Chris Holm - The Big Reap

Dazed and knocked windless, I lay on the mattress spattered with afterworm for seconds or minutes or hours, sanity returning by degrees. I looked around, and realized I was, in fact, in a basement — the wired-glass-windowed, pipe-laden basement of a commercial building, to be more precise. Six mattresses were scattered across the floor, all bare and cheap and worn from use, three others caked brown with fallen gore and sprinkled all around with glinting shards of shattered glass. Above mine and those ones hung cocoons — mine fresh, glistening, and steaming slightly like sweat rising from a body on a cold day, the others downy-white and desiccated to varying degrees. Above the other unused mattresses hung bottles like the one from which I had drunk, rough twine knotted at bottleneck and then around the building’s heavy piping, pale worm-halves swimming around inside.

So this was their rendezvous point, I thought. Their fallback position, should I get too close to any one of them. Meant I had ’em on the run, I thought. It didn’t occur to me, but should have, that there’s nothing more desperate — more dangerous — than a cornered animal. Unless, of course, it was a trio of cornered sociopaths with near-unlimited means and access to some for-seriously dark magicks.

Beside my mattress, I found a coarse blanket and a stack of clothes: jeans, sweatshirt, socks, shoes. All cheap, tacky, and off-brand. I used the blanket to towel off, and then dressed hastily. The shoes were too big, the pants an inch too long. But they’d do to get me out of here, at least.

And still, from somewhere, a phone rang.

I staggered to my feet. Touched a finger to my meat-suit’s throat, only to find it healed. Rotated his right arm in its socket, and no longer felt the pull of Ricou’s bite-marks. Looked like the worm-thing did me one better than just getting Malmon out alive, it patched him up some, too. Put him right, physically, at least. I kinda hope he was too overwhelmed by the experience of what we’d just gone through to even try to process it. Better he thought it nothing more than a bad dream — or, more accurately, a bad trip.

By the pale gray light trickling in through the windows, I saw a tray table in the distance, on which sat two items: one a rectangle of black with a green dot of light at the center of its upper edge, the other a cordless phone standing upright on its base, a red light on it blinking in time with every trill of its ringer.

I walked cautiously toward them, certain they must be some kind of trap.

Which they were, but not in the way that I’d imagined.

I reached the table without incident, nerves jangling. The rectangle of black, I realized, was an open laptop computer. And unless I was much mistaken, the green light I’d seen from across the room indicated that its built-in camera was activated. The table it and the phone were sitting on reminded me of the type folks used to eat their TV dinners off, pressed tin and collapsible, its surface painted beige with brown trim, an ugly orange floral still-life at its center.

Still the cordless rang. I picked it up. Heard Father Yefi’s cheerful voice on the other end of the line. “Samuel,” he said, “so good to see you!”

“Wish I could say the same,” I replied.

“In due time,” he told me. “I trust my brother didn’t give you too much trouble?” His tone was playful, jovial.

“You aren’t pissed I killed him?”

“The Ricou you killed was an animal, nothing more. I mourned his loss a long time ago.”

“Then why’d you go to all the trouble of bringing him to Nevazut?”

“I felt I owed him that much, at least. A chance to live, in whatever stunted way he could. But your untimely arrival rendered my gesture moot. And so his final act was one of sacrifice for the greater good. As, I suspect, will yours be.”

“The greater good? I think you mean your own continued well-being.”

“Yes. Mine, and Drustanus’, and Yseult’s,” he said, without a hint in his voice that my reprimand had stung him any. “I assure you, were he in any position to’ve chosen such a path, he would have done so. He was once a decent man.”

“Sure he was,” I said. “But then again, weren’t we all? Speaking of Drustanus and Yseult, I’m looking forward to meeting them. What say we arrange a little get-together? You, me, them, an iron stake or three…”

“Funny you bring it up, Samuel. arranging a little get-together’s precisely why I’m calling.”

“Is it, now.”

“That’s right. It’s high time, don’t you think? In fact, we’re overdue, but it took my siblings longer than expected to make the arrangements I’d requested. I wanted it to be quite the to-do, you see.”

“You’re a regular Gatsby, Grigori. And you remember how well that ended for him.”

“Be that as it may,” he said, “the time has come to extend to you a formal invitation. It’s why I allowed the occlusion spell protecting Nevazut to expire, after all, and left your handler the breadcrumbs necessary to lead you here. I trust your journey was a pleasant one?”

“Peachy,” I said. “Where and when?”

“How’s now for you?”

“Good as any time, I guess.”

“Excellent. Do me a favor, and press the touch pad on the computer to your left.”

“A computer? Really? Seems disappointingly non-magic-y for you, Grigori. Simon might consider that a victory, were he not, you know, all dead and stuff.”

“My apologies,” said Grigori drolly. “I do so hate to disappoint. But don’t worry, I think you’ll be suitably impressed by what we have in store for you. Now, the computer, please. She hasn’t much time. My siblings bore easily when prevented from toying with the living, and our new pets are growing hungrier by the minute. I cannot ensure her safety for much longer.”

She? She who ? With growing dread, I did as Grigori asked. As the touch pad clicked beneath my finger, the computer’s screen awoke. On it was a webcam feed of a man, bound to a plain wooden chair in the center of what appeared to be one of those all-day breakfast chains, Denny’s or Cracker Barrel or whatever. The kind of place with pictures on the menu and a stupid name for every dish. The guy was paunchy, middle-aged, with a long beard streaked gray and nicotine-stained around the mouth. A trucker-cap on his head, a tan Carhartt jacket over flannel, tucked into well-worn jeans. Split lip, black eye, blood running from one ear. The eye not swollen half-shut was wide with fright. The dining room around him had been cleared of all its furniture. Tables and chairs were tossed into the booths on either side, probably to make room for the elaborate concentric circles of runes around the fellow’s chair, all rendered in drying blood.

Grigori and his compatriots hadn’t, however, cleared the room of all the bodies.

They lay sprawled across the floor amidst the broken plates and clots of drying egg in damn near every pose imaginable: face up, face down, curled fetal, arms akimbo. Necks torn out, but little blood around them. Some women, sure, and little girls as well, but none in danger, on account of they were dead already.

“Uh, Grigori? Maybe you’ve been outta the game a while, but that’s a dude I’m looking at.”

“Oh,” he said through the phone to me as he picked up the computer on his end and turned it to face his own smiling face, “I wasn’t talking about him . He’s to be your new vessel. And I hope you like him, because you’re going to spend quite some time inside him. You see, my brother Simon was not wrong about you; you’re a threat that needs neutralizing. But he was a fool to lean on science when magic is so much more utile in this situation. A coma would only bind you until death. The proper ritual will seal you in stasis indefinitely, a shelving to last until the stars burn out.”