Issue #133 • Oct. 31, 2013

(Grim monstrous ghostly special issue for Halloween!)

“Pheth's Aviary,” by Matthew Kressel

“Not The Worst of Sins,” by Alan Baxter

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

PHETH'S AVIARY

by Matthew Kressel

        Deep in the bowels of the queen’s palace, the kitchen was aflurry with demons preparing for tonight’s feast, and Pheth hated every minute of it. He averted his eyes as Buldumech chopped off the heads of bleating imps, drained their blood, and sliced their green flesh into edible portions. He cringed as Mardero dropped squirming slugs into a boiling broth of leek and radish. And he nearly lost his gorge when Alath removed a tray of steaming cow eye sweets from the oven.

        Pheth wondered gravely, Am I the only demon in Sheol who sickens at the sight of flesh?

        “Pheth!” Akton screamed. The kitchen governess hopped from hoof to hoof as she scowled at him. “By Sheol’s twin suns, quit your gaping and get to work, or shall I tell the queen herself how lazy you are?”

        Pheth lacked the courage to tell her that it was not laziness but revulsion that stymied him. “No, mistress,” he said as he wiped sweat from his brow.

        “Then get to work!”

        He nodded and fled her presence.

        Behind the kitchen, he descended the dank stair in a fit of despair. How he longed for the old days!  Ever since Mashit had taken over the throne, a great many things had changed in the palace of Abbadon. Afraid of enemies lurking behind every stone, she’d banished well-robed courtesans to sweat in the gold mines. And she’d turned soiled stablehands into bedecked astrologers. When well-known demons hadn’t shown for monthly convocations, it was said that Mashit had her magicians teleport a third of the inhabitants of Sheol into the Great Deep, to float forever in the Abyss as punishment for crimes even their victims couldn’t remember.

        For the former king—Mighty Ashmedai—Pheth had painted a thousand colorful frescos across the palace walls. But Mashit had turned Pheth into a slaughterer. And so for the past fifty dreadful days, he had been tasked with the worst possible job in all the myriad dimensions. Worst for him, at least.

        He hung his shoulders as he entered the subterranean corridor of animal pens. Orange torchlight flickered furtively from the walls. The straw floor quivered and quaked, like a shivering beast itself. Years of accumulated dung befouled the air. He staggered past drooling faun and goblin, intelligent beings drugged into stupefaction. He tried to ignore the moans of black giraffe and feathered pig as he swept past their too-small cages.

        The animals didn’t fear him as they feared the others. For a demon, Pheth wasn’t very large or menacing. His back was scaly yet smooth, like a snake’s, and tufts of white fur covered his chest and belly. His face was small and churlish, with a curved beak for a nose and eyes spread too far apart. Even though Pheth could recount his demon ancestry for forty-nine generations, the kitchen staff often joked that Pheth himself was a devolved bird.

        “I wish I were one,” he muttered. “So I could fly away.”

        The coop lay at far end of the corridor, where the light was most feeble. A small flock of birds huddled inside.

        Mashit had requested goose, and so at great magical expense she’d had the creatures portaled down from some realm called Canada. Pheth had never seen their kind before, and he imagined Canada a magical land full of creatures like these, with their graceful necks, charcoal feathers, and delightfully plump bodies. And their lovely webbed feet! He gazed into their eyes as he opened the gate.

        The geese huddled quietly in the far corner and stared oddly at him.

        “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “Your lot is not fair, but what can I do?”

        Then the birds did something curious. They bowed their necks for him to break.

        “What is this?” he said. “You wish to die? What strange birds you are! But why?”

        Yet there was no time to indulge these thoughts, not with Akton’s ever-watchful eyes. So with a heavy heart he snapped each of their necks. And after, when he had stuffed all twenty-five flaccid bodies into his satchel, something tiny shuffled out from behind a bed of straw. A gosling, fuzzy, featherless, waddled into the torchlight.

        “Oh my!” he said, letting slip a giggle. “Look at you! How lovely!”  He covered his mouth to quiet himself. “How soft you look,” he whispered. “How gentle.”

        And yet, he realized, he had to kill this creature too. Or did he? He made sure that no one was watching and then slipped the gosling into his apron pocket.

* * *

        It was not easy keeping the bird hidden while he prepared dinner. From time to time, the gosling poked its head out to glimpse the world. And what a brutal world it must have seen. Its family julienned into strips, their defeathered flesh seasoned with sage, parsley, and rust, soaked in goblin milk and breaded thick. Always, carefully, making sure that no one saw, Pheth gently pressed the gosling back into hiding.

        What a vile monster I must seem to it! he thought as the cleaver fell.

        Their bodies were still warm as he removed organs and viscera. Where did your essence go? he wondered as he stared into one’s lifeless eyes.

        He feared that their ghosts hovered near, waiting for the chance to spill boiling soup on his head or knock a knife off the wall-mounted rack onto his fingers. But when he looked over his shoulder, he saw only the kitchen staff preparing tonight’s feast and Akton’s ever-watchful eyes burning into his.

        He stuffed the geese with apples and tar, potatoes and slime, imp sausage and cuttlefish roe. Then he roasted them in the kitchen’s towering brick oven for an hour, basting them in cetacean butter until their flesh turned a golden brown. Though the savory smell sickened him, he laid the butter as carefully as he once had strokes of paint.

        Hours later, after the meal had been served and cleared, he and the kitchen staff smoked pipes of nightshade out back by the trash heaps, waiting for permission to leave. The black waters of Lake Hali lapped languorously at the shoreline, and a thousand ruddy stars, fat as goose-pimples, smoldered in the night sky.

        Akton waddled into the humid air, clutching a jug of wine, and everyone rose from their stupor to greet her.

        “Word from above,” she said—she grabbed Mardero’s pipe and took a puff—”is that our queen enjoyed her dinner.”  A stream of yellow smoke flowed out from her nostrils like a dragon. “Her Highness sends her compliments on another fine meal. If your cleaning duties are done, you may go home.”

        Relieved, Pheth turned to go, but Akton stopped him. “Not you, Birdface. The queen requested you. Personally.”

        A chill ruffled his white fur. “Me? What for?”

        “How in Sheol should I know? The queen’s whims are as predictable as the stars.” And even as she spoke, the ruddy lights trembled in their orbits.

        Did I overspice? he thought. Were the birds undercooked? Did someone choke on a bone?

        “She’s in the Karteek Lounge. Take the servant’s stairs. What are you waiting for, Pheth? Go!”

        She waved him away, and he bounded inside and leaped up the candlelit stairs. But halfway there, he remembered with a start the gosling still in his apron pocket. He couldn’t return it to the coop. Most nights Akton hovered like a bat around the kitchen, sampling the queen’s wine. And he couldn’t enter the queen’s presence with the bird. If it were to pop its head out, she would have both of their heads for dinner.

        He stared up the stony stairwell into the dim heights. “I am bound like Azazel, upside-down beyond the Mountains of Darkness.”

        One of the crevices under the stairs looked just large enough to hide a gosling. He pulled the bird out of his pocket. It blinked and awoke. He peered into its black eyes, and the bird cocked his head and peered back.

        How could he leave this helpless creature here, where it might get discovered or fall to its death?  “Be still little one,” he said. “For both our sakes, be as still and silent as the Great Deep!”  He kissed the bird and returned it to his apron.

        By the time he reached the Karteek Lounge, he was covered in sweat. Why hadn’t he thought to clean himself first? Change his shirt? What an oaf! A toad-faced guard eyed his grease-stained visage disapprovingly, but let him pass with a discourteous grunt.

        Pheth had forgotten how large the Karteek Lounge was. Diaphanous curtains fluttered before giant windows that looked over the black waters of Lake Hali and the distant and madly flickering lights of the city of Alar.

        This must be what a bird feels like, he thought, when it soars above the ramparts.

        He woke from his reverie at the sound of demons laughing.

        Spread about the room on soft purple couches, a curse of demons guffawed at someone’s joke. In the center, Queen Mashit and her lover, Kokabiel, reclined on an enormous bed. The giraffe-shaped Kokabiel, with his spiraling ram’s horns and vicious rat-like face, seemed less menacing now as he draped his hoof-arm around Mashit’s gold-belted waist. And though Mashit took a human form and wore no clothes, Pheth could not glimpse her famous pale flesh under all her scintillating gold.

