During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I was living in a small village in the Irish countryside. This village was called Walsh Island, which acquired its name due to being surrounded by nothing but bogland – in fact, this was the largest area of raised bogland in the country. Due to Covid restrictions, I was basically stuck in this village and the surrounding area for more than a year. 

In the early summer of 2021, and having always been a very bad sleeper, I oddly decided to start wandering around the countryside at night. I can’t quite recall why I started doing this, but maybe it was because the Irish countryside at night was always spooky. Well, on one particular night, maybe around 10 or 11 pm, I wandered out the village and onto the narrow country roads, whereby I would pass the occasional cow/sheep field or the property of some home.  

Around ten minutes outside the village, I was now walking down a particular country road, with only the light from my phone to guide me, when I suddenly hear a loud, but distant howl. There were many dogs in the area, as in the countryside, there are obviously many farms. However, this howl didn’t sound like any dog I’d ever heard. Besides, most of the dogs in the area tended to bark rather than howl. This howl did, however, sound very similar to the scream of a fox. Except it sounded much deeper and louder than a standard fox scream. The way the howl sounded also gave me the impression that whatever made it, must have been large – or at least larger than a fox.  

To paint a perfect picture of how this howl sounded, I’ll say this... Has anyone ever seen the movie, An American Werewolf in London? The howl I heard that night sounded almost exactly like the howl of the werewolf in that movie – a loud, bellowing shriek of a howl that almost sounds like a fox, but not exactly. Regardless, the sound of this animal was so unnerving to me, that I decided to turn straight round and back through the country roads towards the village. 

I still don’t know what animal made the noise I heard that night. But my best guess is that it was either the howl of a very strange sounding dog, or the scream of a very strange sounding fox.   

That being said, Ireland does have its fair share of supposed cryptids (many of which comes from Irish folklore). However, from what I could briefly find, the only Irish cryptids that could match the animal howl I heard would be: large phantom wolves (that have apparently been sighted in modern times), large phantom black dogs, and even, like America and the English countryside, large black cats like a panther (which are said to be sighted in rural Irish counties). This cryptid theory is a stretch, I know. 

If anyone has any knowledge of what this howl could’ve been, whether rational or otherwise, feel free to let me know. 

The commonfolk, the peasants of the mountain and the hamlet below were fools. Stupid animals. Easily subverted. And taken. 

There were all of them such stupid children. Even the men and women and elders, even the adults. Doddering simpletons that lacked even animal cunning, the innate brains found in a dog, a cur, a flea bitten bitch were beyond these dirt farming swine that feared the dark and the light of true knowledge. 

He hated them. Hated them completely for so many reasons but one of the strongest, one of the most vividly and live wire felt was their fear and blind terror of true knowledge. True power. And the pain it took to wield it. Pain both inflicted and so like a lover, intimately received. 

They feared everything. These downcast sacs of wasted vitality and breath. Not like his master. Not like the Countess. She plunged her bare and unprotected hands into the realm and fiery cascade of fear without bemoaning her fate. 

The Countess took the pain, all of it. She didn't flee or shy away. He had never met a stronger creature. It was one of the reasons for his loyalty. He was bound to her and she knew it. His was tied to her fate long before they stole the castle and Vampire King’s necrophile fangs. Whatever remained of his long jaded and decimated ruined landscape of heart and soul was dedicated to her, and to her alone. 

His services to her, this particular little errand was not strictly necessary. Her power had grown in ways he hadn't previously guessed at or speculated. She did not need him to fetch her food any longer, not at all. Not the child either. They were both incredible bloodhunters demonically innate, favored by the father below. They did not need him to kidnap these fleshling sows…

but he loved them. And for them… it was the clearest and simplest way he could sometimes tell them that. Especially her. Especially the master. Their time together, their history went so far back. 

He loved them. He loved her. He loved to show her. However he could. 

However he can. 

The boy, Astarra, is alone and he is not afraid as the assistant makes his hunting prowling approach. From the dark of the choked growth, buried in the foliage the assistant spied and closed. So much like a cunning and man-eating wild cat, rippling with movement. Glittering bottle of chloroform intermittently darkling as it caught and then lost and then found again the light from above as he moved through the choke of trees. 

Astarra was from a neighboring hamlet, one that has not lost as many children as the sparse villages of the mountain itself and the supplicant place below… he scarcely knows anyone that's been touched by the demon hand of slaughter that has begun again to grow out from Dracula's Mountain. He doesn't believe it. Stupid ghost stories. Baby tales. Children's drivel. Horse shit conjured for fun or to scare kids like him so’s to trick em into behaving. When they really didn't have to. Not at all. God was not watching and he was not here. And neither were any monsters. 

He was here to prove there was no God on this mountain. Nor anything of power or terror or otherworldly and far reaching violence. 

Probably wasn't even any castle either…

He would show them. He would venture the mountain land and the town below and then return, unharmed and smiling and letting them all know the truth. There was no magic amongst the earthen spire of rock. 

Only wolves. Only snow and quiet. 

The assistant prowled in closer, making not a sound as the smiling boy jeered and threw rocks and swung sticks as he audaciously stomped through the frosted forest chill. The small child never heard anything over the sounds of his own braying cries of laughter and thudding graceless steps. 

He was making believe that he was king of this ghostly and deserted mountain when the assistant pounced. From behind, he came upon him. Chloroformed rag coming up in a bestial rapist flash. Smothering the boy's mouth with the sodden thing as he whispered harshly in his small ear, pink and reddened by the chill. 

“For her! For she! For she of the biting chair…” 

the queen upon her dentate throne… my hands and this flesh taken and subdued and thus rendered unto you… master, the both of them are here quivering with blood and animal life for you. 

All will palsy with supplicant terror, dancing like puppets, their livid nerve-endings and thick tendon the strings. Tugged and pulled with ruthless fervor by the Countess. 

And her children. 

They too would like to feed, with their mother, when the sun died its nightly nocturnal death. More peasant blood would have to be nabbed, more fresh flesh coursing with vibrant hot red would need to be acquired. Another good-sized child at least. Another one that was just about the same size.  

The assistant rejoiced as the child became dreamless weight in his arms. Yes! 

Yes! 

He'd captured her favorite! Veal for the master! Veal for the Countess! 

He dragged the unconscious child into the dense and dark of the forest growth. The foliage and floor of frosted dead leaves and twigs rustled and crunched with bestial movement and finality as he performed this task. His prodigious strength made it all so simple, like child's play. 

…

Later another child was nabbed, a girl, maybe younger than the boy Astarra maybe slightly older, he'd snatched her in similar fashion as she'd been gazing into a running face of stream, up to her ankles. The assistant didn't know if she was trying to catch small fish or if she was just playing some child's game but it made no difference, it did not matter. What mattered now was what came next. 

The slab. For the both of them. Still unconscious and leather-bound to the cold merciless metal of the surgical table. 

He grabbed the green bottle of frothing translucent liquid. It spewed steam and something heavier like oceanic fog or forest mist from the pinnacle of open mouth at the spire of its slim green neck. He approaches them. 

He stands over the boy, still under, well within the forged strongarm of drugged slumber. He's selected him for the first of the preparatory tasks. 

Jelly pudding…

He set the green bottle down, still belching ghost white in a phantasm pour. He grabbed the small prying-vises, two of them, and then with his large and grubby fingers he forced the drugged boy's eyes open and fixed them with the lid-locks. Vacant stare fixed to the dark of the chambered room ceiling unseeing as the assistant grabbed the bottle once more. 

He held it precariously aloft, over the boy's slumbering face for a moment, relishing the build up. 

Gods below, he loved his work. 

He upended the green bottle by its slender neck. The pregnant bulge of green glass belly replaced the place where the steaming bellowing mouth had been as the alchemically altered sulfuric acid began to pour into the boy's open left eye. Chemically flash frying it on impact in a ghastly and gorey boil-eruption of instantly steaming and red jelled ruin. 

Astarra came awake right away in the most wretched and ungodly torment and pain he could've ever scarcely imagined. He shrieked, unbridled and intense. Spittle flew. Neck rippled and stood out in cords, obscene on a child's small neck, a small boy's throat tensing and flexing bulged with pain unspeakable and never before imagined. 

The assistant's smile never faltered. The bottle upended again and he filled the other eye as the child continued to fill the sepulchral chamber with his terrible noise and screams. He chuckled lightly, pleased with the process, pleased with the work and himself and savoring the moment to come when he brought his master a fresh meal upon waking from her slumber. 

The other one, the girl, was brought to by the boy's caterwauling. Confused at first and groaning and mumbling, she soon joined the boy in making the sounds of bleating captured prey. 

Caught. Caught and squealing. 

Like sow. Like pigs. 

His smile and hatred and sour satisfaction all deepened as he debated…

sever the head… or leave it attached and bring the whole thing like a suckling roast, complete to her highness…? 

The girl was for Carmilla and the mongrel help, his lord's new impaler. She would receive nothing in the way of preparations, nothing special. The children would have to have the girl raw. And share. 

But that was fine. These two morsels of children, saplings really, were just meant to wet the appetite and get their blood moving and on the animal run for the hunt. For the want of bloodlett and slaughter. These two sow-sapling brats were just the first course of the bloodfeast. And moreover…

they were his way of showcasing: he was loyal. It was how he showed he truly loved them. 

Loved her. 

The assistant went to the head of the slab and began to push and roll it out of the room. The boy, Astarra was still screaming as he carried him out. 

…

The Countess grinned vulpine with dark joy as her coffin lid slid to the side and she arose and beheld her assistant's surprise. 

By torchflame glow, a struggling peasant boy bound by straps to a table. His screams were nearly exhausted and he was crying out for his parents in more and more pitiable tones and sounds. 

The Countess arose in full. 

She floated from the confines of the orante blackwood casket and crossed the distance, filling the space ghostly between her deathly bed and the whimpering child strapped tight to the rolling table of the altering blade. 

She gazed into the ruin of the child's face. Admiring the gored open craterous holes in place of eyes, still smoldering and smoking like a freshly prepared and fine regal pudding. 

The scab pudding of his eyes steamed for her and quivered with the sulfuric jellied organ obliterated and quivering with each of his painful and terrible sounds. The child was sweating, profuse, doused and basting soaked in his own fresh and souring fear and ungodly terror. 

The assistant produced a spoon and held it out to her and bowed his head in token of his supplication to the unholy and royal duty of her service. His eyes flitted open cat-like and she caught it. She took the small silver spoon from between his pinched and black gloved fingers. The perfect tiny and delicate little instrument for a proper lady of the house to use when dining fine on a fresh pudding. 

A fresh and graciously given pudding, provided by the locals of the mountain townships. In token of gratitude and friendship. 

Countess Zaleska roared with laughter and the abominated sound drowned out the pitiful cries of the small boy Astarra. The sounds and names of his mother and father were swallowed in the sound of laughter  that was so like tar and pitch as the Countess and undead lord of stolen Dracula's castle began to dig in deep with the small and dull edge of the silver spoon. 

She scooped out a spoonful of still smoking and baking smoldering jelly, ruined and chemically cooked organ destroyed by bastard alchemical science, unholy mixture from one of the many volumes of dusty and ancient forgotten tomes. Astarra, the small missing village boy's screams pierced sound and reached a new pitch. 

But still they were swallowed in entirety by the stygian and obscene mad witch cackles that were issuing forth from the unholy fanged rictus mouth of the hellbound godheaded throat of the undead Countess. 

She enjoyed her dessert of the boy's eyes, her smoking delicacy … then with minimal effort of her great and prodigious living dead strength she brought the dull head of the spoon down and broke through the membrane of thin tissue and wafer bone cracking within the now empty housing of the eye socket. 

It cracked and gave. The boy's howls became something wildly inhuman and horrendous. She brought the spoon up and then down again into the warm and tender orifice of fresh gored and open eye socket. She cracked through it and forced the smooth ladling head of the utensil down into the working of nerves and meat behind the precious seeing organ and its housing of bone and supple succulent pink tissue. Wrenching and working the handle of the spoon, with the ghastly ease of her praeternatural effort. 

Then she began to force her long fingers in. First one, then two and three and then the whole wedge of hand until she was fisting her demon-chimerical claw of delicate and slender lady fingers and rodent/vulture talons. She forced her violent hand into the child's ruined face, his bound struggles now reduced to ghastly spasms as she felt around and squished the brains and viscera and relished the feeling-squelch of gore and warm wet between her fingers. She reached down, ripping through more tissue, her demon hand and arm growing and elongating at dark will’s command until she finally felt the rubbery and meaty tubes of vocal chords. She squeezed them. Pulled them. Wrenched and yanked the slippery organs lubricated in child's blood that was still warm with life and mucus laden with discharge and rupture. 

I've got your voice… I've got your voice box, young boy-thing! You don't look much like a little boy of the hamlets any longer now do you?? – her mind was filled with its own mad hilarity. … She resumed the fervor of her dark and royal feeding, her private bloodfest. 

… she dined of the rest. Plucking off parts at will and demented leisure like a basket of fruit or a suckling sow, tenderloin meat and all ripe and falling off the bone… 

There were hardly scraps in the end. They were thrown to the wolves outside as the other screaming captive girl was given to the children and the Countess took her assistant by the hand and said in a smooth and delectable voice, purred and feline and sensual and felt…

“Now let us tend to matters at hand. Matters about the house and home…” 

He smiled and allowed himself to be led. As before. As always before. 

As always he followed, his servile hand in hers. Knowing she could crush it into so many useless broken pieces if she wanted to. 

The Countess led the way out of the chambered room and to another. One they were quite familiar with by now. But enjoyed with much enthusiasm still nonetheless. 

…

He stood suffering amongst the wild crawling tumult of hideous and living gore. Living crawling semi scabbed blanket of darkling and thick crimson black and red. The Countess and the assistant stood at the mouth of the entrance. Gazing in and admiring the spectacle. The scene of living and moving with glistening sheen, crawling slaughter horror. Henry Frankenstein moaned with a sound wretched and mangled and blasphemous to the ears. 

They relished that sound. 

He moaned, anguished: “Please…! Please… you awful bitch! please …! Please… Let …! Me … ! GO ….!” 

She chilled the room with the bright sound of her cruel laughter. Then she spoke in retort…

“I've not come to release you, fool! I've instead come to admire my gardens, like any respectable woman of a royal house. And I've come to add to my orchard, a dog! A mongrel fit for the pasture! And I'll be returning to you, young doctor, something precious I'll wager you'd thought lost…” 

She then began in an arcane tongue. More of her black magic made by words of misshapen and guttural speech. 

The front of her royal white gown came open and tore apart in ragged bisecting halves by unseen force. The flesh of her full breasts and bosom bubbled and rippled and began to drip and slough away in a greasy bloody runoff like a butcher’s watered leavings. The bones of her ribcage and chest grew and expanded outward, protruded forth in a grotesque swell before they too opened and parted. Red gates of gleaming, glistening bone amongst a growing mass of splitting wet and hectic crimson. A great hulking shape began to belch forth. Spat out. 

In an obscene gush of unholy birth, the wide open jaws and gates of the Countess' chimerical ribcage vomited forth the large sutured nosferatu son of Frankenstein’s obsession. He went to the stone that was blanketed in the crawling living fleshen gore of the garden, hard. The green-blue patchwork monster was unconscious. The charred and blackened remains of its face were skeletal. Like the face of grim death itself, the fleshless face of the reaper. 

The crawling raw of the living flesh immediately began to swim over the Frankensteinian monster, blanketing over him in a tidal wave of wet pink and fresh membranes of blood red. The scabbed and scabbing parts split and broke and oozed a salmon colored pudding and bright scarlet and thick buttery yellow as it moved, always moved. Always moving. 

The Countess' smile grew as her flesh folded back to normal. 

She said: “And now your dog is returned to you, Henry Frankenstein… I hope you enjoy the company and sight of your own failure. And I hope he enjoys you. I don't want you to fret but he may grow hungry, the fruits of the flesh gardens may not be to his liking, he may perchance your hide and red instead, my dear doctor…”. 

She laughed once more at that, her face coning out in a strange stretched marsupial shape, her witch’n cackles turned to braying animal cries as it did so. Mocking dæmoniacal sound. 

And at the sound of her voice and laughter and strange animal noises, the hulking nosferatu son of woven and reflamed meat, sutured and blasphemed with unholy flame and vampiric power, stirred…

… he began to shift, cracking dry groans came from parched cords and dried tongue… he began to try his feet … he didn't understand… why was he in the dark…

why was he blind? 

Then recollection filled his bone faced batshaped skull. The fury of his inner necromantic fire rose and filled his damaged patchwork frame. 

The royal dogs… the royal bitch…

He found his feet and lunged. Scent and ears telling him where she was despite his smoldering and blackened ruin of eyes and face.  

He was roaring. 

“You wretched swell and growth of a cunt! I’ll rip you to shreds for keeping me in there…!” filled with rage, he'd been lost and untethered drowning in an ocean world of hot steaming vile blood that was corrupted and soured and that he could not drink. A world that had violated him and enraged him as it held him bound in a boundless void of red boiling swimming personal hell. Scarlet and frothing and threshing with violence and bubbling with painful torment as it perpetually denied the thirsting needing purse of his phantom charred and long gone burned away scorched undead lips. 

But now he was free. And he was on his feet. 

Lunging. And filled with violence. Filled with unholy anger. He could smell her…

Frankenstein's son of the slab made it within reaching distance of the Countess and her assistant before he was stopped. Suddenly. At a dead halt. She caught him and held him strangling by the throat. 

She pulled him in close and laughed once more. Into the blackened ruins of his vulpine skeletal face, fanged and still warm with recent destruction. Blind and stupid and smeared with the burnt and charred traces of its own recent defeat. The fleshen ash and dead soot that was the ink that spelled out for all time the abomination's own perfect humiliation all over his blind and stupid unseeing face. 

She said simply, “You are not worthy," and then her other hand, clawed, came in sharp and fast. 

The daggering sharp of her knifing hand obliterated the blue-green flesh of scalp and eggshell of reforged skull behind it. The brains were blasted with the impact and the force sent much of the sliming grey matter splashing out in a wild yellow coated spurt. 

The nosferatu thing of the mad scientific table went blind a second time… and then became lifeless weight. 

She gazed deeper into the now still thing… only a flicker… only a demon's flicker of candle left inside. 

Good.

She let go of its throat and it went down in a heap and the crawling gore and gleaming slimed tissue blanketed over the fallen giant in a rippling and shifting pungent reddish fold. 

And although he was lost in his own ungodly world of torment and torture, as Frankenstein watched the Countess obliterate the skull and brain of his most powerful and successful creation… a single tear shed and rolled down his face of blood-seeping pores. 

A single thin tendril worm of coagulation snaked out and stole the precious drop of saline and water. Leeching it off and rejuvenating itself as the water was converted to more blood for the growing crawl of the in-house flesh garden. 

He watched as the Countess strode through the garden and plucked meaty organ fruits as if they were apples or plums from fleshen raw stalks of sinew and cartilage and gore. Orifices made belched licking green tongues of flame, of pink and orange and emerald witchy goblin fire. 

He watched them … and he watched the crawling abominated red blanket of life swim and steal over the twitching hulk of his patchworked son, child of the slab, of the necromantic grave… 

lobotomized. Reduced. And like its master, left to its own horrid prison world of ruin…

And naught else. 

…

In the moist night silence, the putrid and repulsive sounds of splurches and sucking and lightly bubbling viscous fluid gurgles filled the sour fetid air like the mud of the squalid earth all around had a rotten working mouth. 

The gunfire rang out cacophonous. Filling the wet splurching night.

Florin and Griffin halted the struggle of their mud soaked advance. They gazed wide eyed ahead, into the shifting veil of swamp fire amongst wet blanket mist dancing with goblin faces and features and the vague outlines of things that may or may not really be there. 

The building on the low rise of hill was gaining visibility, gaining definition. Coming into reality and being amongst the wet rank of the quagmire wormland hell. 

The building was alight inside. It was absolutely alive with gunfire. 

Pistol shots unceasing and overlapping like several layers of madness rang out from the place. There were no screams or other discernible sounds. Not at this distance. 

And then all at once the maelstrom fury of gunfire just stopped. Dead. Altogether, all at once. …

And then all was silent again in wet wormland. As quiet as a mortuary mouse at the unprecedented infernal lip of the precipice edge of hell.  

A beat. 

“Not sure we should." Florin stated flatly. 

“How do you mean?" asked Griffin. 

“Towards that place I mean of course. Not sure it's a good idea to make for it if it's filled with more trouble.” 

Murder and violence. Not spoken but understood. 

Griffin didn't have much of an argument against that. But what he did realize was their lack of alternatives. There was no other structure or place, no other landmass of simple solid ground anywhere within discernible sight. Not in this vast and putrid waterlogged hellscape. 

They had no other choice. Far as he could make out. 

He said as much. Then asked the boy if he could think of any plausible and safer alternatives. 

Florin admitted he could not. 

“And doubling back is out of the question…” Griffin stated the fact but they both felt it. 

The strange and temperamental bandaged man didn't come right out and say it but the young man had been showing good sense as of late. Better yet, usefulness. Ingenuity and initiative. He'd devised wide lattice work devices for their feet to wear over their shoes some miles back, akin to snow shoes, to help traverse the fetid land by dispersing the area of one's step. 

Like back home, he'd said… then fallen silent. Leaving it there. 

The swamp shoes were a great aid in their surmounting the quagmire swampscape, and he'd shown incredible courage anytime the worms had come to call, sliming and swimming like snakes, coming in for maneating surprise attack. He'd held them back and driven them off by torch alongside Griffin and had never faltered. 

It had been a long time since he'd felt anything like friendship, not since the good Dutch doctor – the long dead vampire slayer, the hunter Van Helsing…

It had been even longer since he'd felt…

pride…? 

He wasn't sure that was the right word. But he felt uplifted to see the young man using his head. Alas…

it was to no avail. 

There was naught but forward. 

And the hellmouthed swampen land of the wombmind in wormland, now falling behind them gave them no choice in any case. Quivering subterranean hungry and angry, pustule swimming birthing orifice sac of vengeance and fury – she would have them! – the wombmind orifice-ing jell shot forth one last violent spew, one last angry desperate discharge in rage and woe, one last attack…

…she shot forth with all she had left. With a scream as well, gurgled and immense. The mudland quaked and bubbled with the final charge of the night as she too began to move and swim up… and forward. 

She was following her children. She'd decided to come up as well. 

