by Chuck Wendig
11
The horror of the half-and-half is unparalleled. Consider it: you are a child with only one human parent. Your other parent is no parent at all, merely a contributor of darkly squirming seed, a mote of ill magic spawned in the cracks and crevices of the Great Below. It happens however it happens: a man stumbles into a storm drain or rocky grotto, is seduced by gobbos who to him look like lovely lasses with their bosoms bared. Or shadows creep up from the fraught fissures and take a woman in her bed – either by the lie of a human façade or by malevolent force. The result is always the same: a pregnancy. If it is the monster that is full with child, then that child will most likely be born down in the dark, and its humanity will forever be a liability. At its best, gobbos sometimes use such hybrid children as mules. At the worst, they are sacrifices to the deepest gods or test subjects for some strange new weapon. If it is a human mother whose belly has grown round with the dread energies of the Underworld, then she will most surely perish during birth; I’ve not yet heard of one who survived. The child is ever part human, yes – in all the weakest ways. And also part monster, in all the strangest ways. The design of the monstrous half cannot be predicted as it follows no discernible pattern nor does it seem related to the inhuman parentage. I’ve seen and heard tell of half-and-halfs who look like minotaurs or mermaids, or who have the flesh of reptiles or the insect limbs of pale cave crickets. One thing can be sure: they are embraced by neither world but possess the power and frailty of each. Our world sees them as human, but a human that doesn’t quite seem right. The world below sees them as human, too – a human that will never belong. It is a horror, to be sure, but in my most sleepless nights I wonder if I would’ve been better born among them. I feel as a man between worlds.
– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below
Werth’s phone rings. He fishes for it in his pocket, tilts it up–
It’s Mookie.
“Mook,” Werth says, answering.
“Where you at?” Mookie asks.
“Out.” He clears his throat. “And about.”
“I got a line on Nora.”
“Good. Whatcha got?”
“She’s with the Get-Em-Girls.”
Werth sniffs. “You don’t say.”
“Yeah. They got a little place carved out of the Great Below. It’s a warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen. I think I know the place. Couple blocks from Port Authority. I think the place is a gateway to the Deep Downstairs.” Upstairs, downstairs. This world, that world. Earth, and Hell. Werth doesn’t like that place. He likes it up here.
“And you think Nora’s with them,” Werth says.
“I talked to Smiley. He’d know.”
“Good. I’ll meet you there.”
“How close are you?” Mookie asks.
“I’m uhh, a ways away yet.”
“I’m in Chinatown. Meet there?”
“See you inside of an hour – 46th and 10th.”
Werth punches the end call button.
Then he looks up at the warehouse where the Girls are hiding Nora Pearl. He reaches in the trunk of his 1988 Cadillac Seville, pulls a Winchester Super X 12 gauge from inside. Thumbs five shells into the gun’s undercarriage, saving the sixth for the chamber.
He slides the action forward, thumbs the safety off, and heads toward the warehouse door. It’s a vertical warehouse – tall, narrow, brick the color of dried blood. Looks like an old fire station.
Door’s got a cage over it. Locked with a chain-and-padlock.
If Mookie were here, Werth might be able to ask the big lug to just punch it into smelt. Or bite through it like a circus performer. But this isn’t a job Mookie needs to be around for. It’s 4am, nobody’s really up yet, and it’s the same city it always was where something bad happens and nobody calls the cops…
Werth stands back. Levels the gun.
Choom.
The lock blasts open.
The cage grate squeaks open.
Werth tries the door behind it. Unlocked. Good.
Into darkness, then. He can make out shapes. A desk to his right. Ahead, narrow shelves with narrower aisles. They look empty, but it’s hard to tell. He thinks to pull out the little flashlight he’s got in his pocket, but all a flashlight does in a situation like this is give someone something to shoot at.
Instead, he creeps. Let’s his eyes adjust. Creeping doesn’t come naturally for him. He’s got a limp and, to those who can see them, a pair of cracked goat hooves that would easily fit a set of Clydesdale horseshoes. Even if someone were looking at him blind, they’d still hear the way he clomps around like a clumsy donkey.
So, creeping takes extra effort. It’s almost comical, he figures – raise one leg up, bent at the knee, gentle fall. Like Elmer Fudd sneaking up on that asshole rabbit.
