“This isn’t like the jar,” Clay said. “This is a brand new life for her, a brand new physicality, and I swear to you, Auggie, if she is in pain, if she changes her mind, if she decides she doesn’t want this, I will never let her suffer.”
“Changes her mind?” Gillian asked.
“Yes,” Clay said. “I’ve spoken to her about this extensively. Well, to her head anyway.”
“I … I want to speak with her, Clayton,” Gillian said. “Alone, please.”
Clay took them back to the tank room. As they walked through the barn, Gillian nodded to the elaborate mechanical contraption on the back of a wagon.
“What on earth is this, Clay?” she asked.
“Something I came up with after that bad spate of lightning storms we had at the end of summer,” he said. “Still haven’t got the kinks out of it yet.”
Clay opened the door to the tank room. Auggie stopped by the door, his massive arms crossed.
“Clay says he has to set up the apparatus to talk to her,” Gillian said. “You don’t want to come in for a moment?”
Auggie shook his head.
“I understand,” she said. “Any messages for her?”
“Nothing I didn’t already tell her,” Auggie said quietly.
“Gillian?” Clay said, and gestured to the door. Gillian kissed Auggie and then joined Clay. The door thudded as Clay closed it and Auggie stood alone.
The tank room was illuminated by numerous lamps. Clay set about his work quickly and efficiently. He poured a powder that resembled salt from a bag into the tank with Gerta’s head. The solution rained down as white, slow-motion columns that hit the bottom of the tank and then spread and diffused as swirling clouds of sediment.
“This will stimulate the solution itself to act as an electrical producing medium to power the craniovox,” Clay said. “I’ve been corresponding with a youth in Sweden, name of Svante Arrhenius. Boy’s a genius, a prodigy. Helped me with some ideas I had about the conductivity of ion-rich solutions. Solved some of my neurological restoration and construction problems I’d been wrestling with.”
Clay took a circular device woven with numerous thick rubber-coated cables and wires, and gently placed it on Gerta’s head, making sure it was secured tightly. He ran his healed fingers through Gerta’s long floating hair gently. He ran a cable from the device to a wooden box with a crude, circular metal screen on its face and a few thick black toggle switches. Clay attached the cable to the back of the box. He dried his hands and flipped one of the switches. There was a loud snap, a puff of smoke from the box and a strange, barely audible hum in the air.
“This works on a larger scale, but is essentially the same equipment I used on the vox screen I had in her jar,” Clay said. He gestured for Gillian to join him by the tank and pointed to odd devices the size and shape of large coat buttons mounted along the front face of the tank’s edge.
“Talk toward these and she will be able to hear you through the head harness,” he said. “I’ll flip the connection to finish the circuit. If you have any trouble at all, I’ll be outside with Auggie.”
“Thank you, Clayton.” Gillian pulled a wooden chair in front of the tank and sat. Clay had set lanterns on either side of the tank and one behind it to provide illumination for the conversation. He snapped the other switch on the wooden box and there was a momentary screech, which rapidly faded. He nodded to Gillian and Gerta and then exited the room, closing the door behind him.
“Hello,” Gillian said.
The drifting head opened and closed its mouth, bubbles spilling away.
“Hello, dear friend,” a woman’s voice, faint but audible, said from the screen on the wooden box. Gillian smiled when she heard the voice.
“I know it must seem a dreadful question but, how do you feel?” Gillian asked.
“I think it must be a little like our memories when we are very young,” Gerta said. “I remember … things. Other things seems to be dreams or nightmares, I can recall flashes, impressions but not full memories.”
“Do you remember dying?” Gillian said.
“The end, yes,” Gerta said. “Pain, choking, drowning in my own body. Fear … horrible fear. The fear was worse than the dying, I recall. Like tripping in a dark room, the fear of the fall into nothing. I remember talking to you, to Augustus. Clay came once when you were both exhausted and slept. He told me how he felt about me, said he would never have done anything to hurt me or Augustus. Dying feels very … cramped, like you are in a tent that’s tight with too many people; you just want to step outside and breathe fresh air, feel space around you. Have a moment alone.”
