Wraiths of the Broken Land (16 page)

Chapter XI
Insectile Notions

Yvette Upfield stared at the crimson dot. A beneficent warmth like rich honey spread from the place that the man with the wooden nose had pierced with his syringe, and the world quietened. The circle became a swollen three-dimensional crimson bead that tracked across her powdered skin.

The bed rose up to meet the back of Yvette’s head, and the ceiling slid before her glassy eyes. A segmented bug with innumerable legs crawled across a wooden beam, and she recognized the creature as the vessel into which she sent her spirit while her body withdrew semen from weak men as if it were a toxin.

Luxurious warmth spread from the red dot and replaced the hurt cells that comprised her bones, muscles and tissues. The fabric of her body became soft and homogeneous—a dense spongy material that absorbed her agonies.

Yvette tried to recall what she had told the man with the wooden nose, but her mind was a marsh.

“What did I say?” she asked the insect.

The many-legged thing upon the ceiling described an ellipsoidal pattern, halted directly above her face and stared down with multifaceted onyx eyes.

“What’re you trying to tell me?”

The watcher remained silent.

A drop of blood aspired to the tip of Yvette’s right index finger and dripped to the floor. It was suddenly very clear to her that if she touched the bug’s eyes, she would be able to communicate with it. She attempted to employ the muscles in her arms, but could not remember how to operate them. “Maybe later.”

A second or ten minutes later, blood tickled Yvette’s fingertips. To the vessel into which she often escaped, the gaunt woman said, “I need you to get Samuel. My husband.”

Candlelight flickered upon the bug’s multifaceted eyes.

The woman with the homogeneous body knew the truth. Yvette Upfield was a spoiled lady whom Samuel C. Upfield IV no longer wanted. Hundreds of men had used her, and she had entertained doubts about Him. Four months ago, a child had burgeoned within her belly, and even though she had cut herself to imitate her monthly bleeding, the man with the wooden nose had seen through her ruse and applied an abortive salve that smelled like berries, sulfur and burnt chicory, and she had lost the innocent to a terrible searing pain. Shortly after that incident, the man with the wooden nose had given her medicine (so that she could stop weeping) and she had been drug-addled ever since. Sins had been committed to her, by her and deep within her.

“I was different,” Yvette said to the bug.

Upon the ceiling, the vessel adjusted twelve of its legs.

The woman with the homogeneous body thought of her husband, Samuel C. Upfield IV, the articulate thirty-eight-year-old entrepreneur whose percolating mind contrived elixirs and devices as if he had a telephone cable that connected him directly to the great Creator. Although his ultimate ambition was to invent a very important thing (such as a motor vehicle or a telephone), he spent most of his time selling elixirs and investing small sums in prospecting ventures.

“If I’d been born in the antebellum period,” Samuel C. Upfield IV said to Yvette from the oak table that dominated the main room of their cozy apartment in San Francisco, “I would have a great number of important inventions to my credit. Myriad noteworthy contrivances.” He looked up from the sketches that filled ‘The Upfield Book of Very Important Diagrams’ and gazed through the bay window. Turquoise waves thundered harmlessly beneath the pendulous legs of circling seabirds. “But they’ve invented so much already…”

Doubt assailed the educated, pious and pretty blonde man who was the exact same height as his wife.

“I believe in you.” Yvette walked toward the table.

Samuel stood, withdrew a chair for his wife (he always chose the seat closest to his own) and presented it to her buttocks. “Set down the blessed posterior.”

Yvette sat into the airy folds of her bright blue dress, and Samuel placed earrings, which were gentle kisses, upon her bare earlobes. He slid the seat underneath her.

“Perfect.” The choirmaster laid her sheet music upon the table and looked at her husband. “The Lord has bestowed upon you a great gift so you could make the world a better place. And you are.”

Samuel seated himself, gazed wanly at ‘The Upfield Book of Very Important Diagrams’ and sighed. “I fear that I won’t ever realize my greatest potential. I had such grand plans for that traveling lighthouse, but then…”

(Electricity was a word rarely uttered by the Upfields.)

“Your elixirs help people,” defended Yvette.

“But are elixirs significant? Will they change the world?” Samuel shook his head twice, answering his two-pronged inquiry. “They will not.” He drank from his mug of spiced brandy.

“They already do—they help folks lead happier lives right now. Todd Parks had that bellyache for three years until he drank your restorative.”

