Marshsong

by Nato Thompson

  “Fennel, I know you can feel it. I sure can. The closer we get to the source of this gasoline, the stronger the acid pit in our stomachs. That spitting feeling is growing already and I shudder to think what it will do when we get up to the top of the road. We need to drink the fish sauce.” Isabella put a sip into her mouth and felt instant relief. She reached out to hand it to her brother. He turned his horse and began galloping up the road.

  “It hurts to know I am so much stronger than you! I don’t feel a thing! Last one there is a rotten cat turd!” he yelled and Zarathustra had already galloped past the first bend in the road. Isabella spurred Elia and raced to catch up.

  Traveling this far couldn’t be more exhilarating. They had never seen nor heard of this path. It had almost magically opened up for them and they were now heading up into the maw of their favorite subject of all time—the unfamiliar.

  "The unfamiliar is a clumsy toad on a malevolent road to a spooky abode.

  The unfamiliar gives time its life and riddles the wise and steals their wife.

  The unfamiliar is treacherous and coy like a codger's old toy or the knife-wielding boy.

  The unfamiliar is a clumsy toad on a malevolent road to a spooky abode."

  Isabella sang to herself. It was the song Marty would sing to her when she was a smaller, younger but no less frightful cherub. She loved that song. Marty was once so kind to her. He would rock her to sleep and tell her dark Grimm's fairy tales that made her shudder and slobber. He once took her on the walks that he now only shared with Fennel. He would tell her why some old women become obsessed with cats and how, in the old ways, you could tell the mood in a house by the softness of butter. But he had changed. Become afraid. Afraid of her and these very unfamiliar roads that had her spitting thick spit. She hocked a fat loogie into the brush and charged along. The road twisted up into the mountains where boulders and cliff faces dared the road. Fennel could still smell the Duke—lamp oil and propane. He pushed on.

  After almost two hours, they reached a tunnel that went into the body of the mountain—a hole ominous and inviting. It just vanished deep into the interior. This was it. The entrance.

  "Magnificent," whispered Fennel.

  Even with the fish sauce, Isabella felt the stir in her stomach. She couldn’t fathom how her brother felt. She looked over at him and besides the perspiration accumulating on his brow he seemed fine. His excitement if nothing else provided a powerful energy in him. Neither had any intention of turning back. They dismounted and told the horses to wander into the woods.

  "We'll be back in a couple hours, so don't disappear," said Fennel to the faint sight of Zarathustra ducking its head into the grove.

  The mouth of the tunnel was cracked, chipped and ancient. Above the entrance, carved into the melanoid mountain were the words Incendiary, which Fennel gasped happily, “Incinerate!” The road below their small feet showed signs of heavy use. As obscure the location, it was not without its inhabitants and those in-the-know. They grabbed each other's hand and walked delicately inside.

  Darkness. It gave comfort to the twins. Their noses perked up to the unmistakable smell of smoke and gasoline—its dank odor undeniable. The air was thick with a corroded texture. They moved silently along the road, the wet towering walls hugging the vast darkness around them. The blackness enveloped their breathing. They could hear water trickling along the edges of the wall and a thin glistening stream made its progress to their right.

  It wasn’t all that long before they could see light flickering in the distance. As they came nearer they could see torches and then the carriages that they illuminated. Several carriages were parked with the horse stables just a little ways up. They approached. No one was around, but there was the carriage house. Horses shuffled at their approach but made nary a sound. The twins tread as lightly as they could, mustering as much internal magic as possible to shield their presence. Such things weren’t easy when it came to animals. People were easier to fool.

