The Woodkin by Alexander James

Author:Alexander James [James, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CamCat Publishing

10

THE PRIEST

In my dreams I stumbled through knee-deep snow as my limbs turned black. Every breath hurt.

I woke back in my cell, the gently rotting room stinking of blood and fear. The world passed me by just on the other side of the door. The day dawned, raining again. Water dripped through soft spots in the roof, pattered against my already chilled skin. I didn’t care.

They ate him. They fucking ate him. I couldn’t credit the few and far-between pictures floating to my muddled consciousness. A dozen or more bloodstained faces, strings of muscle bulging in the spaces between their teeth. Human muscle, muscle that used to be a walking, talking person. A garbage person, but a person, nonetheless.

This was no issue of perspective. No other way to look at it. I couldn’t pretend it had happened to Switchback, and not Josh. Two lives I desperately wanted to stay separated drifted toward each other. Collision course.

In the corner across from me a pile of leaves shuffled in a frigid breeze. Appletree had hunched there yesterday, hiding from this place behind a tattered shred of cotton.

A glimpse of baby blue among the rust red of the dead leaves. Appletree. Ronnie Coors. I’d crossed paths with both, and both were now dead. For all I knew, they’d devoured Appletree’s remains when they were finished with Ronnie.

My stomach lurched hard enough to send me into the corner with the dry heaves.

Another cool morning, the freezing damp clinging to every surface. Fifty degrees, tops, and raining to boot. I clung on to the little bit of acidic bile left in my stomach and shivered, gooseflesh rising over my upper arms.

Something iron slammed against the door to my cell, loud enough to make me flinch and cry out. I stuffed my spine into the corner—they couldn’t sneak up behind me then; at least I’d see them reach for my throat with their bloodstained fingers, reaching to tear me apart like they’d torn apart Ronnie.

Two men stood on the other side of the door, wearing identical expressions of casual disdain.

They didn’t speak. One gestured with curt motions, a “come here.” The other spat over his shoulder, bored.

They were people. They might have been an insurance adjuster, or a chef—fuck, they still might be. But their faces . . . their scarred and twisted faces couldn’t be fake. Anywhere they went, people would point and stare, whispering about them. They were monsters now. Swallowed by the woods, by the outstretched arms of the old man. By the distorted column of smoke and malice.

“You can get fucked. I’m not going anywhere with you.” I thought of the small and lonely form of Appletree, surrounded by a red corona of dirt. I hunched deeper into my corner, and concocted a wild plan of darting between them, out into the trees—

The rusty squeal of hinges told me they didn’t give a good goddamn if I wanted to go with them or not. After my clumsy dive through the legs of one, they had me by an arm apiece.

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