Xisthruos
09-05-2007, 04:49 AM
Hello.
I only show up at random here nowadays, and when I do, half the time I usually post something inane or quite incoherent. :) So I decided I would post this fraction of a larger story I've been working on so that those who faintly remember me might know that I am still alive and productive.
This takes place about thirteen years after the events of "The Spiteful Dead." I have chosen this particular bit because it fills you in on what ol' Robert Miguel, the protagonist from the RPG, has been through in recent years. Further developing the world in which "The Spiteful Dead" revolved around has been an obsession of mine for the past several years, but I never really took off with writing more than scattered notes about it until earlier this year. I've had several botched attempts of writing in the past (a few of which this forum was subject to several years ago) and so I'm pleased to find that I'm seeing much more promise with this. It's probably because I'm no longer trying to unwillingly force ideas from my empty, empty brain as I write. :)
I've made a few minor changes to the spellings of some things since "The Spiteful Dead." Robert Miguelle is now Robert Miguel (not much of a change there) and the city of Belize has been renamed Belias. When I first conceptualized The Spiteful Dead, I was 14, and did not actually know that Belize was an existing country. Then SejonSol comes along. Funny, yes?
Also, I suppose I might mention that in this story, "Rendsfield" is a mid-sized city that has recently been mysteriously destroyed by flame and a zombie plague (the latter has yet to set in), and the main characters here are currently traveling there. I hope you'll get enough of a feel for who the characters are that I don't need to explain much else, but we'll see. Also, there is some bizarre imagery in there that might appear to be making some huge leaps, but please be assured that theses events are linked to existing figures and aspects of the bigger picture. This is just a fraction of that picture.
BTW- If I write enough to publish, it will not be called "The Spiteful Dead" or anything similar. In hindsight, the title was unfortunate. :) Just more to blame on my youthful inexperience...
Please excuse the length.
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Thomas's cargo had been clanking around on the rooftop now for miles, and it was starting to grate on Robert's nerves. Sure Thomas was a Father, but Robert had never met a Father who was that high maintenance. Not that Robert had ever known that many holy men. Come to think of it, how did he really know this "Father" Thomas really was who he said he was? He was just a punk, anyway--far too young to have made anything of himself yet. Probably just trying to pull a con job or something. But why, though? Why impersonate a priest, of all people, if you couldn't play the part? There was something off-putting about his behavior--something very un-priestlike. It would make anyone think twice before putting down money on some counterfeit holy water. He sure seemed to have put forth a lot of effort to look the part, with his bands and robes and all his priestly accessories, but he acted more like a rough, undisciplined youth more than any other chump who might be considered even the least bit devout. Robert could see Thomas strewn across the backseat of the car through his mirror, the hand of his closest to the window dug deeply into his cheek, distorting the expression of his blank, bored stare. Furthermore, as Robert had discovered earlier, under Thomas's (rather poignant) cologne, he still smelled like he'd spent all of yesterday drinking and smoking in a bar. Robert sure as hell hadn't pegged this kid for a priest at first when he'd seen him out of the uniform. Well, maybe Robert was just giving too much credit to the reasoning skills of the average person. Especially out here, where the IQ of the average person seemed to drop the farther you went away from the cities, and the higher the temperature got. Thomas seemed like an O.K. kid to Robert, granted you kept track of your valuables around him. He wasn't unlike Robert was at that age, in that respect...
Robert's car hit a pothole and Thomas's hefty cargo thudded heavily on the roof, probably putting a dent on the outside of the car. This, in turn, elicited an agitated "Goddammit," from Robert, quite audible enough to attract the attention of both Lin and Thomas. Robert didn't say anything else, didn't turn to acknowledge either of them. The silence between the three of them that had been present earlier returned for an encore. All Robert could think of now was how damn stupid he had been for allowing this punk to come along with him when pure, sound reasoning coming from all directions had told him not to. There was something unique about this kid, for sure, but it couldn't be a good thing. He'd be sure to dump him off somewhere the first chance he got.
Meanwhile, Lin shifted uncomfortably back into his former position in the passenger's seat at the front of the car (there wasn't much any other way someone like him could move around a car.) He didn't spare much time wondering why Robert was so upset--he had a pretty good idea. Instead, he simply sat there languidly, his knees elevated and just close enough to his chest to be uncomfortable, and his tail cramped and bunched up in his seat and around his body, almost in a coil. There wasn't much to do with his grotesquely long arms, and so he kept these folded up across his chest, where they fought for space with his knees. It wasn't just because of his size that he made such an akward fit--he was ill-porportioned compared to most people. The car's interior was too small and too hot (they were being baked in their glass enclosure by the high sun) and they had all been in there for far too long, but Lin found a way to ignore the discomfort. He sat and thought, not so much in words, but in pictures, guided by the hand of the creator as quiet, desert scenery passed by along the road. He had not slept at all last night, and was very tired now. He had kept himself awake all that time by maintaining a car that did not need to be maintained. "It's best to be safe," he might have said in his defense. This was probably true, given the mileage they had already put on that car, but Lin had a different motive for keeping awake.
The sky was bright and clear, and stretched far behind the flat cliffs and plateaus that seemed to block much of the horizon. There were scattered shrubs and bushes all along the ground, and many rocks, all of which seemed to appear and dissappear like scratches on a film reel. The telephone wires above undulated endlessly from one pole to the next. Lin allowed their endless repitition of swooping lull him into a stupor.
Gradually, the bright colors of the sky inverted into a strange shade of purple. It was still quite bright, however, and now perhaps blindingly so, as patches of bright, pure white sat on the edge of the horizon directly adjacent to the deep, luminous purple, with virtually no middle ground between them. Lin noticed this, but was feeling too tired to care. The distant cliffs he had seen were now no longer present, having been replaced by pitch black outlines of their former selves. The world around him remained in motion as before, but soon appeared to swirl about him in all directions, instead of just one. He followed the spinning with his eyes mindlessly as if in a trance, but soon found he could not keep up. Soon he was not sure where he was in all this mess, much less where the car he had been sitting in had gone to--for its presence was no longer there. He felt the dull sensations of dizziness, powerlessness, and apprehension, but strangely, did not act on them. He had lost all sense of direction, and began to feel as if he were sitting alone.
