A Body Displaced (Lansin Island 2)

by Andrew Butcher

  Just as she decided she’d had enough relaxation, her phone rang.

  It was Tamara.

  They all agreed to meet at the witch’s cottage. Juliet made her way there by bus, even though Nicolas had offered to pick her up. And it turned out she was the last to arrive. The witch and the half-elf were each sitting in their corners, and Nicolas on the loveseat.

  Not that it mattered to her, but one of the first things Juliet noticed was the length of Nick’s hair. It was longer than she’d ever seen it, and it gave him a less mature look.

  She sat down next to him, exchanging brief greetings with each person. Nicolas and Tamara were both pleasant in return. The half-elf just nodded silently.

  ‘Okay,’ said James, ‘this is embarrassing timing. I’ll be back in a second.’ He made his way out of the room and towards the bathroom.

  Nicolas, clearly amused, huffed at Juliet’s side, and it brought out a laugh from her, too. She turned to him and said, ‘How have you been?’

  ‘I’m actually getting along okay. Things have kind of fallen into their own place. You?’

  ‘That’s nice to hear. The same for me, really. Only …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A few weeks ago Kim told me she was engaged to Ryan. I’m still concerned about her.’ Juliet sighed, and quickly looked over to Tamara, who was politely daydreaming.

  Nick didn’t answer instantly, but seemed to think it over some. ‘We’ll just have to keep an eye on them,’ he said, and Juliet observed his use of we. ‘That’s the best we can do. I just don’t think it’s wise, us stabbing Ryan in the back after he kept his side of the deal.’

  ‘That’s a good point.’

  ‘There’s something that’s been on my mind, actually, apart from that someone wants me dead, of course. Has my mum’s spirit appeared to you again? After she said something was chasing her?’

  ‘No,’ said Juliet regretfully. ‘Did you want me to try to summon her?’

  ‘She told you not to, didn’t she? She thought it was dangerous.’ He breathed audibly out of his nose, then inhaled. ‘Don’t worry about it. If she contacts you again, you’ll let me know, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The half-elf returned, his head tilted and his curls rubbing against the ceiling until he sat back down. He said, ‘So, the framing of Jean-Sébastien Laurent was a success, giving Kerra’s family some closure, as Nicolas asked for. I don’t plan to mention this again. What I’ve brought you both here to tell you is regarding Austin’s interrogation, and the enemy you are already aware of.’ He aimed his words at Juliet and Nicolas, giving the impression he’d already told the witch everything.

  ‘A few weeks ago, Austin gave us the location of the person he worked for. It was an area of the Otherworld. Since then, my full-blooded kind moved in on the location, but the enemy had already retreated …’

  ‘So they didn’t catch the man who wants me dead?’ Nicolas shifted on the couch.

  ‘That’s one of the things I need to tell you: who and what this enemy is. Remember I was almost certain of who it was? Well, now Austin has confirmed it.’

  ‘Should I be worried?’ Nicolas added a sheepish laugh to the question.

  ‘I will be watching over you still,’ said the half-elf. ‘My kind will do what we can to protect you.’

  Hopefully more than you did last time, thought Juliet, and she was surprised Nicolas didn’t say something similar. Growing tired of the cryptic nature of the conversation, she interrupted. ‘So who is this enemy, then?’

  The half-elf folded his arms. He squinted, as if the answer he was about to give would be painful to put into words. He opened his mouth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ~ WHAT YOU ALWAYS WANTED ~

  IT REEKED OF piss and shit. The stench woke him, and he discovered the smell was his own. With his head hung weakly, it took no effort to look down at his body, which was nude if not for soiled boxers. The ground below him looked both gritty and sticky, splotched by excretion. His feet didn’t touch it, though; manacles dug into his ankles, holding his legs apart and off the ground, his body weight sagging down on them and drawing blood from his skin. He could feel that his arms were shackled up and stretched out too. They were numb, and his hands number.

  Drip, drip. He tried to lift his head, but a burning pain seared over his skull, reminding him of the last thing that had flashed before his eyes.

