The moaning he’d just heard sounded very much like that of an animal of this species. So he entered the cave without a sound so as not to signal his presence to its resident, Gus on his heels, just as discreet as he was. Domino took the first turn, following the noise of a regular rustle impossible to identify, avoiding walking in the blood with his bare feet. The light was faint here, the smell of rock cold and musty.
Something then moved in the rocky corridor, and the nichan stopped. It was but a ripple in the air, then a reflection of translucent, moiré colors a few steps away from him. The shape was close to the ground, as if kneeling. Behind Domino, Gus leaned over to peer at it.
The more Domino stared at the thing, the more its composition stood out in the darkness, as if the entity emitted a faint light shining in its core, reflecting off the surface of its body. The thing seemed to scratch the ground with a small hand or a paw. But nothing happened; the hand had no effect on the sand and dust. The thing then raised its eyes, two bright spots without eyelids, and Domino knew what it was.
A spirit.
Its vaporous silhouette didn’t look human but rather like an animal taking itself for a biped. No one knew where spirits came from. Like many other changes in this world, they had appeared after the Great Evil. Spirits were born from the unburied dead, whose corpses attracted the Corruption in black flakes as light as ash. A lone spirit was harmless. The more they grew in number, the greater the danger grew with them . . .
Domino tried to calm his heartbeat. One spirit. That must have been what he’d felt at the cave’s entrance. If that spirit was there, it meant a human or a nichan had died somewhere close. Being attached to the deceased, the spirit couldn’t leave the cave. Judging by its behavior, however, it was calm.
Another yelp resounded in the distance, even attracting the spirit’s interest. It turned its strangely curved head in that direction, straightened up, and rushed toward the sound. Its substance faded like colored smoke with every step. After half a dozen steps, it was gone.
Domino glanced at Gus. His expression was serene, but something made his amber eyes shine. His breathing was tense.
“It won’t do anything to us,” Domino whispered.
“I know,” Gus said through his sugar-flavored breath.
“We can leave, if you want.”
Like all nichan children, Domino had finished off more than one struggling hare or wildcat with its paw caught in a trap. Death was a part of the circle of life, of survival. The Gods had allowed it. Domino was used to it by now. But Gus was foreign to the experience. He’d never followed the clan on a hunt before.
Yet what was in the cave didn’t seem to frighten him. And if it did, he probably wouldn’t show it.
“Go ahead,” Gus said, with a slight chin twitch.
Domino nodded.
A cave opened before them, lit by a shaft of light piercing through the rock far above their heads. No spirit in sight.
Domino came to a sudden halt, his heart at the edge of his lips.
There was an animal lying on its side in the middle of the cave. A deer. Its jaw was hanging down, as was its long, rosy tongue. The flesh and skin covered with brown hair was torn from the muzzle to the base of the skull, where an ear was missing.
The deer was now dead. Bile rose in Domino’s throat. Instinctively, holding his breath, he hid Gus behind him.
The deer hadn’t arrived here on its own. A huge creature, black in places, grayish in others, was moving over the animal’s body, thrusting against it. It had three arms, one of them protruding from the side of its abdomen. From the ends of the arms emerged numerous filaments. They bent and unfolded with disordered movements similar to those of a pile of caterpillars assaulting a leaf. It was as if they were moving and twisting according to their own will.
The creature’s face, on the sides of which hung dark pieces of flaccid skin, had no nose or eyes, or maybe they were closed. In any case, the thing had a gaping mouth, and the soft, boneless flesh of its jaw rocked with each start.
In a slower movement, tilting its skull to the side—a skull covered with long, heavy, dirty strands of hair—the creature readjusted its position. Retreating, its deformed, bloody phallus pulled itself out of the exposed entrails of the deer. With a squeaky rattle, the creature sank back into the dead animal, clinging to the broken jaw and antlers to keep its balance and resume a pace suited to its needs.
Domino held his breath. He didn’t dare move, and he hoped with all his heart Gus would mirror his behavior and that he couldn’t see any of the monster’s actions.
