The Beast

The Beast

THEY CALLED HIM THE BEAST behind his back. To his face, no one had the balls. No one. And this was something in the gulags. Once, years past, I witnessed him murdering a guard. Manacled. He strangled him, nearly severing the man’s head. So violent. So efficient. So impressive. In the midst of a gulag riot it occurred. Many suspected, but none knew, not for sure. Except me, and I did not talk. You didn’t talk. You don’t.

The Beast was different. To look upon him was to know this. Forget that he turned suka. Forget the stories. Just know that in the Thieves’ World the Beast was marked to die, to have his Vor tattoos taken, and he didn’t, and they weren’t. His was a story of survival, of murder, of mad vengeance, a script of legendary reckoning etched by blade in scar tissue across his flesh. He had been hammered into something so compact he appeared made of iron. A real girevik. The Beast. A killer born.

“How many has he killed?” they whispered. Many.

Suffice it to say he was dangerous. A more dangerous foe I could not conceive. Yet that is not why we killed him. That is why we killed him first.

* * * *

HALFWAY TO THE SEVVOSTLAG gulag our prisoner transport smashed something a glancing blow, shanked off the road, skidding, then tumbled down an embankment and into the bed of a stream. The water was not deep, or we would have all been dead. As it were, only most of us were dead. Ten prisoners. One guard.

The communal chain round our ankles bound us together and to the carrier. But it was broken in places. Manacles bound our wrists. I heard grunts and sobbing when I came to. The man next to me was my old cellmate. He’d been decapitated when the carrier rolled to a stop on its side, his head thrust out the sidewall, being but canvas. His body was somehow pristine. I did not know his name. I did not care.

“Comrade…” someone whispered.

“Frisk?” Jesus, it was Frisk, another Vor. A foul pig of a man, but a Vor nonetheless, and so by Thieves’ Law, my brother. But was I his? I rose, extricating myself from the tangle of chain and bloody limb. Frisk hobbled to my side. Chains clinked. He pointed past me, and I turned. In the mangled darkness, I saw. Comprehended.

The Beast lay amidst a pile of prisoners. Vor and suka and political. A quagmire of bodies and bent limbs that moved sluggish, like a bed of drunken worms. Some did not move. Most. A flap of skin the size of a pig’s ear lay open across the Beast’s face, skull gleaming crimson slick beneath. He was still breathing.

“Yah…” It was all I had to say, one word, a whisper, a nod, a death sentence. Frisk and I bore no love for one another, but in this, we were of one mind. Frisk slapped a shiv into my open palm as another appeared in his right. There might never be another chance. I pounced upon the Beast, my shiv disappearing into his side, Frisk beside me for a step then disappearing. I stabbed again and again and again.

The Beast said nothing. This man, a grunt was all he offered in recognition of being shanked. A grunt. What he did was considerably more.

Lightning. He moved like it. Dazed, blinded by a river of blood, injured, dying even, who can say? The Beast wrought hell like the fucking devil. Even as my shiv rose, a huge fist staggered me. Iron fingers rasped my face, his thumb penetrating my mouth, fish-hooking me, nails tearing my ear as he grasped my face like a handful of weeds, twisted and yanked. Flesh ripped and sinew snapped like cord.

I kept stabbing, kept screaming. He smashed me down on the carcass heap. Then he was on top of me. Smashing. Metal teeth ripping flesh from my face. I screamed but nothing came. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Blood filled my mouth and blinded me; then the Beast seized my wrist. He peeled the shiv from my fingers as though from a child’s. He squeezed, bearing down on my face, my jaw popping, dislocating, and everything shrunk to black.

* * * *

I COULD MOVE … BARELY.

I sputtered, choked, gagged as I yanked his thick iron fingers from my throat, hacking as his dense form crushed me. His stink was suffocating.

I bucked and kicked and bit until I realized the Beast wasn’t moving. Slack-heavy with death, he lay across me. Prisoner 345. The Beast.

