The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  Islands in the ocean. Waves over beaches. Nimbuses crowding the firmament. Hex in Bedlam, in Hrothas. Hex in a forest. Hex digging in the dirt. Cold water, thick spray. Night Terrors carrying a tribute, Corrupted in tow.

  The Skeleton sifted through the images. “Show me the Widening Gyre,” he demanded. He would treat the heart like the heir, willing it to do his bidding. “Lacuna, an island off the coast of Nachtla.” He felt like throwing up, but he didn’t have a stomach, so he was solid on that front. “Hex, age twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight.”

  Hex standing over her husband, cracking a whip across his face. The Widening Gyre spiraling inward, ship masts disappearing beneath its surface. Mara in Corrupted garb. A centipede mask sitting in the shadows. A pile of children’s bones. A wriggling, blue mass, nesting like a spider in all the minds it could.

  He had to refine the visions. The Black Hour absorbed time itself and forged its own hellscapes from it. He had to cut away those dark simulacrums; otherwise, he couldn’t be sure what would happen if he mistook them for being real.

  “Show Hex, in Nachtla, with James, Gary, Warren, Elizabeth, Miranda, and Mr. Haemo.” The Black Hour’s heart pulsated a blisteringly hot heat. “Show me Hex sending her thoughts in Nachtla.” If he had flesh, he wouldn’t anymore. He could see why others had failed here. They had the disadvantage of being human. “Show me their boats in the Widening Gyre.”

  The gears in the Black Hour’s heart ground into one another. Its dark, fleshy surface tightened. Center glowing a wintry white, it assaulted the Skeleton’s mind with tens of timelines of Hex, Nacthla, the Widening Gyre, and an island that had to have been Lacuna.

  To go where he needed to go, he had to stick with what he knew. Like pieces to a puzzle, he arranged every scenario until it reflected his own experience. Starting in Nyxis, he moved with the Marrow Cabal into the barn where the witch Helena and her sisters had weaved them into the town. He found the fragments of his conversations with Mr. Haemo and James, relived the attack on his friends and his inevitable capture. There, the timeline split, and rather than follow himself into weeks of torture with Captain Yelena, he trailed after Hex and the others as they escaped the town and headed eastward.

  He didn’t know if he was doing it right—who could claim to be an expert on the Black Hour?—but it felt like he was getting somewhere. He watched as the Marrow Cabal navigated the land, stopping in town after town, village after village. He spotted anomalies that couldn’t have been—James with the wrong hair color, the Marrow Cabal in the Old World, Mr. Haemo not being a freak. He disregarded them, and went back to the source at Nyxis again, to scour other annals.

  If he let the scenarios play out as they occurred, he’d be here for months. There was too much information to process, too many details to take note of. He could, assuming the heart wasn’t lying to him, spy on each member of the Marrow Cabal, overhear their every conversation, oversee their every private action. But now wasn’t the time for that. It was interesting to see, though, that as the Marrow Cabal traveled toward Nachtla, their ranks continued to grow. Hex had told him true; she wasn’t going to let his name go to waste.

  There, there it is. He stopped the Black Hour’s heart on a scene in Nachtla. Hex was transmitting something to him. He pulled away from the village, but before he did, he heard someone mention something about a Red Worm. He scanned the horizon, to ensure the season was right. And then, holding that timeline in his mind’s periphery, he tracked down his own journey, from Ghostgrave to the Nameless Forest, and overlaid them.

  As he trucked toward the present, his present, the anomalies became fewer and the branches in time shorter. The Dread Clock hadn’t had a chance yet to forge new midnight nightmares from the events of the last few weeks. He replayed his struggles of tearing out the heart, and while he did, Hex’s timeline showed them departing Nachtla, twelve strong, for the coast.

  “Shit.”

  The images were coming to an end. Everything was playing out in real-time. From the heart, he watched himself on the island, watching himself from the heart on the island. And as this was happening, the Marrow Cabal were marching through a cove, to a small dock with three boats tethered to it.

