Through the tears that blurred my vision I saw the High Priest smile and nod.
“And you shall have it. Bring him!”
I was seized, though not before blows were landed against my body, and I was dragged back to the altar room. The High Priest strode ahead of us, Janice guided by his arm, her head down. The congregation gasped as I was led before them, hanging between two men while the High Priest took to the pulpit.
“Brothers and sisters of the faith. On this, our most holy of days, the day of the Longest Night, one among us has blasphemed. On our day of sacrifice, of giving up one of our own so that we may all live in happiness and peace, this man sought to bring ruin upon us all!”
There were more gasps and a few cries of outrage from the congregation at his words. I kept my eyes lowered, not wishing to see the scorn and hate that even now was rising against me like a physical force. Derek moved beside me, his voice rising above the slowly growing cries of shock and anger.
“Halitus has sought to steal away my betrothed!”
More cries of anger.
“As you all know,” Janice’s father continued. “Derek has made his intentions with my daughter known. They are to be wed this summer when the sun burns brightest in the sky. But while we all lowered our heads in prayer, giving thanks for a bountiful year and preparing for the sacrifice, the snake in the grass struck. Halitus stole Derek’s bride away and was caught performing indecent acts!”
I tried to raise my voice in defense of myself, but the shouts from the congregation drowned me out. A few threw the unlit candles they had been holding, the projectiles bouncing off my shoulders and head as I was held in place with strong hands.
“I demand retribution!” Derek cried once again.
The crowd took up the cry as soon as it left Derek’s lips. Further candles flew at me as more and more people rose to their feet, fists shaking in the air as they hurled insults and anger at me. Janice’s father raised his hands and the shouting slowed, then stopped.
“This shall be a special ceremony. Instead of sacrificing one of our own...” A woman in the crowd, Janice’s mother I realized, sobbed at her husband’s words. “...we shall offer up the corrupt, the heathen, the perverter of our faith!”
The cheer rocked the walls of the room, more than one candle going out from the sudden blast of noise. The arms holding me tightened their grip, causing my skin to itch and burn where they pressed, as I was hauled to my feet and roughly guided towards the door along the main aisle. People continued hurling insults at me. Some spat on me, others managed to strike blows until I was out of range, hauled along by the Priest’s followers. Behind me the High Priest continued his sermon of anger, shouting about retribution and justice as the crowd turned back to face him. I didn’t struggle, my mind still trying to come to terms with what had happened.
Derek and Janice were courting? The entire town knew?
My gut clenched as I remembered her kiss, the feel of her body pressed against me.
Why hadn’t she said anything?
Why had she kissed me?
I was thrown into a small room, the door slamming shut behind me. I lay where I was thrown, my body aching. Outside I could hear the voice of the High Priest directing the people to prepare the area where the transgression against Derek would be solved under the view of the town’s gods.
The Killing Field.
In the darkness I wept in frustration. My chest felt empty, and I finally screamed my pain at the room around me. I wanted my life back. I had asked nothing more than to be left alone. Why had Derek come to me? Why had he even suggested Janice if he was courting her?
Had they planned it?
Janice’s kiss floated into my memory, the need behind it, the need that had pulled me in.
It had been sincere, hadn’t it?
I don’t know how much time passed before the door opened and the parishioners yanked me to my feet from where I lay. The night air hit me and cut through the thin layer of wool I still wore. My breath frosted in front of my face, teeth clenching to stop from chattering.
They dragged me through the snow to the Field and I finally lifted my gaze.
They had cleared an area in the center of the lake, torches set up in a rough circle, so many that the heat beat against me like a physical force. The ice shone like polished glass and I could see the bases of the pillars fading into the darkness below. The night air was silent except for their chanting.
My body shivered while they dragged me onto the ice, following the mass of footprints that marred the beauty of the snow. There was no altar on the ice where they would normally sacrifice the child chosen to honor their covenant with their gods.
No, this was to be a sacrifice of another kind.
