Embedded Files
Clyde’s horse is dead and his stomach is empty again. It was all such a long time ago, by now, and she’d been a good horse.
Cloud shadows sweep across the trees and tumble down the mountain. A dead tree, rust-red, with lichen climbing its trunk, has fallen in Clyde’s way. He can hardly lift his bad leg over it. Things don’t last long up here, where the winter starts early and springtime might not come at all. It has been a dry season, and all the land’s moisture has become swirling winds. All will eventually settle on the icy crust of October. That’s the way of things. Not just here.
There’s been no water.
Clyde has avoided his own reflection for a few weeks, as a precaution to his sanity. Last time he’d seen it it wasn’t pretty. His liver must’ve failed by now: one can’t ignore yellow skin. His stomach wishes to vomit, but there’s nothing left. Clyde is high-and-dry, skin-and-bones, in preparation for death.
I’ve been a damn fool. I’m gonna die up here, Clyde murmurs, by way of apology. There’re no good place to die, I reckon, but this one’s all right for me. Whatever it is that’s been afflicting him for months now is in his muscles and in his bones, a creeping shadow, sliding over him more and more each day. He sleeps in the weather sometimes, often maybe, unless he can find a place to take shelter. He seldom finds hospitality.
A blanket of cloud rolls over the sky and then off to the horizon, where it vanishes. I can hardly keep on in this way, he moans. He falls down hard, on the rocky ground, and lays motionless. The despondency of imminent death puts Clyde to sleep, a crooked heap on the side of a cold mountain. The sky grows dark and twilight begins early. Clyde’s hat blows off in the wind and a fog rolls away with it.
Something sounds, loudly, unexpectedly: a woman's scream. He pulls himself out from his death-daze, wondering if he sees correctly now that the fog is gone. There, amongst the elongated night shadows, he sees an unnatural structure. Rubbing his eyes, he murmurs to himself, Is that a chimney? He can see the silhouette clearly now. It’s a mansion: an impossibly well-made mansion, vast, very large, with a sealed roof and a smoking chimney, all on this remote mountainside. How on earth? Who would build such a thing? he wonders. Staring at the building, and again rubbing his eyes in disbelief, Clyde is pulled to his feet by instinct. He swaggers and stumbles forward to the mysterious house.
There is no paint, nor any defining features. For what purpose is this construction intended? he wonders. He reaches a door and raps at it, over-and-again, in a daze, loopy, unthinking. There is no answer. He falls against the big wooden door face-first, knocking out a tooth on his way down to the stone veranda, where his body rests, his consciousness faltering.
He wakes up in a grand reading room, with cherry wood railed catwalks above the vast shelves of periodicals and a magnificent spiral staircase. A slight, repulsive man in a fine suit sits across from him with a grim, yellow smile.
Whiskey? he offers, setting a glass before Clyde and filling it.
Wher’ ‘my? Clyde’s mouth is like rubber.
Girls and women gather along the catwalk, appearing from the many rooms above. In dresses with garters showing or bodices or under garments, they range from dreadful of appearance to hideous, amorphous of body to malnourished, fearful of eye to helplessly curious. All eyes are on the stranger.
You’re just fine now, the man assures Clyde. My name is Nachtnebel. Welcome to La Brouillard Nocturne. Nachtnebel smiles. Silence settles upon the room, and Nachtnebel continues. You probably need a drink, eh? At this, the man drinks from his glass, grimaces and eyeballs his guest. Go ahead, my friend. It is on the house.
Clyde drinks, nearly spitting it back up. Water, Clyde croaks.
Quickly, the man orders one of the girls: get the man a glass of water. The girl pushes past a pair of swinging doors and promptly returns with a glass of shimmering clear water. She sets it before Clyde, carefully, her eyes darting around the room.
Clyde stares at the water, unbelieving, momentarily wary. Where’d you get this water? he asks.
It is from our well, Nachtnebel assures him. It is perfectly potable, I assure you.
Clyde drinks from the glass, the pain of water running down his parched, damaged esophagus, makes him cough it back up onto the table. He gasps and coughs.
Mon Dieu, says the grim man. Two pairs of hands grab Clyde and carry him from his chair. Take him to the suite. Bring him food.
