COMING SOON: The Romance of Certain Old Bones

Hello internet! It is with pride and trepidation that I announce the imminent arrival of my new Trace & Boz novella, "The Romance of Certain Old Bones," which will make its official debut at Planet Comicon, Kansas City, May 20-22, 2016.

I will have paperback first-editions for sale, with cover art by Chelsea Mann. Ebook edition will launch shortly after the convention.

In the meantime, here's the first two chapters to whet your whistle! This should tide y'all over until the second Trace novel comes out next spring.

The Romance of Certain Old Bones

by Holly Messinger (c)2016

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

declare, if thou hast understanding. – Job 38:4.

Dakota Territory, June 1875

The Aberdeen brothers were the last to leave Yankton. They had traded their wagon for picks and cradles and a mule, their oxen for a couple of mustang ponies, and they rode off into the setting sun at a pace that suggested they were eager to find their fortune… or hoping to avoid pursuit.

Jacob Tracy supposed it was a bit of both. The Aberdeens had invited him along, promising an equal share of any gold they found. There was a very real possibility of striking it rich—General Custer’s expedition had confirmed the presence of gold in the Black Hills the year before—but Jacob thought it more likely the boys would get rousted out by federal troops, if they were lucky. Scalped, if they weren’t.

Still, he wasn’t the brothers’ keeper. The other five families in their small wagon party had already resupplied and struck out to find their fates in the territories. Jacob pocketed the last of his fee from the Aberdeens and headed for the livery where he’d left his horse, and where the last of the drovers, John Bosley, was waiting for his pay.

Bosley was a hard, rangy colored man, a few years older than Jacob and no less weathered. Jacob didn’t know him well—he’d hired him in St. Louis on the word of a mutual friend—but three months on the trail had proved him a worthy companion. He was good with horses, frugal with supplies, and didn’t pry into the business of others. He had once let slip that he’d served in the Tenth Cavalry, but that was about the only personal fact Jacob knew about him. And that was fine; Jacob didn’t much talk about his own past either.

Bosley was talking with the livery owner, an older Negro with a bad limp, when Jacob walked into the stable. They were leaning on a rail, relaxed and sociable, but the livery owner straightened and sobered at the approach of a white man. Bosley drew himself up, too, but he met Jacob’s eyes on a level. Given that Jacob was six foot two, that was saying something.

"Hey Boss," Bosley said easily, and then to the livery owner, "This is him. Mister Tracy. The big red quarter horse is his.”

There was something in this introduction that conveyed, He’s all right, for a cracker, and the liveryman’s face relaxed subtly. He shook the hand Jacob offered. "Redman Davis, at your service.”

"Pleasure,” Jacob said, and handed over a couple of gold eagles. "That’s for our two horses and tack. He tell you about that shoe?”

The livery owner nodded. "I’ll see to it, sir. Have it right for you in the morning.”

"No rush,” Jacob said. "We’ll probably be here a couple days. Where’s a good place for dinner?”

"You’ll want the Republican Hotel, sir. Best steak dinner around here.”

"What about you?” Jacob said to Bosley.

"There’s a saloon down the street that’ll suit me,” Bosley said, which Jacob took to mean the saloon was run by a Negro proprietor, or at least would serve black customers.

They had been eating together every night for weeks, of course—all the drovers and bullwhackers hunkered down around the same fire, spooning out hunks of cornbread from the same skillet, even sharing canteens, sometimes. There was no time for social distinctions on the trail, and Jacob made sure the men he hired knew it. But in town, particularly a frontier town, walking into the wrong establishment could get a nigger killed, if some good white citizen decided to get ornery about it.

But there was no law against a white man going into one of their places. And Bosley was too self-possessed to raise an eyebrow when Jacob said, "Mind if I join you?”


2


The steak dinner might not’ve been the best in town, but it was pretty damn good. And the clientele at Simpson’s saloon was mostly white but with a few black faces sprinkled in. There were few Negroes in the Territories, and plenty of Territory to go around, so they were mostly left alone. Not like the Indians, say, or the Chinese.

Jacob pushed the rest of Bosley’s pay across the table in a leather purse. "Count it if you want,” he said, but Bosley just nodded once and made the purse vanish. "And if you got a notion to make more, I’m thinkin I might scout for another job around here. Odds are we can pick up another party headed for Montana or Oregon.”

"Maybe worth it,” Bosley allowed. "You been to Oregon?”

"Not yet. But I been through the Pass a few times. Ran cattle for a rancher out in Wyoming, til a few years ago. And I’d be glad to have you along, if it works out. Fifty-fifty.”

Bosley gave him a long measuring look, weighing the proposal and the white man who made it. That was one thing Jacob liked about him—that boldness, that pragmatism that bordered on fatalism. "Get out to the coast by October… then what? Stay the winter there?”

"Ride down to Sacramento, get on the train to cross the Rockies. Be back in St. Louis by Christmas, dependin on the weather.”

Bosley sucked his teeth. "Or there’s security.”

"For the railroad?”

"For the prospectors.” He nodded across the room. "Or whatever those dudes are here for.”

Jacob followed his gaze. The dudes in question stood by the bar, dressed in practical dusters and slouch hats, but a little too neat and self-conscious to pass for seasoned locals. Jacob’s eye instinctively picked out the man in charge, fair-haired and poker-assed, with a neat Van Dyke beard.

Priest? Jacob thought first. No—scholar, though. He knew fanaticism when he saw it. The fellow’s tight-wound intensity was enough to intimidate the younger, taller man to whom he was speaking. The youngster was even more of a greenhorn, with the stooped shoulders and rabbity eyes of a chronic worrier.

"Heard ’em talkin out in the lobby,” Bosley said. "Seems they were out here last year, found some strike they’re eager to work, but they’re worried bout some other dudes beatin ’em to it, or stealin their find. The little banty-rooster there’s tryin to hire some local guns to guard their passage.”

"Passage to where?”

Bosley took a swallow of his beer. "Badlands. Hell Creek.”