Derek smiled from his place beside Janice’s father, his teeth shining in the harsh light. He was dressed in his thick winter coat, the hood back so his hair whipped about in the slight wind that threw small flurries of snow through the lights.
Janice stood on the other side of her father, her head down as if she could not bear to look at me. For this I was thankful, for I did not want her to see the pain in my eyes. Whatever her hand in this, it did not matter now. No, all that mattered was the patch of ice.
They dragged me to the edge and tossed me onto it. My face hit the ice and skidded, the skin freezing and cracking before I pulled myself to my knees. I reached out, half frozen fingers wrapping around something that tingled under my touch. It was one of the pillars. My gaze followed it downwards into the water below. Something dark moved where the light lost its luminance in the depths.
A shadow.
My shadow?
The ice was like a hazy fog, the light clearing it up so that I could see the unfrozen water below; the depths below hidden in shadows, as if the light itself feared to venture too far into the water. My gaze searched the darkness below until Janice’s father spoke.
“Derek has called for justice on this, the Longest Night.” He turned his body, arms outstretched to encompass the people that surrounded the clearing of ice I now stood in.
There was a low murmur, a few loud shouts breaking out. Janice stayed close to Derek, clinging to his arm, her gaze never leaving her father. She whispered something under her breath, her small mouth moving silently. Her father turned and jabbed a finger at me.
“We now seek justice on the Killing Field under the gaze of the ancients who came from beyond. They shall choose their champion and will sup upon the blood of the outsider. In their wisdom we shall find the justice for the crimes committed this holiest of days. The stars are in alignment, the spheres of the heavens screech against each other, the hounds between angles howl.”
The crowd was chanting now, the sound echoing across the ice and into the darkness beyond the lit area. I rose to my feet, my legs feeling cold and numb as the wind sheered through my pants. Already my fingers were freezing and I flexed them, feeling the joints crack.
“Come champion of the gods, take your place against the usurper.” The High Priest handed Derek a curved dagger that glinted like sea gold in the reflected light of the ice. “Make it slow, so that the gods may take pleasure in his expiration and drink deep of his soul.”
With that the High Priest joined his daughter on the side of the ice, his voice rising in a loud chant in which the villagers joined. The wind rose and brushed against me, causing the pillars to sing a low song. Derek stepped onto the ice across from me, his steps sure on the slick surface. It was hard not to notice that he had replaced his boots with ones with a spiked tread.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My lips cracked as I spoke, their moisture stolen by the cold.
Derek moved closer, the dagger held loosely at his hip as if forgotten.
“You always were a fool Hal, just like your mother before you. Did you really think that Janice could love an animal like you?” He smiled under the hood of his parka.
I shifted my weight from foot to foot in an attempt to keep my muscles from growing slack,
finding the movement hard, the warmth I was gaining coming too slow.
“But you were my friend.”
Even speaking it out loud I knew it to be a lie. I thought of him as no more a friend than he had apparently thought of me. Derek laughed.
“Then you are even more a fool than I thought you were.” He stopped an arm’s length from me. “You really don’t know what’s going on, do you?”
The moment I took to think on his words distracted me enough that when his fist caught me across the cheek I went sprawling onto the ice. I rolled as he followed, his spiked tread smashing into the ice where I had been a moment before. Around us the chanting rose in volume.
I growled and kicked out, my leg catching his knee and driving him to the ice with a cry. I was on him in a moment, only to be thrown off, my head cracking on the ice as I landed. I blinked the stars away as he leapt on me, his fist hammering against my face and shoulders while I thrashed under him.
He laughed as he landed each blow, a cat at play with a mouse as I cried out, blood splattering the ice below my head as my lip and eyebrow split. Another blow landed, this time with the hilt of the dagger before he leaned in, his teeth flashing.
“You know why you are here, Hal? Because Janice was to be the sacrifice this year. The gods spoke, and she was the chosen one, still eligible for the service. Her father couldn’t commit his own to the Field and the gods, so it was decided you would be the one. The outcast, the monster. Janice knew.” He leaned in further, his breath hot against my cheek. “She knew and she gladly did it.”
