Bound by Rites

by Thomas Cleckler

  The commotion had woken Nebanum as well. Waking from such a labored sleep was difficult. They both felt as though sleeping had somehow made them more exhausted. Nebanum climbed the wall to get to his feet, which were coated in red to just above his ankle. Rhone looked excitedly to his own feet. They too were coated with the gift of Cardinal Alley. His blood socks, combined with the surprisingly clean clothes, made him feel as though he had escaped for the final time; that now he was given a chance to flee civilization for good. All I need now is a cricket’s song, three cat’s tails, eight dead mice, the birthing blood of a full moon, and an earth egg. With clothes and anonymity, he could finally escape to the other place for good, to live among those who would not look upon him with hatred or unwelcomed lust.

  “We should go our separate ways,” Nebanum said suddenly.

  The words jumbled in Rhone’s head, not making sense and catching him off guard.

  “Separate?”

  “I think it would be safer.”

  Rhone stood with some effort. He studied Nebanum’s dark eyes, the only eyes he ever wanted to look at him. Now he found it difficult to hold their gaze.

  “Why?”

  “To give them a chance to forget about us. They’ll be looking for two.”

  Exhaustion prevented Rhone from concealing his relief and Nebanum laughed at him.

  “What did you think I meant?”

  “It doesn’t matter. How long?”

  “We should meet somewhere... three months?”

  “Three months?!”

  Nebanum chuckled, “Okay, let’s start with one month.”

  Rhone leaned into Nebanum. They held each other in the alley, each feeling as though somehow their lives were no longer their own—fearing, but not admitting, that they may not see each other again. The rest of Warwick began to wake. Trading cloth, butchering pigs, tilling soil that was more stone than earth. Dirt, grime, silver, and blood were exchanged for one another via clawing hands. Rotten mouths sucked on rotten food and stared with dead eyes. Most of the citizens hadn’t had a unique thought their entire lives, yet every day they’d have the same conversation they’d had a week before and amuse themselves with their own creativity and intelligence.

  Fear was the true currency of the common man; if stupidity was their pleasure, fear was their provocation. Fear of homelessness, fear of starvation, fear of the prisons, fear of Hell, fear of becoming a pariah. Even Lord Cadfael, sitting high above in his stone castle, relying on fear to keep his position, was manipulated by fear. Fear of revolt, fear of the King, fear of assassination, and more recently, the fear of a chambermaid’s gossip. It was a burden they all carried. The only time they were allowed to set it down was when they all agreed that this or that person was responsible for their misery and that person was jailed, beaten, raped, or publicly executed. The weight would be lifted for a few moments—maybe even a few days—but with each visit from the tax collector, each stillborn, every bushel of rotten apples, every logless fire, every condemnation from the priest, the weight would grow. Over days, over months and years, little by little, their molehill grew into a mountain and they had no choice but to drink, beat, and bleed their fear away. Rhone and Nebanum knew they were such a remedy for those bound by fear. It didn’t require thought or discussion, they knew because they had always been.

  Whether born with pouty lips, a generous figure, a predisposition to trust, a twisted tongue, or any randomness of creation that singled one from the others, some were simply—cruelly—destined to be remedy for others’ ails.

  Rhone went north to Syrah, where there had been famine. It was decided that he and Nebanum would meet there in a month’s time, each collecting half of the reagents for the ritual.

  The first few days were hard for Rhone. He and Nebanum hadn’t been separated for years. Nebanum was his mentor, brother, protector, lover, and friend. He would go on long walks, desperately trying to avoid the thought that he may never see his friend again. He would walk along the vast fields, filled with weeds instead of wheat, listening to the crickets and birds.

  Famine had left nearly all the but the most stubborn of households abandoned. Rhone had plentiful options for lodging and chose a shabby structure near the edge of town. The room was small enough to feel secure and large enough that Rhone felt he could hide. News of the abandoned town had evidently spread because each day new families took up residence in abandoned homes. Rhone watched as the families fought and bickered over the emptied rooms, each claiming rightful ownership in a place they’d never lived. As the weeks went by, the idea that there had been a famine became laughable. Streets began to swell with bodies, gutters ran with waste, and market stalls filled. The people were even content enough to tolerate a public hanging.

  Where wheat had been there was now turnips. I don’t even like turnips, Rhone thought, watching flecks of white float down outside his window. Winter was foreshadowing its arrival with a thin sheet of white. The cold had driven the pests indoors and Rhone spent the better parts of his evenings squashing bugs and stamping after rats. He’d kept a cat for a few days but it had run off.

  Closing his window to the cold, Rhone heard the town crier announced the hour and that all was well. He had just shown up one evening—the crier—to announce a line of succession change in some far off capital. The information was meaningless to the new denizens of Syrah but his presence had become a characteristic of the town that Rhone admired. It was a comforting regularity that assured him of time passing. In his still and musty room, it was easy to imagine that he were frozen; condemned to hunt cockroaches forever. Every announcement from the crier was another hour closer to Nebanum and therefore not only welcome, but vital.

