by Chuck Wendig
He leaps for the Pig. Grabs hold. Barely. Legs dragging behind him. Gobbo hanging off the legs.
The pig rounds the curve. There. Ahead Davey. Lying underneath the black thing, the reaper’s cloak, men leaping on top of the monster – the monster flinging them off like they’re straw-stuffed poppets.
They’re not Mookie.
The pig lurches forward–
Mookie clambers up over it, toward the front of the cart–
It crashes into the deadstop. Mookie uses the momentum to leap.
He tackles the shadow-thing. Goblins screeching behind him. One gob catches a shotgun blast to the dome – buckshot peels back its scalp like the skin of an orange. A Sandhog’s six-shooter punches a hole in the other.
Mookie wrestles with the reaper-cloak. He pulls it off Davey Morgan – but it has weight and energy like Mookie can’t believe and before he knows it the thing has him pinned. Bullets cut through the shadow and disappear inside it – the shadow-thing continues its assault unfazed. Knife fingers stick through Mookie’s breastbone like the flesh isn’t even there – he feels them cutting apart not his heart but rather, his soul –
Nora. Jess. Grampop. Pop. Worthless. Dumb. Bad Dad.
Ugly thoughts like tentacles reach up, coil around him, threaten to drag him down.
No. No time for this.
He roars. Lifts his head. Opens his mouth.
And bites for one of the only exposed features he can find.
He bites off one of its shiny eyes. Spits it out.
Light shines through the hole – a bloom of illumination like a sunbeam through morning mist. And then the thing keens, a high-pitched tone before diving off Mookie and through the floor. Like a wraith without substance, its flesh unreal.
7
A union within a union. A guild within a guild. Local 147-and-a-half. The men of the Sandhogs know about it, though they’ve little idea what it actually is. They think it’s some manner of “inner circle” composed of veterans of the Sandhog life who help shape policy and who know all the tricks. They know tricks, yes. They know a great deal. They’re the ones who know what’s really down there. The night the Sandhog demolition crew blew a hole in prehistoric rock and opened up a cave into a forgotten gobbo temple, the men there on that crew were the first. The ones that lived formed the pact. They wrote the charter. In union speak, everyone there bought the buck. Any Sandhog who sees something he’s not supposed to see, they rope him in. Though some find themselves invited, too. Tested by the others. Strong, smart, tough, and a little deranged: these are the traits that those men need. These are the traits necessary to stand between the safety and sanctity of the world above and the named and unnamed monsters of the Great Below.
– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below
The reaper-cloak gone, the gobbos dead, gun barrels swing toward Mookie.
Davey stands. Shaking. Flinty eyes casting about, trying to find a slippery grip on the world. The man – older now than Mookie is – looks rattled. He brushes it off, finally levels his stare at Mookie. “Mookie Pearl, as I live and breathe.”
“Davey Morgan.”
“Been a long fucking while, Pearl.”Loooong fookin’ wall.
“It has.”
Morgan shows his palms, lowers them – and as he does, the rest of the Sandhogs, a dozen or so men, lower their guns, axes, hammers.
“You bring these monsters to my doorstep?”
“Maybe. I dunno.”
Davey steps up to Mookie. His bushy caterpillar eyebrows arch. He clucks his tongue, then seems to make some internal decision.
Mookie knows it’s coming long before it hits – the old man telegraphs the punch so far in advance he might as well have sent message by way of an old limping donkey. Just the same, Mookie takes the hit. It’s owed to him.
But just to be sure, he growls:
“You get that one. But you won’t get a second.”
Davey cocks his fist back again.
The hand trembles.
Mookie gently shakes his head. Don’t.
Davey’s fist uncurls and he waves Mookie off. “Ain’t worth breaking my hand on your ugly underbitten jaw, Pearl.” He takes a bit of snuff from a Skor can, stuffs it between gum and lip. The other Sandhogs start to back away – they can sense the body language of their crew chief. They slowly move back to work, always keeping one eye on Mookie – a stranger in this place. “Fuck are you doin’ down here anyway?”
“On a job.”