The deep purple above seemed to be opening up for something, but Lin could not crane his neck upward to see it properly. From what he could make of it, it appeared as though a much darker color--pure black--was seeping out from somewhere and absorbing the sky. Long lines of blackness seemed to dribble forth from the large black pool in the sky like ink, or, perhaps, some kind of inhuman blood. They didn't stop when they touched the ground and seemed to slowly "bounce" or undulate toward Lin, looking like tentacles reaching out to grab him. Lin wanted to struggle, but it seemed to do him no good. What was he struggling against? Suddenly, he could see the sky above him--the mysterious patch of black which had hitherto escaped his gaze--and what he saw, what he could quite plainly see, disturbed him greatly, due to its stark, vivid contrast with the trancelike (though unpleasant) surroundings he had been subjected to so far. It had looked like a flower at first glance, and certainly, it would have continued to look a lot like one were it not for its vivid detail. Its center was yellow, like a flower's, but the discolored, glassy look about it made it seem a lot like an eyeball. The pupil looked strange and fractured, like an unfinished jigsaw. Outside of this, where a flower's petals would be was a complicated network of yellow vines or roots, and what looked like--but he hoped it wasn't--the severed limbs of many countless humans, deformed and discolored, worked into a twisted menagerie of growths within the vines, pulsing and throbbing along with a sort of reverberating harmony. It was sickening, like watching the soft bodies of unmorphed insects--maggots and the like--flail about helplessly. Worse, the mouths (or something similar) on the monstrosity opened themselves wide and bright red, and began shrieking at him in some shrill batlike tenor. They spoke only nonsense, but the noise was incredibly unpleasant and it painfully broke the relative silence he had so far experienced. The vines slowly extended toward Lin, and he struggled violently, determined not to be rended to pieces and assimilated by them like many others seemingly must have. They grabbed his arms...
Lin spilled out of the car when they pulled over and opened his door, and Robert and Thomas did their best to snap him out of his trance, or at least keep him from injuring himself in all his thrashings. The two of them could barely keep the large man under control, holding him down by his arms. Lin eventually came to, and the violence subsided. He broke down into tears. His already ugly face was discolored and looked quite unpleasant now. It was hard not to feel sorry for him.
"I shouldn't have let you stay up all last night. Next place we come across, I'll get you a room to sleep in. Something more comfortable than this, at least," said Robert.
"I doubt we'll find one the closer we get to Rendsfield," said Thomas, "All the rooms will be filled with refugees. I don't want to waste any time, anyway. We should just head straight to Rendsfield."
Robert was a little put off by this, "I don't care whether there's a room to spare. We'll camp out in the goddamn parking lot if we have to. I'm making sure he's taken care of. You don't like it, you can walk from here, but that won't get you to Rendsfield any faster."
Lin, not having paid attention to what anyone was saying suddenly interrupted them, looking soulfully at Thomas, the young man dressed as a priest. In a pitiful tone, he asked, "Why does God do this to me?"
Thomas looked back, puzzled, "What do you mean? What have you done to deserve this?"
"I don't know," Lin answered in a whisper.
Robert wasn't expecting Thomas to say anything that might suddenly give Lin peace of mind or reason for hope. In fact, he didn't exactly expect Thomas to say anything the least bit insightful. He did, expect from Thomas, however, something godly and uplifting, even if horribly saccharine. What he heard from Thomas was this: "I guess you're just nuts."
This tore up Robert inside, just as he felt it did to Lin. He yelled at Thomas to help Lin into the back of the car, and they swiftly headed for the closest place to rent a room--and they did find one with little difficulty, at the following exit a few miles down the road. The trip was silent, except for when Robert made simple pronouncements like, "This exit," or "We're here."
The location they picked was very small, and didn't seem to serve as much more than a rest point between the previous rest points and the next--all mere diversions between the larger rest points (themselves offshoots of the nearby towns.) As a result, the place was quite forgetable. There was a small restaurant and gas station in one building, and a motel in the building next to it. That was all. There was nothing special about the room they rented, not even the price, which was moderate. You could have painted the entire place in monochrome, and it would have looked no more washed-out and dull than it was. It was clean, however. The clerk, himself a washed-out and rather dull looking man in his middle years, took a strange glance at a sickly Lin in the waiting room as they were checking in. He asked, with little sense of empathy, "He's not going to cause any trouble, is he?"
"No," Robert said, not looking up from the forms he was signing. Robert didn't really know the answer any more than this man did. He was hoping Lin wouldn't cause another scene, that was all. It was just hope. It was only midday by the time they were in their room, but it would be much longer until Lin would be ready to sleep. In the meantime, they spent the day playing cards with a deck Thomas owned, watching the room's modest, snowy television, and reading from magazines and a newspaper they had purchased from next door. They had both lunch and dinner at the tiny restaurant, though they didn't eat much, and things calmed down enough through the day that they actually began conversation. It was nothing special, to be sure, and they avoided difficult subjects such as Lin or Rendsfield, or whether Thomas was really a Father or not. Thomas and Robert dominated conversation for the most part--Lin was engaged, but too tired to add in more than a word or gesture every once in a while. It was strictly limited to small talk--sports or unrelated current events, the quality of the food here (Robert reminisced almost humorously for a time about how many better steaks he'd had), or obscene cracks about the restauant's manager (who evidently was the same person as the clerk from the motel.) The stocky, balding manager looked over at them reproachfully every once in a while, but he was always too far out of range to have heard anything. There weren't a lot of people eating at the diner throughout the day, but just enough to produce a low, buffering murmur. It seemed in the manager's nature to be so weasly. Robert came to discover that Thomas had a very crude sense of humor--very unlike a priest, but very much like someone his age. It was not altogether surprising; everything else seemed to fit that way.
It was fairly late at night when Lin was sleeping silently in the hotel room. He hadn't made a ruckus getting to sleep, but he had tossed around for a while, causing the bed to creak every minute or so. Robert got off the sofa in the middle of the room once he was certain Lin was knocked out, and left the room quietly. The lights in the hallway were still on even though the outside through the windows was dark, and the place was still and quiet. Earlier in the night there had been many sounds of people moving and talking through the cheap walls of the building, and the stairway door, which was heavy, had thudded loudly many times by people who were hastily going back and forth. It was a little after midnight now, and all activity had ceased. You could hear the buzz of the lights overhead, and the mechanical roll as the air conditioning kicked in. Robert, rarely in a haste to get anywhere, held the door as he passed through into the echoing stairwell, and guided it softly to its resting place.
In the lobby he found Thomas sitting alone, smoking. Robert leaned in the doorway, facing him.
"Damn restaurant closed at eight," complained Thomas, leaning in at Robert, "This is the first dry night I've had in weeks."
"Maybe it'll do you some good," said Robert. He wondered if he'd tell Thomas about the half-bottle of scotch he still had.
"Whatever," Thomas said, breathing out some smoke,"I knew I should've stocked up on everything they had when I still had the chance." He sat back with his eyes blankly forward, away from Robert. His cigarrette dangled lazily from his right hand, off the couch and above the white linoleum floor.
Robert stopped wondering about the scotch, "I need a drink too. I've got a half-full bottle of whisky upstairs. You want to split what's left?"
"Yeah, that'll do," spoke Thomas, with full attention regained.
Thomas extinguished his smoke on a tray and followed Robert upstairs to the room, where Robert fished out his bottle. There were no glasses available in the room, so they settled with a fresh pair of disposable drinking cups. They headed back to the lobby, leaving Lin in peace. Robert poured equal portions into the cups after unwrapping them and placing them on a coffee table.
"Now that's class," he said, taking his cup.
"Fine drink, fine atmosphere," Thomas added. They shared this brief moment of humility in the silence of the sparsely decorated waiting room. After a few moments the by now infamous hotel clerk walked to his post at the front desk and sat there glaring at them. Before he had the opportunity to scold them they had retreated outside, and into Robert's car.
