Plum D’Oborries drove down a dusty road with dry grass rising and sinking in waves along the horizon with the windows open feeling the dry warm wind whip her face. She rumbled all over, up and down, felt every shift and crease and pebble on the road in her bones, up her spine. It tingled all throughout her and ran down her wrists and came out finally through her fingers.
She hadn’t quite gotten used to the dying thing yet, but she felt alive, thoroughly. Sunlight scarred the tarmac. Clouds built up in the skies like Greek temples stacked atop one another, with weird polyhedral shadows.
Hustum snored gently, curled up in a newspaper they had snatched off a diner’s table a few hours ago. He sometimes woke up, looked out the windows, worked at the crossword, and complained about something.
A field of bored cows with crooked fences slid past. The air smelled like pollen.
They were back in business, and Plum could already hear the money rolling in. The cardboard sign had been obliterated in the last car, but they’d kept, in its boot, a store of emergency cardboard. It had been stickytaped to the top of their car. It said:
PROFESSIONAL ROAD HAG SERVICES
WITCHCRAFT ET AL, SPIRITS COMMUNICATION, WE WILL SPEAK TO YOUR DEAD, HIGH QUALITY BANISHMENTS, CLEANSING AND PLACING OF JINXES (BENIGN ONLY)
PROUD AFFILIATE OF THE SEVENTH GLASSBREAKER’S COVEN
Plum had added a pair of rough pictures of her and Hustum’s smiling faces on either side of the sign. A thumbs up floated next to her’s. If she was in the market for a road hag, she would have definitely hired herself.
‘What’s an eight letter word for an animal that isn’t a horse?’ asked Hustum.
Plum looked over at the newspaper. ‘Is that a real question?’
‘I’m not asking for the sake of personal enlightenment. How many letters is in “octopus”?’
‘Eight,’ said Plum, very certain.
‘That’s how many limbs they have,’ Hustum hissed. ‘No. It isn’t that.’
The car rose to the top of another hill and all the landscape sunk down beneath it, rolled along and stretched over a far field where the wind scrawled patterns in tall yellow grass and the monstrous scaffolds of telephone towers hulked in rows and stretched dark telephone lines far across the horizon. A town squatted there, miniscule, a cobbled assortment of straight-backed buildings and criss-crossing roads. A big green tilting sign stood out of the dry earth and said: ‘Welcome to Grisshleunhorse!’
‘Finally!’ said Plum. ‘Time to hark the wares.’
‘I hate harking the wares,’ said Hustum.
Harking the wares involved parking on a relatively busy street and parading boldly in front of the parked car holding up another cardboard sign that said:
WE DO WITCHCRAFT!! CALL US UP!!
‘I think the exclamation marks are too much,’ said Hustum, sitting on the kerb and using his sign to keep the sun off his face.
‘Hey! Man! You need witch shit!?’ Plum shouted at a man on the other side of the road, and he looked at them with wild and terrified eyes like they were the worst things he had ever seen and hurried away.
‘And so is the swearing at strangers.’
‘Well what’s your tactic, then? Huh?’
Hustum shrugged. ‘I’m hungry. We should get something to eat.’
‘That’s the opposite of helping us get money,’ said Plum. ‘But it’s tempting.’
‘Oh I know it’s tempting. I bet you’re very tempted now, aren’t you? I know you are.’
Plum was tempted, unbelievably so. She was almost always hungry, and when she wasn’t hungry, she could will herself hungry. She was strong, however. She had the self control to wait a mere hour, until it was around the day’s lunchtime, before eating. She was a willful and sharp-minded adult who knew exactly how to control her own impulses.
Plum D’Oborries and Hustum were being stared at from the other end of the local McDonald’s.
‘Mmffinitely looking at us,’ said Hustum through his burger.
‘What?’
‘Him.’
‘Huh?’
Hustum jabbed Plum and nodded at him.
The McDonald’s was small and crumbling and would have felt cramped if it wasn’t so empty. He was easy to pick out in a shadowed corner, back against a bright obnoxious red chair.
A very small man with thin spectacles and pale, wet lips looked right at them. He was so hunched and so thin you could almost see his spine through the back of his white shirt. His own burger was half finished, sadly squatting on the tray. He seemed intensely distraught and Plum wondered what his problem was.
‘Hey, what’s your problem?’ she asked, waving at him. Hustum made a groaning, hissing noise.
He went rigid immediately, looked left, down, looked at his burger, at his watch. He breathed for a while, patted himself on the chest.
Plum was worried, now. ‘You alright dude?’
He held up a finger, breathed, steadied himself. He stood. Approached them.
‘Uhm. Hello.’
‘Hey,’ Plum said right back.
‘Yeah. Hi,’ Hustum said bitterly, loudly slurping his coke.
He stood there awkwardly. He looked out of place. He looked like the kind of person who never looked in place anywhere.
‘Are you a witch?’
Plum grinned so wide the man reeled back. She stood up high, beaming. She flexed in various poses, for a few moments.
‘The roughest! The toughest! The meanest witch you’ll get!’
