Shores of the Marrow Read online

  “Cal, the stories are in your head—you know them. And the story of Mayor Partridge and Father McCabe is true. There is something in The Pit, a doorway—The Leporidae burrow is long and deep—and not all doors lead to the Marrow.”

  Cal was breathing heavily and his legs felt barely strong enough to hold him up.

  The Marrow? What the hell is the Marrow?

  “Pick up your book, Cal.”

  Cal did as he was instructed, but refused to look at the cover. Then Seth led him over to the shelf where he had first pulled the then empty book from.

  “Put it back.”

  Cal, his brain still foggy, squatted and went to slide the green book back in the empty spot. But before he did, his eyes fell on another book. One with a worn leather cover and the words Inter vivos et mortuos.

  Intrigued, he reached for this book, intent on pulling it out, but Seth stayed his hand.

  “That’s someone else’s story, Cal. Not yours.”

  Cal nodded and slid the green book in beside the other.

  Then he stood and turned to Seth, who was smiling again.

  “One day you will make your own sacrifice—like the men in Askergan, the women in Stumphole Swamp.”

  Cal nodded and allowed Seth to guide him to the door.

  It’ll all be over soon. This queer dream will be over and I’ll forget all about it.

  Seth opened the door, and Cal squinted into the bright light. He was about to step outside, when Seth spoke again, drawing him back.

  “Remember, Cal,” he said, bringing a finger to his temple. “The story is in here.”

  Cal nodded a final time, then stepped out into the sun, far more confused than when he had arrived asking questions about a feud between Mooreshead’s Mayor and a priest.

  He left peering down into the eternal depths of the Leporidae burrow.

  ***

  Cal waited outside Hank’s house until the sun blinked out like a reptilian eye, with the cover of dusk as the first, transparent lid, followed by the imminent darkness brought on full-thickness skin flap.

  The weather had cooled over the course of the last few hours, and there was the scent of impending rain in the air.

  Little of this registered with Cal, however. His mind was still racing, his thoughts a runaway locomotive, replete with ideas and notions and ultimately confusion.

  He had seen things today, things that couldn’t possibly be real. He had written and drawn things that he had no business creating.

  A spiral of tunnels, like spokes on a wheel… not all lead to the Marrow.

  He had to tell Hank; he was compelled to tell his grinning friend about what he had a seen, and what the Curator had told him: the story of the priest and the mayor was true.

  The priest made a sacrifice, and one day you will too.

  But Cal had to wait. Hank’s parents were strict, and had rules against visitors on school nights. Which was ironic, given that like him, his friend rarely attended the institution.

  Cal waited in the bushes across the street, aware that his own parents must be worried sick about him, but accepting of the consequences. This was more important.

  This was exciting.

  At half-past nine, the upstairs lights blinked out. Cal waited another five minutes, and a single light flicked on in the room on the left-hand side of the house.

  Hank’s room.

  Reading, maybe?

  But Hank wasn’t much of a reader. A story-teller, sure, but not a reader.

  Cal’s brow furrowed just as the first drop of rain landed on his forehead. He wiped it away, realizing that it wasn’t just wet with rain.

  He was sweating, too.

  The light blinked out again, and Cal’s confusion deepened. When it turned on a second time, he wondered if perhaps Hank had spotted him earlier in the evening and was sending him a signal.

  Cal shrugged and stepped out from the line of hedges. There was a street lamp off to his left, illuminating the quiet street in an ashen glow. He took two steps to his right, staying low, careful to stay out of the light in case Hank’s parents were still awake.

  Then he strode across the narrow berm and onto the street. As his shoes hit tarmac, a pitter-patter sound distracted him and he slunk back into the shadows. Cal’s first thought was that it was just the rain picking up in intensity. But while a skyward glance confirmed that this was true, it wasn’t the rain that he heard, but footsteps.

  And then he saw her. Her blond hair was tied in a tight ponytail, and a smack of bright red lipstick stood out on her pale features like some sort of beacon.

