by Scott Hale
R’lyeh had taken the vial of Thanatos from the Skeleton two weeks ago. He had left her alone in Operations one afternoon. She had seen it sitting on his desk amongst a bunch notes from Herbert North. She waited two weeks to use it, thinking he might make a big stink about it having gone missing. He didn’t, and she never did figure out why he, someone who couldn’t die, had it in the first place.
R’lyeh opened a drawer in the desk. The drawer was stuffed with greasy diaries that the previous owner, Poe, must have pored over. R’lyeh had gone through the diaries a few times. Most of them were from girls, teenagers like herself, and they talked a lot about friends, parents, school, and things called “sports.” It made R’lyeh feel uneasy reading these Old World recollections, not because she couldn’t connect with the kids, but because she could. They all wanted the same things she wanted, but what had stood in their ways couldn’t have compared to what stood in R’lyeh’s. Maybe it was all a matter of perspective, but here she was, alone with a bunch of mercenaries, living on a lake of blood; her parents were dead and her best friend was missing; and all she could do to pass the time was drink poison and kill people. It wasn’t that she thought she was better than those Old World girls, but could they top that? Hell, could anyone?
R’lyeh smiled, her suffering becoming her strength, and reached past the diaries to the vial of Thanatos stowed behind them. She held the vial up to the light creeping in through the gaps in the attic’s roof. It looked curdled, almost like a crunchy, black spread. She undid the stopper. A strong, putrescent smell—ear wax and body melt—poured out of it.
“H-Holy Child,” R’lyeh wheezed. If the poison didn’t kill her, then the smell of it would. “That’s fucking f-foul.”
What am I doing? She put the stopper back in the vial, the smell a wake-up call. Everyone has their limits. She swished the chunky, death-like discharge. Deathshade ingestion and malinga envenomation had cures; blight beetles and poisonbite berries probably weren’t as bad as everyone made them out to be. Yes, she was immune to the Crossbreed, but what was she doing? Was she looking to die? Or looking for a reason not to?
R’lyeh bit her lip. She wanted to be good at something, and she knew you didn’t get good at something by talking about it all the time. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if someone were up here with her, watching her, validating her.
But she was on her own, with no one to stop her, so she said, “Bottoms up,” and popped out the stopper. The Thanatos moved like sludge inside the vial. “Here we go.” She pressed the vial to her lips, death now a distant thought. “Here we—”
A loud crash came clanging up the staircase outside the attic. Her lips immediately went numb from the fumes wafting off the Thanatos. She stopped up the vial and slipped it in her pocket. What the hell was that?
She heard a table get flipped, and a bed kicked out of the way. Heels were being dragged across the ground in some sort of limp-legged waltz. It sounded like someone was drunk, pissed off, or both. R’lyeh crept over to the attic door, braced her body against it. She put her eye to the keyhole, held her breath.
The staircase was a straight shot from the first floor to the attic. R’lyeh couldn’t see everything, but she could definitely see if someone were coming her way.
“I can’t… hold… on,” the intruder whispered, out of sight.
R’lyeh listened closely. Her eyeball hurt from being pressed so hard against the keyhole.
“Can’t make… do it.”
I know that voice, R’lyeh thought. Who is that?
There was silence for a moment, and then a shape passed in front of the staircase. Surprised, R’lyeh fell back on her palms. The attic floorboards creaked under her weight. She held her breath, held the Thanatos through her pocket. Had they heard her? She plodded forward on her hands like an infant and put her eye to the keyhole.
Hex was standing at the bottom of the stairs, bleeding blue light from the corners of her eyes. Her face was twisted into a maniacal grin; and her braids were moving around her head, as if she were caught in a windstorm. One hand was holding the bridge of her nose, while the other was behind her back, tightly gripping something.
“She’s fighting… me,” Hex said, but it wasn’t in her voice that she spoke, not entirely. It sounded as if someone were speaking through her.
Whose voice is that? R’lyeh swallowed hard. What’s that behind her—
Hex brought her hand out from behind her back. In it, she held a large, rusty machete. Her eyes focused in on the keyhole of the attic door. She smiled. With tears of light pouring down her face, she said, “Kill her.”
