Edith crouched near a terminal with a reflective surface. A large chunk of flesh dangled off her cheek, the spot where she’d been struck earlier and where Richter had managed to strike her once more before she stuck him over and over with the curved needle she kept hidden in the skin of her wrist. He’d done some damage, exposing her true self underneath.
“Edith.”
She turned to see Vogel standing on the catwalk ten feet away from them, an SS-designated dagger clutched in his fist, the words Meine Ehre heisst Treue carved on its blade. Margot cowered behind her mother, tiny fingers clutching at her belt.
“Herr Vogel,” Edith said, raising her hands to chest-height in an attempt to show him she was disarmed and meant him no harm. “Please, you’ve been so kind to us on this journey, I feel selfish asking one more favour of you.”
His chest heaved, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, he said nothing.
“Look the other way. Go back to the other passengers and forget we were even here.”
“You’ve killed the Captain. What you did to Ingrid Schmidt . . . I heard her cries from the hallway. When I entered her room . . . my God, Edith, you skinned her alive.”
“I never meant for any of this to happen, please believe me,” she paused, gently pushing Margot towards the engine room door, her eyes swelling. “I want a good life for my daughter. Surely you understand that much.”
He lowered his dagger, his shoulders dropping. The kind eyes that once looked upon them returning to his face. He held back tears. “What are you?” he asked.
She smiled thinly. Edith started to answer him but before she could utter a word, Margot came blaring past, a flurry of brown curls and blue stripes. She charged at Vogel, knocking him off of his feet, the dagger tumbling onto the catwalk with a clang.
“Margot! No!” Edith cried, rushing for her daughter as she prepared to charge him again. Vogel scrambled, finding the blade just as Edith grabbed Margot and held her in her arms, her back to him.
At first she felt a tiny sting. Then the sting grew until it felt as though her whole back were aflame. She faltered, dropping Margot onto the metal catwalk. Blindly, she turned in place using her arms to shove Vogel away. She felt heat against her hands and she pushed, a crash sounding out as pain shot through her torso. She turned back to Margot, ushering the girl towards the engine room door.
“Mama,” the word shook from Margot’s lips as Edith felt the warm rush of liquid dripping down her back, her legs, her feet.
“Go, Margot, I’ll be right behind you.”
The little girl hesitated, but grabbed their new skins and went towards the door. Edith made a full turn towards Vogel. He lay tangled in wires and cables, blood saturating his black uniform and dripping through the catwalk grates underneath him.
“Do you want to know what I am?” she asked looking down at his broken body. He seemed smaller on his back, paltry, child-like.
He said nothing, his eyes wide. There was no need to hide anymore, not in this world. What good was a mother who kept her child hidden because of her own fears? She was no better than the others who sent their followers off to die while they sat in their castles.
Edith reached an arm behind her and dug the blade out from where Vogel had made contact, shrieking as she did. The dagger hit the catwalk with a clang. She removed her clothing one excruciating item at a time until she stood nude. From the wound that Vogel forged in her shoulder, she bore her fingers in, pulling at the skin as though she were removing an adhesive. It ripped quickly, easily, and for the first time in a long while, Edith felt the night’s air against her true self. Grabbing onto her brown curls, she tugged from the neck, pulling up and over. The fillers dropped from her face—a trick she’d picked up years ago, using strands of burlap to round out the parts under the skin that made her facial features more human. She’d gotten pretty good at it, though she often noticed Margot’s eyes were slightly far apart. The girl was still growing so there would be imperfections. Edith yanked her claws out from her fingerholes, the blood sticking to her fur stringy like strawberry jam. And with a heave, she tore the rest of the skin away, tossing it into a pile between herself and Vogel. She stretched her arms out as far as they could go, bringing her hands to her back to her rear. Her fingers both found a thick strand of thread, and through a grimace, she pulled the thread, the fabric unspooling the wings she’d kept sewed down for years. She flexed her newly freed appendages, and though she’d clipped them long ago so they’d be better hidden—much like her horns—they were now free. Everything was unfettered.
