8 Gone is the Witch (29 page)

“No
, I swear. I was just kneeling over him when his tail came up and slapped me upside the head.”

“Maybe it’s just muscle
spasms,” said Tony.

As he said that,
the tail moved again.

“See!
I told you!”

“Is he alive?” I knel
t down to get a closer look.

Tony
shook his head. “I don’t see how. He’s not breathing.”

Ursula, sometimes more practical than I give her credit for, reached out and kicked
Jerome in the side. The scaly little peapod lurched as if zapped with defibrillator paddles. He opened his eyes and gasped for air, expanding his withered chest like a balloon.

“
Jerome!” Carlos grabbed him under the arms and pulled him in for a hug. Already, Jerome’s natural color was returning. He exhaled a lungful of air and drew in another, filling in the shriveled wrinkles throughout his entire body.

“Carlos
. Ease up! Let him catch his breath.”

“I’m
sorry, Lilith. I’m just so happy!” He squeezed Jerome one last time before releasing him.

Jerome
fell back onto the sand, but was looking better with every passing second. Eventually, Carlos stood and helped the green peapod back onto his feet.

“
Jerome.” I gave the dog-eared driget a pat on the head. “What the hell happened to you? We thought you were dead.”

He puffed
out his puny chest and beat on it like a gorilla. “Jerome hold breath. Keep sand out.”

“You h
eld your breath all that time?”

“
All the time. No breathe.”

“But how
?” asked Carlos. “I mean you didn’t––”

“
Suspended animation,” I said. “I read about that. He put himself in stasis.”

“
What’s that?”

“
Biologically speaking, it’s a form of spontaneous hypoxia: metabolic flexibility at the cellular level. He used carbon monoxide to reduce the oxygen tension in his blood, in effect, dialing down his heartbeat and respiratory rate to virtual zero.”

“You mean like
temporary hibernation?”

“
No, more like temporary dead.”

“Dead
.” Carlos looked at Ursula, his brows tightly gathered. “You brought him back when you kicked him. How did you know to do that?”

She shrugged a little.
“I saw my Dominic do it.”

“To who?”

“The television.”

“Nice,” said Carlos,
and he nodded. Jerome had no idea what that was, but appeared equally satisfied with her answer. He mimicked Carlos’ nod, and the two of them turned and walked off, their heads bobbing like dashboard Chihuahuas.

After
dusting off, Tony, Ursula and I picked up our stash of brobble fruit and followed the two back into the Dark Forest.

It was s
hortly afterwards when Ursula pulled on my shirtsleeve and whispered in my ear.

“Really?
” I said. “Not even once today?”

“I had not the urge.”

“All right then.” I called up to the others. “Hey guys! Hold up. We have to take a break.”

Carlos
said, “You can’t be tired already.”

“
It’s not me. It’s Ursula. She has to go.”

“Go
where?”

“You know.” I jacked my thumb up
and gestured into the woods.

“
What?”

“PEE!
Damn it! She has to pee. All right?”

I saw him and
Jerome exchange stupid grins. “Can’t she pee on the go? That’s what we do.”

I shook my head
in exasperation. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

Tony
said, “Okay, let’s get on with this.” He nodded into the woods. “Ursula, go do what you gotta do. Take your time.”

She scurried off like a rabbit and disappeared into the trees.
While waiting on her to return, I took a seat on a fallen tree trunk to tighten my moccasin lace. Tony, perhaps needing to give his ankle a rest, sat down beside me. Carlos and Jerome were just about to join us, when we heard a ghastly scream echo from the woods.

“What was that?”
asked Carlos.

I stood and palmed my chest to quell my
racing heart. “That’s Ursula!”

Chapter Sixteen

Tony and Carlos tore
off into the woods. I ran after them as fast as I could, but lost them in the thick of the undergrowth. By the time I caught up with them, I found they had rendered the situation under control. Mostly.

“Stay back
,” Tony warned, splaying his hand to stop me as I stumbled out of the brush and onto a patch of open ground behind him. They had cornered an old man against a wedge of boulders and held him there in a stalemate.

He seemed harmless
, yet his dark, hooded eyes told me different. I kept my distance. Tony and Carlos tightened their semi-circle around him. Movement to the left caught my eye. It was Ursula, stepping from the shadows into the clearing.

“Ursula!” I reached out and she ran into my arms. “Are you all right?”

“Aye. Fine, sister. T`was a fright is all.”

“
Did he hurt you?”

“I didn’t hurt her,” the old man cawed. “But she done scared the bejeebers out of me, I can tell ya that! Whaddya mean by sneakin` up on an old man?”

“Quiet,” I said. I moved in for a closer look. He appeared unarmed, save for a sharpened piece of tree branch he clutched in his gnarled right hand. I imagined he’d been using it to stoke the campfire burning in the clearing. There a charred dog-sized rat, skinned and skewered over a makeshift scaffold of twigs and vine, sizzled over a low flame.

“
Who are you?” I asked.

“Name’s Yammer
.” He gestured toward Jerome with a nervous twitch. “That creature there, he’s dangerous, ya’ll. He’ll kill ya soon as look at ya.”

Carlos laughed. “Who, him?”

“Yeah him. That there’s a driget. A bloodthirsty carnivore is what he is. You got a gun, you ought to shoot him.”

“I’m not going to shoot him. He’s my friend.”

“Friend? You fool-hearted pansy. Ya can’t make friends with a driget. Everyone knows that.”

