by B R Grove
A scream bubbled up in her throat, but she stopped herself.
It can’t hurt you. It’s just a part of the background.
The creature let out a guttural snarl and bounded forward. She stayed in her place, glaring at the monster, daring it to come closer.
Her facade shattered immediately as the creature lashed out a sharp-taloned paw and slashed at her arm. There was a sharp sting and a spray of blood as she shrieked and jerked away. She clutched her arm and took a step back, preparing to run. The creature continued past her, running through the thicket of trees on the other side of the sidewalk and disappearing. Lemmie blinked. She took a quick look at her arm. The cut was deep; she would have to go to the hospital. She took one last fearful look at the thicket before rushing in the opposite direction. She was terrified, but not because of the monster.
It was because one of them touched her.
They’d never done that before.
~
That night, she couldn’t fall asleep. Despite flipping her pillow many times, changing her position, and trying to think happy thoughts, her stitches were sore, the room was uncomfortably humid, and the encounter with the creature on the street still plagued her mind. She groaned, annoyed, and threw her pillow across the room. There was a thump as it hit something in the left corner. It fell to the ground, revealing the ghostly face of a woman.
She had long, stringy black hair that fell past her elbows. Black trails of tears streaked her cheeks and soaked the collar of her tattered white nightdress. Her sunken, hollow eyes were glassy as she blankly stared at Lemmie, who was sitting upright in shock now.
She shook her head, the same frustration from earlier returning and bubbling up inside of her. She scowled and stared back at the woman defiantly. “What do you want?” She asked, putting as much venom in her voice as she could manage. She was not going to be frightened into running anymore. Even if these things hurt her, she had a right to sleep in her own room without being terrorized.
The woman said nothing and continued to stare. She was almost enveloped by the shadows of the room, despite moonlight shining through the open window. It was as if all of the darkness accumulated in that specific area. Lemmie didn’t notice that as she continued to stare at her terrorizer.
“I said, what the fuck do you want?” She shouted.
The shadows started to stretch across the walls, blocking out the moon. It seeped along the floor like a black pool. Lemmie started to notice as it snaked up the legs of the bed and soaked the white sheets, coming toward her. She withdrew her legs and curled into a fetal position. What the hell? She thought, looking back to the woman in the corner.
She had moved closer now, almost at the edge of the bed. She opened her mouth wider than anything should be able to open its mouth and let out a screech that rang out like a thousand screams of the damned. It was the worst sound that Lemmie had ever heard, and she pressed her hands over her ears, desperately trying to block it out. The large void of the woman’s mouth seemed to grow, and Lemmie let out a scream of her own; one of sheer terror.
Her screams continued as the shadows swallowed her whole. There was a rushing sound, like a wave in the ocean, and then silence.
The moonlight returned to the room, illuminating the tousled white sheets of the now-empty bed. The shadows had vanished completely, taking their prey with them.
The Red Sparrow
It had been over a year since Jeremy had last gone to his family’s cottage. It was located just outside of Waylon, the small town that he had grown up in, and he would visit it frequently in his youth. He used to go swimming with his cousins in the lake behind it. They also fished and went canoeing. He remembered his cousin Molly catching the first fish he had ever seen from the lake. It was one of the best memories he had.
The cottage remained as a part of his life even through his teen years, and less frequently in college. He had brought Amelia, his fiancée, there one hot summer. It was the summer he proposed, and through her tears, she accepted with a huge grin on her face.
Then the accident occurred the year before: the day when he lost the love of his life. They had gone up to the cottage by themselves, just a week before their wedding, in hopes of getting some alone time together. They were canoeing on the lake, and Amelia had fallen out of the boat. Though he struggled to save her, she couldn’t make it back to the surface, and sadly drowned.
He had managed to keep all memories of that awful day locked away in his mind so he wouldn’t have to suffer from them constantly. There still remained, however, the memories he had of the cottage, now tainted by tragedy.
A heavy weight rested on his heart as he sat in the driver’s seat of his family’s old sedan, and looked up at the place. It was a quaint little thing. He wasn’t sure if it was his mood or if time had taken its toll and he didn’t realize it, but the white siding which covered the bungalow was dull and chipped, and the deck was noticeably weathered. He could see the skeleton of the striped chaise lounge that was pushed up against the wall.
He sighed and went to get his bags from the trunk. He hadn’t brought much, just a backpack and a bag of clothes and stuff. Thinking about it now, he didn’t know why he thought that coming back here would be such a good idea. He supposed that he had figured seeing the place again would help him come to terms with what happened, or would revitalize the warm feelings he previously had about it. He felt nothing now, just a nagging feeling of dread.
A blur of red among the trees to his right caught his eye. At first, he thought it had been a cardinal, but when he looked closer, he saw that it was a sparrow. It was red, save for a ring of black around its neck, and at the tips of its wings. He gazed at it, mesmerized.
The bird twitched its head and looked back at him.
