Keepers ch-2

by Gary A Braunbeck

  “So he wandered, then collapsed, unable to walk from the sores upon his feet. He crawled until he could move no more. He lay there dying. In what might have been the last moments of his life, Zeus heard a strange weeping sound. He turned his head to see an odd beast lumbering toward him. This beast was a cow who had no one to milk her. Her teats were swollen and painful. She saw this child lying there in the middle of the desert and went to him, positioning her body so that her teats were directly above his mouth. Zeus sucked hungrily, drinking his fill of her life-restoring milk.

  “The gods saw this and were strangely moved, and so restored Zeus’s powers to him. He brought the cow back to Olympus with him and decreed that she and her like were to be considered sacred, and would be plentiful upon the Earth so that no child would ever again know the suffering he had to endure, and no parent the grief of having to see their children die. The cow lives on Olympus still, grazing in a field beside Zeus’s throne.”

  A loud whistle breaks the still of the morning. Men wander into the fields, each carrying their own device, and begin to prod the beasts into groups, and those groups into lines. They march toward the large building with the smokestacks. The men continue shouting and prodding them until they are stuffed into the corrals. The animals cry out in confusion. Another man walks the length of the rows, tossing handfuls of hay to them. They lower their heads and eat, silently.

  At the front of each corral is a large metal door. There are four in all.

  A buzzing sound fills the air for a moment, followed by a deafening shriek that momentarily frightens the herds, then is replaced by the chords of soothing music.

  The animals, calm again, return to their meal. I can hear the voices of the herd.

  Our hearts are pounding together. There is not enough room. Is this a face I am standing on? Is my friend dead? Are we all dead already, or is death still to come? Are we real? Do we exist at all?

  I envy them. Their whole purpose is fulfilled just by standing in the field all day, eating, then looking upward at the sky where no gods look down.

  The door at the end of the first corral opens. From deep inside the dark place beyond comes a rumbling.

  The rumbling room! they think.

  One by one, they raise their heads and cry out. More hay is tossed to them but they do not look at it. All thoughts of hunger have fled. Now there is only fear and bodies pressing together, the crushing weight of one becoming that of many. The wooden rails of the corral make clattering noises as their bodies slam against them, but do not break. The rails never break. Such is the care given to the construction.

  One of the beasts cries out as blood bubbles from its nostrils.

  Another releases the contents of its bowels.

  Yet another stomps in crimson-colored urine.

  Their fear reaches out and grips my horns, pulling my head forward.

  “It’s time,” says Carson, placing a hand gently on my shoulder.

  I march forward, my hooves sinking into the mud. I can feel my muscles rippling under my flesh. I have to remember that I am not the same as them. I must remember this. It is important.

  I enter the corral gate, and follow the path that leads me to the right. I walk a separate path that parallels that of the herd. I reach the end and step up onto the platform that has been built for me.

  I turn to face them.

  I take a breath.

  I raise my arms before them.

  They stare at me in awe and wonder. This is how they worship me. How they love me. To them I am a god. Their cud-stuffed prayers are only for me.

  I suffer as you do, I say to them. I have known the loneliness of dark spaces. I have tasted the fruit of betrayal. I know what it is like to stand upright as a man does.

  TWO LEGS! they pray to me. IF ONLY WE HAD TWO LEGS, WE COULD LEAVE THIS PLACE OF FEAR AND FOLLOW YOU!

  You will never stand on two legs, I say to them. To stand as a man stands is very hard. Two legs are very hard. Perhaps four is better, after all.

  WHERE ARE WE TO GO? TELL US, SHOW US THE WAY. WE WILL FOLLOW.

  I answer them with a cry of my own, one composed of equal parts field-beast and man. They throw back their heads in reply.

  I turn on the platform and begin walking inside.

  They follow.