“Off the Yellowstone?”

Bosley nodded once.

“That’s right through Sioux territory.”

Bosley nodded again.

"That don’t scare you?”

"Nothin scares me no more,” Bosley said, in a tone that suggested he’d already seen the worst.

And because Jacob felt the same, he got up and went over to the bar.

"—utterly unacceptable, Mr. Ryan,” the older man was saying, while the young beanpole squirmed. "I warned you these yokels would take advantage of us. You should have haggled him down.”

"I tried, professor, but he wouldn’t budge.” Ryan spoke with the whine of the perpetually put-upon. "Supplies are at a premium because of the prospecting rush and the traders are gouging everyone. We should have outfitted in Omaha, like I told you.”

"Coffee,” Jacob said to the bartender. "Sugar.”

"—taken us three times as long to get here,” the professor snapped, "as I made clear to you in Omaha. I shall have to deal with this Willoughby myself, since you seem incapable of completing the simple task I set to you.”

"You’re welcome to try,” Ryan muttered, "but this late in the season there’s not gonna be much available.”

"Excuses,” the older man said. There was no particular vitriol in his manner, just a sour triumph, as if he’d anticipated this outcome. "It’s always excuses with you, Ryan. More and more I doubt your sincerity in following this course of study—”

"He’s right, though,” Jacob interrupted, and the professor looked around, distracted from his recreational flaying, speechless for the moment. "Excuse my overhearin, but you gentlemen are gonna get hustled by the locals, unless you find a middleman who speaks their language. And I’d stay away from that Willoughby character, unless you want horses lame in all four feet and wind-broke besides. Davis is the man you want, over on third street. He’s a smaller operation but he takes better care of his stock.”

"And no doubt you get a tip from the referral,” the professor said.

"Not a cent. But I know horseflesh, and Davis is the only man I felt right about leavin my mount with. Thanks,” Jacob said to the bartender as his coffee arrived. He took a sip and asked, "You boys from Boston?”

"I am a professor of natural sciences at Yale,” that fellow said, pokering up further. He was no older than Jacob, mid-thirties at most, but determined to project authority. "Dare I hope you have heard of it?”

"I’ve heard of it,” Jacob said. ”Though I was educated near St. Louis myself, and the Benedictines weren’t too concerned with the natural sciences.” That got the professor’s attention, as Jacob had guessed it might, so he added, "Vires idoneos requires, certior fio.” —I hear you need a few worthy men.

Ryan frowned, but the professor’s smile was dry and appreciative. "And might you be such a ‘worthy man,’ sir?”

"I like to think so,” Jacob said.

backstory

Trace could not remember exactly the conversation during which he’d told his family about his curse. They’d been sitting in the parlor that evening—the elder Aloysius Tracy and his younger, golden-haired wife, Rachel. Jacob’s own wife, Dorie, pretty and plump with pregnancy, her auburn hair gleaming in the firelight. Probably she had been making something for the baby, whose arrival lacked only a month or so. Probably Rachel had been doing her own mending; no one’s hands were idle in the evenings. Probably Jacob had been whittling or mending tack or braiding rope, while Aloysius read aloud to them from one of his Catholic-interest newspapers or political tracts.

Jacob was thirty that year, and finally felt like a man. He’d been married nearly eleven months. He’d mended fences with his father, been welcomed home like the prodigal son, and thrown himself willingingly into the family farm. The years he’d spent on cattle ranches out west had taught him a few things about the new breeds and ways to improve stock, and Aloysius—perhaps as eager as his son to smooth over the years of ugliness between them—had been surprisingly receptive to Jacob’s ideas.

In the past year, since meeting Dorie, he had not seen a single spirit. Not one. And while some deep intuitive part of him attributed the miracle to her bright and intoxicating presence—she kept his head so turned around he hardly noticed where his feet were, much less any sinister goings-on—with his rational mind he chose to believe that he had finally grown up, put away childish things, overcome the weakness of mind and spirit that had needed to see death and horror all around him. He had stopped clutching weakness around himself like a shield, in an effort to stave off adult responsibility and keep wandering, unsettled, unreconciled to his father’s expectations.

The old man had been right, the thirty-year-old Jacob Tracy told himself. He’d spent too many years with his head in the clouds, pursuing ideas of some grand calling instead of settling to mundane reality. At least there was no more talk of his becoming a priest. Being married had put paid to that idea. And his brother Warrick was nineteen and already a corporal in the army. The irony of Aloysius’ pride in his younger son’s career was not lost on Jacob.

That was what had prompted the confession, now that he thought about it. Aloysius had been reading one of Warrick’s letters, and boasting about the younger brother’s achievements. Jacob had felt compelled to remind them that he, too, had been in the army and there was nothing distinguished about it, from an enlisted man’s point of view. That had goaded Aloysius to declare that fighting in support of such wickedness as slavery and rebellion was bound to bring on God’s judgment.

And then the familiar litany, delivered not in a scold but in a rational, triumphant tone, as if Aloysius Tracy was imparting some higher wisdom that his son was finally old enough to grasp: that defying one’s elders and falling in with unGodly companions were the first steps on the road to vice, intemperance, and insanity. It was only through God’s grace, Aloysius reminded them all, that Jacob had recovered from possession by the demons morphine and madness.

Dorothea had gasped at that, her eyes darting from her father-in-law’s face to her husband’s. Jacob felt frozen with shame and fury; he had told her little about the two years after he’d been wounded.

Rachel, alone of them, had the detachment and grace to turn the moment. “Now Al,” she said firmly—the only person Jacob had ever heard chide his father and get away with it. “You know Jacob was badly wounded. Of course he spent time in hospital. We should thank God he survived at all. And let us not discount his own character in maintaining his temperate ways. Why, even you know Father Gilham has a greater fondness for the bottle than he ought. It’s the curse of the Irish, my grandmother always said.”

“I was never mad,” Jacob said, looking his father in the eye. “I was out of my head with pain and fever, and yes, with the medicine they gave me. But I know what was what. I saw things out there on the battlefield, and for years after.”

