The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  “M-Mom,” Duška cries.

  “She’s…” Sethe can’t get the words out.

  A blast of cold air winds down the hall. It shouldn’t be there. It shouldn’t be this cold inside the house. The candle goes out. He turns into his room.

  The casement window is wide open, and Starla is hanging out of it, her face upside down and staring directly at him. She has a hole in her head. Blood falls languidly from it, freezing before it hits the ground.

  Someone laughs outside the window.

  The rest of Starla is wrenched through it, into the white dark.

  And then Duška screams.

  1

  Bowie’s body forgets it’s seventy-two. A surge of adrenaline takes over and unlocks muscles that gave up so long ago. He hurries down the hall. More snow blows through it from the family room.

  “Girls! Girls! Don’t touch them whoever…”

  The front door is open. A cloaked figure stands in the doorway, holding Duška against him. Snow blows over them, builds up around them. She doesn’t have her blanket. She’s scared. She’s shivering so badly.

  The back door is open. A cloaked figure stands in the doorway, holding Sethe against him. Wind and shards of ice trickle down around them, tinkling when they hit the ground in a magical kind of way that makes the scene sicker. Sethe has her fingers dug into the figure’s arm, her teeth into his hand. The hate is all the warmth she has right now.

  Moonlight pours in through the two doors, but the living room between remains pitch black. That is, until a red light flickers into existence. It stands freely in a grotesque, clawed palm.

  Bowie looks back and forth between the two figures holding his daughters hostage. They’re both too far away from him to do anything. And if he does anything, then one of the girls isn’t going to…

  “Look familiar?”

  The voice comes from the center of the room. From the thing holding the red light.

  “Not exact, I know, but that’s on you,” it continues. “Time to wake up.”

  Bowie buckles over. He takes heavy gulps of air. What little adrenaline he had is gone. His body is on fire. His mind is twisted up inside his skull, trying to work out solutions. He thinks of Starla, and before he knows it, his face is soaked with tears.

  “Gunshot wounds to their faces, right?”

  Bowie looks up. “What are you…?”

  The cloaked figure at the front door takes out a pistol and blows Duška’s face off.

  Bowie’s voice breaks as he screams, “No!”

  The cloaked figure at the back door takes out a pistol.

  “Daddy…” Sethe says.

  Bowie runs towards her, pleading, “Don’t, don’t!”

  And then the cloaked figure pulls the trigger.

  Bowie gets to her by the time she hits the ground. He can’t recognize her anymore.

  “Why?!” he screams until his voice gives out.

  He glances up at the cloaked figure. Its face is mangled and covered in dried blood. The ghoul… the ghoul the townspeople saw…

  Bowie takes Sethe in his arms and goes to Duška. The cloaked figure steps aside. He looks like a ghoul, also. Bowie scoops her up, too, and with each of them slung over his shoulders, he goes, bawling, back towards his room.

  “And the Oscar goes to…” the voice in the dark whispers.

  Bowie stops. The girls are too heavy to carry. He shakes as he cries and sets them back down. He lays them out and then falls onto his haunches. He can’t get up. He’ll never get up again.

  The voice in the dark speaks again. “Not the life I would have chosen, but I can see the appeal. Cozy, for sure.”

  Bowie ignores him. He takes his girls’ hands in his and says, “Just fucking kill me.”

  “No, no. That’s not why I’m here at all.”

  The red light increases in intensity. Holding it is a giant, seven foot mosquito bundled up in a skin cloak. On a different day, Bowie might say it was the worst thing he’s ever seen. But today, his daughters lie dead beside him.

  “I missed you, ghoul.”

  Bowie’s breath catches in his throat. His mind goes elsewhere. Quickly, he refocuses onto the mosquito.

  “I gave you decades upon decades. You did good, you did. But now, it’s time.”

  The mosquito steps up to him. His cloaked cronies fall in at his sides.

  Snow builds in the doorways. The house is pale with moonlight. It looks like a tomb.

  “Go on, ghoul. Put on your killing suit.”

