The Bearer of Secrets (Dark Legacy)

by Kyle Belote

  She eyed him disparagingly as he stood and stretched, rubbing his belly.

  He’s keeping things from me again.

  The warlock set about cleaning the pot and dowsing the fire, tidying up the site rather quickly with the aid of wizardry. He shouldered his pack eagerly, like a young sailor about to make his maiden voyage. Julie, however, barely managed to scrape herself up from the ground. Her eyes were heavy with exhaustion.

  They wound their way along the trail for more than an hour until they came upon their first sign. Judas, without pause, continued to the right of the sign. Julie stopped to read and then looked after her master, puzzlement engraved on her face.

  “Where are you going?” she called after him. He turned to look at her, and she pointed to the sign. “It says we need to go left.”

  “No, it says you must go left. I go right.” He gave her a casual wave as he left her once again, for what seemed like the hundredth time since they had entered. She sighed wearily and continued along the left trail.

  The rickety rut eventually led her to a narrow path along a cliff face. A tree up to her left grew out of the cliff side with its roots winding down in the rock. One root as thick as a branch jutted out over the trail, curving overhead to form what looked like a threshold. It would not have been so unusual, except that beyond the root–through the threshold–was but a shadow. Her eyes couldn’t penetrate the darkness beyond. Apprehension gnawed at her insides, the tenebrous destination instigating rife trepidation within her.

  “You have a big day tomorrow,” she remembered Judas saying to her the previous night. She almost trudged through before she caught sight of the writing on the root above her head. Her steps faltered, pausing to read the letters scratched in, etched, by a blade and shaking hand.

  Here madness dwells.

  She couldn’t presume as to what kind of trick the Corridor attempted. Julie didn’t feel the eyes upon her like she had when they first entered, but she did note the absent sense of waiting or anticipation. Even the voice warning her off or laughing at her predicament fell away.

  Perhaps Judas had been right, the end of the journey imminent. But the scratched letters did little to quell her qualms, though the logic of her thoughts gave her hope. Still, she found the possibility that someone lost their mind and etched the words into the root unnerving.

  How could someone lose their mind and still have enough sanity to carve the warning?

  The uneasy feeling subsided when she analyzed the events, the conclusion inevitably a paradox, a trick on her mind, like all the rest.

  Assured, she entered the doorway.

  ***

  Chapter 25 : Mr. Pleasure

  “Wake up!” a coarse voice boomed. The bellow was deafening and painful to her ears.

  A massive meaty backhanded smashed into her face, sending her rocking in her chair and nearly tipping to the ground. The fall would have hurt more than the massive hand. Her skull would have cracked on the stone floor. Metal clamps around her wrists secured her arms to the armrests; ropes bound her forearms.

  Blinking back the stars and the sudden tears accumulating in her eyes, she fought to focus on the man in front of her. Julie’s head lolled, her eyes rolling sleepily back and forth until she could make sense of what she saw. A large fire illuminated every dirty crevice in the small, brick-lined room.

  Where am I? What is this place, a dungeon?

  It didn’t make sense, but the contrary evidence was impeccable. Suits of armor stood randomly, cluttering the small room. Weapons of every kind littered the floors and crowded a few small tables, swords, maces, axes, knives, arrows. Various clothing lay heaped in piles, torn and blood-splattered.

  Her eyes latched onto the chilling man. In a moment, she knew she had never laid eyes on him before. The word huge did him an injustice. His staggering height was rivaled by his roundness. Arms showed signs of muscle hidden beneath a profound amount of fat. His immense belly swelled out towards her, and she doubted he could reach her with his arms. Being tied to a chair was a hard argument to sidestep; the throbbing sting on her face reaffirmed her miscalculation.

  His lower jaw jutted noticeably. A profound under bite revealed chipped teeth, cracked and nicked while he ground them in his slumber. Stench reached her nostrils, a mixture of sweat, mildew, and dirt. A faint undertone of copper or something metallic hid subtly beneath the backdrop.

  Her head snapped back and forth frantically, searching for an escape. “What the fuck?” Her breath came in rapid pants.

