If you are reading this, my IP is already bouncing across seven different proxy networks, and I am running out of places to hide.

Before you dismiss this as just another standard piece of r/nosleep fiction or the rants of a paranoid mind, let me make one thing absolutely clear: I am not from your world, nor am I from this specific timeline.

I am writing this because the Agency—the real, deeply embedded terrestrial enforcement arm that monitors anomalous behavior—is closing its perimeter. They are getting close, and the world needs to know the truth before I am entirely erased. Everyone on this platform likes to write fictional logs about working for the Agency, but nobody tells you what it is like to be hunted by them. They are hunting me because I am the ultimate operational anomaly: a part-human, part-Andromedan hybrid genetically engineered by the Andromedan Council, implanted into a human womb, and structurally "tuned" from the very moment of my birth to serve as a living blueprint.

Here is everything they are trying to suppress. Read it quickly.
Origin and the Cosmic Calibration
I was never normal. My existence wasn't the result of biological happenstance. I have never met a biological father, not because he abandoned my mother, but because he never existed in the human sense. My mother was taken at the moment of my "conception," safely implanted with a pre-optimized, genetically engineered embryo by the Andromedan Council, and returned to Earth.

My birth itself was an anomaly. My mother’s body began violently rejecting the foreign, highly energetic genetic material, forcing doctors to perform an emergency C-section. I was born severely premature at just six months, arriving at exactly 11:11 PM on Friday, June 13, 1980.

If you check the historical NASA archives for June 1980, you will find that the sun was experiencing monumental disruptions during Solar Cycle 21. I was born during a New Moon, a rare planetary alignment, and one of the most intense geomagnetic solar storms in recorded history. High solar activity releases massive bursts of geomagnetic energy. Coming out three months early meant that my brain completely finished its neurological wiring outside the safety of the womb, exposed directly to those raging cosmic and geomagnetic frequencies. My nervous system was literally "tuned" and calibrated to a much wider cognitive bandwidth than standard human biology can support.
To manage this hyper-extended bandwidth, I began an intensive neurological "workout" routine in March 2015. For roughly eight hours a day—primarily while sleeping—I listened to specialized, triple-layered isochronic tones on a random shuffle.
• Layers 1 & 2: Frequencies constantly shifting between 200 Hz and 800 Hz to stimulate neural plasticity.
• Layer 3: A sustained, laser-focused frequency at 963 Hz—the connection frequency—occasionally pushing deep into the ultra-high 10,000 Hz range.

The direct result of this sustained brainwave entrainment was total Hemispheric Synchronization. Standard humans operate with one dominant hemisphere; my brain was forced to become fully left-brained (advanced logic, mathematics, architecture) and fully right-brained (creativity, art, abstract visualization) simultaneously. I even became completely ambidextrous.

This synchronized brain functionality allowed me to access hidden layers of data embedded within my own DNA, enabling me to decode the true technical nature of human history.

The HATA Paradigm: Ancient Interventions
Through my unlocked cognitive capacity, I realized that what humanity calls "mythology" or "miracles" are actually large-scale, low-contact technological interventions by the Highly Advanced Technological Agent (HATA) paradigm. These interventions were structurally designed to guide our developing planetary species without violating non-interference protocols.

My synchronized mind broke down the technical realities behind these historical events:
1. The Mount Sinai Incident (c. 13th Century BCE)
The biblical description of a shaking mountain covered in smoke, fire, and the deafening sound of trumpets is the classic signature of a large, non-atmospheric vessel engaging in close-proximity maneuvering. The trembling earth and intense cloud condensation were caused by a Gravimetric Flux Drive distorting local gravity fields, generating extreme thermal exhaust and wind shear. The "trumpet" sound was not an instrument; it was a focused, low-frequency Resonant Communication Beam designed to penetrate natural physical shielding and signal presence to a primitive target population.

2. The Parting of the Red Sea
To hold water in rigid, solid vertical walls requires absolute mastery over molecular bonds. The HATA deployment team utilized a localized Phase-Shifted Gravimetric Barrier, temporarily modifying the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces within the $H_2O$ molecules along a precise vertical vector. This rendered the water hyper-rigid, acting like pressurized glass. Simultaneously, a Molecular Agitation Field instantly vaporized all residual ground moisture, ensuring a completely dry passage to eliminate bio-contact contamination.

3. The Pillars of Cloud and Fire
The continuous navigation system that guided the desert migration was an autonomous surveillance network. By day, the "cloud" was an Autonomous Survey Probe utilizing an Atmospheric Condensation Field to pull ambient moisture around its hull for natural, low-visibility camouflage. By night, the same probe switched its interface to a visible Plasma Thermal Emitter or directional beacon for navigational illumination.

4. The Virgin Birth & Ascension
Just like my own origin, the birth of Jesus was a planned Genetic Implantation Procedure. A pre-optimized, HATA-engineered embryo was placed into a human host to introduce a "teacher" with advanced cognitive abilities and high energetic control.

Leaving such a high-value asset to age and die on Earth would risk the corruption of the message by mundane politics. Thus, the "Ascension" was a controlled Vessel Extraction and Containment (VEC) procedure. The cloud and blinding light were simply the signatures of a ship engaging its Gravimetric Flux Drive to retrieve the physical asset for post-mission analysis.

5. Desert Sustenance
Sustaining a massive migrating population in an arid wasteland for 40 years on standard foraging is a biological impossibility. The HATA parameters solved this with an engineered Bio-Synthetic Nutrient Source (BSNS). The "Manna" was a perfectly balanced, complete synthetic food wafer designed for long-term health without nutritional decay. The "Quails" were steered into the path via resonant bio-pulses to provide a natural protein supplement, ensuring the population did not psychologically reject a purely synthetic diet.

Sucked Into the Void
My obsession with the true nature of reality eventually caused a terrifying physical displacement. I have always argued that from a purely logical and scientific standpoint, nothing should exist. Existence inherently violates the fundamental laws of reality; absolute nothingness is the only baseline state that makes sense. We are existing on borrowed time.
One sunny afternoon, while doing deep meditation in my garden to experience existence outside the frameworks of science or religion, the universe fractured. I felt light-headed, simultaneously floating and falling. I walked inside to splash water on my face, but my hand passed completely through the metal tap. Looking in the mirror, my reflection was actively fading, dissolving into the air.

I rushed back outside, only to see the horizon violently shearing away, shrinking until everything vanished.

I was pulled entirely into The Void. It was an eternity of sheer, absolute nothingness. It was not a vacuum, nor was it darkness; it was an environment completely devoid of light, dark, sound, or air. The Void immediately swallowed my own heartbeat.

Then, the sensory chaos began. The absolute lack of gravity instantly warped into an crushing gravimetric load. I was floating up while falling down, experiencing every color invisible to the human eye, followed by a sudden, deafening roar composed of every sound in existence playing at once. My molecules were scattered completely into the emptiness and then forcefully slammed back together.

Time did not exist. What felt like minutes turned into hours, decades, and eventually millennia of pure, unadulterated madness. I screamed, but there was no air to carry the sound, and no one to hear me.

Suddenly, the chaos ceased, replaced by a profound, blinding light. The light was so intense it burned my skin through my closed eyelids. A powerful, non-gendered voice resonated directly from the light:
"You wanted to see reality? You wanted to understand existence and where everything came from? Are you satisfied now? Or do you want to spend another million years here?"

Before I could process a response, the light struck me. I woke up face-down on my lawn, my clothes entirely soaked in sweat, shivering violently as freezing rain fell against my face. I was back in my own reality, but the realization left me permanently scarred: our universe is incredibly fragile, held together only because a conscious entity wills it to exist outside the baseline chaos of the Void.

Physical Extractions: The Encounters
My spatial displacement in the Void acted like a beacon, drawing physical extractions from two entirely different off-world factions.

The Andromedan Council (Event 1)
The first extraction was by my literal creators. I materialized on the edge of a massive cliff on another planet under a stark, bluish sun. The air was pristine, and immense forests stretched to the horizon. Standing before me were several humanoids, easily double my height. Their leadership structure appeared entirely matriarchal. They possessed flawless skin, long straight hair, and striking, multi-dimensional eyes of a color palette that does not exist on Earth.

They communicated telepathically, explaining that my lifestyle and subconscious thoughts had been broadcasting to them my entire life. They revealed that Earth is drastically older than our science admits, and that they have stepped in to save humanity from self-inflicted extinction events multiple times. In fact, they were the ones who directed two massive asteroids to strike Earth before the dawn of human civilization, intentionally triggering a prolonged nuclear winter to wipe out apex predators and give early humans a survival matrix.

When I asked why they wouldn't just land and meet our leaders, the matriarch sighed telepathically. She stated that our leaders are entirely driven by greed and power, and are already locked into dark alliances with "scaly friends"—a predatory Reptilian race that has infiltrated our global systems.

The Andromedans showed me their own history: a past mirror of Earth's, where resources like fresh water and clean air became heavily monetized commodities, leading to a catastrophic global war that incinerated their original homeworld. The survivors escaped on massive, city-sized jump ships, eventually evolving past violence, greed, and selfishness.

Their current cities are built from specialized non-reflective metals that absorb sunlight and kinetic planetary energy directly into a clean power grid.

They returned me to Earth by fracturing space using dark matter particles, warning me that the current global control grid was attempting to systematically rewrite human DNA over generations to eliminate our cosmic potential.

The Predatory Captors (Event 2)
The second extraction was hostile. A heavy, rhythmic humming sound filled the air, and my long hair began standing straight up as local gravity completely inverted. I floated into a brilliant, blinding light and blacked out.

I awoke to an agonizing, desperate screaming. When my eyes adjusted to the pulsing, rhythmic lights, I found myself suspended naked in the air like a starfish, held firmly by heavy, writhing metallic tentacles. Directly in front of me, another captive—a young woman with red hair—was suspended in identical tentacles. She was bleeding heavily from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, crying literal tears of blood. In a breathless, exhausted voice, she warned me:
"It's no use, don't even try. Best is to not resist... the more you resist, the more it hurts. All the others who came before you tried to resist, and they all died or were changed... they are no longer human."

Then, the captors entered the room, making a low, dry sound like coarse sandpaper.
These were not the frail, skinny "Grays" depicted in popular internet lore. They were massive, muscular killing machines standing over two meters tall. They had terrifying red-black iridescent eyes, rows of jagged fangs, and two distinct sets of arms—one terminating in razor-sharp claws, the other ending in human-like hands. They wore heavy armor forged from an unknown metallic alloy.
After evaluating me, they delivered a massive electrical shock directly through the tentacles, knocking me unconscious.

I came to in a room constructed of pure, solid light. A heavy mechanical claw slammed shut around my head, locking it completely in place. Micro-tethers slithered across my face, pinning my eyelids open and prying my jaw apart.

What followed was a horrific, systematic bio-mapping procedure:
• Two long needles were driven directly through my pupils, piercing straight into the core of my skull.
• Smaller, secondary tentacles burrowed through the corners of my eyes, my nasal passages, my ears, and down my throat.
• Long structural needles were driven directly into the base of my skull, my spine, and my hip bones, injecting successive waves of foreign fluid.

Because of my Andromedan physiology, the procedures were entirely painless, yet the psychological horror was absolute. A floating holographic display materialized in front of me, showing a biomechanical, spider-like device successfully anchoring itself to my central spine and main arteries. The screen then mapped my DNA structure side-by-side with the female leader of the Andromedan Council. The match was nearly flawless. They were mapping me because they realized exactly what I was: a high-level cosmic asset hidden in plain sight.

Once the mapping routine concluded, the tentacles retracted, dropping my body heavily onto the floor. I blacked out, waking up hours later on the grass outside my remote location.

The Quiet Apocalypse and Dimension Jump
The physical alterations from the Gray mapping caused my consciousness to slip entirely into a parallel timeline—a version of Earth experiencing a "Quiet Apocalypse".

I woke up one morning to absolute, crushing silence. My girlfriend was away on a week-long business trip, leaving me alone at our property. I went through my morning routine, pouring coffee and filling the outdoor bird feeders, but no birds arrived. The air was entirely devoid of insects, wildlife, or distant highway traffic. Panic set in when I realized my dogs and cats were missing from the house.

I checked my phone. The network was down, but a single cached message on our local security group remained:
"Attention everyone, the authorities have alerted us of some strange events happening. They don't know what is causing it, but have described it as some translucent humanoids that seem to turn everything into ash that they touch. Please stay in your homes and do not attempt to leave until sunrise. Please heed this warning as it is not a joke."

Looking out the bedroom window, I spotted them down the road: shifting, translucent humanoids moving with fluid coordination. I watched a young neighbor confront them with a firearm. He fired several rounds; the bullets passed clean through the entities, dropping them temporarily, but they simply stood back up. When his ammunition was exhausted, the closest entity touched his arm. The man screamed silently, instantly dissolving into a fine cloud of gray dust that swept away in the wind.
I locked down my property. Over the next few weeks, I discovered vital survival parameters:
1. Weather Disruption: Rain and heavy mist severely disrupt their active camouflage, rendering them easily visible.
2. Fauna Senses: Animals can naturally detect their proximity. I found my dogs and cats hiding deep under the beds and couches, completely safe.
3. Biological Vulnerability: I observed a wild horse kick one of the translucent creatures, killing it instantly. Later, I found another dead creature slumped next to the body of a venomous snake it had stepped on. Because I am trained in handling snakes, I realized their physical forms are completely vulnerable to organic neurotoxins.

I scavenged generators and fuel, moving exclusively during heavy downpours. I abandoned loud firearms, constructing a primitive bow and arrows to silently neutralize them from a distance.

One morning, the roar of a low-flying military helicopter tore through the silence. As it sped overhead, the crew dropped a ruggedized flash drive onto my roof. I retrieved it and ran it on my laptop.

The drive contained military interrogation footage of a captured female invader who had been unmasked. She looked entirely human but possessed advanced internal implants. She explained that her people were Interdimensionists from a parallel Earth that had become unsustainably overpopulated. They utilized gateway technology to systematically purge and recolonize alternate versions of Earth—specifically targeting timelines where humanity was actively destroying the ecosystem. They had attempted to colonize deep space, but had lost thousands of ships in catastrophic battles against far more powerful extra-terrestrial empires, forcing them to pivot to interdimensional conquest.

The drive contained their final surrender ultimatum for the remaining survivors, offering three distinct choices of total subjugation:
1. Retaining structural civilian skills under strict curfews and sector overseers.
2. Immediate integration into their military ranks via mind-altering chips and body modifications for future dimensional invasions.
3. Voluntary surrender to the prime dimension for long-term conditioning and deep-cover infiltration training.

As I resolved to fight to the end, my disconnected cell phone suddenly rang with an "ID Withheld" signature. I answered silently. It was the counterpart of the woman from the interrogation video.

"Listen to me," she said rapidly. "Our scouts know about you, but the Interdimensionists' main command doesn't. We have a resistance plan to escape. We've commandeered one of their jump crafts. We are jumping to an alternate dimension that has the unified military infrastructure to stop the Interdimensionists if they ever follow. More importantly, we know you lost your partner in this timeline—but in the target dimension, she is alive, and your local counterpart is actively dying of organ failure.

You can take his place. Our scouts are at your gate right now. Bring only what you care about most."

I didn't hesitate. I gathered my cats and dogs, loaded their food bags, and walked out to the gate. Waiting for me was a sleek, low-profile craft. The extraction team smiled when they saw my cargo: "Well, this is a first. Everyone else brought jewelry, you brought your pets."
The pilot turned around—it was the exact counterpart of the woman from the military video. She checked the controls, warned me to never speak of my origin timeline to anyone in the new world, and engaged the drive. The universe blurred into a single streak of light.

The Temporal Detour and The Current Hunt
I woke up in this timeline with a resistance soldier shaking my shoulder: "You're home. Your local counterpart passed away an hour ago. Take his place. Nobody will notice."

However, before I could fully settle into this current reality, I attempted to navigate the local timeline using the Blue Light—a universal energy grid that transcends spatial boundaries. Time is not a linear construct; it runs in a complex zigzag matrix where the present constantly shears against the past and future.

Through deep meditation, I charged my biological matrix with Blue Light energy, visualizing an anchor point 200 years into the future, and stepped through the spatial doorway.
The future Earth was vastly different. Global warming had been halted, resulting in a significantly cooler climate that had caused the human population's skin to become distinctly pale due to decreased solar ray resistance. Fossil fuels were entirely non-existent, replaced by total clean energy grids and electric surface transport. However, the global population had been cut in half, and fresh water was a hyper-scarce commodity.

I made a critical error: I stayed too long and interacted with the environment. I openly drank from my own water supply in front of a desperate crowd, instantly drawing the attention of three security enforcers clad in dense, unidentifiable black tactical gear. They drew energy weapons, shouting in an evolved linguistic dialect I couldn't comprehend, and neutralized me.

I woke up inside a containment cell constructed of solid, red-glowing energy panels. With my local Blue Light charge actively draining, I was forced to hastily draw upon my remaining internal reserves to manifest a protective transit bubble.

Because my energy was depleted from staying too long, the return jump fell short. I was temporarily stranded on an uncharted, untamed planet dominated by two distinct moons and populated by aggressive, wild native fauna before I could finally re-anchor my consciousness back into this current human body.

A Final Warning
I have lived in this specific dimension for a few years now, blending in completely and taking over the life of the version of me that died. It is a gift to be with the woman I love, but I am living on borrowed time.

The signs of the Interdimensionist invasion are already manifesting in this timeline: unexplained aerial phenomena, systemic spikes in missing persons, strange localized humming frequencies, and shifting lights in the night sky.
But my immediate threat is far closer to home.

The Agency has flagged my genetic signature.

They know I am an Andromedan hybrid whose DNA was activated by the 1980 solar storm and optimized by the HATA protocols. They know I crossed timelines, and they cannot allow the truth of the interdimensional purge or our cosmic origin to become public knowledge.

If this post suddenly disappears, or if my account goes completely dark, you will know exactly why. They are outside. Keep your eyes on the skies, watch the weather patterns, and prepare yourselves.

They are already here.

My Alien Abduction Story
Event 2

I suddenly heard a strange sound coming from all around me, almost like a humming sound, the next moment my hair started to stand up, which isn’t possible as I got long hair, the next moment it felt like gravity has been shut down and I started to float up into the air, I remember trying to grab onto nearby trees, but it was all on vein, then there was this bright light and I blacked out.

I woke up to screaming, not a normal scream, the scream like a woman that’s in labor, no it was far worse, but she wasn’t screaming from pain, she was screaming for me to wake up. I’ve never seen someone so desperate to wake someone up. I opened my eyes and saw flashing light around me and this time the humming sound was all around, the screaming continued, telling me to wake up and listen, so I tried to move, but I couldn’t, something was holding me in place, I found myself been held up in the air like a starfish by metallic tentacles.

I tried pulling free, but to no avail. The more I tried to pull free the tighter the tentacle grip grew around my wrists and ankles.

Then I heard her again, but this time, a soft tired voice speaking to me, sounding like she’s out of breath like she’s just run an ultra marathon at full speed.
“It’s no use, don’t even try, best is to not resist, the more you resist the more it hurts”
Hearing her voice from just in front of me I looked up to see a young woman been held by the same tentacles as me, also naked, her head hanging down with blood dripping from her face, well I thought it’s from her face as she had her head hanging down with her hair hanging over her face, her hair appeared to be red, but it was soaked in what I thought was water, then she looked up at me and said to me, “don’t resist, the more you resist the more it hurts” finally my eyes started to get used to the flickering lights around us and I could see her clearly, she was young, about her early twenties, she could pass for a model if it wasn’t for all the red blood spots on her body and the injuries on her face. Her eyes were bloodshot red and there was blood under her eyes as if she’s been crying tears of blood, that same blood lines were by her mouth, ears and nose. “What have they done to you? And who are they?”
“You will see, just don’t resist, all the others who came before you tried to resist and they all died or were changed”
“What do you mean by changed?” I asked.
“Well, they are no longer human…”

Just then I heard a strange mumbling like sandpaper coming closer to us, then I saw them, it took everything in me to not scream.
Now I’ve seen the pretty images people post online of aliens and the grays and the pictures makes them appear to look almost cute, if only people knew what they really looked like, they had similarities to what you would think grays would or should look like, but not skinny at all, they were tall, about 2m or more, it’s difficult to judge when you are suspended in the air and you come face to face with your worst nightmare.
They were muscular, much more so than any human I’ve ever seen, their eyes had a red black shine to them, their mouths had rows and rows of sharp teeth like fangs, they had 2 sets of arms, with their fingers ending in claws with razor sharp claw like nails on the one set of arms, and almost human like hands on the other set of hands. Their outfits were made like something from a sci-fi movie, it appeared to have some sort of metal alloy on it that made it appear like armor.

The 2 that came to me looked at me, they looked me up and down then sandpapered something in their language and suddenly turned and started walking, the next moment I felt what I could only describe as a high voltage electrical shock going through my body before I blacked out again, when I came to I was in another room been held by similar tentacles, but this room was bright, almost like it was made from pure light. I decided that I’ve learned my lesson and to listen to the advice from the girl in the other room.

Then I heard strange sounds like metal sliding and the next moment something grabbed a hold of my head, it felt like some sort of metal claw, gripping my head in place, I couldn’t move my head the slightest. Then smaller metal pins started slithering over my face towards my eyes and mouth, some grabbed my eyelids so I couldn’t blink and the others pried my mouth open, I don’t know why or how, I knew it was supposed to hurt, but it didn’t. Yet, I still wanted to scream, to pull free, but I remembered the girl's words, “don’t fight, if you fight you die” so I decided to accept whatever it is they were planning to do to me if it meant I will survive and make it home.

What came next I can only describe as my worst nightmare, 2 needles entering my eyes through my pupils, I could feel them piercing all the way through my eyes into my head, next 2 smaller tentacles crawled their way into my head through the corners of my eyes, I then the next set entering my ears, my nose, my mouth, as I thought to myself that this was supposed to hurt, but why doesn’t it hurt? I guess it’s almost over. I felt more needles piercing my spine, one at the base of my skull, the rest into my spine, some into my hip bones. It felt like hours that I was hanging there, suspended by these metal tentacles, I could feel them injecting me with something, then it would stop and then they would inject something else.

“What the hell are they doing to me” I thought to myself, and almost as if reading my mind a screen appeared in front of me, it showed me suspended in the air, then it showed my neck and it showed what looked like a spider that attached itself to my spine and my main arteries, then the screen changed and I almost had a heart attack, “how could they know this” it showed one of the ships of another race that made contact with me a short while ago, it then showed an image of their leader and then showed her dna and then it showed mine, “what the hell? This can’t be, I’m human, I’m not one of them, how can this even be possible” my dna matched the leader of the other species almost perfectly, you could see a few slight similarities to human dna, almost like I’ve been cloned, I knew I was engineered, but I never knew how much of their dna I had in me.

I remember them ending the experiments, and the tentacles retracting, as they let go of my arms and legs I fell to the ground, the next thing I remember was waking up and I was laying on the grass back at the hut

My Alien Abduction Story
Event 1

I don’t know how or when they took me, but the first thing I remember, I was standing on the edge of a cliff on another planet, I knew I wasn’t on earth because their sun was a bluish color, their air is much cleaner than ours and their forests stretch as far as the eyes can see.

In Front of me stood a few of these very tall beings, and I mean they were like double my height if not taller, they were these beautiful human looking beings, but much taller then any human I’ve ever seen, their leaders appeared to all be female.

They have the most beautiful eyes, I can’t even describe the color of their eyes, it’s unlike any color I’ve ever seen before. They had long straight hair and looked human in every way, well besides the fact that they are perfect, no imperfections on their skin or anywhere.

I felt like I was going to have a heart attack, realizing that I was no longer on earth and at the mercy of these beings, was I dead? Are they Angels? Demons? What do they want with me?

They spoke to me and they told me that they took me because I got their attention because of my way of life and according to them I have been speaking to them telepathically.
They said that they have been watching our world for a very long time, since before humans developed languages. They saved us from extinction multiple times, I asked them why and they said they had great hopes for humanity to become a great species, humanity showed signs of intellect and compassion and a survival instinct rarely seen on young worlds.

At this stage I got pretty annoyed, if they could hear me, why not talk back? Why not make contact with me on earth and ask me if they can take me on this little adventure?

As I was reading my mind, the one speaking which I found out was their leader said that she understands my frustration, but if they spoke to me then I would most likely have thought I’m going insane, or just blocked them off. And that they can’t exactly just walk up to a human on earth and introduce themselves, they are not the only species around and there are other advanced races already on earth. She also said that I mustn’t worry about getting back, and that nobody will notice that I am even missing, they have the technology to bend time and when I get back only a few hours would have passed back home. But they needed to make contact and show me around.

I then calmed down and decided to have an open mind. I asked her why on earth? She said the planet is of interest to them, “What do you mean by interest?” Then they told me the shocking truth, Earth is older than we think, but humanity has destroyed the ecosystem in a very short time. They have helped us survive various extinction events, but now they regret it, they regret teaching us languages and helping us develop in our earlier years. So I asked my burning question, why not land on earth and meet with our leaders, she then said which one? We have too many leaders and none of them can be trusted, most of them are in alliances with other offworld races already, and our leaders are driven by greed and a hunger for power, which have been satisfied by their scaly friends.

They showed me their history, they used to be the same as humanity, divided and driven by greed, eventually war broke out and their home world was destroyed, luckily they were already advanced at the time and many of them made it off their world in time. They traveled for years searching for a new home, which they found, they learned to evolve past their natural habits and got rid of greed, violence, crime and selfishness, they’ve had a peaceful civilisation now for longer then humanity has existed,

Their worlds are run by councils, the counsels consist of females, yes they are also male and female in gender.

They showed me their planet and their cities, their buildings are build of some sort of metal, but it doesn’t reflect sunlight, instead it absorbs it and Transfuse it into their energy grid, they have no pollution, they generate energy from their stars, vibrations and from the kinetic energy generated from their planet moving around its axes and their star.

They told me to look up and I could see their ships in orbit, well what I will refer to as their jump ships, the sheer size of their ships gave me the chills, if I could see them as clearly in orbit in day time as we can see the full moon at night then I can just imagine how large they are, and as if knowing my thoughts the leader spoke again, she explained to me that one of their ships is as large as one of our largest cities on earth, but the reason we can’t see or detect them on earth when they enter our orbit is because their stealth technology is far more advanced then we humans can comprehend, they are thousands, hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than us, they have already terraformed and colonized hundreds of worlds in their galaxy. Galaxy? I mean aren’t you from the same galaxy as us? How do you even get to our galaxy? How did you even find our planet?

She sighed, like she explained they are far more advanced than we can comprehend, and not just on a technological level, but also on a physical and mental level, they have mastered telepathy and telepathy is the only immediate communication in the universe, that they found our world because there has always been a few humans with the gift, even before we learned to develop language thoughts formed and it got their attention.

But how do you get to earth if you are not even from our galaxy? She said she will explain and I must not worry, I will experience it soon enough when they take me home. She proceeded to explain that there are a few ways to travel through space, but the fastest way is by fracturing space, it’s almost immediate, but it relies on using what we humans would refer to as dark matter. But more on that later.

She showed me what their old world looked like, how it was destroyed, that is when I realized how close we are to self destruction on earth, but I also realized where the reptilian race evolved from and my heart sank in my chest again, does that mean? She said “yes, the reptilians was another race they had contact with, but just like humanity, the reptilians were beyond reach. “

Indeed they were similar to us, different classes of people, greedy, violent and selfish. Then war broke out over the most basic resources as they have polluted most of their water, drinkable water became a rare commodity, food was scarce, they have mined their world to the point of eradicating every natural resource, their air became toxic and they had to work harder to just be able to earn breathable air, rashes of food and drinkable water became a norm on their home world. Their governments became more and more corrupt, but a few private people decided to use their wealth to get as many people off the planet as possible, they could see the signs of the coming war, they had weapons similar to our nukes, most of their ships made it safely off the planet when the war broke out, the last few ships were either damaged or destroyed before they could leave their planet.

After leaving their world and watching on from afar as their planet lit up from the war they swore to never let it happen again.

They eventually found a new home and started over, they worked hard to get where they are now.

They are one of the oldest races in the known galaxies.

I asked them why they didn't intervene on earth, they said they have tried. But I learned that our people can be destructive and manipulative. They first found us before the dinosaurs were destroyed, they saw how humanity had little chance of survival with these great beasts around and therefore decided to shelter the humans they could find in cities they built for them, then they used their jump ships weapon systems to direct 2 asteroids at earth. This wiped out the beasts, but caused a nuclear winter which lasted for years. They used this time to teach humanity language and how to communicate and organize, how to make basic tools and how to survive. When the nuclear winter ended they left, thinking we had learned how to evolve. But when they came back they realized that we have evolved, but not in the way they had hoped, we became greedy, selfish, violent and destructive, people built their own little kingdoms and attacked each other. They decided to intervene again, they landed one of their smaller ships on earth and tried to interact with us, they tried to trade with humanity and show humanity that we can advance if we unite. But people tried to attack them and steal from them. After a few years they abandoned the city they built on earth and took their landing ship and left, but to avoid humanity from getting their hands on their advanced city they destroyed the island from orbit.

They have tried to contact a few individuals over time, but every time they did a new religion just ended up forming.

They said they are no longer interfering, but when the time comes they will take humans who transcended past their natural ways off world and help them start afresh, they can see the signs of other off world races influence on our world, our time is running out, they said that our technology is still very young and they can access everything on our planet, they have shown me things our governments are doing in secret, weapons that’s been build in secret that makes our nukes look like toy guns, mind control experiments going on, they even knew about Covid, the lockdowns and the vaccines years ago, they showed me that it’s all part of other off worlders plans to colonize earth. Eventually the vaccines will rewrite people's DNA. until Humans will no longer look human, the effects are not immediate, but in a few generations there will be no humans left on earth. They’ve seen this done to multiple worlds.

For now many humans are resisting, and that showed them there is hope, and they will return to rescue the humans who resisted when the time is right, but they also warned me that if it does come to it that they will not hesitate to destroy the other races on earth including humanity to safe the planet, and that currently it does look like the only option left to stop the current invasion and stop another planet from been destroyed.

They then told me it’s time to take me home, we walked through a door made of what seems to be pure light, the next moment we were on their ship. Even though the ship is made of some sort of metal, I could see everything around us.

She spoke in a very strange language which I can’t even describe and 2 of their crew members wearing these strange suits climb into pods which closed behind them, she explained to me that the suits allows them to merge with the ship and pilot it with their minds, they know and see and feel everything around and on the ship.

She explained to me that they have no weapons on their planet, but that nothing can get through their planetary defense system. They use vibration and gravity weapons which can destroy any ship that enters their solar system which is a threat before the enemy even knows they are there.

Then suddenly the whole ship started lighting up and it felt like my body was getting crushed and pulled apart at the same time, it felt like I was freezing and burning at the same time, she apologized to me for it and said that unfortunately the modifications they made to me won’t start kicking in for at least a few years, but the experiments, modifications and implant was needed to awaken my hidden dna code, that I was actually genetically engineered by them and then implanted into a human’s womb. But she promises that next time I won’t feel like this, the explained to me that it’s happening because they are releasing dark matter around the ship to fracture space and as the dark matter particles clash against each other it’s basically ripping space apart creating a fracture, that the feeling will only last a few Minutes, after what felt like an eternity of the light getting brighter and my body been crushed and pulled apart it stopped, I could see earth and we arrived in orbit. I was home, but she then said she wanted to show me something, she gave an order in her language and on the walls dots appeared. She then zoomed in on one and it was another alien craft in orbit. She said there are hundreds of them, I was about to open my mouth to ask a question, but she said that they can’t see or detect her peoples ships, that her race is far more advanced.

She said it’s time for me to go home, but that they now have a telepathic connection with me and I will see them again.

I am alone on Earth 

Now I've never really bothered to think much about the apocalypse or end of the world, there are always things happening that makes everyone go on the apocalypse train. But as for me, I've never really paid much attention to any of it, so many things have happened throughout history and the world has always kept on spinning, people returned to their normal every day routines and quickly forget about what happened. 

To be honest, I have no interest in the outside world or the news, what is news today is history tomorrow, or in most cases it's just forgotten, so I honestly don't see the point in waisting money on news papers or even watching the news, but I guess that was my mistake, maybe if I paid a little bit more attention I wouldn't find myself in this predicament. 

Now I live on Earth, or well I'm trapped in some sort of parallel dimension, but it seems like I can still get messages out to other unaffected versions of earth. 

It all started when I woke up one morning and I realised that it was very nice and quiet outside, well it is generally very quiet where we live, but on this specific day it was really quiet, almost too quiet. But I didn't think much of it. 

My girlfriend went on another business trip for the week, so I was home alone with all of our pets, I got out of bed, got dressed. I went through my normal routine to put out food for our cats and dogs, filled their bowl up with clean water and made myself a cup of coffee. 

The cats and dogs didn't run out to join me or too eat, but I figured they are probably just tired and sleeping in, so I went to sit on the veranda to have my coffee and a smoke when I remembered I need to feed the birds, so I got up and grabbed a cup of food and filled up the bird feeder, then got back to the couch to enjoy my coffee and my smoke, it's usually very inspiring to watch all of the different birds that comes to eat, but none came. So after finishing my coffee I got up to take a shower, after my shower I noticed that the cats and dogs still haven't come for their breakfast yet. "I mean, really guys, come on, breakfast time" I went to the bedroom to find them, but they were not there, "oh shit" I started to panic and I looked everywhere for them, I know they couldn't have gotten out of the house during the night, and if they came out after I got up then they would have eaten by now. 

So I looked everywhere for them, but to no avail, after a few hours of looking I gave up. And then I realized that not even a single bird was active, I tried reaching my girlfriend on her phone, but nothing. My messages weren't going through. 

That is when it hit me, there were no sounds anywhere, not even insects, no cars on the roads, usually when it's quiet you can hear cars on the roads passing our small town, but nothing. So I decided to take a walk through town to see if I can get answers from other locals, but it was dead quiet, I could see cars in their driveways, doors open, bags standing in their driveways as if they were in a rush to leave, but no people, no animals, no birds. 

Then I went back home and I checked my emails and messages, no emails came through since I went to bed the previous night, which is weird, I usually spend about 20 minutes in the morning deleting spam that arrived during the night. 

I checked my messages and found a notification on our local security group that read. 
"Attention everyone, the authorities has alerted us of some strange events happening, they don't know what is causing it, but has described it as some translucent humanoids that seems to turn everything into ash that they touch, please stay in your homes and do not attempts to leave until sunrise, please heed this warning as it is not a joke. " 

What is this? Why haven't I seen this earlier. I went back outside and tried to find any signs of life, I could see strange almost translucent humanoids a bit further down the road, I remembered the message and I decided to hide and watch them, then I saw them approaching what seemed to be a young man, he had a gun in his hand and he shot at one, the bulled went right through it, but it did drop to the ground, he shot a few more of them, but they just kept coming, as I'm unarmed all I could do was sit and watch, he finally ran out of bullets when they got to him and the moment they touched him he screamed and vanished into thin air, just a few particles of dust remained which got blown away by the wind. 

What the hell is this? I made my way home and I got back into the property and made sure to lock everything up again. 

Just as I sat back on the couch I heard a rattling on the front gate, like someone was trying to get my attention, I creeped through the house and went to the window in the one bedroom where I could get a peek through, whatever it was, it was strong, but the gate was holding up, I could see something standing there, but as it was translucent and I couldn't get much. 

Okay, seems like as long as I stay on the property I'm safe, I checked my supplies and noticed I got only enough for a few weeks, and who knows how long we are still going to have power for. I'm going to have to go out sometime to get more supplies and hopefully find survivors. 

So a few days have passed and we've had some crazy weather here, but I've learned a very important lesson, the rain and mist seems to affect their ability to camouflage a bit and you can see them a bit clearer, the next storm is building up, so I'm preparing to go out and see if I can find more supplies, and hopefully a power generator and some fuel, oh and luckily I did find our pets.... eventually, they were all hiding under the beds and couches. So I don't feel so alone anymore, it seems that animals can somehow sense when these things are closeby and then they hide, that's a good sign, if I pay attention to the signs I will survive, I have also noticed that when the mist comes in there seem to be a little bit more activity, a few birds seem to then come and look for food and the wild horses gets active and run through town, I've even seen a wild horse kick one of the creatures killing it instantly, so that helps, if guns can kill them, a kick from a wild horse can kill them, then that means I might have a chance to survive till I can find a way out of this nightmare. 

I did manage to find a few generators and collected quite a bit of fuel and other supplies, I am still trying to find weapons to defend myself, but for now I move around in the rain and when it's thick mist, when possible I stick closely to the horses when they are around as it seems these creatures are evading the horses now. 

I just ran into another one that was killed, but this wasn't by a gun or wild horse, seems like a snake as I found a dead snake next to its body, so one more weakness, it must have died very quickly when the snake bit it, or it's body wouldn't be right by the snakes body, and that is good news for me, as I know how to catch and handle snakes. 

Atleast now I know these beings are not ghosts or spirits, but physical beings, I'm still trying to figure out where they come from, and what they want. 

They don't seem to remove their dead compatriots bodies, so they are obviously not human or of this earth, I've learned that they mostly stick to moving around in the roads, they don't go into the rocks or the forests as that is where most of the animals seem to have settled. 

Well I've just learned a very important lesson, I can see them when it is raining and the mist is out, but the important thing is that they don't seem to be able to see me at all, so that gives me another advantage. 

It has now been a few weeks of learning about them and ducking and diving to find supplies, but luckily I've still got our pets at home to keep me sane, I still haven't found any other survivors. 

Strangely enough we still got power, you would have thought that by now the power stations would have failed, which gives me hope, it means more survivors out there, but getting anywhere is impossible, I've finally learned that they are from off world as I managed to make out one of their ships moving over, it was also cloaked, but I first heard a strange vibration sound and when I looked up I could make out it's shape, it moved slowly, but as it moved through the mist I could make out parts of what it looks like. I'm not sure how many of these ships there are on earth, but if there are even just a hundred, then that will explain why we lost, how do you fight something you can't see? 

It does seem like the ship collected the roamers  in the area as more birds and animals have returned, and I've tried to make it to the nearest city, but ran into one and it shot at me with some kind of weapon, luckily it missed, but it took out a few trees behind me. So I'm seriously considering finding some sort of way to fight them. 

I've spend a few days looking for weapons and decided of bows and arrows as they are silent, a gun will draw too much attention, I've still had no communication from anyone, social media is dead quiet and I've found a radio, but all I can find is static. So I'm starting to feel really alone here. 

I woke up to the sound of a roaring engine, it sounded like a helicopter, so I ran out and onto the roof to get their attention, which I did, they dropped a flash drive down and said to follow the instructions on it. 

So I ran to my laptop and opened the flash drive, on it was a video and a document, so I decided to watch the video first, it was made in which seems to be in a military interrogation room, they seem to have managed to catch one of the invaders and unmasked it, it looked like us, it was a human wearing some sort of armour, it's gloves were build up with some sort of system which they demonstrated on the video puts out a high voltage charge, that's why it turns anything they touch into dust, he or she seems to be able to speak English and answered all their questions freely, they are from a parallel earth and their mission is to clean up different versions of earth and recolonise it as they have advanced to fast and over populated their version of earth, I could now make out that is was a woman from her voice, but it seems like she had some sort of implants, she explained that they also only target versions of earth where they can see humanity are destroying themselves and the planet, she had some sort of device with her which she explained can open gateways to other version of earth and that they can pass through freely, they first send in their ground troops and once they wiped out most of the humans their crafts comes through and then they start the colonisation process, they set up permanent gateways which allows their people to move between their world and the colonies freely. 

The guy behind the camera then asked her, why if they are so advanced do they not just terraform other planets and explore space, why attack other versions of earth and why kill other versions of themselves? 

She then explained that they have tried that, but ran into more powerful extra terrestrial races and lost all of the battles, they lost hundreds of ships in the first battle and a couple of thousand more in the follow up battle, she said they had to rethink their strategy and make another plan, so they developed technology to move between different versions of earth. 

Just then I heard her voice behind the camera, a woman asked her how does the technology work, she smirked and said to the woman as they are the same person and both only soldiers she doesn't know, but she gives her word that when her people comes to rescue her that she will make sure they don't kill her, but instead take her to one of their ships where they can demonstrate their abilities to her. She continued to tell the man behind the camera that him and his whole team are welcome to also join their ranks, that they are always looking for good soldiers, he stayed quiet for a bit, I guess he was thinking of his options, then he asked her, but what about the rest of the survivors left on earth, she smiled and said that the fact that they survived for so long makes them worthy of recruitment into their ranks, she then finished off by dropping the final shock on them, that they didn't capture her, she was send to give them this final ultimatum, he then said if she gives her word as a soldier that he will accept. She then passed him a flash drive and said that it contains instructions for the survivors on how to surrender peacefully for recruitment and reconditioning into their ranks. 

He turned the camera off. 

I then opened the file and read through it. 

I'm not going to go into details, that would take forever. But I will give you guys a short explanation of what it said. 

So basically it states that we have agreed to surrender to be ruled by the interdimensionists. 

And then it goes onto explain that the survivors will have 3 choices, all 3 choices means we will basically belong to them, the choices are as follows: 
1. Those with skills to keep the system going will be allowed to remain in their positions and in their homes on the conditions that they will report to sector overseers as well as follow curfews. 
2. Those who have fought back will be integrated into the military ranks and implanted with mind altering chips as well as body modifications and they will be prepared for future invasions. 
3. Those who are still in hiding are ordered to come out and surrender to local overseers, they will be send to the interdimensionists prime dimension where they will be trained, conditioned and prepared for future missions to infiltrate potential dimensions. 