Aloysius looked stony. Rachel seemed poised, as if to grab for a knick-knack in harm’s way. Dorie stared at Jacob, big-eyed. “What things?” she whispered.

And so he told them. About lying there on the battlefield and seeing the tear in the sky, and watching his fallen comrades march up through it. About the hospital, later, and noticing how some of the dead seemed to linger, confused, and how they began to congregate around his bed, asking him for directions, for explanations, to carry messages to loved ones. How he had argued with them and then raved at them in his pain and fever, until the nurses, not knowing what else to do, loaded him up with more dope until he could hardly move, and the ghosts mingled with his opiate dreams and began to seem like demons.

By the time he was healed enough to be moved he was already known as a derangement case (Dorie’s eyes were growing bigger and bigger) and the dope had its hooks in him. They’d transferred him, along with a few other ravers and cataleptics, to the Sanitarium at Richmond, where he eventually came to the attention of Dr. Hardinger.

But he knew it would do no good to tell Aloysius Tracy that his saving physician had been a devout Spiritualist, who had tried to persuade the younger Jacob that he’d been favored by God to bridge the worlds of the living and the dead. So the thirty-year-old Jacob caught his breath and summed up lamely, “He helped me stop seein them so often.”

“But you still see them?” Dorie insisted, her eyes darting around the room, as if reconsidering all the shadowy corners.

“No,” Jacob said, taking her hand. She was a delicate little thing—afraid of horses and lightning and even overly-large dogs. It was one of the things he loved about her—that she made him feel brave and strong. “Not for some time now. Certainly not since I met you. You think I’d let anything evil near you?”

“But you did see spirits,” Aloysius persisted, “after leaving the hospital. I saw it in your eyes, when you came here. The Devil’s curse was on you, and his imps pursuing you.”

Anger boiled up in Jacob. “Yeah, Da, they were. And you gave me no respite from them. You threw me out of here like Cain—“

“Jacob,” Rachel interrupted. “Let it be. Your father has long regretted his treatment of you. Don’t undo the goodwill you’ve built between you. And this quarrelling isn’t good for the baby.”

Jacob glanced at Dorie, who had a hand spread over her belly and was looking rather white. Instantly contrite, he helped her out of the chair and to their room, where he spent another hour or more assuring her there were no ghosts in the house, no demons coming to harm her or their baby.

But three weeks later they were all dead.

silly man

“Though you yourself were raised to believe in demons, and in more recent years have been able to see and hear the spirits of the dead, you don’t entirely believe that demons exist, is that right?”

“I guess not,” Trace said slowly.

“And why is that?”

“I suppose because… all the things that demons are supposed to do, can be caused by somethin else. I’ve seen the causes.”

“Such as drugs, and madness, and war.”

“Yes….”

“And you’ve never seen a demon.”

“Not that I know of.”

“Ah.” She looked approving. “Clever answer, Mr. Tracy. I suspect you have seen a good number of demons without knowing them. Unlike the spirits you see every day, which are pale fragments of living persons, demons are whole, sentient entities. There is a reason why the Judeo-Christian traditions portray them as evil tricksters. Many of them can assume the form of ordinary things in our world, either by possessing a living thing or mimicking its form. Many so-called mediums are unwittingly calling up demons in the guise of a customer’s loved ones.”

Trace was appalled. “I knew there was somethin fishy about that table-rappin.”

“Indeed. But let us refocus on our current problem. Something—we shall call it a demon, for the sake of simplicity—is precipitating the murders of innocents in the neighborhood. It seems to be connected in some way with a particular newspaper office, the Village Voice, and possibly this reporter, Mr. Reynolds.”

“But he doesn’t work for the Voice.”

“That may not be relevant,” Miss Fairweather said. “Demons have been known to migrate from one host to another, particularly as they become familiar with their surrounds and gain strength. And they tend to gravitate toward a particular type of host, a particular character, if you will.”

“So what do you want me to do when I find it?”

“Exorcise it, of course.” Miss Fairweather looked astonished that he should have to ask.

for Lizzie

Into the family room strode a dapper young man in a sack suit and a bowler hat. He tipped the hat and marched toward Trace with his hand extended. “Sheriff Paulson?” he asked.

“No,” Trace said, “I’m—“

“Oh, you must be Mr. Lombard,” the young man said, nodding at Boz. “And this must be your hired man, Aenard?”

“No, this is my partner, Boz,” Trace said. “And I don’t know any Lombard. Who are you?”

“Rex Reynolds, reporter for the St. Louis Times,” the young man bared his teeth cheerfully. “Were you a friend of the deceased?”

“We knew him,” Trace said.

“Didja?” Rex Reynolds pulled a tattered notebook and a stub of pencil from his pocket. “What was his name again? Hershel, wasn’t it? Was it just him or all of them? Looks like a slaughterhouse in here, don’t it?”

“What are you doin here?” Trace asked pointedly.

“Searchin’ out the truth, mister. People got a right to know when there’s a murderer in their midst.”

“There ain’t no murderer,” Trace protested. “He’s dead in the well with the rest of ‘em.”

“Really? I heard there’s a young girl down at the jailhouse with blood all down her dress. Did you know Miss Anna Hershel before she killed her family?”

“That young girl didn’t kill anybody,” Trace said in disgust. “Hershel was a decent fella with two proper-raised daughters and somebody did for them in a bad way.”

“Mind if I quote you on that, mister…?”

“Tracy. Jacob Tracy. And if you’re here to search out the truth you might ask some questions before you start jumpin to hare-brained conclusions.”

“How did you know about the murders?” Boz interrupted.

“It’s all over the streets this end of town,” Reynolds said.

“You mean you read it in the Voice this morning like everybody else?“

Reynolds sucked his teeth. “Hey, that neighborhood rag may’ve been first with the story, but the Times has got the readership, we’ve got the resources, and this reporter is gonna break the case wide open long before Anna Hershel faces a jury. Now stand aside, gentlemen, I need to see the bodies.”

