Ashes and Entropy Page 14

  When the ninth voice joined in, I was shaking. By the fourteenth I was slumping against the warm bright walls of the deep tunnels, shuddering with ecstasy, horrified by myself, my teeth digging into my tongue slightly. I watched myself from within the music.

  The choir approached. I felt it through the walls against my skin, felt it rolling towards me, inhuman. I rested my eyes for a moment and saw that after-image still burned into them, of the hanged woman and the wheel of fire. When I opened them I saw the shadow of the choir on the wall.

  The choir propelled itself into the dim light, and the music swelled—truly swelled, something alive and joyful. Its tongues pushed it forward up the tunnel, rolling the ball of singing flesh to me, trailing saliva. The choir of the underground paused before me, a perfect circle three times my height, its patchwork of mouths alternately singing and grinning cheerfully, drool oozing into the crevices of the tunnels. Their tongues ran up my arms, feeling me out. Between blinks I saw the image of my friend, hanged and bloated and fading from my eyelid. The spell of the music broke too late.

  The tongues snaked up my neck, up my chin, over my lips. I pushed back against the wall, pushed against the music, watched the mouths twist into a patchwork of frowns. The tongues pulled my mouth open and held me, their drool running into my mouth.

  This was how it had happened to her, and this is how it happened to me. Even with the first few drops of the choir's honey, I could feel the change coming like the edge of an orgasm. It is nearly here. My flesh swells with the new mouths. The tongues are unfurling. Soon all I will do is sing and smile. Perhaps the memory of my friend will disappear too...but I think not.

  All of my mouths will sing dirges.

  AMITY IN BLOOM

  by Jessica McHugh

  Ma's taken a tumble, and she's screaming for help at the bottom of the stairs.

  The other kids look for me to take the lead, but I ain't budging, so they ain't budging either. We hate the yowling bitch, God's honest, but the reason most of us stay on the top step is because we know Ma's not alone down there.

  The devil has roots in the cellar.

  I've heard its voice my entire life. In the bowels of the dilapidated row house on Amity Street, it sings from the misshapen husk of a girl named Rose I ain't never seen. Rumors say she's hairless and limbless and red as the flames of Hell, but that's all grapevine truth. Only Ma and the men who pay to brave the dark are allowed to see the warbling wretch.

  The devil's quiet now, though, and after two hours of wailing, Ma's gone quiet too.

  The beastly nursemaid we call Ma raised us up, but there ain't nothing maternal about her. She runs our little house with an iron fist and dugs that sway like white flags, and the robes that hang off her massive hump make her look like a walking pile of laundry as she hobbles up and down the cellar stairs, grunting at the painful boils scattered over her body. A former bawd in her own right, Ma came to New York for a better life and don't seem at all pleased she wound up den mother to eleven bastards when the real action's in Miss Jennie's elegant boarding house across the street.

  The Madam of Amity keeps no less than ten girls ranging from milky blondes to dark-skinned beauties that decorate the row house windows like drops of ink in water. The notorious guidebook known as The Gentleman's Directory lauds Miss Jennie's establishment as an emporium of love for which the procurer spares neither expense nor labor. French mirrors and rosewood furniture make it a palace of beauty where gentlemen are so lavished upon that a night with Miss Jennie's girl is said to possess a man forever.

  Her girls are well-tended too, trimmed in glittering finery and plump as autumn sows. When Jennie's workers crave sweets, they get sweets. When they want jewels, they get jewels. And when they conceive on the job, they're given tip-top looking after.

  We bastards, on the other hand, ain't treated so nice. Living a stone's throw from Miss Jennie's brothel, we're confined to our rundown quarters, forbidden to ask which big house whore squirted us into existence, forbidden to even knock on the big house door till we're sixteen.

  That's tomorrow for me. One more sleep till I beg to join Miss Jennie's covey. One more sleep till I find out if I'm whoring for life or starving to death. I wish I had better choices, but that ain't the hand I got dealt, and feeling sorry for myself ain't gonna change it. Besides, a bad hand can still win the game, and no busted old bawd on the cellar floor is gonna fuck up my chances now.

