Hold The Dark: A Markhat story (4 page)

I put my hand on it, but didn’t turn it right away. I listened to the sounds of the house—the creaking of wood beams, a soft hooting of wind somewhere up in the attic, a gentle snoring that came from the bedridden Mother Hoobin’s room. All the sounds were muffled and faraway, lost in the big solid confines of the house. They were gentle sounds, homey sounds, the sort of easy familiar sounds that lull you right to sleep.

I turned the knob, pushed and let light from the hall lamps spill in before me.

It was just as I imagined. Neat and orderly. Hand-sewn and bright and comfortable. There was a four-poster bed with veils hung across the posts and a big iron-banded cedar chest at its foot. There was a polished oak dresser that hadn’t come from any flooded farmstead, a big round mirror hung on the plaster wall above it. There was a nightstand on the far side of the bed, a flower-box beyond the window and a door that led to a bathroom on the far wall. There were lamps, and a handful of long matches in a silver vase. I lit both lamps and looked about.

The wood floors were covered with two big red rugs, the weave and dye so fine I found myself unconsciously tip-toeing over them.

A pair of fuzzy slippers waited by the bed. A second pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses sat atop a book on the nightstand. A long-hemmed, plush, red bathrobe hung on a hook by the bathroom door.

And there was the closet. I made for it first.

If it was empty, I had some bad news for the Hoobins. But I doubted I’d find it empty—anyone who packed their clothes would certainly take their reading glasses and a book or two as well.

The closet was full. I mean packed tight—clothes upon clothes upon clothes. I pulled a handful of dresses out at random and spread them on the bed.

Darla had been right. Martha had a gift. She’d taken silk and cotton and wool and made works of art.

I poked around in the closet, counted ten pairs of shoes, fifty-six dresses, nineteen pairs of pants and a plethora of hats and scarves and undergarments I left untouched lest the Hoobins hang me from a ceiling beam or mount my head above the mantel. Also in the corner was a good leather clothes bag. It was new and empty and if it had ever been used I couldn’t spot it.

I finished poking in the corners and turned from the closet to the dresser. I spent a few moments rifling through the drawers, starting at the bottom and working toward the top like a good burglar. Stockings and unmentionables and bolts of silk and linen were all I found.

Atop the dresser lay neat ranks of moderately expensive make-up, the various and sundry tools of application, and a plain glass jar full to the brim with clothes-pins, bent needles and bits of this and that.

Satisfied that the dresser contained no threatening letters from deranged suitors or the torn halves of still-legible stagecoach tickets, I opened the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. There were more clothes, more bolts of new fabric, a stack of old books and a tiny cedar jewelry box in which a single gold ring lay. Atop it all was a ragged stuffed bear, more tatters than fur, wrapped in a clean white towel with a tiny pillow tucked under its head.

I closed the chest and entered the bathroom. Aside from a fancy flushing toilet and hot running water in the sink, I found nothing there worth mentioning except the half-used bottle of bath suds that smelled of Darla’s hair.

I closed the bathroom door behind me, heard footfalls on the stair, counted, divided and decided that all the Hoobins were about to pop in and see what I was up to.

I sighed, regarded my glum expression in Martha’s big round dressing mirror, and saw a tiny glimmer of silver from deep within the junk jar at the edge of her dresser.

I went that way. I’d marveled at the way Martha’s make-up, combs and whatnots were lined up in neat ranks on the dresser-top. You see that a lot, with poor folks who come into money—they tend to treat every possession, no matter how humble, like a treasure. Martha was certainly that way. The junk jar was only there for things she didn’t want to throw away yet, but had no particular affection for.

So what was that gleaming silver at the bottom?

I was dumping it out just as Ethel popped his head in the door.

“Have you found aught amiss?” he said.

I froze. There it is, said a voice only I could hear. Finally.

“Oh, I have indeed.” I picked my “aught amiss” up, shook a pair of sewing needles out of the bristles. “Have you ever seen this before? Any of you?”

I held it up, and they crowded around, tip-toeing on Martha’s fine red rugs just as I had.

I’d found a comb. A silver-handled comb, worked in the shape of a swan, finely cast, laden with detail, heavy in my hand like the small fortune it surely cost.

The brothers Hoobin shook their honest heads.

“No, never.”

“Not I.”

“Nor I.”

“No,” said Ethel. He scowled at the comb as if he could make it confess to a litany of sins merely by glaring it toward righteousness. “No, I have not seen this thing.”

I nodded toward the dresser. “But you have seen that one. The comb there.”

I pointed. They all nodded yes. “It was our mother’s, and her mother’s before,” said Ethel. “From where did this comb come?”

I squinted. There were no hairs in the bristles.

You use a comb once—even once—and there will be hairs.

I felt like dancing. Instead, I shrugged. “I found it there. Stuffed in that jar, with a lot of other junk.”

“But it is not junk,” said Ethel. “Is silver, no?”

“Silver, all right. Well worked.” I turned the comb. Let it glisten in the light. “But Martha put it in that jar. She never once used it.”