‘And the cheapest,’ Hustum added. ‘Our prices can’t be beat, and if they are, we’ll match it, or better.’
‘If someone beats us, I’ll beat them,’ Plum said, flexing.
‘She won’t actually. We don’t condone that.’
‘Thank goodness,’ said the man, not looking very glad at all. ‘I have an, ahm, issue.’
‘Don’t we all,’ said Hustum.
‘A haunting. Of sorts. I can tell you the details–’
‘We’re in!’ said Plum.
His name was Holland Fring and he lived in a squat slumping house on the outer edges of the town, over a bumpy dusty road. It sat atop one of the curling hills, cut a line between the road and the cars and the town and the dry grass, endless, quivering suddenly in numinous patterns, and the power lines with bugs and pigeons flying between them.
The house had a tin roof with splotches of rust. It all smelled like sand and burnt wood. He seemed to keep a majority of his furniture outside, piling up and rotting on his verandah, or in mismatched piles in his backyard. His living room consisted of a large green couch with its sides torn revealing white innards, a coffee table, and a plump old television. Through a window in the living room you could see–everything.
It unfurled. It stretched out, contained, barely, by the window frame, unspooling, like an ocean. It went on and on and would have gone forever if the mountains, far away, a vague band of dry green tinged with a steely blue mist, hadn’t put a stop to it. It was yellow, brown, green, grey, at times. Plum saw patches of dandelions, and the dry corpses of leafless trees, like the twisted bones of shattered dinosaurs.
Holland had a kid named Sparrow Fring who creeped the hell out of Hustum and who had big eyes and a small mouth and an even stronger stare then her father.
‘Are you really a spirit?’ asked Sparrow.
‘Yeah. Uh. I am.’
Holland had brought a hard and crumbling stool in from his backyard that Plum was sure was going to break under her at any moment.
‘Did you die?’
Hustum was squatting on Plum’s shoulder, keeping a majority of his body safely behind her wide neck. He reversed, slightly, farther behind it.
‘No?’
‘You ever thought of it?’
‘Well–’
‘Ah. Uhm, Sparrow. The adults are talking about… boring things, now. You should. Play. Outside.’ Holland came in with a tray with three mugs of tea. Neither Hustum nor Plum had wanted tea, and neither of them were strong enough to deal with the awkwardness of turning it down.
‘The ghost?’ Sparrow asked. Hustum swore she hadn’t blinked in at least a minute.
Holland tried shrinking into his own neck. Hustum tried shrinking behind Plum’s neck. Plum rumbled with laughter.
‘Yes. The, ahm, ghost.’
Sparrow nodded. ‘That is boring.’ BYE,’ she yelled suddenly, and scuttled off.
‘Yes. Uhm.’ Holland slurped loudly from his mug. ‘We have a horse situation.’
‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ Plum said gently.
‘That’s related to the ghost, right?’ said Hustum. ‘Because we don’t do horses.’
‘We could do horses,’ Plum argued.
Hustum grumbled to himself. ‘We don’t specialise with horses.’
Holland shook his head. ‘No. Ahm. We have been dealing with a spectral horse, of sorts. It comes from the telephone lines in the evenings and, uhm–’ he gestured outside the living room window, at the far grasslands, at the telephone towers with their dark lines crisscrossing. ‘It runs. I haven’t slept in my bed for very long. I simply let myself fall into, uhm, unconsciousness at work.’
‘Wow,’ said Plum. She glanced into the backyard through the rickety door, at Sparrow, who was discovering something clearly incredible in the dirt using a stick. ‘It must be hard for your daughter.’
‘No, she’s fine. She can sleep through anything. Actually, she loves horses. It’s just me.’ He smiled. It was jaggedy and uncomfortable looking.
‘It should be a real horse,’ said Sparrow, and even Plum jumped. She materialised out of seeming nothingness. ‘Ghosts are boring.’
‘What’s so boring about ghosts?’ asked Plum, when she had recovered from the shock. She was grinning widely. She loved kids, especially the weirdo ones. Hustum clasped the back of her neck hard.
‘I’m a horse,’ Sparrow explained.
‘Are you really?’ asked Plum, tilting her head.
Sparrow blinked and stared at Plum.
‘Sparrow, please,’ said Holland, his hands clasped together. He looked like he was trying to shrink himself. Sparrow dashed off as fast as she had appeared.
They sat quietly for a few moments. Holland loudly slurped his tea. Hustum kept glancing to the backyard, at Sparrow.
Hustum finally stretched and yawned and looked tiredly at Holland. ‘Alright. Any history of horses in this area? This house? Have any jockeys die particularly horribly around here a few years back? Or some kinda zoo tragedy?’
‘No. No. No, no, no.’ Holland shook his head with a frantic energy that seemed to come from nowhere. ‘Absolutely not. We have never had horses here. Never, ever.’
‘Well, it might be worth considering–’
‘Impossible!’ Holland exclaimed, suddenly. ‘It’s in the, ahm, town’s name itself, “Grisshleunhorse.” No, I won’t take any horse theories. Absolutely not.’
Hustum glanced at Plum and Plum glanced back at him.