  “This has to be it.” The Skeleton sounded convinced, but only because he had to be to keep going. How he’d managed in the last few minutes to have done what he did, he couldn’t even begin to understand. It was like the heart was guiding his every move, teaching him how to make the most of it. For any well-adjusted individual, that should’ve thrown up enough red flags that even the blind would do a double-take. But the Skeleton had never been one of those people. If he had been, he would’ve said “no” twenty-five years ago, when Poe put a knife in his hand and left it up to him as to what to do with it.

  The Skeleton put the Black Hour’s heart to his teeth. “Take me there,” he spoke into it. He held the moments in his mind, him on the Dread Clock’s island, the Marrow Cabal setting sail for the sea, and willed that past into the present once again. “Take me, god damn it.”

  The heart throbbed in his hands, his demands clearly heard. The gears fixed to it started to grind and turn. With every pulsation, the fabric of reality before him became twisted and torn. Against his view of the lake and the Nameless Forest further back, small slits were cut into air in the form of an upside-cross. From them, salty spray and the sounds of the sea blew through.

  This has to be it, the Skeleton thought as he pocketed the heart and gripped the tears in reality. Laughing maniacally at what was happening, he pulled the slits further apart and realized the portal sat high in the sky. Looking through, he could see the shore behind an evening haze, while below, the ocean spiraled inwards, throwing massive waves in a childish tantrum.

  That’s the Widening Gyre. He pushed further into the slit, until half of him was in the sky, and the other half still in the Nameless Forest. Where are… On the edge of his field of vision, three boats were struggling against the current. Beside them, Mr. Haemo hovered in the air, hauling someone out of the water who’d gone overboard.

  The Skeleton felt a phantom smile form across his face. “This is it, guys,” he said, talking to Clementine and Will.

  For a moment, he thought about the fact he had never seen the Membrane in the Black Hour’s recordings, but ignored it.

  He pushed the rest of his body through the portal, said “We’ll be home soon enough,” and fell like a heretic out of heaven from the sky.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  The Skeleton must’ve fallen off-course, because when he woke up, he woke up in half, in the dark, on a beach. Had he even died? He didn’t remember going to the Membrane, even for an instant. Apparently, having his spine snapped off from his pelvis wasn’t good enough for Death anymore.

  The Skeleton sat up and started blindly rooting around in the sand. “Son of a bitch,” he said. A few crabs snapped at his digits. He gave them a good smash.

  He grunted as his hands closed around the rest of himself. “God damn son of a bitch.” He lined his upper and lower spine up to one another and let his body do the rest. “Where the hell am I?”

  Light would’ve been nice, but all he had was the moon, and the clouds were doing their damndest to hide it. The ocean sounded fairly calm, so either the Widening Gyre was winding down for the night, or he’d come out of the portal much further up the mainland’s coast. There were trees, however, higher up the hill he lay at the bottom of. Palm trees and sprawling mangroves, and massive, mutant succulents large enough to get lost in. He’d been to Nachtla once or twice in his lifetime, and didn’t remember any plants like that there.

  The Skeleton froze. The Black Hour’s heart. He patted himself down and, lo and behold, it was in the pocket where he left it.

  “Tough son of a bitch,” he said, touching it through the fabric, trying and finding no damage done to it.

  He dug into the opposite pocket and found the heir there. It hadn’t weathered the journey well. The object was in pieces, looking
like the innocuous snail shell it resembled. “Not good,” he said, hanging onto the fragments. “God damn it.”

  He started moving his legs well before he realized his spine had reconnected. I did it, he thought. He let out a wild laugh and beat the sand with his fists.

  “Ha, ha! I did it Clementine!” He jumped to his feet. His cheeks went red, even though they were technically lying in a pile of the flesh fiend’s shit in Ghostgrave.

  “So bring us back,” Will said through the Skeleton’s mouth.

  He shook his head and said, “Soon. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how much more I can get out of this heart.” But what the Skeleton was really thinking was this: I have to do this right, and I’m afraid to do it alone. I don’t have a life to risk. You do.

  “Now to get my bearings—” a strong gale blew across the beach and flattened him into the sand, “—what the hell?”

