Frank Tuttle - Hold The Dark

I don’t recall anything else, until Mama pulled the sheets from my bed and took Darla from me and wrapped her in them and laid her out at the foot of my bed.

All the while, the whippoorwills sang.

I will speak no more of that night, save to say that I awoke to dim daylight, and the sound of Mama’s brush scrubbing dark blood off my door.

I rose. I rose, I bathed and I dressed. Mama watched me go to the bathhouse, watched me return, never spoke a word.

Tomorrow had come. I sat at my desk and recalled my promise from the night before. A bottle of wine, and the wide wicked world be damned.

And so, I reflected, it was. Damned.

And more to come.

The Watch came, with their black wagon, and Mama saw Darla off. The number of bite wounds covering her left no question to her fate. Darla would rise, unless the crematorium’s flames consumed her first. Rise not like Evis, but like Allie Sands-a ruined, shrieking thing gone mad with pain and hunger. Those who slew her had surely known that.

I listened to the dead wagon rattle off, heard the driver cackle and shout. As the sound of him faded away I closed my eyes, clenched my fists and began to count my breaths.

Evis sent men, and Mama sent them away. More came, and she flailed at them with her ragged broom and screeched and cussed and they fled.

Ethel Hoobin came and was admitted. I spoke to him. Mama says I was calm and coherent. That I had assured him my trap was set to spring upon Martha’s abductors, and he was to gather his troops and wait for Mama’s call.

Ethel may have known about Darla, or maybe not, but he asked his questions and nodded once at my reply. He got up and left without another word.

Finally, Mama came inside, propped her broom by my door and threw my bolt.

She sat. I felt her eyes upon me, though I did not open my own.

“Boy,” she said, at last. “Boy, I’m so sorry.”

I clenched my jaw.

“She’d have been good for you. And you’d have been good to her. I seen that much. Didn’t see no further.”

Mama’s voice broke. She bit back a sob, and I opened my eyes.

“We’ll never know that.”

“I saw death a comin’. I swear I never saw it comin’ for her.” She brought up a hand, to mop at her eyes. “Boy, I’m so damned sorry.”

We sat for a long time. Somebody came and pounded on the door. I looked up and saw the black hat Darla had playfully donned just yesterday. I let the man outside knock and shout.

Mama mumbled something under her breath and the pounding stopped. She mumbled something else and the shadow on my glass turned and fell away.

“I reckon,” she said, after a long ragged breath. “I reckon you’ll be a goin’ after them what did this thing.”

I nodded a “yes”.

Mama squeezed her lips together so they wouldn’t quiver. “I reckon you got to,” she said, after a while. “I don’t reckon it matters none that I still see Death’s shadow, a hangin’ at your door?”

I nodded “no”.

Mama stood. I didn’t look up, didn’t see the tears, couldn’t watch another heart break that day.

“I reckon I can’t argue against that. I reckon them bastards got to die.”

I listened to the street. Yes, I thought. They’ve got to die. Again. And this time, they’re going to stay dead forever.

“Promise me one thing, boy. Promise me you won’t go nowhere, won’t do nothin’, till I get back.” She drew in a ragged breath. “I ain’t got no right to ask. Not after what I done. What I didn’t do.” I could hear her grind her teeth. “And I can’t make that up. But there’s one thing I can do. It ain’t right. It ain’t smart. And I reckon it might get us both kilt. But it might get some of them heartless bastards gutted, so I reckon it’s worth the price.”

I said nothing. I barely heard.

“Boy, you got to wait. Just this once. Please.”

I neither moved nor spoke. Everywhere I looked, there was blood-tiny flecks and drips, drying to the color of old rust.

Mama sobbed, stood, turned and left, and I was alone with all my newborn ghosts.

Evis himself came, soon after. In the daylight, no less.

He was swathed in yards of black-black that covered his black-gloved hands and his booted feet and his black-veiled face. He came and he knocked and he spoke, and I found myself at the door, throwing the bolt, more out of shock than any act of conscious will.

He bowed. “I came to extend my deepest sympathies. May I enter?”

I stepped aside. He straightened and darted in out of the sun.

I made my way back to my side of my desk and sat. I did not speak. After a moment, Evis sat too.

He pulled the cowl back, and the veil, and regarded me through his dark glasses. Even so covered, he grimaced in the dim light of my office.

“I confess we were unaware of any close associations. Aside from Mrs. Hog. And we considered her to be at little risk.”

I’d considered none of these things, and it stung.

“We’d just met,” I said. “At the Velvet. She was Martha’s friend. She’d been asking around, about Martha. Maybe she asked once too often.”

And while I had the name Encorla Hisvin to protect me, she had nothing. Nothing but me, and I’d failed her.

“I am partly to blame, as well,” said Evis, reading my mind. “We applied pressure, as I directed. Pressure to a group of none too stable persons already inured to pointless violence. And now another innocent is dead.”

“Your man outside. I never saw him.”

Evis sighed. “He saw nothing. Nothing, until a body struck your door and fell. He remained hidden, hoping the bearer or bearers would reveal himself. He or they did not.”

“How could he have seen nothing? She didn’t walk to my door. Someone carried her.”

“Sorcery. A powerful charm of concealment. Or perhaps one that acts to distract onlookers. We have not been able to determine the specific nature of the charm.”

“You check on your man’s whereabouts the last few new moons? Maybe he didn’t see because he was holding their coats.”

“I will forgive this insult. You are overwrought. Understandably so.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” My Army knife found its way into my right hand.

“The man in question was Victor. He was at my side, the last four new moons, raiding suspected meeting places. He has taken no human blood for nearly forty years. Were he to partake now, the effects would be impossible to conceal.” Evis raised his hand. “Please. Your ardor is excusable, to a point. But it was not I who has done this thing.”

I put the knife down.

“They didn’t just kill her.” The words came hard and each stuck in my throat.

“I know. What was done to her was monstrous. Worse than death. Had you not done what was necessary-”

I heard the dead wagon rattle away again, in the shadows of my soul.

“-she would have risen. In that state, you could not have helped her, or spared her the pain.”

I thought of the crematoriums. Thought of new black smoke and fine grey ash, boiling out of the tall brick smokestacks.

“She is free now,” said Evis, as if he knew my thoughts. “The pain is gone. They may not touch her, ever again.”

Nor I , I thought. Nor I .

“And now we must end this. They have identified you as their tormentor. They dared not slay you, for fear of the wrath of Hisvin. But this they have dared. Despite the risk. It demonstrates recklessness, a disregard for even their own safety.” He shook his head. “There is no more dangerous creature than one which fails to realize its own mortality.”

“The Thin Man.” I’d not really been listening. “Think he’ll still show?”