The Bestiarum Vocabulum (TRES LIBRORUM PROHIBITUM)

by Dean M. Drinkel

  ***

  A cold draught tickling at the bottom of Kruger’s socks woke him from his slumber. His left elbow and the small of his back ached from sleeping on the hard wooden floor for so long. He sat up on his better elbow and stroked his blond hair from his eyes, to see that it was daytime again and the front door to the cottage was slightly ajar. Kruger sat up and let the blanket fall off his shirt and looked around the cottage.

  Two of the candles had burnt down to drippings over the night yet the third was missing. Muller was snoring gently in his cot, but the blanket next to Kruger was empty and Vogt wasn’t anywhere to be seen. The fire had long since died out, but his jacket and shoes were dry so he pulled them on. Leaving the Commander to sleep, he grabbed his Luger and after stretching his back made for the slightly open door.

  Outside it was misty still, but not dense fog like the day before. Kruger made his way down to the pebbles cast shoreline easily making out the orange dingy from ten feet away. The closer Kruger got to the escape craft, he saw something was wrong. The dingy was deflated and looked like some wild animal had slashed at it, making long rents in its sides and rendering it useless. Kruger looked around in the clearing mist and hoped that they were on some jutting out piece of land and not an island.

  A scream of pain broke the eerie white silence.

  It came from the direction of the cottage.

  Kruger gripped his sidearm and ran back up the stony beach towards the grass roofed cottage, just as another scream came from within. He burst through the door to find Commander Muller on his feet being danced around and around by a beautiful blonde woman, who had not a stitch on to cover her modesty.

  Blood was running in rivulets down Muller’s wounded leg, but the woman seemed not to care. Around and around she danced the German naval Commander, getting faster and faster before Kruger’s dizzy eyes.

  “Shoot her,” Muller cried out in a pained voice.

  Kruger raised his Luger, but they were dancing and turning at an unnatural speed, that made his eyes waters to look at them. It was impossible to get off a clear shot. The woman’s eyes blazed like polished glass, in a sunlit stain-glass window, but Muller’s had filled red with blood. Kruger took an involuntary step backwards into the doorframe as the two figures dancing and twisting became a blur of flesh. Kruger heard Muller cry out one last time in agony, and then heard several sickening cracks of bones. The woman and Muller could no longer be seen, and the flesh coloured blur or their dancing became suddenly blood red.

  Then she stopped dead.

  Something fell to the floor at her bare feet.

  Kruger had to tear his virgin eyes from her nudity, down at the pile of clothes and striped clean bones and skull that lay in a heap on the floorboards of the cottage.

  A pile of bones that once had been Muller.

  Kruger looked up shaking from head to toe, even more than when he’d been wet and cold when they found the cottage yesterday.

  The beautiful woman, a personification of Aryan lust, stood before him and opened her arms wide to welcome his head to her full bosom.

  She was perfection in female form, but had murdered his shipmates in some supernatural dance of death. Then he remembered Vogt’s joking warning about the Ellerwoman and he raised his Luger and fired at her.

  The bullet took her left eye.

  Leaving a gaping hole on that side of her face that had exited out the back. Kruger could see the chimney breast of the fireplace on the far wall behind her. Still she moved closer towards him, unfazed and seemingly unhurt by the wound in her brittle looking head.

  He fired again twice as she closed the gap between them. One shot clipped her left forearm and chipped a small area off, so he could see inside her hollow arm. The second round had blown away a hole under her left breast. Even though he could see she had no ribs or inner working like human body inside, there was something sat inside her hollow frame.

  It was an ice coved, un-beating heart.

  She was nearly on him now, her alluring smile wide and welcoming, even though her left eye was missing.

  He fired again into the hole under her left breast, pulverising the cold heart within.

  Her smile faltered now and her hands reached for the hole in her body. She looked at Kruger with a look of disbelief, to one of pure evil hatred from Hell’s fire. She tottered one step backwards and fell. Like a chocolate Easter egg, she broke apart as soon as she hit the hard wooden floor. Her limbs broke away from her torso and her head caving in, so a jigsaw of thin brittle flesh remained.

