Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
PART SIX
Toby ran on and on until the cobblestones ran out. Until the road turned to hastily-laid tar. Until all the bombed-out buildings were behind him. Until he passed a sign reading,
You Are Now Leaving The Township Of QUINSY
Come Again Soon!
If he'd been thinking at all, he might have wondered if he'd slipped through time and wound up back on Earth, but in another century.
Even if he'd considered that idea, proof soon presented itself that he hadn't escaped from Phobiopolis after all. Past the place where the remaining road fizzled out into a dirt path, there was another forest. The woods surrounding Stoma had been leafy and green, suggesting springtime. But here the trees were dark and bare. Mid-to-late Autumn? Either the seasons had changed, or the trees had all been strangled to death by the hundreds of turquoise vines that wound around their trunks here. The veinlike lines of blue were everywhere, entwining themselves with all plantlife, pulsing slowly to the time of a heartbeat.
Toby didn't even notice. The nice thing about running was that you could get lost in it. Just drown your thoughts in the sensation of bare soles hitting the ground. The fabric of pajamas rustling against your skin. The dampness on your pantlegs. The chill of the midnight air. Your inhales, your exhales.
Toby was as blank as he could be. until finally his body turned against him in mutiny. He stumbled and nearly fell. His footclaws clutched the soil to keep him standing.
He was motionless in the road for a minute or so. Lit only by the near-full moon overhead, the little white mouse looked like a half-erased smudge on a black page. The wind made the tree branches murmur, but the loudest sound in the forest was Toby's sobbing.
He had never, not in all his life, hated anyone more than he hated himself in that moment.
When he'd stopped running, all the soreness from his tired body rushed back in. And so did his memory.
He couldn't see the forest. All he could see was Piffle's last expression before the machine had blown that pink smoke into her eyes and evaporated her.
He'd left her to a fate arguably worse than death. He'd left her there. He hadn't even tried to save her. His only thought had been himself.
He'd saved his own life. He'd saved nothing.
Worst of all, worse than anything else, was the certain knowledge that, if she were here now, she would forgive him. Even for as short a time as he'd known her, he knew that was her nature. He could imagine her sweet smile telling him the words, 'Of course you ran, you were so scared. Don't feel bad. I don't blame you. Don't worry about me.'
Eyes blind with tears, the small mouse somehow stumbled across the road without falling. He sat with his back against the bark of a tree. He held his head in his hands. He felt everything and nothing all at once. He had never dreamed that shame could feel like this. As if he had no right or reason to exist.
He had seen sadness in stories. He had felt it for himself, and sometimes for others too. But this was a new species of sadness he'd never imagined before. Much deeper, like it was coring out his heart and spilling the scrapings all over the floor.
All those books he'd read and shows he watched about heroes... The hero who saves the day and rescues the girl. That was what happened. What was supposed to happen. This wasn't even about 'boy and girl': Piffle had been literally his only friend in this horrible, rotten land. This was about basic, blood-simple loyalty.
And the first time he'd laid eyes on her, he'd flinched back in disgust.
When she was in trouble, he ran.
'I never gave her that hug she wanted.'
That did it. That was all he could take. Toby's crying became completely uncontrollable and he clutched his knees to his chest to bury his face between them. His tears added even more moisture to his soggy pants. His nose was filled with the wet scent of that horrible factory. The place he'd left her. Toby rocked back and forth. Not a single thought was given to the fact that he was sitting here all alone, out in the open, completely helpless in a forest that probably contained just as many monsters as the one before. And it was the dead of night, too. This was exactly the situation he'd curled up shivering in his cave to keep himself safe from. Now here he was. If something with teeth came along and ate him, he wouldn't care. He knew he deserved it.
Eventually though, just like his body had shut down from exhaustion, so did his emotions. Toby cried until his eyes burned. Until his throat was worn raw. He cried until he was as hollow inside as an empty tin can.
He sat with his head on his knees on the side of the road for a very long time, until he dimly realized that his feet had gone numb.
Ears and fingertips, too. He started moving around to get some heat in them, not out of a conscious desire to stay alive (because he didn't care if he did), but because his body simply switched to autopilot. He rubbed his feet until he could feel a little bit of touch coming back to them. Then he looked around at where he was.
A tangle of cross-hatching. Dark black angry lines all around him, with pulsing turquoise nerves. Not a building or landmark in sight. Just the dirt road beside him. He'd have to find someplace to sleep for the night. Though one thing he was sure of, he couldn't walk anywhere. He doubted his run-down legs would even let him stand.
So, on hands and knees, he crawled farther along, looking for perhaps a bush he could shelter under. Maybe a hollow tree.
What he didn't expect to find was a nightlight.
The ground was glowing. Below some patchy grass at the side of the path, there was a soft but unmistakable gleam emanating from under the soil.
