D is for dinosaur, p.8
D is for Dinosaur, page 8
part #4 of Alphabet Anthologies Series
There were still five bullets in the clip.
Robert, I knew, would insist on us sailing alone, lest someone try to take his precious treasure. And if he happened to have an accident? The locals already knew him to be a foolish drunk. It seemed doubtful that they would waste a moment investigating his death, especially if there was no body to be examined.
It felt... possible, and it was that very feeling that made me quake inside. How many times had I wished for something like this, something that could just make him go away forever? Yet now that I held such a thing in my hand it seemed monstrous; it was monstrous, it was murder. Yet hadn’t I just been contemplating suicide?
It was with these uneasy thoughts chasing each other that I put the pistol in my knapsack. Perhaps I wouldn’t do anything; perhaps I would turn it on myself. But at least I had some protection should Robert’s behavior escalate. Or so I told myself.
It was early morning when I awoke, but Robert was already gone. From our window I glimpsed him far along the promenade, talking with a man in overalls and rubber boots. As I watched, Robert counted out many bills and handed them over, then shook the man’s hand.
Today, then.
I dressed swiftly, checking my knapsack twice. The pistol was real, loaded, and well-hidden. In the mirror I could not meet my own eyes. Today, then. Everything would change today, for good or ill.
Robert returned, his feet heavy on the stairs, and I met him with a smile, but he looked me over with such a searching expression that I began to panic. He knew, he had searched my knapsack and he knew...
“I’ve found us a boat,” he finally said, in the tone I had come to think of as Stern Father. “Now you’re going to do exactly what I say from here on out, Carol. I only have one chance at this, I can’t have any mistakes. Otherwise, hen, poppet, love? You’ll be paying me back for the rest of your goddamn life.”
I nodded, keeping the smile on my face, but a small, angry voice said, “or maybe you’re going to pay me.” Robert didn’t react, but instead started to gather up his things; only then did I realize the voice came from inside me, that its anger was mine.
There was a moment, that morning, when everything felt … not good, but not terrible either. When everything felt neutral, balanced. Perhaps it was that, occupied with steering the boat, Robert had little cause to speak, and thus I could pretend we were as we appeared: an adventurous, middle-aged couple indulging in an off-beat holiday.
Or perhaps it was that both sea and sky were the same color that morning, a slate grey, so that it was all but impossible to see a horizon, where one element ended and the next began. Just a soothing infinity of nothingness.
Too, there was something about those islands. Vast, rocky slabs jutting from the water, their tops fuzzy with a pale green: they were like nothing I had ever seen. As stark as the landscape was, it wasn’t jarring like the young people we had seen, but rather welcoming in its timelessness. Had I my way we would have brought a picnic, and visited several of the islands. But one look at Robert’s face was enough to remind me that we were not here for pleasure. This was the culmination of all his years of obsession.
As we passed what seemed to be the last of the islands he slowed the boat and stepped out of the cabin, checking our location against his maps, muttering to himself as he worked out calculations. “It should be here,” he said aloud. And then, as if addressing the island itself, “where are you? I’m close, I’m nearly there...”
My stomach clenched and I reached for the knapsack. “It must be nearby,” I offered, trying to sound cheerful. “Perhaps we should go back to that last island? That rise would let you see for a good distance around.”
“You don’t navigate by sight, you idiot,” he retorted. “You navigate by coordinates.” When I started to speak again, he shouted, “just shut up, Carol! I can’t think for your damn whining.”
I reached into my knapsack, letting my fingers close around the handle of the pistol. A single shot, and then I could push him off, his boots would act like weights...
But he suddenly jerked upright, peering into the distance, his lips parting slightly. I looked, but there was only the water and the sky, the gloomy clouds of a piece with the whole grey expanse—
only as I let my eyes become unfocused I realized that there was a texture in one area, a strange density. I looked at Robert again. He had a pair of binoculars out now, scanning the horizon, his lips curving into a smile that did nothing to ease my dread.
