Fire Spirit (22 page)

‘You want to give me one good reason why I should, when there's everything in it for me?'

‘Please,' said Nadine, and now the tears were running down her cheeks and she couldn't stop herself from breathing in deep, panicky sobs. ‘What have I ever done to you? Tell me, and I'll do it!'

‘Oh, you'll do it all right,' the laughing man reassured her. ‘Not only that, but a few other things you probably never heard of. Now, which is your favorite horse here?'

She couldn't stop herself from glancing across at the expressionless man. As soon as he saw that she was looking at him, he drew his kitchen knife slowly across Maggie May's throat, not deep enough to sever an artery, but enough to start blood sliding down to her shoulders, as if a shiny red scarf had been tied around her neck.

‘
Don't hurt her
!' Nadine cried out. ‘Please – whatever you want me to do, I'll do it! But don't hurt her any more!'

‘I'm only asking you which is your favorite horse.'

‘I can't tell you. These are working horses, not pets. I don't have any favorites.'

‘Oh, come on, you must have a favorite. How about this one here?' He peered at the nameplate over the top of the stall. ‘Bronze Star. That's a fine-looking animal, isn't it? Shiny as a salesman's shoes. And that's a fine-looking pecker he's got there, doesn't he just! Almost as big as mine, when I'm feeling in the mood for it!'

‘I told you, I don't have any favorites,' Nadine repeated. She was terrified that if she revealed her feelings for Bronze Star, they would hurt him badly, or kill him.

‘Still and all, he's a good-looking animal, ain't he?' said the laughing man. ‘We could start with him, and work our way around the stables, until we find the horse you like the best.'

He beckoned to the expressionless man, who let go of Maggie May's mane and came across the stable to Bronze Star's stall. Bronze Star snorted and kicked as he approached, but the expressionless man stood in front of his stall, pointed his finger at him and said, ‘Listen, horse! You're going to stop fretting now, you got me? You're going to quiet down and stay that way.'

Bronze Star whinnied again and rolled his eyes, but the expressionless man continued to point at him, as if he were a disobedient child, and after a while he stopped kicking and scuffing at the floor of his stall and stood completely still, with his head lowered. The expressionless man opened the door of his stall and stepped inside.

Nadine looked at the laughing man in alarm and bewilderment. She had never seen anybody who could pacify Bronze Star like that. Even experienced horse-wranglers usually had to whisper to him and cajole him and pat him and get him used to their smell.

‘My friend, he has a real way with horses,' said the laughing man. ‘Dogs, too, even Dobermanns and pit-bulls. You know what I think? When it comes down to it, he scares them. Shit, I know he scares me.'

The expressionless man lifted his kitchen knife again and held it up until the point was only an inch away from Bronze Star's left eye. But Bronze Star stayed where he was, his head still drooping, and didn't flinch.

‘What I'm going to do is, I'm going to blind him first,' said the expressionless man. ‘That will put him into a panic, and when he's in a panic his heart will beat that much faster, so that when I cut his carotid artery open, his blood's going to come pumping out like a goddamn fire hose.'

Nadine hesitated for a few seconds. Then she took off her padded vest and dropped it on to the floor. Next she started to unbutton her green-and-brown check shirt.

The laughing man watched her as she unfastened her cuffs, and then took her shirt off, too.

‘Don't stop now,' he told her, with a cough. She reached behind her back and slid open the hooks of her white cotton bra. Bare-breasted, she stood and faced him defiantly. ‘Don't hurt any of my horses, that's all.'

‘Oh, girly, you don't know the half of what we're going to do,' said the laughing man.

‘Little tiny tits you got there,' said the scowling man. ‘Nothing like
hers
. Hers was humongous.'

The laughing man lifted his hand as if to tell the scowling man to hold his tongue. He waited for a moment, and then he said, ‘Go on, sweet thing. Get yourself stripped off.'

