Read Online The Empty by Thom Reese - Free Book Online Page B

me?” ventured Oskar as Dolnaraq spit fur from his mouth then swallowed a tough length of flesh.
    Dolnaraq stared at the man. His grasp of the German language had increased with his time at the carnival and he comprehended most of what Oskar said. “You say it is wrong that I eat the cat. Why?” Dolnaraq’s words were slow, some of his pronunciations poor, but his sentence was coherent.
    Despite the bloody scene before him, Oskar managed a wry smile at the first true sentence uttered by Dolnaraq in his presence. “The cat was…not for eating,” he replied, obviously a bit dumbfounded by the question.
    “You bring me meat every day. You consume meat yourself. Why was this meat forbidden?”
    “The cat was your friend, your companion.”
    “I did not ask for a companion.”
    “True, but often we do not have the luxury to choose our companions. We must make due with those we are given. Often we find camaraderie where none was expected.”
    Dolnaraq tore free another length of flesh. He had no reply to this.
    Despite the grizzly scene, despite the recent attack on him by Dolnaraq, Oskar stepped closer, his eyes narrowing, his lips pursing into a peculiar frown. “Your face has changed. It looks…” he stammered, apparently formulating the thought even as he spoke. “It looks familiar, rather like… My young friend, what did you do to me? I thought that I would die.”
    “You might have,” offered Dolnaraq between bites.
    “But your face, in some small way… No. I am delusional. Forgive me.”
    With that, the little man shook his head as if in confusion, then turned and ambled silently away. This was fine with Dolnaraq. He was still eating.
    * * * *
     
    Oskar returned two days later, in his arms he held three tattered and worn books. He set these on the dusty ground, held up one finger indicating that Dolnaraq should wait, disappeared around a corner, and then returned with a short gray metal stool. Seating himself on the stool beside the books, he said, “It is time you made some progress.”
    Dolnaraq was leaning against one of the two wooden walls of his cage thinking of his carefree times with Tresset and wondering if the two would ever reunite. He cared little for what the man was saying.
    “I suppose,” said Oskar. “That we should begin with names. Mine, as I’m sure you know, is Oskar. What is yours?”
    Dolnaraq stared at the opposite wall.
    “What do you call yourself?”
    Silence.
    Oskar sighed. “All right, then I suppose it best that I myself give you a name. In youth I had a dear friend named Otto. I believe I will call you Otto.”
    Dolnaraq picked a piece of rotting flesh from between two teeth and flicked it across the cage.
    “Now…Otto. If you are ever to live beyond the confines of a cage, you must be civilized. We cannot have you behaving like an animal.”
    Dolnaraq lulled his head in Oskar’s direction. “I am not an animal.”
    “No, I don’t believe you are. The very fact that we can converse attests to that fact.”
    “Still I am caged like an animal.”
    Oskar sighed. “Wilhelm thinks you a beast. He also seeks to become rich by owning you.”
    “And you? You could free me and yet you do not.”
    “You…” Oskar hesitated, apparently searching for words. “You are a threat,” he said finally. “I sense a fine intellect, but you behave as a beast. You have attacked me twice since your arrival. On the morning of your capture, you had apparently slain several people in the nearby village. The attacks were savage—animalistic. Wilhelm lied to the villagers, convincing them that he had slain the werewolf. Otherwise, they surely would have tracked you down and slain you. I cannot, in good conscience, release you while I still believe you would behave as such.”
    Dolnaraq stared forward at the chipped paint of the wall before him, not meeting Oskar’s gaze, not responding to the statements. Apparently the villagers believed there had been only one “werewolf.”