  Bowie’s vision goes dark. He slips inside himself and finds a closet within. Many faces stare back at him. Many lives he’s never known and yet has the greatest affection for. He reaches out to one.

  And one reaches back.

  The ghoul jumps to his feet in the Night Terror, Emvola’s, flesh and lunges for Mr. Haemo.

  Mr. Haemo laughs and catches the ghoul by the wrists and drives his proboscis straight through his neck.

  The ghoul gasps. Dark blood seeps out of the wound. He can’t speak. He can’t breathe.

  “My little cauldron,” Mr. Haemo says, tipping the proboscis so that it goes down the ghoul’s throat, rather than out the back of it. “You’ve stewed and simmered, and after this time, you’re finally ready. One part starved ghoul, one part flesh fiend; hundreds of dead bodies; exposure to a Worm; the acids of depriving yourself a much needed sleep; and of course, a homunculus’ oil.

  “You see, we all have the same Skeleton in our future. I’m glad it’s you, though, that he’ll be reborn from. If the Dread Clock is right, you two will get along very nicely.”

  Mr. Haemo pushes the proboscis directly into the ghoul’s stomach.

  “Now, we have a long journey ahead of us. And years of winter. You’re going need your rest. I’d hate for you to remember any of this.”

  0

  The ghoul wakes to a mouthful of a dirt and an earthworm on his eyeball. Instincts kicking in, he starts digging upwards, raking at the earth. Augmented by hunger, he rips through his shallow grave, from the coldness of his rest, to the heat above.

  One hand explodes out of the ground. He grips the grass and sends his other hand through. The ghoul lifts himself out of the earth and into a hot summer evening. The humidity is thick. He’s swimming in it.

  “Goddamn,” the ghoul says, heaving himself out of the ground and collapsing upon the grass. “Goddamn.”

  He rolls over, sits up; gets his bearings. An abandoned, ripped apart chapel looms over him. And behind him, a haphazard graveyard stretches into the dirty night.

  “Alright, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  The ghoul gets up. His senses are making his mouth pucker. There are so many bodies here to feast on. But where to start? Where to start?

  His nose picks up something sweet, something fresh. He wheels around in search of it until he’s back at the chapel. Realizing it’s coming from in there, he goes in.

  Past the pews and chipped altar is a piece of the floor that’s sunken in to recently disturbed earth. There are flowers there, and a tiny, unmarked headstone. It’s a new grave. A new grave for a new soul.

  The ghoul grumbles. He’s so hungry, but he can’t bring himself to eat a baby. He’ll have to settle for less.

  The ghoul turns—

  And a man slams into him, bringing them both to the ground.

  The ghoul kicks the man in the stomach. A cloud of alcohol explodes from his lips. The man crashes into a pew.

  The ghoul scoots backwards. He’s shaky with hunger. It’s been a long while since he’s killed someone, but if he’s got to, then he’s got to.

  The man staggers to his feet. He’s lean, black, and somewhere in his early thirties. Veins bulge from his frame. He’s killed before, the ghoul knows, and right now, has no qualms about doing it again.

  “Get the hell away from there,” the man says, slurring his words.

  The ghoul glances at the tiny grave.

  The man moves towards him.

>   “I’m not.” He holds out his hands, stopping him. “I’m not. I wouldn’t do that.”

  The man straightens up. He rumbles out a slow belch. It slides over his lips like vomit would. “What’re you doing here?”

  The ghoul shakes his head. “I just woke up. Don’t know how I got here.”

  “Well, get.”

  The ghoul stays put.

  The man licks his lips, pushes sweat from his forehead into his hair. He rubs tears out of his eyes.

  “You okay?”

  The man stares at him with daggers in his eyes.

  “Is that your little girl in that grave?”

  The man’s mouth quivers. “How’d you know she was a girl?”

  The ghoul taps his nose. “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Vale.” The man sniffs his nose. “Her name, for a moment, was Vale.”

  The ghoul nods, whispers, “What’s your name?”

  The man looks at his surroundings, as if he can’t believe he’s having a conversation with this creature. “Atticus,” he finally says, sobering up. “Most just call me Gravedigger.”

