When they reached the shore, where stocks of wheat shuddered in frost and the moon gorged itself on sheets of vapor, Chien pulled ahead raping the winds for human scent. It dove into the brush, unfurling a growl for its master to follow. The woods fell into dead silence and its passages of life shut in doors of shadow as the beast raged with hunger, smashing the limbs about and turning over rotten logs, accosting Chien whenever they crossed paths.
Then a hare leaped from the shrubs with a convoy of wild dogs following from the brush. Chien wove in and out of the pack, wasting the class into the soil till a single dhole tarried behind the jack. The wolf pulled ahead and slew the rabbit, thrashing it until the body kicked and puckered out, shedding its fur in bulbs. The beast segued into the path and hobbled the dhole, snapping its leg.
“Chien!” he growled and stomped again. “No, Chien! Chien!” The wolf raised its head and found its master circling around the crying dhole, slapping its face, raking his claws along its ribcage, calling it Chien. The wolf walked up to its master, nipped his arm, and ran back into the forest with the beast trailing.
They broke from the woodlands to a parapet overlooking the town. Winds rolled through the amber fields and came out as resurrected dust devils in the streets. The beasts observed the town deep in slumber, watching as windowsills lit with candlelight showed mothers rising from their slumber to stoke the furnace for their children. Chien slid down the hill, tracking old scents of men who had long passed, while the beast followed the ridge till it leveled with the plain. The beast waited till a figure passed in the shadows, drew water from the pump, and entered a home where candlelight slithered into smoke. He turned to the wolf but Chien took after a stray wandering the village streets. The beast knelt in the brush, sizing the spoil against his hunger, and sprung into the meadow.
Sir James Walden shoved the door closed against the breeze that lifted his robe and released the warmth sleeving his feet. He took a candle off the windowsill and brought it to the kitchen where he lathered bread with butter until the crust darkened. He poured himself a glass of milk when the door creaked and candle blew out.
“Hello?” Sir James called. The door whined from the hinge, pannings rays of moonlight as it teetered. “Get out. I’ll pray you no mercy.” He took the candle and stepped into the void, feeding the demons fear as he raised his hand into the pitch. A hand grabbed the back of his neck and Sir James spun, slamming the floormat.
“Dear!” his wife called. She struck a match and lit the candle as flame birthed over the wick, showing her pudgy hand held out to him through the dark.
“Leave me!” he batted her away.
“What was all that fuss? First you wonder out, then made means for supper, and now the mess.”
“Go back to bed” he hissed, waving her off. She gave him a cross look and disappeared into the hind quarters where the door shut with a rattle. “Wench” he muttered. “Restless shrew.”
He pushed the door closed and slid the latch when the beast wrapped its hand around his mouth, holding his tongue silent in it claws. Blood trickled down Sir James’ throat and fell into his lung, damming his breath before he could scream. The beast drove him to the floor, sending the candle rolling across the boards, toddling the flame into smoke. Sir James writhed as its fingers gripped his socket, jarred his head back, and sank its teeth into his skull. Clumps of hairy flesh ripped from his scalp and straps of muscle snapped off his face like catgut from violin. He seized in pain and confusion as the beast turned him over and clamped down on his neck. Sir James kicked, flailing like a blood let pig, and struck the beast purloining bit after bit of tissue. He raised his eyes, looking for the face sworn in a masque of carnage, but it was gone. The door swayed in the breeze, flapping like the lips of adulterous love, while the moon rose above the fields to show a barren street. Sir James opened his mouth to scream but his tongue fell heavy against his cheek and jaws blustered in pain.
Then a shadow moved in the doorway, the width of the frame and as tall as the threshing. Sir James reached out, tethering his fingers with the dark. Pain shot through his body as it knelt down, seized his wrist, and began to drag him.
“No!” Sir James forced the words through the blood turning scarlet in his throat.
