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“Don't you just love this weather, m'lad?”

He speaks in a harsh and croaking voice with a strangled accent—old Bostonian or something. With its tortured vowels, I'm not sure at first if what he said was
m'lad
or
m'lord.

In a couple of long strides he's right in front of me, hunching his shoulders to look into my eyes. A face that would only look at home in hell, pale skin stretched taut round fleshless bone, hollow cheeks, sunken eye sockets—he looks like something is eating him from the inside. He's not just gaunt; he looks emaciated. But the scars are the worst.

All over his face—and over his body, they say—a latticework of white-on-white scars runs riot. His is a stitched-together patchwork hide of tiny diamond-shaped sections of skin, a square inch or so in size on average. And inside every section is a mark, not really tattooed but hacked into the skin and stained black, each mark different and each one indecipherable as far as I'm concerned. Like an untranslated Mayan codex, the sigils that disfigure him seem to signify some story I could never read, a blood ritual meaningless to an outsider but terribly horrifyingly true if you only had the key to understanding it.

I'm shaking.

He throws his arms wide, his tattered gray suit jacket flapping in the wind.

“Speak, m'lad,” he says.

His brown trousers are sodden, ripped and muddy, his jacket belonging in some antique decade with its wide lapels; I'm trying to find his clothes real interesting because I don't want to look into that face. He puts a knuckle under my chin and tilts it upward.

“Speak,” he says.

“You wanted to see me.”

A very small voice.

“Yes, indeed. You're a good boy, Tom, good boy. I call you and you come running. Am I so very…scary?”

I bite my bottom lip and nod.

“You're a good boy, a
bright
boy, m'lad. I reckon you could go far. You reckon that?”

Dumbly, numbly, I nod again.

WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

His gloved fist cracks across my cheek with a sudden, casual brutality and, as I fall, a kick in the stomach sends me sliding, splashing into mud. I retch, sob, cough and try to pull myself away, too shocked, dazed, winded to think of anything else. I feel the edge of a tarpaulin under my palm, my fingers digging into muck. He grabs me by the collar and drags me to my feet. I blink, tears streaming down my stung face, salt in my mouth along with the darker taste of rainwater mud. I don't think I've ever been punched before.

“Go where, m'lad? You have a destination in mind, you have a sense of direction? If you do I'd like to know. Well?”

He lets me go and I fall back to the ground.

“I didn't think so. I reckon you're just like all the rest…I've got your number.”

His voice is twisted with contempt but when I look at his face, at his eyes at least, I'd swear that what I see is disappointment.

“Why don't you stand up, m'lad? Come on. Show some backbone.”

I slide in the mud, steady myself against some polythene-covered piece of furniture, and try to pull myself upright.

“Tell me, m'lad, where are you now; do you know even that?”

I manage to get up onto my knees, still shaking, blinking.

“What do you mean? Endhaven…?”

“Wrong, m'lad. Where you are now is humiliation and anger, frustration and fear, and it's
me
that brought you here.”

He stalks away from me, strides to his cart and slaps his hands down on the edge—like a drunk would hold himself steady against a low wall as he throws up, or like a boxer would hold the ropes at his corner as he waits for the bell to ring.

“Where you are now is on your knees,” he says, “and I'm the one you owe it to. You could stand up, but maybe you'd rather be down there on your knees. Tell me. Is it worth it? Is your tawdry little life
worth
all this?”

He comes striding toward me through the dark rain.

“It's…something,” I say, and he kicks me in the face.

“What've you got that's worth my keeping you alive?” he says.

I can't answer, too busy whimpering, curling into a fetal ball, but I can hear him hissing in my ear, crouched down beside me.

“Should I reckon your debts, m'lad, give you a sermon on the sins of the flesh? On respectability? On decency? I reckon your debts run deeper than that.”

I moan. I feel his gloved hands grabbing the shoulders of my jacket, dragging me like a sack of potatoes.

“You owe me your life, m'lad,” he says. “You owe me your
soul.
”

He's lifting me, swinging me round, dropping me onto puddles and bubble-wrap polythene and a solid shape of seat and back and arms beneath—a chair.

“Or fair exchange,” he says.

I wipe the muck out of my eyes—tears, rain, blood? All I can see is the vague shape of him pacing around me.

“You know, m'lad, I reckon there's not one of you in Endhaven who will ever have enough to…repay your debt, clear your account, to
pay back what you've taken from me.
”

I've never heard him like this. I've heard him calling down God's wrath, cursing the sinners and the cities of iniquity, but this is pure unbridled venom.

His gloved hand clamps my jaw, pulls my face up for him to snarl into.

“You people. You give up your dreams to me, sell out your hopes for a trinket or two and, you know what? Really. Honestly. Your souls are worth nothing. Nothing!”

Has anyone ever heard him like this? I think. Has anyone ever heard this rage? Christ, it's like some kind of confession. Why me? Why is he doing this to me?

“I'd kill you all now,” he says, “but it's not within the contract.”

And his voice sounds almost sorry.

“How do I reckon you, Tom?” he says. “I reckon you're nothing.”

A SHORT WALK DOWN TO THE EVENFALL

My face is burning, half with the heat of pain, half with the heat of shame.

“What do you want from me?” I say.

“I want nothing at all from you. You're worth nothing at all to me. Nothing.”

“Then leave me alone.”

He pulls off the glove on his right hand; scarred like his face and just as cadaverous, it has one small patch of raw tissue where a little diamond of skin has been cut out, peeled off. Even the muscles and veins inside are white as the sinew and bone.