  The ghoul can’t remember much, but he remembers cordiality going a long way with the so-called “Corrupted.” So he extends his hand to the Gravedigger and says, “It’s nice to meet you.”

  The Gravedigger is hesitant. But after some deliberation, he wipes his hand on his pantleg and takes the ghoul by the wrist. “What do they call you, ghoul?”

  The ghoul opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out, because he doesn’t know what to say.

  He remembers he had a family once. They’re dead now. He remembers he had been awake before this. There were strange creatures. And the world wasn’t right. He remembers mosquitoes. And blood. And the smell of old people. And snow. And there’s this dark place inside his head, and he sees a lot of flesh he used to possess, but now its stretched and wrinkled and discolored from disuse. He couldn’t wear them, not even if he wanted to.

  And oddly enough, with this Gravedigger guy, he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to be anything but his decrepit self. He sees a man hurting, and in the corner, the object of his hurt, and thinks maybe, just maybe, something could be done about this.

  The ghoul smiles. He can’t remember his name, but being a smartass, or at least having once worn the skin of a smartass, he gets clever and tells Atticus: “It’s Gary. Gary the ghoul.”

  The Gravedigger’s scowl turns upward slightly into the hint of a smile. “You hungry, Gary?”

  Gary nods. “Starving.”

  The Gravedigger exhales loudly, blinks the tears out of his eyes. He shakes, fighting back another meltdown, and staring at Vale’s grave, says, “Well, let’s see what we’ve got to eat around here. Keep your head low. Clementine’ll take it off if she sees you kicking around in the dark.”

  “Okay,” Gary says, laughing. “She your wife?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Prettiest.”

  “Lucky man.”

  “Yeah.”

  Gary clenches his jaw. “Got another child?”

  The Gravedigger shakes his head. “No. Not sure we ever will. But there is this kid that keeps coming around these parts. James. He’s a timid thing.

  “Listen, you got me in a bad way. I’ll cut you a deal, Gary. I’ll let you have your run of the corpses if you keep an eye on my baby Vale’s grave here. Don’t let nothing get to it. I haven’t had a friend…”

  Gary grabs the Gravedigger’s hand and shakes it. “Deal.”

  “Alright, then. Now, since I always do everything all ass-backwards and complicated-like,” the Gravedigger says, “let’s go walking in the moonlight so I can get to know you some. I’m sure you a got story to tell.”

  Gary didn’t.

  But he would.

  YOU HAVE BEEN READING

  “THE AGONY OF AFTER.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SCOTT HALE is the author of The Bones of the Earth series. He is a graduate from Northern Kentucky University with a Bachelors in Psychology and Masters in Social Work. He has completed The Bones of the Earth series, and has since begun working on a standalone novel entitled In Sheep’s Skin. Scott Hale currently resides in Norwood, Ohio with his wife and frequent collaborator, Hannah Graff, and their three cats, Oona, Bashik, and Bellatrix.

  The Eight Apostates

  by

  Scott Hale

  DEICIDES

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any relevance to any person, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

  THE EIGHT ASPOSTATES

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © June 2019 Scott Hale

  Cover art by Hannah Graff

  Map by Jacquelyn Graff

  Edited by Dawn Lewis

  This book is protected under the copyright law of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  First Edition: June 2019

  Copyright © 2019 Scott Hale

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7330966-2-1

  BOOKS BY SCOTT HALE

  The Bones of the Earth series

  The Bones of the Earth (Book 1)

  The Three Heretics (Book 2)

  The Blood of Before (Book .1)

  The Cults of the Worm (Book 3)

  The Agony of After (Book .2)

  The Eight Apostates (Book 4)

  Novels

  In Sheep’s Skin (Coming 2020)

  Subscribe to mailing list for future updates!

  Listen to Terrorcast, hosted by Scott and Kameron Hale.

