The Boneshaker (5 page)

The wagons were moving faster now, had been ever since the caravan had gone out of view of the town it had left. You would still call what the mules were doing
walking,
but only because they all had at least one foot on the ground at all times. The gait wasn't graceful, but it was shockingly swift—any observer would have to spur his horse to a canter at least to keep up. There were no observers, of course. If there had been, the mules would still be clopping along at a perfectly ordinary pace rather than speeding on, smoking like chimneys with every breath.

The last irregular shape in the train was covered by a giant piece of dark oilcloth and, except for the furious treads of the creatures towing it, made no sound at all.

The tall man driving the lead wagon who had waved so jovially to the folk of the last town now sat hunched under his long, dark traveling cloak, even though it was a warm evening. The expression on his face might've been a grin or a particularly toothy scowl. If it was a smile, there was no humor in it.

Through the smoky exhalations of the mules, he kept his eyes on the twinkling lights far off on the horizon. At the speed they were moving now, they would pass through them around midnight.

B
ACK IN THE BEDROOM
at the top of the stairs, Mrs. Minks considered her daughter seriously. "Are you sure you want this story right before bed? You won't have nightmares, will you?"

"No," Natalie scoffed. She didn't get scared by much anymore, but they always pretended she did. It helped set the mood. "You've told it to me before. Anyway, it's just a story."

Her mother sat very still for a moment before answering. "I also didn't tell you the whole thing last time. You were too young."

"I
like
scary stories, and you tell them best of all. Go on."

Annie Minks thought about it for a moment, tapping a foot on the floor. "What about something else for tonight?" she said. "The one about Jack and Saint Peter has the Devil in it, too. Remember? It's the one where Jack's so awful even the Devil's a little scared of him and won't let him into Hell? So he has to wander the earth with a coal of hellfire, looking for his own place?"

"Mama," Natalie said, exasperated, "no, I don't want that one. You just spoiled the ending."

Her mother hesitated. "It's just that the one about Tom and the Devil's a long one."

Was this still part of the game? Something in her tone, so light it wasn't light at all, gave Natalie goose bumps.

"No, it isn't. Unless it's a lot longer than I remember." Natalie decided not to mention that really she didn't remember much of it at all.

"It is longer."

"I'm awake!"

"And furthermore—and this is very important, Natalie
—nothing
is just a story."

This was definitely not part of the game. "Please?" was all she could think to say.

It took a few long moments, but slowly, slowly, the night went back to normal in the little bedroom. "I'm not too tired," Natalie's mother said quietly, as if trying to make up her mind. Natalie waited, breathless. "All right."

Natalie scooted back against the pillows.

"Well, this story takes place ... oh, I don't know, forty or fifty years ago. Before Arcane was anything more than a saloon and a stable, but after the Old Village at the crossroads had died. Tom Guyot, I think, had lived a long life already. He had been a slave on a plantation, and he had escaped. He had been a soldier in the War Between the States, and he had survived."

A medal,
Natalie thought as her mother paused for a sip of water. It had been some kind of war medal, that bronze piece he had been hammering into shape for his guitar in the brief image she saw before she passed out in the street. Then, just as she was wondering how she could possibly be so sure the vision had meant anything at all, Mrs. Minks set down her water glass and continued.

"Sometime after that, Tom was on his way home, somewhere in Nebraska, I think, and the way I heard it, he walked most of the way from North Carolina. He didn't have much, but he had his guitar, the same one he plays now, and he would play wherever he stopped for the night.

"Now, supposedly he made that guitar himself when he was a boy, and whether he taught himself to play it or whether someone showed him the way to do it I don't know. But it might as well have been a part of his body, and he could play any song on it as beautifully as you'd ever hope to hear. If you've ever seen Tom Guyot play, really
seen
him, not just half noticed and kept on walking, you've seen what happiness looks like."

It was fresh in Natalie's mind, the way Tom's face had moved along with his voice, how he seemed to forget the rest of the world was there. She nodded.

