A Tree of Bones (61 page)

“It is.”

“Scary, too. That ought’a do somethin’, if only for a little while.”

“I somewhat think
you
were the scary part, Mister Pargeter. But Bud should recall the threat a good long time, if nothin’ else.”

They made good time back to that sign Chess had passed coming through, where Charlie reined in a moment, casting a side-eye back toward town — thinking on his folks, perhaps, and how he might not ever see them again. Time was, just the basic implication anyone could have kin they didn’t wish dead would’ve made Chess want to bash their stupid brains in, but not now. Another change.

Yet once again, Ed Morrow came into his mind; big Ed sweating beneath him on that first night at Splitfoot Joe’s, eyes gone wide and white as a half-broke horse’s, while Chess fisted their hands together and slid down his length with a holler, sure nothing on earth mattered as much but that too-happy place where the two of ’em would end up in just
one — hump — more
. ’Cause
I don’t care to think on it no more, and you’re gonna get me so’s I can’t
, without a shred of regard for the other party’s feelings. Like every other time he’d pulled that same trick on so many other men, none of whose faces he could even vaguely recall, let alone their names . . . all but Rook, and Ed.

Poor old Kees Hosteen, too, who’d cleft to him in the face of mocking indifference, only to die for his partiality just as surely as Chillicothe and his pals, or the Lieut, or that Pink Chess’d had his first gun off. Or all of Bewelcome township, for the grand sin of insulting Chess’s taste in bed-partners; all of Hoffstedt’s Hoard like-a-wise, excepting Yancey and Geyer, for the equal-grand sin of siding with Chess against Bewelcome’s own Sheriff Love, when that crusty gentleman came calling.

Sit there eyein’ me up like you never saw nothing prettier
, Chess thought, his own gaze straying automatically back to Charlie’s own sizable form, wrapped in bad fashion thought it might be.
If you knew me at all beyond my fame, you wouldn’t want to come anywhere near, for fear of being pulled down like undertow. Or then again, maybe you still would; maybe you’d just come running the faster, dick in hand. ’Cause from what I’ve seen, you somewhat
like
things dangerous.

“That smile for me, Mister Pargeter?” Charlie called over; Chess hissed again, and shook his head.
Incorrigible
, that was the word he’d heard the Rev use, way back when — when he’d still thought Rook a good man to the core, an up-stood man-mountain set adrift ’mongst killers and rogues, with his thread-worn Bible quotes and his odd ideas about . . . everything, really. Before he’d finally found out better.

Only now did it occur to Chess, though, that there was probably always at least a shred of that man left in Asher Rook, deep down — had to’ve been, seeing what things came to, in their final throes. Same shred that’d dug itself inside Chess somewheres dark and set in to breed, eventually producing the person who’d kept on shocking himself with his own capacity for self-sacrifice. For that might be credited to Rook as well, along with Ed, and Yancey. And Chess himself, too, in the end.

Even me.

“Think a lot on yourself, don’t you, Mister Alarid?” Chess asked the man in question.

“Aw, why so formal? You could always call me Charlie. And me, I could call you — ”

“Gettin’ a bit ahead of the game, ain’t you?”

“You tell me.”

“Oh, I will,” Chess said, coolly. And turned his horse toward the sun, so the glare would block the fact that he couldn’t quite stop himself from smiling, yet again.

Hell really was murky, like the Bard had claimed; that was one funny thing, amongst so many. Though the fact that it resembled Asher Rook’s earliest dreams so little was also fairly amusing, for certain values of same: a dry, sere, awful place for all its deep darkness, like the inside of an oven never quite brought to full heat, and different from Mictlan-Xibalba’s clammy climes as lava was from dirt.

Not the same, and not a dream, either. Forever, too, or so the rumours claimed. He was prepared to believe it.

In the end, heat aside, Rook’s Hell had proven less the classic Baptist endless cook-kettle he’d always heard about than that Bead-rattler Saint Theresa’s vision of a place of absence where God turned His face away, weeping on sinners’ betrayal, and the sinners suffered thereby, as much as for any other reason. But being him, God’s face — one he’d never seen, any more than he’d heard His voice, no matter how much of His Word he’d back-spouted to his own venal ends — wasn’t the one which he found himself fixed on most.

All places bordered each other, down here. He felt them pluck at the edges of this private Inferno, begging pride of place. The Ball-Court, where Ixchel and her smoky brother lay coiled ’round each other, sunk back into torpor, plus a thousand thousand other places sown all ’round the globe, equally terror-wonderful. Where Anansi and Suu Pwa the Dust Devil, Crow and Rabbit and Sedna, Tiamat and Marduk, the Old Sow Who Eats her Farrow had devolved into an equally primal morass, along with pagan martyrs and Christian saints alike — Hypatia and Catherine, both of Alexandria; witches and possessees, witch-hunters and exorcists, workers dark or light, all trading in the same mythic substance. All of whom had begun as human, once upon a time; most of whom had been sacrificed to some idea of the divine and became divine in turn, at least temporarily. All of them, quite probably, hexes.

