by Linda Welch
I gear up before leaving for Castle’s place at ten forty-five. The hilt bound with sisal cord, a long obsidian dagger rides a waist sheath. Obsidian slices through the toughest skin, even a wyvern’s. Two smaller obsidian blades rest in forearm sheaths and a pouch on my belt holds three tiny triangular steel blades designed to fit between my knuckles.
Castle gave me the dagger as a kind of ‘welcome to the club’ gift. He meant to find me work and inexpensive lodging, then we both discovered I can fight and have a strong stomach for gruesome. Small, agile and fast, I quickly adjusted to the lifestyle and how to use body mass to my advantage. He asked me to partner with him and I didn’t think twice. I learned to capture or kill monsters.
I wear my shin-length leather coat. Leather is no substitution for body armor but does provide some protection from claws and teeth.
The sky is red streaked with black. Half-fleshed, I cling to the deeper shadows. The main streets are almost silent, few pedestrians negotiate the uneven sidewalks. Stores have closed, though bars and nightclubs on side streets and alleys are in full swing. I pass the House of the Seven-Handed God. Pink plaster crumbles off the walls and two of the great glass windows are cracked. Few people believe in the gods nowadays. Congregations are tiny, as are donations, and religious bodies have difficulty recruiting young people to replace elderly priests.
Were gods here ages ago, but left when people stopped believing in them? Does belief bring gods into existence and now they’re dead. I know evil entities emerge from somewhere to create havoc and we say they come from below, but we are supposed to take the gods’ existence on faith alone. For some inexplicable reason, these old temples for deities no longer loved or wanted make me sad.
Gliding up stone steps to Castle’s door, I call up more flesh to rap the wood. Footsteps tap the hall’s wooden floor, the door opens and Castle stands there with a bloody great sword in his hand.
“Come in.” He steps to the side and swishes the sword through the space I occupied a second ago.
The house is lit up inside. We don’t need light by which to see, but lamplight adds normality to the building and discourages thieves.
Castle follows me along the wood-paneled hall, through his living room to a space next to the kitchen. The right wall is all closet, a wall lamp hangs on the left. Castle presses a rivet on the lamp’s mount and a panel slides aside to reveal an arsenal stacked on shelves and hanging on pegs.
“Ghouls, huh.” I glance at his sword, the blade four feet of honed, tempered steel, his hand protected by a heavy steel buckler; a good weapon to use on ghouls because we can strike from a couple of feet away. We don’t want to get in range of their long arms.
I select a similar sword from its peg, lighter than Castle’s but as long, with a narrower, slimmer blade.
Castle chooses an obsidian hatchet with a long wooden haft and two obsidian throwing knives. He tosses me a leather baldric and harness and snags one for himself.
We leave through the backdoor and cross the street to where his car waits under the residents’ carport. The old jalopy needs the shelter, any more rust and the body will fall apart. It already lacks the left rear passenger door.
He grabs the handle on the driver’s side door and yanks, but the damn thing is stuck again. A well-aimed kick with his heel and it grudgingly grinds open. I perk an eyebrow. He gives me a sour look. He will never admit driving the heap embarrasses him and he thinks it’s bad for his image.
We settle the swords and harness on the torn vinyl backseat and climb in front. Castle starts the engine, twists to look out the rear window and backs out. At least the rain has stopped, a good thing, as the windshield wipers need new rubber blades.
The car plows through puddles in the rain-slicked streets, spraying water over the sidewalks. I pick at my fingernails as Castle whistles through his teeth.
My peripheral vision catches movement, white streaks, and I look up sharply. A whirlwind of lights dance and swoop in an alley. Will-o’-the-wisp, a half-dozen wind elementals and they are excited.
“Stop.”
The old car screeches to a halt, but the alley is empty. The noise scared off the elementals.
I hop from the car.
Castle sounds disgruntled. “Rain, whatever’s there is dead.”
“I know.”
