by Donald Tyson
You dig the earth. You move the stones.
Understanding came, and I felt the wordless affirmation of the djinn. It fed on corpses, or on the lingering life essence of corpses, but it possessed no physical body with which to dig them from their graves.
“Why can’t you just pass your head and arms into the earth, as you pass them through my flesh?”
Holy words seal the ground.
In the books of necromancy I had studied, it was written that words were tangible to the djinn, and might be used as barriers or as weapons. A thing described in the correct words became real to the fleshless beings who dwelt in the realm of air that encircled our world. The words of the Koran must possess potency against devils. This surprised me, as I had always dismissed the holy texts sung by the mullahs as the meaningless diversion of fools.
“Very well. Show me a treasure, and the next grave I encounter will be opened for you.”
No treasure lies here. Soon we reach treasure.
“Where is this treasure to be found?”
In the city between the hills.
“There are no cities in the Empty Space. What city?”
The city has no name.
My cynical laughter floated on the night breeze.
“You want me to continue feeding you, but you give me only promises in return?”
A sense of protest stirred in my mind. The dignity of the creature was offended by my lack of faith. With my hand I batted away its assurances as though they were beetles buzzing around my head.
“First show me treasure, then I will open a grave for you.”
When I continued to ignore its thoughts in my head, the creature uncoiled its arms from my neck and pulled its face from my skull. It hopped gracefully to the ground and slipped away into the desert, pausing to look back at me.
“First the treasure, then the grave,” I repeated.
Almost sadly, as though my words had injured its feelings, it darted and flitted behind the dunes and was lost from my sight.
As I walked onward alone, the silver glow of the road began to dim, and the dizziness that I had felt since waking left me. The night regained its customary appearance. I raised my hand in front of my face, but my fingers no longer gave off their own light. If the djinn hopped on the road behind me, it was invisible to my normal vision. The effect of the spiders persisted for less than a day. Idly, I wondered if I would still be able to hear the djinn speak were it to thrust its head through mine, even without the influence of the spiders.
The light breeze fell still. A faint sound made me stop and listen. Ahead a human voice murmured through the darkness, and a camel grunted. Taking care to walk silently, I climbed a hill near the road for a better vantage. Upon the black expanse of sand beside the road several campfires glittered like a scattering of rubies. The fires were small—no caravan made large cooking fires in a land without wood, where anything that burned must be carried by cart or on the backs of beasts. Yet by their light I saw several dozen large wagons and many smaller carts, numerous camels, and as many horses. It was not the caravan that had abandoned me, but a more prosperous group of merchants. Since I had not seen their tracks on the road, I knew it must be making its way west, to Yemen.
Descending the far side of the hill, I walked southward away from the road and into the moonlit dunes, then made my way east until I crouched behind the encampment, where the arc of wagons shielded me from the light of the fires. There would doubtless be many useful things to steal, if I could approach undetected. No dog barked. Since I was not able to move over the loose sand and pebble-strewn ground with absolute silence, there must be no dogs in the caravan, a token of good fortune from the fates. Most of the caravan lay sleeping, the poor on the ground in their blankets, the more prosperous in their wagons. Only a few men sat huddled before one of the fires, muttering to each other as they shared a leather-covered flask of wine.
Making my way to the wheel of a large wagon, I stood in its shadow and listened for several minutes. Nothing stirred within its cover. I sniffed the air. It was laden with a curious sweet fragrance. The point of my dagger easily penetrated the thick felt. I sawed the blade back and forth slowly to avoid noise, then climbed onto the hub of the wheel and pushed my head through the slit. Within the wagon it was very dark. Had the enhancement of my vision caused by the white spiders endured, I would have been able to see its contents easily, for the spiders made radiant not only anything having life, but anything formerly alive such as the very wood of the wagon, or anything possessed of life force, such as the djinn.
My eyes adapted to the nearly absolute darkness, which was broken only by a beam of light from the moon that shone between the imperfectly closed curtains at the front of the wagon. I saw an elongated box of wood that filled the bed of the wagon, and beside it two simple stools, both empty. Upon a small table the stub of a candle stood, most of its length melted to a puddle of wax at the base of its brass holder. The tang of the burnt wick still hung on the air, mingled with the overpowering sweetness of honey. Curiosity would not permit me to leave the wagon without learning its contents. It was not difficult to squirm through the slit in the covering. The flat lid of the box had been fastened with only two nails, neither of great length. I pried it gently up to avoid the protest of the wood as the nails pulled loose and slid it aside.
Within lay a bundle of linen that could be nothing else but a burial shroud, yet it was unnaturally bulky, as though layered beneath its surface. I slit away its binding cords and cut it open. The exhalation of honey and spices that welled up from the rent cloth almost made me retch, it was so overpowering. Beneath it was a body entirely swathed in bands of linen that were saturated in honey and spice. I smelled cinnamon clearly, and myrrh. My hands quickly became covered in the sticky honey, which had partially dried to a kind of paste. As I unwrapped the corpse, I cursed silently and periodically scrapped my fingers clean with the edge of my blade.
