Dragon Maid (23 page)

There was still a part of Annette’s rational mind that knew what was happening was beyond the realm of natural law. She should be terrified.  She should be resisting the wolves’ psychic pull.  Yet she was not terrified, she was enraptured.  She would not resist.

The wolves kept walking.  Annette kept pace with them.

She heard voices, then footsteps mingled with the sounds of crackling ice.  For the first time, she realized how cold it was in this place, yet she herself was not cold.  She was wearing a V-neck sweater, jeans, and sneakers – poor protection against even the recent Montana nights which had been in the low forties.  Yet here, with the snow frozen on the ground, she felt warm, insulated against a cold which must be intense.

The voices came closer and Annette struggled to make out words or phrases.  She could not.  The words were in a foreign language she did not recognize. They were men's voices and they were coming closer.

Annette saw lights and realized they were torches.

The torches came closer and the wolves halted before a clearing.  Annette realized that she too was standing still, no longer moving forward.

Several men made their way into the clearing.  They were dressed in heavy fur-lined boots laced up to the calves.  Their coats were knee-length shearling as were their gloves and hats.  When they spoke, wisps of mist from their mouths obliterated their features. 

Annette had to strain to hear their words, in the hopes that a familiar sound would clue her in to the language they spoke.  She could make out one word, a name:  Ileana.  One of the men spoke it and the man standing next to him spat in the snow.

Their leader was a tall man with dark, fierce eyes, and the only one who was bare-headed.  While the others spoke in hushed or hesitant tones, his voice rose above the other with weight and authority.  When he spoke, the others fell silent.  When he spoke the name, “Ileana,” he did so with an anger and forcefulness that chilled Annette in a way that the frigid climate never could. 

 Blackness seemed to radiate from him:  his hair, his eyes, his thick bushy beard all bore the same lustrous, ebony hue.   It was not a mere physical blackness.  There was something about this man that radiated an eternal darkness, one suggesting a soul blacker than any mere corporeal characteristic he might possess.

The wolves shared her distaste.  When he passed, they all bristled, a few growled.

The man and his band walked past, not seeing them. 

At any other time, Annette would have been amazed by this, but tonight, it was just one more inexplicable occurrence that somehow seemed normal.

When the band passed, the wolves began moving again.  They followed the band and Annette followed the wolves.

They had gone about a mile when the leader brought the group to a halt.  They were standing before a wooden cabin and the leader began yelling to someone in the cabin.  Someone named Ileana.

Annette saw the interior illuminated with a soft glow.  The door opened and a woman emerged, holding a candle.  She was clad in a white robe which came down past her knees, but not quite to her feet, which were bare.  Her hair was dark blond, wavy and came down past her shoulders.  Her figure was slender, but solid.  Her face had lines which denoted a hard peasant life, yet these features detracted from her beauty only a little.

The woman said something in that strange unfamiliar language, directed to the dark-eyed leader.  Her gaze never wavered.  Annette did not understand what she said, but she did understand that she was expressing defiance.

The woman’s (Ileana’s?) response drove the leader into a rage.  He came towards her, shouting something which Annette interpreted as an ultimatum.  When she answered him, in the same defiant tones, he started shouting again, this time, brandishing a truncheon he’d pulled from inside his coat.

Annette lost it.  “Hey!  Leave her alone!”

Her words went unheard.  The leader edged closer to the woman, shouting and raising the truncheon higher.

“Get away from her!”

Suddenly, two small forms came rushing out into the night.   They were shouting and the boy was crying.  They were running towards their mother, the girl was shouting at the men.

For the first time, the woman showed fear.  She yelled something to the children, no doubt ordering them back into the cabin, but it was too late.  The leader grabbed the woman by the hair and forced her onto the ground.  He barked a command, and four other men rushed forward towards the children.  The boy tried to run, but he was brought down.  The girl stood her ground and was held fast.

The leader looked down at the woman and repeated whatever demand he had made.  This time, his voice held no anger.  He was smiling an ugly smile and his tone was triumphant.  The woman knew she was at a disadvantage.  She shouted back, no longer defiant, but begging, for him to spare her children, to leave them in peace.  Once again, the leader repeated his demand.  Her response was a rapid head-shake.   Annette sensed that it was not because she was being obdurate, but because she could not accede to the demand being placed upon her.

