Gradually I became aware that my hands were stinging from the slime. They demanded that I put them in cold water at once, but something else kept my frozen arms in place while my eyes made a frantic search of the beach. Some part of my brain knew danger was near even if my eyes had yet to perceive it. Tears pooled in my eyes but I waited.
Suddenly, walking into view on the crab-strewn shore, I saw the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes on. He walked out of the surf, uncaring of what the salt water would do to his linen slacks and shirt. He stopped just beyond the tide line and stood very still, head cocked as though listening to distant music. He was blond, radiant, a fallen angel who commanded the wind to still so that he might listen. For me. I was morbidly and irrationally certain that he was trying to hear my heart.
Beautiful he was, but terrifying too. I stopped up my breath and ordered my heart to still and my hands to stop burning. I slowly lowered myself into the sand and tried to pretend I was a rock. He turned slowly. The blank, black pits where eyes should be passed over where I crouched. They rested on me for only a second, but I swear the touch of his gaze burned worse than whatever was on my hands.
It seemed inevitable that I would be discovered. He didn’t see me, though. Apparently I was wearing enough mud, dung and other detritus to pass for a smelly sand dune. Or else he saw me and I wasn’t his object.
My ears popped as the barometric pressure fell and the creature spun back in my direction. The dying wind shifted again, and the faint scent of brimstone, a ghostly whiff of breath laced with cognac and blood and other rot reached out to tickle my nose. I wanted to sneeze, to scream, to run as fast as I could and not stop until I reached Hawaii. Instead I remained still and nearly breathless until the gaze passed on.
Pleaseohplease, I prayed. Don’t let him call to me. As horrified as I was, I had the awful feeling that I might actually answer if he bade me to come.
An eternity later, he turned away and strolled toward the bushes at the far side of the clearing. I allowed myself one gulping breath and then listened again with all my might. The air in my tortured lungs tasted of the bitter-sugar nectar of carnivorous blossoms that were dying, poisoned by the stringy slime that was still eating away at them and at my reddened hands.
It was dangerous, but I ran for the water, tiptoeing through the mass of crabs that seemed to be having some kind of seizures. I had to get the poison off of my hands, which now felt like I had laid them on a griddle.
Kneeling in the surf and tending to my burning fingers, it was several moments before I looked up again. Observation wasn’t coming to me easily that morning, but this wasn’t something I could fail to see despite the tattered remains of mist. Clumping toward me through the surf were…monsters. Fantastical, horrible monstrosities pieced together out of the odds and ends of humans and animals. I saw every variation of obscenity imaginable. These weren’t zombies; these were something else even more awful.
Ghouls, my brain whispered. Just like Ambrose talked about in The Devil’s Dictionary.
Only, he hadn’t been joking.
Thank God for adrenal glands, because without the flood of chemical energy, I might have crouched there, riveted by horror, until something bit me. Choking back a scream, I fled back into the fog that still clung to the mountain, this time grateful for the sulfurous cloud that clogged up my lungs. It never occurred to me to draw my gun and shoot them. I was too afraid of drawing Saint Germain’s attention. For some reason, I knew he would be worse.
Where the hell is Ambrose? I wondered as I ran.
A new fear dawned in my heart. Surely he would be on the beach repelling the invasion—if he was able.
Longanimity, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan for revenge.
Longevity, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
Misericorde, n. A dagger which in medieval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Chapter Seven
Maybe I got lost in the damned fog again, or maybe it was just sheer bad luck dogging me. Whichever, I soon found both the monstrous crocodile and Saint Germain.
As I crouched on the ground, my knees having failed me, I thought again that he was, without any competition, the most beautiful man—no, most beautiful being—that I had ever seen. Lucifer, the reputedly bright yet fallen angel would have nothing on him.
At the same time, he was also the most hideous thing that ever walked in Heaven or on Earth.
Fortune favored me in as much as the two monsters were very busy with one another and neither seemed to know I was there in the dripping shrubbery, trying to stay more or less upright by grabbing vines that I hoped weren’t snakes or covered with man-eating ants. Coward that I am, I was just beginning to back away from the showdown that had popped out in front of me in a most unpleasant way, when I stumbled into one of the odd and infrequent clearings in the mist. Then I noticed something odd. More odd. Saint Germain was moving but the crocodile was not. The giant reptile might have been stuffed for all the life it showed.
Muttering, he approached the crocodile with some sort of sword heavily carved with runes. He handled the blade with easy familiarity, suggesting that either he used it regularly at historical reenactments or had been a warrior in another life. Ozone was thick in the air, and every hair on my body stood on end as it rolled over me in a prickly wave. I knew in my gut that I had stumbled into magic—and not just any old magic, but true diablerie. Don’t ask me how I knew this, but I realized that Saint Germain had somehow bespelled the giant reptile and was planning upon slaying her. Or worse. I had noticed that things didn’t stay dead around him. Ask me what’s worse than a giant crocodile and I’ll tell you: A giant zombie crocodile who could be ordered to eat me.