"That guy is a spook, man," Thomas was saying, "one moment you think you're alone, the next he's staring you in the face. Hey, turn on some lights, I can't see a thing."
"Lights don't work," said Robert, "I got this thing dirt cheap."
"Geez."
"Just enjoy the dark atmosphere. At least he can't look in here at us that way."
"Unless he's hiding in the backseat."
Robert took the scotch bottle by the neck, turned around in his seat, and started flailing it around clumsily in the back. He used more effort than was neccessary. His head faced Thomas, and was pushed up against the seat like a soldier shielding himself against artillery fire. With a sarcastic smile he asked, "Hear anybody say 'ouch?' "
"I get it, it get it," Thomas laughed, "Okay, knock it off."
Robert switched back to a more natural position. "I've seen too many surprises to get done in like that," he said.
"Yeah?" Thomas pondered this briefly, "What is your story, anyway? There aren't too many people who'd want to go to Rendsfield... like now--right now, anyway."
"Huh," said Robert, "Wouldn't know where to start. Don't always get asked that, you know?"
"I hear ya. What do you do for a living?"
"Haven't had a steady job for fourteen years. I used to be a cop, you know."
"Sure as hell don't act like any cop I ever met."
"Why do you think they fired me?" Robert said, smiling smugly. "I could say something similar about you."
Thomas laughed this off. "So, where at?" Thomas asked.
Robert hesitated for a moment, but he soon felt he could be honest with this kid. He could always deny it later, anyway, under the pretense of having been tipsy."Belias," he told Thomas.
"****. Are you serious?" Thomas was staring him in the face now. "So, fourteen years... you must've left just before everything went down."
"Yeah," said Robert. He'd leave things there.
"I'll let you in on a secret of mine," said Thomas, "I lived in Othello just before it went up in flames."
For a brief moment Robert thought Thomas was making fun of him, but Tom didn't have a stupid grin on his face. He seemed to be serious. Robert still wasn't convinced he was telling the truth, though, until something clicked, "That's why you wear the--"
"Yes."
The priestly uniform Thomas had on bore an especial resemblance to those who used to strut all around the religious capital Othello back in its days of existence, most of all in the rosary, which Thomas now unearthed for better viewing. It consisted of many beads of red, blue, green, and white, and its signature piece, a large circular pretzel-shaped and heavily embroidered ornamentation featuring gems of red, blue, and green orbiting a larger yellow gem. It was common knowledge that a properly trained Othello priest could fire off any given set of biblical stories with the aid of this kind of rosary. The rosary was a universal sign of conversion, though this particular design was more complex, and given only to certain priests. Thomas began showing off his experience with the piece, flipping and shifting its parts around with his fingers:
"For forty years wandered the sons of Ghenks through the vast lands of the Zinni, dispelled from the wicked empire of Khasisatra that would soon crumple. The Zinni offered little welcome, and neither did the Alecks further east, and so the sons of Ghenks went farther and farther east to find a land they would one day wrestle from nature and name after their patriarch, 'Ghenks.' "
The rosary doubled as a map of the world somewhat, and it was actually somewhat amusing to watch the pieces move from one side to the next, taking on the roles of places and characters.
"I could go on for days like this," said Thomas.
"Yeah, you'd better stop," said Robert, making it sound like a threat. He still wasn't sure what to think.
"So what have you been doing for money lately, since you don't have a job?" Thomas asked after a long pause.
"I do just about everything, I guess. I move from place to place with Lin, looking for a buck. Mind you, it's not always easy getting work for Lin with the way he looks, but I've been able to do a lot of things from dishwashing to construction, yard work, table waiting, night watch, you name it. As long as it doesn't require much skill or talent."
"How'd you meet up with Lin, anyway? Has he always been like that?"
"He was like that as long as I've known him."
"Why do you bring him along everywhere, then?"
Robert grunted, "It's not so much one of us dragging the other along, but the both of us together being pulled across the face of the earth. I met the guy a couple different times doing jobs in some town out in Tetalusk, or somewhere, and--I don't know--I guess we just got used to one another. Neither of us has a home, or a family tying us down, so we decided to hit the road together." Robert wanted to shift the topic away from himself for a while. He took another gulp of his dwindling supply of whiskey, let it sit with him, and then asked, "Why don't you tell me something about yourself? How do you make a living?"
"Same story, I guess."
"Somehow I can't picture you applying for a dishwasher's job in those robes."
"You'd be right, then. I don't do that kind of work. Money has a way of coming to me when I need it."
"Yeah, okay." Now Robert was sorry he asked. He wasn't ready to become witness to what sounded like Thomas's criminal exploits, so he didn't press on. He let the coming pause drag on into the minutes.
Their view from the inside of the dark car was of the desert wilderness, and of the road next to the parking lot. This flat, dark road that trailed into nothingness would be the path ahead of them tommorrow. It seemed ominous now, much in the same way anything begins to look ominous at night. This road was empty, but the air outside droned with the sound of unseen vehicles traveling for eternity. Robert thought of what sat at the end of that road, of the carnage there--Belias, Othello, and now Rendsfield. Somehow he felt that road might seem just as ominous even in the daytime.
There were always fables about a river or caravan that would lead lost souls from this world to the underworld. Why not a road, then? A modern, paved road. This road. Robert should have died long ago in Belias. He had never stopped cursing that fact. He, of all the people in that city, someone as terrible as himself was spared from death while literally millions of other, more worthy people had to die. It was as though he had stepped on every last one of their dying corpes to in order to preserve his pathetic life.
He was struck again with an image that had haunted his sleep for years--a real one he had lived through for six agonizing days. In the Merran sea he had floated for what seemed like forever with salt water pouring into his wounds. His only companion, an ex-lover of his, or more appropriately, the corpse of his ex-lover. Her face was discolored, blank, and swollen, growing even more grotesquely freakish with each passing day. Death would do no justice to her once beautiful body, as the salt water bloated her into a disgusting caricature, whose mocking, undying familiarity to Robert made him want to look away. He could not. The worst thing of all was that he had floated on her corpse in order to live. Wounded as he was, he could have barely kept his head above water, had it not been for her expiration. Her face distorted, but the eyes always constant, crying out in pain at him, accusing him of this henious, unforgivable breach of their partnership. Even once he had been rescued, he did not let go of her corpse easily, hideous and foul-smelling as it had become. He wasn't sure how he managed to live through those six days. They ran together in a nightmarish delirium. And yet, wherever Robert was, he could place himself again in those waters, all senses imbued with powerful clarity.
"You ever hear stories about trails, or highways into hell?" Thomas suddenly said.
Robert was dumbfounded. This was coincidental, he was sure.
"It's stupid, right?" Thomas continued, "Like, how people always want to bring a piece of the fantastical right in front of them, connecting old religion with unrelated parts of modern life?"
The relentless droning of distant highway cars seemed louder now, or maybe just more apparent. They sounded perhaps like massive, mechanical birds of prey swooping down harmlessly miles away, for now ignorant of Robert's current location.
