The Bestiarum Vocabulum (TRES LIBRORUM PROHIBITUM)

by Dean M. Drinkel

  Other sleeping mercenaries and freedom fighters are now awake and shouting for Kagi to stop swinging his sword-arm and destroying the man-sized punching bag that dangled from the rafters. The four-foot high bag has only just been placed here for exercise and diversion during the long days of planning for the raid. Across the top of the punching bag made of sawdust and chopped chicken feathers one of the men has scrawled the name COOKE in broad black strokes of charcoal.

  All of Kagi’s nightmare disappears when the light from a whale lamp comes up. “Ever eat feet?” Captain Brown had asked the men at table during their last supper. By then, they’d run out of food supplies and were down to eating the worst parts of the chickens and goats. “Ever cook the feet?” Captain Brown asked of his men.

  A dream like the madness they contemplate—a takeover of a U.S. arsenal might well bring on the evil of a Mara. They mean to abduct and hold as hostages slave holders. They are here to emancipate whole plantation populations, and to arm slaves in and around Virginia and Maryland. “Ever eat raw meat, boys? Ever cook and eat the feet?” called out Kagi to the others, bringing on a nervous laughter in them. “Gives a man one helluva nightmare.” The joke covers the fear. Everyone laughs as the stuffing continues to pour from the punching bag, and as the suffering inside Kagi finds no outlet.

  “Damn, Kagi, you still got that powerful swing!” the Leavenworth escapee calls out.

  “Mr. Kagi,“ began Shields Green with Dangerfield Newby looking on, “you damn sure ruined all the work I put in on that punching bag!” Shields Green, former body guard to Frederick Douglas and here in Maryland to kill slaver holders, had not been in Kansas with Brown. Kagi believes the black man cannot possibly understand.

  Dangerfield Newby, the newest recruit to the cause had come to free his wife and children from a slave owner in Virginia. He stood at the oil lamp and felt a pang in his heart for John Kagi who so often woke with the sweats and nightmares. Dangerfield’s rich voice fills Kagi’s ear as the former slave says, “I ain’t never seen a man arm himself—literally—with a sword to fend off the demon nightmare. I hope it works.”

  The attic darkens again, but Dangerfield, tall, lanky and dark as the night, leans in over the troubled Kagi at his bed. Kagi thinks how Dangerfield looks like the shadow of Caleb now; he looks like the punching bag now.

  “You need the caring heart of a good woman, Mr. Kagi, for a fact,” says Dangerfield, “a woman like my Harriet. You being chased by this demon. I know all ‘bout him but until you told me all you know ‘bout him the other night, I had no idea of its name, Mara, or just how evil it could be.”

  “Evil is the bed made of the flesh we are heir to, Mr. Newby.”

  “You mean like it’s in us, in people?”

  “That’s shrewdly intelligent of you, Mr. Newby.”

  “Do ya think evil’s going to win down at Harpers Ferry? You do, don’t you, sir?”

  “I fear so.”

  “You fear Mr. Cooke getting things wrong, Mr. Kagi?”

  “You are indeed a perceptive man, Dangerfield.”

  “I can’t dislike Mr. Cooke, ’cause he’s the one who led me to find you so’s I can fight alongside you here. He recruited me.”

  “He’s a loser, a foul up, Mr. Newby.”

  “Is he the cause of your nightmares?”

  “Yet he sleeps like a baby.”

  “If we are fated to die at Harpers Ferry and our names forgotten from history, Mr. Kagi, that is my nightmare.”

  “It’s a fear we share then, my friend.”

  “Our cause is righteous even if we make mistakes.”

  “There might be some comfort in righteousness, sure until it twists your soul, Dangerfield.”

  “Best get some sleep, sir.”

  As Brown’s first lieutenant, Kagi knows the men look to him for guidance and courage, but he fears his bouts with the Mara have cost him dearly, as in their faith in him. Still, when they begin the war anew in Virginia, they’ll know it is Kagi who has chosen this new battleground.

  He’d pushed Brown to take the war to the Cradle of Slavery—Virginia. He imagines if they prove successful here, then the emancipation of all American slaves will become a tidal wave to bring on the necessary war. At the same time, perhaps he will have vanquished the Mara that appeared to live inside his mind, sharing space with his soul.

