“Get him down!” father thundered. “We cannot leave him like that! It is an affront to his spirit.”
He turned then to Herung, who was on his knees sobbing, and helped the old man to his feet. He put his arm around Herung’s shoulders and led the man from the scene.
“We will bury him so that his spirit can find peace,” father said to Herung in a conciliatory tone, hoping to comfort the ancient Fat Hand warrior.
“My boy, my boy, what manner of beast would do that to my boy?” the old man moaned. “What have I done to offend the gods, that they would allow such a thing to be done to my boy?”
I did not think it was a beast, nor the vengeance of some Fat Hand deity, but I kept my doubts to myself as Frag ordered Fodar’s body taken down from the tree.
Old Herung wept as we tried to figure out how to get his son out of the tree in a dignified manner.
5
As it turned out, there is really no way to get a dead Fat Hand out of a tree in a dignified manner, not impaled as he was upon its branches. The only thing we could do was grab ahold of the dead man’s arms and pull. As Herung and my father watched from a distance, we tugged on Fodar’s arms until the branches slid from his flesh. He dropped with a thud to the ground below and an opossum, which had chewed its way into his anus, went scurrying from its gruesome burrow. We all groaned in disgust. Poor Old Herung howled in outrage. Frag tried to spear the rapidly retreating opossum, but he missed and the blood-streaked marsupial dived into a hollow beneath a tree, escaping the big man’s wrath.
I examined Fodar’s body more closely once it was on the ground but came no closer to enlightenment. Aside from his thoroughly chewed anus, which I had not previously seen, his body was remarkably intact.
Finally, frustrated, I admitted defeat.
Our search party split into two groups then. The first group was tasked with transporting Fodar to his final resting place. It was decided that he would be removed to a high place overlooking the valley. Neanderthals normally buried their dead in their cave, placing their bodies in the earth in a fetal position, as if returning them to the womb, but Old Herung wanted his son to have a sky burial, which was normally reserved for chieftains and powerful shamans. No one objected to the young man receiving such an honor, and a travois was constructed to haul the dead Fat Hand to a nearby mountaintop. The second group continued to search for the other missing youth. The most logical way to do this, we all agreed, was to track the beast that had killed Fodar.
I chose to help track the beast. The lot of us were trackers, every man, but I was exceptionally skilled at following a trail. Yet despite my keen instincts, the evidence was confusing.
On the earth where the blood had pooled (though clearly not enough blood to account for such a violent death), were several human footprints as well as a few fluffs of animal hair. There was also a confusion of small animal prints... scavengers, most likely. I milled around, studying the prints as my father and Frag looked on intently.
“Raccoon,” I said, pointing. “Opossum. And some dogs. All of these tracks are from small beasts. No speartooth has passed this way. But this...” I pointed at the ground. “This is a man's tracks.”
“One of ours, perhaps?” Frag asked.
“No, these tracks are too old. They were left several days ago. See how the sides are firm and smooth? And there is dried blood smeared within the depression. These tracks were made when the blood was still wet. Our tracks are here... and here... They are shallower. The ground is drier today.”
“Evv?” Gan suggested.
I shrugged. “It is too small a print for an adult Fat Hand. A Fat Hand child might make a print this size. Or one of us, a Fast Foot male.”
Frag frowned. It was not unknown for Fat Hands to fight and kill one another. They were powerfully strong and had fiery tempers when aroused, but when fights broke out and someone was killed, it was normally from being clubbed or stabbed or beaten with fists. No Fat Hand or Fast Foot would sharpen the limbs of a tree, lift a man up and skewer him on the spikes.
Frag thought about it for several minutes. Finally, he spoke. “Evv would not do a thing like that to his brother. They were never combative toward one another. I also doubt any of our people would have the strength to do such a thing to the body. Hang it in a tree, I mean. A group of men perhaps. But not a man acting alone.” He lifted his arms, fingers outstretched, to judge the height the body had been hung from. “How could he be lifted so high?”
I shook my head. “I do not know.”
“Perhaps it was the Flesh Eaters,” Gan suggested.
“The Foul Ones?” I asked. “But they live so far away. They rarely venture this far south anymore.”
They had raided our village several times when I was a boy, the people we called Foul Ones. I could certainly imagine the Foul Ones doing a thing like this. They were smaller and frailer than us, but terribly vicious and cruel. They sharpened their teeth into points to appear more ferocious and, judging by the smell of them, must live amidst their own waste. Vile creatures, the Foul Ones! Our two peoples, Fat Hand and Fast Feet alike, killed the fiends on sight. We did not even consider them yemme. To us, the Foul Ones were more like Fat Hand demons than man or beast. Once or twice, during their raids, they had made off with a few of our women and children, and had almost made off with me once, but only at great loss of life to their own warriors. I suppose the cost did not justify the reward, for their raids had come more and more infrequently, and we had not seen them at all in many years.
“It could be the tracks of a Foul One,” I said, “but it looks like there was only one man, not a group of them, and I doubt a single Flesh Eater could kill a warrior as large as Fodar. Or that one of them could do such a thing to his body.”
