by Jeremy Craig
I glanced up at him sharply and he waved his hands about wildly. “Oh no, no, no, no, no, that was before my or your Aunt’s time serving, I assure you. Back when it was corrupt and some were thick as thieves with the darker powers, I put a few of them in their pine boxes myself… Well, it was more like matchboxes when I was done with them.” He smiled wickedly and poured some wine, swirling it about in the glass and sniffing at it with his eyes closed like connoisseurs do.
“Your Aunt, Grandmother, Artur, and I made quite the team in our time, but it was a messy, ugly, bloody business and we lost good friends…” He paused reflectively. “And family.” He raised his glass in salute of this and downed it. “I’d thought the bad times were over, though now I fear they have only just begun.”
Fazool walked me to the room I shared with Gramps and patted my leg encouragingly. “Go on in, Ben. I think you will find it will be alright. We let him breathe, remember?” I nodded uneasily and knocked twice and was gruffly ordered in to find Gramps sitting on his bed, head in his hands, a golden locket dangling from his hand as Aunt Milly patted his back soothingly. Manx was curled up on the pillows and glaring at me accusingly.
Gramps let out a long shuddering sigh that sounded a bit uncomfortably like a sob. I caught a glimpse of Fazool who offered me a weak smile and thumbs up before I shut the door with a creak leaving the halfling to return to his own room in peace. Aunt Milly coldly beckoned me over to stand before him as she tapped her foot impatiently on the thick carpeted floor. “What did he tell you?” Gramps asked hoarsely as he continued to stare with red rimmed eyes at the carpet patterns with his head in his hands.
“I’m guessing everything,” I answered honestly.
“Good. Saves me the trouble.” He gazed up and smiled sadly as he handed me the locket. “Go ahead, take a look.”
It’s an exquisite piece of Dwarfish make that exemplifies the age-old adage that “they don’t make them like that anymore” to a capital T. Square and tiny and richly engraved with ravens and mesmerizing patterns of interwoven vines and flowers, it opens with a tiny catch and on one side is a painting of a simply gorgeous woman with thick braided blond hair wearing a crown of braided tiny white flowers about her brow. On the other is a tiny clock that told time and moon cycles with gold hands over a rich purple background awash in a tiny field of diamond stars.
I stared at it in silence. “Gwenevere,” I acknowledge softly, and he nodded gravely. “While I loved your grandmother deeply and honestly, I never loved anyone else as much as I still love her.” He rubbed at the bridge of her nose.
“And she was taken from me, completely. That was what I feared my eldest son had in mind for you and your parents, Ben. I couldn’t risk it, I couldn’t allow him or his minions anywhere near my family,” he explained in a tone thick with sadness and agonizing regret.
“You can’t visit her at the Reunion like you do with Gran?” I asked innocently. Gramps stared past me sadly for a long moment, a tear running down his face as he cracked his knuckles and seemed to be in another place, far away and long ago.
“No, I can’t. Our wicked son made sure of that. Somehow her soul isn’t in the ether. She’s just…gone,” he answered in a barely audible whisper I had to strain to hear over Manx’s absurdly loud panting.
“I’m sorry,” I managed.
He peered up at me bleakly and smirked crookedly. “I know, Ben, but let me tell you something that will make your life ever so much easier when you grow up. There is no better apology than changed behavior.”
“Translation.” Aunt Milly eyed me narrowly with arms crossed and foot still tapping away. “There is nothing you should be able to trust more than family. Never doubt your grandfather’s intentions for you ever again. No matter how pig headed, stone skulled—” Gramps glanced up at her and grunted disagreeably, and she rolled her eyes and got to the point. “He, and us, always mean you well, Benjamin. If nothing else, believe that.”
“That being said,” Gramps added as he accepted back his locket, staring down at it a moment before clicking it shut and hanging it over his neck and under his shirt. “This really isn’t your fault. This whole place is toxic. It bleeds into your skin and leaves you less for it. It never used to be this way.”
He shook his head and anger flashed over his face and was gone before he continued. “My son has made a mockery of what our kind built. One of the many atrocities I will see to it he pays for with interest first chance I get.”
