He sat back down, holding it in his lap.
He tried his word games again, his imaginary vocabulary test, but he couldn't remember what letter he'd reached last. The shiftings inside his body made it hard to concentrate. It seemed important that he keep track of them. The top of my right foot…the nape of my neck…
Eric leaned forward, scratched at his left calf, felt a lump there. He stared down at it, watching it flatten itself out, then bunch together again slightly lower on his leg. It was nearly the size of a golf ball. When he probed at it with his finger, there was that familiar sense of numbness.
The incision wouldn't hurt, he knew; it was the pulling forth that would make him cry out. As he sat thinking this, he noticed another bulge. This one was on his left forearm, much smaller than the others, about three inches long and thin as a worm. He touched it, and it vanished, burrowing down into his flesh.
All this was too much for Eric, of course: he couldn't just sit quietly, watching these things appear and disappear across his body. Something needed to be done, and there was really only one solution, wasn't there?
He lifted the knife from his lap, leaned forward, began to cut.
Somehow, the trail up the hill seemed to have grown much steeper since Stacy'd last climbed it. As they made their way ever higher, she started to pant, her clothes clinging to her sweaty body. She had a cramp in her side. Mathias appeared to sense her distress, and-even though they were nearly to the top-he stopped so she could rest. He stood beside her, staring off across the hillside while Stacy struggled to catch her breath.
Her heart had just begun to slow, when the voices started.
Wo ist Eric? Wo ist Eric?
They turned, looked at each other.
Eric ist da. Eric ist da.
"Oh Jesus," Stacy said. "No."
Eric ist gestorben. Eric ist gestorben.
They both began to run, but Mathias was faster. He was already in the clearing by the time she reached it. She found him there, gesturing, speaking the same word over and over again with great sternness. In his fatigue and distress, he'd fallen back upon his native language."Genug," he kept saying." Genug."
It took Stacy a moment to understand that he was addressing Eric. There was a ghoul in the clearing-that was what she first thought-some new horror spawned from the mine's mouth: blood-streaked, naked, wild-eyed, with a knife in its hand. But no, it was Eric. He appeared to have stripped much of his skin off his body. It was hanging from him in shreds; Stacy could see his leg muscles, his abdominals, a glint of bone at his left elbow. His hair was matted along the right side of his head, and she realized he'd cut off his ear.
Mathias's voice rose toward a yelclass="underline" "Genug, Eric! Genug! " He was gesturing for Eric to set down the knife, yet it seemed clear to Stacy that Eric wasn't going to do this. He looked terrified, savage with it, as if it were some stranger who'd been attacking him.
"Eric," Stacy called. "Please, sweetie. Just-"
Then Mathias was stepping forward, reaching to yank the knife from Eric's hand.
Stacy knew what was going to happen next. "No!" she shouted.
But it was already too late.
Once Eric started, it had been impossible to stop.
First there'd been that bulge in his calf, and that was easy: he'd made a single short cut with the knife, and there it was, right beneath his skin, a tightly coiled ball of vine, no bigger than a walnut. He'd pulled it from his body, tossed it aside. Then he'd started in on his forearm. This was when things became a bit more complicated. He made a small incision where he'd glimpsed the wormlike bulge, and found…nothing. He probed with the tip of the knife, then enlarged the bloody slit, drawing the blade in a smooth line from wrist to elbow. The pain was intense-he was having a hard time maintaining his grip on the knife-but his fear was worse. He knew the vine was in there, and he had to find it. He kept cutting, digging deeper, then moving laterally, pushing the knife beneath the skin on either side of the incision, prying it upward, peeling it back, until he'd managed to expose his entire forearm. There was more and more blood-too much of it-he could no longer see what he was doing. He tried to wipe it away with his hand, but it just kept coming. His skin was hanging from his elbow like a torn sleeve.
There was an abrupt clenching in his right buttock, as if a hand had grabbed him there, and he pushed himself to his feet, dropping his shorts and underwear, twisting to stare. He couldn't discern anything, though, and was about to begin probing with the blade, when he felt movement in his torso, just above his belly button, something shifting slowly upward. He quickly switched his attention to this spot, slashing at it with the knife. The vine was right beneath the surface here; a long tendril tumbled forth, more than a foot of it, dangling from his wound, twisting and turning in the air, blood running down it, spattering into the dirt. The tendril was still attached to him, rooted somewhere higher in his body. He had to draw the knife nearly to his right nipple before the thing slipped free of him.
Then it was his left thigh.
His right elbow.
The back of his neck.
There was blood everywhere. He could smell it-a metallic, coppery odor-and knew that he was getting weaker, moment by moment, with its loss. Part of him understood this was a disaster, that he needed to stop, needed never to have begun. But another part was aware only that the vine was inside his body, that he had to get it out, no matter what the cost. They could sew him up when they returned; they could wrap him in bandages, tie tourniquets around his limbs. The important thing was not to stop before he was through, because then all this pain would be for nothing. He had to keep cutting and slicing and probing until he was certain he'd gotten every last tendril.
The vine was in his right ear. This seemed impossible, but when he reached up and touched the lumpy mass of cartilage, he could feel it there, just beneath the skin. He wasn't thinking anymore; he was simply acting. He began to saw at the ear, keeping the knife flat against the side of his head. He'd started to moan, to cry. It wasn't the pain-though that was nearly unbearable-it was how loud it sounded, the blade tearing its way through his flesh.
Next came his left shin.
His right knee.
He was peeling the skin back from his lower rib cage when Mathias reappeared in the clearing. Time had started to move in a strange manner, both very slow and very fast at once. Mathias was yelling, but Eric couldn't grasp what he was saying. He wanted to explain what he was doing to the German, wanted to show him the logic of his actions, yet he knew that it was impossible, that it would take too long, that Mathias would never understand. He had to hurry-that was the thing-he had to get it out of him before he lost consciousness, and he could sense that this terminus was fast approaching.
Then Stacy was in the clearing, too. She said something, called his name, but he hardly heard. He had to keep cutting-that was what mattered-and it was as he was bending to do this that Mathias rushed toward him, reaching for the knife.
Eric heard Stacy shout, "No!"
He was shaky-he didn't feel entirely in control of his body-he was reacting by reflex. All he intended to do was fend Mathias off, push him away, clear enough space to finish what he'd begun. But when he threw out his hands to do this, one of them was still holding the knife. It came as a shock, how easily the blade punched into the German's chest, slipping between two of his ribs, just to the right of his sternum, sticking there.