Her voice slipped between the grass and the breeze without creating so much as a ripple within the calm. “You travel like a thoughtless bird, Family Man, straight and unwavering—and wholly predictable. I really didn’t think you’d take such an obvious route, yet she assured me you would. I should know by now not to question her.” Her voice was both soft and loud, and she made no effort to hide herself—confident, no doubt, in the beasts that served her. “Did you really believe she wouldn’t know you were coming? Where did you think your dreams were going? After everything I’ve heard about you, you turn out to be nothing more than a simple-minded brute. You lack the cleverness of your art, monster. Now, I’m certain you must have at least learned enough about us from her dreams to know what comes next. Or were you foolish enough to believe you would have the honor of being devoured by our mother?”
With a heavy heart, I surprised the squatting beast from behind, having crept beneath the sound of the woman’s monologue to get close to it. Its strength was fierce and feral as it tried to struggle free of my grip, but I proved the stronger. Its neck snapped loudly, summoning its minions to investigate. I took the intervening moments to study them. They were wolves from under the earth with white vestigial eyes, ash coats, and massive overhanging claws and teeth. My heart broke when they attacked.
My father met the first beast in the air. The creature became nothing more than a shriek wrapped in blood. Lunging at my knees, the second meant to steal my balance. The spiked counterweight of the great axe blade passed through the creature’s brain, splitting its jaw and pinning it to the earth. Spinning around, I interrupted the beast stalking me from behind, passing the giant blade through the thing’s neck. Its head dropping cleanly to the ground.
Wisely determining her beasts insufficient to her cause, the woman fled, her nimble retreat soundless. The last two monsters tried to cover her withdrawal, rearing up in front of me in a show of intimidation. My sister slashed their throats in a wide, sweeping arc before taking flight and plunging into the fleeing woman’s back. She stumbled into the low-hanging limbs of a dead tree, just beyond the wood line. She tried desperately to hold herself up by the lifeless branches, even as they tangled within her hair and poked at her flesh. With a handful of broken twigs, she slowly collapsed to the ground.
I wanted badly to spare the remaining creatures, but I couldn’t. Miss Patience already knew too much. They came at me almost passively, their fires cold and dead. With their task all but impossible, they simply wanted an end to things. It was a gentle affair, considering.
The woman was still breathing, as I’d intended. I looked upon her face—she was blind and terribly beautiful, her eyes a marriage of glass and spring rain. I immediately recognized her from my dream. “More like an eagle than a thoughtless bird,” I said. “An eagle fears nothing, and it finds no critics among the littered bones of its prey.” I had wanted to glean further insights from her, but I’d destroyed too much beauty to summon any lingering sense of purpose. I couldn’t bear to look at her. As I turned away, I could hear the rain falling behind her beautiful, sightless eyes.
She gathered what breath remained and spoke. “I didn’t know . . . eagles could cry.” In the next moment, the blind woman and the sun were dead. The newborn darkness drifted across me, washing the remains of the daylight from my broken skin. I sank into the darkened field, defeated.
I had become a cannibal, subsisting on the flesh of dreamers and leaving their corpses to bake beneath the horrible sun. There was little rationalization left to me—I was clearly doing the Deadmother’s work. I tried to tell myself it was all a fantastic and calculated gamble, the slain wolves a necessary sacrifice. Yet the barer truth had finally loomed too large to ignore—I was killing my own, and it wasn’t at all clear how that was a good thing. Of course, whether I found the game to my liking or not, I would be forced to play along, lest I become merely another name scratched off a list.
For days, I lingered the field and the forest, sleeping away the sun and haunting the thickets by night, using the cover of darkness to raise a great and terrible monument. I hoped my newest piece would somehow exonerate my crimes, allowing the spirits comprising its wicked teeth and mournful eyes to spread a dream as wild and hungry as fire. My project took me a little over a week to complete, and with the exception of my family, she was my best piece.
