by Scott Hale
R’lyeh didn’t bother looking back by the time they hit the woods outside the Divide. The only way this could end well for everyone was if both sides died. And if she looked back, she knew she would be disappointed in what she saw. Total annihilation was the only remedy for her sickened soul.
They rode for days back to Gallows. During that time, neither R’lyeh, nor Elizabeth said a word to one another. There was nothing that needed to be said. They had ridden to Rime, failed their mission, and lost a friend on the way back. What had they learned that a few scouts and messenger birds couldn’t have? How cruel the world was? How badly their hearts could ache? In all this time, they had done nothing but bear witness to atrocities. Maybe for a man who was only bones there was something to learn from all that suffering, but not for R’lyeh, and certainly not for Elizabeth.
I can’t do this, R’lyeh decided at the end of the week, at the end of the day. Gallows wasn’t far now, just over the hill ahead. She had found some poisonbite berries along the way, and now slipped them into her mouth. Elizabeth saw her, but didn’t say anything. Elizabeth didn’t do much of anything. Sometimes, R’lyeh had to remind her to breathe.
I have to fight, she thought, her, Elizabeth, and the third horse, starting up the hill. If it’s a threat, it has to die. I could have saved her, but I didn’t. I was closer than Elizabeth. She scratched her horse behind its twitching ear. Everyone around me dies. I can’t be around anything alive.
R’lyeh wiped her eyes, turned to Elizabeth, and meekly said, “We’re here.”
Elizabeth’s dull eyes shifted. Her mouth, white with dried drool, cracked the smallest of smiles.
R’lyeh nodded and rode the horse over the crest of the hill. She squeezed her legs against the beast, grabbed its mane, and said, “Shit, shit. Stop.”
At the center of Gallows, in the lake of blood, a giant bat floated on its back. On the mangy beast’s belly, tens of pale children moved back and forth between the lake and the bat; some rubbed the blood into its fur, while others nursed it into the creature’s panting mouth.
R’lyeh threw out her arm, to block Elizabeth, but Elizabeth rode at full-speed past her.
“Great,” Elizabeth kept saying, over and over. “Great!”
R’lyeh untethered the third horse. It smartly took off for the countryside. Don’t stop, don’t stare. R’lyeh swallowed her hesitation and rode down the hill towards Gallows.
They didn’t know the passphrase for entry, but the cabalists in the sentry towers let them through, regardless. Elizabeth was the first to make it to the dock. When she did, she dismounted from her horse and booked it toward Operations.
R’lyeh, ten seconds behind, hit the docks, and did the same. She kept the giant bat and the pale children in her periphery, but only in her periphery. If she stopped, if she stared, something could happen to Elizabeth. She couldn’t lose another one. Not now. Not ever. Not again. Not if she could—
Halfway up the ramp to the second level, Elizabeth braced herself and shouted, “You mother fucker!”
Cabalists across Gallows stopped what they were doing. The pale children in the lake of blood levitated above their bat god and exchanged dark whispers with one another.
R’lyeh, with a stitch in her side, hoofed it towards and up the ramp to the second level. At the top of it, the Skeleton stood, his arms folded across his ribcage.
“What are they doing here?” Elizabeth ran at the Skeleton. She threw her arms at him. He caught them and held her there, a prisoner to her own grief and rage. “What are they… what are they?”
Behind the Skeleton, Warren emerged from Operations and asked Elizabeth, “Where’s Miranda?”
Elizabeth went limp in the Skeleton’s hands and collapsed onto the ramp, a sobbing mess.
R’lyeh ran up the ramp, dropped down, and pulled Elizabeth against her. Peeling her hair off her hot face, R’lyeh said to the Skeleton, “What the fuck is going on?”
“Allies.” The Skeleton looked past R’lyeh and then asked, “Where’s Audra?”
R’lyeh shook her head. She held Elizabeth tighter as she tried to pull away.
The Skeleton nodded. He went sideways just as Hex emerged from Operations, too.
“What happened?” she asked, hand covering her mouth. “Audra?”
“No,” the Skeleton said.
Hex’s face went tight. Her neck tented; she grabbed onto Warren.
