“Didn’t hear?” Birds asked, then continued, “Someone went and chopped off his ear-when he was sleeping, if you can believe that. And now it’s a ghost ear.”
“You can hear ghosts?”
The three ex-soldiers stared at the first mate for a moment, then Heck Urse said, “That he can, only sometimes they take bites.”
“What a horrible thing!” Ably Druther straightened and began backing away, fading with every step from the pool of lantern light.
Which was probably why none of the ex-soldiers crouched on the walkway actually saw whatever it was that rose up behind the first mate and bit off his head.
Like a blot on the turgid seas, the deck of the Suncurl was a stain far below Bena Younger and her cackling mother. Edges blurred, the blackness itself the only proof that the ship existed at all, as the swirling thrusts of spume on the seas broke and rolled out to the sides, blooms of crimson-tinged luminescence cavorting away into the night.
Sails flapped as the Suncurl drifted as if indifferent to the wind, nudged along on the currents of the red road. No one visible at the wheel. Only shadows caught in the rat-lines and rigging. No lantern swinging beneath the prow to light the way.
Close round the hatch to the hold huddled most of the crew. Reams of sand had been spread in a futilely protective circle, encompassing the hapless sailors, a detail that loosed hacking laughter from Bena Elder’s gaping mouth.
Overhead, the fitful wind shredded rifts through the thin shrouds of grey cloud, yet whatever world those rents revealed was naught but soulless darkness, bereft of stars.
Laughter’s End exuded lifeless sighs into this turning, alien night sky, and Bena Younger crouched down, knees drawn up, arms wrapping them close against her chest, shivering in waves of blind, despairing terror.
Whilst her mother’s desiccated head nodded in rhythmic reassurance, and she sang on in her crooning way. Lust and death this night, the murderous charade of love and treasures plundered! Oh, utopian circumstance as like a philosophe’s wet aspiration-yes, all the dancers pause as if pinned through their free feet by dread spikes of reason! Exalted music of procreation! The Luckless fool has perchance undone us all-must we bless the sackless madman and his lurking lurker in the locked trunk? But no, warded indeed is that child-by none other than the one lost to all cogency!
You and me, beloved, we shall survive this night, oh yes. Bena Elder promises! Safe from all hungry harm. Your dearest, loving mother is swelled to all decent proportions, for such are these exuding sighs that travel the red road, the whispered promise of rightful majesty accorded all things maternal, one hopes, and hopes, yes.
Cry not, daughter. Warm yourself in your mother’s unrelenting embrace-you are safe from the world. Safe and safer still. Virgin is your blood, virgin is your child mind, virgin yes, is the power of your soul-your sweetest kiss, yes, upon which the only one who truly loves you feeds, persists, endures.
You are mine ever and ever, even this night, and so I shall prove to all, no matter how hoary and dismal and desperate the challenge from below!
Let me sip each whimper from your lips, daughter. My strength grows!
One scream. a sudden widening of the eyes, a faint primordial shiver. The soul tenses, crouches, awaits a repetition, for it is in repetition alone that a face is painted onto the dark unknown, a face indeed frightened, frightening, wracked with pain, or-and so one wishes-in bright, startled delight. But alas, this latter entreaty is yielded up so rarely, for such are grim truths unveiled, one beneath another and seemingly without end.
One scream. Breath held, heart stilled. What comes?
Now, an eruption of screams. From three throats. Well that is indeed… different.
The hammer and thump, the wild pitching of inadequate light from somewhere down below. Boots on slick wood, the screams growing ravaged as tender tissue splits to the torrent of sound. And this, then, is the place and the moment when all totters on the knife-edge, precipice yawning, wind howling oblivion’s flinty echo-does madness arrive? Unleashing misdirected violence and random calamity? Vague figures charging into one another, mouth-stretched faces crushed under heel, shapes pitching over the rail, bones snapping, blood gushing, grimy fingers digging into eyes-oh, so much is uttered by the fates to the chant of remorseless madness.
A deep, reverberating shout-nothing more would have been needed-a commanding voice to tug souls back from the brink.
If only one was there, among that huddle of crew, of the fortitude and iron spine to seize that one moment of salvation.
But terror had swum the night’s sultry currents, seeping into flesh and mind, and now, in the wake of that terrible shrieking from below, chaos blossomed.
Life, as Bauchelain would well note-were he of any mind to voice comment-was ever prone to stupidity and, in logical consequence, atrocious self-destruction.
Of course, he was too busy spilling an endless flood of seed into a barely sensate and in no way resisting Captain Sater down in his cabin, and this, as all well know, is the pinnacle of all human virtue, glory and exaltation.
In wild whirling lantern light Ably Druther’s headless corpse continued kicking even as blood gushed from the ragged nightmare that was his neck. His hands waved and twitched about as if strung to belligerent puppets. Birds Mottle, Gust Hubb and Heck Urse had collectively recoiled along the gangway towards the head-not Ably’s, which had vanished, but the one at the bow-and in the process their feet had tangled, precipitating all three in a shrieking tumble down along one side of the mouldy hull, and there they thrashed, with Heck still holding the lantern high, in suddenly sodden clothes pungent with the reek of urine and, in Gust’s case, something worse.
