I’m going to start with the obvious: I know magic isn’t real.
I’ve never believed in ghosts or ghouls or that little old ladies muttering over a crystal ball or stirring a bubbling cauldron had any power. I’ve put my faith in fists and knives, real, useful things that I can grasp, things that have served me well.
Or at least they did, until my former partner Nicolas le Blanc, bastard son of a whore he was, stabbed me in the back and fled back to the safety of France, leaving me to rot in an Arabian prison. The details of that weasel’s treachery aren’t important here, but suffice to say I spent every day of those 10 long years planning my revenge. There wasn’t a night in that helllhole where I wasn’t lulled to sleep by the satisfaction of imagining slitting his miserable throat.
So I returned a free man with my body hardened and my mind thirsty only to make the bastard pay. The old gang was in ruins, half split back to France with Nicolas, the others scattered like stray dogs without a leader. Only dear, stupid Stephen was easy to find and so, bereft of other options, I recruited him and we became a sorry gang of two.
He was happy to see me. I was rather less happy to see how aimless he’d been, how he had spent those years drowsily drinking arak and unsuccessfully pursuing local girls. Nonetheless, it was a start, and I buckled down to the business of planning my long awaited revenge.
It was not an easy business. I discovered many of my former contacts dead or gone or plain unwilling to work with me. I called in a favour and was able to secure passage back to the homeland but once there, I was staring down the prospect of starting from scratch, without anything from which to build my vengeance. It was a bleak outlook.
It was some time in those frustrated and thwarted weeks that Stephen mentioned that if it is was Nicolas’s death I wanted, he knew someone who could make it happen.
I was skeptical of this declaration. I hadn’t known Stephen to have much of either brains or charisma, and whatever local assassin he had in mind was likely to be incompetent at best and a charlatan at worst. But he was persistent and I was at a loss for any better plan. Eventually I relented, and we went to see this mysterious contact.
I should have called it off when the address he was given led us straight to the cemetery. There is a fine line between theatrics and idiocy, and standing outside the old mausoleum, white marble stretching up from the earth like the bleached bones of some giant beast, I felt I had stepped firmly into the latter.
We were met by a thin, pale girl whose Arabic was accented with something Eastern European. She was brusque, not answering any of my questions but only staring at me with unsettlingly bright eyes until I agreed to follow. I do not know how they had managed to coax so many plants into growing inside that building, sheltered from the sun and fed only by choking dust, but they rustled around our path like a whispering sea. Stephen was giddy, though he insisted I lead the way through the dark, cool stone of that strange mausoleum.
When we were led into the chamber that would have housed the body and I saw who we were here to meet, I could have smashed my fist straight through Stephen’s stupid grin.
This was no killer, no hard thug or experienced assassin. She was bent over the heavy bud of one of those strange plants, her hair covered and her body draped in chiffonous silks the color of freshly spilled blood. She was dreamily reciting something I did not understand, her eyes half-closed.
My impression only solidified when she finally turned and mildly asked our business. This was no killer; more likely someone’s doddering, fortune-telling grandmother.
My blood was boiling and I was ready to storm out of this stupid, dank crypt into a more productive discussion but Stephen barreled blindly ahead and in a rush of words told her everything. She listened silently, caressing the flowers beside her as one would a dog’s head.
She turned her gaze to me and it seemed impossibly bright - I had the thought that she must be blind and these were fogged cataracts uncannily catching the light like a cat but no, her eyes were clear and alert as she assessed me. I braced myself to refuse whatever payment she demanded for this ridiculous scheme, to assert whatever services she claimed to provide of no use to me, but all she asked, in that same soft tone of voice was, “Hal turiduh an yata'alamu?”
“Do you wish him to suffer?”
A chill ran down my spine then. Or maybe that’s just my knowledge of what I know now coloring my memories. Either way I nodded, my lips suddenly dry and told her yes, more than anything.
