by Elliot Burns
That left the castle. It was closer, just half a mile across the stone path. Sure, it didn’t look lived in. After all, nobody actually took residence in castles these days. But it might be open to tourists, and that meant there’d be a ticket office or gift shop with a phone.
He started walking. The sun burned in the sky, but there was something strange about it. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but it felt like it had changed.
After a few minutes’ walk he started to sweat, so he stopped. He took off his jacket so that he was just in his Alien t-shirt. It was a shirt with a drawing of a facehugger, and below it was the words ‘Free Hugs’. He tied his jacket around his waist.
As he did, he noticed a wooden sign to his left, just off the path. It was around his height, and it the top of the sign was different pointed pieces of wood that showed where to go.
He walked over to it. Maybe it’d give him an idea how far he’d gone while he was in his trance or whatever the hell it was. As he got close enough to read it, his heart felt heavy. There was writing on the signs, alright. And there were numbers indicating how far away each place was. The problem was, he’d never heard of them. He would have bet all his savings that the words on the sign didn't originate from the English language.
“What the hell is going on?” he said.
As he got closer to the castle, he saw the walls more clearly. The stonework looked centuries old. There were three towers that rose high above the rest of the structure and were capped with sharp domes. Ten feet above ground level there were openings in the stone. At first, he assumed that they were windows, but they were too small. Notches were cut into the stone, and he guessed it was for archers to rest their crossbows.
“Must have been a military castle,” he said.
That was good. It meant there definitely should be an office here of some kind. Someone with a phone. But who would he call? Mum would likely be shut in her room, lights off, bedcovers pulled up to her face. Sarah would be working. She’d go straight home after her shift to take care of her son. Jack could hardly ask her to drive to wherever the hell he was to give him a ride.
He reached into his jeans pocket for his wallet. Like the phone, his wallet had vanished, too. That left him stuck here without communication or cash.
With nothing else to do, he walked until he reached the castle. The drawbridge was down, which was strange. Surely there was another entrance for visitors? It didn’t seem right that people could just wander over the bridge. He shrugged. Time to get this over with.
The drawbridge creaked as he walked over it. The wood was battered but sturdy. Twenty feet below, running in a circle around the castle, was a giant hole. Jack supposed that it had once been a moat filled with water, but it was dry now.
He might not have been the greatest student, but Jack had a great memory for the school classes he actually listened to. When he was 12, they’d done a 6-week unit on castles in history class. He knew that moats differed depending on the disposition of the castle ruler. A cruel king or lord might dig a moat but leave it empty, so that anyone who fell into it would break their legs and then starve to death. A particularly monstrous S.O.B. might fill a moat with spikes. Or hungry beasts. There were as many moat variations as chocolate bars.
This one had been filled with water at some point. He could tell from the shape and how the soil looked. For some reason, it made him feel better that whoever built the castle had gone for a less cruel kind of moat. Not that it mattered now – nobody had lived here for hundreds of years.
He crossed the drawbridge and stepped into the castle. The first room was a kind of indoor courtyard. The floor was made of grey stone, and it had been flattened by footfall. The ceiling was thirty feet above, and birds had made nests in the crevices. There were doors all around him, but no map to indicate where they led. The room smelled of dirt and age; a chalky smell, like a blackboard had been wiped and the dust still lingered in the air. With every step he took, his footsteps echoed.
“Hello?” he said.
His voice echoed back at him. He felt a chill, so he unwrapped his jacket from his waist and put it on. He looked around him. There had to be an information sign somewhere. Or a castle map. Anything.
He took a few steps. There was something written on the walls, but it was in the same language as the sign he’d seen earlier. Completely foreign to him. He stopped. This was getting worrying.
As he thought about what to do, he heard a noise. It seemed to be coming from deeper in the castle. It was a person shouting something, though Jack couldn’t make out the words. He focused and narrowed the noise down as coming from the north. He turned toward it.
