by Scott Hale
The homunculus pauses, as if it has realized it is speaking too much and says, “You came for me.”
“I did,” the ghoul says.
“Not the Maggot?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“We all hold our undoing within ourselves,” the homunculus says. “Even God, I believe. I hope.” It touches the ghoul’s rough cheek with its soft finger. “What do you want from me?”
“Your blood.”
The homunculus smiles.
“Not me. It’s not for me.” The ghoul hangs his head. “It’s for the mosquito, Mr. Haemo.”
“Ah.”
“You know him?”
“Unfortunately.”
“What has he promised you?”
“A life. A way to have a life.”
“What is wrong with the life you have now?”
“They’re not mine. Mine’s gone. I’m a parasite. I’m a cuckoo bird.”
“Is that not your nature?”
The ghoul doesn’t respond.
“You can be yourself, and you can be more.” The homunculus takes a step back. “We have been telling the Night Terrors this for years. Some are listening. Emvola did not.”
The ghoul sneers. “Maybe you shouldn’t have given them horrible principles to base their life around.”
The balls of fire on the ceiling begin to glow brighter.
The homunculus makes fists and then, slowing its breath, says, “That is what you do when you do not believe in the subjects you are trying to mold. You appeal to what they are, in the hopes that, one day, they will become what you have.
“I am sorry, ghoul, but I do not have blood to give you.”
The ghoul stammers, “W-What?”
“I am bloodless. I only have the oil from the Mokita machine. It is yours to have. That is what the mosquito wants.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“I have just committed a terrible sin by giving Mother Abbess Priscilla that box. I appealed to her nature with the hopes it will make more fruitful our own. I wish to atone.”
The ghoul nods. The hollow is going dark. The homunculus’ weavings are beginning to wear thin.
“You’re manmade,” the ghoul says.
The homunculus nods.
“But you can spellweave.”
Again, it nods.
“How?”
“The Mokita machine. Its oil.”
The homunculus presses its hand to its chest and tears a piece of it away. The porous material in place of flesh comes free in one, dry hunk. Behind the material lies the creature’s chest cavity. Inside it, artificial organs with a plastic sheen throb with calculated movements.
The homunculus reaches deeper into itself and wraps its hand around its heart. The container is rich with a dark, swirling liquid inside it.
“The liquid is the oils of Exuviae,” the homunculus says. “When man could not be God, he tried to be Its opposite, instead. They lie to themselves about the nature of angels and demons. They only see the wings.”
The homunculus rips out the heart container and hands it to the ghoul.
As soon as the ghoul takes it, the homunculus collapses upon itself into a pile of dust.
Overhead, on a cue, he hears buzzing and the flapping of wings, and Mr. Haemo’s grating voice.
“Just one more thing you have to do for me,” he says, landing behind him, resting his claw upon the ghoul’s shoulder. “Just one more thing.”
2
Bowie cracks his back at the crack of dawn and wakes his wife, Starla, with the dramatic gyration.
“What’re you doing?” she rumbles, one half of her still in last night’s cups. “What time is it?” She opens an eye. There is no light coming in from the casement window. “Go back to bed. You need to sleep!”
Bowie lets her go on like this for another five seconds or so before sleep, having realized she’s slipped its grips, comes to get her. She’s gone by the time he gets out of the bed.
He’s seventy-two. Older than anyone he’s ever met, Bowie expects some insomnia in his twilight years. Starla hates it, though. Being his wife makes her, by default, his most trusted physician, and according to her, it isn’t right or natural to have him awake at all hours. Then she usually tells him he didn’t use to be like this. Then he tells her she didn’t use to nag him so much. And so on and so on.
Bowie stumbles in the dark out of the bedroom. In the hall, he smells the candle they pinched out an hour ago and wishes they hadn’t. He kicks at the wall until his feet hit something hollow.
