Chapter 2

 

A cold claw trailed down Kimberly Archer’s spine as Mister Gull led her up the garden path to his front door. It circled every vertebrae before passing through skin and muscle to clench around her stomach. A sudden, inescapable feeling of wrongness.

From the street, it was little more than a two story bungalow with black curtains and a tall iron fence, ringed by a neat green hedge rising just above Kimberly’s waist. A garden gnome with flashing marble eyes was being strangled by the onslaught of creepers worming beneath the bushes. The weather vane atop the peak of Gull’s house - black iron, wrought into the shape of his namesake - spun crazily, even though Kimberly couldn’t feel even a hint of wind on her bare arms.

It all felt different the moment the front gate closed behind her. Breathing was difficult, like the air had grown heavy, crushing her lungs in her chest. The light behind the curtains in the front window darkened to a deep green, as if Gull’s house held the ocean and she was peering through a crack into an endless trench, a depth where the even the predators hunted blind. She felt like she was drowning in open air, lungs burning, eyes bulging.

They’d driven from Kimberly’s house to Gull’s, but she couldn’t remember getting into the car. Just the phone call, the stranger outside, dressed like a middle-aged accountant in the sheeting rain. Gull introducing himself, empty handed, beckoning her out the door. The body in the bathtub - if you could call it a body, just intestines and tidal blood - slowly congealing behind her. Couldn’t remember the turns they’d taken, either. Like the two places had knitted together into one bubble.

God, she still couldn’t breathe. There was air beyond that gate, she knew there was air waiting, and if she could only force herself to run-

Mister Gull rested one hand on her shoulder, and the sensation vanished. “Remember, Mrs Archer. You’re safe here.”

She shivered in his grasp. “I still don’t know what happened to Peter.”

“Your husband...” Gull paused on the word. “...is in a different place now.”

“I don’t believe in Heaven.”

“Neither do I.”

The front door swung open at a touch, revealing a simple hall, polished floorboards and knockoff Chinese vases on sideboards. It yawned before Kimberly like she was standing on a precipice, teetering on the edge, toes hanging over an impossible pit. One step forward and she’d tumble forever, over and over, spinning into oblivion-

“Inside,” he said. “Before the rain ruins this coat.”

She couldn’t resist.

 

Mister Gull led her, one hand on her elbow. She didn’t have the energy to shrug him off. She was bone-tired, drawn thin, and Gull’s presence was the anchor keeping her from tumbling into the void.

“Shoes off, Mrs Archer. This is a socks-only house.” There was a note of amusement in Gull’s voice as he kicked off his Oxfords - black, polished so finely that Kimberly saw her own distorted face, the blonde ringlets of her dirty hair, reflected in the leather. “Or would you prefer Ms?”

Her head swam as she unlaced her boots. Gull’s house felt strange, immaterial, like the walls weren’t quite there. Just drifting smoke. She ran one hand down the wallpaper - cold, pebbled by air bubbles. Poorly laid, but real. So why did it feel like the whole building would blow away if she closed her eyes? “Ms is better. I never married anyone.”

“Rustwood says otherwise.”

“Well, fuck Rustwood.”

“That’s the spirit! You, my dear, need a cup of tea. Don’t be so shy. I don’t bite.”

Gull’s smile put Kimberly in mind of deep sea fish with distended mouths full of thin, curved blades. She wished she’d brought a kitchen knife, a wooden club, a toasting fork. Anything at all besides her fists.

And yet, a cup of tea was exactly what she wanted. “Why’d you come for me?”

“Why not?”

She blinked. The kitchen was wide and bright, sunlight flooding through large, polished bay windows. The heat on her skin was almost an alien sensation. She couldn’t recall stepping through the door. “Did the rain stop?”

“The rain never stops.” Gull waited behind the kitchen counter, bobbing teabags in chunky porcelain mugs. His fingers were long and pale, like his lips, his eyes. His neatly clipped beard and moustache were ash-white, twitching as he smiled. “If I want light, I get it. Sugar?”

“All the sugar you’ve got.” Kimberly tried to calm her shaking hands as she glanced around the kitchen, looking for anything sharp or heavy. No telling if Gull was friend or enemy, not yet. Could be the one sane person in Rustwood. Could be another Bo Tuscon. No way to tell until they were on top of you, trying to scissor through your skull.

Gull slid the mug along the counter. “Drink, Ms Archer. Drink and relax. We’re all friends here.”

