The Devoured

by Curtis M. Lawson

  "Have you come here to pay tribute, Confederate?" Thurs spoke without turning toward his two unwelcome guests.

  The old man dropped his pack to the ground and began fishing for ammo. He hadn't planned on emptying his capacity before this showdown, so now he had to take advantage of any time he might find.

  "A tribute of lead perhaps," the old man said, now loading Donner with six rounds. "Unless you give up my boy."

  Thurs stood up in a manner far too graceful to befit his size or monstrous appearance, like some terrible, mountain cat. The titan then turned to face its aggressors. The blood inside both the old man and Hank ran ice cold as the face of the dark titan looked right at them.

  The complexion was off, more like the color of the Nevada desert, and the eyes were orbs of jet, but the face… It was like looking at the old man's reflection in a night time lake. Only now did Hank realize what the old man had meant when he said that Thurs had taken his son.

  "Thurs .... Thurs is your son?" Hank asked incredulously.

  Thurs looked at the two as if it was trying to remember some detail buried deep within its mind—something covered by time and dust. Finally a look of slow recognition crossed the titan's face.

  "You. You are the progenitor." The voice was not Emmett's. It was a gravelly bellow that seemed to come from some place deeper than even the giant's body would allow.

  The old man set his calloused thumb against the hammer of his .44 and pulled it back. He didn't raise the pistol though, not just yet. The click of Donner’s hammer locking echoed through the abyssal temple like thunder.

  "You think your primitive weapons can harm me?" The low register of Thurs's voice ascended into a high-pitched laughter, like the sound of cicada bugs.

  Thurs's laughter died. "I am not one of your witches. I am not some terran beast toying with cosmic power. Riddle this shell with holes if you will. I care not."

  "Emmett," the old man's voice was shaky, and his eyes were pooling with tears. "Fight it, boy!"

  There were two terrible truths to the old man's quest. The first was that he had no real plan. He'd shot, killed, and coerced his way across half a continent. Now faced with the god that inhabited the body of his son, the old man had no idea what to do.

  "It’s the spider," Hank drew out the words slowly. These words held within them the second horrible truth of the old man's quest. Both the old man and Thurs were too embroiled with one another to note the boy’s statement.

  "The thing you call Emmett gave itself to me freely. There is no escape from such a bargain."

  The old man lifted his pistol and screamed at the nightmare reflection of himself. Tears of pain and rage ran down his withered face and through the gray stubble on his cheeks.

  "Give me my boy!"

  "No," Thurs answered simply, and turned his back to the old man. Hank noticed the titan smile slightly as it did so. The evil, crack-fleshed thing was enjoying the old man's sorrow. It was feeding off of it.

  Thurs kneeled back down at the stone altar, paying the two intruders no further mind.

  The old man's hands, always so calm and steady, now trembled. His breath came out as uneven bursts and gasps.

  "Take me then!" The words were almost unintelligible, wrapped within sorrow. "You take me and let my boy go!"

  Hank turned toward the old man, horrified by what he was asking of the dark titan.

  "Your son ain't there!" Hank screamed, anger and fear welling up in his chest.

  Again, the old man and Thurs both ignored Hank’s protestations.

  "Your power ain't meant to be locked up in flesh, and I know that body is damn near breaking. I'm big and I'm tough as nails. I can hold you for a spell longer than you're gonna get from my son."

  Thurs looked down at Emmett's hands, which bore cracks in their flesh all the way down to the bone beneath.

  "That ain't even your son’s body anymore!" Hank screamed, trying to push the old man, as if it might open his mind. "It's like that fungus spider. Ain't a damn thing of your boy left in there!"

  The old man didn't even cast a sideward glance toward Hank. It was as if the boy didn't exist. Thurs was the entire world right then, and the giant was slowly rising to its feet. Its naked husk of a body turned and cast a hate-filled smile at the old man. Both he and Hank held their breaths, not knowing what to anticipate from the monster.

  "I accept," said the Devourer that wore Emmett's flesh.

  Icy cold air poured forth from the eyes and mouth of Emmett's stolen body. The cold front, the true form of that thing called Thurs, poured out from the son and into the father. A cloud of freezing moisture fell to the earth in its wake, leaving a trail of frost between the two.

  Hank stepped back, edging closer and closer to the doors as the horrifying vision of the old man's possession unfolded.

  The old man’s gray eyes turned cataract white, and the poison blood in his body spread like a drop of ink through a pint of water. Every vein and artery showed black beneath his rawhide skin. Thurs didn't need to romance or fool the old man as he had done with his offspring. This time he could take his host immediately. After only seconds it was complete.

  With the transfer complete, the shell of Emmett's body hit the granite walkway of the temple and crumbled like a porcelain doll dropped from a child’s hand. Bits of brittle tissue fell into the surrounding sea, flash-freezing as they were swallowed beneath the whitecaps that battered the sides of the granite walkway. Hank had been right. There had been nothing left of the old man's son. This thing was not even a human corpse.

