He stank to high heaven, like death on a warm day. And his voice sounded familiar like I heard it in a dream somewhere.
This is what he told me.
Women hold the key to vitality. All things spring forth from women, even the fertility of nature itself. Without them, without their flesh bringing forth our flesh, we cannot come into being.
He told me that female flesh is the secret to continued vitality. That from the flesh we come and back to the flesh, we must go if we wish to have life.
He told me to take the night and consider these things. And then he told me that there are consequences for those who lose their vitality.
***
Andrew closed the book in disgust. What on earth was wrong with Corvus? He was already having a hard enough time reconciling with the fact that his grandfather had become obsessed with a figment of his imagination, but now on top of that, he had to deal with his grandfather’s grotesque views on women too?
His stomach turned as he tossed the journal onto the table. Vitality and flesh, it was all just too much. He didn’t even like that word. Flesh. It left a bad feeling in his mouth reminiscent of the few fundamentalist Baptist sermons he had heard as a kid before his mom died and his died quit having them go. There was too much baggage attached to that word for it to ever not sound creepy to Andrew.
Noticing that Celeste’s snoring had died down and deciding that he had had enough reading for one night, Andrew pulled himself up out of the armchair. A wave of dizziness overtook him as he stood up, toppling him right back down into the seat. His vision blurred for a moment before evening out again. He was more tired than he thought.
Getting up again was a struggle, but Andrew managed to make his way into the kitchen to put his glass in the sink. Then he turned out the lights and went upstairs, fully recovered from his dizzy spell. He stumbled over to the bedroom door but paused before going in.
Was it his imagination, or could Andrew hear something in the attic? He tilted his head and held his breath, trying to pick up the sound again.
Nothing.
The attic door was still open, its gaping maw opened wide, beckoning to him, bidding him enter. Every rational part of his mind told him to just go to bed, but Andrew found that his body was moving against his will. He approached the attic as quietly as possible and began to climb, the steps creaking softly under his bare feet.
Poking his head through the opening and peering into the darkness, Andrew saw nothing that could be making the sound. A small beam of moonlight streamed in through the small window behind his head, illuminating the small path to the back of the attic, which was hidden behind an impenetrable wall of shadow. After listening for a moment and allowing his eyes to adjust, Andrew located the sound.
He climbed up the last few steps and tiptoed slowly across the floor over to the nearest Ragged painting. This one was a closeup, showing just the creature’s face. Thick black hair covered all of its features except for those red eyes, which met Andrew’s gaze with a malevolent stare.
The sound was coming from the portrait.
Andrew’s eyes widened as he leaned in closer to listen, his ear almost touching the canvas. That’s when the sound became a word.
Flesh.
He jerked his head back and was met with a new wave of dizziness. Losing his balance, Andrew turned and caught himself on a box behind him, landing face to face with another one of the paintings. This one was a wider image of the creature tearing the meat off the body of the horned girl in white. The word came again, this time from the new portrait he was facing.
Flesh.
Andrew pushed himself back into a standing position and moved to the next painting in line. Leaning forward, he heard the word a third time.
Another image called out behind him, louder this time. He spun back around to find the source but heard the word from another place further down the aisle before he could find it. Soon, multiple voices were speaking at the same time, overlapping as they did.
The chorus grew rapidly, leaving Andrew in a daze as dozens of small voices began to chant.
Flesh. Flesh. Flesh. Flesh.
Through the noise, Andrew somehow heard a new call; a silent voice telling him to go to the window. Numbness overtook him and his feet carried him through the moonlight, taking him to the small octagonal pane on the wall. The voices, which had been steadily growing in volume, suddenly fell silent when he put his hand on the glass.
Out in the backyard, standing in the moonlight, was the Ragged. Its features were tough to make out in the darkness, but Andrew was certain of what the creature was. It looked like a living shadow, all dark and amorphous as if its body were made out of the tattered fabric that hung off it in heaps. Thick black hair hung over its face in slick, matted strands, obscuring most of its features, just like in the paintings.
The Ragged was staring at the house when Andrew approached the window, but it seemed to notice his movement, lifting its gaze upward. Looking directly at him now, the creature tilted its head to the side, as if in contemplation. It swayed back and forth for a moment, looking like it may fall over, but then it stepped forward.
It took short, stiff steps, and Andrew noticed that it was favoring its left leg as it moved. After limping five feet closer to the house, never breaking eye contact with Andrew, the Ragged stopped again. Then, it slowly lifted its right hand and placed it on its stomach, tilting its head to the opposite side.
Almost instinctively, Andrew found himself gently shaking his head no. He remembered how the Ragged had made that same gesture in Corvus’s first journal entry, and, while some part of him in the back of his mind believed he was dreaming, he didn’t want to go down the same path as his grandfather. If what he was looking at was real, then Andrew wanted no part of it.
Upon seeing his response, the Ragged lowered its hand back to its side and slowly turned around, limping slowly back into the woods. As Andrew stood frozen to the spot and watched the creature retreat to the back of the clearing, the voices in the paintings returned, quickly growing in volume.
