He comes upon a narrow stream that runs inland from the river. Rather than ford it Niko follows it. Soon a forest lines the rivulet banks. The smaller trees bear pale yellow fruit the size of softballs. Beneath the trees are knots of obese damned so gravid that they cannot lift themselves enough to pluck the fruit their starfish hands strain toward like massive babies blindly groping toward a toy. They look halfmelted and drowning in themselves, blubber spreading in a doughy mass and features buried under wrinkles like bleached Shar-pei dogs laboring to breathe, their gender blurred to indistinction and imprisoned in their convoluted flesh.
Four demons lounge around the base of one spreading tree, playing cards and eating fruit. They laugh and shout insults at each other and shuffle and deal. One says I knock and raps the ground in front of him with his sharp knuckles. Without looking he lobs the slim core of a gnawed apple over his winged shoulder. The sessile damned are groping for the scrap before it has stopped moving. The lucky winner is the one who rolls a few inches to one side and feebly grasps the core in his chubby fingers and brings it to his gaping mouth to chew and swallow mindlessly, seeds and stem and all.
In a moment three of the demons groan and complain and pitch their cards to the grinning dealer who then shuffles for another round. One demon gets up grumbling and idly hooks his trident in a branch and jerks it up and down. Heavy ripe fruit thumps down around the rotund dead who strive to gorge themselves upon it. The demons break off their game to watch the obscene feeding. They nudge one another and chortle and point out favorites and place bets.
One of the obese gluttons lets forth an awful highpitched keening and begins to rock like a dinghy on a choppy sea. His enormous belly shudders and convulses and heaves and his jaws work and his eyes are terrified and agonized as they look out from their fleshy pits. From deep within this struggle of bloat comes a mild purring terrible to hear. One demon whoops and shouts and slaps the shoulder of the one beside him as the purring enloudens and becomes a rip on the fat man’s belly that spreads across his massive floundering gut as if he’s being disemboweled by an invisible assailant. The curved rip widens and reddens like a smile and the smile vomits an engorged stomach and stuffed-sausage intestine and bile. The body wheezes but it cannot scream because its diaphragm is torn in two. The wound’s lips flap with a thick fart of venting gas. The corpulent explosion grips great handfuls of its own ruined guts and stuffs them in its mouth and chews and swallows and spews them out again from its exposed digestive system only to grab and swallow them again. Around the gluttonous display recycling itself the other swollen dead grab whatever of the spilled sweetbreads they can hoist into their engorged selves.
The happy demon does a little dance and tells the others to pay up. Niko hurries on into the woods.
NAKED BODIES SHACKLED hand and foot against the boles of fledgling trees of some lost species never named. Many of the dead seem barely inconvenienced by their long confinement as they talk casually among themselves. Others are stretched taut and lengthened over the course of many years as the trees to which they’re bound have grown and slowly pulled apart their chained and moaning decorations in the agonizing grip of the slowest imaginable rack. Manacles on taller trees hold only stumps of tornoff limbs.
Demons with tackhammers and awls patiently transcribe entire narratives onto the trunks of certain trees. The bark shudders at every stroke and Niko sees that these trees have an eerily human shape. As if long ago the seeds of human beings were planted and grew elongate and distorted. Some bear fruit that demons pluck and eat to conjure muffled sobs from deep within the rooted flesh.
Demons with enormous axes chop at other trees that exude blood instead of sap. Scabbed stumps sprout limb saplings born again from parent trunks. From the deeper forest comes a hornet whine of chainsaws, a grating keen of buzzsaws, a chortle of woodchippers, pounding of hammers, intermittent chopping. The vibrant tone of human wood filed down to powder.
Several times Niko glimpses odd apparitions. Waisthigh Boschlike naked chicken creatures mostly leg and running blindly through the woods. He can’t figure out what they are until one such strange and awkward thing slams against a tree and falls back kicking and convulsing to regain its footing. Against his better judgement Niko goes to help the flopping thing only to pull up short in utter horror at the realization that the creature is a human being. A woman rendered unrecognizable as such because her spine has been snapped and bent double and her entire head shoved up her ass. The flailing arms find purchase on the ground and hoist the contorted body upright. The extruding pelvic bones and lower back are cut and bruised and scabbed and swollen where she has sprinted into trees.
