怪女孩‧蛻變中

He is a transformer of human flesh; a creator of monsters. if a Supplicant comes to him with sufficient need, sufficient hunger for change--knowing how painful that will be--he will accomodate them. They become objects of perverse beauty beneath his hand; their bodies remade in fashions that they have no power to dictate.

Some saw Christ. With his long dark curly hair and the rough beard he'd grown in prison, Requiem did indeed look like the Man of Sorrows in certain lights. 

What he didn't look like was a man who killed a woman in a sordid back-street squabble over the dividing of the profit from an afternoon of pick-pocketing. But as the prosecution reminded the jury over and over, Requiem's many faces were not to be trusted. He was a Guizer, said the lawyer, a man who took pleasure in putting on faces to suit the occasion, not one of them more trustworthy than any other. 

“I have heard men grow pale when they hear of Tom Requiem's reputation as a great fighter and tender-hearted women blush when they hear stories of his prowess as a lover, but when we come to inquire as to where these stories originate what do we find? Why, that they have come from the lips of the great lover himself. He is a liar, born and bred, a man who likes nothing better than to weave fabrications, and fantastications, and make the world his fool by having us believe them! This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will prove today, as I uncover his crimes and deceits. By the time I am done telling you the truth about Thomas Absalom Requiem, you will find very little to admire about him, I'll wager, and much to hold in the profoundest contempt.” 

Prosecutors are not always good at doing as they promise they'll do, but this one was an exception. Bu the time the lengthy trial was over, Tom Requiem's many reputations were in tatters. His female conquests had come into the witness box and given lists of his inadequacies, while those he had reputedly fought against in human combat told of his street-dog tricks. 

“There you have it then,” said the prosecutor. “Tom Requiem is a cheat, a philanderer and a murderer. He may have an innocent look on his face right now but I beg you – be not deceived! -- he is fully deserving of the hangman's noose.” 

The Jury agreed and the judge declared the next day that Tom Requiem would be hanged by the neck until dead. And God have mercy on his soul. 

That night, well after midnight, Tom had a visitor. He introduced himself as Joshua Kemp; he was to be Tom's hangman. 

“I will be merciful,” Kemp said, “for I see no purpose in prolonging a man's agony.” He drew closer to Tom as he spoke and glanced back over his shoulder to certain that nobody was listening at the door. “But,” he said, lowering his voice in a whisper, “should you find by some wild chance that I did not complete tomorrow's business. . .” 

“What are you saying?” 

“Keep your voice down and listen. There are those parties who would like to see you preserved from so short a life.” 

“Well, well” said Tom. “Not that I'm not grateful an' all, but why would anybody work to save my sorry neck from the noose?” 

Kemp tugged at the collar of his shirt, as though this subject was growing a little too uncomfortable for him. “Better I don't talk about that,” he said. “ I just came here to tell you to take courage and for God's sake, play dead. You may be buried, but you'll be dug up again. That's a promise.” 

“Buried. . . alive?” Tom Requiem murmured. 

“That's the word to keep remembering,” the hangman said. “Alive. Alive.” 

“Oh, I'll remember,” Tom replied. 

So the next day, with his head shorn of its shiny locks and his chest shaved clean, Tom Requiem was taken to the gallows, where a huge crowd waited to see judgment done. Despite his conversation with Kemp of the previous night, he did not feel much reassured. He watched the hangman's face – right up until the moment when the burlap sack was put over his head – searching for some sign, however small, of reassurance. A wink, a tiny smile. But there was nothing but sweat on Kemp's face. Then the bag came down like a black curtain and Tom heard himself breathing hard in darkness. The murmur of the crowd receded to near silence. The priest came to the end of his prayer. There was clatter and a terrible emptiness beneath his feet. Then he fell, down and down, and the darkness became a blaze of white, so bright that it burned all his thoughts away. 