Gillian’s eyes had grown wet as she listened. “I missed you,” Gillian said, her voice cracking. “You were my sister, my mother, my best friend. I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too,” Gerta said. “I knew you would look after Augustus. I knew you would not let him fall away from the light. Thank you, Gillian.”
Gillian choked a little and sniffed, wiping away the tears. “I hope you know how much he loves you,” she said. “If I knew … If I knew what Clay was doing … I’d never have…”
“Loved him?” Gerta said. “You loved him the first time he told Will to have a care how he talked to you in public.”
Gillian laughed and sobbed.
“He’s a good man, it’s easy to love him,” Gerta continued. “I remember the fire. It was awful—sleepwalking in the burning house, screaming, and oil-faced shadows. But I wasn’t scared anymore, Gillian. I learned to control the fear in the jar. So many things in life, in death, are so much less terrible than we imagine if we can just control the fear. We can survive the jar, we can escape it, if we let go of the fear.
“I remember talking to Augustus, saying our good-byes. He loves me, yes. He loves the memory of me, of us. His Gerta has gone. He loves his Gillian now, and I want him to have a new, beautiful life with you, my dearest friend. I hoped for that when I was dying—I saw you cling to one another. Your happiness, his happiness, is my joy. I wanted it even more when I escaped the jar, when Augustus finally let me go.”
“And now?” Gillian said. “Gerta, I love you. You were always better to me than my own family ever was, and I can, and will, stop Clayton from doing this to you, if you wish. This is about what you want, what you need, not Clay, not Auggie, not even me. It’s your life, your soul, Gerta. Tell me, what do you want?”
Gerta’s head tumbled, the raven hair a curtain that drifted between her eyes and Gillian’s. The shadows of the lantern made Gerta’s old eyes and young face seem almost ghostly and translucent.
“It has been so long since I could move as I choose to move, to have volition. Before that I was ill, so ill, and before that I had grown so old, so quickly, the stresses of life crippling me while my insides still wanted to sing. I have been a prisoner for so long, Gillian. To that damned jar, to my sickness, to my own bed, and in the cage my body became. Death was the only freedom I ever felt and even it was taken away from me.”
“The methods Clay is using are … questionable,” Gillian said. “To say the least. There may be side effects we know nothing about; you may be trading an end to your suffering for more suffering, Gerta. I just want you to go into this with your eyes wide open, not just hearing Clay’s pompous claptrap about—”
“Science,” Gerta interrupted. “Yes, one of the reasons I long for hands is to be able to cover my ears occasionally. Clay is a fine man, and he loves me very deeply. I know that love blinds him. His religion is science and that blinds him too.
“I’ll be honest, Gillian, the prospect sounds too good to be true, but I so want it to be true. I want to live, who wouldn’t? I want to have more time, more life. I want to be free. If Clay’s formula doesn’t give me that freedom, if there are strings attached to it, then I will end this false life, myself, on my own terms. If for some reason I can’t, if I … change, I want you to promise me now you will kill me. Please, my darling friend. I know it’s a lot
to ask, but I am asking it of you. Don’t let Clay or anyone else stop you, especially me. If you think I have been corrupted in some way, please end that and give me peace. I don’t want to live a slave or a monster. Please promise me now.”
“Of course,” Gillian said. “I promise.”
“Danke,” Gerta said.
“I’ve missed you,” Gillian said. “I have to be honest, I’m glad to be getting my friend back.”
“Me too,” Gerta said. “Now, tell me all about the wedding.…”
* * *
The door to the tank room opened and Gillian emerged. Both Clay and Auggie stopped pacing and turned to her. The barn doors were opened and the sky was gray, edging toward dark blue. Dawn was close.
Gillian walked out of the barn toward Clay’s wagon.
“Do not botch this, Clayton” was all she said on the way home.
* * *
“Everything went fine, Gillian,” Clay said, wiping the gravy off his mouth with his sleeve. “She’s perfectly lucid and even the scars from the stiches will be completely gone soon. She wanted to come today, but her skin is still a little too sensitive to daylight. It should toughen up pretty soon though, a few more treatments with the formula. She told me to give you her love and her best wishes for the day. She said it meant a lot to her you wanted her there.”