Ethel held out his hand. I let him take the comb.

He closed his eyes, gripped it tight. The other Hoobins closed their eyes and began to mumble what I took to be lilting Balptist prayers.

I shut up and watched. Ethel’s face went red, his jaw quivered and I could see his teeth grind together through the skin of his cheeks. I counted to fifty and decided Hoobins didn’t breathe like mere city folk when his ears flushed and he opened his eyes and sucked in a lungful of air.

He flung the comb down, atop Martha’s bed.

“I could see nothing,” he said, more to his brothers than to me. “Nothing to help, or find.”

I frowned. “What were you looking for?” I said.

“For Martha,” he said. “Sight runs in our family. But mostly to the women. And Momma is stricken, Martha is gone and it is for you to find her.” He took up the comb, holding it gingerly, as though it were hot, or unclean. “Take this, finder. Take whatever you will. Take and find.” His gaze turned down, and he sagged. “This much I saw, brothers. Martha lives. But only at the sufferance of those who know neither mercy nor shame.” He looked up at me again, sky blue eyes wet and pleading. “Find her. Any price. We will pay.”

I took the comb and looked about at Martha’s things, at the sad rabbit-furred slippers waiting by her bed, at the bathrobe patient on its hook.

“I’ll find her,” I said. “And you’ll pay what we agreed, no more.”

Ethel nodded. His eyes were welling up, and I got out of there, preferring the tender mercies of halfdead or the Night Watch to the spectacle of all the Hoobins weeping around Martha’s empty red chair.

Chapter Four

I kept to the middle of the street, all the way out of the New People neighborhoods. I even whistled an old Army marching song and put a jaunt in my step, jut to let the scores of New People peeping down at me know how much vampires and silly Curfew laws meant to the fearless finder Markhat.

Once out of sight, of course, I shut my fool mouth and slunk all the way home, darting from doorway to doorway, giving dark alleyways wide berth, hiding twice from passing Watchmen and once from a band of mean-eyed drunks.

By the time I reached Cambrit, I was winded and weary, but none the wiser. I toyed with the comb in my pocket, but saw no further than Ethel had. Had Martha bought the comb for herself? It seemed unlikely—why spend so much on a bauble, if she’d planned to toss it out when the junk jar filled up?

Which meant, perhaps, it was a gift. And, if so, then it wasn’t the gift that Martha despised. No, it must be the gift giver. Why else would she hide such a thing away?

I trundled on. There wasn’t any traffic on Cambrit, though I could hear drunken shouts and the sound of hammering nearby. I passed Momma Hog’s, but no light showed in her window or under her door, so I trudged on. I doubted that her cards could tell me anything I didn’t already know, or the Hoobins wouldn’t have needed me at all.

I reached my door, fumbled with the key, managed to get inside before being taken by halfdead or fined by the Watch. Three-leg Cat sat atop my desk, preening his wicked right foreleg and generally making it plain he hadn’t been waiting for me, no not at all, but as long as I was taking up space I might as well fix him a snack before he went out carousing.

I lit a lamp, went past my office and lit another lamp in my room. I keep a tin of jerky back there. I hate the stuff—it reminds me of the Army—but Cat likes it well enough.

“Here you go,” I said, tossing him a piece. “Now beat it, you Curfew-breaking scofflaw.”

He scooted. I pulled off my shoes, undressed and called it a night.

I didn’t sleep immediately, though. Something Ethel said bothered me. “She lives at the sufferance of those who know neither mercy nor shame.”

Neither mercy nor shame. Hell, that’s half of Rannit. On a good day. And maybe Ethel was merely putting too much stock in a talent he admitted only Hoobin women could truly use.

But maybe not, whispered the night. You can’t lie in the dark and be rational. No, late in the night, the goblins come out. “What if,” they chant. “What if Ethel did get a glimpse of something, out there in the shadows?”

Neither mercy nor shame, came the words.

I thought about all Martha’s things, lined up like little soldiers, waiting for her return. I thought about a tattered stuffed bear, a pillow put carefully under its sad little head. I wondered where Martha was, who kept her there, why they knew neither mercy nor shame.

Some nights sleep is a long time coming.

Morning came, all rattling wagon-wheels and yelling drovers and sunlight and bustle. I grumbled and stumbled and cut myself shaving.

I’d barely shambled out to the office when Mama Hog’s short shadow fell over my door. She knocked, once, and then tried the latch.

“You in there, boy?” she shouted.

I made it to the door, unlocked it, stepped aside when Mama came trundling past.

“Where was you last night? I waited for an hour after Curfew.”

Mama carried a basket. I smelled biscuits and ham and hot coffee, and came to my senses before I made any smart remarks about the Regent’s three daughters and a room at the Velvet.

“I was working,” I said, motioning Mama to my client’s chair. “Your friends, the Hoobins, found me.”

Mama sat, plopped her basket down, began to unload it.

