Not pausing for the man’s leather sandals, they whirled from their metal snaps, and along with foot arches and toes, they disappeared, and not a trace of the man remained.
Instantly the black opening in Russell’s face started closing, becoming a normal human looking mouth again. The receded nose, eyes, and ears that had been pushed back like a motorcyclist’s helmet visor, smoothly returned to their normal places. Life flowed through his body again in glory. Billions of cells already formed and grew, fed on the substance of one form now becoming another’s.
The group watched Russell’s body sway, a tremendous surge passing through him that each of them personally knew. Turning toward them, his eyes opened. They revealed whites, pupils, and irises flooded red with blood, only a pin-sized black spot at their centers. They walked to him, and he calmly leaned against Nathan, who embraced his expanding frame.
His shoes, loose from the loss of girth, were already filling. Layers of thick flesh were materializing layer on layer. Bone joints again became hidden under the returning luxuriant dermis. Healthy new skin swathed the scabs, welts, and puss covering his head. A lawn of thick shiny hair started to sprout. By day’s end, he would again be the beautiful, desired, and sometimes envied creature of the race that oppressed him. All would now be good, and Shawn hugged him, “Buddy.”
“Shawn . . . ,” Russell said, his lips parted to force a smile that revealed budding ivory stubs where minutes ago toothy gaps had been.
Turning together from the chapel’s niche, they started back to the transept to leave the church. They did not get far.
The several rats they passed did not cause them to slow or turn away. They were all familiar with the creatures, each having spent more than one night among them in ghettos and back alleys, cesspools and filthy environs during myriad travels under circumstances they often had to endure. However, as they passed into the wide church nave, they slowed. Before them, marked by shafts of light spotting the floor, rats were gathering, not by dozens or by even hundreds but by thousands.
The encroaching black tide advanced on little scratching nails whose sound filled their ears with dreadful foreboding. The doorway they entered through and the whole front entrance were effectively blocked. They could go no farther. From the columns, from the walls, and from small cracks in the floor the rats entered and advanced. Luckily, behind them, the ground remained clear of the creatures, and trying to remain calm, they slowly retreated toward the side chapel.
Shawn bent for a rock to throw. “Don’t,” Nathan said, “you could spook them, set them off.”
Walking backward, looking around for an escape venue, they spotted nothing. All the while, the rat numbers kept growing. They covered the entire floor of the church before them, and where the black sea ran out of ground, they piled on top of one another.
“Anything, does anybody see anything?” Nathan said.
“Nothing,” Gus said. “There’s no way out behind. The walls are solid.”
“Up. Up,” Nathan said, pointing for them to look up. “Anything?”
“Just that little opening,” Shawn said. “Over there over the little altar or whatever.”
“Everybody go there, slowly,” Nathan said.
The minions squeaked through thousands of grinding teeth, their mass of advancing claws scratching the stone floor.
“Anyway you can reach it, Shawn?” Nathan said, looking at a circular brick opening, a vent, or ancient skylight in the lower ceiling above the side chapel.
“I . . . ,” Shawn wondered scoping the area. “I might make it with a leap to the little stone altar in the wall, then to that ledge opposite, and then a Hail Mary to the opening, but . . .”
“Even if he could, Nathan,” Gus said, worried as he’d never been seen, “the opening is barely wide enough to get his head through.”
“I might fit,” Leeda said.
“Can you jump the course I laid out?”
“No,” she said, examining what he’d pointed to.
“Nathan,” Sammy said. “The rats.” Eyes glittering like an ocean of crawling fireflies, the rats now advanced from the sides and rear.
“Can you lift her to it?” Nathan asked.
Before Shawn could answer, Leeda stepped from Shawn’s quickly cupped hands, onto his shoulders, and into his upturned palms. Stretching his arms as he had at the retaining wall, he lifted her toward the narrow opening.
Her fingertips gripped the opening’s exterior rim. She pulled herself up, sliding an elbow out as she angled her shoulder up through the circular, chimney-like opening.