Kimberly accepted the mug, turning it around to examine the scene painted on the porcelain. Pastoral, a woman in a dark robe washing her clothes by a river. A robe, or a habit. She shuddered and stared into the milky swirls, trying to calm the thudding in her chest. Would he have poisoned it? No, too complicated, too paranoid. Gull had pulled her out of hell. If he’d wanted her dead, he would’ve left her there. She was seeing enemies in the shadows.

Gull smiled at her from beneath his salt-white moustache. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and fresh-baked bread.

She lifted the mug.

The tea was as sweet as promised, a hot flower unfurling in her stomach. She sipped gratefully, finally feeling the tension slip from her shoulders. “How’d you know where to find me?”

“That’s not really what you want to ask, is it?”

He was right. She was here, safe. But her maybe-husband... “What happened to Peter? Was that him in the tub?”

“Most likely.”

“But you said he was in a different place.”

Mister Gull didn’t meet her eyes. “Did you care for him?”

“I don’t know. I never knew him, not really. He was just...” She pushed back the memories. Her hands in his, the heat of his breath on her shoulder. Sitting on the sofa together in silence, her legs stretched out across his lap as they ate microwave popcorn and watched Dallas. The little, quiet moments.

All those times that’d never happened.

“He was nice,” she said. “Is nice. I didn’t want him dead, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You may be in luck, then.” Gull plucked an apple from the fruit bowl atop the kitchen counter and polished it on his sleeve. A knife appeared in his hand with a flourish, and he took the fruit apart with quick, deft flicks of the wrist. “That wasn’t a complete corpse. They left the offal behind and took your husband hollow.”

“Hollow? Like those dead people in...” She swallowed, remembered Gull hadn’t been there, didn’t know what she’d seen in Bo Tuscon’s hideaway. “There were bodies made into nests.”

Gull snorted. “Still up to her old tricks, then.”

“Who?”

“The New Queen. The pretender. Not an original thought in her head. Everything she knows, she learned from her mother.”

The tea was already soaking through her, boiling her insides. It wasn’t soothing any more. It made her want to curl into a ball and clutch her stomach. “Who are they? And what do they want with the baby?”

“Your child? I thought you didn’t care.”

“Just because Curtis isn’t mine doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

“Interesting.” Mister Gull offered Kimberly a slice of apple, but something about it seemed wrong. Too white, too papery. “The town is growing on you. You’re becoming attached.”

“Fuck that.” The last of the tea left a cloying taste at the back of her throat. “Fitch was only making sense when he talked about destroying this place.”

“Fitch is a noble man, but he’s short sighted. There are thousands, tens of thousands of people living in Rustwood, lost in Rustwood. They rely on the Queens without knowing it. Fitch would kill his beasts and leave the town rudderless. Bring fire down on them all in his ignorance.”

Kimberly’s legs wobbled beneath her. A day and a half without sleep, always running, always afraid, had taken what little strength she had left. She circled the room, inspecting the array of plush leather furniture - serious antiques, sofas that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a European palace - before collapsing into a chaise lounge. The cushions almost swallowed her, and for a moment she contemplated closing her eyes, forgetting the strange Mister Gull and the troubles of Rustwood. Just letting sleep carry her away, forever.

She forced her eyes open. “Two Queens. Rosenfeld said that too.”

“Old and new, original and pretender.” Gull perched on the end of the seat across from her, one hand cupped beneath his chin, as if he were taking her measure. “One’s been keeping Rustwood ticking for decades, long before I arrived. The other, the young pretender, she’s the one Fitch calls the Beast. She wants it all. Both of them need you. I don’t know why. You’ve just got a sort of... magnetism.” Gull’s smile was unnerving, and Kimberly got the awful feeling that if he grinned any wider his whole jaw would unhinge far enough to swallow her whole head.

She looked away, trying to shake off the feeling of being a very small mouse in a very wide, bare field. “What are they? Are they like...”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met one.” He raised one hand, turning it back and forth lazily in the air, and clenched his hand into a fist. In that moment, Kimberly felt a wash of heat expand across the room, tingling on her skin. “Are you familiar with the French Revolution?”

Know it? She’d specialised in it, written high-school papers about the Jacobins and the Reign of Terror. “What’s that got to do with-”

“History repeats. The Queen rules the town. Keeps the rain coming down and the people scared. New Queen, the pretender, she’s making a line for the throne and everyone in her path gets chewed up and spat out. Now, your friend Fitch, bless his soul, he wants a revolution complete with a guillotine in the town square, but where will that leave us?”

