Throne

by Phil Tucker

  “I can’t run,” said Kevin, staggering into a walk. “Can’t run. Not even. If there was a killer with a razor. Blade following. Behind me.”

  Maya, panting heavily, blinking sweat from her eyes, turned and looked back. No sign of Tommy in the broad concrete expanse that was the Plaza. Looking back, she saw that the park opened up before them into a vast field of undulating swells, scuffed snow and dead grass, flanked on the far sides by thick banks of trees. Turning, she left the road that ran into the park and stepped onto the dirt, Kevin following behind.

  Overhead, several shapes glided into view, passing them to circle several times in the air and then swoop off into the park. The owls. Maya counted. Seven of them. Kevin looked at her, shrugged, and they began to follow, the owls relaying back and forth, guiding them over the undulating lawn to the paths beyond, into the actual trees. Walking was a blessed relief. After a couple of minutes Maya regained her breath, but Kevin didn’t look good; his narrow face was mottled with angry patches of red, his hair was stringy with sweat, and he kept three fingers permanently pressed into his side.

  “Thank you,” said Maya. “Thanks for helping.”

  “I didn’t do shit,” he said. “I just ran. I think I may have screamed a couple of times. Where are we going now? Why am I still here? Are you going to pay me for all this?”

  Maya couldn’t tell if he was joking. “You don’t have to come any further, if you don’t want.”

  “Gah. I know. Just, well, how am I going to leave now? I’m curious. Haven’t seen—had visions, episodes—like this since I was a kid. Maybe I’ll meet Santa next. Or there’ll be an orgy going on under the trees. I saw,” he said, turning to her, expression serious, “A woman come out of a tree, once, when I was a kid. She tried to kiss me.”

  “Yeah?” asked Maya, “What happened?”

  “She tasted like mold, so I ran away. Never kiss a mossy bitch.”

  “Oh. Good to know,” said Maya, trying not to laugh. He grinned at her, and she found herself thinking, he isn’t nearly as ugly as I had thought. Not attractive, but there was something. Charisma? “How long did you have those visions for?”

  Leaning back, frowning in pain at the sky, Kevin replied, “Till I was eleven. That’s when they started medicating my ass. Stopped seeing visions. And freaking out. I was doped out of my brain, a walking zombie, but my old man, he was fine with that. Long as I stopped yelling about the devil coming to cut me up, and how I wanted to go flying at night with burning leopards and crap.”

  They were walking along a narrow path, the owls flitting above in the gloom, but then the owls flew into the trees to their left. Maya and Kevin slowed, shrugged, left the path and followed. Winter meant that it was easy going, and they picked their way carefully over fallen branches, round spindly bushes and over small gullies. Somewhere to the west the sun was setting, and the shadows around them were growing long, melting into each other, all the colors losing their contrast and flattening out into grays and blacks, dark browns and purpley blues.

  “You will be safe here,” said one of the owls, and it took Maya a few moments to locate it, perched above them, flat face gazing down. “Go ahead. Rawhead and Bloody Bones will not tempt Old Man Oak.”

  “Oh,” said Maya, “Good. Thank you, for helping.” She remembered Tim Tom Tot, and suddenly shook her head, “I mean, uh—that was very timely of you guys and—“ The owl remained motionless, watching her with eyes that were holes in its white face.

  “Let’s go meet Old Man Oak,” said Kevin brightly. “Sounds like a character.” He linked his arm with hers, and began to drag her forward. “Walk like this,” he said, swinging his left leg in front of her, forcing her to swing hers out wide to avoid kicking him. “And then kick your right in front of me. That’s how you have to walk when about to meet a tree man.”

  Maya laughed, too tired and drained to fight it, and so they walked, arm in arm, legs crisscrossing before them in a ridiculous manner, out into the glade in which Old Man Oak stood in all his terrible age and glory.

  Chapter 11

  Maribel stood, locked in her own silence. The darkness about her was absolute, hiding the walls, the ground, whatever lay above. An inky blackness without texture or gradation. Only Kubu was there with her in the void. Sitting as a toddler might, monstrous face raised to gaze up at her with eyes so painfully blue.