  “Someone's plucking the ribbon!” Bonnie shouts from her spot at the front window, and we rush to ogle the cove on the rainy stoop of the big house.

  When he pulls Miss Jennie's bell, the women vanish from their windows as if tied to the chime. It reels them back from the glass, through the halls, and down the stairs to the door opening a shaft of light into the Greenwich gloom.

  When the man bows, Miss Jennie Creagh consumes the glowing entryway like a candlesnuffer made flesh. She has a strange way of commanding the Amity Street shadows to lengthen, widen, and join the dark mien that oozes from her presence. Her hair hangs loose, a veil that blends into the rest of her adornments—every inch gray save for the massive rose pin at the crux of her heavers. Her body isn't bulgy like Ma's, but she looks bigger somehow, like an angry cat puffing itself up for a fight. Her face don't say “fight,” though. It it says “play,” and eventually, the fellow will get his chance. But not yet. Miss Jennie makes him wait—makes them all wait—in the shitty little house across the way.

  Men with certain cravings don't like being told to wait, and they sure don't like waiting in a broken down row with bordello bastards. In short, we gotta amuse like a fuckhouse without being a fuckhouse, and the next best thing, Miss Jennie decreed, was a bonafide freak show

  Not many bonafide freaks in our lot, though. We got two harelip kids and a girl with a purple pox covering half her face. We even got a girl with stumps for arms. She flaps 'em like wings and jigs around the parlor while the riflers clap and stomp and toss coins she can't never catch. But the rest of us is pure gaff. We paste oats and hair on our faces and bind each other's bodies till we don't look human—they like that, the gentlemen—but we ain't nothing compared to the headliner. What are simple monsters like us when the devil's singing in our cellar?

  As the man starts over, the kids are frantic, sniveling and gnawing their nails. Ma's supposed to answer the door and lead the gentleman about the show before taking him down the devil's throat, but with her lumped at the bottom of the stairs, there's only one option.

  “Call me 'Ma,'” I tell them. “Keep your heads and get gaffed like you would any other day. I'll handle the gent.”

  A normal girl would be shitting in her boots right now, but as I unbind my splayed fingers and remove the beginnings of my “Seal Girl” get-up, there's not a soul in New York could mistake me for being normal.

  A freckled girl named Mary stands in my way, her face as tight as a tabby's ass. “We should tell Miss Jennie. She wouldn't like this.”

  “She'd like losing a customer less.” I dig the Siamese Twin bindings out of the gaff basket and toss them at Mary's puckered gob. “You and Patty get yourselves right.”

  “I don't want to be a twin again. The straps bruised me up and down last time, and I don't even look like Patty. There weren't a single man who bought us sharing the same skin.”

  “It's not you they're buying, darling.” I pinch the twelve year old's chin and sneer. “You got four years before you knock on that big house door and beg for a bed. Take that time and get agreeable, or you won't be worth more than a quick upright in the Bowery.”

  She pulls away, scowling. “Pinky was agreeable. She was going to be the finest gooseberry pudding in the Points, remember? I doubt agreeable's got much to do with it.”

  I don't want to admit the bitch is right, so I tell her to shut her bonebox and tie herself to Patty. Frankly, Pinky's dismissal is still a shock for most of us. We littles thought she'd be a natural addition to the boarding house. I helped her make the dress she wor
e the morning of her sixteenth birthday. It was as close as any of us would get to a coming out party, so we lived in those moments long as we could. Dressed in frill and violets and gloves she’d nicked from Lord & Taylor, she stood as prim and perfect a cotillion girl as I'd ever seen. That’s how I remember her: hopeful, daring, refusing to believe she'd ever be cast into a sunrise gutter.

  I've seen her since, passed her in the Bowery a year ago after her rejection. She was the breadth of a wilted cornstalk. Leaning against a barbershop, Pinky hiked her tattered dress and flashed her stained thighs at the passersby. Drawing closer, I realized she was still wearing her birthday gown. This faded violet, this would-be debutante, was a rag of her former self in long greasy sleeves and gray gloves. You wouldn't find her name in The Gentleman's Directory, but that didn't mean she was closed for business.

