by Orrin Grey
“Go on, then.” Needle gestured towards the cistern entrance. “Don’t keep the precious beard waiting.”
Screwing my courage to my breast, I breathed deep and stepped upon the great carpet of fungus, towing Kavin’s body behind me. The surface gave only slightly beneath my sandals, my feet sinking deeply enough that I needed curl my bare toes for fear of touching the great unclean thing.
Fear was not a luxury I could allow myself. Not amongst this rough company. Another step. Another. I would not let this … this thing unman me. I was used to being the master. I would show them. Garan, Valkuran and Xiou, alike. I would show the smart-mouthed thief who’d felt the need to trod upon my business. Master yourself, I thought and you will master these men. Even if Needle was necessary to reach our goal, there might prove no need for him to return with us.
Yes.
I smiled. ‘The best,’ he’d claimed to be.
We shall see.
Hraki would be more-than-happy to do the deed. It worried me some. How best to broach the subject? Wei, at least, seemed likely to side with the thief. Reputation was not enough to keep one alive in Khyber, let alone below it. Needle might have cards left to play, dice left to roll.
Many players in this contest — if, indeed, we all played the same game.
My musings had distracted me long enough that I had made my way far onto the great mushroom. I wanted to look back, but dared not. A sign of weakness, that. Let them think I cared not whether they dared to follow me. When I — a fat coinpurse, as Hraki was so fond of calling me — was across the terrible thing, they would need to follow.
Of course, if they did not, if they left me, there would be no one to naysay their courage above. Should the vile creatures that came for my followers come next for me, only these four would know their shame and cowardice.
Not a comforting thought.
This was something I could believe of Needle — and perhaps the Garan. Hraki, though, would not. Honour, courage, these things were far too important to Valkurans, even one so far from his home. No place in heaven for them unless they died with a blade in their hands. I shuddered, touching the braided silver noose about my throat, and happy that the Goodson required no such sacrifice from His believers.
“Come on, you lot,” Needle’s annoying voice echoed over the chamber. I winced at its volume. I couldn’t help it. “Light a fire and leap smartly, yeah? Coinpurse is getting away from us.”
A surprise that Needle would be the first one demanding the ruffians follow, but I shrugged, accepting the strange fact. Anything that would get my men moving was comfort to me. It was also a reminder of how far I had travelled away from them and just how exposed I was. Were anything to come for me now, none would reach me in time. Even were they so inclined.
I could feel their footsteps behind me. Strangely, I felt I could almost tell which steps belonged to which man. The power that emanated from each grudging step of Coal’s advance. Needle’s cocky strut, so brash despite such a light touch. Wei, who barely seemed to brush the surface at all. Hraki’s angry stomp sending shocks up my spine. I slowed my progress, hoping they might catch up to me, hoping I was not being obvious.
Hoping to hide my fear of being caught alone.
A large cluster of the yellow growths blocked my path. This time, there was no column rising from their centre. I stopped, peering deeper into a yawning circular chasm. I wrinkled my nose at the smell wafting from within. In the eerie purplish light that emanated from the horrid thing, I saw one of my factors, ripe with decay. He was unrecognisable but for the pendant bearing my house’s sigil. No skin visible that was not covered in the foul growth of swaying, hungry mushrooms.
The body stirred and I leapt back with a cry.
He was dead, but he had moved. My bowels went to water. I meant to turn back. To run. But the angry yells of my men-at-arms told me there was no safety to be had.
From beneath my factor, they rose up, standing like men, but they were not. Their broad caps narrowed to points and would have been almost comical, were it not for phosphorescent pricks of light where a man’s eyes would be, glowing like a devil’s fire. Stalking us, their forms undulated bonelessly. More birthed through small openings, like stool squelching free of the bowels of their master.
From behind me there was a rush of air and a crackle of flame, as if oil had been poured upon a fire. Coal was accessing his bargain with his heathen god. The cistern grew bright, almost as bright as day, as the Garan’s dark hands burned white with heat.
