“I’ve seen ‘em gambling.”
“What’s that?”
“Preachers. Even knew one was a priest by day, referee by night. Only talked about Revelations and the Baby Jesus and vaqueros with a scale in each hand.”
“No use for that talk either.” El Amarrador paused, looked down at the dead rooster in his arms. “Wanderin’ a landscape already been written.”
“Gambling makes you question how things come about the ways they did.”
El Amarrador shook his head. “What’s the use if the Engine makes it so all is bound to happen the way it does?”
El Amarrador was drunk. He was a teller of tall tales, his words a drunkard’s philosophy. Rey had dealt with men like this before. Braggarts. Liars.
These were the best moments anyone here would ever experience. Life would never be better than when the bird they’d placed money on struck down an opponent.
Most labor camps were segregated. Hapas, Mexicans, and whites occupied their own place, los mas moreno, lo mas pobre. But ethnic divisions were trivial when it came to gambling. Were they not all nothing but stoop laborers and pea pickers and fruit tramps destined to throw wages at floating taxi dances, raffles and lotteries? Gamble on death in hopes they’d achieve some sort of grandeur beyond the grime and the sweat? All of God’s children.
Rey had accepted that his God was no longer the traditional one with all the pomp that came with the faith he’d been born into. These days his God was a dusty fur-clad thing, dispersing life about the land as if all of His creatures were trample-burs shed from holy garb. Rey’s Lord wore the armor of the mountains and deserts, went into battle with a face disguised by cold blue skies. A clandestine, inscrutable God.
“I’ll get my dough tomorrow?”
El Amarrador made eye contact, gaze locked in place as if Rey was lined up in a rifle’s fixed point sight. “I know why folks been disappearin’ from the camps.”
“Disappearing?”
“Government been abducting folks.”
“Like Canete’s camp? You tell a lot of strange tales. Like your boy.”
“He been talkin’?”
“Talked about a burned up horse takin’ people into the heavens.”
“Boys play cruel games. Burn snakes and lizards. Boys tell stories.”
Rey detected something beneath the words. El Amarrador wasn’t a skilled liar.
But he didn’t pursue the matter. Didn’t think the infamous cockfighter even had the means to answer anyhow. He thought to bring up one more issue before leaving.
“I get the sense we met before.”
El Amarrador didn’t acknowledge the comment, just looked at his dead bird and mumbled, “You’ve set something in motion that shoulda been left alone.”
“How’s that?” Rey asked.
But El Amarrador just kept up with slipping his hand across Alectryomancer’s smooth black feathers.
It was evident any and all talk was done.
Little Cerefino died on the way back to camp. Rey put him back in the coop. He’d bury him in the morning.
He ate the last remaining grapefruit to still his stomach cramps. Drank some water. Lit a lantern, picked out a photograph from the cigar box. It was a snapshot of a kitchen.
Someone else’s memories.
This struck him as so fanciful it frightened him. Were he and his wife not relieved when the running water had finally been installed out there in the middle of the countryside where they’d raised their son and daughters? Was it not here, sitting at that very table, that their daughter ran in to tell them about the terrible fire?
He was sure of it, though nothing was certain anymore.
He put the picture away and read from the book.
SHRIEK’D AGAINST HIS CREED
I attest that Darwin plagiarized from Robert Chambers (Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, 1844), Patrick Matthew (On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, 1831), and his grandfather Erasmus Darwin (Zoonomia, 1794) in an attempt to substantiate his central thesis that “we are descended from barbarians” (The Descent of Man, p. 796). Darwin perpetrated this fraud so as to substantiate a non-Euclidean fact(less)-space with which to dogmatize (i.e., desensitization of primal neo-cortic paradigms) his core beliefs.
Darwin’s zeal to label human origins as animalistic was a plot to obviate his murderous nature, to obscure his own crimes—specifically his murdering his two firstborn children (conveniently recorded as being stillborn) and his subsequent lapse into depravity. Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle was his attempt to portray other cultures as cannibals, to justify his abnormal appetites (Strauss, Clara.Psycho-analysis and the Enfeebled Victorian Mind, 1902, p. 325).
Darwin compared the native ‘del Fuegans to sub-humans and denigrated them mercilessly: “I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilised man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement.” (The Voyage of the Beagle, p. 103)
“These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant and their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world. It is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some of the lower animals can enjoy: how much more reasonably the same question may be asked of these barbarians! At night… [they] sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals.” (The Voyage of the Beagle, p. 104)
“These Fuegians are Cannibals; but we have good reason to suppose it carried on to an extent which hitherto has been unheard of in the world.” (personal letter from Darwin to C.S. Darwin, 1833)
Darwin was even cruel in his amusement at observing the “savages”. He mocked them in a letter dated May 23, 1833, to his cousin, “In Tierra del [sic] I first saw bona fide savages; & they are as savage as the most curious person would desire. A wild man is indeed a miserable animal, but one well worth seeing.”
Darwin even made jest concerning the assassination of Fuegians in a letter to C.T. Whitley, “... to day I ordered a Rifle & 2 pair of pistols; for we shall have plenty of fighting with those d— — Cannibals: It would be something to shoot the King of the Cannibals Islands.”
