Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  “No!” Bonifác was ready to cry again. “Chew the ropes! Chew the ropes!” Even the young man could not understand the words that tumbled against the gag, tied so tightly it was cutting into the parched and cracked corners of his mouth.

  The dog tilted his head.

  Bonifác held his breath.

  The dog brought its mouth around the peg the man’s right foot was bound to and began to chew and gnaw.

  Bonifác was ready to scream with excitement, though he tried to keep quiet so as not to distract the dog. The dog’s saliva dripped in great gobs onto the rope and Bonifác’s ankle. The peg shivered in the dog’s teeth. Bonifác held his breath, expecting the ropes to fray and come undone.

  The dog continued to gnaw at the wood and the rope, moving its head to various angles, and the wood continued to tremble. Bonifác heard an occasional crunch, and a splinter would fall to the ground. But the ropes did not fray. The dog struggled to get its teeth around the ropes but they seemed too close to the ground and its head too large for it to twist into the proper angle. The canine drool that soaked the ropes also seemed to be making them tauter and more resilient, harder to shred.

  The longer the dog struggled to free Bonifác, the more frenzied its chewing became. It snapped and snarled at the wood as if trying to tear the small stake from the earth. The dog raised himself and planted its front feet as if for better leverage and lunged at the wood as if it were a living adversary, like the wolf in the undergrowth last night.

  Bonifác heard the wood crunch between the sharp teeth and in the same instant, the great black beast leapt back from the peg as if it were a snake poised to strike. Bonifác lifted his head as best he could to see the wood.

  The stake seemed intact though the wood had been scored by the dog’s teeth. The top of the peg looked rougher than he recalled it having looked before, but the stakes had never been great pieces of workmanship. The rope showed small signs of fraying but seemed intact. Bonifác could not understand what had happened.

  Then the dog choked and coughed and gagged, dancing wildly around the man on the earth. It hacked and retched but nothing came from its mouth.

  Bonifác watched the dog in terror. What was happening?

  The dog’s wild dance became frantic. The animal was in a panic. Great droplets of spit from the dog’s jaws showered the man. The dog coughed and coughed and choked but still nothing came up. It was trying to heave up something. But what? Had it suddenly been taken sick? Was it trying to vomit up some vile thing the gypsies had fed it before it came to Bonifác?

  Then small flecks of blood were raining down on Bonifác as well as the drool. Bonifác realized a shard must have broken off from the stake and gotten lodged in the dog’s throat. The dog was choking to death.

  The animal’s leaping gradually subsided even as the gagging sounds became more desperate. The dog shook and twisted its head in its effort to clear its windpipe, but to no avail. It collapsed onto the ground beside Bonifác, very nearly in the same position it had taken when first chewing on the rope. Bloody, foamy spit bubbled from the animal’s jaws. It continued to gag and try to heave up the shard of wood, but its struggle became weaker and fainter.

  At last the dog gave up and lifted its eyes to Bonifác’s. The dog whimpered and seemed to shrug its shoulders as if in resignation before it stretched out on the ground beside the man and lay still.

  Bonifác wanted to cry but could not because his eyes had become so dry.

  Bonifác closed his eyes and waited.

  There was a sudden chill and he realized that he had fallen asleep for part of the day. Now the sun’s rays slanted sharply through the trees and the sight of the dog’s body beside his reawakened the despair that had engulfed him earlier, the despair he had escaped while sleeping. His protector, his hope of escape, was dead beside him, having died in the effort to save him. He cried again but with no tears, his throat even more parched and dry than it had been earlier. He turned his face to avoid the sight of his faithful canine friend’s dead body.

  Then Djordji stepped from between the trees, and the fury was plain to see on his face. Bonifác turned aside to avoid looking at the gypsy but only confronted the dog’s corpse again. Bonifác felt himself wracked by dry sobs.

  “The recipe was a failure!” Djordji exclaimed. “It was a more than a failure! It was a lie! You knew it would not produce gold, did you not? Filthy liar!” He kicked Bonifác’s leg. The would-be alchemist groaned with this new pain.

