A Corpse, Chapter 16

*copyrighted material*

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    Under the hoar-frosted trail, his toes were livid, a barefoot scourge around the fort would surely make him talk or so said the officers. The soles of his feet blistered and skinned. Lifeblood dripped from his wrists, the prickly ropes gnawing at his skin. He fell into the mud, and his shriveled lungs could only make out short breaths. He could not bear the harm any longer as he attempted to pull himself up. Wyatt tried thinking about nice things, anything that would take him far from the clocking hours preceding his slow death. His mind took him back to Bartleby, memories of landscapists in the streets sketching the city’s frozen lake and scenery. He’d hopped around seeing all sorts of entertainers at the courtyards. Acrobats, ballerinas, actors, harpists, and sopranos. Bartleby was the boomtown of performers and attractions, theaters, and circuses. All paid by the government to mask the truth from foreign, high-level politicians and wealthy tourists. 

    It was 1917, and Wyatt was a boy of eight asking his mother for a coin to buy his favorite cacao paste bars. After school, he’d visit the candy store for two big chocolate bars wrapped in brown kraft paper. Once in the comfort of home, he’d share the sweet and creamy squares with his mother and her seven-month-old pregnancy. But then he remembered the day mom had lost

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her footing in the kitchen while she washed the dishes, landing on a drinking glass that slipped from her fingers. He found Harriett Elsner crying and bleeding on the glossy white kitchen tiles coming back from school, the eight-year-old had quickly called for help in the neighborhood and an ambulance had taken her away that day. Half an hour later his father Andrew had received a telegram from the hospital at his workplace in the car-assembly department of the automobile factory. Wyatt stayed with Mr. Stassie for a week, his father’s old buddy, and landlord of the block. His parents had later returned home with a healthy baby they decided to call Calvin. But despite the blessing, something wasn’t right. His father, Andrew Elsner, had changed from an affectionate man to a depressed and angry shell as if the whole event had been unbearable to him. Father would leave for work hours earlier than usual and when he was home he would move around the house quietly, like a shadow. Mother took a part-time job in a dry clean establishment out of the blue, she’d cry in the bathroom sometimes. For a whole year, the wonderful city of Bartleby wasn’t as great as he thought it was, Wyatt looked after the baby when she wasn’t around. And odd enough, Mr. Stassie would check on them while alone and make questions. Bizarre questions that had always got him thinking about that man.

    Fast forward to Calvin’s first birthday, everything had gone back to normal, mom was there, and dad was there. Physically, and mentally. An intimate and joyful celebration with a couple of neighbors, co-workers, and small gifts that could only fit the baby boy. Calvin grew curious and his older sibling grew fond of this new little person in his life, feeling less isolated from his own family. But in April 1922, the civil war finally reached the city of Bartleby when several Rootstock extremists—acting on their own—brought down a circus tent, fracturing the foundation upright poles in the middle of a show. Suffocating and crushing a hundred people. There was no point of return, even when the Rootstocks detached themselves from the said event through several radio broadcasts announcements, the harm was already done. It was just the beginning for many

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families—the Elsners not yet included—who decided to leave Bartleby and so, wandered around the country from province to province. Calvin and he would suffer the same fate later on though before ending up in Nooktown. He came to realize there were not that many places his mind could drift to for comfort after that.

   “I’m losing my patience . . . ” Jesse crabbed, pointing a gun to his head for what seemed the fifteenth time that day. Wyatt’s wrists bled due to the friction of his ropes, he had been tied weeks ago and had been fed whenever they remembered he was still alive. He’d shat anywhere like a dog and had lost a considerable amount of weight while his beard had grown wild. The Visitors had come by to Fort Yggdrasill four months ago but instead of taking him away, the Roanoke Military had convinced them to let them use the oldest sibling as bait to catch the missing Elsner brother. A large battalion of them had entered the facility with their black masks on and their detachable golden-framed spectacles. Wyatt had noticed then how high-ranked Visitors had peculiar lenses framed in the shape of wings. Bronze, silver, or gold, the higher the rank, the longer the wings. As a salute, Visitors would put their pistols against their necks, the safety lever off to address their loyalty to the government. Their full disguise meant for them to be faceless soldiers even in social status, meaning their lives were whatever the remaining leaders wanted. Visitors had no names or families either. There was certainly no small talk with these fellows. And they didn’t feel interrogating Wyatt was necessary at all, for the time being, surely they knew he didn’t have a clue of whatever was transpiring out of his imprisonment or even before it.

    The Commander was under rupturing pressure, he had already failed once before. He had promised the boy’s capture along with Dr. Mulhouse’s complete shutdown. The Visitors had threatened to take control of Nooktown indefinitely if Jesse fell short. Whatever to get the job

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done. They didn’t mind getting their hands dirty. But somehow, they were willing to evaluate him in this situation. Was he the leader Nooktown needed?

