Demon in the Whitelands

by Nikki Z. Richard

  “What is it?”

  “Accident,” the sheriff said as he shoved his feet into his boots.

  “Some logger had a pine fall right on him. Still alive for now, but they’re waiting for the doctor to get there before they try anything. These fellows can get a bit heated when things like this happen.”

  “But it’s an accident.”

  “It’s never an accident, kid. ‘Accident’ is a nice way of saying somebody fucked up.”

  Samuel laced his boots.

  “I thought my only job was—”

  “You’re the one who decided to be some knife-throwing hero. You want to be a real patrolman? Fine. I’ll show you what this job’s really about.”

  They left the house, and the sheriff drove the jeep faster than he normally did. His eyes weren’t as red as they normally were, and his breath didn’t reek of booze. The wheels careened up and down as they moved through the square, past the mayor’s estate, and onto one of the logging sites along the far end of the western woods. A large black truck was parked near the edge of the woods, the back of it stacked full of stripped pine trunks. Piles of chopped trees were lined up alongside the truck with various tools scattered all around it. There wasn’t anyone near the equipment.

  The sheriff hit the brakes and put the jeep in park. Samuel followed him out of the vehicle and into the woods. The earth below their feet had turned muddy and soft. Drops of water fell in spurts from the melting snow that hung on the branches above. Samuel looked up as a drop hit his lenses, and he noticed how the trees on this side of the woods were taller than the ones around his old cabin. Nearly all of the trees on the western end ran about twenty to thirty meters high, a lot bigger than the average on the east end. The trees’ jagged branches only partially blocked the rising sunlight. Samuel trudged along after the sheriff. They walked along the premade path until they came upon the crew.

  Twenty or so loggers were gathered around a large pine that had fallen directly in front of the path. Many of them stood there solemnly, a few of them talking quietly among themselves. Several patrolmen were there as well, including the one with the wiry hair. Samuel recognized him from the festival. The sheriff tilted his chin up to a balding man standing near the front of the tree, his hands fondling his gloves.

  “Josiah, right?”

  “Yes, sheriff.” He bowed before motioning to the men behind him. “This is my crew.”

  None of the crew took any interest in acknowledging Samuel or the sheriff, their attention focused on other things. The sheriff paid no heed to their somber demeanor and spat into the ground, digging his thumbs into his belt. He waved at the wiry-haired patrolman.

  “Doc here yet?”

  “Over there.” He kept his eyes away from Samuel. “Other side.”

  The sheriff gave a nod to Samuel, signaling him to follow. They moved past the clusters of men holding their tools and made a half circle around the pine. The doctor was on her knees, hunched over the fallen tree. The sheriff motioned for two loggers to move out of his path, and they did so without a word.

  The doctor tucked a stray strand of her hair back behind her ear. Her head was bent down, and she was speaking softly to the man lying on the ground. His body was only visible from his chest up, the rest buried underneath the large pine. He was a bearded man with a square face, blood seeping out from the corner of his lips. Samuel had a hard time guessing how old the man was, partially due to his large amount of facial hair. His mouth was open, and his breaths were loud and forced. There was no need for the doctor to say anything. He’d seen enough of death to know the logger was near the end. Images of his father performing the rites engulfed his mind. He knew the routine by heart: the reading of the scriptures, the prayer of new life, and the shedding of blood. He remembered the old butcher. The thoughts prompted him to subtly scan the area for his father, but he wasn’t there.

  “What’s the verdict?” the sheriff asked.

  The doctor arched herself up, rubbing her thumb across her palm. She shook her head quietly. It was enough to confirm what Samuel already knew. The men around him knew it too, all of them at a loss as to what to say to their trapped crew member. One of them mustered up a weak encouragement about how Wilkens was the strongest worker he knew. The one logger’s praise prompted another to speak up. He was a thinly fellow but still had brawny arms.

  “This isn’t fair.”

