Mr. Shivers

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “I remember my daughter’s eyes,” said Connelly. “She had the most beautiful brown eyes. Eyes like… like molasses.” He stopped. “At least… I think they were brown.” He reached for his wallet but found it was gone. He could not recall when he had lost it.

  “What happened to her mother?”

  “She’s waiting for me.”

  “Oh. I remember now.”

  “She’s waiting for me. I’m going to go home. I’m going to go back home once this is done and everything’s going to be the way it was. Just the way it was.”

  They heard something and stopped. It was whistling. They followed it and found Roosevelt sitting upon a stone, looking down a cliff at the fog, kicking his legs like a boy on a church pew. He heard them coming and looked and beamed at them.

  “Hello, boys,” he said. “Hello. Morning. I think it’s morning.”

  Connelly and Pike glanced at each other.

  “Where did you go, Mr. Roosevelt?” asked Pike.

  “I went here, of course. Walked right here. Just a stroll.”

  “Are you sure no one told you to go and sit there?”

  “No. No one told me. I just thought, well, there’s got to be a nice seat up there, I bet. I’d like to sit up there. Sit and look. So here I am.”

  “I see,” said Pike. “What’s your name?”

  “What?”

  “Your name. What is it?”

  Roosevelt faltered. “I… Something. It’s something,” he murmured. “I know I have one. I’ll remember it,” he said, and smiled again. “Don’t you worry.”

  Pike nodded. “Well, stay here for a moment longer, sir. Just stay there while we talk.” He motioned to Connelly to follow. They walked a few yards away.

  Pike said, “Roosevelt is not himself.”

  “I know.”

  “He led us to that town. When he first saw the pastor he said something. It was a code, or a message. Then the pastor looked at us and knew he had to kill us. Did you see?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The shiver-man did something to him in that jail. I don’t know what, but I have an idea. I think he told Roosevelt to lead us here. I think he tortured it into him. Like he wrote his orders in Rosie’s skin or on the inside of his skull.”

  “I know. The pastor looked in his eyes and said, ‘There he is.’ He recognized the gray man had changed him. Somehow.”

  “All right. Who’s going to do it, then?”

  “I don’t want to kill him.”

  “And I don’t mean to,” Pike said tonelessly. “At least, not yet. If the shiver-man told him one thing he might have told him others. We may not have his devilry but there are ways we can ask Roosevelt all the right questions and get him to answer.”

  Connelly looked at Pike. Then he looked at Roosevelt, just beyond. Rosie was holding a small stone and cooing at it and telling it to wake up and give him water. Connelly watched him for a long time.

  “I don’t want to do it,” he said.

  “At least help me bind him.”

  “Goddamn it, Pike.”

  “Do you want this or not?”

  Connelly took a breath. “All right, then.”

  They walked back over to him. “Mr. Roosevelt!” called Pike. “Here. Let me help you.”

  “Help me with what?” asked Rosie, curious.

  “Help you with your hands,” he said, and he took off his belt and handed his gun to Connelly.

  “All right,” Roosevelt said, and smiled and held them out.

  “No, no. No, no. Behind. Behind you.”

  “Behind me?” asked Roosevelt, now confused. Connelly walked around him.

  “Yes. Behind you. It’s good for you, you see.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Did you see where I left my rock?” he asked as Connelly tied his wrists.

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” said Pike. He tore off part of his sleeve and began tying Roosevelt’s ankles.

  “That was my special rock. I was going to get water from it. Poke a hole in it and make it give me drink.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes.” He whimpered. “That’s tight,” he said, wriggling his arms. “That hurts.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Pike. “Now sit.”

  “Listen,” said Roosevelt as he sat. “Listen. Listen to me.”

  “We’re listening,” said Pike. He secured the binds at Rosie’s feet.

  “Listen—take a man,” said Rosie. “Take any man. Lawyer-man. Preacher-man. A man of law and civilization, the highest in the land. Take that man and put him before a desert and march him across that desert with naught but the clothes on his back and a thimble of water a day—”

  Pike nodded. “He’s been changed, all right.”

