Barton looked imploringly at me. I suppose I looked less intimidating than Messenger. “What is this? You people have no right to go around—”
“Five. Four.”
“If you say yes, you may escape punishment,” I said. I don’t know why I urged him to play. I dreaded the appearance of the Master of the Game. And I harbored no goodwill toward Barton. He had been poorly used, abused indeed, exploited. But the punishment for molestation is not death. And if it were, then that punishment would have to come from a court of law.
Barton could have gone to his parents. He could have gone to a school counselor. He could have simply gone straight to the police by picking up a phone and calling 911.
He had done none of those things. Instead he had ruthlessly plotted murder.
“Three. Two.”
“I’ll play!” he shouted. Then, almost as an afterthought, “What is the punishment supposed to be?”
“The very worst thing you can imagine,” I said.
His eyes narrowed, and I knew he was running through a catalog of fears in his mind. But here is what I have learned: people are seldom consciously aware of their deepest fear. It is in the nature of most minds to avoid the worst fears, to wall them off, to ignore them and instead imagine that only more benign things can ever occur.
Barton did not know what he feared, but if he lost the game, I would know that fear. I would drag that fear into daylight.
“I summon the Master of the Game,” Messenger said.
He arrived preceded by a yellow mist, a mist the color of urine, a vile, sentient mist that can close around you, make it hard to breathe, and whisper wordlessly of dread. The mist blanketed the dozen students and the frozen teacher and formed a rough circle around the three of us. I could feel rather than see that the classroom was extending, spreading out to make room for the Master of the Game and whatever game he had brought with him.
He has a flair for the dramatic, the Game Master. And he did not disappoint.
I won’t go into describing the hideous guises in which I had previously seen this creature, but will confine myself to telling what I saw on this day at this time and place.
He did not so much emerge from the yellow mist as form himself from it. Tendrils of that diseased cloud swirled to the center, twisted around like a small tornado, and slowly solidified into something that might be flesh and was very definitely blood.
He was roughly human in shape—two arms, two legs, and a head—but was taller than any human outside of the NBA. And from the top of his head, blood flowed down to coat his entire body in red gore. It was as if he were a sort of volcano, with a caldera opening the crown of his head, with the viscous red slicking down across his face and down his neck, and spreading across every inch of him.
I had steeled myself; I thought I had prepared myself, yet I took a step back and turned my face away and cast my eyes to one side, seeking the reassurance of Messenger’s calm face. I had been prepared for a creature of horror, but the smell, that primal, salty smell of blood, massive quantities of human blood, that smell . . .
I did not faint. I did not vomit. Both threatened, but by looking away until the gag reflex was lessened, I avoided shaming myself.
Yet when I turned back, jaw set, muscles all clenched, I saw still worse, for the Master of the Game is never truly singular but comes with other creatures attached, an infestation almost, a sort of ant colony that crawled and swam against the eternal flow of blood.
Not ants of course, but tiny human creatures, men and women, young and old, all of the same race now, a red, red race.
I had avoided disgracing myself. Barton did not. I smelled urine and vomit and yes, indeed, young Barton Jones had collapsed on the floor and was whimpering. No trace of the cool, calculating killer could be seen on that tearstained, vomit-flecked face.
Those with tender hearts would probably imagine that mere exposure to the Master of the Game constituted punishment enough. But while Messengers of Fear may have their own individual emotions, including compassion, their duty is not to bend the world toward mercy, but to correct the balance that is harmed when terrible crimes go unpunished.
As for the Master of the Game, whether he is unique or one of several of his ilk, there is no pity within him.
Upon completing his dramatic and mind-shattering appearance, the Master of the Game asked in a voice like corpses speaking, “You summon me, Messenger?”
“This is Barton Jones, a murderer. He has chosen to play the game.”
Barton did not voice an objection to being called a murderer. I doubt very much he was capable of speech at all.
I heard tiny cries and choking sounds coming from the creatures that swam and crawled and drowned in the blood that flowed down the Game Master’s form.
“The game is this,” said the Master of the Game. “I shall summon twenty-one creatures. You must cut the head completely from each one and fill that bag”—whereupon a large canvas sack appeared—“and complete this gruesome task within five minutes. If you do this, you will have won. If you lack even one head, you will have lost and be subject to punishment.”
“What?” Barton asked pitiably. He looked to me, eyes drowning in tears. “What is happening to me? You have to help me. Can’t you help me? Call my mom. I want my mom!”
I knew to remain silent.
Beside the sack now lay a machete. I looked meaningfully at the machete, hoping Barton would get the clue and ready himself for the game. But he was unprepared when the first of the creatures appeared.
And oh, oh, oh, the cunning creativity, the wicked sadism of the Game Master. For the creatures that ran one by one, screaming from the mist, were very much like pigs, with one essential difference: each had Lisa Bayless’s head.
Barton made no move to attack the first Lisa pig until that monstrosity, that violation of nature’s laws, attacked him, snapping at him with his erstwhile teacher’s teeth and emitting the outraged squeals of a pig.