"Now, I'm not saying he was happy the rest of the time," Annie explained, "or that having that guitar and playing it the way he did made the bad things in his life right somehow; that would be silly. Tom had been a slave, and he'd been a soldier. He probably saw things he'll never be able to forget until the day he dies."

"Like what kinds of things?"

"Things that aren't for putting in bedtime stories. Things you'd have nightmares about. Don't make that face; I'd have nightmares about them, too. The point is, Tom was one of the best guitar players there ever was, and once he was camping out in what was left of the Old Village on a summer night just like this one, and suddenly the crickets stopped singing and a man came and sat down by the fire and Tom knew right away that it was the Devil."

"
How
did he know?"

"Because the man who sat down on the other side of the fire made him feel the same way in his belly as all those awful, horrible, miserable things he'd seen and could never forget, only worse. Tom knew what real evil looked like, and he figured the only thing that could be worse than real evil was the Devil himself."

To see the Devil ... what on earth would he look like? Red skin like badly dyed leather, probably some horns and fangs. And of course everyone knew about the Devil's feet in the shape of goats' hooves, and his tail, which had a little spade at the end and probably a stinger, too.

It wasn't hard to picture the Devil like that. It also wasn't very scary. Natalie tried again.

His eyes ... his eyes would be thin and squinty, like the eyes of a thief, so that you didn't know quite where he was looking. Or ... or wide open and staring, and
empty.
They would be dark like pits, with no whites at all, just holes in his head ... or all white with no pupils, or an ugly gray the color of hot ash.

His teeth would be sharp, of course, like knives or fangs meant to tear meat away from the bone. Or like ogres' teeth, dull and cracked and broken from chewing the bones themselves, perhaps. Or maybe he didn't show his teeth at all, only gave you flashes when he smiled, so that you never knew what they looked like until he finally leaped across the fire and bared them at you a moment before he tore you to pieces.

Or he might have looked just like anyone else in the world. He might have looked perfectly normal, and unless you had seen real evil the way Old Tom had, you might not recognize him at all.

Which was a horrifying thought.

"So Tom knew he was in some trouble. The Devil was sitting no farther away than that chair is from you, and the fire was casting strange shadows on his face, and he was looking at Tom's tin guitar.

"'That's a fine instrument,' the Devil said. Tom didn't answer, just kept on playing. 'That's a fine song you're playing, too.' Tom didn't answer then, either, just played on and ignored him.

"Well, the Devil doesn't like to be ignored. When Tom didn't hear him speak again, he looked up and saw that there was no one on the other side of the fire. Then he turned his head and found the Devil sitting ... right ... by ... his...
side!

"'I paid you a compliment,' he said. 'Perhaps you didn't hear.'

"Then Tom spoke his first words to the Devil. 'I heard you.'

"The Devil looked Tom over. He saw a poor man, and he saw the only thing that man had in the world to hold on to: a guitar. He also thought he knew what a poor man with nothing but a guitar would want more than anything in the world.

"The Devil said his next words very quietly. 'Do you know who I am, Tom Guyot?'

"It probably scared Tom, and scared him a lot, to hear that creature say his own name. He stopped playing and said, 'I know who you are.'

"'Then you know I can help you. Let me have a turn on that guitar.'

"If there was one thing Tom
wasn't
going to do, it was hand that guitar over to the Devil. He shook his head and kept on playing.

"The Devil leaned in closer and whispered, 'Let me have a turn on that guitar, Tom, and when I give it back it'll surprise you.'"

"How can a guitar surprise you?" Natalie asked. That very afternoon, that same guitar had made noises she had never thought a musical instrument could make ... but no, he couldn't have agreed to it, could he?