“Esquire” Fierro said. “I saw a wolf chasing a stray and I ran it out of town. Then I saw that you left your door open.” He dropped a knee into the dark pool forming on the floor and brought the lantern around. Blood fell from Sir James’ neck in beats, synchronized in a refrain of death. Fierro lifted him into his arms, tearing the robe at the seams, and smothered the gauze against his throat. The mayor watched him work like an angel of mercy, searching his eyes for promise.
Sir James grabbed Fierro by the head and brought the face to his own. “Kill it” he whispered. “Whatever it takes. Carte blanche.” Fierro watched while Sir James’ eyes rolled and body splayed across the floor, aborting the soul into perdition.
~ 54
Gabrielle entered the gate to the bailey, standing at her father’s grave. Her tears dropped in the wind as she reached out and touched the face of the tombstone, feeling the cold cheeks of the seraph holding the burning floor lamp. She pulled back the vine coiling around the head to where lay dolent eyes hidden in a dress of white rose petal. Snow piled the cairn and shackled all the greenery into fray. As she searched this last testament to her father’s existence she found a single red rose growing from the horn of the shrub. It was immaculate.
She swept her eyes from the bush to the tower barraged by the cold. A haunting torch burned on the windowsill as curtains danced to the knell of the soaring winds. Lamentation grew in her heart as she stood from her father’s grave and entered the castle.
Wonderment curbed the chill exuding from the walls as she walked through the blockade of silence heeding her back. Dust devils rose from the stonework like snares of sorcery and dissolved against the columns in the hall. A threadbare chair bedecked in mildew and wool sat atop the platform. Spools of web hung from the rafters where high windows, dredged in chalk, emitted an opaque light over the stage. A whisper echoed down the corridors and waned into silence as Gabrielle entered the kitchen.
Pots lay scattered on the floor beneath the rotted hangers, and a breeze pushed ash from the kiln, wrapping the jars of expired brine with a tattling ring. She lifted an overturned pan from the cutting block, exposing a crescent of dried tomato and dead silverfish. She searched the room and opened a vat to spiders colonizing a bin of flies.
Then she went to the sink and found a teapot shattered with a teacup in the basin. A wind rose with an echo and felt as if there was something there that wasn’t there before, a perversion inside the castle. Mildew and humus lofted in the gallery till Gabrielle opened a window, letting the draft cure the stagnant air. Ice formed on the windows in scripts of rigged white peaks. The pans shook in a melodious rattle as the breeze sped around the stove and plugged into Gabrielle’s hands with a vindictive bite. She lowered the windows shut and rubbed her hands warm when a shadow swam across the wall and evaporated.
~ 55
Sir James Walden lay limp against the rope fastening him to the post. Veins hung from the lesion beneath his jaw as his head bowed in death’s reverence. Fear spread in the crowd as they watched his head turn in the wind, exposing the wound that duplicated the accents of wet clay. If ever, they whispered, Satan put his signature upon something, it was upon him.
Fierro stepped forward with boots bathing in slush. Fire trickled from his torch, and the crowd swallowed a sick gasp as the corpse came beneath the light. Sir James Walden was dead, rejoined to the brigands of thieves and chancers. The crowd sighed fear and relief at the sight of the late mayor. Men brought their knives and bats, and women their children, and children their crosses. The devil was among them and a slaughter was to ensue. Fierro watched the dark cloud of heads exhuming air like puffs of winter frost over mountains. Each man resembled a ghost, darkening as the moon rested half sunk behind the hill
, ebbing away like a dandelion perishing in the wind.
“I know you are all afraid” Fierro said. What inept words. Could he begin with a better truth? Certainly. Who will die next? He turned his gaze upon the body and found no restoration for his thoughts. “I too have suffered a great harm from this devil. But we must not stand prey to such witchery as this current curse presents. By God’s sacred name and our mortal souls, we must” he shouted, “we must strike this evil from our land.” Silence returned with a dull glaze of fear and the dying flame of sanity growing shallow in their eyes. “We must prepare these days to enter the black woods and take the devil’s lair. He who is not with me does not deserves what make him and his family free; life!” The crowd murmured when Fierro brought the torch before Sir James, showing them the devil’s craft.