    “Su—suck it, Jess . . .  ” He exhaled. He had to admit the Head Commander was pretty much screwed at this point. Had Calvin crossed the Southern border of Norway by now with the help of the Renou? He wished for it to be so. Jesse had spilled the beans back at his prison cell, Calvin was alive, well, and under the Renou’s protection. His only motivation was to keep spitting at Mcallister’s face without any fear, even when he knew the unfavorable condition of Calvin’s whereabouts. Nonetheless, the lightheadedness wouldn’t leave him alone anymore, and he started to assume the worst. He had then started counting his days.

   “Show me your hands or you’ll get a bullet in your foot,” Jesse said.

    Wyatt did so silently, raising both of his hands and holding his breath. He stared at his missing fingernails knowingly, plucked here and there. Jesse had yanked them off himself with the hot blacksmith tongs back in the boiler room on a few occasions. 

    Before the Commander could get a hold of the blacksmith tongs once again, his right hand—an officer he simply called Dicky with big eyes, red hair, and a match’s shaped head—rushed towards him from the main gate and muttered something in his ear. Jesse looked right ahead at the trail that found its way toward the fort, there he spotted the people he was hoping to meet up with. And probably ready to welcome them with high consequences. The survivors of the hunting party had arrived, holding their weaponry with blackened fingers, their gloves torn and nasty. Some of them stank of blood and other stomach-churning things. Officer Møller and his men saluted with stony eyes, following him back into the fortress and acknowledging with dread the military’s deep-rooted mode of operation on failed missions like the one before them.

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    Days went by and Wyatt, in his deplorable condition, took notice of the sudden disappearing act the Commander and his men had perpetrated on officer Møller, his servicemen, and the surviving hunters. The ex-cabbie, however, was kept in his prison cell permanently once his dying state was evident and undeniable. The realization of it happening haunted him deeply, curling up on the numbingly cold floor like a fearful child. Checking his slothful breaths as if he could be ahead of death itself. As if he’d know right away. 

    The terror of it all took him back in time again, he remembered the night prior to the escape from Bartleby. The military had knocked at their door Sunday night on Christmas Day. They had proceeded to search around their house with single-minded fury. His father had opposed but regretted it the moment one of them hit him square in the jaw, an instant knock-out. His mother had clutched baby Calvin with all her might watching in fright while Wyatt curled up beneath the kitchen sink. They emptied the fridge, pantries, and wallets. They broke walls and cut the telephone’s cords, a pea-green rotary dial phone his mother used all day to call all of her friends.

  In what he thought were his final days, the lightheaded feeling took full control of his feeble limbs, his body couldn’t withstand his weight. He became a thin and sickly frame. The soldiers left him untied, covered in raggy blankets. Fabrics so old that shared a translucent quality, patched too many times. He was ready for death to sweep him away. 

    However, the antlered beings kept boggling his mind, their whispers a constant distraction yet no one else seemed to have the ability to see or hear them as he still did. At times, they’d just stare back at him from a distance, and Wyatt would hold their gazes to make them stop, which they never did. Amongst them was the glowing sapphire twin, Marut. She spoke to him on various occasions, her decrepit and eaten visage was a little terrifying up close and she might

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have noticed it in the way he’d always shut his eyes whenever she was near. The pain was already uncomfortable enough as it was to look at her face, drilled with tiny holes and cracks. 

    Marut didn’t seem offended by it at all, she just sat a little farther and returned to their one-way conversation. She kept it simple, and spoke about Saami folklore tales that had been passed on to their Renou children before being sent out into the world to fulfill their destiny, like the one of Biegolmai, a giant known as the Wind Man. At the dawn of creation itself, Biegolmai created the Sapmi region with two huge shovels, fields known as Northern Europe and Northern parts of Fennoscandia, lands that stretched over Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, traditionally inhabited by the Saami. Biegolmai used one shovel to hurtle the wind and the other to pour outrageous bulks of snow, making the place uninhabitable. Until the day one of his shovels broke, and everything quieted down. The Saami could finally enter the Sapmi lands after that, their predestined heritage unfolding before them. Marut brought the storytime to a close by saying that the Cosmos was good to those even-tempered and resolute, she was sure that a man or a woman with a heritage was a man or woman with a whole world ahead. This heritage could come in many forms, not just physical objects but principles. However, they could come in spiritually embedded codes too, dormant within humans. Super genes. Sometimes good and rarely yet not impossible, bad too. Those needed to be exterminated. But most of the time they came along with traditions, honor, or even religion with positive intentions.

    The fateful night came and Wyatt’s organs began their collapse, breathing turned into slow but agitated motion and his cheeks and lips had taken a violet shade. Marut called for his brother Krishanu and he made an appearance right away. The twins, along with the rest of their ghostly comrades witnessed the moment and remained silent.

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    A guard at shift took notice a few hours later and dragged the body out of the Fort with the help of his colleagues, the Defenders followed in a silent procession. The soldiers had planned to bury him in the morrow, hoping for nicer weather. Once they were gone, the unflowing blood vessels of the corpse’s windpipe started to glow softly in the color of burnt orange and ruby throughout his skin. It spread all over the body following each one of his arteries. Krishanu bent down to squeeze his heart, as more ghosts reunited around the body. With a translucent grip, he mended the unmendable, calling his name.

END OF CHAPTER #16