  “How dare you lie to me?” the gypsy wanted to know. “Did you think I would not discover the lie? Did you think I would forgive such treachery? You must think me a fool! But I am no fool!” Djordji kicked Bonifác again, the sharp pain cutting through Bonifác’s haze of grief and despair.

  The gypsy noticed the dog’s corpse as he lifted his foot to kick Bonifác a third time.

  “Dead? The dog is dead?” Djordji demanded. “Did you think to call down some vengeance on me and strike the dog instead? Are you such a poor student of alchemy that you cannot bend the most simple powers of nature to your will?” Djordji laughed at the alchemist’s anguish and kicked his ribs. Bonifác whimpered and cried.

  Djordji leaned down to Bonifác. “The time will come when you will bless this day as the least of your afflictions,” Djordji hissed. “Do you hear me? The least!”

  The gypsy stood upright and strode to Bonifác’s feet, turning to face the abject man again. The gypsy pulled a small leather pouch from his belt. He pulled a handful of small things—pebbles?—from it and held them in his fist.

  “Great dogs guard all the gates of hell,” Djordji told Bonifác. “They keep the living out and the damned within. These dogs have many names: Cerberus, Anubis, Barghest. As a chovihano, I have collected the skulls and teeth of dogs for many years, collected them for just such a day as this. And now these teeth of earthly, mortal dogs will bare the sharp teeth of those dogs of hell against you.”

  Djordji walked slowly around Bonifác, dropping the dogs’ teeth in a circle on the earth.

  As he walked, the gypsy spoke even as he pressed the teeth into the earth with his boot. “When I am done with you, I shall bury one skull of a dog near the chasm into hell that you passed. I have already buried the skull of one dog in the garden of a cottage at the edge of this forest, not far from our camp. Are you surprised, boy? If you had kept walking along the road and not stopped to sup with us, you would have reached the edge of the forest in less than an hour.” He chuckled at Bonifác’s growing dismay.

  “Yes, boy, you were less than an hour from seeing the walls of the great castle of Prague,” Djordji taunted. “Do you know what can be found between the edge of the forest and the walls of the castle? A great open field, a field used in years long gone by to bury the dead. Soldiers have fought battles there as well, in more recent days. I have buried the first dog’s skull in the garden of a small house that sits there, where the burial field and forest meet.”

  Bonifác wanted to weep but the tears would not come to his dry, sore eyes. He closed them, hoping somehow that Djordji would vanish if he could not be seen, but Bonifác could not stop his ears against the terrible words the old man spoke as he completed the circle of dog’s teeth around the would-be alchemist.

  “When I have buried the dog’s skull at the chasm to hell, it—together with the skull at the edge of the forest—will form two barriers impossible for you to cross,” Djordji explained. “When you have died here—yes, death cannot be far now that you have had nothing to drink for days—your corpse will rot here unburied, like the body of a dead traitor on display to warn other would-be traitors against such treachery. Your spirit will be unable to rest, tethered to this circle and doomed to wander between the two dog skulls. Your ghost will come to the edge of the trees and see the great city you so yearned to enter… you will see it but be unable to enter it!” Djordji’s hideous laughter echoed in Bonifác’s head. “Trapped here forever, denied what you can see!”

&nbs
p; Bonifác opened his eyes again and saw Djordji standing near his feet, the circle of canine teeth around dying man and dead dog complete. The standing man leered at the man outstretched on the ground.

  ““Do you know what that means, boy? That I am chovihano? Know you perhaps the name the Germans give to such a man as myself? They would call me hexenmeister. Do you know that word, alchemist? Even I, a humble chovihano of our people, have a great many more skills than you, alchemist-boy,” Djordji boasted. “I am sorry that you drive me to use my skills in this manner. We might have been able to do many great things together.” He kicked Bonifác’s shin and walked off between the trees.

  Bonifác closed his eyes, his chest heaving with dry sobbing.

  “Death take you, Djordji!” he cursed the old man. “If you are anywhere near this forest when I have died and am trapped here, I will be sure to hasten your journey to join me!”

