Deathscent

by Robin Jarvis

  Henry glanced down at the piglet sitting at Adam’s feet. “What use will that be?” he cried.

  “He’s an excellent alarm,” Adam replied. “Whilst I climb the tree he can keep watch. There’ll be naught to fret about though.”

  “Oh no,” Henry added sarcastically. “You don’t mind being gored by long brass tusks?”

  “Old Scratch has never actually hurt anyone, has he?” Adam said.

  “Only because no one’s been lunatic enough to go wandering into his realm at night! He’ll get you for certain, he’s a killer!”

  But Adam’s mind was made up and, brandishing his simple weapons, he marched from the workshop.

  Cursing, Henry ran after him.

  “What devil’s got into you, Coggy?” he asked. “This ain’t like you.”

  But there was no dissuading the boy and Henry felt compelled to go with him. Of the apprentices, Henry was the one with a reputation for recklessness and a fearless disregard for rules. He could not bear the thought of Cog Adam stealing that prestige away from him. The prospect of journeying into the woods at night, however, was more than daunting and he marvelled that his friend could even contemplate the idea.

  “If we do meet that monster,” Henry promised as they crossed the lawn, “you’d best gallop as fast as you’re able, I’ll not tarry for you. I’ll race out of there so quick you’d think my hindquarters were aflame.”

  “We shan’t be there long,” Adam assured him. “I know the exact spot to make for. All three of us can be back at the manor before Old Scratch even knows we’ve been trespassing.”

  Henry was not convinced. They had now reached the edge of the woodland and the dark trees thrust high before them in huge mountainous waves of shadow.

  “Pox buckets!” Henry hissed. “I’m not venturing in there. Even if Old Scratch don’t get us, then goblins and sprites will. My dad used to tell stories of wild folk in the wood, of witches and things unnatural.”

  Adam stifled a laugh. “Don’t be so daft,” he whispered. “The worst that’ll happen is you’ll trip over a root in the dark. Still, maybe that’d knock a morsel of sense into that wooden head of yours. No, not you, Suet.”

  Henry was still unsure, until Adam goaded him a little further, explaining how courageous Jack would think the pair of them. That settled it; winning the good opinion of Jack Flye was worth a frightening journey in the dark.

  “What you waiting for then, Coggy?” he murmured. “Last one there has to tell Widow Dritchly she’s fat as Old Temperance but thrice as ugly.”

  “I thought you’d already done that,” Adam chuckled and, with the piglet plodding after them, the two boys proceeded into the wood. Neither of them knew what to expect. They had hardly grown used to the woodland in the daytime, but at night it appeared to be a different country entirely.

  Adam attempted to keep to the track which he and the others had used earlier but quickly found that an impossible task. No moon sailed above the uplifted isles; only the starlight pricked through the firmament and that was not bright enough to guide him. Beneath the leaf-laden trees all was pitch and silent, like a forgotten realm placed beneath an enchanted slumber. The boys’ cautious trudging briefly broke the spell but it was swift to close in behind them once they had passed.

  It was so quiet that Henry imagined he could hear his heart beating and for the first time he wished that his hawk was still clattering high overhead. He had never felt so vulnerable in his life. The tormented nightmare which dwelt in this woodland could not fail to hear their intrusion – they might as well have brought lanterns and shouted their presence at the top of their voices. An icy dread began to creep up his spine and his fearful glances around them became ever more frequent.

  The intense black forms of the surrounding trees were alarmingly sinister and in every new patch of gloom he pictured hollow caves where a tusked terror might make its lair. With Suet shuffling dejectedly between them, they pressed towards the far edge of the wood, near to where the stranger’s night boat was wedged in the buttressed heavens.

  “We almost there?” Henry croaked.

  “A little way more,” Adam replied. “’Tis not easy in this …”

  Without warning he halted and the piglet bumped into him, a surprised squeak escaping from the abruptly compressed snout.

  “Look,” Adam whispered. “Up there.”

  Through a break in the dense leaf canopy, Henry saw the stark outline of a scaffold rise up against the familiar oak. Within that great tree, there beat a small point of blue light.

