She gave in; she closed her eyes. A million thoughts whirled through her
mind – I've been seeing ghosts ever since I got here. I'm about to see a
few, or a lot, more, but I can handle this because I am a Southern woman.
The South is haunted. I moved to one of the most haunted cities in the
South, if not the world, where my family has a long history and my
grandmother can tell ghost stories that happened to her "daddy's people" or
her "mama's people" that will turn your hair white.
When she paused to take a mental breath, the voices began, as if they had been waiting patiently for her full attention. They were arguing quietly, but in earnest as if they hoped not to be overheard. When Augusta tried to open her eyes, she couldn't. She couldn't move. She couldn't see and she couldn't move, which was somehow more horrifying than what the Blue Lady had shown her in the paintings.
She felt helpless and nauseatingly vulnerable. It was as though she wasn't there at all.
The voices were that of a man and woman; Augusta supposed they belonged to the man and woman she had seen in the paintings.
The woman's voice was frantic and pleading; she was upset to the point of hysteria.
"I can't do that," she wailed, "I swear to God I cannot! Joshua, please believe me... Please don't ask me to do that."
The man, apparently named Joshua, responded coldly, venomously. "You can and you will. This is something you should have taken care of before it got to be a problem, anyhow."
The woman dissolved into tears, weeping hopelessly.
"Deanna, look at you already. You're beginning to look like a zeppelin, and people are asking questions. You know as well as I do that Carl and you can't produce a child together and God knows you've tried enough times. What will people say as you get bigger and bigger?"
"But you're asking me to kill!" sobbed the woman, Deanna, "I can't do that. I'm sorry this happened, but I can't tear this life out of me. It didn't ask to come into being."
There was the sound of a stinging slap, then a long moment of silence.
"I am a physician, and I know every other physician in this county and they all know me. And we all know that my brother might as well be rutting with a horse for all the good his semen does. If, six months or so from now you squirt out a bouncing baby bastard, people will talk and word will spread, and when it spreads my name and my family's name won't be worth horse dung in the street."
"But I could go to Springfield to have the baby!" Desperation disguised as hope, interrupted by sniffling. "Or Bloomington or, if it's ready by then, the new hospital you and that Italian fellow are building here in Silent Hill! We could say there are complications the hospital in Ashfield can't cope with and no one would have to know. It won't matter what the doctors have said about Carl.
"Things like this happen all the time – husbands and wives who aren't supposed to be able to have children do have them!"
The man's voice was tinged with disgust now. "Just because you want something to happen doesn't mean it can or will. You can't go somewhere else to give birth just because you want to. And even if you did go to Springfield, or to my new hospital, people would still want to know why. There is no other choice – you cannot have this child."
"I had hoped nothing would come of it," she said, quieter now as if dazed.
"But something did come of it. And I have a reputation to think of, and a family name. Surely you know and benefit from the fact that the Blackwells are a leading family in Toluca County."
"I DO KNOW IT, DAMN YOU!" she screamed with vehemence, then quietly said, "But I don't care. I will not commit murder to protect your precious family honor. I don't care if you all cast me out and leave me penniless for the rest of my life. I don't care if I have to sell myself in an alley to feed and clothe myself and this child – I will have this child and I will raise it, love it, and watch it grow."
There was fury in her voice, like a stick of dynamite, lethal and only wanting a spark to ignite it. "And I will raise this child to be a better person than you. I will make sure it knows its father was nothing more than a rutting hog and that it should do all it can to ensure it won't grow up to be like you."
Another slap – but it was muffled and heavier, perhaps the sound of a balled fist striking a cheekbone.
Stunned silence. There was only... the hum and vibration of the Little Baroness' engines. She was still on the Little Baroness, Augusta realized. Sailing Toluca Lake on a foggy November day in 1918 with the wealthy Blackwell family of South Ashfield that had chartered the boat especially for a birthday party.
Whose birthday party, she wondered.
"Go ahead and hit me," Deanna hissed, "Go ahead and let everyone in the family wonder why my face is swelling with bruises when I step into that dining room upstairs. Go ahead and let your brother know you've struck his wife."
"You WHORE!!" He roared, and there was the sound of his fist striking flesh again.
Deanna fell, and hit the floor with a wounded gasp of pain.
He began to kick her, aiming for her stomach, and said, "If you won't take care of this, I will take care of it for you. You will NOT ruin my name. You will NOT ruin my reputation, and you will NOT ruin my family's standing in this community."
He paused, panting. Augusta could imagine his face already twisted into the rictus of hatred she had seen in the paintings.
Deanna groaned in pain and struggled to say, "I had hoped it wouldn't, but I knew it would come to this. I'm not as frail-minded as you suppose, Joshua."
Unbelievably, it sounded as though she were smiling. "I wrote all of what I told you into a letter this morning and left it under the bedclothes in mine and Carl's bedroom. Hit me, kick me, strike me again and I'll give it to him this evening when we return home. Kill me and say I fell overboard, as I know you probably want to and are capable of doing and he'll find it anyway.
"Either way, I will ensure that your name is dragged through every pig lot in this county and beyond. And then, what will Dr. Alchemilla have to say about that I wonder? I doubt very much he'll even want to admit he ever knew you, much less allow your name to go up with his on the new hospital you two are building."
Silence. Shock, then rage, became a palpable thing in the parlor that must be one of the private dining rooms on the lower deck of the Little Baroness.
Suddenly, a strange scraping noise that Augusta realized, with surprise, was the sound of the man called Joshua grinding his teeth. He laughed suddenly, and it was a sound completely detached from anything sane, the sound of a mind snapping in two.
Joshua bent down, and from the sound of it, grabbed a handful of the lace that adorned the fancy blouse Deanna had worn in the paintings. He stood and hoisted Deanna with him, until her feet in their high-buttoned shoes barely touched the floor. She gagged and gasped for air.
"Kill you?" asked Joshua, "Why, that's a fine idea if I do say so myself. I hadn't even thought of it until you mentioned it. Perhaps you're right. You're not as frail-minded as you seem, my dear."
She choked in his grasp in the air.
"But Carl won't find any letter from you. And my family will not have to endure the shock of losing a daughter-in-law and a son in a single day. There are only fourteen people on this boat including myself and I will kill them one by one and then I will sink this little pleasure ship."
"I will be the only survivor, and it will look like such a tragic accident. I will swim to shore and will be nearly catatonic from the loss of my entire family for probably a week or more. In fact, perhaps the only thing that will cheer me any at all will be finally seeing my name etched in stone alongside good Dr. Alchemilla's at the newest, most modern hospital in the state."
"And whenever I'm working there, when the sun's shining on the water, in between the ailing I'll look out over the lake, and I'll think to myself: under that water sleeps a whore and her bastard child. And I'll hope you're both burning in hell."
He dropped her, and Augusta heard and felt the jolt of Deanna's skull striking the plush arm of the velvet sofa. Deanna Blackwell slid to the floor, mewling in pain.
"You'll die first. You and your bastard," growled Joshua, low and vicious.
He left the room. Augusta heard his footsteps on the carpet patterned with vines, then heard a door open and close. She knew he had gone to find the axe – perhaps it was a fire axe used to smash open doors on a burning boat, or it could be used to slice through troublesome ropes should they tangle and pose a hazard in the engine room. An axe had an amazing number of uses.