I didn’t think. If I had, my brain would have defeated me because it was also half enchanted by Saint Germain’s beauty and wholly fascinated by whatever he was uttering in that bewitching voice. And I was terrified as well, filled with the kind of fear that makes you fall on the ground, screw your eyes shut and mewl. But—thank all the gods and goddesses—my hands once again seemed to have a will of their own and they had the gun. They shook with dread as they took aim at the lovely stranger, but they kept on task even as my brain was panicking.
Understand that, just like you, I never wanted to shoot anyone. And if someone had told me that I would end up shooting someone—more than once—I would have laughed at them and then moved away from the wacko who suggested such a thing. I am not a killer.
Until I have no choice but to kill or die.
A head shot is best, I heard my father say, and I raised the gun up and squeezed the trigger before I could change my mind.
I missed his skull but managed to blow an ear off. The stuff that sprayed out of his head did not look like blood and it smelled awful.
Saint Germain snarled and whipped around to face me, sword still raised. In that moment, I knew I was dead. I could feel power, raw and evil, coming at me like a nuclear blast. He no longer looked beautiful. He said one word—I can’t recall now what—and it backhanded my psyche with a force that stunned me into immobility.
OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod, was all my brain could think or do. It forgot how to breathe or even make my heart beat as I saw that giant sword swinging down at me.
Then karma came to my rescue. I tell you, it pays to be kind to animals, even giant reptiles. I had distracted Saint Germain long enough for the crocodile to shake off her paralysis. With a grunt that shook the ground, she leapt at the once-beautiful monster, grabbing him by both legs, and jerked with all the strength in her eighteen-foot body.
The whiplash snap should have broken his spine and crushed every rib in his carcass when it smacked into the stony ground. Saint Germain fell, but he didn’t cry out, nor did he drop his sword, which clanged down entirely too near my body.
With any other creature,
I would have put my money on the huge crocodile winning this fight. Really, you have no idea how huge she was! But this wasn’t a human or even a zombie that she battled, and I couldn’t count on her managing to kill him.
Sobbing with terror but again possessed of a beating heart and mobile limbs, I raised the gun between my splayed knees and shot again. And again. I pulled the trigger until the gun was empty, but Saint Germain continued to thrash and flail about with his sword in spite of the many large holes I had punched in him, including one that blew off his left hand just above the wrist. The damn thing dropped onto the trail and then scuttled into the bushes like a hungry crab after its lunch.
Not sure what else I could do that the crocodile could not, and having used my last drops of courage and every bullet, I turned and ran into the jungle. Panic lent me winged feet, and I managed to travel several hundred yards before I collapsed.
That was when Ambrose found me. At the time, I thought it a miracle.
“How badly are you hurt?” he asked urgently, rolling me over and lifting me into his arms. The now-familiar heat from his body washed over me, warming my insides and calming my heart enough that I could speak.
“I’m not hurt. I shot him. I shot him and shot him, but he didn’t die. Maybe the crocodile ate him.”
“Him?” His eyes widened. For the first time ever, he looked shocked. “Saint Germain is on the island?”
“Yes, and he has ghouls with him—a dozen or so. They were slimy and they poisoned all the crabs on the beach and burned my hands with their ooze.” I wasn’t explaining myself well, but a display of my blistered hands made my point for me.
“Damn. And he brought that many zombies as well. I got half a dozen already but there are as many still wandering around,” Ambrose said, helping me to my feet.
“I need more bullets,” I said back, trying to locate my knees and having only limited success. “And bigger guns. Much bigger guns. The Colt hardly did anything.”
“Let’s get back to the cottage and restock—for all the good it will do,” he said, leaning down to pick up the largest rifle I’d ever seen. It had a very high-tech, futuristic look to it, and I was betting it wasn’t available in your average gun shop. “I think I’ll have to rip these bastards limb from bloody limb.”
“Not bloody,” I said, shuddering. “He had black ooze. Not blood.”
“Point taken.”
“Did you find Ashanti?” I asked, as I stumbled along with Ambrose. Without his arm around me, I would have fallen. As it was, my feet hardly touched the ground.
“Yes, and she left on the plane—which you should have done too. What possessed you to run off like that?”
I didn’t answer, since he didn’t really expect me to. Anyway, I was saving my breath for important things like screaming if we saw a ghoul, and running blindly through sulfurous fog if a zombie crocodile chased us. Thankfully Ambrose could find his way through the mist and kept moving at a brisk clip. The fog was thinning quickly now that we neared the water, and I began to think that I might actually be able to manage on my own. If I wanted to—which I didn’t.
Admittedly I was somewhat distracted by heaving lungs, running on boneless legs, and residual terror at nearly being eaten, or killed and then eaten, by several different and horrible creatures, but I would have had to be acutely unobservant to have missed the way that Ambrose was scanning the nearby shrubbery watching for danger. It dawned on me that I had been found but not rescued. We were still in a lot of danger, and if he was being ultracautious, so should I be.
“What are you thinking?” Ambrose asked as I finally managed to regain command of my legs. This time he did want an answer.
“That I know what really chased Ichabod Crane through Sleepy Hollow.”
He turned his head and actually grinned down at me. His usual calm had returned; nothing knocked him off balance for long.
