by Toby Bennett
Suddenly the girl stirs in her sleep, half consciously swatting at a fly that repeatedly bumps into her head, as it describes lazy and uncoordinated circles in the air. It doesn’t take Dale long to recognize that this is no ordinary insect, like calls to like and he can sense even the tiny energies animating the small creature. Even though he is still in the process of aligning bones and organs, the skin-shifter risks extending one of his flat tentacles, in an attempt to swat the offending insect. Before he can reach it, however, Lillian's hand snakes out, shattering the dry insect against the headboard. Through blurry eyes she sees the shadow rising at the foot of her bed, jet black despite the illumination of the nearly full moon. Lillian blinks once hoping that the apparition is some trick of her unfocused eyes but the intruder only seems more substantial. With a small gasp of panic she lunges towards her revolver.
Surprising as the speed of the girl’s reaction is, she is only human and the tendril has caught her wrist before she can reach the gun hanging from the bedpost. Lillian opens her mouth to scream, as something that feels like an animal’s tongue wraps itself around her wrist and begins to pull with a grotesque strength but before she can utter a sound another dark tentacle, plunges into her open orifice. Her immediate urge is to gag at the taste of rotten flesh and decay but retching only makes her more aware that she cannot breathe for the rubbery flesh now filling her throat. Desperately she tries to pull back from the intrusive limb, thrashing and thrusting her head back into the wall behind her with bruising force but the tentacle seems to have no trouble simply extending itself following her movement. Through her growing panic she is vaguely aware of other leathery restraints slipping around her legs and lower body, wrapping her tighter and tighter in layers of leathery skin. All this is a secondary concern to her growing need to breathe. The creature behind the snaking chords of flesh fixes her with cobalt blue eyes and smiles, revealing a line of teeth, sharp and hollow.
Outrage and anger fade as the demand of her spasming muscles for oxygen begins to shut down her frenzy. Bile builds in her tortured throat and nausea replaces panic. She fixes angry eyes on the abomination smiling back at her, able to see it properly, now that she is resigned to her impotence. The monster is hideous, its skin a deep black that reflects the silver moonlight as if it were horn or the outer skin of a beetle. The eyes look human enough, except they are almost luminous in the darkened room, an effect of being in the dark face rather than because they are actually glowing she speculates. It doesn’t matter now, much longer and she will lose consciousness. A blessing? or an escape from a night mare? I’ll wake up any moment she promises herself as her eyes droop. As if it some how reads the severity of her need the tentacle suddenly surges forward again and opens itself deep in her throat.
“I’m sorry but you’ll not be escaping that way,” the monster chuckles, as the girl takes her first breath through the now hollow tube. Unable to reply or struggle against the bonds pinning her left arm and leg, Lillian simply stares at the thing, wondering what it will do next, I will wake up any minute she promises herself fervently but instead she feels her body lifted gently from the bed. Somewhere, further up the tentacle filling her throat, a twisted lump of muscle begins to pump, forcing new air into her lungs, breathing for her. Furious at the monster’s presumption, Lillian tries to bite down as hard as she can but the tube merely compresses then opens when she relents, as flexible and impervious as leather.
“Yes! That’s the spirit!” The monster crows, in a voice made alien by the sound of saliva washing over rows of widely spaced teeth.
“You are so deliciously warm and it is so cold in the marshes,” the thing croons, drawing her closer so that she can stare into a face that was once human. Even as her captor says it, Lillian realizes that the flesh enfolding her is cold, as chill as the night outside. The carrion taste, now fading with familiarity and her own resignation, confirm the terrible truth that the thing holding her is dead and has been so for a very long time.
*
“Those who are without sin have nothing to fear from darkness, my child,” the young preacher says, sliding across the seat to sit close to the well-dressed young woman staring out of the window into the desert night that flashed by at incredible speed.
“Oh I know, Father, I just wondered what might be out there,” the girl answers, flushing, “this is the first time I have been away from home and even though I am with my guardian,” at the mention of his presence the man in the seat across from her lowers his book and fixes the padre with an appraising stare, “I’ve heard such stories, about lost spirits, mutants and even the walking dead.” The girl plunges on ignoring the disapproving look, “I am so glad we have you here, Father, a holy man such as yourself must have experience of such things?” She turns to him hopefully, biting her lip slightly in anticipation of being told something bizarre or shocking.
“Indeed, miss, indeed,” the preacher answers widening the gap between the two of them on the seat, until her chaperone seems satisfied and returns to his book.
“I am relatively new to my post but already I have seen many disturbing things in my work, ministering to those poor souls who must live on the fringes of the desert.”
“I am sure that they are too upsetting to be related in Christian company.” The girl barely conceals her hope that the preacher will take the hint and strain the bounds of propriety.
The preacher, for his own part, spares one more look for the older man reading on the seat opposite and then elects to draw a veil over his exploits, partially because they might be considered too upsetting for a young lady but mostly because they might seem far less extensive if examined closer.
