Tainted: A Horror Novel, page 19
Nothing more? Where is that thing?
Why was she not laying in a puddle of her own blood, the next feast for the beast? Shouldn’t she be gurgling blood through a gaping hole in her neck by now?
Rob... oh, poor Rob.
Tears filled her eyes. she could no longer hold back the emotions she had refused to acknowledge before. There she stood, alone, in the middle of a black abyss, weeping. Her mind wandered back to what seemed like a lifetime before, but in reality, had only been about ten minutes.
She had been roused suddenly by a loud yelling outside of her tent. As she sat up, Rob was already awake and heading to the door. What happened next only happens in movies. Dead naked girls don’t just fly out of nowhere in real life.
That shit just doesn’t happen.
Rob had exited their tent and Jennifer had tried to follow. The noises outside were indescribable, but she could distinctly make out Nichole screaming. A scream that cried out in pain, invisibly begging to live. James yelled something, but his words were muted by the bellows of Nichole’s terror.
Her memories of what happened next blurred, coming at her instead in quick flashes, like pictures, still frames in her mind. Rob stood at the opening of their tent, blocking her view. She could hear James continue to yell from somewhere beyond but had no way to see what he was yelling at with Rob in her way. He suddenly fell silent, punctuated by a wet snapping sound.
Rob was moving then. Terror ran up her spine. Rob wasn’t the rushing off type. She leaned forward and peered out into the darkness and couldn’t believe what she saw.
Dead!
Dead and naked and covered in blood!
Outside, Rob was covered in blood, fighting to get out from under Nichole’s lifeless body. His hands slipped, unable to find a good grip, soaking in her gore. It filled his mouth as he yelled for help. It only took a moment for her to get to the open flap of their tent… everything was happening so fast.
A wave of nausea hit her at the sight. Jennifer emptied her stomach, covering her legs with sickeningly sweet-smelling bile. Fighting the second wave, she crawled out from the tent. She had to help Rob. Jennifer froze as she stood from the tent. A nightmare was unfolding outside the safety of her nylon walls. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the gloom as she surveyed the site in horror. James’s body slumped against a tree while Sara stood to her left, on the opposite side of the camp. She too seemed equally frozen in terror. Her complexion that of milk, eyes wide and unblinking.
Jennifer saw it then as she followed Sara’s gaze, saw the thing in their camp. A creature stood, cloaked in darkness, atop the remnants of a fallen tent; tense and unmoving. She couldn’t believe she’d missed it on her first scan, but there it was.
Rob continued to struggle to free himself from his sloppy, gore-filled prison. She had wanted to help but found herself petrified. Even now, as she stood alone in the forest with the massacre behind her, the memories of those horrifying moments threatened to steal her resolve to survive. To steal her will to live. To steal her desire to run.
The horrific images flashed through her mind’s eye like a child’s flipbook. Sara charged ahead, plunging a large branch deep into the side of the shadowed thing. A large branch they had used to stoke the fire.
Another image flashed. That of an eyeball, dangling between bloody fingers, fluid spilling from it as a silver claw caught the side of the soft tissue as it gently swung... An image she would never forget.
The monster had grabbed Sara’s face then. It had forced her head to the ground. Its muscles had bulged beneath its skin, shredding the flesh from its own arm. Its fingers elongated with a crack of bone and squeezed Sara’s head until her skull collapsed under the pressure. Blood sprayed from her nose and mouth, brain matter erupted from beneath her hair. Her eye fell loose from its socket, rolling from between the monsters clawed fingers.
The monster then fell to its knees, clasping Sara’s head like a stress ball. Its skin ripped and tore away from its body, landing with sloppy smacking noises as it hit in the grass. Its body continued to contort and bulge and grow. Its muscles swelled as bones cracked, configuring to its new shape.
The monster did not bleed, but howled in pain, nonetheless.
Jennifer closed her eyes tight, slamming her hands to her head. She did NOT want to remember. That thing is not....
