Henri Ville

by M. Chris Benner

  As an aside, he quickly added, "Together we're taking a spiritual journey but we'll talk about that later."

  Then he began walking the center isle between the pews.

  He looked at the worshipers.

  "I was twelve years old when I died, and it wasn't until I came back that I had strength, will, focus and determination, and it was at that age that I began to see demons."

  ***

  Twelve year old Rigby Briarwood returned to the town of Warminster, and the townspeople knew. Word spread quickly, much like the tales mocking him had passed rapidly from lip to ear to lip.

  Only now the stories were different.

  Before returning home, Rigby telegrammed his mother and asked for a specific sum of money. He got home and found his supposed uncle gone (but not before the man took all the food, even the few cans Rigby had stashed in case of an emergency). Food had been donated to him while he recuperated at the church and he stocked his shelves with vegetables and oats and new cans and jerky. The town from which he had come had been very generous, especially after young Briarwood spoke to them. The resident of the church - the Man of God -encouraged Rigby to speak of his past to the parishioners while recovering in the church's bell tower. The young boy had been shy?but after some time he noticed things weren't the same here. He was in a different town, surrounded by people that didn't know how embarrassing his toes were, that didn't snicker behind his back, that didn't harass him; in fact, they all seemed to care for his well-being, which was refreshingly new. They wished him well when he passed, and smiled. So he spoke to the town's people, only once, one Sunday. He stood at the pulpit of the church and described his death, how it had felt - that there was warmth, that it was like a soft blanket wrapping around him. He was hesitant to tell them that he felt different inside, that some part of him had changed ever since? but he did, he pushed himself through it and told the congregation as much as he could, often stopping to search for words as it was hard to explain that there was a heaviness inside him now, one that hadn't been there before, that his brain was thinking in both the same way and also from a new part (in the back of his skull, it felt like), that the world had more shades of color and that the wind passed knowledge through him. He was focused now. He had God inside him. After he finished, everyone spoke a solemn "Amen" and the church was silent?

  It wasn't long after his return that Rigby again encountered David Browser. It was isolated, near the forest, and Rigby was pacing and writing a sermon in his notebook. David Browser hadn't known Rigby was in town until the moment he saw him, and he hungrily approached. The scuffle would be described at length to the church parishioners when Rigby returned to the town far from home, and spoke once again at the church that had welcomed him, to the people that had welcomed him. With such an impressive first speech and overwhelming praise, the Man of God saw immeasurable potential and had made the boy promise to come back and speak every third Sunday. The Man of God even hired an extravagant coach to chauffeur Rigby from Warminster to the church and back again. The first time Rigby rode through the town in the lavish coach, on his way out of town, he passed his peers and their parents, and they watched in disbelief.

  And Rigby gave them a humble nod in return.

  "When he touched me, I truly saw him. David Browser, when he grabbed my arm, I saw him for what he was," Rigby spoke, twangs of fear and pain inflected in his young voice. As good as his first attempt had been, his second was much better. For three weeks he prepared it, rehearsed it, wrote and rewrote and practiced more. His encounter with David Browser had been brief, starting as it always did, but it reshaped the entire sermon. A mocking song while Rigby's book was knocked from his hand. David Browser grabbed Rigby's frail arms and, in the instant David Browser's touched the skin of Rigby's arm, the freckled redhead shrieked so loud that David Browser startled. There was a moment of harsh shaking in an attempt to stop the screaming but it served to further exacerbate the problem.

  "I didn't know what was happening," explained young Rigby to the church parishioners. "He touched me and then I saw? I saw something? I saw everything?" and he paused. It was a pause he had planned and rehearsed, manipulating the crowd to want more. They were watching, their eyes intent and mouths open as they starved for the meat of the story. They wanted any of it, all of it, even the crumbs.

  Before he spoke, Rigby held up a sketch.

  The crowd gasped as one.

