Novel Extract; Two

At night, Half Way Tree was a desolate place. It was still outside the main hub of brick houses and uproarious taverns that made Kingston famous throughout the Caribbean, but there were the last of the pig farms, a burgeoning rum distillery and, clustered near the crossroads, an inn and small estate of houses, amongst which was a brothel and the vicarage. The tree that leant its name to the place stood lonely on one of the corners, old and used for shade from the summer heat and unyielding sun. A dog was sleeping under it, twitching every now and then, as a midnight cart clattered along the stony track towards a gibbet that was standing nearby.

The horse pulling the cart was not a handsome beast, but it did the job, so the man, who was sitting on the cart in question, thought. He pulled his the hood of his cloak over his face a little more as his undisguised friend, who was the leading the placid animal, said “Why’re we even doin’ this?”

“Because,” said the first, with no elaboration.

“Because what, James? You tell me everythin’!”

A peaceful journey stopped abruptly as the second man turned to face the first, who was thinking rather dour thoughts beneath his melancholic exterior. The former, however, appeared concerned and somewhat betrayed as he grabbed his captain’s hand.

“James, please. Tell me,” he squeezed the scarred limb tightly, forgetting the newly scabbed marlinspike wound across his knuckles, “Yer can trust me with whatever it is. Yer know yer can-”

“It’s not about trust, Matty. It’s just personal…”

His fellow threw up his hands in defeat.

“Fine, but when yer ready to talk…”

The latter grabbed the reins somewhat roughly and began dragging the rented horse along the road at a faster pace; they took a left and then a right, passing an old brick wall. It was not long before a dark shape loomed from behind it against the moonlit sky, and the cart and men rumbled to a halt. A large iron cage was hanging from the upside down L shaped frame that was standing just back from road, which led both out of Kingston and into the heart of it. The gibbet was standing across from the tree on the opposite side of the road, looking lonesome but far more gruesome than the latter with the black body that was propped up inside the cylindrical cage.

The hooded man called James jumped down from the cart and strode past his friend. He walked up the macabre spectacle, and stretched out a gloved a hand in order the touch the unusually cold framework that encased the tarred corpse.

“’Ello, Mar’Anne,” He whispered quietly, staring at the distorted face above him, “Long time, no see…”

He pulled a hammer out from under his cloak, and swung it violently at the rusted, offensive padlock, which shattered in a spray of metal shards; one caught his wrist, and he hissed pulled back.

“James?”

The corroding cage swung wildly. It struck the captain and bowled him over onto the brittle and patchy grass; Matty ran over, and helped him up.

“At least the door’s open,” he noted dryly, seeing it hang and clank against the rest of the cage.

The two men approached it again and held it until it was still again; they debated about whether to cut the gibbet down or to try and smash the chain from which the cage was suspended, but in the end the two men decided to try and extricate the rigid body without any further vandalism.

It was a gory task to say the least, for the prison doctor had been keen to cut Mar’Anne up and hastily preserve her remains the day after when she had begun to rot. The result was a dissected skeleton wrapped in withered flesh that had been turned black by the copious amount of tar smothered across her skin. The scars from where Iblis Leeche had sawn between her wizened breasts and cut her ribs away like a lid stood out boldly from the other zigzagging sutures that held her arm and leg muscles to the bone from which he had cleaved them. Her mean mouth was forever agape in a grotesque but silent scream of what could have been called agony from the grave. If one dared to peer in close enough, they would be see the shiny grey pearls that were her teeth, and maybe even her straw stuffing that poked out of her gullet.

The two young men prised the stiff body out of the cage with some difficulty, as the door was a little too narrow for her shoulders. Matty had to hold up the frame for a little while as James twisted the forgotten mummy out of the door. The horse tossed its plebeian head and grey mane as it stubbornly refused to be led the few feet between where it stood and the gibbet. The weathered body was thus carried a little further than the two men had hoped to hold it, and they were none too happy when they had to fight to get in the coffin they had brought. It was a tight squeeze, but in the end, but with a few broken nails and some sloughed off, creepy grey skin that reminded James of bad wax, Mar’Anne was fitted into the wooden box, and the Matty began to lead the horse back towards the town.

“And now we can take ‘er ‘ome,” James muttered, with a sigh of relief. The promise that his captain had sworn would finally come to completion.