"I don't know, and neither did Old Tom, but he didn't ask for an explanation just then. The Devil spoke again. 'Let me have a turn on that guitar, Tom, and I'll give it a
voice.
'"

A voice?
She
had
heard the guitar sing just like a real voice on a record. She had heard it with her own ears! Tom couldn't have really given the Devil his guitar, could he? Those amazing sounds couldn't have been because the Devil gave the guitar a voice ... could they?

Natalie bit her lip. She'd heard the story before, so she should've known the ending. But it was like a whole different tale this time. After all, she'd already heard the guitar do all the Devil had promised.... Her mother, however, was in full swing. The tale hurtled on like a boulder down a hill.

"Tom stopped playing, and the Devil knew at last that he was listening. 'All I have to do is tune it, Tom. Let me tune it, and then let me play one song on that guitar,
just one song,
and afterward it will play anything at all. Anything. Songs you don't know, songs no one's ever heard before. And with it, you will play them better than anyone else in the world.' The Devil smiled and said the words that had never failed him before. 'You'll be famous, Tom. You'll be the most famous guitar player in the world, the most famous there ever was or ever will be.'

"For a long, long moment, the only sound was the crackle of the fire. The Devil waited. His fingers itched to take that guitar, because the Devil knew that guitar was like Tom's soul, and if Tom gave one up it would be the same as giving up the other.

"Then a strange thing happened there at the crossroads. Tom turned his head and, for the first time, looked the Devil straight in the eye.

"'My guitar already has a voice,' he said."

Natalie's breath escaped in a rush of relief.

"The Devil was surprised, but only for a minute. 'I'll give it a better one,' he said.

"'I like the one I gave it.'

"Well, the Devil was
astounded,
but only for a minute more. Then he got angry. Who was this man, this poor man with nothing but a guitar, who dared look the Devil in the eye?

"'Give me the guitar or I'll take it from you.' His voice was deadly and cold, and so quiet Tom heard the words in his heart instead of his ears.

"But Tom didn't flinch. He said, very clearly and calmly, '
No
'

"Well, that made the Devil so furious he had to work hard not to let it show. When the Devil gets angry, he loses control of his disguise, and no one, not even the bravest man or woman in the world, can see the Devil in his true form and live. If Tom died of shock or terror before the Devil got hold of his guitar, then his soul would escape, so the Devil had to keep calm. He made fists with his hands, clenching and unclenching them over and over. They didn't look like human hands anymore, but it was taking so much effort to keep the disguise on his face, the Devil couldn't worry about that.

"'I'll tear your head off and take that guitar out of your dead, stiff fingers,' he said as quietly and coldly as before.

"Those words felt like icicles growing between Tom's ribs. He didn't know what the Devil knew, that if he died before handing over the guitar the Devil wouldn't get a thing out of it, and the truth was it didn't matter, because the Devil was so enraged and insulted that he almost didn't
care
about Tom's soul anymore. What Tom did know was that he was in terrible danger, body and soul.

"But in the same way that the Devil thought he understood the poor man with the guitar, Tom had some ideas about the Devil, and he decided to take a chance.

"'I'll make you a bet,' Tom said finally. 'I bet with the voice I gave this guitar myself I can beat any song you can play on any other guitar you can find on the earth or in Hell.'

"The Devil looked at Tom for a long time. He looked at Tom's hands, and he looked at the guitar, patched together from coffee tins and milk cans. He looked at the old, yellowed gut strings, the finger slide made from a broken bottle.
Humans are so arrogant,
he thought. All that anger, and this would be easy after all.

"He unclenched his fists, and the sight of his hands uncurling made Tom sick to his stomach. Each finger was thin and had so many joints that they looked more like spiders' legs than human fingers, and there was no skin at all, only a horny covering like an insect's shell. Worst of all, at the end of each finger was a tiny, perfectly formed human face where there should have been a fingernail."

Natalie clenched her own fists. Her knuckles showed white through her skin.

"The Devil reached those hideous claws into the fire and pulled out his own guitar. It was metal, like Tom's, only this one was the deep red of hot steel, smoldering