by J. Thorn
“Delia. Tell me where you are and I will come and get you,” Thom said.
The constant bellow of the river answered him. Halfway down the slope, they felt the spray of the river floating on the wind like morning dew.
“Daddy?”
The voice came from downstream, deep in the woods before the river. Thom nearly lost his balance scrambling over brush and between trees.
“Daddy’s here, Delia. I’m coming.”
Kira grasped Thom and pulled him back. She, too, heard the cry but a chill ran down her arms. The voice sounded like Delia’s but it had an odd edge, as though something mimicked her daughter. Her instincts prickled and though she wanted to rush ahead of Thom and find her daughter, she didn’t. Thom broke free of Kira’s grip and walked ahead.
“That isn’t Delia,” she said beneath her breath.
The ground gave way beneath each step, the loose soil pushed into miniature hills by their shoes as they moved sideways down the slope. The scent of the river hung thick. The water seemed too fresh, almost cloying.
Thom broke the forest’s rim first. He rushed down the shoreline as though he meant to outrun the river while Kira and Rowan chased him.
“Thom,” Kira said. “You must stop. I can’t see you.”
Thom became a ghost on the periphery of the moonlight, fading into the shadow of the tree line. She rushed after him and stumbled on the shore, her right foot plunging into a pool of water bubbling out of the saturated terrain. Her ankle twisted, forcing a throaty yell.
Rowan pulled her up, threw her arm over his shoulders and dragged Kira as they raced to catch Thom.
“Help me, Daddy.”
Kira choked on her sobs upon hearing Delia’s voice.
She leaned on Rowan, moving as fast as she could down the shore on a sprained ankle. But Thom moved farther away, rushing toward the siren’s call.
“It’s a trap, Rowan. We have to stop him.”
“He’s too far off. He’ll never hear us,” Rowan said.
Rowan looked down at her, asking with his eyes if she could continue at this pace. Kira never wavered. Though the pain in her ankle wrung tears out of her eyes, she surprised Rowan. He had to run faster and faster to keep her from breaking out ahead of him.
Eventually, Kira broke free anyway, limping like a wounded animal running from a predator. They gained on Thom who kept stopping along the rim of the forest, tracking the origin of Delia’s cries.
“I can’t find you, Daddy. Please come.”
“Thom.”
The river swallowed Kira’s cry.
Rowan called too, but Thom faded deeper into the trees. If they didn’t catch him soon, they would lose him.
Thom broke away from the river and angled into the woods.
“And now the forest has him, too,” she said, his cloak entering the woods. “It could be the last I ever see of him.”
Rowan yelled over the sound of the river.
“We’ll not lose him. Keep going.”
Kira smiled at Rowan and nodded.
They ran together, gaining on Thom, but not seeing the shadow moving within the trees as it raced toward them.
Kira barely had time to scream before the trees parted and an enormous dread wolf crashed through the brush. It careened into Rowan, the beast striking the innkeeper from the side and driving him into the soil. Rowan raised his arms to shield himself as the monster tore at his chest. Claws ripped strips of flesh from his arms. Jaws snapped toward his face. He tried to push the beast off, beating at its snout with his hands. But the dread wolf was too big. He might have had more luck chopping down a mountain.
Claws tore across his face, drawing beads of blood. More claws cut through his hair and lacerated his scalp. Rowan smashed his fists into the monster’s chest, which felt as solid as a castle wall. He looked into the dread wolf’s eyes and saw his own death reflected back at him.
The dread wolf’s claws swept downward and raked his neck. More blood flowed.
Kira saw the monstrous beast on Rowan. Its thick arms clubbed the man’s head and shoulders, claws drawing blood from the innkeeper in thick, crimson strands. Rowan’s legs flailed beneath the beast, his struggles slowing. His choked cries carried over the river, the roar unable to drown out his dying voice.
She screamed for Rowan to get out from under the monster, but the dread wolf was too big. The beast was killing him and then it would come for her. She looked for Thom but did not see him in the pale moonlight of the forest.