“Right on the goddamned money,” he said.
He started the boat with such a rush that I nearly fell off. As the boat skipped over the increasingly choppy water I saw that my eyes had not deceived me. The texture coalesced into another rocky island, only this one was much darker, seemingly in a perpetual shadow while its fellows were dappled with light. The sheer face of the island was of a piece with the gray water and gray sky, and nothing seemed to grow atop it save for a few skeletal shrubs clinging to the lowest edges.
“That’s it!” Robert roared over the engine. “That’s it! Tell me that doesn’t exist!”
I curled my lips over my teeth, trying to smile but feeling more like a frightened animal. The water seemed to swirl around Ormrey, if indeed Ormrey it was. The boat lurched as if caught in a storm, though the sky remained unchanged. As Robert turned the boat to follow the island’s outline we came upon an inlet of sorts. It was here that he steered the boat, and my fear began to blossom into outright terror. What if he wrecked the boat, what if it sank here? Who would find us? We were miles from the last inhabited island, with barely enough supplies for a day trip. I didn’t even know if the boat had a flare, or anything to start a fire, or—
The boat scraped something as it entered the inlet and I cried out, a shriek of pure fright. Robert, upon hearing me, began laughing—a wild cackling that I had never heard him make before, that reverberated off the rocks around us and sent a flock of dark grey seabirds aloft.
After our rough entrance, however, the inlet proved calm. Robert slowed the boat, still sniggering to himself, and I tried to relax by studying this new landscape. What kind of rock was this, and why was it so markedly different from the other islands? What were those birds, seemingly neither gull nor raven but some odd mixture of the two?
We wound through what felt almost like a canyon at times, until at last the inlet began to widen, and the rocky walls sloped downward. Peering ahead, I saw we were entering a misty area, almost like a tiny bay, a hollow navel in this belly of land.
And then I saw the pilings jutting from the water, and my stomach clenched again.
“See?” cried Robert. “You’re my witness, Carol!”
How was it that someone could inhabit this godforsaken rock? And then it struck me in its simplicity: however crazy it seemed, this was private land. The locals didn’t encourage visitors not because of some strange conspiracy, but because it was trespassing. We were trespassing. The owner was probably some wealthy recluse, ready to shoot us on sight.
Robert steered the boat towards the pilings. On one was a weathered sign: Private Keep Out. He pointed to it, laughing. “As if that’s going to work,” he declared. “I’ve come too far, baby. Too damn far.”
As Robert lashed the boat close, I found myself envisioning different outcomes to this day. Perhaps we would be shot, and all my worries would be over. Perhaps God would be kind, and Robert would be shot first, giving me a chance to plead for my life. Perhaps the owner would simply call the police and we would go to jail, and that seemed the most pleasant outcome of all: food, shelter, other women to talk to.
“Carol!” I blinked and Robert was in front of me, angry once more. “Goddamnit, get off your ass and get to work. This isn’t a vacation.”
We had brought our knapsacks, stuffed with our raincoats and a couple of sandwiches, but then Robert lifted one of the benches, revealing a tent, two sleeping bags, and a large flashlight. I realized I was gaping, and forced myself to look away. When had he made these arrangements? Did he expect us to stay here overnight?
“Let’s get moving,” he said, slapping my shoulder. “We’re wasting the fucking day.”
My jaw dropped open. The fucking day? Robert never swore. Even in his worst furies he had never used the f-word. I felt like I should say something, before we left the boat, but I could think of nothing. Robert had already snatched up a sleeping bag and the flashlight and was climbing off the boat, leaving me to struggle with the tent as well as my own sleeping bag. It took some doing to get everything off the boat and onto the narrow strip of shoreline, then to figure out how to carry it all; it left ample time for my shock to turn into outright panic. Overnight, on this distant rock? We only had two sandwiches, we didn’t even have water. How did he expect us to survive?
