[[THE ANNOTATED DIARY OF KEZIAH MORGAN (PUBLISHED WITH THE COOPERATION AND PERMISSION OF THE DARE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE AND MORGAN FAMILY) -EDITORS]]
I wasn’t booked on the NCW show, but there were a few guys there that I was actually pretty cool with. I mostly hung around in the back of the crowd to check out who all was there until the intermission when I slipped around the makeshift entranceway. I heard a commotion near one of the little areas the place had for dressing rooms and sure as shit, Van Nuys was in the middle of it. Of the couple of guys at this show I was cool with, Van Nuys was definitely top of the list. Only problem, and it wasn’t so much a problem as just Van being Van, he got REALLY into his politics at the drop of a hat. And from the sound of it someone dropped a hat but hard.
“’The boys,’ huh? Man, ‘the boys’ my ass. ‘The boys’ just some shit to keep us in line. Tell me one time the boys or some locker room court shit wasn’t run by the same motherfuckers that get real tight with management? Naw, see if ‘the boys’ is some real shit, how we ain’t got a union? For real, though, tell me that. Cause this business ain’t shit without us, so how WE the ones dying broke and crippled? Cause any time anyone wakes up and says “union,” the locker rooms get reeeeeal divided. Bookers and management and all them? They let the dudes at the top know that this shit ain’t gonna fly, and the dudes at the top of the card decide they’re fine with how things are, cause how things are is putting money in THEY pockets. That ain’t no “boys,” man. If “the boys” was some real shit, then we’d have that union by the time most of us had boots to lace up. Man, fuckin’ miss me with what “the boys” think bullshit. I got like five promotions ain’t wanna book me cause I talk that union shit, and how “the boys” gonna put up with that when the ONLY people benefit from a union is ‘the boys?'”
In his defense, he wasn’t bullshitting. Van Nuys got blackballed from more than a few places for trying to get whole cards to walk out, and it left him pretty bitter. But he didn’t have a lot of other options for work, which is why the only thing he talked about more than “wrestlers should unionize” and “most bookers are low key racist” was “have an exit strategy or don’t start wrestling.”
“Oh, shit, issat Keziah?” He wedged through a few guys and pulled me in for a bro hug. His activist tirades were passionate but could be fleeting if he got distracted.
“So who got you started this time?” He waved it off.
“Nah, some dude talkin’ bout how new guys comin’ up ain’t doin’ it the same, and I’m like ‘fuckin’ GOOD,’ right?” He was looking around, probably for whoever made the comment, but the second I served as a distraction they took the opportunity to scatter. “Man, anyway, where you been?”
“Funeral.”
“Shit, man, I heard about that. Your dads, right?”
“Yeah, long time coming, probably. You booked?”
“Fuckin’ know it, top spot. Surprised you’re here if you ain’t workin.”
“Maybe next circuit, ya know? Just got in from back east. You gonna be hungry after this? I could do with a drink.”
“Oh, we goin out on the town, errybody eatin! Come on out with us!”
“Deal. Where’s management?”
He threw his chin off toward a back hallway and I slipped away. The thing that made Van Nuys worth the trouble to some of the indie bookers was he was a pretty legit draw. Charisma out the ass and all that, he was fucking watchable. Would’ve hit big if he weren’t too much of a pain in the ass for bigger promotions to want to deal with.
After the show and after he made the rounds with the fans and shit a bunch of us hit up the bars in the area.
“Sucks about your pops, though, I ain’t wanna put a damper and shit, but ya know?”
“I getcha. Thanks.”
“You said he was all notorious or whatever back home, yeah?”
“Sorta.1 I stayed the fuck away from as much of that as I could, but it was kinda both of ’em, my mom too.”
“That’s what’s up. So look, I ain’t just talkin’ shit earlier. You know I’m on that union business for real, and I might got enough names behind the idea now that we could start some serious work. I know you ain’t on too many radars and might not wanna hurt the bookings you do get, but can’t have too many people behind somethin’, y’know?”
