It was when everything seemed like it had gone to crap did she remember that she was still holding an ax. She gripped it harder and felt it suck more strength out of her. Clenching her eyes closed, she sliced the air in front of her, and the crows and ravens were silenced. Now she could open her eyes. The birds were gone, and the ax was glowing, covered in blood.
The wolves were no match for the ax either. Beth hurled it behind her and felt a sadistic satisfaction as she watched as metal met meat and bone. But as she'd flung it, she realized she'd lost her only chance at protection. But as her fears became thoughts, the ax, in its flight of carnage and killing of each wolf without hindrance, glowed brighter and returned to the hand which had thrown it in defiance.
Never had she in all her years thought she would be doing this or would have the gusto to pull it off—she was surprised at herself, and such that it had overshadowed her awe with everything supernatural and out of place she had observed in the last hours.
The howls, caws, and the sneering laughter of the Being grew silent until they were only echoes in her head.
Beth carried herself toward the town square where people were now packing up. Only three bulbs lit what was previously serenaded by a whole garland of bulbs. All the people had gone home, and the two or three who hadn’t were dragging the wooden tables back to the barns. The elder was still walking in circles, a rosario in his hands, lips trembling religious mutters. Beth rushed toward the old man, surprised at first to see that there was no one waiting for her. Funny. She remembered they always waited—some for the drama of it all, some because they cared.
“You’re here,” the elder said, turning his bearded face toward her, smiling. “Took your time, you did.”
Beth leaned forward, the ax resting on her knee. She took many deep breaths until she could get a full sentence out. “How long was I in there?”
“Five hours, give or take. Everyone’s gone home, I’ve been waiting for you. So, tell me, did you succeed?”
“I—” Beth didn’t have to think hard. The evidence was already there to convince the elder. Half a lie would work here, too. “Yes. Look,” she held the ax in front of him, showing him coagulated blood on it.
“Hmm. What did you see? What did you sacrifice?” the elder wasn’t looking at her ax but in her eyes, his wise ones discerning truth and lie from hers. She didn’t blink nor shift her gaze one bit. She stared back.
“I’m not supposed to talk about that, right?”
“Right. But whatever it was, it posed quite a challenge, I assume, looking at the state of you.”
“Yeah. Gonna need a tetanus shot, am I right?”
“The ax, Bethany. Give it to me.” The elder said, still staring hard at her. He gave up trying to interrogate her further and held out his hand.
Beth hesitated. He grabbed it out of her hands, and when she resisted, he became vicious, almost feral. She let go, backed off, and without saying another word she ran for home.
“Hey!” her mother said. She and her father were sitting in the living room, both with a cup of coffee or milk or whatever it was that they drank. “So much blood! Your face! Oh, my dear!” She rushed, huffing, her hands on her chest, and threw herself at Beth.
“It’s not that bad.”
“Let me take you to the hospital.”
“Mom.”
“Be quiet. You’re one of the Einherjar now.”
“What?”
“You’ve sacrificed your soul to the Being. Now it belongs to him, and he will ferry you to Valhalla when the time comes!”
“Dad!” Beth looked at her father for reason. He turned his head to her, grinning, and said, “yeah. What she said, Sugar.”
“Everyone sacrifices their soul to the Being?” Beth drew back from her mother, towards the door.
“Not everyone, honey. Just the ones who’re chosen for the cause. The blessed ones. And you, my dear, oh, you’re one of them, now. Free ticket and all!” Judith was beaming, and in her glee and her haste to get to the car she didn’t notice Beth. Beth, who was hyperventilating. Beth, who had thrown the fake shroud of calm off of her and was now drawing sharp breaths, and holding her head in her hands, tugging at her hair—the realization of what had transpired now sinking into her.
Belief, but of a different kind took root in her. She understood it, standing there, stained with blood.
A hand tugged at her shoulder, reigniting the fear from the chase, and the hand closed tighter. Beth ushered a shriek and turned to face whom it was—it was her mother, and she looked fanatical.
