The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  Time was different in the Membrane, he knew that. The days he’d spent down there were no more than hours to him. But going to Eldrus and holding up his end of whatever deal they struck tonight was going to take time. If this was the course he was going to follow, it would be many more months, a year, even, before he had the chance to see them again.

  Just how long in hell could one wait until they started to call it home?

  “All right,” Hex said, nudging him.

  They slipped into an alley between two bone-white buildings.

  “We’re getting—”

  Atticus held up his hand. He heard voices, chanting; feet shuffling and stomping out a beat. “What’s that noise?”

  “Ah, yeah.” Hex beckoned him to follow her to the end of the alley, where an intense light was coming through. “Have a look.”

  Atticus curled his lip and slipped past her. At the edge of the alley, he leaned out and had a look.

  In front of a lighted gazebo, thirty or so figures swayed, humming and holding their hands high. In the gazebo itself, a man sat in snowy robes, reading from a heavy book that had to have been the Holy Order’s holy text Helminth’s Way. Beside him, a portly woman stood and sang in tongues. Even though it was gibberish, it didn’t sound half bad.

  “Midnight mass,” Hex whispered. “If you’re going to get right with the lord, may as well get a head-start, you know what I mean?”

  Atticus wouldn’t admit it to the woman, but the hymns, the movements—it was starting to get to him. It centered him, made him feel right on the inside. He didn’t expect that. Wasn’t sure if he liked that he liked that.

  “Take it you’re not the church-going type?” he finally said.

  “No, afraid not.” She pressed her body against his, as she peeked out of the alley to look at the mass. “Saw god when I was a little girl.” She glanced at Atticus from the corner of her eye. “Didn’t much care for it.”

  “That so?” Wedged between her and the alley, his Corruption against hers, Atticus realized how much he missed a woman’s touch. “How come?”

  Hex worked herself loose, tightened up her bun. She retreated and leaned against that building’s side door.

  “Didn’t see the big deal. God seemed like an asshole, like the rest of us.” She raised her eyebrows, and smiled.

  Atticus didn’t believe her, and he didn’t care if she knew it. “What’s god look like, then?”

  “Has some blue to it,” she said, blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face.

  “You saying you’re god?”

  Hex shrugged, and said, “We’re all gods of something,” and then threw her weight into the side door, flinging it open.

  Atticus took a few steps forward as Hex disappeared past it. “What’re you doing?”

  Poking her head out, she said, “What? Oh.” She held out her hand, shook it until he took it. “We’re here. Come on, Gravedigger.”

  Atticus dropped Hex’s hand and followed her. On the other side of the door, they entered a small workshop that time had gutted. All that remained now were a few tables, some tools, and about a fourth of the wooden floor. The rest of the workshop was cut-off by rubble and the building beside it, which it appeared to have been attached to at some point. Faint moonlight poured in from the gaps in the roof.

  “Won’t they hear us?” Atticus asked, searching for Hex’s so-called benefactors.

  “Not with all that praising going on out there.” She swung back around and shut the side door. “They’ll be at it for another hour.”

  “They late?”

  There wasn’t a lot to look at in the workshop. It was empty, flat; no corners or crevices to check.

  “We’re early.” Hex found a few chairs folded up against the wall. Bringing them over to a table, she said, “Here, cop a squat.”

  Atticus eyed Hex.

  “What?” she said. She set up six chairs and sat in one.

  He buried his paranoia and sat opposite her.

  She sighed, put her hands behind her head, getting real comfortable. Smiling, she finally said, “How are you?”

  “Eh?”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m… fine.”

  Hex waited a moment, tonguing her teeth, and said, “I’m fine, too, Gravedigger. Thanks for asking.”

  Atticus laughed. “What is this?”

  “I’d really like to get to know you.” She leaned forward, elbows to the table, and looked him in the eyes. “Tell me about your family.”

  “Heh, uh, thought I did.”

  Hex shook her head.

  “Well, I mean, what do you want to know?”