“Thanks all the same, but pass. Not about fucking up bookings, I do that fine on my own. You just take shit way too seriously sometimes.”
“I feel you, I hear that a lot. Ain’t gonna get me to take shit less seriously, though, hear me?”
I nodded and picked up the drink he was nursing. Downed it in one big go and slid it back in front of him.
“Shouldn’t. Your drink’s empty, though, should go get a refill.”
He laughed it off and slid out of the booth we were in. Like I figured, he made it halfway between us and the bar before he got distracted. While I had a moment to myself I went through my phone and was about to shoot the NCW booker a text to confirm I wanted booked next time through the area when I got a message from Lilith. For fuck sake.
‘Meet be back at the house.’
I almost thought to myself ‘someone else better fucking be dead,’ but just my dumb ass luck it’d be true, so I figured I better not jinx it.
“Errything cool?” Van Nuys was already back, sliding a fresh Tom Collins over to me.
“No. Feel like a trip to North Carolina?”
–
1- Just south of Kill Devil Hills in an unincorporated forest is a little neighborhood that hasn’t existed on any maps in years2. They used to want people to visit, to join them. When we lived there, there were signs adorning the entrance to the private road that ran through the Archer compound. Now you’d never even know they’re there. The woods eventually overtook the road almost completely. The sentimental part of me likes to think it was the last bit of Grace Morgan’s revenge. But really they just let themselves get so insular and let the bad, fundamentalist habits they inherited from Urbain seep back in so much that they did it on their own. At the time, though, things were still thriving.
I stood in the churchyard behind the pavilion over our mother’s grave. Little bits of plaster and clue were still visible from different times it’d been defaced. I crouched down and disrupted a bit of the ground beneath her mortsafe with a stick, sprinkled in some of the ashes from my father’s funeral into the earth.
“You’ve been away from home for too long. I hope this helps.”
As I crouched there, I picked away at some of the plaster over her name.
“I been askin’ around tryin’ to get people to not to that.” August was surprisingly good at not making noise when he walked, considering how much he loved attention.
“Clearly it’s working wonders. I bet you put on your most convincing charm.”
“I’d hoped this unfortunate set of circumstances could be a chance at something of a reconciliation. Maybe get the Morgan family back into the fold, so to speak.”
It honestly took a little bit of effort not to walk up and deliberately laugh in his face. Even turning and walking up to him and Salvation, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t do it.
“If you want to keep company with the Morgans you’re as welcome as anyone else at the Charenton, I’m sure. As for our attendance here, I doubt we’ll have any further business here. If Keziah is ever passing through you’ll no doubt know where to find her. If I’m ever passing through, I can promise that you won’t.”
“Harsh words protect hurt souls, Lilith. I take no offense I promise.”
“I truly wish you would, August.”
As I passed, Salvation extended a hand. I greeted it only with my eyes.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake hands.”
Civility would normally dictate otherwise, but I do have rules for who I don’t shake hands with. Chief among them is charlatan faith healers. She smiled and nodded, and was never as good at hiding how awkward and forced as it was as August. I still don’t know if I have more or less respect for that.
“Of course. But travel safe, Miss Lilith. We’ll light a candle for you.”
I made it back to the house on Roanoke a while later. Alicia had kept it from falling into disrepair in our father’s waning years. The wallpaper was faded and the plumbing was a little worse for wear, but the office and our mother’s rectory were almost pristine. I poured a glass of wine as I waited for the sun to set before moving to the rectory. There were no windows, the vents had been sealed shut and painted over, it was as isolated as a room in the house could be. On the wall opposite the door was our mother’s vanity. I sat and took her materials from the drawers and laid them out. For a moment, I sat and stared unblinking at my reflection in the mirror, touched the wood, smelled the air, listened to the insects outside. I shut my eyes and concentrated first on my fingertips, then my hands entirely, feeling them from the inside out. When I was fully present, I was ready to get started3.
