Beast

by Thomas Castle

  She lifted the satchel to restore the cup when a bobcat broke the brush. She threw the cup, bouncing it off the predator’s head into the straw like a dud mortar. It wove its head back and tore through the stock when Chien leapt from the shadows, broadsiding it into the loam. The cat fought to retreat but Chien caught it by the tail and dragged it back down. The creature screamed, swiping its paws as its ears cocked back into slits as fine as razors, with teeth borne like a row of bleached knives. Chien tore at its throat, cropping meat its jaws. The two ears folded into one as the skin around its eyes pulled away from their sockets, causing the snout to hang off its face like a melted mask. The bobcat squealed, thrashing in blood, then gave a death gurgle as the wolf entombed its teeth in the back of its skull. Chien raised its eyes to Gabrielle’s and lifted its prize, translating the envy of the kill from her body into the bobcat. The wolf bit down harder, releasing the bones with a tight snap, and disappeared into the woods.

  Gabrielle knelt into the turf, tilling the grass with her fingers, and gave the gods an alm of tears for not feasting on her flesh. Then she stood like a pagan born in the blood of its enemy, triumphant, and seated her satchel on her back. The air tasted sweet, honeyed with life, feeling revived until she saw a castle steeple crown the ridge.

  The kingdom was at hand.

  Father, Gabrielle thought.

  ~ 49

  Gerard awoke as the beast slid the key into the cell door and unlocked the cage. Chien stood behind him, his demon incarnate, as the beast shoved Glanton into the block. The man slammed the floor at Gerard’s feet as the beast shut the cage and with the hound into hell. A faint sigh leapt from Glanton’s lips and Gerard took him into his arms.

  “Easy does it” Gerard said. “We’ll get you back right and find a way out. Or maybe kill that bloody thing, if the gods give us swift justice.” Glanton shook his head as he sat upright, bringing his face into his hands, grunting.

  “My head” Glanton moaned, leaning back into the wall as he blew into the air. “Where am I?”

  “Friend” Gerard pulled himself closer to Glanton. “Where’d it find you?”

  “The woods.” He blinked heavy, turning his head about the cell. “I was out fishing when it overcame me. I saw it sometime before but thought it was just a bear, so I never gave it mind. This pain” he groaned, putting his head back into his hands and rocked.

  “It captured me on the hunt. Traded me for a dead tart. Can you imagine the luck. Then it took me over a cliff. I thought the fall would kill us both, if not the rocks. But be we damned, we lived.”

  “What is it?” Gerard looked at him with an air of sympathy. “What?”

  “A demon.”

  “Don’t be a twit.”

  “It eats men.”

  “Swear it!”

  “It’s sworn! Why do you think we hunted it?”

  “Thought you might have just caught a line of misfortune.” Glanton trailed his eyes down to the wound in Gerard’s leg, feeling his stomach churn like cloth in a hive of moths. “You talked about facing this thing together. How about it?” Gerard looked him up and down, seeing a heretic claiming to be the messiah, then pulled his leg against his body and checked for maggots.

  “How would you face a demon?” Gerard placed a maggot that rolled out the wound back under a dead flap of skin. “I’d say the surest way is to take its heart out.” He set his leg down as gentle as a virgin’s touch, then pulled back his vest exposing a snagged femur ground to a point.

  “How do you want to do it?” Glanton held out his hand.

  “No.”

  “You’re in no condition to do it.”

  “This will take two men, you dumb bastard. The strong one has to grab the beast while the other stabs it. It’s not a matter of trust.”

  “And if you can’t move quickly enough with that leg we both die” Glanton stood and kicked a knot of straw across the cell. “Is that the only one?” Gerard nodded. Glanton turned toward the window where sun set into the mountains, opening the ridge into violaceous swirls. Silence carried like an instrument out of tune. Gerard shuffled across the floor and patted Glanton on the leg. He turned toward the gimp, finding the femur held out in his hands. Glanton took it, holding it like it was pulled from stone, while Gerard laid back on the ground and bridged his arm over his eyes.

  “I’d rather break out than fight our way.” Glanton spun the femur in his hand and turned toward the cell door.

  “We’ll dig until it comes, and when it does we’ll be in arms with our forefathers. Make your peace with the gods, because I wager that by the end of day you’ll be singing death’s song among the ancestors.”

