A Book Of Tongues (37 page)

Such ideas can never work efficiently, little king . . . at least,
not when left to mere humans’ administration.
Then, cheerfully:
But we shall fix all that, you and I . . . while my brother watches,
and your paramour is driven by hungers he cannot fathom to
soften the land before us, whether or not he thinks he wishes to
do so.

Rook nodded, slightly, watching her close for any sign that
the pressure of supporting such a massive, complex binding was
distracting her — which it was, increasingly, the spell itself a choir
of iron bells and stone gears all set drainingly a-clank, louder and
louder and louder. Loud enough to drown him out when he finally
allowed himself to think, soft yet clear, beneath the tumult of
cemeteries blooming fresh from sea to shining sea —
oh, goody.

Remembering that moment down in Mictlan-Xibalba, when
Morrow’s bullet hit Ixchel’s brain — that unholy
snap
, throwing him
clear for one cold instant from his warm bath of predestinate fate,
that fine, slickly impenetrable shell of
need to get this
finished
, worry
’bout the cost later.
When he’d looked down and seen nothing but the
horrid meaty undeniability of what he’d caused to be done — fuck
that, what he’d
done
, himself, with his very own reeking hands.

Chess, and the awful damn mess he’d made of him, with all his
bad intentions. Chess, dead and split open, staring vacant, when
all he’d ever told himself was that he wanted him kept alive, kept
running: a hundred times magnified, saved and salvaged, eternally
rendered powerful, beautiful, unstoppable.

And now Rook knew the result — had seen it himself, albeit
through Morrow’s eyes. But that wrench persisted. It wasn’t enough,
and never would be.

Made a mistake, I know it now. Need for you to set it right, ’cause . . .
I just can’t.

For the first time since her death, he found himself ruminating a
bit on Grandma. It occurred to him only now that maybe the reason
she’d faced him alone hadn’t been predatory at all. Or at least, not
mainly so. For Injun hexes seemed to favour working in bunches
with true shamans, the preachers of their kind. Them as were
human, yet able to tap a-purpose into something far larger than
themselves, perhaps that same force he’d felt boil from poor Sheriff
Love’s Word-struck pores.

From that angle, Grandma might actually have thought she was
protecting her people by going hand-to-hand with Rook solo. Old
and crafty as she was, she’d have known Rook’s proximity would
rouse her hungers and smother her honour — put her at the mercy of
her power-thirst, like any “normal” magician. And then her people
would’ve been caught in the overspill, her focus torn, forcing herself
to care about making sure they came out okay.

Faith could produce miracles, no question. But hexes, perhaps
because they bred miracles automatically, seemed to have no
access to faith’s power, unless they could somehow
become
gods,
themselves.

Human sacrifice was the key, Rook thought — the worst taboo of
all, worse than rape, patricide, or cannibalism. Gods fed and bred
on the death of others, spiked higher-than-high with two parts
suffering to three parts ecstasy, mirroring the blood-echo of their
own. The God Who Dies . . . but not a milkwater Hebrew messiah,
content to overspend his coin-flesh in others’ service ’til He was
good and broke. No, this was a shell-game god whose hungers ebbed
and flowed in earthquake-driven tidal waves, meeting out glorious,
cyclical destruction. Like Ixchel and Smoking Mirror.

Like Chess.

Chess, whom Rook had held, watched sleep. Chess, who fit in his
arms as if he was made for it. Chess, who’d kill him, if he could . . .
and very well might, when all was said and done.

But no such godhood for Rook, never; that boat had good and
sailed. Only the vague sense that while he couldn’t right now
conceive of anything to do for Chess, for Morrow — he still knew
himself at least willing, when the time for it came ’round, to at least
try
.

His palms still red and sore, even in her coldly imperative, power-soaked double-grip, where the Bible had burnt him.

My guilt talkin’, that’s exactly what
that
was — stand-fixed, as ever,
on how I don’t deserve to use His Word. How I never did.

But she’d the right of it too, he knew — the Good Book
had
been
just a crutch for him all this time, and one without which he could
get along perfectly fine, as their current spectacular working all-too-well proved.

Still, he couldn’t say he didn’t miss it. Almost as much as he
missed — other things.

