The Digger keeps jars of meat preserves stacked in his shallow cellar, and a lock on its tin door as a necessary precaution.
“Crafdy unz, dem whispers...” He says, shuffling in from the day’s work. He travelled far to the edges of the map today, (to the edge of the world, it felt!) but the walk had been worth it. He had put a long, bothersome story down, one that had been sleeping for a very long time. It’s dreams had been crossing with the Digger’s dreams, and that had been making all sorts of trouble, oh yes. He dug all day, a stubborn hole that never seemed to get bigger. But then he saw it, saw the juicy, pulsing muscles, (a neck, perhaps?). It was a big one. Its body rose up and down, breathing, though it lay under several feet of dirt and sand.
He plunged the cracked tip of his shovel into it, once, twice. The skin was thick, and his shovel blunt. He grunted, hocked, spit. Finally, the skin ruptured and gushed. Whatever black strands came out, the Digger made sure to sever them. The hole filled up quickly, until the Digger couldn’t see his feet. A quick succession of bubbles popped at the surface before all fell still. The air buzzed like rapacious flies with drooling mouths as the Digger cut out chunks of the buried body and put them in his sack.
He’d made it back to the his home atop the butte as the sky began to darken. He could see the dark clouds coming in from the north, riding the cold wind. He’d made sure to put the necessary offerings at the four points of the compass, and freshened the ring with some fresh juice from one of his many jars. This way no hungry shadows would find their way in. As extra assurance, he’d laid a carpet of broken glass at the top of the stairs. You could never be too careful.
“Da Fade is very hungry tonight,” The Digger says, after popping a finger into his mouth and putting it in the air. He watches as the clouds tumble southwards overhead, leaving a space of open sky directly above the ring of blood and whispering to him as they pass.
“Oh, beez quiet, now,” He says, waving them away and chuckling. It certainly looks like it will be a splendid storm tonight. But his stomach growls. He’s hungry, so storm watching will have to wait.
There are no windows in the Digger’s home. There is only a large mirror, which hangs on the wall furthest away from the door. Sconces hang from the bottom of the mirror’s frame, wax drippings like thin, frail bones all the way to the dirt floor. The Digger walks to the table, finds matches, and goes to the mirror, never taking his eyes off the tarnished glass, of his figure walking around the room. His face is pointed and washed out like a turnip. Though he’s thin, his flesh sags, as do his overalls. The nails on his squarish fingers are pointed and sharp, and he uses them to rake his balding head, where several long green stalks grow, some with tips capped by small, white flowers.
With the candles lit, the Digger steps back, admiring how the gold frame glints in the darkening room. Soon, night will consume the plains, and there will only be the fire to see by. Still looking at himself in the mirror, he goes to the corner of the room, where there is a pit made of cinderblocks bordering an ankle deep pile of ashes. The Digger grabs several large twigs from a pile, and proceeds to start a fire.
“Wod’s for dinner, you handsome devil, you,” The Digger says to his reflection, once the fire is going. There’s a blackened hole in the roof through which the fire escapes, but a layer of smoke still hangs from the hovel’s rafters.
“Hows aboud pickled wilderbeast? Dat’s your favorite dish.” He goes to his sack, weighs it in his hands.
“Should probably ask da missus, do you dink?” His reflection nods. “Okay, I’ll be but a minute.” The Digger goes back outside, and around to the cellar door. He carries a lit candle. The lock is old and rusted, but a well oiled key does the trick. He’s quickly down the dusty stairs and past the preserves, on to another set of stairs which go even lower into the earth.
“Oh, dahling, I wos wonderding...” His voice echoes. The air is cold, expansive, dark. His candle flame is swallowed up in it. He walks up to plastic table sticky with coagulated juices, and several chairs which run round its perimeter in askance stances. A still figure sits at the head of the table.
“...dahling? Oh, well, still hod under da collar, I dakes it.” The circle of the Digger’s candlelight touches on the tips of the figure’s fingers, which rest neatly on the table’s surface. The nails are brittle, the fingers brown and gnarled like tree roots. Nothing moves except the dust motes in the air, as if caught in an icy stream.
The Digger turns quickly and goes out of the room, back up the stairs, past the preserves, out the tin door and back into his windowless room. He looks in the mirror, at a panting, pointed face surrounded by a burning, golden halo. The room is hot. The salivary glands in his mouth loosen, making the hunger in his stomach into a biting pain. It’s been a long day. No matter if his darling is angry with him or not; he’s hungry, and he’s going to eat. Now.
“Tasdy, tasdy, tasdy,” He says. A pulpy piece of the day’s bounty, (of a story that is no more!) blackens on the end of a long two pronged fork the Digger has over the fire. He sits on the cinder blocks. Black smoke creeps through the air, while tears trickle in muddy little streams down the Digger’s dirty face. He blows the smoke from the meat until he can wait no longer. The bites burns the roof of his mouth, but the juices, oh, the juices, they’re savory and buttery and delicious. He imagines in his mind that the beast is still squirming in his mouth before taking another bite.
But then: oh, no.