  Then he spoke:

  "It was like the mountain in a deep nightmare. I didn't just see him but the world in which he existed. The sky was black, and it wasn't like night. Ashes were raining down. There weren't stars. Just black. The ground was wet like mud but it was dark red, and boney, too, like hollow rocks." Rigby's eyes glazed over, as if recalling it were seeing it again-this had been rehearsed more than any other part. "And there was a mountain and I could see it very clearly like I was there and staring up at it. But it wasn't a mountain. Not really. Maybe it was the size of a mountain but it wasn't made of earth or anything I've ever seen. It had narrow, beady eyes and scabbed arms with hands the size of a town. He wasn't clothed and I could see that it wasn't a boy and it wasn't a girl. Its legs were longer than any tree I've ever seen. This beast, he didn't see me. He was reaching his clawed fingers - fingers shaped like knives from the knuckle - and he was reaching up into the black overhead, so far up I couldn't see. And there was nothing else around. Like this was his lair, him and I and a ground of blood and sky of black and that was all? but I could still hear screaming, human screaming. Agonizing screams mixed with words I could barely understand, begging over and over to stop, to-to-to end, to forgive."

  ***

  "I told the church of the first demon I had witnessed, in great detail. There would be many demons I would see in my lifetime but the first was the most terrifying, the worst I would ever encounter-until recently, that is. And I told the church of this demon, that he was destroying life, that he existed only to cause pain and suffering in the lives of better people." He sighed as if disappointed. "I didn't tell them what to do. They were listening to my stories, not taking part in them. But in time, between that sermon and my next, David Browser disappeared out of thin air. There was worry and panic that he had run off. But I learned otherwise. I was the one to find him. His disappearance had been a mystery to me as much as my hometown but I was walking in the forest where I wrote my sermons, pacing and writing, and I near walked into him."

  ***

  The young Rigby Briarwood stared up at the lifeless body of David Browser as it swung with the gentle breeze. David's eyes were still open and his bloated tongue stuck from his mouth. His skin was a greenish blue. The stench was intolerable but it didn't stop Rigby from getting close. He looked the body over, the feet dangling barely off the ground. Rigby showed only a fraction of the delight he felt inside, his expression otherwise calm.

  I knew there was a fighter in me, he thought.

  And the young Rigby Briarwood softly mumbled "Amen" as he unzipped the front of his pants to relieve himself on the corpse.

  VI

  There was a brief meeting between Henri and Chaim.

  It took place on the second day.

  "I need your help," Henri stated, matter-of-factly.

  "The hell do I care?"

  "I could walk outside without a cover on my face."

  "You wouldn't endanger the lives of all these people."

  "I wouldn't need to. These people are dumb. And they've seen what I can do. I'd just tell them you're a demon. Or a spaghetti monster, whatever. They'd run as far from here as possible."

  "I don't like to be threatened."

  "Good, 'cause I don't like to threaten. I need your help. Think of it as a challenge. I can't imagine you got many things to occupy yourself with out here. By the way, I just brought you an entire town of people with money. And trades."

  "I didn't need a-"

  "This isn't a pissing contest and I'm not looking for a 'thank you.' I had an idea. I th
ink it'll work. If it does?we might be able to get home. At the very least I'll be able to walk around without a Goddamn mask."

  "Oh." Chaim rolled his eyes.

  "I had an idea. It's pretty simple. Take maybe two, three weeks and then I'm out of your hair."

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "You do have a choice. It's just that all of the other options are threats. And since neither of us like it, why don't you just hear me out?"

  Pause.

  "What's your idea?"

  ***

  Three days later and they nearly had a plan?

  "You're on your own with this. It's Greek to me."

  Nearly?

  Chaim tossed Anson Sharpe's notebook toward Henri, who picked it up off the table. "I might be able to do it," she sighed, flipping through page after page of lines intersecting lines within boxes and tiny designs and scribbled labels.

  They were all in the Apothecary, Henri, Novak, and Chaim.

  Chaim conducted all of his public business at the poker table in the saloon and all of his private business in the empty second floor barroom of the Apothecary. He liked sitting in the farthest corner of both buildings, his back always against the wall.

  "I'll stick to what I know," Chaim grunted, then thought a moment. "First thing's first, we need to confiscate all the metal in town."

  "Why's that?" asked Novak. He was wearing a skin-tight purple dress.

  Chaim refused to let the hairy cross-dresser sit at the table so Novak stood.

  "Well," Chaim spoke, condescendingly, "from what Henri's said, we're going to need a lot of magnetite, right?"