“I am thinking we should not do that again, neh?” Frisk grunted as I wrestled the Beast’s carcass off. It took some doing. The man was lead. Frisk offered no hand. I expected none. “Apologies. My chains, they tangled on a corpse.” Frisk’s explanation — dog shit. So much. “And my ankle’s broke.” Whore. “Better late than never, neh?” Fuck you. He cut a sleeve from my decapitated cellmate and held it to his bloody forehead. “He fucking savaged you, boss.” No shit. “Get some cloth. Wrap your face. Jesus, you’re a mess. Can you talk?” To you? No. “Pop it back in. Bah. Forget it. Looks like you had a stroke. Like your face got caught in a thresher. Or no — set on fire and now — now, it’s melting off.” His eyes went wide as I turned. “Shit, boss. He tore your fucking ear off!”

I couldn’t feel the left side of my face. It hung limp, dangling in shreds, like cooked squid. Blood soaked my prison drabs. I shivered in the aftermath of adrenaline’s end and cold’s onset.

“Lucky you were always ugly as sin, neh?” Frisk said.

“Fuck you.” I looked around. Ludicrous. “Do you see it?” Talking hurt, breathing … worse. Broken ribs, at least. I felt shattered, wrong somehow, on the inside. From the crash? Or the Beast? Did it matter? I glared down at his carcass, toed his head aside with my boot, spat a maw full of blood, a tooth. “Seems smaller now?” My speech was a spatter of slurps and red drool. “Never a big man, but dense. Hard. Iron.” I clutched my side. “Jesus…”

“They always do.” Frisk slumped on the bench and chuffed a cough. Red spit dribbled in strands. They wobbled as he spoke. “When they are dead. Death, it subtracts something. I cannot explain.” He clutched his side with one hand. “Please, how far from Sevvostlag are we, do you think? How long did we drive? I fell asleep.”

“Forty miles, fifty, a hundred? Who can say?” I wrapped my face and head with a swathe cut from my dead cellmate’s pant leg, secured it with shoelace. “I don’t know. This land drags on forever and carries a black reputation.”

“Peasant bullshit. What land doesn’t, neh?” Frisk twisted his shiv free of the base of the Beast’s skull. It scraped like a fork tine on teeth. He wiped it clean. Pointed with it. I wondered where mine had gone. Frisk stared numbly down at his feet. “Your ear, I think it is over here.”

* * * *

FRISK POKED A HOLE in the canvas roof, tore it wide, peered out. Dying orange of dusk glazed in, soon to be twilight. A bone chill ghosted in like mist, and he leaned back, shivering. We both shivered. Our prison drabs were thin cotton. Cheaply made. The cheapest possible. “What do you suppose we hit?”

“A tree, a rock, ice? Did we skid? I was sleeping, too.” I winced. “And what matter? Driver probably fell asleep. Or drunk off his ass.”

“Vodka.” Frisk drooled. “Lucky shit.”

“What I wouldn’t do. Maybe we slip these chains, have a look? A taste?”

Frisk nodded then froze as one of the carrier’s front cab doors smashed open beyond the canvas walls. Glass rained on rock and water. Someone in the pile of bodies moaned, and I told him to shut the fuck up. Whoever it was listened.

Boots crunched on snow and made their way toward the back of the carrier.

Me and Frisk froze, our breath steaming in the dark the only betrayal of our survival. The rear canvas flaps pulled back, and a guard peered in. A black shadow against a canvas of vermilion snow. A specter in the dying light. He clutched a rifle, favoring one leg.

“Any of you shitfucks still kicking?” the guard grunted.

“I … I am.” A voice in the darkness. Past us. Who? One of the politicals or suka. Buried beneath a cargo of flesh. A Vor would say nothing. “Help me. Please. I — I cannot move…”

“So the fuck what? Anyone else?” He nosed the canvas further aside with the barrel of his rifle and froze when he saw Frisk. Then he saw me and stepped back, pointing with the rifle. “By the saints — what the fuck happened to you?”

