Other terrors, p.19
Other Terrors, page 19
Dieter was marched out of the tent, artifacts cradled in his arms. He saw what was left of Ivan and let out a cry of his own. The revenants weren’t done with their liar.
More sticks, leaves, and mud gathered to the creatures as they fastened Ivan to one of the bigger trees, his rent and bloodied face to the bark. It looked like they were trying to crucify him. It takes a long time to die from that.
And now it was our turn.
Ivan’s squealing died down a little, maybe out of exhaustion. Dieter called me by name as some of the company turned to face him. He dropped the small pieces we’d first unearthed and turned to run. The afternoon was getting on, and as he tried to make distance from the creatures, I saw him silhouetted against a break in the clouds. The sunlight caught him just right before a soldier stepped out from behind the appraisal tent and with one stroke lopped his head off. Also not a quick death, but perhaps more merciful than what Ivan was compelled to endure.
I’d read plenty about how the tribes had dispatched the captives from the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the nineteenth legions, and as the ripshit and malignant spirits of those same victims turned in my direction, I finally realized the atrocities they had in mind for me.
05
The wicker enclosure they’d crammed me into wasn’t upright. I was in fact lying prone inside the hull of a wolf bitch, constructed with twine and wood and sod that when spirited together formed a cage that felt harder and colder than my own car where I’d tried to kill myself in order to avoid facing the truth of my being. The rope around my neck tightened with every breath. The landscape had also continued to build these vengeful spirits. Their flesh hadn’t grown any more human—the mud and soil made them darker than midnight—but by that time, most of them towered almost to the tops of the trees, and how they had constructed the wheels that bore me inside the wicker construction, I couldn’t tell you. Whatever force had made it, was keeping it together, and preventing me from escape (to where?), it was the only reality left to me by then.
Until the fire came.
They started at my feet; and although it wasn’t my first time being burned, it’s the worst pain every time. Perhaps it’s the dehumanizing aspect of the element; it takes all of your features away, perhaps even one’s own memory—the ultimate fuck-you.
I’d have gladly forgotten my suicide attempt, but the fire brought that night back in a flood of sorrow. Not only did I feel regret for just not going along with Peg, but I was dying for something that didn’t make any sense. All told, I’d never consult on a dig again.
Through a gap in the rib cage of the wolf, I saw Ivan drooping against the tree they’d crucified him to, still facing the other way. But then, I also saw the replica—the sunlight hit it with such precision, pollen danced about it like fireflies. I screamed at the petty little bastard, imploring Ivan to tell these beings that the eagle was counterfeit, to admit that he’d ordered it online from wherever.
Then I stopped myself—they wouldn’t have understood him, even with his tongue.
Right then, a torch was thrust at my head through a gap in the wolf. The right side of my hair singed, and I let out a short curse, in Latin.
The fire carrier stopped short.
Its glowing red eyes narrowed, and the revenant muttered something about cleansing me with fire. Beautiful fire.
Over the grass, dirt, and twigs, the pieces of armor that we’d initially found were fastened to the being’s torso. This mattered to them more than any fascination with the dead past mattered to me, in the end. I wanted a future, if not with Peg, then to be happy living in my own skin, to be alive-for-real in the truest, deepest, most human sense.
The being continued staring down at me, its torch powerful and pointing skyward.
To avoid another jab, I cleared my throat, and in Latin, I asked its name.
Fraxinus Antonius, it said. Of the nineteenth legion.
Fraxinus—ash trees, of the family Oleaceae. Ashes are also a symbol of rebirth. The lost soldiers had come back to Kalkriese, just not as human.
The other soldiers looked back at me, heedless of the seeming delay in dispatching me to the flames. One of the taller ones, seemingly in a panic, thrust his own torch at my shoulder. I winced, and with my limited mobility in the enclosure, it was difficult to dodge these attacks. Upon his withdrawal, I saw the twine at one of the hinges stay aglow and curl into itself.
“I am Tamora,” I told them in Latin. Their hesitation was the only expression I could glean. This was all guesswork and desperation to buy time.