Nadine tugged off her green rubber boots and her riding-breeches and then her thong. She was seventeen and she had gone all the way with only one boy before, Peter Vandermeer, a twenty-one-year-old law student at Ivy Tech, with an incipient black moustache. Their relationship had lasted only two months, and she had never stood naked in front of any other man. She felt angry, and embarrassed, and utterly defenseless, and she had never felt so frightened in the whole of her life. The stable doors banged again and a chilly draft stirred the sawdust on the floor.

‘What we're going to do now is a little cull,' the laughing man told her. ‘You know what that is, a “cull”? Comes from the French “
cuillir
”, to collect. In practice, it means weeding out your surplus livestock and putting them down.'

‘Please don't hurt my horses,' Nadine begged him. ‘You promised you wouldn't.'

‘
Moi
? I'm not going to hurt your horses.
You
are. This is a re-enactment, sweet cheeks, an exorcism, and if it's going to work any good then it has to be done right, just the way it originally was. Here. Knife, please.'

He held out his black-gloved hand, palm upward. The expressionless man came away from Bronze Star and gave him his knife. The laughing man approached Nadine and held the blade up in front of her face, so that its point was only inches away from her nose. Nadine stared at him, gulping and trembling, convinced that he was going to cut her open, there and then. But instead he turned the knife around and offered her the handle.

‘Take it,' the laughing man coaxed her. ‘Go on, take it.'

Nadine took hold of the knife. She was shaking so much that she almost dropped it.

‘How many horses do you have here?' the laughing man asked her.

‘Eighteen.'

‘Hmm. That sounds to me like about seven too many. So what I want you to do is, go around and pick out seven that you could do without, and slit their throats.'

‘What? I
can't
! You can't ask me to do that? I
can't
!'

‘If you don't, my darling, then you are surely going to die, in the slowest and unpleasantest way that me and my friends can conceive of. So that's your choice. The horses or you. Come on, they'll forgive you, these horses, once they get to horsey heaven. They'll understand that you didn't have a choice. Then again, maybe they won't. I never thought that your average horse was that intelligent, did you? Would
you
let any old lardass saddle you up and jump on your back? Or maybe you would. Depends what kind of a girl you are.'

He took Nadine's elbow and led her over to Bronze Star. ‘There we are,' he said. ‘All it takes is one deep cut. Quick and deep. No hesitation. He won't feel a thing.'

Bronze Star was still standing motionless, with his head lowered, as if the expressionless man had completely broken his spirit.

‘I can't,' said Nadine, and started to sob.

‘Go on. He won't hold it against you.'

‘I can't!'

‘So I was right. He
is
your favorite. In that case, I totally understand. Let's try another horse, shall we?'

The laughing man kept hold of her elbow and steered her along the stable to the next stall, with the scowling man and the expressionless man following close behind.

‘Here, how about this old hack?'

The horse in the next stall was Nightlight, a black eight-year-old with a single white blaze on his nose. Most of the horses at Weatherfield Stables were five and over, because horses of that age were used to being ridden, and tended to be more obedient and less likely to throw their riders over the nearest split-rail fence.

Nadine shook her head. ‘No.'

She deliberately dropped the knife on to the floor, but the laughing man immediately picked it up and held it out to her. ‘You
have
to, don't you get it? The exorcism won't work, otherwise, and if the exorcism doesn't work then it's going to be your fault, and me and my friends, we won't like that, and neither will the gods of ill fortune. The gods of ill fortune, they have to be propitiated, or who knows what gruesome events are going to befall us.'

‘I can't kill him,' wept Nadine. ‘He's such a beautiful horse. I can't.'

Without warning the scowling man pushed himself right up behind her, so that his papier mâché nose jabbed the back of her head, and she could feel the buttons and the rough material of his overcoat against her bare shoulders. He reached around her and took hold of her breasts in both of his hands, and squeezed them so hard that she screamed.

‘You listen to me,' he breathed, close to her ear. ‘You're going to cut that horse's gizzard right here and now, because if you don't I'll slice your tits off and chop 'em up bite-size and make you eat them raw.'

