Mister B. Gone Read online

  I had been a creature of little consequence, even to myself.

  I’d lived unremarkably (excepting perhaps the patricide) but I would not, I was suddenly determined, die that way.

  The shape of the world changed in that place and moment. It had always seemed to me like a Palace that I would never know the joy of entering, for I had been marked as a pariah when I was still in my mother’s womb. I was wrong, wrong! I was my own Palace, every room of which was filled with splendors that only I could name or enumerate.

  This revelation came in the little time between Quitoon Pathea’s disappearance into the shadows and the arrival of the mob, and even now, having thought about the event countless times, I am still not certain as to why. Perhaps it was simply having escaped death so many times that day, first at the hands of Cawley’s gang, then from the lover-boy’s knife attack and later from the crowd on Joshua’s Field, and that I was now facing it yet again—this time with a weapon in my hands that I had no knowledge of how to wield, and therefore expecting to die—that I gave myself the freedom to see my life clearly just this once.

  Whatever the reason, I remember the most exquisite rush of pleasure with which that vision of the world blossomed in my skull, a rush that wasn’t spoiled in the least by the appearance of the human enemy. They appeared not only from the spot where I had entered the grove, but also from between the trees to left and right of it. There were eleven of them; and they all had weapons of some description. Several had knives, of course, while others carried makeshift clubs of living wood, hacked off trees.

  “I am a Palace,” I said to them, smiling.

  There were a lot of puzzled stares from my executioners.

  “The demon’s crazy,” one of them remarked.

  “I got a cure for that,” said another, brandishing a long and much nicked blade.

  “Cures, cures,” I said, remembering the dead soldier’s boasts.

  “Everybody has cures today. And you know what?”

  “What?” said the man with the nicked blade.

  “I don’t feel in need of a doctor.”

  A toothless virago snatched the nicked blade from the man’s hand.

  “Talk, talk! Too much talk!” she said, approaching me. She paused to pick up the small sword the dead soldier had left in the grass. She picked up his halberd too, tossing both of them back towards the mob, where they were caught by two members of a quartet who had just appeared to swell the crowd: Cawley, the Pox, Shamit, and Father O’Brien. It was the Pox who caught the halberd, and seemed well pleased with what circumstance had handed him.

  “This creature murdered my daughter!” he said.

  “I want him taken alive,” Cawley said. “I’ll pay good coin to whoever brings him down without killing him.”

  “Forget the money, Cawley!” the Pox cried. “I want him dead!”

  “Just think of the profit—”

  “To hell with profit,” the Pox said, shoving Cawley in the chest so hard that he fell back into the thorny briars that prospered around the grove.

  The priest attempted to haul Cawley out of his bed of barbs, but before he could raise the man up, the Pox started across the grove towards me, the halberd that had first been used to goad and prick me once again pointed in my direction.

  I looked down at Quitoon’s sword. My weary body had let it droop until its point was hidden in the grass. I looked up at the Pox, then down at the sword again, murmuring as I did so the words I’d used to speak of my revelation.

  “I am a Palace.”

  As if woken by my words, the sword raised itself up out of the grass, its point cleansed of blood by the damp earth where it had settled. The sun had risen above the trees, and caught the sword’s tip as my own sinews took up the duty of raising the weapon. By some trick known only to the sword, the sun’s light reflected off it and momentarily filled the entire grove with its incandescence. The blaze held everything and everybody still for several heartbeats, and I saw everything before me with a clarity the Creator Itself would have envied.

  I saw it all—sky, trees, grass, flowers, blood, sword, spear, and mob—all one lovely view from the windows of my eye.

  And yet even as I saw the sight before me as a single glory, I also saw its every detail, however insignificant, the vision so clear I could have made an inventory of it. And every part of it was beautiful. Every leaf, whether perfect or eaten at; flower, whether pristine or crushed; every glistening sore on the Pox’s face, and every lash upon his gummy eyes: My awakened gaze made no distinction between them. Both were all exquisite, all perfectly themselves.