  “God’s spit!” Henry exclaimed, speaking louder than he had intended. “Did you ever see such a shiny blue acorn? What can it be?”

  “The thing that the stranger desires,” Adam said, stepping forward again.

  A moment later they were standing at the base of the oak, the chill light flashing down on to their raised faces.

  “Well, here we are,” Henry remarked, puffing out his chest and slapping the trunk. “Told you there weren’t nothing to be scared of, Coggy.”

  Adam let that pass and knelt beside Suet, laying his weapons down and fondly stroking the piglet’s face. “Now, you remain here,” he instructed. “You’re a sentry tonight, so keep alert and listen out for you know who. If you hear him approach, then squeal your loudest. Good boy.”

  The mechanical wiggled the back portion of his keg-shaped body. If his tail had been real and not simply a hook it would have wagged furiously. Holding his carved head as high as he was able, Suet watched the two apprentices scramble up the oak and disappear into the leaves.

  Then, with a jerk which flipped one leathery ear over his face, making him look as fierce as possible, the piglet began to patrol around the tree. His master had given him a command and he performed the guard duty with devoted obedience, no matter how afraid he might be.

  As the apprentices swarmed up the oak, lured by the unusual winking light, another presence travelled the darkened woodland.

  In the deep mirk, a great shape was moving, treading down the bracken and shouldering aside the low, outstretched branches. A rumbling growl trembled the air and the trampled undergrowth suffered even more as something dragged in its wake.

  All day long he had sheltered from the searing heat in a cool green tunnel ripped into the dense ferns which grew close to the village. No one suspected how nigh this monster drew to their homes, but the woodland was no longer large enough to contain him. Now, rested and strong, Old Scratch swaggered through his realm, his sharp glass eyes gleaming cruelly in the shadows. The rage which constantly blazed within his misshapen body was bubbling, streaming through the feeder pipes to forever fuel his unquenchable wrath.

  Circling the oak, Suet paused for an instant and tottered smartly about. He had heard a noise. Faint at first, he mistook it for a breath of air threading through the trees. Dismissively scraping the earth with his trotters, he resumed his watch.

  Far above, Henry had ascended higher than Adam. The source of the peculiar, pulsing light would soon be within his reach and his expectant features flickered beneath that spectral sapphire glare.

  So engrossed were both boys in the climb that neither of them noticed the noise which made Suet halt a second time. The sound was growing louder and the wooden piglet stood stock still as his nose pumped rapidly in and out.

  Dry twigs were snapping on the woodland floor and the mechanical began to shake with fright. Old Scratch was coming. The hostile waves which Suet had sensed that first night were flowing through the woodland, heralding the nightmare beast’s arrival. A loud, questing grunt resounded in the distance – the horror would soon be aware of their presence. Suet’s back legs folded beneath him and he stared up as far as his neck would allow, but the angle was not acute enough. He could not see his master and he squeaked desolately, longing for him to return.

  Suddenly, a fierce shriek blasted through the woodland and the piglet knew Old Scratch sensed that his realm had again been invaded. At once Suet’s internal
bellows squeezed together and he let out a shrill squeal which soared up into the branches. The ground beneath him began to quiver as steel hooves stampeded through the darkness, but still the little piglet squealed the alarm.

  High in the branches, Adam heard the signal and turned a stricken face to Henry. “Scratch is coming!” he yelled, beginning the scramble down. “We have to go!”

  But Henry Wattle’s fingertips were even then stretching out to where a circlet of metal was caught in the uppermost twigs. Set in the rim of that ornate band, the ghostly light enticed him on, splashing coldly across his grubby features. Nothing could make him turn back now.

  “Henry!” Adam cried. “Leave it!”

  “Just a sneeze away,” the other boy muttered as he inched further along a perilously thin branch and reached out as far as he could.

  Jumping the remaining distance to the ground, Adam was horrified to see that his friend had not yet started down. Suet rushed over to him and whimpered wretchedly. To the right of them the night-crowded trees were filled with a crashing uproar as the wild boar came thundering and panic surged through Adam’s veins.

