The Barrow Will Send What it May

by Margaret Killjoy

  We must have gone that mile at a breathtaking speed, because Thursday yelled “Turn!” just as he jerked the wheel and sent those of us in back sliding into one another.

  The books held.

  Of all the ways to die, I think being pummeled to death by trashy hetero romance novels might be the worst. Or best. Either way, it didn’t turn out to be my fate.

  We screeched to a stop, which slammed us forward, and Thursday killed the engine. I opened the side door and stumbled out, desperate to stand on solid ground.

  At the other end of the short gravel parking lot, a 1950s pickup truck sat empty.

  “We should split up,” Thursday said. “Find her faster.”

  “Oh,” Vulture said, pulling out his phone. “I know where she is. Or at least her bicycle.”

  He opened an app called “Find My Phone” and a map filled the screen, with a dot representing us and a dot representing, presumably, some third phone he’d hidden on Isola’s bicycle.

  “Where do you get that many phones?” I asked.

  “I steal them from people,” Vulture said.

  The graveyard was surprisingly large for such a small town, and like the town itself it looked like it had seen better days. Most of the stones were small and worn. Many were cracked or tipped over. Huge oaks sat atop hills and cast moon shadows across the haphazardly maintained lawn.

  Somewhere in all of this was a back-from-the-dead woman and a magician who had pulled off the kind of miracles that people write bibles about. Who had also just killed Heather. Well, maybe it wasn’t fair to blame him for Heather. I wasn’t feeling fair.

  Whenever I got out of this alive and not in prison, I was going to sit down and have myself a well-deserved panic attack.

  Thursday had his gun held slack at his side as we moved through the graveyard. Brynn had her baton out. Mine was lost somewhere in Iowa, so I took out my knife. Vulture stopped to take a picture of a tombstone with the name HARDWOOD.

  We crossed to the very back of the cemetery, where an iron fence separated lawn from forest. Several of the vertical bars were missing, and Vulture led us through the gap and into the trees.

  “Not much farther,” he whispered.

  He was right.

  A muddy impromptu path led us through young pines to a small clearing. A red bicycle leaned against a tree near us. Ten feet away, in the light of Vulture’s phone’s flashlight, Isola stood over two unmarked, impromptu tombstones. She still wore the same black slip dress, but she’d paired it with sensible hiking shoes.

  “Don’t know how you followed me,” she said, without turning around. Cut wildflowers, in blues and reds, sat at the foot of each stone. “But you shouldn’t have.”

  “Yeah, let me guess,” I said, “it isn’t safe.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  Her back was still to us, but she pointed at each stone in turn. “Loki, Damien.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “The same thing that will happen to you.”

  “Sebastian Miller?” I asked.

  I’d seen magic close up and personal. Still, though, it was hard to be afraid of some man while I had my friends at my side, armed and on guard.

  She turned to look at me. I doubted she could see us, because we had a light on her. She nodded. Her blond hair hung loose over her black slip and alabaster skin, and just for a moment I thought we were talking to a ghost. She was real, though. She was alive. Which was scarier.

  “Are you working with him?” I asked.

  “Loki came to town in December,” she said, instead of answering me. “They rode in on a salt truck that had picked them up hitching, and they showed up with a whole suitcase full of stolen books and one hell of a grin across their face. Said we’d never believe it. They showed us The Book of Barrow and yeah, they were right, we didn’t believe it. Didn’t believe it was real.”

  She sat cross-legged, there in the mud, resting her head against the stone she’d called Damien.

  “So they said they’d prove it. Vasilis and Heather tried to talk us out of it, but you don’t talk Loki out of doing things, Loki talks you into doing things. So we went out with snow chains and snowshoes and snow boots and snow everything to a backwoods spot where Damien once saw a bear. Figured we’d catch it hibernating. Shoot it. Bring it back to life.”

  “What could be easier?” I said.

