The smiling fist I remember so well.
“The Noise binds us all, young Todd,” he says, his voice slithering and shiny like a snake. “If one of us falls, we all fall.”
“You ain’t here,” I say, clenching my teeth.
“Here, Todd,” Manchee barks.
“Ain’t I?” Aaron says and disappears in a shimmer.
My brain knows this Aaron ain’t real but my heart don’t care and it’s beating in my chest like a race. It’s hard to catch my breath and I waste more time waiting just to be able to stand up and move on into the afternoon.
The food’s helping, God bless Wilf and his crazy wife, but sometimes we can’t go much faster than a stumble. I start to see Aaron outta the corner of my eye pretty much all the time, hiding behind trees, leaning against rocks, standing on top of woodfall, but I just turn my head away and keep stumbling.
And then, from a hilltop, I see the road cross the river again down below. The landscape’s moving in a way that turns my stomach but I can definitely see a bridge down there, taking the road to the other side so there’s nothing now twixt me and the river.
I wonder for a minute about that other fork we never took back in Farbranch. I wonder where that road is in the middle of all this wilderness. I look from the hilltop to my left but there’s just woods as far as I can see and more hills that move like hills shouldn’t. I have to close my eyes for a minute.
We make our way down, too slow, too slow, the scent taking us close to the road and towards the bridge, a high rickety one with rails. Water’s gathered where the road turns into it, filling it with puddles and muck.
“Did he cross the river, Manchee?” I put my hands on my knees to catch my breath and cough.
Manchee sniffs the ground like a maniac, crossing the road, re-crossing it, going to the bridge and back to where we stand. “Wilf smell,” he barks. “Cart smell.”
“I can see the tracks,” I say, rubbing my face with my hands. “What about Viola?”
“Viola!” Manchee barks. “This way.”
He heads away from the road, keeping to this side of the river and following it. “Good dog,” I say twixt raggedy breaths. “Good dog.”
I follow him thru branches and bushes, the river rushing closer to my right than it’s been in days.
And I step right into a settlement.
I stand up straight and cough in surprise.
It’s been destroyed.
The buildings, eight or ten of them, are charcoal and ash and there ain’t a whisper of Noise nowhere.
For a second I think the army’s been here but then I see plants growing up in the burnt-out buildings and no smoke is rising from any fire and the wind just blows thru it like only the dead live here. I look round and there’s a few decrepit docks on the river, just down from the bridge, one lonely old boat knocking against it in the current and a few more half-sunk boats piled halfway up the riverbank along from what may have been a mill before it became a pile of burnt wood.
It’s cold and it’s long dead and here’s another place on New World that never made it to subdivided farming.
And I turn back round and in the centre of it stands Aaron.
His face is back to how it was when the crocs tore it open, peeled half away, his tongue lolling out the side of the gash in his cheek.
And he’s still smiling.
“Join us, young Todd,” he says. “The church is always open.”
“I’ll kill you,” I say, the wind stealing my words but I know he can hear me cuz I can hear every last thing he’s saying.
“You won’t,” he says, stepping forward, his fists clenched by his sides. “Cuz I says you ain’t a real killer, Todd Hewitt.”
“Try me,” I say, my voice sounding strange and metallic.
He smiles again, his teeth poking out the side of his face, and in a wash of shimmer he’s right in front of me. He puts his cut up hands to the opening of his robe and pulls it apart enough to show his bare chest.
“Here’s yer chance, Todd Hewitt, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.” His voice is deep in my head. “Kill me.”
The wind’s making me shiver but I feel hot and sweaty at the same time and I can’t get no more than a third of a breath down my lungs and my head is starting to ache in a way that food ain’t helping and whenever I look anywhere fast everything I see has to slide into place to catch up.
I clench my teeth.
I’m probably dying.
But he’s going first.
I reach behind me, ignoring the pain twixt my shoulders, and I grab the knife outta the sheath. I hold it in front of me. It’s shiny with fresh blood and glinting in sunlight even tho I’m standing in shadow.
Aaron pulls his smile wider than his face can really go and he pushes his chest out to me.
I raise the knife.
“Todd?” Manchee barks. “Knife, Todd?”
“Go ahead, Todd,” Aaron says and I swear I smell the dankness of him. “Cross over from innocence to sin. If you can.”
“I’ve done it,” I say. “I’ve already killed.”
“Killing a Spackle ain’t killing a man,” he says, grinning away at how stupid I am. “Spackles are devils put here to test us. Killing one’s like killing a turtle.” He widens his eyes. “’Cept you can’t do that neither now, can ya?”
I grip the knife hard and I make a snarling sound and the world wavers.
But the knife still ain’t falling.
There’s a bubbling sound and gooey blood pours outta the gash in Aaron’s face and I realize he’s laughing.
“It took a long, long time for her to die,” he whispers.
And I call out from the pain–
And I raise the knife higher–
And I aim it at his heart–
And he’s still smiling–
And I bring the knife down–
And stab it right into Viola’s chest.
“No!” I say, in the second that it’s too late.
She looks up from the knife and right at me. Her face is filled with pain and confused Noise spills from her just like the Spackle that I–
(That I killed.)
And she looks at me with tears in her eyes and she opens her mouth and she says, “Killer”.
And as I reach out for her, she’s gone in a shimmer.
And the knife, clean of all blood, is still in my hand.
I fall onto my knees and then pitch forward and lie on the ground in the burnt-out settlement, breathing and coughing and weeping and wailing as the world melts around me so bad I don’t feel like it’s even solid no more.