Malus Domestica

  Leon snarled downstairs. Wayne screamed. The scuffling-smacking sounds of a fight carried up to her, and then everything was still and quiet.

  Silent lightning illuminated the loft’s windows, tracing the strange figure again. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” the thing in the wheelchair said, with a voice that was like dry leaves blowing across a sidewalk.

  “Morgan,” said Robin.

  “Morgan,” said the Matron. “Sycorax. Circe. Cassandra of Apollo. Miss Cleo of the Psychic Hotline. One of those, I’m sure. I forget. You get to be my age, you forget a lot of things.”

  The light over the stove clicked on, bathing the apartment in a soft, slanting light.

  Marilyn Cutty stood on the other side of Kenway’s chopping block. “Happy Halloween, littlebird,” said the witch, coming around the kitchen island at a stately pace.

  Tearing her eyes away from Cutty, Robin peered at the wheelchair at the edge of the hoodlight and saw a thin, hunched creature, a hideous marionette swaddled in an old quilt. Her arms were twigs, hooked into drawn, papery fists. Her simian Yoda face pushed puggishly into the front of her skull. Eyes like manzanilla olives twitched in gaping sockets.

  Perched in the valley between the Matron’s hairy left ear and the knob of her left shoulder was a burden of sweat-slick flesh. It bulged and undulated like the egg of a giant snake.

  “Ah, yes,” rasped the antiquated troll, almost obscured under the tumor. Her face was a mask of stiff yellow skin. “Happy Halloween, my dear.”

  “Champagne,” said Cutty. “Feeling festive, I see.”

  Robin bent carefully, cautiously, and stood the champagne bottle on the floor to free her hands. Her eyes flicked down to the Osdathregar sticking out of Kenway, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Cutty regard it as well.

  Blood glistened between the veteran’s lips. Was he dead? Her heart tumbled in her chest.

  Robin lunged for the dagger, but she was too late. It leapt out of Kenway’s back and whirled across the room, landing in Cutty’s outstretched hand. Before Robin could react, Cutty gestured at her and an invisible force washed her up off the floor and across the apartment, where she hit the bedroom wall and hung there, suspended some eight feet in the air.

  The impact knocked down several paintings in a card-flutter of canvas squares. The frames banged and slapped as they fell.

  Cutty smiled as she paced slowly, inexorably, out of the kitchen. “Ereshkigal.” She flourished the dagger. “We’ve been incubating her for quite some time now. It takes time to resurrect a death-goddess, you know.”

  “That’s why you settled in Blackfield and never left, never went nomad like the others,” said Robin. The wall pressed against her back hard enough that she thought she would sink through the brick.

  “Bingo.” Cutty pointed the dagger like a magic wand.

  The witch came around the front of the kitchen island and casually leaned against it. “The demon called you here, didn’t it? The one Annie summoned, the one she infested her house with. It’s been calling you. It brought you here.”

  “…Yes.”

  “Did it ever occur to you to wonder why?”

  Robin stiffened. “It knew what you were doing! It knew—”

  “—That the time was at hand.” Cutty smiled. She gestured at the Matron and her fleshy, heaving tumor. “Hundreds of years, we’ve been working to bring Ereshkigal into the material world. Coddling it, feeding it life from the dryads. Mum’s been eating for two for a very, very long time. And she’s not the first…it’s taken a lot of trial-and-error.” The witch scoffed sadly. “Halloween. It’s almost too on-the-nose, isn’t it? Hokey. But I kinda like it.”

  Robin tried to push away from the wall, but no dice: she was glued down. She could move her hands, though, and as Cutty kept talking she slipped one into her jacket.

  “Regretfully, I’ve missed a few of your birthdays, littlebird,” said the witch, emphasizing every so often with the handle of the dagger. The blade rested in her hand. “What kind of a great-grandmother am I? So after your magician friends left, I thought, why don’t I bring Mother to town and make a night of it? Throw you a surprise party? You and the goddess Ereshkigal can share a birthday party. Isn’t that neato-keen?”

  The top of the Matron’s massive hunchback split open like a Jiffy-Pop bag—splutch!