“You are partial,” protested Samuel. “Lovely, but partial.”

“And our choir uses your throat tonic when we sing our praise and devotion direct to God each week. Ain’t that—isn’t that significant?”

“It is.” Samuel brightened, set down his brandy, fixed his cravat, stood, took one stride to Yvette and kissed her upon the forehead. “Lower the drapes.”

The choirmaster closed her eyes, and as she tilted her head back the floorboards creaked. Samuel’s soft lips landed upon her left eyelid and then its sibling. Presently, they kissed.

Yvette opened her eyes.

The bug with innumerable legs watched her from the ceiling of her cell.

“Where are you?” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, and a drop of warm blood tracked across her right arm, grew cold and dripped to the floor. She looked down. The tiny crimson hemisphere sank into the ancient stone, and was wholly absorbed.

A person outside the door shouted, “¡Gringo, vas!”

The imprisoned, drug-addled, choirmaster who was born in Shoulderstone, Texas and lived in San Francisco, suddenly recalled whom she had betrayed to get her medicine. Upon the ceiling, the segmented bug moved its myriad legs, entered a hole in the ancient stone and disappeared.

Yvette’s soul was lost inside the walls.

“No.” The woman thought of her family and the tall blonde gentleman, and how her need for medicine, her sinful weakness, had doomed them all. “No!” shouted Yvette, even though the word did not have any meaning in Catacumbas.

“No!”

Chapter XII
Sharp Embodiments

Rising from the depths of oblivion, Nathaniel Stromler dimly apprehended the tight ropes that bound his wrists and ankles to the limbs of a heavy chair. His senses sharpened and he recognized the smells of wine, seafood and cream. Fork tines clinked upon ceramic plates, startling him.

The bound man shut his gaping jaw and opened his eyes. From the ceiling directly above him depended two gold-plated candelabra, European in style, and upon the surrounding walls of grayish-ochre ziggurat stones, hung tapestries that depicted hunting tableaus and galleon arrivals.

A man with European-accented Spanish remarked that the foreigner was awake.

“Señor,” enjoined a deep and familiar voice.

Nathaniel tilted his head forward and saw that he was seated at a long dining table. At the far end of the oaken slab sat Gris, accompanied by two men who wore dark cherry suits. Steam rose from the shrimp, peas, yellow rice and béchamel sauce that filled their plates.

Upon the table directly in front of the captive gringo laid two wooden bowls that were covered with heavy stone lids. Something living rustled within the vessel on the left.

Nathaniel jerked. “No.” He twisted in his seat, but his chair was made of stone and did not move even a fraction of an inch. Had he not already emptied the contents of his bladder and stomach, he would have done so upon hearing that insectile noise.

“Diego,” said Gris.

A gentleman with a neatly-trimmed black beard stood from his chair, withdrew a glove from his dark cherry slacks, inserted his left hand and waggled his fingers.

Nathaniel’s heart pounded.

“I am left-handed,” Gris declared, “as are all five of my sons.”

The bearded man, who had a thin nose and thick lips like his father, walked toward Nathaniel.

“Do you believe this is a coincidence?” Gris inquired as he speared a pink shrimp with his fork.

“I do not know,” responded Nathaniel.

“Scandinavian studies have proven that left-handed people think differently than do the majority and quite often reap the rewards of their atypical thought processes.” Gris pointed his speared shrimp at his bearded progeny. “At a very early age, Diego was instructed to favor his left hand and was punished for contrary behavior.”

Nathaniel doubted Gris’s sanity.

“Like all of my sons, Diego learned to become left-handed.” The one-eyed Spaniard ate the shrimp and summarily thrust his fork into another pink morsel. “That was my will.”

Unable to entertain desultory conversation any longer, Nathaniel demanded, “What do you intend—”

“Dolores Plugford is but two months away from fully accepting that she is a whore and my property,” stated Gris. “Yvette Upfield has a longer journey—her religious devotion is an obstacle—but she too will grow to accept that she is what she does. That is my will.” The white-haired Spaniard looked at Nathaniel with both his good eye and the gray rock that was lodged within his left socket. “Both of these women could have avoided many terrible—and pointless—agonies had they yielded to my will when they sat in the chair that you now occupy.”

Diego raised the thick stone lid from the right bowl. Deep within the vessel was a shallow puddle of pure black oil, upon which sat dim stars that were reflections of candelabra flames. Gris’s son uncovered the left bowl and revealed a roiling confluence of gray pincers, spindly legs and curved tails. The rustling and clicking of the arachnids sounded like a brush fire.

