Spirits of the Charles

by Paul C. K. Spears

  But it hadn’t felt free. Not like this.

  In spite of the bad company, in spite of the pain in her back as the Buick smashed over potholes, she was exhilarated to be “in the game.” And a small part of her was looking forward to hitting the Soldiers.

  If I see the Queen this time, I won’t Twist anything.

  This time I’ll just shoot her. And if I have to, I’ll keep shooting, until she’s—

  “He’s losing his mind,” said Frank.

  “He’s… who?”

  “Argus. The Greed’s rotting him.” Frank was staring ahead at the road, utterly unwilling to look her in the eye as an equal. And yet, his mouth kept running. “Back before the Atlantic thing, he showed up in Charlestown. Killed all our boys. He was working with some turn-coat copper. It was a stupid move, but…” He licked his lips. “He shook down our outfit. Rebuilt everything. He was damn good at it.”

  She sat back, appalled. She’d known her friend could be vicious, but she’d never heard of anything like this. “What happened after that?”

  Frank sighed. “We made money. A lot, so much I almost forgot he killed Stevie. And Seamus, too. But he’s nuts, absolutely off his gourd. I was too blind to see it then, and now…”

  “Now?”

  “He’s becoming a monster.” Frank’s whisper was full of disgust, and she realized this must be the source of his fear. A man who ran the Gustin Gang was no coward; it took something serious to spook Frank Wallace. “He just keeps drinking that crap. No one goes for Greed over and over—not grifters, not even Wall Street boys. They want to be able to look in the mirror, you know? But he just… keeps hitting it. He’s been drunk on half our jobs, but every decision he makes gets us more cash. And he just keeps getting bigger… And weirder.” He shook his head. “I tell you, Sweetwater, if I’d known what he was gonna become, I never would hired you two in the first place.”

  Rose bristled. She’d never been able to afford a dentist for the tooth Seamus had knocked out, and the gap was still there. Lucas thought it was cute, but every time her tongue touched that hole, she remembered Seamus’ fist hitting her face. “We weren’t employees. We were tools. You and Stevie had ways of reminding us of that. I’m not your confidant.”

  “That was business, okay? This is… this is different.” He was gripping the steering wheel like a life-vest. “He just keeps drinking, and pulling in cash, selling and buying and selling... He looks like something out of a kid’s storybook. He can breathe fucking fire, Rose, did you hear that?”

  It was the first time he’d ever addressed her by name—hell, this was the first time she’d talked to him in person. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Don’t get funny about it. I’m just… making conversation, you know?” He lit another cigarette while driving, not an easy feat with the road tossing them up and down. “If I thought we could get away, I’d keep driving all the way to Canada. But it’s like he’s got this… hold on people. Or his money does. He used to play cards with us, and he always lost. He was too greedy. But now… You look in his eyes, and it’s like you’re the card, and he moves you how he likes. Gives me the creeps.”

  “Must be hard,” Rose said, the ice in her own voice surprising her.

  “Don’t give me that.” He hunched low over the wheel as another car passed, growling towards Boston. “Jesus. Was that a cop? Did you see a badge?”

  She shook her head. “We’re fine, Frank. Just drive.”

  He did, and the silence resumed. Then after a while he said, “I think you’re the only one who can stop him.”

  “Frank, what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Henderson! He’s crazy!” He jabbed the cigarette at her. “He shot one of our boys last week, for taking five bucks off a mark without asking. Five bucks, and now the guy’s dead!” He laughed, humorless. “A couple of Solomon’s boys tried to get him over the winter, and he just… the bullets just sank in, and disappeared. Then he cooked ‘em. I don’t know how we’re gonna get rid of him.”

  Rose digested all this, disturbed. Get rid of him…

  Frank sucked on his cigarette. “You’re the only one who ever worked with him, before this. I only hired him because we needed a fall guy. A fuckin’ Scot? We never would’a let him to the top circle—he was trash. We never would have worked with a Scot or a darkie before, not on our level. Know what I mean? It was business.”