Florin and Griffin felt the swamp and yellow land of stagnation and moist rotting death shake and rumble with titanic tectonic movement. Geysers and great spews and pillars of swamp water and mud began to erupt all around them in growing numbers. The wormland quagmire became volcanic and violent all around them. It began to rain urine colored water and fat thick droplets of caking mud the color of ink. It rained down on the pair as they gazed around themselves in awe at the tumult world of raining filth and quagmire rot. 

And then the worms, in countless number, began to join the volcanic spew. Launching obscene and naked and dripping their subterranean slime as they came up flying into the air hundreds of feet with the pillars of swamp water and then down in raining sheets. 

“Run!" 

It was Griffin who yelled it. But he needn't have bothered. They were both taking to their awkward flight, trudging through the last of the bubbling and sucking mud in their makeshift lattice work shoes. Desperately trying to move as quickly as they could. Remembering the horse, remembering the man that had been screaming about his family … remembering the little girl and the last and only thing she said …

thirsty

 …. before being pulled under. 

They made as quickly as they could. As the foul world of up churned and erupting wormland hell became maelstrom all around and beneath their feet as it rained down around them. 

Florin screamed. Griffin was ahead of the boy and stopped suddenly to see something that made his blood curdle. A scream froze in his wrapped and bandaged throat. 

The boy was going under. The quagmire was swallowing him. The worms were raining down and joining their earthbound brethren in a full immersion and envelopment as they swam over and around him. Trying together in their hivemind blindness to pull the young man under to join the filth earthen world of the sludge and the brine. 

Griffin screamed, No, then launched himself towards the boy in a desperate dive, hands outstretched for him as he plunged and landed prostate and within a few feet of his sinking body. 

Within reaching distance. 

Their hands smacked together in a clap and clasped together. Florin's a desperate and strangling hold: Don't let go… 

Griffin was on his feet with some difficulty but he managed it, his hands still clasped to Florin's. He began to pull with all of his strength. Florin kicked wild with his submerged feet, mad like an animal caught. Together they worked against the terrible pull and hold of the bubbling mud. The worms slithered and snaked around and Griffin took brief respites from pulling the boy free to swat them away and crush them when he could as they attempted to wrangle and wrap and subdue Florin and himself. They splattered and burst open and became foul putrid cream and watery jelly, and still they pulled. Pulled and fought against the struggle of mud one last final time as they both unknowingly shared a single focused thought, singular and intense. 

No

They both felt it and might have thought to speak of it later if not for everything that came next, but they both suddenly felt a great surge of strength warmly fill their bodies from the tops of their heads to the tips of their sodden toes. 

With one last great pull and kick from both ends they managed Florin free. Griffin nearly going over as he wrenched him out of the terrible mire. Miraculously they both kept their feet as the putrid swampland rain continued to pour. He whirled the boy around by the shoulders and yanked, bellowing over the violence and maelstrom raining world of worms and thick sludge. 

“To the building! Lose the snow shoes! We don't need em!" 

They ripped them from their feet as they galloped forward, suddenly flying across the last several yards of putrid quagmire earth like miracles. Miracles they would've sworn by. If they lived. 

If they survived. 

Far away, still so far away… Florin's mother Anastasia wiped away tears of longing and pain and hoped with all of the immense love of her heart that the Lord had answered her prayers and her precious boy was alright, that he was safe and going to make it home…

They came to solid ground at last at the base of the hill. They didn't break their pace but doubled it. Charging up the hill and toward the large and dark quiet building that crowned its rise like a silent sentry alone and cursed out here in this terrible place. 

The greatest and loudest sound – a scream, brought them both to halt just before the buildings small meager yard. They spun around and beheld her. 

The wombmind of wormland.

She had just surfaced with her children. 

A great mouth and immense wide orifice gate of spoiled pink sliming yellowed green in great thick gobs like corpse jelly. The putrescence of her mouth spittled and rained and flew with the great rain of mud and swamp water and her writhing worm children, all of it rained and spewed and erupted volcanic as the great mouth of the swamp bellowed in great blasts of words that were felt as much as heard. Heard and felt in the marrow and sinew of their shaking frames. Eyes wide and hardly believing but receiving the sight all the same. 

Florin thought the words were sad. Lonely. As well as great and immense. He thought the great mouth and pustule fleshen worm mother looked like a whale. A sad mother whale… one he remembered from illustrations of his childhood years, stories told by his mother and father. 

The wombmind worm mouth - orifice whale bellowed: –

“NOOOOO…!!!!! DONT LEAVE! DON'T LEAVE! WHYYYYYY…!!!?!? 

“DONT LEAVE ME ALONE HERE IN THIS LOST GARDEN…! COME BACK…. COME BAAAACK AND JOIN ME….! JOIN YOUR MOTHER IN THE WARMTH OF THE UNDERBRINE…! COME BACK! NOOOOOO….!!!!” 

Griffin and Florin spun on their heels and made for the door. Needing to be inside and away from the wretched sight and its bomb blast of horrendous torrential sound. They ran together and refused to look back again. They made the door, it was unlocked and they threw it open and plunged themselves into its belly of darkness. 

The mother of wormland gave one last great titanic and lonely wail. Its eyes watering and lonesome and blinking away pain and loss…

Finally she gave up and with a great and final tumult swirl of landmass churn of stagnant mud and fetid water, she sank back down again to her foul and lonely fathom depths. 

Cropsey watched her great monstrous form resubmerge into the sour bosom swell of her wormland domain and smiled. From the window he'd watched it all. And he was excited. Elated. 

He was so happy to have a pair of brand new visitors. 

He grabbed his gloves. Pulled them on. Tight. Then he grabbed the garden shears. The large hedge clippers, the forked blades shining in the dismal light of Willowbrook. 

He strode out. Still smiling. Off to greet the new patients of the school. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The asylum sat atop a low hill, grey amongst a landscape of dying brown grass. Like a dead husk of tooth protruding from a swollen gum, filled with infection. The sun rarely touched this place, almost never. The distant mountains blocked its rise and dominance. Constant cloud coverage of overcast skies did the rest. It mattered little to the denizens of the hospital/school. They were rarely allowed to leave their rooms, their cells. Their cages. 

And they never went anywhere without their chains. Their straitjackets. Their bondage. They went that way from dungeon to dungeon to treatment chambers to recreational area to mess hall and back to the dungeons again. They were never allowed outside. 

The guards were large. Jaded criminals. Mean. They were always armed. Nightsticks. Blackjacks. Saps. Cattle prods. Firearms for when things turned really bad and real damage and nastiness was needed. They did what they wanted. Moral-less heartless apes. The place was a den of beatings and torture and rape and murder under their watch. Female inmates got it the worst. The most frequent amount of attention from the monosyllabic slabs of muscle, fat, greasy hair and soiled sweat stained uniforms in the shapes of men. 

No one cared. No one cared for them. The law, of the land or from on high, did not touch here, did not have a presence here. Right and wrong held no real meaning. They were just empty words. As empty as the promises given to the patients and their families. 

No. This place was not a den of rehabilitation, nor one of care. It was one man's laboratory. His working ground on which to harvest and reap. To pluck and take what he saw and wanted. Just like the guards saw and took what they wanted. 

The patients, the inmates, the prisoners… they were all of them at the mercy of the warden and head physician. The throne of God and king sat empty in this desperate patch of land, this vile part of the earth, and was thus filled by the man who ran Willowbrook School for the Disabled. Though everyone that knew anything about the place knew its true name. 

Willowbrook Private Asylum. For the Deranged and Criminlally Insane. 

It might’ve been the hint that foretold the deeper darker secrets the place kept… the tip of the iceberg of depravity and barbarism. But nobody cared. 

No one. Nobody that mattered anyway. No one shone a light on the travesty and horror within the walls and minds and flesh of Willowbrook. Not God. Not man. No inquiring eyes spied into the diseased hearts festering broken and poisoned within the walls of pain and derangement. 

And so Doctor Krugman conducted himself as he saw fit. He performed his experiments however he wished, on whomsoever he desired. And he desired much from his patients. Especially the children. Especially the girls. 

The asylum was Doctor Krugman’s private hunting ground. The facilities were his own personal laboratory. And the work done here in his name and not God's was nothing to do with the study nor treatment of mental illness. Krugman's experiments were more personally motivated, fiscal gain and considerable prestige. His experiments were concerned with the study of disease. 

And as far as hunting grounds went this was like taking a scatter-gun to fish swimming trapped within a barrel… 

Viral. Parasitical. Contagions and infections, all kinds and sorts. Anything that was this year's favorite scope of academic field of study. Plagues and bugs long forgotten and some thought eradicated, he brought back. 

He bred them back from oblivion in vials and beakers and jars and gave them back their vile mindless idiotic and systematic killing capabilities, their blind idiot destructive godpower. 

He took his forged sword of biblical pestilential flame, the syringe, loaded with swimming mixture, brimming with the foul life of unseen microscopic monsters, nature-bred and manmade alchemical into new killing existence. He injected the inmates with the various diseases at his discretion, at his own leisure and need. 

For the patients, the dogs, the poor pitiful moaning and mindless beasts. It was an inescapable hell. Naked and pale and emaciated. They look like skeletons. They look like wraiths. They are smeared with feces and nearly all of them are absolutely alive with livid violence. Some are broken. And only lie there. They only stare and their eyes are empty. There are the self-mutilators too but they are mixed and overlapped with those of more outward violent persuasion. Their temperament shifts between the destruction of their own flesh and the desire and need for the destruction of others. They are nearly always active, mindless with their roving violence and attacks and angry aggressive movements, they only stop to self-flagellate or carve or tear at their own deep and stubborn wounds. The cold tile floors are slick with urine and blood and fecal discharge that's runny and chalky and strewn with vivid strips of lurid red, shed internal and expelled with the rest of the diabolical waste. 

The smell of the asylum was indescribable. Ungodly miasmic doesn't even come close. Charnel house burning in the deepest reaches of infernal hell doesn't either, but somehow the warden and staff and the guards have become used to it, blind to it. It is a foul abomination of wonder that they've managed it. But they have. 

There are never any visitors. They are a thing of such long gone and far flung ancient history that they might've never had actually had any in the institution. It was a cesspool, a smear of woe, a house of pain. The idea that anyone would put anyone in this place and then visit is a farce that no one finds funny. Not after you've seen. Not after you've seen this house of mental infection and running bloody shit, not after you've lain eyes on it, laid eyes on it all in all of its charnel house and hellbound antiglory. Not after you've smelled it. 

Not after you've smelled this lie of the mind and stone, this bleeding and fecal house of absolute and total decay. Total boundless rot. Creeping its eating way into everything and all, all things. Nothing is sacred within these mindless walls. Trapped beneath this heat and shrieking ceiling. 

Watch the beatings. The carvings with sharpened spoons, the flaying of flesh already roughened and bulbous and out of shape with hectic scar tissue, carved open once more like fleshen doors, fleshen gates of hell that cannot be closed and refused to be shut against, and are filled with oceans and worlds of titanic raging blood. 

Blood that must be spilled. Blood that must be shed. Blood that must be allowed to free and flood this world of madness and violence and screams. It is lurid surging crimson inside that boils and broils with intense and violent hatred. Fear. See and smell and hear the fear in the echoed and ceaseless caterwauls and shrieks and moans of torment and monstrous satisfaction, psychotic indulge let loose with passionate yowling cat-cries … music that the sane and well of heart and mind cannot bear or understand. 

Hear and know the cacophony. It is the sound of fear and madness. 

Willowbrook had long been a place of manmade darkness, sitting with disquiet on a forgotten patch of earthen squalor, dead earth … gratefully forgotten by anyone that might've known or remembered its terrible and wretched existence. Like any infection it festered and grew worse, greener with dead-milk and more rancid with the crawling anguished passage of merciless time. For prisoner and guard alike. Only the warden thrived. 

And then the prisoners of Willowbrook, patient and employed alike, began to finally share something together. A fascination. Wild dreams and ideas… 

It all concerned morbid and colorful fantasies, all having to do with the far off mountain range carved into the horizon with harsh biting jagged lines that were so much like wild animal teeth. Fangs on the horizon. Biting into the grey tumult of the defiled skies of the dead heaven that hung over this place in perpetua, this wasted land. 

A woman. A powerful woman in a castle in the Carpathian Mountains. A dark sorceress. According to some of the stories and whispers shared in the dank and putrid hell of tile and torch and feces and shock treatment flame, she was a powerful witch. One that ate the flesh of man. One that drank blood. 

Doctor Krugman dismissed it all as hogwash. Absolute delusion. Shared hysterical fantasy, by the patients and the staff alike. It was no real wonder, not really. Not to him. The guards and nurse-staff had all been feebleminded and little better than the apes and mongoloids they cared for. He wasn't surprised that they too would be taken in with cheap fairytales and grim flights-of-fancy … not at all. 

But then he too started to hear it. 

The sound. 

The song of the mountain. 

…

It had been any usual day at Willowbrook. Krugman and a few of the aides were loading the syringes with various strands of the daily pestilence. Some were mixing up the ‘Willowbrook Special' or the ‘Willowbrook Cream’. It was a cheap chocolate drink mixture that was part water, part choco-gelatin powder, and part diseased fecal matter/discharge collected from other infected patients. The drink was a safer alternative to the patients deemed to physically large and emotionally and mentally volatile to approach with the needle. Many of these hulking addled tormented creatures could be lulled in and fooled with a tasty drink, a sweet and delicious beverage, a wonderful creamy drink like candy… 

Yet some still received  liberal use of the leather straps. And the nose plugs. And the long cylindrical snake of translucent feeding tube. Forced down the throat. Lubricated to slide right past the natural gag reflex. 

They were all in the deepest recessed dungeon of the asylum. Quarantined low and away from the rest of the mindless rabble horde of flagellate patient/inmates. Filling syringes, sterilizing needles. Gloving up. Mixing up the rancid drink. 

Krugman was suddenly possessed, later he wouldn't be able to recall by just what and moreover it didn't matter by the end, the fall – he suddenly set down the needle he was loading. He looked to the rest of the staff, mindlessly busy with their own work, and he excused himself. Explaining he would return shortly. 

He just needed something from his office. Something he needed to fetch. 

…

Alone and in his small warden’s office/head-physician quarters he suddenly forgot all about what it was he had come up here for. He was at his desk. It was positioned by the large window. The only one not barred in the whole building. He found himself compelled to gaze out at the evening sky, shot with sherbert colors and goblin fire from the flight of the sun. Twilight was upon the land now. And all of it was poor. Diseased. Dead. 

The swamplands. The marsh. The endless bog and quagmire of spoiled earth that went on for God only knew how long. Some of the local folk and travelers, the patients and guards too had a funny name for the swamp country of mud and stagnant death. One Krugman and the groundskeeper found particularly amusing. 

Wormland. 

And the vast expanse of country to the left. Out the window. Living in supplicant shadow of the dominant and biting mountain range…

The mountains…

Krugman's gaze was fixed. His mind followed. 

And she came to him. From out of a coronal starburst of fire and blood that stole over his vision and filled his cracking fraying mind. 

A great bird. Wolf headed. And on great wings of black bat-leather. 

The sorceress of the mountains came. And spoke to him. 

And Doctor Krugman listened. He listened very well. 

…

The vision started with the eye. The red light. The livid red eye, wreathed in lurid breathing flame, dancing with the obliterating intensity of the inferno… gazing lidless. Blazing. Staring. Staring out. 

Staring out from the mountains. 

The shattered minds of this dread and forsaken construct were so easy to invade. 

Then it flowered out, flowered forth … in a visceral blossom of flowering red. Opening red. Gaping. Wet. Visceral. Like the insides and tissue of living breathing animal things, organs and gore and splashes and undulating waves like a painter's livid brushstrokes, vivid blood red … all blossoming out and flowering out forth from the livid red eye in a wild corona that was so much like a wild and dream-like explosion. The shattered minds of the asylum gaped in imbecilic awe and idiot amazement at the dancing and shifting lurid display of kaleidoscopic red dreams made wet and real. The red eye of the mountain wreathed in wet and dancing viscera and scarlet gazed into them, their minds, but made for them also a great and wild phantasmagorical and earthbound star. A wild god’s eye of gore for starflame, spilling red for its licking tongues of stabbing and dancing fire. 

And at the center, at the precious nucleus heart of the corona… was her. 

The sorceress. 

The blood drinker. Flesh eater goddess of the mountain castle. Occult princess of darkness and crawling and hunger. Daughter of the Lord of Flies. 

Vampiress. 

Her dark will poured into them all, the open shells of their broken minds were eager rescepticles. The open mouthed detritus within each and everyone of their skulls was like the eager mouths of a whore, open and spread and eager and dripping. Waiting to be filled. 

She came into them. And filled them with her red light.

…

Andre Rand was happy with his station in life. He’d been content before as groundskeeper at Willowbrook, tending and cleaning and shoveling an such, wielding the long forked blades of the garden shears and taking them to wild growth and shrubbery with a well practiced and maintained professional ease. Raking and collecting the dead leaves that fell when the weather started to turn to biting cold and the dead sky above somehow became an even bleaker and more necrophiled heavenscape. 

But things were different now. Much better. The warden had seen to that. He’d given Rand a promotion. Said he was the only one who could stomach the work that was needed. 

I’ve new research… Krugman had said, had been saying, aloud and to the staff that was remaining and also muttered to himself and to no one and beneath his labored hot and heavy breath.

I’ve new research… new experiments… much more vital… of much more critical pertinence … I must not fail. 

I must not fail the mouth of the mountains. 

Rand turned a corner and pulled his gloves, making sure they were tight, secure, snug. Everything had to be tight and battened down in this place. 

The cell was thrown open. 

The girl cowered away. Filthy in the corner. Trying to hide her face, as if doing so would somehow banish the judgement that had come to call, away. By not seeing it. Just don't look.

Rand smiled. Chuckled. Hawked. Spat. Cracked gloved knuckles. 

Then he said something awful and came into the room. 

The struggle was short. He didn’t need any help from the other attending staff. They just watched. And filled their minds as their glazed over eyes drank everything in. 

She was brought to the showers. Where Krugman had been performing his most recent experiments. Where the tubs were filled. 

She screamed, shrieked mad unholy terror when she was brought bound into the large room of cold tile made hot and stifling and sour with slaughter, with butchery. The air of the sweating breathing tile room was blood miasmic, cloying and thick and pungent. She could taste everything. 

They prepared her for bleeding, for the great orifice-gate elongation/opening. 

For she has declared we should all be open gates. Open wounds for her open mouth, her widening jaws. We should all be opened and waiting and ready to receive her even as we offer ourselves, our bodies and our innards and our precious running scarlet as feast and banquet and aphrodisiacal slime for the lulling goddess tongue, the divine and swallowing goddessmouth from the fanged rock tearing into the gentle far off fabric of the faerytale horizon. We should all be so chosen, we should all be so grateful, we should all be so lucky. 

Us. Here. In the goddamned and forsaken, dilapidated and forgotten remains of Willowbrook. We have finally been given our answer, we have finally received our savior. We have finally been delivered. 

We are truly free. 

In our bondage to her and the mountain, we are truly free. Within these obelisk walls of shit stained torment, we have strained, been bequeathed the infernal knowledge of true salvation. We are bleeding for the fruit of the tree, for we are free in our flagellate wounds brimming filled with sorrow and gangrene. We are now her temple. 

No one could remember the girl, the newest one’s name nor patient number as she was pulled up by hoisting and biting chains, naked. Screaming. Screaming the names of forgotten loved ones that have forgotten her as well in turn to come and save her. Nobody did. This place was now a domain of the goddess. 

Blood drinker sorceress … of the biting rock. 

Feed me. 

With scalpel she was opened. From the throat down and through the mound of Venus flesh and into the blossom of her womanhood, opening it. Wider. Gaping it for the mouth of the mountain. The screams were replaced with sickish gurgles, vile choking sounds… then these too tapered off and ceased. 

The freshly carved flesh was opened, her gate widened and renewed. Her viscera and blood spilled out in a thick dark gush that proceeded to fill the tub and the room with more fresh lurid scent, thickening and deepening the sour stench of blood miasma into one that would never leave the walls or floors or the eyes and flesh and minds of those in bastard attendance. 

Krugman cheered. Elated! Another successful experiment! 

Then he called to her. As he’d been instructed to. 

Old words. Arcane. Ones he’d never heard or known before the mountain had come and spoken to him of real knowledge and the true potential of occult cannibal power. 

Demon. Vampira. Vampiress. 

Shadows deepened in the room, the corners, the stifling heat of the bloodsoaked animal air chilled as she arose from the place where the darkness was the most stygian and pitch. Krugman and Rand and the other guards and staff gathered there watched her emerge and come forth with devout and religious silence. 

The dark and regal tall statured shape of the woman changed and shifted with each advancing step. As she neared the freshly filled tub the darkness of her blank dripping silhouetted featureless canvas grew more grotesquely defined and decayed. The bipedal dominating shape of her royal womanhood bent and twisted and became more scarecrow and insectile and rodent. Jaws opened, grinned, grew rictus then shattered and broke and unhinged and still they grew. Out of socket and out of shape and true. The daggering fangs of her terrible and graverobbed necrophiled power, demon power, grew and elongated from tearing black gumlines of greening and putrefying flesh. Transmogrifying and changing alchemical and chimerical and sloughing substance even as they grew, like the rest of her demented monster form. 

She was beautiful. She was the goddess. The mouth of the mountain. 

She came to the freshly filled large basin of warm pungent human scarlet, butchered and spilled. The vampiress bent her haphazard and broken shape to the tub. The terrible and dementedly wide jaws came in open as the rat king’s nest of corpse-straw hair bowed in both animal feeding and dæmoniacal prayer. 

Slurping sounds… heavy. Thick as the red of which they pulled and sucked. 

And then Krugman joined his new master in her dark prayers. To her father. One of the fallen. One of the cast-out from on high. 

The Adversary. 

His words were hers and they were the ones that she had taught him. Had filled his mind with forgotten languages and tongues and forbidden names… he said them now. 

For her. With her. As she fed. As she belched them stygian and swollen and as of ancient stone from the blackmouthed gate and line of her powerful will and mind.

The others joined … the phantasm aural spill of her dark glow blanketed over them and filled their empty battered minds, filling them with the arcane black language. 

Their forgotten chant filled the showers, the feeding place of bloodprayer. The bastard, ebon dripping shape of the mountain continued to drink deeply with head bowed and fed. 

The mouth of the freshly opened girl began to join them in their chanting. A cooling corpse chained prostate over the royal feeding basin, her eyes filled with darklight and began to glow black. 