Watching huddled below, the others saw the black bell shape of her leather skirt close. It blocked the shaft’s light for an instant before she disappeared. When her head reappeared looking down at them, she saw a dark sea starting to surround them.
Outside, on the lower roof of the side chapel, she looked around for something to widen the opening. She saw iron retention rods loosened from their frames by the elements. Taking one, she struck the bricks with it, easily crumbling the old mortar. She kept hitting the skylight’s casing, and with each assault, the bricks loosened. She pulled them away, and soon the narrow opening was wide enough for the others’ shoulders to clear.
When she looked back down, Russell was already reaching up to her. Pressing her thighs against the side of the exterior brick cylinder, she hung her body down like a trapeze artist for him to climb over and make it to the roof. “Hurry!” she called to the ones below, seeing the rats only yards from them. “Hurry, Shawn!” she called, his arms extending Sammy on his upraised palms. Helping Sammy with a quick tug up over her back, Sammy’s taller, stronger body clutched the brick rim and pulled himself to the roof. When he was out of the way, Gus already stretched his arms to Leeda’s extended hands. “Move Leeda. Let me,” he said, and she got out of the way. His long arms grabbed the outside ledge, and with Sammy’s help, he pulled up to and tumbled onto the roof. “Nathan!” Leeda cried, rushing back and dropping her torso again into the opening.
“Out of the way, Leeda!” he called, ready to spring from Shawn’s shaky shoulders. “Move away!” And just as Sammy and Russell pulled Leeda’s body out, Nathan pushed off Shawn, leapt high, and seized hold of the opening’s lip. The three helped him onto roof, and then all turned to look for Shawn.
“Push down some bricks!” Nathan said, leaning on them, the rats practically at Shawn’s ankles. “Shawn! Out of the way!” Nathan called, sending the bricks down, and scattering the rats. With the rats dispersed, Shawn had enough room to step back, take a run as he did, and leap to the side altar as he’d planned. However, fatigued from lifting every one, he missed and fell to the floor.
“Gus! Your lighter! The lighter!” Nathan screamed, pulling Russell’s cloak from his shoulders. “Light it! Light!” Nathan shouted as he looked down and saw Shawn attempting to stand, fighting rats off his body, finally getting up, stomping into their mass, and dashing again to the stone altar, this time making it but with rats clinging to his body.
The cloak lighted, Nathan bent down with it on fire over the opening. The rats were leaping to the altar and crawling up Shawn’s body. He couldn’t pull them all off fast enough, but he readied, strode hard to the altar’s end, and pushed off toward the ledge at the other side, landing there, and bringing himself higher and closer to the vent.
Nathan shook the flaming cloak, trying to ward off the vicious animals, but they held tight to their victim, bloody scars covering Shawn’s shoulders and face. “Jump Shawn!” Nathan called to him as Shawn struggled to ready a leap.
“Jump! Jump!” the others yelled.
Finally, almost covered with rats, Shawn leapt from the ledge. One hand connected with Nathan’s, the other trying to grip the bricks. However, drained and bleeding, and fighting a coat of mauling teeth and ripping claws, he could not pull himself higher. Shawn’s weight was too much for Nathan to lift, and so seeing no alternative, Nathan walloped the flaming cloak against Shawn’s body. Instant
ly, as if a torch lit, a mass of oily rat fur burst in flames over Shawn. His flaming body kicked and shook. Nathan’s and the other’s arms tried desperately to hold Shawn, but the fire traveling to Shawn’s head burned their arms, and their grips loosened and yielded. They watched the fiery torch fall to the church floor, and there it burned, the clinging rats jumping off, but plenty of others surrounded the still appetizing body.
“Shawn . . . ,” Sammy cried, hanging over the opening. “Shawn . . . Shawn . . . ,” he cried, as the others rolled onto their sides on the roof.
Sprawled on the tiles under a splendid sun filled sky, a quiet sobbing slowly came from the yulen. They did not wail, only sobbed, all except Nathan, who, sliding Gus’s metal lighter between his clenched teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and refused to cry.
