Nightspawn Read Free Page B

solemn face (only a tic in the eyelid to betray the boiling glee) caught like a minor moon in the shadowed pane. Confronted everywhere by such an unsettling abundance of twins and triplets, what conclusions they must have reached, those poor wayfaring strangers. Did the islanders have a genetic strain, unknown to science, which multiplied to grotesque abundance each little fish within the womb? Was the ground a warren of passageways by which these grinning urchins scurried from corner to identical corner, intent on driving the foreigner away gibbering and mad? Oh, the times I had. Consider, then, my plight when I found myself hopelessly lost in the very streets where I had laughed at the helplessness of others. Covered with sweat, nerves in tatters, a hot scald squeezing my bladder, consider all this and pride besides and there I was, reeling through the village, calm confidence twitching on my haughty mouth while my little strabismic glinty green eyes searched on all sides for a set of steps, a rickety but welcoming doorway. At length I could go no further, and sat down in the burning dust beneath a ruined tree. I was finished. In a moment they would arrive with their glittering gats. My bowels writhed in anticipation of the bullets. Then I lifted my head and looked to the other side of the street. These things are so simple. I climbed the steps, on my knees I suspect, crawled along the corridor and flopped into the room. Erik lay spreadeagled on the bed like a dead horse, his mouth open and eyes closed. He was naked. I looked at his great pink lolling sex where it reared out of its bush, and then I went galloping across the room, through the open windows and out to the roof. I struck the parapet of the wall with a soft plop, and found myself gaping down into a ragged garden two storeys below. A startled turkey gobbled and fled out of my range, crimson comb aquiver, a wise bird but too wary, for my stomach was not yet ready to give up its treasures, not yet. I turned away from the garden and wiped the sweat from my eyelids. Andreas sat in a deckchair beside the window and gazed at me placidly, his hands folded in his lap.
    ‘Ah,’ he murmured. ‘The white man.’
    I nodded to him.
    ‘Hello.’
    I went back into the room, my lips forming the German’s name. He was gone. The bed still bore the imprint of his bones, but of the man himself, there was not a sign. In the second or two while I stood there staring, my mind went back to search for a lapse in the time I took to gag above the garden. Andreas came in and found me with one finger raised, the smile of the ‘r’ in Erik still lingering on my jowls.
    ‘Has something happened?’ he asked.
    I turned to him, and my teeth, of their own will, clenched themselves. I was not capable of telling him about that blood and death. It was a shyness almost.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing, I felt sick for a minute. Where has he gone? He was here a minute ago.’
    ‘Was he? You are very pale.’
    He was humouring me. I wanted to kick him in his fine gleaming teeth.
    ‘For Christ’s sake yes, he was here, on this bloody bed.’
    He went to where their bags lay in a corner with their guts out on the floor. I watched his fingers scrabbling inside one of them, and for an instant I glimpsed the beasts. Later they were to come in herds. He drew out a flat leather flask, unscrewed the cap ( eek eek )and filled it to the brim with tawny liquor.
    ‘Here,’ he said, bringing to me the little cup. ‘Drink this.’
    The brandy spread its thin hot roots along my nerves. I sat down on the bed. Eek eek, said the cap. Andreas watched me with a sidelong look as he put away the flask. I began to whistle soundlessly, tapping a finger on my knee. The cripple sat down on one of the straight-backed chairs and carefully arranged his misshapen limbs to fit the severity of the wood.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked irritably.
    He continued to study me with mild curiosity. At length he