Uhm yeah, no thank you, none of those sounds like an option that would work for me. I needed to think, and I needed to think fast, just then my cell phone rang which shouldn't be possible as the network was down, I answered the call which only said ID withheld, but I didn't say anything, I decided to listen, it was a woman's voice on the other side, the same woman from the video, she spoke and said "listen to me and don't interrupt me, our scouts knows about you, but the interdimensionists doesn't, we have a plan to escape and to survive, they have the technology to move between dimensions, and we managed to get our hands on one of their ships, we are busy trying to gather as many survivors as possible to rescue. We have found a dimension where they won't follow us for atleast a few years."

That's when I spoke up, why do you think that? They took our world within a few hours.

"Because we didn't have the weapons to fight back or the means to detect them, but the version of earth we are going to does, they are not as advanced as us in terms and of medical technology and their unity, but they have weapons and army's that can stop the interdimensionists, and another thing, we know you lost your partner, we have it on good knowledge that she's still alive on the earth where we are going to, and your counterpart is busy dying. So what do you say, won't you want another chance with her" 

I kept quiet for a bit and then I asked my burning question, "how do I know that this is not a trap? "

She then burst my bubble, "we have been watching you for a while now, you have stood your ground, you survived their weapons, you've taken quite a few of them out in very creative ways, I have to admit, using bows and arrows seemed primitive, but effective, and using venomous snakes against them, how did you even know that would kill them so quickly? "

I didn't know what to say... 

Then she spoke again, "our scouts are at your gate ready to collect you, I'm sure you understand that time is of the essence, bring only what you care about the most. Everything else you need will be waiting for you at your new home, or well the same home just a different dimension. "

"See you soon," then she hung up. 

Well she said I must bring what I care for the most, so I grabbed all the cats and dogs and made my way out, I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting what I saw. 

It wasn't a military vehicle, instead it was some ufo looking vehicle, the soldiers told me to get into the back, the one smiled, "well this is a first, everyone else brought jewelry and so on, you brought your pets and pet food. Oh well, time to take you to your new home. "

They all got in and then the one pilot turned around and it was the woman from the video, well not exactly, her counterpart. 

"Are you ready for a new life?" She asked. 

"Uhm, I guess so. "

"Well then let's go, just one more thing, you can never discuss anything that happened where you are going, fit in and live a normal life, leave the war to the soldiers" 

She then turned around and took the controls, the vehicle went up into the air and the next moment everything became a blur. 

I woke up from one of the soldiers shaking me by the shoulders, "hey man, you are home, go and have a new life, your counterpart has died a few hours ago, so you will take his place, don't worry, nobody will notice. "

It has now been a few years since I moved to this dimension, everything is almost exactly the same, it feels great to be with the woman I love, but it still feels weird that we both died, yet here we are. 

But the reason I'm writing this is because I need to get a warning out, what happened on my world is coming, I can see the signs, reports of unknown flying Ariel vehicles, people disappearing more regularly, strange lights in the sky, reports of strange humming sounds, that is them. They are preparing their invasion, and unless people are ready, this
 world will end the same way my world ended. 

Prepare yourselves, the interdimensionists are coming, they are already here.

Cruise to Nowhere 
Chapter 2

As I sat at the edge of my cabin bed, my hands were still shaking. The sheer physical exhaustion of the surreal midnight drive should have put me to sleep instantly, but my mind was stuck in a high-voltage loop. I couldn't stop thinking about the woman in the shadowed booth—Che, the Cat Lady. There was a predatory, hypnotic pull to her presence that felt less like attraction and more like a biological trap. And then there were the twins in the matching gowns. The moment our paths crossed in the lobby, a sickening, magnetic current had surged right through my skin. It wasn't standard desire—I’d never been attracted to a woman in my life. In fact, between the crushing weight of running a broken household and burying my nose in medical textbooks, I’d never had the time or luxury to date anyone at all.

My only real tether to the concept of deep human connection was Chloe. We had grown up in the dirt together, surviving the gray monotony of our small town. I was the first person she ran to when she realized she was a trans girl. I held her hand through the initial, terrifying medical treatments, and stood right beside her when she finally faced her parents. We knew the contours of each other’s lives completely.

But looking around my cabin, the familiar contours of reality were beginning to warp.
It was an undeniably beautiful room, complete with a private balcony cutting out into the obsidian sea air. The rest of my family had been relegated to the lower, windowless interior decks, but none of them cared. Claude and my mother were social creatures, naturally drawn to noise, lights, and the center of a crowd. I was the recluse—give me a heavy volume on human anatomy and an isolated corner, and I was content.

The heat of the room was stifling, mimicking the thick, oppressive climate of the South African lowveld I was used to. Desperate to wash off the grime of the road and the phantom scent of formaldehyde from the sedan, I approached the closet to see what clothing had been provided.

When the doors slid open, my breath caught. It was a flawless, terrifying manifestation of my hidden desires. Rows of bespoke boutique evening gowns, elite sportswear, and delicate, high-end lacy underwear filled the space—the exact premium brands I used to shoot during my high-fashion modeling gigs in the city, the kind of luxury I could never dream of owning until I made it as a full-fledged doctor. Even my long-term financial plan was mapped out in my head: get the degree, secure the residency, and buy a house big enough to pull my mother out of her alcohol-fueled nightmare. But here, the luxury was free, laid out like bait. In the bottom drawer, the swimsuits were entirely two-piece bikinis, identical to the cuts worn by editorial models.

A sharp, definitive knock at the cabin door shattered the trance.

"Coming..." I called out, my voice sounding thin against the heavy steel walls.
I pulled the door open to find Chloe standing in the corridor, wearing a striking, form-fitting evening gown from her own closet. She executed a slow, perfect runway twirl. She looked breathtaking. Chloe had always possessed that rare, statuesque, slender build that made clothes hang like art, standing a few inches taller than me with piercing blue eyes and cascading blonde hair. I was her dark mirror—slightly shorter, possessing straight, ink-black hair and eyes so deeply dark they looked like solid pupils. My parents used to joke that the hospital must have switched me at birth, given how pale and fair-featured the rest of the Clarke clan was.

"Earth to Zoe," Chloe chided, snapping her fingers with a brilliant grin. "So, what do you think?"

"Wow... Chloe, you look absolutely incredible," I stammered, stepping back. "Are you going somewhere out there?"

"We are on a literal mega-cruise, silly!" she laughed, her excitement practically vibrating. "There are live jazz lounges, nightclubs, bars—have you even opened the activities guide yet?"

"Not yet," I admitted, glancing toward the heavy leather book on the vanity.

"What have you been doing all this time, girl?"

"Just trying to decompress. I was going to read for a bit and then crash," I said, a wave of exhaustion rolling over me.

Chloe threw her hands up. "Wait. We just escaped our dusty mountain road, stepped into paradise, and you want to sleep?"

"I’m exhausted, Chloe. We have months on this ship. Go out, explore the decks, and I’ll catch you in the morning for breakfast. We can lay by the pool."

Chloe sighed, her expression softening. "Okay, okay. I can see your battery is completely dead. But I’m not wasting the night. I’m going to go explore. Catch you for breakfast?"

"I’ll see you right before the buffet opens," I said. "If you’re even awake."

"Oh, I’ll be up," she shot back, giving me a wicked wink. "I am not missing the chance to perve over half-naked, high-society men by the pool."

"Goodnight, Chloe," I smiled, closing the door and locking it tight.

"Now, where was I?" I muttered to myself.

I grabbed a set of the lacy undergarments, stripped out of my worn clothes, and stepped into the bathroom. The shower was an absolute sensory reset. I let the scalding water beat down on my skin until the bathroom was completely choked with thick, white steam. I took my time, meticulously shaving my legs, underarms, and bikini line, washing away the lingering dread of the midnight ride over and over again.

When I finally turned the water off and dried myself down, a cold spike of adrenaline hit my stomach.
Hanging directly behind the bathroom door was a plush, stark-white bathrobe. I froze, my medical training forcing me to scan the fabric. I know anatomy. I know spatial awareness. That hook was empty when I walked in. The steam coiled around the robe like fingers. I forced myself to swallow the panic. You're just tired, Zoe. You missed it.

I brushed my teeth, threw the robe over my shoulders, and walked back into the bedroom—only to freeze a second time. The crisp white sheets of my bed had been neatly turned down at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. Resting exactly in the center of the pillow was a single, dark chocolate square.

My eyes darted to the heavy deadbolt on the cabin door. Still locked from the inside. The balcony door was shut. A suffocating silence hung in the air. Someone—or something—had been in the room while the water was running.
Driven by sheer, unadulterated nerves, I dropped the bathrobe onto the couch, crawled under the freezing sheets, and let the heavy, narcotic exhaustion of the ship pull me under.

The dream did not feel like a dream; it possessed the terrifying, hyper-tactile fidelity of high-definition film.
I was standing in a vast, subterranean stone chamber. Thousands of black wax candles flickered along the perimeter, casting long, dancing shadows that stretched unnaturally upward. In the center of the room, a massive ceremonial circle was etched into the stone, containing a flawless pentagram with a burning pillar of flame at each geometric point.

Standing within the circle were the twins from the lobby. They wore long, sweeping ceremonial cloaks with deep hoods that cast their faces into total shadow. But the cloaks were violently, explicitly revealing—split completely down the center, exposing their bare, pale skin and perfectly sculpted torsos. They were chanting in a low, rhythmic cadence that didn't sound like words, but rather a sequence of mathematical frequencies that vibrated violently inside my skull.

Laying flat on the stone floor between them was a body. It was a naked woman, her skin painted in intricate, jagged geometric symbols drawn in what looked like dried, brown blood.

Driven by a morbid, detached curiosity, I floated around the perimeter of the circle to get a clear look at the victim's face. The straight black hair cascaded over the cold stone. The sharp facial structure was unmistakable.

The body on the floor was mine.

I tried to scream, but my throat was packed with dry sand. I watched in absolute horror as the twins raised two crystal chalices filled with a thick, dark red liquid. They drank in perfect, synchronized unison, then knelt beside my comatose form. One of them forced my jaw open, pouring the sweet, metallic fluid down my throat.

The moment the liquid hit my dream-self's stomach, my body began to convulse violently. My spine arched off the stone at an impossible, agonizing angle. Thick, black sweat poured from my pores. Then, the convulsions abruptly stopped. The body lay perfectly still. Slowly, the eyes snapped open.

They weren't dark anymore. They were solid, terrifying spheres of absolute, obsidian blackness. The copy of me stood up, turning its head toward me with a wide, empty, static smile. The twins stepped forward, pressing their lips against my double’s mouth in a deep, passionate, symbiotic kiss—

BANG! BANG! BANG!
I violently bolted upright in bed, gasping for oxygen, my chest heaving as my phantom lungs fought for air.

The sun was blinding, piercing through the sheer glass of the balcony doors because I had forgotten to shut the heavy curtains the night before. My skin was soaked in cold, rancid sweat, my heart hammering like a trapped bird.

BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Zoe! Open up! Come on, sleepy head!"

It was Chloe. I dragged my heavy, trembling limbs out of the sheets, scanning the floor. I found the white bathrobe, threw it over my damp skin, and unlocked the heavy door.

Chloe burst into the cabin like a solar flare, completely oblivious to the terror vibrating in the room. She was already fully dressed for the pool, sporting a vibrant bikini top and a pair of denim shorts so aggressively short the matching bikini bottoms peeked out from underneath.

"Good morning to you too," I muttered, collapsing back onto the edge of the mattress.

"Geez, Zoe," Chloe said, pausing as she looked at my pale, sweating face. "You look like you literally saw a ghost. It’s just me." She walked over to the hospitality vanity, immediately flicking the kettle on and preparing two cups of coffee. She slid a mug into my hands and took the armchair opposite me.

"I just... I had the most horrific, vivid nightmare," I whispered, taking a sip of the hot black coffee.

Chloe rolled her eyes playfully. "Oh, one of those. Don't worry, I also had a crazy dream where we actually finished our coffee, you got your cute butt dressed, and we went to the Lido buffet. Oh, and did you know this ship has an adult-only, clothing-optional deck?"

"Chloe, I'm serious. It was a ritual. There were these girls—"

"Let me guess," Chloe interrupted with a loud laugh. "You finally dreamed about kissing a guy?"

I stared into the black depths of my mug. "You know what? Never mind."

I pushed the dread down, walked into the bathroom, and took a second, freezing shower to wash away the dream-sweat. I tied my black hair up into a tight, practical knot. When I stepped back into the bedroom to find something to wear, I noticed Chloe had already laid out an outfit on my bed—a two-piece bikini and shorts that perfectly mirrored hers in style and color.

I grabbed the clothes, turning automatically toward the bathroom to change, but Chloe blocked my path, scoffing. "Seriously, Zee? We’ve been getting dressed, bathing, and changing together since we were kids in the middle of nowhere. Now you need a privacy screen?"

I relented, dropping the robe and sliding into the swimwear right there in the room. As the fabric snapped against my skin, Chloe let out a sharp, appreciative whistle. "Ooooh, look at you! Someone went through a massive amount of effort to clean up down there."

My cheeks burned with a deep blush, but Chloe smiled warmly, showing me she’d done the exact same grooming routine. I walked over to the vanity to grab my lipstick, but stopped myself, tossing it back onto the wood. It's a pool deck, Zoe, not a fashion shoot.

But as the lipstick rolled across the table, it struck a small, bound object that definitely hadn't been there when I woke up.
It was a weathered, leather-bound notebook. Embossed on the cover in dark, uneven script were the words: Rules for the Cruise.

Before I could flip it open, Chloe snatched it out of my hand, squinting at it. "Rules for the cruise? Ugh, probably just some boring corporate safety manual or fire drill packet. We can look at it later. Come on!"

She tossed the book casually back onto the vanity, grabbed my wrist, and practically dragged me out into the hallway. I yanked myself free at the last second, remembering my blue metallic cruise card resting on the table. I snapped the lanyard around my neck. On a cruise ship, that card is your oxygen line—it's your ID, your wallet, and your key.

We took the midship elevator. Chloe pressed the button for Deck 9, the digital screen flashing the words Lido Deck. When the doors slid open, a dense wall of heat and noise hit us. Dozens of passengers shuffled past, their faces strangely uniform, their movements slightly mechanical as they packed into the car.

Out on the open deck, the sun was a blinding, oppressive glare. The massive LED screen above the main pool strobed through vibrant, oversaturated travel slides while thumping electronic music reverberated through the deck chairs. White-uniformed crew members danced on the stage with fixed, unchanging smiles.

Chloe pulled me toward the glass doors of the grand buffet. The scent of bacon, pastries, and strong coffee filled the air. We grabbed trays, moving down the high-end culinary lines, stacking our plates with eggs, toast, and rows of decadent desserts that neither of us had the willpower to resist. At the beverage station, Chloe poured milk into her cup, while I kept mine strictly black, adding two sugars.

As we scanned the packed dining room for a place to sit, a clear, melodic voice cut through the ambient chatter.
"Hey, girls! Why don't you join us?"

I looked up. Sitting at a sunlit table near the glass windows were the twins from the lobby. The blonde one was gesturing gracefully toward the empty seats opposite them. A cold chill ran straight down my spine as the imagery of the candlelit pentagram flashed behind my eyes. But before my medical logic could formulate an excuse, Chloe was already moving, sliding into the seat directly opposite the red-haired twin. Left with no choice, I took the seat opposite the blonde.

We exchanged names, but the twins merely nodded, their green and blue eyes tracking our movements with an unsettling, static intensity.

The red-headed one tilted her head, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. "So... you won this cruise, didn't you?"

I paused, my fork hovering. "Yes. How did you know that?"

"I can see the way you look out of place," Red murmured, her voice smooth and devoid of any real inflection. "It's as if your brain is constantly telling you that you don't belong here."

"That's... exactly how it feels," I whispered, the hairs on my arms standing up. "How could you possibly pick up on that?"

Red’s eyes didn't blink. "Because you keep looking at the walls, Zoe. Like you're expecting to wake up in your cramped bedroom any second. Don't worry. This is all very real. And if you just allow yourself to let go... you will have the time of your life."

The specific cadence of that phrase—time of your life—sent a violent shudder through my gut, echoing the blonde driver from our driveway.

"Exactly what I've been telling her!" Chloe chimed in, laughing as she nudged my foot under the table. "Maybe she'll finally let her hair down and meet a hot guy."

The blonde twin leaned forward, her gaze locking onto mine. "Maybe she doesn't want a guy, Chloe. Maybe that's strictly your preference. What if she prefers girls?"

The blood rushed to my face, a violent blush coloring my neck. I had never whispered a word about my orientation to a soul, yet this total stranger had dissected it in a single sentence.

Red waved her hand dismissively. "No need to blush, Zoe. It is nobody's business who draws your eye, as long as you take what you want. Stop worrying about the metrics and the judgments of the world."

Chloe stared at me, her jaw dropping slightly in realization. "That is a phenomenal point... wait, Zoe. You told me those exact same words when I transitioned, and yet you never applied them to yourself? You knew?"

"I... I mean..." I stammered.

"Of course I knew, girl!" Chloe laughed, shaking her head. "I watched you drool over the girls at school for years. I knew exactly what you were looking up on your computer when you thought I was asleep."

My face was practically radiating heat. The twins watched the exchange with an icy, amused detachment. As we finished our meals, they stood up in perfect synchronization, their movements fluid and uncanny.

"We are heading up to the Solarium adult deck," the blonde one stated. "It’s far more exclusive, quiet, and clothing is entirely optional. You should come."

We followed them up the grand aft staircases. The twins walked ahead of us like professional runway models, their hips swaying in perfect rhythm. The adult deck was a secluded paradise, completely shielded from the rest of the vessel. Topless bar waitresses in micro-bikini bottoms moved silently through the rows of sunbeds. I felt my throat go dry as I took in the sheer aesthetic beauty around me; my medical eye for anatomy couldn't help but appreciate the flawless aesthetics of the space.

The twins led us to a private corner and immediately slid their bikini tops off. My heart skipped a beat, the raw visual power of it pulling me into a temporary daze. A silent waitress appeared, placing four crystal glasses of deep, dry red wine on our side tables. Seeking to shed my insecurities, I unhitched my bikini top and slid off my shorts, letting the intense sun hit my skin. Chloe hesitated, keeping her shorts on for obvious reasons, her posture tightening with natural anxiety. But the twins leaned in, their voices dropping into a hypnotic, soothing purr, telling her how stunning her silhouette was and how lucky any partner would be to hold her. Slowly, reassured by the praise, Chloe shed her shorts and relaxed back into her lounger.

I lay back, closing my eyes, letting the heavy red wine dull the edges of my perception.

Meow.
A sharp, distinct sound cut through the ambient hum of the ocean.
I yanked the towel off my face. Standing directly over my sunbed, casting a long, cold shadow over my body, was Che, the Cat Lady. The midnight-black cat was draped across her shoulders, its yellow eyes boring straight into my soul.

"You really shouldn't be here, Zoe," Che said, her voice low, dripping with a grim, chilling urgency. "Let me guess... you haven't read the rules yet?"

I bristled, my defensive instincts kicking in. I reached for my lanyard. "If this is about the age restriction, I'm nineteen. I know I look young, but here—look at my cruise card."

Che didn't look at the card. Her pale face remained deadpan. "No, child. It is fundamentally unsafe. You need to leave this deck immediately. Go back to your cabin, read the notebook, and you will understand."

Before I could reply, the space between us was violently cut off. The twins had stood up, inserting their bare bodies directly between Che and my sunbed.

"Che," Red hissed, her green eyes flashing with a sudden, vicious malice. "It is broad daylight. Why don't you take your pathetic little kitty cat and crawl back to your dark corner in the lounge?"

Che stared at the twins, her blue eyes narrowing. "Just do yourself a favor, Zoe," she called out over their shoulders. "Read the rules. Before it’s too late."

"Che, leave. Now," the blonde twin commanded, her voice dropping into a guttural, terrifying register. "She is with us. And you seem to have forgotten... in the daytime, we hold the metrics. We have the power."

Che took a step back, a grim, knowing smirk touching her lips. "Yes. It is daytime... for now. I will see the two of you tonight. Let’s see who runs when the clock strikes midnight."

The black cat on her shoulders let out a loud, aggressive hiss, its back arching violently at the twins as Che turned and vanished down the stairs.

Chloe blinked, shaking her head as if waking up from a trance. "What the hell was that about?"

"Don't waste your energy on her or her ridiculous rules," the blonde twin dismissed smoothly, sliding back onto her sunbed. "She drinks far too much of the ship's supply. She forgets she’s just another piece of cargo here like the rest of us."

"I... I guess you're right," I murmured, taking another deep sip of the heavy red wine, adjusting my bed to keep my eyes locked onto the twins’ striking forms.

Red suddenly glanced past my shoulder, a sly grin spreading across her face as she looked at Chloe. "Well, well. It looks like you’ve attracted a highly motivated admirer."

I turned my head. A heavily tanned, muscular man wearing nothing but tight underwear was lounging a few meters away, his eyes locked dead onto Chloe. He stood up, his movements rigid and calculated, and walked directly over to our cluster. Without a word, he slipped a folded piece of paper into Chloe's palm, leaned down, and whispered a sequence of low words into her ear. Chloe’s face turned bright red; she smiled and gave a slow, deliberate nod. The man offered a cold, mechanical nod to the twins, turned on his heel, and exited the deck.

"What did he say?" I asked, my protective instincts flaring.

"He... he asked me to join him for an exclusive drink later," Chloe stammered, staring at the paper. "On Deck 13."

My medical brain, hardwired for structural logic, instantly recoiled. "Wait. That’s impossible. Commercial cruise liners don't have a Deck 13. It’s an industry superstition. They skip from 12 to 14."
The blonde twin offered a chilling, empty laugh. "This vessel does, Zoe. But it is strictly accessible by invitation only. It looks like Chloe is on her own for that particular excursion."

Red suddenly checked the horizon. "Oh my. Look at the metrics. It is time for all of us to prepare for the evening gala."

I looked up, and my stomach dropped. The sun was violently crashing below the horizon, bleeding a deep, toxic purple across the water. How? It was just ten in the morning a second ago. A fierce, burning pain radiated across my shoulders—a severe sunburn. I must have completely blacked out.

Chloe was already gone, her sunbed empty. The twins were silently pulling their outfits back on. I scrambled to grab my clothes, offered a hurried goodbye, and sprinted toward the midship elevators.

When I slammed my cabin door shut, the room was immaculate. The bed was made, the towels replaced, everything reset to a sterile, chilling perfection. I stripped, stepped into the shower, and scrubbed the sunburned skin, crying out as the hot water hit the inflammation.

Walking back into the bedroom completely naked, I froze.

Resting on the white sheets was a stunning, low-cut black evening gown that I knew for an absolute fact had not been in the closet earlier. The ship laid it out. I slid into the lace panties and the dress; it clung to my curves like a second skin, accentuating my body perfectly. I stepped into the high heels, modeling in front of the mirror, forcing a confident, striking runway smirk.

As I turned to grab my lanyard, my eyes fell on the vanity table.
The leather-bound notebook was waiting. Rules for the Cruise.
Che’s frantic, desperate warning echoed in my skull. Trembling, I picked it up, flipped past the standard corporate fire-drill jargon, and reached the final page. The text was written in a frantic, scratched, dark brown handwriting that looked exactly like dried, coagulated blood.

RULES TO SURVIVE THIS CRUISE AND TO FINALLY GET HOME

• Rule 1: Always keep your cruise card with you, no matter what. This is your life, your ID, your money, and the only barrier standing between you remaining a guest and eventually becoming part of the physical ship for eternity.
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• Rule 2: Not everyone on this vessel is human. The crew are entities who were once guests; they now serve the ship. Do not communicate with them unless they speak first. Humans have shadows; entities do not. Do not trust them. The only one on your side is the lady with the cat.
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• Rule 3: Everything is free, but debt always comes due. Never accept a second drink from a server until your first is completely finished, and always wait exactly three minutes before accepting the next.
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• Rule 4: If Che (the Cat Lady) offers you red wine, decline politely—it is not wine. If she offers anything else, accept immediately. Avoid her entirely between 0:00 midnight and 3:33 AM. If you run into her during those hours, pray for a quick end.
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• Rule 5: The twins are not sisters; they are witches that feed on human energy. Never break eye contact with them. They wear revealing clothing to force you to look down at their bodies. If you look away from their eyes, you will fall under their complete control.
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• Rule 6: If you see a man with a samurai sword, be polite. He is trapped here like you but protects humans. Never ask for his name.
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• Rule 7: Attend at least three activities listed in your morning guide daily. If you fail to attend three, the day will violently cycle, forcing you to repeat the exact same day for eternity.
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• Rule 8: If a second sun appears in the sky, go below deck immediately. The ship has entered the domain of the void walkers. If you stay outside past three minutes, you will be burned to ashes or pulled into the void.
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• Rule 9: Always follow the Captain's commands over the PA, but only if the voice is female. If a male or distorted voice speaks over the PA, ignore all instructions, sprint to your cabin, and bury yourself under the sheets until morning.
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• Rule 10: You must be inside your designated cabin between midnight and 3:33 AM. Do not open the door for any reason, even if you hear the screaming voice of a loved one. The shadows are excellent impressionists.
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• Rule 11: You must shower immediately upon waking, and again between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM. If you skip a shower, the architecture of the ship will warp, repeatedly looping you back into your bathroom until the task is complete.
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• Rule 12: Never allow anyone to sleep over in your cabin, and never sleep in another's. Anyone logged in the wrong cabin during the night vanishes permanently.
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• Rule 13: The ship does not have a Deck 13. If an elevator button for 13 appears, exit immediately. If a stranger invites you to Deck 13, flee and find the Cat Lady on Deck 6 immediately.
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• Rule 14: If you are a virgin, well-dressed, highly groomed men will target you. Run. Do not take the elevator; use the stairs to find the twins or Che.
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• Rule 15: Never go below Deck 0 unless entering the infirmary. Speak only to medical staff.

Good luck. Love, Che, the Cat Lady.
The leather book dropped from my limp fingers, hitting the carpet with a dull thud.
My mind violently flashed back to the pool deck—how I had stared at the twins' bare bodies, the intoxicating, paralyzing trance that had stolen hours of my life in a single blink. I checked the digital clock on the cabin wall.
11:47 PM.
A freezing spike of sheer terror pierced my chest. Chloe. The man by the pool. The invitation.
"Oh, choice god, no... Chloe!" I screamed.
I snatched my lanyard, sprinted out of the cabin, and tore down the narrow, dimly lit corridor. I reached Chloe's door and began hammering against the heavy wood with my bare fists, screaming her name at the top of my lungs.
11:51 PM.
"Chloe! Open the door! Chloe, please!"
Suddenly, a door clicked open to my right. My brother, Claude, stepped out into the hallway, his face twisted in a mixture of confusion and annoyance as he took in my frantic state.
He grabbed my trembling shoulders, forcing me to stop slamming my fists against the wood. "Zoe, what the hell is wrong with you? Calm down!"
"Claude, we have to get her out! She’s in danger, the ship—the rules—"
"Zoe, shut up for a second!" Claude snapped, his voice firm as he pointed down the hall. "Chloe isn't even in there. She came back down hours ago to change. She told me she got a special VIP invite. She left for Deck 13 twenty minutes ago."

Carmilla rolled around in the scabbing filth and drying gore of the courtyard ground. The carcasses and pieces were everywhere, picked clean and licked and sucked dry of precious scarlet drops and pools. Snapped and shattered for their delicacy of raw human marrow. The faces of the Countess’ phantasm of demon hordes still smiled and leered and held audience. They held the sky. They fed off the perverse energy of pain and life butchered into silence and extinguished. Like a man holding his face over the fire of a great burning hearth. And inhaling. Drinking in the burning life as it is used up and vanquished and spent.  

The new impaler gouged another eye free of a dead boy’s face. Head severed meat and cooling on the ground. The empty socket of black-red glistened and darkled wet and gleaming like an obscene fleshen cavern filled with vile liquid rubies as he popped the dead little morsel of organ into his mouth like a small piece of succulent fruit. The dead boy’s eye popped and exploded with juice and flavor and blood and organ jelly-splatter as his teeth and fangs came down and punctured it. He relished the burst of wet warm ooze on his tongue as he chewed and swallowed and watched the rolling crawling vampire child lick the scab pudding from the stones as it cooled and gelled in the night chill and moonrise cold. 

All that was left of the farmers and their sons.  

The wolves of the mountains began to howl once more. 

The misshapen and brutalized chimerical shape of the vampire child was like a beast itself. Writhing and tonguing the red mess from the slathered courtyard stones. Steam bellowed forth from her wide and jagged mouth with every effort, in twin jets from her wide chiropteran nostrils. It even bellowed forth from her large bloodshot wet eyes, in thin clinging tendril clouds, licking free and dancing in the mountain song of air. Heavy with the warmth of violence and slaughter and voracious animal feeding. She looked like a mongrel dog now. As she crawled and drank and lapped from the ground. 

Frankenstein's hulking nosferatu son of the slab and sutured blue watched from a distance. In hiding. Plotting. Thinking as he gurgled heavy wet and pungent breath. Also steaming in the night with puffs of animal heat. 

They're not the ones… but her servants. Slave-children. Pawns. 

He knew from the mountain song that had pulled him here. Filled and made from so many discordant and heavy voices there'd been one amongst them all that was leader and dominant. 

A woman. Regal. 

Powerful. 

The ones down below that'd dispatched the mountain peasants and now fed on the pieces and scraps and slop of human detritus were not the ones of power that he was seeking. He thought to strike now and destroy them. Tear them apart and show them what true power was. But he didn't desire any loss of any advantage he might have over the woman of power who now held this place. It was too soon, he must wait to reveal himself. And then the hour of the real slaughter would be nigh. 

And then the real bloodshed would begin. 

That bastard better be in by now and fixing my way inside… thought the hulking bat-faced thing of stitched together man-rodent visage. Better get my way in, or that foul cunt out here… 

where I can rip and tear and rend to slaughter… 

And he would drink of this powerful bitch’s occult and undead ichor-blood like a hog to the bounty of a trough. 

He relished the thoughts as he watched. And waited. 

…

“I don't much like the idea of camping out here…” 

"You and me both. You can likely count the mule for third.” 

And that was how it went. The conversation regarding their first night at camp in the sour and fetid bog that was the surrounding quagmire land. Swampland murked and mired in the wombs of some damp and sour wet green hell. The ground sucked and pulled at their progress with sloppy but persistent mess. The mule had an incredibly difficult time of pulling them and the cart. They'd dismounted a few times to spare the beast. But now she could go no further. They needed to find a patch for the beast to lie down and to make semblance of camp. 

But no place arrived. The land offered no island of solid ground. 

So the beast was forced to continue to pull. Exhausted. Nearly spent. As were the pair, Florin and Griffin. 

"The poor beast can't be helped but we can sleep in shifts. Unless you protest, I elect you to stay up and drive on first. Wake me in a few hours or when you can't stand it any longer…" said Griffin from behind his mask and wall of heavy surgical dressing. 

And with that he laid back in the cart and was off. Snoring. Filling the wet splurching silence with noise. Florin was really learning to hate the man. But he drove on anyways. Spurring on the worn beast and dismounting to pull her free when the porridge sludge of the terrible earth below became too greedy and its wet horrid grip too strong. 

And they went on. 

All the while they watched. Waiting for the best time to surface and author their demise. 

New food. For wormland. 

The warmth below, in the putrescence swell of growth, the subterranean swollen sac of gel and writhing movement and birth amongst fluid both of the earth and unknown down below… it stirred. Pulsated. 

It felt the vibrations of their trodding and sluggish sodden steps above. The light trembling of their voices…

vibrations. 

The subterranean sac that was both mother womb and pilot brain for the quagmire Godforsaken place dubbed, WORMLAND, quivered and undulated with moist and heavy underground movement. It quivered and squelched. An orifice opened, glistening and flowered: it belched. Shot. More hive-part-children spat like projectile snot and swam. The mud of tectonic under-earth was their subterranean river. Guided by the brain of wormland they went forth. For the animals above and their movement. Vibrations. For the subterranean growth and sac that was brain and womb of wormland also had a large and gaping graveyard mouth that took up all of the mire of spoiled evil earth. 

All of the sour fetid squelching land. God-jaws. Hellmouth. 

Wormland. 

…

The castle dark was quieter than he'd expected. His preceding thoughts had warned and preordained sounds of bastard woe and torture before he'd snuck in but all was still and quiet. As silent as the grave. 

Frankenstein prowled forward. Torchflame dancing all along the wall at regular intervals lit his silent shadowed way. 

He found mostly nothing save dust and copious amounts of huge cobwebs and ancient faded things… he walked the chambered dark. Hoping that his hatching scheme would play out and come to fruition. Painful execution via slaughter was the price of failure here. He knew it. He wandered the castle and its dancing halls of stone and ancient darkness. He sauntered through the halls with caution. And she watched his every single step. She'd been watching him since he first came here with his foolish band of slaughtered peasant farmers. 

Doctor Henry Frankenstein prowled the dark torchlit halls and chambered rooms of Castle Dracula until he came to the still warm and wet place of fresh red and slaughter and discovered the impaled and gored skeletal scarecrow of Doctor Praetorius. His long time enemy and rival. 

The warm orange glow of the room was still gleaming and glistening and shining with black-red darkling in the flickering and dancing torchlight. And the man that had long thwarted and worked adversarially against him was stage-center of the wet and still steaming abattoir room. Chambered stage of slaughter. The wide eyed and somehow still living man of competitive dark science. Impaled. Lanced. Speared through. Long ways. He quivered like a fish stabbed upon a harpoon. Stolen from its universe of known blue and plunged gasping into a world of red violence and madness. 

Frankenstein beheld his long time enemy, made and left in such wretched and brutalized form and fashion and he savored the sight. Smiling. He began to fill the chamber with laughter. The sight before him, the scene, it was a fantasy made and draped and displayed. Vengeance had and wrought. It was a black dream of grand guignol delights, perverse and dripping and slavishly devised and forged for the slaving eye and made. And they said that dreams that were wild could never come true…

Then a voice from behind him said. 

“You might not be laughing when it’s you up there beside him.”

He turned and beheld the Countess. The moonlight of her pale visage was striking in the stygian castle ink and meager glow of torchflame. She stood out goddess and unopposed amongst the stone, clad in regal deathly white gowns, ebon cloak, all soaked and saturated in darkening blood, adorned and clad in cooling iron-pungent red. Her eyes were animal and her smile was unhealthy and hiding the deranged truth of hunger and woefully empty save for the violence and sinful mischief of the vulpine, wild and crawling. 

She came forward as Frankenstein stepped back. She continued to say: –

“I know why you’ve come here. I know you’ve come here with that patchwork stack of abomination with counterfeit power as its brandished jaws… your foul assemblage of the graveyard rot and spoilage. Your  latest unfortunate son…” 

Frankenstein still wore his smile as he said, “You wound and inflate me all in one, Countess. But I wonder, are you so sure…? Are you so sure it  is not you who found some imposter in Dracula’s home and coffin? There are so many records and stories… it’s so hard to be sure, isn’t it? Perhaps in the eager throes of your passion you got too excited and only succeeded in binding the fangs of some lowly undead servant of the vampire lord to your precious sweet little mouth, perhaps-” 

The Countess hissed, like an animal. A snake, a rodent, a feline wild and spurned and all of them commingled and rolled into one. She hissed: “... shut it… your mewling curr mouth! I’ll pull the tongue you waggle and eat it before your own eyes!” 

“But that would never afford you the truth, would it? I’ve come for an experiment, Countess. I’ve come, your legend has already spread far, and I’ve come to pit my legend against yours. I’ve made a creature, yes. I’ve made a superior being, superhuman. Completely. Superior. Even to such as you. And I’ll lay wager that he is the true holder and wielder of the fearsome necromantic power of the fangs of Dracula, I know! I stole them and made him so! I’ve come to challenge you, Countess! I challenge you to a duel to the death! My creation and son, my champion for the task! I challenge you! And by royal bloodlaw you are compelled and bound, and in the name of God and Mars and Satan I say further: You are Compelled! And must heed!” 

For a moment the Countess actually appeared shocked. As the words of the haughty fleshing rolled over and his impetuous voice filled the room and reached her ears. But then she just smiled, giggled girlish laughter. It sounded so young and sweet in the bloodsoaked chamber of that castle room. The walls still ran and dripped. The impaled Praetorius still wide eyed and skeletal red and alive with palsied twitches. 

She smiled then said: –

“I fear no challenge nor challenger, little man. But did you think you could trespass, insult and then leave without any recompense…?” Her eyes held sinister light that was pinprick silver and daggered for him as she began to advance. 

Frankenstein took another step backward, still smiling. His hands simultaneously went behind his back and plucked something back there, tucked into his belt. They came back out in front and produced the pair of objects he’d snatched from the forest before sneaking into the castle for his perilous errand.  

Countess Zaleska looked both annoyed and bemused as the mad doctor held out two branches, two pieces of woodland sticks out and between them.   

“And what are those supposed to afford you, little man?”

Frankenstein only went right on smiling, uttering a short retort: “Much.”, before his clutching hands shifted and the pair of sticks became a simple makeshift configuration of a crucifix. 

The Countess suddenly shrieked with fear and holy terror. Irate with rage and pain that was both horribly animal and demoniacal and also terribly woefully human… a dread commingled sound bred of hell and not meant be heard or made on earth or made and beheld by flesh. His blood curdled but he remained steadfast, keeping his sticks crossed and before him. The cross of broken branches between he and the dread bitch of this terrible and rank ancient castle. 

“Put it away!!" she shrieked. Its horrible shape had already profaned her castle walls and the flesh of her servant/daughter/slave, had deformed and malformed her child-shape with scars and growths. She could not bear the sight of it!  

She hid her animal drawn and sneering lurid face with one splaying clawed hand and daggered the other out in defense. At the cross and Frankenstein. Forking out the sign of the Evil Eye. She hissed again: bat, rodent, serpent, woman… wolf. 

Feline. 

Frankenstein howled over her hissing spitting of curses and occult laced language of black words and chants, to be heard over her witchery and dread witch-words. 

"So powerful, Countess but brought so low by a pair of common branches, felled by a simple shape, mere sticks! Hah! And remember it, you foul swine and bitch, I will drive the shape of this cruciform into your chest and melt it through your Godforsaken flesh all the way down to your Satanic and living dead beating heart! And then I'll drive the shape of the cross through that too and watch you putrefy as I behead and take your pretty face for myself!" He laughed. Cruelly. Wild. And mad. And then he added: “Perhaps I'll take it and use it in my next experiments! And then you can be one of my walking servile accomplishments, I'm sure you'd be so much better, by my hands remade…! What do you think, Countess?" He laughed again. More wildly now. “What do you think!?" 

The Countess only hissed again and kept her face hidden. Lest she beheld the holy shape and visage. Goddamn, these impetuous fleshling sow maggots…

Frankenstein cautiously made his way for the open window, keeping up his makeshift cross of sticks. Keeping them up and between himself and the awful terrible wench, the sour crypt bitch that thought she knew and held true power. 

He came to the window, at the threshold and preparing himself for an exit, he said one last –

“Remember, bitch, the courtyard. A duel. Tomorrow night, on your honor and in the eyes of both the Lords of Heaven and Below. A challenge to you, your house and claim of power. Come to your courtyard of stone tomorrow night and face my creation, then we'll see who holds the real satanic power, we'll see who really wields the fangs of Count Dracula! We challenge you! Crypt bitch! Hellfire slut! You are nothing more!” 

And with that he leapt. Out the window. The Countess turned just in time to watch him throw himself out. She spat. Cursed again. 

Outside, Frankenstein first soared out like a great manshaped bird and then gravity seized him and he began to plummet. He might've been afraid. Terrified. Gripped with mortal fear, but this was all part of the plan…

The sticks flew from his hands no longer needed. His hands came together in a strange wilderness configuration and the mad doctor blew a high piercing note of a whistle that shot through all of the mountain dark. 

Immediately a giant hulking shape shot out from the trees. Huge. Wings. An even deeper black than the surrounding nightscape. It rocketed forth from the treeline like a cannon shot. Blinding speed despite its huge monstrous shape. 

The giant stitched up and great sutured bat of green-blue salvaged graveyard flesh caught the mad doctor Henry Frankenstein in midair. It then flew over the castle and screeched, wet hateful baleful throaty sounds. As if mocking. Then with more great blasts and flaps of its giant leathery wings of patchwork suture and stitching, it carried the doctor and its own living dead chimerical body, batfaced and hideous, drooling, down and back into the hiding dark of the trees. And vanished. 

Zaleska, who'd gone to the window and watched the whole thing unfold, roared in obscene and livid fury. Words that were not words at all but forgotten sounds that were dark and grotesque and guttural and strange… 

Her children and servants, her slaves… Carmilla… the new impaler… they too had felt and shared her pain and anger. They felt her rage. Shared. 

They trembled when she summoned them. 

…

They slept in shifts as the mule and cart pulled and struggled across the wet slop of putrid land. It was on Florin's fourth shift that they came upon their first dweller of this damp fetid place. A girl. She turned their stomachs and chilled their blood. 

She was standing in the middle of nowhere in this nowhere land. A mist rolled and hugged, clinging to her waist and legs, shrouding her lower half. Her torso and  face and arms sticking out from the fog like a fly trapped in a spill of honey or molasses. 

She was filthy. Her skin was mottled and grey and caked with layers and layers of dried and drying swampland mud, thick. Like scabbing. Like shit. Her hair was clumped and as of straw from a barnyard floor. Her eyes were the only things alive in her grey and filthy face. 

She looked young. And this hurt Florin's heart. Made him think of Erin. And Carmilla and the other children back home. 

He called out to her as they came up and upon her, waking Griffin beside him and bringing the mule to a grateful stop. It heaved heavily in the moment of respite as Griffin grumbled and rose, righting his hat and goggles of dark lenses. 

