Mr. Shivers

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “No. He looks wolfish but he’s got a boy’s eyes,” said Dexy.

  Nina grunted noncommittally, like she disagreed but would not argue.

  “Here, sit you down, boy,” said Dexy. “There ain’t a chair here can hold you, but just sit down on the floor if that’s all right.”

  “I’ve sat and slept on worse,” said Connelly.

  “That I believe,” said Nina.

  The cabin was large and shabby but still comfortable. The stone floor was cracking but laid well and the rafters were kept clean of cobwebs. Three chairs sat around the fire, the empty ones on either side of Dexy. Each was made for little old ladies. On the opposite wall were three doors, two open and leading to bedrooms, the third slightly closed and the inside dark.

  “Your tea is good,” said Connelly. “I had some.”

  “Oh, flattery,” Dexy said, but she smiled. “Flattery. That will get you anything. What do you need, young man?”

  “Just, well… I came up, and…”

  “Oh, you don’t have to say no more,” she fussed. “Nina, this boy needs to eat.”

  “Well. I guess I’ll feed him, if that’s the way it’s going to be,” said Nina grudgingly, and went to the kitchen.

  “Here,” Dexy said to him. She held out a melted lump of wax with a small bit of wick swimming in the center. “Here, take this candle and light it in the fire, if you don’t mind. My damn eyes ain’t worth a lick anymore.”

  Connelly did so, using a thin branch as a match. He set it on the table beside her and she fiddled with her crochet halfheartedly.

  “I used to be so damn good at this,” she said. “Only thing that’s worse than a thing that don’t work is a thing that almost works.” She dropped her needles, sighed, and raised her head up to the ceiling in despair.

  “Mind if I ask you a question?” asked Connelly.

  “Oh, probably. But go on ahead if you want.”

  “What are you all doing out here? It must be miles from anything.”

  She grunted, turning the question over. Then she said, “Knitting.”

  “Knitting?”

  “Yeah. Well, that’s alls I do, at least.”

  “You moved out to the woods to knit?”

  “Most days it seems like I’ve always been here,” she said. “But then, it may just be my age.”

  Nina came out and served him cold chicken and cornmeal. She left to get him a fork and when she returned he had already eaten most of it with his hands.

  “Lord, I said you was starving, but I didn’t realize you was dead on your feet,” she said. She sat on Dexy’s right and pulled a shawl about her shoulders.

  He took the fork from her. He had not used one in a very long time and it took some remembering.

  “Hold it like a pencil,” said Nina.

  “Been even longer since I held a pencil,” said Connelly, but he tried. The two old women watched him eat.

  “Boy’s been living on the edges a while now, Nina,” said Dexy in her frail little voice.

  “Ain’t that so. Long time.”

  “He went out there himself and now he don’t know where he’s going.”

  “No idea at all. I agree.”

  Connelly looked up and saw the two old women were watching him, Nina no longer cackling, Dexy’s face no longer old and confused anymore. In the firelight they could have been carved from wood.

  “What?” said Connelly.

  “Hmm. Lookie here,” Nina said. “The knight errant, wandering through the forest, a-questing. Olden days he’d be cantering on a white horse. Not no more.”

  “Not at all,” said Dexy. “Things change.” They looked him up and down, studying him as though he was some strange anomaly. They did not seem so old now, or so fragile.

  “What’s going on?” said Connelly.

  “You think we don’t know your type?” said Dexy. “We seen your type before. If we lined up all the men like you we seen, why, it’d stretch all the way down the river.”

  “The man on a quest,” said Nina almost condescendingly. “Venturing out to slay the beast.”

  “What monster you hunting, white boy?” Dexy asked. “What demon is it you seek to slay?”

  “There is one, ain’t there?” asked Nina.

  Connelly stared back and forth between them. “You know about the shiver-man?”

  That surprised them. Their eyebrows rose up, crinkling the skin of their faces like butcher paper. They did not seem so dismissive anymore.

  “Ah,” said Nina faintly, and nodded. “That one.”

