Candle in the Attic Window Part 24

The cast-iron stomach I thought I possessed revolted at the sight and I stumbled down from the stool just as the bile rushed up. I hunched over in the shadow of the witch's hut and vomited as I heard the second man scream from within, Grandfather now taunting them through the open window. Then Grandfather went quiet and I felt his chill touch on my neck, even as my stomach projected more mango and acid into the widening puddle.

"Malis," Grandfather said, his mirth suddenly replaced with an edgy desperation. "Run home, now!"

Shuddering from my convulsing stomach and the scene repeating itself in my head, I somehow managed to stand up. Instead of fleeing, however, I shakily got back onto the stool. That idiot pride in my recent graduation would not allow me to leave without first ensuring none could benefit from my ministrations, the fractured state of my psyche such that the horrors of the night paled beside the thought of failing to uphold my convictions. Or so I told myself; perhaps I was just too scared or fascinated to run.

The man the corpse had bitten bled out on the floor next to a toppled chair, his head nearly severed from his vicious neck wound. The witch Theary, I corrected myself lay twitching in her doorway. Beside her, the man with the machete she had fought lay sprawled, his head snapped all the way around. The risen corpse had vanished and then I heard footsteps in the mud rounding the hut to my left.

I slowly turned, fear bringing my nausea back with renewed vigour, and then Grandfather's frigid fingers slapped my cheek and pa.s.sed partially through, saliva freezing to my teeth. The blow invigourated me to flight, just as the murderous corpse rounded the hut and saw me. Then it and I screamed together as I tumbled from the stool and ran. Grandfather was shouting, and before focusing on the mist-masked trees blocking my way, I saw him drift between me and the pursuing corpse. My bare feet sank to the ankles with each step, but I propelled myself faster and faster through the mist, wet leaves slicing and slapping as I ran into the night jungle.

That wretched wail came again from just over my shoulder, and then a fallen tree reared out of the fog to trip me. I hurled myself into the air, clearing the rotten wood but entangling myself in sharp, thin vines. Grandfather shouted again, somewhere nearby in the mist. I clawed at the vines, but, in my panic, I could not get a grip on them and so, instead, yanked and thrashed and rolled until I came loose, shallow gashes opening all over my slick, muddy body. I stumbled away from the wreckage of the dead tree and the vines. As I frantically spun myself in a circle, nothing moved in the ever-thickening fog. The vegetation had thinned somewhat and I hurried forward, but after only half a dozen paces, came up short, a sudden epiphany freezing my legs and darkening my vision in the manner that heralded another blackout.

Forcing myself to regulate my breathing, the black rings closing in around the fog widening and fading, I staved off unconsciousness. Not vines but wire had caught me, I had suddenly realized, meaning I could only be one place: the Dead Field. Another echoing howl rolled out of the fog, the corpse of the man who had killed my parents loping closer, my feet paralyzed by the justified fear of what lurked under the mud.

Biting my lip until the pain returned my body to me, I spun around and carefully stepped back the way I had come, hoping the fact that I was still bipedal signaled a clear path.

Click.

Not even two steps, I thought, clamping my eyes shut and setting my jaw, willing away the sharp metal digging into the sole of my left foot.

A shadow darted through the mist before me and I screamed. I had to; otherwise, I would have moved my legs, my body demanding some response to the approaching shape. I resolved to lift my foot just as the evil corpse reached me, in the hope that it would share the deadly blast. I was too scared when the time came, however, and instead found myself babbling at the corpse not to kill me.

"Shut up!" Grandfather hissed, his profile solidifying through the fog. "Shut up, Malis, please."

I squatted down in the mud, too scared to cry.

"We're in the Field," he said. "We have to find you a ... Malis?"

I shook my head frantically, the silence of the Dead Field even worse than the baying of the corpse had been.

"Are you ..."

"Yes," I managed, my voice cracking. "My left. Will it hurt? Tell me, I "

"Shut up." He knelt down in front of me . "Stay still and jump back when I tell you. This may hurt; I don't really know."

Grandfather laid his cool palms on the top of my muddy left foot and pressed down. It felt the same as the first time I swam in the ocean instead of a sun-fermented pond, my entire body charged with a cold so intense it burned. I saw the backs of his hands disappear through my foot, his wrists now brus.h.i.+ng its top.

"Now," Grandfather said, "jump backwards."

I did, staring intently at the ghost of my grandfather. His hands were buried in the muck, his face taut, and then I saw his failure. His eyes widened and we both heard the trigger rise without my weight on it, his spectral palms lacking sufficient corporeality to keep the weapon from discharging. All this transpired in an instant, as my foot lifted and I stumbled backwards.

