Authors: Caitlin R. Kiernan
“I’m sorry,” she says, still staring straight ahead. “Fine. I won’t ask again.”
“Fucking Christ, you’ve got a pair of balls on you.”
“Is it really necessary to use that word so much? You don’t seem to be able to get through a whole sentence without it,” and she checks her pistol to be sure that it’s loaded, pops the clip out and shoves it in again.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
“No,” Jane says, aiming the gun at the windshield, squinting through her wraparound sunglasses as she sets her sights on the remains of a very large brown grasshopper squashed flat against the glass. “I’m not. It makes you sound like a vulgar, ignorant man, and I know you’re more than that. But you better slow down some. That’s our turn.”
Deacon starts to tell her to fuck off, considers putting her out right here, and then whatever happens, he’ll only have himself to blame, before he sees the road sign on his left and the stop sign on his right, and the road sign reads
ARGILLA ROAD
.
“Left or right?” he asks and switches off the Camaro’s wheezy heater because he’s started sweating.
“Left,” Jane says. “The house was near the very end of the road. Probably not much more than a mile from here.”
“That close?” Deacon asks, and “Yeah, that close,” she replies.
He takes the turn without stopping, hardly even bothering to slow down; the rear of the car fishtails, and for a second or two, he thinks they’ll wind up in the boggy, weed-choked ditch and have to run the rest of the way.
“Four o’clock on the dot,” Jane says, and Deacon looks anxiously at the dimming eastern sky, scanning it for any evidence of the full moon, praying that they’re not wrong about moonrise, that they’ve still got forty-five minutes to go this final mile and find Chance. Jane turns completely around in her seat, gripping the loaded semiautomatic in her right hand. “It’s still back there,” she says. “But it’s keeping its distance.”
“So what happens next? Is that little pop gun of yours really going to do us any good against this bitch?”
“We have the shotgun, too. As long as we can stop Narcissa before she finishes the summoning, we have a chance.”
“A chance,” Deacon says and shakes his head, wishing that one of the empty whiskey bottles or beer cans in the backseat were full, wishing he had something besides fear and adrenaline to clear his muddled head. “That’s really not very fucking funny.”
“Sorry,” Jane says, not sounding sorry, sounding distant and preoccupied, and she doesn’t take her eyes off whatever she thinks is following the car. “I didn’t say it on purpose.”
“What are you doing? I thought you just said we shouldn’t look at it.”
“That’s when I thought it was an assassin. Now I’m not sure what it is.”
“So long as it stays out of my way,” Deacon says, pressing the accelerator almost all the way to the floor, “I really don’t give a rat’s ass
what
it is.”
“I think I saw it once before, years and years ago, but it was locked inside a little green bottle then.”
Deacon hardly hears her, too busy watching the road and the speedometer, the Halloween sky bruising itself towards dusk, too busy trying to believe that they’ll be in time and he and Chance will have the rest of their lives to heal from the things they’ve seen and done in the past week. The Camaro’s engine roars and shudders like a weary, dying animal, swan song of pistons and crankshafts, belts and spinning fans, and the angry orange temperature light comes on again.
“Don’t you even
think
about it, cocksucker,” he growls and takes the wheel with his bandaged hand long enough to slam his right down hard against the dashboard. The orange light flickers indecisively and then winks out for good, but now there’s white smoke or steam, probably a little of both, leaking out from beneath the hood.
“Deacon, we’re not going to be much use to anyone if you kill us before we even get to the rath.”
“What the sam hell is a
rath
?”
“You know the poem, ‘and mome raths outgrabe.’”
“Is that what we’re hunting? A jabberwock?”
“Have you ever used a shotgun?” Jane asks him.
“Not unless video games count,” and she sighs and keeps watching whatever it is she thinks is tailing the dying Camaro.
“But you’ve used a pistol before?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Deacon replies, trying not to think about Scarborough Pentecost’s body lying in the front room of the spider-girl house or the gaping black hole between his eyes whenever he wanders into Deacon’s dreams. “I’ve used a pistol. Once.”