  “Who are you?” said Connelly.

  “Oh, us?” Nina said, and laughed again. “We just three black bitches sitting by a river, minding our own.”

  “We’re old,” said Dexy. “We just been around a while, sugar. We know a thing or two.”

  “All of us,” said Nina.

  “All of who? Who else is there?” asked Connelly.

  Nina gestured to the shut door behind her. “Our sister, of course. She lies dreaming, as she always does. Always has. Best not to wake her. It’s what she likes.”

  “And you… you know about the scarred man?”

  “Everyone knows,” said Dexy. “Maybe they know in a part of them they don’t want to think is there. But they know. We just know a little more.”

  Connelly shook his head. It was incomprehensible to have this happening, to have stumbled half dead from the jail and wandered here to be met by the same. Weeks ago he would have fought for a scrap of news of the gray man but now he seemed to dominate every patch of earth Connelly walked over.

  “No, I-I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m going to go. I-I thank you for the dinner but I’ve had, I have had enough of this.”

  “You won’t go,” said Dexy calmly.

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because you want to ask us questions. Because you want to know.”

  He turned at the door and shook his head again. “No. No, not this, not again. Do you have any… Do you know what I’ve been through? Do you?”

  “Yes,” said Nina.

  “We got an idea, hon,” said Dexy.

  “No you don’t!” he shouted. “Don’t you… Don’t you sit there and tell me that! Just don’t!”

  There was a noise from the back of the house, a faint thud. Dexy and Nina looked at each other in fear and Nina stood to her feet. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “Oh, Lord, he woke her up. Such noise, such noise these boys make.” She pulled up the hems of her skirt and opened the bedroom door and slipped in, but before it could shut Connelly smelled stale air and the noxious scent of bile and decay. He did not know who slumbered back there but he did not think he wanted to.

  “There,” said Dexy. “I hope you’re happy.”

  “I’m… I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, you didn’t know. She’s just… crabby.” She looked balefully at him. “So you done yelling?”

  Connelly shrugged, then nodded.

  “Hm. You made up your mind, then? You staying or going?”

  He watched her for a while, then slowly lowered himself back down to the floor.

  “Good,” Dexy said. “That’s sensible. Very smart of you.”

  “So what are you going to tell me?”

  “What you need to know, I suppose. But give us a second. We ain’t all woke up yet. Here, let me get you your tea right quick.”

  She shuffled off to the kitchen. Connelly sat before her chair and leaned back. He felt comfortable. It was the first time he had been warm since he had camped with the Hopkinses. He watched the flames dance and fight and thought about how mad this all was and soon abandoned that train of thought.

  He listened to the fire and his eyelids grew heavy. There almost could have been words in its crackling.

  He slept.

  Someone touched him on his arm and he woke. Nina was standing over him.

  “It’s time, boy,” she whispered.

  He stood and followed her out the back. Night had fallen and wit
h it a thick fog had crept down from the mountains, gathering around the bases of the trees. She led him through the maze of trunks until they came to a small clearing. In the center a gray mountain ash grew and before that was a small fire. Dexy sat across from it, a small stew cooking on its flames. As he sat she spooned a little into a bowl and took a bite with a tiny spoon.

  “Good,” she said with a nod. “Nice and spicy. Good to keep the chill out. Care for some?”

  Connelly took his share and it was warm and buttery. Nina sat on Dexy’s left, each of them on small stone seats, Connelly on the forest floor. To Dexy’s left was another stone seat, this one empty.

  “Your sister’s not here,” he said.

  “She’s here,” said Nina. “She just ain’t over there.”

  Connelly shrugged. “So what are you? Witches?”

  “Witches, no. Bitches, maybe,” said Nina, and she laughed.

  “I already had my fortune told,” he said.

  “And did it answer anything?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, here’s your chance. Just give me a moment,” said Nina. “Need to wake things up a little.”

