by Mark Cassell
Reaching the kitchen, he tucked the Witchblade in his belt. Now gripping the clock in both hands, it seemed to taunt him as the digits flickered to 3.28. Patterns of red streaked its casing.
The backdoor gaped like a black mouth and swallowed him as he stepped into the garden. The rain lanced his neck and pummelled the ground. The wind bullied the trees. His stomach was a flopping mess, and with his free hand he pushed his intestines back in. They bulged between splayed fingers.
The door swung to, and its creak stuttered into the night. A spear of light remained in the garden and did little to penetrate the stygian black that stretched beyond. He squinted at the contours of the patio furniture, the shrubs, the fence, the silhouette of trees against a looming sky. And the darkness closed in...
3.29.
Each step dragged. No pain as he headed for the shadows, towards the hole he’d dug the previous night. He walked around it, his tie still following like an obedient serpent.
3.30.
The darkness beckoned. His heart was a constant drumbeat.
His leg shot sideways and he dropped the clock. Both hands slapped the freezing mud. A bitterness peppered his lips and he spat. The accompanying crack of thunder was barely louder than his thrashing heart.
His face was near the clock: 3.31. Ahead, the shadows twisted, unfolded, releasing a swirl of faint colours. Like a diesel spill leaking into his garden the shadows edged towards him, a tsunami of darkness approaching.
Release us.
He pulled out the Witchblade, raising it, and slowly stood up. The blood thumping in his head lessened as if his heartbeat counted the seconds. He edged closer to the darkness, still with a hand pushed against his bulging abdomen. His other arm reached with the Witchblade. Closer. Closer.
The blade sliced the shadows like cut fabric.
Yesss.
He entered the void, his work tie still trailing.
3.32.
And inside he knew them. They were there, as glimmers of life forgotten.
No longer are we forgotten.
Their sparks of life force detached from the darkness within. Each started blinking out. The fewer there were, the colder he became. He almost felt their relief. It was like a teasing fire as winter burrowed into his soul.
As his life ebbed, so theirs moved on.
The shadows closed in, and Terry managed a final glance at his life. He saw the clock, its digits fading, reading 3.33.
CLAIMED
Lena’s boot stubbed a tree root. Arms outstretched, she flew forwards, her rucksack pressing her into the earth. Gravel and twigs tore her palms. She grimaced and rolled sideways, seeing only towering pines and blue sky. Neither offered help, nor did the geothermal mist that obscured the surrounding trunks.
That now-familiar sulfurous stink clawed down her throat as she gulped air and chewed agony. Silence, save for the pulsing blood in her ears. As a solo traveler, on a backcountry trek through a fraction of Yellowstone’s 9,000 square kilometers, she realized just how far she’d hiked.
Her hands were a crimson mess. She sat up and shrugged off her rucksack. Smearing blood across a pocket, she grabbed tissues and began wiping her hands. More mist enveloped her as she removed stones and splinters. Eventually, she dropped the tissues and squinted into the mist. The gnarled root she’d tripped over hooked from the earth like an arthritic finger. Patched with lichen, it appeared as though someone had burnt a symbol into it. An hourglass, perhaps?
A chill crept with the mist, and darkness pushed into her periphery. Her breath snatched. She shuffled backwards, and her back thumped rough bark. Shadowy clusters, like tangled phantoms, thickened. Approached.
Black tendrils lashed out and snatched up the bloodied tissues. Something crackled, hissed, and the blood faded. The tissues floated to the ground, each now marked only with dirt.
Another tendril slithered forwards to coil around her ankle; cold, wet... Agony. Searing. Skin blistered. Smoldering flesh and fabric mixed with the sulfur. She gagged. Her flesh wrinkled, feeling like a billion writhing maggots. Every inch taut over her bones, crackling, crispy and flaky.
Freezing.
Her lungs tightened.
Something clutched her mind and yanked it into the shadows. From a growing distance, she saw her frail body. Her head, now little more than a skull with wispy hair, tumbled free—a hollow, rustling sound. It rolled. From gaping sleeves, an arm slipped and fell and cracked the skull. Bones splintered like dead branches. Dust plumed.
