Queen of the Dark Things (11 page)

Jeronimus smiled, his black shadow grin carving deep cuts in the angular box of his face. “There is a dreamwalker that visits you. We want her.”

Shaking his head, the Clever Man waved the spirit off. “Catching dreamwalkers. Tricky business.”

“We don't need you to catch her. We have plans for the catching. We need you to keep her in the dream, keep her from running off to wake up.”

“Oh,” said the Clever Man, making scissors with his fingers, cutting invisible string. “I know exactly what you mean. This can be done. But still, very dangerous. She's a powerful spirit. Very strong. Very clever. Why do you need her?”

“Because she is ours.”

“If she were yours, you wouldn't need my help.”

“She belongs to us. She is the last of the blood promised us.”

“And when you have this blood?”

“We will be free.”

“Why don't you just kill her and take the blood you're owed?”

Jeronimus raised both his shadowy stumps. “Because we haven't all our hands to kill with. She will help us find them. Then, when her body fails, she will join us.”

“And you will be free.”

“Yes.”

“This is dangerous. My price is steep.”

“Name it,” said Jeronimus.

“Yes, name it,” hissed the crowd of shadows.

“From this day on, you may never harm anyone of my dreaming.”

“Done. Agreed!” Jeronimus's smile broadened. This was an easy bargain.

The Clever Man shook his head, holding up his free hand. “I'm not finished.” He spun the bullroarer faster.

The shadows writhed impatiently. “What else?” asked Jeronimus, his enthusiasm fading. “Name your full price.”

“You may never again enter Arnhem Land. It is forbidden to you. If you step one foot on it, you forfeit your spirit to me.”

“Yes, yessss. Agreed.”

“Agreed!” promised the crowd.

“And,” said the Clever Man, looking very sternly at Jeronimus. “I demand the sacrifice of one of your own.”

“What?”

“One of your shadows.” He pointed at one standing toward the front of the throng. “That one. Bring him to me and we have business.”

The nominated shadow shrieked. “What? No!”

Jeronimus turned to look at the shadow of his crewmate then looked back at the Clever Man. He nodded coldly. “We have business.”

The pack of kutji descended upon their brother, each grasping him with their one good hand.

“No! Not me!” shrieked the spirit. “I've been faithful.”

“Your sacrifice will not be forgotten,” said Jeronimus.

The kutji dragged the shadow to the Clever Man who at once flicked his wrist, whipping the bullroarer to a full stop in his hand. He lowered his arm, pointing the tip of it at the shadow. He began to sing, the words deep, abrasive, cutting into the night with the howl of rising winds and the rippling of the dream around them.

The sacrifice screamed, its voice breaking, distorting, its essence siphoned directly into the Clever Man's artifact. The shadows scurried backward over the broken, rocky ground, terrified at the sight of their brother's demise.

And then all went silent, the night returning to a soft and gentle peace. The shadows did not speak nor chitter nor sigh in any way. They were too frightened by what they had seen.

The Clever Man nodded respectfully. “I agree to cut the cord of the dreamwalker and deliver her to you. Are we agreed?”

“We are agreed,” said Jeronimus.

“We are agreed,” said the rest of his crew.

“Good,” said the Clever Man. “Do you know what she looks for at night when she walks?”

“No,” said Jeronimus.

“She seeks a bunyip. Find the one that wallows nearby and show it to her. I will do the rest.”

C
HAPTER
14

O
ROBAS
AND
A
MY

G
oddamnit, Ewan,” Colby muttered into the night, his words slurred into an unintelligible blur. He was mumbling incoherently, his head dizzy; his face fuzzy, numb; his lips slapping against each other just to see if they were still there. He was drunk. Completely trashed. Somewhere between beers with Austin, half a bottle of whiskey with Yashar, and a few more slow beers for good measure, Colby was lucky to be upright. Though upright was being a bit optimistic.

He was stumbling, stammering, cursing randomly. And somehow he'd found himself alone, out in a field, in the middle of the Limestone Kingdom.