  The platform extends all the way across the rumbling room. I can travel its length and never touch the soil below. This platform empties onto a wooden terrace at the other end, and there I will walk down the ramp, go around the building, and enter the Corral of the Separate Path once again, then twice more after that. Until all the herd have been led into the dark, rumbling room.

  Then I shall be rewarded.

  I step through the doorway into the rumbling room. Behind me, the herd moves as one.

  My arms still raised, I gesture for them to come. Come, my children, follow me.

  They enter the rumbling room four at a time. As they step through the door, a man walks up to each of them. These men hold hammers. Hammers smash into heads. Their knees buckle, and with a cry they drop. Chains are dropped from above and secured around their legs. The room roars. The chains are pulled taut and the first four are lifted from the ground. They hang there, in great pain but not yet dead. Another roar, the walls shake, and they begin to move. It is as if they are slowly flying. As they pass by, they look at me. Their eyes are stupid with fear, and I cannot return their gaze. I am not the same as them. I am not the same as them. I am not the same as them.

  Other men approach them now, holding something long, curved, and shiny. They lift their arms, these men, and pass the shiny curves through the flesh.

  I whisper to them, Fear not; soon you too shall graze in the fields by Zeus’s throne.

  I have to make them believe this, as I must make myself believe it.

  There is no other way to survive in this world of no gods.

  The line is moving smoothly now, the beasts entering, the men falling upon them with hammers and chains. The room roars and snarls. I walk on. I reach the end of the platform and turn to see the fruition of my leadership.

  The beasts hang there with their stomachs split open and their heads cut off. I smell their open flesh and see their dead hooves. On a metal hook I see all of their tongues, cut out and pierced by the sharp metal, pierced through the root and hanging there, mute and bloody.

  I lower my arms.

  I see their heads lined up on the floor. Someone is cutting off their cheeks with a knife, slicing through their tender flesh. Once this has been done, he kicks what remains of their heads down through a hole in the floor.

  Blade passing through them.

  Lives there a man who has not dreamt of being as strong as a bull in the fields?

  Red running past.

  Is there a bull who has never longed to stand as a man and be nearer the sky?

  Bubbling up.

  Only. You. Remain. Eternal.

  Red passing through. The world, this room.

  Give to me reign of the fields, the sky, and all creatures who dwell in between.

  Split in half, this way and that.

  Their cries still screeching through my brain, I climb down the stairs and walk around the building, an abandoning god, and prepare myself for the moment when the sun kisses the ground and the sky bleeds twilight and I am fed on my follower’s broiled remains and Beth is allowed to sit by my side.

  To stand as a man stands is very hard. Two legs are very hard. Perhaps four is better, after all.

  I touch my sides, wishing to stand on two legs. Two legs gives me a tailor. A tailor gives me clothing. Clothing gives me pockets. A place to hide my hands. To keep my paycheck. To store a key to a room with no straw on the ground or E LEVEN

  – the top of my skull connected with the roof of the car when I jolted awake, shaking.

  Goddammit.

  I rubbed my face and eyes as if rubbing would brush away the remnants of the dream, then took a deep breath and looked at my watch.
r />   I had been asleep for almost twenty minutes.

  Not great, but at least it hadn’t been hours.

  I stretched my back, rubbed the back of my head, took several deep breaths, and-as rallied now as I would ever be-climbed out of the car. After removing the high-intensity flashlight from the trunk and closing the lid, I began walking over the rise and down toward the graveyard. The flashlight’s beam revealed that there weren’t as many birds here now, and nowhere could I see any bones.

  I headed toward the old barn in the distance. As I neared, the silence surrounding me became almost unbearable. I’d have given anything to hear a bird sing or a dog bark.

  The ground around the barn was spotted with deep holes. Someone had been digging. Quite a lot.

  The barn door was partly open, so I was able to enter without making any noise. Inside it glowed with warm, bright light, courtesy of at least a dozen oil lanterns.

  Carson was at the opposite end. His clothes were covered in the moist, clay-like soil from outside. A large shovel rested inside the wheelbarrow he’d used to haul the dirt in.