Ah, but which
parts
of your Word do you miss most, Ash Rook?
whispered a voice like Chess’s, if only a little, in his inner ear.
The
part says repentance brings forgiveness? Or the parts that tell how
Vengeance Is Mine?

The spell was winding down, resolving itself reel on reel, a wound-back thread from the world’s force-ravelled cloak. Ixchel’s gaze
came back to him, re-possessing his Judas heart and argumentative
Satan’s mind, eating him alive. Yet Rook stood free a moment more,
idly considering his hands in the sunset’s glow, as though they were
still gloved wrist-high in the cooling red of Chess’s insides.

And for once, something came to him that wasn’t from the
Bible at all: something unbidden, new, slipping sidelong into his
head. Shakespeare again,
The Tempest
, which he’d seen performed
once back in Crickside, albeit heavily bowdlerized. Gonzago the
shipwrecked Venetian courtier, of his boatswain:
I have great
comfort from this fellow. Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him;
his complexion is perfect gallows.
Or the vengeful magician Prospero,
or savage witch-boy Caliban — two points on the same compass,
inalienable:
This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.

To which Caliban, his myriad sins found out, replies, “. . .
I shall
be pinched to death.
”

Rook said it aloud — trying it on his tongue, weighing it like it
came lozenge-sized, while little miss Snare-and-Trap Ixchel just
stared at him, her flat black eyes particularly empty.

Replying, after a moment — “I do not understand.”

Rook shook his head. “Wouldn’t expect you to.”

. . . darlin’.

In the cemetery, things were growing just as dark. From beyond
the gates, scattered throughout shrouded Tampico, Morrow heard
screams begin to rise. He laid a tentative hand on Chess’s shoulder,
only to find it shaking.

“Christ, oh Christ, what
is
this?” Chess choked out, liquid,
scrabbling at his eyes. “I’m cryin’ fuckin’
blood
, here. I’m . . . back to
coughin’ up Goddamn
flowers
. . . .”

Remembering what’d come along with those last time, Morrow
almost shied away, but half-hugged Chess instead, for all the smaller
man’s frame was so tense it hurt and sweaty enough to stick. “Should
prob’ly get a move on, come full nightfall.”

He broke off as Chess gave an inarticulate cry of frustration,
punching both fists straight down into the dirt. There was a pulse,
barely visible, and a sound of innumerable mice scrabbling. Bare
seconds later, bones began pushing their way out around them,
driven upside by a glut of vines and roots: whole, fragmentary,
unidentifiable shards and crania with some skin attached, clacking
jaw-harnesses, chittering unstrung teeth. They skittered around,
circling Chess desperately, seeking a guiding will from a god too new
to know what that might be.

“Shit!” Chess shouted, like he was near as surprised as Morrow —
for all that seemed
highly
fuckin’ unlikely.

“Got
that
right,” Morrow yelled back, kicking ossuary junk away
with both feet at once. “Make them lie down again, Goddamnit!”

They were both upright, back-to-back. Morrow swore he could
feel Chess shake his head frantic-fast, where ’round mid-spine. “I’m
tryin’
— I think. But — ”

— problem is . . . you just don’t know all too much, really, about any of
this crap. Why it happens. How to stop it.

Now the stones themselves were getting in on the act, rocking
and shuffling like they’d been hit by an influx of mole-diggery,
spraying dust and earth in plumes, up high. The bones leapt and
tangled, trying their best to reassemble themselves, or maybe cobble
something entirely new out of their own ruin — strange and teetery,
spider-legged, all grabby-stroking pinchers mated from fingerbones
and shoulder blades, tentacles of re-beaded vertebrae dragging
’round in spasmic switching tails. Weird growth of marrows and
tubers putty-sticking skull to skull, ribcage to ribcage. Flower-eyes
a-bloom and seeking blindly, soft scrabbly root-clumps gone hectic
as millipede legs.

And all of it closing in at once, like it wanted to
kiss
Chess. Lick
his boots with its vegetable tongues, leaving a pungent trail of rot
and growth behind.