  Inside the carriage area, there were numerous tunnels offering the next path to travel. They opted for the one with the most flagrant aroma of petrol. The scale of the entire world around them made the already small twins all the smaller. The tunnels towered high up into the sky above them. Massive carved faces whose almost lack of adornment were compensated by the sheer impenetrable darkness. They scampered along the tunnel and began to smell the oxygen of the outside. They exited into a sprawling lush garden from which they could at last view something of which they had never seen anything remotely close to. Towering far up into the mountain, carved from the mountain's very body, stood a castle most extraordinary. Spiraling staircases wound across the architectural surface and the glimmering from the lights inside made an astrology of life across the mountain's surface. They could see people coming and going as though it was a hotel for thousands—a world outside their own carved into the body of the mountain itself. Fennel always eager to act before thinking ran as fast as he could up to the exterior wall of the building. He placed his hand on it and then showed it to Isabella.

  "Unbelievable," he whispered. "It is coal. This fortress is made of coal. What a wonderful home. What a wonderful, wonderful home." He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped off his hand. "Though, I must say, I don't relish the effects this would have on one's apparel."

  Isabella took another sip of her fish sauce and stared in wonder. “Here it is, Fennel. Proof of others. I knew it. I just knew it.”

  She felt a wave of satisfaction rolling through her. It almost made her cry, the feeling so big. An ocean of sensation so deep she could no longer register what emotion it was. Something big, like a world churning inside. She wasn’t crazy after all. Whatever this home of the Duke was, it was a place outside of not only Barrenwood’s geographic territory but its psychic and spiritual border as well. Isabella found herself getting on a knee and thanking the universe. It was almost too much for her.

  Fennel came over and helped her back up. He was laughing. His face was noticeably gaunt but his laughter sincere. “You are a piece of work. Get on your feet, Miss Melodrama. We are just at the beginning.”

  They both walked across the garden with its blackberry bushes and calla lilies. They felt tiny in the face of such expanse and with their little black bodies they looked nearly like floral adornments. As mesmerized as the twins were, they could sense the Duke’s presence in the vastness of the castle above. As much as there were hundreds of people inside, there was only one duke. He was a distinct entity for sure.

  "The window. Up there" Isabella pointed to the closed dark window at a height of nearly fifty feet. This would be their front door. “We’ll enter there."

  She grabbed onto the surface of the wall, its chalky exterior making her hand instantly stained and climbed up spider-style. Her body, spread wide across the surface, moved stealthily up toward the window with alacrity. She popped the lock without difficulty and crept inside. Fennel, on the other hand, just leapt up in one jump, his little calves obviously being an ancestor of the kangaroo. He sat perched in the window, looking and smiling beguilingly at Isabella.

  "Ha, ha, ha" he laughed quietly. "You really should learn to bound. Ha, ha, ha. Your face is covered in black. How hilarious you look."

  Isabella was covered. Her face, hands, body, everything was dirty birdy. She paid little attention. Instead, it was Fennel who felt the need to slightly wipe her off. They had entered a darkened hallway that overlooked a giant banquet hall. The table below could fit almost forty people, but at present the room was abandoned. The chandelier candles were unlit but melted nonetheless.

  "Lavish," said Fennell, "very lavish."

  They crept along the hallway and slid down the banister into the banquet hall. Little children in a foreign home. The walls were adorned in giant paintings of battles, regal portraits, and red dripping canvases. A bearded man swinging a morning star charged almost out of the picture frame. His mouth contorted as he charged toward death or victory. A forlorn woman
stared obliquely out her screen door into the silent evening outside, her hand loosely holding a small shovel. A canvas thick with paint was swathed in a charged umber with a heavy gaping incision across the left side. The paint clotted and richly textured created a landscape that made its way toward the oak floorboards below. Pouring down.

  "Quite an atmosphere for dining. I shudder to think where this man digests," mused Fennel.

  They walked around the room and Fennel couldn’t help his slight kleptomaniac desires—the polished silver sitting without use on the table too tempting for him. He grabbed a spoon and knife and went to slip them in his pocket. They fell on the floor with a clang. It was the sickness. His hands were shaking. The twins jumped below the table just in time. A barrel-chested man in a bow tie peeked his extremely bronze face into the room and then entered with a squadron of assistants in white scrubs.

