Thrall

by Mary SanGiovanni

  “Oh, hell no!” Nadia shook her head. “No one’s leaving me alone again in this town. No way, no how. I’ve seen some pretty bad stuff here already, so let’s just all go together, okay?”

  Carpenter shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  He led them through the Self-Help shelves and cut back up the abundantly stocked Occult section, then veered around Military History to a small metal door. The chain and padlock had been broken (bitten, Jesse thought), and reddish stains that could have been rust or blood had set in on the surviving links.

  “Stairwell to the clock tower,” he said, nodding at the door. “Brace yourselves.”

  With a sharp turn and yank of the knob, the door wailed, angry that its secret was about to be divulged. A stale-meat gust of air greeted them.

  “Oh Christ.” Tom, standing next to Carpenter, coughed. Pale-faced, he looked back at Jesse and shook his head. “Don’t let the girls in here.”

  “Let me see,” Carolyn said fiercely. “I’ve got to know.” She pushed past Tom in spite of his best efforts to keep her back. She cried out when she saw what lay on the floor at the foot of the stairs.

  Nadia turned away from the door and shook her head. “I don’t want to see anymore, Jesse,” she pleaded, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t want to see.”

  Jesse nodded, feeling a lump of guilt in his gut for ever having brought her there. He came up alongside Tom and peered in.

  Carolyn stood in front of it, her back to them, her hands trembling visibly at her sides. She was mumbling something to herself over and over that Jesse couldn’t quite catch. At her feet in a crumpled heap lay a grotesque parody of who Jesse assumed had once been Ms. Steitler, but what looked far more like a Halloween mask and costume discarded by some trick-or-treater. Whatever had overtaken the associate librarian had extracted not only all the blood but each and every bone from her body, and likely muscles and organs, too. It left the skin intact, a complete outer shell of her body. Several flyaway wisps from her bun hung in the deflated face. The waxy lips were open—not screaming but stunned, dazed by echoes of pain, perhaps. The eye sockets were empty.

  “Ms. Carolyn?” Carpenter looked in over their heads. “Ms. Carolyn, do you need a few moments alone?”

  Carolyn bent down, grasping one of the glove-hands in hers. She nodded slowly, her voice lost in the folds of her clothes. They hovered uncertainly at the door and after a moment, she looked up. There were no tears but her face was very pale. “I’ll...want to bury her. Alone. Outside, on library grounds.”

  Carpenter nodded. “Of course. Do you need any help carrying the—carrying Ms. Steitler?”

  Carolyn laughed, a clipped, dry bark of humorless sound. “No. I think I can manage her.”

  “Okay then. I’d like to make sure you get outside safely, just the same.” Carpenter pulled a mostly crumpled pack of Marlboros from his pocket and opened them. A few cigarettes and a cigar lay inside. He tapped the cigar out for himself and held out the pack. “Anyone? Smoke if you got ’em.”

  Tom’s face lit up. Jesse could almost see his mouth watering. “Shit, really? It’s been so long since I’ve had a smoke....” He took a cigarette from Carpenter, who proffered a lighter. As a thin stream of smoke lazed up the stairwell, Tom let out a long, smoky breath. “Ohhhh, that’s gooood.” He smiled, and Jesse couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Drag?” he asked, but Jesse shook his head.

  Nadia coughed as Carpenter’s smoke mingled with Tom’s. Carpenter smiled and twisted the end of his cigar against the stairwell wall. “Why don’t you boys head on up to the clock tower and finish off that smoke? We’ll attend to Ms. Carolyn here and make sure she gets down to the library grounds okay. You can join us after.”

  “I’d like to be alone.” Carolyn slipped her arms under the remains of Ms. Steitler and hoisted the skin easily into the air. She didn’t look so sure of what she was saying. In fact, Jesse wasn’t even sure she really knew what she was saying.

  Carpenter followed as she carried it out of the stairwell. “I know you would. We just want to keep an eye on you.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Nadia said to Carpenter, fanning the smoke away from her nose with some exaggerated annoyance.

  Tom nodded and started for the stairs. Jesse trailed reluctantly behind.

  “Nadia?”

  She either waved off him or the smoke. He wasn’t sure.

