The Dark Stone

by Mark R Faulkner

  The robe was still a little damp when he stepped out of the door. Snow lay deep enough to reach up his shins and a crust had frozen on top of it, which cracked every time he took a step. When he caught his victim’s scent on the breeze, pulling him toward her, his heart raced with anticipation. She spun around at the sound of his footfalls in the snow and the tenderness of her wind-bitten cheeks drove him wild with desire. She didn’t have time to scream.

  When all was done and he’d had his way he looked down upon her, blond hair splayed out over crisp white snow and painted lips, contrasted vividly against the bloodless, white face; as did the jagged hole in her throat above pale her breasts. He felt no satisfaction afterwards, just an empty void inside which quickly filled with remorse.

  Still yearning and yet knowing his cravings could not be satiated, he started back toward his room. He was in no rush, knowing that when he arrived he’d have no choice but to speak to James and it was not a confrontation he looked forward to with relish. When he turned into the lane, no other tracks overlaid the ones he'd set down earlier and he knew before entering the yard that the house stood empty.

  Inside was dark, no lamps had been left burning and no light came from the crack under James’ door. Sam went into his own room to wait, thinking his landlord would return before too long. The fire had burned down to one or two dull red embers and he busied himself for a while by fetching more wood and nurturing flames back into life.

  It was the longest hour of night, when the dark seems to be holding daylight at bay, when he heard the yard gate scraping open. Shortly after came a clattering, as James tripped over the tools he’d left scattered under the lean-to.

  Sam moved out onto the landing to wait. There was a lot of scrabbling from below before the door scraped inwards hard enough to bounce back off the wall. He watched as James fumbled around for the lamp and when he did eventually find it, he put it on the ground and staggered from side to side while bent over, trying to light it. The scene almost brought a smile to Sam's face. Almost.

  James leant on his knees and stood with a groan before bending back down to retrieve the lamp from the floor. Only then did he raise his head and look up the stairs, taking a step backward and clutching his free hand to his chest in surprise. His voice was slurred when he spoke, but also carried a tremble. "Sam!" was all he said before looking at his feet and starting upwards. Progress was slow and Sam waited patiently on the landing with his arms crossed while James guided himself up with one hand on the wall. The other hand was holding the lamp out in front of him.

  Halfway up, he stopped, steadied himself and looked up again. Shadows danced in the lamplight. “What are you?”

  “I wish I knew,” replied Sam honestly before backing into the doorway to let him pass.

  James warily made his way up the remainder of the steps and opened his door, fumbling the catch in haste. He tried to close the door behind him but Sam reached out a hand to stop it and stepped over the threshold.

  James’ room was almost as sparsely furnished as Sam’s. “May I come in?” asked Sam, although by blocking the doorway he was giving no option.

  “Uh-uh.” James gave a meek nod of his head.

  Sam stepped into the room and James backed up to the far wall, near the window and although he looked like he needed to sit down, he did not.

  “I’m glad you got out of the tavern. What happened?”

  James shrugged. “I ran.” Then he seemed to have a moment of courage, or perhaps the drink made him forget the danger he was in, for he began asking the questions. “Why?” he asked. “Why did you do it?”

  “They hurt friends of mine,” he said.

  “They’ve hurt a lot of people,” said James glumly.

  “Who are they?”

  “Like I said before, just thugs.”

  “Yes. But who do they work for? What do they want?”

  “They’re a law unto themselves but I s’pose it’s him at the castle who’s their leader.”

  Sam knew the castle. He’d visited there once, when the monks first picked him up. “What’s his name?” he asked.

  “Dunno.” Said James. All the time they were speaking, he was trying to subtly undo the catch on the window behind him.

  Sam tried to reassure him. “Don’t worry,” he said, nodding to the window, “they deserved what came to them.”

  “They didn’t deserve it. No one deserves that!” His back slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, knees tucked up beneath his chin.

  “And how do you know that?” Without realising, Sam had taken a step forward.

  “Get away from me. I know what you are.”

  He moved another step closer. “And what’s that?”

  Sam had no desire to hurt him but something deep inside was goading him on, willing him to take another step toward the man on the floor and savouring his palpable fear. With Sam looming over him, James curled into a clammy, trembling ball. “Please,” he muttered, “please don’t hurt me.” He was begging for his life.

  Sam reached down and covered James’ face with his splayed hand, hooking his fingers beneath his chin. James began to thrash, clawing at Sam’s arm and trying to bite, but the grip was too firm and his mouth was covered by the unyielding palm, stifling his screams and cutting off his air.

  Sam opened himself fully to receive the life which flowed into him, revelling in ecstasy as James’ futile struggles steadily weakened and slowed so that eventually only the occasional twitch showed any glimmer of life remaining. And these too eventually stopped and when Sam finally relaxed his grip, James’ body had been reduced to a dried, wrinkled, raisin-like husk.

  44

  From behind an old apple tree, its fruit and summer leaves long gone, he watched. Lamps burned in nearly every window and the studded gates stood open. Through them, in the courtyard beyond, horses were being led to their stalls and people were carrying on jolly conversation. Their laughter came to him on the breeze, along with the clippety-clop of hooves on cobbles. Sam thought about the last time he'd stood beneath the walls, when a young and brave monk had climbed them. Then he thought of Brother Aaron on the road, his head impaled on a spike.