Nathaniel began to shake.

Gris said, “My son shall show you the embodiment of a lie.”

With his protected index finger and thumb, Diego extricated a small gray scorpion from the left bowl, held it above the adjacent vessel and let go. The arachnid plopped into the black mire. The legs of the ichor-covered creature clicked furiously upon the wood. Nathaniel felt a numbing horror spread throughout his chest and head.

“Each lie you utter shall be thus embodied,” stated Gris. “You are aware of this creature’s ultimate destination?”

Lightheaded, Nathaniel nodded.

The scorpion scrambled in circles, but could not ascend the bowl’s slick walls.

Gris inquired, “When does your group plan to raid Catacumbas?”

“Whenever I give them the signal. There was no set time.”

“How large is this raiding party?”

“Three men.” (Nathaniel had not mentioned Long Clay, Deep Lakes and Patch Up to Yvette.)

“Three men plan to raid Catacumbas?” The one-eyed Spaniard was doubtful.

Diego glanced at his father.

“I was hired by three men—the father and brothers of the women I visited.”

“The little husband was not involved?” inquired Gris.

“I was completely unaware of his existence until Yvette mentioned him to me.”

Gris inclined his head toward the unnamed silver-haired son and whispered into his ear. The gentleman nodded twice, rose and departed. A heavy door closed.

The one-eyed Spaniard returned his attention to the captive gringo. “What is your name?”

Once Nathaniel revealed his true identity, the path to Kathleen and his mother and sister in Michigan would forever be open to this repellant creature. “Thomas Weston.”

“It is unfortunate that you have chosen to disregard my advice.”

Strong hands gripped Nathaniel’s forehead and jaw, and his mouth was pried open by the unseen restrainer who stood directly behind him. A wooden ruler pressed his tongue flat. Diego reached into the oil and withdrew the dripping scorpion. Its wriggling legs showered black droplets upon the table.

Nathaniel shut his eyes. Needlelike legs tickled his cheeks, and pincers poked his soft palate. Uselessly, he struggled against the restrainer and the stone chair. He gagged, but his empty stomach had no more contents to expel. Spindly appendages pricked his nasal passages and esophagus.

“A bajo.”

The ruler was pulled from Nathaniel’s mouth. His jaw was slammed shut and his head was jerked back. The oily mass descended his throat like chewed chicken bones. It transgressed his neck, flinched once and entered his chest.

The strong hands released the captive’s jaw. Nathaniel tilted his head forward, and his vision began to narrow. Diego reseated himself and contemplated the manifold scorpions within the left bowl.

“What is your name?” repeated Gris.

Nathaniel recalled his monogrammed handkerchief. “Nicholas Samuelson.”

Gris contemplated the answer and nodded. “Do you have a wife?”

“I do not.”

“The discoloration upon your ring finger intimates a different truth.”

Diego reached his glove into the left bowl and withdrew a beige scorpion from its sharp contemporaries. Its legs wriggled continuously as if it were the conductor of an arachnid symphony.

Nathaniel said, “I am engaged to be mar—”

A stinger pierced his stomach, and he shrieked. The dire agony thrust him into a new stratum of existence, and his entire life prior to that extraordinary pain seemed numb and insensate by comparison. As the stinger withdrew from his stomach lining, a terrible coolness flooded his guts.

Death loomed, undeniable.

Nathaniel Stromler knew that his living remainder would be filled with bright red pain. The only thing that he could do was withhold information that might endanger Kathleen or his mother and sister. Presently, the dining room turned to watercolors and slid down his cheeks.

The silver-haired son returned to the room, sat at the table and put a napkin upon his lap.

Gris appraised Nathaniel momentarily. “Once el escorpión settles, we shall talk more about your fiancé.” The one-eyed Spaniard picked up his fork and knife. “I am a great admirer of women.” He stuck his tines into a delicate pink shrimp, which was covered with béchamel sauce, and raised it from its embryonic peers.

A burning harpoon that was a stinger lanced Nathaniel’s insides. He yelled. His pierced stomach shuddered and tried to jettison its attacker, but the arachnid clutched tissues with its toothpick legs and would not be expelled.

Consciousness leaked like a vapor from Nathaniel’s head. Candelabra flames fell like dying stars, and darkness blossomed.

Gris’s son complemented the shrimp.