The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  A metallic whine rang out across the fields. Gemma’s head shot up. The Dread Clock was ringing in the hour. Below, on the porch, the overweight overlords of the plantation were now walking in circles, dragging dead, black bodies behind them. They milled about like brain dead cattle, not going anywhere in particular, but only because this alone was enough to get them through the day.

  Her mom and dad watched the circular procession with intrigue. Then they grabbed the nearest house servants, broke their necks, and started pulling them like sacks across the porch.

  “Gemma.”

  She looked back to the balcony. There, floating behind the banister, the Keeper, somehow even more wretched in the harsh sunlight.

  “Give them back,” she begged. Her face was splotchy and red. Dehydrated with disgust and hatred, she was on the verge of passing out.

  “Why?” The Keeper nodded at the fields. “Why would you want them back? After all the bad things adults have put you through?”

  “I don’t care! This isn’t real.”

  “Ah,” the Keeper said. “To be young. Look at your parents, Gemma. See how they fit in.”

  Mom and Dad were laughing with the masters of the house, patting them on the shoulders and leaving bloody hand prints on their shirts.

  “You’re an idiot!” Gemma started forward, hands balled into pink fists. “God, please, give them back.”

  The Keeper cocked its head. “What makes you think they’ll want you back? This is their vacation. You’re interrupting.”

  The Keeper put its hands together, as though it were closing a book. And like the pages of a book, the field, workers, and the plantation and its owners folded inward, into a black margin of space where only Gemma and her pain were sustained.

  Then the blackness faded, like a transition into a scene from a movie. The sun hardened over into a moon. The fields warped into fences, the crops into barbed wire. The ground became muddy and insect-ridden. The plantation’s stark white walls gave way to gray facades that stretched like wings around Gemma. The trees, greater in number than before, began to twist upon themselves. They worked their limbs this way and that, until at first, they were crosses, and then by some unseen force, were bent into swastikas.

  Collectively, the Africans from the field stared at Gemma. Did they blame her? Or just want answers? She couldn’t say, and neither could they. As though struck by Death itself, the slaves fell to the ground and died. Their brown bodies sank into the brown mud. Like seams ripping across a blanket, the threads of their flesh began to pull apart. All across the concentration camp, from the Africans’ cold, dark husks, pale, emaciated bodies began to emerge.

  These prisoners, of all ages and sexes, struggled to their feet. Shaved and bruised and similarly tattooed, they marched across the yard in between the watch towers that ran along the sodden stretch. Faceless men with readied guns trained their sights on the shambling crowd. But no one, neither the prisoners nor their captors, appeared to realize Gemma was there.

  Sick to her stomach and still recoiling from the sight at the plantation, Gemma moved through the stripped mass of people. She had to find the Dread Clock and her parents, but the weight of despair was so heavy that she found it hard to do anything at all. There were so many people here, in this new circle of hell. Everywhere she looked, she saw bare flesh and bleakness and such deplorable conditions that it almost seemed a joke that the Nazis here had bothered to build barracks at all. This place was a factory fueled by the only natural resource that would never be depleted: hate.

  Soldiers flanked the throng of prisoners from every direction. Overhead, explosions erupted across the sky. The moon took a blow and bled white blood like rain upon the concentration camp. German orders were shouted to the Jewish prisoners, urging them to keep moving forwards. Gemma didn’t know what they were saying, but she didn’t need to. Regardless of tone or mother tongue, disgust always sounded the same.

  With the prisoners, Gemma passed a crumbling building from which a bitter, cloying fog poured. The walls of the building were made out of red bricks, though most of them were stained through with human-shaped splotches of blue.

  Past the gas chamber, the group of prisoners began to part. Gemma, too short and too squished to see what was happening ahead, planted her feet to wait it out. A soldier in a freshly-pressed uniform stopped in front of her, smiled, and kissed the top of her forehead. He looked like he was proud of her, like she had something to do with all of this.

  Gemma had to resist every urge to vomit. The tail-end of the procession—mostly the elderly, the amputated, and severely emaciated—struggled past her. She tried to keep her thoughts focused on finding the Dread Clock and her parents.