That was all it took. She told me it would be done, said that once it was “set in motion” that nothing would stop it. She asked if I had passage back to France and I told her readily enough of the ship that was ready to leave as soon as I was. She asked that cargo be added, a large, heavy wooden box that would “cause no trouble” that she would arrange to be picked up once the ship arrived. I balked at this request but she just cooly stared me down until I relented. What the hell was one more ridiculous request, I figured.
She waved away all talk of what she expected I owe, saying only that payment would “flow like blood, in its own time”. She spoke oddly in that way, using words I didn’t know despite what I considered to be my excellent grasp of the language, and structuring her sentences in a way I found archaic. All the time we spoke the pale woman that had escorted us stood nearby, silent and watching.
Before we left, she asked if I had anything that belonged to Nicolas. By a stroke of luck I had his silver snuffbox I had borrowed before being hauled away for hard labor. I can’t say for sure why I kept it, but I did feel something of a pang when she took it in her cool, dark hands and told me breezily it would suffice.
The late afternoon sun was far too bright after the shadows of the mausoleum. As I stood there blinking from the light, it was as though the sun were burning away the strange delusions I had been under, and I felt regret for indulging her pointless whims. But what was done was done, and I could see to a more direct solution once my feet were firmly on French soil. I bid farewell to Stephen and prepared myself to leave.
The journey across the Mediterranean Sea was, predictably, miserable. I had not been on a boat for any length of time in years and I spent much of the first days with my head over the side, heaving up the remnants from my stomach. Worse, some aquatic illness began taking members of the crew halfway through the trip and they were confined to bed, sickly and pale, leaving fewer hands to assist on deck.
But I made it in not so long a time as to go completely mad, and the irritatingly heavy box I had insisted come aboard was removed, as promised, from the docks in a timely manner. I found cheap lodging and I set to work learning what I could about what had changed in my absence.
Nicolas had done well for himself since stabbing me in the back and making for his rathole in Paris. He owned a warehouse near the docks through which goods, many illicit, flowed. His success only strengthened my resolve, and I redoubled my efforts to find him.
It was a month before I saw him. I had taken a seat in a cafe overlooking the docks and I spotted a well-dressed man surveying his corrupt kingdom. My heart leapt to my throat when I saw the rat, and it was all I could do to stop myself leaping over the banister and killing him there on the street. He was older, and had a limp that was new, but his dirty blonde hair and shit-eating smirk had not changed a bit.
To my credit, I waited. I did not know what the woman from the crypt’s plans were, but I had gone this far in her scheme and was willing to be patient. So I waited. Every evening I frequented that cafe, and every evening I felt my bile churn as I watched Nicolas strut through his domain in his fine coat and thick-soled boots. Whatever ailment induced his limp had also necessitated the use of a cane, and I could hear it tapping along the street as he walked.
It was nearly two months later when I was tipped off about a meeting Nicolas would be having in his warehouse with a smuggler who was antsy about security. His guards were told to find somewhere else to be, and the warehouse workers were instructed to take a day off. He would be, more or less, alone.
I can not miss such a clear call to action, dark magics and shadowy schemes be damned.
These details are also not important here and frankly, I cherish them too much to commit them to paper. Suffice to say, Nicolas died the death he deserved. His new life must not have been as comfortable as I thought, as underneath his fine clothes he was missing several more teeth and fingers since last I saw him. He was missing even more when I was through with him.
Perhaps I am meant to say that the revenge was meaningless; that cutting the bastard to pieces and dumping the remains into the dark sea did not feed the hunger that had grown every day I was behind bars.
But if I did, it would be a lie. Killing him was the most pure joy I have ever known.
I took a scenic route back to my lodging, my blood calm and my heart at peace for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. I was preparing to cross a bridge when I saw a shape sat in the middle and I paused, confused as to what I was looking at.
It was a package, like any one might have delivered. It was wrapped in thick paper and tied with a slender rope under which a thin, green leaf was tucked. I approached it warily, my knife in my hand. My hand clenched tight around the hilt as I saw the writing in black, plain letters on the top, “To the urgent attention of M. Jean Vancy.”
