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Angel of Vengeance

I stared out the bus window and watched the dark green of the forest roll by. I was going south, and not because I wanted to. It's just that there was nowhere else to go.
      On both sides of the highway, the trees were twisted and swollen with tumors, tangled-up like interwoven fingers reaching up from black pools of fetid water. It reminded me of the Swamp.
      Here and there, something stirred in the mud. I tried not to look out the window, but I was fascinated. Somewhere in a shallow pool in another state there was a body picked clean by the crows. My best friend was floating in the water somewhere, alone. Dead by my own hand, and I could face that fact at last.
      But I didn't want to face it without assistance. I took my bottle out and drank till my thoughts dimmed.
      "Remembering the good old days?" asked an old man in a gray tweed jacket.
      "Not at all," I said. "No, not at all."

Frank had been my partner in crime; we'd learned night wandering together. The art of visiting the other world we called the Fringe. Together we had served its queen, the tyrannical Paramount. Together we had fought Her enemies, and recruited Her servants. I didn't know our strange dreams were poisonous. I didn't know who would pay the price.
      Now there was no one left but me.

The bus dropped me off at a general store that doubled as the Greyhound station for several nearby towns. The sun of late winter glared down at me like a huge watchful eye. I glanced back up at it impassively.
      I knew this store. I knew this town. We had come here together, Frank and I. Gail, Erika, and Martin had been with us too.
      That was before any of this had really mattered at all. We were just playing games with it at first - investigating haunted places, sacred places, trying to scare ourselves just to pass the time. Well, we succeeded in scaring ourselves all right. I shifted my backpack and went into the store.

The guy behind the counter seemed to have developed a symbiotic relationship with his chair. He wasn't going to move no matter what happened in front of him. I scanned the store with my eyes and took my options in quickly. I needed to wake up, and I needed something to eat. I settled on black coffee and two slices of cheese pizza.
      "Is there a cab that comes out here?"
      "Yeah, sure. The number's on their card here. But they're the only ones in town. If they could make it out here before an hour I'd be pretty surprised."
      "It doesn't matter. I can wait."
      He pointed at the pay phone.
      The pizza tasted like Elmer's glue on a slice of cardboard. I ate it anyway. I didn't know how I'd be received when I got where I was going. They wouldn't want to hear what I had to tell them. But I had very little choice.
      I didn't carry a gun anymore. Not after what happened when I went back to Nottamun. It was an imprecise sort of tool, and I couldn't afford that - not when I was so ready to use it, not when I was so well acquainted with its potential. I needed a weapon I could be sure of. A weapon that might kill nightmares and buy me a little bit of time. Not that time was a priority.
      I waited in the parking lot until the taxi came.

"Where are you going?" asked the cabby.
      I put the pack on the seat beside me.
      "Could you take me out to Railroad Street - to the very end of it?"
      "You're going to see those freaks."
      "Yeah. I'm going to see the freaks."
      "What are you - another freak?" he asked.
      I glanced at his face in the rearview mirror. No doubt he surfed the internet for bestiality porn, but at least he dressed the way he was expected to, so in his mind he was normal.
      "You don't want to find out," I said quietly. He didn't bother me again.

He let me out in a large yard that would have been filled with green grass if grass was in the habit of growing there. As it was, there were only a few brown patches of the stuff, holding on as if waiting for something better. There was a white house, at least hypothetically. In reality, the paint had mostly peeled off, and the building itself was in an advanced state of decay. The Bog Tribe seemed to have fallen on hard times.
      Still, I saw two of them as soon as I walked up toward their homestead. There was a man with white hair past his shoulders and a long white shirt that hung low over white pants stained with several kinds of dirt. He was in a combat stance in the front yard, wielding a knob-headed Irish fighting stick in each hand. His opponent in this bout was a man with a dark buzz-cut, dressed in black paramilitary-style clothes from head to toe. He was armed exactly the same way.
      They didn't greet me while the bout was in progress. The older man, whom I knew as Shillelagh, feinted twice with his left hand to draw a parry. The younger man parried with the butt-end of one stick and counterattacked simultaneously with the other; but the combination left his right knee exposed. Shillelagh parried his opponent's counterattack and struck the knee in exactly the right spot, where the doctor hits it with his little hammer. The younger man's foot kicked out involuntarily, and he lost his balance. On the way down, he was treated to a finishing strike that would have broken his skull if it had been meant to. Shillelagh helped him up, then turned to greet me.
      "Noctiviganti," he said warmly, "I was wondering if we would ever see you again. This is our new student, Dave Amaro."
      Shillelagh raised his eyebrows. "I see the others are not still with you?"
      "Most of the others are not alive."
      "I see. Dulce et decorum est, as your friend the Hermit used to say. Come in for a drink, I can't discuss business when there's a thirst on me."