"Stuff that it wasn't intended for," Robert edged Thomas on.
Thomas had been finishing his last bit of scotch. "Yeah," he said as he exhaled. "But it's interesting. I've always wondered what something like that would be like, you know, if it existed. What would the road look like, where would it start? What kind of scenery would you pass? Who would be your driver?"
"Yourself."
"What?"
"I would think you'd travel it alone," Robert said, "You're born alone, and that's the way you die."
"Maybe... but don't some people have a hard time coping with death? Like, no matter how horrible some guy's life is, even if he thinks he wants death, when it comes down to it, he'll hang on to life with everything he's got? He's still afraid of death, and he needs someone to guide him there... or maybe to turn him away until the time is right?"
Robert didn't know what to say. Was Thomas talking about him? How could he have this insight?
"How about this?" Thomas held his rosary again, and started reciting a prayer:
'Dear God in heaven, look after your children, least of which not this poor soul lost in the throes of the earth. For the soul of the beggar is the soul of a king, not greater or less, Yet, in the face of disastrous cirucumstance, the beggar cannot equally ensure his safety. Dear God, you know that survival is not a sin--' "
For some reason during the prayer, Thomas decided to grab Robert's right hand and press it against the amulet, along with his own, and it was at this point in the prayer that Robert pulled his hand away while also shoving Thomas back against the side of the window. He was getting more than a little creeped out by all this.
"What the hell's your problem?" Thomas shouted in surprise.
"I've never even heard that prayer before."
"It doesn't have to be in a book for it to be a prayer. What's wrong? You afraid of looking like a queer, or what?"
"No. Listen, why do you get all philosophical like that with me, but when Lin asks you for help, you just call him nuts?"
"Huh?" Thomas genuinely looked like he wasn't sure what Robert was talking about. "Oh," he suddenly said, "Because he didn't offer me anything to drink."
Robert rolled his eyes at the laughter that followed. It was becoming clear that any insight Thomas displayed had been unintentional. It was still incredibly strange.
Some lights were kicking on in the hotel, and the murmur of voices could be heard from within the building. All thoughts immediately led to Lin. Robert immediately left for the inside. Thomas followed.
There were more than a few people standing about in the hallway near the room where Lin was, all waiting impatiently for the manager to settle things down. He had already unlocked the door and headed in before Robert had enough time to reach him. From inside the room came Lin's voice--a terrible, harsh moaning--and the racket caused by his thrashing against furniture.
"What the hell is going on in here?!" the manager demanded, in an angry drawl. Lin, who had been standing upright in the other direction, turned swiftly and belted the fat man with his fist, knocking him off his feet and sending him reeling to the ground. He wasn't out cold, but didn't look like he was about to stand up again soon. Robert rushed in and tried to tackle Lin, but failed to catch the large man off balance, and Lin threw him off, against the wall. This surprised Robert, for it seemed to him through this display that Lin was working at full capacity, with all faculties intact. He wasn't sleepwalking, at least not now. Out of the corner of his eye Robert saw the figure of something in the room he hadn't noticed at first. Thomas, standing on the other side of the room in front of the doorway saw it also, and he stood frozen, staring into it. Silhouetted in the dark room by the night sky coming in from the room's sinlge, open window, was the tall figure of a naked man, gaunt and withered to the point of being skeletal. Where his head should have been was the head and beak of a stork. In porportion to his wingless body and the obscenely long scythe-like appendage that grew out from it, the stork-man's head was so small to have seemed almost non-existant. But it was there, staring blankly through two glistening marbles on either side.
Lin started at the figure, screaming, perhaps blaming it--whatever it was--for all his pain. When he reached it, it bounded swiflty from the open window using its long strawlike legs, seeming to vanish into the void of sky. Lin came too late, and tumbled over the side of the second-story window. Robert, who had followed shortly behind, grabbed Lin's arms, and Lin dangled there.
"Let go of me," Lin said to Robert, not looking up at him.
"I saw that bird-thing too, Lin. Hang on," Robert said back.
Thomas came up behind them, "I've seen that thing..." he said.
"Hear that? Tom saw it too. You're not nuts."
"Let go of my arms."
"I'm not letting you fall."
Lin was getting agitated, "I don't mean to hurt myself. Let go of my arms so I can climb down myself. It will be easier that way."
"Oh," said Robert.
"No, what I meant was, I've seen that man before," Thomas continued.
"You what?" Robert turned his head to look at Thomas.
"I just wish I could remember where."
"Robert," Lin interrupted.
"Right." Robert let go of Lin, and Lin expertly climbed down the face of the building to the ground, as if it were second-nature. It was. He sat down at the sidewalk in front of the building and waited.
Robert turned to properly face Thomas. "Are you screwing with me, or are you really acquainted with whatever it was we just saw?"
"I've never met it up close before, but I know I've seen it," he seemed to be thinking really hard, "I don't know... maybe it was just in a book somewhere."
"Whatever," Robert spat out, frustratedly. He stormed out of the room and into the hallway, but not before tossing some money in front of the manager, who was still doubled over in pain. Robert wondered if Lin hadn't busted something internally in this man.
"I'm calling the cops," the manager was just able to force out.
In the hallway all he got were stares. He didn't waste too much time there. He began to think that only he, Lin, and Thomas had seen the stork-man, though Neither Lin or Thomas seemed like they were of particularly sound mind. Robert had doubts of his own sanity. But they couldn't all have hallucinated the same thing.
Robert met with Lin outside, sitting next to him. "Did you get enough sleep?"
"Yes. For now. You?"
"Dead tired," Robert smiled. "I'll be fine. We can't stay here any longer, though."
"I know. I've been thinking... I want to get to Rendsfield as soon as possible."
"Think you can drive?"
"I can."
"Good. I don't think I'll be able to keep my eyes open as the night drags on."
A pause.
"I'm sorry for being a burden," Lin said abruptly.
"Don't worry."
"If it happens again, shoot me." Lin got up and headed for the car.
Robert got up and followed. "You know I wouldn't do something like that," he said.
Out of the front door of the motel rushed Thomas, dragging along his excessive luggage. "Hey!" he shouted, "You're not leaving without me, are you?"
"Right. Guess we've got to babysit this one further," Robert murmured. "Lin," he motioned to his partner, and they helped Thomas fasten and load the suitcase up top.
"I need to find out just what you've got in there," Robert complained, having finished the unwieldy task. "Of course, right now I guess we'd better move. He didn't actually call the cops, did he?" he asked, looking in Thomas's direction.
"Didn't waste time trying to find out. Best to be safe."
"It's not like we're wanted here, anyway," Robert concluded.
As Lin was getting into the driver's seat, he found Robert's empty scotch bottle from not too long ago. He held it, looking at Robert.
"Had a bit of a party in here," joked Robert. He slid swiftly into the passenger's seat, stretching his arms high and folding them behind his head. "It's trash," he finished.
Lin took the bottle by the neck and hurled it into the distance. It never made a sound, as if it forever stood suspended in mid-air.