“Listen to you. Job. This is a job, Pearl. The Sandhogs know the work.” Davey spits and the tobacco juice splashes against the gray back of a dead gobbo. “So, spill it. Whaddya looking for this time?”
“Looking for Death’s Head.”
Davey ill-stifles a bark of a laugh. “Right. You’re smarter than that. Or I thought you were – maybe I’ve been overestimating you all this time.”
“I know it’s a dead-end, but they told me to look so I’m looking.”
Suddenly, Davey switches tracks. “How’s the wife, the kid?”
Mookie knows what he’s doing. Davey’s sizing him up. Why, Mookie’s not sure. Maybe he really knows something.
“Been apart from the wife. Years now.”
“I think I remember hearing that. Your kid?”
“She’s fine.”
Davey smiles. “You’re lying. You got a bad tell, Pearl.” He taps his jaw. “You get tight right here. Muscles bunch up. Like the lie doesn’t want to come out and you have to force out of your mouth.”
“Fine. My daughter hates my guts.”
Another laugh from Davey. “Mine hates me, too. Cassie.”
“I remember her.” Their girls went to junior high together.
“Cassie’s a good kid. Wants to be a Hog.”
“They let women in now?”
“They do, at that. Oh, I scoffed at first too but some of these broads swing a hammer or hang wire-net better than a lot of the fat bastards that work on other crews. That fella over there–” Davey points to a Hog’s broad back in a reflective vest and slicker. “That’s no fella. That’s Honolulu. Samoan girl. Tireless worker. Doesn’t sleep.” Davey shrugs. “Just the same, Cassie can’t be a Sandhog. I won’t let her. It’s too crazy down here.”
As if for proof, he nudges a goblin corpse with a boot.
“You know what that thing was?” Mookie asked.
“The shadowy fucker? No. Never seen one. Came right for me, though.”
“It did.” Mookie sniffs. “Why’d it do that, you figure?”
“Fuck if I know.” Davey shifts from foot to foot, shoves his tongue in his cheek pocket. “What are you saying, Pearlie-boy?”
“I’m saying it went right over my head. Like it was coming for you.”
“You’re the one that brought this thing to my boys. Don’t go pointing fingers at me, ’less you want another jab to the chops–”
“What’d it come for, Davey?”
Davey’s hands curl into fists. “Fuck off, you asking me questions like that. Like I answer to you.”
“If they came once they’ll come again.”
“Let ’em come. I’ll be more ready next time.”
One of the Hogs behind Davey comes up. Mookie knows him from way back. Dutch, the radio guy. Not as old as Davey, but older than he was. Someone who’s been around. He sets a long-fingered hand on Davey’s shoulder and peers over a nose broken long ago by an errant pick-ax. Mookie hears the man mutter: “Just give it to him. Not doing us any good, is it?”
“Give me what?”
“I’m not giving it to this big bastard–” Davey, suddenly cagey, narrows his eyes and looks Mookie up and down. “Fine. You know what? Fuck it.” Fook it.
Davey fishes in his overalls underneath his slicker, withdraws something that looks like a little jeweled tea ball. Fake jewels. Just a trinket. Hangs on a small chain. He tosses it to Mookie. “I found a vein of it way down. About two years back one of
my guys, Goosey, got taken down past the Shallows, into the Tangle. I went after him, found this in the wall of a dead-end passage, next to a thread of rose quartz. I didn’t think it was anything but…”
Mookie flips the cheap little latch.
Inside, powder the color of blood. Bright and fresh. Like something spilled out of a throat-slit calf and dried to a flaky dust.
Holy crow. “This is Vermilion?”
“Uh-huh. I can’t vouch for the other colors, but now we know that Red and Blue are the real deal. Oakes maybe got something right.”
If Red is real…
Then maybe Death’s Head is, too.
“How do you know? You try it?”
“Once,” Davey says. “And never again.”
“Bad?”
“Never been out of control like that before. Way beyond what the Blue does for you. They call it the Red Rage for a reason.” Davey shudders. “Felt like it… took something from me, too. Can’t say what. Years of my life, maybe. So, fine. Take it. You can carry that burden. I don’t want it anymore.”
