by Ginn Hale
John closed his eyes. He was so tired. He felt the thermos slip from his hands and then the brush of Laurie’s bony fingers as she caught it.
“Don’t go back to sleep, Toffee. Stay awake for a little while, okay?” Laurie shook him gently.
John forced his eyes open again.
“How did I get back here?” John asked.
“You ask that every time you wake up,” Laurie said.
“You just staggered out of the middle of that fucking blizzard, like a big, old abominable snowman,” Bill said. “That was three days ago. Maybe four. I lost track of time when it was really blowing out there. It could have been day or night.”
“We thought you were going to die. You were like ice.” Laurie’s eyes suddenly misted, and she pressed her lips tightly closed.
“I’m fine,” he assured her. He would have said it even if he were missing his legs just to keep her from crying.
“Yeah,” Laurie forced a smile, “but you look like shit.”
“You just said that I looked better.”
Laurie didn’t say anything. She just reached behind him and pulled the blanket up around his shoulders.
“You looked worse than shit before.” Bill scowled at the radio. Slowly, he turned the dial through frequency after frequency of static and then switched it off. He stood as much as the low ceiling allowed and walked over to John with the radio.
“I don’t want to sound gay or anything, ‘cause, you know, that’s your bag, but I’m really glad you’re not dead, man.” Bill sat down next to him.
“Thanks, Bill... I think.”
“Anytime.” Bill gazed at the radio. “You know, I can’t really remember how that stupid radio commercial for the Beer Barn went. In a really retarded way, I kind of miss it. You’d think I’d miss something else, you know, like NPR news or the college radio station.”
John tried to think back, but his mind was still fuzzy from the cold. There had been some little sound effect in the jingle, he recalled.
“It went, ‘Beer Barn! Beer by the bucket!’” Laurie sang. “‘Beer Barn! Everyone else can—’ and then there was that angry ‘moo’ over the words, ‘fuck it.’”
“Yeah, I miss the beer-cow’s moo,” Bill said, then amended. “Maybe I just miss beer.”
“I think we all miss beer. I could certainly use one now.” John’s voice still sounded dry and raspy.
“Forget about boring old beer. Now we’ve got exciting weasel broth, made with real weasel!” Bill gestured toward the thermos. “It’s warm and weasel-licious.”
“You make it sound too good to resist,” John replied flatly.
He was beginning to feel a little more alive. It didn’t take all of his concentration just to stay awake. He lifted the thermos to his mouth. The steamy scent drifted up to him. The smell of meat, he thought.
Suddenly the clear image of bound bodies writhing in flames rushed up to him, unbidden. With it came the rich smell of roasting flesh and the sound of shrieks muted beneath bundles of oil-soaked rags and the sight of shadows dancing and jerking across the white snow as the flames crawled over them.
Nausea washed through him as he caught a second whiff of the broth. He passed the thermos back to Laurie.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Are you gonna hurl?” Bill pawed desperately around for some kind of receptacle.
John swallowed back the bile in his throat. “No, I’m fine. I just...” He felt so sick just thinking about it. He pressed his eyes closed, desperate to push the memory back. He needed it to recede into the mundane recollections of trudging through snow, setting traps, watching the northern horizon for storm clouds. But now that he’d remembered the images, the smells and sounds wouldn’t leave him.
“Toffee?” Laurie’s voice rose sharply in alarm. Her hand gripped his shoulder too tightly.
“What’s wrong?” Bill sounded scared.
He couldn’t fall apart on them. They needed him to pull himself together. He was the one who always kept it together.
He said, “I’m all right. I was just a little woozy for a minute.”
“Do you want some more broth?” Laurie started to lift the thermos, but John pushed it gently back.
“Not right this minute. I need to tell you guys about what I saw. Before I got caught in the storm, I was following the tracks of a man.”
“A man? You mean another human being?” Laurie hadn’t looked so excited since they had both been in the third grade, when she had genuinely believed she would receive a pony for her birthday.