  The vision didn’t last. In just a few heartbeats it had gone.

  But it didn’t matter. I owned it forever now, and with a shout of death-loving joy I ran at the Pox, raising Quitoon’s sword above my head as I did so. The Pox came to meet me, the point of his spear preceding him. I brought the sword down in one lovely arc. It cut off a foot or more of the Pox’s spear. His step faltered, and he might have retreated had the chance been offered, but the sword and I had other plans for him. I lifted the sword and brought it down again with a second swoop, bisecting the length of halberd that the Pox still held. Before he had time to drop the remains of his weapon I again lifted the sword and struck a third blow, slicing the Pox’s hands off at the wrist.

  Oh Demonation, the noise he made! Its colors—blue and black with streaks of orange—were as bright as the blood that gushed from his arms. There was such beauty hidden in his agony; my delight knew no bounds. Even when cries of vengeful rage rose from the crowd behind him I saw more loveliness in their venomous colors—sour-apple greens and bilious yellows—that my own jeopardy seemed remote, inconsequential. When it came it too would be beautiful I knew.

  Quitoon’s glorious sword was not distracted by these visions, however. It sent a vicious shock wave up through my arms and shoulders and into my dreaming head. It hurt so much it stirred me from my reverie. The colors I’d been glorying in withered and I was abandoned in the dull lie of life as it is commonly seen, smothered and sorrowful. I tried to draw a clear breath, but the air tasted dead in my throat and leaden in my lungs.

  A sagging, but dogged hag amongst the mob started to goad the men around her:

  “What are you afraid of?” she said. “He’s one. We’re many.

  Are you going to let him go back to Hell and crow about how you all stood in terror of him? Look at him! He’s just a little freak! He’s nothing! He’s nobody!”

  She had the courage of her convictions, it must be said. Without waiting to discover whether her words stirred the others into action, she started towards me, wielding a crooked branch.

  Crazy though she surely was, the way she diminished me (I was nothing, I was nobody) gave the rabble fresh fury. They came after her, every last one of them. The only thing that stood between their ferocity and me was the Pox, who turned as they approached, extending his gouting arms as if one amongst the mob might heal him.

  “Out of the way!” the harridan yelled, striking his massive torso with her crooked branch. Her blow was enough to make the weakened man stagger, his blood splattering those who crossed his path. Another of the women, disgusted that the Pox had bled on her, cursed him ripely and struck him herself. This time he went down. I did not see him rise again. I saw nothing, in fact, but angry faces screaming a mixture of pieties and obscenities as they swarmed around me.

  I lofted up Quitoon’s sword, holding it in both hands, intending to keep the mob at blade’s length. But the sword had more ambitious ideas. It pulled itself up above my head, the paltry muscles of my arms twitching with complaint at having to lift such a weight. With my hands high I was exposed to the mob’s assaults, and they took full advantage of the opportunity. Blow after blow struck my body, branches breaking as their wielders smashed them against me, knives slashing at my belly and my loins.

  I wanted to defend myself with the sword, but it had a will of its own, and refused to be subjugated. Meanwhile the
cuts and blows continued, and all I could do was suffer them.

  And then, entirely without warning, the sword cavorted in my hands, and started its descent. If I’d had my way I would have sliced at the mob sideways, and cut a swathe through them.

  But the sword had timed its descent with uncanny accuracy, for there in front of me, holding two glittering weapons, stolen no doubt from some rich assassin, was Cawley. To my bewilderment he actually smiled at me in that moment, exposing two rows of mottled gums. Then he drove both of the blades into my chest, twice piercing my heart.

  It was the next to last thing he ever did. Quitoon’s sword, apparently more concerned with the perfection of its own work than the health of its wielder, made one last elegant motion, so swift that Cawley didn’t have time to lose his smile. Meeting his skull at its very middle, not a hair to left or right, I swear, it descended inexorably towards his feet, cutting through head, neck, torso, and pelvis so that once his manhood had been bisected, he fell apart, each piece wearing half a smile, and dropped to the ground. In the frenzy of the assault, the Cawley bisection earned little response. Everybody was too busy kicking, beating, and cutting me.