  Djordji pulled the small trowel from his belt and knelt on the earth. Shadows deepened and filled the air beneath and between the trees as dusk fell. The chasm that was said to lead directly to hell was not far, only a few steps away. The scent of brimstone hung in the air above its rough and rocky edges. Djordji dug a hole in the earth, deep but not wide, and then pulled the second canine skull of his collection from the small wooden chest in which he had kept the pair. He inspected the skull a final time, making sure it had not been damaged or chipped, and placed it in the earth. He scraped the earth back upon it and tamped the dirt down tightly.

  “Deep enough to not be disturbed or dug up by some wandering animal,” Djordji muttered, surveying his work with satisfaction. “The ghost of the alchemist-boy may even try to dig it up himself but he must not be able to.” He raised his voice and called out to the forest. “Do you hear, Sarah-la-Kali? He must not discover either dog skull nor dig up one or the other, lest the spell be broken! Guard my workmanship, Sarah-la-Kali! Protect these skulls I have hidden, insure my vengeance against this stupid boy who thought to call himself an alchemist! Do this and I will offer you such homage all the days of my life, such homage that no chovihano will ever be said to have honored you more than I!”

  As he stood there, calling to the mother of the Roma, he did not hear the leader of the wolf pack approaching behind him. The great, hungry beast stood in the gathering dark. Its lip curled back in a silent snarl, saliva dribbling down the side of its jaw and then dropping to the forest floor. The wolf watched the man as the rest of the pack silently drew near, a half-dozen gray shadows coalescing behind and around Djordji.

  “Do you hear? Such homage!” The chovihano turned to return to his family’s caravan and the pack sprang upon him, their leader’s howl echoing in the now complete darkness.

  Bonifác lay there that night, hearing the wolves howl. He trembled with fear in his soiled trousers, afraid that the wolves would come for him. But they did not come that night and he lay there for another day and a night. He waited. He slept. He shivered with the chill and shook with a fever. Sometimes strange waking dreams came to him and it seemed that he could see imps and gnomes dancing in the forest. His dead grandfather came to him, walking carefully around the circle of canine teeth but saying nothing. Neighbors from his childhood came to him but would turn their backs when he begged with his eyes for a sip of the beer from the mugs in their hands. He grew more desperate for water or ale or anything that could quench his thirst. Even raindrops would have been some small relief. But no relief came.

  The second night since Djordji left him, Bonifác heard the wolf howling again.

  “What is it hunting?” the would-be alchemist wondered. “Will it come for me next? Perhaps it should… The quicker this misery is finished, the better!” He thrashed about in his bondage, forgetting that he had exhausted himself in his struggles against the ropes before. The cords cut into his wrists and ankle again, but the pain only drove him to struggle more valiantly. He kicked his feet against the earth and twisted his hips, hoping that the struggle might fray the ropes. Surprisingly, it did! The rope that bound his foot to the peg the dog had chewed on suddenly came undone.

  Momentary hope sprang up in Bonifác’s heart. The now-free foot might help him free the other that was still bound. He brought the free foot down against the peg to which the other was bound, and would have screamed were it not for the bandana stuffed into his mouth.

  “God in Heaven,” he prayed, wrenching his free foot away from the peg, “what is to become of me?” His dry, cracked lips chafed against the bandana.

  Exhausted, he listened to the sounds of the forest. Gradually he forgot where he was and was only aware of the dark, the chill in the air that set him to shivering, and the sounds of rustling leaves and undergrowth around him. His numb limbs forgot they were bound to the earth and even the pain of the rope against his raw flesh faded away. He seemed to be floating, aware only of the pain in his shoulders that twitched and shuddered.

  Finally, he opened his eyes.

  “Are those the stars above me?” He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but there seemed to be hundreds or thousands of points of light glittering and dancing above him. He still seemed to be floating, nearly as high as the highest tree limbs, though he was still unable to feel his limbs or cry out. Night birds called to one another. Again a wolf howled nearby. The night grew colder.

