The Hangman ripped off his robe, tossing it to the side. His thick biceps seemed to glow underneath the zipping fairy lights that had followed them inside. “Put them in the chairs,” he ordered.
His servants jerked Rakesh up, tossing him into a wooden chair against the wall. They tied his ankles and hands to the legs and arms of the table as his back burned with pain. He struggled against blackness as it crept across his vision.
The servants then roughly seated Jiro next to him.
Jiro’s head rolled about on his neck. Clearly he too was fighting to remain conscious.
The Hangman strode over, standing before his prisoners with his legs spread and arms set in a broad stance. The fairy lights created a horrible glow on his face. He had the craziest look in his eyes.
Rakesh wanted to scream at the sight of those devilish eyes, yet was unable to tear his gaze away. The Hangman turned to Jiro first, cracking him across the face with the back of his hand.
“Who are you working for?”
Jiro’s head snapped back. He moaned, but his eyes remained closed.
“No one.”
The words came out of Rakesh’s lips in a squeak of terror. The Hangman lifted one eyebrow and turned to him. His eyes tapered into slashes.
“What?”
“W-we w-w-work for n-no one.”
“Then why were you in my house?”
“Food.”
“Food?”
Rakesh swallowed. “We’re starving. We didn’t know it w-was your house. We were just looking for food.”
The Hangman glanced down, eyeing Rakesh’s hollow stomach and gaunt ribs.
“You were looking in drawers that no one would use for food.”
Rakesh tried to shrug, but grimaced instead. “We are hungry. That’s all I know. Food could be anywhere. Hidden anywhere.”
The Hangman’s nostrils flared as he leaned close to Rakesh, the foul scent of his breath wafting over them.
In the disturbing shadows, The Hangman’s face seemed distorted by an ominous grin. Rakesh trembled.
“Then why were you holding that box?”
The Hangman pointed a long finger to one of his servants, who held the little black box in his hand. It lay closed in his palm. Rakesh forced himself to look at it, keeping his expression as blank as he could manage.
“W-we thought it could hold spices or salt.”
“Salt?”
“We crave it.”
The Hangman snorted.
Trade in and out of Iskawan had been bleak since the dark city began, and several food items rarely made it through the caravan and into the hands of the residents. Like sugar. Salt. Tea.
The Hangman eyed Rakesh.
“I don’t believe you.”
Rakesh braced himself, preparing for a backhand to the face or a deathblow to his head.
None came. Instead, The Hangman straightened, pulling his shoulders back. He loomed tall and terrible above his prisoners, seeming to stretch into the great darkness as if he were one with it.
Rakesh’s mind spun. His throat burned with thirst. He’d surely suffer another lashing for a glass of water.
“But I don’t think you’re entirely lying either. You’re too stupid to do much else, aren’t you? I can’t kill you outright and risk a mob rising up in protest right here in Iskawan.”
The Hangman turned to his servants, ham-like fists propped on his hips. “Let’s just get rid of them.”
The Hangman’s men forcibly pushed the two hapless guys out of the house and into the streets. Rakesh was too consumed by the need for water, the need for relief, to do anything more than stumble along, but Jiro cried aloud with every step they took.
Finally, to silence the cries, one of the servants grabbed Jiro, slung him over his back, and carried him. Jiro silenced, his arms hanging limp down the man’s back.
Slinking off to the side of the street, The Hangman and his servants led them farther from the main center of the city, toward the darkness of the outer wall. Rakesh stumbled along, his legs dragging on the ground until he fell.
The Hangman grunted, and another of his servants picked up Rakesh and slung him across his back. Rakesh let out a cry, but silenced it, lost somewhere in the haze between life and death, grateful not to have to shuffle....
He must have passed out, or slept. He woke some time later when The Hangman’s servant threw him to the ground. His back wounds, sticky with blood and sweat, seemed to peel open from the resulting jolt and threatened to erupt. Rakesh passed into a mind-numbing place of darkness before returning to a form of consciousness once again.
As Rakesh lifted his eyes open, The Hangman towered over him, fists pressed into his hips. But his gaze was fixed somewhere beyond the bodies of Rakesh and Jiro.
“Here you are, wretches. Your new hope.”
Looming tall above them all were…the North Doors.
Rakesh’s chest constricted in a panic infinitely more painful than all the other things he had endured. Like a drumbeat, the words echoed in his mind.
North Doors. North Doors. North Doors.
“No,” he murmured. His lips peeled apart, dry as sand. “No!”
The man bearing Jiro kicked at him. Rakesh groaned, his head tilting back.
Several seconds passed before Jiro’s gaze narrowed on the dark swath of land stretching before them. Then Jiro sucked in a sharp breath and screamed. “No!”
The dark lands of The Nothingness were what lay before them.
The Hangman grunted and waved his servants back. “Go,” he instructed them. Then turning to Rakesh and Jiro, he leered, “Good luck in your new home – for whatever length of time you manage to not die. With your open wounds and bloody skin, I doubt you’ll live to see another hour. I hope it was worth it.”
The Hangman laughed, a deep sound that echoed and almost shattered the last of Rakesh’s control. Jiro scrambled after him as The Hangman backed away.
“No!” he screamed, his voice thin and reedy like that of a lost child. “Don’t leave us here! Kill us back in Iskawan. Return us to the stocks. Please!”
This evident fear only made The Hangman laugh harder.
Once The Hangman passed through the massive North Doors, his servants slammed them closed, nearly crushing Jiro’s hand.
Rakesh stared blankly off into the distance.
The Hangman had just sentenced them to a death worse than torture. At least, in torture, they could pass out. Obliterate the pain. But here, in the dark lands, they would know every moment of their existence. Every horrible twist of their hearts.
They couldn’t run from such pervasive darkness.
Rakesh slowly shook his head, bringing himself out of the spiraling thoughts.
No giving up, he thought, remembering her.
No giving up.
“Jiro. Come.” He reached out a bloody hand, the stump of his missing finger glazed over black with a thick scab.
Jiro stared at the dirt beneath him. “The Nothingness,” he repeated, his swollen lips bloody with drool and sweat and a thousand unreleased screams. “They’ve sentenced us to death in The Nothingness.”
“Yes,” Rakesh said. “There’s hope for escape from the pain. Come. We cannot stay here. We need . . . We need.. . .”
The thought fell away from Rakesh’s lips.
What did they need? Where did they even start? And why would The Hangman relinquish them to the dark lands of The Nothingness instead of just killing them secretly?
Perhaps he planned to track them. Then laugh at their deaths.
Or maybe he just didn’t care. Maybe they didn’t matter enough to watch even in death.
“Jiro, come.”
Jiro slowly pushed himself upright. His chest lifted and fell in agonizing breaths. Every movement seemed to cause him pain. He grimaced, the tight nuances of his face cutting through every expression. Tears glittered in his eyes.
“We will die.”
“We can survive.” Rakesh gently took his arm. “Jiro, we’ll stick together. We can survive. We’ve already survived this long. We’ll continue.”
“Not in The Nothingness!”
The scream tore from Jiro’s throat, rippling out through the strange darkness that seemed to absorb it.
Jiro began to breathe so fast over he had to double over. “The Nothingness,” he murmured, as if in disbelief. “The Nothingness!”