“No, no!” said the King, waving his hands to quiet the rabble. “I am a just and fair man. Any judgment is left to God above.” His hands rose to reference the sky where his new god was said to reside. “Feed them and give them drink.” The crowd was clearly taken aback but didn’t dare make a sound of displeasure.
Guards rushed food into the cage. The ravenous prisoners barely chewed, just devoured whatever came before them like beggars in a garbage pit. The King’s soldiers silently watched.
When the supply was depleted and the men were satisfied, they lay strewn on the ground of the cage like their dead countrymen on the field. The King looked on from a golden throne without a care. The sun was setting and night’s first chilly breeze rolled down the cliff sides.
Queasiness overtook Garth. Looking around, he could see that the others felt the same. One man began to groan and soon that groan turned into an agonizing scream. Possibly gas? The result of eating too quickly? Garth waited for the symptoms that seemed to be running rampant and when they hit, he knew it was more than bad food.
The entire cage seized as the men convulsed and thrashed against its bars. The sounds coming from within were no longer from men. Skin ripped, bones twisted, and bodies bubbled.
“Men without God are not men at all!” cried the King. “Now, who is the monster?” The crowd howled as agony tore Garth into a deep, silent blackness…
“That was the beginning of my new life,” Garth said.
I couldn’t help it, I stared at his leg, the one he’d claimed had been crushed in the battle.
“It grew back that night. Along with this hump and these horns.”
“And a sleek, new skin made of granite.”
He ignored my attempt at positivity. “No. I was not yet stone. Just a monster. Unfortunately.”
I swallowed past my embarrassment. “So this…transformation…was some sort of torture?”
“Not so much torture as security. If a slave is disfigured, he’s less likely to leave his master.”
I balked. “That would give me more reason to run away. Didn’t you hate him even more?”
“I despised the man. But it is hard to flee when you look like this.” He referenced his own, weird form. “Monsters always stand out among men. And where would we go if we did escape? We were unrecognizable to our families.” He appeared to choke up, even without anything to choke up on. After a moment, he gathered himself and continued, “There is no use killing a soldier if he can be resourced in another way. The King was practical when it came to those things.”
“So what did he have you do?”
“I’m getting to that,” he said through a half-grimace, half-glimmer. He seemed almost…happy that I found his story so enticing. “We became a sort of police force.”
“You had to protect him?” I gasped.
“Yes, but also the capitol city and the people there.”
“His people,” I said with disgust.
“Innocents,” he corrected. “They just happened to have a terrible ruler.”
“That’s still pretty shitty.”
Garth chuckled to himself. “Yes. Yes, it was. We were not so easily swayed, though. We were still serving the man we had risked our lives trying to topple. Obviously, there was resentment.” Garth grabbed his head as he tried to search for something. He found a somber thought that moved him forward. “I can not remember his name. The other Guardian…two syllables.” He looked at me sadly, “Forgive me, I haven’t—”
“It’s fine. I understand.”
“One of us, another Guardian, could not bear his position and he left the palace. He did not get very far, though. Some townspeople believed he was a demon and killed him. It took about twelve men to bring him down, but they got him. Then they burnt the body in the square to ward off further evil. People were very superstitious back then.”
“Maybe it was better to be dead?”
Garth shook his head in distress. “The King went a step further.”
“Further than turning you into slave creatures?”
“Yes. A week later, he returned with the head of the runaway’s wife. Not only were we at risk if we betrayed him, so were our families.”
“What a tricky bastard,” I said under my breath.
“As my mother said, I was at war for family. She was right. So we bit our lips and lived to protect the King. We hoped our lives would pass quickly and that our souls would be reunited with our loved ones, long after all of our passing.”
For the first time in hearing his story, I rolled my eyes. For some reason the idea of black magic, monsters, and Garth’s very existence to begin with was understandable, but the fluffy soul business I just couldn’t ingest.
“You think it is funny. The souls,” he said.
“No, not funny. I just…when it comes to religion, I just…don’t have one.”
“It has nothing to do with religion. Humans have souls. It is a fact. As far as you know, I should not even exist, right? Magic?”
“I know. My reasoning of what’s real and what’s not…it’s stupid. Magic versus science…and all.” I had no clue what I was talking about. A few short days ago, I was scared of devil children in the medicine cabinet. I certainly had no right not believing in ghosts.
“Science is magic and magic is science, Jeremy,” he said bluntly. “You humans think you’ve discovered everything there is to know. You thought you had it all figured out in medieval times, then one hundred years ago, and then fifty years ago. But you always prove yourselves wrong. One day you will find that there is more to the world than atoms and cells and mathematic equations.”
“Something divine?” I asked, with a hint of sarcasm.
“Something you simply have not figured out yet,” he said. “You will, in due time. Until then, I will just have fun watching you speak so convincingly about all that you humanly know.”
*
The local mall of my childhood town was a tiny thing. It had all of the usual suspects lined in rows, begging for business. But thirty miles west of my little beachside city was the Mecca of South Jersey shopping: the Freehold Mall. About three times a year, Mom and her girlfriends would pack us kids in the car and pilgrimage to the shopping center that made ours look like a five and dime. We’d haunt the halls of that two-story behemoth until the recycled air made us sick, but we’d eventually leave feeling like the satisfied consumers we were bred to be.