I followed him into the house. The hall was lit by kerosene lamps, and religious murals decorated the walls - Christ on the cross, and the dark man at the crossroads, Brighid of the Mantle and the white, shapeless Washer at the Ford. They were an eclectic bunch. Various tools had been dropped in random corners, and there were Bibles and packets of John the Conqueror, Follow Me Boy, and Lucky Hand, crammed together on tiny shelves next to candles of every color, silver dimes, and copies of the Long Lost Friend and the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Books of Moses.
      "Meg's asleep right now," he said. "But she'll get up."
      "There's no need to wake her," I said.
      "But she would insist."
      He went through an old sheet hanging down over a low doorway, and I leaned forward to examine their bookshelves more closely. Dave stood behind me silently. I guess he knew what his job was.
      They hadn't expanded their library much since the last time I'd seen them. It was the same mix of Neo-Druid nonsense and the practical conjuring of hoodoo. I'd always liked that kind of working best - it didn't separate its dark side.
      Shillelagh returned in a moment, with a bottle of the Glenfiddich in his hand.
      "Meg will be out in a moment with a plate of scones. She keeps them on hand for any visitors with a Scottish last name. Between that and malt whisky, we intend to make you pretty welcome."
      From the back room I heard the swelling whine of a bagpipe album.
      "Care for water?" laughed Shillelagh. "There's no way I'll even think of letting you add ice."
      "I wouldn't hear of it myself. This isn't cheap bourbon you've got here."
      We went through into a dim living room with stuffed animal heads shrieking silently on every wall. There were at least a thousand books of every age and condition, piled carelessly between old relics of furniture.
      "Sit down wherever you like, except in the throne chair. That's exclusively for Meg."
      I knew this already. Goofer Meg was their queen. She started the Bog Tribe sometime back before I was born - assuming I was born, because there's no proof of that as far as I can tell. It was all hoodoo at first, but she collected miscreants of any kind and that included Shillelagh. When he became her husband they added the druidism. Now their followers practiced both, along with other things. It was a strange mix. To my mind there's no point in mixing. My own purpose is single-minded. But as long as they didn't oppose the Paramount I had no quarrel with them.
      The throne chair was an antique high-backed chair from which the stuffing was slowly escaping. It didn't look very tempting in the first place.
      Shillelagh sat down in an old recliner beside the throne chair. He opened the Glenfiddich bottle himself, and looked vainly around him for a shot glass.
      "Hieronymous!" he yelled. "Get in here with some glasses!"
      A pale and mousy child crept in a moment later, bearing glasses of different sizes. Shortly afterwards, I was sipping the whisky. It was good enough to be polite with.
      "So what's your business, now that we've done the formalities?"
      "It's not quite the same as it used to be. Everything changed along the way."
      "Yes, I imagine so, if your comrades are no longer with you. Why don't you tell me what happened. No, hold on - wait for Meg to come out."
      Meg appeared with the scones and some marmalade. She was a large woman, dressed in layers of dark skins. Her eyes looked like nightmares, or dreams that are about to become nightmares, hovering inches from hysteria. Power warps us all in different ways. It had been warping her for decades.
      "I've got your favorite, Jim," she announced.
      This was an odd notion, but I didn't challenge it. I just took a scone and passed the plate around. Meg went over and sat in her throne. Meg had always been hard to deal with. I didn't adore her, so I was suspect. I preferred to deal with her husband.
      "What's your business, Jim?" she asked me, "I know you didn't come here just to see me."
      "I have news for you. And I have a question."
      "The news first. Payments before favors."
      "The news first. Well, all right. Frank is dead."
      A sudden intake of breath.
      "You mean you killed him, don't you?"
      "You know me better than I realized."
      "So how did it happen? I want the whole story. No rationalizations."
      A girl with long blond hair came in the room. She saw me there, and her face hardened. "We have company."
      "Very good, dear," said Meg. "Yes, company. Come sit down."
      "Where's Frank?" the girl asked. She didn't come any closer.
      "Jim says Frank is dead, Theresa. And he was about to tell us why."