There was my name, clear as day. My mind reeled. No one should have known where I was, and certainly wouldn’t have known I would take the circuitous route that led me to this bridge. I took a few steps back, peering in the shadows for a sniggering face, some sign as to who had placed this in my path.
But there was no one. Only the rustle of swaying grass and the faint cry of small birds.
Warily, I picked up the package. It was small, the size of my palm, and light. I cut the cording with my blade and flipped the lid off.
Inside, unmistakable, was a human finger. There was no blood or gore, just the pale lump of a little finger sat on the bottom of the box.
I threw it to the ground. The grip on my knife was damp as I turned, demanding whoever was responsible for this sick joke show themselves. No one did. There were no sounds but the whisper of the cool wind.
Understandably, my pace quickened as I hurried back to my bed. No one seemed to be chasing me, no one even took notice of my rushing through the streets, but I kept a hand tightly on my knife and my eyes alert.
I was almost back to my room when it happened. A slick mud puddle, the same color as the street underfoot, and I slipped. I hit the wall hard and there was a sharp jolt of pain as the blade in my hand twisted.
There wasn’t any blood. But when I opened my hand, there was a sickening tap as my little finger fell to the ground, severed as neatly as by a butcher’s blade.
I stood numbly in shock, pain radiating through my hand. I clasped my wrist. My breath was shaky. Eventually, with nothing else to do, I continued home, leaving the cleaved digit where it lay in the mud.
I slept deeply and did not dream. My missing finger did nothing to diminish the taste of the boiled eggs I ate for breakfast, their flesh seasoned with the death of my betrayer. I whistled as I dressed. However, my heart sank when I opened my door.
There in the hall lay a package, no larger than my forefinger, wrapped in thick paper and tied with a rope under which a green leaf was tucked. The top read clearly, “To the urgent attention of M. Jean Vancy.”
I took it inside and placed it on the table. I must have spent an hour staring at that hateful folded paper. I could hear the comings and goings of the people around me but they were distant, trivial in comparison to the trial before me. Finally I came to some decision and, moving quickly lest I lose my nerve, slit the cording and turned the box over.
A pale white tooth, smooth as the inside of a shell, clattered to the table. The gnarled roots were clean and bare.
I did not go out that day. As I was carefully preparing for bed I tripped on the hem of the coat I had thoughtlessly tossed aside the night prior and bashed my face against the corner of the bed. I felt the loosened tooth tumble from my mouth before I saw it.
The packages kept coming. A finger, toe, a tooth. I changed hotels in the dead of night, stopped answering my door, did not open the packages when they inevitably arrived. It did not make a difference. Every day, I felt the bright shock of pain as I lost a finger, a toe, a tooth.
I gathered all the furniture in the room and tossed it outside, despite the protestations of the owners. The bed, the table, all thrown to the front with a crack of wood until nothing remained but me and the clothes on my back. That night the light fixture on the wall came loose and cleanly severed the last toe on my right foot when it fell with a shriek of metal.
I found the woman from the crypt. As luck or fate or some sick providence would have it, she was sitting on a park bench on a dark, cold evening, leaning low to examine the wildflowers that grew scraggy underneath. I had to use a cane to walk, and I staggered toward her shakily. I don’t know how she had come to France or why she had chosen there to idle; it occurs to me now her appearance might be some delusion of my fevered mind. But there was no mistaking the pitying look she gave me with those eyes bright as an amber flame as I grasped at the hem of skirt like a beggar, imploring she help me. Nor the final words she spoke to me, “Some hungers are too great to be killed; they can only be diverted.”
And then she was gone. I did not follow her. I have not seen her again.
I don’t think she can help me now. I don’t think anyone can help me.
I still don’t believe in magic. But I am certain, now, that there are some things in this world with a hunger that is much, much worse. And there isn’t much left of me now to devour.
—
[Taken from an unsigned letter found in an abandoned room at the Hôtel de Cauchoix, Paris. The only other items left in the room were several empty packages wrapped in thick paper.]