That’s—that’s a dohor.
The thing couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Nothing in this world had been more tainted by the Corruption than this creature. Once a great and powerful species, once as clever as nichans and humans, this was all that was left of their descendants today: brainless monsters, driven by the basest instincts. And that dohor was seeking its pleasure in the still warm belly of a dead deer.
The two teenagers had to leave. At once. Dohors were huge, as fast as nichans, and almost equal in strength. When one of them spotted prey, it didn’t let go.
A few steps from the dohor lay human bones.
Heart pounding, Domino searched for Gus’s hand behind him. He didn’t dare divert his full attention from the creature. He found his friend’s fingers and squeezed them. Gus’s hand was ice in spite of the heat. Shifting his eyes away from the creature for a moment, Domino discovered Gus’s horrified expression. He was petrified, paler than ever, eyes wide open.
It’s more than time to go.
Without further ado, Domino tiptoed away from the cave, pulling his friend in his wake, not letting go of his grip on his hand. Slowly, they retreated until the creature left their field of sight. But before they reached the exit, a shrill scream echoed against the rock and pierced their eardrums.
They had been spotted.
They ran for their lives, leaving the winding corridor of the cave, jumping from one rock to another, nearly slipping into the basin whose crystalline reflections had lost all their appeal. Another cry rose, close by. Too close for Domino’s liking. Looking over his shoulder as they finally reached the edge of the trees, he spotted the dohor emerging from the cave. Still excited, its cock dripping with blood, its back arched, its milky white eyes finally open, the creature stopped. Its head shifted in their direction, making its loose jaw swing from side to side. It had located them. With breathtaking speed, the dohor bent on its bandy legs then leaped over the pond in one jump.
“Fuck!” Domino swore.
He didn’t want to see this thing up close or know what would happen if it caught up with them. He didn’t want him and Gus to end up like that deer, leaving as the only trace of their time in this world little spirits that would never rest in peace.
Without thinking, letting his survival instincts take over, Domino bent over and pulled his friend toward him.
“My back. Get on my back!”
Gus obeyed. Domino was stronger and much faster, even with a load on his shoulders. So Gus wrapped his trembling arms around the nichan’s neck, jumped up, and closed his legs around his waist. Despite its too long and deformed limbs, the dohor sprang towards them at a terrifying speed. Domino ran away and never looked back.
He drew all his energy and ran like the wind, not caring that his muscles would snap under the effort, that his breath would run out. Fear had swept through him, but his instinct now guided him. Domino yielded everything to it. His body, his every reaction, his thoughts. The trees around him turned into gray, fuzzy shapes. The earth beneath his feet propelled him forward. So he ran and ran and ran and never slowed, holding Gus firmly against him.
Several disembodied cries echoed through the woods for the next few minutes. They only pushed Domino further on.
The village walls emerged between branches and trunks. In a last effort, he accelerated and then skidded to a halt. Without searching very long, the two boys found the hidde
n passage leading to safety. Domino put Gus down and pushed him into the opening. Once on the other side, a few seconds later, Domino collapsed into the ferns.
The adrenaline deserted his body. His lungs ached as if he were drowning, his limbs felt nailed to the ground. He barely saw Gus pushing the bamboo with all his might to put it back into place. Domino ran one hand over his face and fought to at least remain seated. He couldn’t stand. His legs shook, the air burned his chest, the world spun like a tornado.
Gus was close by, out of breath. He placed one hand on Domino’s shoulder. The other was pressed firmly against the nichan’s mouth.
“Hey, breathe through your nose,” Gus panted. “Slowly.”
Domino nearly choked but complied. Breathe in. Breathe out. The stratagem proved its worth, and soon his breath stabilized. Gus withdrew his hand, looking apologetic. The nichan, lips moist with saliva, closed his eyes. He didn’t know where Gus had learned this, but at least air seemed to find its way to his lungs now.