There, off in the distance, Colby could make out his friend, smiling, waving, beckoning him to come back. But he couldn't go back. There was no going back.

“Fuck you, Ewan, you fucking fuck.” He stumbled to his knees, his palms slapping the ground in time to prevent him from going face-first into the cold, dewy grass. “I trusted you. You were
pissed at me
? Pissed at
me
? Because I didn't tell you shit? Well, you kept her from me, buddy. Your little girlfriend got us all in the shit, didn't she? That's what they do. It's how they get us.”

Colby lowered himself to the ground, then rolled over on his back, staring at the stars, still yelling out to the spirit in the field.

“How fucked up is it that of all the monsters we dream up, the ones that are the most dangerous, the ones that we fall most easily for, are the women? The ones that want us to dance or to fuck or to kiss or to, or to, or to whatever, you know. You know what I'm talking about. Those. They're fucking dangerous. I told you. I mean. Not directly. But I told you. But you didn't listen. And here we are. You with your girlfriend and me all alone. Again.”

Colby sat up and spun himself around on his ass to be able to see Ewan. But the spirit was gone.

“Where the fuck did you go? I know you're out there. There's more to you, isn't there? More than just what's playing on a loop like a broken fucking record replaying the best part. There's got to be more. You're not that. You're not that happy little boy. You were only that happy little boy for like five fucking seconds, but that's how you're going to spend the rest of my life? Waving like a fucking moron?”

He stopped, burping slightly, his insides roiling, stomach muttering as loud as he. “Hold on,” he said, his throat tight, stifling his speech. Then he vomited, puking up a mess of booze and cheese. “Oh. Lasagna was a mistake.” The world began spinning more violently than before. “Hold on, Ewan. I need to find more grass. Better grass.”

Colby crawled on his hands and knees through his own mess, finally collapsing a few feet away. He stared at the tilt-a-whirl sky, calling out into the night again.

“That's the worst part, you know,” he said, screaming at the stars. “I know so many people who used to be dead, I mean, dead who used to be, well. You know what I'm saying. Spirits of people who are dead now. Some things can become other things. But not you. You're just an echo. A memory. You only say things that made sense a lifetime ago. And that's all you're ever going to say. You'll never make me laugh again. I can't even tell you about Austin. I mean, I can. But you aren't listening. You aren't there. You might as well be ashes in a jar.”

His eyes glazed over with tears, his garbled rambling punctuated with weak sobs, occasional hiccups serving as misplaced commas.

“You just had to fall in love with that girl. A smile and a pair of tits dreamed up to wring the life out of you. Well, fuck you! Fuck you for being there for her and not me. She tried to kill you with the rest of them and you chose her. I was your friend. I was the one you were supposed to be there for. But you chose her. You. Chose. Her.”

The night, already quiet, got quieter still. The buzzing insects dropped their songs and crawled deep into the earth. The wind stilled, the leaves holding tight, trying their best not to rustle. The air grew thick, heavy, damp, an unnatural chill setting in with it. Something was very, very wrong.

“Ewan?” asked Colby, tilting his head up toward the forest.

“No,” oozed a voice so deep and menacing that it sounded almost as if it came from everywhere at once. Then the whole world screamed—damned voices begging for mercy, moaning, bellowing, crying out—a tinny, AM radio broadcast from the bowels of Hell, wails like static, distorted, breaking up, shivering the land itself. Trees stiffened like hairs on the back of the neck. Everything alive quivered like it had something to fear.

The universe tore open and Hell spilled out, for a brief moment becoming one with the field.

Colby tried five times to sit up, aggressively rocking himself upright, before managing with the sixth to prop himself on wobbly arms. The night around him flickered as if by campfire, trees blinking on and off, a dancing murk writhing behind them. It took Colby the better part of a few beats to even take it all in.

Then all, once more, went silent.

Before him, across the field, stood a man burning from head to toe, fire licking the ground around him, air bending, melting in the heat, a long blazing ribbon rippling off the back of his head like hair fluttering in the breeze, embers like dandruff spiraling away. His flesh was charred and smoking, the deep blue of well-fed flame, bits dripping to the ground in waxy globs before boiling away on the earth. He was like a candle melting in a house fire, its wick burning futilely above.