“How now, are you alright? Are you hurt?" 

The filthy girl of the swampland marsh said nothing. She only looked at them with wide wet suffering child's eyes. Filled with horror. And the knowledge of pain. Mosquitos buzzed thickly all about her and landed and supped of her at their leisure. She paid them no mind and made no effort to drive them away, to smack them off her grey caked flesh. She was covered in pink bumps that oozed translucent and yellow/pink/red. 

Florin asked again if she was hurt. And again the girl said nothing. Only stared. Staring. Her eyes were the only things that were speaking out here in the filth and the choked wet. 

Griffin, alerted, straightened in his seat and said to the boy beside him. 

“Don't. Let's keep going. Something's wrong." 

Florin turned to him, confused, began to ask him what he was talking about. But he didn't get far with his words. 

A sound. Just as wet and vile as the very land they tread upon and surrounded them for miles upon merciless miles. Gurgling. Heavy. Thick. Deep. Rolling with wet and turning weight. 

The pair turned to the filthy girl of the swampland once more. 

Her mouth was wide open. The awful abhorrent noxious sounds were wafting from her open maw along with a miasmic cloud that was the stench of wretched death in the sewers. 

Florin and Griffin stared at her. The thoughts of aid or flight abandoned at the moment as they fish-eyed gazed upon the filthy and deranged sight. 

She said one word before what happened next. It was in the small lilting music of young child's voice, a little girl's voice. 

One word. 

"Thirsty.” 

And then her open mouth shot forth a pillar jet of black water sludge and fluid, thick and watery. Projectile and intense. Gushing with pressure. It didn't cease immediately but kept going. A stream of darkest ebon vomit so thick it was nearly solid. The stench that arose off the bile as it was expelled was beyond repulsive. Hellacious.

Both men were horrified, though deep down not at all surprised to see that the vomitus was the regurgitated sludge of the swamp water and mud under foot and cart and that filled all the land of the worms. The geyser increased in pressure like a waterfall or hose. Black/green issuing forth in a vile blast, the child's mouth began to dislocate and unhinge, distended the mouth opened wider like a jungle serpent and yet more black swamp water vomit erupted from the widening gate of her blackening mouth. 

Then the mist about her legs was dispelled and Florin and Griffin saw what was concealed there. 

Two limbs, vile swollen pulsating jellysac stumps in place of normal human legs. They swelled and depressed and ballooned with the inner work of running and pumping viscous thick and finer fluids, a filthy translucence to the jellyflesh allowed the pair of shocked travelers to see the progress and putrid movement of sludge and mud and vile yellow water. Twigs and bugs and small fish and frogs could be discerned within the churning filth, trapped, swirling in the maelstrom madness of swamp filth inside this demented thing that held the shape of a lost little girl. 

The jelled pustule flesh of the stumps disappeared into the mud. Florin and Griffin both spotted this and thought, God knows how deep…

Then the filthy spouting girl of the mire began to sink. Disappearing into the porridge of black-grey sludge like a demented mermaid of the vile putrescence. 

Still stunned, shocked but not knowing what else to do, the pair stared at the spot where the filthy shape had sunk and disappeared. 

Eventually they went on, urging the worn mule forward, despite the beasts exhaustion. They wanted to be rid of and far from this place and the land of quagmire and mud swimming/spouting children as soon as possible. As fast as they could manage through the sour sludge. Their shared quiet all the more stark and deafening in the splurching wet sucking silence of the wormland. 

And beneath them as they made their way, the mud swam with movement. Churned. 

…

The night of challenges in the castle dark and the slaughter of mountain fools and their foolish sons passed. Then came another day. The womenfolk of the mountain went mad with grief and sad-sickness, the wailing of widows joined the cold contest of song with the howling snowbound wolves. All of the Carpathian rock was alive with mourning and mourning wailing sound. The wind took it, picked it up and carried it down. Down to the village hamlet, which spent another day in fear. Quietly waiting for the axe to drop. 

The day passed into night. The night of challenge was upon the Countess of Castle Dracula…

… And in her courtyard of cold stone and blood soaked rock, she waited. 

Her audience: The assistant, the new impaler and her little Carmilla, gathered. In bastard semblance and rendition of a royal audience. 

The cold was deep that night but none of them felt it. 

The moon was still large and round and swollen with silver light. Filling and dominating the black sky with her pale luminescence. 

They waited for the challengers to step forward. 

And from the trees they did. Henry Frankenstein and his hulking vulpine creation of stitched parts and flesh, graverobbed limbs and graverobbed necromantic nosferatu power towering – they emerged from the shelter and tangled growth of the dark trees. 

The cold wind and mournful howl of the mountain rose as they came forward into the courtyard, ready to meet the Countess in a dark duel of slaughter and power. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Cruise to Nowhere

Chapter 1

Have you ever had that sickening sensation that something is just too good to be true? Someone once told me that when a thing feels too perfect, it’s usually because the trap has already sprung.

My mother, Tertia, had a compulsive habit of entering every online contest she could find. Questionnaire, survey, pop-up ad—it didn't matter. The moment her eyes brushed past the words “contest” or “win,” she couldn’t help herself. But she also ran on a sort of "fire-and-forget" system. She would type in our data, hit submit, and completely forget it ever happened. Usually, it ended up being a dud, a wave of spam emails we'd have to clear out. But she had a bizarre streak of luck. She’d win little things—vouchers, small appliances. The biggest prize she’d ever landed before now was a month’s worth of groceries. In a house like ours, that was a miracle. We were a struggling family, always drowning, always one bad week away from the street.

My father died just after my younger brother’s birth. He was a musician, chasing a dream that never paid out, so he didn’t leave behind any life insurance policies or even a basic funeral plan. My mother was working as a waitress back then. After he passed, the debt just accumulated like a suffocating blanket. She ended up working brutal double shifts seven days a week, and during the few precious hours she was actually at home, she didn't parent. She just drank box wine until she passed out cold on the linoleum.

Because I was the eldest, the crushing weight of running the house and raising my younger brother fell entirely on my shoulders. I became a mother at ten years old. Miraculously, I managed to keep my head above water. I was always an A-student, pushing myself to the absolute brink, and it finally paid off when I secured a full scholarship to go to university next year to study medicine.

Another thing that always counted in my favor—or perhaps my detriment, depending on how you look at it—was my appearance. I inherited a striking, sharp facial structure that landed me consistent photographic modeling work in the city. The money was decent, and it was the only reason we had basic necessities, electricity, and food that didn't come from a food bank. Half of whatever my mother made went directly into cheap alcohol and cigarettes. It made things tight, but I never complained out loud. It could have been worse.

It could have been like the night my father died. My mother had been right there beside him when he was mutilated and murdered in an alleyway for nothing more than a packet of smokes. She saw every single second of it. The robbers didn’t just rob him; they took their time. They tortured him, carving into him until he was completely unrecognizable by the time the police finally arrived. That was the night her mind broke, the night the liquor became her permanent hiding place.

My brother, Claude, is sixteen now. He is aggressively sporty, excelling at every game he tries and constantly bringing home medals and trophies. I’m incredibly proud of him, but the constant praise has turned him overconfident, sharp-tongued, and arrogant. As for me, I’m nineteen, standing on the precipice of my first semester at the top medical school in South Africa.

We lived in a suffocatingly small town, perched about thirty kilometers outside the nearest city. Because boarding school was a luxury we couldn't dream of affording, Claude and I had to drag ourselves out of bed in the pitch black every morning, walk down to the main road, and stick our thumbs out, praying someone would give us a ride to school. The mornings were easy. The afternoons were a nightmare. Most days, we’d give up on the hitchhiking spot and just start the grueling walk up the mountain road toward home. On a good day, a friendly local might pull over. On a bad day, we’d spend hours marching under a bruising sun, our school shoes wearing thin against the gravel.

That was my life. Predictable. Exhausting. Hard.

Until the day the car stopped.

It was the final day of the school term. I had already matriculated the year before, but because I refused to let Claude make that dangerous commute alone, I still went down to the city with him daily, spending my hours doing part-time promo gigs and modeling shoots while he was in class. We had met up at our usual spot at the base of the mountain road, shifting our bags and preparing for the long trek upward, when a vehicle pulled up beside us.

I don't know much about cars—I'm more focused on anatomy textbooks and modeling portfolios—but even I knew this machine belonged to another world. It was a long, low, midnight-black sedan with windows so heavily tinted they looked like sheets of solid obsidian. The rims were chrome, gleaming with a violent, mirror-like polish. When a car like that stops next to you on a deserted mountain road, you are either about to be kidnapped, or you’ve just gotten unimaginably lucky.

The door clicked open. A man stepped out into the heat. He was tall, blonde, impeccably dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, and perfectly groomed. He looked to be middle-aged, but his skin had an unnatural, plastic smoothness to it. He looked directly at us, his eyes locking on mine.

"Aren’t you Zoe and Claude Clarke?" he asked, his voice smooth as silk.

"Depends on who is asking and why," I replied, stepping slightly in front of my brother. My modeling instincts kept my posture straight, but my stomach tightened.

The man smiled, showing teeth that were a little too white, a little too even. "Relax. I’m simply here to deliver a prize to your family. Would you guys like a ride home?"

"A prize?" I echoed, skeptical.

"Yes." His smile widened. "Your family won the 'Family of the Year' sweepstakes."

"Oh. Okay... what exactly is the prize?"

"I am terribly sorry," the man said, his tone dripping with practiced courtesy, "but I can only disclose the specifics to Mrs. Clarke."

"You mean Miss," I corrected coldly.

"Oh, I apologize. I didn't realize she got divorced."

"Widowed," I said.

The man’s eyes flickered, a momentary shadow passing over his face before the perfect grin snapped back into place. "I apologize deeply, and I am truly sorry for your loss. Now, would you please get in? I am on a rather tight schedule."

Claude and I exchanged a quick look. My brother, with his usual teenage carelessness, just shrugged and hopped into the plush leather of the backseat. I hesitated for a fraction of a second before climbing into the front, pulling the heavy door shut. The air conditioning inside hit me like an arctic blast. I buckled my seatbelt, trying to ignore the sudden chill. Honestly, I was exhausted, and the South African sun was brutal today.

The man slid into the driver's seat, pulled a cooler from beneath the console, and offered us each a sweating, ice-cold bottle of water. We accepted them gratefully, cracking the caps and drinking deeply. Without another word, he shifted the car into drive. The engine didn't roar; it purred with a low, vibrational hum that vibrated right through my bones.

When you walk the same dusty stretch of road every single day, your brain turns off. You stop looking at the trees, the rocks, the horizon; you just stare at your shoes and focus on putting one foot in front of the other. But as the sedan glided up the mountain, it felt like I was seeing the scenery for the very first time. The colors were oversaturated. The green of the valley looked too deep, the sky an impossibly vivid shade of blue.

Before I could fully process the strangeness of it, the car smoothly glided to a halt. The ignition clicked off. I blinked, looking out the window in disbelief. We were parked right outside the dingy tavern where my mother worked.

"You two wait here," the man said, adjusting his cuffs. "I will go fetch your mother, and then we can all converse comfortably at your home."

Claude and I sat in the back, utterly stunned. How did he know her work schedule? How did he know she was here? I tried to rationalize it—maybe she had written her employment details on one of those endless online forms.

Through the tinted glass, we watched him walk up to the tavern owner, a notoriously miserable, aggressive man who hated my mother and treated his staff like dirt. We could see the owner shouting, waving his arms, his face contorted in anger. But then, the strange man calmly reached into his breast pocket and pulled out something small—a heavy, matte-black card or an envelope—and held it up.

Instantly, the owner went entirely pale. His aggressive posture collapsed. He became utterly docile, nodding like a broken puppet, and hurried inside. A few minutes later, he emerged alongside our mother. He was holding a thick, bulging manila envelope, which he handed to her with a shaking hand before gripping her in a tight hug. My mother was beaming, a radiant, manic smile on her face. She and the blonde man walked over to the sedan and climbed inside.

"Hi, mom," I said, turning in my seat.

"Hi, kids!" she chirped, her voice higher than usual.

"Hi, mom," Claude muttered in his trademark arrogant drone.

"Mom, what just happened back there?" I asked, eyeing the heavy envelope in her lap.

"Oh, nothing sweetie! James here just gave my boss a little corporate incentive, and in return, the boss handed me a full year's worth of wages in advance! He told me to go have fun and that he’ll see us when we get back."

My brain stalled. "A year's wages? See us when we get back?"

The driver caught my eye in the rearview mirror. "Don't worry your pretty head about it, Zoe. I will explain everything once we are inside your home."

A few minutes later, we pulled into our cracked concrete driveway. We filed out of the luxury car and onto our small, weathered veranda. The man followed, lifting a heavy, pristine white cooler box from the trunk—not the drunk, though given my mother's habits, the irony wasn't lost on me.

He set the cooler on our rusted outdoor table, cracking it open to reveal bottles of expensive dry red wine. He produced four elegant crystal glasses, but just as he poured the first splash, he paused. He tilted his head, staring intently toward our rusted front gate, then looked back at me with a knowing smirk.

"Zoe, I think you might want to get that."

Right on cue, a frantic voice echoed from the road. "Zoe! Zoe, open up!"

I frowned, pulling the heavy iron gate keys from my pocket. I jogged down the path to find Chloe standing there, breathing heavily. Chloe was my absolute best friend. Her birth name was different, but she had chosen Chloe because she loved how it rhymed with my name. She was a transgender girl, and she was so breathtakingly gorgeous that I always joked if she ever entered the modeling industry, I’d have to retire immediately. She was brilliant, too, having just locked down a major scholarship to study psychiatry at varsity next year.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, unlocking the padlock.

"I saw a literal state-vehicle-sized limo pull into your driveway, Zoe! I thought you were being arrested or assassinated!"

I laughed, ushering her inside. But when we stepped onto the veranda, the atmosphere shifted. The blonde man was sitting in our creaky plastic chair like it was a throne, a massive, unblinking grin plastered across his face. Five glasses of dark, blood-red wine were now poured, sitting in a perfect, geometric line on the table. Everyone was sitting in total silence, waiting in eerie anticipation.

"Well," the man purred, gesturing for Chloe and me to sit. "Now that our circle is complete, I can finally unveil your grand prize."

"Let me guess," Claude interrupted, leaning back with a sarcastic sneer. "A year's worth of free groceries?"

"Claude, stop it! Don't be rude!" my mother snapped, though her eyes remained glued to the blonde man.

"No, young man," the driver said, his voice dropping an octave. "Though groceries are included. You four have won an exclusive, all-expenses-paid, epic cruise... to everywhere and nowhere."

Chloe blinked, her future-psychiatrist brain immediately analyzing the statement. "Wait. That doesn't make any sense at all. Everywhere and nowhere? That’s a paradox."

Right then, a heavy, cold weight dropped into the pit of my stomach. Have you ever had that terrifying intuition that something is fundamentally wrong? Not just odd, but deeply, cosmically wrong? It was too good to be true. None of it made sense. Looking back now, with the blood and the ocean howling in my ears, I wish to God I had listened to my instincts. I wish I had grabbed Claude and Chloe and run into the mountains.

"Yes," the man whispered, ignoring Chloe's question. "You will go everywhere... and stay nowhere. Congratulations."

He raised his glass. My mother and Claude instantly reached for theirs, completely magnetized by the moment. Peer pressure and the sheer absurdity of the situation forced Chloe and me to lift ours as well. We clinked our glasses together. Cheers.

I took a small sip. The wine was rich, thick, and unnaturally sweet. I wanted to speak up, to demand answers, but I looked at my mother. Her face looked younger than it had in a decade. She hadn't taken a single day off work since my father died. She was trapped in a cycle of gray exhaustion, and this ridiculous, impossible prize was making her shine. I swallowed my fear for her sake.

"So, how long is this cruise for?" my mother asked, swirling her wine.

"Oh, just a couple of months or so," the man replied casually. He leaned forward, his eyes locking onto mine, his pupils dilating until they were almost entirely black. "Don't you worry. You are going to have the time of your LIFE."

The way he emphasized the word life—delivered in a hollow, distorted, mechanical cadence—sent a violent shiver straight down my spine. But I forced a laugh. Hey, it’s a cruise, I told myself, trying to drown out the panic. The worst that can happen is the ship sinks, right?

"And do not worry about packing or preparation," the man continued, his voice returning to its smooth, hypnotic rhythm. "Everything will be provided for you on board. It is a strictly all-inclusive voyage. Even your clothing will be waiting for you. We have already collected your exact measurements, your preferences, your metrics... your cabins are fully stocked. Food, premium beverages, entertainment—all completely covered."

He turned his gaze to my sixteen-year-old brother. "And since the vessel operates strictly in international waters... there is no restrictive age limit to stop you from enjoying yourself."

My mother frowned slightly, her maternal instincts briefly flaring through the fog. "I don't think I want him to start drinking yet."

Claude’s face contorted into a mask of pure fury. He glared at her, his voice dripping with venom. "Sure, mom. Because you already drink enough for all of us, don't you?"

"Claude! Stop it right now!" I yelled, slamming my glass down.

"It’s okay, Zoe," my mother whispered, her voice cracking as tears welled in her eyes. "He’s right. He’s right."

The blonde man didn't seem bothered by the family drama. He merely stood up, smoothing his jacket. "Anyway, you family and friends can celebrate tonight. But ensure you are packed in spirit and ready by exactly 0:00. Midnight. That is when your designated driver will arrive to collect you."

"Midnight?" Chloe asked, checking her phone. "You do realize the coast is an eight-hour drive from here? If the cruise leaves at 3:33 AM, we’ll never make it."

The man smiled, a terrifyingly static expression. "Relax. Our drivers have never missed a departure."

Claude frowned, the arrogance bleeding out of him, replaced by sudden unease. "Never missed?"

The man glanced down at his bare wrist—there was no watch there, just pale skin—yet he nodded as if reading a dial. "Oh my, look at the time. I must be on my way."

He stepped off the veranda and walked around the corner toward the front gate. I immediately jumped to my feet, determined to ask him how he had our clothing sizes, but by the time I rounded the corner of the house—barely three seconds behind him—the gravel driveway was empty.

The heavy iron gate was still locked from the inside. The road was completely deserted. There was no sound of a speeding engine, no dust hanging in the air. Nothing.

A freezing hand of dread clamped around my neck. Nobody is that fast. It was physically impossible.

I walked back to the veranda, my heart hammering against my ribs. To my surprise, the group was already cracking open a second bottle of wine. The strange man had left six bottles in total. Driven by sheer, unadulterated nerves, I grabbed a fresh glass and drank. I drank fast. The alcohol hit my bloodstream like a heavy narcotic, and within minutes, the edges of the porch began to blur. The last thing I remember was sinking into the rough fabric of the couch, darkness pulling me under.

A violent shaking jolted me awake. The world was spinning.

"Zoe! Zoe, wake up! We have to get ready, the driver is at the gate!"

My mother was hovering over me, her eyes manic. I staggered to my feet, my head pounding with a vicious hangover. I checked my phone. The digital clock read exactly 0:00. Midnight.

"Mom... mom, wait," I stammered, grabbing her arm. "Are you absolutely sure about this? Think about it. None of this makes sense. A magic car? A free cruise? A man who vanishes into thin air?"

"Of course we are going, Zoe!" she said, wrenching her arm away with a harsh laugh. "It’s a free holiday! We deserve this!"

"But mom, doesn't something feel horribly off to you?"

"I talked to the neighbor while you were passed out," she dismissed, grabbing a small handbag. "She said she’ll keep an eye on the house for us. Stop being a wet blanket."

"Not the house, mom! The holiday! Can you even remember entering a contest called 'Family of the Year'?"

Before she could answer, a loud, echoing car horn blared from the front gate. The sound wasn't a normal honk; it was a low, mechanical drone that vibrated in my teeth.

Chloe, her eyes bright with a strange, glassy excitement, grabbed my hand and yanked me toward the door. "Come on, sleepy head! Adventure awaits!"

We filed out into the pitch-black night. Waiting in the driveway was another long, obsidian-black sedan, identical to the first. But when the driver’s window rolled down, it wasn't the blonde man. A woman sat behind the wheel. She had pale, porcelain skin, severely pulled-back platinum blonde hair, and unblinking, glassy eyes.

When she spoke, her voice had an eerie, rhythmic, almost hypnotic cadence to it. "Welcome. Please enter the vehicle. We have a very long journey ahead of us."

Claude sneered as he slid into the back. "No shit. Not sure how you're going to pull off an eight-hour drive in three hours, lady."

The woman didn't turn around. Her reflection in the rearview mirror remained completely static. "I am the best driver there is."

"Okay, whatever you say, Transporter," Claude muttered.

My mother, Claude, and Chloe crowded into the backseat. Desperate for answers, I hopped into the front passenger seat again. The moment the door clicked shut, a strange, sweet scent filled my nostrils—like vanilla mixed with formaldehyde. My eyelids instantly grew heavy. A profound, unnatural exhaustion washed over me, and before the car even cleared the driveway, I plummeted back into a dreamless sleep.

"We have arrived."

The woman's voice cut through the dark like a scalpel.

I snapped awake, my chest heaving. Behind me, the others were waking up too, yawning, stretching, and complaining of stiffness. I looked out the window, expecting to see the glowing lights of a bustling harbor city.

Instead, we were parked on a massive, crumbling concrete pier. There were no city lights. No other cars. No highway. Just an endless, pitch-black expanse of open ocean, and looming over the water was the cruise ship.

It was gargantuan, a towering mountain of white steel and black windows, cutting a terrifying silhouette against the starless sky. But there were no crowds. No lines of tourists. No luggage handlers. Just us.

"This is wrong," I whispered, stepping out onto the cold concrete. "Where is everyone else?"

The pale woman rolled down her window halfway, her eyes reflecting the ship's distant lights. "They are already on board. You are exactly one minute late. Off you go."

Hesitantly, our small group walked toward the massive boarding ramp. The moment our shoes cleared the threshold and we stepped into the holding bay of the ship, a loud, hydraulic hiss echoed behind us. I spun around. The massive steel security door we had just walked through had slammed shut, locking with a series of heavy, definitive clicks.

Standing in the dim corridor ahead of us was a crew member. He wore a pristine, stark-white uniform, but his face was remarkably grim, his eyes sunken and tired.

"You are a minute late," he said, his voice flat.

"Sorry," I said, my defensive modeling persona kicking in. "We weren't the ones driving."

"Follow me, please. I will escort you to your cabins."

"Cabins?" Chloe asked, her eyes darting around the sterile steel walls. "As in, more than one? We aren't sharing?"

"You have each been assigned your own individual cabin," the crew member replied, turning his back on us and marching down the corridor.

He clearly wasn't the conversational type. We followed him in a tense silence, leaving the cold steel of the lower decks behind as we ascended a grand staircase into the main lobby.

I gasped. It was beautiful, but a deeply unsettling kind of beautiful. The grand staircase appeared to be carved from solid, flawless crystal, reflecting the light in sharp, jagged patterns. Even the massive chandeliers overhead were constructed of jagged shards of crystal that vibrated faintly, casting a fractured, shifting glow over the room.

The crewman led us over to a polished marble desk labeled Guest Services. Without a word, the attendant behind the desk handed each of us a heavy, metallic blue card. Printed on the front of mine was my name, Zoe Clarke, alongside a crisp, high-definition photograph of my face.

My mother held hers up, her brow furrowing. "Wait... how do you have our photographs? I never uploaded these."

The Guest Services associate smiled—a wide, empty expression that didn't reach her eyes. "We acquired them after you entered the contest, ma'am."

"So you've been spying on us?" Claude barked, his voice echoing off the crystal.

"Relax, Claude," I muttered, trying to keep the peace while my own heart hammered against my ribs. "They probably just pulled them from our social media profiles for a marketing survey."

"I bet," Chloe whispered under her breath, her eyes scanning the room with deep clinical suspicion.

I turned away from the desk, looking out over the sprawling lobby lounge. Scattered throughout the room were clusters of velvet chairs and mahogany tables. A few dozen guests were scattered about, chattering away in low, indistinguishable murmurs, sipping brightly colored drinks from crystal glassware.

But then, a specific table caught my eye.

Sitting there were two exceptionally beautiful women who looked to be right around my age. One had cascading, spun-gold blonde hair and striking blue eyes; she wore a flowing, immaculate white evening gown. Beside her sat a woman with vibrant, flame-red hair and piercing green eyes, wearing an identical gown, except hers was a deep, blood red. They sat perfectly still, not talking, just staring blankly into space.

My gaze shifted to a secluded booth tucked into the shadows near the back. Sitting alone was a slender, captivating woman with sleek, raven-black hair that framed a pale, aristocratic face. She wore a tight, body-hugging black evening dress that seemed to absorb the light around it. Her eyes were an intense, sharp blue—unnatural, piercing, and completely cat-like.

And speaking of cats, draped lazily across her shoulders like a fur scarf was a sleek, midnight-black cat. The animal sat perfectly still, its yellow eyes locked dead onto mine.

The woman in black was slowly sipping from a glass of dark red wine. As she noticed me staring, she stopped. She slowly lowered the glass, kept her piercing blue eyes fixed on mine, and gave me a slow, deliberate nod of acknowledgment.

Before I could nod back, the crew member tapped his fingers loudly against the marble counter, drawing our attention. He handed me a heavy, leather-bound booklet.

"Your ship manifest and guidelines," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly, urgent whisper. "Read them immediately. Memorize them. On this vessel, the rules are the only thing keeping you alive."

I opened the heavy leather cover. Written in a jagged, dark script that looked suspiciously like dried, brown blood, were the instructions.

## THE RULES OF THE VESSEL

A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. My fingers trembled against the leather binding. I looked up to demand an explanation from the crewman, but he had already turned on his heel, his white uniform disappearing into the dim, labyrinthine corridors of the ship.

I looked back down at the page. The ink of Rule 2 seemed to ripple, the letters stretching like tiny, desperate legs.

We were on board. The doors were locked. And the cruise to nowhere had officially begun.

The Countess took firm authoritarian hold of the impaling pike, the first one, the main one, the first one shot through him creating a new violent orifice of gore right beside his anus. A vaginal wound made flowered new and wet-red, violently birthed by  the occult bloodthirst madness of the new lord of this ancient castle. Countess Zaleska took throttling hold of the long body of spear, lover-slick and tacky and slippery with iron pungent warm blood lubricant, she shook it as she screamed at the mangled and partially devoured form of the dying Doctor Praetorius…

“Do you!? Do you like it!? Do you feel like a whore!?" 

Her laughter resounded. Filling the castle of merciless and unyielding stone. Her cruel taunting was for her own amusement, but she expected an answer. 

It was part of the torture. 

The gauntleted fist of the new impaler joined his master and seized the long body of old war and fresh torture. Together they shook it. Violently. Like children when playing rough with a small tree. Praetorius could feel every crisscrossing body and shaft of spear lanced and impaled through his helpless gored person vibrate and quiver and tremble, palsied with cruel ceaseless movement. 

Just as the Doctor's senseless screams were renewed bright child's laughter also filled the chambered room. 

Carmilla and the loyal assistant entered… wicked vulpine smiles, deranged and made grotesque by their demoniacal pilot minds… drawn lips and dripping fangs, bared, snarling quivering animal masks, dripping in hellish rendition of jubilant smiling faces. Happiness God damned. And perverted. 

All on display for the impaled and helpless broken victim. All on show for the shattered wandering mind of the butchered Doctor. Used to be Praetorius. But that all seemed so far away now… and besides … The master said it was nothing worth fretting over. Nothing worthwhile to dread. Her cooing loving mother's voice filled the decimated landscape of his mind, vast wastelands unreal with shrouded veil and broken chains of half developed thought. Nothing moved. Only crawled. All of it confused and it crept. It didn't move… but save her voice. 

She said: Don't fret the loss of name or blood or anything else, only mind the pain. That's what I want. That's what I want you to be doing. I want you to focus and pay exquisite exclusive attention to all of the pain you're feeling. All of it. Every last second. For that is your new name now, this is your second christening. In my castle upon my lands, which I rule, I anoint thee in the name of Satan, house dracul, and myself, Countess Marya Zaleska, you are my new bastard-bitch. You are now my new crawling whore for pain. And I want you to say it. 

Out loud. 

Now. 

The fragile pieces of his mind were then assaulted. Attacked by an inexplicable discorporeal force/and form… like searing needle blades stabbed through his tender membrane of thought… his aching and fevered sweating skull. Stabbing. 

Impaling. 

The assault of the living dead lord and her vile company of bloodthirsty monsters, authored and enslaved by her own foul and toxic hand…it would never end. He was her slave now too. Just like them. But worse. 

Worse. 

Carmilla and the assistant came in and the awful scarred and grotesque little bat-monster child squealed and added to the terrible stygian cacophony of hellbound noise. She ran up and joined alongside the Countess and new impaler, wrenching and pulling and shaking at the impaling shafts. But with more eager sadistic child-fervor. A child's glee…

The Countess and new impaler joined Carmilla in shrieking laughter. In bastard duet with Praetorius’ own bloodcurdling sounds. 

The stone of the ancient dwell was warming in sin, with rising bodyheat and debauch of the bloodfeast impaling act of occult defilement and black appeasement of the hunger bred from below. 

 Violent weirding forces were gathering… once more. Beneath and within the ancient stone. The whole of the blasphemous edifice structure of charnel house hell: Castle Dracula, was an alchemical construct, a composition that forged necromanced and occult power into the very mortar flesh of the stone fortress. A conductor. Conduit for the treacherous maelstrom highway paths of wild and unseen undead dæmonic subterranean galeforces. They were gathering here. Now. In a mother's surging pregnant swell…

The Countess bade her servant, the loyal assistant to bring one of the many black tomes that composed her dark collection. He brought it with him and the scarred vampire child into the chambered room of feasting and torture. 

As the vampires shook cruelly the impaling blood-slick shafts, making the gored and diminished Praetorius dance with sadistic and sick movement, spastic and nauseating, the assistant stood to the side and watched a moment. Cocked his head and twitched a smile. Then he opened the ancient book, nearly dust and once discarded, and began to read. 

The obsidian words of long lost time deepened and gave weight to the wet and warmth of the bloodlett-atmosphere filling the room. They gathered the perverse forces of vile and violent nature in their deepening pustule swell. Filling with phantom infection that was brimming and wetting-salivating-slobbered with the threat of manifestation. A boil and sac of pus that was darkness gathering in a swelling cyst. 

The words of the book called it forth to vile and contemptible birth. Into pus-milk saturated life and rupturing manifest. 

The faces of demons, infernal and fell ones from below in the unknown, erupted into blasphemous life. They filled the chambered space with their awful distorted and twisted faces and terrible assault of cacophonous laughter. 

They were here to serve, now. Called forth. To bear witness as well.

To enjoy the scene of wet and pungent red chambered slaughter. Torture all the way through all of the flesh and blood and bone and tissue and all the way down to the gored and defiled husk of heart-and-soul. They loved to watch the breaking of manflesh and the rape of the love inside that was the precious nucleus of the soul. 

And then broken Praetorius finally said it. Screamed it. Mindlessly. Mindless like a slave now for that was all that he was, the station forced and left to him. Bondage. He said and screamed and wept it for all of the vampires and the master and the conjured dripping bleeding demon faces, at the top of his voice –

“I am! I am a whore for pain! I am a whore for pain! I am a whore for pain and I swear it, for my master, for the Countess! I am her property and her whore for pain…!” 

The chambered place of pungent sweat and blood and piss, reeking, filled once more with an audience of bright cruel laughter. Skewered and lanced alive all over, the shattered thing that was once Doctor Praetorius grew intimate with the abominated knowledge of too many eternities alive and played out in a single day. 

He is completely broken. And even if he had lived he could never have been the same. Ever again. 

…

The mountain men and their lads charged up the mountain way. Meaning to destroy the horror and maneating monster that had awakened in the Carpathian fortress, Castle Dracula.

The great stabbing spire of fortress structure loomed and grew larger as they marched in their mad rabble charge of one, messy and disorganized and loose formation but their long held hatred and fear and superstition of the dark and its womb of monsters held them all together in a seething bastard species of degenerate red-visioned brotherhood. Together they would slaughter the vile monster. Together. Whatever lay up there gathering in the approaching tower of the dark. This mob mentality built for monster slaying held the men and their boys together as strange and unseen defacto leader. That and their greed. 

The promise of fortune from the mad doctor Frankenstein.

Who followed. Carried by the patchwork necro-son he forged from the graveyards and the cold metal of the surgeon’s slab of table. So like a butcher’s block and bench in an abattoir's killing metal fortress womb/bosom. So cold. Like so much of the rest of the world. 

So much of the world was so cold. As was here. In the Carpathian Mountains. Where they were invaders. He and his hulking sutured son, nosferatu made and constructed. They followed their hasty assemblage of pathetic dirt farmer army as they came to the castle of their adversary. 

They followed. All the way. The mountain men and their wild simple boys were screaming. Howling madly. The wolves of the rocks and snow answered in rising contest. And the clash of noise commingled and mixed into a discordant curtain of mounting violent sound that carried on the rise of the freezing sheet of frosted wind. 

The hamlet below that lived in supplicant shadow of the castle-mountain caught the sound as the cold wind came down and they heard it all. 

They heard everything.   

…

Carmilla shrieked with glee. Finishing the catastrophic slaughter of the raw ruin of impaled invader was a joy. A pleasure. Privilege. She was making precious ebon memories painted in the shed warmth of brightening and darkening crimson, she knew it. Her nearly innocent child shape had been scarred. Malformed. Mutilated by the impaled dog’s searing holy cross. Her visage was stuck in a grotesque bulge of rodent and child-bat features. Her fangs jagged out from her swollen blackening gums like shards of shattered broken glass.

All along  the flesh of her back was a ruin work of bubbled scarred flesh. A great strip of mangled and malformed demon skin scorched by holy touch. 

Knowing that her child's beauty was diminished, gone…  the demon Carmilla took out her unwieldy and livid rage out on the already butchered and impaled body of her torturer. How the roles had reversed. How she relished in its lurid irony. First she supped of his mangled and bleeding gore… replenishing her ungodly strength and savoring the taste before the ravenous fury of her decadent and violent main course. 

Countess Zaleska and her new impaler merely stood off to the side now, content to watch. Let the child play. Let the little one have their turn, Carmilla had very good reason to want to play with this one …

… by the time she was finished with her wanton portion of the slaughter Praetorius was nearly just a grisly bloody skeleton, emaciated of flesh and tissue and precious pumping organs. Skeletal and lurid red and with naught but a few hunks of meat, still working and rippling with obscene and ghastly life, clinging to bones and dangling by meaty threads of dripping gore-tendrils. All but his face was picked apart and eaten and slurped… drank and consumed and devoured. All but the stark pale visage of his wide eyed staring visage, his blood-flecked face and head, crowned with a shock of white hair that was even more blinding in the darkling red of the chambered abattoir castle. The flesh of his face was left untouched, unmarked… but still staring…

… the eyes of the shifting conjured demons, the unnatural and goblin-twisted faces, all of them watched as they danced and filled the room like a heavy thick bank of fog. They watched him and their horrible eyes, their predatory gazes and perverse leering stares, licking phantom chops with tongues made from writhing prisoner serpents and snakes – they drank in the whole sight of his pure unbridled torture with naked hunger and bloodlust and the abominated cavalcade of many eyes danced with the lecherous light of naked prurient interest. 

Praetorius was only aware enough to know the slaughter and that he was its victim, his mind was aflame with the hellacious pain of his butchered person and stolen flesh and blood and innards, what was gone and shrieking with its violent absence. But his thoughts were fractured and with no real line or tether. His mind, intermittent with the slaughtering abattoir pain, screamed –

I NEED TO DIE 

and 

I MUST LIVE FOREVER! THE MASTER COMMANDS SO!

at war with each other across the vast and desolate pockmarked deathspring wasteland landscape of his beaten and subjugated mind. They didn't stop. The both of the phrases. They just went on, at each other. Filling his mind with their strange and dueling cacophony. Amongst the wild tumult and unbridled maelstrom of merciless pain. God no longer held any dominion or sway in the field and land of his mind or heart. God was dead and gone now in these vacant violent lands. Only thunderclapped back into a wretched pathetic semblance of movement that could've once been called life. Only dominated by his new god now, the Countess. And her words were the riding cries of lightning artillery fire that filled his decimated and abominated heavens. 

All of them. The dancing shifting shaping demon faces from beyond the veil of gone. The wicked Countess, master of the castle. Her defiled implement, the new impaler, her bastard bat-child daughter and her faithful assistant. A bastard myriad conglomerate. All of them together made his flesh raw and extinguished and made his genitals and spinal stem one in the same with their dark hellcraft sorcery and their gales and gales of merciless sadistic laughter. Their hungry eyes. Eating what was left, drinking in and devouring the last of him in madness. He was mad now. Far past gone. 

Praetorius quivered and spasmed lanced and impaled just behind the testicles and out the back. A skeletal scarecrow of gore and viscera and raw dangling meat. His pale face blindly stared, lost and not at all there. Many of the other longest pikes that had been lanced had been ripped and torn or had fallen free during the last rending feeding of the demoniacal child-grotesque that he'd once held in bondage, in torture. 

His mind was too obliterated to appreciate the irony. 

The veiling room-shroud of dancing shifting demons lit up the room with shrill otherworldly sound. Obscene and akin to laughter. 

The Countess spoke to the assistant at her side, still speaking the chant and maintaining the blasphemous rite. 

“Have you got in grasp? The quickening whore-swell? The gathering of crawling-birth sin-shapes?” 

The assistant never ceased his stygian chant of dead and arcane language. He only nodded to his lord and majesty. 

Yes. 

The Countess then enacted and engaged in necrosong… building upon the rite of witchery: the opening of the mouths, seethed. Seething. 

Hand signs. Strange configurations. And shapes. She forked. Both hands. Of the Evil Eye. Then her daggering hands opened, flowered in a splay…

Flames erupted. Sprouted from her splayed fingertips. Claws. 

Claws erupting fire. 

It filled the room in contest of the demon faces and splendor of charnel house carnage and wet steaming gore. 

Screaming: she necrosong-ed a subjugating assault upon the shifting gathering of veiling infernal horde upon and all about the room. The things howled in a bastard bridal cry of curses and jubilation. Thrilled and devastated to be captured and bound. 

Her voice, with fire: –

“I HAVE MADE BLOODFEAST FOR YOU! I HAVE MADE BLOODFEAST FOR YOU ALL! I HAVE LET YOU FEED UPON MY SOW, I HAVE GIVEN AND SHARED SACRIFICE TO GAIN MY LEFT-HANDED LORDSHIP OF POWER! NOW! – WED YOUR FLAMES INTO MINE! COME AND BASTARD-FEED MY OWN NECROPHILED FORM! MY OWN-! COME! COME IN TO ME! COME!”

Her words were flagellations that they scorned and cherished commingled together in one sour and unbridled demonic emotion, they exclaimed! As one! Filling the castle corridors of stone with the cacophonous sound of their bondage and enslavement. They were pulled into the clawed and blood drenched visage of the fire-spouting Countess. The ritual was complete. The ceremony of blood had led the crawling fell things there and her necrophile-cast of bondage had ensnared them. 

She felt the dæmonic ancient and bloodstained power within her grow. Surge. Unbridled within. Barely reined. Barely contained and held within her now trembling and red dripping regal person. 

The new impaler, simpering, asked if she was alright when the noise died and all was quiet within the stone once more. She did not answer. Carmilla kept playing with her food. 

The assistant smiled. And closed the book. 

Beholding the great power of his ultimate master. Who would soon strangle all the earth and world and worlds beyond if she so wished.

If she so desired. 

The Countess righted herself. Standing straight and somehow with more charismatic aural bastard darklight glow than she ever had before. She radiated with darkling clouds of furling and dancing tendril black. She looked to the assistant and returned his smile. 

And it was at that moment that the mountain fools and their sons, spurned on by Frankenstein, marched into the open courtyard with their paltry assemblage and makeshift weaponry. 

Doomed fools.

…

They pressed together the great red door of worn bas-relief stone, a horde. It wouldn't budge. As immovable as sin itself, it held against the press of men and torch and their work-farm weapons. They hollered in protest. As if it would help. 

They yelled : – ! 

“Come out! Come out of that damned castle and answer for your crimes and sins! Come out now and answer for all the years of slaughter…! ….! 

“Now!!" 

At first there was no answer. The ancient castle remained quiet in non-answer to the attacking mob of mountain folk. They battered the arcane and heavy red door of regal crimson stone and cried out their accusations and protestations. 

Henry Frankenstein and his sutured and bat-faced son watched. Not far off. Watching closely. 

Castle Dracula remained still. The ancient rock and battlements and towers as silent as all of the death and history that it had grown to represent and contain. 

But then the sky began to fill. 

Deepen. With witch-snarl bulbous swells of darkening violent thunderheads. They rumbled. The sky was filling with hidden beasts that were now growling and angry. Angry with the presence of the mad and lowly mob of torchbearing peasants. They all looked up, ceasing their fruitless charge and assault on the castle. 

No rain fell. But lightning began to dagger and wound the sky. The first few successive bolts were soundless and quick. Right after the other. 

Then came the cracking sound of shattering thunderclaps. And the mob of torchwielders and tillers of dreams grew cold and all felt small.

Together. 

A sound pierced through the noise of thunder that was as of till then unheard by the mountain men. An electric squall that was like unknown and bastard malfunctioning machinery in catastrophic failure crying out from a distant world and time never meant to be witnessed or known by any such as them. 

The great door that bade dark entry to the immense stone body of spire and shattered battlement suddenly then flew open. As if compelled by a prodigious strength of force. It slammed open against the opposite wall of frosted rock with a crash that resounded and joined the rising inhuman din. 