Nothing. I did a nervous little dance in the mud until I finally suppressed my body again. Grandfather blinked and raised his palms towards me, a smile tickling his cheeks.

"A dud. You are so lucky, Malis," he said, with the same tone as if I had brought a pit viper into the house thinking it a water snake. "Now, do not move. Please."

Before I could answer, Grandfather jumped about with his back to me and planted his arms to the elbows in the mud. Then he began pus.h.i.+ng forward in a crouch, amid the scrub growing in the Field, resembling a monk cleaning a temple floor. I carefully followed where his footsteps would have been. Through the fog, I saw the wire fence tangled in the fallen tree and quickened my pace, only to realize my grandfather could no longer protect me.

The corpse hopped over the fence with surprising agility and I remember praying actually praying, for the first time since I was a child that it would trigger a mine. Grandfather shouted and tried to shoo it away, but I do not know if it could even see him. It saw me, though, and I backed away as it advanced, no longer caring if I stepped on another mine. Then it pounced and I screamed and screamed and screamed, the stench of excrement and pus and fever-sweat and mud enveloping me in a nightmare haze as it pinned me under its knees.

Maybe it saw something of my mother in my pale, wet face, or maybe it simply enjoyed hurting more than killing. Regardless, it twisted its fingers through my hair and stretched its other hand towards my eyes instead of opening my throat like its first victim. I felt another panic attack swelling inside me, the jabbing pain in my chest almost equal to that in my plucked scalp. I must have screamed, because then its fingers were between my teeth, chili oil burning my mouth as the slimy digits tried to seize my tongue.

Grandfather floated in and through and around the muddy, swaddled corpse that pressed me deeper into the mire with its weight, but still it did not acknowledge the ghost's presence. The soiled bandages dangling from its face brushed my own and I bit the fingers, only to have it s.n.a.t.c.h its hand free and begin pummeling my cheeks. I saw its teeth s.h.i.+ning through the dark and the fog, its whole face glowing phosphor green.

I saw its eyes brighten with the same unnatural luminescence, and then another punch struck my temple, but it lacked the strength of the previous blow. I squinted, to bring my eyes back into focus, and saw that it looked past me, the jade light bathing its bared teeth and bulging eyes and dripping nose. I heard raspy breathing from behind me, saw Grandfather retreating behind the corpse, and then the thing howled and fled, departing as violently as it had arrived.

The fog had nearly swallowed the running corpse when the green light warmed my own cheeks, but before I could turn, an explosion shook the earth and I tucked my knees to my chest and whimpered. Parting my rapidly swelling eyelids, I half-expected to see my mother and father returned to rescue me, their ghosts tinted lime and their motives pure.

Instead, I saw the witch for what she truly was and closed my eyes right back up, holding my knees even tighter in an attempt to ward off the crippling pain in my lungs.

"Come on, Malis." Grandfather shook me gently. "He's gone and that means I'm to be off."

This, combined with the endorphin c.o.c.ktail stirring through my body, brought me around enough to sit up in the mud and put my arms around him. He hugged me and already, I noticed his sweet smell of tobacco and wet leaves was fading into nothing. Pulling back, I saw he grew more translucent by the moment, the s.h.i.+ning witch-thing visible through his bare chest. I shook my head in a childish effort to dispel it all, but he took my hand and helped me up. I slipped as I did, his fingers no longer able to grip mine. Together, we approached the witch and the once-more-inanimate corpse.

"Thank you, ma'am," I managed, disgust and pity and fear jostling around my taxed brain. "I'm sorry for everything I said. For everything I did, when I was little. I didn't ..."

I could not finish, for she looked up from her meal and smiled at me. The man with the machete had not cut her throat, as I had a.s.sumed, but she had simply loosed herself through some means of her own. Her bark-like face and stringy hair tilted upwards, the light cast from below now brightening my face, just as it darkened her own. Her teeth dripped a mixture of feces and meat, the carca.s.s of the raised and killed-again Khmer Rouge captain splayed before her facedown in the Dead Field, one leg missing and the other shredded beyond recognition.

She dipped her head again, burying her jaws in the corpse's cratered posterior, teeth cracking bone to better access the ripe bowels. Only the complexity and the completeness of her organ structure allowed me to ignore my climaxing nausea. Watching her swallow, I saw no visible change in the skin of her neck, but where the exposed organs dangled beneath, I could clearly see the bulge of the food traveling down until it plopped into her surprisingly large stomach. I marveled at the emerald radiance her heaving lungs shone onto the scene, on the surreal impossibility of a living human head floating in the air, with all of its entrails and organs intact and functioning without the benefit of a body.

