He Who Cannot Die Page 4

  I don’t know who or what I now am, or how any of this is possible. From what I think I know, it shouldn’t be. I bleed, but I can’t bleed out. I breathe, but I can’t suffocate. I eat, but I cannot starve to death. I feel pain, yet I heal quickly from any injury. I can be torn and ripped apart, yet still somehow, I get put back together. Back in the 1970s, I earned advanced degrees in molecular biology, etiology, and genetics while I lived in New York City. I devoted more than a decade of my life there to studying the science of my own body, but I didn’t uncover a single answer. Eventually I became frustrated with the dead-ends and moved on to other less aggravating mental pursuits.

  In my lifetime, I have been beaten to death, trampled, shot, hung, stabbed, and burned. I have suffered huge falls, terrible accidents, head trauma, crushing, and drowning. I’ve lost digits, ears, limbs, and once I lost most of my head. Each and every time, and sometimes it took some time, I somehow became whole once more.

  I cannot die. I cannot be killed. I cannot bring an end to my own life. In more than one of my darker times, I admittedly tried that, too.

  Impossible? Yes. Is it true? Yes. This is where one simply must have that thing called faith. One must simply believe that there is something bigger at play than what usually guides the average person’s perceptions.

  I don’t know, and have decided I will never know, what that bigger something is. I know it started when the curse was placed on me by Tashibag, but I don’t know how her curse worked then or now. It could be the power of some god. It could be demonic. It could be a physical relationship with energy that my cells share with some spiritual realm I don’t understand. It could be magic. It could be legitimate fucking voodoo. All of that could exist. None of it could exist. I have found endless evidence supporting every conclusion I have hoped to declare as the science that makes it all possible. I have also found plenty of evidence disproving every bit of it. I suppose this is what it means that to know anything is to also know nothing.

  I know it will take faith for almost anyone to believe what I am claiming, and I know it will take even more to believe the seemingly more impossible assertions of what I still will be sharing.

  My unique biology is only the first part of the enduring anomalies that have repeatedly happened since I killed my brother. The other parts are so unexplainable that I don’t expect any rational person to actually find a way to place faith in them.

  At least with my biology, I can mix science and energy with spirituality, and come up with wild and unfounded theories of how it could be. These other parts of my curse, well, again I must go back and explain how it all came to be. Only then can anyone decide just how much faith she wants to put into my story at all.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Do not touch his body,” Seth demanded, as I eventually stood and looked more closely at our dead brother. With Seth’s youth having just been abruptly taken from him, he meant it and I did not argue. He attempted to spit on me in his anger, but his mouth had become too dry. I reached an open palm toward him in our common gesture of condolence. “Do not ever touch me again,” he snapped, as he violently and awkwardly slapped my hand away from him.

  I searched deep within me for any feeling or emotion of which I could actually make sense enough to vocalize into something productive. I scanned my thoughts for the right words to calm Seth’s heaving chest and glossy eyes. Before I could say anything, he turned and fled; headed in the direction of the village.

  Once Seth disappeared around the North bend in the river, I collapsed onto my ass and studied Abel’s body. His open and lifeless eyes seemingly stared straight at me as if to ask why. I strangely felt no guilt. Instead, I thought only repeatedly to Racheele, whose mother’s instincts were certainly in full force at that very moment. I imagined she was preparing places to hide our daughter should Abel become an immediate threat. Perhaps she had taken Flor into the woods until she received the signal that things were safe.

  For more than what must have been an hour, I thought of my family and gazed upon the corpse of my brother. This enigmatic monster could not hurt us, and he could never again disrupt our lives in such terrible ways. I caught myself grinning at the thought and forced a colder face, even though I was alone. A smile just didn’t feel appropriate.

  Beyond the far hill, new white smoke billowed into the sky. Mom had started preparing dinner in her own home. She and Dad wouldn’t even have known yet that Abel had returned. Sharing all this news would fall on my shoulders, as it should.

  As Seth demanded, I left Abel’s body on the hillside and made my way home. Racheele was inside, leaning against the far wall with our daughter in her lap. She had gathered together a collection of hand-sized rocks, which were piled beside her in case she needed to start throwing them. I sat beside her and told her what I did.

  “Flor is safe now. We are all safe now,” was all she replied after I finished. I pulled her against me as we both seemed to search for what words we were supposed to say to each other next. Instead of eventually finding those words, she set Flor aside, and we began to fuck in a primal way we never had done before. As if the only way to right our current world was to scratch, and claw, and be overly rough with one another, we fucked. When it was over, we both sat against opposite walls, catching our breath, communicating with each inhale and exhale just how much we supported and loved the other, no matter what difficulty could currently be headed our way.

  Racheele understandably wanted some time to herself after that. I gave it to her and made my way over the hill to share what occurred with Mom and Dad. I didn’t know how I expected them to respond, but I knew they deserved to know the truth and to hear it directly from their eldest son, who had just spilled the blood of their second son.

