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

by S. A. Softley

  “Mhmm,” Ellison rumbled. I knew his few words had been said. He waited for me to speak. I imagined he knew why I’d followed him.

  “I’m ready,” I said after a deep, false breath.

  “Mhmm.”

  “Do what you gotta do to… preserve me… Might as well help people while I’m slowly mummifying.”

  “Glad to hear you say it. I’ve been thinking about it too. I think we should try it out on one of ‘em first.”

  I nodded sullenly. I realized that somehow I’d guessed that this might come up.

  “What if…” I had difficulty forming the words. “What if somewhere inside they can feel… think… remember... like me?”

  “It’s possible,” he said pragmatically. “But they can’t control themselves and you can. That makes you valuable. Worth preserving. One day maybe someone can figure out why.”

  There was a long pause. Tree branches rustled and the heavy snow suspended upon them fell with a dull thud to the ground.

  “Your wife… they did this… preserving on her?”

  “No.”

  “You said…”

  “Yes. They offered to embalm her. I didn’t think she’d want that. I returned her to the earth untarnished. She fed the trees like she would’ve wanted.”

  “Untarnished…” I said vacantly.

  “The chemicals they use prevent decomposition. Some people prefer that. I didn’t see the point. Wasn’t natural and it wasn’t like I’d be looking at her once she was in the ground,” his voice sounded slightly choked. “You ain’t going in the ground though. It makes sense for you. Some good will come from you.”

  “Alright. We’ll find… one of them. You can try it, but make it quick. If it can suffer…”

  “I know.”

  “And whatever we do to it… just be careful. You can’t get infected. Not for me.”

  “I know.”

  I was about to go through a terrible trial and worse; I’d be putting another body through it first and putting a good man in danger.

  Penance and sacrifice, I repeated the words to myself like a mantra.

  Twenty-Nine

  “There.”

  Ellison pointed into a dark pine grove. The trees there were twisted and weathered. The west wind had forced each one to grow at a peculiar angle; shaping them with unyielding pressure from the time they were saplings. The same west wind that had worn grooves into the carven face of the man beside me.

  We’d ridden for a little over an hour on horseback following the shuffling tracks of a person who had trudged through the deep snow. My horse, a dark bay mare called Clea, stood some distance away, pawing distractedly at the frozen ground, digging in hope of finding some tasty plant. Ellison’s horses were well trained and would stay where they were told without being tied.

  Ellison had given me Clea to ride on the second day I’d worked for him. She was the most well tempered horse he had. She was charcoal black on her mane and tail and around her hooves. The rest of her was a deep oaky brown. She, along with all the other animals had been uneasy around me; some of them had been downright terrified. Perhaps they could smell death. Perhaps they could smell the disease. Possibly, they sensed that I was cold as the wind or heard no heartbeat in my chest.

  The first time I’d reached out to touch Clea, reaching for the saddle and reigns, she had let out a terrible cry and reared, her great copper eyes rolling and her nostrils flaring. It had taken a couple of hours of calmly sitting with her before she would allow me to place a hand on her. It had taken a day before she’d allowed me to climb into the saddle. When I’d ridden her the first few times, she would twitch nervously, her ears trained back on me and her breath heavy and strained.

  Over time, and with the help of a constant supply of carrots and oats from my hand, she’d become used to me and no longer shied away though the other horses still stamped nervously when I was around. Before long, she worked as well with me as she did with Ellison and greeted me with her velvet nose as an old friend. I heard her huff impatiently behind us as Ellison and I trudged forward on foot.

  We were up on a tall hill that jutted darkly out of the white windswept snow-scape. The trees clung desperately to the top of the hill, rooted into the few remaining patches of soil. The earth had worn away leaving dark granite bones protruding from the softer flesh. The look of it made me shudder. I told myself that it was simply our reason for being there that had caused me to feel apprehensive about the place. The trees pressed in tightly as I tried to peer into the dark spaces between them. They guarded their hard won patch of earth jealously.