  ~

  Pinky licked her lips as if I'd pick her out of all the star-gazers in the Bowery, then squinted at me like a moon-eyed hen. “Polly?” She stumbled toward me with a filthy grin. “That is you, ain't it? God but you're a lovely thing now." Wobbling past me into the alley, she mumbled, "I wonder how long that'll last.” She crouched to piss, barely able to keep her boots out of the puddle. When she finished, she dug into a nearby pile of garbage and withdrew a half-drunk bottle of spirits. “It won't, you know,” she continued with the bottle at her lips. “Whether you wind up in the boarding house or not, those looks'll leave you flat. Beauty's good for bedding, but don't expect a wedding.”

  “What happened to you, Pinky? Why didn't Miss Jennie take you in?”

  She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, but the garment made her lips slimier. “A valuable thing, that information. You got money for it?”

  “For the grocer. Ma will notice if I don't get everything on the list.”

  “Say someone eased it from ya. Some jilter or cross-cove on the road.” When she unfolded her hand, I noticed the torn gray lace was tinged with other colors. Scabby sores on her palms had dyed the gloves pink and sickly gold. With a sigh, I covered an unsightly boil with a quarter, and when she squeezed it tight I swear claret squirted out between her knuckles.

  She pocketed the coin and cast her gaze at her piss-sprinkled boots. “I don't know why she rejected me.”

  “You dizzy cow, I paid you!”

  “I'm being square. She measured every part of me on that stoop. Out and in, she read me like a wise man reads the Bible, with worship and doubt, and declared me unworthy. But I was intact, Polly, I promise you. I was bright and clean as Sunday morning. Now look at me.”

  I didn't want to. The longer I stared, the more pus and grime I saw. Not just on her hands, either. There were greasy spots on her bodice, getting bigger all the while. Not blood, really. Wetter, thicker, bulging-like.

  I averted my eyes, and she cackled, spitting out a wad of pink phlegm. “I don't blame you. And this ain't even the worst.” She glanced side to side. “I usually hide this, but we were family once, weren't we? The lot of us gaffing and dreaming we'd be in the big house together, free and easy and set for life. Well...”

  She unbuttoned her sleeve and rolled it up, inch by inch revealing a slimy arm consumed by crusty scales.

  "...I ain't a gaff no more, sister."

  The patches resembled wet scabs, but they weren't rooted to her skin. Thick as overgrown toenails, the revolting scales drifted through Pinky's soggy flesh like beef cracklings swimming on a sea of boiling fat. It got messier the higher she lifted the sleeve, and when she pulled it away from her armpit, boggy black meat opened in the crease like a dead cur's reeking mouth.

  Her dogged stink was doubled when she parted her teeth and stuck out her tongue. It was discolored, and the surrounding flesh was peppered with sores, but the real problem hung farther back. The fleshy ball dangling down the back of her throat was riddled with glistening black pimples, and when she exhaled, the growths opened like rosebuds dribbling milk.

  Swallowing hard, she wiped her eyes. “Miss Jennie saw it, whatever it is. It was peaches and cream before that—I had my foot in the door—but this thing in my throat ruined me. I ain't had nothing but shit luck since.” She gazed up at me, eyes welling and hands in prayer. “Take me back with you, Polly. You can sneak me in, hide me in the cellar with the devil if needs be.”

  I couldn't and she knew it, but she was mad with desperation and grabbed my wrist. Black pimples appeared like spots of char on her skin and erupted with white pus when she increased her grip. Her soggy skin made it easy to pull free, but panels of her scaly flesh came with me. I fell backward and landed in her piss puddle, which was slightly less disgusting than the slimy viscera fingerprinting my wrist.

  Inside, pulling free wasn't easy at all. This was a girl who taught me how to braid my hair., who once took a beating from Ma in my place. If this is what comes of a clever girl like Pinky, maybe I should be shitting in my boots.

  She sang Rose's song as I walked away, perfectly recited as if the devil itself had hold of her wagging tongue.

  ~

  What I wouldn't give for that song to fill the little house now. Puzzling as it's been all my life, the foreign verses and minor keys have been a comfort in times like these. As the man slogs through the mud to our front door, I pray for Rose to cry out. I pray for Ma to spring up from the cellar floor and go about her work escorting the gent. The harridan could beat me to bits for leaving her down there, and I'd thank her for every bruise as long I can go back to playing the Seal Girl.