“And who does that make you? Napoleon?”

“Hardly. I’m just a man who knows right from wrong, unlike some.”

“Fitch isn’t a bad guy.”

“He lied to you.”

“I didn’t say he was good. He...” She closed her mouth just short of mentioning the thing he carried in his pocket, the squirming mass blinking and coiling across his knuckles. If Fitch had kept it a secret from her, he’d sure as hell want to keep it a secret from Gull. “He’s blinkered, I guess.”

“He promised you a way out of town, didn’t he? But all the while he was planning on burning the place to the ground. You were a stepping-stone to him. I don’t think that way. We’re going to work together, Kimberly.”

“How presumptuous of you.”

“I just know a kindred spirit when I meet one. So, what do you want, Ms Archer?”

She’d had enough of the Ms Archer schtick. It made her feel like a schoolteacher. “Just Kim. And I want... shit. New York, I guess. Home. I saw a way out, through the convent.”

Gull regarded her from beneath heavy eyelids. “We don’t all get what we want. That gate is closed now, anyway. Forget you saw it.”

“What about the roads? I tried the bridge, but it just went on forever. I asked Fitch once if we were dead and this was hell, but he said I was being ridiculous.”

“He was correct. Rustwood, the afterlife? What an idea.”

“I got hit by a train!”

“I know. I heard it all. Ms Archer-”

“Kim.”

“...Kim, do you know what powers the engines here? It’s not death. It’s blood.”

The image of the dead child, glimpsed through the portal in the Pentacost convent, swam back into Kimberly’s mind. The poor girl lying broken atop her bed, the dribble of blood staining the sheets, pearling on the floor. She’d watched the light go out of the child’s eyes... “I met Rosenfeld. We did something with my blood.” She stared at her hands, trying to remember which pinky had taken the pinprick. “A ritual. Voodoo bullshit.”

“You’re learning. It’s far from bullshit, Ms Archer. A little blood can help you find what’s missing. A lot can open a door. As for leaving Rustwood... to do that, we’d have to know where it truly is.”

Gull stood suddenly to fling open the curtains. Outside, the rain was easing. A hint of blue sky in the distance, although Kimberly knew it wouldn’t last long enough for them to see the sun.

Again, she struggled with the strange sensation that everything beyond the windows was painted on, flimsy enough to punch through. If she just blinked hard enough, squinted through the glare to the reality beyond...

“Have you ever gone to the edge of town?” Gull said, one hand teasing at the corners of his white beard. “The mountain ranges?”

“I tried. Got most of the way to the top.” Kimberly shivered as she remembered Bo clambering up the slope behind her, the madness and hunger in his eyes as he grasped for her ankles. What she’d seen in the pit of his throat. “What’s on the other side?”

“No man can describe it. You have to see for yourself. You’re too young to go there now, too... innocent. But I’ll take you one day, when all this is done.”

Gull seemed so thin in the light - his skin was the pale parchment of the basement conspiracy theorist, eyes sunken but bright. His hands twitched by his sides, and Kimberly could tell there was relentless energy there, that it took him effort not to pace back and forth. A dynamo, barely contained.

“When what’s done?” Kimberly asked.

“All this business. I have great plans for you, Kim. I think we could-”

“Stop.” Kimberly took a long breath, pressed her palms flat on the lounge beside her. Still there, still concrete. The house was real. She was real. Not a dream. “You say I can’t get back to New York.”

Gull nodded slowly. “The only ones who can open those doors now are the Queens themselves.”

“So what’s it going to take to bargain with a Queen?”

“You can’t bargain with them. They’re elder powers. They control more than you-”

“Can you kill them?”

Gull went silent. One hand rose nervously to tug at the collar of his neat-pressed shirt.

“The Queens have power,” he said, finally. “They keep it, they treasure it, and sometimes they bestow it. What can be given can also be taken. And with that... not molotovs or guns, but what they hold inside themselves... they can be killed.”

“Do you think they feel fear?”

“Not as we feel it, but yes. They must.”

“What about you? Are you scared?”

“Now you’re getting it.” He grinned, and for a moment Kimberly thought she saw something in the darkness behind his teeth. Something squirming. “I’m a relic, Kimberly Archer. I stole from the Gods of Rustwood and they cursed me for it, but one man’s curse is another man’s gift. I’ve been waiting so long to meet another like me, one who hasn’t fallen into the rhythm. One who can fight without getting trapped in the same old patterns.”