The woman scampers off like some kind of maimed blind spider. Niko does not follow.
THE SOUND OF powertools flaying wood grows louder as Niko presses on and soon emerges from the peopled wood and stops before an appalling sight. Ahead on the denuded plain thousands of demons work the living lumber and drive teams of shackled damned to chainhaul soul-encasing logs to a low enormous building, itself made of timber rough and doubtless conscious. The logs go into one end of the building and emerge from the other as eightfoot lengths of finished four by fours. The air smells heavily of sap and blood, sawdust and rotting meat. The building is both slaughterhouse and lumber mill. A slaughtermill.
A wooden platform runs the slaughtermill’s length, and beside the platform runs a railroad track emerging from the thinning forest on Niko’s right. A signal at the platform’s end glows steady green. An odd jewel of color in this monochromatic red.
The railroad signal’s green turns flashing red, a color nearly white in the ochre light. Niko feels the rumble grow until its thunder fills the world. A great sculpted black iron locomotive howls braking from the wood of the gluttons with a sound like a nation of fingernails clawed across a vast clean chalkboard plain. The locomotive’s front is shaped like a frenzied gargoyle head with a great maw gaping to devour whatever lies before its bound life screaming on the rails. Its behemoth breathing carries across the clearing as it bellows to a stop beside the platform. A load of naked dead disgorges like fleas abandoning a corpse, to be rounded up and herded along by whiphanded demons who direct them to piles of finished beams. The dead are made to pick up two beams each and drag them along a twinrutted trail etched deep into the plain by centuries of just such wooden beams dragged likewise. Niko feels dread certainty about their fate as his gaze follows the rutted path into the distance where inverted phonepole crosses crowd the flat horizon.
The train bleeds forth a ragged thousand of the damned, then winged demons search the cars for those who cower fearful in the dark. What wretched bodies they prise forth are carried struggling high into the weighty air like baggage. The demons chortle and cavort and dogfight one another, playing chicken and making diving airplane noises as they bash the bodies against each other in the raven air. When they tire of this the demons dive toward the gaping head of the locomotive and feed the limp pulped bodies to the waiting train like offerings to some allconsuming god of industry. The venting engine steam turns bloodred like the spout of a mortally harpooned whale.
Soon the train is thrumming again, a neverending growl like some entropic engine of the night unraveling the fabric of nature itself. Niko feels the locomotive’s urge to tear along the track and devour all that lies along its fated way. The boiler builds up its head and begins a labored breathing. Slaved wheels spin to grate sparks from the rails beneath. Demons scatter powdered bone onto the rails. The wheels gain traction and grind on. The angry god of locomotive shudders and convulses waking. Boxcars jerk into motion as the gaping metal maw once more eats up the neverending miles.
Niko is up and running before he is aware of what he’s doing. Running awkward with the guitar case in hand and free fist pumping. Running toward the leaving train and watching thick red smoke vent from the locomotive straining deeper into Hell. The demons on the nearby platform have their whip hands full with this new trainload of tormentee
s but Niko clothed and carrying a guitar case and running fullout is bound to attract attention.
And he does. A demon looks up from lashing a sobbing girl’s naked bleeding back and sees Niko making for the rear of the train and frowns. He cracks his whip about him to clear a space and gets a running start and spreads his leather wings and takes to the irontainted air.
Niko veers more sharply toward the train. He glances over his shoulder at the demon on the wing. It’s going to be close. At the last moment he cuts left to run in the direction the train is going. The train has picked up speed and sobs along faster than Niko can run with the guitar case. Only a few feet now. A freightcar with an open doorway glides into view. Niko throws caution to the winds and his case into the door. The case bangs the edge and spins into the deeper darkness of the car. Niko jumps in after it. His shins bark the boxcar’s edge and he pitches forward and his arms and chest slam the filthcaked wooden floor. His hands scrabble and slide and catch. His body cants toward the spinning metal wheels that want to mill him into pulp.
