Mindripper

by Baron Blackwell

  Lulu tapped Enk’s shoulder, and he nearly jumped. She pointed down the hall, and he nodded. Together, they all crept forth, their ears trained to any hint of a disturbance.

  It’s almost over, Merka. Almost. . . .

  Enk swallowed. No one expected trouble, not with only one servant in-residence, but he could not blink without imagining some new desperate scenario. He touched his throat. Almost dying twice in a day was more than enough.

  Lamplight beckoned up ahead, atop of a round table, where the darken hall ended in a congress of three differing paths. Enk ignored the ones that diverged to his left and his right, tracking the staircase that rose into the blacken heights.

  Stairs. Always fucking stairs.

  They paused at the boundary of the lamp’s brilliance.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Tizkar whispered. “We need to split up or we will—”

  “I’ll take the stairs,” Enk said, cringing inside as the words left his mouth. Why? Why had he uttered those words? I’ll take the stairs? Who did he think he was?

  “Are you—” Tizkar began.

  Enk nodded curtly, and Tizkar fell silent, his eyes going to Lulu’s pinched expression, then he shrugged, as if to say, “I tried.”

  Enk returned his gaze to his chosen ordeal. Ilima would often chide him for his obstinacy. “By God, Enk,” he would say in exasperation, “you and my sister are of a pair. In all the world, only her own is a match for your bullheadedness!”

  Ordinarily, the memory would have brought a smile to Enk’s face, but he felt only sadness. He heard Tizkar take the hallway to the left, his careful footfalls dwindling into nothingness.

  “Enk—” Lulu began.

  Still not looking at her, he waved her away. “Scream if you need me,” he added with a hitch in his throat.

  A forced snort. Warm lips graced the side of his face. Then the faint ebbing of retreating footsteps.

  Alone, Enk thumbed his face; it was warm where Lulu’s lips had lingered. Thankful neither Tizkar nor Lulu had pushed the issue further, he pressed on, clutching the railing as he climbed. He was unsure if he would have been able to resist the allure of an easier track for a third time.

  The stairs groaned beneath his boots, and his ailment reared its ugly mane, suffusing his lungs with its coarseness. It was bewildering the way it transformed his airways into pinpricks. No matter how many times he experienced it, it got no easier. There was no mastery here, just bottomless horror.

  Enk stopped, huffing and puffing as quietly as he could manage. His eyes searched the darkness above. Halfway. He had only made it halfway. Suddenly he wanted to laugh or perhaps cry, but could not tell which. It was all so ridiculous!

  He rose one foot after another, continuing his steady climb upward. When had he ever been cowed? By his illness? By anyone? Then why worry about it now?

  Enk tittered back, his mind drifting. Silver light fell across his face from a partly obscured window as feminine screams rented the air behind him. His heart thudded hard within his breast.

  His hold on the railing failed. . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Cries from the Dark

  “Lulu,” a voice cries across starlight. . . .

  Lurching horror. A wide-eyed boy roiling back, drifting.

  He turns from the blacken heights, where silver light caught and divided, trapped within a glass chandelier, and gazes out at the welling staircase. He does not so much fall as it rises to meet him.

  A scream rifles the air. Wicked torment blots out breath, strikes all thought of iniquities from his mind. He rolls down the corpses of mutilated trees.

  The boy comes to a stop. . . . “Lulu.”

  An oddly battered instrument joins his company, a musket whose bayonet has been glossed with a sheen of crimson.

  Lavender-pink ripples swim out from the corners of his eyes. He blinks, and the wrinkles increase their dance across existence. Waves froth into violent seas.

  Eyelids slink shut into infinities. . . .

  ■■■

  Thoughts gathered back from the verge of oblivion.

  Enk lifted, first to one knee, then another. Agony retreated, giving him room to gulp another breath. He looked away from the table, where the oil lamp axed the great back of the surrounding dark, and gazed down at the scratched surface of his stolen musket.

  Stairs. Always fucking—

  Violet fangs splintered the base of his skull, and, for a moment, he nearly rejoined the floor. He gnashed his teeth. No time for that—not now. Lulu! Lulu was in danger.

