I could see he was tempted. Perhaps it was his pride, though, that made him think about it for too long. I don’t think he could bear to accept that I’d been right from the start and that if he changed his mind now it would look like weakness, while my stance would look like strength. Our final chance at negotiation was interrupted by Cleaver booming at the crowd from the top step of the church where the demon’s neck was exposed and ready for his blade.
“Menfolk and womenfolk of Long Lofting, I proffer we chop the dragon’s head off and keep it as a trophy in memory of this day.”
The crowd cheered. They were starving; they would have said yes to anything at that stage. All they saw when they looked at that demon hanging down the entire front of the church from bell tower to steps was a big fat turkey ready for the oven. I suppose some of them might have been seeing steak or lamb cutlets, but they were all of one mind when it came to the demon’s noggin.
“Chop it off! Chop it off!”
The chant grew louder. Prattle and I stepped back from Cleaver to make some distance.
I glanced into the crowd and saw Velvet had arrived, her face full of amusement and curiosity. I gestured to her to get back to the house but she just smiled at me and waved back.
Cleaver put the blade of a long knife to the demon’s throat and drew it towards himself while pressing against the skin. It opened a deep groove in the creature’s neck but no blood came forth. He proceeded to saw towards the demon’s spine and the rift in its flesh grew wider becoming a second mouth. Inside were the demon’s muscles and vessels for air and food and gore. Though severed in cross section, not a drop of fluid came forth from any part of the wound.
Cleaver’s long bladed knife sawed and sawed until he reached the spinal bones and there he sawed even harder to split his way through two vertebrae. The head was almost free. Cleaver’s sweat sprinkled the stone and evaporated in moments. The crowd’s cheering died down as the work progressed; all had seen slaughter before and all were surprised there was neither blood nor fluid within the demon. With a gristly snick, the knife slipped through the discs and ligaments between the bones and parted the final flap of skin at the back of the demon’s neck.
The head fell.
It hit the top step of the church with a dull, bony knock. It bounced upwards surprisingly high and flipped over. Instead of rolling down the church steps towards the waiting onlookers, the head landed on the stone at Cleaver’s feet. The severed neck hit the granite with a fleshy slap and for a moment or two there was total silence. The crowd, perturbed by the lack of blood, weren’t sure whether to applaud or hiss. Then the demon’s eyes, which had been open but blank ever since it landed on its back in the cabbage field, blinked. A few people at the front of the crowd tried to take step back but found they were hemmed in by those behind them. Even those who weren’t sure what they’d seen sucked in a startled breath.
But when the demon smiled, pulling its thick leathery lips back even farther exposing rank after rank of jaundiced fangs, the gasps came back out as screams and holy petitions. The entire village tried to reverse from the head and many stumbled over with others falling on top of them. Those in the dirt scrambled away on hands and knees. The outer edge of the crowd expanded and broke until everyone felt they’d reached a safe distance. Rickett and Wiggery abandoned their respective wing tips and ran down the steps to join them.
Cleaver, still holding his knife and panting, hadn’t moved. From his angle, he couldn’t see what was scaring the villagers but when the demon’s body began to move he started back, raising his hands up to protect himself and dropping into a half crouch. The great wings of the beast, slack all this time, began to beat against the wall of the church. The wind they made would have been welcome in that heat if it hadn’t signaled life in such a monster. Dust and stone chips flew from the wall where the wing bones made contact. Cleaver must have thought it was the demonic equivalent of a beheaded chicken’s twitches and flutters and that it would settle down. He didn’t move far enough away and one of the wingtips caught him a solid blow on the shoulder. He flew like a straw doll thrown by a spoilt child and landed ten strides away on his face in the dirt. His knife landed harmlessly beside him.
The demon’s body bent in half, it snapped the ropes restraining its arms and its hooked fingers reached for the chain that held its ankles. Its attempts were clumsy and ill-coordinated because it couldn’t see what it was doing. When the hands did take hold of the chain, the talons flicked against the rusted links, cleaving them like twigs. The metallic snap of sheared iron was followed by the sound of the demon’s body collapsing into a headless heap at the front door of the church.
The impact dislodged the head and it bounced down the rest of the steps with a dizzy look on its face until it came to rest on its ear in the dust. The crowd of villagers dispersed still farther, some of them taking shelter in their homes, others peering around the walls of cottages or trading posts. A few froze where they were, caught in the open expanse of dirt that served as the village gathering place and market square.
The body of the demon tried to stand. With a clawed foot standing on one of its wings, it tripped onto its chest, tearing a hole in its flight membrane and rolled into the dirt. The head grimaced with frustration and a hint of embarrassment. Its lips moved but without air from its lungs the vocal chords were useless. The body pushed itself up from the ground again and this time stood swaying in the middle of the square. I’m certain the head would have been turning from one direction to another to assess the situation, had it still been attached. Instead, the headless thing walked carefully a few steps with its arms out in front of it like a shepherd looking for black sheep on a winter’s midnight.