–
2-[[This seems to be a very literal observation on Lilith Morgan’s part. Local street guides for the area that otherwise list private roads give no information for the part of Dare County the Holy Hermetic Revival church seems to have been located, although some data collected indicates that it was listed a number of years back. The road Urbain Ave is, however, recognized on Google Maps and Google Street View, although whole sections that seem to be houses and possibly the pavilion Lilith mentions later in this footnote are blurred out. Content farm site “10s Unit,” a click-bait outlet for slideshow countdowns on various topics, listed this in their article “Top Ten Random Houses Blurred Out On Google Maps,” excerpt provided below. -ED]]
“There’s a spot in the woods of North Carolina off of a private road Google Maps lists as “Urban Ave”[sic] where there appears to be a few houses completely blurred out in both street view and aerial view. The area has some aviation history, so one might theorize that it might be related to that, but the censored areas are too small to house any planes, and the area overall is too close to residential areas and appears too accessible to be any off limits government sites. So it seems to be either some private residences that somehow got Google to keep them from showing the houses or possibly a data error of some kind.”
–
3-Lit two candles. Dim light flickering against the mirror. Needle pierced my skin, right in the middle of the swirl of my fingerprint. One drop turned the sugar cube red. Crushed it between my teeth and watched the mirror ripple. A vast, framed ocean extended into unknowable depths in front of me. The blood of a poet. A dark so thick it swallowed all the color. A yawning, monochrome abyss. Drowning in black and white. Cold crashing waves chopping everything to pieces as they slammed into the water, the sea punching down into itself. A percussive atmosphere. Thunder that fills your lungs as the dark pulls you in darker. Twin suns fading further away. Down.
Down.
D
—o
—-w
——-n
———-.
All dark and cold and salt and turbulence and my bare feet touched frozen sand. Eddy pushing hard at my back. Crashing hard onto my knees, my hands cut on jagged slate while I crawled. Lungs burning despite the desolate cold around me. I raised up to my feet and felt air again. Clenched my eyes and opened them. Clenched and opened. Clenched. And opened, and clenched, forcing tears to remove the sand and grit. Crying vision back into my eyes. Everything on my body clinging to me for warmth while the light shook behind me. My feet stumbling through sand to look for softer earth. Cut arches wandering in search of grass, until the grass came to me.
Around me was nothing but dead trees. A skeletal grove of twisting branches pointing accusingly at the small clearing I found myself in. My footsteps echoed through my ears, but I hadn’t walked in hours. Or days. Maybe ever, if I’d always been here, clinging to the ground, digging my fingers into bleeding soil. Soft, delicate feet. They didn’t so much as bend the tall grass.
Metal bird skull fused to a face that looked down at me. The crow put her hand on my chest, her forehead on mine. Wordless apology, handed me the fruit. The deep, rich hue of the pomegranate was the only color in the world. Blood poured out of the holes my fingers tore into its rind, staining my hands, dripping down into the blood seeping up from the soil, pooling shallow around my knees. I smelled copper drowning out the salty sea air. The crisp sound of the flesh and membrane of the fruit tearing apart gave way to the small, pulsing heart inside, beating in time with the pounding in my chest.
I scrambled desperately, clawing the earth in front of me apart, pulling soil away, my hands fossors. I blinked hard and used the bight of my elbow to wipe the tears from my eyes as I put the still twitching heart into the hole, taking more care to replace the dirt on top of it than I had to displace it. Cutting through the hard, bitter cold, I felt the ground warm beneath me. The crow’s voice echoed in my head, calling me up to the house.
I walked through the cinders and ash of my father’s funeral pyre and left a trail of black footprints up the stairs of the back porch. I left no other trace, my steps made no sound. But the crow was waiting. Her metal skull was starting to corrode, the salt in the air eating at it like an invasive fungus.
There was little left of the house by then. Wisps of soot clung to the charred drywall like silhouettes of the flames that left them. After images of disaster. The crow’s eyes were locked on me as I wandered through the house, wiping off bits of black from the walls here and there. The ash seeped into the blood sticking to my hands. My palms were black in little time at all. When I turned the corner leading downstairs the crow was in front of me.
