“I’m sorry,” the captain says once he has gone “but I’d just as soon not fill his head with these things. Like a lot of people who grow up near the river, he cannot understand the hardships of the desert. He only hears what he wants to, strange creatures, silver and guns.”
“And demons! Don’t forget those,” Randy
Corfin
says, squatting down next to the two other men.
Though prematurely balding Randy puts a lie to any claim that
rivermen
are soft, he is nearly six and a half feet of solid muscle.
“Got some nonsense, from one of those new preachers down in
Island
City
, that the devil is trying to take over the line and that all good believers have to stop him. Of course, that meant giving up a week’s pay, but Jason was glad to do it, I guess you can just be glad he wasn’t older when the Crusades came, he would have gone with them in a heartbeat and now, with their chapters running the South territories, he still might.”
“They only took it over to end the corruption begun by the
Thatchers
,” the captain says looking meaningfully at their passenger. The meaning was clear, careless talk could cost them business or worse.
“There was talk on out last run up the Snake that there might be a new Crusade brewing,” Randy continues, “the last thing we need is him hearing about that.”
“If he wanted to go we couldn’t stop him, he’s been sixteen for two months now.”
“Bah!” Randy scoffs, “he’s wetter than the underside of this boat. Can’t claim he’s a man just because his balls have dropped.”
The big man stops and takes a look at Sam, then evidently decides to continue talking, despite his captain’s warnings.
“I don’t know if you’re a religious man yourself? But I remember before all this madness came to the river. Now boys are being lured off to fight whatever bogey man those soul hungry crows can conjure up.”
“Anyone who has walked the Anvil is religious, Randy,” the captain says, softly, “you’d understand that if you’d ever been further west than a curve in the river.”
“Well perhaps we have less use for gods here on the river, certainly used to have. As for you friend,” addressing Sam, “believe what you like but to my mind you should never follow a god that needs your money or your children to do his fighting.”
So saying the big man pulls a flask from his coat and takes a long pull before offering it around. Sam takes it gratefully enough and smiles back without commenting on the river- man’s words. In fact he is unsure as to whether he feels pity or envy for this man, so free of the strictures that so many take for granted, free from Sam’s certainty that both of them are damned.
*
At last the sun is down. At last the water and the mud have cooled, leaving only the stink of another day’s baking heat. A dark shadow stirs beneath the water of a moon-lit pool; black plates, made slick by the water, move over twisted bone and muscle. Dale is hungry, now that he is awake, even the small strain of keeping air flowing into the human trapped beneath his skin during the day time had been draining. Now he yearns to feed. Does he dare take something from his master’s prize? Even the thought causes the formation of myriad tiny barbs which press into Lillian’s limp flesh bringing her back to consciousness. Dale can taste the thin trickles of blood from her newly abraded skin and it is only with the greatest reluctance that he withdraws the goads in her flesh.
“Do not fear, beloved, you are sacrosanct, but I must feed. Must!” He is almost howling in frustration. Did
Pellan
care nothing for his child that he would ask this pain from him? The blood of an alligator would have to do. Cold and thin, no real sustenance but it was all there was to be had.
While the monster hunts, Lillian’s mind twists and turns, seeking some solution to her predicament. Although the cold dead flesh around her insulates her to an extent, having been buried and submerged for the whole day has left her body temperature dangerously low. Pure exhaustion had allowed her to sleep for a while but now the pain of nearly twenty four hours of being unable to shift her position and the cold of the water they have just left are conspiring to overturn her already fractured reason.
Warmth comes in the form of blood dribbling down from one of Dale’s many kills, a baptism that blinds her with sticky gore. Repeated blinking fails to dislodge the drying blood and mud and she all too quickly surrenders to a renewed sense of inevitability. It is not until the new voice has been talking for a while that she makes one more heroic effort to open her eyes and finds to her surprise that they open with ease, air flows in through her open nostrils as it has been doing, unnoticed, for the last few minutes. Her hand reaches up to touch her face, seeking the miasma that must be left by the marsh, but she finds only smooth skin and her hair feels as if it has been recently washed. It’s all true she tells herself it was all a dream, a horrible dream, I’m free, it never happened. It is dark in here but the blinds must simply have fallen shut. She reaches over for the bedside candle but instead her hand closes on dry reeds and beneath that moist earth. At last her mind allows her to register the voice which had reawakened her.
“What in nine hells were you thinking bringing her here like that?” The voice demands in a harsh whisper, “I’ve only just got her cleaned up and it’s mere hours till sunrise. She barely looked at me through the whole process! Do you think
Pellan
wants his prize in that condition? Do you think the other Elders will bid for her if she’s broken?”
“I was hungry, what was I supposed to do? I got the girl here in good time, didn’t I?”
“Only she may be completely mad and physically damaged! I even believe that she might have been suffering from exposure.”
“It’s not so easy caring for them, they’re weak. I did the best I could.”
“Would you like to tell
Pellan
that when he asks why she’s so fucked up? No? You surprise me.”
“I just got hungry, that’s all.”
“I could tell that! She’d been punctured.”
“I didn’t take anything .. hardly a drop.” Dale whines. “He won’t even notice, unless you tell him.”
“What should I say if he asks and he might well, the state she’s in!”
“What do I know about looking after the living? I’m a hunter not a nursemaid!”
“Something else I’m sure would help your case! You should really go and see him, Dale, explain a few things. I’m sure he’ll see your point of view.”
“No, please, Kurt, there must be something you can do.”
