Narrator, The by Cisco Michael

Author:Cisco, Michael [Cisco, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Horror, Fiction, Novel
Publisher: Lazy Fascist Press
Published: 2015-05-02T06:00:00+00:00

*

We are standing on a streetcorner in the wan light from the windows above us, glowing through dimity curtains.

“Do you smell that?” Thrushchurl asks suddenly, turning his head and raising his nose.

“It’s bodies!” Jil Punkinflake says, sniffing.

“They expose their dead, you know,” Thrushchurl says, coming a step towards us. He turns and follows the scent. Jil Punkinflake sails out after him as though he were tethered to Thrushchurl, and I come too, behind. Their heads go one way and another, like bloodhounds combing the air.

The street we follow is dark blue, all the windows are dark except where pale curtains glow feebly like clouds at night. There are light clouds wandering the sky now; stars in the strait between the buildings overhead, no moon. We are approaching the end of the street, where it does the splits and folds right and left in what looks to be little more than a pair of trails, and directly before us is a silvery ridge not quite as tall as we are, sparsely quilled with rattling white weeds. We take the left split; the trail is dust, overhung with half-fossilized branches, the ridge on our right and brick wall on our left, seven feet apart or so.

Why are we stepping lightly, not talking? Thrushchurl’s magic embarrasses us. Maybe magic works here. I should try making myself disappear.

No sound but the all-surrounding stir of air. The trail veers away from the wall and into a tunnel of laced boughs fragrant with resin, so low we have to duck as we pass. The path is a shallow trench; I catch a few snags. The roof drops away and the path sinks in between stones and follows an incline up and over. Weeds bow in the wind. The path widens, the land opens, but now there are trees around us, corkscrewed and bare, separated like trees in a park. We walk among these trees, which grow sparser and older, more enormous and spreading. The ground between them is a porridge of blue and silver soil, grit, stones, bleached weeds, into which the path has faded. A little aspirant noise from Thrushchurl and he points to a scaly wall. We trace it to a corner, double back and, further in the other direction, we find an iron gate. Thrushchurl pushes the gate, which is bound shut by a length of chain, in as far as it will go, and, his grin out of place with the concentration of his features, he squeezes himself through under the chain. Jil Punkinflake slips in as readily as he might through a half-open door, but I have to take my time, turning this way and that, the disagreeable smell of iron smearing on my clothes and hands.

There is a path here, flat between humps and trees. We stand peering into the blue dark, and I can see white forms standing around us. Statues. Silence. Excited looks. Jil Punkinflake’s face settles further into its old color, the pink bleaching away, his face yellow against the blue night.

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