I trudged up what had once been a path, but was now weeded over. The sun was starting to drop from its height: past noon already. The path was steep, winding upwards into the heart of the island, and I plodded wearily along its track. So lost was I in managing the equipment that I was well round the bend in the path before I saw it.
Before me rose a castle. Not the crumbling ruins we had glimpsed in our journey north; this was a castle out of a movie, intact, nearly pristine. The stone, though weathered, was solid and undamaged. The windows were boarded over with whole planks, nailed together and bolted to the stone; the roofs were smooth expanses of metal. The only real sign of decay was the weeded-over path, a ribbon of green-tangled gravel that ran right up to the arched gateway.
Which was open.
I hesitated, only to glimpse movement inside, and slowly entered. Robert was standing in the middle of a kind of courtyard, knapsack, sleeping bag, and flashlight piled at his feet, his arms spread wide.
“I’m here!” he suddenly bellowed. “I’m here!”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose as his voice echoed off the walls here here here. “Robert,” I said, but couldn’t think of what I might say without risk of agitating him further.
Everything’s going to change.” I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me; he seemed to be addressing the sky, or the castle itself. “We can have whatever we want, do whatever we please. Everything changes now.” He turned around, twitching as if he had expected to see someone else. “Put it down,” he said more brusquely, gesturing to my full arms. “We need to start looking before it gets dark.”
“Looking for what?” I slowly let my burdens drop. My shoulders screamed in pain, my hands were striped red where handles and straps had dug into my flesh.
“The cellars,” he said impatiently. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?” Before I could speak he suddenly slapped me. I cried out in pain, nearly falling to my knees as my whole face lit on fire. When I tried to straighten he hit me once more, sending me skidding to the ground. Gravel cut into my hands and knees.
“I am so fucking sick of that look,” he said, his voice thick in his throat. “That goddamn look. You think I’m crazy, don’t you? Your crazy failure of a husband. But that’s going to change, starting now.” He leaned over, catching my eye. “Now shut up and follow me.”
I rose slowly, flinching lest he lash out at me again, barely able to see for the burning pain. He was already consulting yet another hand-drawn map. Slowly I hunched over my knapsack, pretending to check inside it while I tried to calm myself. I was terrified lest my tears provoke him to more, I was terrified to follow him, I was terrified to spend another minute in his company—
and then my hand closed over the pistol, and I felt an iciness wash over me, a nervelessness that was a welcome antidote to my tears. I moved the gun to my jacket pocket and wiped my eyes.
“I’m ready,” I said.
We entered the castle through a moss-streaked wooden door whose hinges opened smoothly. If Robert noticed, he made no sign. Once inside we found ourselves in a great hall, the kind that would have once been filled with cheering knights and serving wenches. The hall was empty and dusty, like returning to a vacation home after a long winter. For a moment I forgot all about Robert, forgot even about the small weight in my pocket, so taken was I with the space. One wall was lined with tall, arched windows, their leaded glass neatly removed to reveal even lines of wooden boards; through the gaps between streamed the thin afternoon sunlight. A few boards had come undone, revealing in strips the endless churning sea. The wind whistled as it caught at the openings.
Above the vast fireplace before me was some kind of painting, directly on the stone, showing a tree adorned with faded symbols. Behind me, over the door we had entered, was another painting, of a cross like the ones on hospitals, only entwined with many snakes instead of the usual two.
None of it spoke of some ancient, long-perished race: the colors seemed too fresh, the images too distinct. Yet Robert was oblivious to everything save his map. He had already crossed to the far side of the room and was working open a wooden door beside the fireplace.
“She’s this way,” he called over his shoulder.
His voice snapped me out of my reverie. That goddamn look. If I shot him here the report might carry out to sea. Instead I followed him into a dim, narrow hallway.