  “Henry!” he shouted. “Hurry!”

  At the top of the oak, Henry’s fingers grazed against cool metal. “A whisker more,” the boy said, leaning as far forward as he dared. “There!”

  With a whoop of joy he snatched the circlet from the snaring twigs and grasped it firmly in his hand. Yet there was no time to even look at what he had retrieved for at that moment Old Scratch burst from the undergrowth, shrieking like a demon.

  “Satan’s monkey!” Henry wailed, seeing the hideous shape tear across the ground below.

  Seizing his hammer and stick from the ground, Adam stood against the trunk and, with quailing nerves, beheld the grotesque creature erupt from the foliage. Suet let out a petrified yowl.

  The wild boar was a horrendous spectacle. Carved from rosewood, it had once been a handsome creation, but the feral years had wrought a monstrous change. Adam had never seen anything so evil and malignant. The face was an unholy image of savage fury and the boy’s legs turned to water at the sight of it.

  Old Scratch had been built as mechanical game, a beast to be hunted on horseback, and so possessed every cunning necessary to evade his pursuers, combined with devices to make the chase more satisfying and dangerously real. At some point during his ferocious exile, Old Scratch’s snout had smashed in two, leaving splintered jags which were far more vicious than the original design had ever intended. Flanking this merciless maw were two solid brass tusks. They were tarnished now but their tips were still sharp and bitter. What the ragged snout ignored they gladly ripped and gouged.

  Crimson fires raged behind the slanting glass eyes and spearing from the boar’s broad, humped back were long rows of deadly steel bristles. Yet what made this harrowing vision even more grotesque was a tattered train of tough, stale proudflesh – the stuffings which had burst from the beast’s internal moulds, splitting and squeezing through the rotten rosewood casing.

  Dragging and flapping behind the charging monster, the shredded grey mantle was like a filthy, moth-eaten veil. Resembling a squat, demonic bride, Old Scratch came ravening, roaring and snorting terrifying shrieks of challenge.

  The stick fell from Adam’s grasp. Such a weapon was useless against so powerful and dreadful a creature; all he could do was try to escape. His first thought was to climb the tree once more, but there was no way he could accomplish that with Suet and he could not leave the piglet down here to confront the wild boar’s savage wrath alone.

  There was only one course of action left to him. With Old Scratch bearing down on them, the boy grabbed Suet from the ground, flung the hammer with all the force that was left in his trembling arm and fled.

  Spinning through the darkness, the hammer struck the boar above one eye and bounced off. The blow made a slight dent in the carved wood but that was the only effect it had. Without checking his speed, Old Scratch stormed on and, sprinting as fast as he could, Adam raced away.

  Hastening down the oak, Henry clambered on to the bottommost branch and saw the nightmare go galloping after. Cog Adam had no chance. The wild boar was gaining on him – a minute more and the apprentice would be hurled to the ground as brass tusks drove into his scrawny legs.

  “The devil’s dinner,” Henry murmured. “That’s what Coggy’ll be.”

  A brief instant of indecision tormented Henry Wattle. If he remained quiet while Adam kept the monster busy, he might be able to sneak off and run to safety. Yet his conscience rebelled at the craven idea and he was sickened to have even thought it.

  From the branch he leaped and, holding the coldly flashing circlet over his head, the boy yelled. “Hey! Offal brains – over here! Ho – bacon breath! Call yourself a wild boar? I’ve seen scarier sheep. You look like a hunchback granny in her shift.”

  Faltering in his pursuit of Adam, Old Scratch veered around and glared at the insolent child standing beneath the oak tree. Henry shouted more insults and the malevolent beast’s temper boiled as never before. Snorting like an enraged bull, he stamped upon the ground and bolted straight for the apprentice.

  “Witch juice!” Henry wailed. “You’ve done it now, Wattle!”

  Dodging around the trunk and pelting past the scaffold, the boy ran. Old Scratch’s ferocious shrieks reverberated through the woodland, tearing into the darkness and echoing beneath the firmament. The crimson ichor seethed within him and the flames of his fury shone from his eyes. Only death would placate this fiery rage, to let his beautiful, curved tusks slash and rend, to roll across the fallen quarry for his bristling steel to do its shredding work, then to trounce and push his splintered maw into what remained. That was what Old Scratch lusted for and he shot over the ground as if fired from a musket.

