seymoure

Chapter 87

Down, Down into the Darkness

Slip had descended to the point where the swaying of the columns was incidental, if noticeable at all.

The problem now was that things were getting dark. He saw that he could not see more than the outline of the pillars nearest to him, and those had melted into something that looked more like a solid wall with lines than a group of individual pieces of stone standing alone.

The darkness had sucked the color out of the world around him. Higher up there had been an awareness of lines of color streaking through the rock and varying distance between them. That distance had given a greener tint to the grey tone of the monoliths. Now they were all closer to the color of coal than that of granite.

The more concerning change was the cold. His hands fought the temperature as they fought to hold up his weight as he hoped not to plunge into the darkness below.

Every so often a wind would whip by him, and the air had shifted from that of a summer evening to something approaching an Arctic blast.

His hands stung and complained to him at these moments. He had pulled a kerchief from his vest and wrapped one hand and then the other for as long a period as he though he could stand.

His hunger was the one thing that let him stop thinking of the cold. It dwarfed the fatigue also, and for that he was almost grateful for the ache of appetite.

He smiled when his stomach rumbled. At the moment it was his only companion.

Then the spasm of a muscle of his right arm drew all his attention. The tremor gradually expanded to most of his right side.

The little man wondered if he were having a heart attack.

His childhood idol, Vester the Pickpocket, had died of a heart attack. That was the only reason he thought he might recognize the affliction.

Vester had been running back to the wagon to show his wife Velma the purse he had liberated when Eric saw him stand ramrod stiff with his left hand propping him up against the stone corner of a building.

There was a blank look in the man’s eye, but the most telling thing was that his right arm contracted into a tight flex. At first Slip thought it had been the man weighing the magnificently heavy annuity he had brought home.

But the fingers went limp and the money jangled down to the ground at the moment when Vester’s eyes looked around with wonderment and surprise.

The pickpocket’s gaze hit the boy’s, but before he could communicate anything he lost all self, and the lifeless husk had crumbled to the ground.

The boy had stood frozen to the spot until people began to gather. He had run to the man, picked up the money and ran to Velma. The pair returned with Doc (who had never graduated from any medical school, but did all the duties of a physician for the carnies. He also ran the roundabout when he was sober enough.) who declared that the man had died of a heart attack.

As his own muscle spasm abated, he decided that that was all it had been and not the ending that he feared more than any other.

He had been near death any number of times in his life. His was not a sedentary existence, but neither would he have wanted it to be. Still, the death he had witnessed befall Vester was the one that held the most terror.

A gust of icy wind brought him back to the moment, and he took the cloth from his left hand and moved it to his right.

He turned just enough to peer down below. He saw nothing at all.

He took a deep breath and then returned to his descent into an unknown destination.