The neighborhood was quiet. No creatures, no dead things, nothing creeping in the shadows.
I walked along Concord to Orchard Circle, past the dead end and down the slope to the bridge.
It was lonesome walking so late at night and more lonesome navigating the deep ravine between my neighborhood and the center of town, not knowing what I was walking into. As I started down, I could smell a wet, mushy odor like garden compost and rot.
The guitarist from Rasputin Sings the Blues was standing on the footbridge, his silhouette barely visible in the dark and made unnaturally tall by his top hat. He was smoking a cigarette, and when he looked up, the cherry glowed a bright, violent red.
I stepped out onto the bridge. "Are you waiting for me?"
He nodded and waved toward the other end of the bridge. "Let's go for a walk."
My skin was prickling all over. "Who are you--what's your name?"
"Call me Luther, if you like."
"And if I don't like?"
"Then call me something else." After a fairly mysterious pause, he pointed to the other side of the ravine again, then jerked his head down at the slag heap.
"Where are we going?"
"Into the pit, of course."
The sound of his voice made shudders creep down my neck. A person would have to be crazy to go down into a lair of dead things. A person would have to out of his mind. I knew that I should just tell him no deal, just walk away.
It was no good, though. There were all kinds of arguments for turning around, climbing the path, walking straight back home and locking the door. But when it came to Emma, my loyalty had never been in question. I would do pretty much anything.
I followed Luther across the bridge and along a tangled path that ran down to the bottom of the ravine, where the slag heap sat lumpy and black. As we moved deeper into the shadow of the ravine, it seemed to rise up, huge against the sky.
Luther smiled and touched the brim of his hat. "Home, sweet home."
"So, you live in the slag heap?"
He twitched his shoulders, almost a shrug. "Well, to be more accurate, underneath."
Then he reached inside his coat and brought out a knife. The blade was long and yellow, made of ivory or bone. I stepped back.
He laughed. "Don't be a fool. I'm not going to cut you."
Then he jammed the knife into the base of the hill, all the way to the handle.
When the blade sank into the slag, nothing happened for a second. Then a sheet of gravel slid away, exposing a narrow door.
He pocketed the knife and pushed the door open, waving me through. The entryway was dark and smelled like mildew. The opening was low and the air was wet and cold, but when he ushered me in, I didn't hesitate. I stepped inside and Luther followed me into a low tunnel. When I looked back, all I could see was the faded black of his coat as he guided me down.
We moved slowly, and I kept one hand on the wall. It was rough, crusted with loose debris, but the tunnel didn't seem to be in danger of collapsing. The floor sloped steadily downward as we went and I was increasingly aware that we were deep underground. Deeper than cellars and basements and the water mains that ran in a complex network under the streets. The weight of earth above us was almost suffocating, but something about it was comforting, too. I felt surrounded, like I was being held in place.
As we kept going, the tunnel widened, and the air got wetter and colder. A long way down, there was light.
When we reached the end of the tunnel, Luther stopped, straightening his collar, adjusting his lapels. The light came from the narrow crack between a pair of heavy double doors. He caught hold of twin handles and dragged the doors open.
Then he swept off his hat and bowed low. "Welcome to the House of Mayhem."
I was standing in a kind of lobby, with a stone floor and a high ceiling. Torches burned in rows along the wall and the smoke had a black, oily smell like kerosene. The handles were mismatched, made from dead branches and baseball bats and one that looked like the handle of a garden shovel or an ax. The walls were lined with other doorways, lower and narrower than the one we'd just come through. On opposite sides of the room were two massive fireplaces, but neither of them was lit.
A group of girls stood around one of the fireplaces, watching us. All of them had on long, grimy dresses and stiff vests that laced up the back. The smell coming off them was worse than the girl at the party. It made me think of a morgue.
At the far end of the lobby, there was a big wooden desk. It was the kind that a librarian or a receptionist might sit behind, but no one was in the chair.
When Luther put his hand between my shoulders, the weight and suddenness of it made me jump.
"Come now," he said softly. "No need for alarm. She just wants an audience with you."
He pushed me closer and we leaned over the desk to look behind it.
