by Hallows,Kit
As I inched closer to the chamber I spotted the passage Hellwyn had mentioned. I ducked into it, glad to be out of view of the twisted figures tending their fires.
The passage was pitch black. I pulled my phone from my pocket, glad Hellwyn had either missed it, or disregarded my taking it with me. It felt strange in my hand, utterly out of place in this otherworldly realm. The glow of the display was swallowed up by the unearthly darkness and did little to light my way, all I could see were thick stone walls and a flight of worn stairs leading down. I turned the flashlight app on, pointed the beam toward my feet and made my way down the steps.
When I reached the bottom, a long corridor stretched before me, its walls lit by eerie, pulsing, glowing blue and green lights. As I got closer, I could see they weren't lights, but some kind of fungus. They trembled and twitched as I leaned in to inspect them and lurched away. It looked like bracket fungi; long shelves of fruiting mushrooms.
The place reeked of damp and mold and a cold draft issued along the corridor. I strode on but slowed as something moved in the darkness ahead.
I reached for my gun but it wasn't there. "Shit."
I pulled the sword from its sheath but it felt wrong. Like it was simply a costume prop, like I was eleven years old once more, playing pirates with my friends.
And then a white pinprick of light appeared in the gloom and I could see the outline of a person coming towards me.
I pocketed the phone and held the sword with both hands. Was this the beast?
No, it was a woman...
My gorge rose as she shuffled into the halo of light radiating from the fungus.
She wore a moth-eaten wool dress, caked in dirt, and blood.
Her lips were half chewed off, her face a map of festering wounds. One of her eyes was missing, the other the color of curdled milk. It glowed as it jiggled in its socket and fixed upon me.
She moaned and reached out with broken fingers, her other arm ending in little more than a stump encrusted with dry blood.
A zombie.
"Great." I held the sword out as she shambled forward, gnashing her chipped shards of teeth together. A stench of bile and rot leaked from her half open throat.
And then with a hoarse cry of rage, she lunged at me.
29
I jumped aside as the zombie turned to strike again. She snapped and groaned. The stench of rot and decay was overwhelming. I wanted to run, put as much distance between myself and this abomination as possible but I knew she'd follow me. Besides, I never run, not when I can help it.
The zombie darted and pounced, her twisted clawed fingers jutting toward my face. I stepped back and allowed my thoughts to focus, to stream from my mind, through my limbs and into the sword.
She attacked again.
Cut.
The sword almost danced as I swung, it bit through her wrist and cleaved off her hand. It fell to the ground with a soft thump as she hissed and lumbered on.
End.
I swung the sword again. My focus on her throat, my intent to decapitate, to put an end to her monstrous wretched half life. The blade slipped through her flesh spilling blood as thick and sluggish as crude oil.
Her eye glowed with a piercing light and I'd swear I heard a strangled, half human plea. Then the crimson line across her throat yawned open and her head toppled to the ground, followed by her jittering, thrashing form.
I sheathed the sword, grabbed my phone and took off down the tunnel, eager to escape the sound of the twitching corpse behind me.
One tunnel led to another, twisting and turning, the grime and dirt growing thicker the further I went. Great tangled webs dangled over the path, I held my breath as I strained to listened for the approach of the unimaginable creature that must have woven them. More tunnels, more twists. Soon the glowing fungus grew in such proliferation that I no longer needed my phone to light the way.
Bones littered the floor. Nestled amongst them were skulls, some human, some canine, but most I could not identify. I paused to take a closer look and realized that many belonged to a species of large formidable looking beasts I'd never seen. Nor wanted to.
With the exception of my own footfalls, the place was silent. I tried to walk quietly but now and then the crunch of tiny shards of bones rang out, giving my position away to anything that might be lurking in this god forsaken place.
It seemed like I'd been wandering for hours in the still, abandoned depths when two new tunnels appeared. They branched off to my left and right while the tunnel I'd been following led to a shadowy flight of stairs that plunged into darkness. I paused as an eerie sound drifted up from below. A voice. It was too muffled to for me to understand the words, but it sounded like a man. His voice low and urgent, his cadence almost sing-song.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled and once again I reached for my bag of tricks and gun. I felt so frigging naked without them, vulnerable.
Slowly, I made my way down the steps.
An empty doorway awash with firelight yawned at the foot of the stairs and the flickering light spread across the flagstoned floor. The splintered remains of two wooden doors hung from heavy black iron hinges and, through the large gaps and holes that had been punched through the wood, I could see a long open room. One wall was lit by flaming torches, while the other danced with shadows. In the center was a row of benches, like pews in a church.
Three small figures sat huddled at the front, their silhouettes leaning against one another as if drunk or asleep. They faced the man standing before them. His voice was louder now. "...the princess lived in a castle surrounded by gardens and sunlit dells, and trees laden with the plumpest, juiciest fruits you've ever seen."
I crept into the room and edged along the shadowy walls. If the man had seen me, he showed no sign of it, he just continued with his story.
There was madness in his voice. Madness and despair.
