by Khidra Kay
She shivered and pulled the blanket up around her as she lay down.
Behind her, quiet whispers drowned in the sound of the fire. She could hear them settle down on their blankets.
A sound startled Grenna. She must have drifted off to sleep. Carefully she turned towards the others. Maybe she had been dreaming? The sound of the wind in the trees could have been whispers in her imagination.
She opened her eyes. Above her was the giant face of the baby. Darkness seeping out of its eyes and teeth bared. It's features distorted in the glow of the fire. A hiss emanated from the snarling lips.
Grenna screamed.
“What is it?” Amber sat up straight in her blankets.
“Grenna?” Hissa rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.
Grenna took a breath. The face was gone. She sat up. The baby was next to Cati, wiggling its arms around and scrunching its face. He started crying.
“Oh, great,” Cati said and picked it up. “Now, look what you've done.” She held the baby tight and rocked it.
“What was the screaming about?” Dan asked with a hand on Hissa's arm.
“Yeah, why did you wake us all up?” Paul asked.
“I...” Grenna glanced over at the baby who was still screaming. “I thought...” She looked at the faces turned towards her. Even in the dying fire, she saw the annoyance. But there was something else. A darkness behind their eyes that she hadn't seen before. “I had a bad dream.”
“Oh, for the...” Paul said and threw himself down again.
“Seriously?” Amber said. “Are you three years old?”
Cati managed to quiet the baby and put him back down.
Grenna stared at the sky. The stars were out and the moon rising. A late moon. Tonight was the night when the moon hesitated. The night between summer and fall, between childhood and adulthood.
“I guess we should go back to sleep then,” Hissa said.
Paul sighed and got up to put a few more logs on the fire.
“If certain someones could stop waking us.” Fritz pulled the blanket over himself.
“Wait,” Grenna said. “What's that?”
“What now?” Paul was almost growling as he carefully fed the fire.
“Don't you hear that? In the forest.”
They quieted down to listen.
The first rays of the moon lit up the campsite. A slithering rustle was closing in from all sides.
“What is that?” Amber said and pulled her blanket closer.
“Snakes.” Grenna jumped up as wriggling, glistening heads lifted from the grass.
She took a few steps closer to the fire. The others joined her. Cati was holding the baby tight. For a few seconds, they stood still. Listening to the baby laugh.
“What do we do?” Hissa was breathing quickly.
The snakes closed in from all sides. Cati screamed.
“The water.” Paul dashed over towards the lake. Grenna hurried after.
Paul stopped. Grenna ran into him. Someone ran into her.
“No. Get back. They're in the water.”
Grenna peered over Paul's shoulder. The water was boiling with snakes.
They retreated to the fire. Dan picked up a twig and swung it in front of himself. Grenna backed up until she could feel the heat of the fire scorching the back of her legs.
One of the snakes made an attack. Its fangs burrowed into her leg. She reached down to brush it off. Another snake grabbed on to her hand. Grenna pulled off the first snake, ripping open two gashes in her skin as it refused to let go.
Around her, she could hear screaming and swearing. And the baby laughing.
The air smelled of rotting fish and fear. Sparks flew as someone tossed a snake into the flames. A hissing scream kept the other snakes at bay. Just for a moment.
Grenna grabbed the snake that was biting her hand. She pried it off and threw it into the fire. Around her, the snakes backed up.
She stomped on one of them, wishing she hadn't taken off her boots. It lay still.
Again and again, the fire hissed and crackled as they threw in another snake.
When the moon was visible above them, Grenna sank down to her knees and cried. Paul tossed another snake into the fire.
“What- What kind of snakes were they?” Amber asked with a trembling voice.
She was sitting near the fire, holding her leg, covered in blood.
“I don't know,” Grenna said.
Paul shook his head. Hissa was busy bandaging Dan's leg. Dan watched her, pale and quiet. Cati was on her knees, crying. She was still holding the baby. Fritz threw a rock at another snake.
“Do you think... they're poisonous?” Amber whispered the question.
Everybody stopped. The baby cooed. They had all been bitten. All except the baby.
“See what your scream did?” Fritz turned towards Grenna.
Grenna's mouth fell open.
“You and your godforsaken bad dreams.” Dan stood up, ignoring Hissa's attempts at cleaning his wounds. “Look at this.” He spread his arms out over the camp. “You did this.”
“Me?” Grenna stood up. “I had nothing to do with this.”
“You screamed.” Dan was spitting as he shouted.
“That doesn't attract snakes. That's not how snakes work.”