The suite is well furnished, comfortable and private, and needless to say, a rest is in order for the weary traveler. A bizarre woman pokes her head through the doorway, and with a giggle, she carries in a plate of beans and meat, setting it on a bedside table. She runs her hand through Clyde's hair and clicks her teeth. You look nice, she says to him.
Please, he pulls his away from her touch.
Ungrateful, are you? She smiles a staircase of teeth.
I’m sorry, Clyde says, Thank you kindly for the food.
You’ll just have to pay me back one way or another, the woman laughs. Does anyone tell you, uh, do they tell you that you are worthy of a roll in the hay?
Excuse me?
Intercourse, mon Dieu, do you know anything? She laughs like a man. Are you… how is it… un puceau?
Clyde sits up, but the woman easily pushes him back into place, putting her busty weight atop his chest. She leans over his face: her eyes don’t match and she has a scar running from her temple to a hairless spot on her scalp. Her breath is rotten. Get off me, Clyde begs.
D'accord, d’accord, do not tie the panties. It is for your own good, the woman says, standing and leaving the room. She speaks to someone in hushed tones outside the door. There is a consultation of sorts before the door is closed and locked. Footsteps fade down the hallway.
Clyde takes a bite of beans and meat, relishing the nourishment. He tries to eat more, but his eyes droop and he cascades into an involuntary slumber.
He awakes to the sound of dripping. He looks down to the foot of the bed in terror, finding there a young girl with no upper-lip. Dith, she lisps crawling onto the bed, giff vee fun. Giff vee fun.
Hey! he cries out, Get off me! His strength has returned some and he kicks the girl to the floor. He tries to sit up, but his arms are tied to the headboard. He sees that his ankles are tied as well.
I wuth on’y tyina helt, she gripes, running for the door. She speaks to someone outside and immediately another girl walks in, wearing something frilly and threadbare. The new girl sways before Clyde, sniffing a stuffy nose and scratching her bulbous body as she tries to dance. Clyde gasps. She shakes her head and leaves, her face all red.
The next girl comes in and closes the door. She turns off the overhead light, blocks the doorknob with a chair, and crawls under the bed.
Clyde says nothing, but struggles against his restraints.
The girl rustles around before coming up with an unlit candle. She goes to the hearth, strikes a match on the stone, and lights the candle. In the amber gloaming, her thick brows, flakey skin, and wandering eyes could hardly be seen.
What do you want from me? Clyde pleads.
They want your seed, she says, that is all. Will you give them your seed?
What? No! No, I won’t!
The girl stares at the man on the bed with one eye, while the other eye takes a walk around the room.
Who are you? Clyde asks.
The girl shrugs, Call me Kate.
What is this place? Why are you here?
La Brouillard Nocturne. It is a boardinghouse. People come from time-to-time and we use them as we can.
As you can? Clyde shivers.
My father can’t go on like this, she continues. His seed is become poison. You see my sisters; they are a monster. I am a monster. Tout le monde.
Clyde scratches at his bindings, dripping sweat.
The girl rubs her hips and continues, sighing at the window, If you give them your seed, they will not kill you.
But why?
She places the candle in a candelabrum on the mantle. For food, she says.
Clyde gazes with horror at the dinner plate on the bedside table, still heaped with meat and beans.
It is a hungry world, father says. Father lies. He is a monster. I wish he was dead.
Please, let me go, Clyde insists.
The girl smiles. If you let me, she says.
Let you what?
She raises her shirt, exposing a surgical scar at the bottom of her belly. If you let me, maybe they will let you, she says.
Clyde’s fingernail peels back as he gouges at the splintered ropes binding him. He cries out.
Oh, mon petite chou, come here my sweet boy. She mounts him.
No! he shouts, No!!
Oh, do not be a poor-sport; it is fun.
No means no!! he screams, tugging at his bindings one last time, breaking free and slamming his palm into her jaw. He reaches down and grabs the dinner plate from the bedside table. Is this fun?! he shouts, Is it?! And he smashes the plate across her face, splattering meat and beans and blood on the wall. She falls to the floor and someone pounds on the door. They call out to her in French.
With a shard of dinner plate, Clyde cuts the ropes from his other wrist and his ankles. He hastily runs to the window. The window overlooks a high cliff, must be 200 feet to the rocks below. He rummages through the room. There’s banging on the door, and the chair is bending. In the drawers, he finds various bottled oils, perfumes, lewd photographs, gaudy gadgets, and various underclothing.
