by Scott Hale
Outside the dining room, Ezra and Belia were making a huge ruckus.
“Ah!” Ichor’s eyes lit up. “Now, if no one is going to kill me, then let’s get to the main course.”
The dining room’s double doors flung back. Ezra and Belia stood there on the threshold, a huge cart between the two of them. Ichor waved them in, and in they came, a ghoulish grin upon their faces. On the cart, the naked, bloated corpse of a five-hundred-pound man lay; his flesh was bruised, stiff; his stomach, a massive mound of swollen, pimpled flesh that gave him the appearance of being pregnant with a smaller, lighter, perhaps two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man. In the corpse’s mouth, an apple, cleaned to the point that it glinted in the light, had been wedged. This was Grandpa Gloom, Aeson knew, and like a slaughtered pig, he was here for them to consume.
With the double doors still open, the Choir’s songs were coming into the dining room at full volume. In combination with the grisly spectacle laid out before Ichor’s guests, Aeson, beginning to laugh again, started to realize what the deranged Child of Lacuna was attempting to accomplish here.
It’s a test—the food, the setting, all of it. He looked at Dalia Dark, Agnus Buckles, and Rustin Carr—the Holy Order of Penance followers, and then Big Scar Pedro and Jack Remy—the Disciples of the Deep adherents. These were hard people—walking calluses, really—who had lived in the Dismal Sticks all their lives, and would continue to live in the Dismal Sticks for as much time as their lives had left. History had shown them to be no strangers to killing their own if deemed necessary. And Ichor wasn’t even one of their own.
It was a test, for both Ichor and for the heads of the families gathered here. A competition to see who could stomach the others the longest.
Can they beat the Witches? Aeson glanced around the room. Everyone here was armed. Dalia had a blade in her belt, Agnus an Old World flintlock pistol across her lap; Rustin’s fingernails were so long they may have been knives, and Jack had a dagger in his boot. Big Scar Pedro kept eyeing Bjørn’s bastard sword as if he had a mind to steal it, so that was always a possibility.
Pain’s pet.
Ichor clapped his hands again.
Belia, mumbling, “Goddamn it, goddamn it,” hurried over to him and handed him two gigantic butcher’s knives.
Pain’s pet. Aeson white-knuckled the hilt of his sword. Let them kill each other, like Bjørn said. She’ll come. Maybe they’ll kill her or, at least, weaken her. He swallowed hard; his throat constricted, and breathing became impossible for a moment. Nothing is going to stop them from killing us. He looked at Dalia, at Big Scar Pedro. I’m going to have to fight.
“We’re all here because of Grandpa Gloom,” Ichor said, handing one butcher knife to Rustin, the other to Jack. “I fled to the Sticks a stranger, and I brought you heaven and its two gatekeepers. All I’m saying is that I held up my end of the deal. It’s time for you all to hold up yours. Ezra! Belia!”
Ezra and Belia slammed the cart into the end of the table. They then jumped onto the table, grabbed Grandpa Gloom’s fat, mushy ankles, and started hauling him down it. His arms knocked the dinnerware out of the way; forks and knives got caught between his legs and the crack of his ass. Like ants lifting something far beyond their weight, Ezra and Belia backed down the dining table, past the guests, until Grandpa Gloom’s bloated, five-hundred-pound corpse was splayed out in the middle of everything.
Ezra dropped off the table, his eyeball bouncing against his face.
“Goddamn it,” Belia said, her stunted arm and leg giving her some trouble as she struggled down to the ground. “Goddamn it.”
Bjørn came to his feet, because Grandpa Gloom’s gigantic belly was too big to see over.
Aeson followed the Bear’s example. His legs almost gave out as he stood up, they were shaking so badly.
“Good idea, my brothers,” Ichor said. He ran his hands through his blue hair, slicking it back behind his ears. “Up, up, everyone.”
Begrudgingly, Dalia and Agnus rose. Big Scar Pedro did the same, and then sidestepped away from Bjørn, now apparently not so interested in the Night Terror.
Rustin and Jack were the last to stand, the butcher knives in their hands sharp temptations they were struggling to not give in to.
