Despite that many of them were Freemasons, a secret society steeped in the occult, the Founding Fathers envisioned an unspoiled continent, freed of old encumbrances—not just taxes but the arcane and complex practices that had for centuries determined the fate of nations. They deliberately enacted their rebellion without first seeking the advice of The Masters, of whom the Freemasons were vassals. Since they hadn’t asked, neither had they been expressly refused. Thus, when against everyone’s expectations the American Revolution was successful, the question naturally arose: what was to be done?
But the High Arcane were not autocrats, even though they sometimes acted it. Except for the handful of matters where they took direct interest, their influence was intentionally oblique. They fancied themselves kingmakers rather than administrators and left the running of things to the men known to common history. As far as they were concerned, changes in government were inevitable, even healthy, and they neither desired nor sought formal ratifying power. At the same time, enterprises that threatened to upset the balance were always likely to bring their scrutiny, and so, if only from mere prudence, it was always better to seek their consultation in advance, where possible.
Here the Founders were shrewd. No sooner had fighting ceased than a secret delegation was dispatched. The Freemasons knew that The Masters had been pursuing their own enterprise for centuries, that they had been endeavoring to discover and seal the portals and doorways that dotted the earth, particularly at the intersection of its natural ley lines, whereby dark forces entered our plane. It had been understood since the discovery of the New World that the continents of North and South America would eventually need to brought under that enterprise, although given their size and antiquity, no one had yet contemplated how. Certain influential Americans vowed to see it to fruition in return for assurances that the new government of the colonies would be left to run its own affairs. The Masters agreed, the first such scheme to be formalized in writing. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 was orchestrated expressly for this purpose, and Lewis and Clark, with the help of a native shamaness, made the first serious attempt to map the ley lines of North America.
Under the terms of the understanding, which kept the United States formally separate from The Masters’ regime—whence came the Freemason’s motto: “new world order”—the fledgling nation also couldn’t request support in matters arcane, which left America with a unique problem: how to police members of its growing magical community, many of whom had emigrated not to escape persecution, but justice. Catching them was difficult enough. Holding them proved almost impossible. A crisis was reached in 1804 when, after one such failed apprehension, the city of Detroit was burned to the ground. A secret meeting was called by then-President Jefferson and proposals were solicited for a final solution. It would be a full two years before a winner was selected and another three before the necessary funds were raised, for in typical American fashion, the structure to be built was unlike anything that had been attempted before. Not just a prison. A prison to end all prisons.
Rather than a tower, which stretched the energies necessary to defend it, the centerpiece of the winning proposal, submitted by architect Jeremiah Everly and magus Zachary Xavier Thorne, was a star fort, then a common method of military fortification. Originally designed to repel magical attack—by turning a castle into a giant binding hexagram—star forts were also effective against cannon shot. Everly and Thorne’s genius was to invert the hex, to turn the binding inward: to keep people in rather than keep them out.
A remote island was selected in the bayous of Louisiana, far removed from any magical influence, and in the spring of 1809, ground was finally broken. Construction was beset by delays, including the War of 1812, and took a further thirteen years. When the doors were finally opened in 1822, it was without ceremony, for by then, the project had taken the lives of three women and thirty-seven men, including the founders. Mr. Thorne died in a smelting accident. A casing exploded and plated the man from head to toe in sterling silver. Two years later, the brooding Mr. Everly succumbed to melancholia when bog water inexplicably flooded the foundation for the third time and he threw himself in. In honor of the men, the project once destined to be called Black Water Penal Colony was instead humbly ordained Everly-Thorne Penitentiary. But it was a hulking place, distant and dire, and none of the inmates ever called it that, nor too the guards and wardens who lived in the remote fort for months at a time. Forty years later, at the outset of the Civil War, when management of the facility was transferred to a private consortium under the direction of The Masters, its true name was officially recognized—Everthorn Prison.
It was the Civil War that ended the Founding Fathers’ dream of a continent free of the influence of old-world magic. From the beginning, the native shamans had resisted—sometimes violently—the sealing of the doors and portals through which they summoned their ancestors and healing spirits, and despite that the American ruling elite had no material interest in The Masters’ long-term enterprise, it chose to ally against the shamans out of expediency. Advisers close to President Andrew Jackson secured his approval to invite members of the High Arcane’s secret apparatus—agents and provocateurs—to help break the shamanic resistance in the West in return for certain additional concessions that kept a permanent magisterial presence on the continent. The bulk of the New World’s magic users had settled in the less industrial south, and after the outbreak of war, the Union found it had no adequate response to the Confederacy’s occult army. Lincoln’s government had no choice but to scrap the document of understanding and ask for aid, and slowly but surely over the next hundred years, The Masters asserted their influence over the whole of the Americas.
