King Carrion

by Rich Hawkins

  PRESENTS

  KING CARRION

  RICH HAWKINS

  KING CARRION

  First Published in 2016

  Copyright © Rich Hawkins 2016

  Written by Rich Hawkins

  Edited by Daniel Marc Chant

  Published by The Sinister Horror Company

  Cover art by Vincent Hunt

  www.jesterdiablo.blogsport.co.uk

  Twitter: @jesterdiablo

  The right of Rich Hawkins to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9935926-6-9

  DEDICATION

  For my Dad. I miss him every day.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks and gratitude to everyone who’s supported my work, since I emerged shy and whimpering into this genre they call horror. Much appreciation goes out to the beta readers and those who’ve offered advice and wisdom. And last of all I salute my family, without who I’d probably lose what little sanity I possess.

  "When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations . . . then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy." - Deuteronomy 7:1-2

  “Videogames are bad for you? That’s what they said about

  rock-n-roll.” —Shigeru Miyamoto

  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good

  men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

  PROLOGUE

  Northern England, 49AD

  The day waned into shadows bleeding with bitter cold. This was the last light before dusk.

  The painted men worked quickly to restrain the women against the stone pillars. Four sacrificial victims for the god who walked in the forest. The victims didn’t struggle or resist while the potion administered to them earlier still coursed through their blood. They were placid and compliant.

  Hunched and wheezing under a thick cloak of wolf fur, the old shaman stood away from his acolytes and watched them while keeping one eye on the darkening sky. Once the ropes were secure the men checked each knot and binding, then fell into line before the shaman and awaited him with solemn faces and downturned eyes.

  The forest clearing was silent except for the low whisper of the wind through the surrounding trees. This close to dusk the shaman sensed the animals of the forest retreating to their dens, burrows and nests, to hide from what hunted in the darkness. He saw the fear in their wild hearts.

  The shaman blessed each of the men in turn with his antler-crowned staff. Young men in stained furs, their faces and chests painted white. Their hair was spiked with lime. They were devout, loyal acolytes, and the old man considered them as kin. His successor was among them, ready to be chosen by the elders. By tomorrow, there would be a new priest for the tribe.

  The sun had fallen beyond the forest. Hushed breaths turned to mist in the numbing air. A glacial wind rushed through the trees and across the clearing. Wolves in the distant hills cried at the emergence of the pallid moon.

  The shaman stood before his acolytes and leaned upon his staff. Each intake of air prickled at the inside of his chest. His bones grew more brittle as the days passed. But this was of little importance, as there would be no more days for him after tonight.

  The young men watched him. Some of them wept openly, and he comforted them with the old words and simple prayers of their tribe. They touched heads. And then he bid them farewell and watched them depart. The men vanished into the trees with their burning torches and short blades to keep away the sharp-toothed things.

  He hoped they reached the village before nightfall.

  *

  The shaman pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders and walked within the clearing. Below the knee-length grass his bare feet padded on patches of moss and dead leaves degrading into mulch. In the bare dirt between the stones he drew shapes and symbols with the end of his staff. The ground was spongy from the previous day’s rainstorm. Underneath the cloak, his dirty robes shrouded the frail and withered form of a man waiting to die. He looked up at the first stars appearing in the sky. The wind mourned the loss of another day.

  The women in their sacrificial robes murmured in their stupor. They were dreaming. The shaman watched them for a short while. Theirs was an envied fate, and their names would be spoken in dreams and memories for as long as the tribe endured.

  Privately, for the last few months, he had worried about the rumours coming out of the south, about an invading army making its way northwards. Romans, they were called, and eventually they would wipe out or convert the shaman’s tribe. He had seen it in visions and fugues while kneeling by the fire inside the temple. The mushrooms he’d ingested only made the visions more vivid and terrible, but they’d shown him the truth of things to come. His dreams told him of tribes all over the isles falling to the sword of this army and their new god. And what would happen to the old gods then? Who would be left to worship them?

  These thoughts made him sad and angry. Maybe the old ways would survive, somehow, but he held little hope. The rites and customs of his people would be ground to dust.

  He downed the last of the water from his drinking horn and watched the trees. Beads of water ran down his long beard. It was almost full dark. He shuddered.

  Then, deep in the forest, something let out a mournful wail that echoed through the trees and reached into the sky towards the moon. A warning to all the animals and beasts of the land. He dropped the drinking horn and it clattered by his feet.

  His voice trembled with awe. “I hear you.” Then he recited parts of an old song under his breath and spoke the names of his God, because his God had many names.

  A gust of wind slipped across the grass. In the silence that followed he listened to his heart flounder and stammer, old and tired and waiting for the end.