Standing over thirty feet tall, she scraped her head against the ceiling of the forest, dominating the shadows. She wore many ferocious heads, each one grinning through staggered lines of eager teeth. Her central face beamed with beautiful, blind eyes filled with the soft patter of spring rain, staring into places where sight failed the visions dreams alone could bear. Upon her head, a crown fashioned from the bones of hunting birds. Her dress I made from feathers and flesh. Many and canine were her legs, each foot tipped with large claws projecting red and wicked beneath an ample, flowing gown. Covered entirely by her dress, her torso was a temple made of wolves, where interlocking ribcages sheltered the phantom rhythms of seven dead hearts. Like her many heads, they were arranged to honor the woman who had destroyed me. I placed her at the rim of the forest, where her sightless eyes could stare down the sun without wincing.
When I crept into Black River City, I found it sparsely populated, and only by persons who seemed glad for the relative isolation. Many of the citizens moved about by night and sang to themselves as they went down dark curving roads into the surrounding woods. The sound of strange industry and muted conversations could be overheard from the basements and attics of no small number of houses. It also appeared the people had renamed their township for some reason, as I found the name Lastrygone written upon a large sign set out by the only road connecting the city with the rest of the world. Overall, I found the little hamlet quite likable.
At last, just before dawn, I arrived at the abandoned residence of Martin Crook, the first recorded victim of Miss Patience. There were few occupied buildings near it, as if the structure had been ostracized. I entered the decaying Dutch Colonial—which looked untended since the murder, some ten or fifteen years ago—immediately touched by the cold echo of past atrocity. The gloom tangibly thickened as I neared the cellar door, and the basement stairs held surprisingly firm as I descended them. The flesh of the house may have all but rotted away, yet the bones of its dead body remained strong—no doubt reinforced by the wicked deed’s refusal to abandon its home, preferring to keep the light of that wickedness alive and burning.
The basement was small and earthen, which of course was why Miss Patience had chosen it. Surprisingly, the large hole in the floor leading to her underground tunnels was meager by way of adornments, despite its historical significance—unless you counted stolen dreams, in which case this was far from her first documented kill. I looked more closely at the edges of the pit, and I noticed a small collection of teeth protruding from the inside rim, as if the opening were indeed designed to resemble a kind of mouth. I’m sure it was only the first of many mouths that ended up swallowing Mr. Crook that fateful night. The collection was comprised of mostly human and animal, though a smaller assortment were beyond my ability to identify. Nevertheless, I was fairly certain I was gazing upon fragments of the Tower of Teeth. I wasn’t sure what they signified, if anything. They could’ve been nothing but an embellishment for art’s sake—the many and varied followers of Miss Patience were known to be a creative lot.
Despite the lackluster features of the location, I was still thrilled to be in such a historic place, not to mention one step closer to my inevitable meeting with the renowned cannibal. But the sun was almost up, and I hated the idea of ruining the somber atmosphere of the house with daylight, so I retired to a corner of the basement and slept the day away. My dreams were hollow, filled only with the drone of common silence—nothing of the stolen dreams that had so often haunted my sleep.
I awoke to a dissonance of raised voices from without, like some rowdy crowd slipped
from hell. The night was fresh, likely no more than a few moments old, and the noise almost masked the sound of something prowling the upper portions of the house. The excitement was excruciating. My sisters could barely contain themselves as they tried, again and again, to leap into my hands. I looked to the opposite side of the cellar, where a miniature window peeked above the rim of the unkempt side yard. I could clearly make out shadows pressed hard against the dirty glass, as they were nearly pinned by an obnoxiously bright light. I carefully made my way across the room to the window, ever mindful of the prowling creature, now silent, that lurked somewhere above me.
The tiny view revealed a mob of townspeople. They were all gathered around my latest work, screaming and waving their arms. How they had managed to transport it from the edge of the wood, I couldn’t imagine. From the top of what looked to be a water tower, a powerful spotlight illuminated my creation. I was so absorbed by the exquisite vision of my art being exalted—or cursed, I wasn’t sure which—I almost forgot about the silence of the thing upstairs. And how the cellar steps did not creak when walked upon.
