Chiral Mad 3 Read online

  “… can’t be.”

  “John Henry, what you looking at?”

  “That fellah on our porch. In the moonlight it almost looks like Martin, but that can’t be.”

  “Why not? We got his letter two days ago tellin’ us he was coming.”

  John Henry whirled on her. “A letter ? That can’t be, Polly Ann. Martin’s been dead goin’ on six years.”

  She laughed. “Oh, my poor John.” She placed a gentle hand against his cheek. “I do believe that all that hammering must’ve shook loose some of your brains.”

  “You two comin’?” shouted Martin from the porch. “I been waiting here a while and I don’t mind saying that I’m … well … kinda hungry! ”

  “Oh, my Lord,” whispered John Henry under his breath.

  Then remembered Mr. Daedalus’s words: There will be rewards for you, John; on that you have my word …

  … How does it feel to be something of a god?

  “Some men have to be tricked into it,” he whispered.

  “What are you going on about?” asked Polly Ann.

  “Nothing,” said John Henry, wiping the tears from his eyes so she wouldn’t see them and promising the universe that he would be a worthy god. “Nothing at all. Now, come on, let’s go feed that brother of mine.”

  REFLECTIONS

  THROUGH

  THE RAVEN’S EYE

  MARGE SIMON

  i.

  The trees were barren in this land,

  buzzards haunting their austere branches.

  In the distance, a gypsy caravan,

  pulled by mules and men.

  Boys ran beside

  as long as they could,

  then were pulled onto

  the backs of wagons.

  The gypsies found the man at dusk,

  in fetal curl, an empty pistol clenched to chest,

  his withered lips drawn back in death,

  as if some joke had passed his mind.

  Above, the vultures swirled,

  a sky afire with black wings.

  All night, the dry winds blew.

  ii.

  Draped in a blanket

  to ward off the coming winter,

  a woman sits on the street corner,

  cat curled in her lap.

  Beside her is a basket of nuts.

  When the light changes,

  she cracks the nuts with

  a hammer, offering her wares

  to passing pedestrians.

  Nightfall, she begins tapping

  the hand that holds the nuts.

  Over and over she taps

  until the skin splits

  in many places.

  A man and a girl emerge from a bar,

  stagger down the empty street.

  They stumble over her.

  He swears, kicks the cat away.

  The woman moans, but cannot rise.

  Flakes swirl, white feathers on her face,

  her lips draw back in a rictal smile

  as she drifts into forever sleep

  in the fresh pink snow.

  Blackbirds on the wires,

  a necklace of black stones.

  By dawn, the wind is bitter cold.

  THE OFFERING ON THE HILL

  RICHARD THOMAS

  I’D BEEN FOLLOWING the train tracks north for three days when I came across the skeletons—a pile of bones in a ring around a cairn of skulls, a bullet hole in the center of each one. The sun beat down on me, one wave of pulsing sunshine after another, my skin like worn leather—my eyes two tiny black dots. One boot followed the other as I pushed onward, faded jeans pasted to my sweaty body like a second layer of skin, a revolver on each hip, leather holsters filled with glistening metal, their weight a comforting presence. I’m too old for this, but the uneasy quiet that has slipped over the land—it is not a death knell—only a beginning. The world has moved on, but my greatest fear is that the dead will never stop laughing.

  As hot as it is now, it will be deathly cold tonight, a wave of freezing air washing across the desert as sure as the sickly glowing ball will rise tomorrow. I have to find shelter, or start building a fire, soon. In the distance there are mountains, but I can’t get there tonight. I don’t like the look of the ring, either—the skulls make me uneasy. So it will be baptism by fire—one dried scrub brush on top of its brother; whatever dead or dying cactus I can find, the rotting boards from an old sign—Death Valley it says, an arrow pointing off in one direction, surely a joke.