“Leave you alone?” he says. “Come on, we'll take a short walk down to the Evenfall, m'lad, and see if you still want me to leave you alone.”

He reaches into a pocket, searching, finds what he's looking for and produces the missing patch of skin, holds it out toward me in the palm of his hand. I know the black mark with a deeper and more instant recognition even than when you see your own face suddenly reflected in a window or a puddle.

I remember watching the others get their marks—I was maybe five, six, I don't know—and then it was my turn and I cried and had to be held and comforted and coaxed by Annie as the tattooist leaned over me with her blurring, buzzing needle in one hand, wiping away the blood and excess ink with the antiseptic wipe in her other hand. I remember the hot biting pain in my shoulder and the feeling deeper inside like this mark was something being dragged out of my soul, not carved into my skin. I don't really remember the later part with the scalpel—I think maybe I passed out—but I remember afterward, sitting in the back of the rag-and-bone man's cart, crying with the pain and misery, with Aunt Stef hugging me and Annie sitting across from us, also in tears. I thought it was because her shoulder hurt too, but now I guess she knew what we were giving up.

The rag-and-bone man curls his hand into a fist around the patch of skin and I feel it, not in my shoulder but at the back of my neck.

“Who are you, Tom?” he says. “You're nothing without this. The only thing that holds you in this world is the contract, is me. You have nothing to hold on to; we go down to the Evenfall, m'lad, and I reckon your soul will just blow away in the wind.”

“I have Jack,” I say. “We have each other.”

“Yes, but does he actually need you?” he says.

I say nothing.

“Jack…” he says almost idly. “Maybe there is something you have to offer. You ‘love' the iceman, don't you? You'd give your soul for him if you could. Would he give his for you, do you think? That's ‘love,' isn't it? Isn't that what you think?”

I feel sick, afraid that I know what he means, praying that I don't.

“Come on, m'lad, you know his soul's not going to be given to anyone. It's sealed off more secure than a Swiss bank account. That boy, he cut his heart out long ago and locked it in a little steel box to keep it safe from damage. How can you ‘love' him if you don't even know him? Where's he from, what made him what he is; what's his secret mark, his hidden true name, the
essence
of Jack? Until you know that you'll never really touch him, and he'll never truly be yours. Isn't that true? Isn't that what you think?”

“Leave me alone. I don't know what you—”

“Oh yes, you do,” he says. “You want to know him, don't you? You want to really know him, m'lad. Deep down. You want to
own
him.”

“No, that's not—”

“I could help you. We could make some sort of deal here.”

“No! Leave him out of this.”

“You want him? I'm the rag-and-bone man, boy. You want it, I can get it for you, at the right price. Come on, make a deal with me, m'lad, or let's just take a walk right now. It's time to pay the piper, m'lad. But I can call in your credit or extend it.”

THE DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE

I won't listen to his deal. I don't know where he's going, but I don't care.

“No,” I say. “You'll never own him. Not like the rest of us.”

“Is that what you think? I own you?”

“…yes…”

“Is that what they told you, m'lad?”

I say nothing.

The rag-and-bone man laughs, pulls his hat off his head and shakes his hair, still laughing. He puts the hat back on and thumps it down.

“I don't own you, m'lad.
You
own me. Look at me, for the love of god, and ask yourself if you can't read me like an open book.”

He tears his ragged T-shirt down from the neck to bare his tattooed chest.

“Look at me. This is
your
contract carved into this skin, the brands of ownership that bind me to this town, the true names of the people of Endhaven, signed and sealed, the declaration of dependence. This one”—he holds up his fist—“is yours.”

I stare at the latticework of diamond scars all over his chest, all over his face, the scars of where each scrap of soul has been stitched on, a harlequin suit of horror.

“You…you brought us here. We sold our souls. Safe passage.”

I think of the tattooist and Annie crying on the rag-and-bone man's cart, the years of digging ourselves in in Endhaven, burying our pasts in the dirt as we planted the seeds we needed to live in the future, looking out to the east and the ocean and the Evenfall where all our memories lie drowned. We gave up our souls to come here. That was the deal. It's always been…obvious.

“You and your two lesbian hags, the rest of Endhaven, you're the buyers, m'lad. You're the customers. I'm just your little black book written in blood. You're not chained to me. You're chained to each other
by
me. Me”—a bitter laugh—“I'm nothing to you without this skin.”

“You brought us here,” I say in a small voice, confused, adrift.

I don't think I understand anything anymore.

“Every symbol on this hide is a life I'm responsible for, a name that I wear to keep it safe from a broken world, because the people in this town are too craven and weak to carry their own souls. Oh yes, I
carried
you here. Yes, you
need
me. I'm your fucking slave, m'lad, but I'm tired and torn. I want…release.”

Suddenly it clicks.

“Jack…”

“Now there's a boy with the strength to carry a world.”

Waves of nausea wash over me; I feel like I'm going to be sick.

“I'm sick,” he says, “and tired. Of all of you. I want out.”

I clutch the bubble-wrap-padded arms of the chair, lean forward, breathing heavily. I can't look at his face, just his fist clenched tight around my soul.

“You have no idea what your boyfriend is capable of, m'lad. You have no idea. But I do, m'lad.”

His fist grips tighter, knuckles white on white.

“And I can give him to you. I can make him yours.”

“Or,” he says, “we can go down to the edge of Evenfall, m'lad, and I will bury you so far down in the dead soul deeps that you won't know which way is up. You think you can stand against the Evenfall without someone to hold your little hand, to hold your little soul.”