Hex started to climb the stairs. Her arms and legs jerked wildly, as if she were fighting against herself. “R’lyeh,” she said, dragging the machete against the wall. “R’lyeh.”
Hex went slowly, as if she were trying to tease the terror from R’lyeh to savor every morsel. Spit foamed at the sides of her mouth; she was rabid with rage.
R’lyeh backed away from the door. What the fuck is wrong with her? She looked around the attic. There had to be a weapon up here, or something she could turn into one. She sprinted across the space, a trail of creaks and cracks following behind her. It didn’t matter. Somehow, Hex already knew she was here.
R’lyeh went to the fort of Old World crap and tore it apart. How could she be so stupid as to not have a weapon on her at all times? She riffled through the desk, emptying out drawer after drawer. Behind her, Hex’s footsteps grew louder, more forceful, and she could hear the machete skipping across the wall, grinding into the stone.
“You need to pick better… friends,” Hex said, now on the other side of the attic door. She rattled the doorknob. “I know you’re… up here. I was watching you sleep.”
“Hex,” R’lyeh finally said, “I don’t know what is going on with you, but if the Skeleton—”
“I like… the lake. Too bad it’s not… water.” Hex laughed. She threw herself into the door. It held, but only barely. “Hey, R’lyeh.” She stopped. Through the door, she said, “Do you think they’ll notice you’re gone?”
R’lyeh pawed inside the desk. She ripped out the metal track one of the drawers slid on. It was better than nothing, but not by much.
“I don’t think they will,” Hex said.
She yelled and rammed her shoulder into the door. She stumbled into the attic. Immediately, her eyes shot over to R’lyeh in the back. Hex waved, and then she barreled through the attic, the machete held out at her side, slicing through the air.
“Hex, don’t!” R’lyeh took off. She went sideways through the attic, keeping the crossbeams between her and Hex. She waved the metal track feebly and cried, “Stop, please. Stop!”
Hex blinked the light of her eyes. She shook her head—no, she wasn’t going to stop—and then ran full-speed at R’lyeh.
R’lyeh swung the metal track. Hex slashed the machete downward and tore it out of R’lyeh’s hand. She spat in R’lyeh’s terrified eyes.
“Fuck,” R’lyeh said, temporarily blinded. She stumbled, and then all the air blew out of her lungs as Hex’s fist pummeled her gut. R’lyeh reeled and fell on her ass. Threads of pain weaved through her stomach until it was unbearably tight. She gasped. A noise, a voice maybe, came from downstairs, but R’lyeh couldn’t move herself to speak. Instead, she lay there looking up at Hex. They were both crying now.
“I need you to die slowly.” Hex took the machete in both hands and pointed it at R’lyeh’s chest. “But you’ve been doing that since Geharra, so I know you won’t let us down.”
Hex drove the machete through the air. R’lyeh screamed. She put her forearms out. The floorboards rumbled, and then instead of impaling her, the machete slid along her arms, cutting her superficially from elbow to wrist. Hex yelled something and then tripped over R’lyeh’s legs, as if she had been pushed.
Shock-numbed, R’lyeh scooted away. Behind Hex, Elizabeth stood, looking almost as scared as R’lyeh felt.
Hex got her bearing
s and whipped around, swinging the machete as if it were an extension of her arm. Elizabeth went sideways, dodged the blow. Then she balled her fist and broke it on Hex’s snarling mouth.
“I’m s-sorry,” Hex said, her busted lip bleeding profusely.
Elizabeth wrenched the machete out of Hex’s now limp hand. And then, for good measure, or maybe because she had always wanted to, she socked the blue-haired telepath in the eye and knocked her out cold.
“You’re okay, yeah?” Elizabeth said, panting.
R’lyeh sat up. The gash on her arm was long and bleeding, but it wasn’t anything that wouldn’t heal within a few weeks.
Elizabeth extended her hand, and R’lyeh took it. “Don’t tell anyone what happened here.”
R’lyeh held the gash; blood seeped through the gaps between her fingers. “What? What the hell? What the hell is wrong with Hex?”
