by DD Barant
“I thought you wanted a public meet.”
“That’s the safe way to do it. But fortune favors the bold, right?”
“Fortune favors the survivors, Jace. They’re the ones that are still around afterward to write down pithy little sayings and stick them in cookies so they can be quoted by people about to do stupid, dangerous things.”
“Are you agreeing with me or not? I can’t tell.”
He sighs, and hefts the duffel bag on his shoulder into a more comfortable position. “Neither can I. Let’s just go—if I haven’t turned around by the time we get there, I guess I’m sticking around.”
I grin. “Now you’re talking.”
* * *
The B-and-B is typical. Far too typical. In fact, if there were an ultimate example of a B-and-B, some kind of perfect, iconic version that exemplified not only everything Bed but also everything Breakfast, then this place looks like three of those smushed together. With extra gables sprinkled on top.
We stop in front and stare at it. “This place has always creeped me out,” I say. “It’s like that house on the hill Norman Bates lived in with his dead mother, only it’s the house itself that’s in drag.”
“What? It’s quaint.”
“No, a dairy churn is quaint. This is quaint cubed, with cuteness bleeding from the edges. The frilly, frilly edges.”
I don’t really have to describe it, do I? Its curlicues have curlicues, like some kind of deranged Victorian fractal. Every surface that isn’t a blinding white is a sunshiny yellow, and I know once we get inside we’ll be overwhelmed by an overstuffed tidal wave of teddy bears, lace, and flower arrangements.
I grit my teeth. “No one said this was gonna be easy,” I mutter, and march through the little white gate and up the porch steps.
I ring the doorbell. A tinny little version of Pachelbel’s Canon plays somewhere inside. A moment later, the door opens with the tinkle of a little bell. The owner, Silas Bloom, stands there: He’s a paunchy man with pale, shiny skin, thick-framed tortoiseshell glasses, and a pair of red suspenders holding up baggy tweed pants.
“Hello, Mr. Bloom. I was wondering if we could pay a visit to one of your guests.”
Bloom squints at me suspiciously. “I don’t have but one,” he says. “Don’t rightly know if he wants to be disturbed.”
“Oh, he’s expecting us,” I say. “Mr. Cassiar, right?”
Bloom nods slowly. “Well … I suppose so. No visitors after nine o’clock, though.”
I refrain from pointing out that it’s mid-afternoon. “We won’t be long.”
“Upstairs, first bedroom on the right.”
He steps aside just enough for us to squeeze by. For someone in the hospitality industry, he’s not exactly welcoming. Maybe he misread the word as hostility.
The interior is about as bad as I expected: Doilies infest every surface like some kind of embroidered fungus, there are picture frames so ornate you can’t even focus on whatever they’re wrapped around, and the floral pattern of the wallpaper is dense enough to smell. Going up the staircase feels like wandering into an actual thicket; I almost expect some kind of woodland creature with huge cartoon eyes to burst out of the wall and demand I sing a song.
But we make it to the top without incident. “Ready for this?” I whisper to Charlie.
“No,” Charlie says. “But since you’re going to do it anyway…”
I knock on the door.
It opens.
SEVEN
David Cassiar is not what I expected.
He’s much younger than I thought he’d be, for one thing—but that’s only at first glance. When he smiles at me, the wrinkles around his eyes put him in his forties, not the twenty-something man I initially saw.
He’s tall, well built, his skin that golden color you see in ads for tanning salons. He’s blond, with deep blue eyes, and damned attractive in a daytime soap kind of way. He’s wearing a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, tan pants, and no shoes at all.
“Well … hello, Jace,” he says. “This is a surprise—but a welcome one. Come on in.” He beckons me inside like it’s pouring rain in the hallway. “And you are?” he asks Charlie, putting out his hand.
Charlie hesitates, then shakes it. “Charlie,” he says gruffly.
“Nice to meet you. I’m David Cassiar—but I guess you already know that.” He chuckles, then closes the door behind Charlie. “Please, have a seat.”