An old phrase popped into his head out of nowhere: “Beware the red sparrow, lest your bad deeds be punished.” He was surprised he remembered it; the red sparrow was an old fable from Waylon. Parents would tell their children not to be bad, or else some mythical “red sparrow” would come and punish them. Like the boogeyman, but not as big and scary. Still, despite the ridiculous premise, the bird’s stare was making him very uncomfortable. He shrugged it off and walked a little quicker to the door.
That night, Jeremy couldn’t sleep. He kept lying in bed, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. The humidity hung over him like a wet wool blanket, and his shirt was soaked through and sticky.
Everything felt wrong, and not just his physical discomfort. An overwhelming feeling of wrongness had been surrounding the whole place ever since he got there, and try as he did to re-familiarize himself with everything, it all felt…off. He groaned and pressed his hands to his face in frustration.
A faint sound caught his attention.
He sat up and listened closely. It came again, as soft as a whisper yet loud enough to echo through the forest. He recognized it as a woman’s voice, and it said:
Come….to me….
Before he knew what he was doing, he had swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up to face the open window to his left. He kept walking, and climbed out the window, falling onto the dry prickly grass outside. He cringed at the sensation, but continued to walk, following the tantalizing whisper through the woods. Branches and foliage on the forest floor stung his feet as he walked, but he found himself continuing onward until he reached a clearing in the center of the woods.
The grass was soft here, which provided relief to his soles. The whispering was gone, and his trance was broken. He glanced around, trying to see where he had come from. Nothing but trees surrounded him every which way, and his stomach sank.
The sound of snapping twigs came from behind him, followed by the sound of something hitting the ground hard. He spun around, his heart in his throat.
Standing before him in the clearing was a tan-skinned woman. She wore a ground-length robe made of red feathers. Some were also woven into her long, dark ringlets which framed her long, pointed face. Her eyes
were what caught his attention, however. Her eyes were orbs of crimson flame, which glowed brightly in the inky blackness of the woods.
“I appreciate that you answered my call, Jeremy Russell,” she said. Her voice echoed with the sounds of the earth; the wisdom of the ages.
“H-How do you know my name?” He stammered.
A smile grew across her crimson lips. “I know the name of every living thing on this earth,” she replied. “I’ve been watching you.”
A shiver ran down his spine, and he clenched his fists. Watching him? “Wh-Why? What do you want from me?” He exclaimed.
She tilted her head back and laughed. The sound was similar to a group of birds squawking. Jeremy fought the urge to cover his ears. She looked at him again and her smile immediately faded. She narrowed her eyes, which still burned bright. “Because you need to atone for what you’ve done.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He snapped. Memories of that wretched summer started to seep back into his mind, but he pushed them down with all his might. His stomach sank when he saw her eyes light up again.
“Yes…you know what I refer to.” She drawled. “That day…on the lake…and poor Amelia…”
“Shut up!” He shouted. Images were coming back full force now, and nothing he did could stop them. She was doing it! She was in his head, making him relive that horrible day…
“She had admitted to a tryst with that boy…Matthew, was it?”
“SHUT UP!!” Jeremy roared, clutching the sides of his head as the memories shot back in all at once.
He saw himself and Amelia sitting in their little canoe on the lake, with her blonde curls in a ponytail, and her blue eyes practically glowing in the sunlight. His heart ached when he thought back to those times: when she was an angel among men to him; the light of his life. Then the immediate change to grimness when she confessed to him what she had done right before they had left for the cottage that year. How she had turned her back on him and the love they had, in a moment of weakness, and went into the open arms of that drunkard from their college days, Matthew.
Jeremy just sat there like a slack-jawed idiot. It was like he had been thrown into a parallel universe, where nothing made sense. Like everything that he had known and trusted had been pulled out from under him. Then, as he looked into her sweet eyes, now filled with guilt, anger took shock’s place in his core. Something snapped in him, at that moment. The love of his life, the woman sitting before him… this bitch betrayed his trust! After saying that she loved him, and agreeing to be by his side forever!
In a moment of fury, he raised himself up out of the boat’s seat and clasped her shoulders. He shoved with all his might and she fell out of the side of the boat. He grabbed her arms and pushed them under the water. Bubbles came to the surface as air escaped from her lungs, and she thrashed around like a fish caught in a net. He continued to push with all his might, ensuring that she would never come up to the air again.
Minutes went by, and the struggle stopped. He raised his hands out of the water and watched stone-faced as the body that once belonged to the woman he loved drifted down to the bottom of the lake.
He was curled up on the cold forest floor now, sobbing uncontrollably into his hands. “A-Amelia…” he moaned as tears rolled down his cheeks. “Wh-what have I done?”
The Red Sparrow tutted from above him. “To feel rage is one thing,” she murmured. “To desire vengeance is another. But to murder…” She shook her head. “…that is an unforgivable crime.”
He peered up at the stoic, red-eyed woman through the gaps in his fingers. “I’m s-s-so s-s-sorry!” He cried. “I don’t kn-know what…” He cut off with another heaving sob. It was a dirty lie. He knew why he had done it. He was angry, and he wanted to hurt her for betraying him. He was a horrible man, and he knew it.
