On the Verge (21 page)

They reached the base of the stairs and found themselves in what must have been a broom closet or ready room of some kind when the church had been above ground. Rusty opened the door just in front of them and they stepped out onto the grimy wood floor of the one room house of God. It was shabby and dark. Freya was fairly certain that, even when it hadn’t been buried below ground, it had never been much to look at.

Just before them and to the right was a modest pulpit set up on a small platform above a few rows of moldering pews. Two large windows on either side would have once allowed the sunshine to illuminate the faithful’s devotions, but now only a pair of ersatz candelabras, one screwed haphazardly into each wall, provided just enough light to recognize just how dark the corners of the eerie church were in comparison. Above it all, a crucifix hung on the back wall. The wooden cross was crudely made, but the carved body of Jesus that lay nailed upon it was disturbingly lifelike in the gloom. The paint upon its smooth surface was bright and clean, as though someone had lovingly cared for it all these years.

Freya looked up at the agonized face of Christ and shuddered. In most of the crucifixion scenes she’d studied, the eyes of Christ were closed or he looked up plaintively toward heaven. This one was different. Jesus stared straight back at her with the baleful eyes of a wrathful god. Freya gulped. Whoever made it must have known that a gentle Christ on the cross wouldn’t have made much of an impression on the people who lived on the margins of Seattle’s pioneer society.

The hard stare made her feel uneasy, and she was already anxious to get out of the old church and on their way. She nudged Rusty and they strode quickly toward the door of the church. Rusty pushed the old wooden door open and they descended a short staircase that put them on street level.

They stood in the eerie glow of an old-fashioned street lamp that vainly attempted to cut through the fetid darkness with its feeble flame. In the dimness Freya could discern some of their dilapidated surroundings. The hard packed dirt underneath their feet was cracked and dry but a few paces away a great mud puddle blossomed where a steady trickle of rainwater from the street above seeped through cracks and crevices in the pavement ceiling. The air was deadly still; a thick silence filled the space.

They seemed to be at the far end of what must once have been a bustling main street in the seedy part of town. On either side of the rough track were ramshackle storefronts with peeling paint and broken windows. Faded signs in old-fashioned lettering advertised barbers and bordellos. There was even a broken-down carriage a few paces away. Its front wheels were shattered and the driver’s seat and footboard were partially buried in the soggy earth.

“Too bad they don’t show you this on the tour,” Freya said.

“This Underground is too close to the Verge. Most humans don’t even know it exists and those that happen to stumble upon it wouldn’t want to stay long. You can feel it, can’t you? The little prickle across your skin, the gnawing in the pit of your stomach. We have aegis, and it keeps those natural instincts at bay to a certain extent, but for the uninitiated, only a madman or a drunkard would tarry down here any longer than absolutely necessary.”

Freya could see why. If it weren’t for the task at hand she wouldn’t want to stay in this strangely disquieting world either, aegis or not. She gently brushed her fingers against the little doll in her pocket and felt that welcome rush of warm feelings.

“Oh, man, I cannot believe I am here to see a witch about bugs,” Freya said. “How is this my life now?”

“Let’s just focus on the task at hand, Freya.”

“Right, let’s go,” she said, and they struck out down the dirt road headed out of town into the great blackness beyond.

Freya wondered how they would see far enough ahead to navigate the treacherous road, but as soon as they had stepped out of the hazy glow of the lamppost the flame in another one further down the street came to life of its own accord.

“Well, that’s certainly convenient,” Freya said.

“There’s no such thing as convenience or coincidence in a world inhabited by creatures of the Verge,” Rusty said. “She knows we’re coming.”

They continued walking, new streetlights illuminating each time they moved beyond the murky glow of the previous one. Ten minutes into their trek Freya noticed that the old shops and houses were growing further apart and their exteriors becoming more derelict. Broken-down buildings became crumbling facades and finally just bits of collapsed rafters or empty door frames, casting frightening shadows on the boggy marsh beyond.

They reached a final streetlamp on the outskirts of the below-ground ghost town. The road they’d been traveling faded into the swampy mud beyond and only a barely-visible track continued into the thick darkness. In the distance Freya could just make out a pinprick of light.

“There she is,” she said with equal measures of trepidation and determination.

