Except they were not human figures. They were skeletons in motion, skulls and bones that glowed with faint green luminosity. There were six or seven of them, hunched down and creeping slowly through the foliage, and in that moment Matthew doubted the strength of his own sanity.
A man came running past Matthew from the direction of the river. He evidently saw the green-glowing skeletons—too late!—and with a hoarse cry of terror tried to turn away from them. One of the nightmare figures leaped forward with an eerie howl. A scythe-shaped weapon at the end of a long shaft swung out. In another instant the runner’s head was nearly removed from the neck. With a gush of black blood the man’s body danced a macabre jig as the head flopped back and forth, and when the body collapsed two of the skeletons leapt upon it with drawn flint knives and finished the job of hacking head from bloody neck.
In that moment, Matthew Corbett of New York did perhaps take a jolt to his mind, for he fell unto his right side and curled up, knees to chin, and he thought that if he did not move from this place until daylight he would be safe, for surely the sun would frighten away these evil spirits of the night. Looking up he saw two more of the skeletons run forward in pursuit of a man who burst from the brush and fled like a terrified rabbit. This unfortunate’s head was likewise nearly cleaved off by the scythe. One of the skeletons picked up the head by the hair and, swinging it round and round with malignant glee, ran off with it held high into the woods as if offering the swamp its greatest trophy.
Screams and cries echoed through the night. Matthew realized he was in the middle of a battleground…or, more correctly, a slaughterground, for the skeletons were taking the heads left and right of men who had escaped from the Indians at the river. He let go the cutlass for a moment to grasp the shaft of the arrow lodged in his shoulder, but the slightest pressure on it was enough to make the pain shoot down his arm and freeze his left hand. He gave that up as a bad job and once more found the cutlass, which was at present his best and only friend. Sweat had beaded on his face and his heart was racing. One of the skeleton men came very near to where he was lying, but then pulled back just short of stepping on him in the thicket.
If he thought he was safe in this little patch, Matthew suddenly found himself gravely mistaken. A body landed on his back, his hand was hammered to release the sword, his head was yanked back by the hair and a leather cord was wrapped around his throat. The weight slid off him and he was hauled to his feet by rough hands. A knife was placed against his neck and he suffered a slap to the face that must be, to the Indians, a supreme insult. He found he would much rather be insulted than dead, for no weapon swung at him to remove his head. At least, not yet. His vision was blurred by the force of the blow and by the pain in his shoulder, but he saw several of the skeletons ringing him. Through the abject terror that thrummed through him, a cooler part of himself realized that these were only men painted with some kind of black pigment and then the images of skull and bones applied with a phosphorescent agent…likely an elixir made from a swamp plant. But Matthew realized that though they were only men, they were most certainly Indians from the village the strange young woman in Rotbottom had foretold, and thus the lopping off of heads might be only the beginning of this deadly ordeal.
The skeleton men hopped and leaped about Matthew, gibbering in what might have been their own language or the language of the mad. He was pulled along by the leather cord, and though he tried to address them in both English and French his voice was half-choked by the binding and no good came of it.
By the moonlight he saw a few other white men, dripping wet from the River of Souls, similarly neck-bound and being dragged along through the swamp. “God’s mercy! God’s mercy!” one of them croaked, but no mercy was shown and Matthew thought God kept His distance from this accursed place. Was there any purpose in fighting the cord? In dropping to his knees and trying to scrabble away into the thicket? He decided no, if he wished to keep his head…and in so keeping his head, he might yet have time to think himself a way out of this.
Someone sobbed brokenly, like a woman, to Matthew’s right. Matthew’s mind was inflamed with both terror and the need to plot some kind of escape, but as he was being pulled roughly along he wondered how many boats and canoes from Jubilee had gotten past this village of the damned before the torchlight had alerted the Indians and brought them, as Quinn Tate had said, to the river like flies on dead meat. Most likely Abram, Mars and Tobey had gotten past, and the first group of boats as well. Would that have included Royce and Gunn? Probably the Indians hadn’t been waiting too long before they attacked, which meant that many of the boats further ahead had gotten through.