  When the skulls are covered in debris so that I can’t see their gaping mouths any longer, I spark a flame from a wooden match with my thumbnail, and toss it onto the wood. It catches quickly and sends flickering tongues of fire up into the sky as the darkness settles across the land. I raise my head and glance north again, and in the hazy distance the ghost of a train whistle blows sorrow. I walk to the tracks and set my hand upon the closest rail—a tiny vibration running through my gnarled fingers, certainly heading away. I’ve never seen the train going south. No reason to head back that way—nothing but abandoned buildings, rotting car husks, and the stench of the human race gone sour.

  So long had I been out in the desert, up in the hills, prospecting and tracking deviant flesh, runaways and bounties hunted with great patience, that there was nothing left for me when I came down—no people, no messages, no television, and no radio—just an endless silence that stretched out into eternity. I’d seen no explosions, nothing nuclear, and the cattle, it could have been anything—starvation, sickness, even poachers—but I gave them a wide berth, anyway.

  The only clue I’d found was the word north. Everywhere I went, whispered by the lips of the dead, scratched into pads of paper, and painted on walls—the word north. I found an entire town, Crystal Lake, dry as a bone, the irony not lost on me, with hundreds of cars on the highway pointed in this direction—empty.

  None of it made any sense.

  But it’s where my wife and child may have gone, if they are still alive. The shadows at night creep in and whisper horrible things, violent imagery of my daughter hung up on a cross, wearing a thorny crown, vast pits filled with the walking dead, pillars of fire shooting high into the night.

  And then the cold pushes in on me, so I move closer to my pyre. I will slowly rotate as the night goes on, walking around the licking flames, as the freezing wind nips at me, a thin sheet of ice coating my emaciated frame. If I stop moving I will die—the weather shifting to both extremes, blazing hot in the daytime and freezing cold in the night. In the wake of the new world order things had changed. I’ve been having this dance with the devil for weeks now, and in the morning, when it warms up, I will collapse. For now, it is the gleam in the eyes of my daughter Allie that pushes me on, reminds me why I even bother.

  The day I left, her long brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, as a teapot on the stove steamed and whistled—the clocks whirring behind my princess as tears streamed rivulets of dirt down her face. Her mother, Cecilia, God bless her, holding Allie back as her own dark hair fell over her eyes, her face, hiding behind it, unwilling to look at me. I walked out the door, securing our future—and possibly their death.

  In the distance I hear wood cracking, splintering, and crashing to the ground—shattering. The thin branches and hollow trunks can’t sustain the weight of the ice, and they topple over, ripping up roots, fracturing—turning to shards, fragments, and sparkling dust. Every night I long to walk out into the freezing cold and let the elements take me. But something is calling me north.

  In the morning I come to lying in the ash around the fire, not burned, but not frozen to death either. A large black bird sits on my foot, tapping its beak on the faded sole of my left boot, yellow sparkling eyes like two marbles rolling around in its feathered, bobbing skull. The beast turns its head to the south, and then leaps into the sky with a rush of foul air, wings spread wide, pushing up into the gray tapestry above us, heading north with a sense of sudden urgency.

&nbs
p; The fire pit is just as I had originally found it, a ring of bones around the pile of skulls, no evidence of the fire, no proof that my labor had even happened. I need water soon, so I have to move on.

  Three hours later I come to the edge of a forest that squats at the base of an expansive mountain range, sweat running down my neck, my back—dirt and grime slipping over my spine. I can hear the water gurgling, but can’t see it yet. My lips crack and bleed, the goatskin at my waist squeezed dry the day before, my eyes on the clouds above, as it grows dark, lightning flashing over the horizon—but the rain, it will never come, not now that I need it. Crashing through the bushes and low-hanging branches, a thin path reveals itself, my feet tripping over roots and buried stones, the sparkle of water glinting through the greenery. I stumble to the pool of water as spider webs stretch across my face, my outstretched hands waving them off, filament in my mouth, a wash of panic mixing with a knot in my gut, the water suddenly my world.

