Out of Salem Read online

  “Schrieve’s queer vision of a monster-infested ’90s is

  rich in metaphor and rife with meaning.”

  — kyle lukoff,

  librarian and author of When Aidan Became a Brother

  “Out of Salem is the best urban fantasy I’ve ever read.

  Hal Schrieve refurbishes old-school world-building sensibilities

  into a note-perfect dysphoria metaphor that feels fresh and classic at the

  same time. Simultaneously nostalgic and forward-looking, this book should

  set a new standard in the genre. Terrifying, beautiful, exhilarating.”

  —april daniels,

  author of The Nemesis trilogy

  “Out of Salem is the genderqueer, undead, anarchist Harry Potter

  replacement we have all been waiting for. Queer teen readers will fall in

  love with this gang of misfit magical monsters—not so much chosen ones as

  outcasts—and if you know a queer teen you should definitely buy it for them.

  However, in its political acuity, its sadness and, ultimately, its hope,

  Schrieve’s book is much more than just a good YA read. It is also,

  in the best possible sense, an educational experience.”

  — cat fitzpatrick,

  editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction

  and Fantasy from Transgender Writers

  OUT OF SALEM

  OUT OF SALEM

  HAL SCHRIEVE

  Seven Stories Press

  New York • Oakland • London

  Copyright © 2019 by Hal Schrieve

  A Seven Stories Press First Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including

  mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without

  the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Seven Stories Press

  140 Watts Street

  New York, NY 10013

  www.sevenstories.com

  College professors and high school and middle school teachers

  may order free examination copies of Seven Stories Press titles.

  To order, visit www.sevenstories.com or send a fax on

  school letterhead to (212) 226-1411.

  Book design by Jon Gilbert

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Schrieve, Hal, author.

  Title: Out of Salem / Hal Schrieve.

  Description: New York : Triangle Square, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018029438| ISBN 9781609809010 (hardback) | ISBN

  9781609809027 (ebook)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Science fiction | Horror fiction

  Classification: LCC PS3619.C4643 O98 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018029438

  Printed in the USA

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  1

  The morning of the funeral, Z’s Uncle Hugh made eight pots of bitter coffee. He circled the house holding the silver coffeepot, pouring cupfuls into different cousins’ Fiestaware mugs.

  “Are you taking her back to New York with you, then?” It was one of Z’s aunts. She was talking to Uncle Hugh outside Z’s room. Z could see his shadow on the floor.

  “I suppose I have to,” Hugh said. “The other option is to sign her into state custody. I asked about that. I called the hospital, and they said that meant they’d send her into the foster care system with a note. We know they wouldn’t have wanted that. I don’t want that.”

  “That’s a lot of pressure.” The aunt shifted her weight and the floorboards creaked.

  “I’m going to have to get through all of this stuff in the house in the next couple weeks and then just leave the rest up to the lawyers,” Hugh said, and sighed. Z could picture him wringing his hands. “I don’t know that I’m ready to deal with her. My life isn’t set up for that.”

  “It’ll only be for a little while, though, won’t it?” the aunt asked very quietly. Z strained to hear more, but couldn’t pick out Hugh’s reply.

  Z chose not to go to the wake, the funeral, or the reception afterwards. Instead, they sat in their room with their science fiction books spread around them on the bed. Folded into the cover leaf of one of the books was a printout of the web page Z had visited at the computers at the public library. The page described the results of the online quiz Z had taken on a website called transsexual.org four months earlier. The pink background of the site had not translated well onto the library’s black-and-white printers, so the letters were a little hard to read.

  COMBINED GENDER IDENTITY AND TRANSSEXUALITY INVENTORY (COGIATI)

  Your COGIATI result value is: -40 Which means that you fall within the following category:

  COGIATI classification THREE, ANDROGYNE

  What this means is that the Combined Gender Identity and Transsexuality Inventory has classified your internal gender identity to be essentially androgynous, both male and female at the same time, or possibly neither. In some cultures in history, you would be considered to be a third sex, independent of the polarities of masculine or feminine.