I shrugged, drooped, mumbled. “Luckier than this one.” I kicked my dead cellmate.

“Not by much.” The guard pointed at Frisk. “You, then. Come.”

“No,” Frisk spat.

Frisk thumbed his shiv at his side. Waited. The guard was out of reach. The numbness in my face was slowly evolving into pain. Standing was an effort. My ribs scraped like broken ice cracking as I shivered uncontrollably.

“We’re about sixty miles out.” The guard began sifting through a ring of keys, turning them over one by one. “Fuck.”

I glanced at Frisk and he at me. The sun dipped beyond the horizon, and the specter of the guard became a pale scared boy, barely a man. Probably needed shave only his upper lip and then only sporadically. His coat was too big for him, his hat, too. I imagined they might fit me just fine.

“Please, what happened?” Frisk asked. “What did we hit?” He trod thin ice, commiserating with a guard. “Are you the driver?”

“The driver is…” The guard dry heaved. “Eusei — my sergeant says we hit a — it is none of your concern. Stand back.” He raised the rifle to his shoulder and aimed it at Frisk. “Neither one of you moves, yah? Here. Unlock your leg. Then give me back the key. If either of you—” he swallowed, “I will shoot.” He wiped the back of his mouth with a hand then tossed a key toward Frisk.

Frisk unlocked his leg and hustled out the canvas flap.

* * * *

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER Frisk was back, as was the peach-fuzzed guard. As, too, was the sergeant. On a broken ankle, Frisk had dragged him like a sack of grain. The sergeant’s legs were shattered. They trailed behind like ropes of seaweed, form dictated by the ragged contours of the ground. A bottle of vodka lay throttled in his hand; from time to time he suckled it. Clear trickled and dribbled down his stubbled chin.

“We shall make you comfortable, Sergeant,” the young guard said. “You.” He pointed at Frisk. “Put him there. Sit him up. Make him as comfortable as you can.”

Frisk followed orders, hissing through grinding teeth as he did so, glancing up at me.

I watched as he did this. Watched as the sergeant’s eyes adjusted to the deepening dark, fighting to maintain focus. His head remained erect, barely, bobbing like a palsied child’s. “You should kill them.” He said it softly; he said it with conviction.

“Eh?” the young guard said, rifle still at the ready. “You.” To Frisk. “Lock yourself again, but further down the line. The far side of your friend.”

“This one is not my friend, neh?” Frisk scowled at me. “I would have killed him had you not shown when you did.”

“Bite your whore tongue. Lock yourself in.” This guard was young but would not be swayed by games, or so it seemed. Best not to test. Yet. Men fear prison because of prisoners, and rightfully so, but they ought fear the guards more. They are the ones who choose to spend their lives in prison. Such men I do not understand. Frisk closed the cuff around his ankle once more. “Tighter.” The young guard shouldered the rifle, Taking aim. “Or you die.”

“Shoot them, Alec.” The sergeant whispered it again. His breathing was shallow, and though he wore a thick wool coat it was clear his chest was collapsed in some manner. His whole aspect was sunken. Hollow. Grey. “Shoot all three of them. And any others alive. Take the food. Leave this place. Before it returns.”

The political had extricated himself from the bottom of the pile. Whimpering, shivering, he sat crumpled like a dead leaf on the canvas ground. Glassy eyes. Snot and blood frozen across half of his face, he cared not to clean himself. His eyes fidgeted from me and Frisk to the guards and then back. I could read his mind and did not envy him his future. Short. In the end, he just sat between our two parties. Sniffling.

The guards whispered back and forth. Desperate angry whispers. The young one, Alec, was pleading. The sergeant was adamant. That much was clear. We only caught parts of the exchange.

“Before what comes?” the political asked.

“Eh?” Alec turned. His rifle turned with him, spoke for him.

“Please, the sergeant said, before it comes.” The political groveled as he spoke. “What is it?”

