Marlow could hear himself shouting, words spilling from him that he’d never heard before. He was himself, but he had also become somebody else, the father of these children, the hanged man. He felt his body shudder and tremble, felt the weakness there, the disbelief, the unbearable sense of loss. He was running again, pushing himself into that wall of heat. He could feel the force of it against his skin, but he couldn’t stop, barreling through the open door of the cottage. He called out, his children’s names boiling into nothing inside his throat.
He was waiting for me, the man said.
“Who?” Marlow asked. “Why are you showing me this?”
Because it explains everything, the man said. Hurry, we do not have long.
Marlow could feel something pulling at him, something cold and dark trying to tug him free of the head he was inhabiting. It was gone in an instant, burned away by the fire. He stumbled into the inferno, his tears hissing. There was no air at all, just a fist of smoke rammed into his throat.
“Please,” said Marlow.
There is nothing I can do, said the man. This is just a memory. Don’t you think I would have changed it if I could?
A jagged bolt of lightning tore across Marlow’s eyes. He tried to take a breath but couldn’t—couldn’t even bring in a scrap of oxygen. It was worse than any asthma attack, it was merciless, brutal, and he clawed at his neck, his chest.
And then he saw it, even through the flames, even past the tears. He saw the ground beneath him begin to crumble into dust and ash. There was something down there, a face buried in the fire.
A face that opened its eyes and looked right at him.
Death was flooding in, collecting in the corners of his vision, in the cradle of his brain. He was making a sound like a hiccup, over and over, but the fire was doing its job well. It was killing him.
The thing in the dirt was angling itself upright so that it could study him, its face unfolding like origami. Its body was too long, arms with too many joints curled tightly to its chest like a praying mantis. It seemed impervious to the fire, its beetle-black skin glowing. It never took those dark eyes off him and he screamed hurry hurry hurry with his breathless lungs. Because he knew this thing, this Stranger, was worse than the loss of his family.
He knew it was worse than death.
It rose up before him, a creature that belonged only in nightmares. Its face was an engine of parts, layers upon layers that fumbled and switched around each other like it was trying to work out how to look human. Only those eyes remained unchanged, eyes that seemed like holes cut in the fabric of the universe, revealing the impossible darkness of what lay beyond. They watched him with what might have been curiosity, or hunger, or glee, or love.
He collapsed, and knew it would be the last time. All he wanted—all the hanged man had wanted—was to rest here, to be reborn in paradise with his children. But the Stranger unfurled one of those too-long arms, uncurled a finger that had four or five joints, all of them crackling in the heat like fireworks. It rested a long, filthy nail on Marlow’s forehead. Its face folded and unfolded until a mouth opened in the very center of it.
THEIR DEATH DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THE END, it said in a voice of quiet thunder, a voice that pushed back the power of the inferno.
Marlow’s brain was shutting down, section by section. Death could only be seconds away, a void that loomed up before him, impossibly big and unfathomably empty. He felt the creature run its nail almost tenderly down his face, along his cheek, tracing the edge of his gulping mouth.
IT IS NOT TOO LATE FOR YOU.
It was, though. It was too late.
IT IS NOT TOO LATE FOR THEM.
And even though Marlow had no breath left to give, those words took his breath away. He felt it, the smallest flicker of hope in the churning ocean of pain.
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS ACCEPT MY GIFT. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SAY YES.
All he had to do was say no.
All he had to do was say no.
But he didn’t. His vision was a tunnel and he was being sucked inside it. The creature was growing more distant, shrinking from him, but he watched as it drew its nail along the putrid flesh of its throat, releasing a sludge of black blood that instantly started to bubble and boil. It dipped the nail into the wound, shuddering with what could only be pleasure. Then it extended its arm again, held that dripping finger before him.
LET US MAKE A DEAL, YOU AND I. ONE DEAL, SEALED IN BLOOD. WHAT IS IT YOU DESIRE?
He saw them, the faces of the children. And Marlow suddenly knew three of them—Mammon, Meridiana, Ostheim.