  But instead of popcorn, what volcanoed out was a river of … at first Robin wasn’t sure—it looked like crude oil, black and thick—then a nose-burning stench filled the apartment with fish and rotten eggs. Pus and blood and God knew what else sprayed straight up in the air and clattered to the floor around the wheelchair.

  Even Cutty was surprised. “Oh, goodness me,” she said, and tugged the collar of her sweater over her face.

  Robin’s fingers closed over the prize in the pocket of her jacket. She pulled out Eduardo’s watch and flipped it upside down, pincering it with her thumbs to turn the back counterclockwise. The pewter plate came loose with a subtle click.

  The shredded skin over the hunchback’s colossal tumor spread like lips, and the whole thing tilted forward, spilling its contents.

  A great gush of fibrous black matter poured out of the broken hump like a horse giving birth and hit the floor with a surprisingly solid, bony weight. The empty sac flopped over the Matron’s lap, covering her face with a parachute of loose skin. Soupy slime oozed down her shins.

  Robin removed the watch’s backplate and took out the teratoma hair inside. She focused on the lock of hair and found the energy lying latent inside. Eduardo’s Gift of Manipulation spiraled up her arm and into her body. She put the watch back in her pocket.

  “Hey, bitch,” she said, pointing.

  Preoccupied by the nauseating resurrection taking place in front of her, Cutty looked up.

  “Happy Halloween.” Robin put her index fingertip over the Osdathregar and stole it out of Cutty’s hands as if she were dragging a file on a computer screen. The dagger whipped upward and hovered over the witch’s head.

  “The hell is this?” asked Cutty, staring up at it.

  Robin whipped her hand down in a slashing motion. The Osdathregar arrowed down at the witch, but halted in mid-air as if it’d struck an invisible obstacle.

  Cutty was pointing up at it, concentration on her face.

  “Where did you learn to do that, littlebird?” she asked, grinning over her shoulder.

  Robin pushed against her and the Osdathregar trembled, turning slowly in the air like the needle in a compass. “I get by with a little help from my friends.” The dagger had become the ball in a game of will. She forced it but it wouldn’t turn, and the bladepoint gradually, excruciatingly, rotated toward her.

  “The Order?” Cutty cackled. “They’re a bad influence on you.” The witch thrust her finger, overpowering Robin, and the Osdathregar whipped across the room.

  At the last instant Robin put up her hands in surprise and the dagger pierced her right palm, bursting from the back. The hilt slammed into the heel of her hand, the tip of the stiletto coming to a stop just a few inches from her face.

  That’s when it began to hurt, an incredible rush of pain. She could feel the blade between the bones of her hand. “Aaaaaaah!”

  “I hate to do it, my sweet little demon, but you’ve got to be taught a lesson.” Cutty stepped around to the kitchen island, selecting a filet knife from Kenway’s dish drain. Then she went to the creature writhing on the floor and used it to pierce the caul covering its face.

  Taking hold of the Osdathregar, Robin pulled it out of her hand, inviting a fresh round of agony. Blood ran down her arm. She flung it back at Cutty, who looked up just in time and put out a warning hand.

  The dagger stopped in the air.

  “You need new material,” said Cutty, twirling her finger.

  The Osdathregar tried to pivot again, but Robin pointed with both hands two-gun style. She howled with effort. “Eeerrrrraaaah!”

  “Do you know what the definition of
insanity is, dear?”

  Robin pushed the dagger-tip away. Vivid red blood dribbled from her clenched fist. “I may not be insane,” she growled from the wall, her entire body shaking with exertion, “but I’m pretty fuckin crazy.”

  The witch stepped away from the thing on the floor, redoubling her efforts, her teeth bared, eyes wide.

  Figures coalesced to Robin’s left and right, a pair of shadows made of cobwebs and a faint blue shine as if patched together from old memories. They marched toward the Osdathregar at a stately wedding pace.

  A third one appeared between them, and Robin recognized her: Annie Martine, wearing the dress she’d died in.

  Spirits. Ghosts. Robin swore to herself in shock.

  The other two shades were a black man and an Asian woman. She supposed they must be Fisher Ellis and Wayne’s mother Haruko.

  “Wuh-what is this?” stammered Cutty.

  Fisher and Haruko’s gossamer hands rose and grasped the hilt of the Osdathregar, and it wheeled to point at the witch. Annie took up position directly behind it, and Cutty’s fists balled into hard claws as they walked the dagger through her willpower like a trio of pallbearers.

