The Kingdom of the Damned

by Mario Garrido Espinosa

  Sister Ana Toribia was still there, waiting for death, face down and with her circular slit in her skull, oozing pasty blood, drenching her wimple. Irene noticed the nun with a victorious face and smiled. Then, she turned her attention to objects that collected dust in a corner. Among them was Sister Prudence Ferdinalda’s unfinished painting and the painting material. She quickly came up with another of her unspeakable ideas: She was going to finish the painting.

  “Well, you did not want me to finish it, so I'm going to finish it!” She said speaking alone, because Sister Ana Toribia was not here to listen to anything.

  She took red paint, something dried out, with a fat brush and missing hair. Immediately, afterwards, she painted in a bad way two exaggerated horns and a demon's tail on top of the Christ that the painter sister left without legs, because she had died prematurely. Below the waist, just above what appeared to be a first sketch of the Christ’s lower parts, she drew a pair of legs, deformed male genitals and ram's hooves, though so badly that they looked anything but that. With black paint, she drew on the original eyebrows others that converged on an imaginary point located at the bottom of the painting.

  “What do you think of how it looks?” Irene was still talking to Sister Ana Toribia. The religious was already dead.

  The false nun went to the chapel, and left her work, from which paint drips slipped, in the place of honor. First, she picked up with difficulty the two-meter-long Christ, which smashed to the ground, although nothing happened to the wooden cross. The upper part of this, just where the word INRI appeared on a kind of parchment, was about to hit Pelayo’s body. The boy would not have felt pain. She had died five minutes ago. It suffocated.

  "Now, it is time to finish what this gaudy witch interrupted," Irene said when she saw the two bodies tied. At once, she found that Pelayo was no longer breathing. "Pity," she said, somewhat annoyed.

  Sister Mikaela was still unconscious. Irene Lopezosa was not going to kill her. She knew that leaving her in that situation was even more cruel than ending her. Nevertheless, she took off her breeches and gagged her, so that her cries would not be heard if she woke up. Then, she tied her still more tightly to Pelayo's body, with the piece of cloth that had been removed from his face, so that the boy's death, if it were possible, would also infect her. The best thing that could happen to Sister Mikaela, in this situation, was to die soon and before she woke up.

  Finally, Irene went down the window of her cell to the road, carrying the sacks. This time she was careful not to even touch the irons that had opened her left leg. She had no choice but to flex her stiff limb so that could pass, and the pain was about to make her fall on her face to the path that surrounded the convent.

  She went into the forest and walked, not knowing which direction, for an hour. In her walk, she found a stream. She took out her groin and wiped the blood. She continued her painful walk to nowhere until two hours later, she vanished. Her shattered body no longer had any strength.

  She awoke fifteen hours later, dying of cold and hunger. She buried her head in the groan, as if it were another morning inside the convent, and ate some of the sack of provisions.

  Chapter 18

  Tales and cares

  1

  P

  ersuwi, the child fish, crossed the sea to see if it had an end and fifty moons later appeared on the opposite shore of the island where he was raised. He stepped on the sand of the exhausted beach and believed himself lost forever. —Night Skin caressed Mario's limp right hand—. Disconsolate, realizing now how much he must never have done that trip, an innocent victim of his own curiosity, broke into an uncontrollable wailing cry and his groans were so strong that they attracted a white gull named Quwii. The seagull asked him if his moans were because he did not know where his parents were, because it was old and knew that the children os his age only cried there for that reason. Persuwi, of course, said yes, and the bird, staring at the boy, proposed a solemn agreement, "If you give me those two fish that you have trapped in your loincloth, I will take you where you can find your parents."

  Night Skin interrupted her story, told in the dialect of her own people, to watch Mario. She thought she saw an arm move. In the next few moments, the dying man stood still. Suddenly, he raised his left eyebrow three times quickly and mime, rehearsing a kind of strange tic. Night Skin was flooded with joy and confidence about his recovery. She stared at him for an hour, but the patient had plunged back into his usual deep, comatose drowsiness.

