All Hallows

by W. Sheridan Bradford

  “Fingers.”

  “Stop repeating things. Get them off, Abigail. Leave your thumbs. You can do four from one hand, or two from each, or three and one… I don’t care how it adds. Four. I need to turn a circle of salt,” Maren said, and removed a large, blue cylinder from her purse.

  “I don’t see how this… Kenna’s—”

  “—Dying? I know. Get with the program, Abigail.” Maren ran a long, sharp nail under a paper seal, opened the tiny metal chute, measured their surroundings, and began pouring a razor-straight circle of white granules around the entire bench.

  Abby stood, dazed.

  Idiot. You trust this wizened hag? Did you not see her teeth? Her jaws? What was she doing when you arrived, Abigail?

  “Maren, how do I know that you’re… God, she’s going to die.”

  “Looks bad, but I believe that’s the idea. Mary doesn’t want you dead—not yet. She wants you more thoroughly destroyed. If this second child dies in your care, you will go mad, and your memory will be ashes in the mouths of your loved ones. Is she talking again?”

  Don’t tell her. She’ll use it against you. Who broke your nose?

  “In my head?”

  “I would surely hear it if she chattered aloud.”

  “Yes, she… sometimes,” Abby confessed.

  “I recognize this is a moment of some small anxiety, but listen to me. Your baby will linger. She’ll choke and purple and wail for you, and she will clutch and kick and scream. There is enough time, is my point—yet there is no time to delay. Ignore your child while we work.”

  “But salt and—”

  “Abigail, is Mary shaking your brain?”

  Heed my counsel, Abigail. Do not tell Maren—

  “Yes!”

  “The circle may help. If not, I have… we’ll need blood for that, too. Once we break you free of Mary, we’ll seek to salvage your daughter’s life. I need four fingers. Your other option is to sit and sob until she chokes and cools.”

  “I can’t think right. I’m so tired I can’t even—I have a fever, and that voice has been in my head for days.”

  “In my purse is a sheet of paper. Can’t miss it. You won’t find it by the ream. Hours and hours, each sheet takes. It was reeds and rushes when I started.”

  “And the salt?”

  “The salt it precisely what it seems. I’ll be done in a jiffy. On second thought, I’ll get the paper. Get that nose stopped, and get started on your fingers post-haste.”

  Maren walked in a steady circle, pouring salt until the ridge was unbroken by grass or pebble. Abby, trembling and out of breath—she could breathe only through her mouth—tried to ignore Mary, who laughed in her head as though it were empty.

  Ignoring Kenna was harder. Abby focused on Maren, following the steadiness of the old woman’s hands. Mary’s voice dulled, disappearing as the white circle closed.

  “What the—? It stopped.”

  “Stopped? Circles don’t stop.”

  “The… the voice. In my head. It’s gone.”

  “Mary won’t be denied for long. The paper will give us a defense. It’s a higher form of—it must be fed before we can try to break her hold.”

  Maren found the paper as though it were the first item in her bowling bag. “Here.”

  “I don’t… what do I do with it?”

  “You bleed. I’ll do the rest. Need my tools. Here’s the whisk. I got this from an aginator back in… I don’t know when. Early in the spice trade. Young man, decent sort for being a vendor. Took a rock to the side of his head for his trouble. Nobody wanted a man from the yellow kingdom shouting his wares.”

  “Did you help him?”

  “I should say not. He knew what he was into. Should have. He was robbed of his goods and whatever wits he had the same day I bartered for this set.” She extended a small bowl that made Abby think of cantina salsa. Maren casually slapped the adrenaline pens from Abby’s hand. “Make yourself useful. Hold these.”

  “I don’t know what any of this does.”

  “The whisk is a chasen. Goes with the chawa. Get them together, and it makes a fine cup of tea. Now we start.”

  “With tea?”

  “A lovely thought. There’s no time, but I can describe it: powder the leaves. Add them, unstrained. That’s it, though I often add—I like my matcha with some extra pep. The measuring spoon is somewhere on my necklace… here, take this chashaku. We’ll be serving blood with this kit today. I doubt it will ever wash-out.”

  “Blood from… my nose?”