Her body hummed as it released itself from the confines of her suit, one that she and Margot had become accustomed to to fit into a world that would not accept them in their natural form.
Vogel couldn’t move. He glared at Edith, observing every inch of her body; quick, uneven breaths escaping his chest.
“Is this not what you wanted to see?” Edith said as Margot opened the door to the engine room. “This is what I really am. This is why I have to hide. The way you’re looking at me at this moment, that’s how I’ve been looked upon my entire life.”
A tear spilled from his eye, rolling softly down his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, and pulled at the loosened wires.
Sparks from the disconnecting wires met the hydrogen-filled air. Before Edith could understand what was happening, a giant fireball sprang to life consuming all in its path. The off-white tarp lacing the Ferris wheel frame erupted in flames as though the sun had reached out from the sky and set it ablaze.
Edith was knocked down, hitting the metal grates hard. Through the blinding light and gaining heat, she turned onto her stomach, pain scorching her every move. But move she did.
Edith crawled to the engine room, passing by Vogel’s screams, his body consumed by the inferno.
The zeppelin suddenly jerked downwards, Edith winding her claws through the catwalk, her hands desperately pulling her forward, feeling for a touch of fabric or her daughter’s warm skin.
She crawled into the engine room and immediately noticed the little girl cocooned into a corner, the flames licking at her feet, her skin already beginning to melt away.
Through fire and smoke, she grabbed a hold of Margot, who dropped both their new, tightly-wrapped skins as she did, and squinted through the flames looking for an escape.
Margot shrieked in her arms. The fire kissed her fur, burning the skin of her wings. All seemed lost. But then, through the smog, she noticed a hatch on the underside of the catwalk.
“Hang onto me!” Edith shouted as her daughter wrapped her arms around her. She closed what remained of her wings around Margot, maneuvering her body through the climbing flames. The hatch lever seared her palms as she pulled, the door itself falling away into a black abyss. Exhaling, Edith tightened her grip on Margot and leapt into the night.
The wind rushed by them, caressing Edith’s body in its gentle touch. With her back towards the earth, Edith expanded her charred wings as far as they could spread, hoping to catch a downdraft to ease the fall. Edith held onto her daughter with everything left in her. Around them, the Hindenburg burned, its massive frame melting away as though it were shedding its own skin.
There were screams, of that Edith was sure, and they were the last things she heard before they hit the ground.
***
Margot awoke in her mother’s arms. She sat up, her body aching.
All that remained of the airship was its collapsed frame some 50 yards ahead of her, like old dinosaur bones sticking out from the earth. People closer to the wreckage were screaming at one another, men rushed the site attempting to put out what was left of the flames.
“Mama?” Margot turned to her mother, unsure of what to do next. She shook her mother but Edith didn’t move.
They were here to start over, her mother and her. She’d chosen a new face: the little girl who lived down the block with the straight red hair and pretty freckles. She’d chosen a new face for Mama: the
lady in the cabin across from them, though Mama had gotten mad at her for getting it. They’d even chosen a new name, too. Mama would be Alice, and Margot, she picked a pretty one: Mary. No more Edith and Margot Brandt. They were Alice and Mary Leeds.
“Hello!” Someone called out from ahead, a silhouette making its way over to her. She shook her mother again but the woman didn’t stir.
“Mama!” She cried, pulling at her fur, slamming her hands onto her chest, anything to get her to move.
“Are you all right?” Another voice said, the silhouette becoming that of two men.
Margot looked back to her mother, her face red and shiny, the fur burned away. Her head was turned to the forest, her green eyes staring blankly off to the distance.
The tears came as Margot stood up, all that remained of her burned skin falling from her body as she did. For the first time in her life, she felt the wind passing through her sprouting fur, over her growing horns, against her maturing wings. The men came closer. She hesitated for a moment, looking at her mother one last time. Margot then ran off, leaving behind the only one who’d ever meant anything to her.
