The Flesh Eaters (7 page)

Meg nods in genuine submission.

“Who gives the orders?”

“You do.”

“Who obeys the orders?”

“I do.”

“Very well. We shall go now.”

Sawney Beane takes Andrews’s horse into the woods and tethers it. It would be dangerous to take the horse with them; they would find it too difficult to hide.

They walk along the road, carrying over their shoulders the sacks they found in Andrews’s saddlebags. The sacks are heavy and stained red-brown from the severed limbs inside them.

The farther Sawney Beane and Meg go, the more desolate the country becomes. The woods grow darker and denser; the open spaces are rocky. Eventually the road runs by the sea, about a hundred feet above the beach. A tree-covered hill rises steeply on the other side of the road, so that it becomes a narrow shelf that divides the upper and lower parts of a cliff.

Sawney Beane decides that they must leave the road and continue on the beach. They scramble down the heavily wooded cliff and walk a considerable distance along the rocky shore. He is alert and apparently untired, but Meg has difficulty walking over the rough ground and lags behind. She does not complain.

Sawney Beane spots an opening in the face of the cliff and goes to investigate. It is a narrow crack in the rock, about two feet wide and eight feet high, with sea water rushing into it. He peers through the opening into the darkness, shouts, and listens to the echo. Cautiously, he steps inside. On the beach, Meg sinks down against a boulder with a tired sigh.

Sawney Beane wades through brackish water that rises to his calf. The cave is narrow and twisting, and he is soon past the reach of the light from the entrance. There are a few flickers of illumination from small cracks in the roof, but otherwise the cave is completely dark. He seems to move without difficulty, however, following the twists and turns for more than a quarter of a mile. Gradually the ground rises, and at last he steps onto a dry floor. The cave has become a very large cavern with a high roof. A vague recollection of the cathedral crosses his mind, but this place does not feel threatening—it feels good.

Sawney Beane retraces his steps and emerges on the beach. Meg is relieved to see him. She is about to say something, but he holds up a hand to silence her. He looks up the wooded cliff face, but cannot see the road. He runs along the beach to look from various points, but the road is always hidden. He becomes increasingly excited. He finds a small stream running down the cliff onto the beach. He tastes the water, and it is fresh.

Sawney Beane tells Meg that this is where they will stay. He tells her about the cave, explains that the beach cannot be seen from the road, but they can easily climb up to the road. The cliffs above the road will serve as lookout points. And even if someone came along the beach, they would not think to look in the cave.

Sawney Beane speaks with a pride that he has never before known. “No one will ever find us. This is a good place. This will be our place.” He throws his arms wide as if to embrace the entire area. “We must prepare the cave.”

Meg collects armfuls of dry grass from the hillside for them to sleep on, and dumps them next to the cave entrance. She does not share his excitement, but he is her master now and she will follow his wishes.

Sawney Beane runs along the beach, jumps in the air, and performs an awkward jig. He finds some timber that has been washed ashore and drags it back to the cave. He finds an old wooden bucket that he fills with fresh water.

It is too dark now for further scavenging. Carrying what they have found, Sawney Beane and Meg enter their new home.

BOOK TWO

I

A man walks along the road with a weary step. He has been traveling for three days now, but he expects to reach his destination today, and that makes him feel better. He rounds a bend and is surprised to see a young woman frantically pacing beside the road. She is obviously in some kind of trouble, and looks relieved when he approaches. She asks his assistance, telling an incoherent story that he has difficulty understanding. As he tries to comfort her, a man leaps out of the bushes and plunges a knife into his ribs. At the same time, the woman pulls out a knife and stabs him in his stomach. Before he dies, the man notices the woman’s smile of pleasure as she twists the blade to make a larger wound.

After the mail has fallen, Sawney Beane and Meg pull the body off the road.

A wagon, drawn by an ancient horse and carrying a middle-aged man and woman, moves slowly on the road. The passengers see something lying in their path. As they draw closer, they see it is a woman, and they hear her groans of pain. Though it seems odd that a lone woman should be in this isolated place, they are concerned about her distress. The man gets off the wagon and goes to her. She lies face down, but as he bends to examine her, the woman suddenly rolls over. The man sees the knife a split second before it pierces his chest and enters his heart. The woman on the wagon starts to scream, but the sound dies on her lips as the man who has crept up behind her springs and cuts her throat.

Leaving the bodies where they have fallen, Sawney Beane and Meg search the wagon and find blankets, rope, and other provisions.

A well-dressed man on a horse is startled to see an attractive girl blocking his path. Her hair is disheveled; her eyes are wild. Her dress is ripped and reveals most of her shapely breasts. He gets a glimpse of a nipple, which interests him. Concentrating on her anatomy, he pays little attention to what she is saying, or to the fact that his horse is standing under the branches of a large tree. Suddenly a noose drops over his head, tightens around his neck, and he is lifted off his horse. He hears gleeful laughter coming from the tree above him. As he kicks and struggles on the end of the rope, the woman enthusiastically hacks at him with a knife she has taken from under her dress. The last thing he notices before he dies of strangulation is the woman’s breasts, completely uncovered, bouncing as she pokes him with the knife. The vision gives him no satisfaction.

The natural aptitude and enthusiasm of Sawney Beane and Meg for their chosen trade is refined by experience. Their apprenticeship is short; they are soon masters of their craft, highly skilled hunters.

Sawney Beane and Meg are proud of their skills. They develop a routine for hiding the victim’s body off the road, for selecting which of his possessions they want, and for destroying whatever remains. Horses are chased away or killed, unwanted wagons are pushed over a cliff to smash on the rocks below and be carried away by the tide. When the road is clear, they move the bodies and the booty down the cliff at their leisure. They know the best routes to take and can scramble easily up and down the cliff face.