  After three weeks, Rhone began to make a point of strolling around the village, before dark, for the sole purpose of showing Nebanum, should he be watching, where he was living. He would return as the sun set, locking his door, and waiting in the comforting darkness. As the fourth week came, and with it heavier snow, Rhone had difficulty staying optimistic.

  As he was returning one evening from his usual walk however, he became dizzy with joy. He could see a thin silhouette between two houses and faint pinpricks of light reflecting from a silver smile. He had to stop himself from running so as not to attract attention. Though the town was full of squatters, the rules of orthodoxy still applied.

  “Stop,” the shadow commanded him before he entered the alley, “tonight, midnight. I have almost everything. We’re wanted in Warwick and Thallfoot; we can’t be seen together. The reward is pretty impressive too.”

  The shadow turned and disappeared behind the houses. Rhone stood, suddenly afraid. The past month he’d been in Syrah he hadn’t thought about the notion of being a criminal. It was such a pathetic thing compared to his ambitions: to be bound by the petty laws of the fools that huddled together in rooms over parchment, who gave orders in turn to more fools with spears. Till midnight, then, he thought and returned to his room.

  Thirty-Three

  The air seemed to hum while Rhone waited, as though the lambskin, dormant in the back of his drawer, suddenly knew what was to come. When Nebanum arrived, it was everything Rhone could do to keep himself off him. Yet at the same time it had been so long that he was almost afraid to touch him. When he allowed his fingers to pull across Nebanum’s skin, like the warm flesh of a plucked bird, chills ran the length of his back, wrapping under his groin and making him lightheaded. Blood rushed to where his penis once was and suddenly the time separating them shrank to nothing.

  “Two o’clock and all is well!”

  They had decided, before their separation, that they did not want to irritate Simalla. Rhone revealed what Simalla had told him in the dungeon. Although he was a loathsome and grotesque creature, he had helped them. And, most importantly, he controlled who entered and left. He was the door whose lock must be picked. So, in order to appease the writhing hierophant, Rhone and Nebanum planned to organize their ritual with all the ceremony they
could muster.

  Eight dead mice lay in the dark as Rhone and Nebanum held the cat tails. Rhone recited the poem he’d written for the occasion, hoping with each chirp of the cricket that they were playing to an ethereal audience and not just the pests in his room. In that inexplicable way that a thought can occur to two people at once, Rhone and Nebanum knew that the ritual had worked. Rhone felt the invisible hands grip his neck and wring the flesh of his back as they pulled him down, across the sidelong sunset. His insides floated and churned, his balance was thrown and his heart panicked. When at last the short and terrifying journey ended he was in the warm sand, staring up again into the gray sky.

  The sands welcomed him with loving caresses, lapping slowly up his arms and legs. Rhone sat up and saw Nebanum, smiling proudly—relieved—coming towards him. He stood and they wrapped around each other, thankful to be away from the realm of man. Unable to pull away in the encouraging sensuality of the warm wind, they began to twist their bodies in love. Nebanum’s back arched as he and Rhone moaned and quivered. They laid in the sand breathing heavily. Rhone held Nebanum’s member in his hand, massaging it.

  “I love you, Nebanum,” he heard himself say.

  The fleshy bone in his hand began to swell. He ran his hand along it, but it began to swell abnormally and alarmed him. He looked down at the thing he held. The thin skin was splitting, the bluish veins pulling before finally snapping. Two bloodied members bloomed from the single bud—mouths gagged with iron nails. Rhone dug his palms and heels into the hot sand to get away. Nebanum’s smiling face, his thin frame, his elegant build was marked with red lines, blood streaking down the pale flesh. When the face of Simalla split through Nebanum’s, it was in the form Rhone had first encountered, which he and Nebanum had known as a honeycomb. Again, as the first time, in the stinking pits, indecently scented as lilacs, fat maggots squirmed, this time packed a dozen to a grave. The canine mouth grinned with hunger.

  “I love you too,” the rasping voice came and the bleeding creature came crawling towards Rhone.

  “No! No! Nebanum! Nebanum!”

  A burning iron hand surrounded Rhone’s neck, silencing him and choking him, pressing him down into the sand. Like a dog being beaten, Simalla’s laughter whined and whimpered in Rhone’s mind as he felt the heads of the nails locate his sex. The two heads pressed into him and he split, crying out, tears streaking and blurring the red and gray horizon.

  The best part, the rasping voice whispered to his mind, is that you wanted to come back.

  The fiend mounted him and took him like an animal. Blood was Rhone’s only contribution to the union. The creature labored into him, grunting with a bizarre tongue, whispering coarse vulgarities into Rhone’s mind, showing him visions of Nebanum being tortured elsewhere by unseen hands. Rhone watched helplessly as his lover cried out in pain; they peeled his flesh in strips, leaned into him with spikes, drinking the wine his throat produced.

  Rhone’s throat burned and cut with his cries. A great pain twisted in his chest. Simalla bit into his neck and began to twitch even more absurdly than he had been. Let it be over, Rhone thought, please, just let it be over.