  Mom, who was fully aware of what transpired between Abel and us four years earlier, took a long moment in silence after receiving the news. “Send his body back to the Earth where it may finally bring some goodness to us all,” she said. That was the only thing she ever said to me about it, that day or any other day.

  Dad looked at me with eyes that a lifetime of laboring had made hard and cold. “Tell me this only. Did it have to be, Cain?”

  I thought as honestly as I could allow myself. “Yes.” I thought a moment more. “I don’t know.”

  He stood and stared at me for some time. Eventually, he nodded as he came to some sort of conclusion. “You, Cain, are my son. Abel has never truly been my son.” He paused. “I know you are a man who does only what needs to be done.”

  And that was that.

  I expected so much more, but grief didn’t afflict our parents. It was then that I knew just how detached they had become from Abel and all of his ugliness.

  News of Abel’s murder spread fast and far once Seth told the first person what took place on the hillside. Being so young, he never stopped to ask himself what might happen if the entire village became aware. He never thought to ask why I, a generally calm and peaceful man, would do such a thing at all. He was angry in a way few people have ever experienced. I’ve never blamed him for that. ‘The benefit of the doubt’ wasn’t a concept available to the human mind for many more millennia. I had shattered what fragile concept that young boy had of family and loyalty. Now he was looking for answers he would never get, by stirring a pot he would never be able to unstir.

  Though a handful of locals had seen others killed by violence in their lifetimes, and everyone had heard the tales of slayings afar, murder didn’t often happen in this more tranquil part of the land. The community was rocked heavily by the news of Abel’s death. To propel the gossip, the man I killed was one whom so many thought they liked and wanted around. The town had just barely been lit with excitement at Abel’s return, and just like that he was gone. They didn’t know what to do with that, so they just talked about it, and they didn’t stop talking about it.

  Villagers became anxious at the thought of having me, or any member of my family, in their immediate presence. Our village’s place of tra
ding eerily vacated when I first approached it. Racheele was given a cold shoulder and a punishing silence by every woman in the village. People I conversed with regularly had nothing to say to me at all. Some began murmuring about the white stripe in Flor’s hair, claiming it was some sort of a sign given from the gods. Eventually, I instructed Racheele that we would all stay away from the village until Abel’s ceremony was done and the newness of it all had blown over.

  Within days, details of what occurred spread beyond the village to Yarib, home of Tashibag the eminent witch doctor. Her fame was comprehensive throughout the land. The story we would have told Flor, and which our parents told us, was that she had been alive since the beginning of the Earth and could not die. The sick and suffering traveled from every village in the region to take advantage of her healing ability.

  I have often thought back to that time, and of how easy it was for any person to find Tashibag. I think back to how generous she was, and of the goodness she freely offered. I once took Racheele on the two-day journey to see the witch whom I prayed could cure her of what must have been malaria. Tashibag mashed God-knows-what together, chanted foreign words, pressed the final crumbly concoction into Racheele’s eyes, and instructed her not to wash it off for three days and three nights. We did as we were instructed, and Racheele’s health returned. There were so many people with marvelous stories of Tashibag and her healing witchery. In those days, there were no naysayers. Tashibag simply was the immortal and good witch who possessed great powers. It was accepted as truth, and why wouldn’t it be?

  I don’t know how much goodness is in her. I do know that after Tashibag came to my village looking for me, things changed.

  Seth never did return to help us with Abel’s body. At Mom’s request, I gave Abel an honorable burning, and mixed his ashes into the ground where they would finally nurture goodness instead of begetting the pain and hurt Abel was known to spread.

  I found myself going deeper into my first justifications for what I did, and equally as deep into the initial guilt accompanying the murder. I was so unsure of how I felt, or of how I should be feeling. My thoughts and emotions were so blurred surrounding it all, and I knew it would be some time before I could see clearly.

  A few days had passed when Ungho, the one man in the village who still pretended to be a friend, accosted me in my field. “Have you seen Seth?” he asked, panting and sweaty from his exigent approach.

  Exhausted from my day’s labor, I dropped the dulled branch I had been using to carve rows into the earth and pointed Ungho’s attention toward my home. “Come have a drink with me,” I told him. “No. Seth has not yet returned to see me. Why are you looking for him?”

  It was only then that I took Ungho’s rather panicked urgency more fully into account. “Tashibag. She is in the village, Cain! You should have seen it. She rode in on the back of an elk, and the man walking with her asked each of us to bring her to Seth, but nobody has seen him today. I came to ask the only person who might know. She is here to speak with your brother, Cain. The witch is here!”

  “That is absurd. An elk cannot be ridden,” I snorted. A knot of unexpected dread formed in the pit of my stomach. Why would the witch be in our village? Does she somehow know what happened to Abel? “Surely, you’re seeing things, Ungho. Tell me what is happening without the embellishments.”

