by A Van Wyck
He couldn’t remember the keeper ever being... curt with him. Overwhelmed and slightly hurt, he retreated quickly to the dark corner at the top of the stairs.
“Alright?” the commander questioned. At the keeper’s nod, Grayston pulled open the door and led the way in. The others disappeared after and then he was alone out in the hall.
Leaning in his corner, he could hear some muffled footsteps from inside the room. Either they weren’t talking or they were whispering too softly for him to hear. He tried not to breathe, straining his ears.
Focused as he was, he became aware of the wooden floor, or roof, depending on how you looked at it, baking beneath his feet as it soaked up the sun outside. The air was stuffy, broiling gently inside the wooden confines. Beneath his novice robes, he was sweating and uncomfortable, the rough weave of the cloth itchy and abrasive. With the heat of the day rising, the air was turning turgid and heavy and difficult to breathe. He wiped a hand across his forehead and it came away clammy. He tried breathing through his mouth, ignoring the rank smell of the place. But though he inflated his lungs as far as he could, he still struggled for breath, as if the life had been cooked from this air. Abruptly lightheaded, he leaned back against the wooden wall. It creaked alarmingly but he barely heard through the wool stuffing his ears. Purple spots bloomed across his vision. Dizzy, he slowly sank to his knees. The smells of mortar and dust and urine thickened. Kneeling, he stared at the stained and filthy planking, trying desperately to breathe. Among the spots of purple, a spot of brilliant red blossomed. He watched in stunned amazement, marveling at the minute ripple of dust it raised. Two more drops of blood joined the first. Alarmed, he clutched at his nose. His fingers came away red. He stared.
A creak sounded. Something about the sound made him raise his head. The open door the keeper and the others had disappeared through rocked gently on its leather hinges. He watched as the invisible breeze pushed it wider, sweeping a bank of dust before it as it swirled down the hall toward him. He tensed.
The gust of heated air swept over him, ruffling his hair and burning across his cheeks. It was humid, thick and cloying. It clawed its way down his throat, searing him with the dry, brittle particles of stench and decay. His thoughts scattered. Tears sprung from his eyes as he coughed.
Keeper Justin was in there, his reeling mind said. There was something wrong in there. Keeper Justin could be in trouble.
Grabbing at the wall, he levered himself to his feet. His sight swayed sickeningly and a rush of nausea gripped him. Shaking his head, he took a step. The door, just a few paces away but seeming so very distant, rocked again. Another wretched gust of heated breath tried to drive him back. Ducking his head, he weathered its blast and took another step, vaguely aware of something metallic, coins maybe, rattling down the stairs. Another step. The door rocked. Somewhere, the metallic sound repeated, a wind chime dying in agony. His front knee buckled and his nails dug white lines across the rough wood, picking up splinters. But he stayed upright, clawing along its length. The door rocked again and he sank into the wall, bracing himself as the furious gust washed over him. The metallic cacophony drove into his ears like nails. Not coins. Not chimes. Chains. Gritting his teeth against the unreasoning terror that had them chattering, he pushed off from the wall…
And fell through the door.
“Marco, kindly wait at the top of the stairs.”
He felt a moment of regret, seeing the expression on the boy’s face. He watched as Marco trotted away down the hall. He hadn’t meant to be so sharp. He had to pull himself together. He couldn’t afford to be distracted now. If it weren’t for the quick watchwoman, he’d have walked through that door with the boy on his heels. Inexcusable. If he’d been thinking at all, he’d have arranged for someone to take Marco back to the Temple. Or at least have left him at the Watch House. But there was no help for it now.
“Alright?” Grayston questioned when the boy had reached the far end of the passage.
Barely daring to breathe, he nodded.
The watch commander lifted the latch and the door swung outward on its hide hinges, the stiff leather creaking dryly.
A blast of oven heated air rolled from the open door, pressing his robes flat against his skin. Riding it was a smell he’d hoped never to smell again. Darting a glance to make sure Marco was well out of range, he took a determined step inside.