He manages.
And his eyes adjust.
He keeps his finger on the shotgun trigger. Just in case.
He does a serpentine. Down one aisle. Up another. Sees now that the stacks are metal frames with splintery plywood shelves. And, like he figured, nothing on them but cobwebs and little herds of tumbling dustballs.
Finally, he makes the whole circuit.
Nothing. And no one.
Certainly no floor blown out. No way to the deep downstairs.
They’re gone. Those squirrelly bitches up and left. They knew they were on the radar, and so they set up a dummy location for just such a time like this. Confirms doubly that Nora isn’t operating alone; they’re with her on this. With her lock, stock, and barrel.
And suddenly it makes sense. The front door is padlocked. On the outside. Nobody goes out that way. Comes in, maybe. But never goes out. This is just a ruse. A front.
Shitfuck.
He’s not going to get to kill Nora Pearl today. And that, make no mistake, is what he’s here to do: kill that little bitch. She tweaked Mookie’s head last year, led him around by his nose until he cleaned out that big nest of goblins, then took over a little slice of the Blue trade. She’s been moving and shaking ever since, and now to hear that she killed Casimir which means she’s probably gunning for the Boss, well…
Oh, and then there’s that other thing – she shot Werth in the fucking hip. He owes her for the limp. He owes her ten times what he got in pain.
So to lose the chance to pop her today…
Whoa, hold up. What’s this?
Werth sees something. Just a shape of an image on the back brick wall.
Flashlight time. He pops the flashlight, turns it on, screws it between his lips like a fat cigar, and walks forward.
Well, looky-looky.
It’s their mark. Their sigil. Painted on the wall like graffiti.
A girl’s hand. Thorn tat on the wrist.
The hand holds an upside-down roller skate like it’s a gun. The skate is Pepto pink. The wheels are robin’s egg blue. Their gang colors.
Inked on the side of the skate: GEG.
Get-Em-Girls.
They use this sign to mark their territory. Which encompasses parts of Hell’s Kitchen – oh, pardon, Mid-Clinton-West-Town-Bullshitland or whatever they’re calling it now – and the northernmost blocks of Chelsea. That means this is their place. Or was, at least.
Werth runs his hands over the mark.
The floor judders beneath him. Just a faint tremor.
He starts to wonder what that means, but doesn’t need to wonder long.
Because the floor drops out from under him, and he plummets into darkness.
The flashlight spins in the air. Drunken strobe.
Werth sees he’s falling down a cylindrical shaft.
Sees more red brick.
And a ladder, too – a metal ladder bolted in. He reaches for it – the gun falling from his hands – and he starts to catch a cold rung, but he’s falling too hard, too fast. His wrist twists. He yelps in pain. His body bounces off the shaft wall. His head hits the ladder – gunggggg – and stars explode behind his eyes
.
Then the ladder is gone.
So too is the brick.
His hooves hit rocky ground. Pain shoots up into his hip.
That old wound reawakens like a sleeping dragon with a forge-hot sword shoved up its nethers. It’s lightning and salt, fire and spear. Werth drops, rolls onto his side.
He whimpers.
He hates that he whimpers.
His eyes adjust. It doesn’t take long.
It’s lit down here. With torches bolted to rocky walls. And a shitload of candles.
Mattresses on the floor. Couple wooden barrels and oil drums – some holding candles, others turned into tables. Posters on the wall: old movie advertisements. Scarface. Taxi Driver. Zardoz, of all things. On the black, wet walls are pink and blue spray paint. GEG. Graffiti images of skates. Some held like guns, as in their mark. Others upright, with blue flame belching out of the top.
Not far away is the shotgun.
Werth reaches for it.
An oxblood Doc Marten stomps down on it. And pulls it away.
Shadows encircle and close in.
Here comes the girl gang.
Faux 1950s punk abounds. Hairnets and garter belts. Polka dots and cherry lips. A whiff of Rosie the Riveter meets the girls from Grease, with a heavy vibe of neo-future dystopian Bettie Page.
A dozen of them close in. Like wolves descending upon a fallen goat.