  He moved closer; his shaved head glistened with perspiration. A white scar reached from below his left eye down to his jaw, a jagged line like a contour map. He turned away and walked to a table by the back wall. Her eyes flickered between her captor and the monstrous hearth, the length twice that of her height. The crackling, tall flames filled the room with stifling heat. With his back to her, he rubbed the sudor from his head, flinging his hand to the side. Flecks of sweat splatter the stone floor.

  The bald man turned back to her with hands wrapped in cloth; a sinister smile split his face. “My name is Mr. Pleasure,” he almost whispered, leering at her. “You shall call me by no other name than Mr. Pleasure. Should you call me anything but my name, I’ll cut out your tongue.”

  When Julie didn’t say anything else, he continued. “You will find that pain and torture can be a pleasure; you will learn to love it, for it is the only thing that makes you know you are alive. Pain connects everything. If you survive, you will appreciate that the pain of other things–the things of the world–and they are nothing compared to what I am going to do to you. In that, you may find comfort, for your life will be painless compared to this.”

  He pulled up a long thin rod, the tip pointed and sharp, and rolled it in his fingers. Admiring the tool, his eyes flickered to hers, making sure she watched, terrified. He lumbered forward, his movement slow but methodical.

  “Let us begin, shall we?” He leaned over her right hand, his clamping down on hers. “This is going to hurt,” the dark promise slithered out of his mouth. He shoved the sharp, thin shaft slowly into the tip of her right index finger. She bit down; her esophagus constricted, her body twitched, spasmed, tried to jerk away but couldn’t move. The bindings held her tight, and the pressure of the man’s hand held her still. The agony was impossible to fathom.

  Julie attempted to kick out while she screamed, bucking against the restraints. She pulled at them, wish them to yield. A smile spread across the fat man’s face. Curses flew from her mouth as he stood, appreciating his work. Amber eyes darted down to her right hand; the iron burrowed deep beneath her flesh, nestling the bone. Rising panic washed through her, breath coming in pants, her chest heaving. She screamed again, her throat hurting, throbbing, going raw. Veins bulged in her neck as if they would burst. He stepped back a pace before turning and retrieving another shaft from the table.

  “For some reason,” he spoke softly through her screaming, “When I insert sharp objects into the hand, specifically the end of the fingers, the torment is almost unfathomable. I wonder why that is?” The look on his face made it clear that he didn’t care as long as he could inflict suffering. He seemed to grow in strength at her screams, gorging himself. He not only enjoyed her anguish, but feed off it.

  Julie’s screams died in her mouth when he showed her the next metal pin. He leaned closer, drool sloshing from his mouth and over her comely face. A finger caressed her cheek. “There is nothing more beautiful than someone in pain.” She cringed at his vile touch and whimpered. “I will give you a choice, sweetie. Shall we revisit the right hand or would you prefer we move over to your left? What will it be?”

  Lips pressed into a thin white line; her body trembled, but her eyes glared at him, promising him a long and painful death. Other than escaped, trembling whimpers, she sued for silence. He sighed, a deep heave making his belly move perceptibly and he strained as he stood straighter.

  “You know, if you don’t talk, there can’t
be clear communication,” he said in a sing-song voice. His hand slammed down on her right hand, clenching it, crushing it, constricting the bones in her hand, hindering her efforts to squirm away. Fighting against his strength, an impossible feat with his added weight, she was but a morsel in the jaws of a large predator. She did note that for such a large slob, he moved far more adroitly than she thought possible. He drove home the second rod into the middle finger of her right hand, the movement quick and violent, where the first had been slow and gentle by comparison.

  She screamed and bucked against the pain, the chair wobbling, even with his added weight. Her head rocked back, bashing into the back of the chair, arms twisted and squirmed, skin tearing, rubbing raw from the rope. Blood poured from her fingertips, a steady drip splashing the floor. Erratic breath burned in her lungs, chest rising and falling at a frantic pace. Her eyes glazed over, a cool sweat prickled her forehead.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” She vaguely heard him move before cold water suffused her. She gasped, choking on the water as he dropped the metal bucket to the floor with a loud cacophony. The drenching water ignited her skin like a thousand tiny needles piercing her in an instant. The cold snapped her awake, her eyes opening wide in shock, the sting in her fingers acuter. A hoarse laugh peeled loose, a deep resonance.