  *

  The shaman retreated to the eastern edge of the clearing and stood amongst the trees and bracken, motionless next to the thin trunks. He raised the cloak over his head and kept watch. Straight ahead of him, fifty paces away in the middle of the clearing, the women slept within their bindings. The stone pillars appeared almost black. He prayed that the women would not be aware when the God of the Forest fell upon them.

  The stars burned above the silent land.

  And in the moonlight a shape emerged from the trees at the northern side of the clearing. The shaman put one hand to his mouth as he stared at the thing that was no more than a shadow within shadows. He felt a nervous smile twitch at the corners of his mouth. The song of his heart, of terror and joy, rang inside his skull. He watched as the tall shadow lowered to the ground and skittered through the long grass like an animal. Then it raised itself and stood among the sleeping women, muttering into its hands as it looked upon them with eyes the priest could not see. It stepped closer to the nearest woman and began sniffing at her, drawing in deep breaths through the holes in its face.

  The woman stirred, then woke with a gasp and raised her head, and she barely had the time to scream before the shadow enshrouded her and for a moment the only sound was of her bones cracking beneath its writhing mass. Then a gurgling as its mouth worked at her skin, followed by a wet ripping as her throat was torn away.<
br />
  The God of the Forest fed slowly, at leisure.

  The woman was the only one of the victims to wake. The God accepted the offerings and visited each of them in turn as the shaman cowered and watched from the treeline. And when the God was finished and left its victims as nothing more than drained and broken corpses, unrecognisable as the women they’d been before the sun had fallen, it stood tall in the clearing below the moon and turned its unseen face towards the sky. It released a shrill cry that filled the night air and seemed to travel far beyond the clearing and the forest and the high hills. The shaman’s legs turned to water and he had to lean against a tree. He stared in wonder and awe, his heart pounding, his limbs trembling. Since his childhood he’d learned of King Carrion, the God of the Forests and Hills. Old Tooth was another of its names. A creature that had been worshipped from before the days of his early ancestors.

  The shaman gasped at the air, and his wheezing breath became a wet rattle in his chest. It it was enough to draw the attention of King Carrion, the God, the Killer of Men. And the shadow lowered near to the ground and slipped through the grass until it was bearing down upon him. It raised itself to its full height. The shaman whimpered, and it was all he could do not to drop his precious staff. His bowels became slop. He let out a childlike whine as he fell to his knees before his God. Numb with terror, he said its name twice and looked up, tears stinging his eyes.

  Its face, except for the red eyes and sharp mouth, was hidden behind filthy dark rags and linen. A thing of writhing shadow. There was a horrific stink of spoiled meat and battlefields, blood and offal. And beneath that was a mustier reek of livestock, rotting straw and old bones. It muttered an old language beyond the shaman’s knowledge. Words older than the tallest of trees. Then it fell silent and just stood there, looming over him. The flapping of dirty rags and cloth upon a thin body partially revealed in the shades of moonlight. The suggestion of horns or stunted antlers upon the scalp; or it could have been the tip of a crown made of animal bones. A twitching mouth of black gums and yellow teeth dripping with blood. Its breath smelled of dead things.

  The shaman drew back from the stink and coughed until his old chest could take no more. He vomited milky froth onto the leaf mulch and dirt. When he was done, he bowed his head and placed his hands together in prayer as his mouth formed an expression of supreme joy mixed with absolute terror.

  The towering figure, this taker of souls, reached down with long arms, placed its bony hands upon his head, and lifted him from the ground. He knew better than to struggle, and bit down on a cry that rose from his throat. The God drew its bloodied face to his ear and without moving its mouth asked something of its highest priest. The words were inside his head, in a voice mimicking his dead father. His eyes went wide. Bone fingers scraped against his scalp.

  Loyal Priest, you know of the Romans and the might of their empire. And they know of me and what I am. They both fear and hate me, and when they arrive here they will hunt me to death, as they will those who worship me. Their army will chase me down with hunting dogs. They will find me among the trees and burn me out of the forest and impale me in the sunlight. Then they will scatter my remains to the winds. I must retreat into the earth to save myself from Roman swords. You are my most devoted follower and you must hide me away and never speak a word of my resting place.

  The shaman listened, nodding his head as tears fell down his face and into his mouth. Through his connection to his God he saw those things in his mind and he wanted to scream.

  Those long arms lowered him back to the ground.

  The shaman, trembling and weak from the sickness inside him, raised his head from his chest, stood on weak legs and offered his undying service.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The rain had already stopped when Mason reached the address scribbled on the scrap of creased paper in his hands. He stood outside the house and pulled the hood of his coat back from over his head. He absently ran one finger over his wedding ring as he walked down the cul-de-sac’s main road, which was lined either side with red brick homes and winter-bare gardens. Most of the driveways were empty this close to midday, but he was aware of the occasional twitching net curtain in upstairs windows.

