“That’s what I figured. ‘Hauna is awesome at finding people like you.”
Misling’s face was exhausted and drained, “I cannot leave him.”
She examined his face, pondering, and nodded. After a few minutes, once she’d parked her vessel on a mooring platform and shut down the vortex engine, Cristoffel slipped out of the vehicle and motioned for him to go ahead of her up the stairway to the main thoroughfare which led to the Plaza. It was silent. When the two of them reached the top of the stairs, the view opened up of a rubble field smoking in a gentle smolder in what was once a proud and beautiful courtyard crowned with the jewel of the city. There was a faint scent of smoke and old damp masonry.
“No…”
Tall and haunting, rising in silhouette against the rubble and with the feel of stark nightmare when something wicked intrudes on nostalgic dreams of home, there stood a misshapen bell tower. It was roughly in the courtyard’s center and stood as tall as four men, a black iron bell housed in its upper reaches. It was of no ordinary materials or design; and as they watched it became more obvious what a horror they’d intruded into.
“It’s made of people…” Her voice broke in sickness, for the tower was composed of contorted living people standing upon and clinging to one another. Heads, arms, and shoulders jutted from its mass – some frozen, some moving slowly as if awakening, and some with heads darting quickly about. The bell tower stood overlooking what was once mighty Balcister; and it was constructed of madmen.
19 LOSS
Sylhauna was talking with some soapstone figurines on a shelf as she stirred eggs in a copper skillet, digging the cottony puffs off the sides with a spoon. She sprinked some herbs from a dark walnut shaker and admired the swirl they made with one of her huge buckled boots crossed behind the other and her head tilted to one side. The kitchen was tidy and smelled of cinnamon. The miniatures represented some of the Salt Mystic’s fundamental archetypes, commonly called the ‘players’. She turned down the blue flame of the stove and lingered her eyes on one, then picked it up, bringing it to her face for a closer look.
“Hello, Libertine! It’s quite pleasing to see you again.” Her accent was intentionally ritzy and glamorous. Suddenly, she whispered with a suspicious glance away and a jerk of her thumb, “Famous guest. When he wakes up, I’ll ask him why he gave you such a dumb name, okay?”
A muted banging explosion sounded from outside, possibly a surrounding neighborhood; and her shoulders winced at it. She quickly recovered her cheerful tone, “They’ll be fine. She knows all the hiding places.” Sylhauna replaced Libertine in its position on the old shelf and spun Peacemaker one way, then the other idly.
“Don’t you?”
Tiny bubbles needled the eggs in her skillet, calling for her attention; and she stirred them again. Dreamer was beside Peacemaker, in the form of a little girl with flowers in her hair trying to hand a mushroom to someone. Sylhauna didn’t address Dreamer or touch it, but rather turned the fourth and last piece all the way around to put its defiant frown and crossed arms to face the dimpled shale backsplash. It was the image of the Rebel; and she didn’t care to see it again.
“I miss you, little buddy.” Not lingering on a thought unpleasant to her, Sylhauna lifted the skillet from the flame though the eggs were still runny and sloshing around in the gray skillet. She raised the volume of her voice to reach Ring in the other room.
“I like them a little squishy and shiny; but not everybody does. I know liquid computers and all that; but when you wake up, do you think you’ll want them squishy or kind of dry? Dry is safe, I think. As long as they’re not plastic.” She waited, thinking, then decided for herself and placed the copper back on the flame.
“I don’t really understand something about you, though. If you’re the Salt Mystic and you’re back, there had to be a ‘you’ already, right? Did she suck out your soul or are you in there somewhere – do you know what I’m saying? Or are you faking everything, because that would be kind of mean?” Not really awaiting an answer, she glanced back to the figure of Dreamer holding forth her tiny mushroom.
“No, thank you; but how kind of you to offer!” She lightly bowed to the figurine, then shifted subjects again at an idle thought. “But since you’re her and more…you know…mystic than Bomar, you can just wake up normal and not foaming at the mouth and stuff. You can just wake up and not be crazy, right?”