He held his hand out, palm up. His fingers twitched, and outside the kitchen window, a sudden battering of wings echoed in the morning air. A great white bird, wingtips black as if smutted with coal. It came to rest on the windowsill, the yellow arrowhead tip of its beak tap-tapping against the kitchen window.

“A gull,” he said, smiling again. “It could’ve been any bird, but I prefer the poetry of it.”

The bird peered through the glass, yellow eyes roving, curious. “That’s your gift? To talk to birds?”

“Nothing so cute as that. The Queen’s gifts are subtle, but with time comes mastery, and I’ve had a long time to think about what needs to be done.” He lowered his hands, and the bird bowed its head, blinking stupidly. “You played the hero in the Pentacost Convent, but this town has no need for heroes. It needs someone willing to do anything.”

He clenched his hands into fists, and the gull burst into flames.

“Son of a bitch!” Kimberly pressed back into the lounge, clawing at the cushions, as the bird thrashed against the glass. “The hell are you doing?”

“Only an example. I will set this town free, Ms Archer.” Mister Gull didn’t blink as the bird’s wing-tips fizzed like Roman candles. Flames boiled from its beak. “How will they write of you in the history of this place? A friend to a vandal? A coward? Or a saviour?”

Kimberly couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, as the bird’s eyes popped and flared. It curled in on itself like tinder, then tumbled from the windowsill into the garden.

Only an example, he said. Not an illusion. Real power. “You can do what the Queens do.”

“A sliver of it, yes.”

“That means you can hurt them.”

“Theoretically. Not alone. I’m only one man.”

“That’s it.” All the pieces pulled together so neatly when she stepped back. “I know how to get home. You and me, Gull.” Her mouth was dry. Her skull pounded. Gull was unhinged, he burned birds alive, but she could use that. The way out of Rustwood was close enough to touch. She couldn’t keep from grinning. Her hands curled into animal claws by her sides. “The Queens open the gates, but they won’t let me out, not unless I’ve got something to bargain with. No, not bargain, no way. Threaten, though. Yeah. That might work. It has to work.

“Mister Gull, you’re going to help me kill a Queen.”

 

* * *

 

The motel bed was a collection of rusted springs digging sharp tips into her back through thin layered foam.

The woman liked it that way. She took off her mirror-finish bug-eye sunglasses and lay back, letting the springs bite into her bare legs, her spine, her neck. The pain was bright and tingling, satisfying like an itch being scratched with ragged nails.

It was good to be out of the rain, away from prying eyes. The motel room was a mildewed box of curling wallpaper and takeaway-stained carpet, the ceiling yellowed by decades of cigarette smoke, the bible in the bedside table scribbled through with frantic annotations. The streets outside were dark below churning clouds.

Somewhere out there was Commissioner Snow. Hopefully doing his job, but she didn’t hold much hope for the poor puppet. A fuck-up in life and a fuck-up in unlife. She would’ve gone to check on him, but her master was waiting for a report. Without getting off the bed, she raised her left wrist to her mouth and bit into the hard flesh.

It was like gnawing through banana peel, skin giving way to fibers and muscle. Below that, the sickly sour pulse of old blood. A few drops were enough - the rest she swallowed. The blood pearled down the inside of her wrist, sluggish, coming to rest in the crook of her elbow.

The voice came suddenly, like wind across her skin, the hairs on her bare forearms standing tall. “You live?”

“I did what you wanted.”

The voice of the new, young Queen vibrated in her guts, in her new legs, in the black, squirming things that were her eyes. “You broke the old woman? You made her bleed?”

“She’ll give Fitch the message. Won’t bow to you, though. You’d have to cut off her legs first. I think we’ll have to kill her.”

The Queen paused. “She is useful. She is my child.”

“Sometimes you have to let your children go.”

“I did not let you go. I brought you back from the dead.”

“It’s not the same.”

She could feel the anger vibrating in the silence that followed. She knew already what she’d done wrong. Nobody questioned the New Queen and walked away without scars. She was already gritting her teeth in anticipation of the pain.

None came. Instead, her master said, “The Old Queen leaves her children to wither. She uses her servants until they’re empty. I am not her. I love my children.”

She was sure the Old Queen, the once-was ruler of Rustwood, said she loved her children too, but voicing her opinion would only end with her head split open. Instead she said, “What do you want me to do?”

“The Archer woman is still key. She has found a new companion.”