  Hex undid her hair and started to braid it in the way she always wore it. “It’s not a test, man.”

  Atticus took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “It’s not easy. I avoid it, if I can, because it makes me feel like they’re already lost. Gary and James, they’re invested, too, but, I don’t know. Pretending I’m alone in this makes it easier to focus on what has to be done.”

  “I understand.”

  “I, uh, well, Clementine was, is, my wife. I’d always seen her around, but we didn’t really meet until we were ten.” He smiled. “There was this Old World swimming pool outside of town, in the mire. Water was cleaner than you’d think, but we mostly went there to get away from our parents.

  “One day, Clementine was at the pool. I mean, she was always there, but for some reason, that day, I don’t know. Guess I noticed her, finally.”

  “The stars aligned,” Hex said.

  “Hormones more like it, but yeah, something like that. I thought she was real pretty. In Gallows, everyone kind of knows everyone. Kids don’t really grow up scared to talk to the opposite sex. At that point, I’d probably seen half the town naked.”

  Hex laughed. “Very open community.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, shaking his head. “So, you know, I wasn’t scared to talk to her. But she always had her friends around. They didn’t much care for me.” Atticus paused, considered putting an end to this confession, and then went on ahead. “But I got her alone one day. Struck up a conversation.”

  “You strike out?” Hex asked.

  Atticus chuckled. “Big time. I’m sorry to say it, but Clementine was a bit of a bitch back then. I’m sure I did something wrong, don’t get me wrong, but I think that girl was born with a stick up her ass.”

  Hex leaned in closer, chin on hand. “So, of course you fell in love.”

  “That’s how it goes.” Atticus looked around the workshop, for uninvited guests, but they were still alone. “She didn’t really come from a good family. I didn’t, either. It was bad, but it was good we found each other. My parents died early.”

  Atticus closed his eyes, saw his father dead on the floor, his mother standing over his body, in celebration.

  “My parents died early, and a family friend took me in.”

  He opened his eyes, but the workshop was gone. He was at Poe’s again, his father’s knife in hand, his mother’s blood all over his face.

  “Clementine wasn’t so lucky. Her dad lived a lot longer than he deserved.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that about your parents,” Hex said softly.

  “Don’t be. I’m not.” He flexed his killing hand. “Poe, the family friend, raised me. Or whatever you want to call it. He’s a piece of shit. Not much better than my dad, except he never laid a hand on me. When I was old enough to do something other than chase down debts, I became the Hangman. Fancy name for a killer. Scarier, I guess. Money was good, so I got Clementine away from her dad. I did a lot of bad things for Poe.”

  “Did Clementine mind? Them bad things?”

  Atticus shook his head. “No, she understood. She wasn’t no saint, neither. She’s got a few bodies notched into her belt, too. Don’t get any romantic inclinations about us. We cleaned up okay, but we weren’t much more than scum.”

  Hex bit her lip. “Will’s your only kid?”

  “No, I mean,
yes.” Atticus’ mouth hung open as he tried to come up with an excuse.

  “He’s got a sibling? Listen, I was just curious about you. If this is something you haven’t told Gary or James, maybe it’s best you don’t—”

  “Vale,” Atticus said, forcing the name past his lips. “Vale.” Saying it felt strange, like remembering a word from a different language; something you’d always known but at some point forgot. “Vale was our daughter. A few years before Will.” Atticus covered his mouth. “You got me on the right night to have me talking about her. You spell-weaving this out of me or something?”

  Hex shook her head. “No, don’t got that power.”

  “She… died.” He exhaled. His saliva was thick, tasted like sadness must taste. “Clementine fought and fought to give birth. But my little girl, my little Vale…” He tapped the table, fidgeted with his fingers. “Too small, too eager to see us. That’s what we used to say. She couldn’t wait to come out. We—” he took a deep breath, “–we got a few minutes with her.” He started to rock in the chair. “At least we got that. It wasn’t her fault, though. She didn’t know better.