  While Emmett’s body shattered upon the granite, the old man still maintained some level of consciousness. He watched as his last hope on earth literally crumbled to bits. Mercifully, he no longer cared. Taking in the essence of his godly enemy had driven the last vestiges of sanity from him. His mind was consumed with hate and death. Hate for the Yanks. Hate for the savage Indians. Hate for his wife and her sickness that caused all of this. Hate for himself and his numerous failures.

  The negativity and madness made Thurs stronger. The emotions fueled him, and the intimacy of seeing the old man’s mind unhinge from the inside was a source of utmost pleasure. His gluttonous moment of victory was short-lived, however.

  With a steady hand and an expression of serene detachment, Hank did as the old man had taught him. He pulled the trigger of his gun, sending a lead slug through the base of his only friend's skull.

  ***

  The old man's body fell, and a horrible scream, like the sound of a star collapsing, shook the endless temple to its foundations. Pillars of ice began to fissure and split. The freezing sea churned and roared. This place between dimensions, this church of madness, was crumbling at the seams.

  The space above the old man's corpse was like a sculpture carved from frozen breath. A ghostly thing, vaguely human in shape, yet mind-bogglingly alien on some fundamental level, floated above the old man's corpse. It screamed its inarticulate rage directly at Hank this time, leaving the boy’s exposed flesh frostbitten and covering his clothing in frost.

  The force of the scream took Hank off of his feet and slammed him into the iron doors. The breath fled from his body as he slumped on the floor, and he thought that he may have broken a rib. There would be time to fret about broken bones and frostbite later. For now he had to escape this unnatural place.

  The boy willed himself to his feet, just as the old man would have done, and used his fear and all of his strength to pull the artillery sword out from the door handles. The stubborn blade would not move. Shards of granite and ice were raining down around him as he as he continued to tug with all that he had. Finally, the sword came free.

  Hank dropped the heavy blade off of the walkway and into the angry ocean. The old man had given him many gifts, but some baggage was too heavy to carry.

  Thurs swung an icy, incorporeal limb down at Hank. The boy covered his exposed flesh, using his jacket like a shield. The fabric froze stiff, but managed to save his body from
further damage.

  The titan howled again and pulled back another one of its ghostly limbs. The ice pillars crumbled further and splashed into the frigid sea.

  Before the beast could lash out at him again, Hank pulled the massive iron doors open. The sunlight of the place on Earth called Winter's End poured into whatever horrid dimension resided within the church. Waiting in the bright light of the earthly sun was the army of witches who so enthusiastically served the Devourers. Hank chose to take his chances with them, rather than Thurs.

  The boy ran through the doorway and dove between the legs of the foremost witch, a balding man in blue overalls wielding a small sickle. The servants of the dark god scurried after the boy, like a group of inept children trying to catch a field mouse. So focused were they on the task of catching Hank for their alien lord, that not one of them noticed Thurs' phantom tentacle lash out from the door, like a whip formed from winter's breath.

  Thurs’s ethereal limb struck several of its closest faithful, but missed Hank. Their skin instantly turned black and necrotic, and a glaze of white frost formed across their skin and clothes. The ruined, frozen body of the balding witch whom Hank had just outmaneuvered crashed to the ground and shattered like crystal meeting buckshot. The blade of its sickle, turned brittle from the cold of Utgard, hit the ground and exploded into a thousand pieces of frozen shrapnel. Two shards of the frigid metal dug themselves into the back of Hank’s right thigh.

  Those who had been shielded by their fallen brethren were unharmed but paralyzed by fear and awe. This display of power and force by their master was as holy to them as it was terrifying. It was a miracle, to them akin to the plagues inflicted upon Egypt.

  The creaking sound of the frozen bodies shattering behind him only served to inspire Hank’s speed. The boy ran with all the energy that a child could muster.

  If he'd turned around he would have witnessed the adobe church, with its bizarre geometry, caving in upon itself. He would have seen a billow of white mist, where the warm air of earth met the frigid winds of someplace beyond the stars.

  Hank had no interest in looking upon the horrors behind him though. His eyes were fixed on the outer edge of the cursed town. If he'd know the wretched language of the Devourers, he might have heard Thurs curse and beg for a body—any body—so that it wouldn't return to Utgard, but all Hank could hear was the pounding of his own heart.

  If he believed in happy endings he might have imagined the old man and his boy were smiling down at him from heaven, thanking him for doing what had to be done, but Hank knew that wasn’t the case. In real life the heroes failed and gods were terrible things.

  Epilogue

  The stars were bright, shining their hatred down toward the earth. For those who believed those fires of the devouring armies to be something benevolent, it must have seemed a beautiful night. For the men gathered in this secret grove, it most definitely seemed magical. Not so much for the boy and his mother.

  A bonfire, bright and enormous, a symbol of unity with the baleful stars above, burned in the center of the grove. A bit off to the side, just far enough away from the fire, stood massive apple tree, nearly twenty feet tall. Apples were out of season and the branches were bare, save for the noose slung over one gnarled limb.

  A young dark-skinned mother kicked and twitched on the end of the hangman's rope as she dangled ten feet above the ground. Twelve men formed a semicircle around the fire and looked on as the woman performed a gallows dance. A thirteenth, a beast of a man at over six feet tall, held the rope in place. All of them wore white robes with masked hoods.