  I failed. He let his eyelids relax until his sight was a dark haze, and then began to wonder how he had ended up here, how his life had come to this. Because this was surely the end of the road. Drip, drip.

  He heard his mother’s grating voice. ‘You continually disappoint me, Arnold.’ He remembered how her eyes had always bore into him, like they knew him better than he knew himself, and judged him for it.

  I disappointed you? he thought now. What did you expect, Mother, with the name you gave me …? Not even all these years later did he want to recall his birth name.

  ‘Nothing wrong with your name,’ his mother’s taut voice rang through from the past. ‘All your names are perfectly good. If anything, you shame them. Arnold was given you after my own father, and Robert after your father’s very own great uncle.’ She scowled. ‘And if you even suggest there’s something wrong with Sole, our own family name, then I’ll …’ She had trailed off, letting his young mind imagine the threat.

  Maybe nothing wrong with the names separately, but what sane parents would string them all together?

  Here and now in his prison, if that’s what it was, he heard rattling and a creaky hinge. His arms were so dead he was sure he’d never use them again. The hinge creaked in reverse, and footsteps pattered towards him. He saw the frayed ends of a robe ripple and sway. Again he made to raise his head, and this time pushed through the pain. His eyes blurred on the way up. When they refocused, he found a cowled figure, its face shaded except for the tip of its nose, the point of its chin, and two orbs of purple that shone through.

  Amethyst eyes.

  ‘I know what you are,’ rasped the manacled man. ‘You’re an—’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said the hooded figure, his voice revealing he was a man. He held a cudgel in one hand, although it didn’t look a brutish weapon, but more a short staff. It was ornate, engraved with imagery the prisoner didn’t understand. ‘I’m also a shaman.’

  As the prisoner took it in, he realised something else. ‘Then we must be in the—’

  ‘Yes, we are.’ The cowled figure stood hauntingly still. The reek didn’t seem to bother him. ‘I know who and what you are,’ his voice came full and low. ‘You are human, and you call yourself Austin. You are soulless, and you call yourself a necromancer.’

  I failed. His last sight, the bottom of a wooden door frame, flashed before his eyes again. Austin, Arnold, what did it matter now?

  His birth name forced itself upon him: Arnold Robert Sole …

  A. R. Sole in its abbreviated form … It churned resentment in his stomach to think of it.

  ‘I have questions for you,’ the hooded man said, bringing back Austin’s attention.

  Austin didn’t like the way the purple eyes stared, burning through him as if they saw all that he was, and judged him the way Arnold’s mother had judged him. He looked anywhere but at the man for now, at stone walls with sconces lit, at a crude table with only a chest on top and wooden stools beside it, at a ceiling of rock with dark spots dripping drops into buckets. Drip, drip.

  He returned his attention to the cowled figure, finally seeing how tall he was. Austin hadn’t noticed at first, because he himself was shackled up high on a frame above the gritty-sticky ground. You have questions for me? ‘Goody,’ said Austin. He gave the most unctuous smile he could muster in his pain.

  ‘These are questions you will answer.’

  Austin barked a loud guffaw and heard it echo. ‘I will, will I?’ What do I have left now? That curly-haired prick of a half-elf had made out that Austin would be questioned and maybe
even offered a way out, a way to escape his deal with … It was foolish to believe him. ‘I’ll answer your questions if I feel like it, dick-face,’ he told his questioner. ‘You’re not better than me. You’re just another one who thinks they are.’

  The hooded man remained motionless, his voice coming out of a shaded mouth. ‘Then I’ll have to make you feel like sharing.’ Occasionally the light from the candles would shift and reveal more of the man’s face, before darkness would take it again. Drip, drip.