  Ungho, a man lacking intelligence and infamous for his use of exaggeration, stomped his impatient foot into the dirt to keep me from scoffing further. “I saw the witch, Cain. I saw her! I saw the elk. With my own ears I heard them ask for Seth by name. This all happened just now. I came straightaway.”

  I assured Ungho I believed him and sent him back to the village with instructions for Seth, should he find him first, to wait for me before speaking with Tashibag.

  With very little explanation as to why I was going, I left Racheele and Flor behind and ran as much of the path to the village as I had energy to run.

  The worn dirt path through the village center was usually deserted except for the occasional meanderer. Today there wasn’t a member of that village who wasn’t outside of their homes. The hustle and chatter I could hear ahead quickly hushed, as villager after villager noticed my sudden appearance. I made eye contact with Ornea, a woman so old and senile that some sort of death should have taken her long before. She squinted her eyes and pointed toward the center of the village, where a large group had circled as if I somehow couldn’t already see it for myself. I made my way cautiously toward it.

  “Cain, come forth.” I remembered that voice from my travels to Yarib. The call came from inside the throng, which immediately parted as it cleared a path from me, still some distance away, to Tashibag. I obeyed and continued shuffling uneasily toward her.

  The witch sat atop a large stone, which someone must have placed in the path just for her. By all appearances, Tashibag was around my same age; her voice was high and soft.

  She was not beautiful by any means. Her body was so skinny, I could see the shape of her collar bones above a gaping piece of shiny fabric that draped loosely around her. Her partially-exposed breasts, it seemed, had never become beautiful from feeding another. She sat tall and straight, her long slender legs stretched and crossed in front of her. Her posture was too erect for the time. Her skin was clean and unscarred. Her hair was straight and so unweighted with earth that the passing breeze was able to lift it and flick it across her face. Her teeth were white and unbroken, like those of a child. Her limbs lacked hair, and her skin wasn’t cracked and worn by the sun. The beauty of a life lived seemed to have passed her by, which was ironic since she was supposedly much older than any of us.

  As I drew nearer, my eyes were drawn to a subtle constricting movement around her. A slender serpent as white as freshly fallen snow and the length of both my arms, hung draped from her neck. The snake moved methodically in and out of view, mostly obscured beneath Tashibag’s hair and inside her loosened robe.

  Just as Ungho had claimed, a great elk bull towered above the sitting Tashibag, lazily eating from a mound of hand-pulled grass. A considerable rack of sharp brown antlers covered with white tips obscured the elk’s eyes from immediate view. The elk was somehow tamed, seemingly undaunted by the chaotic crowds surrounding him.

  A small and withered man, whom I did not recognize stood beside the elk, keeping one hand pressed against its neck. He did not make eye contact with me, nor did he acknowledge my presence as I advanced. His white hair was also free from soil, though his body was covered in scars and cracked skin just like the rest of us.

  I reached the outer perimeter of the crowd and stopped. “Seth.”

  My young brother, whom I hadn’t yet noticed, stood defiantly between Tashibag and the circle of onlookers. His posture was offensive, and his shoulders tightened when our gazes met. His usual dark brown eyes shined gold in the setting sun. “I have told Tashibag what you have done to our brother, Cain. She inquired, and I told her everything.”

  Tashibag softly snapped her fingers in Seth’s direction. “That is enough.” Seth became immediately quiet and still, his stance drooping. The witch turned her attention to me. The whites of her eyes were eerily clear and glistened with conviction. “Seth was not he who first told me what you have done to your brother. He only confirmed the whispers that first brought me here. I want to hear you, young Cain. I want to hear the truth pass through your lips. Where is thy brother Abel?”

  I felt a strange peace while she spoke, even with the eyes of those from my village centered upon me. Tashibag was neither threatening nor hostile. The onlookers mostly stood with gawking eyes and hanging jaws, excited for whatever would happen next. The only aggression that seemed to be present at all sat firmly on the shoulders of Seth. I straightened my posture and took a breath. “I put my spear into my brother, and he breathes no more. His body was burned upon the fire, and the Earth has him now.”

  “I see. Why did this happen?” she asked, though I had the strange feeling she already kn
ew more of what I was feeling than I even did.

  “Yes, tell her, Cain. Tell all of us!” Seth blurted, before the witch again quietly snapped in his direction, bringing him to silence once more.

  I exhaled a large breath I hadn’t realized I was holding in. “My brother struck me in the head with a large stone, sending me into blackness so that he could know my woman after I would not allow it.”

  Tashibag looked me up and down as if she was searching the breeze passing by me for a replay of what I was claiming. Seth’s countenance softened somewhat after hearing my words, and the tenseness in his body lessened, though he said nothing. Murmurs rumbled around me. “This incident you speak of happened long ago, did it not?”

  “Four winters have passed since that night.”

  “Four winters,” she said quietly. “Four winters is much time. Tell me why he would hit you with the stone. Were you so hardened that you would not share your woman with your brother?”

  The peace I had felt evaporated, and trepidation began filling me. “I denied his request many times, and he would not accept my answer.”