Bring On The Dead

by Robert Harterman

  Indeed, any of them would be foolhardy to argue. A blast of wind, snapping the great oaks like a commando snaps necks, enforced Dale’s stance. They only boarded again to beach themselves more securely, fastening battens down over the bales of provisions. A few of them struggled to hoist a tent, but gusts of wind tossed the canvas above their heads. And before the pegs were driven a great wall of rain drenched everyone to the skin. By afternoon, the river had turned brown and violent. Plainly, they were there for the day—which meant they were there for the night, too. Navigating a swollen river is too dangerous a spot for even the most adventuresome man.

  So, with ample patience, they settled in. And they at last managed to pitch their tents. Then they kindled the soaked underbrush and finally got a pile of logs roaring in the woods and gathered round the fire. They spent the afternoon hunkered down, which was fortunate, for Chase, as it allowed him time to draw his bandana down over his eyes and manage some sleep.

  ________________________________________

  Chase could not have slept long, but he had the strangest, most vivid dream of his life. He dreamt of being old, and of Death, riding atop that large black steed he had called Little Fellow. He comes bursting up through the roof he had slept on the night before, like a screaming ghost, still atop his horse, and swinging his long scythe at him. Chase can see the bony zombie face under that hood, wiping blood from his pearl-handled scythe on the sleeve of his cloak. But it’s not blood. It’s afterbirth. Death hands him a baby. Then Dahl, beside him, lurches and yelps, like she’s in some kind of skull-twisting pain. And now Death is laughing. Then logic breaks down, completely. Dhal is talking to him in a language that sounds like kittens or birds. Death rides away but as Chase lay there, she slithers around him and starts barking.

  ________________________________________

  It was dark when Chase woke, and someone had added logs to the fire. Billy and Kenzo were on guard.

  The fire’s glare in the sky attracted a small, wild party of river rats, the wet-haired men—degenerates who had lost all taste for civilization and lived completely on the water with wives but never any children. Hillside lore had all manner of crazy shit to say about them. That they can read minds, place curses, see the future, et cetera. But Chase knew they were just a motley throng, just passing through like them, for he had seen them before once, on the Gardenwater River, which wrapped his old compound of Gintypool.

  When Chase saw them, he gave a low signal, the low whippet of a loon. It was the signal to relax. Everyone among them loosened their grips on their shotguns, some even doing without opening their eyes.

  At this, the wet men approached slowly, making a friendly show of things, waving and nodding before they drew off to a fire by themselves. They had either begged or stolen some beer in glass bottle, which they offered to them, only to receive icy stares from Billy, Kenzo, and Chase. Then they just shrugged as if it didn’t matter to them. Chase watched the grotesque, oily figures leaping and dancing between the firelight and the dusky woods like forest demons. With the wind and rain rustling overhead, and the river’s shores sloshing heavily on the pebbles, and the washed pine air stimulating his blood like caffeine, Chase began wondering how many years of life on a boat it would take to wear through civilization’s veneer and leave one content in the lodges of river wilds. Gradually, Chase became aware of Dale’s presence on the other side of the campfire. He went to about halfway between the two camps, and halted. He made an outwardly gesture, seemingly for want of joining them, but he sat on his feet, Indian style, gazing intently at their flames as if spellbound by some fire spirit.

  “What’s wrong with that Dale fellow, anyhow?” Kenzo grunted, who was taking the last pulls at a smoked-out pipe.

  “Sick—home-sick,” Billy said.

  “They say he came here with some of them… wet ratmen. You’d think he was near enough the river here to feel at home!”

  “It’s not his old tribe he wants,” Billy explained.

  “What then?” Kenzo inquired.

  “His woman, he’s mad after her,” Billy said, and he took his own pipe to his teeth to mask his grimace.

  “Faugh!” Kenzo grumbled. “Dale? He’s too young for that sort of shit. I’ve seen him bang half of Goback since he’s been with us. The idea of a young buck like that all sentimental and lovesick for some fat lump of a wet-woman! Come on! Am I supposed to believe that?”

