The Vorrh

he had become a wildly staring husk. His eyes, which darted to and fro, were the only sign of life.
    ‘HELP! HELP! FOR GOD’S SAKE, HELP!’ he screamed towards the trains. He found the Derringer with its last cartridge and fired into the air. ‘HELP, PLEASE, HELP!’
    Then, just as he heard people running to their aid, the sound of something else reached his ears, turning his blood to water: a laugh, so close that, for a moment, he thought it was Seil Kor himself. It hung in the air around his dying friend.
    ‘Hello?! Hello! What is wrong?’ bellowed an approaching stranger. ‘Where are you?’
    The Frenchman retrieved his voice from a sickly, viscous shell beneath his stomach and called again for help, in the feeblest of tones.
    They carried Seil Kor to the wooden hut station and laid him on one of the hard pews. Nobody knew what to do. He was cold and stiff, with not the faintest sign of breathing, but his eyes worked frantically, seeking the faces of all in the room. They sent for the overseer from the workforce on the train. The Frenchman held his friend’s damaged hand, two of the fingers pointing comically at the ceiling. He thought about straightening them in an attempt to change the reality of the moment, to tidy the discordant and form a splint to normality by fussily adjusting the details. Maclish arrived, and was confused by the tableau.
    ‘Please help my friend!’ pleaded the Frenchman.
    Maclish came closer, putting his hand on Seil Kor’s chest and touching his fingers to Seil Kor’s throat. He saw the darting eyes and recognised the condition, quickly realising that the intended recipient was not the man lying prone before him: the Orm had taken the wrong man.
    ‘Your friend?’ he said, his anxiety inappropriate and incongruous, but lost on the flapping state of the Frenchman.
    The Frenchman agitatedly explained their journey and what had just taken place. Maclish’s culpability turned him stern and distant. ‘He can’t stay here, we have to get him back to the city,’ he said brusquely, stepping outside and shouting commands along the platform. Two of the workers looked up and loped towards him. He pointed at Seil Kor and barked out more instructions, in a tongue that nobody else present understood. They lifted him up from the pew and started carrying him along the platform, past the hissing train and its waiting carriages. There was no urgency in their actions and the Frenchman was enraged to see that both of the Limboia were grinning.
    ‘What are they laughing at?’ he demanded of the Scotsman.
    ‘It’s just their way, they are not all there,’ he said, tapping his forehead with his index finger.
    The Frenchman suspected at once that this was true, and was convinced of it when he saw the vacant men carry his friend past the carriages and off into the perspective distance drawn by the flatbed trucks, which now bristled with stacked trees. ‘Where are those idiots taking him?’ he squealed, rushing after them.
    Maclish groaned and stomped after his loping run.
    ‘Stop! Stop, take him back!’ he shouted at the grinning workers, as they carted his friend into the distance like a piece of game. They ignored him and plodded on, getting further and further from the passenger carriages and the Frenchman’s comprehension. Maclish barked again and they slowly halted, like clockwork winding a slow release. The Frenchman tugged at his friend but he was held firm between the workmen, who looked down at the small man without interest or recognition, the smiles never leaving their greasy, blank faces.
    ‘Tell them to take him back to the compartment!’ demanded the Frenchman of the Scot.
    ‘He is not going back on the train,’ said Maclish, ‘he is going back on a flatbed with the trees.’
    For a few moments, the Frenchman was lost for words, panting and twitching on the other side of speech. Then he let fly with a tirade of demands and abuse while the Scotsman became red and even more stoic, as if his growing colour was a swelling gauge of his inflexibility.
    ‘He’s dead, man!’ said the Scot emphatically, as if talking to a child. ‘He is
not
going in any of the carriages!’
    The Frenchman was stamping with rage, so much so that his left shoe finally gave up the ghost and sprang from his foot with a flourish of something like embarrassment. The Limboia ignored the growing argument as the hanging body, limply slung between them, swayed slightly, its eyes paying fierce