Flesh. Flesh. Flesh. Flesh.
Andrew’s open palm turned into a fist on the glass as the intensity of the chanting sent a new wave of dizziness over him, buckling his knees.
Flesh. Flesh. Flesh. Flesh.
He clamped his eyes shut and pulled his good hand away from the window to cover an ear as he sank to the ground.
Flesh. Flesh. Flesh. Flesh.
Overwhelmed by the cries of the portraits, Andrew pushed his head against the exterior wall and began to pray.
He had never been much of a praying man; his father didn’t have any patience for religion, and Andrew found that he got along just fine without it. But at that moment, he prayed to whatever god might be listening. To anything that wasn’t the Ragged.
After an eternity of cowering on the floor, begging for the noise to stop, the chorus began to subside. One by one, the voices shrank in volume and fell off, until the last word hung gently in the silence. Andrew didn’t move. He kept his eyes shut and listened intently.
Nothing.
It was complete silence in the attic once more. Andrew slowly lowered the hand from his ear and opened his eyes as he pulled his head back from the wall. He hesitated there for a moment, half expecting the shouting to return. The air was still.
A sigh of relief escaped Andrew’s lips. He pulled himself up to his feet and turned to head down the stairs.
That’s when something caught his eye.
On the far end of the attic, deep in the shadows, was the faintest glint of color. Andrew froze in place and stared, mystified by the glow of what he now saw to be two small, reddish lights floating next to each other a few feet off the ground. They swayed for a moment before quickly rising over 6 feet above the floor. Andrew’s heart fell into his stomach as he realized what the lights were.
They were eyes.
A dull thud could be heard in the darkness, and floorboards creaked under a new weight. Then
another thud resounded, closer this time. The red lights bounced in the air. As the sound grew louder in the shadows, Andrew could hear the telltale gallop of a limp.
Thud, thump. Thud, thump.
The steps picked up speed in the darkness. Andrew tried to move but found himself rooted to the spot. He held his breath as the red lights grew brighter.
Thud, thump. Thud, thump. Thud, thump. Thud, thump.
Suddenly, the Ragged’s form came charging out of the shadows, its glowing red eyes trained on Andrew. It cleared the space impossibly fast and shoved him, sending him flying backward into the wall. He slid limply to the floor, his eyes rolling back from the pain.
The creature above him went in and out of focus as Andrew struggled to stay conscious. The last thing he saw was blood-red eyes staring down at him, full of malice.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Celeste yawned and stretched before rolling over to snuggle up next to Andrew. It didn’t surprise her to find that he wasn’t lying next to her; his early riser lifestyle had baffled her for too many years for her to forget about it. What surprised Celeste was that his half of the bed was cold. Had he gotten up even earlier than normal that morning?
A small sinking feeling made itself known in her gut when Celeste realized that she didn’t smell breakfast. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t hear any of the usual signs that Andrew was up and around. No humming, no shower, no cooking, nothing.
She shivered as she slid out of bed. Throwing on one of Andrew’s flannels, Celeste set about looking for him. She checked in the bathroom, looked around the whole of the downstairs, and even checked out front for their car. The sedan had developed a layer of frost on the windows during the night, meaning it hadn’t been used during the night.
Confused, Celeste went back inside and poked her head into the basement. Dark. Next, she went upstairs and peeked inside Corvus’s room, finding it in the same condition she had last seen it in. She frowned and closed the door before begrudgingly turning and looking over at the step ladder leading up to the attic.
“Andrew?” She called out as she made her approach. Hearing nothing, she slowly started ascending the stairs. “I swear if this is some kind of joke–”
She stopped mid-sentence when her head lifted above the ceiling and she saw Andrew slumped against the wall underneath the window.
“Andrew!” She cried, running up the last of steps and kneeling next to him.
His eyes opened groggily at the sound of her voice, and Celeste scooped his head into an overly tight hug.
“What are you doing up here?”
The fog of sleep immediately left Andrew’s demeanor, and he stood up with startling speed.
“We need to leave,” he said as he took her hand and led her back to the stairs.
“Wait,” she protested, pulling her hand back. “Why? What’s going on?”
Andrew never broke stride as he descended into the hallway. Celeste nearly missed a step as she struggled to keep up, narrowly avoiding tumbling to the floor below. He had already stormed into the bedroom. She followed him in and found him hastily throwing their belongings into suitcases.
She tried unsuccessfully to get his attention multiple times before finally getting fed up.
“Andrew stop!” She shouted. The windowpanes shook from the force of her voice, and she could hear Gracie fall of the couch in the living room in shock. Even Andrew froze in place and stared at her. “You need to tell me what’s going on right now, Andrew Wilson, or so help me God, I will move into this house permanently.”
He stood still for a few moments, seemingly stunned by her sudden outburst. Vindictively, she thought that maybe if he had been paying attention, it wouldn’t have felt so sudden for him. Celeste crossed the room and took his hand, sitting him down on the side of the bed.
“Darling, what is going on?” She asked, her voice softening.