"Told you," the witch said, meat and ordure pus.h.i.+ng out between her teeth. "Learn something tonight, eh?"

"We were right," I said, remembering our childhood theories regarding the witch's true nature. "What did we call it? You? Arp? Krasue?"

"Call me by my name, girl," she said, with a leer, and by the brilliant light emanating from her lungs, I saw that she had eaten all the way down to the man's stomach. "Call me 'Theary'. Or, if you like, 'Teacher'?"

"You ate babies out of women." I sat down heavily in the mud. "You'd float through their windows ...."

"Nonsense," Theary snorted, her face and mannerisms so normal compared to the rest of her. "Might've helped a girl now and again get shy of a problem some boy gave her, but I'm no thief. Do I take what others throw away? Well, I'm not too proud. Children can think such things, but you're a doctor now, aren't you? Like me?"

"Yes," I said and from that moment on, I truly was. How could a mere mangled body bring on nausea? How could a simple wail of agony chill my nerves? How could mundane suffering and death quicken my pulse?

I heard Theary laughing beside me, smelled the sour smoke and shaved metal and burned meat and raw waste, and choked on my own revulsion. When I could again breathe without gagging, I turned toward my grandfather, but he had already dissipated into the fog. If not for the wet slurping noises of one monster eating the other, I would have convinced myself then and there that I had hallucinated the entire ordeal. A good doctor believes what she sees, however, and I had no choice in the matter.

I left the Dead Field without triggering another mine and returned to my childhood village of mangoes and rain puddles, and what I did from that night on is my own business. I try to help people and I try to keep my past where it belongs, and if I only succeed some of the time on both accounts, then that, too, is my own business.

I miss my grandparents. My grandmother joined my grandfather the year we finally had tribunals for the surviving officers of the Khmer Rouge. She pa.s.sed quietly in the clinic. I will not say, "Too little too late," but even with the last of those monsters banished through the medicine of the courts, I know their ghosts still thrive and lurk and maim and kill. I do all that is possible to set things right, but in my heart I suspect that my Cambodia is a country forever haunted.

Jesse Bullington is the author of the novels The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and The Enterprise of Death. His short fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in various magazines, including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Chiaroscuro, Jabberwocky, and Brain Harvest, as well as in anthologies such as Running with the Pack, The Best of All Flesh, The New Hero II, Historical Lovecraft, and Future Lovecraft. He currently resides in Colorado and can be found online at http://www.jessebullington.com.

At the Doorstep.

By Leanna Renee Hieber.

From the desk of Mrs. Evelyn Northe.

November 1, 1881.

Day of All Saints. May every single one of those hallowed souls be with me now.

It is true that I live in a haunted house.

You wouldn't know it to look at this fine, glorious Fifth Avenue town home filled with all the stained gla.s.s, marble, carved wood, and other opulence you might imagine of its prime Manhattan location. But the moment I trim my gas-lamps low, I am too aware of the chill, of the comings and goings of spirits. And never have they been as active as tonight. I can't usually see them. But I always hear their steps.

Never one for letter writing, diaries, journals, or any of that nonsense, I haven't had time for such sentiment. But considering I might be seized in death's grip, I ought to have a record. If nothing else but for my friends, so that they might know what became of me when the footsteps got too close to ignore.

I hear the tread far off now, like a dull drum, one after another. Soon, they'll creep up the stairs and stand upon my threshold. While I find the temperature of spirits uncomfortable, it's nothing compared to the dread sound of those steps.

I wonder what my poor friends might do without me, they whom I've drawn into my madness. No. Not my madness. It began long before me. And it called me. It called my friends. It will soon cry out for the world.

Who can say when the spirit world split in two? Who can say when that in-between place of sleep and awake became a true battleground for the soul?

I will always blame the War. Once a country pits brothers against brothers, and has more mangled corpses than it knows what to do with, it's hard not to think of humanity in terms of war.

At some point in history, men began to fracture their hearts, minds and souls. It wasn't enough to simply send a dead spirit on to Heaven or to h.e.l.l. There was born a proving ground between, and a new breed of restless dead and restless living began to walk the land. It got worse, so much worse for the heart of New York when it lost so many twenty years ago, when our country lay in b.l.o.o.d.y tatters and hundreds of thousands of bodies lie in pieces in the dirt.