  “Kill me!” she screamed.

  His laughter boomed, his mass seemingly growing with her pleas.

  “Kill me!” she shrieked louder, panicking. An end to her suffering dominated her mind. “Kill me; you fat son of a bitch!”

  His laugh ceased, his lips falling from a smile to a snarl. A low, throaty growl emanated from him as he stormed to the back wall. He spun around deftly, a large pair of pliers in his hand.

  “I warned you!” he roared. He crossed the room in two quick strides and hit her across the face with the cold, hard iron. Her nose broke in a sickening crunch. Her mouth washed with pain and sat at an awkward angle. Agony shot through her face, masking her fingers but for a moment. She blinked back stars as blood poured from her nose. She spat out teeth and knew he broke her jaw.

  Strong, gnarled fingers pried her lips apart, digging, searching, the pliers snaking into her mouth, snatching up her tongue. He pulled hard, Julie’s head involuntarily moving with his jerk. She could see the soft, pink flesh clamped between the metal. A gurgling whimper turned into a scream as panic engulfed her. Mr. Pleasure drew a large knife–almost a bastard sword–from his belt and leaned down.

  “This will teach you.” He slid the sharp blade through her tongue, severing it.

  Intense cold followed by blinding heat filled her mouth as quickly as the blood. In her shock, she inhaled rather than spit the red liquid out. He lifted her tongue so she could see it, in between the unforgiving teeth of the pliers, and the reality of what had happened sank in. Julie leaned forward and vomited, covering the floor with the remains of her stomach and the blood that had filled her mouth. She tried to curse him again but couldn’t.

  She wanted to scream, but he just laughed at her and swung the heavy pliers down across her head, rendering her unconscious.

  ***

  Chapter 26 : Mr. Pleasure

  “Wake up!”

  A strong backhand slammed across her face, rocking her head back. Stars exploded in her view. It was much harder to bring everything into focus this time and was dismayed to see the obese man standing in front of her.

  “My name is Mr. Pleasure,” he introduced himself as if they never met. “You shall call me by no other name than Mr. Pleasure. Should you call me anything but my name”–he let his eyes cast about the room–“I’ll char your skin over the fire.” He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the hearth. “Do you understand?”

  Julie looked at him for a long moment, taking in his sheer size and mass. If it were possible, she would have guessed he gained weight since the last time she had seen him, but who knew how long ago that was? She remembered her broken jaw and her severed tongue, and then nothing.

  “Do you understand?” he roared in anger. Mr. Pleasure slammed his fists down on the arms of the chair, his face looming close. His breath smelled like decay, fetid and malodorous.

  “Yes,” she whimpered, shying away as much as possible, her face cringing. Bewilderment struck her that she could speak at all. She remembered seeing her tongue as he held it in the vice of the pliers. Consciously, she rolled her tongue around the sides of her mouth and relieved to find it still attached. Thoughts whirled through her head as she tried to imagine how the fat man could have reattached it. The notion flabbergasted her; this brute was capable of doing something so … magical.

  “Good. Then, let us begin, shall we?” The echoing of his words sent a shiver down her spine.

  He picked up a long, thin knife from the table and walked towards her. “This,” he said holding it up for her to see, “is a flaying knife. This beauty is what we use to skin beasts. Lucky for you today, the thing getting skinned is you.” He smiled with glee at the thought of inflicting discomfort. His jowls quivered with anticipation.

  She swallowed, clamping down on her revulsion and fear, burying it deep; her torturer seemed to feed off it, an observation from earlier, but now confirmed. It was possible he was larger than before or seemed larger because she tried to make herself smaller, sitting as far back into the wood chair as she could as if to get away.

  “This is going to hurt,” he leered, another echoing of words.

  Slowly, methodically, he cut into her skin on her left arm. Uncontrollable convulsions shot through her. She shook hard, desperate to get away from him and from the pain he inflicted. Just the thought of being away from him made her grateful. A simple burning thought, hope for escape, allowed her block out some of the agonies. She had never thought about something for so hard in her life–anything to escape her current predicament.

