Touch: A Trilogy Read online

  Touch

  A Trilogy

  A.G. Carpenter

  For those who are haunted,

  for those who carry scars.

  For those who struggle with monsters,

  within and without.

  Contents

  I. Of Lips and Tongue

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  II. Of Shade and Soul

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  III. Of Flesh and Bone

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by A.G. Carpenter

  More from Falstaff Books

  I

  Of Lips and Tongue

  Prologue

  On a hot July day Mama went cracked, locked my sisters and me in the tool shed, and lit us up like a Christmas tree.

  Addie, being the eldest, tore apart every shelf looking for something to break down or pry open the door, but Mama was cleverer than that; all that was left was the jars of turpentine and cans of old paint and the stacks of paper meant for the church fundraiser. Smoke curled in around the edges and every board was lined in shimmering red. I knew right then we weren't getting out.

  But Addie was determined and she pounded on that door 'til her knees and elbows and hands were bloody and raw. She looked at me and sighed, her strength all used up. “Sorry, Del.”

  Then she melted like a birthday candle in the summer sun.

  The baby went quiet. She was small, just brought back from the hospital on Tuesday, and thin 'cause Mama didn't want anything to do with her. The smoke and the stink from the burning paint were just too much. She coughed once or twice, put her fist in her mouth, and got real heavy in my arms.

  The tin roof screamed as the heat curled it up off the nails. Or maybe that was Mama still mouthin' off about how she was saving our souls from the fire that burns without ceasing. With both my sisters dead and the tool shed in flames, I lay down on the dirt floor and waited to die.

  I should have known I wouldn't. With seven generations of witch on Mama's side and rumors of unnatural behavior in Daddy's family, more than a few relatives had the Touch. A shame it couldn't have laid as heavy on Addie and the baby as it did on me.

  The roof peeled back far enough I could see sky and the smoldering branches of the hickory tree overhead. My clothes drifted away like leaves, the blackening fabric glittering with fire on every edge. Voices drifted in over the heavy breath of the flames. I wondered if the neighbors had come to see what was going on.

  One of the roof beams gave way and a length of chain Daddy used sometimes to pull Cousin Larry's car out of the ditch tumbled onto my arm—red hot iron laying imperfect circles all down my neck and shoulder. Jesus save me, it hurt. I screeched bloody murder and the door shook, like someone was throwing themselves against it.

  I’d sucked in another breath to scream when the door busted in and two men stomped through. The wet burlap bags over their heads steamed as the fire sucked at them. One of them kicked the chain away from me, yanked me up, and crashed out into the yard.

  Bouncing over one broad shoulder, I could see it wasn't just the neighbors who had come to see what was going on. The fire volunteers had their truck pulled up in the middle of the vegetable garden, loops of canvas hose spilling everywhere. Sheriff Mains and his deputies had their white and black cars with the gold star on the door parked in a glittering string down the driveway. All of 'em trudged back and forth across the mangled remains of the tomato plants and squash vines.

  My rescuer plopped me down on the grass, hard.

  “Ow.”

  Beneath the sooty edge of his sack, Mr. Feller's eyes got round as saucers. “Fuck me blue.” He snatched his makeshift firecoat off and ducked his head. “Beg pardon, Del. I... uh...” His face reddened, sweatier than usual.

  The crowd around the edge of the yard stirred. Maybe they realized something unexpected was happening. Or maybe they were just hoping for a glimpse of my charred body.

  I sat up and pulled my hair forward to cover as much skin as possible. I wasn't charred except for that one arm, but I sure was naked. My cheeks burned with embarrassment. The fire hadn't killed me, but the thought of sitting out here with all my private bits exposed for God and everyone to see came close.

  Sheriff Mains shoved a few of the volunteers aside. “What's going on?” He stopped, face going white and stiff as a new painted fence as he laid eyes on me. “Delaney.” His mouth worked for a moment. “You hurt?”

  “My arm,” I said. Lumpy with blisters, it had split open, leaking yellow and blood.

  “Jesus.” He snatched one of the volunteers by the arm. “Get the antiseptic cream and some gauze.”

  “And a blanket,” I said.

  The man just stood there, his mouth flapped open like a catfish on the dock.