I roared and slammed my forehead into his nose, a splash of blood warming my skin as his head reeled back. I rose, my fists hammering into his chest, shoving him off as I pushed myself away and climbed to my shaking legs. Blood dripped from my face onto the ice. My shoulder felt cold and I looked at where a jagged cut now burned through my clothing. I didn’t have to look at the dagger in Derek’s hand to know it was dripping my lifeblood from its blade.
“You asshole!” Derek was on his feet and charging towards me even as I managed to find my footing. He hit me and I felt a splash of wetness across my face just before his shoulder rammed into me and sent me skidding across the ice. My hand rose to my face as I pushed myself up, coughing while my lungs struggled for air. Fingers touched the edge of ragged skin and came away painted red. Tears struggled at the edges of my eyes as Derek strode towards me, his nose a ruin, streaks of blood running over his lips and teeth when he sneered at me.
“Why don’t you just–”
His foot slammed into my chest. Something cracked.
“–give–”
Another blow. Tears wet my cheeks freely now.
“–up!”
X
His voice drowns out the chanting and even the pillars’ song as he launches a final kick that rocks my head back, an arch of blood splashing the ice.
I lay there, my breath bubbling, a cough sending thick, dark spray across the ice. My cheek no longer feels cold as it rests against the ice. Derek parades around me, his arms in the air, the bloody dagger leaking my life fluid down its blade and onto his hand. The chanting is loud now, almost deafening.
Janice’s father is yelling something about the sacrifice almost being nigh. He calls upon blood, death and the cold of the void. My body feels heavy and I only want to sleep now. My gaze lowers to the ice as something catches my attention.
There it is again.
I turn, my body protesting as I do. Oddly, as hurt as I am, my skin itches all over. It’s hard to breath.
Am I hallucinating?
There is something under the ice.
Shadows flit under me, an aggravated school of shadow fish, their forms circling around like a small hurricane. I lower my face to the ice, my eyes straining, Derek forgotten as a detached curiosity grasps me. The High Priest’s words fade into the background with the chanting. Only the now-roaring song of the pillars remains. A peace I only ever felt before while gazing at the Field washes over me. The itching of my skin burns yet the shapes keep me from trying to fight the feeling.
Something rises from the depths almost leisurely. The tears that burn down my cheeks from pain turn to something else. The face that rises to mine gazes at me with eyes that are perhaps a bit larger than I remember. Skin that seems more scale than skin glistens in the light of the torches.
I know the face.
It is my mother. Behind her I see others, flashes of grey-green scales and the glint of unblinking eyes while they regard me above them.
A hand – webbed and clawed – presses against the ice and I press mine above hers. As I watch the blood that drips from my hand filters through the ice like engorged capillaries through the whites of an eye. Her alien eyes regard me as the red vines finally reach her, clouding into the water and drawn into her.
There’s a twitch and she regards me before her mouth breaks apart, a smile of a thousand tiny teeth. The burning in my skin fades and I find the pain of my limbs to be strangely absent. The wind no longer cuts me but washes around me like water reviving a salmon.
Shock, it has to be shock.
“Come on freak, time to die.”
The shape of my mother darts back into the depths. I roll onto my back to find Derek near me, the dagger held ready to plunge into my heart. It will now be cut out and each member of the village will partake of my flesh while the blood is allowed to disappear into the ice.
Derek pauses when his eyes meet mine. His mouth opens and his eyes go wide.
I growl and leap at him.
It’s a blur.
My lungs strain to take in air as I hurl him across the ice, his blood spilling across the pristine surface. He’s dead, his ribs spread open to the air. I barely register the warmth steaming on my claws and spines.
I smile.
Someone screams and the chanting falters. More voices rise in panic.
Janice’s father’s mouth flaps like a landed fish.
