by Mark Cassell
A small voice, freaking out somewhere deep within him, screamed and screamed at Owen. Runrunrunrunrunrunrunrun! That voice, fainter and fainter, a hollow echo of reasoning, of reality, shrank into a darkness that he physically felt clog his mind. Lower and lower Owen slumped, now huddled almost foetal-like on the edge of the road.
Each shawl slipped through, dribbling blood and blackness, sucked into another world.
The remains of the driver’s body had by now blistered in a mess of black and crimson. The demon prodded it with his fist and hooked out a clump of blood-soaked clothes streaked with black goo. He dropped it. With a slap and a splash, dark blobs flicked across the tarmac and spattered the demon’s face. Droplets collected around his stitched eyelids and ran down his veiny cheeks like tears.
Eager witches hovered at the threshold of the portal.
In one flash of motion, the demon snatched up the last garment, just before another arm from the shadows took it. “Wait, witch!”
The arm vanished into the roiling shadows.
Holding the shawl out, the demon stepped towards Owen. The cassock rasped over the tarmac, swaying. Those glyphs sparked, charged a fiery red and white. In his hands, the shawl seethed and wriggled and curled at the ends. The same energy trickled along the stitches, weaving along the seams.
“You,” the demon said, “will now serve me.”
Owen lowered his head.
“My midnight companion,” the demon added, “my clay is yours.”
The shawl hugged Owen’s shoulders as the demon let go. Where it touched his neck, his spine tingled and warmed. Something like electricity rushed through him, outwards along his legs and into his toes, along his arms and into his fingers, up and into his brain. Every nerve charged and powerful, energised. Ready.
He was ready.
The demon stepped back. Blood and darkness dripped from his fingers. It hissed as it pooled the tarmac, soaking the hem of his cassock.
The blackness—so warm, so welcome—swelled inside Owen’s mind. He would obey the demon, his master. Together, they would find more flesh to clothe the phantom army, the troops that lay in wait on the other side, awaiting the coming war.
A DEMON’S THREAD
“Demons tell campfire stories, too.” – Anonymous
1. Occultus
When a photographer falls he’s going to protect his camera, and when gravity snatches my clumsy arse that’s precisely what I do. Birdshit and moss, tiles and rotted wood fall with me. The jagged shape of daylight shrinks. I hug my camera and plunge into the darkness, and...
Pain explodes.
My lungs burn and my vision morphs into lightning flashes that betray the black void. I squirm, cradling my SLR. I try to breathe but the agony rages. I clench my teeth as air rattles my lungs and I taste a metallic stickiness. My legs, my arms; I feel them, thankfully. The pain subsides, marginally, so I guess I’m okay.
With a free hand, I reach out to claw wooden boards, dragging grit and filth. I sit up and squint into this nothingness. The stink of damp, of cold stone and decay, strangles me. I cough and pain stabs me in the chest.
Something moves nearby; a wet sound, a slurp like something dislodging.
Silence squeezes me. Had I actually heard it?
The SLR lurches in my hand. A clamminess brushes my arm and grips the camera. I pull it closer, muscles straining.
It’s wrenched away in a spray of slime.
“Hey!” I shout. Somehow the darkness swallows the word.
More slurping, wet and heavy.
I shuffle backwards and kick out. My flailing arms slap the curved brickwork. No exit. Mortar scratches my skin. No. Exit. The cold wall presses against my spine.
The darkness thickens, tightens.
My heart crashes against my ribcage, stealing the silence.
The camera’s flash pulses for a moment, and an oval whiteness fills my vision; a face, blank, featureless with only dark veins beneath glistening skin. The flash goes off fully, lighting the surrounding brickwork and that faceless monstrosity attached to a bulbous sweaty body, squat and seething atop splintered floorboards.
The bare, curved walls—no exit!—prevent any further retreat. I claw at the filth I sit in.
Black. Cold.
Again, that wet shuffling sound. Something flops. More slurping as before, yet this time frantic. Eager perhaps?
