Doc Skimmer remained at the bridge with the body, looking down on it thoughtfully and shaking his head. Finally he took the pipe out of his mouth, refilled it slowly, tamping the tobacco down with a medical spatula he kept in his pocket for the purpose, and said to the corpse:
‘Ain’t you glad you’re out of it?’
Just before midnight they captured seven of them coming over the bridge. They caught them with a fine mesh net that Eb Shaffer had once used to trap small wild birds.
They were just children—hard eyed and not at all innocent-looking—but kids just the same. They were all naked, but not the least bit self-conscious about it. When David Werner got them to the town hall under the bright lights, an uncomfortable pricking sensation accompanied his close inspection of them. He felt as if beetles were crawling over his skin, under his shirt, and kept scratching himself, almost unconsciously.
‘Where the hell do they come from?’ he whispered to Doc Skimmer.
It was their faces that fascinated the townspeople, all of whom had gathered in the hall at the sounding of the church bell. Their faces were smooth and shiny, like the pebbles of streams, polished by time and motion over millennia. Their eyes were like flints, glittering from deep sockets. Though small, the creatures—David Werner could think of no other word—were very strong. They now stood in a sullen group, hemmed in by citizens wielding various sharp instruments, shotguns and hunting rifles.
One of the creatures said something in thick guttural accents.
‘What kind of language is that?’ cried David Werner, the hairs on his neck rising. ‘Sounds like something that might come out of the Devil’s mouth.’
Alice Maurer, the librarian, spoke quietly from the back.
‘It’s German,’ she said.
‘German?’ cried Brunnel, the school teacher. ‘I know German and I can’t understand what he’s saying.’
Alice said, ‘It’s Old German, and I think there’s a heavy dialect there. I studied Old German at university. I can’t catch all of it, but I recognise some of the words.’
‘How old’s old?’ asked Doc.
‘Maybe twelfth, fourteenth century. Somewhere thereabouts.’
David Werner said to Alice, ‘Can you interpret for us? Can you tell us what that—that creature is saying to us?’
‘I caught the gist of it,’ she replied. ‘It was something like “the Pied Piper is gone” or “dead”. I think it was dead.’
There was a stunned silence in the large hall after this remark, as each person in the room, not counting the speaker and those whose words had been translated, stood and pondered on the meaning of this remarkable if incomprehensible piece of information.
Finally, David Werner spoke again.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin. He led the children away, into another place, beyond this world.’
‘I know the goddamn story,’ cried David Werner, ‘Jesus Christ, this is Hamelin. Some of the folks here are descendants of settlers who came from the original town in Germany. What I want to know is what the fuck it has to do with us, and why these mountain dwarfs are going around killing our people because this guy has died?’
The librarian spoke haltingly to the strange little people, with many repetitions and gestures. Finally there was a terse reply. David Werner could see something in those flinty eyes as the replies were flung back. It was a kind of timelessness, but weary, as if death could not be too soon in coming. These creatures were old, he realised. No, not old, ancient. They had seen the coming and going of centuries. It was this realisation that paved the way for the next: he suddenly had an inkling as to what they were—who they were— and the thought chilled him through to his heart.
The librarian translated what she had been told.
‘The Piper died in his sleep not long ago, though they have a strange way of expressing time, so I have to guess at several days. They miss him, because his music was like a drug to them. They have difficulty in going on without it. All the good feelings they ever had are now gone, replaced by a bitterness as cold and hard as a German winter.
‘They say they are the original children of Hamelin, that time in the Piper’s land is different from here, which is why they still look young. They will never grow old, but they will eventually die, like the Piper—not in the way we do here. Not for many hundreds of our years.’
Again, there was silence. Then someone laughed. Dan Starkly said something like, ‘Heck, we’re in fairyland,’ and grinned at David Werner, looking for approval.
Doc stopped the sneering.
He said to David Werner, ‘Do they look human to you?’