Alec lowered his rifle.

“Shut the fuck up.” I said. “No one’s talking to you.”

“Perhaps you should go get the food the sergeant was speaking of.” Frisk rubbed his hands together then breathed into them. “He will need it to stay strong. Some petrol as well. Might help start a fire, neh? Keep him warm.”

The sergeant’s eyes spoke volumes of hatred and never left Frisk’s. “The dog speaks true, Alec. Go. Get the food and some petrol. Some wood if you can manage.”

“I cannot leave you with them.” Alec frowned at the three of us.

“Go. They’re chained like the dogs they are. Go, or we will surely freeze to death.”

“Here, take it.” Alec proffered his rifle.

“No.” The sergeant waved him off. “You may need it more than I.” He swigged a mouthful from the vodka. “I have all I need here.” He wrestled a sidearm from his coat pocket and laid it upon his chest. It was of German make, a Luger, I think. A trophy of the war. “Go. We will need a fire to survive the night. You had best create some sort of roadblock as well. Perhaps another transport might happen down this shit-road. The wreck is not visible from up there. Perhaps we may drive out of this yet? God willing.” Alec nodded, his eyes wide. “And unlock the Worm before you go, Alec. And the dead. Yes. I shall have need of the dead.”

Alec raised an eyebrow. “This idea is no—”

“The Worm. And this is no idea — it is an order.” The sergeant slobbered up from his cairn, pointing with the vodka bottle — nearly spilling it — and froze an instant. Then he settled down again into the bliss of dying drunk. Eyes closed, he spoke. “The other two I would not, but the Worm is a worm. He can do nothing. And the dead are the dead.” He cracked a glare upwards at the dead hanging by their ankles from their bench above. It was like a meat locker. Shanks of pale carcass hung swinging, creaking, twirling.

* * * *

WORM SHIVERED IN THE DARK, hugging himself tight, bleeding, dilapidated. He was a small man. A used man. Once he had been handsome, before the prison pallor had robbed him of health and a full head of hair, of esteem, of pride, of worth. It had broken in him what had once made him a man. He raised his eyes to the sergeant then glanced at me. At Frisk. Twin dagger glares slung silent malice.

“Start working, Worm.” The sergeant pointed the Luger as though it were a czar’s scepter. Indeed, it was. Upon a dying cripple, it conferred mastership over three whole men. Well … two and a quarter, perhaps.

Worm shivered. Once he had been one of the most powerful businessmen in St. Petersburg, an importer of various goods, a player in the major arenas, well placed in the party, but his weakness for western proclivities was discovered, and he and his family had paid. Were paying. Would pay. “W-what is it you wish of me, comrade?”

“This wind is robbing me of what little I have left. I would die in comfort. Relative…” Despite his thick woolen greatcoat and fur cap, the sergeant shivered. He could barely reach his bluish lips with the bottle.

Indeed, the wind had risen and began howling with the fall of the sun. The thick canvas roof and side stopped some of the wind, but the canvas doors were torn beyond repair and stopped nothing. They flapped like the leather wings of a great bat. And in came the cold. It had begun as an aura creeping in like mist to steal the warmth from our bodies and soon grew into some cold rasping banshee whose bone hands hungered for our souls, clutching and clambering up our limbs, tunneling through us to our cores. We shivered and huddled and rubbed our limbs, and we froze nonetheless.

“Block the opening with the dead,” the sergeant said. “That is what I wish of you, Worm. That is what you will do.”

And so Worm began dragging the dead past us, past the sergeant. He watched like a hawk, when conscious. His head nodded from time to time, folding gently onto his concave chest. He nuzzled the vodka bottle in the crook of his arm like a babe, while the Luger’s muzzle peeked from the sleeve of his other arm, lain across his chest. Rising and falling…

* * * *

OUTSIDE THE WALLS of our canvas tomb, snow crunched as something lumbered near. Haltingly. I peered out through a slit in the roof and swore. Shale and rock tumbled from above and crashed into the undercarriage. At first, I thought it the young guard returned. But it was not. I silenced Frisk with a raised hand as the crunch of snow grew louder. I could not see what it was, but I could guess. My eyes strained, but whatever it was chose not to make itself known and wandered off. Our crypt was silent but for the wind’s banshee howl, for each of us had forgotten to breathe. None of us saw it, but we all knew what it was. A bear.