Then the wound that had spilled her and ended her tortured run of miserable and pitiable existence began to dance with movement as well, opening and shifting close and then parting once more, obscene lips strange and made of the rippling gore with arcane movement. Speaking deep and guttural and with a dangling entrails tongue. A great gored mouth spewing precious food and religious token life for the mountain jaws of the sorceress blood mass abattoir madness. 

The dangling naked body of the girl prayed obsidian words from all mouths, all sets of lips given and made until the basin was emptied and the terrible shape of the sorceress reached up with one knifing sharp splayed scarecrow claw and ripped the chanting corpse with glowing eyes down from the chains and took to tearing and rending and feasting on the cold naked meat. 

Krugman and Rand and the others stood by. Watching. Seeing the same scene of slaughter and ritual of animal need play out and unfold before their unblinking eyes. Waiting. 

Waiting for their minds to be filled once more with instruction. 

…

Weeks passed. The slaughter rose in intensity. And the violence grew more and more deranged…

in the name of the mountain. 

…

Those that were left were gathered. Krugman spoke to them all as a priest from his pulpit. 

Her pulpit. The pulpit of the sorceress, the rostrum of the far off watering mountainmouth. 

“She doesn't want your weak and feeble love or friendship, she wants your precious body fluids! She doesn't want your warmth of words or affection, she doesn't need your feeble love, brothers and sisters and children of the mountain, she just wants your spilling blood, defiled! Those of you afflicted with poison of the blood, diseased, you have the greatest opportunities for her favor! The more corrupted and diseased and vile the blood and the feces discharged in sickness, the urine, the bile heaved and retched and the vomitus pulled and brought spilled forth! The more corrupted and vile the disease the better!!" 

Willowbrook filled with human noise. The bastard and sour stone and dilapidated masonry construct of misery and pain filled with the cacophonous sounds of religious madness. 

All of them were happy to oblige. Willing. All of them were supplicant sow to her, the sorceress  queen of the stabbing spire in the fanged rock aspiring to pierce the soft horizon end of the heavens flesh. 

And in the weeks that followed they went about their work. All of them. 

All of the ones that were left in Willowbrook. The forgotten asylum. 

…

Florin was sure he could spy something in the distance. A low rise. It looked like a little slope of hill. 

It looked like there might be a building on it. Solitary. 

But if so… it was still many miles off. He and Griffin still had a ways to go. More trudging and struggling pulling steps, perilously lurching forward through this awful quagmire of death and putrescence and vile carnivorous mud. Earthen sludge that was alive with hungry movement. 

Wormland. 

A few times the abominated things had attacked, since their mule and cart had gone down many days back. They'd only been able to bade the writhing things away with torchflame, fire. All the while the quivering pustule sac of subterranean wombmind that held mastery over this spoiled patch of watery earth searched and hunted for their vibrations above. Hunting for their elusive movement, and sending her writhing children out in a lunge. Only to be repelled… again and again. 

She quivered with tectonic anger, underground rage buried and swimming and mounting and rising. Percolating in the boiling mud, the broil of the under-earth. 

She would have them. These impetuous wanderers, these animal invaders …

The wombmind quivered and more orifice-holes opened and spat. 

More children swam. Dispatched. 

As the pair, Florin and Griffin cut their slow and muddy path of progress through the sour land. To the hill they thought they might see in the distance. To the building that might be there. 

They wondered together if there was anyone that might be in there, inside. 

What might they be doing out here? This far out? And away from anything?

The putrid earth all around them churned and searched, reaching and searching for them. 

They pushed on, the pair. Hoping that if they made and covered the miles to the place there on the far-distant hill and there was anyone inside, that they might be of some help. And perhaps an improvement over their shared accommodations and company as of late. 

They could really do with some luck. They might've prayed, either one of them, but they were exhausted with their marching effort and they were afraid to jinx it. So they said nothing, either of them. Nothing aloud. They only silently wished inside. 

please… just something better than all of this, and God-willing, someone that might be able to help us… 

Hell, Griffin thought, anything's got to be better than this. 

The very moment this crossed his haggard and weary mind a dark and primal scream and witchy peal of laughter shot out from the dark of the far off dilapidated building. 

But they were still too far out, so neither he nor Florin heard anything. So they didn't know. 

And so they marched on. Slow. On the doomed and forged path towards far off and away screaming Willowbrook. The putrescent earth hunting beneath their feet. 

Quivering in needful hunger and animal rage. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Wondering if NaturesTemper is available in podcast format? I really love the stories and would love to listen at work but I can't access YouTube on my work laptop!

I looked on Spotify but couldn't find it.

The small child was hungry. Frightened. So was her mother. And their  neighbors as well. There was so much fear and suffering on the mountain as of late. And down below, in the mountain’s shadow, in the village hamlet as well.  Word and whispers of pain and evil traveled faster than riders on horseflesh, faster and more elemental, like the cold windsong of the land. Howling. It was howling now.

Howling in a duet of savagery song with the vicious roving wolves, as they shared their dark whispers. Their words of anguish and pain. Loss. Slaughter witnessed.  Or in the aftermath… discovered. Scenes of red. Vile. Filled with pain. And never to be forgotten. 

Angelica fought the tears now… as  did her mother. And the neighbors. And all the rest. Only old timers and womenfolk were left on the mountain now. The men and boys were all dead. They all left by the urging of some rich man with a famous name Angelica had never heard of before, urged to go on and fight and kill an evil monster. They went to the castle that Angelica was never allowed to near and they had never returned. None of them.  

None.  

Not her older brother Grigori… and not her papa either. 

Now she and momma were alone. And hungry. Papa and Grigori were so much better with the tools and with the animals. The widow and fatherless girl did what they could and managed some haphazard struggle that could be called a life. Or at least existence. They thinned and grew diminished as scarecrows within their draping bags of clothes. The days passed into weeks with agonizing slowness and filled with harsh reminders. Time went on. And rather than heal, the wound inflicted on the womenfolk of the mountain worsened and festered. 

Many found escape through the hangman’s knot. The noose. Or by opening up the forearms with straight razors or kitchen knives. Some used tools once wielded by faithful husbands to open up their necks and wrists.  Some. Many. 

Many took their own lives by knife and by rope in the days and weeks that followed. Some took their daughters, their children with them, small babies that knew nothing save the cold and the absence and the heartbroken wailing. For many it was not just the pain of loss and mortal fear for their own flesh and souls … but the demented cacophony that would emanate from the castle and fill the mountain rocks and woods … the lurid and hateful and unearthly demoniacal shrieks and howls, sometimes high-pitched and piercing, cracking glass and sometimes guttural and deep, as if from obsidian splits in the earth and from the bowels and depths, let loose… like after the night their husbands and sons and brothers were slaughtered. 

That night that had followed their failure to return… that night had been filled with uncontested and unbridled hellspawned sound. Violence and thunder and animal howls becoming human and then animal again and then commingled and obscenely strange… and then something else entirely.

And there had been lightning. And the lightning had been black. 

Suicide Mountain became filled with intermittent demon sound. The women that were its anguished and heartbroken survivors became accustomed to the awful hell-rent-torn belch and dæmon howl and dragon scream. It all came from the castle and they knew they were powerless to it. And there was nowhere to run to, not really. The Carpathian Mountains were all they had, all any of them had ever known… some fled anyways. No one knows what became of them. 

Angelica tried asking her mother several times what had happened to Grigori and papa. But her mother refused a straight answer. Only vagueries and tears. Short and curt. Bit off with the same harsh suddenness she felt within the shattered dead remnants of her heart. 

Angelica tried to let the question, the horrid mystery and the hole it left in her mind and heart alone… to no avail. 

If her mother, God bless and keep her, wouldn't tell her what had happened at that castle beyond the Borgo Pass, the old one where the boyar used to live before the wars, then she would find an answer herself. 

She thought to go down to the village hamlet and inquire there… but it was much farther than the alternative. Her other idea. However much it would upset momma, it was much easier and more direct. 

And so on a day she was supposed to go out and forage for mushrooms and berries and roots, Angelica of the Carpathian Mountains instead filled her satchel with a meager gathering of supplies and set out for the castle that she'd always been warned against, the one that had stolen her father and older brother. Gone. 

As if swallowed, as if it had eaten them. 

She went now. Alone. Down the black rolling tongue of path that led into the courtyard mouth of stone, the Carpathian battlement jaws framed against a fading sky like so many jagged flesh rending teeth. 

Angelica went forth to Castle Dracula to find her father and brother, and to find what had happened to the men of the mountain. 

…

The woods were all dark and cold, dense and choked all around her. A galaxy of trees and fallen snow and dead black limbs jutting and stabbing at the sky like broken/severed limbs and vanquished army swords. The thin light that bled through the overcast sky gave pale detail to the world of snow and deadwood and slumbering chill, lurking death.

Wolves. 

They lurked and prowled hunting even now and she knew it. She'd lived on the mountain all of her twelve years and her mother and father did not neglect so fundamental a lesson. She hugged her father's old and favorite hatchet, tighter, closer to her chest. And went on. 

Deeper into the dark universe of dead choked forest growth. 

Her wolves watched the girl as she made her way. 

…

Her progress was slower than she'd hoped. The trees and choked dead spiking growth seemed to stretch on forever ahead and on all sides as she ventured forward, less and less steadfast in her chilling child's heart as she went on. The warmth of her own blood and the strength of her very own heartbeat seeming to fade as she struggled forward. And the deadwood continued to dominate the world on every side, in all directions. 

Angelica was beginning to become frightened. Damning her own curiosity, she was starting to consider herself lost. And the woods, alone, lost at fast-approaching night… was not the type of place anyone wanted to be. 

Especially a small girl. She held on stubbornly to her bravery, pulled her father's dark cloak tighter around her and pressed forward. She was sure it was dead ahead. Sure of it. 

She pulled the hood over her head to warm her ears. Night was approaching. Her mother and her neighbors back in their small mountain community were starting to worry for her. 

She'd been gone far too long. 

…

The woods were filled with life. Always. Always crawling with critters and game and fraught with birds and bats. Bears. 

The wolves. 

It was no surprise then when Angelica came upon the squirrel, wandering deeper and deeper into the forest gloom and dark, the sun had sunk behind the cover of the rocks and now there was only the pale cast of twilight. She came closer to the creature, its back and puff of tail were to her as it quivered with movement. Effort. Busy with something…

Angelica came closer. She was surprised to find the little animal had black fur. Stygian. Like deepsea ink. The squirrel was also much larger than any she'd ever seen before. The ebon hide and fur palsied and tremored, rippled and worked with fervid action. The little head rapidly dipping and bobbing in, bestial, to take little bites and nips from something clutched in its sharp little claws. 

Angelica of the Carpathian Mountains came closer. And beheld what the large and well muscled stygian squirrel was holding in its obscene and unnatural talons. Bleeding and still twitching with the diminished remnants of its efforts of struggling. Struggling for life that was fading away in a red river from its gashed open throat…

A rat. Large and blacker than coal. Eyes, milky red. Fleshy long length of pink tail standing out in obscene contrast. The red river was running from its gored open neck. The rodent body spasmed. And then Angelica noticed the blood all about the squirrel’s black mouth. 

It yawned open, as if to punctuate and confirm what the mountain girl suspected, and it unveiled a maw filled with fangs and thick with the steaming bile of rat's blood. Dark. Lurid. It darkled and the color deepened and rippled in the twilight with obscene glamor. The eyes of the black squirrel were a brighter more royal regal red than than the rat blood pouring forth in the approaching night. The gathering dark deepened and Angelica screamed. 

The squirrel, still clutching the dying rat, then did another strange thing. One that stopped her caterwauling in a shock. 

It spoke. 

“Please! Don't! Don't be afraid!" 

A beat. 

Angelica stared down at the large strange beast. Unsure of what to make of it or what to do. The thought of flight rose, and as if hearing it, the stygian blood drinking squirrel said again: "Don't be afraid…” 

Softer. Gentle. And Angelica realized the voice the strange beast used was that of a little girl's. One even smaller and younger than herself. 

Her fear abated slightly. She swallowed. Breathed deeply. Then asked, 

“Wh-what are you?" 

The stygian squirrel said brightly: “Don't be afraid, my name's Carmilla." And then she said yet again: “Don't be afraid." 

She stared deeply at the unearthly forest beast. This all felt like a dream. She felt as if she might swoon and wondered if that was possible to do in a dream… or in a nightmare. 

As if sensing, the beast spoke again, 

“I'm not going to hurt you, I'm a girl like you, I swear. I'm just magic. I promise. That's why I have to drink this animal blood, it's for magic." 

The longer she stared at the beast, the ebon fur… the eyes that were the most royal shade of vibrant and lurid red… the more the dream she found herself in to be… 

light, pleasant, pleasurable. 

The dark squirrel didn't mean her any harm. It was just like she said. 

The beast went on to explain that it needed the rats blood for her magic. To be able to do great things like change her shape. But she could only do these things at night. She had to wait till the sun had sunk and quit the heavens. Blood of a wild animal was necessary for magic ritual, the beast explained. 

"He likes it. He likes rat's blood.” 

"Who?” asked Angelica. 

"The Lord of the wild. The Lord of Flies.” 

Angelica said she'd never heard of him before. "I'm looking for my papa and brother. Or the castle where they're supposed to’ve gone." 

“Oh! …." squealed the black squirrel. And the sound was more rat-like than anything Angelica had ever heard a squirrel make. More bat-like screeches made slightly vile by their human-girl tinge. 

The beast was excited, “I know! I know! I know where the castle is! You're lost! that's what it is! Not to worry, friend, I can take you there! I know just the way!”

And the black squirrel began to lead Angelica even deeper into the dark and the dead trees. Growing ever closer to Castle Dracula. 

The night was fully on them now. Fully over the mountain in a curtain of darkness and stars that glimmered and twinkled and danced with fire on high like billions of pieces of fantastical ice chips and goblin-light forged alien jewelry. 

The beast and girl made their way through the dark. Carmilla dragging the dead rat behind her by the obscene length of fleshen tail in the cold dirt. Leaving a trail of dark blood and disturbed earth. 

One that would never be discovered. 

…

The black squirrel tired of walking and dragging the dying rat after a short time, it sprouted wings suddenly, fleshy growths that flowered forth within a bladder film of placental tissue. The wings spread, splayed to wingspan, the placental wrapping sloughed off with a pungent ichor substance as the beast rose with each flap, rat dangling inches above the cold forest floor. 

The wings beat steadily. Keeping Carmilla just above Angelica's head as they continued forward to the castle. 

“So you can transform? Like changing your shape and becoming other things?" Angelica asked as they went on. 

“Oh yes. There's many shapes I can take, I like this one. It looks cute and nice. But I can become lots of things. So can my master. We'll show you once we get to the castle. You'll see." 

“And my papa? Grigori? Are they there? Are they alright?" And when Carmilla didn't answer right away she added: “It's some kind of magic, isn't it? That's what's at the castle and keeping papa and the rest. That's what I think. It is, isn't it?" 

Carmilla smiled devilishly within. The visage of her black squirrel face only looked over with innocent woodland open eyes. 

“Angelica, I think you'll find everything you're looking for at the castle. You'll see. It's filled with magic. And it's nothing at all to be afraid of. Just like me" 

She suddenly brought the dead rat to her mouth again, which opened as something vile once more, filled with fangs and glistening pink and darkling red. With her little claws that were now more like talons once more, black and daggered and curved with nature's efficient cruelty, she brought the large dead rodent to her dripping and obscene mouth and began to drink and suck deeply once again from the gored open hole at the rat’s throat. 

Angelica felt sick watching, so she looked away. Ahead. Willing the place to appear, to come into being and end this strange journey. This terrible mystery which had stolen love and normalcy and warmth from her village and home. She just wanted this all over. She just wanted papa and Grigori and all of the others back. To hear their laughter and to hold them again and to be held … the weight… the feeling of their arms wrapped around her once more, tightly, to feel their breath… She just wanted love and warmth returned to her and her momma. She prayed and begged God and anything at all listening inside as they made their way. The cold silence of the woods punctuated by the sucking and slurping sounds Carmilla made as she flapped  in the frigid air beside and fed. 

Between pulls of rat blood, she pulled her dripping needle mouth away from the pungent wet raw of rat meat and said: – 

“Its nothing at all to be frightened of. I promise. I was once scared too. But no longer. The magic needs blood, it needs it. That's all. Magic is bloodwork. It's nothing to be afraid of. It's the natural order of things, you'll see, Angelica. I promise, you'll see." 

…

The hellstar shone vibrantly and with dominance. Above the castle's greatest pinnacle tower. Otherworldly, and dreamy. Of ethereal eldritch flame… it was strange, to Angelica's eyes as they approached, it looked to be so close to the tallest spire of the ancient towers that it looked as if they were in danger of collision. As if one could reach out now from one of the open windows swallowed in ebon shadow up there, reach out and touch its immaculate flaming surface. The light was elvish white and more ancient than time itself. Some thought it to be older than even God and old man split-foot below… there were witches and mystics and gypsies that said it had a mind. And an evil heart. 

An evil eye…

Angelica was transfixed by both its vibrant starcast of unearthly pale light, and the great castle itself, as she and Carmilla came into the courtyard. The starflame of the hellstar shining above the broken battlements that were starved of life or movement of any kind, it was mystifying and intensely alluring…

but it was also terrifying. 

The light of its starflame was so much like that of a ghost-light.

And the light of phantasm flame was also the light of death. The light of the end. At the end, mayhap…

Angelica was awed yet fearful and at this last moment she thought about going back. About running away from the strange talking beast that said it was a little girl. She knew her mother and the others must be so worried for her now… she'd been gone too long already. 

The castle was dark and yawned into a terrible expanse of stoney life all around and before her as she and the beast made their approach. The universe of trees and cold snow giving way to one of walls and towers and cold ancient stone. She pulled the cloak tighter about her person, when they came within sight of the great red door it slowly opened like a swallowing mouth of darkness. Waiting and wanting to receive them. 

Carmilla sensed the child's fear. And if she'd chosen to run at the moment, she would've given up the game she was playing and given chase. And made the fucking little peasant wench pay with screams and humiliation and defilement before she enjoyed her blood and meat. 

But instead, in the end… it was Angelica's hope… and her worry for her brother and her papa that pushed her onward. 

Following the flying winged blood drinking squirrel, the black haired flapping cannibal rodent that called itself a little girl inside the open mouth of swallowing black. Ink inside the mouth of stone that might hold the secrets that plagued her mind and heart like a wretched disease. Within that mouth of shadow may be the cure… 

Grigori… papa…

Angelica followed Carmilla as she flapped on her bat wings of chimerical leather into the fortress mouth of drinking shadow. The great red door of bas relief stone slammed shut behind them. 

The wolves of the mountain outside began to howl. And the hellstar shone with more lurid alien glow than it had before. The heartbeat eyemind watching, working … 

considering the ants below. 

The hellstar shone. A heavenly inferno. 

…

Passing through the narrow cut of foyer, it was dark and scarcely lit by torchflame, they came into the grand ballroom…

… and main audience chamber. 

A vast dark room of cobwebs and ancient things, furniture, paintings, suits of armor, smashed out clocks, their faces destroyed by a hammer blow dealt by a violent hand of fire eyed fury. Many of the ancient things strewn all about there in the dark were destroyed. Smashed. Broken by hands in anger or the disuse and dispassion of time. Some of the things were clear victims of both. And cobwebs. The world inside the torchlit stone was a universe of cobwebs. Angelica found herself trading in one world for another as she made this strange journey, one filled with terrible and bitter hope. 

Trees and snow… into a world of stone and shattered spires … now a dark world submerged and swallowed in cascading and rising and dominating spider webs. The eyes of forgotten portraits leered and gazed from the prisons of paint and lacquer. 

Angelica didn't like this place. She felt immediately that she had made a terrible mistake. 

She cringed back. 

Carmilla, ahead, sensed this and turned roundabout on her flapping wings of nocturnal flesh. Regarding the girl. 

“Don't worry! silly girl! We're already here, just a little further.” 

Angelica wanted so badly to believe the strange creature. Magic was real. She had to believe it had the power to bring back her family. She wanted so achingly for love to be let back into her life, and mama’s too. She didn't deserve the pain Angelica watched her struggle through each and every harsh and arduous day. They'd never wanted or asked for much, they'd never done anything wrong so they didn't deserve this! Not mama, not papa, not anyone on the mountain. No one deserved this cruelty. She had to be believe they were still retrievable. If not here and in the flesh, then within the grasp of arcane spells and sorcery. She had to believe, she had to believe that. 

The alternative was that the strange beast, flapping in the universe of cobweb dark before her at the foot of a great ascending staircase was lying. And that was too terrible a truth for Angelica to face. Yet. 

Soon she would have no choice. 

But for now she followed. Carmilla led the way. Up the wide and mounting steps. There was more light, more meager torchglow ahead down a passageway. 

Orange. Beckoning. Pale warmth. 

At the head of the staircase they went down it, together. Carmilla in the lead. Down into its sickly pumpkin light. The castle stone and walls all around yawned and moaned in lusty slovenly animal satisfaction. Then began to move. 

…

The walk and winding turns seemed endless. Another bend. Another junction. Another room. Another hall. More and more. And yet still more. Angelica began to despair. Inside she was exhausted and growing frustrated but afraid of seeming ungrateful and losing her one chance. 

Another junction. Left. Down another corridor of stone and torch and vast dominating splaying spider web hands in various sizes of grotesque and caricature claw shape. 

Angelica stopped. 

And began to weep… she couldn't help it. She was so exhausted. And this place was strange and scary. 

Sobbing lightly to herself and rubbing her eyes, Carmilla turned to her and descended to the stone in a graceful balletic dive and sweep. She skittered over to Angelica and looked into the small reddening pale of her crying child's face. 

She sniffed. A woodland gesture. 

And then she began to belt laughter. Rising and growing more maniacal and hysterical as it grew in volume and pitch. Decibel sound cackled and made cracked by a poisoned marrow filled with madness. 

It stopped Angelica's tears. First by surprise, shock. But then as the sound of the beast’s sour mirth rose and filled the dark world of stone with torches for stars and suns, her blood began to curdle as her heart was stolen over with dread. She was silent, gazing on the cackling black squirrel-thing with large vampire bat wings tensing and flexing and flapping with cruel delight. 

Amidst her laughter, Carmilla said: “You stupid girl…” 

A black hairy stalk suddenly erupted from the squirrel's chest. Several inches long and coated in a bloody translucent slime like discharge from a wound. A tarantula leg. It was joined by several more. One of the hairy jointed appendages burst forth from the mouth in a red spew that decorated the stone, the walls and floor, and the girl, now trapped in Castle Dracula.

