by J-F. Dubeau
“Is it really . . . a god?”
“I don’t know.” Ezekiel tossed his cigarette aside. “Depends on what you’re looking for in a deity. I mean, it’s powerful enough to be a god, but what is it exactly? I have no idea. Cicero might know, but he doesn’t speak to me. Neil probably knew, but he’s gone. It doesn’t matter.”
“What about a way of killing it? You said my grandfather had been looking. Did he find anything?”
“We don’t know,” he said, and shrugged. “Neil kept his secrets. He had associates from all over the world, but he made a point of keeping his contacts to himself. The fewer people who knew, the safer we all were. That was his philosophy.
“The circus would come to Saint-Ferdinand once a year. The Craftsmen would get together and talk about what we’d found. Usually nothing. We’d all check in on the thing to make sure the bars of its prison weren’t coming loose. But then people got greedy.”
So it wasn’t the first time the god had been held captive. Her own grandfather had been part of keeping the creature under lock and key somehow. Yet, in all that time, they hadn’t been able to eliminate it. Now it was in her shed, under her tenuous control, and she had no way of stopping it should the monster get free.
“How was it imprisoned? I mean, before. What was the cage made of?”
“Oil and canvas. Has Abraham ever shown you his father’s paintings?”
“Just the stuff at his house.”
“No, I mean his real paintings.” He smiled a little, like a kid with a secret. “The trick to keeping the god locked up, you see, is—”
“It can’t move out of the line of sight when it’s being watched. I know. I’ve got it locked up with a camera.”
“A camera?” Ezekiel looked surprised. “Not a film camera, I guess. For an all-powerful being, it sure follows strange rules . . . Well, we didn’t have a camera back then. Not one that wouldn’t run out of tape, anyway. I’m not even sure it would have worked. What we had were eyes.”
He looked off into the darkness. “For the longest time, the Craftsmen, the original Craftsmen, mind you, kept a rotation of people going into the cave where the god was kept. They’d just look at it for hours and hours without stopping. There would be two of them so they could blink or take short breaks. Just the worst job in the world. That shit town should have gone bankrupt and closed down a dozen times over, but the Craftsmen kept the place running, just so they’d have a reason to keep the thing locked up. That’s where it became kind of like a cult.”
“What do Mr. Peterson’s paintings have to do with any of this?”
Venus knew that Harry Peterson was a talented painter. His house was filled with beautiful tableaux of still lifes and farm landscapes. His paintings could be found in several homes around the village. Everyone knew about the huge studio he had built into his barn.
“There’s a trick to painting something so real, so perfect, that the universe gets confused,” said Ezekiel. “It doesn’t know if the image is a fake or the actual thing, so it becomes real. Abraham’s father is training to do something like that. He’s almost got it. You should ask to see some of his stuff. It’s absolutely mind-bending. His teacher, Amanda, though . . . she had the knack.
“She painted an eye. A great, big, human eye. It was so perfect that when she put on the finishing touches, the painting blinked. That’s what we used for almost two decades to keep the god imprisoned. Worked like a charm! Until someone got greedy.”
Venus could guess what happened. “Someone made a deal with the god for its freedom.” It was the same deal she’d been offered. The exchange of power for freedom that she’d almost granted. Release me, it kept asking of everyone it encountered. For a moment she herself had been tempted to give it what it wanted.
“Exactly.” Ezekiel pointed a finger, like a gun, at Venus. “A guy named Edouard Lambert. Greedy son of a bitch. One night he made his deal and everything went to hell.”
“What about Mr. Peterson’s teacher? This . . . Amanda? Why can’t we ask her to make another painting?”
“’Cause she’s dead. A lot of people died that night. But the greatest loss was Amanda Finnegan.”
WILLIAM
WILLIAM BERGERON PUT down the glass he’d just upended over his mouth. It hit the granite counter in his kitchen with a loud impact. Not that it mattered. The noise coming from his living room could drown out the sound of a jet engine.
His guests, if he could call them that, were alternately arguing, eating his food, and drinking his liquor. William felt a pang of bitter satisfaction knowing that the really good stuff, the expensive stuff, was stashed away here, away from the collection of yahoos his wife had assembled in his house.
Taking a deep breath to steady himself, William finally summoned the courage to go face those who considered themselves his peers. Yes, they had all been his friends at some point. They’d come to comfort him and Beatrice when Audrey had been found dead. He’d had them over for barbecues, pool parties; he’d even gone hunting with some of them. But today—today they were nothing to him. Idiots at best, vultures at worst.
As he walked into his living room, they all slowly fell silent, each turning a pitying eye toward him. He knew what they saw: a bereaved father sinking back into the embrace of alcoholism to escape reality. Even Beatrice probably didn’t know better. But he knew. He knew they were the ones who had lost perspective. They’d become greedy and stupid, forgetting the awe and fear they’d all felt almost a decade ago when Crowley, Peterson, and McKenzie had opened their eyes to a much wider world. A world stranger and more dangerous than any of them had ever imagined.