  “Doesn’t matter whether you do or don’t,” Billy returned. “It’s a fact. He told me. His woman was a river rat. He tamed her…. he thought. Turns out, the water called her back. He’s been loony for her ever since.”

  “Loony? The boy’s nary spoken a word about a woman!”

  “It’s in his stillness, Mister Kenzo… In his stillness.”

  Kenzo looked at Billy and muttered another unintelligible jumble of curses.

  Chase turned his gaze from them to the fantastic figures. They were carousing around the other campfire now. One form, in particular, stood out more than the others. He was gathering the other rats in line for some sort of dance, a lunging, hypnotic jig that had an easy grace to it, one that was different from the motions of the other wet men. With a sudden turn, his profile was thrown against the fire, and Chase saw that he wore a pointed goatee. He was otherwise clean shaven.

  Then came one of those strange, reasonless intuitions that pop into one’s head but are never asked aloud: Was it true they can see the future? Was such a thing even possible?

  Chase had hardly spelled out his own suspicions when the measured beatings of a drum rang out. There was a low, tuneless chant, like the voices of the forest. The rats began to tread a mazy, winding pace, which in a strange, unreasonablee way brought up memories of Brickelby, naked. The drums beat faster. The suppressed voices were breaking in shrill, exultant strains, and the measured tread had quickened. The boisterous antics of these children of the river suddenly fascinated him. They were swaying now, dancing in a way that could only be likened liken to the wiggling of a green thing under leafy cover. The coiling and circling, the winding and lunging, it all became bewildering, and in the center, laughing, shouting, tossing up his arms and gesticulating like a maniac, was the fellow with the pointed goatee. Then the performers broke from their places and gave themselves with utter abandon to the wild impulses of nature. And there was a scene of uncurbed, animal hilarity as Chase never dreamed possible. Savage, furious, almost animal-like, it seemed like at any time they could fall upon ground and start eating each other like zombies.

  Even Uncle Jickie, who watched from the flaps of his tent, was unsure what to make of it.

  Filled with a curiosity that he knew lures many to their undoing, Chase rose and went across to the thronging, shouting, shadowy figures. A man darted out of the woods full tilt against him. It was the fellow with the pointy beard. As quick as a hiccup, Chase thrust out his foot and kicked his knee, and in the next instant dropped him with a punch.

  His comrades only watched as Chase put a foot in his chest and looked down. The moonlight, only just visible through a break in the clouds, fell on his upturned face. He snarled out something angrily.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you, rat boy?” Chase said, let him up.

  The wet man gathered himself in a sitting posture. Then he seemed shocked at the sight of him. “With me!” he muttered beneath his breath, momentarily silenced with astonishment. “Is it not you who seeks the Black Ones?”

  “Who the hell have you been talking to!”

  “Pardon a little insolence, mister, but I took you and your company for commandos, not fools!”

  “Well mind your fucking insolence and there’ll be no deed to pardon it,” Chase said, pretending not to notice that he had not answered him. He was determined to follow his uncle’s advice and play a rascal at his own game.

  But suddenly, despite himself, Chase was curious—they say these men can also see into another’s soul.

  “Help you up?” Chase asked.r />
  Extending his hand to give him a lift, Chase felt that his palm was deathly cold.

  “Cold!” he answered his thoughts. “Cold as an old tombstone!” With an absurdly elaborate bow, he reeled back among the dancers. “Frigid as a catfish’s asshole! Frosty as the death’s-head of your dreams! Farewell, grave skull!”

  Chase froze, cocking an eye.

  The wet man in oily clothing then went skipping madly back to his companions, drinking and dancing.

  “Get up, Dale,” Chase urged, rushing back to where he still sat on his knees. “Get up. He’s a fucking oracle or some shit! Talk to him. Find out what you can!”

  “Oracle,” he muttered, throwing aside the hand Chase offered down to him.

  “Yes! An oracle. A seer. What it is you call them… a shaman.”

  “It’s Mad Hila I think. Do you not remember him?”

  “Yea. From Gardenwater. Dale, listen. I don’t care who he is. I only care what he is. Come on!”

