Stamps, Vamps & Tramps (A Three Little Words Anthology)

by Rachel Caine

  “If it’s—some kind of magic, maybe it’ll come off,” Danna said. “Or maybe you can disfigure it somehow. Do you think that would work?”

  Lila Mae got up, opened a drawer, and took out a butcher knife. She handed it to Danna handle first. “You do it,” she said. “I’m not very brave. I’ve never been very brave.”

  Danna wasn’t either, but she’d seen things, done things on the road. She’d ridden the rails with murderers, thieves and rapists. She’d seen men die and men maimed by the rolling steel wheels of boxcars. She’d helped cut off a man’s leg once that had been hanging by some stretchy tendons; she’d held the knife while the other hobos had pinned him down, screaming and thrashing. A lot of it came back to her now, with the knife in her hand, and she shook some. “Needs to be hot,” she said. “Red hot, so the wound doesn’t fester.”

  Lila Mae took the knife back and opened up the lid of one of the burners on the old cast-iron stove; she laid the knife over the flames and watched it as it heated up. When it started to glow on the edges, she wrapped a knitted potholder around the handle and brought it back to hand it to Danna. Even through the wrapped fabric it felt hot enough to scald her fingertips.

  Lila Mae skinned up the sleeve of the worn old blue shirt and put her forearm flat on the table, turned to show the tattoo. It was moving now, a tangle of curls and swirls that seemed like some snake beneath the skin now.

  As if it knew what was coming.

  “Try to hold still,” Danna said. “I’m sorry. It’s going to hurt a lot.” She hesitated again. “You know it could kill you, don’t you? Maybe this thing is all that keeps you healthy. Maybe once it’s gone…”

  Lila Mae managed a shaky smile. “I was dying before,” she said. “Might as well get it over with if it’s coming. I don’t think I want to go on like this.”

  That was, Danna thought, good enough. She pinned Lila Mae’s wrist to the table with her own forearm, and the girl’s fingers curled warm around her skin.

  She readied the hot knife over the tattoo. It was thrashing now, and the motion made her head hurt, her eyes water. She could hear a thin howling sound now, like a distant wind. It grew louder and louder like a siren, and she had to fight the urge to drop the knife and cover her ears. No. Danna gritted her teeth until her jaw muscles ached. No I won’t. I won’t.

  “Danna.”

  She made the mistake of looking up, and her mother was looking back at her, her mother, and her heart broke and her breath caught and she wanted… wanted…

  “Danna, my dear girl, don’t do this. Don’t make me go away again. Don’t make me leave you.”

  That wasn’t Lila Mae behind those dark eyes now; there was nothing there but cold and darkness and hunger. The voice was warm and kind, but the dark was merciless. The fingers wrapped around Danna’s forearm tightened, and they felt like talons.

  “It’s lonely here,” her mother said. “I miss you. I miss you so much. Please don’t make me go.”

  “I’m sorry,” Danna whispered. “But you can’t stay.”

  She brought the knife down—not the edge, but the flat of it, still smoking hot and shimmering red at the edges. She hit the center of that writhing tattoo, and smelled burning flesh, heard the sharp sizzle. The arm she pinned down twisted and tried to pull free but she grimly held on, thinking of that hobo on the tracks, his leg dangling from threads that had to come off, it had to be done, had to be…

  She was dimly aware of the screaming, and whether it was the memory of the mutilated hobo or the shriek of a train whistle or her mother crying out or Lila Mae, she didn’t know. Maybe it was all of that. Maybe it was her own voice.

  Lila Mae’s hand went limp.

  Danna gasped and dropped the knife, and as it fell away she saw that the tattoo was clear now, easy to see… the face of a woman. The knife blade’s burn had seared away the center of it, but the eyes looked dark and savage, and the open mouth had fangs like a snake’s.

  Lila Mae slipped bonelessly out of her chair to thud on the wooden floor of the kitchen.

  Danna hurried to her side and pulled the girl into her arms, and put her ear to the thin chest under the bloodstained shirt.

  She heard a heartbeat. Slow, but strong.

  Lila Mae was alive.