  “If those crows are in here looking for scraps again, I am going to resort to placing poison on the table,” the man barked as he looked around the room. “That window up there. They got in that way. Sheldon, you need to close that and do find a way to get out whatever got in. I am sure it is a buzzard or some carrion eater of sorts, but it is dark as night in here and you are going to have a heck of a time finding it. You should head over to the supplies closet and grab that extended pole net. That is how I have done it in the past. We can’t have these things flying around and relieving themselves on the sisters of the wet. That would go over fairly poorly, I would say.”

  The man, who it should be noted possessed a most nut brown skin with a head the shape of a bowling ball, disappeared back into the room with all the men except Sheldon who ran up to close the window. He locked it shut and then scooted down a hallway and out of the room.

  Isabella looked at Fennel angrily. He was trying to stay chipper, but his stomach had begun to really turn on him. He made a faint gesture of apology, but his illness was getting the better of him. His hands had become harder to control. The arthritic shakes were setting in. She saw it in his face. A sound of movement emanated from the room on their left.

  “We can’t afford to be discovered, dear brother,” said Isabella.

  Fennel just stared at the floor. His face was paler than ever and perspiration had really accumulated. He was fading fast.

  “Dear me, brother, take this fish sauce. You’re going to end up getting sick in here and then you may never leave.”

  Isabella again offered the sauce to her brother, shoving it right under his nose. He mumbled something, laughed to himself and took a sip. He screwed up his face.

  “Disgusting!” he said, but a slight bit of color returned. “Let's follow that sound.” He moved fast toward a door.

  Isabella just let the moment pass. She didn’t need to rejoice on the small victory of her brother taking the sauce. He had sipped it instinctually and now he was off.

  Isabella followed her brother toward the door. He wasn’t being nearly stealthy enough; just operating on instinct, and Isabella was worried he was impossible to control. They were bulls in a china shop of coal.

  Isabella followed Fennel back up the stairs and down an exit hall toward an increasing whirring sound. He sensed something. His acute hunting instinct had taken over. They took lefts, rights, lefts and lefts again to make their way through a heavy metallic door that said most invitingly, Staff Only. Isabella breathed a sigh of relief to see her brother on the other side of the door looking down over a metallic railing. She didn’t want to lose him in this house.

  What they looked down upon was hard to explain. Nearly thirty figures clad in bright blood red satin robes scribbled away on long oak tables. Piles of faded parchment with ink splatter littered the enormous desks. Old books, magnifying glasses, compasses, ink jars, and tan folders were everywhere. A series of massive tired mechanical fans spun overhead with ancient dust still sitting safely upon them. The scribes were diligently at work not looking up at all. Their faces were covered in red veils that gave them the look of devilish dervishes. A gigantic fireplace with a small tree inside burned ecstatically on the distant, distant west wall. The heat made the smell of coal all the more present. Urgent and ambitious, the sound of the pens scratching on the parchment mixed with the crackling sound of the burning wood. Smoke.

  In the far corner of the room, they spied mechanical machines for copying. The machine belched black smoke and a man in mechanic gloves was in the guts of the machine fixing it as best he could. The paper coming out of the copier was a marred series of black streaks, the kind of photocopy that might not in the end serve its ultimate purpose of legibility.

  Fennel leaned over the railing down onto the scribes. His face was gaunt again and he hocked a large loogie over the railing. He spit and then spit again. Isabella grabbed him by the arm and pulled him down out of sight.

  “Don’t do that!” she reprimanded him, but his eyes showed not a glint of recognition.

  “Need to spit. Get the wet out,” he mumbled. They needed to get to the Duke and soon. Time was running out.

  Isabella grabbed her brother by the arm and led them both out the far end of the room. She could sense the Duke at the opposite end of the building on floors much higher up. She, fortunately, located a large spiraling staircase that they ascended in rapid fashion. It wound in and out of the building, allowing them a view of Barrenwood just barely visible in the distance. Isabella marveled that for her whole life, this home had been there in plain sight, melted into the mount.

  They traveled further and further up, scuttling past hallways full of guests coming and going. Isabella could feel the strength of her brother waning. She stopped when they had finally reached nearly the top and looked him over. He was a worse mess than before.