I fell to my knees so hard I could feel floorboards buckling underneath me. I wiped the blood and ash over my face. My tears were already streaking the gummy mix down my cheeks as I leaned down and kissed her ankles. She gave one long, slender outstretched finger to guide me to the tree.
The heart had already flourished and withered. The meat was rotting and festering, falling to the ground as the flies got to it, leaving the bones of the trunk and branches standing mostly bare. Standing next to the tree was the crow, eyes closed, head lowered solemnly. I walked to the tree and placed a hand on it next to where the crow stood. The meat was soft from decay, my palm sank into it with no pressure from me. Suddenly everything in me seized and wretched, sea water flooded from my mouth. My hand went further in and I sank forward, submerged in the cold abyss again. Pulled forward further by a hand gripping my wrist.
I submitted to the force pulling me through the water, letting the grit of the salt scrape against my face, shutting my eyes and flowing forward faster and faster.
My sister pulled me out of the water. I felt my stomach wretching again onto the floor of the hallway. I was home again, doubled over outside the bathroom. Keziah shook me back to cognizance and checked my eyes and vitals. Even after years away from the family she remembered the protocols. I assured her that it had gone well and that the meditation was helpful, but she had to have noticed that I couldn’t keep eye contact. I’d felt her presence in the dark, and that was a distressing and ominous sign.
When we last saw our Golden Boys, they were given the gift of cold, pitiful realization. They made their big stand, at least Bison did, and where did it get them? An opportunity to take the coward’s way out. Or for Adam to take it for the both of them. Running from the ring, giving himself a hollow celebration in the back. Pushing the outcome of the match back into the dark recesses of his mind, that the last image of him dealing with lich house anyone has is him running away carrying the last burning ember of his pride. Adam, people like you are a delight. Even if we were the truly sadistic type, we could never do as much damage to you or your partner as you can. Which do you suppose eats more at Bison, the fact that the only reason he wasn’t pinned is because of your flailing desperation, or the fact that even when having to be saved by you, he still took the loss? You make claims, but nothing could possibly look more like defeat. You almost make me jealous, Adam. We went in to do damage and beat you and all that, but we can’t hold a candle to what you do to your self in the name of your pride. Which is to say, the memory of your pride.
But there’s more of you this time, isn’t there? You have a pair of little goslings in tow, don’t you? Let’s cause Adam just a little more discomfort and turn the attention to his teammates. Because my sister and I – and, yes, our own teammates as well – are also up against Jessica Tremor. And darling Jessica has a few questions. Questions like “who am I to judge” and “who am I to turn the chance down,” and honestly, Jessica, who are you at all? Someone here to Do Real Good? Here to be Really Motivated? Put on a Really Good Show? To lure us into a false sense of disinterest by telling us how excited you are to wrestle us? But not with anything too confrontational, right? We do need that veneer of competitive respectability, even if it does ring as fake as anything you’d accuse Kennedy Street of being. Just…what… the barest mentions of ‘faith?’ Child, we have no interest in faith. Our interest is in blood.
Maybe I’m wrong, Jessica. Maybe there IS something to you. Maybe beneath the proclamations of intent to “crush it” and the barb at a former champion that they’ve – gasp – been beaten, and every other chestnut you dust off, there’s a wicked young lady waiting to pounce as soon as someone’s back is turned. As far as strategies go, aggressive insubstantiality is novel. But it will do you no good even if you DO deserve the credit I’m giving you. The feint only matters if the strike does the job, and while I can’t vouch for our teammates, my sister and I are not prone to caring what face you put on. Whoever you are will be consumed, and if there really is nothing to you, there are three others on your team that will be plenty satisfying. So by all means, Jessica. Try as hard as you can to provide your part of this match with just a little more flavor than the ash we burn you to.