  Austin felt a stinging on his chest, so he sank his head to look down. There was a straight slash where the curly-haired half-elf had managed to nip him. His blood ran hot in rage. I had him … He thought back to swiping his blade across the half-elf’s throat … but he cheated. That half-breed should have been dead, and Nicolas Crystan even deader. Austin wished he’d had a second chance at jumping out of that room and stabbing Nicolas … He would take the risk and go for his throat. The only reason he didn’t before was because he had to be quick, and from his hiding place he couldn’t see Nicolas until he pounced. The abdomen was an easier target.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ he asked. He brought his head up again, wondering if he could see the elf’s pointed ears pushing the cowl outward. He could, and now that he’d noticed it, the hood appeared comically distorted, making him snort derisively. His head flared with pain.

  The elf shaman ignored the prisoner’s amusement. ‘Two answers are all I want. One, who you are working for. The other, where this employer of yours is located.’

  Austin considered his options. ‘What do I get for telling you?’

  ‘You will avoid a lot of pain.’

  ‘And then …?’

  ‘You will face punishment for your crimes.’

  Austin snorted again. ‘You really don’t know how to make a deal, do you, dipshit?’

  ‘I have the upper hand here. I know you will answer my questions, one way or another.’ The elf spoke with no emotion. ‘There is no bargaining to be done.’

  Well, in that case, you’ll get nothing from me. Austin knew the person he worked for would kill him for his failure, and he assumed that once this elf got what he wanted, he wouldn’t let him live either.

  He peered deep into the amethyst eyes. You’re not better than me, his mind insisted, as he figured out the one thing in these circumstances that could give him pleasure before death: I’ll die without giving him his answers. He smiled. ‘You’re right, dipshit,’ he spat out, ‘there is no bargaining to be done.’ He broke into a laugh, a continuous one that racked his body and made the manacles cut deeper into his wrists and ankles. The smell of his own faeces caught in his throat, giving him over to coughing. He felt how sore and itchy his nether regions were.

  The elf shaman finally moved. He walked over to the chest on the table, then opened it. Soon after, the torture began.

  When Austin woke again, he was alone in the dark, clean this time, but entirely naked. The last thing he remembered was blinding pain, then he must have passed out. Someone must have washed him and removed his soiled boxers. And he wasn’t hungry, though he did not recall being fed.

  Drip, drip. The dripping had given him solace throughout the torture, a distraction he could set his mind on, but otherwise it was extremely irritating. Right now he wanted to wrench himself free and shove his fingers in whatever cracks the water seeped from. Drip, drip.

  When the dripping hadn’t been enough to numb the pain, Austin resorted to misleading the elf. He pretended he was about to give answers, but then prattled about his past instead. ‘Jessica, her name was. She was the first girl I ever fancied. She was transferred to my lower school, and I would give her my lunch snack every day.’ Then he went on to describe her, right down to the minutest details. ‘When I was older and understood what I had below, she was the first girl I ever touched myself over.’

  The elf had stood entirely still again as he listened to it all, but when Austin lost the energy to go on waffling, the shaman took up his tools again … and upped his techniques.

  Drip, drip. At this moment in the dark dungeon, Austin had an idea. He tried to use his ability, thinking he could compel a spirit to help him, or maybe force one into an object or a dead rat or something, and make it do his will. But his power didn’t work. There’s no in-between to see from this side … I’m on the same side my soul is … He thought of who he worked for, and what they might do with his soul. He’s in this world too.

  Time went on. Already Austin had no idea how long he’d been here. It could have been days and days and he wouldn’t have known. In a weak point during his torture, he’d been tempted to give in. But then he told himself, If I let him know who I work for, then he might help Nicolas … and why should Nicolas live and have a better life than me? In his bitterness, Austin hoped his employer would find a reason to kill Juliet too.

  Noises came. The rattling and the hinge creak. Soon the sconces held light, and the hooded shaman was back. ‘I think yesterday went quite well, don’t you?’ said the interrogator in a neutral tone.

  ‘If you like making naked men scream, then yes, you got a top score.’ A laugh burst out of Austin, but the consequent inhalation expanded his ribs and cracked open the scabs that had formed overnight. Don’t show pain. His pain is worse … It torments him that I won’t tell.

