The thing squirmed restlessly, as much as the packed, clotted and centuried earth above and around it would allow.
With flesh in various stages of decomposition, the silver in the chains which bound it bit into what remained of muscle, a perennial fire in the blood just as mercury is to a man. But whereas that metal would lead a human into a swift and fevered demise as it pulsed round the circulatory system, no such respite was available to the creature.
Oh, there was a casket of course - or rather a crate; heavy, coarse and nailed shut through coils of more silver chains - its captors hadn't been so naive as to bury the thing in open ground. And most tellingly, the box had been packed with native soil after its captive had been interred, safe in the malicious knowledge that this would keep the creature (un?)alive in perpetual, claustrophobic torment. Yes; the stake, the sword and the cleansing fire might have been a more permanent solution, but the executors of this plan had injected more spite than efficiency into their long-awaited ritual.
How long ago had this incarceration begun? In all honesty it was difficult to tell. Time became meaningless when one couldn't tell the difference between waking and sleep, dream and memory, fantasy and regret.
The thorough entombment with seismic cries of howling justice rang in the thing's own ears for what seemed like years, long after the jailers had ceased making the noise itself. After that, a protracted and sullen silence.
An explosive reaction of rage and despair was what the band of villagers had truly wanted, so what point in letting them win any further? Plans of escape and revenge had long vied for attention in the thing's mind, although foremost among these was the assurance that even here in the earth the creature would outlive them all. For if time had taught it anything, it was that no situation lasts forever.
Ah, time. And what long, glorious years they had been.
The creature itself had no gender, strictly speaking, but instinct had gauged it most practical to inhabit a male host. The man had tastes and gluttonies of his own, of course, and the thing inside him had amplified these to levels which would have finished mere mortals. Uncounted years had passed, filled with wine, women and song.
And blood. Always blood.
For the blood was the life; and what was life for, if not living? That the creature and its host deprived others of this in the name of sustenance was... well, nature's way. Those who do not flourish are destined to perish, after all. There were those who would argue - and convincingly so - that there was little of 'nature' about the creature and its hemal symbiosis, but it was certainly in the nature of the creature. And that was enough. Besides, there were plenty of things still to be discovered by the humans in this world. Some of these because they lacked the tools, some because they just weren't yet ready for the knowledge.
The thing of endless years was partly covered by these classifications; but more that those who had deduced its methodology were not destined to live long enough to pass on that information. And so, as the decades passed, a secondary game began to be played. That of a nomadic survival. Oh, would-be-assassins arriving trembling at the threshold did not worry the man/beast-thing unduly, but carelessness could be fatal all the same.
Through time, the blasphemous symbiosis fabricated differing identities at various locations. It did not do to live too long in the gaze of suspicious men, and this way the thing could be seen to grow ‘old’ in one place before disappearing, presumed dead. At this point of course, it would re-locate to another of its former palaces, a young and distant relative of the one who lived there previously, ready to take up the mantle of benign landowner or noble boyar.
After the cycle of feeding and recrimination had run its course - usually within fifty years or so - it would be time to move to another carefully and secretly maintained ruin and begin again. The crimson legends that the creature left in its wake made sure that no one else would inhabit the castles. Well, rarely in any case. Unwelcome tenants could be disposed of before the thing’s official ‘arrival’ as easily as prying villagers afterward, and it was not likely that these hermits would be missed in any case.
But occasionally - rarely even, although not as rarely as the beast would have liked - a challenge arose.
Whether it was one who heeded the local folklore as well as having the nouse to think around it, or just a particularly charismatic chancer who could whip up a mob large enough to present a logistical problem, life of this longevity did not come without... obstacles.
It was one such obstacle which had rapped - iron on oak - one windswept night, in years of which the creature had now lost count. The thing had felt the stranger's approach, of course. An eager, brash inquisitiveness in the psychic aether; a soul seeking to prove itself to others rather than any solemn determination. There would be no point in ignoring the visitor, since vigorous flambeaux advertised the presence of life (of a sort) within the castle walls.
With no mesnie attending - an indulgence long since spurned in the name of hitherto uninterrupted anonymity - it was left to the creature to see to its own domestic affairs. Roused out of a bored reverie, the host appeared at the door without the scuffing or signs of strain that the visitor expected.
The castle's lone inhabitant towered over the fool in the stone doorway.
As the figure stood, snapped out of his boisterous adventure, the creature sensed no prying eyes outside the walls and so leapt upon this... opportunity, with brutal efficiency.
At once enveloping and flattening its prey, lightning-fast metamorphosis led to large membranous wings acting both as propellant and constrictor, while myriad pincers and fangs erupted at every point of contact with the now-shrieking idiot. Sounds the intruder made were lost to the outside world, cocooned as he now was in the fatal embrace of his attacker.
Cries were soon lost as much to disbelief as to the leathery enclosure which gripped every fibre of his being. The visitor's body seemed - to the creature - to deflate in its grasp. Blood, fats, tears, bile and sweat were consumed with equal relish. The symbiote pair were almost lost in their ecstasy; although wasn't it always thus?
No pleasures known to mere man could equate with the rapture of taking another in this way - so completely and utterly. The inexorable binding of hunter and prey at this moment was exquisite, far more than any mere spearman or archer could know. No matter how anticipated or unexpected the arrival of it, the outcome was always the same.
And it was intoxicating. Exhausting. Overwhelming.
The creature was still, now. Almost as still as the shrivelled hunk of meat it surrounded. The remnant would be disposed of easily enough, most likely with fire. The cursed flame was, after all, the greatest hider of misdeeds and absolver of sins.
The thing was roused from its disposal planning by the silent gaze of others. Unfurling from its nest of butchery, it raised its head while surreptitiously forming pseudo-eyes about itself for panoramic night-vision. Surrounded now. Like a fool. A trap. An obvious trap. Which it had walked straight into.
So eager had it been to feast upon blithe innocence, common sense had been cast to the wind. And what a foul stench now came to bear upon it. The crowd - mob - which surrounded the beast at a cautious distance were armed not only with swords, nets, spears and bows but also... buckets?
The circle closed slowly but uniformly. Traditional implements of war seemed only for defensive measures, whereas... as one man gave the signal, the crafted wooden pails were thrust forward and in an instant the creature was soaked. But this was no witch-drowning. Not water, but fire.
The oil of the knoblauch, every bit as harmful to the beast's physiology as hemlock or belladonna would be to any of these attackers. With bubbling skin seemingly aflame, the rest was a blur. Netted, bound in silver chains and speared in a casket, then buried un-alive. By the time the thing's biological defences had nullified the plant oil, all activity above ground had long since ceased...
And yet it was the recollection of this turmoil which had distracted the thing in the ground from activity above it - here and now. Something - someone - was digging. Not by chance, not through idle exploration. No, there was agency - intent - behind the scurrying above.
After all these years - centuries? - what was this now? Treasure hunters come for stories of silver, or myth-hunters arrived to finish an ancient task?
Still unable to defend itself either way, the old dead thing in the ground was at least grateful for the external gloom; that sunlight didn't sear its grey flesh when the lid of the coffin was finally ripped away from its nails after what seemed like an eternity.
Although the sight which greeted atrophied eyes was no less heart-stopping.
A slobbering beast, much like the creature itself but at least twice the size, caked in mud and in obscenely strong health towered over the open casket, a rudely sharpened stake the size of a small tree trunk poised in its gnarled talons.
But worst of all was the simple three-word greeting and eulogy which croaked wetly from its razor-lined jaws...
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• Short stories © WorldOfBlackout.co.uk, all entries are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Y'know, mostly.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
