“What’s wrong with him?” She was pointing at Bomar’s face.
Kensi stepped around the silent man and hopped up to sit on the wall, crossing his legs casually. Bomar’s entire body was motionless; but he seemed to be staring at Ring at this point. No one had seen his head move; and it was unclear whether this was the direction he’d been looking earlier.
“I told you..such rascals..he won’t hurt you. Not one little bit. Bomar’s just not right-not plain regular folk like my sweetsies. But not anybody’s all completely right. Not you either, my princess? He’s just got a little more of not being right. I’m not saying I would get that close to him.” Kensi warned Ring at the approach, his voice darkening and watched momentarily before turning to Misling and Sylhauna still beside the lamppost.
“What are my sweetsies all doing out here – such a time of night and all full of crazies? Such rascals…you look like kiddies on a field trip.”
Misling coughed to gain the floor, “What is your understanding of the events at Balcister? What news have you about what has happened to the city?”
Something about Misling’s tone or grammar, or perhaps his demeanor, gave notice of his identity as Recorder. Kensi leaned his head in, perhaps a little excitedly at the notice, evidently straining softly to make out the wheels within wheels on the Recorder’s forehead as confirmation.
“It blew up.” He chuckled inappropriately. “It did. This morning, darling.”
Kensi leaned toward Misling and lowered his voice like he was telling a secret, “Killed thousands..just horrible and going about their rascal days when up it all went.”
After watching them a moment, as if trying to gauge what they knew, Kensi quickened and gestured like a storyteller, “Wasn’t all either. There were crazies turning ‘round in crowds and firing full blast-zip zip zip. Walking to work and not wanting to be rude and crossing the street, then turn around, they did and started killing. Zip zip zip. I saw that at Carnabie, I did. And fires all over the rascal city. Crazies. People like my sweetsies…wandering ‘round for hours, nowhere to go. I see a lot, don’t I? With sweet Bomar.”
“Well what’s happening?”
He watched them for a reaction to what he’d said, maybe savoring what news he did have, “I saw one rascal covered in dust…looked like a cloud walking, he did…just kept moving past me wouldn’t even talk or look at me…here he’d made it all the way to Carolinestrasse and wasn’t slowing down. So far, my sweetsies, isn’t it?” Kensi scratched his neck and coughed, then spit onto the street.
He widened his eyes and purred, “To run that far, he must have been real scared, isn’t that right?”
“Surely there are rescue efforts, authorities. Have you heard nothing of survivors? What of the Plaza?”
Though the questions were the Recorder’s, Kensi glanced suspiciously at Ring who had stepped closer to the silent man, “That’s what had him so scared…you treasured little rascal. He was scared because no one was helping, were they? No heroes in bright clean uniforms…no doctors and no neighbors pulling off rocks…no helpers at all and a big pile smoking and people screaming. ‘Isn’t that what watchmen are for’, he said to me. Didn’t I ask him why he didn’t help, my little sweetsie. Didn’t I do that? ‘Why are you here with me’, didn’t I say? And ‘What did anyone do for me’, he said back. Didn’t he? But I heard something. Are you looking for somebody, little precious sweetsie? On your field trip?”
“What are you talking about? There are watchmen, certainly. If no one else, watchmen will surely be coordinating rescue efforts.”
Kensi’s goblin face crunched into a wicked smile as he chuckled, “We don’t feel that way sometimes.”
“This Recorder’s sponsor was to meet him in the Tower or the Plaza. He would have been there at mid-day for the crowds. You said you heard something – what was it you heard?”
Kensi shook his head, “Recorder…talking to me…going somewhere.” Looking at Sylhauna, “Something’s punchy about that, isn’t that right, little princess?”
He turned back to Misling and ran his hand across his hair stroking a long pony tail, “That’s horrible, just rascal. Everybody’s got a story. I don’t know. I heard from a lady, all made up and old, who waddled and came aroun’ midnight and wouldn’t give us any money and wanted to see her grandson. She said she hoped the crazies don’t go after houses where all the sweetsies are headed. Where her little Eduan is. Can you imagine spooky strangers stepping into little houses while all the precious rascals are sleeping? Right there at the foot of your bed and you have your feet under the blanket because you’re afraid a cold hand will touch it in the dark and you open your eyes and there are the crazies staring at you. Oh she did, my darlings. Little Eduan screaming at crazies.”
“Someone is responding…there are rescuers! How can no one at all be helping?” Misling’s tone was intent. Kensi only shook his head.
“My little kiddie on a field trip…you want to go and see, don’t you? There’s no one in charge down there, my sweet darling. Nobody in charge like you dream of when you’re warm and sleeping and think how good it is to live in a place where there are brave uniforms. And I heard something.”
“What is it you heard?” Sylhauna held tightly to the lamppost. Ring still hovered near the grotesque Bomar – haunting and silent.
“That old bird, all made up and old…she told me what she saw down there. She did, my sweetsie; and it tells you who the crazies are, doesn’t it?” Kensi grinned; and in the pale light it was at last clear his nose was in fact partly missing. His teeth were twisted and foul.