        Empty-eyed servants waited in the shadows holding bowls of fruit. Bronze censers perfumed the air with the dense smoke of apple peel and locust wing. Pheth sneezed, and the demons’ laughter abruptly stopped.

        “What is this?” Mashit said. Her voice was as smooth as nightshade smoke. As she shifted out of Kokabiel’s grasp, her raven hair flickered azure in the candlelight.

        “Fet, your highness,” the guard said, “from down the kitchens.” His tone implied all the filth that such a station entailed.

        “Actually, it’s Pheth,” he said; then he added with a bow, “Your Highness.”

        Her hazel eyes flashed like a distant thunderstorm. He’d heard never to look directly into them; that those who did became consumed with lust for her and would meet not her wrath but that of her many jealous lovers. It took great effort to turn away, as mesmerizing as she was.

        “Ah!” she said. She smiled and sat up, and Kokabiel grumbled as he was pushed aside. “Are you the cook who has delighted our palates with your avian delights?”  Her golden belt shimmered as she gestured to a table, where three-quarters of his geese lay untouched.

        It was much easier to avert his eyes from that atrocity. “Yes, Your Highness.”

        “Pheth, I’ve never tasted a roast as succulent as yours. Where did you learn your craft?”

        “From none, Your Highness. I used to be a painter.”

        “A painter of what?”

        He was more than happy to speak of the old days. “On these very walls I painted a mural of Dumah splitting graves with her rod and ferrying souls down to meet their punishment in Gehenna. It was a favorite of King Ashme—”  His breath caught. One did not mention the deposed king in Abbadon, especially not to the new queen!

        She paused, and he felt the thread of his life grow thin.

        “Well, Pheth, I dare say you’re a better cook than a painter!”

        The demons’ sycophantic laughter echoed from the walls, and Pheth, shivering with relief, let out a silent but particularly odorous fart. The guard cringed.

        “Your former king had hideous taste,” she said. “How gruesome was Dumah’s face! How crooked her rod!  I had these walls repainted with the deep serenity of Earth’s sky. I much prefer it.”

        “So do I, Your Highness,” he said. And it was true.

        A demon snickered but stopped when Mashit eyed him. “Have you been to Earth, Pheth?” she said.

        “No, Your Highness.”

        “Then how do you know the hue of its sky?”

        Blood pumped in his ears, and he knew his fate had not yet been decided. “From stories, Your Highness. And pictures. They say the blue of Earth’s skies can make even the most brutal demon weep.”

        She smiled. “Ah, I see the poet within you.” She stared at him, and in her eyes he felt his desire for her grow until he forced himself to turn away. “Perhaps this explains your uncanny artistry with food,” she said.

        “Pheth, I have a task for you. I desire to taste one of every bird, from every planet, in every dimension, across the entire Cosmos, wherever birds fly, walk, swim, or teleport. And I want you to prepare them for me, in the way only your poetry can. Will you see to it, Pheth?”

        The gosling moved in his hand. He had forgotten it! “An-anything for my queen,” he stuttered as he pressed the bird still.

        The joy departed from her face. “Pheth, why does your hand linger in your pocket? What do you hide there?”

        He removed his hand and showed her his empty palm. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. A rude habit from years hiding painter’s stains. I shan’t do it in your presence again.”

        Please, little bird, he thought, please stay still!

        “Very well, Pheth,” Mashit said as she strode over to the table and picked at a goose leg. “I’ll arrange for the birds to be portaled in. That is all.”

        He bowed and fled the Karteek Lounge. In the dank stairwell, he removed the gosling, hoping he hadn’t smothered it. It lifted its small head, and he sighed.

        “Little one,” he whispered, “to slaughter one of every bird in the whole Cosmos? How many thousands would that be?  How many millions?”

        The gosling opened its little mouth and closed it again.

        “It is impossible. I cannot do it.”  He hung his head. “If only, little one, we could fly away to Canada. Alas, neither of us have wings. And I don’t even know where Canada is.”

* * *

        It took Pheth nearly an hour to walk home. His stone cottage sat nestled between mountain and lake. The crimson sands shifted unpredictably each day, and tonight his cottage hovered by the water’s edge. He placed the bird on the sand and scraped off the yellow fungus that grew each day on his walls. He tossed the clumps to the ground, and a school of walking fish crept out of the lake to snatch the fragments with their teeth and slink back into the dark waters. When one approached the gosling, its green teeth glistening, Pheth shouted and kicked all the fish back into the lake.

        Inside he set the bird on a chair and fed it morsels of soaked bread he’d stolen from the kitchen. He ate some too. Out of rags and a bowl, he fashioned the gosling a nest.

        “There!” he said. “As good a bed as mine.”

        A growing wind tumbled down the mountain and carried his pipe smoke out the open door. Fits of sand rattled against the windows, and a glowfly landed on the foot of the bed, perhaps to escape the gusts. It phosphoresced its delicate wings. The gosling opened its eyes and waddled toward the insect.

        Does it recognize a kindred creature? Pheth wondered.

        But before the bird got close, the glowfly darted away.

        Pheth sighed sulphurous smoke. “I’m sorry about your family,” he said. “I had a brother and sister too, once. But the stars have taken them as well.”  He closed the door and extinguished the lantern.

        Late in the night, a thunderstorm woke him from fitful dreams. Giant hailstones slammed into the roof, and lightning speared down from the sky to electrify the waters. The mountain glowed like hot coals where lightning had struck, and schools of flying fish buzzed over the lake in ever-tightening circles.

        Something stirred beside him. The gosling had climbed out of its nest and now snuggled in the crook of his arm, fast asleep.

* * *

        The next day, he arrived at the palace just as the second sun crested the horizon. Fans of fiery light spread over its thousand sculpted terraces. By night, the palace was dark and brooding, but the morning sun rekindled the glory of its vulgar spires and arabesque balustrades.

        He wished he could fly above its ramparts to dive over standard and parapet, peering into its myriad rooms before darting gleefully into the sky.

        He had left the gosling home with food and water behind a locked door, and though he had only just left, he missed it terribly.

        After lunch, the hairy archivist came down to the kitchens and led Pheth through many long and twisting halls into the palace library. The cavernous room overflowed with codices, compendiums, grimoires, lexicons, and ordered shelves of dust.

        “Here we find the spell to fetch your birds,” the archivist said in a voice as moldy as the book he was poring over.

        Pheth glanced up at the towering stacks. They seemed to stretch forever. When he reached for a book entitled The Seven Easily Manipulated States of the Human Heart, the archivist smacked his hand.

        “These are not for amateur eyes! Even a wrong glance could send you spiraling into a distant hell.”

        “But weren’t you Ashmedai’s fruit-bearer before Mashit made you an archivist?” he said.

        “So?”

        “So how much could you have learned in fifty-one days?”

        The archivist frowned, squinting over his wrinkled nose. “Volumes,” he said, snapping the book closed. The dust made Pheth sneeze.

        The archivist fled the library, and Pheth struggled to follow. They weaved through the palace halls, down crooked stairs and across endless hallways. He grew dizzy with all the turns, and he wondered if the archivist was toying with him.

        At last they entered an enormous, empty chamber, its ceiling so high it vanished in shadow. Five warlocks in hooded robes huddled in the corner, murmuring, and the archivist walked over to instruct them on the spell. The warlocks drew sigils and zodiacs on the floor in white ash. They chanted an odd incantation, and Pheth’s chest tingled. Something wonderful was about to happen. And it was here, in vortices of smoke and light, where a door opened to another universe.

        The warlocks reached inside and shook an enormous rattle. And from a fetid swamp, startled birds flew up from behind a tangle of reeds.

        “Stymphalian!” the archivist whispered to Pheth. “With beaks of bronze and feathers of chrome. Quite rare. The queen will be pleased!”

        The warlocks plucked the birds from a sky as green as wheat grass, and Pheth wondered what other marvels cavorted through those emerald skies? He longed to enter this new world, to explore its swampy mysteries. He moved toward the portal, but the archivist waved an admonishing finger.

