Engines of the Broken World (7 page)

“Your sister needs some manners lessons,” Jenny said, looking pointedly at Gospel.

“Ain’t neither one of us going to give them to her, though. So you might as well answer. You already told me and I’m dying to tell her, only it’s your story and you’re right here, so I haven’t. But if you don’t spill soon you’d better believe I will.” He seemed pleased with himself, as if he was having a great time now, which maybe he was. Going out into a dreadful storm to save womenfolk was just the sort of thing that would make Gospel’s eyes light up, so long as he didn’t have to take care of them after. But then, that’s what I was for: taking care of everyone. Though not, it appeared, as regards a woman like Jenny Gone, who didn’t want any caring for.

“Fine and I will. Now you listen here, Merciful, and don’t interrupt, not that it’s too long in the telling. It was yesterday morning when I saw a fog rolling in across the hillside, where there’s a barren patch with nothing much growing in it, so even with the snow falling and all, I could still see the wall of white moving toward me. Up there, fog’ll tend to roll on up the mountain or on down, but not so much side to side, so that was peculiar. Well, I wondered about it, so I got all bundled up in my long coat and a wide brimmed hat and took a pack with some gear in it, because it was that kind of weather. In case I got stranded I didn’t want to just be doomed.”

Jenny was a good talker, once she got to talking, and I liked to just watch the way her mouth formed the words, each one carefully made and placed by her thin lips. She was probably about thirty years of age, though I didn’t know for sure. When I was very small, she still had a pa and was being courted by Benjamin Cally, who was dead these two years now. She wasn’t much of a looker, thickset and with hair of no particular color or fineness, but then, there weren’t too many choices around neither.

“The fog was cold as a witch’s tit,” she said, and I like to laughed, only it wasn’t in me right then, so I held it back, “and there wasn’t no sound that came into or out of it. After just a few yards, I didn’t even see any snow falling, though it was thick on the ground still. A deer went right past me, so close I could have reached out and touched it, heading out of the fog. But there was something wrong with it, sure as there’s something wrong with me now. It had a patch missing on the flank that faced me.”

“A patch of hair?” I asked, and it seemed like it was exactly what she wanted, because instead of cursing at me or somesuch, she smiled.

“No, not of hair. Just a patch, like it was a kid’s drawing only someone stopped coloring. Nothing there. Not meat or bones or anything, just blankness. I can’t describe it no better than that, and I know that don’t make much sense, but it’s all I’ve got to tell about the deer. Now why I didn’t just get the heck out of there right then I don’t begin to know. I’ve always been contrary, so I suppose I went contrary to myself. I pushed right on ahead into that there fog even though I knew, I knew right from the top of my head to the tips of my toes that it was wrong and I shouldn’t have been there.

“It was only another couple minutes, maybe, till I realized I couldn’t see any more tree trunks, even though I was past that clear rocky patch and in among the woods. Or I should’ve been. No trees, and the ground wasn’t seeming exactly white anymore, just … well, not white. Like a not-color, but I know that still doesn’t make any sense if you ain’t seen it. And it was then that I started to get a little troubled, or a lot troubled, because I guess I’d been a little troubled all the while, and I turned and started back. Only that no-color ground was slow to cross and seemed to get thicker, because I must have been pretty far into the fog, and then I … well, I can’t say I heard something. I suppose it felt like there was some pressure, and I turned to look over my shoulder—”

“Your left shoulder?” I said, perking up on the rug.

“My left. I kind of twisted about as I hurried, pushing my feet forward, and that was when I realized I just didn’t have an arm anymore. It didn’t hurt. I didn’t even feel anything. I guess that’s the whole point: I didn’t feel a thing, only when I looked forward again there wasn’t no arm at all. Nor an ear, but I didn’t realize that for a bit longer. I pushed harder than I’ve pushed ever, and I moved my legs by sheer cussedness and will, and I got out of that fog, only it was right near my house then. I didn’t dare go in for anything more, so I just started on down the hill. I come toward here because you’re all I know. My pack was flying loose half the time since there was nothing on my left to keep it in, and I realized I couldn’t hear so well and that’s when I noticed my ear was just gone, vanished.” She was crying then, not anyplace but her eyes, just tears coming down, though her voice didn’t change and she didn’t move at all. Only she leaked out tears the whole time while she was talking, and I didn’t blame her a bit. I thought she was real brave, actually.