At this refusal, the leader’s fury knew no bounds.  He swung the truncheon and brought it down on her elbow.  The woman screamed and so did Annette.

“Get away from her!” 

Annette tried to rush forward to the woman’s defense, but found that she could not.  It wasn’t that the wolves were holding her stationery, it was just that her feet would not move, however hard she willed them to do so.  It was like a dream where the dreamer is being chased and is trying to run, but cannot.

“Stop it!  Leave her alone!”

The children were screaming by now and the leader was still shouting at the woman who was in too much pain to respond.  The leader took her silence as further insolence and barked an order to the man standing alongside him.

To Annette’s horror, this man doffed his gloves, drew a knife from a sheath at his belt and strode towards the boy.  With a casualness even more revolting than the violence inflicted on the woman, the man slit the child’s throat.

The boy’s crying gave way to a sickening gurgle as he fell to his feet and died, his blood flowing like a river in the snow.

The woman had found her voice and was screaming what might have been curses, promises, or entreaties.  The leader ignored her and gestured to his follower who walked towards the girl.

“Stop!  Don’t!”  Annette shrieked, knowing it was useless.

The girl struggled and managed to break away.  She started running, but the man with the knife caught her.  She turned and managed to bite his ungloved hand.  He yowled in pain, and thrust the knife into her breast.  The girl screamed but the man, in caught up in a berserker’s rage, plunged the knife into her body again and again.  The child had affronted him, she would pay in blood and agony.

Annette was shouting with fury, knowing that her cries were fruitless, yet she was unable to stop until the girl lay still.  Annette then turned her attention back to the mother.

A change had come over the woman on the ground.  She had stopped screaming and appeared to be in a trance.  At first, Annette thought it was a natural state of shock at seeing her children butchered in so hideous a fashion.   Then, she realized that the woman was in a state of extreme concentration.  She was shutting out the horror of what had just happened.  This was not to protect herself from the enormity of this horror, but for some other reason. 

The leader understood this.  For the first time, his features became contorted in terror.   He brought the truncheon down again and again, with the same ferocity with which lieutenant had wielded the knife against the little girl.  When he was finished, the woman was still, the leader was panting, sweat poured off him, despite the extreme cold.  He shouted something to the other men.  They complied, dragging the dead children back onto the house.

The leader turned his attention back to the woman.  To her amazement, Annette saw that the woman had begun to change.  .  The bridge above her nose had started to sprout coarse hair and her face was developing pustules with shoots of that same coarse hair.  Also, her jaw were starting to change, to elongate, no longer looking human.

The leader lifted the woman, carried her to the door and heaved her inside as if she were sack of grain.  He then shouted something to one of the men who threw his torch into the cabin.  In moments, the flames spread, obliterating all traces of the structure as well as its occupants.  The leader spoke again, his head bowed, and Annette was amazed to realize that it was a prayer.  This murderer, this butcher actually had the temerity to invoke the Almighty after slaying an unarmed woman and her helpless children!

Annette felt sickened.  She had never felt so enraged or so helpless or so nauseated.  Why had the wolves brought her here?  What was their purpose?  Why had she been subjected to so hideous and so unconscionable an event?

Why?

She got to her knees and realized that she was alone.  There was no house, no shearling-clad men, no wolves.  There were no snow-covered trees, no snow-covered ground, no gray sky devoid of starlight.

She was on the floor of her rec room.

It took her a moment for her to take in her surroundings before she swooned.

My second night at Cheery Hell started out just like the first. I locked the gate behind MacGruder, made a pot of coffee, and got settled in. At eight I started my rounds. Everything was quiet. Same at nine. At ten, when it was dark, my newlyweds were back.

Costume play, maybe, I explained to myself again. Some of Stacey’s friends had been into cosplay. But somewhere in my sleep, I’d figured out what they really were.

I waved as I strolled by. “Evening, Helen, Jeremy.”

I thought they hesitated, but I was already past them by then, and when I looked back, they were tongue wrestling again.

There were two young women climbing all over a guy in Section Three. There was a lot of giggling.