What happened then was all fragments, coming and going. He saw faces, looking down at him, contemptuous faces, laughing faces. He saw a doctor come and give him a cursory glance (a doctor, it should be said, with a most peculiar look in his eye, as though there were many fires burning in his head), and then apparently dismissing him as a dead thing; as worthless. All that was easy enough to take. What followed was not. What followed was the stuff of nightmares and in that tiny place in his head where Tom Requiem was still alive he was a tiny ball of fear. 

To see the coffin sides rising around him as was put in that plain wooden box! To see the lid slid into place, eclipsing the last of the light, until there was nothing, nothing, nothing to see but darkness! To hear the wood creak around him as the coffin was carried to the grave and the sound of the digging and the raw rasp of the ropes as they were hauled beneath the box to drop it down into the grave! And finally – oh worst of all, the very worst! -- the sound of the earth rattling down onto the lid of the coffin, becoming more and more muffled as the grave filled up, until there was no sound at all. Nothing! 

It had all been a terrible trick, he began to think. This was his enemies' way of revenging themselves on him. Death hadn't been enough. They'd wanted to try him by hope, leaving him alive in the grave, knowing that eventually he would lose his sanity. 

He could feel it slipping away, moment by moment, heartbeat by heartbeat. There he had nothing to pray to in his darkness. No God that he believed in. No loving Virgin Mother who would have forgiven him his trespasses. He was beyond all to help. 

Or was he? 

What was that sound in the earth? 

Somebody digging, was it? 

Did he dare believe that after all somebody was going to come and save him from this place of torments? Or was it just his crazed mind playing tricks on him? Yes, that it was! It was just one last proof of his insanity, because, listen, listen the sound wasn't even coming from above, it was coming from below! 

Ridiculous. How could anybody be digging toward him from below? 

And yet. . . and yet. . . 

The more he listened, the more he seemed to hear the sound of shovels cutting through dirt and voices even, the voices of the diggers getting louder as they approached. 

Finally, he heard a spade strike against the board beneath him. The coffin reverberated. He wanted to weep with relief. He was going to be saved! The question remained as to what manner of creature would dig a man out of his grave from below, but frankly he didn't much care: a savior was a savior, whatever shape it came in and from whatever direction. 

Now he felt hands on the coffin from all sides; and people talking all around. He couldn't make sense of what they were saying, but some of them were perhaps giving orders, for a few seconds later several powerful instruments (perhaps crowbars) were tearing at the underside of his coffin. Light broke through, yellow light, and finally the bottom of the coffin was removed completely, and he dropped into the arms of those who had worked to save him. 

There were three of them, small, quick-eyed creatures with painted faces. They introduced themselves: Clovio, Heeler and Bleb. 

But it wasn't the diggers who claimed most of Tom Requiem's attention, it was their master. He knew the man, though not his name. This was the fellow whom Tom had presumed to be a doctor, who had briefly examined him before incarceration. No wonder he had spotted no sign of life in the hanged man. He'd been in the plot all along. 

His eyes burned brighter now and when they fixed their gaze on “the dead man,” Tom felt the rigidities of death fall away and life flooded back into his body, from scalp to sole. 

“Welcome,” said the Doctor. “No doubt you are surprised to see me down here.” 

“Yeah. I guess I am,” Tom said. His voice was low from the constriction his windpipe had lately taken, but the Doctor had a quick cure for that. 

“Drink this!” he said, handing a silver flask to Requiem. Never one for half measures, Tom knocked back town full throatfuls of the liquor, which coursed through his cold body most pleasantly. 

“We haven't brought you down here into the Underland out of simple compassion, Tom,” the Doctor went on. 

“No?” 

“No, we have work for you to do. We will dress you in a costume befitting a showman, and you will go out into the world to lead an Infernal Parade. The world has grown complacent, Tom; and fat with its own certainties. It's time to send some fears into the hearts of men.” 

Tom thought of the crowd that had assembled in such howling numbers to see him hanged by the neck until dead. 

“It will be my pleasure,” he said. “Where do I begin?” 

“With the woman whose life you took,” said the Doctor. “With Mary Slaughter. . .“