Lena watched from the retreating shadows, to where her life once was.
DEAD LINES
Pippa hated deadlines. She packed too much into the day and she knew it.
Kneeling, she yanked aside the carpet and a cloud of dust plumed. She coughed. The underlay crumbled as she pulled further and rolled it halfway across the room to lean against an easel and a box of acrylics. As always, getting carried away. She intended to dedicate an entire week to an approaching deadline and to finish the studio. Her studio. She found it pretentious to call it that, but now that she received paid commissions it was time to do this.
She coughed again and leapt to the window. Whatever she’d inhaled clung to her tongue like bitter chalk. As she opened the latch, birdsong washed into the room and the countryside stole away the dead air. Beneath an overcast morning and beyond her garden, fields stretched across the Kent hills like a stitched blanket of varying shades of greens.
She moved from the window to face the room.
Something had once burnt the floorboards: scorch marks zigzagged the timber, some curled to create arcs that disappeared beneath the roll of carpet.
Weird. Two years since buying the place and she had no idea they were there. Crouching, she rubbed the gritty timber. Her palm was smeared black as though she’d been sketching with charcoals. Rubbing her hands together made the stuff crumble away like black breadcrumbs.
She stood and pain lanced her temple. Agony shot across her forehead, into her brain, and darkness pressed in from the corners of her eyes, tighter, tighter and...
Cold air rushed into her lungs. She staggered. Twigs snapped beneath her shoes.
Where was she?
Below the brilliant slice of moon, branches creaked and leaves hissed on a wind that stabbed her clothes. The wet smell of undergrowth and foliage overwhelmed her. Her knees weakened, her legs buckled, and she fell. Her fingers pushed into the soggy ground, freezing. She groaned. A myriad of colours swept across her vision.
“What—” She was somewhere outside, in the fields behind her cottage perhaps. Yet it was so cold. This surely couldn’t be a summer’s night. And it had been morning a second ago.
Fragments of stone squatted in the shadows; mossy and jagged, half buried. Gravestones? Maybe she wasn’t near home at all. But there were no other markers and certainly no churchyard, only looming trees and that sliver of moon.
The darkness beyond deepened, shifted. A silhouette broke the shadows.
A woman approached.
Her dress whipped around thin legs and bare feet, movements slow and jittery. It was as if she waded through water.
Pippa pushed herself backwards, her shoes digging into the earth.
The moon cast a silver halo around the woman’s unkempt hair leaving her face in shadow. Closer, closer…and Pippa pushed herself back further and further.
The rough bark of a trunk dug into her spine.
Still no more than a silhouette, this woman, this phantom, reached out a slender arm. The moonlight reflected from young skin, her fingernails chipped and raw, skin bleeding. Closer.
She pressed icy knuckles against Pippa’s forehead.
A short scream tumbled from Pippa’s quivering lips and echoed through the trees.
Something rumbled, deep, grinding. Black lines scorched the ground, singeing the leaves and twigs and even the earth itself. Cracked and broken stones pushed through the earth. Silhouettes flickered and shimmered between trees. More phantoms. All dressed in
rags, some clutching shreds of fabric to thin bodies. All featureless and blank, hidden in the shadows.
Those fingers still pressed her forehead, numbing her brain. Darkness swarmed her, the images of the women blurring. Blending and churning.
Pippa jerked upright, eyes wide.
Back in her studio a low evening sunshine poured through the open window. The comforting smell of paint clung to the air.
In front of her stood five easels, each supporting a canvas displaying her bold style. A smaller one balanced on the roll of carpet. Paint of every colour smeared her hands, her clothes. She tasted acrylics on her lips.
