“Either they all finally made their way in there,” I started. “Or the fire is their doorway.”
“I think it’s the latter,” Nicholae said. “Let’s go.”
We left the dome behind and trekked back into the open desert wasteland. Nicholae was the first one to rip the chain from his neck (two silver links snapping with a soft clink) and drop the useless medallion in the gray dirt. Erik and Cassandra followed suit shortly after. My medallion suddenly felt a whole lot heavier around my neck.
When I looked over at Cassandra, I noticed a shoulder patch of black shirt fabric was hanging down like torn skin, but her actual skin was perfect. There was some dried blood where the shoulder wound had been, but the skin beneath, flawless.
With the thought of the Scorched Ones lurking in the randomly scattered fires, we gave them all a wide berth, especially the burning forest where I had glimpsed the first creature. After a short while of walking, I glanced back at the dome. The blackened humanoids were exiting the engulfed building several at a time. They didn’t seem to be following us, but rather dispersing randomly.
All the fires lit up the nighttime sky. Pockets of flames sprang up in random intervals throughout the wasteland like geysers. The mountains in the distance looked alive, lit like a rising city. And we ventured toward them. The direction seemed to be as good as any.
In one fire pocket a few hundred yards to the left, I saw a Scorched One step out, raise his face to the sky, and fan it around in a half circle. It lumbered a few steps, turned, and walked right back into the flames.
I lifted my mask to get a momentary breeze on my sweaty face, and after a few thick inhales, began to cough. There was no comfort, with or without the gas mask.
“They’re everywhere,” I said after a few calming breaths of fresh mask-dispensed air.
“I guess we should find a few more people with those pendants and we’ll be golden,” Erik said.
With his tone and expression clouded by his gas mask, I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not.
“My thoughts exactly,” Nicholae said.
Okay, definitely not joking.
We walked for several hours without seeing anything I’d categorize as truly alive. The air was lightening with the sickly glow of morning. Thinner patches of noxious black clouds allowed a few filtered rays of sun to shine through. The mountains seemed just as far away as they’d been when we’d begun our trek in this direction.
Nicholae passed out bottled waters to each of us. I sipped from mine between quick lifts of the gas mask.
I didn’t want to be the first one to complain, but I wouldn’t be able to walk at the pace we’ve been committed to for much longer. I was already bringing up the rear.
“Can we rest for just a few minutes?” I begged.
The others slowed to a stop. Nicholae placed his hands on his hips and surveyed the surrounding area.
The closest fire was a few hundred yards away and it contained no Scorched Ones. I noticed a small group of them remaining close to a larger fire off in the distance. We didn’t seem to be on their radar whatsoever.
“I suppose here’s as good of a place as any to make camp,” Nicholae said.
“That sounds like more than just a five-minute break,” I said.
“We’ve been up most of the night. It seems pretty clear around here.”
“We deserve some shut-eye,” Erik said.
“My feet are killing me,” Cassandra complained.
“Oh, thank God,” I said. Their comments made me feel a whole hell of a lot better.
“It’s not the same without Jules,” Nicholae said.
A gray rectangular building—a carbon copy of the buildings in the previous camps—appeared before us.
“Yeah, your eye for detail is lacking,” Cassandra said.
“What, not even a door?” Erik said, mockingly.
Like we needed a door.
“If you can do better, then you build it next time,” Nicholae said and headed inside through the closest wall.
The inside of the building looked and felt pleasantly familiar. A bed for each of us. A circular table and chairs. The only doors led to a bathroom and a closet. No windows. And temperature controlled fresh air.
I placed my mask on a nightstand and collapsed onto the closest bed, too tired to take off my boots.
“Eat this,” Nicholae said, tossing some kind of oat bar at me.
It landed on my chest and I caught it before it had the chance to skid off me and onto the floor. Without question, I took a bite of the square bar the size of my palm. It was soft with the texture of dry oats. I tasted blueberry, nuts, and cinnamon. And I devoured it in four bites. Next thing I knew, I felt full.
“Surprisingly filling,” I said as I drifted off to sleep.
“To help keep your strength up.”
I didn’t even know if I answered or not. I was already out.
When I awoke, it wasn’t to another emergency. No fire. No scorched creatures tearing down the walls. Maybe they were outside, but I couldn’t hear them if they were, and I didn’t want to ruin the facade by peeking through the walls. It felt like a regular morning back at the camp—as much as regular meant nowadays.
The others were sitting around the table, finishing some manifested breakfast.
“Nice,” I said. “Thanks for waiting.”
“You were out,” Nicholae said.
“We weren’t trying to be quiet or anything,” Erik said.
“What do you want?” Cassandra asked.
“Whatever you guys are having,” I said swinging my heavy feet off the bed, realizing I still had my boots on. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
“Walking,” Erik said sarcastically.
I knew it was a dumb question as soon as I’d said it.
Once I’d eaten and we’d all freshened up, Nicholae dematerialized the building and we continued toward the fiery mountains.
This became our routine. Days of walking through the poison air. Avoiding the pockets of fire that popped up like angry portals for the Scorched Ones. Dismembering any creature that got too close to keep them from following us. And retreating to a newly manifested building each night.
