Caitlin Kittredge - The Mirrored Shard

“They’re meant to pick out things from the outlands that try to creep into the city and steal souls,” he said. “The decayed, the screaming sands, things like that.”

The figures surrounded the soldier, more of them melting in from the shadows as if they’d dripped like inkblots from a pen, and the soldier began to scream. The appearance of a human soul sloughed away, and underneath was a skeletal thing with long legs that bent the wrong way and arms that scraped the ground. Its hands ended in long, bladed things that lived where fingers should on a person, and its jaw was elongated like a cricket’s, underslung and full of teeth.

I braced myself to see carnage fly in every direction at the thing’s exposure, but the four figures simply pressed closer, and after a moment the skeletal creature screamed and slumped to the ground, nothing but a pile of bones.

“Decayed,” Ian said, and shivered as we walked on. “Hate those things.”

I was glad I couldn’t breathe, because I would have been hyperventilating with nerves. The figures had made short work of the monster disguised as a soldier’s soul, but knowing things like that could be creeping among us made it difficult to keep walking, never mind keep my cool.

“The guards didn’t seem too bothered by it,” I ventured. “The Decayed, I mean. If they protect the souls from creatures like that, they can’t be entirely bad news.”

“Oh, no,” Ian said. “They don’t protect a damn thing but themselves. The Faceless are the worst thing in this place, by far. They feed on the energies of the souls. That’s why they keep the monsters out—so the souls are all theirs for the taking.”

He turned us away from the flow of new souls, which headed toward a central square much like Banishment Square in Lovecraft, where more of the Faceless waited. I craned my neck and saw the Faceless packing the souls in, shoulder to shoulder.

“Get deep enough into the Catacombs and the Faceless disappear,” Ian said. “The old souls outnumber them, and they can fight back. They tend to stay up top, where the pickings are easy, and suck down the last little bit of life in a soul for their master.”

“Master? You mean someone controls those things?” I said, casting a wary glance over my shoulder. I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet such an individual.

“Some thing , and yes, they wear his sign,” said Ian. “The sign of the Yellow King. He controls the Deadlands. Nobody sees him, but they’re so scared of the Faceless they obey whatever he says.”

“Sounds like a charming fellow,” I said as we made a dozen more turns through a rat’s maze of alleys that took us deeper and deeper into filth and squalor.

“I wouldn’t know,” Ian said. “I’ve never met him and I’m never going to. It’s hard enough to dodge the Faceless without antagonizing them.”

“Has it always been like this?” I asked as the sky blinked out, replaced by rooftops and smoke. “Is this really all that’s waiting after you die? Torture and things like the Yellow King?”

Ian wrinkled his nose against the stale air. The smell was incredibly awful—one part butcher’s shop, one part burning slag and many parts human filth and misery.

“People talk, of course,” Ian said. “They say it wasn’t always like this, that it was a land like any other and if you had a good life, you’d have a good death. An afterlife. But the Yellow King is all anyone knows now.” He shrugged. “It’s not like I can pick up and leave.”

The idea of this being the end of the line made me sick to my stomach, so I changed the subject. “How far are we going?”

“Deep down,” Ian said. “The guts of this place. That’s where she lives.”

He twitched at every sound, as rats—or something—ran over our feet, and I tried to put aside my own doubts and fears and reassure him. I was better at that than reassuring myself.

“I do appreciate your coming with me,” I said. “More than you know.”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt when you figure out this insane plan of yours won’t work,” Ian muttered. “I told you, Aoife—dead is dead. The Deadlands can change you, but you’ll never escape them.”

“And I think differently,” I snapped. “I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”

“Until you realize that your Dean is stuck here,” Ian grumbled. “And you might be, too, living soul or no.”

“You must have been the life of every party before you expired,” I told him. “Just a joy to be around.”

“Archie had the same smart mouth,” Ian said. “Nice to see you take after him so much.”

We walked in silence after that, a silence that was thicker and tenser than before.

After a time, we reached a tumbledown brick well house, rife with rats and stink. A soul dressed in garb several centuries out of fashion dozed in the mud, snoring, with a bottle spilling sticky green liquid across the cobbles. Roaches scattered from the puddle when we approached.

“Finch,” Ian said, kicking the man’s foot. “Wake up.”

Finch grunted and sniffed, red-rimmed eyes slowly rolling from his considerable gut to Ian’s face. “You!” he exclaimed. “Stone and sun, Ian … we all thought you’d buggered off for the screaming sands.”

“I did,” Ian said. “But I’m back and I need to speak with her.”

Finch grinned, exposing just how bad dentistry had been at the time he’d died. “They all come back sooner or later,” he said. “Once you’ve had her in your skull you can’t stay away.”

“Enough,” Ian snarled, and I saw something flash across his face, which at first I thought was anger but soon realized was shame. Ian was ashamed to be here, ashamed of what was about to happen.

I resolved to keep a straight face, no matter what occurred, and not reveal any reaction. He was jumpy enough as it was.

“Anyway,” Ian said, “I’m not here for myself. I’m here for her.”

“Oho!” Finch staggered up, and I caught the stench of absinthe as his breath blasted in my face like a furnace. “A pretty little one, ain’t she, Ian?”

“You’ll want to take a step back,” I told him. “I may be little, but I’m not nice.”

Finch laughed, deep and full-bellied, and then kicked open the door to the well house. “Same as it ever was, Ian,” he said. “Go down till you can’t go no more, then follow the trail into my lady’s chambers. She’ll be so happy to see you.”

“You’re a sad, stupid drunk,” Ian growled. “You’ve never been anything but, in life and in death, and now you get to spend eternity knowing exactly how sad and stupid you are.”

“Maybe so,” Finch said, still grinning. “But at least I get to stay up here, Ian. I’m not like you. I don’t have to see her. I don’t need anyone but meself.”

I caught Ian by the arm as he started to lunge for the fat man. “Come on,” I said. “The quicker we get this over with, the quicker I’ll be gone and you can go back to whatever you were doing.”

“Just trying to exist,” Ian muttered as the well house door swung shut behind us and left us in darkness. Gray light filtered through the broken roof, and I could just make out a huge bucket, large enough to hold me, with rusted sides.

Attached to the well chain was a sort of cage, equipped with a lever to move the chain from inside. The well was dry, and I swore I could hear music from far below.

“I know the feeling,” I told Ian as we climbed into the cage. It swung back and forth at an alarming rate, but appeared solid under our feet.

I could be hurt here, I knew that much. My soul was floating free, and if it was injured, I might not be able to come back to myself. I held on to the side of the cage as Ian engaged the lever.