He didn’t have much longer to ponder such questions, for suddenly he and the others were pulled from the wilderness into a clearing where multiple torches burned and a bonfire illuminated dwellings that obviously had been constructed by members of different tribes: some made of stones, some of logs, some of woven grass and treebranches, and some of stretched animal hides. The commonality among these dwellings, Matthew noted, was that they were all decorated with alligator skulls and bones, as if these elements from the River of Souls bound the outcasts—the criminal, the insane, and possibly both, if Quinn Tate was correct in the questionable lucidity of her own mind—together as one tribe.
Came the inhabitants of these huts out to watch the arrival of the hunters, and to themselves dance and caper around the white men stained by river mud. They were young and old, male and female, nearly naked, their bodies painted with garish hues of red and blue but scarred in some way or deformed by a hunchback or with withered arm or leg…outcasts, all. Matthew was brought by the skeleton men into a parade of eight other whites being pulled, poked and prodded along a dirt path toward another area ringed by torches. It was a grassy field, Matthew saw. At each end there were open nets fashioned of river reeds, and it seemed that the entire populace of this damned village were gathering around the field as if to watch a sporting exhibition.
Two of the skeleton men passed by on their way to the field carrying between them a basket that dripped blood. Matthew had an instant to see what he wished he had not seen, that the basket held several of the heads that had been lopped from their necks. One of the other white men saw it, too, and instantly gave a cry of horror and fell to his knees. Matthew recognized him as the broad-shouldered, brown-bearded Zachary DeVey, who wore a sweat-damp red kerchief tied around his bald scalp and who had lifted his pistol and declared himself able and willing to put a ball through any spirit, ha’int or demon up the river for the promise of thirty pounds. His pistol was now lost, probably to the belly of the river. DeVey looked up with renewed horror, his face puffed by insect bites and blood gleaming at his nostrils, as one of the skeleton men swung the scythe-like weapon and the edge of sharpened flint sliced through flesh and cracked against neckbone. A second swing finished the job. Blood sprayed into the air. The body remained, trembling, on its knees as some of the other Indians rushed up to catch the gore in their hands as if from a fountain and smear it over their faces and bodies with cries that could only be the joy of destruction. Then the body collapsed and the head with its sightless eyes and open mouth was picked up by the beard and put into the basket along with the others. The parade, including the dazed and arrow-struck Matthew Corbett, was pulled onward.
They were made to stand still while the cords around their necks were tied and knotted together, captive to captive, and then they were pushed down to sit along one side of the field, where they received the taunts and spittle of both their captors and the audience. The Indians shrieked with delight when two teams of five skeleton men were daubed with blood, one team upon the forehead and one upon the chest. The teams took up short but stout wooden poles with oar-like paddles on the ends. They ran to opposite ends of the field and waited there, all down on one knee, as a corpulent Indian covered with black tattoos plucked a head from the basket and waddled out to plant it at the field’s center. Then he waddled back again, and when
he held his fleshy and tattooed arms up the audience did the same, and they all clapped their hands together with a noise like rolling thunder.
To the blast of excited screams and chattering that followed, the two teams leapt up and ran for the head at the center of the field. One of the chest-daubed warriors reached it first and gave it a smack with his paddle toward the opposite net, but it rolled only a few feet before the paddle of an opposing player stopped its progress and struck it a blow for the bloody foreheads. Back and forth the head was struck, as Matthew and the men from Jubilee watched in dreadful fascination.
It took perhaps fifteen minutes for the tattered head to be struck a keen blow by a cunning bloody forehead who got it past an opponent’s gory paddle and into the net. Then both teams retreated to their sides to take their knees again and the corpulent Indian repeated the ritual, this time with Zachary DeVey’s head. After the communal clap of thunder, the game went on.