There were two doors on the north wall. So, which one should he pick? He walked closer, and the noise was unmistakably coming from the left door. The closer he got, the more he realized it wasn’t one noise, but a few. A man shouting, joined by something else. A low, guttural, kind of groaning. It didn’t sound good.
Still, he needed to see a face. Someone who could tell him where the hell he was. Let him borrow their phone for a sec. Looking around, the castle interested him. He felt drawn to it, somehow, and he’d like to come back one day. Right now, though, he was so disorientated that all he wanted was his old, familiar house.
He walked through the open door on the left and followed a cramped stone tunnel. It smelled of mildew. Metal holders were fixed to the wall and he assumed they had once held torches, but they were empty now. His footsteps didn’t echo in the cramped space, but they seemed loud. Too loud. As he walked down it, the tunnel shrank, until soon he needed to bend his head. He started to feel like it was closing in on him, that it was going to try and trap him. He took deep breaths. Finally the tunnel widened again, and he let out a long sigh.
Then he stopped. He felt himself suck in a gulp of air. There was a room in front of him. Walls made from stone and full of dents. A large, oval shaped window was on the north wall, but a sheet of dust stopped much sunlight getting in. It made the place look like a crypt. But it wasn’t the darkness that made him pause.
Across the room, he saw the source of the noise. A man was halfway up the wall, with his feet resting in crevices. He was clinging onto a stone with one hand. Five hungry-looking creatures waited below him.
Creatures. That was the only word for them. They looked like they’d been human once, but something had happened to them. Their skin was greyer than stone, and in places it had fallen away. Their eyes were expressionless black balls. Whatever they were, Jack didn’t need an introduction and a handshake to know they weren’t friendly.
The man didn’t seem to care. He was well out of reach ten feet up the wall. He wore a coat that looked like it was made for him at a time when he had more muscle, but it was much too large for him now. He had a shaved head, and where his hair started to grow back, it was grey. A coat of ash-colored stubble lined his face and jaw.
He seemed to be looking for something on the wall. With one hand gripping a stone that stuck out from the wall, he reached to his belt with his other. Rather than wearing it to support his trousers, the man’s belt had loops running through it. All manner of tools and objects were threaded through them. The man took a chisel from his belt, held it up to the stone, and started to chip away.
The creatures growled. It was obvious they were waiting for the man to get down, and they seemed clever enough to realise they couldn’t reach him. Jack hung back in the doorway. The last thing he wanted was to get their attention.
“Akyaza,” said the man, then shook his head in frustration. He put the chisel back. He reached to an oversized pocket on his coat and pulled out a glass vial. A dark liquid swished in it. Taking the utmost care, the man removed a cork from the vial. He held it up to a part of the wall in front of him and then slowly poured a few drops of the liquid. As soon as it touched the wall, it started to smoke.
One of the creatures, maybe out of boredom, reached out for the man and tried to grab him, but it was a good
3 feet too short. Another, the most enterprising of the bunch, reached down and picked up a piece of stone from the floor. It let out a deep growl and then threw it at the man.
When the rock hit his head, the man grunted. He tipped out more of the liquid than he meant to, and it started to burn on the wall. As the smoke hit his face he coughed, dropped the vial, and it smashed onto the ground. It started to sizzle, and smoke began to spread out over the room.
It quickly started to cover the man and soon, Jack couldn’t see him. He heard the man cough and then shout something.
Then he heard a thump. Jack’s heart started to pound. It sounded like the man had fallen to the ground. Maybe he’d lost his grip. Whatever had happened, he’d be on the floor, surrounded by the creatures.
Should he do something?
Of course he should! He had to! He couldn’t just leave him. There was a nagging thought, deep, deep in the back of his mind, that this was all a trick. A game someone was playing with him. That any second he’d spot the hidden cameras and realize he was on a TV show. The last thing he wanted to be played back to him was a video of him leaving a guy to die.