Suddenly, she jerked her eyes back towards the wall separating her from Ring at a snap or click coming from there. Hearing nothing further, she gripped the skillet’s handle and lifted it from the eye. It is telling of her that the instinct was to bring along a skillet and not a knife; but there she was.
“Lennox?” Cautiously, Sylhauna peered around the corner into the living room wondering at what she might find there; and there stood Kensi in his rags and dust.
“Like jelly.” He was leaning over Ring, jamming one of the needlepacks from Cristoffel’s kit into Ring’s arm with his finger mashing just then on the plunger and despairing at the lack of visible reaction. “I’ll have to tell. I’ll have to tell.”
Sylhauna stood in desolate fright, the runny eggs dripping onto the floor. It was all over her face that she was considering bashing him on the side of his head with it; but she only stood there, uncertain.
Kensi chuckled without looking at her, “You come at me with that and I’ll jam it down your throat, my little sour tart. You believe me, don’t you? Settle it, princess.” He was laughing wickedly, entirely amused with how well things were turning out for him. Sylhauna bit her lower lip, then softly placed the skillet onto a countertop behind her. She looked back at the goblin face.
“Your Record’s going to have you getting crapped on.”
His eyes showed little recognition, though he was for a moment stalled out by it. He patted the bloody place on the back of his head gently while she stood motionless, perhaps trying not to remind him she’d done that.
Kensi squinted impatiently, “We’ll cut your fish’s throat and pull his tongue through the hole, like I said. Just like I said. No talky talky. Your kitchen will have my knife for me, won’t it lollipop? You rascal. Maybe you should have grabbed that instead. Really glad I followed you now. Had to hide, didn’t I?”
She shook her head no, “Not such a big deal. We did too.”
He watched her, then took two steps in her direction, “You’re weird.”
Backing, her hands up, “Just get out of here.” Sylhauna’s voice quivered as she tried to sound less frightened.
Closing in, his eyes smiling, “After we’ve eaten.”
He was wearing on her; and she was almost in full panic by now, stepping back into the wall and watching him. She cast a glance to Ring still laying lifeless, then to the apartment door, then the terrace opening and balcony beyond. Then something else happened.
Quite suddenly, Lennox lumbered out of his bedroom, unsteady and leaning very heavily on the doorframe, “Get out!”
Sylhauna was horrified, “Are you serious? Why would you come out here like that?”
He grunted, clearly suffering, “My house.”
Kensi clicked his teeth and took a step towards Lennox, not realizing or foreseeing what the ill man was prepared to do. He was moving with the surety of someone feeling powerful and controlling with the mischief of a mad god. Lennox however, held in a hidden hand a solid piece of plaster gripped solidly. The dull sound was awful when he slammed it with all his strength into the right crown of the street man’s head. Were Lennox a healthier man, Kensi wouldn’t have survived that blow. As it was, Kensi buckled in severe pain and was dazed enough for what followed. In his panicked rush, Lennox gripped Kensi by a greasy and bloody clump of the street man’s hair and dragged him clumsily to the bathroom, shoving him inside. He slammed it shut and locked the door. Exhausted by the effort, the ill man leaned weakly, doubled over and resting his palm against the writing desk while trying to calm his breathing. She unfortunately stepped closer to him
.
Lennox looked up at her, disgusted, “All you bring me is problems.”
Sylhauna’s eyes softened, hurt. Yet he saw her with disdain. Lennox clutched Sylhauna’s hair and gripped the bathroom’s doorknob to open the door again.
“Stop it!! Let me go!!” Too quickly for her to fight or understand what he was doing, Lennox had shoved Sylhauna into the bathroom as well and locked the door behind her. Then she was alone in a cluttered toilet space with a small sink, weathered cabinet with a mirror whose silvering was wearing off, and the street man who sought to torture her. She banged her fists against the door, a door with scratches and streaks on it; but it was solid. Kensi was recovering and watching her, clasping the pooling bloody places on the side of his head. He stared at her as she banged madly, wolf-like and wild in her fright. After a moment, he ran a pointed finger down one of the old scratches in the door. Fingernail scratches. His smile grew shining yellow teeth.