  Crows and gulls wheeled and glided overhead, dark shapes against the grey sky.

  Mason looked at the front of the house and swallowed a sour knot in his throat. His heartbeat filled his ears, drowning out the sounds of the meandering day. He put the piece of paper in his pocket and wiped his mouth, his hand scraping over the bristly stubble on his chin. A gust of wind slipped down the road and pulled at his shoulders. He winced as he appraised the windows and the front door. Exhaled a tired breath that tasted of cigarettes and sour nerves on an empty stomach.

  He walked up the pathway that split the dark lawn of patchy grass. His legs felt rigid and brittle. He kept his head lowered because the thought of seeing Ellie’s face in one of the windows almost induced in him a panic attack.

  A bearded gnome with a conical red hat smiled gleefully at him from beside a bird table heaped with sunflower and pumpkin seeds. The fence that separated the garden from the next one had been recently creosoted, and he wondered if some male friend had done it for Ellie. He put the thought aside and stopped at the front door. Churning in his stomach. The flutter of his heart. He closed his eyes for a moment before he knocked slowly on the door three times and then stepped back until he was halfway down the path. He stood with his arms at his sides, glancing at the front door. Anxiety frothed in his stomach, rising into his chest. He suddenly felt very exposed.

  He was looking at his boots when the door opened, and for a second he didn’t want to raise his head. But he did, and he opened his mouth to talk but the words never left the back of his throat.

  Ellie stood in the doorway, frowning with something like disdain in her eyes. She folded her arms across her chest and stiffened. Her mouth was flat and bloodless.

  Silence except for the breeze whispering through the tall trees behind the houses.

  Mason’s heart winced. He fidgeted with his hands. Looked at Ellie, blinking rapidly. His eyes watered. She had lost some weight since he’d last seen her. Her hair was cut shorter and dyed a little darker. She wore a dark green woollen jumper and blue jeans. Dull white trainers. Size six, he remembered.

  “What are you doing here, Mason?”

  He wanted to move, to step towards her. Be closer to her. But it felt like he was submerged in cold water up to his knees.

  “I just wanted to see you.” The moisture seemed to have been leeched from his mouth.

  “We’re not together anymore,” she said.

  “It’s not official yet.”

  “How did you find me?” She didn’t move from the doorway.

  He cleared his throat. “We still have mutual friends.”

  “I wish that weren’t the case.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You shouldn’t be here, Mason.”

  “I had to see you.”

  A shadow passed over her face. “Well, now you have. Please leave.”

  Mason bit his lip to hide the trembling of his mouth. “I’ve come a long way to see you. I had to hitchhike here from Devon, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Don’t swear at me,” she said. “Don’t tell me how you’ve had a hard time. I don’t want to know.”

  He sighed and had to glance away from her.

  Ellie coughed into one hand. “I came here to start again, and to try and forget what happened. And most of all to forget you, Mason.”

  “Ellie, listen…”

  She shook her head. “Please leave.”

  “But…”

  “Leave or I’ll call the police. You shouldn’t be here. You’re not supposed to be here.”

  Mason sagged and looked at the ground. His throat tightened as he raised his face at her.
He blinked at the cold breeze and shivered. The sky seemed darker than before. Far away thunder echoed from the west.

  “I haven’t got anyone else,” he said, hating how pathetic his voice sounded. “I’ve got nowhere to go.”

  She shook her head again. “That’s not my problem. You’ve burned all your bridges, Mason. You did a terrible thing.”

  “I made a mistake.”

  “And now you’re paying for it.”

  “Please, Ellie. I’ve stopped drinking. Haven’t touched any booze in months. I’m sober.” And with that he felt a pressure behind his eyes and a sudden craving for anything from the finest scotch to a bottle of the cheapest cider from a corner shop. His teeth itched and he clenched his hands into fists; Ellie noticed and stepped back behind the threshold.

  “Please go away, Mason,” she said. “And don’t come back. Never come back.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” Eyes downturned, he slowly turned away and went back down the pathway and onto the pavement outside the garden. When he looked back, Ellie was already closing the front door. He was sure he heard the click of a lock and the scrape of a bolt being thrown.

  He stood in the street with the silent houses around him and looked up to the sky. Rain began to patter upon his shoulders and the ground. The concussion of thunder above the city reminded him he was far from comfort and shelter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mason walked the streets as the day wore on, even as the rain worsened and the high-up echoes of thunder boomed past the blanket of ashen clouds. He weaved through crowds of shoppers and pensioners. Young mothers pushed prams within which infants squirmed or slept. A bearded man rebuked his son for stepping into the road.