The first concession approved by President Lincoln was shared use of the remote star fort on a small island in the bayou, which, over the subsequent decades, became home to countless madmen, magicians, illusionists, warlocks, and witches from all over the world. The reason they came, some from as far as Tibet, was the same reason they never left. Everly and Thorne’s ingenious design included a pair of massive enchanted boundaries: The Rings True. The outer boundary, made of pure silver, was only seven centimeters thick but ran nearly three miles in circumference. Cast in one single piece—the largest casting in human history—it took four years to produce and required new smelting techniques and several dozen attempts before a single flawless ring was produced without joints or welds. The inner barrier, made predominantly of iron, was poured around a core of pure selenium, a metal previously known only to the alchemists.
To reach the hexagonal fort at the center, or to escape it, the Rings True had to be pivoted—down in the case of the outer ring, up in the case of the inner. To preserve a continuous barrier, only one ring was tilted at a time. The energy required to move the rings and their brick encasements had necessitated the construction of another novelty, a massive geared dynamo called the Prime Mover, which was half-buried between the two rings and thus protected from attack on both sides. The gear box for the Mover, the two-story volcanic obsidian hemisphere that encased the device, was bounded on the interior by a black salt moat such that no spirits could be sent to interfere with its workings and so facilitate an escape for anyone inside, making the prison a universe to itself, hermetically sealed. Indeed, from the air, it resembled a solar diagram, or perhaps the atomic structure of hydrogen, with a black moon between two rings, orbiting at a distance from a pale six-pointed sun.
The cost and complexity of the construction meant that nothing like it was ever attempted again. Nor was there was ever a need. In two hundred years of use, the inmates took control of the ward on three occasions, once for a period of 17 weeks, but not one ever escaped.
Cerise leaned forward to peer out the windshield. “How are we going to do this exactly?”
Nature had already begun to take over the prison-fortress, whose entry looked very different from the last time I had seen it, which was the time I walked out. At some point, someone had modernized the grounds, but now even that was rusted and fading. The imposing black stone walls were dotted in moss and dangling, cottonlike lichen. Small weeds grew from nooks and crannies. In the battle between swamp and prison, the swamp was winning.
I opened my door. “Just stick to the plan and everything will be fine.”
“Says the invisible woman who can’t die. Why can’t I be the one to wear the amulet?” She looked at it, draped over my shoulders.
“I told you. It would most likely drive you mad.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Besides,” I added,” you can see me when I wear it, not the other way around.”
“Also convenient.”
“What’s the first rule?” I asked.
“Don’t touch anything,” she said.
“What’s the second rule?”
“Don’t talk about Fight Club.”
The awning that covered the sidewalk was faded and torn and hung down in flaps. Dead leaves were scattered across the walkway. We had to force the doors, which ground noisily against the vinyl floor. The enormous portraits of Messrs. Everly and Thorne that once adorned the vestibule were missing. In their place was bare plaster, which had apparently been laid over the stone sometime in the 20th century. The whole interior looked completely different, in fact. I didn’t recognize any of it.
Light entered weakly from the dirt-stained windows, making it hard to see. Cerise tried a switch, but nothing happened—not so much from lack of power as a lack of bulbs. The fixtures were empty. Dust was everywhere, but that, as it turned out, was beneficial. It left a trail for us to follow. People had been coming and going, it seemed, and recently.
“The ward is this way.” I pointed.
According to several posted signs, the upper floors were condemned. I pulled one of the curled and yellowed notices down so I could read it. It was dated 2006.
“I suppose we should be grateful she hasn’t tried to trick us with a glammer,” I said.
The stonework was still visible on the stairs, which turned in a square to stop at a barred gate. Over it, carved into the stone of an overhang, were ornate letters dating from the Civil War. They said: Everthorn Prison. And underneath: RELINQUITE MUNDI—forsake ye the world.
“You were right,” Cerise whispered. “This place is totally creepy.”
“I’m right here. Stick to the plan and we’ll be out of here in no time.”
At the end of a windowless hall was a second gate of solid riveted metal. Its only opening was a slat window whose covering was slid to one side. It was unlocked.
As The Masters regime withered, the prison was eventually abandoned and the property put up for sale. By then, it was mostly empty. There simply weren’t many magic users left worthy of the trouble. The bog-filled island was so remote and inaccessible that a buyer was never found and the property reverted to the state. At some point, it was purchased at auction by a paper entity, a company with no real employees or infrastructure, whose sole purpose was to hold the prison in trust on behalf of its owner. As a contingency.
Some years later, when that contingency was needed, an inspection was falsified and a slip of paper was stamped by a bureaucrat in Baton Rouge who had never once seen the place and the prison’s license was renewed. At the same time, the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Westchester, New York found itself suffering an unusual spate of bad luck. No one would admit it out loud, but the various misfortunes that befell guard and inmate alike seemed to have coincided with the arrival of a certain elderly inmate. Thus, when an extradition request appeared asking that the inmate in question be remanded to the State of Louisiana to face additional charges, the warden was only too happy to sign it.
