MIKE SHEL 

I reckoned it had been hanging there for at least three days, judging by the state it was in. The crows had made short work of the eyes and nibbled at lips and cheeks, but the throat was intact, and the clenched jaw told me it still had a tongue, which was what mattered most. I cut the rope from the tree with my hunting knife and let the body drop to the ground. It landed with an unceremonious wet sound—the broad leaves of the hanging tree had apparently sheltered flesh from sun so that it still had juice, despite the cruelty of late summer heat. I sat down beside it, crossed my legs, and reached for my death bag, rummaging around for what was needed. First, the finger bone of a virgin. Well, finger bone of an alleged virgin, such propositions being dicey in the best of times, which these weren’t. Second, a vial of baby’s spittle, duly blessed—the spittle that is; baby itself can’t have been baptized in the faith. Good luck finding one of them on the frontier, where most folks are deeply devout, if not outright fanatics. Third was my charm, the silver cruciform sword of St. Agnes, which hung always on a delicate chain around my neck. I kissed the charm and drew in a deep breath, preparing myself. This sort of work was unpleasant, to put it mildly.

​

“This is disgusting,” said Appoline in a husky whisper, uncrossing her arms long enough to push a strand of brown hair from her pale brow. “It’s unnatural.”

 

“But necessary, Polly,” I answered her, keeping my eyes on the dead body, steeling myself for the grim task.

 

“I don’t want to watch this,” she said—to me or herself, I wasn’t certain. Arms still crossed to punctuate her disapproval, she walked away from the shade of the hanging tree and back into the afternoon light. Her form vanished in the brilliant rays, as though swallowed by the sunlight.

Maybe the sun’s rays would shelter Appoline from my unsavory undertaking. I’d tend to her correct revulsion later. Now I began by prying apart the corpse’s bearded jaw with my knife, eliciting a vile, creaking protest of leathery muscle. I inserted the virgin’s bone into the mouth and past the tongue, dry teeth scraping at my finger as I did so. When the bone had reached the throat, I jerked my finger free, half expecting the corpse to bite it off in protest at my unwelcome intrusion. Then I began massaging the bearded jaw and throat, whispering the lilting incantation into a dusty ear torn and nipped at over the past few days by hungry black beaks. I blew into the mouth, suppressing my gorge as I met the wiry whiskers of beard and flaking, desiccated lips.

 

Nothing.

 

I overcame queasy hesitation and offered a second breath of animation to the corpse. Several heartbeats passed, and I began to worry a third would be necessary, when a chill in the pit of my stomach signaled that the spirit was moving back in, climbing aboard the body like a weary rider mounting a horse for an unwanted journey. After a long moment, the corpse shuddered. It startled me, if I’m going be honest with you, even though I knew it would happen.

 

“I can’t see,” was the first thing the dead man said, hoarsely.

 

“The crows have been at your eyes, friend,” I answered.

 

He sighed, chest rising and falling, filling up dead lungs that had no use for the air, save to fuel the words he spoke. He clucked his tongue and said, “Departed then? Hmmph. Don’t remember dyin’.”

 

“Somebody was unhappy with you,” I offered. “They hanged you from a tree.”

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The corpse frowned and let out a shaky breath that stank like an untended battlefield.

 

“Parched,” he managed to croak.

 

I retrieved my canteen and tipped a trickle of water into his mouth. He choked a bit, as though he had forgotten how to swallow.

 

“Much obliged,” he said after a pause.

 

I nodded, despite knowing that the sightless dead man wouldn’t witness it. The both of us were silent then. I was exercising uneasy patience, wanting to give him time to adjust to his circumstances. After a minute or two he began puzzling out loud about his demise.

 

“Hatches or Pace, could be,” he said. “They always bore me ill. Or maybe Oliver and that new dolly of his. The one with the tits. Where am I? Doages?”

 

“A long way from Doages. At least fifteen miles west of Popdalla, in fact. Maybe four days’ ride east of the Red Wastes.”

“Huh. Not bounty hunters, then,” he mused, voice emotionless and thin. “Five hundred on my head last time I checked. A bounty hunter wouldn’t string up their payday an’ leave it swingin’. Hey! Bring my carcass to that fat ass sheriff in Popdalla an’ we’ll split the reward!” He tried to laugh, but it came out more like a barking cough. I had me a wry one.

 

“Thanks for the offer, friend, but I’ll have to decline.”

 

“Won’t stoop to claimin’ a bounty?” he asked with a bitter sneer, like he was offended.

 

“Not that. Headed west is all.”

 

“Belu wept! What on earth for? Only dogs an’ witches wander out that way. Other’n a few foolhardy sodbusters, speakin’ in tongues an’ askin’ for the trouble they find. An’ you don’t sound like one o’ those.”