The lawyer shook his head. There was something supernatural about these creatures. He could sense it, deep down. It stirred up all the unease of childhood nightmares, brought it to the surface like scum. He had often criticised, when he watched movies, how easily the victims unquestionably accepted paranormal events. Now he was assailed by the same sort of feelings. There was no need for logic. This came from the part of the brain, perhaps the soul, where reason did not intervene. It came from a warning system that had been in primitive man, in the human race since the beginning of time: an intuitive, instinctive knowledge.
‘No.’
‘Nor me either. They look like something out of hell. This may be funny to some of you, but four of us are dead, and I’ve a feeling more will follow, even if we lock these creatures away. You can see they’re different. You can smell they’re different. I wouldn’t want to bet we ’ve heard the last of this. They’re out to get us for some reason. You can see it in their eyes. They hate our goddamn guts.’
Someone shouted, ‘Ask ’em what the hell they want here? This is America. What’re they murderin’ decent Americans for?’
David Werner nodded to Alice and she went into another long seemingly-tortured conversation. Someone went out for coffee, beer and cokes, while this was going on. Dan Starkly asked Bill Smith to fetch him a burger-noonions from Gus’s place, forgetting that Gus was in the hall with everyone else. A dozen other people ordered sandwiches or burgers, and Gus sent Sly Broder his short order cook, with Bill Smith to fill the orders, seeing no reason to turn down a little business.
The drinks and food were in the hall before Alice felt able to pass on her information.
‘As far as I can make out, they think this is Hamelin—the original Hamelin, I mean—and they say that over the years they’ve come to hate us. They say we never went looking for them and we should have paid the Piper in the first place. We broke our promise to him.
‘The Piper’s land is somewhere out there, in the clouds or the mists they keep telling me. I don’t know what that means. It’s not in this world. I suppose they’re trying to tell us that it’s in another dimension, or something. It’s a beautiful land, with green hills, clear streams and rich forests, but without the Piper’s music, it seems barren. And it’s getting colder. The seasons run in millennia. There was never any snow except on the mountain peaks. The children arrived there in the middle of a thousand year summer. Now the frosts are beginning to come, the leaves are falling, and they realise that winter will eventually freeze over the land.’ She paused and then added, ‘That’s about as much as I can get out of them.’
Someone cried, ‘That still don’t explain why here, in Hamelin, Nebraska. Why don’t they go back to the old town, in Germany? It’s them they want, not us. We never saw no Piper—we ain’t done wrong.’
Doc said, ‘Don’t bet on it,’ and puffed hard on his pipe.
The lawyer studied the nearest child. Its skin was like obsidian, yet the child itself, a girl, looked vulnerable. If you picked her up and dropped her. he thought, she would smash like porcelain. He caught her staring back at him, with eyes of lapis lazuli, and he looked away quickly, embarrassed because she was around thirteen years of age, a girl, and nude. He felt as though he had been caught peeking into someone’s bedroom through a crack in t
he curtains.
When he looked back at her, she had turned away slightly, as if trying to distance herself from him. Once again, looking at the skin over her smooth shoulders, her buttocks, she reminded him of things from the earth: marble, quartz, malachite. Her fingernails shone as if polished by wind-blown dust. Even the highlights on her cheeks were the deep red of garnet, not of apples or anything that had once had life. There was no bloom on her, no natural softness anywhere.
‘Doc’s right,’ said David Werner, ‘I’ll tell you what it is. This town. These children are taking their revenge on the adults of Hamelin for stealing their childhood from them, for allowing the Piper to take them from their homes and families. Hate has replaced the love that was in their hearts when they were young.’
Dan said, ‘But this ain’t Hamelin—not their Hamelin.’