Only after suffering numerous bites, and only after wasting thirty seconds on the big clock that conveniently hovered in the air just before the chalkboard, did Barton seize the machete and, with a scream of rage and frustration, hack at the animal’s neck.
The first blow was poorly aimed and bit into the pig’s back, eliciting squeals of pain. Barton had risen to weakened legs and seemed already to be at the end of his strength. Yet he drew back the machete and aimed his next blow more carefully.
It took three tries before he managed to hack the head free and drop it into the sack. Whereupon the second creature came rushing at him.
For a while Barton managed. He hacked and swore, hacked and cried, hacked with snot running from his nose to join the blood that soon covered him.
He reached thirteen heads, but for him the end came with a full minute left on the clock. He just stopped, sank to the ground, sitting in a puddle of gore, and dropped the machete.
He sat weeping, dull eyed, destroyed before the game even ended.
Murder is not so easy when it is face-to-face. Murder is not so easy when you must nearly drown in the blood you shed.
“Have I performed my duty, Messenger of Isthil?” the Master of the Game asked.
“You have. You may withdraw.”
The Game Master departed more quickly than he had arrived, perhaps rushing off to test some other wicked person’s courage.
“Now, Barton Jones, you will endure the Piercing,” Messenger said. “Mara.”
I had hoped somehow that it might be Messenger who took on the Piercing, but of course Messenger’s time was drawing slowly to a close, while mine was just beginning. I had to learn, to grow into this hideous duty.
I drew Barton, unresisting, to his feet. I moved behind him, reached around, and placed one hand over his heart and the other against his blood-slicked head.
I could feel his heart beating. I could feel the spasms of silent sobs. I glanced at Messenger as though he might yet spare me, but I saw only calm patience
in those blue eyes.
Thus, I dived deep within Barton’s mind.
It is an almost impossible experience to convey. There is nothing like it in ordinary life, in which the mind is an inviolate sanctuary where others may not intrude. Words fail, because how can you describe what has no counterpart in human experience?
I could say that his fears were like rats fleeing from a flashlight’s beam, perhaps, but that is only an inadequate analogy.
I pursued those fears, sensing them one by one, reading their intensity, dismissing the weaker ones, searching always for the darkest place where the last and greatest rat would hide trembling.
At last, knowing my answer, hating that knowledge, hating what I had seen and learned, and hating most what my duty now required, I rose from his mind and drew my red hands away.
“He has one fear greater than all others,” I said.
“What is that fear?” Messenger asked solemnly.
“He once saw a YouTube video of a monkey being eaten by a python,” I said. “The image has terrified him ever since. The monkey was alive.” I hesitated. “The monkey took a very long time to be slowly, inexorably crushed and finally consumed.”
“What?” This word was a sob. “What? What? WHAT? WHAT?”
Panic set in and Barton tried to run, but found his feet would not move.
Now Messenger drew a black hood from the pocket of his coat and pulled it over his head so that his face was shadowed and only his mouth could be seen as he said, “You have lost the game. So now, in the name of Isthil and the balance She maintains, I summon the Hooded Wraiths and charge them to carry out the sentence.”
The wraiths lack the Master of the Game’s drama and imagination, appearing simply as tall, hooded shapes, without any opening for a face, without anything visible beyond their sinister clothing. What was beneath that hood? I prayed I would never learn.
They stood before the weeping boy, and one waved a hand above the deepest part of the pool of blood. From that blood it rose, a triangular head as large as a football, slitted eyes incapable of feeling, empty of soul, and then scale upon scale, foot after foot, until the snake, perhaps twelve feet long, lay writhing and twisting, its malevolent gaze focused on its collapsing prey.
“No,” Barton begged. “No, no, this is wrong, you can’t do this. There are laws! You can’t . . . I’ll confess! I’ll go to the cops! I swear to God, I will go to the cops, I’ll tell them everything!”
“That’s what you should have done,” I muttered, angry at him not just for the murder he had committed, but for causing me to endure this helpless witnessing of his agony.
“I’ll do it! I swear, I’ll do it!”
But the serpent was with us, the punishment had been decreed, and there was no hope of escape.
With liquid speed the snake whipped its tail around Barton’s legs and pulled him to the ground. That tail held like a rope, indifferent to his kicks, indifferent to his cries.
Then the python’s mouth unhinged, allowing that baleful jaw to extend, to widen. Large enough at last to swallow both his feet at the same time.
I saw the feet still kicking, bulging through the scaled skin below the snake’s head.
Barton screamed now, no words, just screams. His hands were free, and he pounded on the snake’s head; but aside from a few insolent blinks, the snake did not pay his efforts any notice, but pulsed obscenely and drew the boy deeper, up to his knees.
From there to his thighs took perhaps five long, long minutes. Barton’s voice was ragged, blown out, a hoarse, rasping, animal sound.
I would not have thought that serpent’s jaw could widen any farther, but this is a species able to swallow small cows, given time, so widen it did; and now the snake’s teeth were biting into Barton’s waist, undulating up and down its length to gorge itself on the living boy.
No human with a shred of humanity within her could possibly watch this without sickening, and I am still only human. I lost the contents of my stomach, retching violently in response to all the chemicals a body releases upon seeing the intolerable.