It didn’t find its head. It found Cleaver, still stunned from the impact and in a good deal of pain. It found him because it kicked him as it walked, rolling him over a few times. Then the demon’s body crouched down and waved its flattened palms around until it found him trying to crawl away. I saw the smile come back to the demon’s face as its body stood up and brought Cleaver to the space where the head should have been. I thought the body believed it had found its head because it pushed Cleaver into the space above its shoulders over and over again. That was before I noticed what the head was doing: chomping—the teeth clashing against each other. The demon was trying to eat Cleaver, but luckily for him it was impossible. After some more fruitless chewing, the demon, its head looking truly disgusted with itself and its body looking about as useful as one of Rickett and Wiggery’s cabbages, let Cleaver drop to the ground.
I’d seen enough by that stage. I ran forward towards the bottom of the church steps while everyone else was still either backing or running away. I heard Velvet, the sweet little blossom that she is, screaming my name and begging me to stay away. I darted behind the demon’s body and, careful not to let my fingers get near the mouth, I snatched up the demon’s head, fought my way to Velvet and dragged both of them away. The head was about twice the size of my own and far heavier than I’d expected it to be. After a few yards I was exhausted and sweating cupfuls.
“Here, Velvet, take hold of one of these horns. We’ve got to keep the head hidden from the body and then we’ll all be safe.”
“The things I do for you, Delly Duke, no other woman has ever endured.”
“Carrying a demon’s head must make a nice change then,” said I, panting.
Velvet took hold of that horn like the good woman I’ve always known her to be. She even managed a laugh at the jumble-headedness of what we were doing.
“Where are we going to put it?” asked she.
“I know the perfect place,” said I.
Prattle’s Courtyard
No one was keen to chase after us considering what we were carrying, so we arrived at the priest’s lodge several minutes before anyone else. I suppose most of the village were still watching the demon’s body stagger around in the square. But Velvet and I had the thinking end of the demon and that was dangerou
s part.
We pushed our way through the iron gate and up the path to the imposing thatched household that was Leopold Prattle’s home. I could never understand what priests did that warranted such grand accommodation. Surely they just needed a cell with a cot and a fireplace for the winter—not that we’d had anything approaching a frost or snowfall for as many seasons as I could remember. Why all the accoutrements and luxuries? Weren’t priests supposed to be men of simplicity and contentment? Prattle’s priest lodge had many rooms and even a small courtyard. He had three staff too—a cook, a cleaner and a gardener. All female. All young. All examples of eager, dimpled pulchritude. It made me sick.
I didn’t bother to knock because I knew there was no one home. Using my shoulder I eased the front door open. We walked through the reception hall and out to the courtyard where a spreading Cyprus tree gave shade. We placed the head, the jaws of which were snapping shut repeatedly and with great malice, out in the open on the dirt and sat down at a table to watch it and recover our breath. Some of the outer leaves on the cypress tree died in the presence of the head but most seemed unaffected.
“I love Leopold’s place, don’t you?” said Velvet as though she was a regular visitor.
“It’s a hovel. Anyway, when have you been here before?”
“Oh, I haven’t really. Just once or twice probably.”
“Whatever for?”
“It was a long time ago, Delly. I think I came for spiritual guidance.”
“From that unwashed reprobate? Tell me you’re jesting.”
“I think he washed more often back then. And he was very supportive.”
“Well, patch my pink pyjamas. I would never have believed it.”
Velvet ignored my disgust. She looked around the courtyard and through the windows of the house with appreciation.
“I could live in place like this,” she said.
“Oh, pigswill, Velvet. It’s a glorified lean-to. Our place is much nicer—the garden, the open country beyond—”
“The half-witted neighbours, the long walk to market…”
I shut up. She was right; Prattle’s place was a palace compared to ours and it had privacy, too. I took out the Ledger and scanned it for information on ridding your village of a demon. At the front door there was a commotion and several people spilled through into the courtyard with us. I saw more gathered behind them, afraid to follow. One individual, his black robes unable to hide the dirt or keep in the reek of his body, stumbled right into us.
“Nyev, nyev, nyev. You can’t put it here,” shouted Prattle as he waved his sticklike arms at me. “Take it away now.”
I brushed some grime from my shirt and tried not to breathe through my nose.
“This is the proper place for it,” said I. “It’s a spiritual matter and you’re responsible for it.”
He couldn’t publicly deny either point, so he stood there and put his hands on his hips. When he could think of nothing else to say he turned to the demon head and pretended to assess it, stroking his chin as though he was near to a solution. But he said nothing. Eventually, the small crowd of people in his courtyard approached. Among them were the joint owners of the demon, Rickett and Wiggery, and a bruised, dust covered Reginald Cleaver back in possession of his knife and looking like he wanted to use it some more.
“I say we kill it,” said Cleaver, demonstrating in a single sentence why he’d advanced no further in life than butchery.
“You going to cut off its head again are you, Reg?” I asked. Folk sniggered. Cleaver was indignant.
“No, we cut it up into small pieces and burn it to ashes.”
This was too much.
“Reg,” I whispered, “It’s a demon. From Hell. You can’t burn something that thrives in the hottest flames ever created.
“Yeah, but couldn’t we…”
The hand with the knife in it dropped to his side. The whiteness left his knuckles. Puff Wiggery smacked the heel of his palm against his forehead.