‘No, it’s not,’ said the lawyer, ‘but they found their way here to the descendants of their parents. The original Hamelin is a big thriving town now—with a much larger population than it had in the fourteenth century. Hamelin, Nebraska, now that’s about the right size, the right population. And there ’s this stink of guilt in the air—something to do with betrayal—something to do with sending children away to a place from which they can never return. You understand what I’m saying here? The Williamsons?
‘This is not geography, this is sensing, this is following an emotion through from some other dimension, somewhere beyond our imaginations. I think these little guys mean to get even with their parents, and since their parents are long gone, they’ll settle for us, the adult inhabitants of Hamelin, Nebraska, the people who couldn’t give a damn whether kids live or die, so long as they’re safe themselves.’
‘What do you think we ought to do, Dan?’ asked another citizen, ignoring the young lawyer.
The deputy replied, ‘Hold ‘em here. They got more friends out there, that’s for sure. We’ll get ‘em all in one night, when they come for these gremlins.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dan,’ remarked David Werner. ‘Call in the state police. Let them deal with it. This is getting out of hand.’
Dan Starkly shook his head emphatically.
‘Hamelin settles its own troubles. Anybody tries somethin’ tonight, they get what’s coming to them. People have been killed here. The mayor, the sheriff. When I get all the perpetrators in custody, then I might think about callin’ in some help. I want those little guys to myself for a while.’
There was no changing the deputy’s mind, even when Doc got behind the lawyer and supported his advice. While they were arguing one of the creatures made a run for the door, would have made it to the outside, when a nervous farmer let loose with his twelve gauge, deafening everyone in the room. The heavy shot took away the back of a rattan chair and almost cut the child in half.
Doc Skimmer walked over and inspected the body.
‘Hell,’ said Doc. ‘Nothin’ I can do for this little fellah, that’s for sure.’
David Werner crossed the room and stared down on the corpse. It had not shattered into a thousand pieces. It was not china or glass: it was flesh and blood. There was a boy-child on the floor, and it was dead. He was dead. Looking back sharply at the other children, David thought he detected smiles on their marble features. Not smiles of satisfaction, knowing smiles that said you’ll pay for that soon enough. A chill went through the lawyer during this observation. These strange kids had a secret which they hadn’t divulged, weren’t about to either.
He shook his head, slowly, and then turned to Dan Starkly.
‘I think we’ve dug ourselves a pit here. They’re going to come for us now—the rest of them.’
‘Shit,’ said Dan, ‘they’re only children.’
David Werner nodded, a darkness coming to his eyes.
‘Yeah. Only children.’
They waited out the night, nervously, sitting in natural groups—the farmers here, the businessmen there, the professionals in a corner away from everyone else—until the dawn began to creep through the cracks in the shutters. Occasionally one of the lost children would stir and adult heads would turn, stare anxiously, until the rustling ceased.
Along with the crowing of a lonely rooster, came another sound from outside. Distant it seemed. A high-pitched noise that was painful on the ears, though you couldn’t call it loud.
‘What the hell’s that?’ said Dan Starkly, as if this were the last straw.
‘I’ll go and look,’ answered David Werner, who made his way to the spiral staircase that led to the top of the clocktower.
He took the wooden steps three at a time.
Once at the top he stared out, into the dim light.
He could see the lost children coming, a long line across the landscape, roughly in the shape of a crescent, but what held his attention more was the ground before them, around them, behind them. It seemed to be moving, the whole surface of the earth, rippling towards the edge of town. David Werner leaned out over the rail of the balcony, trying to penetrate the gloom with his eyes. Then he drew back sharply with a swift intake of breath.
Suddenly, he knew what it was.
‘Shit. Forgot about them.’
The smell of tobacco smoke hit his nostrils. Doc was behind him, puffing away on his weed. David Werner pointed to the waves approaching Hamelin as a grey tide slides over a wide, gradually-sloping beach.
‘What is it?’ asked Doc, straining his elderly eyes to see what the young lawyer was trying to show him.
‘The first shall be last,’ quoted David Werner. ‘What else did the Piper take with him into his hidden land? Before he took the children?’