One steps out past the gang line. Ravensblack hair with a shock of electric blue bangs. Black button down shirt and jeans so tight they may be spray-painted on. Hanging at one side, off the girl’s neon blue belt, is a pair of nuclear pink skates. Hanging at the other side is what looks to be a Bowie knife held fast in its sheath.
She’s a kid to him – he’s got twenty years on her at least – but older than most of the girls here.
Werth knows her. Or, knows of her.
She’s the head of the Get-Em-Girls. Has been for damn near a decade. Kelly McClure is her name.
But she goes by “Skelly”.
As evidenced by the white skeleton stitched into the thighs of her jeans.
And the ink-black skulls stitched into the sides of her hot pink skates.
And the silver skull – mouth open in horror – that tops the Bowie knife’s hilt.
She rests her hand on that silver skull just now. Blue nails clicking against it.
“What’s buzzin’, cousin?” Her voice is a long slow pull of whiskey. Not the gargling glass cheap shit, but smooth stuff. An expensive pour that goes down like warm butter. “You’re Werth. I got that right?”
“Yeah, that’s–” He winces. Even talking sends jags of pain into his hip. “Yeah.”
Skelly looks to another girl: a real dieselpunk sweetie, cherub cheeks and thick hips and a tat of a big-ass fire-wreathed wrench on her one bicep. “Lulu, gimme the gun.”
The other girl tosses Skelly a gun. His gun. The shotgun.
Skelly looks the gun up and down. Then she racks the pump – the shell currently in the chamber flips out onto the hard rocky ground.
She does it five more times. Shells bouncing on stone. Until none are left.
Then she hands the gun back to Lulu.
“We don’t like guns,” she says.
“I know.”
“You brought a gun into our home.”
“And what a nice home.”
“It does us all right.”
“I gotta ask, though. You ladies piss in a communal bucket? What do you do with your tampons? Just fling them into the corner? If you’re all on the same cycle–”
She steps forward, puts her boot on his hip. And presses down. Misery. Sheer misery that refuses to stay contained to that one space. It’s like touching a downed power wire. White. Hot. Cold. He cries out. She steps off.
He has to blink back tears. Suck back a snot bubble.
“You know,” she says, “being a woman isn’t easy. It’s tricky sometimes. But I’ll tell you if there’s one advantage we have, it’s that everybody always seems to underestimate what we can and will do. Men, mostly – but even other women do it. Isn’t that sad? It lets us get away with a lot, daddy-o. Lets us pull little surprises. Lets us get tricky.”
“Fuck you.”
“You want me to stand on that broken coat-rack you call a body again? Maybe we’ll all have a go. Use you like a trampoline. Sound fun, sugarplum?”
He winces past the pain and offers a placating smile. “My… apologies. Ma’am.”
“That’s better. I like a puppy knows when it’s licked. Keep showing your belly and maybe you’ll get out of here alive.”
“Wasn’t sure that was an option.”
Now a new voice: “We need a messenger.”
He knows that voice.
He heard it one time. And it told him sorry just before a bullet tore into him.
Nora Pearl. Persephone.
She steps up. And he can see that she’s not with these girls. Not really. Nora looks like she did a year ago, if a bit more made-up. But it’s still the same costume: navy cardigan, a tartan skirt. Like she’s jailbait, still in high school.
Werth can’t even think of something snappy to say. He just waits there. Seething.
“You look a little pale,” Nora says to him. “You feeling OK?”
“I should kill you.”
“That’s what you came to do. Isn’t it?” With the toe of her shoe, she kicks a few 12-gauge shells around. “Oops.”
“You’re in deep water, little girl.”
“To carry the metaphor, I’m actually sailing on top of the water in my pretty pink sailboat. You’re the one sinking beneath the water, dude. You just fell two stories. Possibly broke your leg or, at the least, aggravated an old wound–”
“An old wound you gave me.”
“And to make it worse, your Boss is dying. And everyone knows it. You know how everyone knows? Because I told them. They’re going to come for you guys. And they’re going to tear your little Organization apart, limb by limb.”
“The Organization is all you piss-ant gangs have protecting you from the–”
“From the Underworld?” She snorts. “Please. I think you’re keeping us from it. Keeping us from all the awesome. We want to get rich and you won’t let us.” She fakes a pout.”You’ve gotten fat and comfortable in your beds and didn’t see the rats in the walls, Werth, but the rats see you.” She mimes a rat gnawing and nibbling. Then laughs.
