Noir
Authors: Jacqueline Garlick
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Jacqueline Garlick
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Skyscape, New York
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ISBN-13: 9781503944565
ISBN-10: 1503944565
Cover design by Kevin C. W. Wong & Mae I Design and Photography
For my son Seth, who has tasted the color purple.
And for my mother, Milly, who recently passed away after spending eight long years trapped inside her own Madhouse Brink, trying desperately to escape through the memory-robbing doors.
May she at last be reunited with her long-lost Urlick, who I’m convinced is up there busily wooing her all over again, on the off chance she has forgotten him.
Kiss Dad for me, will you, Mom?
Contents
Prologue
Flossie
Grey, wraithlike bodies twist and turn through the mist—swooping, chanting, cackling. Their white-eyed faces ignite terror in my galumphing heart.
The Infirmed.
Eyelet wasn’t bluffing.
I swing at them and attempt to run, but atrophied fingers sink deep into my skin. They drag me to the forest floor and anchor me there with the weight of twenty Brigsmen.
“No!”
I scream and wrench my head.
“Eeeeeyeleeeet!”
I shout after her.
“T’ain’t no use screamin’. T’ain’t nobody left alive out ’ere to save yuh.” The bloodshot eyes of a ghoul appear in front of me, bulging from inside a levitating head. His irises burn, white flames inside silver candles. I try to look away, but I can’t. His skin is parchment-paper-thin, transparent in places, flaking and torn in others, showing layer upon layer beneath—but no blood. I scream at the thought of it. He claps a bony hand to my mouth. The bloodless veins in his arms have risen to the surface and hardened, shining like twisted silver bars. He must be on the verge, about to Turn. He’ll need to feed again to complete the process.
“No!” I thrash and squirm.
“T’ain’t no use struggling, either.” He grins, producing yellow fangs for teeth. “It’s over for yuh now.” He laughs, and I gag on the stench of his rotting-corpse breath. Bits of his nose and ears fall away, dropping to my chest.
I shudder and buckle.
“Relax.” He hovers closer. “It’ll be easier that way.
At least—for me!
” He laughs again as I scream out.
He breathes his toxic mist into my mouth. It tastes of cyanide silver, tinged with arsenic. I try to spit it out. The world around me tilts and shifts. I’m acutely aware of every nerve in my body jumping. Bile rises up from my gut and pools in my throat. I twist and fight, or at least I think I’m fighting.
The creature swirls in behind me with lash-like speed, sinking his fangs into the back of my skull, popping them first through the skin—then penetrating the bone. I cringe and cry out under the force. Others ghouls swoop above me, filling the air with demonic chants. Their howling reverberates off the trees and through my bones. Slowly I feel my marrow evaporating.
The creature begins to feed. His venom coils through me, paralyzing my muscles and numbing my thoughts.
I can’t stop him. I can’t stop him . . .
my arms drop at my sides.
Then, just as quickly as he started, he stops.
A strange light glows above his head. There’s a violent, crackling crash. Whips of green lightning snap.
A seam rends the sky, and another world is revealed behind it.
Or at least I think one is.
A beautiful world, beyond our own . . .
White clouds, blue sky, yellow sun . . .
It is glorious. Simply glorious.
But it doesn’t last.
The forest falls dark again, save for the eerily green glow of the light hovering just above the treetops. What is this? What’s happening?
I long to turn my head to see.
A deafening boom shocks the forest floor beneath us. The earth rolls violently at my back. I’m tossed around inside the movement like a tiny ship in a tumultuous sea. Hurriedly the ghoul extracts his fangs from my head, prying them loose with a hollow
thwock, thwock.
I wince, feeling a rush of pain from the release of his venom, as the earth rolls again. All around me, apparitions rise, looking like moth-eaten curtains fleeing to the sky.
They’re leaving. They’re abandoning me. Why?
Something very bad must be happening.
“Wait!” I force myself into a sit, clawing after the cloaks of still-spiraling apparitions scattering to the trees. “Wait! Don’t leave me here!”
They churn away into a cloud of dust, leaving me alone in the rocking forest.