Doc’s jaw dropped.
‘The rats,’ he finally replied.
‘Right. The rats. And here they come. Millions of them. Like the children, I guess they have the gift of longevity—I guess very few of them have died. Unlike the children, though, they’ve been breeding all this time. Rats do that, pretty efficiently I understand. There’s probably close on a billion rats out there, heading towards us.’
‘Can we run?’ asked the doctor.
The lawyer shook his head.
‘We’d never make it.’
There was nothing to say after that.
The two men descended to the hall below.
‘They’re coming,’ said David Werner to the citizens of Hamelin, Nebraska. ‘Anybody brought any explosives with them?’
A farmer coughed.
‘Got a couple of sticks of dynamite,’ he replied. ‘In my truck out back. Gonna blow out a stump on my way home.’
‘Right, you take the women and kids. Run for the ravine. Run like hell. When you’re over the bridge, blow it behind you. Quick now. You may stand a chance, I don’t know. It depends on how long we can hold them, keep them busy.’
‘What’s this?’ said Dan, but Doc waved him quiet. The farmer left with the women and all the children under fifteen years of age.
‘Now we’d better get to the windows,’ said David Werner. ‘Those with scatterguns take the best positions.’
‘How many of ’em?’ asked Dan, and Doc just gave him a mirthless grin.
‘You got a spare handgun, boy,’ said the elderly practitioner. ‘Give it to me.’
‘Sure,’ replied the deputy, pulling a Colt from his waistband. ‘Didn’t know you was a gun man, Doc?’
‘I’m not. Couldn’t hit a barn door holding the handle. This is for me. When they get inside, I’m taking the easy way out.’
Dan Starkly gaped, his lack of understanding evident in his expression.
He said, ‘Just kids...’
‘Not any more,’ replied David Werner.
The young lawyer crossed to the window and stared outside. He did not speak for a long time, but when he did, it was in a low voice, the tone of a man who has given up hope.
‘I think I’ve been right, in my assessment of the situation,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I have. Those of you who want to see what we’re up against, come ov
er here and look. Scream if you want to. It won’t make any difference.’
Then he took an automatic out of his pocket and simply pointed into the thick mass of scrambling bodies coming through the picket fence, firing rapidly, one random shot after the other, hitting something every time.
A few seconds later the enemy began pouring through the doors and windows, and the carnage began.
HUNTER’S HALL
This is one of two stories in this volume originally written for kids (the other being ‘The Megowl’). I think it stands well enough besides the tales for grown-ups.
There had been a moment when the sky darkened and the snow-covered forest became still. A moment when the shadows merged, the light fled, and there was utter silence. One second the distant church bells had been ringing their Christmas message through the icicles on the trees—and the next, stillness. The hunter had never known such a silence. He imagined it was like being buried deep in snow. Not a single thing, over the whole earth, moved or made a sound. It struck fear in his heart: a terror which was like a cold shadow itself.
Then came the terrible pain in his chest, followed by the sound of the shot. He thought it was funny, feeling the bullet hit him first, then hearing the sound of the rifle, but then he remembered that a bullet travelled faster than sound. He had often seen the puff of smoke from a far-off rifle, before the sound of the shot reached his ears.
The pain in his chest was over with quickly. Lying there in the snow, his body numb, he wanted to say to his fellow hunters, ‘I know it was an accident, so don’t blame yourselves.’ But he could not open his mouth, or move his lips.
Then, miraculously, he felt fine again. He got to his feet, brushed the snow from his hunting jacket, and turned to say to his comrades, ‘I’m still alive.’ But he found himself alone. All his companions had gone. Strangely, there were not even any marks in the snow, where they had been standing. Nothing. Though there were noises now, of birds and animals, the distant Christmas bells were still silent. The trees looked the same, yet seemed different. The whole scene had a curious atmosphere.
Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales Page 12