Elias smiled and said aloud, “Ain’t it?”
Mr. Solow seemed to focus on the other officers with Douglas White. The Sheriff stood back, arms folded, not saying anything as Gowran did much of the talking. Elias saw that Mr. Solow held something under his arm, a wadded up piece of cloth, perhaps a piece of plaid material? He would ask later what that was all about. Doug White seemed at ease, smoking a cigarette as if nothing was wrong in the world.
He closed the big door of the round barn. Elias looked up to the rafters where the chains used to hang. Those were at the bottom of the quarry along with the car of the dope-heads from Cicero. He walked back behind the bales where Hawg used to sleep. Elias imparted a forlorn look at the two empty bales that used to flank the big creature as he slept. He missed Hawg. Though spirited, Hawg was tame until the drug mule made him feral. Elias sighed, knowing it was a matter of time before the beast got loose. It was a blessing from God that his existence never led back to them.
Soon, things would calm down and soon, everything would be like it was, after a fashion.
As he stepped behind the bales into a long stall, Elias saw another blessing from God. Beams of light snuck in from cracks in the boards, making dust motes dance around the scene like a halo.
The massive form that lay on the hay dominated the stall. The stench from the sow wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, nor was the sound of a half dozen suckling pigs at her many teats. Elias frowned deep as he noted the mouth of the sow, bulged wide as she engorged herself on one of the babies. The tiny back legs of this piglet wriggled a few times before falling limp. Elias cursed himself for not being on top Hawg
of things earlier. He bent over and grabbed two of the babes. He pulled them from their feeding. Angered by the action, the sow reached for two of the other babes. Still chewing on the one in her mouth, her motions never came near him, but groped into the air.
“Now, now, Luella, you know that ain’t the way,” Elias told the huge mother as she chomped on the piglet.
Luella held a baby in each hand, trying to keep them from Elias. One slipped free and never fled its mother’s touch. Only interested in feeding more, the babe returned to its teat, as blind to its danger as its mother was for all time.
Elias looked at the piglets in his hands and then down at the feeding babes. They were longer and thicker of limb than normal piglets. Then again, their mother possessed more breasts than a regular woman. Once Luella bit the piglet’s head off, she pulled the torso down and chewed. The cruelty in her face was not like any expression Elias had ever seen from his neighbor. After chewing for a few moments, her look darkened and Luella stopped her motions. With no words, she spat at Elias, depositing a glob of scarlet on the old man’s left rubber boot. Still holding the two babes, Elias squinted at the object spat. Amid the bloody mass that resembled uncooked ham were two curved objects. Elias thought them tiny bones, the rudimentary beginnings of tusks. However, the dim lights of the barn showed these to be colored white, like the bones they were.
With a sigh, Elias walked from the stall and held up the two squealing babies in the superior light. He stared at the one in his right hand and said, “You are littler than the rest, a runt for sure.”
Unlike his siblings, Runt had shiny steel tusks protruding around its tiny snout.
THE END?
Read on for an excerpt from
EVERDEAD
by Rio Youers
CHAPTER ONE
Shimmer
1
He could tell from the look in her eyes that she was his. The game had been played. The game had been won. Now all he had to do was pick up his prize.
She was playing the coquette, standing with her ankles crossed. So innocent, her fingers twisting in the material of her skirt and her lips played into the kind of smile which could easily be mistaken as demure. But he knew better. Their shape was too full, their color too rich. Nothing demure about that smile, friends and lovers; it was red with desire.
Do you know what I am? His eyes danced from her lips to her throat. Was it a trick of his thirst, or did she actually seem to be offering it to him? Do you know what I will do to you? She had a beautiful neck. Long, like a ballerina’s. A feature he adored in Oriental girls. Their bodies, quite often, lacked fullness. But their necks, their throats …
“Bird Man,” she said.
Luca smiled. “I have always been a bird man.”
Her throat, shimmering like satin in the sway of the lanterns, seemed to swell as she sighed. His amazing eyes caught the beat of her pulse, and he could tell that her heart was racing.
Do you know?