  “Tom,” he whispered when the others had disappeared back into the Non-Fiction room. “Do you think it’s a good idea to let the girls go with that screwball? I mean, he pulled a gun on me, for Chrissakes.”

  His friend glanced once down the stairs and nodded. “I think they’ll be okay. Carpenter’s way off, but I don’t really think he’s dangerous. I don’t think he would’ve shot you. Besides, we took his gun, and there are two of them against one of him. I’m pretty sure Nadia, at least, can take care of herself.”

  Jesse considered it for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess you’re right. If Nadia did need help, we’d hear it sure as hell.”

  They reached the top of the stairs, and saw that the railing curved out around the small, empty clock tower room. The large gears had long since stopped grinding their teeth. They lay rusting and silent now against the far wall beneath the faint hints of daylight that crept around the clock face. Jesse sank to the floor.

  Tom sat across the room. His knees, tented in front of him, supported his arms while his cigarette dangled James Dean-style from his mouth. “That Nadia’s something else, eh?”

  “That she is,” Jesse said. “That she is.”

  “So, is she your girl or what?”

  “Why? You interested?”

  Tom grinned. “Not for me, man. She’s clearly got a thing for you.”

  “Ehhh, I guess....”

  “She wants you.” The end of Tom’s cigarette glowed orange from his corner of the room as he sucked in a breath. After a pause, he asked. “Have you two...?”

  “No, not exactly. Stuff happened, but it wasn’t like that.” Jesse turned away but he could feel Tom’s gaze like a silent spur to continue. “She’s cool, but...I dunno. I can’t see being with her.”

  He looked back at Tom, who shrugged and answered, “Them’s the breaks, I guess. Sometimes you’ve got to break some hearts.”

  Jesse nodded. “So what about you? When was the last time?”

  “Last time what?”

  Jesse jerked a thumb at Tom’s shirt. “Last time you got head.”

  Tom glanced down and laughed. “Damn, man, feels like forever. Guess it was...about three years ago. A few weeks before Main Street.”

  Jesse frowned. “Oh yeah? No shit.”

  Tom nodded, his gaze fixed on the lengthening ash of his cigarette as it dangled over the floor near his foot. “Remember Madelyne?”

  “Madelyne Costanello? Hell yeah, I remember. We all thought she was hot. That girl had a hell of a pair of legs—and violet eyes. She had violet eyes, didn’t she, and long, red hair?”

  “That’s the one. I wanted her so bad—”

  “You were always crazy about her,” Jesse added, remembering how cool Tom had been with all the chicks...except Maddy. Tom had held an inexplicably silent torch for her for years. Jesse hadn’t known her well, but all the guys knew of her. Her sensuality came so easily and comfortably to her that it seemed ingrained in her movements, a part of her physical make-up. It drew guy and girl alike to her. In that respect, she was a lot like Tom. She laughed easily and smiled often, and had always struck Jesse as the perfect girl for his friend.

  A cloud passed over his friend’s face. “Yeah. Yeah, I was. I loved her.” Tom flicked the ash onto the floor. “Before Main Street, we tried to keep things normal. As normal as the rest of us could, considering people were losing it all around us. The September after you left we had a heat wave that lasted through to the following April. Was like summer out there, man. So one night, a bunch of us guys were hanging out at Blaiser’s Point—you remem
ber that place?”

  “How could I forget? Lost my virginity there.”

  Tom grinned. “Didn’t we all. Anyway, Maddy was there, looking beautiful as always, and the guys were all checking her out. They were joking about how she would never go for any of us, and I finally locked on some brass balls and said, ‘Hell, she’ll go for me.’ Of course, they told me I was full of shit. But I went over and started talking to her, and we ended up taking a walk into the woods.”

  A goofy grin spread across Jesse’s face. “No way....”

  Tom nodded. “Told her how I felt about her that night. Told her everything. She was into it, and we started messing around. Then she showed me how she felt about me.”

  “Talk about actions speaking louder than words....”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  Jesse grew serious. “Did she...?”

  The smile faded from Tom’s mouth. “Get out? No. She died a few weeks before Main Street.”

  Jesse bit his lip. “I’m sorry, man, really.”