        The birds flew around the chamber, agitated, confused. They flung metal feathers at the party. One impinged a warlock, and he fell, screaming. But the warlocks eventually teleported all the birds down to the basement coop. The portal closed, the chamber fell silent, and Pheth hung his head. He knew he would never again glimpse that emerald world.

        “So,” the archivist said, and the warlocks, even the wounded one, leaned in to hear. “We have a little wager. How’re you going to cook ‘em?”

* * *

        Expertly, it seemed. Over the next few days, the queen was delighted with his avian delicacies. Gryphon kabobs powdered in honeybee pollen. Stymphalian hearts wrapped in penguin bacon. Raven tortellini in a tomato-base, with green peppers, eggplant, and vulture eggs. The queen wrote sonnets about his phoenix paté and read them before adoring crowds. And while she savored, Pheth slaughtered.

        From Laal the warlocks portaled in a family of woodcocks, and it wasn’t until the basement’s basalt columns had been split to pieces that Pheth discovered stone-eating shamir worms infesting their feathers.

        “Boil the woodcocks alive!” Akton demanded.

        What could he do?  The dead worms floated atop the water, smaller than mustard seeds, and he pitied the birds and worms alike.

        From Gehenna they portaled in miniature sparrows that sung a song so sweetly melancholy that half the kitchen wept and hugged each other, until Akton, with dry eyes, shouted, “Get down there, Pheth, and lop off all their heads!”

        What choice did he have?  He silenced their song.

        They portaled in a ziz, which even immature still stood twenty stories tall. He needed the help of fifty soldiers from the Legion to fell it and another ten strong demons to haul its purple liver to the oven.

        They snickered at its size as he mourned its death.

        From Dayan they brought in fire-winged phoenixes and giggling gryphons, both as mischievous as imps. One phoenix slipped its cage and burned several palace chambers before Kokabiel trapped it and drowned it in the lake. He threw himself a parade (it was well-attended), but Pheth didn’t see the joy in snuffling out a life like a candle.

        Of all the birds on Mashit’s menu, most came from Earth. Pheth longed for the brief glimpses he caught of Earth’s skies. And to his surprise, its sky was not merely blue but apricot and crimson and jade. The warlocks portaled in penguins and peregrine falcons. Cardinals and canaries. Finches and flycatchers. Hawks and hummingbirds. And Pheth cooked them all.

        He cut sinew and viscera by the hundred-fold, quenched the phoenix’s dancing flames and stilled the laughter of the gryphons. He stopped the hummingbirds’ racing hearts and forced the falcon’s last cry. On some days there were so many feathers underfoot he couldn’t see the kitchen floor.

        His hands shook, he needed a cup of hemlock wine to sleep each night, and his dreams were wild with blood and feather.

        But Pheth had a secret, one he dared not share with a soul. Each day, after the warlocks dropped their catch in the basement coop and he ventured down to slaughter them, the strangest thing happened. The birds would bow their necks for him to break. And always, after, a fledgling waddled into the light.

        “Why?” he asked a wake of bowing vultures. “Why do you do this? Do you think I’m your god, that this is heaven?”

        And their answer was always a bowed neck.

        For weeks he killed and cooked, and Mashit ate. And in the evening, after the staff had left and Akton lay unconscious from too much toadstool wine, he snuck the baby birds home.

* * *

        His cottage proved too small for all his new guests. Dung covered the floor, the mattress was in tatters, and the birds bickered, barked and squawked so loudly that he feared the palace would hear their cries. The mourning dove loathed the gryphon and screeched whenever it was close. The smoldering phoenix scalded the ziz whenever it snuggled up to it. The raven refused to eat grain, and the stymphalian kept trying to swallow the hummingbird.

        “I am thrice dumb for this,” Pheth admitted. “But if the idiot archivist can open portals to other universes, surely I can raise a few birds!”

        One morning before first light, after having been up all night because of the cawing woodcock, he slinked into the palace through the servants’ tunnels. He knew the way to the library now (the archivist had indeed been toying with him). He told the librarian, “I must research bird preparation for the queen. Lead me to your books on birds.”

        The librarian, who had been Ashmedai’s foot scrubber before his new role, was eager to oblige and did not seem to suspect a thing.

        That morning, and the mornings that followed, Pheth absorbed volumes under the flickering orange light of a lantern. The phoenix, he read, needed to eat hot coals six times a day. The ziz preferred leviathan meat. And the stymphalian ate human flesh. But most of the birds ate various mixtures of grain, which was plentiful enough in the kitchen, though it took some patience and skill to sneak the food home each night.

        In one of the musty volumes he found a drawing of many birds living happily inside a large glass enclosure.

        “This is what I need!” he said, sneezing from dust.

        There were still shamir larvae in the woodcock’s plumage; they had done horrors to his stone walls. But he captured one, and using trails of powdered granite and quartz powder, he guided it along the mountainside, freeing blocks of stone. These became his bricks. He placed four lodestones in the sand and uttered seven misshapen words, calling forth a bolt of lightning. The molten sheets of cooling sand became his glass. He gathered plants that grew on the cliffs, and these became his landscape.

        The bricks were unevenly cut, the glass was bent and cloudy, the plants kept sneaking out the door, and yet he smiled.

        “I’ve done it,” he said. “I’ve built us an aviary.” The gosling, who had begun his first molt, seemed to nod in approval.

        But then the ziz shrieked and shattered the glass. And the phoenix set fire to the sneezing ferns. And some shamirs must have escaped, because half the bricks had split to pieces.

        Pheth took a deep breath and said, “I swear by the twin suns I’ll make this work.” He stepped outside and placed four lodestones in the sand and said, “This time, we will make the glass thicker.”

* * *

        One dark morning, as acid rains poured down from bleak skies, he was poring over books in the library when he discovered something buried in an ancient text.

        “Using these nine forbidden words,” he read, “one may transform oneself into a winged creature and take to the sky.”

        Overjoyed, Pheth said, “Can I truly become a bird? Can I fly away from this accursed place?”

        The book was old and full of dust, and he sneezed.

        Akton emerged from behind the stacks. She reeked of wine and rotten things. “So this is where you hide.”

        “Mistress!” Pheth said, standing. He slammed the book closed and sneezed again.

        “You are a slau—slaughterer and a cook of birds,” she slurred. “Why research how to raise them?”

        “So... so that I might prepare them better.”

        “Lies,” she said. “You’re up to n—no good, and I’m going to inform the queen.”

        Pheth imagined all of his baby birds plucked of their feathers, basted in butter, roasting on spits.

        “You’re done, Pheth,” she said and turned to leave.

        “No!” he screamed and pushed her.

        He didn’t shove her hard, but Akton was drunk and she stumbled into a shelf. A thousand leather- and cloth-bound books fell onto her head, burying her under a great dusty pile. He heard the approaching footsteps of the librarian.

        Panicked, he ran. He sped through fifty oversized halls, down a hundred twisting corridors, to the only place in the palace where he’d ever felt safe. The basement coop.

        “I am ashes!” he muttered as the basement’s candles hissed and spat at him from the walls.

        He ran past weeping dryads and rainbow sprites, past dybbuks rattling inside jars and golems considering their heavy chains. He sped past unicorns scratching graffiti into the walls with their horns and harpies tut-tutting and singing evil poems.

        All of these creatures would be eaten or tortured or kept in these pens until the stars burned out. “What madness!” he said. “And I am complicit in these horrors!”

        He reached the coop at the end of the corridor. It smelled of recent magic. Today’s catch was already here. He stopped and gasped when he saw them.

        Their breasts were as blue as Earth’s tropical seas. Black and white zebra stripes painted their eyes. Their beaks were short, sharp, yellow. Crowning their heads, small blue feathers poked up like arrows from an archer’s target. Its body was golden, thick as a goose.

        One approached him, and with a little jig it spread its tail of feathers into a gargantuan fan. On the tip of each plume, blue and bright, was a large unblinking eye.

        A thousand eyes stared at him, angry, accusing. These were the eyes of the all-seeing Accuser at the heart of creation. The Accuser had witnessed every murderous act, and now, in this utterly magnificent form, he had come to mete judgment.

