The End of the Sentence
Maria Dahvana Headley, Kat Howard
Language: English
Pages: 176
ISBN: 1596066792
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
It begins with a letter from a prisoner...
As he attempts to rebuild his life in rural Oregon after a tragic accident, Malcolm Mays finds himself corresponding with Dusha Chuchonnyhoof, a mysterious entity who claims to be the owner of Malcolm's house, jailed unjustly for 117 years. The prisoner demands that Malcolm perform a gory, bewildering task for him. As the clock ticks toward Dusha's release, Malcolm must attempt to find out whether he's assisting a murderer or an innocent. ''The End of the Sentence'' combines Kalapuya, Welsh, Scottish and Norse mythology, with a dark imagined history of the hidden corners of the American West.
Maria Dahvana Headley and Kat Howard have forged a fairytale of ghosts and guilt, literary horror blended with the visuals of Jean Cocteau, failed executions, shapeshifting goblins, and magical blacksmithery. In Chuchonnyhoof, they've created a new kind of Beast, longing, centuries later, for Beauty.
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iron shoes, nailed to a pair of hooves, and there was a man matching the description Olivia’s letter had given of Dusha Chuchonnyhoof, and there was Lischen March and Michael Miller, and they were whole and hale. And there was my son, Rowan Mays, smiling. And should the binding be prevented, or left incomplete, the shape shall be twisted, and the death shall be the death of iron. And there was a monster, covered in blood, wailing, roaring, screaming. I could not say which. Nine days. 12. I
coffee to offer you,” I said. “Coffee’d be great,” she said. “Ralph said there was all sorts of scary graffiti on the walls.” She tilted her head and looked at me. “People always want to say stuff like that is done by Satanists, but I don’t think there are too many devil worshippers hanging out in Ione.” She laughed. “It wasn’t good,” I said, “but it wasn’t like that either. It’s gone now. I painted over it.” “You should’ve shown me. I’m a librarian—I like interesting things.” Faces,
and a note in that same shaky hand. Drink. 3. I drank. The wine was cold, crisp with an edge that razored along my tongue, a faint breath of slate-grey stone in the glass. It soothed the roughness in my throat. I drank again, deeper this time, and there was the warmth of honey beneath the mineral brightness of the wine. Dusha Chuchonnyhoof. Neither were names I recognized. They hadn’t appeared on any of the forms I’d signed to make this house mine. It was mine, no matter what the letter had
other land. This land is my claim, and I am vowed to it, and to the family. Do not neglect your duty, Olivia. I will not neglect mine. Dusha. Not, then, a collection of near-identical ramblings. Not that at all. I choked down the rest of the sandwich. It was better food than I had eaten in weeks, but I could barely make myself swallow. The fruit salad I scraped back into the bowl in the refrigerator, and I stacked my dishes in the sink. I gathered some of the piled letters from the front
This wasn’t him. Row hadn’t gotten this old. He’d died when he was four, across the country, nowhere near here. This boy must be six or seven. This was the Row I’d imagine when I wanted to punish myself, the Row that wouldn’t be. I stared at the photo. I turned it over. Dusha’s writing. If you do as I tell you to do, he will return when I do. If you do not, he will remain where you left him. I know your dreams, Malcolm, just as I know the dreams of everyone who sleeps in my house. On the
