Robert McCammon - Speaks the Nightbird

He swiped the coin from Matthew's hand. "If you was to run to Florida and your master was to want you back, them Spaniards would jus' laugh at him. Same's true of somebody done a stealin' or a murder: get to Florida, them Spaniards would protect him. I tell you, once them blackamoors start runnin' to Florida by the scores and gettin' turned into free men, this world's gonna roast in Hell's fires." Shawcombe dropped the coin into the tankard, which still had liquid in it, judging from the sound of the wet plop, then sat smoking his pipe with his arms crossed over his chest. "Yeah," he said with a knowing nod, "a Spanish spy's out there, payin' the redskins to get up to some mischief. Hell, he might even be livin' in Fount Royal, an Englishman turned black-coat!"

"Possibly." Matthew's need for relief was now undeniable. "Excuse me, I have to go."

"Go on, then. Like I say, watch where you step." Shawcombe let Matthew get to the door and then said, "Hey, clerk! You sure he wouldn't part with that waistc't?"

"Absolutely sure."

Shawcombe grunted, his head wreathed with blue pipe smoke. "I didn't think so," he said in a quiet voice.

Matthew unlatched the door and went out. The storm had quietened somewhat, the rain falling now as misty drizzle. In the sky, though, distant lightning flashed through the clouds. The mud clasped hold of Matthew's shoes. A half-dozen steps through the mire, Matthew had to lift up his nightshirt and urinate where he stood. Decorum, however, dictated that he relieve his bowels in the woods behind the barn, for there were no leaves or pine needles nearby with which to clean himself. When he finished, he followed the lantern's glow past the barn, his shoes sinking up to the ankles in a veritable swamp. Once beyond the forest's edge, he gathered a handful of wet leaves and then crouched down to attend to his business. The lightning danced overhead, he was soaked, muddy, and miserable, and all in all it was a nasty moment. Such things, however, could not be rushed no matter how fervently one tried.

After what seemed an eternity, during which Matthew cursed Shawcombe and swore again to pack a chamberpot on their next journey, the deed was completed and the wet leaves put to use.

He straightened up and held the lantern out to find his path back to the so-called tavern. Once more the waterlogged ground opened and closed around his shoes, his knee joints fairly popping as he worked his legs loose from the quagmire. He intended to check on the horses before he returned to the so-called bed, where he could look forward to the magistrate's snoring, the rustling of rats, and rainwater dripping on his- He fell.

It was so fast he hardly knew what was happening. His initial thought was that the earth had sucked his legs out from under him. His second thought, which he barely had an eye-blink of time to act upon, was to keep the lantern from being extinguished. So even as he fell on his belly and the mud and water splashed around him and over the magistrate's fearnaught coat, he was able to lift his arm up and protect the light. He spat mud out of his mouth, his face aflame with anger, and said, "Damn it to Hell!" Then he tried to sit up, mud all over his face, his sight most blinded. He found this task harder than it should have been. His legs, he realized, had been seized by the earth. The very ground had collapsed under his shoes, and now his feet were entangled in something that felt like a bramble bush down in the swampy muck. Careful of the lantern, he wrenched his right foot loose but whatever held his left foot would not yield. Lightning flared again and the rain started falling harder. He was able to get his right leg under him, and then he braced himself as best he could and jerked his left leg up and out of the morass.

There was a brittle cracking sound. His leg was free.

But as he shone the lantern down upon his leg, Matthew realized he'd stepped into something that had come out of the earth still embracing his ankle.

At first he didn't know what it was. His foot had gone right through what looked like a mud-dripping cage of some kind. He could see the splintered edges, one of which had scraped a bleeding gouge in his leg.

The rain was slowly washing mud off the object. As he stared at it, another flash of lightning helped aid his recognition of what held him, and his heart felt gripped by a freezing hand.

Matthew's anatomy studies did not have to be recollected to tell him that he'd stepped into and through a human-sized rib cage. A section of spinal cord was still attached, and on it clung bits of grayish-brown material that could only be decayed flesh.

He let out a mangled cry and began frantically kicking at the thing with his other shoe. The bones cracked, broke, and fell away, and when the last of the rib cage and vertebrae had been kicked loose Matthew crawled away from it as fast as the mud would allow. Then he sat up amid leaves and pine needles and pressed his back against a tree trunk, the breath rasping in his lungs and his eyes wide and shocked.

He thought, numbly, how distraught the magistrate was going to be over the fearnaught coat. Such coats were not easy to come by. It was ruined, no doubt. A rib cage. Human-sized. Ruined beyond all hope of cleaning. Damn this rain and mud, damn this wild land, and damn Shawcombe and the chamberpot he should have had.

A rib cage, Matthew thought. Rain was running down his face now. It was cold, and the chill helped him organize his mind. Of course, the rib cage might've belonged to an animal. Mightn't it?

The lantern was muddy but-thank providence!-the candle was still burning. He stood up and made his way over to the broken bones. There he knelt down and shone the light upon them, trying to determine what animal they might've come from. While he was so occupied, he heard a soft slithering sound somewhere to his right. He angled the lantern toward it and in a few seconds saw that a gaping hole some four feet across had opened in the boggy ground; the slithering sound was mud sliding down its sides.

Matthew thought it might have been what had collapsed under his feet and caused him to fall, for the earth itself was rebelling against this incessant downpour. He stood up, eased to the edge of the hole, and directed the lantern's light down into it.

At first he saw what looked like a pile of sticks lying in the hole. Everything was muddy and tangled together into an indistinct mess. The longer he stared, however, the more clear came the picture.

Yes. Horribly clear.

He could make out the bones of an arm, thrown across what might've been a half-decayed, naked torso. A gray knee joint jutted up from the muck. There was a hand, the fingers shriveled to the bones, grasping upward as if in a begging gesture for help. And there was a head, too; mostly a mud-covered skull, but some of the flesh remained. Matthew, his mouth dry of saliva and his heart pounding, could see how the top of the skull had been crushed inward by a savage blow.

A hammer could've delivered such a death, he realized. A hammer or a rat-killing mallet.

Perhaps there were more corpses than one in that burial pit. Perhaps there were four or five, thrown in and entangled together. It was hard to tell how many, but there were a great number of bones. None of the bodies seemed to have been buried with their clothing.

Hey, clerk! You sure he wouldn't part with that waistc't?

Matthew felt the earth shift and slide around his feet. There was a noise like a dozen serpents hissing and, as the ground began to collapse around him, Matthew saw more human bones being pushed up to the surface like the muddy spars of ships wrecked on vicious shoals. Dazed as if locked in a nightmare, Matthew stood at the center of the sinking earth as evidence of murders revealed themselves under his shoes. Only when he was about to be sucked under into an embrace with the dead did he turn away, pulling his feet up and struggling toward the barn.