One canvas was of an oak tree that towered over the bloodied bodies of men, their clothes torn—perhaps even clawed—open. Blood soaked the grass. From a twisted branch above dangled a hanging woman dressed in little more than rags, her head angled in a noose. Another was of a market square in an unfamiliar village, centred around the thrashing body of a woman tied to a wooden post. She was on fire and screamed into the night. The flames illuminated both the surrounding crowd and billowing smoke. Several onlookers writhed on the ground, their heads a bloody mess against uneven paving. The other paintings depicted similar scenes of women dying; stabbed, drowned, beheaded. This last was particularly nasty.
She’d dedicated an entire day to this insanity; a day that should’ve been for commissioned work. Why couldn’t she remember painting these?
The smallest canvas that rested on the roll of paint-spotted carpet was unfinished. The least menacing, it depicted a wall of looming rock, moss-covered and ancient. Across the leaf-strewn ground, dark clumps of mushrooms or fungus darkened the shadows. No death scene here. She recognised it; she’d recently been there. Yes, on one of her long inspiration-searching walks across the fields.
Her head pounded and she was hungry, tired.
She snatched up the bottles of acrylics and brushes that were scattered about the floor and threw it all in to cartons. She couldn’t keep this stuff, she’d have to buy more. She had work to do, deadlines to meet.
She glanced at each painting. Finally, her gaze dropped to the floorboards, to those scorch marks. She had somewhere to go, somewhere to visit: that sheer-faced rock wasn’t too far.
So much work to do.
Deadlines. She hated deadlines.
MORE IN THE MYTHOS
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HELL CAT OF THE HOLT (extract)
From sunlight to darkness in mere seconds. Squealing tyres, shrieking metal. And silence…
Alfred opened his eyes but only blurred light greeted him, jagged and confusing. The stink of burnt rubber and damp foliage clogged his nostrils. He coughed and an ache raced through his brain. Seconds dragged as his vision sharpened the sunset. The sound of tinkling glass lanced his eardrums, and he tried to move. His seat belt restricted him.
Then he remembered: Martha hadn’t worn her seat belt.
Thank the Lord she was still with him, wide-eyed and pretty as always – her senior years had been so very kind. Regardless of not wearing her restraint, she looked fine if a little dazed.
Somewhere above them, birds chirped. Those shrill cries drilled into his head. He winced.
Often, he would tell Martha—remind her—to fasten her seat belt, and she would always respond that she never found them comfortable. This went back to the mid-70s when a Road Traffic Bill was put forward in the House of Commons, coinciding with those ‘Clunk-Click’ TV commercials. He remembered the fuss she made when it became compulsory should the car have them fitted.
“What a silly idea!” she had said at the time. “Strapped in like children.”
The right side of his head hurt like hell. He rubbed his face and his hand came away wet, and red. The rest of his body felt fine other than a few familiar aches; for the past decade, his body woke up to all sorts of discomfort. Yet he could not complain, he was more able-bodied than the majority of his peers and, moreover, his mind remained sharp.
The windscreen was a patchwork of cracks. His door window however was unbroken, beyond which he saw the cat. Again. Not your average domestic cat, but much larger. It now crouched in the darkness of thorny bushes, blending with the shadows. Could it be a panther? Dear God, really? He had heard of black cat sightings in the area, although shrugged them off as ridiculous urban legends. Bloody thing was the reason why he crashed. He had been the one driving, Martha beside him, when the large cat bounded across the road. Black fur glistening, eyes reflecting the sunset like cooling embers; a sudden dark streak across the tarmac. Alfred had swerved.
And here they were, his car a wreck, mangled bonnet around the trunk of a looming oak.
With rubber fingers, he released his seat belt. The metal clasp smacked the central pillar. Shifting sideways, still aware of the cat’s presence, he looked at his wife. Being such a law-abiding English gentleman, he had soon given seat belts little thought and found himself clunking and clicking. They were not in any way uncomfortable as Martha protested. Several years ago, he read somewhere that on the 40th anniversary of Clunk-Click, over 100,000 lives had been saved. He wondered what the tally was now, himself and Martha included in those numbers.
“It’s okay,” he whispered and took Martha’s hand.
It was relatively easy to clamber from the wreckage, and even when they were both clear he didn’t once lose his grip on her. They stood looking at the Toyota’s crumpled bonnet and mashed grill. Steam hissed. Wispy phantoms crawled up the bark.