The birds—a squabble of pale canaries, their feathers withered and their eyes dull—hopped up and down his outstretched arms. A silent lorikeet bobbed in his palm like a toy, its beak chipped, talons weak. There was a parrot on his shoulder, partially buried beneath one rainbow wing. He could feel it shuddering, too tired to fly, too broken to cry.
The girl stopped playing with her skirt and ran a finger from the side of that red smile to the hollow of her throat. She was not looking at the birds. She could only see him. One of the canaries managed to flutter from his right arm into the palm of his left hand. The small circle of onlookers that had gathered sighed. There was a sprinkling of laughter, during which Luca told the girl that she would bleed for him, that she would die like a flower. That is to say, she would wilt silently. The girl continued to smile, outlining the part of her throat he would bleed dry. She uncrossed her ankles, crossed them again—left over right this time. Luca caught the vague scent of her sweat, her perfume. His mouth began to water.
Kowloon’s famous Bird Market was vibrant with activity. Not, as one might think, the flurry of birds (packed into tiny bamboo cages, they had little space for flurry). They represented solemn color, endless cubes of blue and yellow and green. Their song was more harrowing than beautiful. The activity came from the men selling these birds, nodding enthusiastically, waving in the customers. They bartered with their bodies, elaborate hand gestures designed to negate the language barrier, but which only made them look greedy and sad. Tourists moved through in waves, even at this late hour when the market should be closing, they came with their cameras flashing and their wallets fat with Hong Kong dollars. They rarely bought anything, though, despite the best efforts of the hawkers. Mostly they would shuffle through, taking pictures and smiling, but secretly thinking that the Bird Market was not so much a wonder as a prison.
Beautiful Chinese lanterns swayed in a breeze that had come out of nowhere, throwing shadows into chaos. The old men lining the benches cast uncertain glances at the night sky. There was no suggestion of a storm: crystal stars, a slice of moon wavering in the haze thrown out by the city’s heat. But that unnatural breeze, carrying the scent of the nearby flower market, the groan of traffic inching for progress down Nathan Road. The locals who gathered every evening, to pass the time, to talk and to gaze—those who knew the feel of Kowloon—sensed something. Not a storm, they all agreed on that, but it was something, and it wasn’t good.
The Bird Man stood, his black jacket flowing and his arms alive with so many birds he felt that, if their wings hadn’t been clipped, they would carry him away as if he really were a birdman—a wonderful, flying creature. The girl continued to stare at him. She had her head back, her hair resting in black loops on her shoulders.
“Like a flower,” he said, and began to pirouette, slowly. With each revolution a single bird fluttered from his arm, all the flight its clipped wings could manage, back into its waiting cage. The spectacle was wonderful, almost hypnotic. This dark man turning in circles, shaking the birds loose one by one. He was like a dandelion surrendering to the wind. He was like something beautifully built, beautifully taken apart.
The lanterns swished back and forth, as if this part of Kowloon were pitched on a wave. Shadows ran around him like children. There was color, and then there was no color. There were sounds and smells, and then there was sile
nce. The onlookers applauded. Their faces were made unreal in the lanterns’ movement. They seemed to coalesce into one another. One long smile.
Except for hers. Her face was set apart, like a diamond. Her red smile was always there, even when the world ran out of color.
Do you know what I am?
Luca stopped turning. There was a single canary perched on the tip of one finger. He asked the hawker to hand him a cage. The small heart-shaped one. The hawker obliged, nodding and grinning. Luca took the cage from him. He brought the canary to his lips and laid the lightest kiss on its wing. The bird left his finger in a whisper of yellow.
“What’s your name?” he asked the girl.
“Mei Ling,” she replied, still smiling, still touching her throat.
“Mei Ling,” Luca repeated. He handed her the bird in its tiny heart-shaped home. “A gift. For your smile.”
“My smile?” She laughed. “You’re easily pleased.”
“You think so?”
“I do. What’s your name, Bird Man?”
“Luca.”
“Loo-Ka.” She looked at her gift, ran her finger along the thin bamboo bars. “I think I will call him Loo-Ka: the little bird in my heart.”