“Indeed, I would not burden you with such things but rest assured that you need not worry so, no harm can come to one who has not invited it through impure deed. An innocent such as yourself need fear no harm from such things, particularly while travelling on the train; none of Satan’s creatures would dare to venture so close to the Western line, nor lay hands on anyone free of sin.”
“And is any one of us free of sin, padre?” The silver haired man in the corner, who up until that point has been the quietest person in the compartment asks.
“Why whatever do you mean, my son? Surely you are not saying you think this fine lady…”
“Caroline.” The girl supplies her eyes twinkling at the thought of some sort of altercation between the clean-cut preacher and the dusty desert man. The very look of him in his long jacket with his bleached hair and sun-hardened features makes her think of all sorts of legends and terrible stories. Bobby had said she would see little excitement on her first journey out of Silver Springs. The great lake there made the land around it almost as green as the territories and farms that ran the length of the Blue Snake; Bobby had said that she’d never stand the heat of the real desert and that, even if she could, it was nothing like the stories. The man on the other side of the carriage looked like he had stepped out of one of those stories, she wouldn’t even be surprised to find out that he had ignored the injunction on weapons aboard the train and smuggled a gun beneath his oversized coat, past the arms lockers.
“You are not implying that my Lady Caroline, is not innocent? That she is somehow sullied and touched by sin?” The preacher asks, outraged.
“I repeat, which of us is not?” The white haired man answers calmly.
Caroline tenses, she liked the young preacher a lot and might even have been tempted to take him up on his suggestion that they pray together before turning in for the night, but if the wild man killed him in front of her, that would really be an adventure to tell Bobby about.
“I have ministered to enough sinners to know an innocent when I encounter one, sir and they should not have to fear Satan’s minions as we sinners should. God defends the righteous.”
“If you believe you see clearly, as only God may, then your foremost sin is pride.”
“How dare you? First you insult this girl not once but twice, now you think to cha
stise me! Is your own pride so overweening that you think you can preach to an ordained Minister of the Lord?”
“No, I only wished disabuse you of the idea that you will be made safe by a pure heart. Even if such a thing could be found in any of us, I doubt that the creatures out there on the sands of the Anvil would care much for such things and darker more malignant powers only consider such puritanical qualities spice.”
The silver haired traveller shifts his gaze to the girl, who is so involved in the interchange that she has forgotten to keep up the pretence of staring uninterestedly out of the window and is instead looking on with ill-concealed relish.
“Ignorance and innocence are not the same thing, Caroline. The stories you have been told are, at best, half-truths. God does not spare the righteous. None of us is righteous. If we are lucky, He will forgive us our failings. It is all we can hope for.”
“Alas, this is not the first time I have heard such things from people who have spent too long in the wilderness. Have you forgotten the Christ man’s mercy? Who are you to talk of ignorance where such things are concerned? It is clear that what little understanding you have of scripture has been coloured by your own unhappy experience. This child has not shared your life or its indiscretions and I’ll warrant that she has less to fear from the devils get.” The preacher is still trying to maintain his temper, in light of the miles they may yet have to travel and his calling.
“She may have less weighing on her soul,” the man concedes turning his dark eyes back onto the preacher, “but that is no immunity. Indeed, faith is empty until tested.”
“Do not try to quote scriptures at me, friend,” the preacher warns.
“You mention dark and malignant powers with too much familiarity. Have you some knowledge of the occult we do not?”
Caroline’s ears prick up further at this suggestion, even though she knows the preacher has only raised the idea to embarrass the stranger, as he had embarrassed him. Caroline revels in the tension she can feel in the man in the seat next to her. Both men may have seen more of the world than her but this is not the first time that boys have argued over her.
The silver haired man already seems to be losing interest, however, and he waves the question aside.
“Does it matter? If you genuinely thought me to be in league with Satan’s forces would you rely on your purity to protect you or would you simply turn me over to the nearest Inquisitor and his men?”
“I might do both! It would be pious to hand over any dabbler in the black arts to the Inquisition and save any soul that such a person might threaten,” the preacher answers, momentarily savouring the idea of this upstart bearing the Inquisitors’ brand.
“And am I threatening her soul by telling her that the innocent suffer as readily as the corrupt? An Inquisitor might tell her the same thing.”
“It is not true! God would not allow such a thing,” the young idealist spouts, “all misery is punishment for some wrong we have committed ourselves.”
“No, padre, that is not the truth. The truth is that God has forgotten this place! We have all yet to be judged and until that day innocence will always be destroyed by evil.”
“As you hope to destroy Lady Caroline’s innocence?” The Churchman accuses petulantly.
“She asked a question and you gave her a lie for an answer. If you have served in even one outpost town, you have seen children, younger than her, struck down by curses, possessed or even fed upon by unclean spirits.”
“I have seen such things but they are not for the ears of children.”
“I’m no child,” Caroline protests, pouting.
“Forgive me my dear I simply meant you were young and did not need to be exposed to such things.”
“I have seen girls, younger than this one, with their throats torn and every drop of blood drained from them. I once saw a child of six drained and cast aside like an old wineskin. What was her sin, preacher? Should her mother have told her that there was nothing for an innocent to fear?”