  Enk peered across a great distance, watched himself cast aside what was broken within then pick up the discarded musket. He saw himself stumble down the route Lulu had taken, glimpsed emerald-eyed designs somehow soaring about him, swinging from blurry facade to blurry facade.

  He lurched, slumping cheek first against a boundary—a door.

  A shallow breath. Then another and another. . . .

  Skittish beams clanked against an ethereal barrier like raindrops against a metal screen. A timely reminder of the avenues yet unexplored.

  Enk trembled as promises made wilted beneath the light of necessity. He closed his eyes and opened himself to the gleaming within. He looked—looked!—through an enigmatic shard. A sense of folding where space and angles verged on cadaverous. Surreal and baffling, a sub-audible thumping rippled across a dark, liquid surface. One devolved into many, some with undulations so tiny as to be nonexistent. With a hand that was not a hand, he reached for one such.

  A world in miniature. A realm of dark tunnels, navigated by the minute shift in whiskers, where scents hung impossibly bright upon minuscule tendrils of air.

  Enk flung his eyes open, lanced by the strangeness of the perspective as much as by the knowledge gleaned. His nostrils twitched, and the aroma of freshly baked bread and the sizzling sweetness of frying bacon filled him.

  The kitchen. Lulu was in the kitchen.

  Enk heaped himself away from his place of respite and raced after the trace elements of the feast. And as he ran, his eyelids danced with grisly scenes: Lulu, pale for lack of breath, adorned with sickly ornaments, swinging from twanging strings, her insides coiled in bloody pools beneath her hanging feet.

  No. . . !

  At once vague and visceral, obscenity stacked upon obscenity, a symbolic offering to the larger horror that always awaited. This was what came of hope and love! Devastation. Always devastation. Why did he not learn? Why did he open arms to comfort a world that only wounded?

  “No,” a whimper born out of desperation.

  Distance was the only remedy, he knew this, had always known this. The deeper the bacchanal the more tragic the cost—this was simply the truth, a truth of life. None could escape it, attachment and joy bore suffering upon their festive backs. Remoteness was the only. . . .

  Up ahead, watery light leaked from the gaps between door and doorway, and a golden doorknob shimmered both intensely and vividly.

  Enk paused, sensitive to the thickening richness of the odors, though a stone seemed to be lodged in his throat. But where his lungs failed, terror carried him forward. He flung open the garish portal, collapsing to his knees even as he entered with his musket raised.

  Lulu spun to face him, bleeding from a cut across her cheek. Someone crouched behind her, trembling against white pantry doors, but for the moment he only had eyes for her—Lulu. The hardness retreated from her eyes and she lowered her dagger.

  “Enk—” she began.

  Enk watched the musket slip from his numb fingers before following it to the black-tiled floor. His lungs refused to comply, refused to obey, but he felt his lips fix into a smile.

  See, she’s alive. Whole.

  Yes, the blaring dark seemed to whisper, for now. . . .

  ■■■

  The rhythmic rattling of wood.

  The piercing whistle of steam escaping through a tight spout.

  Enk blinked tears out of his eyes, saw a concer
ned Lulu hovering at his side as he weathered the fearsome accumulation of a week’s worth of petty torments, more irksome for their bombast than the horrors afflicted.

  “Breathe,” she was saying. “Enk, fucking breathe!”

  Enk inhaled as deeply as his lungs would allow, grabbed her arm, tried to speak, tried to tell her. . . .

  Thoughts grew difficult, hazy—fragmented. And the ceiling revolved about Lulu’s face like clouds hurried across storm-bricked horizons.

  Footsteps resounded in the hall.

  “Don’t just stand there, help me with him!” Eyes radiant with tears, Lulu glared at the doorway.

  Tizkar lifted Enk to his knees and smacked his back, whispering encouragements. The howl of the stout kettle deafened. Then whooping gulps entered through Enk’s open maw, and it seemed a miracle to be so full where hitherto only tea scoops of air had dared venture.

  Lulu pulled Enk close and squeezed. “There is no escape from our engagement, not even suicide will save you. If I have to, I’ll follow you into the Hundred Hells and drag you to the altar. This is my one chance at becoming a noble lady, and I won’t let you ruin it now by dying.”