  In a matter of seconds, a windstorm had settled over the area. The sound of the bending trees and the wind ripping through their canopies was deafening. Buffeted to the point of bruising, the Skeleton got up and went on all fours up the hill, to have a better look at his surroundings. He found a dented breastplate along the way and put it on, for old time’s sake.

  As he crawled over the hill’s crest, the clouds above started to part and let a little light in. Using a tree for support, he stood and surveyed the sights. He was on the edge of a dense jungle, a jungle that, judging by the violent tempest charging across it, was on the edge of extinction.

  “This has to be Lacuna,” he mumbled. Sharp, stinging rain ran sideways like razors across the area. “Or an island close by.”

  The Skeleton grabbed his hood and cloak and held them shut. He needed to start somewhere, so he checked the sky for the North Star and headed its way. The circumstances weren’t great—he was walking more crookedly than a drunk on payday—but it didn’t matter. It was done. He had the heart. He knew how to use it. It was done.

  Maybe I could go back, back before all this happened. He noticed, far off, what looked like a house. Go back in time and make this all… No, he decided, heading for the building. No. We live with what we’ve done. That shit’s more trouble than it’s worth.

  Small streams poured past the Skeleton, tripping him up with the debris that floated down them. It wasn’t a house, he realized, the wind throwing him against the building, but a storage shed. House or no house, it was a sign of habitation. And, better yet, it was a place he could hold out until the storm had its fair share of being a full-blown asshole.

  But as he rounded the shed, the slick door handle slipping out his grasp, he noticed something else further off. Torches, twelve of them, and the cloaked figures holding them. They were winding through the jungle, hacking at it with moonlit weapons. He could hear them shouting to one another, but what they were saying was lost in the cacophony of the storm.

  The Skeleton chose to follow, because although he couldn’t see their faces, there was a good chance it was the Marrow Cabal. Their numbers checked out. They sounded about as pissed off as he imagined they would be in this situation.

  The Skeleton went low to the ground. His bones were covered in mud and it was getting hard to walk with the wind and that extra weight. He missed his eyelids, because the rain was doing its best to stab his eyes out of his skull. The cloaked twelve hadn’t spotted him yet, but he did see, as the wind shoved a portion of the jungle aside, where they were going.

  It was a village. An arboreal, half-in-shambles village.

  “What’s that?”

  The Skeleton stopped. While he’d been watching the village, he hadn’t been watching those he was stalking. They’d seen him. Him, the hooded skeleton, with bloodshot eyes and a Black Hour-blackened tongue. All twelve had turned, their torches in front of them, making of their faces smoldering vagaries.

  Not needing the element of surprise to win a fight anymore, he just came right out and shouted it: “Are you the Marrow Cabal?”

  A few torches went down; a few glances were exchanged. A hooded figure came forward, their torch their shield, their sword their only hope.

  “Are you the Marrow Cabal?” the Skeleton repeated. He pulled his cloak closer. Regardless of who they were, he didn’t want them to see all of him, not yet.

  The one who came forward said, “Who—?”

  A woman’s voice. Hex’s voice. Quickly, the Skeleton cut her off and said, “It’s me. It’s me. It’s Atticus.”

  “Drop your hood!” She shoved the torch at him, so he couldn’t see her at all. She swung back her killing arm. “Drop it!”

  The wind did the work for him. A blast of wet air blew across the jungle and flung the hood back.

  “Fuck you,” Hex said. She drove the sword at the Skeleton, but he caught it with his bare hand and held on tightly. “Help,” she cried, the others coming to assist her.

  The Skeleton knocked the torch from Hex. It hit the ground and sputtered in a puddle. With his free hand, he grabbed her cloak, pulling her face inches away from his and said, “It’s me. It’s Atticus. I’m here. It’s me.”

  “Bullshit!” She shook and tried to break free. “Get this fucker off of me!”