  “Well, you’re working with a darkie now,” she said, flatly. “On your level. Times do change.”

  “Christ’s sake…” He coughed. “You know what? You’re right. Times change, and people change. But he’s changing faster than the rest of us. We’re all monkeys next to Henderson, black or white. He’s gonna keep drinking Greed and killing people, until he gets all the money there is. Then what? Think he’s gonna keep us around, us regular guys? Hell, no. For all I know, he’ll eat us.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  Frank looked her in the eyes. He was terrified, she could see that, though his bravado was still papering over the fear. “I want you to kill him.”

  She averted her gaze. “No.”

  “You’re the only one who can get close enough—”

  “Frank… you’re being hysterical. Calm down.” Now that she had the source of his fear, she could Twist it. She re-directed his panic, channeling it into his eyes and fingertips, intensifying his fight-or-flight instincts. He sat up straight, eyes swiveling.

  Now he was on edge, but focused. She tweaked his pride as well, fluffing it up. Male pride was easy to Twist, and she’d done it countless times.

  It worked like a charm. “Christ. Listen to me yammer,” he said. “Bastard’s got me running scared. Me! A Wallace boy.” He pulled a gun from his coat and set it on the dash. She couldn’t see if the safety was on, in the dark. “Let him try to roast me with his freaky Myth shit. I’ll fuckin’ plug him, just you watch.” He seemed to have forgotten all about what he’d asked Rose, admiring his weapon in the refracted glow of the headlights.

  “Frank.” She nodded at an approaching sign. “I think we’re close.”

  “What?” He blinked. “Right, yeah. Just a few more turns.”

  They arrived at a curving back-woods road, threaded between swamp and stretches of dark forest. Out here, everything looked the same to her—the place was uncannily like the dirt path she and Gus had been ambushed on, so long ago. Frank switched off the car, and they sat in darkness, waiting for the headlights to cool down.

  “Well,” said Frank, “you’d better get to it. The place is down the road, on the left—there’s a white mailbox.”

  “Thanks.” She took her gear, smeared the charcoal on her face, and got out of the car.

  She made the walk to the farm in complete darkness, frogs croaking and splashing in the water nearby. The rich fertile smell of the country filled her nose, and blood pumped softly in her ears. In the empty quiet, it was easier to think—easier to hear her thoughts, without pesky people and their emotions around. She found herself calmer, more at peace. More like her old self.

  When was the last time I had a minute to think, away from people?

  She found the mailbox and moved off the road, slipping into the woods. The brush was heavy, but passable, and she followed the driveway, using her flashlight to guide her. At one point, a shipping truck growled down the drive, shattering the midnight around her. She saw the phrase BRAINTREE ICE on it, and lowered her flashlight.

  The property was covered in crab-grass, with a squat farmhouse and a crumbling barn nestled against a wall of pines. She crossed the drive and moved towards the farmhouse, staying low. The house blazed with light, and the rumble of a generator came from the open cellar door.

  The truck had been parked outside the farmhouse, its driver unloading deli cuts and supplies from the back. Rose peered in the kitchen window, and saw several men at the kitchen table, drinking and playing cards. A copy of Galleani’s Face to Face With The Enemy was propped
on the kitchen counter. Each of the men had a red handkerchief in his front pocket.

  They were Soldiers, alright. And well-armed. But Gus’ missing Humours weren’t here, so she kept moving.

  The next window was half-open on a spacious living room, which the Soldiers converted to an armory. Guns hung from the wall next to large ammo crates… but the crates were mostly empty. For a such a widely feared force, they didn’t have a lot of resources. She counted barely a dozen rifles, most of them Brownings and Enfields.

  No perimeter guards, either. They’re short on arms and manpowe… Good. Means they don’t have much to shoot at me with.

  When she looked in the next room, she pulled away from the window, heart pounding.

  The Red Queen was inside. The woman was nude, bowing in front of a cathedral radio. Rose didn’t want to know what this was about, but she couldn’t help herself. She lowered her ear to a gap in the frame.