It was a quick round, the brown-bearded and battered head rolling into the net guarded not too well by a bloody-foreheaded skeleton man after about six minutes of play. A third head was selected, as the other two heads were allowed to remain in the nets. The game continued, with much joyfully deranged noise.
Matthew, fighting pain and shock, knew what would happen when all the heads from that basket found their way into a net, for behind the captives were positioned two skeleton men wielding the deadly scythes. His arms were unbound and his legs free, but the leather cord knotted one man to another made escape if not impossible then highly unlikely. The arrow in his shoulder was taking its due. To remain still and frozen in this posture of defeat, though, meant certain death. To stand and fight…certain death. So for the moment Matthew was caught between deaths with no way out except to Heaven or Hell, according to the will of his Maker.
To emphasize the predicament, the wizened and mud-splattered old man to Matthew’s right gave a cry of either panic or desperation and tried to fight to his feet. Before he got there, he was knifed several times in the back by one of the skeleton men while the other one used his scythe to create another bloody ball for the game. Much to the delight of the Indians who viewed this decapitation, the grizzle-bearded head was placed into the basket and the body dragged away so that a number of children could use their child-sized flint knives on the still-shuddering torso.
Matthew realized the leather cord between himself and the next man on his right was now unconnected, having been severed by the scythe. The game was continuing on with a new head, and presently both teams were being thwarted by the other. Matthew figured there were perhaps forty or fifty Indians here in this mad village, almost all of them shouting and screaming for their team of favor, their attention fixed on this gruesome game.
Matthew thought he might be able to unwind the loosened cord from his neck and at least try to run, but as soon as this idea came to him one of the skeleton men dragged the next man on the right over to him and tied and reknotted the cord and his hopes collapsed.
He needed a sharp edge, something to cut the binding. There was no way he could get hold of a knife, but…
If he could get to it, he was in possession of one sharp edge. It was insane, yes…but perhaps this was a night where insanity must rule, because…there was the sharp edge of the arrowhead buried in his shoulder. His only weapon, and only way out. The skeleton men were watching the game, but were also ready for any sudden moves from the prisoners. Thus…if it was to be done…it had to be done slowly…but the pain was going to be unbearable. He was going to have to probe with a finger along the arrow’s shaft and into the wound. It was the only way.
He bent forward, as if to be sick. Touching the shaft sent a shiver through him. If the arrowhead was imbedded in bone, he could never get it out. And if the shaft broke, so much the worse. He closed his eyes, sweat glistening on his face and the delighted screams of the audience ringing in his ears, and he swallowed hard and pushed the forefinger of his right hand into the wound.
Somewhere in Charles Town the palm trees along the harbor stirred in the night breeze, their fronds clattering together softly over the white stone streets. In New York, Berry Grigsby might have been awakened from a slumber by a disquietening dream that she could not fully recall, but that she thought concerned Matthew Corbett. Not far from Berry’s dwelling, Hudson Greathouse might have sat up in his own bed and thought with a start of alarm Matthew is in danger until the hand of the widow Abby Donovan rose up and brushed along his backbone and he decided that Matthew was likely enjoying a Charles Town vacation in spite of himself, God help the boy.
And somewhere in the world a slender man in an elegantly-cut tan suit whose face was streaked by shadow sat at a desk with pen in hand and a small candle burning before him to illuminate the papers he was executing, and he thought that the next time he saw Matthew Corbett he would show no mercy, for no one lived who had done to his plans what that boy had done, and vengeance would be slow and cold and very, very satisfying.
In the Indian village of the damned along the River of Souls, as another noggin went into the net from the now-empty basket and the first man in the line of the doomed lost his head to a scythe, Matthew was bent forward with eyes squeezed shut in his sweating face, his forefinger searching for the arrowhead. The pain was sickening, nearly making him pass out, yet he had to hang on to his senses. One of the skeleton men walked past and struck him across the back with the shaft of the scythe, and Matthew winced but paid no heed; he had to get this task done, for he’d realized two more heads into the net and his would be the next offering.