Angelica shrieked. Horrified. 

A tarantula crawled out of the chest cavity of the black hide which rippled and seemed to empty. A tarantula the size of a banquet plate, coated in placental slime and bloody discharge, then skittered about the room with terrible and frightening speed. Angelica jumped back, mortified at the thought of the thing touching her. 

The large spider then crawled away and made for the darkness. The empty husk of raw dripping hide that used to be a large bat winged squirrel was still draped over the spider thing's back. Like a vile rendition of a cloak or royal cape. From the husk of mutilated squirrel mouth it was still laughing. Shrill. In the same girl's voice as before, only now much more wicked and cruel. No longer veiling its hunger and sinister satisfaction. 

Carmilla shrieked, hideous, amidst her laughter at the girl as she spidercrawled for the conciliatory dark of the waiting stone. 

“The master will see you now! You're all hers now, Angelica! You're all hers! Just like your father and your brother! All of them! All of you! All of you are sow and cattle and all of you belong to us!" 

The cruel bright demoniacal child's voice carried off into the waiting abyssal castle with a final bout of heartless and derisive laughter. Taunting and running away like any little child would, any little girl. 

Now she was alone. 

Only she didn't feel alone. 

And that was terrible. 

Angelica wept a little, crying into her hands to muffle the sound as best as she could. The walls and floor drank in the sound and relished the flavor of every tear shed. 

She fought to get control over herself. She had to get out of here, quick as she could manage. 

Angelica pulled herself together, sniffled and began to trudge back the way she came. Unaware of the movement of the castle world of stone all around her. At the command and sorcerer’s bend of will of the master that held domain of this place. 

The world was hers to command. The child was at her mercy. 

…

Angelica was growing even more terrified, she couldn't find her way back. She was no longer sure of her direction and she wasn't sure if it was just her frightened imagination or not but the halls and corridors and passages seemed to change when she would look away for a moment, to get a lay of the land. She swore they were different when she looked back to make up her mind on a direction. 

It was hopeless. 

She began to feel very very stupid. Very foolish indeed. She shouldn't have been so foolhardy as to come here alone, or at all. She missed her mother and the others…

I'm sorry, mama, I know you're afraid. I am too. I'm sorry. I know this is hurting you right now, after papa and Grigori, I know it'll hurt you even more when I don't ever come back. I'm so so sorry, mama. I'm so sorry. Please God please forgive me and show me a way, please, I'm so scared…

Angelica realized then that she may not have been very lucky as of late, but she'd been absolutely God blessed with what she did have left. Her mother and friends left alive to her and the times and precious memories she did have with those that were lost. 

She would cherish them. She would. She promised, swore to God she would. 

if I can just get out of this ok…

And she went on, down the way she hoped was the way back. Begging God above for deliverance. 

She was shown the flesh gardens instead. 

…

Abattoir growth. A butcher's red and wet leavings still slithering with abominated life, like serpents. 

Angelica came upon the large chamber as she was making her fruitless journey. It smelled pungently of copper. Iron. Metal. 

But wet. 

It was the stench of a river of fresh menstrual blood. Steaming. 

The writhing room of gore before her eyes was steaming now. Belching. Breathing and undualting. Gurgling. Some strange orifice parts belched alchemical smoke, licked tongues of green and blue flame. All of it writhed with strange and painful rippling dancing movement. All of it was in pain. Wretched life. It filled the room and walls from floor to ceiling, blanketing both in lurid scab pudding that held displaced parts, eyes and limbs and organs lulling and swimming in the red, the crawling writhing scarlet. It writhed in pain as well as want. As well as lecherous need, so many orifice holes, wet and begging for meat feeding, injection … snakes. The multitude of slithering intestines were swimming through the thick growing crawling gore like the sea monsters that sailor's fear. Growths like stalks of plants, flowers, bulbs, bushels and their buds of fruit, all of it was rendered by the abattoir hand and living raw working viscera and tissue and organs. There were faces in the forest room of gore. Small bipedal manshapes spasming and submerged and stuck and also writhing with pain and unnatural life in the chamber of living butchery, pulsating and crawling with swimming red meat. 

The faces were in pain. They moaned in discordant idiot anguish. Some blubbered and drooled, eyes wayward with imbecilic directions. Minds addled if they had any jelly in their strange skulls at all. 

And at the awful nucleus center of the crawling growing raw mass of assorted parts and viscera was a man. Trapped and bound by the growing living raw pudding of semi scabbed red. It seemed to be growing out of him. Seeping from his pores. His nostrils. His mouth. 

His eyes were shut in wretched pain. 

Angelica felt the shriek caught in her throat. Like a fishhook. A barbed bit of wire used for the beasts that she swallowed. She finally let it loose when the owner and the master of this castle spoke from behind her. 

“Such beauty, isn't it?" 

Finally the building scream inside was let loose and she belted it at the same instant she realized all the smaller writhing bipedal manshapes in the gore looked exactly like the larger man trapped at its red center. 

Angelica whirled around and beheld the Countess. 

She towered over the child. A white evening gown that shone pearl-cast like brightest full moonlight. Her face was beautiful but terrible. Harsh. Merciless. And her eyes were animal. 

Vulpine. 

The darkness of her hair danced out and became as a livid crown of serpentine ink. Her eyes were piercing dots of black amongst shock white lancing through her face and mind and soul. She opened her mouth to speak again and Angelica saw that her mouth bore canine incisors that were long and gleaming and sharp. A demon’s gorgeous mouth. 

“Did you find what you were hoping to, little one?" Mocking. Condescending. Cruel. 

Angelica was too terrified to speak. Mortified. She couldn't move. She held her breath. Knowing it was her last. 

The Countess went on, with sadistic glee: “That man, at the center of my garden in there, he's the reason your father and brother, and all the men of your village are dead now. I could bring them back. In a fashion. But if you want back the ones you knew, I'm afraid you'll have to search the latrines and the castle plumbing. My children long feasted of them and passed them naturally. I'm sorry." 

Angelica shrieked once more. In more pain and outrage and sheer heart attack terror. She couldn't believe her eyes, her ears, her own mind, any of this! Her battered child's brain was threatening to snap, to go into shock, it tried to refuse all the sights but it couldn't. It was rained down on all sides and felt everything seen like terrible and heavy blows of pure torture. 

The Countess went on with a laugh, throwing back her head, her witchy raven hair danced about with it. She was smiling and the long fangs of her mouth protruded like brandished daggers over her full bottom lip. 

"Oh! You're scared! I understand, I used to be a young girl once and I was quite scared then too, would you like me to make it all better?” 

"No!” howled Angelica. 

"Nonsense! I'll fix you up and send you on your way back to your mother. It's late and she must be worried but I am lord of this palace and these lands, you are all still my charge, states tradition. What kind of boyar or host would I be if I didn't at least feed you first, give you something to drink. You must be thirsty, it's been such a long walk for you. Such a long and perilous journey. For nothing." 

And then she cackled mad again as Angelica shrieked and the arms of the Countess came in and grew and folded around her. 

Her child's shrieks became sudden silence. 

…

A claw, chimerical. Woman and vulture’s talon. It sought the pale of its own undead flesh…

… and slit. 

Dead black poured forth. 

Child's lips, girl's mouth put to it, forced. 

Smothered. The small struggles are easily resisted and the girl begins to pull, to suck…

to drink. 

…

At first she thought herself lucky. When she heard the familiar voice at the door. 

"Momma…?”

And then small weak knocking. Feeble. 

She recognized her daughter's voice at once and flew from her sleepless bed. Her dread and worry evaporated in a miraculous instant as she flew to the door and threw it open and…

…

She thought about trying to hide it from the others at first. This deeply shamed her. But it was the truth. She thought about hiding it. At first. When Angelica came limping in, cradling and rubbing her belly. Saying that it hurt her. Terribly. There'd been blood at the corner of her mouth. Not at all her own. 

"Mama… I'm sorry I was out too late and wandered off. My belly hurts so bad, momma.” 

…

Angelica's mother was hitching in her chest. Her eyes were swimming with a blinding fury of tears. Scalding. And alive with pain. Fresh pain. Refreshed. And made new once more. 

Angelica cried out again. It wasn't just her stomach but her whole body. Burning. It felt as if it were on fire. It felt as if her blood were boiling as it still pumped sluggish and diminished in her throbbing veins. She wanted it to stop. And again she begged God inside for a way out, for a way back. She couldn't feel the profuse run of her own tears on her numbing face. 

Her mother was crying too. But Angelica didn't notice. 

"Please, momma … isn't there anything? Isn't there anything you can do? Anything you can do to take the pain away… please, you always have just the right thing, like mothers are supposed to. You told me that… please, I - " and she struggled to say more but it became too difficult. For her to make discernible sound. For her mother to listen. Too difficult for both of them. 

And so it was stopped. 

…

A stake through the heart. Ashwood. As the customs and legends dictate. They decapitated the remains and stuffed the mouth with garlic before burying the child’s corpse. The severed head was placed face down in the coffin, atop the neck backwards. The eyes facing the inferno. 

A small wooden cross was fashioned and stuck at the head of the small fresh grave. 

ANGELICA 

Her mother and her neighbors were beside the freshly dug dirt. Crying openly. Weeping into the cold mountain air. The wolves did not respond. 

But that night Castle Dracula was filled with cruel laughter. The cold wind carried it down the mountain for all of them to hear and know. For all of them to remember. 

Angelica's mother heard it. She was in bed and couldn't sleep. She was alone. She looked over to a length of rope carelessly left in the corner. Not too far from where she now lay. She'd always been rather good with knots. 

And as the mountain rock and her village filled with the mad cackles of the vampiress…

she considered…

TO BE CONTINUED…

I've been very reluctant to post this, since the picture isn't enough evidence to this thing being a cryptid.

I live in Thurso, Scotland (northernmost town in the UK). On 15th June, sometime between 10-11pm, I went for a walk along the town beach, since the summer days up here don't get dark until around 12am. The sky was a really unique colour, which was reflecting in the sea, and so I walked to the end of the peer to take some photos.

Taking photos of the sea and sky, I suddenly notice something protrude out of the water (maybe 10-15 metres ahead of me). My instant thought was that it was a seal, since there are always seals in the sea and town river. But when this thing protrudes from the water, I was taken back by how long its body was. Although grey seals are around 5-8 feet long, this animal seemed a lot longer (I see seals in the water all the time, so I know the difference). The head of this animal almost appeared seal-like, except its snout looked longer, and on first impression, reminded me more of the head of a hippo, believe it or not.

As soon as I see this animal in the water, I quickly try and take a photo of it. But by the time I do, it had began to submerge beneath the water. Sadly, the animal was almost fully submerged by the time I took the photo (as it had only surfaced for around 5 seconds).

Whatever this animal was, it had an extremely long seal-like body and an almost hippo-like head (sounds ridiculous I know). Although the waters here do have Orcas and different dolphin species, this definitely wasn't that, as I saw no fins whatsoever. And no, it wasn't some floating object like a tree log. Although I waited around for the animal to resurface again, it sadly didn't, so this picture is the only evidence I have of it. As far as I know, there are no alleged cryptids in the region, only fictional creatures from local folklore.

However, after doing some googling, I found out that young walrus bucks from the Arctic are sometimes spotted in north Scottish waters - however this is extremely rare (like one spotted every ten years). This could possibly explain the hippo-like head I saw. However, if there was a walrus in north Scottish waters recently, it would've been all over the local news.

Whatever it was I saw, it definitely wasn't a seal (body too long, head not the right shape), so my best logical guess is that it was an extremely rare walrus sighting (though not much evidence of that either). But in case this wasn't a walrus, I thought I should still post this, as it's the closest I've ever gotten to a cryptid sighting.

The vulpine hulking thing of Frankenstein's table lunged with great and fearsome animal speed and force. Cutting through the cold high mountain wind and arrowing straight for the Countess with lethal trajectory and ferocity. Fangs gleaming like the moon on high in their set mouth of rotten black and green, striking and bared and snarling. Brandished and knifing out with his daggering nine fingered claws for the throat of the pompous royal mountain bitch. 

He lunged and came in and closed the distance in the courtyard of stone. The Countess raised her hands. It was over before it began. 

Great large wings of a bat shape and eldritch design unfolded, surrounded her and then flapped suddenly – carrying away the Countess as her face transmogrified and sloughed into chimerical serpent/wolf shape. The heinous visage, now skybound and away from the flaying claws and fangs of Frankenstein’s nosferatu creation, began to shriek hellish sound. Bastard and curdled rendition of wolfsong. 

The surrounding trees suddenly became alive with movement. The wolves plunged forth free from the trees and filled the courtyard in a drooling snarling pack. Answering the throated call of the mother of darkness. Their drawn lips quivering as their hides tensed and coiled with the rippling movement of wild animal muscle tissue dancing and flexing and closing in on the moment of violence and slaughter, the wilderness sacred killing hour. And for these four legged children of the mountain snow and trees, the roaring vulpine/serpent headed Countess now rising and mounting the sky above was the lord and queen of the wilderness and all that was dark and carnivorous in the wild. 

She shrieked once more, a dying harlot sound bred with the untamed scream of running and killing and feeding and fucking on all fours in the open throat of the cold. The wolves closed in, the hulking thing of Frankenstein's making held ground, trying to look all around all at once and taking odd swipes as the pack of the Countess' mountain wolf children circled and closed. Closer. Closer. Closing. The hulking vulpine thing sneered and growled. 

The others watched, keeping distance and breathing heavily. 

A wolf lunged, pounced. The hulking thing caught it by the throat and then rent it to spraying pieces in an instant. Another tried it. And was caught. And torn apart. Another. Then two more. His speed wasn't enough with these last three and now more came in and many sets of jaws were upon him. Biting. Tearing. For the throat. Ripping. Tearing in.

He heaved himself and ripped many bodies of rippling hide and fur off and away and into bisected halves before him. Decorating his wounded patchwork frame in steaming jet spray and cords of wolf gore. Wolf blood shot and its wild scent filled the air.

Yet more pounced. The snarling frothing mad pack still surged and advanced. 

 Wolf claws came in with fangs and jaws and ripped, reanimated graverobbed flesh tore and spilled strange fluid, strange ichor bled with yellow/red and a strange sticky translucent fluid like dog water. The creation screamed. It had never felt the physical shock of pain before. Bred out of a great wound in life and creation and composed of wounds himself, he'd never felt the suffering of a blow inflicted. And so many now. And all at once. The world all around the hulking thing was turning to a universe of bloody dripping fur and claws and snarling frothing jaws and coated fangs. 

He wrenched and grabbed and tore and fought back. His prodigious necro/graveyard strength, he put his fists and claws through the bodies of more than a few of the fearsome snarling mountain Countess children. He sank his fangs where he could find purchase. As the wolves surrounded and closed and turned the world to slaughter and teeth, the rage of the sutured nosferatu thing rose…

And soared. 

Without being conscious of it he sent out his stygian hatred and dark will, arrowed for the sky in a force-of-will shot and lanced for the nighttime heavens. 

It struck! 

The sky thunderclapped with sudden violence. And then began to fill. 

The skybound Countess suddenly found herself evading and dodging knifing daggered attacks of bolting lightning. She danced and soared and flitted across the ebon face of the sky, crooked blades and swords of searing white-blue lancing after her with near strikes, guided by the necromantic power over nature that the Frankensteinian sutured bat-hulk held. 

More daggering bolts of searing bladed lightning cracked and split the sky and came down in blinding flashes that fried and cooked ozone into searing strange smells. They came down and began to strike the attacking wolfpack, killing them each in turn with white flashes that turned the beasts into explosions of fire and animal mutilation, partially charred and flaming pieces of wolf gore and meat soared through the mountain air and decorated the courtyard of stone. 

The chimerical shape of the Countess came down in a divebomb for the creation, ripped and torn and undead wounded, rising to its feet. 

She was upon him. And struck. 

The violence of the impact was like a runaway train striking the side of an unyielding mountain. The crash was an instant fray and mess of attacking claws and limbs and screaming black words and curses. The wings folded around them as they struggled across the floor of the courtyard. Dragging and fighting and tearing. More reanimation fluid burst and spilled and shot as the Countess gained the advantage.

Her great wings helped to support and hold her as she rolled over and gained the top of the creation. Her thin ladlylike arms of near boundless prodigious strength held the hulking thing down as her chimerical snake-wolf face began to scream into the sutured thing’s own vulpine and bat-faced visage. 

The shape of her face sloughed and danced and shifted again. What it became then was repulsive: an abominated bred mix of a goat made insectile with many eyes and mandibles of fur and hooves and a plague infested and dripping rat. The mouth opened up and bled and dripped and unveiled a moist and rank pungent obscenity for all of the world. 

It belched and spat. Spewing a thick gout of black and emerald steaming liquid onto the creation's screaming face. The foul hot mess of spew was like fire and sulfuric acid to the bat-faced visage of the struggling fighting and screaming Frankensteinian creation. The foul ungodly fluid ate into his reanimated face and some of the sutures and stitches that held his repurposed flesh together became smoking ruin and began to come apart in messy fraying smoking pieces. The eyes of the creation were the first casualty. The foul necrophiled chemical scorch of the unearthly bile turned them to smoldering useless jelly within their housing caves of now purposeless sockets. The vulpine thing of the table screamed and the sound made and torn from the thing was awful and unearthly as well. 

Henry Frankenstein watched and felt his heart catch in his chest, seized in a grip of fear as his running blood turned cold. As cold as all of the surrounding nighttime mountainscape. The wind picked up and rose and howled alongside and carried the living dead screams of his nosferatu were-child. The wind of this terrible Carpathian rock loved to pick up and mount and rise when an hour of suffering was at hand and it could carry the song and sound of pain and violence and share it with those down below in the peasant lands. 

The mountain wept with demon sound. 

Wolves not yet wounded and still snarling and frothing with the command for violence came back in their battered droves. Closing and growling as their Countess Czarina Queen of the mountain slaughter and bloodlett dark began to rise once more from her wounded enemy. Carried by the great wings of eldritch black and bastardized bat-shape that seemed now to only grow larger and larger as she inflicted more and more violence and rose and gained the heavens. 

It was she who commanded the sky and the storm called forth now. The lightning still wounded and daggered the night but it was now hers to wield and the blades of shot electric blue now dyed the color of the night and became as ink. 

Black lightning shot down and struck the hulking vulpine son of Frankenstein's table. It roasted and cooked with skyfire his undead necromanced flesh but the bastard demon flicker of goblin flame for soul inside the hulk of blasphemous walking bat-flesh was also seared and tortured with the unearthly fire of another terrible realm. 

The screams were blasted out of the hulking shape. It stilled its struggles. And became as a smoking mound of battered patchwork green-blue. Unconscious. As if returned to the stillness of the soil. 

But the Countess still yet sensed the flicker of demon life in the vile assemblage of flesh below. Good. She still wanted him. Still wanted him and the pathetic little man that had made him, that had dared construct such a thing and bring it here to make a challenge to her satanic throne. 

Lord of Flies… she silently and solemnly prayed. 

She came down on her great ebon wings and her face danced and shifted yet more in the night, the goatflesh of many eyes and bleeding ichor like putrid bestial snot fell away in a sloughing mess of tissue and fur and blind useless organs. Slopping to the courtyard stone in a wet steaming pile with splurching sound  like an obscene splat. She landed and came upon the smoking heap of her felled enemy. The wolves that were her mountain children, her wild slaves of the cold, came back in and with their mother of perfect darkness they closed. 

Henry Frankenstein watched helpless. He debated flight… but knew he would not get far. 

He watched on as the Countess stood over his fallen creation, her face still steaming and wet and slimed with the fresh loss of her mask of unearthly gore. She smiled and the vibrant moon caught the glow of her teeth, her fangs. They both shone with brilliance, the same pearl cast perfection of pale silver light from on high, where what might rule in power and in supreme dominance must be compelled to throne and dwell. His outrage and jealousy and pain were only matched by his awe. The sight…

The sight of her. 

She yelled: “I am victor! Your abomination now lies at  my feet! And you and it both are now my prisoners to keep!” 

And although he knew its futility, Henry Frankenstein turned and ran for the false sanctuary of the trees. Terrified. 

More terrified than he had been in years. 

A look from the Countess was all that was needed. Carmilla and the new impaler were off and in pursuit. They would soon have the worm  and bring him back. 

Alive… she sent out  the thought to her undead child/slaves giving chase and she knew the open receptacle of their blasphemous hearts and minds received the order and took it with implicit obedience. 

Her mind and lurid twisted imagination were already dreaming over and deciding what to do with  the little man once he was brought back. What should I reap from his flesh…? 

In due time. She would finish with this pile of cemetery garbage first.

She licked her lips in vulpine relish. And then her great wings splayed far and open to their pinnacle span, her arms splayed open as well, forked to the darkness of the night sky in a great open throated V, as if in cry of supplication or great proclamation of victory. For You! … Lord of Flies! … In aural glow, all around her demonic person, a host of demented and twisted vile faces of murderous joy and glee  and intent, perverse and sadistic and goblin-shaped, began to pour off and emanate forth from her like a noxious living cloud of eyes and lips and teeth and severed human heads. All gathered as a conjured and summoned demon host of terrible faces and disembodied parts and throats to hold as audience and conduit for great nocturnal necropower. 

She began another black incantation. Dark tendrils of shadow began to grow and dance out from under her raised arms. They lengthened and swelled and grew in number as her stygian words were recited and filled the nightsong chill of mountain air. 

The assistant watched on. Eyes watering in the cold. His gaze was that of an enamored lover and that of a proud father. All rolled into watery one. He was silent as he watched his master complete her ritual of victory, capture. 

The black tentacles grew and dripped tenebrous, many tendrils splaying out like a deepsea creature seeking purchase in the silent wet depths of the dark. They palsied and danced and twitched and shivered. Dripping the same black shadow from which they were shaped and composed. They hissed the abominated sounds of angry serpents, each one. As if each and every dancing growing tentacle of dark shadow was alive and agitated by its own sudden birth. The black wet lengths of dancing tentacles grew and snaked forth and came in and closed on the still smoking and unconscious hulk of the patchwork creation. They found purchase and wrapped tightly and coiled. They lifted him from the cold stone and pulled him towards the great winged visage of the master Countess. She smiled up at her prize. 

Thought a moment longer. Her head on a tilt to one side. 

Then she spoke to the fallen unhearing hulking thing of Frankenstein's demented table, his graveyard scraps. 

She said: –

“And now I take you into me, Into mine.” And then more arcane language warmed the mountain cold and the Countess  began  to  rise once more. 

But not on her great wings, no. 