Oh, what promise the future held back then. They would put Saint-Ferdinand on the map, they told themselves. Power, money, health, success, even existential fulfillment: it was all at their fingertips. Nothing was outside of their grasp. There was magic in the world, and anything was possible.
“Don’t we usually meet at the church? What about all that ritual nonsense?” he asked.
“We don’t have time for pageantry, Will,” his wife said. “We have important business to discuss.”
“Fine. What business?”
William already knew what they wanted. His wife had already told him about her latest encounter with Inspector Crowley. She claimed that Stephen wasn’t doing enough to fulfill his part of their arrangement, and she was probably right. The inspector did seem to be dragging his feet, but he was also the last of them who knew the fundamentals of their plans.
“We need to kick Crowley out,” declared Sebastien Desjardins, his piercing blue eyes filled with annoyance and indignation. Beatrice nodded emphatically.
Bergeron gave the dozen people crowded in his large and elegant house an appraising look. Each had been instrumental in putting Crowley where he was, a position that was ideal for finding the proverbial genie in a bottle. It had been no easy task. Crowley’s anger was legendary, and his methods as an officer of the law were dubious at times. A violent incident with the owner of a traveling circus almost two decades ago had also landed him on the wrong side of the former chief inspector. But they had done their part and gotten Crowley his promotion. Now they wanted answers, but William knew they were unlikely to get their way.
“I don’t disagree with that,” William said. Normally, he welcomed being thrust into the decision-making position. That was part of how he’d become the successful business owner he was today. He was easily the wealthiest man in the village. But those decisions had all been made when he was sober, a state that had ended the same day as his daughter’s short life. “But getting rid of Crowley means giving up on everything we’ve been promised.”
He expected them all to fall quiet at that. When they’d founded the Sandmen, Harry Peterson’s paintings and Randy McKenzie’s necromantic parlor tricks had served to convince the group, but it was Crowley who claimed to know where to find the real source of power. In the years that followed their agreement, both Harry and Randy had abandoned the ca
use, each for his own reasons. Thankfully, Crowley had been able to keep both men under his thumb. Without the inspector, none of them knew where to go from here. Yet the assembled crowd didn’t seem to understand that.
“No, it doesn’t.” It was Alvarez, still smelling of blood and offal from his work. His crooked teeth did nothing to damage the sincerity of his smile. “We have a new expert.”
At his words, the group parted to reveal a young, meticulously dressed man in his midtwenties. He smiled affably, both hands in his pockets. If William had been sober, he might have noticed there was something disturbingly familiar about him.
“So good to see you again, Mr. Bergeron. It’s been too long.” The young man extended a hand with delighted enthusiasm. William shook it absentmindedly. So he did know this boy, but from where? “I apologize for coming into your home uninvited, but when your lovely wife told me your situation . . . Well, I don’t believe in destiny, but this seemed like more than a coincidence.”
“You told him about the Sandmen?” Bergeron spat the question at his wife, attempting to drop the young man’s icy hand, but it held firm.
“He already knew. He knows everything,” Beatrice answered with a voice that was meant to be soothing. “In fact, he’s been having trouble with Stephen too.”
“I ran into Beatrice at the station,” the young man said smoothly. “I’ve been trying to have a meeting with the inspector for some time now. He and I have, shall we say, a lot of catching up to do.”
William was getting angry. All these parasites were looking at him with idiotic grins plastered to their faces, as if they were all in on some joke he didn’t understand. Even his wife wore a simpering smile. William wasn’t a man with many admirable qualities. He was, however, hardworking, and he knew his limitations. Above all else, he prided himself on being a keen judge of character. Yet he couldn’t get a bead on this stranger in his house. He smiled too much to be sincere but talked too little for a con man. His features were uncomfortably familiar in a way that was distracting to William. Crowley would have figured it out by now.
Crowley.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Bergeron,” the young man continued without letting go of his hand. “I have all the answers you’ve been looking for.”
Francis Crowley. The pieces suddenly fell in place. A young boy who drank too much soda and ran up and down the aisles of his drugstore, making noise while his mother shopped for cosmetics. Back then William and Beatrice had been desperate for children of their own. Crowley had been blessed with two sons, and Bergeron had been shamefully jealous of the younger man’s good fortune. That is, until Marguerite Crowley disappeared, taking her firstborn with her.
“You’re . . . Stephen’s son?” Widening smiles confirmed that they all had known. Now that he saw it, the similarities were obvious. Not because of his slight resemblance to the inspector, but to his estranged wife. The round face and high cheekbones, the squinty eyes and broad mouth that smiled with ease. Over fifteen years had passed since William had seen either mother or child, but there was no doubt: this was Marguerite’s son.
“Oh, Mr. Bergeron. I am so much more than that,” said the young man, his cold fingers like a frozen vice on William’s hand.
ANDRÉ
ANDRÉ WATCHED WITH trepidation as the rickety Volkswagen bus pulled out of the driveway. The vehicle’s sun-bleached paint looked pink and orange, like salmon flesh, under the faint glow of the streetlamps.