Beside him stood a horse whose hair was the black of the deep, dark nothing, as if it were a shape torn out of space with all the stars plucked out, only seen because of the light reflecting off everything else around it. It whinnied and stamped, the void of its mane caught in the same strange wind guiding the embers.

Colby knew at once who and what these things were. “No! Nononono. I didn't summon you. I want no part of you. Get out. Get away!”

“Colby,” said the Horse, its voice carved out from the sounds of a stampede. “Do you know who I am?”

“I don't know you. I don't want to know you. Leave me be.” Colby tried to push himself to his feet, only to end up on all fours, his ass the high point of a failed arch.

“But you do know us,” said the man on fire, his voice hissing, sizzling, popping. “You know us well.”

Colby crab-walked forward to a tree, climbing himself upright along the trunk. “I've never met you,” he said, his fingers still gripping handfuls of bark.

“But you know our stories. Our names.”

“No! You are Mr. Johnson,” he said of the blaze. “And you are Mr. Miller,” he said to the Horse. “And I did not summon you. There are rules. Rules to all of this. And I didn't call for you.”

“You didn't call for us,” said the Horse. “We're calling for you.”

Colby turned his head, averting his eyes, squinting them shut. “I'm asking you to leave me. Leave me be. I'm way too drunk for this.”

“That's why we're here,” said the man on fire. “You wouldn't speak to us sober.”

“I won't speak to you now.”

“We're here to ask of you a favor.”

Colby looked back, but not directly. “I grant you no favors. You will not be in my debt nor will I ever be in yours.
Go. Away.
”

“You can help us willingly, or not so willingly. We can make things very hard on you.”

The Horse held his hand up to his companion, trying to wave off the threat, then took a few steps forward.

“That's far enough, Mr. Miller.”

“My name is not Mr. Miller, it is—”

“Don't say your name.”

“Don't you want to know for sure?”

“The best that could happen is that you're not really who you appear to be. There's no need to confirm it. Hopefully I'll forget all this by morning.”

“There's very little chance of that,” said the man on fire. “What we're about to tell you will be hard to forget.”

“Impossible to forget,” said the Horse.

“Yes, quite impossible.”

Colby pushed himself to his feet, eyes still averted, turning his back on the interlopers. “I don't want to hear this. This has nothing to do with me.”

“This has everything to do with you. Now, do you know why they sent
me
?” asked the Horse.

Colby walked away, speaking only over his shoulder, his feet unsure. “Because you can't lie.”

“I cannot.”

“Then go back and tell the other seventy the truth. I won't talk to you.”

“We are sixty-seven now. Five of us are missing.”

“I don't see how that's my problem.”

“The one who took them is someone you killed a long time ago.”

“You're mistaken. The things I kill, they don't come back.”

“Some deaths are slower than others,” said the Horse.

Colby continued his stagger, the world spinning so hard and so fast now that it took everything he had to not fall over face-first. “You're only supposed to speak the truth, Mr. Miller, not in riddles.”

The man on fire spoke up. “The five we're looking for were in Australia when they disappeared.”

Colby stopped, but the world kept spinning. His stomach lurched forward as if it were still moving, and he threw up again before doubling over and, finally, passing out in the grass.

C
HAPTER
15

T
HE
S
EVENTY-TWO

A
N
EXCERPT
BY
D
R
. T
HADDEUS
R
AY
, P
H
.D.,
FROM
HIS
BOOK
T
HE
E
VERYTHING
Y
OU
C
ANNOT
S
EE

I
f one wishes to live a long, prosperous life, then one should never dabble in the darker arts. In this book I have warned many times against treading into the unfamiliar waters of the arcane or the occult. No doubt few who read this will heed such warnings. But even if you do not, even if you see this as nothing but a road map to the unseen things you wish to experience firsthand, heed this: do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, attempt contact with the Seventy-two.