  LAST UPDATE DECEMBER 19 1996.

  Z threw the book to the end of the bed. The printout fell onto the floor and lay there, in the heap of trash and clothes. Z turned over on their stomach with their face pressed to the sheets. The printout’s text, which had seemed so important a few days ago, now seemed stupid and useless, like something from an imaginary world. Z lay on the bed for several hours and let their hands go numb. When Hugh and the others returned from the funeral, Hugh stuck his head into Z’s room. His face looked like a bald cat’s.

  “Hey. Susan, I don’t mean to intrude, but if you aren’t going to talk to anyone, you might start packing. You got stuff all over the place here. I know it’s sudden, and very hard, but I don’t have a lot of time. We’re going to need to be out of here in the next couple weeks. It might be good to start putting together what’s important to you to take.”

  “Oh,” Z said.

  “I pulled one of the suitcases out of the garage. It’s outside your door.” He paused. “Here, actually, you probably can’t move it on your own.” He opened Z’s bedroom door and pushed the suitcase inside with his foot. “If you want to come down for dinner, you can. Otherwise I think it’s fine for you to stay right here. Uh.” He made eye contact with Z, swallowed, and looked over at the wall, where an Oregon Ducks pennant hung against the dusty plaster. “Oh, you, uh. You like the Oregon Ducks.”

  “I follow them, yeah,” Z said.

  “You know I used to go to games all the time, when your dad and I were in college. I never played football but my friend Joe did.”

  “Oh. Cool.” Z rolled off the bed and moved a pile of laundry from the floor into their suitcase, then looked up at Hugh. He made a strange bald-cat grimace and walked away from them down the hall. Z sat for a minute and then leaned over and shut their door.

  Z stared at the mess in their room and, after a long time, moved the Oregon Ducks pennant from the wall to the floor. They looked around the room. They couldn’t focus on any of the books or papers. Z’s pen pal Chad’s last letter to them was still on the dresser. He hadn’t written because he was on the road. Z picked it up and carried it with them through the house, sitting in rooms with nobody else in them and rereading the note until the words lost their meaning. When the streetlamps came on in the neighborhood, Z was still curled in the nook between the kitchen and the living room, mumbling the text aloud, though their voice was barely audible over the noise of the radiator. Dear Little Brother/Neutrois Sibling, the letter began. You’re going to be totally okay. I can’t,
like, take you in and be your godfather because I have one backpack and eight cans of Spam to my name but I want you to know that we’re out here and we love you and are waiting for you.

  But waiting where? And what did it really matter?

  After the funeral and memorial service, the relatives left casserole dishes behind, stacked in the refrigerator like bricks: Mexican, Pork Mint, Green Bean, Dill and Spinach. Z wasn’t eating. Hugh packed the Chilworth family’s things into boxes or threw them into black trash bags. The house grew emptier. Z let Hugh throw most of their things away rather than try to speak to him about what they wanted to keep.

  “I think we should go to your father’s church this Sunday,” Uncle Hugh said one day. “To say goodbye to your father’s congregation.” He was standing in the kitchen cleaning out the coffeepot with a dirty sponge. Z was sitting at the kitchen table, in the same place they had been sitting for five hours.

  Z had gone to church less than once a month before the accident. Since they had gotten home from the hospital, Z had trouble concentrating on anything and wondered if it was because they hadn’t left the house once.

  “You can go,” they said. “I’ll stay here.”

  “I think you should go too,” Hugh said, rubbing at the coffee stains on the marble countertop with a dish towel.

  On Sunday morning Z got up and dressed in new clothes for the first time in a week, pulling things out of the drawers Hugh hadn’t already emptied. The pants were clean and the shirt had no stains. When they heard Hugh get up they moved into the kitchen and sat near the coffeepot.

