Beast

by Thomas Castle

  “No!” Cyril yelled, flailing back and forth, listening to his tormentors revel in his pain. They poured another pitcher which buzzed in his ears as the carbonation crackled across his face like small dots of cannon fire. He opened his eyes and caught Philippe’s specter strolling behind the men. Cyril opened his mouth to scream but released a fiery stream of vomit. The men jumped back with a hail of laughter and vulgarity, as the drunken councilman spit the bile into the crowd, gasping for air, then rolling to his stomach fell off the table.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Fierro shouted. The crowd turned toward the captain standing in the doorway with a hand mired to his holster. Men watched as he crossed the floor, like wolves protecting their spoil from the poacher, eyeing each man, lining up his shots to see which bastard wanted to drop first.

  “Hang him, captain” the father pointed at the councilman, imagining the skin around his neck bunched like dirty linen from the end of the noose. “He did this.”

  “Just calm down” Fierro said. “We’re going to see this through. First his testament.”

  “Thank you!” the Cyril cried.

  “Shut up” Fierro growled. He looked at the toper and saw a blooded scrape foil back the skin on his arm like bunched dough. “I’ve got the mind to walk out and let them do what they are fixed on doing.” Fierro toward the father. “But not without an investigation.”

  “Yes I let Hagar out” Cyril spat. “And it’s a bloody shame the oaf couldn’t do more. Whoever thought such brute strength would be wasted on a petty mind. He didn’t do nothing but a few scares. Worthless chap. He’s in hell, I tell you, but his soul isn’t worth a nothing. Not even the devil is happy to have him in his keep. Worthless!”

  The men lunged forward when Fierro discharged his weapon, peeling back the tiles from the roof with molten lead, causing the men to plant their steps back and raise their hands like high priests in officiation. Hagar’s father who stood in front of the patrons with a look as steadfast as stone.

  “You want your vengeance?” Fierro asked. “Then let’s lure and trap this beast with another” he motioned to Cyril. The men moved in on him and lifted the drunk to his knees with his head hanging on his chest. “These days, this day, this hour, is a dark time. You send him to his death and I warn you, revenge makes a dark soul.” Fierro looked to Hagar’s body, then his father and brother. “But you want justice? Be the light till morning comes.”

  ~ 61

  Hagar’s father carried a pail of goat blood into the woods, walking into the sun sitting on the mountains’ crown. He looked to the heavens, praying that his son’s spirit would see his wrong righted. The forest echoed with men fastening their platforms in the trees, anchoring their swivels on the branches, hinging their rifles, sheening their knives and calibrating their iron sights. Ambush hung on the winds. Each man yearned to smell cordite, to taste the metallic zing of battle in the air, hoping to bathe the woods with the blood of fiends. Each hooted toward the other, whistling notes of competition, riling one another to be the first to fall from their nest in a gaff. Then silence fell as the father passed.

  Hagar’s father found Cyril tied to a tree. Two sentries stood post and a gamut of others fortified the trees on the outskirt. Cyril’s flask rested next to his head, nailed into the bark, and a rag soaked in unfiltered rotgut gagged his mouth. Hagar’s father pulled the choke down and set the bucket of blood at his feet.

  “You took my boy” the father said. He dipped the goat tail into the blood and brushed it across the man’s chest. Cyril shivered beneath the cold paste.

  “Please don’t” Cyril begged. He hung his head limp then slapped it back against the tree with a cry of agony.

  “Please’nt? I would’a said the same thing. ‘Please don’t kill muh’ boy’. But you never asked. You just went along and did it. Now I’m just getting along with doing this.” He dipped the tail again and wicked the blood across Cyril’s face. The councilman whipped his head, throwing the beads to the leaves scattered on the ground. Hagar’s father lifted the bucket and drained it over his head, till the bait stood like a pillar of blood, then dropped the pail at his feet. “If you’d never taken the time to watch the sunset, I’d do it now.”

  “Please don’t. Mercy.” The father grabbed him by the chin and raised Cyril level with his face, glaring with eyes that burned like sundials, searching past the tears matted in blood for a soul. Then he turned and disappeared into the woodlands. Hunter reignited the forest with grim bets, wagering on carnage, and men climbed rope ladders into their neighbor’s hut to roll dice, pacing time with cards, and sabotaged their night vision with the flair of clove cigarettes.

