The Atrocity Engine (Custodians of the Cosmos Book 1), page 15
She looked at the Stricklands.
“Put her inside the mausoleum. The door isn’t locked.”
The family did as they were ordered, and moments later, the hideous inside-out creature that had been a woman named Brianne was caged inside the mausoleum. Rachel gestured, and the door’s lock repaired itself and snicked closed. The woman was blind now, and it was debatable what, if anything, she could hear. She milled about for several moments, hitting walls and the door, before finally moving into the shadows at the rear of the mausoleum and sitting on the floor, red hands pressed to her exposed uterus.
The pain she was experiencing had to be excruciating, Rachel thought. She was almost envious. That level of agony would drive the woman insane before long, and Rachel knew that would be a mercy. Not that she wanted the woman to have any mercy, but it couldn’t be helped.
Molly looked up at Rachel, a hopeful smile on her face.
“Did we do good, Ms. Blackburn?”
“You did well,” she said. “Now go forth and find the next item on the list: an extremely corrupted soul.”
Without another word, the Stricklands got back into their SUV. Carlton turned on the engine, and they drove slowly and carefully through the cemetery until they passed through the main entrance.
“One ingredient down, four more to go,” Rachel said. Things were going well so far, and she hoped they’d continue to do so.
She opened a Rift to her home and stepped through. The Rift sealed behind her, creating a Scar that would cause someone to lose control of the left side of their body should they accidently touch it.
Once Rachel was gone, a cadaverously thin man in a yellowed suit that had once been white stepped out from behind a nearby tree. He walked over to the mausoleum and leaned forward to look inside. His mouth stretched into a too-large grin, then he stepped away from the mausoleum and started walking toward the cemetery’s entrance. His protégé was playing an extremely dangerous game, and he couldn’t wait to see how it turned out.
He thought about the day he’d met Rachel.
He’d been walking down a sidewalk in a small town in central Illinois. He didn’t recall the name of it. What was the point? Human habitations – from the smallest shack to the largest metropolis – were all the same to him. It was the people that lived in them which interested him. Their self-doubt, anger, shame, resentment, contempt, hostility, hatred, fear, but most of all, their sweet-sweet pain. Brother Nothing considered himself an artist, and these emotions were the dark materials with which he created his masterworks.
It was late afternoon in early August, and the air was stifling – hot, humid, and filled with biting insects. The UV index was dangerously high today, and if he listened closely, he could hear skin cells crying out in agony throughout the town as they burned, some of them already in the early stages of turning cancerous.
It was an absolutely miserable day, and he felt a twisted sense of satisfaction, as close to happiness as a being like him could come.
Praise Oblivion, he thought.
He continued walking, and several minutes later he approached a Cape Cod which literally had a white-picket fence out front. The cliché was too good to resist, so he paused to take it in: red brick walls, black roof, black shutters, well-kept yard, a flower garden next to the house, and an elm tree that provided shade for a young girl, six years old, or thereabout. Straight brown hair, blue T-shirt, yellow shorts, bare feet. She sat in the grass, near the edge of the shade. In front of her – in the sunlight – was a small metal bowl covered by clear plastic wrap. Next to the bowl was a sheet of white paper that looked as if it had some sort of crayon drawing on it, but he couldn’t make out the details from where he stood.
As much fun as it was to Corrupt children, he was enjoying his walk too much to pause here any longer. You’ll never know how lucky you were today, little one, he thought.
He started to go, but instinct told him to take another look at the child, and this time he saw a black aura flicker around her body, just for an instant, then it was gone. Intrigued, he stepped onto the driveway, walked into the yard, and crouched down on the other side of the bowl from the girl. The drawing was a crude representation of a man and woman – her parents? – and inside the bowl was a white mouse. The small creature seemed lethargic, but it was alive.
“What are you doing, my dear?”
The girl had not taken her gaze off the mouse the entire time he’d approached her, and she still didn’t look at him as she spoke.
“My mommy and daddy won’t take me to Disney World. They say it costs too much money. That made me mad, so I’m going to kill them.”
The girl said this so matter-of-factly it surprised him, and that was not easy to do.
“And how do you plan to accomplish this task?”
She raised her eyes to meet his, and he waited for her to react in horror at seeing him – the skull-like face, the black-hole eyes… But she didn’t so much as blink.
“I put my pet mouse into this bowl and covered it up. Her name is Minnie. I put her in the sunlight an hour ago, and I’m going to keep her there until she gets too hot and dies. And then her death will go into the picture and Mommy and Daddy will die.”
The girl’s crude attempt at a death-transference spell would never work, of course. But the concept was sound, and if she had the right training… He peered into her mind and discovered that her home life was as close to perfect as it was possible to get. Her parents loved her and did all they could to raise her properly. They never laid a hand on her or used harsh language when talking to her, and they attended to her emotional needs as much as they did her physical ones.
He looked deeper.
Her mind, young and still forming, was already a nest of venomous snakes, and it would only get worse as she got older. There were psychological reasons for this, and there were no organic defects either. He looked still deeper, all the way down to the molecular level, and he could find nothing to account for the darkness that seethed within her brain. It was simply her nature.