  The dark-skinned woman decided to keep telling her the story of the fish child. Despite the obvious Mario’s absence, she had not stopped in the last few days of talking to him and dedicated every possible hour to his care, treating him on most occasions like a baby who needed all kinds of aid. She was sure she could hear him, and thought he must have been very bored inside that body that could not move. When she was asked something, she assured that he was shaking his head to say yes or no, but it was only a guess and she only believed it. Mario Toulon had not wiggled a muscle in his neck for days.

  "The little fish boy had not realized that during his swim the two little fish had sneaked in, so they gave them to Quwii without any qualms. Then the seagull swallowed them, so that it almost choked. Then he told it that many moons ago people of the same tribe were looking for a child very similar to him. After saying this, it invited him to climb up, right in between its two long wings, and clutching its neck very tightly. When the child was well coupled, Quwii began its flight and crossed the island to the village of his parents, who welcomed him warmly. In this way Persuwi, the child fish, realized that he had finished his tour where he had started, in Hooweallay, the same island where I was born.

  2

  Tecplacca, the man eats ants, climbed Mount Lapilli to discover why it was always fuming, and when he came back, said he saw a big hole up there and at the bottom a huge hut from which Tamborasumbawa suddenly came out. God of Fire, very angry. He shouted that no one should ever go there to disturb his sleep and in punishment began to fire through his hair with such fury that the rock took the form of sea water and the color of fire. Tecplacca ran so as not to be buried by the Tamborasumbawa’s fire that fell down the side of the mountain. Fortunately, God of fire’s anger ceased when Tecplacca reached the sea.

  At that time, Joseph “The Bull” entered the hut. He sat heavily leaning his back against a wall. After snorting, he began to listen absently to the warrior-who-ate-ants’ adventures. It was not the first time he heard that unlikely story and so he soon stopped paying attention diverting his thoughts to the day when, passing through the beach of Holy Coral Marie, he spotted an abandoned barrel on the shore and came up to it to satisfy his curiosity. Night Skin, who accompanied the giant, stayed waiting at a safe distance. The Bull dragged the barrel to the dry sand and realized, by its weight, that it was full. He opened it —not without feeling quite disgusting— using the iron he used to release the mussels from the rock or break it, if he found barnacles. The rotten wood cracked at the first thrust of the giant. Then, little by little, Joseph was opening a gap with the iron in the form of a lever. A terrible stench, capable of making the healthiest sick, came out of the interior. Joseph overturned the barrel and from it came several liters of totally corrupted seawater and a sack covered with a black gelatinous substance. Unable to avoid an arcade, he opened the sack and, surprising himself greatly, discovered something that resembled a man inside.

  “Holy God!” The Bull exclaimed when he saw him. “Who the hell is capable of doing this to a person?”

  Mario Toulon had been thrown into the sea three days ago.

  The bloodthirsty pirate captain Alexander Cliff Withers “the Hands-cutter”, before setting sail from the port of Delta Guard sea, had sent for the men whose mission was to rob the people who entrusted the barrel to him. He did not understand what could have happened. The only thing he was sure of was that they had not betrayed him, for knowing their methods, it had been years since anyone dared to be un
faithful or in his thoughts.

  The people in charge of the search only found one of them. He was dead and bloated. Sitting with his back on the trunk of a tree, he dried himself in the afternoon sun. They found all the spoils stolen from Sabine and Severus, which was no small thing. No one had dared to touch that corpse, perhaps because in Fuentebabila Cabins de the legends and superstitions were truths like fists. But those pirates were people who feared nothing and without any concern they took everything from their old companion, leaving him completely naked, so that after hours the voracious crows of the contour, which had already partially disfigured the face with pecks, continued their scavenging work with less difficulties.

