*
Burns pushed through the locals. They continued to sing softly and harmoniously. He refused to think of what that meant. He wanted to find Elsie. As he pushed through, those closest to him reached out to touch him. Some found his wounded back, and caressed his bloody shirt and skin. He wanted them to stop singing. He wanted them to help.
None resisted his progress. He saw no sign of Elsie. She would be ahead. She would be outside the hotel waiting for him. They wouldn’t keep singing, Burns told himself over and over, not with people left inside the hotel. He thought of singed feathers and small, burnt bodies.
He left the crowd a few feet from the entrance to the hotel. Black smoke plumed from the doorway, and rose over the façade. Flames burst from the windows overhead. Singed particles like black pollen floated through the air. Burns coughed against the acrid waves. Many of the crowd watched him while they sang. Their eyes streamed, stung by the polluted air.
A woman came from the front of the crowd. Pais. She wore swathes of cloth, and the swollen imitation stomach. Burns went to her.
"Where’s Elsie? Have you seen her?"
Pais gripped his forearms and said his name. The smoke must have irritated her throat, too, since the word sounded too soft. He thought of the dead centurions.
He shook his arms free. "Have you seen Elsie? You know who I’m talking about."
Pais looked disappointed, and tried to touch him again. He stepped back. From inside the hotel, he heard wood crackle, and the feverish rushed breaths of the fire itself.
He looked along the crowd again, but saw no sign of Elsie. The crowd sang their vaguely monotonous hymn. Above, hidden behind the amorphous smoke, something moved with the sound of dragging leather.
Burns looked at the hotel, willing, hoping, for Elsie to stumble out. With the smoke filtering through the doorway, it took a few moments to see the diagram painted on the panel of the door in slick dark fluid -- the basic shape of a man with bull-like horns.
It gave Burns a dizzying thought --
-- the horned god is here --
-- but he pushed it away. He stepped to the hotel and put a hand on the warmed door handle. He turned back to see if anyone would help. No one came forward. He opened the door.
*
Curling smoke embraced him. Ash and acrid air rushed into his lungs. He was coughing before his third step, and already blinded by the smoke. He hunched over, then touched the floor with his fingers, and felt forward that way. Under the worst of the smoke, he could still breathe. His stinging eyes saw enough to see the long receptionist desk, though he couldn’t see fire in the lobby. When he changed direction to hurry to the staircase, he kept against the wall before he found the doorway. He leant into the landing, pushing shut the door with his back and hardly feeling the angry clawed skin.
The staircase was clear of the worst of the smoke, but he was in complete darkness. At least he could stand. He kept a hand on the rail as he took the stairs. He tried taking two or three at a time, but each stair seemed a different height, and after three tries, he advanced with greater care.
He realised as he climbed that he wasn’t sure how many landings there were before he reached their floor. He patted the walls of each landing for the door to the corridor. A new panic started in his chest. He became sure the door was gone; he’d spiral through the staircase, forever patting the walls and never finding a door.
As if reading his troubled, unhinged fear, something at the end of the staircase snickered. He cried against the sound. No one else had followed him inside. No one. He told himself so. No one was down there.
It sounded like it came from a woman. He imagined a wolf-thing opening the landing door while he climbed the stairs -- awkward, incomplete fingers pushing down the door handle -- and in his mind, saw eyes cold as silver rise toward him.
No. Shouldn’t the fire frighten animals, and not encourage them nearer? The wolves had kept to the dark. They had retreated from the populated street.
A more rational possibility, he told himself, was someone had decided to help; or maybe to tell him Elsie was outside ... but Elsie would have made sure he found her.
Burns finally found a door and felt for its handle. It was warm, but not hot. He opened the door, and immediately stumbled from the thick black atmosphere that streamed into the landing. Like the door handle, it was warm, warm as a breath. He ducked under it, where he could see flames trickle from under the nearest doors, offering limited light below the smoke. It was the same colour as the lamplight he’d moved over Pais in the dark.