  It’s not real, it wasn’t really like this, she thought, a panic attack pressing against her heart. People are bad, but not this bad. People are bad, but not this bad. She threw up all over herself. The lie she had told was so bad it was sickening.

  Wiping the vomit off her mouth, she felt the urge to puke again. The prisoners had scattered enough to reveal what had divided them ahead. It was the Dread Clock, and it stood in front of a massive grave. At its side, a Nazi commander sat, smoking and reading a newspaper. Next to him, on a table made out of skulls, a phonograph played soft, soothing classical music. The volume was turned down low, as though the commander was worried about being rude.

  If the clock was here, so, too, were her parents. She still had no idea how to get them out of whatever this was. But she had come here through the Dread Clock. Perhaps she could leave the same way.

  The white rain from the moon slowed to a drizzle, while the war that raged around the camp worsened. Gunfire. Artillery blasts. There was so much dirt and debris being heaved into the air, it was as though something were trying to sift the continent into the sea.

  “Gemma, come here,” the Keeper spoke.

  Gemma, looking at her feet, proceeded to the massive grave. She held her breath and plugged her ears. I can’t do this. The smell of death burned inside her skull. Images flashed through her mind of the dead slaves and now of these soon to be dead prisoners. There’s more of them, she thought. More slaves than masters. More prisoners than captors. Why don’t they fight back? She looked up. A couple of kids that had been sewn together ran past. It’s the Dread Clock. This isn’t real.

  She went past the Nazi commander to the edge of the massive grave. It had to have been fifty-feet deep and, for the moment, empty. At the bottom, hovering over the pool of water that had formed there, was the Keeper.

  “Where are they?” Gemma snarled.

  “So many terrible things around you, and all you’re worried about is your mom and dad?” The Keeper shook its wasp nest-like head. “Insensitive.”

  “This isn’t real!”

  The prisoners that stood at the rim of the massive grave looked at her. They started to point at her and mumble to themselves. They wanted to tear her apart.

  “It’s very real. Some embellishments, but very real.” The Keeper floated out of the grave, until it was hovering above it and Gemma. “You think we caused all of this?” It shrugged. “We create only what has inspired us. In this war, we were just along for the ride. The Black Hour is a museum. It’s not our fault your adults keep giving us atrocities to display.”

  A wave of hopelessness washed over her. She cried, “I don’t believe you.”

  And the Keeper simply said, “We don’t care.”

  Rows of soldiers hurried past Gemma, half to the group of prisoners on one side of the grave, half to the other on the opposite side. Among them, armed and in uniform, were her mom and dad.

  Gemma reached out for their sleeves, but they hurried past, shaking off her attempt.

  “This is what adults do,” the Keeper said. “The sooner you realize this, the happier you’ll be.”

  Mom and Dad, with the other soldiers, formed a perimeter around the grave. Simultaneously, they all raised their guns and pointed them directly at the prisoners.

&nb
sp; “No, don’t,” Gemma said to her mom and dad, who were too far away to hear her.

  She ran to the Nazi commander, who was still reading and smoking, and kicked over his chair.

  “Make them stop,” she screamed.

  But when the commander fell out of his chair, he lost his clothes and his authority. He curled up like an infant and bawled into his knees.

  One gunshot. Then another. Then tens of them. Gemma turned back to the grave. The Nazi soldiers and her parents fired into the crowd of prisoners, sending them reeling into the pit. Those that didn’t die from the bullets broke apart at the bottom of the grave.

  “Holy fuck, god, please, stop!”

  Gemma ran towards the soldiers to try and reach her parents. Hands shot out of the muddy ground and grabbed at her ankles.

  “Fuck you. Fuck you! I’m not… I won’t.” She tried to kick off the hands, but their grips were too strong. “Please, please! I need them!”

  The Keeper put its hands together. “But they don’t need you.” Its tail whipped back and forth, spraying the pit with poison. “Didn’t you see how much better they worked together when you weren’t around? Don’t you remember how happy they sounded before you were born?”