In time, my friends and I reached an age when we could wander around without parents, as long as we agreed to meet them at a specific time and place at the end of our collective sprees. Even though we were only a bunch of meager fifth graders, venturing into the mall without the ‘rents was a turning point. The glimmers of growing up were upon us and soon we’d be “whatever”-ing our way through life, just like Cher and Dionne in Clueless. Our weekly allowances were spent on soft pretzels and milkshakes before we hit up the very best teen stores. Soon our interest in clothes would fade and we’d make our way to the dork stores. If there was a pile of plush animals, cartoon characters suspended from wires, dinosaur dig sets, rainforests in boxes, or castle dioramas, we were there. Hell, I still eat that shit up. It was in one of those shops that I met Dedo, a little stone creature much like Garth…only pint sized and mass-produced.
I laid eyes on him and immediately needed to take him home. I don’t remember what went through my head at the time but I felt like he was alive, waiting for a caring soul like myself to scoop him up for $15.99. It was my duty to rescue him from the plastic shelving and constant sound of children playing with rain sticks. After much begging, Mom agreed, and he was packed in a tiny box made of recycled material. I carefully transferred the bag containing the box home like it contained my sister’s liver. I was super excited about my new friend and promptly showed him off to my father, whom I knew would be thrilled that I wasn’t bringing home a My Little Pony.
Dad’s library was filled with sacred texts, occult conspiracies and crumbling editions o
f everyone’s favorite fantasy novels. Some dads have books on cars; mine had the Egyptian Book of the Dead. He didn’t attend any secret midnight meetings, as the books were just the result of a passing fad, like the time he started collecting accordions or listened to strictly Cajun music for three months. However, his general interest in the subject matter had staying power, mostly manifesting in his very specific taste in movies. I was a spiteful child, so any recommendation from an authority figure caused me to do the polar opposite. “Jeremy, come watch this movie with me. You’d like it,” he’d holler from the other room. I’d obligatorily stomp over to the couch and pretend to be interested. Despite my pissing and moaning, I usually liked what he was showing. I refused to watch Clash of the Titans about seven times but eventually caved, and I’m very glad that I did.
Dedo’s arrival launched Dad into research mode. He pulled information out of giant books as if he were a grand wizard. “The gargoyle’s grotesque form is used to scare away evil spirits, hence their popularity as decoration on sacred buildings through most of the civilized world,” he read from some encyclopedia of magic-goblin-wackadoo-craziness.
“Of course,” I thought to myself. Bringing Dedo home had been my subconscious way of taking control of a situation that had plagued me for years: nightmares.
My mother had become an old pro at coming up with tactics to rid me of bad dreams. First she tried opening the window every night and asking the monsters to leave. Then the bad dream gate was installed. It was meant to keep trolls and whatnot out of my personal space…but it was really just a childproof gate in the doorway, imprisoning me in my bedroom and keeping me from crawling into theirs. Dream catchers, bedtime prayers and other mental trickeries were deployed in the war against boogies and for the most part, they worked. Purchasing Dedo was my (almost) grown up self’s last effort to purge myself of an affliction that I was too old to be suffering from.
I swiftly unwrapped my gargoyle and gave him a prominent spot on my dresser so that he could monitor me throughout the night. As with the rest of my family, I affectionately kissed Dedo goodnight and greeted him every morning. Just as compulsively as I used to ask God to grant me sweet dreams, I would wish Dedo good luck on his nightly prowl.
In high school, my world shattered—along with Dedo—the result of a routine room cleaning. My over-zealous dusting killed him. I lost it. At seventeen I was inconsolable by having broken what most people would consider a toy. The kitchen counter became a trauma unit as I frantically gathered up the pieces and glued them together. Thankfully I was home alone and didn’t have to face anyone with the embarrassment of going crazy over a smashed knick-knack. But, to me, he was more than that. That’s why I couldn’t stand looking at his haphazardly reassembled head and his chipped shoulders. He once guarded me with pride but I’d reduced him to an unsightly arts and crafts project. Could he even see out of his hot glue-glazed eyes?
Finally, I conceded defeat. I said goodbye to my stalwart friend, buried him in the woods behind my house, and braved the nights alone.
For my sanity, I had to believe that everything in my life was a product of coincidence. Upon meeting Garth, I tried wiping Dedo from memory. The pebble that kept me sane years ago had no connection with the boulder that had kept me alive on New Year’s Eve. The tiniest thought of the two in correlation with each other forced my mind into drawing strange conclusions that I couldn’t begin to understand.
That I didn’t want to understand….
*
Our meetings were brief because I’m a normal person of the world and sleep primarily when it’s dark outside. Garth did the opposite. “So, is your species related to vampires or something?” I asked at our next encounter.
“Oh, this evening-meeting situation,” he laughed. “Yes, I suppose we are similar. Except those Night Creatures are made of flesh and blood.”
“And so were you when we left off.”