Something thuds onto the boxcar just above him. Niko looks up and sees the demon clinging to the side of the train like a browneyed bat. Its arms are tapering tendrils, leathery whips coiled around freightcar handles and protrusions Niko could never reach.
Niko glances frantically. Metal walls, the freightcar’s dark interior, the edge of the opened door.
The demon grins and draws a tendril idly back and flicks it forward. The serrated tip brushes Niko’s forearm and the searing pain makes his arm jerk free. He flails, he hits the door edge, he catches it. Bearing Niko’s weight the freightcar door is sliding shut. His ribcage scrapes along the bottom edge of the car. The ground rolls by just beneath him like a giant sanding belt. Niko fights to get a leg up without losing his grip.
The demon’s tendril wraps above the doorway and the demon swings over Niko’s head and into the dark car. He wraps his wings around himself and watches mutely from deep within, shadows shrouding his indifferent face as Niko struggles for his life beneath him. Niko glares pure hate into the demon’s face. The son of a bitch just stands there. The train rocks and Niko’s legs fly out and his hand slips off the freightcar door. The demon’s tendril whistles through the air and wraps his wrist. Niko’s hiking shoes scud ground and then the demon leans back and lands him like a largemouth bass. Niko convulses gasping there beside his scarred guitar case on the filthy freightcar floor. The wind knocked from him by his fall. His wrist seared where the living whip has branded it.
The demon sets serpentine limbs against the clattering door and slides it shut. Now the car is dark and the air is close. The clanking chaos of the train drowns Niko’s wheezing struggle to regain his breath. When he can speak again he addresses the darkness. “Why. Did you help me? Who. Are you?”
And the darkness replies in a familiar voice. “What’s the matter, buddy pal? Don’t you recognize me?”
Niko stares and feels an awful deepdown recognition grow.
Familiar laughter in the closed and rocking space. “After all the years we spent together.” Niko’s heard thousands of recordings of himself. Enough to recognize his own voice replying from the shadows.
“Here.” Snap of leather, and a supple tendril bearing a jaundiced yellow light the color of a failing flashlight moves between the two figures in the boxcar, one supine and the other kneeling, to render in Rembrandt chiaroscuro a funhouse visage floating disembodied in the dark. “Better now?”
Niko takes in deepset eyes reflecting steady cold light, a broad brow, thickbristled eyebrows, mottled brown hide, wide face and prominent jaw, large nose, broad cheekbones and gaunt cheeks. Twisted and contorted, sinister and mutilated, the demon’s face still recognizable as his own.
“You’re me?”
In the sepia light the full lips curve in a lopsided grin. “Close but no cigar,” says Niko’s voice from this thing’s mouth. “I’m your demon.”
HOT WIND FLUTTERS Niko’s tattered coat as the boxcar clatters deeper into Hell to carry its divided load along its destined route. The walls and floor are slimed with human filth, the stench is overwhelming. For once he’s thankful for the dimness.
Near one wall the demon sits crosslegged like a huge statue of Niko carved into a gargoyle, swaying languidly with the boxcar’s rocking, not resting against the wall because of his wings but hunched forward with mottled tendrils hugging pointy knees and waiting silently for Niko to absorb this latest development and looking all the more horrifying in his sure familiarity.
The strange thing is that Niko doesn’t need much explanation. The creature before him looks exactly like the demon he has always pictured, the supple critic and whispering adviser who for so long lived within his mind. Urging him Have another drink. Admonishing him Don’t let her tell you what to do. The self aggrandizing voice that exhorted him to put his own needs first, then told him what a selfish prick he was. The voice that on a rooftop whispered Jump. Here is the demon he has wrestled all his life. The enemy he has come to protect because he believes that to exorcise it is to tamper with the engine that drives his art. The imagined creature manifest and sitting across from him in a filthy boxcar on a rocking Hellbound train. And the face it wears is Niko’s own.
The desecrated face smiles as Niko begins to understand. The ruined head nods. Acknowledging his acceptance. Their tacit communion.
Niko snorts and ducks his head. His demon grins.