Gianni, though, you almost have the opposite problem, don’t you? Rather than going on at length about how little you really have to say, you’ll wax obnoxious in short, exhausting bursts. Far from his fellow junior employee, Gianni is dripping with so much personality he can’t help but get some of it on you. Gianni, I know that I’ve said my sister and I are no sadists, but I’ve also said the truth is paramount. So I’ll be honest when I tell you that unlike with your partners, hurting you will definitely bring me no small amount of joy. But only because your whole existence seems to be built around making yourself someone people can’t help but want to tear down. And because you’re so enamored with any time in the spotlight you can get, we’ll be happy to spill enough of your blood to let you walk a red carpet wherever you go. I promise, the scars I leave will last much longer than any fleeting bit of celebrity you manage to cling to. After all, Gianni, you’re so current and of your time that there’s no way everything about you won’t be dated in ten…
nine…
eight…
What’s fun about this is we get to watch the four of you try coexisting. We already know our Golden Boys are barely held together, and now Jessica has harsher words for them than she does for us. Truly a poor excuse for camaraderie, no? Now, my sister and I have no particular kinship or fondness for Ms. Street or Ms. Williams, to suggest otherwise would be a lie. And I am never anything but purely honest. As our partners, they are a means to the end of the match, and I doubt they see us any differently. But that’s what separates those of us here to work from you people who can’t see past your own silly little sense of being better than everyone else. We’re all very proud of you for thinking the same things as the rest of us. And if that’s all you have, then my sister and I and our teammates will have no trouble showing you what that gets you.
Now, children, the two of you might not be in the same sorry state as Adam and Bison, but you are no better off here. Ms. Street and Ms. Williams will do what they do. Maybe one of them will even get the pin. But we will have our time with you. And just as we did with Abby Normal and your teammates, we will move through you. Where you find yourselves fortunate is that you’re not in our tag team division, so following this match you don’t have to worry about our presence looming over you. The Golden Boys? theirs is another story, as is whatever our teammates may do when your paths cross again. But, children, you do still have to get through the match, and because our time together may be brief doesn’t mean it will be any easier on you. And don’t be surprised if you find Adam and even Bison strangely off of the apron when you go to tag out. You’ll see it in their eyes. Or better yet, come to us and we’ll show you first hand why they’re so hesitant to come back on this particular ledge with us.
No, those relics on your side of the ring are still trying to get back to Adam’s glory days in the middle. Blind to the fact that all they are is just… diminishing returns. I can’t imagine Bison is too happy being leashed to someone egotistically scratching his way back up to mediocrity, but I think he’s plenty miserable already knowing that it’s still the best he could hope for. But they followed our time together with delusion and denial, which honestly was to be expected. Adam, I’m sorry to be the one to break this news to you, but you only gave yourselves a stay of execution. If you’d just let your overqualified minion eat the loss, you could have lived blissfully in our wake, knowing we had no further use for you. But now we get to make you realize over and over that my sister and I are looking down at your ceiling. Whatever plans you have in SCW, they’re falling short. Or, rather, YOU’RE falling short. It doesn’t matter if you can put on a brave face and deny it to the pretty girl interviewing you. If you could have beaten us, you would have. And if you believed you WOULD have beaten us, you would have played things very differently.
Your team is already… no, I’m sorry. Your team was never together to begin with. The only real thing uniting you are your shared fate. And that fate is my sister and I. And those with whom we are temporarily aligned. Whatever your ambitions are here, be it in this match or after, you will be making do with what we leave you. And in the short term, what we leave you is a spot on the mat at our feet. When you joined SCW, you had a vast sea of possibilities stretching before you. But in my sister and I you find that vastness narrowed to a razor. And you can’t help but offer us your throats.
Two leftovers we’re still picking out of our teeth, the latest iTunes update, and someone so nondescript she can’t help but think she’s the star of the match. Don’t look to us. Don’t look to our partners. Look inward. Tell us, how else could this match end? We are not to be felled by anyone here, let alone the likes of you. You will not regain any status you imagined yourselves to have. You will not build more adolescent notoriety. You will not ‘put on a good show.’ You may try to spin some positivity from this experience, but it would be akin to bragging to the man throwing the switch at your execution that you have the best seat in the house. Until the match, my sister and I hold you in our hands. When the match begins, we and our teammates crush you under our heels.
lich house 