  It took the whole afternoon and into the night, but Lila finally woke up. She seemed feverish and in pain, but Danna had bandaged up the burn and put some salve on it, and she hoped it wouldn’t turn bad.

  “It’s better,” Lila said, when she asked her. The girl looked pallid and sweaty, but she smiled. “She’s gone. She’s gone. I can tell.”

  Danna hugged her. “I’m glad. You look—”

  “Sick?” Lila said, and laughed. “I’m all right. Just tired. I’ll be better in the morning. You’d better get some rest, you look tired too.” She coughed, just a little. “Promise me you’ll stay, Danna. Promise me.”

  They shared the bed, and come morning Danna woke up feeling rested. Better than she had in a long time, actually. The sore ankle she’d earned coming off the roof seemed totally healed now, and the only thing that hurt on her seemed to be a sore spot on her arm, where Lila’s hand had gripped so hard. Bruised, she guessed.

  She rolled over, and found Lila looking at her with a faint smile on her face. A sweet, peaceful smile.

  It took her a moment to realize that it was the last smile of Lila’s life. The brown eyes were open and fixed, ever so slightly filmed. Life for a life.

  It wasn’t until Danna had closed the dead girl’s eyes and arranged her peacefully that she thought to push up the sleeve of her own nightgown and look at her bruise. It was a bruise, already turning a dark, ominous, storm cloud blue.

  She could already see the eyes, though. The mouth. The teeth.

  Life for a life.

  There was a whisper in the back of her mind, one she knew came from far, far away. Plenty of bad men to take, Danna. You will be doing them a service, all those honest, poor men and boys riding the rails. Taking away those who deserve to suffer.

  She took a deep breath, and nodded slowly. The voice sounded like her mother’s, soft and comforting. She could almost feel the gentle stroke on her hair.

  The strong did what they had to do. That’s what her pa had always told her, what he’d told her when she’d put on his spare set of clothes and set out on the road to find her own way.

  The strong survive.

  In the early morning light, she bathed and dressed and made herself some breakfast. She walked down to the church and told them about Lila Mae’s death, and the pastor was full of sympathy, and promised he’d come with the undertaker to get the girl. “And who are you?” he’d asked her, as an afterthought.

  “Her brother,” Danna said. “Dan. Our grandpa left us the house.” Promise me you’ll stay, Lila Mae had said. She would. It was a good place, a warm place, and eventually, it would be home.

  Last thing she did, before going into the house, was to go to the back fence and make sure the sticks were still there.

  A simple sideways T shape. Easy mark.

  The tattoo was almost formed now on her arm. She knew she could get rid of it any time she wanted, banish Lilith back to the pit she’d come out of, but for now… for now, her mother’s voice was right. There were good men to be fed. Bad men to be stopped so they wouldn’t hurt anyone else.

  And she was fine with that.

  She knew the exact moment the image was complete; she felt the hot pricking of thorns, and felt her face and body go fluid and warm and pliable. She would be what she needed to be, for anyone who came. The welcoming Grandpa or the sweet Lila Mae or the strong Danna.

  Until it was time to let go and be someone else.

  Her house sinks down to death.

  There were always people looking for an easy mark.

  THE WHOLE OF HIS HISTORY

  By Barbara A. Barnett

  Frederick has made the journey between Boston and Philadelphia so often that his horse seems to
know every turn without his prodding, every ditch and old fallen tree limb to avoid—the memory of the road absorbed to the point of instinct. But though familiarity governs the horse’s steps, Frederick is certain this is the first time he has laid eyes upon the town of Hawthorne. At first, the town strikes him as the sort of unremarkable place he would not expect to recall, with its rough, stony dirt road leading past shops and small boxy houses, some of brick, others of wood. But little by little, Hawthorne’s peculiarities begin to reveal themselves. Frederick spies neither church nor stock and pillory, the mainstays he is accustomed to seeing in such towns. The people are an even odder matter. Frederick worries that his very presence has somehow proven offensive, for not a single soul meets his gaze. They all pass him with bowed heads, the men’s faces obscured by the shadows of their tri-cornered hats, the women’s hidden behind veils. Frederick is accustomed to loneliness, even among those who call him friend, yet the way these strangers avert their faces makes his isolation seem a tangible thing, a great stone-like mass weighing him down.