Soon, Joshua Blackwell returned, and the door opened then closed again. The axe must have been in a narrow wooden cabinet fastened to the wall near the staircase leading up to the dining saloon. Augusta had seen it when she boarded the boat at Rosewater Park – had seen the cabinet, but hadn't imagined what it contained. Now she knew.
And she opened her eyes. She could move again, her arms and legs tingling faintly with the sensation of returning circulation, as though they had been asleep. She sat up and saw her shovel lying on the floor not far away to her left. To her right...
...Was Deanna Blackwell, cowering on the floor, pressed against the sofa. Her innards spilled out, intestines and viscera coiled on the carpet. Her face was a black and purple mockery; swollen, bruised, and slightly misshapen with broken bones floating in the flesh beneath. Her nose was lopsided and crushed.
Her clothing was shredded, where Joshua had torn it away to rip out what lay beneath her flesh and destroy the child growing within. Her body was scored with deep wounds where the axe had tunneled through her bones and muscles. Deanna bled copiously from every wound, from the gaping crater that had been her stomach, and from tiny cuts on her face where the skin had split and ripped apart under the force of Joshua's fists.
One eye opened wide with panic, the other glued shut just as it had been in the painting.
Deanna opened her mouth, now little more than a pucker in the swollen purple destruction of her face, and spoke.
"Do something – he's gone mad!" she gasped, "He'll kill us both!" Her voice, even from the horror of her brutalized body, was undamaged and clear.
Augusta felt her mouth opening and closing stupidly, no sound escaping. It seemed as though one sense at a time was returning. First sight and touch, enabling her to see and move. She could hear, of course, and suddenly she could smell and the odor of the destroyed woman was overpowering, a toxic fog of blood, shit, sweat, and a horrible scent like that of fresh, raw meat.
Deanna clasped her hands over the shredded pit that had been her stomach and tried to scoot away from... what? Joshua? He must be in the room, but Augusta couldn't stop staring at the ruined woman.
As she tried to crawl away from the sofa, back toward the wall, one of Deanna's old-fashioned shoes slipped on a slick bit of what had probably been her stomach wall, and shot out from under her.
"Help me, please!" she screamed, "He's crazy! He says he won't allow me to have my child!"
Augusta realized there was something large in the room, and finally tore her gaze away from Deanna to face Joshua.
Her mind wanted to retreat, to slip away to a safe place.
Joshua Blackwell had become the ghoul in scarlet. It was an immense creature that blocked the doorway behind it, vaguely human-shaped. Or perhaps merely shaped like a star, with a head and four appendages. It lacked definition, with bits of bone, skin, flesh, and clothing floating in red gore. They sank into the flowing red, then resurfaced, sank again and resurfaced.
A face emerged, the face of Joshua Blackwell twisted into the hate she had seen in the paintings. Only, if the five-pointed shape was supposed to be a human form, the face had emerged from an arm. It quickly sank back in and reemerged elsewhere, in the midsection. Bones and flesh, skin and cloth emerged, sank, emerged, sank. There was a pocket watch, gold, on a gold chain. And there was a black bowtie. A leather shoe. Part of a ribcage. An unidentifiable shank of muscle. A hand.
The ghoul in scarlet flowed across the floor, leaving a thick red trail on the carpet, obscuring its pattern. Absurdly, Augusta noticed that in amidst the leafy vines in the carpet pattern, there were small yellow flowers seemingly spaced at random. All in all, a beautiful design that matched the green and yellow velvet furniture exquisitely.
The axe emerged from an appendage that logically should have been the left leg, then was sucked back in. It reemerged where the right arm should be, and the flowing blob of the arm reared back.
SHOVEL! Augusta's mind screamed an order. Get the shovel. She threw herself to the floor and clutched at her shovel, concentrating her momentum in her bent legs to spring like a striking snake away from the ghoul in scarlet.
The axe descended and buried itself in the velvet sofa, where Augusta had been sitting. The appendage rose away from it, leaving it behind. Joshua Blackwell's face emerged, saw the axe, and shrieked. The ghoul in scarlet fell upon the axe and absorbed it, lifted itself up and teetered backward. The sofa now sported a gash that vomited stuffing up between the green and yellow bands of the velvet upholstery.
Crouching on the floor, Augusta stared, horrorstruck. Huddled against a wall near the sofa, the ruin that had been Deanna Blackwell screamed.
Joshua Blackwell's face emerged, sank, reemerged, sank again, emerged, very quickly. Searching. It saw Augusta and grinned. The axe appeared where the head of the ghoul in scarlet should be. The creature bent backward, bonelessly, preparing to heave itself, and the axe, forward. Augusta leapt away and the creature bent forward, almost as though it were bowing to a lady at a fancy ball held long ago. The axe blade whistled through the air... and caught in the ceiling with a dull chopping sound.
Joshua Blackwell's face surfaced, observed, and voiced its rage. The ghoul in scarlet flowed upward, engulfed the axe and pulled it free.
A foot emerged. There was the pocket watch again, and the bow tie. Another shoe. Part of might have been an arm.
The ghoul in scarlet had oozed halfway across the parlor floor toward the sofa, had turned back, and was moving back toward the door. Though Deanna continued to scream, the ghoul seemed uninterested, paying attention instead to Augusta.
Fine, she thought. Fine, you goddamned son of a bitch. You've been torturing this poor woman even longer than Walter Sullivan did those children. Come and get me – this is obviously why I'm here.
As she jumped to her feet and toward the door, she screamed, "Here I am, you motherfucker! Come on!" And she was out the door, and onto the lower deck of the Little Baroness.
It was the starboard side, where the staircase led upward to the second deck and the dining saloon. This private cabin was the furthest toward the bow; its neighbor the left faced the port side. She ran a few steps and turned back to make sure the ghoul in scarlet had followed her. Her reward was a horrible sucking sound as the oozing mass of the ghoul squeezed through the door, in an amorphous blob that began to take its familiar shape and reached for her with the appendage that served as its left arm. A foot emerged, its toes pointed at her, before it sank back in.
Joshua Blackwell's face, wearing an impossibly wide grin, popped out at the end of the left appendage and leered at her. She turned and bolted.
As she ran, she noticed the Little Baroness still seemed to sail through the same soupy murk that had filled the streets of Silent Hill since Augusta had been pulled into this cool, wet hell. It could have been 1918, or 2004, or 1954, or any other time past or future. It was as though the riverboat had somehow sailed out of time.
She reached the stairs to the upper deck. Behind her, freed from the confines of the private cabin, the ghoul in scarlet moved surprisingly, and alarmingly, fast. The axe had surfaced again, waving from the upper appendage, where the head should have been, while Joshua Blackwell's head peered from the right appendage, face grimly set as though performing a necessary, but unpleasant, chore. The same bits and pieces of his body and clothing emerged and sank and emerged again.
Augusta took the stairs two at a time, and by the time she reached the top, the ghoul in scarlet quivered at the bottom. It flung itself forward and the axe cut deep into a wooden step halfway up. Joshua Blackwell's face frowned, and the ghoul oozed forward, absorbed the axe and pulled it free, then began to climb up. Augusta had paused and watched for just a moment, then sprinted away toward the safety of the dining saloon.
She reached the doors, with their oval windows with their ornate wrought iron designs, and yanked them open, leapt inside and slammed them shut behind her. She turned, fumbling for a lock, but before she could find one a large dark shape rose up behind the frosted glass windows. She gaped at it, in the silence of the dining saloon.
