Mr. Shivers

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Which… which god?”

  “Which god? I don’t know, he was crazy. ’Sides, seems to be a lot of gods.”

  “What did he make the deal for?” whispered Connelly.

  “What for? To live longer, that’s what for. I don’t know what the god got. Maybe just… just help. Maybe one hand washed the other, I don’t know.”

  Connelly half listened to Peachy’s words. He felt sick. He swallowed and said, “You… you think he can make people live longer?”

  “Who? The god? Why, sure. He’s a god. Old man said he’d come down out of the hills. Said sometimes there’d be screaming in the jailhouse, and those screams, they’d call to him. Wake him up. He’d come on down and see what was what. Like the mountains opened up and bled and he rose up out of the ash, just tapping his foot.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “What?”

  “The god. What did the god look like?”

  “He never said. Why? What’s gotten into you?”

  “Jesus,” said Connelly. “Jesus Christ.” His head began pounding again. There was a high, warbling whine in his ears, boring into all his thoughts. He grasped his skull and pushed his fingers into it as though to squeeze the pain out along with this new revelation.

  What was this thing they hunted? How old was he, how long had this been going on for? Connelly remembered Korsher, drunkenly rambling in the grass. Remembered the look on the young boy’s face as he recounted the scarred man’s appearance. They had lived in his wake for so long, but what was he?

  “What?” said Peachy’s voice. “What’d you say? How long what? What you doing over there, Connelly?”

  Connelly mumbled something in reply. He felt sick. Without thinking he began tearing strings off of the cuffs of his pants. Then he pulled splinters out of the wood around him and began trying to get his fingers to work. He was not as skilled as Roosevelt so the idol he made was crude but still good enough, he thought. He made its face out of dust and spit and though the eyes were lopsided they still were vaguely human.

  “There,” he wheezed, and lay back. “There.” He placed it in the corner. Then he began coughing.

  “Don’t… don’t you die on me, Connelly,” said Peachy. “I ain’t had no one to talk to in over a month. Please, don’t you die on me, Connelly. Please don’t…”

  Connelly did not answer. The high-pitched squeal trapped in his head was drowning out all other thought. He curled up tighter on the floor and through watering eyes stared up at the ceiling. Above him he saw the shaft of sunlight flicker like a dying bulb, strobing the cell with shadows. But that was impossible. For if the sheriff had the power to kill the sun itself, even for a second, then Connelly and the others were surely in their graves already but did not know it yet.

  Time became soft to him. Hours bled into weeks bled into months. Whatever part of Connelly’s mind still worked believed he was sick, some infection, perhaps another concussion. He shivered all day and all night and when the deputies dropped off gruel and water he did not eat or drink. They laughed when they took away his full plate, their chuckles leaking through the slot in the door, and sometimes he believed they were staying on the other side of the door, watching and smiling.

  The whine in his ears grew louder each day, his head filling up with pressure like a balloon. It made sleep difficult and thought almost impossible. Simply breathing was hard with that whine rattling in his head, turning his mind to jelly. He tried to feel his forehead to get a gauge of his temperature but his palms were clammy and wet with sweat. He shivered at all times and tried to tell his complexion by examining the backs of his hands but it was far too dark.

  On the first morning the idol he had made was gone. There was no scrap of string or piece of twig left to show that it had ever been there. He suspected that something had come in the night, crawling out of the darkness and devouring it before retreating again. So he made a new idol. And when that one disappeared in the night, he made another, and another. And though he could not be sure he felt somehow that all these little souls he made and blessed in the dark cell were keeping him alive and staving off death. That each time they disappeared they had bought him another day.

  He tried to count the days by the shaft of sunlight at the top of his cell but could not, as with each minute the light seemed darker and darker, like the very sun was fading or its radiance was being eaten by his cell. Peachy spoke all day and all night, telling him about the family he had, his mother and sisters, about frying fresh perch next to the river and drinking ale in the evening and kisses sweeter than any wine. Sometimes Peachy would sing and when he did Connelly’s sickness seemed to fade a little. He knew Peachy was doing it to keep himself sane as much as anything, but Connelly did not care.

  Then there came one night when Peachy slept and Connelly did not have voice enough to wake him. Connelly listened and believed himself deaf, he blinked at his cell and thought he was blind, and when he felt the boards beneath or beside them it was like touching air.

  And Connelly said to himself, I am dying. And he believed it. Perhaps he was dead already.

  Darkness swooped down on him, dripping out of the corners of the cell and swallowing him. He lay staring at the wall for what felt like ages. And when he shut his eyes he saw the desert.

  White and brown and blue. The pale line of the desert burning against the chilly azure of the sky above. Dry air rushed over him and he blinked his eyes as their moisture evaporated. He focused and looked at what was before him.

  He was sitting on a small hill, looking down on an immense basin. The sun beat down from the cloudless sky and to his left and right great arches of plateaus formed the edge of the bowl, their wrinkled, rusty skirts sloping down to the ivory floor of the desert. The air was so crisp and hot it felt electric. A land so striking and beautiful it pained the heart.