“Our love for God is what brings us here tonight, isn’t it?” Ichor said. His eyes started to glow bright blue. “The Choir is thirty strong, but that isn’t enough for the Sisters. We need more for our pilgrimage to Angheuawl, to open the way into the Void and heaven. The journey… it’s going to be a long one. People will try to stop us, even our own Disciples. The Dismal Sticks—”
Grandpa Gloom’s corpse shuddered. The flesh on his bulbous stomach ripped, as if several weeks’ worth of gases were trying to get out.
“—could be a new Mecca. People will say that the Choir started here, and they will send their children to have them trained. And you greedy leeches can bleed their gullible parents for all they’re worth. I don’t care!” Ichor smiled, rotted meat wedged between his yellow teeth. “I just need ten children from each of your houses. The Choir downstairs is a little overzealous and they keep breaking the babies before they can get old enough… Ten. I just need ten. When we leave, House Gloom is yours. The Sisters will provide and—”
A rumble came from within Grandpa Gloom’s distended gut. A squirt of blood suddenly shot out of his belly button.
Ichor held out his arms, his vibrant, blue eyes darting back and forth between his guests. “So, what do you say?”
“Where’s Pain and Joy?” Rustin asked, setting the butcher knife down on the table.
Ichor bit his lip. Pointing to his eyes, he said, “We’re watching everything.”
With a shout, Jack dropped his butcher knife and punched the side of Ichor’s head. Without missing a beat, Rustin grabbed a handful of Ichor’s blue hair and drove his face into the table, breaking his nose.
“Anointed One!” Ichor cried, rearing back, holding his nose as blood seeped out from in between his fingers.
Rustin wrapped his arm around Ichor’s neck, put his knee in his back. “You’ll get nothing from us, no more.”
“Call them down. Call Pain and Joy. We got something for them, too,” Jack said. He grabbed Ichor’s jaw and pried open his mouth. “Don’t worry about waiting for heaven. We’ll take you there now.”
Bjørn tore his bastard sword out of its scabbard.
Before Aeson could draw his, Agnus had her flintlock pistol trained on him.
“Don’t do it, Night Terror,” she said.
Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a red, bristly, walnut-sized mass. He shoved the seed to Ichor’s lips, but the Lacunan was laughing too maniacally for him to get it past his teeth.
“Sing,” he said, biting Jack’s fingers. “Sing!”
Rustin grabbed Ichor’s balls through the nightgown. “I’ll have you singing, you goddamn freak.”
Ichor bent over, wailed. Jack shoved his entire fist into Ichor’s mouth and deposited the seed personally into his throat. While Ichor tried to cough out the growth, Rustin twisted his scrotum, as if he were trying to tie it into a knot.
“Witches and Night Terrors, we’ve dealt with worse,” Dalia said, drawing her knife. “And we’ve recruited worse. Should’ve just killed Ichor, Skull Boy and Bear Man. We might’ve let you go.”
Does she know how to use that? Aeson wondered, his attention fixed on the flintlock pistol. Hit her. Hit her. She’ll never load it in—
Ichor retched; his hands pawed at Rustin’s and Jack’s while they bent him over the table and held him there. He then stopped and stretched his arms forward, taking the meaty wrist of Grandpa Gloom and shaking it.
“Sing!” he commanded the corpse, while vermillion veins began to burst out of his mouth. “Sing!”
Grandpa Gloom’s gigantic belly jerked to the left.
Silence fell over the dining room.
Oh no. Aeson took a step away from the table.
Grandpa Glo
om’s gigantic belly then jerked to the right.
Bjørn put his arm out in front of Aeson and corralled him even farther back.
Outside, something slammed into the ground, as if it had been dropped from a great height. Someone shrieked, and then a splash of flames washed over the outside of one of the dining room windows.
“Son of a bitch!” Pedro turned to the window. “I told them to—”
Grandpa Gloom’s gut stretched upward and outward; hard objects from within the corpse’s now bleeding stomach were pushing against it.
“Sing,” Ichor whimpered, his face encased in vermillion veins. Rustin and Jack let the Lacunan go, and he hit the ground.
With a sickening snap, Grandpa Gloom’s pregnant belly exploded, sending bloody chunks all across the gathered guests. Flaps of dead skin, rank muscle, and putrefying organs splattered the walls and lathered the table. The smell of shit and the thick, permeating musk of intestinal lining filled the room, and even sent the cockroaches running. Gurgling sounds, like an infant cooing, rose out of the corpse’s stomach cavity.