  “No. Fresh and willing. A good deal of it. I regret that I did not pack my sword, but I was lugging enough as it was.” Maren grabbed Abby’s chin. “Blood—do know what it is?”

  “I know, but I don’t understand how—”

  “—Did I ask for understanding? Here, hold… I need my necklace again. Here’s the bronze beauty. It’s by way of China—so they call the kingdom today. Shang dynasty. Lifted this from a friend.”

  “And you want me to…?”

  “Stab yourself. Think of it as an early spork, though the pointy bit is on the other end. The movement from millet to wheat got us to chopsticks, but this spoon predates noodles and dumplings. Go on.”

  Abby touched the tip to her upper arm.

  “You are not looking to unseat a burrowed tick. Push. That spoon’s sharper than a barracuda tooth. Give it an inch and it will slice a mile.”

  The tip was indeed trenchant, and it slipped through Abby’s flesh with the ease of a flu needle—it wasn’t painless, but to help Kenna…

  “Good?”

  “Stop playing about. Make a hole. Find a plexus, or if you fancy wearing scars, there are superficial vessels in the scalp, face, and neck. Mind your carotid.”

  “I can’t just… is this clean?”

  “Clean enough to eat with—used to be. Anything, indeed,” Maren scoffed, and bent to the bowling bag, retrieving something she hid in her hand.

  Abby closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to remember her yoga classes—a bubble formed and popped as she exhaled. She visualized the spoon entering her flesh. Where? Her thigh?

  But no, this was beyond crazy—what in the hell was she doing? Kenna had been stung by a bee. Did other mothers take that as their cue to dabble with rituals in the park? To stab themselves with grungy spoons?

  “Maren, there has to be some other… this isn’t sanitary.”

  “Don’t argue. You’ll lose. I was a student of the sciences before men decided to differentiate between one branch and another. Go across the fatty part of your arm. Lots of gushers in there.”

  “What if… if I die, who will take care of Kenna?” Abby asked, a familiar tug of anxiety uncurling in her chest, a squid waking and flexing its multitudes of suckered limbs. “What if—” Abby began, but she inhaled a small cloud and coughed.

  Maren blew a second blast of powder into Abby’s face through the yellow tube.

  “Hold that in your lungs—if you’ve been to college, you know the drill. Enough talk.”

  “I never did dru—” Abby said, and fell silent, for the powder’s effect was instantaneous.

  “Honey is not native to this hemisphere, you know. You wanted science and sanitation? There it is: that sweet spittle was part of the cultural exchange.”

  “Exchange,” Abby said, her eyes flat.

  “Same goes for this pipe. There’s not another quite like it. Much lighter than a thurible—you’ve seen the Catholics swinging their incense down the aisles?”

  “You drugged me?”

  “Hogwash. It’s little more than dried honey. Nepali red, in the event you want to procure more. A black market item—why I don’t know. Honey carries some of what the bees have been into. Clover is the common option, but this is rhododendron. A mild hallucinogenic. Should be fun.”

  “That’s a… pipe?”

  “In a pinch. It’s foremost a courtship flute. Arapaho manufacture, if you want a name you recognize. The tribes rarely
called themselves what they are said to be in books.”

  “It makes music?”

  “In the right hands, yes. I find I’m better at blowing smoke than hitting notes. This is half the usual length, and I have not seen another for hundreds of… it was a fine trade with a fine friend. I should like to see her again.”

  “Will Kenna—?”

  “—Abigail, sit if you must. Fall and you will break something. Your baby, for starters.”

  Maren pressed her fingers over seven holes of the instrument and exhaled again. A tenor note accompanied the resulting puff of dust in Abby’s face.

  “Stop that,” Abby said, coughing.

  “I believe I will. Got a dose myself, that time. I’ll glimpse more faeries than I already do. Here, let’s see if this kills you,” Maren said, reaching for the epinephrine pens that were stuck in the ground like tiny lawn darts—she plunged them into Abby’s leg.

  “Ouch,” Abby said dully.

  “We need a balance, Abigail, and we need it now. Pull yourself together, ignore any voices in your head that are not mine, and get cracking. Blood. Now.”

