The Penance of Leather (Book 1): Ain't No Grave

by S. A. Softley

  I shook my head and pushed away the memories that had forced their way in. I put the soup aside, finished with it, and stood. My legs seemed a little shaky but there seemed to be no adverse affects from my brush with cold and death. I was relieved to discover that no pieces seemed to be missing. I was whole and intact, if a little white. From the waxy bluish look of my extremities, I’d suffered some frostbite. I’d had it before, knew the painful burning, but was relieved to notice that I felt only the mildest discomfort this time. I hoped that it didn’t indicate nerve damage.

  I looked around the room again, feeling less haunted by the deer heads now that I’d been released from the bed, but I still avoided their gaze. Along one wall, old yellowed books lined shelves built of raw pinewood. The books were an eclectic mix. A few old history books and a number of how-to books on a variety of topics from cooking to woodworking. Not surprisingly, there were a number of books on hunting, taxidermy and leatherworking. Some of the books, unexpectedly, had flowing feminine calligraphy, indicating that the volumes contained stories of romance and fantasy. They, perhaps, had belonged to the man’s wife. It was hard to picture him with a book of any kind, let alone a story of that sort. Clearly the centerpiece of the collection, an old leather-bound King James Bible sat proudly on the top shelf flanked by a few other Christian works.

  Near the Bible sat a faded old picture. In the picture was the man, unchanged in appearance except that the lines that scored his face were less pronounced; less deep. A woman with a kind face and round, apple cheeks smiled serenely next to him, leaning her head slightly against his thick beard with obvious affection. The man looked stoic, and yet it seemed as though contentment could be seen within his deep eyes.

  Embarrassingly, as often happens when inspecting a stranger’s house, the man chose this moment to re-enter through the heavy wooden door, stamping the snow from his black boots.

  “Yer up,” he said, ignoring the fact that I’d been nosing through his shelves. “Good. How do you feel?”

  “Um. Fine. Thanks,” I stammered taking a step away from the shelf. “You must have got me warmed up quick. I don’t feel much frostbite damage or anything.” I clenched my hands into fists and opened them a few times. “Once I get up and moving the blood’ll circulate better. Should be good as new.” I hesitated, knowing that I had to say what was on my mind, but I knew that the man would be silent and awkward. “Thanks. Really. I owe you my life,” I finished. He grunted acknowledgement and looked at me in the same oddly pitying way, scrutinizing me under his heavy brows.

  “It’s gettin’ dark,” he said. “Pretty cloudy today, but I don’t think it’ll snow again. Never know, though, they couldn’t predict the weather ‘round here even with their radar and satellites.”

  “How long have I been out of it?” I asked cautiously.

  “Found you two days ago. Looked like you’d been out there for several hours.”

  “Shit,” I breathed. “Lucky I survived.” Several hours unconscious in a snowstorm without heat… The accident, like most, had been unexpected. I hadn’t been wearing a jacket, no gloves, no hat… It was little less than a miracle.

  “Hm,” he narrowed his eyes, peering at me as though I might decide to drop dead after all. “My wife was a God-fearin’ woman,” he said slowly. “She believed there was a purpose for everything. I was never one to put much stock in it. Bunch of silly nonsense.”

  “Your wife… she’s?” I noticed the tense he’d used to speak of her but left the thought unsaid.

  “She’s dead, yeah,” he said frankly. His face was impassive but his eyes, again, hinted at deep emotion simmering beneath the surface.

  “I’m sorry,” I cast my gaze downward.

  “She’s been gone a long time,” he said plainly.

  “What happened?”

  “Brain tumour. Didn’t spot it ‘till too late. Always thought she was just having migraines from weather changes. She hated the weather here…” the man trailed off, a slight, almost imperceptible waver marred his deep voice for the first time. “My point is,” he continued, “sometimes I wonder if she didn’t know something I never figured out,” the man chuckled. It made a sound like boulders rumbling down a hillside.