She was magnificent.
“I’m afraid that your technique – while sound in its basic theory – won’t actually work. I, however, can kill your parents for you, if you like. You have but to say the word.”
The girl looked at him for a moment, then she smiled.
“The word.”
Brother Nothing’s dried, cracked lips pulled away from his crooked, yellow teeth in what was more grimace than smile. A few seconds later a gunshot came from inside the house, followed closely by another. Then silence.
“I planted the thought in your father’s mind that he should take his handgun, shoot your mother in the head, then do the same to himself. They’re dead, as you requested.”
He waited to see how she would react. She looked at him a moment, then she grinned and clapped her hands.
“Yay!”
Her aura flared black for a moment then, and it stayed that way for several seconds before fading away.
Brother Nothing nodded to the mouse trapped in the bowl.
“Are you going to release Minnie now that you no longer need her for your spell?”
The girl frowned. “Why would I do that? It’ll be fun to watch her die. I wonder how long it will take?”
“Another twenty-three minutes.”
“That’s not long.”
“It isn’t. And it will give us time to talk.”
The girl frowned. “About what?”
“I want to tell you about a place where you can learn how to make your darkest dreams come true. It’s special type of school called the Athenaeum.”
The girl tried the word on for size.
“A-thuh-nee-uhm.” She smiled. “I like it!”
“What’s your name, child?”
“Rachel. What’s yours?”
“Brother Nothing.”
The girl laughed. “That’s a funny name!”
His smile was as cold as death itself.
“I’m a funny guy.”
Gina sat on the couch in Neal’s basement apartment. He’d been in the shower for twenty minutes now, and she hoped he’d be finished soon. Although given the amount of gore he’d gotten on him, she wouldn’t have been surprised if it took another twenty minutes for him to get clean. She’d been the one to dispose of his ruined clothes. He’d left them on the tiled bathroom floor, and although he hadn’t asked her to get rid of them, she couldn’t stand their stench.
She found a plastic shopping bag – Neal kept a collection of them under the bathroom sink – and wrapped one around her right hand so she wouldn’t have to touch the clothes as she put them into the bag. She’d then taken them outside and dropped them in the plastic waste receptacle sitting at the back of the house. She didn’t know when trash pickup was in this neighborhood, but for the sake of the residents, she hoped it would be soon. Otherwise, the stench of Neal’s clothes would waft through the air and suffuse the area. A stink like that could linger for weeks, months, maybe longer. She was glad she lived miles from here.
She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised by Neal’s modest accommodations, but she was. Yes, Maintenance employees were required to live as simply as possible and produce as little waste as they could. But she’d always had the impression that few actually tried to live up to this standard.
People need to be comfortable in their home, her father had once told her. It’s a place of respite, somewhere to rest and recharge. The kind of life Maintenance workers lead can wear you down over time if you’re not careful. Living well helps us to do our jobs better and – perhaps more importantly – longer. That more than makes up for allowing ourselves a few indulgences here and there, isn’t it?
Neal wasn’t a by-the-book kind of guy, and while she hadn’t expected him to be living in luxury, she thought he’d at least have a decent place. But this? This was a shithole.
Neal might not be much for rules and regulations out in the field, but it was clear from his apartment that he believed in Maintenance’s mission, and deeply so. Maybe that was the real reason he disregarded rules so often – because he believed he was serving a higher purpose, and he’d do whatever it took to get the job done.
She thought of the condo her parents had gotten her, of the lavish home she’d grown up in. She’d had the best of everything, as had her brother and sister. She hadn’t questioned her upbringing at the time, had just enjoyed it, but now she wondered how dedicated her family truly was to the ideals they fought for. When it was all said and done, were the much-lauded Sandovals in fact hypocrites? It was a disturbing thought.
She heard the shower turn off, and several moments later, Neal – a towel wrapped around his waist – stepped out of the bathroom. His hair was tousled from drying it, but he looked clean enough. More importantly, he didn’t stink.
“Used more water than I wanted,” he said. “But I suppose it couldn’t be helped.”
No one in her family would’ve given a damn how much water they used for a shower, especially if they’d been covered in the same foul shit as Neal had been.
“I’m going to get dressed, so would you mind, uh… you know.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
Gina turned her head to give Neal privacy. She heard him bustle about, as if he was trying to dress quickly, and a few moments later he said, “All done.”
She turned back to look at him. Fresh shirt and tie, slacks, socks, and shoes. No smart glasses, though. The two of them were still working in secret.
Neal walked over and sat on the couch next to her, although not too close.
“Back at Edge, you said there was another place we could go,” Gina said.
“Yeah. The Stygian Market. You can get almost anything you want there, including information. For the right price, of course.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“I’m surprised your father didn’t tell you about it. The Stygian Market was his favorite place while he was working in town. He used to do all sorts of deals there.”
Neal didn’t put any special emphasis on his last sentence, but something flashed in his eyes when he spoke the words. Before she could ask him about it, he stood.
