by B. L. Morgan
From the other side Nicholai the Monk laughed.
“I am nowhere in Hell,” he said to us. “But soon you will be. The curse that is upon this land, the real curse, is the godless unbelievers. You are the curse! But God in his infinite wisdom has sent his servants some tools to remove the curse. Soon you will meet the real children of the night and they will escort you to Satan himself.”
Johnny shouted, “You’d best open this gate or I’m going to beat you to within an inch of your fucking life!”
But the only answer we got was hearing Nicholai’s horse ride away and his receding laughter.
Judit said, “We never should have trusted him, not for one moment.”
I heard rustling around on the ground and heard a snap. A spark flared, it jumped to a leaf and Judit fanned and blew on it building a small fire.
I was sure glad that Judit was fast at making fire this way because I wasn’t worth shit at it and I don’t think Johnny was any better.
Me and Johnny quickly grabbed some sticks and added them to the flames building it up. In only a few moments we had a decent little campfire. Not that we wanted to stay where we were, but at least with the fire we could see around us a little.
What we saw didn’t look good.
Hundreds of gravestones and old stone crosses were knocked over and broken. They laid flat in the dirt littering the ground all around us.
“Let’s make some torches,” I told Johnny. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
“You got that right,” he answered and we scrambled around finding a few arm-sized fallen branches. We stuck these into the fire and got them burning.
From all around us, on all sides, the insect and bird noises you normally hear in the forest just stopped. It was like a switch was turned off. Everything went dead silent.
The lack of sound hit all three of us at the same time and we went quiet also. It was like we’d suddenly shoved in earplugs.
After a minute of complete silence Johnny whispered, “Ain’t that a bitch.” His whisper sounded as loud as a shout.
I put my hand up for him to be quiet because at that moment a new sound drifted up from around us. This sound wasn’t natural. It made goose bumps jump up all over my skin and the hair on my neck felt like it stiffened into wire and was standing straight up.
The horses didn’t like this sound, because without any warning they bolted and ran off vanishing into the darkness.
The sound was a moaning. It was like someone was gasping out heir last breath and was moaning in pain.
There was that sound and there was also the sound of scraping. On the ground, in the ground around us, was a sound like fingernails scratching at stone, clawing, scraping to get free.
I handed Judit my torch and drew my sword. Whatever was going on here, I didn’t want to be caught without a weapon in my hand.
Johnny shifted his torch to his left hand and drew his sword.
Judit swung the torch back and forth in front of us to get a wider view and screamed.
In a lot of places in front of us, ten or twenty spots, hands were rising out of the dirt, digging themselves up, and coming out of the ground.
“Son of a bitch!” was all that I could say as arms then a head and chest appeared pushing the dirt aside and the first rotting corpse dragged itself out of the dirt to a sitting position.
The thing was completely devoid of clothes. Those were rotted away.
I ran forward shouting and kicked the thing in the head like I was punting a football. My boot landed square on the nose. With a crunch my foot went right on in and through its head knocking the brain and skull flying in different directions. The brain splattered against an overturned headstone like a glob of old Jell-O left in the fridge too long.
The thing fell to its back and lay there.
I turned back to my companions and Johnny was dealing with another of the corpses that was attempting to stand. He sliced down on the thing’s head cleaving it in half all the way down to its collarbone.
Johnny’s sword got stuck so he had to kick the thing off his blade.
I was getting set to attack another one when Judit shouted, “We can’t fight them. There’s too many!”
She was right. For as far as our torchlight reached hands, arms, heads, and torsos were coming up out of the ground. I could see at least fifty corpses dragging themselves up from the ground and I knew there had to be hundreds more in the graveyard.
“That way!” I shouted and pointed at the dark structure that we could only get a bare glimpse of in the black night.
We turned and started that way.
Five corpses, all of them naked moaning nightmares of decaying flesh were between us and the building that we were trying to get to.
Johnny jumped forward yelling, “Back the fuck off!” and ripped the guts out of one of them that looked like a fat bloated middle aged man.
It just reached for him and snapped its teeth at Johnny. I kicked the thing sideways off the path making it stumble off into the darkness.
I whipped my cutlass to the right through a zombie’s throat and the head fell backward off its shoulders. That one went down and stayed down.
“Take their fucking heads off,” I yelled at Johnny. “That seems to work.”
He did exactly that to one that looked like a skinny old woman that shambled in out of the pitch blackness grabbing for him.
We attacked the three on the stone walkway between us and the building and after heads rolled we were at the door.
The building was a large mausoleum made of stone. It had a heavy wooden door. Judit grabbed the door handle and the latch turned but she couldn’t make the door move inward.
I slammed my shoulder into it and the door gave a little bit.
Johnny ripped the head off a little boy that moaned and came out of the darkness with its hands out in front of him like he wanted a hug. Then he slammed himself into the door with me.
