by Dan Dillard
***
When Albert finished, Odette was dead. Her face was a bloody, mangled mess and he had the taste of iron on his tongue, but Albert didn’t grimace. Instead, he licked one of his fingers and then savored another bite of her full lower lip and chewed it like a piece of beef. The plump skin popped in his mouth and filled it with a fresh taste of blood. He had no remorse, no guilt. Only a tremendous sense of power.
“Power, Odette. I know you felt it,” he said. He dropped her body and wiped his now flaccid penis on her shredded blouse before standing to dress himself. Odette’s body lay in a heap. The clothing she had worn that day, clean and hand-stitched by Miss Celine with the love only a mother could slather on a child—even an adopted one—lay in a dirty, bloody pile next to her. Albert howled. It was a joyous sound—the sound of a proud young man after a successful first date—a ready-to-take-on-the-world howl.
“I feel strong,” he said. “Like ten men!” He paced, following the inner curve of the circle, flexing his arms and chest and bellowing, all the while his attention focused not on Odette’s corpse, but on the center of the circle. On the middle of the devil’s hoof print.
“Blood has been spilled, offered up to you. Offered so I might be made whole. Give me power. Give me power. Give me power. Give me…”
He stopped walking, stopped saying actual words. They became gibberish and moaning. He staggered to the center of the circle in a trance, something driving him. Back on his knees, he began to dig with his hands. He pulled out fistfuls of sand, cupping it in his hands and tossing it aside. Then he grabbed a handful of the wire grass and pulled it loose, ignoring the irritation it caused. He grabbed more and threw it out of the small hole, making it a larger hole.
Albert dug and dug, well into the afternoon until his fingertips were raw and bleeding, stinging and sending shocks of pain up to his elbows, then up to his shoulders. In a fury, he ran back to the house and found a shovel and a pail.
“My sweet Lord, what happened to you?” Charlotte asked him.
“I’ve found it,” he said, paying her little attention.
“What have you found? Albert, you need medicine. A doctor? Are those ant bites?”
“No I don’t. I need to get back to work.”
“Don’t be silly,” she started to say but her husband grinned at her with his dead face and Charlotte only looked at the floor.
“I’ll be fine. We will all be fine now. I have found it.”
Charlotte didn’t ask any more questions. Albert went back to his task of digging in the circle. He filled the pail with the shovel and then carried the sand to the edge of the ring and tossed it out.
At first, he mused it was a grave he was digging…a grave for Odette. Then, it wasn’t. Odette was gone from his mind, no more important to him than any other animal which had died in those woods. She was a pile of meat and bone to be picked clean and left to decay. Albert only knew he had to keep going. He needed more of the magic that came from the wellspring in the ground. Its source was down there somewhere and he was going to find it. Shovel after shovel, pail after pail full of sand he went, heading from the middle to the edge of the clearing where the old worn path lay. He only knew to stop when he hit rock.
Along the edge of the circle, where his walking had worn the path, there was a stone wall—like he was standing on the top of a chimney some thirty feet across. It was a solid wall and Albert scraped his shovel against it all the way around, digging a trench out that highlighted the circular shape. He lit lanterns so he could continue through the night.
By the time morning light had come, Albert was exhausted, dazed and stiff. His fingers and the palms of his hands were cracked and bleeding. His boots had worn painful blisters on his heels and his back had a catch in it. The circular clearing had become a cylindrical hole, carved flat to its stone perimeter and just over two feet deep. Odette’s body had slid down into the trench on the south side and he paid her no mind. He needed food, water and rest.
It was as if he’d blinked and the power which had appeared—a power that made him kill Odette and hoot like a school boy—had gone, drained out in an instant. He climbed out of the hole and dropped the shovel as he trudged home, wordless, thoughtless and spent.