I was set off to get bathed and get in my pajamas in the palatial powder blue tiled and brass fixtured bathroom. Creepily decorated along the wall were bordello leftover crude roman tile frescos of nude lasciviously engaged men and women. They had kind of museum meets dirty magazine physiques and there were also imps, mermaids, and pixies. It was unsettling how the eyes seemed to follow me as I showered, and I swear the chesty mermaid was giggling at me. I was toweled off, into my PJ’s, and teeth brushed in record time.
I was scooted off to bed and tucked in by a still slightly peeved Aunt Milly, and she and Gramps left me to sleep with Manx curled at the squishy foot of my bed as they were going to head back to the dining are for a snack and nightcap. The lights clicked out and the door creaked closed and I lay there staring at the ceiling to the sound of Manx gnawing on a bone.
Needless to say, after the day I’d had, well the last month or so really, wasn’t conducive to a good, restful night’s sleep. I tossed and turned in the thick, heavy yet silky comforter and sheets and no matter how I pounded at it, flipped it, or folded it, I couldn’t get comfortable on the pillow.
I felt odd, like something was watching and the unsettling quickening of pulse and such that accompanies such worries gave me quite the time of it no matter how tight I shut my eyes in slipping into any kind of sleep.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but the dream this night was painfully vivid, disconcerting, and real in more ways than one. I dreamed that the pretty young girl I only knew as Miss M was somehow sitting at my bedside, staring at me.
For some reason she was holding my hand and the look she had on her porcelain like face wasn’t altogether happy, despite the sweet smile. Pain and anger seemed to burn in her soft amber eyes that shone with fierce determination.
“She’s coming for you, my sweet one,” she warned in a voice that to me sounded like angels singing. “She’s coming and I can’t stop her. She has me tethered, making me do it– But oh, how I’ve tried! She punished me bad last time! So, so bad. It was just awful.”
The dream girl appeared like she was about to cry or perhaps scream in agonizing rage, but instead her hand just tightened painfully about my own. “I had to do horrible things just to be able to talk to you now, to warn you. I’m so sorry… I never asked for this, never wanted to do this to you, but I hadn’t a choice. You’re my only hope. I’ve seen that, and I can’t let you die. I pray that someday you can forgive me and understand why all this happened.”
She let go of me and I felt suddenly cold without her touch, like a warm comfortable blanket had been ripped away on a particularly cold night as she cried bitterly into her lace gloved hands. After a moment she seemed to calm herself and again grabbed my hand in a vice like grip as she stood and smoothed my hair and kissed my cheek, leaving me feeling happy, confused, terrified, and totally bewildered. “Please, Ben, tell your grandfather everything. He must know what’s coming.”
“What’s coming?” I asked wearily.
“I am,” she answered softly with dread and sinisterness in her voice that settled over me like a shroud of constricting ice that left me gasping for air. She wiped a tear from her face and traced a gloved hand over my cheek. “I’m so sorry, but you need to wake, you need to tell, you need to run. I’m coming, and I can’t stop myself.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the shadow of your future, Benjamin Bright, and perhaps a friend. Perhaps someday, something more than that.” She smiled, pretty amber eyes now glowing an unsettling shade
of ethereal yellow. “I know you don’t understand that yet, but I promise you that one day you will. Wake and remember.”
I screamed.
That’s the first thing I remember as the world went mad and the door to my room all but crashed in off its hinges. Manx was going wild and light all but blinded me as Aunt Milly shrieked in horror and Gramps cursed and shouted.
The second thing I remember was the cold. So cold, colder than I ever remember being so as even the comforter was frosted and my breath misted as I blinked and gasped for air. I tumbled from the air and back onto the mattress with a creak.
For a long moment I couldn’t move. I just lay there as Gramps shook me and shouted things I couldn’t make sense of. Aunt Milly yelled and Manx barked like he had caught sight of a particularly maddening squirrel that he just had to have on the other side of a window.
“She’s coming,” I finally managed, and Gramps face paled even though he obviously had no idea what I was blathering on about and was obviously in a complete blind panic.