“We’ll do what I’ve already suggested, you make yourself scarce and we’ll keep her in there for a day. She’s not going anywhere. I doubt she even has any idea where she is, we can present her early tomorrow evening.”
“Thank you, Kurt, I’ll owe you one.”
“Just don’t think I’m taking the rap if she’s permanently damaged! And don’t play the innocent with me, I know you loved every minute. I’ll bet you went out of your way to torture her and not just because you were hungry.”
The voices begin to fade, as the speakers move away from the door, which Lillian now realizes, seals her in the almost total darkness of the earthen chamber. Despite the pain of cuts and aching muscles, she raises herself to her knees and tries to crawl closer to hear what is being said. A few feet from the door she understands what Kurt meant about her not going anywhere, as a chain unnoticed due to the darkness and the general numbness of her body, suddenly becomes taut. She is about to follow it back, to see how firm its point of attachment is, when the sound of footsteps becomes louder. The door opens abruptly letting in ruddy torchlight that seems dazzling by comparison to the darkness of her cell.
“Oh, you’re far tougher than I gave you credit for, I honestly thought you’d got lost in there, when I was washing you,” the voice, which Lillian had identified as belonging to Kurt, says amiably.
At that point Lillian becomes uncomfortably aware that her only item of clothing is a rough grey robe, which she had obviously been bundled into, after this unremembered cleansing process.
“Don’t worry, girl, I’m above such things,” Kurt assures her, reading her discomfort and
favouring
her with a smile that reveals a set of disturbingly sharp teeth. “Al, of course, is a different matter,” he laughs, turning his body to reveal the withered head sprouting next to his own.
Al’s face is that of a man, old beyond any human measure; wrinkled, almost shrunken. If she had to guess Lillian would have said that the head was dead, some grim puppet’s head that Kurt kept on his shoulder as an affectation but Al’s eyes still swim back and forth in their spongy, concave sockets adding animation and the impression of terrible life to his shriveled visage.
“Old Al’s my old head,” Kurt laughs, “not spoken in years. I thought he’d got too old to do much more than groan, but you should have seen him dribble when we got you out of those wet clothes.”
Lillian shivers inwardly at the thought of those poached egg eyes leering at her but she knows she cannot afford to show her disgust.
“Where am I and why have I been brought here?” She demands.
“And what would it matter if you knew where you were?” Kurt exchanges a knowing glance with his mummified second head.
“Wouldn’t do you no good if you did.” Al mumbles, in a voice little louder than a whisper.
“Well done, Al,” Kurt thrills, “I didn’t know you still had it in you, we haven’t spoken in so long that I really thought senility had gotten the best of you! You really have brought out the best in him, miss, he hasn’t spared me a word in ages.”
“You could thank me by telling me where I am.” Lillian struggles to keep control of her natural impulse to express her misery and frustration with a tirade of insults.
“Thank you? Thank you!” Kurt’s jovial expression suddenly slips.
“You think I want him
yabbering
on in my left ear again?”
“But I thought…”
“The hell you did! What do you think it’s been like, watching my old head getting older and older, seeing the condemnation in his eyes. Why should I thank you for bringing him back?”
“I, I don’t know.” Lillian stammers, thrown off balance by Kurt’s mercurial mood swing.
“It’s not your fault I suppose, the old bastard would’ve piped up some time. If you really want to know where you are, you’re far underground, we call this place
Eden
, bit of a joke on the master’s part, I think and you’re not going anywhere because
Eden
is a warren to things far worse than Dale.”
“Dale’s the one that brought me here?” Lillian shudders at the memory.
“Indeed he is and if I told him you were talking now, he’d be back to drag you before the master, but I won’t, do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because Dale is stupid! All I have to do is keep you here till tomorrow evening, let some of your scars heal up an he’ll think he owes me big time. Round here
favours
are the only currency worth having.”
“Who is the master then? Why does he want me?”
“
Favours
always more
favours
,” Al mumbles, looking at her with both wild and runny eyes, “when you live forever, a favour can be a long term investment.”
“Shut up, you!” Kurt snaps, “the only thing that you need to know ‘my lady’”, Kurt puts a scornful emphasis on those words, “is that the master wants you so you are here. I want you here till tomorrow night and you will not leave until the master releases you.”
With that Lillian’s strange jailer pulls the door closed.
“You’ll get some sleep if you know what’s good for you and keep quiet, neither of us wants Dale to know you’re awake, do we?” Kurt’s voice comes through the door. Lillian can hear a muted series of sounds, then:
“I don’t care what you think. You slept through the last eight years, why bother me again now? There’s no need to see her again.”
A brief pause, then “No that isn’t Sue-Anne! I knew you’d gone senile, we’ve never met her before…”
The sound of Kurt and Al’s argument fades as they move down the corridor outside, leaving Lillian staring at the crack of red light under the door. In spite of Kurt’s warning, she cannot resist a lunge at the door but the chain at her ankle brings her up short so that instead of hitting the door, she merely scrapes the tips of her fingers down the rough wood. Her eyes are watering with pain and frustration but she blinks back tears, tugs repeatedly at the chain, which remains taut and unyielding only exasperating her further. Her sole reality now is that thin line of light and she cannot reach it; there is a world beyond it but it is one she cannot enter. At last, she succumbs to her exhaustion and closes her eyes. As soon as she loses sight of her goal she falls, exhausted, to the earthen floor, new blood from her fingertips leaking into the damp soil. She lets those drops fall unheeded, there is no way she can know, no way that anyone in Eden can know, that far beneath her, a grotesque creature tastes the blood on the earth and draws that small nourishment, as it draws and feeds on all death in its overgrown garden and smiles.