  Now, we of the Demonation are a hardy breed. Certainly our bodies bleed, much as yours do. And they give us great pain before they heal, as do yours. The chief difference between us and you is that we can survive extremely vicious maimings and mutilations, as had I had in my childhood, cooked in a fire of words, whereas you will perish if you are stabbed but once in the right place. That said, I was weary now of the incessant assault upon me. I had endured more than my share of cuts and blows.

  “No more,” I murmured to myself.

  The fight was lost, and so was I. Nothing would have given me more pleasure than to have lifted Quitoon’s sword and sliced every one of my assailants to pieces, but by now my arms were a mass of wounds, and lacked the power to wield Quitoon’s beautiful weapon. The sword seemed to understand my exhausted state, and no longer attempted to raise itself up. I let it slip from my bloody, trembling fingers. None of the mob moved to claim it. They were perfectly content to erase my life slowly, as they were, with blows, cuts, kicks, curses, and wads of phlegm.

  Somebody took hold of my right ear, and used a dull blade to slice it off. I raised my hand to swat his stubby fingers away, but another assailant caught hold of my wrist and restrained me, so that I could only writhe and bleed as my mutilator sawed and sawed, determined to have his souvenir.

  Seeing how weak I now was, and so incapable of defending myself, others were inspired to look for trophies of their own to cut from me: my nipples, my fingers, my toes, my organs of regeneration, even my tails.

  No, no, I silently begged them, not my tails!

  Take my ears, my lashless eyelids, even my navel, but please not my tails! It was an absurd and irrational vanity on my part, but while I would not protest their further maiming of my face or even of those parts which made me male, I wanted to die with my tails untouched. Was that so much to ask?

  Apparently so. Though I let the trophy hunters cut at my most tender parts without argument, and pleaded through my pain to have them be content with what they were already taking, my pleas went unheard. It was little wonder. My throat, which had unleashed my mother’s Nightmare Voice several times, could now barely raise itself above a faltering murmur, which was heard by nobody. I could feel not one but two knives cutting at the root of my tails, sawing at the muscle, as my blood flowing ceaselessly from the widening gash.

  “Enough!”

  The command was loud enough to cut through the shouts and laughter of the mob, and more to silence it. For the first time in a while I was not the center of attention. The quieted mob looked around for the source of that word of instruction, blades and bludgeons at the ready.

  It was Quitoon who’d spoken. He stepped out of the same shadows into which he had disappeared minutes before, still wearing all his armour, the face guard down, concealing his demonic features.

  The mob, though they were thirteen or more, and he alone, were still respectful of him. Not perhaps for his own person, but for the power they assumed he represented—that of the Archbishop.

  “You two,” he said, pointing to the pair who were trying to separate me from my tails. “Get way from him.”

  “But he’s a demon,” one of the men said quietly.

  “I can see what he is,” Quitoon replied. “I have eyes.”

  There was something peculiar about the quality of his voice, I thought. It was as if he were barely suppressing some powerful emotion, as if he might suddenly weep or burst into laughter.

  “Let . . . him . . . alone . . .” he said.

  The two mutilators did as he instructed, stepping away from me through grass that was more red than green. I tentatively reached behind me, afraid of what I would find, but was relieved to discover that though the pair had sawed through my scales to the muscle beneath, they had got no further. If, by some remote chance, I survived this first encounter with Humankind, then I would at least still have my tails.

  Quitoon, meanwhile, had emerged from the shadows beneath the trees and was walking towards the middle of the grove. He was shaking, I saw, but not from any frailty. Of that I was perfectly certain.

  The mob, however, assumed that he was indeed wounded, his shaking proof of his weakened state. They exchanged smug little looks, and then casually moved to surround him.

