And he loathed the humans all the more for their unintentional offerings. They were weak things, the humans, their hatred and fear of his mother, siblings, and self, had cost him his life and he detested them for that. Worse still, he could empathize with them now, and that was something he would have rather avoided.
He did not wish to have sympathy for his enemies. He preferred to wait in ignorance and let them remain unknown and unknowable. There was a boy in the town that seemed to call to him, and he resented that fact. The beacon of the boy’s psyche did not call for him to take what he wanted and destroy everything else; it called to ask for aid, and he had no desire to help the human, even if it benefited his mother.
At the thought of her, he shivered, running long thin arms over his body, and crooned softly at the memories of her savage death. Three people in the entire world had ever treated Robert Bathory with kindness or even simple respect. Of those three, it was his mother he missed most profoundly.
Oh, how the villagers had screamed when he came out of the woods to defend her! The memory of their bodies breaking beneath his hands was enough to rouse him further. That simple recollection was one of the few he had that did not involve negative connotations.
Enough. It was time to rise, time to seek out the one who called to him. Not the boy; the boy could wait. No, he had to find the woman who had the spoor of the mushrooms coursing through her blood. She was going to die, that much he knew, but the taint that marked her dying breaths was a special thing and one he needed if he were to grow strong again.
His shell had loosened the ground when he attacked the bear; so climbing free from his earthen womb was easy enough. The joints in his pale body ached from inactivity and his muscles would surely have atrophied if not for the spoor from the witch’s tongue. That few simple drops had restored much of his vitality.
He was vulnerable, and he knew it. Unlike his brothers, Robert was not physically powerful. Most of the bones he’d surrounded himself with previously were water-damaged and impossible to use. Time had decayed them beyond any sort of function.
But there were new bones to be had. All he had to do was get past the meat. He scrambled from his hole in the ground and walked over to the bear’s carcass, pausing long enough to lap at the remaining tainted blood that still rested on the cooling body. The fur tasted horrible, but he could tolerate that.
Then, freshly fed, he got to work. Wickedly sharp claws ripped into the massive bulk and tore fur and muscles away with frightening ease. The bones were bloody and still had a few tendons and lumps of flesh on them, but they would do for now.
Powerful filaments lanced out from Robert’s thin frame and adhered to the bones he chose. He pulled and the skeletal remains separated, drawn to him with the greatest of ease.
Dressing himself with only one decent collection of bones was a challenge, but Robert had always had a certain affection for puzzles.
III
Reggie paced anxiously. Natalie was not doing well at all. The blood flow had been staunched: he remembered enough of his basic first aid to manage a few pressure bandages. It had cost him his shirt and hers, but the wounds had been dressed as best he could manage.
He’d been waiting for almost half an hour when the paramedics arrived. He understood the problem well enough; there was no easy way to access the Hollow. It was definitely off the beaten path.
Two men came his way, both of them sweating as they carried a stretcher between them. The board and brace combination was fully covered with several boxes of medical supplies.
Natalie moaned at his feet, her body writhing slowly and her mouth opening as her tongue licked her lips. If he hadn’t known the distress she was in, he would have thought the sounds almost sensual. She opened her eyes and stared into the sky with eyes that saw nothing.
Reggie waved frantically to get the attention of the paramedics. It was unnecessary and he knew it, but he had to do something. The men moved as quickly as they could with their burden, slipping and stumbling down the steep hill, but never actually falling.
They didn’t bother with speaking to Reggie when they finally got to him. Instead they focused all of their attention on Natalie. Reggie wanted to scream, wanted to demand that they save her, but stopped himself from being a complete ass.
In the distance, over the sound of the men working on Natalie, Reggie heard a different noise, a clattering cadence that simply did not fit with the sounds he expected to hear in the woods.
He looked around for the source of the disturbance, but saw little aside from the trees and plants that made the area unique. Even now, he marveled at them, though in truth he felt ashamed of himself for doing it. They were just plants, and nowhere near as important as Natalie.
“Okay, let’s go.” The deep voice of the paramedic surprised Reggie, and he looked down just as the men were putting Natalie on the stretcher. Her shoulders were re-bandaged with proper dressing and he could see the tape on her back.
He grabbed up their medical supplies while the two men lifted Natalie between them. Natalie was petite in comparison to either of the men, but she was also deadweight and they needed their strength to carry her without risking dropping her on her head. The ground was slippery with mud and covered in a heavy scattering of the damned mushrooms. All three men had to watch their steps to avoid taking a spill.
He walked carefully, thinking of the equipment in his hands and the woman in front of him. She was groaning now, loudly enough that he could hear her even from ten feet away. He could also hear that clattering sound again, and it was closer. Reggie looked back at the Victim Trees and saw it for the first time.
The thing was a cacophony of bloodstained bones, an almost skeleton from some large beast, but assembled in ways that made no sense. The thick legs were long, but made to seem shorter because of the other bones that were attached to them, mimicking the movement of muscles. Bones slid across each other and creaked as the thing walked around the tree, seeking something. A skull with massive curved fangs swiveled back and forth, the hollow sockets looking at the ground and the tracks he and the other men had made.