And of course, I began to fuck it up right away.
I thought the eagle, fake though it was, might somehow appease the revenants.
The twine at the hinge burned almost through. It was an advantage that I needed. I kicked, shouted, and rolled out of the wicker wolf and onto my side in the grass. The momentum was unstoppable, my desire for a future, to see Peg again. To start facial electrolysis back home and abide that burn. Perhaps even to gain tenure again at a seat of learning that would actually put into practice its non-discrimination policy, some concept.
Clouds set in again. All the soldiers’ eyes were on me as they shuffled closer, and then I saw PEG.
There she stood, realer than the Hamburg dalliances of the nascent John Lennon, and she was holding the eagle standard replica aloft. Beyond her, Ivan had stopped wriggling.
SPQR.
Senatus Populusque Romanus.
We both said it together, like a beguiled couple who eat, drink, fuck, love.
A sword crossed her throat. I screamed and fell to the ground with both the replica and Peg. I was overwhelmed as the legion surrounded me and watched me sob into nothing.
After a while, it began to rain.
They all just stood there, staring at the aquilae languishing in the grass. Some of the more soil-based among the dead things began to sag, but Fraxinus stood tall, his armor gleaming against the elements.
I wiped my eyes and glared at him.
“It’s not real,” I told him. “Fraxinus Atoninus, all of the eagles went back home, to Rome. This one is a replica. It’s fake.”
Ivan thankfully was toast by then; he was the one to blame for all of this happening. Not me. I just wished his suffering had gone on for longer.
Peg had stopped moving.
The afternoon was getting on, and once more the rain let up. Late summer is a motherfucker. And so is Kalkriese.
I gripped Ivan’s cheap replica stunt, stood up, wiped the dirt and rain from it against my torn and singed dress, and offered the thing to Fraxinus.
Senatus Populusque Romanus.
SPQR.
As soon as the being grasped it with its wooden fingers, the whole army blew apart in a quiet sigh of borrowed components. The fake standard fell into the very bundle of what Fraxinus had been approximated into, himself a replica of the lost and the, yeah, forgotten.
They had all been lied to. That was the shit memory of this battlefield. It was a humiliation where duty had stood for precious little else than futility, except perhaps for changing the course of European history.
Peg rolled over in the mud, her hand pressed against her neck. She sat up amid the piles of sticks and the broken wolf of wicker interstices, and then asked me what had happened.
Elated she survived, and exhausted, I slumped my shoulders and pointed to the eagle.
Just then, Sofer’s frantic voice could be heard from just beyond the verge. Ivan, Dieter, and Craig remained just as they had been when they’d been ended. The curator’s face was a sun of outrage. The observation tower of the museum stood just beyond the scene in all of its rust-plated glory.
“Was zur Hölle ist hier passiert?” he demanded.
Peg picked up the eagle replica from the bundle of what had been Fraxinus and scrutinized it a little more closely. She didn’t look too bad; like my burns, the wound across her neck also seemed to be a thing of the past. Perhaps she remained alive because she didn’t die during the rout—at least not in the real sense, any sense that would’ve otherwise made sense at that battlefield.
Peg let the fake thing fall back into the mess of sticks, and asked Sofer if he had any wine for us.
I shrugged, and bit at my hangnail anew. It didn’t hurt as much. We try for these little things, although they don’t usually work out.
After our benefactor ran back screaming toward the museum, flailing his arms like a child, Peg and I decided to stay there and wait until sunset before deciding whether or not to continue our journey to St. Pauli in Hamburg.
The Devil Don’t Come with Horns
by Eugen Bacon
It were the second day of summer, a sunny day that cast its own shadow, when you seen the devil. He slipped quietly into your neighborhood. He stepped out all hair, sunnies, and a bandana. A ghost dog and a moving van too.
They came in a rush.
You were running down the road, the wind giving you speed as you cut through the field toward Baridi’s house at the end of the neat suburb when the boys jumped you. One minute they were sullen, smoking ciggies on the stump that was once a red oak by the footy field. Next, they were swinging fists at your ribs as you writhed on freshly mown grass in a forgetting town that the council and volunteers kept spotless.
