Bound by Rites

by Thomas Cleckler

  Time crawled onward, and after what had felt like half a day—though it’d been only a few hours—Nebanum returned, triumphant and arms full of treasures. He had clothes for Rhone, women’s clothes but clothes nonetheless, two loaves of hard bread, and a squirming sack.

  “I also got you a scarf. Well, I think it’s meant to be a swaddling cloth, but it should do the trick.”

  Rhone cast aside the loot and embraced Nebanum. His exposed skin was gooseflesh and Rhone rubbed him, trying to share the little warmth he had. He donned the clothes and returned to his spot by the fire.

  “So, I suppose that’s the cat?” Rhone nodded to the now still sack sitting on the floor.

  “Yes. A common, rodent hungry feline. Here.”

  Nebanum tossed a knife to Rhone. He caught it and licked the blood from his palm where it struck.

  “Why do I have to do it?” Rhone wanted to know.

  “I go out, risk my neck for all this,” Nebanum spread his hands around the cold room, “and I have to fight a cat who doesn’t want his tongue cut out? That hardly seems fair.”

  Rhone laughed, “Toss me the bag.”

  Nebanum slid the sack over with his foot. The creature inside moved slightly. Rhone pressed down on the cloth, feeling the anatomy of the cat inside. With a quick motion, he plunged the dagger into what he thought would be the heart. The sack leapt and twisted, the cat wailed and moaned. Nebanum laughed as Rhone fought to get the bleeding sack back under control. When at last he did, he managed to work his hands around the neck. He held until the bag stopped twitching then held just a moment longer before emptying its contents onto the floorboards. The cat was a mangy tabby with a widening, glistening dark patch.

  “Cats are really disgusting, aren’t they?” Nebanum observed as he pulled pieces of stale bread apart.

  Rhone opened the mouth of the cat and held the hairy tongue in his fingers. It’s texture made his skin crawl and the stench that poured from its bowels was simply foul. The knife was dull and it took some effort to remove the surprisingly dense tongue.

  “Here it is. Where’s the feather?” Rhone said, holding the tongue in his palm.

  Nebanum retrieved the feather from under the bed.

  “Hand me that sack,” he said, “we’ll keep the reagents in here.”

  “Reagents? Since when do you know such fancy words?” Rhone mocked.

  Nebanum laughed and handed down the feather. Rhone tossed it and the bloody tongue into the cavernous bag. They dressed, Nebanum helping wrap Rhone’s face so that he could go outside. Rhone washed the cat’s blood off his hands in a puddle. They stood in the overcast.

  “I’m concerned about the finger,” Nebanum said.

  “The virgin finger?”

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t have to kill anyone. Besides, we won’t be taking an important finger. We can just take the little finger.”

  “Do you remember where we met? The camp?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember that big kid, Bartholomew? Big jowls?”

  “Vaguely. What of him?”

  “Well, there was this skinny kid that used to tease him. I always wondered why Bartholomew never ground him into dust. Without fail, every day—this actually might’ve happened before you got there—that skinny kid would throw rocks at him, call him a bastard, things like that. Well, one day, when they decided to feed us, that Bartholomew walked right over to the skinny kid and took hold of his thin arm and bit one of his fingers clean off. The skinny kid screamed and cried. It was mildly entertaining. I remember the sound it made. Maybe it wasn’t a sound so much as it was a feeling.”

  “What’s your point, Nebanum?”

  “Well, it happened really fast and the skinny kid healed right up.”

  “And?”

  “And, of the two of us, you’re the one with front teeth.”

  Twenty-Five

  Rhone and Nebanum snuck out of town, deciding that the village was too small to ignore the connection between the arrival of two strangers and the surge in petty crimes. They made their way back to the main road that ran north and south. Peddlers, pilgrims, and peasants still trickled up and down, seeking money and salvation. For a while they absently followed a group of pilgrims. Because they were dressed no better or worse than any of the other travelers, Rhone and Nebanum were able to blend in with the rabble. The pilgrims were lost in conversation; one with his nose in the air, the other squinting at passersby.