‘Alright. Well. I’ll take that off the list of possibilities.’
‘Yeah. He will,’ agreed Plum.
‘Yes, I will. Plum. You don’t need to emphasise that.’
‘Sure thing. Just wanted it to be clear that we don’t believe in any horse theories at all.’
‘Again, Plum, you don’t need to emphasise that, it just looks suspicious.’ Hustum nodded paternally at Holland and sipped his tea. ‘No horse theories here.’
Plum sometimes felt like she could only breathe at dusk. The nighttime air slipped in, cold, fresh, wet. It filled her nostrils–she inhaled, sighed. Crickets chirped.
Something in the lights, a luminescence spreading in the sky turning all the countryside a deep black, made everything look how, Plum felt, like it was meant to look. Like these were things in their true form, bereft of the burning sunlight, the wild colour and the refracting pigmentation. So the grassy hills became oceanic waveforms, the outline of stones or trees in their wake–so the telephone towers became jaggedy titanous beasts. Heavy shadows swirled off the junk in Holland’s backyard.
It was the hour where dark things emerged. Amorphous things, unbound by gravity, flapping in the wind, with dull eyes unblinking. Plum saw them in her peripheral vision, the witch-sight, the only segment of the human nervous system dedicated to sensing numinosity. Hustum snoozed on a rotting cabinet, rolled aside, occasionally, as an invisible sentience slipped past him. It was the witching hour, and Plum felt alive, awake.
She felt the urge to go for a drive, but sat on the stool, felt the moths bump against her lantern and her closed fist.
There were no horses in Grisshleunhorse, was what had been emphasised.
They had asked around the town about the horse ghost and had, invariably, gotten this sentiment. Old men smoking on street corners, kids trying to nick the wallets of those old men, tired women at bus stops, shopkeepers with husky beards and wild stares. There were no horses. Maybe horses existed, but if they did, it was elsewhere, like Mongolia, or Ancient Greece. Maybe horses didn’t exist at all. Plum was beginning to doubt even that. They were working on her.
Horses, for instance, didn’t look particularly real.
Orange light blazed from Holland’s house. The windows gleamed like gold, or like they were full of lava–the porch lights winked. Plum saw thin grass and patches of hard dirt all turning the colour of copper. Colours wheeled in the sky. She glanced aside, checked the lumpy dark form of the offering they’d prepared earlier. It was a hefty brown sack of the burnt, salted remains of apples and carrots. It was full of their ghosts.
Plum felt it, felt it in her bones.
‘Hustum?’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Hustum, nodding, glancing.
A warping was in the telephone lines. Evening light bent, or the lines intertwined, made strange curvatures. A black form raced through the gleaming air. A frog was croaking loudly. Plum stood up. There was a thumping, a rapping tapping.
A dark horse with eyes like shimmering red gemstones emerged from somewhere underneath the air. It slipped down from the sky, running on nothing, tap tap tapping, great muscular neck arched. It ran in long arcs, snorting. It sped along, above Plum and she felt a sickly wind flush over her, was deafened, briefly, with the noise of hoofs on old flagstones. It looked at her.
‘Hey, dude. I’m a witch. How’re you?’ Plum yelled. She waved at it. It stood in the distance, a sharp blot.
It began moving at her.
‘OK, well, I’m doing fine, myself,’ Plum added. It came closer. She grabbed the sack and held it up. ‘Did you want–did you want something to eat?’
Plum flung herself aside clutching the sack to her gut and felt a brushing, brutish wind glide by, felt all the bending, contracting musculature. The horse continued, swerved–right at Hustum’s cabinet.
‘Hus—’
There was a scraping crash. The cabinet fell over like a slightly strong breeze had pushed it over. Hustum went flying. He spun like a lost tyre.
‘Hustum!’
When Hustum landed he bounced. He laid in the grass for a moment, stretched, and said: ‘Ow.’
Plum spun around, saw the horse wheeling back around.
‘Stop! We’re talking, dude. I know you can talk. Uh. It can, right, Hustum?’
Hustum slithered over to Plum. ‘That isn’t a horse, Plum. Look at it.’
The horse stopped running and glared at Plum. It reeled its head up, side-eyed her.
Hustum was right.
She could see it, now, revealed in the far flickering edges of the copper porch light. The hooves were curled, clenched fists. Something about the form of its spine, too, was off–blatantly so, now it was near the light. Its neck seemed too low, its head bent downwards. When the horse looked up at them it took effort, strained muscles in its neck and shoulders.
The horse had abs.
It looked up. It opened its mouth and its teeth were huge, laid in rows like massive tombstones, it opened its mouth, opened it, wider, wider, and a great long red wet tongue slithered beneath. It spoke with a mouth that opened all the way down to the middle of its neck:
‘MOCK ME, WILL YOU? ONCE AGAIN. ONCE AGAIN SOMEONE RUBS IT IN, ONCE AGAIN.’
It reared back and stood on its hind legs, stabilised itself, hulked, widely. Its ‘hooves’ unclenched. Its fingers were long and thin. Its breath came out in heaving bursts of white mist that rolled out of the sides of its long mouth. Its tongue lolled.