  “Someone was supposed to fetch the doctor, this man named Ronny, but he didn’t. Said he would, and we waited, but he didn’t. He had always wanted Clementine, always hated me for having her. I don’t know if Vale would’ve made it if the doctor had come. I wanted to kill Ronny, because I knew he’d done that on purpose, but I couldn’t. In those… in those few minutes with Vale… I knew her. And I knew she wouldn’t want that.”

  Hex sat there in silence. When he stopped breathing so heavily, she reached across the table and took his hand. This time, he didn’t pull away.

  “Will’s a good kid.” Atticus nodded. He liked the way Hex’s fingers rubbed his knuckles. “Clementine didn’t want to have another child, but it happened anyways. I quit being Hangman when he was born. Poe sent a few men to my house that night to help me reconsider.”

  “Did you?” Hex asked, hanging on his every word.

  “Reconsider? No, no, I didn’t. But I did such a good job on those men’s bodies when I was done that the mayor made me gravedigger.” He took his hand away from Hex’s. “Poe and I were all right after that.”

  Hex groaned and said, “Men are stupid.”

  Atticus shrugged. “Will grew up quick. For the life of me, I don’t know how it happened so fast. Doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. I was afraid, think Clementine was, too, he’d turn out like us. But he didn’t. He got the best of us. Which was good. Made us better ourselves.

  “We definitely sheltered the boy. He kept hearing things about us, what we’d done in the past, and thought it was a big joke. We were just a bunch of boring farmers who wouldn’t let him have no fun.”

  “No swampy pools to play in?”

  “Nope. At that point, Mr. Haemo had made himself comfy in the area, so Will didn’t get to meet the love of his life there, like I did.”

  “Does that giant mosquito have to come with us?” Hex asked, cringing.

  “I need to have a sit down with him. I’ve got no qualms killing him at the end of this. Kind of hope I get to.

  “I don’t talk about Will much, not like I do Clementine, because it hurts too much. He’s too good to be down there in a place like that. I know he isn’t prepared for something like that. We didn’t let him see the world the way it really is.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Hex said. “If he’s your son, I’m sure—”

  Atticus’ lip started to quiver. He’d cried enough, so he looked away until the urge passed.

  “I don’t know if he’s down there. I know Clementine is. I saw her. She saw me. But Will? The Abyss might’ve got him. I could see him giving in. If he was lost… alone.”

  “I bet he’s still down there,” Hex said, eyes going kind. “What’s he going to be when he grows up?”

  “Everything. He could be, too, if he wanted. But if he had to settle on something, I think he’d be a farmer, like his old man.” Atticus bit his nail. It fell off into his mouth and made him wretch. “You want to tell me about Ichor?”

  Hex leaned back in her chair. “Guess that’d be fair, on account of having you spill your guts and all.”

  Atticus shook his head. “Please, don’t joke about that,” he said, grabbing his stomach. “It’ll probably happen at some point.”

  “Ichor’s different.” Hex bit her lip, chewed on her words. “When we were little, in Angheuawl, he wasn’t really ever around. He was a loner. Kids used to make fun of him, beat him up. He’s very smart, but has a temper like you wouldn’t believe. I think if he had grown up somewhere else, he might’ve turned out different. All that bad business made him a bleeding heart. And all the world’s going to do to people like that is bleed them dry.”

  Remembering what Hex told him awhile back, Atticus said, “You mentioned you weren’t all that close ‘til you got hitched.”

  “Yeah. I got it. Made sense. Parents marrying me off to some stranger like I was some fucking set-aside bride. I’d get all brotherly, too, if I were him. But I think he did it for the wrong reasons. He was trying to prove something or something.”

  Atticus thought back to Ichor’s supposed imprisonment. “Bleeding heart? Take it he’s an investigator type?”

  Hex threw her hands up into the air. The chair tilted back. “Shit,” she yelled, balancing it.

  “You don’t have much love for him, do you?”

  Hex mouthed “No,” and snapped her head to the side door they’d come through.

  “You trying to prove something, too? By rescuing him, I mean.”

