by S. A. Sidor
One of the banditos had a scattergun hidden under his serape. We did not know this, of course, until he pulled both triggers, shredding wool in a sparking smoky flap of colors and fringes. Kittle’s head broke into flying pieces. Pink and gray mush kicked out behind him. He rolled into a silent heap before the living dead horsemen.
“Throw them in the pit,” El Gusano said.
“My God, Hardy–” Evangeline said. She pressed against me and dropped her hands to grab at my sleeve with tight fists. Her chin quivered, though she held it high.
“I know,” I said. “Don’t look if you can help it.”
But I forced myself to witness the removal of my recent companions. What desecrations were to come I did not wish to contemplate, yet my mind drew me those pictures too.
A pair of necrófagos dismounted and tossed the murdered detectives over their horses. But when they came close to Thomas they backed off, turning their heads away.
“Ghouls hate mugwort. See? They won’t eat him.”
Eat him.
“How much of that do you have in your bag?”
“Not nearly enough,” she said.
The ghoul with the torn serape pointed his filthy clawed finger at us. He was asking a question of his boss.
El Gusano said, “Stake them while we deal with the train.”
The buzzing black flies lifted en masse into the sky and moved up the line.
16
Seeketh Whom They May Devour
Did I mention their eyes?
The ghouls’ eyes?
Probably not and I know why, because I try to forget them. They were moist and swollen like poisoned bubbles about to pop in my face, and they lacked the tiniest hint of humanity. They did not show any pupil, no white sclera either, but were thoroughly black hemispheres. I looked into those rotten-eggy eyes as the ghouls wrestled me to the dirt and pinned my limbs down. Are these the eyes of people-eaters? I asked myself. Would they be the last I would see in this life, which as I might have mentioned was the only life I ever expected to have? The unfortunate answers were Yes! and Yes! I did not believe in Heaven, but how could I discount Hell?
The necrófagos rifled through my pockets and stole all my coins.
Now a naked foot has never struck me as a particularly vulnerable specimen, Achilles’ heel notwithstanding, yet when my legs were wish-boned apart and my ankles ligatured to wooden stakes in the sand, I felt nothing short of alarm, and the stripping of my shoes followed by the brisk unpeeling of my socks led me into such a state of panic as if the entirety of my clothing had vanished and I lay publicly nude. The sun broiled my soles. The ghouls, once I was immobilized, scrapped with each other to see who would be the first to try my shoe leather on their horny gargoyle pads. How much worse it must have been for poor Evangeline. They snatched her petite soft pink slippers with glee and attempted to work them on their own deformed feet, tearing the seams and poking their dactyls out of the new holes for airing. Her silk stockings – sage green, I noted – they bunched over their noses and mouths, and with exaggeration sucked gouts of air off the wrinkled bouquets, uttering appreciations as one might if one sat ravenous for supper and smelled the savory fumes of a soon-arriving hot meal. I credited her for not crying.
“Can you move?” she asked.
“Not much. They’ve done this before, I’d say.”
Our arms were extended and pulled taut at the wrists, cuttingly bound, a loop and another loop for good measure, hard little knots at the ends like marbles – the binding material being, as best I could judge, dried animal (human?) tendons. Our bodies spread into two Xs before the troupe of demonic corpse-lovers. Dazzling light forced our eyes closed. No comfort was there for us on that cracked desert floor. None whatsoever.
Through my shuttered eyes I saw the red inside my skin and wondered how long it would be until that redness spilled. A shadow floated over me, and I peered up into the face of El Gusano. I could not see his eyes, just black sparkles in the fat multiple folds of his skin, cheeks studded with moles like cloves in a Sunday ham and sprouting coarse pale hairs all the way up to his lower eyelids, the lush almost feminine lashes batting as he gazed down at me with curiosity if not pity. He had no neck to speak of. Rolls of belly and rolls of chest defined a superabundant shape that did not fit entirely inside his clothes.