  Or perhaps not; perhaps, win or lose at Harpers Ferry tomorrow, October 16, 1859, magically, his Mara will be vanquished. Or is he dreaming again? And is it time he realizes that his Mara is, and always will be both in life and in death, a permanent resident…

  N Is for Nimerigar

  Christine Dougherty

  Author’s Note: While Frank Carr and Cecil Main are credited with the discovery of the Nimerigar skeleton, this is a completely fictional account of that occurrence.

  Pedro Mountains, Wyoming, October 1932

  “Stand well back, Frank! I’m blowing it!”

  Frank Carr rolled his eyes and spat a line of tobacco into the dirt. He shrugged his sheepskin coat more tightly to his body. It was colder up here in the Pedros than it was in the valley, even though the sun was still strong this late into October. It was the wind that did you in, up here.

  “You hear me, Frank?”

  “Yes, Cecil, godalmightydamn…I hear you!” Frank stomped to the edge of their newest tunnel and glared down at his partner. Cecil Main looked like a Cecil, at least to Frank he did, anyway. Those little glasses. That’s what made him a Cecil. That and his mother-henning.

  Cecil smiled a little sheepishly with one eye squinted up against the sun. He pulled his glasses off and cleaned them with the bottom flap of his long-john shirt. How he could be warm enough in just a long-john and flannel was beyond Frank. Cecil wasn’t even portly. And mild-tempered! The man was mild as fresh milk. Frank was the one who should be running hot, considering his bad temper, but here he stood, shivering in the wind.

  He sighed and reined in his frustration.

  “I’m well back, Ceec,” he said. This time, he kept the impatience out of his voice. “You can go on and blow ‘er.”

  Cecil slipped his glasses back on and smiled up at Frank. He honestly liked his partner, though few others did. Frank reminded Cecil of his own daddy. Daddy was long since dead, having passed in ’22 of the pox, and Frank was a nice reminder of that curmudgeonly man.

  “You got it, Frank,” Cecil said. “But stay well back, now.” He couldn’t help himself. He always saw trouble where trouble hadn’t even thought to be just yet.

  Frank nodded and spat. Then he wiped his chin. “I’m right here, Ceec. Go on.”

  Cecil called out from ten down to one and Frank almost hollered again. Who was Cecil warning? Nobody out here but him and Frank. But lay back, let him do it his way. It’ll get done on either hand, so lay back. Lay back. Frank spat another thick line of tobacco into the dirt just as Ceec pushed the plunger and the dynamite made itself known.

  Frank waited as first the echoes of the blast and then the smaller echoes of the falling debris had plinked and popped and tinked into silence. They weren’t that far in yet, but you had to be careful. Roofs could collapse, gas pockets could explode.

  Cecil pulled himself up. He shuffled at the entrance, nearly jigging, anxious to see what the cave might have given up; but he was cautious about barreling right in. In consideration of Frank’s feelings. Most wouldn’t know it, but Frank had a deep fear of the caves…it accounted for at least half of his bad temper. Prospectors shouldn’t be afraid of prospecting. They shouldn’t be afraid of the dark.

  It was in the caves and nowhere else that the men traded places of worrier and non-worrier; Frank became Cecil and Cecil, Frank.

  Cecil adjusted the lamp flame and listened judiciously to the silence. Without looking up at Frank he said:

  “I guess we’re okay to head in there.”

  Frank glanced from the cave mouth to Cecil and back to the cave mouth. His squinting eyes and heavy frown showed th
at he was suspicious of the cave, although he told himself it was pure prudence. He pursed his lips.

  “Give ‘er another minute there, Ceec. Don’t go off half-cocked.”

  Now it was Cecil’s turn to curb his impatience, but he was better at it, easier about it. He nodded and smiled.

  “You’re the boss, partner,” Cecil said.

  “Don’t forget it, partner.”

  “I wouldn’t, boss.” Cecil finished and grinned at Frank with eyebrows raised and hopeful.

  “Aw, we’ll go on and go, then,” Frank said, relenting. “You’re so anxious, how about you go first?”

  “You got it, boss,” Cecil said. He marched into the cave and the temperature instantly dropped by ten degrees. He went slow, allowing Frank to acclimate. Left to his own devices, Cecil’d barrel straight to the back. Every blast was like Christmas to Cecil. Maybe they’d even be able to set up the sluice today!