The energy melted out of his body, and Andrew looked at her with distant eyes.
“I think it’s real,” he said quietly. “I think it’s all real.”
“What’s real?”
“The Ragged.”
With that, Andrew began to tell Celeste everything he had been keeping from her. He told her about the deer heads in the barn, described the entries in Corvus’s journal, and even recounted his experiences from the night before. She listened to all of it, doing her best to digest the startling amount of information that she simply hadn’t been made privy to.
Part of her wanted to be angry with Andrew; the impulse was certainly there. But there was something about the way he told her everything, maybe the genuine fear in his eyes, that let her know that now wasn’t the time to be upset. Whatever Andrew had kept from her, Celeste was certain that he had had a good reason.
“I thought it was fake the whole time, you know?” He began wrapping up the briefing session. “Just a bunch of weird coincidences and the imagination of a crazy man. But with everything that’s happened, and how on edge we’ve both been, and especially after last night, I’m just not sure anymore. I’m scared that it’s all real. That the Ragged’s out there, and it’s been messing with our minds. I’m just scared.”
Andrew leaned in for a hug and Celeste embraced him, holding him close as he buried his face in her chest. She ran her fingers through his hair and stared at the wall. It was all just so much to process at once. But through the flurry of emotions and information, something nagged at the back of her mind.
“I don’t think it is,” she said after a few minutes of holding him.
He pulled back and looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not the only one who’s found weird stuff around here.”
Celeste laid it all out for Andrew. She told him about her nightmares and about the general sense of unease she had been feeling since their arrival, but she also told him about the missing girls in the pharmacy, the books on folklore, and the atlas, including her theory.
“I think Corvus was up to something bad,” she finally said after laying out her side of the puzzle. “The journal, the atlas, the folklore, the paintings. I think your grandfather may have using his delusions to justify some awful stuff.”
“You think he was capable of something like that?” He asked, clearly not wanting to accept the idea.
“You’ve seen all the creepy stuff around here,” she replied. “What’s more likely, that there’s an ancient fae creature living in the woods behind the farmhouse, or that a mentally ill old man convinced himself there was to help with his guilt?”
Andrew sat silent for a moment, staring blankly into space.
“I just don’t see how there can be any other possible way to explain all of this,” Celeste said, trying to coax a reaction out of him.
He blinked a couple of times before his eyes refocused and he looked at her.
“So where does that leave us?” He asked, his face a forlorn mix of fear and sorrow. Celeste felt genuine pity for him at that moment; his only good influence growing up was on the cusp of being posthumously outed as a monster. “We can’t both be right.”
She absorbed his statement and took a minute to think.
“Okay, that’s true,” She finally said. “But why don’t we each act like we are?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that there are a half dozen books on folklore creatures in a box downstairs. Certainly one of them tells you how to fight off a faerie. You stay here and study up, and I’ll go into town and follow my lead. We’ve got all day to figure this out, and then we can stay in the motel the rest of the time. But we cannot leave town until we’re certain there weren’t real crimes committed here. Got it?”
Andrew’s eyes met hers for the first time since she had brought up her theory, and they were full of pain. Admittedly, it wasn’t Celeste’s best pep talk in the world, but the point seemed to have gotten across when he set his chin and nodded.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
; ***
The next few hours passed at an unbearably slow pace for Andrew. Two thoughts wrestled with each other in his mind as he and Celeste packed their bags and did last-minute sweeps of the house for anything of value. The idea that his grandfather could have been a serial killer fought for dominion over the admittedly absurd notion that a being beyond mortal comprehension had been living in the forest behind the farmhouse and communicating with him.
He knew logically that the latter option was foolish to even consider, but after his experiences the night before, Andrew just couldn’t be certain. And, to him at least, the idea that Corvus was up to anything nefarious felt just as outlandish. His grandfather was a gruff, even cold, man, but a murderer? Even back when he was a teenager hearing the rumors about Eileen’s disappearance for the first time, Andrew had refused to believe that Corvus could have been capable of something like that. It felt completely counter to the man he had met.
After the couple had finished packing their bags and prepping to leave, Celeste picked the keys up off the counter and went out the front door. Andrew followed her out to the car, watching as the prevailing winds brought with them those same dark clouds he had seen the night before. Celeste rolled the window down to say goodbye.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” He asked, his elbow propped up against the door as he leaned forward, ducking his head out of the wind.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Both of us going would attract too much attention. Plus, it’s just going to be a quick in-and-out thing. I won’t linger, and I won’t be chatty.”
“Okay, just get back here before this storm hits. It’s supposed to be pretty ugly.”
“Don’t worry babe, I’ll be back by sundown.”
Celeste gave Andrew a quick kiss before flashing him a small smile and backing out of the driveway. Andrew did his best to return the look, but his nerves were getting to him. He still wasn’t certain why she was so insistent about being secretive, but he was willing to take her word for it. Celeste had always had excellent gut instincts, and a small part of Andrew mused that they might not be in their current predicament at all if he had listened to her gut sooner.
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