“Don't you try to tell me you had nothing to do with this.” Dan waved a finger at her. “You've been against us-”
Hissa stood up in front of Dan.
“Against you?” Grenna stepped around Hissa. “We're here to have fun. To celebrate. You're the ones who've been acting strange. Ever since we found that baby-”
“Hey, leave him out of this.” Cati struggled to stand up while still holding the baby.
“No,” Grenna said. “There's something wrong with that baby and you know it.”
“Maybe,” Paul raised his voice. “Maybe we should all just go back to sleep. There's nothing we can do now, anyway.”
Grenna glared at them and stomped off to her blanket. She shook it out to make sure there were no snakes hiding and lay down.
For a long time, all she could focus on was her heartbeat, fast and irregular. What if the snakes were poisonous? She hadn't even cleaned her wound. She listened to the others shuffle around. Heard them fetch water and tear up clothes for bandages.
Grenna clenched her teeth. None of them came to help her. She lay stewing, wide awake, waiting for the others to go to sleep so she could sneak down to the lake and clean out her wounds.
She forced herself to breathe evenly and calmy as she waited.
“It's time,” Paul said.
Grenna opened her eyes. Had she dozed off? There was a strange red light. She looked up. The moon had taken on a bloodred color, tinting everything around them.
The baby laughed. She forced herself to lie still as the laughter turned to screams. Joy turned terror. Her breath caught as she listened to the terror in the baby's scream. Frozen in fear, she struggled to breathe. A sickening pop broke the air. And the baby's scream was cut short.
Grenna moved her head slowly. Her friends were laughing. Amber held a knife covered in blood and stared down at the mess in front of her. She was covered in blood. Not her own. She handed Hissa a little leg. Hissa smiled as she tore into it ripping the flesh with her teeth. Cati was studying a small, dark eyeball before she popped it into her mouth. Dan sat, leaning over the pile in front of Amber. He scooped up something red and pulsating. With a maniacal laugh towards the moon, he bit into the heart.
Fritz growled at him and ripped the rest of the tiny heart from his hands. He laughed and placed it in his mouth. Closing his eyes as blood ran down the corner of his mouth.
Amber stood up. She held a fingerless arm towards Grenna.
“Have some.” Amber cocked her head. “It's the antidote. For the snakes. I was worried for nothing.”
Grenna slowly got up. Everyone was looking at her.
“Yes, have some,” Dan said and plucked another organ out of the
bleeding pile in front of him.
Grenna backed up. The moon covered them all in blood.
“Did you... Did you kill the baby?”
They laughed and turned to each other. After a moment of silence, the baby's face appeared above them. Laughing with eyes dark as the winter night.
“He'll be with us forever,” Cati said. “Our little baby.”
Grenna took another step backward. The fire wavered and she stumbled.
“There's no point in running. The snakebites were fatal.”
Her heart raced and her stomach turned.
“Is this why we came here? Why everyone comes here?”
Dan laughed. “Don't be ridiculous. We're chosen. Do you have any idea how hard it was for him to set this up?”
“Him?”
“Rafa, the god of chaos. He came to us in the form of an innocent child. He created a way to enter our world.”
“The black leaf.” Grenna stared at the face above her friends. It shifted and took on features from the six of them. She backed up to support herself against a tree. The fire spun in front of her.
“You can join us,” Hissa said. “You must join us. Rafa is only just beginning, but he will be victorious. And we, the first of his true disciples, we will be victorious.”
Grenna shook her head. These weren't her friends anymore.
“No,” she whispered.
“But Grenna, if you don't do it, you die. The poison is already in you.”
“I can't. It's not right.”
They laughed.
“Right?” Dan said. “It'll be right when we get rewarded beyond our imagination. When we rule the world as Rafa's representatives.”
Grenna blinked and clutched the tree behind her. The darkness in their eyes was wrong. She couldn't do it.
“No. Rafa is evil. I won't let you do it.”
They laughed.
“You can't stop us. Your options are to join us or die.” Amber said.
“I have to warn the others.” Grenna turned and stumbled through the forest.
Behind her, six laughs mixed together. She ignored the branches tearing at her face and arms and ran. Her knees hurt and she struggled to get back on her feet. If she could make it to the village before the poison spread... She took sight of a tree and flung herself towards it. The forest was spinning around her and her fingers were tingling as she gripped the rough bark to stay upright. Behind her, laughter echoed. Everything around her turned blood red as she took sight of another tree. She had to make it back to the village.
A wolf howled in the distance. There were no wolves on Wolf Mountain.
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