"Oh." He realized he'd been saying that a lot. "I'm Theo Vilmos."
"Fair play to you. My name is Applecore."
"Applecore?"
"Don't start."
"But I just…"
"Don't start, fella, or you'll be wearing the rest of this tea."
He stared at her, alarmed but also amused at the thought of being attacked by an angry fairy. Then again, maybe it wasn't funny — maybe she could turn him into something unpleasant, a toad or a pea under a mattress. At the very least, wouldn't she sour the milk or something?
Of course, the milk in my refrigerator's probably sour already.
"I didn't mean to offend you," he said out loud. "I was only surprised because… well, because I don't know anyone with a name like that."
She gave him a stern look, then softened somewhat. "It's not my fault. I was the last born."
"What do you mean?"
"We're a big family, the Apples. Got twenty-seven brothers and sisters, I have. Seed, Skin, Pie, Pip, Doll, Tart, Tree, Wood, Bark, Blossom, even Butter, just to name a few — all the good names were taken by the time I came along. 'The mistake,' Ma and Da always called me, but it was in good fun. But there was bugger all choice left for names."
"Ah." It wasn't very clever, but it was better than "Oh." A little. "So… so what brings you here? Not that you aren't welcome," he added hastily. "But we don't get many fairies around here."
"And with these prices, I'm not surprised." She showed him a weary smile, the first from her he'd seen. "Sorry. Old joke, that." She tilted her little head to look at him carefully. "You really don't know?"
"Is it something to do with my great-uncle's book?"
"Not that I've heard. The old fella who sent me didn't tell me much. Apparently he's not the only one interested, but… Someone's keeping an eye on you."
"Someone? Someone like who?"
"Shite, man, I don't know! But the old fella's worried about it, so he sent me to fetch you. Don't ask me, ask him."
"Old fella… ?"
She put down her tea and cocked her head as though listening for something.
"You said 'old fella.' What 'old fella'?"
"Tansy, his name is. He's a sort of doctor-fella from one of the important families."
"But who is he? Where is he?"
Applecore shook her head slowly, distracted. Suddenly, he thought he knew what she was noticing — a sharp stench, sourly rotten. "God, what is that?" he asked. "A skunk?"
"Something's outside."
He stared at her, slow to catch on, but his nervous system knew it before he did: his heart was already going triple-speed. "Outside… ?" The smell was painfully strong now. His eyes were beginning to water.
She was up and hovering, her wings blurred almost to invisibility, making the air hum like the propellor of a toy plane. She shouted something in a high clear voice, words in a language he did not recognize, then turned to him, clearly frightened despite the attempt to keep her tiny features hard and expressionless. "It'll take a little time to open again — who knew we'd need it so fast?"
"Open… ?" It seemed like he hadn't finished a sentence in hours.
Something bumped the front door, one, two, three times. Theo was so bewildered that he actually reached for the knob.
"By the Trees!" she shouted, buzzing up close to his face, fists clenched. "Are you completely thick? Don't open that!"
"But there's somebody there…" Something shoved the door again, hard enough to make it creak, as though a huge animal had leaned against it. The stink was even more powerful. He reached out and flicked on the outside light, then put his eye to the peephole.
He was actually relieved to see the green duffel coat in the glare of the porch bulb, the slouched but obviously human shape huddled against the door. He could see a matted tangle of curly hair, a sheen of dark-skinned scalp and forehead. Some old black guy, a transient…
"It's all right," he called to the fairy. "It's just…"
Then the figure's head lolled back. Its jaw was broken, dangling flat against its chest. The blind eyes were not just milky-white, but like poached eggs were beginning to collapse and run out of the sockets. Theo staggered away from the door, his heart frightened straight up into his mouth so that for a moment he could not even draw a breath.
Applecore buzzed to the peephole, then swam backward in the air. "Bad," she shrilled. "This is bad!"
"Wh… what… ?"
"You don't want to know. Where is that double-cursed door?"
He didn't know what she meant. It was pretty obvious the door was right there, and hell was on the other side of it. But this had to be another nightmare, all of it, however real it seemed — that was the only explanation. He was locked in sleep — maybe he was even comatose, dying, limp on the cabin floor with his mind showing weird movies like a projector running in an empty theater. There couldn't be anything in the real world like any of this…
But if she was part of a dream, Applecore did not know it. She sped around the room like a fly in a bottle, her tiny shape little more than a shadow. "It will get in the easiest way it can. If it has to break in, we may have time. Are there any other doors, man?"
She was on about doors again and Theo couldn't stand it anymore. He sank to a crouch on the floor and clutched his splitting head. The stench was terrible, as though the thing were right in the room with them…
"The bathroom," he said, dragging himself upright again. "Oh, Christ, I think the window's open. There's just a screen…" He lurched across the room and pulled the bathroom door open. His nostrils were scorched by a blast of ammonia and sulfur.
The thing in the duffel coat was pushing at the screen. Even as Theo watched in stunned disbelief, it began to come through, the rotting meat of its hand forced through the netting like hamburger through a grinder. It stopped, impeded by bone. The wormy strands of the fingers writhed and groped a little farther forward, then the screen ripped out of the frame.
Theo shrieked and stumbled back into the main room. The bulky shape came through the high bathroom window and fell to the floor with a complicated, wet noise, then dragged itself upright. Theo snatched up his guitar and held it by the neck, trying to keep his legs under him as the stinking thing shambled out into the light.
It wasn't even a rotting corpse. Nothing that simple.
It stood, swaying, a thing of stinking tatters. Bits of bone and rags and greasy flesh and even curls of newspaper protruded from the torn pants and coat. The left foot was bloody-ragged and moldering, but where its right foot should be two smaller feet seemed to have been smashed together as a makeshift, one of them still wearing a filthy woman's shoe. One of its hands had been mangled by the screen, but was already growing back together. The other arm, raised now beside the collapsed face, did not end in a hand at all, but in the mummified corpse of a cat. Its skeletal jaws opened and closed like clutching fingers as it extended toward him.
Theo screamed and swung his Gibson as hard as he could. Part of the thing's mouth and nose flew off and it staggered but it did not fall. Air rattled in the hole of its throat. The gaping, crooked jaw twitched, tried to close, but most of the muscles were gone. As the duffel coat gaped open he saw that a suppurating hole in its chest had been bandaged over with a shredded mask of flesh — something that had once been a human face. Theo felt himself growing dizzy, saw blackness close in on him.
Suddenly the fairy was there, a winged glimmer between him and the monstrosity. The room grew brighter, until it was full of flickering light. He could even see Applecore's face, hard as a cameo brooch.
"Go on!" she shrilled, then flew at the thing's head like an angry sparrow. It leaned away from her, hissing, and swung its arm. The cat-hand clacked, the teeth just failing to close on her. "It's open, the door's open! Go through!"