He strode across the room. He smelled the smoke now. A sour aroma like burning matches, but thicker. It latched onto the back of his throat.
When the smoke cleared, Jack was just a few feet away from the creatures. The man was on his feet now. He reached inside his coat and drew a long sword from it. The steel was rusted in places, and the blade looked so blunt that it would be more useful for bludgeoning than slashing.
The first creature lunged at him. In a speed that belied his age, the man sidestepped around it and then shoved the tip of the blade through its head.
Wow. Maybe the sword was sharp after all.
Two of the creatures turned around. They saw Jack, and there was a glint of recognition in their eyes. He knew they wanted him. One of them lurched forward, arms outstretched, and Jack saw that they didn’t have fingers. Instead, their hands seemed to form a sharp point, with one long nail lining the edge.
As two of the creatures came at him, he backed away. “A little help here?” he said.
The man shot him a look. “Dora as’y telehumar,” he said.
Jack shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t speak….” He searched his brain. What language was it? German? Dutch? Danish?
The man looked annoyed. “Dora as’y telehumar!” he said again, more forcefully this time. He nodded at the ground.
Jack looked to his side and saw a rock on the floor. ‘Dora as’y telehumar’ must have meant ‘pick up that rock and bash their heads in with it.’ As the creatures advanced on him, Jack picked up the rock. Learning languages was a lot more fun than he remembered.
The first of the creatures was a foot away from him. It smelled rotten. It reminded him of the first time Mum had one of her fits. Jack had been so young that he didn’t realise that when Mum wasn’t functioning, things didn’t get done. He remembered opening the fridge 6 days into her illness. He was hit by the overwhelming smell of a turkey that was starting to turn. The creature in front of him smelled much worse.
He gripped the stone. He focused on the creature that was reaching out for him, clawed hands outstretched. He smelled its putrid aroma, and felt anger build in him. The reminder of Mum and how he felt when he was younger burned in him. It fueled him like hot oil in his veins.
When it was close enough to lunge at him, he swung the stone. The sharp end connected with the creature’s temple and pierced the skin. He heard a sound, like air escaping a vacuum. The creature gurgled, then slumped to the floor. That left one more.
“So, are you German?” he called across the room.
The man had just forced his blunt blade through a creature’s chest. He lifted his leg, put his boot on the creature’s belly and kicked it away, forcing it to slump onto the floor. The man turned to face the remaining beast.
Jack still had one of his own to deal with. It went toward him, its mouth wide open to reveal a low of yellow teeth. A black liquid dripped from the corners of its lips. Over in the corner of the room, the man grunted. Lifted his blade. Prepared to stab the creature in front of him.
Jack held his rock tight in his hand. “Not German, then?” he said. “Dutch? Swedish? Danish?”
The creature lunged at him. Jack tried to copy the man and sidestep out of reach, but he wasn’t as nimble, despite his age advantage. The monster’s claw scraped down the side of his arm, and Jack felt a burning pain on his skin. Anger flared in him. He raised the rock and brought it down on the creature’s head with all his might.
The monster stumbled back. Black oil oozed from a wound on its skull, but it didn’t stop. It redoubled his efforts, then sprang toward Jack. This time he was able to step out of reach. Then he brought the rock down again, caving in the monster’s skull. It gave a loud groan, then fell to the floor.
The man stabbed the creature in front of him, and it fell to the floor, with the blade pierced through its stomach. The man pressed down on the creature with his boot and heaved his blade free. As he straightened up, Jack heard a crack. The man put his hands on his back and groaned.
“T’sa da modo da han,” he said, groaning. Jack had no idea whether it was correct or not, but from the way the man rubbed his back, he translated his words as ‘I’m getting too old for this.”
Jack didn’t feel so good himself. A few years ago, he’d been in great shape, but he’d had to cancel his gym membership to save money. Now, he wished he’d kept up his regime. Sweat pooled on his forehead, and he took a deep breath.