  “Hold on!” he said, jerking himself up back. How do you know he’s a seer?”

  “I don’t know, really know,” Chase began, clumsily conscious that he had no proof for his suspicions, “but he hinted at my dreams. He knew what we’re after. It strikes me that we’d better not let the opportunity escape us, you know? If I’m wrong, what would will it cost them to find out?”

  “Beer. Lots of it”

  “That’s it?” Chase asked.

  “He’s a hard one to read.”

  “But he’s got the sight.”

  “Oh! When he’s drunk out of his regular sight, I imagine!” laughed Dale.

  They walked together to the vessel.

  “We haven’t got beer,” Chase said, and he began rummaging through bales of stuff with a noise of all manner of things knocking together.

  His uncle and the rest of their company still watched wordlessly.

  “What’s your plan?” Dale asked with a vague tone that suggested Chase had some shady purpose in mind.

  Chase found a fine dirk in a walnut box. “Here.”

  “A box? You’ll need more than that, Mister Chase.”

  “There’s an excellent dirk inside. He could trade it for a barrel of beer, maybe two.”

  “Come down to the sand between the forest and the beach in about an hour and I’ll have news for you,” Dale said, and he brushed past him with a look on his face that was hard to read in the half-light.

  Chapter 17

  There on the banks of those brown, raging waters began his first compromise with conscience. Chase knew very well that his uncles would not approve. Indeed, they would not even emerge from their tents for fear of incurring the wrath of the spirits that were about to be called upon. But Chase also knew that the rough-and-ready commandos sang epic poems about standing upon one’s own wits and cunning.

  His only fear was a vague sense that he would arouse bad luck with calling on the powers of the unknown, but sum’bitch, they were facing powers unknown.

  Suffice it to say, when Chase went down to the shore, the shaman was sitting in the midst of a new fire, swaying, and Dale was beside him on his knees. Dale motioned him to keep behind the shaman.

  They must have sat there an hour, maybe more, before finally Chase heard his drunken lips mumbling his own name in a voice that sounded like a whispering fiend from old. Chase could not make out the nonsensical words, but something happened, something that is not easy to explain. For a strange moment, the darkness overcame him. It felt neither alive nor dead, but an indwelling for things from some ethereal world in between. Chase looked from the fellow out into the dark trees, half-expecting fairy watchers out there in the dark.

  Then suddenly, coherent words emerged from his jumbled hissing.

  “Devil’s wife—serve him weel this night. Billy’s—sh—sh—friend too—Sho’s his wife, Shir, Shiri, taken. Still alive. Weelll enough, but still crying in horror. The babe there too. Babbles at the teat in the dark, in the dark.”

  “Ask him where she is,” Chase whispered over his head.

  “Where’s the woman?” demanded the trader, shoving more liquor over to Dale.

  “Shiri—thrown into the earth for later. As the squirrels do. The Black Ones put them away, puts them into the inescapable lair. The nest. The hole. Lets the apes eat them later. Eats them later.”

  “Where—”

  Dale shushed him.

  “Dark,” the shaman went on. “That wax-face babe—hungry—a stranger offers the teat. Chase—stuck in the devil’s mouth to his neck—broken nerves, the fear of hell for seeking it. Courage cut short, cut with the venom, with the bile, with the black smoke of his own thoughts.”

  “What? What venom?”

  Again, Dale shushed him.

  “Small-fire pours from the mouth to make the Chase-man bellow, bellow like a calf. Go—run home—go back, says the mind—run away, away, to live, says the heart,” the shaman said. And he stopped to look off at the stars, his eyes rolling back into his head.

  “Ask him where she is,” Chase whispered. “Quick! He’s going to sleep.”

  Dale wiped his beard on his sleeve and said, “Come back to now. Leave the dark, go outside. Where are you now?”

  “Ah but you already knoooo…. Shiri—hot in the halls of the dying,” drawled the shaman. “Shiri—hot under the water that rises but does not fall. Take off your Human head! Put on the Zombie’s head! Don’t wear helms. No armor! Bare feet—softer,” and he rolled over in a sodden pose, as if asleep. “But it fails. All will matter not. Death settles the matters. In the end, it slithers around all, and Chase will burn and know why the Zombies fear not the cooling blue pain of death.”

