Engines of the Broken World (16 page)

The eyes opened, shining white now, and the head nodded slowly. “The only one left, and it’s bringing the world, every possible world, to an end. If we destroy it, it’ll all stop. At least, your mother thought so.”

Oh, how Mama had raged against the Minister in those last days of her decline, and now I guessed I knew why. “But how can we destroy it?”

“I don’t know,” Auntie said. “But it will not want you to. And it’s powerful. More than I guessed.”

I realized I was a stupid little girl, and Gospel was out in the snow because of me, and he’d never catch the Minister because it was terrible and clever and Heaven knows what all else. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t ever, I guessed, know what to say to Auntie. She weren’t like anything else I’d ever seen, and there was no fashion in which she could be made familiar. And what she said … well, Gospel had the right of it in some way, ’cause it was unbelievable and seemed like a lie, but then again so was the cold unbelievable, the cold that was so intense that even in the cellar, where it should’ve been warmer, I could see every tiny breath I let out, and I was shaking on the steps, and even Auntie in Mama’s dead body was giving off the faintest steam of heat in the frigid air.

I heard something upstairs and wondered if it was Miz Cally up and moving. Or maybe Gospel had come back, and that was something I truly hoped for. But like a cloud came the thought that maybe it was neither of them. If it wasn’t, that would be … well, it didn’t bear thinking on at all.

S
IXTEEN

I scrambled up the stairs, not casting one single look back at the thing at the bottom, and ran into the kitchen. The Widow was standing up, swaying like a willow tree with one ringed hand on the table and the other held to her head, where her hat had slipped and her smooth dark head shone in the light.

“Miz Cally, you’re awake,” I said, slipping my shoulder under her arm to help her stand.

“What’s happened, girl? And why’s it so blasted cold now?”

“I don’t rightly know what happened, Miz Cally. The Minister, I think it did something to you. It made you go to sleep, or something like that.” Really I kind of thought it had tried to kill her, but I didn’t ought to say that, I guessed. A body didn’t like to be told that something she had trusted for a span of years tried to push her into an early grave, and maybe that wasn’t what happened at all, though not if you asked me. “Why it’s cold … well, it’s just been getting colder all this time, and the door’s been opened for a moment and let out the warm.” It sounded really stupid to say it like that, but it was the truth.

“For how long did I swoon?”

“An hour, or two hours, maybe. I don’t rightly know. It’s been cold and awful, and Gospel’s gone out to chase the Minister, who ran away after it hurt you, and downstairs…” I fell silent.

She stood up on her own, looking down at me from her great height. “Downstairs what, Merciful? What’s downstairs? Is there really some kind of horrible demon possessing your mama’s poor unburied body? Tell me the truth, now, girl.”

“The truth is there’s something in there, and I don’t know if it’s good or if it’s bad.”

“You ain’t been down there to speak with it, have you?”

I squirmed under her glance, and I didn’t want to say I had. I knew I was probably trucking with the Devil when I talked to Auntie, and Miz Cally took all that sort of thing very seriously. So I didn’t make a peep, which meant that of course she just pushed right past me, a little unstable still, and moved over to the stairs. The light in the cellar was dim and shaky, the oil in the lamp probably running low, but you could see something down there, a shifting something that was probably Mama’s leg. The Widow set her hand on the hatch and flipped it down so that it closed with a bang.

“You will tell me right this instant what is happening down in the cellar, or so help me God I will turn you over my knee until you squeal out the truth. I expect it’s something dreadful, just from the bit I could see, and I want to be prepared before I go to clean up that awfulness.”

“You can’t!” I wailed. I knew she meant to set herself to doing something, and the way that she talked back at her house maybe she knew well enough what needed doing. Which would be a sore trial if she got rid of Auntie, because I still thought we needed her, no matter how awful she was. “It’s a lady who knew Mama. And Miz Cally, she’s helping us.”

“Helping you? Oh, no, child. That’s possession, and that’s a devil down there in the body, making it stir and move. If the Minister was here, we’d have an exorcism right now, no matter what you think that made thing might have done to me. But since it’s gone, and probably not eager to come back, I gather, I’ll have to do my part.”

