Hangman, page 16
*
Sam ran faster than the shambling corpses even with a bad ankle. Something grated in her shoulder as she ran, and her right hand sent shooting pains all the way along her arm. It felt next to useless. She tried to flex it as she ran in an awkward gait across the icy road. She couldn’t make a fist, though there was some movement.
Making a fist wouldn’t help her, though.
She had no idea of anything that could help her. All she knew was that she had to get out of this place. She had to find William. She had to find Warren, if he still lived.
And she had no doubt that neither was in this world, this realm, any longer.
She turned the corner and saw the bright light was coming from the noose outside the hotel.
And the Hangman was there before it.
*
The Hangman. He wore a hangman’s cloak of black, with the hood drawn high so that she couldn’t see his face. He rode a dark horse and sat with his head at the height of the noose. There was the stench of death around him, even from across the street. She could hear buzzing, too, and at this distance, in the white icy road, she could see that flies were attracted to the rot.
Sam skidded to a halt, her breath rasping from the cold and the run and the pain. The dead turned the corner behind her, shambling, but implacable. The Hangman stood in front, the dead behind.
The Hangman wasn't just terrible. He was beyond understanding. She knew this, because he turned his eyes toward her, under that dark cowl, and his eyes burned with fire, a passionate fury that touched her even though the road was between them. There was more than just a road between them. There was a gulf: of time, of life, of death. The Hangman was a dead thing inhaling lives into him. Those lives, those sacrifices, made him stronger, more whole.
Even as she watched the flies flew away, and the stench seemed to lessen. He was getting stronger, yes, but more real, too.
The Hangman turned his eyes from her and his horse snorted, dismissing her. Turned back to the noose, and the way through. Waiting ... waiting for what?
For the world behind to catch up, of course.
How could you fight a wraith? Something that should not be? The answer, she knew, was that she could not. There was no hope, faced with Death himself on his dark horse. But it didn't matter.
She couldn't win, but if she could save William?
Could she?
The boy had already gone through. The monkey and the bear had him. Would they let him live, should the Hangman die?
Could she stop the Hangman?
No. No one could. You can't kill something that doesn't exist. You can't kill Death.
But she had to try.
“Hey!” she shouted. The Hangman turned again. His face was shrouded in shadow, but even from across the road she could see the bone poking through the skin. The Hangman was a rotted cadaver: Dead and Death in one. He mocked her with a gaze of his inhuman eyes.
Her heart turned to ice as sound came from the Hangman. She realized he was laughing.
The Hangman nodded to her, once.
Then he put his own head into the noose and drove his spurs into his dark horse’s flanks so that the horse bolted out from underneath him, and he dropped down with a sickening crack as his neck stretched, but wouldn't break.
*
In the real world, William cried, watching his friend’s legs jiggle and jump while he was slowly strangled by the rope.
His legs kicked out, one last time, and then stopped.
Warren stopped kicking because suddenly a black horse appeared beneath him. His face changed, because just as Warren now rode a black horse that seemed to come from nowhere, the Hangman now rode in Warren's body.
Through from his world, into ours.
*
57.
The Hangman’s body fell to the tarmac. His head flew from his neck and landed with a crack as the skull broke on the hard ground. The horse disappeared.
What else could she do but put her own head in the noose? What other way back could there be?
There was no other way...but perhaps...
Sam climbed the gibbet. She edged along the arm of the gibbet to the noose and pulled up the rope until she held the knot in her hands.
She loosened the knot as far as it would go, until it was wide enough to climb through, though now she wouldn’t be able to reach it from the ground. There was nothing for it: she let herself tumble through and followed the Hangman back to wherever he had gone.
For a second, maybe less, she managed thought, then there was a tearing agony, like the vortex she was in tried to turn her insides out. She tried to scream, but she couldn't, because she was inside out. Her insides: lungs, stomach, and organs floated outside her ribs as though there was no gravity in this place. Of course, there was not. She was in some kind of limbo, some waiting room, some place that was only ever meant to be passed one way. But the Hangman had somehow broken those rules, traveling through and breaking into Sam's world. Now she broke those rules, too, and the agony of going against the will of the being that created this place was tearing her apart.
As suddenly as her madness came, her voice was lost, immortal agony experienced, Sam found herself in a long tunnel running through the underground from the church, but this time falling as though into a pit, moss and hanging lichen, decades, maybe centuries old, on all sides. Cold water dripped onto her face in defiance of gravity itself.
She fell until she hit a rusted iron ladder, and saw stars, real stars. Then into the shaft rising from the Green Man’s home, but down, down...
She came out and fell hard to the ground with a grunt.
*
58.
Warren Johns breathed no longer. But then he had no need of air. His bare sockets glowed, now, glowed with the fires of the dead and damned.