Noise, I reason. They hate noise. That must have been it?
Or is it light they hate?
Either way, it doesn’t matter. They’ve gone.
I’m saved!
Reaching up, I tentatively explore the wounds on the back of my head, a thin veil of blood trickling down my neck, and I faint.
A gun goes off and I launch upright, eyes wobbling. The sound of carriage tack jangles. Hooves stomp the dirt. Gunshots again. The shots are coming from the clearing.
Someone’s here! They’ve come for me, to save my life—or what’s left of it.
I’ve got to get to the edge of the forest, quick!
I grab for my skirts and bobble to a stand, with a great sight-bending
whoosh
. Head throbbing, I turn with the intention of running but fall instead, against the jagged bark of the tree. I grip its girth, my brain sloshing around in its cavity.
My heavens
,
what is this? I reach up to steady my head, but it takes several moments before my brain anchors into place again.
Good Lord
, what’s happened to me?
I look down and gasp, realizing the problem—or at least one of them: I’m no longer in possession of feet. They’re gone, completely gone, replaced by a mass of curling vapour that spreads out from under my dress in all directions. Tentacles now drift across the forest floor where feet used to be. Tentacles, like those of a sea creature. There must be eight of them, if not ten. A fearful, high-pitched noise escapes me, of which I’m not proud.
I hike my skirts higher, realizing my legs are gone, too. All the way up to my knees. “
Good God,
” I squeak. “The Turning has begun.”
I clap a hand to my forehead and it slides on through. Lord have mercy, I’ve lost half my head.
Slowly I grope the ground, tentacles floundering in a sad attempt at movement, but movement eludes me. I whimper, hearing the voices in the clearing again, growing distant. “No, please wait for me!” I hover above the earth—half in this world, half in another . . . a world I know nothing of. I’m unsure what to do. My spit tastes of copper. A metallic tingle burns at the back of my throat. I retch, and the spit falls through my hand.
“Oh, Lord!” I holler. This has to be fixed. Quickly. But how?
A lightning-like current jerks through me, causing my whole body to intermittently twitch, like a short-circuiting machine. All at once, my muscles tense and then go slack. Thoughts misfire in my head. Sparks fly. I’m robbed of sight. I zap and buzz and then fizzle out. My eyes waggle side to side. At last they settle back in their sockets, and my sight is restored.
Thankfully
. Plumes of smoke puff from the ends of my hair and fingertips as the malfunction peters out.
They stink and sizzle. I stink and sizzle.
I’m sizzling.
Good Lord in Heaven
, what’s happened to me?
I gasp, fearing I may faint, when all at once I’m struck by the feeling of being lost, or having been lost, or losing . . . Who am I? I look down at my hand and see it’s fading.
Oh, good God!
I clench my eyes shut and try to remember, why am I here? Who’s done this to me? The thought is blurry. I have to fight hard to make it come around.
Eyelet.
That’s who.
Pulling the scarf from my neck, I reach down and create a tourniquet, tying it tight around the tops of the tentacles to keep the venom from spreading, and grab a rock from the ground. I use it to attack the problem at the source, gouging the sharpest end into the wound on my head. I cringe, flinging the festering guts to the ground.
How vile.
I turn my eyes away. I should not have to be doing this!
I clean the wound out the best I can, then reach for the slough spruce, packing the remaining hole up tight. There. That should be better.
I hope.
Another gunshot shakes the forest. I start off, and my body catches and misfires again. Teeth chatter in the not-so-distant trees. Red eyes glint.
Criminals
, my mind registers. That’s all I need. Haven’t I been through enough today?
I grab my chest and whirl around, and, to my surprise, the sudden rotation causes my body to float several metres. Oh my! I gulp, leaning back against a tree, my stomach leaping, my heart—
or what’s left of it
—aflutter. Something deep inside me ignites. All my fears of immobility are dashed. My feet may be gone, but the rest of my body still works.
The perfect vehicle for revenge . . .
I grin, lurching forward, craning my neck out, then thrusting my hips shakily, drifting over the forest floor like a new skater across an icy pond
.
