9 Tales Told in the Dark 22

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  He shone his torch on the stony ground as he paced up the lane, ice crystals glinting in the bright light. Again, his breath was all that he could see ahead of him, beyond the cone of his torch’s beam. His footsteps echoed, magnified by the stonewalls at either side of the road and animals and birds shuffled in the underbrush as he passed. He came to the top of the road, where the gate was and put his torch down while he reached over to unfasten the catch. The gate stuck, but gave with some pressure and swung open with a sigh of tired metal.

  He picked up his torch and pointed it ahead of him. The iron doors were completely rusted. Around them, fungi grew out from the wood of the walls of the barn. He stopped and felt his heart and his breathing stop. After a few moments, both returned, so he took the few steps forward to the iron doors. Trying not to cut his hands on the rust that was all around, he swung open the door and shone the torch inside. He saw the nearest pen, with the young ones first. All the sheep were lying on their sides. Many of them looked to be dead, but others were still twitching, their tongues lolling from their mouths and swollen, oozing sores littered their bodies, wool matted into the mix of blood and viscera. The farmer felt the air rush out of him once again and he fell to his knees. A cursory arc of torchlight revealed that the whole barn – forty-eight head of sheep – were the same. Some of the older sheep, despite looking much worse, were still conscious, moaning with hoarse voices. He crawled over to them, but thought better of touching them despite his longing to give them some comfort. He sat, prostrate on the hay-covered floor, and wept.

  He remained there for the whole three hours it took for the vet to arrive, destroy those that were still alive and carefully take samples of the blood and other tissues from the sores for testing, later in the day. Sergio knew it was coming before he said it, but still he was shattered to hear that they’d all have to be burnt. He decided it was best left until the next morning and walked home zombie-like, his shadows long in the midday winter sun. He felt like a little boy, sobbing as he told the whole story to his wife. A strong woman, from farming stock herself, she put her hands on his shoulders, looked him squarely in the eye for a moment.

  “What you saw is what you saw,” she began. “But I haven’t seen a darn thing. And until that changes, I’m going to assume that what you saw was because you were tired. Then I’m going to wait until we hear from the vet. And then we’ll decide what we’re going to do, alright? Them sheep were all up to date on vaccines and what have you. We’ll likely be covered by insurance. Tonight, I’m going to run you a hot bath and you’re going to try not to think about it, ok Senhor Fernandes?”

  He smiled, the mere act of raising his cheeks bringing more tears, but no sobbing this time. He went to change out of his clothes while his wife ran his bath. While he bathed, the sobs were silent. Violent, and from the very core of himself, but silent. And when he had sobbed it all out and the steaming water had numbed the soreness from his being stretched out on that wood floor half the day, he went to bed without saying a word.

  “Good morning, senhor Fernandes,” said Benedita Freire, Francisco’s mother, as the acrid black smoke rose up off the pile of sheep carcasses. “Did you manage to get the wool off them in workable condition?”

  He stared into her eyes incredulously. “It’s early senhora,” he said, refusing to acknowledge her question. “What are you doing down in the village. Stores and market won’t be open for another two hours.”

  There was silence, punctuated by the sound of the wind pulling the flames this way and that as it squalled around the hillside.

  “Tomas,” she said, letting the name hang in the air, so it too might be taken off by a gust of wind. “Tomas was here, wasn’t he, Sergio?”

  The farmer wished her a good day and began off towards his cottage.

  “If he was here, he’ll come back, Senhor Fernandes,” she called after him, her voice reverberating eerily off the stonewalls and the wooded embankment that ran up to the mountainside. “He’ll come back until whoever’s next is… till whoever’s next is next.”

