by DA Chaney
Unencumbered by the disembowelment, the dead man opened his mouth wide and lunged at the white creature. The creature side stepped the oncoming attack and leapt into the air, landing on the dead man. Ed watched with sickened fascination as the white creature began hacking at the dead man’s neck with its sharp claws. Dead clumps of flesh flew, sticking to other dead people as it was separated.The dead man snapped his jaws and tried to move in to sink its teeth into the creatures flesh but it kept missing. The creature hacked and slashed until the dead man fell in a heap, unmoving, and decapitated onto the ground. A putrid smell floated in the air as the white creature seemed to celebrate its victory and throw itself onto a new dead victim. It took Ed a moment to realize that this was happening all around her. Claws streaked through the air and hacked while the clicking sound of dead men’s teeth bounced through the room.
One track minded in their desires as they were, some of the dead people still tried to slowly reach her on the stairs. The ones at the front hadn’t yet begun to understand that the group was being attacked from behind and were being set upon the new creatures.
Covering her face with the crook of her elbow to avoid the smell of rotten open wounds, Ed looked closer at the new...white, naked people?
No, they weren’t people. She couldn’t place them with anything other than the form of a human man, but they were badly misshapen, gaunt, strong, and seemed to mostly utilize four limbs like an animal might. What are those things?
Even as she stood and watched as mayhem took place all around her, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Two types of creatures that she had never even heard about before today were locked in a death match in front of her. It looked like one clan fighting to exterminate another as each side fought against each other.
The white creatures were clearly waging war and appeared to be winning. Flashes of their nude bodies stood out among the drab colors of the dead people as they struggled and wrestled together. Some beat the dead peoples heads in with fists and feet, effectively caving in their skulls and spilling their brains out, while others used their considerable sharp claws aimed at the throat for decapitation. Ed noticed that with these kinds of wounds, the dead people did not get back up and the white creatures began attacking a new target in some kind of empowered frenzy. Some of the creatures gleefully chortled in their throats as if they were getting extreme satisfaction.
Ed cringed as a white creature got too close to her when it lashed out at a nearby dead person. Cheeks and chins too large for their faces, eyes sunk into their heads, teeth black, rotten, and missing, flat ear holes, and hairless. Their bodies had little fat on them and bones and muscles looked tight under the skin. Their skin tone wasn’t as pure white as she’d first thought either. Many of the creatures’ flesh were marred with oddly large purple and red looking sores that were being broken as they fought.
Captivated by the scene, one of the creature’s large claws slashed across Ed’s hand where she held the torch up to see. Yelping and cursing herself for a fool, she dropped the torch, and fell back onto the stairs. Bracing herself for a fight she knew that she couldn’t win, she was shocked when the thing looked impassively at her, carefully avoided the flame, and moved onto the next dead man. Virtually ignoring her vulnerability. Ed’s mind spun as she watched mutely as the dead people stumbled into the flames of the torch and were set on fire.
Ed hollered when she felt sets of hands grasp her upper arms and pull her backwards up the stairs. Kicking and flailing her arms with blood from the cut on her hand splattering the steps, she continued to fight, feeling the steps bumping against her back, creating fresh bruises.
“It’s me! Young Ed, it’s Mr. Swicker.” He set her down and shook her forcefully with his grip and made her look into his eyes. Then Swicker’s gaze flickered to the massacre happening below them and his eyes widened. “What in the bloody Hell is going on down there?”
Launching herself away from the doorway and Swicker’s tight grip, Ed saw Barlowe’s body unmoving in the grass. She was about to shout when she noticed that someone had separated his arms, a leg, and his head from his body. Relieved, Ed crumpled forward and braced her hands on her knees to catch her breath. She waved a hand at Swicker, explaining for him to talk first. Before she revealed what she’d seen, she wanted to know where he’d been and how he’d found her.
“When I parted company with you, I went in search of Lord and Lady Lockette. The manor was in a poor state of ruin and as I investigated, I saw many open doors with no one inside the rooms. I fear that had I walked into some of them when they’d been full, not realizing what was happening, I may have shared Mr. Barlowe’s fate when he went into the kitchens.” Swicker glanced at Barlowe’s body. “I came upon some of these crazed people and managed to fight some of them off. I found Lady Lockette in a room on the second floor and we managed to stay safe even after some of those people chased me up the stairs. I went to the window and waited. When I saw you emerge from the stables tonight calling so much attention to yourself, I knew you were going to be in trouble. I tried to call to you, but you didn’t hear me. Then I saw Mr. Barlowe follow you, which seemed impossible since he died last night.”
“I slept an entire day?" Ed furrowed her brow. “Where did the carriage go?”
Swicker gestured to the people who’d been standing in the darkness not far from him, with his hands. Ed‘s gaze flickered to them and hoped they weren‘t dead people. She didn‘t know if she had the strength to save herself at this point. “It seems as though Lady Lockette arranged for personal transportation and sent some correspondence for grounds assistance as soon her husband grew ill from an attack he’d had, which is how I became involved. She called for men to arrive for a hunt. When the men I sent ahead of me arrived, they walked into a slaughter. We didn’t see these crazed people when we first arrived because they were busy chasing those poor fellows through the manor.