Aeson leaned forward and saw that the worst had yet to come.
Inside Grandpa Gloom’s blown-out stomach, five small flesh fiends, probably no older than seven or eight, sat, their naked, emaciated frames covered in a sludge of gore. Their beaming, bloodshot eyes roamed around in their skulls, going this way and that, while their tongues tasted the bloody body pudding on their lips.
Bjørn shouted, “Aeson, watch out!”
Agnus Buckles had taken out a pouch and was frantically pouring gun powder down the barrel.
Head pulsating, Aeson swung his sword and hit Agnus with the flat end of the blade. It smacked against her face, leaving two bloody indentations across her cheeks where the edge of the sword had dug in. She screamed, dropped the pistol, and fell back onto Dalia Dark.
Aeson smiled—the cold touch of relief washing over him—and then he flew backward as one of the boy flesh fiends leapt out of Grandpa Gloom and onto him.
“Get it off me!” he cried, the pale imp digging its tiny fingers into his neck.
He fell against the window that was burning on the outside, sending a crack across the glass. The flesh fiend swiped its sharp nails across his mask, knocking the skull sideways. Aeson grabbed the boy’s thin arm, tried to break its grip on him. But the creature was ravenous, and it was stronger because of it.
“Kill it!” Bjørn shouted at him. Two flesh fiends on his chest and shoulders drove him out of sight.
“Get off me,” Aeson said, shoving his forearm against the flesh fiend’s chomping mouth. It was wet, too slick to hold; and its movements were erratic, as if it were being constantly electrified. But in truth, it was the face that kept stopping Aeson. The fiend had the face of a little boy. Blue eyes, a small nose and mouth. Its body was scarred, tumorous, and twisted, but its face was untouched. Innocent. Maybe even mistakable for something other than monstrous.
The flesh fiend sank its teeth into Aeson’s arm and tore away a hunk of flesh. Tears burst from Aeson’s eyes. He elbowed the fiend, sending several teeth further into its purple gums. The flesh fiend spat out the blood like a snake would venom and then dragged its ass up Aeson’s chest. It took hold of his mask and drove its fingers through its sockets.
Aeson grabbed the fiend’s wrists and clamped his eyes shut. He could feel the creature’s sharp nails grazing against his lids, getting caught in the corners of his eyes. The fiend ground itself harder against his chest, the texture of his armor amplifying the boy’s excitement. It then stood up, wrists still held by Aeson, and started jumping up and down.
Aeson’s eyes shot open as the flesh fiend knocked the wind out of his lungs. Holding the creature there, while it jumped gleefully on top of him—it felt like they were playing a game. And to the little boy, maybe they were. This was all the creature knew, all it had ever been promised. Aeson looked at the flesh fiend; at its wrung-out body covered in bite marks and scratches; its long hands and even longer fingers, bits of its siblings underneath its nails. He looked at its face, wrinkled and mischievous, and searched its jet-black pupils for any sign that it could stop, that it could be reasoned with. That it didn’t have to die. That he didn’t have to be the one to kill it.
Then Aeson heard something outside: wings.
He let go of the flesh fiend’s wrists. The little boy lunged forward, thumbs going immediately for Aeson’s eye sockets. And when it was close enough to grab, Aeson took the boy by the back of his head, flipped him over, and bashed his face into the ground, into the portraits and paintings that lined it; over and over again, he slammed the little boy’s quickly softening skull into the artwork—not out of malice or sadism, but because the faster he killed him, the less he would feel.
When the boy’s head was too slick to grip, Aeson let go, grabbed his sword, and stumbled to his feet. Dalia Dark rushed past him, drenched in blood, for the double doors. Across the table, Agnus Buckles was being stripped of her clothes by two of the little girl flesh fiends, who kept pausing to take bites out of her breasts and, in between chomps, would mumble about milk.
Where was Bjørn? Aeson looked at his bloody hands and felt sick at how Corrupted they looked. He reached for the curtains to wipe them off and saw that the entire outside of the house was engulfed in flames.
“Skull Boy!”
Bjørn rose off the ground on the opposite side of the dinner table. His breastplate had been torn off, and there were deep, seething gouges in his chest. The Bear’s sword was bloodied up to the hilt.
Aeson grabbed The Blood of Before from underneath his chair and stuck it behind his breastplate. A few feet away, two flesh fiend children were doing their best to rape Big Scar Pedro.