Kira saw Rowan’s belt and sword several feet away, the hilt gleaming. She heard Rowan’s screams, saw the dread wolf’s raised claw frozen in time as it prepared to rip through Rowan’s flesh. Her legs moved, carrying her toward the lost weapon. Jaws snapped. A howl peeled through the night.
She grabbed the hilt and it was as cold as the river’s water. Although the weight of the broadsword felt unwieldy, she hefted it with both hands, pointed it straight toward the dread wolf’s back and ran. She saw Rowan’s prone body, immobile. The dread wolf looked like a mountain growing out of the shore, dwarfing the fallen man. She ran but it seemed as though the space between her and the murdering beast kept growing. The shore appeared to move backward beneath her feet, forcing her to run in place. She wasn’t going to make it in time. She wasn’t going to save Rowan.
The sword tip plunged into the beast’s back. The hilt ricocheted backward into her belly, driving the air from her lungs. The tip glanced upward and tore open a line of flesh from the small of the monster’s back to its shoulder.
Kira’s stomach throbbed and her vision swam behind black stars. The dread wolf howled and leaped off the ground, spinning toward her. A thick arm swung, striking her shoulder. The force sent Kira tumbling toward the river’s edge.
She felt around for the sword, aware it was no longer in her hands. Water rushed inches past her head, the spray soaking her to the bone, beading on her face, flooding her nostrils and suffocating her.
Kira closed her eyes. The ground tremored beneath her as the dread wolf drew closer. She could smell its rancid breath.
The monster howled again but without the same ferocity.
When Kira opened her eyes, she saw the broadsword stuck in the dread wolf’s back and Rowan holding the hilt.
Rowan pulled back on the sword. The beast spun about with blood rushing down its back. The sword glistened like lightning in the darkness. The weapon swept horizontal, separating the monster’s head from its neck. It became airborne and splashed into the water. The snout jutted out of the river, rushing downstream as the waters swallowed it.
The night wind trilled and the trees swayed to the cackles of witches. The decapitated dread wolf bled out from its neck stump into a black river merging with the water. Rowan fell onto his hands and knees, his face a tiger’s mask of pallid flesh and crimson stripes.
Kira screamed at the night sky.
Chapter 29
“It’s too dark, Daddy. I can’t find you.”
Delia’s voice blended with the shrill wind, her calls always seeming to come from just past the next set of trees. Thom pushed through a copse of young trees bending like rubber beneath his pursuit. Roots reached for his legs as though the forest conspired to keep him from Delia. He followed her voice as it hovered closer then farther away, then closer once more. The forest played the same shell game, but this time he planned on reaching his daughter before she was snatched away from him again.
“Daddy’s here, Delia,” he said. His voice clenched into a screech, dry like sandpaper against his parched throat.
He didn’t look back for Kira and Rowan, focusing instead on the transient cries of his daughter. He realized the forest separated his wife and friend from him, just as it did with his daughters.
Thom stumbled into a bramble shrub. Cruel thorns ripped across his face, missing his eyes by a whisker. Hot pain seared his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He felt blood trickling down his face.
I could have done more. All o
f my daughters are gone. If I had acted sooner...
“Daddy. Why did you leave me all alone?”
Delia’s voice came from the right before and now it came from far off to the left.
“Daddy’s sorry. Stop running away. Let me help you.”
His foot smashed into a log. He tripped and rolled down a hill, leaves and twigs scratching at his back. A stand of young trees caught him before he rolled to the bottom but the small of his back hit the trunks flush.
He cried out, grasped low branches and pulled himself up. Something shifted in his back and he yelled again.
“Daddy.”
He ran on, stumbling through the trees and calling out to Delia. He ran down the hill, pushed the young trees apart and fell onto his knees. Thom looked up into a clearing.
A desolate meadow spread out before him, the trees standing guard around the clearing’s periphery. Beyond the rim, the woods ascended a ring of hillocks making the meadow appear cup-like.