It towered in front of her, a creature comprised of both man and beast. Even as it stood hunched over, the creature had to be over seven feet tall. Its heavily muscled arms hung low to the ground, Sara’s face dangled a few feet from the dirt as it continued to hold her. It loosened its grip a bit, and fragments of grey matter fell loose.
The creature stood upon strong hind legs and a short stiff tail protruded from its backside. Black fur covered its body, shimmering with a hint of silver in the light of the full moon. Its eyes glowed the same silver hue, intensely bright below its steepled ears.
The monster stood only a few feet away, dumbly looking around the camp, as if in a daze. But the thing looked right past her.
The black werewolf casually tossed Sara’s body aside, and with one long stride the beast made its way to where Nichole’s broken body had landed... and to Rob!
Tears had poured down Jennifer’s cheeks as the beast began to leisurely rip the bodies apart. Rob’s gurgled screams had echoed through the night. Jennifer had loved Rob inside and out. The creature revealed his true insides to her, and then ate them...
Oh, poor Rob.
Jennifer had fled then, running for the trail the moment the thing had turned its back. Content with its meals, the creature lazily ate Sara’s foot as Jennifer fled into the blackened forest. All she could do was run blindly ahead, away from the nightmare she had awoken to.
Jennifer shook her head hard, bringing herself back to reality. If that thing was truly after her, she had no time to waste. She was exposed and vulnerable. Regaining her composure, she pushed the grotesque images aside and quickly continued on her way. Jennifer would allow herself to fall apart later, now was not the time.
The steep path proved difficult, but she knew she could make it to the cars if she continued carefully.
A deep, guttural howl broke the silence of the forest. That thing was behind her, and close.
Her resolve held firm, not allowing panic to overtake her. She pushed ahead faster, focusing on her foot placement. Stumbling a second time could prove deadly. With its size, and obviously immense strength, the thing could overtake her if she missed a single beat.
She could hear it, the thing seemed all around her. She could hear its heaving breaths as it made its way through the brush to her right.... No! To her left! It was definitely trailing her to the left. The thing did not need a trail to follow, just a scent.
Her scent.
Her legs throbbed and her lungs burned. The creature was closing in, circling back around to her right. Harsh breaths rasped from just beyond the shadows. The crack of twigs and dried leaves revealing its position, from all around her.
Is it playing with me?
Why not just end this sick game for God’s sake!
The trail opened suddenly onto a clearing. Ahead of her, both vehicles sat idly, two silent sentinels, waiting. She hastily made her way to Splint’s van and tugged hard on the handle. Sanctuary at last!
The door would not budge.
Dread filled her then as Jennifer realized she had forgotten the keys.
That’s it! She was going to die. She ran all this way, fought hard to keep herself from giving up, and she had still lost. Her survival instincts had gotten her this far, but forgetting the fucking keys at the killing field...
Life has a way of screwing up your day with the slightest, most minute of details.
The bushes rustled behind her. The Wolfman was here to finish the job.
Jennifer slunk down next to the van and waited for the inevitable.
She told herself she wouldn’t scream.
Night of the Raven Part II
Magic is a funny thing, wild and unpredictable. Even the most proficient masters could not hope to fully control the vast powers of the universe. Benny Ravenstale was no master of the mystical arts, having only dabbled in it throughout his life. The very fact that he was able to conjure a transformation spell was astounding. His very will to survive providing him the energy needed to perform such a powerful spell.
Soaring high above the trees in his raven form, his power began to wane. With his life no longer in peril, it had become hard to maintain the focus needed to keep the spell active. His head was pounding, blurring the world before him. If he didn’t land soon, he would surely plummet into the canopy below.
Not a good thought.
Benny pushed forward, hard through the night sky. The pain coursing through his body was becoming unbearable. His muscles felt as if they would tear from the bone, burning like fire with every flap of his ebony wings.