Blood was oozing from the wound, wetting his shirt. Matthew got his thumb into it, to widen the aperture. Follow the shaft, he thought. He clenched his teeth; the sounds of the crowd ebbed and swelled as his consciousness wavered. Fight it! he told himself. It was either this or he was dead, and he could well be dead even if he got the arrowhead out for he might be too weak to use it. He probed deeper into the torn tissue of his shoulder, and perhaps he steeled himself even more to overcome the pain when the crowd screamed with ecstacy as another head was netted.
His forefinger touched the arrowhead’s hard edge. He remained bent forward, as if either sick or sobbing with terror, as the skeleton men hacked the head off the next unfortunate victim in line and dragged his body away for the children. The head entered the game. Matthew worked feverishly to get both forefinger and thumb in position to pull the arrowhead free, but it was a bloodslick and brutal job and he felt his will to live leaving him like a candle being slowly extinguished. His face felt swollen and pressured by currents of blood. He thought he couldn’t hang on any longer, that it was all for naught and he would die here anyway, but suddenly the arrowhead came loose between his forefinger and thumb and there was not as much pain as he’d feared because the arm and shoulder felt dead. Now the task of getting the arrowhead out was before him, and he thought he should do this quickly before he lost heart and too much more will and strength. He began to withdraw the arrow…slick fingers on the flint…lost his grip on it…found it again and touched something that shot pain not only through his arm but down his side. He nearly wept, but for that there was no time.
Matthew drew the arrow out. At the very last a wave of sickness and agony passed over him and he very nearly lost his senses. He might have, had not a great hollering and tumult from the audience indicated the netting of another dead brainhouse. Matthew put the arrowhead’s edge to the cord around his throat and began to saw at it, his own skin be damned. The remaining man on his right was doomed; the skeleton men were coming up behind him. Suddenly this citizen of Jubilee, who had been struck mute with shock until now, gave out a scream and tried to stand but the knives plunged into his back and drove him down to his knees. The action upset Matthew’s focus and intent, as well as his balance. One of the scythes was upraised to cleave head from neck.
Just as the scythe was falling, Matthew felt the arrowhead cut through the cord. As it loosened he ripped it off his neck and wi
th a burst of desperate energy scrambled to his feet. Emboldened by Matthew’s success, two of the other white men also tried to stand. One of the skeleton men whirled toward Matthew, knife in the left hand and the scythe gripped in the right. The warrior’s eyes in the skullface were black holes of madness. Before either blade could come at him, Matthew plunged the arrow into the Indian’s upper chest with as much strength as he could summon, and then he could do no more for anyone else. He turned and ran for the swamp. He was aware that almost instantly the second skeleton man was after him, the deadly scythe seeking his head. Matthew kept his head tucked into his shoulders as he ran along the dirt path, and behind him he heard a screaming and shrieking that might have raised the dead from their graves, for the Indians in this mad village of the damned were delirious with joy in what seemed a sudden new twist of the game.
He ran among the huts in the direction of the bonfire, seeing no other Indians because they were likely all at the field. A glance back showed the skeleton man almost within swing of the scythe. Matthew stumbled; his legs were weak, he was about to fall. He felt death about to take him.
He was nearly to the bonfire when he heard the crying of a baby from the woods beyond. It was a wail that rose up and became a soft sobbing, went on for perhaps three or four seconds and then ceased altogether.
Matthew passed the bonfire. He glanced back and saw with amazement and pure relief that the skeleton man had stopped; not only that, but the eerie figure was backing away, the scythe still held high to deliver a blow. Matthew tore into the wilderness, fell onto hands and knees, got up again and kept going.
The baby’s cry did not repeat itself, but as Matthew struggled through vines, thorns and muck toward the river he recalled what Granny Pegg had said: Old Cara told me this…if you hear a baby cryin’, keep goin’. Don’t try to find it…just keep goin’, ’cause that’s a spirit you don’t want to see.
The River of Souls Page 13