Suddenly, the room goes quiet and something is slipped under the door. It’s a petri dish. The horrid man, Nachtnebel, speaks with authority from the other side of the door. We will let you go… alive… if you will make a sample for us.
Go to hell! Clyde screams. A moment of silence settles around Clyde before the chair splinters and the man forces his way through the door, carrying a candelabrum. His monstrous hand, dripping with candle-wax, is the first thing Clyde sees. The man has clearly changed; there is no doubt. In order to pass through the doorway, Nachtnebel must stoop down low. The formerly slight man has grown significantly. He is no longer slight at all, but large, with amorphously bubbled skin. For Clyde, the shock is too much for words and the room is spinning.
Clyde lunges for the candelabrum on the mantle, and without hesitation, he holds it under the curtains, which burst into flame. The curtains are a powerful fire starter, and the room is rapidly engulfed. The walls pop and wail at the joints; smoke fills the space. Crawling to the window, Clyde forces it open to get of the smoke, coughing and hacking. He nearly falls out! Catching himself, he’s reminded of gravity and the severity of mountain crags. After a bout of vertigo and another coughing fit, Clyde crawls out the window and meticulously climbs along the seams of the building. Everything cools down outside, the air feels like heaven. He recklessly shuffles along, rounding the corner of the building to where the ground rests two stories down. He jumps. The fall breaks two toes and one elbow.
Clyde limps desperately away from the towering inferno. My legs can only take me so far. After that, it’s up to God, he assures himself. He tries to pray, but he doesn’t know how to pray, so he just speaks. There’s places that are evil and there’s places that are good. Please, God, help me find those good places. I’ve seen evil this night, and I hope never to see it again.
Clyde staggers, slips, and rolls down a rockslide. In the place where he finally stops, he finds a nook in the mountain, concealed by bushes. I’ll wait for dawn here, he tells himself. I’ll set out at dawn.
Sleep comes easily. He dreams about a beautiful, brown woman, obscured by waterfall. He passes through the falls and finds her there, upon her bed of fine linen. She holds him like a baby upon her soft bosom.
When he finally awakens, the sun is directly overhead, shining in his eyes. Stiff as a board, he sits up, cradling his arm and grimacing.
Waterfall, huh? says the girl with the dinner plate scar across her face. She wipes her mouth and seals a petri dish. Then, before he can make sense of what is happening, she strikes him upon his broken elbow with a stone.
Clyde’s screams echo across the mountains, diminishing as they go, until his voice is completely lost and forgotten to the silence of nature.
one’s all right for me. Whatever it is that’s been afflicting him for months now is in his muscles and in his bones, a creeping shadow, sliding over him more and more each day. He sleeps in the weather sometimes, often maybe, unless he can find a place to take shelter. He seldom finds hospitality.
A blanket of cloud rolls over the sky and to the horizon. I can hardly keep on in this way, he moans. He falls down hard, on the rocky ground, and lays motionless. The despondency of imminent death puts Clyde to sleep, a crooked heap on the side of a cold mountain. The clouds grow dark and twilight begins early. Clyde’s hat blows away in the wind, as the fog rolls in with the night.
Something sounds, loudly, unexpectedly: a woman screaming. He pulls himself out from his death-daze, wondering if he sees correctly through the fog. There, amongst the elongated night shadows, he sees an unnatural structure. Rubbing his eyes, he murmurs to himself, Is it a smoking chimney? He can see the silhouette clearly now. It’s a log palace: an impossibly well-made log building, vast, very large, with a sealed roof and a smoking chimney, all on this remote mountainside. How on earth? Who would build such a thing? he wonders. Staring at the building, and again rubbing his eyes in disbelief, Clyde is pulled to his feet by instinct. He swaggers and stumbles forward to the mysterious log palace.
There is no paint, nor any defining features. For what purpose is this construction intended? he wonders. He reaches a door and raps at it, over-and-again, in a daze, loopy, unthinking. There is no answer. He falls against the big wooden door face-first, knocking out a tooth on his way down to the stone veranda, where his body rests, his consciousness faltering.