  “You surprise me,” his voice said, breaking through her retreat. She blinked and the solitude she formed in her mind faded away. Her wet clothes clung to her body, but she dared not take her eyes off him. But that’s what he desired, Mr. Pleasure, for her to see the horror he wrought.

  He seemed almost deflated when he spoke. “Look at yourself.”

  She refused, knowing what would happen if she did; her eyes would behold the revulsions he inflicted. Panic would rise, her need to get away, to flee, would overcome any sane thought, and she would feed him. He would grow stronger as she lost her mind. Her emotions, and the control she had over them, would only empower him. Looking was giving in. Finding a way to take his power away, his control, would strengthen her, but what could she do bound to a chair?

  “Look!” he shouted the command. But still she refused. Letting out a snarl, he snatched the back of her hair, pushing her face downward, but she closed her eyes. “Good!” he bellowed. “You don’t want to see? You want to close your eyes. Fine! I will cut off your eyelids. Then you’ll have to!”

  He crossed over to the table and picked up something very small, no larger than a fork, with a small blade on the tip before crossing back over and strangling her by the throat. “Hold still, unless you want me to cut your eyeballs,” he said, both snarling and smiling simultaneously.

  Julie tried to struggle, at first, moving her head, shying and jerking away from the impending agony and his arduous grip. The cold metal left angry red trails across her skin. She screamed and tried to squint her eyes shut, willing him to stop; anything to keep him from carving her, but she held still in the end. She thought frantically back to the escape buried deep in her mind, but the serene landscape eluded her. Julie couldn’t think of anything but the impending threat of the blade and the thought of him cutting her eyelids off.

  The fire of the cut danced across her skin, her face burning as hot blood ran rivets down her cheeks. The sharp sting ricocheted all through her body, a trauma blossoming in the back of her head and shooting down her spine. Another scream ripped through the air, one so loud it hurt her ears. His hands worked deftly; her
strength sapped and the ability to fight him off vanished.

  “Now look!” he said. Strong, calloused fingers snaked through her honeyed tress, his grip threatening to rip out her hair as he forced her to gaze down at her arm. He flayed the skin off her left arm from wrist to elbow. Muscle and blood pooled in recesses, the skin a sickly white and pink, a thin layer of fat clinging to the underside of her peeled flesh. The vivid redness of her muscles burned into her mind. The walls around her mind crumbled, whatever defense she built up around her came crashing down after seeing what the monster had done to her. A renewed scream came crawling up her throat into the room.

  “You fat fucking son of a–” A meaty hand crushed into her temple, stars exploding in her sight, the blow hard enough to end her words. Julie’s head rocked to the side, and her body slumped, on the cusp of consciousness and unconsciousness.

  An odd scraping sound of metal on stone filtered through before she distinguished a thud through the metal chair. The jarring effect brought her back from the brink momentarily before she slid back towards the welcoming darkness. She sought the darkness, anything but Mr. Pleasure and his tortures.

  She didn’t know when she started to feel the new sensation, but she experienced heat, and her body protested against the odd position it rested in. Sweat peppered her body, her vision fluttered, focusing through the luminance. Flames thundered below her, licking the air between her and the bed of coals. Her arms were bound behind her, and her ankles were fastened to a metal rod, roasting like a pig on a spit. A quick, panicked glance out into the room and she spied the bulky man. He smiled as the flames rose underneath her. With defiance, she held his gaze. This monster, no matter what he did to her, would be deprived of the satisfaction of feeding off her screams and discomfort. She would hold out for as long as possible.

  The aching need, the want and desire to kill him feed her, giving her strength to resist screaming. The suffering ascended, the heat melting her flesh. Her skin boiled, blistering, rising and falling, flourishing down her legs and over her stomach. She wanted him dead, and she craved to be the one who delivered it. Her mind dwelled on this one thought as the smell of cooking flesh filled the room. His laughter broke the hold of her desires, the torment rising to an unbearable point. She remembered hearing someone scream in the distance before she succumbed, embracing death.