Nocturnal: A Novel

He felt her hands pulling up his blanket, hiding his head and face. It reminded him of being a small child, when his mother would adjust his jacket for him to make sure he stayed warm.

Aggie stood. He kept his eyes cast down as instructed. He followed Hillary’s feet. With each step, he waited for hands to grab him, yank him back, toss him down into the cavern floor where the children would dig into him with forks and knives.

He barely breathed until he again slid into the tunnel from which they’d come, leaving the ledge behind. “Hillary, what happens now?”

“Now they cut up the groom to make the stew. Except for the brains — Crabapple Bob gets to feed those to Mommy. Or maybe they think Vanilla Gorilla got the kill? Either way we will have much stew tonight.”

Stew. The Tupperware. Aggie had been eating people? The realization should have shocked him, he knew, but he’d seen more than he could handle and he just didn’t give a fuck. As long as he got out of here, it didn’t matter at all.

“No, Hillary, what I meant was … what do I have to do so I don’t wind up as stew.”

They exited the narrow tunnel into the hodge-podge hall that led back to the white room. Hillary gave him a missing-tooth smile, her eyelids and cheeks crinkling so deeply he would have thought her blind.

“Oh, that,” she said. “All you have to do is deliver something for me, then you are free.”

Free. Just the thought of it. He would deliver whatever she wanted, no matter what the risk.

They reached the white room. It shocked Aggie that he was actually relieved to see it, to once again be locked behind those white bars. For the moment, he had the place to himself — but he knew more prisoners would come.

Aggie could only hope that when the masked men brought in the next bum or illegal, he wouldn’t be there to see it.

Long Live the King

So many.

All along the ledge, down in the trenches, on the cracked deck of the old shipwreck: his people, his kind. How had he gone his whole life without knowing this feeling? His heart felt like it might swell up and choke him, push his lungs out of his chest. So much love.

“Sly, I don’t know what to do.”

A big, strong hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got your back, my king. Everyone is here. This is your time. Are you ready?”

Rex glanced to the right, to the ship cabin and the ledge above it where Firstborn sat in his golden throne. If Rex was going to claim his birthright, he’d have to face that frightening creature in the fur-lined cape.

Rex took a deep breath, then nodded. “I’m ready. Yes. Let’s do this.”

“Can you jump?”

Rex looked over the edge — at least a thirty-foot drop to the meandering trenches below. “I can’t jump there. That would kill me.”

The big hand patted his back lightly. “I’ll show you how to do that later. Pierre?”

Strong hands slid around Rex’s sides, lifted him, set him behind a big, skewed-jawed head. Then Pierre dipped, and leaped.

The ceiling came so close Rex had to duck tighter into Pierre’s fur. They soared under rocks, bricks, broken pieces of wood and jagged bits of rusted metal, then they were dropping down fast.

They landed on the shipwreck, Pierre’s big body rattling the dry wood. Sly thumped down on their right, Sir Voh and Fort on their left. Rex slid off Pierre’s back. They stood in the middle of the deck, near to the big mast. This close, Rex saw that the mast was old wood with human skulls all around it, running from the base right up to the T-bar with all the lights. Sly ran to the ship’s cabin and disappeared inside.

Rex looked up and around at all the strange faces peering down at him from the ledge above. Everyone was standing now, looking down — clearly, this was something new to them.

Sly came out of the cabin. He carried a man in a white robe. The man wore a mask from the Saw movies and held a trumpet in his hands.

Sly set him down in front of Rex.

“Blow,” Sly said.

The man with the Saw mask did as he was told, blowing a long, single note.

Sly waved his arms, turning quickly to face one side of the cavern then the next. “Attention! The moment promised to us is here! This” — Sly turned and pointed at Rex — “is our king!”

A murmur rippled through the cavern. Rex felt anxious at being put on the spot, excitement at being the center of attention in a good way for once, and pride at knowing he was here to help these people, to lead them.

Then, a too-deep voice echoed through the cavern.

“The king? Impossible.”

Rex looked up toward the throne. Firstborn stood on the ledge, looking down. The man with a big head stood on his right, the black-haired woman on his left.

Rex noticed Pierre take a step back.

“He cannot be the king,” Firstborn said. “Sly, what lies do you speak?”

“No lies,” Sly said, more to the audience than to Firstborn. “Everyone, come and smell the truth!”

More murmurs of excitement. People started jumping off the ledge, sailing through the air to land on the deck. Such strength, such agility. They gathered around Rex. So many shapes. So many sizes. So many colors. They sniffed him. And after sniffing, they all whispered the same thing.

The king.

Some were as scary looking as Pierre and Sly and Sir Voh and Fort, and some were even worse — like the one with the blue scales that looked like a boll weevil. But some looked like regular people, men and women with unwashed hair and multiple layers of ragged, secondhand clothes. They could have been the bums and street ladies Rex saw every day; some of them probably were.

They sniffed, they whispered, they reached, they touched.

Rex’s heart filled with love.

“Enough!”

Firstborn’s roaring rang off the cavern walls and ceiling. Everyone stopped. Everyone looked.

The black-furred man jumped off the ledge. He sailed through the air, his fur cloak trailing behind. People scrambled out of the way, giving him room to land. He hit the ruined ship’s deck with a thud, knees bending to absorb the shock, left hand pressed flat to the ground.

The big-headed man came down to his left, the black-haired woman to his right.

Firstborn slowly stood, rising up to his full height. He was as tall as a basketball player on TV. Six-foot-six? Even taller than that? This close, Rex saw the gray lining Firstborn’s mouth, and streaks of that same color running from his temples to above his ears. He looked old.

“So, this tiny boy is our king?”

“He is,” Sly said. The snake-faced man again played to the crowd. “Can’t you all feel it? Can’t you all smell it?”

The crowd murmured with excited agreement — excited, but cautious. Rex saw the way they looked at Firstborn. They all feared him.

“Smells can be faked,” Firstborn said. “This boy is just a human.”

Rex saw many people shaking their heads.

Firstborn stamped his big boot, rattling the boards beneath. “He is human! You are all being tricked!”