“What’s that?” One voice said as she ran, the trees growing closer and closer.
“It looks like the devil.” Said the other.
The flames of the wreckage were nearly extinguished as Margot ran into the night; into the forests of New Jersey.
LA LLORONA
CULLEN BUNN
It will be said, I suppose, I disappeared without a trace. That I have cultivated fertile ground for wild speculation, I cannot deny. In my time, I have penned many tales of strangeness and spectral happenings. And, as to my personal affairs, I have crafted an air of secrecy, furtiveness, and—yes—even morbidity to fascinate idle minds. Therefore, a bit of mystery surrounding “The Demise of Ambrose Bierce” suits me well enough. Though it would please me just as well if no man, woman, or child considered my passing at all.
Yet, I write these words—scrawl them really on what few scraps of parchment I have managed to find in this place—in hopes that someone will one day read them and understand with some clarity what became of me.
Although my death—if it is truly death that awaits me—might be of such abnormal quality that it is beyond rational comprehension.
“As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.”
I wrote this final line to my longtime friend, Blanche Partington, only a few days hence, not realizing the dark foreknowledge of the words. Certainly, I hinted at death and what lies beyond. (What man can grasp the concept of nothingness?) Even as I put pen to paper, I anticipated that it would not be long before I stood before a firing squad. After all, I was a “Gringo in Mexico,” a respected position deserving of the thunderous fanfare of a five-gun salute. Pancho Villa, who humored me in the early days of my journey, had grown weary of my tequila-laced humors, and I surmised my time in his company was coming to a bloody end.
And so I fled.
From the city of Chihuahua, I stole away in the night, before Villa’s men could drag me before a bullet-riddled wall and sent me to my final reward—a hole in the dirt! With me, I carried little more than the clothes on my back, a meager supply of tequila, and the sombrero given to me by the revolutionaries as a reward for marksmanship. I kept to the muddy banks the Rio Conchos as well as I could, with the intent of following the Rio Grande to Ciudad Juarez and back into the United States. The assassins who pursued me—if there were, indeed, assassins—surely anticipated my route. They, too, would stick to the river, and they would be traveling on horseback. I had also stolen a Colt Bisley pistol, and I kept it tucked in my belt and close at hand. Should my pursuers catch up with me, they would learn that an old man could be dangerous prey. Still, the journey was slow. I stayed hidden during the day and traveled the war-torn countryside at night when I could.
On the first night, I ran out of Mezcal. Dreadful business, that. In the wake of such a tragedy, my head throbbed painfully with every step of my flight, reminding me that perhaps the life I saved was not worth living.
On the second, my accursed asthma asserted itself and I made little progress on my journey. I huddled in a crumbling, abandoned cabin, wheezing and shivering in the hot and stagnant air, crouching in the purest darkness, jumping at every sound like a child frightened by sheet phantoms.
On the third night, I found the woman.
Before I saw her, I heard her, a desperate cry that seemed to be carried across the river’s surface. The sound chilled me marrow-deep. The sound was unlike any I had heard before—hollow and mournful and lost. In my time, I had heard mortally-injured soldiers on the blood-soaked field of battle, crying for their mothers as they grasped fitfully at their wounds or crawled blindly in search of limbs severed by cannonball. Their cries were less haunting than the gut-wrenching sobbing I heard as I followed the river’s bend through a forest of scattered, spindly, skeletal trees.
It was an otherworldly sound.
It was much worse than the sound of someone who was dying on the battlefield. It was the cry of one who had already died but had not moved on. It was—I could not shake the feeling—the wail of a ghost.