  As I kneel at the edge of the creek, by the pool, I cup the cold water and drink, the liquid spilling down my chest. The knees of my jeans soak through with mud, and as I sit up to breathe, gasping, the row of crosses reveals itself to me, on the other side of the oasis. Six, seven of them, all in a line, all shapes and sizes, skeletons strung out and bound with vines, crucified, the nails run through, another row behind them, with nothing but skulls on pikes. Tied around each bit of rotting wood is a single piece of ribbon, each of them a faded pink, moss growing beneath the sacrifices, low white blossoms running off into the woods. I lower the canteen into the cold water, and fill it up, my stomach clenched in knots, my eyes on the whispering leaves—my heart thudding drumbeats in my chest.

  It’s time to move on.

  I won’t be able to make it up the mountain tonight—wouldn’t make any sense to get caught out in the open like that, wind and ice spraying certain death. Out of the woods a path deposits me at a tiny shack, a lantern glowing in the window as the sun falls out of the sky. A skeletal dog is tied to the house with an old withered rope, whining and pissing into the dirt as I approach the humble dwelling, the skittish beast eager to say hello.

  “It’s okay,” I say, showing the skinny wreck my open palms. She squats, her tail wagging like a metronome turned all the way up, her eyes glazed over with white, a black lab mix of some sort. She licks my hands, her black muzzle dotted with gray hair, the poor thing dying out here, begging for attention. She must go inside at night, I think to myself, or she’d be frozen to the ground, dead long ago. I run my hands over her ribcage, each bone like a slat of wood, wasting away to nothing. I root around in my gear and bring out a tough stick of jerky, and kneeling in the dry earth I give it to her, and she falls into chewing and licking with a devout worship that makes me a tad bit uneasy.

  “Good girl,” I say, standing back up.

  The door to the structure opens and a grizzled old man peers out, long gray beard hanging down, his eyes the same glossy white as the mutt. In overalls, boots, and a dirty long-sleeved shirt, the man sways in the doorway, a grin slipping over his face.

  “That’s awfully kind of you, stranger,” he says. “Food’s hard to come by out this way, and in my condition, our condition, it’s difficult to head into town.”

  I nod, realizing he can’t see me, and step forward.

  “My name’s John Ford, and I’m heading north. You seen anyone come by, any sign of life, of late?”

  I stand there holding out my hand, the blind coot staring over my shoulder, his whiskers twitching. He extends his gnarled digits to me, and smiles, so I take his hand, like grabbing a fistful of sticks, and shake it.

  “Nobody of late. I’m Benjamin Russell, but you can just call me Ben,” the old man says. “Come on in, it’s gonna get cold soon. Can you bring the dog? She’s Jezebel, the old whore, I keep her tied up so she won’t wander off, chase after something she shouldn’t—but the ice is coming, I’m sure you know all about that.”

  I turn back to the dog, the meat gobbled up in a frenzy, a rotten sigh coming out of her mouth, death creeping closer every day. And I guess that’s a blessing.

  “Come on, Jezebel,” I mutter, untying the rope from the rusted hook on the post, leading her inside. She knows what’s good for her, the cold coming in, so she obliges.

  Inside it’s warm, a potbelly stove glowing in the corner. Not much to see in here, a tiny bed to one side, the stove, a small wooden table with two rickety old chairs, and a few pots and pans for cooking. Along the inside of one wall, just under the only window is a stack of wood—plenty it looks like for the night, for days in fact, possibly weeks.

  “You found the creek, I imagine,” he says, sitting down in one of the chairs. “So you’re set on water. I head down every couple of days to fill up some jugs, got the path memorized, nothing much to trip over out this way. We got a few sacks of beans and rice, it’s not much, but you’re welcome to join us for dinner.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I say, plopping into the other chair.

  “Got a few extra blankets and the floor, that’s about it, my friend. Unless you want my bed, I don’t think I could keep you from taking it.”

  “That’s fine, Ben. The floor is just fine.”

  The old man gets up and walks to the bag of dried beans, and then the rice, taking a few scoops from each burlap sack with a tin cup, depositing it all into a cast iron Dutch oven. He lifts a jug off the table, adding in some water, and then reaches for some dried herbs in a small wooden bowl, sprinkling them into the pot. He sits back down, tired and bent.

  “You headed over the mountain, John? North?” the man asks.

