Dead Boys

by Gabriel Squailia

  “Take this for your troubles,” said Jacob, laying a shining object on the bar. It was a little chipped and completely useless in the underworld, but the barman was eager enough to snatch up the mounted oval of a Guinness tap and cradle it in his hands. “If you can undo the screws you can speak to him awhile,” said Barnabas quietly.

  “Phillips head?” said Jacob, who had already climbed onto the bar and begun rummaging in his knapsack.

  Standing before the remains of the man he’d spent most of his death seeking, laying his hands on the mottled driftwood that housed him, and beginning to work out screws that hadn’t budged since the day the man had been mounted, Jacob Campbell was so full of emotion that he was surprised to notice that his heart wasn’t beating. The sense of excitement that could, at rare moments, overwhelm the dead was so similar to the effect of adrenaline on the living body that the term “bone-rush” was applied as a psychic defense against confusion, a way of reinforcing the reality of death at the moment one could most easily forget it. A dead man’s mouth was already dry, no throb afflicted his throat or temples, no sweat dampened his palms, and his nerves couldn’t tingle; nevertheless, when a bone-thrower triumphed or a sentimental corpse found an object that recalled her life, something essential about that person’s perception changed, and it was hard to say what had changed it. While it was strange for Jacob, who didn’t tremble, and who had no breath to hold, to conceive of himself as impassioned, he could not deny that the sight of the Living Man on his knotted mantle of wood was coloring his existence, nor that the sensation he felt when he held the Living Man’s head in his arms blazed just as brightly without its mortal trappings.

  “I’ll be buggered backwards,” said Leopold as Jacob returned, “the shiny ponce has done it. That was quite the sales pitch, Campbell: recombinant preservation, indeed! As if two corpses would suffer being sewn to each other for more than an hour without tearing one another to bits.”

  “What were you whispering to him right at the end?” said Remington. “What changed his mind?”

  “I was bluffing. Desperately.” Jacob propped the Living Man’s plaque at the end of the table.

  “Now what?” said Remington.

  The three of them stared at the Living Man’s face, pondering the paint that peeled from the wrinkles around his eyes. Even the headless seemed to be closely attending to his features, their hands gripping the edges of the tabletop.

  “Maybe he’ll feel better if you give him back his finger,” said Remington.

  “Let’s be easy,” said Jacob. “By all accounts this man hasn’t spoken since before the flood.”

  The party fell into a silence that had the air of a séance, surrounded but unbroken by the Crowded Car’s ruckus.

  At last Jacob addressed the head, holding his palms open as if mimicking the rhetorical style of an ancient politician. “O brave explorer, O nameless thanatologist, forder of the five rivers, uniter of life, death, and the space between: the path toward you has been a long one, and I grieve to find you so ill-treated at its end.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Leopold, “that looks awfully uncomfortable. Did they nail him to that plaque from inside his skull?”

  “See, the bolts went in through the back of his skull here,” said Remington. “They must have put the nuts in through his mouth.”

  “Ingenious!”

  “O Living Man,” Jacob went on, “the road you trod is one no other man on Earth or beneath it has yet understood, but it need not remain forever obscured. I ask only that we be allowed to serve you and bring your works into the light of day.”

  “He means himself and the boy,” said Leopold, “begging your pardon.”

  “It is my greatest hope to walk with you into the sunshine of the living world. If it is a disciple you desire, I will bear that name; if you are weary, I will carry on your legacy. If there is a place in this cosmos where you might find your rest, I will bear you thence. The abominable fate that has befallen you can be transformed, if you only speak the word.

  “Tell me, O Living Man, will you let us bear you from this dark chamber? Will you once more tread the path that leads between the worlds? Will you, O ancient traveler, be free?”

  They waited.

  “Was that a sigh?” said Remington suddenly.

  “It was gas escaping from your lily-white corpse,” said Leopold, “but we could always convince the barman it was a hallelujah.

  “Really, Jacob, is this as far ahead as you’ve thought? The man has been mum and sober on a barroom wall for eons, watching bodies liquefy for entertainment, and your plan for bringing him around is, ‘Pretty please, O moldy one’?”

