He was in the center of a small circle of trees; the needled arms lacing together like fingers above his head to blot out the slivers of light that crept through the clouds from the moon. The piercing cold stabbed at his bare chest, penetrating through the flesh like a series of needles, ripping at the skin as though to peel it back. His swirling breath lingered around his face like a localized fog before fading into the darkness. Turning in place, he watched the ring of trees around him.
There was no doubt in his mind that there was someone nearby, just out of his line of sight. He could feel him there, the heavy stare fixed upon him as he stood alone in the center of the grove. There was that coppery smell again, climbing into his sinuses and dripping down the back of his throat as it filled the forest on the thin breeze.
Peering beyond the shadowed trunks, he could see nothing but the thick blanket of darkness that enshrouded the shrubbery. It masked whatever animals slumbered through hibernation or brumation or whatever small prelude to death slowed their functioning through the frigid winter months, allowing them to arise in time for the mating season in spring. Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him, but the darkness seemed to be gaining mass, piling blackness upon itself until it seemed to pulse behind the lichen-crusted trunks. Threatening to swell all around him and spill through the thin gaps between the trunks into the small circle where he hesitantly waited for whatever had drawn him here to reveal itself, it called to him with words that he could feel, but not necessarily hear.
He looked straight up into the darkened mass of interwoven branches, their needled extremities shuddering against one another. A thin cloud of snow sifted through from above. There was nothing around him, at least nothing that he could see with his own eyes, yet still he knew that it was there with him, standing just outside of his line of sight, sharing the same frigid night air that rifled through his lungs. He could taste its rotting breath on the tip of his tongue and feel its damp warmth on his exposed skin.
Staring down at the white-dusted ground, he could see something etched into the frozen, crusty snow in the dim light. Though barely visible, he could tell it was there. Kneeling, his face only a few feet from the hardened surface of white, his finger traced the carvings. They were letters, marked into the snow by a human hand, his finger fitting perfectly into the thin channels.
“White lace?” he mused, discerning the patterns of letters.
Why in the world would anyone take the time to write the words “white lace” in the snow in the middle of nowhere?
His mind raced in circles, the words echoing over and over in the corners of his brain, which churned like an engine in response to the letters. Knowing they were written there for his benefit, for his eyes only, he frantically sought to decipher the cryptic code.
Finally, it hit him.
An old Alice Copper song played through his head. It was a song he hadn’t listened to since he was maybe sixteen years old, yet still the words poured back atop the music in his mind as if he was listening to it at that very moment. The chorus echoed in his brain and he whispered it aloud.
“In my mind,” he said, his finger still tracing the words, “Blood drops look like roses on white lace.”
There was a dull splattering sound, like the sound of a leaking faucet dripping onto an open drain. Following the noise, he stared down on the small droplets, bright red circles in the virgin snow. Dabbing at one of them, he brought his dampened finger right in front of his face, inspecting the reddened surface of his fingertip. He rubbed his thumb over it, smearing the thick crimson fluid.
Throwing himself onto his back, he stared up into the canopy above, just as a loud crashing sound filled the woods. Brown needles fell in droves from the branches above as a shower of snow cascaded through the air. A dark shape appeared from the branches above, hurdling toward the ground at an enormous speed. The object landed with a sickening thump, a gut-churning groan emanating from the shape that was sprawled across the ground just past his outstretched feet.
Sitting up, Scott felt his heart begin to race. He reached for the object with his trembling hands. He could tell what it was, but beneath the darkened sky, he was unable to tell whom. His throat grew dry, his lips parting to dampen his mouth with the humid air.
Rolling up onto his knees, he shakily lifted the arm that was sprawled across the snow in front of him into the air. The skin was cold and dry, the flesh traced with the drying lines of blood that had run like small streams over the surface. Fingers curled into claws, elbow tightly straightened; rigor mortis had begun to set in. Allowing the arm to flop back down onto the snow, he leaned over the body and stared at the face, which was crusted beneath a mask of dried blood.
It was Jeremy, just as he had seen him only minutes prior in a heap on the marble floor of his shower stall. His peeled back eyelids exposed the bloodshot whites of his eyes, only the bottom crescent of his dark eyes visible as they had rolled back into his skull.
A gaseous groan parted his blue lips as the head slowly lifted from the ground.
Scrambling backward, his red hands buried in the thick snow, Scott hurriedly scuttled away. The body slowly rose from the ground. The head lolled back onto the shoulders, the arms and legs hanging limply, as the body floated into the air. The tips of the blue toes scraped at the crusted surface of the snow, tracing thin lines with the long, yellowing nails.
Unable to take his eyes from the body hanging in midair, he scrambled backward against the trunk of a tree, the jagged bark pressing deeply into his back. His feet continued to kick at the snow in an attempt to propel him further away, but to no avail. So he sat there, trembling against the base of the tree, helpless to do anything more than watch as Jeremy’s head snapped forward, the whitened eyes seeming to stare straight down at him on the ground.
