by Heath Pfaff
Together we crossed the field that stood between us and the cabin. Dreea hung back, her head kept low to hide her appearance. Arthos came forward and knocked on the door firmly. Someone was clearly inside or near. Smoke rose from the chimney, the sweet and hunger inducing smell of cooking meat filling the air.
The cabin was large, a low fence around the perimeter. The back of it faced away from the direction we’d traveled, and it looked like there was a barn out beyond, though I saw no livestock, nor any sign of them. It looked peaceful enough. It looked like the sort of place that a man could raise a family and enjoy the rewards of working the land. It felt completely different than the world beneath the strange darkness behind us. As we approached, though, I noted that the front windows were all entirely boarded up from the inside. The nails protruded through the wood framing in places, ripping holes in the edges of the window the same way they seemed to rip holes in the serenity of this little hideaway at the edge of madness.
The door opened and a man with an expression that rested somewhere between surprised and concerned looked out at us. I say he was a man, but he wasn’t a man like I was used to seeing. He had fur over parts of his body, up his arms which I could see because his shirt was sleeveless, and on the sides of his neck. His eyes looked like those of an animal, though his face was humanesque in shape. He had long, pointed ears that seemed felted like a cats, and they rose up through his hair.
“Who are you, where did you come from?” He asked, voice suspicious, and with a strange accent to it that I couldn’t place. I supposed we were lucky to be able to understand him at all.
“We’re travelers who have gotten lost.” Arthos answered, either not noticing how strange the man looked, or doing a wonderful job of covering it up. Dreea almost looked more like this man than we did. No, he was more like a mix of us and Dreea, a halfway point. “We were wondering if you might provide us with some information about the area. We’re trying to get home.”
The man eyed us suspiciously again, and then he shrugged and sighed. “Travelers? Travelers from afar.” He said the second part as if to himself. He considered us for a long moment, and it seemed to me that he might turn us away, but then he let out a sigh and shrugged. “Would you at least leave your weapons outside? I don’t want you to frighten my family, strangers.”
Arthos looked at both myself and Dreea and gave a nod. “Of course. We don’t wish any trouble.” He said, and I knew that was a signal to put down my weapon. I wasn’t comfortable taking it off, but I did anyway. I also removed the knife at my belt, though the truth of the matter was that any one of the three of us was still quite dangerous, even without an immediate weapon at hand.
We left our weapons in a neat pile by the door and then entered the cabin. It was clear upon entering that a family did indeed live there. Things were a bit messy, but nothing was out of the ordinary really, with the exception of the boarded windows. There were a few handcrafted children’s toys lying about the floor, and there was a table for family meals along one wall. There was a hunk of meat roasting over the fire, and something else cooking in a pot beside it.
“Have a seat at the table and I’ll get you something to drink. I can’t spare food, though. Meat has been scarce since the darkness rolled in.” He explained. “Oh, I’m Quintin, by the way. You must be from far away. I don’t think I’ve seen people of your kind before.” He looked at us, then nodded at Dreea. “Well, except for her. She’s feraling. I didn’t know they bothered with clothes.” He seemed unconcerned by her, but far more interested in us. “What are you?”
Arthos spoke on our behalf, which was just as well since I didn’t know how to answer that question. “We’re Wardens. I’m Arthos, my friends here are Lillin and Dreea.” He gestured to each of us in turn. “We traveled quite far to get here. We’re looking for a doorway, one that can’t be opened by normal means, and the search has taken us here. I’m afraid we know little of the area, though. What is the darkness? How long has it been here?”
“Wardens?” Quintin asked, clearly not recognizing the implications, but then he shrugged and went on as he sat wooden cups with water in them down before each of us before taking a seat at the head of the table. “The darkness is just the darkness. I heard tell it rolled in off the sea. It hit Prosper first. The entire city went crazy. The people killed one another, at least most of them. It just kept rolling across the land until it hit the estates east of here. It moved a bit further but seemed to lose momentum. That was about two years ago now, so it has been about eight years since it first came. I’ve walked down that way a time or two, but it gets strange-quiet that way. Weird-like, feels ‘though it’s creeping into your skin, and then it feels like you can spend hours there and come back and it’s s’if no time has passed here at all. I don’t like it. Nope, not at all. I just avoid it now. The whole family avoids it. I told ‘em not to go down that way, and they listen. Didn’t take much convincing.”
Arthos mulled this new information over, and I was doing the same thing. I’d never heard of a city called “Prosper” nor much of anything else that he talked about. We were either very, very far removed from our own lands, or we weren’t even on the same world anymore. I thought it was probably the latter. He didn’t seem to know what Wardens were, and I felt that knowledge of the Wardens had probably traveled quite far, at least rumor of them.
“Have you heard of any doors like the one I mentioned? An old doorway, one no one can open?” Arthos asked, cutting to the heart of what we were looking for. I was surprised he would talk of it so openly.