        Pheth fell to his knees. “I’m sorry!” he wept. “I’m so sorry!”

        A chick emerged from the huddle of birds. The adults pushed it towards him, a small brown, delicate creature lacking their parents’ brilliance. And like those before, they bowed their necks for him to break.

        “Stop!” he said. “Fools! I am no god. I am no savior. This is Sheol, and I am your executioner!”

        From upstairs came the sounds of shuffling and a confusion of demon voices. “Who? Pheth? He just flew into the basement!”

        Leather boots plodded and demon hooves clopped at the top of the stairwell as he opened the gate and grabbed the chick. “To raise one, only to slaughter the rest?  No more,” he said. “No more.”

        He tucked the chick into his pocket and used his keys to free the golems from their chains. The clumsy beasts slammed against the walls, cracking stone. The floor shuddered, and dust fell from the ceiling.

        Pheth shattered the dybbuks’ jars. The spirits giggled madly as they darted away. He smashed wooden trunks, freeing thousands of dryads, and they filled the air like glowflies. He set harpies free, and they cackled and walked up the walls. The demons from upstairs entered the corridor and froze at the sight of all the freed creatures.

        The unicorns stampeded, skewering three demons. The rest screamed and ran. Pheth climbed over their bodies and sped upstairs, trailing four frightened demons. He raced through the kitchen, past the stunned-looking Alath, Mardero, and Buldumech, and out into the night.

        Acid rains poured from dismal skies, burning his skin. An acrid fog choked the air, making him cough. The bird cheeped in his pocket as he ran all the way home.

        When he entered his aviary, the birds were cawing in a cacophony, as if they knew their day of reckoning had arrived. He put the chick down on the sandy floor as the rain pounded on the glass roof.

        The gosling—now a plump and gray-feathered goose—waddled up to him.

        “How quickly you’ve grown,” he said. “But it’s all been for naught. Our time is short. Our judgment approaches.”

        The goose pecked at the ground of the aviary, drawing an arc in the sand. The shape reminded Pheth of the sigils and zodiacs the warlocks had drawn.

        “Of course!” he said. “I have watched the warlocks open a portal a thousand times. And who were they before the queen’s shuffle but idiot stablehands?  There’s no reason why I can’t open one too. Even to Earth!”

        The goose seemed to nod.

        “I can save us!” Pheth said. “I will take us all to Earth!”

        He stepped out into the burning rain. He drew obscene angles in the sand and intoned harsh syllables, sticking his fingers up and down, as he’d seen the warlocks do, and then left at just the right moment. As he worked the spell, the rain paused, as if curious, and the clouds parted to reveal crimson skies.

        A vortex formed above the waters, growing. It was working!

        Something soft rubbed his ankle. The goose had come to watch. He had left the aviary door open, and all the birds were pouring out. Finch and gryphon, woodcock and ziz, phoenix and dove, they all surrounded him. In the center of the vortex glimmered a sliver of blue sky.

        His heart ached at the sight of Earth.

        The birds squealed, squawked and chirped. And suddenly, as if they had been there for Eternity, Mashit, Kokabiel, Akton, and the Queen’s Legion stood beside his house. Akton scowled and held a bloody rag to her scalp.

        Kokabiel waved his hoof, and the sliver of Earth’s sky tumbled away like a feather in the wind.

        “Look!” Kokabiel said. “Birdface has birds of his own!”

        Mashit stepped forward, and in the sun her gold adornments seemed to writhe and burn. “Look at these creatures, Koko!” she said. “What a wonder!” The flock of birds parted as she stepped into Pheth’s aviary. She vanished inside, and when she emerged minutes later, she said, “What a stupendous idea!  Koko, you troll, why didn’t you build something like this for me?”

        Kokabiel harrumphed.

        “Your Highness,” Akton said, holding her bloody rag so all could see. “This aviary was not meant for you. Pheth snuck into the library. He stole the birds from the palace. And how did he feed them?  By stealing from my kitchen!”

        Kokabiel coughed, and she added, “I mean, Your Highness’s kitchen.”

        “He must be punished!” Kokabiel added sheepishly.

        Mashit turned to Pheth and sighed deeply. “I will miss your avian delights, Pheth, but sparing you would set a foul example. I will feed your mind to Barsafael, where you will suffer his madness for all Eternity. Koko, collect these birds and bring them to the palace. I have a perfect place in mind for them.”

        As the soldiers came for Pheth, he remembered the nine forbidden words he had read in that book, the ones that could turn him into a bird.

        He turned to the goose and said, “Forgive me, little one.” Then he spoke the nine words. Except he was nervous and said only eight, and one of the words he had certainly mispronounced. The world about him warped and shifted, and suddenly everyone was very large, and he was very small.

        “Look,” Kokabiel said, and his voice shook the world. “The idiot has turned himself into a dragonfly!” He raised his forehoof. “Let me turn him back before he flits away!”

        “Wait!” Mashit said. “Better yet, fix him that way. Let him live out his days as a fleeting insect. It’s a fitting punishment, I think.”

        Kokabiel waved his hoof, and Pheth felt the world shift again, but this time his thoughts shrank too, so that soon all he wanted to do was find a nice rock to sun on, and maybe have a little something to eat every now and then.

* * *

        The dragonfly flits from rock to lake, buzzing across the warm afternoon. How huge and bulbous that mountain is, how glorious its ledges upon which to sun.

        The dragonfly soars around the mountain ten, twenty times, until he finds the familiar ledge, then lands.

        Below, in an enormous valley of straight transparent cliffs that catch and hold the sun, colorful flying creatures, much larger than him, frolic on trees, wade in clear pools, and weave through the air. They eat when they are hungry, sleep when tired, and no predators haunt their skies. How graceful they fly; how vibrant their colors. They call to mind ancient memories that flicker like suns on a puddle before they vanish.

        Through an opening in the clear cliffside, a huge creature emerges and flies up to the dragonfly. Its black beak, long sleek neck, and plump gray body make the dragonfly flutter his wings with excitement.

        They soar together, diving over rock and ledge, climbing so high it becomes hard to breathe. And the dragonfly thinks, How many days have I been flitting about with my friend?  The twin suns have come and gone many times, and I tire.

        His wingbeats slow, stop. Above him, his friend’s silhouette flaps against the sky. She gently takes his wings in her beak and carries him far over black waters toward a distant shore.

        They land on a crimson beach, where yellow clumps infest a rectangular pile of stones. She sets him on the sand and pecks away at the clumps. Creatures walk out of the water to eat them. When a creature comes for him, she frightens them all away with a honk. Her actions seem familiar, comforting. With her wing she pries open the heavy stone and carries him inside.

        The interior is dark. It smells of familiar things, and he longs for something he can’t quite remember. She places him in a basin lined with soft moss, then sits across from him in the shadows. But she’s too far away. He wants to be near. So he climbs out of the basin and moves toward her. And it is here, in the warm nook of her wing, with the sound of the lake lapping at the door, that he feels safe at last to close his eyes.

Copyright © 2013 Matthew Kressel

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Matthew Kressel’s fiction has or will appear in Clarkesworld, Interzone, Electric Velocipede, Apex, as well as previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the anthologies Naked City, The People of the Book, After, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and other markets. He edits the speculative fiction and poetry magazine Sybil’s Garage, and alongside Ellen Datlow he runs the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series in New York. His website is www.matthewkressel.net.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

NOT THE WORST OF SINS

by Alan Baxter

        Staring up at the stars, I hear the footsteps with plenty time to spare. Two sets, trying to sneak around behind, in the dark beyond the glow of my dying fire. Graham Masters shimmers into view and opens his mouth to warn me, but I just nod and slip my pistol from its holster. So many times, desperate people will try their luck on a hapless traveler. It ain’t the first time for me. Won’t be the last.

        As the steps crunch softly closer, behind the scrubby chalky-pale Chaparral brush, I turn up onto one knee and fire a shot. There’s a howl and the pounding of one set of feet. Cowardly bastard ran away and left his friend to his fate. Not so much a friend any more. I aimed low; he should only be wounded. Unless he was crouching, I suppose.

