Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True - Kris Saknussemm [146]
“So you think we are in danger, real danger?” Hephaestus queried.
“I think,” Lloyd said, with a face on him that was far too old for his years, “that just as we must put behind us old ideas about machines—even my ideas about machines (and this remark completed the familial acknowledgment of the change that had occurred)—we need to be prepared for danger wherever we look. From now on, danger is always real. Even unreal danger. Especially the unreal.”
CHAPTER 8
Dead of Night
HEPHAESTUS HAD NO IDEA WHAT LLOYD WAS SAYING, AND YET HE understood that what was called for now was belief in his son. The failed inventor had sobered up inside himself at the deepest level.
“The Clutters have two horses and a wagon they used as a hearse,” he announced. “Petrie told me. I think I heard them out back. They may not get us all the way to Texas, but they’ll get us out of here. When any kind of word gets out about this, we’ll be in strife. People will think somehow we done this. Whether these be the real Clutters or no, locals will need to make sense of things.”
Lloyd nodded.
“These are the Clutters that Petrie knew. And what happened to them may have something to do with our arrival. But we aren’t to blame and we won’t be burned for it if we keep our heads.”
“We takem wib us and give ’em proper beerial,” Rapture said.
“That’s right,” Lloyd agreed. “We take everything with us, we get a head start. Then anyone who wants to know more has got to find us, and they have no proof of anything being wrong.”
“Let’s load up the coffin first,” Hephaestus suggested. “The way these folk lived, we might get a couple of days or even more before they’re missed. Even Petrie said he hadn’t had a meal or a jaw with them in weeks.”
Over the course of the next hour the Sitturd family worked in a frenzy of divided labor. Once Lloyd had indicated that he was finished examining the wreckage in the back area, Rapture set about gathering up all the broken, scattered bits into a neat pile. Hephaestus went out to inspect the wagon and the horses. “These animals have got to be real,” he said to himself when he found them and had lit a lantern. “If they were machines, they’d look better.” Both animals were desperately skinny, which seemed to fit in with everything the family had learned about the couple. “Perhaps they didn’t know any better,” Hephaestus reasoned.
While his mother was cleaning up and his father was giving the horses a feed and preparing the hearse, Lloyd completed his analysis of the bodies. In addition to the obvious mortal indignity they appeared to have inflicted on each other, he noted odd puncture wounds and gouges in their feet and legs, as well as on their hands. A couple of samples of their innards, some of which seemed organic and were already decomposing as the black dog in the street had, as well as some pieces of what were clearly manufactured workings of an intricate, complex nature, he placed in a bag that he found in the kitchen. Along with the now empty Vardogers’ music box, he tucked all his findings away with the Eye, the Ambassadors’ box, Hattie’s fetish, and his uncle’s map and letter.
Beyond the fatal wounds, the aspect of the corpses that he found most puzzling was discovered only when he pried open their mouths to find shards of comb and bent metal, as if in their delusional fever the couple had taken to eating the contents of the music boxes they snapped open. How very curious, Lloyd thought, remembering the ravenous