* * * *

“CAN YOU GET HIS GUN?” It was not even a whisper. It was a clipped hiss, a stare, a twitched glare at the guard, a shadow-hand of a gun signed in fenya, the Vor’s pidgin-talk. Worm ignored my silent inquiries. Ignorant or obstinate. He continued in his labors, dragging the dead with his cracked bloody hands, body bent like a question mark, grunting and huffing, sweating while me and Frisk shivered, waiting, watching.

“We shall need it when the other guard returns,” Frisk whispered.

I nodded. “Or the bear.”

“Yes … the bear.” Frisk paused and then looked at me. “I saw bloody tracks outside in the snow. Huge. Bigger than dinner plates. And the front bumper of the truck. Covered in blood and hair. Ruined.” I watched Worm’s eyes grow and glisten as Frisk spoke. “Like it struck a building, neh? And it is out there still. Lurking.”

“It left.” Worm wrung the corner of his shirt in his thin pale hands. “It’s gone.”

“Waiting, Worm. It is waiting. Winter is near and it nearer. And it is hungry before it sleeps, neh? Think it won’t be back? With all this fresh-killed meat?”

Worm hazarded a final warning glare amidst his labors, but that was all. He continued construction of a wall of dead for the dead. From time to time, amidst Worm’s sniffling huffs and Frisk’s teeth chatter, I heard the tread of massive paws crunching through the crystalline snow.

* * * *

“HE IS DEAD.” I squinted in the dark. It was impossible to tell, but the sergeant had not moved in quite some time, not even to drink his liquor. But… “He is dead. Get his keys.”

“He’s not breathing,” Frisk added.

“The keys. In his pocket. Do it, Worm. Before the other guard returns. We will take care of him. We’ll remember this deed and repay.”

Worm collapsed broken onto the corpse pile and lay there huffing in the dark; he lay near the sergeant, an arm’s breadth away, the Luger laid there upon his chest. Worm lay there for some time, watching, weighing risk, consequence. Neither Frisk nor I dared draw breath. Minutes passed where only the zipping cold friction of wind upon the canvas was audible. A white blade of moonlight stabbing through our roof was our sole source of light. With a gulp, Worm made his decision. He crept forth like his namesake. He was a cautious man, weak, inching forward, staring, always staring. Wide dilated eyes watched for so much as a twitch, a tremor, his hand creeping like a pallid tarantula across frozen moonlight toward the Luger.

But the sergeant, he was not quite dead. His eyes sprang open like steel traps. “Fucking Worm!” Grunts and curses spat through exhaled mist. The sergeant was laid out, broken, dying, but he hurled Worm about like a child. Worm scrabbled, wailed, kicking then bit the sergeant’s hand. The sergeant howled.

Me and Frisk dropped to the ground as the gun waved about then discharged — a stunning blast in the cold. I huddled behind a freezing corpse. A second shot shattered the crystalline air, a hammer on ice. A third shot and more — I pressed further back, further down. Willed myself smaller. Harder. Slid sidewise folding into nothingness.

“Hah!” Worm sprang up, gesturing an obscenity with his free hand as he kicked the sergeant in the ribs. Once. Twice. In the face. Then he shot him there. Worm had won. Triumphant Worm. He turned. “Fah! You sons of bitches. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you! I have it. I am in charge.” He waved the Luger about like a drunken conductor, pointing at each of us in turn, closing an eye in his aiming.

“The keys,” I whispered. “Get the keys.”