Quintin shook his head. “No, can’t say I have. I mean, I’ve seen locked doors, but someone always has the key. I haven’t heard of any that can’t be opened at all, but then we don’t really leave the farm here. I used to trade in the city once a season, but not since Prosper fell. I don’t go that way, and I try to avoid the people that come up the road from that direction. It doesn’t happen often, but some of them aren’t right. Something’s wrong with them, like the same kind of thing that’s wrong with the forest. They’re quiet inside, no light in them.” He gave us suspicious looks.
“Why don’t you move your family out of here?” I asked on a sudden impulse. “It sounds dangerous to stay.”
Quintin turned to look at me, his eyes passing over the tattoo on my face. “Why do you have such a strange mark on your face, girl?” He didn’t answer my question and for some reason I found that troubling.
“It’s a marking of my people. It’s only significant where I come from.” I explained without really explaining.
“Hmm,” Quintin’s expression didn’t really change. “Well, is there anything else I can help you with? I’m afraid I don’t know much. We keep to ourselves. Can’t trust strangers. Can’t trust no one, not really.” His voice had taken on a evasive and distant edge. My unease was beginning to grow. .
“Where is family?” Dreea asked suddenly. “Quiet here. Children like to play, make noise.” Her ears were tucked low, and I could sense a tension to her. Her nose was twitching slightly, taking in things I couldn’t even begin to guess at.
Quintin hesitated, and then when he spoke he did so with a strange note to his voice, a tension that drew on his words, making them long and somewhat shaky. “They’re out back with their mother right now. Like you said, children like to play. I was just making supper. My wife . . . she likes to give me some quiet time when I cook. She’s a fine woman. Kid’s are real fine too. Sometimes they act up and you have to take a belt to them, but not so often. Good kids.”
His explanation made perfect sense. There was no reason to doubt him at all, and yet doubt still hung upon me. Something felt wrong. This whole situation felt off.
“Where is the next closest city from here?” Arthos asked, either not picking up on the strange feeling in the air, or just not choosing to acknowledge it. I thought it was the latter. Arthos was clever, and he had to be aware of the odd pressure that was growing in the room and pressing upon us all.
“Next closest city?” He asked, his head cocking to one side. “What does that matter?” Quintin’s voice had grown darker, his expression was becoming suddenly hostile. “There is nothing beyond Prosper. You can’t go beyond the veil, no further than we are. It won’t let you.”
“What is the veil, Quintin?” Arthos asked, not missing a beat. He still seemed calm, but I could hear a slight growl emanating from Dreea. “What do you mean we can’t go beyond it?”
“The nightmare man, the one at the head of the marching darkness, he won’t let you go.” Quintin stood up from his seat suddenly, and all of us snapped sharply to attention, combat training making us fall into defensive positions. “He wants you to do something for him. It’s why I’m waiting here. He knew you would come from another world. He needs you to find something, and he won’t let you return until you do. You can’t go back through the door until you find it. It is the key.” The man’s tone was becoming more erratic, and his eyes were rolling back into his head as he spoke, the pupils vanishing to expose just whites as the color seemed to drain into the top of his skull.
“The star fell from the infinite depths of blackness and into the sea, but it wasn’t a crash. It had followed the first compass here looking for the tesseract box. You must bring it through the gate or you will never return.” He was breathing sharply now, gasps slipping between his lips between his words, his teeth smashing closed as though he was trying to break them together.
“Go to Prosper, find the tesseract. Go!” He started to scream, the sound horrible and raw, the sound of a man trying to rip his vocal cords apart with the force of his voice. We all backed away from him, Arthos and I falling into a loose combat stance.
“Quintin!” Arthos yelled. “Quintin, listen, we need you to . . . “ I wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he didn’t get any further. Quintin bit off his own tongue, spitting the chunk of flesh onto the floor as he reached up and pushed his forefingers into the sockets. His eyes ruptured as his others fingers clawed at his skin. He grabbed his face and began to rip at it with his nails, taking hunks flesh from it before he finally collapsed to the ground, choking and gurgling on his own blood.
Dreea had moved closer to me, as though the closeness might protect her from the horror of what had just happened, or perhaps she was intending to protect me. I wasn’t sure. My mind was reeling. I should have made some effort to stop him, but it had all happened so fast, and I had never expected things would escalate the way they had. Even Arthos seemed struck motionless by shock.
“What just happened?” I asked, reeling from what I’d witnessed. I was replaying his words in my head, but they didn't make any sense. I wasn’t sure what a “tesseract box” was, but I had the sinking impression that I knew who the “nightmare man” was. As soon as he’d said those words I’d thought of the man with the black eyes in the picture.
“We should get out of here.” Arthos said, already moving towards the door. “Someone is using very powerful magic, and it’s clear that we are being targeted. He knew too much about us.” He grabbed the handle of the door and turned it, but I heard the latch stick as he shifted the wooden catch.
“Locked.” Dreea said. “He didn’t lock. We followed him in.”
She was right, of course. Dreea had pulled the door closed as we’d come in. There was no way for the door to be locked unless someone had followed us and locked it from the other side, but I saw another problem already. “There isn’t a keyhole in this side of the door.” I pointed out.
