John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

But this… I had not imagined that people could live this way. It looked like the den of some animal rather than a place for people.

I wondered where in the world I was.

In the mirror, I saw the rags on the cot move, and a brown bear poked its snout out of the fabric and rolled off the cot with a squeaking of rusty hinges and old wood.

I gasped and turned my head. Mr. Glum was sitting on the cot, blinking stupidly. He wore a long night-shirt of dull red, patched and holed in places, and clumps of his chest hair peeked through the holes. One leg was on the floor. I saw his stump, and saw how the flesh had been folded over below his knee and stitched into a rough seam.

“Ah, Melia,” he said. “You’ve come.”

I tried to shrink back, but this only pressed the edge of the workbench more rudely into my bottom.

“Come over here,” he said. “I’m in no mood to chase you. I am not to marry you, if Boggin has his way, but there is much to do which will not touch your maidenhead. Take off your shirt and get down on your knees, here.”

The narrow door to the shed was on the far side of the cot from where I was. I started to edge toward my right, my hands still white-knuckled on the workbench, around the foot of the cot.

He gave a hollow laugh. “Stick, I truly want you now!” He put his hand out and his crude cane, made out of a hoe staff, flipped up from the mess on the floor and into his grip. He painfully levered himself upright.

Tottering on one leg, he thrust the cane against the boards of the narrow door behind him. “Door! Never have I wanted more that you should be locked fast, and let no fair maiden as fine as this escape my grasp.”

I heard a heavy lock click shut, even though I could see plainly that there was no lock on the door.

Between the edge of the wall and the foot of the workbench was a corner. I pushed myself into it as far as I could go.

Here I was, a big and sturdy girl, tall and athletic, and there was him, short, old, and crippled. No doubt I could have pushed past him, clubbed him in the face with something, jumped over him, gotten away. If he had been a one-legged man in truth.

But I did not think he was a one-legged man. At that moment, I was convinced he was a three-legged bear.

Grendel cocked his head to one side, squinting. “You’re out of the collar I put you in. You look better in it. It shows the world that you’re mine. I want it, I want it, I want it back on!”

He raised his hand and made a crook-fingered gesture toward my throat.

In the mirror, I could see my frightened face, and I could see a little shadow beginning to circle my neck, getting harder and more substantial…

“Ow!” shouted Grendel, doubling over, clutching one hand in the other. His cane fell to the floorboards with a loud clatter. There was a spot of blood welling up on one hand.

At that same moment, I saw in the mirror (but not in the room) a bloodstained shadow who had stepped out from behind me, and reached across my shoulder with a spear tipped with a stingray spine, striking Grendel’s hand.

Grendel raised his head, his eyes grown white and terrible with fear. “Either your balls or your brains must be made of hard stone, girl. What were you thinking, bringing a ghost here? A ghost!”

He wobbled a bit on his one leg, and looked like he was about to fall.

He must have seen the confusion on my face, for he said, “You don’t know, do you? Arthur’s Table lies not half a mile off. It marks the spot where the backstairs go down into the Dark Land. This place, this damn school, it were put here because it were so close to the spot where the path to the House of Woe comes out. Ghosts don’t walk here.”

“Why not?” I said.

He shook his head. “It brings the Dog.”

Even as he said that, the wind outside the hut began to moan and howl. Two more howls joined it.

The flames playing around the embers in the stove trembled and began to go out, one by one.

I looked over my shoulder. There was nothing behind me but the boards of the wall, badly caulked and water-stained. To the nothing, I said, “Telegonus, run away.”

Grendel smirked, and said, “He ain’t going to run away, that one. I seen him fighting Neptune’s men when they killt him. Fought even after he’d lost. Even after he’d died. He don’t give up. And he knows me. He knows how I got no power over you while he’s here.”

I said, half to myself, “Ghosts are from Erichtho’s paradigm. The concept of a disembodied spirit is a dualistic concept.”

One by one, little embers died. It grew darker in the small room.

“He’s coming,” said Grendel. “The Dog’s boss. The Unseen One. I feel my bone marrow turning cold.”

Grendel stooped and fell onto his cot, hugging himself with both hands. His face was slack and pale with fear. “Get out, both of you! Before He comes… ”

More light died. More gloom grew. I could only see the silhouette of Grendel’s face now, the texture of his scruffy cheek, the stubble of his bald head, the glitter of his eyes.

“Go! He might be here now. In the room. You, I’ll see you in the morning, little golden princess.”

I said, “You’re the one. They need you to erase my memory. None of the other paradigms will work on me.”

The shadowy head nodded. “That’s right. All I need do is have the spirit in me move me to it. What I want bad enough, I get.”

The howling grew louder. Now it did not sound like wind at all, but like a hound indeed, one as large as the sky, approaching as fast as the wind.

The last embers in the stove flared up and died. The coals glowed cherry-red a moment, then went black. The light was gone.

The door rattled in the frame. The little hut seemed to shake.

Then, suddenly, it all fell silent. The world seemed to hold its breath.

In the darkness, it seemed to me as if the shed walls had shrunk to the size of a coffin. I could hear Grendel breathing; I could almost hear his heartbeat; the sounds seemed louder in the lightlessness, as if Grendel were pressed up against me.

I only had a moment. I had to think of something to say.

I whispered, “Grendel, darling. Poor, handsome Grendel. You cut off your foot for me… because you wanted me… let me keep the memory of how much you wanted me… ”

“Don’t try to trick me, little bint,” he growled back. I imagined I could almost feel his breath on my cheek.

“No trick. I am not in love with you and I never will be. I feel sorry for you, really. But… Iam flattered. You almost had me, didn’t you? I was tied up hand and foot, and gagged, and it was your hands that tied me up. I was hoisted on your shoulder with my hip pushed up against your cheek. We were alone. No one else saw it. No one else knew you had me, no one but you and me.”

He didn’t answer. His breathing sounded loud in the gloom.

I said, “Once I forget that day, the day you took me, who will know that it ever happened? Oh, yes, you will remember. But only you. How will you know that you didn’t just imagine it?”

He spat, “ ‘Tis a trick. You want to make my desire weak.”

I pushed myself away from the wall, took a step toward where I thought the cot was, and reached out with my hands.

I touched his cheek, and felt his razor stubble, and his shoulder, and the rough fabric of his patched nightshirt.

He jumped, startled, and grabbed my wrists with both his hands. His grip was tight, vicelike, and I could feel the leathery calluses of his hands dig into my flesh. His hands were so hard, so large, and so ill-smelling. I wondered how soft and small and fragrant my hands felt and smelled to him.

Oh well. Might as well go for broke. It was just words. Noises in a row. I could make myself say them.