The Jailor King

The full weight of his exile hadn’t become apparent to Maxwell Arison until he stood choking on the train platform, the billowing chimney of the departing engine more coal smoke than steam, stinging his eyes and scorching his lungs. It was then, after the train had receded from sight and he found that he was alone on the platform, that he realized that he would have to carry his luggage himself.

            After several moments of cursing his turn of ill-fortune and after petitioning an impassive sky for an ex machina from whichsoever deus that would listen, he finally mustered up as much wherewithal as he could without mussing his bespoke wool and silk frock coat. It had previously been spoken for, but had been a gift from one of his more lavish mistresses wanting to slight her husband by “misplacing” his favorite coat, which fit well with his raison d'etre of one man’s gain was the other man’s loss. It was only on this long walk along the riverside dirt road uphill into the village of Hogswain that he truly believed he felt what it was to be the man of loss.

            As he made his way upstream towards Hogswain he left behind a trail of a few mourned suitcases of various sizes (thus earning back the karmic support of an unnamed deity, he was sure). The river he followed towards town had been a calm and collected chap back near the train station, but was now a raucous and rocky rapid affair that was at a sharp incline for nearly a mile before it leveled out at the town’s elevation. It was as if the river itself was as eager to get away from this uncultured backwater as he. No offense, thought Maxwell to the river, a moment’s whimsy thinking it might be insulted by the term.

            Cresting the incline at which the rapids began and the town’s official perimeter ended, Maxwell saw three men and a cart near the riverbed where the water began to pick up speed. Two of the men were concerning themselves with something near the water while the third stood by the horse-drawn cart, hand rolling a cigarette but the man’s hands were too large and calloused so all he was doing was managing to make a mess of it. The man stopped attempting to complete the task when Maxwell, out of breath and smiling his most charming smile gestured towards the rolling papers and pouch of tobacco the man was holding. Confused by the sudden appearance of Maxwell in the most impractical outfit that this part of the country had ever seen, the man handed over the items without protest. With practiced, nimble, deft (and pale and soft) hands, Maxwell produced a perfectly rolled cigarette to the man with an exaggerated flourish. While the man was looking at the cigarette that had appeared so elegantly, with much quicker and practical movements, Maxwell had already rolled a cigarette for himself, lit it, and was handing the pouch of tobacco with the papers tucked neatly inside back to the man who immediately accepted the appearance of a cigarette in the mouth of the out of place man as readily as he had accepted the appearance of a fancily clad man lugging multiple expensive suitcases along a dirt road on a trolley, which is to say, with mild annoyance.

            Inhaling on the cigarette, Maxwell imagined his life among the hoi polloi of Hogswain (brief as he hoped it to be), braving the elements, nobly acting as the vanguard against the wilderness which threatened to encroach upon civilization (such as it was to be considered here in Hogswain). He imagined that he would learn to appreciate the simple things this life had to offer, like the rustic, unrefined feel of this working man’s floor-swept halfzware as he drew its smoke into his lungs, feeling it loll around in his body like a vagrant in a cathedral, reveling in the blasphemous juxtaposition. He evicted the vagrant from the cathedral in the refined, dignified manner that he had learned in his beloved erstwhile metropolis, impressing the working man who then surely became distracted with following the arc of a swift-flying bird that must have passed above Maxwell’s head.

            Having ingratiated himself with the Hogswainian through the traditional exchange of cultures, the man’s tobacco for his genteel performance, Maxwell offered a fiscal exchange of coin for the services of the man’s cart as means of conveyance for his property into Hogswain. The man eyed the proffered coin, then eyed the deep gouges in the dirt road left by Maxwell’s haphazard attempt at guiding the trolley away from the train station. Deciding that the cost of a broken cart axle would far outweigh the pleasure he would gain from telling the displaced gentleman exactly where he could place his generous offer, the man politely denied the coin and said that he would gladly convey the man and his luggage to Hogswain if only he didn’t mind sharing the cart with the cargo he and the other two men had been charged with transporting.

            Quite pleased with his negotiating expertise, Maxwell readily agreed to the terms, the only addendum being a polite request in aiding him in loading the luggage onto the man’s cart, seeing as he was quite beleaguered by his journey thus far. Thankfully the man agreed, though Maxwell was becoming concerned by the number of birds that must surely be flying overhead that must be continually distracting the man. As helped to load the luggage and sat at the prow of the cart, he began periodically scanning the sky himself, lest one of these potential birds swoop too low and become entangled in his hair.

