The Broken Ones

by Stephen M Irwin

  “And what would I have to do?”

  Chaume’s voice was sweet and gentle. “Turn a blind eye. That’s all. What will that cost you? Nothing. You haven’t got a job. You haven’t got a wife or children. You do have a burden, though. But she’ll be freed, whether you accept or not. I’d just rather keep you.”

  “Whatever you called up, you asked to send its creatures after me,” he said.

  “Just warnings,” Chaume said. “But I like that they didn’t stop you.”

  “You had Naville sacrifice Frances White to get rid of whose ghost?” Suddenly, he knew. “Karl’s.”

  Chaume nodded.

  Oscar stared into Chaume’s tourmaline eyes. Maybe he was, after all this, still a Nine-Ten detective. He felt a cold smile on his face. It all made sense now. He continued, “When you knew it worked, you had Penny killed for her stepfather, your barrister. Another good man to have onside. Pity her mother found out. And then”—Oscar nodded to the house above them—“you had all your guests upstairs here the other night. At your party. You wanted me to stay, too. For your demonstration. Whose ghost did you get Ereshkigal to remove with Taryn Lymbery’s death? Yours?”

  Chaume shook her head, and her long hair whispered on her dress. “Why would I want to get rid of my husband?” She sent a fond look to an empty space in front of the industrial refrigerator, then returned her cool eyes to Oscar. They glittered. “No, the Lymbery girl was for your inspector. And tonight … well, you saw our guests upstairs. Including your commissioner. I think you should come with us.”

  Oscar felt a cold ball in his gut.

  “And I think you can go to hell, Ms. Chaume.”

  She stayed there, though, just inches from his face, looking into his eyes. A puzzle, but no time left to solve it. She kissed him lightly on the lips.

  “Goodbye, Detective.”

  She stepped back lightly, and by the same strange magic Karl reappeared with his pistol. Chaume turned, a silent twirl of red and black, and was gone.

  Karl remained, head cocked, listening to ensure his mistress’s departure.

  “I’m unsurprised, Detective. If that’s any consolation.”

  He waved the pistol for Oscar to step out away from the bench, back over the grate. Karl stood between him and the door. The only other way out was through the windows behind him. There was no escape.

  Does it matter, Oscar wondered, whether I die here or a foot to my left? He stepped out. And as he did a form appeared behind Karl’s shoulders. Jamy Brum held up three fingers.

  “Thank you,” Karl said, and leveled the pistol.

  Jamy curled a finger, still held up two.

  “Would you like to turn around?” Karl asked.

  “No.”

  The thin man nodded—as you wish. Jamy dropped another finger, holding up just one.

  Karl raised the pistol.

  Jamy flapped both hands down and crouched.

  Oscar threw himself to the ground as lightning flashed as bright as day. Thunder smashed at the building, shaking the windows and making the hanging pots ring like bells. A bullet whined into darkness.

  Oscar waited for the shock and the pain, wondering where the misaimed slug had hit him.

  The pain didn’t come. He straightened.

  Jamy stood over Karl’s body, which twitched a little, then was still. In the light of the single lamp, Oscar could see that the dead man’s right eye was gone, a wormhole, a bullet hole. A puddle of oil-dark blood spread behind him. Oscar became aware that the sound of rain was louder. He turned.

  The window behind him was broken. Zoe Trucek lay on the ground, Oscar’s service pistol in her shaking hand. Her green eyes were wide.

  “Cops never think they can be followed,” she said.

  They ran. She had his service pistol, and he held Karl’s SIG.

  “Where are they?” Zoe whispered. She was shivering; her short hair was plastered flat against her skull, and her clothes were soaked.

  Oscar shook his head, trying to clear it of all the thoughts and images racing through it: Karl’s shattered skull; the elation of being alive; the feeling of hugging Zoe so hard that she complained it hurt. The corridors were a maze, and to Oscar they looked identical in their deep shadows and burnished opulence. He searched for Jamy, but the dead boy was gone.

  He slowed and stopped, and gestured for Zoe to halt as well.

  He waved for quiet and closed his eyes, trying to remember where he had heard girls laughing, not knowing what was waiting for them. How long did they have? The intricate pattern he’d seen sliced into the abdomens of Penny Roth and Taryn Lymbery would take time to inscribe. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty. Time was running out fast.