  ~ 50

  “It will hear you!” Gerard growled as Glanton struck the wall with the femur, filing the old grout into lint. “That bastard demon will hear you. Do you know what it eats? Men! We’re good ‘ol supper for its black soul. But not me, aye, not me. It’ll get a taste of something if it tries putting those teeth into my good flesh.” He turned a rock over, scraped like flint to a craggy point, and slid it back into his sleeve. “It’s not long but it’ll go deep. By my soul, if it tries taking me I’ll dig all the good men it’s eaten out of its gut.” Glanton looked at him. The color from Gerard’s face flushed away, leaving the pigment of his skull showing through in his cheeks, ashen, sunken with shock, depressing into deaths final stage.

  “Quiet!” Glanton whispered. “I’d rather die in the snow than the hell of its belly.” He dragged the hock across the wall, digging a moat, turning the mortar into crumb. Gerard resealed the pointed rock and peeled back the leather flap guarding his wound. A lip biting cry echoed in the cell, seeing the maggot infestation, and he fell somnolent.

  “Keep your wits” Glanton growled. “Shut your trap. Just shut it. I’m almost there.” He shoveled the bone, chiseling the foundation, till a thread of light blinked in the dust and spilled over the stonework in an oblong circle. “Starvation or savagery, a better death awaits us outside these walls. Praises the gods!” He jammed the femur and pried the stone, splintering the bone into halves. Glanton slapped the wall and scattered the cartilage, beating the floor with tears. “Curse you Aries, the soldier who dies like a whore. Filthy! Dishonorable! Have you no clout, you fattened lard, you louse, you king of knaves.”

  Glanton kicked the wall and felt his knee twang with pain. The brick slid, widening the light orb, and he kicked again till the opening salivated a frigid draft. He beat the stone, crushing the pads of his foot, and laughed, tickled by the feathers of ecstasy. The block wobbled and spit outside the wall like a chipped tooth, returning a deluge of cold air. Gerard grunted and stirred as the maggots sank deeper into his warm flesh. Glanton stuck his arm outside, slapping the outside walls with his hand, feeling the first sunlight his flesh tasted in lost time.

  “Quickly!” Glanton shook Gerard, and turned back to the hole. Birds swam the sky and clouds coasted on the breeze, sailing the ottomans of gods. Liberty saturated the winds like thick cream, sweet and heavy on his tongue.

  “Freedom!” Glanton sobbed. “We are free!” He retracted his arm and sank his face into the plaster. Winds licked his cheeks and kissed his tongue with bitter frost as he detonated a hysterical laugh into the void. He saw demolished steeples across the kingdom, the crumpled obelisks that would have lifted the dead to heaven. Caved rooftops of straw sat depressed like the footsteps of giants. Moss crept up the walls like blood left from pillaging and carts rested in the streets where ghosts abandoned their chassis. But it was all joyous in the eyes of a deadman redeemed. He gazed to the base of the tower and saw leagues of snow packed against the wall, where once poor men, made rich in freedom, begged for franc and brisket.

  Then he saw it. The beast perused the yard, mining the soil with long strides, and returned out of sight. Glanton mashed his head into the hole, straining to see it. It returned with Edmond in tow, sluiced in mud, screaming as the beast dragged him to a post and knotted the chain around the base.

&n
bsp; “My-” Glanton gasped. He turned back and leaped atop Gerard. “Wake up, you bloody fool. It returned! Wake up.” He grabbed Gerard’s chin to square with his eyes and felt a cold muscle droop out the side of his mouth. Glanton moved his hand to his throat and felt no pulse beneath the cooling skin.

  “Damn you” Glanton cried. He sat back into the wall, shaded his eyes, and felt teardrops turn to ice on his arm. Then screams plated the wall in shallow drums. Glanton looked out the cavity, seeing the beast rummage through the snow till it found a shovel. It walked back to the man marooned at the pillar, raised the spade, and struck a tussock of hair into the snow. Edmond chortled like a possessed child’s plaything then fell dead. The beast circled the body and sprung over the corpse, leaving a lattice of innards across the road. It peeled back the scalp and opened the head, scooping the brain from its nest, chocking its throat with the pinkish gray pulp. Wet gurgles whipped the air as the beast returned his devilish claws into the empty bowl and scraped out the remnants of gory sap into its mouth. A strong burn rose in Glanton’s stomach and he spew bile down the towers side.