“She’s coming. We have to run,” I repeated mechanically in a voice I didn’t recognize amid the blur and fuzz the world had become as my head throbbed and my eyes swam. “We have to run,” I repeated as he shook me, demanding I explain.
“She’s mine, and she’s coming. She did bad things. She hurt her, and now she’s coming. Coming for us all, and we have to run. She warned us, and we have to run,” I babbled.
“What in the dizzy hells is this?” Gramps yelled as he whipped about and stared at his sister-in-law. The terrified look on Aunt Milly’s face said it all. She knew, and that alone turned his face a shade of grey I’d never seen.
“He’s been compelled,” Aunt Milly hissed. (A compulsion spell is a wickedly potent bit of spellcasting that forces another to say or do something the caster desires, limited only by their powers and the strength of the victim’s mind and the caster’s will).
“How is that even possible?” Gramps gasped. “We’re immune to magic!”
“Not all kinds of magic…and not until their Ascension Day, as you well know,” Aunt Milly snapped back shrilly with horrified fascination as she began to mutter odd words under her breath that made my skin crawl. She turned about, looking at the room with rapt, nettling attentiveness.
“She is coming,” I repeated as I sat up, rubbing my eyes clear in time to see Fazool in a pair of striped silk pajamas, old fashioned night cap, purple bath robe and fuzzy slippers shuffle in. He had his walking stick in hand and a very confused and thunderous look on his tiny face as he took in the door, the panic, and me in a glance and quickly drew his blade from his cane just as a thunder of footsteps announced the arrival of the Rovers Rest portly owner. A nicked, rust pocked old battle axe that had seen better days was in Mac’s hand and several others at his back who all peered into the room curiously from behind his stocky frame.
“Artur, what in the dickens is going on?” Mac hissed as he hefted his axe and peered about.
“We need to run,” I insisted, my words punctuated by a roaring hiss of fire that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was filled with nightmarish fiery effigies that shrieked, laughed, and taunted in a thousand voices that were anything but human, consuming almost everything it touched with roaring, hungry, demonic glee.
We only survived it because of Fazool. Muttering and waving about his hands complexly, perspiration beading and body trembling, the tiny halfling held the demon fire at bay long enough for us to flee the doomed hotel. The little Witch carried out over Aunt Milly’s shoulder—just like how Gramps carried me, shouldering through smoke, flames, screaming guests, and shadowy, horned, chittering, laughing things that were there, but not quite real.
The night was cold and rainy that we burst out into as the fire brigade with their brass, wood, and iron wheeled contraption of a tanker was pulled up by horse. Tools and rolled hoses were ignored as everyone stared in gaping, frozen, wide eyed horror at the unreal nightmare roaring and seething and bursting window glass that left me paralyzed with intense cold despite the impossible heat.
The fires crept from the windows like skittering fiends. Literally jumping and crawling, dancing and leaping into a towering hellish, horned, and roof rattling roaring monster that was there thrashing and bellowing then gone with a reek of brimstone, leaving the Rovers Rest smoking from the charred holes and frames of its widows.
None said a word save Manx who was whining and laying at Gramps’ feet with his paws over his face and trembling, never a good sign that. I remember a Darkling fireman staring, slowly doffing his bright red helmet and clutching it to his chest as he dropped to his knees and sobbed. He wasn’t alone.
“Ooh my,” Fazool mumbled as Aunt Milly helped him steady, leaning on her like a child as he stared up where the thing had been lighting the sky a moment before. “I fear it’s not over.”
“Not over?” Mac asked incredulously as he stared at the teetering shaking Halfling Witch with dawning horror.
“She said to run,” I reminded everyone.
“Who did?” Gramps snapped tersely.
“Perhaps we should listen,” Fazool advised with raised finger that shook like a leaf in a fall season wind. He was right. There was screaming and uncomfortable, wet crunching noises of animalistic butchery. Horrible sounds accompanied by monstrously feral, almost orgasmic shrieks that froze the blood of anyone who listened with heart seizing shock. Stealing the warmth from the body and chaining you with thrills of terror as the demonic horrors bounded out of the night amid an orgy of slaughter.