  Chase felt a shudder, looking at this silent, uncompromising pose. He seemed frozen in the stance of a crab, an impossible angle for a man to assume for longer than a moment.

  And yet he did not move.

  Then the earth rumbled, or else it was his bones.

  And the shaman fell.

  “Why do they come,” Chase whispered.

  “They yet seek The One… The Black Ones search out the one, the one who cannot be turned. The one that remains as himself in death. They hear rumors, whispers, of the one who remains a man…. Oahhh ooooo, but mistaken… misguided, they are. Trust, adventurers, the source is not fully of this world or the next, but a thing stuck between… Pray it does not seek to creep into your bones and flesh… and soul.”

  And suddenly, the shaman snored.

  Chapter 18

  As Chase and Dale gathered themselves up from that encounter, the campfires were dead, or dying. There was a gray light on the water with an elusive stirring of birds through the foliage overhead.

  But not a sound came from the fellows.

  The shaman lay with his bared chest not a hand’s length from the dirk they had given him.

  Dale and Chase looked at each other with the same unspeakable things in their hearts: Did he see the future? Did his mind take flight from his soul to go to Nashville, lair of the longmongers? Or was this all just an evil dream from a black moment of desperation?

  In the end, it mattered little. And it made little sense. They only knew that Shiri and the little one, Cullfor, were suffering. And so was Billy. Chase had no doubt of it. Chase looked over at him. He was feigning sleep. The poor soul had not managed any real rest. Chase knew then he had to do what he could to help him get them back. He had to use every means at his disposal, even if every soul in what remained of mankind thought it folly—which is exactly what Dale seemed to think. Having spent time with the wetmen, he put more stock in words of the shaman, who had all but said they were doomed.

  He and Chase stood silent above the sleeping shaman. Neither of them was moving, and neither was uttering a word. But Chase could see he was unnerved.

  “Thundering fuckl,” Dale whispered. He shook his head, knelt down and picked up the dirk, placing it back in the fine walnut box for him. “It serves us right, the weight in our guts.” He was spe
aking in a low voice Chase had never heard him use. “We should have asked nothing of it! It serves us jolly fucking right.”

  He looked out at the water. Then he looked at the small trail back northeastward.

  His eyes followed his slow, deliberate gaze.

  “This is madness,” he whispered. “The madness of the self-murderer. ”

  Guilt robbed Chase of the power to answer. He felt his blood freeze with the fear that he might be leading his fellows to their death.

  Then there was the faintest fluttering of leaves. They both glanced fearfully into the gloom of the forest like two assassins that had been caught in the act of something horrible. Chase was trying to knock the fear off his own brow, when among the shadows of the pines an open space suddenly revealed itself to be a face. It looked out upon them gleaming eyes, like those of a crouching panther.

  “Squeamish fools!” muttered his uncle.

  They both leaped back from the thicket.

  Then, at imminent risk to their own lives, they stood erect, defiant against his glare.

  “We had to make sure where she was!” Chase said, too loudly.

  “Yes, Mister, and bind yourself as fear’s prisoner all the way!” Jickie added.

  “Pah! Fear? Fear! What is this shit you call ‘fear’?” Dale asked, which made Chase’s heart lift once again with hope.

  Chase was learning, he supposed, that there are things that are better left unspoken.

  “Indeed! I wash my hands of even learning what it means!” Chase said in indignation, and he strode off to his tent.

  At which he heard his uncle laugh.

  “Good, boys!” he thundered. “Most good!”

  ________________________________________

  Chase had known for some time that the worst of cowards easily justify their acts at the time they commit them; but afterwards—afterwards is a different matter, for the thing left undone haunts a mind the worst. But the uncomfortable reflections of the night kept trooping throughout his mind. How near they had been to regarding it all as hopeless. Indeed, Chase felt a certain creepiness that set all his flesh quaking. It was those maddening words about venom and fire.