Frank Tuttle - Hold The Dark

“You got to tell it your name,” said Mama. She gripped her dead owl close to her chin.

“What the Hell.” I knew she wouldn’t leave until I’d done so.

I raised the thing, spoke my name-my secret birthing name-to it.

It shook in my hand, but only briefly.

Mama began to cry. “Forgive us both,” she said. Though if she prayed, I knew not to who. “We done what we had to do.”

Tears ran suddenly down her face. She rushed around my desk and gave me a single fierce hug. Then she was bawling and out the door, leaving her bag and her dead owl and a fresh-brewed hex-paper charm-the one I’d asked for-behind.

I didn’t follow. I left the cloth-wrapped shell on my desk. I gathered my things, found my coat and put Mama’s charm in the pocket. I took my black hat off the hook where Darla had hung it, and I put it on.

A storm blew up, an hour after dark. Cold winds blew, and cold rains fell. It felt like spring had given up, and handed the streets back over to winter.

I listened for the count of bells amid the thunder. Found that I’d idly taken the huldra up within my hand. Still cold, even through the cloth, I found it comforting to hold, and the vague patterns on the shell drew my eye.

I thought of Darla, thought of Martha, thought of the rain-swept streets. But mostly, I thought about fires. Fires and blades and shouts, rising in the night.

The huldra stirred in my hand. I started and heard, faint behind the blow and beat of the storm, the Big Bell clang out Curfew.

I rose, donned my coat, slipped the huldra in a pocket. I put out a handful of jerky for Three-leg Cat, thought about it for a minute and upended the tin on the floor beside my desk.

And then I turned and sought out the alley on Regent Street, the one that gave me a clear view of Innigot’s Alehouse. And I waited in the storm, and I watched through the rain. I saw the Thin Man come, saw him open Innigot’s door and dart inside.

I tore Mama’s charm. I pushed aside the huldra’s cloth and took it in my bare hand, and something dark and hungry blossomed in the depths of my soul.

“Martha Hoobin,” I said. “It’s time to come home.”

I crossed the street, and opened Innigot’s door.

Innigot himself turned to face me. I knew the man, and he knew me, just another occasional Curfew-breaker out for a brew.

That’s what he thought, at first. But the longer he looked, the more troubled his grizzled old face became.

I grinned. He blanched and toddled off toward the back. I swept my gaze across the taproom, in search of my Thin Man.

As was any curfew-breaking alehouse, Innigot’s was dark. There were three candles guttering along the bar, flickering just bright enough to show drunks the way to more beer without making it obvious the place was open in flagrant defiance of the Curfew. Half a dozen hunched forms nursed beers at four tables. All watched me, without turning their faces toward me.

Save one. I blinked, the huldra shook and then the candle-lit room was as bright as noon. I saw him plain, though he sat in the back, in a corner barely touched by the light.

I smiled. As one, the other five men in the room rose, wove and heeled-and-toed it for the door. They left hats. They left coats. They left it all, and I let them go.

The Thin Man saw. He watched me come for him, tried to meet my eyes, tried to convince himself he wasn’t afraid, that something hadn’t gone horribly wrong. I could see though, see the fear rising through him, as easily as I saw the silver buckles on his fancy shoes, or the swan-shaped silver clasp that held his cloak closed at his throat.

The huldra stirred again in my hand. And as I walked, it showed me things.

You know those skull-face carvings at the right-hand gatepost of Orthodox cemeteries? Looks like a skull-until you see the skull is merely folds in the robe of the Angel Aaran, and part of his outstretched hands.

That’s what it was like, as I walked. I saw stains on the warped planks of Innigot’s floor, and an instant later I saw that they were old blood, blood spilled while three men had held a fourth down and cut him. Blood spilled while Innigot had stood calmly ten feet away, wiping down his dirty glasses with a filthy rag.

I heard shouts in the wind, cries for mercy-sounds that had been there all along, for anyone who knew how to listen.

And so when I looked down upon the Thin Man, I saw his fear, plain as a bucket of sun. He looked up at me with cold brown eyes and a face that betrayed neither guilt nor shame. But he saw something in me, something in my eyes, something that chilled him to the bone.

I laughed. “Well, well.” I stopped, pulled a chair around, sat beside him at his wobbly table. “Come to talk about combs, have we?”

He nodded, licked his lips and swallowed. “I brought all the rest. I have the other seven, right here.”

He reached beneath his chair, reached for a paper bag. I didn’t follow his hand with my eyes, didn’t need to see. I knew the bag was full of silver combs, just as he’d said. Each was a sibling to Martha’s.

I snatched his hand back, put it down flat on the table, withdrew my own hand.

“I don’t want them.”

“I’ll tell you where they came from.”

The huldra showed me words near his lips.

“You got them from a young man named Tenny Hanks. He stole them from his father, who runs an import shop on Vanth. Tenny was a weedhead. You gave him ten crowns, and he smoked that right up and killed himself the next day trying to rob an ogre.” I smiled in triumph. “Isn’t that right?”

He opened his mouth, shut it, tried to decide if he could knock me down and make for the door.

I let him see my eyes. He began to shake.

“I never wanted the combs. All that was a lie. Just like you feared. No, it’s the girls I want to talk about. You know the girls. The special ones. The ones you fed to your vampire friends.”

He choked back a shout, tried to bolt. I shoved him back, surprised at how easily he gave way to my touch.

“I know it all,” I said. He tried to look away, but I held his gaze, let the huldra show me more. “I know about the priest. I know about the halfdead. I know you help them, because they let you watch.” I pulled him closer, laughed when he wriggled and whimpered. “You made a mistake, taking Martha Hoobin. She was no whore, and you knew it. What would your halfdead friends say, if they knew you meant to feed them a rich man’s sister?”

He gobbled and clawed. I tightened my grip.

“They’d have your head, they would. Poor stubborn Miss Hoobin. She preferred her Balptist verse to the mouthings of your Church, and you decided you’d make her pay. What better way to educate her in the mercies of your Church than to feed her to a room of halfdead, you miserable little swine. Isn’t that right?”

“I’ll tell you,” he said, gasping around my grasp. I had him by the throat, one-handed. He grappled and clawed but couldn’t dislodge my grip. “I’ll tell you where they are. Tell you where the halfdead are.”

I laughed. The sound of it was strange, more thunder than voice.

“Oh, you shall indeed. Do you think that will save you?”

“You want to know, don’t you?”

I laughed again.

“I know already.” The huldra whispered again, telling me what was ready to leap from the Thin Man’s panicked lips.

“Below another old warehouse. On Santos. Three blocks from here. They’ve gathered there, already. The party begins in an hour. Have I missed anything?”

He coughed and wheezed, began to turn purple. “You…swore. You…swore…you wouldn’t…harm.”

“Did I now?”

I let go. He fell limp down on the table, threw up, lifted his face, sputtering and spewing.