  But that's not how it goes. If prayers did fuck-all, I wouldn't need 'em right now.

  The gentleman knocks, and the kids nearly jump out their gaffs. I assure them it's just another day with another sad cove, but as I twist the doorknob, my nerves stew in my belly like last week's offal.

  Exhaling slowly, I open the door and greet the gent with more sing-song pluck than Ma could muster at her lushiest. The man's eyes narrow, and he scans my body. It's the first time a customer hasn't goggled me in puzzlement or revulsion—though I'm feeling both now—and he removes his top hat with a crooked grin as he enters the little house.

  After nearly sixteen years, Ma's introductory speech is branded on my brain, but the words fall like dry nuggets of horse shit from my trembling lips. “Welcome, good sir, to the land between Heaven and Hell, where freaks and fancy run wild, and—“

  He holds up his hand. “Save it, darling. I'm here for the devil.”

  It's what I'd feared. I hoped to sneak down to the cellar and take care of Ma while the gent was exploring the oddities, but as he hangs up his wet ulster overcoat and gestures for me to lead on, it’s clear he's a man on a mission.

  When I turn around, his hand falls upon my lower back, and he chuckles at my flinching. Raising a candelabra betrays me further with trembling fire and dashed ribbons of smoke. Looking back at the gent, I find his expression crinkled with mockery.

  “Are you cold, miss? Would you care for my coat?”

  “It's not the temperature that chills me, sir. I shiver from the whispers of the devil-girl beneath.”

  “I don't hear anything.”

  “You will, sir. Lowly things like me hear her whisperings, but she saves her song for you. Only a righteous man can make the devil sing like an angel, and those who defy are laid low. You may yet see the truth of it, sir, cramped on the cellar floor.”

  A few kids give me a thumbs up from the parlor, and I exhale so gratefully I almost lose a flame. I've never touched so much as a toe to anything below the top step—been ages since I even toyed with the idea—but down I go, orbed in candlelight on the creaking steps of Hell.

  A cool, earthy breeze rushes up the stairs like a band of ghosts fleeing for safety. It snuffs one of the candle flames, and I temporarily lose my balance, bracing myself on the dry stone wall. The cellar's throat is cobwebbed and infested with insects that move too quickly for the light to identify, but halfway down, the dark gullet shocks us with illumination. Mirrored panels on either side of the staircase catch a
nd bounce the candlelight into our eyes. Wincing, I continue on, but the man stops, staring intensely into one of the mirrors.

  “Sir?”

  He grunts but doesn't look at me. He trudges to the other side of the staircase and gazes into the mirror there. On each step, each wall, one by one, he looks deep into his reflection like there's something hidden in his face, just out of focus, faintly visible beneath his skin.

  I'm only three steps from the bottom now, where the mirrors turn the corner and cover the cellar walls. On the ground level, I spot Ma's reflection before her actual body, limp on the floor beside a stone pedestal.

  The gentleman is still several stairs up, goggling his smooth white face. While he draws closer and closer to the mirror, I shuffle to Ma.

  She's flat on her back, gob hanging loose as a trout's, but she looks younger as a corpse. There's something innocent, almost apologetic, like death has ironed out the angry creases lording her forehead, scrubbed away the envious grime of her station, and left her swaddled in the soft skin of childhood that trauma so often leathers.

  I wonder if she's someone's mother. I wonder if she has friends. Shit, I wonder what her real name is. And I hate myself for not wondering before.

  Her eyelids look closed, but the candlelight catches a glimmer of wet ivory when I'm at her feet. I illuminate her face and peer at her exposed eyes. It's as if all color's drained from them, the pale irises barely distinguishable from her pupils.

  Rose's voice rings out, and I drop the candelabra. Retrieving it, I lift the remaining flame—and so do my many reflections. In the mirrored dark, I'm surrounded by corpses and candles and the devil-girl's song, but there ain't no devil I see. It's the usual tune and the same old words, but they strike me now like water droplets on a hot griddle, searing me so deep that when I am old—if I am old—I'm certain Rose's song will be the last scars the worms eat.