“Give me . . . give me a moment.” Domino nodded, clinging to the hand his friend held out to him. “We . . . we have to warn the others.”
Gus agreed, his cheeks red, sweat sticking his golden hair to his face. He took a deep breath to restrain his own emotions. Domino did the same, or at least he tried to contain his exhaustion. He couldn’t let go now. As long as this thing was running around their territory, he had no right to let his guard down.
“It’s my fault,” he said between gasps. “I’m the one who lured this thing here.”
“Keep this to yourself,” Gus said.
“They’ll know we went outside.”
“We’ll be punished. I don’t give a shit. We’re alive. You don’t need to tell them how far we’ve gone. We just went out to have fun. That’s when we saw the dohor, and it followed us when we fled.”
He was right. They’d both get punished, no matter what. All that mattered now was getting rid of this thing, not worrying about less pressing issues.
“All right,” Domino said, bending his legs to get up. “All right, let’s do that.”
“All right.”
Ero was in the sanctuary. Surrounded by several nichans, including Orsa, Memek, and Beïka, he was organizing the division of labor for the next hunt. Focused and sweaty, like the others, Ero had no idea that the next hunt was imminent.
Domino clenched his fists and, followed by Gus, stopped near his uncle, who he hadn’t even spoken to this morning during Natso’s baptism.
“We’ve got a problem,” said the teenager with more fear in his stomach than he would have liked.
Why was it still so hard to talk to the man? He should have asked for Mora’s help first. Mora would have found the right words to announce such news. No, in truth, it was best not to involve Mora in the matter. The dohor was roaming around because of Domino, because he’d failed to interpret the bloodstains and the signs, because he hadn’t been discreet enough to get out of that cave without being noticed. So it was up to him to face the damn consequences he’d decided to ignore.
His uncle looked up at him briefly and then turned his attention back to his partner. “Not now.”
Yes, now. There was only one thing left to do.
“There’s a dohor near the village walls.”
All the faces around the table turned to Domino. Ero’s expression shifted from boredom to shock.
Beïka sighed heavily. “Damn it, Domino! What the fuck have you done?” he barked in a sham of authority that left his little brother unmoved.
“Say that again,” Ero asked, his brow furrowed around the dot tattooed on his forehead, a tiny part of the honorary marks—most of it covering his broad shoulders and chest—that had darkened his body since his son’s death.
“There’s a dohor near the village walls,” Domino repeated, obeying his Unaan’s order. “I . . . I wanted to get out of the village. I wanted to . . . ”
Ero leaped to his feet, rising to his full height. Domino had prepared himself for it, but at that moment he felt like an insect his uncle could crush under his foot. He looked down then, forced himself to hold the gaze of the clan’s Unaan, remembering that the man wouldn’t forgive such cowardice.
“You better talk. You say there is a dohor. How did it get there?”
“I left the village to look for a place to bathe. It was in the woods. When I ran away, it saw me.”
“You’re fucking stupid, Domino,” Beïka spat, like so many times before that day.
This time, Ero silenced Beïka with a gesture without turning away from Domino. “Was it still there when you went over the wall?”
“I’m not sure. I couldn’t hear it anymore. It didn’t have a nose, so I doubt it could follow my scent—”
“Dohors don’t rely on the same senses we do, you idiot,” Orsa cut him as she stood up, face and shoulders tattooed, as intimidating as the clan chief. “Their bodies are covered with glands that feel the slightest movement, the slightest heartbeat. They don’t need their eyes or nose to find you.”
“Fetch the rest of our best hunters and warn the sentries,” Ero ordered his partner, who complied immediately.
Around the table, all the nichans got up and left the room. Ero’s daughter followed suit. The man gently grabbed her wrist, catching her attention. Like her parents, Memek had been tattooed a few days after Javik’s death, when she’d been eight. Now, the teenage girl’s forehead, chin, and hands were dotted with ink. All the patterns, although different from those marking her parents’ skin, were perfectly symmetrical.