  The old farmer didn’t turn back. He could hear her words loudly and clearly, alongside the crackling and splitting of the wood on the pyre. He got into the house and crept to the bedroom. His wife was quiet. Asleep. He went to the kitchen cupboard and pulled out the coffee pot. He set it down and unscrewed the cap. Added water and spooned coffee onto the filter. Fastened it and lit the stove. He sat down. Pressed his hands to his eyes, so tightly he saw colored patches imprinted on the backs of his eyelids. Finally, he exhaled and stood, walked back to the cupboard and took their homemade liquor from the end of the wine making season. He poured himself a shot. He sipped at it. Then downed what was left in one. Then he poured another. He threw it down his neck and turned off the stove, putting the liquor bottle back where he’d taken it from. He pulled open the door as silently as he could, pulled on his woolen hat, and stepped out into the half-light.

  The village was penned in by four farms, acting like boundaries to the outside world, with the market, café, the guesthouse, and the rest in the center and one farm at each corner. Old Fernandes strode past cottages where villagers were just barely stirring from sleep, all the way from his farm in the south-west right across the village to Francisco Freire’s land in the northeast. The land here didn’t see the sun until after eight at that time of year. The murk was still as thick as treacle and he barely noticed the farmhouse until he was near to walking into it.

  He cleared his throat and rapped on the door. The latch was unfastened remarkably quickly. “Come in, Sergio,” Francisco said. He had clearly been waiting for him. There was steam rising from the tarnished silver coffee pot in the middle of the table and two mugs. The dark, strong liquid was almost as viscose as the darkness outside as Sergio filled the chipped cup, beginning to explain everything that had happened with his livestock and working back to his seeing young Tomas, or what had seemed to be Tomas.

  “I know,” said Francisco, finally, when Sergio ran out of things to say. The old man took a sip from his mug, not blinking, waiting for an explanation.

  “My mother,” Francisco began, “is a descendent of the original settlers here.” He paused and took a sip from his own cup. “We’re not talking about when this place was even a village, as such. This country didn’t even exist. It was post-roman, Celtic, apparently. And for the last fifteen hundred or so years, they’ve continued observing their traditions. It’s why I fell out with the old bat in the first place. Remember when my dad died?”

  He paused. Sergio nodded, crossed himself, and whispered something under his breath. “Go on, son,” he urged the younger man.

  “This time, I… I was mad with grief. She was doing… I don’t know – something – in the church, after the service – to Tomas, I mean. I lost it, Sergio. I completely lost it. I took the ritual objects and I smashed them and now-” Francisco choked and violent sobs began to shake him in his chair. Old Fernandes stood and went to him, offering him a handkerchief, which he gratefully accepted. Then he put a firm hand on the young man’s shoulder. “What is he, Francisco? I need to know,” he said.

  “You would call it Death,” said Francisco’s mother, stamping the cold out of her old legs as she pushed the door closed. “Death will embody the last person to die in the community, if the soul is not properly sent off. He will come back and he will bring corruption, and decay until the next soul is taken.”

  Farmer Fernandes’ white hair seemed to turn a shade lighter as he slouched deeper into the cushioned back of the chair. “And who is the next soul, Senhora, if you don’t mind me asking?” He looked at her, his expression full of fear.

  “That’s for death to know, and for us to find out,” she said with a smile as bitter as the coffee she was pouring into the cup she had just taken down from the rack.

  For the next hour, she explained in more detail about the journey of the soul to the underworld and how the very embodiment of Death got caught up with it, should it not be cor
rectly guided and supplied. Francisco periodically stood and paced the small room, unable to fully grasp the idea of his son as some kind of soul claiming monster. All the while the wind howled and, after some time, huge, sticky snowflakes began to illuminate the small window of the front door, as the first rays of sun reached this side of the mountain. Through shock or exhaustion, they all sat watching at the windows as the grey-green of the mountain landscape metamorphosed into a plain of bright, fresh white. Sergio broke the silence as he stood, his chair legs creaking across the wooden floor. “I really must check on that pyre, do excuse me, please,” he said. And as he did so, he froze. He could hear the screech of metal on metal. He turned back to the table. “Do you hear that?”