Opening another door, he revealed a staircase spiraling down into darkness, and I wondered at his sureness. How could he have mapped the castle so exactly just from books? As I followed him down the stairs I could hear him muttering, “I’m coming, I’m coming…” the way one might if a visitor were leaning on your doorbell. Save that I doubted there was anything for him to be going to. This castle seemed stripped of anything of value, and it was only a matter of time before Robert realized it.
I tightened my grip on the pistol.
We descended into a damp darkness, our way lit only by the cone of light from the flashlight. At the base of the stairs we moved through an archway and found ourselves in an open space, cool and black. The light picked up stone columns at regular intervals, the skeletal remains of what looked like racks lining one wall—
and at the far end, across from us, a large, barred door of scarred wood, its edges outlined in molten metal.
Robert made a small noise in his throat and rushed forward, forgetting completely about me. The light danced over the wood as he felt along the metal seam, then tried to prise free the bar. After a few minutes he began kicking and punching at the door, flinging himself at it in a futile paroxysm of rage.
Those fists and boots, striking me.
At last he fell to his hands and knees, focusing the flashlight on the bottom edge of the door: the light revealed a thin space between door and floor that Robert pressed his face to. “I’m coming,” he said. “I’m here, I’m coming.”
“Who are you talking to?” I blurted out.
He ignored me, clawing and gouging at the crack, trying to work his fingers under the door as he whispered into the narrow space.
“Robert,” I said again. He sounded on the verge of tears, and I felt a bitter pity then for this man, reduced to scraping like an animal, his whole being so taken with whatever lay behind the door.
I felt pity, but I also wanted no more of it.
Suddenly he turned to me, rising up on his knees and holding out his hands: his fingers were coated in blood, his knuckles split and his fingernails hanging. His eyes were glistening with tears. “Do something!” he screamed. “Do something, you stupid, worthless cunt! Do something or I’ll feed you to—”
I raised the pistol and fired.
Robert jerked back against the door, then fell to the ground. Around us the shot echoed, ringing out against the stone like some terrible tolling bell.
I fired twice, then a third time, until he was perfectly still, until he was just a thing at last. I couldn’t even see his face anymore... and then it was as if all sensation rushed back into my body: suddenly I was trembling and heaving, my stomach emptying itself and my icy hands opening of their own accord. The pistol tumbled to the stone and I dropped to my knees beside it.
As I knelt there, collecting myself, I felt my pants becoming wet: a thin rivulet of blood had reached my knees, following the cracks in the stone. More was pooling around Robert’s body, seeping under the barred door that was now pocked with bullet holes. Instinctively I began crawling backwards, seizing the pistol and raising it before me though there was nothing left of Robert but so much dead flesh.
It was done and I was free. Why then did I feel so sick, so terrified?
It was then that I heard a faint, pattering sound. At first I thought it was rodents, which made me laugh bitterly: what a fitting witness to it all. The sound, however, became louder, more distinct. Not the sound of feet, but of something... moist, like lips smacking. I reached the bottom of the stairs, unable to take my eyes off Robert’s body still framed by the light of the flashlight, but there was no hint of movement. Still the sound persisted, becoming an insistent lapping, as if something were licking...
A thump suddenly echoed through the space, and another. I nearly fired again, pointing the pistol at every shadow, but there was nothing, nothing—until my eyes focused on the barred door.
The thump came again, and the door trembled. A flurry of scraping followed, as if long nails were being dragged over the wood, as if something were looking for a crack, a seam, any way to get out.
And then a long, thin finger emerged from one of the bullet holes in the door, curling around to stroke experimentally at the wood with a clawlike fingernail.
I turned and threw myself headlong up the dark stairs, stumbling in my haste, cracking knee and chin on the stone edges as I blindly ran upwards. At the top I didn’t pause but kept running out into the open courtyard and the foggy, damp twilight, out of the castle and back down the path. I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me; silently I prayed I was on the right path back to the boat. The ground, at least, was sloping downward, but I kept skidding on the dry earth and twisting my ankles on hidden divots and rocks. My pace slowed to an awkward trot, and my mind finally caught up with my panicked instinct.