He scrambled over the floor, past where the flames reached from underneath the doors. Heat radiated from the doors. They blistered like skin. Sweat covered Burns and stung the wounds of his back, and ash-tainted, dribbled into his almost useless eyes. He suddenly had to feed his lungs between coughs. His hands pressed over small shapes that cracked softly under him; as they became more numerous, he realised they were dead birds, Rodenje's little orphans. They reminded him of the path of flowers, except he suspected the carcasses would lead him to his suite.
He wasn’t going to find out. His vision was gone. Sweat made the ash covering him a soft skin. More ash furred his throat. His throat and lungs and eyes felt like open wounds. He continued to choke, and collapsed in weak convulsions. His limbs curled into his midriff, drawing the small bodies on the floor toward him, as if he mourned for them. A sheet fell over his body, coated him, and grew in weight, until it felt like cold leather cocooning him.
Mothers.
Burns woke with his insides feeling flayed. It was dark and he wondered if the leathery sheet that wrapped around him in the hotel corridor would hold him forever within this empty stillness. He wouldn’t mind; it felt like floating in nothingness. Nothingness was somehow appealing. It would make his failures – his book, losing Elsie -- insignificant. He would no longer need to prove himself, prove anything. He raised his hands to touch the leathery sheet, but found darkness, only darkness. He heard someone nearby crying, and listened while the cries became clearer. He eventually recognised them as his own sobs.
Cool, callused fingers touched his forehead, and scraped over his face to linger on his cheek. They were stubby and felt incomplete -- the idea of a human hand, he thought, rather than an actual hand -- with sharp tips that reminded him of the claws that had torn his foot and his back. As if called on, the wounds started aching. Dimly, he was aware that he lay over something damp and warm, possibly blood from the ripped tissue of his back.
He thought of trying to move from the claws, but sensed little malice, and it was easier to stay still. Besides, the coolness of the skin was like water, calming where it touched. The claws moved down over the prickling skin of his chest and stomach, their touch telling him he was naked.
He could still smell burning, and wondered if he remained in the hotel, until he realised the smokiness came from his pores. A pressure in his skull dulled his thoughts. This was also good, he decided, though it pressed like rain clouds and promised pain.
A light shed around him and he turned from it. He wasn’t ready for daylight. Neither was the thing hunched beside him. As it shrank from the light, Burns wasn’t sure if he glimpsed an old woman, or a deformed animal. If it was a woman, she was almost naked, save for a patched black pelt. He saw its heavily swollen stomach; it was beyond simply pregnant, the tissue of its yellowish-white belly stretched so thinly, that it was almost translucent. The thing scratched on all fours to a corner, where it drew shadows around it like a blanket until Burns saw only a vague form, a shadow deeper than the rest.
Pais came through the open door.
Daylight blurred Burns' sight and rendered Pais differently. His eyes were dry and felt coated with grit. At first, he thought this could be Pais' older sister -- older by a decade, probably more. Then she sat beside him (he finally registered the unyielding slab; he wondered, dimly, if this was where he had lain with Pais), where she appeared in her forties, a woman who could pass for youn
ger until scrutinised.
He looked to where the haggish creature had retreated, and within the rust-cogged state of his mind, tried to remember if it was in that corner that he'd found his clothes over the dismembered animals. Either the creature adapted perfectly to the shadows, or it had moved.
He opened his lips, which felt numb and dry as a healing wound. Instead of words, a whisper of stale air left him. His chest rattled. A convulsive hack had him curl over the slab. Snot and tears flowed from him. When it past, he lay breathless, with grit from his throat now clinging to his tongue and teeth. Weight like a sand dune pressed over his chest.
Once he had enough air to whisper, he pointed to where he thought the haggish thing hunkered, and asked, "What is it?"
"One of our old mothers," Pais said dismissively. She stroked his head while he drew feeble breaths, and wiped his face with a cloth -- he didn’t know where she took it from, or where she put it afterward. She said, "I suppose she made promises to you? No?"
He croaked, "Old mother?"
