Horse Men
by K. C. Gray
part 1 of 2
Toya pushed up her shoulder-length hair as she lay down on the small circular patch of lightened wood in the clubhouse. She spread her arms out on either side of her as splinters pressed into her flesh.
Her hair was left to look like a tall auburn crown. The hay had either fallen through the rotted parts of the floor or the wind had blown it away, but she could tell from the lighted circular spot the hay made on the floor exactly how big the circle had been. Her legs and arms splayed out way past the circumference.
A patch of light from the sun hit a web, lighting up a struggling bug like an actor on a stage. The spider was nowhere to be seen. The web could have been old; one the spiders had tired of and moved on to create a better one outside the confines of the small, dilapidated building.
* * *
Right around the time her mom left, Toya and her friends completed the clubhouse. The oldest was eleven. The house seemed just the right size, with three separate rooms and the roof barely grazing the head of the tallest.
A rope ladder hung from the door opening fifteen feet above the ground. The adjacent wall had a bigger door cut in it, and a slide connected from the base of the door to the ground in a wide, sloping manner.
The friends sat in the biggest room out of the three. The other rooms were empty at the time, but one room would be designated for the boys and the other for the girls; the one where they sat would be the unified room. A small hallway led to the other rooms, and although they could barely take five steps down the hallway before hitting the end, they were proud of it. All seven children had pitched in to build it with the help of a few parents.
They sat around on beanbags that they had managed to heave up the ladder or push up the slide and sprinklings of hay for those who couldn’t afford the beanbags.
Guy leaned into the center of the circle from his beanbag chair and waited for them all to calm down enough for him to gain control. Andrew leaned over the side of his beanbag and tried to whisper, “Where is the necklace? Can I see it again? You just found it in the woods?”
Guy shushed him. “I’ll get it in a little.”
Toya sat on the other side of Andrew. She leaned forward from her pile of hay to hear a little more. Guy was always finding things, but he never would share.
Andrew asked, “You think it’s liquid inside?”
Guy only shook his head.
The sun was starting to disappear behind the tall trees, so they didn’t have much time to complete the meeting.
* * *
The clubhouse swayed a little in the wind. Club Horse, they called it in a mean tribute to Toya. The metal slide going from the side of the clubhouse down to the ground still had hoof prints in it.
They all insisted that something natural had to have happened. But how could they remember? They were blessed to forget. Toya had to remember. She wouldn’t change her story, and her father, a newly single parent, didn’t know what else to do. He sent Toya to a clinic. Toya was the only one not cut down with the fake sword, with memories oozing out like thick ketchup.
* * *
“Let’s get on with the meeting.” Guy had raised his voice. Everyone scrambled for their bit of hay or beanbag. “The reason we’re here tonight is to finish forming this club.” Guy had the biggest beanbag, and it looked like a dented dinosaur egg with him sitting in it.
Toya sat on her hay beside Andrew.
“We still need a secret handshake,” Guy said. “Any ideas?”
Off to Toya’s left horses burst into the room. The walls seemed to stretch out, and the center of the room seemed even smaller than before, with the roof and the walls so far away.
Everything happened quickly as everyone except Toya and Andrew jumped to their feet. Swords glared in the lowering sun as her friends fell to the ground. A pool of blood formed around them. The horses ran down the hallway.
* * *
There was a call from below. Toya sat up. She could barely feel the release of pressure from the pieces of wood. “What?” she called back.
“Let’s go,” Chris said.
She only sat there, waiting for something: for the memory to fall away or for a new memory to reveal itself... one of a bump on the head, maybe... something to explain away the horsemen.
The clubhouse rocked as Chris climbed up the reins, no, that was obviously the wrong word... rungs.
One of the men yelled, “Search every room.”
“Toya,” her name floated out from behind Guy’s chair. She quickly crawled toward where she heard her name. “Over here.” Andrew lay on the floor, curled up into a ball behind the chair.
“They came from this way,” Toya whispered, “they’ll leave this way. We gotta find a better hiding place.”
“I’m not moving. We need to play dead.” Andrew’s eyes wavered from side to side as he searched around him. He began to cry when he saw Silvia lying beside him, a circle of blood surrounding her head like a Madonna painting.
* * *
The floorboards creaked under Chris’s weight, “Come on.” He stopped at the threshold. “You alright?” He knelt only an arm’s length away.
“He sent me away because he thought I was crazy,” Toya said.
“I know,” Chris sighed. “What do you need?”
“Listen.”
“I’ve heard it, and it’s nonsense.”
Toya didn’t move.
“Please don’t start this again, Honey. It’s been over a year. Let’s go home. Maybe you’ll feel better when we leave.”
“No.” She lay back down.
“Toya, you’re getting all bruised.” He took a chance and crawled further in. “Look,” he lifted her arm and pulled a few splinters out of her flesh. Red dots appeared on her honey-colored skin.
Chris pulled her up from the floor. They both had to stand on their knees in order to move around. How could a horse even fit inside of the clubhouse? Chris brushed her skin off some more, and she let him hug her afterwards. His fingertips burned her as he ran them over her bruised skin.
“Let’s go, please,” Chris asked one more time.