We didn’t make it to the base of the mountains until the middle of the fourth day. We couldn’t see anything in the higher elevations except for spreading flames. Without a clear purpose for climbing the mountain, it seemed safer to stay out in the open. We camped at the base of the mountain for the night and headed north the following day.
During many hours of marching, I listened to music on my phone. Since there was no network here, I manually set the date and time as accurately as I could to give myself some sense of time. I was so afraid of losing more time after my stay in the asylum. I needed to at least know what day it was, even if the days didn’t matter out here. The next day was just a continuation of the day before. We trekked across the fire-spotted wasteland in gas masks, guns on our hips (or tucked under an arm in my case), and swords slung over our shoulders. We were waiting, itching for anything—alive or dead—to cross our path.
On the seventh day, we finally found something. Cassandra stepped on a piece of metal under dirt and weeds and almost passed by without any consideration. But out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her stop, which also caught the attention of the others. I removed my earbuds to hear what was being discussed.
“It sounded hollow underneath,” Cassandra said, bending down to examine what she’d accidently discovered.
“What is it?” Erik asked.
“I heard it, too,” Nicholae said.
I joined the group huddled around the metal object. Cassandra cleared the junk obscuring it from view and revealed a metal disc akin to a manhole cover. She traced a line around the edge, which had a metal seam the disc fit perfectly into. Nicholae fit his slender fingers between the seam and the disc and pried it up on one side, which tossed up a cloud of dirt and ash.
Beneath the disc was a circul
ar shaft descending into darkness, with a metal stepladder attached to the manmade wall.
“This could be an eventful day,” Nicholae said, dropping the disc to the side of the hole, releasing an even greater dirty cloud.
“Anything’s better than endless desert at this point,” Erik said.
“This was like finding a needle in a haystack,” I said. “What’re the odds?”
“Someone has to find the needle,” Cassandra said. “Eventually.”
Nicholae released a small glowing orb from his hand. It floated down the shaft to illuminate a few feet of wall and ladder at a time. And it kept descending deeper into the earth until the light was just a speck in the darkness.
“Is it still going?” I asked.
Nicholae nodded. “It’s deep.”
“Do you seriously want to go down there?”
“This could be just what we were looking for.”
“Or nothing at all.”
Nicholae peeled his eyes from the hole. “So? What’s your point? If there’s nothing of value down there, then we move on. I thought Daniel was showing you how to see the good in situations. When you focus on the problems, then they consume your attention. When you focus on the opportunities, more opportunities appear. This is potentially a great find. For all our searching, we owe ourselves to check it out.”
“I’ll go first,” Erik said. He dropped a few more orbs into the hole, and was just about to step onto the first metal rung of the ladder when a voice came echoing out of the darkness.
“Who goes there?” the voice bellowed from far below.
Kafka (7)
Jag was sewing up Eli’s arm again. It had almost become commonplace. Eli watched him do it each day since he’d been taken here—locked in this ramshackle tool shed. He was chained to a beam overhead that slid a few feet in two directions with enough slack for him to sit on the unfinished floor, but not enough to lie down. The chain was attached by a padlock to a choke chain around his neck. Eli spent his nights leaned up against the only wall he could reach and choked himself awake several times sliding to the side in his sleep.
Jag tied off the final stitch and wiped the sewn-up wound with a towel dipped in rubbing alcohol. The red skin puckered at the jagged seam and Eli knew it would scar badly—all of them would. Almost as much thread could be seen on his arms as skin. He thought he was beginning to look like a sadistic surgeon’s art project. Each stitched-up cut ached and burned with its own personal cry for help. He had a specific memory attached to each one—if memory was really the right word.
“I’ll bring you lunch once I get washed up,” Jag said and stood up, holding the towel with pink stains in one hand and the needle with extra thread in the other. “You must be hungry.”
“Not really,” Eli said, looking his daediem straight in the eyes.
“I’ll bring it for you anyway. Eat it or leave it be. If not you, the bugs will enjoy it.” Jag leaned down to reapply Eli’s gag before he turned to leave. Once outside the shed, he gave Eli one long look before he slowly closed and locked the wood panel door.
Eli heard his captor’s footsteps diminishing through the grass as he headed for the main house.
Eli laid his arms in his lap. The insides of them were the worst, so he laid them with the insides facing up. Blood was still seeping through the newest stitch work, trickling around the curve of his arm and dripping onto his jeans.
It didn’t matter.
Jag had pulled him out of the hole, just like Kafka said he would. Eli had had to endure layer upon layer of earth shoveled on top of his body, the burning in his lungs from the inability to suck in anymore air, for much longer than he would have liked—for longer than he would have thought he’d be able to endure. But a strong hand reached in and pulled him out just as he was about to give up hope. Jag had saved him—and brought him here.
Looking down at his ruined arms, Eli figured—dreaded—Jag would be moving on to other parts of his body. Other parts to cut. Other parts to ruin.