  Kruger turned and ran, gripping his Luger in his hand for grim death. He ran to the right of the cottage now, not noticing the mist had all but cleared. It just lingered where the North Sea met the pebbled covered beach. At the shoreline he turned left and ran skirting the beach as he ran, he could just see the outline of the lone cottage as he ran and an awful truth dawned on him as his young legs carried him round in a rough circle.

  This was no outcropping of Norwegian coastline, this was tiny island and he had no food, water or means now of escape. As he ran through the remains of the mist he could see the orange of the dingy up ahead and beyond it two launches had been drawn up on the beach and several men stood beside the boats.

  Smiling Kruger ran towards the figures and the closer he got he saw there were at least a dozen of them.

  “Hallo,” he cried as he ran waving his Luger.

  He just about noticed the brown uniforms and green berets, before shots rang out from three rifles. Oberleutnant Zur Kruger fell onto the wet pebble beach, dead, before he’d realised what had happened.

  “It’s a bloody Jerry,” the Royal Marine Corporal said moving closer to make sure he was dead.

  “Better check the cottage,” a Lieutenant-Commander in Royal Naval Uniform said to the Marine Lieutenant and Sergeant next to the second motor launch from HMS Surrey.

  “A Luger,” spied the Royal Marine Corporal. “Can I have it sir?”

  “If you must,” the Royal Naval Officer replied stiffly.

  “We found a survivor, sir,” the British Lieutenant called from the cottage doorway.

  The naval officer and corporal trekked up the beach just as the Sergeant lead an attractive local looking woman from the cottage. Her feet were clean and bare and she had a thick woollen blanket wrapped around her to cover her modesty.

  “Anyone else about?” the Lieutenant-Commander asked.

  “No, sir,” the Lieutenant replied.

  “We better get her back to the ship then, before she catches her death of cold,” said the Lieutenant-Commander.

  The blonde woman with dazzling green eyes like emeralds, said nothing to the Lieutenant-Commander, but smiled at the men, as they led her back to the launches.

  F Is For Fenrir

  Shadow Wolf

  Raven Dane

  A shadow that needed no light to exist, seeped from the ground, weak and nebulous as morning mist. The depths of the earth teemed with microscopic life and this had given it the strength to rise after countless centuries. As it crossed open ground, a colony of ants turned against each other in murderous fury. The shadow strengthened.

  After passing through a forest, leaving wildlife carnage in its blood-stained wake, it was now strong enough to tackle more complex prey. In a car park beside the woodland, it found two humans in the throes of lust in a steamed up car, oblivious to anything beyond their urgent needs. The shadow passed over the car. To unheard screams, the woman turned savage, bit down hard on the man, severing his erection. Drenched with his own gushing blood, insane with pain and fury, the man groped for a weapon, plunged a blunt screwdriver into her neck. Yet more blood mixed with the steam and ran down the car’s windows in wide scarlet ribbons.

  Stronger, bigger the shadow moved on to more quarry …

  ***

  What was wrong with his home town? After Colorado, he expected it to look small, cramped and overcrowded but this was still a good place, a town to put down roots and rais
e a family. So why did it now give him the creeps, make him shudder for no obvious reason? Jet lag? Rob Helson pushed aside his unsettling observation and paused outside the boozer, here for the first time in four years and nothing had changed. The same stench of stale piss and spilt beer, dusted with cigarette ash and butts from the pariahs banished to the pavement outside. He smiled to himself for feeling a little nervous about the reunion with his childhood friends waiting inside for him.

  Not that they would seem strangers after a long absence, Facebook and Skype took care of that. They had miraculously managed to grow older together, the old bonds stayed linked by the cyberverse, Helson only hesitated because he did not want any fuss, nothing beyond a manly handshake and everything back to how it used to be before he went to the States to pursue his high flying academic career. All he wanted was a relaxed gathering of good mates, equals in every way, some sort of normality to chase away the dark shadows invading his soul since his arrival back in Weltham.