“We tried it your way,” the Skeleton said. He then turned back to R’lyeh and stepped towards her and Elizabeth. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth.”
Face buried in R’lyeh’s chest, Elizabeth said, muffled, “You knew, and you called them here, anyways.” She spit at the Skeleton. “You’re a fucking monster. Get away from us!”
The Skeleton’s veiny, glassy eyes focused on R’lyeh. Fat, black, salamander-like tongue flopping around inside his jaw, the Skeleton said, “When the battle is over, whoever wins will come here next. You will be leaving.”
R’lyeh shook her head. “No. No! I’m not going anywhere. I’m not running anymore.”
“Everyone is running.” The Skeleton touched the Black Hour’s heart beneath his robe. “Hex’s plan failed. Mine will not.”
“You’re not coming with us?” R’lyeh let go of Elizabeth and stood up, face to face, with the Skeleton. “You’re abandoning us?” She pushed him; when she touched him, an orgy of blood and steel stabbed through her skull.
“Hex is going to lead the Marrow Cabal to our new base of operations—” the Skeleton sighed, “—and I’m going to the Dead City to put an end to all of this, once and for all. Now, get Elizabeth out of here, before Gemma sees her.”
CHAPTER XVII
Technically speaking, there were two Nameless Forests on the continent, or so Aeson liked to think. The first was the most famous, and the only one anyone cared about—that wooded nightmare to the east that was quickly becoming the Disciples of the Deep’s new Mecca. The second Nameless Forest, while at this point nearly forgotten by all, was much older than its spotlight-hungry sibling and, in some ways, or, again, so Aeson liked to think, the more interesting of the two.
But to call it the Nameless Forest would be disingenuous, because unlike the home of the Dread Clock, this second forest was truly nameless. In the countless stories Aeson had read about the place, it was obvious people had tried to give it a name; however, one would never stick for long. Purgatory Pointe, the Dark Woods, the Winding Haunt, Bleak’s Holdout—these names, while all similar in tone, were just a few of hundreds attributed to the forest over the remaining recorded years.
Before the Trauma, the humans were calling it the Garden of Sleep. The forest had been annexed by a local state park. Deemed too unstable for general use, it quickly became a Mecca of its own for the many youths who willingly trespassed into the area.
Suicide forests had been in style at the time; when dead teenagers started washing up in the creeks, rivers, and lakes of the state park, the locals panicked. They figured their sons and daughters were going into the Garden of Sleep to kill themselves, but each body that was recovered suggested otherwise. Of the sixty who died in the Garden of Sleep, not one of them was determined to have died by suicide.
The next logical conclusion was that the sixty had been murdered, either by their peers, or by a person or persons residing in the forest. But the medical reports and newspaper clippings Aeson had read were quick to dismiss this suggestion, as well. The teenagers hadn’t killed themselves, nor had they been killed by anyone else. They had simply stopped living.
The Trauma happened shortly thereafter, and the humans never got the answers they wanted. But because Aeson was an Archivist (eight years ago he had more time on his hands than did most clocks), he realized in his haphazard researching a precedence in that place for similar mysterious deaths. Back when it had been known as Purgatory Pointe in the 1800s, the Dark Woods in 1910, the Winding Haunt in 1975, and Bleak’s Holdout in 2012, there were cases of corpses with unexplainable causes of d
eath. Children or adults, it didn’t matter; every year, bodies would be found that appeared to have given up on living altogether, as if the thread of life itself had been snipped from their souls. Myths were made, and creatures were created, and the wrong people were blamed for these eerie wrongdoings. But like the forest itself, the deaths were quickly forgotten, with each subsequent case just as shocking to the public as the first. Not only was the Garden of Sleep—the best name given to the forest, or so Aeson claimed—capable of killing undetected, but it had hanging about it a fog of unfailing amnesia.
Eight years ago, at age eleven, Aeson began making connections in the case about the same time he started hearing stories about the forest from those in Caldera. He had developed an obsession with the Garden of Sleep, not only because of its history, but because the forest was only a half a day’s journey to the west from the village. It was an obsession his eight-year-old self at the time couldn’t believe no one else had. And yet, it was an obsession only his eight-year-old self and those unfortunately similar to him could have. For what child, orphaned by their parents’ suicides, wouldn’t take interest in the home of Death?