Pais sighed, but said, "They are such pathetic creatures. They dream and dream and never accept what they are -- lost spirits who try to keep living children in their bellies." She looked into the shadows, a few feet from where Burns looked. Loathing hardened her eyes. "Except the old mothers never birth. But they keep trying, until the children grow too big inside and die, when they must pull them from their bodies. Then they find a woman who sleeps, to steal her unborn baby and put it in their own belly, thinking this time, this baby will birth, this child will open its eyes, it will cry for its mother, it will cry me."
Burns saw the old mother's eyes shine like moonlight over water, and saw the old mother's teeth exposed by a similar cold light. It growled at Pais, but Pais turned back to Burns. He should feel fear, but remembered the delicate touch of the creature -- it was of a different mind than those that had chased him, or it no longer wanted to harm him.
He asked, "What’s happening here?"
Pais said, "The old mothers were badly chosen and they failed us, but we must keep trying. We must keep faith."
"Pais," Burns said, but his words, whatever he meant them to be, faded into a long, hurt sigh. The smoke in his system left him exhausted and dispirited. Fatigue already pressed him against the slab. He drew a breath that left his lungs raw. "Where's Elsie?"
"You know she had nothing to offer you. But the Lady can offer you everything. The festival, the tributes -- we are to make you ready."
"I don’t believe in the Lady."
"You have no choice. She is a god. She demands and we serve."
"Pais..."
She said, "I was Pais for the festival."
"Please. Where is Elsie? Did she get out of the hotel?"
"Her faith is seen. Your fate is still open."
Gnarled syllables came from the old mother. Pais retorted with syllables as thick and convoluted.
Burns felt as faint as the air trailing through his throat. Some internal gravity seemed to sink his eyes through their sockets; it dragged his eyelids closed, and made his skull feel full of bog water. He was drifting back into the exhausted sleep his damaged body needed, but he dimly wondered if more than this was responsible. Leathery darkness embraced him.
*
He woke with the room shut against daylight. Elsie sat beside him, where Pais had been. She wore a thin pale nightdress that was too big for her. The room was dark again, except for the dim light over Elsie’s face. Burns' heart rose, until he noticed her eyes remained as dark as the bedroom.
-- except this isn’t a bedroom, Burns reminded himself; it’s a temple.
Her eyes quivered like pools. She smiled the same condescending smile Pais had given him, except for her teeth -- they were the moonlit blades of the wolfish old mothers.
"You never helped me," she told him. She touched his cheek with a hand that glowed like moonlight on damp leaves, though her fingers felt dry and powdery. Aromas of oily nuts and seasoning rose from her cool skin. "You left me for them. You made a tribute of me. You never believed we should be together."
Burns groaned against her touch. It made his skin feel as if it rippled. He released a small sound that might have been a cry, except it died partway from his throat.
"I suppose you're sorry?" she said, the corners of her lips tearing across her cheeks until they no longer made a smile, or any expression. "But you didn’t ask me to come here, did you? You never asked me to care for you. You made your choice, even if you never had the courage to follow through. Now I’m not your problem. Right? It's better this way. You would never finish it between us. You couldn’t. Now, you don’t have to fail, you owe me nothing. I'm ready for the new flesh. I'm eternal." The edges of her ripped lips started to curl like dying petals, exposing dry purplish gums.
"I tried to help you," Burns finally managed.
He could see her tongue move through the ripped flesh as she spoke: "You were never meant to help me, dear."
She had the stench of the old mothers. The garment rose between her breasts (they were fuller than Burns ever knew them) and over her lap, like a tent around her engorged midriff.
-- her skin, Burns thought, and managed to raise a hand and touch her long enough to push her fingers from his face. Whatever this was, it had Elsie's features, but the skin was like an ill-fitting glove.
The features rippled apart and exposed the contorted face of the old mother. The pools disguising the eyes were gone. She glared faded moonlight.
When she moved, her body slithered against her garment. The swollen womb pressed Burns' side (it felt taut and hard against his hip, cold and very still). He recognised the same stewy and wildly sexual fragrance that rose between him and Pais when they laid on the slab. Revulsion and desperation urged his weakened body to flail at the thing's face and shoulders. Dead film and dust from her cracked skin pattered over him. She snatched and pinned his forearms to the slab. Her fingers felt stiff against his skin, hard and strong. She leant over his face. He caught the potent mix of Rodenje wine and spices, and fleshy decay.