Forgetting. Because that’s where your pa fled to forget.
“What you gone hit me fer?” you cried, shielding your face.
Mad, the Cormont boy—a good-looker, but all mean—spoke through his puffs. “Ain’t no dawg but me,” he said, and chewed on the smoking dart at the side of his lip.
Neat wore white shorts and a grubby mop on his jet-black head. No big-name heritage—he were a Clanger, and his mother part of the neighborhood watch. His brother Langdon, also in white shorts, had orange curls so tight they were a fist. The littlest Clanger, Jowls, had friendly eyes that asked fer a ciggie, offered you a puff, but he were as random as his socks, one beige, one crimson-striped, and a don’t-argue vest that tradie folk somber about their business wore.
All this went through your head in slow motion as the punches fell in real time.
Soul Parchment, the compact one, had the body of an ox. He yelled Fucketty! as he whooped you. He were the angriest of the pack, made him the meanest. But Mitch Lightfoot unsettled you. His folding knife had an ebony handle. He wore a rucksack and stayed away from lil’ fights—just big ones where he flicked open and closed the glint of stainless steel, the blade’s flicker as gray as Mitch’s danger eyes.
Waterman stayed away from fights too. He were a Nielsen lad, skipping tricks on a hemp rope. Alternate foot, jump, jump, cross, boxer step, jump. He kept skipping as his mates smashed you.
You tossed a kick that connected. Neat yelped.
“Got loose at the right time,” hissed Mad. His fist flattened you slam bow. “Lie down, kid,” he said, as you started to rise.
Something smashed into the pack, and Baridi was fighting your war. The boys fell away afore she spoke. “Let him go.” She stood there in leggings and a tank-top. Heart face. Tiny eyes. Braids.
“Or what?” Mad rubbed his lip with a thumb.
She stared him down. “Yer the courageous one?”
“Weak ’uns run from this.” He pulled a bodybuilder pose, muscles ripped through a pale polo shirt. The way he said it, you knowed that he liked her.
She ignored him, gave you a hand.
The bravery in a small girl surrounded by big brutes awed you, and it stupefied the boys, except Waterman, who was still skipping, and Mitch, who dropped the rucksack from his back, pulled out Metal Glo and a rag, and polished his blade.
The sound of the pocketknife’s flick as you walked away, then: “Wait up!” said Mad. “Ye forgot yer ball.”
“Toss it,” said Baridi.
“Nah. You come git it.”
She ran back, but he dribbled, bounced away, and then sprinted. Baridi chased, chest out in her leggings and tank-top. She ran hard and fast, little legs rolling. Mad gave his best to keep the ball, turned it over to Langdon.
Baridi held the heat, Mad dodging. Soul Parchment got involved, then Jowls, the boys outnumbering Baridi four to one, then five to one. She plowed through body traffic, dragged the ball with her foot, scooted away with it.
“Fortune changes,” she called out, laughing.
“I ain’t never change fer nobody,” shouted back Mad.
“Is everything about yer?” She rolled the ball on the ground at speed. “Then come steal it. I’m weak.” She hit a long one into the distance, raced after it.
Mad gave up first, then the rest.
She were full of panting when you reached her. “That’s how it’s done.”
“Kick a ball?”
“Beat bullies.” She tumbled the ball, grinned at your laughable attempt to catch it with a foot. “Want me to kick it to myself?”
“I got two lefties.”
“They’s club feet.”
“Is that what yer think?” You positioned, paced to the ball and back.
“Don’t reason with the ball. Just kick it.”
“Sometimes, yer got to reason.” You gave the ball another look, searched fer a target in the distance, and shot. The pack behind howled at your flying boot, the ball on the grass still.
Baridi took the kick. She thumped, strong shin to boot. Bent the ball across the quiet street to the cottage at the end of the world where death happened.