The door slid inward and Judit slipped past us inside.
We followed, and then slammed the door shut behind us.
Chapter Forty-Five
The Dead Underground
There was one of those latches on the inside of the door made by a steel rod that slid into a steel ring bolted to the wall. I slammed that bar shut locking the door from the inside.
The question instantly hit me, “Why would anyone build a house for the dead with a door that locked from the inside?”
A loud WHAM came from the other side of the door.
That one was followed by hundreds of other thuds as the creatures outside pounded against the door in an effort to get at us.
I guess that answered my question.
Johnny and Judit swung their torches around to illuminate the inside of the mausoleum.
The dancing torchlight gave us flashbulb shots of rows of marble crypts that were recessed into marble walls.
This building was only about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide. The torchlight showed us the far wall. The structure was maybe the size of one of those old west single room schoolhouses.
The marble crypts lined both walls and in the middle of the floor about halfway to the back wall there was a pitch black hole that lead down into the bowels of the Earth.
“What the fuck are those things out there?” Johnny asked above the continuous noise of the things beating on the door.
“Why are you asking me?” I answered. “Why don’t you step outside and ask one of them?”
“I’ll pass on that,” he said.
Judit asked, “Do you think we can spend the night in here?”
As an answer a sound heard even above our talking and the beating on the door came from over our heads. It was more of the moaning.
Judit and Johnny stuck their torches up above their heads to illuminate the ceiling.
There was a gaping hole in the roof of this place made by age and rot. Even though we’d only been in here less than five minutes the things from outside found a way
in.
Hands grasped the edge of the hole and the creature pulled itself up and looked down on us from over the edge.
The thing looked like once it had been a well built woman in her mid-thirties. Now the face was bloated, the eyes were sunk into the head and as the black lipped mouth pulled back into an animalistic grin I saw long white fangs.
“Son of a bitch!” I shouted as the thing fell over the edge and smashed head first into the stone floor.
Bones snapped upon impact and the abdomen bloated from accumulated trapped gasses in the stomach cavity exploded spewing a noxious mix of fumes and shit smells into the air.
All three of us gagged from the stench.
But even with its face ruined and flattened by the fall the things arms and legs flailed as it started to push itself up from where it was flattened out on the floor.
Johnny stepped forward and stomped on the thing’s head smashing it into ugly goo.
“Fuck, that’s sick,” he said and staggered away and wiped brains and hair off his boot onto a coffin.
We had backed up away from the falling thing and were at the edge of the gaping black hole.
Judit shined her torch over the hole and we saw stairs that lead downward.
Above our heads two more sets of hands appeared at the edge of the hole in the ceiling.
“We can’t stay here,” Johnny told me.
I took Judit’s torch and held it in my left hand.
“I guess we go down there then,” I told them and headed down the steps into the underground.
The stone stairs lead down at roughly a ninety degree angle.
I went first, trotting down the steps even though I couldn’t see much in front of me because the smoke was blowing back into my eyes.
That was actually a good sign since it meant that wherever these stairs went at least they came out somewhere where there was open air. With those things able to get in behind us, I sure didn’t want to come to a dead end.
Judit was behind me and Johnny was bringing up the rear. We wanted her between us so we could be the first line of defense if we were attacked from either the front or behind.
The stone staircase was about five feet wide and the ceiling over our heads was somewhere around eight feet up. The walls were made of brick, moist moldy brick.
We went down the stairs and after about twenty steps they stopped. The floor in front of us was a dirt floor and was level.
That was also where the stone walls stopped and the walls on both sides were made of flimsy rotting boards.
I held my torch up and saw that the ceiling was lower here. It dropped to a height of around seven feet. That also seemed to be held up by wooden beams that looked moldy and rotting.
“Lets get a move on,” I shouted to Johnny and Judit and took off running.
They ran beside me. From far behind us we heard the crash of more of those undead things smashing into the floor falling from the hole in the roof.
We ran harder.
The dirt floor began to be a gradual upgrade leading toward the surface.
The walls of both sides up ahead of us had holes gouged in the boards in several places. We ran like hell away from the sounds behind us because we knew that those things were going to follow us underground.
Judit screamed and tumbled to the floor. Johnny couldn’t stop fast enough. He tripped and sprawled on top of her.
Then I saw what caused that.
A hand was sticking out of the wall. The hand clutched Judit by the ankle.
Johnny jumped to his feet and hacked the arm at the wrist. The hand came loose. It fell to the dirt still twitching, fingers still grasping.
I yelled at them, “Quit fucking around and come on!”
Scratching sounds came from the walls on all sides of us. A hand at face height broke through and grabbed at my eyes. I sliced it and three fingers flew.
“Keep moving,” I shouted and kept running forward chopping and hacking at the hands that burst through the walls.
Stone walls appeared again on the sides of us and stone stairs lead upward.