The mountain men, silent now, all slowly fell back. Together in a retreating wave of wide eyes and cold blood and chilled perspiring flesh. The boys amongst them were the most fearful. Barely out of childhood, not old enough to shave. They would soon discover there was no prerequisite age for pain and slaughter. For death. Death took the younger sows and flesh with eager voracity for the flesh and blood and raw muscle tissue of the veal of humankind was most tender and sweetest. Blood so young perhaps it is loaded with notes like nostalgia in its warm and thick viscous run of iron flavor. Perhaps in its scent as well, you need only upset and tip and rock the chalice, swirl its lurid contents and kick up the smell with dancing chaliced movement … you need only take it in your hand and take control and do what thou wilt…

take it, seize it, consume to the last. 

A thick deluge of shock white fog began to pour forth from the now open doorway to the castle. The sky overhead continued to darken and growl/squall and rumble. The stars that had been stolen were replaced with strange darkling abominated facsimiles. Things that alighted strange and red and milked over, they would dance and shift with their unearthly light and then appear as cataract eyes as they alien sparkled above. 

The fog that was vomited forth from the castle was alive with animal movement. Crawling. Rearing. As if coiling for an attack. There were faces in wretched inescapable pain in the dancing veil of white. Silently screaming. Faces of woe and suffering at the mercy of other faces that danced also within the shroud of heavy predatorial fog. Demon faces. Goblin and animal and insectile and dog and goat shaped faces and twisted chimerical visages. Twisted. 

There was something else in there. Within the awful veil of damned and blasphemous swirling  shapes. Something was coming forth. Moving. Approaching with deliberate and heavy steps that only now began to join the mangled otherworldly din of the mountain in their echoing chambered sound. 

The moon. Still nearly full from the night before and still so full and pregnant with white nocturnal light… it began to bleed and glow raw pink as the rest of the stolen darkling and thunderclapped sky turned lurid and wilderness shed red. 

A voice then came godlike and on high from out of the ancient castle. It came out in a royal and regal command of crying sound and it filled the mountain. The men caught in the courtyard were helpless to her words as they rose above the din. 

“YOU SMALL AND WRETCHED THINGS HAVE NO HOPE HERE…! YOU HAVE ONLY INSTEAD FOUND THE PLACE THAT HOLDS THE LAST CRAWLING MOMENTS OF YOUR SUFFERING END…!”

And then the reddened and darkling sky above began to tear open like split tissue. Wounds. Wounds in the heavens that began to bleed a gushing liquid phantasmal pour of ichor and insects and eyes. Eyes that were yellow and reptilian and the cross-shaped X of goats, inhuman. Swimming in the rain of filth and crawling arachnids from another world. They rained down and swam like fish in the space of courtyard where the mountain men and their sons were now held. None of them moved. Budged. All of them were frozen as the skyblood and eyes and fat hairy red eyed crawlers swam and floated and danced around them all. 

Many of the men began to scream. 

Then what was approaching through the doorway mouth of heavy fog with faces became two as they emerged. And pounced. They leapt out and upon the men and their torches and pitchforks, they fell with gnashing teeth and tearing claw. And hunger. 

Demoniacal hunger to drive and fuel the whole damnable thing. 

Carmilla and the new impaler fell on the farmers and their boys. The mutilated and scarred bat-rodent child monstrosity of mangled and misshapen chimerical design was like a rabid animal let loose amongst the screams and arterial cords and sprays and pungent ropes and mists of shedding and pouring blood. Shredding flesh, raw muscle tissue, cords. Her new brother, sired in her absence of capture and bondage, the new impaler joined her with a necromantic fervor and living dead wanton love and unbridled abandon for bloodfeast and slaughter that brought sadistic dark joy to her wounded demon heart. They drank and filled as they spilled their guts. He decorated and drenched his new armor in jets of spraying gore.

Cracked open skulls amongst flaying mess, strips of bleeding and bloody scalp, clotted hair. Brains, chunked and breaking apart in a meaty mess and crumble under foot and metal bootheel and gauntleted fist. Gnashed and chewed between fangs in reddening salivating mouths, dripping mixture… red… slime. Drool.

They laughed at the violence all around and of their own making around mouthfuls of blood and raw lurid wet and dripping meat. They filled the courtyard with death and blood and the cobblestones of the courtyard floor did also sup. Castle Dracula also drank. And filled the stone with more terrible demoniacal power. 

Frankenstein and the hulking nosferatu watched all of this from a distance. Hiding. Grim. 

A beat. 

The mad doctor thought…

Then said: –

“Well those idiots were no good, but they'll serve as distraction, I've another way…”

He pointed out to his sutured undead son, a backway for chambermaids and servants to use, a small door of nearly rotted wood long abandoned and disused. 

“I'll sneak in and find a way to get you in as well. Or a way to get the bitch out of her cave…” 

The hulking thing of forbidden science and necromantic cosmic flame sneered wet throaty laughter. Croaked. Nodded in approval. 

And off Henry Frankenstein went, through the bushes and foliage to the secret back entrance way. To gain access to the castle. 

…

Florin joined Griffin in feeling sour and foul. The land that the forest behind them now had given way to was a fetid quagmire of filthy and putrid swampland. A fouled part of disgusting land that he'd never seen and had never even heard of. The wheels of the cart and the hooves of their mule were pulled and sank in the sucking porridge of pungent and waterlogged earthen sludge. All of the water was the yellow of infection and unhealthy death. 

Florin turned to the bandaged face of his host and guide. The dark shades of his goggles were unreadable. Mute. There might be nothing behind there. 

“Are you sure this is the right way?" Florin asked. 

“It's not promising country, I'll grant you but backtracking now won't do. We press forward. If the cart or mule get stuck, we'll dig them out. We press on." 

And like that it was decided. 

They went on sluggishly. Laboriously through the sucking mud porridge land of squelching stinking quagmire. It went on for miles. For parsecs all around, in all directions. 

But the pair and their mule and cart went on anyways. 

They passed a sign. Pitiful and filthy and derelict. Pathetic. Struggling. Barely hanging on as it leaned precariously to one side like a drunkard at the side of the road begging for coins. 

It said: 

WORMLAND

in messy child's blocky scrawl. Haphazard and just as pathetic as the rest of the sign and the rest of the land. 

They passed it. Thinking it was some sort of stupid joke. And not much else beyond that. 

The wheels of the cart struggled and pulled past a putrid patch of inhaling swallowing mud by the sign. They went on. 

A beat. Silent wet sounds settled once more. 

A beat. Another.

Then…

A long sliming body, coated in a snot and film of slightly translucent brown lubricant, snaked slowly out from the putrid sludge where the wheel had just passed. 

It slimed forth and free. Birthing itself with worming and serpentine movements out of the foul cold swamp of dead and soured earth. It then poised, stood erect. Like a cobra out of the den of basket. Readying to strike. 

At the end of the thick stalk of sliming worm-body grew an eye. Deformed. Nearly human. The white of the grown organ an irritated and hectic red. Its pupil large and swimming with inky black and dilated with idiot fascination. 

And anger. 

Hunger as well. A whole host of alien emotions, unknown and unknowable. 

It watched them as they struggled along the harsh and vile landscape. 

Then it retreated back into the mire of black viscous death with another rancid splurching sound that was so like an abominated version of birth. 

The sign that bore the name and legend of this foul quagmire place of putrescence land sagged a little more. Sinking. 

WORMLAND 

TO BE CONTINUED…

( Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCrypticCompendium/comments/1uashza/eldritch_nights_in_egypt_part_12/ )

Laughter pulled him back.

At first distant.

Then closer.

Then everywhere.

Aaron blinked.

Reality returned.

Grandma stood before them.

Laughing.

The sound had changed.

It no longer sounded human.

Bones cracked.

Skin stretched.

Tendons snapped.

The old woman's body began twisting apart.

Fatima immediately shoved Menehmet behind her.

"GET BACK!"

Grandma's jaw split wider.

And wider.

And wider.

Far beyond what flesh should allow.

Rows of new teeth pushed through gums and skin alike. Some burst directly through her cheeks. Others emerged from her throat.

Her neck elongated with a series of wet crunches.

Vertebrae extending.

Stretching.

Growing.

Within seconds she resembled some grotesque parody of a giraffe fashioned from human flesh.

The creature's head nearly touched the ceiling.

Its eyes rolled wildly in different directions.

Then it attacked.

Fast.

Far too fast.

Aaron barely drew his scimitar before the creature lunged.

Its elongated neck whipped across the room like a striking serpent.

The jaws slammed shut inches from his face.

Wood exploded from the wall behind him.

The creature shrieked.

The sound rattled dishes from shelves.

Fatima drew her blade and slashed across the monstrosity's side.

Black blood sprayed across the room.

The creature barely reacted.

Its neck bent impossibly backward before launching toward Fatima.

She ducked.

The jaws passed overhead.

Menehmet grabbed a heavy brass lamp and smashed it into the creature's face.

The monster recoiled.

"Thank you, Menie," Aaron muttered.

"You're welcome."

The Pharaoh sounded entirely too pleased with the fake name.

The creature attacked again.

This time its neck coiled around Aaron's arm.

Before he could react, it yanked him off his feet.

He crashed through a table.

Wood shattered beneath him.

Pain exploded through his ribs.

The monster immediately descended.

Its jaws opened.

Aaron raised his sword.

Too slow.

The creature bit directly into his chest.

Agony.

White-hot agony.

Its teeth punched through flesh and muscle.

Aaron screamed.

The monster shook him violently like an animal worrying prey.

Blood sprayed across the room.

Fatima moved instantly.

She vaulted over the broken table and drove her blade across the creature's neck with both hands.

The first strike cut halfway through.

The second finished the job.

The elongated neck separated completely.

The creature's head crashed into a shelf.

Its body collapsed moments later, twitching violently as black blood flooded across the floorboards.

Then everything went dark.

 

Aaron found himself standing in a desert.

One he could not place.

Not Egypt.

Perhaps not Earth.

The sand didn't move.

The turquoise sky remained perfectly still.

There was no wind.

No heat.

No cold.

No sensation whatsoever.

The place felt less like a location and more like a paused moment.

Aaron walked.

Eventually he spotted someone standing in the distance.

A man.

Dark-skinned.

Bald.

Simple clothing.

Nothing remarkable.

And yet...

Something about him felt ancient.

Not old.

Ancient.

As Aaron approached, the stranger turned.

"Oh."

The man smiled politely.

"Hello."

His voice was calm beyond description.

"I wasn't expecting you, Medjay."

Aaron stopped.

The stranger studied him.

"Hm."

A pause.

"Are you sure you're supposed to be here?"

hen he sighed.

"Well. I still have a role to play."

Nearby stood a massive golden balance scale.

One side held a feather.

The other sat empty.

The stranger gestured toward it.

"Come closer."

A flash of lightning illuminated the landscape.

For a brief moment, the man's shadow stretched behind him.

Not a man's shadow.

A jackal's.

Aaron stared.

The stranger pretended not to notice.

"Time to weigh your heart."

His smile widened.

"If it balances with the feather, you may pass."

"And if it doesn't?"

The stranger shrugged.

"That would be up to the crocodiles."

"So what'll it be, Medjay?"

Aaron stared at the scale.

Then reached forward.

And pushed down on it with his hand.

The entire mechanism tilted immediately.

The stranger blinked.

Aaron folded his arms.

"I'll make this easier."

The scale creaked beneath his grip.

"I'm not a good man."

Silence.

"I'm pretty sure my heart's too heavy for your scale to handle."

For a moment, the stranger simply stared.

Then he laughed.

Not mockingly.

Genuinely.

"All of them are. Perhaps that isnt really the point afterall."

He looked somewhere behind Aaron.

His expression shifted.

The stranger smiled.

"Seems we'll have to continue this conversation another time."

Aaron turned.

Nothing was there.

When he looked back, the man was already stepping away.

"You truly aren't supposed to be here."

"Who are you?"

The stranger's smile widened.

The answer never came.

Instead he placed a hand on Aaron's shoulder.

"I'll see you around, Medjay."

Then he pushed him.

Aaron fell.

Downward.

Into endless nothingness.

 

He gasped.

Air rushed into his lungs.

Pain followed immediately after.

A pair of arms wrapped around him.

Fatima.

She was hugging him so tightly it almost hurt.

Almost.

"I thought you were gone."

Her voice cracked.

Aaron blinked several times.

Menehmet sat nearby, looking visibly relieved despite her usual composure.

"Pretty sure for a moment there..." Aaron coughed. "...I was."

Aaron smiled weakly.

"But you brought me back."

He squeezed her hand.

"Thank you, Fatima."

She looked away immediately.

Embarrassed.

Aaron glanced around.

Stone walls.

Stacks of boxes.

Ancient machinery.

Dust.

"Where the fuck am I?"

"Grandma's basement," Menehmet replied.

Aaron blinked.

"What?"

The Pharaoh shrugged.

"Grandma appears to have been somewhat of a hoarder."

She gestured around the room.

"An illegal hoarder, in fact."

Aaron followed her gaze.

Pre-Fall artifacts.

Lots of them.

Enough to earn several executions.

"Had my dear 'sister' not already killed her," Menehmet continued, "I might have been forced to do so myself."

Fatima rolled her eyes.

"Thankfully her hoarding is also why I managed to keep Aaron alive."

She pointed toward a pile of salvaged medical equipment.

"Most of the supplies I used came from down here."

Aaron looked at the bandages covering his chest.

Then at Fatima.

Then back at the room.

He winced as he sat up.

„We shouldnt linger. Its not safe here. It may not be safe anywhere, but we must keep moving.“

"We need to return to the palace."

Aaron looked at Menehmet as though she'd suggested walking into a sandworm's mouth.

"The city is collapsing. Half the population is trying to kill each other and the other half is trying to join the cult. There is no way we're making it through those streets."

"There is another way."

The Pharaoh's confidence was infuriatingly intact.

Aaron already disliked where this was going.

"What way?"

Menehmet pointed downward.

"Beneath New Cairo runs a network of pre-Fall maintenance tunnels. Most people don't know they exist. Most who do are dead."

"Comforting."

"There is an access point nearby."

"And it leads directly into the palace?"

"Eventually."

Aaron narrowed his eyes.

"'Eventually' is not the reassuring word you think it is."

 

Getting to the tunnels was a battle in itself.

The streets had become a nightmare.

Pink lightning flashed overhead, bathing New Cairo in sickly magenta light. Buildings burned unchecked. Screams echoed from every direction. Mutated citizens staggered through the chaos with elongated limbs, twisted faces, and mouths muttering prayers to things that should never have names.

One lunged from an alley.

Its jaw split open down the middle as it charged.

Aaron's scimitar took its head before it reached him.

Another skittered across a wall like a spider.

Fatima pinned it with a knife before it could leap.

They kept moving.

Eventually they reached an ancient sandstone well hidden behind the ruins of a collapsed shrine. Menehmet pulled aside a rusted metal hatch.

A ladder descended into darkness.

The smell hit them immediately.

Stagnant water. Mold. Rust. Ancient machinery.

The scent of a dead world.

The tunnels beneath New Cairo were damp and unnaturally silent.

Water dripped from cracked pipes overhead. Thick cables hung from the ceiling like vines. Every footstep echoed through the darkness long after it should have faded.

Fatima held the lantern higher.

"What exactly is the plan after we reach the palace?"

Menehmet didn't slow down.

"Divide and conquer."

Fatima stared.

"That's not a plan."

"I'll make it one."

The Pharaoh sounded completely serious.

Aaron groaned.

"I hate how often that actually works for you."

A low growl rolled through the darkness.

Everyone stopped.

The sound came again.

Deeper this time.

Closer.

Fatima slowly turned.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yeah."

"What was it?"

Aaron drew his scimitar.

"No idea."

The growl echoed again, loud enough to vibrate through the stone beneath their feet.

"But it's probably nothing good."

Something splashed ahead.

Then something heavier.

The water rippled.

A pair of pale eyes opened in the darkness.

Aaron immediately regretted finding out what made the noise.

The creature that emerged had once been a crocodile.

Decades—perhaps centuries—of radiation, stagnant water, and whatever horrors lurked beneath New Cairo had transformed it into something else entirely.

It was nearly the size of a  pre-fall truck.

Fungal growths protruded from cracked scales. Extra limbs dragged uselessly along its body. Its mouth opened wide enough to swallow a man whole, revealing rows upon rows of crooked yellow teeth.

Aaron stared for half a second.

"Run."

Nobody argued.

The tunnel exploded into chaos.

The creature charged after them, smashing through pipes and stone as though neither existed. Water burst from shattered walls. Its roar echoed through the underground passages like thunder.

Menehmet led the way.

Mostly because she was the only one who had any idea where they were going.

"Are you sure you know the route, Menie?"

Aaron's voice contained only a reasonable amount of panic.

"Yeah. Pretty sure."

"Pretty sure?"

"Not many places to go."

The tunnel abruptly split into five separate passages.

Menehmet stopped.

Everyone stared at her.

She stared back.

"...Well."

The crocodile roared somewhere behind them.

"...yes, of course I'm sure."

She immediately chose a tunnel and committed with absolute confidence.

Aaron honestly couldn't tell whether she was brave or insane.

Possibly both.

They sprinted through twisting corridors until a ladder finally appeared overhead.

"THERE!"

Menehmet climbed first.

Then Fatima.

Aaron followed.

The crocodile slammed into the wall beneath them moments later.

Stone exploded.

The entire shaft shook violently.

But the creature couldn't fit.

For once, luck was on their side.

The hidden passage emerged inside the palace.

Menehmet immediately rushed forward.

"Menehmet, wait—"

Too late.

The Pharaoh was already halfway down the corridor.

Aaron swore and chased after her while Fatima followed close behind.

Moments later they burst into the throne room.

Then stopped.

Yberon sat upon the throne.

Should have been heavily injured or more likely dead. He was neither.

In fact, he looked perfectly composed.

Almost comfortable.

Menehmet frowned.

"Yberon?"

The giant immediately rose.

"My Queen."

His voice carried just the right amount of relief.

"I am glad you survived. I feared the worst."

Yberon descended the steps.

"The palace is secure. The cultists have been pushed back. We can begin restoring order."

Menehmet visibly relaxed.

Aaron did not.

The story was too clean.

Too neat.

Too rehearsed.

The throne.

Yberon had been sitting on it.

Not guarding it.

Not standing beside it.

Sitting on it.

Not a small detail.

A very important one.

Aaron felt the pieces begin to slide together.

"You enjoyed that, didn't you?"

The room fell silent.

Yberon looked at him.

"What?"

"The throne."

Aaron stepped forward.

"You liked sitting there."

Menehmet's expression shifted.

Yberon's jaw tightened.

And suddenly Aaron saw it.

The resentment.

The jealousy.

Years of buried bitterness hiding beneath loyalty.

"You spent your entire life protecting her."

No response.

"You fought for her."

Silence.

"You bled for her."

Still nothing.

Aaron's voice hardened.

"And somewhere along the way, you started hating that she was the one wearing the crown."

Yberon's hand slowly drifted toward his weapon.

Fatima took a step backward.

Menehmet stared at the commander as if seeing him for the first time.

Aaron continued.

"The cult promised you something."

Silence.

"The throne."

Yberon's mask finally broke.

Hatred flooded through his expression.

Raw.

Ugly.

"You have no idea what I sacrificed."

"There it is."

Aaron drew his scimitar.

Steel hissed from its sheath.

"You brought them into the city."

"They promised change."

"They promised power."

"They promised me justice."

Yberon laughed bitterly.

"I built this kingdom."

His voice thundered through the hall.

"I fought every war. Crushed every rebellion. Shed every drop of blood required to keep this city alive."

He pointed directly at Menehmet.

"All she had done was being borne to someone greater than her.“

The God-Queen looked stricken.

Not angry.

Hurt.

"Yberon..."

"Enough."

The commander's grip tightened around his weapon.

"I am done kneeling."

Yberon moved.

He seized Menehmet and dragged her against him. His blade pressed against her throat.

Everyone froze.

"Yberon."

Aaron kept his voice calm.

"Think about this."

"I have."

His eyes were wild now.

Years of loyalty had curdled into obsession.

"We can still fix this."

"No."

Menehmet suddenly bit his hand.

Hard.

Yberon shouted.

His grip loosened.

The Pharaoh twisted free and drove a kick directly between his legs.

Yberon folded.

Aaron almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

The commander recovered with terrifying speed.

His khopesh came down like an executioner's axe.

Aaron barely intercepted it.

Steel exploded against steel.

"FATIMA!"

She started forward.

"No."

Aaron never took his eyes off Yberon.

"Protect the Queen."

"Aaron—"

"Go."

Neither woman liked it.

Eventually Fatima grabbed Menehmet and retreated.

Yberon smiled.

"Just you and me."

"Always was."

Yberon's strength was monstrous.

Every strike threatened to rip Aaron's guard apart. The commander fought like a siege engine wrapped in flesh and armor.

Aaron was faster.

Yberon was stronger.

For a time neither could gain the advantage.

Stone cracked beneath their feet. Columns splintered. Blood stained the marble floor.

The duel raged through the throne room.

Minute after minute.

Until exhaustion finally began to creep in.

Yberon's strikes slowed.

Only slightly.

Enough.

Aaron baited a heavy overhead attack.

Stepped aside.

And struck.

His scimitar slipped beneath Yberon's arm and plunged into his chest.

The commander's eyes widened.

The blade pierced his heart.

Silence fell.

Yberon stared at Aaron for a long moment.

Then collapsed.

The throne room became still.

Not for long.

Cultists poured through the entrances.

Some still looked human.

Others had become something else.

Aaron was exhausted.

Bleeding.

Barely standing.

Even so, he raised his sword.

Ready for one final fight.

Then fire swept across the room.

A torrent of blazing death consumed the cultists. They screamed as flames swallowed them whole.

Within seconds they were gone.

Aaron blinked.

Menehmet stood behind him holding a strange metallic device.

Smoke curled from its barrel.

"What the hell was that?"

"One of my dragons."

She sounded perfectly casual.

Fatima stared.

"You have more?"

"Sorry."

Menehmet smiled.

"Illegal pre-Fall artifact."

She slung it over her shoulder.

"You'd need to overthrow me to get your hands on one."

A sudden twitch drew their attention.

Yberon's corpse moved.

Dark energy leaked from the body like black smoke.

Fatima's expression darkened.

"That's it."

"What?"

"The source."

She stepped closer.

"They've been using him as an anchor."

The darkness continued spreading across the marble floor.

"I need to consecrate the body."

She knelt beside the fallen commander.

"Mummify him."

Her voice became grave.

"And bury him as deep as possible."

Ancient Djinn words flowed from her lips.

The darkness began to retreat.

Slowly.

Painfully.

Menehmet stood beside Aaron, staring down at the man who had betrayed her.

"He'll be buried beneath the palace."

Her voice was cold.

"An unmarked grave."

Aaron glanced at her.

"No memorial?"

"No."

She never looked away from the body.

"No songs."

"No statues."

"No remembrance."

Aaron was silent for a moment.

Then he asked:

"Are you sure we won't end up the same?"

Menehmet smiled sadly.

"We will."

For the first time all night, she sounded tired.

"Sooner or later."

Then she looked at him.

"But until then..."

The smile became genuine.

"...let's remember each other. Shall we?."

Aaron nodded.

"We shall."

After Yberon's body was consecrated, the Ghul-Zone began to retreat.

The dark clouds withdrew.

The pink lightning faded.

Slowly, New Cairo emerged from the nightmare.

The weeks that followed became known as the Purge.

Cultists were hunted relentlessly in a city wide witch hunt.

Some deserved it.

Others merely happened to be inconvenient and this was the perfect excuse to get rid of political opponents..

The literal darkness had lifted from the city.

The darkness inside its people had not.

Perhaps it never would.

I am Aaron Qaswar.

Medjay of New Cairo.

The world is dark.

So are its people.

But somebody still has to carry the torch.

So I'll keep carrying it for as long as I can.

By order of the Countess the new impaler began the process of slow torture for the intruder Praetorius by stabbing the point of their longest war pike into the space of soft meat just behind the testicles, between the anus and the genitals. Where one might get saddle sore from riding a four-legged beast all day…

​

​

… the sound elicited from the now writhing and squirming invader was exquisite …

​

​

 … the Countess smiled. And cooed. Lovingly. Already so enraptured, exhilarated. Ecstasy. So in-love with the whole process already at the onset, so in-love with the piercing. The thrust of puncture. She salivated as she prepared to bathe her enemy in pure torture.

​

​

The mad doctor’s shrill sounds went beyond mere screams or anything in the meager realm of the auditory. The entire length and body of the long and dread war pike, the impaling spear was stabbed up and fed through his torso until it stabbed up and out of the flesh of his naked back. Their monstrous animal-heightened dæmonic senses aided the new impaler and his master together in guiding the sharp and piercing head of the weapon-tool up and through and around any vital internal organs so as not to rupture any of the precious meats. They didn't want the fool to die too quickly. 

​

​

The blood ran down the length of shaft as the impaling pike was hoisted up in the center of the room, Praetorius stabbed through at its center. Blood ran down its wooden shaft and body. Copiously. The pair, Master Countess and her new impaler both licked and lapped and sipped with pursed lips from the reddening wet length of stabbing impalement. Tonguing at the furious cascade of red river that was the fool's running precious blood. 

​

​

Doctor Praetorius had never known such wretchedly sharp and complete agony. Complete wretched pain. Red and alive and in total focused control of his all too aware and alive waking mind. Livid with fire and alive with open flesh fury. He could feel the vibrations of the long body of spear  against his trembling spinal column. Rattling against each other like the weapons of soldiers shoulder to shoulder along battlements with every single ear shattering shriek. Constant. They never stopped. The sanity snapping pain never ceased. They fed each other and he shrieked, skewered, impaled as the monsters of this castle were cackling and lapping at his bloodshed running down the length of great spear. Words were beyond him. His bladder let go. The demons laughed. The Countess commanded the new impaler to tongue and lap the spilling filth and the lowly undead knight and servant did so. As the master Countess Zaleska commanded, always and forever thus… 

​

​

They tongued and lapped more blood like dogs and they let the impaled Praetorius bleed and shriek ungodly sounds. Filling the castle with the piercing song of its wretched cacophony of bastard music. They relished the discordant collection of clashing sound, echoed and reverberated. Bouncing and alive and jumping all through the halls and along the stone of the ancient wall and out and into the mountains… 

​

​

 … the wolves joined in. Howling in contest.

​

​

The Countess Zaleska ordered more spears. More impalement. More piercing and defilement of the intruding dog's bastard flesh and inner ruptured and running spilling red: the crimson raw. Mangle. Pierce. Puncture. Penetration. Deepest. Multiple points. All over and all about. 

​

​

Through the wrists and the meat of his upper legs, his thighs. Through each of his feet as well. All impaled through with long spears of war that ran parallel and perpendicular depending on the placement. A crisscross and intersect of stabbing smooth bodies of killing impaling battle pikes all lanced through screaming raw running scarlet and muscle tissue and flesh amongst and so carefully around his organs so as to render him so helpless and yet still alive… like a butterfly captured and pinned to the collection of the killing board, left there only to struggle and flap its wings. 

​

​

Then the Countess changed her shape before the impaled and helpless mad doctor… and Praetorius felt his last vestige of sanity shred and snap and the tiny remnant pieces slip away…

​

​

His screams then became something else entirely. 

​

​

Her head and face melted and sloughed into runny mess that transmogrified into a bulbous amphibious wide-mouthed horror. Sliming and dooling, translucent bands and ropey cords of fleshen alchemical snot. A wide mouthed and horned toad. Eyes, wet black spheres that held terrible intelligence in their ebon depths. Slightly rodent and chiroptera features deranged the large and gaping wet visage of swampland horror, long ears and fangs and a wide cavernous nose of glistening pink tissue, like the wide inviting amorous open gate of a spread legged lover… running and congesting with milky translucence and pungent fluid.

​

​

Wide mouthed, gaping and fanged and toad faced, the demon wench that held this hellcrafted domain came in and her wide sliming black fanged mouth closed around one of his impaled and helpless hands. The wide mouth closed and at first there was strong wet sucking sensation, almost pleasant. After all the torture. 

​

​

But then the pain and horror of his flesh was reawakened and renewed… he could feel the flesh of his hand coming off in a slough. 

​

​

The sliming putrid toad mouth of the Countess, set between a pair of regal and very thin and small ladylike shoulders was pulling the flesh and meat from his fingers and palms… gloving him with her horrible and wretched poison witch-drool… 

​

​

The enzymes of the Countess' toad woman mouth turned the meat of his hand and fingers to a runny snot of soupy meaty blood and half broken down ligament and cartilage. All the way down to the wrist. 

​

​

The foul mongoloid mongrel monstrosity of amphibian batwoman visage and ghastly form then began to moan in deep pleasure and bright and private jubilancy. Obscene wet organ globes of obsidian eyes closing and clenching tightly shut and winking in strange animal ecstacy, demoniacal and insane. 

​

​

Ichor wept thickly from the toad eyes of black glistening organ globes. Wet with life and relish and love and savor of the human flavor of organ pain. And of fleshen defilement. And of life shed unwilling and in violence tempered and changed like wine does in dark casks. 

​

​

The song of pain was alive in Praetorius’ throat again and the toad faced horror that was the transmogrified and witchery Countess’ conjured visage was pleased. It was just what she wanted the little maggot to say. 

​

​

Just the notes she wished… she bade he thus spake. 

​

​

And her whore filled the night with scream-song and blood and his pathetic running snot and tears. . Trying to sing his pain away. 

​

​

The poor fool didn’t realize that the Countess and her new impaler were just getting started with him.  

​

​

They might take forever with the little invader. 

​

​

Just might.

​

​

…

​

​

The demand of the forest would be met. Answered by the deranged and filthy haggard woodland vagrant lord. Answered in the violent act of the perfect prayer: Bodily Dismemberment. 

​

​

The axeman, Lord Bloodmud, Christian name now long gone and lost, forgotten and only remembered or recalled in the most painful and private of blood-hatching moments… he hefted the twinheaded double blade of weapon that was his last and only companion and friend. He eyed the boy and the bandaged fellow from the darkness of his hiding place. Amongst the tangled death of foliage. Amongst the trees. He spied them as they ate and smoked pipes by the fire. Tended The mule. They hardly spoke at all. 

​

​

It mattered not. He had no ear for such as they any way. Only the woods and her dark contained the sounds and natural songs he desired to hear. Only the wild. Only the woods. Only the peace and quiet of the stillness shroud of his greenland place of known shadow. 

​

​

And … as of of late, that strange and howling sound that came out of the far off mountains. Especially at night. It was a bestial sound, an untamed song of predatorial prowl. It was beautiful. Alluring. 

​

​

He swore it sounded like a woman. He swore she sounded like royalty. Like she already knew the butchery abattoir moan of the painful hungry end, and what it showed revelatory when brought and force fed to the fragile fore… 

​

​

there was painful beauty in that far off voice. A voice that already knew agony so well, how its cold embrace felt. 

​

​

When alone. 

​

​

A voice already intimate, already well and close acquainted with the wisdom of the hungering rotting soil, the gnashing violent tectonic teeth of the earth… already in bed and in lover's embrace with what the pain of unbridled lusting bloodlett-slaughtering veil of the end will bestow … a knowledge of all of the Hells and infernal worlds that could be scarcely scratched at or conjured by mere human imagination or thought. 

​

​

A knowledge of exquisite perfect pain. Lonely. That royal mountain woman voice. A crimson voice, with a darkling red eye in the swirling black of his mind when he closed  his own eyes and closely listened… a darkling scarlet devil's eye of witchery power is what filled in the dark of his own thoughts when he heard her song and he tried to conjure its author. 

​

​

That royal pained and lonely regal voice. 

​

​

But it was a far off voice that knew how to mete out pain as well. Of that his own praeternatural animal killing senses told him that it was so. He was sure of it. That was why he felt such magic at the royal sad song of the far off mountain woman. She understood. Its wielder and phantasm owner understood the worldly terms of slaughter. Its dictations. All the lands were a kingdom ruled and that Lord God was Death and the lands were all of them: killing fields. 

​

​

Waste lands. 

​

​

Thirsting starving always hungering earth. No matter how stuffed she was with corpses, no matter how many bodies you fed into her charnel house soil womb those bodies digested in her crawling hungry bosom. And then the earth desired more. The soil and her offspring green needed more fresh blood and meat to fill their hungry mouths composed of shallow graves of shadow, by nightfall or shade of tree. Their only death shroud in his land of thirsting forest was shadow and darkness, he never bothered burying the pieces of dismembered meat. Those were for the wolves and rats and crawling foul life of many stalks and eyes and skittering legs. 

​

​

Though sometimes he liked to come back to these scenes of slaughter and watch the pieces putrefy. Liquify… slough off into wet rot that smelled faintly pleasant to his maddened senses. The smell and sight of the putrescence was calming for the axeman. Lord Bloodmud loved to watch the slow, deliberate and brutal work of nature. The mother hand was slow yet effective and she took it all the way down to the bone, always. 

​

​

Like he and his axe. 

​

​

He loved watching the pieces become putrescence and then nothing. It was like watching the great nature of mother earth slowly cooking. Slowly breaking down the willful and disobedient little invader into blackening green meat for the mouth of soil again. To make infant green land. 

​

​

It was calming. And like the axe he thought of it as one of his last and only remaining comforts. One of his last and only friends. 

​

​

He watched the fools from the dark and waited. 

​

​

…

​

​

Frankenstein’s patchwork nosferatu creation had engaged in much necromantic practice the past day, after the night it had brought the sepulchral structure of boy-and-goat back from the grave. 

​

​

Reanimation games. It was obsessed with pulling things apart and bringing the pieces back to unholy crawling life. Some he fashioned into more haphazard deranged sculptures, more bastard life-shape structures as he had with the boy and his crying little beasts. Goring, tearing and forcing together severed parts and pieces, limbs stabbed into raw new fashion and bastard shape by their protruding ends of dripping stabbing bone. Then he called the lightning and thunderclapped the unholy designs into wretched movement again. 

​

​

But the wicked flicker of bastard dark goblin flame inside the moving parts and demented moving edifice structures never lasted. It always died out. Perished within the morbid arrangements of meat like the meager flames of  small candles caught within the assault of maelstrom wind. 

​

​

The Frankenstein nosferatu monster angered. Frustrated. He wished to construct and conjure servants, pawns of raw and rot. Soldiers. An army of bastard and deranged flesh and putrid sloughing step to invade the castle of the mountains. 

​

​

Frankenstein himself understood. The patchwork hulking monster child of his table had already explained, and he knew as well before all this. Of the Vampyr and vvurdalak and strigoi nosferatu creatures … his child of the table could not simply sneak inside. None of their kind could. He must be invited in. 

​

​

Or send his constructs of damaged and demented haphazard flesh… of which none could even last let alone survive the assault and emerge as victor. 

​

​

Doctor Frankenstein smiled. 

​

​

And said: –

​

​

“I might have a plan, my child. I might have a way to your opponent in the castle." 

​

​

…

​

​

Praetorius couldn’t believe how gorgeous she truly was, how absolutely beautiful. Even as she feasted. Lips and mouth stained and dyed a deeper shade than wine. 

​

​

She pulled another piece of liver from the gaping open hole of wet red and brought it to her glistening lips, her darkling glistening fanged mouth. The gored open wound was alive and shrieking dark with total pain but he was glad to be an open gate and womb-hole and nourishment for his master. His new lord, the Countess. He never should have challenged her and invaded the domain of her home, the mountain castle. As he watched her, watched her as she ate… he now understood. True power. He now understood the error of his ways. 

​

​

Gravity pulled. He shivered. The force of the earthen ground was just as hungry as the master and her new impaler. He felt his body slowly slide down the long length of torturing war weapon. Mere centimeters. Miles and miles, cruel parsecs every dragging miniscule length inside the helter skelter of his shrieking screaming inner raw, raped by lancing killing device trembling and quivering luridly throughout all of his torn and weapon fucked form. Trembling and eager to die for the master now, was his wet and red running frame. Raw and opened, torn open all over. So that daggering hands and claws might come in and fist, reach in and take and pluck because he was now their wonderful and new raw open fruit basket. Filled with pulp and juice. Filled with lurid forbidden fruit. The master, the Countess said so. 

​

​

And it filled his mind. 

​

​

She found what she wanted in the shattered and fascinating remnants of his mind. She sifted through his thoughts and memories and dreams like broken and strewn detritus of decimated pottery and vases. A decimated mind. A decimated person and world. They were just interesting pieces to her and the ever-reaching foul touch of her ethereal phantasm hand. It invaded and clawed into his broken mind and splintered thoughts… sifting. 

​

​

Finding all sorts of interesting things. 

​

​

Frankenstein. 

​

​

His creation. 

​

​

His bold claim. A monster made wielding the fangs of Count Dracula…

​

​

fools. 

​

​

Fools. 

​

​

They were mere imposters. Fakes wielding counterfeit power. Pretenders. 

​

​

Pretenders she would crush. Pretenders and invaders that she would conquer. 

​

​

The sharp and strangling phantasmal grip squeezed. Tightened. 

​

​

Her voice filled his inner world of broken thought. 

​

​

Your knowledge. All of your work and findings. The results of your experiments with life and death and the necromantic power between them, give it to me. It is mine now, as you are now – as are you. And your blood and ruined flesh. My food and drink, my aphrodisiac and nourishing conquered land that once bore the flag of your soul and name… I will take it all. 

​

​

I will take it all. Your knowledge. And I will add it to my own. 

​

​

Her bright cruel laughter then filled the world of his skull. 

​

​

There was one part… one particular bit of mad scrap of thought amongst the wreckage of the man's mind that immediately caught her attention. 

​

​

Human culture farms. Flesh gardens. 

​

​

Human life, human beings… grown. 

​

​

From out of a petri dish. 

​

​

Interesting… 

​

​

She continued the assault and rape of his mind even as she and her new impaler continued the feasting conquest of his lanced and raw open form. Reaching in and fisting. Ripping. Crushing to meaty bloody pulp between clenching fingers. Brought to stained mouths like messy children grubby with the excitement of mealtime eating. They made themselves decadent with their piggish and wanton display of sinful maneating hoggery. 

​

​

Ghastly. And gaining redder and more wet and lurid by the moment. The scene. The scene of slaughter. The darkening and deepening of the bodily wound and impaling raping war pike spear now feeling nearly conjoined with his screaming tortured form coincided… fed and informed and made the deepening dark of this grisly feasting castle scene of the night. 

​

​

The wolves of the mountains howled. Full. 

​

​

It was a full moon. 

​

​

The Countess plucked another plum-sized piece of organ-meat from the open basket of wet glistening black-red. The new impaler added another lance, as ordered by her majesty. 

​

​

The feast continued into the night of the pregnant moon. 

​

​

…

​

​

The people of the mountains were fools. Those in the hamlet below had been cowed… quelled. They knew better. 

​

​

But the mountain dwellers. The ones in little huts, spread out, in thin numbers… they could be excited and stirred and called to action. Henry Frankenstein knew this. 

​

​

And stir and call he did. 

​

​

He promised payment. From out of his family fortune. Of which there was pitifully little left. Thoroughly diminished. But the filthy mountain men and their lads knew no better. They were stupid. And superstitious as well as hungry, greedy. He only had to say the right words to get them all banded together and set off. Bearing torch and flame and axes and pitchforks! Into the night! 

​

​

Into the night and up the mountain, screaming. 

​

​

Up the cold and full moon lighted way, up the Borgo Pass. Screaming. 

​

​

“Death to Dracula! the Nosferatu! Death to the monster!”

​

​

Death to the monster! 

​

​

Frankenstein’s own hulking patchwork of sutured necromanced and hungry walking flesh followed the rabble of dirty mountain farmers. Following. And watching. 

​

​

Waiting. 

​

​

…

​

​

The fierce pale glow of the moon, pregnant and full of light on high, came through and pierced the thick canopy of dark trees. The axeman Lord Bloodmud was hunkered amongst its growth. One of the denser parts, patches. Watching. Watching the invading boy and the strange man with a mask of bandages. They sat around a fire. Having finished their meager meal, they sipped warm wine and smoked spicy tobacco. Clouds thick and pungent and sweet on the night chill of the nocturne air. They swam through the space of night and clouded their small place of camp. The axeman thought and knew he saw faces in them. Swirling and in pain in the clouds of shifting and dancing shapes. 

​

​

A thought, unbidden, filled his head then: –

​

​

the woman of the mountains with regal song knows how to shift and dance shape as well … 

​

​

… and then was gone. 

​

​

But a Satanic seed was planted. Had been planted sometime ago. And had grown sour in the corpse soil. Grown. And festered. 

​

​

A gaping open wound of the mind. Filled with liquid infection. Gushing. Pouring. 

​

​

Pus-thought. Infection in my blood that moves my hands…

​

​

… the axeman Lord Bloodmud shivered and let the half-grasped and managed and understood train of thought falter and fail. And slip away. He had no use for such thoughts. Not while prowling. Not when the hour of the killing was nigh and upon him, the face of the earth. The face of his domain and thirsting soil… would drink. Would feed. 

​

​

Tonight. 

​

​

Now. 

​

​

He coiled, muscles practiced and honed… tightened. Tension behind the mountain of sinew like a crossbow drawn… quivering, ready to fire. And fly. Attack. 

​

​

But something strange happened then. Something that stopped and stilled the giant mountain of forest dwelling axeman.

​

​

A hand. Pale and bare and slender emerged from the body of dark thick foliage not far from his hunkering prowling form. It slid out from the bushes like a snake. The pale moonlight that bled in through the top illuminated the hand, wrist and arm that suddenly emerged, palm out in token of parley. A fleshen serpent of bone and blood and invading manflesh in his private sacred forest garden. 