‘It–isn’t a horse, that’s not a horse, it isn’t, oh it isn’t,’ Hustum babbled, and he shot off to the safety of the junk on Holland’s verandah.
‘I knew you could talk,’ said Plum proudly.
The not horse made a horrible low grumbling noise that sounded like rocks collapsing in a deep, moist cave. Jets of white swirling steam flew from its mouth.
‘WHY MUST I BE ALWAYS REMINDED,’ it screamed, running at Plum with a shocking haste despite its loping, swaying movements. ‘OF THIS?’
It brought a great arm down and Plum threw herself aside, felt the ground rumble, smatterings of dirt flying.
‘You don’t want the offering then?!’ yelped Plum.
‘OF MY INADEQUACIES? DO YOU SEE ME REMINDING YOU OF YOUR INSECURITIES REGARDING YOUR, SAY, FATHER?’
The not horse raised up its arm again, brought it down like a great hammer and Plum flung the offering right in its face. She stepped beneath its swing, rammed her fist right into its gut. It was hard and taut and her fist made a great THUMP. The not horse made that grumbling noise, stumbled back.
‘I don’t have insecurities about my dad,’ Plum argued. ‘He was decENT!’ she yelled, throwing herself aside again as it charged at her, past her, screeched to a grinding groaning halt. It turned around, grumbled. Its huge teeth were clenched. Its eyes bulged. It reeled its arms back, flung steady, brutish punches like a steam engine.
‘Can we talk?!’ Plum sputtered, bobbing between punches that made the air rush over her like it was solid. The not horse slipped in a sudden jab that darted faster than Plum even expected right at her face. She caught it on her arm, flung it aside. ‘For just a mom—’ and she was cut off by the CRACK of the not horse’s other arm slamming right down onto her shoulder.
She shook like a drum and before she could steady herself the not horse swung again, swung right into her gut like a train. She gasped and felt every molecule of air exit her mouth at once. She felt numb and heavy and flew across the grass, landed in a heap in the shadows on the edge of the porch light staring at the stars above.
‘ARE WE NOT TALKING? ARE WE NOT DISCUSSING THE NATURE OF OUR IDENTITIES?’
Plum felt like she was made of melting wax. ‘No, this is… more of uh…’
‘More of a one-sided rant,’ suggested Hustum, slithering out of the darkness.
‘Yeah, that. Hi Hustum.’
‘We should leave, Plum,’ Hustum suggested. ‘Like now. Immediately. At this exact moment.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Plum, stretching and hearing things deep inside her body crack. She stood up, swivelled her head around, watched the not horse bearing back down on her.
‘We gotta do formation oh-five,’ she said to Hustum.
‘Oh-five? Oh, oh, not oh-five.’
‘Hustum,’ Plum said mournfully. ‘Do you want me to die again? Really?’
‘Just guilt me like that, OK. Fine,’ said Hustum, sitting down and holding himself in a tight ball and as the not horse loped closer Plum grabbed him off the ground, pointed at the not horse’s head with an arm. She threw him.
He unwrapped midair, opened his arms and legs:
‘Perfect shot!’ Plum exclaimed as he wrapped around the not horse’s head like a giant elastic band, hooked into it with claws.
The not horse flew back, grabbing at its face and neck. Hustum was fast and skittish and he scrabbled around the not horse’s head in a panic.
‘AD HOMINEM! ONCE AGAIN MY OPINIONS ARE BEING IGNORED; BELITTLED.’
Plum charged at the not horse feeling all her bones bending and burning, went right for its legs. She crashed into it with all her force and it gave way, slipped, flailed as it collapsed. Hustum sped off its head like a squirrel off a falling tree.
It was easier to recognise the not horse’s absurd hugeness now it was splayed on the ground, still, for a moment. Its muscles were thin and tightly wrapped. Plum still felt that punch. It had been like a bullet.
‘I’m not gonna beat you while you’re down, dude,’ Plum announced, moving a strand of hair out of her eye. ‘But what’s your deal?’
‘MY DEAL IS I AM GOING TO TRAMPLE YOUR BONES FOR INSULTING ME.’
‘Oh, diplomacy,’ said Hustum, slinking away.
Plum rubbed her face, grimaced and stood still and watched as the not horse stretched itself out, dragged itself to its feet, billowing steam. She clenched her fists, held her arms up, though the effort burnt.
‘Alright. That’s OK. I’ll kick your ass, man.’
The not horse glared down at her with red, bulging eyes.
‘LATER. MAYBE LATER. THIS DEBATE TIRES ME.’
The not horse was gone with red eyes fading into darkness and steam swirling, dissipating.
Plum and Hustum dragged themselves up the verandah, knocked on the door, and waited. The night wind was cool and metallic on Plum’s aching body. Panicked moths knocked themselves out on the blinding porch light right above her head. It was all quiet, now, peaceful, everything was rustling and humming. Her peripheral vision danced.
The door didn’t open. Plum didn’t groan because her chest hurt.