Nadine turned in panic to the laughing man, but the laughing man simply nodded, as if he were assuring her that the scowling man would really do that, and that he wouldn't do anything to stop him.

‘All right,' she heard herself saying, although it didn't sound like her at all. It sounded like another girl altogether.

The scowling man released his grip on her. She took the knife from the laughing man and held it behind her back. She approached Nightlight slowly, lifting her left hand and stroking the blaze on his nose. Nightlight snuffled and licked his lips, because Nadine always brought him a sugar-lump when she brought him out of his stall.

‘I'm so sorry, Nightlight,' Nadine whispered. ‘You know that I wouldn't do anything to hurt you, don't you?'

Nightlight looked at her, and she was sure that he understood what she was going to do to him, and why. She had been brought up with horses all of her life, and she was convinced that they were not only brave but intuitive, and that they were prepared to give everything to the people who loved them and looked after them. It was what people who knew about horses called ‘heart'.

‘You
will
be in heaven, Nightlight, I promise you,' said Nadine. ‘You'll have sunshine, and sugar-lumps, and all the sweet hay you can eat.'

‘For Christ's sake, shut up and get on with it, will you?' the laughing man demanded. ‘You're making me nauseous.'

Nadine held Nightlight close, lifting herself up toward him so that his nose was over her left shoulder, and she could feel his warm breath down her back. She knew that she needed to be decisive, and quick, and that any hesitation would only prolong his pain. She closed her eyes for a moment and then she raised the knife to the side of his neck. Nightlight remained unnaturally still.

‘Please forgive me,' said Nadine. She took a deep breath and then she drew the knife diagonally across Nightlight's jugular groove, severing his carotid artery and his jugular vein and the sympathetic trunk which carried his nerves from his brain to his spine. Nightlight let out an extraordinary noise, like a man shouting, and tilted forward, flooding Nadine with a bucketful of warm blood.

Nadine lost her balance and fell heavily backward, hitting her shoulder against the side of the stall. Nightlight nearly collapsed on top of her, but the scowling man seized her arm and dragged her clear. She stumbled on to the sawdust and rolled over on to her side.

She managed to stand up, quaking with shock. When she looked down at herself, she saw that she was smothered all over with blood, like some primitive woman warrior who had covered herself from head to foot in scarlet warpaint. Nightlight was lying in his stall, his legs still shivering. He gave a few spasmodic kicks, but Nadine knew what she had done to him. He was dead.

The laughing man stepped back, giving her a slow handclap. ‘Well done, honeybun! Very well done! Wouldn't have guessed you had it in you!'

‘See the way she dropped him?' the scowling man whooped, with obvious relish. ‘That was something! Just like he'd been poleaxed! I never saw a horse go down like that before!'

‘OK, OK,' the laughing man interrupted him. ‘That's one down and six more to go. We'd best be hustling, before Ms Honeybun's pa gets back and tries to spoil our fun!'

Nadine shook her head from side to side. ‘No,' she said. ‘I can't kill any more. Please don't make me.'

‘Oh, come on, now,' the laughing man cajoled her. ‘Of course you can kill some more! You're a natural. You should have worked in an abattoir rather than a riding-stable. Besides, it's essential that seven horses die. It's essential and it's necessary. Got to mollify those gods of ill fortune, girl! Got to give 'em what they crave and desire.'

Nadine started sobbing again. ‘I can't! I don't care if you hurt me! I don't care what you do! I can't!'

The laughing man stepped right up to her and slapped her face, twice, once each way. ‘Shut the fuck up!' he barked at her. ‘Shut the fuck up and do what you're told! You can't even imagine what the consequences are going to be, less'n you do! You want to see hell, in all its blazing glory? You want to see the whole world burning up like a burning fiery furnace? Because that's what's going to happen, less'n you do what you're told to do, and quit that moaning and howling and constant complaining.'

He stood over her, breathing harshly. He suppressed a cough, and then another. ‘All right, then. Are we agreed? Yes? So let's get down to it. Pick me another winner, doll! This is better than an afternoon's racing at Indiana Downs!'