Reaching down, his bones crack like branches underfoot. He shudders in delight and grabs the pot beside the wall. Holding it in one hand, he takes his dick out and pisses into it. His bladder thanks him as it shrinks. When the stream is nothing more than a drizzle, he gives himself a few healthy shakes. It’s ceremonial at this point, though. He could stand here and slap himself around through breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and still he’d dribble as soon as he put this useless thing away.
“Good enough,” he mumbles with final jerk.
He puts his dick away. A single, sadistic drop of piss hits his linen not a second later.
Bowie takes the pot and shambles down the hall. He and his family have been in this house for twenty years. He knows it well. If he were to spin around in this Black Hour blackness, he would still find his way to whatever room he needed and not run into anything on the way. No, he wishes the candle was still burning because the world got worse when the lights went out. If you’re sleeping, you can’t see it, but he doesn’t sleep, so he sees it all.
Bowie, dodging chairs and a table, gets to the backdoor. The cold comes in under it and chills his toes. When you’re only skin and bones and your two ten-year-old daughters combined weigh more than you, a gust of cold air is all it takes to get your teeth chattering.
He reaches into the dark and comes back with a heavy coat from off the wall. He steps into the boots beside the door, and sinks. Holding the pot of piss, he cringes and then opens the backdoor.
It’s snowing again.
Only at night, blanketed and glittering, can their town of Nyxis gain some sense of comfort. At any other time on any other day, Nyxis is a restless child—all gnawing gums and growing pains. It used to be a barren field covered in scorch marks and satellites, and small hovels that were homes to the witch covens that roamed here. But then witches’ children wanted more than to sow suffering, so they sowed seeds and reaped fields, and those from the smolders of Vold (now Elin) saw and left their city lives for the country.
The town is ten miles wide at this point, but it continues to expand. That’s where the gnawing gums come in, and the growing pains. Nyxis creeps across the land, be it by shack or field, taking more and more of the Trauma-enriched soil of the Heartland for itself. But with this potential for prosperity comes those desperate to prosper. Rich and poor and those getting by; good and bad and those myopic menaces—they all come Nyxis to claim their stake. It’s led to a town structured around being unstructured; a cultural wave crashing against a socio-economic typhoon. It’s led to some of the town’s greatest achievements (socialized medicine) and most terrible transgressions (prostitution, and weaponized sexually transmitted diseases).
But in the snow, you can’t tell. The moonlit white and the frosted dark hide these things without prejudice, bias, or lies. Gone are the buildings–those built up at the center, those falling apart at the ends; gone are the midnight marauders and the late night life takers; gone are the howling voices from those who have too much and those who don’t have enough at all; gone is the blood, but when it’s not, when it’s there, eating through the snow, reflecting off the ice, at least it’s beautiful.
Bowie doesn’t share these thoughts with his family. He and his wife have been around long enough to remember a time when the world was closer to ending than beginning. When he does sleep, the memories haunt him. It’s gotten better, but mostly, the world has gotten better at hiding its inhumanity. It’
s no longer so raw, so primal. Violence goes not naked into the street, but clad in the clothes of priests and politicians.
At times, he misses when he could trust no one but those he loved, and days were spent in solitude. It was a crueler world, but in some ways, an easier world. But these are words of a victimizer, not a victim. He knows this, and knows if the tables had been turned, he would not think so fondly on the follies of the past.
Bowie hurls the piss from the pot into the snow. The stream steams in the air and lashes the top layer. With the piss, he sends these negative thoughts, too. He doesn’t need them, anymore. If he really misses seeing a world undone, he knows he need only wait for his hour with Death. She’ll show him.
He wipes his runny nose, turns to go back in the house, and stops. Something catches on the corner of his eye and reels him around. There it is. A tree. Moonlight running like streamers through its outstretched branches. It sits on the edge of his property, snow packed around its roots, old as the land it’s grown from.
And it shouldn’t be here.