Silence, once again. Just my heartbeat punching the seconds that pass…
2. Evil Inside
I have no happy memories of her when I was a little girl. The woman broke my doll. That had been, what, thirty years ago? She wasn’t even a relative—just one of those people you referred to as “Aunty” out of respect. That sweaty chin, her jowls swaying as she bent down, insisting on a kiss…only ever in front of Mum. Once we were alone, she had a bear-like grip. I’d be dragged, thrown to the floor, always bullied by a glance; a spear of blatant irritation. Her voice, like a shovel dragged over gravel, and that heavy stink of body odour, cabbage, damp. Breath like something rotten.
I resent my mum for always leaving me with that woman, and perhaps you could also blame her for what happened last week. What’s that? Yes, I suppose this is a confession. Aunty broke my doll, I told you.
The crunch of her bones wasn’t as loud as the crack of my doll’s head as it smacked the kitchen floor all those years ago. Aunty still has the same floor, funny enough. Yes, I still call her “Aunty”, even now. And her head didn’t bounce like my doll’s did. I remember the way those little plastic eyes broke loose and shot inside the head, the rattle as they settled, the darkness within. Black like Aunty’s soul.
Of course, I had to do the same to Aunty’s eyes. When my thumbs pushed into her sockets, that wetness oozing, popping, there wasn’t any darkness there. Even if, as I truly believe, her soul is black, there was nothing to suggest the evil inside her. I guess you could say I’m disappointed. There was a gooey redness. So much, it spurted. No black. Just red.
Oh look, I think there’s still some under my fingernails.
3. Of Earth and Fire
The shrooms glisten in the afternoon sun, bulging from the wheelbarrow. I stand back and wipe dark streaks down my overalls. That cloying stink thickens in my lungs like the time I’d discovered a dead fox beneath the shed, maggots seething, all rot and grey meat. These shrooms are like that; grey and black, festering, pulsing. Who’d ever seen such a thing?
Indoors to clean up. There’s TV to watch and a meal to be had. Shepherd’s pie. Much later, I’ve a toothbrush in my gob as noises, a roar and crackling, yank me to the bathroom window: a blinding light, white and yellow, in the garden. The wheelbarrow’s on fire. What on Earth?
My bare feet pound the stairs two at a time.
The backdoor swings wide and crashes against the wall. Kitchen shelves rattle. I lurch into the garden, the cold paving biting my feet. I grip my toothbrush and squint into the blazing wheelbarrow; those bloody shrooms.
My eyes dart around. Where’s the hosepipe? There, coiled like a snake beside the tomato plants. But my feet fail me, root me to the ground.
This strange fire rages.
Helpless.
In the flames, the burning mass shifts. Not the shrooms, something else. Toying with my vision to create shadowy phantoms. Churning within the fire…is a face? Black and narrow eyes, a sharp nose, and mouth wide with needle teeth. Squirming, teasing. First it’s there, then it’s not.
My feet twitch and I shuffle forward. I don’t mean to. I don’t want to. My head is heavy and a presence of…of what—evil?—leaks into my periphery, clamps my mind. Another step closer, closer to the blazing wheelbarrow. Smoke slides down my throat. I cough. Heat prickles my skin.
And still I walk.
Tendrils of fire reach for me, just as I reach it. The plastic of the toothbrush melts in my hand. Agony roars. I slip, arse down on the dew-soaked grass. The fire wraps around my hand, my wrist. Up my arm. Lancing pain, yet strangely detached. Like the pai
n is someone else’s. The patchy shadows twist with the flames to embrace me. Warm, soothing. The darkness bleeds as the fire bursts around me. I crawl, slither and reach across blackened grass. My flesh is no more. I clutch with burning fingers, yet I have no hands.
Body, nothing more than fire. As liquid flame, I reach the garden perimeter. Fire crackles as I spread outwards. I slip between foliage, scale the fence, up and over, burning, and out into the street, reaching for Mankind beyond…
Once again, here on Earth.
I am.
Fire.
“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.”
– Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven (1845)
ON THE VINE
Shane’s legs tangled with his sleeping bag. He fumbled for a torch, snatched it, and almost dropped it. Again something thumped outside the tent, scratching the canvas. He sat upright and thumbed the switch. Light speared the darkness. He squinted at the apex in the tent roof.