A little girl was crouched on the floor. She had on a white party dress that looked like it was made of old surgical gauze and also like it might have been on fire at some point. She was sitting with her legs pulled up, drawing on the stone with a burned stick. All the pictures looked like eyes and giant mouths full of teeth.
Luther leaned against the desk and pressed a little brass bell. "Here's your boy."
The girl turned and looked up at me. When she smiled, I stepped back from the desk. Her face was young and kind of shy, but her mouth was crowded with small, jagged teeth. Not a nice, respectable thirty-two, but closer to fifty or sixty.
"Oh dear," she said, putting down her stick and reaching out a dirty hand. "I ought to have been more cautious." Her voice was soft, and her train wreck of a mouth made her lisp. "You think I'm ugly."
The truth was, yes. She did look ugly, maybe even horrifying, but her eyes were wide. She was going to be terrifying if she grew any bigger, but for now, she was cute the way even a turkey or a possum can be cute when it's a baby.
She patted the heavy, high-backed chair beside her. "Here, sit and talk with me. Tell me about yourself."
I didn't sit down right away. It was hard to know what to think of her. She was different from Luther and different from the girls at Stephanie's party. Her jagged teeth and her tiny size made her seem more implausible, more impossible than all the rest of them.
When I took a seat on the edge of the chair, she went back to drawing on the floor.
"I've been curious about you," she said, scraping a new charcoal mouth with her stick. "We were so pleased that you survived childhood. Castoffs generally don't."
I nodded, staring down at the top of her head. "Who are you?"
She stood up and moved closer, staring into my face. Her eyes were dull black, like the feathers on a dead bird. "I'm the Morrigan."
The word sounded strange, like something in another language.
"I'm so pleased that you could find it in your heart to visit us," she whispered, reaching to touch my chin. "It's wonderful that you need us because we need you, you see, and business arrangements are so much more satisfying if they're reciprocal."
"What do you mean 'need you'? I don't need anything."
"Oh, darling," she said, smiling and reaching for my hand. "Don't be silly. Of course you need us. You're becoming so frail, and it's only going to get worse. This really is the best solution for all of us. You'll help me, and in return, I'll make sure you're supplied with all the remedies and analeptics you need and you won't have to live out the rest of your days in slow agony."
I watched her, trying to see the reason behind why I was even here. "What do you want?" I said, sounding more nervous than I would have liked.
"Don't look so alarmed. I won't ask you to do anything you don't already desire in your heart." She turned away and knelt on the floor again, picking at her hair. "While music is hardly the most powerful kind of worship, it's fine and adequate. We're always looking to bring new blood to our stage."
"What does that have to do with me, though? I'm just . . . no one."
"You have a good face," she said, crossing her legs and fidgeting with her dress. "An undamaged body. Your wholeness makes you immeasurably useful to me. If it's agreeable, I'll send you out onstage with the rest of my musical beauties to stand in front of the town and receive their admiration." Each time she pulled out a clump of hair, she set it carefully off to the side of her drawings, like she was starting a collection.
"Rasputin, you mean? When?"
"Tomorrow, at that estimable venue, the Starlight."
"But I just saw them. They played last night."
"We're in a bad time," she said. "Don't tell me you haven't seen the signs."
I thought of the rusting grates and brackets at the Starlight and nodded.
"The town is drawing away from us. The rains dishearten them, and their attentions are half felt at best. We need all the adulation we can get. If the season is bad enough, I'll send them up every night until the worst days have passed."
"What do you want me to do, though?"
The Morrigan smiled. "Now we come to it. Your sister has been a busy girl, as I'm sure you know. She appealed to us on your behalf, asking for medicines and cures, which we were only too happy to provide. It's easy enough to mix the medicines you need. All we ask is that you help us in our endeavor for applause."
I didn't ask what the point of applause was or how she even knew that I could play. Instead, what came out of my mouth was dazed and stupid sounding. "Why is it important to make them happy?"
The Morrigan ripped out another clump of hair. "They're better at loving us when they're happy."