“We must be very careful here,” Rusty said. “There won’t be any lights out in the swamplands and I sincerely doubt that Baba Yaga will let us walk right up to her front door without putting a few obstacles in our way.”

“What for?” Freya asked. “Isn’t that asking a pig to jump through hoops before you turn it into bacon? Can’t she just slaughter us humanely and get it over with?”

Rusty just looked at her through his contorted brows. Freya was getting used to not being able to tell whether he was smiling or grimacing at her. He was a hard person to read, even though she considered herself a bit of an amateur psychologist. She didn’t want to admit it, but it was one of the reasons she found him so intriguing. With his distorted features and penchant for silence he was a challenge, a mystery, but it wasn’t a forced concealment. There was a difference between secrecy and privacy. He was a private person and Freya could respect that. Knowing Rusty was like studying fine literature; you had to work but it could be done and the rewards for doing so were manifold.

“Keep your guard up and watch your step,” he said as he turned his inscrutable face back toward the darkness. “And be sure you stay on the path. This morass could hold any number of untold dangers.”

He held out his hand to Freya and she slipped her hand in his without any hesitation. She considered herself a strong woman but it was nice to know she didn’t have to walk the dark path ahead of them alone.

Cautiously they began the last part of their journey to Baba Yaga’s house. It took them only a few minutes to move beyond the faint circle of light cast by the last street lamp at the edge of the abandoned town. They were left with only the greenish glow of Baba Yaga’s home in the distance to guide them, a ghostly beacon cutting through the gathering gloom.

“We should have brought a flashlight at least,” Freya said, as she nearly twisted an ankle on a loose rock. “And did either of us think of carrying a weapon of some kind? That might have been helpful too. I mean who goes traipsing into a godforsaken bog in the pitch black without at least a bare minimum of preparation. Apparently we do. Not our most bri—”

“Quiet,” Rusty hissed. “Do you hear that?”

Freya quit talking. Her ears strained to pick up the sound that Rusty had heard. She peered hard into the darkness, desperately trying to see anything in the pitch black.

It took her a moment to distinguish it at first from the pounding of her heart, but then it grew louder and more distinct, the steady, heavy beat of hooves on the wet-packed ground.

“What the hell,” said Freya in a low voice. “Is that a horse?”

“Sounds like,” Rusty replied. His grip tightened on her hand.

The steady thump of hooves grew louder, echoing through the underground world so that it sounded more like thunder than a galloping horse. Then Freya’s light-starved eyes picked out a white-hot glow moving swiftly through the street they had just walked down. It illuminated the buildings as it passed, bathing them in a brightness that blanched the old bones of the tumbledown town before moving on and returning them to Stygian obscurity.

The mobile glow had almost reached the edge of town, and Freya held her breath as she waited to see what kind of mad sight would greet her eyes when it moved beyond the rickety Skid Row canyon and into the open darkness of the marshland. The pounding grew more intense and then there it was, a giant steed, white and luminous as the moon, driven forward by an equally incandescent rider dressed like a medieval knight in full armor. In one hand he grasped the white reins of the galloping stallion; in the other he held tight to a wickedly sharp lance.

Freya and Rusty stood frozen on the little rocky path in Baba Yaga’s putrid fen. The horse was nearly upon them, such was the speed at which it approached, and there was no room to maneuver without tumbling into the stinking mud on either side of their little jetty. The horseman gave no sign of slowing; indeed Freya saw him dig his sharp spurs into the great beast’s flanks. He stood up in the saddle and, dropping the glinting lance so that its spiny point ran parallel to the ground, urged his horse on.

“Jump,” Rusty shouted, his baritone barely audible above the deafening roar of the horse’s mighty gallop.

“What?” Freya yelled. “Where?”

“Into the marsh.”

Freya took a faltering step toward the edge of the path but then stopped. The glow of the knight and his charger cast a spectral light across the murky marsh on either side of them. Freya could see that they were surrounded by black water, thick with foul sludge and the decaying remains of plants, their rotting thorns and vines ready to entrap them in the depths of the quagmire. The horseman would be upon them in mere moments. He and his fearsome steed took up the entire width of the narrow track. It was either jump or be crushed under the relentless charge of the radiant horse or skewered on the pitiless point of the knight’s lance.