“You stay here,” Ero told his daughter, who opened her mouth to reply. “Your mother and I are going on a hunt. One of the three of us must always stay in the village.”
“I can run faster than you,” Memek said before eyeing her cousin. “I run faster than him.”
“It’s not a race, Memek. This thing has to die.”
Ero didn’t have to repeat himself. He turned his attention to Domino and then to the blond head sticking out behind him.
“I’m sorry,” Domino said to attract Ero’s bottomless eyes to him instead of Gus.
“You’ll be sorry when you see what you’ll get for getting out of the village. Do you get hard for every rule you break?” Domino refrained from answering. “In the meantime, you’re coming with us.”
Domino widened his eyes. “What?”
“You’re the only one who knows exactly what path you took. And since this thing has been chasing you, it will consider you its prey until one of you dies.”
“You’re using him as bait,” Gus guessed, and Domino moved to his right to come between his friend and uncle.
But it was too late. Ero’s eyes cursed the human as if he’d been a flea jumping around in his clean sheets. Gus spoke again before Ero had time to get more infuriated. “Do you need me to come?”
No! Domino thought. In addition to not being able to keep up, Gus would be in danger. He too was one of the dohor’s targets. Ero didn’t know it yet, but if he found out, maybe he’d consider using a different bait.
“You have something to do with this?” the Unaan asked him.
“I was referring to treating the possible wounded.” Gus’s voice was calm and composed, as if Ero didn’t impress him in the least.
“I don’t want you in our way,” Ero said, and he guided Domino to the exit and then to the central square.
Many nichans had come out of their houses, attracted by the hunters’ gathering. Mora was among the curious ones. As soon as he spotted his brothers, he left the porch of his hut to join the group preparing to leave.
Domino gritted his teeth. In the end, he couldn’t stop Mora from getting mixed up in his antics.
“Hey, where are you going like that? No, no, no. Why are you following them?” Mora asked, forcing his little brother to face him. Apparently, the situation had gone around the clan in a matter of minutes without the need to ring the village bell.
It was Ero who answered. “There’s
no need to worry. I will keep an eye on him.”
“Yeah, me too,” Beïka said, stopping near his brothers, looking sour.
Domino saw on Mora’s face the moment he made his decision. Mora had no trust in his younger brother. And contrary to Beïka’s opinion of himself, Ako’s second son wasn’t a particularly reliable hunter. Everyone knew that.
Domino didn’t wish for his brothers to get into this, responsible for this mess or not. But just as he couldn’t stop the monster from following him here, he couldn’t do anything to keep Mora in Surhok, either.
“I am coming with you,” Mora said.
“You’re not a hunter, Mora,” reminded Ero.
“I’ll let you deal with the dohor. I’ll deal with this one.”
He pointed to Domino, who searched in his fear for the words that would change his brother’s mind. But when everyone began to march under the clan chief’s leadership, he was at a loss for words.
As he walked out of the village, following the group, Domino was only able to look back. Gus stood at the entrance of the infirmary, about thirty paces away, anxiety piercing through his usual calm.
Under a stormy sky casting a yellowish hue over the forest, the hunters split into two groups. One, led by Orsa, headed northeast. The other, led by Ero, searched the woods in the other direction, drawing a large circle around the village. Domino pointed in the direction in which he’d entered Surhok a few minutes earlier. Mora never let him out of his sight. The nichans progressed silently, most of them already transformed, ready to eliminate the threat to whatever end. Slowly, step by step, the group dispersed to cover more ground while remaining within earshot of one another. Only Ero, Domino, and Mora advanced in line.
For more than an hour, as the darkness deepened, they searched the woods, smelling the air, looking for any traces the creature might have left.
“Silence,” Ero whispered.
Domino listened. Not a rustle, not a song from the treetops. All the birds had deserted the area, yet birds, from the smallest hummingbird to the largest vulture, weren’t afraid of nichans. The dohor had driven them away. If none of the birds had returned since Domino and Gus had fled . . .
The Nichan Smile Page 15