  But it was her eyes that gave it away. Stacey’s green eyes were beaming as she made her way quickly across the street, then onto the lawn.

  Cal’s heart was racing in his chest.

  No, come on. It can’t be.

  But it was.

  The sound of a latch lifting echoed in the night, and the window with the light on opened about six inches.

  Hank’s bird-like nose peaked out.

  “Stace?” he whispered. “They’re asleep, come on up.”

  As Stacey made her way onto the lawn, then put her right foot in the trellis on the lower half of the porch, Cal remained frozen.

  No, no way.

  He recalled what Hank had said to him as he watched Stacey walk away form The Pit with Brent. He had felt a small tinge of jealousy then, but that was silly.

  After all, Brent and Stacey were cousins.

  You like her, don’t you? Well, she likes you too, Cal. We can all see it.

  Bullshit—all of it was bullshit. Hank had just been placating him so that he could get with her.

  Calm down, Cal. There might be a rational explanation for all this. Homework, maybe? Group assignment?

  Except that wasn’t quite right; he knew that Brent and Hank had spent the day at The Pit.

  Cal ground his teeth and felt his face tingle with heat. The rain that splashed down on him seemed to sizzle and boil upon touching his skin.

  “Fucking Hank,” he grumbled. “Fucking Hank!”

  The words that came out of his mouth did so from between clenched teeth. And yet Hank, who was on high alert for his parents waking, heard the sound and he raised his head. Even Stacey, who was halfway up the side of the porch turned toward him.

  Cal slunk into the shadows, trying to become one with the shrubbery.

  Please don’t see me. Please don’t—

  “Who’s there?” Hank hissed. The rain was coming down harder now, making it difficult for Cal to make out the words.

  How the fuck did they hear me?

  He tried to remain complete still, going as far as to even hold his breath.

  Stacey and Hank remained frozen as well, until Cal heard his friend’s voice cut through the rain.

  “Cal? Cal, is that you?”

  Cal wasn’t sure if it was Hank or Stacey who said the words, but it didn’t matter. His reaction was visceral and immediate.

  Cal started to run. With the rain pouring down on him, soaking his shoes and causing an accompanying splash with every footfall, Cal ran as fast as he could, trying his best to ignore his friends’ shouts following him up the street.

  Chapter 12

  Cal hadn’t planned on coming to The Pit, but he wasn’t surprised that that was where he ended up anyway.

  The rain was nearing torrential status now, and the muddy, worn path that Cal took to the rim of the gravel pit was nearly impassible. Feet spread wide, he tried to avoid getting his shoes stuck, opting instead for the wet grass that flanked the path like sideburns.

  He couldn’t believe it. Hank had fucking lied to him, coerced him, tricked him so that he could get with Stacey.

  It made no sense; why would Stacey pick Hank over him? Sure, he was big-boned, but Hank was a pimply-faced bespectacled whiny little bastard.

  “Fuck,” he swore. As he neared the edge of the gravel pit, approaching the area where they had sat the day prior, he suddenly regretted his decisi
on to come here. Like a virus proliferating in his brain, this regret started to replicate, until it quickly got to the point where he regretted everything that had happened over the past few days.

  The story that Hank had told him was obvious bullshit, obfuscating the truth in a lame attempt to keep him here in Mooreshead.

  Yeah, Cal thought, that’s what this is all about, keeping me here.

  They all—Hank, Brent, Stacey—knew about his plans to get out of this boring, shit ass town and leave them behind. That’s what pissed him off—it must be.

  And his encounter with Seth Parsons? That was just a weird trick… Hank had put something in the whiskey. Like that blue/green alcohol… Absinthe, was that it? Yeah, he heard that that stuff can make you pretty twisted, give you hallucinations and shit. Or maybe the meeting had been less sinister, maybe it was just the result of his hangover mixed with toxic mold spores or some shit.

  Cal rubbed his sore wrist absently.

  “Fucking lies, fucking bullshit lies,” he turned his head to the heavens, blinking at that rain that pelted down on his face. “All of it, this whole place is just a bunch of boring fucking lies!”