“Who was it?” Bill asked. A tiny flush colored his pale cheeks.
“I don’t know. I just found tracks.”
“But they were human, right? It was a person?” Laurie asked.
“Yes,” John said. “It looked like he just dropped out of nowhere like we did, but he seemed to know where he was. He went straight north, no wandering or circling.”
“Oh God, he might know what’s going on, or how to get out of here, or... I don’t even know. I’m so excited! ” Laurie grinned.
“And you followed him, right?” Bill watched John carefully, as if he suspected that this was not good news.
“I followed him for most of the day, north, up to a river bank, and then west.” John forced his voice to stay even. “I reached a pavestone road. I could see the cobblestones where wheels had plowed aside the snow. The wheel tracks didn’t look like they came from cars. They were more narrow and spaced farther apart.” John knew why he was obsessing on the tracks. He didn’t want to think any further.
“Motorcycle tracks, maybe?” Laurie asked.
“More like a cart.” In John’s mind, cocooned bodies thrashed desperately as flames rolled over and burned through them. The noises they made were muted and deformed by agony. They came out strangely, like the shrieks of birds. Like small animals dying.
“I didn’t look too closely at the tire tracks. I think there were only two.”
“And?” Laurie asked.
Bill said nothing. John met his eyes and in that moment, a message seemed to pass between them. Bill tensed, waiting to hear the rest of the story.
“There were poles along the sides of the road, like flagpoles with chains at the tops.” John couldn’t stand to look at either Laurie’s or Bill’s face. He dropped his gaze down to the packed bark floor of the shelter. “There were people manacled to the chains. They were hanging from their wrists and wrapped up in layers of cloth. Kind of like mummies, I guess. And they were all on fire.”
John couldn’t go on. He could hardly form coherent sentences.
For a moment there was only silence, then Laurie whispered, “Were they—they weren’t alive, were they?”
John nodded.
“Did you try to get them down?” Laurie asked.
“No. I... There was some kind of accelerant in the wrappings. It made the heat intense enough to burn through parts of their bodies before they were dead. Their limbs were dropping off. I couldn’t stop it.”
Laurie stopped asking questions.
“So,” Bill said, after a few more seconds of silence, “I’m thinking we should avoid that area.”
“I think that would be a wise decision.” John straightened. “We should probably try to hide our presence here as best we can.”
“I really thought...” Laurie held the thermos between her hands like it was a captive bird. “I really wanted this whole thing to be something good.”
“I’m sorry,” John told her.
“It’s not your fault. I’m just dumb and flaky, that’s all.” She sniffed and then pushed her stringy hair back from her face. “How do you think we can make ourselves less obvious?”
Having a question to answer made John feel better immediately. It offered him a sense of control and knowledge. He didn’t know where they were, but he could begin to make maps. He didn’t know whose tracks he had followed, but he could make sure that his own tracks were hidden from now on.
After that nigh
t he hunted more carefully. He found himself once again digging down to the cold earth and touching it, growing familiar with it, not just as an amusement, but because he depended on this land now. He needed to know in a breath if the least detail was out of place. If a stranger crouched in the dark stands of trees, or if men lay in waiting behind the drifts of snow, he had to sense their presence before they sensed his.
Their need for fire troubled John the most. Smoke was too easy to spot; its scent carried too well. Bill and Laurie now marched a mile south of the shelter and cooked under the cover of the trees. For each meal, they had to haul the supplies and raw food out and then carry everything back. It was exhausting for Bill, who could hardly breathe, but he didn’t complain. None of them wanted to risk their lives for convenience.
Steadily, the snowdrifts grew wetter, and the air, even at night, turned warmer. John saw changes in Bill and Laurie and even in himself. All their voices had grown quieter, their hair longer and wild. They were often silent, just sitting, listening to sounds in the night outside their shelter. An animal tension infused their motions and gnawed at their sleep.