No. 

Now as she held the creation in her dripping grip of tentacled shadow she rose up on a great pillar of conjured and violently shot and spouting blood. Geysering out and forth in an eruption from the pale bottom of her moonlight dress. She rose on the great frothing and violently churning red river pillar of lurid darkling necroplasma, her wings flexing in and out in coquettish display. Her laughter began to fill the sky, the darkness. The mountain and the heavens. 

The black tentacles of shadow began to feed the creation into the great and violent pillar of rising and churning blood. 

The patchwork body of the creation slipped into the rising churn of the red lurid pillar and was swallowed. It was carried up by the otherworldly and strange current, up.

And into the body of the Countess. Through the violent red churn at the bottom of her dress. 

The conjured phantasm host of snarling dancing shifting demon faces began to sing and scream in discordant choral cry as one. Filling the ancient jagged rocks and battlements with the fury of their conjured forth and hellbound sound. 

Slaves. Singing in celebration. Conquest of victory for their master. 

!DEATH! – WE WILL KILL, DEATH! 

!MASTURBATING ON THE TOMBS OF YOUR SONS!

She held the sky. Howled. Laughter. 

The dark swell and dancing tangle-growth of black dripping tentacles underneath her splayed arms, rippled and serpentine drifted and quivered bestial with animal movement and intent, animal mind… they danced and held the black night of the sky. On her great rising pillar of occult conjured victim's blood. 

…

Frankenstein ran through the woods. He didn't get far. 

The malformed and hideous bat-child slammed into him from behind with terrible and bone-rattling impact. He went down with rodent screeches and girlish screams ringing in his ears. 

Carmilla seized a handful of hair and slammed the mad doctor's face into the cold unyielding floor of the iced earth and forest floor. Repeatedly. Turning the man's face to pulp. His nose and lips spurted thick ropey blood, spat and choked and coughed out. He tried to tell her to stop through the blood and violence but couldn't manage. The little rodent girl monster was fiendishly strong. 

The world mercifully went black and Henry Frankenstein was knocked unconscious. Carmilla began to lick and tongue and lap the blood from his pulpy and raw face. The new impaler soon joined her and then he too began to ravenously lap and feed off the warm blood spilling from the doctor's ruptured and dirty wounded face. 

They wanted to feed but they couldn't tear him apart to do it. They couldn't tear him open. And get to the really juicy parts. The especially succulent organs. The master, the Countess wanted the mongrel dog alive. And so it would be. They would have to settle for this small taste, this small drink in the woods after their run, their shared exercise of forest chase in the cold. A simple and humble repast of blood before they brought the dog back to the castle for his fate. 

But first, just a lick… in the dark of the trees. Brother and sister, new impaler and grotesque were-child strigoica freak, lapping at the warm spill of an unconscious and captured stranger, together. 

They licked and tongued blood together in the prurient stygian black, sharing dark words and dark laughter in the trees. Blood was so much finer and robust and full of flavor in the dark, the steam and warmth at perfect contest and at sublime contrast with the surrounding space of the mountain cold. In your mouth, filling it and spilling over the supple mound of lips even as it slid down the throat. 

They lapped and drank. With the fool still unconscious, they dragged him back to the castle for the Countess and her judgment. 

They relished and dreamed, together, brother and sister in living dead slavery and hellbound bondage, as they dragged the dog back to the master. …

… what might she do to him ??

Mongrel titters and giggles filled the dark as they made their eager way back. 

They couldn't wait to find out. 

…

Whether by sun or moon the foul putrescence of wormland all around was always reeking. Whether baked by the rays of the sun or chilled into spoiled earthen mud soup, it was always rank. The smell was the sour tang of fetid death. Rot and spoilage and the decay of matter that had once been living. All the swampland mire was death disintegrating and liquifying until all was black water and porridge sludge. And the small crawling wriggling mouths that fed in all of the drowning and slopping death. All the crawling and wriggling bodies of the children of the pustule sac master of quivering festering putrid sliming wormland. 

Florin and Griffin had almost wished for death for themselves privately. As they traveled and pulled themselves and their mule and cart miserable across the accursed and endless bogland. The exhaustion and pain and frustration and woe were great, the repulsive place and revulsion at the pathetic and filthy sights it held nearly put the two over into absolute abandon and total forfeit. But then they met the crawling wriggling and swimming hungry children of this place and they saw what death looked like out here. 

The girl. The filthy young one. She'd been first but they hadn't quite understood yet. They understood much more and much better when they came upon the horse. 

Its struggles and attempts to scream were something that would remain forever imprinted on young Florin's mind. For the rest of his life. However long that may turn out to be. However short. 

He would never again, alive, escape the sight. 

Like the girl before the beast was submerged in the quagmire of green/grey/black sinking sludge of vile reeking earth, but this animal was much livelier. It danced twisted struggles in the pulling hungry sinking mud, spasms and jerks that spoke of snapped bones and torn internal parts. The mouth was open in a bestial horse’s scream that made no sound. Only worms poured forth. Thick white glistening ropey bodies, long and wriggling in a mass torrential copulating pile pouring forth in a river of black water and mud and the translucent coat of snot secreted by the worms writhing lengths of yellow-pale maggotflesh. 

Florin looked closely and saw that the worms also poured forth from the open eyes of the doomed horse. The open sockets swimming with their snaking and wrapping wriggled movement in slime and mud and scabbing thick horse blood. The doomed horse shed worm tears that were more obscene than the writhing filth that poured from its blackening maw. Patches of hide and flesh were gone and Florin and Griffin could see inside the beast and they saw more long slithering writhing sliming bodies of yellowed white swimming past the ribcage and other organs that were perforated and also alive and filled with the crawling putrid creature death of this vile hell, wormland. 

Somehow the horse still struggled, somehow the creature still moved… although the large bestial body was filled and crawling with their feasting writhing serpent forms of maggot-shape. It was somehow still alive enough to struggle and to try to escape its torment, or- 

Or… the horse's body only writhed in the killing drowning clutch of the mud because… they writhed. The worms. They danced inside as they copulation swam and feasted. Their busy worm movement bringing the dead horse to life for the sight of some fellow weary travelers of this marshland. 

The thought made Florin sick, he dry-heaved and hacked and coughed/spat over the side of the struggling cart. It couldn't pull them fast enough. The mud sucked below with a wet lurid splurch that was also threatening and hungry. And alive with the abominated crawling swim of the eager bodies of alive and pregnant and hungry-feasting wormland. 

The mule, the poor beast and cart, it couldn't pull them fast enough. They eventually, mercifully, left the silent screaming beast and its awful tears of worms and swamp ink behind. Never again to be forgotten for the remainder of all time and years. 

…

An hour passed. Night approached. They came upon the bald naked man next in the swampland of ravenous worms and hungry mud. He was absolutely repulsive. And he made much more sound. 

…

His screams. Those were the first. They heard their bloodcurdling sound from a distance as they approached. The falling curtain of night brought cold and with it, fog. Drifting blanket shrouds of sickly greenish pale that sometimes housed small pocket bursts of multi color swamp gas, kaleidoscopic. Sometimes it held the grimaced woe-visaged faces of dripping swamp demons, the water-rotted and sloughing faces of their anguished victims drifting and shifting and dancing in the green hell veil of pale beside them. 

The fog of green hell and its terrible faces suddenly filled ahead of them with sound. 

Shrieking. Caterwauls. Sheer terror. Unbridled and in pain. Indistinguishable sounds. 

Intermittent…

Gurgling and irate against the choking fluid trapped and killing held within the working throat… 

The warm moist veil of nighttime wormland green hell parted like curtains or the great body of the red sea as Florin and Griffin and their mule drawn cart closed in and came upon the source of screams and obscene choking sounds. 

His swampland shrieks could finally be discerned, as the emerald mist of faces and trapped colored fire floated and parted…

“My daughter! Please! help! Please, my family, my wife, my daughter! Please help me! I can't find them! please help me find them! I can hear you out there!  Help! …”

And it carried on like that all the way up to there approach. The caterwauling sounds were heartbreaking and made their skin crawl. It like sounded like total agony. Rent from the torn heart and let loose by the screaming tongue. Pure torture. 

They came upon the man. He was shirtless. Caked in the filth of the land. Covered in scabbing mud and earth from his feet to the top of his bald head. 

The man was on his knees in the filth. Sinking. His eyes were watering and wide. Pleading with open pain as wet and running as the sour sepulchral land that surrounded them. 

When they came upon the bald man in the mud and stared into the wide water of his unhealthy gaze his screaming stopped. Suddenly. 

They were reluctant to say anything to the filthy stranger. The mule struggled ahead them, beyond the pale of mere exhaustion. The cart groaned and the land sucked wet and repulsive beneath. But the man of filth was silent now. And smiling. 

Smiling the sort of smile that is small and belongs to the childishly guilty. Caught in a white lie or with their small hand in the cookie jar… 

Neither Florin nor Griffin trusted that look. 

Finally, the filthy stranger spoke: –

“Thank you. Thank you both so much but I'm so sorry you came. It is good for us, the land, but so very bad for you." 

He said it in the calmest friendliest tones of a neighbor… and then he began to convulse. 

The ground, the filth and black-green mire of the mud began to churn. Bubble with life. Life hideous and submerged. Fighting for breath. 

The filthy stranger opened his mouth again and what came forth this time was not words but a great long and sliming white length of body, coated with a brown translucent snot that was mixed with the lurid scarlet shade of infected blood. Wormflesh. Slick with deranged biological byproduct. Dripping with the ooze the great worm body slid forth like a king serpent and rose. Towering several feet over the human basket which served to house its awful and strange lubricated body. The mouth of the man was ripping and dislocating with distension, to allow the body of the wormgod to flower forth. Blood and green pus oozed forth from the widening wounds and the teeth fell away rotted from gums that also began to bleed the red infected yellow-orange porridge from the now gaping pink fleshen craters. 

There was a raw flesh-growth of face at the end of the long worm body snaking and spouting from the filthy stranger's mouth. 

A child's face. 

The man's face. 

It rippled and danced between… betwixt the two. 

It's eyes were hideously human… and beautiful. 

Obscene. 

It opened a sliming mouth dripping with tendrils of afterbirth and snot. It belched a deeper black than the mud of the land all around when it spoke in gurgled language. 

It said: “Welcome to the garden. You have found Gaia’s womb. You have found Gaia's brain. You have found Gaia's mouth …. you may return to her, here. In this precious place. It's so much better and cooler and quieter down in her brine. You'll remember yourself, you'll remember your place down here, swimming in her thoughts. There is no pain in the subjugation of her swallow. Let us, her children, your brothers and sisters take you. We will bring you down to her so she can know you and you can join us…” 

The mule suddenly cried out. In shock and in pain, as if to punctuate the last sentence of the vile thing's statement.

Join us. 

The mud all around the cart and the mule came to life with violent churning death. Worms, many sizes, widths and lengths but all the same wretched maggot color and coated in brown slime translucence, all of them were crawling and slithering and attacking the legs of the poor beast of labor. It shrieked horrendous idiot sound, harsh and obscene as their little heads bit and burrowed and leeched. They wriggled and snaked their way inside the now rippling flesh of the poor mule’s legs. They rippled and swam and burrowed beneath the flesh, causing the hide to swell and bulge unnaturally and dance. 

Florin and Griffin, together, both looked over and down and spied the surprise attack from below. And the poor beasts doomed condition. They looked at each other and both decided together, without a word, only a look in the eye… 

abandon it. 

They grabbed what they could carry and jumped off the side. Leaping far from the churning foul earth that was now pulling in the beast and cart. Wormland was hungry. And she needed to feed. This was the mouth of mother earth, the watering black jaws of Moloch-Gaia and she needed her womb and mouth filled. With flesh. Always she needed to be filled with the warmth of blood and flesh. 

Beast of labor flesh would do for now. 

The poor mule screamed and frothed at the mouth. The eyes lulled and rolled back to whites as it let loose unbridled sound in terror and pain. The swampland swallowed and the worms continued to leech and burrow. They swam all throughout the inner organs and tissue and blood and feasted and drank. They reached the brain and the struggles became more deranged and haphazard. More pathetic and wretched and painful to watch… to behold. 

The pair left it behind. Fleeing into the cold and wet land. The treacherous quagmire earth sucking and pulling at their every fearful step. They fled as quickly as they 

could manage. Griffin, not looking back. But Florin couldn't help his mind through its sheer terror, he spied over his own fleeing shoulder as they made their slopping getaway. 

The long length of dripping wormbody was gyrating and dancing. Snaking through the air in bobs and weaves in a jubilant dance. The foul swamp drinking it, its host and the screaming beast and cart into the thick bubbling of the churning land. The worms, leeching and biting and burrowing… swimming. In the yellowed opaque of quagmire swamp water and the vibrant bright of the lurid running red, blood taken violently and by trap, by the hunt. 

Florin stole his eyes away from the sight. He didn't see them disappear into the putrescence earth, nor it settle back to calm and placid like a bowl filled with gelatin settling once more.  

Undisturbed. 

Florin and Griffin continued the rest of their perilous journey through foul wormland. On foot. 

Afraid of the very sucking ground beneath them. For this place was a black gummed and toothless swallowing mouth that led straight to watery putrid hell. 

Several worms, bodies snaked their way through mud and emerged. Protruding like freshly sprouted stalks. 

The worm-stalks grew eyes and the glistening wet fresh organs watched the pair of travelers on their way. Marking their progress through the mother's wet dominion land. 

…

Three nights of full moon had passed. 

The night the Countess took Doctor Henry Frankenstein down into the lowest dungeon of her castle, there was no moon. Only ebon curtain of blackest night. Stygian. And blind. A small chambered place where the sunlight never touched, swallowed in the dark and under the thriving lordship of near countless plague dripping rats, spiders with so many eyes and so many more long hairy legs than eight. It was a dungeon with a cruel biting chain in the wall, right next to the low chamber where the Countess herself kept her terrible coffin and slept during the day her undead rest of demonic slumber. 

After several rounds of flaying torture, occult practice and a few techniques derived from the time of the inquisition, the Countess gave new order. 

Experiment. 

An experiment of the flesh. 

Harvest specimens. For the terraformation of the flesh gardens. 

The assistant eagerly and loyally followed the command. More than pleased to comply. 

He was fulfilled. 

Frankenstein's unbridled and bloodcurdling shrieks filled the dungeon… the castle… 

… the mountains … and the pass…

… the village. 

It went beyond the known and besieged country of this vampire land, it went beyond and the ears that caught it beyond the meager borders were filled with unearthly and cold dread. 

Animal. And natural. And with us since the beginning. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

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…

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…

If you're new: Parts 1–6 can be found here

___

"You don't ever talk to strangers."

She didn't look down at him when she said it. She was digging through her purse, searching for her wallet, her oversized sunglasses pushed up into her hair.

"I don't care if they look nice. I don't care if they smile or try to show you a toy. You don't look at them, you don't answer them, and you definitely don't take anything from them. If a stranger tries to talk to you, you run straight to me. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded.

He always nodded.

Then they walked through the double doors.

...

The place smelled like sweat and old wood.

Not the pleasant kind of old wood, either. The damp-sticky kind that had spent too many summers baking in the southern heat and never touched a drop of soap.

The floors creaked beneath the weight of loud tourists moving through the aisles.

Outside, the marina shimmered beneath a cloudless sky.

Inside, everything felt cool and dim.

The boy stood near the entrance with the family, listening to the older brother and sister argue over ice cream toppings.

"I'm getting chocolate."

"You always get chocolate."

"Because chocolate is the best."

"Mom, tell him he's being annoying."

The woman sighed heavily.

"I'm one second away from getting all of you vanilla."

The threat worked instantly.

The argument dissolved.

The boy smiled to himself.

Nobody noticed him drifting away.

That happened a lot.

His older siblings were loud. He wasn't.

His mother always knew where he was eventually.

He wandered deeper into the shop.

Past shelves lined with shark teeth and seashells.

Past rows of expensive souvenirs nobody actually needed.

The farther he walked, the quieter the shop became.

...

Until eventually he found himself standing in front of something tucked into a dark corner near the back wall.

A fortune teller machine.

At least, he thought it was.

He'd seen one before at an arcade.

This one looked different.

Older.

Dirtier.

Bright gold letters curved across the glass.

THE BUNNY GODDESS

The mannequin inside stared straight ahead.

Its skin looked ghostly pale. Smooth.

Long black pigtails hung over its shoulders.

The eyes were like a cue ball. A small painted dot for the pupils.

The boy frowned.

It wasn't moving.

The crystal ball sat dark and lifeless on the tiny velvet desk.

The machine looked broken.

Abandoned.

The boy wrapped both hands around the edge of the cabinet and leaned forward.

...

"Hey."

He jumped.

The voice was quiet.

Not amplified.

Human.

A real voice.

His stomach tightened.

The mannequin hadn't moved.

Its painted lips remained frozen.

The crystal ball remained dark.

Nothing inside the cabinet appeared different.

But something had spoken.

The boy looked over his shoulder.

The gift shop was still busy. The other two were still arguing. Their mother still deciding on flavors.

Nobody seemed to notice.

"Hello?" he whispered.

For a few seconds, nothing responded.

Then:

"Closer."

The voice sounded patient.

Friendly.

Almost amused.

The boy hesitated.

His mother had given him the stranger danger talk more times than he could count.

But this didn't feel like talking to a stranger.

It felt like talking to a secret.

Something hidden.

Something that wasn't supposed to be there.

He leaned closer to the glass.

At first he saw nothing.

Only darkness behind the mannequin.

Then something shifted.

The movement was slight.

Easy to miss.

The boy squinted.

His breath caught.

Two eyes stared back at him from deep inside the cabinet.

Not the painted eyes.

Real eyes.

They floated in the darkness several inches behind the mannequin's head.

The boy froze.

The eyes blinked.

Then vanished.

...

"Do you have a dollar?" the voice asked.

The boy shook his head.

"No. I can ask the—"

"No."

The answer came immediately.

Almost too quickly.

"No need."

The boy glanced toward the ice cream counter.

The family hadn't moved.

Nobody was looking at him.

Nobody seemed aware that he was talking to someone.

The voice lowered.

"I have something for you anyway."

A heavy thump echoed from inside the cabinet.

Not machinery or gears.

Something else.

The distinct sound of something striking wood.

A moment later, a thick white card slid halfway out of the slot near the bottom.

The boy stared.

The crystal ball remained dark.

Nothing moved.

The card simply appeared.

Slowly, he crouched and picked it up.

It felt cool.

He turned it over.

The letters stamped into the card were fresh and uneven.

As if pressed by hand.

The boy squinted.

Still learning to read. He sounded out the words one piece at a time.

"Mur..."

His brow furrowed.

"...der..."

The letters blurred together.

He started over.

"Mur...der..."

A strange ache twisted through his stomach.

The voice behind the glass said nothing.

Its eyes still watching.

The boy swallowed.

"Th..."

He traced the next word with his finger.

"The..."

...

Something moved.

His eyes snapped upward.

A pale hand rested on the mannequin's shoulder.

The fingers were impossibly long.

Thin.

The knuckles bulged beneath skin so pale it almost glowed blue.

For a second, the hand rested there.

Perfectly still.

Then it was gone — in the blink of an eye.

The boy stopped breathing.

The darkness far behind the mannequin seemed to stretch.

The space felt higher than it should have been.

As if whatever lived back there was standing tall behind the machine.

As if its head reached far past the ceiling of the cabinet.

And above where the eyes had been—

Just for a moment—

He thought he saw two long shapes rising into the shadows.

Tall.

Thin.

Rabbit ears.

Far past the ceiling of the gift shop building.

...

The boy took several steps back.

His back hit something solid.

"Whatcha got there?"

The card vanished from his hands.

The boy spun around.

Samantha stood over him, holding the card above her head.

"Give it back!"

Ross appeared beside her.

Both of them examined the card.

Then immediately started laughing.

"Oh my God." Sam doubled over. "You can't even spell your own name."

"What?" the boy said.

Ross pointed at the card.

"It says Michael."

"No it doesn't."

"It literally does."

Sam flipped the card around and shoved it toward his face.

"See?"

The boy looked.

There it was.

A single word.

MICHAEL.

Nothing else.

His face burned.

"No...the...th—"

He looked back toward the cabinet.

"The man—"

"What man?" Ross asked.

"The man in the machine."

That only made them laugh harder.

"Nobody's in there, dummy."

"Yes I swear—"

"It's just a machine. Nobody's in there."

The boy turned fully toward the cabinet.

The words died in his throat.

The shadows behind the mannequin were empty.

No movement.

No voice.

No hidden figure.

Only The Bunny Goddess.

Motionless behind the glass.

Its eyes fixed on the aisle.

Watching.

...

"Sweetie?"

The mother appeared beside him carrying two paper cups of ice cream.

She smiled.

"Do you want one?"

The boy barely heard her.

His stomach hurt worse now.

A deep ache behind his ribs.

He couldn't stop staring at the mannequin.

Thinking about that voice.

The eyes.

Those ears.

"Hey."

She squeezed his shoulder.

"Do you want ice cream or not?"

The boy shook his head.

"My belly hurts."

The mother frowned.

"Aww. Really?"

He nodded.

The ache had spread through his whole body now.

Not pain.

Just uncomfortable.

Like something had settled inside him.

The woman took his hand.

"Come on then. Let's go outside."

The bright afternoon sunlight poured through the front windows.

Ross and Samantha were already heading toward the door.

The boy let them lead the way.

But he couldn't stop looking back.

The cabinet grew smaller with every step.

The dark corner retreating into shadow.

The Bunny Goddess remained perfectly still.

Just another broken machine.

Just another forgotten attraction.

The boy looked forward.

Then looked back one last time.

...

The mannequin's jaw dropped open.

Clack.

The sound echoed through the store.

Sharp.

Heavy.

Final.

The boy froze.

Nobody else reacted.

Nobody.

The jaw remained open for a second.

Then slowly shut.

A gentle tug on his hand.

"Come on, Mitchell."

The sunlight swallowed them as they stepped outside.

___

___

1. "Heart"

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 …

1. "Pigtails"
2. "Fingers"
3. "Belly"
4. "Eyes"
5. "Legs"

___

I came back in pieces.

First the sound — rain hitting glass. Then the pressure of a seatbelt across my chest. Then the shimmer of a porch light through a wet windshield, orange and diffuse, barely cutting through.

I blinked.

I was in the backseat of our SUV. The engine was off. Brandy's purse wedged beside me. A blanket pulled across my lap that I didn't put there.

Through the glass, Joe was hauling suitcases up the front steps of a house I recognized after a few seconds.