I glance around the room. Four-poster bed, of course. Frilly quilt, frilly pillows. Several antique chairs that seem to have been upholstered in the wallpaper’s inbred offspring and then doilyed to within an inch of their overstuffed lives. I shudder. “I’ll stay on my feet, thanks.”
Cassiar shrugs and sits down himself, crossing his legs casually. Charlie picks a chair and occupies it like it’s enemy territory. He drops the duffel bag down between his knees.
“I assume you decided you’d rather have your questions answered now instead of later?” Cassiar asks.
“More or less,” I say. “Okay, more more than less. You told me you knew what was going on in Thropirelem. What would that be, exactly?”
He looks at me steadily for a moment before answering. “Monsters, Ms. Valchek.”
“Monsters,” I say. I say it the way a farmer might say gophers, or a teenager might say algebra.
“Yes. I’ve been tracking a cult for some time now, and I have reason to believe they’re based in your little town.”
“Wait,” Charlie says. “Tracking? Who tracks a cult?”
The faintest trace of a frown surfaces on Cassiar’s face. “Well, I do. I’m sorry, I thought you were familiar with my work—or would have Googled me, at the very least.”
“We’ve been having connection problems,” I say. “Pretend we’re Googling you right now—what’s getting the most hits?”
“Probably my own Web site, Evilhunter. That’s what I do, you see; I hunt monsters.”
The phrase resonates in my head so strongly I can almost hear echoes. “You hunt monsters. Like a profiler?”
“No. I don’t seek to understand evil—just to eradicate it. And the Gallows cult is one of the most evil groups I’ve ever encountered.”
“Are you talking about the Gallowsman?” Charlie asks.
“Yes. You know it as a local legend, but it pops up all over the Midwest. Minor details change, but the central story is always the same. Local man named Jump—or Leap, or sometimes Hopper—has a run of horrible luck. Coldhearted villagers turn their backs on him, or execute him outright. He promises to come back and share his pain with them. Then people start to die. There are many variations of how they die, but it’s usually something bizarre or improbable and always involves strangulation. The only way to stop it is for someone to hang themselves on purpose—to show the Gallowsman that somebody understands his pain.”
Terrance hadn’t told me the last part; then again, maybe he hadn’t known it. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to risk the guilt in case somebody found me hanging from the rod in my closet. “So if this is such a widespread story, then why is the cult based here?”
“Because all stories have some element of truth to them, or they die out. This is the town where the actual event took place, over two hundred years ago.”
“Hold on,” I say. “Let’s go back to the whole I-hunt-monsters bit. For whom?”
“For the good of all.”
“Oh? That must be hard to bill.”
“I write books about my exploits. They generate enough income to keep me going.”
What I wouldn’t give for an Internet connection right now—I can smell scam all over this guy. “I hate to be picky, but I’m not sure you’re really what we’re looking for in a monster-hunter right now. Do you have a résumé you could leave with us?”
Cassiar sighs, uncrosses his legs, and leans forward. “I don’t blame you for being skeptical, Ms. Valchek. Monsters, for the most part, are fiction. I’ve never come face-t
o-face with a vampire or a werewolf, though I have found evidence that suggests such creatures did once exist. And I believe they might again, if the Gallows cult has its way.”
I pluck a porcelain knickknack from a shelf and toy with it. I’m not even sure what it’s supposed to be—a puppy? A kitten? A horribly deformed duck? “If you don’t hunt vampires or werewolves, what do you hunt? Sasquatches? The Loch Ness Monster?”
“Oh, I’m intimately familiar with the supernatural, Ms. Valchek. Demonic possession is all too real, as are malevolent spirits like poltergeists. But what the Gallows cult is trying to do is far worse; they’re trying to drag something physical across the Great Divide. Not a spirit, not a nebulous entity, an actual being. In fact, they may have already succeeded—and it could lead to something utterly catastrophic.”
“What, an evil undead hangman isn’t bad enough?”