“Figured you was.” She paused long enough to look up at me and grin. “Ain’t them Hoobins a humorous lot?”

“That Ethel keeps me in stitches,” I said, grabbing a biscuit. “Now why don’t you tell me what you know.”

There was a biscuit halfway to Mama’s gap-toothed mouth. She looked at me, shook her head and put her biscuit down.

“I don’t know nothing,” she said, and she sounded ashamed. “Can’t tell you a thing. Don’t know what done happened to that poor little girl.”

I nearly choked. “What?” I spat. “Not a single cryptic hint? No veiled allusions to fate or destiny?” I wiped my chin. “Mama, do you need a doctor or a new deck of cards?”

Mama shook her head, sank a little lower in my chair.

“Hey. I was joking.”

“I know you was.” She peered back up at me, her tiny black eyes pinpricks behind that mane of wild grey hair. “But the truth is, boy, that I can’t see nothing. Don’t know nothing. I don’t even know if Martha Hoobin is alive or dead. I ain’t never been so blind about anything, boy. Not ever in my whole long life.”

“You’re serious.”

“Aye,” she replied. She took in a breath, made herself sit up, brushed her hair back away from her face. “Damned if I ain’t.”

“If you can’t see Martha what makes you think I can?”

“Maybe I ain’t lookin’ with the right pair of eyes. Maybe you and your findin’ can go where me and my Sight can’t.”

I sighed, took a bite, chewed.

“That isn’t much of a chance,” I said, after a while.

“I reckon it’s the only one that Hoobin girl has got.” She joined me at breakfast. “You find anything yet?”

“Just this,” I said, between bites. I pulled the silver comb out of my desk and set it down between us. “Found it in a junk jar on Martha’s dresser. The brothers never saw it before. I think somebody gave it to her, and I think she had reason to dislike him.”

Mama wiped her lips on her hands and then wiped her hands on a napkin. She reached out and picked up the comb.

“That’s what you think.”

I nodded. “Makes sense. It’s an expensive gift. But what’s the old saying? Gold from a pig’s ass will still smell of manure?”

Mama didn’t laugh. She took the comb in both hands, closed her eyes tight and started shaking and mumbling, right there at my desk.

“Mama, look, don’t you need a cauldron and a virgin bat for that?”

“Shut up, boy,” she said, and I did, since her words seemed to come out a fraction of a second before her lips moved.

My office got cold. I watched frost spread across the glass in my door and then Mama yelped and threw the comb away.

I caught it. It was cold, like a chunk of ice, but the feeling quickly passed.

“Mama, what is it?”

Mama opened her eyes.

“Damn.”

I groaned. “All that for nothing?”

Mama snorted. “That ain’t right. Even if it just sat in a shop window. Even if you’re the only person who ever took hold of it. Even if it was fresh out of the silversmith’s forge—boy, I ought to have seen something.”

I set it down.

Mama eyed the comb like it was a snake, coiled up in her biscuits and eyeing her back. “Take it away.”

“But why—”

“Take it away!”

I scooped it up, dropped it in a drawer, closed the drawer.

“It’s gone. Now tell me—why the hysterics?”

“I done told you. I ought to have seen something. Felt the touch of someone’s hand. Felt the touch of your fool hand, boy, but I didn’t see nothing.”

She was rattled. I’d never seen Mama rattled. I sat back and pondered for a moment.

“All right. Tell me this, Mama, what could make an object feel like it was brand new? What could take away any history of contact with the people who’ve owned it?”

Mama shook her head. “I couldn’t. Don’t know nobody what could.” She lowered her voice. “That’s black magic, boy. Dire hex. Them what messes with the way things be—well, I don’t even know no names.”

I leaned forward, made Mama look me in the eye. “We’ve been friends for a long time, Mama. I like you. I respect you, and even if I don’t always show it I believe you when you tell me things, sometimes.” I took in a breath. “But isn’t it possible that maybe, just this once, you just can’t see what might be there?”

Mama puffed up, but only for a second. Then she deflated. “I reckon that might be so. Maybe I’m gettin’ old and blind.”

“Never. But even the sharpest eyes can’t see every blade of grass.”

“That a Troll sayin’?”

“It is,” I lied. Mama held Trolls in high regard, and their rustic proverbs even higher. “Trolls also say that a single misstep does not doom a march.”

Mama stood. “You’re a liar, boy. But I reckon you’ve earned them biscuits, all the same.” She cocked her shaggy head, caught up her basket. “What you reckon on doin’ next?”

I shrugged. “More of the same. Go back uptown. Talk to a watchman named Rupert. Ask strangers on the street.” I nodded toward the drawer that held the comb. “Might drop in on a few silversmiths along the way, see if anybody can tell me anything about that.”

Mama grunted. “I know some New People, other than Hoobins. I’ll be seein’ ’em, too. I’ll be askin’.” She hesitated. “You reckon that poor girl is still alive?”

I swallowed, sighed, stood.
Eighth day gone
, I thought.
Eighth day.
“Sure she is.”

Mama left, shaking her head.