New York City, you gorgeous gorgon. You manifold monster. You have made the evil industrious. You have made the striving hungry. You are still broken and grieving for those bodies, and you have ignored your pain. I saw you when you were on your knees with manifold losses. Too many to fathom. You ignored your sorrow and you sewed patches onto yourself and stuffed all your empty parts with just so much meaningless straw, making rag dolls. With one strike of a match, this whole city would ignite like young girls incinerated in garment factories.

But how can I blame you, my fair city, when I have done the very same? I, too, have patched my grief over loved ones gone, over my husband taken from me not in battle but in health that failed too soon. I wonder if I shall see Peter Northe yet this day, if he waits for me. No, his mind went; he wouldn't remember whom to look for. Perhaps that's best. To enter the pa.s.sage without attachment. But I would like to hear him say, "h.e.l.lo, old friend," just once more, his greeting to me since our youth, when we looked into one another's eyes and glimpsed inner life far elder than our years.

Society would have nothing to do with me had my husband not made an absurd amount of money on what could have been a failure. But his venture succeeded. Life is full of those two walks: the winners or losers, the broken or the triumphant, the beautiful or the ugly. And each of those paths wears deeper the tread of those who restlessly watch the results. Destiny is not preordained. Your walk is not writ for you. You make choices along the way.

I made one today.

There is a letter near my hand. It sits upon my writing desk, glaring up at me with my own shaking script, addressed to a man I despise. But I know that he is going to die. My gifts have told me. And I should let him die. He's made the city worse; he's hurt innocent people; he knows not what he toys with when he perverts a seance and goes grave-robbing in foreign lands. I am aware, with a knowledge as mysterious to me as ever, that his train will derail and that he, along with many other pa.s.sengers, will die.

So, he should, by all intents and purposes, be left to it so the devils may take him.

And yet.

I was not left to die that day when everything changed. My life was once spared, on a winter's morning in '63.

On the West Side, near the mid-town piers, I watched a boat come in, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with wounded soldiers up from the Carolina coast. It was not long after the Proclamation had been signed and announced, and New York was buzzing with the news, nervous murmurs of what it could mean for the Union, though it didn't bring a swift end to the war.

"Mr. Olmstead's on that s.h.i.+p," I heard a woman say, nodding towards the waterfront. "Sanitation officer for the Union. I hear he's seen more than his poet's heart can bear."

F. L. Olmstead. The visionary behind Central Park. An architect of natural beauty presided over unnatural, ugly and twisted remains of men that were once whole.

Two walks.

It was cold, there by the pier, and the crowd was anxious, women swaying from foot to foot, their hoop skirts moving to and fro like silent, tolling bells. Tolling for the dead. Hopeful for the living. Those a.s.sembled likely had a relative they were praying to see disembark. I wanted my cousin returned, James, a vibrant young man who was like a brother to me. As if it were a spell, I kept murmuring his name, an enchantment to bid him into my arms. I was not prepared for what would come.

Since childhood, I'd seen phantom shapes in corners, things I pa.s.sed off as shadows, and I had a way of knowing unknowable things. Mother, sensing tell-tale signs, owned a similar ability and guided me with calm practicality, insisting I never make a show of what I had inherited. But my talents were unpredictable and inconsistent. The fate of James, for instance, to my chagrin, remained entirely shrouded to my senses.

But as I stood watching a vessel approach, its stars and stripes flying (the Confederates may have flown their own stars, but our flag remained that of the United States), I knew it was involved with the War. Goodness knows there weren't pleasure crafts docking on these weather-worn planks; they had their own piers to separate themselves from the hard truths of the city. But not just the grey trappings of the s.h.i.+p anointed it as war property. It was the chill and the odd haze that surrounded it. Cool as the winter air may have been, it was suddenly arctic as the s.h.i.+p neared. And a halo came off her bow, her stern, a haze overpowering the haggard faces in Union blue peering from the rails ... hungry for their city yet haunted for it ....

While I couldn't make out distinct forms, I sensed that I was watching as many dead come home as living, aboard that s.h.i.+p.

My nose started to bleed. A garish drop of crimson upon the bell of my pale wool skirts. d.a.m.n. A s.h.i.+ft to my psychology was one thing, but messy physical reactions were quite another. I glanced about. Was anyone else affected by this dread chill and the aura around the s.h.i.+p, making it, too, seem like a phantom? It didn't appear so mostly, people simply scanned the paper listing recent New York dead and kept looking anxiously back to the boat, to see if anyone able to stand on the prow was one of their own. But a few knew. A few could feel what wakened in me.

Six average men and women held hands, facing the river as if they were bracing for a storm. Their noses weren't bleeding like mine, but they stared around that s.h.i.+p. Did they see that same halo? They held tight and bent their knees as if anchoring themselves against a tidal wave of secondary impact as if barricading against whatever that boat carried in its wake. One of them turned to glance at me, a striking middle-aged woman.

