Underground

CHAPTER 22

The temperature had dropped with the sun. A pair of trash fires sent out yellow light at each end of Occidental Park and carved the shadows into broken, moving shapes. There were few people in the park and those were gathered around the heat and flicker from the burning cans. When Quinton and I entered the avenue of plane trees, the bizarre parade that had come to Grandpa Dan’s beckoning had tripled and followed us from the Cadillac Hotel to Oxy Park.

Lass had begun to stir again as we crossed Main, but I ignored him, peering into the jigsaw darkness toward the giant totems at the far end. In the erratic light, the black wooden statue of Tsonoqua—Nightmare Bringer—seemed to breathe and move, spreading her arms farther than usual to hold an oil-slick-edged hole in the air. The shape of the world seemed a bit warped at that spot.

I headed straight for it, confirmed in my opinion that Qamaits and Tsonoqua were, like Sisiutl and Cerberus, just different names for the same thing. As we got closer, I could see a large, dark shape at the feet of Tsonoqua, bulking even larger with eerie shadows that moved independently of their object.

I stepped over the low rail that separated the totems from the walkway and stopped, facing the massive carving of Tsonoqua, whose arms reached out as if to pull me into an embrace—the better to eat me I supposed. The face, highlighted with red and green paint, pursed its lips as if to kiss, while a darkling gleam played in the hooded eyes. Another pair of dark eyes looked up from the face of the huge woman seated at the carving’s feet.

The Grey was more present around the totems and I didn’t bother to hold on to normal. Whatever happened next would take place in the thin space between the worlds. But as I let go, little changed, and I found Quinton still beside me and the strange audience of ghosts and humans, spreading around us in a circle, still visible in the Grey. The shimmering edges of the hole in the totems hands seemed to spread and hold the worlds together in the presence of the gathered spirits, animal and Indian. The real Indians and the birds were there as well, watching, encircling us and completing the sphere of magic that contained us all.

“I want to return your pet,” I started, “and the man you lent him to needs to account for his actions.”

Qamaits laughed, showing needle teeth in her spirit form, and shook her head.

“No dog.”

“I didn’t say it was a dog. I don’t think your gods will be pleased that Sisiutl’s been killing people who never threatened them on the whim of this man you gave his leash to. I only want to send the man up the stairs to account for it and return Sisiutl to his post—neither of you should be in the human world.” Lass shrieked in my head and I winced as he began to claw and fight to escape.

Qamaits noticed and her laugh was dismissive. “I like it here. Sisiutl shares his meat. I do not have to hunt or gather food. It is cold, but I have many blankets and the people do not chase me away. Why should I go?”

“You have a duty,” I said, sickened, knowing the people Sisiutl had netted must have gone down the maw of this creature, too. “The man has done wrong and Sisiutl is tainted with it. I only ask you to show me the stair so the man can answer for that.”

As she considered, I looked at her collection of eclectic trash: the colorful blankets, discarded children’s toys, fancy liquor bottles…

She stood up, easily three times my bulk and a hair shorter, yet she loomed, double-shadowed. She stared at me with odd eyes that gleamed yellow and red and shook her head, baring her pointed teeth. “If Sisiutl goes back to the realm between, I must go, too. Why should I?”

“You have a duty to the gods and you don’t belong in the human world,” I repeated as I threaded the pheasant feather into my buttonholes to free my hands. “You must go back.”

Qamaits recoiled at the sight of the feather, her eyes staring. Then she roared and swelled even larger than her looming totem, the double shadows behind her filling and solidifying into a hulking shape from nightmare: wide and black and seemingly made of teeth and claws. “Meat!” she shrieked. “I eat you all!”

I jumped back, dragging Quinton with me and jerking on Sisiutl’s leash, calling for the serpent-headed creature. The double-ended monster rushed into the park, casting a wave of color through the Grey and screeching as it came.

The crowd shuddered, gasping or muttering strange words and issuing angry animal cries. The huge sea serpent stopped between Qamaits and me and glared at each of us with a different head. Qamaits drew up short, glowering.

“Who will it answer—me or you?” I asked, feeling weak-kneed and anguished as Lass battered against me in terror. “It says its hungry. Want to find out which of us it prefers for dinner?”