He took the noose from around his neck and wheeled round on his horse.
“Bring me the child,” he said, his voice cracked and harsh, unlike any mortal voice. Like the voice of Death himself. When he spoke, he looked straight at William, as though both his eyes were intact, though William could see nothing but that dark and awful fire in the sockets.
“Walker,” he said when William stood before him.
William was young, but he was brave enough. He thought he’d seen everything, been more terrified than he ever could be.
He was wrong.
“Hang him,” said the Hangman.
William's bladder let go. The thought of a death like he'd just witnessed filled him with dread, more powerful than any fear he'd felt since coming to the village. More powerful than any horror he'd witnessed.
In his mind's eye he replayed Warren Johns’s death, his feet jingle-jangling until the end. He saw all this so vividly, he thought he was hallucinating as Sam fell through the noose and landed with a thump on the ground. But he knew she was real, because the scales were gone from his eyes. He could see very well.
He was a walker.
*
William felt a cold calm descend upon him, and looked behind the Hangman, at all the souls waiting there.
His mother was one.
She placed her hands before her face, then removed them. Like she was playing peek-a-boo with a child.
But William understood.
Sam was unconscious on the ground. Blood poured from a wound on her head, when she'd hit it on a very real rusted iron rung.
“Hangman,” he said. He tried to keep his voice strong. To be confident like he'd never been before—a fey child afraid of his own visions. “Hangman, can I make a last request?”
“I'm no judge, boy,” said the Hangman in Warren Johns’ deep voice. “No judge.” But he nodded, just the same.
Sam stirred on the ground, and put a hand to her head. Her eyes finally focused. The scales were gone from her eyes. Warren John’s body was the Hangman’s vessel. Terrible eyes stared out where once a kind and thoughtful man had one real eye, and one of shining steel.
“God, Warren—” she said.
“Shh, now, Sam,” said William, in a tone beyond his mere seven years. “Hangman, I'd like to say good-bye to my friend.”
The Hangman did not laugh, or nod, but sat implacable upon his black horse. William took it as a yes.
Sam was pulled up by the townsfolk and held fast. William walked to Sam. No one held him. No one would force him into a noose.
With a smile, William Bridges pulled on Sam's arm to bring her down to his height. He kissed her on the cheek.
“No, William!” she said.
As he leaned in close, she took his hand. They touched for just a moment. William closed his eyes, prepared his heart, and turned to face Death like the man he might become.
*
The last walker. The last of a dying breed: those that could see the world behind this, where death and time raced to catch up.
William held out his hand for the Hangman to take. The Hangman took him up on his horse with no effort at all.
The sweeper watched with a grin on his bearded, stained face.
Then he stepped forward and led the horse, Death, and William to the noose.
“Good boy, walker. Why waste energy fighting?” rasped Death’s head. “You and your kind, your time is done.”
The sweeper halted and patted the boy's knee. William flinched at the touch in a way that he hadn't before, feeling Death's hands around him.
But none of that mattered, because William was a walker, and a walker didn't go lightly into the shadow, he fought it until the end, just like Warren.
William rammed the steel eye into Warren Johns’s eye socket.
“This is what you are!” screamed William, and saw his mother’s ghost smile from among the damned. “You’re just…just a dead thing!”
*
William knew just how that steel eye worked, and why the Warren Johns that was had been able to bear its touch. Because it looked inward, as well as outward. Just as it saw the truth of the world outside, it saw the truth of the man, too.
Warren had been able to bear it because his soul was pure. He'd been a walker, and although he'd never explained to William just what that was, William knew well enough. He understood, deep down in his soul, what it meant to be a walker. He was a guardian of the light.
The Hangman saw inside himself and understood the truth, too.
He was just a dead thing in a dead man's body.
The flies came first, and the Hangman batted at them, trying to get them from his eyes, but they crawled into his bare eye, heedless of that dark fire that burned within. His grip on William loosened, and William lashed out his young leg into the face of the sweeper, who held the horse's bridle still. The sweeper stumbled backwards and William leapt down from the horse.
The sweeper cried out in agony, his hold on reality torn. His form began to shift, into that of a monkey, then back to man, then monkey. The agony of the transformation was obvious to the young walker.
William ran to Sam's side. Not one of the townsfolk moved. It was as though a spell had been broken.
When the crows flew in through the fog and began feasting on Warren Johns’s fast-decaying corpse, the townsfolk began to scream. Some seemed bewildered to find themselves holding makeshift weapons and covered in blood and viscera from their murdered victims. Some fell to the floor and sobbed, great heaving sobs.
All the while the monkey shifted endlessly, and the low beasts feasted on the carcass of Death himself.
*
William still heard Warren’s voice, from beyond the veil.
“Take the scales from their eyes,” he said.
