James Enge: The Red Worm's Way

In fact, drunk Morlock and undrunk Morlock hated each other. Someday one of them would destroy the other , Morlock reflected. He wondered which one would win.

By then the sun had set. He lit the first of many candles, putting it on the end of the empty overturned water barrel, and settled down to wait for what the night would bring.

The red fire of torches and bonfires wounded the darkness beyond the corpse-house door. Morlock often heard laughter and voices, not so very far away. He could never catch what anyone was saying, but it all sounded merry enough.

Morlock found it easy to stay alert, though. There was an odd tension in the air, as if someone had spoken, paused, and soon would speak again.

There were rats scuttling around the corpse-house. Morlock kept circling around the corpse-table, prepared to catch them if he could. But they were wary, and he couldn't even seem to find where their hole was. But as long as none of them got to the body, he supposed he didn't care.

Glancing up from his rat-hunt, he saw the red worms.

They were coming through the patchy walls of the corpse-house — hundreds of them, on every side except the wall with the door. Morlock watched without doing anything. Strigae must be pressed up all around the outside walls of the corpse-house; they far outnumbered him. Either his precautions would work or they wouldn't; if not, he needed to know now so that he could get out soon.

The worms were a grayish red, the color of a rather unhealthy human tongue. But they were long and thin, and each one terminated in a little tongueless mouth with needle-sharp teeth. They wove their way through cracks in the wall, and extended into the empty air beyond the wall . . . and were foiled. When they came to the air over the little channel of running water they began to twitch and shudder. They could go no further. One by one they withdrew; the water had defeated them.

Morlock saluted his departing enemies with a rude gesture, but he didn't imagine this was the end of his troubles. He continued with his rat patrol, kicking away any of the vermin that seemed to be trying to climb the sheer legs of the corpse table.

Eventually he heard a thumping on the ragged roof. It was what he had expected — Strigae could not cross running water, but they could use a bridge to cross above it. The wood of the roof would shield them from the effects of the purifying stream until they had crossed. Perhaps he should have pulled the roof off the corpse-house, as he had thought of doing. But the roof served as a protection against arrows or spears or rocks — or any kind of throwing weapon. Just because the Strigae could use magic didn't mean they had to and, once he was dead or unconscious, they could figure out a way to defeat the stream. It would be easy enough just to slap a board across it; crossing over so close to the running water might prove difficult but, with a corpse to chew on the other side, they would no doubt find a way to do it.

Morlock got up on the corpse table, crouching under the low roof, with one foot planted on either side of the dead man. He waited until something thumped gently on a loose patch of the roof, just over his head. He punched it solidly; the patch flew up and whatever was on it flew squawking away and thumped, less gently, on another part of the roof.

"Get off there!" he shouted. "If you don't get off the roof, I'll pull it down, and you with it. Then you will be in here. Within the sacred boundary of the stream. With me ."

The thumping hastily retreated to the edge of the roof. There was the sound of whispering outside the corpse-house for a while, and then silence fell. When Morlock was fairly confident they were gone, he got down from the corpse-table and resumed his rat patrol.

Morlock was lighting a new candle from the sputtering corpse of an old one when he felt someone was looking at him. He glanced up and saw Zatchlas standing in the open doorway.

"Good evening," Morlock said, oddly relieved. "I'd offer you some wine, but I didn't save any."

Zatchlas gave him an unreadable look, then said, "Well, I'm not much of a drinker. It's a good evening for you, anyway. I saw a cloud of Strigae around the place and thought you were done for. But now they all seem to have gone."

"They will be back, I suppose."

"Almost certainly. But it is amazing you have lasted this long."

"Thanks."

"Nothing personal. Many of us are rooting for you, you know."

"Not enough to intervene and help me, I suppose?"

"Not directly," Zatchlas said, a little shamefacedly.

Morlock shrugged; he wasn't surprised.

"Besides, it would spoil the bets."

"You're betting on whether I make it through the night?" Morlock asked, intrigued.

"Some of us are," Zatchlas said. "So we could not interfere, even if we dared, you see? The bets would be off."

"Don't worry about it," Morlock said. It embarrassed him to see the bulky young man justifying himself.

"But. . . well, a few of us. We thought we might walk by here a few times, when the Strigae are not about. Just to see how you are doing."

"Thanks."

"It's all right. I'm sorry we cannot do more."

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders again. He hadn't expected anything, so he wasn't disappointed.

"It's just . . . I thought you should know." Zatchlas seemed to be having trouble coming to the point.

"What is it?"

"I think the Strigae left something behind them. It's propped up against that wall, and it seems to be moving. I didn't want to get too close to it . . ."

"Wise choice."

"But I thought you should know about it," Zatchlas concluded.

"Thanks." This sounded bad, Morlock reflected. If they had left some sort of device to topple the wall inward, he'd have to do something about it. The fallen wall might serve as a bridge for the Strigae to cross the stream. Quite apart from what falling stones might do to his skull, if he was caught in the collapse. "I'll have to have a look at it," he decided.

Zatchlas stood away from the doorway to allow Morlock through. As Morlock stepped across the stream, Zatchlas drew himself up in alarm and glanced around, gesturing at Morlock to stop.

The gesture turned into a fist and hit Morlock in the face. The dark world grew a little darker for a while. When Morlock came to himself he was lying across the stream with his head almost under the corpse table. Looming large, like actors on a stage, he saw three rats eating one of their comrades, who was asleep in a pool of wine next to the tipped-over wine cup. The sleeping rat whined and snored but did not otherwise protest as his mates fed on him.

There was some great weight oppressing Morlock. His ribs grated on each other and creaked. Whistling voices spoke words he didn't understand, then he heard Zatchlas saying, "I am being careful."

The weight oppressing Morlock shifted, and shifted again. Morlock sluggishly realized that Zatchlas must be using his fallen body as a bridge to cross the stream. That meant Zatchlas was a Striga, or an ally of the Strigae.

Zatchlas grunted and the weight on Morlock's body increased. Zatchlas now carried the dead body of Thelyphron — straight out of the blessed boundary of the stream, where the Strigae could feast on it in peace.

Morlock seized the fallen wine cup, as the most available weapon, and surged to his feet, throwing Zatchlas a sprawl on the ground outside the corpse-house, the dead body of his father atop him. With surprising lightness, he leapt to his feet and ran off again, hauling the body with him toward the lights and the laughter of the fair.

Morlock ran after him into the carnival night.

Zatchlas was burdened with the dead body, but Morlock had been knocked almost unconscious. Zatchlas had almost reached the fairground before Morlock caught up with him. Several groups of people stood nearby, talking and laughing, in apparent indifference to what was happening before them. Morlock likewise ignored them and punched the bulky young man savagely on the right side of his fat sweating neck. Zatchlas went down.