The Wanderer (32 page)

I set my teeth, steeled myself. I’d provoke, stand still, unresisting, take the beating as well as I could, choke groans, whimpers. Elliot sparred at me a little, but then, realizing I wasn’t going to put up a fight, belying the infirmity he’d shown before, picked me bodily up, hurled me to the floor. The air was driven from my lungs, I bit my tongue. Cowering away, I crawled backwards till I struck the wall, then slumped against it, struggled to get my breath back, the salt tang of blood in my mouth.

‘Nowhere to run now, rat.’

He capered towards me, warbling a ditty in Punch’s cracked, tuneless voice.

I lay down on my side, drew my knees to my chest, wrapped my head in my arms. Elliot vented his wrath. He pummelled, kicked, stomped.

‘Hee, hee, hee. Weakling. You’re pitiful!’

I drifted away once more.

When I came to this time, I found Elliot had clapped me in the roundhouse’s manacles, wrists and ankles. The iron chafed, bit. I lay on the floor, up against the wall. The door was shut, but it wasn’t too dark, chinks between the slates overhead and the stones of the walls let in slender blades of sunlight. These put me in mind of the ever-popular sword-cabinet illusion, which I’ve seen a number of conjurors perform in my time. If you don’t know it, my reader, it’s as it sounds: a cabinet, containing an assistant or volunteer, is run through with rapiers; the assistant or volunteer remains, of course, ‘magically’ unharmed. This recollection caused me to mull the nature of memory generally. It struck me that its ability to draw such apt analogies, the basis, I’d hazard, of all invention, swells with its hoard of reminiscences. Thinking this, a clammy dread threw its coils round me, for I realized, given the aeons he’s lived for, even though his recall isn’t suited to eternity, Elliot is doubtless horribly creative, is unlikely to fail to dream up some awful torment for me.

As I lay there, pondering my fate, the door opened, and Elliot entered, now in the guise he’d adopted for the gathering at the Nightingale, that genial old man. I wondered if this was his true or habitual form. I’d thought it would solace me for him to abandon the form of Punch, but I actually found this aspect even more disquieting, for it suggested benignity. Though it had hinted at a weakness alien to the stuff of Elliot’s being, the hooknose’s loathsome phizog had been truer to his antic evil.

Elliot was followed by a tribesman who carried a bulging sack. Elliot gestured and the tribesman emptied it out on the mud, left. I looked over at the heap: the tribeswoman’s and my
meagre things.

‘There’s nothing there that’ll interest you,’ I croaked.

But Elliot ignored me, began to go through the pile. He first spent some time scrutinizing the typewriter, turning it about in his hands. Then exclaimed, ‘Ah!’, nodded to himself, put it down, and began looking through the remaining stuff. It wasn’t long before he came across this document. He riffled through its pages, looked perplexed, scratched his head. Then he arched his eyebrows, grinned, giggled nastily, put the document down, rubbed his hands together in glee.

I ranted then, begged him not to destroy my work. He turned to me, said, ‘We’ll see,’ then took up my papers again, left the roundhouse, sniggering.

He left me alone some time. At first I lay still, tried to sleep, but the ground was too hard, the gyves strained, so I squirmed, sat up, leant against the wall. This took some time, fettered as I was. I was then a little easier in my body, and my mind was free to wander, and I was afflicted by terrible anxiety, terrified Elliot had taken my memoir away to burn it.

But, when he later returned, it appeared I’d been granted a reprieve; he held my tale in his hand.

‘This isn’t all that bad,’ he said. ‘I found it quite gripping, am dying to know how it ends.’

He chuckled.

‘The tone is overwrought, though, and some of the writing stilted, mannered.’

I lifted my head from my chest, where it lolled, went to spit, but my mouth was too parched.

‘Just a little constructive criticism,’ he jeered. ‘Anyway, don’t worry, I’m not going to destroy it, much as it would hurt you, and give me pleasure. I’ve devised a more apt torture. I know you won’t be able to resist continuing your narrative, whatever you have to suffer. Besides I’m itching to read your account of all that’s happened today. You can get on with it straight away.’

‘But I’m too weak to write now,’ I said.

‘Well then, you’ll have something to drink and to eat. That should get your strength up.’