Mookie looks down at the little ball of red powder before snapping it closed again. No idea what he’ll ever do with this or what good it will be. Barter, maybe. Not that he wants some Mole Man jacked up on the Red Rage, but if it gets him closer to the Death’s Head, so be it.
Davey says suddenly, “You could come back, you know. To the guild. To the 147 ½. Once a Hog, always a Hog. Turn yourself around. Get away from that crowd you work with. Do some good down here. I got a place on my crew. Young fella, West Indian, name of Jamie that we called Cheeto, he caught a mean burn on his legs from the lye in the concrete and he’s out for a good long while – and you know, a man a mile and all.”
Mookie shuts him down. “No. I’m good where I’m at.”
“Course you are.” Davey scowls. “Whatever. Fine. Go on out of here, then. We’ve got work to do.”
“Can I take the pig?”
“You could use the walk.”
Mookie growls. “Later, Morgan.”
“Fuck you, Mikey.”
Nora’s on her way to meet a Trogbody called Kortz – she doesn’t know him, but what she does know is that soon the shit is really going to hit the fan and that means she’s going to need someone to protect her. The Trogs are good at that. Loyal to a fault. Thick body, thick skull. Dumb as the rocks they’re made of, most times.
Reminds her of her father.
But then, as she’s crossing the street to hit the subway, the text comes in.
Nobody’s gonna b home come ovr <3
She smiles. Texts back: No guards?
The reply: No guards all clear
She texts back:
OMW
And then she is truly on her way.
It’s almost midnight when Mookie emerges, born out of the dark. Night in New York is never dark, not really; the sun may set, but the lights are always on. Traffic lights, streetlights, headlights, lights from many windows and many doors. All of it painting the sky in a rusty glow, an orange-brown smear that sometimes stands punctuated with pockets of other color – a blue wash from the tip of a skyscraper, a purple spotlight from some new club opening up. Muddy watercolors.
Even if all those lights went out, it’d still be brighter than the spaces beneath.
And so when Mookie once again rises into the world, he’s once more forced to narrow his eyes. Soon his brow hurts from squinting.
Sometimes he thinks: maybe I belong down there.
He knows he’s gotta call Casimir. Tell the kid something.
Should’ve never taken this job, Mookie thinks. Should’ve never told that kid I’d have a look. Because even if the Red is real, the Purple probably ain’t. And if it is, Mookie’s no closer to finding it – which means the old man is going to die and this coltish kid is going to end up as Boss. Worse, he’s going to blame Mookie for failing him.
Damned in all directions.
All that sits in his gut like a ten-pound barbell. The Red, the Blue, the search for Death’s Hand, the changing of the guard. It’s all too much for Mookie. He looks at his phone – again that thought: you better call Casimir, get it over with – and then swiftly pockets it. He’ll call the kid later. For now, he cleaves to comfort: his stomach growls like a starving bear.
He’ll put off the call. Just for tonight. Time to murder some food. Not literally. Not this time. To do that – to go select a hog (a real hog, not a Sandhog), he’s gotta take a trip out of the city to one of the farms. Maybe Butter Moon, where Charlie Predwick raises beautiful Berkshire hogs, or maybe Red Bridge Farm, where Maeby and Mark Cunningham have a pen of wild Mangalitsa – close enough to boar that the pork is wild, gamy, musky. For now, that’s not an option. He’s in the city and he’s got work to do, so he figures it’s off to see Karyn.
Karyn McClaskey – little hipster chick inked from wrists to neck to ankles. Butcher. The girl loves all parts of the pork, especially the strange parts. Ears and face-meats, guts and gonads. She’ll even cook the tail. Braise it in beer. Then bread it. Then fry it.
His stomach does happy somersaults just thinking about it.
Last time Mookie checked, she’s dating one of the Get-Em-Girls, too. Not his place to judge. (Though Karyn’s always picked the crazy girls.)
A trip to Karyn’s will be good. He needs something to distract him. He’s still riding the tail-end of the Blazes. Makes him feel buzzy and bee-stung. An antenna drawing in too much noise, not enough signal. When that dark shadow-thing attacked him, it poked holes inside him, holes he can’t seem to plug up, holes through which gush visions of Nora and Jess, images of cancer and shadow.