He wakes up in a grand reading room, with cherry wood railed catwalks above the vast shelves of periodicals and a magnificent spiral staircase. A slight, repulsive man in a fine suit sits across from him with a grim, yellow smile.
Whiskey? he offers, setting a glass before Clyde and filling it.
Wher’ ‘my? Clyde’s mouth is like rubber.
Girls and women gather along the catwalk, appearing from the many rooms above. In dresses with garters showing or bodices or under garments, they range from dreadful of appearance to hideous, amorphous of body to malnourished, fearful of eye to helplessly curious. All eyes are on the unusual stranger.
You’re just fine now, the man assures Clyde. My name is Nachtnebel and welcome to La Brouillard Nocturne. Nachtnebel smiles. Silence settles upon the room, and Nachtnebel continues. You probably need a drink, eh? At this, the man drinks from his glass, grimaces and eyeballs his new arrival. Go ahead, my friend. It is on the house.
Clyde drinks, nearly spitting it back up. Need water, Clyde croaks.
Quickly, the man orders one of the young girls: get the man a glass of water. The young girl pushes past a pair of swinging doors and promptly returns with a glass of shimmering clear water. She sets it before Clyde, carefully, her eyes darting around the room.
Clyde stares at the water, unbelieving, momentarily wary. Where’d you get this water? he asks.
It is from our well, Nachtnebel assures him. It is perfectly potable, I assure you.
Clyde drinks from the glass, the pain of the water running down his parched, damaged esophagus, makes him cough up water all over the table. He gasps and coughs uncontrollably.
Mon Dieu, says the grim man. Two pairs of hands grab Clyde and carry him from his chair. Take him to the suite. Bring him food.
The suite is well furnished, comfortable and private, and needless to say, a rest is in order for the weary traveler. A bizarre woman pokes her head through the doorway, and with a giggle, she carries in a plate of beans and meat, setting it before Clyde on a bedside table. She runs her hand through his hair and clicks her teeth. You look nice, she says to him.
Please, he pulls his away from her touch.
Ungrateful, are you? She smiles a staircase of teeth.
I’m sorry, Clyde says, Thank you kindly for the food.
You’ll just have to pay me back one way or another, the woman laughs. Does anyone tell you, uh, do they say that you are worthy of a roll in the hay?
Excuse me?
Intercourse, mon Dieu, do you know anything? she laughs like a man. Are you… how is it… un puceau?
Clyde sits up, but the woman easily pushes him back into place, putting her busty weight atop his chest. She leans over his face: her eyes don’t match and she has a scar running from her temple to a hairless spot on her scalp. Her breath is rotten. Get off me, Clyde begs.
D'accord, d’accord, do not tie the panties. It is for your own good, the woman says, standing and leaving the room. She speaks to someone in hushed tones outside the door. There is a consultation of sorts before the door is closed and locked and there are footsteps moving down the hallway.
Clyde takes a bite of beans and meat, relishing the nourishment. He tries to eat more, but his eyes droop and he cascades into an involuntary slumber.
He awakes to the sound of dripping. He looks down to the foot of the bed in terror, finding there a young girl with no upper-lip. Dith, she lisps crawling onto the bed, giff vee fun. Giff vee fun.
Hey! he cries out, Get off me! His strength has returned some and he kicks the girl to the floor. He tries to sit up, but his arms are tied to the headboard. He sees that his ankles are tied as well.
I wuth on’y tyina helt, she gripes, running for the door. She speaks to someone outside and immediately another girl walks in, wearing something frilly and threadbare. The new girl sways before Clyde, sniffing a stuffy nose and scratching her bulbous body as she almost dances – to which Clyde’s face shows disgust. She shakes her head and leaves, her face all red.
The next girl comes in and closes the door. She turns off the overhead light, blocks the doorknob with a chair, and crawls under the bed.
What’re you doing? Clyde asks.
The girl rustles around before coming up with an unlit candle. She goes to the hearth, strikes a match on the stone, and lights the candle. In the amber gloaming, her thick brows, flakey skin, and wandering eyes could hardly be seen.
What do you want from me? Clyde pleads.
They want your seed, she says, that is all. Will you give them your seed?
What? No! No, I won’t!
The girl stares at the man on the bed with one eye, while the other eye takes a walk around the room.
Who are you? Clyde asks.
The girl shrugs, Call me Kate.
What is this place? Why are you here?
