Engines of the Broken World (23 page)

“
Hush, little baby,… don’t … you … cry.
…” But I did, I started crying for Mama, who was dead, and for Auntie, who had just wanted to live, and for myself, who wanted to live but was going to be dead anyway. For everybody else too, I was crying. The tears were cold on my cheeks right after I shed them.

“Come on, Merciful. Let’s go. We got a job to do,” my brother said, just like he was aiming to set up a fence or beat the rugs. That was Gospel, though. I don’t think he cared none for any of it, just wanted to have it done.

Only I saw tears on his cheeks too as he went past me real fast, his feet banging on the stairs.

I looked for what I figured would be the last time at Auntie sitting there, singing out from the wreck of Mama’s body, and tried without much success to pretend that when I went up those stairs it wasn’t Mama I was leaving there too. And then I climbed up the steps, into the warm kitchen, and went to go kill the Minister.

T
WENTY
-S
IX

“
Are you okay?
”
my brother asked me when we were both at the top of the steps. “That was a bitter thing, to have to see Mama like that again. I’m sorry we had to do it.”

“It’s nearly all bitter now. But it’s almost over, right?”

He nodded. “Almost.”

There was light in the sitting room, a faint blue glow that reminded me of the full moon. I held Gospel back as we circled the wreck of the kitchen table, held him back because I didn’t know what we might see in there. There wasn’t a thing in the house that shone blue like that. “What do you think that is?” I whispered to him.

“Hell if I know, Merce. Hell if I can even guess.” He sounded so tired, so worn, and I wondered if he was well at all, or how bad he was still hurting from the beating he got earlier and from the frostbite that still marked his face.

“Well, we got to end it the right way.”

“Don’t you or me know what’s right anymore, so don’t pretend you do. We’re just doing what seems best, minute to minute. And like you just said, we ain’t got much more time to get confused. Now, are we going in there, or are we staying in here?”

“In there,” I said, and gave him a little push. He started forward, my brother with his knife held out before him, and I followed careful and cautious, falling a little behind, because Gospel being Gospel, he was moving fast for trouble. He got into the room and stopped right there, staring over to the left at where we’d left the Minister. When I peeked in around him, I could see what had stopped him, and it stopped me, too.

The Minister was still the Minister, a little gray squirrel sitting on the lower lip of the loom, with tiny wet black eyes and furry small-clawed paws. It was looking at us, not seeming to have moved much at all since we’d left it. And yet … there was something more there. There was a shape around it, a shape that passed through the loom, or into the loom, or something that my eyes couldn’t rightly describe to me. A tall man, maybe, though you could see right through it and there wasn’t much more than the idea of a man. And it was shining, that manshape, shining with a faint blue light that lit up the room, and warmth was coming off of it.

Or maybe it just looked like an angel now—maybe it
was
an angel, to be able to talk to God and be at the Flood and who knew what all else—and everyone knew angels glowed, leastways they did in the Good Book, in the pictures.

“I don’t like the looks behind your eyes,” the Minister said. It reared up onto its haunches. The man shape around it didn’t move at all.

“What do you mean, Minister?” Gospel said, trying to sound innocent. He’d always been bad at that trick.

“The way you hold that knife, the way you walk, everything suggests to me that you have made a decision. A bad one, if I’m any judge of right and wrong. One that shows you’re halfway to the Devil.” Which he was, it didn’t say, but we both knew.

Gospel stepped forward, circling around the back of Papa’s chair toward the loom, behind Mama’s. The Minister watched him come closer. I stepped over the threshold into the room and felt so much warmer, felt warmth shining out from the Minister, from the glowing image of what I now thought of as an angel.

“I heard you talking with the thing in the cellar,” the Minister said. “I heard it, and I heard you, and I know what you mean to do. You should be ashamed,” it said. But Gospel, he wasn’t a strong one for shame, and so he kept on walking.