“Chess, for Christ Jesus’ sake,
c’mon
— ”

Above, a swarm of bats flapped by, their wings squeaking slightly.
At closer vantage, they proved to be butterflies made from black
volcano-glass, filigreed, rough-hewn. Dipping in formation as they
flew, they made a strange back-and-forth mutual flutter, as though
saluting
Chess with the synchronized rise and fall of their shadows
passing by: fluid and staining, same as gunpowder, or ink — or those
hellish-cold rivers they’d waded through, near-endlessly, on the
road to the Moon Room.

You’re one of them, now,
Morrow thought, looking anywhere but at
Chess.
One of their kings. And they love you for it, all of them.

“Chess —
please
— ”

“Beggin’ again, huh?” So deadpan-dry, it took Morrow a second
to realize Chess Pargeter had made a
joke
. Like any man faced with
craziness and death, and the choice of either laughing or going mad.

Morrow gulped. “Well,” he said, balancing on the fulcrum of his
own rising hysteria, “I . . . I did recollect hearing how you liked it
that way. . . .”

Which was maybe flirting with intent, or even skirting too close
to Chess’s Ma’s old stomping grounds. But at this point, Morrow
wasn’t minded to be finicky — just about anything that got them
both out the gate would do.

Seein’ how, whatever’s comin’, I’ll definitely stand a far better chance
of surviving if I got you by my side.

Chess flickered a grin at him, his old devil-take-everyone-but-me grin. “Ed, you got more guts than smarts. And you already had
too many smarts.” Without a second’s pause he turned, held up his
hands palm-together, then swept them apart with a cry: “
Begone,
Goddamnit!
”

So thoughtless instinct succeeded, where lack of conscious skill
had failed. The bone-creatures, black stone butterflies, bouncing
stones and writhing vines, all parted Red Sea-wide, then fled away
and out of the graveyard, vaulting the fence or sliding between its
iron bars, into half a dozen alleys and out the main exit.

Within moments, the dull background of screams ramped up
sharper, harsher. Closer. Running shadows crossed the nearby
streets, and a general smell of panic and blood filled the air.

Chess lowered his hands, gaping. After a moment: “Aw, shit.”

“It’s
you
,” said Morrow, coming to stand by his side. “You bein’
here, what you are, that’s what’s causin’ it. We leave, this ends . . . I
think, leastways.”

A narrow sidelong look: “‘We,’ huh?”

Then, before Morrow could marshal further arguments: “Ah,
hell. Might as well.”

From Bewelcome township’s dead heart, meanwhile, a tiny stream
of ants — unseen, unchecked, under Rook and Ixchel’s noses both —
bore salt away into the desert, grain by tedious grain. To where a
black-faced figure squatted by an empty campfire at the crux of a
thousand dead roads, studying the future in his own mirrored foot:
past and present converging, diverging, splintering.

A million possibilities. Pick one, plant it, water well with blood.
See what grows.

Looking deep into the wavy greyness, to seize — at last — upon
one particular face and
pull
. . . hard enough to draw a devotee
down once more from his own promised Heaven, to twin him with
vengeance unslaked. Rebuild him, particle by icy white particle,
then turn him loose —
why not?
— for no better reason at all than
simply to see what happened next.

A man of salt opening his eyes, coughing out the residue of his
lungs to glitter on the night wind. And turned his head only slightly,
just far enough to catch what light remained aglint off the sharpfiled points of his resurrector’s awful smile.

Your name, little earth-apple . . . give it to me, and
quickly. What did they call you, when last you were alive, mi
conquistador?

Stretched out full-length, the man coughed again — gathered his
strength even in devilry’s overt face, like any warrior of the one true
God.

Then rose to meet his brave new life, unashamed in his tall, salt-glazed nakedness, and replied —
“. . . Sheriff Mesach Love.”

Gemma Files was born in London, England and raised in Toronto,
Canada. Her story “The Emperor’s Old Bones” won the 1999
International Horror Guild award for Best Short Fiction. She has
published two collections of short work (
Kissing Carrion
and
The
Worm in Every Heart
, both Prime Books) and two chapbooks of
poetry (
Bent Under Night
, Sinnersphere Productions, and
Dust Radio
,
from Kelp Queen Press).
A Book of Tongues
is her first novel, and will
be followed by a sequel,
A Rope of Thorns
. Find out more about her at
http://musicatmidnight-gfiles.blogspot.com/.