  He did not hear me as I walked toward him.

  He was busy cutting sections of twine from a roll. There were various sizes of branches and sticks in a pile at his feet. There were buckets of water. Rope. Tubes of caulk and a caulk gun. An immense sheet of tarpaulin from which several large pieces had been cut.

  I was in the middle of the barn. I could see Carson, but since the stalls on that side ran into the beams and wall that supported the hayloft above, I couldn’t see what he was working on.

  “Carson?”

  He looked at me, smiled, and waved. “Hi, UncGil. I’ve been taking the bus. The #48 express. Remember how it almost hit us?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked down at something on a hay bale. A comic book. He turned the page.

  “Is that the new issue of Modoc?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I bought it yesterday.”

  I took a few more steps toward him. “What’re you working on?”

  “Present for Long-Lost.”

  “What kind of present?”

  “Come look. I’m almost all done.”

  I walked over to him.

  Somehow, he had used the bird bones and clay, the twine and rope, the caulk and several sections of discarded wood, as well as all the twigs and sticks, to build a near-perfect replica of Long-Lost.

  It wasn’t nearly as big as it was portrayed in the comics-it looked to be just under six feet in height-but it was still impressive. He had cut away sections of the tarpaulin to fashion the skin for the wings. The horn was a stick that he’d whittled to a point. He’d gathered feathers as well, using them to give the body as much texture as possible. The spider’s legs were one of the most amazing parts: for those he’d used bone, stick, twine and twig, clay, and remnants of bed sheets, twisting them tightly together so they could support the weight of the rest of it. It was a marvel of design, something I knew to be beyond his capabilities.

  “How long have you been working on this?” I asked.

  “Long time. Ever since we came out here the first time.”

  “You’ve been sneaking out and taking the bus?”

  He nodded, and then began wrapping the twine around the bottom of one of the legs. “Uh-huh. That bus runs all night.”

  So he’d been sneaking out at night after bed check and getting back before breakfast.

  A flash of fire burned up my side and I had to lean against one of the stall doors.

  Carson looked over and saw me, the state of my clothes, and the blood. He dropped the twine and ran over, putting his arms around me. “You hurt, UncGil? What happened?”

  “I had an accident.”

  “Wanna go to the hospital?”

  I shook my head. “No, Carson, I want to take you home where you belong.”

  He released his hold on me and went back to work. “I don’t wanna go back there. I wanna stay here.”

  “Well, you can’t.”

  He checked the comic book, looked at me, then turned a few pages and shook his head.

  “What’s wrong, Carson? What’s Long-Lost say? What are you supposed to do now?”

  “Well,” he said, adding the last bit of twine and clay to Long-Lost’s arm, “I dunno.” He held up the comic. “The next part is about you.”

  (Longlost sayz the Keeperz are comeing n He kneedz to talk to yoo.)

  “I see.” I reached out and took the comic book, rolling it up and slipping it into my jacket pocket. “Then we should go home and read it together.”

  He shook his head. “The animals need me.”

  “What animals?”

  He stopped his work and stared at me. “Don’t you know what this place is, UncGil?”

  The pain was starting to make me dizzy. “No, Carson, I don’t. So why don’t you tell me all about it on the way home?”

  “I’m not leaving! ” he shouted, throwing a wad of mud at the far wall. “I’m not leaving and you can’t make me! ”

  “Don’t shout at me, Carson.”

  “You try an’ make me go an’ I’ll… eyes on my face. I’ll… I’ll call for ’em.”

  My stomach tightened. “Call for who? Long-Lost? He doesn’t live in this world, Carson. He lives on the other side of the Great Scrim-remember from the first couple of issues?”

  He shook his head again, starting to cry. “Nuh-uh, not Long-Lost.”

  “Then who?”

  “The Keepers. They know you’re here.”

  Listen to the cold silence in the center of my soul as he said this.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Carson.”