La Brouillard Nocturne. It is a boardinghouse. People come from time-to-time and we use them as we can.
As you can? Clyde shivers.
My father can’t go on like this, she continues. His seed is become poison. You see my sisters; they are a monster. I am a monster. Tout le monde.
Clyde scratches at his bindings, soaked with sweat.
The girl rubs her belly and continues, sighing at the window, If you give them your seed, they will not kill you.
But why?
She places the candle in a candelabrum on the mantle. For food, she says.
Clyde gazes with horror at the dinner plate on the bedside table, still heaped with meat and beans.
It is a hungry world, father says. Father lies. He is a monster. I wish he was dead.
Please, let me go, Clyde insists.
The girl smiles. If you let me, she says.
Let you what?
She raises her shirt, exposing a surgical scar at the bottom of her belly. If you let me, maybe they will let you, she says.
Clyde’s fingernail peels back as he gouges at the splintered ropes binding him. He cries out in pain.
Oh, mon petite chou, come here my sweet boy. She mounts him.
No! he shouts, No!!
Oh, do not be a poor-sport; it is fun.
No means no!! he screams, tugging at his bindings one last time, breaking free and slamming his palm into her jaw. He reaches down and grabs the dinner plate from the bedside table. Is this fun?! he shouts, Is it?! And he smashes the plate across her face, splattering meat and beans and blood on the wall. She falls to the floor and someone pounds on the door. They call out to her in French.
With a shard of dinner plate, Clyde cuts the ropes from his other wrist and his ankles. He hastily runs to the window. The window overlooks a high cliff, 200 feet to the jagged rocks below. He turns and rummages through the room. There’s banging on the door, and the chair is bending. In the drawers, he finds various bottled oils, perfumes, lewd photographs, gaudy gadgets, and various underclothing.
Suddenly, the room goes quiet and something is slipped under the door. It’s a petri dish. That horrid man, Nachtnebel, speaks with authority from the other side of the door. We will let you go… alive… if you will make a sample for us.
Go to hell! Clyde screams. A moment of silence settles around Clyde before the chair splinters and the man forces his way through the door, carrying a candelabrum. His monstrous hand, dripping with candle-wax, is the first thing Clyde sees. The man has clearly changed; there is no doubt. To pass through the doorway, Nachtnebel must stoop down low. The formerly slight man has grown significantly. He is no longer slight at all, but large, with amorphously bubbled skin. For Clyde, the shock is too much for words and the room is spinning.
Clyde lunges for the candelabrum on the mantle, and without hesitation, he holds it under the curtains, which burst into flame. The curtains are a fire starter, and the room is rapidly engulfed. The walls pop and wail at the joints; smoke fills the space. Crawling to the window, Clyde forces it open to get of the smoke, coughing and hacking out-of-control. Looking down, he’s reminded of gravity and the severity of mountain crags. After a bout of vertigo and another coughing fit, Clyde crawls out the window and meticulously climbs along the seams of the logs. Everything cools down outside, the air feels like heaven. He shuffles along the seams, rounding the corner of the building to where the ground rests two stories down. He jumps. The fall breaks two toes and one elbow.
Clyde limps desperately away from the towering inferno. My legs can only take me so far. After that, it’s up to God, he assures himself. He tries to pray, but he doesn’t know how to pray, so he just speaks. There’s places that are evil and there’s places that are good. Please, God, help me find those good places. I’ve seen evil this night, and I hope never to see it again.
Clyde staggers, slips, and rolls down a rockslide. In the place he finally stops, he finds a nook in the mountain, concealed by bushes. I’ll wait for dawn here, he tells himself. I’ll set out at dawn.
Sleep comes easily. He dreams about a beautiful, brown woman, obscured by waterfalls. He passes through the falls and finds her there, upon her bed of fine linen. She holds him like a baby upon her soft bosom.
When he finally awakens, the sun is directly overhead, shining in his eyes. Stiff as a board, he sits up, cradling his arm and grimacing.
Waterfalls, huh? says the girl with the dinner plate scar across her face. She wipes her mouth and seals a petri dish. Then, before he can make sense of what is happening, she strikes him upon his broken elbow with a stone. Clyde’s screams echo across the mountains, diminishing as they go, until his voice is completely lost and forgotten to the silence of nature.
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