“Then I’ll take the shotgun.”
“You do that,” and Deacon is starting to have trouble seeing through the steam coming off the engine, the smoke from burning oil; he considers turning on the windshield wipers, but decides that would probably only make things worse. Around them, the land is growing flatter, the thick stands of pine and hardwoods giving way to the marshes, a restless sea of yellow-brown grass marked here and there by gnarled and stunted trees. There’s a small river to the east, snaking along between low and muddy banks. On their Rand McNally Massachusetts road atlas, it’s only a pale blue squiggle labeled the Castle Neck River, but several times Starling Jane has referred to it as the Manuxet. There are a few old willows growing in sandy places near the water, their drooping, bare limbs dragging the ink-dark surface like woodsy tentacles. Deacon doesn’t like the river, something he’d rather not even try to put his finger on, and he watches the road through the smoke and steam, instead.
“It can’t be much farther now,” Jane says, turning back around, and Deacon glances at the speedometer. The needle’s wavering uncertainly just above ninety miles an hour, and he eases some of his weight off the gas pedal. There’s a sudden, violent rattling sound from the guts of the Chevy, metal grinding metal, and “It’s a good damn thing,” he mutters. “A few more feet, and we’d have to get out and fucking push this piece of junk.”
Jane sees the huge gray Lincoln first, parked at the side of the road underneath a crooked little oak. “There,” she says. “That’s it. That’s her.”
“How do you know? Is this—”
“Deacon, just stop the fucking car!” she shouts, and he hits the brakes, screeching to a stop five or ten yards past the Lincoln.
“Do you have a god you pray to, Deacon Silvey?” Jane asks, handing him the pistol before he can pull the Camaro over to the shoulder.
“No,” he says, and she frowns and shrugs her bony shoulders, lost inside the raincoat. “No matter,” she whispers. “It probably wouldn’t make much difference anyway.”
Chance is trying to think of the name of the bitter, ugly root that Narcissa made her chew after breakfast, trying to think of anything but the pain. She takes another step, the rutted, sandy road like walking in a nightmare, and realizes they’ve started going uphill again. Narcissa has one arm around her tight and is carrying a leather satchel in her other hand. “It’s wearing off,” Chance says. “The morphine,” and stops as another contraction begins.
“It’s not much farther,” Narcissa says.
“I can’t do this. I can’t walk any more.”
“Yes, you can,” the werewolf replies, holding her up, holding her up and dragging her forward through the sand and thistles when Chance hurts too much to walk. “You can do all sorts of things, if you have no other choice.”
She can’t remember the name of the root, even though Narcissa told her twice, told her it would help get the contractions started, the root and the syringe full of oxytocin. Just like her, that she remembers the name of the drug and not the root. She wants to ask Narcissa what it was called, but she can’t get her breath to speak. The air’s gone cold enough now that it fogs when it rushes out between her teeth, forced out of her in dragon-smoky gasps whenever the pain comes, and she wishes she could think clearly enough to count the seconds, the minutes in between. Certain only that the distance between contractions is getting shorter and shorter. The air is cold, but the sweat’s coming off her like she’s hemorrhaging water, like she’s just a little black rain cloud trying to wash the world away. She’s started having chills and wonders if it’s a fever, if she’s burning up alive and maybe, if she’s lucky, the flames will get Narcissa, too.
“Just over this hill,” the werewolf growls, though Chance is beginning to doubt she really is a werewolf after all, beginning to think that’s just another lie the morphine told her.
“I have to stop,” Chance gasps as the pain releases her again. “Please, let me stop for a minute.”
“No way, crazy lady. You sit down now, and I’ll never get you back on your feet.”
“I can’t climb this fucking hill.”
“From the top you can almost see forever,” Narcissa says, as if she hasn’t heard a word Chance has said to her. “You can see the Annisquam lighthouse after dark, like the eye of a sea serpent rising up out of the bay. Sometimes you can see the top of Allen’s Reef showing above the waves.”