I heard the creak of the rocker and horrible thumps, the dreadful clumping thumps of hard footsteps on the floor, coming rapid and loud, and then the thing that had been the Widow was at the door. The head was in its right hand, and something bulky was in the left. It pulled back that hand, holding the head high with the right, and I called out, “Gospel,
duck
!” but my stupid brother didn’t hardly listen. He turned a bit and cringed down, and the Minister bounced to the side on the frame, and then that last log from by the fire flew across the room and slammed into Gospel’s chest. The knife dropped from his hand as he flopped into the corner of the room, bouncing off the linen chest and landing with a ragged crash on the ground. I swore I heard a bone snap in the hit.

The Minister, what had bounded aside to avoid the log entire, sprang off the frame with the faint blue shape around him still and landed right next to Gospel, reared up and fierce, its tail puffed out.

“Capture it, Merciful,” the thing in the Widow said. James, that was its name. “Get it. We’ll make God pay for what He’s done.”

“What you done, more like,” I said. I ran over to Gospel and dropped on my knees beside him. The thing in the door didn’t move, only stood there with the head lifted up high to crane a view over the chairs. “Is he alive?” I asked the Minister.

“For the moment, yes. He is … very badly hurt.” The little creature didn’t look over at Gospel, just kept its eyes trained on the staring head. The Widow monster hadn’t moved closer, just shifted from side to side.

I checked my brother over, careful not to touch him too rough. His chest felt wrong, kind of soft, and there was blood on his lips, and bubbles that formed up when he breathed in and out. But at least he was still breathing.

“He can’t dare touch you now,” the Minister said, very softly. “You’re his last chance. He needs a mortal to touch me, to destroy me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s an abomination. He’s not really part of God’s creation. So creation doesn’t respond to his will any longer, not like it responds to yours.” I didn’t understand exactly what it meant. I just stared down at Gospel and shook my head. “You’re the last one who can make any decisions,” the Minister insisted, “the last one whose free will matters. You can stop that thing.”

“Or you can capture the Minister. Kill it, if you like,” the man’s voice said from the dangling head of the old woman. “I can hear you, you know. There isn’t too much other noise now.”

And there wasn’t, I realized. The wind, the hiss of the snow, it had all stopped sometime in the last few minutes.

“Why’s it so quiet?”

“The world is very small now, Merciful. There’s not enough of it left for the wind to blow, for the snow to rustle. There might not be snow falling anymore, in fact. The fog’s cut off even the lowest of the clouds.”

“How long do we have?”

“Half an hour, maybe. A little more or less, if you struggle against it or if you accept it. The choice is yours, as it was always going to be.”

I had half an hour to live, or to die. I had half of one hour, that was all, to decide what if anything I was going to do. Gospel couldn’t help me and the Minister wouldn’t help me and no one else was left. I wanted to cry again, but I’d cried about all I could. I’d cried for good reasons and bad, and I was going to try my hardest not to waste time doing it again.

“Take it, Merciful,” the devil said. “Take the Minister and hold it, and I’ll show you what to do.”

I looked at the little squirrel, standing so brave in front of Gospel, and I knew that I wouldn’t take it and hold it. I knew that no matter what I did, I wouldn’t let the little thing be tortured or whatever it was that the monster wanted to do. The light around the Minister, the glowing shape like a man, was getting brighter, and I could see outlines—a face that was handsome and gentle, and strong arms, and a faint shimmering of broad wings. I knew that it was an angel, just like it had said. I knew it, and I knew I could never let that kind of hurt be done to it.

The needful moment had come, I guessed.

I reached inside Gospel’s jacket. His chest felt weak and soft, and I tried not to notice that as I took hold of the gun, warm from being against his body. I’d only shot it off the one time, but it already felt cozy in my hand, like it sort of belonged there. I stood up, with the gun tugging my tired arms down.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Gabriel,” the Minister said.

“Not you.” I hadn’t even thought it would have a name. “That one.” I knew what Auntie had called it, but I wanted to know if she was lying, wanted to know if I could trust anything she had said, and this was the only card I had left to play.

“I have no name any longer.”

“You do,” I said. I took a single step and raised up the gun. “Tell me your name.”

“You can’t kill me. I’m not as weak as that thing below. My hate makes me strong.” Its voice was dark and evil when it spoke, and I got a shiver up my back because I knew it was terrible still. But I had listened when the Minister had talked, and I had figured things out. I knew something.