        His ragged breath and sobbing mark him out easy. I wander over, pistol resting ready along my thigh. Jesus, he’s barely a teenager, not a hint of whiskers on his chin.

        “What the fuck you doing?” I ask. Masters stands beside me, shaking his head, unseen by the boy.

        The kid’s holding hands to his gut. Must have been crouching after all. “You killed me, mister!”

        “What you doing creeping up on honest folk in the dead of night?”

        “Just lookin’ for some justice in the world!”

        “Is that right?” I turn around and walk away.

        “Poor dumb child,” Graham Masters says and I nod.

        “You done killed me!” the kid cries out again, but we ignore him and lay down by the fire. I ignore the discomfort deep in my gut too. He gasps and sobs for a good hour before his breath hitches and he bleeds out.

* * *

        I wake in the darkness with a scream and think I’ve been dreaming, until I see Masters fighting with the spectral figures. He’s shouting and cursing, and I can’t make things out too clearly, what with the sleep in my eyes and mind. Masters is grabbing at the ghosts as they claw and scratch, trying to get past him to me. Waves of coldness waft off them. I can smell] frosty ground, but it ain’t that late in the year yet. My heart hammers and I start to get up.

        Masters snarls over his shoulder. “Sleep, boy! Don’t give them the power of your attention!”

        They’ve got by him before, and when they claw at me they’re so cold it burns. It’s hard to ignore the fight. Cursing the whimper in my breath, I turn my face to the earth and squeeze my eyes tight shut. Every night now it’s the same, every time getting worse. Pressing my hands over my ears to mask the shouts, I don’t know how long before it’s over, but eventually sleep takes me.

* * *

        Dawn smudges the horizon pale pink and blue as I kick up the embers and set the pot to boiling for some coffee.

        “Again last night,” I say to the flickering form beside me.

        “Ain’t nothing for you to worry about.”

        “They seemed angry....”

        Masters turns a hard face to me. “Ain’t they always, boy? Ain’t I always kept them off you?”

        Not always, no. But I let it drop. Masters being mad at me all day can be worse than ghosts trying to take me away at night.

* * *

        The buildings stand like sentinels in the early sunlight. The town is little more than a crossroads, too small to even have a name, by the look of it. I can relate to that. Two streets mark out the cardinal directions, lined with stores and homes made of roughly cut wood, and more properties spread out behind them. People in dusty clothes walk in the shade of awnings, occasionally casting me suspicious glances. They quickly look away if I catch their eye.

        I’ll ask around and see if any of our leads are good ones. My daddy’s had eighteen years of getting lost, having fucked off right before I was born, but a cur like him don’t stay hidden for long. He ain’t dumb, uses a bunch of aliases, but he did business with Graham Masters not so long ago, so we know all of Pa’s fake names. At least the ones he was using before he turned on his own partner. Masters has never told me what their business was, but it can’t have been friendly if it caused my sonofabitch father to leave Graham Masters a ghost. I guess Dad thinks moving from state to state will mean he never crosses paths with his past. We aim to prove him wrong in that assumption and put things to rights. Graham Masters for his own reasons, and me for Momma and myself.

        The main street is swirling in dust from wagon wheels and horse’s hooves as I tie up Old Jack by the saloon. He buries his nose in the water trough, sucking and sucking like he’s never had a drink in his life. He’s a damn good horse, honest and gentle, and he means the world to me, even if his chestnut brown hide is scraggy and his ribs show through. My gun and my saddle are pretty much all I have besides Jack. And Graham Masters, I suppose, but he ain’t an actual thing, regardless of how helpful he’s been.

        It only takes about a half a minute in the saloon to know the barkeep there ain’t going to be any use. He’s never heard the names I give him. As I step back outside, a man walks towards me, jaw working as he chews tobacco, and I see the sun glinting off his badge, attitude drifting out from under the brim of his dirty grey hat.

        “New in town, eh?” he says, voice like gravel. He seems nervous.

        I nod, choosing not to answer such a dumb question with words.

        Masters beside me says, “Fuck him.”

        There’s an uncomfortable silence that I get the impression I ought to fill. “I ain’t planning on starting any trouble here, Sheriff.”

        He looks me up and down, tips his hat back a little. “You after something specific?”

        “Just passin’ through.”

        “That right?”

        I smile at him, try to ease his tension some. “I’m on the trail of a man, as it happens, so maybe you could help me out.”

         ”Is that so?  Who you looking for?”

        “The man uses different names. Danny Calhoun, sometimes. Or Seth Cooper. Maybe Frank Gates?”

        The Sheriff’s chewing stops dead. He sniffs and spits. “Pretty damn bold, I gotta say. Pretty goddamn bold.” He slips his gun from his hip and gestures with it. “This way, kid.”

        “What the hell? I ain’t done nothing.”

        The Sheriff barks a laugh. “That right?”

        “There’s some kinda mistake here. I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

        “Why don’t you come along quietly and we’ll sort all this out.”

        I cast a desperate glance at Masters, and his face is pure fury. “Do as he says,” he hisses. “He’ll shoot you down in an instant out here. Go with him and we’ll find a way free.”

        I follow the Sheriff towards the jailhouse, my gut churning as I wonder just what the hell Masters can do to get me out.

* * *

        The tiny cell smells of mildew and something less pleasant. It’s dim inside, with sacking over the one small barred window high in the wall, blocking out the fresh air and sunlight. The shackles hang heavy against my wrists, a length of chain swinging between them. I keep hearing talk of a gallows and how they finally got someone they’d been after, and I can’t believe they think that’s me.

        Masters keeps assuring me he’ll sort it out, and I have to trust him. I never had anyone to trust before, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. But I’m doubting him more by the second. The cell door is heavy and new-looking.

        A priest comes walking along beside the Sheriff, grinning like a fox. His hair is lank and streaked grey, hanging in rat tails over his ears and brow.

        “I suggest you have a chat with this man,” the Sheriff says to me. He pulls out a bunch of keys and opens my cell door. The priest steps in, still grinning, his cheeks sallow flaps over a sagging mouth of broken yellow teeth. What the hell is he so damn happy about?

        “I don’t need no priest!” I say.

        The Sheriff ignores me. “You gonna be okay with him, Father?”

        “Oh, yes, don’t worry about me.”

        “I’d much rather keep the cell locked and you outside it.”

        The preacher shakes his head, still smiling. “We’ll be fine.”

        The Sheriff nods. “I won’t lock you in with him, but that door there will stay bolted.” He points down the hall to the heavy wooden door between the cells and the front office. The only way out. “You knock on that door when you need to come out.” He hands the holy man a six-shooter. “If he tries to follow you, even puts one toe outta that cell, don’t say anything. Just shoot him dead.”

        The priest looks like he’s going to protest, but the expression on the Sheriff’s face brooks no argument. “He’s vicious, Father, left two innocent corpses in his wake. And he ain’t as clever as he thinks he is, leaving a trail of questions and murder. It was always going to catch up with him eventually.”

        Two corpses in my wake? I look across at Graham Masters, but he won’t meet my eye. His face is a mix of embarrassment and rage. There’s more than two corpses in my past, but I think I know the ones this Sheriff is talking about. Masters knows ‘em too.

        With a shrug, the priest takes the gun and tucks it into the belt holding his black robes closed. “He’s just a boy,” the holy man says. “But I’m sure this gun will keep him calm while we talk.”

        “This is your last chance for any kind of redemption,” the Sheriff says to me. “Don’t fuck it up now.”

        He walks away before I can protest, and I’m left in an unlocked cell with an armed preacher. The wooden door to the office closes with a heavy thunk and I hear the bolt turn.

        Masters moves close to me, whispers, “This is your chance. I’ll make a distraction, you get past this maggot.”

        Before I can answer or ask any questions, he’s gone.

        “What would you like to talk about?” the priest says.

        Unsure what else to do, I start by asking him the names.

        “No one I can remember,” he says, kinda high-pitched.

        “You sure?” I say, deliberately loud, like my voice can push away the creep this guy gives me.

