Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

Hanging bones. Skeletons rattling and clattering in the air currents; tightly woven ropes knotted on large and vicious hooks embedded in the ceiling, then noosed around the nearly fleshless necks of discolored skeletons with skulls grinning and staring at us from shadowed, empty sockets.

No one moved. No one said a word.

How many were there? How many hanging skeletons in this chamber that seemed to stretch on endlessly in all directions? Too many to distinguish, too many to count.

Only gradually did more details become apparent—not because they had been hidden, but because it was all too much to take in at once, and only bit by bit could it be processed; maybe not even then; perhaps there would never be enough time to assimilate everything we saw in this chamber. That, after all, might be best.

The skeletons were not completely stripped clean. On most there still remained dangling strips of leatherlike skin, translucent strings of sinew, the reflection of metallic wrist bands, stray tufts of hair caught in splintered bone.

Looking more closely now, I saw that some of the bones were broken, crushed, particularly the fingers and toes, digits missing or barely hanging on with bits of cartilage or ligament. But there were occasional signs of damage to the larger bones, too, and, more rarely, to a few of the skulls.

The air currents had died down, and the skeletons swung more slowly now; there was less clacking and clattering, quieter now, though just as disturbing. The left wall was fifteen meters and two dozen skeletons away, the right wall the same, but the far wall was beyond view—all we could see were more skeletons, stretching endlessly into the distance… literally hundreds, I guessed. Thousands? It was horribly possible.

Father Veronica was the first to move, the first to step farther into the chamber. The skeletons were not lined up in rows, and they were so close to one another that there was no way to move among them without grazing the bones. As Father Veronica worked her way toward the back, she set some of the skeletons swinging and clattering again. I followed, making my own path, making my own terrible music.

There were hundreds of bones scattered about the floor, strips of decayed flesh, pools and smears of viscous fluid. Just as it was impossible to avoid brushing against the hanging skeletons, so was it impossible to avoid stepping on bone or in thick, sticky liquid as I moved through the room. I pushed through the skeletons in a daze, barely able to maintain my balance, my thoughts frozen in place, my body hardly able to function.

Ragged gouges across a kneecap, more gouges in a cheekbone. Scorch marks on some of the hands and feet, and I could only hope they were postmortem, but I suspected, given everything else I’d seen, that they were not. A caved-in skull; a large patch of dark leathery skin flapping at a clavicle; an entire chest of cracked and broken ribs.

Father Veronica had stopped, frozen in place. I made my way to her side, and my breath caught as I saw what she saw: the broken, cracked, damaged, tortured skeletons of children.

Whatever the reasons, this felt so much more terrible, making breath difficult to draw. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak. Something should have been said, something should have been asked, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be.

After some time—I had no idea how long—Father Veronica and I pressed on, past the bones of the children.

Glimpses of the far wall could now be seen, which meant, at last, an end to this. If there could be an end. We pushed through the last of the hanging skeletons, desperate and faster now, although it meant violently rattling the bones.

But we were still not prepared for the final sight. We reached the end of the chamber, emerged from the hanging skeletons, and found ourselves staring in horror.

Impaled on hooks projecting from the back wall of the chamber were the ruined skeletons of twenty-five or thirty infants. Bloodstained hooks protruded from the infants’ chests and necks, through shattered ribs and throats. Crushed fingers and toes. Charred flesh and bone. Broken teeth and desiccated eye sockets and wisps of torn and delicate hair. Babies.

“No,” Father Veronica whispered. She began to weep, shaking her head slowly from side to side, the tears streaming down her cheeks. I could do nothing but stand motionless at her side, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to comfort either her or myself.

Ireported what we found. As I spoke, my voice transmitting back to the shuttle where it was boosted up to the Argonos , I felt detached from myself, standing outside of my own body, even outside of the flyer, watching my lips move, listening to my voice relating everything we had seen. Watching the others watching me.

When I finished, there was only a faint background hissing and occasional crackling from the communications equipment. No questions, no requests for clarification. Finally, after several minutes of uncomfortable quiet, Nikos spoke.

“We need to discuss this further here,” he said, his tone tired and unsure. “For now, though, we don’t think you should stay there. Proceed to the next site tomorrow. If it is decided that further investigation is needed, you can return.”

“We need to bury them,” Father Veronica said. Even her voice was unsure, lost.

“Impossible,” Nikos replied. “The numbers… the terrain there… it’s a logistical nightmare, and it would take you days, if not weeks. No, it’s impossible. Continue on to the next site tomorrow.”

“But the babies,” she said, imploring. “At least let us bury the babies… they… their faces… Please. Let us bury the babies.”

There was another long wait, several almost unbearable minutes during which we all sat in silence, none of us looking at any of the others. When our wait finally ended, it was the bishop’s voice we heard.

“Yes, Father Veronica. Although the captain is reluctant, I have insisted. You may bury the babies.”

“Thank you, Eminence.”

There were a few more exchanges, formalities, and then we disconnected the linkup. We were so very much alone, the four of us in the flyer surrounded by jungle and darkness and death.

THEnext day we buried the babies’ skeletons, a gruesome task. I see no reason to recount it in detail. While clearing an area for the grave, Trude went a little insane. She widened the beam of her stone burner and notched it up to full power, then burned and burned her way through the vegetation all around the area, far more than necessary, sending up clouds of choking black smoke that did not dissipate for hours. No one tried to stop her, no one tried to calm her.

That night I sat with Father Veronica outside the flyer, in front of a contained fire she had started with one of the stone burners. Neither of us spoke. The light from the fire did not penetrate very far into either the jungle or the night, and despite the crackling orange flames, I felt that both were closing in on us, and that there was no escape.

WEleft at dawn for the next site. I was glad to be leaving all of that behind us, but now I was afraid of what else we would find.

We flew far to the north of the continent, leaving the steaming jungles behind. Near a high mountain lake we found a single dwelling surrounded by a circular, water-filled ditch. The rotting remains of a crude boat were scattered between the dwelling and the lakeshore.

The air was cold and smelled painfully clean. With fallen logs from the nearby woods, we laid a bridge across the ditch. The dwelling was a single room, with handmade wooden furniture, shelves with plates and cups and utensils, cooking equipment, and an unusual apparatus that we surmised was a stove. On the bed, beneath the tattered remnants of a blanket, was the skeleton of a man who, I would like to think, died quietly in his sleep.