“There’s a bell tower down there, lollipop. A bell tower all filthy and tall; and it wasn’t there yesterday was it?”
The Recorder stopped cold, locking into his highest level of attention. He always turned his left ear slightly toward the center of activity when that happened.Ring at last shifted a half-turn away from the gargoyle man, putting Bomar outside his peripheral vision. He again made a cautious scan of the garrets and upper windows lining the dark boulevard, the gables and parapets. Sylhauna was the one to question it though.
“Like a Red Witch bell tower? Like it just showed up today?”
Kensi nodded, “That’s what she said, the old bird. My princess. She had to see tiny Eduan to keep him from the crazies, didn’t she?”
He looked at her like she was a pastry, awkwardly hesitating, “So much.”
After a moment, he continued, “That means my sweetsies go poking ‘round in a pile for survivors, somebody’s gonna rip you into pieces and wieces. The crazies will, the rascals. But you sound like you know how it goes, my kiddie on a field trip. Ring the bell and you go free, right? Isn’t that right?”
He darted his gaze between the girl and the Recorder, “Won’t some rascals tell you it isn’t true and that awful tower is a trap, right? It’s a trap for drawing out resistance rascals, right? And they don’t let anyone go. Who knows, princess? Who knows what happens when you ring the bell? Maybe you go free.”
She shook her head, “I don’t know.”
“Well whatever. Good reason to not go down there, isn’t it?” He laughed, somewhat of a cackle like a cartoon witch.
Sylhauna caught Ring’s attention and, tellingly considering her view of who he was, asked, “Is it true?”
“Where on Carolinestrasse?” Ring ignored her question and asked his own of the street man. He was close enough to Bomar at that point for dark and hard claws to strike out and grab him mercilessly should things go that way. Bomar’s dead eyes stared directly into the back of Ring’s head, his black mouth gaping like a sinkhole as if he were set to screech like a banshee and draw down leather winged hordes from the sky.
“What are you talking about? Are you being rascal?” Kensi’s tone was less friendly, offended almost. He shifted his seating on the ledgestone to more fully face Ring, eyeing him like a piece of ground beef.
“You said you were on Carolinestrasse when you saw the man covered in d
ust. You were making a point about how scared he was because he’d run that far. We get that; but where on Carolinestrasse were you?”
A pause, “Near the rendering plant, sweet darling. I think you smell nasty, all getting close when he shouldn’t and on his field trip…and looking at sweet Kensi like he’s done something rascal. Looking at me. Are you trying to catch me fibbing…like I’m spinning stories for kiddies on a field trip?”
Kensi squinted again, “What are you doing here early, anyway my darling? We weren’t supposed to meet till sunrise, were we?”
Misling and Sylhauna tensed quickly, both of them unsure of what it was they’d just heard the strange street man say just then. The Recorder confirmed in her eyes she’d caught something in it as well.
“And don’t stand that close to my friend, Bomar doesn’t like that…he’ll be rascal with you. Sweet Kensi has told you that already and said it again.”
“Right. So you’ve hit all your high points now. You know we’re looking for someone and filled us all in on the bell tower. You’ve kept us and pressed us for information.” Ring was as confident here as he’d been at any other point, not reacting to the stranger’s implication. He turned back to face Bomar, cold and dead…close by.
“You’re being rascal with me…and you’d better stop it. You’d just better stop it or I can be rascal too.” Kensi spoke violently, through clenched teeth, aggressively.
“And you made it compelling to go…very spooky. Your midnight woman was full of insight into what’s really going on. Of course, you made her up and little Eduan. They told you to make up names to sound authentic, inject details.”
Kensi caught the eyes of Sylhauna and the Recorder, lingering his gaze long enough to fully draw their attention to his face and his manner and to ensure they caught the full import of what he was to say, “This fellow here…this rascal…he isn’t who you think he is.”
“You’re inept and really lost.” Ring was close enough to Bomar at this point to breathe on him.
“Bomar…”
“Yeah, Bomar.” Ring lifted his hand slowly as he continued. Kensi stood erect with fists tight at his side and shaking just a little.
“I wonder whether your minder is close and you were killing time or if you were just trying to get to that bell tower crap you were throwing at us.” Ring’s voice rose in his passion. Misling and Sylhauna watched the gargoyle man more closely and urgently, as if he were being summoned into a foaming berserker rage to swallow them whole.
“Get away from sweet Bomar, you horrible darling, he doesn’t like-“
“Yeah, he doesn’t like it. You know what he doesn’t like?” Ring reached an index finger up to Bomar’s nightmare face and touched it gently to a single tear on his cheek, slowly turning to see it and sense it for what it was and what it meant. He watched the tear as if it held visions of the future.
“Being tortured by a lunatic poser trying to earn his blackening from like minded psychotic filth.” Ring looked up at the street man fiercely and with lightning in his eyes, “Wake him up.”
“You can’t have him, sissy boy. Sissy kiddie on a field trip. Turn your own. Turn your own kiddies and leave my sweet Bomar!” Kensi eased closer, like a boxer appraising a bigger fighter than himself.
“I said wake him up!”
