Shadow Fabric Mythos Vol.1: Supernatural Horror Collection

by Mark Cassell

  A miasma of colour again threatened darkness. Another cry, muted, snatched him back to the here, the now, to this insane situation. Panic snaked its way up from his stomach.

  Something sticky tugged his hair as the pain subsided.

  Henry, the old man, lay beside him, now shirtless to reveal a glistening paunch. Amid a haze of white chest hair, black slime clumped and oozed over pale skin. Leaves and mud and hooked brambles clung to his trousers. More slime smeared his bare feet.

  But it was his hands that…what?... Whatever was happening with the old man’s fingers challenged Dan’s perception. Both hands dripped filth and just as before, they were clamped to his forehead. Yet those fingers were abnormally long. Still gnarly and twisted, but with smooth skin, stretched and taut. As were the forearms, they too were grotesquely misshapen and thin.

  Slime flicked in all directions. It was as though Henry’s pores oozed the stuff.

  Dan moved again and a heat swept through him. That black filth was heaped between them. It pulsed as though with a heartbeat of its own. Some of the hardened lumps had fused with Dan’s scalp, with his skull.

  Agony drilled into his brain.

  Henry rolled sideways, eyes hidden by those ridiculous hands. His mouth, slack, red, and dribbled slime.

  One hand shot downwards and the fingers speared Dan’s chest.

  Hot pain tore through him.

  Ribs splintered through shredding flesh. The bones cracked, snapped, and rose to meet, to join, those probing fingers. His heart wrenched in a rush of wet heat.

  Snap-snap. Crack. Fusing and twisting.

  And the darkness pressed in, just as Henry pressed closer. Closer.

  Dust swirled in the final rays of a setting sun and the man returned the scattered papers to the briefcase. His spine popped but that was only this new shape settling. He lifted the case and sniffed; leather, relatively new. There was a hint of cinnamon…from where porridge oats…a son—Joe, four years old—had been careless during breakfast. His wife—Susan—had laughed. He had a well-paid job...the council…makes changes...he drove last year’s BMW yet wanted an upgrade.

  From the pocket of his suit, fitting snugly now his bones had fully shifted into place, he pulled out an ID tag.

  Another name, another face.

  He slid a finger across the plastic. Slime oozed beneath the fingernail, and he licked it. Bitter.

  Dan Porter.

  “I hate changes,” he muttered and walked into the twilight, towards his BMW.

  MIDNIGHT CLAY

  As though the moonlight pushed him along, Owen freewheeled down the hill. The wind bit into his face, froze his knuckles. Often summer nights were like this, especially with a cloudless sky. If only he hadn’t left his coat back at Jimmy’s house.

  A rumble in the distance, almost a howl, snatched his attention to the bend up ahead. He steered closer to the edge of the lane. He and Jimmy had an awesome evening; the new Dungeons and Dragons role-play game had stolen the day away. Before they’d realised it, night had fallen and Owen was late. Jimmy had beaten him with some lucky dice rolls.

  The next game, Owen thought, would be war.

  The rumble intensified; a vehicle approached at speed, still unseen. Perhaps a truck or lorry. Having cycled this route many times, he knew the lane was wide enough even if he did meet something that large. Still, he kept close to the grass verge.

  Once more, his thoughts wandered to the game. Luck or not, next time he’d outsmart Jimmy.

  Further ahead, along the winding road and through the trees, headlights forced back the darkness. Air-brakes hissed. A lorry, definitely, and it approached the bend without slowing.

  Owen jammed on the brakes, the back wheel whirring on the tarmac.

  He jerked to a halt.

  The vehicle tore into the bend. Tyres screeched and juddered and groaned in protest. The trailer tilted, jack-knifed, and tipped. Something sleek, a silhouette against the night sky, leapt from the roof with what looked like enormous wings and too many limbs. Whatever it was, Owen had the fleetest glimpse as he threw himself sideways, dragging his bike. He rolled into the bushes, twigs and branches raked his hands and face. The lorry cleaved the tarmac, roaring like a metal dragon and uprooting trees and foliage, mud and earth.

  His heart pounded in his throat.