Mookie comes up out of a metal cellar door in a West side alley, and his phone suddenly goes full tilt like a juggled pinball machine. It buzzes and lights up once, twice, again and again.
He’s got ten new messages.
They’re all from Werth. The old goat has the patience of a coked-up mosquito.
Mookie sighs, then thumbs redial without listening to the messages.
“Fuck, Mook, where you been?” That’s how Werth answers.
“Downstairs. I got something. We thought it wasn’t real, but I got–”
“No time for that. Later. Something bad has happened.”
“What?”
“Someone murdered Casimir Zoladski.”
PART TWO
BLOOD & BRINE
8
The Underworld in myth has long been associated with the dead – it is in the low places that the souls and spirits of the departed go in many of the old stories, sometimes to be castigated for their earthly ways, sometimes because that’s where the dead must go. It has long been believed that this Underworld, our own Great Below, was not like that: it was a physical place, not a spiritual one. Its walls were granite and quartz, basalt and schist – they were neither slick with spectral ectoplasm nor formed of the non-corporeal dreams of the freshly demised. The monsters of the deep were real, it seemed, and ghosts – if they were real at all – were not part of that place. We were, of course, wrong.
– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below
Mookie doesn’t belong in this neighborhood. Upper East Side, Museum Mile, Central Park – it smells of money. It’s all trees and top-shelf condos and mansions crammed next to mansions. It’s restaurants that wouldn’t let him through the front door (much as he might secretly like the chance), people with dogs from breeds he’s never heard of and probably couldn’t pronounce, views of the city and the park that some buyers would literally kill for.
The air, fresh, crisp. Like the bite of an apple.
No gangs here. Nobody owns this territory – not the Get-Em-Girls, not the Three-Eyed Jacks or the Switchblade Charlies. The gobbos try once in a while, but neighborhoods like this are well-lit, clean, lots of cops. The gobs and other Underworld beasties can masquerade, but the mask is imperfect. And it’s only skin deep. Besides, the Organization has a strong pre
sence here. The Boss. Couple lieutenants living in the neighborhood. Most they get is some gobbos slinging Blue where they shouldn’t.
Mookie comes up on the Boss’s place – middle of the block off of 5th on 82nd Street. In some ways the mansion looks like a long, lean face with many eyes and a mean, hungry mouth.
Through the front door.
He thinks for a moment he has the wrong house. His heavy boots fall on black marble, kicking up little clouds of powder and leaving behind a small trail of sand, and all of it echoes, and nobody’s here, and for a second, Mookie’s about to back out slowly–
He smells something. A whiff of a scent…
Then: Mookie hears a ding, and crossing the foyer comes Werth, hobbling along on his cane.
Werth, the old goat. Literally so. He with a pair of cracked hooves clomping on the floor and a set of ram’s horns jutting out over his furry, crooked ears. Chin whiskers now more than that – from his jaw sprouts a wispy salt-and-pepper goat’s beard. His face is still human. Hands, too. The rest of him: not so much. All this, revealed by the Blue.
Mookie asks, “What happened?”
“C’mon. Upstairs.”
“Where is everybody?”
“We’re the ones they called.”
“Are we at war?”
Werth pauses. “Not yet. Like I said: upstairs, let’s go, let’s go.”
Mookie feels suddenly raw, like skin peeling off a popped blister. When Cerulean leaves you, it’ll do that. Make you feel restless, listless, tired and wound up all at the same time as if you just pounded a double-espresso right before sucking down half-a-bottle of codeine cough syrup.
The Blazes gutter and go out. Werth goes from goatman to just a man in the blink of an eye. The Blue is gone. Blindness to that world returns.
Werth asks, “You OK?”
Mookie doesn’t say shit. He just keeps walking.
Upstairs, then.
Werth steps into the elevator. Mookie pulls the wrought iron door across. Inside are old elevator buttons like something off an antique typewriter.
As they go up, Werth looks at Mookie’s side. The shirt soaked through from where the gobbos got him. Arm, too. “You tussle with someone?”