XIII
“We found ‘em, Pa,” Josiah Early excitedly said, to his father seated at his customary table outside the esplanade café in Saint-Tropez.
“Josiah,” Joseph sulked, “you said I could tell ‘em.”
“So go on—tell ‘em.”
“We found ‘em, Pa.”
“’Bout time,” Macon’s gravelly voice said, as he scrutinized his search party.
“Can we get our reward now?” Joseph queried.
“Reward?”
“You said.”
“Who did you find?”
“Why, the Nathan fella, Pa.”
“Part of the problem was we was pronouncin’ his name wrong,” Josiah said.
“All wrong in French,” said Joseph Henry.
“Which doesn’t mean you was sayin’ it wrong, now does it?” Macon said.
“We kept sayin’ Nathan like ah . . .”
“Bathin’.”
“And they say it like, ah, ah—Satin!”
“Nay-ten!”
“Nay-ten.”
“Well all I can say is it took youse long enough to catch on. But you did. And that’s all that matters.”
“And our reward?”
“Joseph, unless our Mr. Nathan is mighty small an’ you got ‘em in your pocket, I don’t think you found ‘em yet. Am I wrong?”
‘No, Pa.”
“Then where is he?”
“Just a ways outta town,” Josiah said.
“Owns a fancy car store,” said Joseph Henry.
“Then we better be gettin’ on over there if we wanna find him and you wanna get your grubby little hands on the reward,” Macon said, rising from the table.
“Mademoiselle we spoke to said it was three kilometers outta town.”
“Let’s be walkin’ then,” Macon said, the waiter coming right away to slide his chair back and remove the half-finished wineglass.
“I ain’t finished with that, mister. I’ll be back shortly.”
“But sir, I cannot hold the table for this,” the waiter said, referring to the glass.
“I didn’t say for you to hold the table, boy. Hold my drink for when I get back. And don’t get your fingers all over the glass. Let’s go boys.” Macon turned to walk where his son had pointed.
“Can’t we take a taxi, Pa?” Josiah said. “It’s far.”
“Walkin’ was good enough for Our Savior. It’s good enough for you,” Reverend Early said, walking ahead.
“Oh Pa . . .”
“I walk toward the benediction of Our Lord,” said the Reverend, walking forthright. “I walk with Him, with Him at my side. Sinner that I may be, He walketh with me. Toward the light of goodness I walk. Toward that light you all walk—when with me you walk. Walk children! Walk with me! And walketh with He the Lord our savior. Walk now toward Jerusalem.”
“Toward Jerusalem,” Joseph said, catching up to his father.
“Toward the new Jerusalem,” said the Reverend.
“The new Jerusalem.”
“Walketh with the Lord Almighty, walk!”
“With the Lord!”
“Toward the new Jerusalem.”
“New Jerusalem.”
“Walk with me walk. To the new Jerusalem we walk.”
“To the new Jerusalem.
“The new Jerusalem we walk.”
“Follow me, boys, to New Jerusalem.”
“To the new Jerusalem!”
“New Jerusalem!”
“The New Jerusalem!”
>
Leeda’s hem gently glided over clusters of sprouting yellow buds covering the wide-open meadow she hiked. The warm clear day provided a balm to her spirit that she sorely needed. The loss of Shawn and the way he died weighed on her thoughts. She hadn’t realized that in despair, she had walked to take the lead, the others walking far behind heavy-footed.
Finally she raised her eyes from watching the grasses over which her wide skirt folds advanced. She was determined that pushing ahead was the only way to stop the past’s sorrow from catching up. She looked forward, opposed the past, and her strides lengthened.
Lifting her face toward the caressing Sun, her gorgeous head shook her flowing hair back, and she pushed her journey and her thoughts forward.
>
“Looks like we found our boy,” Macon Early smiled, head lifted. Looking ahead along the top of several stories tall, light reflecting glass panels, he and his boys saw in big bold letters, Voitures Exotique Nathaniel.