  “Please, Father… Come back to me… I need you.”

  Then something in a foreign language. Then the same phrase, over and over. Disturbed, Rose moved away. There was nothing useful to here—just more Soldier madness. She wanted no part of it.

  The barn, though, might have answers. It was big enough to house the Humours, though they would need enormous ice-beds to counter the night’s warmth. It’s worth a shot… I need to leave here with something, or Gus will never get off my back.

  She approached it at a low crouch, throwing herself to the grass when two men emerged from the double wooden doors. Light flashed and pulsed behind them. The men were deformed and misshapen, with extra limbs dangling off them and scales and feathers marring their faces.

  She recognized these men—they were the Fomeroy brothers. Never far from trouble, those two. Somehow they must have thrown in with the Soldiers.

  “Nah, I’m telling you,” Ed said. “It’s true. Twenty hot dogs.”

  “But how does he do it?”

  “He’s an athlete! Gives him an appetite.”

  She heard a scream from the barn: high, choking and raw. The brothers looked back at the building, then continued talking as if nothing had happened.

  “But how does he fit ‘em all? Does he drink Gluttony first?”

  “He’s a baseball player! They got a mantabolism! Lord, you’re a dumbass sometimes.”

  She crept away, approaching the rear of the barn. There was a small, rotting hole in the boards, just big enough to fit her. Those screams came again—something ugly was going on, inside. She had a nasty feeling in the pit of her stomach, some intuition telling her to run. But she couldn’t leave.

  If I find those Humours, Gus will leave me be. Finally.

  She had to go in.

  Dropping to her belly, charcoal itching her cheeks, Rose pushed through the gap, and into the mouth of madness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALEKSANDRA HAD been drinking.

  She was not normally a drinker. The Cause required vigilance, and she was not one to shirk its responsibilities. But weeks of Fischer’s prattle, and the strain of running the Soldiers, had worn her nerves thin. She needed something to take the edge off, and she found it in a bottle of vodka in the basement. It was half-empty, and not even properly distilled, but she made herself a cocktail anyway with soda water from the pantry. And then another, and another.

  The liquor felt good. She’d spent her entire day making phone calls and arranging “demonstrations” at Suffolk County to stir up dissent, and then screaming at the Fomeroys until they did what they were told. And still her army’s victory was no closer. They were running out of time.

  So, she drank. And she polished her knives, and counted her bullets. And when she was alone in her room with its sparse bunk and old children’s drawings, she switched on the radio, and Buda’s voice came out.

  The voice was warm, patient and paternal, with an undercurrent of fury. It was his voice, her surrogate father, the only God she’d ever known. “Hello, Aleksandra. How you doing, kid?”

  And then the frayed cord lost power. She fiddled with the wires, struggling to bring him back, but when the broadcast returned he was gone. All she heard were filthy capitalists whining and whimpering about their oil. Apparently, their President had allowed his poker-friends to steal government petrol.

  “Fools.” She tugged at her collar—it was very warm, in this farmhouse. She was sick of marching around the place, trying to hold it all together in the face of Fischer’s idiocy and Palmer’s refusal to Drain, to become the Host they needed. She tugged her shirt off, and then her trousers, slugging back vodka.

  As she drank, doubts festered in her mind. Had Mithras forsaken her? Was this why the plan was moving so slowly? Perhaps someone else was destined to bring down America, and Buda had been wrong.

  No—she’d waited too long. She had suffered, and suffering demanded reward. Furious, she slapped the radio, kicked it.

  “Fucker! Tell me what I must do!”

  Buda’s voice crackled from the speakers. “I’d keep my hands to myself, bambina. That’s what I’d do.”

  She fell back, terrified. “I’m sorry, Father! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it…”

  “Hey. It’s okay. You’re tired—you’ve worked hard. I get it.” He chuckled. “I spent weeks, sweating over those Wall Street bombs back in ‘20. Could have blown myself up any second, but I kept at it. You’re like me: you don’t give up. I respect that.”