“Miz Cally, she knows things. Things that can help us, things that can stop the fog.”

“We should rather be dead and saved than live and be damned, girl, and that’s the sort of thing this’ll lead to. Such a thing hasn’t happened much since we got the Ministers, but it’s the end of days, and all the heavens and hells are breaking loose, I expect. Now, are you going to help me or slow me down?” She tapped her foot expectantly.

I didn’t know what to say, because I knew she was mostly right—that it was something awful, whatever was inside Mama’s body. On the other hand, I didn’t want the world to end, and me still just a girl. So I clamped my mouth shut, and the Widow did just what she’d done before, which was ignore me being useless and get on with her business. In this case, she took up the bucket and the cloths that sat by the sink, picking them up for what reason I couldn’t begin to guess, and she pulled open the cellar door.

Mama was right there, as if she had been waiting for the chance to make an entrance. She rose up, pushing from the stairs, and I screamed in surprise and a little in terror because she was awful bad to see in better light, all purple on her whole back half, and with a few spots where her skin was broken and weeping clear fluid, with her mouth hanging open and her eyes as pale as the storm outside. Esmeralda Cally, always practical, didn’t scream at all, just swung the bucket of water overhand and brought it down, splashing like a fountain, on Mama’s head. The whole operation produced a noise like a frog jumping into a pond, and then Auntie reeled back and tumbled down the stairs. With her other hand, the Widow flipped down the hatch and put one big boot right on top of it.

“That was plenty satisfying, indeed it was,” the Widow said, and as she turned to look at me I dropped the hand that had risen to my mouth in fear. “Now, was that what you expected, Merciful?”

“No, ma’am.”

“And did that seem friendly, and at all like your mama?”

“No, ma’am.” I could hear something moving about in the cellar, the thump of something settling on the stairs and then a wheezing sound, and scraping. She was crawling up the stairs, I supposed, dragging herself maybe.

“Now do you see why I say we need to dispose of this thing?”

“Yes, Miz Cally.”

“Then fetch me some snow, and we’ll get to work on the matter.”

I took the bucket from her hand where she held it out. “What do you need snow for?” I asked, because it was mighty cold outside and I didn’t want to open the door.

“You can’t cast out a spirit without pure water, girl, and snow’s as pure as you’ll get.”

I was about to ask her why she didn’t just get it herself seeing how the door was just three feet off from her, but then I took a moment and saw as how she was shuddering like a new chick. She was an old lady, after all, and probably this wasn’t what she’d expected to do with her day. So I stepped over to the back door and opened it enough to scoop in a mound of snow, most of which ended up in the bucket, but some scattered on the wood of the kitchen floor. The thumping, scraping, and wheezing wafted yet from the cellar, but it sounded a little closer, and after I shut the door tight I hurried to carry the bucket back to the Widow’s still-extended hand.

“Good work, girl. Now, it would be better if it was water proper, because water is cleansing, but there’s enough good in snow, I suppose, and we ain’t got no time to melt it down. And we ain’t got a Minister to lead the prayers, but I might know them well enough, I guess, after a lifetime of praying.”

“Wait,” we could hear, muffled by the wood, “listen to me.” Scratching and scraping, the body was climbing up closer, I could tell.

“Evil spirits don’t impress me much. Open up that hatch, Merciful,” the Widow said, and hefted the bucket up high as she started to pray for strength from the Lord. I lifted up the hatch and crouched by the back door, holding it up. Miz Cally was at the other end, where the stairs met the floor, while I was looking down into the dimness.

Auntie was draped across most of the steps, her head just a couple of stairs down from the opening. “I’m not an evil spirit,” she croaked out. “I’m a woman, like you. I know you, Esmie. I know you inside and out.”

“You don’t have no right to call me by that name,” the Widow said, and dumped down the mound of snow onto Mama’s body, which was pulling itself bit by bit up the stairs.

“I’ve got all the right in the world. I know you, Esmie, I know your sorrows,” Auntie said. The snow hadn’t seemed to hurt her none, and the Widow wasn’t praying too steady, what with stopping to yell down at the thing in Mama’s body.

“Don’t tell me none of your lies,” Miz Cally said, and then called on the Lord and started up her praying again.