  “I reckon. That’s the way the wind is pulling me, hoping to find my family—my wife and daughter. If they went this way, they probably followed the same signs I’ve been reading for weeks. Guess I’ll see what’s left in a world that’s suddenly gone dark—what’s on the other side.”

  The man nods.

  “Take some of the feed with you, if you want, son—Jezebel and I aren’t long for this world. I got a couple bullets with our names on them, if it comes to that, or we might just wink out in the same long, dark night. Who knows?”

  “Thanks,” I mutter. “I’ll take you up on that offer.”

  The dog sits next to the stove, still shivering now and then, her body doing its best to digest the jerky, something she probably hasn’t eaten in months.

  “Have you seen many people since it all went quiet, get much company?” I ask.

  The wind picks up, the cold beating against the shack, and I’m grateful to be inside. I can feel the ice slipping through the cracks in the wood, nipping at my exposed flesh, but I suppose the structure will hold.

  He sighs, his white orbs open wide, trying to remember.

  “There was one day, we got a whole mess of folks, a long line of feet moving over the dirt. I could hear them coming, like a stampede, and I went to the door and stood there, I listened. Both of us did. I heard a few greetings, but mostly it was quiet, eerie almost, must have been a couple dozen people drifting by, hardly a word, nobody stopping, just the creaking of bodies, the sighs and moans, a few kids crying, a sharp word here and there, but I don’t know if your wife and child were in there. Maybe. You never know.”

  I nod and take a breath.

  “You been over?” I ask.

  “The mountain?” he replies. “Long time ago. It’s a bitch, you’ll cross a few streams, so water’s not the problem. Cold, of course, a few wild things up in the rocks, the scraggly woods that are dying all up and down the hill, coyotes, snakes, the usual.”

  I nod.

  “And …”

  He opens his mouth as the wind kicks up again, the shack rattling and shaking, the smell of the beans and rice simmering, drifting to me, my stomach clenching and unclenching in hunger.

  “What?” I ask.

  He smiles, his mouth a mess, gums bleeding over his yellow teeth, wiping his face with a shaky hand, his eyes blinking and twitching.

&n
bsp; “Nothing,” he says, as the window rattles.

  He stands and walks to the stove, the skillet bubbling, stirring with an old wooden spoon, mumbling to himself, rubbing his lower back, the dog lifting her head, whimpering.

  “I don’t know if they all made it over,” is what the old man says, and I swear he’s crying, his back to me, but it’s getting dark, and I can’t see his face.

  The dog sits up and stares at the man, whining, a low growl deep in her belly.

  “Shut up, Jezebel,” the man yells suddenly, turning around, his pale skin flushed. “If I want to tell him, I’ll tell him.”

  She lies back down, quiet now, cloudy eyes darting back and forth from the sound of her master’s voice, to me, and then she closes them, surrendering.

  “I don’t know if any of them made it over, son, is what I’m trying to say.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  He rubs his face and sits back down, tears running down his wrinkled skin.

  “Out here it’s every man for himself, right?” he says. “I guess I could have said no, and let him take me, just surrender. Not like I’m living like a king out here. The fucking thing could have stayed up there, gotten what came its way, I don’t know why it had to offer me anything.”

  “What are you talking about, Ben? Who is up in the hills? Is somebody bothering you? Want me to go talk to them, put a scare in them? I don’t mind.”

  Ben cackles and rubs his white eyes, shaking—his mouth hanging loose, lips trembling.

  “I wish it was that simple, John. A long time ago before this darkness fell over the land, I made a deal. I can’t say I believed much of it at the time, I was sick with the cancer, dying, and felt like I might like to live a little longer, not die out here in the silence, alone. He showed me a path, the new path that goes over the mountain, one he’d been clearing for a long time, months I suspect. Just send them this way, he said. And then he put his hands on my head, and laid me down on the bed, running his long fingers over my flesh, kneading here and there, pushing his fingers in, the pain, the tenderness; he knew what he was doing. There was no blood, but the cancer went away. He ran his hands over my skull, and the headaches stopped. Held my hands and knelt beside my bed, and the arthritis disappeared.”