Whereas Bill had previously been slim, he now seemed wasted. His inability to either run or fight bred a desperate stillness in him. He could crouch against the dark trunk of a tree, small and perfectly motionless, becoming almost invisible.
Laurie’s cheeks were chapped red, and her bone-like hands were marred by cracks and calluses. Her body had lost all traces of femininity. Thin strings of ligament and muscle barely covered the bones of her arms and legs. She had learned to hunt, but still hated to leave Bill alone. She watched over him constantly.
From the looseness of his clothes, John knew that he too had lost weight. The thick meaty feel of his body had been reduced to a hard leanness. Hunger and constant motion had eaten away the soft curves of his cheeks. He had become nearly as angular and weather-beaten as the bare, black trees. His beard was thick and shot through with white.
Recently, as the days had grown longer, he had begun spending more time out alone. He gave Laurie and Bill their privacy and the time to enjoy it, since he could give them little else. And sometimes, when they would curl up close to each other or kiss, John would feel desperately lonely. He preferred to be away at those times.
Always he wanted to return to the spot where he had lost the key and where he had first seen the man’s tracks. Truly, a foolish temptation. He certainly didn’t want to follow any more tracks to another scene of human immolation.
But he wondered if something might not appear there again. Maybe a door back home. So he approached cautiously. He no longer walked straight from one point to another. He circled and kept to the stands of bare trees.
He was still a few dozen yards from the exact spot when he felt a sudden chill and caught a faint odor in the air. Something felt out of place. He remembered having the same sense the day he had come across the shattered yellow stones by the wolf rock.
John crouched down under the cover of the trees and concentrated. He scanned the expanse of white snowdrifts and the four dark patches where trees grew close. Then he heard something—a sound like a whisper. His attention whipped back to the closest drift of snow. He stared at the perfectly white expanse, and, as he did, the faintest gray shadow coalesced in the air. Instantly, it darkened, and a man suddenly appeared, suspended a few feet above the snowdrift, hanging in mid-air.
He knelt, his bare hands held up close to his chest, head bowed as if in prayer. His clothes were uniformly gray and heavy. The cut of his coat reminded John of photos he had seen of soldiers in World War I. He was a young man, maybe still a teenager, but well-built with close-cropped black hair and sharp features.
A second later the man and his shadow crashed together as the man dropped face down into the snow. The man immediately jerked himself upright.
“Jid! Jid korud’an!” The young man’s tone and expression made it obvious that he was cursing. Kicking at the snow bank, he bent down and picked up his knit black cap. He scowled at it as he shook the snow off and then seemed to consider whether it would be warmer to put the damp cap on or leave it off. At last, he pulled it onto his head.
He looked simultaneously miserable and annoyed as he frowned down at the deep imprint where he had fallen. John followed his gaze and noticed the small red spatters of blood. The young man pulled back the coat sleeve on his right arm. John stared at the several narrow rivulets of blood, as well as the red welts that marked the man’s skin. The injuries looked painful, but not deadly.
Seeming to come to the same conclusion, the man pulled his sleeve back down. He then scanned the horizon. When he caught sight of the mountains, his straight stance slumped a little. He curled his arms over his head, while muttering to himself, “Jid. Jid. Li’hir bai’an. Jid.”
His tone, expression, and posture all struck John as the body language of a person who had completely screwed up. John felt a hesitant sympathy for him. If he had been bigger, or armed, then John would have felt too threatened to commiserate, but as he was, the man simply struck him as someone who was having a really bad time.
Then without any warning or reason, he looked at the trees where John crouched. At first he didn’t see John. He just observed the trees with disinterest. Then he sighed and glanced down a little and his gaze met John’s directly. They both stared in silence. The man’s eyes were dark, the pupil and iris almost melting into one. He wore a fixed, startled expression.
Since John’s knife was within easy reach, he waited to see what the man would do.