Robert, I knew, would insist on us sailing alone, lest someone try to take his precious treasure. And if he happened to have an accident? The locals already knew him to be a foolish drunk. It seemed doubtful that they would waste a moment investigating his death, especially if there was no body to be examined.
It felt... possible, and it was that very feeling that made me quake inside. How many times had I wished for something like this, something that could just make him go away forever? Yet now that I held such a thing in my hand it seemed monstrous; it was monstrous, it was murder. Yet hadn’t I just been contemplating suicide?
It was with these uneasy thoughts chasing each other that I put the pistol in my knapsack. Perhaps I wouldn’t do anything; perhaps I would turn it on myself. But at least I had some protection should Robert’s behavior escalate. Or so I told myself.
It was early morning when I awoke, but Robert was already gone. From our window I glimpsed him far along the promenade, talking with a man in overalls and rubber boots. As I watched, Robert counted out many bills and handed them over, then shook the man’s hand.
Today, then.
I dressed swiftly, checking my knapsack twice. The pistol was real, loaded, and well-hidden. In the mirror I could not meet my own eyes. Today, then. Everything would change today, for good or ill.
Robert returned, his feet heavy on the stairs, and I met him with a smile, but he looked me over with such a searching expression that I began to panic. He knew, he had searched my knapsack and he knew...
“I’ve found us a boat,” he finally said, in the tone I had come to think of as Stern Father. “Now you’re going to do exactly what I say from here on out, Carol. I only have one chance at this, I can’t have any mistakes. Otherwise, hen, poppet, love? You’ll be paying me back for the rest of your goddamn life.”
I nodded, keeping the smile on my face, but a small, angry voice said, “or maybe you’re going to pay me.” Robert didn’t react, but instead started to gather up his things; only then did I realize the voice came from inside me, that its anger was mine.
There was a moment, that morning, when everything felt … not good, but not terrible either. When everything felt neutral, balanced. Perhaps it was that, occupied with steering the boat, Robert had little cause to speak, and thus I could pretend we were as we appeared: an adventurous, middle-aged couple indulging in an off-beat holiday.
Or perhaps it was that both sea and sky were the same color that morning, a slate grey, so that it was all but impossible to see a horizon, where one element ended and the next began. Just a soothing infinity of nothingness.
Too, there was something about those islands. Vast, rocky slabs jutting from the water, their tops fuzzy with a pale green: they were like nothing I had ever seen. As stark as the landscape was, it wasn’t jarring like the young people we had seen, but rather welcoming in its timelessness. Had I my way we would have brought a picnic, and visited several of the islands. But one look at Robert’s face was enough to remind me that we were not here for pleasure. This was the culmination of all his years of obsession.
As we passed what seemed to be the last of the islands he slowed the boat and stepped out of the cabin, checking our location against his maps, muttering to himself as he worked out calculations. “It should be here,” he said aloud. And then, as if addressing the island itself, “where are you? I’m close, I’m nearly there...”
My stomach clenched and I reached for the knapsack. “It must be nearby,” I offered, trying to sound cheerful. “Perhaps we should go back to that last island? That rise would let you see for a good distance around.”
“You don’t navigate by sight, you idiot,” he retorted. “You navigate by coordinates.” When I started to speak again, he shouted, “just shut up, Carol! I can’t think for your damn whining.”
I reached into my knapsack, letting my fingers close around the handle of the pistol. A single shot, and then I could push him off, his boots would act like weights...
But he suddenly jerked upright, peering into the distance, his lips parting slightly. I looked, but there was only the water and the sky, the gloomy clouds of a piece with the whole grey expanse—
only as I let my eyes become unfocused I realized that there was a texture in one area, a strange density. I looked at Robert again. He had a pair of binoculars out now, scanning the horizon, his lips curving into a smile that did nothing to ease my dread.
“Right on the goddamned money,” he said.