I sighed and started in on it. Nothing was going to make it any easier. The single malt couldn't disguise its bitter flavor.
      "We discovered the Swamp was open," I said. "Someone had opened a gate there, and the Reaches were leaking through. We couldn't allow that…"
      Meg snorted.
      "Damn it, Meg, you know we couldn't. That place is evil. It would have corrupted the waking world."
      "That place is Power," Meg said. "A man like you would think it was evil. It's a perilous place, yes - and sometimes frightening. But it is evil only to those who bring evil with them. You bring these shadows upon yourself."
      She had a house along the border, but I walked the border wherever I went. Did I bring my evil with me? Maybe so, but I knew it when I saw it.
      "Be that as it may. The gate had been opened by an adept called the tall man. He kidnapped a girl. He wanted to use her for a working."
      "And you stopped him?"
      "I'm afraid not. We tried to stop him. But we were a moment too late. He killed the girl. I broke him for doing it. Then we went down to close the gate."
      "Okay. So what happened there? Why is Frank dead?" asked Theresa.
      "Hush, dear. Let him tell the story," said Meg. I looked into my whisky glass as if it was a crystal ball.
      "We succeeded in the working, or we thought we did. Frank and I stayed up to guard the others. There was a lot of tension that night - stupid social things. Erika was upset because Gail had kissed me. I took a walk to cool down - and Frank was left alone." I put my head down in my arms. "That's when it happened. The Swamp took him when he dozed off for a moment. He pulled a gun. I had to shoot him to keep him from shooting Gail."
      "You liar."
      Theresa lunged at me. Shillelagh caught her. Shillelagh's arms caught her, rather - but it was Meg who kept her back from me. If Meg decided to let it happen, the Bog Tribe would kill me.
      At least, they would try to kill me. Perhaps it wouldn't prove so easy.
      "I'm not done with the story," I said. "There's more to it after that. I went on the run. For five years I wandered around the country, just like I'm doing now. All I wanted was to forget. But then I got called back home to Nottamun. Those Ones hadn't finished with me."
      "They wanted you to kill more people?" asked Theresa. She was crying. Dave was staring at me. He hadn't known Frank, as Theresa had. But he knew an enemy when he saw one.
      "Gail and Erika had disappeared, and most of our Outer Circle were either dead or hospitalized. I went to ask Martin about it, and right after that he killed himself."
      Even Meg's eyes were wide at this point. Because I was a plague.
      "I put a new team together. This time I was working with the Hermit - you remember us talking about him before. I also brought in a new girl, named Rose, and an old friend named Mark Walker to get my back in case of trouble. We were going up against a couple of gangsters named Devil Joe and Apache. There was someone else behind them - an adept with real power. We found out it was Erika."
      "God in heaven, Jim. Did you kill her too?"
      "She's still alive. She's in a coma."
      Her body is in a coma. But Erika's falling forever.
      "What about the others?"
      "Devil Joe and Apache are dead. Gail's gone. I don't know where."
      "I suppose you're looking for her?"
      "No, I'm not. I never want to see her again."
      "Then I guess she's the lucky one. And now you're a fugitive again. So you thought you'd pay us a visit just for old time's sake. Just so you could tell us how you destroyed all your friends. You're damned, Jim. Do you realize that?"
      I looked in her eyes.
      "Yeah. He realizes that." Shillelagh sounded gentle.
      It didn't seem likely that they would grant me any favors at this point. I had underestimated their disgust with me. Theresa had only been a fling for Frank, but he appeared to have made quite an impact on her. And they were all willing to stand behind her.
      "I guess I'd better go," I said.
      "Leaving so soon?" asked Shillelagh. "But that's impossible. You've got to stay and finish the bottle."
      Meg glared at him. "Yes, of course, stay for dinner. We've offered you the hospitality of our house, and we'd be shamed if you refused it."
      This sounded sincere enough to raise the issue of poisoning. But I didn't see how I could back out of it. Besides, there was always the possibility I could turn things around somehow. And there weren't many people who could fulfill my unspoken request.
      "Could you go and get the table ready dear?" Meg asked Theresa.
      She kept her eyes on me as she left the room, as if I might commit some fresh atrocity if left unattended. This didn't seem unjustified.