The inside consisted of just two rooms. The door opened into the dimly lit main living area. A single, glassless window had been added to the far wall. The extra wooden supports that had been hammered into the wall around it said it had not been done thoughtlessly. An attempt at curtains had been made with heavy cloth that might once have been brightly colored. The thin bar of sunlight, streaming through a rip in the fabric, fought against the passive fury of angrily swirling dust motes, agitated by their intrusion.
He stepped around a low table that had been a shipping crate in its former life, navigating between the ragged, stained cushions that must have served as chairs. Gently, he unhooked the window covering from its bent nail. Sunlight streamed in.
An upset cup lay on the table, a dark stain fanning across the rough wood to lap against a small earthen vase. Someone had gone to the trouble of arranging some wild flowers in it. Dead and wilted now, they cried shriveled petals onto the tabletop. An oil stove had a rickety table to itself beneath a shelf of candle stubs. A broom, the bristles balding and al bent one way with much use, leaned against the wall, keeping company with a large, tin washing-up bucket. If not for the smell, it could have been a perfect, peaceful little domestic tableau.
Except that flies and maggots crawled thickly on whatever unidentifiable, congealed foodstuffs had once filled the scattered bowls.
That… and the blood.
The wood had soaked it up and the heat had baked it in, turning it into dark spatters and sprays across the walls. A solid streak, dried and flaking now, showed where something had been dragged across the floor. The trail disappeared under the curtained hanging that separated the two rooms.
Breathing out harshly, he turned his head away, delaying the approaching moment and his eyes alighted on the orderly stack of blankets in the corner. The children must have slept in the main room. A threadbare teddy bear sat atop the pile, surveying the gruesome scene. He looked into its stitched eyes, contemplating the fixed smile.
Steeling himself, he turned towards the next room, being careful not to step in the dried blood. He was only half-aware of the commander following him. Fearing he’d lose his nerve if he waited, he pulled the moth-eaten hanging to one side.
It had been the main bedroom once. Now, it was an abattoir.
He tasted bile in his mouth and clenched his teeth, swallowing hard. It seemed like a long time before he started breathing again.
“We left everything as it was,” the commander whispered behind him. “I’m sure you can see why.”
He nodded mutely.
“Neighbors said he worked as a butcher down by the stockyards and cattle pens.”
Justin’s gaze dropped to the floor where butcher’s tools – knives, cleavers, hooks – lay discarded, gummed to the floor by a layer of blackened blood and hair.
“Said he was a quiet man,” the commander continued, inflectionless. “Kind. Honest. Hardworking.”
If it hadn’t been for the straw pallet in the middle of the room, the blood might have lain ankle deep. It must have slowly drained through the warped floorboards.
“Lived with his wife and three children. Two small girls,” the commander paused, his emotionless calm failing him for a moment, “and one newborn. A boy.” The man cleared his throat loudly and Justin could sense the seething, cold anger the commander stoked to sear away his emotions.
He looked again at the carcasses hanging from the ceiling, rotating slowly on their hooks.
A butcher, yes. But these weren’t animals.
Two small girls.
A wife.
Her armless torso hung
above the bed, the flesh grey and bloated by the heat. It was hard to imagine that all these scattered pieces added up to three whole people. But the hardest to look at was the little figure, off to one side. Whole. Nailed to the wall.
And a newborn.
Merciful goddess…
But no. There would be time to pray later. For now, he had to concentrate.
“And these?” he asked, indicating the finger painted symbols covering every bit of wall, ceiling and floor not already obscured in blood. From what he could see, they’d even been carved into the flesh of the victims – goddess grant they’d been dead at the time.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” the commander said. “By all accounts, the man was illiterate. And this certainly looks like no writing I’ve ever seen. Do you recognize any of it?” the watchman asked, watching him closely.
He shook his head.