He glanced around, obviously searching for other men hidden in the stands of trees. When he saw none, he returned his attention to John. Very slowly, he lifted his hands away from his body.
“Vunan.” He spoke very carefully. “Yura’hir li’ati ratim’at’iss.”
He was obviously waiting for a reply. When John said nothing, the man went on, “Li’hir yura’ati ratim’at’ sa?” he asked very clearly, his expression intent.
John knew that he had to respond. He didn’t want to shake his head or nod, since he had no idea what, if anything, those gestures might mean to this man. He guessed that his best bet would be to say something. At least then the man might realize that John didn’t speak his language.
John slowly straightened and lifted his own hands away from his sides.
“Hi.” John found himself mimicking the man’s very clear enunciation. “I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.”
The man gaped at him as if a bird had just flown out of his mouth. It wasn’t an expression of misunderstanding, but of disbelief.
“Ahab...” For a moment, words seemed to fail the man. Then he asked, “How do you know those words?”
John knew he hadn’t misheard. The other man had clearly spoken English. John guessed his own expression was a startled as the young man’s. For a second, John had the terrible idea that he, Laurie, and Bill had just been lost in some isolated corner of Minnesota. But he knew better. They didn’t burn people alive in Minnesota.
“You speak English?” John asked.
The man lifted his head as if in challenge. “I know all of the words. How can you know them?”
“I’m American,” John replied. It was an answer, which, he realized belatedly, assumed a great deal of knowledge on the part of the man: that a majority of Americans spoke English, for example. Or even what America was.
“You are from that place?” the man asked.
“Yes. America. We speak English there.” The conversation wasn’t going as smoothly as John had hoped, but at least they were talking. “Do you know where it is?”
“In the Kingdom of the Night, beneath the Palace of the Day. With a gold key, through a gold doorway.” The man watched John’s face closely as he spoke, as if he were uttering some kind of secret code.
“I have no idea what you mean by that.” John decided to just be honest.
The man scowled.
“If you are from that place, then
say what lies beside it,” he said.
“Beside it? You mean its borders?”
The man nodded, and John took it for an affirmative.
“The Atlantic Ocean to the east; Pacific Ocean to the west; Canada, north; Mexico, south. Is that what you mean?” John asked.
“Atlantic, Pacific, Canada, Mexico.” He recited the names and nodded his head. At last he asked, with great incredulity, “How can you be here?”
“I don’t know. I just am.” John didn’t even consider attempting to explain. “Do you know how I could get back?”
The man shook his head. During the course of the conversation, his arms had slowly lowered back down to his sides. He took a few steps closer and John decided that he could afford to meet his new companion halfway. He was bigger, and he wasn’t already injured. The odds favored him.
Up close, John could smell the wet wool of the man’s coat. John guessed that he himself smelled much worse.
“Only the Holy Gateway can link the worlds,” the man said, “and only Kahlil’im can cross it.”
“Kahlil’im?” John was pretty sure that the Holy Gateway had to be something like the yellow ruin he, Laurie, and Bill had found in the mountains. “Who’s Kahlil’im?”
“Maybe me. Others are training in Rathal’pesha hel vun’im’ati lafti’ya pom’an.” The man didn’t seem to notice that he had slipped out of English.
“I didn’t really understand all of that. You were speaking... What’s your language called?”
“Basawar. The world and the word are one.” The man smiled as he said this. He had a nice smile, the kind that New York advertising agencies would have loved to plaster all over cereal boxes.
“Yura’hir—” The man caught himself this time. “I’m sorry. I only speak these words in training. It’s hard to remember.”
“You’re doing better than I would.” John shifted uncomfortably. His feet were starting to get cold.
“You were saying that you are Kahlil’im?” John reminded him.
“I may be. Someday.” The man frowned at the crushed snowdrift where he had fallen. “I still must learn how to make myself go where I should and not to bleed so much.” He touched his right forearm.