In the cave, some items are thrown on a pile and forgotten, others are used to make improvements. Candles provide a dim light in the living area, but cooking pots are not used—the smoke from a fire might be seen. Blankets cover the straw pallets, but a valuable feather mattress molders off to One side. Sawney Beane and Meg have collected many fine garments, but they wear only crude fustian or sackcloth, and wear it until the cloth has almost disintegrated. They have acquired enough to make a home that is more comfortable than most in the kingdom, but their interests and pleasures lie elsewhere.

The hunt and the kill are the moments when they feel most alive, but they have come to take these pleasures for granted. This is how they live now; for them it is ordinary, normal. They are the hunters, and it is natural to hunt; anything else would be unnatural. Eating the flesh of their victims no longer has special significance. It is natural for hunters to eat what they kill.

They feel no connection between themselves and their victims, no common humanity. They are the hunters; the others are
the others
—only things for them to stalk for amusement, kill for pleasure, eat for food. The greater the victims’ fear and surprise, the greater the hunters’ satisfaction and pleasure. Every display of weakness makes them stronger, more superior, more contemptuous. They stand over their fallen victims, yelling at the corpses, cursing them, kicking them, spitting on them, dancing in triumph over the bodies.

They are the hunters. They kill men to live. They live to kill men.

Meg is near the end of her pregnancy. She is hugely bloated and moves with difficulty. Her breasts are swollen and tender to the touch. Sawney Beane knows that she will soon give birth, but he does not understand the mysterious process, and it disturbs him. From the time her body began to change visibly, he became increasingly uneasy.

It is evening in the cave, though that has little significance in a place that is always dark. Meg places a lit candle on a ledge, then groans suddenly and clutches at her protruding belly. The sound startles Sawney Beane; his face is puzzled as she moves slowly to her straw pallet and lies down. He backs away from her and stands in the shadows.

Eventually it begins. He does not want to watch, but is compelled to do so. In mounting disbelief and horror, he hears Meg’s groans and labored breathing, then sees a small blood- covered, compressed thing emerge from the juncture of her legs. He turns away.
 
      

“Help me. Cut the cord.”

Not looking at her, he shakes his head.

“Never mind. I’ll do it... There!” She laughs. “It’s over now. You can look.”

Reluctantly, he turns. Meg wraps a rag around the baby and holds it out to him. He refuses to take it.

“It will not hurt you. Hold your son.”

He takes the baby and holds it awkwardly. At first he will not look at it, but then the baby draws his attention. As he begins to study it, the significance of the event dawns on him. He speaks haltingly, more to himself than to Meg.

“A boy... a boy... we will continue to grow... our numbers will increase... we will become stronger...” Kneeling by Meg, he speaks with more assurance. “We will make more babies... grow more and more strong. So strong we will never be afraid. They will fear us. Aye. You watch. We have only begun. They will fear us. And we will hunt.”

Eight years have passed, and there are now eight children of varying ages.

A crude tribal structure has evolved. Life in the cave has acquired rhythms, routines. There are things to do, and there are established times and ways to do them. This manner of existence has not been seen for thousands of years, but Sawney Beane and Meg have surely and unerringly accustomed themselves to it. It is as if they themselves had been raised in an isolated cave and guided from birth by tribal lore.

Hunting is always the major activity. Sawney Beane and Meg hunt together, except when she is in the last stages of pregnancy and lacks sufficient mobility. Then he hunts alone, but this is difficult and dangerous, so when Meg is able to hunt they try to put away enough food to minimize the need for solitary endeavors. As the family grows, so do the requirements for food, but there is never a shortage of prey on the road. Obtaining it is more a pleasure than a burden.

Initially the children are Meg’s responsibility, and Sawney Beane pays no attention except to kick them away when they are under foot. But as they grow older, he takes a greater interest—they are the means by which the family will grow strong and prosper. Sawney Beane’s instincts make him the tribal elder responsible for the training of the young. He teaches them about survival and discipline—and, most important, about “the hunt.” When they are old enough, the children are taken from the cave and hidden in the bushes to observe the hunt and the kill.

In the dim light, in the vast shadows of the cave, the family no longer appears truly human. Except to hunt, they never leave the cave, so they are all very pale. In the darkness, the whiteness of their skin is almost phosphorescent, like that of certain kinds of mold or slugs. Their hair is long and lank and dirty. Their clothes and bodies are stained with filth and blood, with scabs and sores and bruises. The smell of the cave—dampness, brackish water, urine, excrement, rotting flesh—clings to them, but they do not notice it.

The children are thin and wiry like their father, but their rough games have made them very strong. Their jaw muscles are exceptionally developed from eating stringy, uncooked flesh, and gnawing on resilient bones. The children do not have names. They are called “Boy” or “Girl” or “You,” but there is rarely any confusion. They have learned that it is best to be alert to their parents’ wishes and commands.

There is an uncanny cohesiveness among the group—a total awareness of one another. They function almost as one organism, moving and breathing in harmony.
 

The children know no life other than that of the cave; they accept it as normal. And so it is also with Sawney Beane and Meg, for their existence prior to the cave is only a dim recollection of unpleasantness. The cave—here, now—is their life, and it is right.

Three infants are being attended to by Meg. The youngest sucks at her bare breast, which almost continual nursing has considerably distended. The other two babies are at her feet, contentedly chewing on bits of human muscle. Ordinarily this would be too tough for them, but it has begun to decompose, and after much effort they have reduced it to a soft pulp.