“Come! Come, we’ll get you all patched up,” she said, holding the door open with one hand, with the other on Beth’s shoulder.
“Jeez! You sure you don’t want to tear it off?” Beth slapped her mother’s hand off her shoulder. Right now, to her, everyone seemed an enemy, a hostile member of some cult she’d refused to join.
“Okay, okay! Get in the car, to the hospital,” her mother said, her smile still wide ear-to-ear, her enthusiasm uncurbed by her daughter’s rudeness.
“I’ll drive there myself, thank you,” Beth said and rushed outside. She needed alone time, time to think, and besides, she needed to be away from these people.
“Are you sure? In your condition I mean,” Judith said.
“Let her go, Jude,” Beth’s father said.
“Fine. We’re very proud of you, sweety,” her mom said, and Beth stifled a scorn as she headed to the car.
Beth didn't bother with the hospital. What was the point? She hadn't been harmed. She was only covered in wolf and crow’s blood. She drove to the parking lot of the only place that was lit up like the 4th of July, Wal-Mart. She sat in her car and contemplated on everything. She hadn't been harmed thanks to the ax. What was that thing anyway? What power did it have? What do you do when something you don’t believe to be true manifests right in your face?
After she'd waited long enough that she thought her parents would believe she'd gone to the hospital, she drove home.
The road from the Wal-Mart to the town’s suburb was one long stretch with forest on either side. Beth kept peeking from the windows for any signs of the Being. She found it odd that it, the haunter of this town, never came out of the woods, and odder that its effect was limited to the circumference of the town that touched the woods. The stocks of food and wood which had been affected were near the woods, and so was the water supply.
Maybe it’s some malevolent spirit that’s tethered to the forest and can’t get out of its vicinity, she thought. Maybe it’s not a god, but some fiend, some poltergeist, and these people are playing into its trickery, giving it air, being ignorant.
A flock of crows burst out of nowhere and collided with the windshield of the car, forcing Beth to swerve sideways. She jammed her foot on the brake, and before her car could go off-road, she had it stopped to a halt. She saw the ravens dispersing back into the trees. She saw him, the Being, standing in his emerald glow, behind the woods; him, with his wolves and his crows.
She pointed her middle finger at him, turned the keys in the engine, and drove back home. When haunting thoughts didn’t subside, she turned the radio on. A Coldplay song was on. Something about wanting to be a superhero, something about reading books of old, fairy tales and myths. Coldplay, she thought, was acquired taste. On the surface, it was cliché ridden and icky gooey, but once you got to the sentiment behind the lyrics, it was another thing entirely. It helped her, thinking about them, and soon she was singing along to the lyrics, not thinking but just driving and singing.
When she reached home her parents were asleep, the lights in the living room were turned off. She went to her bedroom, that old place where she had spent her entire childhood, and without changing her clothes she went to bed, and as soon as she hit the mattress, she was asleep.
“Your hypotheses about me are wrong, unbeliever. You’ve seen my face, you’ve faced me in the forest, and yet you still don’t believe. You don’t think I can get out of the forest
—well, I’m in your head, I’m with you everywhere. I’m in your room. I’m in your mother’s room. You didn’t play by my rules. Now perish, and watch as I lay wreck to your life.”
There were no visions in her dream; only these words, ringing.
Beth didn’t wake up. Her alarm must have gone off, and in her sleep, she must have snoozed it. Her mother didn’t wake her, her father didn’t, and by the time she did wake up it was way past noon, and harsh sunlight fell on her face through the window—had it not fallen she would have kept on sleeping.
There was an unnatural quietness about the house. Her mother, the wearer of pants in the family, normally went about screaming, ordering, and if not doing either then just plain babbling to her friends and neighbors on the phone. She wasn’t doing any of it right now. Beth’s father, a quiet man, made his presence known in the house by his shuffling feet, his occasional burps and by the hollow coughs he had gained by smoking a little too much in his early years. There wasn’t any of that, either.