“From sailboats to rats. Now you’re mixing your metaphors.”
“I’ll assume you can keep up.”
“You’re father doesn’t know I’m here. Just so you know.” He clears his throat. “This is all me, little girl.”
“My father can go fuck a duck.”
“Interesting image. He loves you very much, you know. He shouldn’t. But he does.”
Another laugh, this one loud and echoing and hollow. “Right. Love. Like he loved my mother? The only thing Mookie loves is you and your Boss. He loves the work so much it’s not even work. I was always the chore. The hard work wasn’t going down into the dark. The hard work was just… sitting with me. Playing dollies. Listening to my stupid stories. Pretending we were cooking food for princesses and presidents.” She sighs. “After he left us, I asked him to stay… I don’t know how many times. He never did. Not once. So don’t sell me on his love. It’s a lie, a scam, a joke.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“You said you needed a messenger.”
“Yup. I want you to send a message to your Boss and all his people. Actually, I want you to tell everyone.”
“Tell everyone what?”
“That I killed Casimir Zoladski. And I’m just getting warmed up.”
As if the fall wasn’t enough, they worked him over pretty good. The one called Lulu picked him up. Got a belt around his neck. Held him as the others brought the gauntlet to him – Skelly clubbed him with her skates. Another chick in a slashed-up mint-green poodle skirt whacked h
im in the face with an old-timey sap – he didn’t even know they made those anymore. The rest just got him with fists and elbows and feet.
Then they dragged him up the ladder by a pulley. A pulley system on an old track high up in the warehouse ceiling – way they moved things around before forklifts.
Skelly patted him on his head, and then stole his tin of Blue. That crafty twat. He could’ve used that to feel better – a temporary fix, but a fix just the same.
After that, she tossed him out onto the sidewalk. Wound a chain around the broken lock and then popped a fresh padlock on it. Then: she was gone.
Now: everything hurts.
His head pulses like a balloon someone’s flicking with an annoying finger. Thwump thwump thwump. He tastes his own blood. Spits it out – with it comes a tooth that clatters into the street just as an off-duty street sweeper truck passes by. He hopes that it’s his dead tooth, but it’s probably not. His luck it’s probably one of the still-good ones.
He can barely stand. His leg is shaky, the pain almost liquid now. Sloshing up and down from heel to hip. He’s not sure anything’s broken. But something’s torn.
Into the car. Glove compartment. Got a bottle of Vicodin. Pop the cap. Dry-crunch a couple like they’re Tic-Tacs.
His phone rings.
Haversham.
Werth answers, starts to say, “You wouldn’t believe–”
“Things have changed,” Haversham says.
Werth listens, and it feels like the floor is dropping out from under him again – falling, falling, his guts, his heart, his head.
“OK,” Werth says. Voice raw.
“We need you back. Come to the house.”
“The house. Yeah.”
Haversham ends the call.
Werth sits for a few minutes. Staring at the center of his steering wheel. Like it’s an eye staring back, or a mouth trying to draw him close in order to eat him.
Finally he breaks the spell, starts the car, and gets the fuck out of there.
12
Some say that the Underworld is the Hell of all the myths: that it is a prison. Some say that God built it, though then others ask, why would God build such a thing? How mad must God be? The easy reply is, of course: quite mad, indeed. God’s actions throughout history, if you believe in him and the purity of the Good Book, have been the actions of a psychopath. Just the same, it’s difficult to reconcile the images of Hell and the ways of a Christian God with the existence and function of the Great Below – the Great Below has very few dead, after all. Some shufflers, some ghosts. But most of what lurks in the dark are not creatures of spirit; these are no spectral entities. They are flesh and blood. Gray flesh and black blood in the case of the goblins. Stone and sap in the troglodytes, slick scale and toxic slurry in the Nagas. I have heard one theory that works toward bridging the gap, suggesting that the gobbos – and perhaps the other denizens of the deep – are reincarnated sinners. Die as a sinner, be reborn as a grub in the subterrestrial prison below our feet. If that’s true, if the Underworld really is a kind of jail, then it further explains why so many of the creatures just want to be free of it – at any cost.