David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  Bits of rattled memory abruptly restored, Ana stared, jaw gone slack, at the dark, misty haze. Which rumbled, as hazes never do, yet this one did; and as growling emanations shivered snow off the boughs, the snow globe swirl animated the trees. But the enchantment broke with the snap of a stick, with a wild-eyed woman now chasing her horse.

  Or so Ana tried, but the forest grew dense and thorns on the vines snagged her shirt and slowed her advance. Worse, the slope now inclined, trended steeply up. Already panting, she wondered how she could do it, just where you might hide from a malevolent haze and a blur in a coat. But as the icy air raked and the deep rumble paced, her mind brought nothing but the words of the king, his soothing assurance so epically wrong:

  He’ll never find you, you’ll both be safe.

  Thrashing uphill without looking back, scratching and crawling like prey run to ground, Ana faded, began to slow. But then the slope receded, the climb leveled out, and cresting the hill into snarled briars and ghost-white birch, she lifted her gaze toward a wink of blue.

  A light, by the look. But a branch obscured it and tears made it fuzz, so rising in a squint, she tried to see more. Desperate for a miracle, but too overwhelmed to hope, she discerned, amazingly, something quite close.

  A quarter mile downhill, Christmas lights led from a barn to a house. And framed, in a twinkling glow, a sight more beautiful still, the fogging exhaust of an idling truck.

  Knuckles callused from too many knocks, Willy the deliveryman rapped the farmhouse door.

  “Package!” he yelled, then waited for a reply. A wait worsened by the cold, it devolved even more from his door-glass reflection, that hemispherical gut bulging his coveralls embroidered with Trust Me, I’m Fast!

  Sighing at his mass, Willy noticed a hand-scrawled note. ‘Gone Huntin,’ it said, so that was that, nobody home. But as he opened the door to wedge the package within, he spied a light toward the back of the house, a televised flash of silver and blue. Colors that could have meant anything, perhaps nothing at all; but tonight?

  Tonight, he had to know.

  “Hey!” Ana yelled, now rushing downhill toward the back of the barn. “Is anyone there?”

  Sprinting into the barn’s dark interior, she entered a warm funk fragrant with manure and soothed by Waltz of the Flowers, the latter wafting from somewhere ahead.

  “Hello!” she cried, but the only reply came from the cows, thirty-odd head munched cud to the Nutcracker suite. No farmer in sight, but as Ana followed the tune to a radio veiled in web, she noticed red light through a window.

  Taillights?

  “Hey!” she exclaimed, then charged the glow. But fixated ahead, she never saw the pail, never knew it was there until she banged it hard and tripped.

  Toppling toward a barn floor crash, Ana stopped her fall by grabbing a cage, a thin wire mesh. She clung there a moment, tried to think; and so did the rabbit, the ten-pounder peeking out. But when it hackled its fur, when static crackled the radio and a cow anxiously bawled, Ana knew her pursuer was close, she had to act.

  “Help!” she shouted, and glimpsing a door, she vaulted ahead and leapt outside.

  Not the welcome she expected, Ana slid to a stop amidst clouding exhaust, the oil-rich exhale of a restored antique. ‘Willy’s Willys Delivery’ stenciled the old truck’s door, and though the engine’s lopey idle suggested escape, the vehicle looked empty, no Willy was near. But then she saw tracks, boot prints leading to the farmhouse front door.

  Should I do it, just rush in? She had to, no choice. But as cow stanchions clanked and a rising lowing swelled the barn, Ana wondered what shelter an old clapboard house offered from a chasing man and a stalking haze, so that left the vehicle. But then what, flee a galactic horror in an old Willys truck?

  Unable to choose, to pick one fatally flawed option over the next, Ana considered surrender, just giving up. Wasn’t that reasonable, the only logical plan? Had this horror, this entity from lightyears away — had it come this far just to let her escape?

  A clatter behind made Ana jump. Fully expecting the man who pursued, she twisted instead toward a disturbance behind the barn window, to the rabbit rattling its cage.

  She should have ignored, either dashed to the house or stolen the truck. But as Ana looked on, it wasn’t just a scared rabbit she saw, but a serendipity of size.