I’ve never believed in ghosts or ghouls or that little old ladies muttering over a crystal ball or stirring a bubbling cauldron had any power. I’ve put my faith in fists and knives, real, useful things that I can grasp, things that have served me well.
Or at least they did, until my former partner Nicolas le Blanc, bastard son of a whore he was, stabbed me in the back and fled back to the safety of France, leaving me to rot in an Arabian prison. The details of that weasel’s treachery aren’t important here, but suffice to say I spent every day of those 10 long years planning my revenge. There wasn’t a night in that helllhole where I wasn’t lulled to sleep by the satisfaction of imagining slitting his miserable throat.
So I returned a free man with my body hardened and my mind thirsty only to make the bastard pay. The old gang was in ruins, half split back to France with Nicolas, the others scattered like stray dogs without a leader. Only dear, stupid Stephen was easy to find and so, bereft of other options, I recruited him and we became a sorry gang of two.
He was happy to see me. I was rather less happy to see how aimless he’d been, how he had spent those years drowsily drinking arak and unsuccessfully pursuing local girls. Nonetheless, it was a start, and I buckled down to the business of planning my long awaited revenge.
It was not an easy business. I discovered many of my former contacts dead or gone or plain unwilling to work with me. I called in a favour and was able to secure passage back to the homeland but once there, I was staring down the prospect of starting from scratch, without anything from which to build my vengeance. It was a bleak outlook.
It was some time in those frustrated and thwarted weeks that Stephen mentioned that if it is was Nicolas’s death I wanted, he knew someone who could make it happen.
I was skeptical of this declaration. I hadn’t known Stephen to have much of either brains or charisma, and whatever local assassin he had in mind was likely to be incompetent at best and a charlatan at worst. But he was persistent and I was at a loss for any better plan. Eventually I relented, and we went to see this mysterious contact.
I should have called it off when the address he was given led us straight to the cemetery. There is a fine line between theatrics and idiocy, and standing outside the old mausoleum, white marble stretching up from the earth like the bleached bones of some giant beast, I felt I had stepped firmly into the latter.
We were met by a thin, pale girl whose Arabic was accented with something Eastern European. She was brusque, not answering any of my questions but only staring at me with unsettlingly bright eyes until I agreed to follow. I do not know how they had managed to coax so many plants into growing inside that building, sheltered from the sun and fed only by choking dust, but they rustled around our path like a whispering sea. Stephen was giddy, though he insisted I lead the way through the dark, cool stone of that strange mausoleum.
When we were led into the chamber that would have housed the body and I saw who we were here to meet, I could have smashed my fist straight through Stephen’s stupid grin.
This was no killer, no hard thug or experienced assassin. She was bent over the heavy bud of one of those strange plants, her hair covered and her body draped in chiffonous silks the color of freshly spilled blood. She was dreamily reciting something I did not understand, her eyes half-closed.
My impression only solidified when she finally turned and mildly asked our business. This was no killer; more likely someone’s doddering, fortune-telling grandmother.
My blood was boiling and I was ready to storm out of this stupid, dank crypt into a more productive discussion but Stephen barreled blindly ahead and in a rush of words told her everything. She listened silently, caressing the flowers beside her as one would a dog’s head.
She turned her gaze to me and it seemed impossibly bright - I had the thought that she must be blind and these were fogged cataracts uncannily catching the light like a cat but no, her eyes were clear and alert as she assessed me. I braced myself to refuse whatever payment she demanded for this ridiculous scheme, to assert whatever services she claimed to provide of no use to me, but all she asked, in that same soft tone of voice was, “Hal turiduh an yata'alamu?”
“Do you wish him to suffer?”
A chill ran down my spine then. Or maybe that’s just my knowledge of what I know now coloring my memories. Either way I nodded, my lips suddenly dry and told her yes, more than anything.