He wore what might once have been a nice coat, nut-brown with patched at the elbows, now ragged and torn. His hair was greasy and wild and hung in curtains, almost obscuring his round wire-framed glasses.
He looked like an accountant lost in the wilds of some terrible place.
A place just like this.
I glanced toward the three figures on the bench, I could not see their faces but I could tell they were children. They remained frozen as the man clawed his fingers and his raised voice boomed in the character of a fairy tale beast.
There's only one beast here. I had no idea where the thought came from, but I knew it was true. Then I noticed the string tied around the children's arms and legs, pulled taut to keep them sitting up and at attention. The chill running across the nape of my neck was consumed by a hot flash of rage.
"...and do you know what the princess was called?" the man continued, seemingly unaware of my presence. Light flickered upon his glasses as he cocked his head towards his audience.
I drew parallel with the children. A flood of bile rose, stopping just short of my mouth.
They were dead, their throats slashed, their garments spattered with blood. Each sweet tiny porcelain face was frozen with horror, their wide glassy eyes staring.
His captive audience.
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"It's not how it seems." The man turned to me. "Now please, step out from the shadows and show yourself."
Rage simmered through me. "It's not how it seems? You mean those children aren't bound and their throats aren't slashed?" My fingers gripped the pommel of my sword.
"What are you doing here, in our home?" The man asked, his voice broken and insane. "It's far too late for visitors."
"I'm looking for a monster and I think I just found it."
"There's no monster here." He shook his head decisively. "Now, you must go. I need to finish the story before I put my children to bed." He pointed to a series of makeshift beds, each carefully covered with a thick blanket of dust and silken cobwebs.
"Why did you do it?" I asked. I could barely move or think as the utter
horror washed over me in ever more powerful waves. "Why?"
He glanced back to his slain audience. "I...I had to save them."
"Save them. By cutting their throats?"
His brow furrowed. "Do you think it was an easy choice for a father to make?"
I pulled my sword from its sheath and held it by my side.
"You'll never understand what it was like,' he continued, one finger pointing my way, "never!"
"Tell me why." There was no question, I was going to kill him, but before I did I had to make sense of this evil.
"We came to escape." The man smiled, exposing small yellow teeth. "Go to the Hinterlands they said. You'll be safe there. Well, did it matter? Because we certainly couldn't stay where we were. The whole place teeming with them. Everywhere, people turning, transforming into those...into those things. I didn't want to watch my family suffer like that, and I didn't want to suffer that fate either." He trailed off and gazed into the darkness behind me.
"What fate?"
"The sickness," he said. "The pestilence that turned the dead to living and the living to dead. We fled, left everything; our possessions, our gold, our home. As well as my research. All gone. We ventured through the forbidden caves and finally we were delivered to...safety." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Tell me, does it seem like a safe place to you?"
I had no answer for him.
"I thought it could be a fresh start, or that we could at least ride it out. Hide for a while, gather our thoughts and wits, and once we had, find a new land. A place for the living. And we would have too, I believe that."
"What happened?"
"I thought we'd left the darkness behind, but we'd brought it along with us."
He stepped into the light of the flaming torch and now I could see his face more clearly, the tiny veins in his forehead inky blue and black, the yellow tinge of his eyes and his bloody gums as he smiled. "My wife had been bitten. She'd hidden it from me. Hid her shame and terror. Perhaps she thought the infection would simply vanish once we left our world. That's what I tell myself."
He stepped towards me. I clenched my sword tighter.
"She's wandering out there even now. Lost and alone." He nodded towards the door.
I thought of the woman in the wool spun dress and shivered. "What about the children?"
"I'd been out foraging. Some of the fungus in the tunnels is perfectly nutritious, and there's a cavern with a pool of water and fish. Revolting things, but edible. I was only gone for a few hours but when I came back..." He stopped, choked by his words. "When I came back she'd turned and.... bitten my little angels." He took a deep breath, his hands clenched to fists as he moved closer to me.
"And then what?" I took a step away. The wall was right at my back.
"She returned to her senses. For a few scant moments at least. I took her away, dragged her through the tunnels like a savage dog. I set her free at a crossroads and she wandered off. That was the last I saw of her."
I already knew the story's end, but he continued.
"And then I bound up my angels so they couldn't harm each other and I went in search of help. But there was none. This place is filled with hard, soulless creatures. Everyone's out for themselves. No one cares." He shook his head. "Maybe that's not true. Some did show mercy, but none could help. They thought I might find a cure, in some other world. So I came back to collect my angels...but they were lost, burning up, turning...I couldn't bear to watch. So I...so I ended their torment."
"I'm so sorry," I said as I sheathed the sword.
"Sorry?" He smiled. "It seems like such a tiny little word." He pointed to his forehead. "Can you see them, the black worms crawling through my veins?" The edge crept back into his voice.
"It looks like an infection."
"The infection. Soon I'll be one of...them," he nodded to the children. "Which is why I was set to spend one last night with my angels. But you arrived." He pointed to my sword. "You look like a man who's no stranger to violence and death. Help me end it."
"I don't understand," I said, even though I did.
"End my life, then burn this room to charcoal. Stop the sickness from spreading."