My hippie friends were in Section Five again. There seemed to be more of them than last night. The guy with the guitar was playing some Cat Stevens song. He was not, thankfully, singing. But given the quantity of pot smoke that surrounded them, it wouldn’t be long.

I could see the smoke, but I still couldn’t smell it.

The Smoking Man was all alone in Seven. He had his back to me. I don’t know why, but I had the idea that he knew I was there. I went off the path and between the headstones until I was right beside him. He was tall and slim, with silver hair, cut short. He wore a dark suit. He had one foot up on the base of a headstone, and he rested his elbow on the top of it. He looked like a model posing for GQ. Smoke drifted around his head. I hoped to hell he was holding a cigarette I couldn’t see. MacGruder hadn’t given me any instructions for dealing with a trespasser on fire.

I stood there for a minute, thinking about it. I wasn’t as fuzzy now as I had been the night before. Stacey hadn’t been whispering her sweet poison in my ear; I could think half-way straight. Touching him seemed like a bad idea. But then again, I didn’t know why I shouldn’t.

I reached for him, and then stopped and put my hand down. “Excuse me, sir,” I said firmly, “but the cemetery is closed after dark.”

He turned around slowly. Where his face should have been, there was a gleaming white skull.

It was the wrong time of year for Halloween decorations, but Stacey and her damn drama professor probably could get or make really good ones. If she knew I had this new job, she would totally…

Looking at this elegant skull in the half-light in the middle of an old cemetery, I knew it wasn’t a fake.

For one thing, the smoke from his cigarette was wafting out of the eye holes.

“Shit,” I said.

The skull grinned. “Now scream and run away, boy.”

For a guy with no skin, he had a really deep voice.

He was right. I should have screamed and run away. I should at least have been scared out of my mind. But somehow I wasn’t. I was face-to-face with a ghost or a ghoul or something. I wasn’t normally a brave person. But I wasn’t afraid.

What could he do to me, anyhow? Carve my beating heart out of my chest with his boney fingers? Good luck to him. Stacey had already torn my heart out and stomped on it with her boyfriend’s big leather professor shoes.

I don’t think I was actually suicidal. I hadn’t thought about ending my life. But right then, if Boneface wanted to end it for me, I wasn’t going to put up any fuss.

So I shrugged and said, “I’m kinda out of shape for running.”

The specter laughed. His teeth chattered just a little, bone-on-bone. “You think you’re out of shape? Son, you’re nothing but skin and bones.”

“You ought to talk. At least I got skin.”

He laughed again, a big rich belly laugh. Then he took a pull on his cigarette. The smoke leaked out all over, his eyes and the hole where his nose should have been and his ears and between his teeth. “Not scaring you, huh?”

I shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Ah, hell.” He turned away, and when he turned back, he was flesh-and-blood again. Or at least he looked like he was. He flicked his cigarette away. The butt glowed in the air and then vanished before it hit the ground. “What’s your name, son?”

“Henry.”

“Henry. That’s a good name. Henry.”

I had hated my old-fashioned name since the first day of kindergarten. “It was my grandfather’s name. He didn’t have any sons.”

“Ah.” He flicked his wrist and a new cigarette appeared between his fingers, already glowing.

“And you are?”

“Oh, yes, sorry. That was rude. I’m so used to people running and screaming, I’ve forgotten how to have proper conversation.” He gestured to the headstone he was leaning on. “John Warren Frazier. But you can call me Jack.”

I looked at the headstone. John Warren Frazier had died in 1963 at the age of fifty-one. For a guy who’d been dead for almost as long as he was alive, Jack looked damn good.

I looked back at the ghost. He was definitely taller than me and thinner. His face—the fleshed-in version—was skinny too. He had a long chin with a big dimple in it. No, not a dimple, what was the right word? My mother’s word. A cleft, that was it. His chin had a cleft. Far more manly than a dimple. The ridge of his eyebrows was sharp, too, and his eyebrows themselves were bushy and rather stern and damn near met in the middle. It was a memorable face, unique if not precisely attractive. He looked like he could be truly terrifying when he was angry. But he wore a sort of half-grin, and his eyes seemed to think I was funny.