I was beginning to get the feeling we were just going around in circles. "What does it mean, love us? How can they love you? They don't even believe you exist."
"They have to love because otherwise, they fear and they hate, and we'll all spiral down in one long decline. They'll hunt us--they've done it before. If we don't keep the peace, they kill us."
I knew that was the truth. All my daily concerns and everything that defined my life--it all came back to what had been done to Kellan Caury.
The Morrigan scowled and it made her look terrifying. "They can be very dangerous if they take it into their heads, so it's imperative that they remain placated. Their admiration sustains us, and our music makes them smile, even if they don't realize it's us they're smiling at."
"You live off groupies?"
She shrugged and drew a large, lumpy animal on the floor. "Off their attentions and their little favors." She added a pair of eyes, drew two slashes for pupils. "It's not the only form of tribute, but it's a good one."
"If it's not the only form, what else is there?"
"I have a sister who believes something else." She said it lightly, but she was looking away and her voice sounded thin and high pitched. "She's a right vicious cow, though."
"That's not a very nice thing to say about your sister."
"Well, it's not a nice thing, snatching away children. It makes the town uneasy." She dropped the stick and crawled over to the corner of the desk, peering around it at the main doors. "And it means giving up our own precious babes to replace theirs."
The two girls from Stephanie's party had come in from the long tunnel that led up to the slag heap. The one with the torn throat leaned in the doorway, while the little pink princess skipped around her, waving the star wand.
The Morrigan stood up and pointed to the rotting one. "The family knew her for what she was. They took her out into the hollow by Heath Road one night and cut her throat with a sickle."
I tried to breathe, but for a second, my lungs wouldn't cooperate. The girl was horrific, but the story was worse.
The Morrigan only nodded and patted my hand. "Terrible, isn't it? She was very young. Only a baby, really."
The girl stood by the double doors, tall and ragged. She was running her fingers over her torn throat, playing with the edges of the gash. When she caught me looking, she smiled.
I glanced away and turned back to the Morrigan. "How could she have died when she was a baby, though? I mean, she's not little anymore--she grew up."
The Morrigan nodded. "And why shouldn't she?"
"Because when people are dead, they don't do that--they don't get older."
She waved me off, shaking her head. "That's ridiculous. How on earth could I keep a proper house if I had to spend all my time looking after infants who never learned to look after themselves?" The Morrigan smiled, sounding pleased with herself. "The dead mind me. It's not a hard trick to make them live again if you have the right tokens and charms and the right names to call them by."
"I don't know, but I think most people would say that's a pretty hard trick to pull off."
She looked up at me, shaking her head seriously. "Mostly, people just don't want to."
"People like your sister?"
She grabbed the stick and slammed it down on the floor. "My sister lives on blood and sacrifice. She cares nothing for what's already dead. But then, she has the distinct advantage of being born heartless."
"It's heartless to think dead things should stay dead?"
"No," said the Morrigan. "It's heartless to use children so callously, to toss them away simply because she'd rather have something else. But look at me, I'm going on. You've come for the hawthorn analeptic, and I intend to give it."
When she came around the front of the desk and reached for my hand, I followed her.
She led me out through a narrow door and down a short flight of stone steps. The air smelled damp and mineralized, but it was nice and I wanted to keep breathing it. I followed her through doorways and tunnels, amazed by how far the House of Mayhem seemed to sprawl.
We turned down a wide hallway and into a huge room, far bigger than the lobby. The floor of it was covered in patches of standing water, so much in places that there was no way to avoid it.
The Morrigan splashed happily, jumping into the smallest puddles and kicking at the surface so that water sprayed up around her. I followed more carefully, walking around it where I could.
"Mind the pools," she said, pulling me back from the edge of a wide puddle. "Some of them go quite deep and I would have to call Luther to fish you out."
I looked closer at the puddle I'd almost stepped in. The edges were steep, cut straight down into the stone, and the puddle was so deep that I couldn't see the bottom.