  He strolled in to find them at their favourite table furthest away from the toilets and closest to the bar. Mr Sensible Jenks, Baxie the perma-stoned aging hippy, Dan the Man and Mike. The guys who’d shared their first cigarette behind the clichéd school bike shed, who’d passed the first crudely rolled spliff at impromptu overnight camps in Lockley Wood. Who’d all cram into Baxie’s battered estate car, the brown and rust coloured one with the trailing exhaust held up by wire to go clubbing in High Wycombe.

  He sat down, with a nod of thanks as the first of many pints of Green King was pushed his way. Sunk in one as ritual bravado to boyish cheers from the men they’d become together. Overcome by a nostalgic surge of affection, Helson watched them over the rim of the next pint. He was closest to Mike who had come out two years ago first to the group, then to his parents and family before finally announcing it to a mainly unsurprised world. Mike was slight of build, quick of temper and the best man to have at your side in a fight caused by...

  “Oh look, The Brainiac has returned.”

  Nigel. Or as Helson called him ‘That Bloody Nigel.’ No one would own up to Nigel, he did not belong to the original group of friends, somehow over the years he had insinuated his way into their laid back company and never left. Already the sensation of fingernails scrapping along a blackboard invaded Helson’s relaxed mood, the man’s sneering tone and superior manner setting his teeth on edge.

  “That is Professor Brainiac to you, Eelman.”

  Helson felt petty-minded but couldn’t help enjoying the narrowing of the man’s pale eyes, the slight tightening of the mocking, thin smile at the mention of their old, hated nickname for him. Helson did not want to ruin the reunion with spite but was satisfied by the shared amused glance of secret agreement between the others. Dan fetched in another round and the gathering settled to their time old relaxed mixture of banter and catching up with recent news including the unsettling, gruesome deaths of a courting couple outside town the night before.

  The noisy pub fell silent as new arrivals strode in, picking up the volume once they had found a table and settled down. Nothing threatening about them, another group of Weltham locals, just friends not out for any trouble. Helson’s mood sank as Nigel owned up to knowing the newcomers. Of course he did, Nigel knew everyone and everything.

  “See those lads over there,” he announced, in a voice too loud for anyone’s comfort, “they are all LARP nutters. Dress up as bloody elves and orcs, run around wet woodlands all weekend with bows and arrows.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, Nige,” sighed Baxie, “actually looks great fun. I’d have a go if I had the dosh.”

  Nigel laughed at the prospect, “I can just see you dressed as some stoned druid or wizard.”

  Baxie nodded agreement with a wide grin, hoping the men in the corner did not think they were laughing at them. Nigel’s runaway mouth and obsessive bragging had led in the past to fights. Not that he was ever there to see the results of his winding up, he was so slippery and quick to escape, hence the nickname, Eelman.

  “That big blond lump is completely barking,” Nigel continued, prompting the others to hastily drink up their pints, time to leave the pub, “thinks he’s a real fucking Viking. Worships bloody Thor and Odin, says he can speaks Old Norse, crazy.”

  While the others squirmed in embarrassment, Nigel turned in his chair, “Oi, Big Eric,” he bellowed to the newcomers, “where’s your helmet with them big pointy horns?”

  As one, the friends stood up, smiled apologetically to the LARPers, definitely time to leave. The big man’s demeanour caught Helson’s attention, visibly shaken up, nervous and nursing a crudely bandaged wound to his arm, seeping fresh blood.

  ***

  Normally the young women and their boyfriends all went out together, including meeting up at live action role play weekends or Sci-Fi conventions, activities they all enjoyed equally. But with all their menfolk out on a pub crawl, their girlfriends were determined to have a wild night out of their own. Not a hen night complete with tacky haloes and glittery fairy wands but a proper evening out on the lash, carefree and silly with the whole long Bank Holiday weekend to recover from the deliberate excesses. Avoiding the pubs where their other halves planned to visit, the young women had taken a taxi to a large Chinese restaurant on the edge of town that also held a disco on Friday nights. A safe place to let their hair down and have fun.