The shape outside slammed itself against the doors, which shuddered in their frames. A crack appeared in the window of the door to her right, and Augusta backed away. There was silence, then the brass knobs turned and the doors swung open. Joshua Blackwell's hands had surfaced, but having served their purpose, retreated into the ghoul in scarlet. Blackwell's face leered at her, turning slowly clockwise in its frame of red slime.
Though the ghoul in scarlet tried to fling itself forward, Augusta saw the handle of the axe, and saw that the blade was caught on the doorframe outside. She raised her shovel and stabbed it forward, like a spear. The blade sank deep into the slime just beneath Joshua Blackwell's chin. She pushed it in, digging, then stabbed the shovel blade upward, wrenched the handle downward, and heaved and scooped out Blackwell's head. His face wore a shocked expression. With a grunt, she flung it across the room and heard it land on the piano keys, where it made a discordant sound like an exclamation.
The ghoul quivered as if suddenly confused. It dropped away from the axe caught on the doorframe and fell forward. Augusta yelped and jumped away.
It hit the polished parquet floor with a heavy, wet smack. Red slime began to spill away from the things – the bones, flesh, organs, and clothing – hidden inside. Bones emerged. Part of an arm, part of a leg. A lump of what could only be intestine. Something that looked like a liver. A sheet of skin, wadded and crumpled, that looked uncomfortably like the leather of Augusta's backpack. One hand, and then another. A foot, then a shoe, then a foot still inside a shoe.
The pieces began to move, to quiver, then skitter randomly across the floor. Augusta squealed in disgust and ran to the nearest table and climbed onto it. The slime looked more like blood than ever and was running in rivulets across the floor. The thing that might be a liver had begun to roll ponderously, crossing square after square before encountering a rug, hesitating a moment, and rolling on, seeming to stick to the carpet as it moved on. A hand skittered past, like a crab, balanced on its fingertips, looking so ridiculous that Augusta barked a laugh that was almost a sob. Bones clattered across the polished wood, their ends wet with gristly cartilage.
They were converging on the tiny dance floor, under the crystal cloud of the chandelier hanging overhead. Augusta heard Joshua Blackwell's head thump down from the piano, onto the piano bench, then onto the floor, and saw it roll crookedly across the stage before spilling down onto the dance floor. The face looked annoyed; its eyes found hers and stared at her with hatred.
Augusta looked around the dining saloon, helplessly, and let out a sobbing scream.
The birthday party aboard the Little Baroness had been interrupted and there were bodies, several of them, in the dining saloon. Seated at tables, sprawled on the floor, all of them scored with great gaping cuts. An old woman sat at a table, her head nearly severed and held on only by a strip of skin and flesh. A young man, probably a teenager, lay face down on the floor, his back hacked open. There were so many others... mutilated, chopped to death. Plates full of food had been smashed on the floor, sumptuous meals ground into the green and gold carpets and smeared on the parquet. On one table an enormous, many-tiered birthday cake sat without a single piece carved from it, its snowy icing spattered red. The body of a little girl wearing a frilly red and black checked dress lay on the floor, halfway under the table. It was hard to guess how old she might have been because her head had been chopped off.
Joshua Blackwell had said there were only thirteen people aboard the ship and he would have no problem killing them all to protect his name, his standing, and his ambitions. And he had. Christ in heaven, he had.
The pieces of Joshua Blackwell had collected beneath the chandelier on the dance floor and the slime that looked like blood had collected there as well. It rolled over the pieces and a stubby red column studded with bits of Joshua Blackwell was beginning to take shape. It was rebuilding itself. Soon it would sprout what served for arms, legs, and a head.
Oh God, she breathed. What can I do?
She hopped down from the table and charged the growing ghoul in scarlet. Joshua Blackwell's head rode the column as it climbed upward, wearing a smug smile. Gripping the shovel by the end of its handle, Augusta swung it back, then forward with a grunt. The shovel blade smacked into Blackwell's head and tore it free with a sound like a boot pulling from swampy mud. The growing column collapsed, the red slime spilling away from the pieces of Joshua Blackwell inside it.
Maybe if she could find the heart and destroy it, she could kill the ghoul in scarlet, she thought. It could obviously survive without the head.
Or maybe if she had a flamethrower. Or a cannon.
Or a grenade launcher, she thought. This is good: think of something. Think of what it would nice to have right about now. Think about weapons and armies and the National Guard. Think about something or else your sanity will crack like an egg.
An atom bomb. She searched through the pieces of Joshua Blackwell thrashing about on the floor at her feet. She stabbed the shovel downward and sliced the thing that might have been a liver in two.
A machine gun. Joshua Blackwell's head was rolling toward her, growling and gnashing its teeth. She steadied herself, waited a moment, and swung the shovel. Back home in Asheville, various golf courses sometimes offered free passes to the employees at the visitors center in hopes of future recommendations to interested tourists, which was how Augusta had found herself experiencing the course at the Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa, the massive hotel perched atop Sunset Mountain overlooking downtown, one crisp morning last December. Though she learned she didn't especially enjoy golf, she seemed to have an affinity for it. Joshua Blackwell's head sailed up, arced over several tables, then down, and hit the floor with a heavy thud halfway across the dining room.
A microwave oven. Shove the bastard's head in and cook it until it exploded like a potato. Where was the heart? There was part of the ribcage, almost half of it, except for one or two of the bottom ribs, but there was nothing inside. There was only chalk-white bone and grayish cartilage.
A can of kerosene and a lighter. She kicked away a foot. Where was the goddamn heart? There was something, but too small to be a heart. Maybe a kidney. She stepped on it and it squelched horribly under her shoe. Augusta's skin crawled and she shivered. She didn't know how much more of this she could endure.
A tank with the biggest, heaviest treads ever manufactured. There. It emerged from a tangle of intestines, trailing veins and arteries like the train of a wedding gown. She pounced and stabbed the shovel blade downward, slicing through the coils of intestine, then through the heart. A geyser of dark blood jetted out... and nothing happened.
"Damn it!" Augusta wailed. Hands, feet – including one wearing an expensive leather shoe, bones, muscle, things she didn't want to think about, still writhed across the parquet floor, splashing through red slime that looked like blood.
So, what now? She could spend the rest of the day swatting Joshua Blackwell's head away to prevent the ghoul in scarlet from reforming itself, but there seemed to be no way to kill it.
She thought of the Blue Lady who had thrown her into this situation, like Alice through the looking glass.
"What am I supposed to do?" she called out. "You put me here to do this, so what do you want me to do? I don't know how to kill it!"
There was no answer, only the wet slapping and clicking of unspeakable things moving by themselves across the parquet floor. Augusta cursed. If she couldn't kill it, perhaps at least she could prevent it from taking form again. She would have to find the head and seal it away somewhere.
So where had it gone? She looked over the dining saloon. There were so many bodies... Joshua Blackwell had murdered his entire family.
Stop it. Find the head. Do something with it. Throw it overboard, or seal it in a refrigerator, or put it in the oven in the kitchen downstairs. Even if it won't die at least it will stay in pieces, and if it stays in pieces, it's relatively harmless.
She paused, then smiled. Yes. Put it in the oven. And turn it on. That sounded like a fine idea.
"Come on," she growled, "Come on, you gruesome sack of shit. Come out and let me play with you."
A thrashing rope of intestine flopped against her right foot. She looked down at it, grimaced, and kicked it away.
When she looked up she saw movement across the dining room. Joshua Blackwell's head rolled out from beneath the chair where the old woman with the nearly-severed head sat.