  He could have just walked in through the front door and wreaked bloody havoc and slaughter, but that's not what he had in mind. They needed to feel fear. So instead he worked his way around the crown of the hill to the back of the castle, where the walls were featureless apart from the occasional arrow slit, and began to climb. Lizard-like, he shimmied rapidly up the aging stone, jumping silently over the battlements and up onto the ramparts. A sentry was doing his rounds, a battered horn in his hand, walking toward him. Sam stayed still and crouched, almost invisible against the wall as the sentry’s boots clicked on the stone.

  He was only young, wisps of fluff showing only the beginnings of a beard and moustache. His attention was fixed somewhere else, inside the walls, thinking about places he’d rather be than in the cold and dark. Before he had chance to register what was happening, a bony hand was clamped over his mouth and his head was yanked around, snapping his neck. There was no time for him to cry out before his body was flung over the wall, to land in the uppermost branches of a blackthorn far below, where it hung limp and lifeless.

  One more roaming sentry was similarly and efficiently despatched. His eyes bulged with disbelief as Sam materialised from the shadows to grab him one handed by the throat, effortlessly crushing his windpipe.

  Sam walked calmly around to where the walkway passed over the main gate, where it widened enough for a crude table and a couple of chairs to be put there. Two more guards sat opposite each other, playing a game of dice to while away the long hours of the night while a bottle of brandy sat on the table between them. He didn't hide his approach. The guards looked up in surprise and drunkenly staggered to their feet. "You're not supposed to be up here," the older of the two said while fumbling at his scabbard.

  "Sorry," said Sam, putting on his humblest smile, before he r
aised both arms and slammed their heads together across the table. Their faces connected with an explosion of blood, teeth and glass from the bottle. Brandy ignited as it hit the lantern and a ball of flame engulfed both smashed heads, setting their hair alight and blackening their lips.

  With the bodies slumped aflame across the table in front of him, Sam straightened to look out across the snow covered fields, glowing white under a pale moon, and then he looked back to the keep. There were no guards at the door. They were not expecting trouble. Sam smiled to himself and took a deep breath of winter's air before he dropped down into the yard below. No one had seen him enter and he landed in a deep patch of shadow where ivy grew thick. Almost a shadow himself, he slipped along the wall and up the few steps into the keep.

  Although the dead had been removed, not much else had changed inside the castle. Spiders lurked in every corner and the woodwork no longer held its sheen, under layers of dust and grime. Everything had lost its lustre and although the place was lived in, it was no-one's home.

  Once inside it was less easy for him to stay hidden. People milled about, coming and going from doorways set along the corridor and servants, balancing jugs and platters, weaved their way between groups who were standing idly drinking and chatting. Had it not been for their grubbiness, they could have passed for aristocracy. And yet Sam did remain unseen; almost invisible against the walls, he flitted from shadow to shadow, staying in the patches of dark between the lamplight until he reached the winding stone staircase. Where he and Father Geoffrey had once gone up to the rooms and tower above, Sam descended into the pitch black of subterranea.

  It didn’t take long for the sounds above to fade into silence, as if the dark itself deadened and then swallowed the noise, as Sam followed the spiralling steps deeper into the bowels of the castle. As he went deeper, there were new sounds; the tortured groans of despair of those resigned to their fate. He could feel them too, hurting.

  At the bottom of the steps there was a dark, damp place where the stench of human waste and suffering was overpowering, even to him. Sam crept silently round the last bend of the stairs to see someone sitting at an old mouldy desk, their feet up and oblivious to his approach. Behind him, on the wall, two torches burned in rusted iron sconces, casting a dim flickering light about the chamber.

  The man at the desk almost fell backwards out of his seat when Sam materialised from the dark, and the bunch of keys he had on a large iron hoop slid to the floor. “What the…”

  His words were cut short when Sam sliced his throat and the gaoler completed his fall to the cold, damp floor, gasping for air while life flowed out around him.

  From down a small tunnel, carved into the bedrock, the suffering souls sensed a commotion and their groans increased in volume and a solitary chain could be heard rattling. By now the beast was fully in control and Sam was simply the vehicle for its will. When he reached the first cell and the prisoner contained within set eyes upon the thing, his groaning ceased and the chains fell silent.

  The emaciated figure peered up through rusted iron bars, from where he lay naked in his own filth, shackled to the back wall by one wrist. With one touch of Sam’s hand, the lock fell away and the cage door creaked open. As the creature walked in, the prisoner weakly kicked his legs to try and push himself back against the slime-covered wall to escape the monster looming over him, but his efforts were in vain. His mouth worked to form pleas but only a dry rasping escaped his gummed up lips.

  “Thirsty?” said Sam.

  The wretch on the floor meekly nodded.

  The monk hitched up his robes and proceeded to urinate over the prisoner’s face, who could only try and turn his head away from the foul stream, spluttering. Sam left him there to look into the other cells. There were six in all, and only one other contained a live prisoner. The others held only corpses, in various states of decomposition.