  “Well, she figured out a lot I didn’t. She was a smart woman, but never much liked this lifestyle. Never got used to the solitude out here with only a fool like me for company… I was too ignorant to give her the things she deserved. She always wanted to travel; see the world; meet people. Instead we stayed here working the farm day in and day out, season after season. I was too damn proud to leave. But she stuck with me, no matter how I ignored her. I didn’t speak enough to her. I think that hurt her the most: the quiet. I loved her deeply in my way, just rarely told her… or showed her. She loved me. Almost unconditionally, no matter how often I showed I didn’t deserve it.”

  There was a long pause. The man’s face remained wooden and inflexible, his eyes cast downwards. The creases grew deeper around his eyes. I allowed the silence to draw on, stunned by the openness and rare wordiness of his speech. I’d heard him grunt only a handful of words since awakening in the brass bed and suddenly he unleashed a torrent of deep secrets about himself. Perhaps this had been a steadily building geyser, the words pent up inside him over the long lonely years.

  “Anyhow,” he continued, shaking his head, “she knew about purpose. She might have known your purpose if she was around today. Why you’re still… here.” He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “And that is why I didn’t burn you. She wouldn’t’a stood for it. I nearly did, but you spoke. I was surprised that you could.”

  “I could hear her voice telling me ‘no’. She would have had me bring you back. She would have nursed you back to health if she could. I suppose I just want you to know that you’re here because of her. Because even dead she’s a better person than I ever was. You’re here because of Maggie.”

  The name had almost sounded like Megan the way he spoke it. I could feel the room begin to spin around me, could feel my face go slack. Hearing her name… the name of the woman I’d loved and killed spoken aloud gutted me. I felt hollow and ice cold.

  “Your wife was Maggie. That’s what you thought I was calling out,” I muttered.

  “That was her name,” he nodded.

  Maggie and Megan, I thought, two unfortunate women killed because of the ignorant, selfish men in their lives…

  We didn’t mean to kill them, a small voice inside protested.

  And yet her ashes are there, consumed in flames that you lit, my father’s voice taunted.

  “I almost burned you again, when I saw that bite,” the man continued, “but she wouldn’t have wanted that. You were still speaking in your sleep. Your mind was in there still somehow. On the news, they said everyone who got bit died and their bodies would begin to move again, but they said there was nothing left of the person they used to be. The bodies were brain dead, apparently. Obviously they were wrong.”

  Something struck me as wrong. Some detail he was telling me wanted to be noticed. I shrugged the feeling off.

  “Most of them are like that,” I said softly. “I suppose I was immune somehow.” The room’s orbit around my head had slowed. “I guess you haven’t seen many way out here.”

  “Nope. I got rid of one. It was wandering through the trees one day. Maybe wandered off from a town or another farm; maybe from the highway. I didn’t recognize it. Couldn’t tell who it was… couldn’t even tell if it was man or woman. A lot of its exposed flesh’d been picked off. The rest was frozen… hangin’ off…” There might have been the slightest shudder in his stony voice. “I cremated it like they said to… they always called it cremating. A clean word. What you do to them that are actually dead, not what you do to the ones that come back. Not the same thing at all. They never told you how they squirmed and hissed right up until the flames took the last of ‘em. Never told you how they blistered. How they popped and spat fat… how they melted and boiled an
d charred before your eyes… the smell…” There was a haunted look within the man’s eyes.

  I gagged and the room began to spin again. I was sick of the spinning, sick of gravity shifting beneath my feet. It was all too much. The unspeakable memories of that ash pile in Lac d’Hiver, the red-brown explosions as shotgun pellets ripped through the torso of a half frozen body that glared and snarled at you, the shattered mulch of flesh and bone, the vacant stare of Megan’s eyes, her jaw hanging slack, chewing air mindlessly, the flames that reached higher and higher into the winter sky, the popping of ammunition… or had that been the sound of Megan’s body, as the old man had described? My stomach lurched, sickened. I breathed deeply; convulsively. I felt the air rush in and out, felt life where there should be none.

