The Book of the Unwinding

by J. D. Horn

The force swung her like a pendulum, and she began to spiral downward, gaining speed with each pass, even as her field of vision narrowed. Her tormentors were toying with her, no doubt to underscore how powerless she was. The ground grew closer and closer. Evangeline braced herself, expecting to be dragged face-first along the rough pavement, but at the last possible moment they righted her and set her down lightly on her feet.

  The magic had deposited her inside the deserted park, near the basin, beside the ruins of the old gazebo. Above the vines and brambles, she could make out the basin’s far edge, where the Ferris wheel still stared like an unblinking, all-seeing eye. To her right, the white towers of the bungee ride framed a gateway to nowhere.

  From above, the park’s dominant feature, its dilapidated roller coaster, appeared to trail off into a double teardrop, but from ground level its wooden frame loomed high like the skeleton of Leviathan—fallen where it had been slain moments before it could take sanctuary in the muddy pond the park managers had once branded as a lake. Movement at the water’s edge confirmed her suspicions. With the dragon dead, the basin and the lake were now alligator territory.

  She could hear the roaring and rumbling of automobiles as they careened along the highway near the far edge of the park. Rather than connecting this space to the world beyond, the white noise seemed to cut off the abandoned park from the world around it. The wind picked up, teasing her naked skin into gooseflesh. She wrapped her arms around herself, her own touch bringing comfort if not additional warmth.

  Flags, now no more than tattered rags, still fluttered, a frenzied flapping in the winds rushing from Pontchartrain to Chandeleur Sound. Old bones creaked in the abandoned rides, straining rusting joints. The chains of the swing ride rattled, its seats long since removed. As if in reaction to the clanking chains, Evangeline’s memory conjured the ghost of a sunny day, overlaying the bleak and deserted scene before her with happy, dawdling crowds, rambunctious children, and melting ice creams. Bits and pieces of a day remembered. Bits and pieces of a day imagined. The comforting fiction heartened her, but soon the effort of maintaining the happy illusion started to drain her. She let the mirage slip away, and again she felt alone and exposed.

  A door slammed behind her, causing her to startle. She forced herself to regain composure before turning, not wanting to give in to fear—or at least not show that she had. When she did swivel around, she found herself facing Festival Hall, a galleried two-story structure built to resemble those in the Quarter. No, at the end it hadn’t been called Festival Hall. Like the greater park, the hall’s name had been changed, too. In its final years, it had been known as the Orpheum. Fitting, reflected the tiny part of her mind that wasn’t panicked. Like Orpheus, a dead lover had landed her in Hades. The door, one of the Orpheum’s entrances, opened and slammed again—then, as if divining that it had her full attention, it eased wide open.

  Evangeline realized that the park wasn’t an improvised stop at all. It had been the destination all along. She’d anticipated a tour of Grunch Road, so she’d strayed south of it. Still, she’d ended up right where Celestin and Margot wanted her. They had turned her own expectations against her. All right, then. Lesson learned.

  Come and see. A taunting voice whispered in her mind. It was the same invitation the angels made to John the Revelator at the breaking of each of the seven seals. Her drunk fanatic of a father had made sure she knew her Bible. Celestin and his feather-bound ally were certainly familiar enough with her history to understand this allusion would resonate with her.

  Come and see. The words echoed again, this time in her father’s impassioned voice as it had sounded coming from his pulpit.

  The broken seals ushered in end-times.

  Come and see. A strong tug pulled her toward the open door. She stumbled forward, unable to stop or even right herself until she stood inside. Although she hadn’t thought of this place in years, once inside, she remembered it as it had been. The floor was even, not pitched like in most theaters, as the space had once been set up dinner theater–style with tables rather than rising rows of seats. The call dragged her along the floor, heedless of the broken beer bottles left by recent trespassers and the detritus washed in by the flood more than a dozen years ago. The pain of sharp edges meant nothing to her now. She tried to dig in, stand her ground, but still she lumbered along like a puppet on strings. Eager for even a false sense of control, she picked up her pace instead, rushing forward.