The crowd was thinning around them, shaken away like the birds from his arms. The old hawker shuffled up to Luca and told him that the market was closing. He bowed and looked at the night, retreating.
“What is it?” Luca asked. He sensed the man’s fear like a dog that bites.
The old man shrugged. “Feel bad,” he said. “Like storm. You feel, too?”
Luca shook his head. He followed the man’s gaze, fixed on the watery slice of moon. “Nothing,” he said, but he inhaled the air and trained his sensitive ears to every sound. There was nothing but Kowloon, exotic and exciting, full of light and height. Two million voices lifted in an exclamation of life. The heartbeat sound of electricity. The scream of televisions and video games and neon advertising. Twenty million aromas. An explosion of tastes. A blinding display of sights. Nothing but Kowloon. Nothing.
“Something bad,” the hawker said, bowing as the shadows played, his dark eyes choked with fear.
“Just a breeze,” Mei Ling said. “That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Luca agreed.
She took his hand “You’re so cold,” she said, but how could she know that it had held one hundred years’ worth of women before her, and had cradled them, touched their hair and their bodies, and made them feel loved, even as they died? How could she know that his hands, like the rest of him, had not aged in that time? His skin remained smooth and pale, his fingers straight and strong. How could she know that he always slept in the darkest places, that he often shared a bed with diseased vermin and cockroaches? How could she know that he was little more than an animal?
He looked at the night once again, feeling the unnatural breeze.
Something bad.
“Come on, Bird Man,” the girl said. “Let’s fly.”
2
The Vagabond had told him—so long ago now, when he was new—that the thirst was nothing but pain. It would writhe in his stomach like a snake. It would fill his mouth with a dry, acid longing. It would lace his throat with sand and dust and the taste of age. The thirst was an illness, make no mistake about it. And although it was just as fine as wine to live forever, the downside was that he would wake every night with his stomach burning, his mouth crying out for the taste of life, hands clawing … clawing.
Pain, my friend, the Vagabond had said. Ahhh, we are worse than animals. They scavenge, yes, but they procreate. We have no interest in that, as you know. We live to drink, and we drink to live. It’s a pretty miserable existence when you stop and think about it.
He was right; Luca had woken into the Kowloon night, spitting cockroaches from his mouth, wiping filth and faeces from his hair, with his stomach rolling and his throat so dry he made a sound like a death rattle when he breathed. He quenched this thirst—hating himself, hating his endless life—by catching a feisty little rat, tearing it in two, and swallowing its guts in one greasy, easy lump. It wasn’t exactly finger-lickin’ good (although he did lick his fingers), but it served to lubricate his throat and ease the pain in his stomach. An appetizer, if you will.
And now …
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mei Ling asked, fluttering like the canary in its cage. She smiled. “Do you want to kiss me? Is that it?”
They had walked through the Flower Market hand in hand, the wild fragrances soaking them both, and his stomach had cried out. His mouth was running. Thirsty. Again, so thirsty.
“Kiss you … yes.”
“Do you want to touch me?”
Hand in hand, his unstoppable heart thumping and angry, walking through the crowds and the heat of Nathan Road, across Salisbury and behind the Hong Kong Museum of Art. The waters of the harbor lapped and swayed. Central stood on the other side: a brilliant range of lights and angles. A testament to achievement. But never mind the pretty picture. He didn’t walk her out here to admire the view. He was thirsty. Fairly parched, for the love of God, and no dirty rat would fill the void this time. Oh no, he wanted the main course: a pretty little Kowloon delight named Mei Ling.
“Yes, I want to touch you.”
“Do you want to make love to me?”
He took her in his arms and turned her in a circle. She giggled like a schoolgirl, throwing back her head, and he breathed her in. He could smell the faint salty shine of her sweat and his mouth was open. His throat expanded, tasting the cinnamon in her hair and the lemon fragrance of her perfume. Her body seemed so small in his arms, so breakable. He cupped her shoulder blade and felt he could snap it off. His long fingers circled her upper arm, where her thin muscle flexed, as weak as a child, and he was taken by the sudden, overwhelming sensation that she was not a woman, but a beautiful Oriental doll made of silk and bone china. Her face would shatter when he took her down, he knew it. Her glassy, broken eyes would regard him sorrowfully, and he would run away in pain, still thirsty.