  Rosie’s voice grew stronger. “—march him across that vast dry expanse with no contact and no food, no meat nor grain, and by the time he reaches the other side he will have been whittled down to his darkest heart—”

  “Do you want to stay or go?” Pike asked Connelly.

  “—and his eyes will see no love nor comfort nor compassion in the arms of others—”

  “I’ll go,” said Connelly.

  “—but his hands will sing with the great red song that they have been waiting to sing their whole life.”

  “Then go,” said Pike. “But give me the knife.”

  “He will be as he was meant. The knife he has carried in his heart, the weapon that he is, it will find use—”

  Connelly took the knife out and looked at it. Watched the edge gleam with the morning sun. Then he held the hilt out to Pike. Pike took it, nodding like he was listening to Roosevelt’s words.

  “—he will find the bright cold use among his brothers and among the beasts of this world and he will find joy in it. He will find joy in it. He will find joy in it.”

  Connelly began walking away. He heard Roosevelt say, “What’s going on?” in a quieter voice. “What’s going on?”

  Connelly heard Pike say, “Hush now. We’re playing a little game,” and Connelly walked to the other side of the cliff and moved behind a stone and sat.

  He was still for a second but then shifted uncomfortably. He reached behind and into his pocket and took out what was digging at him. It was a small crescent wrench. He could not remember where he got it. He tossed it away and looked up at the sky and wondered if it was going to rain. Then the shouting began.

  There were words to the exchange but he did not listen for them. A question, calmly asked. An answer, given in panic. The question came again, whatever it was. A protest, again and again, no, no, not me, I don’t know, no. Then the mountain quiet was pierced by hysterical cries and maddened wailing. He heard Pike ask something again, calm and low, but the screams did not answer, just intensified. Then the voice choked and coughed and Pike said something once again.

  Connelly listened for what felt like a long time, for hours or perhaps minutes. In that place time no longer functioned. Its purpose was moot, perhaps forgotten. When he could bear no more he stood up. He walked back down the path and paused behind a rocky outcropping, listening to what was happening on the other side. Then he steeled himself and looked out.

  It was only the briefest glance, but it was enough. First he saw Pike crouched before something, something twitching and supine against the rock. He did not immediately recognize it as Roosevelt, could not even recognize it as a person, but then he saw a mouth and eyes in it, vague human features adrift among all the writhing redness. Pike sidled up before Roosevelt, back and legs taut, knife clutched low like the ovipositor of some foul insect. He whispered something to him, a priest delivering some depraved last rites, eyes small and muddy and empty and his fingers testing the hilt of the knife. Then the blade began to move back in and a burbling sound came from deep within whatever was left of Roosevelt, a sound that steadily grew to a scream.

  Connelly withdrew and walked back up the path as the screams went on. He looked back. Thought. Then knelt beside a stone. He took out the las
t gun and counted the rounds in it.

  “Bastard,” he said softly to himself. “Bastards the world over. Ever since I met you. Bastard.”

  There were five rounds left. He did not know if there was any other ammunition. He rolled the cylinder and snapped it shut and stuffed it in the waist of his pants. Then he waited, listening. Trying to see if Pike had any more questions and hoping it was done with and he would see no more of it.

  When he judged it was time Connelly got up and returned to where Pike and Roosevelt sat. He saw the two men ahead, piled on each other in the mist. Pike calmly digging at something in Roosevelt. Moving with the lapidary care of a master craftsman, eager to see his work done right. He was not asking any questions. Connelly could tell all his questions had come and gone.

  “Stop,” said Connelly. “Jesus Christ, stop.”

  Pike looked at him, startled, and stood. His knees and hands and front were stained with gore. “Mr. Connelly,” he said. “What are you doing here? I’m… I’m not yet finished.”