  “I wondered,” the gray head sipped at a teacup, “if you would catch on; question why we would ever want you. But, just as Jhilrah predicted, you kept coming back, swallowing the hook deeper and deeper into your gut.”

  The great yellow arms of the Spoke Man reached for Rhone’s head, pulling it free of his body among a cacophony of popping and cracking, tearing and ripping. The room spun and he was impaled on a sixth spike, watching his torso sit headless and cockless in the chair.

  Actually, Simalla laughed, the best part is that you don’t even realize what you’ve lost; what we’ve stolen from you. I wonder who will find the lambskin on your corpse...

  Rhone’s eyes shot open, his heart beat alarmingly—dangerously—fast. Tears came without grace as he called to the empty room.

  “Ne’ah’nuh?! Ne’ah’nuh?!”

  He was alone. Sucking the cold air was pushing him closer and closer to collapse. Suddenly, in the dark room, between blinks, a form appeared. New and unknown emotions were tormenting Rhone. Running to Nebanum, he cried into the night, his howls waking neighbors, stirring rats, alerting owls. The flayed and ravaged corpse of Nebanum lay bleeding. Rhone ran his hands over the slick and hot face of his lover, trying to wipe away the death, wipe away the deceit. He whispered to his dear friend, his savior, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay...”

  Still huddled over his mutilated lover is how the guards of Thallfoot found Rhone the next morning. When he was pulled, weak and heartbroken, into the snow filled street, he was unmoved when the short man moved into view. Even when a tall, handsome priest looked down at him, he was numb.

  “Well, here we are; united at last,” Davidson grinned.

  “Good Lord, he’s killed the other one!” a voice shouted from inside the room. The sounds of regurgitation followed shortly.

  “The bald one is dead?” Wallop asked, worried, “I suppose he’ll have to do.”

  Thirty-Four

  It was early morning. A pair of crows rubbed their beaks together on a roof while below the crowd was assembling for the hanging.

  “I ‘eard dat dey burned down a o-phanage.”

  “Motherless dogs. They’ll rot in Hell, that’s for sure.”

  “That new priest from Thally is here too, make sure they don’t try nuffin’ devil-like.”

  “One of de guards told me that he ate his friend!”

  “Oi, ‘ere dey come. Who’s dat short feller?”

  The burlap sack was whisked away from Rhone’s face and the crowd gasped at his visage. Daylight blinded him and hurt his eyes. Davidson was at the end of the platform. He was smiling, but somehow it didn’t seem genuine. The priest had his arms extended to the crowd, his captivating voice and handsome appearance directing their hatred and vitriol. His long arm swung and pointed to Rhone in accusation, the same arm that had held tight to the flog which whipped Rhone’s back. Rhone had enjoyed it. He would never admit it to anyone, but now, as death hung looped before him, he admitted it to himself. He thought of Nebanum. He wanted to smell him, to taste him just once more. Rhone’s body shook with fear. There would be no salvation this time. His eyes wet as he was shoved up to the landing.

  Rhone couldn’t hear the words of the shouting and condemning orchestrators, but by the timbre in their voices he knew that it was approaching. His chest heaved up and down, his eyes burned and ached.

  He didn’t fight the executioner who led him to the rope. His legs were shaking uncontrollably and he watched his dirty feet cros the boards. I’m going to look, I have to see them. Rhone forced himself to look into the crowd. They were blurred, but they were there. He gritted his teeth, certain they would crack under his force, but they held tight. It was the second time he’d had a noose fastened to his neck; the second time it was done before a cheering crowd. This time, Nebanum could not chastise the executioner and priest. This time, Rhone would have to make light of the giant, wingless flies that decided their lives would become better if he died. It boiled in his gut, then came raging from his mouth. He shouted nonsense—a list of every curse he knew, determined to rob them of their pleasure, determined to make Nebanum proud.

  “Suck, fuck, cock! Priests fuck men—”

  “This demon murdered and raped poor Fayette Smithson, killed and ate his only friend—”

  “—they sell children! The Abattoir is a murder den—”

  “—look upon his body, see his perversions manifest—”

  “—fuck, cock, prick! I’ll kill you all! I’ll bite your fingers off one at a—”

  “God have mercy on your evil soul.”

  Weightlessness, the feeling he got from reading the bloodied rune scrawled onto the lambskin, from climaxing in the forest with Nebanum, from falling into the other realm—before it was cruel—filled his skin. His neck twisted and one eye went dark. The platform was now
a ceiling that spread towards the crowd. Their pale faces cheered and laughed, pointing at the dying sixteen year old boy. Rhone swayed; the world dimmed. Even with his catlike eyes, he could not see through the darkness. As death swept in to escort him away from life Rhone saw a rotund copper bird swoop down onto a supporting beam. It’s little eyes were dark and viridescent. Fayette sat with Nebanum by a stream. She was giggling and turning her green amulet over in her hands. Nebanum’s skin was smooth and his smile complete.

  “Fay, do you know how a horse eats corn?” he asked her. She giggled and shook her head, “When Rhone gets here, he’ll show you.”