by Jeffrey Ford
“Thanks,” Belius said. The word came as cold as the day.
“I understand your frustration. You’ll learn as well as they will,” he said and reached up and gave Belius’ closest horn a tug. “Next time you have to go to town, I’ll go with you.”
The afternoon wore on without incident or further conversation. Belius was sorely tempted to discuss the Inferno with the doctor, but he knew it wasn’t the time or place for it. For the most part they just sat and stared at the mound of beef in the clearing. Every now and then the doctor would take a swig from his seemingly bottomless flask. They took turns getting up and going for short walks to keep the cold out of their bones. As the sun began to set, the snow let up and the wind died down, no longer whistling as it cut through the trees. During their vigil some squirrels had come to inspect the bait, tasted it and went away uninterested. A deer had passed through the clearing, stopped in the middle and getting a whiff of the slaughter took off as if the lifeless mess was a hungry wolf. There was no sign of the dogs though; not even the distant sound of barking. Belius tried to picture the pack. He wondered what it was that had made them mad.
After the old man had returned from his tenth trip behind a leafless oak to urinate, he said, “We’ll give it one more hour. After that it will be too dark for us to do any good. I don’t fancy getting lost in the dark.”
“Where do you think the dogs are?” Belius asked.
“What they usually do is stick to the woods by day, hunting for wild animals, but in the evening, as it starts to get dark they go down to the farms and look for livestock; calves or young goats that can’t protect themselves.”
“And the girl that was killed?”
“She was just a young thing. Probably thought they were somebody’s pets and went up to them. When you get that many of them together, though, and they’re crazy with their freedom and hungry as winter itself, they’ll attack just about anything.”
“How many?” Belius asked.
“Well, Phil Miller, who owns a farm a few miles from here, shot one of them. He said there were about twenty or so. And the woman whose daughter was killed said there must have been thirty. So, knowing how people like to exaggerate about things that scare them, I’d say there are probably no more than ten.”
They waited out the final hour but nothing came for the meat. By the time they decided to head back for the house both Belius and the doctor were shivering. The sun was now only a few minutes over the horizon and still covered by clouds so that night would come quicker than usual. In the gathering darkness the woods took on an eerie aspect with all the bare branches, now black for lack of light, jutting up and out at all angles. A snow owl hooted somewhere over their heads. The surrounding scene reminded Belius of the time he had lain out in the fields all night. Without thinking, he raised his snout toward the tree tops and a mournful lowing sound crept out of his throat. He stopped walking and just stood and listened as if for an answer. An odd tingling sensation traveled slowly up from the tip of his tail to the back of his neck, raising hairs to attention as it went. The doctor had also stopped walking when Belius moaned.
“What is it?” Grey whispered. He reached quickly for his flask and took a drink. “Belius, are you alright?”
Belius meant to answer in words, “There’s something nearby,” but his response came in a series of grunts and squeals.
The doctor threw the flask on the ground and drew his gun. He turned quickly to look behind himself, the hem of his long coat spinning with the sudden movement. As Belius watched the bottom of the coat, rippling like wind through a field of wheat, an explosion of red went off in his mind. Without thinking, he turned just in time, lowering his head to impale the leaping dog on his right horn. With a wild jerk of his neck, he threw the whimpering creature to the ground and caught it in the throat with the hoof at the end of his leg. There were three gun shots then and the yelp of another dog.
From behind the trees, Belius heard them saying, “Leave the man, he has a gun. Bring down the bull.” The message was passed around among the pack. “Bring down the bull.” The voices were low and rough. The only thought that traveled the human corridors of Belius’ mind was the doctor’s previous words, “Hungry as winter itself.” He heard another leap and turned back around again to break the ribs of a huge shepherd that had been aiming for his jugular. It fell clear of him but didn’t give up. It struck out again as soon as it hit the ground, clamping its teeth around his human leg. With another blow to the skull, blood seeped from behind the dog’s eyes and it let go with a gurgling cough.
Belius sensed he was out of danger for the moment and looked up to locate the doctor. Darkness surrounded him now as if night had pounced out of the sky. The doctor was nowhere near and all that could be heard was the vicious growling of the pack.
He stood his ground, knowing there was no sense in running. His ears were erect and listening. He waited for the next leap, the next lunging set of jaws and sharp teeth. From somewhere, not too far off, there came the sound of three more gun shots, followed by a scream.
“Doctor,” he yelled into the night, but, again, his language became the language of animals. He was breathing heavily, and his heart pounded with the force of a mallet. Cautiously, he began moving in the direction of the scream. After he had covered no more than five yards, the night materialized two mongrels that charged at him simultaneously through a whirl of snow. As he crouched to meet their attack with his horns, a searing pain shot up through his body from behind. There was a crunching sound, like a tree being cracked in half by a great wind and then the tearing of flesh. Agony ripped through his entire body. He bellowed with such force that the charging dogs were knocked off their feet. The blood poured out from the stump that was left of his tail, and the smell of it sent the pack into a frenzy. All sensation left him and he dropped to his knees.