  The Skeleton’s teeth chattered, probably because he remembered they were supposed to in a storm as cold as this. “It’s me,” he repeated. He brought her in closer, her nose in his nose cavity. “You’re a telepath. Ichor, your brother, he can only receive. All your life you hated him—” He pulled her back as the rest of the Marrow Cabal tried to overtake him. “—You hated him and now you two hunt each other, beat the living shit out of each other.” He looked into her pale blue eyes and saw the faintest glimmer of recognition. “I had a daughter,” he said, his voice as pained as he now felt. “I had a daughter named Vale.”

  Hex’s lips started to quiver. Her blue braids unwound and brushed against them. “Atticus?” She threw up her hand and the Marrow Cabal came to a halt.

  “You patched me up,” he said, continuing to appeal to her. “That night in Bedlam. There was a riot. And again, on the way to Carpenter Plantation, on Adelaide’s Deceit.” Her eyes went bright blue. She was transmitting everything now. “You told me you were from Angheuawl, but you told me through the heir you’re from another place. An island. Lacuna.”

  Hex got all soft on him and started crying tears fatter than the rain drops dotting her face. “Atticus? Oh my god, Atticus?” She let go of her sword, but he kept holding its blade. She touched his skull, her hands shaking. “Atticus… how are you… what the hell…?”

  At this point, the rest of the Marrow Cabal had put two and two together. Gathered around, the Skeleton saw James, Gary, Warren, Elizabeth, Miranda, and Mr. Haemo in man-mode. There were five additional members now, too. Three more women, and two men.

  “At-Atticus?” James stammered.

  Gary, beautifully decayed as ever, dropped his hood and torch and managed only a pathetic, whispered, “Oh no.”

  The Skeleton nodded and released Hex. She backed away from him. He couldn’t blame her for that.

  “You look like you’ve been through the wringer,” Warren said behind his bulky hands.

  “That, and then some.” The Skeleton felt an immediate wholeness now that he was in their presence again. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it, missed them. In the months away from his friends, and friends they were—there was no denying it now—he’d lost more than his flesh and blood. He’d lost himself to his cursed crusade.

  “What happened to you?” Hex was speaking for everyone, though that wasn’t anything new.

  The Skeleton went sideways as the tempest blasted them from the west. “King Edgar and his flesh fiend pet did this to me. Too much damage. Couldn’t fix it.” He grabbed the guttering torch that Hex had dropped and handed it to her. “It’s a much longer story than the time we have to spare right now.”

  “You’re creeping me out, bag of bones,” Mr. Haemo buzzed, his skin suit not doing a good job of adhering to his
insect form.

  “Compliment as far I’m concerned.” He even missed Mr. Haemo, but mostly because he still planned to use him for everything he was worth.

  “I got it, Hex,” he said, tapping his cloak where the heart sat somewhat safely.

  “What?” she said, confused.

  “The Black Hour’s heart. And I used it. That’s how I got here.”

  The new recruits into the Marrow Cabal looked at one another, baffled.

  “Atticus… you can’t… I don’t believe… Wait, where’s your family?”

  “Did you find them?” James stepped beside Hex.

  Gary hung back, looking less excited than the Skeleton would’ve imagined.

  “No,” the Skeleton said. “Haven’t tried yet. Got to do it right. With you all. Back in Gallows. Is this Lacuna?”

  All of a sudden, Hex snapped out of the trance the Skeleton’s arrival had put her in. “Yes!” She grabbed the sword in his hand and said, “Shit, yes. This is… there’s too much… just follow. I’ll try to—” She gave him a pathetic look.

  He missed them, but he didn’t miss their pity. He’d spent months traveling the continent, and not once did he look at his reflection. People were a confirmation of his condition he could’ve done without.

  “—I’ll try to fill you in on the way,” Hex finished. She nodded at the others.

  Together, they darted through the sheets of rain that stood between them and Lacuna.

  The Skeleton had to pace himself as they ran, because the purity of bone made him faster than them all. He kept deflecting the glances the others were giving him. They dug too deep, those wide and sympathetic eyes. He didn’t need that right now; couldn’t handle that right now.

  “This is my home,” Hex said. “I’m a child of Lacuna. This island belongs to the Night Terrors.”

  The Marrow Cabal grunted and groaned as branches and bushes tore at their cloaks and gouged their flesh.