Elizabeth bent down and took the machete. She trained it on Hex, who was still unconscious. “Bone Man wants you.”
“The hell?” R’lyeh held out her arm; a few drops of red got onto Elizabeth’s shirt. “Have you all gone crazy?”
Elizabeth looked at her coyly. “You throw a fit about that, you think Bone Man isn’t going to let you go on the mission, yeah?” She chewed on her lip. “Don’t tell anyone about Hex, okay? Miranda’s downstairs. She’ll patch you up.”
R’lyeh’s cheek quivered. “You’re not telling me something.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Obviously. Hex is second-in-command, yeah? If people know what she did here, well, that’s not good for anyone, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry about your booboo, but get out of here, please.”
R’lyeh scoffed. She let go of the wound and wiped her bloody hand down Elizabeth’s side.
“Yeah, I deserve that.” Elizabeth crouched and prodded Hex with the tip of the machete. “Go now. King Bones will fill you in on everything else, alright?”
R’lyeh started across the attic. Halfway to the door Hex had broken through, she turned and said, “How’d you know what was going on? I’d be dead if you hadn’t showed up.”
Elizabeth looked back. “Came to get you for Our Fleshless Leader. Clementine said sometimes you hang back. Then I heard the screaming. Thank god for coincidences, right?”
R’lyeh nodded. The vial of Thanatos suddenly felt very heavy in her pocket. “Right.”
Mornings in Gallows were always a grim affair. Today, just like any other day, the sky was a gray mire in which both the sun and moon had been caught. At this time torches burned brighter than any light coming in from the heavens above. A heavy fog sat at the outskirts of town, as if waiting for an invitation to come in.
To R’lyeh, it was the blood lake that seemed most changed in these small hours. While Miranda stitched up her arm, she stared at the crimson waters through one of the barracks’ windows. Every morning, something seemed different about the blood. Whether the lake was spreading outward or it was getting deeper, R’lyeh couldn’t say for sure. But something was definitely happening inside Mr. Haemo’s blood well. She couldn’t have been the only one to have noticed it, right?
“There you go,” Miranda said, snipping off the stitch. She turned R’lyeh’s arm over and held her hand. “Not good as new, but not as bad as before, either.”
Everyone liked to call Miranda a bitch, but R’lyeh had taken a liking to her. She wasn’t a bitch. She just did her own thing. Miranda spent most of her time in Gallows due to her left arm, which was left dead due to nerve damage from a battle. The Skeleton had assigned Miranda to keeping an eye on Clementine and Will, which she did as if their lives depended upon it… which they did.
“I’m going to go check on Elizabeth,” Miranda said, getting up. She put her left hand in her pocket, so it wouldn’t hang limply at her side. That seemed to embarrass her. “You have your orders.”
R’lyeh nodded. She ran her fingers over the stitches in her forearm. They tugged on her flesh; it felt like tens of ants were biting her skin.
“Bring your mask and your weapons.”
R’lyeh slid her chair away from the table. Stomach aching, she said, “Why?”
“You’re leaving today.”
R’lyeh stomped across the docks, ax in hand, Cruel Mother’s talons at her side. The leather armor she wore—a chest piece and bracers—were tight and irritated her stitching and stomach, but she didn’t care. She pulled the octopus mask down harder on her head. Things were starting to spiral out of her control again, and she wasn’t about to stand for that shit.
The blood lake gurgled beside her. Flashes of Geharra’s pit flooded her mind. She quickly turned her thoughts to Hex’s attack, which no one seemed to care about. Okay, she got it; Hex was second-in-command, but she’d just tried to cut her up with a freaking machete. And what the hell had she been saying? It was like someone was talking through her. And her voice? R’lyeh knew she knew that voice. It made her heart hurt when she heard it. It couldn’t have been Vrana’s, could—
R’lyeh ran into a passing cabalist. She bounced off his bulk and caught herself against the dock’s railing. He kept going, never turning back, and she went ahead, never apologizing to him. She was a Night Terror, and he a Corrupted. That was the way of things, even here, amongst supposed allies.