“Screw your mother.” Worm didn’t even look our way. His eyes were all for the sergeant. Teeth grimaced. He kicked him in the side, stomped his head, his chest, his stomach. He fell to his knees and began tearing, hammering the corpse with the pistol. It rose and fell until bloody dripping with bits. Then he collapsed, huffing on his back like some tortoise flipped over in the sun. For some time he lay there. Grinning. Finally, though, he did the sensible thing. He wrestled the greatcoat from the dead sergeant’s carcass and donned it. The hat, too.

Me and Frisk watched from the darkness.

* * * *

WHETHER IT WAS THE BARK of the pistol or stench of dead meat is irrelevant. The bear returned not long after the melee. Worm froze as he donned the sergeant’s furred hat. Eyes wide.

Peeking through a tear, I could see it this time as it lumbered through the stream. We three froze as one. The bear came limping from the shallows. A thing born of hell. A demon. Drenched fur lay matted flat and bloody black to its face and legs. Frozen blood jagged at mad angles. Skull and broken fang stood bare and bright as the snow as it limped along. Icicles of gore dangled and broke from its chin. Its tongue lolled out, swollen like a fat black slug. It was a bear but unlike any bear I’d ever seen. Massive. Hellish.

“What’s it doing?” Frisk whispered.

“Shhh—”

Its ears pricked at Frisk’s voice. It turned, listened, snuffed, snorted. The canvas walls of our tomb pressed in as it lumbered along its length. Wire-bristle fur protruded in through tears. Its gait was horrid. Obscene. Degenerate. It hobbled like some old broken thing, past the open back of the carrier, sniffing the bodies of the dead, growling with each breath, slurring blood and hacking bile into the snow. One eye had been rasped from its skull in the collision with the carrier. Ridged bone and black socket stared continuously. Its horrible injuries served only to make it more terrifying. For the longest moment, it stood there in the swell of moonlight. Huffing. Asthmatic. Thick drool coursed from its maw, dangling in ropes upon the carcasses. Something akin to hatred dwelt within its single black eye, something beyond mere animal.

Worm raised the Luger, aimed it. What effect if any a Luger might have on an animal that size? But anyways — Worm fired. The shot was lost in the wind’s scream. The thing merely stood there, its gaze now fixed on Worm. Worm squeezed the trigger again and nothing happened. CLICK. Like a dying flower Worm wilted into the carrier, as far toward the cab as he could go, shriveling backwards blind over the corpse pile. The thing merely glared with that one black eye, naught but a pinprick of moonlight on black. Then it was gone.

* * * *

IT TOOK SOME TIME FOR Worm to creep from his hole. Tentative, he crawled over his dead compatriots and back toward the opening. Me and Frisk huddled shoulder to shoulder. We had stripped whatever prisoners were within reach and used their clothes to bolster our own. It did little good. The chatter of our teeth, my injuries, made conversation impossible. As though we might converse.

Worm crawled past, toward the billowing canvas doors. They cracked like whips in the blizzard wind. When he passed us, just out of reach, he turned toward the whipping canvas, the door, escape. Then from behind, Frisk pounced, tackling Worm. His shiv rose and fell as Worm twisted, slamming the Luger into Frisk’s face. Squealing, he twisted free and kicked and swung and swore. They rolled, and Worm gained the top. But I could reach him. I grabbed his wrist and tore him on towards me. The Luger came, too, Worm flailing it like a club, but it tore past my head. I slammed a fist into his gut, and he crumpled over right into my knee. Frisk’s shiv was at Worm’s throat, point pressing in. Twisting. A bead of blood trickled down, a thick, slow, creeping seep.

“Easy, Frisk.” I tightened my grip on Worm. “Don’t kill him.”

“You my fucking boss?” Frisk demanded. “Am I suka now? Or is Worm yours? Huh, Worm? You his?”

“Watch your bloody tongue.” I almost kicked him in the face. “He’s the only one not chained.”