“Fine. Don’t have a name. Makes it easier to say good-bye.” And I pulled the trigger. The shot went far wide, no chance I had hit anything, but the monster was surprised as all get-out anyway, and it bolted back into the bedroom.

“Don’t you let Gospel die, Minister. Gabriel. Don’t you dare,” I said, and I went after the thing in the Widow. There wasn’t a good place to hide in the bedroom, and anyway the Widow had been too big to just go about hiding. But it wasn’t hiding. It was standing right by the fire. The head was back in place atop that long body, and in the shadowy light it almost looked to
be
Miz Cally, from her nearly bald crown down to her booted feet, one ringed hand shining in front of her mouth as if she’d been caught in a gasp.

“Don’t shoot, Merciful,” she said, and it was the Widow’s voice, just the same as when she was calling on the Good Lord against the thing in the cellar. “I’m still here. I’m still inside.”

And I stopped in my tracks, because I didn’t know. Maybe somehow she was still in there. Maybe the Widow had been fighting to get out all this time, and now the thing was so terrible afraid that she was winning. Only … even if she had been there before, Gospel had knocked the body so hard, she’d be dead now. She had to be dead now. Dead, and I hoped she was with God in His Heaven just like the Minister had said. I raised up the gun and stepped closer, so that I was just out of the thing’s long reach, barely back out of danger.

“You can’t kill me,” the thing said in its man voice. “You can’t kill what’s already dead.”

And maybe I couldn’t. But I’d try anyway. The rules were changing. I screwed up my face.

“My name is James,” the thing said suddenly. I wondered if it thought that would stop me, thinking it was a person with a name like anyone else. But it wouldn’t. It just proved what Auntie had told me, proved that he was a killer and a terror and worse than anything else in all this narrow world. He was wicked through and through, and there wasn’t no point to leaving him be just because once, long ago, his mother had named him James.

“That’s a nice name. But I don’t suppose I care about that anymore,” I said, and I pulled the trigger again. The gun bucked in my hand and smoke jumped up in front of me and the thing staggered back and into the fireplace. I didn’t stay to look at it, didn’t want to know if it was dead or alive, didn’t want to do anything more. I stumbled back out of the room, closing the door behind me.

“You killed it?”

I dropped the gun and shrugged, spent. “Maybe. I don’t know. It fell over.” Into the fire, I didn’t say, but I started to pray for poor Widow Cally, for Esmeralda, who was my mama’s friend and taught me to jump rope. I asked God to please look after her and to please see that she got her time in Heaven, because she was one of the best of souls. And I expected that He heard me when I prayed just then, because I was like as not the only thing in all the world doing any praying. Unless maybe Gabriel was doing some, but I thought it probably didn’t really need to pray at all.

“Now just the one in the cellar,” the Minister said.

“She’s already done for.” I walked around to where it rested, the shining shape all around it, and Gospel just behind, with the blood on his lips barely bubbling from tiny, weak breaths. “He’s dying, isn’t he?”

The little face turned to Gospel. “Yes. He’ll probably not make it to the end. But he’ll live forever in Heaven.”

“Maybe he wanted to live a little longer here,” I said, but I knew it was pointless to go wishing. I knelt down beside my brother, empty of tears.

“You’ll be back together with him soon enough.” The Minister’s voice was full of sympathy, but all I could remember was Jenny’s missing arm, and I knew that would be the way for me. Quick or not, that would be the way at the end, and I couldn’t think of it as a good thing, even with Heaven on the other side.

The light from the Minister was getting real strong, and I could see the shine of the blood on Gospel’s lips, could see how his cheeks were starting to peel where the black dead skin was, could see that he was bruised on his chin from I didn’t know what. I reached out and took his hand. He might’ve pushed me away if he could, but there wasn’t any strength in his hand. It was limp and weak and didn’t do nothing but sit in my sweaty palm.

“Tell me when he dies, Minister.”

“You shouldn’t think about that, Merciful. You should pray. There isn’t much time.”

I could smell something on the air, sickly sweet and smoky, and I knew the Widow’s body was burning in the bedroom fireplace.