Eventually, the tears subsided, his despair being replaced by numbness in his heart. He sat up, wiping his face on his shirt, and looked back up at the woman. “Is th-this why you came?” He asked earnestly. “To punish me for what I’ve done?”
“A smart boy,” she answered, “though not smart enough to heed your elders’ warnings about me.”
The blood drained out of his face as she recited the words he had heard as a child.
“‘Beware the red sparrow, lest your bad deeds be punished’…” She outstretched her feather-covered arms, appearing more like wings now than ever before. “So you know what your fate shall be.”
The red light faded from her eyes until they were black like a bird’s, and she let out a loud screech. It rivalled the sound of a thousand birds of prey. The feathers detached from her body and flew around Jeremy, surrounding him like a tornado. He hid his head under his arms and cried out loud. The screeches grew louder, and heat emanated from the wall of feathers that surrounded him. They burst into flame, one by one, and swallowed him in a crimson balefire.
It continued to rage on moments after the damage had been done, and was blown out by the wind. All that remained of Jeremy Russell was nothing more than a pile of ash and the burnt plumes of a few feathers. As for the sparrow, she had vanished without a trace.
To this day, fables about an ominous red sparrow persist. Many parents and elders warn their children to do good things and never be bad, lest the red sparrow comes for them.
For the red sparrow does not let bad deeds go unpunished.
Of Goblins & Moonshade
Vivian never ventured outside of the village alone before. She made a few trips back and forth to market with her mother when she was a little girl, but never had she been sent out by herself. It was too dangerous, her parents had said. A child could easily stray from the stone path and end up lost in the woods. The woods were dark and deep; anyone could get trapped in there, least of all a young girl.
But she was a woman now, her mother had told her. That, and there was no one to make the trip with her. Mother needed to stay home with Tatiana, due to Vivian’s elder sister’s illness. Father was out with the rest of the men hunting wild prey in the less deep part of the forest, across the bridge to Longside.
But the only way to the market was through the path, made of thick grey stone, and winding through the dark parts of the forest.
“There’s nothing to fear now,” Mother said as she tied Vivian’s lilac-coloured shawl beneath her chin, and handed her the brown herb pouch to sling over her shoulder. “As long as you don’t stray from the path. You’re smarter now; you can handle it on your own. And your sister needs those herbs to heal.”
So now here she was, walking along the line of grey stone, trying to keep her gaze on the road ahead. It was difficult, and she found herself looking around at the trees that marked entrances into the twilight woods. Their branches were twisted and curled, like fingers of beckoning hands.
She wouldn’t admit it, but part of her wanted to answer their call.
She grew up with tales about the woods: of goblins and imps and other things that went bump in the night. But unlike the other children, who cowered away from the woods in fear, the stories only drew her in; fed her curiosity and desire to explore the dark unknown.
Eventually, the end of the path came into view between the trees up ahead. Vivian shook herself out of her thoughts and sped up her walk. She passed through the gap in the trees and stepped onto the path that had turned into a dusty dirt road. The grey shifted rock stopped where the forest did.
Ahead was the entrance into Longside. This town always seemed especially dismal, she noticed as she made her way through the fairly busy town square. Even when she came there as a child, she remembered the sun not shining, and how a shiver ran through her from the cold air. Now that she was grown, she developed a fondness for the rarity of grey days. The sun always shined in her own village, and she preferred the calm peaceful autumn days to the summer ones. As she wandered, lost in her thoughts, she had reached the vendor’s tents and stopped in front of a short, hunched old woman selling herbs laid out on a wooden display.
“Penny for your thoughts, my dear?” She asked in a creaky voice.
Vivian jumped, not having realized she wasn’t paying attention. “Oh! Um…sorry, did you say something?”
The woman grinned, revealing a set of jagged, broken teeth. “You seem to be stuck in a thought, dearie.”
Vivian blushed in embarrassment. The woman let out a wheezing laugh. “Not to worry! Everyone gets their head stuck in the clouds from time to time. Let me guess…” She made a twirling motion with one of her bony fingers as she squinted her eyes in thought. “You’re in need of a specific kind of herb, yes?”
Vivian nodded, surprised that the woman knew. “Yes! I need something to help with a fever. My sister is ill, and I need to get something to help her get well.”
“I see! Well, I have something for you here. Tell me, dearie, are you from out of town? I figure I’d remember a pretty little face like yours around here!” She reached a finger out and twirled a lock of Vivian’s brown hair around.
She jerked back, and the curl fell away from the crone’s grasp. “I’m from the other side of the woods,” she replied.
The lady tutted. “That’s a long ways away,” she said. “Did you come through there all by yourself?”
Vivian nodded, and the woman tutted again. “That’s mighty brave of ya.” She plucked a few herbs from the display, muttering to herself as she took a cloth pouch from the drawer inside her booth. She dropped them inside, tied it closed with twine, and handed it to Vivian. “Five gold for these.”
Vivian fished around inside her herb pouch and only came up with three gold coins. “I…I thought that it was three…”
“My prices have gone up. It ain’t easy to find this stuff, you know!”
Her heart sank, and she dropped the coins back in her bag. “I don’t have enough…”