Bowie sets the piss pot down and wades through the five inches of snow on the ground to get at the tree. He and his family have been in the house for twenty years. And this tree here? It wasn’t here a few hours ago. He should know. He was just out here at midnight, pissing, staring at the same spot he was staring at now, except it was empty.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
Because he’s old and incurably stubborn, he touches the tree. There’s a rough, scabby scar that runs vertically along its base. From it, a warm, viscous fluid oozes. Hard seeds cling to the liquid. He considers picking one out and tasting it, but common-sense kicks in and he considers otherwise. It’s then that he realizes the tree isn’t made of wood, nor is it lined in bark. The whole thing is comprised of this dense, dark, viscous material.
He’s never seen anything like it.
And he doesn’t like it.
Bowie hears Starla’s voice in his head. “Get back inside,” she tells him, “or you’re going to catch your Death.”
Wiping the fluid on his fingers on his pantleg, Bowie backs up and goes back inside. He shuts the door and stands there at it for a moment, thawing. The strange tree has taken root in his mind. Even if he could sleep, he couldn’t anymore. Not with that thing that shouldn’t be there being there.
Something bites his neck. He slaps the spot. The pain stops. He pulls his hand away, holds it to the crack in the door where some moonlight comes through. A smashed mosquito lies bloody in his palm.
Bowie goes to check on the girls. On his way, he grabs the candle from the hall and lights it with the tinderbox and wooden split. Their house is one large room that doubles as a living room and a kitchen; the single hall is short; one side leads to his and Starla’s room, the other to their daughters’. It’s not big enough for a family as big as theirs, but on nights like these, when it’s dark and cold and strange trees are growing from the ground, and strange insects are riding on the air, the house is just the right size. He wants to be able to see everything all at once.
He goes to the girls’ room and pushes open the door. He holds the candle high, lets the light crawl over their sleeping bodies. Duška and Sethe are out. They’ve pushed their beds together, and are wrapped up in each other’s blankets. Their eyes move behind their lids, dreaming, most likely, of warmer days.
Bowie backs out, slips into his room—Starla is snoring up a storm—grabs a blanket off their bed, and brings it back to the girls. He lays it over them in equal parts. But like the hairs of a flytrap, as soon as it lands on Sethe’s arm, she quickly snatches it away. And like the younger she is, even if it’s only by weeks, Duška fusses about this from her slumber.
Bowie leaves, and leaves their door open on his way out.
He goes into the family room and sits in his chair. He sets the candle on the table beside it. A surge of wind rushes up against the house, shaking it before receding. It does this over and over, and the temperature in the house dips with every attack. Bowie grabs the quilt from off the back of his chair and wraps it around himself. The wind stops after that.
Thinking about the tree makes his stomach hurt. In a post-Trauma world, in a town built by the children of witches, day-to-day oddities were absolute certainties. Night Terrors still visited them, though not as often as before, and Lord animals were known to pass through on occasion. A few even claimed to have seen the Black Hour. Revenants attacked the outer parts of Nyxis in the spring and lamias preyed on the orphanage and foster homes in the fall. Some said they’d seen a ghoul down by the river earlier this week.
Even this winter was said to be unnatural. Archivists in Elin, Geharra, and Six Pillars had all agreed it might last for years.
But never in Bowie’s days had he seen a tree like the one in his backyard. And why was it in his backyard and not the old crone’s next door a half mile down the way?
Bowie rubs his thumbs against his fingers. He clears his throat with his whole body. He convinces himself he has to piss again, so that he can see the tree again.
The candle’s getting low. And if this winter is going to last half as long as they promised—weathermen never get it right—they’re going to need all the candles they can get. He snuffs the flame. The cold closes in on him. He pulls the quilt tighter against his body. Pushing out of the chair, he comes to his feet after fifteen seconds and then waits there, until his body gives him the go ahead to go ahead.
When he was young, he didn’t have to be so deliberate. Now, everything has to be accounted for.