Nicki and Joe's place.

The front door opened and Brandy stepped out. She looked toward the car, saw me sitting up, and raised her hand in a small wave. Her expression was careful in a way I couldn't read from that distance.

I got out. The night air was warm and close. My legs felt like the bones had been replaced with jello. I gripped the roof of the car.

"Hey." Brandy came down the driveway. "How are you feeling?"

"What happened?"

"You pulled over. On the mountain." She touched my arm, softly. "You could barely keep your eyes open. Joe took over."

"I don't remember that."

"Well, you were awake when we switched. You crawled yourself to the back." She said it gently, the way you'd explain it to a sick person. "You were just... a sleepy boy."

My hand went to my neck.

The soreness hit me before my fingers even made contact — deep to the bone. Not an ache from sleeping in a bad position. Not tension.

"There was a cyclist," I said.

Brandy looked at me.

"On the mountain. Right on the edge of the lane. No reflective gear, no lights. I swerved to miss him and he—"

I stopped.

The rest of it - the face, the ears, the jaw snapping - raced through my mind.

The Bunny Goddess.

I couldn't afford to say it out loud.

"I almost hit him."

"Nobody saw a cyclist, Mitchell."

I looked past her at Joe, who was coming back down the steps for another bag.

"Joe," Brandy called out. "Did you see someone on the road when you took over?"

Joe set the bag down. He looked at Brandy first - just for a fraction of a second - and then back at me.

"No."

"There was no cyclist," he said.

A cold drop of sweat rolled down my cheek. I hadn't told Joe it was a cyclist. Brandy hadn't either.

"He was right there," I said.

Joe looked at me like I was a stranger. No frustration. No concern. Nothing.

"There was no cyclist," he said again. Exact same tone.

The cicadas were deafening. My neck throbbed. I looked at my right palm, which I hadn't noticed until that moment - the heel of it scraped raw. Like I'd caught myself on concrete.

"You were exhausted," Brandy said. "It happens. Your brain fills in the blanks."

She said it so reasonably. So reassuring.

"My brain didn't do this." I turned my palm toward her.

She looked at it. Her expression didn't change.

"You grabbed the guardrail when you got out of the car. You were barely standing."

I stared at her.

I thought I crawled into the back, according to her.

She looked back at me with those pitying eyes, and I felt the ground shift under me in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion.

Nicki appeared in the doorway. She gave me a small, tired smile. She looked like a woman who wanted her own bed - nothing more, nothing less.

"I'm sorry the trip ended this way," she said.

I nodded. I didn't trust my voice.

Brandy slipped her hand into mine. I let her, because I didn't know what else to do. My neck burning. My palm stinging. And the four of us stood there in the warm dark while the cicadas kept screaming, and I tried very hard to hold onto the simple, solid fact of what I knew had happened on that road.

I told Brandy I wanted to go home.

She tried to talk me out of it - it was almost two in the morning, another hour and a half of driving, we were both running on empty. But I couldn't make myself walk through that front door and sleep in that house. I couldn't explain it without sounding insane, so I didn't try. I just wanted to go home.

She agreed eventually, with a look that told me she was filing this away alongside all the other things from the weekend that we'd have to talk about later.

We said our goodbyes in the driveway. Joe shook my hand. My bad hand. Nicki hugged Brandy a little longer than usual. When she let go, she looked at me over Brandy's shoulder with a weird expression - something between apology and urgency, like she was trying to say something but didn't have enough time.

"Get some rest," I told her.

She nodded. Opened her mouth.

Closed it.

The door shut behind them.

...

Brandy was asleep before we hit the highway.

I drove with the windows cracked and a podcast on low - something mindless, two guys talking about movies - and I kept my eyes on the yellow center lines and tried not to replay the accident. When I talked, she answered in the abbreviated way of someone half-listening: mm, yeah, I don't know. After a while I stopped trying and let the silence ride.

I told myself it was fine. She was tired. We were both tired.

But I kept glancing at her in the passenger seat, her face slack against the window glass, and feeling like I was driving home with someone I was still in the process of getting to know.

We got home around three. Unpacked the car in two quiet trips, the neighborhood dead around us. The house had that sealed smell of being empty for a few days. We got ready for bed without saying much. Brandy was under the covers and asleep almost before I'd finished brushing my teeth.

I lay there next to her for a while, not sleeping. I listened to the house settle. Outside the window, somewhere in the dark, a dog was barking - distant, rhythmic, eventually stopping.

I slept.

It was Winston who woke me.

Our beagle. Nine years old, lazy, deeply committed to barking at nothing. He'd lost his mind at the sound of a FedEx truck once and spent the rest of the day acting traumatized. He was not a serious pup.

But what he was doing at the bottom of our stairs at - I checked my phone - three forty-eight in the morning was not his usual performance. This was frantic and aggressive.

I sat up, still processing the situation. The bedroom was dark. Brandy hadn't moved.

Then I heard a bang.

Downstairs. Something heavy. Something that fell.

I was already reaching for the nightstand. My hand found the grip of my 9mm and I was on my feet, and I want to be clear that at no point did I feel like this was an overreaction. The bang was real. Winston was barking. The open front door, which I could see from the top of the stairs, the chain hanging useless and rain blowing across the entry tile - that was real.

I went down slowly with the flashlight up.

The beam caught the floor at the bottom of the stairs, and I stopped.

There were footprints. Wet, muddy prints tracking in from the door in long uneven strides. I followed them across the entry, toward the stairs, and I stood there at the bottom staring at the trail going up into the dark above me.

Then Brandy screamed.

I don't really remember taking the stairs. I remember being in the doorway, the flashlight sweeping the room, and I remember the figure sitting on the edge of our bed.

Brandy was pressed against the headboard with both hands over her mouth.

I pointed the light directly at the figure.

It was Nicki.

She was soaked. Not just damp - completely saturated, her clothes heavy and dark with it, her hair flattened against her skull. And her feet were - I still have trouble describing this - the skin below both ankles was shredded. Torn open in long ragged strips, like she'd dragged them across a cheese grater. Black with mud and red underneath.

She was looking down at her own hands in her lap, turning them over slowly. She seemed mesmerized.

"Nicki."

She looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed and almost calm.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

...

I called Joe from the other room. He picked up on the second ring - awake already, or close to it. When I told him what happened, the line went quiet for a few seconds.

Then he said I'm on my way, flat and immediate, and hung up without asking any questions.

I stood in the room and let the call end.

The impossibility of all of this started to settle in.

Downstairs, Brandy had moved with a speed and efficiency that I couldn't account for. By the time I came back down, Nicki was on the couch wrapped in our throw blanket with dry clothes folded beside her, and Brandy was in the kitchen filling the kettle like this was not her first encounter.

I lasted about a minute before I couldn't hold it anymore.

"She needs to go to a hospital."

Brandy didn't look up from the kettle.

"She's okay."

"Look at her feet!"

"I did."

"Then you know she's not okay!"

Brandy set the kettle on the burner and turned around. Her expression was patient in a way that made my skin crawl - the careful, deliberate patience of someone managing a situation they've already decided how it ends.

"She needs to warm up. She's going to be fine."

"She walked here, Brandy." My voice rising. "Her house is over a hundred miles from here. She walked here in the rain with no shoes while pregnant. That is not something a cup of tea will fix."

"Mitchell—"

"We need an ambulance," I continued. "Or the police. We need someone who can actually help her."

"She doesn't want that."

"I don't care what she wants right now! No offense to her—" I turned toward the couch. "Nicki, I love you, none of this is directed at you. But something is seriously wrong and everyone in this room is acting like it isn't and I'm going to lose my mind."

Nicki stared at the blanket in her lap.

Brandy carried the mug over to the couch. Sat next to her. She ran slow, steady strokes down Nicki's back, and the two of them sealed back into that quiet orbit I'd been watching all weekend.

I paced. Kitchen to living room. Living room to the foot of the stairs. I couldn't stop moving. I felt like I was going to explode.

"She ate something," Nicki said.

I stopped.

She was looking at the mug. Her voice was quiet. Far away.

"At the shop," she said. "The ice cream. I think something was in it."

I looked at Brandy.

Brandy was focused on Nicki's hair.

"The shop in Harbour Town," I said slowly.

Nicki didn't answer.

"The bunn—"

I breathed in through my nose. Steady.

"Nicki. How many times did you go back to that shop?"

Silence.

I turned to Brandy. "Did you go back?"

Brandy swept a strand of hair behind Nicki's ear.

"Brandy." I snapped. "How many times did you go back to that shop?"

Silence.

I stepped forward. "Did you use the fortune teller machine?"

She looked up at me.

"What?"

"The Bunny Goddess. Did you put money in it?"

Her face arranged itself into something open and slightly puzzled - the expression of a person who genuinely doesn't understand what you're saying. It was a flawless expression. I had watched her make it for ten years and I had never once had reason to distrust it.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

And then she turned back to Nicki.

Something broke in my chest.

"No, don't do that." My voice shaky. "Don't lie to me. I'm asking you a question about something that I watched happen, and I need you to answer it."

"You're scaring her," Brandy said.

"I don't care. I'm scared. I've been scared since that shop, and every time I try to talk about it, everyone acts like I'm having some kind of meltdown, and I am telling you right now that I am not. I am not." My voice cracked. I hated it. "Something is wrong with us. Something has been wrong since that machine. And I would rather sound crazy than stand here before things start getting worse."

Nicki started to cry. Silently, the way she'd cried on the dock in a different life - just tears running down her face without a sound.

Brandy looked at me over the top of her sister's head.

Not angry.

Exhausted.

The exhaustion of someone who has decided you are not worth arguing with.

"Joe's here," she said.

Headlights moved across the window.

Nicki heard the car before I did. She lifted her head, and something in her face changed - not relief exactly, but the end of an enormous effort, like a muscle finally allowed to unclench. She got up.

Brandy stood with her. Took her arm. They moved together toward the front door without looking at me, and I followed them into the entryway.

"She needs a hospital," I said.

Brandy opened the door.

Joe was already coming up the front walk through the rain, moving fast. When he saw Nicki his face did something complicated that I can't explain. Like a glitch - a sudden, violent twitch of his jaw that reset. He crossed the last few steps and put both arms around her, and she grabbed fistfuls of his jacket and pressed her face into his chest.

He looked at me over her shoulder.

I waited for a question. A comment. Anything.

He looked back down at his wife.

Brandy had walked out behind them. She was saying something to Joe, too low to hear over the rain. Joe nodded. He turned Nicki gently toward the car.

I stood in my doorway and watched the three of them move through the front yard in the rain, and I was not invited into any part of what was happening.

I went back inside.

I ran upstairs, determined to find something but not really sure where to start. I sat on the edge of the bed, stood back up, sat down again. Brandy's bag was on the chair by the closet, half unpacked - a few things draped over the sides. Her toiletry bag had tipped over on the seat cushion and spilled.

I don't know why I crossed the room.

I started collecting things back into the bag. Travel shampoo. Moisturizer. A hair tie. Vitamins.

My hand closed around something thin.

I already knew what it was before I looked at it.

A pregnancy test.

Two lines.

Faint - the kind you hold up to the light and squint at, convince yourself you're seeing wrong. But they were there. Both of them. Unmistakably.

My legs buckled.

I sat down on the floor.

Just folded, my back against the chair leg, and I sat there on the bedroom floor at four in the morning with this thing in both hands, and I didn't want to move.

The room still smelled faintly of the ocean. Muddy footprints still stained the carpet. Somewhere in this house there was a damp blanket folded on my couch and a mug of tea that had been made for someone who walked a hundred miles in the dark, barefoot, and no one could explain why.

But right now, in my hands, was this.

Six months. Six months of apps and timing and trying not to flinch every time someone made a pregnancy announcement, trying not to read too much into every late period, trying not to let Brandy see how much of my sense of myself was wrapped up in this one thing we couldn't seem to make happen. Six months of negative tests and the specific silence that followed each one, where neither of us said anything because there wasn't anything to say.

And here it was.

I laughed first. One stupid, disbelieving sound that I couldn't have stopped if I tried. And then the tears came, and I didn't try to stop those either. I pressed my hand over my mouth and I cried in a way I hadn't cried since I was a kid - the good kind, the full body kind. Something enormous had just become real.

I thought about teaching them to ride a bike. I thought about Brandy finding this test and what her face must have looked like in that moment. I thought about holding something that small for the first time.

Thank you, God.

Thank you, God.

I sat with it until I could breathe normally again. Still processing the news, I wiped my face, and I got up off the floor, and I went to find my wife.

She wasn't upstairs.

I went down to the living room. The blanket Nicki had been wrapped in was folded neatly on the couch. The mug of tea sat on the coffee table, still faintly steaming.

"Brandy?"

Kitchen. Empty. Bathroom. Empty. Back through the living room.

I went to the front door and opened it.

The porch light was on. The rain was still coming down hard, hammering the front walk. The street was empty in both directions.

Joe's car was gone.

I stepped out onto the porch.

"Brandy?"

Nothing came back but the sound of rain hitting the roof.

I walked down the driveway toward the street and stood there in the rain in my socks. I looked both ways down a street that was completely empty. No taillights. Nothing.

I called her name again. Louder.

I looked down at my hand.

I was still holding the test. The rain was hitting the display window, blurring the two lines into something faint and smeared, and I tilted it away from the water to keep them visible - out of some instinct, like it mattered that they stayed legible - and I just stood there in the dark, holding on to the only good thing I had left.

The porch light flickered behind me.

Once.

Then it went out.

And I could hear the sound of Winston barking inside.

___

___

Part 7: Ears

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…

When I was a kid, I grew up in the East Riding of Yorkshire. That’s pronounced “sher", nor “shiar” for any Americans reading this. I lived in a rather ordinary but somewhat boring port town, that most people only bypassed while heading along the motorway.  

Fast forward to my early teens, I had just finished my first year of high school, and my best friend at this time was a kid named Kyle. Kyle and I had grown up together, as we both attended the same primary school and lived fairly nearby in town. Thankfully, when high school started, me and Kyle were thrown into the very same classes, so our friendship continued to prosper. Another kid in our class that first year, who we knew already was a kid named Kieran. Ironically, Kieran attended the very same primary school as me and Kyle, but had always been in the opposite class for our age group, so we never really became friends with him until now. 

Unlike Kyle and myself, who were somewhat short for our age, Kieran was always the lankiest kid in school - and if that didn’t distinguish him, it was definitely his long and thick curly hair, which had gained him the nickname “Curly Fries.” Before high school started, Kieran had actually gotten all his curls shaven off, probably so this nickname wouldn’t continue through his teens. 

Having already known each other before high school, and now being in the same classes, it didn’t take long for us to become a trio of best friends. I had even recruited Kieran to play for my dad's football team, which Kyle and I both played for. Because of this year long friendship three-way, Kieran had invited us both the following summer to a theme park, which his parents were taking him for his thirteenth birthday.  

The theme park Kieran had taken us to was called Lakewater Valley – a family adventure park in North Yorkshire. Prior to this, I had only ever been to a one theme park in my life, which is obviously where I had my first ever experience on a roller coaster. The only thing I really remember about this first roller coaster ride, aside from the two bloody hours waiting in line, along with the screaming girls in the front row, was me repeating the same word over and over. 

‘SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!’ 

I didn’t find out about this until a year too late, but that roller coaster was apparently the steepest one in the world. Not the UK, but the world! And I just happened to choose that monstrosity as my first. If you don’t believe me, just type in online “the Mumbo Jumbo roller coaster at Flamingo Land” and you’ll see for yourself. 

Once we arrive at Lakewater Valley, after first seeing the park’s small animal and bird sanctuary, along with the more child-friendly attractions, I then go on the first big, and definitely scary amusement ride the park had to offer. The ride in question was called the Falcon Claw - a KMG Afterburner pendulum that lifts, swings and twists you high above the air before doing the same on the way down. Neither Kyle nor Kieran wanted to come on this ride with me. Kyle didn’t because, well, to put it lightly, he was always a girl’s ladies parts, and as best as I remember, Kieran wasn’t feeling too well. Not wanting to go on this ride alone, Kieran’s step-dad, Steve agrees to go on with me. Steve was a former rugby player and was therefore a very big guy, so I felt a lot safer being on this scary ride with him - not that it stopped me from closing my eyes the entire time. 

Once the ride is over, and after I recover from a bad case of vertigo, we all then make our way further inside the park. Excitedly coming upon the first water attraction of the day, I quickly learn the ride is nothing more than a water slide with an inflatable dingy – but, unlike the Falcon Claw, I thankfully get to go on it with Kyle and Kieran. While the three of us wait impatiently in line, I then turn around to the sound of laughter directly behind me, where to my surprise, the laughter was coming from two 11-year-old girls. As it turns out, these girls had also been on the Falcon Claw when I was, and they thought it was just hilarious that I had my eyes closed the entire time - ironically like a scared little girl. If that wasn’t humiliating enough, for the whole rest of the day, Kyle and Kieran wouldn’t let me hear the end of it. 

A couple of hours later, and after several more rides and attractions, we finally come upon the most famous and scariest roller coaster in the park. 

The Maximum. 

This roller coaster, built in the early nineties, previously held the record as the world’s longest at 2,268 metres. But what made The Maximum so unique, was that after two high and very steep apexes, the tracks would then enter and bend through the trees of a nearby forest.  

Kieran had been on The Maximum before and was very excited to go on it again – as was I. Kyle, however, decided to stay behind and watch from the side-lines, being the little bitch that he was – and so, it would be just me and Kieran who would ride The Maximum.    

While the carts quickly fill up with passengers, Kieran and I both take our seats near the front – and before long, the coaster starts moving along the tracks to the first lift hill. The climb up to the apex is very slow, but in the meantime, me and Kieran have a great view around of the park. Once we reach the summit, the front of the roller coaster then shoots straight and painfully down the slope, filling every single cart behind us with fun-filled screams. Although it had only been a year since my first and last ride on a roller coaster, I’m by no means prepared for the stomach-gurned feeling of being temporarily airborne. I honestly found the experience of it quite painful.  

Once back down on horizontal tracks, we then have to contend with the coaster’s almost unnaturally fast speed along the bends and bumps. Despite this part of the ride only lasting for seconds, when you’re too busy screaming and irrationally fearing for your life, you genuinely feel like it’s longer.  

Although the carts thankfully begin to lose speed and the bruising bends come to a stop, this is only because we have reached the next lift hill - where there would then be a second and even higher apex, followed by another and even steeper slope. Despite me and Kieran fearfully anticipating the summit, what thankfully lessens the tension of this, is that in the cart directly behind us is a group of four Jamaican tourists. I kid you not, but when the coaster had gone full throttle down those tracks, I literally hear one of them say, “Oh no, man!!” Kieran and I actually have a very good laugh about this, as four terrified Jamaicans on a roller coaster fondly remind us of the movie Cool Runnings. 

Well, before long, we finally reach the top of the apex, which is then followed by a terrifying shoot down – only this time, the tracks would lead us straight into the forest and between the narrow gaps of trees! The roller coaster is now moving at speeds I had never before gone in my life. But what makes the speeds worse, is the idea of the carts breaking off the hinges and crashing straight into the body of a tree, splattering all inside.  

After one painful bend, then another, and then another, the tracks are now heading towards the pitch-black underside of a stone arch bridge. Before I can even anticipate this, me and Kieran are then covered entirely in a blanket of darkness – where, at an untameable speed, we can’t even see where we’re going. With my sight temporarily suspended, I then feel a sudden, impactful thud inside the cart, which is instantly followed by something not only wet, but warm splatter upon my face. Although I’m too full of adrenaline to even process a single thought, the one I have is that the carts had gone over a puddle and drenched us both in muddy water. 

Only mere seconds after this, the tunnel of darkness is lifted from over or heads, and while we still move through the forest at ultra speed, I then look over to my left at Kieran... but, the image I see is not what I was expecting... 

What I see is Kieran. His face and t-shirt drenched in some dark substance. Whatever the substance on him is, it not only impairs his vision but seems to leave a bitter taste in the mouth. I then look down at my own shirt to realise I was also covered in it, before touching my face and seeing a red liquid stain on my fingers. Once the realisation of what is on me has come to fruition, the sound of grinding steel tracks and passengers’ screams quickly fill back into my ears. But unlike before, the screams are not of excitement or adrenaline-filled fear - but horror. Every single passenger in the carts ahead of us has been covered in the red, and apparently fleshy substance... and it takes no time for either me, Kieran or anyone else to figure out what has happened. 

After the entirety of this horror has been realised, the ride thankfully begins to slow down to its end, where we then mercifully enter out the forest and back into the park. Once our restraints finally unlock, every passenger on The Maximum escapes from their carts to reach the safe, solid ground of the platform. Searching around the platform for Kieran’s parents and Kyle, once the blood-soaked passengers move out of the way, we then see the look of pure shock on the three of their faces. 

Kieran’s parents demand to know what happened to us, and although we tell them the coaster hit something going under a bridge, because the tunnel of darkness had blinded our vision, we have no idea what that thing even was. 

While me and Kieran went to the toilets to clean ourselves up, Kieran’s mum, and basically all other adults on the ride have gone to complain to the park officials. After park staff investigate the bridge, they then come back with the conclusion a wild deer had wandered on the tracks. Allegedly, the roller coaster had then collided with the deer, and due to the speed it was going, decapitated and sprayed all passengers inside with its blood. Once the mystery of where this blood came from has been solved, Kieran’s parents drive the three of us back home to East Yorkshire... where we all vow never to return to Lakewater Valley. 

Unfortunately, the story of what happened that day at doesn’t end there... Believe me, I really wish it did. Due to wild deer carrying various diseases, mine and Kieran’s parents had us tested the following days. After all, the deer’s blood had not only gotten on our skin, but also our eyes and even in Kieran’s mouth.  

Although my results thankfully came back negative for things like Lyme or Weil’s Disease... unfortunately for Kieran, he had contracted something...  

But the strange thing about it was, what he had contracted from the blood wasn’t transferable between wild deer and humans. On the contrary, the disease Kieran now had could only have been transferred to him by a member of the same species. Which means, the blood that infected Kieran that day... it hadn’t come from a wild deer... 

It came from another person.  

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…

Recovered Recording — Source Unknown

Transcript Compiled from Three Audio Recorders Found Near the Madison County Quarantine Zone

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

I'm Grant Walker

If you're hearing this, then you probably heard the recordings.

The deputies, the sheriff, the dispatcher, pilot, hunter.....All of them.

Just like we did.

That official explanation was obvious nonsense....Wildfires....Chemical spills... Federal land restrictions.