  A week after releasing the moorings the whole crew perceived a terrible pestilence that grew as the hours passed. It was a pestilence that made even more unbearable the one that already had the boat and that vaguely reminded one of the detachment of the slave ships where hundreds of people fell ill and died chained, battered in their own feces. In fact, the captain ordered his guard to look well in case there were any nearby. Despite being a complete murderer and thief, the Hands-cutter hated those boats and whenever he came across one, approached it in peace, and, at the least expected moment, endorsed four guns and sank it completely, killing to harmed and executioners.

  A cabin boy reported the origin of the problem. So that, once discovered the source of such an insane aroma and without thinking twice, they detached from the barrel, throwing it overboard, never to remember it again.

  On the Holy Coral Marie beach shore had two days, rocked by the ups and downs of the tide, when Joseph and Night Skin found him.

  3

  Night Skin linked Tecplacca, the-man-eats-ants’ story with another that spoke about a woman whose breasts flowed milk exactly like goats’. Joseph had already heard that crazy story. He looked bored at the man lying on the floor. He remembered instantly the state in which they had found him. He was totally famished. He looked like a mummy, although the face retained its main features. The head, barbarously shaved, was white and green with mildew. His eyes were wide open, as if he were constantly looking at the death scythe blade in front of his face, like a mirror, which left an expression on his face of pure horror, capable of infecting anyone. The arms remained clenched and stiff, and the hands fingers —already without nails—, tense and paralyzed. His color, if there was any, was of the world after this life. The skin covered the lack of meat with salt and sea moisture, and it seemed that if you touched him, it would break, and your hand could lodge inside his rotten body... That man was, in short, a human plunder.

  “Poor devil! What a terrible ending," The Bull said after the first glance.

  Night Skin ran to the shore. When she arrived with Joseph, she remained silent, as if thinking of something impossible that had come true. Her face showed amazement, disbelief and, in a way, joy.

  "We must leave here as soon as possible," the giant shellfish man proposed two minutes later. “This corpse cannot bring anything good...”

  “No, no. Stay. Help man!”

  “But he's dead!” Jose said, not understanding what kind of freak had entered his companion's head this time.

  “Not dead. Help man!”

  “What help! There is no one to help him.”

  “I help.”

  “But you've gone crazy! What do we care about this man, or whatever? Let him rest in peace! We cannot do anything for him anymore.”

  The woman was silent, determined to do what she said. Joseph grabbed her by the arms to look at him.

  “Listen to me. This man may have the plague or rage, or whatever. He can infect both of us and those diseases cannot be cured by anyone on this island. Neither you. Are you understanding what I'm saying!” The Bull asked, trying to convince her, while Night Skin seemed to continue, without changing her mind, staring at the waste that Mario Toulon was at that point.

  “You help I a long time ago. Heal man the same.”

  “It is not the same. When I found you, you were still alive. It seems you do not realize the danger that may be looking at us! Let's move on! Someone can see us and accuse us of the death of this poor devil," Joseph said, while pulling the woman, grabbing her by the arm.

  “Help I man. Not dead!" Night Skin repeated as she released herself from Joseph The Bull’s powerful hand.

  "Well, goodbye," the giant said, leaving sullenly, muttering a curse under his breath and lamenting the fact that this woman could not be brought to her senses when she persisted with something. “There you stay! I'm going to catch seafood, which is what I was coming for. I do not want to know anything about this matter..." he said, although he was aware that, in the end, he could not be on the sidelines.

  Night Skin took the dying man to the shack that served as a refuge. She carried him on her back and endured as nothing the smell and the feeling of carrying a piece of infested and dead flesh stuck to her body. Meanwhile, Joseph pursued her from a distance watching her movements.

  She unloaded Mario in the center of the hut. The dark-skinned woman slowly removed the rotting rags of clothes that clung to his skin like barnacles to the rock. Some pieces of decomposed skin remained attached to the corrupted cloth. When everything was uncovered, she found that the person as a whole was a piece of flesh plagued with bruises, wounds and marks of bones trying to tear the pale skin that surrounded them.