At the end of the room, we skirted around a pool that was even bigger than the others. A woman lay on her back, floating in the water. Her arms were crossed over her chest and buckled to her sides with canvas straps, but she drifted on the surface without going under. Her dress was stuck to her legs, sinking down so the hem of it disappeared into the murky water. Her eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling, and her hair fanned out around her head, tangled with leaves and twigs. There were deep scars running down her cheeks, crisscrossing and overlapping, like someone had carved a grid into her face.
The Morrigan barely glanced at her, but I stopped and leaned down to get a better look. "Is she dead too?"
The Morrigan scampered back and came up next to me. "Her? Oh, not remotely."
"What happened to her, then?"
The Morrigan took a deep breath, like she was trying to find the best way to explain something, and said carefully, "Some can go out and some can't, and some can only go out on nights when strangeness passes for merriment, and some used to go out but due to misfortune or accident cannot go out anymore." She slipped her arm through mine and whispered, "My sister's man did that to her--the Cutter. He laid iron rods against her face because it amused him, and now we have to fasten her arms down to keep her from clawing off her own skin."
In the pool at my feet, the woman opened her mouth but didn't make any noise. Her lips were a chilly blue and she stared up at me with wide, anguished eyes until I had to look away.
I turned to the Morrigan. "Why, though? What good does it do to hurt someone like that?"
"Not good. It's never a matter of good. But my sister does love to punish the innocent for our trespasses. She was displeased with me, so she took it out on someone else." The Morrigan fumbled for my hand. Hers was tiny and hot. "It wasn't my intention to make you sad. Here, don't let's dwell on misfortune. Come along and we'll fetch you something nice to take away with you."
When I looked over my shoulder, the woman was still floating, staring at the ceiling as the water slopped gently against her tattered cheeks.
The Morrigan glanced up at me. "It's not always so bad as that," she said. "My sister is only unduly cruel to those who cross her. She makes sure we know where we stand and who we answer to, but if you keep out of her way, there's nothing to fear."
We left through a door at the far end and went down another flight of steps to a little room off the end of a hall.
I stood in the doorway, staring into a room full of glass cabinets. A marble counter ran the length of the wall, with shelves and cupboards above it. The counter was covered with pipes and test tubes and glass containers in all different sizes.
Emma's friend Janice was sitting on a little hassock at the counter, picking through a heap of twigs and roots and leaves. I almost didn't recognize her. Instead of the wild tangle of curls, her hair had been scraped back hard from her face and twisted into a knot on top of her head, like Emma usually did before she went to bed. It made Emma look touchable and soft, but on Janice the effect was the opposite. It left her face completely unobscured, showing high, sharp cheekbones and a delicate jaw.
She was startlingly beautiful, but in a way that could never function in the world. The kind of thing so eerie that people can't even deal with it, and so they have to destroy it.
She had one leg stuck out behind her at an awkward angle, trailing her bare foot in the flooded place where water bubbled up from the stone.
"Hello, ugly boy who isn't ugly," she said without looking up. "Are you here for more of my restoratives and my analeptics?"
The Morrigan went skipping across to her through the puddles and hugged her around the neck. "He would like another dram of the hawthorn, please. Just a taste, to start with. If he does us proud tomorrow, we'll see about giving him a more practical amount."
Janice got up and went over to the row of cupboards. She was wearing a sort of romper suit. It buttoned down the front, with lace around the neck and armholes, and looked like it might be some kind of old-fashioned underwear. She opened a glass-fronted cabinet and started sorting through bottles.
When she found one she wanted, she took it back to the counter. With great concentration, she licked a paper label, running it carefully along her tongue, and pasted it to the bottle. Taking a pen from the knot on top of her head, she marked the label with what looked like a big floppy 3. Then she turned and looked up at me.
"A dram," she said, setting the bottle in my hand. "It isn't much, but it should be enough to hold you until you've earned your keep."
Behind her, the Morrigan was creeping toward the worktable, reaching for the pile of plant cuttings.
Janice spun around on her hassock and slapped the back of the Morrigan's hand. "Naughty!"
The Morrigan skipped back, looking guilty and sorry. Janice sorted through the leaves and stems until she found a small yellow flower and tucked it behind the Morrigan's ear.