“You fuck, I slipped the chain an hour past.” He turned back to Worm. “I’d treat you nice,” Frisk crooned, grinning jackal mad as he stroked Worm’s head, wheedling the shiv. “There, there, my sweet. Wakey wakey. No sleeping yet.”

“Get the fuck off him.” I scanned the ground. “Take off the coat, Worm.”

Worm lay weeping, fetal, crumpled. Where was the Luger? I scanned the ground and saw it, scooped it up, tucked it into the back of my pants.

“Take it off.” Frisk kicked Worm. “Do it, you Worm. You fucking shit-licking-faggot Worm.” Frisk grabbed him by the lapels and shook him, swatted him, spit in his face. “GET IT OFF!” Frisk tore the hat from his head and beat him with it.

Worm whimpered and clutched at his head.

By the back of his collar, I hauled Worm to his feet then tore the coat down from behind.

Frisk stabbed him in the gut, “Die, you fuck, die,” and shucked him from the greatcoat like an oyster from its shell. Then only me and Frisk were standing there, freezing, both clutching an arm of the woolen greatcoat.

* * * *

I STEPPED BACK AND DROPPED to a crouch, leaning against the overturned carrier seat. Fuck. Worm, next to me, shivered like a dog. Frisk donned the greatcoat and hat then bent down and tied his shoe, haltingly, wincing. He’d somehow slid the metal cuff over his broken ankle. The guards hadn’t checked. No doubt he’d lost some skin. Some bone. A small price for freedom. Like an ape, he scurried over the fallen bodies to the sergeant. He peered out the canvas doors for an instant then grabbed the edges and weighted them with the dead. It did little.

I drew the Luger from my pant waist, examined it as best I could. It seemed whole, slick but undamaged. No bullets, though. Hell, at least it was metal. A poor club, but a club nonetheless, when the time came. And it would. I glanced up at Frisk, living up to his namesake, and tucked the Luger back. Frisk drained the last of the sergeant’s vodka then hurled the bottle into the night.

Worm, on the ground, clutched at my ankle. Even by the cold pale of moonlight he looked drained of life, a ghoulish grey except where blood had spattered his lips and chin black. Five holes had materialized upon his belly, soaking through the coarse shirt fabric, spreading, encompassing, reaching like things alive, five black promises soon to coalesce into one that would swallow him whole. His fingers grasped at my shoe, his nails plucking at my laces like the strings of a violin. Eyes unfocused, head lolling back like some broken-necked doll, his breath came shallow and fast between weeps and moaning. He whispered something I could not understand.

I didn’t try to.

Frisk limped, hunkering low through the crypt, back towards me, scanning the ground, grunting, wheezing in pain. He was looking for something. The Luger. Had he found bullets on the sergeant? A spare magazine? I rose to a crouch. Frisk clutched something. A magazine? Or his shiv? I readied, drawing the Luger.

“HALT.”

Frisk froze, just out of my reach.

His eyes met mine. “Fuck!” they said.

The guard, Alec, had returned.

Frisk turned slowly toward him, hands raised.

“You fucking filth.” Favoring his right leg, Guard Alec aimed his rifle. “Take off his coat, you son of a bitch! Take it off. NOW!”

“Easy now, boy.” Frisk raised his hands. They were empty now. Slowly, he drew one arm then the other free of the greatcoat. He held it out at arm’s length. “What was your name? Alec, neh? Alec, please, I did not kill your man. Your sergeant. How could I? We are chained where we stand, neh?” He kicked at some chains on the ground for effect. “I wanted only to keep warm.” He tossed the coat then hat toward the guard and raised his hands once more. “To survive.”

Guard Alec swallowed, aiming the rifle at me.

“It was Worm.” I indicated with my head the pile of bleeding offal at my feet. “He beat your sergeant to death. He was drunk. Dying. Unconscious. Worm stole his pistol. See for yourself. We could do nothing.” As if we would.

“Send him over here.” Guard Alec drew the bolt back on his rifle, checked it, rammed it home. “Send him over here. Now.”