‘I’ll get it, I’ll get it, dammit, stupid…’ Hustum mumbled, slinking up to the door, patting his paws against the crack between the door and the doorframe, and suddenly slipping right through it. He looked like he was made of plastic–he crinkled absurdly as he slipped through that tiny crack.
‘Ow ow ow ow ow,’ Plum heard him chanting, as the handle clicked and the door creaked open. He had just crossed a threshold uninvited which, to a spirit, felt kind of like having salt poured in your eyes if your whole body was a giant eye.
The shadows were blue and heavy inside Holland’s house. It smelled like old teabags. Moonlight drizzled in through the living room window and a tiny form–a cockroach, some bug, some small god–scuttled over an abandoned teacup.
‘Hooooollaaaaand,’ said Plum, stepping carefully through the room and bumping immediately into the table, a counter, something small and dark left on the floor. ‘Howsit, dude? Sorry about the noise.’
Nobody was there. They stepped, carefully, casually, to the door on the other end of the room that Plum was vaguely aware lead to Holland’s bedroom.
‘Quietly now,’ said Hustum, as Plum grabbed the doorknob and ripped the door wide open and Holland wailed like a banshee:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
‘Bang! Bang!’ exclaimed Sparrow, aiming an old and crumpled shotgun right at Plum’s chest. Holland had his eyes covered desperately, back against the wall, legs wriggling. Sparrow stood in front of him, stance hard.
Plum, Hustum, and Sparrow all stood in silence as they waited for Holland’s screech to settle steadily down, from an EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE to eventually an eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee that puffed out, finally, as one final eeep.
Hustum flicked on a light switch and the sweat on Holland’s forehead gleamed like diamonds.
‘Uhm. How did it go?’
‘Nightmarishly,’ said Hustum.
‘Great,’ said Plum.
Hustum side-eyed Plum and added: ‘We’ll need time to brainstorm for a bit. And sleep. And mend our bones. Did you know any good motels around?’
Holland wiped his forehead and shook his head. ‘No, no, ahm, please. We have a guest room upstairs–you can take that. As long as you want.’
‘Very hospitable,’ said Hustum, nodding. ‘And could you make your daughter put the gun down?’
‘Uhm, Sparrow, please, the gun.’
She held down the shotgun and nodded and said: ‘Next time.’
The stairs creaked and buckled underfoot and Plum’s bones creaked and buckled right back at them. The guest bedroom smelled, also, like old teabags. But moreso it smelled like rotting wood and dust and wet fabric. Blue moonlight splashed through a dirty window, gave everything a metallic tarnish.
It was small and Plum kept bumping into things, thwacking the ceiling or hitting a wall. Her foot straight punctured through something. It was too dark and Plum was too tired to figure out what it was.
‘S’been a good hard day, I say,’ Plum announced, plummeting like hard lead into an uncovered mattress.
‘I disagree,’ said Hustum, coiling up on a cabinet next to the window, but Plum was already asleep.
She had a meaningless dream of a woman in a white jacket who said to her:
‘Hey. Hey? Are you there? Do you feel like yourself?’
‘I love you more than anything,’ Plum would announce back to her, but she was wavering like disturbed water and she came apart, split atomically, dissolved.
The morning sun brutalised the room. It sizzled in like a deathray, blasted all the dust and flung hard shadows and gleaming white reflections everywhere. Plum was forced awake.
She sat up feeling sweat in her joints and a grinding pain that had subsided, like spreading water, into a vague undercurrent of agony over her whole body. Hustum was leaning out the window, smoking out of a dainty and intricate pipe. It had carved garlands of leaves and faceless forms dancing, disembodied faces with huge teeth and bulging eyes, snakes intertwining like ropes. The smoke was white, pirouetted into a morning breeze, buzzed and flashed like thunder and vanished.
‘Didn’tcha quit that?’
‘Yeah. But I’m stressed.’
‘You’re always stressed.’
‘Not this stressed,’ said Hustum, waving a paw around. ‘I’m gonna have an anxious breakdown if we don’t figure this out soon.’
‘You’re always having anxious breakdowns.’
‘Not this anxious breakdown.’
When they came downstairs, Holland was still asleep and Sparrow was nowhere to be seen. The gentle snoring of a man who had not slept in a bed in many days slipped through the shut door.
They convened at their base of operations, the McDonald’s.
‘Firstly, this isn’t an exorcism,’ Hustum said over his hash browns. He had found a pen somewhere and rapped it on a piece of tissue paper. ‘This is a monster hunt.’
‘I don’t like “hunt”,’ Plum argued, shovelling down chips. ‘Sounds, like… brutal. Right?’
‘You wouldn’t call last night brutal?’
‘Ah, fuckin, alright,’ Plum conceded.
‘Step one is we readjust prices accordingly,’ said Hustum, scribbling on the tissue paper. ‘We’re not getting paid exorcism prices for a monster hunt.’
‘Very charitable,’ Plum commented.
‘Step two,’ said Hustum, leaning back. ‘Figure out what it is.’
‘Well it isn’t a horse.’