Then the oddity turned, the bloody, raw looking head cocking to the side slightly as it looked in his direction. There was a shuffling, scraping noise as several of the bones that made the body of the creature rearranged themselves and it reached down to awkwardly pluck a few mushrooms from the ground.
Reggie stared at it, uncomprehending, as it shoved the mushrooms into its open mouth.
The hand it had created ended in thick black claws, sharply hooked and curved.
That’s the bear. He looked at the thing and knew he was right; something had torn the bear apart and made it a puppet somehow.
While he was thinking about what could have done something like that, the bear-thing was heading in his direction. It walked surprisingly well all things considered. He looked for the wires that held it together but saw none.
Reggie pinched himself in the arm and tried to snap himself out of his shocked state. The pain helped.
“Guys? Gentlemen? I think we have a situation.”
The paramedics stopped, irritated by the interruption. They were half way up the steep hill and saw where he was pointing.
One of the men, the taller of the two, looked down the hill and scowled, as confused by what was there as Reggie was. The other man, a stout, shorter individual grew almost ghostly pale.
Shorty looked at his partner and said, “We need to get the fuck out of here, now.”
“What the hell is that thing?”
“Old Bones,” Shorty said.
The first paramedic looked to his partner and then back over at the thing coming their way. He looked like he wanted to piss himself. “Just go. Go, go, go!”
The two men started climbing, careful of their passenger but eager to get gone from the area.
As soon as they started moving faster, the thing down in the hollow reacted. The bones on its body shifted and relocated themselves and
it dropped to all fours, moving more like a dog than anything else.
Enough was enough as far as Reggie was concerned. He dropped his packages and started running. Medical supplies fell and clattered back down the steep slope and he scrambled after them, using his hands to grip the rough grass for extra purchase. As he looked up the hill, he saw the paramedics finally cresting the top and vanishing from his sight.
Reggie scrambled faster, afraid to look behind him. He finally made it to the top of the steep slope and ran as fast as he could. It wasn’t long before he caught up with the men.
“What the fuck is that thing?”
“Just…just run, mister. Just get away. We’ve got your girlfriend and we won’t leave her.”
He’d run earlier, as hard as he could to escape from the bear. He’d abandoned Natalie once and didn’t think he could face himself in the mirror if he did it to her a second time.
Reggie looked around for any kind of weapon and found nothing, It was very possible he’d have found some excellent choices if he’d kept the medical supplies with him, but he would also have been torn apart by now.
The rattling noises were coming closer and he turned to face the thing coming up from behind them while the two medics did their best to haul ass with Natalie between them. Natalie wasn't moving at all.
The thing looked at him from empty sockets. He thought he saw a glimmer of light cast back by something deep inside the skull. He couldn’t be sure.
“What do you want?” Why am I asking it questions now? What the hell is wrong with me, I should be running!
The collection of bones moved forward again, ignoring him as if he didn’t even exist. The bear skull craned and looked in the direction of Natalie on the stretcher. There was no mistaking what it was looking for.
Reggie watched it walk past, watched the bones that slid and creaked and the drying blood and gristle that were gradually flaking away from the animated nightmare. He could almost make out a form lost inside the bear’s ribcage, but there was too much flesh left covering those bones for him to be certain. Natalie was dying and this thing wanted to do something even worse to her.
He couldn’t let that happen. He just had to figure out how to stop it.
IV
The human looked at him and asked questions, as if he would speak with it, even if he could. They stank of fear, the whole sorry lot of them. He was disgusted by their proximity.
The taste of mushrooms was still redolent on his tongue, and he could feel the restorative effects of the fungi as they entered his system, but it wasn’t enough. He needed more; he wanted to cleanse his pallet with the blood of the woman up ahead.
She was already dying, but she was not like most of the humans who ate the mushroom; they were trying to change her to make her into something else and he wanted that change for himself. He wasn’t really sure what would happen if he feasted, but he was willing to take the chance.
Two men carried the woman on a board between them. They kept looking in his direction, afraid of what he might do to them. They were unimportant to him. The scent coming from the woman was what mattered most. He had to have her.
Robert moved forward, cursing the limited tools he had to work with. He stretched out his limbs and moved faster, not willing to let her escape from him.
The one he’d already walked past tried to stop him. As he continued onward, the man took a running start and then jumped, fully intent on knocking Robert over.
Warm, soft flesh met with his bone shield and the man let out a gasp of pain as the sharp edges of the bear’s vertebrae cut into his meaty parts. Robert stopped moving forward and sagged under the unexpected weight.
“Ahh, shit that hurts.”
The words were clear enough, but even if they hadn’t been, Robert would have understood. The fool hadn’t given any thought at all to what he was doing.
Robert turned and looked at the man. He was trying to pull his hands away from the bones without hurting himself any further. Robert flexed his hands and shuffled the bones of his form, seeking the best way to kill the nuisance.