I was filled with apprehension. Killing him the moment I'd seen the children would have been one thing, but after he'd told me the truth? Now that I knew of the heartbreaking, hideous choice he'd had to make and how it had sent him over the edge?
He sniffed the air. "You carry so many scents. So many worlds. So much death. You've dealt more than your fair share of endings. All I'm asking for is one more. A mercy killing."
"I can't. It's not how I do things. There has to be a reason-"
"Is this not reason enough?" He cried. The black worms in his forehead began to squirm.
"This is not what I came for, I was sent to slay a beast."
"Is a sickness that turns little children into the undead not monstrous enough for you?"
"I've never taken an innocent life."
He stepped forwards and gazed into my eyes. "I can see it," he said.
"See what?"
"The darkness inside you. You've got more than enough to do what I ask."
I shook my head. "I'm sorry." I began to walk away. I'd report my findings to Hellwyn, see what she wanted to do about it.
And then I felt his hand on the back of my raincoat. His eyes were dark now. Like flint. "You'll slay this monster. It's what you were sent to do. Do it now, before I have to force your hand."
"Force my hand?" What was he going to do, pull a pen from his pocket and stab me with it?
"I've studied the arcane arts. I can transform, if only for a short while. I can become something else...."
I shrugged his hand off and strode toward the door but the air began to shift around me. The temperature plummeted. I turned back as he began to shout.
"You came to slay a beast? Then a beast I will be." A dense cloud of magic swirled around him and the dark eddies mimicked the worms that wriggled across his forehead.
The spell he was conjuring was one of transformation, but it was like nothing I'd ever seen. The billowing magic that surrounded him swirled faster and faster, and formed menacing shapes.
Wolves.
He spoke in strange tongues and began to grunt like a savage. Fur erupted from his face, throat and hand. Thick, wild lustrous brown and grey fur.
His eyes narrowed and shifted as his face elongated into a snout and his glasses clattered to the ground. He threw his head back to reveal long, curved, wicked, ivory fangs. A dry tearing sound came from his suit as his body became wracked with spasms. Fur jutted from the holes in his clothes and his eyes glowed yellow around his black sliver-like pupils. "A pity you pushed me to this." His voice was low and hoarse. Primal. Long black claws sprouted from his fingers.
He grabbed a flaming torch from the wall and threw it onto the bench beside his children, splattering them with hot pitch. Within moments the flames danced and spread across their clothes.
I couldn't watch, and as I turned away, I found him stalking towards me, the man gone and in his place, a beast.
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I unsheathed my sword as the monster raked its paw through the air, faster than I could move. Firelight glinted on each of the curled black claws that descended towards me.
I stumbled back as its claws raked at my chest. The raincoat shimmered and the beast roared, snatching its paw away as pain and bewilderment twisted its monstrous face.
I held the sword like a silver barrier between us.
Kill.
The hilt trembled in my hand as I focused my intention but images of the man he'd been and the children he'd lost flashed through my mind. I shut them away, took a step back, and steadied my grip on the sword as the monster leapt at me. The blade glinted as I swung it toward the creature's thick, furry throat.
The wolf smacked the blade with a great paw and howled as it sunk into its flesh. Hot red blood spattered my face as it wrenched its hand away. Its growl was low and feral as
it stalked in a slow deliberate arc, its eyes gleamed and its teeth gnashed in fury.
I prepared myself for the onslaught, but the creature cradled its paw beneath its armpit and bounded away, shouldering the remains of the door off its hinges and vanishing into the shadows.
Heat blazed at my back. The conflagration roared and spat across the chamber, engulfing the benches and turning the three tiny lifeless figures into bright red orange dolls of fire.
I fled from the burning room as a mournful howl echoed through the tunnels above. The stairs were splattered with drops of steaming blood. I ran up, taking them two at a time as snakes of black smoke swirled behind me.
Where was he? I scoured the gloom for a sign of the beast, but he was gone.
Paw prints were scattered through the dirt and dust. I ran, following them until a stitch pricked my side, forcing me to stop.
I leaned over to catch my breath and strained to hear the beast's movement. The place was silent but for the occasional drip of water from the caverns above.
Once again I found myself reaching for my bag. "No crystals, no gun." I needed magic, and fast. I closed my eyes and reached out, hoping to tap into any mystical pockets of energy that might dwell in this dark, forsaken place.
The place sizzled with magic, it thrummed through the cold stone walls. I reached out to the ancient rock tunnel and shivered as the power buzzed through my hand.
It washed through every part of my being, quenching a long aching thirst. I trembled like a lost man in the desert who's finally found an oasis. The sheer abundance of power was almost overwhelming.
But it was a dark magic.
It twisted through me and reached into the core of my being, searching for something I'd long suppressed. The darkness within.
I stood tall, my muscles rippling, my senses more alive than they'd ever been. I felt invincible. And starved for destruction. My very being screamed to burn up the power coursing through me. I ran, my footsteps hard and fast as I thundered through the tunnel. I had quarry to pursue. My mind delighted at the prospect of facing the beast and basking in my own darkness, as I rose to the challenge of slaying it.