“We have to stop this,” I whispered to Messenger. “It isn’t right.”
Messenger said nothing.
“It . . . hurts,” Barton managed to say. “I . . . can’t breathe.”
Those were the last words he spoke, for now the snake had his chest, and Barton’s breathing was shallow and desperate. With each exhalation the snake tightened its grip, so that each breath shortened the next.
3
I PRAYED THEN TO MY OWN GOD, NOT TO ISTHIL who I served and despised, but to the God in whom I still believed and hoped was watching, for it all to end.
But there was no succor for Barton Jones, who had murdered.
The snake had swallowed Barton’s entire length with only the head and arms still free.
He looked at me then, Barton did, with eyes that no longer pleaded for mercy but simply needed to see something human and real. I think he believed my face would be the last thing he would ever see.
His body was now a huge bulge in the snake’s body, but he no longer writhed or kicked. The blood was being squeezed from his lower body, and the air from his lungs.
Then, with a final powerful undulation of that snake’s whole twelve-foot length, Barton Jones was gone.
The snake closed its jaws over fingers, and suddenly, without a sound or a warning, it was gone.
Barton Jones lay now on the clean tile floor of his classroom. He was not covered in blood. He was not covered in the bodily fluids that had been squeezed from him. He merely lay, a boy, barely breathing, eyes squeezed shut, motionless and silent.
I knew he was not dead. I knew that all of it had been an illusion. But when an illusion can be seen and smelled and tasted and touched, it ceases to be something even the strongest mind can resist believing.
The snake was real to Barton Jones. It was real to me.
I felt dirty and ashamed. I was sick in ways that went far beyond a queasy stomach. What I had witnessed had been an atrocity. The fact that Barton Jones was a murderer, that justice demanded punishment for him, or even that this worst of fears was the product of his own imagination did nothing to lessen my own sense of the savagery of this punishment.
Was this truly the price Isthil demanded? Then She was a savage, barbaric creature.
And yet I served Her. As did Messenger.
Daniel was with us; Daniel, that deceptively average young man in the jeans and hoodie.
“Barton Jones,” Messenger said, “your punishment is completed. The balance that you disturbed with your wicked deed has been righted. You are free to go.”
Had I had within me any remaining vestige of humor, I might have laughed. Free to go. He would never be free of this memory, and neither would I.
But was he so destroyed that he had permanently lost his mind? Would he find within himself the strength to go on?
Daniel was watching Messenger, as he does, knowing that Messenger himself has been pushed as far and perhaps further than any feeling creature could endure.
Messenger removed the black hood and stuffed it into his pocket. His face shone with perspiration. He was breathing hard, as was I, almost as if it were we two who had endured Barton’s agony of body and mind.
“Rise if you are able,” Daniel said to Barton.
Barton’s eyes flicked open. I believe he may have briefly lost consciousness, which could only have been a good thing for him.
He woke screaming in that same ragged, blown-out croak.
Daniel and Messenger and I waited. None of us could help Barton. He was on the cusp between going on with whatever he could now make of his life and being taken away to the Shoals, that mysterious place about which I knew only that the wicked who have been driven mad by their punishment will have a bare possibility of recovering, or else will live out their days in halls echoing with nightmare shouts and mad laughter.
We waited, because we are patient, we who serve the harsh goddes
s Isthil.
Slowly, slowly, trembling like an old man with palsy, Barton drew his legs beneath him, came to a crawling position on hands and knees, and finally rose, shaking and weeping, to his feet.
“Good,” Daniel said.
I saw relief in Messenger’s eyes, and knew it shone from mine as well. Barton would survive.
Survive, but whether he could yet make something of his life, I was not to learn then.
“Are we done?” I demanded. And without waiting for an answer or permission, I left that place and returned instantly to my abode.
Some person or magical force unseen by me ensures that my abode is cleaned and stocked with food, and that my dirty clothes are washed and returned. That person or force does not stock my shelves with alcohol. I am not a drinker, but at that moment, with the silence echoing my every slight sound, I would have swallowed alcohol or anything else that would have blanked that memory.
But of course those who serve Isthil are never allowed to forget what they have done in Her service.
I stood before the mirror in my bedroom and waited.
I didn’t see it at first, for it formed on my right side, just where my waistband would be, concealed by my hanging arm.
But then I felt the tingle and the heat as the image appeared. I watched as it was outlined as if by an invisible artist. I watched as the shape became clear and as the livid colors filled in the sketched shape.
And at last, there it was: a boy’s face, contorted in terror, as the snake consumed him. The tattoo Isthil gives has an awful advantage over regular tattoos: it moves. Just a little, just barely enough to perceive, but on my flesh that snake’s body did pulse and writhe.
I had dressed myself by the time Messenger came.
I offered him a soda and took one myself.
“Tell me it’s true,” I said after a long silence had passed.
“What is your question?” he asked.
“Tell me it’s true. Tell me that this is necessary. Tell me that we are not just carrying out the sadistic games of a cruel being.” When he said nothing, I went on. “Tell me it’s true and vital and that we are saving existence itself from extinction, Messenger. Even if it’s not true, tell me it is true.”