  “Okay,” he said, and started up a set of stairs.

  She followed as he retraced the route he’d taken flanked by Karl and Moechtar.

  They reached a juncture where two hallways converged and a central staircase rose. Oscar grinned. Jamy was waiting at the end of one corridor.

  “This way,” Oscar said.

  Off the hallway were four doors in two opposing pairs, and copper mirrors between each. They walked up, listening.

  “No!” a girl’s voice protested. Others shushed her. “I want to go home.”

  Oscar tried the door. It was locked. He looked at Zoe. She nodded. He raised a boot and waited for lightning to flash through distant windows. When thunder rumbled, he kicked hard and the door flew open.

  The girls looked up: a little blonde girl with walking sticks; a tall, horsey girl with thick glasses and stains of blue and orange around her mouth; and a third, broad-faced freckled thing who lay on the bed, her close-set eyes red from crying—when she saw Oscar, she began to cry again. Dresses were scattered around the bedroom—some frilled and a century old, others new and pretty—as were hatboxes and costume jewelry from a small wooden chest. On a bedside table sat a tray with a few colored lollies left in a bowl and a nearly empty bottle of soft drink. A wheelchair was in the corner. Megan wasn’t there.

  “Miss Zoe!” cried the blonde girl, delighted. She wore a batiste blouse that was too large for her, and a velvet hat with a faded gray ostrich plume that made Oscar’s skin go cold. The girl on the bed looked at Zoe and wailed, “I wanna go home!”

  Zoe shushed them. “It’s okay,” she said, opening her arms.

  “He broke the door.”

  “Shh, now.”

  “Did you see my hat?”

  And Oscar heard a faint, distant scream.

  Chapter 41

  The air felt potent, charged with something more than the power of the storm. He’d left Zoe with the girls, told her to try and find a way to get them out. His footsteps clapped and echoed on marble and polished wood. Another scream: a girl’s voice raised in terrified pain.

  Ahead was the grand staircase. At the bottom were sets of tall glass doors as dark as windows to the sea floor; beyond them, the great ballroom. Where else more appropriate to invite a goddess?

  Oscar started down the stairs.

  The shot took him in the calf. The lower limb went numb and he lost balance, clutching at the dark wood banisters. He rolled halfway down the carpeted staircase before halting his fall. He realized that Karl’s pistol was no longer in his hand.

  “Oscar?”

  Jon’s voice was low and easy.

  “Yeah,” Oscar said.

  “Ah.”

  The sky lit white through a skylight high overhead, and thunder followed. Jon’s giant form stood at the top of the staircase. “You okay?” His large hand made his pistol look comically small. “Where’d I get you?”

  “Leg,” Oscar replied.

  He lay sprawled on the stairs. He tried to rise, but a feeling like ice water was spreading around the gunshot wound. His hand felt below his knee; it came back very wet and sticky.

  “I was aiming higher,” Jon said apologetically, descending. “Light’s not good.”

  Oscar’s hands probed the dark stairs. Where was the fucking
gun? Lightning flashed again, and Oscar looked wildly around in the split second. No sign of it. Thunder roared like rapids, and as it faded Megan’s screams from the ballroom grew louder. The air coming from below seemed colder.

  Jon arrived, his bulk a presence more felt than seen. His knees cracked as he knelt.

  “Oh, getting old,” Jon said. “You gave Karl some trouble.”

  Oscar nodded.

  Thunder pealed again. “I can’t stay long,” Jon continued. “I have to take care of those crips. Your squeeze won’t get far. I had enough trouble getting the little bitches up there.”

  Oscar’s lower leg felt frozen now, and his head felt perilously light. He began to feel the bird-wing flurry of panic around his mind. Bleeding, his mind shouted. You’re bleeding out.

  “I tried to help you.” Jon’s words were a gentle reproof. “Stubborn motherfucker.”

  “You tried to have me stabbed,” Oscar said. “I was your partner.”

  Jon was quiet for a long moment. “You just couldn’t let Haig go. So he paid me to help you along.”

  Oscar groped along the treads, hunting for Karl’s gun. It could be anywhere between here and the top of the stairs.

  “Haig paid you then. Moechtar and Anne Chaume now,” Oscar said. “That’s why you do this? The money?”