She went out of her room, looked around. Nothing. She went outside the house, and there wasn’t anyone there either. But she could hear a commotion, people talking to each other. When her eyes had adjusted to the sun’s glare—which was weird because the sun never glared in this town because of innumerable trees—she saw desolation: all the surrounding trees were leafless, dead, and black. Wherever grass used to be before there was the ugly brown earth. Flowers were dead too, their wilted petals lying like martyred soldiers across a battlefield. Wherever Beth looked, she saw crows, malevolently gazing at her, each one of them, perched on lifeless trees.
She walked, first down the front steps, then across the walkway, then on the road towards the sounds of people talking. It unnerved her, every aspect of it, and left her thinking: yeah, that’s all on you. You did it, somehow.
She reached the end of her street and now stood in the town square. She saw the people huddled around the pathway leading to the forest. The entire town was there—or what was left of it. A car zoomed past her; in it were five people (parents in the front, rowdy children in the back). “Look what you done!” the husband screamed at her as he drove off. By the looks of it, they were ditching the town permanently. She didn’t pay them heed; instead, went to the cluster of people standing at the helm of what once used to be a forest. Without the foliage and greenery, everything looked transparent.
“What’s happening?” Beth asked.
“It’s him, the elder. He’s dead,” a boy answered her. His face was flushed with color, and he was grinning. He was a boy, and matters like life or death didn’t matter to him as much as observing them and reveling in the reactions of others did. To him, it was all very funny and exciting.
“What?” Beth brushed past the people, shoving them to advance to the clearing around which the crowd was formed. The elder lay on the gravel, and his limbs splayed in unnatural angles, a look of plain horror on his face (his eyes wide, his jaw wider in a grimace). He was mangled; bite marks and chunks of missing meat all over his body; blood crusted to his ripped out clothes, most of it coagulating in splotches all across his body.
“When did this happen? Why? Why?” people whispered in fear to each other. By the looks of it, from what Beth ascertained, he had died not long ago. His death seemed to overshadow the fact that all around them everything was desolate. The crowd around him was crying, and most of them sincerely. They knew this guy, had broken bread with him, had asked him for help on many occasions, had had their children blessed by his hand, had asked for his advice on farming, on matters of love, on everything. Even Beth, who considered herself the most detached of them all, had been acquainted with him all her life—that is, the life she lived here before moving to college.
“The sacrifice! It must not have gone accordingly!” someone sobbed between wails. People began humming and murmuring in agreement. Beth’s parents, who stood across from her, stared at her; her mother vilely, her father stupidly.
“Bethany, tell us the truth.” Her mother demanded.
All eyes were on her. The crowd formed a wider circle with her standing next to the dead body and everybody around her, making it seem like they thought that she had murdered him.
“Tell us!” an old man, eyes Scandinavian blue, the kind you’d stare in and never stare out of, broke the ring and shuffled towards her. This was the elder’s assistant, his vizier, of sorts. “Did you sacrifice for our God?”
“I...”
“Hesitation is half the sin’s confession!” the old man said and spat at Beth’s feet. She retracted from where the spittle hit the ground. “Did you or did you not kill your offering? Or did you anger the Being?”
“I…”
“She’s not denying it! She’s not—” Whatever anyone said, yelled, at her, she didn’t listen to; everything became blurred out, the voices fuzzing in and out of her aural range, the dead body’s eyes staring fixedly at her. You did this.
Two strong-armed men from the crowd emerged, grabbed her from either side and dragged her to the town square.
She did not resist. She thought about cutting and running, making it to her car, zooming off to the opposite part of the country, living in a hut, killing wild deer and plucking blueberries for eating, living off on stream water. It was a good image to conjure up, but it was as unreal as whatever was happening right now. She should’ve been studying for her finals. Should have been anywhere but here. Even a stuffy, humid library with pissed-off students glaring at her was better than here.