  “That’s no good,” Hugh said, looking at Z’s corderoy pants. “Wear a dress. There’s a dress over in one of the suitcases that’d be nice.” He moved into the hall where the suitcases were piled on top of one another, and rummaged inside the plastic dry-cleaner wrapping. He returned to the kitchen and laid the thing out on the table.

  Z looked at it. It was purple with long sleeves and a fake belt. Z had worn it for thirty minutes the previous Christmas and then fought with their mother about it.

  “I’m already dressed,” they said.

  “I’ll be wearing dress shoes,” said Hugh. “I think you should try it on. Sunday is for dressing up. You get home, put on pajamas for all I care.” Z noticed he did not look them in the eye as he spoke. He poured himself a cup of coffee and turned away.

  “I’ll wear dress shoes,” they said. “Not a dress.”

  Their dress shoes were slightly too small, but their smallness did not seem to hurt Z’s feet like they had before the accident. In fact, Z could not feel their feet at all, though they could still move them.

  Beads of ghostly rain broke across the window of the car. In the lobby of the church, there was coffee. Z did not drink it; they stood instead on the scratchy short-haired carpet and watched their uncle. Hugh drank two cups of coffee and ran his tongue against his teeth.

  The sermon was about the joy which was mankind’s natural state of being, the basis of connections between people and God.

  “I would also like to take a moment to mark a great sorrow,” the pastor continued. “As many of you know, we lost four members of our congregation last week, when Darren and Suzanna Chilworth’s car hit a patch of ice out on the highway. Their three children were in the car at the same time. I know many of us knew Darren and Suzanna extremely well. Darren and Suzanna and their daughters Mary and Lucy were interred here this past week and I saw many of your faces at the funeral. I think a lot of us have really rallied in supporting Suzanna and Darren’s daughter Susan and Darren’s brother Hugh in this difficult time, but we can never do too much for each other. Susan, Hugh. I want you to hear from all of us how lucky we are to have you here alive.”

  A few people turned around and stared at Z. Z began to pick at the skin on their hands.

  “May we keep now three minutes of silence and pray for their peaceful rest, thank God for Susan’s life, and ask ourselves how we can make her feel cared for and safe in this time of grief,” the pastor concluded. He asked everyone to close their eyes. Z stared blankly at the floor. Their contact lenses itched and Z was worried they would get blurry if they blinked. Z realized they should put on their glasses instead of continuing to wear contacts, since there were probably all sorts of microbes growing on their eyes, but Z hated the way their glasses made their face look round.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Uncle Hugh said.

  “I’m not fidgeting,” Z said loudly. Their right eye suddenly really hurt. They reached up to touch the contact lens and pull it out, but they couldn’t find where the lens ended and their eye began. They began poking at their eye, aware that several people were still staring. Z recognized several of their mother’s friends. Their necklaces and styled hair contrasted sharply with Z’s disheveled appearance. I am a charity case, Z thought. They poked their finger into their eye. The contact lens would not move. Z scraped at their eyeball with two fingers instead, hoping to gain purchase on the small rubbery lens.

  Suddenly, Z’s right eyeball came out into their hand.

  They stared down with their left eye—it took a moment to figure out what it was. There was some black gooey blood on their palm.

  “Oh no,” Z said. A few people looked around and saw them. There was a hysterical, horrible humor to the situation. They began to laugh, a low, humming, electrical noise that made the pew shiver. It was the first time they had laughed since the accident.

  Uncle Hugh looked over and made a high-pitched noise in the back of his throat. He spluttered. He looked around frantically; most people who were looking did not seem to realize what had happened. He reached over and pushed Z’s head down below the pew so nobody would see the eyeball, leaning over as if he was concerned for their safety.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

  “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  Uncle Hugh grabbed Z’s shoulders and lifted them forcefully from their seat on the pew, steering them rapidly to the doors of the church. A few people watched them exit. Nobody intervened.