  He carefully stripped him of all the foreign bodies that covered the wounds. After this, she cleaned every inch of his anatomy with clean seawater, in an act that, he had been conscious and given the state of his skin, would have made Mario howl with pain.

  In a corner of the Night Skin’s hut, she stored plants that she herself was looking for. She came up there and selected what she thought fit. Then she made a paste based on crushing laminarian, boxwood roots, rhododendron, echeveria pulmonal and stems of wild Melo cactus; all this mixed with the juice of a very fleshy plant that she identified as lessonia palmetto, but that was actually another that only occurred in Moralnugno. She dried her own sweat with two gigantic leaves of cyclopean rafflesia, chopped them up and added them to everything else. She spit on five leaves of birch rhubarb, and soon after the nerves and veins of these began to ooze a thick and whitish fluid as pus. She drained it and included it in the mixture. She added two fetid Ellenboro stems, which increased the bad smell that already, without this last ingredient, had the preparation. And mixed and kneaded until finally the concoction, of a frightful dark green color, was ready to be used. Then, frantically, but no less conscientiously, Night Skin worked to smear Mario Toulon through all the cracks in his body, as she knew that this mixture would soon solidify, and once in this state it would be impossible to extend.

  In the following days, in any case, Mario was managing to deceive death, although his appearance did not indicate it. Although he did not finish dying, neither could be said he lived. It looked like a dead man painted in blackened green. The only indications that made him think that he had some life left were that he breathed through his mouth, although without desire and with a terrible job; and her heart, which was still beating incomprehensibly. That breastplate worked in Mario the same effect as the mother of the barrel that had served as transport by the sea: it kept him alive, but it did not heal him.

  Night Skin took great care of the stranger, even feeding him herself by making nutritious porridges of fish, seafood and plants, which forced him to swallow. When what there was to eat was too hard, she herself was crumbling it. Even with her own teeth, if necessary. Not even her own mother she would have cared for. Joseph the Bull did not yet understand the reason for so much work, foreseeably useless. In his opinion there was no human way to heal a man in such a state, and she was not a Goddess. Only the inevitable was being postponed.

  4

  “Admunwem, the white-haired warrior, went deep, loaded with all his weapons, into the island to know where its center was, and returned four moons later with a monkey hooked behind him, disarmed and turned
into a fat woman with the largest tits ever seen there." Night Skin swelled her cheeks and imitated a thick woman’s movements, believing, perhaps, that Mario could see through his eyelids. “Admunwem said that in the interior of Hooweallay there were strange forces that seized people’s will and without being avoidable in any way, they made of them what they wanted. He could never have returned if it had not been for the monkey to point the way back. The ape turned out to be a man strangely transformed by the evil forces of the interior and in time returned to its normal state; but Admunwem remained forever with her form of woman. The monkey who became a man fathered three children in the changed body of the white-haired warrior, who founded as many villages along the coast.” He paused. “Since then, it is forbidden for men of the tribe to enter the island and the just punishment for any woman who dares to disobey her husband is to force her to enter the interior of Hooweallay, so she will face those unknown forces...”

  "Good God!” Joseph exclaimed, who was returning to fetch wood. “Here it smells like inside the shell of a dead crab and left in the sun for three days...”

  He had not finished expressing his disgust when he could see how Mario Toulon suddenly opened his eyes and stood up, partly peeling his green armor. It seemed as if his good health had returned with a stroke and he wanted to get up for a walk. He kept looking at a fixed point. It was the thirty seconds most intense Night Skin felt for many years. Instantly, the thief's body returned to relax, staying as it was, lying on the floor but with eyes still open. The woman then moved her hand in front of the sight of the dying man, but her eyes remained still in the direction of that non-existent fixed point, so that she extended her eyelids again, losing a little more her sparse hopes.