Castle’s lips clamp together, his fingers impatiently tap the steering wheel as I start for the alley. He doesn’t lack compassion, but doesn’t see the point of investigating a lost cause. Wind elementals scour dead flesh off the bones but won’t attack the living. But I don’t want to think of a family learning their loved-one has been found as a pile of clean-picked bones. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
The alley stinks of rancid meat and rotting vegetation. My boots crunch on broken glass and squelch through a disgusting pulp. The inky darkness is no problem for a wraith. Night or day, our vision is perfect.
Bite marks cover a big, dead, seriously torn up cat. I don’t want to speculate what made those marks. The elementals can have it.
I walk backward a few paces, turn and trudge to the car.
“Do we need to call anyone?” Castle asks.
“Nope. Just a dead cat.”
He puts the car in gear. “Happy?”
I slump in the passenger seat. “I’m always happy. See my big smile?”
He huffs out a noncommittal noise. And off we go again.
We drive through an upscale neighborhood of high-rise apartments with tiny areas of colored rock in front and neat paths. Buildings get farther apart, single-family dwellings replace the apartments. Our destination is a semi-rural suburb five miles yonder.
Chapter Two
The Blayne estate house towers east of Bermstead. Sounds grand, but calling it an estate is a stretch; Gettaholt doesn’t have space to spare for huge houses and acreage. Still, the house is impressive, big and very old with turrets and towers and pale weathered stone.
Calla Blayne is a sylph and one of the Triad, Gettaholt’s ruling body, although strictly speaking a duad until the open position is filled. Sylphs are female, and rare. The poet Alexander Pope called sylphs airy, invisible beings, but he was wrong. He was, however, right about spleen and vanity. She’s a tough cookie. Blayne has balls and they are made of steel. She took over as Chairperson when her predecessor Hyde stepped down. He quit the position when his wife contracted a life-threatening illness and he took her Upside to find a cure. The decision didn’t go down well. The hoi polloi are not allowed Upside when they get sick. Maybe that’s why he didn’t return.
Blayne was already a formidable businesswoman. Now, as the Triad’s Chair, she is the most influential person in Gettaholt, if you don’t figure Alain Sauvageau and a host of underworld bosses into the equation.
Word on the street said she was unhappy the city built a cemetery near her home. Had the plans been submitted later, after she joined the Triad, I doubt they’d have been approved. Ghouls in her neighborhood must be a double whammy.
Castle parks the car outside the cemetery and we climb out. As expected, the gates are locked for the night. Grunting, Castle bends, picks up a pebble and tosses it at the high mesh fence. It bounces off the mesh to land in long grass.
I put hands to hips. “Brilliant.” The electricity has failed, making the fence and gates ineffective barriers. “No wonder they got inside.”
And they’re in deep. Ghouls don’t waste time when ripe bodies abound for the plucking.
The cemetery is big but we can narrow down their cubbyhole. Mausoleums are built to last centuries and include below ground crypts to accommodate future generations. Ghouls take over these crypts and add crude rooms and tunnels as they breed. New as this place is, there are but five big family mausoleums.
Castle returns to the car and finds the green folder. Opening it, he plonks his index finger on the page, then waves it in an easterly direction. “Thataway.”
Getting into the baldrics takes a moment but makes drawing the
swords from where they rest on our backs much easier than from a conventional sword belt, and keeps the weapons out of our way till we need them.
He scales the fence hand over hand on the metal mesh and lets himself down the far side. Following, I straddle the top bar which supports the mesh and take a second to look out over the cemetery. It stretches seemingly forever, but plenty of space remains between grave markers. It will fill up in the next decade. Lamps line the paths like bloody teardrops but shed little light. The city doesn’t waste light on the dead. Markers are gray or white blotches on a flat landscape broken by a few trees clustered near the mausoleums and some low shrubbery. The air is dead and heavy.
I swing my leg over, twist, and climb down the mesh, dropping the last few feet. Our boots scrabble on a path of chipped stone as we head east toward the place where ghouls feasted, so we step on the grass. Ghouls are nocturnal, they see in the dark. Any above-ground will spot us coming. We don’t want to make it easier for them by making noise.