  “...and they have a sliver of wood from the staff of Moses.”

  “Sigmund, do you ever wonder if all these reliquaries we wander across the land to see are fake?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would someone fake something like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They wouldn’t. No point in it; there’s nothing to gain.”

  “Well, we do donate to the church wherever we stop...”

  “That money goes towards feeding and clothing the poor. Are the poor fake?”

  “Well, I suppose not.”

  “There’s no room for tight fistedness when it comes to matters of faith.”

  The road approached a divide. On the signpost, two planks pointed in contrasting directions: Warwick and Verdoom. Rhone and Nebanum stood near the signpost as the travelers parted around them.

  “Well,” Rhone began, speaking through the scarf that hid most of his face, “Warwick or Verdoom?”

  “I don’t know if I have another journey in me,” Nebanum sighed.

  “Maybe Verdoom has a cemetery? We can get the dead man’s shoe. I don’t know if it’s wise for us to return to Warwick so soon.”

  “Let me ask one of these imbeciles if there’s another little village nearby.”

  Nebanum took a step towards the stream of dirtied bodies. He tried hailing a few to stop, but only got blank stares as the people continued on their way. Finally, after his sixth or seventh attempt, he was able to accost a young man carrying an empty basket. Nebanum beckoned him out of traffic, near the sign.

  “This is my traveling companion, Rhone,” Nebanum said hastily.

  “Hello Rhone. My name’s—”

  “So you said there’s a couple villages along the way to Verdoom?” Nebanum interrupted.

  “Oh, they changed the name. It’s ‘Verdon’ now. I guess ‘Verdoom’ was frightening the children,” the young man laughed. Rhone and Nebanum stared at him blankly, waiting for him to answer the question.

  “Yes,” he began, back on course, “there’s Mildew and Yorne.”

  “Which one is more hospitable to outsiders?”

  “Oh, that would be Yorne. Definitely, Yorne. I stopped in Mildew once when I was ill and—”

  “Does it have a cemetery?”

  “Yes, of course. They have a great big church where—”

  “Alright, how do we get there?”

  “Well, make like you’re heading to Verdon. It’s the third road on the right, no, I’m sorry, left. Third road to the left—east. Then, that road also splits—the other way it goes is a backwards way to Verdon, no reason to take that really.”

  “So third road on the left, then where after that road splits? Left or right?”

  “Right.”

  “Right. Alright, thank you.”

  Nebanum walked abruptly away and left Rhone momentarily alone with the smiling young man. He nodded and turned to follow Nebanum.

  The first two, incorrect roads came relatively quickly. The third, and correct path, however, was nowhere to be found. As the sun began to set, Rhone wondered if they hadn’t been misled. The storm of the previous night left a gray film in the sky. A few stubborn wisps of white clouds glowed a pink orange. The road, unlike the ground surrounding it—which seemed to be muddy whether or not it rained—was dry. Cloth and leather shoes and pant cuffs of thousands of travelers had absorbed all the water like a dishrag. A bell sang out over the soggy trees and they found their trail. It was overhung with water-heavy trees but the bell es
corted them through. The trail was muddy and overgrown with weeds. Finally, after an uncomfortable trek they came to the decrepit town.

  A narrow bell tower swayed with the swinging bell above the church. The bell’s song was flat and buzzed towards the end of its note, suggesting a hairline crack in its body. Algae infested white slats were the scales for the building. Heavy clumps of green moss hung from the roof, clinging to the soffit. It was beautiful in its decay and Rhone was taken by it.

  The crop of tombstones that the town sowed were also aged and in the process of being reclaimed by nature. Names and dates worn thin by time were hidden under creeping vines. When the final pang of the bell had finished ringing—buzzing the air—Rhone and Nebanum were skirting the perimeter of the small village.

  Rhone’s feet ached from the excessive walking. It never ends, he thought, your whole life is walking from one place to another. Nebanum stopped as they came to the rear of the church and graveyard. The tombstones were newer and the graves fresher. One was so fresh, in fact, that the shovel used to dig it had been left out by a careless or grief-stricken gravedigger. All they had to do now was wait for the embrace of night.