  Francisco cocked his head and concentrated. He did. “Marta?” asked his mother, but he shook his head. It was impossible. She had gone south to stay with her parents – she was finding the grief particularly difficult to deal with. He stood and crept silently toward the back door. He listened. A regular squeal of metal grating against metal. His heart rate and mind raced in tandem. Then it struck him. Tomas’ swing. “Sergio – back to your farm, now,” Francisco barked the order. His mother nodded her agreement. The old man opened his mouth, preparing to refuse, until the sound got louder, faster. He turned and bolted out of the door and up the road into the advancing light. Francisco’s mother had stepped into the kitchen and was weighing up potential weapons. She had a cleaver in her hand and was about to swing it to get a feel for the heft of it, when she heard the catches of the back door open and the creak of the wood as Francisco pulled it slowly open. He looked ahead and the swing was still moving, but slowing. The metal struts holding it aloft had almost completely rusted and the bushes nearest to it were blackened and lifeless, a curled ball of decay. He stepped out into the falling snow with a shiver.

  His usual delight at the crunch of fresh snow under his boots was replaced with the terror of being detected. He tried to tread lightly. Taking a few steps forward, he saw the tiny footprints belonging to what was once his son. They lead away from the swing and around the side of the fence into the field. Under each print, the thin winter grass too had been left devoid of life. He reached the fence that marked the border of the garden, but couldn’t see the death child. The sun was still rising and the reflection on the virgin snow made it hard to pick out any details in the empty farmland.

  Just then, he heard a cacophonous sound from a clump of trees between the edge of his land and the road. No longer caring about being seen or heard, he began to run. He called out to his son “Tomas! TOMAS! Can you hear me?” When he reached the trees, he was aghast to find the source of the sound. Two crows were lying on their backs, their wings snapped inside out, useless as they tried to flap them while visible sores were already swelling on their torsos, feathers curling and falling out. The other crows in the trees were watching the spectacle and making their displeasure known with a cacophony of rasped cawing. It was too much for Francisco and he dropped to his knees. He barely even felt the snow soaking through his trousers and chilling his flesh. He didn’t even hear as the slow, slight footsteps of his former son approached him. A crooked smile adorned his face, as several of his teeth had now fallen out. A cavity had opened up behind one of his ears and a deep brownish fluid oozed slowly from it. Looking up, even at this monstrous form of what his son had become, he couldn’t help but smile at seeing his son’s eyes once more, his body animate.

  The boy approached him slowly, not blinking, his skin looking increasingly blue, the closer he got to the daylight streaming into the trees from behind his father. “Tomas,” Francisco said, little more than a whisper. The boy tried to reply, but what came out was little more than a hissing and a gurgling, drool carried over his lower lip by his wayward tongue and dropping onto his already filthy miniature suit.

  Finally realizing the horror of what his child had become, and that he was here, in fact to claim his own mortal soul as penance for his failings just days earlier, Francisco tried to stand. His legs were completely frozen, the joints stiff. He couldn’t move. He used his arms and shuffled backwards. The boy-made-death advanced and he began to scramble backwards, trying to work some warm blood into his frozen legs. “No no no no no no,” he muttered as he looked up in to that wide grin, no sign of the boy he had borne in the vacant, dark eyes that bore down on him. The boy slipped and reached out, one hand grasping Francisco’s ankle. He immediately felt the pain strike his heart, his lungs suddenly heavy as he tried to breathe in. The cold gathered around him, as though he had just plunged into a frozen lake.

  “Honey and oil,” his mother said from behind him. He turned to see her approaching, bare handed. “The directions for the soul are in the locked cabinet in the kitchen.”

  Not understanding, and feeling his consciousness beginning to slip from his grasp, Francisco just managed to utter a final “What?” But he needed no reply. She stepped forward and grasped the boy in her arms. “My soul,” she mouthed to Francisco as she felt the frozen touch of the boy-become-death at the sides of her face. Her wrinkled skin seemed to pull tighter over her frail bones and she began to fall towards her knees and then forwards, on top of the boy.