A memory sparked: the luminous stones in the spider's chamber. This one must be a bigg'un.
Toby thought it would help him see better. So he started to dig. He even apologized to the grass as he pulled it up.
Soon enough, after he'd gotten his hands dirty up to the wrists and made a pile of considerable size, he realized that whatever he was digging towards was a lot brighter and a lot farther down than he realized. Though he kept on shoveling up handfuls of the nearly-frozen dirt. His fingers were beginning to turn blue, but at least the physical activity kept his mind from dwelling on how much of a useless coward he was.
Toby suddenly shook.
No, wait. The ground had.
He stopped digging.
He felt it again. Something was moving below him. The light from his hole shone brighter.
Toby began to back up a bit.
Soon the murmur in the earth was a rumble. Tree branches above scraped and crackled. Toby felt a growing vibration running through him, strong enough to make his flesh jiggle.
Then the ground exploded.
Dirt clods flew in every direction as something radiant emerged from underneath. Toby instinctively scrambled backwards and threw his arm up in front of his face to shield his eyes. Whatever had come out, it was bright enough to shame the moon. Bright as a second sun.
And it was screaming: a deep, gurgling, demonic roar, directed skyward. The bellow shook the trees and punched Toby's eardrums. This was the exultant howl of something that had been trapped in the cold darkness for an unimaginable length of time and was finally free, in defiance of whatever had put it there.
Toby wondered if he had just unleashed something that had been buried for a reason. (It didn't surprise him. He had certainly proven how good he was at making everything worse.)
The thing's glow faded, and when Toby's blinking eyes began to adjust, they made out an equine shape silhouetted against the moon.
But as it became clearer, Toby realized this was not a living thing. These were the bones of something long dead. The horse's skull looked all around at the trees and the moon. It stamped its hooves against the grass. The skeleton was charred completely black, like it had crawled out of a furnace after someone had tried to incinerate it. Soot flakes fell as it shook the remnants of its tail. Toby could see each one of its blunt, blackened teeth.
The light hadn't come from a stone, but from within this hellish thing. Deep inside its body, some kind of inner illumination seeped through. It was every color of a Christmas display. Gem green, fierce orange, cold blue, severe red. Deep in the sockets of its eyes were two white pinpricks, where the brightest light of all inside its brainpan showed through.
Toby stared at it. He trembled a bit, but his face displayed no emotion. He had released this creature. There was not a doubt in his mind that it existed to kill, but he'd used up all his fear long ago. If this thing meant to devour him, he would let it. What right did he have to live anyway?
The thing spotted him.
Toby realized that, miraculously, he did still have a tiny bit of fear left in him.
The dead horse shook more dirt from its glowing bones and approached the small boy who had exhumed it.
Its mouth opened. Toby stared at those teeth. They were so flat and square. They would shatter his arms and legs like pretzel sticks when it started to eat him.
But it didn't start eating him. Instead, in a disused but clear voice, it spoke, "Thank you, Sire."
Toby had cringed himself into a tiny ball, but now he peeked past his sleeve. The horsemonster was standing there quietly, looking down at him. Awaiting a response.
Toby opened his mouth but his larynx was painfully tender. "Y-you're wel-come?" he rasped.
The skeletal beast tucked one foreleg beneath itself and bowed. "I owe you my freedom," it said in a rich Basso Cantante.
Toby sat up a little straighter. That voice was like if someone had stolen the sounds of a hundred different radio announcers and distilled them into a quintessential concentrate. "What are you?" he dared to ask.
"I am a parasomnic construct," it said with a bit of pride. "I was born of nightmares. Spawned from the very substance of this land. I exist to frighten. And I used to do so quite well. Extraordinarily well." It paused. "...Too well."
"What do you mean?" Toby reflected that if it hadn't been for his utter emotional exhaustion, he would have been fleeing and flailing in hysterics by now. The horsemonster was clearly not bragging by calling itself a nightmare elemental. At any other moment in Toby's life, the mere sight of it would have scared the blood in his veins to ice.
The parasomnic construct turned its face away a little. Shame crept into its voice. "I was a monster. Too good of a monster. Like other constructs, I spent my time habitually terrorizing and incinerating any souls I could get close enough to. There were others like me. We would hunt in packs. We would find dreamers and tear them limb from limb. The blood was delicious. I cannot say I was happy, because I had and have no soul to feel with. But I was well-satisfied. I was performing my function to the best of my abilities."
It raised its head slightly higher. "I was a perfect nightmare."
Then its head lowered, and it pawed at the ground with its hoof. "Eventually, they put a stop to me. I have always been a skeleton, but once upon a time I was lightning-white. Gorgeous and terrible. Some of the souls whom I had previously terrorized fell upon me. They chained me and lit me with some unknown magic fire that burned me from the inside out. I had never felt before, but in that moment I felt pain. I struggled. I killed many of them, only for them to return and continue holding me down. I burned to ash that night. Then they buried the ash in this very ground and I found myself unable to regenerate."