Slowly, I will myself toward the voices. Leaves crackle beneath the ruffle of my skirts. Twigs catch and drag. I repeat the motion over and over, slowly increasing my agility and speed—
not to mention my grace and poise
—until at last it’s as though I’m flying.
I’ve always wanted to fly.
Pungent Vapours pour through the trees, curling about my waist, and I panic. I open my mouth to scream—until I realize I’ve nothing to fear. The Vapours are having no effect on me.
This is troubling.
I must be further gone than I thought.
Add
this
to my growing list of terrifying concerns. I twist my fingers, lobbing another one off.
I’ve got to hurry, if there’s any chance to save myself at all.
I’ve got to get to the clearing. I burst forward, making short order of the journey, tucking in behind the trunk of a tree at the clearing’s edge, and draw my tentacles in underneath me. Best not spring myself on them all at once.
I brush my hair from my eyes, hoping it stays, primping what is left of the bun I so painstakingly stacked this morning. Or was that yesterday? I adjust it over the gaping hole in the back of my head to hide what’s happened, then peek out around the bark of the tree. A plume of ash-choked dust rises from the centre of where the Core once stood.
The Core.
Good God, what happened there?
Orange flames lick the sky, bolting up from the earth in a circle. All the tops of nearby trees are charred. It’s as if the Vapours have just moved through the area again, but they haven’t. Have they?
Amid the flying soot and whirling dust a pair of Brigsmen appear, hauling a bedraggled and badly beaten, black-faced Urlick.
Urlick!
My heart sails ahead of me, though I am stationary. Despite everything that’s happened, he still has that effect on me.
Oh, Urlick, rest assured our connection will never cease.
My eyes follow their tracks to the very brink of the belching ravine at the back of the property. Embers? I scowl. Good Lord. He didn’t try to escape to Embers, did he?
Urlick struggles with the Brigsmen as they lead him through the wreckage of the Core. His eyes are blackened and his skin is cut. Good God, he looks like he’s tangled with a tiger. He turns, and I also notice his arms have been burned.
My heart pangs to see him hurting; a warm rush of dedication pulses through me. I yearn to race after him, to fall at his feet and confess my true love. But then again, I already did that and he didn’t give a
shite.
I close my eyes and see us as we once were,
pre-Eyelet days
: Urlick sitting across the parlour table, gazing up at me during lessons—the special way he used to crimp up his lips whenever he couldn’t solve a problem.
That
damned
Eyelet, she’s ruined everything.
“I’ve done nothing!” Urlick’s voice reverberates in the trees. The Brigsmen slap his belly up against the side of a paddy wagon parked at the edge of the woods. He struggles as they try to stuff him inside. “You have no proof—”
“We’ve proof enough to put yuh in the slammer,” one Brigsman hisses. “And once we’ve found his body, we’ll ’ave enough to see yuh ’ung.”
“Body?” I gulp. My eyes scan the premises. My brain slowly works out the math. Eyelet was after me, and I left him with . . .
uuuuhhhh
. . . “Daddy?” I feel my face go slack. My gaze swings to Urlick. “Oh, good God, he didn’t. Did he?”
“Please, you don’t understand,” Urlick pleads, staggering, his hands now tied at his back. “I can assure you, I’m of more use to you alive than dead!” He writhes against his restraints. “I know things! Important things! Things that could save our world!”
Things that could save our world?
What does that mean?
Wait a minute . . . I whirl around. He’s right. His mind is brilliant. After all, he was the one who came up with the cure for Eyelet, wasn’t he? The serum that combats the ill effects of her father’s so-called
miracle
machine. The antidote . . .
the glorious antidote
. . . that my father was willing to give up his life for!
I arch a brow. That was Urlick.
Wasn’t it?
I search my memory for the answer, but it appears my thoughts are still foggy on that.
At any rate, if anyone can come up with a way to save me—
to slay the demon that now lurks within me
—it’d be Urlick! I can’t let them kill him!
I need him more than ever now!
“Stop!”
I spring from my hiding place among the trees, drifting out into the clearing.