Whitley, disturbed at Darwin’s atavistic descent, wrote back, “I will not disturb your “ordering” occupations or your cannibal shooting...”
This dehumanization of the natives justified Darwin’s equating them with animals. This exacerbated his initial foray into violence when he murdered a native child and devoured the boy’s fatty tissues in a sado-erotic manifestation of ritualistic hubris.
A coyote yipped somewhere near the hills. Didn’t sound like any coyote heard before.
Rey fell asleep.
The smoldering horse visited late that night. Shone with such fervor he awoke several times expecting to be met by the rising sun. In the morning he went to bury Little Cerefino, but something had broken into the coop and snatched away the carcass.
The sun angered up Rey’s daydreams vivid and rough.
A rusty shadow approached. Rey leaned on his hoe, adjusted his hat to better protect his eyes from the glare. Though it wasn’t the horse vision this shape did move with the gait of a wounded animal. Loping, limbs not working in conjunction.
The creature kept at it. Clomping forward as if its feet were too heavy. Waves of heat squiggled from the ground like ethereal snakes.
Rey looked up just in time to find a tawny bundle of rags bearing down. El Amarrador’s boy knocked the hoe from his hands.
Rey clambered to his feet. The boy crawled on all fours with such ferocity he thought it might be an animal dressed up in a child’s clothes. One of them aswang some told tales about when they were feeling particularly nostalgic and superstitious.
“What the hell got into you?” He grabbed the boy’s arm, hauled him upright.
The child was even thinner t
han before. Feral quality to a mouth set crooked by missing or distorted teeth. Eyes collapsed deeper and darker, dead moons never graced by starlight. At first Rey thought the boy’s skin was charred black, then the odor hit him and he realized he was caked in dried excrement. An animal. No longer familiar.
“You got my money?”
The boy lunged, bit down hard, teeth scraping out a furrow on the back of Rey’s hand.
He kicked the child in the chest. Felt a thin bone snap underfoot. Boy fell flat on his ass.
“Little fucking bastard!” Moved forward to kick him again.
The boy quickly sprang to his feet despite his cracked ribs. Moved so fast he was a speck in the distance by the time Rey caught enough breath to pursue.
Nobody working in the field seemed to notice any of this. If they did they didn’t acknowledge it.
Rey’s hand turned red and puffy like an overfilled hot water bottle. The wound was ragged and filthy. He’d see to it that El Amarrador pay what was owed. Provide what was his. See to it that his brat got punished too.
He worked until the sun dipped behind the hills. There were no cockfights that evening. Word had spread that the Sheriff had raided the pit. Labor contractor was gathering the necessary funds for a bribe to resume the fights. He’d have to go tomorrow, follow up on El Amarrador and his money. Teach that boy respect.
Days ago he’d used the last of his funds to pick up some meager provisions. Ate a heap of fried potatoes. Drank some strong coffee. Scoured the skillet with handfuls of sand. Left it outside in the night air to cool down. His hand ached something terrible.
Later that evening strange sounds came from the tent near his but he didn’t go explore. Couldn’t explain why, but the last thing he wanted to find were those very same children greedily digging into their gelatinous meal.
Rey worked through the morning. Had yet to hear any talk on whether the cockfights were on again. He was going tonight anyway. Gallera was the only place El Amarrador might be found. Shortly after sunset he wrapped the book in his jacket and buried the bundle underneath the straw.
He could remember some of the book now. Lengthy passages built up in his head like the nest of a cactus wren in a cholla plant. Cannibals and Phainothropus ran through his brain.
He wrapped his wounded hand with the old shirt he’d used to cover Little Cerefino’s cage. The bite-mark was seeping clear fluid. He needed to block out those words from the book. He looked at his straw bed and saw that a snapshot had fallen from the cigar box. It was a picture of the coffins.
He dwelled on the memory of the coffin maker. On the children’s caskets and the coffin maker’s camera. Rolled them over and over in his mind until they were worn slick like a pebble in a river.
He couldn’t have been older than 7. The carpenter’s business had prospered in the days after the fire. Despite the grim occasion the craftsman had spent some of his newly acquired wealth on a camera. Rey was so fascinated by the man’s skill he’d asked for a photograph to document his handiwork. A memento, something he could show his brother. The carpenter had been happy to oblige as he knew Rey’s parents and knew their boy was curious about the coffins.
That day came back, clear as a bell.
The smell of sawdust, shellac and linseed oil. Skies filled with smoke rising from the smoldering structures days after the fires had been put out.
That had been the day the ancient-engines paced Rey from the heavens. Followed him all the way down the path until he ran so fast he was able to lose them in the trees just before reaching home.
He remembered his heavy heart, a rebuke from his mother for making up stories about ancient-engines on such a tragic time when so many had died.
Rey stared at that little coffin and remembered the blackened skin of the victims cracked like dry soil, pink muscle visible in the lines. He hid the photograph under the straw.
Headed out across the fields to the barren area where he’d beaten Alectryomancer. The night was unusually quiet. A half moon offered a feeble light to walk by.