Or a pot of boiling water into which I have fallen, Thom thought. It is quiet here. Too quiet.
The wind perished at the forest’s edge. Thom sensed fear pooled in the meadow like diseased water.
The fear pushed against the trees which did not spread into the meadow. Instead, they grew back into the forest, hiding behind their larger brethren. The fear smothered the air. The wind should have descended the hills and thickened as it funneled through the meadow, but it turned away from the clearing. The fear tainted the moon as its beams struggled to reach the valley. It stiffened the meadow grass, frozen like frightened children.
Thom shivered despite himself, pulling his cloak tighter. He stood and his back spasmed. He caught himself before he fell again.
Hunched over, hands on knees, he waited for the pain to relent. A voice from the back of his mind told Thom not to lift his head, for if he did, he would look upon the source of the fear devouring the meadow. He allowed his eyes to travel from one side of the rim to the other. Cold pain seeped from his back to his chest. The meadow looked familiar, as though he had been here before. He lifted his eyes.
A rectangular house of smooth stones stood at the far end of the meadow like a block of winter’s ice refusing to melt. Thom swallowed and dropped back down to his knees. He knelt and stared across the clearing, the stone house looking back at him.
The door that isn’t a door will open and the evil will come for me as it came for my daughters.
Thom closed his eyes, hoping to identify some sense of his children’s life force.
My daughters are here, by God. I can feel them and if I listen I might hear them screaming and then—
Before he could finish the thought, his legs carried him across the meadow. His hand unsheathed the sword and the crypt disguised as a house grew larger. Larger and closer.
All the while, he locked his eyes on the smooth stones. He knew they would change as they did in his dreams. He knew the house had his daughters...and his daughters no longer belonged to him.
Thom raised the sword as though charging into battle. The house loomed less than fifty paces away. He drew closer, or perhaps the house drew closer to him with an insane inevitability.
The light broke into dappled swaths as though skeletal fingers passed in front of the moon. Thom froze, wanting to cry out but unable to speak. The stones morphed into human bones, jumbled into walls and jutted out of the sides like broken sticks. He looked upon the skulls and saw the hollow faces of Jasmine, Sarra and Krea screaming back at him. He cried out, the wail breaking the silence of the clearing.
His daughters’ faces locked in frozen screams and their empty eye sockets looked upon him with accusation.
They aren’t really my daughters. This is another trick. If I give up now, I will never rescue them.
He screamed again, the sound twisting snake-like into a cry of rage. He felt the paternal bond break. Thom knew in his heart they were gone. Whatever wicked force lived in the house of bones stole his daughters. Coerced them. Murdered them.
“Come out and face me,” Thom said.
His demand echoed off of the bones and his voice careened off of the trees.
Silence.
He heard only his own heavy breathing, his breath forming miniature clouds dissipating into the frigid air.
A woman’s voice whispered. The words brushed past his ear like a prayer for the dead.
“Tell me your name, shepherd.”
Chapter 30
“Go on without me,” Rowan said.
“I will do no such thing.”
Rowan stumbled and Kira grabbed his elbow to keep him from collapsing. He leaned on her, grasping at tree trunks to stay upright.
“Go on,” he said. “The ankle isn’t slowing you down like I am. Find Thom. Bring him home.”
Kira looked ahead before turning back to Rowan, a tiny tear gathering in the corner of her eye.
“Don’t know how, my lady, but you’ve been on his trail, tried and true. Like a tracker.”
“C’mon,” she said. Kira slung his arm over her head and took a step forward.
“No,” Rowan said.
He winced and slid down the trunk of a tree until he sat at the base. Rowan coughed and spit bloody mucus on to the ground at Kira’s feet.
“Get up. I’m not leaving you here to die.”
“Aye. Best I die in a more scenic spot.”
Rowan allowed Kira to help him to his feet so they could push on, pursuing Thom to the end of the world.