The silence stretched. The symbols on the walls were indeed alien to him but he wasn’t ready to dismiss them as made-up scribbles the way the commander had suggested. Being an empath also meant being sensitive to his own emotions and he could feel unexplained, age old fear stirring awake inside him at the sight of these symbols. They jarred the eye. They didn’t belong. And whatever – he refused to think of what was left of Perner Meum as human – had drawn them didn’t belong either. He shivered, coming out of his reverie.
“Please order your watchmen not to remove or touch anything here,” he instructed the commander seriously. “I want the Temple to handle this from here on out.”
“This is a watch investigation,” the commander pointed out mildly, raising an eyebrow.
“Not anymore.”
The commander did not seem surprised. But then, he wasn’t stupid. His insistence on Justin’s presence rather than that of any other priests suddenly made more sense. Neither did he raise the issue of the Temple’s complete lack of jurisdiction. No one ever contested the Temple.
“So Meum is mad, then?” The commander asked, looking around.
Justin shook his head.
“No,” he said. “He’s not that well off.”
He turned around. Now the commander did look surprised.
“That man,” he tried to explain, “is… empty.”
“Lost his mind completely?” the commander frowned.
No, he thought. Not lost. Stolen.
The mind that had wrought this horror should be a churning cauldron of screams. But there was nothing left of the man called Perner Meum. In every way that mattered, he was dead. His body yet lived because no thought was required to make it so. It would wither and die eventually. Nothing could live like that for long. There was an echo left though, resonating in that empty skull. That echo was what had made him insist on seeing this.
He nodded anyway. The commander did not need to know any of this. This was Temple business now.
A commotion outside caught his ear. He glanced up. A familiar sensation washed up against his extra sense and he gasped as he felt again something he’d not felt in six long years. He’d hoped never to feel it again. It was weaker now. A ghost of its former self. But still too much. Much too much. All this registered in the fraction of a moment before Marco burst through the door, tumbling inside like he’d been pushed. He fell to the floor in a pile of robes, coughing and gasping, fingers scrabbling convulsively at the bloodstained planking.
“Father?” he choked, his face pale and his voice weak. He cast around drunkenly, searching.
“Father?”
Oh, no.
Justin grabbed at the door hanging but it was too late.
He saw the boy look up. Saw his eyes alight on him. Saw them move past him…
The boy froze.
Terror crawled across his face, contorting it into something unrecognizable. But it was as nothing compared to the heart stopping dread that leapt up inside the boy’s mind, drowning reason.
Justin had experienced this before. He knew what to expect next.
“Grab him!” he shouted, scrambling forward.
The lieutenant had elected to remain just inside the door rather than view the bedroom. She’d started forward the moment Marco had burst in but her concerned hands turned serious at the ring of command in Justin’s voice. Even so, she was not nearly fast enough. She lunged at him but he was no longer there. There was a dull thud as Marco bounced from the hallway wall opposite the door and a mad scramble as he clawed with hands and feet toward the stairs.
“Marco! Stop!”
Justin pelted out the door, aware of the commander hot on his heels. Him in the lead, they dashed down the stairs at break neck speed. A dangerous thing to do when wearing robes. He gathered as much of the accursed thing into one hand as he could without slowing down.
“Morrick!” the commander bellowed down the stairs from over his shoulder, “Stop the boy!”
They burst out into the relative brightness of day just in time to see the other watchman pick himself up out of the dust, wearing a startled expression. There was no sign of Marco.
“What happened?” Commander Grayston barked.
“Went right over top of me, sir,” the man related in a wondering voice, dusting himself off. Not unaware of the thunderhead expression his superior was wearing, the man added, “Like a reed tail monkey, sir! Couldn’t lay a hand on him, sir!”
“Which way did he go?” Justin put in desperately as his sense of the boy dwindled.
“Couldn’t tell you, sir,” the watchman said, on the principle that it was a good idea in these situations to throw in ‘sir’ wherever you could. “I was on my nose for that part, sir,” he explained.