And so it was that Livonia Tuesday, who insisted everyone call her Granny, became the sole inmate of Everthorn Prison, of which she was also sole owner.
Her voice echoed up from the wide circular well formed by the cell block. “Well, come on in. Don’t be shy.”
The ward was a vast open spiral. A stone-arched walkway turned seven times, passing every cell, before stopping at the base. Each full turn had four gates, one at each of the cardinal directions. All of them, it seemed, were either damaged or open. A heavy wire mesh had been bolted over the arched openings that faced the central well, probably to prevent anyone from jumping. That was new. In the old days, no one had cared if one of the inmates threw themselves over the edge.
In appearance, the ward resembled a panopticon, but it was not. The heavy mortared-stone architecture of the time precluded such an invention, which required both high, open spaces and good lighting. Everthorn had been built not only before the electric era, but before gas as well. For the first five decades of its existence, it had been lit only by fire, which was why the high dome roof had been inlaid with heavy glass tiles—to let in the sun. Many were now broken or missing. The same true of the cell doors, which had either fallen from their hinges or were dangling from them.
Cerise and I passed the sixth gate, and I glanced inside the adjacent cell, once the home of Prudence Plunkett, one of only five female inmates, myself included. Pru was undoubtedly the most beautiful, and she would brook no rivals. I remember when she arrived. Her hands and forearms were bandaged and remained so until she died of a fractured skull. Medical care being lax in the prison, her bandages were not changed often. They came loose when she strangled me. I could see the tips of her fingers, cracked and charred permanently black. Pru tried to set the prison on fire, but Everthorn could not be burned. It was waterlogged.
Water was a perpetual problem, in fact. I remember it sometimes seeped through gaps between the stones. Such gaps were swiftly repaired when the prison was active, but they had since been left to multiply. Each was marked by thick mats of moss. In Pru’s cell, I saw a few dainty wildflowers on the wall as well. The seepage dribbled down and gathered in puddles on the floor, where it ran in rivulets out of the cell and joined a narrow stream, like the runoff from a hose, that bounced down the spiral walkway to the fourth turn. There, it was deflected and fell over the end of one of the steel struts that stuck out from the well wall, so irrigating the lush, semi-wild garden that had grown over the bottom floor. The prison’s base had collapsed on one side, revealing part of the cistern underneath. Enough water had gathered over the years to fill the cistern to a height of five or six feet. I saw lily pads and several turtles resting on the fallen rocks of the floor, which made a kind of ramp to the water. Floating in the center of the gap was a large albino alligator.
“Do you see that?” Cerise whispered.
“It’s better if you don’t talk to me from now on. She is quite sensitive.”
Cerise made bug eyes at me in protest.
“Don’t worry. Just make the trade and we’ll be gone. There’s nothing in the world she wants more than that coin. She nearly killed for it already.”
“Define nearly.”
I made bug eyes back and she shut her mouth.
To one side of the pond was a bulbous tree topped in a few small tufts of razorlike leaves. As it had grown—like a tumor, it seemed—it had picked up detritus from its surroundings. A wrought iron plaque bearing the seal of the prison was embedded in it, as was a tattered umbrella and one of the heavy glass tiles from the dome. A human skull peered out from the cavity in which it was trapped. Next to it, the branches of a thorn bush erupted from a cracked and emaciated corpse wearing the torn remains of some kind of uniform. Not police. A utility worker, perhaps. Henbane grew from his open mouth.
“Remember not to touch anything,” I said.
We passed under the dribbling water, whose echoing splatters on stone below were the only sound, and I saw Abraham Dunvluddich’s cell. I must have drawn in breath, because Cerise turned nervously to me. It was still a sight, covered in layer upon layer of frantic scratches in the stone. Diagrams. Drawings. Descriptions. Formulae. One on top of the next as if the layer below had been completely unseen. It was quite different than I remembered, reminding me how faulty our memories can be. The version in my head was much cleaner, as if my rational mind had trouble hanging onto the depth of Abraham’s madness and had tidied up a bit. My memory also had the cell in the wrong place.
Of course, if Abraham’s was there, that meant mine was next. I forced myself not to look.
“Just keep moving,” I said. “We’re almost there.”
As we reached the end, Cerise stepped around the very last cell, whose interior was pitch black, as if every ray of light was eaten as soon as it crossed the bars.
Black Tom’s cell.
It hadn’t changed. According to the old-timers, Black Tom had been a pirate and the very first resident of the prison. It was supposedly his reign of terror on the Great Lakes and northeast coast, along with his repeated escapes from earlier methods of incarceration, that had necessitated the creation of Everthorn in the early 1800s. He’d been at Everthorn longer than anyone. But he was never seen. The guards never brought him food or emptied his pail of waste, which led some of us to speculate that he had become the very darkness we saw. Others said he was a wretched creature, a tortured soul, hiding in the dark, who knew only pain. Certainly, special precautions had been taken: a ring of silver had been poured into a groove that lined the arched opening. Once, when I was sick with cholera, I stumbled weakly as the line to breakfast passed Tom’s cell. I reached for the bars to steady myself and felt the air around my fingers turn cold and then freezing. Gravity seemed to pull me in, and I had to yank my arm away.