“Oh, no.” The Digger starts up. His eyes are wide and red. A rivulet of drool and meat juice drivels down his cheek. He looks to the screen door. He can hear the shadows and the storm tearing through the desert. They sound like they’ve discovered something.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” The Digger says, and runs outside, his shovel in hand. He has forgotten to lock the tin door to the basement. Stupid, stupid. He trips in the dark, almost steps in broken glass. He feels the first of the rain. Then he sees it. Though the door is shut, he can see the oiled lock glistening in the star light. The clouds are revolving around the butte, angry and closer than they should be (The offering should have kept them further back.) He’s about to lock the door, but a pestering doubt rakes at his brain.
“Wod if dey god in?” He wonders. “Wod if dey hungry mouds god in?” His gaze goes from the door, to the shadows raging outside the butte top in jagged gyres, and back again. That’s when he hears a shout. He turns towards it, perplexed. The shadows, even when they scream, only do so in the raspy, hushed tone of a whisper. That scream he had just heard sounded like something else.
“Sounds like a man.” The Digger says. He’s anxious. It’s been a very long time since he’s had any company. His darling had not been much for socializing as of late, preferring quiet dinners at home in the cold and dark of the cellar. He hadn’t realized just how much he missed other people until he heard the man’s voice. What an unexpected treat.
He locks the tin door quietly, then tiptoes up the path towards the other side of the butte. When he nears the rise in the path, he hides himself behind a boulder, then peeks out. He sees them, two men, by the stairs to the plain. One is on his back and hugging his knee, while the other tends to it.
“God the glass, dey did,” The Digger whispers. At least he’d remembered that; it made forgetting to lock the cellar door a little more forgivable. He lightly taps the head of the shovel on the tip of his boot. The storm writhes around the top of the butte in such a seething froth that most other sounds are drowned out. He would have to shout to the men to be heard, but what sort of welcome would that be?
The Digger’s brow is lined with dirty furrows. He is wondering how he will greet the two men, when they both start up the path, towards him and his home.
“Oh, no, no, no,” the Digger shrinks behind the boulder. He bites a nubby nail. They’re heading towards his house, towards his sweet darling love. They’re apt to wander about, make themselves at home, as if they have run of the place. He has to think, and fast, how to intercept them.
He runs his eyes up the path, to where it narrowly passes between a large rock and the dried out husk of a fallen tree. The tree is really no more than a sheath of bark as thick as a turtle shell, the insides eaten away by wind and sand. He could hide behind it and be completely invisible. The men would be so close in passing him that he could lick their fingers, if that was his fancy. The Digger muffles a giggle, a sound not unlike a pillow suffocating a jackhammer. He likes his plan very much, but he has no time to relish in it: the two men are walking fast, despite the rain (or perhaps because of it!) and the one fellow’s stiff limp.
To get to the narrow pass and the tree husk, the Digger has to first go in the open and cross the path. Being seen would entirely ruin his big, fun plan, so he has to make sure he’s not. The center of the butte top is divided by a tight row of jagged tent rocks, a saggital crest obscuring each side of the area from the other. If he slinks low enough below the eye line of the ridge, he can avoid being seen. He rushes back in the direction of his house, slipping in some mud as he rounds a turn. There’s a bleached white bone in the sand by his feet, shiny in the rain. A clavicle, by its curve, but sharp, like a broken wishbone, perhaps from the winged story he dug up long ago, the one which screamed when the sunlight hit it.
The Digger takes the bone and puts it in the back pocket of his overalls. He crosses the path and then rushes up the other side of the hill. He crests the ridge, peeks over the rocks. The men are still hobbling along, slower now.
“Leg musd be sdiff.” The Digger bites his thin lower lip, holding in a guffaw. The hollowed out tree is only a quick shuffle away. Crouching low and moving like a fiddler crab, the Digger scampers, hidden by the small hoodoos and boulders, his baggy bottom brushing the earth and his shovel a big claw raised to the sky. He nestles in behind the bark perfectly. Why, there’s even a little space to peek through! Oh, what luck.
“Whad gread luck, by Jove,” The Digger brings his eye right to the peephole. The men are almost on top of him. Despite the rain and the storm, the Digger feels a warmness bubbling in his chest and steadily moving up to his cheeks. It’s making everything before him as clear as high noon in the highland.
“Do you see the fire, Will?” The hurt man says.
The Digger licks his lips. The cloth around the man’s leg looks like a shirt. It’s soaked all the way through, shining red in the rain. He could lift it over his head and wring out every last drop. Then he’d smack his lips before cutting open the dirty denim, so he could dig into all the fleshy pulp beneath. He and the thirsty earth would drink and drink, until they bled the big buffoon dry.
“No. I smell it though. Smoke.” The other man, Will, is thinner and younger, with all his juices on the inside. His shorts are black and skin tight, his thighs encased in them like sausage links. The Digger decides he’ll be the first he welcomes. They’re almost to the cusp of the ridge, walking fast despite the bearded one’s hurt leg, and the Digger is about to jump out of his skin, he’s so gal-dern excited.
But then, Will stops. He wrinkles his nose and begins to look anxiously around, as if he’s smelled the Digger’s particular eau de garbage, sweat and smoke embedded in clothes. He tenses, about ready to run. There is someone watching them, someone very close.