  A fourth ghost appeared, a bloody-faced man in a police uniform. Then a fifth and a sixth, two boys in black dress clothes. They all crowded around the hovering silver dagger, urging it forward.

  Sweat trickled down Cutty’s gray face. “No! No!”

  As if she were bringing someone back to life with shock paddles, Robin punched forward with both fists. The spirits rushed forward and the Osdathregar caught Cutty in the solar plexus, lifting her.

  Robin brought her fists down as if ending an orchestra piece and the dagger darted into the floor, nailing the witch to the hardwood planks.

  “AAAARGH!”

  As one, the ghosts faded, and the force that was pinning Robin to the wall let go. She dropped onto her hands and knees, barking her shin on Kenway’s nightstand on the way down.

  “Uuuuuuuhr,” groaned the cadaverous horse-limbed thing on the floor.

  Robin crawled to her feet and staggered toward it.

  An angular shape moved restlessly inside a cloudy white caul. The rubbery sac was clear enough that she could see through it. Thick wisps of black hair clouded around pale limbs…an elbow…a hip…a hand… a face.

  One bloody eye gazed through the membrane. A finger poked through and ripped the knife-hole wider.

  Robin recoiled.

  Her ankle bumped something, and she found the bottle of champagne.

  Getting an idea, she approached the thing currently tearing its way out of its amniotic sac. Her heart slammed a door in her chest over and over. Robin steeled herself and grabbed the reborn Ereshkigal. The death-goddess’s flesh was like cold butter. Robin’s fingers sank into clammy wax.

  A thin, malformed face stared at her, eyes glassy and veiny under a scum of cold clear mucus. “EEEEEEEEE!”

  Robin screamed back, terrified, “Aaaaah!” but she was already steamin’ along and there wasn’t no stoppin’ this train. She rose, flexing, and lifted Ereshkigal by the upper arms. The wraith under the flapping caul screeched and kicked like a feral child.

  A hard strange wind skirled through the apartment, rising and howling and stinking of rot and sulphur, and the paintings on the walls flapped and clacked in stiff wooden applause. Papers blew off their fridge-magnets and swirled on the air, plastering against the couch and cabinets. Robin’s sexpot witch-gown ripped and flapped madly around her thighs.

  Robin muscled the larval Ereshkigal over to the lifeless Matron in the wheelchair. There she dumped it on top of Morgan, or Sycorax, or whatever the ancient bitch wanted to call herself. Then she turned, grabbed up the bottle of champagne, and…

  …remembered that champagne is not flammable.

  “Shit. Shit!” she shouted into the building hurricane.

  She dashed to the kitchen, threw the bottle into the sink (where it shattered) and hauled the refrigerator door open. Inside was a carton with one egg in it, a bottle of ketchup, a half-quart of milk, a box of Mexican leftovers, and enough liquor and beer to stock a tavern.

  “Thank God for bachelors.” She grabbed a bottle of Stolichnaya. Storming around the island (dodging Cutty’s reaching hands on the way) she went over and poured Russian vodka all over the banshee.

  “Nooooooo!” roared Cutty. Her face changed, became cavernous with teeth. A fell light shined in her eyes and she bucked ferociously against the dagger’s hilt.

  Robin found Kenway’s cigarette and took a steep drag on it, sucking smoke.

  The cherry throbbed orange.

  She tossed the butt on the monster squirming in the wheelchair, where the Stolichnaya caught and went up in a bright splash of white flame. Ereshkigal shrieked and thrashed, gabbling nonsense. The wind caught the fire and whirled it into a helix of flame, worming toward the ceiling.

  Rushing at the conflagration, Robin grabbed the arms of the wheelchair and ran it backwards. Flames licked at her face. Her eyebrows roasted, turning black, curling into ash.

  The back of the wheelchair crashed through the window.

  Robin found herself teetering on the edge of a three-story drop. Her arms windmilled as the wheelchair and its flaming payload somersaulted head over heels and crashed into the dry canal below in a shower of broken glass.

  “You little bitch!” Cutty was screaming, still pinned to the floor by the Osdathregar.