The young man flipped his notebook shut, shouldered past Boz and strode out the kitchen door. It seemed only prudent to follow him.

They stepped into the back yard just in time to see one of the women hauled up out of the well, dripping wet and dangling from the hook that had caught under her arm and neck. Her head was thrown back, her stringing hair partially covering the gaping white-lipped wound at her throat. There was so little blood left in her that the flesh was white as a trout’s, but her clothes were stained a uniform rusty shade from the saturated water.

“Get her down!” one of the men snapped, and two of them reached to catch the body and the line from which it hung. Together they wrestled the sodden corpse over the lip of the well and lowered her to the ground. She still had her shoes on, which struck Trace as somehow inappropriate.

Rex Reynolds gave the pitiful thing a cursory glance and then barged up to the man in charge. “Sherrif Paulson, I’m Rex Reynolds, from the St. Louis Times, what can you tell me about the situation here?”

Sherrif Paulson swayed away from the young man with a wave of his hand, like an ox flicking at a horsefly. “Nothin’ to tell, son, got three dead bodies and a hysterical young girl watched her father go mad.”

“So you believe her story that the father was the killer,” Reynolds said, jotting in his notebook. “How’d he end up in the well, then?”

“She says he slipped and fell,” the sherrif said. “Easy, there! Don’t go tearin’ up the clothes until Doc’s had a chance to look at em.”

“He was a big strong man, wasn’t he? Is that the body over there?” Without waiting for an answer, Reynolds marched over to the quilt-covered figure on the grass.

“Now you just get away from there,” the sheriff began, and was distracted by a shout from the men at the well. The rope and hook jerked up, suddenly slack, and flung a disembodied arm in a gingham sleeve onto the grass.

They all looked at it in varying degrees of dismay. “So tell me, sheriff,” said Reynolds, “you think a fifteen-year-old girl could swing a kindling-hatchet with that kind of force?”

for Charlotte

He picked out the smallest bedroom on the second floor for his new quarters; it was shabby and dark, with no curtains and the ugliest yellow wallpaper he’d ever seen, but he’d lived in worse. At least it was well away from the attic workroom, and the double windows let in a cool breeze from the woodlot behind the house. That breeze was an important consideration, in St. Louis in August, when the night air clung like wet cotton, and a feather bed felt like a sweaty hand cupped around him.

Tired as he was after the restless night before, he got engrossed in the old London Physicians Monthly she’d given him and kept reading until long after dark, feeling vaguely decadent at the waste of lamp-oil. She’d marked the article on microorganisms for him to read, but he was more interested in the piece on treating nervous disorders. Having spent a year in an asylum, himself, he was grimly fascinated by the author’s theory that a sick mind was only a tired mind: like a machine, the brain could be overworked, and the best cure was complete rest. Trace had never seen a machine mend itself by sitting idle, and he’d only been cured by isolation and rest because he’d gotten smarter about not telling people when he could see things they couldn’t.

The small clock on the mantle chimed midnight, rousing him out of his light doze. He was so drowsy his head felt swimmy, but there was no need to be up at dawn to run down stray horses or get sleepy oxen moving, and he reckoned he’d best get used to her hours. Besides—the thought surfaced before he could dodge it—it had been five years since he’d tried to sleep in a room without Boz’s snoring.

He gave his head a shake and rolled onto his other side, vaguely upset in the stomach from all the rich food she was feeding him. Or maybe it was the wallpaper, he thought, glancing up from the pale cream page to the hideous yellow walls. He wasn’t in the habit of noticing decoration—didn't often stay in a room that had any, point of fact—but this wallpaper was singularly offensive. The color was bad enough, a dirty yellow shade that reminded him of a dust-storm on the horizon, but the pattern was worse. It seemed to seethe in the lamp-light at the corners of his eyes, making him feel vaguely fever-sick, or maybe morphine-sick.

He turned up the wick again, flipped back to the article he was supposed to be reading. It was interesting, but too full of unfamiliar terms for him to just skim it. He had to mentally parse every sentence in order to squeeze out the meaning. It seemed a Swiss named Lister had proven the existence of tiny creatures called “microorganisms,”—too small to see, but alive and aggressive—which attacked healthy body tissues, causing disease and putrescence. This was some different from the idea of spontaneous generation, which Trace had learned about in seminary. Spontaneous generation taught that maggots and putrescence sprang from the decaying matter itself. He’d always thought that made sense enough, seeing as how God had created the world out of nothing. But the idea of tiny, invisible creatures invading healthy flesh reminded him of ants swarming over a scorpion, or those bloodsuckers swarming the train. Nature tended to repeat the same patterns in different sizes, so maybe God had made microorganisms, too.

A whispering sound drew his gaze up from the page toward the dark eye of the window. The curtains were missing; even the hardware had been wrenched from the plaster. The wallpaper was stripped off in patches, too. Maybe someone had intended to redecorate this room and never got around to it. Trace wondered briefly how long Miss Fairweather had lived in this house and whether she had made any efforts to remodel it. It seemed unlike her to spend time decorating, especially since she did no entertaining. And yet she had the manners of a trained hostess. She was always unfailingly proper, even while insulting him. She didn’t wrap herself in frills and fripperies like the fashionable ladies he saw around St. Louis, but he’d seen her in very fine clothes on a couple of occasions, and even her plain work dresses were better-fitted and finer cloth than those of a shopgirl or farmwife.

She had money, obviously, had probably been born to it. Might even be minor English nobility. No doubt had been raised a proper lady… but that didn’t explain her education, her training in science. Trace had read of some medical schools back east starting to admit ladies, but Miss Fairweather was not much younger than he. Maybe the schools in England were more permissive. Maybe she’d had tutors.

Another scientist who supported the microorganism theory (he read) was a Frenchman named Pasteur. Some years ago he had boiled some meat broth in a glass jar, then bent the neck of the jar. This was supposed to prevent microorganisms in the air from getting into the broth, and it worked fine until Pasteur tilted the jar to let the broth into the neck of it. After that, the broth got rancid, which was supposed to prove that these tiny creatures were carried by air currents.