Four of them circled around him now, waiting for him to fall. Their eyes were bright yellow in the night. Their mouths were wide open, displaying froth and fangs. He knew they were taunting him, but he could no longer hear them. They went around and around his slumping form, and on every third orbit one would jump in and bite him on the arm or the leg. He tried to raise his hooves for protection, but they were heavy as stone.
The dogs whirled faster and faster around him, and his mind adopted their motion until they became a blur. His fear of death was a twister that sucked consciousness into its funnel. Before long he was in the center of the cyclone and it was still and blue. His father handed him the knot. Without thinking, he took one of the loops of the tangled cord and pulled on it. It came apart as if by its own volition, and he fell forward into the snow.
Belius woke with his snout buried in two inches of snow and found a fiery pain waiting for him on this side of consciousness. He lifted his head to take a deep breath of the cold night air. The freshness of it stung his snout, and, when he exhaled, the steam came forth mixed with a moan. He rolled over on his left side. Finding that his arms once again worked, but like rusty machines, he lifted the back of one to his eyes and wiped the frost and melted snow from them.
Listening intently over the action of the wind, he heard no growling but instead a wild flapping noise and wondered if it was the owl he had seen earlier in the tree tops. In the time he had been unconscious, the clouds had cleared. Above the swaying branches that clacked together in the wind, the stars and moon shone with frigid clarity. He knew he must get up and try to get away, but there was a ringing in his ears and a weariness in his legs that increased the power of gravity. The ragged stump of tail that was left to him pulsed exquisite pain throughout his spine and flanks as the numerous bites on his arms and legs began to make themselves known, each, in turn, blossoming into a new chord of suffering.
“I’m going to die out here,” he thought. The realization made him wild, and fighting his heaviness, he pushed himself up onto his knees. With his arms out in front of him, he managed to crawl a few feet. Every other second, the blackness
that he knew he would not awaken from a second time, flitted through his head.
He had dragged himself no more than twenty feet, stopping five times in the process, when he again heard the flapping noise. It seemed to be drawing close to him. He lifted his head and squinted to try to see what it was. In the new moonlight, he could make out a shadow rushing toward him. It seemed to have wings at its sides, and it flew just above the ground. In an instant, it was upon him. Though his mind was completely blank, in his heart he thought, “This is death.” He meant his final statement to the world to be a roar, but his bodily weakness diminished the sound to a squeal more fit for a pig.
The doctor took the opportunity of the minotaur’s open mouth to pour the remaining whiskey from his flask into it. The liquor brought summer to Belius’ insides. The ringing in his ears was drowned out by near instant inebriation. The pain wilted in the heat, and the blackness that had flitted through his mind lay down and slept.
“You’ve got to get up, Belius,” the doctor said.
“The dogs,” Belius whispered harshly.
“I think I got the last of them. I’m out of bullets though. We’ve got to get going now.”
“Give me a second, just a second.”
“No time,” said the doctor, slipping his spindled arms beneath the minotaur’s. With a strength that could only have come from somewhere outside his thin frame, Grey hoisted Belius to a standing position.
“I’m going to let go of you for just a second. I’ve got to get my coat around you.”
“Keep your coat, you’ll freeze,” Belius said without conviction.
The doctor let go of him and the minotaur’s huge body swayed in standing circles like a top running down. The coat was quickly sloughed and draped over the wide shoulders that were big enough to actually fill it out. Belius draped one arm around the old man’s shoulders, their height difference making Grey’s thin body appear a crooked crutch. The two started inching their way back to the farm.
The walk seemed to Belius to take years and years. Grey never stopped talking the whole trip, explaining how he had to run for cover and reload after his first volley. He had made it back to Belius just in time, as the pack was getting ready to move in for the kill. He hit all six of his shots, one right after the other and in the process killed two more of them. The other two took off through the woods, seeing the damage the doctor’s gun could do. This was the only information that Belius could cull from the incessant monologue. The rest was just a string of words that at times sounded as if the old man were praying or practicing an incantation.
The doctor let go of Belius and moved toward the kitchen door, calling to the old woman to come help with her son. A strong wind came and toppled the minotaur. Then his eyes no longer worked, and he suddenly realized that he had forgotten to remember.
With a scream, he awoke and found himself in a strange bedroom. The windows had been shattered. Knick-knacks lay broken on the floor. A rocking chair was twisted into a knot. There was a large fissure in the plaster of one wall. Wherever he was, he knew he’d been snoring.
The bed he was in was big enough to accommodate his full size, unlike the one at home where his foot and hoof stuck out over the end almost touching the floor. Blankets and comforters were piled five thick on top of him to keep him from freezing in the cold air that blew freely in through the broken windows. The pillows beneath his head had been tattered by his horns.
He peered out over the edge of the impressive mattress at the decimation his snoring had caused and felt like a castaway adrift on a sea of fragments. Through the broken windows, bright morning light poured in and glimmered against pieces of ceramic and glass. With great difficulty caused by the stiffness of his limbs and the pains that tattooed his whole being, he made it to the edge of the bed, threw back the layers of blankets and sat up. This simple action caused his head to swim, and from somewhere just in front of him, he hallucinated a mad dog, jumping for his throat. He threw his hooves up to protect his face from the attack. With the movement of his arms, the illusion dissipated into nothing.