I wasn’t certain how much longer I could stand up, let alone bluff on instinct alone. I felt sure I was bleeding inside and tearing apart like a rag doll with ripped seams. It wasn’t as bad as being beaten to death had been, but it was bad enough.

Qamaits moved back half a step, teetering on the edge of the hole in the worlds.

Her glare shifted back and forth between me and Sisiutl and she gnawed her lip until blood flowed over her chin.

“Show us the stairs,” I demanded, forcing my old dance-gypsy bravado to the surface.

Sisiutl grinned and snapped one snake head at the ogress. It would have been as glad to snap at me, I imagined.

Keeping a wary eye on me, Qamaits dug into her cart of discarded treasures and pulled out a strangely folded thing of plastic and cardboard, coated in filthy, torn, and peeling pink vinyl. She unfolded it: a dollhouse.

I heard Quinton snort beside me, but I wasn’t about to cast stones—I was holding a legendary monster by a piece of frayed string and arguing with an ogress who looked like a homeless woman. Belief and appearances were only nodding acquaintances, it seemed. Qamaits lifted the house so it passed through the ring of oily gleam between her effigy’s hands, and as she brought it down the ring expanded, the world rippling and warping to accommodate the house. Even Lass grew still as we were enclosed in the second bubble of Qamaits’s realm.

The dollhouse grew and the ring of some sort of dimensional rift flowed out to encompass the park, which became the yard. It unfolded until the house had become full-sized, its open front leaving the interior revealed and raw. The smell of water lilies and black mud rose into the frosty air as a pool formed from a puddle at my feet, a sturdy stone needle rising from its shore nearby. I walked unsteadily to the post and tied the piece of string through the eye of the needle.

Sisiutl rolled in the grass where bricks had been a moment before, snorting with delight. Then it stopped and slithered across the ground, back and forth, as if pacing in some strange, reptilian way. Qamaits stood aside and watched me with narrowed eyes.

I took the feather from my buttonholes and teased Lass loose from me. He shouted and fought to stay with me and not to be thrown into the realm of the zeqwas. I tore him out with a keen of agony and stumbled to my knees, pushing the last trailing threads of him away with the plume. Once outside of me, he recovered the memory of his shape but cleaner and younger than I had known him—and he did have a mild resemblance to Quinton. I shivered to see him looking so solid and familiar.

With a hunted look, he glanced around, as if seeking an escape, but there wasn’t a way out. The world of the house ended in a band of rainbow beyond which the normal world of Occidental Park lay in a thin mist. The crowd still stood around it, their movements suspended. Sisiutl prowled its yard and snapped at Lass while muttering to itself.

Lass started toward Quinton and turned up his hands. “Q—”

Quinton looked a little dazed, but shook his head. “No. You messed up and I can’t help you this time.”

“But—I helped you. You took my identity to hide from those… people.”

“I know. I’m sorry I had to, but there’s nothing I can do for you now.”

Lass slumped. “I don’t—I can’t…” Trepid and shaking, he eyed the surreal house of Qamaits and then the ogress herself, who grinned at him with bloody teeth.

Qamaits called to Sisiutl, who leaped toward Lass, biting at the air. “Choose!” she commanded. “Sisiutl hungers.”

Lass stumbled back, remembering fear, and shot a supplicating glance at me. Then he looked at the long, vanishing stair that wandered up into the depths of the house and back to me again. “Please… can’t you come with me? I don’t want to go by myself!”

I was tired and aching and I wished I could hold on to my disgust of him, but I felt impotent pity as I looked at Lass’s spirit. I don’t know how I knew it was true—maybe the way Qamaits licked her lips or the shift in Sisiutl’s pacing—but I was sure one step across the threshold would have the monsters on me and I didn’t like my chances against them both. “I can’t go with you,” I replied.

Qamaits gnashed her teeth in frustration.

Lass hung his head and shuffled his feet. “All right,” he mumbled, and began to walk to the house like a guilty child to his punishment. Sisiutl and Qamaits let him pass.

As he mounted the stairs, the house shuddered. With each step Lass took up the risers, he seemed to get farther away, and the house shrank into distance and dimension, shivering smaller and smaller. It dwindled, sparkling and rippling as the rainbow sheen of the rift spiraled closed until Occidental Park flowed back into place and the only sign of Lass’s journey or of Sisiutl was the battered dollhouse—still glimmering prismatically—sitting on the ground at the feet of the totem.