“Wyrd cast his baleful eye upon you all.” Hraki poured a great dribbling handful of something vile and black into his mouth.
I held my noose, clawing for the protection of the Goodson, Khyber’s true and proper God, no matter what the cults believed. My breath caught as the silver cord tightened about my neck.
“Begone!” I croaked.
They stopped in step, regarding me queerly before they broke against the symbol of my faith, like a wave in the harbour. My men-at-arms were not so lucky. The creatures bypassed me, pouring toward the others. It was almost heretical, but I did hope the Goodson would see fit to offer my heathen guards the protection they needed to survive. I might still need them, after all.
Fire flew from Coal’s hands. Where it struck the creatures, they wilted and fell.
Hraki stood, as if rooted, shaking, though I sensed not with fear. I could almost feel the rage wafting from the Valkuran. His mouth frothed, his eyes rolled back in his head, and then, only as the creatures surrounded him, he moved. Axes whirled, like things alive, lopping limbs from torsos. Heads from necks. Splitting the creatures as if they were cords of wood.
“Wyrd! Wyrd! Wyrd!” he screamed. His god’s name the only word that seemed able to push past his frothing mouth.
At first, Wei’s staff seemed ineffectual. Bludgeoning the creatures did nothing. They swayed, absorbing each blow. The Xiou was unbothered. With a twist of his wrist, the pole came apart and two slender metal blades shone, reflecting Coal’s flames.
Of Needle, there was no sign.
“There’s a lad,” his voice whispered in my ear. “Keep ‘em off us.”
I turned and the thief was beside me, almost as close as a lover, holding an outstretched-but-unused dirk and watching the creatures slide past us to engage the others.
They fell and they fell, but more rose to take their place. As if Needle’s ‘Vile Truffle’ could vomit out an endless supply, could birth an unending tide.
I had a moment of hope that my chosen instruments would beat back these creatures, that, with the Goodson’s mercy, we would send this Cygaricus back to whatever hell had spawned it.
And then it all went wrong.
Hraki locked eyes with me. His body black with ichour, black as the rotten mushrooms he’d swallowed to fuel his rage. Oily spittle pouring from his mouth, he came for me. Cutting through a wedge of the creatures, he thundered forward like an Eryan cavalry at charge.
I tried to cry out, but my throat had tightened. Fear. Shame. I felt the heat of my bladder emptying down my leg.
Coal and Wei, more men than I, stood firm against Hraki.
Entreating the Goodson, I begged my god to intervene for their heathen lives. A blade nicked across my throat.
“Let’s see how this plays out, luv.”
An axe thunked into Coal’s spine and the Garan dropped, limp. Hraki stepped over him, but there was some life remaining in the Garan. His burning hands closed about the Valkuran’s ankle and held, vice-like, as Hraki dragged the prostrate sorcerer over the tumourous ground.
Flames licked up the Valkuran’s leg, setting his clothing ablaze. In his frothing turncoat rage, Hraki didn’t notice. His traitorous eyes sought only myself.
Agile Wei easily outpaced the burdened — and burning — Valkuran.
Wei hurled one of his blade staves like a javelin. It pierced Hraki’s chest and still he came on, kicking the now-dead Garan from his heel. Hraki threw his axes in rapid succession
. Wei blocked the first. The force of the throw snapped his last stave.
Splinters burst free and I felt the sting as one imbedded itself in my forehead. The second axe bit deep into the Xiou’s shoulder. He grunted. As loud a cry as I’d ever heard the curious man voice.
Staggering, Wei grasped the axe. Hraki had stopped his advance, fallen to the flames of a dead Garan, who, even in death, refused to loose his murderer.
A gobbet of something vile swelled in the flames, bursting free to splatter me. I felt the cutpurse cower low at my back. It burned, whether with heat or poison, I knew not. I wiped blood and worse from my brow.
“That’s it for you, then, luv,” Needle clucked. He did not seem upset about my discomfort. I have heard that scalp wounds bleed profusely, but this was not something I had ever expected to experience myself.
