Crik (10 page)

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at the cage’s wire mesh. Cackling, Krimble set the cage atop the table in front of the children. Inara licked her dry lips. Light ushered in from the open door betrayed the fear in her eyes. Still reeling in shock after discovering Inara had lost her legs, Jack fought against his rising panic. The bloated stomachs forced up against the side of the cage, did not help, he felt weak and disorientated. To make matters worse, the new light had made Yang stronger; delighting his shadow who began rocking the cage; the vermin squealed.

Picking at his scar, Krimble ignored the cage. The wooden chair gave his bent back some trouble; after a few attempts at getting himself comfortable, he finally settled down, his nose hovering a few inches above the wooden top. Glints of light, dancing on wet corneas, peaked through bushy eyebrows, stealing Jack’s attention from his wayward twin.

‘Leave us go,’ Jack told the leering face.

Inara’s shrill laugh answered Jack. ‘Don’t my missing legs tell you anything? Why haven’t I asked if he would let me go? How stupid I am.’

‘Quiet, you’ll upset him,’ said Bill, pushing his chair back with his toes, getting as much distance as possible between himself and Krimble.

‘Upset this piece of marsh piss,’ said Inara, wagging her finger at Krimble. ‘Why would I want to do that? He’s done nothing to me!’

Krimble remained silent, first looking with longing at Jack, then Bill, and finally Yang. His haggard face lit up when the rats retreated from the fingers Yang fed through the wire mesh.

‘I don’t think they like you stroking them,’ said Krimble. ‘Please continue, they are vermin, and what they want doesn’t matter. These disease riddled creatures do nothing but pick over my leftovers. However, if you care to keep one, please be my guest, take any you fancy.’

Eager to possess a rat, Yang slipped his hand inside the cage, catching the fattest occupant by its tail. The rat cried in alarm when Yang lifted it over its scrabbling companions.

‘Good,’ said Krimble, reaching for the lock atop the cage. Yang extracted the rat from the open door. ‘Don’t let it escape,’ warned Krimble.

Jack wanted to tell Yang to put the rat back, not wanting his shadow accepting anything from his captor. To escape, he needed Yang to stay focused, and with the light shining in from the landing, his shadow had the strength to manipulate his bonds. If Bill could distract Krimble long enough, Yang could release him; when Krimble left, Jack would untie Bill and seek a means to leave the room. Without a way to communicate his plan with Yang, he failed to see how to implement it. Inara laughed into her hand, Yang cradled the rat like a doll, swinging its furry body to within inches of the candle’s flame.

‘It will burn,’ said Inara through a wide smile as Yang again swung the rat.

‘She’s lost her mind,’ said Bill.

Jack refused to comment. Considering what had happened to her, who could blame her if she did have a few screws loose. The way Krimble hunched forward over the table made him appear pitiable; another person with a ruined spine and scarred visage would invoke just that reaction from Jack, but the torture he had inflicted upon Inara left no room for sympathy.

‘What’s your name?’

Jack found Krimble addressed him. ‘You know my name; you knew it before I could tell you. Now untie me!’

‘What’s your name?’ Krimble repeated in a beseeching tone.

Incredulous, both Jack and Bill shared a look. Both boys wondered whether during his isolation in the marsh Krimble had grown crazy.

When Krimble asked a third time, Inara said, ‘He’s not speaking to you.’

‘What do you mean he’s not speaking to me? He’s looking directly at me,’ said Jack.

Shaking her head, Inara said, ‘What he wants lives inside you. He doesn’t care about us; we’re the same as that cage. We give home to his desire; nothing more.’

‘What’re you talking about?’ said Bill. ‘You aren’t making any sense.’

‘He doesn’t want you; he wants his shadow,’ she pointed at Jack, ‘and whatever secret you possess. Once he gets it, he will kill you both.’

Krimble continued to ask his question, changing the pitch from a whisper to a shout that reverberated around the room. He cajoled with a smile, moving to pat Yang’s arm. At first, long pauses punctuated his words, and then he tumbled them together, so that sentences strung together as a single word.