"It is up to us, those who see the world in ways the rest cannot, to affect the world for the better," she said, and then smiled as if I'd nothing to worry about and turned again to the west.

It wasn't until James floated face to face with me that I truly saw a ghost. And when that beloved face transparent, grey and hollow met my eyes, I fainted. Too close to the edge where I'd wedged myself in for a better view, I took a nasty tumble right into the Hudson.

A blow to my head took care of my consciousness.

Yet, I shall never forget what I saw in that in-between state.

The two walks.

There, on the edge of life and death, in this soul-defining moment, distinct presences were on the move. Threads of light and columns of dark, thin coils moving in different directions, were buffeted like leaves in a breeze down an endless corridor. Along this pa.s.sage were windows, windows onto small scenes. Intimate, or epic. A family dinner. A coronation. A first kiss. A last wish. A battle scene. Somewhere in that scene lay James' final breath. My hand seized at my chest, as if to ma.s.sage my faltering heart. I, and these shafts of illumination and shadow, together we were captivated by the window-boxes of human existence. Both the lit and darkened threads vied for the scenes, pus.h.i.+ng and pulling for dominance over these slivers of time. My life hung suspended between the world's moments.

Then, all at once, it was as if the threads noticed I did not belong. I was mobbed. The light surrounded me and gave a huge push, while the dark matter simply hung to the corners, watching. Waiting. A vibrating string, positively singing with light, grazed my ear: "You see the currents of life. Take your gifts and go. But do not overstep your bounds. Do not weave the threads of life and death with your own hands."

I did as I was told, responded to the demand to go on living, and gasped painful, cold air.

Dock workers had pulled me from the river; the ma.s.s of piers and s.h.i.+ps blessedly buffered the undertow. I never did get the chance to properly thank those workers and I still regret it. A doctor who happened upon the scene took charge and so, I was bid to lie still. Coats were thrown over me, women glad to have something to fuss over that was not their dead relation.

I put my hand to my face and touched a b.l.o.o.d.y gash on my forehead. My nose still bled. The six I'd glimpsed were nowhere to be seen. But that was all right; they'd given me something. That woman had inspired in me confidence to be an anchor against forces pressing in all around us and the light had only confirmed it. I knew then it was my duty to aid the living while I lived. I patched my grief. I steeled my heart, stuffing it with purpose and pride. These things may yet be flammable.

As for whether I'll help the dead once I've crossed onto that sh.o.r.e is knowledge for another day. Yet tonight, perhaps, but not this moment.

My duty is to life while I have it. What knowledge I have I must use. I mustn't stand back and let a man's train derail and kill him, even though I abhor him. The lantern at my elbow is lit; the smell of oil is distinct. The letter is in my hand, addressed to Mr. Bentrop. It simply says: If you take that 8pm train into the city next Tuesday, it will derail and you will die. Sincerely, your second chance.

My hands shake. I return to these pages after having dropped the note in a mail box, despite the dark, dangerous lateness of the hour. Countless spirits attended my wake; I could feel their icy tendrils bouncing behind me. A drunkard or thief wouldn't have dared accost me; the air at my back would freeze the standing hairs on the bravest of necks. I was the Reaper. Off to delay tidings of death.

But did I, in doing so, inappropriately weave the forbidden threads?

And for a man such as Bentrop, of all people? What of the other poor souls on that 8pm departure? Do they not matter? Yet, I sense Bentrop has a further part to play in matters in which I am engaged, and I must act on instinct, even if it violates instruction. What good is a gift untapped?

Bentrop is in part responsible for the needle which is about to come to the city. A vast stone obelisk from the sands of Alexandria. "Cleopatra's Needle", it is called and it shall sit beyond the steps of our lovely Metropolitan Museum of Art. Men like Bentrop see in the artifact a vast power. Men like Bentrop need to be curbed. Yet, there I went, warning him against the closing jaws of prophecy. Still, he has to take the advice. There is choice involved. Two walks. Two paths. Bentrop has helped to bring a tower into our city that boldly points to the sky, as if in a demand ... must he not be prepared for how the skies will answer him? Must not I, too, be prepared for just such a reply?

Ah. Pardon the dark mark upon the pale page.

My nose has begun to bleed. d.a.m.n.

The steps are on the stair. Landing. Stairs. Landing. My hallway. Far worse than the cold, I maintain.

I confess I'm not ready to again face that pa.s.sage where angels tread and devils pace. What force will win me this day? Who is closer to seizing any of us, the angels or the devils?