Rural villages like Saint-Ferdinand attract a wide variety of people. From young families looking for affordable real estate to retired couples longing for a simple and quiet end to their days. Farmers and nature lovers were also common, as well as artists and oddballs who just didn’t fit in and had abandoned larger metropolitan areas. As everyone in town knew, Paul and Virginie McKenzie fit into the latter category.
Ever since he could remember, André had heard his parents gossiping about Venus’s mom and dad. Hippies was the term they most often used to describe them, though lazy, dirty, and the occasional communists were also tossed around. When he eventually met their daughter on his first day in school, she turned out to be nothing like he’d expected. She was smart, friendly, and just abrasive enough to be funny. Despite his parents’ warnings, André became fast friends with her.
Then, at the end of middle school, Venus got pushed up a grade. Consequently, she began to spend more and more time with the older kids and less time with André. Bitter and hurt, he started picking on her. Almost overnight his best friend became the dirty, lazy hippie his parents had always warned him about. And he made sure she would never forget it.
While making fun of Venus had become a favorite way to show off in front of his friends, even André knew that stalking her from the bushes outside her house might be pushing things too far. His goal tonight wasn’t to torment her, however.
Once the van was well out of sight, André slipped out from behind the hedge where he’d been hiding. He’d already seen Venus leave with Inspector Crowley’s son, a detail that made him hate her all the more. He’d muttered something unkind under his breath as she was driven away by the older teen.
But now that mother and daughter were both gone, it left Paul McKenzie by himself in the garage. Most kids knew Venus’s father as a rather friendly man, who was either too dumb to worry about the world around him or just couldn’t be bothered with it. André’s father thought he was simply too stoned to care. Either way, Paul made for an unimpressive authority figure. Two summers ago he’d caught André and his friends running off with eggs from Mr. Lee’s farm. They’d told Paul that they had permission to take the eggs, a lie anyone would have seen right through. Not Paul McKenzie. He smiled and waved as they had run off to do their mischief.
Making his way toward the backyard, André took stock of the ancient lawn mower and vast collection of rakes and brooms that littered the overgrown lawn surrounding the wooden shed. Those and other gardening implements created a clear blast radius around the shed that dominated the otherwise simple yard. A quick glance at the back porch confirmed that the kitchen was empty, allowing him to creep carefully toward his goal.
He smiled upon seeing the heavy padlock on the door of the shed. It was all the confirmation he needed. The McKenzies owned an artisanal tea shop at the edge of the village. There they grew and dried their own leaves to supplement the large variety that was already available from various suppliers. Everyone knew the family was no stranger to hydroponic agriculture, and that made André very curious about what they could be hiding in a locked shed in their backyard.
Nervously, André searched the yard for something that could break the lock.
After a couple of minutes, he got his hands on a long crowbar that had been lying under a stack of broken carpentry tools. Pushed by a voice in the back of his mind, he slipped the crowbar slowly into the loop of the padlock, careful to make as little noise as possible. Then, when he was somewhat confident of his leverage, he closed his eyes and put his full weight on the crowbar. But despite his straining, the lock refused to give. Just as he was about to run out of breath, a thunderous crack burst from the door.
His eyes still closed, holding on to the crowbar but standing absolutely still, André listened for any indication that the noise had been heard. After what felt like half the night, he finally opened his eyes to inspect the damage. The results were not what he expected, but they would have to do. The padlock lived up to its promise of indestructibility and had remained intact, gleaming defiantly in the moonlight. But the panel to which it had been secured, however, had not fared quite as well. The old wood had given out, nearly disintegrating as the screws that had held the lock in place had broken free. The door to the shed hung open.
A soft neon-blue glow emanated from within. The boy nearly jumped out of his skin when a voice called out to him. “Free me . . .”
He knew immediately that this was not Paul McKenzie. In fact, before his eyes adjusted to the darkness within, primal fears were al
ready urging him to run. But something else kept him rooted in place.
“You’re new. Let me look at you.”
The voice didn’t come from the shed or the yard, but instead boomed directly into André’s own brain. Whoever spoke to him wasn’t using words but rather carving concepts and ideas directly into André’s mind, painfully reshaping the boy’s thoughts into a message.
Fighting his legs and bladder to keep either from running, André turned to look within the small shed. Perhaps the McKenzies were cooking up something even more potent than he had thought, and it was now affecting him. As his eyes scanned the cramped room, all they could see was a cacophony of bizarre horror. The walls were decorated with a complex lattice of bones and flesh and the stretched organs of small animals. The impressive, if revolting, artwork drew dizzying lines and spirals that instantly reminded him of the rosebushes his mother obsessively tended each summer.
Before the gruesome mural of stretched tendons and plucked eyes stood a figure. It was humanoid in form but featured an otherwise impossible anatomy. It seemed to be admiring the mural. Its dark, shadowy skin appeared to push away dust, air, and even light. At the thing’s feet was a pool of dark blood.
“Child,” it said, its voice making André nauseous just to hear it. “Free me.”
André shook his head, eyes wide open, unblinking. His mind raced to comprehend what his senses were reporting. Though he was unable to come to a logical conclusion, every cell in his body agreed, as if the information had been encoded directly into his DNA: this thing meant to harm him.
No. It meant to harm and destroy everyone.