The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (19 page)

“Faith,” Manfried sighed, having almost convinced himself. “You know what we gotta do.”

“Kill us a demon. For real.”

“Mary bless us, we will. Better to just get shy a this place without settin eyes on it again. Now where’s that ignorant cunt
you was with?” Manfried demanded of Alphonse.

They found Giacomo facedown in the hallway, near the rear door. He had drowned in a shallow puddle of snowmelt, the water
barely covering his nose and mouth. The three mobile men convened in the hall, and after Alphonse told his fractured tale
all three glanced at the cloth obscuring the woman’s room.

Manfried ripped the partisan down. “What you gotta say?”

The most beautiful woman the repulsive graverobber had ever spied looked up, her supple body partially draped in dirty blankets.
Hegel and Alphonse tried to peer around Manfried but his square shoulders filled the narrow doorway. Her pale thigh shone
like the moon, and going on the glorious contours of the cloth he doubted she wore anything beneath her covers. She smiled
mischievously, black hair glistening down her side, and Manfried suddenly felt compelled to apologize; for what, he knew not.
Before he could speak she raised a finger to her dark lips, and they all heard a rapping on the front door.

Hegel and Alphonse rushed back to the main room, and Manfried sorrowfully followed, promising his eyes they would soon take
her in again. She smelled different from any woman he had met, and despite the urgency with which Hegel and Alphonse ran to
the door he could not tear his mind from her. The night’s events were near-forgotten, and his sharp ears were dull to the
shouting all around him.

“Manfried!” Hegel barked in his face.

“Eh?” Manfried tried to clear his thoughts.

“It’s here!” Hegel’s eyes bulged, alarmed at his brother’s nonchalance.

“Faith.” Manfried smiled dreamily, then shook off her phantom. “Shut it, all a yous!”

The room fell gravely still save for Ennio, who moaned beside the hearth with a bottle clutched in both hands. The knocking
did not come again, but something snuffled at the bottom of the door, blowing snow in through the crack. The Grossbarts advanced,
the drunken Alphonse following them with rushlight and sword. They stood there for a moment, then Manfried spurred himself
into action.

“What you want?” shouted Manfried.

“Let me in,” a voice pleaded.

“Why?” asked Manfried.

“Warmth. Christian succor. I’ll not harm you, I swear.”

“Yeah, and who is you and where you come from?” asked Manfried.

“I’m Volker, I live on the edge of town. I’ve been hiding, please let me in.”

“Oh, rot, you’s that same meckin demon!” Hegel shouted.

“Demon? Demon!” The man beat on the door. “Then let me in, for the love of the Christ babe! My soul’s in danger, and if it
takes mine then yours is damned for not saving me!”

“Maybe open the door and look?” Alphonse turned from Grossbart to Grossbart.

“I ain’t gonna dignify that with a response cept to say by my ma’s foul mound, how thick’re you?” said Manfried, and then
raised his voice. “Give us a private discussion, Volker!”

“Hurry!”

Manfried retreated to the center of the room, Hegel and Alphonse in tow. “Listen,” he told his brother in their familial language,
“it’s tryin to trick its way in, might imply it’s too weak to bust the door. We wait it out til cockcrow, it’ll turn to dust
in the sun.”

“You sure a that?” asked Hegel.

“What you say?” Alphonse’s distress grew with each development, and a council he could not decipher sat poorly with him. The
twin glares emasculated his tongue, though, and he went to Ennio’s corner to try and calm him. Alphonse’s booze-soaked brain
could not comprehend much, and he took another pull from Ennio’s bottle.

“Demons can’t bide daylight, any child’ll tell you,” Manfried insisted.

“What about that demon in the woods? He seemed to prefer it,” said Hegel.

“Now you was the one insistin that weren’t no demon.”

“Witch told me it used to be a man. You wanna hinge your soul on a witch’s word or a child’s tale?” Hegel glanced at the door.
“Should a drawn a circle in the snow round the tavern, that would a done it.”

“How’s that different from my so-called superstition?” Manfried demanded.