        “Maybe I can check my donations book. I keep a note of all the generous souls who help the church. But really, you shouldn’t be worrying about any of that stuff now.” The preacher’s eyes linger on me, slide up and down, and he smiles kinda crooked. “Would you like to give something to the church, young man? Before you move on to the next life? It might go down well with... you know.” He nods upwards.

        “I ain’t got two pennies to rub together.”

        “Maybe you could give something else, fine-looking young boy like you?” He steps up, too close, his breath sweet-smelling, like rotten fruit. “A horse or a pig is all well and good, but it’s not  the same. Oh no, not the same at all.” His eyes become suddenly hard, cold. “Besides, you’re already damned.”

        I hear a commotion out front and the Sheriff yelling. There’s a gunshot somewhere and the sound of pounding feet. My fists drive the preacher’s head back and he staggers away, scrabbling for the gun at his waist.

        I hit him again, two-handed, using the metal around my wrists instead of my knuckles.

        The preacher doesn’t make a sound as blood floods his mouth and chin, rushing from his crushed nostrils. Then he laughs, the unbelievable son of a bitch. “Is that what you like?” he says, high-pitched and breathless.

        He draws the gun from his belt, but I’m ready and slap it aside with the chain of the cuffs. The report is loud, and the bullet bites splinters from the side of the cot. Now he looks concerned.

        I hit him again and he goes down, tumbling over in a mess of blood and black robes. He comes up onto hands and knees; the gun wavers out in front of him. I grab it and twist it from his grip, hear his fingers snap.

        My ragged boot fetches him up under the chin, and his rotten teeth crack and spin across the floor. I drop down on him and keep punching until my knuckles bleed, and his twitching stops.

        Masters is right there. “Come on, boy!”

        The door at the end of the corridor is unlocked, and I don’t have time to ask how. People are screaming in the street and the Sheriff is firing shots into the air, yelling for calm. Whatever Masters did out here has the townsfolk well and truly spooked. Running outside I see Old Jack down the street, the only horse standing calm. I jump on, drag his reins off the rail, and pound out of town before the Sheriff can realize I’m gone.

* * *

        There’s a whole lot of nothing except wide open space and tumbleweeds between that last town and the next. I figured I’d do well to move along quickly, but I meant to buy food and fill my water back there. Now I’m pretty much out of both.. The nights are getting colder and a low fire does little to keep me warm, hungry as I am. My shirt is thick but my denims are ragged. Masters has always worn his fancy suit and shiny shoes, but I guess a ghost has no concerns for weather and seasons. I’m going to need to find a coat and a lot more to eat.

        “Quit yer whinin’,” Masters says, even though I haven’t complained. “You can always eat your horse and walk.”

        “I ain’t eating Jack. He’s about the only friend I ever had.”

        Masters’ anger is instant. “That right? And what the fuck am I, boy?” His hand whips out in a slap across my cheek. It’s icy cold and stings something fierce, even as it passes right through. Only when he’s really angry, he told me before, can he affect physical things. I guess he was mad as hell in that Sheriff’s office. “No wonder your daddy walked away from you,” he says. “He could see your weakness even before you were born.”

        “Fuck you, Graham Masters! I ain’t weak.”

        He sneers at me. “Didn’t I find you in the depths of your despair, boy? Cradling your crazy Momma while she gibbered in her madness, holding a gun and sobbing your heart up? About to end it all?”

        “Fuck you,” I say again. I can’t meet his eye, so I stare at the shackles hanging off my skinny wrists instead. “I was only sixteen. I was lost. My Momma was....”

        “You’re eighteen now, boy,” Masters shouts. “And you got me to thank for that!”

        I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing, thinking about Momma wasting away like a dead horse by the side of the road, eaten from the inside out by maggots. Except Momma is being eaten up by memories. My good for nothing daddy left her pregnant, no money or family nearby. Dragged her out to the middle of nowhere to start a new life that fell apart before it began. When I swelled her belly, and my daddy’s dumbass dream had turned to shit, he just walked away, and she had to beg for everything. I was born in the dirt of the street, and my Momma was reviled by everyone around her. She was too fragile to exist like that, and it slowly drove her mad.

        By the time I was five, I’d already had to grow up enough to look after her instead of the other way around, and that was all my daddy’s fault. By the time I was sixteen my Momma had pretty much no mind left, and I was sick of it all. Masters is right that he found me in the depths of my despair. And he convinced me to put Momma with the nuns and help him track down my daddy, seeing as we both had a score to settle.

        My daddy had killed Graham Masters over a business deal gone bad, so Masters told me, whatever their business might have been. He’d as good as killed my Momma, and he’d ruined my life since before I even entered this unforgiving world. I took the chances Masters offered me, so I oughtta be grateful. It’s true he’s teaching me to be strong, and I wonder if this is maybe what it’s like to have a father.

        I’m trembling, but I tell myself it’s the cold and the hunger, not fear or hatred.

        “I was drawn to you, boy, because we share a common enemy. Your daddy ruined everything for me, fucking killed me, and I’m burning with a vengeance. And didn’t I light that fire in you?”

        I nod, not looking at him. I can feel that furnace churning in my belly every second of every day. It only gets hotter when I think of poor Momma. I look out across the low fire, towards the distant mesas standing like guardians of this desolate land. I’m one tiny person in a harsh and barren world. What chance do I really have of ever finding my hateful father?

        “Now shoot the chain between those cuffs, boy,” Masters says. “There’s room to angle your pistol in there, and I’m about mad enough that I can probably help. Just be careful you don’t blow your stupid hand off.”

* * *

        I wake in the pitch dark, and something moves over me. A light of a sort; a glow. The fire has burned away to nothing but a gentle smear of orange in the night, and the cold is in my bones. As I blink awake, rubbing sleep from my eyes, the glow resolves into a face. Then two. They lean over me, eyes wide and terrifying, mouths stretched in silent screams.

        My heart races, my stomach turns to water. Fingers rake like icicles across my face and throat, clutching at me, grasping. They drag a tiny sliver of my soul away with each touch. I see it like silvery smoke stretching out of me in ribbons; feel myself lessen every time. A distant wheezing howl escapes their wide mouths, like cries of pain but somehow triumphant.

        With a screech, Masters swoops in. He grabs the things and hauls them off, and the fighting starts. Biting down on my fear I scramble away and load more wood to the fire, blowing through numb lips to bring the flames up again. I squint away as Masters brawls with the things that tried to take me while I slept.

        A distant howl drags my attention, and I look into the screaming face of one ghost, not distant at all. Masters is grappling with the other, throwing panicked looks at me over his shoulder.

        “Don’t you let it in, boy!” he screams. “Don’t you give it form!”

        The ghost reaches for me, its frosty hands dragging the very essence out of me. My mind slides, my vision blurs. I hear the far-off cries of Masters as he’s dragged away, fading as he goes.

        Swatting at the ghost, my hands slapping through frozen air, I get dizzy. “Graham Masters!” I cry, but there’s no answer.

        I turn and stagger away, running and stumbling, no idea where I’m heading, just away, away into the morning. Surely it’s only minutes now before they’ve finally got me. Masters is gone, I’m alone in the night.

        Don’t you let it in, boy!

        “You can’t have me!” I scream as I run. Icy claws rake my soul through my back; my spine arches like it’s going to pop in a dozen places. “You cannot have me!” I howl again and keep running and running until my vision blurs and I fall, blackness sweeping in before I hit the ground.

* * *

        I wake shivering as the soft glow of dawn begins to brighten the horizon. Grey, lifeless scrub stretches away from me in every direction, as empty as my soul. As lifeless as my existence. I might be alive, but I ain’t living, not really.

        I see movement in the velvet sky above me and squint on the circling black shape of a vulture, looping around like an angel of death. It spirals slowly downwards, joined by another. They land not twenty feet from me and hop from side to side, squawking at each other. I want to scare them away, but a part of me wonders why I should bother. What’s the point?

        There’s the sound of hooves on the stony ground, and the big ugly birds flap angrily up and away. It’s Old Jack, and Masters walks beside him.

        “They’re gone.” Masters sits beside me, his face unreadable even in the low light.

        “I thought they got you.”

        “I’m a ghost, you fucking idiot. I’m already dead.”