Oh God, Augusta swallowed. She stumbled over the pieces of Joshua Blackwell moving on the floor, and when she was finally free of them she ran with long strides toward the head weaving drunkenly toward her across the floor. She saw more bodies lying between the tables – a man who looked to be in his thirties, his throat a deep red gully, an expression of shocked horror on his face. A woman in a dark red dress stained darker from axe blows to her stomach.
Joshua Blackwell's head righted itself and faced her. It seemed to have chewed through its tongue; its mouth frothed with bloody foam as it gnashed and gnashed and gnashed its teeth.
"Come on, Dr. Blackwell." Augusta stepped forward, and the head tilted back and rolled away.
It knows what I'm trying to do, she thought, and shuddered. Several running steps took her to Joshua Blackwell's head, which was trying to hide itself under a table. She nudged it into the open with her shovel, then kicked it, hard. It – dear God – bounced across the floor, rising and falling, skipping, and rolling on. Augusta ran to catch up to it, kicked it again, and watched it rebound off the wall under the three oil paintings at the far end of the dining room. She was almost to the kitchen; the staircase that led downward was to her right.
Joshua Blackell's head growled as she herded it around the banister with the blade of her shovel, then swept it down the stairs and watched it tumble to the bottom. Again, it bounced. She would never erase that image from her memory.
Augusta slumped, a hand on the newel post at the top of the stairs. She suddenly felt sick, and she swallowed several times and took deep breaths to chase away the nausea. Her skin prickled. She looked up, gasping, at the paintings.
Two of the paintings now depicted the Blue Lady. Augusta stared, agape. In the painting farthest left, the Blue Lady, resplendent in her gown, stared disconsolantly from the gilt frame, her eyes seeming to hold a world of sorrow. She was chained to a golden throne, the chains made of huge, blackened iron links flecked with rust. The throne sat on a tiny spit of rock jutting up from a heaving sea. Weeping Mary, clad in a blood-red bikini and sunglasses, stood by the throne, an arm draped over the Blue Lady's shoulders, a self-satisfied smirk on her face.
Augusta blinked.
The central painting seemed almost abstract. It showed nothing more than a bizarre design that looked as though it had been burned onto a blank canvas. There were circles within circles, strange symbols, marks, and letters, and in the center, a large triangle. It looked sinister but as Augusta gazed at it, she felt awash in peace and calm as if it were the symbol of something profoundly holy.
She wanted to touch it, but somehow felt she shouldn't.
In the painting on the right, the Blue Lady had burst her chains and hovered triumphant in the air. From her back, a pair of magnificent wings projected out and curved upward, almost filling the painting. Above her, the clouds had broken and beneath her the sea was calm. Weeping Mary, still in her bathing suit, had become a grotesque, wasted thing sprawled on the rock. Her sunglasses were missing and blood erupted from her eye sockets. Her tongue was long and forked and curled outward through a nest of fangs in a hiss at the angel above her.
The wings were sheathed in peacock feathers, splendid in iridescent greens and blues.
Augusta felt her breath hitch and looked away. At the foot of the stairs, Joshua Blackwell's head snarled and snapped, rolling back and forth. Augusta glanced at the paintings again, savoring the peace the strange image in the center seemed to bestow from its gilt frame. She couldn't imagine what it might be, but it seemed full of power and purity, and strength.
Joshua Blackwell's head was a stupid, impotent thing at the bottom of the staircase. She looked down at it, her face set in a scowl. Keep it away from the rest of the pieces the ghoul in scarlet had contained and it was helpless. She would seal it in a pot on the stove, shove it into an oven, or kick it into a freezer. She started down the stairs to the kitchen.
On the lower deck was a large plainly carpeted room with a large closet to one side filled with clean white waiters' jackets hung on hooks. Two were missing. Ahead was a swinging wooden door and beyond, presumably, the kitchens or galleys or whatever they would be called. Augusta shoved Joshua Blackwell's head forward with her shovel, toward the door. She stepped down onto the carpet, marched forward and pushed open the door and kicked the head inside. It had begun to squeal high-pitched.
Augusta gritted her teeth. Beyond the door, the kitchens of the Little Baroness were cavernous and filled with appliances so antique they hardly looked like what they were and instead seemed almost like works of art. The room was searing hot, which meant the ovens and stoves were good and ready. She smiled and swept Joshua Blackwell's head along with her shovel.
The ovens seemed to burn coal; in the corner to her left, a surprisingly shiny shovel hung from a hook on the wall above a metal bin heaping with dully gleaming black lumps. A long, fancy range topped with at least twenty burners ran along the left wall of the galley, while a broad, marble- topped counter unfurled itself down the center, and sinks the size of bathtubs clustered along the wall to the right. At the rear were several doors, some of them broad slabs that probably opened onto refrigerators and freezers. Shelves held tins of spices and ranks of closed cabinets almost certainly were stocked with dishes.
Oven or freezer? She wondered if Joshua Blackwell's body parts could organize themselves enough to open a freezer without the head, and with that realized that if she lived long enough to look back on this experience, she would have nightmares for the rest of her life.
She shook her head, and decided the oven would probably be the best choice. If she could incinerate Joshua Blackwell's head, the rest of him, she hoped, would be as good as dead and would flop and thrash like beached fish on the floor of the dining saloon until they rotted, or mummified.
Joshua Blackwell's head alternated between mewling fearfully and growling and trying to snap at her as she brushed it along.
"You'd better be afraid," she said to it and in response it looked up at her, snarled, and spat a gob of something noxious that missed and splattered instead on the floor behind her.
She stomped hard on the head and pinned it to the floor while she grabbed a towel from the counter and used it to open the nearest oven. She grinned as a wave of heat billowed out. Then, using her shovel, she scooped up the head, tossed it inside and slammed the oven door.
"There, you son of a bitch. I hope that hurts." She leaned on her shovel and stared at the oven door. From behind it, she heard muffled shrieks and a very satisfying rattle as Joshua Blackwell's head thrashed and fought to escape.
A sudden flare of vertigo. She staggered and reached back to steady herself on the counter. From the corner of her eye she saw a pair of legs clad in black trousers at the end of the counter near the freezers, and a puddle of blood collected in the grout between the galley floor tiles. The rest of the body, probably that of the chef, was hidden from view. Of course Joshua Blackwell would have killed the chef, she thought, and felt ill. And the waiters as well. She looked back at the oven.
It was a marvel of black wrought iron and white enamel, balanced on bandy little legs and adorned with iron curlicues and engravings – more like a work of art than a stove, she thought again. Gleaming copper pots of all sizes simmered on the stovetop.
She watched the oven for what seemed like several minutes before she realized something was happening. The iron around the oven door was beginning to glow red. The banging behind it had intensified and the cries grew louder. The copper pots were boiling over, belching steam, water and sauces splashing out and sizzling on the range top. Augusta backed away, toward the door, dragging her shovel on the tiles. As though a bonfire was raging in its center, the kitchen was growing hotter. And hotter. Quickly.
Something had begun to take shape on the enameled oven door. A shape, and shapes within, scorching themselves black against the white. After a moment, she recognized it as the design from the middle painting upstairs in the dining saloon. A circle within a circle ringing a triangle, dotted with arcane symbols and letters from some dead alphabet.
She thought it best to flee and turned, threw open the kitchen door, and ran.
She found that pieces of Joshua Blackwell were spilling down the stairs, seeking out the kitchen and she fought her way through them, stepping over and around them, and kicking them out of her way.