The canopy sliced the moonlight into disparate strips revealing the woods in segments. The beams flushed a sycamore in cobalt gray while thorn bushes hid within the gloom, standing guard and ready to rip flesh. Silence blanketed the forest, the same heavy, thick kind they experienced since leaving the Mylan Road.
Rowan stepped on loose soil, tripped and plunged down an incline. His chest crashed into the trunk of a stout ash and he almost fainted. Kira slipped too and tumbled into a stand of younger trees. She crawled back up the hill to him, wincing with each step on her injured ankle.
They looked at each other and started walking again. Dead leaves crunched under their feet which reminded Kira of walking through the woods with her daughters in autumn. She refused to believe she would never see them again, that fear remaining locked in a darkened closet in her mind. She wouldn’t open that door, but she could hear the floorboards squealing as something vile and monstrous shuffled beyond it.
A harsh, blue glow rose from the base of the hill. As Kira walked toward it, her heart pounded like battle drums. Rowan limped along next to her, bent over and wheezing. His face turned ashen and he struggled to keep his eyes open.
They moved closer, so close she could reach her hand into the underwater blues and allow its icy touch to envelope her flesh. Thom had entered the clearing. She knew this with an odd certainty. She also knew something else was there too, waiting for them both.
They crept out of the woods and into the clearing. Kira shivered, the air freezing the meadow. Cloud vapors formed as she exhaled.
Trees bordered the opposite side of the meadow, the outer rim appearing as an unreachable shoreline. The clearing looked like a cold ocean hiding unseen terrors beneath the surface.
Rowan and Kira waded deeper into the clearing, Kira’s eyes shifting from side to side. As if nudged by an invisible tide, they angled to the right and traversed the meadow lengthwise.
Kira saw a glowing, rectangular, outcropping at the far end. She glanced at Rowan and wanted to ask him if he saw it, too. His eyes locked on the shape, watching it as one would a shadow crossing a bedroom window in the dead of night.
Rowan staggered forward, his limp worsening with each step. Rowan removed his broadsword with such stealth, Kira hadn’t even seen his hand go to the hilt. The dead wolf’s blood streaked the iron with black smears. The blade glistened in the moonlight as though hungry, searching for its next foe. Kira averted her eyes. A breeze picked up, thickening from the end of the meadow and burrowing
under her skin. It turned her bones to ice.
The silvery rectangle took shape and Kira saw a stone house at the far rim of the meadow. Thom stood before the house. And she saw something else, something that caused warm urine to run down her leg.
Chapter 31
The door that is not a door will open and she will come for me as she came for my daughters.
The voice in Thom’s head reverberated. The house of bone and skull pulsed with light as though a fire burned within. A thin blade of light cut down the front of the house, burning through the bones. A shape stepped through the doorway, stalking him like the skeletal reaper coming to usher him into the abyss. The voice haunting his nightmares spoke.
“My shepherd.”
The shape towered above him and devoured all light, hunched over like the twisted trunk of a tree. He came to her, but Thom could not help but feel she found him again, just as she found him in the forest and his dreams.
He raised the sword and her laugh formed icicles on his spine.
“You dare challenge me?”
Thom stared into her flaming eyes, her monstrous figure dwarfing him.
“I gave you enough chances, shepherd. I offered you your daughters, promised you a kingdom and life eternal. Yet still you raise your sword to me?”
Thom’s eyes flared and his chest heaved. He took a step closer and turned the point of his sword toward her.
“You murdered my daughters and now I am going to kill you.”
When he charged forward, the air wavered and an unseen force struck Thom. He flew backward as though kicked by a horse, the air pushed out of his chest. His head struck the ground and as the night spun past him, he heard a woman screaming.
Kira?
A tingling prickle ran along his flesh and the hair on his head stood on end. He felt an energy building, like the moment before lightning struck. He rolled away as a bolt of white light exploded the ground where he was laying. Soil rained down as he grasped the sword and got to his feet. The woman’s eyes followed him across the meadow and flickered like candles in a dark cave.