  The hall was dark, even darker than the outside, which benefited from the city’s ambient glow. For a few moments, she couldn’t see much of anything, but soon her eyes adapted to the lesser light. On the stage, she made out the set from the theater’s final performance, a rounded arch and cogs made to look like clockwork, framing a circle edged with Roman numerals. She heard a pop, and a flare-like ball of lightning exploded to life over the stage, dazzling her eyes. She blinked to clear her vision. A moment before, she had been certain the stage was empty except for the set. Now the brilliance illuminated a trio of bodies.

  Evangeline gasped and staggered back.

  Margot and Mathilde stood before her, each caught in mid-transformation. Woman-sized chimeras with the wings and talons of a bird, the head and torso of a human female. They stood side by side, the tips of their wings touching, their mouths stretched wide in a silent mimicry of derisive laughter. She didn’t need to touch the women to know they were, after hundreds of years, dead. Their empty eyes were trained on a desiccated corpse kneeling face forward on the proscenium before them. The body held his hands out toward the audience as if in supplication, perhaps begging for mercy or maybe only soliciting applause. He wore an expensive-looking suit and a ridiculous white construction-paper mask. The mask had two rounded slits for eyes and pointed yellow tips along the top suggesting a crown.

  Evangeline rushed forward, nearly stumbling as she mounted the four steps to the stage. She focused on the corpse’s paper mask and leaned in to try to make out the word scribbled in green crayon along the band holding the mask in place.

  It wasn’t just a word. It was a name. Alice.

  She steeled her nerves and snatched at the mask, breaking its band. The man’s features had already begun to flake away, but there was no mistaking the face.

  Before her knelt the corpse of Celestin Marin.

  The great Celestin Marin, who’d slaughtered dozens of his fellow witches in his effort to claim their magic and escape death. The man who’d murdered his own grandson for power, and his own son just so he could hide behind his son’s features.

  Evangeline took a step back, freezing when she realized there was someone home behind Celestin’s shrunken eyes. He had been wrenched from the safety of Babau Jean’s form and trapped, aware, inside his own decaying corpse. Evangeline couldn’t have envisioned a more fitting punishment for the man. It was almost as if the gravity of his rightful destiny had caught up with him and returned him to his natural body.

  Who? The question broke the surface of her shock.

  It hadn’t been Celestin or Margot after all. The whispery voice, the irresistible will, they belonged to another. One who’d been strong enough to crush them.

  Three of the greatest evils she’d ever faced stood vanquished before her. A poetic justice may have been served, but the thought could bring her no peace. That their judge could be the same as the source of her agony only kindled her fury. The light above her began pulsing, then strobing, reacting to her building rage. She screamed—sharp and shrill and bloodthirsty—a harpy’s lamentation.

  I am the balm for your suffering.

  The words silenced her in a heartbeat. The force that had been tormenting her, twisting her body in the hope of twisting her soul, remained nearer than her own shadow.

  Struggle begets pain.

  She understood now. This scene hadn’t been intended as a torment. It was an appeasement, an offering. The power driving her transformations was presenting itself not as her nemesis, but as Nemesis, the spirit of retr
ibutive justice. More importantly, it was working in her favor.

  Unlike in Celestin, not a single spark of life remained in the sister witches. Still, their wings began beating in unison. Fed by a power other than their own, like the amusement park’s dead animatronics, the pair parted and rose up, one on either side of Celestin, to gaze down on him like a travesty of a Nativity scene. They hung in midair as the strobing of the light slowed, gradually returning to a cold, steady beam.

  Evangeline failed at first to notice, but a fine ash had begun to float up around the sister witches. Speck by speck, her childhood terrors were disintegrating, both flesh and bone falling away to dust. A gust of wind roared across the stage, finishing them and scattering their dust till there was no distinguishing between the sister witches’ remains and the thick layer of grime that already coated the place.

  A loud, shrill whistling suddenly filled the air all around her. She threw her hands up to protect her ears, and the light vanished. The force that brought her here pulled away, deserting her with Celestin. Or perhaps it had abandoned Celestin with her. Her light-deprived eyes fell on the witch’s body, now a black silhouette on a background of shadow. As she studied his contour, the message grew clear. Celestin was hers, given to her to do with as she would, free of the power’s interference or influence.