There was a splash on the floor of the prison, and I turned to see the alligator was gone. In its place, slowly standing upright on a mossy mound, was Granny, naked and dripping. She didn’t look well. She was thinner than I had ever seen her, and her hair was falling out. What little of it remained hung wet from her scalp like white twine. Her wrinkled skin was draped over her bones like a canvas bag. One of her arms was crooked and she had a pronounced shamble to her walk and reached immediately for a gnarled cane resting against a barrel. Someone had hurt her.
“Well, well, well,” she said as she hobbled naked across the moss carpet. The knotted cane wobbled with her hands. “Who do we have here?”
“I’d like to make a trade,” Cerise said nervously. “For this.”
She held up the coin. She didn’t dare move from the staircase that joined the walkway with the floor of the prison. The poison garden started at its base. My stories of Doctor Alexander’s encounter with Granny had apparently done the job. Unfortunately, my part of the plan required me to leave Cerise to her distraction.
“Stick to the plan,” I whispered. “And don’t let her touch you.”
An outer ring of squat columns held up the spiral of cells above. Between them, folding tables and chairs had been tossed into piles, along with some exercise equipment. All of it was old and decrepit. To the left, behind the tree, flooded spiral stairs descended to the cistern. To the right, the wide hall that once held the massive pump system brooded in vines and darkness. Since all of the cells were empty that was the last best place to look.
The ceiling of the hall had since been propped with iron girders—in the 1960s, by the looks of it. Three more archways at the back had been covered in drywall. I knew for a fact that one of them held a secret door and that the space beyond had once been a coal larder but that since it had been used to interrogate suspects during the war. The old mechanical vacuum pumps were gone, which pleased me. Like all the inmates of Everthorn, I had spent innumerable hours manning the levers. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. The water of the bog was a constant threat, and time at the pumps was mandatory in the rainy season—year-round if the guards didn’t like you. In place of the pumps was a row of dilapidated mid-20th century machinery, like something you might find in a factory or printing house. I think they were used to make license plates, which was especially ironic. I’m sure some well-intended bureaucrat meant to give the inmates an occupation, something productive to pass the time. Tethering magic users to machines was like asking the farmer to pull the ox.
The boiler that powered the old pumps was also gone, but not the banded metal cage that held it. The concrete of the foundation had been poured around its legs, making it immovable. Cast with outward-facing spikes, it was meant to keep the prisoners from breaking the expensive machine. More than one boilermaker had survived a riot by barricading himself inside. The boiler itself had been built by hand, as machines were in those days, and stood on metal claws. The opening of the furnace had snarled like an open mouth, and there were rumors it was a caged fire drake, but I could never say. At some point it had been removed, replaced by the electrical wires that snaked conspicuously down the walls.
In the cage, in place of the boiler, was a disheveled man bent over an old wooden desk. He looked like a medieval copyist as he filled the empty pages of a bound journal with scratch. His work was lit by candle. He took no notice of me. But then, I was still wearing the amulet.
I took it off.
“Oh, Doctor...” I breathed.
He turned his head to face me with frosted eyes and stared out at nothing. His long, curly beard was as wild and unkempt as the verge in the ward. He wore a long gray bath robe with loops for a fabric belt that was now missing. There was a cluster of beads and talismans over his white T-shirt, and the thick black frame of his glasses was wrapped with white tape on one side.
Slowly, he turned back to his work.
I heard Granny cackling in the main hall. Couldn’t be good. I needed to hurry.
I strode to the gate, expecting to find a heavy padlock, but there was nothing but a sliding bar, and I opened it slowly so as not to make a sound.
“Come on,” I whispered, taking my friend’s shoulders. “We have to get out of here.”
His frosted eyes alighted me again without recognition, but he complied, and I led him out of the high boiler cage. I had left the amulet on the ground. I was happy to be free from its dark chorus, if only for a moment. I wasn’t sure it would work on two people, but the collar was wide enough for us to put both our arms through at the shoulder.
“Put that on,” I heard Granny say loudly, “and dearie here dies.”
I spun. The old witch stood in the arch, naked as before. Behind her were several men in dirty work clothes. One was barefoot in overalls. His head had collapsed from severe trauma on one side. Another was scarred across his face and missing his left arm at the elbow—alligator, from the looks of it. His right arm was wrapped around Cerise’s head. His hand covered her mouth while Granny, smiling, held a thorn-covered twig to Cerise’s bare throat.
My shoulders dropped. There was no point testing Granny’s resolve. I had seen her slaughter her own people without a moment’s hesitation for nothing but the slightest gain.
“What about the coin?” I asked, dropping the amulet to the stone floor. “You can’t just take it from us. You have to trade. Let her go and I’ll give it to you.”