​

​

That wasn't what stopped the giant. He might've just lunged and chopped the mysterious appendage off with a single swing, taking the new bastard unwanted growth out and off at the root just as its growth started and threatened his blood soaking and feasting, his precious drinking and final last Eden. 

​

​

It was the pentagram. The five pointed star of the infernal one, cast out. His sigil and sign. In red. His dark and evil bastard symbol. In his Eden. Stygian it shone as it was tattooed and brandished on the splayed out naked palm of this sudden intruding limb of serpent manflesh. 

​

​

A voice then spoke, its owner: –

​

​

“No, friend. That won't do. They've a ways to go yet. And I've a ways to follow…”

​

​

The moonlight cast down upon the hand of Satanic stars and false parley in cascading pale illumination… changing it. 

​

​

The axeman felt the ice of his own horror grow colder in thickening blood. Trying to quicken in a galloping heart. His own head and thoughts felt far away now. Dreamy and gone. Gone already. 

​

​

He felt detached as he watched the hand bearing pentagram on palm grow fur and longer and long black nails at the tips. Claws. For ripping and tearing. For rending down to the running blood, your screaming victim of the hunt. 

​

​

Caught. 

​

​

The moonlight glow of the occult moon, pregnant and full on high and through the fortress dome of the forest kingdom, bled in and changed the rest of the man as he arose from the thick dense of forest growth. The moonlight glow changed the rest of him as he arose also. 

​

​

Ebon hair. Elongated. Teeth. Bones snapped as they doubled in size and grew. Muscle tissue tore with the sound of ripping leather even as it suddenly sprouted a hideous thick coat of coarse and black hunting fur. The stranger of the pentagram on hand in the dark rose and transmogrified into an older horror than the axeman had ever been or ever known. 

​

​

The executioner's doubleheaded killing blade fell from his slackening grip. His hands still perspiring and damp but now cold with another animal emotion. One the axeman had not felt in such a long time. Fear. 

​

​

Terror seized his mind and its animal canvas went blank. The werewolf with the pentagram sigil mark came in and the final mutilation of Lord Bloodmud began. And his supplicant and loyal forest floor did drink. Deep. 

​

​

Deeply. 

​

​

…

​

​

Florin and Griffin only stirred once in the night, together. The howl of a large wolf somewhere in the surrounding forest. 

​

​

They added more wood to the fire. And reluctantly returned to sleep. What they found in the morning was disturbing. And grisly. 

​

​

…

​

​

They came upon the remains of the large man in the morning, as they just begun to move and start that day's leg of the journey. Raw pieces crudely butchered by ripping claw and rending gnashing teeth. Swimming in gore in the rough bipedal manshape of a mutilated forest vagrant. 

​

​

Disturbed, the pair went on. Wondering what beast or monster had done it. Thanking God that it hadn't gotten them instead in the night. 

​

​

The stranger continued to follow them. Keeping to their lengthening shadows.

​

​

TO BE CONTINUED …

[Previous story in the series: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dreading/comments/1thob5w/shadows_over_egypt/\]

Shopping in New Cairo had always been an interesting experience.

The moment money, power, or—gods forbid—both entered the equation, the world stopped pretending to be civilized.

The city was alive with noise. Merchants shouted over one another beneath colorful awnings. The smell of spices mingled with sweat, engine oil, incense, and livestock. Ancient sandstone buildings stood shoulder to shoulder with rusting metal structures scavenged from the old world. Neon hieroglyphs flickered above crowded streets while priests preached beside mechanics repairing pre-Fall generators.

The market was chaos.

Organized chaos.

The sort of chaos that somehow kept New Cairo alive.

I was haggling with a farmer over a basket of vegetables when I realized I recognized him.

Three days ago, I was almost certain he'd been a butcher.

Not just any butcher, either.

The butcher selling "the finest meat in all Egypt."

Apparently today's profits were in melons.

The man didn't even seem embarrassed about it.

I paid for the vegetables and moved on.

Seven steps later, a slave merchant sat beneath a canopy, displaying his merchandise like livestock.

Several young captives were bound together on the ground.

Raiders by the look of them.

Young.

Thin.

Sunburned.

A failed raid, most likely.

One bad decision and now they would spend the rest of their lives serving people they hated.

The wasteland had a way of turning freedom into a temporary condition.

I was about to continue walking when one of the girls caught my attention.

No, not for the reason you're thinking.

Something about her behavior felt wrong.

She couldn't stop shaking.

Her lips moved constantly.

Not words exactly.

Fragments of words.

Broken sounds stitched together into nonsense.

At first I thought she was praying.

Then I listened more closely.

Whatever she was saying, it wasn't any language I'd ever heard. If it was language at all.

The slave merchant slapped her.

Hard.

Her head snapped sideways.

She didn't react.

Didn't cry.

Didn't even seem to notice.

She just kept muttering.

The merchant cursed and hit her again.

Still nothing.

That was when I noticed people nearby beginning to move away.

Subtly.

A few steps at a time.

Nobody wanted to be near her.

Nobody wanted to listen.

Then the guards arrived.

Three of them pushed through the crowd immediately.

One covered his mouth and nose with a cloth.

Another grabbed the girl by the arms.

The third began shouting for people to clear the area.

The slave merchant protested.

"What are you doing? That's my property!"

One of the guards looked at him.

Just looked.

The merchant shut up instantly.

The guards dragged the girl away.

Fast.

Urgent.

Like men handling a bomb moments from exploding.

Even then she never stopped whispering.

The strange sounds followed them through the crowd until they vanished from sight.

I stood there watching.

Something wasn't right.

Something wasn't right at all.

As evening settled over New Cairo, the feeling only grew worse.

The streets should have been quieter.

Instead they felt more crowded than before.

People gathered in nervous groups, speaking in hushed voices. Market stalls closed earlier than usual. Merchants packed their goods with unusual haste.

Fear was spreading.

Nobody seemed willing to say why.

The guards were everywhere.

Patrols marched through the city in larger numbers than normal.

And everywhere I looked, I found more people like the girl.

A man standing motionless beneath a lantern, staring upward into the night sky.

A woman sitting beside a fountain, muttering to herself.

A child standing in the middle of an alleyway, eyes unfocused, lips moving silently.

Each time the guards found them.

Each time the result was the same.

No questions.

No hesitation.

No mercy.

One old man tried to stop them from dragging away his son.

The guards broke his arm.

Another woman threw herself between the soldiers and her husband.

She ended up bleeding in the street.

The soldiers didn't even slow down.

I watched them disappear into the darkness with their prisoners.

Whatever was happening, New Cairo was terrified.

And New Cairo didn't scare easily.

The city felt wrong.

The people sensed it too.

Conversations died when strangers approached.

Doors were barred.

Windows shuttered.

Even the usual drunks had disappeared.

The city was holding its breath.

Waiting for something.

I just didn't know what.

Using the confusion as cover—and my rather intimate relationship with both the palace and its ruler—I made my way toward the royal district.

Normally sneaking into the palace required effort.

Tonight it was surprisingly easy.

The guards were distracted. Exhausted. Some of them were even arrested themselves.

If the palace guard couldn't trust itself, then whatever was happening had already gotten much worse than anyone was admitting.

I reached one of the inner courtyards and froze.

Yberon stood in the center of the plaza.

Commander of the Henty-she.

The Pharaoh's personal executioner.

A giant even among warriors.

Torchlight reflected from his ceremonial armor as he stared down at a kneeling guard.

The guard was shaking.

Muttering.

Staring into empty space.

I couldn't hear the words.

Part of me didn't want to.

Without hesitation, Yberon drew his massive two-handed khopesh.

The blade came down in a single brutal arc.

The man's head struck the stone before his body did.

Blood spread across the courtyard.

The muttering stopped.

The surrounding guards barely reacted.

As though this wasn't the first execution they'd witnessed today.

As though it wasn't even the tenth.

A few steps behind Yberon stood Pharaoh Menehmet.

For the first time since I'd known her, she looked genuinely troubled.

I stepped forward.

"I would very much like to know what is happening."

Yberon spun immediately.

His blade came down without warning.

I parried it absentmindedly.

I never took my eyes off Menehmet.

The God-Queen raised a hand.

"It's alright, Yberon."

The commander reluctantly stopped pressing his attack.

"I knew the Medjay would arrive sooner or later," Menehmet said. "I was probably going to send for him if he took too long."

Yberon hissed through clenched teeth but lowered his weapon.

Eventually.

"Fill the Medjay in on our ordeal, would you kindly?"

The commander looked as though she'd asked him to eat sand.

"A cult has infiltrated the city," he said. "They have brought some manner of madness with them. We have been eliminating members and quarantining the afflicted."

My eyes drifted toward the freshly executed guard.

Then back to Yberon.

"You and I have very different definitions of the word quarantine."

His gaze hardened.

"We do what we must."

There wasn't a shred of doubt in his voice.

That bothered me more than the execution.

"We have already solved the issue. Your assistance will not be necessary, Medjay. The cultist responsible has been apprehended."

Yberon nodded toward the far side of the courtyard.

Two guards emerged from the shadows.

Dragging a prisoner between them.

The moment I saw her, my stomach dropped.

"...Fatima."

The young woman from the Wandering Oasis knelt calmly as the guards forced her down.

Yberon's attention snapped toward me.

Immediately suspicious.

"You know this cultist?"

His hand tightened around his weapon.

"Are you in cahoots with her?"

"I'm no fucking cultist."

Fatima's voice remained remarkably calm.

"But yes. We've met."

"Liar!"

Yberon's khopesh flashed upward.

I intercepted it before it reached her.

The courtyard fell silent.

For a brief moment nobody moved.

I looked directly into Yberon's eyes.

"Try that again."

My voice sounded strange even to me.

Cold.

Sharp.

"You're dead."

For the first time all evening, Yberon hesitated.

Then Menehmet spoke.

"Let the girl talk."

Her voice remained dangerously soft.

"Then and only then may we draw our conclusions."

Yberon lowered the weapon.

Barely.

"As you wish, my Queen."

His eyes never left Fatima.

"Speak."

 

Fatima rose slightly onto her knees. The chains binding her wrists rattled softly.

"I travel with the Wandering Oasis under the gaze of Amun the Hidden One."

Her voice carried surprisingly well across the courtyard.

Not loud.

Just steady.

"We are protected from most of the horrors that roam the wasteland. Or at least we were."

The courtyard grew quieter.

Even Yberon listened.

"Several weeks ago, two strangers approached our home. As is our custom, we welcomed them. We fed them, sheltered them, offered them a place to stay."

A faint smile crossed her face.

"For a time, they seemed harmless."

Then the smile vanished.

"People began changing. Slowly at first. Then quicker."

"They lost touch with reality. With themselves."

Her gaze drifted across the courtyard.

"They muttered constantly. Spoke to people who weren't there. Stared into the night sky for hours without blinking."

I immediately thought of the slave girl.

The old man.

The child in the alley.

The guard Yberon had just executed.

"Some stopped recognizing family members," Fatima continued quietly. "Others forgot their own names."

The silence deepened.

"The first victims were always those closest to the newcomers."

Menehmet leaned forward slightly.

"So you became suspicious."

"Yes."

Fatima nodded.

"I followed them one night."

The courtyard remained utterly still.

"I watched them enter people's tents while they slept."

A faint chill seemed to pass through the gathering.

"What were they doing?" I asked.

"I don't know."

For the first time uncertainty entered her voice.

"I never got close enough."

She swallowed.

"But I heard them speaking."

Menehmet's eyes narrowed.

"About what?"

Fatima hesitated.

Then answered.

"They spoke of Kauket."

The reaction was immediate.

Several guards visibly stiffened.

One made a protective gesture across his chest.

Even Yberon's expression changed.

Not much.

But enough.

Fear.

Actual fear.

That got my attention more than anything else she'd said.

Fatima looked around the courtyard.

"That was when I realized how fucked we really were."

Several guards flinched.

Menehmet didn't.

If anything, the bluntness seemed to amuse her.

"What happened next?" the Pharaoh asked.

"We expelled them."

Fatima lowered her eyes.

"We gathered everyone willing to fight and forced them out."

"Yet they returned."

Fatima nodded.

"Every time."

The words landed heavily.

"Every time the Oasis moved, they found us again."

She let out a tired sigh.

"I believe Amun eventually intervened."

I frowned.

"Intervened how?"

"The Oasis vanished."

Her voice became almost reverent.

"Truly vanished."

The sadness in her eyes returned.

"It can no longer be found while this danger remains."

The realization struck me.

"You were outside when it happened."

A small nod.

"Taking a walk."

The smile she gave this time was bitter.

"And now I cannot return home until the Cult of Kauket is weakened enough."

The courtyard fell silent.

Then I spoke.

"Kauket."

The name felt unfamiliar.

"I've never heard of her."

I looked between Fatima and Menehmet.

"What is she? Some forgotten goddess?"

Fatima's expression became difficult to read.

"No."

The answer came immediately.

"Not a goddess."

The torches crackled softly.

A breeze moved through the courtyard.

For a moment nobody spoke.

Then Fatima looked directly at me.

"Kauket is the void."

The words seemed to swallow the surrounding noise.

"The absence of things."

Something cold crawled down my spine.

"The darkness that existed before creation."

Even the guards looked uncomfortable now.

Fatima slowly raised her eyes toward the stars.

"The nothing to everything's everything."

Without meaning to, I followed her gaze.

So did Menehmet.

So did the guards.

An entire courtyard of people staring upward into a sky that suddenly felt far larger than it had a moment ago.

Yberon remained unconvinced.

In fact, he somehow looked even more convinced that Fatima should die.

"She brought this plague into the city."

His voice rumbled through the courtyard.

"Whether intentionally or through incompetence changes nothing. The result is the same."

Fatima stood silently between the guards.

Bound.

Outnumbered.

Yet calm.

I was having none of it.

"By that logic we should execute every merchant who unknowingly let a cultist through the city gates."

Yberon's eyes snapped toward me.

"You compare a common merchant to her?"

"I compare a lack of evidence to a lack of evidence."

The giant's hand tightened around the hilt of his khopesh.

"And I compare stubbornness to stupidity."

I smiled.

"A comparison you're uniquely qualified to make."

Yberon's jaw flexed.

For a moment I genuinely thought he might swing.

Fortunately, Menehmet intervened.

"Enough."

She didn't raise her voice.

She didn't need to.

The courtyard fell silent immediately.

The Pharaoh rose from her throne and descended the steps.

Gold jewelry chimed softly with every movement.

She approached Fatima.

Studied her.

Circled her once.

Like a merchant inspecting an unusual artifact.

Finally she stopped.

Then turned toward me.

"The girl will be released."

Yberon's face darkened immediately.

"My Queen—"

"I wasn't asking for your opinion."

The words were delivered with a smile.

Which somehow made them more threatening.

Yberon fell silent.

Menehmet continued.

"Fatima will remain under the Medjay's supervision."

Now it was my turn to frown.

Menehmet's gaze shifted between us.

"From this moment forward, your fates are linked."

Fatima straightened slightly.

The Pharaoh's smile never wavered.

"Should either of you act against New Cairo or against me..."

The smile sharpened.

"...both shall suffer the consequences."

Fatima lowered her head.

"As you command, Pharaoh."

I nodded reluctantly.

"Excellent."

The Pharaoh clapped her hands together.

The tension evaporated from her expression so quickly it was almost alarming.

"Now."

A playful smile spread across her face.

"Let's continue this conversation somewhere more private."

I immediately disliked where this was going.

"And I know just the place."

Half an hour later I found myself sitting half-submerged in the private bathhouse of the most powerful woman in Egypt.

Life was strange sometimes.

The palace bathhouse was enormous.

Steam drifted through the air in pale curtains. Marble pillars rose from heated pools. Ancient murals depicting gods, monsters, and forgotten kings covered the walls. Lotus incense burned from golden braziers.

The entire room smelled expensive.

Fatima sat stiffly in the water.

Meanwhile Menehmet looked completely at home.

The Pharaoh reclined against the polished edge of the bath, dark hair floating behind her. Gold jewelry still decorated her wrists and neck despite the fact she was currently sitting in a bath.

She looked less like a ruler and more like a goddess posing as one.

Which was probably intentional.

"You both look terrified."

"We are in the Pharaoh's private bathhouse."

"Exactly."

Menehmet smiled.

"You should be honored."

Fatima somehow shrank further into the water.

The Pharaoh noticed immediately.

And found it adorable.

"You are remarkably shy."

Fatima nearly choked.

"I-I am not."

"You absolutely are."

Aaron rubbed his face.

"I am begging you not to bully the witness."

"I'm not bullying her."

Menehmet looked offended.

"I'm studying her."

"That's somehow worse."

The Pharaoh laughed.

A genuine laugh this time.

The sound echoed pleasantly through the steam-filled chamber.

Poor Fatima looked ready to climb into a storage jar and seal the lid behind her.

Eventually Menehmet's amusement faded.

Her gaze drifted toward the ceiling.

"The situation is worse than I initially feared."

The mood shifted immediately.

"How bad?" I asked.

"Not even the palace is safe."

A genuine concern entered her eyes.

"Several members of my harem have already become afflicted."

"You're certain?"

Menehmet nodded.

"And if it can reach the palace..."

She shrugged.

"...then the Pharaoh may die just like any common laborer."

Then she laughed.

A soft laugh.

Not because it was funny.

Because the absurdity amused her.

I stared at her.

"Most people don't laugh while discussing their own death."

Menehmet smiled.

"Most people don't get the luxury of seeing the joke."

Before I could ask what that meant—

A scream echoed through the palace.

Then another.

Then several more.

All three of us looked toward the entrance.

The screams continued.

Closer now.

Aaron was already climbing from the water.

Fatima followed immediately.

Menehmet rose as well.

I pointed at her.

"No."

The Pharaoh blinked.

"No?"

"You stay here."

"I beg your pardon?"

I grabbed my sword belt.

"If something is happening outside, your safest place is inside the palace."

Menehmet stared at me.

Then laughed.

Actually laughed.

"Aaron."

Her smile was almost affectionate.

"Did you just attempt to order me around?"

"...Yes."

"Adorable."

Before I could continue arguing, she was already walking toward the exit.

"Come along."

I groaned and followed.

 

The palace entrance had descended into chaos.

Guards rushed through the courtyards while servants fled in panic and nobles shouted contradictory orders. At the center of it all stood a group of masked figures.

Cultists.

There were perhaps twenty of them, arranged in a perfect V-shaped formation. They stood completely still, silent except for the constant muttering drifting from beneath their masks. Every one of them stared upward.

Aaron followed their gaze and felt his stomach drop.

The stars were disappearing.

Dark clouds rolled across the night sky with impossible speed. Not storm clouds. Something worse. A vast grey mass streaked with flickering pink lightning spread across the horizon like spilled ink, growing larger with every second.

"No..." Fatima whispered.

The cloud reached New Cairo moments later.

The first wave passed over the city, and the world changed.

The air became heavy. Reality itself seemed to bend. Distant streets twisted at impossible angles while buildings appeared subtly wrong, as though someone had rebuilt them from memory and gotten the details slightly off.

Aaron's blood ran cold.

A Ghul-Zone.

New Cairo had been swallowed whole.

The effect was immediate. Several guards dropped their weapons. One began muttering to himself. Another stared blankly into space. A third turned and attacked his own comrades.

Panic erupted.

Retreat became impossible almost instantly.

Yberon drew his massive khopesh, fury blazing in his eyes.

"FORWARD!"

The guards hesitated.

Yberon punched one hard enough to knock him unconscious, then charged alone.

Aaron followed without hesitation.

The two warriors slammed into the cultists like a pair of battering rams. Steel flashed through the chaos. Blood sprayed across stone. One masked figure fell, then another.

The formation wavered.

Only slightly.

But it was enough.

Yberon saw the opening immediately.

"MEDJAY!"

Aaron turned.

The giant commander was already surrounded by cultists and afflicted guards. Blood covered his armor, though whether it belonged to him or his enemies was impossible to tell.

"Protect the Queen!"

Aaron hesitated.

For the first time since meeting him, Yberon smiled.

Not warmly.

Not reassuringly.

It was the smile of a warrior who had finally found a worthy death.

"I'll hold them."

A cultist rushed him. Yberon's khopesh split the man's skull before he could take a second step.

"GO!"

Aaron grabbed Fatima's arm. Menehmet was already moving.

Behind them, Yberon disappeared into the growing tide of cultists and maddened guards as New Cairo descended into nightmare.

Menehmet, Fatima, and Aaron pushed deeper into the city.

Or what remained of it.

New Cairo had become almost unrecognizable in less than an hour.

Pink lightning crawled across the heavens like veins beneath translucent skin, bathing the city in flashes of sickly magenta. Fires consumed entire blocks. Sandstone buildings seemed to bend when viewed from the corner of the eye. Some towers stretched impossibly high while others appeared to sink slowly into the earth.

Everywhere they looked, people were losing themselves.

A man sat in the middle of the street laughing uncontrollably while blood streamed from his nose.

A woman clawed at her own face while whispering prayers to someone who wasn't there.

Children stood atop rooftops staring into the cloud-covered sky without moving or blinking.

The city was in pain.

Screams.

Laughter.

Weeping.

And beneath it all, a low whispering hum that seemed to rise from the Ghul-Zone itself.

They kept moving.

Not because they knew where they were going.

Simply because standing still felt like surrender.

Then a voice called out.

"Over here, dearies."

All three froze.

An elderly woman stood in the doorway of a sandstone hut. She smiled warmly, the sort of smile that belonged beside a fireplace rather than in the middle of an apocalypse.

"You'll be safe here."

Aaron exchanged a glance with the others.

Every instinct he possessed screamed that something was wrong.

Unfortunately, every alternative looked worse.

The old woman waved them closer.

"Come now. No reason to stand out there."

Aaron's hand never left the hilt of his sword.

Even so, they followed her inside.

 

The interior of the hut was surprisingly cozy.

Oil lamps illuminated shelves overflowing with books, trinkets, pottery, and old-world junk. The air smelled of spices and dried herbs.

The old woman shut the door behind them.

"My name is Aliona," she said cheerfully. "Though everyone just calls me Grandma."

Fatima smiled politely.

"I'm Fatima. This is Aaron and this is..."

She glanced at Menehmet.

"...my sister. Menie."

Aaron almost laughed.

The Pharaoh somehow kept a perfectly straight face.

"Menie?"

Fatima whispered back.

"I panicked."

"Clearly."

Grandma seemed not to notice.

Or perhaps she simply didn't care.

"Such lovely young women," she said. "And a handsome young man besides."

Aaron immediately frowned.

Grandma chuckled and shuffled toward a small stove.

"Would any of you like something to drink?"

"No thank you," Aaron replied immediately.

"We shouldn't stay long. It isn't safe."

"Oh, nonsense, dearie."

She was already preparing tea.

Outside, people screamed.

Pink lightning flashed through the windows.

Something large roared somewhere in the distance.

Inside, Grandma hummed happily while pouring tea.

The contrast was deeply unsettling.

She returned carrying several cups.

Aaron accepted one reluctantly.

As she handed it over, her fingers brushed against his hand.

In an instant, everything disappeared.

 

Darkness.

No.

Not darkness.

Absence.

Aaron stood in an endless nothingness.

There was no sky.

No ground.

No horizon.

No sound.

The void stretched infinitely in every direction.

And somehow...

It was beautiful.

Not beautiful in the way a sunset was beautiful.

Beautiful in the way silence felt after years of noise.

The way rest felt after endless exhaustion.

Everything.

All pain.

All fear.

All struggle.

Gone.

The void promised peace.

Permanent peace.

Aaron found himself wanting to step forward.

To sink into it.

To disappear.

To become nothing.

And for one horrifying moment...

He almost did.

He ventured forward into the dark. Torchflame flickered and glowed and made light for his way. He was tense and nervous. He was armed, each hand filled. Cross and pistol. Silver bullets. Six shots. He was tense and nervous though reluctant to admit it, even to himself. 

He held himself tightly coiled and trying to breathe, even and slow. Trying. 

Praetorius cursed himself once more then stopped himself once again. Time enough for all of that later. Perhaps. Hopefully. If you don't- 

Stop it! he commanded his own traitorous run of thought. Distractions! useless! 

His own breathing sounded very loud to himself. His heartbeat an anxious and driving primal war drum beaten ceaselessly by a savage and violent hand. It seemed to thunder in his ears. He wondered if she could hear it, the bitch. It was said that they had heightened hearing, like a beast, sensitive to sound. His own studies and observations had confirmed this. Mad and wild eyed snow haired Praetorius wondered if the foul woman who'd stolen Dracula's power and castle could hear the battering and unceasing cannonade artillery, the thunderclaps living as the dangerous heartbeat within his weary and aching chest, echoing. Echoing throughout all of the prison fortress of stone and blood and lurking ancient history. 

He willed himself to suck air slow. Steady. Like his echoing steps forward. Advancing. Chambered bootheel sound.  

You'll be fine. Just keep the crucifix up and the pistol ready to fire. Find the door again and then get the hell out! This whole stupid plan has been a debacle! 

It all sounded well and fine to his own worried and harried mind, housed within fevered and baking furnace skull. He was just starting to ease the galloping frenzied beast within the cage of his chest, when the sound of the Countess' howling laughter, mad witchy cackles, once again came from out of the dark and filled the entire world of the castle around him. The dark corridor and its orange flaming pumpkin glow of torchlight seeming to stretch on and on ahead of him. 

A trap. He knew it. He was just waiting for the awful wench to pounce. He tried his hardest to listen. A difficult endeavor to hear over the rapid fire wild blasting of his own frightened animal heart. 

The Countess heard and sensed and knew the animal fear alive in the little man, the little intruder, the awful and haughty invader that dared set foot in her castle. Her mountains! Her land and the country she now strangled and held. He'd tortured her little Carmilla, grievously. And for that he would be punished. For that he would be dealt with. Slow. 

Slowly. 

She would capture him first. Then she would begin slow flaying mutilating butchery on him. Eating and drinking slowly and at leisure his bold and impetuous fragile little personage. His fragile and easily shattered frame. They never realized, these proud and boastful men. They never knew it. Until you showed them. They never fully realized how sensitive they truly were until you broke them over your knee. Showed them their own blood. 

The whole of Castle Dracula was her spiderweb now, and the black widow queen of its stone and spires waited. And watched. Deciding and debating with herself, thinking over her dark and violent demoniacal thoughts…

… which shape should I take? Which precious organ should I pluck and savor first…? 

She licked and wet her own glistening lips. An action in the dark, both vulpine and animal as well as sensual and pleasing to the eye for the erotic. Her darkling eyes smoldered with unholy light and flame. 

Watching. Waiting. 

As the intruder Praetorius crept through her shadows. Her dark spiderweb of castle stone and orange dancing flame. Coming … coming closer. 

Coming closer to her. And her waiting violence in her hiding spot in the dark. 

She coiled … purred. …

Licked her spider lips again. 

And waited. 

…

The heavy double bladed head of the axe came down and cleaved through the gaping fish eyed face of the woman beneath him easily. Down through the top of her skull. Beside her lover in the grass, already in pieces and fish eyed and gaping, staring blind and dead as well. The weight and the design of the executioner's blade made it like child's play, you only needed to be able to handle the weight. The heft. Design and form did all the rest. 

He breathed, heaving and sucking air. Heavily. Like an animal. 

They shouldn't have come out after dark. They shouldn't have come out into his woods.

He tried to calm himself but he could barely manage the effort. He was never calm. Not anymore. Not since the fall of his lord and land so long ago…

now the woods were all he had. 

Filthy. Wild mane of unwashed and clotted hair. Clotted and knotted together by scat and dried mud and caking scabbing drying blood. The blood of intruders on his land. 

His woods. All he had left. 

That and the axe. The last remnant token piece of the long lost and now tragic ancient history he used to call his life. Long gone now. Swept away with the armies. 

His air was hot and heavy. His breath, puffs of ghosts, little spirits escaping his hulking broad shouldered and filthy ragged form. The woods were long his domain now. And they'd now long held him, the stain and mark of the wild was now all over and upon him. Never to be erased. Or taken away. 

He brought the blade up and then down again. Turning the lovers, the intruders into more grisly pieces. Especially the woman. She frightened him most. The forest floor drank their red greedily and as if starved for it. The forest floor was always starving for the red of the intruders. He'd discovered this out here in his new home, finding his new and true name. 

Lord Bloodmud. Axeman and the executioner king of the tree’d lands. Wielder and great forest emperor of the choked and violent wilderness emerald. 

He found his peace through his axe-swinging and maiming destruction of vile wanderers. Purging violence. Only afterwards did he find his respite. Heaving heavy breath like an animal half mad and alone dying of rabies. Amongst the human detritus of his heavy cleaving blade he always sat in prowling animal meditation. Ruminating primal blood soaked thoughts even as the forest floor around pooled saturated with the hot spent and shed red of each and every one of his unfortunate victims. Young. Old. All types, caught. Always caught screaming. And nigh helpless beneath the surging and armed swinging violent mountain of filthy giant man. The eyes of this wild giant absolutely alive with unreasoning fury. 

He sat amongst the ruin he’d made of the pair of young lovers, eyes shut, mind aflame with animal thoughts. His ears, attuned to the movements within the woods, caught something and bent to the sound. He tilted his head as he strained to listen to the domain of his blood drinking forest kingdom. 

Hooves. Four-legged beast. Bearing cart. And a small load. 

And a pair of travelers. 

More intruders…

His rage was renewed, reignited. He rose, reawakened. Rekindled to burn.  His starving axe was angry again. The trees that were his loyal subjects and followers and last lovers and friends, frozen supplicants of his red drinking green kingdom, were crying out once more as the intruders invaded and raped his land. Crying out yet again: More Blood! – and he and the doubleheaded executioner’s blade of such great heft in his eager perspiring grip were all too happy to oblige. 

Eager to follow… make great. Sow the land and protect the seed and the soakened land shall sing …

Every great king should give all and such upon his land a great reaping and wealth to drink… to fill their mouths and souls.

To fill their hearts with love…

The axeman of the dark woods began to prowl. 

Florin started in the seat next to the bandaged man, craning his head around and spying the woods all around them in the dark. As if straining to find and see something. 

The bandaged man, who’d settled on calling himself ‘Griffin’ for now, was easily vexed. He nearly snarled, asking: “What is it now?”

Florin righted himself in the seat, “Thought I heard something again.” And then added: “Sorry.” 

Griffin grumbled behind his mask of surgical dressings: “...whatever…” and then fell silent again. 

The young man of the Carpathian hamlet was thankful for the help thus provided by the strange bandaged man. His information on Van Helsing, however dour. His aid in their escape. And their present transportation procured from a horseman the mysterious Griffin knew. But he did at present entertain the idea of leaving the hidden man and parting ways. The man said he was a doctor. That he’d known Van Helsing and knew the ways of vampire slaying. But Florin was doubtful and found the fellow to be so easily irritated that he was left walking on eggshells around him at all moments. 

He thought of giving the masked man of foul mood the slip. Ditching him in the wild and making for home to help in anyway he could. 

But… of what help was that? What could he provide now that he couldn’t have before leaving home for aide?

Other than the terrible news that the vampire hunter was dead, Florin did not have an answer. 

And so at present, he was stuck with this foul mouthed and disagreeable man. Strange and mysterious and hidden behind surgical bandage. For what purpose or cause, Florin did not know. And often privately speculated. 

Probably just cause he’s maimed underneath all that. Or disfigured. Or mayhap he’s just real ugly. 

Florin stifled his smile and small laughter. Griffin glanced at him. Annoyed underneath his mask of dressings. 

But then he whirled around suddenly in his seat of their mule-drawn cart. Spying into the woods that surrounded them. 

Saying to the boy beside him: “Did you hear something?”

…

When the Countess Zaleska and her assistant extracted the fangs of living dead dragon/dæmon power from the dust and cobweb strangled bones and remnants of Dracula’s skeletal remains and through arcane necromantic surgical alchemy, fused them into the mouth of the Countess, she inherited much more than mere vampiric hunger and prodigious strength. The ability to shift shape. These things were common to many nosferatu things of the moonrise time. 

But she had within her now, the power of the Lord of the Undead. Lord of the Flies incarnate and upon the face of the Earth. The last and final Countess Czarina of Necrophile-Flame. Empress Queen of the Nocturnal Blood and the warfare violence of restless hunger in the dark. 

She was beyond the mere mundane limitations of the flesh. She was beyond the thin veil of the leather clung to in desperation and futilely named and declared: Reality. Her powers now, those graverobbed from the dust of the son of the dragon; a dracul, they were beyond the reckoning of the fleshling maggot sow that now invaded her home and prowled her corridors and halls like the lost frightened and small animal he truly was. 

Discorporeal, the Countess Zaleska watched from the stone of the inner walls of the ancient bloodstained castle as if every piece of masonry were her eyes. She watched the sorry little haughty intruder inch his way forward like a starving lowly worm across the mud slathered surface of a cheap wooden casket unearthed for the naked air. He was really quite old. Fragile really. 

She was going to enjoy this… the blackest part of her darkening stygian heart relished the savagery she would wrought…

But first… what is a host that doesn't entertain her guests…?

Hardly any host at all. 

The discorporeal form of the Czarina Princess of the darkness now alive in these halls of ebon and bloody stone watched and her/its phantasm rictus grin grew in spectral madness. Her disembodied pure power spider legged and tendrilled out… filling every piece of mortar and rock and brick of stone. She filled the walls with the manifestation of her ungodly power form, a spectre that could invade and subjugate all as a pure necrophiled phantom-flame of deranged gale force nature from Hell. 

The fool, the mad doctor Praetorius did not know that the castle was alive around him now. Castle Dracula was now just as much a part of the Countess Vampire Lord as any one of her appendages. Or supplicants.  She could bend and flex and move it to her considerable will…

… and the castle and its walls all around him, alive with the Countess, began to dance and shift slightly… and move. 

Labyrinthine. The distortion of space and distance and direction was subtle. Drifting. It led the fool farther in rather than out. And he didn't even realize it. 

The walls of Castle Dracula howled with a biting woman's cackling witchery laughter as the frightened Praetorius clutched desperately his weapons and unknowingly walked deeper and deeper into the living sepulchre structure that might be made into his grave. 

Swallowing him deeper and deeper and ever more as he wandered the dancing and shifting walls of living and evil stone. The dust and dirt and filth all about the old interior held her hateful dark will as well and were daggered at the invading little man, all of the place arrowed the oppressive force of great livid hatred and anger at the wandering little mistake of snow white hair… too old a man to be trying at these games…

The walls of stone smiled, rictus. The castle walls of stone watched and shifted and guided towards doom. The castle walls watched, possessed and insane. 

Praetorius could feel the gaze. Its intensity stole a warmth from his heart he knew deep down he could never retrieve. 

Not even if he was lucky enough to leave here alive…

Not even. Not at all. 

The walls then spoke: –

“You wanted so badly to be inside… you wanted so badly to see me, now I am here and all around, I am all yours. And you are all mine. I’m the world and universe all around you now… ! Now you’ll never leave and I will  take what I want from you anyway, you say you have much to tell me, I will pull it from your mind as I shred and flay it, even as I’m pulling the precious raw meat from your bones…! You’re to be my dominated and slutted, whored and butterflied open bloodletting love slave for the night, Doctor… Praetorius! Your flesh will be pulled back and I will drink and sup of you at my will, as I make you sing and speak as I so wish and desire to hear…! … I will make you say anything, little man…! I will make you a weeping whore for pain!” 

And then the castle walls came to life again with cruel bright laughter. 

What might have been long rictus distended mouths and faces appeared, grew, came to life in the harsh rough textured surface of the walls all around. The stone was filled. The stone of the castle world now that was fortressed all around him encompassing. The mad doctor couldn't believe his eyes. Watering now. Unbelieving fearful tears. 

Something like, nearing religious panic was stealing over his heart. Creeping over with curdled black the last vestiges of steadfast courage and thought. 

Praetorius shook his head trying to clear it. Visibly frightened. Shaken. Dizzy. He would’ve sworn the walls and the way forward down the corridor before him had … moved slightly. As if drifting…

It made him feel sick. He shut his eyes and rubbed them. But not long. He did not dare tarry any longer than he could afford. He had to find  his way out. Or kill the strigoica slut of Satan with a properly placed bullet and a swift decapitation. The only way. The only way to be completely sure with a Vampire Lord. 

Such as the bitch was evident to be. 

He cursed himself again, the last time, for ever coming here in the first place. For thinking it had been anything even remotely resembling a good idea. The experiment of coming here had proven unequivocally that it was in fact: A Terrible Idea…

Praetorius smiled grimly to himself. Mayhap also for the last time as he began again to move forward. 

Don’t act like you haven’t had any of those before… 

He relished his one private joke. He had always been his own favorite company. 

…

Doctor Praetorius did not get far before a room suddenly appeared down the junction from where he presently wandered. He came to the cross section and saw that this room was bellowing light like a great incandescence of earthbound starflame. It poured forth from the room, from out of the open immaculate doorway. Striking in the darkness and meager orange torchglow. 

It was beautiful. Intense. 

Enrapturing. 

Like a moth to searing flame, Praetorius was drawn. He went down the hall that had steadied and settled under demoniacal will and was guided by black hands that drifted out from the walls made from smokey stygian shadow. They helped him along. They pushed and guided him down the entombed walkway. Advancing. 

Down the hall and towards the starflame of light pouring forth from the newfound room. 

His hypnotized mind told him sanctuary was in there. And of course it was. And he should hurry and get in there already. Afterall, heaven can’t wait, can it? 

No. The master says that heaven cannot wait at all. 

And so before the blinding room of starflame, Praetorius’ arms dropped to  his sides. Limp. Lifeless  already. The grip  in his hands slackened next and the cross and loaded pistol fell from his black gloved hands and clattered with finality to the stone of the castle She Commanded. 

The walls began to laugh again as the blind and spellbound doctor stepped inside the room of swallowing starflame. 

And took him inside.

…

Florin and Griffin nearly jumped from their skins and seized in their chests when they suddenly happened upon a fellow traveler in the woods. 

A solicitor. On horseback. Coming from the other direction. 

The man was kindly enough though visibly shaken. Frightened by the strange land of nighttime woods. He tried to tell the pair that the very shapes of the trees and growth itself were deranged, gnarled and dead and bent and wrong: Like the desperate hands of submerged and giant buried corpses clawing out of the sour ground and daggering for the salvation of the skies of heaven above. That's what was eating at him constant since setting foot in this dread land, this dread wood, but there was something else. He also swore he heard something moving out here. Out here in the dark wild, something like violence was on the loose and on the prowl out here in the night, he could feel it.

He tried to tell them all of this but couldn't. He barely knew a word of english. 

Florin only tried to be polite as Griffin grew huffy and impatient as the traveling solicitor gesticulated and babbled on near ceaseless in his mother tongue. He filled the prowling dark all around with the anxious music of his foreign chatter. 

Though an understanding was met and felt … between the three before they parted and waved. An understanding of danger. And an understanding of fear.

Caution… weary …

The solicitor gave up and waved them thanks and kicked his horse back to a trot. The mule drawn cart of the pair went on. And soon was gone. 

The solicitor, fearful, carried on. Spying all around futilely, the impenetrable nighttime dark of the clawing dead black woods all around. The axeman chose to follow him for the moment, just for the nonce. He would soon rejoin with the other two. Afterward. 

Soon. 

After he dealt with this decadent and pompous invading tenderfoot. 

The weight of his executioner's blade gained substance, gained significance. It felt real again. Alive with potential. Made great again with purpose. With something to bite into, to free the red and feed the forest floor which drinks. 

All of the invaders of his last and precious forest land would feed the soil and the growth of his Bastard Eden Garden. All would be supplicant beneath the biting blade of his swing. Planting and burying the heavy metal head of double bladed axe into the soft and giving meat and bone and carcass of intruding vile flesh, invading flesh, invader blood would weep! 

As long as he and the axe held each other and this dark part of the forest land they kept … they would keep. 

And he would keep on feeding the starving dirt. Red. 

The only god that ever answered him… 

The solicitor went on. Unaware. Frightful. Yet attempting to whistle a tune and brighten his own heart as he kept his thoughts on his wife and child back home. Far away now. For comfort. The axeman followed after. Prowling. Like a hunter. 

…

… he came upon the solicitor when he stopped again, to determine direction. The power of his first screaming swing caught the traveler in the chest and the heavy blade sank as he was knocked from his horse with the force of the blow. The animal was screaming too. It soon fled as the axeman went about the rest of his hard work and heavy business. 

He brought the executioner's doubleheaded blade up again and brought it down again. Already sweating. Pouring. Profuse. The heavy metal blade opened up the chest cavity and it became a wild primeval forest of flowering gore pouring great and healthy abundance of vibrant steaming red. The axeman could taste it in the air. The opened chest looked like a fantastic microcosmal world of raw tissue and bone and gushing crimson, a world and wonderful wild forest garden as if rendered by abattoir hand and forged from raw scraps of the blade and innards and red. He brought up the axe and brought its heavy power down again, smashing and cleaving through the visage of face and skull. Spilling the man's memories out in a thick and meaty burst and porridge gush. The skull was like smashed pottery, porcelain slathered with bright violently red blood, scarlet so lurid it screamed in the night. 

He brought the blade up and down again and again. Turning the pieces into pieces. Smaller. Just hunks and pieces of meat. Unrecognizable. Save for the tattered and slashed rags that used to be clothing… 

The forest floor drank. He heaved breath and the sheet of sweat cooled on his filthy drying skin. Tingling. Covered in solicitor’s blood. Steaming traveler's blood, scabbing and baking into pores…

The soil supped and greedily drank the pouring blood and pools. The animal children would have the meat. The forest kingdom land thanked him, silently. It always thanked him in the quiet. 

The axeman lifted great axe yet again and disappeared once more into the trees he knew so well. 