  Wind kicked across the side of the building, howling into the apartment through the broken window. Robin realized her jacket was on fire and wrestled it off, throwing it out into the canal.

  “I’ll kill you!”

  She went over to where the witch was flailing around and picked up Wayne’s phone, dialing 911.

  “I’ll tear your goddamn guts out!”

  “Hello,” the dispatcher said pleasantly. “What’s your emergency?”

  “My boyfriend’s been stabbed.”

  Robin crouched next to Kenway. She frowned at the blood soaking through his shirt from the hole between his shoulder blades—what she could see of it through the tears in her eyes. “We’re at 3210 Broad Avenue, Griffin’s Art Shop. There’s a big red picture of a gryphon on the front window. Please hurry.”

  Cutty snarled in a gutteral, blustering roar. “I’ll crack open your chest and eat your heart, girl!”

  The dispatcher sounded startled. “An ambulance is on the way?”

  “Thanks,” said Robin, hanging up.

  The witch panted like a winded horse, slavering and coiling around the dagger in her chest. “Get this thing out of me and I’ll show you how to hurt! You’ll wish Annie never pushed your sorry ass out of her rotten cunt!”

  “Keep talking.”

  Giving her a wide berth, Robin shut the refrigerator door. Then she braced her foot on the wall and hooked her fingers around the back of the fridge.

  Six feet to her right, Cutty looked up, curious.

  “What are you d—NO! NOO!”

  Robin pried the fridge away from the wall and overturned it on top of Marilyn Cutty’s face.

  The Kenmore flattened the witch’s skull with an impact heavy enough to vibrate the hardwood floor. Gray brains and skull fragments sprayed in a thin starburst.

  Thin wisps of energy curled from underneath. Robin followed them and found Cutty’s heart-road. She absorbed it. The spray of gore sizzled as if the floor were a griddle, and dissipated into black scum.

  A few minutes later, Robin was finishing off the Stolichnaya and watching the thing in the canal burn, when the Parkins came trudging up the stairs. Wayne had one of Kenway’s toluene paint markers and a deep scratch on his face. Leon had an algiz rune drawn on his forehead and he was cradling a blood-slick cat.

  The three of them stared at each other with shell-shocked eyes.

  A distant ambulance siren fell over them, growing to a caterwaul. “You look like you need a drink, Mr Parkin,” said Robin, and she offered up the vodka bottle.
<
br />   Leon smiled tiredly. “No thanks.”

  VALDEZ SUMMER WAS IN full swing as a 1974 Winnebago Brave trundled into the parking lot of Cap’n Joe’s Tesoro gas station. The sky was a mystical, permeating fog that hovered at a height of about sixty feet. Emerald mountains crowded around the town, their peaks thrust into the low clouds as if jostling for a drink of rain. Robin angled the RV underneath the awning (wincing in anticipation as the vehicle’s brow just slipped under the eaves) and parked next to the pump at the end.

  Satin gray ocean lapped at the shores of the bay across the road. She sat there for a moment, gazing absently, not really thinking.

  Eventually she unclipped the seatbelt and climbed out of the driver’s seat, squirreling into the living area. A trash bag full of clothes sat in the floor under the breakfast nook. She opened it and her lip curled at the coppery stink of blood and munge of wet ashes roiling up out of it. She tied it shut and opened the door, carrying it outside.

  The parking lot was wet and seal-black, mottled with rain puddles. She clomped across them in her combat boots and threw the bag of clothes into a Dumpster, then went into the gas station.

  She came back out with a little bag, glass clinking inside. She left the bag in the breakfast nook and went out to pump the gas.

  Wind rolled in off the ocean, giant blundering warps of air that pushed waves across the puddles and made the aluminum sheeting in the awning bark metallically.

  Robin gradually became aware of a presence standing at her left.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said, smiling over at a feminine figure as it coalesced from the cool Alaskan air.

  Annie Martine smiled back. “Morning, love.”

  Robin’s mother didn’t talk much these days, but when she did, she spoke without the speech impediment of a scarred tongue. Her AM-radio voice was tinny and hollow, but her diction was razor sharp.

  She wore a long flowing gown or sundress, or at least that’s what Robin thought it was; the revenant was mostly diaphanous and gauzy, just coming into focus around the face and shoulders.