Granny lifted her head and cackled. “That old thing? Pshhh.” She waved it off. “You fools oughtta know better. Can’t spend the coin of fate twice. That’s what ruined my poor Wilbur! I already spent that silver on this here pocket watch.” She clicked it open and examined the face. “And it tells me I only got a few hours left. But lookee here. The Three Sisters answered my prayers. I think they want that dern coin ‘out of circulation,’ as the man says. Doesn’t bode well for the bearers!” She laughed. “Now, kick that amulet away.”
I did as I was ordered and watched it bounce over the stone. It didn’t get very far.
“Sorry.” I shrugged.
Granny hobbled over and reached for it, her tongue squirming greedily. She pulled away as soon as it touched her skin. She looked to me in shock.
“Dark chorus,” I said dryly, and she spat.
She snapped her fingers and the doctor turned. “Find something that’ll smash this—and her head.”
“Let Cerise go,” I said. “Killing her doesn’t benefit you.”
“Now why would I kill such a lovely child? She’s the answer to my prayers! Just lookit her.” Granny admired Cerise. She walked over and put a hand over Cerise’s womb. “Already ripe!”
I glanced at Cerise in shock. She glanced back sheepishly.
She was pregnant.
Granny stroked Cerise’s short hair. “This youngin’s gonna be my new momma. Ain’t that right, sweetie?”
“No...”
The old woman wanted more time. It seemed she hadn’t been after the coin at all. She had tricked us into giving her the pocket watch, which counted down the moments to her death. She needed to know how much time she had left. Whatever spells and offering she had made since our last encounter brought to her just what she needed, a young pregnant woman whose unborn child would be the vessel by which Livonia Tuesday would be reborn.
“Well,” Granny barked at the doctor. “Get on with it.”
It took him only a moment. He walked to one of the broken machines and pulled out a metal bar. Nearly two meters long, it appeared to be some kind of industrial chisel. It was relatively thin—no more than an inch thick—and tapered to a diamond tip. There was a flat notch near the top. It was meant to slide into a pneumatic hammer, I think, and so be driven through sheet metal. The bottom third was heavily scuffed, but beyond that, it was brushed to a shine. He held it like a walking stick.
“Break it,” Granny ordered.
The doctor lifted the long, pointed bar. The diamond tip flashed as he brought it down hard on the crystal, shattering it instantly and throwing off such a blow that all of us were knocked back amid a great swirl of darkness.
No one had expected that, and for a moment, there was silence. Cerise was prone but free. The doctor was on his back. He had taken the brunt of the blow and had lost his grip on the long metal chisel, which rolled closer to me. I looked at it as Granny looked at me.
She pointed to Cerise “Grab her!” she ordered as she struggled to her feet.
I scrambled forward on all fours, but in my haste, I knocked the long bar with my feet and it rolled back to the bearded doctor, who stood and lifted it. He was standing between me and the others. There was no way around.
“Put her against the cage,” Granny ordered.
Getting up from the ground was a struggle for her, and she was breathing hard.
The doctor raised the sharp diamond tip to me, and I took a step back. I stopped at one of the spikes of the iron cage, which pointed menacingly toward my back. I waited for the doctor to finish the job. But he didn’t move. Granny snapped her fingers again, and when nothing happened, she took a step forward.
The doctor spun and swung the diamond point at the old witch, opening up a huge gash across her shoulder and forehead and knocking her to the ground. He turned his head to me then and winked. The amulet’s blast had apparently broken whatever spell she had over him.
But Granny only laughed. It was low, like a rumble. The remains of her stringy hair hung in front of her face. The gashes on her shoulder and forehead were deep and exposed her flesh, but they barely bled—as if she were drying out.
Cerise squealed, but the one-armed zombie had her neck in a headlock and almost nothing came out. The other held her skull with both hands like it was a watermelon he was going to smash.
“You need her,” I said.
Granny thrust a fist and the doctor flew through the open gate and into the cage, where he struck the bars. The force of the throw had yanked the bar from his hand, and it bounced on the stone with a clang.
The old woman cackled. “You’re a clever one, Doc...” she sneered. “But yer not a wizard yet!”
She turned to me. “Get in there with him. Some folks is comin that wanna meet ya!”
We could hear them preparing the ritual. The sound of it echoed through the arch to the main hall, making it impossible to relax. Cerise paced around the long, high cage. The doctor sat tugging at a loose thread on his soiled bathrobe. I sat on a stack of filled journals. We had just spent the last several hours trying to find our way out of the makeshift prison and were both beaten and exhausted. The heavy Depression-era padlock that held the gate could not be reached from behind and the wide cast iron bands that comprised the cage could not be budged. Cerise, being very small, could very nearly fit through the square openings, but no matter how we pushed her, we couldn’t get her through.