I slipped between the clamor of the mob and the whispers of nearby movement. My silence wrapped around me like loving arms, and my hands filled with saw-toothed laughter. The rank smell of fruiting corpses traveled upon the breath of the thing that entered the shadows at the bottom of the stairs. Its movement vacillated between a shuffle and a purposeful gait, outlining a struggle between primal and prudent dispositions. It inhaled deeply, combing the air for signs of prey. A beam of light shot through the cellar window and brushed its face.
The thing’s countenance was as conflicted as its movements, expressing the extremes of a barely human condition. Its white eyes were sunken into its face like heavy, lusterless stones thrown atop a filthy pillow, and they peered no deeper into the world than was necessary to locate sustenance. This most certainly concerned the swollen meats of the dead—more specifically, human corpses. A septic pit of rough-hewn teeth comprised the thing’s mouth, which it kept slightly agape, as if to reduce the distance its jaws would have to open to admit its next meal. The longer I looked upon the thing, the more I detested it.
Ultimately, there were two principal attitudes concerning art. The first seeks to capture reality, faithfully reproducing its every mundane detail, admitting little to nothing of the imagination. The second type flies the world, chasing dreams, foolishly hoping to catch them. It goes without saying which art I practice, and this creature was clearly the work of a practitioner of the first type. The grotesquery was nothing but a portrait of a single basic urge, embellished slightly by the coarse appetite of a nightmare. The creature was, however, undeniably well-made, the attention to detail impressive. But I much disliked the trite theme it was obviously designed to reflect.
A second noise emanated from the upstairs as something else entered the house. The peripheral glow of a flashlight frosted the cellar stairs as the second intruder investigated. The first creature immediately recoiled from the invading illumination, shielding its eyes and hissing. Surprisingly, it spoke. “Keep the light to yourssself, you blind idiot!”
The creature from above ignored the insult and croaked back in only slightly less inhuman tones. “Isss he down there?” I was being sought out, and I was sure it wasn’t to congratulate me on my latest work.
“He’sss down here,” said the first, “I’m sure of it. I can sssmell the death clinging to him. Come to me, Family Man. Hiding is for prey.” The taunt was absurd on its face, but required a retort nonetheless. I decided I would savor my time with the thing in the basement, so I departed for the creature above me, as silent stairs go both ways. I had retired to the kitchen, clumsily roaming through the cupboards, of all places. The windows of the room were without curtains, and when the creature finally shined the light near the glass, my reflection betrayed my presence directly behind it.
The reflection also granted me a brief look at the creature, allowing me to measure the difference between itself and its companion in the basement. It was essentially the same kind of being, differing only by way of its greater share of human features, which were likely diminishing over time. This was typically the case with Post-Darkness afflictions, I had come to learn. The thing quickly spun around and I seized it by the throat, crushing its windpipe before it could marshal any kind of alarm. I didn’t want to spill its blood, as I desired to remain as traceless as possible.
I had just finished packing the creature’s body into the small fireplace when I heard more of them, this time entering through both the front and back of the house. A nearby window showed me the restless crowd of townsfolk, composed of creatures much like the ones I’d encountered, except for one. A massive figure passed through the crowd like a praying mantis strolling among tangles of swarming ants. However, these ants seemed to bow to the mantis, as opposed to attacking it. They gathered behind this new creature and fell silent. The thing was little more than a shadow standing before the great beam of light that shone down upon my work. It paused to gaze upon the piece, but again I wasn’t sure if my artistic effort was being admired or admonished. I wanted to linger near the window to observe the moment’s conclusion, but the creatures were closing on me.
I decided to exit through the back. On my way out, I encountered another creature and dispatched it as I had the first, except this one’s body I stuffed into a nearby burn barrel. As I disappeared into the backyard, I detected the presence of other things moving through the night, far from the crowd and its light. I froze, waiting for the invisible things to make the first move. Within moments, a howl from something both alien and wolf broke through the quiet, issuing from the house I’d abandoned. They’d found the body I left in the chimney. I was simultaneously impressed and disappointed with the speed of the discovery—these creatures seemed to excel at locating the dead. It was little wonder why.