“Spend your life with me lest you chose to spend the lives of your women and children. This demon wills retribution, its gut is unquenchable for blood. It must be killed, or we perish in our deceit. What man is brave? Not I. But I am required, and so are you, to uphold our honor. We, men, must save our homes, our families. It comes to take that away, and we, brethren, are required to vanquish it and all its attempts.”
The crowds mourned this irrevocable call. Men resigned themselves to fate, retiring early from the crowd to begin enjoying the immunities of death, and thinking hell awaited them punctuated their belief with hussies and grog and floundering.
One man followed another until the score of men settled nigh, and like a train of shadows the dark cloud of people disbanded as smoke in the night breeze. Fierro turned once again to the late Sir James Walden when a rush of horror became vibrant, as did his disdain. Is it remorseless, Fierro wondered, to lack pity? Death could not soften his dispassion toward the once nefarious councilman.
Fierro stepped down from the pyre of collapsed wood and reveled in what he mused was his last night of peace. A strange current of festivity and pockets of silence drifted on the breeze. Many taxied themselves to the taverns, swollen and bloated with spirits. They enjoyed what was not sovereign before death, because in the face of it man can assume it’s disrespectful nature; one does not find death but becomes it. Other men reserved the last succors of life in quiet solitude, deliberating their sentiments with family. Neither their women nor the children spoke, but crowned the patriarchs with benevolent words, adorned them in loving sighs, placing a threshold of kisses upon both their cheeks and hands.
The night was swollen with all these strange and peculiar things, things that were until now unspeakable of the people. Honest men caroused, and harems sought their delight in solitude. Anxious men sat in meditation, while hermits paced inside their homes and set to work at the grinding stones, sharpening their tools into weapons.
Fierro understood that what is left silent on men’s lips were secrets hidden in their hearts. No one spoke of interest in caravaning into the woods after the demon, but each man burrowed in his heart of hearts what they knew was required of them to do. Fathers slept little and women gathered their younglings into their beds, wet with snivels and dribble.
Fierro turned toward Sir James, shrugging off his resolve. Will the blood demon come again?
~ 56
Cyril stood on the balcony of his home, watching an abnormally sized dog tear through the street after a stray cat. He plugged the flask into his lips and chugged till sour air rapped against his tongue.
“Can’t offend the spirits” Cyril said. “I’ll be rubbing the reef of my own casket. It’s bad, bad luck, offending the spirits.” He leaned against the rail and looked out over Philippe’s home. The misses bustled around, chasing the fleeting memories her late husband. “Poor, poor doxy.”
He took a coat and opened the front door, feeling the wind frost on his brost. The time to visit Hagar came overdue, but appeasing the dead was paramount; he’d fulfill his vow during Sir James’ eulogy. He mumbled, dropping words like bread crumb, when he saw young children pull fishing line across the path and scatter into the alley.
“Come out, pips” Cyril slurred. A young lad leaned out from behind a barrel, dropped his hat into the mud, and ran. “Impish! Aye. Where’s that bloody place?” Cyril went door to door, knocking until no footsteps echoed back. He crept over to the window, pushing beside two water barrels, and spied a giant sleeping in his bed. His feet hung off the end, and so corpulent was his size that everything around him shrunk as though he slept in a room fitted for children. Cyril withdrew his knife and pried the window open. Their slept the giant with straps binding him to the bed.
“Aye, sir” Cyril whispered as the giant stirred, slapping his lips as he pushed snores into the air. “Peace to ya!” The giant slept as dawdling as a bear in winter. Cyril took out his flask and paused it on his lips. What might awaken with the man once he opens his eyes?
Then he heard Fierro’s voice pall as the crowd broke and began their return home. Cyril jumped to the bedside, pulling back the buckle and pin, and slid the leather strap through the rung like scale from a molting snake. The restrains fell away when the giant’s breath quickened and voice came to life in a wave of growls. As Cyril set the last strap it tightened, crushing his fingers. He pulled back to no effect. The giant sat upright, staring at him like a Minotaur at a marooned Olympian, blowing a chain of smoke from his nostrils into the cold night air.