I stood to stretch my tired muscles and knocked over one of the bound volumes, which fell open. Inside, someone had drawn the pages of a book. That is, it wasn’t that the text had been copied. It had been sketched, Gothic font and all. But the copy was imperfect. Several of the lines were illegible. The shape of the words and sentences were scratched in pencil, but the letters were unclear. I closed it and opened another.
“These are books from Etude’s library,” I said.
“She was having me reproduce it,” the doctor explained. “I think she was looking for something.”
“Desperate to live.”
Cerise had a leatherbound journal in her hand and was turning the pages. “You did this from memory?” she asked, incredulous.
“Etude gave Doctor Alexander everything he had,” I explained. “Every page, digitized and stored on a USB stick.”
“And you memorized it?” Cerise asked. “Seriously?”
“Not all of it.”
“You were right,” she said to me. “He even looks like a grisly old wizard.”
Doctor Alexander looked down at his open bathrobe. He fixed it around him like a suit coat. “What’s wrong with my robe?”
“Slippers are a nice touch.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “Taking a shower.”
“The doctor was kidnapped,” I explained to Cerise, “because he didn’t do as he was told and went to visit his daughter.”
“Fascinating,” Cerise said, snapping the journal shut. “I don’t know about the two of you, but I intend to get out of here.”
“Admirable,” I said. “How?”
She looked around. “Come on. There’s gotta be a way.”
The doctor slid down the bars to the floor. “Let me know when you need help.”
“You’re just gonna give up?”
“Never said that.” The doctor had torn loose a long thread from his robe and was rolling it between his fingers.
Cerise looked around. “There’s gotta be something.” She looked around again. Then she looked up. “What about that?”
She pointed to the roof of the cage, formed from crossing bands of cast iron that rose from the concrete and bent over top of us. Two centuries of gravity had bowed them at the middle. Unfortunately, that was 20 feet overhead.
Cerise glance to the square gap she had almost made it through. Then she started to climb.
“Please be careful,” I said, glancing back to the hall to make sure we were not being observed.
The climb was easy enough until she crested the curve. Once she was more or less hanging upside down, she had to loop her legs in and out of the gaps to keep from falling. Still, she was lithe, and it was quite a bit easier for her than it would’ve been for either the doctor or me. At the top, she used her weight to pull on the sagging cross-band, which bounced loose from its rusted rivet.
“I think I can make it,” she said, shifting her feet for leverage.
The doctor had stood and walked to me. “That’s a helluva fall...” he breathed.
The two of us watched helpless as she pulled herself into the square gap, pushing hard on the bowing metal to give her shoulder another inch or so of space.
And then she was through. She pushed up with her arms like she was exiting a pool and rested cross-legged between the spikes, which made adequate braces for her descent to the floor.
“The steel bar.” I pointed. “We might be able to use it to break the lock.”
“Good idea,” the doctor said, sliding the desk out of the way.
The loop of the old padlock was large enough that we would thread the stainless-steel bar though. The three of us pulled on one end, trying to create enough torque to break it, but it was no good. My hands slipped and I fell, which caused everyone to lose their grip. The heavy bar fell loose and clattered on the stone.
“Shit!”
A low shape appeared then. A crawling shadow lumbered up the steps to the arch. The albino alligator. It stopped at the top and stared at us with pinprick eyes. There was a red gouge across its head. The pair of dead-eyed zombies, no doubt risen from the surrounding swamp, stood behind.
Cerise stepped back from the cage door.
“Run,” I told her.
“No...” She didn’t want to leave.
“Run!”
“Where?” she asked, backing away.
“Just go! RUN!”
She took off toward the back of the hall and disappeared among the row of derelict machines. The zombies shambled after her.
“Come, out, come out wherever you are!” one of them called.
Back on two feet, Granny approached the cage just as the doctor, reaching between the bands, grabbed the steel bar and pulled it inside.
“You two are almost more trouble than you’re worth,” she said. “But don’t worry. Your friends will be here any minute to take you away.”
“They’re going to blight the entire earth, Livonia. I’ve seen it. They’re going to make a lesson of us.”
“Pshaw! Then there’d be nothing left to rule!” Granny shook her head. “Those fellas just wanna be kings. And thing about kings is, sooner or later, they always fall!”
“They’re being tricked!” I objected. “The dark gods don’t care about them. They never did. They’re using them. That’s all. They opened the portal, no thanks to you, and they’re—”
“Enough!”
I felt myself being slammed back into the bars with a clang.
“Ow...” It hurt.
“I got this,” the doctor said. He had used the steel bar’s diamond tip to gouge marks in the concrete. “Stay inside here,” he said.
Granny made a clicking sound in appreciation. “A reverse ptarmigan circle,” she said. She looked frailer than ever. “Keep ‘em out instead of in. Never would’ve thought of that.”
“I may not be a wizard,” he said, pointing the tip of the bar at her, “but I learn quick.”
“That you do, Doc. That you do. Alright, then.” She clapped her hands. “How ‘bout a rematch?”