“I’ve returned from the dead,” he said to himself and laughed softly so as not to jar any of his wounds. This joy filled him and in it he found the energy to lift himself to a standing position. Slowly, he hobbled to the door of the room, trampling even more fully those objects he had sonically destroyed in his sleep. He opened the door and walked out into a long, wide hallway, the new warmth of which made him feel as if he were home in the parlor of his mother’s house.
As he wandered through the halls, passing rooms and alcoves, taking a flight of stairs down to another hall, he had every intention of finding Doctor Grey, whose place he surmised he was in. His condition was jittery though, and, when he passed a room, the door of which was opened slightly, and saw a big red leather chair, he decided to enter and sit down for a rest before continuing. When he opened the door to enter, the pain seemed to flee his body.
“My god,” he said under his breath, “a library.” And then in a voice that was much surer, “Yes, of course I know how to read.” He was dizzy with the prospect of such a gold mine of ideas and images, remembering the magical effects of just the one book he had read. He ran his hooves along the spines of the leather bindings. Twice, he went around the entire room, tottering and leaning against the shelves as he made his way. His eyes passed over so many wonderful titles that they seemed to make a story in and of themselves. Finally he came to his senses and chose one volume, reaching with his arm extended to the very top shelf to bring it down. He nudged it out of its place with his hoof and then let it fall the rest of the way into his arms. It was a thick book of more than eight hundred pages entitled The Collected Writings of Scarfinati. He didn’t bother to sit down in the chair that had at first attracted him, but stood where he was, swaying unsteadily like a buoy in rough water. He opened the book and began reading the first page. Most of what he read made no sense to him, but he continued, lost in a daze that had everything to do with dreaming.
Somewhere in the middle of the twentieth page of the essay, “Evidence of the Almighty’s Schizophrenia in the Natural Existence of Living Organisms,” he was drawn back from the attraction of the printed words by a noise behind him. He spun around ungracefully, slamming the book closed in case the doctor did not want him hoofing through an expensive volume. Instead of meeting the glance of the old physician, he encountered a young woman. He was as startled as she. Meaning to say something polite as a greeting, his words turned on him and he remained silent. She moved her glance down his figure to stop at a point below his waist. Then putting her hand softly to her cheek, she turned her head away and ran from the room.
“Wait,” Belius called. It was not until he had set the book down on the chair and passed out of the door into the hallway that he realized he was naked.
Back in the room he had awoken in, Belius discovered the camel’s hair overcoat the doctor had sacrificed to him the night in the woods. He slipped it on and buttoned it up the front. Prepared now against any further meetings, he earnestly went in search of the old man. This time, he again passed the library with the red leather chair, but did not enter. Instead, he simply stuck his snout in for a second and took a whiff of the aging paper and leather bindings the way a child might linger in the doorway of a bakery. The only way he could describe the aroma he took deep into his lungs was rich.
He resumed his journey, and in the course of it discovered the enormity of Grey’s house. He knew that perhaps it seemed bigger than it actually was because he had backtracked and gotten lost a few times, but, from his most rational summation, he could say for certain that it had two upper floors and a main floor. The upper floors were defined each by four hallways that formed a square around some central courtyard. These upper passages were lined by rooms as in a hotel. The only difference though was that these rooms were not designed for economy, but for spacious living. A quick look in each of them showed that they were for the most part empty and unused. Eve
ry fourth or fifth one would have its walls lined with bookshelves and contain a library as impressive as the first that Belius had discovered.
On the second floor of the house, Belius was rounding one of the four corners of the network of halls, moving quietly like a ghost without a reason to go haunting, when he heard up ahead a female voice singing. Immediately, he knew, from the slight rasp of the voice that it must be the young woman who had seen him naked earlier. To save himself embarrassment, he quickly turned and headed in the opposite direction. Considering his bulk and the clumsiness his wounds imposed on him, he had to move slowly in order not to make a sound. So when he heard the voice approaching from behind him, he ducked into what he thought to be one of the empty rooms and found instead a staircase. With great haste, he hobbled down the steps and out through another door at the bottom of them. This entrance led directly into the kitchen on the first floor.
Sitting at the kitchen table, drinking from a coffee cup and reading the newspaper, was the doctor. Slung around his neck was a stethoscope. Across the front of his partially unbuttoned white shirt was a splotch of dried blood. By the way he lifted the cup with trembling hands and the way he placed it down with placid grace after a long gulp, Belius knew it wasn’t filled with coffee.
The old man looked up and saw the minotaur standing in the doorway to his right. His eyes widened with delight. “I’m glad you’re finally up and about. Another night of your infernal snoring, and I think the rafters would have splintered,” he said. With his foot, he pushed one of the chairs out from its place under the table and nodded, inviting Belius to sit down.
“You’ve been out for a few days, boy. Lost a lot of blood. How do you feel?”