  “Antiseptic cream and gauze,” Sheriff Mains bellowed. “And a blanket.” He waved a hand at the rest of them. “You. Keep the crowd back.”

  The volunteers scattered and Mains dropped to one knee beside me. Pulled his hat off and rubbed the sweat from his face with his sleeve. “Delaney.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your mother...” He paused, eyes buzzing like a fly in a jar. “She came at us with a shotgun. Blew a hole the size of my head in the side of my car.” Annoyance cut a hard edge through his words. “We didn't have a choice.”

  I rested my hand on his knee to show there were no hard feelings. “I expect you didn't.”

  His mouth crinkled up. “I'm sorry, Delaney. Real sorry.”

  They all were.

  The doctor at the hospital and the nurses who changed the bandages on my arm 'til the skin finally closed back up said so every day. “How you doing, Delaney? So sorry about what happened
.” The neighbors who came to the burial service when we put the baby in the ground just looked sorry—standing around in their church clothes, hot and awkward.

  The psychiatrist who met with me every day used different words, aiming to sound like he wasn't pitying me. Or scared. But even if they sounded different, his words meant the same thing.

  “Real sorry about what happened, Del.”

  It didn't stop them from declaring I should be put in an institution for observation. For my own safety, they said. Special needs, they said. Just until I was old enough to live on my own, they said. But I knew they didn't ever mean to let me out. Folk that don't burn can't be let loose in society.

  In case they turn like Mama did.

  Magic and madness don't always run hand in hand, but there's a reason they call it the Touch. No one wanted to see what would happen if I went cracked. So I stayed in the asylum like they told me to and figured on never seeing the world beyond the gate with my own eyes again.

  Then one day The Salesman woke up.

  1

  Mrs. Hayney's dog finds the bodies.

  Fella worries a shoe off with a bit of foot still melded to it and brings it back to the yard. She ain't happy about it, not when she thinks it's a piece of trash he's dragged up on her porch. And then she sees those little bones that make up a person's toes. Five chalky shards and a couple of burned toenails poking out between the charred rubber sole and flaky vinyl upper, and she goes all hysterical.

  Screams like she was the one been burned up, staggering 'round and flapping her hands. “Jesus. Sweet Jesus.” She pauses, takes another look at the shoe, just to assure herself that it ain't full of mud and sticks.

  It isn't.

  She pats the sweat off her upper lip. “Jesus,” she says again.

  Bored with all the screamin' and takin' the Lord's name in vain, Fella snatches that shoe back up with a wag of his tail.

  “You give that back.” Mrs. Hayney picks up her broom and whacks at him, but he scampers out of the way. Running back and forth across her yard and around the old pickup truck with the weeds growing through the fenders. Him bouncing and wagging his tail and enjoying the chase, and her sweating and beating the hell out of him with her tongue. “Just you wait 'til I get ahold of your flea-bitten ass. Give it. Give it!”

  She gets him cornered against the fence next to the propane tank and wallops him good. He drops the shoe with a yelp.

  “That's a good Fella.” She motions him back toward the trailer. “Go sit. Go on, now.” And he might be interested in that shoe, but he don't like the thought of the broom slapping him again so he slinks off.

  Mrs. Hayney stares at the remains, her round face dimpled with thought. Sure as hellfire she doesn’t want to touch it, but leaving it there will only bring the dog back for more mischief. She unties her apron, lays it over the top, then adds an upturned bucket and a couple of bricks to weigh it down. A nudge with her foot and it don't tip over so she trudges back to the trailer.

  There's a leftover biscuit on the stove and she gives that to Fella. Eyes the beer in the fridge, but gets a glass of water instead before picking up the phone and dialing the nine one one dispatch. Better to not be sipping on a Koors if she's going to be telling stories about body parts lying in her yard.

  “Nine one one. What's the nature of your emergency?”

  “My dog's gone and brought part of a body into my yard.”

  “When you say part of a body...”

  “It's a foot.” She's breathing heavy into the phone.

  There's a momentary pause on the other end. “Give me your address and we'll send a deputy out right away.”

  “Thirty two oh six Grisham Road. And he'd better bring some gloves. It's all burnt-like.”

