“What the hell are you doing?” Eppstadt wanted to know.
Joe simply repeated his plea: “You gotta help me.”
“There’s no time, Joe,” Eppstadt said, “You’ve got to come back with me. Right now. Christ, I sent you down to close the door. Why’d you come in?”
“For the same reason you did,” Joe said. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Are you going to help me or not?”
Eppstadt had pressed his way into the midst of the thicket as he and Joe spoke, snagging his suit on the briars that grew in profusion here several times as he did so. The tableau that now came into view appalled him.
There was a man crucified amongst the higher branches of the tree Joe had climbed, the deed done with both rope and nails. Joe had already managed to remove a couple of the nails (spattering his arms and face with blood in the process) and was now pulling at the knotted rope with his teeth. He was desperate to get the man down from the tree, and he had reason. The branches around the man’s head were bustling with birds, the Devil’s Country’s version of carrion-crows: bigger, crueler versions. They’d clearly made several assaults on the man’s face already. There were deep gouges around the victim’s sockets where the birds had gone after his eyes. Blood from the wounds poured down his face. He might have resembled Christ but for the brightness of his blond hair, which fell in dirty curls to his shoulders.
“I need a stone!” Joe yelled down at Eppstadt.
“What for?”
“Just find me a fucking stone, will you?”
Eppstadt didn’t like to take orders — especially from a waiter — but he saw the urgency of the situation, and did as he was asked, looking around until he laid his hands on a long, sharp stone, which he passed on up to Joe. From his perch on the ladder, Joe took aim at the closest of the carrion crows. It was a good throw. The stone struck the most ambitious of the flock-who had apparently decided to come in for the kill-and messily smashed open the bird’s head, but its companions did not fly off, as Joe had hoped. They simply retreated up the tree a branch or two, squawking in fury and frustration, while the dead bird dropped from the perch.
As if awoken from a grateful sleep by the din of the birds, the crucified man raised his head, and opened his mouth. A black snake, no thicker than a baby’s thumb, slid out from between his lips in a thin gruel of blood, spittle and bile. The snake dangled from the man’s lower lip for a few moments, hooked by its tail. Then it fell to the ground, a foot from Eppstadt.
He stepped away in disgust, throwing a backward glance at the door, just to reassure himself that his means of escape from this insanity was still in view. It was. But the snake had changed his perspective on this mercy mission.
“The guy’s on the way out,” Eppstadt said to Joe. “You can’t do anything for him.”
“We can still get him down.”
“And I’m telling you he’s beyond help, Joe. Look at him.”
There did indeed seem little purpose in laboring to depose the man; he was obviously close to death. His eyes had rolled back beneath fluttering eyelids, showing nothing but white. He was attempting to say something, but his mind and his tongue were beyond the complex business of speech.
“You know what?” Eppstadt said, glancing around the landscape. “This is a set-up.” There were indeed dozens of hiding places for potential attackers-human or animal-within fifty yards of them: rocks, holes, thicket. “We should just get the hell out of here before whoever did this to him tries the same on us.”
“Leave him, you mean?”
“Yes. Leave him.”
Joe just shook his head. He had succeeded in getting this far, and wasn’t going to give up now. He pulled on the rope that held the man’s right hand. The arm fell free. Blood pattered on the leaves over Eppstadt’s head, like a light rain.
“I’m almost done,” Joe said.