  In the town square, Frederick calls to a figure ambling ahead. The man turns with a graceful spin worthy of the ballerinas Frederick saw during his brief time in France. Unlike the other people of Hawthorne, this gentleman meets his gaze, presenting him with a disarming smile. Frederick feels a flush in his cheeks that makes him wish he had called to someone else. He has prayed for God to rid him of these sinful feelings, yet still they come. This man in particular possesses a preternatural beauty that rouses an unwanted attraction with sudden and surprising force. There was a time when Frederick wondered if God had abandoned him, deeming him too unworthy to save; now he wonders if God was ever there to begin with.

  The gentleman draws closer, an expectant look on his face. He appears no older than Frederick’s own thirty years, trim and broad-shouldered. His jacket and breeches, though clean and neat, have the well-worn look of travel about them. His skin is pale, almost luminous. A turn of his head toward the sun, though, and Frederick at last notices an imperfection—a reddish mark on his neck, some type of scar or birthmark obscured by his ruffled cravat.

  Frederick swallows to moisten his drying throat. “Would you be so kind as to tell me if there is an inn where I may find lodgings for the night?”

  “Of course,” the gentleman replies. He speaks with a musicality that Frederick finds far too alluring. “I was heading there now myself if you care to follow.”

  Frederick thanks him and prompts his horse into a slow walk to keep pace with his newfound guide. With each step, he feels an irrational yet growing urge to burst into a gallop and see if he can reach the next inn by nightfall. Frederick tells himself there is something unnatural in the way no one but this man has looked him in the eye, but in truth he knows that his apprehension has another cause: this man has made him fear what is unnatural in himself.

  “Samuel,” the gentleman offers by way of introduction. “Samuel Warren.”

  Frederick doesn’t want to know the man’s name, but there it is. Civility leaves him no choice but to offer his own in return, for it takes only one glance at the sky’s ominous hues of darkening purple to know that he will find no safe shelter beyond this town tonight.

  The inn to which Samuel leads him is called The Wayward Tramp, a modest brick building with a weathered sign that features the silhouette of a man with a walking stick and a sack slung over his shoulder. While Frederick secures his horse to a post outside, Samuel bounds toward the entrance, promising to let the innkeeper know that he has a guest for the night. Only when the door closes behind Samuel does Frederick realize how tense he has been since meeting the man. His breath comes easier now; a dozen knots seem to unclench in his stomach. So unnerved by a stranger, he chides himself, by barely more than a smile. Frederick considers a new possibility: that God—if He exists—has not abandoned him, but has put before him a test in the form of Samuel. A test he has failed before.

  Once inside the inn, Frederick is greeted by the hum of conversation, the familiar kitchen scents of boiled meat and freshly baked bread, and a lively tune played upon fiddle and fife. In the main room, the fireplace sits unused—no surprise with such a warm spring. Tables and chairs of all shapes, shades, and sizes are scattered throughout the wooden-pillared room. The patrons occupying them are just as eclectic. Frederick has never known of an inn or tavern where men and women mingled in the same room, or where the Indians native to the colonies were permitted at all, and yet here he sees them all sitting and talking together. Unlike the people he passed on the street, these individuals do not hide their faces with veils and tilted hats. Yet there is something shadowed about them that Frederick cannot make out from where he stands.

  A burly man emerges from the kitchen. With a deep, boisterous voice, he greets Frederick and introduces himself as the innkeeper. His vigorous handshake is accompanied by cheerful words about providing feed and water for Frederick’s horse and the rare pleasure of being able to offer him a room to himself, but Frederick does not hear all of it properly. His attention is fixed on the innkeeper’s skin. The man’s face and hands are covered with an odd array of red-inked tattoos: figures and portraitures, a feast spread upon a table, a child playing with marbles, a hound chasing after some unseen prey. Every image is impossibly detailed, like miniature paintings upon his skin. They conjure memories of a Lenape warrior Frederick once encountered; depictions of the man’s every feat of bravery were inked upon his body. But for all the fascination such markings inspire in Frederick, he is well aware that most people regard the natives and their painted skin as unsightly at best, at worst an affront to God—mutilations of bodies made in a divine image. The innkeeper, though, displays not the slightest hint of self-consciousness about his uncommon appearance.