Something pressed against the fabric…and a barbed vine pierced through. Its end hooked like a beckoning finger. The thing tore downwards—so many barbs—and the canvas, frayed and jagged, flapped with the wind.
He grunted and kicked away his bedding.
The vine twisted like it had purpose, reaching for him. Cold air and the stink of something rotten poured in. He choked.
“Carla!” He shook his wife in the sleeping bag beside him. “Wake up!”
He scrambled onto his knees.
“Carla!” He coughed. The smell reached into his lungs.
The vine lashed his face. Grimacing, spitting agony, he flailed with both arms. Barbs sliced his forearms and the torch flew from his hand. It smacked the groundsheet beside Carla’s head, spotlighting her closed eyelids, and flickered once…twice…and blinked out.
Darkness.
Feeling the most naked he’d ever been, despite wearing shorts, he backed into a corner. The damp fabric clung to his back. One hand swiped at the vine and barbs lacerated his flesh. His other hand fumbled for the lantern he knew to be somewhere near. Miraculously, he found it and prodded the on button.
Light exploded. He winced, blinded by both glare and pain.
The vine—more a trunk—recoiled like a cobra, framed by torn canvas and black night.
“Carla?” How could she sleep through this?
With awkward hands slick with sweat and blood and fear, he grabbed their food bag. Knife. He needed a knife. He looked down and…
The trunk smashed into the back of his head. The barbs raked his scalp. Darkness stole his vision, for only a second, and he swayed. Reflected in the serrated blade he held, the lantern banished his threatening darkness. Before he and Carla had left for this camping trip, she had teased him and said they’d not need a bread knife, it wasn’t for camping, they’d not use it.
He felt his blood rushing through him, roaring in his ears and also dripping from his arms and head. His breath short, sharp in his lungs. Again, he choked.
The trunk lashed at him. He clutched it—the damn thing had grown—and the barbs lanced his palm. Lightning pain tore up his arm. As he gripped, digging in fingernails, he brought up the knife and hacked. The blade sliced through the trunk in a spray of dark filth. It spattered his face, stung his eyes, and dribbled into his mouth. Bitter, foul.
Carla screamed.
“Get out of here,” he shouted at her. “Now!”
The trunk wrenched from his grip, the barbs further shredding his skin. Black gunk peppered the walls.
Carla’s sleeping bag had shifted to reveal the torn groundsheet. Grass and earth bulged, and coils of smaller vines had twisted into her bedding. The zipper was mangled, perhaps even melted. She thrashed, still screaming. It rattled his brain. The sleeping bag bunched and slid down her body, now covering only her legs.
Shane gasped.
Where her night-shirt, the blue one with daisies on it, had ridden up, the flesh across her navel glistened; mottled and covered in pustules. Several oozed. Beneath her, half-buried in the disturbed earth and half-protruding from her skin, smaller vines wriggled like grass snakes. She twisted left and right, and uprooted those vines. The earth seethed as more vines erupted, seeking out her skin once again, each extending and whipping.
The sleeping bag slipped further…
Cold air hissed through Shane’s clenched teeth.
Downwards from Carla’s hips was the barbed trunk. No legs. Seamlessly that bastard trunk blended with her mottled flesh and burrowed into the ground. As she writhed to and fro, so too did the trunk overhead, raining black goo.
Shane fell back. The knife slid from numb, bleeding fingers.
His wife’s eyes were still closed and she reached out with pale arms. The lower half of her body, the vine trunk, yanked the tent fabric. More filth sprayed and spattered his face. He blinked away that stinging muck.
Poles snapped in a tangle of canvas. The tent collapsed.
Carla wrapped the trunk around him, coiling. Tighter, ever-tighter. The barbs tore into his flesh. He yelled and grunted, wrestling. Useless.
A rib cracked. Then another.
Still she screamed. And Shane joined her.
THE ARTIST AND THE CRONE
I guess there will always be something in Mabley Holt to keep me here. Even after all the crazy stuff back in the spring, I returned and bought this tiny cottage with its equally tiny garden hemmed in by a precarious ragstone wall. As a man of little needs this was a perfect place to settle.