  “Where’s Fierro?” one huntsman asked as his friend kindled a fire and set a pot of roast over the tinder. Smoke kicked into the air, filling the camp with the haze of boiled fowl.

  “He’s seeing the father off. I guess he and the baker are returning home. I don’t blame them. Murder or not, something’s rotten about the whole thing. I’d ship off too if I was they.”

  “That’s a sour thing to do. He left just when things got ripe.” The hunter shrugged his shoulders as he sat back into the tree and stirred the pot, pressing his chin into his chest as the night set in. Cyril shivered as men pulled their face guards against the condensation flowing through the masks. The hunters setup fires in their pots, raising the tree line like an infernal serpent slithering about the canopy, as Cyril sat beneath the fiery crown, rolling his head side to side, gathering raindrops of heat against his cold and sticky flesh.

  Glass broke at the base of one of the trees as a huntsmen shouted dammit and another snickered. A thistle of smoke rose from the leaves and the golden wafers crisped. Flames leapt from the ground in a sprig of tongues, seasoning the ground with cinder. More fires sprouted and grew like beads of rain, joining together until the drops grew into a seamless ocean of heat.

  “Fire!” a huntsman shouted, throwing his line to the base and descended, while another fumbled from his perch and slammed the ground dead. Another lout reached for his repel, knocked the lantern into the stew of dry blush, and grew the blaze. Cyril kicked mud at the fire, which swished like waves opened by stone and closed again, creeping on.

  “Help!” Cyril cried. The clay smoldered as flames rose up the trees, popping with bark, and spit char biting into his face. “Help!”

  “Beast!” a huntsman cried as a shot rang out and peeled a smoldering piece of bark off the fern. Cyril raised his eyes as a hunter opened his black powder flask and dropped it to the floorboards. Crumb sifted through the platform as the flames reached heavenward and licked the black dust, kissing it with sparkles and snaps. Then another shot passed through the flames, transmuting the bead into molten lead, and slapped the tree like quicksilver, splashing across Cyril’s chest.

  The blaze sucked back, a tide readying its push, when Cyril saw the throes of death open before him; its gates were wide and as deep as a dead man’s march. Then the tree baring his back shook and split, while the fort above his head toppled to the ground. The roof fell in on the men like a communal urn. The gate of flames screamed from beneath the pyre while Cyril picked himself up from the floor and threw the ropes from his shoulders like rags from a corpse.

  Men hacked at the fire, raging with defiance, while Cyril ran into the forest, leaving a trail of blood.

  ~ 62

  Gabrielle awoke in a bed surrounded by candles. She set her hand on the wispy canopy smothering the flames into fuzzy dandelion heads, and opened the veil to a gush of cold air. Gabrielle crept out of the room and entered the hallway where torches hung from the walls like arches of flaming sabers, offering a march for death’s bride to be. A sweet hymn played on the phonograph echoed in corridor.

  She entered the main hall. The beast sat on its throne placed atop the dining table, holding an envelope in one hand and a paring blade in another. The beast huddled over the letter, like a mongoose greedy over an egg, when it wretched back toward her. It broke the
seal with the blade, littering red petals over the floor, then dropped all that was in its hands and began crawling out of the room.

  “No!” Gabrielle screamed. She grabbed the letter opener and ran at the beast. It turned and caught her arm, ripping the hand off at the wrist.

  When Gabrielle awoke from her nightmare she raised her hand and padded the eyebrow dried in blood; she touched her temple and a stallion bucked inside her skull. A bowl of water sat with her on the floor beside the bed, and beneath it hid a pair of children’s shoes laden with fur. A canopy of silk hung over the mattress and two pillows stuffed with goose feather rested at the head. A breeze rollicked in the curtains and furrowed the sheets, turning the starlight in the room pale with frost.

  She crawled to wall and pulled herself up on the dresser. Her feet felt swollen and knees held like a newborn doe. Gabrielle took an old robe off the shelf and wrapped herself before descending the steps. How did her father stay here? Where did he reside? Did that thing kill him? Memories faded into conclusions, every thought tinted with horror, as she tried to recall her father and was met by dark fantasies of the beast. Gabrielle reached the ground floor, studying the pillars veiled in shadows, and stepped out into the room. Every sign of life was absent, from the roar of the winds to the echoes of mystery. Perfect calm sat in the air, bedewing her soul with an alternating cycle of fear and accord. She looked around, making quick glances as specks of dust glinted off the moonlight, and hurried across the hall into a crossway of passages.