  The logger bent down and picked up a metal trap near his feet. The teeth were snapped shut, but there was visible blood on the pointed edges. He held the trap up over his head.

  “The mayor had us bury all these traps in the middle of winter. For what? To catch some thief raiding his jewelry box?”

  Most of the loggers grunted their agreements.

  “And then, when the snow cleared, we’re ordered go back to work in the western woods because ‘it’s the best lumber we have.’ Did that prick forget he had us bury these traps in the snow, or did he just not care? And the mayor sits up there, in his cozy little mansion, while we bust our balls! Where is the justice in that?”

  The man threw the trap angrily against a tree, forcing a loud thud. The loggers around him nodded, muttering swears and curses of their own.

  The patrolmen on the other side stepped forward. “Careful. That is Haid’s mayor you’re talking about.”

  One of the loggers wrapped an affectionate arm around the infuriated man, trying to calm his friend. It seemed to be enough for the moment. Samuel expected the sheriff to speak out a rebuke, but he didn’t say anything.

  “He’s right,” the doctor said. She reached in her bag and pulled out a black vial. “Tree was falling. The men cleared the way, but then he stepped on the trap, and … ”

  Samuel wondered if the logger’s legs were visible on the other side of the fallen tree, and if so, how he’d not seen them before. Those traps had been set to catch the mayor’s thief. So far, they’d only caught Zei and this unfortunate logger.

  The doctor uncorked the vial and put it next to the man’s open lips.

  “You’re going to have to swallow this. It’ll feel like you’re drowning, but you have to force it down. It’ll help with the pain. I promise.”

  The dying logger groaned, and Samuel’s chest felt heavy as he imagined the weight of the tree on his own chest. The logger drank the doctor’s medicine, nearly gagging as he managed to get down most of it. The doctor wiped the blood and spilled medicine from his cheeks and lips with a rag.

  “Rites,” the logger choked out. His red eyes welled with fresh tears. “I want the rites. Please.”

  Some of the loggers fidgeted uncomfortably once they heard the request of their dying friend, while others looked on with sympathetic gazes. Samuel wanted to be surprised as the other men were, but he couldn’t be. As much as society despised the clergy and all their archaic practices, the dying were forced to deal with their mortality in a way that others didn’t have to. Samuel had only seen the living rites performed a handful of times, but he’d seen enough to know that those near the end worried about only a handful of things: the lives they’d lived, their loved ones, their pain in death, and the afterlife.

  The doctor peeked at the sheriff before turning back to the man. She made her voice sweet. “I’m sorry. There’s not enough time.”

  The logger huffed harder, almost as if his chest were fighting to lift the tree. “Rites,” he whined. “Please? Rites.”

  “Can’t we just lift the tree, Elizabeth?” the logging supervisor asked as he came around the other side of the pine. He straightened his posture as his boots dug into the mud. “The sheriff can drive him to the cleric’s place. Give the man what he wants.”

  “He’s not going to make it.”

  The logger who’d thrown the bear trap came to Samuel.

  “You’re the cleric’s son, aren’t you?”

  The sheriff turned, his heel sinking deeper into the ground.

  “He’s a patrolman.”


  Samuel pushed his glasses up his nose. He could feel the eyes of the loggers and the patrolmen on him.

  “I’m not a cleric,” Samuel said with a forced calm. “My father is. You have to be ordained and marked in order to perform the rites.”

  The logger clenched his arms together, shaking his limbs. He got closer to Samuel, their faces nearly touching. Samuel was forced to look at the man, and it made him feel helpless.

  “Come on,” the logger whispered. He bit his lip before continuing, making sure to keep his voice low enough so only the two of them could hear. “That’s a good man dying down there. He’s got a wife and three kids. Works hard every day. Even talks about the roots all the damn time like some religious do-gooder. Really good guy. And he never complains about the job. And he never asks for anything. Never. Which is more than I can say for most of us. For me. More than I can say for me.”