‘Thank you. Thanks. We can close the case, now.’
‘I was just trying to help.’ Plum bit petulantly into her cheeseburger.
‘It isn’t a ghost, clearly,’ said Hustum. ‘Not a stone tapes resonance, not a timespace misplacement, not even an animate apparition. Full physicality, no cold spots, nothing.’
‘It came from the telephone lines,’ Plum added while chewing. ‘And it definitely wasn’t an electric or an infrastructure spirit.’
Hustum scribbled, nodded. ‘It didn’t feel like a normal spirit. Its body–its composition. It was, uh.’
Plum raised an eyebrow.
‘Slippery. Lumpy. It definitely wasn’t made of atoms, or harrowskin.’ He looked at the tissue, tapping the pen. ‘It seems very… manmade, doesn’t it?’
Plum chewed very thoughtfully. ‘Spirits don’t stick that hard to a theme. “Not being a horse.” Lines up with what everyone in the town thinks, too…’
Plum and Hustum held their McDonald’s in silence.
‘Thoughtform,’ said Hustum.
‘Small god,’ said Plum.
‘Same crap,’ said Hustum. ‘No wonder its skin felt like that. And why it came from the telephone lines. Those things are full of nothing but ideas, buzzing around up and down. It’s made of ideas.’
‘You reckon,’ asked Plum, pointing at Hustum with a chip. ‘The town came first, or the god came first?’
‘What?’
‘Like the god set up everyone here to believe in not horses to feed itself, or, like, they already believed so hard in not horses the god started existing?’
‘I don’t care. Thinking of that makes my head hurt.’
‘Maybe that’s because of all your smoking,’ Plum suggested smugly.
Hustum ignored her completely and looked over the tissue. ‘OK. So how do we kill it?’
‘Kill it?’
‘Stop it. Make it cut it out. Provide it the necessary social services to resolve its issues in a constructive manner. Whatever.’
‘If everyone in the town started believing that they did have horses, it would probably—’ Plum splayed open a hand. ‘Poof.’
Hustum relaxed his head on the table. ‘We’re not getting paid enough to do that. And that’s still legally murder.’
Plum looked down at the final mournful crescent of her hamburger. The beef glistened. ‘Must suck, just being not-something-else’
Another evening came where fires melted down from the skies and the telephone towers hung jaggedy dark silhouettes in the horizon. The wind picked up, crickets chirped in thickets.
The not horse descended in an invisible parabola. It was a black hole in the sky, dancing on strands of wind with a noise like rapping on stone slabs. It halted at the door to Holland’s house. Standing on all fours like that it came face to face with one of the lower edges of the corrugated roof.
It desired debate.
It pressed against the door and the door’s threshold pressed against it, pulsated like a headache in the universe. It unfurled a hoof, laid lanky fingers on the doorknob, began twisting it—
Sparrow opened the door and folded her arms.
‘Horse,’ she stated.
‘AH. HUMANCHILD. I HAVE BEEN HARASSED OF LATE. HAVE YOU SEEN, PERHAPS, MY ACCUSERS?’
‘Huh?’ said Sparrow.
‘THE WITCH. HER–WELL, IT WASN’T A FAMILIAR–IT WAS A CAT-SCARF-PET-THING.’ A heavy puff of steam spurted through its gritted teeth. ‘THEY MOCKED ME.’
‘Why’s that?’ asked Sparrow.
‘YOU KNOW WHY.’ The not horse’s eyes were twinkling red crosses of light against a darkening sky. Sparrow blinked uninterestedly.
‘Is it cos you’re not a horse?’
The not horse was patient with human children, especially the one who lived in this house and who frightened it just a little. It reared its head back and puffed more steam, curled its great tongue behind its long mouth. It flexed spindly fingers.
‘My dad says I’m not a horse. He’s lying.’
‘PERHAPS HE IS.’
‘I’m a horse. Maybe you are, too,’ she suggested diplomatically.
‘PERHAPS,’ agreed the not horse. ‘PERHAPS I AM.’
The not horse’s nostrils flared and it smelled witch on the wind, floating out the open door.
‘Whoawhoawhoawhoa!’ Plum babbled, hoisting Sparrow aside and into the house like a sack of groceries.
‘Are you crazy?’ She placed her hands disappointedly on her hips, tilted her head, raised an eyebrow. She filled the whole doorframe and had to crane her neck downwards a little to see through it. ‘A kid?’
‘WE WERE MERELY TALKING, WITCH.’
‘You talking to me left me with bruises, dude. I feel like a fuckin… old coke can.’ She glanced to see if Sparrow was in earshot and said: ‘Sorry.’
‘I SEE YOU INTEND TO CONTINUE YOUR ASSAULT ON ME,’ The not horse said. ‘RUTHLESSLY, COLDLY. AS IF TO SUGGEST THAT YOU, TOO, WERE FREE OF PROBLEMS?!’
‘That’s what I was doing, you got it,’ said Plum, nodding, leaning on the doorframe.
‘AND NOW YOU ADMIT IT, OPENLY. WITH NO SHAME.’