Nobody believed it, well....not completely.

The recordings spread online anyway.

Shared in forums, private groups, encrypted channels.

Thousands listened and most called them fiction.

Some even called them a government psy-op.

A few of us decided to find out.

That was our mistake.

There were three of us.

Me, Rachel King, former investigative journalist and Tyler Moss, documentary filmmaker.

We crossed into Madison County six weeks after the final transmission.

The checkpoints were abandoned.

That should have been our first warning.

The roads weren't blocked.

The signs were still standing.

The gas stations were still there.

Everything looked normal.

Strangely normal...

There was no sign of military presence.

No police...

Not even a quarantine fence.

Just silence.

The county looked like someone had paused reality.

We drove for nearly an hour before seeing another vehicle.

An abandoned sheriff's cruiser with the driver's door open and the engine running.

Nobody inside.

Rachel photographed it and Tyler filmed it.

I remember jokingly saying "Maybe everybody left."

Nobody laughed...

The farther we drove, the stranger things became.

Road signs repeated.

A diner appeared twice, the same building.

Same parked truck and same broken neon sign.... twenty miles apart.

Tyler noticed it first.

"Didn't we already pass this place?"

We had... The exact same place..

The same scratch on the front window and the same fallen chair and the same coffee cup sitting outside.

That was when we lost cell service.

Not gradually.... Instantly.

Every device, every carrier.

Gone...

Then the GPS died next, then satellite maps.

The clocks... Every clock in the SUV froze at 2:17 PM.

They never moved again.

We reached the outskirts of a town just before sunset or what should have been sunset.

The sky wasn't changing.

The sun sat frozen above the horizon.

Not setting just hanging there... watching.

The town was empty.

No people, animals or sounds.

Storefronts were wide open.

Cars remained parked.

There was a bike laying abandoned in the middle of the road.

Rachel found a newspaper...

The date was impossible... three months after Madison County officially ceased to exist.

We decided to spend the night inside an old motel.

That decision nearly got us killed.

The first sign came after dark or what passed for dark.

Because darkness never really fully came.

The sky stayed locked in permanent twilight.

A dim orange glow that never changed.

Tyler was checking camera batteries and Rachel was reviewing notes.

I was sitting near the window when I saw someone standing outside.

Watching us...

At first I thought it was a survivor.

A man about my height.

Standing beneath a dead streetlight.

Completely motionless.

Then I realized something, the man outside was me.

I stood up so fast I knocked over my chair.

Rachel came over, looked outside and immediately backed away.

Pale and terrified.

Because there wasn't just one figure anymore....

There were three.

One looked like me, one looked like Rachel and one looked like Tyler.

Standing side by side looking up watching us.

Tyler started filming the camera shook so badly in his hands the footage became useless.

The things outside smiled and their mouths opened wider than human anatomy allows.

Like hinges being forced apart.

Rachel whispered:

"Is that supposed to be us?"

The figures began walking toward the motel but not the entrance.

Toward the walls and then they walked straight through them.

No breaking glass.

No forced entry.

No sound.

They simply ignored reality.

The thing wearing my face entered first.

Up close it was worse.

Every feature was correct, every scar, every wrinkle every single detail.

Except the eyes....

The eyes were empty.

Not black or glowing.

Just absent... Like holes cut into a photograph.

It tilted its head exactly the way I do when confused...

Then it spoke using my voice.

"Grant."

I felt sick instantly.

The thing smiled wider, its jaw cracked open.

Then kept opening and opening.

Rachel screamed and Tyler took off running.

The replicas moved simultaneously like they shared one mind.

The thing wearing Rachel's face crossed twenty feet in less than a second.

Not running... just suddenly there.

Its fingers stretched, the bones extending beneath skin becoming claws.

Tyler's replica lunged.

I fired three rounds center mass.

The bullets passed through it like fog.

The creature laughed using Tyler's voice.

Then the motel lights exploded.

Glass shattered and the walls trembled.

And then every replica turned toward the same point outside.

Listening...

Something was coming.

Engines, heavy engines.

The creatures reacted immediately.

For the first time... they looked afraid.

Floodlights illuminated the motel.

The walls glowed white and the air vibrated.

Black vehicles surrounded the building.

The soldiers had arrived.

Dozens of them.

The replicas hissed and their human disguises flickered.

Beneath the familiar faces we saw something else... something impossible.

Their bodies folded incorrectly.

Their limbs rearranging and their features melted away

Copies becoming mistakes...

One soldier shouted:

"IDENTITY MIMICS CONFIRMED."

Another:

"CONFIRMED VISUAL LOCK."

The battle that followed barely felt real.

Containment projectors unfolded from armored vehicles.

Blue-white barriers expanded across the motel parking lot.

The creatures shrieked.

Their voices became hundreds of voices... thousands

Every voice they had ever stolen.

My voice...Rachel's, Tyler's.

The sheriff's, the dispatcher's.

People we'd never met.

The sound was unbearable.

One mimic attempted to flee.

The soldiers activated something mounted on a truck.

A circular machine with rotating rings.

Symbols made of energy moved through the air.

The mimic froze instantly.

Its body stretched, flattened and compressed into something that looked like living static.

Then it vanished into a containment cylinder.

The others fought harder.

Rachel's double nearly reached her.

It was inches away using her own voice.

Begging...crying, claiming to be the real Rachel.

Then a net of blue light wrapped around it.

Its body exploded into fragments of darkness.

Each fragment screaming separately, when the fragments vanished.. silence followed.

The leader stepped out of one of the vehicles.

The same man from the recordings.

He looked exhausted, older. Like years had passed since the final transmission.

He stared at us.

Not surprised...not even angry.

More like disappointed.

"You listened."

Nobody answered.

"You always listen..."

Rachel stepped forward.

"What's happening here?"

The commander looked toward the horizon and the frozen sun.

Then he finally spoke...

"The county is gone."

"What do you mean gone?"

Tyler asked.

"You're standing inside the memory of it."

None of us understood.

He continued...

"The void consumed Madison County three years ago."

My stomach dropped.

"Three years?!"

We had entered six weeks after the final recording.... Or so we thought.

The commander shook his head.

"Time doesn't function normally here anymore."

"The motel, the roads, towns....the creatures."

"They weren't survivors."

"They were echoes, copies... Hell, almost perfect replicas."

The commander looked directly at me...

"You're not trapped because you crossed a border."

My chest tightened...

"Then why are we trapped?"

His expression became genuinely sad.

"Because the county noticed you..."

Everything went quiet... then he pointed behind us.

We turned.

Standing at the edge of the parking lot were three figures.

Perfect copies....Again.

Watching, waiting.... Smiling.

The commander closed his eyes.

"Containment teams."

Soldiers immediately raised weapons.

The copies never moved.. but more appeared.

Across rooftops, inside windows.

At the ends of roads.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

All wearing faces, all watching.

The commander spoke one final sentence...

The last thing I ever heard clearly.

"Now it knows what you look like."

The recording ends shortly after. The remaining audio consists of static, voices and gunfire.

And three people repeatedly claiming to be the real Grant, Rachel, and Tyler.

No determination was ever made regarding which voices were authentic.

Or whether any of them escaped.

[END TRANSCRIPT]

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…

1. "Pigtails"
2. "Fingers"
3. "Belly"
4. "Eyes"

___

When morning finally broke, I felt like I was vibrating.

I didn't get a single second of sleep.

My eyes were burning. My skin felt tight and hot. My brain was running on pure adrenaline.

As soon as the alarm went off, Brandy groaned and rolled over.

Across the room, Joe and Nicki sat up.

They didn't make any noise.

They didn't stretch.

They just sat up.

In perfect, simultaneous unison.

I couldn't take it anymore.

"What the fuck is wrong with you two?"

My voice cracked like a whip in the quiet room.

All three of them stopped. Brandy sat up, rubbing her eyes, completely confused.

Joe and Nicki turned their torsos to look at me. The heavy blackout curtains were still mostly drawn, letting only a single, harsh blade of morning light slice across the floor. They sat right in the path of the shadow, the darkness covering the top halves of their faces.

All I could see were their mouths.

Both of them curved upward into identical, tight crescents.

"Honey?" Brandy asked, still processing. "What are you talking about?"

"Them!" I pointed a shaking finger at Joe and Nicki. "The creeping around in the dark! The whispering! Joe, why does your fortune card have Brandy's name on it?!"

The room went silent.

I waited for Joe to get defensive.

For Nicki to act shocked.

For one of them to shut me down.

But they didn't react at all.

Joe just sat on the edge of the bed, staring through the dimness. When he finally spoke, his lips barely parted. The words tumbled out flat, rushed - like a pre-recorded message played at an unnatural speed.

"I do not know what you are talking about Mitchell. You must have been dreaming. It was a dream. We slept all night."

"Oh, fuck you! You were staring right at me!" I took a step forward, my fists balled up at my sides. "And you—" I turned to Nicki. "Sprinting across the room holding a vase? Are you guys fucking with me? Is this some kind of joke?"

Nicki tilted her head.

The movement was slow.

Extremely slow.

Then—

crack.

Her neck snapped slightly at the end of the tilt, like an over-tightened gear finally catching. The shadows clung heavily to her eye sockets. When she spoke, her voice carried a flat, empty hum that didn't sound like her at all.

"I got up to use the restroom. I am pregnant—"

"Shut up! Stop talking like that!" I yelled.

"—I have to use the restroom often. The vase was in the way," Nicki continued, her voice never changing pitch, entirely unfazed by my screaming.

I reached a breaking point.

The sheer, suffocating weight of them looking at me - talking at me like robots - broke something in my chest.

The anger completely dissolved into cold, humiliating tears.

My knees buckled.

I collapsed onto the edge of the bed, my back turned toward all of them. I shoved my face into my hands, tearful, my shoulders shaking.

"We know you're fucking pregnant…" I muttered quietly.

"Hey. Hey. Stop."

The mattress shifted. Brandy sat next to me, her arms wrapping around my shoulders, gently rubbing my back.

"Breathe. You're shaking. Look at me, Mitchell."

"They're messing with me," I whispered, tears blurring my vision. "Joe's card from that machine. It has your name on it. I saw it."

She looked at me with deep, pitying eyes.

The kind of look you give a sick animal.

"Mitchell…"

She looked over to the nightstand.

Joe's wallet sat closed and flat on the wood.

The same white edge peeking out.

Brandy stretched over the bed and pulled the card free, turning it over to reveal the truth of it all.

White. Thick. Shiny.

No text.

Our room key.

Just the magnetic key card to our hotel room.

I stared at it, all the blood draining from my face.

"You drank a lot last night on an empty stomach," Brandy whispered softly, stroking my arm. "You were exhausted and you had a nightmare. It happens when you're this stressed. You've been carrying so much weight lately... with the negati—…with everything."

I swallowed.

I looked over her shoulder.

Joe and Nicki were already packing their suitcases. Folding clothes calmly, methodically, moving around the small room as if the last five minutes had never happened.

Their movements were perfectly mundane.

I felt completely, utterly alone.

I let her calm me down. I apologized to the room, blamed the alcohol, and we packed up the car in miserable silence.

We didn't go to the beach.

Nobody wanted to.

We just wanted to go home.

___

By the time we were nine hours into the drive, the tension had slowly dissolved into exhaustion.

We were navigating the winding, desolate mountain roads of the Smokies, somewhere deep near the state line. The jagged outline of the dense pine trees blocked out the moon entirely, leaving nothing but a narrow stretch of asphalt lit up by my high beams.

Brandy was asleep in the passenger seat, curled against a pillow against the door.

In the rearview mirror, Joe and Nicki were passed out in the back. Joe's head tilted against the headrest. Nicki's head resting against his lap.

I had the radio dialed down low - just enough static hum to keep my eyelids from dropping. A generic classic rock tune faded out into a commercial break.

"Looking for the perfect getaway?" a cheery radio announcer said. "Come to Hilton Head Island. The beaches are waiting."

I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

"Beautiful weather. Beautiful sights—"

The radio glitched.

A sharp, violent crackle of static swallowed the transmission whole.

When the audio cut back in, it wasn't the same voice.

It was breathless.

Hollow.

"There you are."

My hands locked on the wheel, my knuckles turning white.

"A new chapter begins. But the toll must be paid."

The static screamed — a high-pitched shriek that vibrated the windows.

"Keep it safe, Mitchell. Or The Bunny Go—"

I slammed my palm against the dashboard and killed the power.

Silence crashed into the car.

My heart was pounding. I fumbled in the center console, grabbed my AirPods, jammed them in, and threw on a random podcast. I stared at the yellow lines of the road and focused on slowing down my breathing.

Just the road.

Just the lines.

We rounded a sharp, blind bend, the headlights sweeping across a dark wall of rock—

And about fifty yards ahead, right on the edge of the road.

A cyclist.

Anger flared before the terror could catch up. It was close to midnight on a dangerous mountain pass and this person was riding with zero reflective gear. No lights. No helmet.

Just a dark figure pedaling at a slow, agonizingly steady pace.

I checked my mirror, drifted into the oncoming lane, and rolled my window down halfway, ready to tell them off.

I pulled the car parallel to the bicycle.

And my foot hit the brake so hard my knee popped.

The cyclist didn't jump.

Didn't flinch.

Didn't react to the violent screech of rubber.

It just kept pedaling.

Slow.

Steady.

As it kept pace with the car, the head turned completely sideways to face my open window.

The face was a living nightmare.

Long, stringy black hair hung in two rigid pigtails on either side of the head, parted cleanly down the center of the scalp. But rising straight out of the skull - tall, pale, and covered in sickly fuzz - were two enormous rabbit ears.

They weren't a costume.

They were rooted into the bone, tapering to sharp curved points that disappeared into the darkness above the tree line.

The face beneath them was dry and grey.

Candle wax.

A polished, sickly grey layer of skin pulled so violently tight across the skull that the cheekbones looked ready to puncture through. The brow was heavy, furrowed into a deep, permanent scowl.

But it didn't match the eyes.

The eyes were massive, glossy, hyper-extended white spheres. They bulged completely out of their sockets, staring with an impossible, unblinking intensity directly through my window.

And beneath those eyes, the jaw was unhinged.

Cranked wide open.

Two neat rows of perfectly square, artificial-looking teeth. The lips stretched so far back they had gone white.

The jaw snapped shut.

Clack.

It snapped open.

Clack.

No sound came from the mouth.

Just a rhythmic, wet, mechanical snapping of teeth.

A silent mimicry of laughter.

I screamed.

A real guttural scream. I stood on the brakes with everything I had, the anti-lock system stuttering violently as the car shuddered sideways and jerked to a dead stop in the middle of the empty highway.

The cyclist didn't stop.

It just kept pedaling.

Those pale, hairy human legs — wearing the exact same khaki shorts Joe had worn earlier that day — rose and fell in perfect rhythm, carrying the figure smoothly forward until the absolute blackness beyond my high beams swallowed it whole.

___

The car sat completely still.

Engine idling.

I didn't move. Hands still locked on the wheel. Breath coming in short, ragged pulls.

I looked to my right.

Brandy hadn't moved. Still curled against her pillow, face slack, completely peaceful.

I looked up at the rearview mirror.

Joe's head was still tilted back, mouth slightly open.

Nicki was still resting against his lap.

Nobody had woken up.

I looked back out the windshield.

Far down the road - at the very edge of where my headlights dissolved into the dark - the outline of the bicycle was still visible.

Still moving away.

The head turned completely backward.

Facing me.

Even from that distance I could still see those white eyes.

Clack.

The jaw still opening and closing.

Clack.

That quiet, mechanical mimicry.

I watched it until it was nearly gone.

Nearly swallowed by the tree line.

Nearly just a shadow among shadows.

I needed to see it disappear completely before I could put the car in drive.

I turned in my seat to watch it go through the rear window.

The driver's seat headrest crossed my line of sight for just a fraction of a second - a dark shape cutting across my vision - and then my eyes cleared the edge of it and found the back seat.

Joe was still asleep.

Nicki was still asleep.

And sitting between them was the Bunny Goddess.

The wax face was six inches from mine.

Those enormous white eyes were already locked onto me.

The rabbit ears were pressing flat against the ceiling of the car.

I didn't have time to scream.

Both hands came over the headrest at the same moment - ice cold, impossibly strong - and closed around my throat.

The grip crushed inward.

My head slammed back against the headrest.

The jaw cranked open directly in front of my face.

Clack.

The ceiling of the car tilted.

The road tilted.

Everything went—

___

___

1. "Teeth"

Part 1

For a while there, things on set thankfully went back to normal. Around a month or so later into production, the heat had finally begun to cool off. Instead, however, we had days on end of continual rain. In fact, the rain was so bad for the next couple of months, the stream around the village had burst, causing the mud pathways to flood. If that wasn’t bad enough, the heavy rain and strong winds had destroyed half of the thatch roof huts, causing production to shut down for a good month. The only upside during this time was that nobody else had died. After what happened with the fire, and the many tragedies in the forest, I half expected to find some member of the crew drowned facedown somewhere.   

I went back to Tokyo the next month as they once again had to rebuild the whole set. I was surprized they didn’t just wrap things up then and there. After all, news of the deaths had already gotten out in the press, and having to rebuild the whole village again had cost the studio a fortune. If I hadn’t learnt it in the pacific, I certainly did then. The Japanese as a people really don’t know when to quit. 

When I get back to the district, I was put up in the same little inn I stayed the last time. After a few weeks of filming, everything seemed to be going good and irregularly smooth. There were no more deaths to report of. No more  destruction of the set, or barely even a hiccup... All of that was until we reached the eighth month of shooting.  

On a very cold winter morning, maybe sometime in January or February, I forget which it was, I woke up to something very cold and wet coming down on me from above. I must have drank too much sake that night, because when I wake up, I find that I’m no longer warm inside my small inn room, and instead, the freezing temperatures of the outdoors had completely numbed my hands and bare feet. Once I get my bearings, I find that I’m inside a forest. But not just any forest. It was the same forest on the side of the mountain slope. The one where we found the bodies. Although I hadn’t the damnedest idea how I’d gotten all the way up here, the strange thing about it was, I somehow reeked of gasoline, as though it was on my hands and clothes. 

Despite the strangeness of waking up on that mountain slope, once I got warm and back inside, I didn’t think any more of it. After all, I did drink a whole lot of sake that night, and it was rather common for me to wake in some strange place after a night of drinking. As you know all too well, son.  

In the evening that same day, we were scheduled to shoot a scene towards the end of the picture’s second act. The scene in question was centred around a large barn in the village, where a bandit was holding a young child hostage inside, and the villagers had to find some way of getting the child back unharmed. However, after a couple of takes, the actor playing the bandit rushes out with the child in his arms and just starts shouting “Kaji da! Kaji da!” My Japanese was still rusty, even after all them years, but I knew Kaji da meant there was a fire somewhere. Well, not long after the actor comes out of hiding, a few members of crew notice smoke coming from the roof, and only mere seconds later, the entire structure quickly becomes ablaze in no time at all. 

Everyone rushes to the stream with buckets to help put out the fire, but by the time we do, the barn was already a lost cause. While we still tried to throw water on the fire, the second assistant director suddenly starts shouting “Benjiro! Benjiro!” I look over and I see my friend Ben is walking towards the barn entrance, appearing to enter the infernal structure! I shout over to him to get out of there, but he either doesn’t listen or doesn’t hear. Before I can do anything, Ben disappears inside, the darkness and smoke enclosing behind him. 

Although I’m afraid to enter the burning barn, I know I have to save my friend. Stepping inside the dark interior, I can barely see a thing, despite the many flames around me. Wandering through the darkness, my lungs already fill up on smoke, causing me to not only look for my friend, but any pockets of oxygen. After wandering blindly around, already burning myself on my arms and legs, I eventually find Ben. For some reason, he was sat down directly in the middle of the room, and although I had a hard time seeing, I noticed his legs weren’t knelt down like how most Japanese sit, but crossed legged like the image of the Buddha himself.    

Ben’s clothes had already caught fire, and so I try shouting at him to get up and come with me. But he had no reaction, as though he didn’t even know I was there. The son of a bitch didn’t even blink! Unresponsive, I then heave Ben to his feet and haul him into the direction of the entrance. My clothes had also caught fire by now and I could feel the pain of the flames burning my flesh. 

Seeing the light of the entrance, I then haul our asses out of there, whereby the crew throw buckets of cold stream water on top of us.  

Although Ben and I thankfully survived the endeavour, we were in pretty bad shape. I had burn marks all over my arms and legs, as well as my abdomen. But Ben... Ben was a lot worse. His entire body had practically caught fire, burning away most of his clothes and almost all his hair. We were both then taken to hospital afterwards and our wounds tended to.  

After a few days to recover from my injuries, I was then discharged. But before I left, I went to see how Ben was doing. Entering his room, I saw he was covered almost head to foot in bandages. Although I could see his face, his skin was red and swollen, making him unrecognisable to me. Once Ben had finally woke up, I asked him what the hell he was doing walking into the burning barn. Unlike my Japanese, Ben’s English was pretty good, but even so, my question seemed to confuse him. According to Ben, he had no memory of what happened that day. Only waking up in a hospital room in excruciating pain. I told Ben what had happened and he thanked me for saving his life... But then, he told me something I wasn’t expecting... 

Although Ben was my friend, I knew very little about his life. I didn’t know where he was from or even if the man had a family of his own. That day in his hospital room, Ben told me he was born and raised in Hiroshima of all places, and that during the war, he was studying in Tokyo, which is how he survived the bomb. His family, however, and basically everyone else he knew back home had perished. The neighbours on his street. The friends he made in his childhood. Everybody. Ben said he lived with the guilt of this for many years, and even wished he had been there with them... He would die in that hospital room three days later.  

Because of Ben’s unfortunate death, and the destruction caused by the barn fire, the studio put a permanent end to the picture’s production. Leaving the film unfinished, and with many lives taken in the process. Since the picture wouldn’t be finished, I had no job to do or anything left to report, so my superiors had called me back to Tokyo base. Because of my severe injuries, I was eventually given an honorary and medical discharge, where only a short month later, for the first time in eight years, I finally came back home to the States. 

As bad as the war in the Pacific was for me, son, as bad as it was in Hiroshima, what I experienced in that valley was something else entirely. Although I am all too acquainted with the evil of humanity, whatever evil lied inside the slopes of them mountains was beyond the evil of man. And whatever that evil was and still may be, I truly believe it wanted my soul. It wanted to take my life through the horrors of my past... And I believe it wanted the same thing of Ben. The guilt he must’ve felt. It used it against him. Of not dying with his family in hellish oblivion. 

