Lavie Tidhar - The Apex Book of World SF 2

Craig grunted in surprise. That was the point at which Lex’s memory erased what followed, which was, of course, his hand—so much smaller—being grabbed tightly, the rock being taken out of it and the favour returned with interest, as Craig swung it down on his head. His body dropped in the long grass some way from Phil’s and about ten seconds after.

When sight returned, there were only the stars and clouds above, all spinning about slowly and lazily. A continent of thick grey cloud slowly swallowed the half-moon, dulling out its light. Crickets chirped. Pain throbbed down from the top of Lex’s skull as if Craig were right there thumping him with the rock every two seconds.

There was rustling nearby, the tickling touch of long grass, a faint lingering stink of cask wine. A gnawing, crunching sound. Like Phil’s dog Jules at work on a bone. Sucking, slurping. Crunching, gnawing.

He lifted his head, but the spike of pain made him rest it back on the grass. Tenderly, he touched his scalp; there was a sticky, tacky patch of blood. He moaned quietly. The background sounds—the eating sounds—ceased.

A listening, watchful silence ensued that instinct told him not to break. It went on for a long time. There were footsteps padding through the long grass, moving away from him, then towards him, then away again. Slow, heavy steps.

Keith and Craig? he thought. Both of them, still here?

The footsteps stopped. The eating sounds began again. There was a low murmur of someone’s voice saying something, mostly inarticulate, but amongst the babble he made out the words “good, good”.

Slowly, Lex sat up, hardly disturbing the long thick blades of grass around him. A shape loomed ten or twelve metres away, set against the sky behind. A large man hunched forward on the shorter grass where Lex had ridden his bike over the drop, with his back to Lex. The big hunched-over body was just a silhouette against the cloud. It moved in jerking, sawing motions.

A soft moan. Mournful, Lex thought, or maybe a note of pleasure. Though he knew he must stay quiet, he was too confused to be scared. He thought back to rumours about the bogan kids who came here with their girlfriends to screw. But this was no kid.

Up on his elbows, Lex watched the man’s strange movements, still not comprehending, as the minutes passed. Not till he sat up, and the clouds shifted, the moon’s light coming out from hiding to reveal the large man crouched over Phil.

Phil was looking right at Lex, so it appeared, eyes wide and unblinking and with a strange kind of grimacing smile, his lips peeled back. Lex gestured to him as if to say, Are you okay? What’s going on?

Phil did not react at all. His head was in a strange position to the rest of him, a most unnatural angle. In fact, as Lex’s eyes adjusted, he saw that it wasn’t Phil at all but actually some kind of doll, for the head had been pulled right off. He rubbed his eyes as if it might change things, but no, the head wasn’t attached to the body at all.

A dark pool spread about the body. Phil’s chest and belly had been ripped open. The man by the corpse of his best friend was digging around in it, sawing off handfuls of flesh with a knife and lifting them to his mouth. The sight did not quite register, did not make any kind of sense at all. Lex did not think he was really seeing it.

The man’s head turned sideways and Lex could see the chewing motions of his jaw. Inarticulate sounds came from his chewing, gargling throat interspersed with “good…good”.

For Lex, everything span around again, very fast. His head fell back down on the long grass, making it rustle.

The eating sounds stopped. The man got to his feet. For a moment, his heavy excited breathing was the only sound. Heavy footsteps padded swish-swish through the grass. Lex felt and heard him coming but didn’t care because he couldn’t. He still didn’t understand.

The man stood, tall over him, stretching far above like a statue, legs that were concrete pillars. It was the man they’d seen ogling the magazines in the news agency. For a long time, the longest minute in Lex’s life, the man stared down at what the moonlight had revealed to him in the tall grass. His blood-smeared mouth hung open just as it had when he shambled out of the shop towards them.

A car swept past, swishing up puddles of water where the road dipped, then it was gone.

The man was trying, it seemed, to speak. Gibberish came out, a language of stuttering grunts, interspersed here and there with words. Lex discerned only, “Where we come from… makes us hungry.”

In the long years later, on therapists’ couches, in bed tearfully telling his wife about it for the first time after twenty-one years of marriage; after waking from every nightmare where he was, again, a kid lying in long grass next to the water…

All the while driving himself through business school, through board rooms, from success to success, ever higher and faster as though to get away from a shambling monster on the road behind him…

Through memories of the funeral, of the police interviews, the witness stand with the monster blankly watching him answer questions in the trial that eventually put the monster in a hospital, not in a prison…

From trying to work out why, why he hadn’t been taken as well; why he’d been spared after he’d passed out in the long grass, utterly at the monster’s mercy, only to wake later and find what was left of his friend spread across the dewy ground…

Till he was an old man, rich and lonely, fading from life in his last days, bitterly wishing that, of all the memories his mind so eagerly shed, good and bad, why those memories above all others must remain till his very last day…

He would, throughout all this, seek some secret meaning in those words his ears had barely discerned amongst the grunts and stutters that had burnt those words—with whatever secret things they meant—into his mind, into his life, as a never-fading scar.

Nira and I are with Hemal on the day she dies. She is teaching us a clapping-song game, a remembering game. She is winning.

We call Hemal by name, though that breaks respect law because she is my mother’s younger sister. She says being called jal-amaa makes her feel old. She is sixteen, which is old; Nira and I are five.

My amaa opens the door screen and says, “Hemal, we must talk. Nira, go home; your amaa will worry.”

Hemal’s eyebrows pull together, scrunching up her caste marks, like maybe she ate all the butter or forgot to douse the cook-fire. She gets up and ruffles my hair. “I’ll be back soon, little ones.”

She ducks outside. Arms grab her. She fights. My father shouts, “Don’t try to lie. We saw you with that boy, that fisher-caste scum! And all this time you were living in my house, luring in the mist…”

Nira says, “Your ataa won’t beat her, will he, Shaya?” Her voice is small.

I say, “Shh,” and put my arms around her.

Voices pile on each other, words like “Law” and “Honour”, words like stones. Nira’s eldest brother says, “Fishers use children’s fingers for bait.” He is supposed to marry Hemal.

Amaa sobs, “Sister, little sister, how could you?” and Hemal says, “How could you? ”

Then the half-bricks start, and cobblestones and broken bottles. Shadows huge and sudden against the door screen; the thud of Hemal falling; screams and wet breaking noises.