“Lady Lockette’s cousin, Mr. Irwin Fairchild, came to the estate to take her away to her family’s home based on the information he’d received in the letter about the animal attacks. Using the window, he met with us where we were barricaded in. After we came up with a plan, with great peril to himself, he left and hid the carriage further down the way so that we’d have a safe method of escape. His own horse was attacked when he first arrived.
“When I saw you I knew it was time to make our move. I brought you here, lad, and I’m responsible for putting you in harms way. Some could live with just walking away, but not I. When we reached the courtyard, we followed the path you’d taken. Then when we were close enough, we heard Mr. Barlowe striking the door to the crypt, we knew you would be in here.”
Ed felt sweat dot her forehead as her legs gave out and she finally fell heavily onto the ground. She didn’t like being beholden to any man, but if her strength had allowed it she might have just kissed his boots. She was a lowly street boy for all that he knew but he’d taken the risk to rescue her anyway with these dead people running around. A selfless gesture of which she’d never had before. Brock may have saved her hide before, but always to the tune of being partners who made money together. Never just because her life had been in danger. Brock had a stake whether she lived or died. Swicker had not, and yet he’d come for her.
She thought that he’d taken an opportunity and had left her on her own. She was used to the familiar sting of abandonment. It’d made for a hard life, but one that had gotten her this far.
The idea that she hadn’t been betrayed and left behind after all made her feel uncomfortable in her chest so she coughed and spoke. “With Mr. Barlowe following me, I just ran. I knew something wasn’t right about him, being messed up like he was.” Ed sucked on her teeth and made a smacking noise with her lips. As she spoke, she pressed her eyes closed and fought the desire to probe the wound on her cheek. She explained what had lead her to the crypt and then to the man she’d found in the burial chamber.
“That can’t be.”
Ed looked up
at the voice. A woman, presumably Lady Lockette, stood in a man’s overcoat that covered a blood splashed corset, and a Lady’s fine underwear. Her perfect doll face showed in the torchlight as she stepped forward. She scowled down at Ed as if she was something scraped off the bottom of her shoe. Next to her the tall, thin, hawk-nosed young man with curly hair, presumably Mr. Irwin Fairchild, leaned forward and nodded his agreement and placed his hand on her elbow.
“My husband’s family has lived here all their lives and none of these creatures have been around until quite recently. I don’t know where these things come from but things living inside the crypt? Underground? It’s preposterous. I’ve never heard such a wild tale in all my life.”
Ed grunted, hanging her head as her face stung with embarrassment and pointed toward the door. She was used to it from people like Lady Lockette, but didn‘t like being called a liar. “Well, where ever they came from, they’re in there. Feel free to take a walk inside. I’ll wait here.”
Swicker made a soothing sound intent on disarming a verbal fight before one erupted. “We needn’t quarrel about the particulars. It’s possible these things started this whole ordeal if they were the ones that attacked Lord Lockette to begin with. Who knows how they got in there. Maybe they dug a way inside. Either way, it’s a dangerous location.”
Swicker kneeled, tipping Ed’s face up into the light of the torch. The woman squealed and was pointing at Ed’s face. Ed was about to counter with a rude comment about the Lady’s choice in attire, when suddenly she wasn’t standing there anymore. A long white and purple mottled arm had snaked out of the crypt door and jerked the pretty Lady Lockette inside.
Lady Lockette’s screams echoed loudly down the stone stairs. Stunned and horrified at what had just happened, Ed watched Mr. Fairchild vault forward and disappear inside, his footsteps pounding hard on the stairs as he called his cousin’s name, adding to the Lady’s screams.
“Stay right here.” Before Ed could utter a word, Swicker jumped to his feet and also flew down the stairs after them. Ed hadn’t really cared that the idiot cousin had rushed down the steps after her, but her stomach knotted and turned over when Swicker disappeared down them.
Crawling on her hands and knees, Ed moved to the open doorway and stared up over the lip of the crypt. She saw the carnage in the lighting below. The dead people that had come for her were all down, laying in broken goopey grey piles on the floor. The newest casualty, Lady Lockette, lay in a bloody mess on the floor where one of the white creatures had chewed her neck clear through to the bone and was carelessly shredding through her underwear to get at her stomach contents. When the thing shifted in the light to slurp at the blood pumping from the wounds, Ed saw that the creature was pregnant.
Shuddering, her gaze sought out Swicker. He fought with a sword, winning against the one he was up against. Ed could see that he was quite good as he slashed and jabbed, and the creature howled as Swicker continued his assault. Two other creatures were taking down the cousin in a grotesque spray of blood and screams as the large claws ripped him into thick sections.