Though the spell had given him use of his battered limbs, it had not restored sight to his mutilated eye. The throbbing agony shot through his skull in excruciating waves, hammering down in rhythmic intervals in line with his heartbeat. And with every whack of that hammer, a blinding white light flashed before his good eye.
But none of that mattered. The pain didn’t matter, nor the blinding flashes, nor the loss of his eye. The only thing that mattered was that he’d escaped. His life, or what was left of it, was all that he had left, but he had escaped with it.
He pressed ahead, flying straight for the large moon. The beautiful silver orb filled the blackened sky, illuminating the tops of the trees below. A sea of green, sprinkled with a silver hue, laid ahead as far as his eye could see. It was beautiful and peaceful, inviting even. Had he willed it, his suffering could be gone in a tangled heap of flesh and bone amongst the peaceful trees. But he was not to go peacefully into that good night, not yet. Benny had one final role to play before he could let go.
He had to find the girl.
Benny scanned the silver touched foliage, searching along the banks of the lake for a large clearing of trees. It was a long shot, for sure, but he had overheard the kids talking about camping by the lake, and there was only one place he knew of that fit the bill. The question was, could he make it before the spell lost its potency?
The moon continuously drew his eye, a sense of dread filled his heart with every glance. He knew what happened to the young ones under the light of a full moon. He might already be too late.
Throughout his studies Benny had learned a lot in the ways of beasts, of the Shifting Ones. Simple laws, like those that all natural beasts obey. Omissions from history, long forgotten and never spoken aloud. Omitted for fear that it would draw attention and bring with it the wrath of the creatures hiding within the darkness.
One such law was that of The Blood Rage, an uncontrollable hunger that consumed anyone unfortunate enough to not hunt between the moon’s full cycle. Benny never discovered why the moon caused such a thing to happen, but he knew the ancient tribes worshiped it for the power it held over them. And of the Shifting Ones, he read that the wolves’ blood rage was by far the worst, only to be stopped by thick shackles and chains. There were even stories of that not being enough, especially when the first change happened under a moon exactly like the one he flew towards now.
Nothing of the truth within the darker side of history made much sense, though. If he had spoken a word of what he knew, Benny would have been locked away long ago. The world seemed to thrive on its ignorance, and even those few who knew the secrets amongst men were just as much in the dark as the people they lied to.
This was all Vincent’s fault, he’d decided. Why the hell would he have left the girl after clearly choosing to turn her? That old mutt had always been an odd one, but this seemed crazy.
Benny had met Vincent long ago; within the same year he’d opened his shop in the small town of Wolf’s Head. Back then, Vincent had visited him nightly. A tall, well-built man in his thirties, which Benny now knew to be a ridiculous underestimation by at least one hundred and fifty years. His long black hair hung in a rat’s nest atop his head, his attire was ragged, and his skin heavily tanned, yet his complexion was perfect. It was the eyes that hinted at his true nature. Piercing blue eyes that cut through his hobo exterior, keenly aware of his surroundings.
The eyes of a predator.
His appearance never mattered much to Benny. He had made a friend in the transient, a person that would not pry into his past the way others would. Benny figured that Vincent had just as much to hide from as he did.
Vincent would arrive at the same time every day, five minutes to seven, without fail. The disheveled man would emerge from the forest and take his seat on the porch, waiting patiently for Benny to close shop. Bits of twigs and leaves often stuck to his clothes and tangled in his unkempt hair. He seemed oblivious to it all. Benny would finish his routine, grab a couple of beers, and join his friend on the porch. Their conversations began as any would, about nothing. Slowly, as time passed, Benny began to drop his guard. He had opened up about his unconventional upbringing and the tragedies that led him to his life among the trees.