If he was as strong as Kafka seemed to believe he was, he would escape this captivity, kill his daediem, and return home. This was his test. And he was failing. Eli didn’t know if there was a time limit on this test, but he feared that if there was, he was dangerously close to crossing it.
Jag entered the shed not long after his departure with a plate displaying a peanut butter sandwich minus the crusts and a glass of water. Eli thought of his mother cutting off the crusts from his sandwiches as a kid. She didn’t throw them away, but ate them while he enjoyed his sandwiches.
“I know,” Jag said, pulling the gag down to dangle like a necklace. “Your mother used to do this for you. A little piece of home. Eat up.” He set the plate and glass on the floor beside Eli. “Oh, you’re still bleeding. Why didn’t you say something?” Jag grabbed another clean towel from a bin under the workbench and pressed it against the freshest wound. “We don’t want to waste any,” he said and smiled—a smile that seemed friendly on the surface. The fiendish hunger in his eyes was anything but.
Eli still had a hard time getting over how similar the two of them looked and understood why another word for daediem was mirror. It was like looking in a mirror, if he was projecting a perfect image of himself. It was as if everything Eli criticized about himself when he looked in a mirror was removed from Jag. Eli didn’t want to take his eyes off the monster for long, but he closed them for a moment to hear the voice he always heard in his head. The voice was his own, or at least a part of him, a part of him he always wanted to be.
“I’m going to kill you,” Eli said when he reopened his eyes.
“I know that’s what they told you to do, but you can’t,” Jag said calmly. “And deep down you know it. I am you. You’d just be killing yourself.”
“Then why would they send me here to do it?”
“You tell me.” Jag picked up a quarter of the sandwich and lifted it to Eli’s lips.
Eli squeezed his lips together defiantly and shook his head.
Jag took a bite and placed it back on the plate. “Maybe they really want to get rid of you. Maybe it’s a sick game—how they get their kicks—convincing you to kill yourself.”
“No,” Eli said. “Unchain me and we’ll find out who’s right.”
“Unchain yourself.” Jag stood up. “Eat. You’ll need your strength. I’ll be hungry again soon.”
“Why? You want me weak.”
“But not too weak.” Jag left the shed again.
Eli gulped the water down and devoured half the sandwich. He slung the plate like a Frisbee at the door. The other two quarters of the sandwich sailed off in different directions and the plate shattered on contact with the door. Porcelain shards were scattered all over the shed floor. He examined the pieces like a puzzle. The broken pieces littering the floor curiously reminded Eli of Humpty Dumpty.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Rays of sunlight shone in through cracks in the wallboards. The air in the shed seemed to be its own tiny universe of swirling dust motes and flies, a cosmic dance of perfection under the guise of chaos.
The workbench along with the rest of the shed was bare, all tools and equipment removed. Empty hooks hung from the walls and bare nails stuck out like unfinished thoughts. Eli turned his attention back to the scattered puzzle pieces.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Eli got to his feet and pulled his chain across the overhead beam as far as it would go. It only allowed him halfway to the door. He reached for the closest plate fragments, but they were still several inches from his foot. He stretched farther, the choke chain cutting into his neck as he extended to the point of nearly falling. An inch away. Eli took a few steps back to rest his neck and pulled on the chain harder to get as much slack as possible, then reached again.
The toe of his sneaker tapped a triangular shard that would fit nicely in his hand, but when he pulled back, his foot slid right over the piece without it moving an inch.
All t
he king’s horses and all the king’s men.
Eli heard the door to the main house open and shut. Footsteps clomped through the grass.
He reached for the fragment again. His foot pawed at it a few times before he was able to inch it closer. He was beginning to see stars from the chain tight around his neck. After a few more tries, his heel was finally able to reach the far side of the fragment, which allowed him to easily kick it back to a more comfortable distance.
Jag had the key in the padlock, seconds away from opening the door to the shed.
Eli squatted down as far as he could and grazed his hand along the floor until he felt the jagged shard, the sharp edge nearly cutting a finger. By the time the door finally opened, Eli was seated against the wall—where Jag had left him—seated discreetly on the displaced shard.
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
“I heard someth—Eli, look at the mess you made.” Jag looked at Eli sitting in the far corner of the shed and shook his head. “Paper plates for you from now on.”
Jag left and returned with a broom and dustpan. For the pieces he had difficulty sweeping into the dustpan, he bent down and meticulously picked up by hand—until each and every piece had been recovered and discarded.
A growing grin slowly crept across Eli’s face.
17
Hole
“We can hear y’all talking up there,” the gruff voice continued. “State your names and your crimes, and we’ll consider granting you entrance.”
Nicholae nudged Erik.
“Okay, okay,” he said to Nicholae before turning his voice to the hole. “My name is Erik Lorne and I am here with my wife and two sons. We—we had to take responsibility for the actions of our daediems and sentenced to fifteen years in Purgatorie.”
“All of you?”
“As a family. May we come down? We seek protection from the Scorched Ones.”
“Please, sir,” Cassandra said. “Three of our medallions were stolen by other travelers. The Scorched Ones come for us wherever we stay on the surface. I beg for your protection. For us. For my boys.”
Archanum Manor Page 18