“It might well have been,” he admitted. “Why shouldn’t a ghoul be a horseman too—especially if it’s a zombie horse?”
I shook my head but was feeling better. No, we weren’t safe yet, but Ambrose’s cheerfulness was a bracing tonic. At some other time, I might have been annoyed by his refusal to feel a normal degree of human fear, but at that moment all outside courage was welcome since I was so short of it myself.
“I’m stopping off for some trench spikes. There’s no need to waste the ammunition on the zombies. Let’s save it for the ghouls. Spikes are also quieter. No need to ring the dinner bell for them.” Ambrose seemed to be talking to himself as he said this, though I didn’t actually see his lips move.
“I want some ammo anyway.” My lips definitely moved as I answered. I didn’t consider the ammunition wasted since I wasn’t able to rip zombie heads off with my bare hands, but didn’t say anything about his barbaric preference for hand-to-hand combat. If Ambrose wanted spikes, then spikes we would have. After all, as proved night after night on the evening news, some people favored bludgeoning and manual piercing to modern high-tech solutions. Guns were for wimps like me who weren’t familiar with the older type of up-close-and-personal violence more common in other eras.
His head turned. Evidently he was surprised that I had heard him.
“You can have every bullet I possess,” he agreed, speaking in a slightly louder voice, though it was still hushed with caution. “But I would prefer not to use them if we can avoid it. Sound attracts the ghouls and zombies, and I would rather not have the entire undead nation down on us all at once. Especially not if the crocodile has failed to digest their fearless leader.”
“He had put a spell on her,” I said, feeling stupid for uttering these words, but suspecting that this was something important I needed to impart, even if it meant using imprecise language. “He was going to kill her with some kind of sword. That’s when I shot him. I blew his ear off. That made him angry.”
“I imagine it did. What did he do then?” I had Ambrose’s complete attention.
“He turned around and tried to knock my head off with another spell, until the crocodile grabbed him and they started fighting. I shot him until I was out of bullets but he wouldn’t die. I think the thing that hurt him most was blowing off his left hand, but even then he never screamed. The hand crawled away.” I reported this last bit especially reluctantly, almost looking for sympathy, but Ambrose didn’t take me up on it. Crawling hands were apparently too common to merit comment.
“No screaming? Too bad. I should have enjoyed that. Good effort anyway. We’ll have to work on your aim, though. It’s hard to work magic if you don’t have a head to talk with. Best to go for a head shot when you can.” His practical calm, or something, was pushing my remaining fear back into normal proportions. My supernatural dread was gone. I felt that we would be able to cope with whatever came our way. Somehow.
“I didn’t want to shoot the crocodile,” I defended. “And they were thrashing around a lot. I couldn’t get close without getting smashed by the croc’s tail or Saint Germain’s damned sword.” I thought of something else. “I was serious before. He doesn’t bleed blood. It’s some clotted black stuff that stinks ’til hell won’t have it.”
“Black clots? Damn.” He shook his head. “Well, that’s sort of good news and sort of not.”
“How so?”
“The real Saint Germain bleeds. What you saw was probably a golem.”
“A Gollum?” I repeated, thinking of the Lord of the Rings movies.
“No, a g-o-l-e-m. It’s a clay statue brought to life with magic—another kind of Frankenstein monster, only much nastier. They can be made of earth or twigs or even stone.”
“This thing didn’t look like clay.”
“The good ones never do.”
“Oh, look. We’re here.” I spoke happily, as I suddenly recognized where we were. A moment later the corner of Ambrose’s well-fortified cottage peeped out of the thick tangle of swamp grass that still clung to a bit of the eerie fog. I felt myself relax a bit more once sanctuary was
near.
Ambrose grunted something in agreement. My relief proved premature, though. We could see as soon as we rounded the corner that something had ripped the cottage’s iron door off its hinges and thrown it twenty feet down the beach. We stopped cold outside the small building and Ambrose wrinkled his nose as he listened. After a moment I smelled it too. Rot.
“Ghouls,” I whispered. I pointed to the trail of sludge, the burning slime I was now familiar with. “Don’t touch it. It burns.”
“Someone’s in a bad mood. Why the temper tantrum when they could just walk in? It wasn’t locked.” I thought I head Ambrose say this, though again I didn’t see his lips move. He could have taken the ventriloquist act on the road and made a fortune.
“Do you think they took the guns?” I asked, trying not to sound frightened, which is difficult when you’re whispering in the first place because some nasty beastie might hear you.
“Not all of them. And they probably didn’t get the ammunition. I keep it up in the rafters. It would be hard to find.” Avoiding the worst of the slime, Ambrose slipped into the cottage and headed for the bedroom. As was getting to be my habit, I followed a safe pace or two behind him. I also did a lot of looking back over my shoulder, praying I wouldn’t see whatever had ripped the door off.
One of the first things I noticed was that Ambrose had left an electric teakettle by the sink, but this served to make me realize that I no longer had any urge for food or drink. I laid my empty Colt down beside Ambrose’s designer gun in the middle of the kitchen table. Unable to help myself, I looked about nervously, even though there was no place for a monster to hide in the bare room. Maybe it was paranoia, but I still felt observed.
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