“And with me only partway down the mountain, there comes Gospel up the hill with a path beat down in the snow from where he’d walked. And we hurry back down, with him not even asking any questions till we get here, and now I’ve told him, and now I’ve told you, and I don’t want to talk about it no more if that’s quite all right.” And she took up her teacup with her right hand and had a sip, and then set it down with a clatter, because her hand was shaking that bad. She sniffed deep in the silence that came after her tale, and I felt bad for asking her about it in the first place.

“I told you the fog was real, and I told you it was a terror.” Gospel said it soft, and he leaned over to me, but I was sure Jenny Gone could hear it too.

“I know you did. I didn’t ever see it, though. How was I to know?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

I realized the Minister must have heard every word, because it had come at some point to lie down at the bedroom doorway with its head raised above its paws and big ears cocked up to listen. It panted just like a real dog with its tongue hanging out, and you could let yourself think it was real—only it wasn’t, of course. After the trouble we took to make sure the Minister hadn’t heard us yesterday, it seemed odd to just let it hear everything, but then, with the fog scarce six miles off I supposed it didn’t much matter. The Minister could catch the whole danged story, for all I cared then, because there was nothing left, no time left. In a few days every one of us was going to die, or vanish into something that wasn’t, into a cold and dead fog.

Jenny wasn’t crying anymore, though there were still streaks on her face. She was ignoring them, and I thought it was good if I ignored them too, like a woman grown who wouldn’t pay any mind if her friend’s hair was out of place, not till there was a good moment to fix it up. Which this, for the tears, just wasn’t. Everyone was looking.

“Does it hurt at all?” I asked finally, because I wanted to know.

“No, it doesn’t. There’s no pain, there’s no blood, and I still feel like I can move it, only I can’t. It’s just not there. And sometimes I think I hear things from the missing ear, too. Voices, like lots of people talking, but there’s nothing there and I don’t hear it with my good ear.”

“You just can’t get enough of this, can you, Merce?” Gospel said with a chuckle.

The Minister spoke up from its post by the bedroom. “That is quite enough of the questions. Miss Gone has suffered enough, I should think.” Such compassion in the voice of the made thing. It shamed me to hear it so that I looked down at the rug and picked at the edge of it, where the fur was getting ragged and ratty.

“It’s all right, I don’t much mind. My own damned fault, really. I should’ve known it was nothing but badness and left, at least after the deer went by, but I didn’t. I got just what I merited, I’d guess.”

“No one merits such punishments, nor even knowing of them,” the Minister declared, and rose up, walking in its bounding way up to Jenny and laying its great head on her lap like a benediction. Old as it was, sometimes it did the right thing without any call being made, and this was one of those times. The poor crippled woman closed in on the Minister and started to weep freely, like I had with the Widow Cally just that morning. Gospel nodded his head to the kitchen, and I went with him, quietly creeping away to the other room so as not to embarrass Jenny any more than she likely would be already.

In the kitchen, Gospel reached up into the top of the cabinet above the sink, where I couldn’t even get my arm to and he had to stand on his tippy toes, and pulled down a brown glass bottle.

“What’s that?”

“Whiskey, dope. Papa used to drink it, and the bottle’s just sat here all this time. I reckon Jenny could use a swig, and maybe I could too.”

“The world’s coming to an end and you want to start up with liquor?”

“Ain’t like I’ll have any more time later. And maybe you should get yours in too, huh?” He pulled out a few little glasses, the sort of thing we never used but had gobs of anyhow, and splashed some brown, smelly stuff into three. He carried one out into the other room, and I watched him set it down beside Jenny, but she didn’t seem to notice. The Minister was whispering things to her, I thought, though it was hard to tell over her sobbing. Gospel came back a moment later and took up the other two little glasses, holding one out to me.

“No thank you, Gospel, no thank you at all,” I snapped, and pushed the glass away.

“Suit yourself, but I’m betting if Esmeralda Cally herself was here and had heard what we just did, she’d have a plug and call it medicinal.” He nodded at me as he set down the glass I’d rejected, and then tipped his head back to gulp down his own whiskey. Which he then promptly spit out in the sink, coughing and gasping. “That stuff is foul. How’d Papa drink it at all, I wonder?”