            After keeping vigilance against any diving birds for a few minutes, Maxwell was shocked to discover that the cargo he was to share the cart with, currently being carried to the cart between the two other men, had turned out to be a drowned corpse pulled from the river, curiously missing both hands. After regaining his composure in record time with only a minimum of startled local fauna and laughter from local persona, Maxwell was able to elicit that these fine, weathered fishers of men were actually what comprised the constabulary of Hogswain, with the man with the cart being the chief constabulary. Maxwell remarked that it was a good thing the chief had turned down the coin for conveyance since Maxwell didn’t want his first impression unto the Hogswain government to be one of bribery, to which the chief agreed and went on to clarify that donations to the policing force were looked upon favorably as a way to establish friendly interrelations between the public and those that protect them. After depositing a coin each in the two palms of the deputies that had suddenly appeared under Maxwell’s nose, the five men, both living and former, bounced along in the cart back towards Hogswain.

            Maxwell, having lived in the city for most of his 22 years, was no stranger to death, having spent no small portion of time comforting and consoling the women of the widowed community as best he knew how, begrudgingly accepting their generosity as best they knew how, he was nonetheless ill-prepared for the proximity and tumidity of the corpse. To distract himself he attempted to conversate with his police escort, whose conversation skills presented more as an interrogation of him than conversation with him, much to Maxwell’s delight as he was quite familiar with the subject matter. He assured them that he had an uncle in Hogswain with whom he would be staying for an indeterminate, though hopefully truncated time and the policemen nodded, surely out of compassion for his circumstances. When asked why he was to stay with his uncle, Maxwell advised that when the policemen heard hoofbeats, to assume the cuckolded governor’s horses and not zebras, to which one of the deputies asked what a zebra was.

            Arriving into Hogswain, Maxwell was disappointed that his lowered expectations had been too optimistic. The main thoroughfare stretched through the entire town, bisecting it into two halves of equally drab neighborhoods filled with even more drab people. Spotting a tavern that looked more lively than the surrounding buildings, a feat which it accomplished by using green paint to write the name instead of black, Maxwell hopped over the edge of the cart, thanking the men and saying that he would arrange to have his luggage picked up from their station as soon as humanly possible. They must have been surprised by his capricious exit because their only response was to grunt in reply and the chief emitted a single bark of laughter.

            Hogswain had at one point been a trading spot along the river for those traveling between the two larger cities that it lay between. It had fertile ground and no lack of necessary resources and so it had flourished for some time, mostly because the draw of the two cities and their promise of an easier life outside of a farm kept most from settling permanently in Hogswain and so there were never enough people to put a burden on the natural resources of the area. As time went on, Hogswain became less necessary as even the two larger cities it was between became less enticing themselves with even larger cities outside of them drawing even more people and with more efficient forms of travel, such as the train that Maxwell himself had arrived upon, the need to stop in villages such as Hogswain had dropped considerably, leaving Hogswain to be a reduced to a momentary change in scenery outside of a window on the way to civilization.

The street, while not nearly as busy as those of the city, was still filled with people going about their little lives. As he crossed the thoroughfare to the tavern, he attempted to politely greet the people and tipped his top hat to the women, but was met with sad disinterest each time. The existential irrelevance of this place must have leaked into their souls and that is the reason everyone looks so dour, thought Maxwell to himself as he walked through the entrance of the tavern, noticing briefly the odd smattering of locks peppering the door where it met the frame.

He had not expected the tavern to be full of lively people as the sun was still high in the sky, but the few occupants inside made the people on the street seem exuberant and verbose. Maxwell ordered food from the barkeep and a gin while he waited. Eyeing the occupants in turn as potential candidates for conversation, he came to the conclusion that the barkeep was likely to be the only one to engage in any sort of spirited exchange, at the very least on the topic of exchanging coin for spirits.

After spending the cart ride in the presence of a handless corpse and the lack of any companionship at hand, Maxwell was beginning to feel his mood darken to match the ambiance of the tavern’s clientele. When the barkeep returned with his ordered food and to freshen his gin, Maxwell sarcastically commented on the tenor of the tavern and asked who had died. The barkeep put the bottle of gin roughly on the bar, nearly spilling Maxwell’s drink and in a low voice pointed at each occupant in turn and said which loved one they had recently lost.