  “You’re making them do this,” Gemma whined pathetically. There was a tear in every fold of her face. “You’re making them,” she said, on the verge of a temper tantrum.

  The Keeper unclasped its hands. “Am I?”

  It pointed to the soldiers, who were now standing over the edge of the grave, firing into the dead bodies, riddling them with bullets.

  “Then what’s their excuse?”

  Gemma dug the heels of her palms into her sweaty forehead. “The Black Hour. I don’t know! I just want to go home. Give them back. I can’t take this anymore. I’ll do anything.”

  “I know you will,” the Keeper said. “Our futures have the same Skeleton.” It lowered itself from the air and honed in on Gemma. “We can keep this up forever. Can you?”

  She nodded and then shook her head. Then said, “You’re doing this on purpose.”

  A missile cruised overhead and exploded into the wasteland beyond. The shadow of a tank rumbled past the barbed wire fence, fire spewing from the top of it.

  The Keeper nodded. “Of course I am. Every human is a unique palette of pain and suffering. No one tastes or feels the same. Our catalogue of experiences exceeds what your mind is capable of comprehending.”

  The Dread Clock rumbled. A low tone bellowed out of it.

  “I want to bleed you and yours dry, Gemma. To the very last drop. For some, that takes only a minute. Others, a lifetime.” Again, the Keeper put its pincers together and said, “I know what you’re thinking. You should have never come here.”

  Gemma swallowed what felt like a gallon of mucus down her throat. She wiped her face, but all she did was spread ashes across it.

  “It’s not that you should have never come here.”

  The concentration camp began to dim, as though all the lights were turned off in the world.

  “Your mom said it best: you should have never been born. Just think how much better things would have been for everyone, yourself included, if you hadn’t?” The Keeper shook its head. “You selfish little beast.”

  “That’s not…” Gemma couldn’t finish the sentence. She folded her arms around her face and rocked in place. Don’t listen to it. Don’t listen to it.

  But she was. She had listened to every word and somehow found truth in each of them. All of this came back to her. She never told the police that Dad had hit Mom. She never told Mom that Dad had touched her. She never told her parents about the website, about what the Dread Clock really was. She had every opportunity to get help, and she didn’t. All the shit she pulled at school. Everything she did to keep them together. And for what? For this? Mom would have never bought the fucking clock if she hadn’t been with Dad. She wouldn’t have even stayed in town. And Dad might have been gone, too. Far away. With Gemma or another woman, but not here, not killing slaves, not slaughtering Jews. They would have been happy. They would have been safe. Their Black Hours would have ended. Their Black Hours would have ended. Their Black Hours would have—

  CAMILLA

  The last place Camilla expected to wake up was in a garden outside a convent. It seemed like the start to a really bad joke Trent might tell when he’d had one too many bottles of liquid courage in him. And maybe she had suffered the same fate, because as she got to her feet, she saw she was dressed like a nun. The whole kit and caboodle, in fact. The black tunic, the white coif and veil—she had it all.

  “Either Halloween came early,” she said. She noticed a cement bench in front of some flowers and took a seat. “Or, Christ, I’m still dreaming.”

  And what a dream it had been. The Antebellum South. A concentration camp from World War II. And other things, as well. Weird shit that had happened at home. Some of it good—Trent and her sure put their bed to the test—but most of it bad—god, had she really eaten Gethin?

  In front of her and the convent was a small pond around which the garden had been built. There was a fountain in the middle of it, but it was the strangest fountain she had ever seen, because it was shaped just like a clock.

  Pointing at it, she said, “Do I know you?” She laughed, squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Yup, still dreaming. Or dead.” She chuckled, clicked her heels together. “Don’t know why I would dream about a convent. Don’t know why I’d dream about eating Gethin, either, so I guess I should just give up trying.” She laughed, amused with herself.

  Camilla fell back on her hands. She arched her spine, closed her eyes, and breathed in the garden. This is nice, she thought. I’ll have to come back here. I’m sure Gemma knows all about lucid dreaming. Such a weird—

  “Camilla.”