The panic was ocean-deep, drowning him even though he knew this was just another man’s memory. Right now he would give anything for another breath. He would give everything he had and everything he was for just one more breath.
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SAY YES.
Marlow should have said no—the hanged man should have said no—but death was on him and despite the fire it was cold, so cold.
He should have said no, but he saw their faces. He saw the faces of his children.
He should have said no, but instead he opened his mouth and used his very last breath, the very last of himself, to speak one final word.
“Yes.”
THE WATCHMAKER
The Stranger’s face rippled like a machine, the black pit of its mouth widening into a smile, its eyes dripping darkness. Then it slid its nail into Marlow’s mouth, the blood dripping onto his tongue, sliding down his throat, tasting of rot.
IT IS DONE.
A supernova of inverse light detonated inside his skull, and suddenly the scene changed, the house, the fire, the Stranger exploding into dust. Marlow reeled inside a tornado, pieces of scenery clicking into place like a stage set until he saw a workshop, stone walls lit by torchlight. He turned his head left, then right, taking in workbenches littered with tools and mechanical parts.
I was a watchmaker, said the hanged man. Maybe that’s why he chose me.
“Who?” said Marlow, but he knew the answer to that because he saw the Stranger in the corner of the room, cloaked in shadow, its face click-click-clicking like an insect as it watched him. He felt that strange sensation of being pulled, like he was a fish on a hook, half remembered some other world where his real body lay surrounded by coiling shadows.
Just pay attention, said the watchmaker. I cannot hold you in this memory much longer.
Marlow saw his hands starting to work, sliding an axle through a cog and fixing it to a metal frame. He carried it across the room, into that pool of shadow where the Stranger stood. Marlow noticed that the creature was surrounded by mechanisms, glass pipes protruding from its body. The skin of its chest had been pulled away, its ribs cracked open and emptied. Beside it, pinned like a butterfly, rigged with tubes, was a shriveled heart that beat weakly. Marlow slotted the clockwork piece into the apparatus, his hands shaking. The Stranger made a noise like a cat purring, its body flexing, shuddering, rippling.
It was dying, said the man. Its heart was too old to keep beating. It needed a way to stay alive.
“A machine?” said Marlow.
An Engine.
A door opened at the other end of the room and a child ran in, one of the boys Marlow had just seen in the burning house, one of the children that had died. He laughed, trying to close the door against the young girl who was chasing him. Then they were all bursting through, shouting at one another, giggling. The joy in Marlow’s heart belonged to the man, he knew, but it was still as welcome as dawn, filling him with sunlight. He found himself laughing, too, even when the children turned to him and he saw that their eyes were as black as pitch, as empty as unfinished dolls. They fell silent together, seemed to sag and deflate for a moment before remembering themselves, running from the room.
I should have known they weren’t real—not the way they had been. They were something foul, something he dragged up from the darkest part of the world, or made from the foulest part of himself. He tricked me.
Marlow felt a cold hand wrap itself around his spine, pulling hard. The edges of this place, of this memory, started to fray and he clung on with everything he had. The scene began to speed up, his hands working tirelessly, the Engine growing and growing and growing, filling the room, expanding out into a cave, and then a cavern filled with bone—a graveyard, Marlow realized, remembering Paris—becoming a cancerous mass of parts that was relentless. For millennia, those five children watched, and played—climbing, hiding, sheltered by the Engine, drinking the blood that flowed through it—their humanity belied only by those inhuman eyes.
And all the while the Stranger stood there, its disembodied heart pumping, filling the Engine with contaminated blood.
“What is it?” Marlow asked.
Evil, said the man. It is evil, and ancient, and wrong. Something that never should have been here, which slipped through the cracks. It has roamed the Earth for centuries making deals with humankind.
“But how?”
Its blood is rotten, but powerful. Drink it and you do not die. Drink it and you are no longer human. Drink it, and anything is possible.
Speed, invisibility, mind control, anything you wished for, Marlow thought. The Engine had granted every desire and it had all come from this.