  With stunning speed she reached into the fire and grabbed a fistful of burning coals and flung them up into the air. Connelly raised his arms to shield himself from their hot rain, but they did not fall. Instead their ascent slowed and they came to a stop, hovering above, and then each of the little sparks began to twitch and move, dancing like fireflies. They spun in little orbits and some left the clearing to explore the woods. Then it felt like the air grew close and nothing existed but the clearing. The trees seemed to grow taller and thicker, hiding the night sky until they were towering giants. It was as though they were in some primeval version of the world they lived in now, some original version whose wildness and savagery had slowly been worn down with age until it was the complacent time they called the present.

  “Now it knows,” said Dexy softly, looking about. “We got the word out. Now it knows we going to ask, we got troubles on our mind and we going to ask it.”

  “Ask who?” said Connelly.

  “The night. Everything. Eat some more stew.”

  He did. He coughed, as its spice seemed to have increased now. The forest’s colors seemed painfully bright, liquid browns and violent blacks, and once again the sisters no longer looked like people so much as carven statues.

  “What’s in this stew?” he asked.

  “Good shit,” said Nina, and grinned.

  “Stuff from the earth’s heart,” Dexy said. “Bit of root, bit of mud. Bit of blood of things that live down there, things that listen. Earth knows everything. Bones under your feet, they know everything. You want to know the truth of things? You got to take a bit of the earth’s heart and put it in you. Then you ask.”

  Nina was still grinning, now looking like some squat, wicked shaman, some priestess of rituals that happened far from the eyes of men. “So go on, little white boy,” she said. “Ask.”

  Connelly looked at them a while and said, “Who is he? The shiver-man. You know him. Who is he?”

  Dexy laughed. “You mean you traveled all this way and you don’t know?”

  “The farther I go the less I understand.”

  “You know,” said Nina. “Don’t be fooling yourself, little white boy. Everyone know who he is. You known all along.”

  “You been in his wake all this time, so what’s he left behind?” said Dexy. “Each place you go to that he been, what’s there waiting? Why would he show up in the country in these famished times?” She chuckled, exasperated. “Boy, what has he marked you with and every other soul he meets?”

  Connelly stared into the fire and thought. Thought about Molly, dancing and laughing. About Roonie and Jake and Ernie and every other soul lost along the road, and those blank, black eyes and the joyless grin.

  “He’s Death, isn’t he,” said Connelly.

  “Death,” snorted Nina. “That just a word. Might as well be writing in the sea or the sand, for who can name nothing? Should you try it would surely eat that word as well.”

  “He has a thousand names and each one catches but a part of him,” Dexy said.

  “He is the Harvester, the Sickle Man,” said Nina.

  “The Night Walker and That Which Devours.”

  “The Skullsie Man, the Star Reaper, the Grinning Bone Dancer.”

  “He is the Black Rider, the great beast below all and beyond all.”

  “Fenrir Wolf-End, the Sightless Hunter, Forest Stalker and Singer of Ends.”

  “The Red Axis, the Forgotten Plowman, Destroyer of Worlds.”

  “Pale Conqueror, the Crownless King.”

  “Death?” Dexy scoffed. “Death is but a term. To say he is Death is to call night a mere shadow. He bears a dread weapon in his hands, that thing we call nothing, and he brings it down as a blade. Cuts under all, plows it all up, turns it over. That is what he is.”

  “But you knew that, didn’t you, boy?” Nina asked him. “You knew it all along.”

  Connelly thought about it. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think I did.”

  “ ’Course you did. You’re slow, but you ain’t stupid.”

  Connelly looked down and set the bowl aside. He stared into the fire a great long while.

  “Can I kill him?” he asked.

  Nina and Dexy looked to the blank seat, then up at the sky.

  “To kill death,” said Nina. “Ain’t that a thing man’s hungered for since he looked about and saw where he was.”

  “Could death be so great a thing that death itself could die?” asked Dexy.

  “And were it to come about, what would follow? More death? More suffering? Perhaps. Who can say save he himself that has seen the deaths of thousands, of millions, the deaths of all?”

  “Well?” said Connelly. “Can I?”

  “Yes,” said Dexy. “Yes, he can be killed. But not easily. With great effort and sacrifice, it may be done.”