  Jacob laid a hand on his breast pocket. “It was worth a shot,” he said, “but there are other ways. Since I’m out of alcoholic baubles and the barman has no interest in time, I’ll have to resort to a plan I won’t ask you to take part in.

  “Leopold, you’ve done me a great service. Here’s the payment I’ve promised you,” he said, working an account-stone out of the pouch on his wrist and whispering the password. “I rather doubt you’ll want to follow me past this point, but your path is your own.

  “Remington, my odd little fellow, I fear that we must part ways here. Take Adam and Eve to safety; I’ll wait as long as I can before making my move.

  “When the barman asks for his head, I’ll take the Living Man hostage. If pressed, I’ll use this.” Out of Barnabas’ sight, Jacob opened the ties of his leather pouch, trying to ignore the feeling that Ma Kicks’ finger was pointing at him as he worked out the silver lighter and laid it on the table.

  “Dear Lord!” hissed Leopold. “You moldering loon, you’ll go up like the rest of us! These Tunnels are marinated in alcohol. Dead City will blaze from Heap to Heap!”

  “It’s a chance I’ll take if it means climbing from those ashes with the Living Man.”

  “Sounds like fun,” said Remington. “We’re not going to miss this!”

  Adam flicked his thumb as if urging Jacob to start the fire sooner rather than later. Eve crossed her arms, signaling her discontent, but before any further discussion could be had, Leopold snatched up the lighter and tossed it down his throat.

  “Think of something else,” he muttered as it clattered to a stop in his ribcage. “I won’t spend eternity as a briquette.”

  Remington ignored the bickering that ensued, focusing instead on the group of newcomers pushing through the door at the opposite end of the bar. They were debtors, with white skulls grinning over black robes, the first he’d seen since his descent. Banging on the tops of the nearest tables with their fists, the tallest of them barked, “On your feet! Routine inspection.”

  “Hey,” said Remington. “You guys.”

  “Pipe down, boy. The adults are speaking.”

  “But there’s a—”

  The grumbling of the Crowded Car’s patrons suddenly ceased as the door at the opposite end creaked open again. The debtors stepped aside for a compact corpse in a well-kept robe who threw his cowl back, revealing a skin-tight leather mask elaborately stitched to resemble a grinning skull.

  “It’s him!” whispered a nearby drunkard. “It’s the blessed Gambler!”

  Every other booth in the car had taken to its feet, but Jacob and Leopold were still lost in debate, ignorant of the two terrified lines that had formed beside the booths at the debtors’ urging. “This is pretty crazy over here,” said Remington as the inspection began. His companions paid him no mind until a wave of indignant voices rose, startling them out of self-involvement.

  “Well,” hissed Leopold, “you couldn’t ask for a better diversion than this! The barman’s trying to quell a riot, the Car’s in an uproar: abscond with the head, and we’ll leave through the back!”

  Before Leopold could retreat, however, Jacob gripped his broomstick and forced his head toward the scene at the back of the bar. The debtors were yanking down the trousers of each corpse in line, exposing their tenderest decay to the gaze of the
Masker, who ignored their curses and moved through their ranks with a businesslike air.

  “He’s pantsing them,” Jacob said in Leopold’s ear. “Almost as if he’s searching for someone with a defining characteristic between his legs, wouldn’t you say?”

  Leopold’s body bucked, a shrill, kettle-like whisper escaping his jaws. “The jig is up! The honeymoon’s over! The ship has sailed! Let us away, boys, while there’s still a chance to escape.” So saying, he tore off toward the car’s far door, paying no mind to those he shoved aside.

  Jacob, scooping up the Living Man’s head, followed after. “So help me god, L’Eclair, if you’ve brought the wrath of the Magnate upon us—”

  “You’ll be very, very cross, I know,” said Leopold. “Now run, while there’s still time!”

  “What’s happening?” said Remington as he was hustled to his feet by Adam and Eve.

  “That was a Masker, one of the Magnate’s generals. Leopold neglected to mention that he’s on the run from the highest authority in Dead City,” said Jacob.

