BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue010 Read online

  Issue #10 • Feb. 12, 2009

  “Hangman,” by Erin Cashier

  “Kreisler's Automata,” by Matthew David Surridge

  PODCAST STORY

  “Dragon's-Eyes,” by Margaret Ronald

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  Hangman

  Erin Cashier

  The warped beams of my shack couldn’t keep out the sawing of the locust song outside, and so I didn’t hear the footsteps until they got close—bare feet scuffing on dry dirt. When would Sister Crow finally answer my prayer and wash away the wagon-trail that led people past my door?

  The footsteps paused, and their owner coughed up phlegm and spat before knocking.

  “I’ve come to hire you.”

  I was silent but anyone who knows of me knows I can’t sleep.

  “I can pay some.”

  And they all know that money means nothing to me, but that doesn’t stop it from being offered. They have nothing else to give.

  “And I’ve got booze.”

  For years it was easier to cultivate the persona of a drunkard than face my grim reality. I pissed booze out just like water with as little effect.

  “It’s not much, but—” The voice broke.

  I went and opened the door. A boy stood there, scrawny from lack of food and white from lack of sun. He had a jug in one hand. How far had he walked today, alone, to find me? And how far back was his home? Had the world spread again since he’d left? Opened up its legs a bit and let new wild fields push apart the old tame ones?

  “I’m not for hire.”

  The boy’s free hand clenched into a fist. “You used to be.”

  “That was then. This is now.” I stepped back to shut the door.

  He leaned forward and put his bare foot in the door’s path. “You can have me, if you want.”

  I eyed him again, leering on purpose. Steel formed in some part of him, and he stood still, without wincing in fear. Whatever he wanted from me, he wanted it bad.

  “You’d be more use to me as food, if I ate. And besides, my pendulum doesn’t swing like that.” I moved the door’s edge closer to his foot. “I’ll take it clean off if you don’t move it.”

  He measured me. Whatever rumors he’d heard about my stubbornness, my obstinacy, the very things in me that kept me alive far beyond my normal time, I could see him listing them now inside his head.

  “But I need you!”

  “You don’t need me. You need the Hangman. And he ain’t here anymore.”

  The boy’s jaw tensed but he didn’t move his foot.

  I didn’t have the heart to cut him—if I did, it’d take him even longer to leave. And there were things out at night these days, things that’d follow a trail of blood for miles upon miles. “Stand there all night if you want. And all tomorrow too. Ain’t gonna change my mind.”

  He fished around in a pocket and pulled something out. He threw it at me and it landed on my dusty floor. “She said to use this but only if I had to. Said you’d listen to me. I told her it was dumb, that you wouldn’t listen, that you weren’t real.”

  “Well, for what it’ll comfort you, you were right.” I sat down on my chair again. The boy stood in the door for a few moments more then spat again, this time inside my house, before turning to leave.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I waited two days before I moved again. For me, they passed as the blink of an eye. I might have stayed there longer had not a crow flown in my broken window and gone to pick up the trinket the boy’d left behind.

  “I don’t want no messages today, woman. Shoo,” I said startling the crow, and it dropped its bounty to the floor.

  I eyed it, much as the crow had. It was looped and grey and worn, perhaps a small dead mouse. I picked up what looked like a tail, so that the body of it dangled down, and I recognized it at once. A noose. Braided from grey hair. Her’s.

  Made by my own hand.

  Damn boy. I put the talisman in my pocket and set out.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I didn’t have to stop to sleep, or eat, or drink. These things gave me the speed of a man on a horse and I wasn’t trailing a mounted man. I wasn’t even trailing a good scout—there were scuff marks, bent grass, and sleep spots too near the road that let me know I was on the right path. By the next morning, I saw the boy on the horizon. The entire time I gained behind him he never once looked back.

  “You—” I said when I was near enough and nearly scared him out of his own skin. “Who gave you this?” I asked and held the noose high.

  “My mother.”

  “Where’d she get it from?”

  “Her mother. And her mother before her,” he added before I could press. “Been in my family a long time.”

  “I’ll bet.” I looked at the boy, not sure what I was looking for. Her eyes, my eyes? The line of her nose, the angle of my jaw? Did it matter if they were there, or not? The talisman could have been stolen. Even if it weren’t—it’d been so very long ago. I had no ties to this boy, or to the family we might have shared, not anymore.

  He frowned at my attention. “You gonna help, or not?”

  It was a good question. Had I come out here merely to ease my curiosity? Or for action? And what did it matter what I chose, when each of my days were like all of the rest?

  “Mayor took my momma. He’s gonna feed her to the train.” The boy pointed a finger up at the rising moon. “She’s got three days left, Hangman. I ain’t got time to wait.”

  I put the talisman in my pocket. If I kept it, no one else could ever use it again. And if I did this chore now, for this boy, I could honor its memory. One last time.

  “Why your momma?” I asked him.

  “‘Cause,” he said, and didn’t say anymore.

  “It ain’t too late for me to turn around and go home, you know.”