There are many names for these demon women things, but the most known is Furies. Things of terrible beauty twisted even more terribly into things darker and more fearsome than any nightmare can ever conjure up.
Lithe, corded with muscle, part scaled, part spined, part naked voluptuous flesh with dripping claws, whipping tails and long needle teeth that ripped and tore and gutted as they swarmed. Nothing lived once these things got their hooks into it—literally. Furies’ feet and hands have horrible curved talons.
They rip into anything they catch like a child wildly digging into the sand at the beach to find imaginary treasure as they howl, spasm, moan, and scream in a din that would drive many a sturdy soul mad to witness. Gore, limbs, ropes of guts, and blood were sent up about them in vile shower of viscera and death that I can’t forget and likely never will.
Gramps ripped out his sword with me still over his shoulder, but Aunt Milly wildly yanked him and Fazool into a portal she had swirled into being as we all stared dumbly at the hellish charnel house the street outside the Rovers Rest had become. I believe Mac dove in after us with Manx as he tumbled out onto the grass in front of Gramps’ Lodge retching, smoke wafting from his singed clothes.
Almost the moment Gramps let me down, Aunt Milly grabbed me by the shirt of my pajamas and pulled me into the house. Manx barked and howled as he galloped after us and Gramps helped an obviously shaken and partially catatonic Mac to his feet.
White Owl, who had been house sitting—and obviously unsettled by our state and arrival—opened the door for us with a toothbrush dangling from his mouth and stepped aside to let the dangerous witch barrel in unobstructed, dragging me after her. She all but tossed me onto the couch and knelt down before me, just as Gramps walked in looking serious, frightened, and confused.
“Spill it, every word, every detail, every single thing. Now,” she demanded firmly as she jabber her long-painted fingernail at me over and over with each word like an assassin’s dagger.
I told her everything.
She looked cored out, deflated, and about to faint by the time I was done. They all did, even Manx who sat at his spot with his head between his paws. Fazool, who had come in mid-story and plopped himself into Gramps’ favorite squishy leather recliner seemed outwardly thoughtful. Tapping a perfectly manicured and ringed finger to his lips and fiddled with the singed dangly tassel on his nightcap, that had somehow survived and inexplicably remained on his hea
d throughout the whole ordeal.
“This girl in your dream,” he waved the rest quite before they interjected. “She used the word tethered. Did she, specifically, say THAT word?” I nodded and the tapping of finger to lip increased as Fazool leapt up and started to pace.
“What is it?” Aunt Milly demanded hesitantly.
“Not sure yet,” Fazool shrugged as he fixed me with a piercingly serious, appraising look. “And she said she was punished for trying to help you, did she?” Again, I nodded, and he nodded as if this confirmed something. “So, she said she was your friend and all of this. How curious. I’m not sure I’d want her as my friend if that’s how those she likes are treated.” He giggled then went still and absolutely grey. “Haven’t gotten any packages recently, perhaps with any sweet treats in it?” Gramps and White Owl stared at one another and both looked sick to their stomachs.
“Oh, Gods, no…” Aunt Milly whipped about, normally neat and styled orangish red hair billowing about as she furiously put her hands on her hips and glared at the two sheepishly grey and speechless men who were staring at each other. Gramps accusingly and White Owl in horrified, wordless apology.
“Tell me you didn’t?” she hissed.
White Owl nodded slowly, and Gramps swallowed uncomfortably as if he was trying to down a rather large apple whole.
“As silly, idiotic and doltish as it may be,” Fazool too glared at the pair. “We may be unspeakably fortunate that they DID fall for it.” Aunt Milly rounded on him and he nodded grimly. “It seems our young lad has a mysterious friend determined to keep him alive by any means necessary, even as she’s forced to try to kill him.”
That made no sense to anyone who just stared blinkingly or blankly at the Halfling like he had gone mad. “No, I’ve not inhaled fumes of been addled daft.” He giggled. “Think about it. Had they not fallen for this like a pair of addle minded fools, this little Warlock girl, and yes, she’s obviously a Warlock, and a powerful one, too, wouldn’t have been able to warn him. And if she hadn’t… Well, we would all be dead at the moment, now wouldn’t we?”