“So that means, no matter how much we cook the demon steaks and chops, they’ll still be raw, right?”
Several people made disgusted retching sounds.
“I’m going off eating the thing, I can tell you,” said Blini Rickett.
“I think we need to talk to it,” said I, “Find out why it came here.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Prattle as if the idea had been his.
He approached the demon head and several people backed away, not certain what it might be capable of. Not one of them thanked me for bringing the head a safe distance from the body so that neither could be effective. No one said ‘you were right about this demon, Delly Duke.’ Instead, they watched Prattle kneel down at what he believed to be a safe distance from the demon and address it.
“Vile abomination, why do you come here? Tell us your purpose lest we destroy you.”
The demon opened and closed its mouth and moved its lips in what might have been language but no sound came out. Prattle leaned in a little closer.
“You’ll have to speak up, spawn of the dark one, or we will be forced to encourage you.” Prattle looked back at his little knot of onlookers and winked as though he’d interrogated many a demon. I sighed in resignation. From my angle, it looked like the demon head was laughing. His face was wrinkled tight, creases at the edges of his mouth and eyes. A few droplets of sulphurous pus trickled from the corners of his eyes; he was laughing so hard he was crying. Prattle had his own opinion. “Observe,” he said, gesturing towards the contorted face, “See how the mere proximity of a holy man strikes pain into the beast. Come now, demon, speak to us.”
Feeling very tired, I put a hand on Prattle’s shoulder and gestured for him to listen to me for a moment. He didn’t look pleased to have his routine interrupted, especially when he had the crowd and the demon eating out of his hand. I whispered as quietly as I could.
“The demon isn’t able to make any sound because it has been separated from its lungs. I’m certain there’s plenty it wants to say to you, but at this stage, it’s not possible. We’ll need to make arrangements.”
Irritated, but knowing I was right, Prattle asked:
“What kind of arrangements?”
Puff
An hour later everything was set up in Prattle’s courtyard. The demon’s head was elevated, propped up between two chairs on top of a table, and we’d managed to stick the sharp end of a large pair of bellows from the forge into its windpipe. Despite placing a sack over the demon’s head during the entire operation and everyone wearing thick leather gauntlets, Cleaver had lost a thumb to the demon’s snapping teeth. Velvet was bandaging his hand as best she could, having sewn the wound closed with gut.
“I’ll never work again,” he was saying. “I can’t do anything with my left hand, not even wan—”
“Never mind about that now, Mr. Cleaver,” said Velvet, cool as you please. “You’ll learn to use your left hand in no time.”
“Truly? You think I will?”
“Of course I do. I know it. You just need to practice. To give yourself some incentive you can start by practising wan—”
“Thank you, Velvet,” I said, “I think he’s got the idea. Now then, who’s going to operate the bellows, Puff or Blini?”
“I’m not doing it,” said Wiggery.
“Nor I,” said Rickett.
“This demon is your property, gentlemen. Remember how I helped you to establish that fact and save you from the hungry masses?”
Neither of them spoke.
“Right, you can take it in turns, then. You first, Puff.”
“Oh, come on, why can’t he go first?”
“Just do it.”
Looking frightened and put out, Puff took up a position behind the demon’s head and took hold of the bellows handles.
“Make sure you don’t knock the head off the chairs when you’re pumping. You have to be firm but gentle.” I wanted to add, ‘just like when you jizjam Mrs. Rickett’, but I held bac
k. We had enough trouble on our hands as it was.
“When should I do it?”
“Just start pumping and don’t stop until we say so.”
With his elbows moving in an out like a slow impersonation of a flapping chicken, Puff Wiggery began to blow air into the demon’s head via the windpipe. The rhythmic sighing was difficult for the demon to deal with at first. Its eyes opened wide with surprise at the snorts of air coming involuntarily down its nose. It opened its mouth and made ‘haa, haa, haa,’ sounds with each pressurised blast from the bellows.
“Living up to your name now, Puff,” shouted Rickett and everyone laughed, their nerves forgotten for a moment.
Prattle stepped in front of the demon head. Because of the table and two chairs, it was higher up than his own head and the height advantage and the sheer size of it made him seem inferior in every way. He showed less confidence than he had earlier.
“Now then, demon, where have you come from and why are you here?”
“Haa, haa, I am from haa, haa, Hell, idiot mortal. Haaaaa, haa.”
Prattle blustered on, dusting over his mortal idiocy.
“What do you want with us? Why have you come to Long Lofting?”
The demon licked its lips, careful not to shred its venom-yellow tongue on its own teeth. The tongue extended further, sharpening to fleshy point and with great control, the demon licked at some irritation near the lobe of its ear. A few stifled gasps came from Long Lofting womenfolk who were brave enough to have squeezed into the priest lodge. I checked Velvet out of the corner of my eye but she seemed impassive, unaffected by the fiendish display of lingual dexterity. The demon might have had a long tongue but it wasn’t educated in the use of it, not like me. I allowed myself a moment of smugness—I, a mere mortal, could out-evil a demon any day of the week.
Snake Eyes Page 10