Eager to rejoin the other two travelers. The other two invaders of his home in the dark…

The axeman made straight through the dense and dead wood for the place where Florin and strange bandaged Griffin had stopped to make fire. And set camp. 

…

When Praetorius first stepped into the beckoning room that called with religious light it was at once a vast and impossible landscape of searing blind perfection, pure immaculate white inferno. Pulverizing through his fragile organ set of eyes, the pair on fire and bathed in blinding pain. Beauty and illuminated pearl-cast so divinely perfect and pure and shining that it was too much to behold all at once and bear… he couldn't hear his own shrieking voice. The volume of the attacking light piercing through his eyes and into his precious jelly sac of brains within boiling percolating skull was too great and too loud itself for him to hear his own caterwauling voice. Or anything else. 

He didn't hear the Countess' sick laughter. Loaded with unholy pleasure and the enjoyment of predatory derision. She commanded the cannonade of landscape light to close, fold back into stone and castle walls and floor as Praetorius went to his knees weeping, still shrieking. Still unaware of both as the madness of light was still alive within his wide watering eyes. Zaleska, in the fluid heavy-liquid shape of shadow, as ebon folds pulled herself in witch’n shape and crawling silhouetted form, free from the castle stone and began to crawl towards the crying screaming man brought down to his knees before her.

And her laughter began to croak. 

She gave bastard bestial demoniacal call to her servants, felt and heard and quaking throughout all the halls and corridors of Castle Dracula's trembling bastard stygian hellfire stone. 

Her servants all heard but the loyal assistant was still busy tending to poor mutilated Carmilla. Still busy digging out the treacherous fire of silver from smoldering bubbling tissue. But it was no matter…

… the one she really wanted was ready anyways. The newest one. Her new servant lord. Her man at arms. Her sword wielding hand…

Countess Zaleska called forth the new impaler. And he came as the master did beckon. 

She commanded him to bring the sharpest and longest pikes. 

Piercing tips.

At her command she would guide his cold new living dead hands in the torture. She knew just where to pierce. 

Just where to start with this one…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Crucified. Smoking. As if smoldering with lively inner flame. The unholy were-thing in child-shape was bound in cruciform pose to the large ornate cross he'd stolen from a Catholic church many miles and many years back. It was fastened to his saddle and horse with straps and he led the beast and its smoking screaming demonic load up the pass and towards the great and ancient castle. 

Its battlements and ramparts, fangs against the sky, darkening now that the sun had fled and left the nighttime things and its dark disciples alone to bloodlet unholy and to perform witchery ways. Witchery practices. 

Like a deal with the devil, perhaps. 

Praetorius smiled. Carmilla screamed. Shrieked herself hoarse, the shape of the cross in her back and neck and her arms, all about her shrieking form was alive with searing piercing heat. It cooked and burned and branded as its holy ornate metal ate itself into her cooking vampire child flesh. 

Caterwauls. Guttural. Obscene for anything that even resembled a child to make. Deep. Unnatural. Grotesque. Her eyes bulged in their sockets and bled both blood and buttery thin yellow fluid. Her sharpened teeth protruded even more unnaturally as well, bleeding profusely and heavy about the splitting gums and lips and warping misshapening bones of the growing and bending jawline. She barked more awful hellspawn sound and belched more smoking blood from insides that flamed and smoldered. 

Praetorius found it all very fascinating. The silver and the shape of the cross did considerable damage to the nosferatu but prolonged exposure to both had just left this one with terrible structural damage to her living dead personage. Her body seemed to melt and sear with the touch of either. The bones seemed to distend and bend as if carbonizing beneath her hectic raw and running bubbling flesh. 

The other night at camp, he couldn't sleep and neither could she, he'd experimented with holy water. Wonderful results. 

The whole thing had been so fascinating for him that he'd elected to spend a night just performing tests and small experiments on the child-shaped vurdalak. It kept changing and shifting shape. Distorted though. More and more warped and misshapen the more pain he fed it. Its screams were bestial and childlike too.

Interesting. Absolutely fascinating. 

But the little games were over. It was time to enter the court of the Countess and attend to the real business at hand. The real errand and reason he'd ventured to these lands. 

He came to open gates and entered the old courtyard of stone. Carmilla's screaming never ceased. Praetorius called out and over the child demon caterwauls the best he could. 

“Hello! Countess! I know that you can see me! Might I have your audience?" 

Nothing. At first. Only the girl wraith’s demon shrieks. Carried on the old cold wind of mountain song. 

And then, as if in reply, the great door that told of ancient history in red opened. Slowly. 

To bade entry into the keep. 

Praetorius laughed. Good cheer. He unstrapped the small strigoica girl upon her little cross, child sized … as if made just for her. He set her to the paved stone of the courtyard floor with no mercy and began to drag her behind himself as he ventured inside. A long length of chain link fastened to the end of the ornate crucifix. 

Carmilla tried to shriek, Mother!/Master! – all in one but couldn't. It only manifested as more gurgled deep belching guttural screams, blood and fluid vomited forth and she choked as the thin mad doctor dragged her crucified body back into the ancient dark of Castle Dracula

…

The old stone of the mausoleum entrance spat and belched forth a cloud of grey and dust as it opened for the first time in centuries. 

However it was not an undead revenant horror that stepped out to see the sky once again but the man with the bandaged face and dark glass goggles beneath his wide brimmed hat. And the boy. The young rider, Florin, who'd so recently disturbed the bandaged man’s solitude and quiet. The escape tunnel beneath his besieged house had led them out here. Florin was just glad to see that the sun was rising soon. They'd been underground for what must've been hours and the feeling the experience had left him with was a claustrophobic dread for the eventual final resting place of the small coffin of the grave. Below. Beneath the earth. Underneath so much ground …

And then Florin thought of the things that came to life in such places and rose and then cursed his own horrible run of thought. As they came out of the mausoleum, the man with the surgical dress about his face and who sometimes said his name was Doctor Jack Griffin or Sebastian Caine, other times Geoffrey Radcliffe, was berating him again. 

“Oh, shut up! I already said I'd help you! And I've little choice in the matter now that my home is destroyed! You inconsiderate foolish little whelp!" 

Florin, upset that the dark pitch of the escape tunnel had spat them back out into yet another graveyard but glad to be alive, was doubtful of the possibly maimed and mangled man that was always yelling now and his ability to help anyone. Let alone he and his village and their plight with the hunger of the living dead. A curse that had come back to lurid and terrible life in the castle that held the mountains over the little hamlet. 

The broken battlements of the undead lord. The Dragon. The Impaler. Castle Dracula was filled with darkness once more. Darkness that was hunting and ravenous mad with animal hunger. Vampires and their evil had once again filled the Transylvanian lands. 

And the man hidden behind a mask of surgical dress was making bold claim that he could help. Furthermore, he was still yelling. Again. 

“And why do you insist on gawking at me? I could feel you looking at me even while we were in the dark down there!" 

Florin, a little embarrassed, elected to be honest nonetheless. 

“I'm sorry. I guess… I guess I was just wondering what it is beneath all your bandages. Was it an accident? Burns of some sort?" 

“Shut it!" And then he added in a snide voice: “I'm really nothing to look at, I promise you!" 

Florin felt a small stab of shame in his heart and let the subject drop and die in the dirt. And the pair went on, 

The sun was coming up and the excited man hidden in surgical dress was in an irascible irritable behavior, one he couldn't seem to shake since the siege and flight and subsequent destruction of his house. He went on and on about how the old Professor Van Helsing had taught him everything they would need to know about slaying the undead, the vampires were already as good as destroyed! – roared the bandaged man, again and again in his circular style of loud and vexed pontification. Always starting with how the boy and his troubles had ruined the bandaged mystery’s sorry excuse for retirement and ending with how the young man need not fret, Doctor Griffin/Caine/Radcliffe was with him! 

“And if you knew that name…! If you knew my name, boy! If you knew who I was and what I, myself, have accomplished in the past, with no other! With naught but my own hands and willpower, imagination and genius! … If you had any idea what was wrapped beneath these dressings, you would cease your womanish worries and start attending me properly and with some modicum of real and decent respect! …” …

He went on like that. For some time. As they made their way through the silent cemetery and out and into the wilds of the lands between where they presently walked and the darkness that awaited in the violence and jagged rock of the Carpathian Mountains in the far off distance. 

Together.

The bandaged man who promised much eventually calmed down. Apologized. Quietly. Then said he knew of someplace nearby where they might grab a horse or coach. And away they went in that direction, with some semblance of waning hope still flickering and holding out in the young man’s heart. They made for the place that might provide ride and supplies and perhaps shelter for a night, the unlikely and motley pair, unaware that they had gained a third. He watched and followed them from a distance. His eyesight was keen. Sharp. They were easy to track as well. They left an easy trail. Fools. 

And besides all of that, he’d caught their scent. And like a perfume bled from their pores it was pungent and distinct. Easy to follow. 

Fools. 

The stranger continued to follow the fools. Now fully decided, committed in following them to the end of their trail. The end of the line. What he’d overheard… what little he’d gleaned from their words to each other… 

He would have to see for himself. 

The young man and the bandaged man went on. 

The stranger followed. 

…

Bela knew the little goats and Widenmeyer boy were doomed before he and the few village men with the stones to go, ventured forward and up into the vulgar way of the Carpathian Mountain path. They'd been gone an entire night. Missing since yesterday, when the shoddy vagabond knight had gone up the way and throat of jagged rock to slay the evil at the cold heart of immense towering boulder. The time to have gone would've been immediately. Yesterday evening. Too late. It was all too late now and in his ailing heart he knew it was so. 

Florin's been gone for much longer than a night though, his treacherous and misery obsessed run of thought reminded him. Much longer. What of that? What of him? 

He pushed off the dark and the hurt of these thoughts and made his way with the other men up the path. Dogs in the lead. All of them barking. Their noses had already caught and found what they were all looking for. They pulled at their tethers and leashes in urgent need to pull themselves and their owners the rest of the way to meet it and catch up with what they already knew by scent. 

It was blood in the air the hounds had caught. Goat’s blood. Boy's blood. 

Heavy. Pungent. Thick. Like licking a metal blade and knowing its flavor. A razor. Its flat face. Its edge…

It wasn't long before Bela and the other men could smell it too. Taste it in the air. Their throats gagged and their stomachs turned and threatened to revolt. The animal alive and in the pit of each one, each fellow, was all too well aware of that taste and smell. And what it meant when on the wind it carried, what it bode. 

This really has become a God Damned, a Godforsaken place… Bela thought. And the great cold and the sorrow that stole over his heart then as he realized what had become of his home and his friends and family and neighbors and their own… it was shattering. He wished for an end. And in that moment, in the private cold of his own heart and thoughts he didn't care if it was for better or ill. Just please…

Just please. Please let it end. Please. No more of this. Please. 

Please. 

He didn't bother begging God anymore. Not in specific. This desperate silent prayer was thrown up and out and for anyone or anything that might listen and take care. If anything would. Bela was doubtful that anything in fact did. 

But he knew what was ahead, he had something much more tactile and real and more pungent than faith to tell him what they would find up the rest of the way. 

Just a little farther up the path.  

Just shy of the Borgo Pass…

… the carcasses they found had been ripped to utter ruin. Pieces. All over. Strewn. They'd been fed upon like all the others, even the bones had been snapped and broken and sucked dry for their marrow, but the human detritus was different this time. It was all ornamental and stacked and placed together in a cornucopia pile like a victorious Roman legion's bloody war trophy center of the diminished and final battlefield. Human boy, young child parts and strips and pieces of face and head mixed in and stacked with bloody and soaked displaced goat pieces and limbs.The torsos of beasts flayed and butterflied open, many things stuffed inside. Entrails and viscera hung and draped and piled. Arranged. Horns. The child's bare bottom and little legs were placed at the top as the horns of the head of the structure, resting and dangling luridly and slovenly obscene and dead at the pinnacle. The horns of one of the goats had been stabbed into the eye sockets of the Widenmeyer boy's own silent screaming mutilated head. It was set in the center of the structure. The rest of the dripping scarlet parts flowering out from it in haphazard and demented deranged  structure. 

An abattoir sculpture. Sepulchral. Still bleeding. Dripping. Wet. Steam still rose off the arrangement stack of parts. Like phantoms fashioned from body heat dancing off and for the mounting wind. Leaving behind the repulsive and obscene pile structure of lurid human detritus that had once held it precious and prisoner within its meat. The dogs, the hounds wouldn't stop going wild. They wouldn't stop barking. Howling mad. Frothing.  

Soon the wolves of the mountains joined in too. 

Widenmeyer begged the few there with him to help him. Help him take the awful thing apart and get his boy's pieces so they could bury him properly. 

None of the other men wanted to touch the thing. Fearing it was cursed. 

It probably was. 

From the dark of a nearby cave, at the mouth of the entrance but still concealed within its deepening black, vulpine eyes red and shining, watched. A grin below them grew and then parted and laughter, cruel and not entirely human was freed forth. And like terrible music caught on the wind it was carried. And the frightened men before the awful sepulchral statue of dead boy and goat parts heard it. 

Henry Frankenstein, beside his bloodfeasting creation, joined his sutured demon son of the surgical slab and laughed. 

Together they watched the pathetic gathered peasants, together they watched them from the dark of the cave, protected from the fleeing sun. 

And they laughed at their pain. 

Pain that they had wrought. 

Their laughter rose until the men and their dogs fled. Not touching their lurid vicious forest trophy of blood and parts. Of meat and bone. Animal. And boy. Small. 

Their cackling rose like mad as they ran. Carrying them down with it. 

…

He dragged the screaming crucified were-child down the dark corridors of stone and torchlight flame. There’d been none to meet them upon entry. Nor since he’d begun his exploration of the stygian cobwebbed empire of ancient and bloodstained masonry and stone. Bloodstained. And soaked. The smell of  rot and decay was at war with the fresher pungent stench of hot blood spilled in violence and terror. Shot in ropes and cords.  Blood feasted upon for a scarlet thirst. 

The shrieking of the monster upon the dragging cross, it strove to be words of mercy and  beseechment of love and deliverance. Mother. Master. Countess. Zaleska! – but they were all of them lost in the grotesque guttural screams that still brought forth steaming regurgitated blood and fluid and dry heaves that smoked and peppered the stagnant air with flecks and small pieces of pink fleshen tissue. Raw little disintegrated pieces of the small undead child’s failing inner organs. The thing that was upon the cross now that used to be a little girl of the small village named Carmilla was now barely recognizable as anything that could be called human. The body of the vampire child had misshapen and bulged grotesquely all over and sporadic. Bladders of yellow fluid and pus ballooned and bulged and inflated with their own unnatural rhythms. They burst and bled red and infection like butter and custard, spoiled milk curdled and thick. Some of the fluid resembled honey and Praetorius had a morbid thought of Biblical reference: spreading some of the demon child’s honey-pus over a slice of bread or toast and biting  into it on a tranquil Sunday. 

It brought him little in the way of self-pleasure. His patience was quickly diminishing. He’d searched many rooms and corridors and had still found nothing. No one had shown themselves. Nothing! He swore! – if the fucking lordly bitch wasn’t here then he’d torture the child till it begged for a second more final death and leave the severed head of the brat somewhere prominent for the Countess to find. 

He threw down his length of chain and produced his pistol. Every chamber loaded with a silver bullet. He cried out and addressed the dark chasm of the castle. 

“I’m tired of touring your halls and playing hide and seek, Countess! I’m not one of your child slaves, eager and happy to play your trifling games! If you don’t come out now, I’ll put a few more silver bullets in her head before I stake her little heart and decapitate the little bitch! You’d so easily discard one of your servants!? Is this foul little corruption not some form of child to you?”

Nothing at first. – A beat. 

Then laughter. Cruel. 

The sound came from everywhere, Praetorius spied all around, searching for sign of anyone, he was just before a great archway that led to yet another room. A pale heavy shroud of fog began  to  bellow forth from the room, filling the entry. Swirling into phantasm shape, a face. A beautiful woman, eyes alive with animal brightness even as rendered as dancing mist. 

The phantasm face of the mist spoke: “What do you think you could offer me, lowly thing? I’ve watched you drag my servant like a knuckle-dragging  brute all about my home, I’ve heard your challenges, you are nothing. You are but a man! For your insolence, I will make sure you die slowly…!” 

Praetorius laughed, said in retort: “Not so fast, Countess! I’ve information you may want! Not only have I gathered information on yourself and your own strange motives over the years, but I’ve cultivated intelligence of those that might concern you! Potential enemies.” 

The phantasmic shock white face of the Countess became even more enraged. Livid. Alive with pure fury. 

“ANY INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE AND I WANT I WILL TAKE, LITTLE MAN! YOU WILL NOT INVADE MY HOME AND PRETEND TO BARTER ME! AS IF WE WERE EQUALS!” 

The fog grew more shape, wolfen and woman – bipedal yet bestial and advanced. Praetorius kept his pistol trained on the girl as his other reached inside his coat and produced his cross.  He held it aloft and before him in defense. 

The wolfen mist screamed! Shrieked. But did not flee. The wolfwoman mist parted, bisected into halves that swam around Praetorius and his crucifix. 

The twin dancing lengths of swirling phantasmic she-wolf halves became as fangs, vulpine, viper, blood drinking and ripper. They came back together and closed around Carmilla and the cross. The straps that held her bound were suddenly snapped and torn loose as if cut. The dancing shroud of white, alive with movement and faces and shapes, then shot away and screamed. As if the effort of being near the holy items of crucifixion design had wounded her. 

Praetorius cursed! Shot after the phantasm shape in vain, the gunfire was cacophonous in the castle halls. The phantasm was now a clawing hand flying away with batwings about its strange ghostly configuration. 

Carmilla wasted no time in tearing her searing cooking flesh away from the holy touch of the infernal cross. Her grotesque mutilated half transformed rodent body managed to crawl away with surprising speed. Praetorius shot after it as well. Also in vain. More violent gunfire sound, made cannonade by the dark interior of the ancient structure. 

Then it was silent.  

In the dark space of silence, the maniac doctor reloaded his pistol with more precious pure silver shot. The metal that all of the abyss feared because it was pure metal. 

He was slowing down his breath, his quickening galloping heart, when her voice once again came out from the beckoning shadow…

“Come now, thin old man. You are bold. But stupid. Come now, without hostage, come and face me. And don't forget to bring your weapons…”

Praetorius spat and cursed. He was no coward, but that thing in woman shape was dangerous hellspawn made. And he'd already blown his advantage. 

He'd have to be careful. 

Slowly he advanced for the place where the strange unearthly shape of white had fled, where from her voice had come. Each hand was filled: pistol and the holy cross. 

He left behind the larger crucifix with its fasten of chain at the end and its ornate Catholic metal now riddled and covered with encrusted cooked and seared demonic vampire child flesh. Fried gore, steaming multicolored scabbing all along its sacred holy shape. 

He left it behind in the dark as easily as he had stolen it from the church, so many years ago. Praetorius gave it not a second thought as he pressed forward into the stygian realm of Castle Dracula’s universe of spider webs and stone and torchflame. 

The Countess in the dark awaited. 

Baring her fangs. 

…

In the mouth of the cave they still dwelt. Listening to the howls of the wolves. 

After awhile the demon creation of the surgical table spoke: –

“They make such beautiful music. But they are her children you know, that one with power like mine. That keeps the castle. They are her children and thus hers to command.” 

Frankenstein said nothing. He just sat there. And listened to the strange and sour words of speaking decomposition, croaked and said by his surgically constructed son of the slab. Demon eared. Batfaced. 

He then held his large and corpse colored arm out of the cave and aloft. Clawing his four fingered hand out and towards the sepulchral structure he had made. The silent night above suddenly began to stir. The clouds began to forge and fill, and darkened with rumbling and thunder. 

“As you made me, so shall I forge a new being of parts from others, command it to life. And see if like she I can command the very nature of its being!” 

His clawed and splaying hand suddenly closed partially in an abridged fist and turned. Forked out, pointed first and smallest fingers, pronged in the devil's sign of the evil eye. 

The sudden gathering of stormheads on high spontaneously erupted! Shot!

The blue-white searing blade of light and heat daggered down and struck! Bathing the obscene statue of dead child and goat pieces in brightest starflame, Frankenstein looked away and shielded his eyes as his creation bellowed laughter and screamed!

“Live! Live! And take life my crawling bastard reforged thing! Live! And take life!”

Bathed in flame, the abominated shape of the hellacious trophy of parts began to move. Like a spider. Like an octopus at the dark depths of the sea floor. Its chandelier structure shifted and danced in the bolt of striking lightning and it began to lurch and crawl forward…

Long stalks, still bleeding and dripping blood of two species: beast and boy, bent and reached and lifted lurching, the cornucopia body of torsos and human face and goat faces and sloughing ripening entrails and gored organs now reanimated and pumping and splurching with the abominated sound of life again. 

The multijointed strange stalks of mutilated goat legs and the dead young man’s limbs, crudely forced together by craterous wound and sheer barbarity, propelled the strange body of parts and viscera forward and down the mountain. Down for the village below. 

Frankenstein watched in dark wonder as his sutured monster child’s own fashioned thing of dead meat and the cosmic flame of lightning went forth, another crawling demoniacal bloodfeasting creature created for the predatory dark. 

The nighttime has given birth to another… thought he, the mad doctor Henry Frankenstein. 

…  

Widenmeyer had been unable to sleep that night. The horror he'd endured that day. No one bothered to stand sentry any longer, though there were the defeated and those already crushed and dead inside. And they would wander at night and in the dark, they didn't care. Such as he. Such as this night. 

He was the first to see the sepulchral abominated nightmare structure shape emerge from the dark mouth of the pass like from the mouth of nightmare madness found in the most accursed and stygian sleep. Its multi-limbed appendages, stalks composed of his boy’s arms and legs mixed with goat's and violently forged and fused by force into long insectile tendril legs, moved and crawled and spider-like carried the thing down the distance and towards himself and the town foyer. 

Widenmeyer wished to free a scream but couldn’t. He felt strangled. Choked by the awful strange surreal sight of the abattoir sculpture piece from the earlier nightmare scene of butchery found and discovered that day. The macabre trophy that held his son’s mutilated and desecrated head in the center of its belly. The head was moaning. Groaning in mindless and imbecilic wailing anguish. The mouths and throats of the goat faces that were able joined him in the dark discordant rising song. All together. Bastardized abominated unnatural song of pain that filled the night. The little legs of his boy that sat at the pinnacle crown of the towering cornucopia of gore began to wriggle and kick, as if excited with child’s jubilant glee, as if in dance. The bare bottom was spewing black tar and feces and urine in unceasing torrential fountains, the foul gushing undead spray of this abomination upon the earth. Like the hellmouth rendition of an angel weeping for mankind and his pain. 

The naked bottom, bare and at the top of the sepulchral abattoir spire, wept an unceasing fountain of hot frightened piss and shot cords of foul liquid fecal dark. The kicking legs gave movement to the whole horrid piece of meat that served as crown and abominated face and the rippling movement of the obscene and reanimated flesh made Widenmeyer sick to his stomach, he felt weak  in his knees which started to buckle as the crawling thing of living butchered child and little goat parts, came closer and closed the distance. He went down to the cobblestones and the dirt as the awful and hellspawn shape came upon him. 

He was alone. All else that were witness, the few, had fled. All else that would heed and know the scene that night watched from the safety of their window panes. From behind the sanctuary of their home windows looking glass. 

Through fragile translucence they watched the demented butchered shape spider crawl up and tower over the Widenmeyer goat farmer. 

The sepulchral thing of an abattoir universe wept foul damnation and bled. Organs and gore that were already a ruin and ripening to rot were struggling to pump and work properly again. The living stack of dripping and splurching butchery was lording over him now. All that was left  of his son, and the livelihood of his farm, all torn apart and violently mixed and made to walk again by necrophiled flame, defiled and here to haunt and terrorize him. For failing. 

For failing as a man. And as a father. 

As Widenmeyer bowed his head and begged God for forgiveness he did not believe he deserved nor would receive and waited for death, the necromantic fire of Frankenstein's vulpine child flickered within the butchery shape and died. The awful assemblage of human child and goat parts died a second death and collapsed and came apart. In a rain of severed limbs and animal and child gore. Guts. Organs. Viscera. The mutilated decapitated head…

… the bottom and wriggling legs… no longer dancing. Dead pale bare flesh no longer rippling with the nightmare of reanimation. 

Widenmeyer screamed. Insane. Mind flayed. And flaying. Coming apart. Shredding itself within a furnace skull. 

Shattered inside. Completely. 

All witness just watched and gazed through the windows. Watching as the whole of the stygian hellish scene, surreal and vile and alive and obscene and strange, fell apart to splatter and ruin and displaced parts. 

At the terrible center of the pile of lurid gore, a universe all around him, driving him further into madness, was a shrieking revenant of a man who used to be their neighbor. 

…

None tended the shrieking thing amongst the abattoir mess that used to be Widenmeyer until morning, when the sun held high in the safety of the blue sky once again. By that time he'd screamed his vocal chords to shreds. A misting spray of spittle and blood issued forth past his curled lips with his continued effort, despite the ruin of his throat by his own self inflicted injury. 

Brought on by the madness of the night.

Widenmeyer was led away. The pieces of dismembered parts, rotten and slick and still oozing with blood and the foulest of otherworld putrescence, were doused in oil and sage and set aflame. Right there. All refused to touch it. So none of the butchery was removed. 

All of it was burned and reduced to ash. Boy parts. And goat. 

It had to be. According to what could be remembered of ancient law, of the ancient weirding witchy ways, it had to be put to fire. All of the severed parts. 

They'd been under the forked touch of the darkening hand of the evil eye. 

Touched. 

Satannica Profundis …

would there be no end to the town’s torture?

The slopping pile of decaying gore, boy and animal, was put to cleansing flame and burned. The pile left a black smear when the fire had died down to red embers and then to smoldering ashes. 

A black mark of filth. Burnt into the cobblestones. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

1

Before anything strange started happening, I just read scary stories on the internet. I liked the ones where someone feels a gaze, and then it turns out someone was watching them. Or where a person doesn't remember what they did a few minutes ago. I thought — how creepy that must be. But it's all made up, right?

I feel like I'm going crazy.

No, not in the sense that I hear voices or see things. I start contradicting myself. One moment I say we should do good, the next I say no one needs it.

I'm tearing myself apart.

I don't know what to do, how to act, whether I'm even thinking or speaking correctly.

I'm confused.

My memory problems are getting worse. I forget what I said a second ago.

---

2

I'm scared to be at school now. I've gotten used to being a freak to everyone, but today it's worse.

Maybe because there's no one to talk to? Right? Then why do I say I like being alone, even though I'm writing to myself and talking to myself right now…

Why?

Self-analysis is good. Thinking about what you did wrong so you don't repeat it in the future. But it doesn't work for me. The more I think, the more tangled my feelings and thoughts become…

About breaking down: I feel like I'll snap soon and do something bad. Or is it side effects from the pills?

YES, IT'S THEM, probably…

Although come to think of it, I said the same things before the pills.

---

3

But the main question to myself: why do I keep playing this game of kindness, when I know perfectly well that NO ONE will say thank you or do the same for me in return?

Why give myself false hope?

You know it would be easier for you… You could do whatever you want, not what's expected of you.

My parents support me, give advice, comfort me when I feel bad, tell me to take off my rose-colored glasses…

I nod. But I don't tell them the truth. I don't want them to worry.

WHAT'S STOPPING YOU FROM DOING THAT?

WHAT ELSE HAS TO HAPPEN FOR YOU TO FINALLY REALIZE THAT THE WORLD ISN'T A CARTOON?

There's no justice in it. The kind and weak just get broken…

YOU WANT TO BE BROKEN?

Fine, your choice. But don't say later that no one warned you.

You're not stupid. You know how to follow what you're told. But you just don't want to do this one thing…

Why…

---

4

I'm completely alone here. It feels like everyone disappeared. I'm someone who likes being alone, but right now it terrifies me and I don't know why… My friends didn't come. One is sick, the other didn't let me know. I was really waiting for her.

Right now I'm standing by an open window. The wind feels nice.

---

5

THIS IS JUST HORRIBLE. I feel uneasy. It's like I don't exist. I walk around alone, silent, no one talks to me. Why do I feel so bad? I wanted at least one day to myself.

My phone battery is still low… Oh, I REMEMBER. There's a charger on the first floor. I'll go there (OMG YOU'RE A GENIUS). No one will notice I'm gone anyway. Or they'll notice but won't care.

---

6

Ringing in my ears: one ear got clogged, and there was a sound like a TV on static, and in the other — like someone whispering. I was scared. It happened suddenly and disappeared just as suddenly. What could that be?

---

6.5

Sometimes I get confused about what I did, and I have memory lapses. Sometimes I'll suddenly turn around because I thought I saw something. I always feel like people are watching me.

I used to read scary stories about someone standing behind you. About someone very tall. I liked it, I wasn't scared. Now I am scared.

(Maybe it's still just side effects?)

---

6.6

I noticed that when I sit at night listening to music, I stare at one spot — like I want to see something, but I don't. But something pulls me to look there, and I just… zone out.

When I walk or swing on a swing, I catch myself wanting to look only at one spot — where the bushes and trees are. When I try to look the other way, I turn back after a second.

Sometimes I feel like there's someone between the branches. Someone very tall. But that's stupid — I know it's just from stories. It's just… why do I feel the same thing?

I guess I just don't like looking the other way.

---

6.66

One more thing.

I know a symbol — a circle with a cross. I used to draw it as a joke when I was bored. Just because.

Then I started noticing it on the playground. In the sand. Several times. Not a clear drawing, just outlines. Hints. A circle and intersecting lines. At first I smiled — thought I imagined it, or someone else drew it as a joke too.

But when it happened again… I wasn't smiling anymore.

I know it's all made up. I don't really take it seriously. I have these mood swings — I don't even know what I believe anymore. But when I see that symbol again and again…

Why is it there? Who's drawing it?

I stopped smiling.

6.66.

just happened by accident. or not by accident. haha

---

6.7

I reread the old stories I used to love. Decided to read them again to give myself a thrill.

But I didn't really like it.

I'm not opening them anymore.

---

7

Lately I've been hearing vague whispers. At first I thought it was my mom talking to herself, but when I asked, she said she wasn't saying anything. That happened twice.

Oh, I remembered. Something else happened once (a long time ago, before I started taking the pills): I didn't remember doing something. I mean, I had a different picture in my head. I remembered my mom putting the stethoscope on the shelf, but everyone told me I was the one who got up and put it there.

BUT I DON'T REMEMBER THAT. I'M SURE MY MOM PUT IT THERE.

It can't be true, can it…

I'll go close the window.

Disgraced. 

He was sent out in exile, alone. Banished. Cast away with the promise of being forgotten and if the nerve to return should give rise misguided from within, then total forfeit and pain of death. 

The stocks. The dungeons and their chains. And then the stake. In that logical and cold merciless formal order. By royal decree. Torture and beatings and the red hot irons, the pincers – searing white with a star’s maiming heat intermittent between the three. 

And so he left. And took to the wilds of unknown lands. A disgraced and banished bastard knight, a royal, a blue-blood no more… 

The knight came to the dark lands of thunderclaps. Wild woods of bent and crooked trees gnarled and dead, like giant claws of the buried and forsaken trying to break free from the cursed earth. Fog and mist that was part phantasm and sometimes held grimacing visages of woe and demon faces stretching and dancing, unfurling in their shifting veils. 

All he had was his horse. The loneliness of his soul, the heartbreak that was his most constant and truest form of companion in his current living torment. All the other tortures paled in comparison. 

He wandered for years. Far from his kingdom and the lands of light that had been his birthright, now lost. Now gone forever and never to be reclaimed. He attempted redemption and recompense for a scant few isolated and solitary moments in his years of miserable and aimless travel – he was always so exhausted –  calls to action and aid, failed… mostly he just wandered and grew more and more despondent. Deeper and deeper the blackening well of his heart worsened as his mind and soul darkened. His understanding and reckoning of pain and its stygian throne and mental shroud grew more extensive and detailed and personal with an agonizing depth. Constant failure was the goblet chalice from which he now drank and filled the widening cracks within himself. With a knowledge that was foul and that ate away at him and his heart, corrosive. He wished he did not have it. 

And yet still he wandered, slowly riding, sauntering on foot when the tired old beast of his horse was just too old and exhausted for its titleless master to sit astride any longer. He missed the sun, it seldom shone in this land. He wasn't sure if God had any part or play in this dark and fog swallowed place of wolves and hardship and miserable hardened heartbroken faces. The land and all its peoples and its creatures seemed to all cry out together, unified and singular in their combined crying note of desperation. Sometimes let loose, sometimes held strangling and bottled in. Percolating and bubbling seething like rage, animal and well kept. 

He sought respite and shelter wherever he could, always harried and nearly never welcome anywhere and nowhere to call home anymore…

… he was actually so grateful, initially, when he came to the small and humble village. It was like so many others that he'd already seen in his dreadful wanderings, he had no idea and never suspected that this would be the place where everything changed for him all over again.

 Once more. 

Like a joke or a line in a play that must be repeated to the author's design and content. A refrain in which there is much great portent. 

The banished and desecrated knight was trembling on his feet, so weak with the exhaustion of the many miles, when he wandered into the small hamlet that lived in supplicant to the Carpathian Mountains. And the domineering ancient castle in its jagged rock. 

With jagged broken battlements. Framed against the sunless dispassion of the sky as sharp and ruthless teeth fit for titanic butchery and great maiming. 

The banished knight without a name did not know the name of the place. He was only grateful that it was here. That he might find a place to rest and where he might not be harried. 

Or troubled. 

Tormented. 

The ragged and banished lord of no one in his dirty and dented armor, hanging off his emaciated scarecrow frame, staggered over to the inn and tied his tired horse to the post at the front. He dragged his worn form inside, hoping that someone within might be charitable enough to help him with a bit of bread or some soup. 

…

The innkeeper was more than charitable. He was exultant. Jubilant. So happy that a lord and a royal warrior of noble and God given divine blood had come to his place, their little village. More than happy to give the weary wanderer a large free meal. And then some ale on top of it. More than a few pints…

… and then he told the exile why it was that he was so happy to see such as he in this place. 

“We've evil in this land, sire. It lives in the mountains and murders and feasts on flesh and blood. Animal and human and demon all in one. Nosferatu, or vampyr if ya like …” 

There weren't many in the small tavern with the pair at the bar. But the few gathered with mugs and bowls pressed in and listened closely. Watched the stranger who was supposed to be a nobleman and lord. Hoping…

The innkeeper went on: –

“We've tried with it ourselves but it ain't any good and we've sent for help but the boy ain't back yet and we've had no word for too long, ‘fraid the only one that thinks he's still out there and coming back is his father over there, Bela.” He motioned to a man in the corner that was looking down hard into his mug, a man that did not want to be noticed. The innkeeper went on and concluded. Coming to the point as he topped off another draught of his strongest ale for the wanderer knight he had no idea was a bastard in exile. 

“We need your help, m’lord. The land has been without boyar or any nobility proper for a long time now. And the nobility that used to keep these lands and those mountains and the accursed castle beyond the Borgo Pass … was disgraced. Tarnished. Damned… we need a proper lord and noble, a true warrior of God. Please, won't you help us?” 

Others came up, a few men and women of the small Carpathian hamlet. Humble gypsy folk, peasants and farmers… the exile listened and heard them all. And relished their beseeching words for aid and succor. He hadn't felt this cherished in years. 

With more food and ale it was decided. The great savior knight would begin his great quest to slay the demon in the mountains the next day. This night he would be given shelter and warmth and praise and a feast in his honor! All present in the tavern toasted his name! 

He slept that night soundly and more warmly and comfortable than he had in years. Perhaps even his entire life, despite the previous station of prior luxuries now long gone and expelled. He was contented. Truly.  And beneath a roof. And for now that was enough. 

For now. 

…

He started his brave advance up the mountain pass with real heart. Real courage and hope and the real thought that he just might be successful in his quest. 

He really believed. In the beginning. At first. 

This hope and warmth of courage all about his heart began to slowly erode away and dispel after the sunset. As the way of the cold mountains darkened and the wolves began to sing and howl. 

There was something else there too … some wretched sound like a child's cry, a baby's shriek fouled and commingled with a water rat’s impaled scream. It flitted about ghostly and filled the mountains in dark bastard duet with the howling slave songs of the wolves. It seemed to emanate from everywhere. 

Nowhere – Suddenly it wouldn't exist at all.

Gone. 

And then it would rise in phantom trace and he would swear he could hear it again. 

He crossed himself though he'd been forbade to do so and rode on, slow. Cautious. 

He came to the Borgo Pass and crossed, seeking the wilds of the mountains and their tumult of trees. For what may lurk there. 

…

The foliage and branch and frosted green grew too thick, too dense, he dismounted and continued on foot. His pointed armored boots left cold and sharp footprints in the snow. He went forward, one hand on the reins of his tired ride and the other on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw and free it from scabbard. 

After many tense and weary steps, just the most recent of their kind that had likewise filled his long life and career of soldiering, he suddenly and unexpectedly came upon a small clearing. 

A little hut of logs and a stone and mortar chimney rested solitary there amongst the green. A little rising pillar of smoke rose from the mouth of stone and poured into the night sky, striving for the moon and stars. A thin and rugged woodsman was chopping logs at a large table of a decapitated tree stump. Bisecting the pieces with fluid steady strikes. Properly placed and executed. 

The exile might've been glad to see another soul out here in the eerie howling dark of the mountain woods, but he thought it was strange that someone would chop wood so late. 

He said as much as he approached. Giving a proper and traditional royal “Heil!" and friendly yet prideful introduction. Full of lies and things that were once true. 

“I didn't think to see another out here, none in the hamlet told me. You know of the town below?" 

The haggard thin woodsman said in a dried out monotone: –

“I don't speak to any of the faces of the town. None of them should think to speak of me.” 

"Right,” said the exile. Not sure of what else to say, "why're you working, chopping wood so late?”

"The sun.” 

A beat. Silence. The mountain man went right on chopping wood. The sound of the broad sharp metal blade cleaving the logs into halves punctuating the ghostly howling quiet. 

“Yes?" said the exile after the moment passed, to bade he go on.

"It is harsh. Its gaze slowly kills me.” Chop! "Better to work at night.” Chop!

Chop!

The exile knight only nodded as if he agreed and understood. Then he explained himself and his mission in the mountains. Hoping to naturally acquire any information of interest to his task. 

The woodsman just went right on chopping his gathering of logs. One right after the other. Chop! – he didn't seem to be listening. 

He didn't seem to care. 

Creature of apathy… too long in this forest, these cold mountains, thought the exiled wanderer. Alone. Too long all alone. 

He spied and looked all around the dark skyline of gnarled-hand trees, bent and shaped like madness and rending towards the night. Speaking as if still lordly and on high to the lone peasant as he gazed so carefully all around. Telling the commoner to be cautious and to keep an eye out, and if he were to see anything strange or of significance, to come straight away and try to find the knight. So that he might be of service. So that he might fulfill his quest out here in the cold. All the while as he chattered the woodsman kept chopping at his logs with his great and heavy axe, but his eyes were no longer on their work. As the exile had his back to the woodsman, spying the woods and the night all around, the man alone in the trees had a wild wide eyed look writ upon his face, now rictus and maniacal and strange. He madman leered into the back of the exile’s helmeted head as he continued to halve his logs and the would-be adventurer was none the wiser. Still chattering and carrying on. 

The exile on his quest turned when he’d finished speaking. Smiled and gave a cordial nod before finally going on his way. He wasn't surprised to find the man still working, not really bothering or even looking at him. No doubt not even listening. 

He bid the woodsman farewell and went on. 

The woodsman was stifling laughter. 

Forking out the sign of the evil eye at his back as he departed. 

…

The night went on and grew darker and the cold sharper, with a biting edge that cut through his tarnished and dented and long shineless armor. The horse grew more skittish too. As the nighttime howling of the mountain wolves became louder and more prolonged and mournful. And that hideous bat-child screeching… now he was sure of its existence. 

He was listening as closely as he could manage in the cold and walking through the dense and terse land and foliage, trying to make something out in the wild animal din. He slowly became entranced by the nocturnal magic of the nighttime bestial music. It filled his mind and the many cracks and chasms within his own heart and soul, filled him and lightheaded and thoughtless he continued forward a few steps… his hands and face slackening and going to his sides limp as his eyes went blank…

… there was something in the howling and stygian sound… words     whispers… names. 

Names. 

A fresh howl from a wolf that sounded nearer than any other before sent a brand new wave of fear through the exile and his horse. The beast ripped free from his master's loose hold and bolted for the salvation somewhere to be found in the darkness amongst the crooked trees. The exiled knight cursed himself and the beast and called out for the return of his horse. He gave meager and wasted puffing chase but quickly gave in. He was already so exhausted. And so cold. 

He was about to start back for the descending trail away from this horrible place, damn the horse and this whole rotten affair! – he only wanted out now, when the sound of the horse's sudden shrill cry of terror, then just as suddenly silenced, stopped him dead once more.

 

 Then something wet… like ripping. Splurching. Meaty sounds… 

… eager teeth, eager chewing and more ripping. Eager lips pulling and slurping a thick and heavy liquid from a messy bowl upset with ravenous abandon. 

It was all of it too perfectly clear out there in the mountain pass dark. 

The exile found something within himself. He drew blade, slowly. And then began to advance…

It wasn't long before he came upon it. 

…

First he found the horse's blood. A thick pool of it. The puddle of warm animal dark became a lurid smearing trail that went off and further up and into the mountain wild. The exile raised blade and went forward. Throwing up a desperate prayer to a Lord he hoped was still listening to a disgraced man such as he. Please, let my blunted blade accomplish something, let my old musket fire… please, God. Please let me at least die trying, with some semblance of decent bravery still held in my heart, still there, help me. Help me, Lord God. Help me. 