“Door locks from the outside, sweetsie. You don’t see a lot of that.”
Sylhauna went berserk, smashing her fists against the door hard enough to bloody herself. Her eyes were wild; and she’d lost control. Kensi’s eyes were on her as he steadied himself, not so much enjoying her reaction as just bearing it. When he shifted his position as if to move toward her, she stopped banging and pushed her back against the door as if that distanced her from the street man.
“I hid a key in here once, under a tile behind you. May still be there.”
He nodded dismissively, “Sweet Kensi’s had a rough night, sour tart. He’s thinking maybe the princess knows where these old fingernail scratches came from, isn’t he?”
Sylhauna was silent, trying to calm herself. He nodded, “Bet that’s really scary then. Cause here you are again. With a rascal.” As he said that last word, his eyes twinkled in joy.
“Were you lying about expecting him?”
Kensi stood up slowly. He wasn’t well after all the beatings he’d had. She inhaled sharply, trying to keep him talking. Yet Kensi’s filthy face collapsed into a skull, vicious and mean, as he sharply sprang at her and clutched her neck with both hands. He squeezed and shoved her into the wall, lifting her off the floortiles with the force of his attack. Her face purpled almost immediately as she choked for air.
“Would you like Kensi to keep talking? To be stupid and gloat and tell you what I’m doing and how many there are and where I was born? Fish!!”
Sylhauna’s eyes were rolling backwards in her struggle. She wasn’t getting any breath past his clutch at all. He stuck his tongue out like a hungry snake, scraping it against her left eye.
“If he hadn’t made me talk before, I’d have you dreaming cold dreams right now, fish! Instead of choking and dying in the toilet!”
Veins stood out in his neck and on his forehead like roadmaps. She opened her eyes quickly and rolled them left and right, searching desperately for a way forward. No one was coming to help; and she was entirely on her own. Her breath was depleted, her arms weakening at her sides. No sounds came from the other side of the door at all. Sylhauna was devastatingly on her own in this; and it was ending here. Her eyes stopped on the fingernail scratches, long and curving and worn.
She reached her right hand up, incredibly past his locked arms, and in one motion shoved her pinkie finger into the ring he wore in the pierced eyebrow, the one with frayed threads hanging from it, and jerked downward as hard as she could. She’d torn flesh; and he withered immediately in howls of pain as bright red blood sprayed about them. Kensi was flapping his body as she doubled over and wheezed in.
He howled like a dying animal, “Aiiieeee!!”
She madly lifted her right boot and jammed it into Kensi’s face, striking the back of his head against the back wall twice. He reached out and tried to grip her boot; but she already had struck him again with her fingernails, digging into the wounds on his head as if digging for potatoes. She was screaming with ferocity and abandon; and that too was confusing him. He only shook his head and flailed his arms, too dizzy from the head batterings to find his way up and at her. Sylhauna struck him again in his face with the boot; and he slammed viciously into the wall and went still. Knowing it wouldn’t last, she quickly leaned forward and over him, his disgusting breath still puffing into her face, and reached back to the floor and jostled an old cracked piece of tile around till it slid apart from the place where it fit. Kensi was starting already to mumble something, slurring his words. The key was still there where she’d placed it perhaps years ago.
Yet she dropped it; and it made a tinking sound as it fell. Kensi’s eyes rolled open again. Sylhauna wasted no time at all and clamped her teeth down onto his wounded eyebrow, biting down and trying her level best to rip his flesh. The pain drove him to fury; and he rammed into her, knocking Sylhauna to the floor. It only put her closer to the key though; and she slipped her grasping fingers around it right away. She sat up on her knees and fumbled with the key in the keyhole, having only a blink to work the mechanism, and managed it open. Then, in another fit of fury perhaps recalling that of other days she’d spent in this place, Sylhauna drove her boot again into the street man’s face.