  “He found us the first night. We’d barely made it three miles from the trailhead. He got us while we were asleep. Tranquilizers, I think. I go to bed in a tent, and I wake up in a dark place. Warm, damp, dark. Gag in my mouth. Shooter’s muffs over my ears. Then I’m unconscious again, then I’m awake. That cycled who knows how many times.”

  “Oh god,” Vulture said. “Oh god.”

  “He didn’t torture me. I think he wanted us out cold the entire time. But I know that he killed me. I was so delirious, the whole time. Yet when he killed me, when he put a needle in my arm and killed me, I knew. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. I knew I was dying. Then I was awake, months later.”

  “Why’d he let you go?” I asked.

  “Movement!” Thursday shouted. His held his gun in a two-handed grip, tracking something through the trees.

  Brynn dashed into the darkness. Not toward the movement, not away from it. Parallel.

  A crack, not as loud as gunfire, pierced the air. Thursday fired in response and deafened us.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  It took a while before the words registered. But Sebastian Miller came out of the trees and into the glow of Vulture’s flashlight with his hands above his head, a rifle held loose by the barrel. He wore camo head to toe, hunter’s camo, the kind with actual pictures of trees and leaves printed on it. It had to be him. I barely recognized him from his own photo—not that he looked different, but that his face was so forgettable. It was like face camo, being as unremarkable looking as that.

  I turned back to Isola. Her head lolled from side to side, then she dropped forward with a confused look in her eyes. Her face struck the mud. Two running strides and I was next to her, my hand feeling for a pulse for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.

  “If she’s dead, you’re dead,” Thursday said.

  “Hear me out,” Sebastian said.

  “She’s alive,” I said. Her pulse was strong. Then I found the dart, a simple tranquilizer round projecting from her shoulder. He was a pretty fucking bad shot. No one aims for a shoulder . . . he was aiming center mass and hit high right. I pulled out the dart.

  “Kill him anyway,” Vulture said.

  “Hear me out.”

  “What?!” Thursday roared.

  “One of you asked why I let her go. I let her go because I’m not a monster. I won’t keep a girl prisoner in my basement forever, and I didn’t think I had it in me to kill her twice. But I should have.”

  “Why’s that?” Thursday asked.

  “I don’t know how much you know about any of this,” Sebastian said. “Magic, resurrection, everything. But it’s dangerous. Real, real dangerous.”

  “You came here to kill her because you actually bothered finishing the fucking book,” I accused him. “You got to the good part, with the apocalypse, and you had, what, resurrecter’s remorse?”

  “You could say that,” he said. “But listen. I’ve got everything under control. This will all be over soon, back to how it was, the world no closer to its end.”

  “Kill him anyway,” Vulture repeated.

  Brynn appeared behind him, struck him with her baton. He stumbled, and she was on him. He was half again her weight, and she got him to the ground without a problem.

  “Begone!” he shouted. His words cut through the air louder than I felt they ought to have. A flash of light caused my vision to stutter, a series of bangs deafened me again, and he was gone.

  “Fuck,” Brynn said, lurching to her feet. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m goin
g to kill that man!”

  * * *

  We got Isola to the van and drove back to the library in silence. Two doors down from Isola’s squat, the shiny black SUV was parked in front of the still-operational bed-and-breakfast. Feds don’t stay at bed-and-breakfasts, do they?

  Thursday pulled the van up alongside the curb next to the library. Our bikes were back—presumably Vulture had grabbed them the night before.

  “Someone’s got to get Gertrude,” I said.

  “Oh fuck,” Thursday said. “He would kill her, wouldn’t he?”

  “I’ll go,” Brynn said.

  “I’m coming with you,” Thursday said.

  “Good luck,” I said. Fear of missing out and protectiveness argued in favor of me going too, but if Brynn and Thursday couldn’t handle it, having me along wouldn’t change that. Vulture, reluctantly, passed Brynn his phone and opened up a map with Gertrude’s house pinned on it. Vulture had been busy.