  “She’s a whore,” he finally offered up. I nodded. Made sense.

  “I hate the trains,” I said.

  The boy nodded vigorously. “Me too.”

  I started off towards the next station and the boy fell inline behind me.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The boy did his best to keep up with me but the fuel of anger and fear have an end, for other people at least.

  “How old are you, boy?” I asked, trying to keep him awake.

  “Fourteen. Name’s Jim.”

  So short, for fourteen. I could carry him easy, I knew it.

  “Where’s your daddy? Why ain’t he here doing this, instead of you?”

  Jim’s silence ate up half a mile. “Don’t have a daddy. Don’t need one.”

  I snorted. “I bet your momma has other opinions about that.”

  “My momma says men ain’t worth nothin’. Except for me, that is.”

  “Well you ain’t a man yet. Come here boy.” I knelt down a bit. “We’ll go faster if you let me carry you.”

  “I can make it!”

  “We’ll go faster if you let me carry you along. We’re racing a train, Jim, no time for pride.”

  The boy sighed, then wrapped his arms around me. I could feel his skinny wrists against the scars that bound my neck.

  “Hangman?”

  “Yeah?” I lifted him up and cinched my hands together beneath his rear.

  “I drank your booze. Sorry.”

  “I’ll forgive you this time,” I said and soon he was fast asleep.

  Clouds moved overhead like sweeping black wings. Sister Crow was on the move. It was during the Dust Time that Sister Crow rose up from the land itself—she sheltered it, and poured the rains down that made life possible again. It was only her watery benevolence that kept the ‘Tana and
‘Kotas alive. But she was a fickle goddess. She didn’t answer every prayer. And the ones she did answer, well, she didn’t always give you the answers you wanted.

  Thinking on it too long made my scars ache.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I spent the night trekking across the short grasses of the plains with the howls of coyotes in the distance. I found old railroad tracks and walked along them, their empty metal bars shining off into the distance under the filling moon. No place safer to be at night these days, ever since the trains had taken off from them.

  Since the Dust Time, the world had been spreading apart, some places moreso than others. Houses that had been a spit apart from each other originally, a time now that probably only I could remember, were now miles distant and going. New land appeared, new and angry, with things on it that were like they were once, but not quite the same. Mean, mean bison.

  And the trains. Something about their tracks stretching over the new ground, driving over the new territories that spread out before them—it changed them. Like horses that tossed reins, or oxen that had slipped their yokes, there was no way to tie the trains down again once they were unleashed. For a time, people tried. Tried caging them, killing them, luring them into canyons and rolling down boulders atop—anything to get them to do our bidding again. And maybe that was why they hated us.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Is it true?” Jim asked, when he woke up the next morning. What he wanted to know was the same thing everyone asked.

  “We walked all night. Doesn’t that prove enough?” I said setting him down.

  The boy frowned. “I only know the songs.”

  I grunted. Been awhile since I’d heard any of them, and I didn’t need to again—but Jim launched into one before I could stop him.

  “He stole a horse, upon a time,

  They took him to a tree,

  Hung a noose around his neck,

  But later he got free.

  “Hangman can’t we kill you?

  Hangman can’t you die?

  He’s trapped on earth just half alive,

  Beneath the cloudy sky.

  “Sister Crow, she kissed him

  To keep him safe below,

  Sister Crow, she cursed him

  To live a life of woe.

  “Hangman can’t we kill you?

  Hangman can’t you die?

  He’s half a man, with half a soul,

  Forced to live a lie.”

  He’d picked an old one, one I hadn’t heard in a hundred years or more. “Sweet Jesus and Brother Sparrow, who the hell told you that song?”

  “My momma,” Jim said. He wandered off to pee, and looked over his shoulder once he’d aimed to ask, “Who’s Jesus?”

  “Ain’t worth knowing these days.” I said, shook my head, and kept walking.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We reached Jim’s town as the moon rose that night. A breeze ran down the thoroughfare and lights flickered behind shuttered windows. I knew this place. My own home had been on the outskirts of it, years and years ago. Jim ran down the street and pointed at the biggest house—it didn’t look much different than I remembered, all clapboard and colors worn down by time.

  “He lives there.” Jim stuck his hands into his pockets. “He’ll just see you and give her right over.”

  Life was a lot easier when you were fourteen. “We’ll see.” I stepped up the old wood stairs to the Mayor’s door, and rapped my knuckles on its frame.

  A man with rheumy eyes opened up the door, holding an oil lamp, wearing dirty cotton underclothes, followed by the breath of rotting teeth.

  “Who’re you?”

  I’d had a name, a long time ago. But no one but me remembered it. “I’m the Hangman. I’m here to save the whore.”

  An eyebrow crawled up the Mayor’s forehead, and he laughed, making his awful breath wash over me. “Ain’t no such thing as the Hangman. How much did this kid pay you to say that?”

  I stepped forward. I was taller than the Mayor, and I pushed him back, not physically, but with the force of my will. I had will in spades. I tilted my head, so he could see the raised and rippled line the rope had left on my neck.

