Song of the Sandman Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2020 J-F. DUBEAU

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Inkshares, Inc., San Francisco, California

  www.inkshares.com

  Edited by Adam Gomolin

  Cover design by M.S. Corley

  Interior design by Kevin G. Summers

  ISBN: 9781942645962

  e-ISBN: 9781947848054

  LCCN: 2017955460

  First edition

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  VENUS

  ABRAHAM

  DANIEL

  ALICE

  JODIE

  VENUS

  ABRAHAM

  DANIEL

  ABRAHAM

  VENUS

  ALICE

  DANIEL

  ABRAHAM

  VENUS

  JODIE

  ALICE

  DANIEL

  ABRAHAM

  JODIE

  VENUS

  ALICE

  ABRAHAM

  DANIEL

  VENUS

  ALICE

  DANIEL

  ALICE

  ABRAHAM

  VENUS

  ABRAHAM

  ALICE

  VENUS

  DANIEL

  EPILOGUE

  LIST OF PATRONS

  INKSHARES

  PROLOGUE

  The worst part about the worst things is that they can happen to anyone. There is no inoculation to catastrophe, no matter how many precautions are taken. Sometimes the fort we build to protect ourselves is the very thing that collapses and buries us alive. The thicker the walls, the heavier the masonry, the more bones get crushed, the more skulls get split. It’s the sense of security that becomes the great betrayer, folding in on itself, obliterating all within.

  It had taken the better part of a decade for Alice to build those walls. She’d started with nothing but the pieces of a shattered life and whatever emotional tools were available to an eight-year-old. Her shelter was flimsy at first, hastily put together from whatever leftovers of herself she could find. The largest stones her tired and wounded mind could carry were stacked together to form a fragile barricade, one that threatened to crumble at the slightest touch.

  And it did crumble. Over and over throughout the years, Alice would have to build again and again. But each time, she found she had more resources to work with, that she could lift heavier materials, and that she knew how to construct a sturdier bastion. One from within which she could protect her battered spirit.

  By her sixteenth birthday, Alice had built a veritable fortress. The repetitive drudgery of her routine, however unique, had made her a skilled architect. As long as she didn’t step out of line, as long as she didn’t think of all the things she’d never have, it was easy enough for her to endure.

  The very trappings of her predicament had become symbolic of her fortress. The bars on the windows no longer served to keep her in, but instead protected her from what was outside. The scratches on the wall, each marking a day in captivity, had been painted over, as she no longer counted the time before she might be rescued or escape.

  Incarceration was transfigured into security. Captors were now family; and routine, a shield. Food, lodging, and even some measure of education were provided to her. Other members of her new family had to work one or two jobs, giving up their earnings to the community; meanwhile, all that was required of Alice was that she keep her voice in perfect condition.

  As far as she could tell, this was going to be her life until the day she died. Everything was arrayed to keep her safe and healthy and content. She was a delicate music box, kept in perfect working condition, stored in a velvet-lined box for its own protection.

  At sixteen, eight years into her imprisonment, Alice’s life took another sharp turn.

  It started when she heard a loud commotion outside her room one night. Then came the screams. Neither were unusual. The refurbished storeroom Alice called her own was located in the basement of what used to be a school. Members of the family would sometimes move furniture and boxes in and out of storage down here, caring little whether they bothered her with their activities. Sometimes it would be one of her “brothers” or “sisters” who would be dragged down the stairs. Kicking and screaming, they were taken to the lonely darkness of the Reflection Room, a small custodial closet where family members would be locked in solitary confinement if they broke a rule. The Reflection Room smelled of stale blood, urine, and fear. The smell of discipline. One Alice knew from experience.

  On this day, Alice had no idea what could be going on and felt no curiosity toward it. Whoever had transgressed would be punished and then welcomed back into the fold. Their sin would be bled out in fits of painful contrition. Upon hearing the sounds, her thumb quickly pressed the volume control on her earphones to drown them out. So seldom did Alice get an evening to herself; she’d be damned if this one would be ruined because someone had displeased Mother.

  Prokofiev blasted loudly in her ears and she bent over her book once again. It had taken time to convince Mother to procure the Harry Potter series for her. Mother had argued that it might give her “ideas.” But Alice knew where to draw the line between fantasy and reality. She knew the bars on her window were too narrow for an owl to fly through.

  “Alice!”

  She snapped her head up at the mention of her name, yanking her earphones off at the sight of Victor Poole. With well-combed graying hair and a dark brown goatee, he was the very picture of a schoolteacher. Or what Alice imagined one would look like. He must have been calling out her name for a moment, as he looked at the end of his wits. His skin was red from exertion and his throat was ragged as he spoke. His maroon cardigan had a large dark stain at the front that looked like spilled oil.

  “Alice! Come quick!”

  He stood in her doorway, waiting for her to react. But Alice never had visitors. She was kept to a strict schedule and even stricter limitations on where she was allowed to wander. What could Victor Poole possibly want with her? These questions were wandering back and forth through her mind when she heard the wail.