Justin frowned, which was as good as a litany of curses from any another man. The watchman ducked his head in abject apology but Justin didn’t notice. He was concentrating, searching for one thread among the millions.
Fading… fading…
Gone.
He’d lost him.
“I don’t suppose he’ll be able to find his own way back?” the commander queried, calm again, now that the immediate hurry was over.
Justin shook his head. How could he explain that, even if Marco had known the first thing about the city, there was a good chance he was now incapable of even forming the desire to return to the Temple.
“We’d best get moving then. I’ve got to get back to the Watch House so I can arrange search parties.” He patted Justin’s shoulder awkwardly, uncomfortable with the gesture. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”
And if we do? Justin thought miserably. Will we have found all of him?
CHAPTER 3 – ECLIPSE
There was running.
And then there was not.
He wasn’t certain what happened to the space in between. But when he finally slowed, moments from collapse, he had a spear in his side and every breath burned his raw throat. His throbbing pulse was drowning his hearing to the time of his laboring heart. He staggered a few more steps before jittery muscles threw him down against a wall. For a couple of drunken moments he fought not to pass out. Then he threw up.
And then he did pass out.
Reality returned as a hazy tunnel with his body at the end of it.
He’d lost a sandal, he saw. That foot was scuffed and sore. Drawing it up, he kneaded at the sole, noticing that the heels of his hands were scraped and raw as though he’d broken a fall, or several, with them. He couldn’t remember that. Or why his knee and shin hurt. He twitched his robes aside. He’d lost some skin on both. The seeping on the lower leg had stopped and the knee was gummed with dark blood. He spent some time picking splinters out of his fingers but he was weak and trembling and ended up making a mess of it, breaking them off or pushing them deeper, so he gave up. The splinters, now that he remembered. That was from that house he’d been to in the Furrow with Keeper Justin…
He stilled as the memory resurfaced, slamming into him like the last landing down a tumble of stairs. He rolled to hands and knees and heaved dryly, spasming so hard his ribs cre
aked.
It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. People just didn’t do that to each other. He’d seen wrong or misunderstood or… or…
Holy Helia, those poor people…
He needed to find Keeper Justin. Justin would make sense of all of this. He’d make it go away. He’d rearrange things with a few well chosen words so the outside world settled, unconfusing and non-scary. The priest would make this better.
When there couldn’t possibly be anything left in his stomach, he rose unsteadily to his feet. Spitting to clear his mouth he looked around. He was in a shadowed alley that stank of urine and rotten fish. Sounds of people drifted from the far end on a slightly fresher breeze. He moved toward the sun’s faint glow.
Even with his non-existent knowledge of the city, he’d hoped to step out onto a street he recognized. But that appeared to be asking too much. Desperately he looked up and down the unfamiliar road. The buildings didn’t look any better from the front and were in a state of disrepair to match the broken cobbles. The whole scene was painted grey, as if even the light from the sun, sitting low on the horizon, came to it second hand. The people he could see looked much the same. Haggard, washed out figures strolled aimlessly with their heads bowed or marched purposefully, scowling at everything in sight and daring anyone to make eye contact. He quickly dropped his gaze to his feet.
If he were still in the Furrow, he must have come quite a way. He could smell the same salty tint to the air he’d smelled that morning at the docks, what seemed a lifetime ago now. He glanced around nervously. There seemed to be a general direction to the flow of traffic, with more people moving one way than the other. Tugging off his lone sandal, he followed them, hoping they were moving in the direction of the city center. He needed to find someone in uniform. Or a local Temple. Or just anyone, really, who looked like they might not hit him.
He felt guilty about that. He shouldn’t judge. The Temple taught respect for all citizens equally. But right now he was grateful for his immediate fears. They lay like a concealing blanket over the horrific scene that seemed seared into his forebrain. Without them, he might curl up into a whimpering little ball, right here in the middle of the road, and not get up again.