  Kubu, Edamukku, Kirsu, Nid Libbi, returned the phooka’s refrain. Maribel felt as if she had been transformed into crystal, a statue frozen by the very importance of the moment. She had to act, move, demand and fight, but she couldn’t. She was arrested by Kubu’s large eyes, by the frank, open, alien and terrifying gaze. Eyes that were almost too large for its baby face, eyes sunken, for all their size, into the skull, and ringed by lines of weariness, pain.

  Pain. Kubu gazed up at her, and Maribel felt as if she were gazing into a whirlpool, a chasm, a sucking abyss. The features, the form, the little body and face were false, a thin mask over something monstrous, greater than her mind could understand, than her eyes would ever be able to absorb. That it wore this little body was a blessing, in that it allowed her to understand it on her own terms. She couldn’t fathom what it would look like otherwise, how its true body might appear.

  “Sofia,” she managed. Her throat was dry, desiccated. Her voice a lifeless whisper. But the name gave her strength. She took a step forward. “Sofia.”

  Kubu remained seated, blinked but once. Something seemed to curdle under its skin. Its mouth was a closed slit. Its nose pressed flat against its face.

  “Give me my daughter back,” she said. She was speaking to it in Spanish. “I want her. She’s not yours. Give her back to me.”

  Kubu sat still. Did it understand her? The eyes were pitiless, without any flicker of comprehension or emotion. It was like gazing into the heart of a glacier. She took another step forward. Pinpricks of rage were beginning to spark up within her, her terror rolling over into fury. This little thing, this malignant doll, this monster had taken her daughter, and now it stared up at her with a stupid, vacuous gaze and said nothing.

  “Give her to me!” she suddenly cried, and rushed forward, lashing out with the toe of her shoe to kick Kubu directly in the face.

  Before her foot could connect, Kubu reared back with a shriek, pulled away as if snatched by invisible ropes, up into the air, his body distending and expanding into a distorted cloud, his features splayed across the air before her, his body as broad and rippling as a sail, black smoke, eyes bulging, mouth a roaring cavern. Maribel stumbled, her kick finding no resistance, fell into the whirling storm that was Kubu, was suddenly thrashing through him.

  Despair latched down on her from without. She knew her own despair, the numbing weight that robbed the world of animus, joy, and filled her with nothing but fear and dread. But this was different. This was an older emotion, simpler, starker, without nuance or overtones. The kind of primitive despair that comes from incomprehension and base fear. It fell across her like a net weighted with lead balls, and she crashed down to her knees.

  Kubu. Not its name, but a name given to it. Knowledge flooded her mind, forced in with the same subtlety and strength of a hatchet blade through the skull. Kubu, Edamukku, Kirsu, Nid Libbi. Ancient words for miscarriage, for the death of a child. Wails arose about her like flames, sounds heard thousands upon thousands of years ago in countless bedrooms, caverns, halls and homes, keening screams of rage and despair. A chain of mothers and fathers crying out their loss to the night, a sound mirrored down through the ages to present day, her own screams from the night in the hospital twinned and mirrored amongst them.

  Kubu. When did it die? The little one who never knew its name, who never saw the sun. She couldn’t see it any longer, the horrifying face smeared and blown away like smoke, but it was surrounding her, choking her, a miasma of pain and need. Understanding came to her, a base emotional truth. It was death, it was a particular kind of death, it was the death of the baby before it could be
named, loved—made human. Dead before it could be recognized by the oldest of rituals, it had been trapped between life and death. And only in the deaths of other such children could it reproduce itself, reproduce its pain and hate, its envy and need.

  “No,” said Maribel, choking and flailing. “No.” She stumbled up to her feet and forward, trying to escape it, to free her mind of its influence, the overpowering hunger that was threatening to dissolve her sense of self. “Give her back. Give her back to me.” Her fury was a white, destructive heat within her. Just as Kubu had entered her mind, she lashed out at it, not with fists or nails, not with blows or crude physical violence, but with the fierce need and desire of her own. She would fight it. She would have her daughter. She would wrest her free no matter the cost.

  But instead of weakening Kubu, instead of locking it in a contest of wills, her anger fed it, so that a feeling of vertigo swept through her as she sensed it growing in size, its need growing clamorous, cacophonous about her. She was lost in this darkness, disoriented. Her strength waning as she fought for breath. Her own confusion infuriated her. How was she supposed to fight it? What weapons were hers to command if not her own need and right?