"Oh God," she panted, "Oh God, oh God, oh God..."
She was halfway across the dining saloon before the galley of the Little Baroness exploded.
When she paused to take a mental breath, the voices began, as if they had been waiting patiently for her full attention. They were arguing quietly, but in earnest as if they hoped not to be overheard. When Augusta tried to open her eyes, she couldn't. She couldn't move. She couldn't see and she couldn't move, which was somehow more horrifying than what the Blue Lady had shown her in the paintings.
She felt helpless and nauseatingly vulnerable. It was as though she wasn't there at all.
The voices were that of a man and woman; Augusta supposed they belonged to the man and woman she had seen in the paintings.
The woman's voice was frantic and pleading; she was upset to the point of hysteria.
"I can't do that," she wailed, "I swear to God I cannot! Joshua, please believe me... Please don't ask me to do that."
The man, apparently named Joshua, responded coldly, venomously. "You can and you will. This is something you should have taken care of before it got to be a problem, anyhow."
The woman dissolved into tears, weeping hopelessly.
"Deanna, look at you already. You're beginning to look like a zeppelin, and people are asking questions. You know as well as I do that Carl and you can't produce a child together and God knows you've tried enough times. What will people say as you get bigger and bigger?"
"But you're asking me to kill!" sobbed the woman, Deanna, "I can't do that. I'm sorry this happened, but I can't tear this life out of me. It didn't ask to come into being."
There was the sound of a stinging slap, then a long moment of silence.
"I am a physician, and I know every other physician in this county and they all know me. And we all know that my brother might as well be rutting with a horse for all the good his semen does. If, six months or so from now you squirt out a bouncing baby bastard, people will talk and word will spread, and when it spreads my name and my family's name won't be worth horse dung in the street."
"But I could go to Springfield to have the baby!" Desperation disguised as hope, interrupted by sniffling. "Or Bloomington or, if it's ready by then, the new hospital you and that Italian fellow are building here in Silent Hill! We could say there are complications the hospital in Ashfield can't cope with and no one would have to know. It won't matter what the doctors have said about Carl.
"Things like this happen all the time – husbands and wives who aren't supposed to be able to have children do have them!"
The man's voice was tinged with disgust now. "Just because you want something to happen doesn't mean it can or will. You can't go somewhere else to give birth just because you want to. And even if you did go to Springfield, or to my new hospital, people would still want to know why. There is no other choice – you cannot have this child."
"I had hoped nothing would come of it," she said, quieter now as if dazed.
"But something did come of it. And I have a reputation to think of, and a family name. Surely you know and benefit from the fact that the Blackwells are a leading family in Toluca County."
"I DO KNOW IT, DAMN YOU!" she screamed with vehemence, then quietly said, "But I don't care. I will not commit murder to protect your precious family honor. I don't care if you all cast me out and leave me penniless for the rest of my life. I don't care if I have to sell myself in an alley to feed and clothe myself and this child – I will have this child and I will raise it, love it, and watch it grow."
There was fury in her voice, like a stick of dynamite, lethal and only wanting a spark to ignite it. "And I will raise this child to be a better person than you. I will make sure it knows its father was nothing more than a rutting hog and that it should do all it can to ensure it won't grow up to be like you."
Another slap – but it was muffled and heavier, perhaps the sound of a balled fist striking a cheekbone.
Stunned silence. There was only... the hum and vibration of the Little Baroness' engines. She was still on the Little Baroness, Augusta realized. Sailing Toluca Lake on a foggy November day in 1918 with the wealthy Blackwell family of South Ashfield that had chartered the boat especially for a birthday party.
Whose birthday party, she wondered.
"Go ahead and hit me," Deanna hissed, "Go ahead and let everyone in the family wonder why my face is swelling with bruises when I step into that dining room upstairs. Go ahead and let your brother know you've struck his wife."
"You WHORE!!" He roared, and there was the sound of his fist striking flesh again.
Deanna fell, and hit the floor with a wounded gasp of pain.
He began to kick her, aiming for her stomach, and said, "If you won't take care of this, I will take care of it for you. You will NOT ruin my name. You will NOT ruin my reputation, and you will NOT ruin my family's standing in this community."
He paused, panting. Augusta could imagine his face already twisted into the rictus of hatred she had seen in the paintings.
Deanna groaned in pain and struggled to say, "I had hoped it wouldn't, but I knew it would come to this. I'm not as frail-minded as you suppose, Joshua."
Unbelievably, it sounded as though she were smiling. "I wrote all of what I told you into a letter this morning and left it under the bedclothes in mine and Carl's bedroom. Hit me, kick me, strike me again and I'll give it to him this evening when we return home. Kill me and say I fell overboard, as I know you probably want to and are capable of doing and he'll find it anyway.
"Either way, I will ensure that your name is dragged through every pig lot in this county and beyond. And then, what will Dr. Alchemilla have to say about that I wonder? I doubt very much he'll even want to admit he ever knew you, much less allow your name to go up with his on the new hospital you two are building."
Silence. Shock, then rage, became a palpable thing in the parlor that must be one of the private dining rooms on the lower deck of the Little Baroness.
Suddenly, a strange scraping noise that Augusta realized, with surprise, was the sound of the man called Joshua grinding his teeth. He laughed suddenly, and it was a sound completely detached from anything sane, the sound of a mind snapping in two.
Joshua bent down, and from the sound of it, grabbed a handful of the lace that adorned the fancy blouse Deanna had worn in the paintings. He stood and hoisted Deanna with him, until her feet in their high-buttoned shoes barely touched the floor. She gagged and gasped for air.
"Kill you?" asked Joshua, "Why, that's a fine idea if I do say so myself. I hadn't even thought of it until you mentioned it. Perhaps you're right. You're not as frail-minded as you seem, my dear."
She choked in his grasp in the air.
"But Carl won't find any letter from you. And my family will not have to endure the shock of losing a daughter-in-law and a son in a single day. There are only fourteen people on this boat including myself and I will kill them one by one and then I will sink this little pleasure ship."
"I will be the only survivor, and it will look like such a tragic accident. I will swim to shore and will be nearly catatonic from the loss of my entire family for probably a week or more. In fact, perhaps the only thing that will cheer me any at all will be finally seeing my name etched in stone alongside good Dr. Alchemilla's at the newest, most modern hospital in the state."
"And whenever I'm working there, when the sun's shining on the water, in between the ailing I'll look out over the lake, and I'll think to myself: under that water sleeps a whore and her bastard child. And I'll hope you're both burning in hell."
He dropped her, and Augusta heard and felt the jolt of Deanna's skull striking the plush arm of the velvet sofa. Deanna Blackwell slid to the floor, mewling in pain.
"You'll die first. You and your bastard," growled Joshua, low and vicious.
He left the room. Augusta heard his footsteps on the carpet patterned with vines, then heard a door open and close. She knew he had gone to find the axe – perhaps it was a fire axe used to smash open doors on a burning boat, or it could be used to slice through troublesome ropes should they tangle and pose a hazard in the engine room. An axe had an amazing number of uses.
Soon, Joshua Blackwell returned, and the door opened then closed again. The axe must have been in a narrow wooden cabinet fastened to the wall near the staircase leading up to the dining saloon. Augusta had seen it when she boarded the boat at Rosewater Park – had seen the cabinet, but hadn't imagined what it contained. Now she knew.