  As the group burst through the door by the bar, Barnabas hollered, “Everyone stay where you are, the next round’s on the house!”

  The swinging door knocked a pair of debtors aside like bowling pins, and the band of outlaws escaped noisily, albeit slowly, down a nearby sewer pipe.

  “What kind of idiot runs from the Leather Masker?” said one from the floor, still within earshot.

  “One who is desperate,” said her partner, a lanky debtor who shifted the weight of an enormous gourd strapped to his shoulder from his back onto his hip. “Alert Monsieur, and I, Jean-Luc, shall ride upon the backs of the guilty!”

  “There’s a debtor on our trail!” said Remington, watching their pursuer with glee. “Why don’t we stop and grab him?”

  Hearing this, Jean-Luc stopped abruptly, giving them a more generous lead.

  “He’s only marking our trail,” said Leopold.

  As if to demonstrate, Jean-Luc scooped a handful of river clay from his gourd and dropped it on the ground behind him.

  “Blast it all, but we haven’t the time to dispatch him. Our only hope is to outrun him!”

  “How?” said Remington. “We can’t even run!”

  This could hardly be denied: haste only caused them to stumble against one another or the walls around them, granting them no more speed than their leisurely pursuer.

  “How far is the nearest exit?” said Remington.

  “Miles away,” said Leopold. “Do you think I brought us all this way for the scenery? We’re in the bowels of Dead City, boy, with the might of the Magnate rushing after us like an enema. Now for the love of your maggoty mother, move!”

  “It occurs to me,” said Jacob, “that the debtors aren’t chasing us because we’ve stolen a severed head from a pub but because we’ve made the mistake of associating with you, Leopold. A more pragmatic man might wonder why we don’t just hand you over.”

  “You’ve already fled, Jacob. We’re accomplices now, and there’s no use blubbering over it,” said Leopold, then promptly collided with the figure turning the corner into the tunnel before them, tumbling ass-over-elbow into her wheelbarrow full of slops. Even as Leopold was bemoaning the ill effects of such dampness on his finery, Jacob recognized the Crowded Car’s lopsided runner, covered in the rotting vegetable matter that had spilled from her conveyance.

  “God’s wounds,” Leopold cried, “the barman sent you to the surface less than an hour ago! Speak, wench: where’s the passage?”

  “No dice,” said the runner, scooping handfuls of pumpkin guts back into her barrow. “That’s the fat man’s secret.”

  “I see,” said Leopold, knocking her barrow to the ground. “Shall I buy this secret from you or twist your arms out of their sockets?”

  “Buying it’s easier all around,” said the runner. “I like your jacket.”

  Leopold seemed primed to argue, but at the sound of the Masker and his claque entering the sewer pipe he began to wrestle with his blazer, saying, “Remington, help me off with this!”

  The runner, unperturbed by the coat’s unnatural stiffness, was so pleased with its color that she led them to the exit herself, humming through the din that rebounded all around them.

  Jacob envied her leisurely pace, as his company only got clumsier the more excited they became, and gained no speed by rushing. Jostling one another, they slammed their shoulders against the slick walls, and banged their heads off the slumping ceilings. With every awkward step they were dogged by the steady slapping of the river-mud, the rough orders of the Leather Masker, and the clattering of bones and boot-heels. It was enough to curdle Jacob’s marrow, but his dread only trebled when the lopsided runner led them to a moldy plaster wall at the end of an alley, where she stopped short.

  “It’s a dead end, you dizzy slut!” cried Leopold. “Give me back my jacket!”

  “It’s a push,” said the runner, shoving the wall down with her hands. By means of rusted pulleys hidden above, the wall came down like a drawbridge, revealing a great concrete ring through which a dim sepia light spilled onto the floor.

  “My thanks, dear woman,” said Jacob, bending as he climbed into the tube. “Would you pull the trap-door shut behind us?”

  “No use,” said the runner, “the bonehead’s already here.”

  Chancing a look over his shoulder, Jacob saw the debtor standing at the end of the alley, holding a dripping fistful of clay. Launching himself up the tube, Jacob clasped the Living Man close to his chest and whispered, “If you can hear me, little Orpheus, pray.”

