Ms. Berkley was next to me, leaning on my shoulder. “Pay attention,” she said.
I snapped out of it and looked down at Lionel. He was sighing more than breathing and staring at the floor.
“If he dies,” said Ms. Berkley, “you inherit the spell of the Last Triangle.”
“That’s right,” Lionel said. Blood came from his mouth with the words. “Wherever you are at dawn, that will be the center of your world.” He laughed. “For the rest of your life you will live in a triangle within the rancid town of Fishmere.”
Ms. Berkley found the gun and picked it up. She went to the bed and grabbed one of the pillows.
“Is that true?” I said and started to panic.
Lionel nodded, laughing. Ms. Berkley took up the gun again and then wrapped the pillow around it. She walked over next to Lionel, crouched down, and touched the pillow to the side of his head.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Ms. Berkley squinted one eye and steadied her left arm with her right hand while keeping the pillow in place.
“What else?” said Lionel, spluttering blood bubbles. “What needs to be done.”
The pillow muffled the sound of the shot somewhat as feathers flew everywhere. Lionel dropped onto his side without magic, the hole in his head smoking. I wasn’t afraid anyone would hear. There wasn’t another soul for three blocks. Ms. Berkley checked his pulse. “The Last Triangle is mine now,” she said. “I have to get home by dawn.” She got dressed while I stood in the hallway.
I don’t remember leaving Lionel’s building, or passing the park or Maya’s Newsstand. We were running through the night, across town, as the sky lightened in the distance. Four blocks from home, Ms. Berkley gave out and started limping. I picked her up and, still running, carried her the rest of the way. We were in the kitchen, the tea whistle blowing, when the birds started to sing and the sun came up.
She poured the tea for us and said, “I thought I could talk Lionel out of his plan, but he wasn’t the same person anymore. I could see the magic’s like a drug; the more you use it, the more it pushes you out of yourself and takes over.”
“Was he out to kill me or you?” I asked.
“He was out to get himself killed. I’d promised to do the job for him before you showed up. He knew we were onto him and he tried to fool us with the train-station scam, but once he heard my voice that night, he said he knew he couldn’t go through with it. He just wanted to see me once more, and then I was supposed to cut his throat.”
“You would have killed him?” I said.
“I did.”
“You know, before I knifed him?”
“He told me the phantoms and fetches that were after him knew where he was, and it was only a matter of days before they caught up with him.”
“What was it exactly he did?”
“He wouldn’t say, but he implied that it had to do with loving me. And I really think he thought he did.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
Ms. Berkley interrupted me. “You’ve got to get out of town,” she said. “When they find Lionel’s body, you’ll be one of the usual suspects, what with your wandering around drinking beer and smoking pot in public.”
“Who told you that?” I said.
“Did I just fall off the turnip truck yesterday?”
Ms. Berkley went to her office and returned with a roll of cash for me. I didn’t even have time to think about leaving, to miss my cot and the weights, and the meals. The cab showed up and we left. She had her map of town with the triangles on it and had already drawn a new one—its center, her kitchen. We drove for a little ways and then she told the cab driver to pull over and wait. We were in front of a closed-down gas station on the edge of town. She got out and I followed her.
“I paid the driver to take you two towns over to Willmuth. There’s a bus station there. Get a ticket and disappear,” she said.
“What about you? You’re stuck in the triangle.”
“I’m bounded in a nutshell,” she said.
“Why’d you take the spell?”
“You don’t need it. You just woke up. I have every confidence that I’ll be able to figure a way out of it. It’s amazing what you can find on the Internet.”
“A magic spell?” I said.
“Understand this,” she said. “Spells are made to be broken.” She stepped closer and reached her hands to my shoulders. I leaned down. She kissed me on the forehead. “Not promises, though,” she said and turned away, heading home.
“Ms. Berkley,” I called after her.
“Stay clean,” she yelled without looking.
Back in the cab, I said, “Willmuth,” and leaned against the window. The driver started the car, and we sailed through an invisible boundary, into the world.
——
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, and The Shadow Year. His short fiction has been published in three collections: The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, and The Drowned Life. His fiction has won the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons and teaches literature and writing at Brookdale Community College.
Laird Barron
—
The leaves were turning.
Lorna fueled the car at a mom-and-pop gas station in the town of Poger Rock, population 190. Poger Rock comprised a forgotten, moribund collection of buildings tucked into the base of a wooded valley a stone’s throw south of Olympia. The station’s marquee was badly peeled and she couldn’t decipher its title. A tavern called Mooney’s occupied a gravel island half a block down, across the two-lane street from the post office and the grange. Next to a dumpster, a pair of mongrel dogs were locked in coitus, patiently facing opposite directions, Dr. Doolittle’s Pushmi-pullyu for the twenty-first century. Other than vacant lots overrun by bushes and alder trees and a lone antiquated traffic light at the intersection that led out of town—either toward Olympia, or deeper into cow country—there wasn’t much else to look at. She hobbled in to pay and ended up grabbing a few extra supplies—canned peaches and fruit cocktail, as there wasn’t any refrigeration at the cabin. She snagged three bottles of bourbon gathering dust on a low shelf.
The clerk noticed her folding crutch and the soft cast on her left leg. She declined his offer to carry her bags. After she loaded the Subaru, she ventured into the tavern and ordered a couple rounds of tequila. The tavern was dim and smoky and possessed a frontier vibe, with antique flintlocks over the bar, and stuffed and mounted deer heads staring from the walls. A great black wolf snarled atop a dais near the entrance. The bartender watched her drain the shots raw. He poured her another on the house and said, “You’re staying at the Haugstad place, eh?”
She hesitated, the glass partially raised, then set the drink on the counter and limped away without answering. She assayed the long, treacherous drive up to the cabin, chewing over the man’s question, the morbid implication of his smirk. She got the drift. Horror movies and pulp novels made the conversational gambit infamous—life imitating art. Was she staying at the Haugstad place indeed. Like hell she’d take that bait. The townsfolk were strangers to her and she wondered how the bartender knew where she lived. Obviously, the hills had eyes.