I tried to wipe the blood from my eyes, but could not stay ahead of the flow. Everything had gone dark.
“Help me,” I begged. The wound burned, the filth of this place aggravating it.
“There’s going to be no help for you, I’m afraid.” Needle didn’t sound afraid in the least, nor saddened by his statement.
“What … what do you mean?”
“You’re the job, yeah?” he said. As if that explained anything. “Been contracted by the Truffle to bring his boys home.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded again.
“Working for spoils? That’s a first-time jobber’s mistake, luv. Mushrooms grow in shit, yeah? I guess shit-brown eyes and shit-for-brains’ll do just as fine.”
“No. No. That cannot be. It was a cut. Just a cut.”
I could feel the cutpurse’s smirk. Glad in that moment that I was blinded.
“The Truffle wants his … children.” The word was almost a question. The thief groped for another. “Progeny, then. The ones sprouting out your peepers and maybe some other places, too; not that I’m for looking down there.”
I reached forward with a trembling hand. Afraid in my blindness of what it might find. I knew my fingers had not touched skin.
“No.”
“’Fraid it’s to be yes, luv. You’re done for.”
I felt a wrenching pull. I screamed. It was as if the bastard had torn an eye from my skull. The pain radiated from the orbit, down my jaw, reaching my fingers, stabbing at my groin and toes. It was as if he had crushed the orb twixt his fingers.
Gasping, “What did you do?”
The words felt thick, garbled. My tongue had swollen. A rumble in my guts and I voided myself, sobbing. What wept down my face was not tears. Goodson help me, I had no eyes. I wanted to wretch. Something came up, spreading my jaw so wide it cracked like thunder. I took a breath.
My last.
As my nostrils closed, I kicked, clawing for air with bloody fingers.
“Extracted my payment,” Needle said, smugly. His words grew fainter and fainter. “These fellows grow in your flesh, but it’s said that they keep a flash of their food’s memories locked away. You have a lot of secrets, Coinpurse, and I trade in them. I doubt the Truffle would notice if I had just a taste ….”
OUT OF THE BLUE
By Ian Rogers
Ian Rogers is a writer, artist and photographer. His short fiction has appeared in several publications, including Cemetery Dance, Supernatural Tales and Shadows & Tall Trees. He is the author of the Felix Renn series of supernatural-noirs (“supernoirturals”), including “Temporary Monsters,” “The Ash Angels” and “Black-Eyed Kids” from Burning Effigy Press. His most recent book, a collection of dark fiction called Every House Is Haunted, will be available in Fall 2012 from ChiZine Publications. Ian lives with his wife in Peterborough, Ontario. For more information, visit ianrogers.ca.
IT WAS FOUR IN the morning by the time I got to the house. Jerry had called me an hour earlier, knowing I’d still be awake. We both suffered from insomnia — mine was the symptom of an actual sleep disorder, while Jerry’s was the result of too much caffeine in his diet. He claimed this made us brothers, of a sort, and I was too tired to argue with him.
Jerry was a real estate agent with a very specific and very unusual area of interest: He only represented properties that were haunted. Houses, condos, farms, stores, warehouses — it didn’t matter as long as it had some sort of supernatural taint. It was a niche market, but Jerry was a good salesman and he made out okay. When he wasn’t trying to offload the next Amityville Horror, he was usually out chasing women at Toronto’s finer bars and cocktail lounges.
I figured that was why he was calling me that night.
“I’m not going out,” I told him. “You’ll have to fly solo tonight, Maverick.”
“Goose,” Jerry said, disappointed, “you wound me.”
“It’s three in the morning, Jer. It’s past last call.”
“That’s not why I’m calling.”
“And I’m not coming over to look at a rash on any part of your body.”
“It’s not that, either.”
“Then why can’t it wait until morning?”
“Technically, it is morning.”
“Then technically, I’m hanging up.”
“Wait,” Jerry said, suddenly serious. “It’s an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“Do you remember that house I told you about last week? The one north of the city, near Barrie?”