Niko looks up at him again and nods back. His demon laughs and nods back. Niko laughs too, finally, with the finality of understanding. What else is there to say? They’re twins after all, however out of true the likeness. The moment hangs unspoken in the boxcar air.
Soon they quiet down and listen to the locomotive’s soulhulling horn whistling in the dark while it ferries its load of misery and pain farther into the territory of despair. A cargo seeking mercy from creatures without conscience. Finally Niko nods again as if the iron language of the train has spoken to him in a primitive and private tongue and he regards the demon, his demon, sitting patiently before him.
“You’re taller than I imagined.”
His demon laughs and Niko follows. The train screams boastful oblivion. Many miles away, mulchosaurs glance up from their gutstrewn prey and scream replies to the iron challenge shrieked across the tortured air beneath the world.
From the folds of its wings Niko’s demon produces a bottle. Sealed cap, white letters on black label. “I believe you dropped this.” He leans forward and holds the bottle out.
Niko takes the whiskey from him. “I believe you’re right,” he says, and breaks the longshut seal.
A HUNGRY TRAIN howls down the gloom and feeds its pace by eating souls on rails set in the poisoned land like stitches in a rotting wound while Niko takes the offered drink and smoky liquid floods a tunnel decades dry. His demon nods approval as the man drinks from the bottle and the trainhorn blows an aching note as his charge on a Hellfound train falls off the wagon like an ousted angel.
Down the hatch the demon says in Niko’s voice.
Lookin at ya Niko toasts. He holds the whiskey in his mouth expecting that his throat will clamp and when it doesn’t lets the liquor trickle down his throat and waits. No pounding skull no clenching gut no breaking sweat. A faint but not unpleasant burn of smoky liquid in his mouth.
He swallows. His eyes tear up, his face turns red, he feels he’s going to sneeze. But it has always felt like this or worse.
“Like falling off a bike,” his demon says.
“Or a wagon.” He lifts the bottle one more time but hesitates.
“Go ahead. The second stroke won’t make you more unfaithful than the first.”
But Niko bangs the bottle on the rocking floor and watches amber liquid sloshing with the freightcar’s motion. “So,” he tells the bottle. “You’re back.”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of. What’s that mean?”
“I’m back but not the way you think.”
&n
bsp; “No shit, Sherlock. Now if I want to wrestle you I can do it with my hands.”
His demon’s smile grows fond. “Not what I meant, bud.”
“Don’t call me that.” Niko grabs the bottle up and takes that second swig and does not see his demon’s look of undiluted pleasure.
“Let me deal you some cards here, buddy pal. One, a cute little succubus clamped onto your leg like a horny little poodle dog. Two, a toasty fire inside a comfy little igloo. Three, two lovenotes in your own crappy handwriting, Exhibit A sealed in a bottle of Tennessee’s finest, Exhibit B delivered via Greek Express.”
“You wrote the notes.”
“No shit, Sherlock. And built the igloo. And made the fire. And knocked that little sucker off your leg.”
“But why.”
A helpless shrug. The ravaged face wears something sad and tender now. The demon wraps his wings about him as if cold and now it’s his turn to stare bleakly at the whiskey bottle. “Because, you poor fuckedup loser,” he tells the bottle, “I love you.”
PITCHFORKED DEMONS STOKE the famished engine with a coke of anguished souls. Niko in the stifling boxcar feels the old familiar fuse burn in his belly and he looks away from his own demon swaying with the boxcar’s languid motion. He senses the demon’s embarrassment and feels embarrassed for him.
“It’s an occupational hazard,” his demon says. “Sometimes we get a little too fond of the thing we’re decimating.”
Niko slides his guitar case between himself and his demon.
“See, I’m part of you. Which means I’m also partly you. Mostly you never needed me. Did you know that? Mortals often don’t. You undo yourselves just fine without us. But sometimes you flog yourselves right up to the brink and then just stand there wavering. That’s where we come in.” He mimes a little push with S-shaped tendrils.
Niko undoes the catches and raises the lid and stares into the case like a man at the funeral of an old lover. He takes another swig of booze. Three old friends getting reacquainted on a train. Can I have a hallelujah.
Mortality Bridge Page 24
