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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 154: Brown 337
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 132
The body was burned that night in the city incinerator, and the Living Colors were asked to come the next day at noon to the river. They gathered, along with a dozen police officers and Assistant Mayor Pepidou on the ironwork bridge over the River. Reverend Ishmael began to pray.
“Dear Lord--”
The disembodied head interrupted. “We killed Him. Killed Him. He cried as He died. He, unlike me, never rose from the dead.” The head began babbling more blasphemies, and the policemen holding the chest from which the head was to be dumped convulsively thrust the box over the edge. The box hit the water, dunked, and came up.
“I shall float to the edge of the river. I will be born again--”
A seeming log of great length rose from the depths of the Mississippi near the floating box that held the head. The policemen protested they had not wanted to throw the head with the box, but somehow their arms had done it anyway. Pepidou was yelling to ‘shoot the head, men, shoot it’, but Derek called out a halt.
The bobbing head laughed at them, and proclaimed itself invulnerable to bullets. Pepidou muttered to Derek that the box was not so invulnerable, and why should they not shoot? Derek pointed at the lengthy log in the water, which had passed the box, and suddenly moved back toward it. A splash of water from the thirty foot long alligator washed into the box, and the taunting voice of the dead head stilled.
“No, no, I can tell you things. Secrets. Things you need to know--”
“We want nothing from you.” Derek said coldly as he leaned over the railing and looked down on the doomed being floating a great way down from him. Old Mossyback opened his cavernous jaws and closed them around the whole box and the screaming head. Some crunching sounds were heard, and then the ancient alligator with a tiny sapling on its back began to swim briskly away. Soon it dove, and even its ripples were gone, and the River rolled on to the sea.
“Hallelujah, and amen,” Reverend Ishmael finished his five word prayer.
“Amen,” said all the men, and some crossed themselves, and others did not, but all appeared relieved that it was noontime, and the Carter Brothers were gone.
Derek knew it was not quite so. The others left him with his band there, and he turned to them.
“We need to finish the other one,” Lei said stolidly.
“I want my practice knife back,” Vashti said.
“Let’s do it.” Derek led them on a hike into the bayou, along the vampires’ trail. This time they left behind the musical instruments, but he still carried his other tools.
The band, in ever growing unity, walked on, joking and laughing as they went. In the swamp, there were other dark things. There was more than one Grunch in the city, and other monsters as well, some older than the presence of the French in the land--but when they heard the joy of the redeemed, they hid themselves.
The quintet crossed the bridge, and quieted, weapons ready, then entered the crypt. Inside, the body of one of the Carters--they had never learned which was which--lay with a wooden dagger in its chest, piercing its heart, Derek suspected. Remembering how the dead head had reacted, he had Maurice cut off this one’s head. It began to babble until Maurice stuck his knife up into the neck and into the brain like he was mounting it on a very short pike.
The trip back was a tad gruesome, hauling knifed head and desiccated body separately. But Derek had a thought, and when they came to the River, he was not surprised to see a log in the water with a sapling on its back. Maurice decided he did not need his dagger that bad, and tossed the whole mess into the river. Old Mossyback swallowed it in one gulp. Then he waited, eyeballing the body. Vashti wanted her knife, and yanked it out.
Suddenly the body came to life, steaming as the Sun ate at it, and jerking and rising, and starting to run madly in one direction then another. A wave of water covered his shoes, and half of the mighty alligator came out of the water, and bit down on the body. Slowly, as if amused, with the struggling body in its many-foot-long jaws, Old Mossyback retreated back under the waves.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #517: Versers Moving. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