I only show up at random here nowadays, and when I do, half the time I usually post something inane or quite incoherent. :) So I decided I would post this fraction of a larger story I've been working on so that those who faintly remember me might know that I am still alive and productive.
This takes place about thirteen years after the events of "The Spiteful Dead." I have chosen this particular bit because it fills you in on what ol' Robert Miguel, the protagonist from the RPG, has been through in recent years. Further developing the world in which "The Spiteful Dead" revolved around has been an obsession of mine for the past several years, but I never really took off with writing more than scattered notes about it until earlier this year. I've had several botched attempts of writing in the past (a few of which this forum was subject to several years ago) and so I'm pleased to find that I'm seeing much more promise with this. It's probably because I'm no longer trying to unwillingly force ideas from my empty, empty brain as I write. :)
I've made a few minor changes to the spellings of some things since "The Spiteful Dead." Robert Miguelle is now Robert Miguel (not much of a change there) and the city of Belize has been renamed Belias. When I first conceptualized The Spiteful Dead, I was 14, and did not actually know that Belize was an existing country. Then SejonSol comes along. Funny, yes?
Also, I suppose I might mention that in this story, "Rendsfield" is a mid-sized city that has recently been mysteriously destroyed by flame and a zombie plague (the latter has yet to set in), and the main characters here are currently traveling there. I hope you'll get enough of a feel for who the characters are that I don't need to explain much else, but we'll see. Also, there is some bizarre imagery in there that might appear to be making some huge leaps, but please be assured that theses events are linked to existing figures and aspects of the bigger picture. This is just a fraction of that picture.
BTW- If I write enough to publish, it will not be called "The Spiteful Dead" or anything similar. In hindsight, the title was unfortunate. :) Just more to blame on my youthful inexperience...
Please excuse the length.
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Thomas's cargo had been clanking around on the rooftop now for miles, and it was starting to grate on Robert's nerves. Sure Thomas was a Father, but Robert had never met a Father who was that high maintenance. Not that Robert had ever known that many holy men. Come to think of it, how did he really know this "Father" Thomas really was who he said he was? He was just a punk, anyway--far too young to have made anything of himself yet. Probably just trying to pull a con job or something. But why, though? Why impersonate a priest, of all people, if you couldn't play the part? There was something off-putting about his behavior--something very un-priestlike. It would make anyone think twice before putting down money on some counterfeit holy water. He sure seemed to have put forth a lot of effort to look the part, with his bands and robes and all his priestly accessories, but he acted more like a rough, undisciplined youth more than any other chump who might be considered even the least bit devout. Robert could see Thomas strewn across the backseat of the car through his mirror, the hand of his closest to the window dug deeply into his cheek, distorting the expression of his blank, bored stare. Furthermore, as Robert had discovered earlier, under Thomas's (rather poignant) cologne, he still smelled like he'd spent all of yesterday drinking and smoking in a bar. Robert sure as hell hadn't pegged this kid for a priest at first when he'd seen him out of the uniform. Well, maybe Robert was just giving too much credit to the reasoning skills of the average person. Especially out here, where the IQ of the average person seemed to drop the farther you went away from the cities, and the higher the temperature got. Thomas seemed like an O.K. kid to Robert, granted you kept track of your valuables around him. He wasn't unlike Robert was at that age, in that respect...
Robert's car hit a pothole and Thomas's hefty cargo thudded heavily on the roof, probably putting a dent on the outside of the car. This, in turn, elicited an agitated "Goddammit," from Robert, quite audible enough to attract the attention of both Lin and Thomas. Robert didn't say anything else, didn't turn to acknowledge either of them. The silence between the three of them that had been present earlier returned for an encore. All Robert could think of now was how damn stupid he had been for allowing this punk to come along with him when pure, sound reasoning coming from all directions had told him not to. There was something unique about this kid, for sure, but it couldn't be a good thing. He'd be sure to dump him off somewhere the first chance he got.
Meanwhile, Lin shifted uncomfortably back into his former position in the passenger's seat at the front of the car (there wasn't much any other way someone like him could move around a car.) He didn't spare much time wondering why Robert was so upset--he had a pretty good idea. Instead, he simply sat there languidly, his knees elevated and just close enough to his chest to be uncomfortable, and his tail cramped and bunched up in his seat and around his body, almost in a coil. There wasn't much to do with his grotesquely long arms, and so he kept these folded up across his chest, where they fought for space with his knees. It wasn't just because of his size that he made such an akward fit--he was ill-porportioned compared to most people. The car's interior was too small and too hot (they were being baked in their glass enclosure by the high sun) and they had all been in there for far too long, but Lin found a way to ignore the discomfort. He sat and thought, not so much in words, but in pictures, guided by the hand of the creator as quiet, desert scenery passed by along the road. He had not slept at all last night, and was very tired now. He had kept himself awake all that time by maintaining a car that did not need to be maintained. "It's best to be safe," he might have said in his defense. This was probably true, given the mileage they had already put on that car, but Lin had a different motive for keeping awake.
The sky was bright and clear, and stretched far behind the flat cliffs and plateaus that seemed to block much of the horizon. There were scattered shrubs and bushes all along the ground, and many rocks, all of which seemed to appear and dissappear like scratches on a film reel. The telephone wires above undulated endlessly from one pole to the next. Lin allowed their endless repitition of swooping lull him into a stupor.
Gradually, the bright colors of the sky inverted into a strange shade of purple. It was still quite bright, however, and now perhaps blindingly so, as patches of bright, pure white sat on the edge of the horizon directly adjacent to the deep, luminous purple, with virtually no middle ground between them. Lin noticed this, but was feeling too tired to care. The distant cliffs he had seen were now no longer present, having been replaced by pitch black outlines of their former selves. The world around him remained in motion as before, but soon appeared to swirl about him in all directions, instead of just one. He followed the spinning with his eyes mindlessly as if in a trance, but soon found he could not keep up. Soon he was not sure where he was in all this mess, much less where the car he had been sitting in had gone to--for its presence was no longer there. He felt the dull sensations of dizziness, powerlessness, and apprehension, but strangely, did not act on them. He had lost all sense of direction, and began to feel as if he were sitting alone.