“Cause it’s fact, as our uncle told us.”

“So you’s gonna believe
that
road-apple? Sides, if that’s the case we can draw circles round us on the floor in here.”

“Stop him!” Ennio wailed, and the Grossbarts saw Alphonse crouched by the front door, his ear pressed to the wood.

Manfried and Hegel both went for him but before they took three steps the crazed man tossed back the board latching the door.
The door blew inward, snow swirling around the manically laughing Alphonse. A silhouette loomed behind him in the doorway,
stopping the Grossbarts’ feet and Ennio’s scream.

“Seeing this, Grossbarts?” Alphonse cackled. “Think you kill my cousin and live? Think you kill me? I have its word!”

Alphonse’s left eye sprang from its socket in a spray of blood. His jaw hung loose and the mess of his brains spilled from
it, the entire back of his head caved in. He dropped dead on the floor in front of his assailant.

The hog from the cemetery stepped into the room on its hind legs, chunks of Alphonse’s skull and hair stuck to its left front
hoof. Its black eyes shone and it casually kicked the door shut behind it. The Grossbarts were no longer strangers to sanity-stealing
horrors, yet the comparatively simple sight of an animal walking like a man stunned them immobile. Not Ennio, who crawled
toward the hallway, refusing to look at whatever had entered the tavern.

“Grossbarts,” the pig said, licking its teeth.

Before they had set out into the mountains such a fright would have sent the Brothers reeling into a panic, but having recently
experienced equally traumatizing events they shakily held their ground. Hegel began hyperventilating, tunnel vision setting
in as he jerkily raised his sword. Manfried held the rushlight steadier than his mace, which shook along with the rest of
him. The hog took another step, its hoof clicking on the wood, and the Brothers reacted.

Manfried hurled his rushlight at the pig and ran, and Hegel rushed the beast. A stinking cloud of saffron vapor spewed from
its snout, enveloping Hegel as he hacked at it. Reaching the hall, Manfried realized his brother did not follow and turned
back to the room, kicking the hallway door shut to prevent Ennio from running out on them. Hooves struck at the blinded Hegel
but his sword connected and sent the beast rolling across the floor. He staggered, choking and coughing on the reeking miasma.

“Brother!” Manfried called but Hegel paid no heed, doubled over in agony.

The pig stood on its hind legs again, but the hoof it had killed Alphonse with stayed on the floor where Hegel’s blade had
banished it. The hog charged its dry-heaving adversary but Manfried intercepted it with a thrown bottle that smashed against
its fetlock, knocking it over beside Hegel. It latched onto Hegel’s boot with its teeth but he blindly kicked it off, falling
down himself.

Manfried rushed the pig with his mace but it squatted and pounced, its misshapen frame belying a diabolical dexterity. It
knocked Manfried over a table and pinned him down with its hoof on one arm and its blood-pumping stump on the other. Manfried
spit in the porcine face as it leaned in, and he saw dozens of welts and boils coating its snout, one eye crusted shut with
pus. Its dripping tongue snaked out toward Manfried, and with dread he saw buboes the size of apples blossoming in the crotch
of its arm.

Rubbing his eyes, Hegel saw the beast pressing down on Manfried and he stumbled forward. Hegel’s sword slid between its ribs
and he toppled it into the shelving, bottles raining on them and smashing at their feet. It bounced off the wall and brought
its girth down on him, driving them both to the floor. Blood bubbled everywhere as he tried to dislodge his sword and focused
on not being crushed by the braying beast grinding him into the broken pottery, schnapps, and oil.

Ennio rolled away from the reeling combatants and lay pressed against the hearth, the puddle of oil creeping toward his feet.
He stuck his hand into the blaze and snatched out a brand, charring his fist and melting the skin off his palm. Manfried caught
this from the corner of his eye and kicked the pig’s face, then seized Hegel and jerked him out from under its mass. Be it
from concern for Hegel’s safety or difficulty in forcing his cooked nerves to obey his will, Ennio paused just long enough
for Hegel to scramble out of the small pool before he slammed the flaming brand into the oil.