They walked out of the woods and to her childhood home, where everyone had gathered after her father’s funeral. Toya hugged her family: those she had never even met, those whom she hadn’t seen in years, and those who used to torture her after she insisted that what she witnessed was real. They were all strangers, people who knew nothing of her but what they wanted to assume.
Toya finally came to her mother, the woman who had left her father to raise her alone. If her mother had stayed, maybe her father wouldn’t have sent her away. They hugged stiffly. It had been five years since they had seen one another, and longer than that since they had really talked.
Chris held her arm all the way to the car. He cared so much for her, but she needed more. She needed one person to listen, to hear her and not tell her what she should think, or how she should feel, or what she really did experience.
Just listen.
“Did you see them?” Andrew asked.
“All I saw were the horses. I couldn’t see the men. I was too scared to look up.”
“They were horsemen. They were men-horses.”
The horses ran back down the hallway. Andrew and Toya both became lifeless. Toya tried breathing as shallowly as possible, but Andrew’s breathing became erratic.
The horses took a shortcut through the room, jumping over chairs, and then left the way they came. Andrew and Toya looked up at each other.
“They’re gone,” he said. “Maybe we should leave, too.”
The sound of hooves picked up again down the hallway and they both tensed up against the floor, trying their best to look like rag dolls.
“Prince,” a man said, “we should leave through the woods so that the men can have a place to rest. We have run a long way.” Their voices were low and unrushed, and the horses’ hooves tapped the floor slowly, but the sound headed straight for Toya and Andrew.
“No,” another answered. “We need to be far from here before morning. For the men’s hard work, they will receive one week’s royal treatment.”
Andrew uttered a sound as they came up behind him.
The horses stopped.
Metal dragged across the floor and stopped at the very moment Andrew hopped to his feet.
Toya fought the urge to open her eyes.
“Wait. You don’t have to kill me.” Andrew’s voice stopped and he cried out before falling to the ground. The thud intermingled with a peep from Toya. One horse started walking slowly, and the men were no longer talking.
The horse stopped by her head. Fingers moved in circles around her hair. She stopped breathing as he pulled her up. Her feet dangled above the floor and her nose touched the nose of a man. She screamed as strands of her hair slid out of their follicles.
The man’s sword reflected a piece of the setting sunlight as he held it up. There was something odd about him, but Toya couldn’t figure out what. His hair was parted in the middle of his head and braided into dreadlocks, which hung past his shoulders. A leather strap hung across his bare chest, and his dark skin glistened with sweat. Around his neck was a silver necklace with a dime-sized jewel in the center which jutted out in all directions; blue with a hint of green going down the center. It seemed to flow like liquid.
“Quelty,” he said, “do you see what I see?” He put his sword away in the case behind his back and lowered Toya to the floor.
“Purely coincidence, Prince.”
“Even so. It’s amazing.” As he reached out and caressed her face, she noticed that the horse’s head was not in front of him. If he were on his horse, he would have been over eight feet tall. They were men-horses. His lower abdomen merged so completely with the horse that it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. He pulled her closer.
“She looks just like her,” he said. “I won’t hurt you,” he said to Toya. “You will be spared.”
Toya wanted to pull away as he continued to run his fingers over her cheeks and chin.
“Prince, are you sure that’s wise? She may speak.”
“And who’d believe her?”
Quelty stepped into her view. If it weren’t for the sagging skin on his face he would have seemed as young as the prince. Toya looked up at the prince once more and their eyes locked. The prince leaned in closer and pressed his forehead to hers. Toya’s eyes were jutting out, but the prince’s were closed.
“Sir!” Quelty exclaimed. The prince stood straight and looked at him. “That’s not her. She’s dead!”
At that, the prince slapped him across the face. “I know that! I don’t need the reminder. Go outside with the others,” the prince ordered. “Leave me the powder.”
Quelty’s eyes were wide and his breathing shallow, but he did as the prince said.
The prince took a bag from Quelty’s hands and strapped it onto a belt.
“We should be leaving soon,” Quelty mumbled before galloping down the slide.
Toya slowly backed away.
“Don’t run,” the prince said. He reached down and grabbed her hand. “Do you have a name?”
She nodded.
“What is it?”
“Toya,” she whispered. She looked around at all of her friends and began to cry.
“Don’t worry, Toya,” he smiled and hugged her tightly. “They’re not dead,” he whispered.
All she could manage was a whimper.
“It’s an illusion.” He pulled his sword out and held it for her to see. The edges were thick, making it unfit to cut anything. “When we hit a human with it, it causes them to fall asleep and wipes their current memory away. They’ll wake up not remembering the last thirty minutes. Except for you. I want you to remember me, because I will always remember you.”
“The blood,” she somehow managed to whisper.
“Your imagination. You see someone being hit by a sword, you think of blood. Of course, your imagination was heightened by our natural magic. It manifested the blood briefly, while my men were here. Look now.”
Toya’s friends all lay still, but their chests and bellies rose and fell with their breaths and all signs of blood were gone.
“They’ll be waking soon.” He took a pinch of what looked like glitter out of the bag and blew it into her face. The prince’s entire body began to waver, like water being poured down a fresh painting. “Don’t forget me.” He caressed her face one last time before walking backwards toward the slide.
Her eyes started to close, and she could barely make out his outline. “I won’t forget you.” Her eyes shut, and she fell to the floor.
* * *
Copyright © 2011 by K. C. Gray