            Embarrassment quieted Maxwell for a time, time he spent drinking and trying to tactfully draw out details from the barkeep. From what he learned, which was quite little since the barkeep’s goodwill towards Maxwell was not much to swear by, the thing that bothered Maxwell the most, other than his own social faux pas, was that each of the victims had been murdered. He admitted that the constabulary he had met didn’t seem to be beacons of competence, surely they must be doing something about the slew of slayings. The barkeep expressed his doubt with a rude sound and refused to engage further beyond refiling Maxwell’s drink, and even that seemed a test of his patience. He was able to gather from one of customers-slash-mourners that there had been a death nearly every night for the past three weeks.

            As the hours moved on and the sun lowered in the sky and the inhabitants of Hogswain straggled in and out of the tavern, each one seemingly a widow or widower of some fashion. Maxwell’s thoughts, increasingly muddled as they were becoming, were of the sheer improbability of the situation. Hogswain was a small town, but it wasn’t miniscule. How could every customer that entered the tavern besides him have had a loved one murdered? How could the police be incapable of doing anything? How had the news of the sheer number of murders not have reached the city? Coincidence could only be believed to a point, and that point seemed long since passed.

            The light from outside had dimmed considerably as Maxwell pondered these things. He was interrupted when the final customer besides himself exited the tavern and the barkeep came over to him and said that it was closing time. Maxwell was quite surprised by this because the sun wasn’t even down yet and said as much to the barkeep. The barkeep informed him that the sun’s place in the sky meant that it was indeed closing time and that if Maxwell wanted to see its next rising, he would be well to make sure that he was back in the hotel across the street before the sun sets. Maxwell didn’t correct the barkeep with his lodgings because the more pressing question was why would everyone be so afraid of being out after sunset, surely these murders were because the victims were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, tried a shortcut down the wrong back alley, insulted the wrong person, or poached the wrong land, not simply because the sun had set. In his drunken stubbornness, he jokingly asked if the barkeep was insinuating that the moon was killing people.

            With the calm patience of a smoking volcano, the barkeep clarified that it was not the moon that was killing people, but the Jailor King.

            After a moment of shocked silence, Maxwell voiced his confusion. He asked if that was the name of some sort of sickness or gang of roustabouts that had formed. Surely a single person couldn’t be responsible for so many deaths. It simply wasn’t possible, insisted Maxwell, beginning to think that the barkeep had been tasting too much of his own wares. The barkeep’s own thoughts also drifted to the state of mind of the other person. When asked to elaborate, the barkeep glanced out of the window to the length of the shadows and said that he would explain quickly.

His explanation is as follows:

Right then, stand up and listen quick, you pompous twat and don’t bother sitting back on my stool ‘cause you’ll be out that door either on those gas pipes or flat on that puckered arse of grandmother you call a face, it makes none to me.

Ten years past,- yes, be making your way to the door- chap was the town’s locksmith, huge man, seven feet tall, bit of a profligate, like yourself. He had- don’t deny it, I seen how you were eyeing widow McMahon. He had a habit of minding other men’s business. Well, one day a husband finds out this locksmith has been putting it to his wife and decides to do somethin’ about it.

Husband being a wealthy man, invites the locksmith into his new carriage, complaining that the locks don’t work from the inside. Tells him that if he can find a key that works, he’ll pay him a king’s ransom or some shite. Thing is, husband commissioned the carriage and the locks were never meant to work.

So locksmith gets in with all his gear, different types of keys and a file to alter the keys, and husband shuts the door behind him, locking him inside of the unlockable carriage. Locksmith goes about his business, when one key doesn’t work, he files it a bit, tries again, tries a different key, or something like that. I don’t know a locksmith’s business and I don’t care to. Soon enough, locksmith feels a bit warmer, starts smelling smoke. Turns out husband has lit a fire under the carriage and it’s startin’ to catch.

Locksmith starts to panic, husband just laughs and tells him to keep trying, keep trying. Eventually the whole carriage is up in flames and the husband has the wheel blocks removed and pushes the carriage onto the thoroughfare. The husband’s house was at the top of the hill and so the carriage rolls all the way down through town and into the river.

Either the locksmith burned up or drowned, but a body was never found. Husband doesn’t face charges, either he bought the verdict or the locksmith had a dalliance with magistrate’s wife or daughter, in the end husband walks away scot free and everyone moves on with their lives.

‘Til about a year ago, husband shows up on the rocks of the rapids, drowned as a sack of kittens and missing his hands. Weren’t no sign of a struggle at the mansion, just a bunch of broken keys laying on his doorstep. Next day, the magistrate shows up drowned and hands cut off. Constables check his house, sure enough, bunch of broken keys on his doorstep.