Over the next few hours the place filled up. Other members of the commune came back from working around the property, and found seats or sat on the floor. Children of various ages ran around chattering.
      We had finished the bottle and started another. The remains of a Shepherd's Pie were scattered on dirty plates here and there. Theresa watched me constantly in silence. She kept making curious gestures with her fingers. I assumed she was warding against me. I had a buzz on. Everyone else was good and drunk.
      Meg was holding court with her various subjects, enlightening them on topics as diverse as the right way to apply Come to Me oil and the Morrigan's rhetoric about the end of the world.
      Shillelagh was talking to me about fighting.
      "I fought a challenge-match with a Chinese stylist," he said. "I knocked him out in thirteen seconds."
      "Must have been bad luck for him, the thirteen."
      He laughed. "Yeah, I guess so. The number of Judas."
      "The number of Loki too."
      He grinned. "Why don't you ever train? Witchfinding is a dangerous line of work. You could use a little combat skill."
      "I do train. I trained for several years before the dreams started. Then I was a bit too busy to keep up with it, though I practice the forms when I get a chance to. I don't really need it anymore."
      "Why's that?" he asked.
      I didn't answer. I've never explained what happens to me to anyone. But it made him think of something.
      "Hey, you know what would help you?" he asked. I just looked at him innocently. "If you had one of those black-handled bog-oak knives. I've been making some myself."
      "Oh yeah, that's true." I nodded slowly, "I've heard about them. They can kill ghosts and nightmares, or so they say. But have you seen it work?"
      "Yeah, you bet."
      He jumped up eagerly. Theresa tried to get Meg's attention, but Meg just hushed her. She was too busy preaching. A moment later, Shillelagh was back. He showed me a long knife with a dark hilt carved with knot work. The blade had been left blue from the forge rather than polished. It seemed to eat the light.
      "Do you mind if I look?" I asked, "It's quite beautiful work."
      Always flatter a drunk man. It leads to gifts.
      "Look all you want," he beamed. "Hell, it's yours if you want it."
      At this point, Meg finally noticed. But it was now too late. A gift cannot be ungiven in our world. She stood up, red-faced.
      "Jim Rankin, you come into my house," she said, quietly and dangerously, "you come into my house, practically boasting about your murders and betrayals. And then you take advantage of my husband's generosity …"
      "Shillelagh's a grown man," I said. "He made this offer freely."
      "And I won't unmake it now. But you may discover, Sleepwalker, that it's easier to come here than to leave."
      "How melodramatic. Are you going to work hoodoo on me, Meg? You know who I work for."
      Shillelagh stood up again, rather regretfully.
      "You know, I'm sorry, Jim …" he started.
      "Throw that bastard out!" yelled Meg. "Throw him out right now!"
      Dave took a step in my direction.
      "I think it's time for you to go," he said. I just stared at him silently.
      The room quieted. I felt very tired.
      "What are you going to do about it?" Meg sneered, all pretense gone. "Are you going to hurt me, Jim? What about your rules?"
      I turned and looked at her with my tired eyes. What she saw there drained the red from her face.
      Shillelagh thought he had to defend her. I didn't blame him. When he swung the Irish stick at my head, I drove my open palm into his face. The arm blocked his strike, and drove him backwards. He flew back and hit the ground unconscious. When they're drunk, sometimes you're lucky.
      "That should do," I said. "I'll be going now."
      Meg started to laugh. There was a long and lonely scream outside the door; the cry of a thing that has wandered for a thousand years on a barren world without seeing another of its kind. All the flames in the lanterns guttered at once, and the windows shook. The children screamed hysterically. One of them fell to the floor and started choking. Theresa dove forward to help it.
      The thing screamed again outside. It was beyond mere malevolence. The house was an island in a sea of madness, and the tide was coming in.