Luca pressed his mouth to her throat, feeling the thump of her pulse, the rush of her blood. His mouth ached, his thirst screamed at him. It was all he could do to keep from taking her right there and then, even with so many people around—the midnight strollers and the lovers crowding the benches, looking over the harbor at the brazen monument of Central. He would take her and she would die in his arms, slowly, effortlessly, almost like an act. She would fold into darkness and the lights of the city would move across her eyes, as wonderfully as they moved across the black water of the harbor.
So you do bleed, Luca thought, pulling away from her throat, from that pulse, her sensuous rush of life.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Mei Ling stood on tiptoe to tack a little kiss on his jaw. Her canary—Loo-Ka— bobbed up and down in its heart-shaped cage.
“Your question?”
“I said …” She pulled him close to whisper in his ear. “Do you want to make love to me?”
Excitement in her eyes, her mouth partway open and as red as her heart.
Luca nodded. He touched her hair. It felt dead to him. He touched her face and his thirst danced. “Yes, oh yes. I want to …”
Drink from the well of your throat … fill my stomach with your soul …
“You want to …? Tell me, Bird Man.”
“I want to …”
Cradle you like a baby as I bite into the fruit of your heart.
“You want me. I know, Bird Man. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Yes, I want you.”
“Your place or mine?”
He considered his place: deep in the guts of Kowloon: a disused, burned-out maintenance station on the Tsuen Wan line, somewhere between Tsim Sha Tsui and Jordan. It was a damp pit blissfully starved of light and crawling with a multitude of ’roaches and rats. It wasn’t much, but it was home. He would lie there during the long daylight hours, waiting for the deep drop of sleep. He w
ould listen to the frequent blast and shudder of the trains as they passed six or seven feet from where he lay. He would think about the people on those trains, maybe half a million every day. Half a million little hearts beating away. Half a million minds and souls that were lost in the worlds of their cell phones and newspapers, trapped in prisons of work or conversation, and all of them ignorant to the fact that they were passing within feet of a living monster. Did they feel a chill, he wondered—a sudden cold flush—at that moment? Did they rub the gooseflesh on their arms? Pull their jackets a little closer? I am here and you don’t even know it. I am the tumor in your stomach you haven’t discovered, the lump in your breast—in your throat—you haven’t yet felt. I am here, malign and voracious. I am here …
“Hey, Bird Man.”
He touched her face. He inhaled the breeze of her scent, like summer. “I’m here.”
“Your place or mine?”
“Yours,” he said, and kissed her. “Definitely yours.”
3
Mei Ling Cheung was not normally given to promiscuity. In her twenty-three years she had only ever been with two men. The first was an older businessman with a house in the Peak District, who had seduced her with his wealth before discarding her like an associate with whom business relations had broken down. She was not sorry. She did not pine for the man who had cultivated not the feelings of her heart but her predilection for elegance. For four months she had sipped from the cup of the Hong Kong millionaire, she had been draped with more shimmer and shine than a Christmas tree, she had seen every inch of Central from the back seat of a Rolls Royce, and had eaten in restaurants like Petrus and Gaddi’s, where a five-course meal cost more than her father earned in a month. They went their separate ways—he to his life of heights and diamonds, she to a one-bedroom apartment on Cameron Road, where the aircon made a sound like a fistfight and the ’roaches were so familiar she felt she could give them names.
Her second waltz with romance happened just two months ago, and lasted all of a week. Bobby Lin was a sweet, if simple-minded boy who worked on the Lu Wotu with her father, trawling the polluted western harbor twelve hours a day, seven days a week. He was honest and hard working and when he smiled his face was pinched with so many dimples he looked like a different person. Unfortunately, this brief encounter met its conclusion when Bobby, in one of his more vacant moments, let slip to her father that he had the best intentions for Mei Ling. Her father responded by promising to gut Bobby like a fish, right there on the deck, if he so much as looked at his daughter again.
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