  The woman's son, a boy no more than eight years old, younger than Hank had been when the cannibal murdered his father, was forced to watch. The robed figure in the center of the semicircle held the boy's face, and made him witness his mother's dying moments.

  The noose had been tied to offer a slow, strangling death, rather than the mercy of a broken neck. Pain and fear were sources of power for these men. But pain and fear could be easily shut down and replaced by hope. Sometimes all it took was a tiny piece of lead.

  The sound of thunder echoed through the grove, though no lightning or rain accompanied it. Some invisible force had severed the hangman's rope, and the young mother fell hard to the ground.

  Again the sound of thunder rang through the orchard. This time, one of the witches fell. The white robe quickly took on a darker color as the hole in the man's chest pumped out his life force.

  The robed servants of the Devourers drew knives and guns of their own from the voluminous folds of their garments. Their fire had ruined their night vision, and the masked hoods hindered their sight even further.

  In addition, their bold religious attire and ritual fire made them easy targets. Hank, unencumbered by superstition or servitude, was quite comfortable staying to the shadows.

  Hank took several big steps to the right, changing up his angle to keep the witches guessing. His strides were long, as he'd grown to be quite a tall young man. He wouldn't be surprised if the superstitious bastards mistook his calm tactics for supernatural speed.

  He fired another round, this time into at the witch who was holding the boy. The Klansman's head exploded, filling his hood with bits of brain, skull, and blood.

  Worship of the dark gods what lay outside had grown in the days since the old man left this world and this war behind. It wasn't just angry natives, or weak-minded hill folk. With this new cult, the legion of Utgard now found allies among police chiefs and captains of industry, farm hands and politicians. It wouldn't be long, Hank reckoned, before Thurs or one of his filthy brethren returned to this world.

  But Hank had advantages too. He had the shadows and the anonymity of a second-class citizen. He had experience and will. He had the wisdom and memory of the great warrior who had trained him. He had confidence that man would prevail.

  Hank let another slug fly, and spilled the blood of a third witch, like a splash of whiskey for a dead friend.

  <<<<>>>>

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Curtis M. Lawson is a writer of unapologetically weird, dark fiction and comics. His work includes the Amazon best-selling novel, It’s A Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World, The Devoured, and Mastema.

  Curtis is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association, and the organizer of the Wyrd live horror reading series. He lives in Salem, MA with his wife and their son. When he is not writing, Curtis enjoys tabletop RPGs, underground music, playing guitar, and the ocean.

  curtismlawson.com

  curtismlawson@hotmail.com

  Preview- It’s A Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World

  Enjoy this preview of Curtis M. Lawson’s Amazon Best Seller, It’s A Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World!

  While The Antique Man lay suffering in the hospital and the two lovers collectively known as the Picasso Killer terrorized and tortured a murder groupie who went by the handle AbsurdByrd_666, another man with an unusual pseudonym of his own was crouching by an open window, watching a U.S. senator through a sniper's sight. The assassin's Christian name was Jack, but to most he was known only as The Rhodesian.

  The job he was working was as simple and clean as they came, completely motivated by financial concerns. Politician A was trying to push a law that interfered with CEO B's bottom line. Usually companies in the U.S. didn't conduct business in this way, but Jack's employer was a new-money kind of guy, and he was used to getting his way. Jack wasn't one hundred percent on the details, nor did he care to be. His sphere of concern was bound by his bank account on one side, and his reputation on the other (with strippers somewhere in the middle). Some mercs tried to fight on the side of the angels when circumstance allowed. Jack didn't believe in angels.

  He'd made his sniper's nest in the window of an office building across the street from where the senator would be dining. The spot gave a clear view allowing for a clean, easy shot. The place also had a quick escape route which would allow him egress before a 911 dispatcher would even pick up the call.

 
"Did you know that GMOs are more addictive than heroin?" a slurred voice from the corner of the office questioned.

  "I hear that, china. Those pricks in the food industry have me eating two or three times a day. I just can't stop," Jack responded in a gregarious manner.

  Just to keep things tidy, Jack had captured and drugged some far-left blogger named Tyrone Wells. Wells was best known for writing scathing and poorly edited calls to arms against the "American Empire." He also had a record for destruction of property. When the police did eventually find The Rhodesian's set-up, they would also find a strung-out Tyrone Wells, with his well-documented fingerprints all over the sniper rifle.

  The time had just about come to pull the trigger. The grey-haired lawmaker had been having dinner with a woman half his age at some haughty Italian place with dim lights and pricey wine. The Rhodesian hadn't wanted to ruin an expensive meal for the other folks inside, so he'd waited for Mr. New York Senator to shuffle off toward his waiting town car. He was still arm in arm with the young girl, and Jack smiled, imagining what her face was going to be like in a minute when her sugar daddy's head exploded.

  "What are you doing over there anyway?" Tyrone asked, in a confused, drug-addled tone.

  "I'm not doing shit. I'm just like a manifestation of your subconscious. But you, fuck-o, you're about to destroy a piece of the American murder machine. Sound good?"

  Tyrone giggled and replied with something that sounded like a yes.