Perhaps it was stupid to think things wouldn’t catch me up.
My one neighbour whose cottage was marginally larger than my own was a young lady of a similar age to me, with a reserved smile. If I thought my garden needed attention—those nettles were tall enough to sting your face—hers was equally neglected. We’d acknowledged each other when I’d moved in and that had been it.
After three weeks and kind of settled in, I dozed in front of a late night TV programme. A scream jerked me upright. On my feet, I staggered. That shrill cry still echoed, if not through the house but through my head. I yanked open the front door and stepped into the night. A cold moon pushed down on me just as the cold paving pressed up into the soles of my feet. I ran towards my neighbour’s house. The place was silent and dark.
She’d had a nightmare, that was all. I headed back inside to bed.
Morning came and I awoke to the sound of thumps and clatters as though someone threw things in temper. I leapt from bed and raked fingers through my hair. Pulling aside the curtains without thought of my nakedness, I glared out the window and into her garden.
Dressed in a paint-spattered jumper and jeans, my neighbour stood beside a wheelie-bin. Its lid was up and rested against the ivy-shrouded fence. She was upending a number of shoeboxes and cartons, pouring out paint bottles and brushes and all manner of art supplies. Swiping away her dishevelled hair, she stepped backwards and looked up.
At me.
I twisted sideways, suddenly realising how naked I was, and the edge of the dresser stabbed my spine. She must’ve seen me. I waited, my back pressed to the cold wood. By the time I leaned sideways and peaked around the curtains, her garden was empty. She hadn’t even put the bin lid down.
The day came and went; a day that I spent reading. Recently, I’d been reading a lot. All the books I’d inherited, books that truly belonged in a museum, were a mine of information that I hoped would help me understand a little piece of my troubled past. I’d even thumbed through a few books relating to local witch trials—it seemed Mabley Holt hadn’t escaped witchcraft back in the 17th century, and given the small dealings I previously had with a magic that was most definitely black, that came as no surprise. The Shadow Fabric, a sentient darkness, was perhaps the most blackest of the arts imaginable.
Having just finished dinner, I heard my neighbour scream again. Only this time much closer, from outside perhaps. I took the stairs two at a time and ran into my bedroom, to the window. She stood in her garden,
her face illuminated by the roaring flames from a twisted, shrunken bin. Thick smoke corkscrewed upwards.
Back downstairs again, I snatched my boots and yanked them on. One was bulkier now I’d modified it to conceal a weapon—these days I was always prepared. Keeping the Witchblade to hand was comforting, and as far as I could tell it was the only one in existence. I yanked open the back gate and ran alongside her house, over cracked paving and brambles threatening to trip me. The crackle of flames was louder as I approached. I stumbled into her garden. The stink of plastic and chemicals stung my nostrils.
Dressed in the same paint-splashed jumper as when I’d seen her that morning, she threw me a glance then looked back at the fire. Flames roared. Spirals of grey-black smoke reached the twilight clouds.
She scanned her garden. I guessed she looked for something to put out the fire. If we could contain it fast enough we’d not need the fire brigade. I ran over to where a hose coiled, tangled with grass.
“This attached to anything?” I shouted.
She nodded, hair catching in her mouth. She hooked it out.
“Turn it on!”
She seemed doubtful for a moment. I dragged the hose closer to the flames as she vanished round the corner. Heat prickled my face. The hose jerked, spat, then hissed a stream of water and I directed the nozzle around the edge of the inferno. Smoke belched and I cupped a hand over my mouth and nose. Waving the hose left and right, I doused the flames and gradually worked inwards. Defiant at first, the fire diminished.
Eventually, I stood back but kept the hose aimed at the dirty rainbow of molten colours. Several fence panels showed a few scorch marks. The ivy had burnt away and water dripped from the shrivelled and blackened ends.
“Reckon you can turn it off now,” I said.
Her face, although relieved, seemed to shrink. Her mouth slightly open, she disappeared round the corner again. I heard a couple of squeaks and finally the flow dribbled. She returned just as the last drip splashed my boot.