But it was old, so old. It was losing itself, and it needed my help. It tricked me into building the Engine, it showed me what to do, how to put the pieces together, and it held time at bay. A hundred thousand years is nothing to it, it became nothing to me.
Marlow watched as the Engine grew, as the watchmaker put a million pieces in place, and then a million more, as he chiseled out a pool from the stone and filled it with the Stranger’s blood. The scale of it was infinite, unthinkable. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t already seen it.
And I came to love them, those things that were not my children. How can you not love something that you spend infinity with? I came to love them as I had loved my own flesh and blood, and they loved me, too. They changed, they remembered themselves. But I did not forget. In all that time I did not forget that it had deceived me.
“What did you do?” Marlow asked.
I deceived it.
A roar of outrage shook the memory, so hard that the vision began to dissolve. Marlow could still see through the watchmaker’s eyes, though, as he ran frantically through the Engine, as he ducked beneath mechanisms, as he tried to cover his tracks. The Engine surrounded him like an ocean in a storm, every piece of it moving, every piece of it furious. There was something in his hand—something that might have been an old-fashioned lantern, a canister ribbed with metal parts, with glass tubes. This thing didn’t give off light, though, it seemed to pulse with darkness, and when Marlow looked more closely he saw the Stranger’s heart there—the Devil’s heart—pumping.
In all those years, it never expected me to know enough to change its design.
Marlow looked on as the watchmaker pulled a knife from his pocket, ran it across his palm. He rested the wound against the canister and its mechanisms began to twist and coil around themselves, sealing it.
But I did know enough.
The Engine crashed to a halt, every piece of it freezing and plunging the cavern into silence.
I knew enough to change it.
Then it began to turn again, backward this time, everything working in reverse.
I knew enough to turn it against him.
Another howl filled Marlow’s head, turning his brain to jelly. His stomach lurched like he was inside an elevator. He could feel himself moving—not him, but the whole cavern, the whole Engine, slowing to a halt again after a handful of seconds.
The Stranger came to trust me, over time. It trusted me with the very essence of itself—its heart.
“Heart?” Marlow asked.
Not a heart like you and I would understand it. It is the darkest part of it, the core that birthed the star. Without its heart, it is just a devil.
“And with it?” Marlow asked.
The watchmaker sighed.
With it, it is a god.
“Why didn’t you just destroy it? Kill it?”
The Stranger cannot be killed. It is too old, too closely connected to the foundation of the universe. Neither can its heart be destroyed, as far as I know. But I locked it away, inside a mechanism that cannot be opened by infernal forces, or by human ones. And I used the Stranger’s power, his blood, and split the Engine into incarnations of itself, each one trapped inside time. I trapped him here, inside this one. My children hid his heart inside another, somewhere he could never find it, some place he could never reach.
“What happened then?” Marlow said, craving the truth like he was craving water.
Then he turned one of them against me.
The scene juddered to a halt, four of the five children standing around their father—around Marlow. They were in a corridor, the stone walls damp, the air cold. One of the boys twisted the handle of a red door and opened it, night flooding inside.
“Hurry,” said Marlow, the word spilling out of his mouth in another language, its meaning perfectly clear. “He’s coming.”
A shout from the other direction, full of rage. The three boys fled through the door, leaving just the girl. She ran forward, threw her arms around Marlow, sobbing into him, and he pried her away. Past the tears, her eyes were a brilliant shade of green, as human as anything Marlow had ever seen.
“You have to go, Meridiana. You have to leave me.”
“I won’t,” she screamed. “I won’t.”
One of the boys ducked back in, and Marlow knew it was Mammon. He was holding the canister, the heart pumping so furiously it sounded like it was calling for help. He took hold of his sister with his free hand and dragged her through the door. Behind them came an animal cry and Marlow looked to see the missing brother there, his face warped into a carnival mask of anger, his eyes blazing black light.
“Father!”
“Come with us,” pleaded Meridiana, but the watchmaker turned to her and shook his head.
