Page 23

23

THE PIT

H enry ran full pelt into the clearing, only stopping when faced with the very nightmarish vision Léon’s words had smashed into his brain.

The place was all fresh, all lovely, all cool and forest animals and perfectly bucolic, except for the enormous rectangle gashed deep into the earth, from which protruded one green and dead hand, half stripped of rotting flesh right through to the bone, the rest, red and brown and gristled, twisted in gory protest against its brutal fate.

“You didn’t…” Henry gasped out, hands in his hair.

He dashed to the side of the bloody chasm, reeling back, falling to the ground with a retch when the sight and smell hit him full in the face.

Bodies on bodies on bodies, dumped in the ground with no coffins, no markings as to who they were, one mass burial site, waiting to be filled, covered, forgotten, reclaimed by the woods and the soil.

Henry scrambled for the edge, clawing at the crumbling dirt as he searched over corpses and corpses, skulls gaping at him, eyeballs leaking out of heads, bodies bloated with gas, some ruptured, some eaten, blood and organs and muscle and bones and red and green and yellow and Henry all but wept, “Catherine?”

“Henry?” The voice came back to meet him from beneath a movement of broken and rotting limbs.

Henry had already swung his legs down into the pit, landing with a squelch, boots sinking deep in filth too foul to name.

“Just stay calm. Breathe and stay calm. Calm!”

“And don’t open your eyes,” Léon warned her again, over the crunch and smash of old dead as he, too, jumped into the pit.

“Where is she?” Henry shouted, casting his eyes over the mess.

“Henry!” she cried out, the second half of the word ending in what sounded like vomit.

Léon scrambled over the yielding bog of human refuse, boot becoming trapped and almost slipping off into a stomach cavity, but happily, for Léon’s sanity, he could not see far enough below to know what it was.

He grabbed his boot at the knee and yanked his leg up, searching for the pink of Souveraine’s dress, which it seemed all the other bodies of the day had fallen on top of.

“Don’t swallow anything!” he called.

“We’re coming.”

A cry broke out from deep in the dark, half despair, half relief, conflicting emotions overwhelming her, and at that very moment the ever-gathering yellow clouds burst open, washing them in a cascade of vermillion rain.

The walls of the pit began to shake and crumble, and Henry, throwing a panicked glance around, yelled, “Calm, Cathy! Stay calm, or we’ll all bloody die!” He began ripping arms off old bodies in a frenzied attempt to find his way past, hauling those carcasses that were solid enough to the side in one piece, searching through intently, following the sound of her wails.

“There!” Léon shouted, spotting a gasp of pink satin poking through the cacophony of limbs.

Naked chest awash with red, he redoubled his scramble over the mound, and Henry followed his direction sharply.

Together they dug every body out of the way and flung back the bloody skirt from Sophie’s deceased legs, to find Catherine, still curled in a ball, eyes shut tight, shaking all over.

“Catherine! I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” Henry took an arm beneath her, which she curled into, religiously following Léon’s instruction not to look, even as she reached a freezing hand up Henry’s warm arm, to his chest, where he pulled her in, where she crumpled, racked with sobs.

Henry stood in the pit of the dead, a stark and strong contrast to the destruction surrounding them, a lighthouse in the night, his own eyes shut tight, holding his sister safe in trembling arms. “Just breathe. Calm. Breathe.”

The scene could hardly keep from touching a heart as soft as Léon’s.

Catherine’s fingers dug into Henry’s arms, and he didn’t move an inch, stayed like a pillar of strength in the scene of gore, as though it was nothing more than a field of lavender.

He breathed the foul smell into a full chest, and just as she settled into his hold, a ray of light sliced through the clouds, shining a hazy pink onto the pair of them.

It was only when Catherine finally tilted her head up that Henry whispered Léon’s, “Don’t look, not once,” and attempted a path backwards and out of the hole.

Slipping, holding onto his blind sister, he looked around for purchase, and Léon rushed to his aid.

Bringing a hand beneath his elbow, grasping at the muddy wall, Léon led him back to the side.

He clambered out ahead of the two, then put a hand out for Catherine.

“Léon’s here,” said Henry gently.

“He’ll lift you out.”

Her grasping, wet fingers slipped into Léon’s, and Henry braced her with a knee.

She stepped upon Henry’s thigh, and was pulled to safety, Henry soon buttressing strong arms in the dirt and lifting himself out.

He took Catherine’s hand and lead her several feet back from the pit, while Léon watched on, feeling as though he was intruding, but also swept up in something he’d never once meant to become a part of.

Henry turned her away from the horror, and took her face in his, searching over her sallow skin, brushing back the bloody, stinking hair.

“Look at me.”

She opened tentative eyes to the blinding, sulphur-orange daylight, finding Henry, then smashed two arms about his neck, sending him stumbling back.

“I knew you’d do it! I knew. Every night, Henry, every night!” She fell upon his shoulder in a fresh flood of tears, a wreck, all the strength that had brought her through her trial and imprisonment and near death crumbling now she’d found a foundation to hold her up.

And he did, but with a look at Léon like Léon had never once seen on his face.

Thankful, eyes wet with gratitude.

And something more. Something that touched Léon deep inside.

But it lasted only a moment, then he pulled back to look again at his sister.

“We need to get out of here.” She gave a harried nod, then Henry refocused on Léon.

“I’ll take you to them. Thank you.” Holding his sister in the nook of one arm, he stretched out a hand for Léon, still gloved, bloody, but no more bloody than Léon’s bare hand was.

Léon was shaken to the core by the entire day’s events, but seeing Catherine turn and look back at him, seeing her huddled up safe against Henry’s chest, gave him a spark of pride such as he hadn’t felt in years.

Such as he’d forgotten he could feel.

He stepped forward and took Henry’s hand, firmly, but the second his fingers curled around Henry’s was the very moment a whinny sounded from across the field.

All three heads snapped up, and there they saw the cart man, sitting astride his buggy, staring at them.

How long he had been watching, Léon could never have guessed, and his panic at the sight was almost overwhelming, only controlled due to its replacement by an even more profound emergency when Henry reached for his pistol and aimed straight for the man’s head.