  “Cal?”

  Cal’s heart leapt into his throat, and he spun on his heels. He moved onto the muddy path as he did, and his feet immediately sunk several inches into the muck.

  Hank was standing in his soaking wet t-shirt, his hands held out in front of him, palms up. Stacey stood behind him, her blond hair hanging in wet strings in front of her face.

  “What the fuck do you want?” Cal snarled. “I thought you were my friend!”

  Hank’s hawkish features twisted into a grimace.

  “I am your friend! I—”

  “You what? You just lied to me so that you could fuck her?” he demanded, lifting his chin to Stacey as he spoke.

  Stacey’s eyes went wide, and Cal had to shout to be heard over the torrential downpour.

  “Oh, yeah, what are you going to say? You’re going to say that you weren’t fucking? That you weren’t doing that shit behind my back?”

  Stacey’s expression changed from shock to sheer rage. She moved forward and tried to push by Hank, but he moved with her, remaining firmly planted between them.

  “Are you fucking serious?” she shouted, her voice shrill. “What gives you the right? I can do whatever the hell I want. I don’t owe you anything. We’re just friends, Cal. I’m not sure what you thought… why you thought that we had something going on, but we didn’t and we don’t. So, stop being a fucking baby and let’s go home.”

  The words struck Cal like a flurry of punches and he took a few steps backward, his feet slurping loudly in the mud.

  “Well—”

  A loud crack of lightning split the sky, illuminating their faces. Cal ducked instinctively, and then straightened, feeling embarrassed for more reason than one.

  “I—I just… I just thought that—”

  A massive, rolling wave of thunder interrupted his blubbering. Cal felt his chest flutter with the change in pressure, then instinctively glanced over his shoulder and stared into the gravel pit.

  The Leporidae burrow is long and deep…

  It seemed to him that the thunder hadn’t so much as echoed in the pit as it had originated from there. There was already a pool of water at the bottom, one that sloshed and churned with—

  “No, fuck you, Cal. You have no right. There was nothing ever between us, and you wanna know why?”

  Cal’s head whipped around again, but this time he said nothing.

  “Easy, Stacey,” Hank offered, but Stacey was having none of it.

  “No, fuck this. Someone has to say it… it’s because you are fucking obsessed with everything being so boring, and thinking that you are,” she threw her arms up dramatically, “for some reason better than everyone. You think you’re too good for Hank, for Brent, for me. Too good for all of fucking Mooreshead.”

  Cal was so shocked at this sudden outburst that he couldn’t even formulate a response.

  “But the truth is—”

  “Stacey, please,” Hank interrupted.

  “—no, let me finish. The truth is—” now it was Stacey’s turn to turn her head to the Heavens, before returning her gaze to Cal. “The truth is that you are boring, Cal. You are the most fucking boring person I’ve ver—”

  “Stacey! Enough!” Hank shouted.

  This time, she shut up.

  Cal started to cry. He couldn’t help it. The tears poured down his cheeks in rivulets that rivaled those that bled down into The Pit.

  “Fuck,” Hank whispered moving forward in the mud. “Cal, c’mon, man. She didn’t mean it.”

  Cal turned sideways protectively as Hank continued to approach. Before he knew it, his old friend was directly beside him.

  “Let’s just—let’s just go home,” he said, reaching out and putting an arm around Cal.

  Cal didn’t mean to do what he did next. It was instinct, fueled by his anger, confusion, and just plain disgust. Disgust at himself, disgust at the fact that what Stacey had said about him had all been true.

  “Don’t fucking touch me,” he whispered as he reached out and wrenched Hank’s arm from his shoulder.

  Under any other conditions, Hank would have just shrugged this off, righted himself, and they would have all been on their merry way. It probably wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. After all, Cal didn’t like being touched.

  Only these weren’t normal conditions.

  Hank’s heels slipped in the mud and he stumbled forward. Had his shoes landed one foot to the left, they would have locked in the mud as Cal’s were now. But Hank’s sneakers came down too close to the lip of The Pit, and they slipped the eroded edge.

