Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

Frantically, she began jiggling her hands up and down, oblivious now to everything except a piece of iron, as if she were enclosed in chalk with it, moving it grain by grain, hurting, hurting, but seeing the near end of the protesting bolt separating from…

The nun screamed.

“Quiet,” Adelia screamed back. “I’m concentrating.”

The nun went on screaming. “He’s coming.”

There had been a flicker of movement to the right. Reluctantly, Adelia turned her head. The tunnel’s bend, which was in Veronica’s view, prevented Adelia, opposite her, from seeing the thing itself, but she saw it mirrored in the shield. The uneven, convex surface threw back a reflection of dark flesh, at once diminished and monstrous. The thing was naked and looking at itself. Preening, it touched its genitals and then the apparatus on its head.

Death was preparing for his entrance.

In that extremity of terror, everything abandoned Adelia. If she could have sunk to her knees, then she’d have crawled to the creature’s feet: Take the nun, take the boy, leave me. If her hands were free, she’d have bolted for the ladder, leaving Ulf behind. She lost courage, rationality, everything except self-preservation.

And regret. Regret pierced the panic with a vision, not of her Maker but of Rowley Picot. She was going to die, and disgustingly, without having loved a man in the only health there was.

The thing came out of the tunnel; it was tall, made taller by the antlers on its head. Part of a skinned stag’s mask covered the upper face and nose, but the body was human, with dark hair on chest and pubis. Its penis was erect. It pranced up to Adelia, pushing itself against her. Where deer eyes should have been, there were holes from which blue, human eyes blinked at her. The mouth grinned. She could smell animal.

She vomited.

As it sheered back to avoid her spew, the antlers rocked and she saw that bits of string tied the antlered contraption to Rakshasa’s head, though not tightly enough to prevent them from wobbling when he made a sudden movement.

How vulgar. Contempt and fury engulfed her; she had better things to do than stand here threatened by a mountebank in a homemade headdress.

“You stinking crap-hound,” she told him. “You don’t frighten me.” At that moment, he hardly did.

She’d discomfited him; the eyes in the mask shifted; a hiss came from between the teeth. As he retreated, she saw that the penis had drooped.

But he was feeling behind him with one arm while looking at Adelia. His hand found Sister Veronica’s body, crawled upward until it reached the neck of her habit, and ripped it down to the waist. She screamed.

Still watching Adelia, the thing swaggered for a moment, then turned and bit Veronica on the breast. When it turned back to see Adelia’s reaction, its penis was rampant again.

Adelia began to swear; language was the only missile she had, and she pelted him with it: “You turd-mouthed, stench-sucking lummox, what are you good for? Hurting women and children when they’re tied? Not excited any other way? Dress like a dog’s beef, you son of a pox-ridden sow, under it all you’re no man, just a betty-buttered mother’s boy.”

Who this screaming self was, Adelia didn’t know, didn’t care. It was going to be killed, but it wasn’t going to die in debasement like Veronica; it would go cursing.

Lord Almighty, she’d hit the gold; the thing had lost his erection again. He hissed and, still looking at her, wrenched the nun’s clothes down to the crotch.

Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Gyltha’s Saxon English, Adelia used them all; filth from unknown gutters came to her aid now.

A jellybag, she called him, a snot-faced, arse-licking, goat-fucking, bum-bellied, farting, turd-breathed apology, Homo insanus.

As she shouted, she watched the thing’s penis; it was a flag, a signal to her victory or his. The act of killing would bring it to emission, she knew, but, in order for it to be in a condition to emit, the Beast needed his victim’s fear. There were creatures…her stepfather had told her…reptiles that dragged humans underwater and stashed them until their flesh was soft enough to make a pleasurable meal. For this one, terror was the tenderizer. “You…you corkindrill ,” she yelled at it. Fear nourished Rakshasa; it was his excitement, his soup. Deny it to him and, dear God grant it, he couldn’t kill.

She shrieked at him. He was a farting, pudding-pulling chaser, a maggot-brained hog with a cock like a winkle; she’d seen bigger balls on a raspberry.

No time to be amazed at herself. Survive. Taunt. Keep blood in your veins and out of his. With every word, she jiggled the iron cuffs around her hands-and the bolt in the chalk moved more and more easily.

There was blood on Veronica’s stomach-her fear had gone beyond terror into a state where her body remained flaccid to the thing’s abuse-her head back, eyes closed, her mouth in the rictus of a skull.

Adelia kept swearing.

But now Rakshasa was himself tearing the nun’s manacles out of the wall. He stood back to hit the girl across the mouth and then took her by the scruff of her neck to march her toward the small tunnel where he slammed her to her knees. He removed the grating with one pull. He pointed. “Fetch,” he said.

Adelia’s cursing faltered. He was going to bring the child into this uncleanness and befoul him.

Veronica, on her knees, looked up at her torturer, apparently bewildered. Rakshasa kicked her backside and pointed into the hole, but he was watching Adelia. “Fetch the boy.”

The nun crawled into the tunnel and the clank of the manacles on her hands as she moved became muffled.

Adelia prayed a silent scream: Almighty God, take my soul; I am past what can be borne.

Rakshasa had picked up the body of Safeguard. He threw it on the anvil so that it was on its back. Still watching Adelia, his hand reached for the flint knife and ran its point experimentally down the back of his wrist. He put up his arm to show her the blood.

He needs my fear, she thought. He has it.

The antlers wobbled as, for the first time, he took his gaze off Adelia and looked down. He raised the knife…

She closed her eyes. It was a reenactment, and she would not watch it. He will cut off my eyelids, and I shall not watch it.

But she had to listen to the knife striking into flesh and the squelch and the splinter of bone. On and on.

There was no more swearing in her now, no defiance; her hands were still. If there is a hell, she thought dully, his will be set apart.

The noises stopped. She heard the approaching pad of his feet, smelled his stink. “Watch,” he said.

She shook her head and felt a blow on her left arm that brought her eyes open. He’d stabbed her to get her attention. He was pettish. “Watch.”

“No.”

They both heard it: a scuffling from the little tunnel. Teeth showed beneath the stag’s mask. He looked toward the entrance where Ulf was stumbling out. Adelia looked with him.

God save him, the boy was so small, so plain, too real, too normal against the monstrous stage the creature had set for him; he skewed it so that Adelia was ashamed to be on it in his presence.

He was fully dressed but tottering and semiconscious, his hands tied in front of him. There were blotches round his mouth and nose. Laudanum. Held over his face. To keep him quiet.

His eyes traveled slowly to the shredded mess on the anvil and widened.

She shouted, “Don’t be frightened, Ulf.” It wasn’t an exhortation but a command: don’t show fear; don’t feed him.

She saw him try to concentrate. “I ain’t,” he whispered.