  Most of them were still carrying the weapons they’d used to wound me.

  It didn’t take long for them to take up their positions. When they had done so Quitoon slowly turned on the spot, as though to confirm the fact. The simple act of turning was difficult for him. His trembling was steadily getting worse. It could only be a matter of a few seconds before his legs gave out and he dropped to the ground, at which point the mob would—

  I was interrupted in midthought by Quitoon.

  “Mister B.?” His voice shook, but there was still strength in it.

  “I’m here.”

  “Be gone.”

  I stared at Quitoon (as did everybody else in the grove), trying to work out what he was up to. Was he presenting himself as a target so that I might slip away while the mob tore off his armour and beat him to death? And why was he shaking in this bizarre fashion?

  The order came again, spoken with almost panicky force.

  “Be gone, Mister B.!”

  This time his tone stirred me from my bewildered state, and I remembered his instruction to me: Take cover when I call your name.

  Having already delayed my obeying of his order for perhaps half a minute, I made up for lost time as best as my wounded body would allow. I took five or six backwards steps, until I felt the thicket at my back and realized that I could go no further. I raised my throbbing head and looked at Quitoon again. He was still standing in the midst of the mob, his armoured body shaking more violently than ever. There was a cry emerging from behind his faceplate now, and it was rising in volume and pitch as we all watched and listened. Up and up, louder and louder, until the sound he was making, like the sound I’d learned from Momma, scarcely seemed a plausible product of lungs and throat. Its highest audible notes were as shrill as a bird’s shriek; its lowest made the ground beneath my feet shake, made my teeth and stomach and bladder ache.

  But I didn’t have to suffer its effects for long. Barely seconds after I had raised my head, the sounds Quitoon was unleashing became in the same moment both shriller and deeper, their new extremes accompanied by a sudden conflagration inside the armour, which spat shafts of incandescence out through every chink and seam.

  Only now—too late, of course—did I understand why he had wanted me to be gone from here. I pushed my body against the knotted thicket, and was reaching behind me to try and pass the barbed branches when Quitoon exploded.

  I saw his armour shatter like an egg struck by a hammer and glimpsed for the briefest moment the blazing form of the shatterer himself. Then the wave of the energy that had blown
the armour wide open came at me, striking me with such force that I was driven backwards, over the dense thicket, landing amid the briar several yards from the grove. There was a thick, pungent smoke in the air that kept me from seeing the grove. I struggled to get myself up out of the barbed bed in which I lay; finally dragging back towards the grove. I was bruised, dizzied, and bloody, but I was alive, which was more than could be said for the rabble who had surrounded Quitoon. They lay sprawled on the grass, all dead. Some were headless, some hung from the low branches, their bodies pierced by dozens of holes. Besides the more or less complete corpses, there was a large selection of pieces—legs, arms, loops of gut, and the like—festively decorating the branches of every tree around the grove.

  And in the middle of this strange orchard was Quitoon. A bluish smoke was rising from his naked body, the substance of which was sewn with seams of brightness that steadily became a little weaker as each seam gave up its intensity. The only place where the brightness remained undimmed was in Quitoon’s eyes, which were like twin lamps blazing in the dome of his skull.

  I picked my way through the litter of bodies, revolted not by the blood and body parts, but by the parasites that had flourished in their thousands on the bodies and in the clothes of the mob and were now rapidly exiting in search of living hosts. I had no intention of becoming one, and several times as I crossed the grove I was obliged to brush off some ambitious flea that had leapt upon me.

  I called to Quitoon as I approached him, but he didn’t respond. I halted a little distance from him, and tried to rouse him from this distracted state. I was uneasy about those furnace eyes of his. Until some sign of Quitoon himself returned to cool those fires, I was by no means certain that I was safe from the power he had called up. So I waited. The grove was silent, except for the tapping sound of blood as it dripped from one leaf to another, or down into the already sodden ground.