14.01
“Here!” Green Eyes called out. “Found one!”
Wood popped, snapped, and creaked as I approached. I started to duck low, beneath the lowest branches of the trees that clustered in the corner of one back yard, but changed my mind. Closing my eyes, I walked through the tangle. Where ice-laden branches bent to the point of breaking, they hooked themselves on the holes in my body. I could feel the wood shift, much as it had when it had been gaining footholds in my flesh, crawling, shifting position, the little pieces I took in finding places at the edges of the gouges, holes, and other wounds.
“Goblins, probably,” Green Eyes observed.
“Safe bet,” I said.
“Huh?” Evan asked. He started to make his way through my body, and started to poke his head out, when I covered his eyes.
It quickly turned into a game of whack-a-mole, as he shifted position, poked his head out, and was blocked before he could take in the image. “You’re not letting me see this? You know the kind of horrible gunk I’ve seen? Old gobby Mcnailface back there? People dying? I bit a man’s eye. You going to tell me this is-”
He managed to worm his head out and around the edge of my hand.
“-blegh,” he said, before retreating back inside.
The body was arranged in the tree, more akin to an octopus than a human being, if it had even been human to begin with. Every limb was broken in multiple places, joints popped out of sockets, skin a bruised purple-black where it had been stretched, wrapped around the thorny tree branches. Fingers and feet had been broken and bent backward, wrapped around and nailed in place, not with any precision, but more ‘nail until it stays where it is’. Branches behind the body had been broken off, the points of wood penetrating back and buttocks to hold up the corpse.
The least broken arm had come free, and dangled at the side, long since frozen. Bits of bark and splinters under the nails marked where the dying individual had tried to claw free. Fresher than the blood under the nails, marking it as one of the last things the individual had attempted.
Maybe it was better that Evan hadn’t looked long enough to see the smaller details.
“They didn’t even eat him,” Green Eyes said.
“Wasn’t the point,” I replied.
“What was the point?”
“I guess they wanted people to stumble onto it,” I said. “Sunrise is soon, and goblins can be stupid. Maybe their desire to horrify and alarm overrode their desire to avoid karmic backlash.”
“Hm. It’s more than that, isn’t it?” Green Eyes asked.
I glanced at her.
“If they were that stupid, they wouldn’t have lasted this long.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it’s a crazy night. Or do you think there’s more going on?”
“There was this one place near the cistern, back in the dark waters, this one place that I could swim to where the bodies sometimes collected, a bunch of goblins made displays like this. I could get food there if I was quick enough to grab the bodies before they fished them out. But the reason they did the displays, I think, is they were marking territory.”
“You think that’s what these goblins are doing?” I asked. “Staking a claim?”
I cut one branch with the Hyena, and bent another until it snapped. The body was stiff with cold, but it still flopped forward, mangled head on my shoulder, skin cracking and breaking as much as it bent, where the joints weren’t connected. Like a child’s oversized stuffed animal, or a macabre dance partner.
“Going by what I know?” Green Eyes asked. “Sure.”
“Meaning they’re planning to stay a while,” I said.
She didn’t reply to that.
I moved through the thicket, carrying the body, and laid it out on the road.
The road, at least, was black. If any blood flowed, it wouldn’t raise suspicion.
I glanced at the satyrs, who were hanging a distance away. Keeping watch, supposedly. Mostly talking.
Kneeling, I unzipped the remains of the corpse’s jacket, then tore off a strip.
I laid the strip across the eyes.
“How come?” Green Eyes asked.
When I looked up, she was lying atop a snowbank, looking down at me and the body.
“It’s not intact enough for me to do the polite thing and close the eyes,” I said.
“Doesn’t work anyway,” Green Eyes said. “The body keeps them open. It gets weird if you try, and they keep opening their eyes. I learned pretty fast, you have to look at them as meat. Once they’re dead they’re gone.”
I cut, using the Hyena.
Green Eyes kept talking, settling her chin on the back of one hand. “Gotta look for the light in people’s eyes, instead. That’s where the person is. Not always good, but still people.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Might be a little biased, given my situation, but I like the idea that the person is inside. Not the body.”
“Why do you think I like you, you knob-head?”
Evan made a sound, like he was suppressing a laugh.
I found that several ribs were cracked. I cut away flesh, fat and connective tissue, a cut along one spot, moving on after the initial incision. By the time I returned to the first spot, the Hyena’s tendency to twist and exaggerate the wounds had pulled flesh away for another slice.
Once the broken ribs were exposed enough, I pried them free. I inserted the new ones in alongside the old, broken ribs.
“You don’t want to eat?” I asked.