  Swamp witch. That’s what Celestin had called her. Dalliance. He’d used it as he laughed in disbelief in Luc’s face. Good enough for a dalliance, but certainly not to marry. All these years later, the memory still caused her face to flush in shame. She felt her shame turn to anger, red sparks building and dancing along her fingertips. It suddenly dawned on her that she wasn’t remembering the moment from her own perspective, but from Celestin’s. He was willing her to relive all the raw moments from their shared past. Offering up intimacies she’d not been privy to before. The fake olive branch he’d given to Luc to bring him closer. That the idea of Luc rutting with her had made it a pleasure to kill the boy.

  She yearned to watch the last spark of Celestin Marin shrivel up and fade. To end him once and for all. The sparks on her fingertips now sizzled like a sparkler, burning hot enough and bright enough to warm her body and shed light on Celestin’s face.

  You’re weak. Weak. The words echoed in her mind, but the thought wasn’t hers. It was Celestin’s. She watched as the fear in his eyes turned to disdain, the same superior glint she’d caught there when Luc had first introduced them. Celestin was pushing her to wrath. He wanted her to strike out. She couldn’t deny the temptation she felt, but she also couldn’t bring herself to destroy him. A part of her had once believed his words. A part of her always might, but that part of her had led her down enough dark paths, and it no longer got to run her life. The energy at her fingertips fell away, leaving behind a faint scent of sulfur and a fluttering sensation in her stomach.

  A beam of light landed on Celestin’s face. “He’s too big to use as a paperweight,” a man’s voice spoke from behind her. She was surprised to have company, but not frightened—she didn’t have a single nerve left to jangle. She glanced back as he turned his flashlight on his own features. “It’s me. Lincoln Boudreau.”

  “What are you doing here?” she said. She hadn’t come here of her own accord, so let him be the one to explain himself, to justify his presence.

  “Well,” he said, shining the beam of his light on a duffel bag he was carrying, “I had the feeling you might be cold.” He set the bag on the floor, and it slid to the end of the stage, then jumped up on its own to land by her feet. He turned his back toward her. “I told you I see things sometimes,” he said as she knelt and unzipped the bag. A Bonnes Nouvelles T-shirt. Yoga pants. A pair of men’s flip-flops. “Of course, I didn’t anticipate the dead guy, but I did see . . .” His words trailed off. He was, she realized, doing his best to be a gentleman in a situation so singular and macabre that even the world’s greatest optimist would struggle to promote it to “awkward.” “I took the shirt from the club’s inventory. You can deduct it from my pay.” He paused. “’Course, I do hope you’ll give it to me at cost.” He made a tutting sound. “I mean really, Ms. Caissy. Thirty-two dollars?”

  “They’re collector’s items,” she said, amazed to realize that for an instant she’d almost forgotten about the rage-filled corpse kneeling beside her.

  “Yeah, save it for the tourists,” he said, committing, it seemed, to his grotesque choice of now as an appropriate time to flirt.

  “I do.” She glared down at Celestin. She could almost hear him chanting the word “whore” over and over. “They’re the ones who buy the darned things.” She pulled the extra-large shirt over her head.

  “I know it’s way big, but I was thinking you might wear it like a dress. Then I borrowed the pants. They belong to the new girl, Rose.”

  “Borrowed?”

  “Well, without her permission or knowledge, but yeah. Borrowed. Don’t snag them on anything on your way out of here.”

  “Remind me to fire you for theft later, okay?” She tugged on the yoga pants. Those fit fine. Better than most of her own clothes did these days.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lincoln said and laughed. For the first time in a long while, Evangeline felt whole.

  “You can turn around, Lancelot.”

  “Lincoln,” he reminded her as he turned to face her.

  “Oh, I know your name.” She slipped on the flip-flops. They were twice the size of her feet. “Yours, I take it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he repeated himself, though this time his tone carried a clear insinuation.

  She felt her face redden again, but not from shame. He knew how to tug her strings. She didn’t like it. She’d had enough of string pulling.

