Blood Fugue

by D'Lacey, Joseph

  Somewhere farther up the trail in the direction they’d been heading, there was movement. Stealthy steps advanced towards him in the darkness, the caress of clothing-covered legs brushing against each other made a gentle sound like breathing. In just a few seconds his body went into overdrive. His breathing was rapid and high in his chest and he was certain the noise of it would give him away.

  Attempting to make no sound, he crept back to his mother.

  He felt the springy fabric of his sleeping bag beneath the sole of his boot and crouched down to be as near as he could to his mother before he spoke. In less than a whisper he said:

  ‘Mama, someone is coming.’

  ‘Luis, I can hear someone on this side too.’

  Blind, he reached out his hand towards her and was relieved to find her reaching for him. Her grip on him was fierce and clinging. Every muscle in his body clenched as they waited; praying whoever it was would either stop and help them or pass by into the night forever.

  Luis heard nothing from the direction in which they’d come and he wondered if his mother’s hearing was as unreliable as her eyesight. From the place where he had started to pee he heard the noises approaching.

  When the quiet footsteps were right beside them they stopped. Luis held his breath. Further away, all noise ceased. For an excruciating moment, there was utter silence in the forest. And yet the darkness around them was thick with intelligence and threat. Luis could sense it and so could his mother. Luis lost control of his bladder releasing what he’d retained only moments before. He thanked god it didn’t make any noise. The warm, shameful wetness spread from his underwear into his trousers, along his thighs and downward towards his bottom. He bit his lip to stop himself from crying but he knew that in a few more seconds he would whimper and give himself away.

  As his piss turned cold against his skin a male voice, so close it seemed to be in his head, said:

  ‘That’s a waste of fluid. What’s wrong with you, boy?’ Then the voice took on a shrill, offended tone. ‘They’re protected, sheriff. What do we do?’

  Footsteps, no longer stealthy approached. Luis felt the chill of blunt steel against the centre of his forehead and a loud metallic click.

  ‘Take those goddamned dream-catchers off right now or I give this kid a third eye. He’ll be able to see God right through the hole.’

  Luis didn’t need any more encouragement. He used his free hand to remove the necklace. Maria did the same.

  ‘Toss them into the trees behind you.’

  They did as the voice said and heard the gentle release as the man with the pistol let the hammer rest gently back against the firing pin.

  Luis was half way through breathing a sigh of relief when a cold hand closed around his throat and lifted him to his feet. The hand then lifted him off the ground, the force pulling Maria upright too.

  ‘Sure is a bonus to find some extras,’ said the first voice.

  ‘Put him down you filthy son of a diseased whore,’ Maria said into the darkness.

  Luis, unable to breathe, let alone speak, through his clamped windpipe was proud of his mother’s fierceness and amazed at her use of English curses. Tears pricked his eyes at her bravery. Still she clung to him. He felt more bodies close in. Hands reached for her, dragging her away, and Luis held on for as long as he could.

  From the blackness a beam of yellow brightness split the night, illuminating the grotesque band of stalkers. Luis had had no idea there could be so many of them. As he ran out of air he thought he counted ten or more. The light settled on the face of a man in a sheriff’s uniform, appearing to blind him.

  Luis assumed the sound he heard next was that of the angels singing as they came to collect him, so mellifluous was its tone. An instant later there was a flash of purple lightning beside him and the hand holding him released. He and his captor fell to the ground, Luis into a starry half-awareness.

  ‘All of you back away,’ said the holder of the flashlight, the one who had thrown the binder.

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Yes. Come to me. Both of you.’

  José stepped forward so that he blocked them from the sheriff’s line of fire. If the sheriff was the only one with a gun, he had to incapacitate him before he began firing into the light. He crouched to make a smaller target of himself and loosed another binder.

  Its melody was the most heartening sound he’d ever heard, their sword and shield against the creatures of the valley. The sheriff heard it coming and ducked. The binder’s song finished in the brush between the trees. He only had two left and the one he was wearing. He aimed his flashlight right at the sheriff’s body and pulled his arm back to try again. A startled cry came from behind him before he let it fly and he turned to see a man he half recognised dragging Maria away from him.

  ‘Let her go!’ he screamed at the man who had taken her. The man didn’t listen. José snapped the binder at him but his aim was way off. The binder whistled briefly and connected with a tree somewhere out of sight. José watched Maria’s eyes widen with terror as she tried to tear the man’s grip from her. A moment later, something encircled Luis’s neck and dragged him too into the darkness. José flung his last binder in the direction of the thing that had taken his son. There was no contact. Figures closed in from every side and José Jimenez collapsed to his knees with his hands reaching into the darkness.

  ‘GIVE THEM BACK TO ME.’

  The arbour was as silent as when Kerrigan had left it in search of Carla. He planned to skirt the edge of it and head out towards the Eastern path the way they’d all come in. There was no breeze there in the thick of the forest but, as he and Carla ran along the border of the arbour, a rustling began again in the leaves of the tree.