The gallera was no longer there. The stakes in the ground, leather cords, chicken bones—everything had vanished. He looked across the flat expanse.
Three figures stood in a loose circle around a metal trash can, sides glowing the color of an overripe tangerine. Sparks dribbled out of the can’s mouth into the night.
Rey recognized the gatekeeper, the smoker, and the tall sleeper from the other night. Rugged men. Grifters eking a living from the gullible and vulnerable. Clothes dusted with travel.
“Where’s the gallera?” Rey stepped within the trash can’s light.
The gatekeeper was startled by the sudden appearance. “What we got here?”
The sleeper awoke. He leaned forward and grabbed Rey’s arm. Twisted it behind his back. Pressed the flat edge of a knife against his cheek.
“No need for that!” Rey pulled away from the tall man.
Inexplicably, with no warning, they began to punch and kick.
Boots hit like mallets. They used fists then switched to whipping Rey with leather belts when their hands became too sore. Split skin stung like a serpent’s nip.
Rey fell, stirred up talcum soft dust that enveloped them like fog. He kicked out but only hit air. Grabbed the pant leg of someone. Crusted wound on his hand split and burned as if he’d been branded. He lost his grip.
“You know me! You fucking know me! Why you killin’ me?”
The gatekeeper looked down with his gloating eye. Observed Rey as if he’d found a lizard basking in the sun, listless, wondering if he should stamp it out or allow it to continue living. “Don’t know who the fuck you is.”
“What happened to the gallera?” Rey yelled over and over until the gatekeeper’s heel struck his mouth and it became difficult to speak through the thick blood.
Rey prayed he’d look up and see the black horse. Maybe then these men would sense that instinctive panic the animal invoked. Maybe they would catch its musk wafting this way, stench of blackened muscles making water in mouths like some crass miracle.
Maybe their seeing it would definitively prove that the horse was a real flesh and fire thing and not some phantom.
But the night refused to assist him.
Rey glared at the men through an eye that hadn’t swollen shut. Couldn’t describe how he looked to them. Brute existence filled him with terrible thoughts.
“Where’s El Amarrador?” Red flecks from his lips spackled the pale dust.
The three men pulled strange fearful expressions at hearing that name. Their faces wobbled in the night like ash ejected from the blazing trash can.
“El Amarrador,” Rey demanded again.
The men slowly retreated. Rey could only crouch there in agony, watch them pace backwards until their forms wavered. Minutes passed then they dissipated in the waning light like ghosts.
Rey slowly trudged back towards camp against a sky as colorful as neon lights in the city at night. The ochre hills were a dull glaze in contrast. He checked his shirt pocket to reassure himself that the snapshot was still safe and sound.
He stopped before a massive saguaro cactus.
Hadn’t been here yesterday.
A majestic sight. Patience of nature, roots buried under sand, decades of waiting for that rare shower to nourish it. Thriving slowly but inexorably.
A cactus this size took over a century to reach such heights.
A century or more.
Club-like arms branched off in several directions, thickly spined and heavy with fruit. The sky gave off a strange light.
Rey was suddenly overwhelmed by an insatiable hunger. Nothing mattered save devouring the dripping fibers of that plant, to swallow his fill then continue greedily consuming until he emptied the contents of his stomach to make room for more.
His fingers slid into the cactus. Spines tore at his skin. He made a fist, withdrew clumps of pulp, spongy and clear. He ignored the small dark embryos floating in the handfuls of plant jelly he
raised to his mouth. Honey thick fluids flowed down his chin.
He consumed until the cactus’ wine-like juices intoxicated him. Dug deeper into that cactus, clawing towards an elusive pulse deep within, striving towards that plant’s heart but found a leathery womb instead and marveled at how none of this was possible.
He tore the tissues away to reveal a human fetus inside.
He held it cupped in both hands. Leg and arm buds still soft, malleable even. The desert night air steamed off of its warm mass. The umbilical was a lumpy gray rope trailing deep inside the cactus. Rey bit the cord in two.
Oh I will die here, Rey thought. I will die standing, my body continuing its motion of swinging the hoe, relentless in its performance, corpse moving diligently in death in the only manner it has ever known.
That unnatural hunger got the better of him again. Every moral fibre within Rey’s soul pleaded with him to stop, to reject his blasphemous thoughts. But he was weak and resumed his violation of the flesh, wallowed in his depravity.
He ate the fetus with gusto. He was now fully resigned to his descent into an amoral existence. Ate until his stomach cramped, vomited, and then succumbed to that preternatural appetite once more. He feasted late into the night.
Hours later he managed to find his way home.
The flavors remained cloyingly sweet on his tongue. He opened the book, but couldn’t be sure whether what he read, or even whether the wicked deeds he’d committed were imagined or not.
PHAINOTHROPUS
Phainothropus energies as communicated from mediums both diffuse and antecedent to the chemical waveform of ontological substrates vis-à-vis the hyper awareness of an entity’s comprehension. The neuro-aggregate of which one’s existence is layered in multiple personalities as decreed by compatabilitist ideologies, or conversely, philosophies sympathetic to Molinism, to arrive at a new species. I have dubbed this being Phainothropus.
Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales Page 19