Toby wondered how long this beast had been waiting to tell someone its tale. Despite the fact that it was admitting to actions of wanton evil, Toby felt less afraid of it now. 'It seems remorseful,' he thought.
"In the dirt, I realized that anger is the easiest, earliest emotion. For many years, my existence was no more than hatred. I hated those that had imprisoned me. I could not dream, yet I dreamed of my revenge. Every iota of my being yearned for blood. For the ripping of limbs. For the gushing of hearts."
Toby reconsidered. 'Maybe not.'
"Yet I could not have what I wanted. Over time, I came to realize that there was nothing I could do to accomplish my freedom. So my ashes waited in the soil. My rage slowly died, as it was useless to me. And, since there was nothing else to do, I listened.
"I do not know for how long I have been underground, only that I have heard so many conversations pass down this road that it changed me in ways profound. I found myself capable of empathy. I still do not exactly 'feel', but I became aware that the souls I had preyed upon in my heyday did not enjoy being preyed upon. There was no thought to 'good' or 'wrong' in those times, I simply did what I was meant to do. I had no more thought for the feelings of my victims than the feelings of numbers that are fiddled about with to solve sums.
"Over many years, I realized that I was grateful to those who had imprisoned me. My stillness had allowed me time to learn. I understood living things now, and I understood myself."
It leaned in close to Toby and he felt its warm breath on his hair. "You have given me what I have desired for longer than I can describe. I have listened and waited, and wished for someone to release me so I could live in this world again and become something new. I would like to begin my reemergence by offering myself to you as a servant."
Toby blinked. His immediate reaction was to decline. "No! I mean... I mean, I'm glad you want to be better. That's very brave of you. But I don't deserve any thanks. I... I did something horrible tonight."
"Worse than the things I've done?" it asked.
That gave Toby pause.
Here he was hating himself for abandoning Piffle, yet standing in front of him was a being that had just admitted to reveling in years of murder and torture. Toby was willing to trust in its good intentions for now. Maybe, he dared to think, in time he could forgive himself too.
If he thought there was the slightest, most remote possibility of rescuing Piffle, then that would have been his first suggestion. But that was a futile hope. He knew nothing about this place and he knew he was not the hero he saw in stories. He was a weakling, a bungler and a crybaby. The best he could hope to do was tell someone else what had happened to Piffle in the hopes they'd know how to save her. And then leave this world forever before he made anyone else's life worse.
The mouse didn't say anything for quite a while, so the parasomnic construct snorted gently in his direction. "Sire?"
Toby blinked and looked back into the glimmering embers inside the horse-thing's sockets. If he could get used to Piffle's eyes, he supposed he could get used to these ones as well.
"Please reconsider," it gently pled. "I know that I want to be something other than what I was born as, but I know only what I've overheard. I have no practice being anything but a monster. I require instruction," it explained. "If you allow me, perhaps I can put my nature to good use. Is there anyone you know of that deserves a torturous death?" it asked with a hint of glee.
"No, no!" Toby said, waving his hands. "Nothing like that. Actually, I was just thinking about... a friend. Someone I failed. I know I can't help her, but I'm trying to find someone who can. You said you've overheard a lot?"
It nodded.
"Have you heard about a wizard named Aldridge?"
"Oh yes, many times."
Toby sat up a little straighter. "Good! I need to find him so he can send me home. And while I'm there, I'll tell him about my friend. If anyone can help her, he can. Take me to him, please."
Even without facial features, the horse-thing perfectly conveyed chagrin. "Well... that is to say... I've heard many legends. I know he lives on a mountain, but it is two very different things to see a mountain in the distance and to know how to get there. There is a reason so few reach Anasarca. Even straight paths in this land are not always straight paths. Do you follow?"
Toby snarled a little. "Then... do you know where we can find someone who's been there? Or who could guide us there? Like, an adventurer? Someone fearless?"
Its ears perked up at that word. (Actually, it didn't have ears on its bare skull. But its glow took on the vague outline of a living horse, giving it the aura of where things like ears and a tail would be.) "I have heard many passers-by say that the most fearless furson in all of Phobiopolis resides in a place called Phlogiston."
"Allright. Do you know where that is?"
"Not precisely," it admitted. "But it is considerably closer than Anasarca, and I have gleaned the general direction and distance. I believe I can make an educated guess."
"Okay then. I'd like to try," Toby requested.
"Absolutely, sire!" The horse-thing trotted in place cheerfully. "After spending what I assume to be several centuries motionless, nothing appeals to me more than starting out on a long journey as soon as possible! We can begin right this second if you desire!"
Toby actually smiled a little. After all the heartbreak and horror and self-hated he'd been through tonight, the last thing he'd expected to find at the end of all of it was a bit of hope.