“Crick,” but before Will can get all the words out, his eyes stop on the hollowed out tree. The Digger tenses, knowing that the man senses him, knows he’s watching. But it’s too late. The man with the delicious pulpy leg is crossing right in front of him, a shovel’s swing away.
“Stop!” Will says.
Crick half turns. “What is it?”
“Get back here! There’s someone behind the tree!” The words are more in-the-moment narrative than warning: as Will says it, the Digger lunges out from behind the tree, swinging the shovel like a polo mallet. He cracks Crick on the chin. Will hears something give in Crick’s chin, a loud pop. Crick is knocked backwards, the gravel and mud catching his fall.
The Digger pants over Crick’s body. The bright blooms of color in the the fallen man’s cheeks, the blood so fresh on his teeth and cracked lips, looks so lovely in the soft twilight. What beautiful mess of tissue and brain matter lies underneath, the Digger wonders. He lifts the shovel above his head, his two hands wrapped around the handle.
“Hellos, and welcome...” The Digger is about to plunge the shovel down, but a small stone buzzes by his cheek. He looks up in time for another, larger stone to hit him in the middle of the forehead. He staggers back a few steps, his shovel up in front of his face. Oh, yes, he thinks: the man with the worried face and sausage thighs.
“I wanded to welcome him firsd, besides.” The Digger thinks. He affords himself a quick peek at ol’ Cricky, who moans and twitches a foot, but otherwise remains stone still.
“You! Stay!” The Digger commands, kicking Crick in the leg. Fresh blood seeps into the shirt around the man’s leg. The Digger then looks up at Will, who stands with another stone in his hand.
“Don’t touch him, you fuck.” Will says. He lets the stone fly, which the Digger bats out of the air. He can already feel the skin rising on his forehead, feels his veins pulsing beneath the swollen bump. He’d rather not have another.
“No danks!” The Digger says, rushing down the path towards Will. The shovel slashes quickly through the air. Will tries to get away from it, jumping to the side, but the blunted metal edge still finds his cheek bone, cutting it as it arches up and away. Will stumbles, trips. His forearm catches the dirt as he falls. His cheek is cold and numb, but he can feel a warmness trickling down. It touches the side of his mouth, and the taste is metallic but unmistakably familiar. His own, that of his home, from a place completely alien to the highlands, where the summer is light and sweet, and he lived in a house on the south face of a mountain that was never quite finished, never quite done.
The water was so sweet, from a well deep underground. There was a pond on the other side of the road with caterpillars, mosquitos and fat trout to eat them. Will thinks of this as the Digger pounces on him, the shovel barred across the nape of Will’s neck. His lower lip scrapes the ground as the Digger pushes down, gravel mixing with the blood in his mouth. The man has flowers sprouting from his head on thin, green stalks, which dangle in front of Will’s nose, and they smell like garbage.
“No,” Will says. He wants to hold on to the home he left behind, with the sky so soft in winter, with short gray days which twisted around the smoke from the black chimney, the snow eddying up to the door of the Koster home, beckoning him in to the warm room where his father lay. He’s trying not to lose it. He’s trying, but the acrid taste of the dirt overpowers that of the blood, and it’s fading fast.
“Yes, we musd have our dinners. Yes.” The Digger puts all of his weight on the handle, bouncing like a piston so that the young man’s face sinks into the dirt. The shadows are hungry too, whispering for a taste of the Digger’s catch. He pays them no heed, just pushes down harder, not caring if he breaks the young man’s neck or not, just that he wants him to be quiet, to sleep like the stories under the ground do and stop causing a ruckus.
Thunder starts to swell from deep in the plain, a slow crescendo. It booms, and all at once, everything grows quiet. The Digger realizes that the young man isn’t struggling anymore, has indeed gone to sleepy sleep. He looks about him, jaw slack, eyes wide. The clouds encircling the butte in a roiling gyre have receded; they billow away to the south, like a tarpaulin being rolled in off of a pool, lightning flashing from their translucent insides.
“Ah, peace and quied, my friends,” the Digger says, looking at the two prostrate men on the ground around him. “But when da shadows leave, dat can only mean da Fadesy is oud and abouds,” The Digger lifts Will, whose head flops on a neck that is already the color of a plum, and lays him on top of Crick.
“We musd ged underground, my friends.” The Digger says. He’s done well in welcoming his new friends, and his darling will surely welcome some company at the dinner table. But first he must get
them up over the crest and back to the house. He puts the handle of the shovel under Crick’s armpits, a frame which makes it easier to pull the two men over the loose earth.
“We musds ged underground, before da Fadesy comes.” He’s breathing hard as he comes to the crest in the hill. The little four walled shack comes into view, with orange light blossoming on the ground in front of the screen door. Behind, in the distance to the north, is a huge expanse of gray, at odds with the heavy twilight that eats up the rest of the landscape. The Digger’s eyes pop.
“Okay, friends, we musds hurry.” He’s panting hard as he pulls the men down the incline. The Fade is coming.
Chapter III: “Dinner Party”