  “Me too.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed. They studied the spaces in front of them for some time without really seeing anything but their own memories. Tom occasionally flicked the ash of his cigarette as it grew. Finally, he broke the silence.

  “I found her. Found her body, I mean.”

  Jesse waited without a word for him to continue.

  “We were together about four years. One night, we were hanging out at my house and I fell asleep on her. I was putting in long hours with DeFalco’s crew—we were all sort of throwing ourselves into normal things like work, rebuilding everything, and you know how construction sucks the life outta you at the end of a long day. Anyway, we were messing around, you know, and then after...well, she knew I was tired and didn’t want to wake me to walk her home, so she left alone. Went into the darkness alone. Into the Raw.”

  Jesse swallowed. “Guess it wouldn’t make you feel any less guilty to tell you that it wasn’t your fault, Tom.”

  “No,” Tom answered quietly. “It wouldn’t. But thanks, man.” He ducked his head a moment. When he looked up, his expression remained cool, but his eyes were shining. “The Raw cleared the next morning. She’d never even made it off my front lawn. It...they...whatever was out there...did things to her. It hurt her not even ten feet from my front door.”

  “Tom....”

  “Messed me up for a long time. That was when I knew that they were right about the things in the Raw. They used to just take the bodies, maybe leave a little blood, a bit of bone, but you were never really sure what went down. I don’t know what would have been worse—not knowing what happened to her body, or seeing it the way I saw it that morning. Like a doll with a cracked head and all the fucking stuffing ripped out of the stomach. That was the idea that popped in my head, crazy as it sounds. I threw up in the bushes.”

  “Man, I’m sorry. Damn.”

  Tom nodded, sucked the last breath from his cigarette, and crushed it beneath his shoe. On the tail end of the smoky exhale, he asked, “So why did you come back, Jesse? You never said why you’re here in hell again.”

  It was Jesse’s turn to drop an uncomfortable gaze to the floor. “Mia.”

  Tom frowned. “Mia? But I thought—”

  “She called me. Left me a message on my answering machine. I had assumed she was...well, you know. I figured most people in Thrall were gone. But if there’s any chance, any chance at all that she’s not and that I can get her out of here and get her someplace safe, I will.” Jesse shook his head. “I don’t want to let her down twice.”

  Tom nodded slowly, but his brow crinkled in disagreement. “What...well, what makes you think it was really her? I mean, I only say that because you know this place, Jesse. You know what it’s capable of, and what it might try to get back whoever it thinks it lost. Are you sure it was really her?”

  Jesse thought about the town—the silent buildings, the rusted shells of old cars, the jagged branches of trees combing the streets with long shadow-fingers—before answering. “No, I’m not sure. But it’s possible. I figured however slim, it’s probably my last chance to see if I can have her, Tom. If I can get her back from this place.”

  “You’re a crazy son of a bitch, ya know that?”

  “If you had a second chance with Maddy, wouldn’t you take it? Just to see? Just to know?”

  The corners of Tom’s mouth turned up in a sad, reflective half-smile. “Yeah,” he answered, “I guess I would.” He rose and brushed the dirt off his backside. “Guess I can’t blame you there. I haven’t seen Mia in years, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t here. And if she is, we’ll find her.”

  Jesse grinned and rose, too. “Thanks, man.”

  “Uh, guys?” Nadia called out over the tinny reverberating footfalls as she and Carpenter climbed the tower stairs. “There’s something out there we think you two ought to see.”

  “Actually,” Carpenter said, “it’s more like something that you aren’t going to see.”

  ***

  As Carpenter ushered them down to the Non-Fiction area, he said, “We lost Ms. Carolyn.”

  “Huh? How?” Jesse asked.

  “We walked her outside, and then it was like she heard something—something out of our reach, something only in her ears. She took off across the lawn and we couldn’t catch her because—”

  “Look at the windows,” Nadia broke in, her face flushed with excitement. “We got caught out in it and—look.”

  Beyond the dirty panes of glass swirled a thick blood-foam. Nothing solid could be seen through or beyond it. It looked as if a spool of some awfully wrong kind of cotton candy had enveloped the library. Dark streams of angry black roiled within the mix, signifying something much more sinister to Jesse. The Raw thumped audibly against the glass, a ghostly fist pounding for entrance.