  Gabrielle came to the ward. Tables thrown with moth bitten sheets bedecked the room, a bedpan caught old tea dripping from a rusted crack in the kettle, counting her breaths away with every drop. She searched the cabinets for something sharp, cruel, pulling the drawers to the ground, tossing the gauze through the air in ribbons of ivory. Her cheeks huffed, feeling her soul drain out in the form of tears. She threw the dressing to the floor and chucked the tray across the clinic, pulling the curls in her hair straight.

  Gabrielle ran out the ward and found her way to the bailey where her father rested. A crow perched atop the headstone kicked off, and flapping its wings tore the head of the red rose from its stem. It fell into the ground and unfoiled in dirt rolling to her feet. Gabrielle knelt down, took the final petal from the bud and laid it in her palm until the wind flicked it into the night, losing it to rot in the woods. The heart remained in her hand, a clove with a thin stem. Gabrielle crushed it. She dropped the rose over the grave, knelt and kissed her father for the last, then ran to the castle door. She pulled the handles, like a graverobber a coffin, and entered the castle.

  The ghost of her father followed at her shoulder, watching her, avoiding her glance, awaiting his daughter to befall tragedy. Darkness stirred in her breast. Truth would be her closure, far more sealing than death. She would wager her soul to find out why her father stayed, and demand a verdict of history from the beast. Gabrielle was intent on cajoling it to convey through its broken dialect the errors of her father, and at last find consolation.

  The a scream arose in the hall, severing her thoughts of Jakob. The cry heightened as Gabrielle approached the stairwell to the far tower. Her heart enchanted her feet, betraying the premonitions, and her mind equipped her with a list of exhortations, promising her death for needless satisfaction. But she continued, impartial to any form of reason that would not achieve her means, seeking only to acquire a summation pertaining to Jakob, the poor inventor.

  Steps spun under her feet like a rotary, shoveling the distance of her haven from feet to paces. The crown of the steeple grew at the top of the steps. A crow resting in the window kicked off the perch, swooning the clouds with a harrowing caw, gathering them to hide sins committed from the righteous gaze of sunlight.

  Gabrielle reached the top flight and put her hands on the tower door, brushing the dust from the threshing with her breath, holding the rung of the gate, and pushed it open. There lay Gale Luther christened in blood with his vestment rent to the waist, his eyes reversing into his skull, and the beast pulling stripes of flesh from his ivory bones. The creature tugged the meat until the tissues snapped, and packed its mouth before returning its claws into his side. The beast raked against his bones, mining for flesh, as strident scream sang from Gale’s lips.

  Gabrielle put her fingers against her lips, tasting the blood engrossed on the door rung. The beast turned and saw the beautiful girl enthralled in shock. Her lips parted with an unruly tremor, smearing the blood over her lips like war paint. the beast dropped the body to the floor and came at her.

  She ran outside the room, pushing into the wall as though Samson might adjure her soul, giving her the strength to crumble the tower, and bury the three in the everlasting moor. Gabrielle closed her eyes, listening to the tune of her breath as her lungs expanded, drawing lines of sweet freedom through her nostrils, and collapsed.

  When she opened her eyes again the ceiling moved as though a sheet were unraveled. Her eyes roved to the window which shimmered and blinked as the crow came onto its perch. The beast carried her in rigid arms. A musk rose from the muzzle harnessed in human bits, and it laid her on the bed. While it turned back toward the door Gabrielle reached out. Her fingers touched its fur. The beast stopped and shuddered, feeling electric, and turned back to Gabrielle with a growl. Her eyes sat like chalices filled with innocence, only obtainable to the pure of heart, and the beast searched her over as she rested a dainty hand on its arm.

  She whispered as a dream superimposed the real world, and shut her eyes, “Who are you?”

  ~ 63

  Fierro kicked the shovel into the dirt, cutting a crude pock into the clay, and tore back the first patch from Sir James’ grave. Bats dove in and out of the trees, chasing gnats across the fields, as townsmen brought their torches and stood around the site where the late councilman rested. A bandwagon rested off the road, pulled in by a pack of mules, waiting for the load of remains while the gravekeeper struck up a match, lit his cigarette, and waved the stick till smoke spun off the head.