‘Kill us,’ cried Bill, twisting in his chair. ‘Why do that, we didn’t want to come here.’

‘Fewer bones than what you saw lay outside when I arrived,’ said Inara. ‘You are not the first to have shared this room with me. When I opened my eyes after drinking the tea, four others welcomed me to this prison; each missed one limb or another. Huir had all four limbs hacked off; yet he never stopped planning his escape.’ Inara laughed, throwing back her head. ‘I asked him once why he continued to try, without his arms and legs where could he go, he said he could live without his limbs, he could not live without his ability.’

‘His ability?’ asked Bill.

Again, Inara grinned. ‘He could control the weather. He owned a farm, and his family relied upon him to provide the rain and sunshine needed to grow his crops. Personally I’d miss my arms and legs more than that ability, but he believed his family would starve without it.’

‘He wants Yang?’ said Jack with incredulity. Smoke curled off the back of the rat Yang played with. ‘How, he’s as much a part of me as my hand.’

‘You know how easy Krimble takes people’s hands,’ remarked Bill.

‘What’s your name?’

‘I wish he would stop saying that,’ continued Bill, shaking his head.

With dawning horror, Jack understood Inara’s meaning, when she said Krimble wanted what lived inside them. Bill had no Talent until the Hatchling climbed inside him, the following morning he could control animals. Inara, unaware of Bill’s Talent, had called it Bill’s secret. Jack’s own Talent rocked the rat in front of them. ‘Have I got a Hatchling inside me?’

‘What’s a Hatchling?’ asked Bill.

‘I’ve never heard that word,’ said Inara. ‘A Narmacil lives within you. It gives you your ability. Without it your shadow would be the same as mine.’

‘You mean the demon hiding inside Bill is in me as well,’ cried Jack, jerking against his restraints.

‘Yin, what demon?’ said Bill, sweat glistening on his brow. ‘What’s all this nonsense?’

Clapping her hands, Inara said, ‘You don’t know about the wood sprites.’ She didn’t hide her amazement. ‘The Narmacil come from the trees to join with you, to make you whole. He,’ she pointed at Krimble, ‘can speak to our Narmacils, that’s why we’re here.’

All his life Jack believed Yang belonged to him, that his parents had somehow imparted his shadow to him at birth. If Inara spoke the truth, the black creature with the golden eyes had hitched a ride his whole life; even now, it slunk around inside him, conspiring with Krimble.

‘Tell me what’s all this talk of demons and Narmacils, you two aren’t making any sense. Come on Yin, if you know something, tell me.’

What could Jack tell Bill? He had kept the discovery of the egg in Grandma Poulis’s garden from Bill. The demon, after hatching from the egg had jumped into Bill’s throat. By knowing, what could Bill do? Sticking his fingers into his mouth would do no good.

Krimble, opening the cage, saved Jack from giving his friend an explanation. Clamping his bony fingers around the swaying belly of a rodent, Krimble lifted it toward Bill. Bill, eyeing the gnashing jaws of the filthy creature, pushed back in his chair. A stone protrusion stopped him from gaining much distance from his captor. Keeping a tight grip on the rat, so that flesh and black hair bulged between his fingers, Krimble jabbed his arm forward. The creature writhed as though it drowned only a few inches from life giving air. The old man’s glee, apparent on his withered features, grew as Bill squealed in distress.

‘If I bring the rat closer, it will bite your cheek,’ said Krimble with a crooked smile. ‘Of course, with your Talent, the likelihood is the vermin would turn against me. It will twist in my grip in a futile attempt to sink its teeth into my thumb; forcing me to break its ribs. That will not happen,’ he remarked, showing ruined brown stumps lining his red gums. ‘I have an understanding with your buried friend.’ He glanced across at Yang, and then gave Jack a wink. ‘It won’t hurt you,’ he assured Bill, ‘it will do what I say.’ He opened his fingers on the struggling rat, which once released stopped moving; not attempting to flee to the open door only yards away. ‘All I want is your power. I would gladly sit astride that black wolf of yours and go everywhere in search of other Talents. Bending the forest to my will, to bring visitors to my remote house, will be unnecessary. Instead, I could visit them, taking what they do not fully appreciate.

