Clive Barker - Mister B. Gone

With this done, we sat amongst the naked dead while we ate and drank.

"We should probably bury them," I said.

I knew as I made the suggestion that Quitoon would not want to waste time digging graves. But I had not foreseen the solution he had in mind. It was impressive, I will admit that. At his instruction we dragged the three dead men perhaps fifty yards deeper into the forest, where the trees grew high and the canopy thick. Then, to my astonishment, Quitoon cradled one of the corpses in his arms and dropping to his haunches suddenly sprang up, throwing the body up into the branches with such force that it pierced the heavy canopy. It was quickly gone from sight, but I heard its continued ascent for several seconds until it finally lodged in some high place where bigger, hungrier birds than those that sang in the lower branches would quickly strip the flesh from it.

He did the same thing with the two other bodies, choosing a different spot for each. When he was done he was a little breathless, but well pleased with himself.

"Let those who finally find them make sense of that," he said. "What does that expression mean, Mister B.?"

"I am merely amazed," I said. "A hundred years together and you've still got new tricks up your sleeve."

He did not disguise his satisfaction, but smiled smugly.

"Whatever would you do without me?" he said.

"Die."

"For want of food?"

"No. For want of your company."

"If you had never met me, you would have no reason to mourn my absence."

"But I did and I would," I said, and turning from his scrutiny, which made my burned cheeks burn again, I headed back towards the horses.

We took all three animals, which allowed for each to have some respite from being ridden, which speeded our way. It was late July and we traveled by night, which was not only cautious but also had the advantage of allowing us to rest in some secret place by day, when the air, unmoved by even the faintest of breezes, grew fiercely hot.

Limiting our traveling to the short summer nights made Quitoon foul-tempered, though, and rather than endure his company I agreed that we should travel by both day and night so as to be in Mainz sooner. The horses soon sickened from lack of rest, and, when one of them literally died beneath me, we left the survivors with their dead companion (about whose corpse they displayed not even the slightest curiosity) and taking our weapons and what little food remained from a theft of the previous day we proceeded on foot.

The horse had perished just after dawn, so as we walked the heat of the climbing sun, which was at first balmy, steadily became more oppressive. The empty road stretching before us offered no prospect of shade beneath roof or tree, while to each side of us stretched fields of motionless grain.

The clothes I'd taken from the huntsmen, which fitted well enough and were the garments of a moneyed man, stifled me. I wanted to tear them all off, and go naked, as I had in the World Below. For the first time since Quitoon and I had left the blood-red grove together, I wanted to be back in the Ninth Circle, amongst the troughs and peaks of the garbage. "Was this how it felt?" Quitoon asked me. I cast him a puzzled glance.

"Being in the fire," he said, by way of explanation, "where you got your scars."

I shook my head, which was throbbing. "Stupid," I muttered.

"What?" There was a hint of threat in the syllable. Though we had argued innumerable times, often vehemently, our exchanges had never escalated into violence. I had always been too intimidated by him to let that happen. Even a century of thieving, killing, traveling, eating, and sleeping together had never erased the sour certainty that under the right stars he would kill me without hesitation. Today there was just one star in the Heavens, but oh how it burned. It was like a blazing unblinking eye frying our rage in our brain pans as we walked the empty road.

Had I not felt the fever of its gaze upon me, and the weight of its judgment within that gaze, I would have muzzled my anger and offered some words of apology to Quitoon. But not today; today I answered him truthfully.

"I said stupid."

"Meaning me?"

"What do you think? Stupid questions, stupid mind."

"I think the sun's made you crazy, Botch."

We were no longer walking but standing facing one another, no more than an arm's length apart.

"I'm not crazy," I said.

"Then why would you do something so idiotic as to call me stupid?" His volume dropped to little more than a whisper. "Unless, of course, you're so tired of the dust and the heat that you want to be put out of your misery. Is that it, Botch? Are you tired of life?"

"No. Only of you," I said. "You and your endless, boring talk about machines. Machines, machines! Who cares what men are making? I don't!"

"Even if the machine changed the world?"

I laughed. "Nothing is going to change this ," I said. "Stars. Sun. Roads. Fields. On and on. World without end."

We stared at one another for a moment, but I did not care to meet his gaze any longer, for all its golden gleam. I turned back the way we'd come, though the road was as empty and unpromsing in that direction as it was in the other. I didn't care. I had no will to go to Mainz, or see whatever Quitoon thought was so very interesting there.

"Where are you going?" he said.

"Anywhere. As long as it's away from you."

"You'll die."

"No I won't. I lived before I knew you and I'll live again when I've forgotten you."

"No, Botch. You'll die."

I was six or seven strides from him when with a sudden rush of dread I understood what he was telling me. I dropped the bag of food I was carrying, and without even glancing back at him to confirm my fears I turned to my right, and raced for the only concealment available to me, the corn. As I did so I heard a sound like that of a whip being cracked, and felt a surge of heat come at me from behind, its force sufficient to pitch me forwards. My feet, trapped in those damnable fancy boots, stumbled over themselves, and I fell into the shallow ditch that ran between the road and the field. It was the saving of me. Had I still been standing I would have been struck by the blast of heat that Quitoon had spewed in my direction.

The heat missed me and found the grain instead. It blackened for an instance, then bloomed fire, lush orange flames rising against the sky's flawless blue. Had there been more to devour than the wilted grain I might have been scorched to death there in the ditch. But the grain was consumed in a heartbeat, and the fire was obliged to spread in pursuit of further nourishment, racing along the edge of the field in both directions. A veil of smoke rose from the blackened stubble and under its cover I crawled along the ditch.

"I thought you were a demon, Botch," I heard Quitoon say. "But look at you. You're just a worm."

I paused to look back and saw through a shred in the smoke that Quitoon was standing in the ditch watching me. His exression was one of pure revulsion. I'd seen the same look on his face before, of course, though not often. He reserved it only for the most abject and hopeless filth we had encountered on our travels. Now I was numbered among them in his eyes, which fact stung more than the knowledge that his gaze could kill me before I had time to draw a final breath.

"Worm!" he called to me. "Prepare to burn."

The next moment would certainly have brought the killing fire, but two things saved me from it: one, a number of shouts from the direction of the field, from those who presumably owned it and had come running in the hope of putting out the flames, and, more fortuitous still, the second, a sudden thickening of the smoke that came off the burning grain, which closed the opening through which Quitoon had been watching me, obscuring him completely.