  “The father just can’t let it go” someone said. “Said this will exonerate his boy, in so many words. Pour soul just can’t see it straight. Thinks exhuming him might bring some closure.” Fierro slammed the shovel down hard, peeling back the layers, when the spade belted against the coffin with a dull thud. The gravekeeper flicked his cigarette into the brush and spit the smoke from his nostrils, and jumping into the pit reached out to Fierro.

  “Give her here” the gravekeeper said. He took the shovel and scraped the lid till a few lanes of dirt covered the casket, then turned toward the men who stood around the pit like pups at the teat. “A warning to the weak. Sometimes they eyes are open, or one of them open, like a split in old apple skin. Sometimes their teeth are showing when they wasn’t before. There might be a maggot or so. Look away, lassies; but all you devils, gather.”

  He jammed the shovel into the lid and pried it up. A virulent odor broke the air, spirited with the stench of cruel immortality. Men collapsed to the ground and hurled, clenching their guts with a terrible ache till they dry heaved and were escorted back by men with wills too weak to stay. Fierro helped lift the remains, which set cold and heavy in his hands. They raised the rigid body like a scaffolding of mortality. Helpers took the former councilmen and threw him in the cart, pulled a rug over his corpse, then slapped the burros to pull the rogue back into town.

  Men walked by the cart with rifles slung on their shoulders, watching the fields for anything that might spook the mules and send the body dashing into town with hellfire piping the wheels. Hagar’s father waited on the periphery, awaiting the men’s return from the frontier, and joined their ranks as they passed from the fields into the narrow street. The gravekeeper looked to the father, then Fierro, and lit another cigarette before any bloodshed between the two occurred. Children lay awake in their beds, waiting till the mules bray strummed the night, and arose as the caravan came then passed like a procession of some frenetic ritual.

&
nbsp; The bandwagon turned into a building through two barn doors built into the face, sweeping silence back into the streets. The gang pulled back the tarp and hoisted Sir James’ carcass onto the examination table where the mortician drew the vest open with pincers and rotated the head to the side. He dipped a washcloth into the bowl and scrubbed the neck, revitalizing the coagulated blood, and reworked the lance until it lay vulnerable beneath the torchlight.

  He pulled back the scalp where the gash sullied the skull, and daubed the opening with a rag until the cloth no longer sucked blood from the bone. He gestured to his assistant to bring him snips, pulling back the hair to trim it when a chunk fell from the foliage of skin and brain like curry, rattling in the metal basin. The men gasped as another ran to the latrine and vomited. They leaned around the pan, studying the nugget sautéed in blood. The mortician lifted the entity with a pair of tweezers and swirled it in a jar of vinegar, then brought it out for examination. He rotated a canine tooth broken at the root. The doctor wiped his brow with a hankie and turned toward the party.

  “Forensics isn’t an exact science” the mortician said, “but I’d say this tooth is human. Do you want to go further?” Hagar’s father came forward, studying the body, and confirmed the mortician with a nod. The doctor, feeling a grievance for the father, summoned his apprentice to bring Hagar’s body.

  “I want you to be prepared to see your son again” the doctor said. “We have him soaking in a saline; it slows the disintegration of soft tissue until we can make our analyzes. The solution causes pruning of the skin, and a natural discoloration occurs posthumously. I hope I can tell you in all gentility; don’t anticipate seeing the boy you remember.”

  The aide wheeled Hagar’s body beside Sir James and stood back as the mortician looked to the father. His eyes welled as he saw his son, bloated with purple veins constricted beneath cold flesh, and gagged the blubber in his throat. The skin drew back at the nails, elongating them like claws, and his eyes lay deep in their sockets. The men stood in silence as Hagar’s father reached out and touched the body. He placed his hand over the heart, patching the wound, and let a chorus of tears met in his eyes as he opened his son’s mouth. He pulled back the lips and dug his finger against the tongue, pulling the cold muscle to the side, and anchored the jaw open. There sat all four canines. A cry of vindication burst from his mouth as the father fell to the floor in a vicissitude of exultation and bereavement. Five men gathered to lift him to his feet.