“No.”
“I picked up the listing a few months ago. Remember? The shitbox-with-a-bad-roof-but-it’s-got-potential?”
“Still drawing a blank.”
“Okay, it doesn’t matter. I need you to come up here.”
“Why?”
“I ….” Jerry hesitated, which gave me a moment of pause, because Jerry never hesitated. “It’ll be easier to explain once you’re here.”
“To Barrie? Jerry, it’ll take me an hour to get there.”
“I said it’s near Barrie. It won’t take that long. There’s no traffic this early in the morning.”
I grunted.
“Come on, man. Do me a solid. I helped you the time that woman tried to sue you after her sister got killed by those spooky kids.”
I grunted again. Jerry wasn’t usually able to talk me into doing things I didn’t want to do, but on those rare occasions when he did, I refused to acknowledge him with actual words.
The thing was, I did sort of owe him and not just because of the incident with those “spooky kids”. I had learned early on that if you were going to make a living as a detective who specialised in supernatural cases, then it was a good idea to have a lawyer familiar with supernatural law. Jerry had passed the bar years before he started selling haunted real estate, but, these days, he only practised law on special occasions. He was useful when I needed legal advice — or when I required actual representation. Jerry was a tenacious, sharp-minded debater who didn’t know when to quit. It was because of these traits that I knew there was no point in arguing with him.
“It’s still gonna take me a while to get out there.”
“That’s okay,” Jerry said. I could hear the relief in his voice. “Thanks, Felix. Seriously.”
I grunted and hung up the phone.
I don’t like being in the woods at night. It’s a common phobia among those who have been to the Black Lands. My one-and-only excursion was brief, nothing more than a few steps onto that Plutonian shore, but it was enough to put me off trees and darkness for good.
The place I was headed wasn’t very deep in the woods and that was the only reason I didn’t turn around and go home. I took the 400 north out of the city, got off at Shore Acres Drive near Cookstown, and was presently bumping along an unpaved road with nothing around except a few trees interspersed between fields of freshly turned earth.
I spotted Jerry’s car — a black 1968 Ford Galaxie, fully restored and the only thing Jerry truly loved — parked up on the side of the road across from a small house. I pulled in behind it and turned off the engine. The headlights went out at th
e same time and my stomach clenched painfully as the darkness came flooding in.
I sat and took a few deep, steadying breaths. I saw the interior light of Jerry’s car come on as he got out to meet me.
Jerry was short and bald, with bright, animated eyes and a stubby chin. He reminded me of the manic money launderer Joe Pesci played in the Lethal Weapon movies. He was wearing a grey t-shirt and black track pants with white stripes down the sides. His usual preference was for expensive suits and loud ties, but it wasn’t the sort of thing one would be wearing at this hour. Still, I was a little taken aback to see him dressed so casually. He looked decidedly un-Jerry-like.
“This better be important,” I said, climbing out of my car.
“It is.” Jerry’s eyes flicked nervously to the side. “At least, I think it is.”
“You think?”
I followed his gaze to the house. A car and a van were parked in the gravel driveway. The van had something printed on the side, but I couldn’t make it out in the dark.
Jerry said, “I’m worried about Julie Spiro.”
The name sounded familiar, but my brain was too foggy from lack of sleep to make the connection.
“She’s the interior decorator I hired to fix up the place,” Jerry said.
“She the one you’re sleeping with?”
Jerry looked aghast. “You mean Barbara? Hell, no. I ended that months ago.”
“So, you’re not sleeping with this one?”
“Well ….” Jerry tilted his head to the side. “Not yet. She’s a work-in-progress.”
“Sort of like your house.”
Jerry’s eyes darted to the side again.
“So, why are you worried about this woman if you’re not sleeping with her?”
“Because she’s not answering my calls.”
“There might be a connection there.”
“Would you get your mind out of the gutter?” Jerry snapped.
“Did you tell her you’re a writer?”
“I am a writer,” Jerry said. “I’ve written books.”