  Just behind the farmhouse, Willy lugged his package to the back porch. He didn’t usually do this, circling a house was a way to meet dogs, but since it was Sunday, he had to know.

  Pressing his face to a porch window, he followed the silver-blue flickers to an old Zenith television, the recorded highlights of a game. Three hours of bloody mayhem distilled to numbers, Willy glimpsed the game’s final score: Pittsburgh 47, Detroit 14 — his Lions had lost.

  Again.

  Yet though this team from Detroit had cost Willy lots of beer bets, maybe a fiancé or two, he’d never lost faith. But he was losing his posture, and with yet another crushing defeat, he leaned against the window’s cool, solid glass.

  Then puzzled at the shiver, why the window shook. Suspecting plumbing, some bad knock of pipe in the old cellar below, he watched the glass now convulse from its caulk, a weirdness only surpassed by the TV inside, the old Zenith going super-nova with a blinding bright glow.

  The television shattered first, then came the window, the fast-cracking glass. He heard no shots, but Willy was already running, hauling heavy assumption about what just passed, how he’d nearly been killed by some cranky farmer or cranked-up nut.

  Flying like Barry Sanders, Willy rounded the house for his truck. But as he charged in, someone else fled, and looking quite out of place, a slender brunette broke from the vehicle’s fogging exhaust with a pack. A bundle, Willy assumed, stuffed with guns and cash, she and some shooter were robbing the farm. Or maybe not, but whatever was happening, it was no business of his, so shouting by habit — “It’s on the porch!” — he swung into his truck and mashed the gas.

  But instead of a roar, he heard only misfire, the stutter of fouled plugs or bad gas. So instead of the engine, Willy roared instead, an eruption of abuse accompanied by manipulations of boots and hands, by his rabid orchestrations of accelerator and choke. He didn’t grasp the cause of the malfunction, but he did know his truck, and with a backfiring bang, he coaxed the Super Hurricane L-head into high revving life.

  Every wheel spinning, Willy whipped out a turn, a barn-banging scrape now swallowed by rumble, the growl from the haze now darkening his windshield and cracking its glass. An inexplicable sight, but then the real shooting started, machine-gunning pops from firecracker strands of Christmas lights exploding overhead.

  Running flat-out the opposite way, Ana veered into an orchard. She needed cover, someplace to hide, and though the gnarled trees stood naked against the silhouetting snow, they did slow the wind, the cold blowing in through her shirt and into her bones. But it wasn’t just the freeze she fought, it was the speed, the sheer velocity of her life in collapse. Hadn’t she just been sipping hot tea, wasn’t her only concern the angel or a star?

  “The boy!” yelled a voice, steel wool on the wind. “Surrender your son!”

  Shocked by the call, Ana peered through the flurries and black hash of trees at a man in a greatcoat whipped by wind. Caught, she knew, the chasing blur had tracked her down, and regardless of his advantage, she had no choice, so redoubling her grip on the pack in her arms, she pivoted hard and bolted away.

  But her feet were numb and the frozen ground rough, and swirling flurries turned her flight into whirl. More stumbling than running, she could barely stay up, yet if her pursuer’s command lit a hot fear, his voice had sparked an unexpected thought. Its texture was different, that steel-wool scratch, but something about its inflection reminded of someone once met.

  “Let him go, Ana!” demanded the dimly connected voice. “He’s no longer yours!”

  Resuming his chase, the man in the long coat began to close. But Ana’s mind raced a
s well, and the more he said, the closer she came to a catch of her own.

  “It’s useless, woman!” he said with a taunt, the crunch of his boots increasing fast. “And you don’t understand, you have no choice!”

  “Choffa?” Ana gasped, now slowing up. “Is that—?”

  But when she turned back around, the Choffa she recalled is not what looked back. One of the men who’d come from the stars, Choffa had been an aide to the King; and though the voice seemed a close match, his face — formerly a handsome young man with a soft, easy smile, this thing in a greatcoat kept his face under wrap, a haphazard crisscross of mummy-like strips obscuring skin all blistered and a mouth of scabrous lips. Yet his eyes shocked the most, for though the left looked normal, his right seemed to glow.

  “It’s you?” Ana croaked.

  “What I am,” Choffa began, “is what I’ve become. What many become, those who wish to live.”