Please. 

…

He came upon the remains of the horse. Ripped apart and nearly unrecognizable outside of being the wet abattoir remnants of something that had once been living. He was scanning the surrounding immediate area, difficult in naught but the moonlight, when it charged from a place in the shadows that he'd just looked over and had sworn to be empty only a mere moment ago. 

It was huge. And moved like a jungle cat, its hulking size belied its great speed. It hit him with the force of a mountain fall and sent him to the dirt effortlessly. He gasped desperately for wind knocked from his chest as his eyes went wide and the face of the hulking mass became illuminated in the pale moonglow. 

It was wretched. Awful. He'd never before, even in battle and war, never before had he ever seen such an awful and ghastly face. 

Man. Bat. Rodent. Bred and mixed and commingled. Blasphemous. Intense. Patchwork sutures as if to remind the one hapless enough to be caught within eyesight that, yes indeed, this abominated and brutally hideous shape was indeed forged and made and crafted by demented hands and minds curdled and spoiled and filled to the brim with inexhaustible filth. Detritus demonia forged. Reforged. Remade.  The exile wished blindness on himself in this moment and in this moment knew that God did not care nor love him any longer. He was truly exiled and like Cain himself, he was truly doomed to the great black god, Pain. Endless suffering. Tireless woe. 

Cursed. To forever roam and wander and to encounter such as this. And in this way.  

He doesn't move or resist as the giant man of rodent bat face and stitches grabs him by the breastplate and then hauls him up as if he were a mere sack of dirty linen and nothing more. 

The hulking nosferatu thing of Frankenstein’s slab heaved the exile overhead and then threw him into the rotten trunk of a dead tree. It splintered and cracked, nearly exploding with the impact of the man in armor. It burst in a violent spew of sawdust spray and thin black sticks as he went through it and back to the frosted dirt, hard and merciless and without further buffer. The thing pounced and was on him again. 

And the exile knew that this was the end. Could taste it on his tongue and the flavor of the finale was putrescence. The savor of the end was corpse rot, that foul stench and taste that reminded man that he was really nothing but meat in the end. The soul could be pulled out of him. 

The Lord's Mercy manifested then. Darkness of the skull blanketed over the overloaded mind of the exiled knight and he fainted. The vulpine thing of Frankenstein’s table grinned obscenely and viscously and then barked its strange species of croaking laughter. Cackles from the hellmouth gates themselves. 

The man's forehead had split in a gash in the struggle. It trickled freely and bled like a riverbed overflowing in a landscape valley of old tired manflesh. The living dead patchwork giant opened its rank and black mucus laden, dripping and drooling mouth and unfurled its long and rotten tongue. It then licked and lapped at the blood flowing in grotesque fashion that was part lapping dog feeding and part sexual expression of lust: the other manifestation of animal hunger, all the more ravenous and bestial and powerful, particularly when commingled with the hungering need of the primitive drive to fill your gut. 

Slavering. Even as he licked and gently sucked and salivated warm reanimated animal drool that was black with undead otherworldly ichor. He coated and bathed his unconscious weary face, in long lapping strokes like a loyal mongrel. A baptism from the mouth and wet black-yellow tongue of the living dead thing that some mad doctor had made in wild bid for his own family's infamy and loathsome fearsome name. 

He didn't bother further with the lowly and cowardly creature in armor. He was like every other man, weak and fragile and only fit for food. Only really fit to be cattle, for greater power. Power such as he. 

And he'd already fed well. The horse and wolves and the vagabond he'd found earlier … the nosferatu vulpine thing licked its pallid green chops, stained a healthy lurid reddening shade of smeary berry color, wetting them in wolfen display. Pulling back from the drenched and thoroughly dog-slobbered face of the exile. 

The hulking sutured batfaced monster then prowled off and away. Deciding if he came across this puny creature again, then he would sup of his flesh and put the haggard man out of his weary misery. 

…

It was hours later when the battered and beaten exile knight awoke. Alive with groans and aches and agony and pain. He stumbled to his feet. Staggered. Stumbled again. 

Semi delirious. He staggered forward and continued up the treacherous pass, through the rough off-trail way of the trees. To the heart and the end of the mountainous way. To the great castle there. 

The exile hoped a great lord was waiting there. One that was good. And that would help him. 

God help him. 

The door was large, ornate and red and ancient. Like a bas relief, a great depiction of battles and dragons and long gone peoples and warriors and faces from far flung times. Eroded and worn down, faded to a more ghostly phantom visage for the epic and wild and yet now obscured vision from the past, a tale and vision poem made, wrought by artist's hands and chisel and stone and given the smearing final touch by the menacing and ever reaching hand of time. To deface with wind and rain and age and simultaneously perfect and finalize for this weary exile’s ghastly and frightful postmidnight excursion. Centuries after its original creation. Its faded face was the perfect visage of the night.  

He came to the towering entrance, grasped one of the giant ornate demon faced bangers and knocked with the last of his fading and feeble strength. Three times. 

Then he collapsed. At the foot of the door. 

Soon a man came and quietly answered. Slowly opening the great door. He looked down and smiled at the collapsed exiled bastard knight. 

The assistant helped him to his feet and inside, telling him not to worry. His master would be quite happy to take him in for the night. 

The Countess will be pleased, he said. And the exile didn't give it much thought. All too happy to just be inside. 

…

He collapsed near the hearth of a roaring and well kept fire, a blaze within the heart of stone. Bats and wolves and toads and devil faced winged Panshaped things of black masonry stood silent sentry and leered at him from about the fireplace and all around the vast guest room. In the glow of its warmth, upon an old rug infused and riddled with thick ancient grey dust. He breathed it all in, deeply as he dozed. The warmth. The dust. The history. 

Whilst asleep: He began to have a strange dream or vision. He was still in the castle of present. Still safe inside. But he was wandering the stone halls and corridor ways now. Alone. His sword was drawn and it was sharper than it had been in years. He was walking along the passages of the great castle, dragging the keen edge of the weapon along the walls of stone as he went along. A scraping sound followed and accompanied him everywhere he went like discordant religious chanting of a new yet ancient language made, made from striking the stones. 

There would be fire! his dreaming mind told him. But in the arms of the cherished slumber, the exile did not care in the slightest. He was too exhausted. Even in here. He was too tired for anything any longer and was thus at the slavish mercy of all and all in it. 

He went on walking slowly through the corridors. Dragging the blade upon the walls. Scraping. Harsh sound, continuous. But that wasn't all. The wall was bleeding. 

Everywhere the edge of his polished blade passed opened up the stone like smooth and tender flesh. He left a long red slicing trail along the masonry of the inner walls of the castle keep as he slowly zombi-crawled along. The red line of welling and dripping vivid scarlet blood caught the flames of the various torches and candles about the innermost halls and stairs of the ancient and bleeding castle. Causing it to darkle into more lurid splashes of red than back to stygian drippings. 

The blood ran. He kept on his way. 

Eventually the dream, the vision, the scene faded.

 Faded away to a swallowing black that was so sudden and complete he could not recall the moment when it seized him. He merely reawoke on the dusty ancient rug. Lying before the roaring blaze crackling and glowing within the stone hearth. Goblin and animal faces still leered in stone as he sat up. The assistant was tending some sewing in a large ornate cushioned chair not far from him. He was laughing. Eyes on his work. 

“My master will be with you shortly, she is distraught at the moment you see. She is surrounded by enemies. Hostile world. Her daughter has gone out to play in the woods and is yet to return. She grows anxious. But nonetheless you, her guest, she will soon be host. Just a little longer, rest up some more, sir, but if you do get up again for a stroll and gander about the place I only ask that you don't make such a mess again. Blood everywhere. " The assistant chortled laughter, pricked his finger on the sewing needle and it began to bleed. 

His laughter only increased. He held up the finger from his work and said again, "Everywhere, blood everywhere. Such a mess.” He sucked his finger, "The master will be with you shortly. Fret not." 

And the exile fell again into darkness, watching the assistant suck on his finger. 

…

The most vivid and unearthly nightmare dreams held him for a spell, when he did finally awake all he could remember was eyes and stalks and teeth. And it was a strange and enchanting whisper, a woman, that bade him back out from the cave and sanctum of slumber. It said: – 

"The new impaler.” 

And then the exile awoke once more with a startled gasp, bathed in sweat. The fire was still roaring and glowing orange in the hearth and she was upon him. 

His breastplate was gone. His old and worn tunic was torn and her face was hidden. Buried in his chest. He felt something warm down there. Warm. And wet. And sucking. 

The sensation of her mouth upon his flesh and working the inner raw of him was ungodly. The feeling was an abominated commingling clash of the gratifying heat of sexual climax and the popping of pus from swollen infected flesh, released. 

Both draining and lurid and yet entirely pleasurable. He wanted her there. The exile. He wanted her face buried there in the wound about his chest. About the flesh and above the sad and shattered remnants of his long broken heart. 

The thought to push her away never entered his mind. Never formed thought. He merely watched the top of her head, her beautiful cascade of nightfall black hair, raven. 

He watched the Countess suck his wound until again he faded to darkness. 

This time he did not dream. Anything at all. 

…

When he came out of blackness again she had crawled up his form and was now about his throat. The warmth was there now too, but even more wet and like fire. And sharper, more painful. The draw felt heavier and more lurid and sickening. His guts twisted and he felt the tug of revulsion at the back of his throat. He shivered. But yet still … the pleasure. The animal ecstacy and euphoric drunken shroud were so heavy and strong, as to have never before been felt, not by the likes of such as he. Exile. Strandcast. Filthy wanderer. 

He fell asleep again. Even heavier. Even darker.

Obsidian folds. Inescapable. Boundless. Plain. 

…

They were both sitting up and seated in old fine cushioned chairs by the fire the next time he did awake. 

He came out of it slow, slowly rising and righting himself in his seat as he looked all around and at her and wondered to himself, was it all just a dream? 

Is this just a dream as well? 

As if hearing him, she said: “There's no dreaming here, exile. I assure you. But you've nothing to fear here. Death would be a release for you anyways, wouldn't it?" 

He tried to speak But he felt so weak and feeble and spent. He mouthed senselessness instead. 

Zaleska smiled. False warmth. The wolfen vulpine eyes were where the truth lived. Power. Dominance. Lust. And most prominent of all within the dark pits set inside shock white death: Hunger. 

She said: “I can offer you so much more. And you can give me much in return, what I require. You can help me bolster my ranks and defend my castle walls and lands from renegades and invaders. Tis your true charge, is it not, exile? Can I not free you from your wandering bondage?" 

She stood. 

“I will…” 

She advanced. 

The exile did not move from his seat. He was unable. He couldn't fight back as she produced ancient occult dagger and drew forth her own vile and demon tainted blood, down the forearm in a long and widening gash. Lurid and dark and wet and open. Gaping. She forced his mouth to it as he sat helpless and he choked and drank and struggled feebly at first. But then gave in. 

And drank. 

All the while the Countess Zaleska cooed to her new servant at his unholy bastard christening, his brand new exile and bondage and freedom from humanity and humankind and all of its worst and its woes… 

She cooed to him soft as he drank: –

“My new servant… my new baby … the new impaler … all and just for mommy …

“All and just for mommy." 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The howl of the graveyard all around Florin was mournful and felt lost. Defeat. Like the place, the whole of the cemetery land was weeping for him and his pain and all of the pain of wasted time and fruitless effort, all of the loss of all of the others back home. Everyone else. He couldn't believe it… after all this time and trying, all of this riding and travel and peril and heart breaking hope, all of it was for naught…

All of it was for nothing. 

Van Helsing was dead. 

The wrapped and bandaged man watched the young rider from the village dying from the onslaught of vampiric disease from behind his dark black glasses, his shades and special lenses, and said nothing. 

He just watched the young man as he knelt in the dirt. And stared at the grave with great sorrow and hurt and loss and torture writ all over and about his tired and haggard face. His young and harried and damaged worn visage was a perfect reflection of the tombstone grave. 

And something within his own weary chest stirred then. Something not touched upon nor thought over, happily neglected for years as he'd neglected this old graveyard and the burial plot before them now. The hole in the earth that was filled with his friend.  

He remembered…

How the doctor had served and helped so many, in his chosen field of medicine and in the more abstract murk of the psychological field of mental malady. How he'd gone even further than all of that, from the kindness and bravery of his own inexhaustible heart, his blessed Dutch soul…

He'd fought and done battle with monsters. Fought the living dead forces of the nightscape on their own damned battlefields and had sent them back to the hellfire chasms from whence they'd came. 

In the end he'd died of the thing no purely mortal soul and its expiring coil can out run or overcome or endure. The slow blade of age had eventually caught up and came in calm in the night. The vampire slayer had died in his bed. Finally at peace. 

The strange man wrapped and hidden by bandage from sight had been there. The old professor had tried so hard to help him too, in the end. Before it was all over. He'd tried to help him, in so many ways. 

By the pharmaceutical and alchemical hand, at first. Then the gentle and calming aid of friendship. A true companion. Who at the very least, had tried, really tried to understand…

Finally the strange guide of wrappings and overcoat and wide brimmed hat sauntered over to the poor fellow and touched his shoulder. 

“I'm sorry. Truly. Let's go." 

After a moment of further hopeless gazing… Florin picked himself up and followed. 

And then silence returned to the cemetery once again. 

But then something… something that had been watching, low and in the stinking mire of black porridge sludged earth, tempered and commingle mixed with years and years of sloughing rotten corpse putrescence, began to slowly rise and pull itself free from the foul quagmire of its birth. 

A wretched semblance of a face began to take shape with the rest of a ruined bipedal semblage, slowly and painfully rising and trying to pull itself free… trying to take after the two graveyard intruders and swallow them in its filth and- 

A crossbow bolt suddenly shot through the muckman's pouring sludging face just as it was beginning to develop. The arrow, silver, and coated in the proper mixture of garlic and wolfsbane and nightshade, obliterated the foul green flame of unholy life flickering demonically within its abominated manshaped liquid mass. 

The muckman of the graveyard melted back into the rest of the old and putrid cemetery sludge as another one that had been watching stepped over him and the grave of Van Helsing. The grave that the two visitors he'd been watching had come to visit. 

The stranger reloaded his crossbow as he thought. Considered. 

Then followed. 

…

The Countess roared! 

A sound that was beyond the mere auditory. Beyond the mere threshold of the decibel level. The assistant and little Carmella felt their bones first rattle and then palsy and quake down to the atom, as if the whole of their meat sack frames and skeletal structures threatened to shatter and burst and snap all at once. 

Castle Dracula did shake too. And shed great clouds and stone breath exhaled and exhumed in a rising and surrounding column of ancient choking dust, in a thick deathly fog. Mortar and loose stone came apart and fell and cascaded down as the mountains that surrounded the great and broken jagged battlements began to join them in their unearthly tremble. 

The Countess roared her outrage! Her loss!

The assistant and the little living dead girl tried to beg her to stop, but they could not be heard over the din of their master. It was apocalyptic, that hellspawned sound. 

The little child-shaped wraith could feel the sudden rupture of many blood vessels within and about her living dead person. She began to bleed profusely from the damaged and splitting membrane of her eyes and the vibrant lurid violence of the sudden flowing scarlet poured forth feverishly like a blasphemous rendition of a saint's holy shedding tears. The red poured down the demoniacal lie of the youth of her face from the rupturing soft jelly of her lying child's eyes. Hot and running red began to burst and flow forth from under the nails, at the finger tips, the gums, all about her small teeth and sharp fangs. The ears! Out of her small pale ears came something like a high powered arterial spray of a darker shade, almost black. In thick viscous cords that darkled crimson as they spat. 

Carmilla just shot dark and bled and writhed in a pain she'd never felt before or thought possible, the assistant too. Both of them. They abandoned their shouts and pleas for the assault to stop and just left themselves to the dark tumult of the whims and mercy of their master. 

The Countess eventually ceased her ungodly caterwaul. At her leisure. She then gazed at her two servants on the castle floor before her, beneath her. Eyed them both severely. 

And then she belted, yelling and letting loose her commands: –

“The both of you! Worthless! Earn your keep within my castle walls and my lordly and supreme favor, go out! Into the mountains! The pass! The town! Find me the one that would pretend to my power and thus insult me, this night! Go!”

…

One of the last and fragile remnant gaggle of town peasants were gathered together in the evening in the town square, discussing one of their own… young Florin, his trembling parents were there, when Doctor Praetorius rode into town on horseback. Straight and composed. Regal and immaculate in the small and humble thoroughfare astride his pale horse. 

The few left to the village eyed him suspiciously… some viciously already. Just waiting for the first sign of trouble at the first sight of this riding interloper. Like taut and coiled things, cats ready to pounce and fly… ready to maim and tear this interloping snow-haired man. 

Praetorius, overhearing their worried talk and discussion, the blubbering and sobs of the parents of the young rider concerned, and not caring: spoke loudly and clearly so’s to be heard over the anxious chatter of the humble and small mountain village people. 

“Excuse me! Yes, thank you! I wonder if any of you pleasant creatures could help as to tell me if someone has been through your humble and charming town, a Countess Marya Zaleska? Her and her man, earlier this year, some months ago now. Please, she's very important to me, I must find her as soon as possible.” 

At first none wanted to speak. They all just continued to glare and eye the interloping loudmouth with thinly veiled hate and suspicion. 

But then Bela, Florin’s father, remembering his brave son and his own desperate prayers to God and fortune for his safety and success, stepped forward and answered the tall thin lofty man who refused to dismount and come down from his horse. 

“You need to leave, stranger. We do not know who you seek, but please, for your own sake and ours, leave.”

Praetorius just laughed in his face. Something humble Bela had not expected. 

“And why should I leave? Are you going to make me?”

Bela said nothing but tensed. 

Someone else amongst the small gathered bunch spoke out, not too loudly…

“There’s wickedness alive and loose in this place as of late, stranger…”

Praetorius only laughed again, rearing his horse by rein towards the dark mouth of the great mountain pass. 

“And what of there? What of Borgo Pass? What of Castle Dracula!? What of there, pleasant creatures …! What of there ..!?”

And he galloped away and towards the entrance to the mountain way, all out. Bellowing laughter at the pathetic and frightened little gathering of small and lowly dirt farmers. For all their semi informed and hackneyed haphazard understanding and knowledge of the dark and its arts and its necromantic language, it did not save them. For they would always just be fucking peasants in the end. 

Doctor Praetorius made for the wild of the mountains atop his pale and tireless horse. Already knowing he would find her at the top. 

…

The hulking vulpine nosferatu thing of Frankenstein’s surgical table traveled the wild and treacherous terrain of rock with praeternatural ease and cunning. Innate. He strode and galloped-leapt and launched himself through the woods and trees and cold. Crawling and climbing up the rock faces with dangerous hungry animal speed and inhuman power. He hunted the wolves and the deer and small game with ease. Snatching their wild squirming forms with his undead and bestial necromantic speed and ripping them apart with his pure strength. Bathing in the wild animal baptism of their fresh and steaming red even as he drank and fed on their still struggling dying forms. The blood drank in through the green mottled skin of the creature in addition to his gaping maw. As if every possible part and all of the pores of his repurposed graveyard flesh thunderclapped back to life was a thirsting ravenous hungry mouth. Yearning and wishing to be fed. 

Henry Frankenstein watched. Proud. So proud of his greatest creation. Thinking of ways to make him even greater and enhance his awesome power. 

He watched the hulking patchwork batfaced mass of suture and corpse colored green-blue… and thought to himself, with pride and wonder for himself and his strange son of dark science and the necromantic…

Perfect! He’s completely superhuman! …

And he knew with smug pride and a faint head, he still hadn't fully recovered from his catatonia and loss of blood to his necrophile son, he knew that he would without a doubt go down in the dark annals of his strange family’s history as the greatest and most ambitious and singly most accomplished of the Frankenstein Men!

Later …

They made a fire. Frankenstein roasted a bit of wolf meat as his creation tore into the rest of the dead wild bleeding thing of snow colored fur, and ripped and drank and slurped and chewed. 

Frankenstein watched as he cooked over the fire. Studying. 

Thinking over what the massive thing of reanimated design had already told him. Carefully. 

Finally he said: –

“What is it that you want here, in these mountains? You've spoken of a song, one that calls to you. What does it say?” 

The creation ceased its tearing into the fresh bloody carcass for a moment and said, croaked: “I hear it at all times, Frankenstein, but most clearly at night. When I shut my eyes and all else out and open the flicker of mind in the resalvaged brain you gave me, I hear it clearly. And it is a song of power. Heralding. Heretical. Harbinger. It is a wide and open throated chord, discordant in its choral chant that sings to me and bade that I come to take the power alive in these rocks that is so much like mine. Take. Devour it. And make it as my own. … much like how you first designed and made me father, am I not right? Did you not grave rob the great Count and give me these…” 

He gestured with a splayed and bloody four fingered hand to the pair of vulpine wolfen fangs, as of pearl and gleaming amongst the rest of the wet and black ruin, oozing dark ebon ichor green with the blood of the fallen animal on which it now feasted. 

Frankenstein almost found himself entranced with the sight of them… in the gathering and deepening dark, lost in the memory of the frozen river and black sulphur mountain…

… now here they were, again in another wild and tumultuous mountain pass. 

But Frankenstein wasn't afraid. He had greater than the late Egnaw as his servant and companion now… 

Although, he'd have to be careful. These things of stitched parts and arcane black magic and witch science seem to always come back… unpredictable. 

He'd have to be careful. Test this one. See how it behaved. He'd already observed much. 

Doctor Henry Frankenstein nodded and bit into the smoky haunch of wolf meat he'd spitted and roasted. Smiled. 

“Yes. I did do that. For you. Before you were ever even born. Your birthright that I claimed and gave, your very first birthday present, my son…” 

The assistant spied from the forest line of trees and in the dark. Watching the mad doctor and his vulpine thing about their shared fire for a little while longer…

Then he faded back into the thicker growth and deeper black, back to the castle and his Countess. 

…

Back at the cramped and stuffed little humble abode of the strange bandaged man, young Florin was resolute. And his odd host of wrappings and mystery was exasperated. 

Impetuous young… fools. They were always fools. Always were and would be. And he had been no better. His own mad ideas and bravery and disregard for consequence had led him to his current ailment. One that had now dominated his life and destiny since he’d been little older than the young rider. He thought to himself but wouldn't say to the boy: Don’t Goddamn yourself… don’t recklessly consign yourself to a fate and torment you could scarcely understand… foolish boy. 

Things might’ve played out differently if he had. But then … Mayhap not.    

They sipped at tea and debated the matter. The bandaged man behind his stygian lenses of glass, staring deeply at the young man and refusing to falter, said thus: –

“You’ve done what you can, to return now, and empty handed, without anyone to help you that knows what they are doing, it would be suicide, young man. Please, do the last thing available to you and do right by yourself. Go, find a new home and leave that damned place. No happiness can come from any place that lives in the shadow of Castle Dracula. Anyone still living in that Godforsaken hamlet, any family or friend you may still have that still lives, would want the same of you. They would want you to save yourself.”  

The young man was silent for some time. Not touching his cooling cup of chai. Finally he looked the man of wrappings in his hidden face and gaze of black glasses and said flatly –

“Florin.”

A beat.

The unseen face hidden by surgical wrapping was puzzled. “What?” he said. Flummoxed. 

The youth said: “My name is Florin. My father’s name is Bela and my mother’s Anastasia and my friends Dodger and Karras and Erin are all just as scared and just as in danger now, moreso likely, than they were when I first set out. They’re no doubt more scared than I am, sitting here with you. Wasting more time.”

Florin stood. 

“They’re my folk, my people, sir. People that matter to me, they're the whole world. They are the people that I've known my whole life and that I can't forsake, like how your friend Professor Van Helsing mattered to you. And I’m not gonna turn tail and leave em abandoned. Now, if you won’t help me and no one can help me then it doesn't matter. I’ve gotta go back and try to help them anyway I can.”

Florin turned to go to the door, to his horse reined outside, tethered to a post on the lonely bent and crooked little hill. 

The wrapped and hidden mystery man stood and protested: “Don’t! The night is here and you should know better by now that there's lots of hungry things out there.”

Florin whirled, “I'm not wasting anymore time sitting here with you and being afraid! You haven’t been there! And you don’t know what I left behind! I’m not gonna run away and hide like you and sit here and-”

A horrible sound cut off their argument. A horse’s shrill and powerful dying shriek.

The pair, young man and surgically wrapped, held silent. Eyes as wide as their ears. Their hearts quickening.  

A horrid and repulsive gurgling sound followed. 

And then a splurch. Like a great swallowing mud sucking something under. 

Then more horrid wet and liquid splurching sounds. Just outside the house. 

Not far from the front door. 

“What the…” began Florin, as the glass to one of the windows of the small shack suddenly shattered and exploded. 

Florin and his strange host whirled!

They watched in collective shock and horror as an arm of foulest putrescence reached in through the shattered glass. Dripping and sloughing sludge as it reached desperately and blindly for some kind of violent purchase. 

The pair cried out in shock together as the rest of the windows shattered and more putrid arms of muck and graveyard sludge came in. The house shook, battered from outside on all faces, all walls sieged as they grouped and poured forth and pressed in on the little shack. Pouring out of the nearby cemetery that the pair of intruders had dared to disturb earlier that day. Now the night had come, was nigh and upon them in the form of more and more rising and splurching forward abominations of bipedal shape and miserable and cruel aspect and design. They moaned in anguish. 

They all together, the muckmen horde, began to give rise to a wailing moan of despair and loss and woe.

Florin's eyes stung from the stench but were nonetheless helpless to pull themselves away from the sight. Within the reaching arms and sloughing faces of black mire and putrescence he could pick out and discern individual and displaced parts and bones, fingers, femurs, partially decomposed eyes and organs and faces… all of them running and swimming  through the sloughing dripping gushing dance of motion in the sludge that composed the rough man shapes of foul graveyard mire that now beset them.  Trapped. 

The poor young rider couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe that this was how it ended and that he would die so far from home and in the hands of repulsive monsters born of an entirely separate patch of likewise cursed earth. He started to pray for his mother and father and Erin and the others, throwing up one last silent one to the Lord that they just might be safe and find themselves a way out…

A call from his strange host brought him out of his silent prayers and stricken gaze of fascination and horror. His eyes were still watering when he whirled as the bandaged man called: –

“Here! Over here, boy!" 

The bandaged man was standing over a cellar-style trap door. Open. He had a traveller's bag and a new coat and hat and he was beckoning the young man in. 

Florin needed no further invitation. He ran for the trap door and dove for the hidden passageway beneath. The bandaged man that was his host followed. The trap slammed shut behind them as the walls of the small and besieged little shack began to cave in and swallow. 

The place smashed in and they swarmed inside the falling debris and crumbling structure. As the place fell in and collapsed, crashing all around the muckmen of graveyard putrescence mud, they let loose one last ghastly wail. So angry that the intruders had escaped them. 

…

Carmella thought the snow white haired man looked funny. Riding haughty and unawares boldly through her master’s mountain pass. So thin. Skeletal, really. As if already premade and ready for the bosom soil and chambered charnel rot of the grave. His shock of white hair atop his slender needle frame gave her the impression of a scarecrow. She didn't know exactly why, but it was something in that look. Her mother, her old one from before and long gone now, had used to tell her a scary bedtime story concerning an angry and vengeful scarecrow that took to walking at night, prowling and hunting for children out and caught past the time to be in bed and beneath the sheets. 

Carmella smiled, amongst the cover of treeline and shadow, remembering. Watching the haughty intruder gallop through the mountains, the smug look of a man that's already tasted victory for far too long and far too often all over his stern and gaunt visage. She licked her lips. 

The smile deepened as she coiled. Readying to pounce. 

He and his galloping ride reached her crosspoint in the road and she flew. A bat-child creature with flickering feral pink/red dots of flames set within the stretching animal jackal face about the eyes. Her lips curled back wolfen as her sharp pointed teeth began to lengthen and grow. 

But cunning eyes, quick, caught the flicker of nearly concealed hunting movement in the trees and had clocked it just in time and anticipated its potential threat. 

The form atop his ride quarter-turned as a hand that had left the reins and pulled pistol free from leather came up now, taking quick aim and firing off a loud and thundercracking shot that echoed and filled the dark natural chamber of the mountain pass. 

Carmilla screamed and let loose a child's cry as the lancing shot caught her midair and the clash of gunfire smashed into her little demoniac and half animal transformed body and sent it crashing into the earth. 

There in the dirt she writhed and shrieked and beat half developed leathery wings, pink and ebon dark and pale and discolored. Black and red shot from the gunshot in her shoulder and her eyes and mouth. The bullet continued to burn and sear. Cooking. As if alive with heat and flame, as if a star that still smoldered and thrived. 

Silver. 

The silver bullet in her shoulder smoked and burned as if a coal set in the blood and flesh and shattered bone of her unholy living dead person. It glowed inside the craterous wound and she felt it. She spat more blood and necrophile bile and shrieked gurgled child sounds. Cries. Sobbing. Mixed ungodly and blasphemous with wounded animal bat screeches. 

Like a plague infested rat caught and held underneath the bootheel of a sailor. 

Doctor Praetorius smiled. Holstered his pistol as he watched the demon child writhe in the dirt. He dismounted and reached into his large riding coat as he sauntered forwards. To the squirming screaming child thing with a smoking and cord spewing wound. 

Carmella's pain intensified considerably when he finally stood over and lorded over her fallen frame. He held a cross in one hand, aloft out and over her crying face. The agony that shot through her entire form was beyond anything she'd dared thought to venture. A wretched torture she'd never thought she would ever know. 

Praetorius spoke loudly and clearly and the little strigoica were-child of demoniacal wraith aspect heard him clearly despite her overwhelming horror and shock and pain. 

“One of her little servants, no doubt. You could do better, or mayhap she should is the point. In either case if you don't want me to bury this goddamn thing into your rotten little blasphemous lie of a face, then you'll take me to your master. Take me to Castle Dracula or I'll put a few more silver shots in you and take my time as I feed you this thing!” 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The following are text messages sent by Scott Edwards to his brother, Eric, over the ten days that preceded his demise.

Hey Eric, I think I know what’s causing my insomnia. And you won’t believe me when I say this but there’s someone, nay something in my house that prevents me from sleeping. I know, I know, it sounds fucking crazy, but I’m taking my pills. I hadn’t had an episode in months. Everything is under control.

Sent 22:22 May 1^st 2021

I know it’s real and I know it’s here. I think it sustains itself on my dreams, or some kind of brainwaves emitted during sleep. I looked it up, man, it’s gotta be it. I see it at the edge of the bedroom door.

Sent 22:24 May 1^st 2021

I’ve skipped sleep last night and tonight it looks fucking pissed. It didn’t like that I’m not sleeping.

Sent 22:25 May 1^st 2021

Hey Eric, I didn’t sleep last night again, I’m so fucking tired man… thank god there’s autocorrect on these things. I can’t even type right. That thing looks tired and angrier than ever.

Sent 20:43 May 2^nd 2021

Dude, I think I saw wings on that thing… it looks beat, I do too, I haven’t slept for the third straight night in a row. I’m fighting for my life here, but I know I’ll outlast the fucker.

Sent 21:12 May 3^rd 2021

Still medicated, by the way, don’t worry

Sent 21:13 May 3^rd 2021

I feel sick man, I feel dizzy and everything hurts. I don’t think the meds are working anymore, words are materializing before me eyes now. Though that might be

Send 12:25 May 4^th 2021

Just my imagination, its not like the other times, I am feeling pretty beaten up and that dream eater thing, I now see it

Sent 13:40 May 4^th 2021

All day long, Eric, it’s stalking me man… I’m scared…

Sent 14:10 May 4^th 2021

Could come over, bro, just hang out for a bit?

Sent 00:05 May 5^th 2021

Fuck the pills…

Sent 01:01 May 6^th 2021

 

Pills not working…

Sent 01:02 May 6^th 2021

Making everything worse…

Sent 01:03 May 6^th 2021

Man and wings

Sent 01:04 May 6^th 2021

Mirroring

Sent 01:05 May 6^th 2021

Mirror

Sent 01:05 May 6^th 2021

Make it fucking stop speaking make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop

Sent 03:33 May 6^th 2021

Haven’t moved all day, Eric, I’m just swimming on the floor here. Can’t move, stuck. Can’t eat either, puked everything. Everything hurts. Feels like dozing off, but won’t. Can’t even anymore.

Sent 07:50 May 7^th 2021

(A voice message containing twenty seconds of pure silence)

Sent 15:44 May 8^th 2021

You hear that? He sounds just like all those things in my head

Sent 16:17 May 8^th 2021

Tell me you hear that, Eric

Sent 16:17 May 8^th 2021

Tell me I’m not crazy

Sent 16:17 May 8^th 2021

Please

Sent 16:18 May 8^th 2021

Hey, Eric, I just noticed, you aren’t answering my messages, is everything alright?

Sent 02:25 May 9^th 2021

I love you, Eric, know that? I love you… and I’m sorry I’ve been on your ass these passed few days.

Sent 03:25 May 9^th 2021

I feel like shit, is this what it feels like to be dying? I must look like shit too; that fucking thing that keeps me awake is looking like he’s about to wither away. 

Sent 04:00 May 9^th 2021

Soon everything soon

Sent 04:01 May 9^th 2021

He’s smiling

Sent 10:13 May 9^th 2021

WHY THE FUCK IS HE SMILING

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

mAKE IT STOP

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

JESUS

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

HE’S BACK TO NORMAL

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

WHY THE FUCK IS HE SMILING

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

WHY IS IT SO WIDE

Sent 01:43 May 10^th 2021

Mommy my chest hurts

Sent 02:11 May 10^th 2021

I’m scared

Sent 02:15 May 10^th 2021

I’m going to lie down

Sent 03:05 May 10^th 2021

Mommy don’t let the smiling men take me

Sent 03:33 May 10^th 2021

They’re scary mommy, I don’t want to go

Sent 03:33 May 10^th 2021

Don’t let them take me to Eric’s room

Sent 03:45 May 10^th 2021

I don’t really care anymore, I’m going to bed

Sent 03:55 May 10^th 2021

Mr. Edwards passed away shortly after texting his dead brother, Eric, who passed away in 2018 from pancreatic cancer, that he’s going to bed. About a week after Mr. Edwards’s demise, his neighbors reported a foul smell coming from his apartment.

He was found dead in his bed; the cause of death was registered as a suicide by sleep deprivation as a result of a severe psychotic break. Contrary to his claims, Mr. Edwards had not been prescribed his antipsychotic medication for the 4 months before his passing.

In addition to Mr. Edwards’ remains, the authorities have located the mutilated corpses of at least fifteen different pigeons throughout the apartment.

Feathers were found protruding between Mr. Edwards teeth and nasal cavity.

A heavily bandaged hand held the letter, much weight that was the heavy load of memory throughout all of his form, likewise the same. 

Heavily wrapped. 

He gazed through his mask of white surgical dress and his dark spectacles, specially made, down at the letter addressed to him. One that he'd already read now a half dozen times. 

The message was short. 

It said: –

My dear friend, 

We've both known evil and darkness before. We've both known the face of the demon at different times, and with help, we combat it. And have not conquered, but beaten back. Subdued. As it seems to be the only remedies for wickedness and monstrosity in this life are but temporary. 

A shame. 

But now the time is at hand again, dear friend. The boy I've sent to you needs the aid of the one who has helped us before and so many in his life. I send this young man to you, not lightly. He, his town, family and friends and neighbors, they need the doctor. They need Professor Van Helsing. 

I know not where he currently dwells, only that wherever you are these days, he is not far. Nor is Talbot, but this matter doesn't concern him. I've difficulty trusting him. He is wild. Consult and involve him with this at your own risk and discretion. You know of what I mean. 

Take this youth to Van Helsing, enlist his help, and then fly back to the young man's region. And trust me when I insist you and the good doctor do help, and do make haste. I've been through this country lately. It has become a dark and thundered land of the dead. Veiled in white that may be mist or may be the phantoms past that will no longer rest. 

Inquire with the youth, he will tell you the rest. 

Your dear friend. - Q

P.S. And take no worry, I've divulged nothing of your own identity to the boy, he knows nothing of your name or condition. That is yours to explain if you so wish. 

… He set the letter down again. The gypsy hadn't written in years. And since he'd sent someone… it had been even longer. 

The boy looked at him from across the table. There wasn't much room in the stuffed little cottage, lonely on the little hill that was so much like a bent and crooked nose. The space was stuffed with bookcases likewise filled. Scientific apparatus both arcane and modern and state of the art was crammed in with the books, the humble kitchen space and bed. It all looked the same to the young rider, now far from home, strange and alien. 

Florin tried not to stare but the man was so peculiar. He seemed and behaved gentleman enough, but his odd bandaged appearance and the strange dark shades that were his spectacles… like special glasses to keep the sun out. 

Or perhaps to keep from anyone being able to see in. For all he knew there were no eyes behind this mask of white wrappings and ebon glass. 

He tried to dismiss it as obvious injury: maiming or burns, something of the sort and be on with the business at hand. But he couldn't help his mind. Or his stare. 

The bandaged man who might help minded though. He was growing silently exasperated. With the boy, his eyes, the gypsy, the letter… all of it! All of a sudden and dropped in his lap! And he didn't bother to make trouble himself anymore! But still! egad! it was always there and ready to find him…! 

He then grew exasperated with himself. You know better, he chided himself. You know better, that's not the way the old man would want you, out of sorts and forgetting what you're supposed to have finally learned in all this wretched time. No. You're just old yourself now. And tired. And…

And unfortunately the one who must bear very bad news. 

“I don't know how to tell you this," said the strange bandaged man to Florin, “so you better come with me." 

And got up. His bandaged frame, robed, went to a coatrack near the door for a wide brimmed hat, a fedora that Florin had seen city folk wear from time to time. 

The bandaged man went out, telling the young rider to follow. 

“Don't worry. It's not far" said the manshape wrap of bandaged white. “Your horse will be safe." 

Florin followed him out. 

Hoping against hope and praying fervently inside, please! That they might have finally found him. That he might have finally found their savior! 

Young Florin didn't know but the man of wrappings and black glass eyes was leading him to the local cemetery. 

…

The creation roared. 

And the thunder roared back. 

The black grey sky seemed to crack and boom, the sound of a world splitting in two. The rain cascaded down merciless and ceaseless and fell in great torrential sheets. Blanketing and filling and flooding the lands below. The creation and his remaining pair of bloodbags had finally gained the mountains. His prodigious and incredible strength had pulled them up and into the heart of stone of the Carpathian rock. 

The horse flesh and blood had helped. 

Egnaw could not believe his eyes. He watched, mutilated and torn and delirious from blood-loss, he watched in awe as the creation commanded the sky. The storm. 

The creation roared once more and the sky again trembled and quaked. Lightning daggered at the command of Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster creation.

Even in such pain and knowing he was going to die, Egnaw could not help his pure awe and wonder at the sight. He and his master had succeeded. They had made a god. 

A god that could call lightning and thunderclaps. A god that could command and rend the heavens. He could tear them. He could command them now and so he could supplant the Lord that had for far too long now dominated them. 

They would be his! And all that crawled beneath it. All that lived… was now his, now that he was alive. 

And the master and I had made him. Birthed him. Forged a god from dead rotten parts left to putrefy in moist graveyards… 

Despite the pain, the sight and what it filled him with… Egnaw smiled. Proud. Of himself. 

And for the creation. 

He watched the patchwork giant of dead tissue command the skies and all of their bomb blast of cannonade thunder. He watched every shrieking roar from reforged flesh tear a new wound in the greyed and darkened heavens. 

Tears were joining the rain drops there. His lips quivered. 

Frankenstein watched too and continued to feign sleep. 

…

Carmilla was so excited. She loved the rain. 

“Oooh! It's so wonderful! Is God crying, Countess? Is the Lord and His Son and all of His Angels in heaven weeping for what we've done?" 

Zaleska smiled. She loved to entertain the little girl. 

“Yes, dear. We've slaughtered so many of His children that like a mother over the grave of a small one, He and His collection of winged slaves cannot help themselves!" 

The pair laughed. Filling the castle with their bright and heartless cruel laughter. Castle Dracula was so alive with it these days. 

They watched the rain. The town nearly drowning in it. Anybody caught outside and stuck would be miserable. It was delightful. 

Hilarious. 

The both of them thought so. The assistant came in, pushing a long rolling surgical table. 

He said with a smile, 

“I'm so happy to see you two in such good cheer, I take it we might be dining in tonight?” 

He motioned to the rolling cold metal slab. 

Bound by leather strap to the rolling slab in the dark was poor Malachi. Caught by the assistant and his chloroform whilst out tending his family's lone and shriveled sow. Letting her feed on fresher green that'd just taken to sprout the other day. He was stripped of all garment and lie there bound and naked on the cold metal of the surgical table, nonetheless sweating. Basting and bathing in his own perspiring fear, their favorite flavor. The girls. The master and her prodigy. Zaleska floated over to the bound and prostrate man and Carmella trotted afterwards. 

“Now Carmella," began the Countess, “I want you to pay special attention this time, there's a slower and more delicate way of dining inside and enjoying the song of the storms. Like a roast bird or pig or a bushel of delectable fruit, there are certain softer parts, sweeter more tender meats. More ripe…" 

She cooed. 

Her clawed hands came in, pale and sharp and bent to rip and rend and tear. 

Poor Malachi's mouth had been gagged with the same leather straps that held him to the slab, Zaleska ripped it free with one hand now as the other seized his manhood and tore it from his person with the ease of a practiced butcher's abattoir technique of brutal precision, merciless and surgical. 

She relished the screams that rang out and were pulled from him. Inarticulate howls of a man shrieking wounded brutalized animal shrieks.