The deep purple above seemed to be opening up for something, but Lin could not crane his neck upward to see it properly. From what he could make of it, it appeared as though a much darker color--pure black--was seeping out from somewhere and absorbing the sky. Long lines of blackness seemed to dribble forth from the large black pool in the sky like ink, or, perhaps, some kind of inhuman blood. They didn't stop when they touched the ground and seemed to slowly "bounce" or undulate toward Lin, looking like tentacles reaching out to grab him. Lin wanted to struggle, but it seemed to do him no good. What was he struggling against? Suddenly, he could see the sky above him--the mysterious patch of black which had hitherto escaped his gaze--and what he saw, what he could quite plainly see, disturbed him greatly, due to its stark, vivid contrast with the trancelike (though unpleasant) surroundings he had been subjected to so far. It had looked like a flower at first glance, and certainly, it would have continued to look a lot like one were it not for its vivid detail. Its center was yellow, like a flower's, but the discolored, glassy look about it made it seem a lot like an eyeball. The pupil looked strange and fractured, like an unfinished jigsaw. Outside of this, where a flower's petals would be was a complicated network of yellow vines or roots, and what looked like--but he hoped it wasn't--the severed limbs of many countless humans, deformed and discolored, worked into a twisted menagerie of growths within the vines, pulsing and throbbing along with a sort of reverberating harmony. It was sickening, like watching the soft bodies of unmorphed insects--maggots and the like--flail about helplessly. Worse, the mouths (or something similar) on the monstrosity opened themselves wide and bright red, and began shrieking at him in some shrill batlike tenor. They spoke only nonsense, but the noise was incredibly unpleasant and it painfully broke the relative silence he had so far experienced. The vines slowly extended toward Lin, and he struggled violently, determined not to be rended to pieces and assimilated by them like many others seemingly must have. They grabbed his arms...
Lin spilled out of the car when they pulled over and opened his door, and Robert and Thomas did their best to snap him out of his trance, or at least keep him from injuring himself in all his thrashings. The two of them could barely keep the large man under control, holding him down by his arms. Lin eventually came to, and the violence subsided. He broke down into tears. His already ugly face was discolored and looked quite unpleasant now. It was hard not to feel sorry for him.
"I shouldn't have let you stay up all last night. Next place we come across, I'll get you a room to sleep in. Something more comfortable than this, at least," said Robert.
"I doubt we'll find one the closer we get to Rendsfield," said Thomas, "All the rooms will be filled with refugees. I don't want to waste any time, anyway. We should just head straight to Rendsfield."
Robert was a little put off by this, "I don't care whether there's a room to spare. We'll camp out in the goddamn parking lot if we have to. I'm making sure he's taken care of. You don't like it, you can walk from here, but that won't get you to Rendsfield any faster."
Lin, not having paid attention to what anyone was saying suddenly interrupted them, looking soulfully at Thomas, the young man dressed as a priest. In a pitiful tone, he asked, "Why does God do this to me?"
Thomas looked back, puzzled, "What do you mean? What have you done to deserve this?"
"I don't know," Lin answered in a whisper.
Robert wasn't expecting Thomas to say anything that might suddenly give Lin peace of mind or reason for hope. In fact, he didn't exactly expect Thomas to say anything the least bit insightful. He did, expect from Thomas, however, something godly and uplifting, even if horribly saccharine. What he heard from Thomas was this: "I guess you're just nuts."
This tore up Robert inside, just as he felt it did to Lin. He yelled at Thomas to help Lin into the back of the car, and they swiftly headed for the closest place to rent a room--and they did find one with little difficulty, at the following exit a few miles down the road. The trip was silent, except for when Robert made simple pronouncements like, "This exit," or "We're here."
The location they picked was very small, and didn't seem to serve as much more than a rest point between the previous rest points and the next--all mere diversions between the larger rest points (themselves offshoots of the nearby towns.) As a result, the place was quite forgetable. There was a small restaurant and gas station in one building, and a motel in the building next to it. That was all. There was nothing special about the room they rented, not even the price, which was moderate. You could have painted the entire place in monochrome, and it would have looked no more washed-out and dull than it was. It was clean, however. The clerk, himself a washed-out and rather dull looking man in his middle years, took a strange glance at a sickly Lin in the waiting room as they were checking in. He asked, with little sense of empathy, "He's not going to cause any trouble, is he?"
"No," Robert said, not looking up from the forms he was signing. Robert didn't really know the answer any more than this man did. He was hoping Lin wouldn't cause another scene, that was all. It was just hope. It was only midday by the time they were in their room, but it would be much longer until Lin would be ready to sleep. In the meantime, they spent the day playing cards with a deck Thomas owned, watching the room's modest, snowy television, and reading from magazines and a newspaper they had purchased from next door. They had both lunch and dinner at the tiny restaurant, though they didn't eat much, and things calmed down enough through the day that they actually began conversation. It was nothing special, to be sure, and they avoided difficult subjects such as Lin or Rendsfield, or whether Thomas was really a Father or not. Thomas and Robert dominated conversation for the most part--Lin was engaged, but too tired to add in more than a word or gesture every once in a while. It was strictly limited to small talk--sports or unrelated current events, the quality of the food here (Robert reminisced almost humorously for a time about how many better steaks he'd had), or obscene cracks about the restauant's manager (who evidently was the same person as the clerk from the motel.) The stocky, balding manager looked over at them reproachfully every once in a while, but he was always too far out of range to have heard anything. There weren't a lot of people eating at the diner throughout the day, but just enough to produce a low, buffering murmur. It seemed in the manager's nature to be so weasly. Robert came to discover that Thomas had a very crude sense of humor--very unlike a priest, but very much like someone his age. It was not altogether surprising; everything else seemed to fit that way.
It was fairly late at night when Lin was sleeping silently in the hotel room. He hadn't made a ruckus getting to sleep, but he had tossed around for a while, causing the bed to creak every minute or so. Robert got off the sofa in the middle of the room once he was certain Lin was knocked out, and left the room quietly. The lights in the hallway were still on even though the outside through the windows was dark, and the place was still and quiet. Earlier in the night there had been many sounds of people moving and talking through the cheap walls of the building, and the stairway door, which was heavy, had thudded loudly many times by people who were hastily going back and forth. It was a little after midnight now, and all activity had ceased. You could hear the buzz of the lights overhead, and the mechanical roll as the air conditioning kicked in. Robert, rarely in a haste to get anywhere, held the door as he passed through into the echoing stairwell, and guided it softly to its resting place.
In the lobby he found Thomas sitting alone, smoking. Robert leaned in the doorway, facing him.
"Damn restaurant closed at eight," complained Thomas, leaning in at Robert, "This is the first dry night I've had in weeks."
"Maybe it'll do you some good," said Robert. He wondered if he'd tell Thomas about the half-bottle of scotch he still had.
"Whatever," Thomas said, breathing out some smoke,"I knew I should've stocked up on everything they had when I still had the chance." He sat back with his eyes blankly forward, away from Robert. His cigarrette dangled lazily from his right hand, off the couch and above the white linoleum floor.
Robert stopped wondering about the scotch, "I need a drink too. I've got a half-full bottle of whisky upstairs. You want to split what's left?"
"Yeah, that'll do," spoke Thomas, with full attention regained.
Thomas extinguished his smoke on a tray and followed Robert upstairs to the room, where Robert fished out his bottle. There were no glasses available in the room, so they settled with a fresh pair of disposable drinking cups. They headed back to the lobby, leaving Lin in peace. Robert poured equal portions into the cups after unwrapping them and placing them on a coffee table.
"Now that's class," he said, taking his cup.
"Fine drink, fine atmosphere," Thomas added. They shared this brief moment of humility in the silence of the sparsely decorated waiting room. After a few moments the by now infamous hotel clerk walked to his post at the front desk and sat there glaring at them. Before he had the opportunity to scold them they had retreated outside, and into Robert's car.