And she opened her eyes. She could move again, her arms and legs tingling faintly with the sensation of returning circulation, as though they had been asleep. She sat up and saw her shovel lying on the floor not far away to her left. To her right...
...Was Deanna Blackwell, cowering on the floor, pressed against the sofa. Her innards spilled out, intestines and viscera coiled on the carpet. Her face was a black and purple mockery; swollen, bruised, and slightly misshapen with broken bones floating in the flesh beneath. Her nose was lopsided and crushed.
Her clothing was shredded, where Joshua had torn it away to rip out what lay beneath her flesh and destroy the child growing within. Her body was scored with deep wounds where the axe had tunneled through her bones and muscles. Deanna bled copiously from every wound, from the gaping crater that had been her stomach, and from tiny cuts on her face where the skin had split and ripped apart under the force of Joshua's fists.
One eye opened wide with panic, the other glued shut just as it had been in the painting.
Deanna opened her mouth, now little more than a pucker in the swollen purple destruction of her face, and spoke.
"Do something – he's gone mad!" she gasped, "He'll kill us both!" Her voice, even from the horror of her brutalized body, was undamaged and clear.
Augusta felt her mouth opening and closing stupidly, no sound escaping. It seemed as though one sense at a time was returning. First sight and touch, enabling her to see and move. She could hear, of course, and suddenly she could smell and the odor of the destroyed woman was overpowering, a toxic fog of blood, shit, sweat, and a horrible scent like that of fresh, raw meat.
Deanna clasped her hands over the shredded pit that had been her stomach and tried to scoot away from... what? Joshua? He must be in the room, but Augusta couldn't stop staring at the ruined woman.
As she tried to crawl away from the sofa, back toward the wall, one of Deanna's old-fashioned shoes slipped on a slick bit of what had probably been her stomach wall, and shot out from under her.
"Help me, please!" she screamed, "He's crazy! He says he won't allow me to have my child!"
Augusta realized there was something large in the room, and finally tore her gaze away from Deanna to face Joshua.
Her mind wanted to retreat, to slip away to a safe place.
Joshua Blackwell had become the ghoul in scarlet. It was an immense creature that blocked the doorway behind it, vaguely human-shaped. Or perhaps merely shaped like a star, with a head and four appendages. It lacked definition, with bits of bone, skin, flesh, and clothing floating in red gore. They sank into the flowing red, then resurfaced, sank again and resurfaced.
A face emerged, the face of Joshua Blackwell twisted into the hate she had seen in the paintings. Only, if the five-pointed shape was supposed to be a human form, the face had emerged from an arm. It quickly sank back in and reemerged elsewhere, in the midsection. Bones and flesh, skin and cloth emerged, sank, emerged, sank. There was a pocket watch, gold, on a gold chain. And there was a black bowtie. A leather shoe. Part of a ribcage. An unidentifiable shank of muscle. A hand.
The ghoul in scarlet flowed across the floor, leaving a thick red trail on the carpet, obscuring its pattern. Absurdly, Augusta noticed that in amidst the leafy vines in the carpet pattern, there were small yellow flowers seemingly spaced at random. All in all, a beautiful design that matched the green and yellow velvet furniture exquisitely.
The axe emerged from an appendage that logically should have been the left leg, then was sucked back in. It reemerged where the right arm should be, and the flowing blob of the arm reared back.
SHOVEL! Augusta's mind screamed an order. Get the shovel. She threw herself to the floor and clutched at her shovel, concentrating her momentum in her bent legs to spring like a striking snake away from the ghoul in scarlet.
The axe descended and buried itself in the velvet sofa, where Augusta had been sitting. The appendage rose away from it, leaving it behind. Joshua Blackwell's face emerged, saw the axe, and shrieked. The ghoul in scarlet fell upon the axe and absorbed it, lifted itself up and teetered backward. The sofa now sported a gash that vomited stuffing up between the green and yellow bands of the velvet upholstery.
Crouching on the floor, Augusta stared, horrorstruck. Huddled against a wall near the sofa, the ruin that had been Deanna Blackwell screamed.
Joshua Blackwell's face emerged, sank, reemerged, sank again, emerged, very quickly. Searching. It saw Augusta and grinned. The axe appeared where the head of the ghoul in scarlet should be. The creature bent backward, bonelessly, preparing to heave itself, and the axe, forward. Augusta leapt away and the creature bent forward, almost as though it were bowing to a lady at a fancy ball held long ago. The axe blade whistled through the air... and caught in the ceiling with a dull chopping sound.
Joshua Blackwell's face surfaced, observed, and voiced its rage. The ghoul in scarlet flowed upward, engulfed the axe and pulled it free.
A foot emerged. There was the pocket watch again, and the bow tie. Another shoe. Part of might have been an arm.
The ghoul in scarlet had oozed halfway across the parlor floor toward the sofa, had turned back, and was moving back toward the door. Though Deanna continued to scream, the ghoul seemed uninterested, paying attention instead to Augusta.
Fine, she thought. Fine, you goddamned son of a bitch. You've been torturing this poor woman even longer than Walter Sullivan did those children. Come and get me – this is obviously why I'm here.
As she jumped to her feet and toward the door, she screamed, "Here I am, you motherfucker! Come on!" And she was out the door, and onto the lower deck of the Little Baroness.
It was the starboard side, where the staircase led upward to the second deck and the dining saloon. This private cabin was the furthest toward the bow; its neighbor the left faced the port side. She ran a few steps and turned back to make sure the ghoul in scarlet had followed her. Her reward was a horrible sucking sound as the oozing mass of the ghoul squeezed through the door, in an amorphous blob that began to take its familiar shape and reached for her with the appendage that served as its left arm. A foot emerged, its toes pointed at her, before it sank back in.
Joshua Blackwell's face, wearing an impossibly wide grin, popped out at the end of the left appendage and leered at her. She turned and bolted.
As she ran, she noticed the Little Baroness still seemed to sail through the same soupy murk that had filled the streets of Silent Hill since Augusta had been pulled into this cool, wet hell. It could have been 1918, or 2004, or 1954, or any other time past or future. It was as though the riverboat had somehow sailed out of time.
She reached the stairs to the upper deck. Behind her, freed from the confines of the private cabin, the ghoul in scarlet moved surprisingly, and alarmingly, fast. The axe had surfaced again, waving from the upper appendage, where the head should have been, while Joshua Blackwell's head peered from the right appendage, face grimly set as though performing a necessary, but unpleasant, chore. The same bits and pieces of his body and clothing emerged and sank and emerged again.
Augusta took the stairs two at a time, and by the time she reached the top, the ghoul in scarlet quivered at the bottom. It flung itself forward and the axe cut deep into a wooden step halfway up. Joshua Blackwell's face frowned, and the ghoul oozed forward, absorbed the axe and pulled it free, then began to climb up. Augusta had paused and watched for just a moment, then sprinted away toward the safety of the dining saloon.
She reached the doors, with their oval windows with their ornate wrought iron designs, and yanked them open, leapt inside and slammed them shut behind her. She turned, fumbling for a lock, but before she could find one a large dark shape rose up behind the frosted glass windows. She gaped at it, in the silence of the dining saloon.
The shape outside slammed itself against the doors, which shuddered in their frames. A crack appeared in the window of the door to her right, and Augusta backed away. There was silence, then the brass knobs turned and the doors swung open. Joshua Blackwell's hands had surfaced, but having served their purpose, retreated into the ghoul in scarlet. Blackwell's face leered at her, turning slowly clockwise in its frame of red slime.