A shirt button popped under the strain, landing on my chest.
El Gusano shuffled to Evangeline and I was back under the sun and blinded.
I felt two thumps in my back – earth tremors – and realized El Gusano had kneeled on the ground between us. I turned my head and opened one eye – a slit. He removed his sombrero and held it out, blocking the sun, so Evangeline could see him.
“Eh, are you thirsty?”
Evangeline lay in the dust cloud he had stirred.
“Yes,” she said.
“Me too.” He leaned over and licked the dewy sweat from her skin.
The necrófagos snickered.
“You I’m going to save for last.” He pushed his boneless hand into her ribs and she struggled. “I leave a little room for dessert.”
“Don’t touch her,” I said.
“You mean like this?” He balled his hand into an enormous fist and hammered it down into her stomach. Evangeline cried out.
I jerked at my bonds.
El Gusano scooped a handful of sand and trickled it onto my face.
I twisted my head. His hand followed until I was spitting the warm grains.
“Hey, no more entertainment. I got work to do.” He slapped my cheek the way you would a child’s, eased his bulk up off the ground, and walked over to his horse. He came back with something in his hands: a long, lacquered tube, stoppered on one end with a cork. He pulled the cork and peered down into the tube. “You know bark scorpions, señor?”
I said nothing, thinking it wiser to keep my mouth shut this time.
He shook the tube. “It no matter if you do.”
“Why torture us?” I asked, unable to stay silent. “Do you enjoy it? You’re depraved.”
“I hear you battled a nephew of mine in the Tomb of the Living Skull – a gusanito, one from my dearest sister’s fiftieth hatching – I am told you threw fire on him.”
“What? I don’t–”
Tomb of the Living Skull? His dearest sister’s fiftieth hatching?
“The bark scorpion is slender and delicate like a preeety lady. But her sting is most venomous.” He laughed. “My ladies don’t like being out in the daytime under the hot sun. So they will look for places to hide.”
He dumped the contents of the tube on Evangeline and me. I heard Evangeline catch her breath. I felt the crawling almost immediately. Little bodies searching…
“You better not move too much, amigos. At night the ladies will come out to dance.” He snapped his fingers in the air. Looking into the tube, he scowled and tapped out one last scorpion on my forehead. Then he placed his sombrero over my face.
“You take a siesta while we fill our bellies. Tonight we see how you’re doing.”
“I hope you choke, you devil,” Evangeline said.
“If your face was not so small I make a mask – I like you that much.”
“And if my mouth were not so dry I would spit in yours.”
I enjoyed her comment, but the scorpion crossing the bridge of my nose prevented me from saying so.
The necrófagos left us to attend to the train and its doomed passengers. Despite the direness of our circumstances the train riders had it worse. We could not see their fates unfold, but we could hear, and the sounds were as harrowing as they were gruesome. The ghouls commandeered the engine and drove the train straight into the open pit. Because they themselves did not fear death and in fact courted death, it was no act of daring, but still it has to be admitted, derailing the train into a hole in the ground was unexpected. I am certain the people on board felt shock. They worried about robbery, not slaughter. The luckiest ones died first. Such destruction! The
tumble and crash of the train cars seemed never to end. Screams carried above the ripping metal and cannonade of exploded wood. In the aftermath, when the quiet settled, there came an almost rain-like sizzle of sand and clapping rocks signifying a small landslide. We listened as one by one the necrófagos dropped into the pit and began to feed on the dead. A renewed chorus of cries (the dying, and the living who found themselves trapped and forced to bear witness) joined with wretched moans – sexless, ageless, equalized in their misery – echoing from the hollow. The cavity had to be deep – deep enough to swallow the whole train and hamper any survivor from climbing out.
Evangeline and I did not speak. I tried to distract my thoughts from the carnage but found little success. The scorpion had wandered from my face. Where it went, I knew not, though I felt a tickle in my collar that soon enlarged itself in my imagination so that the sensation might have been a stream of acid pouring along my neck.