“Get up, Worm. Stand.” I nudged him with my foot. “Get up! Guard Alec wishes a word with you. Best not keep him waiting.” Worm grasped at my foot and whimpered in response. I kicked free then spat. “He cannot move, I am thinking.” I glanced at the rifle and shuffled from its path. “His dying is near.”

“Do it! Both of you. Stand him up. I will not shoot a worm in the dirt. Stand him up. Like a man.”

Frisk’s glare met mine as we stooped, taking Worm underarm and by pant waist. “You have the gun?” Frisk whispered almost inaudibly. We hauled Worm to his feet. They dangled, withdrawn, already atrophied it seemed, afraid of the ground; then they touched. “Yes. And you, bullets?” A twitch of a nod was Frisk’s reply.

Worm was on his feet, a shivering dead thing that hobbled, teetered, and fell the instant we let him go. Blue vein crisscrossed beneath translucent skin, and I imagined I could see his very skull grinning under the harsh blare of moonlight. Worm crouched on all fours, managing somehow to stand, pulling himself up by the manacle chains hanging from above. His thin arms shook as he clutched the chains to breast like some forlorn lover. He raised a hand as if to ward off the guard and turned his head.

I turned as well.

Guard Alec raised the rifle to his shoulder. His body jerked. A shot rang out, dwarfing those of the Luger’s before, and me and Frisk were covered in a spray of bone and blood. The shot reverberated in my ear.

“The gun…” Frisk mouthed. “Give me the gun.”

“The two of you, stand.” Guard Alec chambered another round. “Stand up!” A steaming cartridge sizzled in snow. The wind ripped Guard Alec’s hat from his head. He did not flinch. “Up. UP, I said! Are you fucking deaf?”

Me and Frisk rose to stand amongst the dangling chains. Acrid haze stung my nostrils, burning the back of my throat, a welcome relief from the stench of corpse. Chains clinked. Wind ripped across the canvas walls. As my eyes focused, I became aware of a dark mass growing behind Guard Alec. Like some tidal wave it grew and grew, rising, drowning out tree and star. I thought it a trick of the darkness and moonlight until this wave roared, crested, and broke, dropping, crashing, felling Guard Alec like a thunderbolt. He was there one moment; then he was nothing.

One eye. One eye gleamed ice blue amidst this black horror. And teeth, what teeth! And gleaming half skull. All that were visible. Thick claws scraped through carcass and snow alike. It huffed. Snorted. Chuffed. Bone in Guard Alec’s chest cracked and split like kindling as the bear limped forward into the carrier. Its huge form swallowed the darkness, eclipsing existence. It froze in the glare of moonlight as though it were something painful, shied for an instant, then pondered on, cracking bone and forging through the tangle of dangling corpse and chain.

Frisk hunkered behind me, shiv point digging into my spine. As though it mattered. I almost laughed. As though I wouldn’t gladly trade death by his knife for death by this monstrosity. A pinprick versus disembowelment, consumed while yet drawing breath. Frisk’s hand was shaking. As was I. Before me stood fate incarnate.

“The Beast,” I mumbled.

“Give me the gun,” Frisk whispered.

“Give me the magazine.”

The beast paused not a foot from me. Its long tongue dripped some foul ichor. Bile. Its lungs drew air like a bellows as it sniffed long and deep, taking in my scent. Asthmatic wheezes whistled like a symphony of the damned long after its exhale. A wide wet nose palpated my foot then moved up, snuffing. The scent of death on the thing enveloped me, entering my nose and mouth and throat, my lungs, my soul. White skull, ponderously thick and steel-hard, vaulted above us as it stood on hind legs, rising up, looming over, wavering. Ropes of saliva slid down, slopping on my feet.

“Give me the gun.” Frisk’s lips did not move as he spoke.

“The fucking magazine.” Neither did mine.

“The gun!” Louder this time, a desperate squeal. “Give me the gun—”

“Give me the fucking magazine!”