‘Although I have many Talents, I desire the companionship of my own shadow.’ A wolfish hunger made Krimble’s mouth gape open as he regarded Jack. ‘To never suffer from loneliness is a covetous and a unique gift. You don’t value Yang; I saw your silent reprimand when Yang took his present from the cage.’ He moved across the table, pushing the rat in front of Jack. ‘I could use your friend’s Talent to command this beast to tear into your flesh. A deserved punishment for the oppressive years Yang has had to endure with you. With my help he will unlock his full potential, and enjoy a freedom he has never known.’

‘He is not talking to you,’ Inara told Jack, ‘he is coaxing your Narmacil away from you by promising to give your shadow privileges you don’t allow. It is a lie,’ she continued, now speaking to Yang, who had stopped playing with the fat rat, ‘you will be a prisoner amongst those he has already fooled. Trapped inside his crippled body, enslaved to his twisted spirit; he will not leave this place, and you will rot with him.’

‘Silence bitch.’ Krimble swung his hand around, smacking Inara across the side of her head. ‘You speak of things you do not understand. She lies,’ he said with madness gleaming in his eyes, ‘come to me Yang and we will travel far and wide. Crik is a small, insignificant, village. I will show you sights you could not imagine if you remain with the boy.’

‘He promised Huin’s Narmacil to spread his influence across the marsh, to brighten the sky, to make the land wholesome and good, instead he only brought more mist and rain.’

‘I said be quiet,’ said Krimble.

‘Yang, you have a connection with Jack, I see it. Don’t tell him your true name, once he has that you will belong to him.’

Krimble threw the rat at Inara. Hatred for the girl deepened his scars. ‘Eat her eyes,’ he commanded.

Inara screamed; the rat clung to her golden hair with tiny paws. It scrambled higher as Inara tossed her head from side to side in a futile attempt to dislodge the vermin.

‘Bill, stop it, tell it to let go,’ said Jack.

‘Leave her alone,’ cried Bill, tears running down his cheeks.

The rat continued to climb, seeking Inara’s eyes, as Krimble commanded.

‘I can’t stop it,’ said Bill, horrified. ‘Don’t touch her,’ he yelled, only for the rat to ignore him.

When the rodent’s pink tail whipped across her chin, Inara lost control; her screams became an insane ramble. Her enlarged pupils became dark pools in which the rat grew with every passing moment. Tears wetted her face, while the weight of the hungry rodent pulled her to the left.

‘Bill,’ cried Jack.

‘It won’t listen to me Yin,’ muttered Bill, hoarse in defeat.

Cackling with glee, Krimble scrutinised the horrified girl’s struggles with a disgusting perversity. Ignoring the pain in his back, he hunched forward, eager for the show to continue to its grisly finale. A black fist, shaped like a hammer, smashed into his grinning mouth. Blood sprayed upward as Krimble fell from his perch in a crumpled heap.

Jack looked with disbelief at his shadow, who had discarded the rat it had moments ago been playing with. The urgent screams from Inara brought him back to the immediacy of her plight. The rat still clambered closer to her eyes, hungry to sink its jaws into her yielding flesh.

‘Get off her, leave her alone,’ commanded Bill.

After falling to the ground with a soft thud, the foul creature scrambled for the open landing.

Ignoring the fleeing rat, Jack raised his voice, over Inara’s cries, for Yang to untie his bonds. Familiar with knots, Yang untied the rope with little difficulty. Jack moved to place a comforting hand across the girl’s shoulders while his shadow attended to Bill. At that moment, he shared her sorrow; Inara had witnessed Krimble kill the others before turning the knife on her. Unabashed grief overcame him, so that he barely noticed Bill’s hand, or Yang wrapping his insubstantial body around them all.