  Not life, my father’s voice drenched with ironic, cynical humour. I silenced the voice, wishing that my father would die and leave me in peace, wishing that the voice of my doubts and fears had chosen some other person to mimic.

  Why had I been spared? Why couldn’t I just sleep? The old man’s wife had been wrong. There was no purpose to this; there was no God in this. That’s just what we tell ourselves to avoid the painful truth that we know in our hearts. That nature simply sent out a giant fuck you to humanity. I’d been spared. Spared for no good fucking reason.

  Not spared, my father insisted sardonically.

  Spared, I continued, ignoring the thought, through some random chance, some gene that had previously served no purpose, some collection of antibodies I’d picked up somewhere… the right cocktail of circumstances… It was all meaningless. Two sad, tired, undeserving men who’d flunked life years earlier were left behind while so many others, so many beautiful, wonderful people had been lost; had been turned into nightmarish flesh-eating corpses, doomed to putrefy and wander, until they at last became slime or dust.

  “I don’t know whether I really believe or just want to believe that you’ve got some purpose, but either way, it’s for her. For my wife,” he said in a low rumble. I thought perhaps a small droplet caught the light and glimmered in the corner of his eye before he blinked it away. “Maybe it is fate,” he muttered. His face had turned inward; he was no longer speaking to me, but merely voicing his thoughts aloud. “It’s true that I can help you more than most could have, I guess, can help you last a little longer… maybe a little longer...”

  “What do you mean by ‘last’?” I asked, confused. Something at the back of my mind struggled to the surface like a man who, carried too deep underwater by an undercurrent, thrashed in panic back up to the air.

  You know.

  “You said I’d learn something soon. What were you talking about?” The man’s face transformed as I spoke. The hint of emotion that had brought it to life earlier had been wiped away and he was once more inscrutable, expressionless as a tree.

  “Do you not know?” he asked, his eyes studying me as they had done while he’d questioned me.

  I shook my head, but I could hear the voice of my father shouting something at me, muffled and unintelligible as though my head was submerged in water.

  “What don’t I know?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper, calm but forceful despite an anxiety which was building. The thick log walls seemed suddenly to press in. My breath came in shorter and more painful bursts. My head swam.

  “Son,” the man said deep, slow, his dark eyes burning into mine. Everything in the world had crumbled away except for those burning eyes. “You… are dead.”

  Twenty-Six

  The wordfell heavily to the floor and thudded with a metallic weight. In less than an instant an image flashed by as though all of the events since the flight had been single threads that I’d glimpsed, now woven together into a completed illustration.

  The flash of pain as teeth ripped flesh from me, the warmth that had spread like fire through my veins. The numbing cold that had followed. I recalled a red-toned darkness that had covered my eyes. I heard sounds of panic. Screaming. A lurch as the plane began a steep descent. Violent motion all around me. Memories that had been locked until this wooden man had provided the key, the flick of the wrist that had opened the door. There were no images, only sounds. I remembered the sound of people shouting, crying out. I heard the movement as they crawled over each other, over seats to get away from the monstrosity that snarled and spat near me.

  There was a bouncing screech as tires hit pavement. People were being urged to remain calm as they pushed their way toward either end of the cylindrical room. The sound of heavy pops as emergency doors were unlatched and thrown open.

  Sharp, panicked voices shouted threats and orders at the huge monster still clumsily bashing its way through the cabin, attracted to the smell of sweaty flesh that rose like tendrils from the fearful human beings that had fled. A smell, I realized, that grew stronger and more attractive as I lay in the seat, bleeding and unseeing. The fire that had burned through my veins had receded, leaving cold ash in its absence. I heard a metallic click as spring-loaded darts launched from tasers. A metronomic ticking indicated that electricity sparked down the wires into the thing’s skin. The sound was like that of an engine that refused to turn over. Cries of alarm indicated that this creature was refusing to comply with the electricity. The crackle of gunfire sounded as the men barking orders squeezed their weapons in panic.