-- from the dead body inside her, Burns thought.
He couldn’t fight her; the revulsion that had strengthened him a moment ago had already depleted the little energy restored by sleep. He lay still and gasping.
"You can give me a child. Give it to me and you won’t have to fuck another bitch again," she hissed eagerly. "We’ll make a glorious boy I can keep inside me. I'll feel it grow and grow. Our flesh. New flesh. For us. A new Orphan boy for the Lady."
Something like hope (it suddenly made her seem pathetic, Burns thought) filled her alien eyes. Something like a smile raised her ripped cheeks. She raised her legs over the slab and across his thighs, to shimmy over his pelvis. Her cold, swollen stomach pressed over his. He tried to shift under her, but couldn't.
The garment was her only clothing. He felt her dry inner legs scrape his naked thighs. She let go of his left arm to reach beside the bed. Her stomach pushed the air from him. Her garment did little to disguise a body of knotted growths and old wounds, tufts of stiff fur, and cracked skin.
She brought her hand back spilling particles over Burns and the slab. She raised her clenched hand over his lips. He gasped under the weight of her, and she dropped a few morsels into his mouth -- seasoned nuts similar to those at the restaurant. They tasted of milk and fields.
The pieces felt jagged in his smoke-shrivelled throat. He immediately coughed, sputtering bits over the old mother and his own body. Her eyes twitched. She released his forearm, and grabbed his jaw to press it shut. Burns' teeth crushed more nuts. He gagged on their debris. He tried to twist from her grip, but she knocked his head against the slab, and kept his jaw shut.
She leant her misshapen head closer to his. "This is for you," she cooed, her gentle voice in contrast to the cold hatred in her eyes. "Today is for you."
Small hard chunks of food clogged his throat. Tears washed his cheeks. His eyes suddenly felt too large for their sockets. His
skin felt hot as baked stone.
"It's for you," the old mother seethed. "The little orphans fall for you -- and you're unworthy!"
Burns sensed the darkness move around them. The room suddenly seemed not to exist -- it couldn’t, considering the vastness of whatever swirled around the slab. Burns felt the old mother stiffen in apprehension. Her garment bellowed as the air rushed around the slab. She screamed. Then she leapt from him -- except an instant later, Burns realised she'd not leapt, the dark hurled her and smashed her against a wall. He heard her bones snap and a boggy stink spilt through the room from her ruptured body.
Even choking, starving for air, Burns' mind and body reacted against the dark. He tried to curl from it. He grabbed the side of the slab, and rolled off. He hardly noticed the crushed nuts he coughed up. On the floor, he crawled to the corner where the slab met the wall. He knocked over the table where the old mother had fetched the nuts. The bowl clattered and the nuts tapped the floor like impatient claws.
He felt the dark's attention on him. Its long breaths were like the wind over the Rodenje hills. Burns remained curled on the floor, shivering, hearing the tortured whimpers of the old mother just a few feet away, gasping air tainted with the odours of her burst body, gaping at the dark, and too terrified to think.
Cull.
Burns woke to a white flood that seared his vision. When he turned from it, hands came from either side -- not those of an old mother, the air was clean of such decay. This skin was softer, the touches gentler. They kept his limbs against the ... not the slab, this felt different under his bare skin. He lay on wood, and it rocked as if to a lullaby. Air moved around him and carried scents of grasses and the countryside. The searing light was sunlight. He was outdoors.
The world merged in his vision. He turned to the people beside him. Local girls, younger than Pais, pressed on his arms while they talked to one another. Each wore swathes of white cloth. Burns thought their faces caked with moss and clay, but saw the moss had grown along the rims of their eyes and around their nostrils. As they spoke, he saw mossy substance over their lips and teeth. Faint trails of it peppered their cheeks; it grew through their long hair, stitching it. He watched the forearm of one of the girls twist like a wrung clothe. The girl either didn’t notice, or didn’t mind.
Dead Birds: The Dark Orphans Collection Page 12