  After that there was silence, save for the creak of a buckled trailer wheel. And voices. Faint echoes on the wind from somewhere in the darkness. Not near the lorry but further away in the fields. Imagination surely; adrenaline from witnessing the crash. Imagination, too, had made him see that great…creature?

  Entirely in his head.

  He pushed himself up and staggered onto the road. The underside of the metal hulk loomed over him. A clump of mud and tangled brambles fell from the buckled wheel. Tiny glass beads covered the road, each one glinting moonlight.

  If only he hadn’t left his phone in his coat pocket, back at Jimmy’s.

  “Hello?” he called, heading for the cab.

  No one answered.

  He trod alongside the cracked headlights. Both were smashed, yet one remained blinding. Glass and plastic crunched beneath his feet.

  There was nothing left of the windscreen; the cab roof crushed on the driver's side. It looked like a gaping vertical mouth without teeth. Above, the cab door was missing, allowing the moon to spotlight empty seats. No driver. He scanned the road from where it had come. Twisted metal, plastic, and glass scattered the tarmac.

  The driver’s body was nowhere in sight.

  He circled the lorry as best he could given the density of the foliage, to scan a shallow ditch and the tractor grooves in the adjacent field. He ran a little way down the road, seeing whether the driver had been thrown from the cab before it hit the bend.

  Again, nothing.

  He trotted back to the cab. Careful not to snag his clothes, he climbed inside the glassless windscreen. Moonlight guided him without injury—jagged edges everywhere. The dashboard was a twisted mess. He rummaged only to find food wrappers and dog-eared fitness magazines. No phone, no way of contacting the police. Clambering out, he realised he had to get home and call the police from there.

  Heading for his bike, he ran alongside the trailer. Wooden pallets, now vicious splinters, were cradled in metal cages between the wheels. He came round to the mangled rear doors and stopped. Crouching, he peered into the long length of gloom. At the far end, past chunks of masonry, several broken crates lay in the shadows. Knowing he should be cycling home, he stepped over the warped hinges and into the trailer.

  It smelled of earth, of brick dust, and something sweet, something sickly. He headed for the crates, straddling busted pallets and rubble. He reached the nearest crate and read the label: Handle With Care. Straw poked between cracked panels. He slid his fingers beneath a wooden board and tugged. The snap-crack echoed. Removing another, he peeked inside. A dozen or so black stones about as large as his fist huddled among the straw like eggs in a nest. Leaning with one leg off the ground, he reached in. Damp straw poked his fingers and he grabbed one of the stones—cold and heavy.

  He lifted it out.

  Just enough moonlight pushed into the trailer for him to see. Mostly smooth, a kind of marble effect streaked through the stone; a kaleidoscope of colour blended with that deep, dark black. Bringing it closer to his face, he—

  A thump rang through the trailer. From overhead.

  He grabbed the edge of the crate. A splinter tore his palm but he hardly felt it as he looked up.

  Another two thumps followed in quick succession.

  He shoved the stone into a pocket and ran, leaping over the debris. He stumbled into the fresh air, turned and looked up. Dangling over the side near a missing wheel, a denim-clad leg twitched. An arm, too, flopped over the side. Blood dripped from the fingers.

  Owen froze. That hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  Someone stood over the body. The person was tall, broad shouldered and wore what looked l
ike a priest’s cassock under flowing robes. Peculiar markings covered the robes, reflecting moonlight as though every symbol and glyph was stitched in silver. He held a staff or perhaps even a spear. His bald head glistened on a thick neck. Owen couldn’t see his face. The man cocked his head as though sensing him and raised the spear...and rammed it into the driver’s chest. Once, twice. Then a third time. Blood misted the air.

  The man turned.

  He had no face. This was no man. He—it—had only a blank head, like a white balloon, smooth and featureless. No, not entirely featureless; where each eye should be was a row of uneven stitches.

  The ground seemed to suck at Owen’s feet. Silently, he screamed at them to move, to get him out of there, but he could...not...move. He had to grab his bike, cycle away, get away from there. Now.

  “Child,” a low voice blasted into his brain.