  Setting behind the breathing church, the sun didn’t bother trying to penetrate the remaining gray skies left by the storm. All around, trees dripped and sighed under the increased weight. It was an ugly day.

  “You know,” Rhone began, “we may be able to kill two birds with one stone.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, we—or I—won’t have to bite anyone’s finger off if we can plunder the grave of a virgin.”

  “That’s a good point. Here’s hoping this town’s been plagued with stillbirths.”

  Nebanum jumped up and began to move towards the graveyard. He and Rhone went from tombstone to tombstone, checking dates and figuring age.

  “All over twenty here,” Rhone said as he traipsed over the muddy graves.

  “Same. Hey! This guy was eighty!”

  “That doesn’t help us, keep your voice down. We need someone young enough to be a virgin.”

  “Let’s just dig up this fresh one.”

  “Wait, is it a man or a woman?”

  Nebanum squinted in the dark. Rhone walked over beside him when it was obvious he couldn’t see.

  “‘Madeline Hornswallow.’” Rhone read.

  “Odd name for a man.”

  Rhone chuckled and moved to the adjacent mound, “‘William Hornswallow.’”

  “That name...” Nebanum said, shaking his head.

  “Sound familiar?”

  “No, I think I’d remember a Hornswallow.”

  Rhone stifled his laughter and retrieved the shovel. In the surrounding dark woods, water dripped down through the leaves, mimicking hushed footfalls. Everything was wet from the rain. Creeping vines dug their thin tendrils into the widening cracks of the tombstones, strange fungus reached out of graves, feeding no doubt on the rotted wood and bone below; the weight of the forest’s contempt for civilization was palpable.

  Rain had loosened, but weighted, the earth. Malnutrition limited Rhone’s efforts and he soon had to trade off with Nebanum as the spiders and cockroaches crawled out of the soggy grave. He sat on Madeline Hornswallow’s tombstone and peered into the noisy, black woods as Nebanum used his reserves of energy. What a sight we would make, he thought, should any be watching.

  The graverobbers worked into the night, each commenting on how misleadingly deep graves were and how silly the whole thing was.

  “If you think about it,” Nebanum whispered, “you might as well just toss them into the ocean.”

  The shovel sunk into the dirt with a sneeze. Nebanum continued as Rhone dug:

  “What happens to bodies when you bury them? A storm comes and they float away into the ocean; worms turn them into dirt, which turns to mud, which runs into streams, which spill into the ocean; they—”

  The shovel sunk into the dirt, but this time thudded.

  “Finally,” Rhone breathed, leaning on the shovel.

  He had spoken too soon for there was still much dirt to clear before they could begin to pry the lid off. Nebanum dug into the sides of the dirt walls to make room for their knife. Luckily, the damp earth had softened the wood and the nails gave way easily. The grave was apparently not as old as they had thought for the corpse steamed with putridity and decay.

  Rhone held the lid while Nebanum tried to remove one of the dead’s boots. It was crowded inside the grave; there wasn’t much room for them to stand comfortably and once or twice they laid a misplaced step, treading on the body. Rhone’s foot sunk into the abdomen of Mr. Hornswallow. A fresh eruption of sharp, rank, nauseating stink emanated from the black hole.

  “Oh my God! Get that God damn shoe already!” he whispered through gritted teeth.

  “I’m trying, it’s caught.”

  “You can’t smell it like I can...”

  “Got it!”

  Nebanum tossed the boot out of the grave and hauled himself up. Once he’d helped Rhone out he began refilling the hole.

  “Where’s the shoe?” Rhone asked, wiping his foot in the grass.

  “Right here,” Nebanum tossed the heavy boot to Rhone.

  Reeking leather hit squarely in Rhone’s chest. He turned the boot over in his hands. The foot was still inside it. Gray flesh, spongy and gelatinous, had fused to the material. Rhone shook it. Nothing but flakes of dried rot came out.