  Her eyes slowly opened. The Dread Clock’s Keeper stood behind her, its pincers inches away from her face.

  Camilla screamed, tried to sit up, but the Keeper’s second set of hands quickly grabbed her head and held her there. She made her body dead weight to slip off the bench. But the Keeper’s pincers quickly clamped down onto both sides of her torso, arms included, and held her there in that awkward pose.

  “What… are…” Camilla was already hyperventilating. “No, wait, I recognize…”

  The Keeper’s deformed hands molested the flesh of her face. It pulled her skin back tight, widening her eyes.

  “My girl? My Gemma? I remember.” A pathetic clicking noise came out of Camilla’s throat. “You. Did you hurt her? Please, she’s a good girl. I remember. I never meant…”

  “Shh,” the Keeper said. It twisted its tail around, bringing the drooling stinger that crowned it to Camilla’s forehead. “You’ve given me almost everything. But to have everything, I must give you something in return.”

  Camilla shook her body. “No, I don’t want it.”

  “You don’t even know what it is.” The Keeper stabbed the stinger into Camilla’s skull and started to pump the curdling liquid into it. “You never will.”

  The convent, the garden, and the Keeper disappeared. Left with only her memories, there was one that stood out amongst the rest. It pulled her in when she wanted nothing more than to put it away. The memory was like a diamond, dense and indestructible. Thirteen years of pain and unspoken rage had sharpened its edges, like whetstones. She couldn’t hold it for more than a moment without getting hurt. And yet here it was, in the palm of her mind, demanding embrace, and promising only evisceration.

  There were nights, and then there were Nights. She’d had many of the former, fewer of the latter. There had been the first Night with her first date, and the first Night she had sex. The first Night she met Trent, and the last Night she spoke to her mother. But the Night that stood out the most was the one that had changed her life forever.

  Thirteen years ago, Trent revealed that not only had he cheated on her, but that the woman he fucked was pregnant with his child. The confession was cat
aclysmic. It tore through Camilla like a knife and bled away the last drops of love she still had for him. Divorce was the obvious option and, in the weeks that followed, imminent. That is, until he told her the child was already born, and that the woman didn’t want the little girl. And that he was going to take the baby and bring it home and raise as it as their own.

  The first moment Camilla laid eyes on little Gemma, so pink and small, she knew she would love her. The same couldn’t be said for her husband, but for their new daughter, it was an unspoken, unshakeable fact. Gemma wasn’t hers by birth, but it didn’t seem to matter. She was a beautiful child. One that had been spared a terrible life of trailer park drama and dead-end ambitions. Camilla had been given this opportunity for a reason; and although she would never forgive Trent for what he had done, never in a million years would she take that same anger out on Gemma. Truth be told, she took in the child partly as a test for herself, believing that, if she could raise Gemma, then all the efforts and energies she had put into her and Trent hadn’t been a waste. But more importantly, that Camilla wasn’t a waste herself. That she was capable of nurturing a relationship, of seeing it through to its very end. That she could have an effect on someone, and that both they and she could be better for it.

  This was the memory that lay before her, crystallized and clear. But as she recalled it, she saw that its structure had changed. It became more angular and raw. It became a liability, something which couldn’t be kept close to those memories connected to it. Fissures ran along the gem, from the outer layers of excuses and weak justifications, to the deep core of regret. Then, as though it had been there all along, in the soil of the experience, a black mass rose, coating every moment, feeling, and belief that it touched and changing it for the worse.

  Suddenly, Gemma was no longer the pink and small baby that inspired smiles and sighs. She became a tiny a burden, an unwanted annoyance. Every dollar that was spent on her was a dollar that could have been spent on something better. Every late night spent up with her, feeding her, burping her, rocking her to sleep, was a night wasted. Everything that Gemma did right, Camilla found something wrong to complain about. And everything that Gemma did wrong—and there were many things—Camilla found an excuse to curse her name and count down the days until she was no longer her responsibility.