Plum nodded faster and harder. ‘I am. And everything you say is… really dumb. And I disrespect all of it.’
‘THEN I WILL GRIND YOU TO POWDER. PHYSICALLY.’ The not horse clenched a fist to demonstrate.
‘OK. Good luck.’ Plum slammed shut the door.
The not horse was made of shifting, sublimating idea-mass. Its form had a noospheric association and nothing more–that it was a horse, that it was not. It had none of the rigidity of atoms, the unimaginative, unshiftingness of molecular composition.
The not horse squeezed through the cracks of the door like a scraping heavy mist, swept into the living room like a tidal wave and dragged itself ponderously with one huge and lanky arm, quivering amorphous lines of taut muscle and horse flesh. The threshold snapped with a sound so sonorous and harsh it rattled from inside the bones. Something fundamental and conceptual had shattered, briefly.
It pressed against the walls of the house and they groaned, shoved aside tables and litter, swept away teacups and chairs.
The room was lit with dull and flickering candlelight and the faint smell of thin smoke from a single corner. Wobbling shadows grabbed at the not horse. A giant mound of minced beef laid in a pile at the end of the room. It glistened.
‘What’s with the kid?! What’s with the kid?!’ Hustum shrieked. He was clutching a small canvas sack and had his paws to his face.
‘Minor issue minor issue I’ll be back in a second,’ Plum babbled, bashing out the opposite door with Sparrow in tow.
Hustum stood there suddenly alone. The candle was next to him. The light shone through him, caught on his wispy fur. He was thin and translucent and looked very easy to break.
‘So, so, you broke that, uhh. You sure broke that threshold, huh?’ said Hustum. His entire body shook like he was made of paper. He clasped the canvas sack tightly.
‘CHILD’S PLAY,’ boasted the not horse.
‘Well–well. Ah.’ Hustum breathed deeply. ‘Here’s STEP TWO!’ he screamed and pulled a handful of hair from the sack and moved for the candle. The not horse swiped wildly and batted the hair right out of Hustum’s hand. Hustum stared in horror. His fur stood on end.
‘A RITUAL? TO CAPTURE ME? I EXPECTED NOTHING MORE!’
‘Waitwaitwaitwait,’ Hustum babbled, scurrying away from the not horse’s hand and fleeing under another swipe. He coiled and twisted, scrabbled under overturned furniture like a frenetic lizard. The not horse advanced, raked its fingers over the floorboards and peeled away the wood. Hustum was too panicked to scream. In all the groaning of wood and noises of furniture scraping, and the not horse’s steam spewing, it was hard to hear the sound of the upstairs window shattering.
It was also hard to hear the door slamming open, the hard footsteps racing down the stairs.
It was, however, easy to hear Plum yelling: ‘Horse!’
She had blasted through the upstairs door on the other side of the room, had climbed carelessly up the dark undulating, cycling not horse-flesh. She crawled over its back on all fours, teeth clenched, rushing for its head.
‘AND AGAIN YOU DECIDE THAT YOU MUST—’
Plum reared back and raised her arms and brought them both down towards the not horse’s head. It tried to shift out of the way but the walls groaned, creaked, kept it in place. She smote it with both fists right in the head, hammered downwards. There was a stony THUD and the whole not horse buckled, shifted forwards. Its face landed right in the minced beef, squelching.
‘Hustum, for Go-’
‘I’ll do it I’ll do it just don’t say that,’ he yelped, rushing to the fallen sack and grabbing up handfuls of scattered hair. He moved to the candle and stuck them in.
Smoke erupted snakelike in hefty bulbous puffs, twisting and dancing. Hustum flung the hairs down and fled–the flaming hairs were tiny winking cinders in the absurd, monstrous, expanding mass of smoke that Plum charged through with eyes and mouth shut tight.
She felt like her face and guts and all the water in her skin were burning away, felt filthy smoke caught in her clothes and joints like dirt. The outside air might have been clear water. The wind carried soothing balm. She inhaled the sweet scent of nothing in particular, grass, pollen.
‘My house,’ moaned Holland, sitting cross legged next to his car and clasping Sparrow to his chest. ‘That’s… my house…’
The smoke did not exit Holland’s house. It pulsed around inside it, brushing against the windows and the open door like the outer layers of a soft skin. It was a spinning, uncanny cocoon.
‘What house,’ said Sparrow, voice muffled by Holland’s shirt.
‘My house,’ Holland sobbed.
‘It’s not smoke,’ said Hustum, splayed out on the grass with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and heavily. ‘It’s a smoke-spirit we partnered with a while ago. It’s the envelopment concept. Binding magics to bind stuff all together after we broke the thresholds in there. You know.’
‘So our, uhm, house is burning down and haunted?’ asked Holland.
‘It isn’t burning, dude,’ said Plum, finally opening her eyes and holding her arm out to the house.
The smoke shrank, even as they watched, spun faster and faster, drilling into itself. With a noise like a low cough, it was gone.
The inside of Holland’s house was a charred, irregular landscape. Plum approached gingerly, rapped on the doorframe and watched a thin rain of ash and burnt not horse hair fall down and clump on the ground. It smelled like flaming hair and hamburgers.