  Brynn and Doomsday took off on bikes. Vulture and I carried Isola into the library and up the stairs to lay her down in her old bed. Where she’d lived with her since-murdered partner. The bed she’d consciously avoided ever since her return.

  Still, we had to keep her safe. As safe as we could.

  Safer than we’d kept Heather.

  Vasilis was sleeping in the living room when we came in. Doomsday was absorbed in a book, sitting with the window in sight and her handgun on the table next to her in easy reach.

  “What happened?” she asked, standing.

  I’d been a bit jealous that she’d gotten to stay at home. But she moved like a woman three times her age, exhausted, presumably from the effort of researching, standing guard, and consoling our host.

  “Tranq dart,” I said.

  Doomsday shot a look at Vulture.

  “Not me!” he said. “I don’t even own a dart gun yet. It was Mr. Miller. He was going to kill her! Again!”

  “How long is she going to be out?” Doomsday asked, again looking at Vulture.

  “I don’t know, because I have never tranquilized a human.” Then he thought for a moment. “I have never tranquilized a human with a dart, nor have I tranquilized an unwilling human. I also don’t know what agent he used, and basically I have no idea.”

  Screams broke into the living room, from the bedroom.

  “Not long,” Vulture answered, authoritatively.

  * * *

  “I think he killed all three of us,” Isola said. She was sweating. Maybe from the heat but probably from the drugs or just outright fear. “I think he killed one of us to resurrect me. I think I was the test subject. Then he killed whoever was left to bring back Gertrude.”

  “Oh fuck,” I said. I couldn’t come up with a better way to comfort someone who’d been through worse than I would have imagined possible.

  “You know what I’ve spent all this time thinking about? Instead of thinking about things like how do I get better or how do I kill that man, what really keeps me up at night?”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  We were strangers, really. I didn’t want to crowd her. I sat on the bed, about a foot away from her. Doomsday sat on a chair next to us.

  “I don’t know which of them died for which of us. I don’t know if Loki died to resurrect me or if Damien did. It doesn’t matter. I know that. I don’t think anyone’s soul has joined mine. But it . . . it fucks me up. Barrow stands by the gate and he let me slip out into the land of the living when it opened for . . . when it opened for who?”

  I put a tentative hand on her shoulder. She jerked, and I almost pulled it away, but she grabbed my wrist and held my hand against her.

  “I haven’t touched anyone in three months,” she said. “Not once. Not since before I died.”

  “Oh, honey,” Doomsday said. She stood up from the chair, sat down next to me on the bed.

  “Do you want us to hold you?” I asked.

  She stared at the ceiling for a moment, then nodded.

  We laid down on either side of her and held her, and she cried. Nothing like the hacking, fearful sobs we’d heard from Vasilis the night before. She just cried. After a while, I did too. She’d kill me if I told anyone, I don’t doubt, but I’m pretty sure Doomsday did too.

  We need people.

  It’s not really giving up our freedom to be close with people. Because freedom only exists in relation to other people. I thought I needed to be left alone. I just needed people. Good people.

  Like my murderous witch friend or this dead stranger.

  Outside the window, the sun finally, gracefully, rose.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, the library door opened and shut and several pairs of feet tromped up the stairs.

  “Hey,” Thursday shouted. “We’re back.”

  More shuffling of feet, as someone, presumably Thursday, walked through the whole of the apartment. At last, he opened the door to the room we were in.

  “Where’s Vasilis?”

  SIX

  “Son of a shit!” Thursday roared, running down the stairs to search the library below.

  Gertrude stood in the living room, staring at Heather. A weak smile sat on the older woman’s lips, and fear and sadness were fighting for control of her eyes.

  “He killed her?” she asked, running a finger along Heather’s cheek.

  We really had to do something with the body. I never would have guessed I’d ever be too busy to deal with the dead body of a new friend, but there we were, scrambling to keep everyone else still alive while a corpse grew cold on the table. How long till it started to rot?