Though the ghoul in scarlet tried to fling itself forward, Augusta saw the handle of the axe, and saw that the blade was caught on the doorframe outside. She raised her shovel and stabbed it forward, like a spear. The blade sank deep into the slime just beneath Joshua Blackwell's chin. She pushed it in, digging, then stabbed the shovel blade upward, wrenched the handle downward, and heaved and scooped out Blackwell's head. His face wore a shocked expression. With a grunt, she flung it across the room and heard it land on the piano keys, where it made a discordant sound like an exclamation.
The ghoul quivered as if suddenly confused. It dropped away from the axe caught on the doorframe and fell forward. Augusta yelped and jumped away.
It hit the polished parquet floor with a heavy, wet smack. Red slime began to spill away from the things – the bones, flesh, organs, and clothing – hidden inside. Bones emerged. Part of an arm, part of a leg. A lump of what could only be intestine. Something that looked like a liver. A sheet of skin, wadded and crumpled, that looked uncomfortably like the leather of Augusta's backpack. One hand, and then another. A foot, then a shoe, then a foot still inside a shoe.
The pieces began to move, to quiver, then skitter randomly across the floor. Augusta squealed in disgust and ran to the nearest table and climbed onto it. The slime looked more like blood than ever and was running in rivulets across the floor. The thing that might be a liver had begun to roll ponderously, crossing square after square before encountering a rug, hesitating a moment, and rolling on, seeming to stick to the carpet as it moved on. A hand skittered past, like a crab, balanced on its fingertips, looking so ridiculous that Augusta barked a laugh that was almost a sob. Bones clattered across the polished wood, their ends wet with gristly cartilage.
They were converging on the tiny dance floor, under the crystal cloud of the chandelier hanging overhead. Augusta heard Joshua Blackwell's head thump down from the piano, onto the piano bench, then onto the floor, and saw it roll crookedly across the stage before spilling down onto the dance floor. The face looked annoyed; its eyes found hers and stared at her with hatred.
Augusta looked around the dining saloon, helplessly, and let out a sobbing scream.
The birthday party aboard the Little Baroness had been interrupted and there were bodies, several of them, in the dining saloon. Seated at tables, sprawled on the floor, all of them scored with great gaping cuts. An old woman sat at a table, her head nearly severed and held on only by a strip of skin and flesh. A young man, probably a teenager, lay face down on the floor, his back hacked open. There were so many others... mutilated, chopped to death. Plates full of food had been smashed on the floor, sumptuous meals ground into the green and gold carpets and smeared on the parquet. On one table an enormous, many-tiered birthday cake sat without a single piece carved from it, its snowy icing spattered red. The body of a little girl wearing a frilly red and black checked dress lay on the floor, halfway under the table. It was hard to guess how old she might have been because her head had been chopped off.
Joshua Blackwell had said there were only thirteen people aboard the ship and he would have no problem killing them all to protect his name, his standing, and his ambitions. And he had. Christ in heaven, he had.
The pieces of Joshua Blackwell had collected beneath the chandelier on the dance floor and the slime that looked like blood had collected there as well. It rolled over the pieces and a stubby red column studded with bits of Joshua Blackwell was beginning to take shape. It was rebuilding itself. Soon it would sprout what served for arms, legs, and a head.
Oh God, she breathed. What can I do?
She hopped down from the table and charged the growing ghoul in scarlet. Joshua Blackwell's head rode the column as it climbed upward, wearing a smug smile. Gripping the shovel by the end of its handle, Augusta swung it back, then forward with a grunt. The shovel blade smacked into Blackwell's head and tore it free with a sound like a boot pulling from swampy mud. The growing column collapsed, the red slime spilling away from the pieces of Joshua Blackwell inside it.
Maybe if she could find the heart and destroy it, she could kill the ghoul in scarlet, she thought. It could obviously survive without the head.
Or maybe if she had a flamethrower. Or a cannon.
Or a grenade launcher, she thought. This is good: think of something. Think of what it would nice to have right about now. Think about weapons and armies and the National Guard. Think about something or else your sanity will crack like an egg.
An atom bomb. She searched through the pieces of Joshua Blackwell thrashing about on the floor at her feet. She stabbed the shovel downward and sliced the thing that might have been a liver in two.
A machine gun. Joshua Blackwell's head was rolling toward her, growling and gnashing its teeth. She steadied herself, waited a moment, and swung the shovel. Back home in Asheville, various golf courses sometimes offered free passes to the employees at the visitors center in hopes of future recommendations to interested tourists, which was how Augusta had found herself experiencing the course at the Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa, the massive hotel perched atop Sunset Mountain overlooking downtown, one crisp morning last December. Though she learned she didn't especially enjoy golf, she seemed to have an affinity for it. Joshua Blackwell's head sailed up, arced over several tables, then down, and hit the floor with a heavy thud halfway across the dining room.
A microwave oven. Shove the bastard's head in and cook it until it exploded like a potato. Where was the heart? There was part of the ribcage, almost half of it, except for one or two of the bottom ribs, but there was nothing inside. There was only chalk-white bone and grayish cartilage.
A can of kerosene and a lighter. She kicked away a foot. Where was the goddamn heart? There was something, but too small to be a heart. Maybe a kidney. She stepped on it and it squelched horribly under her shoe. Augusta's skin crawled and she shivered. She didn't know how much more of this she could endure.
A tank with the biggest, heaviest treads ever manufactured. There. It emerged from a tangle of intestines, trailing veins and arteries like the train of a wedding gown. She pounced and stabbed the shovel blade downward, slicing through the coils of intestine, then through the heart. A geyser of dark blood jetted out... and nothing happened.
"Damn it!" Augusta wailed. Hands, feet – including one wearing an expensive leather shoe, bones, muscle, things she didn't want to think about, still writhed across the parquet floor, splashing through red slime that looked like blood.
So, what now? She could spend the rest of the day swatting Joshua Blackwell's head away to prevent the ghoul in scarlet from reforming itself, but there seemed to be no way to kill it.
She thought of the Blue Lady who had thrown her into this situation, like Alice through the looking glass.
"What am I supposed to do?" she called out. "You put me here to do this, so what do you want me to do? I don't know how to kill it!"
There was no answer, only the wet slapping and clicking of unspeakable things moving by themselves across the parquet floor. Augusta cursed. If she couldn't kill it, perhaps at least she could prevent it from taking form again. She would have to find the head and seal it away somewhere.
So where had it gone? She looked over the dining saloon. There were so many bodies... Joshua Blackwell had murdered his entire family.
Stop it. Find the head. Do something with it. Throw it overboard, or seal it in a refrigerator, or put it in the oven in the kitchen downstairs. Even if it won't die at least it will stay in pieces, and if it stays in pieces, it's relatively harmless.
She paused, then smiled. Yes. Put it in the oven. And turn it on. That sounded like a fine idea.
"Come on," she growled, "Come on, you gruesome sack of shit. Come out and let me play with you."
A thrashing rope of intestine flopped against her right foot. She looked down at it, grimaced, and kicked it away.
When she looked up she saw movement across the dining room. Joshua Blackwell's head rolled out from beneath the chair where the old woman with the nearly-severed head sat.