"That guy is a spook, man," Thomas was saying, "one moment you think you're alone, the next he's staring you in the face. Hey, turn on some lights, I can't see a thing."
"Lights don't work," said Robert, "I got this thing dirt cheap."
"Geez."
"Just enjoy the dark atmosphere. At least he can't look in here at us that way."
"Unless he's hiding in the backseat."
Robert took the scotch bottle by the neck, turned around in his seat, and started flailing it around clumsily in the back. He used more effort than was neccessary. His head faced Thomas, and was pushed up against the seat like a soldier shielding himself against artillery fire. With a sarcastic smile he asked, "Hear anybody say 'ouch?' "
"I get it, it get it," Thomas laughed, "Okay, knock it off."
Robert switched back to a more natural position. "I've seen too many surprises to get done in like that," he said.
"Yeah?" Thomas pondered this briefly, "What is your story, anyway? There aren't too many people who'd want to go to Rendsfield... like now--right now, anyway."
"Huh," said Robert, "Wouldn't know where to start. Don't always get asked that, you know?"
"I hear ya. What do you do for a living?"
"Haven't had a steady job for fourteen years. I used to be a cop, you know."
"Sure as hell don't act like any cop I ever met."
"Why do you think they fired me?" Robert said, smiling smugly. "I could say something similar about you."
Thomas laughed this off. "So, where at?" Thomas asked.
Robert hesitated for a moment, but he soon felt he could be honest with this kid. He could always deny it later, anyway, under the pretense of having been tipsy."Belias," he told Thomas.
"****. Are you serious?" Thomas was staring him in the face now. "So, fourteen years... you must've left just before everything went down."
"Yeah," said Robert. He'd leave things there.
"I'll let you in on a secret of mine," said Thomas, "I lived in Othello just before it went up in flames."
For a brief moment Robert thought Thomas was making fun of him, but Tom didn't have a stupid grin on his face. He seemed to be serious. Robert still wasn't convinced he was telling the truth, though, until something clicked, "That's why you wear the--"
"Yes."
The priestly uniform Thomas had on bore an especial resemblance to those who used to strut all around the religious capital Othello back in its days of existence, most of all in the rosary, which Thomas now unearthed for better viewing. It consisted of many beads of red, blue, green, and white, and its signature piece, a large circular pretzel-shaped and heavily embroidered ornamentation featuring gems of red, blue, and green orbiting a larger yellow gem. It was common knowledge that a properly trained Othello priest could fire off any given set of biblical stories with the aid of this kind of rosary. The rosary was a universal sign of conversion, though this particular design was more complex, and given only to certain priests. Thomas began showing off his experience with the piece, flipping and shifting its parts around with his fingers:
"For forty years wandered the sons of Ghenks through the vast lands of the Zinni, dispelled from the wicked empire of Khasisatra that would soon crumple. The Zinni offered little welcome, and neither did the Alecks further east, and so the sons of Ghenks went farther and farther east to find a land they would one day wrestle from nature and name after their patriarch, 'Ghenks.' "
The rosary doubled as a map of the world somewhat, and it was actually somewhat amusing to watch the pieces move from one side to the next, taking on the roles of places and characters.
"I could go on for days like this," said Thomas.
"Yeah, you'd better stop," said Robert, making it sound like a threat. He still wasn't sure what to think.
"So what have you been doing for money lately, since you don't have a job?" Thomas asked after a long pause.
"I do just about everything, I guess. I move from place to place with Lin, looking for a buck. Mind you, it's not always easy getting work for Lin with the way he looks, but I've been able to do a lot of things from dishwashing to construction, yard work, table waiting, night watch, you name it. As long as it doesn't require much skill or talent."
"How'd you meet up with Lin, anyway? Has he always been like that?"
"He was like that as long as I've known him."
"Why do you bring him along everywhere, then?"
Robert grunted, "It's not so much one of us dragging the other along, but the both of us together being pulled across the face of the earth. I met the guy a couple different times doing jobs in some town out in Tetalusk, or somewhere, and--I don't know--I guess we just got used to one another. Neither of us has a home, or a family tying us down, so we decided to hit the road together." Robert wanted to shift the topic away from himself for a while. He took another gulp of his dwindling supply of whiskey, let it sit with him, and then asked, "Why don't you tell me something about yourself? How do you make a living?"
"Same story, I guess."
"Somehow I can't picture you applying for a dishwasher's job in those robes."
"You'd be right, then. I don't do that kind of work. Money has a way of coming to me when I need it."
"Yeah, okay." Now Robert was sorry he asked. He wasn't ready to become witness to what sounded like Thomas's criminal exploits, so he didn't press on. He let the coming pause drag on into the minutes.
Their view from the inside of the dark car was of the desert wilderness, and of the road next to the parking lot. This flat, dark road that trailed into nothingness would be the path ahead of them tommorrow. It seemed ominous now, much in the same way anything begins to look ominous at night. This road was empty, but the air outside droned with the sound of unseen vehicles traveling for eternity. Robert thought of what sat at the end of that road, of the carnage there--Belias, Othello, and now Rendsfield. Somehow he felt that road might seem just as ominous even in the daytime.
There were always fables about a river or caravan that would lead lost souls from this world to the underworld. Why not a road, then? A modern, paved road. This road. Robert should have died long ago in Belias. He had never stopped cursing that fact. He, of all the people in that city, someone as terrible as himself was spared from death while literally millions of other, more worthy people had to die. It was as though he had stepped on every last one of their dying corpes to in order to preserve his pathetic life.
He was struck again with an image that had haunted his sleep for years--a real one he had lived through for six agonizing days. In the Merran sea he had floated for what seemed like forever with salt water pouring into his wounds. His only companion, an ex-lover of his, or more appropriately, the corpse of his ex-lover. Her face was discolored, blank, and swollen, growing even more grotesquely freakish with each passing day. Death would do no justice to her once beautiful body, as the salt water bloated her into a disgusting caricature, whose mocking, undying familiarity to Robert made him want to look away. He could not. The worst thing of all was that he had floated on her corpse in order to live. Wounded as he was, he could have barely kept his head above water, had it not been for her expiration. Her face distorted, but the eyes always constant, crying out in pain at him, accusing him of this henious, unforgivable breach of their partnership. Even once he had been rescued, he did not let go of her corpse easily, hideous and foul-smelling as it had become. He wasn't sure how he managed to live through those six days. They ran together in a nightmarish delirium. And yet, wherever Robert was, he could place himself again in those waters, all senses imbued with powerful clarity.
"You ever hear stories about trails, or highways into hell?" Thomas suddenly said.
Robert was dumbfounded. This was coincidental, he was sure.
"It's stupid, right?" Thomas continued, "Like, how people always want to bring a piece of the fantastical right in front of them, connecting old religion with unrelated parts of modern life?"
The relentless droning of distant highway cars seemed louder now, or maybe just more apparent. They sounded perhaps like massive, mechanical birds of prey swooping down harmlessly miles away, for now ignorant of Robert's current location.
