Harlan County Horrors (27 page)

“
Chaos,” Ennica repeated. “You’re talking ‘beginning of the
universe’ type stuff.”

“
A
never-ending series of storms in a never-ending line of teacups.
Life is Chaos. So it follows that we are Death.” The witch pet the
crow reverently. “He was once a majestic bird with rainbow plumage,
Mr. Hue was. His first taste of carrion flesh turned him black. He
is much more elegant now, don’t you think?” She nuzzled his sharp
beak with her nose. “Even more majestic.”

The
chocolate in her mouth turned to dirt, and Ennica forced herself to
swallow. She had already welcomed insanity, or she would have never
climbed this mountain in the first place. “Are you
evil?”

“
We are evil to good as night is to day and the end is to the
beginning. We are solace and silence and solitude. We drew
blueprints in the stars and fashioned this world from the dust, and
we return all that thrives here to it. We complete the
circle.”

“
By killing people.”

“
By bringing order to chaos.”

“
So...by killing people.”

The
witch shrugged. “As you wish.”

“
What do you get out of it? Power? Joy? Vengeance?”

“
Balance,” said the witch. “It is the way of things. Up, down.
Life, death. Action, reaction. The reason we do what we do is
because the universe could not exist without us.”

“
If you hate life so much, you must find me
revolting.”

“
Not in such harsh words.”

“
Tell me then,” said Ennica. “What do you see when you look at
me?”

The
witch studied her with strange eyes, bright in contrast to the dark
shadows in the skin that surrounded them, but still flat, like the
crow’s, like the deer heads mounted in Ennica’s father’s garage.
They burned like a fire with no flame. Like the coal, deep in the
heart of the mountain beneath them.

Ennica imagined herself through those dead eyes. A short,
pudgy girl with stringy hair and blotchy skin. A good heart and a
soft life. A mouse in a field waiting for an eagle to prey on it,
waiting to be wanted somehow, by someone. Desperate and sad and
stupid and too full of dreams and fairy tales to be of much use to
anyone.

“
I
see a mess waiting to be tidied up,” said the witch. “I see a life
within a life, and I pity you both.”

If
the witch could read her mind, then her knowledge of the pregnancy
was no surprise.
Smile, baby. You’ve just
met your first witch.
“If you find humans
so unpalatable, why look like one?”

The
witch folded her arms and crossed her legs under the table. Her
feet were bare beneath her ragged skirts, but there wasn’t a speck
of dirt on them. “You came all this way to ask my
story?”

“
Look,” said Ennica. “It’s been a long day, I imagine it will
be a longer night, and I have little left to lose. My mind’s full
of its own misery, and to be honest I’m tired of it. I would love
nothing more than—okay, than my ex’s head on a platter, but second
to that, I’d love to hear about some troubles that aren’t my own,
you know?”

“
I
like you,” said the witch with her dead eyes.

“
I
might like you too, but the jury’s still out,” said Ennica. “So
spill. Why live the life of a human?”

“
It is my curse,” she said. The crow murmured a consoling
caw.

Ennica picked up her teacup again. “Oh, this is going to be
good.”

“
We were young,” said the witch, “mere millennia old, a blink
of an eye in the yawn of the universe. We were reckless, learning
our boundaries, testing their resistance.”

“
Not so very different from humans,” said Ennica.

“
Only we lived deep down under the earth, in the soul of the
world, in the heart of the mountain. Our paths were never meant to
cross with the humans. And so it remained, until the humans
discovered an aspect of our existence they couldn’t live
without.”

“
Coal.”

“
In our wake, we cannot help but arrange the basic elements
into their purest form. Given enough time—”

“—
the earth would be a diamond.” Ennica’s grandfather had been
a miner. He’d taught her about coal, and its varying degrees of
carbon purity. The purest carbon, given time and the pressure of
the world above it, was a diamond.

“
Unfortunately, humans evolved before that time had come to
pass. They dug tunnels into our sanctuary and brought light and
noise and chaos where there had once been silence.”

In
a twisted way, Ennica could relate. “It’s never fun to have your
once peaceful existence smashed to pieces by some uncaring
lout.”

“
Exactly so. My siblings and I try and maintain our privacy
when we can, in our way.”

“
Siblings?”

“
The imp, the angel, the twins, and I.”

“
You lost me,” said Ennica.

“
You can always tell the imp’s passage from his distinct odor.
The angel has put so many birds to rest that she takes wing herself
now, most days. The twins, they fight. Always fighting. They are
the argument, and the cold shoulder.”

“
And you are the blackdamp,” said Ennica. Her grandfather had
told her stories of men killed by the damps in the mine. The stink
damp reeked of sulfur. The whitedamp killed the canary before it
killed you. The firedamp exploded. And the afterdamp got you when
the dust settled, just when you thought you were safe. Then there
was the mixture of everything, the queen of them all: the
blackdamp.

The witch had called them the Wild Ones, the Widdershins,
and
the Damps
.
Ennica wondered what the miners would say if they knew it was
vengeful fairies smothering their brothers to death in the bowels
of the coal mine.

“
I
was always drawn to the humans; they were complicated beings, and
so am I. They disgusted and repulsed me, but I was fascinated. I
knew I should stay away, but I could not. “ The witch cocked her
head to one side, a gesture that would have looked more natural
performed by Mr. Hue. “Does this make sense to you?”

Let’s see: desperately wanting something you know you
shouldn’t, and then later being burned by same. Oh, yeah. She’d
written that scene in her diary a time or two. “Yes,” said
Ennica.

“
We are completely different,” said the witch. “There is
nothing of us in you, and never should be.”

“
Should?” asked Ennica.