  Enk laughed, not yet capable of words. This quip warmed where the other had only chilled, and it seemed a wonder that retreaded ground could seem so expanded when clasped to the breast of shining femininity.

  Tizkar rolled his eyes and walked around the entwined pair, moving with purpose. The whistling cries of fleeing vapor lessened, overshadowed by the banging of wood knocking against wood.

  Enk shifted in Lulu’s grasp. A gray-haired woman rocked back and forth on the kitchen floor with her arms wrapped around her legs. Dark bags hung under her blue eyes, and streaks of scarlet painted her teeth, where blood seeped from a busted lip.

  “So this is the—” Tizkar trailed off as he dropped the kettle and the washrag he had used to handle it. It crashed onto the floor, and he skipped back from its exploding geyser, blowing on his fingers. “Damn it!”

  The old woman cackled in reptilian-like glee.

  Tizkar paused, studying her anew.

  “Be careful with her, she cut me,” Lulu said, thumbing the bright line across her face. “Almost took my eye out. She’s not as harmless as she seems.”

  “She and the rest of your sex,” Tizkar muttered.

  “I didn’t quite catch that last bit.” Lulu gave him a look correlated to lines of displeasure. “Mine repeating it a little louder.”

  Ignoring their banter, Enk crouched down before the old woman, extending a hand to her, palm first. The mocking smile slipped from her face, and she trembled harder. The vibrating pantry door nearly squealed. “I won’t hurt you,” he told her.

  “Shit . . . I think. . . .” Tizkar tilted his head, as if listening to things only audible to his ears. “He’s home. Deal with her and meet me in the dining room.” Then he was gone, dashing out of the kitchen.

  The old woman grabbed Enk by the collar and yanked him close. “There’s a heart upon the stairs behind you.” A laugh, like some ghoulish shriek. “Don’t look, you won’t be able to see it. It lies beyond seeing, beyond knowing. A heart in a wooden hand.”

  “Crazy bitch,” Lulu muttered behind him.

  Enk pressed a finger into the woman’s forehead. Her skin pulsed like the molten core of a steel furnace. A heart in a wooden hand? There was no heart, and yet suddenly he could hear one thumbing behind him. Not behind him—inside him. Yes, it had to be. . . .

  Sleep.

  Enk caught the old woman as she slumped forward and gently lowered her onto her back. He folded her hands onto her stomach and stopped, noticing something dark poking from the edge of her long sleeve. He rolled it upward.

  “How did you. . . ?” Lulu asked, falling silent as purpled and greened skin was exposed.

  He turned and glared at her.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “Those are not from me.”

  Enk stared at the old woman’s arm. Someone had beaten her viciously with a cane—no, a walking stick. To torment a defenseless soul such as this, one had to have a void where a heart should beat. Something between rage and anguish cramped his throat.

  “Let’s go,” Lulu tugged Enk to his feet and handed him his musket.

  Enk felt stripped to his essentials as they left the light of the kitchen for the bleakness of the darkened halls. What was once an unlikely possibility had become an almost certainty. The Scarlet Apron—they had found him! Lulu’s grim expression almost screamed as much.

  But there was this nagging element of doubt.

  It all seemed too easy, and one if the great ironies of men was that they valued only what was difficult, so perhaps this was the crux of his problem? Perhaps he merely heaped complications upon something perceived as too simple? The parabola fit the trajectory of his wayward thoughts.

  And yet. . . .

  Enk inhaled past the pinch in his lungs, remembering the bargain they had struck with Suni. He could sense it now, a vague inkling of the immense dimensions of the price they would pay. He smiled inwardly. It was unhealthy, his growing fascination with personal toil, but that, he decided, was a complication for another day.

  Lulu tapped his shoulder and slipped into a chamber.

  He followed closely on her heels, sweeping his musket left and right. Dark wood-paneled walls lined with portraits of foggy landscapes. A red-and-gold rug draped in front of a grand fireplace, awash in the dim glow of a low-banked fire. And a long table at the chamber’s center, cloaked in a silken tablecloth.