  Abby looked at the foot-long spoon in her hands, hesitating at the greasy feel. Mary’s vile laughter rang in her ears, circle of salt or no, bringing Abby to despair.

  “Here goes,” Abby said. Her heart raced as though it might explode in a final, fleshy, fruit-like burst. Her brain moving as though through tar, she blinked at the bronze spoon, lifted it level with her shoulders, and jabbed it into her forearm with such violence the point glanced off bone, exiting sloppily on the other side.

  “There we are!” Maren said brightly, the flute clenched in her teeth, the sheet of paper between her thighs, the simple-looking bowl ready in her hands.

  Maren captured a red stream in the crude tea-powder bowl, whisking immediately with the chasen as it filled. Abby’s blood foamed, rising like a mousse.

  “Took you long enough,” Maren grumbled. When the blood was a meringue, Maren poured the creamy mess onto the paper, refilled the chawa—it did not take long—and began whisking again.

  “Will it be enough?” Abby asked, watching her heartbeat drive the two-sided wound. She wanted to ask how the paper worked, but Maren’s explanations were worse than not knowing. Abby also felt she might faint, and remembered she shouldn’t.

  “Hang in there. This paper’s greedy,” Maren explained. “Gives us a one-way unbinding. Close that gash you made—we’ll want more where that came from. I can cauterize it shut or you can wrap—here. I was saving this ribbon to… I don’t know. I’d have used it by now.”

  “Is it over?”

  “This part. Your child is dying. Try to remember that. We need you undistracted. Then the rest becomes possible. No promises, mind you. Tie that off while I—”

  From Abby’s perspective, the sheet absorbed more liquid than an entire roll of high-end paper towels. Tendrils of her blood expanded outward in threads, something like a river system photographed from space.

  Maren grumbled at the paper and blew across the surface. Scarlet rusted dry with uncanny speed, creating fractals that congregated on one side.

  “Wild,” Abby said, a long glove of gore coating her arm.

  “Ready? This will tear something. If I fudged a step, it may rip the wrong thing in half. You’ll be the first to know if that happens.”

  “Right,” Abby replied.

  “Here’s to honey dust,” Maren said, tearing the paper slowly. As Maren reached the final inch, Abby was certain the paper emitted a small cry.

  The parting didn’t hurt—not much. Piercing her arm with the spoon, that had hurt. Then again, Abby didn’t bear the brunt of the unbinding. As the last of the fibers parted, Mary screamed so horribly that Abby flinched.

  “You hurt her. Is she dead?”

  “Who, Mary?”

  “Right. The voice. Did you kill her?”

  “Fat chance. We’ve revved you up and down. Got Mary out of sorts. Now we’ve torn the veil. She’s watching now, or she will be soon. We must work with speed and on the fly. It’s a fine way to make mistakes.”

  “For Kenna.”

  “I told you to tie that ribbon around—here, blast it. I have never liked dealing with people who don’t know how to tend a basic injury.”

  Maren drew the ribbon so tightly that Abby’s skin marbled. The old woman yanked a dangling epi-pen from Abby’s leg and threw it into the diaper bag with the confidence of someone who threw things often.

  “How did paper get Mary out of my head?”

  “It is a symbol of separation. Tears right at the fabric of possession.”

  “Possession? How can she do that?”

  “The usual ways. Don’t handle that paper—we don’t need a psychopomp on our hands. Move, Abigail. Your child needs you, and I need fingers.”

  “Right,” Abby said, and looked at her hands.

  Kenna’s breathing pitched briefly. The stuttering rhythm reminded Abby of a song John would sing for hours at a time when he was home. “Lady Lard” was the song, and it had limitless verses, none of them suitable for an infant’s ears. It was how rhyme worked in the military, John would say. He wasn’t a singing man—not in the shower, not in the kitchen—but he sang to Kenna.

  Who will he sing to now, Abigail?

  She began to cry, her nose and chin dripping a mix of fluids. “She’s back already. I… it’s not working. The fingers. I can’t.”

  Maren looked-up from her purse. “See your future without her. Let the full force of your child’s death hit you. It will do you no good after the funeral. Use it now.”