        “They nearly got me!”

        “But they didn’t. Fuck ‘em. You’re haunted, boy, you know that. It’s how I found you, after all. You let me in and gave me strength. Don’t you let them in too, and they’ll stay weak.”

        “I guess.” I don’t believe a word of it. Next time, the time after. How much more is in me for them to take?

        “Finish this business,” Masters says. “Get some peace of mind for you and your momma. And for me. They’ll have less to hang onto.”

        “Really?”

        Masters stands over me, eyes dark and foreboding. “Get up, you weak prick.”

        “I don’t care any more.”

        “Yes you fucking do. Look.”

        I follow his pointing finger and see a jack-rabbit sitting on a mound of prairie not thirty yards away.

        “Slow and quiet,” Masters says.

        The boom of my pistol in the cold air is staggering, and the jack-rabbit’s head is gone.

* * *

        It’s well past noon when the silhouettes of a small town appear on the horizon. It gives me renewed strength, and I’m smiling as I ride down the main street that’s lined with wooden buildings, brightly painted awnings, and fancy sign-writing in the windows. I can see homesteads spreading out beyond the town, people working, wagons rolling. Hills swell up into mountains to the west.

        I tie Old Jack to a post outside a saloon, give him a pat on his hot neck. I pull the heavy sleeves of my baggy shirt down to hide my new iron bracelets and walk in through the double swing doors. It’s dim and cool inside, quiet and still. Dust motes dance in the early sunlight shafting in between the slats of the shutters. A bald guy with a belly like a full sail is polishing glasses behind the bar, and a pretty young thing is sweeping up. I nod to the barman and watch the girl awhile. She’s young and slim, with a cascade of blonde hair and a glint in her eye. She holds my gaze for a second or two before looking back to her broom.

        What I would give to find a town someplace, settle down and get some work, woo a pretty girl like that and maybe get married, have some kids of my own. Just normal stuff. But this fire burns in me, and I can’t do anything normal until it’s out, and that’s only going to happen when my daddy is brought to account for what he did to Momma and me. She’d have liked to live in a small town like this, I reckon. Far better than the nuns’ sanatorium where she’s lying now, mind broken and body withering away to sticks and dust.

        “Help you?” the barman calls out.

        I smile at him, friendly-like. “I could use a good meal. Or even a bad one,” I add with a laugh.

        He pushes his chin at the girl sweeping up, and she sets her broom aside and disappears out back. I pull up a stool, sit down and put my ragged black hat on the bar beside me. There’s a moment’s uncomfortable silence as the barkeep measures me up and down.

        The girl returns with a tin plate holding some kind of stew and a hunk of bread. She hands it to me with a soft smile, almost like a secret. The gravy is thick like mud and cold, from last night’s cooking, but it smells fantastic. The meat is mostly gristle and the bread’s stale, but I swallow it down like it’s the food of God, my belly aching at the sudden pressure it hasn’t felt for too long. That jack-rabbit kept me alive, but he was near as skinny as me. It feels like the first time I’ve eaten properly in weeks.

        “I’m looking for someone,” I tell the barkeep as I mop up with the last of the bread.

        He’s immediately suspicious. “That right?”

        “Give me a whisky. Just the cheap stuff.”

        He nods, puts a glass on the counter and fills it from a bottle without a label. I’m only drinking to be friendly, trade for the information he might have, but the sour burns nicely all the same. I put a couple of coins on the scratched bar.

        Graham Masters stands beside me, unseen by the others. He tilts his head at the barman. Impatient fucking ghost. “I’m looking for a fella goes by several names. Mind if I run ‘em by you?”

        The barman shrugs.

        “All right then. Danny Calhoun?”

        He shakes his head.

         ”Seth Cooper?”

        Shake.

        “Frank Gates?”

        This time there’s a slight pause, and his eyes narrow just a bit before he shakes his head.

        “Frank Gates?” I ask again, one eyebrow raised.

        “I said no, dammit. I ain’t ever heard of no Frank Gates.”

        The pretty young girl has stopped sweeping, watches us with a strange expression. Masters is virtually dancing on the spot. “He’s lying!” he says to me, like it ain’t obvious, even to the tables and chairs. Truth be told, I’m getting damned tired of this game, but my excitement rises too at this reaction.

        I nod and stand up, tip my hat. “Much obliged, sir. Guess I’ll move along and keep looking.”

        The barman seems relieved and smiles at me. “Good luck finding him.”

        I turn to leave and walk slowly to the door, giving the barman plenty of time to pluck up the courage to ask the question that must be burning his lips to get out.

        “Say, stranger.”

        There it is. I turn back. “Yeah?”

        “Why you looking for this fella anyway? You mean him harm?”

        I laugh. “Shit, no. We have history. We go way back. I’m just looking up an old friend.”

        His brow creases, eyes narrowed again. He doesn’t know what to make of that. I’m too young to be a pal of someone my daddy’s age. Eventually he shrugs once more. “Well, like I said, good luck.”

        “Thanks.”

        The sun is beating down outside, making me squint. “Back door or front?” I ask Masters, almost invisible in the brightness.

        “Surely the back,” he says, vengeance clear in his tone. He’s at least as hungry for that now as he was for money in his life, I reckon.

        “That’s what I thought.”

        We stroll casually around the saloon, keeping to the shadows near the building walls, and peek around behind. Sure enough, the fat barkeep comes hurrying out, rolling up his apron and dropping it by the door as he waddles behind the other shops and slips away between them. I’m sure we’re close. I’m so near the quarry I think I can almost smell the bastard.

        “Don’t lose him!” Masters barks.

        I trot back around the front and turn the corner. It’s easy to see the fat barman, hurrying up the street. There’s not that many people yet in a frontier town like this, but you can see the potential of the place. It’s only going to get bigger, like so many others we’ve seen. Masters says San Francisco is a city that takes hours to walk across, with huge buildings of rock and brick. I can’t imagine a place like that.

        The barman shouts and waves and a young boy runs across the street to him. There’s some frantic chatter and something changes hands, probably a coin, and the boy takes off north out of town like a rabbit running from a gunshot.

* * *

        Old Jack trots along happily and I can see the young boy up ahead. There’s a property on the hill, just a small farmhouse, and I think that’s where he’s headed until he jumps bareback onto a horse out front and takes off again. He gallops north and I keep Old Jack in check, tailing him at a distance. There’s no point in giving myself away now I’m this close.

        The kid rides hard for a good hour, grubby white shirt billowing in the wind of his gallop as his bare feet swing at the horse’s flanks. He heads into the hills and down a ravine with a river running along it. Masters is getting more agitated all the time, popping up and shouting at me about losing the kid, but it’s hard to keep up and not give myself away when there’s fuck-all but the two of us out here.

        Sure enough, before we’re a half-mile into the narrow valley, I’ve lost all sight of the boy and his horse. I sit on Old Jack and curse. Masters is furious.

        “You are one useless fucking idiot!” he yells. “What now?”

        “I don’t know,” I say in a broken voice. It’s going to be dark soon, and the ghosts are coming back. Masters is getting worse at holding them away, and I can’t see the fucking point any more.

        “Don’t you sink into some useless funk, you prissy child,” Masters says, his face an inch from mine even though I’m on horseback. “You start searching.”

        The ravine doesn’t branch out, and it’s getting deeper. If the kid came through, it’s likely I can carry on and hopefully stumble across wherever he was headed. Follow the river and pray I find something before dark.

        It’s slow going, picking along through the rock and scrub. Often we have to climb a steep bank and keep the river in mind by listening more than watching. We could go right by wherever that kid was headed and not even know it, but I don’t tell Masters that. He’s irate as hell all the time and only getting madder.

        I’m tired, hungry and kinda scared, sagging in the saddle, when something pulls me up. Voices, drifting from somewhere. I hold Jack in a clump of trees and let him drink at the river. Once he’s safely tied, I have a drink myself. It’s at least as cold and fresh as it looks. Going quiet and careful on foot, it’s not long before a crackle of fire and the smell of cooking rumbles my stomach. There are men talking, not far away.