And William knew there was one more thing he had to do. It couldn't be made right. The village couldn't be healed. But the canker, the cancer, could be torn from it and thrust into the light.
He was a servant of light. It was his duty, his alone, now that Warren Johns’s tattered and ravaged remains lay on the ground amidst the bones of a dread horse.
“Lord! Take their scales! Take their scales!” he shouted to the heavens, and a great light filled the sky. “Take the scales from their eyes!”
And the villagers saw all that they needed to see.
The sweeper fought. He shifted, his monkey form tore and scraped and bit and clawed just as the old man fought tooth and nail.
But he could not fight the tide. As his feet kicked beneath the noose, his cigarette fell to the floor.
Dog end, thought William. The kind of cigarette his father had always called a dog end.
*
59.
As the fog cleared and the villagers wept in terror and sorrow and remorse for their sins, William understood he could tell them all, each and every man woman and child remaining, to step up to that noose and they would obey.
He had that power.
But he stayed his hand because of Sam, and because of his mother. His mother nodded at him, a final good-bye. He lifted a hand and blew her a kiss, just like they did every night when she put him to bed.
She was going to bed now, and in the good place.
Perhaps, thought William, if there was a place behind all things, racing to catch up, maybe there was a place ahead, too. A place that waited and didn't rush, a place you went to when the time was right.
He smiled, his young face covered in grime, because he knew it was the truth of things. He smiled, and his face was beautiful.
Sam stepped forward and took the boy's hand. The villagers didn't matter anymore. They would suffer for their sins, in this life or the next.
Just as the Hangman was not a judge, neither was William. He was just a servant of light. A walker, the last of his kind, and a seven-year-old orphan.
But Sam squeezed his hand tight, and he knew that he was no orphan.
*
The fog was clearing. Police would be coming soon. The press. The stories would start, the media would swarm.
But Sam Green and William Bridges would be long gone.
“Come on,” said Sam. “We need to leave.”
They both understood why. The villagers would not stop them. Not any longer.
There was nothing left at the Noose and Gibbet but the stench of old death.
“Wait,” said William. He walked over to the mess of Warren Johns, laying on the ground amid the bones of Death's horse.
He picked the steel orb from within Warren's skull. He didn't flinch. It was just a corpse.
Hard, for a seven-year-old boy. But that wasn't all he was. Not any longer.
“We'll need this,” he said, and didn't need to say any more. They both knew their place was together now. Maybe in some villages Sam would be William's mother. Maybe some days she'd be his older sister.
The road waited. They didn't look back.
As they walked from the little village, neither looked back.
They never looked back, just looked at what was, right there and then, because there wasn't just one world, but the one behind, and the one in front, but they could only live in one.
And as they walked, they saw. They saw the places that other eyes slid past: wonders, horrors.
They walked, and they were not alone.
The End
Afterword
This novel sits on the same book shelf as Highwayman, Death by a Mother’s Hand, A Scarecrow to Watch over Her, Deadlift, Coachman (coming soon), Flesh and Coin and many other tales. They are all stories of the Walkers, the Mulrones, and the Land Between Midnight – the world between worlds filled with fog and populated by creatures of English myth...and monsters, too.
This novel was inspired by memories of a small town in Norfolk where my grandparents, Baldy Nan and Granddad, lived. We went each month when I was school-aged, and for longer during school holidays. When I moved back to England from Japan, it was Norfolk I went to, and Norfolk is where I stay. I love where I live. The inn (The Noose and Gibbet – I changed the name for this book) of this story is pretty much the pub where Mrs Saunders and I held our wedding reception. The town of Frampton is Hingham, the place I spent so much time as a child, teenager, and later, as a young man.
I hope you liked the story, and as always, thank you for keeping me company on the dark and lonely roads of Old England.
Craig
The Shed
2017
About the Author
Craig Saunders is the author of many novels and novellas, including Masters of Blood and Bone, Deadlift, RAIN, and the fantasy tales set in the world of Rythe. He lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife and children, and likes nice people and good coffee.
Find out more on Amazon, or visit:
craigrsaunders.blogspot.com
facebook.com/craigrsaundersauthor
pinterest.co.uk/craigrsaunders/
@Grumblesprout
Craig
The Shed
2017
Also by Craig Saunders
Novels
Hangman
Highwayman
PIG (with Edward Lorn)
The Dead Boy
Left to Darkness (Oblivion Series #1)
Masters of Blood and Bone
Cold Fire
A Home by the Sea
RAIN
A Stranger's Grave
The Love of the Dead
Vigil
Spiggot
Spiggot, Too
BLOOD DRUGS TEA
Novellas
UNIT 731
Death by a Mother's Hand
Flesh and Coin
Bloodeye
Deadlift
A Scarecrow to Watch over Her
The Walls of Madness