I didn’t think this was how an exorcism was supposed to go, with all the interruptions and the bickering, and if it hadn’t been so generally terrifying, I suspected I might’ve laughed. But the one bloated hand that slapped down on the kitchen floor wasn’t funny, and then the other reached out for the far edge of the flipped-up hatch and they both started to tug. Lurching, dripping wet, and with snow still piled on her back, Auntie loomed up into the kitchen. The Widow had stepped away. I could hear her praying up a storm, calling on the Good Lord to make it right.

The beast on the stairs pushed itself up, dragging its legs behind it, while the Widow stepped back farther, her hands making the sign of the cross. I crouched back against the kitchen door, feeling the cold of outside burning into me. Auntie straightened up fully and set her left leg onto the wood floor of the room. As she stepped out I could see that one leg didn’t hold her straight at all, because it looked like it was broken in the calf, and I supposed that happened when she got knocked down. But if it was broke, it didn’t stop her from standing on it. She listed just a bit to the right.

“Now, Esmie, you have two choices. You can keep pushing me down these stairs until you get tired of it and lock me in, though that won’t keep me out of the way for long; or you can talk to me, the same as Merciful has, and see that while I look a bit ugly, I’m still a person. We don’t have much time, only a few hours to talk, and then one way or another it’ll all be over.” Her hands were out before her like she was pleading.

There was something in her voice when she said the last bit. It was hard to tell, because she sounded dreadful all the time, but right then it seemed like there was even more dreadfulness, and it sent a shudder right down my spine. I bent my head down a little so I couldn’t barely see, but I still peeked out through my eyelashes.

“Before all the saints and angels, I’ll have no truck with you. Good Lord give me strength!” the Widow said. She snatched a necklace from around her neck, one with a big and dangling crucifix, and leaning forward she shoved hard at the thing’s chest. I was mighty proud of her just then, for standing up for herself. Talking to the thing in Mama didn’t seem like the best of notions anymore.

But Auntie didn’t fall down this time. Instead those pleading hands reached up and wrapped around Miz Cally’s wrists. The monster spun out of the way, pushing Miz Cally. I gasped as the old lady kept going forward, though I don’t think she really much wanted to. She was moving fast, though, and was getting a bit of help from Auntie, and before I could say anything, before I could do more than try to catch at her tall, falling form, she was taking a tumble down those stairs. The cellar door slammed shut behind her, bouncing off my knuckles as it passed. Auntie’s half-purple, half-white hand had flipped it shut, and there was me with my hands outstretched only three feet from her, the skin scraped from the banging hatch. The fat hand reached up and pushed at her cheeks with spread fingers, twisting up the corners of her mouth, or trying to, so that she could make herself smile. Her lips split while she was doing it, and I felt like being sick again.

“I do believe I’m getting the hang of this body. Now, I’ve a few things to say, Merciful, and I expect you to listen carefully.”

S
EVENTEEN

There was a moment of silence then, and I strained for any sound, even a groan, coming from the cellar, but there weren’t nothing I could hear over the wind that still howled outside. I wondered if Gospel might suddenly come back and save me from what I’d got myself into, but I didn’t figure that was very likely. No, not very likely at all. He’d been gone awhile now, though I wasn’t sure exactly how long. It was so cold inside that even with the fires going the snow had barely melted inside the back door and my breath was a visible fog every time I panted out my fear, so that I couldn’t think he’d be all right outside. I was sorely sad that I had sent my only family out into the horrible wilds. Didn’t suppose it much mattered, though, as we weren’t likely to get to make up with each other.

I did about the only thing I could, which was to shuffle my feet around the cellar door real slow and hope she didn’t notice I was moving until I was out of her reach. After all, her eyes were milky and rotten, and I thought she probably didn’t see none too good. Except she had seen the Widow without any problem, when she needed to. Whatever this thing was, she wasn’t quite what she had tried to seem in the basement, helpless and confused. After I figured I was far enough from her grip, I spun on my heel and bolted away with the quickness that only a girl with an older brother can muster. Around the table and through the door I went, into the god-awful sitting room, which was frigid cold and covered in the blood of that danged hen that lay by the door, dead in a pool of slick, frozen red.