From far behind us we could hear the moans of those things as they followed us in the tunnel and broke through the dirt and rotting boards trying to get at us.
Up ahead at the top of the stairs a lantern light shone. Almost immediately there was the squeak of rusted mettle, a loud clank and the snapping together of metal parts.
We ran up the stairs and I ran full into a closed steel gate made of metal bars.
Nicholai the Monk grinned down at us from the other side of the gate and spoke. “This gate is always closed and locked. I decided to make certain that you were trapped like the vermin that you are. You will die the way you deserve to die, eaten by evil things.”
“Open this dam gate!” I yelled at the Monk. “Or I’ll fucking kill you when I get out of here!”
His answer was to laugh in my face.
“But you will not get out!”
I turned back to Judit and Johnny. I went back down the steps, handed Judit my torch, and shoved her up higher than me toward the barred gate.
“Please open the gate and let us out,” Judit pleaded with the Monk. “We’ll forgive you for betraying us.”
He laughed at her too.
The dead thing’s moans were getting closer. The moans were nearly deafening.
Me and Johnny were shoulder to shoulder.
Johnny shouted back to Judit, “Fuck that idiot!”
“I’m not that kind of woman,” she told us.
“Then offer him a blow job instead,” I yelled and the dead things rushed out of the darkness below and were on us.
There was not enough room for us to stand side by side and fight so I shoved Johnny behind me and set to hacking left and right at the animated corpses that came at me.
Fingers, hands, arms, and heads flew as I cleaved at anything that came at me out of the pitch blackness.
This wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter. I became a grim butcher hacking up body parts as they were thrust at me.
The problem was there were just too many of them. Their sheer numbers threatened to push me back and I had nowhere backwards to go.
As I hacked and sliced and diced, shouting came from behind me. I couldn’t really hear what was being shouted. I was a bit too busy fighting off the charging wall of zombie things that were gradually overwhelming me.
In front of me, two steps down was a pile of twitching hands, arms, heads, and bodies. They climbed over it and madly dove forward.
Two of the things climbed the body part pile and leaped simultaneously.
I ripped to the side and took both hands off one of them at the same time as cutting a bloody furrow through his cheeks and nose.
The other one hit me on the thighs like a tackler in a game of football.
But it wasn’t any game when I went down beneath him and others piled on top of me.
Teeth snapped shut inches from my face. Something bit my leg and I kicked it loose.
I punched and kicked as well as I could and for some reason still had a death grip on the sword in my hand.
Johnny yelled, “Get the fuck off him!”
I was grabbed by the hair and jerked straight up the stairs and dragged out from beneath the attacking corpses.
Johnny had me by the hair with his left hand. With his right he hacked at the living dead.
He dragged me up the stairs and out into the open air. Some of the things were crawling up the stairs following us. They were illuminated by Johnny’s torch. He’d thrown it over me into the mob.
The gate was slammed shut on two blood thirsty grinning faces and latched. I lay on the ground for a moment on my back and looked at my friends.
Someone new, a thin built plain faced guy with brown hair stood beside Judit.
As I got to my feet I saw Nicholai the Monk lying in the dirt. A knife was sticking out of his chest. He was dead.
“I’m sorry I had to kill him,” the guy said spe
aking mainly to Judit. “He would not open the gate to let you out and attacked me when I went to do it myself.”
“We’re not sorry,” I told the man. “It’s just too bad you couldn’t kill him slower.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Csejthe Village
“I am Rozer,” the new guy told Judit and held out his hands to her.
She fell into his arms and they were instantly locked in an embrace.
After a full minute of an intense lip-lock Johnny said, “God dam man, she never thanked us like that and we fried a fucking werewolf for the girl.”
They came up for air.
Judit told Rozer, “I am happy to meet you.”
“Yeah, I guess you must be,” I answered for him.
Rozer had a wagon pulled by a single horse.
Me and Johnny piled in back.
Judit sat beside Rozer as he flicked the reins and we started back toward his village.
Our horses were nowhere to be seen. They were probably in the graveyard and we weren’t going back in after them.
Rozer asked us, “What were you doing in The Cemetery of the Tainted? We trade off keeping guard out here to make certain none of the tainted escapes. Tonight I was late because a drunk caused problems at my Inn. But no one is ever supposed to be in there after dark.”
We explained how we were locked in by Nicholai the Monk and why we were traveling through these mountains.
He listened intently then after a moment answered, “I have heard stories of men working with the creatures of the night that sprang from the Countess Elizabeth’s Curse. I believe this monk of yours was one who was doing that.
“If you hunt the Countess Elizabeth Bathory then your journey is almost at an end. My village is Csejthe and the Countess home is Csejthe Castle not far from there.”
We rode on for a time after that.
The cool night air actually felt good after the hot battle we’d been through.
I was rubbing my leg where the undead guy bit me when Johnny asked, “How are you doing bro? You went down pretty hard when those things jumped on you.”