  “God…” said one man desperately. More gunfire.

  “Get him,” another voice shouted. “Get him out of here!”

  Rough, gloved hands grabbed at me. A searing pain flashed through my arm, but my body was limp, unable to pull away from the source of the pain. I was dragged down steps into the raw bite of sub-zero air.

  I recalled panic as I realized that I was trapped in a body that refused to move, refused to obey the screams of my thoughts. Stuck in my own head, the tightest constraint of them all. My internal hysteria was heightened as I felt straps and fabrics being wrapped tightly around my lifeless body, the gurney rattling along beneath me.

  There were long stretches of blackness followed by flashing images that came like strobes, unclear images, as though obscured by deathly fog. There were bright lights that stung my eyes. Shapes and voices passed overhead indistinct and unintelligible. My body moved without any motivation from my mind, tugging against the relentless, ever-present straps. There was hunger of such intensity that all the gnawing emptiness I’d felt afterward seemed like the barest echo.

  There had been long periods of dormancy; black, cold and without age. A jubilant feeling as I felt myself slip out from a bond carelessly secured, followed by a sickening horror as I realized that I could not control my body. The feeling of my teeth sinking deep into soft flesh as warm blood gushed into my mouth, both satisfying and repulsive. Another long dormancy began as my small aluminum prison was slammed shut once more by a screaming figure who clutched at a terrible wound… The next time I’d awoken had felt like an electric shock, the long nightmare had ended and I’d regained control over myself, all memory of the days and weeks before erased or repressed. I remembered holding my breath for unknown minutes as I’d panicked in that tin coffin. I’d only fooled myself into believing I needed to breathe. I would never again feel oxygen feeding my blood.

  Suddenly all the abnormalities I’d felt made sense. The intense hunger that was never satisfied, the cold clumsiness of my limbs in the below-freezing air, the intoxicating smell of Megan as she’d bathed, the thick, weight in my stomach after eating, the strange looking vomit that had nagged at me… It had nagged at me because it had looked undigested; chewed and mangled, but otherwise just as it had gone in. I wondered if the same was true of my other bowel movements. Had the food and drink simply passed through my system? It was no wonder I hadn’t felt well, hadn’t felt normal. It was no wonder I felt hungry all the time no matter how full I was. I shuddered. My body had been like them through it all; filled with the repressed, sickening instinct that all of the creatures seemed to have toward living flesh.

  How had Megan di
ed? I could not recall. Had it been passed through our intercourse or had I succumbed to hunger and bitten her, relapsing into an uncontrolled and repressed state, as I had in the hospital? How had we even engaged in sex? If I was a dead man with no blood flowing, how had I managed it? There were no medical answers and probably never would be. The whole disease was bad science fiction to begin with. How could such a thing even happen in the real world?

  It occurred to me that my other reflexes had stayed active. Anything my body did automatically seemed to have gone on functioning as normal. My lungs continued to inflate and deflate. At times of stress or activity I’d breathed faster and heavier, just as in life. I’d breathed like I needed oxygen out of nothing more than habit, perhaps. I’d eaten, vomited, shit and pissed all out of habit. All because my body thought I still needed to. Maybe sex was the same way. Maybe I’d just… reflexively functioned. Somehow, blood and fluid had gotten where it needed to go, pathways had widened and engorged and… As though to punctuate the point, I felt the need to vomit. I gagged but nothing came up.

  The question remained. How had Megan died? No. I knew I had not bitten her. I was sure of that. I could not recall tasting the copper flavour of blood that night. I’d never lost control since awakening in the morgue. And why not? Why had I alone been allowed to come back to my senses? Why was I not cursed to wander mindlessly like the others? My host, the old man, sat watching me passively as I silently wove together the truth of the events.