  Novak nodded, pretending to understand.

  "Yeah, mag-magnet-ite?"

  "Mag-ne-tite," he spoke as if talking to a child, "it's highly magnetized. You know what a magnet is?"

  Again, Novak nodded without fully understanding.

  Henri sat at the table, ignoring the conversation. She focused on the diagrams in Anson's notebook, judiciously scrutinizing every detail. Once she felt an understanding of it, she'd begin reproducing each and every schematic until she could reproduce them from memory. She needed to know it like the back of her hand. Reproduction was the way she learned best, the technique she used most frequently for tests in college. Over and over and over, until she knew every detail. Then and only then would she be willing to physically try and put the information contained in his notebook into practice.

  "So you're going to collect all the metal in the town?" Novak asked, skeptical and a bit angry at being treated like a child.

  "Yes. That's what I said. Did you fix the generator yet?"

  The rotund steam generator was in the far back of the property, a couple dozen yards out behind the shops. It looked like a giant, spidery monster, even in the morning light.

  "It's on my list of things to do," Novak remarked, sarcastically.

  "Oh? And you haven't found a metric ton of magnetite yet?"

  "A metric??-Where am I going to find a ton of mag-magne-magnite?"

  Chaim gave an aggravated sigh.

  Their relationship had blossomed in this way since the moment they met.

  "That's your job, Novak, it's why you're here, why you are in any way useful. Because you can get things," spat Chaim. "Now go fix that generator and get me my Goddamn mag-ne-tite."

  Novak gave a defeated nod and silently left.

  "You don't need to be so mean," Henri said to Chaim once Novak was gone. Her words were half-hearted, as her attention remained on the drawings in Anson's notebook.

  "Well?" Chaim began as if he had been compiling a list to defend himself against such an accusation, "I'm not a fan of cross dressers. They make me uncomfortable. And he was a friend of that ass-head Anson Sharpe, which means he's probably an idiot. I don't need more idiots in this town."

  Henri's eyes lifted from the notebook, slowly. She had a lethargy about her that Chaim had never seen before, not just a calmness but almost sluggish. It wasn't just exhaustion but something a bit more?

  "Novak's wife died of tuberculosis a few years ago," she informed him in a way that sounded as if the information didn't much matter-and then she winced, quickly, her fist clenched?and then her eyes returned to Chaim. "Dresses help him deal with it. Every dress he wears used to be his wife's so, maybe cut him some slack. He's not an idiot. And, by the way, Sharpe's dead. Bled to death in my arms. I'd prefer we refrain from talking about him."

  Chaim had little to say on either subject after that.

  He carefully watched Henri, studying her as she went back to flipping through Anson's notebook. Standing, he walked to the bar and pulled out a clean glass and one of the few liquor bottles he kept stored on the second floor of the Apothecary. He sipped from the bottle (it was awful and he winced) and then walked over to Henri, set the glass down, poured two fingers, and offered her the glass.

  She shook her head.

  "Since when do you turn down a drink?" he asked, suspiciously.

  She shrugged.

  "You know?" and he paused, picking his words carefully, "I didn't want you here because I was afraid you'd destroy my town, kiddo. Nothing personal. And being alone?sort of makes things?a bit crazy. Crazier, actually. But, honestly? I?I actually missed you-well, missed a familiar face. Part of me is glad you're here."

  "Part of you?"

  "Well, part of me. The rest thinks you're going to destroy my town and get me killed?"

  There was a nod of understanding between both parties.

  Henri stopped looking at the notebook.

  Something had caught her eye.

  It caught Chaim's attention as well.

  Henri's hand was shaking.

  "What's wrong?" Chaim asked in a fatherly tone.

  Henri glanced up with wounded eyes.

  "What's wrong?" he repeated.

  VIII

  Not Long Ago?