Granny whipped her arms forward, but the doctor held the steel bar in front of him. Whatever magic came for him was directed to the iron, which seemed to move against him, and he struggled to control it. He lowered into a wide stance as the bar wavered more and more. He grunted and planted his feet apart. He was losing control. He slammed the tip of the bar into the floor to hold it, and the old witch pushed the bar instead of pulled, and it slammed into his face, knocking him back.
She chuckled and rubbed her gnarled, arthritic fingers. “Not bad. For a beginner. If’n only you had more practice. Alas.” She wiggled her pinky and smiled like she was going to gut him with it.
The doctor’s nose bled and he wiped it.
“You can’t summon her,” he said. “Not from outside the circle. You’re gonna have to come in and get her.”
Granny growled in frustration. She moved her fist and he flew back with a shout. She opened the padlock with a twist and the heavy gate swung wide. She shambled toward me, claws out.
“Don’t worry, dear. You’ll wake up again.”
Doctor Alexander starting laughing from the floor behind the desk. It was hearty, and Granny was annoyed.
“What’s so funny?” she barked.
“Well, I’ll tell ya,” he said. “By knot of one, my spell’s begun.”
Granny’s eyes went wide. She reached immediately for her withering scalp.
The doctor stood. “By knot of two, it findeth you.”
The old woman, realizing she had been shedding hair all over the prison, turned and hobbled for the cage door.
The doctor walked around the desk, rolling something in his hands. “By knot of three, you cannot flee.”
The old woman’s legs froze as if turned to stone. She wobbled.
“By knot of four, you hit the floor.”
Granny fell, as rigid as a broomstick. Her skin hit the concrete with a slap.
“By knot of five, come your last moments alive.”
The pocket watch had tumbled free from her hands in the fall, and I picked it up. Six minutes and counting.
“By knot of six...” The doctor lowered his voice as stood over her. “No more tricks,” he said softly.
Doctor Alexander dangled the stray thread from his robe over her. Several of her scraggly white hairs had been tied into a string of six knots.
“Like I said, I’m a fast learner.” He turned to me. “Sorry. Had to wait until she opened the gate.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, heading for the door.
There was a loud noise from behind the machines.
“Oh, no. Cerise...”
A head bounced out and rolled to a stop near my foot.
“Sorry, boss,” it said.
Its headless body appeared then, walking on wobbly legs. In its arms it cradled the head of the second zombie. The walking corpse fell to its knees and then forward, muffling the cries of the head it carried. Cerise was standing behind holding a large shovel.
“Turns out I can see their enchantment through walls.” She shrugged.
She glanced up then, as if something caught her eye.
“They’re here,” she whispered.
“Who?” the doctor asked. He pushed Granny with his foot to make sure she was stuck.
“How many?” I asked her.
“Three,” she said. “No, wait. Four.”
“Four what?”
“What do we do?” Cerise asked.
“There’s no way we can beat four of them.”
“WHO?” the doctor insisted.
“But isn’t that the only way out?”
“No,” I told her. “It’s not. We were never going out the front.”
“What?”
“I didn’t want to tell you, in case Granny sussed it out.”
“Sussed? Are you kidding me?”
“Go to the back,” I told her. “Behind one of the walls is a secret chamber. It’s the old coal larder. You should be able to see it.”
“You’re not seriously gonna go out there,” she said. “Alone?”
“No. Not alone. Doctor, bring the staff.”
He looked at the steel bar in his hand. “Staff?”
“Hold up,” Cerise called. “What are the two of you gonna do against four of them?”
“Just find the chamber!” I said.
“You can’t even see them!”
I led the doctor up to the hall and across the poison garden to the very last cell. Black Tom’s cell.
“There.” I pointed to the silver that had been poured into a groove around the opening. “Break it.”
He looked ominously at the dark. “Are you sure about this?”
“Doctor,” I said calmly. “Please.”
He nodded, and gripping the bar with both hands, brought it down hard on the silver. The sharp, diamond-tipped point pierced the metal with a spark, and instantly we felt a frigid blast. The swamp air was humid, and crystals of frost spread over the metal bar. A man appeared from smoke, a dark man dressed darkly in clothes fitting an 18th-century sailor. He didn’t appear to be more than 35. He stepped to me. The doctor tried to intervene and the man spread the fingers of his right hand. The doctor froze, veins and eyes bulging as if every muscle in his body had suddenly seized.
Black Tom leaned closer and looked into the doctor’s eyes. “I dinno you,” he said in an Irish brogue.
He lifted his hand and the doctor flew against the stone wall. His staff fell again with a clang. Black Tom took my hand gently and I felt my body lift.
“But you...” He leaned and kissed my hand. “You I remember.” He sniffed my fingers gently, as if they were the petals of a flower. “What say ye, lass. Shall we make beautiful mischief?”
I admit it was a tempting offer. But alas, it was not to be. I could already see his face wrinkling in front of me. Streaks of gray appeared in his dark hair. I grabbed his hand. He thought I was taking it to follow him up and away to freedom, but I pulled him back. I showed him his own withering fingers.