  “Slow down you damn idiot!” Frank said, calling across the lengthening, jiggling shadows the men made. “It ain’t going anywhere.”

  Cecil threw a grin over his shoulder and calmed his pace. He might have done so anyway, considering what he was seeing. Which was odd. He squinted into the gloom and held his lantern higher.

  Normally the little bit of dyno they used would just take off a layer or two of the wall, giving them a chance to fish the rock and shale that came loose. But – unless his eyes were tricking him – this time it looked as though they’d blasted right into another cave.

  Apprehension tightened his gut and he stopped abruptly. Frank walked onto his heels and cursed.

  “Ceec, jesusjumpedup, what are you…”

  Then Frank saw it too, and his voice died in his throat. He could not have explained the feeling of dread that overcame him at the sight of that black mouth in the far wall. He pulled his coat tighter still and then rolled his shoulders as if trying to rid himself of the baseless – and therefore unmanning – fear.

  Cecil stepped closer and the light was bright enough to show a small cavern, less than four feet wide and four feet high that had been cut out of the rock. The lamp swung and the light flashed across a small skeleton nestled into the back of the tiny cavern. Its skull was at least a third of its overall height and looked disproportionately large, the eyeholes wide and somehow alien. It would have appeared Bhudda-esque in its cross-legged, cross-armed repose if not for the large, ragged hole in the side of its skull.

  It sat in what almost looked like a nest of stripped bark, small sticks and bundles of dried prairie grass.

  “Holymotherofgod,” Frank said, whispering as though in church. “That’s a baby!”

  Cecil glanced around at Frank and then peered more closely at the skeleton. He shook his head.

  “I don’t think so, Frank,” Cecil said. His voice, too, was quiet but more in contemplation than reverence. “The shoulders are wide and the leg bones are bowed to a fare-thee-well. Whatever else this thing might have been doing, it’d walked the earth a good bit, I’d warrant. Its gravity pulls your bones so.”

  Somehow the notion made Frank feel a little better and a little worse. Finding a baby would be a sad thing, especially one that had had its head stoved in. But some kind of little man…that was downright unsettling.

  “It can’t be but just over a foot or so tall,” Frank said.

  “Sounds about right,” Cecil said. He set the lamp down and it gritted across the dust and rubble. It also caused the small cavern to drown back into darkness.

  He pulled his glasses off and polished them carefully as he thought. He’d heard of prospectors finding things in the Pedros: Indian things, Shoshone, mostly. Spear heads and feathers tied just so. Sheets of leather buried and abandoned for no evident reason. Small carcasses wrapped in grasses and tied with lariats. Teeth. Bones.

  Lots of things. Strange things. And people liked strange things. Look how much attention that circus man’s Mermaid had gotten. Cecil’s first cousin had seen it with his own eyes. Feegee Mermaid, they called it.

  An oddity was something people would pay to put their eyes on, just as Cecil’s cousin had paid to see that mermaid.

  “I think we should try and see what it’ll fetch us at the Exchange,” Cecil said. “I bet we can make a good buck on this, especially if it’s some kind of Shoshone nonsense.”

  Frank thought over the idea. This claim hadn’t netted them anything yet and they could use the money, there was no question. Whole country was downtrodden. Might change if they could get that new deal politician in the White House, that biggun. But it might not, too. But selling a baby skeleton? Even if it wasn’t a baby…it stayed in his mind as one.

  It just seemed wrong.

  Odd that he was the one with a case of the guilt-willies while Cecil stood there cool as a cucumber, polishing his glasses like talk of baby skeletons wasn’t nothing to him. Frank would have thought himself the tougher of the two, but look at this. It made him frustrated and angry.

  “Hell yes we ought to,” he said, louder and gruffer than he’d intended. Cecil raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Frank went on: “Maybe even take it over to Fort Hall. See if the injuns want to claim what’s theirs.” He grinned nastily. “At a price, of course.”

  Now Cecil’s mouth worked in surprise, opening and closing like a gasping catfish. “Frank, you’re crazy! We can’t go near those Shoshone! They’d kill us dead. There’s been nothing but trouble over there.”