  “I don’t care if you hurt, I don’t care if you need, I don’t care about your pain. You are nothing to me, I want my daughter, you have no right to her,” screamed Maribel. If the darkness about her had grown colossal, then she would rise to meet it with sheer incandescence.

  Kubu pressed in on her. Welcomed her blows, her hatred, her anger. She felt it rubbing against her like a cat might do to its master, twinning about her legs, arms, the rasp of its skin against her cheek. It was death, and she was in its realm. The phooka had opened the door to this darkness, and led by Isobel she had passed the souls of the dead and the damned to reach Kubu’s home, its place of strength and resting.

  Sofia, she thought, and an idea came to her. Forget Kubu. Reach for her. Her daughter, her flesh and blood, her loved one. Closing her eyes, pressing her hands against her ears, she strained outward, through the swirling cloud that was Kubu, and in search of Sofia, her essence and soul, her little spirit. It would be luminous, her spirit, glowing and pure. Somewhere here, perhaps. Her daughter.

  Maribel searched the darkness, her thoughts and love pouring out and sweeping about her like the beam of a lighthouse. Nothing. She staggered to one side, back, reeling like a common drunk. Nothing. No signature, no scent, no hint of Sofia. Nothing.

  “What have you done to her?” screamed Maribel. Kubu hissed and laughed, the sound plucking on her fear like fingers on exposed tendons. An image came to her then. A little skull, the cranium paper thin, incomplete, the plates not yet melded into bone. The small face, the eye sockets, the tiny nostril slits.

  Sofia.

  Maribel’s mind slipped away from her. From her depths came a roaring deluge of pain and hysteria that blotted out all thought. She knew it was true. Knew that Kubu was not lying, not tricking, not playing games. Kubu was death. The little death, the death before sunrise, the death before the first taste of mother’s milk. It didn’t play games, it merely took. And what it took, died.

  Sofia. Maribel lost her mind, and all went black.

  Cold. A cold so harsh it burned. She was lying on freezing iron, her body shivering in a slow and erratic manner. The world began to impinge upon her. Traffic. Cars. The slurred blare of a horn held down as the vehicle drove by. A voice, just above her, speaking. Calling her name. Something was wrong. Something was gone from her, so completely gone she couldn’t seem to remember what it was. Her body was a painful slab that she didn’t want to return to. Didn’t want to inhabit. But the voice wouldn’t leave her alone.

  She opened her eyes. Whiteness. Such a profound change from the black that tears came to her eyes, caused the world to fracture. Strong fingers wiped her tears away. Took her by the shoulders, pulled her up and then lowered her onto soft warmth. Somebody’s lap. Maribel struggled to find a reason to wake up. So much better to drift away. Away from what awaited her. Pain.

  “Maribel,” said the voice, a woman, a hand cupping her cheek, brushing her hair back quickly. “Maribel wake up.” And then a series of quick electronic beeps. “Hello? Yes, I think I need an ambulance.”

  “No,” said Maribel thickly. Not the hospital. An aversion so complete and all-consuming forced her to rouse herself. “No hospital. No.”

  “Maribel?” The voice closer to her face, breath on her skin. “Maribel, what did you say?”

  It wasn’t so hard, it seemed, to force herself to sit up. Not so hard, not when compared to other things. Slowly, painfully, she sat up, swung her legs down. She was on a bench. Blinked her eyes, looked blearily at the woman. She looked familiar. Soot black hair, cut close to the head. Large eyes. Isobel.

  “Fine. I’m fine. No ambulance.”

  A tinny voice was coming from the cell phone. Isobel held Maribel’s gaze for a heartbeat, two, and then killed the call. “Okay. Come on. We have to get you out of here. Can you walk?”

  “Yes,” said Maribel, though she had no idea if she could. Isobel slipped an arm under her, helped her stand. Her legs were nerveless, and she was having trouble thinking. Remembering. Her thoughts kept slipping out from under her, her eyes kept closing. She felt so heavy, and strangely now, warm. If she could just lie down for a bit. Gather her strength. She had been through so much. Too much. She couldn’t quite recall, but still…

  Isobel was talking, speaking urgently to her. They were moving, Maribel dragging her feet, leaning heavily on the helping shoulder. Down a path. Bushes. A distant wall. Traffic beyond it. Her little park. She knew it.