I was already inside another dwelling when a second spotlight burst to life from somewhere on the opposite side of town. The lights began falling across houses and trees and yards, hoping to find me blundering about in plain view—as if the one who had made art of their alien hunters, secretly infiltrated their town, and silently killed a number of their kind would be foolish enough to fumble about in the open. No, these creatures were not the smartest of adversaries, though I knew they were only the vanguard of a much deadlier foe—and I would be meeting her soon enough.
After several hours of fruitless searching, the creatures finally decided to relax their guard, thinning their patrols and once again renewing their apathy toward the occasional flitting shadow. I was far from idle during this time, taking great care to better understand my pursuers, stealing into their guarded chambers and slipping away with increasingly weighty insights. One of my more profound discoveries concerned the caverns beneath the town filled with the industry of cannibals. They were busily sectioning hundreds of preserved corpses into isolated and type-specific parts, which they proceeded to package in a variety of ways, ranging from the ornate to the industrial. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, the flesh eaters passed their bundles into the hands of strange beings apparently called up from the very guts of the earth. It seemed the cannibals had transformed their rancid hunger into trade, distributing human meats to creatures hidden away beneath the ground. I was immediately curious as to the specific remuneration such inhuman things might use to compensate the cannibals—besides human flesh, what could such creatures want? Of course, my principal curiosity regarded the flesh trade’s relationship with Miss Patience. She seemed a considerably less purposeful creature than was suggested by all the frenetic and subterranean commerce.
Another discovery concerned my dreams, or lack thereof. Strangely, my many attempts to conjure them from sleep had failed. Each effort summoned only the stinging absence of memories, of this or any other world. I began to interpret the void as a possible indicator of my quarry’s proximity, as no further nocturnal hints were needed to
bring the two of us together. If my theory was correct, she was certainly nearby, likely abiding in the darkness living beneath the city.
As for my latest piece of art, it had been hoisted upon a large flatbed truck and taken to an open field just outside the city limit, where it was left to float amidst the golden breakers of rolling, unkempt grain. I’m certain it was placed there to lure me into some kind of trap, which of course did more to cement my low opinion of the creatures’ intellect rather than stimulate my curiosity. Naturally, I decided to reprimand the beings for assuming me so foolish, and ultimately to avenge my fallen tears—they had been wasted on creatures barely worth the flies that played at their slack, stinking mouths. Still, there was something behind the soft, blind eyes of a particular and bygone woman, perhaps an echo of something that forgot how beautiful it once was.
When the night sank into its deepest darkness, I proceeded to follow a specific cannibal—who had once thought to stalk and insult me—to a diner that sat lightless yet heavily attended near the center of the town. After I had entered the building through the back door, I was delivered the unwholesome sight of a man-eater’s kitchen. Corpses wrapped in plastic bags filled with sweet-smelling marinades swung from stained hooks, and piled atop stained trays were the raw tubers and organs of the human body, sliced into cold cuts. Now, there did seem to be some lingering conventions of the human condition still clinging to the degenerates, as there were several recently used ovens and stovetop burners where meat had actually been cooked, though to what degree remained a mystery.
However, one area seemed out of place—a pile of decaying bodies lay in the corner, all showing enormous bite marks. Initially I believed the cannibals to be ghoulish creatures, preferring their food rotted and fly-covered. Later insights, however, showed it was only their breath, and not their appetites, that concerned the spoiling dead. Further, none of the creatures I had so far witnessed possessed jaws large enough to leave such enormous and ragged marks. It was at that moment the answer to my previously posited question concerning the compensation of certain underground customers was made apparent. A massive creature hauled itself into view, emerging from a distant hole in the floor I had failed to notice. It was something far afield the beings occupying the town—it formed no visible relationship with even the darker features the citizens shared in varying proportions and extents. The beast was an alien among monsters, most likely one of the remunerations I had earlier wondered about, gifted to the cannibals for services rendered. It seemed little more than a large roiling sack of greyish muscle surmounted with a wide, featureless head—save for its mouth, which was overfilled with crooked, flattened teeth and several flailing, quasi-translucent tongues.
The Red Son Page 11