  The wailing hadn’t come from behind the door of the faraway Reflection Room; it had originated from somewhere closer. The scream had an animal quality to it, the sort of noise that might escape the belly of a wounded dog. High-pitched yet guttural, fraught with agony, it was a plea for release.

  “Mister Poole, who’s that screaming?” asked her tremulous voice. He didn’t answer.

  “Is she coming?” Mother’s voice echoed down the hallway, delicate yet uncompromising. In the background a drawn-out howl attempted to drown her out.

  Before she realized what her thin limbs were doing, Alice climbed out of bed and rushed past Victor, pushing him aside, the flat of her hand pressing into his soiled cardigan.

  The hallway underneath the school that she called home was dimly lit by a spine of fluorescent lights. They stretched from the stairs and service elevator, all the way to the other end of the basement. There, another set of stairs was hidden behind a door that said exit-sortie in glowing red letters. Midway through the
hall, a door was pulled open and a small gathering of family members crowded around it.

  “You called, Mother?” Alice asked, obedient.

  The tension was unmistakable. The two men closest to the door wore masks of abject horror, gray skin across their contorted features. Whatever they were looking at, the source of the tortured screams, Alice couldn’t imagine. The only certain thing was that she wanted no part of it.

  The third closest spectator was Mother. Hers was the demeanor of an annoyed supervisor. Arms crossed, back stiff, she glared at Alice with equal parts disdain and impatience. She might as well have been waiting for her to make her bed or get ready for school or finally mow the lawn before the weekend was over. All of this while someone was almost certainly dying a painful death mere feet away.

  “This is it, Alice. Time to shine,” Mother said, stepping aside and gesturing calmly toward the open door.

  It took a moment for the other two witnesses to realize what Alice was doing and get out of the way. Averting her eyes, Alice stepped up to the threshold, just as another earsplitting scream—­­this one of a thick, wet quality—burst out of the opening.

  She looked back at Mother, preferring to face her impatience than whatever was in that room. She could smell the metallic aroma of fresh blood, feel the rank humidity of sweat and bodily fluids. It was a slaughterhouse that she didn’t want to face alone.

  “Hurry,” Mother said, letting just a hint of fear slip through her urging. “You can do this, Alice.”

  Taking a deep, blood-scented breath and closing her eyes, Alice turned toward the room. Moist cracking and a frantic gurgle were all she could hear. Knowing she would lose her nerve if she were to take but the smallest of peeks, she instead concentrated on the task at hand.

  “Anytime, Alice,” Mother said, through thinly veiled worry.

  Another deep breath and Alice began to sing. The song—a sweet, slow lullaby—came out a trembling mess. Alice could picture Mother’s annoyed eyes. She was better than this, more practiced. In fact, when she put her mind to it, as Mother demanded her to do at this precise moment, Alice was perfect.

  Voices and noises, screams and echoes, all attempted to ripple the glassy pond of her concentration. A fine, warm mist touched her right cheek and something nudged the tip of her naked foot. But she maintained focus, thinking only of the air as it was pushed out of her lungs. Alice concentrated on how she could manipulate it with her vocal cords, her tongue, the opening of her mouth, even the tilt of her neck. Before long, she was lost in the lullaby. Her mind let go of the physical world surrounding her, abandoning all other senses. Her limbs were gone, as was the ground under her feet. If it weren’t for the need to take in air so that she could sing, she may have even forgotten to breathe.

  However long it had been, the room was quiet now. Her only companion was the sound of a slow and ponderous dripping.

  Alice slowly cracked open her eyes. They stung from the light and they hurt from the cramped muscles that had kept them shut. While she had been prepared to see the room turned into a butcher shop, the reality far exceeded her imagination.

  The singing had put a stop to the butchery, but Mother, along with every other surviving family member, had been put to sleep. They were slumped on the ground, awkward piles of humanity tossed aside with careless abandon. They were the lucky ones. Their chests moved up and down in deep slumber.

  Others had been less fortunate.

  Alice couldn’t tell how many family members had been killed, their remains in a mess of limbs and innards. She thought, if only for a callous moment, that counting heads would do the trick, but even that seemed a challenge.

  Among the carnage, she saw a stroke of pale gray in the middle of a crimson tableau—one last survivor. Nestled amid the various body parts like a bird in a nest lay the body of an old man. Ashen and wrinkled and completely naked, his eyes were covered by thick scabs of dried blood. At the center of each wound was a dark iron nail, driven into the socket. Whoever he was, the old man wasn’t part of the family. In fact, judging from the viscera covering his hands, he was the one responsible for this massacre.

  What Alice didn’t know was that the name of the man to whom the body had once belonged was Sam Finnegan.