“I can and I did.”

Yammer gave a nod toward the fire. “They is good eaten ya know, drigets are. Taste like chicken.”

“
What?” Carlos holstered his gun and pulled his bolo. “I bet you taste like chicken, old man.”

Tony
said, “Carlos, don’t. He’s not worth it.”

“
He’s just an old spectersoma. I’m gonna cut him up and feed him to the treklapods.”

“
Wait!” I said. “He’s human.”

Carlos
was nearly on top of him then, had him cowering on his knees with his back pressed tightly to the rocks. I could see the fear in the old man’s eyes, and his relief when Carlos turned back to look at me.

“Human?”

“That’s right.” I pointed to the fire. “Look. He’s cooking rat. Spectersoma don’t eat rat. They don’t eat anything unless it gets them drunk or high.”

He turned and regarded the man with renewed suspicions
. “Is that right, gramps? You human?”

The old man nodded.

“You from Earth?”

“Earth?”

“Yeah, Earth. You know; sunshine, puffy clouds, green meadows, the place where rats aren’t any bigger than... well, rats.”

Old Yammer seemed to give it careful thought, as if trying to recollect
details of a dream that had evaporated lone ago. “Sunshine,” he said, and even his voice sounded dreamy. “I remember sunshine.”

“How long ha
s it been?” I asked.

He hooked his brow and seemed to guess at the answer. “Don’t know. Couple
years, I `spect.”

“Give me a year.”

“Pardon?”

“
When you arrived here. What year was it?”

“
Oh well... let’s see now. Gertrude passed in ’46, the mule in ’48. I took to panning a few months later...” He began counting on his fingers until the tally seemed right, at which time he looked up and said, “1849.”

“What
!”

“Yup. So what’s that make it now? 18
51?”

Carlos laughed.
“Are you kidding? I don’t know how to tell you this, old timer, but it’s––”

“Yes
.” I said, shutting Carlos down with a glare. “It’s 1851. What my friend here was about to say is that tonight is New Year’s Eve.”

“You don’t say.
So it’s 1852 already, eh?”

“Yup. Sure is,
” Carlos replied. “Time flies when you’re having fun. Don’t it?”

“
Carlos.” I returned that glare. “Don’t milk it.” He soured his face and stuck his tongue out at me. I walked over to Yammer and offered the old man a hand to help him back on his feet.

“
Listen, Mister Yammer, we’re sorry about the confusion, but we––”

“It’s just Yammer
. No mister.”

“Sorry.” I wiped my hands on my jeans to deposit the dirt I picked up after only touching him. “So, Yammer, w
e thought you were spectersoma. But see, here’s the deal.” I opened my sack and gave him a piece of brobble fruit. “We’re human, too. Fact is we didn’t know there were any other humans here. Thought only spectersoma and indigenous freakazoids inhabited this stinking rat’s nest.” I looked back at Jerome. “No offence, shorty.”

“None taken
,” said Carlos.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

I came back to Yammer. “No hard feelings?”

Yammer
let his guard down some, though not entirely. Only when Carlos and Jerome backed off, did he seem at ease enough to step away from the rocks. Clearly, he had learned to trust no one in a world where the dead lived and evil ruled.

Tony and
I coaxed the old buzzard back to his campfire. We all settled around it and listened as he filled us in on his life in the ES. It turned out he got there purely by accident after stumbling through a portal in San Francisco.

“Damndest thing,” he said.
“Happened while I was panning for gold. I`z on my knees, hunched over some god-awful cold stream, my sifting pan full of sand and water and not much else.

“
Then I heard it, a strange voice calling to me from an abandoned mine up on the hill. I didn’t know what to think, but I knew I wasn’t havin` no luck panning, so I went up to have a look. I poked my head inside the mine and there it was, the biggest shiniest gold nugget I ever did see, just sticking out of the wall, waiting for me to come pluck it.”

“So
did you?” Carlos asked. “Did you pluck it?”

“No
, dagnabbit! I didn’t pluck it. I tried sure enough, but I never made it. I stepped into a puddle on my way towards the dang thing. The next thin` I know I was falling like a stone. Couldn’t imagine what kind of mineshaft went straight down for so damn long. After a while, I reckon I blacked out or some`um. Woke up later and found myself here in hell.”

“This is hell, all right,” I said.

“Yeah, except I ain’t dead,” the old man complained. “Least I don’t think so.”

Tony looked at me.
“How could that happen?”

I shook my head. “
Hard to say, but caves are known to sometimes populate their own conversion points through particle resonance due to natural frequency modulations in seismic activities.”

“Come again?”

“Spontaneous portals.”

“Oh.”

“Wow.” said Carlos. “I bet that means there are lots of other regular people here, too.”

“Yeah, too bad for them.”

“So, this truly is Hell.”

“What’s that you say?”
asked Yammer.

“Forget it.”
I handed him another brobble fruit. “Tell me. Have you ever heard of a man named Doctor Lowell?”

“
The wizard?”

Tony and I exchanged glances. “Yes,
I guess so. You know where we can find him?”

“Sure. He’s up in the Dark Fortress.”

“We know that. Do you know how to get there?”

Yammer took a big bite of the brobble fruit and
swallowed seeds and all. “Might,” he said, “if you got another one of them brobbles.”

Carlos pulled out his bolo, leaned in over the fire and chopped the head off the skewered rat.
“How `bout you just tell us, old man.”