  “Close to home. My… apartment,” she said. She managed to slur out the address, and then things went dim, distant. Like she was sinking through feathers into a warm stillness. Somehow she kept walking, putting one foot before the other. Swaying, held tightly, then helped into something warm. The smell of pipe smoke. Pipe smoke like her grandfather used to smoke in his summer home in Valencia, peeling an orange with his knife from the war, smoking and telling her long, intricate stories about the creatures that lived at the bottom of the garden.

  Driving. Head so heavy it lolled on her neck. Isobel rubbing her hands with her own, but that made them sting. The car stopped. Door opened. Strong hands pulled her out, callused but gentle. Voices. Hands going into her pockets, and then up steps, held in strong arms. She pressed her head against the man’s chest. Leather jacket warm, soft against her cheek. His chin touching the top of her head, his stubble spiking through her hair to rasp her scalp.

  Too hard to stay awake. Too hard. She let her eyes close, and let the world slip away once more.

  This time she came gradually to wakefulness. Drifted into it slowly, gently, the world growing light about her. She was warm, her body still beneath a thick comforter. Her own bed, the mattress firm, shy of being hard. The air was warm, her face felt smooth, clean, washed. Everything was still. Her mind an empty space, a stage devoid of players, though she knew they all lurked in the wings. Memories and facts and hard, terrible truths she didn’t want to face. But for the moment, stillness, silence.

  Maribel opened her eyes. Her room. The walls white, blank, stark. The curtains on the window to her left open, allowing sterilized light to enter and fall across her. She felt dazed by the silence, by the peacefulness that filled her, that made her float beneath the comforter, float within her very own body. She could lie like this forever, still, alone, silent. Solitude had never been so pure, so blessed, so needed. She could lie like this forever, watching the angle of light change against the wall, the wooden floor, widening and dying as the hours slowly gave themselves away to oblivion.

  Time passed. Then a sound from outside, footsteps, a key in the front door. Maribel turned her head to watch as the door swung open and Isobel entered, two large, brown paper bags balanced against her chest, supported on a shelf made by one arm. The other dropped the keys in her pocket, and she entered, kicking the door close
d behind her with her heel. The sounds were discordant, harsh. They broke the peace like jagged rocks thrown high to smash into the smooth surface of a pond.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” said Isobel, stepping into the kitchen to deposit the bags on the counter and then turn to her. She smiled tentatively as she walked over, rubbing her palms on the seat of her jeans. Knelt down next to the mattress, looking down into Maribel’s face. She was wearing a red sweater over a white dress shirt, collar crisp about her neck, shirt untucked so that it hung out below the sweater.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, reaching out to brush the back of her hand against Maribel’s cheek. Her touch tender, enlivening, unwelcome. Maribel turned her face away, closed her eyes. Her serenity was shaking, shivering. Cracks were fissuring through it. Things were coming through. Thoughts, memories.

  “I’ll set some water to boil,” said Isobel at last. “Some tea would be good. And I bought soup from Trader Joe’s. Some fresh bread. You need to eat.” Isobel hesitated, and then rose to her feet. “I’ll have it ready in a second. First you eat. Then we can talk.”

  Footsteps moving away. Sounds in the kitchen. “I had to bring my own pots,” called Isobel, “You don’t have anything in here. Just paper plates and some mugs.”

  Sofia.

  A clattering sound, and then the hiss of the stovetop being lit. Maribel felt her shoulders rising about her neck. She felt like a clock being wound, like a spring being tightened, slowly, inexorably.

  Sofia.

  “You know, there’s been a man hanging around outside. Tall, handsome type. A little older? He came up to me this morning. Asked about you. Said he was your husband.” A pause, and then the sound of a knife chopping something on a wooden board. “Threatened to call the cops. I almost let him up. But I didn’t think it was my place to do so.”

  Tears were running down her cheeks. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible for her to be gone, truly gone, gone like everybody said she was, dead forever, never coming back. Never to look up into her face, smiling. Never to learn how to walk, to split the air with her laughter, to grow into a young girl, a woman, her daughter, her friend, a person, Sofia, Sofia Sofia Sofia.