Now people are talkin’ and the rumour mill is goin’. It’s the locksmith come back from the dead. He’s goin’ after those who wronged him, usin’ their bones to file new keys, unlockin’ their doors, drownin’ ‘em in the river.

All's quiet for after the magistrate, so people think he’s got his revenge, he’s moved on. ‘Til about a month later, another body drowned, missin’ hands, no known connection to the locksmith. Then a week later another body, then another, not a finger to be had among ‘em, a pile of broken keys on their doorsteps. Taking people at random, no one could figure out why. And then the sightings began. And always after sunset. Some nights, no disappearins’s, just broken keys, still people are afraid to leave their homes now, trapped inside like prison cells, hence the name. How do we know it was the locksmith? Not a lot of folks out there seven feet tall, are there?

Maxwell found himself that while the barkeep was talking, he had been led through the exit of the tavern and was standing on the doorstep with the barkeep standing in the doorframe. For a moment he let the barkeep’s words settle in his mind like disturbed silt settling in a riverbed. He considered what had been said. What he had seen on the way to town. The demeanor of the townsfolk of Hogswain. He was silent for a moment before reacting.

He laughed. It was a genuine laugh of amusement and he thanked the barkeep, saying that he was about to give up hope on anyone in Hogswain having a shred of a sense of humor and that he was glad that at least one person in town had enough wit to employ the gallows humor to the situation. The barkeep simply growled and told him that he should go back to the hotel before the sun finished its arc, which was imminent, jutting his chin across the street. Maxwell, wiping a tear of merriment from his eye and producing a piece of paper with an address written on it. He held it out for the barkeep to see, saying that he was not keeping quarters at the hotel, but staying with his estranged uncle. He asked if the barkeep knew how to get to the address on the paper. The barkeep glanced at the address and responded, By running. Quickly. He then slammed the door in Maxwell’s face.

Maxwell marveled at how unwelcoming this town had been thus far and bemoaned having to be stuck here, at least until the scandal back home blew over. He didn’t know where his uncle lived and since the streets were completely empty, there was no one to aid him, so he simply picked a direction and started walking, glancing at street signs, hoping to come across the one on the slip of paper. Before too long he found himself at the river, just as the sun was about to set. He hadn’t expected to reach the river that made up one of the boundaries of the town, but he was still a bit drunk and perhaps subconsciously longing for some sort of boat to come and take him away.

He stood on the bank of the river and felt sorry for himself. Even the river was boring and barely moving. He watched a leaf as it floated from further upstream and was jealous of it. At least it would have the excitement of the rapids to look forward to, he thought to himself as he watched it continue downstream. The sun was below the horizon now and only the fading twilight illuminated the river.

It was when he turned his head to follow the leaf’s nautical adventure that he saw a large square of what looked to be sailcloth, barely visible, floating on the surface of the water. It was not the color of fresh linen like the sails of the immense clippers that moored in the bay back home, but the dirty gray, almost black color that came from exposure and drowned rot. When the leaf flowed past the dark gray cloth, he realized that the cloth was not also floating downstream.

The cloth was not stationary either. It was moving against the current and towards Maxwell, which was a curious way for flotsam to behave, according to Maxwell. As the cloth drifted closer and closer, Maxwell could see the way mold and slime had grown across its surface, seeping its way into the fabric itself like living tar. It disgusted Maxwell on a visceral level so he walked a few steps further upstream to get away from it and it altered its course to follow him. He walked a few steps downstream and it again altered its course to follow him, all the while getting ever closer to the shore.

Maxwell could sense that something wasn’t right, but the gin had muffled any reasoning of those senses. It was as if he had been hypnotized by the approaching sailcloth, despite the looming sense of dread. It was all he could do to take a few steps backward as the sailcloth, much larger than he originally thought, approached the riverbed and as it did, the center of it rose from below the closer it got, higher and higher, as if it were covering something as it walked up the riverbed and onto the river bank.

There was movement under the cloth and suddenly appeared a black emptiness at the crest of the rising sailcloth and Maxwell dimly realized that it wasn’t a sailcloth, it was a cloak; covering a figure that only seemed to keep on growing as it marched up the riverbed onto the river bank. Maxwell took another step back, but lost his footing and fell to the ground and still the figure approached. The looming dread only increased as the cloaked figure rose from the water, up the riverbed and towered over him where he had fallen, even from several feet away and lower on the river bank. The cloak of the figure was held together at the waist by a wide hemp rope that acted as a belt and from that belt hung a large ring of keys, thin, bone-white, and dripping, along with an iron file the length of Maxwell’s forearm that hung from a hook on the belt.