I suppose there are advantages to living Upside, their cities are never this dark, there are fewer places for evil to hide. But of those who receive permission to go Upside, most return here. Upside is too big, too bright, wide open. Not enough shadows. They are more comfortable in the darkness and damp, the smut and excrement. They don’t fit in the Upside world.
We practically bounce over grass spongy from the day’s rain and navigate grave markers, heading for the nearest mausoleum where the signature marks of ghouls were seen. Gobbets of torn flesh, rotting entrails. A ghoul stopped for a snack and didn’t sweep up the crumbs.
Movement displaces the air. I draw my sword, but Castle is already spinning, sweeping, and a ghoul’s head parts from its body.
I crouch, arm stiff, sword angled in front. Castle is still as … well, still as a corpse. He sucks in a breath a moment later and relaxes his arm. I join him and we look down at the body parts. The torso sprawls, the head is face down on a newer grave; it has crushed a handful of sad flowers someone left in memory of their dearly departed. I use my sword’s tip to roll it.
Ghouls are little more than tough, dirty-yellow hide stretched over sinew and bone. Long torso, concave chest; long, spindly, oddly jointed arms and legs, big hands and flat feet tipped with curved yellow nails. Skulls are bald and flat-topped. Small, muddy-brown piggy eyes and pug noses, lipless slitty mouths. How their bodies process food is a mystery to me. They stuff, and stuff, and never a suggestion of a pot belly.
I move back. “Why did it attack?” Ghouls eat more than decomposing bodies. They pick off anything weaker including small, elderly or feeble humans. But two healthy, armed people?
Castle smacks his forehead. “They’re breeding and we’re near the nursery.”
Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?
I sheath the sword. Castle wipes his on the grass before doing the same.
Feet whispering through dryer grass beneath trees, we continue to a large family mausoleum of gothic style. Ornate carvings seem to writhe across its face in the gloom. Iron struts already corroded by the damp atmosphere reinforce the wood door beneath a deep arch. Castle walks left, I go right. Sliding through shadow, I don’t spot any breach in the wall or holes near the foundation, nor any ghoul leftovers. The custodian must have cleaned them up.
We meet up again at the door. Castle fishes a skeleton key from his pocket but pushes the door before he tries the lock. The door moves, the lock is broken.
Another push and the door screeches open with a noise I feel in my teeth. Castle winces. Great, the door is better than an alarm bell. I hope the ghouls are dug in so deep they heard nothing.
We creep through the doorway. Below, the room is gray, with deeper shadows thrown by four sarcophagi which march down the middle. The lids are intact, the old bones inside don’t tempt ghouls. Castle ducks to clear the lintel as we continue down the steps and the ceiling hangs a few inches higher than his head.
An iron railing surrounds a square hole in the floor on three sides. Steps descend into darkness. Castle leads. We end up in an empty crypt lined with flint slabs. No caskets, no ghouls.
He cants his chin and speaks in a hushed voice. “There.”
Ghouls have broken through the wall. They are not using this room, so the hole goes to a tunnel and this is their bolt-hole, the backdoor to their nest. They may have carved out a room beyond, but more likely a tunnel because the smell of a ghoul’s larder doesn’t taint the stale air.
We circle the chamber first to make sure we don’t miss anything before crouching to look through the hole. I pull air in through my nose but still don’t smell anything.
No, wait, faint but there, essence of ghoul.
I scramble over dirt and broken rock with sword drawn and pointing ahead. Dirt sifts on my hair and a thin fibrous root dangling from above tickles my cheek. I stand up in the tunnel, sword in both hands, straining my senses.
I’m more or less ghoul-height; Castle is twelve inches taller and considerably bulkier. He snarls under his breath as he comes through the hole and brushes the sides, not at all happy when he can’t stand upright in the tunnel.
“Damn ghouls.” He shakes his head to dislodge tiny clods of dirt in his hair.
“Yeah,” I agree in an undertone.
We ease along single file, conscious of the tons of un-shored dirt above our heads. The tunnel is long and could lead to the next decent-sized mausoleum. The stink becomes marginally stronger, the reek of spoiled meat.
“Are we there yet, mommie?” Castle whispers.
“Almost, sweetie.”