  ***

  Unsatisfied by the continued weakness, the shadow became insatiable for mayhem and madness, the spilling of blood it needed to return to living form. Unable…yet…to kill for itself, it used powers inherited from Loki, its deity father to influence and corrupt minds to commit acts of horrific violence. The inner savage locked within every human being was the key to the shadow’s survival and victory over its treacherous enemies, those bastards dwelling in smug celebration in the unearthly dimension known as Asgard. Nothing would taste sweeter than their total defeat, rent apart by his regenerating fangs.

  ***

  “Something heavy going down,” Mike muttered as he applied the brakes to his black Audi sports car. Ahead of them was a blaze of flashing emergency lights, police and ambulances, a wide area of road and pavement outside ‘Tangs’ taped off with the familiar blue and white strips that warned of a serious incident.

  Helson shuddered without knowing why, as he had earlier at mention of the courting couple deaths. Weltham was a quiet town, crime meant the occasional burglary, boy racer speeding and late night, drink-fuelled petty vandalism. But emergency barriers around an expensive Chinese restaurant? As Mike paused waiting for the cars ahead to ease past the scene, a rivulet of dark liquid flowed from the restaurant car park and into the road close to the Audi. In the flare of a policeman’s torch, the liquid glowed bright red…fresh blood?

  Finally able to move away, a tall figure caught Helson’s attention, standing among the gawping sightseers behind the tapes was the one Nigel called Big Eric. Horror-struck and white-faced, the man was howling with grief. A primal, heart-rending sound that sent shudders through both men. Two bloody incidents in as many days, what the hell was going on?

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Mike sighed, “best thing to do is go home. No doubt this will be all over the news by morning.”

  Helson’s decision to come home from the States on a short visit now felt tarnished, nothing bad was supposed to happen in this sleepy, old market town in Bucks. Waking the next morning to the aroma of a welcome mug of fresh coffee, Helson thanked his host, Mike and joined him on the living room sofa. The TV was on, and a news flash brought familiar local sights to jolt both men to shocked awareness. Tang’s Chinese restaurant had been the scene of a horrific massacre. A group of young women attending the afterhours disco had raided the kitchens for knives and meat cleavers to set about attacking each other with crazed brutality.

  Their insanity was contagious as staff and clients turned on each other using whatever they could to attack and kill. Out of fifty people, only ten survived, three in intensi
ve care, none able to recall anything of the night’s madness fuelled terror. The police spokesman asked for calm, refusing to be drawn into conjecture on the possible cause of the murderous lunacy or any connection with the courting couple’s gruesome deaths the night before. Helson shuddered as a premonition cast a further dark shadow over his soul.

  “Now the circus will take over,” muttered Mike, “a media circus plus inevitable attending coach loads of bloody ghouls with cameras. You’ve picked a bad time for a reunion, Hellboy.”

  He put down his coffee and stared directly into Helson’s eyes, “Or maybe a good time. Are you still going…you know…to that other place?”

  Tactfully put as ever, Mike was the only one he had ever confided in over his bizarre visions, vivid and real as if he actually dwelt in another dimension, a place of deep, old earth magic, human heroes and powerful but contrary gods. Dreams that always seemed more tangible than everyday life.

  Now Mike was openly and proudly out as a gay man, but Helson’s past nightmares remained hidden, firmly locked in a strongbox in his mind. But something would never leave him. That the basic facts of his life, orphaned as a baby, raised in several foster homes and now a renowned and respected Professor of Norse History in Colorado, all this normality seemed unreal as if he was living someone else’s life, inhabiting a shell of a body that did not belong to him.

  “I’ve done all I can to shut all that crazy crap down, to turn my back on it,” Helson confided, relieved when his host switched off the television. “Guess I was not good enough, I’ve been plagued by a sense of great wrongness since I got back to town. A malign darkness over the town, something very bad that may be connected to me.”