And that’s why I’ve spent the last few hours in the roundhouse, seated at a small rickety wooden desk, composing the foregoing story of my capture. After Elliot had brought in the desk and chair, placed the things that clutter its surface there – my typewriter, an oil lamp to see by, a tin mug filled with water, and a dish containing salty scraps of bacon rind and stale crusts of bread – unlocked the shackles, and sat me down, he told me to write it as swiftly as I could, to call out for him once I was done. I’d no need to bring things to a fitting end, he said, as there’d be more to set down.

Then, before leaving, he tore my nails from the quick and flayed my fingers to the knuckles with a rusty paring knife. Typing is agony. But as he surmised, I’ve been driven to write on in spite of the pain. The typewriter is gory, I worry its mechanisms might become clotted, and these pages are covered with gruesome smears.
¹²
Yet, to me, the blood I’ve shed is the blood of a birthing, for as my life draws near its end, so inevitably does this tale, which is a record of it, and I feel proud I, whose aeonial existence has been so barren, will leave something entire behind me, that, despite its many faults, will endure, perhaps, and this is my greatest hope, to find a reader other than my murderer.

XII

When I’d finished writing the foregoing chapter, I called out as told, and Elliot came, took the pages and the oil lamp away, put me back in manacles.

Sat there in the gloom, I must have drifted asleep, for the next thing I knew, I woke with a start to a din. It was still dark, but whether I’d not drowsed long and it was the same night, or had slept the day away and it was the next, I’ve no way of knowing. The row was coming from outside. Exultant howling, drumming, the pounding of dancing feet. Through the chinks in the roundhouse walls, I could see fitful flaring.

A dread revel by firelight.

The raucous spree went on a time, then Elliot barked, and all fell silent. He yelled a bit in the natives’ tongue, then there was the sound of a struggle, followed by a horrid shriek, a low terrified groan, a moan of pleasure from Elliot. I gagged on a foul stink. Then came rending, cracking, gasps, a blood reek. Then hammering, pleas, Elliot laughing. Followed by splintering wood, panicked flight, footfalls dying away. A lone whimpering. A wet thud and it ceased.

Then Elliot called out, ‘I do love a good party, don’t you?’

I kept quiet and still.

‘These primitives really should thank me, you know. The things I’m showing them.’

Then the mewling came again.

‘Well, I never…’

Elliot guffawed.

‘How is he still alive?’

There was the noise of pissing, splashing, Elliot sighing. The puling became a scream, drawn out, agonized. There was the stench of acid and burning flesh. Then peace again. I sat in the dark, shivering, harrowed. But I was so tired sleep finally
overcame me.

Sunlight streaming in through the roundhouse door roused me. Elliot stood before me, wry grin on his face.

‘Sleep well?’

He was naked, his flesh daubed with dried blood. He had gory hunks of viscera on a string about his neck. Blowflies buzzed about him. In one hand held the account of my capture and, in the other, a metal bowl filled with an acrid stinking liquid, which he set on the floor before me.

‘This is good,’ he said, waving the pages in my face. ‘I really liked the bit describing your strange dreams. I wonder what gave rise to them?’

‘No idea,’ I mumbled.

‘No?’ He shrugged. ‘Out of interest, why did you name me Elliot?’

‘On a whim.’

‘Oh. I wouldn’t have chosen it for myself.’ He chuckled. ‘For some reason though, it does have a sinister ring.’

He set down the typescript, then crouched, unlocked the manacles securing my wrists.

‘Hold out your hands.’

I shook my head, kept my hands, which were raw, grisly, like things newborn, close to my chest. But Elliot grabbed my wrists, yanked, plunged my fingers into the bowl.

It was something like vitriol. Burned. Shreds of my flesh shrivelled, floated free, drifted, dissolved. Bone showed through in spots. I bit almost through my tongue, hissed.

Then Elliot let go, and I jerked my hands back.

‘Still want you to be able to type,’ he said.

‘Fuck you,’ I slurred, tongue ruined, mouth full of blood.

Elliot sneered, held his middle finger up to me. I watched as the nail lengthened, became a sharp curving talon. Then he slashed open my belly with it, hooked out my guts. Then he was
Punch again, bawling ‘Sausages!’, hauling out my innards, gobbling them down.

Woken by my keening, the natives sleeping off their awful frolic perhaps thought it the wail of a bizarre beast, brought into this world from some eldritch realm by the blood rite, so little did it resemble a human cry.