But who will worship at
my
shrine
, Rook could only wonder, trapped here in his cell,
now even Chess doesn’t think on me anymore? Who will remember I lived, let alone died — or how, or why? Who for? In service of what?

Now he had space to be truly honest with himself, Rook could finally admit he’d already figured how the real reason he could never preach effectively on a forgiving God was that on some level, he knew himself both unforgiven, and unforgivable. But
one
deity had loved him, at least, for a little while — and it was the mere idea of Chess being happy again, someday, which was occasionally enough to make him feel happiness’s twice-removed ghost, in return.

Rook remembered a fight, early on. How they’d looked at each other after, aching to grab hold and wrestle, to rip and tear ’til somebody was back on top and both of ’em were satisfied. ’Til Rook had finally said, with what he thought was fairly good imitation of cool insouciance:
So here we are, Private — stuck together, one flesh, like any man and . . . man. Friends?

To which Chess took a deep breath, moving forward, ’til he was well within Rook’s reach. Staring up at him, hotly, as he said —
We ain’t ever been
friends
, Ash Rook.

Would’ve been nice if he could’ve had Chess kneel next to him as he died, if only to hold his hand, make it not hurt and watch as he went into that great night, submerged, a stone through dark fathoms. Hell, maybe to read to him from that Bible he’d given up in Ixchel’s service, which would’ve emptied itself out accordingly. Rook could almost see it now, leaning his forehead ’gainst the cook-hot wall, ’til it frankly hurt too much to do anymore. How the words would’ve floated up and disappeared into air, going out like sparks, leaving the pages bare.

But that wasn’t how it was to be, no. He’d seen to
that
himself.

Live a long time, Chess
, he’d told him, once, when in his cups enough to grow maudlin.
I don’t look to see you anymore ’fore I need to, if that. Repent, if you can —

Fuck that, fool; won’t get rid of me
that
easy, ’specially not if I catch you tryin’. You’ll see me again, no matter where you think you’re goin’.

Maybe. But — not soon, darlin’. Please.

Once a whenever, something he took for his turnkey came eddying in to hammer nails into all his softest places, then twist them; it was dreadful, formless, smelling of wet ash and covered in spikes, with too many mouths and not enough tongues to form much speech at all. In the beginning he’d railed at it, then begged it, then flattered it, then fallen silent. Now Rook asked it questions, hoping to trick it into contradicting itself. Could be its information, wasn’t any better than his own, but the game did keep him thinking, if nothing else. Kept him dreaming, ensconced down here in the Devil’s shit-pit, with nothing to do but regret.

“Is Chess alive yet?”

No.

“Will I ever get out of here?”

No.

“Is there mercy, ever, even for such as I?”

No.

“Uh huh. So tell me this, Beelzebub — ain’t it true what I heard, that same as faithless preachers, all devils are liars?”

A long, long pause. Then, at last — with some reluctance —

. . . no.

So, yes. Yes to Chess still upright, burning back and forth across the wild world, bright and hot as any flame. Yes to repentance, to redemption, if only after long suffering — and now that he was forewarned, perhaps foolishly, he began to believe he might yet be able to take whatever else this place might have to dish out to him.

Not soon
, the poor portion which was left of “Reverend” Asher Elijah Rook thought, giving himself over to his punishments,
but maybe someday, darlin’ — someday. Which makes us both right, in a way; now, ain’t that something?

So, closing what he thought were his eyes, he leaned back on his bed of pain, opening himself up wide to well-deserved agony. . . .

And settled in to wait.

THE END

Born in London, England and raised in Toronto, Canada, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror writer for over twenty years, as well as a film critic, screenwriter and teacher. She has published two collections of short work:
Kissing Carrion
(2003) and
The Worm in Every Heart
(2004), both from Wildside Press. She has also written two chapbooks of poetry. Her first novel,
A Book Of Tongues
: Volume One of the Hexslinger Series, won the 2010 Black Quill award for “Best Small Press Chill” (Editors’ and Readers’ Choice) from
DarkScribe Magazine
, and was also nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. Its sequel,
A Rope of Thorns
(2011), along with this book, complete a trilogy which is really one narrative broken into three instalments. For her next trick, she looks forward to writing something different.

Learn more about Gemma Files at her official website,
musicatmidnight-gfiles.blogspot.com
, or more than you probably want to know at her blog,
handful_ofdust.livejournal.com
.