  “Sort of,” I answered.

  “He definitely killed me, though.” Isola walked into the room. “And he killed two of my friends. To bring you back.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I . . . didn’t know.”

  I couldn’t get a good read on whether or not she was lying.

  “What’s your story?” I asked. “For real. What happened to you?”

  “I died of cancer. I remember dying. It was peaceful—a sharp end to pain. Like falling asleep, but simpler, better. I was in the hospital, in Billings, and there were flowers everywhere, and he was next to me, holding my hand. He was crying. We never had children, him and me. I never wanted them. Just for a second, I wished I’d had kids. Someone else for him to love. He’s never been good at not having someone to love, and I worried about him. I wanted to tell him it was fine. I wanted to tell him I was going to a better place, that he could still love me, or love someone else too, and that I’d see him again. But I didn’t say anything. It was all too complicated, I didn’t know how to say it. I just let myself die.”

  I nodded.

  “Then I woke up in our bed, here in town. I’d died with snow out the window; I woke up to the sound of summer birds. Six months had gone by. He told me what he’d done . . . a bit of it. Only part of it, I’m guessing. He told me he’d brought me back to be with him. He told me he couldn’t live without me.”

  “And you left him?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say anything at all for a whole day. I laid in bed, thinking about everything. He was respectful; he noticed I wasn’t feeling right and he slept on a cot next to our bed. He only left my side to bring me food and water. He just sat there, reading books, while I laid there, thinking it over.”

  There are so many sides to every person.

  “After I stayed up through the night, when the sun rose again, I looked at him, and the first words I said were ‘Till death do we part.’ Then I told him it’s not right, what he did. I told him the dead are supposed to stay dead and what he’d done wasn’t right by God. I’d always known and loved God more than my husband did, and my husband had always loved me more than he’d loved God. So I moved out, simple as that. That was the last I’d ever wanted to think about any of it. Then your friends show up tonight, tell me he’s liable to kill me. Part of me thinks he’d be right to do it. Most of me, though, is just damn scared.”

&n
bsp; Vulture put his arm around Gertrude, and she hugged him.

  I decided I believed her. Not completely, but you don’t need to believe someone completely to choose to believe them enough that you can act on their words.

  “One of the books is missing,” Doomsday said, crouched next to the stack of books on the floor. “Small one. Gold spine, black cover. It’s where I learned about witch’s fire.” She looked up toward the window, where she’d been sitting earlier. “Fucking gun is gone too. Getting fucking sick of people stealing my gun.”

  “Vasilis went to the gift shop, I bet,” I said. “He’s trying to get into the basement, trying to get the book without waiting for us.”

  I thought that through for another moment.

  “He wants the book because he’s going to try to resurrect Heather. I bet he’ll kill Mr. Miller to do it.”

  “He seemed desperate,” Doomsday said. “But I didn’t realize he was both desperate and stupid.”

  “Men will do anything if they think it’s in the best interest of some woman they love,” Gertrude said. “Whether or not the woman agrees.”

  Thursday rushed back up the stairs, slamming open the apartment door. “He’s not in the library. I checked everywhere.”

  “He probably went after Sebastian,” I said.

  “Okay,” Thursday said. “Vulture, Brynn, Danielle, we’ll go after him? Doom, you stay here, guard these two?”

  * * *

  The town was just starting to rise as we tore down the main road on bikes, and people came out of stores on the main strip to stand on the boardwalk and stare.

  Crows and magpies sat on the power lines, watching us too.

  We hit the one traffic light on a red and waited, though there were no cars coming in any direction.

  Thursday pulled up beside me. “Feel like it’s high noon or something.” He laughed.

  I heard shouting up ahead and ran the light.

  Vasilis and Sebastian stood in the shadow of the tyrannosaur, not ten feet distant from each other, weapons leveled. Vasilis held Doomsday’s pistol in a one-handed, amateur grip. Sebastian held a bolt-action hunting rifle, shouldered.