  But Ana heard nothing, every mental facility now mulled his hands, his tangled fingers too many and too long, the usual ten plus four more. All were blighted, tufted with growths, and though she’d glimpsed something like this before, though one who arrived with the King had a similar look, he — at least around her, had always worn gloves. But Choffa?

  Choffa had changed.

  “And—?” Ana wavered, felt a sickening churn. “And the King?” she asked. “Did he also wish — to live?”

  “He was taken when we returned, your king is gone,” Choffa declared, and the news staggered, stilled the wind. But when Choffa’s face wrap betrayed a string-spittled smirk, Ana felt only relief; for though she’d never see her dear king again, neither would she see him like this.

  “And now,” snarled Choffa, eyeing her pack, “we take his son.”

  The ‘we’ jolted, confirmed to Ana that whatever Choffa had become, he hadn’t come alone. Aware again of the rumble, the slowly advancing haze, she guessed whatever fantastical craft hid out of sight would also hide him, the horror of the ale-stain stories had come. She flailed for a strategy, some last delay, but with every option denied or played, she offered her pack, a bundle now shifting, stirring with life.

  Choffa exhaled, misted his lips with dank air from his mouth. Chase over, his prize within reach, he advanced the last few steps, extended his corruption of hands — and flinched when she threw it, when Ana hurled her backpack high overhead.

  Then, she just ran.

  Baffled by everything, by the mother who didn’t just abandon her son, but hurled him high up, Choffa watched the backpack arc toward a tree, then crash through the limbs and thump the hard ground. But if that was the show, then this was the shock, for as Choffa looked on, the pack popped open from a furious kick, the rabbit from the barn uncaged and unbound.

  Ana pushed herself on, but could barely stay up. Advancing by stagger and fitful lurch, she knew Choffa would catch her, would soon arrive enraged. Terror flared, her psyche felt savaged by a hot, slicing dread — yet she also marveled, oddly detached, how her well-planned life would so dementedly end. Did serious women actually die like this, was she really running from a mummy-wrapped face and a rumbling cloud?

  “Where!” shouted Choffa, now closing fast. “Where is he!”

  Ana said nothing, just raced from the orchard and careened into a field, a dead lay of corn with angle iron stalks.

  “Speak, woman! Do you long for my touch?”

  Numb to his threats and dense with cold, Ana staggered on. Nothing mattered but the chase, she would flee as long as she could; and then she saw it, the dull, rising light. Some bastard shade of indigo, the spawn of dusk and night, it came from behind and purpled the snow.

  “I’ll find him!” Choffa yelled, and by the fear in his voice, Ana knew he addressed someone else.

  “He’s close and she’ll tell us,” Choffa affirmed, “you have my word!”

  Ana knew she should run, that was the point, but the light behind enthralled, was simply too strange, so slowing a bit, she took a look back.

  Cemetery, her spontaneous thought, the indigo seep through the bare orchard trees painted gnarled black limbs into portraits of death. Painful deaths, lives struck in mid-writhe, so despite Choffa’s charge, how he sped Ana’s way, she found herself stopped; for though the indigo glow kindled horror, it somehow also entranced.

  Choffa’s impact knocked her ten feet and Ana hit hard, the frozen clods hurt. And so did the corn, the chopped off stalks, so the cold helped, she told herself, mitigated the pain. But when seven blighted fingers gabbed her hair and yanked her back up, Ana knew it wasn’t cold enough.

  “Speak!” Choffa demanded, his ragged face inches away. “You hid him where, the forest? Where is your child!”

  Ana said nothing, just hacked for air from the crash that nearly blew out her breath. Yet her silence also sprung from awe, from the glow advancing not through the orchard, but over the top.

  “He’s ours now, do you hear?” Choffa roared, and sounding ever more frantic, he hoisted Ana by a fistful of hair. “And this night he’ll be marked, I’ll mark him myself!”

  Catching that, aware of his words, but not what they meant, Ana found her voice. “‘Marked,’ what — what do you mean?”

  “I mean to live, Ana,” Choffa hissed. “And if you’d like to keep living, suckle your babe once more, then answer, speak now, where is the Son of the King!”

  Feeling the hair rip from her scalp, Ana shuddered, but made no sound.