Oh God, Augusta swallowed. She stumbled over the pieces of Joshua Blackwell moving on the floor, and when she was finally free of them she ran with long strides toward the head weaving drunkenly toward her across the floor. She saw more bodies lying between the tables – a man who looked to be in his thirties, his throat a deep red gully, an expression of shocked horror on his face. A woman in a dark red dress stained darker from axe blows to her stomach.
Joshua Blackwell's head righted itself and faced her. It seemed to have chewed through its tongue; its mouth frothed with bloody foam as it gnashed and gnashed and gnashed its teeth.
"Come on, Dr. Blackwell." Augusta stepped forward, and the head tilted back and rolled away.
It knows what I'm trying to do, she thought, and shuddered. Several running steps took her to Joshua Blackwell's head, which was trying to hide itself under a table. She nudged it into the open with her shovel, then kicked it, hard. It – dear God – bounced across the floor, rising and falling, skipping, and rolling on. Augusta ran to catch up to it, kicked it again, and watched it rebound off the wall under the three oil paintings at the far end of the dining room. She was almost to the kitchen; the staircase that led downward was to her right.
Joshua Blackell's head growled as she herded it around the banister with the blade of her shovel, then swept it down the stairs and watched it tumble to the bottom. Again, it bounced. She would never erase that image from her memory.
Augusta slumped, a hand on the newel post at the top of the stairs. She suddenly felt sick, and she swallowed several times and took deep breaths to chase away the nausea. Her skin prickled. She looked up, gasping, at the paintings.
Two of the paintings now depicted the Blue Lady. Augusta stared, agape. In the painting farthest left, the Blue Lady, resplendent in her gown, stared disconsolantly from the gilt frame, her eyes seeming to hold a world of sorrow. She was chained to a golden throne, the chains made of huge, blackened iron links flecked with rust. The throne sat on a tiny spit of rock jutting up from a heaving sea. Weeping Mary, clad in a blood-red bikini and sunglasses, stood by the throne, an arm draped over the Blue Lady's shoulders, a self-satisfied smirk on her face.
Augusta blinked.
The central painting seemed almost abstract. It showed nothing more than a bizarre design that looked as though it had been burned onto a blank canvas. There were circles within circles, strange symbols, marks, and letters, and in the center, a large triangle. It looked sinister but as Augusta gazed at it, she felt awash in peace and calm as if it were the symbol of something profoundly holy.
She wanted to touch it, but somehow felt she shouldn't.
In the painting on the right, the Blue Lady had burst her chains and hovered triumphant in the air. From her back, a pair of magnificent wings projected out and curved upward, almost filling the painting. Above her, the clouds had broken and beneath her the sea was calm. Weeping Mary, still in her bathing suit, had become a grotesque, wasted thing sprawled on the rock. Her sunglasses were missing and blood erupted from her eye sockets. Her tongue was long and forked and curled outward through a nest of fangs in a hiss at the angel above her.
The wings were sheathed in peacock feathers, splendid in iridescent greens and blues.
Augusta felt her breath hitch and looked away. At the foot of the stairs, Joshua Blackwell's head snarled and snapped, rolling back and forth. Augusta glanced at the paintings again, savoring the peace the strange image in the center seemed to bestow from its gilt frame. She couldn't imagine what it might be, but it seemed full of power and purity, and strength.
Joshua Blackwell's head was a stupid, impotent thing at the bottom of the staircase. She looked down at it, her face set in a scowl. Keep it away from the rest of the pieces the ghoul in scarlet had contained and it was helpless. She would seal it in a pot on the stove, shove it into an oven, or kick it into a freezer. She started down the stairs to the kitchen.
On the lower deck was a large plainly carpeted room with a large closet to one side filled with clean white waiters' jackets hung on hooks. Two were missing. Ahead was a swinging wooden door and beyond, presumably, the kitchens or galleys or whatever they would be called. Augusta shoved Joshua Blackwell's head forward with her shovel, toward the door. She stepped down onto the carpet, marched forward and pushed open the door and kicked the head inside. It had begun to squeal high-pitched.
Augusta gritted her teeth. Beyond the door, the kitchens of the Little Baroness were cavernous and filled with appliances so antique they hardly looked like what they were and instead seemed almost like works of art. The room was searing hot, which meant the ovens and stoves were good and ready. She smiled and swept Joshua Blackwell's head along with her shovel.
The ovens seemed to burn coal; in the corner to her left, a surprisingly shiny shovel hung from a hook on the wall above a metal bin heaping with dully gleaming black lumps. A long, fancy range topped with at least twenty burners ran along the left wall of the galley, while a broad, marble- topped counter unfurled itself down the center, and sinks the size of bathtubs clustered along the wall to the right. At the rear were several doors, some of them broad slabs that probably opened onto refrigerators and freezers. Shelves held tins of spices and ranks of closed cabinets almost certainly were stocked with dishes.
Oven or freezer? She wondered if Joshua Blackwell's body parts could organize themselves enough to open a freezer without the head, and with that realized that if she lived long enough to look back on this experience, she would have nightmares for the rest of her life.
She shook her head, and decided the oven would probably be the best choice. If she could incinerate Joshua Blackwell's head, the rest of him, she hoped, would be as good as dead and would flop and thrash like beached fish on the floor of the dining saloon until they rotted, or mummified.
Joshua Blackwell's head alternated between mewling fearfully and growling and trying to snap at her as she brushed it along.
"You'd better be afraid," she said to it and in response it looked up at her, snarled, and spat a gob of something noxious that missed and splattered instead on the floor behind her.
She stomped hard on the head and pinned it to the floor while she grabbed a towel from the counter and used it to open the nearest oven. She grinned as a wave of heat billowed out. Then, using her shovel, she scooped up the head, tossed it inside and slammed the oven door.
"There, you son of a bitch. I hope that hurts." She leaned on her shovel and stared at the oven door. From behind it, she heard muffled shrieks and a very satisfying rattle as Joshua Blackwell's head thrashed and fought to escape.
A sudden flare of vertigo. She staggered and reached back to steady herself on the counter. From the corner of her eye she saw a pair of legs clad in black trousers at the end of the counter near the freezers, and a puddle of blood collected in the grout between the galley floor tiles. The rest of the body, probably that of the chef, was hidden from view. Of course Joshua Blackwell would have killed the chef, she thought, and felt ill. And the waiters as well. She looked back at the oven.
It was a marvel of black wrought iron and white enamel, balanced on bandy little legs and adorned with iron curlicues and engravings – more like a work of art than a stove, she thought again. Gleaming copper pots of all sizes simmered on the stovetop.
She watched the oven for what seemed like several minutes before she realized something was happening. The iron around the oven door was beginning to glow red. The banging behind it had intensified and the cries grew louder. The copper pots were boiling over, belching steam, water and sauces splashing out and sizzling on the range top. Augusta backed away, toward the door, dragging her shovel on the tiles. As though a bonfire was raging in its center, the kitchen was growing hotter. And hotter. Quickly.
Something had begun to take shape on the enameled oven door. A shape, and shapes within, scorching themselves black against the white. After a moment, she recognized it as the design from the middle painting upstairs in the dining saloon. A circle within a circle ringing a triangle, dotted with arcane symbols and letters from some dead alphabet.
She thought it best to flee and turned, threw open the kitchen door, and ran.
She found that pieces of Joshua Blackwell were spilling down the stairs, seeking out the kitchen and she fought her way through them, stepping over and around them, and kicking them out of her way.
"Oh God," she panted, "Oh God, oh God, oh God..."
She was halfway across the dining saloon before the galley of the Little Baroness exploded.