The Edge

ABOUT US
Who Are We?
About TEoP

STORY UNIVERSES
Rick Silva's Four Visitors 
Ivan Ewert's Solstice
Nick Bergeron's Mnemosyne 
Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road

Guest Quarters
Postcards

CONTACT US
Call for Submissions
Notification List
LiveJournal/Feedback
Contact

NOTE: These stories are
intended for a mature audience.

Away
A Vorare Story
By
Ivan Ewert
Start at the beginning of the Vorare series

The constant, frantic curling of the Ally's lips - those ragged, soft, horrible edges of the self-inflicted wound - was unbearable. Gordon clamped a hand over his forearm in an attempt to keep the writhing wound under control, and was rewarded with a gout of fresh blood soaking into his shirtsleeves.

"He cut you," said one of the neighbors, an older black man with warts and skin tags covering the back of his neck, thin glasses hovering over his long nose. Gordon remembered him, remembered short conversations in the summers spent at home over the fence, remembered the revulsion he had felt at first over the man's skin condition. For all the money in the world, though, he could not remember his name.

"No," said Gordon, "it's all right, it's just a little blood."

"That's no little blood, young man. You lie still."

The other neighbors were seeing to Carol, helping her to sit in the nearby chair, angled away from Gordon and the other bodies on her floor, the bloodstains across her once-pristine carpeting. They faced her away from the bedroom, where they had closed the door as much as possible without touching the body of Ed Harris. He wanted to see her face, to see her eyes, to know that she was actually all right - to tell himself that he had not brought this Hell to her door, had been able to protect and shield her from the worst possible outcome.

"They have to stop touching things," said Gordon. "The police will be here. They're interfering with … something. Evidence."

"That's the police's problem, not yours." The man rested a hand on Gordon's chest, exerting no pressure but with a solid strength behind it. "You lie still while they help your mama, and we'll get you to the hospital soon enough."

"Can't go to the hospital," said Gordon, the Ally now wringing itself in silent fury, skin and muscle shifting back and forth in a macabre reminder of children burning one another's arms. "I can't."

"You're afraid," said the man. "They're going to find something you'd rather they didn't, is that right?" The man nodded in time with Gordon. "Uh-huh. Get boys like these after you, you're in something too deep. Shame on you, young man, bringing this down on your mother's house."

"I know … I know." The Ally continued to twist and jump just beneath his skin. "Can't you help me? Somehow?"

"I am helping you. I'm keeping you good and still until the ambulance comes, and after that you're going to be found out, whatever it is. The good Lord sees it all and He reveals it in its proper time." His glasses flashed in the light as he nodded his head. "Yes, yes. What is done in the darkness comes into the light."

"It can't."

"But it will. Now you rest and stay quiet."

"You have to help me."

"I don't have to do a thing. Nothing compelling me but Christian charity."

"You have to …"

"Boy, listen to what I said. I do not have to help you. I do not want to help you and I do not intend to help you. You're not dying and I'm glad of that, because your mama loves you and wants you to live, and she has always been a sweet lady here on this block. Get that straight, young man. I'm here for her, not you."

The old man's voice was deep and warm, too warm to carry such cold words. With a start, Gordon remembered his name.

"Steven," he said, and then lost the words. After a moment, he said, "Thank you for watching out for her."

"She's always been a sweet lady," said Steven. "It's the Christian thing to do."

Gordon looked at the back of the chair, wishing he could see her face. Then he closed his eyes, the sound of sirens coming on quickly, red lights beginning to flash against his eyelids in time to the thrumming of his wound.

***

"Hist," came the voice of his Ally, "wake, Child of Man, O wake."

Gordon opened his eyes and looked at the harsh lights above him, casting ivory yellow shadows across the white curtains drawn back from the foot of his bed. The walls were that same color, the off-white of bad teeth and old bones, with a wooden door on one wall and a closed window on the next.

"I slept," he said, surprised. "I slept, didn’t I?"

