The guards saw this. They pointed guns at me.
I raised my head and growled at them.
They dropped their guns and fled.
Later…
I’m not sure how much later.
I dropped Bambi at the E.R. of the closest hospital. I walked her in. She was catatonic. She had some minor burns from drops of molten gold. She couldn’t speak, and the drugs were still in her system. I left her with nurses who tried to get me to tell them who she was, who I was, what had happened.
I walked away and found my car and drove back to my office.
That was six hours ago.
I showered in the tiny bathroom, then took the bottle of Pappy Van Winkle's 23-Year-Old bourbon back to my desk, poured a big glass, and drank it slowly. When it was gone I refilled it. And refilled it again.
Around midnight I fished for the card I’d found on my floor and laid it on my desk blotter.
Limbus, Inc.
Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?
Call us. We employ. 1-800-555-0606
How lucky do you feel?
How lucky did I feel?
Hard to say.
Hard to really know what to think.
I’d fought something that shouldn’t exist. On the other hand, to most people I was something that shouldn’t exist. Hang both of those on the wall and look at them.
Moloch.
Jesus.
But with all of that, there was something that hung burning in my mind.
After I’d let the wolf out, I’d looked at the faces of the sixteen murdered women. Those images were indelibly recorded in my mind. Every single detail. They were all strangers, women I’d only ever seen as skinned meat.
Except.
There was one face, one woman. A little more beautiful than all the others.
It was the kind of face that you read about. The kind of face that might have looked down at you from a movie screen if she’d been allowed to live, to grow up, to become what she’d wanted to be. Pale skin with pores so small it looked like she was carved out of marble; with good bones and full lips and only a single visible flaw. If you could call it a flaw. A small crescent-shaped scar on her cheek near the left corner of her mouth.
I thought about that face. It had been on a poster, screaming down at me, dying.
Maybe the cops would be able to match it against one of the sixteen bodies in morgues across the country. That scar, though, wouldn’t be there. It had been stolen with her skin.
But I’d seen it.
Yeah, I’d seen that scar.
I reached out and touched the Limbus card. I traced each digit of the phone number.
If I called it, I wondered who would answer.
I wondered if anyone would answer.
I sipped some more of my bourbon and wondered about a lot of things.
My cell phone lay on the blotter next to the card. I looked at it.
I poured myself another drink.
And another.
Epilogue
It happened just as he had come to understand that it must. As Matthew turned the final page, as he left behind tales of sacrifices, of ancient gods, of unimaginable futures and beings that span time and space, it fell, fluttering almost, down to the table below, landing with the audible flop of thin, cream-colored card stock. Where had it hidden in the book he’d just read every page of? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was what it said on the front. There, printed in thick black letters that were illuminated by the day’s first rays of sunlight, was a name and a slogan that he didn’t have to read to know.
Limbus, Inc.
Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?
We employ.
How lucky do you feel?
And that was it. No phone number. No email. No address. Nothing. He didn’t need it. Matthew had only a moment to comprehend the words when the bell rang and the door to his shop opened.
The man stood in the doorway, outlined by the dawning glow of a Boston morning. He stood there on the threshold. He did not move forward. And he did not speak. It took a moment for Matthew to realize he was waiting on an invitation.
“Come in,” he said, stuttering.
The man stepped out of the light, and somehow he was precisely what Matthew had expected. A proud face, marked by sharp features and an air of absolute authority. He wore a suit, nothing too fancy. Nothing that would stand out.
“Mr. Sellers,” he said, “I am Recruiter Hawthorne. And I have a job for you.”
As he crossed the short distance that separated the two men, Matthew shook his head.
“I don’t understand.”
Hawthorne smiled. “Ah, Mr. Sellers, let us not play games with one another. You know who I am, and you know for whom I work. I see you even have our business card.”
Matthew glanced from the card to Hawthorne and shuddered.
“One of our other employees visited you yesterday. He left you that book.” Hawthorne said, pointing down to the tattered manuscript that still sat on Matthew’s desk.
“Templeton was an employee of yours?” Matthew said, truly not understanding. The frail man who had come into his store only a day before was terrified of something. Now Matthew knew what that something was.
“Of a sort, yes. We are all workmen in this world, don’t you think? And if we do not always know exactly what the work entails — or even who pulls the strings behind the scenes — it is no great matter. I believe he presented you our offer, did he not?”
“Your offer? You mean you want this book published?”
Hawthorne reached down and rubbed his hand across the shabby cover of the manuscript. “It surprises you, does it? I suppose I can understand that. You think that we wish to hide our work from the world. Yes, it is true, I suppose — what we do, we tend to do in secret. But we do not wish to hide in the shadows. The whispers of our existence have grown too loud, and the curiosity of mankind is never satisfied. People will seek us out, and when they do there is no telling what trouble they may cause. No, Mr. Sellers, we hide best when we hide in the light. Make the story of Limbus one of fiction, one of myth, and one will no more look for us than they would the lands of Narnia or Middle-earth. But first, we need a publisher, Mr. Sellers. That is our offer of employment to you.”
“And what makes you think I would agree to that?”
Hawthorne looked around the shop, sweeping with his hand as if to include it all in one great gesture. “This is your dream, is it not? You built this with your own hands? And now you are in danger of losing it. I offer you a goldmine, sir. A book that will sell millions of copies. A story that will make you rich and perhaps even famous. The job is made for the man, Mr. Sellers. You are the only person who we believe is right for this employment.”
“Are the stories true?” Matthew asked.
The corner of Hawthorne’s mouth crept up into the hint of a smile. “To a measure. They are visions, you see. Visions of things that have been, things that are, and things that are yet to be. They are truth, to the extent that truth exists in this world.”
Hawthorne removed a single sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket and placed it on the desk.
“Our offer is simple, Mr. Sellers. We pay you a retainer fee to put you back on your feet. That is yours to keep, as are all the profits from sales of the work. We ask only for your discretion and a promise never to reveal from whom you received the book. Do we have an agreement?”
With a flick of his wrist, Hawthorne produced a pen, placing it on the desk. Matthew stared hard into Hawthorne’s unflinching eyes. He glanced from the pen to the manuscript to that single sheet of paper. And then he made his choice.
About the Authors
Anne C. Petty is the author of three horror/dark-fantasy novels, a Florida Gothic suspense series co-written with P.V. LeForge, three books of literary criticism, and many essays on writing, mythology, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Recent short fiction includes her award-winning story “Blade,” and the novella “The Veritas Experience,” published in The Best Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction of 2009. Anne is an active member of the Horror Writers Association, the International Thriller Writers, and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. She is a founding member of the Tallahassee Writers Association and has been a presenter at writers’ conferences and pop-culture conventions such as Dragon-Con in Atlanta. In 2006, she founded Kitsune Books, a small press specializing in literary fiction and book-length poetry collections. She has a Ph.D. in English from Florida State University, specializing in Mythology & Folklore. www.annepetty.com/