He started the boat with such a rush that I nearly fell off. As the boat skipped over the increasingly choppy water I saw that my eyes had not deceived me. The texture coalesced into another rocky island, only this one was much darker, seemingly in a perpetual shadow while its fellows were dappled with light. The sheer face of the island was of a piece with the gray water and gray sky, and nothing seemed to grow atop it save for a few skeletal shrubs clinging to the lowest edges.
“That’s it!” Robert roared over the engine. “That’s it! Tell me that doesn’t exist!”
I curled my lips over my teeth, trying to smile but feeling more like a frightened animal. The water seemed to swirl around Ormrey, if indeed Ormrey it was. The boat lurched as if caught in a storm, though the sky remained unchanged. As Robert turned the boat to follow the island’s outline we came upon an inlet of sorts. It was here that he steered the boat, and my fear began to blossom into outright terror. What if he wrecked the boat, what if it sank here? Who would find us? We were miles from the last inhabited island, with barely enough supplies for a day trip. I didn’t even know if the boat had a flare, or anything to start a fire, or—
The boat scraped something as it entered the inlet and I cried out, a shriek of pure fright. Robert, upon hearing me, began laughing—a wild cackling that I had never heard him make before, that reverberated off the rocks around us and sent a flock of dark grey seabirds aloft.
After our rough entrance, however, the inlet proved calm. Robert slowed the boat, still sniggering to himself, and I tried to relax by studying this new landscape. What kind of rock was this, and why was it so markedly different from the other islands? What were those birds, seemingly neither gull nor raven but some odd mixture of the two?
We wound through what felt almost like a canyon at times, until at last the inlet began to widen, and the rocky walls sloped downward. Peering ahead, I saw we were entering a misty area, almost like a tiny bay, a hollow navel in this belly of land.
And then I saw the pilings jutting from the water, and my stomach clenched again.
“See?” cried Robert. “You’re my witness, Carol!”
How was it that someone could inhabit this godforsaken rock? And then it struck me in its simplicity: however crazy it seemed, this was private land. The locals didn’t encourage visitors not because of some strange conspiracy, but because it was trespassing. We were trespassing. The owner was probably some wealthy recluse, ready to shoot us on sight.
Robert steered the boat towards the pilings. On one was a weathered sign: Private Keep Out. He pointed to it, laughing. “As if that’s going to work,” he declared. “I’ve come too far, baby. Too damn far.”
As Robert lashed the boat close, I found myself envisioning different outcomes to this day. Perhaps we would be shot, and all my worries would be over. Perhaps God would be kind, and Robert would be shot first, giving me a chance to plead for my life. Perhaps the owner would simply call the police and we would go to jail, and that seemed the most pleasant outcome of all: food, shelter, other women to talk to.
“Carol!” I blinked and Robert was in front of me, angry once more. “Goddamnit, get off your ass and get to work. This isn’t a vacation.”
We had brought our knapsacks, stuffed with our raincoats and a couple of sandwiches, but then Robert lifted one of the benches, revealing a tent, two sleeping bags, and a large flashlight. I realized I was gaping, and forced myself to look away. When had he made these arrangements? Did he expect us to stay here overnight?
“Let’s get moving,” he said, slapping my shoulder. “We’re wasting the fucking day.”
My jaw dropped open. The fucking day? Robert never swore. Even in his worst furies he had never used the f-word. I felt like I should say something, before we left the boat, but I could think of nothing. Robert had already snatched up a sleeping bag and the flashlight and was climbing off the boat, leaving me to struggle with the tent as well as my own sleeping bag. It took some doing to get everything off the boat and onto the narrow strip of shoreline, then to figure out how to carry it all; it left ample time for my shock to turn into outright panic. Overnight, on this distant rock? We only had two sandwiches, we didn’t even have water. How did he expect us to survive?