  Connelly looked at Rosie. Looked at the lines in his scalp, his toes at sick angles on one shoeless foot. Below his chest he was a mass of redness. Connelly could still see his little soft eyes among the wreckage of his face, lids fluttering, struggling to stay conscious. He was curled around the rock beside him like he was trying to anchor himself to the earth and a few more seconds, even if they were spent in agony.

  Connelly took out his pistol. He lifted it and looked away as he put the little soft eyes under his sights.

  “No!” said Pike. “No, no!”

  He pulled the trigger. The report seemed to sound from far, far away. When he turned back there was a gaping wound in Roosevelt’s breast, drooling blood. His back warped against the stone in his last throes, spasms racking him as the bullet drifted through his body. Then his back went slack and he was still, his face mercifully away from them.

  “Damn you!” shouted Pike. “What… what did you do that for? I wasn’t… I wasn’t done.”

  Connelly swallowed and tried to slow his breath. “What did he say?”

  “I wasn’t done. I wasn’t done at all. Not at all.”

  “What did he say, damn it? Did you ask any questions at all?”

  “I did,” Pike said, indignant. “I most certainly did.”

  “Then what?”

  Pike considered him. Then looked back at Rosie and studied his work. “He said the scarred man was looking for a cave. A cave somewhere in the mountains.”

  “Where?”

  “In a fault,” he said. “A fault that ran between two peaks. One short, the other tall, rising up like one’s leaping on the other.”

  “What’s he doing in there?”

  “He said he was looking for something,” Pike said. “Looking for… for rebirth. To make himself anew.” Then he crouched before Roosevelt and reached out and touched the man’s cheek. He put one finger to his chin and tilted the dead man’s face toward him. Looked into his eyes. Stroked his bloody temple with one knuckle. Then he patted Roosevelt on the shoulder as though bidding goodbye to an old friend. “Well. He’s gone,” Pike said, standing. “He’ll be of no more trouble to us. Eh?”

  He turned to Connelly and smiled. Connelly lifted the gun again and pointed it at Pike’s face and cocked it.

  Pike’s brow furrowed as he saw the gun. He looked at Connelly, confused.

  “I never liked you,” said Connelly, and fired.

  A red eye opened on Pike’s cheek and his head snapped back and he fell in a heap. He stared up at the gray sky, forever perplexed at the way the world was developing. Smoke drifted out of his nose and mouth and the eye above the bullet hole sank in and filled with blood. One hand twitched as the wiring in his damaged brain fought to process information before giving up and going dark.

  Connelly looked at both of them, then checked the rounds in the gun. He put the gun back in the waist of his pants and then stripped them both of their coats and put them on. Then he continued up the trail.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  He climbed around little peaks and through little valleys. His feet were wet in his shoes, perhaps from burst blisters or maybe from blood. He stripped his coat and shirt to rags to keep his hands bandaged and insulated. When his breath became visible he deliriously considered trying to trap some of it in his hands to hold on to it in case he needed it.

  Over stone and brush and wood. Far above the world. There on the points of the craggy teeth that snapped at the heavens Connelly wondered if the land below was real. Were he to venture down he was not sure if he would recognize anything.

  He knew now it was not real. Not at its heart. Before this all he had thought he was journeying out, heading to the fringes and forgotten lands, but now he knew otherwise. With each step he had taken he had moved away from torpid slumber, from the complacent dream-world of home, and instead had approached the visceral savagery whose wax and wane formed the heartbeat of creation. This place in the mountain, the ruins of the village below. Tar shacks and shanties in the desert, lit by guttering fires. Rootless and wild and hungry. They were the real. The other way was a willful lie and having awoken he would not return. Could not even if he wanted to. There was a grim joy in it and he savored its taste and thought it beautiful.

  Tattered wanderer, these are hollow countries, hallowed lands. See them arranged here at your feet, broken ruins of people long forgotten, ancient in their silent rage. See this. See this and know it to be your home.