Freya glanced at Rusty and then they leapt, narrowly avoiding the knight’s attack. They hit the water hard, and Freya lost her grip on Rusty’s hand. She tried to swim but the water was like quicksand. She could barely move her limbs and it took all her strength to wrench her head out of the suffocating slurry. She was starting to panic as she looked rapidly around her for something, anything to grab onto. It was still dark but a residual glow from the horseman seemed to bathe the space with the thin white light of dawn.

She felt herself sinking again. Her arms were too tired to keep up their ineffectual treading and her legs were already stuck uselessly in the thick muck far below the surface. She brought her aching arms to a rest. She didn’t want her final moments to be spent frantically fighting a losing battle. As she slowed her breathing and relaxed, her left arm sank into the dense slime of the marsh and brushed up against a lump in her pocket. It was the doll that Vasilisa had given her. She wrapped her fingers around it wishing that her life wouldn’t end in a vile bog underground. Then she threw her head back, her face just visible above the encroaching water, and laughed at her foolishness and the futility of requesting aid from a ragdoll.

She felt a sharp pain and realized that a thorn from a black bramble bush had caught the side of her face. It was growing in the way only a stubborn weed could, straight out from the rocky and inhospitable ground of the little jetty.

Freya summoned all her strength and thrust her arms up and out of the choking quicksand, grabbing for the tenacious bramble. She caught hold of the end of it, the black thorns piercing her skin, but she didn’t even feel them so focused was she on getting her body out of the deadly muck. She forced her other arm free of the sludge and pulled with all her might. For a moment she thought it was all for naught, that the little weed was just a cruel joke, a vine of false hope planted by Baba Yaga as part of her cruel machinations. But then she felt first her left foot and then her right foot shift forward ever so slightly. She pulled harder, the thorny shoot lodged in the flesh of her hands. Finally, with a sickening squelching noise her upper body broke free and she was able to haul herself up onto the slimy stones of the little path.

She breathed deeply, but the relief that flooded her exhausted muscles lasted for only a brief moment when, with a jolt of dread, she remembered Rusty. She quickly scanned the swamp for any sign of him. In the milky light of the false dawn she could see the marshy land more clearly with its patches of sparse dry grasses, hoary shrubs and occasional dense thickets of black nettles, gorse, and thistles. In between the scrubby vegetation were pools of the viscous sludge that had almost taken her life.

Her heart began to beat more wildly as the seconds ticked by without a sign of Rusty anywhere.

“Rusty!” she called, “Rusty, where are you? Rusty!”

Tears sprang to her eyes. She was paralyzed with fear, locked to the spot where she’d pulled herself free. A creeping horror started to seep in at the edges of her consciousness. It had been too long. But she pushed the thought from her mind. She wasn’t ready to face this distorted reality without him by her side. She shook her head hard, muck flying, and looked again, crawling on her hands and knees and raking the murky waters with her mud-caked hands.

More seconds ticked by and the terror of losing him came raging to the surface. The tears that had sprung to her eyes became full-fledged sobs and she pressed her head into her filthy hands. She wanted to scream, but her throat was choked with so much emotion that nothing came out but a strangled cry. In a rage she threw her hands down and was surprised when one of them hit something soft. Freya looked down and there was the doll, sprawled in the dirt, its pristine apron caked with grime. One of its arms was bent behind its back but the other one pointed out into the bog. Freya followed the gesture with her eyes. Less than a yard away she spotted Rusty’s hand poking out of the black depths of the marsh.

Without thinking she grabbed hold of the same vine she had used to pull herself out of the sucking quicksand, and with her feet firmly planted on the jetty, stretched out as far as she could. At first she only managed to brush his fingers but then she leaned forward a bit more and was able to grab his wrist. She turned herself back around so that she faced toward the rocky path and pulled for all she was worth. Her feet began to slip back into the water and the vine in her hand ripped and tore at her already mangled flesh, but she was determined to get him free. She shifted her feet to find better purchase and let go of the vine in favor of a half-buried rock on the trail. Then, with her arm still stretched out behind her, holding on tightly to Rusty, she engaged every muscle and lunged forward with all her might.