And still Maxwell sat, transfixed by what his brain couldn’t comprehend. In his memory flashed an image he had seen in a museum as a child, that of an angler fish. He remembered being fascinated by the severeness of the creature that somehow kept from scaring its prey away by a light that drifted over the heads of the fish. His child’s imagination pictured the smaller fish looking up at the light and being fascinated by it, thinking it was the most bizarre thing they had ever seen, wondering how it came to exist in its home of deep darkness when suddenly they would be snapped up by the angler fish.

It was this memory of his imagination that snapped his brain into focus. It was as if the gin that had been muffling his senses like cotton in his ears had been ripped away and he could clearly hear that the reptilian part of his brain had been screaming at him the entire time to run away.

Maxwell rolled over, no thought given to the mud that stained his frock coat, trousers, and shoes, and clambered to his feet. He couldn’t see where he was running because he was too afraid to look away from the giant cloaked figure. The Jailor King. It had cleared the river bank with only a few steps and was still coming straight for him. The cloak covered the feet of the figure so it seemed to glide forward at a speed that would have been a jog for a man of Maxwell’s stature. It was when the figure raised its arm and Maxwell could see the cold dead flesh of its hand reaching towards him that Maxwell dared to avert his gaze from it and devote his attention to finding shelter from this ghastly giant.

He reached the edge of the main thoroughfare and ran to house after house. He could see lantern light in all of them, but none would answer the door no matter how he pleaded and pounded on the door. All the while the Jailor King followed, keeping the same pace, not slow, but not fast enough to overcome Maxwell, though he had no way of knowing if this was as fast as it could go, or if it were merely playing with him.

Maxwell’s hands were soon bruised and bleeding, and still no one would open their door, more afraid of the Jailor King than they were of his threats and so they were deaf to his pleas. Hoping to lose the Jailor King, Maxwell fled from the thoroughfare and began darting down alleyways, taking side streets, taking turns at random, but each time he did, he saw the Jailor King, emerging from full rain barrels that were impossible for its size, erupting from shadows from a direction that would have been impossible for it to have come from just moments before. Maxwell’s mind was fast breaking into pieces, splintering off with each terrifying manifestation of the Jailor King.

Still, like a rabbit fleeing a fox, Maxwell would not give up until his heart exploded. He had made it back to the main thoroughfare through random chance and saw his salvation. One of his trunks lay abandoned on the street and he raced towards it. It was the largest one so he knew what it contained. He glanced to the left and saw that more of his luggage lay scattered in the street, presumably leading the way to the constabulary station. Reaching the trunk, he wrenched it open and reached inside grabbing one of his linen shirts and ripping it into strips. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the Jailor King was at the other side of the thoroughfare and still coming.

Maxwell grabbed the bottle of high proof rum he always traveled with and stuffed some of the strips of linen into the neck, shaking it to soak the linen. The Jailor King was nearly across the street as Maxwell took the very expensive flint lighter and lit the rum soaked fabric which immediately went up in flames. The Jailor King was about to reach Maxwell who spun around and threw the flaming bottle at its chest. The bottle connected and shattered, washing the Jailor King in flames.

The giant screamed and beat at the flames that enveloped it, lighting up the darkened street. Maxwell could see people in the windows peeking out to catch a glimpse of what was happening, hopefully without being seen by the Jailor King and targeted themselves. What they saw was a seven foot tall tower of flame running towards the river. They saw it collapse on the river bank, barely more than a burning skeleton draped in burning rags. The townspeople held their breath as it dragged its top half into the water and exhaled as the current dragged it further in and it disappeared from view.

Maxwell followed the trail of his luggage to the constabulary and berated them until they let him inside. They had seen what had happened and knew it was safe, they just were hoping that he would give up and try another door. When he didn’t, they reluctantly let him in and the next morning they agreed to take him, and his remaining luggage to the train station. Maxwell would ride out his exile further down the line. There were other estranged relatives in other towns. And even long after his exile ended and he returned to his beloved city, not a morning went by that he didn’t check his doorstep for any broken keys.

***

Keith Buzzard is a writer, teacher, and musician originally from Chicago, Illinois, now living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When he is not actively pursuing the downfall of capitalism, he enjoys being with nature, playing convoluted board games, making music, and writing weird and/or silly stories for weird and/or silly people. He can be found on Twitter at @KeithJDrazzub. If you are a coworker or one of his students, he is not on Twitter, you must have read that part wrong.