“I’m not a fucking tourist,” Chance grunts, still trying to catch her breath, the sweat dripping from her matted bangs and stinging her eyes. “I don’t really give a shit about the scenery.”
“When I was a little girl,” the werewolf says, and then she’s silent for a minute, pulling Chance along through the sand and brush. The wind whistles loudly through the dunes, and there are seabirds squawking noisily in the sky. “When I was a girl,” Narcissa says again, “Aldous would take me out near the reef sometimes in his rowboat. But he was always afraid to get in very close, afraid of the demons. That’s what he always called them, the demons. Sometimes we saw whales spouting farther out. Sometimes we saw sharks.”
A sudden gust blows the sand high, and Chance shuts her eyes in time, but it gets in her mouth and nose, sticks to her sweaty face and hair.
“I want another shot,” she says, but the werewolf shakes its head no and keeps dragging her towards the crest of the hill.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think more morphine would be a good idea at this point.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Just shut up and keep moving,” but then the next contraction hits her like a punch in the belly, knocks the breath from her, and she can’t keep moving. Chance tries to sit down in the sand, but Narcissa holds her up.
“You just better not forget our deal,” the werewolf smirks, “not if you want to see the kid.”
“I’ve seen it,” Chance says, when she can speak again, even though she believes that even less than she believes Narcissa Snow could really be a werewolf. “Even if you don’t keep your promise, I’ve seen my child.”
“Sure,” Narcissa says. “Whatever gets you through the day. Come on, crazy lady, we’re at the top.”
Chance blinks through the sweat and the grit clinging to her eyelashes, blinks through the pain, at the road winding steeply down the far side of the hill, this lone and stony hill lost out here among the dunes, and at first all she sees is the darkening sky and the white sand, stretching away to the edge of the ocean. The eastern horizon is turning a deep purple, and the setting sun throws long uneasy shadows across the dunes.
“Down there,” the werewolf growls. “Down there near the shore.”
“What?” Chance asks, teetering on the thin rim of another contraction, but then she sees it and sits down in the sand before Narcissa can stop her.
“I was born there,” the werewolf tells her, so maybe it doesn’t care that she sat down, maybe it isn’t going to try to make her walk anymore. “It was a very big house. My grandfather built it.”
“Well, there’s no house there now,” Chance mutters, taking a deep breath and wiping the sweat from her face. “There’s nothing but a bunch of rocks.”
“I thought rocks got you all hot and bothered, crazy lady. I thought rocks were practically your religion.”
“Not rocks. The fossils I find in the rocks. There’s
nothing
in these rocks. It’s all igneous—”
“You hurt too much to fucking walk, but you can lecture me on geology,” the werewolf barks. “Now, isn’t that something?”
“They’re only rocks,” Chance says again, and then the pain’s back and this time she screams because it’s easier than not screaming. Every second longer than the one before, and the werewolf grabs her by the shoulders before she can lie down.
“Not just rocks,” it snaps, its ivory teeth clicking loudly together, yellow-white blades that slice the evening to ribbons. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you, because it’s nothing anyone’s ever had the nerve to put into one of your
science
books, is it? The hounds built that altar to Mother Hydra and Father Kraken ten thousand years before the last ice age. Before Orc and all his children followed the night roads down into the earth, before men had even learned to build fires to keep away the monsters.”
The contraction ends, and Chance gulps the salty, cold air, shivering now, drinking the air like it’s the sweetest water she’s ever tasted. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve said yet,” she says, trying not to let her teeth chatter, not wanting the werewolf to hear her discomfort. And then she forces herself to laugh, even though her throat hurts and she feels more like vomiting. But it’s a clean sound, nonetheless, and she imagines the wheeling gulls laughing with her, opening their sharp, hooked beaks and letting Narcissa Snow know exactly what they think of her delusions.