  Samuel arched his head into his left shoulder, trying to hide himself from the logger’s desperation. It had been easy for him not to think much about his father the past few days, but death always reminded him. People often despised the clergy until they needed them, and his father always did his duties diligently. But he was not his father.

  The logger kept on.

  “I don’t know you, kid. I don’t care. But if you can, help Wilkens. Give him what he wants. Do it. Even if it’s not real. Please. Do the rites.”

  “That’s enough,” the sheriff called out.

  “Please,” the man pleaded once more.

  Samuel forced himself to look at the dying man. His breaths were slowing, his face growing more and more pale.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m not a cleric. It’s against the law.”

  The sheriff waved his hand. The wiry-haired patrolman raised his firearm, and the others around him did the same.

  “Tell your man to back away, Josiah. Or I’ll have Jax here make this nasty.”

  Samuel’s jaw twitched. He wished more than anything that his father were there to perform the rites. For the first time in a long while, he would’ve been relieved to see his father holding the scriptures tightly. But the guilt of the dying man wasn’t enough. He couldn’t stomach the vision of reciting the old lines or slicing his hunting knife over his palm. He wasn’t a cleric. He never had been. He would rather be the one under the fallen tree than be the one to conduct the rites.

  “Back away, Gibbs,” the logging supervisor called out.

  The logger squinted his eyes, his nose wrinkling. He grunted loudly before stomping away, heading deep into the woods alone. The doctor petted the dying man’s hair as he fought to stay alive. Several of the loggers started tearing up, while others remained stoic. The sheriff stood next to Samuel, both watching the man breathe his last breaths.

  “I can’t,” Samuel said to himself weakly. His eyes turned wet. “I can’t do it. I won’t. I’m sorry.”

  The sheriff lifted his hand as if to put it on Samuel’s shoulder, to give him some sort of reassurance, but put it down and shoved his thumb into his belt.

  The rest of the day, Samuel felt frozen. He went to the jailhouse and did his duty with Zei. They shared a meal of boiled potatoes and half of a roasted chicken, but Samuel struggled to keep the food down. His stomach weighed heavy, each breath causing his ribs to twinge. He was nauseated and threw up twice. He didn’t do any new lessons with Zei, content to only stand alongside her and watch her sketch pictures of whitelands mountains.

  Ebauch Wilkens’s funeral wouldn’t take place until the next day. Samuel pictured the logger’s bloodied mouth quivering as he made his request, his voice weak and desperate.

  Rites.

  Samuel blinked hard. How many dead bodies had Samuel encountered throughout his life? He never kept count. Wasn’t it supposed to get easier? He wasn’t merely haunted by the logger’s ghost, but also by the nagging guilt of his refusal to offer a prayer. It was illegal for anyone not ordained by the clergy to perform the rites, and he wasn’t a cleric. He needed the loggers and the other patrolmen to understand that, and they weren’t going to learn if he performed the rites. He’d done the sensible thing, so why did he feel so dirty? A chilly wind pushed through the barred window, so Samuel gathered fresh wood and rekindled the fire. The warmth quickly took possession of the prison cell. He rolled up his jacket sleeves and looked on his arm. Against his own volition, he imagined inked roots starting from his elbow and creeping down in complex motions until they reached his wrist.

  Samuel heard the chains rattling and turned. Zei stood beside him, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulders. She softly held her stub with her good hand as if she were nestling it safely across her side. She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. But something about the way her slit-eyes were looking at him made him think she had an interest in his emotional disposition. He wasn’t sure what to tell her, or if she even cared to know.

  “I watched someone die. I didn’t … I couldn’t help him.”

  Samuel fiddled with the ends of his shirt.

  “Have you watched someone die?”

  He regretted the question as soon as he asked it. He already knew the answer.