  “Hmm?”

  Hex got to her feet, so Atticus did, too.

  “Oh, no. No.”

  The side door creaked open. Figures stood behind it. Atticus went for a weapon, then remembered Hex hadn’t let him bring one.

  “No, I came to get Ichor to kill him,” Hex said, plain as day. “Ah, come on in, everyone.”

  Atticus’ eyes went wide. “Kill him? What the hell you talking about?”

  But before Hex could answer him, three Night Terrors were in the doorway. One wore the skull of a fox, the other a mask of centipede carapaces. The last one, the one who kept closest to the Fox, had pale scars running across his body. At first, Atticus couldn’t make sense of his skull, but if he had to guess, he would have said it looked kind of like a bat’s.

  CHAPTER XIX

  The midnight mass hit a howling crescendo as the creatures came into the room. A small woman trailed behind them, her half-lit face about as worn down as the workshop itself. She was dressed in men’s clothes, and the spectacles she wore were large enough to give Mr. Haemo’s eyes a run for their money. She, along with the Night Terrors, took a seat at the table, while Atticus and Hex just stood there, one far more shocked than the other.

  “Timely, as always,” the woman said to Hex.

  Atticus’ gaze moved back and forth, between the woman planning fratricide and the creatures known to kill humans. When he’d been attacked by the snake, there was too much going on to consider the Night Terrors. But now that they were in the same room as him, he felt the chill of myth and superstition; even had the goosebumps to show for it.

  “Gravedigger.” Hex nodded at the chair he’d been sitting in. “I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

  This feels like a god damn set-up. He didn’t have a weapon, but when it was harder to shake off a cold than it was Death, that didn’t seem to matter much. The Night Terrors followed him as he pulled out the chair and took a seat.

  Pointing to the Fox, Hex said, “This is Johannes.”

  The Night Terror, Johannes, was the thinnest of the murderous bunch. He wore little in the way of armor, but had a handful of daggers, knives, and unmarked pouches lining his waist and legs. There were several patches of fur still attached to Johannes’ mask. By the jagged bands of black and red that ran across them, Atticus would have guessed the skull came from a lord of the Blasted Woodland. Looking
into its weathered sockets, he noticed the Night Terror had black paint around his eyes, to give a more fearsome impression.

  “You’ve been through a lot,” Johannes said, offering his hand. “This must be like icing on the cake.”

  “Yeah,” Atticus grunted.

  He took and shook the Terror’s hand. Johannes cocked his head, as though he hadn’t heard him, and then pulled away.

  “This one—” Hex smiled at the Centipede, “—this one gracing us with her appearance tonight, her name is Mara.”

  Mara’s mask was a mean mound of centipede carapaces that had fused together. They were fashioned in a such way that it gave the Night Terror the appearance of having horns. Unlike Johannes and the Bat beside her, she didn’t wear armor at all. Her clothes looked like something that would’ve washed up on Bedlam’s banks, and by the way she carried herself—so cocky you would’ve thought she’d sprouted one between her legs—this was probably on purpose.

  “Hex has high hopes for you,” Mara said, her voice sounding much older than her body looked. “This is Deimos.” She nodded her head at the Night Terror beside her. “He’s a real chatterbox.”

  “Atticus, is it?” Deimos asked, standing up. He held out his hand.

  This isn’t right. I can’t be sitting here, alive, conversing with these things. “Gravedigger will do.”

  Atticus paused before shaking the Bat’s hand. From the tips of his fingers to the bones in his wrist, Deimos’ skin was covered in pale, shiny scars. He accepted the gesture, went in closer. Deimos’ skull was not one bat skull but many smaller ones, that had been fused together to give him this unnerving visage. The mask had a strange hue to it, too, like the color of disease.

  “Sit, then, Gravedigger,” Deimos said, following his own advice. Beside the mask, he wasn’t all that imposing. And his kind voice wasn’t doing him any favors, either. “I do not know how much Hex has shared with you, so I’ll leave the rest to her.”