  “Wha—” His throat tightened. He looked around. “Who?”

  Inside his head, the voice bellowed, “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  The blank-faced creature gripped the spear with both hands and leaned on it. Those stitched eyes somehow bored into Owen’s mind. That, Owen guessed, was precisely what was happening. How else was it speaking to him? The thing didn’t have any lips!

  Churning shadows looped around the creature’s torso, toying with the robes and tracing along the sigils and glyphs. Framed by fading moonlight, the creature reached down with an impossibly long arm and grabbed the driver’s ankle, then hurled the body over the edge. Dead limbs cartwheeled almost comically and slapped the tarmac, spattering blood. The chest was cleaved open in a bloody mess of jagged ribs and a shredded jacket.

  The creature leapt from the roof, its robes and cassock billowing, spear held high. Wispy shadows trailed behind. More floating than falling, it landed beside the body.

  Owen pressed himself into the bushes and stared, craning his neck—this thing had to be at least eight-feet tall.

  Its voice heavy like a shovel dragged across concrete thundered in his head. “Stop referring to me as creature. Lesser-beings like you mortals are creatures. Demon is more accurate. I am more man than mankind was ever intended to be.”

  A lump filled Owen’s throat.

  “You,” said the demon, “should not have interfered.”

  He couldn’t look away from the demon’s stitched eyelids. Absurdly, all he thought of was the Dungeons and Dragons game he’d played earlier. It was as though he stood face to face with one of the characters.

  “Interesting thoughts, child.” Tilting his head, the demon leaned forward. “You have met my kind before.”

  He most certainly had not. Tabletop role play was one thing, but this?

  “You know of magic, of spellcasting. Of witchcraft.” The demon leaned closer still. “And you have defeated demons.”

  Owen’s heart thumped in his head, louder almost than the demon’s words. He gripped the stone in his pocket.

  “Interesting,” the demon said again.

  He had to get the hell away from this thing. Now. But his legs wouldn’t listen. Although his bike was fairly close, it felt miles away.

  “You have something that belongs to me.” This demon, this man, reached out, fingers curled upwards. “Give it to me.”

  With a shaking hand, Owen lifted out the stone. It seemed much heavier, warmer.

  The demon snatched it. “You should have ignored my interception and continued on your way.”

  “But—”

  “A war is coming, child. A war between worlds, between darkness and an even-greater darkness.” The demon drummed his fingernails over the stone. Tick-tick, tick. Tickticktick. The stone glowed with an inner light, a red tinge deep within the blackness. “None of this should concern you. However...”

  A darkness smothered the demon’s head, spiralling like smoke. Faint tendrils of shadow coiled around the stitches that wove through his skin. Behind his head, behind that glistening dome of mottled flesh, moonlight darkened. The demon straightened his back, robes and cassock swaying. He let go of the spear and it balanced vertically on its tip, defying gravity. Still with those stitched eyes fixed on Owen, he wrenched aside the robes and pressed fingers against the folds. The digits lengthened and sank into the fabric, disappearing into a liquid darkness. The way it played with light bent Owen’s perception. Where he looked, light did not belong there, could not belong, yet a shimmering haze of shadows somehow allowed him to watch the demon’s fingers twist into the darkness and disappear up to the knuckles.

  Giddy, his knees buckled and he fell to the ground, half on the grass verge, half on the tarmac. It was as though his entire body had given up—all he could do was watch. And he knew this was precisely what the demon intended.

  Owen. Must. Observe.

  White energy trickled along the demon’s robes and sparked around the glyphs and sigils. He removed his fingers and black slime stretched and drooped. Dark, stringy.

  “I mould this clay…” That voice reverberated inside Owen’s head. “…With Darkness in mind.”

  Kneeling as if to pray, the demon held out his arms. In one hand, he clutched the stone, and in the other, he cupped the dripping slime. Pressing them together, the two substances moulded like clay. The darkness and red streaks merged, sparking with an inner fire. Faint, yet fierce. Still kneeling, he extended his arm to drag the clay across the tarmac. As before, his arm lengthened, poking from beneath gaping sleeves, muscles flexing, stretching and reaching. He rubbed it across the tarmac, left and right, swift movements, faster and faster, becoming a stuttering blur.