All three were blinded by the jet of flame that rushed over the floor and up the wall. The hog screamed and thrashed, a shadow
capering inside a pillar of fire. It tried to stand but collapsed, its bristly coat crackling and letting off thick waves
of smoke. The Grossbarts leaned against each other, Ennio shouting triumphantly in his native tongue. Then part of the silhouette
split from the twitching bulk and shot through the flames onto Ennio. The man’s cheers turned to screams, the wall of the
tavern blazing.

The Grossbarts ran to his aid out of instinct, and saw the greatly diminished demon had crawled halfway down his throat. Twiggy,
flanged legs and its engorged abdomen protruded from Ennio’s dislocated jaw, the golden film coating the thing lubricating
its passage into his gullet. Each Grossbart snatched a leg segment and tugged but the brittle limbs broke off, smearing their
hands with rank pus. Without legs to hinder its progress it wriggled out of sight, Ennio’s neck bulging as it went.

Manfried seized Ennio’s tilted chin and snapped his neck, then Hegel kicked his corpse into the hearth.

The loft above had caught, the room filling with black smoke. Ennio’s body writhed on the coals and before the demon could
escape again Manfried snatched a table and jammed it on top of the possessed corpse. The Brothers heaped stools against that,
and then the smoke became impenetrable. Arm in arm they stumbled toward the door when a stray flame ignited the oily Hegel.
Manfried shoved his burning brother ahead, crashing through the door and into the snow.

Hegel lay facedown in a snowdrift, steam and smoke rising from him. Manfried remembered the beauty in the back room an instant
before a section of the roof collapsed, sealing the tavern-turned-oven. He fell to his knees but before the regret could leave
his mouth or eyes she stepped around the corner, clad in a fine black dress with a veil pushed back to showcase her countenance.
Manfried forgot his brother and ran to her side but before he could embrace her she pointed to the attached barn, the roof
of which had caught fire.

The chaotic night became wilder still as Manfried braved the burning barn, side-stepping the frantic horses. The lax Ennio
had not fully removed their harnesses, perhaps sensing the need for a hasty exit, and Manfried tightened their straps enough
to pull the wagon out. He found more leather straps and cords and metal things heaped on the floor of the barn, and he carried
these out before the smoke forbade him entrance. Now more exhausted than crazed, he returned to his smoldering brother.

Further proof of Mary’s Providence could be seen in Hegel’s unblemished beard. His pate, however, had felt the burn all the
way to the root. His clothes were likewise scorched and ruined and he could do little more than cough. Coughing implied breathing
and this pleased Manfried. Dragging Hegel into the wagon, Manfried found its interior to be a plush affair strewn with cushions.
Here Manfried promptly joined his brother in a slumber resembling that of the dead, the Brothers Grossbart wrapped around
each other in the absence of blankets.

The tavern burned all night, taking the barn and several neighboring buildings with it. The snow-laden roofs did not catch
easily, though, so the rest of the hamlet remained intact when the Grossbarts staggered out of the wagon. Their normally resilient
guts squirmed at the ungodly stench infusing their clothing and hair but the cool morning and bright sunshine quelled their
rebellious interiors.

No hair remained on Hegel’s scalp, even his eyebrows replaced with black smears and rising blisters. He felt immense relief
that his beard had survived, to say nothing of his face. Only his crown and back were scorched, but given that his garments
had not survived as well as his body he entered the nearest house to search for new clothes.

Manfried’s shoulder throbbed from the demon-swine’s hoof, but upon inspection he found himself mostly unscathed. The hand
that had seized the demon bloomed with fever-blisters, however, particularly his palm. He spit on it and rubbed it in the
snow. Then he began hunting for the absent woman, too embarrassed to call out for her.

Hegel returned to the wagon with several worn but clean shirts and trousers, in addition to the ones he had changed into in
the house where he had found them. His right hand also bore the swollen rash, and sniffing it, he found it stank worse than
the rest of him. He beckoned his brother, who broke in door after door but gave the interiors only a perfunctory inspection
before moving on to the next.