        I can see down into the camp, six canvas tents and a big cookfire. Somewhere in here is Frank Gates. AKA Danny Calhoun and Seth Cooper. I settle down to wait for night. Time to finish this.

* * *

        It’s nice to sit by the river until the dusk turns dark. Graham Masters is impatient to get moving. But it’s taken this long, so it can wait a little longer. Caution is the key here, or I’m liable to blow it and waste everything. Masters has ever been eager to get on with it and, if I’m honest, he’s often been a fairly unreliable companion. He’s caused me trouble more than once.

        But it’s night, and I have a job to do. My heart’s beating fast at the thought. I could finally be here, at that point in my life where I can make my bastard of a father pay and shuck this burden from my shoulders. Tell my Momma he’s dead and buried; let her find some peace. Then maybe I’ll go back to that last town and talk to the pretty girl in the bar.

        I creep down towards the tents. All prospector camps are like this; I’ve seen a few before. I hide in the shadows and watch as the men sit around the fire, eating and drinking and laughing too loud. I wonder if it’s to stem the disappointment of turning up nothing, or in celebration of the fact they’ve struck yella and know they’re going to be rich. Either way doesn’t bother me. I’m going to kill my daddy whether he’s rich or poor. Although pulling a few nuggets from the pockets of his corpse wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

        The kid is curled up asleep under a big coat near the fire. There are four men, so I need to be careful. I don’t want to end up in a fight with them all. I’ve honed some skills these recent years, but even I can’t be sure I’d manage four on one.

        Masters is clear beside me in the darkness. He squints into the gloom and a smile splits his face. “There he is!” He points to one fella and my chest tightens.

        “You sure,” I ask.

        Masters nods without looking at me. “Oh yeah.”

        “Really sure?” I ask again, staring hard at him.

        He turns his glare to me. “That’s Frank Gates.”

        We watch a while longer. Nothing happens except more eating and drinking and then the men start heading for their tents, to bed early to get up with the dawn.

        I keep an eye on Gates, staring hard at the man who seeded me for this world, who ruined my Momma’s life. He’s a rangy bastard, tall and skinny like me, but his hair is dark black where mine is sandy brown. He’s got a nose like an eagle’s beak, and that ain’t nothing like mine either. Nice to know I take after my Momma more than this sack of shit. He wears good clothes, though they’re dirty from prospecting, and his boots are finer than any I’ve ever owned. Son of a bitch. I start preparing for what I’m going to say to him, and I brace myself for the possibility that I won’t have a chance to say anything. Ending him is the only important part of this.

        And he starts heading straight for us. I catch my breath, shuffle back against the rocks and scrub where I’m hiding. No time to move anywhere else. He walks right past me in the shadows and I see his mean face, eyes set close together, black stubble making his cheeks dark in the night. He seems in decent shape, but I don’t reckon he’s close to as strong as I am. He walks between some trees into the gloom, and I can’t believe my luck.

        Creeping like a cat, I follow. Franks Gates, as he’s calling himself, grunts and undoes his braces. He kicks a hole in the sandy ground, drops his britches, and squats, elbows on his knees.

        “Don’t make a sound,” I whisper, as the cold steel of that Sheriff’s Colt presses against the skin of his neck.

        He stiffens, but doesn’t move. A muffled cry of fright escapes his lips, bitten off as soon as it starts.

        “Pull up your britches and move forward.”

        He complies. I can see his hands shaking as he buttons his fly. He stumbles ahead of me, my gun barrel pressed to the middle of his spine.

        “What do you want?” he whispers, his voice trembling with fear. “You want money? Gold?”

        “Shut the fuck up, Frank Gates,” I say quietly, pushing him away from the camp. “That’s what you’re calling yourself now, right?”

        “That... that’s my name, right enough. Who are you?”

        “I’m the son you abandoned, you slimy piece of shit.”

        “What?”

        “The son of the woman you left, pregnant, poverty-stricken and a pariah. She couldn’t take it, the ridicule, the rejection. She’s a fragile bird, and you broke her mind, Frank Gates! Our lives, too!”

        His shaking is visible all over, his knees knocking together, hands flapping by his sides. “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t have a son. I have a wife and two daughters in San Francisco!”

        That just makes me furious. “Is that right?” I almost yell. “Treat them a lot better than you did Momma and me, do you?”

        His voice is hitched with tears, sobbing like a little girl. “I don’t know what you mean!”

        “Turn around and face me, Gates.”

        He stands there, back to me, shaking and sobbing.

        “Turn your face to me, Pa!”

        He turns slowly, hands raised. His face is twisted in fear, tears and snot shining in the darkness. I look around for Graham Masters, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Surely he wants to see this. My own hand starts to shake, the excitement of the situation is getting to me. Fuck it, I can’t put this off.

        “Here and now you pay for what you did to us!” The flash and bark of the pistol is massive in the silent darkness, and a rush rips through me.

        Franks Gates’ chest gouts blood as he staggers over backwards, my shot right through his heart. He’s dead before he hits the ground, and Masters comes running.

        “Stop!” he cries. “It ain’t him!”

        I can’t believe it. “Not again!”

        “I lost you in the trees,” Masters says. “I tried to catch up, but I couldn’t find you. It ain’t him.”

        My euphoria drains away like rainwater on sun-parched earth. I’m shaking all over. “I killed the wrong man!” I yell at Graham Masters. “Again!”

        “I’m sorry, it’s so hard to tell. I’m a ghost, I don’t see real things as well as you do.” He sounds altogether too relaxed for my liking.

        “You said you were sure. Just like you did when we found Danny Calhoun, and Seth Cooper!”

        Something like a smile glimmers across Masters’ face, but it’s hard to see in the shadows.

        I can hear voices shouting and people crashing through the brush. Those gossamer spectral haunts that dog me every night are lurking, reaching, groaning mouths wide in supplication. Are there three now?

        “You have to go!” Masters says.

        Confusion fogs my brain. “I killed another innocent man!”

        Masters’ sudden grin is feral. “Part of you likes it!”

        “What?”

        He grabs at my shirt, dragging icily at my flesh as his hand passes right through me. “Come on! Don’t let them catch you.”

        Is he laughing? I stumble over rough ground, heading back to where Old Jack is tethered. My mind reels, my heart hammers.

        “Keep looking,” Graham Masters says. “It’s your turn now. You’ll find him next time, I’m sure.” There’s no sincerity in his tone.

        I look at the ghost of my mentor in the darkness, and his expression is hard to read. “My turn? Next time?”

        He nods as I untie Jack and swing up into the saddle. There’s a self-satisfied look about him, like a man who’s enjoyed his fill of a good meal. His eyes sparkle, and there are creases at the corners as he grins.

        “It’s your time, boy,” Masters says. “Now you get to keep moving, keep looking for your damn pa, free as you like! Vengeance is a selfish business. And you better stay ahead of those night-time ghouls.”

        “You sound like you ain’t coming,” I say, shivers wracking through me.

        Masters just stands in the night, smiling at me. I can hear the other prospectors crashing closer.

        “I need you to identify him!” I say, and curse how scared my voice sounds.

        Masters leans his head back and laughs. “Boy, I have no fucking idea who your daddy is. Never did.”

        His words echo in my mind and his laughter rings through the valley as I gallop away from the river and into the night.

Copyright © 2013 Alan Baxter

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Alan Baxter is a Ditmar Award-nominated British-Australian author. He writes dark fantasy, sci-fi and horror, rides a motorcycle and loves his dog. He is the author of the dark fantasy thriller novels RealmShift and MageSign, co-author with David Wood of the short horror novel Dark Rite, and has nearly fifty short stories published in journals and anthologies in Australia, the US, the UK, and France, including the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror. Read extracts from his novels and short fiction at his website–www.alanbaxteronline.com–or find him on Twitter @AlanBaxter, and feel free to tell him what you think. About anything.

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COVER ART

“The Rickety Tower,” by Jeremiah Morelli

Jeremiah Morelli lives in southern Germany and currently works as a middle school teacher for English and Art. He sees his painting mainly as a hobby, though he has been selling prints for several years. Colorful, whimsical scenes are what he likes most, and he hopes to publish a children’s book one day.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Copyright © 2013 Firkin Press

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