Several more cabalists came down the ramp to the second level as R’lyeh went up it. They laughed under their breaths while they passed. Was she being sensitive? Or were they being shitheads?
She growled and quickened her pace to Operations. More specifically, was she upset because of what had happened with Hex? Or was it because of what hadn’t happened with Hex? She held Vrana’s ax in both hands. Things could have gone differently if she had been armed. Elizabeth wouldn’t have had to have rescued her. ‘You and your friend really messed things up putting that Blue Worm to sleep,’ she remembered Hex telling her, that night she and Will came back from Bedlam. No shit, she now thought. But why me? What’d I ever do to her?
Lost in thought, R’lyeh had wandered past Operations. She stopped, turned around, and headed back the way she had come. She noticed Will on the first level, walking with Clementine, and waved to them. Clementine waved a few seconds later, her movements all wrong, like she was drugged. Will, on the other hand, refused to recognize R’lyeh at all.
“Guess Bone Daddy grounded you because of the shepherd,” R’lyeh said, watching them disappear into the general store. “Guess I can’t get anything right, anymore.”
R’lyeh headed into Operations. The Skeleton was seated at his desk. Herbert North was standing beside him, leaning over his shoulder, pointing to the papers laid out before them.
Herbert North looked up. His old eyes, dull and covered in cataracts, still managed to shine with a faint, joyful light. Leaning away from the Skeleton, he cried, “Iä! Iä! R’lyeh fhtagn!”
R’lyeh blushed. He was the only person she had ever met who had read the book from which she had chosen her name. Of course, that shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. The Skeleton had plucked Herbert from the Membrane; he had been there a long time, and in the Old World, he used to be a supernatural investigator. Of all the people the Skeleton spent time with nowadays, he spent most of it with Herbert.
“I think I finally figured out the difference between Night Terrors and humans,” Herbert said. He patted the Skeleton on the shoulder, then shivered. Recovering quickly, he added, “Night Terror teenagers actually wake up before lunchtime.” He stretched his face into a smile. “Ba-dump tsh,” he said.
Neither the Skeleton nor R’lyeh caught the reference.
“Bah.” Herbert waved them off. “Let me get out of your hair.” He looked at the Skeleton’s bald dome and cringed. “I mean yours,” he said to R’lyeh. “Looks nice, by the way.”
Did it? Without thinking, she touched it. Her hair was longer than she usually kept it. It was almost at her shoulders, now, just the way Mom always asked her to wear it.
“Whoa, R’ly
eh. Hey.” Herbert shuffled toward her and took her arm. “This is recent.” His touch was tender, much needed. “Are you okay?”
R’lyeh looked past Herbert to the Skeleton, who was leaning forward, elbows digging into the desk, watching her. “I’m good.” She smiled. “It’s nothing.”
Herbert twisted his mouth; he wasn’t buying it, but he was in no position to have it refunded, either. “I’ll leave you two to it.” He gave R’lyeh a short hug, and then bowed cordially to the Skeleton. “Think about it,” he told him. “It’s better than the alternative.”
Herbert North excused himself out of Operations.
The Skeleton quickly came to his feet. R’lyeh, wanting to see what Herbert had been getting at, went straight for the desk and took a peek at the papers scattered there. They were pages that had been ripped out of a journal of illustrations, the ink still wet on a few of them. They were pictures of buildings, skyscrapers from the Old World, and what looked like weapons. She recognized some of them—in Alluvia, the elders had a busted handgun and a rifle—but for the others, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. They were long tubes, pointed, kind of like arrows, while others were small, fat packages with wires coming out of them. The inscription beside the illustration read ‘Bomb.’
“Déjà vu,” the Skeleton said. Casually, he scooped up the papers and put them inside the desk. “Who you been scuffling with?”
“Hex,” R’lyeh said, matter-of-factly. “She tried to kill me.”
The Skeleton stopped, the statement hitting him hard. “Where is she?”
“Barracks, with Elizabeth and Miranda. Elizabeth saved me.”
“Hex isn’t right in the head, anymore. I’m sorry this happened.”
“She came specifically for me,” R’lyeh said.