Qamaits had dwindled back to a more normal size, but she still bore the aspect of the ogress. She glowered at Quinton and me, shuffling toward the little house, drawing closer, cursing, and stooped to pick up the dollhouse.

Then she twisted, leaping at Quinton, snarling, her hands outstretched into talons.

I dove between them, pushing Quinton back and yanking a bit of Grey between us and the ogress. She rolled against it. Then plunged through with a shriek, swiping at me and bringing blood to my cheek. Her gory fangs gnashed an inch from my face. I shoved her back, snatching for the frayed feather, hoping to loosen her monstrous aspect and reduce her to a more ordinary opponent.

She thrashed forward, flickering but unhurt, slashing at me. She moved like an eel and I couldn’t keep her at a distance. Quinton scrambled to help, but we only tangled together, stumbling. I shoved him back again, shouting, “Stay away! It’s you she wants! No one wants to eat me,” I added, muttering and glaring at the ogress. ”I’d give you indigestion, wouldn’t I?”

Qamaits feinted left and lunged right to clutch at Quinton’s flapping coat. I caught her sweeping arm and whipped her back, jabbing the feather at her shadows with the other hand. The dark shapes crumpled a little, but she spun swift as a dervish and lashed back, forcing me to duck and catch my balance with one hand on the ground before swinging over my own feet and spinning a kick at her as I came back up before my shoulder could give up on me.

I had no time to reach for the pistol and didn’t think it would do any more damage to Qamaits than it had to Sisiutl, so I continued with fist and feather, trying to dislodge her shadow selves and break her down.

But she was fast and enraged. She charged at me with teeth bared as if to rip my throat out, her arms spread to grasp and crush.

I twisted aside, dragging the feather over her. She pivoted, using one arm as a counterweight as she flailed at me with the other, buffeting me into the ground again. I wasn’t breaking her as fast as she was breaking me.

I screamed for help and the crowd of Indians, animals, and spirits stirred around us with a rush of wings and a distant chanting. A cloud of crows and jays swooped down, lashing the ogress’s face with wing and claw. I lurched to my feet and scored the pheasant quill down her side, ripping a chunk of her Grey shape away. Qamaits howled and shook off the birds, lurching toward me again. Ghostly shapes of foxes darted beneath her feet, knocking her down, and I tore another slice out of her shadow.

I was panting, worn down by the long ordeal of the past two days and now by the ogress’s blows. I turned and was awash in a crowd of chanting ghosts that threw themselves between Qamaits and me.

I scuttled to the side, seeing the dollhouse still coruscating nearby. I braced and ran at the shadow-cloaked ogress, ramming my shoulder into her side at the cost of rent clothes and flesh, but driving her backward toward the shimmering house.

Qamaits fell back but dug in as I dove for her one more time.

We rocked into the verge of the house together, the rift between the worlds tearing at me and sending a feedback screech through my head. She was half in but fighting the draw of the house with her talons piercing into my shoulders.

Dark wings, gigantic and glossy, dozens of them, clattering with pointed beaks, beat into us, driving the ogress back, ripping at her face and striking us apart. Ravens with hot yellow eyes flocked and stooped, distracting the zeqwa. I twisted, shoved… And she fell away with a shriek, tumbling into the miniature house, spinning and dwindling until she vanished.

The house collapsed on itself, dragging the rift and the Grey sphere with it, folding into a sad pile of dirty vinyl and cardboard again, dull, discarded, and sparkling with only a dim Grey light. The normal world crashed back into us with a roar of modern noise.

Quinton pulled me back to my feet, wrapping me in his coat and drawing me away from the dollhouse on the bricks. I shuddered and gulped air before I shoved my weakness aside to look back at the abandoned toy.

Grandpa Dan shuffled forward and picked up the house, folding it down until it was flat. Then he carried it, a procession of his people—material and incorporeal—forming around him as he went to the nearest fire and carefully dropped it in. The flames rose up in a rush of white and yellow and red, and the Indians watched the dollhouse burn, whispering songs until it was a white drift of ash.

I looked around, seeking a sight of the animals, but they were gone—every one but a dog that limped from the darkness, shaggy coat matted with mud and head hanging.

“Bella?” Quinton called. The dog turned and ran to him, whimpering in relief. He gathered her up and took us both home.