Chapter 7 - The Third Extraction
Clara brought the heavy steel saw down with all the weight in her shoulders.
The double-toothed blade struck the primary ribbon—the one rooted behind the corpse's breastbone—three inches above the floorboards.
It was like striking a bundle of wet hemp ropes bound with iron wire. The steel teeth bit an inch deep, spraying a fountain of dark, greasy oil across Clara's face and chest, but the ribbon did not sever. It contracted instantly, its microscopic, clawed surface locking onto the cold steel of the saw blade and pulling it out of her grip with a violent, bone-snapping wrench.
Clara was thrown sideways against the trestle table, knocking her slide-case and ink-stand to the floor.
The corpse of Arthur Miller did not attack her.
It reached Thomas Vance.
The four dark ribbons converged on the bound man's head, wrapping around his jaw, his nose, and his neck like the roots of a willow tree seeking water in a ditch.
Thomas’s eyes snapped open—not with fear, but with that same, terrible, smooth serenity.
His mouth opened wide.
A sound came out of him—a long, high, musical chord that sounded like three church organs playing different keys at the same time, echoing off the iron stove and the wooden walls until the glass in the single window pane began to hum and vibrate in its lead frame.
The ribbons did not enter his mouth.
They targeted his left ear—the uninjured side.
The thickest ribbon, its tip ending in a pale, six-pointed star of white silica teeth, pressed directly against the cartilage of the concha.
"No!" Clara screamed.
She did not reach for the saw. She did not reach for the poker.
She reached for the brass microscope on the high shelf.
She grabbed the thirty-pound iron-and-brass instrument by its heavy horseshoe base, swung it above her head with a ragged, screaming breath, and brought it down directly onto the back of Arthur Miller’s skull.
The iron base struck the nape of the corpse’s neck with a crushing thwack.
The rotten bone gave way.
The skull caved inward like a dried gourd, spraying a thick, grey paste of liquefied brain matter and pale-blue salt across the pine chair.
The four ribbons stiffened—their dark, segmented bodies vibrating so hard that the oil on their skin turned into a fine, white mist—and then they collapsed onto the floorboards like dead vines cut from a wall.
The cabin fell silent again.
The storm outside remained dead. No wind. No water.
Thomas Vance’s musical chord cut off instantly.
His head flopped forward, his chin resting against his chest once more.
Clara stood over the two bodies—the bloated coast-guard on the floor, his head smashed under her Edinburgh microscope, and the bound cooper in the chair, covered in grey paste and cold oil.
Her left shoulder was dislocated from the impact of the saw's kickback, hanging two inches lower than her right. Her face was painted with dark, oily fluid that smelled of thirty-fathom mud.
She turned around slowly.
William was sitting in the corner by the stove.
He was no longer screaming.
He had pulled his pocket-knife from his coat—a small, three-inch horn-handled knife he used for whittling pine pegs.
He had pressed the point of the blade two inches into his own left ear-canal.
Blood—dark, thick, and almost black—was running down his neck and dripping into the white ashes of the hearth.
"William..." Clara choked out, her voice barely a rattle in her throat.
The boy looked at her.
His right eye was clear, blue, and terrified.
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His left eye had turned completely white—a smooth, hard dome of salt that was already growing out past his eyelashes.
"It's... it's long, doctor," William whispered, his thumb pressing the horn handle half an inch deeper into his skull. "It goes... all the way down... to the bridge..."