“I don’t think there was one in the other side either.” Arthos said. “This door has a bar. I doubt they put in a regular lock.”
“Maybe there is a bar on the other side.” I offered, though that didn't feel right either. I looked over at the window, but there was nothing to see through the boards. Though now that I looked at them more closely I could see gouges in the woods. Bloody gouges the size of human fingers. Someone had been in here trying to get out.
“Come, we’ll look through the cabin. There might be another door out, and if not we’ll just use our Will to break down the barriers.” Arthos spoke as he lead us back into the house.
“Why not just smash the door down now?” I asked, uncertain why we’d bother to search the house instead. It seemed easier to break our way out. I saw Arthos reach for his weapon once and did the same, but was immediately faced with the same reality he had just been faced with. We’d left our weapons outside.
“Using Will to break down that door, or smash through one of the boarded up windows will make a great deal of noise, and also use up energy that we might not need to expend. It’s better to do things traditionally if we can.” The answer made a kind of sense, and made me feel just a bit foolish for asking, though in that moment I just wanted to be out of that cabin.
“You can put out a candle with your breath. You don’t need to use a brick.” Arthos added, and I flushed a bit, feeling foolish.
“I just want out of here.” I spoke softly.
“House bad.” Dreea nodded her agreement. “Place bad. I think Prosper is dangerous. Shouldn’t go.” Dreea was already thinking ahead of us getting out of here, of what our next course of action might entail. I hadn’t let myself get quite that far yet.
“I’m not quite ready to make a decision on that one yet.” Arthos said. “I don't like that it was handed to us as a solution, but I also don’t know how else we can get out of here. We’re still going to try and teach you how to scry.” He looked at me as he said this, and we moved down a hall past bedrooms, and towards a door that looked like it should open up behind the house. “If you can scry out a working door for us, then we will go towards that and not head anywhere near this city, Prosper. I prefer not to take the course laid out by a madman.”
“I’m not the best judge of such things, but that seems wise.” I responded, trying to lighten the mood some. It didn’t work. None of us seemed particularly inclined to levity. We reached the door and Arthos turned the handle. I was surprised when it gave in easily and he pushed it open with no resistance at all. I should have found it suspect given all that had had happened so far, but I was so excited to be free of the house I didn’t take time to question our good fortune. We filed out into the backyard and were greeted with a macabre sight that none of us had been prepared for.
There was meat hanging and curing from racks all across the back of the house, but it was readily apparent that this wasn't just any meat. The bodies had been gutted and flayed open, the heads removed, but we were quite clearly looking at four skinned humans, an adult and three children, each spread open to dry in the sun. Clouds of flies swarmed the corpses, and the smell was putrid and strong here. It had only been covered by the smoke of the cooking meat before.
Dreea whimpered and Arthos had an expression of disgust on his face that I’d never seen there before. I didn’t know how to react. I didn't know what to think of what was before me, or how to articulate the horror of the moment. He’d killed his family. He’d killed them and butchered them like animals. That meant . . .
“Blackened, the meat . . . “ The words tumbled out of my mouth, as I realized the smell of cooking meat that had drawn us here was beyond a doubt the smell of at least one of these people roasting over the fire. My stomach turned hard and I took a few deep breaths to steady myself. I’d seen terrible things many times, but this was of a different kind of sickness. There was malice in every nuance of the scene.
“We were brought here intentionally. The house was locked to lead us here.” Arthos said, voice soft and thin. “Someone wanted us to see this. It’s an attack on our reasoning. They’re trying to scare us, disturb us. We can’t let this shape our decisions.”
I knew he was right. It sounded like paranoid rambling, but this whole thing had been a stage, a private show designed for us. This was an attack of a kind that we weren’t directly conditioned to face. Certainly we were trained to stand in the face of horror, but there was insidious nature to this
moment. Vile things existed, but they often had their own sense of purpose. This was madness, cruel and calculated to assault our reason.
“Poor babies.” Dreea whimpered, voice miserable. She turned her head from the horror. “We should go.”
I nodded. “We can make clearer decisions somewhere else. Let’s find a place to regroup, but someplace far from here and that smell.” The roasting meat was turning my stomach now, the sickening, sweet scent almost making me gag.
Arthos sighed, but he nodded. “That might be exactly what is wanted from us, but you’re right.” He started moving, leading us towards the gate out of the garden. I didn’t relax my weariness as we moved. Something had locked us in the house, and that something had to be outside with us. The threat was still very real.
We made it clear of the fence and gathered our weapons from the front porch. There was no sign of anyone else having passed by. The only footprints to be seen were ours, and there was no bar or lock on the opposite side of the door. No one directly mentioned this, but we all looked. Arthos lead us away from the darkness, further down the road away from the place where we’d first arrived. He didn't need to tell us why. There was no questioning the choice to be further away from all that we’d encounter so far. After a time the road became narrower and the trees along its sides began to close in, their branches linking overhead and blocking out the sun. At first they only did so a little, but then they became thicker, and soon enough it was as dark as night beneath the canopy. We walked a bit longer, and then ahead the branches opened up again.