Appalling thought, really. Trace’s mouth curled in distaste, thinking of what he might be breathing in. As if to underscore the point, a cool gust of air touched the sweat on his arms and chest. He shivered lightly, thinking there must be a storm on the way.

The whispering came again, a faint and yet fleshy sound, like a like a hand dragged along the papered walls. Trace surfaced from his reading-doze and looked up.

Nothing stirred, inside or out. It was a very still night. In fact, he realized, there was no breeze coming in the window.

The room was stifling-hot, but his arms were tingling with gooseflesh, as if a cold breath had blown across his skin. It had been a while, he thought suddenly, since he’d taken the time to meditate. Maybe too long.

He sat up in bed, peering into the dark corners of the room, but there was nothing to see except shadows and the contorted pattern of the wallpaper. It seemed to writhe, like heat-visions on the Great Salt Flats, and most of the movement rippled close near the floor, as if something were crawling down low behind the paper. Something vaguely human-shaped, with long hair hanging over its face. Its shoulder dragged along the wall with a faint rasp and the occasional thump as it knocked past a bit of wainscoting.

“Uh, pardon me?” Trace said.

The crawling figure stopped, hunching in on itself, like a mouse caught on the pantry floor.

“I don’t mean t’interrupt, but could you maybe go do that somewhere else? It’s a mite disturbin.”

The figure resumed creeping as if it hadn’t heard. Trace lay back down with a snort, turned toward the window to find a cooler spot on the mattress, and went back to his article. But now he was aware of the noise he couldn’t shut it out. His ears tracked the slithering all the way down the wall, over the doorway and its trim work—ba-dump, ba-dump—behind the bureau, under the dressing-table, under the window—ba-dump, ba-dump—to the fireplace, where there was a pause just long enough to make him think it had stopped, before it resumed on the other side.

Trace sighed. Round and around all night would drive him crazy. By morning he’d be creeping along with it.

“Alright, you win,” he muttered, rolling off the edge of the bed. He collected his clothes from the chair, put his hat on his head, and took the lamp in his free hand. There was a whole row of bedrooms up and down the hall; surely one of them was unoccupied. “I reckon you were here first.”

Horseflesh...

I read "Horseflesh" for the first time tonight, which is to say I read the hardcopy I took to my writer's group last week, instead of dinking around with the computer version which really accomplishes nothing except moving commas around.

It's not as bad as I thought it was. I disliked it because I was forced to rush through the end, and it shows--the dialogue is a bit rushed, transitions are jagged, but the structure is basically solid. I could, if I wished, play up a certain thread--not really a subplot, just a theme--pertaining to Trace's burgeoning precognative abilities and the Big Bad, but the story functions well enough without it. If I do make the change I'll have to rewrite the climax, as well, which would be prudent because that's the part I was most dissatisfied with. I don't think, however, that any of that will happen before Christmas. Too much to do. Measured the heads of my mother-in-law and sis-in-law today. Also picked up some dandy, very cheap brown hound'stooth check wool, which I need like a hole in the head. Now I am waiting for my hat pattern to arrive, although if it doesn't come soon I'll be forced to wing it.

Stay tuned.

speaking of genius

I've been having the itch for some time to do some journaling in Sabine's persona. This is partly because I really adore carrying around small fancy overpriced "writing" books like they sell in Barnes & Noble, and I've been looking for an excuse to buy a fountain pen (not really sure what happened to my old ones). Up to this point, however, I haven't known what to say. There hasn't been anything for her to say, except maybe to rehash how Trace keeps giving her a hard time, and that would be just really boring and pointless.

Today on the drive into work, though, I had an idea. I knew eventually I would have to revisit some of Sabine's past, particularly with regard to the Mereck years (months? weeks?). I wasn't sure how I'd work it in, because I didn't want to shift out of Trace's POV. But today it dawned on me, I could have him find her journals of that time. I could write that part of the story in grand old epistolary form, á là Dracula and Frankenstein. How apropos. How frivolous and therefore satisfying. And I have just the useless little leather-bound book for the job.

realignment

Had my writer's meeting yesterday. I took them the first nine-ish pages of "Parlor Games," an excerpt which ended with a tantalizing revelation about Miss Fairweather.

Choice comments were as follows:

Where is the rest of it? More! I want MORE! (soon.)

*
Very good--I particularly like the pace & the balance between Trace's viewpoint narration & the dialogue
*
Cool! The plot--or the relationship, rather--thickens apace. I thought you were going to tease us with their relationship as shown in the first two stories for a couple more stories yet. I'm happy to see him establishing some turf to stand up on his hind legs on, at last.

Kung fu? Scheduling conflicts? Divided loyalties? Pshaw.

don't you hate it when...?

A week later, it happened again.

Trace was literally shaken out of a sound sleep--came to in a spasm of disorientation, in the dark, not knowing which way was up, whether it was an earthquake or the Second Coming. The iron bedstead was shaking, and there was a dead man at the foot of it, gripping the rails.

“Oh, Lord, not again,” Trace groaned, pulling his pillow over his head.

The shaking came again, insistent, the heavy feet of the bed thumping on the floor like thunder. No living man could have rocked the weight of that bed, with its two straw mattresses and Trace’s considerable bulk on top, but spirits were funny that way; they could be powerful strong when they were determined.

In another minute the whole boardinghouse would be woke. Across the room, Boz was already groggy and grousing. “Dammit, Trace—“

“I can’t help it,” Trace snapped, and threw the pillow aside, sitting up only to come face-to-blackened-face with the dead man.

He had been hanged, that was obvious. His face was swollen and dark, the eyes shiny and bulging. The tail end of a rotted noose dangled around his neck, and his tongue protruded, dripping froth and obscuring his words.