Aeson climbed onto the dinner table and stepped over Grandpa Gloom’s ravaged corpse. He was missing an arm; in the heat of the moment, someone had probably ripped it off to use as a club.
He dropped off the table, joined Bjørn on the other side. There, Jack Remy lay; his dead body had merged with the nest of vermillion veins still growing out of Ichor’s corpse. Rustin Carr was gone, but given the tortured screams coming from deeper in the house, Aeson figured he wasn’t far off.
“Got the book?” Bjørn asked, even though he could clearly see it.
“I heard her.” Aeson paused, controlled his breathing. “I heard Vrana outside.”
Bjørn nodded, looked at Aeson’s bloodstained hands, and ran. They hurried through the dining room as smoke and flames wound their way in. Bjørn bashed through the double doors. He stumbled, Dalia Dark’s dead body in the hall tripping him up.
“Goddamn it,” Belia belted farther down the hall, where the front doors sat open. She was the one holding Grandpa Gloom’s torn-off arm. “Goddamn it,” she said, pointing at them. She ran out of the house.
“Vrana?” Bjørn straightened up as he heard the sounds of the bloody bacchanal coming out of the basement. “She’s here?”
Tongues of flame licked around the edges of the front door. The fire was finally starting to work its way in. Outside, people were screaming, crying; they could hear people constantly running back and forth, and again, the sounds of something being dropped from high above.
Aeson nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Okay.” Bjørn took his bastard sword into hands and raised it in front of him. “This is it.”
Aeson grabbed the Bear by his straps. “What about the witches?”
“I’ll… take care of them. You grab Vrana.” Bjørn touched his chest where the flesh fiend had dug into his skin. “Can you kill?”
Smoke rolled between Aeson’s legs; a carpet of cockroaches passed beneath it. “Yeah.”
“The world isn’t always like this. I’m sorry.” Bjørn grabbed his shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “Okay. Let’s go.”
As soon as they had made it out of house Gloom, it took everything Aeson had not to turn back.
There were flesh fiends everywhere—thirty, maybe more—tearing throu
gh the Dismal Sticks, chasing down farmers and concerned citizens who’d been drawn by the noise from their homes. Flailing bodies were being thrown to the ground by groups of three and four flesh fiends, to be torn apart and fucked to pieces. Male flesh fiends set upon the women of the Sticks, impatiently spilling their seed anywhere they could, while female flesh fiends held the men of the Sticks down and let their sisters take turns on them. There were a few Corrupted children, too; those that weren’t slaughtered immediately were being hauled off to the lake, where the waters had rotted over and sinewy tendrils of light waved like cancerous reeds.
The fire was burning dangerously close to Aeson, but he couldn’t move. He had wandered into a mire of depravity, and only by depravity could he escape. Standing there on the porch, he watched torchlights flare to the east and the west, and across the lake, too. He waited for the screaming to start from those farmhouses, but the sloppy noise of rape here was drowning everything else out.
“Ah!”
Aeson’s eyes looked up. From the sky, a man fell, his arms and legs reaching for purchase on the very fabric of night. He crashed into the ground, landed on his neck, and broke his head off from the spine. It was then that Aeson realized that the ground was littered with similar bodies. Bodies of broken men who, too, had been dropped to their deaths.
He looked up again and gasped. There she was. There she was; a feathery silhouette against the pockmarked moon. Vrana, his love, his best friend, soaring through the night, the blood of the men she had murdered falling like rain from her feathers.
“Get her,” Bjørn said, shoving Aeson off the porch.
The Bear took off towards the lake, cutting down the flesh fiends that stood in his way.
Aeson followed after Vrana, his shadow in hers—where it belonged, and where he wanted it to be. Sword out, he navigated the tortured throngs of people and flesh fiends, doing his best not to draw attention to himself.
House Gloom groaned as the fire worked its way through the woodwork. The night wind rushed across the Dismal Sticks and blasted the front yard with the blaze’s scorching heat. In places, the grass, despite the evening chill, caught fire. At the back of the house, the rotting orchard erupted, the fruits of flame blooming all across the once-dead boughs. Even the air was on fire, leaving scorch marks with the gentlest of breezes. It was as if hell itself were passing through this plane, to smote from the Earth this desperate imitation.