  Austin was given another chance to speak his answers, to which he spat at the shaded face, aiming for those lustrous orbs. The torture resumed. He became thankful again for the dripping, and later turned his thoughts to …

  … Jessica. In lower school the other kids had bullied her to begin with, because of a mole she bore on one cheek. Arnold Sole had thought she was beautiful and made fast friends with her. We’ll get married one day, and have a big family, they both agreed. At that age, Arnold had believed it.

  Like the torture session before, Austin teased the shaman with the promise of answers, only to go on about those early years of his life. They had been the best years. Maybe the only good ones, before he got his power. He took the torture better this time, because the elf used the same tricks as before. But eventually the agony became too much. Austin returned to darkness.

  It was like his mother was there with him, waking him. He heard her voice so clear, coming back to him from his middle school years, when it all began to go downhill. ‘When your brother was your age he was on all the sports teams,’ she scolded. ‘And your sister is two years younger than you, yet even she can do more than you. She plays the violin like you wouldn’t believe it.’ Austin had believed it; when he’d been Arnold, he’d endured the noise of his sister practising every day.

  And where are my brother and sister now? He aimed the question at the memory of his mother. Oh, yes, they’re in a jar with you and Father. He laughed, scabs tearing open. You’ve all made it so far.

  ‘Arnold. You’re not listening to me. You waste your pocket money on these stupid cartoon books.’ They’re comics. Graphic novels, Mother. You wouldn’t understand … Jessica had understood, back in lower school at least. She liked to know what he was reading, and she even asked him to draw pictures of the characters for her. In middle school, though, she began to distance herself from him. That mole of hers ended up being considered a beauty mark, and her new friends were … well, they weren’t fond of Arnold and the type he hung out with.

  ‘You didn’t understand,’ Austin muttered to his bloody body, in the present.

  From the past, his mother’s voice continued. ‘Your friends are all weird. Girls will never like you, not if you stay this way. I just don’t want you to grow up and think that everyone else is better than you, Arnold. But at this rate, they will be.’

  Drip, drip. Shackled up, he heard the now-familiar sounds of his torturer entering. The elf came and stood before him again in the statue-like way he did, and repeated his two all-important questions.

  ‘Sorry, you say something?’ Austin acted as if he’d been disturbed out of a pleasant moment. ‘I’m a little busy
here, that’s all; maybe you should come back another time.’ He smirked.

  ‘Austin,’ the elf said levelly, ‘you will answer my questions.’

  ‘Is that like your mantra or something? Because it’s getting really old now …’

  ‘You should want to answer my questions.’ The purple eyes momentarily flicked out of existence with each blink. ‘The last person I tortured was left able to speak only one sentence.’

  Austin threw out a laugh and mocked the shaman with, ‘You’re a bit slow, aren’t you? If you leave me in that state, how will I be able to tell you anything?’

  ‘You will tell me what I want to know before it comes to that.’ The elf calmly made his way to the chest on the table.

  The torture went on, and Austin supposed the days did, too. The elf shaman dealt similar torture each session. To begin with, Austin could handle it; the predictability allowed him the chance to mentally prepare when he could. But after a while he began to dread knowing what was coming, dread the repetitiveness of it all, dread the same areas of his body being reopened, tormented again and again and again and again and again and again and again and … Drip, drip.

  Someone must have kept coming in while he was unconscious, because each time he woke he was clean, and his wounds had been somewhat treated. Nothing festered, at least.

  It was bliss to wake in the dark, because then he wouldn’t find himself glaring at the dripping water, or glaring at the chest on the table, knowing the tools inside, or glaring at the candle flames, knowing the pain of fire, of his flesh being cooked.

  Across the days, he tried to torture the shaman right back, by rambling more of his life story …

  ‘Arnold the Acne Arsehole,’ he heard his classmates shout, in those upper school years, when he had more spots than friends, but maybe fewer spots than enemies … Maybe. By this point he was probably the least loved person in school. The popular boys regularly abused him, his ‘weird’ friends from the years before had abandoned him, and Jessica was one of the most desirable girls in the year. She wouldn’t go near him.