  He delighted in the stars dancing about him and felt the despair and anger that had filled him begin to unravel But then he felt the ropes against his limbs and the earth against his shoulders and his buttocks and he was back on the earth, tied to the pegs of his imprisonment. He rolled his head from one side to another.

  The dog’s corpse was still there, dark and still.

  “My friend,” Bonifác whimpered. “Poor pes, dear pes! What is to become of us both, here in the forest?”

  Something moved in the darkness, the dog’s body seeming to shudder and groan.

  “No! No!” Bonifác screamed in his mind, terrified that the wolves had come upon them at last.

  Again the canine corpse seemed to shudder.

  “No!” cried Bonifác in his thoughts, expecting to feel the teeth of the wolf close upon him at any moment. He thrashed about in the ropes and then collapsed against the dirt beneath him and looked about again.

  He squinted and peered as best he could but could still see no wolves in the dark. But he heard a beast groan and the rough slurping of a large animal sliding its tongue across its teeth. From the direction of the dog’s corpse. He refused to turn his head, not wanting to see the attack he was certain was coming. He pressed his eyes shut, his face contorted with fear.

  “Will the wolf eat the dog before it comes for me?” he wondered. “Would it not prefer the warm, fresh meat of my corpse to the cold flesh of the dog? How long before the wolf realizes that I am here and alive, a better meal so close by? Should I attract its attention? Or perhaps it will fill itself with the dog’s flesh and slink back into the forest… Might it leave me here after all?” Bonifác was unsure if slow death was better than the quick death of the wolf’s attack. He tried not to breathe.

  But the sounds faded into silence and no teeth closed upon his limbs or torso. The waiting became unbearable and Bonifác turned his face again toward the dog’s body and opened his eyes.

  The dog’s body was jerking and twitching. Its tail thumped the earth. Its head rolled and then lifted up, and the animal opened its eyes.

  Bonifác nearly screamed as he watched the dog shake itself as if waking from a deep slumber and then slowly climb onto its feet. It licked its lips and barked once. Twice. It swung its head from side to side as if unsure where it was or what might be lurking in the dark. Then it trotted to Bonifác and leaned down over the man’s face.

  Unsure if he was awake or asleep, Bonifác shook with fear and joy as the dog’s great, rough tongue licked the man’s cheeks, drenching his face with drool. Bonifác did not understand how, but the dog had been raised by some magic in the circle of canine teeth that Djordji had n
ot expected.

  Bonifác, still unable to feel his limbs, felt himself relax the taut muscles he could still control. He closed his eyes as the dog’s tongue slurped his forehead. His short, shallow breaths became slower, deeper. He felt a strange rumbling sensation within his torso. His heart pounded but then skipped a beat. And another. The pounding in his chest became erratic. He felt himself drift up from the ground again, slowly rising toward the sky. But this time he felt a wrenching, a twisting and pulling, and he opened his eyes as the dog hesitated in its slobbering and backed away a step or two.

  The sensation of rising became stronger. The twisting and pulling became more intense, the ligaments and cartilage in his shoulders and hips seeming to be torn from their sockets. The erratic thunder of his heartbeat filled his ears and then fell silent. He gasped for breath one last time and then felt a suffocating panic as the solid earth fell away beneath him. He felt as if he were climbing upright and the ropes melting away from his limbs. But in the dark, he seemed to still see himself stretched out on the ground and bound to the pegs. The dog looked from the prone Bonifác to the upright Bonifác and back again several times. Then, with a bark of recognition, it lunged at the alchemist and generously licked his outstretched hands.

  Bonifác knelt and clutched the dog’s jowls with both hands. The dog enthusiastically licked his face, chin to forehead and cheek to cheek. Another strange set of sensations gripped the man and he felt himself melt into the dog, and when Bonifác opened his eyes again, it was as if he were looking out from the dog’s eyes. He could see the alchemist’s body stretched out on the ground. He could see the dog’s great front paws when he looked down as if he were looking at his own hands. But when he tried to walk, it was the clumsy first steps of a newborn puppy trying to coordinate all four limbs that rewarded his efforts. Bonifác, now within the mysteriously dead but revitalized dog, trotted into the deeper shadows of the forest.