  Jon laughed, a self-deprecating chuckle. “I just need more than you do. I guess I always have. You know, none of this might have happened if the service just paid us a bit better.”

  “And Neve?” Oscar said.

  “Ah, Neve.” Jon nodded regretfully. “What could I do? Naville and I were just about to set the fire, and up she comes with Kannis in tow. Pity.”

  Oscar saw silvery mist invade his vision. His fingers shook. Where was the goddamned pistol?

  “Turn yourself in, Jon,” he whispered.

  Jon laughed again. “Not that I would, but to who? Everyone’s coming over. Moechtar. The commissioner.” Oscar felt Jon’s hand on his shoulder. A soft touch. “I told Anne you’d never sell out, that you were screwed together too tight.”

  In the darkness, Megan’s screams grew louder. “They’re just kids,” Oscar said.

  “I know,” Jon said gently. “But it’s a different world, Oscar.”

  Oscar’s fingers closed around metal. The pistol. He was lying on it. If he could just lift himself, but his body felt detached. All he wanted to do was sleep.

  Jon’s hand left Oscar’s shoulder and held the back of his head. Oscar felt the gun muzzle touch the top of his skull. No. There was no more time. He took a shuddering breath.

  “You’re a good man, Oscar,” Jon said. “I’ll see you.”

  Oscar rolled and pulled the trigger. Through the corner of his eye, he saw Jon’s chin lift a little. The big man jerked, as if feeling a sudden chill, and collapsed. Jon rolled down the stairs. Near the bottom, there was a muffled report as his pistol went off, then he became a still mass, knees tucked, quiet.

  A shriek from the darkness below. Oscar could see something through the glass. A gleam, shifting in the old glass like moonlight reflected in a dark pond.

  Oscar forced himself to move. His leg felt as if it were carved of frozen wood. He willed his wet fingers to clutch a banister, put his weight on the hand pressing on the gun, and pushed himself up. Bright gray fireflies swarmed in his vision, and he teetered. He jammed the gun into a pocket and grabbed the rail before he fell.

  Lightning flared again, a halogen flash, and he saw that his pants were soaked red.

  Bad, he thought. That’s pretty bad.

  He knew he should put a tourniquet around the leg, but Megan was howling now: a horrible, almost endless scream. He hopped down one stair at a time, and as he descended the air became colder and colder. His breaths began to condense and fog. He passed Jon’s body and hobbled to the nearest of the doors.

  As the door swung shut behind him, frigid air struck his face and chilled the blood on his neck. Megan’s sobbing rose and fell like the wind: choking back a moment, then redoubling in awful terror.

  The ballroom felt as large as a canyon. The very air seemed to promise a long, terrifying fall, as if it yawned not only up to high ceilings but down into fatal, endless depths. The feeling of emptiness was so palpable that it took all his will to keep moving forward; every step threatened a cliff edge. Where a few nights ago the room had sparkled with constellations of candles, now there was just one light; a greenish glow, tiny at the end of the darkness.

  My dream, Oscar thought. I am shuffling in my dream.

  His heart began to rock behind his ribs. The light was the same, unearthly green glow at the end of the tunnel, the glow that would become a tapestry larger than a sail, clattering with bones and skulls. And behind it waited something ready and hungry.

  He didn’t want to go up there.

  She’ll be waiting. Behind the curtain of bone.

  Megan howled again, an awful, pleading noise that became the simplest of words. “No! No, no, no!”

  The glow shifted like green firelight. Sixty feet away, in the middle of the room.

  Four figures.

  Megan, naked on a table, her eyes staring at nothing, her chest rising and falling. Anne Chaume, in her tight red dress, bent over the girl, working a scalpel and whispering. Moechtar in glasses, standing beside Chaume, holding a dark cloth as a surgical nurse will hold ready a swab. And the police commissioner, leaning unsteadily on the table, his shoulders shaking. None looked up; they had not heard the gunshots above the storm.

  The source of the light, the flickering green, had its back to Oscar. It sat at the end of the table, between Megan’s bound ankles, shining its awful glow up her spread legs and over the four of them. Oscar could just make out the idol’s silhouette. Hunched and horned. It was hard to see; its outline seemed to shift and flicker, to pulse. The air was as cold as a snow peak’s, dry and dead.