  “Look,” said a voice, and he turned to see the pale young man sitting beside him, still flecked with blood, his flaxen hair dancing in the wind. A wide smear of red still shone on his forehead, like the bill of a cap. The boy gestured into the desert before them.

  Connelly turned to look. There was movement in the basin. On the far side he saw the edges of the plateaus almost quiver, like the sporadic rain of rocks that precedes a landslide, but as he watched he saw that the movements came not from rocks but from men, men with dark skin and long black hair. They poured from some unseen pass in the mountain face and even at this distance he saw they were sprinting at a great speed. Their teeth shone white and wild and in their hands they carried rude weapons hacked from wood and stone. They wore no clothing, and once they were close he realized some were women as well.

  “Watch,” said the young man to his left.

  Connelly heard a cry from below. Another group of people came running from the near side, worming their way through a hidden crack in the slope. They were indistinguishable from the band of people in the distance save for streaks of mud across their faces and chest, like warpaint. The screams from the two groups intensified once they saw one another and their paths curved to meet, charging head-on, each party throwing themselves to greet the other’s approach.

  “What are they doing?” said Connelly.

  “Watch,” said the young man.

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “You must watch.”

  As the two bands closed the distance they both let out shrieks of bright, glad rage. The heads of many weapons rose up into the sky like some feral salute, axe and spear and crude blade all hungry to crush and bite. All things seemed to stand still and tense, pausing to leap.

  The two groups met. The spray was terrific on the white sands. Arcs of crimson spun out through the air and traced graceful circles on the desert floor. Axe and spear bobbed up and slashed down, bringing with them a rain of gore. Connelly watched as one man was spitted through the abdomen. He fell to his knees shrieking while a painted woman stooped and began sawing at his neck with a small black blade. Another paint
ed soldier stood over a fallen foe, beating his opponent’s head into pulp with a wide, flat stone. He screamed incoherently, unaware or perhaps not caring that the man was dead. Perhaps he could never be dead enough.

  Connelly could not tell the screams of agony from those of triumph, the dances of victory from the death throes, the anguish from the joy. He watched as one woman picked up a severed head and held it above her and howled with pleasure, and was in turn attacked by a painted man who coveted her prize. He brought his mace down and her knee bent strangely and the head tumbled from her grasp. Two of his comrades crowded around to savage whatever part of her still lived.

  “Why are they doing this?” Connelly asked.

  “Why?” asked the young man. “They would not even know the word. If you were to ask they could not tell you.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Killers. Killers of men. Killers of what can be killed. That is all they know or wish to know.”

  “So they kill for no reason? Not for land? For hate?”

  “They do not know territory, nor do they know the past, and so they cannot hate. They may someday. In the future they may understand it and use it as their reason, as their means. But it is not their end.”

  “What is?”

  The young man gestured before them. The desert floor was a deep red now. To Connelly it resembled a great red eye, a ring of white and a ring of red and then a circle of glistening brown, twitching and heaving. Almost none remained standing now.

  “They’re killing their friends,” said Connelly.

  “They have no friends. To them, friends are merely devices with which they may conquer their enemies. And when they cast down their foes, who remains? More enemies.”

  “They got to learn. They got to learn eventually.”

  “They have not yet.”

  “How long have they been here?”

  “They have always been here. They change, some. The method of battle changes, the stakes grow, but the battle itself is always there.”

  “They could give up. They could go someplace else. Live peacefully.”

  “There are no peaceful lives,” said the young man.

  “What?” said Connelly. “No.”

  “Yes. All life is struggle. It is always battle. These people choose this way because it is simpler. It is easier for them.”

  “I knew peace once. I once lived a peaceful life.”

  “Then go back to it,” said the young man.

  To that Connelly had nothing to say. The young man nodded.

  “It always finds you, in the end,” he said. “It does not matter how you come to it. But you will. Struggling against someone, seeking to cast them down and make the final blow. One day each man and creature will find themselves doing the same.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” said Connelly. “How can I stop it?”

  “Die,” said the young man simply.

  “I can’t do that. I can’t choose such a thing.”

  “Yes. And who can?”

  Connelly looked at the carnage below. Vultures wheeled in the deep blue sky, mimicking the patterns below them, whether they knew it or not. “They could have never come in here,” said Connelly. “They could have stayed out. Stayed away. Stayed far away and never come close.”

  “That would have meant denying the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “The truth of this place. If you were to halt the revolutions of creation, much like slowing a record with a single finger, and then find the center, that place where it is still and always had been still and always would be still, and then having found the center you opened up that tiny heart like a locket, why, inside you would see an arena like this one. Two people trapped within, each scrambling to kill the other.”

  “I don’t care,” Connelly said. “I don’t give a damn. A lie would be better. Any lie. I would rather live with a lie than this, and they could have chosen that.”

  “They could have. But they did not.”