  He turned to Gerard and rummaged through his pockets. He pulled threads from the hem, separating the layers, and unfastened the knots in his vest. He rolled the body to its side and rent the back flannel to his waist, then stripped his socks from his feet. Gerard coughed and Glanton fell back, hugging the wall.

  “Where’s the knife?” Glanton whispered. “I saw it. It’s eating. Give me the knife.” He crept toward the man and steadied his hand on his barren ankle, feeling tight and shrunken from blood loss. Gerard dug into his sleeve and brought out the blade. He drove the point at Glanton, swiping at his eyes but caught the palm of his hand. Blood drizzled down his wrist and drank into his sleeve as Glanton reared back.

  “I thought you were gone, friend” Glanton repeated. Gerard watched him with eyes of a soul turned deranged, and levied the blade with his face. Glanton raised his hands, letting the palm drip like sacred oil, and backed away. “I just thought” he said as he sat down. Gerard pulled the bandage over his leg after giving it one last glance, and scooted against the opposing wall. He rested the knife against his thigh, keeping the blade held tight, and watched his mate squat like a monk in homicidal meditation.

  ~ 51

  Gerard lay against the back wall of the prison cell, hugging the rock sharpened into a knife, while Glanton slept at the foot of the gate. The sun tapered off the cell wall like a droopy eyelid closing to sleep and the winds carried in the frost off the mountains. Gerard thought of his son and the sick dog he promised to look after. When it came time to see its end, knowing his wife didn’t have the makings to put it down, made this all the harder to be away. It was bad enough to die alone, and in a foul way, but it was worse to die on the credit of a broken promise.

  Gerard looked back out the hole and saw Gabrielle pass through a window in the neighboring tower. He rubbed his eyes, scratching at the phantoms in his pupils, and looked again. The tower window sat empty.

  The door at the end of the cellblock creaked. Gerard pulled his lame leg, scooting like a slug over salt, leaving a slick line of blood and pus scraping off the rags. He folded his clothes back and hid the makeshift knife against his stomach.

  Chien came with its muzzle girded in blood, eyes as pitch as the devil’s tail, stalking back and forth in front of the prison door. Gerard slid his hand beneath his vestment and brought the knife between his fingers, then eased it out as the wolf turned toward Glanton asleep in the corner. He dove forward, ramming the blade between the bars and nicked off a piece of its ear. Chien howled and bit his hand, splicing the nail on his finger into halves. Gerard thrust again and the wolf wove beneath the blade. It bit down on his wrist and jarred it down over the bars. He dropped the knife as Chien reeled back, flaying the flesh down to his wrist. Screams of agony filled the keep as blood ran into Chien’s mouth, revitalizing its bloodlust. Gerard positioned his foot against the bar, slipped, positioned again and kicked back, breaking its hold as he tumbled into Glanton. The wolf pushed its snout between the bars and snapped at the air, while Gerard patted Glanton down for his knife.

  “Where is it?” Gerard shouted as he shook Glanton. He turned back to the gate and found the wolf gone, leaving behind a pool of bloody slaver at the base of the door. Gerard crept on his hands and knees toward the bars, listening, hearing his breath drum like pistons inside his skull. He took the gate and pressed his face into the bars. The corridor was empty. Where are the beasts? He felt he was going mad as he crawled to the back the cell and slid into his corner. Beasts, he repeated. Beasts inside a castle?

  Cold air poured through the hole in the wall. Gerard brought up his knees, crossed his arms, and set his chin on its threshold, watching the moon crown the sky like an opal. He began to nod off when burning orbs rose in the trees. A small party wiggled through the forest like glowworm. Gerard pushed his arm through the hole, cramming his head and shoulder into the orifice, and screamed.

  “Help!” he cried as the band slithered further away from the castle. “Help!” Gerard slapped the tower wall and clawed the air, crying, pleading, praying to the gods to strike their deafened heads from their shoulders, when then the cell opened.