That was all it took. She told me it would be done, said that once it was “set in motion” that nothing would stop it. She asked if I had passage back to France and I told her readily enough of the ship that was ready to leave as soon as I was. She asked that cargo be added, a large, heavy wooden box that would “cause no trouble” that she would arrange to be picked up once the ship arrived. I balked at this request but she just cooly stared me down until I relented. What the hell was one more ridiculous request, I figured.
She waved away all talk of what she expected I owe, saying only that payment would “flow like blood, in its own time”. She spoke oddly in that way, using words I didn’t know despite what I considered to be my excellent grasp of the language, and structuring her sentences in a way I found archaic. All the time we spoke the pale woman that had escorted us stood nearby, silent and watching.
Before we left, she asked if I had anything that belonged to Nicolas. By a stroke of luck I had his silver snuffbox I had borrowed before being hauled away for hard labor. I can’t say for sure why I kept it, but I did feel something of a pang when she took it in her cool, dark hands and told me breezily it would suffice.
The late afternoon sun was far too bright after the shadows of the mausoleum. As I stood there blinking from the light, it was as though the sun were burning away the strange delusions I had been under, and I felt regret for indulging her pointless whims. But what was done was done, and I could see to a more direct solution once my feet were firmly on French soil. I bid farewell to Stephen and prepared myself to leave.
The journey across the Mediterranean Sea was, predictably, miserable. I had not been on a boat for any length of time in years and I spent much of the first days with my head over the side, heaving up the remnants from my stomach. Worse, some aquatic illness began taking members of the crew halfway through the trip and they were confined to bed, sickly and pale, leaving fewer hands to assist on deck.
But I made it in not so long a time as to go completely mad, and the irritatingly heavy box I had insisted come aboard was removed, as promised, from the docks in a timely manner. I found cheap lodging and I set to work learning what I could about what had changed in my absence.
Nicolas had done well for himself since stabbing me in the back and making for his rathole in Paris. He owned a warehouse near the docks through which goods, many illicit, flowed. His success only strengthened my resolve, and I redoubled my efforts to find him.
It was a month before I saw him. I had taken a seat in a cafe overlooking the docks and I spotted a well-dressed man surveying his corrupt kingdom. My heart leapt to my throat when I saw the rat, and it was all I could do to stop myself leaping over the banister and killing him there on the street. He was older, and had a limp that was new, but his dirty blonde hair and shit-eating smirk had not changed a bit.
To my credit, I waited. I did not know what the woman from the crypt’s plans were, but I had gone this far in her scheme and was willing to be patient. So I waited. Every evening I frequented that cafe, and every evening I felt my bile churn as I watched Nicolas strut through his domain in his fine coat and thick-soled boots. Whatever ailment induced his limp had also necessitated the use of a cane, and I could hear it tapping along the street as he walked.
It was nearly two months later when I was tipped off about a meeting Nicolas would be having in his warehouse with a smuggler who was antsy about security. His guards were told to find somewhere else to be, and the warehouse workers were instructed to take a day off. He would be, more or less, alone.
I can not miss such a clear call to action, dark magics and shadowy schemes be damned.
These details are also not important here and frankly, I cherish them too much to commit them to paper. Suffice to say, Nicolas died the death he deserved. His new life must not have been as comfortable as I thought, as underneath his fine clothes he was missing several more teeth and fingers since last I saw him. He was missing even more when I was through with him.
Perhaps I am meant to say that the revenge was meaningless; that cutting the bastard to pieces and dumping the remains into the dark sea did not feed the hunger that had grown every day I was behind bars.
But if I did, it would be a lie. Killing him was the most pure joy I have ever known.
I took a scenic route back to my lodging, my blood calm and my heart at peace for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. I was preparing to cross a bridge when I saw a shape sat in the middle and I paused, confused as to what I was looking at.
It was a package, like any one might have delivered. It was wrapped in thick paper and tied with a slender rope under which a thin, green leaf was tucked. I approached it warily, my knife in my hand. My hand clenched tight around the hilt as I saw the writing in black, plain letters on the top, “To the urgent attention of M. Jean Vancy.”