  Cecil’s fear worked like a balm on Frank’s twisted and angry insides and he shrugged his shoulders with the appearance of giving in to a concession. “If you’re scared to go Cecil, then we don’t have to. I wouldn’t care for the drive, anyway, I guess.” He nodded thoughtfully and pursed his lips as if just now deciding something. “We can just take it over to the Exchange like you said. Go on and grab a tarp from the back of the Ford. We’ll bundle it up in short order.”

  Cecil grinned and trotted off and Frank watched after the lantern growing wee and small. His own lantern seemed somehow twice as dim by comparison. He wished now he’d been the one to fetch the tarp. But he had to throw orders, didn’t he? He was the Boss.

  He glanced at the black hole in the wall and then away. Just the thought of that baby (it’s not a baby, his mind whispered in desperate contradiction) sitting in there made his arms rash out in gooseflesh. He shuffled a few steps away and rolled his shoulders again. His coat brushed the wall and a shower of shale whispered down behind him as though telling secrets in the dark.

  He jumped and cursed and his looming fear turned to sudden, hot anger. He raised the lantern and turned sharply to the baby’s cave (not a baby!) with his chin raised in obdurate determination.

  “I’ll just look at it,” he said and attit, attit echoed across the walls. “Keep it in my sight. Not like it’s going anywheres.” Wheres, wheres, wheres.

  His hand shook and gripped the lantern all the tighter. He brought it nearly to the level of his face and the light flowed like something liquid over the glittering shale wall, over the edge of the baby’s cavern, onto the bony feet and legs, up the white torso, finally catching on the head. The eyes. Something moved in the eyes, behind the eyes!

  Frank leaned closer, steadying himself. Was only a mouse or a cave spider. Nothing more. He leaned closer still and the lantern caught the lip of the ledge and trembled. Frank’s own eyes rounded as he leaned just…a little…closer. Trying to see. Was there something…?

  “I got it!”

  Frank jumped at Cecil’s voice and he smashed his head on the top of the cavern. Shale rained down like a black waterfall, sliding cold and sharp across Frank’s cheeks and neck and then into his coat.

  “Dammit, Ceec!” Frank said as he stepped back, shaking the shale from his sleeves and lapel. His lantern–not quite on the ledge, not quite off–began to tumble in…toward the skeleton.

  “Frank! The light!” Cecil called in a panic and stepped forward, reaching, but he was too far away.

  Frank snapped h
is hand out, snake-quick, and grabbed the lantern just before it could tip itself, kerosene and all, into the cavern.

  Cecil let out a deep breath, his hands on his knees. “Jesus, Frank. It woulda burned up for sure.”

  Frank set the lantern down. He stood straight and picked the last bits of shale from his hair. He wanted to be mad at Cecil, he wanted to…but he wasn’t. He was filled all at once with a deep swell of regret as though he’d missed a chance at something. As though something had gone terribly wrong.

  But what had gone wrong? If the lantern had tipped into the baby’s nest, it would have gone up in ten seconds and he hadn’t let that happen. So really, everything had gone right. Hadn’t it?

  Yes. Yes it had.

  Frank tugged at his sleeves and settled his coat. He patted Cecil on the back and reached for the tarp. “You get a hold of yourself, there, Ceec. I’ll get the ba…” He’d almost said ‘baby’. He swallowed and his hand paused. “I’ll get the skeleton,” he finished. The words seemed lame and tight in his throat.

  ***

  “He’s crazy. And a jackass. And ugly,” Frank said. He and Cecil were in Frank’s Ford in the vast, dusty parking lot of the Exchange. The skeleton sat between them, bundled carefully in the tarp.

  In the Exchange, Frank had approached an old Indian woman, one of the cashiers, but the proprietor had intervened. He’d told them they’d best get the Sherriff involved before thinking on selling baby’s bones. He’d wanted no part of their find and shoo’d them clear out of the store.

  Frank half-turned to face Cecil but kept a tight grip on the steering wheel. It stopped him from throwing the bones out the window. He raged inside as he stared at Cecil’s profile framed in the passenger side window. “I’ll tell you something else about that horse’s ass! Last week he…”

  A face appeared next to Cecil’s and Frank gasped, choking on his last word. His hands flew off the wheel and up to his shoulders, fluttering like startled birds. If he hadn’t choked, he’d have screamed.