  The deputy is a young man by the name of Collins—thin as a rail, with a head that seems just a touch too big. He takes one look at the ashy shoe and the splintery toe-bones inside and starts sweating harder than Mrs. Hayney. “Do you know where he found it?”

  “Probably back in those woods.” She waves her hand at the trees and underbrush that squeeze up against her fence.

  “Okay.” He coughs and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “We'd better go take a look.”

  “Nuh-uh.” Mrs. Hayney crosses her arms over her chest, firm. “If I wanted to scare myself green, I'd already a gone.”

  Collins glances at the woods, touches his sidearm nervously. “But...” He takes another look at her, eyes like ice chips under her lowered brows. “Yes, ma'am.”

  It's clear he ain't happy, clambering over the rusty chain-link and pushing and picking his way through the pokeweed and brambles. But he's the one with the badge on and somewhere the rest of that body is waiting for him.

  He swallows hard, rethinking his choice of words. Human dead are still just dead. Not really any different than finding a possum splatted in the road. Aside from size and such, that is. But whatever is waiting back here is just dead.

  The carpet of old leaf on the ground is thick; his boots raise the sour-sweet dust of rotten beech and oak and maple. All prickly as hell and there's brush snagging at his ankles and the backs of his hands.

  He stops and wipes his head and neck to dispel the tickle of sweat creeping across his skin. Wonders if he should just go back and call the dispatch for a proper search party. He glances back the way he's come, toward the brighter green edge of the woods. Maybe just a little farther.

  He ducks under a low branch and pushes on. It doesn't take a dog to catch the scent of the corpses. Blood and burned and rotting.

  It takes a moment longer to spot the hand, crusted fingers curling up through the leaf mold under an elderly beech like a diseased coral fungus.

  “Oh,” Collins says. “Damn.” He tiptoes closer, pulls his hat off and takes a few deep whiffs of the hot felt and sweat. It's a damn sight better than the stink rising in the woods.

  'Cause it ain't just the one body.

  There must be at least a dozen.

  2

  Twice a week, I go down to the psychiatrist's office and read some of his books for an hour. It ain't much. I mean, it isn't much, but it helps me find new words and remember ones that aren't the small magic of the many tongues around here.

  This is the first thing my Daddy taught me.

  Words are thoughts and everyone has them. Has the power to set them loose in the world like raindrops on a field. Small magic and easy to ignore from them... from those who don't have the Touch. But words seep in and take root, and with them, thoughts. You take in the words of others and you take in their thoughts and let them shape you.

  The words aren't always bad. Some say witch and maybe I can see that's just a name that means those whose words come like a storm. But some say it and they mean one who hurts or steals things that shouldn't be taken or loses all sense of right in the world. If I slip and let that word take root, I let that thought take root, too.

  The small magic of many tongues. Because the power is in the repeating.

  So twice a week for the past ten years I've come down to the psychiatrist's office to read and teach myself new words and new thoughts. Reshape myself and my world into something that ain't... that isn't fearful or hurtful.

  I start by copying down another line of a poem to take back and memorize. The medication makes it hard. Both the writin' and the memorizin'. Magiprex they call it. Not very clever, but I suppose that makes it easy to know it's not for blood pressure or seizures or something. It’s supposed to keep the Touch asleep and me and everyone else safe. Mostly everyone else.

  I can't say for sure if it do or don't.

  Does or doesn't.

  Small magic spoken by many tongues.

  What the Magiprex does do is make it hard to write. I can still walk and sit okay. There's only a little slur when I talk, but getting my fingers to hold the pencil and make letters I can read again later is slow business.

  So, I start by copying another line of a poem. Maybe two if they is
short.

  Maybe two if they are short.

  Then spend the rest of my time reading. The days in between I work to memorize what I've written down so far.

  I got one done and repeated enough I haven't forgotten yet. “Going Blind” it's called. Written in German, but there's a book here with it translated because I can barely hold the words I learned when I was small, let alone grasp the power of a second tongue. The poet has a girl's name in the middle, but the psychiatrist says that's because he weren't Baptist like most folks around here so he was named after the mother of God. Still makes me laugh, though maybe I shouldn't. One of the attendants tells me that Delaney is supposed to be a boy's name.

  But Rilke's poem is good, especially the last verse.

  She followed slowly, taking a long time,