  Not looking over his shoulder, Henry did not know how quickly the boar was gaining but, a little distance ahead, he saw that Adam had stopped running and was staring in despair.

  “Don’t stand there gawking!” Henry bawled. “Fly, you idiot!”

  Hesitating uncertainly, Adam did not know what to do.

  “Save yourself!” Henry yelled.

  Whisking around, Adam went crashing through the trees with Suet juddering under his arm. An instant later Henry came dashing after them. Yet Old Scratch plunged in at his heels and the boy screamed as he felt hot vapour pumping from the broken snout come blasting around him.

  “You’re dead, Wattle,” he told himself.

  But before a thrust of tarnished brass gored his thigh, there came a strangled shriek and the wild boar was hurled off his hooves.

  Daring to glance behind. Henry saw what had happened and a rush of relief flooded over him.

  Old Scratch’s train of rancid proudflesh had caught on a low, thick branch and yanked the infuriated mechanical off balance. Yet even now the boar was fighting with the tough fibres, hacking and chewing to free himself. Swiftly, the dirty grey growth was torn asunder and, with the remaining tatters flowing behind him in ribbons, the hideous creature resumed the chase.

  Haring through the remaining trees, Adam and Henry’s spirits soared when they saw the lights of Wutton Old Place shine beyond the lawns, but there was no time for resting, not yet.

  As they hastened toward the yard, they heard the awful blaring roar of the horror behind them and their hopes perished when they realised Old Scratch had crossed the boundary of his realm and was berserking across the grass after them.

  “Not far!” Adam cried. “If we can only make the stables!”

  The apprentices’ chests were aching as their hearts pounded and their lungs wheezed for breath. Over the lawn they sped, their ears ringing to the murderous trumpeting.

  Suddenly their feet crunched on to gravel and, jumping over the assembled crates and boxes, they hurtled for the workshop. As one the boys threw the door open and slammed it behind them. Leaning against the stout barrier, they gasped and panted while outside they heard Old Temperance’s deep
voice call in fear.

  Suet gave a forlorn whimper, Adam and Henry listened to the thunderous crash of Old Scratch’s hooves approach. The wild boar was tearing across the yard and they stared at each other in fear.

  “He’s never left the wood before,” Henry whispered. “What have we done?”

  Before Adam could reply, the door gave a violent bang as the incensed mechanical smashed his head against it. The boy dropped Suet in shock. The frightened piglet scuttled beneath the nearest workbench as a second battering blow slammed into the door.

  Horrified, the apprentices heaved their shoulders against the juddering wood and another jarring collision shook their bones. Again and again Old Scratch smote the door and Adam feared that the timbers would shatter.

  Abruptly, however, the violence stopped and they heard a frustrated snorting pull away from the entrance.

  “He’s had enough,” Henry breathed thankfully. “He’s going.”

  Still pressed against the door, the boys listened intently to the receding grunts only to jump in alarm when an almighty din exploded in the yard as Old Scratch vented his rage on the crates of faulty mechanicals.

  “Sounds like a battle out there,” Adam said. “Hope he leaves Old Temperance alone.”

  Feeling a little more secure, the terror had subsided from Henry and his eyes were shining with excitement. “Oh yes!” he whistled. “I hope they dash each other into kindling.”

  A mournful whine came from beneath the workbench but Henry ignored it and revelled in the pig combat he was imagining.

  “Better than bear-baiting,” he said. “No one’s had hog duels before. Think of it, Coggy, two angry porkers making chops of each other. Earn me a fortune, that would. I could go from sty to style.”

  In the yard the violence ended. Old Scratch let out a tremendous, defiant shriek which fired Henry’s fear once more and he said no more about his absurd idea. Bracing himself against the door in dread-filled expectation, he waited, but no further attack was launched against the stables.

  “It’s over,” Adam said at length. “He’s returning to the wood.”