Vincent proved to be an unquestioning ear, listening intently without judgement. It wasn’t until Benny began opening up about the library his uncle had left him that his wild friend started to show real interest in his stories. He inquired constantly about the boxed tomes that Benny had stacked inside his humble abode, never bothering to unpack them. And with every inquiry, Benny would deflect to another topic, unable to bring himself to divulge his darkest secret. The secret that kept him hidden from the world.
Years passed in this manner, Vincent would inquire about the library and Benny would deflect. He knew now that Vincent had all the time in the world to convince him to begin his studies again, but at the time it appeared to be nothing more than a growing interest.
After years of prying, Vincent had indeed won.
“There will be a day you will need this knowledge, mark my words,” Vincent had said as they cut the brittle tape free from the first of many boxes.
Vincent had shown an interest in the collection, focusing especially on the legends of ancient creatures. Things that would take the shape of man to hide the terrible creature lurking beneath its skin, the Shifting Ones.
Benny read tome after tome aloud so Vincent could understand the ancient text. Some of the languages were hard, even for him, but he managed well enough.
Then, one day, everything changed. Something happened that would have sent a normal person into the grip of insanity. Not Benny though, he had killed his own parents after they’d turned into hideous blood-thirsty vampires after all, and nothing could ever really top that. On that day, Benny closed shop, just as he did every single day, grabbed a couple of beers and headed to the porch, but Vincent wasn’t there. It was the first time since they had met that his friend had been late. Befuddled, he decided to head home, thinking his wild friend might be waiting for him there.
As he locked the door, a sudden movement to his right caught his attention. He had figured Vincent had been running late and was now creeping out of the woods to meet him.
Not that day.
That day he stared into the face of the biggest wolf he had ever seen. The creature stared back, its piercing blue eyes held him in its gaze. Benny found his options short, his gun was left inside and now behind a locked door. He knew that running was not a choice either. So, he stared, waiting for whatever fate had in store for him that day.
Then the wolf did the oddest thing. It stepped forward, cautiously, its soft footfalls falling silent on the old creaky boards. It almost seemed like the wolf was trying not to frighten him. It advanced slow and steady with no sudden movement. Benny could only watch, key still in hand, fear paralyzing his limbs. The wolf made its way across the patio to the pair of chairs and climbed into Vincent’s seat, turned a few times over before sitting on its haunches. When the creature had settled, it turned its attention back to Benny and shot him a wink.
The damned thing had winked at him!
Those eyes...
The blue-eyed wolf had winked at him.
The next few moments were a blur, but he did remember the feeling of falling as blackness descended upon him.
Inside the immense blackness of his subconscious, the pieces began to fall into place. The clues had been there, all these years, yet he’d been too blind to see. Vincent was a Shifting One; his affinity was that of a wolf... a werewolf. Yet another tidbit from his tomes that had proven true, a reoccurring theme throughout Benny’s life.
Benny awoke from his revelation with an entirely new outlook on the world, and saw it as a much darker place than he had once remembered. His friendship with Vincent only grew stronger from it. With the new understanding of his strange friend, Benny eventually opened up about his parents, recounting the entire tale of what he had seen and done. Vincent didn’t judge him for it. He sat quietly listening, absorbing the tale, only speaking briefly of his hatred of the accursed beasts and the blight vampires were upon the planet. As time went on, Vincent even began to open up about himself and what he was doing so far removed from society.
He explained that he had been searching for something, just as Benny once had. And that search had brought him to a library hidden deep in the forest, boxed away to be forgotten in the home of someone he now called friend. He searched for a volume, one as old as time itself, one with a circular emblem of a wolf eating its own tail. Vincent never said why, only that it held the key, and he was destined to find it.
When the book was finally pulled from a tightly packed box, they placed it on a shelf amongst all the others. And there it sat, they never even opened it. Vincent was more interested in its existence and safety than the words scrawled on the pages.
After that, Vincent’s visits began to lessen, and soon he rarely visited at all. On the rare occasions he did stop by he was never in his human form. As the years passed, Benny found himself alone again, and the tome collected multiple layers of dust.