Ghost stories were for the gullible, and Aeson, with the Old World at his fingertips, was beyond gullible. Hearing that Death dwelled in the Garden of Sleep, he began to see Death in all its corners and corridors. And more specifically, he began to see the rare flower, Death’s Dilemma, in all the cases and corpses. Whether it was in the 1800s or on the eve of the Trauma, the flower, or something similar to it, was present in every story from back then, as well as all the ghost stories he kept hearing as a child.
To him, the eight-year-old who thought himself three times his age, the solution was simple: People had gone to Death over the years, and death was what they had gotten. The Garden of Sleep was a gateway to the Abyss—to the great cemetery in which all souls slept. There were reports of a Ferry Woman to take people to Death, but that just seemed like nothing more than pure ceremony. For months, Aeson had wanted to take the trip, to the forest and Death’s seamless domain. But as with others, the passage of time had taken his will, his motivation, and eventually, his memory. He never forgot the forest or what it was capable of, and yet, at the same time, he did.
Many people often described Death as a disease, but now, standing here in the outskirts of the Garden of Sleep with Bjørn at his side, Aeson realized the living were the disease. Death had rejected his advances before. But now they were weak and desperate, and clinging to a poisoned hope—they had to have worn Death down. It would have no choice but to accept them.
“The Ferry Woman shouldn’t be far,” Bjørn said, begrudgingly.
Aeson checked his bag for The Blood of Before. “How do you know?”
“Everyone who comes through here has seen her. She’s always in the same place.”
“When Vrana got back from Geharra, she told me she saw her.” Aeson sighed. “Said the Ferry Woman was holding a dead bird.”
Bjørn shook his head. Pointing forward, he said, “Home isn’t far.”
It wasn’t. From where they stood, they could see the peaks of Kistvaen through the forest’s dying canopy. Caldera wasn’t a stone’s throw away, but it was close enough to make them second guess themselves every second their journey put them closer to the village. If they returned to Caldera, then they could ask the elders for help. Instead of seeking out Death and some mythical weapon, they could try to throw together a group of Caldera’s best and go to Angheuawl to put an end to the witches and their Choir of flesh fiends. And yet to Aeson and Bjørn, both these options somehow sounded unreasonable. Any delay would be a death sentence for Vrana. Any attack that didn’t assure the complete eradication of Joy and Pain couldn’t be trusted.
But, deep down, Aeson knew the real reason why they felt so confident in courting Death. Bjørn didn’t say it, of course, but he didn’t need to. Both men had known Death all their lives, and more than once, It had taken someone they loved away from them. Aeson knew Death through books, and Bjørn through deeds; however, with Ichor’s dinner party, there was no doubt in either’s mind that they were equals in their experiences. The living might have been the disease, but a disease had to keep on living. If they were meant to die, they should’ve already. Like a carless debtor, Death had taken too much; now it was time to take some of it back.
“You alright?” Bjørn asked.
The swamp in front of them gave an unenthusiastic belch. Aeson couldn’t have given a better response. He appreciated the Bear’s concern, but for now and years to come, concern was something that cut rather than healed. So he lied and said, “Yeah,” and got moving.
This nameless forest west of Caldera was mostly swamp; and those places that weren’t appeared to be there just for show. For all the chaos in the landscape—the steep hills and even steeper valleys; the impenetrable black ashes and almost-illusory bald cypresses—there appeared to be a kind of primal order to it. Maybe it was something left over from its days as a state park, or maybe Death had done some redecorating of Its own, but the forest seemed to funnel them through it down a definite path. Those who entered clearly weren’t meant to linger long, which made Aeson wonder: Is the Garden of Sleep really supposed to be here?
Grunting and groaning, they made their way to the edge of the swamp. The water looked more like an oil spill than anything else. Choked with debris and dead animals, and probably a hell of a lot deeper than it looked, it was obvious they would be skirting around the swamp, not swimming straight through it.