  “Fennel, drink up a little more,” she said, placing the fish sauce again in front of his face.

  “That stuff is disgusting. I don’t want it,” he said, waving it off and then suddenly reaching out to drink it. He nearly spit it up but swallowed nevertheless. Isabella then took a sip as well. Fennel’s eyes suddenly looked sad.

  “Iz,” he whispered. “I don’t think this sauce is for me.”

  Isabella paused. It had never occurred to her. She felt pretty good and her brother looked, well, terrible.

  Fennel then smiled and punched her in the shoulder. “Ha-ha. Gotcha! Okay, people are down that hall. We will have to cloak ourselves. I will just refrain from grabbing cutlery.”

  The hallway was in the central building. A sensuous wine colored carpet made room for their fluid black feet. The castle reigned majestic. Ornate mirrors, candelabras, intricate mahogany shields adorned the cornices and doorknobs. It was a perpetual vertigo for one trying to stay surreptitious. Maids and guests and even kittens exited some doors and made their way through others. It was very crowded.

  They stepped into the hall and walked along unobstructed. No one bothered them. It wasn't that they didn't see them. They would even receive courteous eye contact from people and smiles. It was as though they were familiar. Fennel would tip his hunting hat at the gentlemen and say, "Evening sir," in an exaggerated baritone. Isabella walked briskly along the hall. It felt good to be in this strange mansion with its own world of denizens and design. She peered at the paintings that adorned the walls. They were paintings of duke’s from time past. The resemblance to the Duke of Izmir was remarkable—all large men, and women, with burning eyes, immense hands and the intensity of an oryx.

  It was in looking at these paintings that she came upon one in particular that captured her attention. “Fennel,” she whispered. “Look at this.”

  There in the painting sat a refined, rotund couple, most probably the Duke’s parents, as he stood resolute directly behind them. It was a family painting of sorts. But it wasn’t the immediate lineage that captured their eye, but the company they kept. Alongside the Duke was a man black as night with a singular earring and a playful smile on his lips. His arm was wrapped around the back of the Duke. Next to him, were two femal
e twins in their teens, with light pale skin, and their black hair pulled straight back against their head. They were beautiful, seductive and like the rest of those in the painting, odd in the extreme. They all possessed a look both divine and deformed. As though one couldn’t tell if it was beauty they were gazing upon or the hideous pallor of dreams gone rot. And finally, the source that had made them come to the painting in the first place, at the far end of the picture as though he didn’t want to be painted at all, smoking a pipe, sat none other than the gruesome Marty. He was turned sideways as though already walking out of frame, but it was unmistakably him.

  “The ol’ boy sure gets around, doesn’t he?” laughed Fennel. “Never seen him in the luster of paint though. Doesn’t strike me as something that appeals to him.”

  “Something about these people is unnatural. They are like the Duke. Like Marty. They are all, mysterious. Odd,” Isabella mumbled, staring into the painting, hoping to catch more clues. And she did see them although they never registered in her mind as her eyes scanned its surface. There, in the background, just barely lit at the back of the room, stood two small silhouettes equally sized of boy and girl children, their diminutive stature barely recognizable in the illuminated portraits in the foreground.

  But they had to carry on. Time was running thin and she was eager to make progress. She could sense easily where to go, the Duke’s scent making an unmistakable track throughout the home. Her feet moved quicker and Fennel was far behind, bowing and even shaking hands with some of the guests.

  "Yes, sir. And we know what a good lad he is," he laughed, holding his belly. He was enjoying himself most certainly.

  Isabella felt the handle of a door. It was hot to the touch. He was in there. The Duke was behind the door. She put her ear to the mahogany and heard nothing. Silence. Fennel caught up with her as she battled in her mind what to do. Go in? Sneak in? Time was running down and she had to know more. She had to burst in. She shouldn’t, but she did. She quickly unlocked the door with her glass key and pushed the both of them in. Incense. Darkness. Smoke.