Bowie turns to face the backdoor and hears something hit the one at the front. He spins, gets dizzy; waits until it passes. Again, something hits the front door. There’s a short sword beside it against the wall. He gets that first, and then, mustering his courage and strength, he opens the door.
Snow blasts across the threshold. It gets in his many wrinkles and forms tiny icicles there. He squints, because squinting makes him see better, and tries to make sense of the storm swirling before him. Nyxis is nearing a whiteout. He leans into the outside air. His ears prick up at another sound. Footsteps through snow. And as soon as he hears them, they stop.
Bowie panics. He steps inside, shuts the door, locks it, and then tosses some firewood behind it, as if that’ll make a difference. He and Starla have lived in Nyxis a very long time. They’ve gotten to know just about everyone who lives here through their trades—she as a seamstress, he as a “Renaissance Man,” whatever that means. He’s sold Old World relics, repaired stables, tended fields, copied manuscripts, fished, mined, dabbled in dentistry, and of late, made the same candles he now uses to light his house. Never in that time had he ever made any enemies. But now it felt like he had some. Now, it felt like he had been marked.
Bowie turns around and cries out.
Duška and Sethe are standing behind him, blankets wrapped around the both of them. They look like two twins conjoined by comfort.
“Be quiet,” Sethe tells him.
Bowie glances at the door. He must’ve woken them. The girls were light sleepers. When he and Starla found them eight years ago by the abandoned mill, they were covered in markings of the occult. They quickly took them to the local Lillian priest and had them blessed. Since then, they, like him, never slept for long, and never all that soundly.
“Sorry, girls.”
“Why were you outside our room?” Duška asks with a whine.
“I was in the backyard.”
The wind kicks up and rattles all the doors in the house.
Sethe’s eyes droop. “Don’t try to scare us.”
Duška crosses her arms and nods her head.
“What… what did I do?”
“Ugh,” the girls say simultaneously.
“Your daddy’s old.” Bowie scratches his head like a monkey. “I forget things.”
The trees outside creak. A branch snaps off and hits the side of the house.
The girls jump. Their eyelids snap u
p so hard they’re stunned.
Bowie grabs his heart, thinking, Don’t you dare fail me now, and laughs uncomfortably. “It’s okay… Just the storm.”
“I don’t like it when you do that,” Duška says.
Bowie furrows his brow.
“When you talk to us through the walls. It’s mean.”
Sethe tugs on the blanket, taking some away from Duška.
Duška pouts and tugs it right back to where it was between them.
A chill shoots up Bowie’s spine that has nothing to do with the winter raging around them. “T-talk to you? Through t-the walls?”
“Yeah, we heard you,” Sethe says. “Why did you keep saying ‘blood’ over and over and over? That’s weird, Dad.”
Bowie realizes he’s still holding the short sword. He smiles at his daughters, gives them an unemphatic, “I don’t know,” and goes around them, to their room. They don’t have any windows in here, so he doubles-back, his head swimming with dark paranoias; lights the candle again.
He hurries into their room and goes to the farthest wall—the only one where he could have supposedly spoken to them through.
Duška and Sethe waddle up to the doorway, refusing to drop the blankets they share.
“Wake your mother,” Bowie croaks, pressing his ear to the freezing wall.
He hears nothing, but inside his head, it’s all warning bells.
His girls go pattering down the hall, their warm feet sweating on the cold floor.
Bowie smashes his face against the wall and moves along it. Is this place haunted? Wouldn’t be the first in Nyxis. Maybe that tree in the back is an ill omen. He thinks as far back as he can manage, trying to recollect any wrongdoings. But he can conjure no such thoughts. He’s seventy-two. He doesn’t do much of anything anymore except annoy Starla.
Sethe screams.
Bowie straightens up. His back snaps and a sharp pain lances him.
Duška screams.
Bowie cries, “What is it? Come to me. Come to me!”
By the time he gets to the door, the girls are running past it into the family room.
“What’s wrong?” He goes to chase after them, but he’s drawn farther down the hall.