  Anson Sharpe finished cooking dinner. The spring cockspur hawthorn trees had provided a good shield for the fire and any seekers of the great Henri Ville would have a hard time finding them. Also, local attention would be diverted to the pile of twigs and broken glass that had once been the nearest town. Anson plated the rabbit meat and untied one of Jonathon William Beckett the third's arms so the boy could eat. Henri seemed ready to protest but didn't. They ate in silence. Dinner ended. There was a brief discussion about untying both of the kid's hands so he could sleep better but Henri outright denied it, and Jonathon's free hand was again tied behind his back. Conversations halted. The child fell asleep sitting up against the tree. Anson drank brown liquid from an unmarked bottle. Occasionally, he would pass it to Henri and she would take a swig and shudder. Four or five swigs later, she stopped shuddering. The flames had long-since died and Anson poked the embers out of boredom. The red/orange glow was lowering and darkness corralled the camp. The forest beyond was black, an open void. Limbs and trunks were invisible. Henri took another swig and returned the bottle.

  "Why did you leave me?" Anson asked as he took the bottle.

  Henri exhaled in a long, tired sigh.

  "Please don't start, Anson. I just want to rest."

  "Yet here you are, sitting up. Drinking with me. It's like old times. Drinking together by a dying fire. You being mean. Hell, you may even be meaner now than before. Still got an anger problem. I see you saved a kid so you give a shit about someone?just not me, right? Is that how it works?"

  "Do you really want to get into this right now?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well I d-"

  "I've thought about you every day since you left me. I don't-I know. You and I, I got it. I understand. It doesn't equate. We. Don't. Add. Up. And you're so tired, fine - you can just listen. But you cannot take away my Goddamn love for you and you can hear me out. You owe me that. Always try to control things and fight and you get wrapped up in pain-well, I care for you. I don't want anything bad to happen to you. You're a tempest and you bring so many Goddamn storms with you its not even ironic or metaphoric anymor
e - it's sad. You? I mean, everyone's to blame for this. We robbed banks - and a lot of good that did. All the money in the world and we still couldn't stop this from happening or even build the small amount of tech we need. All of us broke protocol - hell, Chaim killed Hitler. It's all of our fault we're stuck here now. It's all of our fault that goddamn Droit is searching for you. We all volunteered, we all knew the risk, and none of us followed the rules."

  "I volunteered for something much different than this. There's only one person to blame. You want to talk protocol-"

  "Share a little blame, my dear. Your ex didn't make all of your decisions for you."

  Anson took a hard swig from the bottle.

  "I care about you, Anson," added Henri after a silence. Anson was taking a swig and he rolled his eyes over the upturned bottle as she continued. "You know I care. And I'm mean-" She took the bottle and swallowed a mouthful. "Yes, I know. I can be mean as all hell. I'm sorry. But sometimes you deserve it. You have no will power. I'm pretty sure your standards for women are limited to: a) female and b) breathing. You're a bigger whore than any prostitute I've met. At least they know what they are. You hide it and you hid it from me. We were never serious because we couldn't even get to that point because you couldn't keep your fly zipped long enough. You don't have a monogamist bone in your body. And now what? What do you want from me? Are we going to get married? Settle down? Why don't we just live through the world wars Chaim can't prevent and everything'll work out peachy keen, huh?"

  Anson went for the bottle but Henri kept it out of his reach.

  "Fair enough. But when we were together, and you were with me, and I wanted you, the only think you wanted - the only thing you'll ever want - is home. More than anything else, ever." Anson sighed. "Guess what? We are home."

  "No. I'm going home. And I figured out how."

  "Yeah? Magic? How are you going to replace the circuit board?"

  "I'm going to bring down the Droit."

  Anson laughed.

  "Yeah? How?"

  "Just answer this - if I got the Droit to land intact, could you fix the shuttle?"

  "Oh, sure-sure-sure. Just get it to land. Why didn't I think of-Let's see? We got a homicidal atmospheric quantifier that's been reprogrammed and now has its switches set to murder - something it's absolutely not built for, which means it could be frying its chips already - we just ask it nicely to land? Even if it is in good shape, it still stays a mile up at all times and we have no aircrafts to try and board it. There's no artillery or land-to-air missile or giant slingshot so there's no weapon to shoot it down because everything here is two hundred years outdated-and even if we did, the tech would burn out from the damage or the crash. And even if you did hit it, and it did begin to fall apart, it's programmed to fly back into the atmosphere and self-destruct. So to answer your question - yes, with all of the hardware in the Droit at my disposal, I could fix everything we need to fix."