Outside the room, as the doorway squeaked open, Lennox watched in shock from the floor where he’d been resting after prying open his cellar door. He’d dragged Ring down to this point and was planning to dump him into the dark cellar and now had the look of someone caught sneaking liquor from the cabinet. Seeing Sylhauna emerge from that toilet wasn’t a development he’d foreseen, for didn’t he know her?
He at last grinned politely, “’Hauna. You need to understand how scared I’ve been. How sick I’ve been.”
Sylhauna’s eyes were cold; and she didn’t watch him long. Across the room, stepping back into the kitchen, she gripped the skillet she’d held earlier and held it up above Lennox’s face as if preparing to strike him. His eyes were wide, disbelieving. She pointed to the cellar, motioning for him to get himself down there at once.
“I’m not going. You’ll have to-”
Perhaps most who knew her would have expected a hesitation; but Sylhauna really didn’t think about it so much. Instead, she swung the skillet and smacked his cheek with a gong-like bell sound. He didn’t pass out; but he did roll himself down the creaking wooden steps into the dark cellar below the floor. He was moaning for mercy, dazed and miserable. Kensi offered little resistance as she pulled him by his feet, grunting from the exertion, to the same cellar steps and dumped him in as well.
Kensi was mumbling again, like a drunkard, “Fish. I’ll eat your eyes.”
Sylhauna kicked the thick door closed, swiveling the latch around to seal it off. Then as if to get distance from what she was doing, she slid a thick bristled rug from near the terrace over the cellar door, concealing it from view as two muffled voices barked from below. It was then as the immediate threat had eased that the terrible dread settled on her; and she sat cross-legged on the floor, hunched over till her forehead rested against her feet and just breathed, her hands clutched tightly to her ears to shut out the thump thump from the cellar and the hum and crashes from the window. She didn’t cry.
It took her a long while, long enough for the thumping to die down and her breath to settle, before Sylhauna looked back up at Ring to see him still cold and still. Reluctantly, she gathered her strength and stood. She no doubt wondered at what it could mean that the cellar door was silent now, and perhaps also at what Ring might be like should he awaken after all. Entirely out line, she just straightened a pillow on the chair and some bits of junk strewn on the writing desk like she was cleaning for a visitor. Then she took a look at the medicine packets on Lennox’s tray.
The packets each had their own sheathed needle or Pro-Mat dermal transfer patch; and they were arranged in overlapping rows like packaged tea bags. Fumbling as if she knew what she was doing, Sylhauna accidentally flipped two packets off the tray and to the floor, which is when she noticed her fingers twitching. She at last closed her e
yes and rose her head as if smelling something.
“Bare feet crossed on a pier, in front of a sparkling river at sunset. Birds are honking.” Calmer, Sylhauna gripped something from the tray, perhaps what she’d been looking for, and turned to Ring. As an afterthought, she slipped into the kitchen and seized the copper skillet just to hold it.
Leaning in close, Sylhauna whispered, “I believe.” When nothing happened, she yelled as loud as she could directly into his ear. There was the slightest puff of breath from his nostrils but no sign of awareness. Knowing a man rolls his eyes beneath the lids when dreaming, she peered over his nose and saw nothing. What did that mean? Her scream resurrected the muffled booms and murmurs from the cellar door; but it was too blurred to tell whether it was two voices or one.
Back close, lips to his ear, “I believe.” That’s when she shoved the adrenalin packet into the side of Ring’s neck and squeezed like she was killing a rat, disgusted and not wanting to touch anything but shoving through anyway because she needed the rat dead. When she pulled back, she held the skillet up between them. Then his eyes banged open. They weren’t sparkling as they had before; and he held the look of someone uncertain where he was as he noticed the room and the thumping cellar door, then the taint of blood still strawberry red and wet on the side of her mouth from Kensi’s brow.
Tearing Down The Statues Page 25