The Morrigan ran her fingers over the flower, smiling and ducking her head. "She's very kind, our Janice. Isn't she kind?"
I held up the little bottle. "Is this why the dead girls and the people in the band seem okay?"
The Morrigan shook her head. She rolled her head so the side of her face was pressed against my arm. Her cheek was hot. "You are an entirely different class of people. Everyone has their own manner of survival. The blue girls are quite sturdy, only susceptible to true destruction by dismemberment and by fire. My players only need adulation if they're to thrive, and my lady-sister lives off the blood sacrifice of unfortunate creatures like Malcolm Doyle."
I stared down at her. "Me, you mean?"
She shook her head. "Oh, no, Malcolm Doyle was a little boy who was taken from his bed in order to feed the ravenous appetites of my sister. You are someone else."
It was the truth, but it still felt strange to hear someone say it. I am not Malcolm Doyle. I'm someone else. "So, they hurt him."
"She tore out his throat," the Morrigan said. "It was very quick. I suppose it may even have been painless, but I can't be sure. Yes," she said after a minute, winding a handful of hair around her wrist and then unwinding it again. "On second thought, I do imagine that it hurt."
"So, when you talk about feeding on the town, you mean murder."
"Oh, no, no. Not murder--sacrifice. And the cost is small. It hardly even qualifies as hardship, as it only comes in sevens, and the town grows strong on it for another handful of years, and when the town is well, so are we."
I remembered how bad I'd felt at the blood drive just smelling the iron. "Do you drink it?"
The Morrigan shook her head. "The Lady's methods are her own business and has barely anything to do with the House of Mayhem. Our job is only to stand in the churchyard and bear witness."
"What are you talking about? You can't go in the churchyard."
"Don't be dense. It has a plot saved just for us--you know, for the heretical and the unclean."
"For suicides and stillbirths and murderers, though. Not for people like you."
The Morrigan smiled up at me and squeezed my hand. "That ground is for us. Each seven years, we go down to the unholy ground and bear witness to the bloodletting."
I stared at her. "But that means it doesn't even get used if they're just pouring it out."
"Intention is one of the most powerful forces there is. What you mean when you do a thing will always determine the outcome. The law creates the world."
"But you can't pour blood on the ground and have it make you strong because you think it should. The world is just . . . the world."
The Morrigan shook her head, smiling. "All great acts are ruled by intention. What you mean is what you get. In the House of Mayhem, we get what we need when they love us. That's why we need lovely creatures like you--there's a great deal of power in beauty, you know."
I thought about Alice, how she existed at the top of the social ladder for no reason except that the perfect symmetry of her face made people want to do whatever she said.
The Morrigan was hugging herself, rocking back and forth. She leaned against me suddenly, resting her cheek on my arm. "We love the town as best we can, and they love us back, although they don't always know they're doing it. But it isn't enough for my sister. She needs sacrifice."
She played with the flower behind her ear and said in a low, singsong voice, "She takes their pretty babies, and in exchange, she leaves them our own diseased flesh. Those are the ones who die, of course--almost always. It's nearly impossible to live outside the hill. So you see, we sacrifice our own too. But it's a small cost to give up the sick ones, the ones who are only going to die anyway. Except . . ."
"Except what?"
Her hand was small and hot when she reached for mine. She turned and smiled up at me, showing her jagged teeth. "Except you didn't. Isn't that the most wonderful thing?"
I didn't answer. I was too far into my own unsettling memory, thinking about the dark, flapping shadow and the screen. What it meant to be left somewhere and never found.
The Morrigan laced her fingers through mine, holding on tight. I looked down at her and she was shrunken and ugly, smiling like she knew something completely desolate. Like she knew me. Her eyes were huge and dark, and I smiled back because she looked kind of pitiful standing there. She looked so sad.
"Promise," she said, hooking her little finger through mine and leading me toward the door. "Promise that you'll work for me and play glorious music, and in return, I'll make sure you never want for anything. Promise that you stay safe and out of the clutches of my sister, and in return, we'll cease to trouble your own sister."
"I promise," I said, because Emma was the most important person in my life and because it was nice to be able to breathe. "I promise."