“
There is one thing.” The witch raised a finger. “The spark. I
would never have known it had I not seen it with my own eyes, for
it was something I never would have guessed on my own. The Damps,
we are one or we are many. We are legion or solitude, at will. We
are here, there, and everywhere, or nowhere, as we wish.” She
looked pointedly at Ennica’s stomach and Ennica raised a hand, as
if to shield her unborn child from those dead eyes. “We do not
procreate as you do. We simply exist.”

“
But you know about human procreation?”

“
Yes. A man and woman once came into the mine, back when the
tunnels were first being shored up. There have been many since, but
this one...this one was my folly. They shed their clothes and came
together and created a life.”

Or
ruined one
,
thought Ennica.

The
witch’s eyes glowed, and suddenly did not seem as flat and lifeless
as they had before. Ennica wasn’t sure it was a good
thing.

“
The spark,” said Ennica.

“
I
witnessed it, that one perfect moment in the midst of all that
chaos when two souls came together and merged perfectly into one.
And it was...”

“
...a miracle,” said Ennica.

“But only for that moment,” said the witch. “That one, blessed
moment when your species and mine suddenly have the same goal:
simplicity and beauty in one perfect unity. Not long after, that
unity divided into two, and then four, and again and again,
creating that thing”—she looked down at herself in her grey
rags—”
this
thing
you call a body.” She touched her arms, the skin at her throat, her
face. “How can you stand to be trapped in this prison, ever slowly
succumbing to entropy?”

“
How did you manage to become trapped in it?”

“
I
was caught up in the moment. Mesmerized. When the spark was
created, my essence was trapped within it and I became its
soul.”

“
You became that baby?”

“
I
became a spirit trapped in a messy carcass.” She spat out the
rancid words. “I did not become human.”

Ennica did not want to upset the witch before she asked her
request, so she kept her talking. “What happened to the soul of the
baby that would have been?”

The
witch blew across her fingertip as if blowing out a tiny candle
flame. Though she was no longer cold, Ennica shivered.

“
I
was invincible. I was immortal. I was before time and after. I was
perfect. And but for that one, beautiful, damning spark, I would be
perfect still.”

“
So if you’re no longer human and no longer a Damp, what are
you now?”

Dead or not, Ennica recognized the look in those eyes: that
same look she had seen in the bathroom mirror, splattered with the
vomit that had ricocheted off the sink after she’d found out
that...after she’d found out. It was a look of confusion,
devastation, and loss. And as soon as Ennica saw it, it was gone.
That blissful innocence had been replaced by something stronger.
Something deadlier. Something...else. Something with the power to
grant wishes, to tame crows, to climb mountains.

“
I
don’t know,” said the witch. “We were not meant to feel. We were
not meant to love or hate. We were simply meant to be, until the
end of the universe and beyond.”

“You loved?” It was impertinent to ask, but Ennica could not
help herself. In a way, she was jealous. She wished she didn’t have
to feel anything. How much easier her life would be right now if
she
couldn’t experience the pain of love
and hate, humiliation and responsibility.

Mr.
Hue cawed again and preened himself. Had the crow been her lover?
“No,” said the witch. “Mr. Hue and I connect beyond trivial
emotions. But I did love a man once, a human man. I yearned to hold
him in my arms, to sink my hands into his flesh and watch him
crumble to ash, to free him from the prison of life.”

Ennica wasn’t sure if she should be more worried that the
witch spoke so casually of murdering her lover, or that Ennica
herself wasn’t moved by it. “You didn’t kill him?” she
asked.

“
Worse,” answered the witch. “I doomed him to live. I fled
into these woods, as close as I could ever be again to the heart of
my home, my mountain, and here I have remained.”

“
I’m sorry.” Ennica reached her hand across the table to pat
the witch’s arm, give her some comfort in knowing that, for this
little while at least, she was not alone. The witch’s skin was cool
and smooth, like marble. Like death.

Ennica bit back a sigh. Only she would be stupid enough to
comfort Death.

“
It is late for you,” said the being to whom time meant next
to nothing. “You should rest; regain your strength.” She opened the
door behind her, a door that had not been there until she reached
for it.

The
house was like the teacup of water, then; it was whatever she
wanted it to be. Nice. In the room was a bed, as simple a
furnishing as the table at which they sat, but it would suffice.
Beggars can’t be choosers. Still far and away better than slowly
dying outside on the frozen ground.

The teacup was now gone, as was the table. And when Ennica
stood to follow the witch into the room, the chair beneath her
disap
peared as well. Would that certain
memories could vanish just as easily.

“
I
will grant your wish,” the witch told her. Mr. Hue cawed his
concurrence from her shoulder.

Ennica had never voiced her desire aloud, but she apparently
hadn’t needed to. “Thank you.”

“
For once, I believe it is I who should be thanking you,” said
the witch. “Sleep well.”

Ennica did sleep well; her exhaustion caught up with her the
moment her head hit the thin feather pillow. But her dreams were
not sweet.

As
before, the shadows on the backs of her eyelids resolved themselves
into Anthony and Tanya. Ennica clenched her fists as she watched
them conspiring, laughing, carefree without so much as a passing
worry about the innocent life—lives!—they had ruined in their
selfish wake.

She was not a fairy; she was no firedamp. She could not stand
aside with a soul of vapor and a heart of coal and watch,
indifferently,
as she doomed her lover to
live out his life. She walked up to the co
uple, her long black skirts swirling about her legs and
brushing the tops of her bare feet. With one pale arm she pushed
Tanya to the side, and with the other she swept Anthony up in her
cold embrace and kissed him. Through that kiss she fed him all her
love and all her pain and everything else she had in her that he
never did—and never would—understand.