"You slumbered," said the Ally, "I thought it best a while lest your secrets do us harm but now we wake and now we move. I will not stay a moment in these walls." It was quite a speech from the Ally, and Gordon wondered at it.

"You hate it here."

"I cannot abide a prison and I will not stay a moment within one."

"I don't see how we have a choice. You're not a power of movement, you told me that much in the woods."

"You will draw a line of warding before the door."

"What? No!"

"You will do it," hissed the Ally.

"You burned … I burned that thief to a crisp in the motel and I've come to terms with that. But I'm not going to do the same to some nurse or orderly who comes in to check on me!"

"What of a policeman? What of one who bears a weapon and itches to use it against you, who may be at one with those who hunt you down? What of a doctor with scalpel and needle, who slices flesh from bone in his profession and at the feasts of the Gentleman Ghouls? What of them, O child, what of them?"

Gordon's neck tensed. "They're Ghouls?"

"One cannot know, Child of Man. The Chainfields are vast and secret as vines in the deep green ground of this land. Their shackles run where mankind works and plays and binds them together as father and son, as master and servant. Better it is to flee in secret and leave no trace behind."

"A charred corpse is more than a trace!"

"Silently, silent, if you will argue thusly with me. There is a man outside, you know this in your heart, a man armed and prepared to watch the door until his people's questions are answered. Why did they hunt you, what have you done, what are the names of the numberless dead? Will you answer, Child of Man? For I tell you plain that I will not stay a moment in this prison or any other and if you wish to sit and to rot then you will do so as flesh and bone alone."

That stopped him. "You would leave me if I went to prison?"

"I would seep from you like your own heart's blood, and you would cease to breathe and cease to be, and I warn you - for I see your eyes and heart and O so noble vision that this death might seem a blessing - and so I warn you that it is not.

"You have seen that spirits exist, Son of Man, and you have seen that things lie beyond your world, and before you long for death I would ask you: what says the God you knew about the eating of the flesh, and the taking of the life, and the consorting with spirits other than his own?

"What says the God you knew of what comes after life?"

"Are you telling me Hell is real?"

"I am telling you to think ere you long for your death," said the Ally, "for this life extends as long as I intend it to and not one instant more."

Gordon sat up in the bed. "Then I'm definitely not going to take another life that might be innocent. Understand? We'll go, all right, but we'll go without a killing."

"It would be …"

"You're playing. I'm playing. This is the deal. I will get you out of this prison and we will get back to the Farm and we will bring it down in ash and flame, and in return all you are going to do is not kill anybody." He spat the final three words with a tightness in his jaw. "Deal?"

"To the window," whispered the Ally. "Draw a circle in your blood and we will flee on foot, but be soft and be quick and above all be silent."

Gordon padded to the window, looking out over the parking lot. The hospital was a small one, with only one floor, and he said a quick prayer of thanks despite himself as he placed a finger against the glass.

Blood flowed against the forces of nature and gravity alike, crawling up his arm and turning his finger into a stylus with which he traced a perfect circle from top to bottom of the window. As the blood trickled along the pane, he heard the faintest hint of hissing from the glass, then stepped back.

"Push," said the Ally, and Gordon did so. The circle of glass fell slowly, toppling into the bushes outside the window. Gordon followed suit, stepping carefully among the evergreen needles and shielding his eyes with one hand.

The sound of the door drove his hands from his eyes, and he began to push the branches aside in his flight.

"Hey. HEY!" The voice behind him was both angry and surprised, rising to a shout. "He's running! Get me backup, get me backup!"

Gordon fled across the parking lot, darting between the pools of light cast by the floods, hunched against the gunshot which never came. Cutting diagonally toward the hills behind the hospital, he ran like a beast from a life of captivity, impelled by his own fear and the hatred his Ally felt for those unforgiving walls which made up every prison - running toward the wilderness which his Ally once called home.

Story by Ivan Ewert, Copyright 2008
Image by Leanne Emery, Copyright 2008