  Every fifty yards he would stop and look for the mountains. One big, one small, right behind one another. Leaping on top as though one attempted to subdue another. And perhaps they did. Even in this barren place conflict seemed inescapable.

  Each time he stopped he would reach behind and take out the gun and check the rounds. It was his ritual. His method of remembrance and prayer. He tried to count how many times he stopped but gave up at fourteen.

  When he saw the two mountains he did not believe it at first. He peered at them against the sky, suspecting some trick, but then relented and checked the gun again and began walking toward them. He nodded from fatigue as he walked and it was in waking from one of these relapses that he spotted a red-black streak on the stony path. He knelt and touched it.

  Blood. It was sticky. Fairly fresh. Fresh enough, at least.

  Connelly began following him again. His eyes roved back and forth for more drops, tracking a wounded creature and waiting for that doorway he’d find in the mountain.

  A crevice. Crack in the world. Breaks down deep to where things don’t forget. Where things still remember what can never be forgotten no matter how much we try.

  “Kill you,” said Connelly, and kept walking.

  He came to the feet of the two mountains and saw the gouge before them, cavernous and crooked like some giant had carved a lightning bolt in the ground. He stopped again and checked for blood. He himself was bleeding from his hands and so he kept them behind his back to avoid muddying the trail. He found a few splotches on a bit of mossy stone. He looked at the earth around the stone and examined the tracks and guessed the scarred man had sat there. Sat there to catch his breath or to look for Connelly or maybe just to sit. Connelly studied the scene and picked out his quarry’s next direction and continued. He took out the gun and kept it out.

  The trail led to the edge of the cliff and he leaned out and looked down. It might have been the way the sunlight made the shadows but the fault appeared endless. He turned back to the trail and saw it led along the edge in a straight line. The man had not tired yet. Connelly would not expect him to.

  Death is tireless, he said to himself. That’s okay. I don’t tire easy, either.

  Then he came upon a path, leading down into the chasm. It was so gentle and so firm that it had to have been constructed, and well constructed. He began down it, gun still out, eyes still searching. He walked down until the light was a thin line above and the edges of the cliff yawned about him. He wondered if this place had actu
ally been carved. A primitive sanctuary, bored down into the earth to greet and remember one’s forebears. He wondered if this had once been the culminating point for some savage pilgrimage and debated whether or not he was such a pilgrim himself.

  Halfway down the cliff he came upon the cave. It was not large, no more than four feet high. He did not see any blood before its entrance but he did not need to to know that this was where the scarred man had fled.

  Connelly reached into his pockets and felt around and pulled out his box of matches. He took off his shirt and wound it around a nearby branch and lit the end. It was a delicate fire, slow and smoking. He would have to move slowly, otherwise he would be moving by matchlight. He let it catch better and walked into the cave.

  The passageway wound through the rock, widening and twisting. He walked with his head bowed and his knees bent and the torch thrust ahead, the gun trained on the dead center of the passage. Behind him the mouth of the tunnel moaned and grieved but he paid it no mind. His eyes grew used to the darkness and patches of moisture winked and glittered at him. He could not say how far he walked but if a mountain had a heart he felt he had to be near this one’s.

  Then he heard a sound from far away in the tunnel.

  “Connelly,” said a voice.

  He stopped. Waited. Then began creeping ahead.

  “You came,” said the voice. It sounded as though the speaker had been weeping. “I knew you would.”

  He came to a wide atrium in the tunnel and saw vaults of rock stretching out above and beside him. Crystals burst into radiant prisms as the firelight found them and he believed for a second that all the night heavens were inlaid in the walls, like someone had pulled the sky down to this room. He scanned the room with the torchlight but saw nothing except another passageway on the far side.

  “I tried to stop it, you see,” said the voice from far ahead. “I thought I could. I thought I could come back and stop it.”

  Connelly began walking toward the next entry, still moving slowly.

  “But I don’t believe I can,” the voice whispered.