“Hardy? Have you been stung?”
Evangeline’s voice was a great comfort.
“No. How about you?”
“I’m fine. I can’t feel them moving any more, which may be the only good thing about all the layers of clothing I’m wearing.”
I risked a smile under the sombrero. “I’ve been thinking about something El Gusano said. He’s definitely not a ghoul.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“No.”
She paused for a long while and I guessed that she felt them crawling again.
Then in a soft voice she said, “El Gusano. I wonder, what does that mean?”
“I think it means worm.”
After that we were both quiet until the sun slipped low, then out of the sky, and in the sudden coolness another, even softer, voice decided it was time to say something.
17
Hopping Into Caves
“Excuse me, Mr Hardy. I think I can save you and the elegant lady, but we must act quickly before the ghouls finish eating in the pit.”
I turned and lifted my head as high as I could under the sombrero. “Yong Wu! It is awfully good to hear your voice if not to see your face. I thought you were dead.”
“Sir, I am also glad you have not… gone to the west.”
I frowned inside the hat.
“Will you uncover my head? It’s airless under here and I’m having the damnedest trouble with it. Take it off slowly, though. I am temporarily infested with scorpions.”
“I cannot do that.”
“What did he say, Hardy?” Evangeline whispered.
“He said he ‘cannot do that.’”
“I thought that’s what he said. Ask him why.”
“Tell us, Yong Wu, why you cannot save us from certain death.”
“I wish to rescue you and the lady. But I have to insist upon one thing. You must not look no matter what happens. It is necessary. If you look, then I will go from here.”
“Is this some Oriental superstition? Because now is not the time for old legends.”
“Old legends are the only way I can help you. So please agree.”
“All right then, I’ll keep this filthy thing over my head,” I replied. “Let’s move!”
“And Miss must shut her eyes until I can blindfold her.”
Evangeline called back, “I promise. No peeking… please hurry.”
I took the boy’s silence as tacit approval.
“Can you spot him, Evangeline?” I muttered beneath the lid of the smelly felt sombrero. “He’s dressed in black silks. The young Chinese server who helped the porter – you’d have seen him before, in the dining car – he must be terrified.”
“The sun’s almost down. Everything is in shadows. Wait… I see him climbing from under the train – here he comes. I’m closing my eyes. I don’t want to spook him.”
“He just might be braver than both of us–”
“Shuush…”
It was seconds until I felt the lightest pressure of Yong Wu’s hand on my arm.
“Don’t move,” he said.
“I couldn’t if I tried.”
A tugging began on my bound left wrist. The ligature hummed like a plucked guitar string. Braided hairs tickled across the palm of my hand. “Yong Wu, you will never bite through those cords.”
“Be still.”
How could he talk and bite at the same time? At my right ankle vibrations struck courtesy of a persistent gnawing. Left wrist, right ankle, and all while talking! I caught my breath. The boy had not come alone. I heard a plunk! and my left hand was freed.
“I am blindfolding you, Miss,” Yong Wu said, having shifted off to my far right.
“Yes, of course. Thank you. That will be easier.”
As Evangeline and Yong Wu conversed, someone chewed through the tendon securing my ankle, and another someone snapped at the binding on my right wrist. I heard teeth clicking together. The sound made me clench my own. Who were these rescuers? Passengers who had escaped the train? Where else could they have come from? Did they not have a pocketknife among them? The temptation to tip my sombrero for a look-see set in hard. But I had made a promise, one that my life as well as Evangeline’s depended on, or so I had been told. I curbed my curiosity for the moment.
Yet I could make do with my other, non-ocular, senses and wonder.
How remarkably quiet it grew in the night-infused desert. By all evidence, the necrófagos had satiated themselves in the pit. They would be up soon. I could not detect the breathing of my liberators though they plied unwaveringly to their cord biting. There were two of them, if I guessed right: Yong Wu’s quiet assistants. All my bonds were soon severed. I wanted to rub my hands but dared not stir for fear of being stung to death.