  Kerrigan stopped to listen and the sound became louder. It was like a crowd of people whispering in expectation. The whispers conspired around them and the volume increased steadily. The leaves sounded excited, full of anticipation. He checked for movement in the trees behind and prepared for an attack.

  It never came. At least, not then. Instead he saw two figures step from another hidden run on the other side of the arbour.

  ‘Get down,’ he said to Carla and they both crouched, backing themselves into the thick tangle of brush and weed surrounding the arbour.

  The figures stopped when they were clear of the woods and stared for a long time at the tree.

  They began a relaxed promenade below the elephantine boughs and as they came a little closer, he saw that they were holding hands; two elderly ladies walking together like two schoolgirls. Above them the branches began to sway and twist and the tree reached its branches down towards the two women.

  It was then that Kerrigan realised he knew them. He hadn’t placed them at first because they were so removed from their usual contexts. Maggie Fredericks never went anywhere except in her car and Kath, his adopted mother — the only mother he’d ever known — could hardly walk around the block. It was impossible that they were here, so deep within the woods. But their footsteps were light and they walked without limps or stumbles or any apparent discomfort at all. They acted as if they were in the prime of their lives.

  He raced forward from his position, screaming to get their attention.

  ‘Kath,’ he shouted, ‘Get away from the tree.’ He waved his arms at her, motioning for her to go back into the forest. ‘Please, Kath. Run now.’

  He saw her look at him then, such a confused and twisted expression in her eyes that it broke his heart. She recognised him, that was plain, and a smile bubbled up with that recognition. But there were new feelings inside her that surfaced too. She looked at him with a thirst and that thirst was tinged with her love for him — a love as genuine as it had always been, now polluted with Fugue. He saw that she wanted to embrace him and feed on him all at once. There was another desire behind it all too, a stronger one suggesting she could not fulfil any of those needs. There was a duty she had to perform more pressing than any of her own desires.

&n
bsp; But the worst thing in those loving eyes of Kath’s was the thing no mother should ever feel in response to a son: fear. She knew he could hurt her, change her. She knew in some part of herself that the change he could make would save her and Kerrigan could see that she did not want to be saved.

  If he could bind her, he knew there was a chance of saving her. He’d brought plenty of wellspring water with him. One shot with a binder and she could make it out of there. That very binder was already in his hand, his finger curled around it ready to launch it but, as with Amy, the tree was reaching for its children. Would it leave Kath here on the arbour floor if she was no longer in Fugue? There was no time left even to question, he had to try.

  It was at that moment Kerrigan heard laughter from behind him and he was iced to his very heart. He’d left Carla unattended for seconds only but the sallow man had been waiting. Perhaps he’d even planned the diversion. Kerrigan hesitated in that last vital second and Kath was gone from the ground. He looked up in time to see her being hoisted by possessive braches into the air and held out, once again, like some kind of protection, the way he might hold out a binder to a Fugue.

  Before he lost all control of the situation, Kerrigan turned and sprinted back to where the sallow man now clutched Carla with his many tongues and one of his long-boned hands.

  ‘I’ve expected so much more from you all these years, foundling. I truly believed you had prepared for this meeting. Now I find you are not worthy of my concern. You are no Fugue Hunter. You are a joke.’

  The words cut him, but Kerrigan let fly a binder before the sallow man had finished his taunts, snapping it from his fingers with a will and force he never achieved in casual training. It soloed like an archangel and it flew true, curving in towards the target at the final moment. Because the sallow man had advanced from Fugue into Rage, the opposition caused by the binder was even greater than usual. There was a thunderous clash as it connected with his long swollen head and a flash of lilac fire that illuminated the entire arbour, searing an imprint onto Kerrigan’s retina. The sallow man collapsed backwards against a pine and let go of Carla who stumbled to Kerrigan, half blinded.

  ‘Are you okay, Carla? Can you see well enough to run?’

  He held her face in his hands. Apart from the shock of the impact she was alert and ready to act. He was about to take her hand and accelerate out of the arbour but she clasped her arms around his neck and pressed her tear-streaked face against his skin. After a couple of seconds in which she embraced him with a kind of desperation, she drew her face away a little and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Behind her the sallow man lay on his back, his tongues and feeding tubes retreating back into him. He’d be unconscious for several hours, but if Kath and Maggie were already Fugues, there was no telling how many others might be wandering the woods. He had to reach the rest of Carla’s family as soon as possible.

  With her wrongful kiss still bruising his lips, Kerrigan took Carla’s hand and they ran from the arbour out towards the Eastern Path. The look that Kath had given him weighed so heavily on Kerrigan, the mere thought of it slowed him down. A few yards into the recently cut trail that led away from the giant tree he heard another sound that laid him even lower. It was the excited barking of a dog back in the arbour. Despite the strange timbre to his woofing, he knew it was Dingbat. A moment later the noise stopped and Kerrigan chewed back on his rising emotions.

  Long before they reached the Eastern path, the night laid its purple velvet blanket down over the valley and smothered it in black.

  Kerrigan pushed the pace. He held Carla’s hand to keep her close. He took a guilty comfort in the warmth of her skin. Twice when she stumbled in the darkness he caught her and helped her regain her footing.