  He turned his light on Celestin, and her eyes followed the beam. “Pauvre couillon there making a big bahbin.” Evangeline had to agree on two counts—Celestin’s desiccated face had dried into a grotesque pout, and the old witch had certainly embodied every negative connotation couillon could carry. Still, she couldn’t work up the sympathy to think of him as “poor.” Not this man. Evangeline felt the weight of Lincoln’s stare. “Looks to me like he’d like to be put out of his misery.”

  “I’m not sure he deserves that mercy.”

  Lincoln snorted. “Yeah, but what does magic have to do with mercy?”

  “What does this have to do with magic?”

  “Ah, come on. Old guy may not be able to use it himself, but that body there is pulsing with power. You’ve got to feel it.” Lincoln held his free hand out, palm forward like he was warming himself before a fire. “You could draw that right out of him. Keep you in juice till long after that red hair of yours has gone snow white. With that kind of magic, you could own this town. Maybe even the whole Gulf region.”

  Evangeline could feel the power, a sizzling dark aura that coated his body like shellac. Unconsciously she’d been trying not to, but now that Lincoln had forced her to pay attention, she couldn’t ignore it. What she sensed sickened her. She stepped back, revolted, drawing her arms in around herself. “No,” she said, fighting back rising bile. Celestin’s aura might look like an impenetrable shell, but she could sense the individual strands of magic he had woven together, see each murdered witch he’d stolen from. “Not that power. It’s poison.”

  “You sure?” Lincoln said. “There’re plenty witches who’d take the risk. Even those who wouldn’t take it in bulk would pay a pretty penny for a piece of him. You could carve the old bastard up into some pretty powerful relics.”

  Evangeline knew he was right. Though Celestin’s body had lain in a vegetative state for many years, he had remained a center of power. His coven had salivated at the thought of creating relics from his remains. Now, he carried the power of dozens. Some witches might wage war over his little toe, but they wouldn’t be fighting her for any part of him. “I am sure. Darkness like that? Even a small dose is gonna take root and grow.” And there, she realized, was the reason Celestin had been handed over to her. She h
ad been fixating on the shame of powerlessness. Her tormentor had broken her down, then offered her a deep well of magic, a gift that, like the Trojan horse, carried her own undoing in the acceptance. “No, I want nothing to do with it.”

  “You’re the boss.” Evangeline imagined she could hear a tinge of relief in Lincoln’s voice. “Okay, then, what’re we gonna do with the old guy?” It felt good to hear him say “we.” She’d file that bit away to process when she had the strength to think on it. Maybe in a decade or two.

  “I don’t know.” She studied the deep lines on the flaking, leathery face. “We can’t leave him here.”

  “Sure we can,” Lincoln said. “We could walk out of here right now. Get in my truck and drive.” She could almost see the fantasy building in his mind. “Get the hell out of Louisiana and keep going till we hit a coast. Los Angeles. New York. Seattle. Savannah. I don’t care.”

  She turned toward his wistful voice, straining to make out his features in the shadows. “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am.” His voice came out in a whisper, like they were conspiring together. “You saw it, too. I’m the man who’s going to ask you to marry him. And you’re the woman who’s gonna say yes.”

  Yes. She had seen. She had felt. But she’d understood it was only a likelihood, not something written in stone.

  Whore. Whore. Whore. She sensed, almost heard, the word rising off Celestin like a toxic stench.

  She glared down at the old man’s body, shocked to see a smooth stone bounce off his forehead. Celestin, still frozen with his arms extended, teetered and fell to his side.

  “There’ll be no more of that, old man,” Lincoln bounded up the steps to the stage. His flashlight shook in his hand, its beam jumping over the toppled corpse. “I got a pond not fifty yards from here full of cocodries who’d find you a tasty little treat.” He squatted down before Celestin. “Whoever stuck you in there, old man, bound you up good and tight. I bet you’d be awake for every bite those gators take. Maybe even after. Maybe you’d still be connected to this bag of bones deep inside them. Or when you come clean out the other end. Tell me. How many bits do you think they’d have to chew you up into before you stop being you?” He nudged Celestin’s shoulder. “One more comment from you, and we’re gonna find out.”