Caroline gasps at this. Somehow the image that springs to her mind is not exciting or titillating; under the gaze of those dark haunted eyes the image of the dead child is too lurid, too real to be thrilling.
“You’ve upset her now and all for the sake of telling your macabre tales.” The preacher cries, reclaiming the space between them and laying a comforting hand on her soft warm skin.
“I have no further interest in debating this with you and I would ask that you keep your opinions to yourself for the rest of the journey.”
“It’s alright I’ll be fine.” Caroline assures her protector. “I apologise to you, sir but I have never seen such things. Even the thought is terrible.”
“Indeed it is, Caroline. Be thankful that, for you, they are things to be imagined, rather than remembered.”
“It must have been awful. Tell me where you saw such things.” Caroline begs, pulling herself from the preacher’s supporting arms and displaying the capacity of youth to dismiss life’s terrors as quickly as they are encountered.
“There are many such sights to be seen in the desert, Caroline, it is not as it is on the line and in the cities. People must fight to survive and desperate people do strange things, few are pleasant.”
“But the girl you saw, surely that was not people? That must have been mutants or even spirits,” the girl whispers.
“I don’t think the padre or your chaperone, would thank me for filling your head with tales of ghouls, as I suspect someone has already been doing.”
“I may be inexperienced but there is no need to insult me! You, yourself, just said there was truth in such tales,” Caroline whines, sitting back in her seat again.
“I wish neither, to scare nor insult you, Caroline but if your interest in the desert is genuine, then you should know the truth and not merely in the form of old tales and glamorized adventures. You want me to tell you that it was a spirit, eventually sent to its judgement by a priest such as this one, or a mutant found by a righteous mob and repaid in kind for its bestiality. The truth is that the girl was alone when I found her and it could as easily have been her family who murdered her, to ensure that there was not an extra drain on their water reserves when they left their worked-out claim and tried to make it back to the cities before summer came. Perhaps another child lived through her death or perhaps it was simply unmitigated evil. I do not know, but before you go looking for the devil and his monsters, remember that the truth is we are all quite capable of evil. All of us have the potential to be monsters at one time or another.”
“And what good does this ‘truth’ of yours do anyone?” The preacher demands.
“Satan’s power lies in untruths, padre. Better that this child be warned than suffer for ignorance that has been made into a virtue.”
“You may believe that, but I disagree,” the young man says earnestly, “Satan’s power relies on something far more terrible.”
“And what might that be?” The Pilgrim asks, with a crooked smile.
“Why the loss of hope, of course! I fear, in that sense, you may already have become one of his victims.” The young idealist answers
“Oh I have hope, padre,” the Pilgrim lowers his hat back over his eyes, to indicate that he has lost interest in the conversation, “I have the only hope we can all have, redemption.”
Neither Caroline nor the preacher seems inclined to respond to this and instead begin a whispered conversation punctuated by giggles and mutual smiles. In a strange way the man in the corner of the carriage had made his point. So far as Caroline was concerned the desert seemed far less romantic a place since she had met him.
The train runs swiftly though the rest of the night and one by one the compartment empties of people, until Blake is alone. No doubt, even now, the preacher is using the pretext of prayer to make an attempt on the Lady Caroline’s innocence. Blake barely gave it a thought, after all he had warned her that purity could be a lure rather than a defense and darker voices within whi
spered that, often, the prey was as guilty as the predator.
Despite the temptation he resists the call of the sleeping carriages and instead takes the vacated seat next to the window. Sand and the low scrub that manages to survive close to the track flash by, briefly illuminated by the cold blue light spilling from the train’s compartments. The only things that seem unmoving are the moon and countless stars.
Blake shivers inwardly, only in the heart of the Citadel had he seen another light like this and its sterile glow brings back memories of that terrible day; of the milky eyes that looked so easily into his blighted soul. He wasn’t sure if he would even have talked to the girl if had the train been lit by normal lamps. Not that it had done any good, anyway, she had only wanted a scary story, a taste of the desert. Unfortunately, some things had to be experienced and when they were it was too late. Perhaps the preacher had not been entirely wrong, because alone in the unrelenting light of the carriage, Blake envied the innocence and the idealism of the young. It was something to be seen from a distance now, a purity he would never touch again. Just as introspection and weariness begin to tug at his eyelids there comes a knock from outside the cabin.
Instantly he is on his feet, the undersized guns hidden at his wrists appearing in his hands as if by magic. He stops short of pulling the triggers only because that would bring the whole train down on him. The trains were seen as something just short of a saint’s reliquary and any harm that came to one through the use of his weapons could have serious repercussions. As a boy William had even heard rumours of another child who’d lost his hand for carving his initials into the woodwork , that might just be something they said to scare the children but they didn’t take your guns off you for no reason and he had no wish to run afoul of the law over a misunderstanding. So he overrides his initial instinct and stands quivering with suppressed action, his guns half-cocked, trying to peer into the dimly lit corridor beyond the glass pane in the carriage door.