  Zei’s bare feet rapped across the dirt floor, the chains around her ankles following her as she made her way to the window. The breeze from outside caused her long red hair to sway in sporadic waves. As usual, Samuel found himself trying to decipher what was going through her mind. Did she care about him at all? Did his question upset her? How much did she understand him, or was it that there was only so much she wanted him to know about her? Where had she come from? What happened to her missing arm? And, since she wasn’t a demon, what was she?

  The funeral took place outside, near the northwest corner of the woods, and those in attendance were mostly the loggers that worked for Josiah’s crew. Samuel went by himself, choosing to stay on the outskirts of the procession. A few of the loggers gave him a nod of acknowledgement, but most of them ignored him completely. He spotted the logger who’d confronted him standing in the front of the casket next to a crying woman dressed in black. There were three children huddled around her; the oldest one couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. The youngest one, a boy of about two, swayed back and forth as he kept a soft hold on his mother’s dress.

  The crew leader went beside the open casket and said a handful of good things about the dead worker, and later shared a funny story about how the logger had managed to save a coworker’s life who was so busy taking a piss he didn’t notice a falling tree.

  “Wilkens ran up screaming and grabbed Cully, who still had his cock in his hand, and yanked that fool out the way. Got piss all over the both of them. We gave Cully so much shit for that. Wilkens too. But he didn’t get mad or make a stink about it. ‘Got to do the right thing,’ he kept saying. That’s the kind of guy Wilkens was. I wish one of us could’ve done the same thing for him.”

  Samuel fiddled with his fancy peacoat, still feeling inadequate in the garb. He’d come to the funeral in an effort to ease his conscience, but learning more about the dead logger only made him feel worse. He spotted his father coming out about a couple of miles past the square. Samuel squinted to focus his sight, and he could see how his father’s footsteps were heavy and slow. He must’ve walked nearly eight miles just to get to the ceremony. His father waited patiently behind the coffin as other men sang their fallen coworker’s praises.

  When the loggers finished making their speeches, his father got beside the dead man’s coffin. He took out the leather-bound scriptures from his jacket pocket and loudly read a passage Samuel recognized from the book of Iskriel, the same passage he’d read to the dying butcher.

  “‘We are but dirt. To the dirt we return. For Azhuel will draw out your flesh and pain, and in Him you will grow again, connected to the His roots. In Him, there is always life.’”

  His father slit his palm open and squeezed until the blood dripped over the logger’s stiff body. Could
the dead man feel any peace from beyond the grave? Could he take any comfort in somehow knowing the rites had been performed for him?

  Once the rites concluded, his father stepped back and wrapped his hand with a strip of cloth to stop the bleeding. He’d used one of the old hunting knives to make the cut, and Samuel remembered how dull some of those blades were. He must have had to press really hard to make the cut. Samuel lowered his hand into his pocket and fiddled with the three throwing knives he’d bought from the blacksmith months before.

  Many of the attendees left as the body was lowered into the ground. Josiah’s crew would have the rest of the day off to spend time with their families, but they would have to return to work the next morning or risk losing their jobs. That was the way the lumber trade was. Samuel’s father edged himself back near the corner of the woods, allowing the people to make their exodus before he would make his leave.

  Nearly everyone except the three loggers who’d elected to bury Wilkens was a far distance removed. Samuel swallowed. It wasn’t as if it was against the law for a citizen to talk with a cleric. He took several steps toward his father but stopped. What if someone saw them conversing? Would they spread rumors that he was going back to the clergy? Would they keep treating him like the cleric’s bastard? He looked around to see if the volunteer gravediggers were watching before continuing on the path to his father.

  Samuel petted his hair, buying time for him to find words. He stopped a few meters to the side, making sure to push his back against one of the pines. He glanced out of his peripheral. His father’s hand was far more bloodied than what was typical, the wet blood still dripping from the edge of his palm.

  “It was a nice ceremony.”

  His father nodded with his usual stiff demeanor, his uncut hand squeezing tight on the scriptures.

  “How are you, Son?”

  The way that he said the word son nearly sent chills down his spine.