“Not Fitch or Rosenfeld?”

“Someone worse. Find her, and bring her to me. Alive.”

“It’d be easier with some backup.”

“I have another instrument. An emissary will come to you.”

She couldn’t help but shiver. She’d spent the last days running free, working independently, building her own little army of numb-tongued followers, and that suited her just fine. But an emissary? If Queen thought she was bending the rules, that she needed someone looking over her shoulder... “Another like me? Where will I meet him?”

But the blood was already drying, and with it, the link. The voice quavered on the edge of hearing. “We don’t have long. The Old Queen recruits more to her cause every day. It’s time to wipe this dusty world away.”

Mrs Rosenfeld had said something similar the night before as she lay bleeding on the floor of her precious homeless mission. Nothing left from horizon to horizon. No need for servants or acolytes. She made you and she’ll unmake you...

No. She had to believe in the New Queen. If she walked away from that promise there’d be nothing left.

Only seconds remaining before the link closed. As the voice faded, she blurted, “I want to know something.”

The reply was a bare tickle around her earlobe. “What?”

“I want to know what I was before. My name.”

The only reply was laughter. Then, silence.

She stood from the bed. The room was empty but she still felt her master’s presence, the pulsing warmth of a body that’d only just vacated. The lampshade on the bedside tilted, buffeted by an unfelt wind, then fell still.

She reached out, twining her fingers in the air, as if she could grab hold of the heat. There was nothing left.

The woman went to the window and looked out upon her town. The motel stood tall at the peak of one of the largest hills in town, and from her room on the third floor she could see all the way to the mountains.

Rustwood. How sweet it looked with the lights of Central Avenue flaring into life beneath the sheeting rain, the heartbeat thrum of traffic, brake lights thudding an arterial red. The Pentacost River licked back and forth below the shadows of the mountains, swollen beyond its banks. Bungalows with yappy puppies running free behind slat fences. Such a sweet place, nestled in the wide arms of mountain ranges, belted on the east by roiling grey ocean. Single highway on the north end, single highway to the south. It’d never needed any more than that. Small enough so that people still knew their neighbours and large enough so people had just started locking their doors.

The citizens of Rustwood weren’t stupid. Just blind. They could smell the wrongness in the streets, the rotten earth beneath the veneer of neatly mowed lawns. They didn’t know why they were scared, but they were. They looked over their shoulders and chided themselves for being paranoid.

The knew, and they didn’t want to know. Poor, fumbling things...

Raised voices carried through the window. Outside, in the parking lot that ringed the motel, a man and woman were arguing in the rain. The woman clutched a paper bag of groceries to her chest as she backed away, butt hitting the door of a parked Buick. The man - six foot tall, hair shaved down to grey stubble - jabbed one finger at her, accusing. His t-shirt was two sizes too tight, threatening to split in half if he sneezed.

The man reminded her of someone she’d met long ago. A lover? Husband? Father? Someone looming huge in her memories, now reduced to a silhouette amongst shadows.

She shook the memory away and reached for her sunglasses. There was work to do. The Queen wanted her to meet with another lieutenant? Fine. She was loyal. She’d follow orders.

But she’d also bring backup.

The couple were still arguing when she came down the stairs. The girl had dropped her groceries, spilling spaghettio cans across the asphalt, and was now up in the man’s face, spraying spit across the man’s cheeks as she cursed. Ken, his name was. Motherfucking Ken, Ken who spent all day on the sofa, Ken who couldn’t hold down a job to save his life, just like his father...

Hard to tell which of them would lash out first. The woman in sunglasses made the decision for them.

She strode across the lot and grabbed the shrieking woman by the throat. The bones slid from her sleeves before the woman could scream, puncturing just below the jaw and sliding in, buttery smooth, until they ground against the hard nubs of her spine.

The woman gurgled weakly. Her hands were dying fish, flopping in the air.

Her partner, Ken the unemployable asshole, was backed up against the side of a van. His mouth hung open so far she could count his fillings. His eyes darted left, right, left.

For a moment she thought Ken would fight. Instead he made a break for the street, high-tops squeaking as he skidded on wet asphalt.

Stupid. But she didn’t need drones with brains. She needed them big and strong, thick enough to take a blade to the ribs, heavy enough to pin her targets to the ground with the weight of their bodies. Ken might’ve been on welfare, might’ve never passed eighth grade, but he had the muscle of a soldier. Perfect.

Ken was fast. She was faster.