Perhaps, I should have turned away from the river and fled from the mournful wailing. To follow such a dirge could only invite misfortune. Still, my burgeoning fear did little to temper my incessant curiosity. I had penned many ghost stories, but I had never been a believer in such manifestations. If this was indeed a spirit, I wanted to see it with my own eyes, to disprove my years of skepticism. If it was not a wayward spirit, then I wanted to cast my speculation aside and continue, unencumbered by flights of fancy, accompanied only by my nagging headache, with my efforts to save my life from Pancho Villa’s assassins.
Can you believe it? A man of my age, hunting for ghosts in the dead of night! Truly, the humor of youth resurfaces at the most unusual of times to remind you of what you once had and what you have lost!
Crouching behind a tree, I espied the woman.
My mind reeled. A ghost! She must have been! No living creature would have presented such a figure!
Dressed in a white gown and shawl, a flowing scarf covering her hair, she stood knee-deep in the sluggish river. The skin of her thin arms and giant face was perhaps more pale than the clothing—so stark as to be almost luminescent. She was weeping—yes—but the tears that ran down her cheeks and dripped into the water looked like black oil. Her eyes, too, were pitch black, and it was a simple matter to conceive that her skin was but a covering for naught but darkness, that her body was filled with those sorrowful black tears.
And the wailing—no creature of flesh and blood would have cried out in such a strange, sorrowful, chilling way.
With emaciated fingers, the woman grasped a wrapped bundle. At first, I could not identify what she held. Then, I saw two similarly swaddled shapes on the bank. The shapes squirmed on the ground, and as the wrapping pulled away from one, I saw an infant’s face.
A baby—no more than a few days old!
A cry caught in my throat. I took half a step and then stopped myself.
The woman plunged the baby beneath the surface of the river.
Now, I moved. Now, I called out, damning the phantom and commanding her to release the infant in the same breath. In years past, I had faced mortality. On the battlefield, I had marched into the cold embrace of death. Here, though, I strode toward a being that transcended death, a creature that had peered beyond the veil of flesh and blood and seen the world beyond. With an angry yell, I stomped across the muddy bank, hoping my own voice might frighten this thing that seemed spawned unto the Earth for the sole purpose of terrorizing others.
The ghost looked at me. Her face—the features lost in a weird, shifting haze—betrayed no emotion.
She did as I asked.
She released the infant.
She pulled her hands out from beneath the water, and now she held no babe. She had cast the child into the depths. Surely, the current h
ad already pulled the infant’s small form away from us, sent it tumbling across the rocky river bed to unknown locales somewhere along the river’s course.
In a rage, I screamed at the ghostly woman. I knew only too well the pain of losing a child. My sons, Day and Leigh, had both been stricken from the world before their times. The pain of their passing had almost been too much to bear. A new mother . . . a new father . . . should never face such torment. I knew not from where these newborns had been abducted. Perhaps there was some village nearby. I would not, however, allow this apparition to throw another baby into the unknown darkness. I had fled for my life from Pancho Villa’s killers, but from this horror—for this purpose—I had found my courage once more.
And yet, as I splashed through the water toward the woman, I stopped. Cold water soaked my britches and filled my boots. The woman stared at me, curious. Had no one ever approached her in such a way? What would I do, I pondered, when I reached the woman? Would I strike her down? Would I tackle her and drive her beneath the surface? What would I do if she had no corporeal shape? If she were a ghost, she might have no form to speak of. She had held the baby, though, so surely—
The babies!
I wheeled away from the woman and splashed once more toward the bank. The two remaining children lay before me. Perhaps I had no means to brawl with a ghost, but I could steal away with her prey. I raced to the two small, bawling bundles. If I could grab them up, I would flee from the river until I found the nearest community, finding shelter for the babies and perhaps for myself.
The woman did not pursue me. Instead, she merely reached out with her long, pale fingers, an almost uncaring gesture. I felt myself hefted from the ground. As if I weighed nothing at all, I was hurled through the air. Although I felt light as a feather when I rose from the ground, I felt no such sensation when I landed. I crashed to the bank, my every bone jarred, my tongue nearly bitten in half by my teeth, several yards from the infants.
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