the metal floor, then the other. “It’s you.”

  * * *

  With the radio Squishy had made out of various electronics, I made the call. I acted like just some random do-gooder making an anonymous tip. “I know where Thadius Thumb is. He’s in a rowboat in Lake Superior. We just saw him, about a mile out from Duluth.”

  I shut off the radio, and we took Clifford down and put him in one of the rowboats, only then untying him.

  Sitting in the bobbing canoe, he looked at us. Me especially. Those same sad eyes he’d had when he heard “Without You” that night; Clifford’s eyes in Thadius’s wrinkled mug. “Listen, Cass. I—”

  “Save it.”

  “Come on. At least let me apologize.”

  I remained where I stood on the rig’s underside dock, Thadius beside me. He didn’t deserve the time, but something in me allowed it. “Okay.”

  “I just want to say . . . Maybe in
another versh, things work out for us. Maybe not, you know, in love or even living together, but maybe we’re friends. Maybe we’re really good friends.”

  I put my hand on Thadius’s shoulder beside me. “We are.”

  Clifford looked at me, then Thadius. “I guess there’s nothing I can say to that.” He took up the ores and began rowing out into the water. He had trouble with his rotator cuff of his left shoulder, but he put the paddle in on the right, then the left, moving away from the dock. Out beyond him, I could see three boats with motors setting out our way. I moved back toward the steps up into the rig. Thadius was way ahead of me, already going up them, stopping to turn around and put a hand out to help me. I could manage without the crutches, but I decided to take his hand anyway.

  We got to the top, watching as Clifford took one last peek over his shoulder as he cleared the cement legs of the rig and was now out into the open water. He turned to face the oncoming Smocks in the motorboats. He kept paddling to meet them in the middle.

  From portholes in the rig, Thadius and I watched. Clifford apparently had a change of heart when the Smocks had drawn in close. He tried paddling horizontally to try to cut away. It was no use. Two arms pushing ores was no match for a three-prop vessel. The boat’s wake made his flip, and they plucked him out of the water, harvested him right out where he was bobbing, thrashing, begging between gasps.

  I looked away. In my hands was the tablet with The Siren House loaded up as a PDF. I’d put it online here, just submit it as a free e-novel to anyone who cared to download it. DRM-free, so anyone who wanted could share it, spread it, do what they wanted with it. Maybe it’d gain traction and get published. Maybe it’d go nowhere. I just hoped someone stumbled across it, maybe knew someone named Cassetera Robuck and sent it her way. Even if she found it in a Smock-destroyed world and she was at her absolute lowest point, maybe it’d give her some semblance of hope. I wanted to be her Sherpa, her lighthouse, wherever she was. Even if just one Cass took it as motivation to change the world around her, my job was done.

  “What now?” Thadius said after the upload bar had filled and we got the confirmation message saying The Siren House was now online.

  “We go on a book tour,” I said and produced the versh hopper.

  We hit every available versh we could, uploading it to several websites across several vershes. We managed to avoid being detected by the Smocks, having to run a few times, Thadius having to carry me toward the end when my legs were really not doing well. I tried reconstructing something from the catalog one night, just a sweater since the versh we’d hopped into was cold, but it didn’t work. My sockets had grown over. Now it looked like I just had two scars on my palms, what looked like pale backslashes. We returned to our versh the day it was time for Clifford to be burned. The Smocks would have their last active scratcher nullified and our versh would be left alone.

  We spent the night in the shack. When we woke up, there was frost in our hair. I jumped seeing Clifford standing over me. I could never see that face as anyone but Clifford. Even though it was how Thadius had looked when he was younger. To me, they were still such separate people. “Come on, girlie,” he said. “I think it’s startin’.”

  I sat up and, through holes in the wall formed by rust, saw Superior Street. People were already heading toward the center of town. We donned our rags again, wrapped up our faces so only our eyes showed. By now I had to rely completely on my crutches to get around. I hated it, but at the same time, it was like riding a bike. Familiarity has both its ups and downs.

  Track 40

  THE BEGINNING IS THE END IS THE BEGINNING

  It was hard to separate Clifford from Thadius, seeing him being pulled from the wheeled cart with the barred windows.

  They’d stripped him of his clothes, beat him up some. I didn’t know why they’d bother, but I wasn’t really all that surprised either. They’d wanted Thadius for a very long time, and their zeal in having caught him showed in each purple mark.

  Suzanne emerged from the courthouse to look over all of us. I pulled my hood lower over my eyes. Begged for her to not look my way, not scan me with one stolen glance. I studied my feet between my crutch tips until I felt her gaze had moved on.