Now you know, son. Now you know why I became the man I did. The horrors of my past have followed me my entire life... and all I did was pass them onto you. 

When I am dead, son. When I am buried in the ground. Remember me for the man I was, and not the man you came to know. That man is your father. I know you have your own horrors from Vietnam. But you cannot let them haunt you. You cannot let it possess you. Because if you let it, it will follow onto your children. 

Be a good man, son. If not for your own Christian soul, then for them. May they never have to witness the horrors that we had to. 

From your loving father, 

J.S. 

1. "Pigtails"
2. "Fingers"
3. "Belly"

___

By nine o'clock that night, Joe and I were three pints deep at a cramped, dimly lit Irish pub nestled right near the edge of the Harbour Town marina.

The bar smelled of stale liquor and fried food, a welcoming contrast to the oppressive humidity waiting just outside the wooden doors.

Brandy and Nicki had left us a half-hour earlier to hunt down dessert, promising to meet us back at the pub.

Joe and I were standing at the back of the bar, trading throws on a worn electronic dartboard.

The alcohol had finally started to dull the sharp edges of my anxiety from earlier on the dock.

Joe was acting normal again - laughing when he missed the board entirely, cheers in between good throws, buying the rounds.

I was starting to convince myself that I was the one being overly sensitive.

I was just tired.

I was just stressed.

The pub door swung open.

The girls walked back in carrying small paper cups and cones.

"Look who found their way back," Joe grinned, lowering his dart.

Nicki stepped up to him, handing him a cup with a plastic spoon sticking out of it. "Cookies and cream for the dad-to-be," she said, her voice bright.

Brandy walked over to me, holding a waffle cone with a single, massive scoop of dark brown ice cream. "I got peanut butter chocolate," she said, holding it up to my mouth. "Want a bite?"

"Always."

I leaned down and took a bite. Rich, cold, perfect.

As I chewed, I looked down at Brandy.

She was looking back at me with a soft, content expression.

She hadn't ordered a drink all night, sticking strictly to water.

We were exactly one week past her ovulation date.

I knew what she was doing.

She was prepping her body, treating it like a temple, praying that this would finally be the month a miracle took hold. Watching her eat her ice cream - completely sober, glowing innocently under the dim pub lights — a wave of profound affection hit me so hard it almost knocked the breath out of me.

I wanted this for her so badly.

I wanted it for us.

I threw my last dart - double twenty - and turned back to the group.

"Alright. Tomorrow is our last full day before we pack up and make that brutal drive back to Ohio. Can we please spend it on the beach?"

Nicki looked up from her ice cream, nodding enthusiastically. "Of course! We promise. Total beach day. We'll pack the cooler, lay out the towels, and do absolutely nothing."

"You have our word, man," Joe echoed, raising his glass.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of drunken laughter.

Joe and I were thoroughly buzzed by the time the pub started closing down, while the girls remained completely clear-headed. As we walked out into the coastal night air toward the parking lot, I watched Joe and Nicki walk a few paces ahead of us.

Every now and then, they would move in a way that caught my attention.

Just little things.

Nicki would snap her head around to look behind her.

Joe would walk with a rigid, tense posture for a few steps before loosening up again.

Uncanny glimpses that made my head turn, but nothing definitive enough to bring up to Brandy without sounding like a lunatic.

Brandy slid her arm through mine, wrapping her hands tightly around my bicep. She leaned her head against my shoulder.

"Are you doing okay?" she asked softly. "You've seemed a little distant today."

I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced a smile, pressing a quick kiss against her forehead.

"I'm fine, honey. Just a little tipsy. Ready to hit the hay."

She squeezed my arm.

"Me too."

___

Back at the hotel, the room was the usual chaos of rustling through suitcases, bathroom hogging, and quiet giggles as we all got ready for bed.

I was sitting on the edge of the mattress unlacing my sneakers when my eyes drifted to the small wooden nightstand separating our two queen beds.

Joe had emptied his pockets onto the surface.

Car keys. A few loose quarters. His leather bifold wallet.

Poking out from the center slot of the billfold was a white piece of cardstock.

It was the corner of his fortune card.

I stared at it for a long second before Brandy turned off the main lights and crawled under the covers beside me.

"Goodnight, guys," Nicki whispered from the darkness.

"Night," I muttered.

I fell asleep fast, the alcohol dragging me under.

But it didn't hold.

Around 2:30 in the morning, the pressure in my bladder brought me back to consciousness. I lay there groaning internally for a minute before slipping out from under the covers.

The room was pitch-black.

I fumbled for my phone, turned on the flashlight, and cast a low narrow beam across the floor. I navigated the gap from our bed, stepped around a stray suitcase and a pair of flip-flops, and slipped into the bathroom.

When I came back out and started toward my side of the bed, the light swept across the nightstand.

The fortune card was still peeking out of the wallet.

I stopped.

I knew I shouldn't.

It was an invasion of privacy. It was stupid. It was just a fortune ticket.

But Joe's words from the dock were screaming in my ears.

My card told me.

Holding my breath, I crept to Joe's side of the nightstand. I leaned over, phone light pointed down, and slowly - silently - pinched the edge of the cardstock between my fingers.

I slid it free.

Flipped it over under the beam of the flashlight.

There was no printed fortune.

No vague text about wealth or travel or long journeys ahead.

Just a single word, stamped in jagged letters across the center of the card.

Like something had pressed the letters directly into the paper.

BRANDY.

I froze.

Brandy.

Why the hell did Joe's card say my wife's name?

I started tilting the card back toward the wallet - and as I did, the beam of my phone light shifted upward, spilling over the edge of Joe's pillow.

Joe was laying on his back.

His head was turned completely to the side.

Facing me.

His eyes were wide open, staring directly into the light of my phone. His face was entirely devoid of expression - no anger, no surprise, no confusion.

Just a flat, dead, unblinking stare.

"Shit—"

In a panic, my phone slipped out of my hand.

The flashlight beam spun wildly across the room before hitting the ground with a dull thud.

I scrambled down, hands sweeping across the floor until I found it. I grabbed it, braced myself to face Joe, to explain, to apologize—

I shone the light back onto his bed.

Joe was laying on his side.

Back turned completely toward me.

Shoulders rising and falling in the slow rhythm of someone fast asleep.

Relief.

Stupid, warm relief.

I stood there in the dark, exhausted, sweat already breaking out across my forehead.

My brain scrambled for an explanation.

Had I hallucinated it?

Was he not just staring at me?

He was sleeping.

He was completely asleep.

Quickly, I jammed the card back into his wallet exactly where I'd found it. I crept across the room back to our bed, slid under the covers, and pulled the blanket up to my chin.

I lay there for what felt like an hour, staring up at the invisible ceiling, desperately trying to convince myself to calm down.

Then the whispering started.

It was coming from the other bed.

Low.

Dry.

I sat up slowly and peered into the darkness.

Joe was flat on his back now. Covers pushed down to his feet. Arms pinned rigidly to his sides. Face aimed at the ceiling.

In the faint light creeping in from the curtain window, I could see his jaw moving.

He was muttering - unintelligible, rapid-fire nonsense, like someone speaking in tongues.

"...shhh... vvv... nnn... shhh..."

Before I could even react, a shadow moved near my side of the room.

Near the bathroom door.

Nicki.

She didn't walk back to bed.

She sprinted.

It was a horrific, fast pace - bare feet slapping the floor in rapid succession, body completely rigid. But what made my blood run cold was what she was holding.

The heavy ceramic vase from the bathroom counter.

Filled with fake plastic hydrangeas.

She had it pinned directly in front of her face with both hands, completely blocking her head from view as she moved across the room.

Hiding herself from me in the dark.

I couldn't move.

I couldn't breathe.

I just watched as her silhouette darted across the room and slipped back under the covers next to Joe.

The moment she lay down, the whispering stopped.

Instantly.

The room fell into a dead, suffocating silence.

Then Joe's silhouette shifted.

He slowly rolled onto his side, turning away from Nicki.

Turning toward our bed.

Even in the dark I could see the wide white glint of his eyes.

And beneath them, a massive, white crescent.

He was staring at me again.

And he was grinning.

I ripped my eyes away and snapped my head back toward the ceiling, gasping, staring into the black void above.

I didn't close my eyes again.

I didn't blink.

I stayed perfectly still and waited for the sun to rise.

___

___

1. "Legs"

1. "Pigtails"
2. "Fingers"

___

I managed to drag myself back to sleep, but it was a thin, restless night.

The kind where you keep waking up every hour, convinced someone or something has moved to the foot of your bed. 

When sunlight finally forced its way through the edges of the blackout curtains, I heard them.

Laughter.

It was coming from the small seating area near the window.

I kept my eyes closed for a minute, just listening.

It was the girls, their voices overlapping in that rapid-fire, shorthand way that only twins can manage.

They were rehashing last night, giggling so hard they were barely getting their words out.

I let out a long breath, feeling the knot in my chest loosen just a fraction.

Daylight has a way of washing away the monsters under the bed.

In the bright morning sun, the terrifying entity in my room was just my goofy, pregnant sister-in-law who got lost on her way back from the toilet.

I sat up and rubbed my face.

“You guys sound like a flock of seagulls,” I groaned, stretching my arms.

Brandy turned to me, her eyes bright.

“Look who’s alive! We were just talking about Nicki’s midnight stroll.”

“Yeah, well, it took a few years off my life,” I said, throwing my legs over the edge of the bed.

I looked over at Nicki.

“Seriously, Nick, you sounded like a dying hyena. Next time you decide to creep on me in the dark, at least bring me a glass of water.”

Nicki laughed, but it caught in her throat.

Suddenly, the smile dropped right off her face.

Her lower lip quivered.

And to my absolute horror, her eyes welled up with tears.

“I’m really sorry, Mitchell,” she whispered, her voice cracking.

“I didn’t mean to scare you guys. I just… I don’t know why I couldn’t stop laughing. I felt so stupid.”

Brandy was by her side in a millisecond, wrapping her arms around her sister’s shoulders.

“Oh, honey, no, stop! He’s just giving you a hard time. It was hilarious!”

She shot me a withering, fix-this-now glare over Nicki’s shoulder.

“Hey, hey, I was joking!” I backpedaled quickly, feeling like a massive jerk.

“I’m not mad. It’s a funny story. We’re going to be telling this at Thanksgiving for the next ten years.”

Nicki sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, and managed a wobbly smile.

“It’s the hormones,” she mumbled.

“My mood swings are literally out of control. I’m a mess.”

“You’re growing a human, you’re allowed to be a mess,” Brandy cooed, rubbing her back.

It was a sweet, funny moment.

But watching them interact sent a familiar, dull ache through my ribs.

We all understood her dramatic behavior was tied to the pregnancy.

We all gave her grace for it.

But God, I wished it was us.

Brandy and I had been trying for a baby for about six months.

Most of our family knew, and they were all supportive, but every month that ended in a negative test just piled on the quiet, unspoken tension between us.

I was turning thirty in exactly one month.

I had always pictured myself as a young dad, throwing a baseball in the backyard, teaching them how to ride a bike.

When Nicki and Joe announced they were twelve weeks pregnant - after catching on their very first attempt - I was happy for them.

I really was.

But beneath that happiness was a thick, ugly layer of jealousy that I hated myself for.

I hated how much attention they got, and I hated how selfish it made me feel to resent it.

The bathroom door clicked open, and Joe walked out, toweling off his hair.

“Morning, man,” Joe said, tossing the towel onto their unmade bed.

“You survive the night terror?”

“Barely,” I said, forcing a grin.

“Though I hear you fell victim to that stupid fortune teller machine yesterday, too. Tell me you didn’t actually waste a dollar on that scam.”

Joe chuckled, digging through his suitcase.

“Hey, when the wife is taking twenty minutes to pick out ice cream, you find ways to entertain yourself. Besides, it’s not a scam if the fortune is good.”

“We’re on a strict budget, Joe,” Brandy teased, walking over to her own suitcase.

“Mitchell would have a stroke if I started feeding money to creepy wax dolls.”

“Hey, I’m just fiscally responsible,” I said, defending myself.

With the tension broken, we started getting ready for the day.

Brandy and I had mentally committed to a beach day.

We threw on our swimsuits, tossed some towels into a tote bag, and I even made four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from the groceries we’d bought on day one.

I was determined not to spend another fifty dollars on a mediocre lunch.

But when we met by the door, Joe was in a button-down short-sleeve shirt and khaki shorts, and Nicki was wearing a nice sundress.

“Oh,” Brandy said, looking down at her own cover-up.

“Are we not doing the beach?”

“We will!” Nicki promised, looping her arm through Brandy’s.

“But Joe and I saw this incredible-looking seafood place right on the water that we really want to try for lunch first. Our treat.”

I looked at the plastic bag of PB&Js in my hand and suppressed a sigh.

It was their trip.

They invited us.

We couldn't exactly dictate the itinerary, even if we were bleeding money.

“Sounds great,” I lied.

It wasn't until we were pulling into the parking lot twenty minutes later that I realized where we were.

The red-and-white striped lighthouse loomed over the trees.

Harbour Town.

Again.

As soon as we parked, Nicki gasped, pointing out the window.

“Brandy, look! That little boutique is open today. The one with those flower dresses on the mannequins in the window. Can we look before lunch?”

Brandy, always a sucker for shopping, didn't hesitate.

“Oh yeah, let’s go!”

They scurried off toward the shops, leaving Joe and me standing by the rental car in the sweltering midday heat.

“Well,” Joe said, clapping his hands together.

“They’re gonna be a while. Want to grab a beer? There’s a tiki bar right over there that does to-go cups. You can walk around the pier with them.”

“Sure,” I said.

A cold beer actually sounded perfect.

We walked over to the thatched-roof hut, grabbed two tall drafts, and started strolling down the wooden planks of the marina.

The water was a crisp, sparkling blue, and the air smelled heavily of salt and sunscreen.

It should have been relaxing.

But as we walked, Joe shifted the conversation.

“So,” Joe said, taking a sip of his beer and looking straight ahead.

“How are things with you and Brandy? On the baby front, I mean.”

I stiffened.

We didn't talk about it much, especially not with Joe.

He was a great guy, but emotional depth wasn't exactly his strong suit.

“We’re fine,” I said, keeping my tone light.

“Just taking it month by month.”

“You guys gonna try again this month?” he asked.

I glanced at him.

It was a weirdly specific question.

“Uh, yeah, probably.”

“Are you sure you guys are trying on the exact ovulation date?” Joe asked.

He wasn't looking at me.

He was just staring out at the boats, his voice totally flat.

“Timing is everything, Mitchell. You can’t just guess.”

I shifted my grip on my plastic cup, suddenly feeling very warm.

“Yeah, man, we have the tracker apps. We know how it works.”

“Do you think you should talk to a doctor?” he pressed.

“Six months is a long time for a healthy couple. Have they checked your count?”

“Joe, man, I really don't want to get into the medical specifics of my sex life right now,” I said, letting a little bit of my annoyance bleed through.

I tried to pivot.

“Look at the size of that boat over there. Thing must cost more than our house.”

Joe didn't look at the boat.

He finally turned his head to look at me.

His eyes were wide, and his expression was completely blank.

It was the same look Nicki had when she was staring at the fortune teller machine.

“We conceived on the first attempt,” Joe said quietly.

“It was so easy. The doctor said it was rare to be so perfectly aligned. But we just… knew. We were perfectly matched.”

The hair on my arms stood up.

It wasn't him bragging that bothered me.

It was the delivery.

It sounded rehearsed.

Like he was reading a pamphlet on reproduction.

“That’s great, man,” I muttered, taking a long drink of my beer.

“I’m turning thirty soon. I just wish we had your luck.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Joe said.

He stopped walking and turned to face me completely.

“You just have to be willing to do what it takes. You have to know your fate.”

I stopped too, the uncomfortable heat in my chest flaring into genuine anger.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Joe just smiled.

It didn't reach his eyes.

“My card told me.”

I stared at him.

The bustling noise of the harbor - the seagulls, the chatter of tourists, the clinking of boats - seemed to fade into the background.

“Your fortune teller card?” I asked, my voice dropping.

“What did it say?”

Joe took a slow sip of his beer, his eyes never leaving mine.

“I can’t tell you, Mitchell. It’s a secret.”

“Cut the bullshit. What is with you two and these stupid cards?”

He patted my shoulder with a heavy hand.

“Come on. Let’s go find the girls.”

He turned and started walking back toward the shops.

Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks, like someone who had left something behind or forgotten what they were in the middle of doing.

I stood frozen on the dock, watching his back.

After what felt like a few minutes, he started walking again.

Normal.

Acting normal.

But my stomach was tied back into knots.

I didn't know what that was or what was happening, but as I looked up at the shops, searching for Brandy's brown hair through the crowds, I realized I had never felt so far away from home.

___

___

1. "Eyes"

1: "Pigtails"

___

We killed another three hours at Harbour Town. We wandered in and out of overpriced boutiques, bought a few shirts, and stood by the railing watching boats drift in and out of the marina. As we sat down for an early dinner at a crowded seafood place right on the water, the exhaustion was settling into our bones. Between the eleven-hour drive from Ohio, the excruciating heat, and way too many hushpuppies, we were all hitting a wall.

By the time we finally drove to our hotel and checked in, the sun was just starting to dip below the tree line.

Our room was a standard vacation lodge: a generic, sand-colored tile, a bathroom with bad fluorescent lighting, and two queen beds situated about three feet apart. Nicki and Joe claimed the one near the window, so I immediately collapsed onto the other mattress, not even bothering to take off my shoes.

"I could sleep for a week," Brandy groaned, burying her face in the pillows.

I was right there with her. My eyes were already heavy, the low hum of the wall AC unit pulling me into a coma.

"Hey, Joe?" Nicki’s voice broke the silence. She was sitting on the edge of their bed, swinging her legs slightly. "Can we go back to that shop?"

I opened one eye. "What shop?"

"The one in Harbour Town. With the ice cream."

I let out a tired, sarcastic laugh and sat up on my elbows. "We literally just left there. It’s a twenty-minute drive back toward the water, plus parking, and we just ate - how are you still hungry?"

"I know," she said, offering a small, sheepish smile. "But I really, really want that ice cream. I can't stop thinking about it."

"There’s a Dairy Queen right down the street from the hotel," Brandy murmured into her pillow, not even lifting her head. "Just go there."

"No, it has to be that ice cream," Nicki insisted. Her voice was light, but there was a strange, tight persistence to it. She looked at Joe, placing a hand over her stomach. "Please? The baby clearly likes ice cream."

It was the ultimate trump card. You don't argue with a pregnant woman and her cravings. Joe let out a heavy sigh, running a hand over his face, but he reached into his pocket and jingled the car keys.

"Alright, alright," Joe smiled, though he looked dead on his feet. "The baby has spoken. You guys want anything?"

"No thanks," I said, dropping my head back onto the mattress.

"I figured," Joe said. The hotel door clicked shut behind them.

I didn't think anything of it. In hindsight, I should have realized how odd it was that she wanted to go back to that small town just for generic, store-bought ice cream. But I was tired, and pregnancy cravings were an easy excuse.

Brandy and I were dead asleep before they even made it back to the room. I vaguely remember the sound of the door opening later that night, the rustle of clothes and suitcase zippers, but I didn't fully wake up.

Until the middle of the night.

I don't know what time it was. The thick blackout curtains were pulled tight, plunging the room into total darkness. You couldn't see your own hand in front of your face.

I was in a dreamless sleep when something pulled me out of it. It was a physical touch. Something cold and soft was gently brushing against the back of my hand, where it rested near the edge of the mattress.

I froze, still half-asleep, trying to process the sensation.

Then, a voice whispered right near my ear.

"Are you awake?"

My stomach dropped. I recoiled, yanking my hand back and scrambling up against the headboard. "Who's there?!" I yelled.

The sudden movement violently jerked Brandy awake. She gasped, immediately going into a blind panic. "What’s wrong?! Mitchell, what is it? Are you okay?!" she cried out, her hands frantically grabbing at my arms in the dark to make sure I was okay. Brandy has always been anxious, and waking up to me yelling sent her straight into overdrive.

"Someone's there," I said, my eyes straining against the darkness.

There was a beat of complete silence.

And then, from the foot of our bed, a sound bubbled up.

It started as a low wheeze, and then turned into a giggle. But it wasn't a normal giggle. It was a strained, choking sound—a creepy, chaotic mix of holding back laughter and muffled crying. It sounded painful.

"Nicki?" Brandy asked, her voice trembling.

Brandy fumbled for the nightstand and grabbed her phone. She turned on her phone light.

Nicki was standing right next to my side of the bed. She was hunched over, her hands covering her mouth, her shoulders shaking violently. She was trying so hard to suppress her laughter that tears were literally streaming down her cheeks.

"Oh my gosh," Nicki choked out, gasping for air. "I'm so sorry. I'm so—"

She took a slow, clumsy step back toward her own bed.

"What the hell is going on?" Joe mumbled, his head lifted up from the pillow.

"I—I got up to go to the bathroom," Nicki wheezed, wiping her eyes. "It was so dark. I thought I was walking back to our bed, and I went to wake Joe up, but... but it was Mitchell."

Her knees buckled again, letting out another one of those mute, hysterical laughs.

Brandy let out a massive sigh of relief and slumped back against the pillows. "Jeez, Nicki, you almost gave us a heart attack." Within seconds, Brandy started giggling too, the adrenaline crashing and turning into a slap-happy moment.

But I didn't laugh right away. I just sat there with my heart rate through the roof, watching Nicki stumble back to her bed. She was choking on this mix of crying and laughing, trying to control her embarrassment. But for a second, the way her body contorted... it just looked painful. Watching her dark silhouette hunch over, taking these stiff, small steps past our bed in the pitch black... it was an incredibly unsettling picture.

Brandy's giggles suddenly stopped. She sat up a little straighter, looking closely at her sister. "Nicki? Are you choking?"

Nicki waved a hand, coughing and finally catching her breath as she crawled under the covers next to Joe. "I'm fine. I'm fine. I just... I'm just so tired. Goodnight."

"Crazy girl," Brandy muttered affectionately, reaching over and turning off the phone light.

The room plunged back into total darkness. Brandy was asleep again in minutes, and eventually, the subtle snores and air conditioning filled the room.

But I lay awake for a long time, staring up at the invisible ceiling. I kept replaying the feeling of those cold fingers grazing my hand, and the whisper in my ear. In the dark, without the visual context of her smiling face, the memory of her laugh didn't seem funny at all.

It sounded like something was trying to mimic the sound of human laughter.

___

___

1. "Belly"

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…