“I always did,” Gillian said. “I suppose we should get over there, shouldn’t we, Clay?”
“Yeah,” Clay said as he pulled the wild flowers out of the vase on the table and handed the bouquet to Gillian. “The big old side of German schnitzel has had enough time to get sweaty and nervous now. Let’s skedaddle.”
Clay dropped a small bag of coins onto the table. The waiter picked up the bag as if it were full of venomous bugs. He opened it and gold coins spilled into his hands. He called out to Clay as he was opening the door for Gillian.
“Mr. Turlough! Sir! This is way too much for your meal! It’s a small fortune!”
“Oh, is it?” Clay said, and looked to Gillian. She nodded and mouthed the word yes. “Oh, okay, well you can just call it a tip. Sound square?”
“Yes … yes, sir!” The waiter smiled. “Come back any time.”
“I get hungry about three in the morning,” Clay said. “I just might.”
* * *
Walking down Dry Well Road, toward Prosperity, Gillian slid her arm into Clay’s. The inventor seemed puzzled by the contact but accepted it.
“Promise me please, Clayton,” Gillian said. “No more skulking around graveyards, no more body snatching, no more worms, please.”
Clay nodded. “Fair enough. Bored with all that anyway. I’m thinking about building a balloon ship to fly across the Atlantic.”
“Of course you are,” she said, patting his arm. “Of course you are. To think I actually suspected you were murdering those girls, Clayton. I’m sorry.”
“No need for apology,” Clay said. “An obvious enough deductive fallacy to make. It’s taking even me a spell to figure out who’s doing it.” They continued walking, turning onto Prosperity, headed for Main. “But I intend to. Just been a little busy bringing the dead back to life and all and helping my best friends get their ducks in a row.”
“Best friends?” Gillian said, and hugged Clay’s arm a little tighter.
Clay straightened his wild hair. “I’m real honored you and Auggie wanted me to be there today, Gillian. Why are you not waiting and doing it when you planned?”
“We don’t want to wait,” Gillian said as they neared the white tower of town hall. “Something Gerta said. We get trapped so many ways in life, so easy to let things slip away. Auggie just walked up to me this morning and said he wanted to do it today, if I did. I love him and I don’t want to spend another night without him beside me.”
Clay smiled. It was genuine and Gillian realized it was childlike and sweet. His eyes actually twinkled for a moment and it made Gillian smile inside and out.
“C’mon then, “Clay said. “Let’s get you hitched.”
* * *
In the mayor’s office, Harry Pratt stood, looking very happy. Before him was Auggie Shultz, in his finest suit, kneading his derby in his huge, sweaty hands. Off to the bride’s side stood Maude and Constance Stapleton.
Clay walked Gillian in front of Harry.
“Who gives this woman into matrimony?” Harry asked.
“I do,” Clay said, “proudly.”
Clay stepped back to Auggie’s side and checked to make sure the ring was still in his coat. Auggie stepped up beside Gillian, who was holding her purloined bouquet. The two looked into each other’s eyes. Their hands found each other’s and clung tightly together.
“Miss the dress, and the crowd? The priest?” she whispered to him.
“Nein,” he said. “All that is important is here.”
A tall figure slid into the room. She wore a dark green dress, bonnet and a gray veil that hid her face. She moved to the groom’s side and touched Clay’s arm gently with her glove. The gesture made her sleeve ride up for a second and caught the shadow of a scar running all the way around her wrist. The veiled lady stood silently next to Clay, the best man, as Harry started to read.
“Dearly beloved…,” Harry began.
The Three of Swords
The third one was in the possession of Thug Batra, who sat hidden in a murder garden of mummified victims among sacred assassins in the bowels of Bombay. Thug Batra was not his real name, it was the name the British colonial soldiers muttered under their breaths as they tried to find him, kill him and end his reign of slaughter. “Thug” was not even correct. It was a bastardization of Thuggee, the name of his religion, his holy cause. His given name was Jangir Batra and he was born in a village outside of Bhopal. Some nights he had holy dreams of returning to the city of his birth as a cloud of evil smoke and strangling the life out of all the city’s inhabitants for the glory of the Black Mother.