  “Shit.” Jesse ran a hand through his hair. “Carolyn’s still out there?”

  “It rolled in while we were out there, and it came fast and heavy. Too heavy to stay out in.”

  “When we saw it,” Nadia added, “we ran back to the double doors and called out to her, but we couldn’t hear or see anything. Mr. Carpenter even tried reaching an arm out in the last direction she went, hoping that by some slim chance he could catch a hold of her, but....”

  “I couldn’t hold out. You know you can’t leave the door open too long in that. And we could hear them already—the things in the Raw—calling to each other. Couldn’t tell if they were close, though, or far away.”

  “We have to do something,” Nadia said. “I mean, don’t we? Shouldn’t we try to get to her?”

  “No,” the men said almost in unison.

  “Not in the Raw, Nadia,” Jesse responded softly, almost as an apology. “You don’t understand. It would be suicide to go out there now.”

  “Maybe we should just take a look outside again, just to see....” Nadia said.

  The men looked at each other.

  “Please?” Nadia’s voice dropped to a whisper as delicate as a bubble. It seemed that with any resistance, her voice might pop and rain tears and screaming down on them. “Just one more look? I’d like to think that God forbid, if it was me out there, someone would at least try to find me.”

  Jesse nodded slowly. “Okay. Okay, let’s go look. Guys?” The others nodded in agreement.

  “Okay, Miss Nadia. We’ll go look.”

  They made their way back to the front reception area. Jesse exchanged a pointed glance with Tom, and then each took one of the doors and yanked it open.

  At once, a rosy tendril of the Raw blew in, bringing a stinging kind of chill as it whipped across their faces. Several gusts of puffy pink followed it, less biting but equally as cold.

  “Carolyn?” Tom called into the swirling mass. “Carolyn, are you out there?”

  “Help me,” a voice soaked with fear called out. “Come out here and help me, please! Please! I’ve hurt my foot.”

  Nadia clutched at Jesse’s arm.
“It’s her!”

  Tom narrowed his eyes. “Where are you now? We can’t see you.”

  “It hurts, Tom. Come help me. P-please.” Dark shapes separated strands of the mist with shadowy fingers, opening and closing crimson holes before them.

  “How did you get hurt?”

  A silhouette hobbled just barely into view, the Raw spinning away all but the broadest detail. From what they could make of things, the leg was bent all wrong and the oblong that should have defined a foot at the end of it was missing.

  “I got bitten by...by something in the Raw. Something awful.” The figure inched closer until they could just barely see Carolyn’s pained expression. Her dull gaze met each in turn, her mouth open much the same as the mouth-skin of Ms. Steitler. The Raw around her leg parted like a curtain. Sinewy meat hung from her shin just above where her ankle had been.

  “Oh my God. Oh, we have to help her!” Nadia said, but Carpenter clutched her arm as she leaned toward the door.

  “That isn’t her, Miss Nadia,” he whispered.

  “What? How do you know?”

  Carpenter cast a sidelong glance at the figure that hobbled closer to the door. “This place has many actors, and none have a true face.” Louder, he called out, “We know what you are.”

  Carolyn jerked suddenly as if a tiny bullet had ripped into her shoulder. She faltered as if she were about to fall, then hopped a few feet forward. “Please don’t leave me out here. I’m scared. Please come get me. It hurts so much to try to walk.”

  Jesse grimaced at him. “Carpenter, I really think—”

  “The things in the Raw pretend, and they’re good at what they do. But there are some things they can’t imitate perfectly. Like tears, for one. They can’t really cry, so they don’t usually bother. Look at her. Can a girl built like her withstand that kind of shock to her system without crying? Without passing out? And still walk?” Carpenter pushed past them to the door. “And more importantly, there’s no blood beneath her leg. There should be, but there isn’t. Because the things in the Raw don’t bleed.”

  To the figure he called, “You ate them all, didn’t you? Picked off the librarians one by one. Ms. Steitler fought you all the way up to the clock tower, but you got her, too. And when Carolyn went out to bury her....”