He pushed against the ground and tried to leverage himself into a standing position, but failed immediately. His legs were too weak and his toes were numb again.
"Allow me, sire," the horse-thing said.
Toby barely kept himself from yelping as it suddenly leaned in close and scooped him right up onto its skull. It raised its head and sent him sliding along its bumpy spine.
Toby ended up splayed across the horse-thing's withers. He clenched himself in place to stop from falling, yet simultaneously tried to keep any part of himself from directly touching the brittle, ashy bones. Talking to this thing, he could handle. Touching it was another matter.
"You are probably uncomfortable up there. Let me make you a proper saddle."
The horse-thing grunted and dug its hooves into the soil, concentrating. Toby freaked out a bit more. Especially when he felt flesh bubbling into existence just beneath him. Coarse fur and gristle bloomed out of the horse-thing's bones to produce a cushion he could sit on.
"Better, sire?"
The texture was a lot like the curly end of an especially-fatty bacon strip. But it still beat bare, lumpy vertebrae. "Yes, actually. Thank you."
The mouse's gratitude noticeably delighted it. "You are most welcome, Sire!"
Toby felt weird about being called that. "Actually, my name is..."
He panicked for a moment. What the heck was his name!?
Oh no! That forgetting-thing that Piffle had warned him about was starting already! But relief flooded through him as he remembered the many times Piffle had called after him. Even in her absence she was still helpful. "My name is Toby de Leon." Thinking back, much of his past life flowed back into him, recalled from when he'd explained it all to Piffle.
"A wonderful name," the horse-thing complimented.
'I can't just keep thinking of it as 'the horse-thing' forever,' Toby thought to himself. "Do you have a name too?"
"Not originally, no," it said. "Although I've heard many names spoken by the people who've passed along this road, and if I had to choose one for myself..." it trailed off. "I've thought about this for a very long time; give me a moment to make sure I'm absolutely certain."
"Allright," Toby said.
After a moment or so, the horse's skull bobbed up and down in a resolved nod. "The name I should like to be known as is George Charles Atkinson."
Toby was more than a little surprised by that. He would have expected something more intimidating. Like Nightripper or Bloodsteed. Something more appropriate for a beast that looked like something Satan might ride on. Although he supposed it made sense in a way. A civilized name was fitting for someone wanting to lead a new civilized life. "Allright. Pleased to meet you, George."
"Pleased to meet you as well, Sire Toby."
Toby was about to ask him to stop calling him that, but figured if George enjoyed saying it, he might as well let him.
"Shall we be off?" George asked.
"How long do you think it'll take?"
"If I can still accomplish my old top speed, then from what I can deduce by my eavesdroppings, we might make it there by morning if I gallop all night long!" He sounded as if nothing could possibly please him more.
"That's good." Toby nodded, then suddenly felt a wraith of drowsiness settle upon him. "Do you need me for anything else though? Because I just now realized how completely wrecked I am. I think I might fall asleep right here against your neck."
"Then let me make it easier for you," George offered.
Toby watched as more charcoal-colored flesh bubbled up from the cracks in the construct's bones. It formed along George's shoulders into a rough rectangle with a raised edge that Toby could use as a pillow. A meat divan. The mouse hesitantly ran a paw over it. The hair was stringy and greasy, and the flesh itself felt like boiled eggplant. But Toby realized his eyelids were barely keeping themselves open at this point. His tiredness, after taking a break, had now decided to pound him with all its might. With a wince, he laid himself down on George's makeshift mattress.
"Is it to your liking?"
Toby didn't want to say that it actually felt pretty nauseating, and it smelled like a well-used dishcloth, so he simply mumbled something approximately yes-like.
"Then may I begin?"
Another mumble. Toby's eyes were already closed.
They opened again pretty quickly though when George started running. In an instant, Toby went from stationary to feeling as if he were strapped to the hood of a car barreling down the freeway. Even that was inadequate to describe it. George's speed made his own panicked run through the factory feel like slow-motion in comparison. This was inconceivable velocity. Sparks flew from the road wherever George's hooves struck a rock or refuse. Toby hung onto the horse's neck for dear life.
Though he realized a moment later that he didn't have to. The undead flesh had some kind of magic to it that was holding Toby perfectly in place, yet without feeling sticky. Toby didn't question it. He didn't have the brainpower to. His body was fiercely insisting that even though he was lying down on the back of a demonic skeletal monsterhorse, the most important fact was that he was lying down, and therefore sleep had damn well better be imminent.
Toby watched the black-and-turquoise trees fly past in a moonlit blur. The drum of the wind in his ears reminded him of the sound of beach waves.
If you had told him at any point in his life that he'd one day be so weary he'd fall asleep riding on top of a literal nightmare, Toby would have called you completely insane.
Yet he was already snoring.
*****