  The concrete tube they ascended was an industrial smokestack rising sideways through the city’s substrata. Like bubbles from the neck of a champagne bottle, the company burst from its open end into daylight.

  “Trapped like rats!” cried Leopold, for they had emerged at the bottom of Southheap, hemmed in on one side by a sheer wall of corroded metal, on the other by the River Lethe.

  “They’re climbing up the smokestack!” said Jacob.

  Remington tottered out toward the dark water at the end of the rubble, where a bathtub floated swiftly by. “Gee, the current’s strong here,” he said.

  “Would that it were strong enough to carry us to oblivion,” said Leopold. “I’d plunge in happily, just to deny them the satisfaction of giving us over to the Mortar and Pestle. They’ll grind us down, Jacob!”

  “For what?” shouted Jacob, clenching his leather-lined fists hard enough to hear them squeak. “What have you done, Leopold?”

  “All I wanted was time,” murmured Leopold, edging closer to the surface of the river. “Just a little more time, enough to plan my—”

  “Hey, wait,” said Remington, calling Adam and Eve to his side. The three of them, through Remington’s eyes, watched the bloated shape of a naked corpse sailing past on the current. “We’re not trapped: we can float!”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Jacob, looking balefully at the smokestack, which emitted laughter in lieu of smoke. “You’re fresh enough that you’re still full of gas, but Leo and I deflated years ago. You’d bob like a cork, but the weight of our preservative treatments alone would drag us to the bottom, where we’d lie waterlogged for eternity. If only we had wooden body-molds, like Shanthi!”

  “An excellent point,” said Leopold, snapping irritably out of his funk. “Had your prices not been so exorbitant, I’d be floating to safety as we speak.”

  “Really, you can shift the blame to me at a time like this? You’re the author of this travesty, L’Eclair!”

  But Leopold broke off the argument, pointing at the water’s edge. “Jacob, look! Your idiot boy’s a savant!”

  While they were bickering, Remington’s companions had stepped arm-in-arm into the current, where they slowly reclined so that he could hold fast to their ankles. Once afloat, each bent one knee, which Remington linked together, so that their conjoined bodies, buoyant with the bloat of decomposition, formed a small but serviceable hu
man raft. Shrieking like children at a carnival, Jacob and Leopold splashed into the river and clambered aboard.

  As Remington kicked off Southheap’s edge, the Masker and his retinue spilled from the smokestack, staggering to the end of the rubble as the company spun off on the current. There was no time for Jacob to bid his city goodbye. The last thing he saw was the Masker striding past the edge of the rubble, where he planted both boots in the river, paying no mind to the water that tugged insistently at his robe. His eyeless stare, the cracks in his mask, the single finger unfurling from his gloved fist, the laughter that rose from his skull-faced debtors when he spoke in a voice like gravel in a meat grinder, his words incomprehensible to the company: these were the things that haunted Jacob long after the raft had left the city’s mangled skyline behind.

  II

  CHAPTER SIX

  On Lethe

  The River Lethe narrowed as it outran city limits, passing swiftly between the rising walls of the Lethean Valley, offering the company’s fleshy raft no place to rest. While Jacob and Leopold clung to the headless corpses, bickering fearfully as they picked up speed, Remington lay face-down behind them, his hands clasped around Adam and Eve’s ankles. He was immersed in a calm analysis of the river, though the only conclusion he had reached so far was that it was deep and murky. Lethe swirled through his head, stirring hundreds of questions that came and went without any hope of finding answers: its color was a mystery, as were its cargo, purpose, and connection to the world of the living, to say nothing of its rumored droughts and floods, or its points of origin or ending; and yet, to Remington, the greatest mystery was what the river would taste like if the tongue he thrust into it were operational.

  Grape jelly? he wondered. Red wine? Ketchup?

  Maybe the Living Man will know, thought Remington, setting his mind on waking him. Pulling his head above the water-line, he called out to the others, “Make room!”

  “You’re doing a fine job as our rudder,” snapped Leopold. “Don’t spoil it now.”