  CHAPTER I

  The taste of blood was quickly becoming one of Vrana’s most favorite tastes, and the inside of her mouth ached for it. Things hadn’t always been this way for her, but Pain would do to that to a person. It wasn’t necessarily hunger, but hungry necessity. She needed those fear-soaked, human-shaped sacks of meat the same way her lungs needed oxygen to breathe. There was no substitute. Without it, she would starve, and she would die, and though she often thought of starving and dying, she was too afraid to do either. Flesh and blood were her sadistic sustenance; elemental substances to stoke the flames of her debased, primal fire. But if she went, then so, too, would the man who depended upon her. She was Aeson’s flesh and blood, his oxygen; he consumed her company in copious quantities, not because he wanted to, but because she made him. Without her, he would starve, and he would die. And Vrana couldn’t have that. She’d lost enough as it was to this world and to the Void. She dared not lose any more. There were worse things she could be than the beast she’d become.

  Vrana rolled her Abyss-black eyes and drove her knee into the stomach of the Corrupted she’d pinned. He wheezed, tore out handfuls of feathers from her torso. Vrana shuddered, thinking that, not long ago, she would’ve been ecstatic to be rid of some feathers. A Night Terror who wore a mask stripped of feathers or scales or flesh through accomplishment was one to be reckoned with. Now, she couldn’t be happier to have them. This winter was a cold winter, and she kept Aeson warm when blankets wouldn’t. That, and she knew what her body looked like beneath the feathers. She remembered that day with the Witch well. The sight, even the memory of it, made her sicker than any of these weekly hunts.

  “P-P-Please,” the Corrupted puttered.

  Vrana’s gaze lingered on his suffering face. It was sad that slaughter could become so routine. She kept her kills alive longer these days, for no reason other than to give the Corrupted a chance to fight back or escape. It wasn’t that she intended to torture them; it was that she hoped there was more beyond the tears and the whimpering, and the pitiful pleas and gasping prayers. Pain had taken her there, beyond that threshold. Perhaps if she took one of the Corrupted there, they
’d become something else, too.

  The Corrupted bucked his body. Vrana lost her balance. He squirmed out from underneath her. The thrill of the hunt pricked her gut like pins. She noticed Aeson’s moonlit shape behind the trees, gathering snow on his shoulders, and sighed.

  Before the Corrupted got to his feet, Vrana leapt towards him. She wrapped her wings around him, pulled him against her breast. He screamed—a mistake—and with his mouth opened wide, she opened it wider.

  She raked his face. His flesh fell apart like wet sand. He pressed his hands to his head, into the soupy pulp of exposed muscle and raw, raging nerves. Webs of sticky blood formed between his fingers. Crying out, the Corrupted stop fighting the inevitable and, instead, turned towards it.

  Vrana swallowed her hunger and drove her beak through the man’s skull, into his brain. Lobotomized, the Corrupted’s eyes went separate ways, and his words turned to spit upon his lips; and when he should’ve crossed that threshold and become something more, he died instead.

  Vrana nodded violently. Her beak passed like a razor through the center of the man’s face, obliterating his remaining features. Like a fish gawping for scraps, she snapped at the gory remains falling like the snow fell through the air.

  “I’m g-going to g-go b-back,” Aeson said.

  With the snow up to his knees, he had to brute force his way through it. He stopped a few inches short of Vrana and the Corrupted she now held in her covetous gluttony.

  “Wait.” She tore the Corrupted’s spinal cord from his body and picked it clean. “I’ll go back with you.”

  Aeson didn’t cringe at the sight of this. He might’ve, before Kistvaen’s eruption, before the flesh fiend had raped him in the Dismal Sticks, but a lot of things might’ve been different had those days never happened. He wouldn’t be traumatized. She wouldn’t be here.

  “It’s fine,” he said.

  Vrana’s stomach tightened. A hard ball of gore congealed like a bezoar in her gut. She wasn’t as hungry as she had led him on to be, but she had to feed. When Kistvaen erupted, the Corrupted stopped fearing the Night Terrors and turned against them. King Edgar bolstered their confidence by putting a continent-wide bounty on the head of every living Night Terror. The Great Hunt, as it was called, was a religiously sanctioned holocaust whose rewards included a hefty amount of coin and guaranteed admittance into heaven.