“Parley?” Cyril asked. The giant bucked, tearing the straps from their anchors, and stormed out of his bed with a yell that excelled beastiality. Cyril fell to the floor as the giant lifted the bed and swung it like a Herculean wielding a chariot. The nurse entered the room as Hagar raged about and clipped the bed leg across her head. Cyril crawled over to Miss Jansen and dragged her unconscious body off to the side. Hagar turned about as though trapped and rubbed his eyes, blinking hard, staring off like a man haunted by things of war. The door sat wide open over his shoulder.
“Hagar” Cyril whispered. The giant whipped his head to the drunkard and twitched; the councilman lifted his hand and pointed toward the exit.
~ 57
Gabrielle entered the library where rows of tables sat pollinated in dust and bookshelves dozed in silence around a vacant chair. Sunlight crept through the window and disintegrated over an armistice. She lifted the saucer to read the treaty, breaking the candlewax fossilized like tallow. A creak whined through the study. Gabrielle strained her eyes against the darkness, seeing a rolling-ladder creep along the rail into the shadows. She looked around, opening leather bound tomes, and found mice tracing worm trails of dust. Then she walked down the aisles where ghost once stood, touching the bindings, and withdrew a book on King Arthur. Dust fell off the cover in silver speck as she opened the pages and fanned the yellow sheets from front to back.
“Stone” the beast said. Gabrielle dropped the volume and fell backwards into the bookcase.
“Who’s there?” Gabrielle armed a book in her hands and brought it to her chest. It stepped into the light as the devil in his heart writhed, exiled on waves of love. Her soul turned moot as the beast neared, dressed like a savage in bloody remains.
“Come!” Gabrielle saw in its eyes the latent taste for the morose and ran. The beast’s cry echoed down the halls as she veered from one passage to the next. Then Gabrielle came to a dungeon where laid bones of men dressed in rags of leathery flesh. She slammed a cell door as the lock punched against the slot and shoved back, then tried another. The beast’s cries grew louder as she ran behind the pillars, searching for refuge among the dead, and stowed away inside a cell block when the best entered.
She held her hand over her mouth, tasting the rotten dust on her fingers, and braced herself against the back wall. Eyes like silver ingots rose in front of the trapdoor, burnished in a glaze of delirium, then fell away into the shadows. He stalked the chamber, folding corpses, dragging the remains from one lot to the next, searching for her. It slammed the prison doors and jumbled the dead until it came across a candelabrum. The beast lifted the bronze piece into the moonlight
and shouted. Gabrielle bit into her dirt laden fingers, quelling the impulse to cry. Tears streamed her cheeks as she watched the creature bash the instrument against the stonework. Then all went silent. Gabrielle leaned forward as the beast took the candelabrum from the floor and lifted it to his ear. He grunted.
“Win her?” the beast growled and threw the chamber stick against the prison door hiding Gabrielle. She fell back into sackcloth bedded in rat pellets and waited. The beast stood at the window, its breath buzzing through the bars, and turned away. She raised her head and saw the candlestick in its hands again. He held it against his head, listening like a father to a womb, and groaned.
“Bold” he whispered. “Timid.” He dropped the piece and crawled out the chamber. Gabrielle opened the door to a council of dead patrons inviting her to share in their lot. Their mouths yawned with desire, and though the eyes fell in where worms ate until naught but ash was left, she felt them watching from the beyond, beckoning her home. She crept over the chain of bodies, feeling their bones crack into dust beneath her knees, and listened as the chamber door rasped through the tongues of rusty hinges.
Gabrielle entered the stairwell, set her foot on the step descending the tower and stopped when the winds shifted and swirled up the passage with the beast’s mull. She retreated, arriving at the summit where an oak door rested in the gloom. Gabrielle took a deep breath, looked back at the passage, then entered the ward. Relics stacked the walls and windows showed a sun roosting on the horizon. She slid an old trunk across the room to prop against the door, then pulled the coverings from the couches and made a bed behind the headboard.
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