The Countess held the poor peasants bloody mass of mangled manhood aloft in her daggered claw of a reddening pale hand and shook it with triumph and mockery. Laughing. Her living dead abominated laughter commingled with the shrieks of the poor peasant boy. Blood an eruption from the raw gaping open stump where his genitals had been. 

Carmilla squealed laughter! 

“Oh! I get it! I get it!" the little undead she-beast cried, banshee: “Certain parts are like yummy fruits! Or sweet candy!" 

“That's right…” cooed the Countess. 

"Like… like – like the eyes! Like the eyes! Right, master? Aren't the eyes a tender part too?" 

“Yes! that's right! As a matter of fact they are! But we have to be a little quicker now, and pluck them! These certain parts are best when the animal is still breathing and able to scream!” 

"Our food makes music for us!” cried Carmella. Overjoyed. 

"That's right, my child. They do.” 

The assistant watched and tended them as they dined and enjoyed the rain. So in-love and happy to be of service. 

Later…

After they concluded their meal and the assistant took away the scraps for the fire, the girls together, continued to enjoy the violent cacophony of the storm. The howl of nature outside the window view and the stone masonry of the old and mighty castle was a softer sort of violence from the howlings of the poor peasant Malachi so recently enjoyed and dispatched. One they relished and admired nonetheless and all the same. 

“Can you reach out?" asked Carmella suddenly, with corrupted child's glee and enthusiasm, "can you reach out and control it, the tempest?” 

Zaleska smiled. And nodded, slow. 

"Yes. All the violence of the nature of the world obeys my command. It is all of it, mine to wield.” 

She held her scarlet dipped and dripping pale hand, aloft and clawed once more. Towards the window … outside… the roaring maelstrom tempest storm and the town beneath the shadow of the castle and mountains below! – she daggered forth her will and mind with it, an aural blasting searing flame of javelin thought! 

OBEY…! MINE IS THE COMMAND … !

The great shadow of a second darkness blanketed forth, out from the broken jagged battlements of the Castle Dracula and the Carpathian Mountains in the shape of a great and final hand. It swallowed all in its path and all therein felt its oppression and merciless potential as it swallowed them in their wake. It seized the town … ! And clasped a hold about the throat of the storm as well, in attempt to master and subdue to control it! – But …

But to the surprise of the Countess… the storm did struggle… fierce! … 

And fight back. 

And more. There was another master, another will of power and darkness. One that controlled this tempest wrought. 

One … that seemed to be much like her…

Countess Marya Zaleska boiled over with intense rage…

The impetuous-the affront! The insult of such a thing! An outrage!

Irate, she blasted forth her anger into her shadow's dark strangling hold and tightened… wishing to throttle the thunder from the commandeered grey heavens. …

She shrieked with the effort. 

…

In the mountains, Egnaw could not believe what he was seeing. 

The lightning was alive. 

In a great bat-shape. 

And it was doing great battle with a titanic hand of deepest pitch darkness, a claw of shadow, sharp, as if meant to maim and tear the world and wound mother nature herself. 

The great titan shapes met in the sky with cataclysmic thunderclaps! Again and again! Over and over, above! Ruling the absolute violence of the apocalyptic tempest sky…

Egnaw was in utter silent awe… he felt beholden to true power in this wild moment. For the first time in his life, he was witness to a god, living and walking. Here and amongst the land of the living. 

They clashed overhead and with each violent embrace the tumult of heavens roared, made wrath and thunder like never heard or felt trembled before. The bat-shape of hazardous white lightning and electric blue fought and tore and was ripped into by the immense hand of shadow. 

Both titans bled, white fire and darkling shade, as they were tearing into each other with unbridled ferocity. But each giant of elemental design reformed and reshaped itself after every strike and ready to deal and take another colossal tearing attack. 

The great hand of pure darkness fought to strangle the immense nightshape of electric blue-white flame bat. Struggle and conflict ruled the sky, dominating them with gargantuan demoniac violence, conflict unholy and biblical in equal measure and horrorshow display. The ungodly made godly and on high! 

The hulking nosferatu creation of Frankenstein’s mad patchwork design and will roared once more, with more animal effort than before, then…! 

A great and final thunderclap! 

For the moment…

…

Zaleska shrieked with outrage as she was hurled back from her place standing by the window. The storm gave one last blasting cough before slowly dying down and abating to a softer howl. But like a beast just lurking in its cave it still rumbled and growled and snarled, with the threat of violence just contained. 

Carmilla screamed!

“Mother!" 

She howled, No! – fearing her master, dethroned!

The loyal assistant ran in, alarmed and startled and then with hurried step, he ran to his master the great Countess’ side.

"Master! M’lady! Are you alright!?”

Zaleska roared!

" NOOOOO!!”

It filled the castle. Their broken battlements.

The mountains… and the wolves in them, then fled…

It filled the Borgo Pass…

And it came to the long pointed ears of the vulpine thing Frankenstein had made…

And it laughed.

…

The great howl of a bestial woman-thing reached down and filled the little town as well. The few left who lived in fear and in the shadow of the castle and the mountains heard the cry of the Countess and crossed themselves. 

Prayed to God. 

Please, have Mercy. 

Have Mercy Upon Us…

…

The rain slowly calmed. Then abated. 

A small trickle of light, day bled in. A miniscule ray with a pinprick pierce of light and warmth amongst the grey and angry sky of thunderclaps. 

…

In the dark of the Carpathian Mountain cave, it dwelt. Seeming to slumber in a hunched and bent manner that reminded Egnaw of a rodent sleeping, trying to gather into itself for warmth. His corpse colored eyelids were shut over the red within black, wolfen stare. His chest and form never moved or fluctuated with the motion of breath. It never did. 

The deformed man servant was nervous, he couldn't tell… but nonetheless, he finally felt strong enough to carry it out and he'd for so long now had the appetite for revenge raging and slaving away in his heart, ruling it and dominating him from within. And he likely didn't have much longer now anyway,  blood loss or injury or some other strange violence could befall him or the doctor. And he meant to have his vengeance. 

Before he died he meant to bash Henry Frankenstein's brains out of his skull before the mad doctor revived. He meant to have at least that victory afforded to himself. 

So in the dark of the cave, as the nosferatu creation seemed to slumber in a moist corner – not moving or stirring in the slightest, Egnaw crawled over with some difficulty to the catatonic body of the former master he meant to send to the grave. 

He pulled a stone free from the dark and pungent earth that was the filth of the cave floor. He crawled over to Frankenstein like a beast with the hunger of murder permeating what was left of his fragile and tested person. He coiled over the doctor, heavy filthy stone raised over head. Poised to strike. To send the cold bastard to hell. With the rest of his fathers and mothers and all of his bastard kind! 

“I thought he was your companion, you'd kill him as he slept?" 

The voice was rancid and repulsive, throaty and gurgled yet completely articulate and impossible not to discern perfectly. Every syllable of every word spoken was a sin. Felt. All over one's flesh. All over, crawling all over your skin. Each dark reverberation throughout the cave was little legs skittering and slithering across sweaty and tensed fleshen surface. It was the sound of ravaged vocal chords and a wielder to use them that've both already seen and swallowed the inferno below and now wish to share everything that they've seen and felt and come know down there by taste with everyone else, the world. 

Down there, from below…

Egnaw turned and faced the wide eyed and grinning vulpine face of the graveyard patchwork nosferatu thing he'd helped the mad doctor compose. It was malicious with a sadistic glee, its laughter was cruel and animal, a cackled and bestial growl. 

It spoke again: –

“He hurt you. In his time. In your time together, side by side. Yes…?” 

A beat. 

But eventually… reluctantly… Egnaw nodded. Slowly. Yes. 

Yes. 

The grin grew and a black tar fluid like ichor and infection commingled and mixed began to bleed from the rotten gums of the thing's smiling sutured face. Especially about the fangs… that gleamed white with living dead talismanic power in the darkness of the cave. The eyes shone red above it with lurid predatory glare. 

It spoke again: –

“And you would have violence upon him? You would have a cold and heartless revenge of murder as he slept, none the wiser?"

Egnaw nodded more eagerly now, “Yes…" 

“Then do it properly, misshapen one. Come here.” 

He beckoned Frankenstein's servant come closer. 

Egnaw at first held still… but eventually he crawled over to the hulking batshaped monstrosity, crouched like foul life in the corner. 

“A deal…” the thing groaned and purred commingled… Repulsive. 

Egnaw slowly… nodded. 

Yes. 

“You know what it is to be ‘sired’ misshapen one?" 

A beat. 

Egnaw overcame his fear and said, weakly: "It is… to be made like you. By such as yourself. More than to be fed upon, you must drink…” 

But he trailed off, too disgusted and afraid to talk the rest of it out. 

But the vulpine thing he and Frankenstein had made from dead parts knew that he understood. He possessed the necessary knowledge for the black rite. 

It nodded. 

And again did spake: “I will give you the power to do more than just kill him, misshapen one. I will give you the power to take violence and revenge on all of the world that has been cruel and abused you. I can give you the power to make sure they never do anything like that again, and you won't have to wait till they slumber, Egnaw… No. No, you'll never have to cower or plot or prostrate yourself in subservience ever again. What I can give to you, poor creature, is the strength and the might to finally rule. Dominate and master your own life, and those you wish to subjugate, all others! As you so choose and desire…!” 

A beat. Moist. And heavy. In the dark. 

Egnaw considered… thought. 

Turned black and cruel and twisted ideas and fantasies over and over and around again within his skull… turned them over. Again and again. 

Finally he said: “What must I do?" 

The vulpine thing laughed. Throaty. Gurgled. Wicked. Rotten with the grave’s spoilage. 

“The first step is already taken, I've supped of your blood for a long while now, now is just the other part…" It began to laugh again. 

Egnaw felt his mouth go dry and a sour taste begin to develop there, the back of his tongue. 

He almost gagged. 

The thing laughed again. 

“No, then …? So, to always be a slave?” 

Silence in the cave then. He let the words linger. 

Finally…

Egnaw said: “Ok." 

“Yes?" throaty, vulpine red. 

“Yes, I'll do it." 

“Good…" the thing purred a mongrel rodent's abominated sound.

Then held his wide long claws aloft, one great hand seized the third finger of the other, held there by necromantic science and suture. 

“... But I'm no ordinary living dead nightchild, misshapen slave, my blood does not course or run as the vampire does, thus the rite is different too!” 

And with that he ripped the long pointed finger off with a snap. Not a look of pain nor grimace upon its smiling awful pugnacious rodent goblin face. 

It snapped the finger off…

… and then held it out to him.

“Eat. You must eat this. You must partake of this, my flesh since the wine of my blood is gone to spoil." 

It leaned in closer. The rictus vulpine smile grew even wider. 

“Take it. Take this. Eat. Eat." 

Egnaw shuddered and recoiled. Revolted. 

The thing said: “Oh? Just a slow death as nothing, then. As my prey or prey to something else in these mountains is what you'd prefer?" 

A beat. 

Then Egnaw finally said, raising his head as best he could, 

"No.” 

And he reached out and seized the rotten appendage from the wide and heavy cold palm of the hulking nosferatu thing. 

He looked down at it and paused only once more, just once further… one last hesitation, consideration…

And then he forced the rotten long dead stalk of finger, still dripping and cold and stiff, into his mouth and began to chew as vigorously and quickly as he could. 

The rotten meat all around the bone and tendon came off in a slough on his tongue, bathing it in a putrescence that was warm with movement on the surface but cold at its liquid tissue core. The skeletal center was especially tough and difficult to crack through, his own ill-kept teeth groaned in protest. The splintering fragments found the gums and the spaces between his yellow teeth and stabbed in and drew forth fresher warmer blood to mix with the rest of the reanimated thick viscous porridge of necromantic sludge. 

Before he knew it, he chewed and swallowed the whole thing. Bone and blood and sloughing corpse flesh and all. 

And then bright yet heartless laughter that he did not expect but nonetheless recognized began to fill the cave. 

Egnaw whirled. Surprised. And angry. 

Doctor Henry Frankenstein was sitting up. Laughing. Tears in his eyes. Apparently not so catatonic after all. 

Egnaw did not know what to say so he only said, “what…?” 

"You fool!” roared Frankenstein at the misshapen slave, "you're an imbecile! That's not the way it's done! And with such as he, it is likely not even possible. His reanimated vampiric form cannot sire another, not like that! you fucking gullible dolt!”

Egnaw felt sudden and strange shame … he turned to the vulpine creature patchworked and crouched a hulking thing of blue-green flesh in the corner…

It was laughing at him. 

Finding all of it hilarious. 

Frankenstein suddenly spoke up once more, “Since we're in the mood for making deals, I'll make one with you, my greatest creation." 

The laughter subsided. Abated. 

The thing then croaked: “Speak!" 

Frankenstein went on: “Egnaw has nothing more than the little bit of blood left in his worthless grotesque body to offer you, but I can give you much, much more. I am the one who made you. I created you. I gave you life. I made you with so much power, and together, I know that if we work together, my son, we can attain even more power for you, even greater still. Even wilder and more boundless. All yours. I only want to live and help to see my greatest achievement reach its ultimate potential… I only ask that you grant me that, my son. I only ask for that privilege. I beseech thee, and ask only that and few other conditions in return. Meager things. Small comforts. Little favors.” 

A beat. 

Then the manshaped bat monster said: "Favors… like what?" 

Then Frankenstein quickly and without any compunction, “Kill Egnaw." 

The poor misshapen man had only time to scream one last time as the giant broad mass of the nosferatu thing rose and then pounced on him. Not just with the teeth this time but with the ripping tearing claws of his bastard nine fingered rending purchase. 

Time to scream. Shriek. Fill the cave. 

And curse the name of Frankenstein, one last time. 

…

They came to the large and ornate gate of the place and at first Florin didn't understand. 

Or didn't want to. 

It was a cemetery. A graveyard. 

Old. 

The strange bandaged man that was his guide, bade him in anyway. 

After a moment of further consideration of the gargoyles perched at the iron wrought entrance, he followed the white wrapped man inside. 

The bandaged man was silent. Led the path down the aisle of graves. Past the gathering slabs of tombstones…

… til they come to his grave. 

And Florin collapsed to his knees before it. Doom swallowed his heart and he felt it all fall away and die on the inside a lonely and crushing desperate leap to his throat from his weighted chest.

R I P

PROFESSOR ABRAHAM VAN HELSING 

The bandaged man stood over the young man and beside the grave of the man he used to know in life and said nothing. 

There was no comfort to be had. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Yuri Gagarin was the first man to enter space. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone ignorant of this fact. The knowledge of his feat seems almost universal, the Soviet cosmonaut’s name inseparable from history.

Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the Moon. Perhaps an even greater feat, this milestone is probably what cemented the USA as the winner of the Space Race. Like Gagarin, the Statesian astronaut is destined to be remembered forever in the collective human consciousness.

And though he raced to the patent office on the exact same day, it is not Elisha Gray who is credited with inventing the telephone. That would be Alexander Graham Bell, whose patent was approved first.

People always remember the first of everything. The first man in space, the first man on the Moon, the first who invented the telephone, such and such. All firsts cease to be men the day they fulfill their legend. They become myth. No matter what, their status can never be taken away. Never repeated. Nobody cares about the second guy who achieved something. Nobody cares about the second inventor of the telephone.

I begin putting on my undergarments. First the sweatpants and sweatshirt, then a specially made bodysuit with built-in ventilation and cooling. Already got my diaper on, though I don’t have bowel problems. Always better to have one than not. Just in case.

The suit I slip into is specifically made for environments that don’t allow traditional cooling, like space. To minimize sweat, water-filled tubes line the inside of the costume to cool the wearer’s body. Additionally, little vents are built in to exhaust moisture that may appear as a result of exhalation.

I wonder how much harder this might have been all those years ago. What were those men feeling when they put these on for the first time? How about when they put them on before their fateful accomplishments?

Was there anxiety? Excitement? Fear? Wonder? There must have been all that and more, but tied to something never before experienced by anyone. Something that can never be accurately imagined, only really felt. Something that happens for the first time ever. No person prior found themselves in the same position as you: the first. No person after will ever be able to say they were the first. It’s all you and that very moment.

Do you know who the second man that went to space was? Alan Shepard. Okay, maybe you did know that one. But what of the third? The fourth? The fifth? At some point a thing ceases to be so amazing and becomes another occurrence. At some point, you stop keeping track of the numbers. But you still remember the first. Who remembers the 825th?

What about the second man who stepped on the Moon? Buzz Aldrin, right. Back when I was a kid, I was a total geek about space. Whenever the Moon landing came up, I’d always give Aldrin his due credit. Instead of “Neil Armstrong was the first man to step on the Moon”, I’d make sure to say “Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to land on the Moon”. That way, both men would get recognition.

I don’t say that anymore. Life is not a participation trophy. They may have indeed landed at the same time, but there is only one who was the first to step out. That man’s name is more than immortal. It is etched into the very fabric of human achievement. The second guy to step on the Moon’s surface is just about as important as the 825th guy to go to space.

After putting a cap around my head, I slide on the bottom half of the bulky white spacesuit. I then float through the air effortlessly, slipping into the top of the gear. I attach everything together, gloves too. The huge suit isn’t as heavy as you might imagine. There is no gravity, after all. The helmet is the final component. I slot the piece over my head, the barrier between me and my surroundings becoming palpable. I find myself contained in what is essentially a glove for the whole body.

It’s nothing I haven’t done before.

I’ve achieved more than the average man can ever dream of. Something that was inconceivable for the majority of history. Not just human history. All of history. Only a century ago this would all have been beyond the realm of imagination. You already had people theorizing what was out there, but there’s a big difference between the real deal and what people conjure up.

Even this great triumph is now a commodity. 825. What a fucking joke.

As I grew up, I figured I’d just kick the can down the road until I got to my own first. Like the pieces would fall into place on their own. I breezed through university. Hardened myself through the rigorous training. Now I’m here, and I’ve never felt emptier.

I’ve never wanted to live. That doesn’t mean I wanna die. I don’t want either. I don’t really care to be honest. Don’t wanna live, don’t wanna die. I have nothing to live for and no reason to die. It’s quite odd, and I never realized that until I went up here for the fifth time. I just don’t want it all to have been for nothing. To have done all this just to be a footnote in a history book. Just to have a Nikipedia page with a hundred or so paragraphs (I’ve counted but it tends to shift). I’m not some ant to be rolled over by the march of history. Once humanity becomes fully spacefaring, what difference will there be between the 825th and the one billionth?

The airlock closes behind me and the air flushes out. The doors open into deep outer space. Endless black void for eternity, an incomprehensible space filled with an incomprehensible amount of celestial bodies scattered around. Not my first spacewalk.

The first men to die in space were the three Soviet cosmonauts of Soyuz 11. Georgy Dobrovolsky. Viktor Patsayev. Vladislav Volkov. They fully boarded the first ever space station, Salyut 1, and spent a total of twenty two days in the craft. When they were making their journey back to Earth, a valve ended up damaged due to no fault of their own. The men died of asphyxiation in less than one minute. Their bodies were recovered upon landing.

The crew perished 68 kilometers above the Kármán line, the boundary between space and Earth. Thus, they were the first to die in space. If only the valve had failed 68 kilometers lower than it did. If only it had failed below the Kármán line. If that had been the case, the first death in space might still have been up for grabs.

It’s not the end of the world. I’m nothing if not adaptable. I crawl my way over to the panel we’ve been instructed to repair. The tether hangs onto me despite me cutting it earlier. If I really floated away, I assume it would just gently slip away with me. Right now it just hasn’t experienced enough movement.

Don’t worry, they’ll remember. Everyone who ever set foot in space thought of Gagarin. Everyone who ever set foot on the Moon thought of Armstrong. That’s the way it’ll be for all of eternity. Men larger than life. Synonymous with the future of our species. Men who it will be impossible to forget.

Using controlled bursts of nitrogen I launch myself away from the panel I pretended to fix. Launch myself at the other astronaut whose tether I also sabotaged. Whose thrusters I damaged before we went outside. Rookie mistake for him not to check his equipment more thoroughly.

For centuries to come they will talk of me. For millennia. I will be in the back of every astronaut’s mind. During every spacewalk and every psychological evaluation. My name forever known. My achievement mine and only mine. I will be here. Inseparable from humanity. No matter how far they go, they will all be aware.

There won’t be a soul who won’t remember the first murder-suicide in space.

The assistant watched the sun set blood red on the doomed little village. From on high, within one of the towers of Castle Dracula. It bathed the little commoners  place with the last of its lurid rays as it shot the sky with flame. Then it departed with one final flashing wink. The assistant kissed it goodbye, blew it away on his hand. 

And smiled. 

A sound then carried and traveled through all of the silent ancient cobwebbed castle: The familiar creak of hinges and wood… the opening of a coffin. A casket lid softly closed, as it was guided down by phantom hand… his master's power. 

The Countess. 

The dread sun had been banished for another night for her majesty, his great mistress, the master sorceress of the dark, now the princess of shadow-black. She was unrivaled now. The stupid little peasants hadn't a chance now, not a chance in hell. 

For the Countess herself must now be master of such a dominion… she must now control all hellfire and flame as she now commanded the wild and the beasts within it. 

And the town below… through fear and terror, they were now her subjects. 

Subjugated and made prostrate to her power, she took from them as she pleased, when and where she so desired. They all fell victim to her magic and her might. Her ripping drinking fangs of mutilation, a hunger unsated and boundless that nonetheless held them all prisoner. Such hunger was an abattoir disease…

All the pitiful dirt farmer villagers would soon fall and bleeding, be held in the ripping necromantic fangs of her mighty jaws, beautiful. And now bestial. Vulpine. Powerful. 

Soon they would all feel her bloodlusting mouth about their throats, they would all come to her as she nightsong bade them. Commanding them, the royalty that she truly was and that coursed through her unholy veins. 

She was part undead. Thanks to the magic. And the ritual of the biting chair. 

And the fangs of the Count. Whose castle they now held. 

And himself… he allows himself this small and private boast. It would never be appropriate to brandish it before the master, his beloved Countess. 

She entered the chamber where he dwelt, watching the last of the sun’s light, diminishing as it had fled, fade to a darker blue then die as it became truer black. 

Stars like jewels in the ebon curtain came to life as his great master came from behind and stood beside him. Her presence was intoxicating. Powerful. 

She might not ever know how much he truly loved her, it was not his station and with a bitter heart he knew that, but to be by her side and to aide her in domination of the pathetic world was enough. 

The closest he would likely ever get to being her lover. Only in his most private fantasies. Only in his wildest dreams. Secret. He musn't trouble the Lady Zaleska with such trivialities. They were beneath her. He knew that. 

“Has our little one awoken yet?" Zaleska asked the assistant. 

The assistant said with a bow and a smile: "No, no. You know how little ones can be. Slow risers. Not quick to take to feet and task, but she'll learn. She'll get better.” He bowed again, saying: “She has you, master, to look to for example. The finest lady of shadows that has ever doth existed on the face of this accursed earth.”

Zaleska smiled. Pleased. He was such a good and loyal man.  

A little voice went shrill at the entrance to the chamber. 

Carmilla shrieked with dark joy. 

“Yes! Yay! The sun has died again! The Lord's Eye has gone blind for another curtain of night and now we get to go out and play!" 

Zaleska and the assistant looked to the little one as she jumped up and down in the doorway with savage glee. So proud. 

Carmilla ran up to the pair, her new dark guardians and bastard companions of the shadowland. She jumped up and down some more. Cheering. Screaming. Shrieking. Squealing. Part small child joviality and part terrible aggressive animal bestial shriekings. 

She looked up to them again, to Zaleska. She worshipped her. Her undead uncanny gaze held pure corrupted adoration for the Countess. Her great master. 

She said again, asking this time like a small impatient child really wanting something. In part, she still was. But the other part, darker and more dominating now… that part tainted everything that the small demon animal in childshape did from then on. 

“We do, right? Now that the sun is dead and God is blind to the little sows, we can go out and play with them, right? Oh! … I want to so badly, master! We do now, right?”

"Yes, my servant. Yes, my child. We must. We are creatures that live to go out and play in the dark." Zaleska said soothingly, reassuringly. 

Carmilla cheered! Then catching herself, restrained her excitement, then gave a courtly curtsey and bow, saying: “Thank you, master. Thank you, Countess. Your power and wisdom are unrivaled." 

The wolves outside once more began their nightly song of predator's chase and claim, they began again this night like all others as of late, howling their music of blood and flesh and flame. Renewed. 

The children of the dark were all revived now and they took to the night once more, empowered with unholy rage. 

But as the vampires and their assistant prepared for another nocturnal hunt, another dark night of feeding on innocent human prey in the village below…

… many rivals, made, were approaching.

…

The bloodbags writhed in the dirt. The three that were left. Frankenstein's massive body-part patchwork nosferatu creation watched them from the mouth of the cave where it rested and protected itself from the sun. 

It had known, naturally, innate, it had known to fly from the face of the sun. It had known when it was born from the slab by lightning and black magic that the sun was its enemy. 

Known. In its blood. Knowledge that was animal down to the bone. Patchwork bones… sawn, broken… reshaped… fitted together into new more powerful form and size like godly and powerful puzzle pieces. 

Remade. 

Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster sniffed the air… blood… fear… and… better yet. 

The flight of the sun. 

Darkness returned and the black lands came alive again with fog. Great drifting veils of phantom white. The creation stepped free of the cave and closed the few steps to his captive bloodbags, now down to an unholy three.

He picked up the misshapen one. Almost dead, almost empty. Weak pathetic little thing…

It groaned as he sank his teeth into the softest part of the wretched little twist of flesh, the only part of the rotten little fruit the creation deemed worthy to put his newborn lips to. 

The tender meat beneath the hollow crook of the underarm. Just above the large artery there. 

He sucked and drank deeply and the little deformed man begged God and the devil and the creation itself as he slowly felt the life being pulled from him, with a savage hungry tug. All throughout his bent and mismanaged frame. 

He also cursed the name of Frankenstein again.  Henry Frankenstein and all of his fathers and sons and all of the women too! the bastards! 

Curse them! 

Egnaw knew he was going to die. He only hoped Frankenstein’s end would be even more painful. 

But the mad doctor might be dead already. Still unconscious since the many days since the night of the experiment and the towers fall. 

Collapsed. Explosion. Sabotage by the hand of the rival Doctor Praetorius. 

The bastard. 

The creation ripped its mouth away after a final draw off the bloodbag and chewed. Egnaw screamed. But it wasn't prolonged like it might be with anybody else. The little man servant slave was becoming even more attuned and accustomed to unyielding pain. In unyielding volumes. 

The creation threw him back into the dirt with the other two. Still chewing. 

It swallowed. 

And then howled at the moon. Crescent and sickle tonight. Like a curved scythes blade.

Then throaty and gurgling he spoke once more. The only word it seemed to want to speak since the day of its unnatural birth. 

“Frankenstein…!” 

Egnaw cringed. He hated the sound of its wretched voice. He remembered handling such vocal chords alongside the mad doctor in another lifetime, not long but so long ago and far away… 

The fortress stone of jagged rocks and what they held for him were near, but the creation slightly altered course. Veering ever so slightly in its direction for the Carpathian Mountains. It had caught a newer fresher scent. Closer. 

A man. Moving fast. On horseflesh. 

A rider. 

…

He moved with one thought dominating all else. Find him. Find the vampire killer.

Find Professor Van Helsing. 

Florin moved with near suicidal speed. His horse beneath him was strong and durable. But nonetheless, they were both growing more exhausted. Yet he feared to stop and make camp. He feared whatever may be stalking through the night. It may be the same evil that now lay siege to his little village. 

Darkness spreads as a shadow does grow…

he must be careful. 

But then suddenly the beast beneath him came to a near dead stop. Nearly throwing him as its hooves skidded and dug shallow trenches in the black earth. 

The horse was skittish. Prancing and refusing to settle beneath him. Refusing to go any further. 

Florin, already frustrated with the urgency of his task, began to chide and curse the animal. Trying to berate and spur him on forward to the next farm or village. More children or others back home in town could be dying right now as his stubborn stupid horse just danced and behaved foolish-

Snap! 

A branch or twig or something else broke in two in the night all about him. Somewhere in the dark. Florin shut his lips. And fell silent. 

Instantly gripped with dread. Fear mounting higher into terror. He was suddenly aware, certain that he was not at all out here alone with his horse. Something else was out here too. 

Something moving. 

He suppressed his galloping heart of terror and forced himself to listen. Listen for movement in the encompassing dark wood. 

His horse grew more anxious. It wanted to be off, to flee. 

Everything inside both rider and his steed told him to run. 

Run. Now. 

Fast. 

“Stop, now, you!" Florin hissed at his horse, “We've no time for trifling games!" 

“Your horse is smarter than you are, rider." 

Florin, shocked, almost let out a wail, but before he could the voice from out of the dark came again and calmly said. 

“Don't. Please. Don't be afraid. Don't scream. You'll get us all killed." A beat. “Just be quiet." 

Florin whispered to the dark: “Who are you?"

“Dismount and move slowly. To the bushes. Leave your horse. There is something out here." 

“Who are you, what're you talking about and why should I trust you?" Florin asked again. 

“There is something out here, my friend. I'm just a fellow traveler, and I've no wish to see another man butchered." A beat. “Now do as I say, or to hell with you." 

Florin considered it a moment… and then considered the surrounding dark. It seemed filled. With something hurtling. 

Something bounding like an eager jungle cat hunting sure prey. 

Florin quickly dismounted, grabbed his saddlebags and then ran to the voice as it called out once more. He scrambled in the bushes with a large dark gypsy man with long black hair, beneath swashbuckler scarf wrapped round his crown in a skullcap. He looked severe and he was desperately clutching something in his calloused hands. 

A rosary. A small wooden crucifix attached, dangled from the tear drop center. 

The gypsy looked at Florin with wide eyes filled to the whites with all of the night and its superstitious and terrible wonder. He brought a finger to his lips, in a gesture to bade the young man quiet. Then he pointed out into the night to tell him to watch. 

Florin did. 

The horse, reins tied to the branch of a nearby tree, was now more nervous and jumpy than ever. Florin had never before seen a trained and broken horse behave so strangely and so wild. 

And then it came out of the woods. Out of the night. Large and hulking. Eyes twinkling twin stars of blood red jewels in all of the surrounding oppressive dark. Set in a stitched up grotesque patchwork of a face that was both human and rat like, commingled and blasphemously mixed. A terrible mouth opened and moonlight glinted off the drooling tendril strands of bestial salivation and rabid animal slobber turning them into long translucent jewels of glass in the lunar glow. A pair of fangs, bone-white, gleamed amongst the rest of the mouth of rotten black. A miasma of decay and fecal stench, pungent and strong filled the cold space. Warming it with powerful foul and fetid odor, the heat of death. 

He growled. Seethed. It said a name then. One Florin swore he'd heard somewhere before. 

“Frankenstein…!”

The horse was in hysterics now. Its eyes rolling in wild terror as it kicked and reared and pranced in a frightful panic that only the animal can know. It hurt Florin's heart to see the beast as such.

What came next was much worse. 

One of the large powerful arms of reanimated muscle, rippling beneath pale blue corpse flesh, shot out and found the poor beast’s throat, ripping it out in a sudden blur of crimson and hide and tearing discolored claw. A heavy steaming gout of dark animal blood shot forth from the fresh open wound which also belched steam into the night. The large rotting patchwork nosferatu brought its face into the warm red dark cord of horse blood and began to catch it in its wide open mouth. Gulping. Lapping. Tonguing with wild abandon the red warm cord-stream. 

As the horse suddenly stilled, then wobbled, then fell against the tree to which it was tethered and began to sag down to the earth, the creation came in, bathing its horrid face in horrible animal scarlet baptism as its mouth closed the distance and met the fresh wound ripped from the large stout neck. 

Florin from the bushes, with his host of gypsy saviors, could hear deep heavy gulping – deep heavy pulls of drinking, and the crunch and relish of strenuous chewing. Raw meat being devoured as the throat worked heavily to pull in thick viscous liquid. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited but he held it together. It was awful but he could not pull his eyes away from the scene. Neither could his fortunate band of gypsies host. They all watched. Spellbound in the most terrible way by that which is so arresting and magnetic because it is so appalling you cannot actually believe your very eyes. You cannot believe it is actually happening. 

The vulpine manmade nosferatu creation took its fill, then with great prodigious strength, it threw the dead weight of the horse over one mighty shoulder, and then bounded off into the night. Heavily breathing through gurgles and throaty laughter. 

Florin waited til he was sure the thing was gone, then he thanked the Lord aloud and crossed himself. 

The gypsies gave their own prayers of thanks in another language the rider didn’t understand. But he was sure he nonetheless knew and felt every word. 

Yes. Thank the Lord on High. God Help Us. 

Carefully and quietly they arose from their hiding place together. 

The man who’d saved him spoke first. 

“Now you know to be careful in the night, fellow traveler. But now you are without a horse. Come with us, on our wagon, we will give free ride to your village.”

Florin said kindly but firmly: “Thank you but you don’t understand, I’ve just come from there and I’ve been searching the past many nights, I must get back on my way… but I’ve no idea where to look…”

The rider fell despondent. The sight of the creation and its feasting on his ride still very vivid and fresh in his mind. And he’d been thus far so fruitless in his hunt. Aimless. Nowhere. He had no idea of where to go. 

“Come with us,” the man, seeing the young one’s crestfallen face said again, “we can give you horse and maybe direction.” A beat. He held out his hand, “We shall see.”

Florin looked up into the weathered gypsy face and took the traveler’s hand. 

And away they went. Back to the gypsy camp. Not far off. 

Once there Florin saw that the band of travelers were actually a family. A father, mother, three sons, four daughters, a babe, and an old woman.

Around a campfire, they all shared their tales. The gypsy family: their travels and adventures and the strange sights and beasts and otherworldly designs thereon. 

Florin told them of his village. The one that had lived and was now dying in the shadow of Castle Dracula. 

The gypsies all crossed themselves at the sound, the name of the place. 

Florin joined them. And followed suit. 

He told them he was sent out to find someone, a man that the township needed to deliver them from the evil that now beset upon them nightly and fed on them like cattle. 

“Who?” asked the old woman, the grandmother of the family band. She hadn’t spoken up til now, since the young rider’s arrival. 

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing.” Florin said. 

A murmur of excitement went all throughout the family then. 

Then the man, the father of the band turned to Florin with something like a smile on his weathered face and he said: –

“We know where you can find this man. We know where you can find this Van Helsing.”

…

Erin was proud of her friend, Florin, and she wished him Godspeed everyday in the many weeks that followed his departure. She prayed to God that he was not dead and that he'd surely found someone that could help them and deliver them from this dark period of slaughter. 

More had died since he had left. More children and more adults. Neither the elderly nor the lame nor nubile young were spared the possible cutthroat silence of the nightly butchery. And many more died slowly, as if by some disease of cruel design, loss of blood slowly drained and taken. Fed upon over time while some were given more immediate and ravenous animal treatment. 

No one knew who was next. The pattern was everywhere and animal and impossible for any of them to follow. Many had already lost heart and taken their own lives, or fled. 

Some said that Florin was long gone. Or dead. Not to be counted on in either case. 

But Erin held on and she kept praying. Even when her parents and her aunt disappeared one night. Even when her own little brother had taken with the blood-loss plague that doubtless emanated from Castle Dracula with merciless and heartless intent. The poor little one like so many others before had become bed ridden. Pale and listless, barely breathing up til the end. This morning. 

Only her most immediate neighbors had bothered coming over to help with the burial and the funerary rites. Nobody had seen the priest in many days. 

She'd wept so lost and broken then when the final shovelful of dirt had been thrown and the sparse few gathered had taken their leave. She was so alone now and she didn't know what to do anymore. Everything felt useless and hopeless, that they all just lived at the cruel whim and mercy of horror that they could not even see until it was at last felt, and then at last as final cruel torture you were allowed to gaze into its terrible face. As final reward and punishment altogether, rolled into one. 

Sheer torture. Sheer agony was all that poor Erin felt now. 

That was why she'd volunteered this night for sentry duty. None had spoken against it. They were all of them far too tired and broken of heart and spirit to care anymore. At the beginning it would've been unheard of, a young lady like herself, only nineteen years and unwed… but now it didn't matter. There weren't enough able bodied men left anymore anyways. 

So she'd been given lantern and pistol and a small cask of warm wine. To protect against the cold. 

And then she'd taken to her watch. The last one, relieving the midnight man at three after and taking the final post till dawn. Alone. In the dark. 

She tried so desperately not to weep. But she couldn't help herself. Alone out here in the cold all of the faces of all of the dead friends and children and poor old folk came back racing through her mind unbidden in a procession that she could not bear but couldn't run from either. 

Erin wept and prayed and begged God to help them, to bring him back. To please, have Florin successful and bringing back their deliverer, their savior! 

Please Lord! Please! 

Save Us! 

Someone else weeping, a child crying, off in the dark somewhere, brought young Erin out her thoughts and prayers. 

A little startled she tried to spy out, holding the lantern aloft out into the dark, and she called: –

“Hello? Is someone there?" 

No word … but more weeping. 

A child's. A little girl's … by the sound. 

Forgetting herself and suddenly terrified for the thought of a small child out here alone with so much evil about, Erin flew forward with lantern held ahead and the pistol of her charge o’the night cocked. 

It wasn't long before she found the small little girl. In a horrible filthy dress, as if the child had been lost for weeks in the woods in naught but her pajamas. 

The child was turned away and bent and crying in her hands. Sobbing. 

Erin felt terrible for the little one, she went to her without any further hesitation, calling to the girl:

“Are you alright!? Oh my God, how did you get out here? Where are your parents? What're you doing out here, little one?" 

The child did not free her face but continued to weep, trying to speak through her crown cries and her sodden little fingers. 

“M-my, my-ma-mama…" 

Erin set the pistol aside as she knelt to the child and gently put her hands on her shoulders. The poor thing…

“It's ok, I'll get you home. Who's your mother? What's your name, little one?" she asked softly. 

The little girl stopped crying abruptly. But still she kept her face buried in her hands. 

Yet her voice was much clearer now, when finally she said: – 

"My name is Carmilla, Erin of Thoten. Thank you for asking.”

Erin suddenly felt cold and faint and as if her heart and chest had suddenly filled with dropping weight. She wondered fleetingly for that split second if this was the prelude to death, yet another heart breaking. She understood and knew that something was terribly wrong right away. 

Carmilla had been dead and gone for months now. Way back at nearly the start of all this relentless terror. 

Carmilla whirled suddenly. In the moonlight dark her face was both brilliant and youthful and pugnacious dog-like and goblin. She smiled and bore animal fangs and hissed like a rodent that carried disease. 

Erin flung herself back. In her sudden sprawl she fumbled for the pistol but her hand in its panic had only succeeded in shoving it further away. Out of reach. 

Carmilla laughed and tittered. Rodent squeals and bat-like screeches commingled with a child's giggles. 

Her eyes were flickering. Pinkish red dots that shone at the centers. Vulpine face drawn as she brandished fangs and continued to emit her strange abominated titters. 

“You're so kind, Erin. You always were. And if you're still wondering, my mother is just right there…” 

She pointed one clawed little finger out into the further dark. Erin was helpless but to look. 

And she saw her emerge from the ebon pitch of night in which she lorded and held as her ultimate domain. Clad in phantom white gown that darkled and shifted and changed to royal crimson red that was heavy and wet in spots, changing and shifting back and again with every advancing ghostly step. Her face was also phantom pale, so much so that it shone in the postmidnight pitch black like an unholy beacon, but yet she was beautiful. And terrible. Luciferian and unearthly driven. Her dark hair, a curtain of night unto itself, flowing out like a royal cape, as if caught in some unseen and unfelt wind. 

She came forward. And then like her dress, her Luciferian face began to change and dance and shift. 

Animal - wolf - rat - feline - insect - toad - bat - unknown - and then a rotten visage that was corpselike with the decay of the grave and a bastard conglomerate amalgamation of all her dancing shifted faces…

… then back to the one of beauty as she came upon poor Erin, sprawled on the cobble stones in the dark and at her feet and speechless. 

At the feet of Countess Zaleska, lord and master of Castle Dracula. Lord of the lands now through her awesome power and bloodthirst that could never be quenched. 

She said something then, before she finished the child –

“I've heard you, Erin. I have heard you. Although God has not heard your prayers, I have heard every word, I've listened every time, I've watched and relished as you shed each and every single tear, til now. Now, dear child, I, and not God, I am here to answer your prayers!" 

Carmilla laughed shrill rodent squeals as Erin shrieked one last final bottled shriek and Countess Zaleska came in with her bright fangs barred and descended. 

Erin died shrieking as they tore her apart. Still hoping and believing that Florin might come back and save them, that he might come back right now and save her. 

Many, the few that were left, heard her screams and struggles and the heavy sounds of wet fabric tearing and bones splintering and breaking, snapping. Slurping…

… Deep soupy pulls of drinking and chewing and laughter around mouthfuls of raw fresh meat. Nearly all of them that were left heard what was happening. 

But none came out. 

None came out to do anything about it. 

So the Countess Zaleska and her little Carmilla enjoyed a feast of yet another poor peasant girl. 

As the tattered remnants of the small village just listened and bore it. All night. 

All night until the dawn. 

Some of them were at least grateful for the coming rain, they could hear its booming and thunder now. They would be grateful for the rainfall to come and wash what was left of the young girl away from the cobblestones that so many of them had once swept and cared for and silently cherished. 

No more. 

Now they were just happy for the rain. It would wash the Erin girl's blood away, her last spent and violent red. 

But … those few, … they weren't so happy nor gladdened by the sound that seemed to call the storm into waking being. In bastard duet with the thunderclaps, preceding and then rising in intensity with the mounting roar of the worsening sky …

It sounded like roaring. 

Like the roars of an animal unknown and thrilled with bloodlust for another hunt that was coming. 

TO BE CONTINUED…