“Brush yourselves off, Josiah and Joseph Henry,” Macon said, standing with his sons across the road from Nathan’s dealership, “and see what the lady-killer skills you’re always braggin’ about, can find out about our boy. Tell them you’re interested in their best pickup truck.”
>
“She’s suffering,” Gus said to Nathan of Leeda still trekking far ahead of them on the open fields of daisies and clover.
“Everybody is.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Gus’ chin pointed to Russell walking spirited ahead.
Although only one night and that day had passed since his taking, their nearly lost yulen had already transformed back into an enduring picture of glowing health. It would last him all of early season before hints of deterioration surfaced at midseason. And in the late season that would follow, consumption and potential destruction would return. The three-month cycle—his regeneration having begun its countdown the day before—would rule like an iron fist. There was no escaping it.
For yulen, there was only submission to their natural rhythm. With learned attention though, they made the most of its benefits. Live and make hay while the brilliant gifts of their natures shined the first month. Always conserve energy or calories—as they called the stores of energy allotted them from a taking. Calories got them from one season to the next. If calories ran out, they ran out. With luck and care, they would not have to give up their mortal coil. They would enjoy the blessings of nature, and they would struggle as well to bear and live through every torture, pain, and affliction, usually at the hands of man, in late season.
Russell had endured the attacks of his late season. He’d been assailed and punished, bourn the terrible pain of his body consuming him from the inside out in order to allow him to reach the moment of his taking’s command. By that glorious first new day’s end, every cell of his body was created anew on the substance of the man his body had transformed into his rebirth.
Flesh to flesh, blood to blood, from the soil of one to the soil of another, nature did not judge. It celebrated rejuvenation of whatever fed, nourished, and allowed its own continuance. Her yulen creature, unlike eagle, worm, man, bear, ant, grunt, ameba, protozoa, in continuous cycle of life until death, She permitted return to the land of the living to partake of Her bounty, and face death another day.
XIV
The Early boys and their father stood admiringly before the gates with a gold italic letter C written on each gate. Women at the dealership had informed the two Casanovas that the double Cs marked the entrance to the estate of Mr. Nols. Because the gates were open, the Reverend saw no reason to stay out. He led his party through The Happy Cs that Constance had chosen to place on each
gate of her Villa Constanza.
The shaded winding drive took the Earlys past the pool where a gardener trimmed Constance’s trellised rose vines. Ahead, beyond a thick carpet of lawn stood the imposing main house.
“Who-wee, Pa,” the boys said. “This fella is it. I never seen anything like this.”
“And why would you, livin’ where and as we do?” Macon said, leading them across the lawn.
“Uh, Pa?” Joseph said, looking at the three fast approaching Dobermans.
“I see them. And I ain’t afraid of ‘em. And neither should you. Any of you. Show no fear. We are on the duty of Our Lord.”
“They don’t look friendly, Pa.”
“Blessed are the beasts of the land, for they shall not harm the righteous,” Macon said, raising his arms, his hands holding the bottom edges of his jacket, forming it into drapes on each side.
“Pa? . . .”
“Fear the beasts, oh wicked, but the righteous not!”
The three growling dogs closed-in to yards from them. Macon Early frozen with his draped arms held aloft, the trespassers huddled behind him. “Pa!”
“Stop in the name of The Lord!”
On command, the snarling dogs skidded to stop, Striker falling over his forelegs.
“Woa . . . Pa . . .”
“The power of The Lord! The power of He!”
“What do you want here?” Antoine snarled, coming up behind them; his flicking hand toward the dogs, sending them running back from where they’d rushed.
“And who are you?” Macon said.
Antoine let out an impatient breath. “I am in charge. Now, who are you?”
“I’m here to see Nathan Nols.”
“Mr. Nols is not here. Now please leave.”
“Then we’ll see Mrs. Nols,” Macon said, and proceeded walking to the mansion. “We’re friends of his and of mutual friends.”
“Kindly stop or I will be forced to stop you.”
Yulen: Return of the Beast – Mystery Suspense Thriller (Yulen - Book 2) Page 14