A black horse stood in the centre of the room.
It sniffed the air. It looked at Plum, at Hustum, with dull hazel eyes.
‘I SEE,’ it said.
‘Still yelling, huh,’ said Plum, and she realised how tired she was, how she felt sort of like taffy inside and out, and she leant against an ashy wall.
‘I DO NOT UNDERSTAND ANY OTHER MANNER IN WHICH TO HAVE MY OPINIONS HEARD,’ said the horse. ‘Is this better?’
‘You can shout if you want, dude. Whatever.’
‘I don’t want to shout.’ The horse breathed gently, nostrils flaring. It gazed around, up, down, at the charred walls, the fallen, blackened tables. It looked down at its own hooves. They were made from atomic matter. ‘You transformed me into a horse.’
Plum shrugged and gestured at Hustum, hiding behind the doorframe. ‘Hustum’s the one who knew the ritual.’
‘I got most of it from Wikipedia,’ Hustum admitted.
‘I owe you…’ The horse looked around again, wide eyes bulging. It looked at its hooves like it was worried they would run away if they weren’t watched ‘Very much. Witch. Your familiar. Wikipedia. I cannot apologise for my actions enough.’
‘Don’t even worry about it,’ said Plum, grinning. ‘We’re getting paid for it anyway!’
‘So adding the house repair and cleaning costs… the ground beef costs… general magic tax… threshold breaking without a permit fine… plus the noise pollution fines from the local cops…’ Hustum looked up from the notepad into Plum’s smiling face. ‘Negative five dollars.’
‘Oh,’ said Plum.
Plum and Hustum drove in a shared state of rigor mortis.
‘I thought Holland looked kinda guilty.’
‘Legally and financially speaking, he did nothing wrong.’
The hills rolled away. The road rumbled and hummed, crackled away under the wheels. Telephone lines split into the far skies. Deep colours sunk in stratigraphic waveforms.
‘I’m just happy I got to do good,’ said Plum, ignoring the rumbling of her stomach.
‘I’m happy for you Plum. I really really am. I’m super happy for you. I am.’
They watched the road unfurl with wide bulging eyes.
There was a noise like hooves on old flagstones. A dark, wavering form rose up in the mirror. Plum felt her guts suddenly tip down then up when she saw it. It came closer, reached the edges of her headlights.
It was the horse. Sparrow clutched its neck like a sort of parasite. She flapped side to side.
‘Oh God!’ said Plum.
‘NNnnnngh!’ replied Hustum, going rigid and collapsing off his seat.
She apologised and parked the car in a patch of flat grassless ground. The horse came up next to them, snorting. Sparrow hung tight onto its neck until it said:
‘You may get off now, Humanchild.’
‘No,’ she replied, letting go and falling facefirst in the dirt. Plum moved to help her up, but she was at her feet before she could even open the door.
‘Are you OK?!’ asked Plum.
‘Fifty dollars,’ Sparrow stated, holding out a fifty dollar note. ‘Cos you got me a horse.’
The empty rigid feeling sloughed away instantly like dry skin. Plum felt like she was going to melt. She had to restrain herself away from a loud: ‘Awwwwwwww.’
‘Is that yours? Is that your allowance? I can’t take that.’ Plum felt like she was going to die happy.
‘You’re sure about that?’ Hustum whispered, peeking behind the car door.
‘It is not hers,’ the horse said. ‘I stole it from the Humanman’s wallet. With my new and dextrous horse teeth.’ Its lips unfurled open in what was probably meant to be a grin.
‘Oh! Well, I feel kinda guilty a–’
‘Thanks!’ said Hustum, slipping suddenly through the air in a white blur and snatching the note out of Sparrow’s fingers. ‘We appreciate the donation. Witches need all the help they can get, nowadays.’ He glared darkly at Plum.
‘We will meet again, Witch and Familiar. This I know.’ The setting sun ran its low lights over the sheen of the horse’s dark hair. It stood with its head high and its eyes bulging. It looked regal, godly, still.
‘Yeah, bring more fifties if you can, too,’ said Hustum, giving a thumbs up and slipping into the car.
‘Don’t steal for us,’ said Plum.
‘You can’t stop us,’ said Sparrow, glaring fixedly right into Plum’s eyes.
She smiled, suddenly, too.
‘BYE!’ Sparrow said, awkwardly clambering up the horse’s side and wrapping herself around its neck.
‘See you, I guess,’ said Plum.
‘Yes. See you.’
The horse turned around and galloped down the road. It was a black blot in the iridescent sky. It slipped over a hill, went down somewhere underneath the air, disappeared.
‘Nothorse,’ said Hustum, when Plum got back into the car.
‘What?’
Hustum had the fifty dollar note in his mouth. He finished scratching at the newspaper with his pen, and held it up.
‘Nothorse,’ he said again. ‘An eight letter word for an animal that isn’t a horse.’
Plum scrunched her face up. ‘That isn’t the real answer, is it?’
‘Apparently it is,’ said Hustum, shrugging.
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