Thin tufts of steam rasped from the mouth of the formerly lifeless body, the breath scraping audibly through the collapsed trachea. It just hung there momentarily, before finally beginning to move very slowly. It came toward him, the toes dragging in the snow.
Scott fought to close his eyes, to roll around the side of the trunk, to leap to his feet to sprint in the other direction, but nothing was going to work. His entire body was paralyzed with fear, even his breath growing stale in his lungs as only his hammering heart was able to function through the onset of the crippling numbness that raced through every inch of his being.
The body stopped, still dangling like a marionette on unseen strings from the mass of branches above. Falling to the right, the head rested on the shoulder, the eyes still appearing to be fixed directly on him. He watched in horror as the lips slowly began to move, the thin blue lines writhing like snakes as they fought to mouth words. A faint sound whisked through those lips, growing stronger and louder with each subsequent attempt until finally it found its voice.
“It’s been a long time,” the deep rasping voice said through the lips of the deceased, its breath visible against the dark night.
The voice seemed to reach right in through Scott’s ears and straight down into his chest, seizing his rapidly pumping heart within its cold grasp. He recognized the voice immediately, knowing that it didn’t belong to the body that floated in the center of the ring of trees around him. Trying to respond, he swallowed the ball of phlegm that blocked his throat, but still the words would not com. His eyes grew even wider, the brows raised nearly to the center of his forehead.
“Aren’t you going to say hello to an old friend?” the corpse mouthed, the voice seeming to come from all around him rather than from behind the swollen tongue of the chipped-tooth mouth.
It couldn’t be possible, Scott thought. Every rational part of his being fought in circles trying to grasp the concept of what he already knew to be true, but was completely unprepared to accept. And though much time had passed, he still recognized that voice as well as if it were his own. Wrapping his trembling arms around his chest in what resembled a self-embrace, he stared at the dangling feet of the body, his voic
e coming in little more than a muffled whisper.
“Matt,” he said, closing his eyes tightly. He felt the cold swell upon him from all sides, tearing through his clothing in an effort to freeze the skin beneath.
“Ahh,” the voice echoed from all around him. “I see you do remember, even after all of these years.”
“You… you’re dead. I watched you die,” Scott muttered, pressing his back as far as it would go against the trunk of the tree, unable to steer his gaze from the figure that hovered in front of him.
“For a while, I thought so too. In fact, there were definitely times when I wished that I had been, but apparently I was meant for something more.”
Scott’s hands shook violently as he held them in front of his face, the dangling apparition gliding slowly toward him in the small grove. There was a shadow to his left, muffled beneath the darkness of the trees. Barely more than a vague outline against the pitch black night, it seemed to generate its own blackness, the serpentine darkness writhing and twisting, a cold effervescence emanating from the heart of the shadow.
“What… how…” Scott stammered, unable to connect his scattershot thoughts.
“How did I survive? Is that what you’re asking?” the lifeless form mouthed. “After that car slipped beneath the ice on that lake, the freezing waters filling the inside of the car, I prayed for a swift death. I prayed for the water to rise up and fill my lungs. But there was to be no solace for me. When the weight of the car finally broke through the ice, it rolled, trapping a pocket of air within the vehicle. It landed on the roof of the car on the bottom of the lake. I broke free of the seat belt and swam out through the open window, but it was so dark under the layer of ice that I was unable to see anything at all. I couldn’t even see the hole in the ice where the car had fallen through. So I swam beneath the icy crust, pounding on it with my fists before the cold finally began to overwhelm me, numbing my flesh so that I could barely move. I watched the surface above me as I sunk deeper into the water, but before I knew it, my back was on the sloped bottom. The stale breath forming icicles in my lungs, I scrambled up the bank, kicking and scraping at the rough silt before finally slamming my head into the thin ice by the shore.
“Clawing up onto the frozen bank, I dragged myself forward. My body shook so violently that there was no conscious control of my faculties. I just crawled, my whole body trembling. Little did I know there was a river just off the far bank. Before I even knew that it was there, I had splashed down into it face first, the rapidly-running water ripping me beneath the surface. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a small, dark tunnel. I don’t know how I got there or why, but my entire body felt as though it was frozen and my muscles were beginning to atrophy. I could barely move as I was wedged so tightly into this tunnel. There was no wriggling free, at least not in the state that I was in. There was no water, no food. I just lay there, pressed tightly into a small cylindrical tunnel of packed earth, praying for death.
“Four days passed before the rats came. The water must have risen in the larger tunnel beyond, as the earth grew damp beneath me, the rats coming all at once in a screaming fit of squeals and clawing nails. They raced right up the tunnel toward my body, squeezing between the earthen walls of the tunnel and me. I was able to bait them with my own flesh long enough to keep them near enough to me to grab them, to snap their little necks. I feasted on those rats for as long as they lasted, buying me enough time to regain my strength, to claw my way through the soft ground, and into that house.”
“What do you want from me?” Scott asked in a meek whisper, his eyes scanning the shadows for the source of the voice, rather than the mere puppet that dangled in front of him in the freezing night air.