He was secreted away from his birth parents by the Thuggee to thwart the British attempt to crush the religion, to become part of a new generation of assassins dedicated to the worship of Kali through the practice of ritual murder. After his decades of study and training, after he was empowered to use his mind and body to kill as easily as breathing, to move as silently as a poisonous thought, after his hundredth murder before even reaching adulthood, it had fallen into his possession, a final gift from his master—proof that he was ready to fulfill his destiny as the greatest murderer of his age, to dedicate each strangulation to the cause of forestalling the Kali Yuga, the iron age of crushing, the end of the world. In effect, each killing he and his brethren committed helped keep the world going.
He murdered his master and took it. In the years to follow he was personally responsible for 241 murders. The truth he knew in his own heart—he killed for the joy of hearing the life hiss from his victim’s lips, for the thrill of feeling them shake and convulse against him and then grow still. He did not kill to hold back the end of the world; he killed for the dark light joy of ending another’s personal world. In the fall of 1870 he dreamed of a small town in the wasteland of the American frontier. A golden god of death from the West called to him, called to it. So Thug Batra came, traveling on a ship across the seas, to America, thirsty to slay.
The Lovers (Reversed)
Mutt arrived at the laundry, where the Closed placard hung on the door. He rapped on the glass. The door opened and Mutt felt the air spill from his lungs. Maude was in a bustle dress of blue-green taffeta with brown frocked velvet patterns, her underskirt was brown taffeta, as was the bodice’s front, and the bodice was adorned with gold buttons. Her hair was up in a chignon and she wore a small capote hat that matched the dress’s colors.
For once Mutt had no words. He opened his mouth and then closed it, trying to not look like a fish out of water.
Maude had an equal surprise. Mutt was in a sack coat, white collared shirt, trousers and vest of brown tweed. He was wearing a pair of brown polished oxford
shoes with laces. He wore no tie and his top shirt button was undone. Mutt’s hair was washed, combed and pulled back into a ponytail with a cord of rawhide. The claw marks on his face from a few days ago were completely healed. He had a bouquet of purple and yellow wildflowers in his big, scarred hand.
“You,” Mutt said. “You look like a queen. I’ve never seen anyone so pretty in all my days.”
Maude tilted her head. “You look very handsome and dapper,” she said. “You did this for me?”
“Yeah.” He offered her the flowers. “Jonathan helped me out some. I just wanted you to not feel bad walking next to me.”
“Oh, Mutt,” she said, taking the wild blooms and smelling them. “Never felt bad with you by me, just the opposite. Never have, never will.”
“No one ever dressed up for me before,” he said. “You look like a piece of art. You should be in some museum, not out in all this mess.”
“Never figured you for a poet, Deputy” she said. “You, sir, are too kind, and I am starved. Let’s go eat!”
He took her hand, escorted her across the threshold. Maude locked the door. Mutt hooked his arm and offered it to her and Maude slid her arm through. They walked across the street to Gillian Proctor’s boardinghouse, where Mutt had his room.
“I’m trying to figure out where you hid the weapons,” Maude said.
Mutt grinned. “Ain’t packing any.”
“Not even your knife?” she asked.
Mutt shook his head and she whistled. “You are taking this seriously, aren’t you?”
“Not even my star,” he said. “No monsters, no ghosts, no spirits, no madmen out to destroy the world, no goat-vampires, no desperados. No nothin’, not tonight. I’m officially off duty. How about you?”
“Well, almost nothing,” Maude said, looking down. “A few envenomed hat pins, my derringer, of course, and a few knives, oh and my fancy strangle cord. Virtually naked.”
Mutt cleared his throat and pulled at his loose collar. Maude laughed and squeezed his arm tighter. He pulled out a pocket watch attached to his vest by a chain, flipped it open and looked at the time. “We still have a spell before vittles are on, care to take a stroll?”
The Shotgun Arcana Page 25