  Owen could not keep up with those frantic movements. It was as though he watched from much further away, like he saw all this through the eyes of someone else.

  A black rectangle formed over the tarmac, but it had depth like a pit. Deep, dark. A black hole, no less, containing a bubbling impenetrable darkness. Again, it messed with Owen’s perception; it hurt to look at and all he wanted to do was look away—but no chance. He had to observe. He must obey.

  The demon stopped and leaned back, those stitched eyes raised to the faint moon overhead.

  Like heavy smoke, the shadows now obscured the trees, the trailer, the debris. It was only Owen and the demon, and the driver’s bloodied body, surrounded by the cloying darkness.

  In similar swift and stuttering movements as before, the demon grabbed the driver’s body and pressed it into the black hole. The arms and legs flopped into the writhing darkness and it floated on the surface that now bubbled and rippled like dark water. Denim and cotton smouldered, wisps of smoke twisting upwards. Skin tore and bones cracked, churning together with soggy clothes and that liquid darkness. The demon dipped a fist into the mix and stirred. Muscles rippled along his forearm as that limb stretched impossibly long. Making circular movements, round and round, juddering and stuttering, the demon stirred. Clay and flesh, shadow and bone crackled and melded together.

  Stirring, churning, the demon jerked and shuddered, wrapped in a kind of ecstasy. His head back, stitched eyes still on the moon.

  Red and black mixed and bubbled.

  Churning and stirring...

  After the longest seconds of his life passed, Owen watched equally horrified and fascinated—frustrated and fearful that he could not move—as finally the demon stopped. His arm shrank back to its usual length. Now burying both arms into the disgusting mix, he yanked out a wriggling sheet of fabric. Dark, bloody chunks of flesh now stitched with the shadows, knitted together like a patchwork blanket. It dripped and hissed on the tarmac as he laid it aside. Strips of coloured cotton and denim were linked, woven with jagged sections of skin that pulsed and seethed as though the entire thing breathed. And it did breathe. Owen had no doubt that was precisely what this fabric was doing; pulsing, throbbing, living and breathing.

  Somewhere far at the back of his mind, he knew he should now be escaping, pedalling fast…but there was something keeping him there. He had to stay, to run would be foolish
. Such an opportunity; this demon will reveal so much more. There were unspoken promises. This demon would show him everything. Everything.

  He had to run. Now.

  But no. He would not. Could not.

  Owen was almost ready to embrace what he was there for.

  The shadows retreated to reveal the underside of the trailer again. Multicolour streaks played in the fading darkness as though a TV screen flickered, colours mixing with the shadows.

  Apparently oblivious to the shifting atmosphere, the demon continued to stitch shadow and skin, creating another grotesque piece of fabric.

  The dirty shades of colour opened up and became the silhouette of someone, or something. Another demon? But this image was different, almost elegant; smaller, frail. The blurry form of what Owen could only describe as an old hag appeared. Her hair was grey and fine, yet her face was hidden in a twist of darkness like a black whirlpool. She extended an arm. Her fingers smouldered as they reached through the shadows and into the world. She caressed the top layer of fabric.

  Owen understood. He knew this was a witch, some phantom from history when witchcraft was dark and dangerous. She was on the ‘other side’, dipping an arm into this world, his world, to claim that grotesque rectangle of flesh and shadow. Any witch that needed such a horrific thing surely would not be a white witch. None of this was white magic.

  “You, child,” the demon’s voice echoed in Owen’s head, “certainly appear to have knowledge.”

  The hag pulled at the fabric and it slurped off the ground. She whipped it up over her shoulders and wore it like a shawl. She stroked it with gnarled fingers, her face remaining in a hurricane of coiling darkness, and finally retreated into the shadows. Again the darkness swirled and more forms shifted. One at a time as the demon laid out more of these garments, a dozen more women approached. Some old and frail, some young and slender, shimmered in the darkness, little more than haunting silhouettes and not once revealing their faces. Each flowed with the haze of shadows to claim their shawls, only to retreat and to make way for another, and another.