Ed touched the deep scratches on her hand remembering how sharp those things had been. The cuts stung as if she’d been slashed with knives. She didn’t particularly like the hawk-nosed man’s status, but she felt sorry for him as he died violently. Her gaze went back to Swicker. A valiant man who had wanted to help an orphan ‘boy’ from the streets, who had rushed into a dangerous dark house to check on his Lord and Lady, and a man who had rushed headlong into danger without knowing fully what he faced, to do the same a second time.
He managed to kill the one he was fighting and seriously wound another, but did not fare well against two more. His death was not kind either and Ed sat in remorse and shock as she watched when claws ripped off his face and sliced through his chest. Quietly, not wanting to see anymore, Ed dropped out of the way, reached up, and closed the door to the crypt. Numb, she leaned against it for a moment staring up at the sky as the sun was beginning to rise.
The wound in her cheek throbbed in time to the claw marks on her hand and she wondered what she would do now. Wearily pushing to her feet, she started walking aimlessly away from Lockette’s land. In the distance she could hear shouting, but she didn’t turn around.
She needed to get far away from the pit-stain of Lock’s Landing and move on. Later, after she curled up under a pricker bush intent on sleeping, her mind would stop reeling with the events of the night and she would wonder, what the hell happened to Brock?
DA Chaney
EpIlogue
Doctor Michael Carver sat at the open window of his office as he stared blankly at the sun coming up over the trees. He’d traveled all night to get home to Lock’s Landing and the trip was taking its toll on him. His eyes stung with the urgency to sleep and he was beginning to give in.
Young Reiley Todde had briefed him a few hours ago on his visitors while he’d been away. Watching the peach colors grace the sky, he rubbed his worn face. He’d rather hoped the boy, Ed, would be waiting for him.
Stretching his cramped legs first, Michael rose from the footstool and indeed decided to call it a night. Pickings for fresh bodies had been rather slow. Only two fresher ones through the entire night since he’d come in. Usually it was double or triple that amount. Not many people probably knew that he was back in town yet.
Sighing, he straightened his jacket and took a last look around. Then, loosening the fabric around his middle, he leaned forward, and pushed the shutters closed. Climbing the noisy stairs to his room above his medical practice, he undressed, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
He was in the business of bodies so it shouldn’t shock him when one came in that he recognized. Rolling over, he fluffed his pillow and breathed in deep. It rankled him that he’d had to give coin to the Baker boys. But the criminals knew, when you brought in a body, Doctor Michael Carver would pay for it.
Michael didn’t know how it happened, but he could tell by the treatment of the body that Thaddeus Brock had not died easily after being mugged, beaten, skull crushed in, stripped to his underwear, and dragged in by his feet by that band of wretched street kids. He started to wonder if he should make a rule about the bodies being buried first. Otherwise, he envisioned those boys bringing far more bodies in his direction after a fresh murdering spree. He needed the bodies for multiple medical practices but he didn’t want to give anyone the excuse to knock off a few people in exchange for the coins. He wasn’t that kind of man. He had standards, yes, but he wasn’t a murderer.
He wondered if Ed knew. Sighing, he turned on the bed and his restless gaze caught the open letter on the bedside table next to his pocket watch. He’d been summoned to Lockland Estate because Lord Lockette had taken ill. There was no further information provided to help him determine what kind of illness that it might be. Your presence is urgently requested.
Michael was the closest doctor in the area. It meant that he was called upon for all manner of medical related issues. He supposed he’d get a wagon together, pack a big medical bag full of varying supplies, and make his way to the estate in the afternoon. Maybe he’d take Reiley with him. The kid could make a good apprentice if he wanted honest work.
Michael closed his eyes and let sleep take him. When he tumbled into his dreams, he dreamed of the dead.
Afterward: Author’s Note:
Imagine a time with no cell phones or land lines. Education wasn’t widespread so being able to read and write wasn’t as common as it was today. Letters could take weeks or months to arrive anyway. What if someone important to you just vanished leaving no clues behind while you were left with a thin trail of information trying to find them?
Cryptic came about when I sat and wondered how hard it would have been in that kind of environment, especially carrying a secret like Ed has. I wondered what could happen if mysterious attacks weren’t just a bunch of bandits in the night robbing people, but a monstrous threat above and below in a time where people could c
ompletely fall off the radar without a widespread alert system. What could happen when shoddy communication could lead to inaccurate information, whether by intent or by accident?
This is a peek behind the curtains, a snap shot in the day of the life of a few unlucky individuals. I hope that you enjoyed the tale. Thank you for reading it and if you’re wondering what’s going to happen to Ed now…you never know, you might see her again some day. -DAC
DA Chaney is the author of her first short stories in First Time Dead 2 and Hell Hath No Fury. She is also a horror movie reviewer for Altered Realities Radio and for The G.A.S.P Factor online. When she isn't writing or planning her next story, she is reading or checking out movies in Western Massachusetts. You can get in touch with her on her Facebook Page: DA Chaney or on Twitter as: DA_Chaney.