  Feeling her fortitude waver, Alice lifted her left hand to her face. It was the one she had used to push Victor Poole out of her way. Feeling for the first time the sticky wetness between her fingers, she saw that she’d been wrong. It wasn’t oil that stained Victor’s cardigan, but blood. Blood that was growing stickier as it dried.

  Gore, violence, the tangible remains at her fingertips . . . none were what bothered Alice most. That didn’t mean she wasn’t shaken by the experience, but while she’d been singing to put the old man to sleep, something had sung back to her. An echo of her lullaby. A voice without sound that only she could hear. It was dark and angry, but also wounded and sad.

  Standing more alone than she’d ever felt, her emotional fortress in ruins once more, Alice struggled to decide what to do next. Mother had told her countless times that she was meant for great things. That one day she would meet an incredible destiny and her voice, her singing, would hold the key to a new age. The rest of the family believed that, but Alice had always doubted.

  Until today, when she had sung to and had heard the words of a god.

  VENUS

  Solitude, death, and darkness.

  The three fears of Venus McKenzie.

  The subway tunnel the young girl was sneaking through felt more hollow and more foreign than it should have. Venus kept looking up at the ceiling, a reminder of the sleeping city just a few feet above.

  Though she hated it, Venus could handle the solitude. She’d been raised an only child. In fact, often she chose solitude. It had been her decision to come to Montreal on her own and not involve her friends. Though, now that she marched blindly down the tunnel, she did long for some companionship.

  She still feared the loneliness, but patting the cell phone in her pocket, Venus was reminded that her friends weren’t really that far. She could, with one call, retreat back to humanity and find Penny and Abraham waiting there.

  Her relationship with death was a longer and more complex affair. Where other children were afraid of corpses, she had been fascinated by them from a young age. She thought, in fact, that she would follow the path of her uncle Dr. Randy McKenzie, who was a medical examiner. But living in Saint-Ferdinand had taught her what death really was. It was one thing to poke and prod at a stranger’s deceased form, a subject rather than an individual, but quite another to live for years among people who would routinely vanish without a trace. Not to mention the frequent news of mutilated remains discovered in the woods, an occurrence that repeated two or three times each year. One day she’d be buying candy from Cindy at the corner store, and a week later Cindy’s parents were burying her in the local cemetery. It was different when the dead had a name and a face.

  Then there was the time she’d danced with a god of hate and death. This, too, had left its mark.

  Death had announced its presence at the Laurier station through the vilest of means. It had reached out to her, pungent tendrils of decay that snaked through the air, undetected by most but unmistakable to Venus. Saint-Ferdinand had taught her the aroma of a decomposing corpse. And the Laurier station smelled of home.

  That left only the darkness.

  The darkness, she simply couldn’t stand. It was just another word for shadow, and that was something Venus had had quite enough of lately.

  A shadow was supposed to be nothing more than the absence of light. But it was more than that: it was where things could hide. All manner of things. The ones that existed just on the edge of life and death, or somewhere beyond it. She’d known a being of shadow, a creature of pure darkness. It had ruined her life, gouging out part of her soul in the process. Besides, darkness amplified everythi
ng else. It made the solitude that much more isolating. It sharpened her other senses, accentuating the thick smell of death. Her hearing was also keener, letting her know exactly how quiet and lonely the tunnels were at this time.

  Solitude, death, and darkness. Those were the things going through Venus McKenzie’s mind when she tripped over the supine body of Sylvain Gauthier.

  Her own cry of surprise echoed back to her from the concrete and stone walls of the tunnel. The high-pitched scream went down an octave with each repetition before eventually dissipating in the dark.

  With a bit of luck and an embarrassing stumble, Venus managed to keep her balance and avoid falling flat on her face. She was walking near the cold, moist wall, staying clear of the rails. Her boots were disturbing puddles of stagnant water that reeked of decay and garbage, but while no sweet-smelling rose herself, she could do without being covered in muddy rainwater and rat piss.

  Despite the darkness, there was no mistaking the corpse. The smell alone was quite enough to confirm it. The lump that had nearly sent her sprawling to the ground had to be Sylvain Gauthier. The stench was beyond belief, answering the question of how it had traveled so far down the subway line as to be detectable all the way back at the Laurier station. How had no one reported it? Why had the maintenance crew not stumbled upon it yet?

  Their negligence was her good fortune.

  Gauthier had looked something like her uncle: a little pudgy, with an easy, if pained, smile, and hair everywhere but on top of a shiny scalp. What had attracted Venus’s attention to him wasn’t so much his appearance but rather a handful of words tucked away in the article that had reported his disappearance.

  Member of the Church of the Sandmen.

  There had been a small cult of people calling themselves “Sandmen” in Saint-Ferdinand. While Venus knew very little about them, she had no doubt about a connection.

  After weeks of nearly fruitless research and investigation, with nary a clue to latch on to, the forgettable article in the Montreal Gazette had breathed new life into Venus’s mission. Still, it would have been preferable that Gauthier still had breath of his own.