“Good, ‘cause my back’s killing me.”
A noise makes me stop walking and I hold up a hand so Castle’s big mouth and bigger feet don’t forewarn whatever heads in our direction. My body hair bristles, I take tiny shallow breaths.
The ghoul spots us the same time we spot him. He about-faces and runs back the way he came. I pound after him, sword gripped in both hands, legs pumping, hair flying back from my face, leaving Castle to follow at a fast shuffle.
I burst into a slightly larger space. The ghoul veers right and I arrive as he slips sideways through a crack. I move so fast, I can’t stop and don’t try. I sail through the wall with Castle’s yell ringing in my ears.
Having done this so often, I barely register the brief tug in my guts. But the problem with dropping flesh and turning insubstantial is I lose everything. As if the wall rips them away, my weapons, clothes and boots come off as I pass through.
I reform and land in a sticky glop, skid on my spine and end up in a delightful consommé of blood, bone, slimy guts and skin. This is no recently interred body. The poor thing was breathing not long ago. Ghouls are chowing down and I landed in dinner.
The ghouls have hollowed out a small, roughly rectangular space. No glimmer lifts the unrelieved darkness and I would be blind were I human. The walls are packed dirt, the ceiling low. Propped up on my elbows, I return the gazes of five ghouls, choice tidbits halfway to their mouths, who squat on their haunches in a half-circle with me dead center. I want to pinch my nostrils. Damn, this place stinks.
The element of surprise is mine. Now is the time to spring into action. Instead, trying to get on my feet, I flounder, flopping and slithering like a beached whale. The ghouls toss aside their dinner and stand.
My hand falls on a chewed femur dripping strings of flesh and sinew. I manage to sit up and whack the nearest ghoul on her ear. Her head jogs over and springs back. Hells.
A ghoul whines and shows his teeth in a parody of a smile. My lily-white flesh must look enticing. Another ghoul grunts.
They are so delighted, they let me roll sideways out of the goop, although I take most of it along for the ride on my skin, in my hair, drizzling in my eyes. Clutching the femur, I leave a noisome trail backing to the wall, which is not far enough. Ghouls surround me. I try to swallow but my throat is closed.
The first moves in. I bring my foot up; sole and heel impact ghoul flesh with
a satisfying crunch as a couple of ribs crack. He flies across the small space, but cracked ribs don’t keep a ghoul down. He gets back on his feet spitting. His buddy ghouls watch as if to say, aren’t you an idiot, kicked way over there by a girl.
A faint voice yells, “Incoming!”
He’s not! A grenade sails in and bounces over the floor. The idiot, he did! I hunch against the wall and drop flesh as dirt and rock blast through the room, taking the ghouls off their feet.
I open my eyes to an obscuring haze and frantically try to blink tiny grains from my eyes. Castle bursts in as the dust settles. The whole place shudders. Dirt sifts from above, becomes a trickle, then a stream and the ceiling comes down on the ghouls as they regain their feet. My eyes meet Castle’s before we drop flesh.
We come together again and look up. The explosion undermined the mausoleum’s flagstone floor, which fell into the room and flattened the ghouls. Legs and arms stick out of the heap. Viscous brown blood trickles in tiny rivulets from dirt clods and chunks of masonry.
“Uh oh,” Castle winces.
The city will be less than happy with the damage done to the mausoleum. I doubt the mausoleum’s owners will appreciate it.
“You brought grenades?”
He picks up his coat and shakes it so the pocket rattles. “Just a couple.”
“A grenade?” I spit dirt from my mouth. “Underground?”
Castle smirks. “A small one.”
“You’ve wanted to try them out since you got them,” I accuse.
A stone slab is inches from the hole and a dark wood casket teeters precariously on the edge. One more teeter and over it goes. We press to the dirt walls as it succumbs to gravity and slides end first onto the rock-and-ghoul pile. Something pale mingles with the dirt. Flowers. Someone recently left yellow tulips for the deceased. More dirt, dust and small pieces of masonry shower down. The casket rests aslant on the mound, the lid half off. I’m grateful it didn’t open and tip out the occupant.