Bjørn took out his giant sword and gave it the once-over. “A few things we have to worry about in here,” he said. Then, sheathing the sword: “Came here a few years back for the nethers oil I used on Vrana’s daggers. Things should still be the same.”
“Wisps,” Aeson said.
“Yeah.”
“And whatever lives at the bottom of the swamp.”
“You don’t know, either?”
“No one does.
“Don’t think its Death?”
Aeson shook his head. “Not the kind we’re going to see.”
“Nethers shouldn’t be out at this time, but we do have to watch for the lamias. Colder it gets, the more active they get.” Bjørn scanned the swamp for the best place to cross. “They hollow-out trees and live inside them. There’s some local people that live in this forest—”
“They feed their third-born child to them. The lamias are always female; top half looks human, bottom half, like a snake. Legend says they were too evil for even the Nameless Forest to take them in. It’s October, though. We won’t see them until mid-November.” Aeson smiled a shitty smile and then, feeling guilty, said, “Sorry.”
“We don’t have to do this.” Bjørn wrung the sweat out of his mullet. “You haven’t slept since the Sticks.”
Vrana had nightmares about the Witch before she took her, Aeson thought. How long until the flesh fiend comes for me? He pulled a cloak out of his bag, threw it over his shoulders, and plodded forward. Winter would be here by the time this was all over. If it froze the land, could it freeze him, too? Could winter lay its hands upon him and encase in ice all those terrible feelings wreaking havoc inside him? Holy Child, he couldn’t go an hour without feeling as if his heart were going to beat out of his chest. But worse were the noises, the smells. Was it his memory or misinterpretations of his environment? A rattle here, the breaking of branches there. He often smelled the fecal stench of bad breath, and the cloying, eye-watering odor of unwashed flesh. He always jumped; cold sweats were now the norm, and it didn’t take much to take him back there, the front lawn of House Gloom, where the flesh fiend had mounted him and fucked its way into his head.
In the Old World, they called his condition Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He had learned a lot of their mental diagnoses about six years ago, thinking that mental health might make a resurgence. But it was more than that. At night, when it was darkest, and Bjørn wasn’t more than a snoring pile of dirt-covered muscles, the flas
hbacks (fleshbacks, he once called them, pathetically) were so overwhelming that they stopped afflicting him, and started becoming him. Or he started becoming them. A mental illness could do that to a person, couldn’t it? Change them? He heard and smelled the foul breaths, and sometimes, they seemed to be coming from him. The rattling, too, and the breaking of branches, which seemed to be his own bones cracking. And what of the flesh? The unwashed flesh, stinking like mildewed clothes, soiled and soaked through? Sometimes, his flesh felt wrong, like it didn’t belong, like it was something he had borrowed and forgotten wasn’t really his.
Aeson knew he wasn’t turning into a flesh fiend, nor had he been born one. But something was happening to him. Just like something had happened to Vrana. Adelyn had asked him to love her, no matter what. Who would ask her to do the same for him?
It was slow going through the swamp. What little they had of a trail to work with alternated between fat roots and pitfalls. Even though they were on the edge of the swamp, it didn’t seem as if it grew shallower the more it tapered towards the shore. One wrong step and they would be up to their necks or worse in the oily water.
And whatever was beneath those black waters definitely knew they were there. There were too many ripples and teasing emergences. Clambering over a fallen tree, Aeson had seen, for a split second, what appeared to be a mushroom-shaped trunk and a single arm covered in serrated rings, like suckers.
“Are there swamp squids?” Aeson asked, the creature submerging before Bjørn could think him anything but crazy.
“You’re the Archivist.” Bjørn broke right through the tree, his thighs like battering rams. “I wouldn’t doubt it, though.”
The swamp’s end wasn’t far off now. It was midday, and they had plenty of light left to get to the dark place they were going. The Ferry Woman was said to be near an inlet shrouded in weeping willows, not far from where the forest let out. She had a boat, and it was by this boat a person could reach the Garden of Sleep. If there was a procedure to this insane plan of his, he didn’t know it; those from Caldera who had been seen taking a ride with the Ferry Woman were never seen again. It was a one-way trip. How he planned to get back, he couldn’t say. It was best he didn’t.