  “So you are, maybe.” The Mayor set his oil lamp down on a high ledge. “Don’t change things. We need the train this year. Fire took the silo.” He crossed his arms. “We had a lottery. She lost. You know the way of things.”

  “A lottery of whores isn’t a lottery!” Jim said butting his head up under my arm.

  “You could go in her stead, little man,” the Mayor said.

  “She won’t let me go. I tried!”

  “None of that matters. I’m here now,” I said pushing the boy back.

  The Mayor shook his head. “Can’t take that risk. Train might not come for you. They like the living, not the dead.”

  “I’m only half dead.”

  “Trains ain’t that smart. Sorry, Hangman.”

  “I’m going instead of her.” I said. The Mayor’s mouth opened, and he inhaled, before sighing that stink back out.

  “Just because you can’t die, doesn’t mean you can interfere in our affairs.”

  “Not dying’s only half my art.” I offered out my hand, and he took another step back. “Would you like to see the rest?”

  He shook his head, greasy hair shining under the lamp light. “She’s a whore. What do you care what happens to her, Hangman? What has she got to go back to if you save her life now, like this?”

  “Living’s better than dying.” This was a thing I knew for sure.

  The Mayor sighed anew. “Ain’t for just me to say. I have enough corn to make it through the winter, but I can’t take chances with the town.”

  Maybe he really was a good man, despite the smell. I rocked back on my heels and I could feel fear spike in Jim, behind me. “I’ve done it before.”

  He squinted at me. “I never heard that story.”

  “You haven’t heard half of them, I’ll bet. Would you rather take what the train leaves you—or take everything?” I’d never met a man that wasn’t greedy when given the chance—and I’d lived long enough to meet a lot of men.

  “We can talk about it tomorrow. I’ll call a town meeting.”

  “Good enough.” I pushed Jim out behind me, and followed him into the street.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “A town meeting’s how this whole thing started,” Jim muttered as he dragged his feet in the dust.

  “Where you gonna sleep tonight?” I asked him, pretending not to hear the dismay in his voice.

  “The brothel. You can come with. Prolly get a blow for free, for all the good you done.” The boy snorted with sarcasm.

  “Things don’t always change fast, Jim.”

  “I know. But—” his voice drifted, and I didn’t need him to tell me what he was thinking. All the stories. All the people. All the death.

  “I just said I’d help save your momma. I’m not raining vengeance. Don’t have it in me anymore.”

  “You’re too old,” Jim said. “Sister Crow should pick a new Hangman.”

  I didn’t say anything—I sure as hell didn’t disagree.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We went in the back door and Jim stole a lamp off the wall to lead us through. The brothel was a warren, the scent of flesh heavy in the air. Women and men snored behind thin doors—it was late enough at night for the last set of paying customers to stay on if the whore didn’t mind.

  “She’s in there,” Jim gestured, with a thumb. I put my hand out towards the knob and he slapped it away. “Let her sleep,” he hissed. He crouched to sitting, and then lay down in front of her door like a dog. I stood, waiting, until he was well and truly asleep, then wandered on till I found the bar. I hadn’t been drunk in centuries, but that didn’t always stop me from trying.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sleepy women with black-ringed doe eyes came out the next day around noon. They ignored me—it was too early to think about callers. I searched each of their fac
es for some trace of hers and found none. I wondered if it’d been so long I’d forgotten. But I’d know when I’d know, and I knew it. Other people get to live their lives full of purpose and decision, and sometimes I envied them. Seems like I walked through mine with a dowsing rod, just hoping to get yanked.

  “That’s him—” I heard Jim’s voice, and looked up. I saw him and the woman standing next to him reflected in the dirty mirror above the bar. For a second—my heart leapt, my breath caught, and my balls ached. Then I twisted, saw them real, and illusion faded. There was a chance she was related to Sarah, my Sarah. But she wasn’t Sarah.

  No one could ever be Sarah. Ever again.

  “You’re here,” she said coming up to me. Her skirts were uneven, her boots unlaced, and the pupils of her eyes were blown wide—she was stoned out of her mind. Jim could have told her I was Sister Crow and she would’ve believed it.

  I took her hand in mine. “I’m here.”

  “I told you I’d find him, momma.”

  Her other hand found Jim’s shoulder. “You done good boy. Real good. Go get me a drink, will you?”

  Jim paused, trapped between adoration and dismay. “Sure momma—”

  “Get me one, too,” I said and sat back down.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Holding court at a brothel was just as good as any town meeting, I supposed. It wasn’t the important people that I had to convince—the important people would be like the Mayor. The important people’s lives had had enough good in them that they could rightly assume they were due for some more. It was the in-between people, the ones who went hungry, who spent days in fields or mines hoping to earn enough to eat, drink, and maybe get a squeeze—no matter how much they felt they’d earned a chance at better things, they’d never believe it till they saw it. And a brothel was as good a place as any to be seen.