  Sam wandered back to the desk and stepped over the body to pick up the chair from the puddle of blood, before he sat down and leaned back on two legs with his feet on the table, waiting.

  When he'd waited long enough and was as sure as he could be that most the castle folk had retired for the night, he went to the bottom of the stairs and listened. All appeared quiet and he started up toward the castle above. Before he’d reached the top of the stairs, the smell of baking bread wafted to his nostrils. Sam peered out into the hallway where a boy was bent over, cleaning up vomit with a shovel and washing the floor by pouring out a bucket of water over it. Sam nodded and walked on by, the boy carried on with his cleaning, hardly giving a second glance.

  The door to the main hall stood ajar and inside the room was dark. A long and steady snoring was coming from the far corner where someone had drunk himself unconscious. Sam glided across the room and around the long table toward him before crouching, so their faces were almost touching. The man's breath stank of stale beer and cheese.

  Using both hands, Sam jabbed his fingers into the sleeping man’s belly, his sharpened nails punching through skin and muscle with ease. There was a small grunt and a gargle but then no sound issued forth from the man apart from a crack, followed by wet tearing as his chest was prised wide open. After eating his heart, Sam reached into the body and grabbed a fistful of guts. With a firm tug they came out in a stinking mess, unravelling like a string of sausages.

  A painting of a stag in a snowy wood, weaving between grey trees, hung on the wall. The stag looked hunted. Sam looked at its big eye; the reflection expertly painted there was jaded behind a layer of dust. It reminded him of himself. He tore his gaze away to carefully arrange the man’s intestines around the painting like a Christmas decoration.

  With the message left, he went back down into the dungeons and once again sat at the desk, tapping his fingers against the stone wall behind him and smiling as he imagined the confusion and panic which would ensue once the body was found.

  45

  It came sooner then he'd anticipated. His senses tingled with a commotion above and Sam rose from the chair to investigate, creeping slowly back up the stairs. Extra lamps had already been lit and men were running from room to room, conducting a search. All had their weapons drawn and many were holding flaming torches up in front of them. Doors banged and furniture was clattered about.

  For a moment Sam was back in the monastery; scared and alone. It set off a chain reaction of anger, fuelled by memories which now seemed a lifetime ago. The last remnants of his humanity dropped away. Sam’s features twisted and his limbs contorted and stretched as his physical form seemed to alter into a grotesque display of wrongness.

  He stayed in the deep shadows of the stairwell as two guards came toward him, looking in all the places a person might hide. The larger of them came close to where Sam lurked and the creature solidified from the shadows, grabbing him from behind and dragging him down into the dark.

  "Martyn," the other one called, upon realising his companion had vanished. Then again a bit louder "Martyn?" He cautiously made his way toward the stairwell and peered into the gloom, thrusting his torch out in front of him with one hand and clutching an axe tightly in the other. The sound that escaped him next was more a scream than a shout.

  Halfway down the stairs, just before they spiralled out of view, the horrifying beast crouched on its haunches over Martyn’s body, lost in the abandon of the feast. It looked up through deep, black eyes set into sunken sockets. Its skin was mottled and stretched taut over angular cheekbones. Blood soaked the lower half of its face where it had been gorging itself.

  The man staggered back into the hallway and shrieked. Others had come running at his first distressed cries and peered over his shoulder to see for themselves. Sam shot up the stairs, ignoring them. They jumped back when he passed, no more than a blur with robes flapping behind. Those who’d seen were hesitant to give chase but men joining from behind barged them into the stairwell in their haste to pursue the thing.

  Sam exited the stairs at the first landing. Someone was comin
g along the corridor toward him, to investigate the cacophony below, walking with his head pointed forward, neck extended, as he strained to see in the dim light. Sam did not slow and hit him with enough force that his spine cracked like a whip. The top of his head lolled backwards and came to rest looking skyward while his lower jaw, which had separated from the rest of his face, stayed dangling around his throat. For a moment he stayed upright, teetering, before crumpling to the floor in a heap. Sam paused for a brief moment to watch, both aghast and impressed, before continuing down the corridor.

  His pursuers were close on his heels and tempted as he was to turn and rip them to shreds, he rushed toward the door in front of him, and paid them no mind. He remembered that the master bedroom was ahead and presumed the best chance of finding his intended target was there, hopefully tucked up and fast asleep. The revenge he’d been seeking was upon him and it was time to tear the heart from the pack.

  He burst through the door with enough force to split it up the middle, sending splinters of wood flying into the room. A man and woman sat up on the bed in surprise. Sam stopped dead in his tracks. The woman reached one arm across her body to cover her naked breasts while at the same time reaching for a short sword with the other. But Sam hardly noticed her at all.

  For a few moments time seemed to stand still. Behind him, the first of his pursuers came running through the door. Sam stopped them with a back-handed swipe which sent the lead guard flying into those following, knocking them down and sending them sprawling back into the corridor. All the time his eyes were fixed firmly upon the man on the bed, whose mouth had half opened to say something before recognition registered and silenced him.