  “Yes, you do.” He pointed at my pocket. “Long-Lost said that you don’t remember like you’re supposed to. That’s why he wants to talk to you.”

  I took several deep breaths, forcing the pain away-or at least forcing myself to ignore it as much as possible-and pushed off of the stall door. “I’m not talking to anyone except you tonight, Carson.” I started toward the barn door. “Now come on! I’m hurt and sore and tired and hungry and I’ve been worried sick about you and there’s stuff going on I don’t understand and I want you to be somewhere safe , do you understand?”

  “But I am safe.”

  I turned around and kicked open the door with my uninjured leg.

  “This is the Magic Zoo, UncGil. They’d never hurt me.”

  I couldn’t move.

  I couldn’t speak.

  I dropped the flashlight and staggered backward.

  Standing in the doorway, on its hind legs, was a massive brown Kodiak bear. It stood well over eight feet high. Its body was trembling and it was salivating, making a noise somewhere between a bawl and a growl. It threw back its head, then tilted it from left to right. Bones cracked, then it began to hum, all the while reaching out toward me with black claws that were easily five inches long.

  It stopped moving, huffed, then trained its deepred eyes on my face.

  A rough growling noise came from behind it, and a moment later the two black mastiffs emerged, one on each side of the bear. Their red eyes burned, if anything, even brighter than before.

  “They won’t hurt you, UncGil, I promise. You just gotta come back inside and close the door.”

  I wasn’t about to move any closer to that door.

  “You had the rumbling room dream again, didn’t you, UncGil?”

  I turned toward my nephew. “How could you know that?”

  “‘Cause it’s still following you.” He stared at me for a second. “Long-Lost showed me in the comic. But I can still see it around you.”

  I started moving backward.

  Slowly.

  The bear and the dogs continued staring at me.

  When I was a few more feet away, the bear looked down at one of the dogs. The mastiff gave a quick nod of its head, and the bear reached out, gripped the door, and pushed it closed.

  At the last moment, before the barn door was f
ully shut, the bear raised its other paw and waved at me.

  “Here you go, UncGil,” sad Carson from behind me. He stood there holding a beat-up wooden stool. “You gotta sit down and talk to Long-Lost.”

  He set down the stool, then waited for me to move.

  “You’re talking a lot better than you have been,” I said to him.

  “Uh-huh, I know. Long-Lost, he says it’s because I’m one of the ‘special ones.’ Because I don’t have to be helped by the Keepers, I’m getting there faster.”

  “Getting where?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know yet.” Then he smiled the smile of the Carson I’d always known and loved more than anything in the world, came over, and wrapped his arms around me. “I love you so much, UncGil.”

  I put my arm around him. “I love you, too, buddy.”

  “That’s good. Hey-do you like swans?”

  It was one of those non sequitur subject shifts that had always been a staple of conversations with him.

  “I, uh… I don’t know, Carson. I never thought about it.”

  “Swans are pretty.”

  “Yes… yes, they are.”

  “Yeah.” He let go of me and started walking back toward his art project. “You should sit down and rest, UncGil. See what Long-Lost has to say.”

  I sat down, wincing from the pain in my hip, arm, and shoulder. Reaching into my pocket, I removed and unrolled the new issue of Modoc: Land of the Abandoned Beast.

  Before I even pulled the cover back, I felt something brush against my leg and looked down to see Carson’s missing cat, Butterball, rubbing against me and purring.

  (Butterball went to live at the Magic Zoo…)

  I reached down to pet him and he, as always, rolled over onto his back and offered his tremendous belly. I rubbed it, and Butterball’s purring grew louder, deeper, more contented.

  Then, as usual, he fell asleep like that; on his back, legs splayed in every direction, mouth open. He looked like the cat equivalent of the town drunk passed out in the gutter.

  I looked toward the barn door, heard the bear huff again, then unrolled the comic and turned to the first page.