“Stand him up,” Yong Wu said. “We will take them to the hills. Go quickly!”
“Remember the scorpions,” I said. “That is very key I do believe.”
“The scorpions have fled. Now we must too.”
Someone, but it felt vaguely more like a something, hooked my shirtfront and pulled me upright as if I were a sack of dirty linens. I waited for a rash of barbs to jab me with hellfire pain, but none came. Yong Wu had been correct. Reader, do you understand that scorpions are armored arachnids? One cannot reason with armored arachnids, though admittedly I never tried. Yet by necessity more often than not it is instinct, and not logic, that rules in the arena of desert survival. Get going or get dead. So I asked myself, what scared off those deadly little buggers? I detected the smell of coal dust. And coldness moved around me. Two stiff arms, strong as whisky barrel hoops, fastened tight across my chest from behind. Coal dust and a bleachy fragrance like, like… mushrooms – that’s what I smelled. Not exactly foul, but loamy and organic, with more than a hint of dark subterranean growth.
“To the caves in the hills,” Yong Wu said. “We will hide there.”
The thing that held me fast forced me down into a crouch. Together we leaped skyward, higher than any man can jump, and landed with a crunch on the rocky ground, only to spring up again, even higher on our second try. So we propelled onward. I felt a speedy wind whipping past as we hopped like crazed man-sized jackrabbits to the hills.
To the caves that Yong Wu somehow knew were there.
The particular cave we occupied for the remainder of the night turned out to be more of a crevice, like two prayerful stone hands steepled together cupping us in the hollow of their palms. A slice of night filled the entryway. Stars glinted at the top. Purple moonlit desert carpeted below. Evangeline and I sat flush against a wall with a stubby red candle burning between us. Yong Wu stood watch outside the crevice, speaking in what Evangeline said was Cantonese to his two silent, and as yet unseen, partners. We assessed our conditions with similar results: sore wrists, bare blistered feet, and thirst.
“I’m sorry you’re here. That all this has happened to you. I feel responsible.”
“Better here than in that hole with the train wreck,” she said.
“Of course. What I mean is I’m sorry you’re not som
ewhere safe.”
“Why would I want to be safe?”
“Because… well, because you’re a, a…”
“A woman?”
I nodded. “A woman of means… accustomed to polite society.”
“There’s more wreckage and horror in polite society than in that ghoul’s pit.”
“I seriously don’t know about that.”
“Well, I do.”
I said no more on the subject. “I wish we weren’t at such a disadvantage.” I gestured at our surroundings, including a pile of scavenged objects, a real magpie’s collection, dim though it was, and apparently property of our mystery helpers, and from where Yong Wu had produced the candle. “But our options are unfortunately limited.”
“Options change, often in the daylight. I think we should rest. We can figure out a strategy in the morning. Together we will come up with a plan of attack.”
“My only plan is to get you back to Los Angeles, to your father.”
She looked at me. Candlelight did nothing to soften her stare.
“Hardy, those ghouls are going to steal the mummies. Are you really prepared to allow that? After all the searching you did, and digging about in faraway Egyptland? Not to mention all the money you spent. How will you explain that to my father?”
“I think he’ll take the return of his daughter over a half dozen crated mummies.”
“You think incorrectly. He will make certain you never work in this field again.”
I paused at that prospect. The possibility of my fledgling career ending before it really began was unsettling. But Waterston could no doubt do it. Powerful men often assign blame to those who are unlucky enough to be around them when fortunes change. They can be notoriously vindictive where money is concerned. I resorted to wishful thinking to quell my anxieties.
“Ghouls, mummies… maybe they’ll just leave them alone. Ride off.”
“They won’t.”
“And we have to get them back? Is that it? Simply retrieve them?”
“See, now you’re thinking. Together we will bring the mummies home to Daddy.”
“We can’t do it alone. Impossible.” I dusted myself off.