“He is only the first. Should the cult be able to bring him through, others may follow. As terrible as the Gallowsman is, his threat is nothing compared to monsters that could turn others into beings like them.”
“Others. You’re talking about the V and W words, right? Or should I throw a Z in there, too?”
He shakes his head gravely. “At this point, I don’t know. But yes, vampires and werewolves are certainly possibilities. The living dead are less likely, for occult reasons that are difficult to explain—essentially, the Gallowsman already fulfills that role, which makes it difficult for anything similar to cross over without his active help.”
Charlie nods. “And he doesn’t play well with others. Luckily for us.”
“Exactly.”
I toy with the knickknack and don’t say anything for a minute. I don’t know what to think; Charlie clearly believes him, but I’m not so sure.
No, that’s not quite it. Everything he’s saying makes sense and fits with what we’ve discovered so far—it’s the man himself I’m having trouble with. There’s something off about him, something not quite right. It’s like if I caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, I’d see someone else.
But so far, he seems to know more about the situation than we do, and that’s worth a lot. “Tell me about the cult. Why are they doing this? What do they stand to gain?”
“Beyond occult power? The Gallowsman’s a locus, not just for despair but for bad luck itself, the swirling destructive side of chaos. Like a curse come to life.”
“Doesn’t sound as if he gets invited to a lot of parties. So why would the cult want him around?”
“When brought here by the death of a suicide, the Gallowsman has a specific purpose—to bring suffering to the one the suicide blames for their pain. But when there’s no suicide, he has no focus. He can be directed by those that summoned him.”
“Like a weapon,” Charlie says.
“When needed, yes. But there is another very real, very tangible benefit to summoning the Gallowsman. He draws ill fortune and hopelessness to him—and away from those he is bound to.”
I frown. “So he’s like a giant four-leaf clover and supernatural Prozac, in handy two-legged form?”
Cassiar smiles. “I suppose. Who wouldn’t want an endless supply of happiness and good luck? Especially when you could inflict the opposite on your enemies?”
He has a point. It’s a little undefined for my tastes, but I’m getting the feeling that’s how magic works—it’s always a little fuzzy around the edges. “So as long as the Gallowsman hangs around—sorry—the cult does a happy dance and never rolls snake eyes. Not great for anyone hunting them, right? And speaking of which, what does any of this have to do with me?”
I didn’t really intend to raise my voice like that, but I’m a little surprised at Cassiar’s reaction. He looks … sad.
“Summoning an otherworldly entity always requires a sacrifice, but in the case of the Gallowsman, it’s a little different. He’s drawn to pain—emotional torment. From what I’ve been able to find out, you’re supposed to be the source of that torment.”
Well, that would explain the pictures. “So they’re planning on using me as bait? Torture me and wait for the Gallowsman to show up?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Well then, I guess you don’t have all the answers after all, Mr. Cassiar. Because unless our local pastor managed to hang himself from the eaves of a three-story building without a window or a ladder, the Gallowsman is already here. You were right about one thing, though—he didn’t come alone. You want to meet a genuine, unalive vampire? Keep your eyes out for our local greengrocer, Jimmy Zhang—he’s suddenly developed a real sweet tooth. If, you know, by sweet you mean blood and by tooth you mean teeth. And while none have actually shown up yet, I have it on good authority that the lupine contingent are going to be putting in an appearance, too.”
I’m a little out of breath by the end, but once I started I couldn’t stop. It was like I had this bizarre need to prove myself to him, as if we were comparing schizophrenic stories and mine just had to be crazier.
He regards me calmly. He looks more thoughtful than worried. “I see,” he says at last. “It seems I’ve miscalculated the timing. Things are further along than I thought.”
“You think?”
“Jace,” Charlie says. “Calm down. What we’ve got to do is figure out how to handle this.”
“Handle? Handle? We’ve got a demon with a rope fetish, a murderous cult, and half the cast of a horror movie, all inside the city limits of a town you can walk across in twenty minutes! And that’s if you stop and talk to all the people you know along the way, only you won’t because they might eat you!”