  The connective tissues were still there, trailing back into their eye socket, Z realized, as they tried to blink. Z could see blurry images out of the detached eye. The carpet in the church hallway was a dark musty shade of green and was dotted with spots where stains had never really been washed out. Black fluid dripped from Z’s eye socket onto the green carpet, leaving small splotches. Uncle Hugh steered Z to a chair in the hall near the entryway, throwing them into the chair with such force that the back of the chair slammed into the wall with a loud thump.

  “Hey,” Z said. “That was unnecessary.” They looked at Hugh’s strange bald-cat face and laughed again. The situation was so macabre. They waited for some sign that Hugh thought it was funny.

  Uncle Hugh looked horrified and angry. “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t understand it,” Z said. “Just the way this works now, I guess.” They were trying to focus their left eye on their right one, to see if they could figure out how to put it back in.

  “Trying to terrify people—everyone is looking at me— what are you doing? Can’t you stop?”

  “I wasn’t trying to terrify people!” Z turned their eye in their hand. Why on earth would they take out their own eyeball in church on purpose? “I was trying to get my contact lens out. It was itching me.”

  Uncle Hugh wasn’t listening. He was standing over Z, sweating and staring at Z’s empty eye socket. “Do you know how terrifying it is to live with you?” he asked.

  The question surprised Z. “No,” they replied.

  “Every moment I wonder when you’ll snap and eat my brain. You pull out your eyes and you make that awful humming noise. It’s like a demon. It’s terrifying.”

  “I just—I don’t know, I just talk.” Z thought about the humming sound.

  “I don’t deserve to put up with this!”

  Uncle Hugh was so large and looming that they decided to proceed cautiously. “I suppose not,
” Z said.

  Uncle Hugh grabbed Z by the collar. Z had not been expecting this. They couldn’t lift their hands against their uncle, because one hand still held their eyeball. Z shrieked, and it sounded a little like a generator exploding. Uncle Hugh lifted them so they were standing on their toes.

  “Let me go,” Z said. They tried to turn their head, to see if there was anyone in the hallway. Their vision was blurry and lopsided and they couldn’t see anything clearly.

  “You don’t understand,” Uncle Hugh hissed. “I have worked all my adult life to ensure that monsters like zombies are dealt with cleanly, efficiently, and present the minimum risk to the public. You know what kind of cases I have done. Prosecuting those who fail to contain monsters in their custody, lobbying to get them off the streets, and to incinerate those which present a criminal threat.”

  “My eye fell out on its own. I’m not terrorizing anyone.”

  “I don’t deserve to put up with this. This isn’t fair. This degeneration will reach your mind too. You know how much the legal work of the last few decades has made a difference? But the monsters keep coming.” He paused and wet his lips. “If people in there saw you with your eye out . . . In taking you on I am going to have to watch you disintegrate until you’re beyond help, hungering for blood. I don’t know what animates you—the hospital wasn’t able to identify a curse— but I know you must have one inside you, and I don’t know what it’s going to do to me.” Hugh’s neck wrinkled upward toward his eyes along the creases in his cheeks. He looked hysterical, red, pulsing. Z could hear his heart.

  “Let me go,” Z said. The mass of tissue that connected their eye to the socket stretched; their head bobbed back and forth. They tried to remember the self-defense spell their mother had taught them. It had been a long time ago, when Z was six or seven. They remembered Suzanna Chilworth’s face, alive, smiling. But something was wrong. Z couldn’t feel the magic under their skin like they used to be able to. They hadn’t thought about it during the week in the house because they hadn’t seen the point in trying to use magic, but now that they needed it the absence felt like the absence of a pulse. They concentrated. Focus your magic at the point of contact—think of a wave, a surge, lean into your attacker. Let them take the heat of your fear. Release the spell. Z leaned into Uncle Hugh, throwing him off balance. They felt the magic going through their body now, but it was at a distance, as if it was coming from somewhere else.