“I didna do it,” he was saying, a frantic mixture of indignation and panic. “Ye gotta tell ‘em, I didna touch that gel—“

“All right, all right, I’ll tell ‘em,” Trace muttered, flinging back the covers. He reached for his pants, hung over the bedpost, got into them and his boots, pulled the suspenders over his undershirt.

“Please, you gotta tell em. They’re gonna put me to the gallows for sure—“

“I’ll tell ‘em,” Trace yawned, taking the top blanket from the bed. Boz had pulled his own pillow over his head; he couldn’t hear the spirit’s pleas, but the bed rattling and Trace’s mumbling and bumbling around the room were disturbance enough. Boz had told him he often talked in his sleep, and thrashed around as if he were fighting someone--and that was on nights without his accustomed round of bad dreams.

“No--you gotta listen to me,” the dead man said.

“I’m listenin.” Trace opened the door to the hall, shuffled through and closed it behind him as gently as he could. On nights like this, the only kind thing to do was go sleep in the stables, let Boz get what rest he could.

“Listen to me!” the hanged man insisted, and suddenly Trace felt his wind cut off, an invisible noose tightening around his own throat. He was jerked back against the door of their boarding-room, clawing at his neck, scrabbling for purchase with his bootheels on the floor. Then sickeningly, the floor was no longer there, he was dangling above it, heels kicking the door, red flowers blooming in his vision, blotting out the faces of the watching crowd--

The door was yanked open behind him. Trace’s feet struck the floor and the rest of him collapsed to it, wheezing, while Boz knelt over him and all down the hall, disheveled heads stuck out to see what the ruckus was.

shinola! at ten thou and counting

So much for making this one a marketable length.

=============

They found the fireman not ten yards from the train, trying to crawl back through the shale and juniper brush. He was sobbing in that broken, wheezy way Trace remembered from Antietam; his shirt was wet and sticky when Trace touched his shoulder.

“Easy, feller, we got you,” Trace said, turning the man onto his back in Boz’s arms. He began to scream immediately, and bat at them with his shredded hands. His face was dark and shiny in the moonlight, black with blood that seemed to be coming from his scalp. The rest of him was shaking and cold, the breath rattling in his throat. “Conductor! We got your man down here!”

There was a skidding and scuffling as the conductor and Willie scrambled down the grade; Willie’s lantern threw shards of light over the ground and the chewed-up fellow between them.

“Tommy!” the conductor said, dropping to one knee. “Tommy, what happened? Where’s Earl?”

The fireman gurgled gibberish, pawing at the conductor’s coat. His sleeves had been torn off, and there was a big chunk of meat missing out of his forearm. With the lamp brought closer, Trace could see a flap of torn scalp dangling over his forehead, and one eye was gone. It looked like a wolf or bear had bitten into his head.

Trace looked into Boz’s eyes, read the question there, and stood up, looking back toward the train.

“What was it, Tommy?” the conductor asked. “Wolves? Did they get Earl?”

Trace squinted. The windows of the passenger cars glowed dimly from the lamps; he could just make out heads and bodies moving inside. He could see two men standing on the colored car, pacing back and forth, keeping watch. One of them had a spark of fire in his hand, which he raised to his lips.

Something dark was slinking up the gravel grade to the tracks. Something blacker than the sky, darker than the shadows. It moved low to the ground, crawling like a frog but much faster, the size of a man. Another one, behind it. Two more--two cars down. Converging on the train.

patiently....waiting!!!!

Joy tells me the turnaround time for Writers of the Future is about four months.

I could spontaneously combust in that amount of time.

Not that I might waiting, per se, but I have this dreadful feeling I'm on the cusp of a new trend and I daren't wait. If WOTF doesn't want Sikeston then I want to send him elsewhere, as quickly as possible. Shoulda gone with F&SF first, I guess; they usually get back to me in a fortnight.

So, figuring I'll just write the next story and sent it to F&SF, I'm making tapping gestures in the direction of Trace No. 2, which involves missionaries, vampires, and a cattle-car full of Chinese railway workers. I'm thinking I'll call it "End of the Line."

All together now: "NAAAAAHHHHH."

advance reviews are in

"Sikeston" has been spectacularly well-received. I was tearing my guts out after the first few reviews, because they were all from careless critters who wanted only to read something fast and get their MPC's in. They weren't negative crits, but they weren't helpful, either, and a lot of them confessed they didn't get it. Based on what's come since, I have to conclude they just weren't reading carefully.

I've had about fourteen Critters crits as of today, as well as five or six from civillians, and they all say the same thing: This rocks.

It's an important distinction from the last three Quinn stories. People said those were fine, very professional, but I didn't hear the same excitement and begging for more. Yes, begging! And a big part of it is the novelty of the genre juxtaposition. No one's ever seen that before.

Peter, one of my Critters friends, wins hands-down for the best crit. I wish I had a computer program that could do what he does. Forget the grammar and spelling: Pete checks internal logic, cultural relevance, triteness, obscure metaphors. He's like a copyeditor in a can. Plus, he just really seems to get it. Listen to this:

The mix of horror archetypes [. . .] and Western archetypes [...] came together in a way that really worked for me. It was nice to see you take some of the familiar elements and put your own spin on them, such as making the "whore with a heart of gold" deranged, periodically childlike (literally) and--well--dead.

I found Trace to be a very likeable, down-to-earth protagonist, in the vein of the "tortured hero" in one sense, but with so many more layers than that. Defrocked priest, traumatised war veteran _and_ he sees dead people? ... he tries so hard to represent himself as just a simple trailhand (even to himself) when there's so much more bubbling away beneath the surface. It gave me a real sense of how desparately Trace _wants_ to be an ordinary guy (even though, deep down, he knows he _isn't_ and never will be).

How can you not be grateful?

I am almost terrified to touch the prose, because everyone agrees it needs very little, but on the other hand one can always clarify and tighten. I have pledged to let Sikeston sit until this weekend, at least, and then do a once-over and send it out. I want to send it to Writers of the Future, first; they have the greatest potential for publicity and payment. After them, I'll try SciFiction.com, and F&SF.