“Let’s get moving. The Market’s a big place, and it’s only open until sunrise. Or more accurately, it only exists until sunrise.”
He headed for the steps and started up. Gina watched him for a moment before rising and following. More than ever, she sensed something had happened between Neal and her father back when they were partners – something bad – and she was going to find out what it was.
One way or another.
When Gina and Neal left Neal’s place, she’d thought they would return to the west side, as it was the section of Ash Creek located on the edge of Shadow, but instead, Neal directed her to head out of town. Like a lot of towns and villages in Southwestern Ohio, Ash Creek was surrounded by farmland – open fields where cows or horses grazed or where rows of tall corn grew. It was night, and Gina saw no cows, no horses. She figured the animals were asleep somewhere, maybe in a barn, like in the picture books she’d read as a child. The corn had been recently harvested, and only the stubs of bent and broken stalks remained.
She was by no means a country girl. She’d grown up in the metro DC area, after all. But she found the land here – the animals, the crops, the cute little farmhouses – to be enchanting in its own way. When the sun was shining, that is. But night in the country was a different story. The cornstalks suggested strange shapes, as if inhuman creatures squatted there, hunched over, watching them pass with narrowed, baleful eyes. And the fields where cows or horses should’ve been seemed filled with thick, living shadows, dark wraiths that twisted and swirled through the air, coming closer to the road with each moment, eager to sink ebon talons into the soft flesh of the two humans driving by.
The farmhouses were shrouded in night, the meager illumination from their porchlights doing little to keep the darkness at bay. The houses no longer looked cute to Gina, but rather sinister and haunted.
Neal spoke then, and his voice startled her.
“It’s different out here at night, isn’t it? Humans create pockets of civilization to isolate us from the wild, to protect us from it, but it’s never far away. Some people like living with the wild, though, making peace with it, even befriending it, if they can.”
“What about you?”
“I think if outside was so great, humans would never have invented inside. Slow down. We’re getting closer.”
Gina eased her feet off the gas, and her Prius slowed. On their right was several acres of untended land enclosed within a long length of weathered wooden fence. High grass and weeds covered the ground, and Gina wondered if this was an area a farmer had decided to let lie fallow this year, or if it had been abandoned and gone to seed.
“Turn right at the next driveway,” Neal said.
Gina expected to see a mailbox – maybe a metal one affixed atop a thick wooden support, like she’d seen in movies – but there wasn’t one. The driveway was unpaved, covered with gravel, and when she turned onto it, the rubber of her tires made soft popping noises as they ground the small stones together.
The driveway was uneven, and the Prius rocked back and forth and side to side as they went, forcing Gina to go slow. It was a single narrow lane, flanked on both sides by high grass. Gina wondered what might be hidden within the grass, but she quickly told herself to stop letting her imagination get the better of her. There was nothing here other than the usual animals one would find in the country – field mice, rabbits, possum, raccoons, fox, coyotes, deer… Nothing to be frightened of. All perfectly ordinary.
Then again, if this place was ordinary, why would Neal bring them here?
She was glad the windows were up.
They drove for what seemed a long time, and Gina wanted to ask Neal if this damn driveway had an end, but she was afraid of what his answer would be, so she kept silent. Before much longer, she saw a pair of dark shapes silhouetted against the night sky, spread apart, one larger than the other.
As they drew closer, the Prius’ headlights washed over the smaller of the objects, and she saw that it was an ancient farmhouse that had collapsed in on itself, nothing but a pile of torn shingles and splintered wood. The driveway forked here, and Neal told her to bear right. She did so, and a large black barn came into view. A dozen vehicles were parked in front – cars, trucks, vans, and motorcycles, various makes and models, all from different eras, but still normal. Other vehicles, however, were… different.
A chopper entirely covered with gleaming sharp spikes – seat and handlebars included. An arrangement of crystalline panels fused together at strange angles, randomly flickering in and out of existence. A car with a standard metallic chassis, but instead of having tires, thousands of tiny insect legs protruded from its bottom.
“Park anywhere,” Neal said.
There were spaces open next to both the spike-bike and the millipede-mobile. Gina pulled in next to the chopper. She regretted her choice when she saw the spikes were coated with blood.
She turned off the engine and looked at Neal.
“What do I need to know about this place?”
“The Stygian Market never closes, but you can only enter and exit it when the sun’s down. If the sun comes up when you’re inside, you’re stuck until it goes down again. We’ve got lots of time before sunrise, though, so we won’t have to worry.” Neal frowned. “Then again, time does operate differently inside the Market. We’ll keep our visit short just to be on the safe side.”
“Is it dangerous?”
Neal looked her a moment before answering.
“Everything we do is dangerous, especially when it seems like it isn’t.”
Was he thinking about how Pam had died? Probably.
Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, she thought. Surveyors were supposed to primarily observe and report, only getting involved in a situation if they absolutely had no other choice. Neal didn’t so much break this rule as act as though it didn’t exist. Had Pam believed the same as he did? Or did she go along with him despite her better judgment, and end up paying for it with her life?