  His praise was like music to her ears. She curled up before the radio, its curved bulk seeming to grow in the half-light from her candles: becoming a monolith, a god. She bowed before it. “Father… It is not going well, here. We have gathered too few, to take the city with the Host. We killed a pig today who came looking for a missing ice truck… They are growing bolder. What must I do?” She felt herself fighting tears. “Why is everything going wrong? Why must I be punished?”

  “These things aren’t your fault.” His voice was like honey and embers. “I’ve Anticipated all of this. It’s part of the design. The pigs will pay—you’re just being tested. Anarchy needs you to understand its pain, before you can bring about the end.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry for doubting.” She placed her forehead against the floorboards, and breathed out a soft sigh. “Father… I also have desires. They… they get in the way of my duties. Take them away from me.”

  “Huh,” said Buda, from the other side of reality. “Whatcha got for me, kid? Confess your sins.”

  “They are…” She dropped to a whisper. “For women. I don’t know what it means. It… it scares me, Father.”

  Silence. Then static, mindless and rasping, came out of the radio.

  “Father? Father!” She leapt up, grasping at the dial. “No, no… Come back! Please, please come back, I’m sorry!” She struck the thing, sobbing.

  In the kitchen, the Soldiers playing at cards paused, cigarettes smoldering in their mouths… and then returned to their game. Their leader had never been entirely stable, and tonight was no exception.

  Aleksandra’s fists grew weaker… and eventually, they slumped to her sides. Her eyes fell on her pistol, resting by the radio.

  There was a way to atone for this failure, she knew it.

  Her mind reeling, Aleksandra reached for the gun.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ROSE PULLED herself from the dirt, brushing hay off her chest. The barn was dark, musty and the earth reeked of livestock, but there were no horses in the stalls. The far side of the barn had been stripped, to make place for an operating table and…

  A steel cross.

  Palmer dangled from restraints on the crucifix. His shrunken face and skin stretched over bones told her he’d been her a while—months, probably. His beard was crusted with drool and spit, and his flaccid genitals dangled in the air. Every so often he babbled, or sobbed, or cried out. She’d never seen anything so horrible.

  Focus. She tried to take in the rest of it, understand what she was looking at. Tubes ran up the thing, inserted into his
arms—a crude intravenous system. An old projector sat beside the cross, snout flickering as it projected something onto the canvas which was hiding her from view.

  The tubes ran out the back of the barn. She knew she was supposed to look for Humours here, but she couldn’t just leave Palmer like this. It was… inhuman, what they’d done to him. It was wrong.

  She crept out of the stall, fully aware she was exposed, with no backup. If the Fomeroys came back, they’d gun her down in an instant.

  When she emerged, Palmer grew silent, regarding her with sunken eyes. She took a scalpel from the operating suite and pulled herself up the side of the cross. Then she began sawing through the leather bonds, which were holding up his wrists.

  “Have you come… to kill me?” said the man. His voice was a wisp.

  “Hush. I’m getting you out of here.” She heard the brothers arguing, outside. Hopefully they would keep their hot-dog debate going for a few more minutes.

  “No.” He wasn’t looking at her, instead staring at the canvas. “They put something inside me. It burns. Like the Holy Spirit, in my veins...”

  “Quiet—they’ll hear us.” She sliced it through one strap, and the man’s arm hung limp, injection tube still stuck to his wrist. She’d have to remove that, too, but first she needed to get him down. There was something wrong about the way they’d hung him, something gleefully blasphemous, like a Bosch painting.

  “The stones. They took them away.” He dangled, mouth open. “I have nothing left. My soul has been bottled, for the Devil’s use...”

  “Please be quiet.” If the brothers heard her…

  “Mankind is filth. Filth! I see it now. I see!” He was grinning now, cracked lips wide, gums bleeding. “They are murderers and liars! I once loved them, but I was stupid, stupid!”

  He slammed his head against a beam of the cross, giggling, his hair flying in a fuzzy halo round his head.