“They would certainly do a thing like that if they could,” father said. “Impale a man on sharpened stakes.”
“But they would have eaten his flesh,” I pointed out. “They wouldn’t have just left him hanging there.”
As we proceeded, debating how many Foul Ones it would take to impale a Fat Hand in a tree, it became apparent that there were actually two distinct sets of footprints, not just the one. They trailed side by side as we neared the edge of the fen. I was terribly embarrassed, but no one upbraided me for my error.
“Easy enough to make the mistake,” my father said. “The prints are very nearly the same size.”
“Yes, but the shape of the toes are different,” I said. “I should have noticed.”
“That, at least, has solved one mystery,” Frag said. “A single man might not have been able to hang Fodar in a tree, but two strong men could certainly do it.”
“I still think it would have taken at least three,” father said.
We moved stealthily on, following the footprints. The trail, we found, led directly toward the settlement of the Gray Stone People. This caused Frag a great deal of consternation. He finally confessed to my father that several of their people had vanished in the last moon cycle. I had told Brulde and my father what Poi-lot confided to me last night, but we had kept it to ourselves, waiting to see if any of the other Fat Hands would mention it. Poi-lot was a good man, but prone to exaggeration.
“How many have been taken?” my father asked, his bushy gray eyebrows knotted together, and Frag held up two hands with only one of the fingers curled down.
“Evv, if he cannot be found, will make the full two hands,” Frag said. “Fodar is the only one whose body has been recovered.”
This upset my father, who felt that Frag and his men had deceived us, but Frag insisted they truly believed the two men had run afoul of a speartooth.
“Perhaps,” Frag conjectured, “it is a man who can transform into a speartooth. It is said that some witch-men can change themselves into beasts.”
My father snorted. Frag looked hurt by his contempt.
We continued on, ascending from the marshes into a thickly wooded ridge. The trees here were vast, ancient hardwoods, the lea
ves just beginning to turn brown and orange and yellow. Before we had travelled too much further, one set of footprints vanished. We puzzled over that for a while.
“It is like he took flight,” Frag said, scanning the heavens nervously again.
“Perhaps he climbed into the trees,” my father suggested.
I shimmied into the nearest tree, a great alder. Moving carefully among the leaves, I examined the branches for any sign that our quarry had ascended into the canopy of the forest. I did spot a few scratches in the bark of a couple limbs.
“There are a couple broken branches,” I called down to the group. “The bark is scraped away from the limbs in a few places as well, but that is all I can see. I don't think I can track someone through the treetops, though.” I grabbed the bough I stood upon, swung my body down and dropped to the earth. “We should track this other one on the ground. It will be easier.”
A short distance further, however, the other set of footprints vanished from sight.
We checked the low branches of a pedunculate oak that stood near the last set of prints, but found no trace of our quarry's passage. We milled around for a while after that, scanning the ground, but could not pick the trail back up. Finally, disheartened, we decided to join the others. Night was fast approaching. The sun, winking at us between the boles of the trees, had gone the color of burning coals.
“Demon,” Frag grumbled under his breath as we trod through the deepening shadows.
I was the only one close enough to hear his soft pronouncement. The word sent a chill down my spine. It made me remember my dream snake, the trickster god of the Fat Hand people, and the way that it had devoured my children.
“I am the hungry maw of death…”
There are no such things as demons, I told myself sternly.
6
Seeing as how you have knowingly purchased the autobiography of a vampire, I am fairly certain you have already realized what sort of creatures were preying upon the Neanderthals. I would, in fact, be quite astounded if I had to spell it out any more explicitly. But for the moment, please indulge me this conceit. Although I am fairly certain there’s no mystery here for you, the true nature of the creatures that were stalking the Fat Hands was an enigma for us.
We did not even have a word for vampire then. The Fat Hand word “demon” is probably the closest approximation, but even that word is not quite right, as their concept of a “demon” was that of a malevolent spiritual being and the creatures feeding on the Neanderthals were corporeal entities, just as real as you or I. They were definitely malevolent, however. Not, perhaps, the most malevolent nosferatu I have come across in thirty thousand years, but very near the top.
That night, the demons that hunted the Fat Hands came for us.
Night fell swiftly in the valley. As we were too far afield to finish the trek back home before darkness enveloped the land, we made camp on the high clearing in which we had “buried” Fodar. I say buried, but we did not actually dig a hole and place his body in it. What we did was build a sort of wooden scaffold on which his body was placed. I thought it strange to expose the remains of a loved one to the elements, but it was the Fat Hand way. After constructing the bier, we made a big fire and bedded down around it, appointing a night’s watch to protect the men who took first sleep.
Dividing the night into two parts, we drew sticks to see who would take first and last watch. I drew a short stick and so I took first watch, as did my father.
We sat beside the fire with the other men who’d drawn first watch, listening to the hot coals pop and crackle as the insects chirped and the wind soughed through the boughs of the surrounding wilderness. I sat beside my father and conversed with him quietly as the rest of the men snored and farted and mumbled in their sleep. It was a chill night, but the chill could not penetrate the invisible globe of heat that encircled the fire. We spoke of the Fat Hands’ plight and other more inconsequential things as the moon glided imperceptibly across the heavens.
