Chapter 19 #2
Say that your wife was about to run away with someone, and you caught them. You shot him and crammed his body into the shed you had once kept animals in, expecting him to die, but instead he healed, and you realized that he was one of these others.
Say that you realized this was the solution to your problem.
A subject that would not die, no matter how many holes you put in him, digging screwworms out of his flesh.
No matter how many botflies lived beneath his skin.
An endless source of material for your studies …
assuming that you were willing to commit atrocities that no one should inflict on another living being.
Say that you hated him enough to do it anyway.
“It has been a year then, hasn’t it?” It sounded like my voice, but it must not have been me talking, because whoever it was sounded very calm. I was certainly not calm.
“Yes,” said Saul.
“And no rickets,” said that calm voice, somewhere off in the distance.
“And no rickets,” Saul said, as if rickets mattered at all, but if I focused on something very small, perhaps I would be able to survive the next few minutes after all.
“Did Louisa know?” It was suddenly very important to me that she had known. If she had, and had loved him anyway … well, I would trust the judgment of a woman who could paint beetles more beautifully than anyone I had ever known.
If she hadn’t—if Saul had lied to her—then I did not know what I was going to do next.
“She knew,” Saul said. I met his eyes and there was no trace of a lie in them.
“He’s a devil!” Phelps shouted, and I jumped. Strange as it sounds, I had, for an instant, forgotten that there was a man with a gun in the room. “He’s a tempter! Don’t listen to him!”
I glanced back at Saul, filthy and gaunt, chained down on his bed of pain. A tempter? Only if pity was a temptation.
“Mr. Phelps…” I began, with no idea how to finish that sentence.
Phelps opened his mouth. At first I thought he was about to speak, but then I saw that he was panting.
He scratched at his scalp and winced, pulling his hand away.
I thought there might be blood on it, but the light wasn’t good enough to be sure.
“Lord have mercy, it hurts,” he said, almost to himself.
“Let me help you,” I said.
He shook his head miserably. “No one can help me,” he said, taking another step forward. “‘Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?’”
“It’s driving you now, isn’t it?” asked Saul, almost conversationally. “It wants you to come closer, doesn’t it?”
Phelps nodded his head up and down, quick and jerky. He grabbed for the timbers beside the stairs and clung, one-handed, half turning. I caught a glimpse of the back of his head.
His scalp was raw and bloody, scored with scratches, and the lump in the middle was crowned with a dark larval circle.
Not a goose egg after all.
I felt no surprise. Either I was numb, or, far more likely, I’d suspected all along but hadn’t let myself think of it. I wondered how far the larva had dug into his brain. It was low on his skull, close to the brain stem. Perhaps it was a miracle he wasn’t paralyzed.
No, no. The wolf worm needs them to be able to walk. It wouldn’t chew through anything vital. Like the wasp larvae in the caterpillar, it keeps its host alive as long as possible so that it can continue to feed.
“Phelps,” I said. “Phelps, it’s just an insect.
I watched Halder dissect a possum that had one.
I saw what he did. I can get yours out.” (This was a staggering lie, of course, but if I could just get the gun away from him and get him out of the shed, I could get him to Ma Kersey and maybe we could do something.)
His fingers jerked, releasing the timber, and he stumbled forward.
“I think it’s too late, Miss Wilson,” said Saul.
“It takes two weeks for them to reach maturity,” I argued, as Phelps blundered across the floor. “It’s only been a couple of days for him.”
“The ordinary ones, perhaps. But things like us can grow very quickly indeed.”
If a creature like Saul could gestate in human flesh in three months, why should a botfly be any different? What changes had been wrought on the evolution of these insects, down in this dark hollow in the clay?
“Devils,” wept Phelps. He hit the wooden table and fell heavily against it, gasping for breath. “Samson,” he added nonsensically. “Samson.”
If I were braver, perhaps I might have tried to snatch the gun away from him. I didn’t. God knows where the bullet would have ended up, in these close quarters. “Let me help you,” I said again.
He ignored me, sliding along the table as if being dragged forward by an invisible hand. “O Lord, have mercy,” he prayed, taking a jittery step toward Saul, then another. “As you had mercy on Samson, have mercy on me.”
“The Lord has nothing to do with this,” said Saul. There was a new note in his voice, something dark and gloating. I took a step back, then another, as Phelps stumbled in my direction. His pupils were huge and seemed to fill his whole face.
“No,” Phelps said, half begging, his hands stretched out toward me. “No, please, stop it, stop it!”
“I can’t stop it,” I told him, retreating. “I can’t, I can’t, I would if I could!”
It was only the truth. I hated Phelps and I was afraid of him and I still would not have wished this on him.
“Not long now,” said Saul pleasantly.
Phelps paused, swaying on his feet. “No,” he said, sounding momentarily lucid. “No, it isn’t.”
“Come on, then,” Saul said, his voice deepening and darkening. “Come a little closer. You know you want to. I didn’t want to feed again, but for you, Phelps, I’ll make an exception.”
The muscles in Phelps’s face twitched and spasmed, but his next words were clear enough. “You think I’ll go alone?”
“You’re alone now,” purred Saul.
“Samson brought … Samson brought the temple…”
I had already retreated until my back hit the wall, but at his words, I started forward. “No!”
“Samson brought the temple down!” Phelps cried, pitching up against Saul’s bed. His arm came up again with the gun pointed at Saul.
Saul screamed in his face.
That horrible sawing-violin shriek would have startled anyone.
My heart stuttered in my chest. It drove Phelps back a step and that was enough, that was all I needed.
I lunged forward and swung the faithful enameled pan and the angle was bad and I knew it wasn’t heavy enough to knock him unconscious, but maybe he’d drop the gun and I could grab it or maybe there’d be a miracle or maybe the world would end but I had to do something.
It slammed against the back of Phelps’s head and something gave under the blow. Something that felt almost exactly like a grape popping.
Phelps’s back arched and he screamed and pitched forward.
He dropped the gun and I dove for it, past his legs, and it vanished into the muddy water.
I had a moment of panic that I’d grab it wrong and hit the trigger and shoot myself in the face, but then I felt the cold metal under my hands.
I came up with it and scrambled out of the way, just as Phelps’s scream was cut off and replaced by a horribly wet crunch.
I turned.
Phelps’s feet drummed against the floor as he spasmed. He had fallen across Saul, and I did not need to see the red tide pouring across Saul’s chest to know what had happened next.
It occurred to me, very distantly, that the merciful thing to do would be to shoot Phelps now.
I looked down at the gun in my hands. I was shaking so hard that my teeth began to chatter and I had to clench my jaw to stop them.
If I tried to aim like this, I would probably hit Saul.
Saul, who had his face buried in the hollow between the other man’s neck and shoulder.
Would it matter if I shot them both? End it here?
To really end it, you’ll have to burn Saul’s body. Possibly while he’s still alive.
The crunching had changed to something softer and wetter. Phelps had stopped thrashing and lay limp across the table where Saul had been chained for twelve long months or more.
(he’s not human)
(he’s something else)
(a devil)
Some things were too monstrous to inflict, even on devils. I lowered the gun.
Phelps’s last breath came out in a long gurgled sigh and was still.
I hit the wall and slid down it, hands over my ears, trying desperately to block out the sounds of Saul Gregor feeding.