“Don’t let it win!”
He turned his hand in front of his eyes as the wrinkles on his face grew deeper.
“Your years are catching you, Tom! You don’t have much time! You won’t make it past the Rings True. Don’t let it win. Bring it down. You escaped every prison they put you in.”
Slowly, I watched his face switch from horror to anger.
“Don’t let it win,” I urged. “Bring it down.”
He pushed past me. “Get your man to safety,” he said, as if the doctor were my manservant.
We made for the arch as quick as we could as Old Man Tom strode to the center of the floor.
“You thought you beat me,” he declared, his voice already weakening. “Didn’t you?”
He reached into the air and pulled and stones erupted from the third-floor wall. The ease of it seemed to surprise him. But then, the prison was just as old as he, and water had been seeping at the cracks for decades.
Black Tom, first inmate of Everthorn Prison, started laughing. “You thought you beat me! Hahaha!”
He reached to his left and pulled again and a column tumbled. The stones of the prison, pressed together by weight and time, began to shift. Mortar cracked, and the waterlogged earth of the bog pressed in on all sides, squeezing Everthorn as if by the throat.
“I found it!” Cerise said, running to meet us. “It’s here!”
During the war, the prison’s old coal larder was converted to “asset containment,” which is to say used for the confinement and torture of high-profile captives—warlocks and mercenaries deemed too dangerous to keep anywhere but the most secure facility in the world. However, since they couldn’t be kept with the general population, who had to remain ignorant of what was going on underneath them, a secret ingress was added to the prison. I knew of it only because I had once been asked to participate in an “interrogation.” The thought of returning to Everthorn, even as a guest, was too much for me however, and I asked my partner, the good Dr. Hunter, to go in my stead.
Cerise had kicked through damp sheet rock to reveal a three-room chamber heavy with dust and years. Nearly a foot of water had gathered inside. Stone and brick began to fall around us with splashes. Wet earth followed in clumps. In moments, we would be entombed. But the space was larger than I expected, and I wasn’t sure which hallway to take.
“Which way?” the doctor asked.
“The back,” I said in false confidence.
There were no lights that deep and it was very hard to see. I saw a set of double doors and led the others through. Inside was a wide office—or rather what had once been an office. There was barely any furniture. The few pieces that remained had been covered in once-white sheets, now a deep and moldy brown. Another grimy covering, whose tail dipped into the standing water, had been draped over an enormous painting on the far wall.
Stones continuously fell, crashing through the damp plaster ceiling. One struck the doctor’s shoulder and he grimaced and went down.
“Help him!” I told Cerise.
I yanked the sheet off the painting, which depicted the very office in which it was hung—a mirror in brush strokes and oils, absent any living occupants. It was huge, as was the gilded frame that held it. Neither could be removed, for what they held was fixed in place.
At the side of the heavy ornate frame was a keyhole into which the Master Key slipped easily, but I had to turn hard. For a moment, nothing happened.
The doctor joined Cerise at the office’s double doors. The two of them braced themselves against it. Cerise shrieked as our pursuers pushed against one of the doors, bending it.
“We can’t hold them!” the doctor yelled.
He had threaded his staff through the door handles, but since the doors opened inward, it did little but slow the slychs down. Soon it would break.
The gears in the massive picture frame shuddered and clicked as the painting stuttered to life. I stepped back as the frame extended in two directions, to the left and down. A slightly smaller frame, just as ornamented, was sheathed inside the first, and it pulled out and unfurled a larger image of the office with one addition—a door. It was in the foreground of the painting, meaning it was right in front of me, and as soon as I could, I inserted the key into the lock of the door inside the painting itself.
It went in, and I turned frantically in any direction as our barricade splintered and my friends were knocked back. We could see the creatures in flashes, which hurt our eyes like a too-bright light. The doctor scrambled out of the water and to his feet. He swung the tip of his staff back and forth.
“HURRY!”
There was an enormous crash. The room shook as the dome collapsed, and everything else with it. We were about to be buried.
The door in the painting unlocked and swung out, filling the room with light. I saw a clear blue sky and white stucco walls with a portico-lined concrete courtyard swept with pebbles and dusty earth.
“Go!”
The prison’s foundation collapsed, triggering a slip of earth. A third of the tiny island slid into the swamp, taking the outer ring’s brick encasement from under it. The massive ring fell, forcing its far side into the sky. The great casting of silver broke free, and for one brief moment, shone bright in the overcast sky. Then it snapped.
The chime could be heard for miles. For those inside, it was clear and deafening. We doubled over, clutching our ears. But it seemed to cause our pursuers special difficulty. For several seconds, they were visible and writhing.
“Jesus...” The doctor breathed, seeing them for the first time.
Cerise stumbled forward and ran through the door. The doctor followed, robes dragging in the water. I stepped through behind him and the two of us swung the door closed.
But we didn’t make it.