I trudged up what had once been a path, but was now weeded over. The sun was starting to drop from its height: past noon already. The path was steep, winding upwards into the heart of the island, and I plodded wearily along its track. So lost was I in managing the equipment that I was well round the bend in the path before I saw it.
Before me rose a castle. Not the crumbling ruins we had glimpsed in our journey north; this was a castle out of a movie, intact, nearly pristine. The stone, though weathered, was solid and undamaged. The windows were boarded over with whole planks, nailed together and bolted to the stone; the roofs were smooth expanses of metal. The only real sign of decay was the weeded-over path, a ribbon of green-tangled gravel that ran right up to the arched gateway.
Which was open.
I hesitated, only to glimpse movement inside, and slowly entered. Robert was standing in the middle of a kind of courtyard, knapsack, sleeping bag, and flashlight piled at his feet, his arms spread wide.
“I’m here!” he suddenly bellowed. “I’m here!”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose as his voice echoed off the walls here here here. “Robert,” I said, but couldn’t think of what I might say without risk of agitating him further.
Everything’s going to change.” I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me; he seemed to be addressing the sky, or the castle itself. “We can have whatever we want, do whatever we please. Everything changes now.” He turned around, twitching as if he had expected to see someone else. “Put it down,” he said more brusquely, gesturing to my full arms. “We need to start looking before it gets dark.”
“Looking for what?” I slowly let my burdens drop. My shoulders screamed in pain, my hands were striped red where handles and straps had dug into my flesh.
“The cellars,” he said impatiently. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?” Before I could speak he suddenly slapped me. I cried out in pain, nearly falling to my knees as my whole face lit on fire. When I tried to straighten he hit me once more, sending me skidding to the ground. Gravel cut into my hands and knees.
“I am so fucking sick of that look,” he said, his voice thick in his throat. “That goddamn look. You think I’m crazy, don’t you? Your crazy failure of a husband. But that’s going to change, starting now.” He leaned over, catching my eye. “Now shut up and follow me.”
I rose slowly, flinching lest he lash out at me again, barely able to see for the burning pain. He was already consulting yet another hand-drawn map. Slowly I hunched over my knapsack, pretending to check inside it while I tried to calm myself. I was terrified lest my tears provoke him to more, I was terrified to follow him, I was terrified to spend another minute in his company—
and then my hand closed over the pistol, and I felt an iciness wash over me, a nervelessness that was a welcome antidote to my tears. I moved the gun to my jacket pocket and wiped my eyes.
“I’m ready,” I said.
We entered the castle through a moss-streaked wooden door whose hinges opened smoothly. If Robert noticed, he made no sign. Once inside we found ourselves in a great hall, the kind that would have once been filled with cheering knights and serving wenches. The hall was empty and dusty, like returning to a vacation home after a long winter. For a moment I forgot all about Robert, forgot even about the small weight in my pocket, so taken was I with the space. One wall was lined with tall, arched windows, their leaded glass neatly removed to reveal even lines of wooden boards; through the gaps between streamed the thin afternoon sunlight. A few boards had come undone, revealing in strips the endless churning sea. The wind whistled as it caught at the openings.
Above the vast fireplace before me was some kind of painting, directly on the stone, showing a tree adorned with faded symbols. Behind me, over the door we had entered, was another painting, of a cross like the ones on hospitals, only entwined with many snakes instead of the usual two.
None of it spoke of some ancient, long-perished race: the colors seemed too fresh, the images too distinct. Yet Robert was oblivious to everything save his map. He had already crossed to the far side of the room and was working open a wooden door beside the fireplace.
“She’s this way,” he called over his shoulder.
His voice snapped me out of my reverie. That goddamn look. If I shot him here the report might carry out to sea. Instead I followed him into a dim, narrow hallway.
Opening another door, he revealed a staircase spiraling down into darkness, and I wondered at his sureness. How could he have mapped the castle so exactly just from books? As I followed him down the stairs I could hear him muttering, “I’m coming, I’m coming…” the way one might if a visitor were leaning on your doorbell. Save that I doubted there was anything for him to be going to. This castle seemed stripped of anything of value, and it was only a matter of time before Robert realized it.