      "It's an angel," Meg said quietly. She had the voice of a little girl. "It's the Angel of Vengeance …" She stood up shakily. "It's the Angel of Vengeance, and you've called it. I think you need to go to it, Jim."
      "If you take another step, I'm going to open your throat like a letter." I had the black-handled knife in my hand.
      "It's Frank's ghost," said Theresa.
      "The hell it is."
      "There's an angel out there!" said Meg.
      "Not even a fallen angel," I answered. "If you move, I'll murder you."
      "It doesn't have to be this way," said Dave.
      "For now it does. You've had it a little hard tonight. If we ever meet again, I'll owe you a drink. For the time being, I'm in charge here."
      He looked at me and nodded. I couldn't tell what the nod meant.
      "Close all the windows. A door is a door in every world. Leave it no way to get into this house."
      "Most of the windows are closed already."
      "Make sure."
      Dave went around to check the windows. The thing screamed again outside. Meg started giggling, but she sat down again. The kids looked like scared animals, sitting in their own piss.
      "What's going on?" Theresa asked.
      My face went numb. A wave of drunkenness passed through me. The world up-ended like a sinking ship. I fell to one knee and vomited Shepherd's Pie and whisky. My legs started twitching.
      Dave hit me in the head. He had grabbed up one of the Irish sticks from the corner, and he swung it hard enough to knock a man unconscious.
      But I wasn't simply a man at this point. My fetch had come visiting from the Fringe. I felt the impact but it seemed somehow meaningless - a phrase spoken in a foreign language, unable to communicate its intended message.
      I was knocked back by another wave of power. When I raised my head again, my fetch was dreaming me. He was night-wandering in me from the Fringe. It was like the liquor of night in my veins. I was wildly drunk on his dreams.
      I laughed. The thing outside responded by howling. Its voice seemed to crescendo upward forever, and with every wave it gathered power. It infected the house. Dave wheeled back and forth with his stick. He seemed uncertain of whether to protect me or put a stop to me. A few of the children started drooling, their faces slack and dumb and terrified. A few of the adults did the same.
      But that was not what was happening to me. The lamps went out, and the house was in darkness. Someone screamed. I heard my voice from a distance.
      "It wants the Book!" I said. "Don't give it!"
      The Book of the Black School - the original grimoire, the one source of magic and knowledge and the heart of corruption. I carried it with me, inside me. It was part of my bone marrow.
      Shillelagh woke up. He grabbed a book somehow in the darkness. I think he thought it was a Bible.
      "In the name of Jesus," he shouted, "begone from here!"
      Everyone else was screaming, except for Meg and my fetch. We were laughing like prophets. Shillelagh had finally reached his limit with her.
      "Damn it Meg," he said. "Did you call this thing?"
      She laughed in his face so hard that spit rained on him. I stood up on drunken legs.
      "It wasn't her," said Theresa, "It was me. Don't you think I have the Power?"
      I turned to look at her, and I was grinning. I took a step in her direction. Dave blocked me. She stood past him, just out of reach, her face mocking and contorted by malice.
      "What were you going to do to me, Jim Rankin? Were you going to burn me alive, or only hang me? They call you the witchfinder, don't they? That's what you do."
      "They call me that." I nodded. "But they're all wrong."
      "Or maybe you were going to shoot me. Or stab me. Well, not anymore. Now it's time for you to pay."
      She made a gesture with her hands. There was a response of some kind from the creature outside. Its energy seemed to focus somehow, like static in the air.
      Theresa started to croon. The door shuddered.
      "Theresa, stop this," said Shillelagh. "You can't control this thing. It could kill us all."
      I saw Hieronymous on the floor. His eyes had rolled up in his head. He was writhing like a puppet on invisible wires and he had driven his fingers into the bleeding meat of his palms.