Oh, and I finally sucked it up and registered for the kung-fu tournament. That should give me something else to worry about.

inkblot

I've always said that a critiquer's comments on a story are as much a map of the critter's psyche as of the story's content.

I may have mentioned, I gave copies of "Sikeston" to my kung-fu teacher, Sit, and to a coworker, Susan.

About halfway down the first page is this description:

She was slim, and pale, and very English, with fair hair swept back in a tight knot and china-blue eyes.

Susan's parents are English. They moved to Canada, then to the U.S., before Susan was born. Susan said to me, "What does that mean, she looked English? Do I look English?"

Susan does not look English. She looks like all my Mom's uncles, who are potato-bug Irish, as Trace would say. I explained to Susan that there is a stereotypical ideal of English beauty as blond and pale and blue-eyed--and this stereotype was much stronger in the nineteenth century. No one else has questioned this description.

Sit, on the other hand, is a 50-year-old Chinese native, been living in the U.S. since the 70's, I believe.

In the story, the Englishwoman has a Chinese manservant (The story takes place in St. Louis, 1880.):

“Miss Fairweather will be with you momentarily,” the Chinese said, bowing. His English was excellent, with British enunciation.

Sit told me last night that the servant was unlikely to have good English, because virtually all Chinese in America at that time were poor laborers. Only a rich man's son, he said, would have known good English.

Fair enough, but I know some things about that Chinese man that don't feature in the story, i.e. his employer brought him from China to England and then to the U.S., and he is quite educated.

Again, nobody else has even noticed this detail. I think some of the critters may pick up on it, though.

I just find it amusing, because people have their hot buttons--they notice the things that relate to them, which they find either flattering or potentially insulting. The second Trace story will have several Chinese railroad laborers featured in, as spear carriers and victims, and I'm already squirming at the inherent prejudice I'll have to deal with, for the sake of versimilitude.

Oh yeah, "Sikeston" is up on Critters TODAY, instead of next week--I didn't expect my MPC award to be redeemed so quickly. I'm not mentally prepared for this.

may I have your attention please:

As of 1:18 pm this afternoon (give or take a few minutes and/or revisions), Trace story No. 1, "Sikeston," is complete.

As you were.

poised for climax

The climax of the story is in sight. I know now what's going to happen, and should get it hammered out today or tomorrow.

I got in this very cool book, one of three I ordered last week: "The Expansion of Everyday Life 1860-1876." Chapters include: A Soldier's Life; Houses, Homesteads and Hovels; Life at Home; Churches, Charities, and Schools; Shopkeepers and Professionals; and my personal favorite, Daily Woes.

And in other news, Je sais où la boite est caché.

I know where the box is hidden. There may be an ending to this story, after all.

now we're getting somewhere

“You all right?” Trace asked after a while, stirring the chaff on the barn floor with his bootheel.

Boz lifted his head from between his knees. His face was darker than usual, from the blood running to his head, but it was an improvement over the ashy color he had been upon leaving the church. “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Did you know that old fellow was… was—“

“Dead,” Trace supplied helpfully.

“—not real—when we went in there?”

“Nope,” Trace said. “Sometimes I don’t.”

“And they just do that—pop up and talk to you when they feel like it?”

“On occasion. More often they don’t know where they are or who they’re talkin to. It’s like they don’t know they’re dead. They’re just echoin what they did when they were alive. Ones around here seem to have more of an agenda.”

“What did Miss Lisette want, then?”

“Huh? You mean Miss Fairweather?”

“No. Dead lady. DuPres. Said you saw her, right?”

“Couple times.” Trace frowned. “Thing is, she keeps changin. Sometimes she’s a little girl, sometimes she’s grown woman, and a crazy one at that.”

“Reckon she was a girl sometime,” Boz said. “Remember the preacher said she was actin crazed, last time he saw her. And this Mereck was supposed to be a mezer—messer—”

“Mesmerist. Ain’t you soundin like a true believer.”

Boz snorted. “I ain’t sayin I believe none of this—but if it’s real, if you think it’s real—hell Trace, I rode cross this country with you ten times, I got to trust you by now. So I got to treat it like it makes sense, and the sensible thing I see is you go ask Miss Lisette what happened. She was there, wasn’t she?”

Trace recoiled from the idea, a sour taste like indigestion rising in the back of his throat. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“Why not? We just sat in there talked to some dead holy-man—“

“I can’t help it if they come to me, but I ain’t goin to start callin up spirits and demons—“

“Who said nothin about demons? Just one poor dead crazy lady.”

“’There shall be none among you who practice witchcraft, or interprets omens, a medium who calls up the dead,’” Trace said savagely. “That’s the laws for the priests—“

“Which you ain’t. Sometimes the world’s a bitch. And that preacher called it a gift—“

“Evil spirits can speak prophecy, too.”

“Christ on a crutch,” Boz hollered. “Don’t it say in your Bible all niggers is cursed? Ain’t you heard the one about Ham’s sons bowin down to white folks cuz Ham’s old man got drunk and left his pecker layin out? Now you tell me you believe that one, I’ll just head back to St. Louis and find myself a new trail-partner.”

“You know I don’t.”

“Damn right. You got the sense God gave you and that’s worth a helluva lot more than what some old smoke-breathers wrote on hides. So quit feelin sorry for yourself and use that gift to find out what the hell we’re doing here.”

Trace looked up slantwise from under his hat. “You’re startin to sound like my old man.”

“Shit. So what would he want you to do?”

“No need to get personal,” Trace muttered. “All right, goddamn it, but you got to come with me.”
“I ain’t holdin your hand.”

“No, but you can hold the goddamn gun, in case McGillicuddy comes around.”

Trace tidbit

He stood before the bowl, unbuttoned his johnnies, and had just let loose a stream of water when a small voice asked, “Who are you?”