There’s a snap like a gunshot as the ice cracks under us, radiating outwards from me. The villagers are running, Janice’s father grabbing his daughter and trying to run when the ice suddenly surges under them. He loses his grip and cries out as she is pulled into the water.
The ice snaps beneath me and suddenly I am surrounded by the cold. It presses against my skin and then through it. Waves move against me, yet instead of pushing me, they flow around me. My breathing is normal, I am no longer struggling. I don’t find it odd that I can breathe under water, it feels natural.
A shape moves, limbs flailing before me and I find myself moving towards it with minimal effort.
Janice.
She hangs there, her limbs moving against the water which presses against her. I watch her struggle as if regarding an insect wounded by a misplaced blow. Her eyes meet mine and she stops, her mouth opening, bubbles flowing from it to the surface she herself cannot reach.
I think she is screaming.
It was then that I notice my mother and the others like her. Glimmering shapes below me and at the edge of the light. Some are flitting forward to snatch pieces off of those too slow to escape the collapse of the ice. The water mists with clouds of red. I can taste it in the water, vibrating through me like the sweetest wine.
Arms wrap around me and I lean in against them. My mother smiles, her needle teeth glinting while the others come to welcome me. With one last look at the light above me I turn and follow them as they dive into the shadows below.
Towards the darkness.
Towards the coldness.
Towards home.
HOMECOMING
Sam Gafford
Ruth Frye had been missing for five days. As one would expect, the town of Dunwich had gone a little mad because of it. The news media from Arkham and Boston came down with all of their cameras and reporters and Ruth’s mother and I spent a lot of time begging her to come home, or for any news. The cops spent hours searching our house, looking in every corner for clues, tearing apart her room
for secret messages from boys or men, but they never found anything. They impounded her laptop and had the phone company print out every text she’d ever received or sent. They even took me in and sweated me for a very long night because, after all, I was only her stepdad, so maybe I had something to do with it. In the end, the police had to confess that they had no clue what had happened to Ruth. She’d gone out jogging one night and, just like that, the 16-year-old pride of Dunwich’s high school racing team had vanished without a clue. No one knew where she was or what had happened to her.
Until, that is, she showed up on our doorstep on the fifth night. She was dirty, her clothes were a torn mess and her blonde hair was spotted and matted with mud. She looked like she’d dragged herself through several miles of hell but she was smiling as she stumbled through the door. My wife, Crystal, screamed and caught her before she fell down. Crying, Crystal asked where Ruth had been for five days, why hadn’t she called? “I got lost,” she said, “I’ve been lost in the woods. I couldn’t find my way home.” Together, they hugged, and cried, and held each other as the photographers snapped picture after picture. Stunned, I stepped forward and hugged them both, knowing that I had to make it look good. The cops would be suspicious if I didn’t. But I couldn’t think. My mind was blank. Because I knew, beyond a doubt, that I had killed Ruth five days earlier.
I’d held her lifeless body in my arms. I’d seen the light go out of her eyes. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever expected or seen on TV or in the movies. It was like she was just there one minute and then gone the next. I didn’t feel anything different either. I’d just raped and killed my stepdaughter and nothing had happened. God didn’t strike me dead. The earth didn’t swallow me whole and drag me to hell. Nothing was different. Well, nothing other than the fact that Ruth was dead, that is.
It’s important to me that you know that I did not start out evil. I’d had a good enough childhood, I suppose. There was nothing in my youth to suggest anything like this. I didn’t wet the bed. I didn’t kill small animals or start fires. Sure, my father beat me up when I was a kid but it was only if I misbehaved so I learned quickly to do what was expected of me. I was just a quiet, unassuming kid who read comic books and watched a lot of TV. I wasn’t the brightest kid around, but I’d always been good at fixing things so, when I grew up I got a job as a mechanic. Soon after that, I’d worked myself up to the point where I owned three garages. Even in the midst of recessions and bad economies, I managed to keep things running. I suppose, in a manner of speaking, that I was something of a success.
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