  Almost nothing lived on the desert floor now. The vultures circled lower. The young man sighed and lifted his face to the sun. “You will see me soon,” he said. “You will see me soon, Connelly.”

  “I will?” asked Connelly.

  “Yes,” said the young man. Then he lifted his hand and touched the red on his forehead, and with glistening fingertips he reached forward and touched Connelly’s brow. “Wake,” he said. “And see.”

  Connelly felt consciousness crystallize somewhere within him. He saw darkness. Then the walls of the jail cell formed in the shadows and he smelled vomit somewhere and knew he was still alive.

  “Connelly?” said Peachy’s voice. “Connelly, you there?”

  Connelly touched the floor in response, scraping the wood.

  “Connelly, I think they did something to your cell. I don’t know what. I think they hid something in it. Something to make you sick. I-I think I figured out what it is just now.”

  He tried to pull himself awake. He knew these words were important but it was difficult to grasp them, like trying to catch greased snakes.

  “Look for something wedged in the cracks,” said Peachy. “Something little, no bigger than a finger. Maybe it’s up in the roof.”

  He looked up at the roof. It might as well have been miles away. He could barely stay awake, let alone stand.

  Peachy said, “It’ll be making a noise. A funny… a funny kind of song, I think.”

  Connelly moved to the corner and pressed his back into it for support. Then with trembling legs he pushed himself up the scarred wood but fell once, then twice. On the third he was not standing but was on his feet, leaning into the corner of the cell. Once there he listened carefully, or at least as best he could.

  The whine was louder here. It was not an infection. Something in the room was singing to him.

  He wiped at his eyes and mouth and found his lips slick with drool. He spat on the floor and then rolled his head to one side. There the whine was fainter. He rolled his head back in the other direction, still listening. It was louder there, painfully loud. It made his teeth hurt just to hear it.

  “You find it yet?” said Peachy.

  Connelly leaned against the wall and stumbled along it, one ear turned toward its cracks. He passed one crack and the whine was so loud he almost fainted. The room shuddered around him, the light flickering and fading at the corners, like the sound was choking the very air.

  He fumbled at the crack, forcing his fingers deep down into it. Finding nothing, he looked higher, fingers wriggling in the small space. He touched something, something rough and smooth at the same time, something knobby at one end. He pushed deeper, fingers toying with the thing’s end, and it fell out and clattered to the floor, the wail intensifying as soon as it was dislodged.

  He squatted and looked at it. It was a bone. A small bone, like the thighbone of a chicken or the bone of a man’s foot. It was gray as ditchwater and on its surface were tiny, fine engravings, writing as thin and ghostly as a cobweb, running in rings and circles down its edge. He reached down and with shivering hands picked it up and looked at it and as he brought it close he could hear words in its shrill whine, quiet chanting in some tongue he had never heard before.

  He said the sheriff could make the cells sing to you at night. Sing about all the bad things that had happened to you, and drown you in them.

  “Oh my God,” said Connelly.

  “For God’s sake, Connelly, do something,” pleaded Peachy. “It sounds so awful. Break it or something, please.”

  Connelly looked at the little bone for a minute longer, then took it in both hands and tried to break it in half. He found he was too weak to do so and so he lodged part of it in a crack in the wall and leaned on the exposed end. The bone bent, then snapped in half and he swore he heard the little bone scream, a yelp like a dog being kicked, and from its broken end something foul and black and thick poured out, covering his hands and running in streaks down the wall. It reeked of chaw sp
it and spoiled beer and old leaves.

  “It’s alive,” he heard himself say. “The goddamn thing is alive.”

  As soon as he spoke he felt the air around him clear and the light from above him strengthen, and while the cell was by no means clean or comfortable it felt like bliss after the past days. His head was clear and his heart strong and he felt alive enough to stand on his own feet without leaning.

  “Good God,” said Peachy. “Good God, that sounds so much better.”

  Connelly breathed deep, in and then out. “Yeah. Yeah, it does. What the hell was that?”

  “I think it was a taint,” said Peachy.

  “A what?”

  “A taint.”

  “Last I checked a taint was the part of you between your asshole and your pecker.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about that. I was just thinking about what that old man said and I… I just remembered something the other night. Maybe it was a dream, I don’t know. I remembered something my momma told me once when I was a boy, something to scare us, but sort of a joke, you know? She said there used to be a witch in her neighborhood who could take a bone and put a little bit of her own black soul in it and then she’d hide it in your room and it’d tell you to do things as you slept. She’d write on the bone what you were supposed to do and the bone would whisper to you and in the morning you’d do it. I thought it was crazy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “Think I heard this before,” said Connelly. “From someone else. Said it tainted and poisoned the land.” He shook his head. “Jesus. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ almighty, things like this don’t happen. Things like this aren’t real.”

  “But it did happen,” said Peachy. “It is real.”

  Connelly thought about it and said, “Yeah.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The next day when the deputies dropped off his gruel and water Connelly grabbed the tin plate and ate hungrily. They did not laugh and reacted with some surprise and he heard their footfalls quickly fall away.