 

I watched the realization dawn on his dead features.

 

“You’re a dirt witch.” It was spoken with certainty and scorn.

 

“Been called worse,” I said, and I had. I took no offense at the slur.

 

“I can’t see ya. You sound civilized. Stole then as a boy? By the Totchee? The Ghells?”

 

“No one stole me, friend. But I spent a fair spell with the Totchee. Had a shorter visit with the Doh-Khats. Learned some helpful medicine. The native folks have a lot of wisdom if you’ll loan them an ear.”

 

“Wisdom? I’d spit if I could!” the corpse exclaimed. “Woke up from the grave by a stinkin’ Totchee dirt witch!” His desiccated features suddenly tightened. “Someone else is with you, floatin’ nearby.”

 

I didn’t respond to that. Appoline was none of his business.

 

“She’s light as a feather,” he continued. “Barely holdin’ on here, tethered gentle-like. Was you sweet on her?”

 

“Don’t you worry none about her,” I said, irritation creeping into my tone. “You’re talking to me now.”

 

“Whaddya want with me anyway?” he retorted, sounding irritated his own self.

 

“Need to ask you a few questions, if it ain’t too much trouble.”

 

“Awww, leave me be!”

 

“Leave you be? What else might occupy your time out here, sir?”

 

“Eternal rest an’ all. An’ why should I help ya, wakin’ me up like this? What’s in it for me?”

 

The dead. Still looking for an angle.

 

“Well, I’ll release you and put you in the ground proper. You can get back to that long dirt nap of yours. Unless you’d rather wait for somebody else to wander along, a kind-hearted Ghell shaman maybe. Or someone who might do you the courtesy of mincing you up into bits tiny enough so that your soul won’t have nothin’ left to cling to.”

 

His scowl wasn’t pretty.

 

“You’d do that to me? Let me lie here, in this rottin’ carcass, stuck between worlds?”

 

Maybe I would have. I was feeling a bit ornery and plenty impatient.

 

“Don’t want to. Just need some answers is all. I lost the trail of my quarry. Maybe you saw something.”

 

“Saw somethin’? My eyes is et out! And I don’t even know who strung me up!”

 

“The dead know things, friend. Sometimes they don’t know what they know, ‘til you ask ‘em. So, I’m gonna ask you some questions, and see if maybe you might have the knowledge I require.”

 

The corpse’s grimace was skeptical, but what he asked next surprised me.

 

“Are they things I’d want t’know I know?”

 

Oh, that was an ace of a question. It’s a question people don’t ask often enough. Do I really want to know these things? Am I better off in my ignorance? I told him a lie. Well, fairer to say I told him something I didn’t know to be true for certain. Something pulled from the air just to set him at ease.

 

“You’ll forget it all just as soon as I send you out past the Final Veil.”

 

“You won’t call me back again?”

 

I clutched St. Agnes as I answered.

 

“Deal.”

 

He gave me a little nod and said no more, ragged, empty sockets staring back at me. That was enough of an affirmation for me. I gathered some dirt from the ground in my left hand and let half the blessed baby spittle drip from the bottle I had un-stoppered. I mixed them together in my palm until I had a muddy paste. I made the mark of the cruciform blade on the corpse’s forehead with that paste and whispered the necessary words. I took St. Agnes from around my neck and pressed the medal onto that mark. Then I asked my first question.

 

“What did they call you, and from where did you come?”

 

“Thom Bench. Late o’ Hockett, by way o’ Champline.”

 

“Did a man pass by here, Thom? Pale, one-eyed fella, wavy blond hair, wearin’ a brown shirt, roses tooled on a leather belt?”

 

After a moment, the corpse spoke.

 

“Yeah.”

​

“How long ago?”

​

“Half a day, maybe a little bit more.”

 

“Armed?”

 

“Single ol’ flintlock pistol in a holster, the other’n empty. An’ a cavalry sword, drawn an’ held casual in his right hand, draggin’ the point through the dirt as he walked.”

 

“There was a demon riding him, Thom. What was its name?”

 

A pause. Then, “Apterfuge.”

 

Apterfuge. I didn’t remember coming across it in Sebastian’s dusty grimoire (MALIGNARUM). That gave me reason to hope.

 

“A Lesser Servant of the Pit then?”

 

“Oh…no,” said the corpse of Thom Bench, a wicked rictus spreading across his nicked and chapped face. “A Soldier of the Furnace. Hungry. And trailin’ fire. You can still smell infernal cinders on the wind, if you sniff real deep.”

 

My heart skipped a beat and the sick knot in my stomach did a jig. It was worse than I thought. So much worse.

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