  There was movement between the branches. Something lurched stiffly. It moved without bending, looking almost as though it was itself a brittle, stunted sapling that had learned to walk. The figure was naked and deathly white, tall and rail thin. I shuddered as I saw that the creature’s left arm had been torn to shreds from elbow to fingertip. Dark muscle could be seen tightening and loosening beneath the skin, which hung away like rag. Bone gleamed through in some places, white as chalk and cracked and scored. A powerful animal with strong jaws had gnawed the flesh of its forearm down to the bone, leaving deep etches in the hard white surface. Most of the hand was missing but the ring and pinkie fingers remained, twitching. Another small bone, perhaps the remnant of the creature’s middle finger, hung like a twig, held to the hand by what was left of the tough, unrelenting tendon. I retched silently in revulsion.

  I made no protests, never voiced my disgust or pressed Ellison to reconsider. The man had made up his mind and so had I. It would be far less pleasant for him than it would be for me… at least, this part. The next part… well, I forced myself not to think about it.

  We’d had the same circular discussion several times in the past few hours. It took him only a handful of words to dismantle the arguments I voiced about why he should not go through with the plan; why it was too dangerous. I worried that the risk of infection would be too great for him; that I would be responsible for another death. He told me that I would not have his death on my conscience as he’d made up his own mind.

  I told him that it would be revolting, that he would be dissecting what was left of a human being. He argued that many people had done that as part of their job on a daily basis only weeks ago. He argued that, when you got down to it, we weren’t much different on the inside from the deer and cattle that he dressed, cleaned and butchered. In his typical way, he never spared more words than were absolutely required. Each time he spoke, only blunt, pure, common sense came from his mouth and a heavy-browed gaze that told me I was wasting my time and his.

  I knew, however, that it wasn’t simply the overwhelming power of his words that won the argument. Inside me there remained the powerful instinct not to die. No, that wasn’t right. I was dead already, a fact that was difficult to remember. It was the instinct to cling to existence. I wanted desperately to exist and despite my reluctance to put another person in danger, to allow another to become infected because of my selfishness, it was this narcissistic instinct that won out. I knew it; loathed myself for it, and yet here I was.

  I could have left Ellison at any time, quietly, in the night. I could have refused to go through with it and yet, here I was, hunting a poor creature, literally frozen stiff, that did not belong in this world any more than I.

  You’d better man up. Grow some fucking balls, my father drawled in my head. I ignored it. I didn’t know whether the voice meant that I should grow some balls and let myself die or grow some balls and get on with not being dead.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered and we started moving through the trees as quietly as we could.

  The crisp, dry branches snapped loudly as we shouldered through them or stepped on them where they’d fallen. I shuddered again, thinking of snapping bone. There was a dry rasping groan as the thing inhaled air into its cold, dead lungs. It turned its head slowly toward Ellison, nostrils flaring, eyes open wide. The eyes were a sickening milky white. Dark brown tint cover
ed the skin around the eyelids and ran in dry rivulets down its cheeks like deathly tears.

  It had been a man. Perhaps he had been young and handsome before his death, but the elements had taken their toll and it was hard to tell now what he might have looked like in life. He was skeletal; the flesh had freeze-dried and tightened, causing him to become almost mummified. His skin had blackened in places and was unnaturally pale in others. My gaze fell in horror to the grotesque and peeling shape that hung between his legs. Few things could bring as much sympathetic dread to a man as the sight of damage to that most valued of organs. Was this what I would become? I was horrified at the possibility.

  Just as the things had done with Megan, this one focused its attention on the living person rather than the dead one. Perhaps they could sense that I no longer had warm flesh to feast upon. Perhaps it was the smell. I had often noticed the smell of Megan. I’d thought my hunger had been erotic in nature and perhaps it had been, but I knew that this had not been the whole of it. I’d hungered for her in a more literal sense as well and it disgusted me to think of it.

  I shook the thought away. I needed to focus or another life could be lost on my account.