He didn’t have long to collect himself. The old man straightened up and pointed at Jack. Two of his fingers on his right hand were fake and seemed to be made of metal. Jack followed the man’s outstretched fingers and turned to see what he was pointing at.
Outside the oval window, barely visible through the dust, he saw outlines moving toward the castle. He walked over to it, put his hand on one of the dusty panes, and made a rainbow-shaped smear to look through. There was no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, though. Instead, thirty more of the creatures were advancing on the castle.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.
Chapter Four
Interfacing…
There were too many for them to deal with, that was for sure. He wondered if he could go and raise the drawbridge to stop a crowd of them getting in, but he wasn’t strong enough. He looked at the man. He seemed like a kindly grandpa except for his blood-smeared blade, and his belt filled with what looked like burglary tools.
“We could try the bridge,” said Jack.
The man ignored him. He patted around his belt looking for something.
Jack pointed to the tunnel at the other end of the room. “Bridge,” he said. “We could raise it.”
It was no use; the man just wasn’t getting it. Jack wondered if he could act out what he meant like in the charades game, but didn’t think pretending to be a drawbridge would help matters.
The man reached into his coat pockets and pulled out a vial of liquid. Jack wondered what it was. The other vial had contained a burning liquid. Maybe it was a chemical weapon that would deal with the creatures. Some kind of acid, or something like that.
The man unscrewed the vial, brought it to his mouth, then tipped it down his throat. With the vial drained, he burped. He held it up as if he was going to throw it on the floor, then thought better of the idea and put it in his pockets. So, maybe he was a burglar, but he was no litterbug. He walked toward Jack. His movements were shaky, and he seemed to sway a little. When he crossed the room and got closer, Jack smelled the overpowering aroma of alcohol.
“Are you drunk?” he said, looking at the man.
The man said something, but his words were a little slurred. Maybe he wasn’t speaking some European language. Perhaps he was speaking something entirely less comprehensible; the language of drunks. Whatever was in the vial had worked quickly.
He needed to do somet
hing. If the man was a drinker, then given he’d just tipped a vial of alcohol down his throat, he wasn’t going to be much help. He looked around. He needed something to protect himself with. The rock had been good against two of the creatures, but there were too many heading toward them.
Jack stopped and listened. He heard a sound. A faint growling coming from outside the room, brought to them through the tunnel at the other end.
He looked around. In the north-east corner there was a pile of rubble, but there was no use picking up a bigger stone. He’d just be sacrificing speed for strength. He thought about smashing the oval window and getting a shard of glass, but it just felt wrong to break it, somehow.
Think. He needed to do something.
The man walked over to the window, kneeled next to it, and then pulled a fist-sized gem from his belt. He set it on the floor. The gem made a whooshing sound and glowed red, and then the man stepped away from it. It must have been a trap of some kind.
More growls, closer this time. This wasn’t good; if they reached the room before Jack and Drunk Grandpa had a plan, they were done for. Come on, he told himself. He looked around the room for something, anything, he could use. He realized he was looking too fast, that he was panicking. He forced himself to slow down.
When he did, his gaze was drawn to one part of the room. It was the floor, a few feet from the centre. It was a small patch that looked like the rest of the stone, but he couldn’t take his eyes off it. As he stared, he felt strange. Like hands were tugging at him, drawing him to that part of the flooring. There was something peculiar about it, but what?
He walked across the room, following the sensation. He stopped when the feeling of being pulled lessened, and looked down.
“G’yaga,” said the old man. “Leodo sana yegar.”
Jack ignored the incomprehensible blend of German, Danish, Dutch and Drunk. Instead, he focused on the stone flooring in front of him. Kneeling and touching it, he felt how cold it was. At first glance, it had appeared to be like the rest of the stone, but something had drawn him here. And looking closer, he saw what that was.