I blacked out again.

When I came to it was also light, but I’d guess, at the earliest, it was two days later, for my stomach wound, my fingers, and my tongue were nearly healed. Elliot stood over me again. He was washed and dressed, in a button-down shirt, cardigan, brown cords, tan brogues, looked benign again.

I shrank away.

‘Just kill me,’ I groaned.

Elliot smirked.

‘Don’t worry, death is coming to you, and soon. First, though, I want you to finish your tale. It wouldn’t be complete, would it, if it didn’t tell how I plan to snuff your life? And don’t you think your readers would be curious to learn how the others who met that evening in the Nightingale died?’

I shrugged. Feigned unconcern.

He smirked down at me.

‘Oh, and your tale wouldn’t be complete without it telling of the fate of the young tribeswoman.’

I groaned, strained against the irons. If I could have clapped my hands over my ears I would.

‘Well,’ Elliot went on, ignoring me, ‘last I saw of the natives, a few hours ago, they were leaving camp, dragging the woman’s broken body with them. I think they were headed for the river. They’ve not come back as yet. Not sure what they were planning to do with her, but suspect she’s dead by now. She was spared the direful sights of my ritual, left tied up outside, but I think the tribe have been taking out on her the vile things I subjected them
to then.’

I sobbed. Elliot cuffed me hard on the ear.

‘Shut up!’

I choked my misery, best I could.

‘Right,’ that devil went on. ‘Shall I tell you how you’re to die first, or save that for later? Begin with the tales of how I ended the lives of those you gathered in the pub that night?’

I shrugged.

Elliot scratched his chin, pondered.

‘Hmm…Yes, I think I’ll start with them. That way you’ll be kept on tenterhooks. I won’t bother telling how the young man you’ve called William Adams died. What you inferred from the state of his body was pretty much dead right. But let me describe how I killed the other two, the butcher and the author…’

Though I was in dread of provoking him, I was perplexed, so blurted out, ‘What about the young woman, the one you didn’t let tell her story?’

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, musingly. ‘I’d all but forgotten her. I was wrong in her case, as I thought I might’ve been in yours. Immortality wasn’t quickened in her, and I watched her age, sicken, and die.’

Elliot then went on to tell of the grisly deaths Duncan and Jane suffered at his hands. I can only stomach giving scant sketches of his gleeful, vicious, sordid, and ranting accounts.

Duncan was the first quarry Elliot tracked down, less than a year after the gathering in the Nightingale. It seems he found the idea of a hunted existence unbearable, for he made almost no attempt to evade capture, returned to Glasgow, merely shaved off his beard and dyed his hair, a very half-hearted effort to alter his appearance. Elliot, in a rage at being denied his sport, took the butcher then and there, locked him up, spent some time thinking up a cruel penalty. It took him a few days, but then he had it. He severed, with a cleaver, the three limbs the Scot still had, then
stuffed him into a sack, lugged him into the catacombs beneath the Necropolis, chucked him into a sarcophagus in one of the lower crypts, left him there a very long time. Only once in a rare while, did Elliot go to him, to pour brackish water down his gullet and cram his mouth with putrid foodstuffs; thirst and hunger couldn’t, obviously, kill him, but would, if only after months, bring on catalepsy and spare him torment, something Elliot wanted to avoid.

When Elliot finally lifted Duncan out of the stone cradle he’d lain in for centuries – on a pallet of bones, beneath a blanket of cobwebs – and lugged him up into the daylight, he was like an infant, weak, helpless, babbling. His brain had been wrecked by isolation, but not just isolation, for he’d not been always alone in the dark, had been dandled, caressed by dread olden things. But Elliot tended to him, succoured him, and, in the end, vigour, if not sanity, returned. Then, by sorcery, Elliot grafted on to his trunk arms and legs hacked from a drunken student.

After that Duncan was the ideal toady, trailed after Elliot, hung on his every word, did his bidding. Elliot initiated him into some perverse and bloody rites. Then, once he was corrupted utterly, inured to the foulest horrors, Elliot took him into the blackest regions of Tartarus. There they wallowed in depravity many years. On their return to the mundane realm, many years later, they roamed the globe degenerate and cruel. But, after a time, Elliot tired of Duncan, and, after making him swallow quicklime, burning out his innards, made away with him, cutting his throat with the knife brought back from the pit.