  Acting without thinking, Francisco took his mother’s arm and pulled her back. The sores were already developing on her wiry neck and exposed shoulder where the boy’s hands had pressed on to her. She fell back. Clearly dead. Suddenly in a state of panic, Francisco leaned forward to look at what had once been his son. Again, he was at peace, even if the markers of his other self remained in his missing teeth and wounds to his neck and head. Francisco stood and stamped his feet to get heat back into them. He blew hard onto his hands until he had some sense of feeling in them. Then he began to walk back home to fetch some blankets.

  THE END.

  Kev Harrison is a British writer of dark fiction in his mid-30s, living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. His work has recently been published in collections from Jitter Press and Almond Press, while another collection from Lycan Valley Press is awaiting release.

  He can be contacted here:

  www.twitter.com/LisboetaIngles

  THE LAST NIGHT by Mandi Jourdan

  The sweet, metallic smell of blood hung thick in the air of the wooden shack. Walden tried to ignore it while he awaited his father’s return from wherever he went when the boy was left alone in the silence of the dilapidated old house. The occasional creak of the oaken framework in the wind was Walden’s only company, apart from that smell.

  It made him feel alive. He longed to feel the warm rush of human blood over his tongue, running through his veins. To wait for his father to bring back someone to feed on was the purest form of torment. It seemed each time Proteus ordered his eldest child to remain here in the shack alone while he went to hunt, he was gone longer. Perhaps the boy had just grown increasingly impatient the more he was left to his own devices in the little wooden prison cell.

  For only a moment, a thought flickered through his mind of how much he hated his father for turning him into this. This monster. For a moment, Walden hated himself for being so weak—so susceptible to his father’s persuasion and malleable to his will. He thought of how hard his mother had worked to teach him that it was not yet his time to become so bloodthirsty. It was too early in the development of his vampiric needs to require so much blood to survive, and he was not the type of person to enjoy it. Without his father’s conditioning, this would have been true.

  In the next moment, these thoughts were gone, his mind again dominated by aching need. Walden’s eyes scanned the room, seeking out something to distract him from the thirst threatening to drive him mad. Smears covered the floor in a shade of dark maroon that had been crimson when the liquid had first spilled onto the rough wooden slats, seeping in between the grains to stain them as a permanent, unchangeable record of the acts committed here.

  Proteus Sinclair and his son were among the Born. Unlike those of their kind who were changed from the species they
would later hunt, the Sinclairs entered the world with a taste for blood and a talent for regeneration. Walden had come to realize that his father viewed this place as a departure from himself—the life Proteus led here belonged only to him, and he had the exclusive right to deny its existence when he returned to polite society and the perfect image he had cultivated.

  The door flew open with bang, and a towering shadow spilled over the floor. Walden stepped to the side as his father entered the room, jaw set firmly and crimson eyes cold as he tossed an unconscious human woman onto the wooden slats. It was clear that Proteus had already begun his torture; the woman’s wrists and neck bore several gashes each, and blood had dried there in lines trickling across her ivory skin from her injuries. Walden’s heart accelerated at the sight, and he hated himself for it. He loathed the way he shifted just a bit closer, sniffing the air as his pupils dilated at the smell of blood much fresher than what decorated the shack.

  “Go on.” Proteus closed the door and leaned against the wall beside it, folding his arms and pulling at a thread on his coat with an air of utter indifference as his son drew nearer to the woman. “Feed.”

  Walden wished more than anything that he could resist. He did not want to cause her pain. But he was physically incapable of stopping himself from fulfilling his need for blood—from kneeling and sinking his teeth into her throat. The hot liquid poured over his tongue and surged through his body, energizing and revitalizing him after waiting for so long to feed. After a few minutes, Walden felt in control of himself again, and he pulled his mouth back to stop. If he held himself back now, she would be in no immediate danger of dying.

  Walden didn’t notice his father standing at his side until Proteus laid a hand on his shoulder. “Finish it.”