  “Git up behind ‘im,” Ellison hissed. I did as he ordered, allowing the cord of rope I carried to play out loosely in my hands. The creature paid me no mind. He kept his unseeing eyes focused on Ellison. I managed to get within arm’s length with no difficulty. As I threw the loop of rope over its shoulders, it gave a sudden jerk, clumsily lunging at Ellison, teeth clacking as it bit air. My hands were cold and stiff, but worked swiftly none the less, wrapping and tying the thing so that it’s arms were pinned. Within seconds, the thing was tied securely, unable to move. Ellison gingerly wrapped tough duct tape over thin, papery lips, making sure that the tape covered the entire mouth and would not come free, allowing him to bite. He wrapped the tape several times around the entire head from front to back to prevent its still gnashing jaws from working free of the gag.

  It had been almost comically easy. The thing acted as though it could not even see me. I was encouraged by that. I could use it. It was a weapon; a strategy. All my fears seemed suddenly misguided and childish.

  “Good,” Ellison said, nodding his approval.

  We secured the thing to an old plastic sled, wrapping it in rope and tarp so that it couldn’t move or struggle. It reminded me of the drills I’d done training for wilderness survival. We would practice creating a stretcher to bring accident victims out of the backwoods. Even with a sled, it was tough work carrying a body over even short distances with clear pathways and we’d had to cover miles through brush. I’d never had to use that particular technique in an emergency situation and was thankful for that as we dragged the sled back to the horses. If it had been a living person, it might have arrived with severe head trauma from the number of times the sled had swung away on a slippery bit of snow and smacked a tree or protruding rock. At last we reached the horses and roped the sled to the saddle, dragging it behind Clea back to the farm.

  “In the shed there,” Ellison grunted, nodding at a shack built of old wooden slats. We dragged the bound creature into the dark building. Ellison dragged a worn and scarred wooden workbench across the dirt floor into the center of the room and lit a gas lantern with a barbeque lighter.

  We placed the struggling body into a deep tin trough. I held it down, pressing a broomstick handle into its chest while Ellison poured bags of rock salt into the trough, packing it tightly around the creature. We slid a heavy plywood board over top and tied it down.

  “We’ll need to leave it for a few hours to cure and dehydrate,” Ellison said. “The salt helps shrink the fat cells and sterilizes the skin. I’m worried that this one’s skin is too far gone, but we’ll see… we’ll see.”

  We kept ourselves busy with work around the farm. While I wasn’t working, I helped myself to one of Ellison’s hunting books, which described the step-by-step process of leather tanning. The process itself would not have bothered me had I not known that we were doing it to something that used to be human, and that I was up next if it worked.

  “Should do,” Ellison said, some time later, thumping up the porch steps where I sat reading. We’d spent the intervening hours silent, each going about our business. Though never at the same time, we’d each gone to check on the creature in the shed. Ellison had clearly just come from there.

  “Hmm?” I asked, looking up. I was glad he was here. The reading had left me with a few nagging questions about the process I was about to undergo.

  “The salt. It should be ready now.

  “Alright. What’s next?”

  “We’ll want to warm up the body first, I think,” he said.

  “The book said this’ll take months… It says you soak the skin in oak bark and water for six to nine months. You ain’t planning on soaking me for months, right?”

  “No. That’s vegetable tanning. We’re gonna use chemicals. It’s a faster process, but the skin doesn’t always turn out as nice. We’ll go as fast as we can, but remember, it’s your skin we’re talking about. Can’t take too many shortcuts. I nodded, feeling an ember of fear in my chest. The right kindling and that fear would erupt in flame, turning into panic.

  We spent the next half-hour heating water to a boil and pouring it into the trough where it steamed thickly in the cold air. We submerged the body into it, allowing it to thaw like meat from a freezer. Ellison dumped more large bags of rock salt into the tub until the solution was briny and opaque, mixing it with the broomstick.