The woman was getting further away and he was feeling the need for her more than ever before.
The spoor from the mushrooms was on the one attacking him as well, but he had not been affected by it. It had not entered his system. The man finally pulled his hands free, whimpering as the blood flowed from his palms.
Robert reached out and slashed him across the chest, drawing bright red lines of pain across the human’s flesh. He fell back, screaming, his eyes wide as he realized that he’d been injured. Blood from his wounded palms mingled with the stains on his bleeding chest and he fell, landing on his rear end as he looked at the smears that covered him.
Robert looked at the man for a moment longer, contemplated killing him and decided against it. He could come back later if he wanted to, but for now the man’s whimpering was annoying and the meal he sought was being carried away.
His stomach ached from the lack of nutrition. His senses still seemed dulled from his years of deep hibernation, and he needed to satiate his hunger if he wanted to adjust fully to the world around him.
He moved away from the fallen man and charged as quickly as he could for the remaining humans. The men looked his way and trembled. They were weaker stuff than he recalled; in times past they’d have had reason to be afraid, but as he was now, he was barely a threat.
Robert shook his head, hating that the faces in front of him seemed familiar. Not from his life, which had been without senses for a very long time, but from his dreams. The mortal dreams that had run through his head and left him feeling emotions he did not care to experience. He knew them, knew their pains and ambitions and worst of all, he empathized with them. It was repugnant.
Angered by his sudden fit of sentimental weakness, Robert lashed out, striking the taller of the men and carving trenches into his chest. The man wailed and dropped his precious burden, making it that much easier for Robert to finally reach his prey. The other male pulled a thick black thing from the side of his pants and slammed it against the bear skull Robert wore. The bone was thick and fresh and strong; the black thing was not and broke on the second impact.
As he seemed to like the skull, Robert let him see it up close and used the fangs to bite down on the fool’s face. Flesh and meat and cartilage tore away from the skull beneath and the man shrieked, forgetting all about trying to hurt Robert. He was by far the most traumatized of Robert’s victims, his wounds almost immediately mortal.
Robert ignored the screams coming from three different sources and looked instead to the woman who had partaken of forbidden fruit.
She lay strapped in the device the men had used to carry her, pinned and ineffectual. Her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids and her mouth opened and gasped greedily for air. Robert looked down at her, suddenly unsure of his motives. Was he supposed to drink her blood? He was no longer certain.
Deep within the recesses of the bear’s skull, Robert closed his eyes and listened to the wind, the straining for the voice he knew was out there, somewhere, waiting to tell him what he needed to know.
He mewled, the sound a faint thing, barely audible, and then struck his borrowed bones together in a rapid succession of clacks and rattles that meant nothing to anyone save for him and his blood relatives.
When he got an answer, it came from the woman before him. With unnatural strength she tore the straps that held her in place, snapping them easily. The bones in her arms broke in the process, but she barely seemed to notice. With hands dangling loosely from ruined forearms, the woman reached out and wrapped herself around the skeletal fusion of bear parts that made Robert’s new body.
Dry lips brushed against the muzzle of the bear’s skull and found a spot to whisper to Robert where he hid deep inside.
“My sweet boy, my little Bobby.”
Joy swept through him, not the dreams of other’s happiness, but pure, undiluted love. Robert’s hands clattered together stut
tering out his excited words. He had hoped and yes, even prayed that his mother had survived what was done to her, but to know, at last to know finally that she still existed in some form was enough to make him feel complete again.
She brushed her lips across the bone and meat of his face and sighed. “I’ve very little time, my sweet boy. Listen to me and listen carefully.”
Robert leaned in closer to hear her words.
V
Reggie sat on the ground and looked at his blood for a long, long time. Or maybe it was a short time. He’d lost track of everything but the free-flowing red that ran from the wounds until it slowed a bit. It hadn't stopped, but it was getting close. When he could finally focus on anything else, he saw things that left him decidedly unhappy.
The bone-thing was holding Natalie in its arms. Her face was pressed against the creature’s rot crusted skull and it looked like she was kissing the thing. Nearby one of the paramedics had fallen to the ground and was no longer moving; most of his face had been torn away and the one remaining eye stared toward the sky. His chest did not rise or fall. The other man was on his knees, pressing his hands against a large bloodstain that blackened his shirt.
“Natalie?”
Reggie stood up, groaning with the effort. The world tilted a little to the left, but he managed to right it. The trick was in not moving his head too fast.
He took a few tentative steps and when he was sure he wouldn’t fall on his face, he moved closer to where the monster and Natalie were holding onto each other. She was speaking to the thing, probably begging for mercy. The problem with skulls is you can’t really read a lot of emotions off of them. Nothing moved except the jaw: there was no way to gauge any reactions when there was nothing to show an expression.
He came up from behind the thing a second time, pausing long enough to find a stout stick, because his hands were already in enough pain. He’d stop the damned thing anyway he could, he owed that much at least to Natalie.
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