The unwinding swaths removed from the head revealed the face of a young woman of beautiful countenance, aged no more than eighteen years. Her flesh was perfectly preserved, so that she looked as though she had died only moments before. I realized the purpose of the honey. A wealthy family transported the corpse of their daughter to Yemen for burial, and the honey was intended to keep the body from decay on the long journey across the desert. I could not help but admire how well it fulfilled its service. Had I still retained my manhood, I might have been moved to lust, but in my butchered condition the only motive I felt in my heart was greed. With quick tugs at the windings, I exposed the hands of the corpse. The fingers of the girl were covered with gold rings, in many of which glittered pearls and jewels.
It was easier to cut through their thin bands with the point of my knife than cut off her fingers. Even the rings were sticky. Brush them as I would on the outer covering of the shroud, I could not get them completely clean. Reflecting that the sand of the desert would scour them, if I hung them in the wind while I slept, I cut a small square of the outer shroud and wrapped it around the rings. It needed no tie to keep it closed. More impatiently, I cut through the swaths around the breast of the girl and was rewarded with a silver medallion inscribed with holy texts. No doubt her family had placed it there to ward off the djinn. How effective it might be against spirits I could not guess, but it held no power over me. I scrapped as much of the sticky mess from it as would come away and forced it into a pocket of my robe.
Almost I turned away from the corpse, then thought to cut the shroud from her feet. Around each of her slender ankles glittered a fine chain of gold. Nicking through the gold links with my knife, I peeled them away and thrust them into my pocket against the honeyed mass of the medallion. Her feet and ankles were so graceful in their shape, I could not resist tracing their outlines with my fingertips. Narisa had just such ankles as these, but her anklets had been of silver, with tiny silver be
lls that tinkled as she walked. A pang touched my heart. It was the first time since my expulsion from Yemen that I remembered the loveliness of my beloved.
The only other prize in the wagon was the tinder box and flint that had been used to light the candle on the table. There was little on the open desert to burn, but the ability to make fire might prove useful were I able to find a store of candles, or an oil lamp. The wax stub on the table, though no longer than the width of two fingers, would burn for another hour. It slid easily into the same pocket that held the tinderbox. I took one last lingering gaze at the face of the corpse in the moonlight. She possessed a great beauty and would not have been out of place in the harem of King Huban. Yet here she lay, in the morning of her life, a corpse wrapped in honey, whereas I, wretched though I might be, continued to draw breath. Wondering at the mystery of being, I squeezed out the rent in the side of the wagon.
The few other covered wagons that I could approach without danger of immediate discovery were all occupied. Their inhabitants snored or stirred restlessly in sleep. The wagon with the corpse had been placed some distance away from the others, making it easier to approach. No one wished to remain near the dead, except perhaps the mother or brother or sister who had burned the candle and sat chanting prayers over the honey-wrapped corpse, and even that conscientious watcher had chosen to sleep elsewhere. I wondered if the ghost of the girl had been present in the wagon while I robbed her body.
The caravan proved as rich a prize as I had hoped, but there would be other prizes. It was an easy matter to steal from those who thought themselves alone in the desert, even for a man new to the trade. Another epithet to add to my name, whatever it might be. The name given me in my dream by the faceless walker across the dunes returned to me. Very well, I would be Alhazred, eunuch, monster, cannibal, grave-robber, and now, thief. What other titles would increase this list before my days ended?
Thinking bitter thoughts, I almost passed without notice a shadow upon the dunes, and would have done so had it not stirred as my eyes slid across it. I stopped and stared, and even then it appeared no more than a pool of darkness. I prepared to continue on, when something gleamed in the shadow. It was a moment before my mind identified it—the reflection of starlight in an eye. With an instinctive snarl I drew my dagger and backed away, holding the broad blade where it might be easily seen. Other shadows began to creep toward me across the sand. They were all around, closing inward. I turned, my teeth barred.
My eyes fixed upon the nearest of the shadows, but my mind refused for several seconds to make sense of its shape. At last, as though with reluctance, its form emerged under the moonlight. It was shaped like a man, but smaller and wizened, with slender limbs and a distended belly, a blackened corpse sprung to unnatural life. In its mouth sharp yellow teeth gleamed, and black claws adorned its elongated fingers. The nakedness of its body showed that it was male. A fragment of fable arose from my childhood, concerning ghouls that haunted the places of the dead, and had the ability to move unseen through the night. Now that I discerned the shape of the thing, I saw it in all its hideous clarity, and wondered that I had been about to pass it unaware.
A cry would bring the men from the caravan to investigate, but when they discovered the state of the dead noblewoman and found her rings in my thawb, they would undoubtedly kill me. The ghouls seemed to know that I would not raise an alarm. At least a dozen surrounded the place where I stood slashing the air with my knife in futile threat. They showed no fear of the blade, and in truth their claws were fearsome weapons, as deadly as any hooked talon of the hawk. More than any other thing, the silence of the creatures unnerved me. I considered crying out and testing my fortune with the men of the caravan, but it was too late—one loud sound and they would fall upon me and tear me to pieces. The men with their lamps would discover only bloody chunks of flesh on the sand.