You seen death. You fell into it. Happened when you rushed into the kitchen in Downs where you lived, when you burst onto Maw lying on the floor. She pressed a hand to her stomach as if pushing back guts. Her hazel eyes held deep surprise, maybe at the smell of wet soil and metal.
So much blood, and it were growing. So much, you could sail a boat in it.
You dialed Emergency and they cleaned her good, put her in the hospital bed, white sheets and all, then Pa came. But there was nothing left of your maw’s strawberry and freesia scent, just a dying smell of nail polish and bleach. Gray lips replaced her glitter smile that made you think of a large diamond. You held her cold hand. Her eyes were half open, teary. There was no gentle tinkle of her laughter, just gasps, then a rattle. When her skin went porcelain, a nurse came and pulled white linen over Maw’s face.
The moving van was up by the cottage’s driveway. A three-seater cabin with a ramp. Somewhere near the cottage—ting!—the peal of a bird.
“What yer bring us here fer?” you asked Baridi.
“Now yer give me stupid? I got yer out of a tangle!”
“Wouldn’t call it that.”
“A spectacle then?”
“Only a small one.”
“That were some desperation, kid. They was killin’ yer back there.”
“Nothin’ of the sort. And yer a kid yerself. Ye git me out of trouble, put me back in it with that ball. What we doin’ here, anyways?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said the Black chap with sunnies and a bandana who’d crept out of nowhere. He stood on the stone steps that led up to the derelict cottage and its stained wooden door peeling paint the color of olives or mold. Halloween windows with the eyes of a ghost looked out at a wilting dawgwood tree on the yard.
“Need help finding something?” He tawked with a whole cherry inside his underlip. That’s how he sounded. He held out the ball, but neither you nor Baridi moved to take it. “You got a good look, did you?”
“Nana said—” Baridi cast you a glance. She raised a brave face and announced: “We don’t tawk to strangers.”
“Nana is wise. You like Skittles?”
“Why Skittles fer?” you asked.
“Settle nerves.” He pulled a tin can from his pocket, pried open the lid.
You helped yourself and popped a sour mandarin in your mouth. “If yer scared, why move here?”
“Who said I’m scared?”
“They dug up all them bodies, some whole, some hacked,” you said.
“A year back,” he said. “The real estate bloke told me already.”
“Shrouded in them burlap sacks,” you said.
He raised a brow.
“Nana said they found bones of seventeen pepo, the tiniest a bub,” said Baridi.
“Tiny hole packed like a pyramid,” you said. “IDs, jackets, rings, teeth, crosses, watches, a gold necklace.”
“What are you talking about, nigger?” It weren’t a question.
“Is it okaywise?” asked Baridi.
“Okaywise to do what?” he asked.
“Callin’ folk niggers that ain’t Black pepo.”
“Aren’t you a nigger?” He looked at you.
“Oh, no, sir,” you said, and shook your head firmly.
“Who is, then?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir.”
He stooped to eye level. “Then I say you are.” He poked you on the chest with a beautiful finger, perfectly shaped. Held your gaze, then straightened up. Offered you another Skittle. “What else Nana say?”
You swallowed a pinkie—sour raspberry. “They was dining chairs, coffee table, queen bed, carpet—ain’t good no more.”
“I like pineapple—the yellow one.” He studied as you popped the Skittle in your mouth. “What if she got it wrong?”
“Who did?” Baridi stretched a hand and he shook a perfect rainbow—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—onto her palm.
“What if Nana got it wrong?” he said.
“She my grammy,” said Baridi.
“And that’s enough?” He laughed.
Baridi folded her arms. “Yer ain’t seen her.”
“Place still smells rotten,” you said.
He turned his beard face on you. “I bet you can conjure some magic with this ball.”
“She can.” You pointed at Baridi with your chin. “Give yer a good run.”
“Show me.” He tossed the ball and Baridi caught it.
Right foot, the ball sailed. It curled toward the footy field. The watching pack didn’t stir or grab the ball. Mad smoked. Waterman skipped. Mitch flicked the knife.
Baridi ran to fetch.
