“Best done quickly,” Saul said finally—and sat up.
All the flesh that had grown through the wires and hung beneath, filled with the dangling bodies of the botflies, was suddenly yanked back against the mesh. Much of his back simply tore away. In other places, mostly around the edges, pale rags of skin came up, still attached, to dangle in long skeins from his ribs. Warbles swung like grotesque beads, or were forced open and their contents disgorged onto the floor.
The sound was indescribable.
Saul did not scream, but he made a hard, awful sound and sat forward, his breath hissing through his teeth.
The room tilted and darkened around me. I dug my fingers into the wooden tabletop and told myself thatIwasn’t the one who had just flayed my own back andIdidn’t get to faint. It was a much harder sell this time, but after a moment it worked.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I croaked, pulling my apron off to staunch the bleeding.
Except there wasn’t any. Or not much, anyhow. Saul’s back was a landscape of pink and yellow meat shot with red, oozing more clear fluid but little else. I could see the white islands of his spine protruding from a skinless sea.
I draped my apron over his back. I can’t swear that it wasn’t just so that I wouldn’t see it any longer.
“Thank you,” Saul rasped, plucking the nails from his legs and tossing them aside. The manacles sheared away from the wood. I looked away before he pulled his thighs loose from the rest of the mesh, but the sound followed me anyway.
Saul stood up, took a staggering step forward, and leaned against the wall. His chest heaved like a bellows. “That was much worse than I expected,” he said, to no one in particular.
I rushed to him, trying to figure out how to support him before he fell over, without touching the horrific ruin of his back. I ended up pulling his arm over my shoulders, trying to take as much of his weight as I could. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Oh god, I’m so sorry.”
He nodded. Violent tremors wracked through him. How long did it take for something like this to heal? Would it be five minutes or five days or five months?
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yes.” Leaning against me, he managed to take a heavy, leaden step toward the stairs.
(This was, incidentally, the first time I’d ever been in a naked man’s embrace. As far as I was concerned, you could keep it.) I cast around desperately for something to distract us both. “Tell me about how you met Louisa.”
“Louisa,” he muttered. “Yes.” Another dragging step. Something lightweight was knocking against my ribs, and I was pretty sure that it was a botfly warble. I deliberately didn’t look, because if I saw it, I would have to scream and Saul needed me to be calm right now.
(wolf worm wolf worm wolf worm)
“You met Louisa,” I prompted him.
“Yes. I’d come here… come here… I was looking for the children. Rumor. I said that, didn’t I? A man told me about ‘blood thieves in the woods,’ but he was drunk. Wasn’t sure if it was one of us or not. When I got here, people told me Halder had been there when they were killed.” I steered him past the wooden table. Water sloshed around his bare feet. My own feet had been cold and wet for so long that I had stopped feeling them at all.
“So you met with Halder?” I asked.
“Yes.” He put out his other hand and touched the wall, leaning against it. “Sorry. Need a minute.”
“Yes, of course.” I made certain that he was stable, slid out from under his arm, and picked the lantern up off the stairs. A botfly finished its struggle to emerge from one of the rags of skin and fell into the water with aplop!
“Met her in the house. She came into the room.” He swallowed, and a little of the strain on his face eased. “Like she brought all the light with her. She was alive and she made you feel more alive just by being there.” He shook his head. “Halder… stupid bastard… didn’t see it. Such a goddamn waste.”
I relocated the lantern and straightened, rubbing my aching shoulder. “Can you handle the stairs?”
“I think so.” He leaned down and broke off a few toenails. “Phelps did me that much good, at least.”
I decided not to comment on that.
Half carrying Saul up the stairs wasn’t easy. They were broad, thankfully, but I slipped at least once and would have gone to my knees if Saul hadn’t been there to pull me back.
“We’re almost there,” I told him. “You’re doing good.”
“So are you,” said Saul dryly. “Am I helping you up the stairs or are you helping me?”
“Let’s not get hung up on the details.” I pulled the door open. Judging by the color of the sky, it was early evening, but itseemed extraordinarily bright after my day spent underground. The sound of cicadas droning in the trees made me want to weep with relief. I stepped outside and turned back to make certain that Saul didn’t trip over the lip on the threshold.