My father began to nod as the night wore on. He was not a young man anymore and we had travelled many miles that day. Every so often his chin would fall to his chest and he would snort and jerk awake to continue with our conversation, as if he had not dozed off. He was like a child fighting to stay awake. I found it amusing. I have always found it both bitter and sweet that men become childlike in their old age.
My father was of the opinion that the Foul Ones were responsible for the disappearances of the Fat Hands. He believed that our cannibalistic neighbors had adopted new tactics, that they were picking off lone hunters now, rather than assaulting our villages directly.
“That is why they have not recovered the bodies of their missing people,” Gan opined, chin to his chest. “The Foul Ones are eating them.”
“And Fodar?” I said. “He was not eaten.”
Father shrugged. “Something must have scared them away.”
It was a good theory, but I was not entirely convinced. As I had said to Brulde earlier that day, I had a terrible foreboding.
I was tempted to tell my father about the dream I had had the previous night. I was curious what he would think of it. I believed the dream had meaning but I was not certain what that meaning might be, although I was afraid that it was bad, whatever it was.
But Gan had dozed off again, so I let the impulse pass.
I sat and watched the clouds scud across the sky, admiring the way the moonlight gilded their edges. When it was time to change the guard, I woke my father and told him to go lie down. He jerked up with a grunt, looking around in alarm, but quickly realized the camp was secure and made his way to his sleeping furs. He curled up in his bedding and was soon snoring again.
I woke up a couple of the Fast Feet who had drawn last watch. I made sure they were good and awake and then I walked over to my father and lay down beside him. I prodded him until he offered me some of his furs, then spooned up behind him to share his body heat, draping an arm across his broad shoulders.
As exhausted as I was, it was hard for me to relax. Every time I closed my eyes I recalled the nightmare I had had the night before and fear roused me back to wakefulness. The hiss of the wind in the trees became the soft slither of the hungry snake god. The murmurs of the late watch became the demon’s malicious promises.
“I am the hungry maw of death. I am the grinding belly of eternity!”
We lay close enough to the fire for the heat to tighten my skin, but I did not complain. The cold had begun to torment my father. It was one of the reasons he’d moved into the Siede. He always kept a big fire in his hearth now, and bemoaned the aching of his bones on cold or rainy mornings. I would gladly sweat tonight to spare the man some pain.
The smell of my father's body was comforting, if a little sour. I was reminded of my childhood, sleeping secure in his protective embrace in the big wetus he shared with my mother, all my brothers sprawled around us, warm and safe in their sleeping furs. I was the youngest after Vooran was taken by the speartooth and father often pulled me into his arms to sleep when I was small, Mother beside us, her soft breaths feathering my cheek. My brothers teased me about it, calling me Little Baby Gon, but it was worth the harassment. I never slept so soundly as in my father’s arms.
My father turned over, smacking his lips and muttering in his sleep. He resumed his snoring a moment later, hands folded on his protuberant belly, his features settled into their own flabby crenellations.
I lay there beside him, looking at his wizened face in the firelight with its big wild frizz of hair and beard, quietly loving him and dreading the day I would have him no longer. I watched him until my eyes closed in sleep.
I did not dream that night, not that I am aware of.
I came sharply awake after some indefinite time of dreamless slumber.
A blood-chilling shriek spiraled into the star-speckled sky.
It was like nothing I had heard in my lifetime. Alien and shrill, the scream drove a blade of ice into my heart. I sat bolt upright
, eyes flashing wide in the dark, and fumbled for the handle of my knife. A cry of fear had leapt from my lips before I could catch it back.
There were Fat Hands and Fast Feet stumbling all around me, some of them mewling in terror, others bellowing for us to rise up, rise up and fight! Someone stumbled into the fire and sent bright orange sparks swirling into the night sky. Confusion in all quarters. We were under attack! But by whom? Or what?
“Yeeeeeee-aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!”
My father lurched to his feet, cursing profusely. I rose in a crouch beside him, staring vainly into the darkness that encircled our camp. The moon had passed beyond the mountains while I slept and the world around us was pitch dark and evil. I found my spear and put my knife in my teeth so that I could brandish the larger weapon with both hands.
“Aaaaiiiiieeeeeeeee!”
The shrill screech made my skin pebble into goosebumps. My balls had shriveled to a walnut.
“Father?”
“Steady,” my father said to me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Be calm, Gon.”
“Demon!” a Fat Hand cried.
“There! There!”
I wheeled around and saw a human-like shape flit in and out of the firelight, just at the edge of its dim orange glow. It was too fast and too deep in the shadows to make out any detail but it was definitely man-shaped. I heard it bound through the grass, even over the tumult of our party. I followed its movement with my ears, heart pounding in my chest, mouth dry with fear. My muscles were twitching and jerking as if there were tiny earthquakes going off inside my body.
Our hunting party had encircled the campfire, facing outwards-- an instinctive formation. Our shadows capered across the ground like evil spirits as the flames leapt and twisted within our defensive circle.
The Oldest Living Vampire Tells All: Revised and Expanded (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 1) Page 7