“That night, so many years ago, you dragged me out of that house. Who knows how that night would have played out, maybe they would have killed me, or maybe I would have killed all of them: no one will ever know. But it was because of you that I was able to get a second chance.”
“A second chance at life?”
“No,” the voice said, booming laughter filling the entire forest. “A second chance to kill all of them. There is just the one thing that still needs to be decided. I have summoned you here for one reason and one reason alone tonight. I need to know whether or not I need to kill you as well.”
“You were my best friend,” Scott said, sliding to his feet along the roughly-barked trunk of the tree, his eyes scanning the darkness hard, searching for some connection with the ghostly apparition that lurked within the shadows. “I would never have let them hurt you if I had known that was their purpose for bringing you to that house that night. They told me that it was time to bury the hatchet—”
“It would have been if you hadn’t pulled me out of there.”
“Time to let bygones be bygones, if you will. I never would have let you show up if I had known what was going to happen. For the last twelve years, I’ve blamed myself for your death. I’ve carried the burden that I was the one who couldn’t save you, couldn’t pull you out of that car. Do you know what that’s like? I haven’t had a single decent night’s sleep since I was seventeen years old.”
“Poor thing, and here I thought living in a hole in the ground surviving on nothing but the uncooked flesh of vermin was bad. Please forgive me for troubling your sleep.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Scott said, lowering his shaking head. “And it’s really not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“Why are you doing this?”
The corpse slumped to the ground in a heap, the gasses building within bursting from the compressing flesh in a combination of a loud belch and flatulence that sounded more like the roar of a bear than anything else. Stepping from where he hid beneath the blackened cloak of the shadows, Matt’s outlined form stepped towards the clearing. Though barely more than a shadow in the night, Scott focused on the form as it began to speak, the darkness around him seeming to resonate from within the dark core of his former friend.
“You remember how it used to be, don’t you?” Matt said, his voice almost sounding human, like it had more than a decade ago.
“How so?”
“Don’t you remember how everyone looked at me, how they treated me? It was as if I carried the plague, as if I was the antichrist. I couldn’t escape it, not even at home. Wherever I went, there was always someone there to try to bring me down.”
“Like I said back then, if you don’t dwell on it, it will eventually go away.”
“But it never did!” Matt’s voice boomed from the heart of the darkness. Snow fell from the branches overhead in clumps from where it had piled atop the nest of needles. Whatever lonesome creatures skulked through the night, scavenging for food or respite from the wicked storm scattered from the underbrush at the sound of the ear-shattering voice.
Scott stared at the wall of shadows. Matt’s form seemed to pulse from the dark rage that resonated within his form. He could feel the cold waves of hatred as they rippled through the forest across the thin, frigid breeze. The form eased from the blackness that cloaked it in its embrace of invisibility, stepping out into the middle of the small clearing, just to the other side of Jeremy’s lifeless form.
The dark cloak that shielded his form blew around him, the tattered edges dancing rhythmically. It looked as though a fire burned about him; black flames lapping at the night from his almost spectral form as it hovered inches above the frozen ground. His face was cloaked in shadows, only the dull manila glare from his sunken eyes, and the choppy, rotten teeth from his snarling mouth were visible. The dim light reflected from the dried surface of his eyes. The cracked and yellowed eyeballs appeared as though they couldn’t see anything at all, the leathered surface snagging each time the eyelids blinked.
“Jesus,” Scott uttered, his eyes fixing on the blind stare of the creature that stood before him.
“Do I repulse you? Does this festering visage offend you in some way? You’ll have to forgive me
as I’ve been living in this infernal hell for as long as I can remember now. But this is all a part of the deal for me. When I gave up my life, my soul, for the chance at retribution, this became a foregone conclusion. The voices in my head that chatter amongst themselves relentlessly are nothing compared to the physical torment of a body that is in a constant state of decomposition. My skin cracks and peels back from the blood that flows like fire through my veins. And there is only one way to end this nightmare, this never ending stream of pain.”
“What’s that?” Scott asked, his trembling voice betraying the onslaught of fear that raged through his quivering body. He stumbled backward from the advancing form.
“I have to finish what I started. I have to live up to my part of the bargain. I was given this power, this curse, for the sole purpose of bringing death to those who had forced so much pain upon me. The demons that writhe within my body, my mind, demand this from me, demand that I reap the souls for them that I promised I would.”
“Two hundred?” Scott asked as he slipped beneath the shadow of the tree behind him, slinking behind the trunk.
Matt just laughed, an insidious cackle that shook Scott to the core of his being.
“Been doing some research, I see. If only you knew what I do. I think you’d find that pretty amusing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Our destinies our linked, you and I. It is our lot to walk side by side through the valley of the shadow of death. The night I made the deal, at the point when the demons swelled from the darkness, whispering, as they entered my body, they revealed everything to me. They told me of the child of the horned god’s blood that would bring the souls of the prophesied hundreds to the master for his eternal consumption. They revealed to me all of the secrets that the darkness held, for me, for all of us. And indeed, I would have my revenge, but that was only one part of the grand scenario.
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