Gary Braunbeck - Keepers

Other men approach them now, holding something long, curved, and shiny. They lift their arms, these men, and pass the shiny curves through the flesh.

I whisper to them, Fear not; soon you too shall graze in the fields by Zeus’s throne.

I have to make them believe this, as I must make myself believe it.

There is no other way to survive in this world of no gods.

The line is moving smoothly now, the beasts entering, the men falling upon them with hammers and chains. The room roars and snarls. I walk on. I reach the end of the platform and turn to see the fruition of my leadership.

The beasts hang there with their stomachs split open and their heads cut off. I smell their open flesh and see their dead hooves. On a metal hook I see all of their tongues, cut out and pierced by the sharp metal, pierced through the root and hanging there, mute and bloody.

I lower my arms.

I see their heads lined up on the floor. Someone is cutting off their cheeks with a knife, slicing through their tender flesh. Once this has been done, he kicks what remains of their heads down through a hole in the floor.

Blade passing through them.

Lives there a man who has not dreamt of being as strong as a bull in the fields?

Red running past.

Is there a bull who has never longed to stand as a man and be nearer the sky?

Bubbling up.

Only. You. Remain. Eternal.

Red passing through. The world, this room.

Give to me reign of the fields, the sky, and all creatures who dwell in between.

Split in half, this way and that.

Their cries still screeching through my brain, I climb down the stairs and walk around the building, an abandoning god, and prepare myself for the moment when the sun kisses the ground and the sky bleeds twilight and I am fed on my follower’s broiled remains and Beth is allowed to sit by my side.

To stand as a man stands is very hard. Two legs are very hard. Perhaps four is better, after all.

I touch my sides, wishing to stand on two legs. Two legs gives me a tailor. A tailor gives me clothing. Clothing gives me pockets. A place to hide my hands. To keep my paycheck. To store a key to a room with no straw on the ground or E LEVEN

– the top of my skull connected with the roof of the car when I jolted awake, shaking.

Goddammit.

I rubbed my face and eyes as if rubbing would brush away the remnants of the dream, then took a deep breath and looked at my watch.

I had been asleep for almost twenty minutes.

Not great, but at least it hadn’t been hours.

I stretched my back, rubbed the back of my head, took several deep breaths, and-as rallied now as I would ever be-climbed out of the car. After removing the high-intensity flashlight from the trunk and closing the lid, I began walking over the rise and down toward the graveyard. The flashlight’s beam revealed that there weren’t as many birds here now, and nowhere could I see any bones.

I headed toward the old barn in the distance. As I neared, the silence surrounding me became almost unbearable. I’d have given anything to hear a bird sing or a dog bark.

The ground around the barn was spotted with deep holes. Someone had been digging. Quite a lot.

The barn door was partly open, so I was able to enter without making any noise. Inside it glowed with warm, bright light, courtesy of at least a dozen oil lanterns.

Carson was at the opposite end. His clothes were covered in the moist, clay-like soil from outside. A large shovel rested inside the wheelbarrow he’d used to haul the dirt in.

He did not hear me as I walked toward him.

He was busy cutting sections of twine from a roll. There were various sizes of branches and sticks in a pile at his feet. There were buckets of water. Rope. Tubes of caulk and a caulk gun. An immense sheet of tarpaulin from which several large pieces had been cut.

I was in the middle of the barn. I could see Carson, but since the stalls on that side ran into the beams and wall that supported the hayloft above, I couldn’t see what he was working on.

“Carson?”

He looked at me, smiled, and waved. “Hi, UncGil. I’ve been taking the bus. The #48 express. Remember how it almost hit us?”

“Yes.”

He looked down at something on a hay bale. A comic book. He turned the page.

“Is that the new issue of Modoc?” I asked.

“Yeah. I bought it yesterday.”

I took a few more steps toward him. “What’re you working on?”

“Present for Long-Lost.”

“What kind of present?”

“Come look. I’m almost all done.”

I walked over to him.

Somehow, he had used the bird bones and clay, the twine and rope, the caulk and several sections of discarded wood, as well as all the twigs and sticks, to build a near-perfect replica of Long-Lost.

It wasn’t nearly as big as it was portrayed in the comics-it looked to be just under six feet in height-but it was still impressive. He had cut away sections of the tarpaulin to fashion the skin for the wings. The horn was a stick that he’d whittled to a point. He’d gathered feathers as well, using them to give the body as much texture as possible. The spider’s legs were one of the most amazing parts: for those he’d used bone, stick, twine and twig, clay, and remnants of bed sheets, twisting them tightly together so they could support the weight of the rest of it. It was a marvel of design, something I knew to be beyond his capabilities.

“How long have you been working on this?” I asked.

“Long time. Ever since we came out here the first time.”

“You’ve been sneaking out and taking the bus?”

He nodded, and then began wrapping the twine around the bottom of one of the legs. “Uh-huh. That bus runs all night.”

So he’d been sneaking out at night after bed check and getting back before breakfast.

A flash of fire burned up my side and I had to lean against one of the stall doors.

Carson looked over and saw me, the state of my clothes, and the blood. He dropped the twine and ran over, putting his arms around me. “You hurt, UncGil? What happened?”

“I had an accident.”

“Wanna go to the hospital?”

I shook my head. “No, Carson, I want to take you home where you belong.”

He released his hold on me and went back to work. “I don’t wanna go back there. I wanna stay here.”

“Well, you can’t.”

He checked the comic book, looked at me, then turned a few pages and shook his head.

“What’s wrong, Carson? What’s Long-Lost say? What are you supposed to do now?”

“Well,” he said, adding the last bit of twine and clay to Long-Lost’s arm, “I dunno.” He held up the comic. “The next part is about you.”

(Longlost sayz the Keeperz are comeing n He kneedz to talk to yoo.)

“I see.” I reached out and took the comic book, rolling it up and slipping it into my jacket pocket. “Then we should go home and read it together.”

He shook his head. “The animals need me.”

“What animals?”

He stopped his work and stared at me. “Don’t you know what this place is, UncGil?”

The pain was starting to make me dizzy. “No, Carson, I don’t. So why don’t you tell me all about it on the way home?”

“I’m not leaving! ” he shouted, throwing a wad of mud at the far wall. “I’m not leaving and you can’t make me! ”

“Don’t shout at me, Carson.”

“You try an’ make me go an’ I’ll… eyes on my face. I’ll… I’ll call for ’em.”

My stomach tightened. “Call for who? Long-Lost? He doesn’t live in this world, Carson. He lives on the other side of the Great Scrim-remember from the first couple of issues?”

He shook his head again, starting to cry. “Nuh-uh, not Long-Lost.”