  But Choffa did. Hit from above, drilled through his back by a searing lick of light from whatever rumbled the haze, he answered with agony, a dry-gargle grind.

  “I’ll find him!” Choffa sputtered, now dropping Ana and twisting back toward the trees. “I brought you the King and I’ll bring you his son, just let me live, let—!”

  All supplication apparently ignored, Choffa shrieked from the ray’s increasing intensity, a searing bright surge now charring the wraps obscuring his face. The cloth now igniting, bubbling with melt, Ana revived when he screamed from the burn.

  Lurching and stumbling, just trying to move, she turned from Choffa and the nightmarish light and fled toward the last thing in her path, a tall, bare oak. Not much of a shelter, but by all supernatural appearance, as good as anything else, for though she had little evidence, the entity in the orchard was him. A conclusion supported, she now recalled, by her late King’s words, his tale of the invader, the horror that glowed with a light from the depths.

  Ana tripped on a stalk and landed in a drift. Succumbing to it all, to the exhaustion and freeze and a fear that possessed, she sensed, finally, an approach from behind. But as the virginal snow turned terminal blue, she somehow, with nothing left, eked out a crawl. Pointless, she knew, at least for her, but all she wanted was a few moments more.

  A brittle crack stopped her advance. Something just snapped overhead, so pausing now, she lifted her gaze. Pretty, those flurries sailing the gusts, but she stared instead at the long, crooked branch, a thing just split from the oak. But instead of falling, it floated, just hung high above.

  “Your child.”

  A whisper from the deep, some unfathomed haunt, it rose from behind. “You know what he is?”

  Ana didn’t answer, didn’t even try, because the texture of the voice not only confounded, it conjured a being both steeped in power and stewed in decay, a cadaver still and somehow alive.

  “He’s just a baby,” she finally rasped. “What — do you want?”

  “Nothing, Anastasia,” the haunting replied. “I came only to see.”

  His mystifying answer went nowhere, just hung overhead, yet so did that long, crooked branch. But now it twisted and turned, shed its twigs and bark as if shucked by invisible hands.

  “And now that I have—” The whisper grew louder, seemed to approach, yet Ana heard no footsteps, no frozen crunch. “Now that I know you bore the King’s son—”

  “Leave him alone!” she reflexively cried.

  “So I will,” the dry voice replied. “An
d so I must, at least for now.”

  Glimpsing movement, Ana watched the branch fall. But just like everything else on this bleak winter night, the wood had changed, transformed from a rough splay of oak into a long, crooked stick, a thing now spearing the tinted snow beside.

  “But though you deceived Choffa—”

  The familiar name startled, turned her gaze to the man who both betrayed the King and came for her son. But instead of Choffa, Ana saw only embers, glowing remnants scattered by wind.

  “Though he failed his test to mark your son, he at least led me to you, so — I will mark him myself.”

  “No!” she yelled, now wobbling up. “Touch him, I’ll kill you, I—!”

  Beholding the horror, the him of the tales she refused to believe, Ana wondered how a being wrapped in chains could suspend in mid-air. Ghostly, the sight, for not only did this vision defy all earthly tug, it also hid from the eye by suffusions of mist swirling its chains, arterial links alive with liquid indigo light. No skin was seen, every square inch resembled a metal mesh weave, yet just like Choffa, too many fingers plagued the hands. But as for a face, when her courage reached that high? Ana saw only a void, a flat black dark with even darker eyes, windows to some soulless abyss.

  “Hey!”

  The far shout startled, shook Ana off the horror and behind to a woods, a hunter in the trees fifty yards out. Who cradled, by all appearance, a large caliber gun.

  “Help!” Ana yelled, amazed she still could. “Please, get help!”

  But to this hunter’s mind, he was the help. Yet he was also confused, had no idea what drama played out, not until the man in chains — did he stand on a ladder, wear stilts? — hoisted a long, crooked stick. And when he then stabbed the woman and turned the snow red, the hunter’s confusion blew clear as he shouldered his rifle and took steady aim, and nineteen ounces of trigger pull later, his firing hammer sparked ninety grains of black powder, an explosive eviction driving a cast iron ball to eighteen-hundred feet per second.