I tightened my grip on the pistol.
We descended into a damp darkness, our way lit only by the cone of light from the flashlight. At the base of the stairs we moved through an archway and found ourselves in an open space, cool and black. The light picked up stone columns at regular intervals, the skeletal remains of what looked like racks lining one wall—
and at the far end, across from us, a large, barred door of scarred wood, its edges outlined in molten metal.
Robert made a small noise in his throat and rushed forward, forgetting completely about me. The light danced over the wood as he felt along the metal seam, then tried to prise free the bar. After a few minutes he began kicking and punching at the door, flinging himself at it in a futile paroxysm of rage.
Those fists and boots, striking me.
At last he fell to his hands and knees, focusing the flashlight on the bottom edge of the door: the light revealed a thin space between door and floor that Robert pressed his face to. “I’m coming,” he said. “I’m here, I’m coming.”
“Who are you talking to?” I blurted out.
He ignored me, clawing and gouging at the crack, trying to work his fingers under the door as he whispered into the narrow space.
“Robert,” I said again. He sounded on the verge of tears, and I felt a bitter pity then for this man, reduced to scraping like an animal, his whole being so taken with whatever lay behind the door.
I felt pity, but I also wanted no more of it.
Suddenly he turned to me, rising up on his knees and holding out his hands: his fingers were coated in blood, his knuckles split and his fingernails hanging. His eyes were glistening with tears. “Do something!” he screamed. “Do something, you stupid, worthless cunt! Do something or I’ll feed you to—”
I raised the pistol and fired.
Robert jerked back against the door, then fell to the ground. Around us the shot echoed, ringing out against the stone like some terrible tolling bell.
I fired twice, then a third time, until he was perfectly still, until he was just a thing at last. I couldn’t even see his face anymore... and then it was as if all sensation rushed back into my body: suddenly I was trembling and heaving, my stomach emptying itself and my icy hands opening of their own accord. The pistol tumbled to the stone and I dropped to my knees beside it.
As I knelt there, collecting myself, I felt my pants becoming wet: a thin rivulet of blood had reached my knees, following the cracks in the stone. More was pooling around Robert’s body, seeping under the barred door that was now pocked with bullet holes. Instinctively I began crawling backwards, seizing the pistol and raising it before me though there was nothing left of Robert but so much dead flesh.
It was done and I was free. Why then did I feel so sick, so terrified?
It was then that I heard a faint, pattering sound. At first I thought it was rodents, which made me laugh bitterly: what a fitting witness to it all. The sound, however, became louder, more distinct. Not the sound of feet, but of something... moist, like lips smacking. I reached the bottom of the stairs, unable to take my eyes off Robert’s body still framed by the light of the flashlight, but there was no hint of movement. Still the sound persisted, becoming an insistent lapping, as if something were licking...
A thump suddenly echoed through the space, and another. I nearly fired again, pointing the pistol at every shadow, but there was nothing, nothing—until my eyes focused on the barred door.
The thump came again, and the door trembled. A flurry of scraping followed, as if long nails were being dragged over the wood, as if something were looking for a crack, a seam, any way to get out.
And then a long, thin finger emerged from one of the bullet holes in the door, curling around to stroke experimentally at the wood with a clawlike fingernail.
I turned and threw myself headlong up the dark stairs, stumbling in my haste, cracking knee and chin on the stone edges as I blindly ran upwards. At the top I didn’t pause but kept running out into the open courtyard and the foggy, damp twilight, out of the castle and back down the path. I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me; silently I prayed I was on the right path back to the boat. The ground, at least, was sloping downward, but I kept skidding on the dry earth and twisting my ankles on hidden divots and rocks. My pace slowed to an awkward trot, and my mind finally caught up with my panicked instinct.
