A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli Page B

weren’t gonna show.”
    I step inside and I’m somewhat gratified to see that even in this torrential downpour and heavy wind, the roof job I did is holding up. A brass cauldron in the fireplace spews noxious fumes and sloshing black liquid. A short curved blade lies on a table nearby.
    “What the hell do you want from me?” I ask.
    “Jest a little blood and vinegar, there, in the pot.”
    “Vinegar?”
    “Some of yer seed.”
    “My seed?”
    “Sperm.”
    “You’ve got to be shittin’ me.”
    She isn’t, and her expression is so contorted that the hinges of her jaw look like they’re in the wrong places. “Evil’s come looking for us. It’s here to stay one way or another. The bad is just gonna get worse. The demons and the spirits, they up in arms and on the loose. You know that, and you believe it, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” She purses her lips and gives me a slow once-over, as if this will be the last time she ever sees me. “’Sides, the carnival will be coming through soon. We ain’t got much time at all.”
    “What’s that got to do with anything?”
    “Everybody’s got sacrifices to make,” she says. “Or don’t you know that already?”
    I shake my head but it’s all right. I take up the blade and cut my hand open over the boiling brew. Where my blood strikes the liquid it hisses and spits. The flames bend and sputter as if drinking. I remember my father’s failures to change these ancient ways, and how his defeats and nearsightedness eventually drove him into the one hope of Kingdom Come, his own miserable mill.
    Velma Coots gives me a scarf and I bind my wound.
    “Now, your seed.”
    “No.”
    “I need it!”
    “Sorry, I have more use for my vinegar than you do.”
    She starts hopping in place. “You got to. The magic won’t work proper without it!”
    “Do your best.”
    She takes the blade and holds it out toward my belly as if she plans to use it on me. The fire reflects in the sheen of my blood coating the knife. I glare at her, waiting to see if she’s really going to make this kind of move. She’s castrated a thousand pigs in her life. Rain crashes harder and still the roof holds against it. I can take pride in that, if nothing else, why the hell not.
    She lets loose a snarl and stabs the knife into a wooden table. “Then whatever happens from here on out is on your conscience, Thomas, you hear that? It’s on your head.”
    “Of course it is,” I say. “So what else is new?”

C HAPTER F OUR

    S OMEONE IS CALLING MY NAME.
    She needs help and is begging adorably, the way we all like.
    In the night I awaken to find my brothers talking to the face. They sway in the darkness, a shambling mass of bodies—of body. Sebastian is delirious with fury, his complaints coming from three throats, hitting three different notes, harmonizing well with a little doo-wop shuffle going on. They glare at each other, stuffed with devotion and anger and regret, each third of that brain filled with memories and needs.
    Sarah isn’t here and neither is Dodi, but I feel a female nearby, one that makes me possessive. They want her, and they’ll go through me to get her. I listen, hoping to hear her voice, but there’s nothing now but the cruel whispers of my brothers, the feel of lips playing against my side. It’s too dark to know which of them is kissing her. Perhaps they’re taking turns, each attending the face in his own manner.
    I try to enter myself, aware of every breath, the singular beating of my sole heart. The chill of my belly and the cold pressure of their mouths. I go further inside, hoping to discover muscles that might be making her eyes blink, small indented nostrils breathing deeply, misplaced cheekbones, lovely earlobes.
    There isn’t anybody. It’s a bruise or a scar. Cole is weeping and Sebastian, in his hate, bites into my side. The storm is no match for his own fever. Pain erupts, but I’m not certain it’s mine. Blood runs thickly down to the