Garth easily tired of playing storyteller. The effort required recalling his past and the baggage that came with it exhausted him. “Yes, that changed rather quickly,” he said as he ran his hand down his arm. “I can not feel this. Well, I feel some sensation of contact. If I had absolutely no sense of feeling, I would not be able to do anything. The details in touch that most take for granted are lost to me.” His finger grazed my jacket. “Nothing. Contact, but nothing more. I know it should be soft. Sometimes I fool myself into feeling it, but that is only when I remember back to my human days. This jacket probably feels much like a scarf that my sister had. I think of that and I know what this should feel like. But those days, those memories, are getting further and further away.”
He pulled away and I ran my fingers over the fabric. It had a sleek, almost wet feeling. It was synthetic. Probably nothing like his sister would have had but I didn’t say anything.
“I am sure you can imagine what I must have looked like when I had skin. Take away the stone and put something else ugly in its place,” he said.
I tried my best. It took me awhile to get over the CGI, video game image that my brain automatically created after years of pixels attacking my eyes, but soon it came. For a fraction of a second my mind saw him how he once was. My breath stopped.
“My skin was blotchy. Boils and bumps, coarse hair and sharp nails. I was revolting.”
He was right. Gross.
“Then, I could feel it all. I tried my best to avoid reflections, to forget what I looked like. But it was hard not to catch a glimpse of my feet as I walked or feel the rough skin on my fingers when my hand closed. Even breath blew through my new lungs differently, like a fat dog or a dying horse. Every moment was excruciating.” His hands clenched into a fist. He held them so tightly that the tiniest sprinkle of dust fell through his palm.
I instinctually grabbed him, trying to set him at ease. It was the first time that I’d voluntarily touched him. We both flinched and his hand released. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Were you remembering?”
He nodded. “When I was turned to stone, it was a blessing to lose those sensations. I became completely removed from my body. This is just a shell that I live inside of.”
From the way he was acting, it seemed like the night was going to be cut short. I’d barely been with him for five minutes and he was over it. “Do you want to continue?” I asked.
“Yes.” A pause. “After that first escape, the King realized that we were simply too strange to be out in the open. His new religion was budding. Real demons, as we were called, guarding the King brought up many questions. We had to be kept secret. There were more than enough men already working to police the streets throughout the day. We were used exclusively at night, after the lamps had all been put out. He turned us to stone and hid us high above the city on the towers of his palace.”
“And that was the beginning of grotesques and gargoyles?” I asked with a bit too much wonder.
“No. Strange creatures have been carved into stone throughout history, which is what made us blend in so easily.”
“But he didn’t have to make you stone. You could have just lived as monsters above the city, right?”
“It is not easy to sleep soundly like a statue with the sun beating down on you during the day without actually being a statue. With this stone curse of day sleep, we were the perfect Guardians. The sun rose and we were forced to rest. Townspeople looking up at the tower would see nothing out of the ordinary. If we were caught patrolling at night, we could easily stand still and be mistaken for decoration. We did not need to be fed because stone does not eat. Stone is harder to destruct, is more deadly in a brawl, and most importantly, doesn’t die. The King had made us Immortal.”
To me, his condition was interpreted as a type of übermensch—a superman. “Immortality. That’s kind of cool, right?”
“Nothing is ‘cool’ if you are not given a choice. I would have never chosen this life,” he growled. “I am separated from everyone I have ever loved.”
“Garth, I—”
; “I can not die! I can be destroyed but I can not die and pass on like the rest of you.” He turned away and walked into the darkness cast by a nearby building. “Immortality is for those who were born Immortal. I was not meant to be this way. I was born with a soul, like you. When he changed me, that soul left because I had no use for it. Because I am not meant to die.”
“Immortals don’t have souls?” I tentatively asked, afraid that he’d snap again.
He quietly shook his head and then mumbled, “Souls shouldn’t be wasted on beings like us.”
Whoa, that was a lot.
We were tired.
Well, I was tired and he was tired of me.
Without too many more words, we called it a night and I headed home.
I walked to an inconvenient subway. Sometimes in New York, nighttime and an iPod are all a person needs to clear his head. I knew Garth was probably trailing me or at least within proximity, just a scream away. Knowing that, I mustered some courage to walk past the scene of the crime. I wanted to face my fears and remind myself that Twenty Sixth Street wasn’t a lava-filled wasteland inhabited by Orcs and goblins, but just a normal city block. It was simply a place where an unlucky guy encountered sad people, hell bent on ruining somebody else’s night.
That neighborhood bustled with people during the day but the business-free evenings made humans scarce. The sidewalk was new, probably laid in autumn, and scaffolding clung to the buildings like parasites. The freshness of the surroundings made the stains more evident. By now, about a week later, the blood was brown and looked like any other city juice, but I knew what it really was. I expected to see just a few speckles but I found a wash that covered an entire slab of concrete.
The realization stunned me. If I had lost that much blood, I’d have died.
More than just my blood had stained the sidewalk that night.
Apparently Garth was right. He was very deadly in a brawl.
3. Enjoy Your View.
In Stone: A Grotesque Faerie Tale Page 5