      Meg howled with laughter.
      "All right, then. The witchfinder," I said. I let myself fall asleep.
      At the same moment that I went sleepwalking, the door jumped off its hinges. It fell to the floor a few feet into the living room, knocking Shillelagh down with his head blood-slick and half-scalped.
      I turned to face the thing. It was scarcely describable. A white floating shapeless mass, like a cloud of thick glue; a yellow goat rearing in a cloud of flies. Both images flickered in the air, along with others. Something like a maggot was in there; something more like an eel. Something very much like an old woman with leprosy. But worst of all I saw Frank's face, accusing me. Coughing up black blood from his lungs as he sank down to die.
      I fell to the side as it came in at me. This was more luck than skill. But it turned out to be very bad luck for Theresa.
      Dave tried as hard as he could to defend her. But he collapsed beneath the horror. His collapse, like mine, was fortuitous. The thing ate the skin from his arm in one liquid moment. The stick he was using had no more effect than our screams. But then the worst of it was over for him. He rolled away unconsciously and Theresa fell under it.
      At that moment, it seemed to become a tree of tongues. Her body peeled back in a dozen places like a log under the drawknife. I jumped forward and stabbed it. The tongues stripped her down to nothing and it flickered back into a yellow goat. Random pieces of Theresa clogged its matted fur and its fleas crawled on them.
      I stabbed it again. I was in the trance. The black-handled knife that killed nightmares drove into it while I sang a battle-song of the Fringe. I was the commander of the Dead Guard now, the elite forces of the Paramount. No common horror could make me falter.
      Then Meg jumped on me from behind.
      Weak queen of an imaginary tribe, a mere role-playing game for adults. She had given Theresa a fatal taste of the knowledge she had pilfered. Enough to drag up some monstrosity from the Reaches, a nightmare she couldn't even hope to control, and it had destroyed Meg's empire in a matter of seconds. Now her fingers dug into my throat as the monster came at me.
      Her weight pulled me over, and I fell down on top of her. The yellow goat reared up in front of me, with six legs like a spider. I had stopped breathing, but I didn't care. I plunged the knife into it as it dove down.
      It died. Its death was a quick thing, but not an easy thing. It transformed one last time and then rained down on me as red jelly. The thick stuff poured into my mouth and onto my outstretched arms. It became a pool on the floor. I spat out what I could.
      I knew that the pool would soon evaporate. There would be no evidence. It was all just a dream. A dream that had maimed Dave and killed Theresa. Just as Meg was now killing me. New stars were coming into life and dying right in front of my eyes. Her fingers felt like metal claws.
      Suddenly Shillelagh stumbled, bleeding, to his feet. A flap of his head was hanging down over his face. His eyes were focused on something distant and terrible.
      He felt around blindly on the floor until he found his stick. I knew what was going to happen next. He was going to break me with it.
      Well, first things first, I thought. I moved to cut Meg in the hand. Before I could do anything of the sort, he raised the stick up rapidly. It came down just as rapidly. Her grip loosened from my neck.
      I rolled away, clutching my knife. He kept hitting her in the head.
      There wasn't anyone else to do it, so I knocked him away from her. Watching empires fall is not a pretty thing.

I was watching the road again. This time there was no water. The police might have wanted to have a word, but of course I couldn't have that. The Bog Tribe was going to have to explain itself. They knew better than to mention me.
      As for me, I had what I came for, and so this counted as a victory. The black-handled knife that killed nightmares - along with proof that it worked.
      The moon was rising outside the bus window. It was a waning moon.
      I leaned back, and remembered.

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