  Cal’s mouth made a wide ‘O’ shape and he cried out as he reached for his friend.

  “Noooo!” Hank screamed as he tumbled over the edge.

  Chapter 13

  The single syllable drowned on and on, radiating up the sides of the gravel pit.

  It was Hank who shouted it—noooo!—but Cal and maybe Stacey too, had picked up the refrain.

  Cal yanked his feet from the mud and moved cautiously toward the rim of The Pit, which had now acquired the consistency of runny oatmeal. He made it in time to see Hank still airborne—although this seemed impossible given the number of seconds it had taken him to reach the edge—his eyes and mouth wide.

  Just as Cal’s foot slipped off the edge, Hank’s back struck the side of the embankment, and even with the rain pouring as it was, Cal heard the air forced from his lungs.

  His friend’s eyes rolled back, and then his entire body seemed to follow suit, and Cal found himself watching Hank tumbling head over heels, throwing up mud from every limb, picking up speed like a wayward snowball.

  Cal tried to maintain his own footing, balancing his terror, enthusiasm and desperation on a grain of sand, while at the same time trying to avoid Hank’s fate.

  He shifted his feet sideways, strafing down the muddy surface quickly, but carefully. Hank was still spinning ahead of him at such a speed that Cal realized there was no way he would be able to catch him. Not until he hit the bottom, that is.

  Anticipating this, Cal lifted his gaze, squinting heavily as he sought the endgame.

  And then he saw it.

  There was some kind of protrusion, something massive and gleaming, jutting from the side of the bowl, about three-quarters to the roiling cesspool at the bottom.

  In all of his years of coming here, Cal had never seen anything embedded in the side of The Pit—anything but roots and weeds, that is—but the thick streams of water pouring down the sides had already caused major erosion.

  The object appeared large and metal.

  And Hank’s listless body was tumbling right at it.

  This time, it was only Cal who shouted.

  “Hank!”

  He reached out in futility—instinctively, really, as there was no chance he could reach Hank. All Cal could do was watch
in horror as his friend’s body flipped one final time, and then his back smashed against the metal object.

  A jolt of thunder erupted at the moment of impact, giving the sound of Hank’s cracking spine an ethereal, monstrous quality that made Cal’s entire body shudder. Through tear- and rain-streaked vision, he saw Hank’s eyelids peel back, his eyes bulge, and his mouth twist into a grimace.

  Then he went still.

  Completely still.

  Cal careened after him, throwing caution to the wind. But before he could reach Hank, his body started to move again, not pin-wheeling in a cartoonish manner as it had before, but this time languidly, carried on the surface of the mud like a pregnant rain drop.

  Breathing heavily, his throat burning, Cal finally made it to his friend.

  He dropped to his knees, driving them both into the mud as he wrapped his arms around Hank’s waist, rooting them, finally halting what had seemed like an infinite descent. Another liquid, something thicker than the rain that soaked him, coated Hank’s entire back, and eventually Cal’s hands as well.

  He didn’t need the weak illumination from the half-covered moon to reveal what it was.

  He already knew.

  Cal swallowed hard, and looked back up the side of the gravel pit.

  The metal object that Hank had struck was more clearly visible from below, and he finally realized what it was. It was the backhoe of a giant excavator, and one of the massive, metal prongs that extended from the bucket was covered in blood. The rain beat down on the backhoe, sending the blood streaming down the gleaming metal surface, where it eventually mixed with the rain that sluiced toward him. Cal’s eyes followed the thin tendrils of dark liquid until they joined with the source.

  “Hank!” Cal shouted, realizing that his friend’s body had gone complete rigid, tetanic, even. He wanted to shake Hank, to wake them both up from this horrible, shared nightmare, but he was afraid of inflicting anymore damage. “Please, Hank, wake up!”

  Hank’s eyelids fluttered, and then his eyes rolled forward almost mechanically, as if requiring great effort.

  “I never… I never meant—” Hank croaked.