  Before Enk could more than glance about the room, Tizkar entered behind him, dragging their quarry—Minos Jamal, a middle-aged man with turquoise eyes, and a light blue wig that contrasted perfectly with the deeper blue of his Peacebringer uniform.

  “Unhand me, boy!” Minos cried, lurching sideways as he placed too much weight onto his lame leg. “Do-do you know who I am?”

  “Yeah, we know exactly who you are, you’re the Lord-Commander of Dilgan’s Peacebringers,” Lulu pulled a chair back from the table and dragged it toward the fireplace. “See, we even reserved a place just for you. Why aren’t you thanking us?”

  “Wait—” he began.

  Tizkar shoved Minos back first into the chair, and its wooden limbs scraped against the floor, coming close to tipping over. Lulu steadied it, then quickly tied the man’s hands behind his back, none too gently. Wincing, the Lord-Commander looked at them with calculation.

  “How do you want to precede?” Tizkar asked, flicking his silver locket open and close.

  Lulu dusted off the knees of her narrow breeches. “I say we start cutting until he answers our questions. How say you, Lord-Commander? You up for a little late night entertainment?”

  “You won’t get away with this, whatever this is,” Minos spat. “Think carefully before you do anything too stupid.”

  “Oh, trust me, Lord-Commander, I’ve thought about nothing else these last few weeks. What I’d say. What I’d do. But I’m sure I’m not alone in this, the whole city dreams of what they would do to the Scarlet Apron when they found him.”

  “What?” Minos laughed nervously. “Is this some kind of joke? You think me the Scarlet Apron? You’re a fool, madame. Who ever told you this—”

  Lulu clanked the man to stillness with a fist. “You will be silent, unless given instruction to speak. Do you understand?”

  Enk stood besieged as he lowered his musket onto the table. The Lord-Commander would succumb without violence, he need only aim his inner brilliance and the man would succumb. And yet he hesitated. . . .

  Click-Clack.

  Indifferent to all, Tizkar looked into the dying fire, his cheek bright with moisture. Enk sighed inwardly. There would be no help from that direction. It was up to him, and only him.

  I must tread where Tizkar cannot.

  Enk approached Minos filled with a chattering cacophony of liquid light. He selected one among the many, a dazzling beam that slithered across the ski
n of reality, and spoke:

  “Are you the Scarlet Apron?”

  Supremacy. Over another’s soul and mind. Over arrogance and pride. Over being itself, down into its trackless depths. No mortal had the will to resist such glorious radiance. This was a power that went beyond the seemings of things, down to the roots from which life sprang, down, down into the soup from which consciousness swam. . . .

  ■■■

  “Yes, I am the Scarlet Apron,” said a voice that filled existence itself.

  Blood gargling silence.

  The world pitched beneath Enk, and he found himself on his knees, watching plumes of sulfur descend from darkling skies then whip about the outer fringe of a primeval forest. From behind a massive pillar, a hunchback waved him onward.

  Enk regained his footing and approached the grotesque figure, recognizing him only when he stood close enough to recoil in horror—Minos with two deformed heads, where the one once sat, and three sets of arms of varying lengths. And instead of hair, fat, white maggots hung from his fish-scaled skulls.

  “You’ve come to see my pretties, haven’t you?” The man giggled, hobbling about as one drunk. “Come. Come.”

  ■■■

  “You heard him,” Lulu said, pressing a dagger into Enk’s hand. “He admitted it. . . .” Her tone was perplexed, as if confused by the ease with which they had gained such a damning confession. “It’s him. The Scarlet fucking Apron sits before us, the Murderer of Dilgan.”

  Enk glared down at the Lord-Commander, riding the frame of two dissimilar spheres, one seen, the other hidden. The base of his skull throbbed hard, hammered by battering rams—even the welding of otherworldly metaphysics to world born thoughts had its toil. And he paid it gladly.

  “You murdered Merka,” Enk heard himself say in a voice that sounded far too remote for the fury that coiled within.

  Minos squinted, taken aback. “Merka. . . ?” A realization of some sort pinched his weathered features into equal parts terror and rage. “I know what you are! You’re an abomination! You’re a Mind—”

  “Why did you kill her? Why butcher her and the others like cattle?”