Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

"Revoke your oath," he said.

"No."

"You'll be destroyed, and we'll all die with you."

"Nobody else is going to die."

"You fool."

I might have too much ego, or not enough, but a promise of protection was still valid. I struck the rock behind me and could sense its sickness. "No one else leaps from the buttresses. Nobody else gives in to misery. Not even you, John. You're staying off the rope tonight."

The thought of not torturing himself made him frantic. His hairless pink face became even more ridiculous, and he looked like a piglet trying to escape a butcher.

Gawain offered the child to me and I held the infant girl. I felt the newborn soul entwined with Elijah's despondency. There was nothing of the true prophet Elijah here, but Jebediah's greatest strength was in forcing the verse of scripture to fit his intent. Maybe I was supposed to be the one to sacrifice her upon the altar of my fears.

"She's beautiful," I said.

Give me the kid , Self told me.

What?

Give her here.

No.

I'll keep her safe.

Where?

Trust me.

Are you back? I asked.

Are you?

I handed him the baby and he took her gently, careful of her fragile neck, and hopped away down the tower stairs. Monks and nuns fell over themselves. Abbot John dove and missed, and Aaron's panic crowded his eyes. They ran out to give chase.

If the mount hadn't been so set in its course and manner its spires and roofs might have come thundering down now, if only to state its case. The charge in the air grew until tiny pinwheels of ball lightning sparked in the rafters. My father tumbled across the room.

"Leave me," I said, and I was astonished when all the penitents and priests left without an argument or fight.

My oath wouldn't affect Gawain, and whatever evil stalked these corridors could not drive my dead father any more insane.

"Why are you here, Gawain?"

Only he and I remained of Jebediah's first coven, but Gawain carried the others with him in some fashion, even now. He sat and stared into me, and never so much as mouthed my name.

My father grinned through his painted black lips. His leer was something set loose from a bottomless terrible dream. I floundered against his chest and held on to him as tightly as I could, waiting for his arms to encircle me, but they never did.

He kept giggling and dancing, and we swung around the room like that for a while, until I was left in a heap and couldn't catch my breath for all the sour tears coursing down my face. I cried for him with my fists in the air just as I'd done when kneeling at his grave, whimpering, "Dad . . . oh, Dad. . ."

Cathy and Janice slept fitfully, with their hands snatching out to each other across the space between their beds. The bloody sheets had been hung aside to dry for later use, along with the stored afterbirth, which would add potency to any spell. Janice's scars took on another hue. All the ghosts of herself sat on the mattress, cuddling and patting her thighs and listening to the deep regular breathing and frequent angry snorts.

The empty robes of Fane pressed a wet cloth to Cathy's forehead. The floating cowl turned to me. Slowly his face reconciled and filled in angle by angle. He stroked and washed her brow and neck, and spoke quietly in her ear. She smiled warmly in her sleep.

Just as his features had been scribbled in, so was the truth that Fane was the father of her child.

Eddie's bed was empty, though the pins remained stuck through the blankets. His organs were still intact in the clay jars, but the jars had been rearranged. His lungs worked their steady rhythm like a bellows.

"Is my daughter safe?" Fane asked.

"Yes."

"Where is she?"

"I don't know."

He nodded, and oddly enough added, "I trust you."

"Apparently you do. Why?"

"You're the only man I've ever met who truly has nothing left to lose, and absolutely nothing to ever gain." He pulled no parlor tricks, but his voice still sounded as if it came from everywhere around me. "I pity you."

"Knock off that crap. Where did they take Eddie?"

"He vanished right before Catherine went into labor."

"When this is over you should take her and go back to selling shoes."

"Perhaps I will. As soon as Elijah is expunged and I get my daughter back." He kissed Cathy's lips, and for a moment my jealousy grew as bright as Elijah's. Fane wiped her face again and said, "I used to think being a shoe salesman was hell. No wonder God killed me."

The smell of curdled milk made me want to sneeze. I left Fane pressing his mouth to Cathy's chin while Janice's ghosts glanced down at her. They saw her one poor seedy life being led despite their potential and expectations, and it revolted them. Her ghosts looked angry enough to kill her.

They pleaded and followed me down the passages, plaintive and clutching. I tried to get them to show me where Eddie had gone, or been taken, but the tragedies of their unlived lives suddenly became too much. Their teeth fell out and their gray roots kept showing through, and their husbands pre-ejaculated and their hysterectomies left them vacant and bitter, and the welfare checks kept getting stolen out of their jimmied mailboxes.

The torchlight dispersed them. I tried more and more doors. Penitents kept their flagellation down to a minimum tonight. They chewed leather and their attempts at atonement were halfhearted at best. When the storm broke I knew that at least half of them would go back to the common world. Out there they'd be normal again. They'd screw around on their spouses and lie in confession. They'd get creative on their 1040s and forget to rewind their tape rents, and they'd cut each other off in traffic and buy shoes from Fane that didn't fit.

Where are you? I called when I came to the chapel.

Self carried the jar with Eddie's heart in it. He and Eddie stood holding hands before the door.

What are you doing here? I asked.

Self remained silent, panting. The flaps of Eddie's chest had been shut, and he wore a soggy shirt. He said, "I want to go to the place."

"Which place, Eddie?"

"The one of forgetting."

I worked my arm into Self's mouth and slashed myself against his fangs. I fed him blood hoping to sever the link between him and whatever else haunted Armon. His Adam's apple bopped as he sucked, and he soon began to burn and flood with our rage again.

Oh, my head.

You've been in contact with it.

Me? With what?

You tell me.

No, you tell me.

Where's the baby?

Safe.

Where are the others? Where's Aaron? And John?

There are no others. None who count.

He sniffed the jar and his mouth watered. I'd given him a taste, and his appetite grew as he watched the beating heart, thinking of the juice and raw flavor. The force of his own desire seemed to startle him, and he wavered a step and held the jar away from his face. It surprised the hell out of me. He handed Eddie's heart back to the boy, who held the pottery close. I felt something in my second self that I'd never felt before, and the icy sweat prickled my hair.

He'd almost felt guilty.

I asked, What's the place of forgetting?

Where did you hear that?

You think you can stop answering me with questions?

Can you?

Yes, I said.

L'oubliette, Mon Capitaine.

An oubliette was a miniature dungeon reached through a trapdoor that was so small only one person could be in it at a time, hunched over.

Do they even have one here?