"Stuff that it wasn't intended for," Robert edged Thomas on.
Thomas had been finishing his last bit of scotch. "Yeah," he said as he exhaled. "But it's interesting. I've always wondered what something like that would be like, you know, if it existed. What would the road look like, where would it start? What kind of scenery would you pass? Who would be your driver?"
"Yourself."
"What?"
"I would think you'd travel it alone," Robert said, "You're born alone, and that's the way you die."
"Maybe... but don't some people have a hard time coping with death? Like, no matter how horrible some guy's life is, even if he thinks he wants death, when it comes down to it, he'll hang on to life with everything he's got? He's still afraid of death, and he needs someone to guide him there... or maybe to turn him away until the time is right?"
Robert didn't know what to say. Was Thomas talking about him? How could he have this insight?
"How about this?" Thomas held his rosary again, and started reciting a prayer:
'Dear God in heaven, look after your children, least of which not this poor soul lost in the throes of the earth. For the soul of the beggar is the soul of a king, not greater or less, Yet, in the face of disastrous cirucumstance, the beggar cannot equally ensure his safety. Dear God, you know that survival is not a sin--' "
For some reason during the prayer, Thomas decided to grab Robert's right hand and press it against the amulet, along with his own, and it was at this point in the prayer that Robert pulled his hand away while also shoving Thomas back against the side of the window. He was getting more than a little creeped out by all this.
"What the hell's your problem?" Thomas shouted in surprise.
"I've never even heard that prayer before."
"It doesn't have to be in a book for it to be a prayer. What's wrong? You afraid of looking like a queer, or what?"
"No. Listen, why do you get all philosophical like that with me, but when Lin asks you for help, you just call him nuts?"
"Huh?" Thomas genuinely looked like he wasn't sure what Robert was talking about. "Oh," he suddenly said, "Because he didn't offer me anything to drink."
Robert rolled his eyes at the laughter that followed. It was becoming clear that any insight Thomas displayed had been unintentional. It was still incredibly strange.
Some lights were kicking on in the hotel, and the murmur of voices could be heard from within the building. All thoughts immediately led to Lin. Robert immediately left for the inside. Thomas followed.
There were more than a few people standing about in the hallway near the room where Lin was, all waiting impatiently for the manager to settle things down. He had already unlocked the door and headed in before Robert had enough time to reach him. From inside the room came Lin's voice--a terrible, harsh moaning--and the racket caused by his thrashing against furniture.
"What the hell is going on in here?!" the manager demanded, in an angry drawl. Lin, who had been standing upright in the other direction, turned swiftly and belted the fat man with his fist, knocking him off his feet and sending him reeling to the ground. He wasn't out cold, but didn't look like he was about to stand up again soon. Robert rushed in and tried to tackle Lin, but failed to catch the large man off balance, and Lin threw him off, against the wall. This surprised Robert, for it seemed to him through this display that Lin was working at full capacity, with all faculties intact. He wasn't sleepwalking, at least not now. Out of the corner of his eye Robert saw the figure of something in the room he hadn't noticed at first. Thomas, standing on the other side of the room in front of the doorway saw it also, and he stood frozen, staring into it. Silhouetted in the dark room by the night sky coming in from the room's sinlge, open window, was the tall figure of a naked man, gaunt and withered to the point of being skeletal. Where his head should have been was the head and beak of a stork. In porportion to his wingless body and the obscenely long scythe-like appendage that grew out from it, the stork-man's head was so small to have seemed almost non-existant. But it was there, staring blankly through two glistening marbles on either side.
Lin started at the figure, screaming, perhaps blaming it--whatever it was--for all his pain. When he reached it, it bounded swiflty from the open window using its long strawlike legs, seeming to vanish into the void of sky. Lin came too late, and tumbled over the side of the second-story window. Robert, who had followed shortly behind, grabbed Lin's arms, and Lin dangled there.
"Let go of me," Lin said to Robert, not looking up at him.
"I saw that bird-thing too, Lin. Hang on," Robert said back.
Thomas came up behind them, "I've seen that thing..." he said.
"Hear that? Tom saw it too. You're not nuts."
"Let go of my arms."
"I'm not letting you fall."
Lin was getting agitated, "I don't mean to hurt myself. Let go of my arms so I can climb down myself. It will be easier that way."
"Oh," said Robert.
"No, what I meant was, I've seen that man before," Thomas continued.
"You what?" Robert turned his head to look at Thomas.
"I just wish I could remember where."
"Robert," Lin interrupted.
"Right." Robert let go of Lin, and Lin expertly climbed down the face of the building to the ground, as if it were second-nature. It was. He sat down at the sidewalk in front of the building and waited.
Robert turned to properly face Thomas. "Are you screwing with me, or are you really acquainted with whatever it was we just saw?"
"I've never met it up close before, but I know I've seen it," he seemed to be thinking really hard, "I don't know... maybe it was just in a book somewhere."
"Whatever," Robert spat out, frustratedly. He stormed out of the room and into the hallway, but not before tossing some money in front of the manager, who was still doubled over in pain. Robert wondered if Lin hadn't busted something internally in this man.
"I'm calling the cops," the manager was just able to force out.
In the hallway all he got were stares. He didn't waste too much time there. He began to think that only he, Lin, and Thomas had seen the stork-man, though Neither Lin or Thomas seemed like they were of particularly sound mind. Robert had doubts of his own sanity. But they couldn't all have hallucinated the same thing.
Robert met with Lin outside, sitting next to him. "Did you get enough sleep?"
"Yes. For now. You?"
"Dead tired," Robert smiled. "I'll be fine. We can't stay here any longer, though."
"I know. I've been thinking... I want to get to Rendsfield as soon as possible."
"Think you can drive?"
"I can."
"Good. I don't think I'll be able to keep my eyes open as the night drags on."
A pause.
"I'm sorry for being a burden," Lin said abruptly.
"Don't worry."
"If it happens again, shoot me." Lin got up and headed for the car.
Robert got up and followed. "You know I wouldn't do something like that," he said.
Out of the front door of the motel rushed Thomas, dragging along his excessive luggage. "Hey!" he shouted, "You're not leaving without me, are you?"
"Right. Guess we've got to babysit this one further," Robert murmured. "Lin," he motioned to his partner, and they helped Thomas fasten and load the suitcase up top.
"I need to find out just what you've got in there," Robert complained, having finished the unwieldy task. "Of course, right now I guess we'd better move. He didn't actually call the cops, did he?" he asked, looking in Thomas's direction.
"Didn't waste time trying to find out. Best to be safe."
"It's not like we're wanted here, anyway," Robert concluded.
As Lin was getting into the driver's seat, he found Robert's empty scotch bottle from not too long ago. He held it, looking at Robert.
"Had a bit of a party in here," joked Robert. He slid swiftly into the passenger's seat, stretching his arms high and folding them behind his head. "It's trash," he finished.
Lin took the bottle by the neck and hurled it into the distance. It never made a sound, as if it forever stood suspended in mid-air.