  “To Hell with it. That fiend can dig the foot out if he wants.”

  They abandoned filling the grave after the first soaking shovelful of dirt. Back in the tree line, Rhone stuffed the boot into the sack containing the feather and cat’s tongue. He and Nebanum huddled together against a damp trunk and hoped that it wouldn’t rain on them.

  The bell tower swayed as the cracked bell was swung. Its flat ring unceremoniously woke Rhone and Nebanum. Rhone’s hands were still coated in dirt, his fingernails loaded with mud. It was just before dawn.

  “Those sons of bitches,” Nebanum groaned, plugging his ears with his dirty fingers.

  The bell stopped but its stale tune still hung in the air. A fog had settled, driven out of the woods by the cold and damp. Rhone wiped a layer of dew from his face. He thought about the night before as he dug at his dirty nails. Thief turned grave robber, what’s next? Biting fingers off of children? There’s got to be a better way.

  Through the haze, across the cemetery, figures were shuffling into church. An epiphany was lingering at the rear of his mind, he could sense it. Watching the villagers, all ages, move into the ancient church had stirred it. His knowledge of the clergy was limited; he hoped his idea would manifest with conversation:

  “Nebanum, what does it take to be a priest?”

  “You have to have mud in your head.”

  “They can’t marry, right?”

  Nebanum rolled over. His mouth stretched into a vulpine grin.

  “You don’t need ten fingers to read from a book, do you?” Nebanum agreed.

  “We’ll wait until they’re done in there, then follow him home.”

  “I’ll bring the bag. He may have some rotting fruit which could supply the living flies.”

  “Gnats, my love,” Rhone corrected.

  Rhone was as confused as Nebanum: my love? Who’s words were those? He could feel his inversed cheeks flush. Nebanum just grinned his devilish grin.

  Even after the sun rose the fog still lingered. It wasn’t until noon that the fallen cloud began to lift and the weary worshipers shambled out of the creaking doors. They winced and held their hands up to block the sunlight, like prisoners leaving the dungeon and seeing the light of day for the first time in decades. Rhone reached up to roll his lip, touched only raw gum and slick tooth, then dropped his hand back into his lap. Whether or not the priest was a virgin, they would have to make a hasty leave of the village.

  “I think I should like to be called ‘Hornswallow’ from now on,” Nebanum mused.

  “Hush!” />
  “No good? What about ‘Dirkswallow?’”

  “I don’t know what has gotten into you lately.”

  A hunched man, looking centuries old, waddled out into the sunlight. His skin was transparent and his head held tight to wisps of white hair. He waved his frail and shaking hand after the last of the saved. The earthy robes he donned seemed like they weighed more than he did.

  “There’s our man,” Nebanum said, rising.

  “He’s going back in the church,” Rhone observed, wrapping his scarf around his mouth.

  “Come on.”

  Making sure that the villagers had mostly returned to their shut away lives, Rhone and Nebanum walked briskly across the cemetery. The priest had apparently moved much slower than they thought for the door had just closed when Nebanum whisked it open. Damp wood permeated the room, ready to sprout mushrooms and house beetles. The pews were not parallel and some jutted into the aisle with obscene assertion. Around one of these protruding pews the priest was delayed and half-turned, so that he was able to greet Rhone and Nebanum with a ghostly smile.

  “Yes?” he squeaked.

  Rhone secured the door. Nebanum tossed the sack into a pew.

  “Hello,” Nebanum began, “me and my friend wondered if we could ask you something.”

  The walls stole sound instead of amplifying it and the room was silent as the grave between words.

  “Yes?” the priest waited, leaning on the pew, seemingly winded.

  “We were wondering if a priest was allowed to marry.”

  Rhone moved behind the pews, making his way towards the altar and behind the priest. He tried not to look at the feeble man; an insidious sympathy was brewing.

  “You were wondering what?” the priest held a veined and shaking hand to his ear, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

  “Allowed to marry,” Nebanum enunciated. He began to close the gap between them.