  It was sad she wouldn’t be able to remember any of what I’d told her. If it hadn’t been for the timed reconstructing required of the Smocks, I’m confident she may’ve given up the Regolatore life altogether. I enjoyed picturing her going to Cassettes Etcetera, walking in and asking the bearded proprietor if he had any Live—and how he, personally, pronounced the band’s name. I saw the scene as just a quick meet-cute, a what-could’ve-been moment where only one party was privy to the possibilities in another life, and the bittersweet tang of that. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t happen. Suzanne was here, her eyes hidden behind the gray mask she’d never fully take off. She was the same cruel blank slate as she’d been the night the Siren House was destroyed. The same as she’d been during the encounter in the cistern room at the temple. Never anything else. Stuck.

  I realized I was staring at her and looked away.

  Clifford spotted me, winked, and gave that little wave. Playing the part.

  I didn’t return the wink or the wave. I guess having read about this happening, I knew enough to not feel anything. I cried, yeah, but I didn’t let him see me do it.

  It really sucked he’d decided to do what he did. Perhaps in your versh he doesn’t turn his back on you. Maybe he’s a good person where you come from. Maybe you two end up together. Who knows? If it works out for you differently and things are great, I’m happy for you. I really am. Don’t let what this Clifford did influence it, either. He’s a great guy, just not this time.

  Just as the torch was thrown onto the pile at his feet, I turned around and began clack-thumping down to the port. If I said I felt nothing, I’d be a liar. The number of possibilities was too great and too present to ignore. Tiny changes is all it takes to tweak a person or a string of events, remember. Clifford may be up for canonization in some versh somewhere. Who knows? I know my Thadius was a good guy at least. Maybe not saint material but still pretty damn good. There’s all sorts of possibilities. I thought about the other Thadius and Cassetera we’d encountered in the Siren House for a split second. We all knew that it’d be dangerous to say even one iota of what was going on in our time lines right then, and having run into each other was something best forgotten. Still. I remain curious.

  I dropped my crutches into the rowboat and felt the pinch in my knee the second my full weight was back on my legs. I got on the walkie-talkie and told Thadius they bought it. I didn’t need him to ask me the question like in the other The Siren House. We didn’t have to stick to the script any longer.

  “Well, I guess that’s all she wrote, then,” he said.

  “It is for me.” I took one of the crutches to push me off from the dock. The rowboat was still jammed up between some boulders, and I began rocking side to side to try to free myself.

  A sputter of static came through the radio on the seat next to me; then I could hear the smile form Thadius’s words when he radioed again. “I hope you described me as dapper at some point. I always liked that word.”

  I smiled, set down the crutch, and took up the radio. “Maybe in the next draft.” The plan was to do another version of The Siren House later on, after all had been said and done. The version I’d put out was before Clifford got burned, and although I was confident that’d be it for us, that Thadius and I would move somewhere else, maybe go and try to find a new town to open another theater in, I still had to complete the story. I’d given any potential readers everything but the ending. You know, what I’m giving you here.

  I’d include the original opening, that one complete chapter that’d given me the kick in the butt I’d needed. Hopefully if something went wrong or the Smocks got word of such an e-book floating around, whoever downloaded it would at least see that much of it and feel as if they had to act. I might tweak it, though, ju
st to give better details about switching Clifford and Thadius, because I could imagine another me missing that idea. Who knows? There might be a few dumb Casseteras out there. Then again, maybe a few of the smart Casseteras would figure that out right away. Either way, if any of that was to happen, I had to write the rest of the darn thing.

  “See you at home?” Thadius said.

  “Yeppers.” He’d gotten his boat to run. Big enough to fit a family of six. It’d take us up and over to Chicago. Maybe we’d go to Detroit. We hadn’t decided yet. Wherever they needed a couple of storytellers, a couple of out-of-work scriptwriters, that’s where we’d go. “Be right there.”

  When I set the crutch aside and reached down to get the ore since I was now floating freely, a shadow fell across the bottom of the boat.

  My eyes darted up to the dock next to me, a gasp escaping my lips.

  A Smock, alone, stood over me. Cradled to its chest in one hand was a tablet. It pulled its other hand free of its cloak and fanned the fingers to show me the palm. The socket snapped open, trained on my chest.

  “Out,” she said.

  * * *

  She walked behind me as I clack-thumped along. She didn’t say where we were going, just to keep moving. She pointed left, I’d go left. She pointed right, I went right.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To judgment.”

  Suzanne. But she sounded chipper. I suppose when you’re a Smock looking for advancement, when you manage to snag a most-wanted scratcher and tie up a loose end, it’s as spirit lifting as receiving a fat check in the mail. I shouldn’t have been surprised they’d found The Siren House online in another versh. We’d practically carpet-bombed the Internet with the thing. I scolded myself. We should’ve waited until after they burned Clifford to upload it, until Thadius and I were long gone. Stupid. Stupid.