They tied her to a chair, and an impromptu court formed around her. It was more of a mob, by the looks of the faces of everyone. They were all angry. She lifted her head upward, saw ravens, saw crows, and they looked like they were mocking her, cawing way above in the branches, and through their eyes seeing her was the Being—his will the absolute will, his will the one to come fulfilled.
Disobey him, and this is what happens to you. Submit to him, and all bounties are yours. Play his games, and all is well. Don’t play his games, and God forbid, mock him, and see what will happen to you.
Beth, filled with despair, felt her heart stopping, skipping beat after beat. Vision going black, blacker, blackest, and then someone slapped her face with brutal force. Everything came into sharp view again, and she saw that it was the same old man who had interrogated her a few minutes ago (or was it an hour? The sun had gone down hurriedly, and everything was dark now.)
Tears. She didn’t want any part in this. She wanted to continue her life in the arc she had thought out. She never wanted this intercession from the Being in it. She never felt the need to believe in any grand narratives. The age of grand narratives was gone. But here, in this secluded pocket of Illinois, it seemed like time had stayed stagnant.
Another slap. Another. Another. Whatever happened to being chivalric? She saw, through bleary eyes, her parents standing in one corner, and in another her cousin Henry.
“Okay, okay! I’m awake, you dolt!” she said.
“Disgraceful child. Tell us the truth right this second!” the old man said. “Truth shall…”
“Please. If you say ‘truth shall set you free,' I’m going to barf,” Beth couldn’t help laughing. This drove the new elder—she assumed that’s what the old man had become after the death of the previous elder—crazier, and he raised his hand to slap her again.
“Wait! That’s enough needless violence!” another man rose from the crowd. She didn’t know who this man was, but she remembered seeing him around town back when she was a kid. “I propose we send her back in to do the job she was supposed to do.”
Everyone roared in mutual agreement. Their eyes lit, their breath contagious, transferring rage and a consensus binding to their religion. The new elder stood brooding, his mustache covering his face, his beard his neck.
“Aye. That we must do. Only then will the Being’s rage be quenched. This blasphemer will put things right,” he said and procured from behind him the same ax that she had been given by
the former elder.
“Will you do it?” he asked her. "Finish it?"
Will she do it? She wanted to laugh, rebel, spit at his face. She wanted to get the hell out of here. She saw every one of them as the Being, his fear controlling all of them like puppets, his thoughts in their heads. All except in hers. He couldn’t conquer her, make her submit, and this defiance made him afraid. Everyone else was his dominion.
“I’ll do it,” she whispered in the man’s ears.
“And if this time you fail, we’ll kill you to set things right, to assuage our God,” the elder said.
They unstrapped the ropes off of her, handed her the ax, and this time with distrust, led her like a prisoner to the forest opening. This time they would watch from behind the trees. No room for mistakes now.
She took the ax, her head racing with thoughts, and headed into the forest, for the second time.
“You've come again,” the Being said. She didn’t turn her head to look at him, but she saw him from the corner of her eyes. He strode beside her, glad and proud, and everywhere around her his wolves prowled; above her, the ravens and crows filled the night sky. He had her surrounded, airtight.
“I come not out of choice,” she said to him.
“Had you done what needed to be done the first time around, child, you wouldn’t have had to face these consequences,” he said, and materialized in front of her. His face, however ghastly and fear-inducing, had a sliver of kindliness to it. The face of a stern father giving a slightly warm shoulder after a very cold one. The father who had beaten his kid with a belt and now offered a half-assed truce: don’t be bad again, and none of this will have to happen a second time.
“Go now, there on the altar is your test, your sacrifice,” he said, and led her, his cold calloused hands gripping her warm ones, to the stone platform where a woman writhed naked, tied by ropes.
The Unbeliever: A Morbid Tale (The Morbid Tales Book 5) Page 3