  “I sacrificed plenty already,” said Connelly. “Little more won’t matter much. But he can die?”

  “Yeah. But you knew that already, too, didn’t you?” said Nina. “Otherwise you wouldn’t been chasing him at all.”

  “I guess so. I saw him scared. Scared of me. Don’t know why, but… He looked like a man who knew he could die.”

  “And he can,” said Nina. “Listen—he weakens now, before the new dawn. He races to stop it. He knows it is driving him back, driving him down, ending the old and bringing in the new. He fears it. More than anything, he fears it, and the birth it brings.”

  “All right,” said Connelly.

  “But consider your actions, white boy,” Nina said. “Consider what you doing. Why you doing this, first of all? For everyone? For yourself?”

  “Not for me,” said Connelly. “For my little girl. It wasn’t right. I got to make it right. And if the world refuses to be right then you just have to force it. You have to make it. Beat it until it listens.”

  “Death will always be a part of this world, though,” Dexy said softly. “One way or another. I can’t say how but it’s always going to be here. Remember that.”

  “It defines all men,” said Nina. “Starts it. Ends it. What defines a country or a civilization ain’t how it lives life, but how it ends it. How it conquers and controls. How it reaps what it needs. He going to be there for that. He going to be there. You know?”

  “I do,” said Connelly. “And I don’t care. Anything’s better than him. Folks shouldn’t go the way they do out here. Shot down in the night, cut in half by trains. Scared and alone. It ain’t right.”

  The sisters nodded to themselves.

  “I asked him something,” said Connelly quietly. “I asked him something last I saw him. I asked him why he took my little girl. And he just said so she’d die. Which wasn’t any kind of answer at all. So I’m going to ask you. Why did he kill my little girl?”

  “Boy,” said Nina, “do you not know where you are
? Are you but a year old? What fool looks Death in the face and asks ‘why?’ and expects an answer? Perhaps even Death does not know why he comes to those who die. Perhaps there is no motivation, no driving force, no intent.”

  “If he cannot say, surely we cannot either,” Dexy said. “Certain questions can never have answers.”

  “Dammit,” said Connelly softly. “Goddamn it. Goddamn it all.”

  A breeze blew through the little clearing, pulling the flames this way and that. Dexy and Nina looked at the blank seat once more. Then Nina scowled as though having heard some foolishness and Dexy shook her head.

  “Well, Lord, Lord,” Dexy said. “First time for everything.” She turned back to Connelly. “Ask another.”

  “What?” said Connelly.

  “Ask another,” said Nina. “Ask another question. First time in a long age since we were asked beyond the three. But we couldn’t answer the last, and so you can give us another.”

  Connelly thought about it for a long while. Considered what he was doing, perhaps for the first time. Considered his life after death and the lives of others.

  “What’s going to happen if I win?” he asked.

  Dexy peered into the fire, her eyes sifting through the flames, and said, “The same thing that always happens after death. Rebirth.”

  “The wounded and injured and dead rise again, fully healed,” said Nina. “That which came before rises up and goes on. Whole. As it was before. Perhaps greater.”

  “And I’ll go home, right?” said Connelly. “Then I can go on home. And rest.”

  “Maybe,” said Dexy. “But if not, white boy… If what was lost never could return, would you still do this? Would you still hunt this creature down?”

  “In a heartbeat,” said Connelly. “Without a second’s thought.”

  “All right, then,” said Nina. “All right. Your mind’s made up.”

  Dexy glanced at the empty seat and tilted her head as though listening. Then she said, “Are you certain of what you want to do, boy? Understand that you are not merely attempting to kill a man, or even a god, but a thing that perhaps holds the endings of men and gods in his hand.”

  “He looks like just a man to me,” Connelly insisted.

  “And so he is, in a way. I suppose that is his weakness. I suppose that’s what gives you a chance to succeed as well as what makes you so sure.” She sighed and the clearing seemed to grow and the trees to shrink. The dark was no longer so close, nor did he feel so little.