  Oscar stumbled. His leg was a lump of numb flesh now, a liability to drag around. His vision doubled and darkened. A bit longer, he pleaded in his mind, just a bit longer. He bit his cheek and tasted blood. His eyes cleared a little. He pulled the gun from his pocket.

  “No, no, no,” Megan wailed, squirming against straps, her pale flesh shaking, her face wet with tears and mucus.

  Thirty more feet, but it might have been a hundred. The pistol in Oscar’s hand felt as heavy as a suitcase. He knew he needed to halve the distance if he had a chance of hitting anything. Just a few more steps.

  Chaume’s red dress looked almost black, and her black hair was so glossy it reflected jade. Silver glinted in her hand, also reflecting the greenish flames. Copper, Oscar realized: it was the copper grate that burned green. There was blood all over Megan’s quaking belly. Moechtar wiped it off while Chaume cut. The commissioner looked ready to faint. The frigid air was tainted by coal fire, vomit, and urine. Oscar felt so tired. Sleep.

  Then he heard her voice. The words Chaume spoke were alien, rolling and hushed, like Arabic, but no Arabic he’d ever heard, mixed with Germanic fricatives, zh, zh, zh. Lulling. Urging. Only one word Oscar recognized. Ereshkigal.

  The strange, horned altar seemed to swell as Chaume chanted. It seemed to expand, to grow.

  Still, they hadn’t seen him. The idol, the only light source, was between them and him. Twenty-five feet. Twenty. His cold leg was turning to black ice, spreading a choking dark frost up his body and neck, over his eyes. His vision was cloaked in black, and the three bodies around Megan seemed to be at the end of a tunnel. Fifteen feet but it looked fifty. They were tiny figures, little puppets on a diorama.

  Megan screamed again, and her soft body arched. Chaume put down the scalpel and picked up a long, shining knife. Its triangular blade reflected the eldritch green light.

  Oscar forced another shuffle forward. The air was so cold that his breaths formed veils of mist in front of him, tinged green. The room was at once a bell tower of noise—thunder; Megan’s wailing; Chaume’s imploring, rising voice—and oddly muff
led, as if they were characters on a screen while he watched from the bunkered distance of the projection booth. He lifted the gun, but his arm wouldn’t move. The pistol was so heavy it might have been an anvil, a cannon, the moon. God, he pleaded. Please. His arm slowly rose.

  Chaume, a tiny thing, lifted the knife to the flame. Moechtar, now the doll he always seemed to Oscar, watched through glasses that were shining emerald ovals. The commissioner closed his eyes. Megan’s belly was a small patch of red and white. The foggy air shimmered like a soft green curtain.

  “Stop now,” Oscar croaked. The pistol at the end of his arm looked small and shortened, like a coracle at the end of a long, thin jetty.

  Chaume looked up. Moechtar turned and reached into his jacket. The knife moved down. Oscar told his finger to squeeze the trigger. Something shifted at the end of his arm, but it might have been the tremor of a pulse or a puff of breeze. Don’t jerk. Squeeze. A flicker, but it might have been lightning. A sister flash, from Moechtar, as small as a firefly in a distant willow grove. People were moving, and then they were gone.

  All was green. Soft as moss. Dark. A curtain. Something tinkled, like bones on a butcher’s block.

  Tick-tap-tick.

  Or dice in a wooden bowl.

  Or …

  Chapter 42

  He pushed aside the curtain, a simple thing of loosely woven wool threaded with tiny beads of colored pottery.

  Green.

  Color filled his mind like wind through a suddenly opened window.

  Green. This room is so beautifully green.

  And yet, as he stepped in he realized that it was not the room itself that was green; the walls were mud bricks rendered with a plaster. It was the light that seemed green.

  Tick-tap-tick.

  Oscar stepped onto a flagstone floor, and found himself in an alcove. The sound of ticking, tapping wood grew louder. He followed the noise around the corner and saw the kitchen. At first, he thought he was back in Gelareh’s apartment: warm afternoon sunlight filtered through vines and herbs in the courtyard outside and struck the room a thousand shades of emerald, peacock, jade, and lime. Smells arrived like a fresh dash of water—frying onion, simmering rice, apricots, saffron, bread, mint, walnuts, tarragon.