The cat—the panther, whatever it was—was no longer nearby. A quick scan of the surrounding trees and shrubs and tangle of brambles, revealed nothing. Still that warmth filled him. Fear of the cat or anger at crashing, he could not tell.
Martha wasn’t saying much, nor could he blame her. It was he who had been driving, he was to blame, taking a shortcut through country lanes at a time of day where the low sun bleached the world, pale and bright. Martha had been talking about their plans for after they returned home.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she was saying, “I’ve truly enjoyed our weekend, it’s just I miss having time away from home. I’d like us to book another break, further away and for longer. Not just one week but perhaps two. We need to make the most of these years, Alfred, while we’re still in good health.”
He saw her point. If only she could see his when it came to wearing that seat belt. Sometimes he annoyed himself and he doubted that he would ever give up thinking of her safety.
Now he was walking with her, away from the car wreck. And that cat. The sunset blinked through the branches of the autumnal canopy and they eventually came to a stream cut between the immense oaks. Without pause, they stepped into the water. Coldness soaked through to his toes, and he and Martha cleared the stream in two strides. His shoe slipped on the embankment. Martha found it no trouble and remained silent as he composed himself on the other side.
The air damp, the ground swampy, their trek through the woodland became more a zigzag path, avoiding lichen-coated rock and ivy-clad boulders. Some of the boulders were broken, gaping like jagged yawns. Years of forest growth covered each one, and although some were as large as houses, they were dwarfed by the surrounding oak trees.
Over the last few years, Alfred had taken to each day with appreciation. Life was for living. Enjoying. It was sad there were those whom took it upon themselves to end their own lives. What of the driver heading towards the cliff without any intention of braking? Did they, from home to final destination, bother to wear a seat belt? Were they at such an emotional low they clicked the belt into place out of simple habit as opposed to an ironic view of their safety during the oncoming journey? Maybe they wished to avoid any entanglements with the law, and if they considered such things with apparent lucidity then was it not possible to bring themselves out from their most desperate hour?
If only things were as simple as the pleasant stroll he and Martha were now
taking.
Parallel to them, the cat broke the shadows between a scattering of smaller rocks. Its eyes again reflecting the sunset – not at all urban legend but real, as sure as his heartbeat. Incredible. Crisp leaves whispered beneath its paws as it kept pace with them.
A small part of him knew he should be afraid, but…
Thinking back to the accident, Alfred squeezed Martha’s hand. Still she said nothing, nor did she return his small sign of affection. Was it affection? Guilt, most likely. The sun had been low in the sky and he had reduced his speed accordingly, yet he should have seen the cat sooner. The next moments were lost to darkness… and now he was walking with Martha. Walking away from that darkness.
Just as it had then, the beast leapt across their path. Fur glistened, muscles rippled. It bounded in front and froze between tree trunks on the edge of deepening shadows. A flurry of leaves swirled. That impressive beast huddled in a place where rays of red sunshine failed to penetrate.
The air seemed to shrink in Alfred's throat, and he and Martha jerked to a standstill. He must run, return to the car wreck, he had to call the police, an ambulance… Run, run away…
Those red eyes, not reflecting the sun at all but glowing from an inner fire, locked on his own. A heat surged through his body, similar to that which filled him earlier in the day on the south-east coast; a rare warmth which arrived with a strange October, the two of them appreciating both the weather and the other’s company. He was lucky. They were lucky.
From behind them, leaves rustled. Getting louder. Voices too.
Alfred turned.
Two police officers approached between the trees, twigs snapping.
“Sir,” one of them shouted. “Stop there!”
Alfred looked back towards the cat. Its eyes burned, blinked once, and it tilted its great head. And then darted off. No more than a dark streak in shadowy folds, it vanished. A chill rushed through him. His fingers and toes numbed and his breath plumed before him in a lazy cloud. He dragged his eyes from the swaying foliage, from what looked like quivering shadow, and peered over his shoulder. His head throbbed.