  We took turns agitating the water for a few hours. Because I no longer slept, I told Ellison that I could do the job alone, but he insisted in coming back regularly to check on the progress and take over the stirring now and then. At last, coming back from a nap as the sun rose the following morning, Ellison seemed satisfied. He allowed the tub to drain and rinsed the body with clean water for a long while.

  “Up on the table,” he said after a close inspection of the skin, satisfied at last. He wisely took the feet of thing, leaving me the upper body. It had shown no desire to bite me thus far, and even if it did, what could happen? I was dead, it wasn’t like I could become more so.

  I grabbed it under the armpits and on three we hoisted it up onto the bench. It weighed much less than I’d expected. The skin was wrinkled, ill fitting and sickeningly white. I looked at the creature in disgust, my lip curling bitterly. This would not work. The skin was rotten and frost damaged. It looked revolting and soon so would I.

  “You don’t have to be here for this part,” Ellison said, his tone kindly beneath his ever-present stoniness. “It’ll be hard enough to go through it without watching it first. Just help me secure ‘im to the table and you can go.”

  I did as I was asked, saying nothing. I struggled silently with the decision. I felt a certain responsibility to remain with Ellison as he worked to preserve the body. It was for my sake, after all, that he was putting himself in danger; for my sake that this thing would have to suffer… if it could still suffer. It was for me that Ellison would have to spend hours and days labouring unpleasantly with a decomposing corpse and noxious chemicals. It was my responsibility to witness the process, to pay respect to it, to be conscious of it and so give it value. And yet, he was right. I did not want to see what he would be doing to my body. I knew too much as it was.

  “I’ll stay,” I nodded defiantly. “I’ll stay.” Ellison gave a curt jerk of his head; a small sign of approval but one that I valued greatly. The set of his jaw and glint in his eye told me that I’d earned his respect with my decision. I knew that although he would have understood if I’d decided not to stay and watch, deep down he agreed with my choice. It surprised me to reflect on how much pride it gave me to know that I had earned his esteem.

  Ellison and I, the day before, had procured embalming fluid and tools from a funeral home an hour down the road. It was a difficult trip, but uneventful. We’d taken his old truck into a tiny hamlet with a handful
of houses, a gas station and a church. The tanning supplies, Ellison already owned. He hunted but took pride in making use of each part of his kill and doing the work, from beginning to end, himself.

  “This will all be, ah… experimental…” Ellison said, repeating his warning again. “I have no idea how this will work… or if it will work. I have tanned hides before, but they have always been properly skinned. You have to remove the fat from the skin to tan it. This will be… a new process. As for embalming,” he continued without a hint of hesitation, “I know almost nothing. The undertaker talked me through the process a little when we… discussed the arrangements for my wife and that’s all I know about it.”

  I nodded, but the tightness in my throat did not allow me to speak. Ellison did not speak any more. He pulled on thick rubber gloves that stretched to his elbow. He pulled a facemask over his mouth and wore safety goggles. He had agreed with my demand that every precaution be taken so that none of the creature’s bodily fluids could come into contact with any unprotected part of Ellison. He pulled a dark blue set of mechanic’s coveralls over his clothes and pulled a thick hood over his head, tightening the drawstrings so that nearly every centimeter of skin was covered.

  “Go start the generator,” he said, muffled through the mask.

  There was a large, red gasoline engine that was hooked up to the farm’s buildings in case of an outage, which happened frequently this far from the power stations.

  I left the dusty room, walking out into the morning light and checked the machine to make sure it was full with the purple-dyed farm gasoline. I started it up and it coughed to life with a sputter, vibrating with a loud rumble.

  As I re-entered the shack, I saw that Ellison had begun to warm the embalming fluid on a hotplate. The fluid was cloudy and bright pink in colour. Perhaps the colour helped to counteract the white and blue hues of the corpse’s skin.

  "I don't know much about chemistry," Ellison muttered, "but I tried mixing in some antifreeze with the embalming fluid. Didn't explode or anything so that's a good start."