If the slayer now sought their souls, the harvest would have been virtually effortless. But nothing descended upon them, and apart from their screams, and the thumping of Ably’s boots-and now, it must be added, the panicked thunder of feet from the deck overhead-there was no slithery, slurping rush to where they struggled and clawed, no hissing descent of slavering fangs.
Despite this, terror held the three ex-soldiers by their throats, especially when Ably Druther sat up, then twisted onto his hands and knees and jerkily regained his feet. Blood wept down his torso front and back, triggering in Heck’s mind a dismayed revulsion that the man didn’t even have the decency to use a napkin. Hands groping, Ably Druther took a step closer.
That step pitched him from the walkway and the trio of shrieks redoubled as the headless first mate plunged down onto them.
Fingers snagged whatever they caught, and Gust wailed as his other ear was torn away from the side of his head, a blessing of symmetry if nothing else, but now terrible crunching, crackling sounds surged into his brain to war with the endless swishing of water.
Flailing, he scrabbled free from the corpse’s reach, landing face-first into the crevice between raised gangway and hull, only to find his gaping mouth suddenly filled with oily fur, squirming as he instinctively bit down even while gagging. A piteous squeal from the rat that ended on an altogether too high note as if bladders of air had been disastrously squeezed, and fluids most foul filled Gust Hubb’s mouth.
His stomach revolted with spectacular effect, propelling the mangled rat a man’s length out onto a tumbling landing on the walkway, where it came to rest on its back, tiny legs in the air, blood-wet slivery tongue lolling down one side of its open mouth.
Heck Urse, in the meantime, was being choked to death by a headless First Mate-who clearly wanted a head and any one would do. As a result, he forgot all about the risks of holding the lantern, electing in his extremity to use it as a weapon. In this, instinct failed him, since such a weapon was in truth likely only effective against the back of his assailant’s head. A head that wasn’t there. The hard, hot bronze of the lantern’s oil-filled body cracked Urse in the face, igniting his beard and breaking his nose. Blinded, he flung the lantern away, spreading a flaring sheet of burning oil in its wake.
This elongated sheet of fire landed in between Birds Mottle’s legs, as she was at that moment sitting up. As heat rushed for her nether parts, she kicked, lunging backward, to land skidding on the dead rat, all the way to the head which met her own with a solid crunch. Eyes pitching upward, she sagged unconscious.
Blood having extinguished his smouldering beard, Heck now had both hands on the lone hand squeezing his neck, and he began breaking fingers one by one. From Ably Druther came a series of anal gasps of, presumably, pain. And finally Heck Urse was able to twist free, clambering onto the first mate’s back, where he pounded down with futile abandon.
Gust Hubb loomed into view, his earless head ghastly in the flickering firelight, vomit slicking his chin to mingle with the blood streaming down both jawlines. Bulging eyes fixed on Heck Urse.
“Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!”
“I’m trying, you damned fool!” Heck retorted. “Get me a sword! A spike! Get me ropes, damn you!”
Gust Hubb scrambled past on the walkway. “Get it yourself! I ain’t staying down here-no way-and I ain’t ever coming down here again!”
Cursing, Heck reached for his knife. Still straddling the struggling body of Ably Druther, he twisted round and hamstrung the first mate, one side, then the other. “Try walking now!” he snarled, then giggled, pushing himself back onto the walkway, yelping at the still-licking flames, then crabbing towards Birds Mottle.
“Wake up, love! We gotta get out of here- wake up! ”
The third hard slap to the side of her face brought a flutter to her lids, then her eyes snapped open and she stared up at him, momentarily uncomprehending.
But Heck couldn’t wait, and he began pulling Birds to her feet. “Come on, sweet. There’s a demon or something down here-Gust’s already bolted, the bastard-come on, let’s go.”
She looked at him blankly. “The ship’s on fire. That’s not good.”
“We’ll get the crew down here, every damned one of them, to put it out.”
“Good. Yes. It’s not good if everything catches fire.”
“No, darling, that it ain’t. Here, watch your step…”
With Heck Ursedragging a mumbling birds Mottle up the steep steps to the deck above, the headless corpse of Ably Druther was left more or less on its own, attempting to regain its feet but, alas, its legs had stopped working. Dejected, the first mate sat down on the walkway, forearms resting on thighs and hands hanging down.
The spark of life could leap unfathomed distances, could erupt in places most unexpected, could indeed scurry along tracks of muscle and nerve, like a squirrel with a chopped tail. And sometimes, when even the life itself has fled, the spark remains. For a little while.
Once seated, Ably Druther ceased all movement, beyond a fainting slumping of the shoulders that quickly settled. Even the blood draining from various wounds finally slowed, the last drops thick and long.