As I turned to ward off a female ghoul that tried to creep nearer than the others, the heavy silver medallion I had stripped from the corpse of the young woman knocked against my breast. Instinctively, I thrust my hand into the pocket and drew it forth, holding it aloft in the moonlight. Soft hisses of dismay filled the night. The creatures put their taloned fingers up to shield their faces and backed away. Whether there was power in the charm, or whether my use of it caused them to fear it as an unknown weapon, I could not guess, but I thanked the fates that I had taken it from the corpse.
“What are you?” I whispered, speaking to the nearest of the monsters, the same one that I had first seen.
He was larger than the others and appeared less afraid of the talisman.
“We are ghouls,” he hissed quietly.
“Why do you seek to attack me? I am not of the dead.”
“This is our land. No one else may hunt here.”
The only prey hunted by ghouls was corpses. They must be aware of the dead girl in the wagon. Perhaps they smelled her decay beneath the sweetness of the honey.
“I hunt nothing.”
“You lie,” he said, cocking his grotesque head to one side. “We saw you open the grave of the man whose robe and sandals you wear, and watched you feast.”
A great shame rose within me. Another being knew that I had willingly eaten human flesh. Almost as quickly I felt a flash of anger at my irrational weakness, and buried it deep within my heart.
“I was starving. I would have died.”
“You are not of our clan. You must die.”
“Wait!”
The leader of the ghouls halted his approach.
“If I bring you the corpse in the wagon of the caravan, will that buy me the right to hunt in your land?”
The leader paused to consider, his black eyes narrowed in thought. He withdrew a few paces, and several other ghouls clustered around him. Their whispers reached my ears, but they spoke in a strange language unknown to me. He returned, the others following at his heels. I raised the knife, fearing a rejection of my pact.
“Bring the meat away from the fires and the men, and you may hunt in our land.”
I realized that they feared the firelight. Perhaps they could only remain invisible beneath the natural light of the stars and the moon, or the brightness of the flames hurt their eyes. There was no choice but to trust them. I sheathed the knife and put away the medallion.
“You are not like other men,” the leader of the ghouls murmured, sniffing at my thighs.
Silent laughter rose in my throat.
“I am ugly and no longer a man at all.”
“That is not what I mean. You saw me.”
“You are difficult to see. I almost walked past you.”
“But you saw me. Other men would not have seen me.”
To this, I had no answer. Leaving the ghouls behind the dunes, I returned to the wagons. The first glow of dawn tinged the horizon to the east. In less than an hour the sun would rise. I climbed into the wagon through the slit in its side and lifted the corpse of the girl from her box, thankful for the outer cover of the shroud that protected me from the worst of the honey. With care I slid the body through the slit and followed it to the sand. It was the work of only a few minutes, since I already knew what the wagon contained, and how to enter and leave it. The corpse was not heavy. I slung it over my shoulder and made my way back to the dunes where the ghouls waited. Laying the girl on her back on the sand, I parted her shroud and stood back.
The leader came forward eagerly, his nose snuffing the air. He peeled away the swaths from the belly of the corpse and bit the exposed white flesh, tearing off a chunk with his teeth and chewing. The motion of his powerful jaw stopped. He spat the flesh out on the ground.
“Poison,” he hissed, glaring at me.
“I can scrape off the honey, “ I said quickly.
“Not the honey. The meat. The meat is poison.”
For a moment I wondered what the p
reparers of the corpse had done to taint its flesh. Then I comprehended the creature’s meaning. Ghouls were carrion feeders. The preserved flesh of the corpse was too fresh. Evidently they could not digest fresh meat. The leader took a threatening step toward me, and the others followed.
“I can fix the meat, so that you can eat it,” I said in haste.
The ghouls stopped and waited.
“The honey and spices keep the flesh from corruption. If I scrape off the honey and set the body out under the sun, by tomorrow night it will be fit for you to eat.”
The leader considered these words and nodded his head. He spoke in his own language to the others, and all melted into the darkness.
Chapter 5
knowing that the men of the caravan would search for the corpse at first light, I carried it far into the desert, taking care to erase my tracks when I crossed soft sand by beating the ground behind me with my thawb, which I removed and wound about my forearm for this purpose. The morning breeze would soon do the rest, obscuring even the faint marks left by my garment from the sand. There was no chance the searchers would discover where I took the body, and in a day they would be forced to move on. I found a rift between two rocky hills with an overhanging ledge that offered me shade from the sun, laid the corpse on an exposed stone, and put my thawb back on. With care, I stripped the shroud and wrappings from the body and used my knife to scrape away all the honey that clung to the naked skin. It was necessary to shave her head, beneath her arms, and between her thighs, in order to remove the honey that saturated her hair.
My work finished just as the first rays of the sun found their way between the hills and touched the corpse. I crawled under the ledge and prepared to sleep, but first ate three of the white spiders so that when the ghouls came I would have the advantage of enhanced vision, in case they were not true to their pact. The honey on my fingers improved their taste, and I licked them contentedly as I settled my head on my water skin. The corpse rested near enough that I would hear any attempt by bird or beast to disturb it.