“I have to lock the door,” he said. “Go. And remember that I love you. Always.”
He smiled at her, smiled at all of them, then grabbed the door and slammed it shut against their cries. He muttered a series of words and the corridor shook almost imperceptibly, that weird elevator lurch rising up in Marlow’s guts again. The last brother—Ostheim, Marlow knew, how could it be anyone else?—ran the rest of the way, barging past his father and opening the door. Marlow had to hold up a hand against the tide of daylight, saw a field of snow, and beyond that a mountain. The children were nowhere to be seen.
“No!” Ostheim said, turning to his father. “What have you done?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “It’s over. It cannot be undone.”
Ostheim pulled a knife from his belt, a shard of Engine, and rammed it into Marlow’s stomach. He doubled up, feeling the boy hoist him onto his shoulder as if he were a sack of feathers. Then they were running, back through the Engine, ducking beneath the mechanisms, climbing the cogs, leaving a trail of steaming blood in their wake. They ran deeper into the machine like they were running through a forest, until they stopped at the feet of the Stranger.
WHERE IS IT? The creature boomed.
“You will never have it,” he replied, locking the truth of the hidden canister away inside his head. “You will never find it, I have made it impossible. You are trapped here, you will never leave.”
IT DOES NOT MATTER. I WILL HAVE IT. I CAN WAIT HERE UNTIL THE END OF TIME. AND YOU WILL WAIT WITH ME.
The Stranger reached for him with those impossible arms, grabbed the top of his head, and squeezed. The pain was molten, those fingers drilling into his skull, pulling him close.
YOU WILL WAIT WITH ME.
More shadows closed over him, sliding into his mouth, down his throat. He felt the flow of cold blood, felt its evil spill into him.
YOU WILL WAIT WITH ME AND KNOW THAT YOUR CHILDREN WILL
DIE AGAIN. THEY WILL DIE SLOWLY, AND THEIR PAIN WILL LAST FOREVER.
Inside the memory, Marlow gagged, trying to scream past the blockage in his throat, trying to fight it. But he was too weak, blood still gushing from the wound in his stomach, his strength deserting him. Slowly, slowly he sank into that squirming nest of shadow, the Stranger’s hand pushing him deeper, deeper into darkness.
YOU WILL WAIT WITH ME UNTIL WE ARE FREE.
“I’m sorry,” Marlow said in the voice of the watchmaker, not even sure who he was speaking to. “I’m sorry. God forgive me.”
Then there was nothing, ink thick and choking. He felt that tugging sensation again, pulling him out of the memory—and he was glad to go, because he couldn’t bear to be here, couldn’t bear to see any more.
Do you understand why I showed you? asked the watchmaker as the edges of the dark started to crumble. Do you understand? I tried to keep you away.
He had, Marlow saw—the watchmaker had a power all of his own. He saw him forging the ghosts, giving them their stolen faces and sending them out into the wastes of hell. He saw them slaughter Engineers one after the other, again and again, until they lost their minds.
I could not risk anyone finding us, he said. All it will take is a deal—a deal between infernal forces, between things that should not be—and everything is lost. A deal will unite the Engines, and in doing so will bring this world and yours crashing together. Do not listen to him, do not bargain with him, do not set him free. You can end this, Marlow. You can end everything.
“But I don’t understand,” Marlow said, the information breaking up into molten fragments as it burned into his head. “Why me? Why are you in my house?”
Because it is you who—
The memory let go and Marlow was catapulted across the void, back into his body, back into the fury of hell. He gasped, seeing his kitchen, seeing the shadows that writhed and squirmed, that coiled around the hanged man, drowning him. The Stranger was there, its face folding and unfolding just like it had in the memory, its eyes dripping. It extended its free hand—coiling its fingers around Marlow’s throat and lifting him up, drawing him to it. It gave off a stench of rot, of unimaginable age and unquestionable power. There was a cavity where its heart should have been, stuffed with straw, as empty as a nest. Pipes and tubes and cogs formed an apparatus inside and around it, making it half monster and half machine.
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