  Frederick stops gaping long enough to secure his room and ask for a hot meal and a mug of ale. He takes a seat in the main room, apart from the other patrons. As much as he longs for conversation, he fears the questions that will inevitably be asked, particularly the ones about why an established young man of his years has yet to marry, for surely he must have prospects.

  At first, Frederick is relieved not to see Samuel among the gathered patrons—perhaps he has his own lodgings here and retired to them straight away. But that brief thought is quickly pushed aside as Frederick takes in the faces around him. They are all tattooed like the innkeeper, men and women alike. Some bear only a few visible marks; others are like a living gallery of miniature paintings. A serving girl sets a pewter mug before Frederick, and his eyes trace the markings on her exposed skin, so numerous that they bleed into one another. It is all so extraordinary that Frederick marvels at the fact that he has never heard stories of this peculiar town before; he can’t possibly be the first traveler to have passed through.

  “May I join you?”

  Frederick looks up to find Samuel standing before him, his own mug of ale in hand. The man’s dimpled smile stirs an unwelcome flutter in Frederick’s stomach. As rude as it would be, Frederick knows he should say that he prefers solitude, but curiosity wins out. Who better to ask about the painted people around him than the person who led him to this very inn?

  “Please,” Frederick says, gesturing to the chair across from him.

  Samuel sits. Frederick starts to ask Samuel what he knows about the markings, but his voice trails off as his gaze falls on the man’s neck. What from a distance Frederick had thought to be a birthmark or scar is actually the same type of dark red tattoo the others have. Frederick can make out a tree and what might be the top of someone’s head; the rest is covered by Samuel’s cravat. It should not be surprising that Samuel is marked like the others, Frederick knows, yet the fact of it catches him off guard all the same.

  Samuel laughs, a teasing tone that says he knows exactly what has left Frederick speechless. He tugs his cravat down to reveal the entire tattoo—a man sleeping with his back against a tree.

  “We’re encouraged to hide our markings outside,” Samuel says. �
��Everyone is afraid we will frighten off visitors if we reveal ourselves too soon.”

  Everyone, Frederick marvels. He has heard gossip of the occasional man allowing a native tribe to mark him as a sign of trust or alliance, always in a discreet and easily covered spot so as not to invoke public scandal. But an entire town? And these tattoos differ from those of the natives. There are no patterns invoking the elements of nature; they are not limited to representations of battles or other great feats. Nor are they like the brandings of criminals, the only other inkings of this sort Frederick has ever seen. Instead, these tattoos are strangely mundane in their depictions, mostly faces and events one might encounter in everyday life. The ordinariness of them makes Frederick uneasy. Commemorating the extraordinary with such an ostentatious display is something he could understand, but with the people of Hawthorne, he can’t help feeling as if unremarkable lives like his own are being mocked, scarred onto skin so as to distort them.

  “I’ve barely enough markings to hide,” Samuel says. “But I still believe we should display them as proudly outside as we do in here. I’m much more interested in those visitors who would choose curiosity over fear.”

  Frederick downs a mouthful of ale. He is unsettled by the markings, and he thinks Samuel must know it, for his words sound like a challenge.

  “Allow me to inquire then,” Frederick says, choosing to meet that challenge. “Why does everyone here have such markings? I have never seen their like.”

  “To remember,” Samuel says, as if that is explanation enough.

  Frederick regards the image on Samuel’s neck with a short laugh. “To remember what, exactly? A nap by a tree?”

  “Each other.” Samuel brushes his fingertips over his tattoo. “I never said this was my memory.”

  There is a wistfulness to his voice and to the way he touches the tattoo that sparks jealousy within Frederick. It’s irrational, he knows. Samuel is a stranger. And as for the tattoo, its detail and artistry does not change the fact that it is a primitive practice to be frowned upon in the civilized world—at least that is the reaction Frederick knows he is supposed to have. Instead, the intimacy implied in Samuel inscribing another person’s memory onto his skin leaves Frederick trying to fight off envy as well as attraction.