There was my name, clear as day. My mind reeled. No one should have known where I was, and certainly wouldn’t have known I would take the circuitous route that led me to this bridge. I took a few steps back, peering in the shadows for a sniggering face, some sign as to who had placed this in my path.
But there was no one. Only the rustle of swaying grass and the faint cry of small birds.
Warily, I picked up the package. It was small, the size of my palm, and light. I cut the cording with my blade and flipped the lid off.
Inside, unmistakable, was a human finger. There was no blood or gore, just the pale lump of a little finger sat on the bottom of the box.
I threw it to the ground. The grip on my knife was damp as I turned, demanding whoever was responsible for this sick joke show themselves. No one did. There were no sounds but the whisper of the cool wind.
Understandably, my pace quickened as I hurried back to my bed. No one seemed to be chasing me, no one even took notice of my rushing through the streets, but I kept a hand tightly on my knife and my eyes alert.
I was almost back to my room when it happened. A slick mud puddle, the same color as the street underfoot, and I slipped. I hit the wall hard and there was a sharp jolt of pain as the blade in my hand twisted.
There wasn’t any blood. But when I opened my hand, there was a sickening tap as my little finger fell to the ground, severed as neatly as by a butcher’s blade.
I stood numbly in shock, pain radiating through my hand. I clasped my wrist. My breath was shaky. Eventually, with nothing else to do, I continued home, leaving the cleaved digit where it lay in the mud.
I slept deeply and did not dream. My missing finger did nothing to diminish the taste of the boiled eggs I ate for breakfast, their flesh seasoned with the death of my betrayer. I whistled as I dressed. However, my heart sank when I opened my door.
There in the hall lay a package, no larger than my forefinger, wrapped in thick paper and tied with a rope under which a green leaf was tucked. The top read clearly, “To the urgent attention of M. Jean Vancy.”
I took it inside and placed it on the table. I must have spent an hour staring at that hateful folded paper. I could hear the comings and goings of the people around me but they were distant, trivial in comparison to the trial before me. Finally I came to some decision and, moving quickly lest I lose my nerve, slit the cording and turned the box over.
A pale white tooth, smooth as the inside of a shell, clattered to the table. The gnarled roots were clean and bare.
I did not go out that day. As I was carefully preparing for bed I tripped on the hem of the coat I had thoughtlessly tossed aside the night prior and bashed my face against the corner of the bed. I felt the loosened tooth tumble from my mouth before I saw it.
The packages kept coming. A finger, toe, a tooth. I changed hotels in the dead of night, stopped answering my door, did not open the packages when they inevitably arrived. It did not make a difference. Every day, I felt the bright shock of pain as I lost a finger, a toe, a tooth.
I gathered all the furniture in the room and tossed it outside, despite the protestations of the owners. The bed, the table, all thrown to the front with a crack of wood until nothing remained but me and the clothes on my back. That night the light fixture on the wall came loose and cleanly severed the last toe on my right foot when it fell with a shriek of metal.
I found the woman from the crypt. As luck or fate or some sick providence would have it, she was sitting on a park bench on a dark, cold evening, leaning low to examine the wildflowers that grew scraggy underneath. I had to use a cane to walk, and I staggered toward her shakily. I don’t know how she had come to France or why she had chosen there to idle; it occurs to me now her appearance might be some delusion of my fevered mind. But there was no mistaking the pitying look she gave me with those eyes bright as an amber flame as I grasped at the hem of skirt like a beggar, imploring she help me. Nor the final words she spoke to me, “Some hungers are too great to be killed; they can only be diverted.”
And then she was gone. I did not follow her. I have not seen her again.
I don’t think she can help me now. I don’t think anyone can help me.
I still don’t believe in magic. But I am certain, now, that there are some things in this world with a hunger that is much, much worse. And there isn’t much left of me now to devour.
—
[Taken from an unsigned letter found in an abandoned room at the Hôtel de Cauchoix, Paris. The only other items left in the room were several empty packages wrapped in thick paper.]