  “I want to, but I can’t bite any harder than I already—”

  “Fingers, Abby, or I am wasting my time.” Maren stumbled as she pulled Heckbesen’s skull and a large, slate-colored ashtray from her purse.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Someone has to prep the forge.”

  “That’s an ashtray.”

  “Among other things. I took a plastic arts course in the late sixties. Fine times, those. Nobody was caught-up so much in baths or hair removal.”

  “Oh,” Abby said.

  “Fingers, Abigail. Move before your daughter stops breathing before we’ve begun. Four fingers and I have a chance to save her. Do your part, and I’ll try the tricky bits. Continue to do nothing and she will be die. Stop thinking about ways to get around what must be done.”

  “I need… how do you cut off your fingers?”

  “How should I know? I’m doing the heavy lifting over here. A cleaver would work.”

  “I don’t have a… I have, like, keys,” Abby said, floating farther and farther away from herself.

  “You’ve got teeth, don’t you? There’s rocks lying about. Make it snappy.”

  Abby fixated on Kenna’s face, which looked more and more like the surface of an inner tube. Tiny fists pinwheeled, bluish welts the size of hideous gumballs pocking her flesh.

  Overlooking the infant’s deteriorating condition, Maren shook a straw-sized bone, its color ranging from cream to dark brown. She blew through the marrow, or attempted to, her cheeks inflating like a session musician tackling a trombone solo.

  You’re failing her, Abigail. You can’t draw blood, let alone steel yourself to lose your fingers. Your soft life won’t let you. Kenna’s as good as gone. Samuel sits with me—he was the lucky one. Who’s the liar now?

  Abby tore her eyes from Kenna’s waving hands and scanned the ground, finding nothing approaching a knife; the spoon was sharp, but not wide. The best she could do—within the circle of white salt, at least—was find a rock shaped like a baked potato.

  Maren balanced the lumpy ashtray on her lap and continued a sequence of checks and tests. Watching the baby turn black was a luxury she did not have, and destroying the tiny forge would seal the infant’s fate.

  In its early days, the ashtray had been a marvelous failure. Even the pottery group’s instructor, a thin man with puffy hair, a patchy beard, and an
unbreakably glib disposition that Maren had found irritating, couldn’t hide his disappointment at whatever blame he shared for the finished product, which looked like the top of a snowman’s head had been dropped and glazed with coal.

  Maren had enjoyed working-out the smallest of bubbles from the slippery clay. It had been a fine class: there were nude models to look at, which passed the time while she worked the object and wove her spells.

  She had, of course, never intended to create a receptacle to do no more than catch used butts and the odd doobie, hence the design.

  Sliding her hands along the sinuous polish, Maren twisted at what looked like a crack in the porcelain. She lifted the forge to the sun, confirming that neither web nor nest was blocking the tuyere that fed the hearth. She removed a rubber plug to access the dry storage area, tapping fuel pellets into her free palm.

  She found the blockage at the inlet and its associated piping. Locating a stray pine needle in her hair, Maren jabbed it through the hole, tested the result, and used the brown needle to scrape the interior of Heckbesen’s femur until a steady flow of oxygen could be delivered.

  The bone whistled like a new coach supervising floor drills, but, what with Kenna’s choking squeals and Abby’s babble, Maren did not correct the issue; she popped the ashtray open, revealing a copper-surfaced groove. The trench was clean, perforated, and triangular. Any sacrifice smaller than a jumbo frankfurter could be consumed.

  “How we doing on fingers?” Maren asked.

  “This rock is round,” Abby screamed in reply.

  “Time’s up. Forget what I said about hamburger. Pulverize your whole hand, if you have to—mash it up. Give it a few licks with the rock; stroke like you’re splitting firewood. Hurry, Abby. Listen to your child.”

  Abby was hyperventilating, crying, and her nose was both plugged and dripping, but she held her breath long enough for her throat to close with hysteria. Kenna was no longer screaming—she wheezed, her fists and feet dancing slowly in the carrier.

  “God, God, God,” Abby said, rammed her index finger into her mouth, and bit as hard as she could—as hard as she thought she could—blood and bile spurting from the corners of her mouth.