Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

Eventually, he said, “We’ve come a long way.”

The words triggered a whoop of affirmation from Fatos. Chick ignored the mule and pressed on.

“I want to thank all of you for having faith in me. You took a great chance. A great leap. I’ve never claimed to understand what happens when I go into Limbo. I just know that I hear and see things. And that those things feel true and real to me. So I want to thank you for trusting in something that none of us understand. Your faith is what makes it so hard to tell you this last bit.”

He paused and let the mood of the group change, felt the joy and excitement start to turn to anxiousness and suspicion.

“I know that we’ve all been looking for the same thing. We’ve been looking for a place where we can be our true selves, together. We’ve been looking for a haven. A place of refuge and sanctuary.”

Jeta nodded her agreement. Milena began to scowl and lean forward.

“But the fact is, I can’t promise you that place. It might be at the end of our road. And then again, it might not.”

Kitty reached over, took Nadja’s claw. Vasco and Marcel brought hands together nervously and cracked knuckles.

“All my life, I’ve been searching for my father. I think it’s my father who led me through the Limbo. I think it’s my dad who brought us to where we are tonight. And now, I think, he needs our help. And I think, if we help him, that he’ll help us in return.”

The chicken boy went quiet for a second and studied his comrades’ faces. The freaks looked back at Chick, unsure of what to say or do. Except for Bruno, who decided to push the boy.

“Tell us,” the strongman said, “exactly what you have to tell us.”

Chick looked at Bruno and nodded.

“Tomorrow,” Chick said, “we’ll arrive at the western shore. And at the castle of Dr. Fliess.”

At the mention of the name, Jeta burst into tears. At the sight of the tears, Antoinette became hysterical. Durga pulled both of them into her breast and looked to Milena for help. But the hermaphrodite only smiled at the fat lady and remained placid and unmoving.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Bruno said, standing and walking up to Chick in order to tower over him. “We spend this entire time running from Fliess. And now you tell us we were actually running to him.”

“I didn’t know,” Chick said, weakly. “Not until the last few days. Not for sure.”

“You said your father would be waiting,” Bruno said, confused.

Chick nodded. “Fliess has my father. And we have to free him.”

“You want us to go to the castle?” Vasco asked, incredulous.

“And demand that Fliess hand over your poppa?” asked Marcel, outraged.

“No,” said Chick, backing up as more of them rose from the ground and came toward him. “Of course not. I have a way in. There are tunnels. A series of caves that lead into the castle. I know exactly where to find my father. And I know, if we can free him, he can help us.”

That there was anger and outrage, disappointment and fear, did not surprise Chick. His own reaction to the knowledge of what lay in wait at the end of their road was profound sadness. The clan had relied on him to bring them to refuge. And instead, he had delivered them into their greatest terror and deposited them at the feet of their enemy. So he understood the bitterness that lay at the bottom of the troupe’s surprise. And beyond this, he felt his own particular brand of grief surge back into every feather of his body, the anguish that had simmered, for years, from the beginning, just on the edge of his consciousness. And he realized that whether or not his freaks abandoned him in the end, he would go to Fliess’s castle. And he would be saved or damned. But he would find whatever last truths were available to him. Because to live forever with a grief that deforms the heart is unacceptable — an abomination that must not be tolerated.

In the end, it was Milena who settled things and decided how the story would end.

“We’re here,” s/he shouted, drowning out the timorous carping of the others. “We’ve followed him this far. Now, we can call it a day and split up. Take our chances wandering around, looking for a show that will have us. Or we can trust in the chicken boy. We can play this out to the end. We can go to the castle and find his daddy and see what the man can do for us.”

It was as simple as that. As if all that had been needed was for a hermaphrodite to state, succinctly, the facts of the matter, and the options those facts generated. Milena’s tone was enough to indicate which option s/he had embraced. And once s/he declared her allegiance, the others began to fall in line. Their outrage and terror petered out rapidly and dissipated into little more than an undercurrent of grumbling. And suddenly, almost instantly, they were whole again.

Durga and Nadja got busy pulling together the night’s supper. And though the clan ate in silence, even the pinhead understood that all of them would remain a family to the end. There would be no splintering of the freaks. Come salvation or oblivion, they would face the future together.

And so, over a dessert of fresh berries and nuts, Bruno consulted with Chick, and the decision was made to set out just before midnight. They broke camp, buried their fire, left the truck to rust in the woods and followed the chicken boy on a path that, though it did not deter the freaks, did nothing to calm or reassure them. Within minutes of setting out on their last trek, they were overcome with a stench that made the slaughterhouses of Maisel seem like cologne shops by comparison. The ground beneath their feet turned into a hard, cracked clay of some sort. They tramped with hands and claws covering mouths and noses, taking short, careful steps that left them prematurely tired and uneasy.

They moved into and out of a fetid, swampy patch, slogging through warm murky water or pulling their feet step by step from the sucking mud. They passed through an infestation of fat, buzzing insects whose bites left welts the size of kroners over any exposed areas of flesh or fur. The freaks cried and groaned and cursed and threatened to turn back. But finally they emerged just meters away from a cascade of enormous boulders that coalesced into a cliff wall, atop which sat what could only be the castle of Dr. Fliess.

It loomed, as if it had been waiting for them since the day of its unlikely construction, all black iron and terrible rivets, countless stories of dark metal and tiny bug-eye windows. At its top was a single turret of tall glass panes, like a lighthouse, revealing a single, dim light within. From the top of the turret, a black metal spire thrust up into the sky like a lightning rod. And from the spire flew an enormous red flag, visible in the moonlight, its undulations in the wind incapable of obscuring the Gothic black F imprinted on its face.

Antoinette brought a hand up to cover her eyes, as if the mere sight of the castle and its awful banner would turn them all to stone. Jeta began to edge backward into the marshland from which they’d just emerged and Milena had to hold the skeleton’s hand to keep her from fleeing.

“That’s where we have to go,” Chick said, pointing to the turret. “That’s where he’s keeping my father.”

He looked to Bruno, but the strongman only nodded his head, gesturing to the mountain of rocks before them. So Chick led the way to the bottom of the cliff, moving to a smooth purple boulder that sat flush against the granite wall. He inspected it quickly, put his palm against its cool surface, then turned to Bruno and said, “This is the one.”

The others stepped back and made room for the strongman, who wasted no time putting his good shoulder to the shale and heaving all of his mass into the stone. It took time and effort to move the rock and at one point, Fatos attempted to offer assistance. But Chick warned him away with a look. They let Bruno grunt and heave, sweat breaking over his face, veins bulging across the dome of his skull. And gradually, the stone was rolled aside and an opening was revealed behind it, carved into the face of the cliff wall.