  Gerard turned back to the beast pulling Glanton’s body from the cell. Chien followed at his master’s heel, circling in the ring of a pentagram, then dashed atop the soldier. Glanton’s hood came down as head rolled back, presenting his icy blue face. Gerard wanted to kick him, to mount his remains and pummel them into ground meat for abandoning him in this forbidden hold. He looked at the face chalked in blue, the eyes rolled back with ice forming around the lids, and thought the bastard lucky. I’d rather be eaten by the cold he thought. Gerard turned toward the beast and its cur, laughing and crying, revolting with a guffaw that not even the clowns of hell could replicate.

  The beast watched him laugh, writhing like a diabetic given sugar, and kicked Chien away from the threshing. He stepped forward and seized Gerard by the arm when he began to quake, drooling like a toper, sputtering something indecipherable. His breath quickened then slowed to a stop.

  Gerard slumped over dead.

  ~ 52

  Cyril opened his coat and withdrew a flask. Rain puddled in the gutters and swept the leaves across the street on the streams. Whiskey ran into his belly like fire fused with liquid fused again with fire, as he put the nozzle to his mouth and eyed Hagar’s hut. The nurse paced like a child caught between two needs as Hagar let loose a shout of pain. Miss Jansen tightened the restraints and fed him herbs ground into gravy. Shrively wench he thought. Cyril looked for any other loon on the street, and sauntered into the woods. He undid his pants and pressed till he relieved himself against the trees, bowing his head back, catching raindrops in his mouth.

  “This is going to be something awful” he muttered. He reached into his pocket, retrieved the liquor, and held it out at shoulder height like a president examining a note of surrender. “I’ve been paid already. What if I don’t do the work?” he laughed. Philippe didn’t have it in him to get his measure. He was too occupied dallying with the dolls. If it weren’t for hell, I’d still hold some fear by him.

  The councilman tucked the flask away and stepped over the roots when he placed his hand against the tree. His stomach rumbled as the network of intestines bunched into knots. He slid his hand over his gut and clenched his teeth, falling to his knees, feeling the agony of the spirits of seppuku, and released a torrent of fiery vomit. His eyes burned with tears as his ears rang and skin crawled like flesh eating worms. Cyril pulled back his jacket and chucked the flask into the woods, then he spewed again.

  “Never again” he swore, watching the flask sling through the air and bounce over the rocks into some patch of wilderness. The rain beat against his back like a thousand fingers tapping him, reminding him that he had an appointment to keep. Cyril pushed off the ground and rose to his feet, staggering against the trees, holding him like oversized crutches.


  Why couldn’t Philippe do it? Blimey ass. Aye, he hasn’t died well enough. He began toward the town when his tongue rolled in the slings of spit traced with vomit. Somewhere inside the waste hid notes of hops and barley. His throat puckered and lips trembled.

  “Where’s it it damnit!” Cyril turned back into the woods, kicking the leaves, using a branch to mine the pockets of moss, and rolled back a gallery of rocks to search in the crevice. The rain beat on him like the eyes of saints, telling him to abandon his ways and return home to regret his sins. Cyril shrugged off the cold as he threw the stick across the yard. He ran to and fro, circling the trees, tracing his steps back to a puddle of urine diluted in mud and fell hands and knees into the soiled mix.

  Cyrol saw the glint of a metallic head fixed between the roots. A sense of demerit befell him as he walked over and withdrew the flask. He poured the whiskey down his throat, feeling the vice eat him alive as the sour whiskey sat burning on his tongue, sterilizing his soul. He toes went numb as his face turned warm. “That’s the spirit” Cyril said.

  ~ 53

  The beast left the castle through the cave with Chien in tow. Moonlight pierced the surface of the water, highlighting a watery tomb. They pulled past the decomposing bodies secreting spores of fungus, chasing off the marine life that excarnated and scattered the bones. Chien came out into the cold air carrying a rung of addled flesh in his muzzle, and its master emerged with a sullen cry. The waves flopped in a clutch of mist, painting the surface in froth. The beast raised his eyes to the sky, finding the moon oscillating about the stars like a drunken gypsy. Starlight fell over the castle walls and strips of decomposed flesh rose like seaweed to the surface. The beast latched onto Chien’s scruff, eliciting a foul scream, and plunged it under water. The wolf reemerged, clawing about the waves as the beast slapped it down again, then swam inland.