“Worry about yourself. Rascal! You think you’re smart and you’re winning. You have no idea what you just did. No idea, you terrible fish, just filthy!”
Sharply, like a demon crawling from a pit, a hulking Red Witch fighter appeared in the shadows behind Ring, towering over him…massive and armored, cloaked in a long coat, scowling and smoking from the heat off his body. Ring was a dwarf beneath the monstrous and dark man coming at him with a charged carbine sizzling and popping like a live wire. Once Ring had turned, each of them stood wide-eyed, beholding the monstrous warrior while Kensi laughed like a howling coyote.
“I’m winning now. Isn’t that right, princess? Now there are some just horrible things to do to my treasured lollipops. Disgusting little sweetsies, so sorry they ran into Kensi, aren’t they? Now we’ll cut off strips of you…strips like bacon.”
“Eat his face. Eat it right off.” Disembodied whispers, several of them, surrounded the Red Witch man like demons inhabiting his flesh - one was never certain what that was. “We’ll crack his back, leave him in the sewage with dung in his mouth.”
Ring watched the massive new arrival, as if he were waiting to see if there were more. The whispers faded in and out. Possibly, the Red Witch man was awaiting fear and panic and stood before them to instill such, or perhaps gauging which direction they each were to run. Perhaps he was awaiting others.
“…squishy little pieces of stripped off meat, yummy…” And another over the first, “Stupid looking coat…”
Ring listened and observed only a moment, then gathered himself, “I trust you hear me over your…babbling.”
The whispers went into a frenzy, incomprehensible and speaking over one another. Though Ring watched for a reaction, The black face and burning eyes were like stone.
“Minders learn lots of languages. I imagine you understand me.” His voice echoed on the quiet nighttime street; and it was not at all clear whether the tremor in his voice was from anger or panic or fatigue. Yet tremor it did, nonetheless.
He swung his thumb towards Kensi, perhaps trying to sound at ease, “It’s embarrassing what you’ve chosen over here. Are you really going to give this idiot a chance to join you?”
Kensi roared viciously, spitting, “You first! I’ll cut you and pee in the hole! Get on your knees!”
“Start with his eyes, his eyes!” “Embarrassing.” “He said pee, he said pee…”
The Red Witch man only chuckled, booming and thunderous, still having said nothing. He powered down his carbine and slid it to his shoulder strap but pulled something else from a separate holster along his waist and just inside the duster.
“Oooh….now he’ll get it….”
Ring held up his hands, his left in a tight fist and his right with fingers outstretched and locked as they train the deadly Frost Troops in the north countries, “Guys, run. Get out of here. No more are coming.”
Kensi seized Sylhauna by her throat and knocked her feet out from beneath her with a strong kick. Before she or Misling could react, the Red Witch man swung his armored fist quickly and smashed into Ring’s left temple knocking him into a half turn. The blow had hurt Ring severely; and it was all he could do to raise his face again. His eyes held the loose daze of too much wine; but he did raise his face. He looked fiercely up and into the Red Witch man’s eyes and lifted his hands again, his legs spread wide.
“Crack him open! Embarrassing.” “More coming, all kinds…surrounded.”
“Misling, run.”
Without mercy or hesitation, the Red Witch fighter slung the new weapon he’d only just drawn like a club and in the opposite direction, metal on bone and vicious. It was hard enough to shatter Ring’s jaw and sounded like it had. He was at that point bent over like a man vomiting, thick tinted mucus streaming like a rope from his mouth. When he turned his face up again and tried to lift his fist, the Red Witch man lifted his boot and kicked Ring in his chest hard enough to shove him the length of three people along the street. It was a shocking move and carried extreme force. Ring stopped moving after that. The Red Witch man shoved the heel of his boot into Ring’s right cheek.
“Stop it!” Sylhauna shouted. “You’re killing him.”
The Red Witch fighter as if in response, held forward the new weapon and pointed its long rectangular barrel, flashing streetlights in stretched reflections, directly into the base of Ring’s skull at the top of the spine and fired. A mechanical thud sounded with finality; and the force of the shot shook Ring’s body.
Kensi laughed in a caterwaul, “Look at that one. Look there.”
The Red Witch man locked his red eyes on Misling, glowing like two drops of lava in the soft street lights. He h
ad to lean forward to see the Recorder’s face. Glowing red wolf’s teeth spread out inside a widening grin. He reached out a massive gloved finger and placed it across Misling’s forehead tattoo roughly.
“Hello, little bug.”
“Wheels on his head, turn it right round…”
Kensi scooted himself to Sylhauna and sat on her, pinning her arms with his knees, “It’s hard for me, lollipop, to steal you away. Like a sister to me now. Crazy from here. So much. Just crazy and screaming and will do anything to make it stop. But a Recorder…that’s just funny, isn’t that right? Remember everything, don’t they?”
“Remember everything…”
“You killed him.” Sylhauna struggled and shouted, almost toppling Kensi. He righted himself by repositioning his left foot wider away from her. Kensi was surprised she’d bucked him so hard and steeled himself tightly.
Tearing Down The Statues Page 16