  As they emerged onto the Eastern path she broke the silence.

  ‘You can see where we’re going, can’t you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly how but I know I’ve always been able to do it when I needed to.’

  ‘I’ve seen you throw those —’

  ‘Binders.’

  ‘Right, binders. What else can you do?’

  ‘They’re not circus tricks, Carla.’

  ‘I know that. I’m just interested. No, I’m fascinated.’

  Where was the harm in telling her a little about himself now? He’d never discussed it with anyone; he wanted to let it out.

  ‘Things just happen, it’s like an instinct. I have no idea what I’m capable of most of the time. But I’ve been doing it all my life. Ever since I was an infant.’

  ‘What do you call it?’

  ‘The only word I know for it is Lethe.’

  ‘What do you call those creatures? What do you call that old man out there?’

  ‘They’re Fugues. He was once a Lethe like me, but he’s turned now. When they’re threatened or hungry they go up a gear, like he did. That’s called Rage.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘I wish I had. But binders don’t kill them. They paralyse or stun them for a while. Usually, when they’re in that state, I can heal them.’

  ‘It’s a sickness, this Fugue?’

  ‘That’s right. The disease has been in this valley for centuries, maybe since before people came here.’

  Carla increased her pace until she was alongside him. She held his hand a little tighter. In the darkness, Kerrigan saw her looking at him, even though she couldn’t see him. There was a look of awe on her face. While he enjoyed the attention, he wasn’t worthy of it. How many people had he lost to the Fugue since he’d left his cabin? Too many to deal with?

  He sighed.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Carla.

  ‘Nothing.’

  There was silence between them for a while but she stayed beside him. His guilt told him he should let go of her hand, but he knew if he did she would trip or crash into something. The other part of him, the part that wanted her in spite of how wrong it was, delighted in that simple touch.

  ‘You’re like them, aren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ he tried to laugh the suggestion away but she persisted.

  ‘There’s something about you that reminds me of the ones I’ve seen.’

  He dropped the pace and turned to her.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘It’s in the way they move, the way they talk. It’s like they’ve forgotten what it was they were supposed to be doing. When we met you, you had that same kind of distracted way about you. Do you know you hunt them when you’re not actually doing it?’

  Kerrigan drew a deep breath and shook his head in the darkness, but she didn’t see the gesture.

  ‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘No one remembers anything afterwards. Most of the time I’m a reclusive writer of magazine articles with a crushing fear of the dark. When I turn hunter, I have no other life. And nothing scares me. Well, almost nothing.’

  Carla looked up at his face again. Somehow in all that blackness she managed to fix her gaze right on his eyes. For Kerrigan it was like looking into the eyes of a blind girl.

  ‘I trust you, Jimmy Kerrigan,’ she said.

  He was about to tell her not to be so free with her trust when he sensed a presence on the trail. He couldn’t believe the sallow man had caught up with them so quickly. He put his hand over her mouth as gently as he could and moved her to the edge of the path.

  ‘There’s someone out here with us,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t say another word and don’t move.’

  He stepped back into the path and stared into the night. Far along the Eastern path he saw them, a band of twenty or more Fugues coming their way at a run. Among them he saw faces of people he knew from Hobson’s Valley and he covered his mouth to keep from crying out in shock. The rest of Carla’s family ran with them, a look of wild hunger in their eyes.

  There were more Fugues than he had binders for, more than
he could deal with on his own. He had failed them all. The people of the town and the whole Jimenez family. He had let himself be distracted; ignored a worsening situation for far too long.

  He crouched down beside Carla who had curled into a ball and was hugging her knees beside the path.

  ‘There’s too many of them,’ he whispered. ‘We have to go back.’

  ‘No, Jimmy. What about Luis? What about mama and papa?’

  There it was; the voice of the little girl, so much a part of the woman she was trying to become.

  ‘Maybe they already got through.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘Listen to me, Carla, if we don’t go back, no one stands a chance. Not us, not your family, not the town.’

  He didn’t give her the chance to respond. He hauled her to her feet and started running back towards the trail that led to the arbour. She dragged her feet this time; all enthusiasm, all hero-worship gone. In the end he picked her up and ran with her in his arms.

  A hundred yards beyond the opening of the newly broken arbour trail, Kerrigan stopped and put Carla down. Crouching, near the edge of the trail they waited for the Fugues to make up the distance. As he’d suspected they would, they turned and entered the recently re-broken trail one by one until they were gone from view.

  Carla was crying beside him, her face pressed into her hands.

  ‘They didn’t make it back to the car, did they?’ she sobbed.

  ‘Carla, for God’s sake keep your voice down.’

  ‘How many of those things were there?’

  ‘It was a large group,’ he said, not able to look at her.

  ‘They were all on this trail together. There’s no way they could have made it past so many Fugues, is there?’

  ‘They had the binders I gave them. Maybe the Fugues didn’t come along this trail. Those two we saw at the arbour came right through the woods.’

  Carla shook her head and looked into the darkness. He knew she couldn’t see a single thing, not even his hand in front of her face if he’d wanted to put her to the test. Still the look in her eyes was a distant one.