Free Engines of the Broken World by Jason Vanhee

it for real.
    “You’re dead serious, ain’t you?”
    I nodded.
    “Well, shoot. I thought the fog was big news, but this is … this is just plain crazy. Does the Minister know?”
    “I think so. I think it’s scared of her.”
    “I know I am, for sure. If it’s really her.” He looked down at the door at his feet. “We should go and look.”
    “No, Gospel, we can’t.”
    “Merciful, there’s a fog full of death or worse closing in on us. How bad can it get?”
    I admitted then that he had a point and that maybe we should go downstairs, but not aloud. Just to myself. To him and to the part of me that was terrified by the idea, I just said, we couldn’t , we shouldn’t , we mustn’t , and tried to leave it at that.
    But he was Gospel, and he wasn’t likely to listen to any kind of sense, for all my pleading. He just smiled and stood up and started for the sitting room, and I trailed along.
    Outside, the light was finally dying, probably for the last time ever.

 
    E IGHT
    Gospel went to fetch the poker from the hearth in the bedroom because he thought Jenny should have a weapon. He still had his knife, though I was hoping we wouldn’t really have a need to protect ourselves since it was Mama. Only maybe it wasn’t. Gospel came back and pressed the poker into Jenny’s one hand, the Minister padding up behind but not really even coming into the kitchen, hardly sticking in its head. I knew—this time I for certain knew—that it was terrified of whatever was down there, even if I was the only other being in this world who could tell there was something to be scared of.
    Gospel took aside the chair, setting it back in the corner where it normally rested, and looked to me. I wasn’t sure how I’d ended up running things, but I supposed that was because I heard the sounds. Since I’d noticed Mama up and moving, I was the one with experience, same as Gospel’d be in charge and no questions if it were a hunt. So I nodded to him, and he took a moment to start up a lamp, his hands steady like I didn’t reckon mine would have been. Then he gripped the hatch and flipped it against the wall. He started down with me following and Jenny bringing up the rear. The Minister didn’t even come close, like I thought it wouldn’t. It only paced and padded next to the far edge of the table with its head down, whining faintly in the back of its throat. I didn’t think to ever see the Minister so obviously afraid, but I guess with the end of the world approaching all things were possible.
    The light didn’t seem so very bright in the cellar, but it was enough to make out the piles of wood and the barrels for keeping potatoes and apples in and the onions hanging from the rafters, now joined by the chickens head down and two goats strung up by their feet. It was a sight to give me the shudders. Still on the floor was Mama’s body wrapped up in the good sheet, only now it seemed like we’d laid her out as a piece of meat just like the animals hanging down above her. The body seemed not to have stirred at all. Gospel went to stand by it, and I came to hover next to him. Jenny kept on the bottom step, not moving into the cellar proper at all, and I didn’t blame her a bit. If I’d been through half what she had I’d be upstairs crying and holding onto the Minister and wouldn’t let a soul lay any blame on me for it.
    “Well … it’s still right here,” Gospel said in barely more than a whisper. “Wrapped up, even. I don’t think anything was climbing on the stairs.”
    “But I heard the steps creak,” I said. It sounded stupid and childish even to me when I said it.
    “Yeah. It’s an old house, and the weather changed so fast I’m not surprised some things are creaking. But it’s not Mama, Merciful.”
    “I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” I said, and poked him in the side. Inside his words I could tell he meant maybe I was going a little crazy, just like Mama had, and I didn’t like that at all.