Trace flinched. Hot piss pattered the floor, and then the whole flow just dried up. “Damnation,” he breathed, and cautiously turned his head to see the little dead girl standing behind him. The black pits of her eyesockets seemed to look into the back of her skull. She held her doll by the hair and tilted her head curiously at him.

Just ignore it, he told himself. It’ll go away in a minute; they usually do. Although “usual” didn’t strictly apply to this situation. He’d always had a firm if untested suspicion that they wouldn’t bother him while he was answering nature’s call.

But nature was no longer calling. His genitals had retreated into his fly, which was damned uncomfortable on his bladder. No matter how control he imposed over his mind and emotions, being brave was not the same as being not scared, and his body insisted on reminding him how near he stood to stark terror.

“You don’t really work for Mereck, do you?” the little girl asked.

He glanced at her again, from the corner of his eye. She was very solid, not transparent at all, and if it weren’t for the crawling of his skin—and pecker—he might not have known she was dead. “I don’t know any Mereck,” he said. “You run along, now.”

“I don’t have to leave. It’s my house.”

“Who are you, then?” He rebuttoned his johnnies, trying not to think about what he was talking to, figuring he’d go outside and do his business behind the barn.

“I’m Lisette DuPres.”

Trace turned full around, startled, but she was gone.

======

We are making progress, Trace and I.

forward movement

Inspiration comes from strange places when you write genre fiction. The more genre-bending I do, the stranger the bedfellows become. To prep for Trace, for instance, I read or watched, in no particular order: two episodes of Firefly, "The Train Job," and "Bushwhacked;" King's The Gunslinger; the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead; Little Town on the Prairie and On the Shores of Silver Lake; Open Range; and perhaps most significantly, Toni Morrison's Beloved. All of this I had read or seen before; I just needed to get the tastes and textures and rhythms back in my mouth.

Here's a sample of what that soup boils down to:

==========

He dreamt of the battlefield.

Artillery rent the air and clawed up the dirt around him, but he lay exposed on the bleeding earth, skin flayed off and nerves exposed to every scream and stab and bullet. Horses pawed the air and groaned, dying, legs broken and lungs collapsing. He soaked it all up as the ground did the blood of the fallen; as his life seeped out of him the souls of others tried to force their way in, and he was powerless to help it. His eyes, fixed on the graying sky, found an opening in the clouds and he tried to get to it, but the way was choked with too many dead, and they dragged at him, his dead and dying comrades, saying they couldn’t make it, they hurt too bad, they were missing limbs and heads and torsos and he had to carry them. They were pulling him down, he was skidding and sliding through loose earth into a mass grave, and he thrashed to break free.

The thrashing woke him to a strange bed—but all beds were strange, these days—and a blazing fire burned in the hearth, which was fortunate because he had not a stitch of clothing on.

Hot, dry, smooth palms landed on his thighs. He started, tried to sit up, but he was just as immobilized as he had been on the battlefield. He could see only a silhouette against the firelight—a bright nimbus of long hair, the long slim line of a shoulder and hip. Soft laughter touched his ears. The hot smooth fingers slid up his thighs to his groin, lingered a moment, and continued upward to the scar, above his hipbone on the left, which a bayonet had started and the doctors had finished.

“Vous-avez la bonne chance, non?” the voice said, husky and sensual, but with a disturbing gutteral quality beneath the laughter.

“Wouldn’t call it luck,” Trace said through his teeth. Sweet and soft and searing, skin against skin—

“Mais vous avez le vision, non? Vous conversez avec les esprits perdu. Vous pouvais decouvrir tout les mysteres de l’universe.” Stroking, stroking, the hot pointed fingers found the seam of his scar and pushed deep into it. He screamed. Scarlet lips peeled back from teeth, grinning while she twisted his guts. “Mais la boîte, c’est la mienne. Sabine n’en avait pas, comprendez-vous?”

Gunshot sounded somewhere, close, and Trace jolted awake, heart thudding in the darkness, boots still on, his scar throbbing as it had not in years.

“Jesus,” he muttered, half-prayer, turning on his side to relieve the crushing sensation on his chest. In the half-dark, he heard Boz scuffling across the floor, toward the window. Other sounds intruded: voices calling and whooping on the street below, heavy boots treading the balcony outside, and the faint strains of the organ from the front of the building.

“Dark out,” Boz reported.

“Lamp,” Trace grunted, and Boz reached to turn up the wick. Trace rubbed his eyes. He had a vicious headache. The box is mine. Sabine will not have it.

“We goin down?” Boz asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, in a minute.” Trace sat up, tugged the scarf from around his neck, and reached to dunk it in the basin. He wrung it out and mopped his brow, the back of his neck.

“So Miz Fairweather says we’re lookin for a book?”

“She thought it might be.” Trace paused. “I think it’s a box. Small, like a woman keeps things in.”

“Lot of women’s rooms to be going through, here.” [they're in a whorehouse--ed.]

Trace was darkly amused. “Guess we shoulda brought that fifty dollars, after all.”

==========


Happy New Year, everybody!

Van Helsing meets Scully & Mulder in the Old West

just a taste....


The werewolf roared, raising on its haunches, semi-human claws scrabbling at its side, and Trace let swing with the staff of firewood in both hands, a solid clout across the thing’s head. Its howl ended in a yelp and the beast fell like a toppled tree.

“Sum. . . sumbitch,” Boz gasped, half-winded by the crush. He sat up, and Trace took him under the arms and pulled him from under the thing. The beast rolled away limp, its muzzle open and lolling in the gravel. It was breathing fast, with a raspy, growling sound. “Bastard’s snoring,” Boz said in amazement.

“Yeah,” Trace said, and laughed. “You okay?”

“Just a scratch, here.” Boz’s shirt sleeve was dark with blood where the thing had clawed him.

“Better sear that with whiskey,” Trace said.

“Inside and out,” Boz agreed. He went to fetch the bottle from the saddlepack while Trace wound rope around the werewolf’s ankles. Boz helped him with the hog-tying, and they both had a drink, in celebration.

“That ought to make the witch happy,” Trace said.