“Reckon you get a taste for it, probably, same as stewed cabbage,” I said, remembering one of my least favorite foods when I was little, though I had kind of gotten to like it before we quit growing many vegetables. That work had become too much trouble for Mama.

“Well, I don’t expect I’ll get a chance. Shoot. I wanted to be a man who drank.” He was disappointed, I could tell, but not as much as he put on.

“Do you think we’re really going to die, or go away, or whatever?”

He looked at me eye to eye and licked his lips, and then he nodded real sharp and looked away, corking up the bottle again.

“It’s not fair,” I said, quiet, and like a little girl.

“Life ain’t fair, or Mama wouldn’t’ve gone crazy, and Papa wouldn’t’ve got shot, and you would’ve had little friends to play with and all that. No, it ain’t fair at all.” He reached up way high to put the bottle away.

And then I heard it, over the click of the bottle settling into place and the murmuring of the Minister and the softer but still-present sobbing of Jenny Gone. The creak of a step, of one of the steps in the cellar, and my head turned and my eyes flew to where the big chair should’ve been but wasn’t.

“Gospel, did you move the chair?”

“Sure I did,” he said. “I needed to get down there with the chickens and the goats, hang them up. I’ll cure ’em in a little while, but I wanted to get them in.”

Another creak of a stair, almost stealthy, but somehow I could hear it. A few feet off in the next room the Minister had fallen silent, but I couldn’t spare a glance to see if it, too, was looking this way. Then I heard the tiniest sound, like a fingernail on wood:
tap tap tap
. Gospel looked over from the cabinet to the back door, where I suppose he thought it came from, but I knew—oh, I knew. It was the hatch to the cellar.

“Put the chair back on top of the hatch, Gospel,” I said, trying to stay calm.

“Move it your own danged self if you want it there,” he barked, and I didn’t even argue. I just hurried past him and picked up the heavy old thing, grunting and straining, and staggered over to the hatch and dropped it there, falling with it just as I swear I saw the blessed thing lifting, the tiniest crack off the floor. Me and the chair slammed it shut, and I plopped onto the seat and shushed Gospel, who was suddenly all interested and full of questions.

I heard the creak of a stair, but it was farther away, and then another, probably right at the bottom, and then nothing. I got on up to my feet from where I’d been sprawled out over the chair and backed away a foot or two.

“Do you mind telling me what the heck is going on?” Gospel demanded, sitting down in the big chair, which right then was about the thing I most wanted him to do.

“You won’t believe me.”

“Like you didn’t believe me about the fog?” His face was a big smirk that I wanted to slap right off of him, but he had a point.

I leaned in right to his ear and whispered real soft, “Mama’s up and walking down there.”

“She’s dead, Merciful.”

“I know. All the same, though.”

And I stood up, and he looked at me and he laughed a little, and then was quiet for just a moment. He tried to laugh again, but something in my face told him I meant it, meant it for real.

“You’re dead serious, ain’t you?”

I nodded.

“Well, shoot. I thought the fog was big news, but this is … this is just plain crazy. Does the Minister know?”

“I think so. I think it’s scared of her.”

“I know I am, for sure. If it’s really her.” He looked down at the door at his feet. “We should go and look.”

“No, Gospel, we can’t.”

“Merciful, there’s a fog full of death or worse closing in on us. How bad can it get?”

I admitted then that he had a point and that maybe we should go downstairs, but not aloud. Just to myself. To him and to the part of me that was terrified by the idea, I just said,
we couldn’t
,
we shouldn’t
,
we mustn’t
, and tried to leave it at that.

But he was Gospel, and he wasn’t likely to listen to any kind of sense, for all my pleading. He just smiled and stood up and started for the sitting room, and I trailed along.

Outside, the light was finally dying, probably for the last time ever.

E
IGHT

Gospel went to fetch the poker from the hearth in the bedroom because he thought Jenny should have a weapon. He still had his knife, though I was hoping we wouldn’t really have a need to protect ourselves since it was Mama. Only maybe it wasn’t. Gospel came back and pressed the poker into Jenny’s one hand, the Minister padding up behind but not really even coming into the kitchen, hardly sticking in its head. I knew—this time I for certain knew—that it was terrified of whatever was down there, even if I was the only other being in this world who could tell there was something to be scared of.