“Your friend Charlie is right, Jace. We need to find a way to quietly contain the situation—”
“Quiet? No, no, no. Quiet time is over. Now is wide-awake, the house is on fire and we need to do something time.”
Charlie gives Cassiar a glance he thinks I don’t notice. I do, but I don’t bother responding. “You know what this is? This is that moment in the movie or book or comic where the good guys screw everything up. This is where they decide to take on the monster all by themselves. Well, sorry, but no goddamn way. We call in the authorities. We get lots of people with lots of equipment—giant crucifixes, automatic weapons loaded with silver bullets, all the garlic they can carry—and we blitz the whole town. Spotlights, teams of at least six, and nobody ever, ever, ever goes off on their own—”
“Jace,” Charlie says gently. “This is a small town in the middle of nowhere. We’ve got a sheriff and one part-time deputy. We might be able to rustle up some guns, but we don’t have any silver bullets or the know-how to make them.”
“We’ll ask the Internet! It knows everything!”
Charlie sighs. “Okay, sure. But how long is that going to take? Where are we going to get the equipment we’ll need? You have a metal foundry in your basement you’re not telling me about?”
I’m starting to run out of steam. “No. But—”
“The only people that are going to believe you are the ones who already know the truth. And they’ll be the first ones to call you crazy.”
Which everybody else will agree with. “Okay, but … we need help, Charlie. We’re way out of our league, here. This is a league we didn’t even know existed twenty-four hours ago, and now we’re supposed to compete at a professional level? Let’s at least try to sign up a few more players!”
Charlie thinks about it. “Like who?”
“How about the sheriff? He already knows something weird is going on. Maybe if we show him what we’ve found out so far—”
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Cassiar says quietly.
“Why?” I demand.
“Because Sheriff Stoker is a high-ranking member of the Gallows cult. He is, in fact, their second-in-command.”
* * *
It’s funny, how the mind works.
You can load it up with all kinds of contradictory information, and it’ll adapt. You can overload it with sensory input, and it’ll
adapt. You can deprive it of any input at all, and it’ll adapt. It’s based in three pounds of jellylike flesh that’s mostly water, and is capable of producing art, mathematics, language, and emotion.
But it has its limits.
I thought I was doing fine. Supernatural beings, my TV talking to me, evil cults out for my blood … but somehow, the simple fact that Sheriff Stoker is one of the bad guys just stops me dead. I got used to the idea of reality not being trustworthy a while ago, but the notion that someone I respect—and yes, I do respect cops, believe it or not—is a genuine Bad Guy just knocks the wind out of me. It hits me on a much deeper level than a nasty revelation; it feels like a personal betrayal.
“I have to go,” I say. My voice sounds flat and unreal, like a bad recording. I’m out of the room and halfway down the stairs before Charlie catches up with me. He doesn’t try to stop me, just says, “Jace? Are you okay?”
“No,” I say. My voice sounds puzzled, but a little relieved, too. I don’t feel either of those things. “I need to go home.”
“Okay, we can do that—”
“Alone, Charlie. I need to be alone.” That isn’t true, I know it isn’t true, but I can’t explain. Not even to Charlie. “Stay here, talk to Mr. Cassiar. See if you can come up with a plan.”
“I don’t think you being alone is such a good idea right now—”
I’m already out the front door and down the porch steps. “Come by before it gets dark. Zhang won’t do anything before then.”
“I … all right. Just be careful, okay?”
I nod, but don’t look back. I need to go home.
I need my shows.
* * *
I remember.
I remember the last time I felt this way. It was when I had my breakdown, when they had to take me away in an ambulance and sedate me. That was the last time I felt this … shattered.
My memories of the event have always been fragmented. Little bits of broken-glass sharpness mixed into a thick, murky broth of amnesia, like a stew made of mirror shards and tapioca. I remember the jab of the needle. I remember the way the blood spurted when I broke the EMT’s nose. I remember being very, very concerned that nobody touch the remote.