“That night, so many years ago, you dragged me out of that house. Who knows how that night would have played out, maybe they would have killed me, or maybe I would have killed all of them: no one will ever know. But it was because of you that I was able to get a second chance.”
“A second chance at life?”
“No,” the voice said, booming laughter filling the entire forest. “A second chance to kill all of them. There is just the one thing that still needs to be decided. I have summoned you here for one reason and one reason alone tonight. I need to know whether or not I need to kill you as well.”
“You were my best friend,” Scott said, sliding to his feet along the roughly-barked trunk of the tree, his eyes scanning the darkness hard, searching for some connection with the ghostly apparition that lurked within the shadows. “I would never have let them hurt you if I had known that was their purpose for bringing you to that house that night. They told me that it was time to bury the hatchet—”
“It would have been if you hadn’t pulled me out of there.”
“Time to let bygones be bygones, if you will. I never would have let you show up if I had known what was going to happen. For the last twelve years, I’ve blamed myself for your death. I’ve carried the burden that I was the one who couldn’t save you, couldn’t pull you out of that car. Do you know what that’s like? I haven’t had a single decent night’s sleep since I was seventeen years old.”
“Poor thing, and here I thought living in a hole in the ground surviving on nothing but the uncooked flesh of vermin was bad. Please forgive me for troubling your sleep.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Scott said, lowering his shaking head. “And it’s really not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“Why are you doing this?”
The corpse slumped to the ground in a heap, the gasses building within bursting from the compressing flesh in a combination of a loud belch and flatulence that sounded more like the roar of a bear than anything else. Stepping from where he hid beneath the blackened cloak of the shadows, Matt’s outlined form stepped towards the clearing. Though barely more than a shadow in the night, Scott focused on the form as it began to speak, the darkness around him seeming to resonate from within the dark core of his former friend.
“You remember how it used to be, don’t you?” Matt said, his voice almost sounding human, like it had more than a decade ago.
“How so?”
“Don’t you remember how everyone looked at me, how they treated me? It was as if I carried the plague, as if I was the antichrist. I couldn’t escape it, not even at home. Wherever I went, there was always someone there to try to bring me down.”
“Like I said back then, if you don’t dwell on it, it will eventually go away.”
“But it never did!” Matt’s voice boomed from the heart of the darkness. Snow fell from the branches overhead in clumps from where it had piled atop the nest of needles. Whatever lonesome creatures skulked through the night, scavenging for food or respite from the wicked storm scattered from the underbrush at the sound of the ear-shattering voice.
Scott stared at the wall of shadows. Matt’s form seemed to pulse from the dark rage that resonated within his form. He could feel the cold waves of hatred as they rippled through the forest across the thin, frigid breeze. The form eased from the blackness that cloaked it in its embrace of invisibility, stepping out into the middle of the small clearing, just to the other side of Jeremy’s lifeless form.
The dark cloak that shielded his form blew around him, the tattered edges dancing rhythmically. It looked as though a fire burned about him; black flames lapping at the night from his almost spectral form as it hovered inches above the frozen ground. His face was cloaked in shadows, only the dull manila glare from his sunken eyes, and the choppy, rotten teeth from his snarling mouth were visible. The dim light reflected from the dried surface of his eyes. The cracked and yellowed eyeballs appeared as though they couldn’t see anything at all, the leathered surface snagging each time the eyelids blinked.
“Jesus,” Scott uttered, his eyes fixing on the blind stare of the creature that stood before him.
“Do I repulse you? Does this festering visage offend you in some way? You’ll have to forgive me as I’ve been living in this infernal hell for as long as I can remember now. But this is all a part of the deal for me. When I gave up my life, my soul, for the chance at retribution, this became a foregone conclusion. The voices in my head that chatter amongst themselves relentlessly are nothing compared to the physical torment of a body that is in a constant state of decomposition. My skin cracks and peels back from the blood that flows like fire through my veins. And there is only one way to end this nightmare, this never ending stream of pain.”
“What’s that?” Scott asked, his trembling voice betraying the onslaught of fear that raged through his quivering body. He stumbled backward from the advancing form.
“I have to finish what I started. I have to live up to my part of the bargain. I was given this power, this curse, for the sole purpose of bringing death to those who had forced so much pain upon me. The demons that writhe within my body, my mind, demand this from me, demand that I reap the souls for them that I promised I would.”
“Two hundred?” Scott asked as he slipped beneath the shadow of the tree behind him, slinking behind the trunk.
Matt just laughed, an insidious cackle that shook Scott to the core of his being.
“Been doing some research, I see. If only you knew what I do. I think you’d find that pretty amusing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Our destinies our linked, you and I. It is our lot to walk side by side through the valley of the shadow of death. The night I made the deal, at the point when the demons swelled from the darkness, whispering, as they entered my body, they revealed everything to me. They told me of the child of the horned god’s blood that would bring the souls of the prophesied hundreds to the master for his eternal consumption. They revealed to me all of the secrets that the darkness held, for me, for all of us. And indeed, I would have my revenge, but that was only one part of the grand scenario.
“Later that night when I killed my parents, I could feel their souls rise from their decapitated bodies as they lay atop those blood-stained sheets. Their essence filled the air all around me, swirling in the stench of their own rot. Theirs were the first of the many that I would reap, my part of the redemption of my life.”
“You’re a monster,” Scott gasped.
Jeremy’s body suddenly floated back into the air in the center of the grove, the arms and legs floundering. The body jerked back to life, the shadowed form of the creature that had once been his friend Matt slipping back into the darkened refuge that the trees provided.
“You call me a monster!” the voice boomed from all around him, tearing a hole in the night. “I had come to offer you help, but you reject me in such a way!”
The body spun in circles in the air, the lifeless arms flopping in the air as they whirled like helicopter blades. There was a gut-wrenching tearing sound as the body ripped straight down the center, droplets of blood flying in all directions. The body was rendered in two, the innards filling the air as they sloshed to the snow-covered earth. Emptied, the flapping shell was flung into the night, the flesh draping from the branches of the trees. What little fluid still clung to the lifeless sheath drained in small drops atop the whitened ground.
“See you real soon,” the voice boomed from the darkness as the outline of the form faded into the shadows.
Scott fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands. He fought to keep the stench of his friend’s insides from overwhelming his senses. Small splatters of the rapidly cooling blood that was not his own ran down his bare, chapped face as the last of the rustling sounds of the monster slipping through the tightly wrought forest faded into the hum of the wind, the rattling of the needles.
Slowly, Scott opened his eyes, rolling onto all four. His stinging, bright red knuckles burned in the ice-cold snow as he crawled forward, staring down at the red patterns that decorated the even white surface. Churning, his stomach turned over in his sour belly, the vomit rising to the back of his throat before being choked back down with an audible thump. Tears crept from the corners of his eyes, arching over his cheeks as they mixed with the crimson droplets, hanging like icicles from the stubbled line of his chin.
Harry burst from the line of trees behind him, his thin shadow casting a long line across the center of the grove. Scott bolted upright, the noise startling him to the point that he was unsure if he would ever be able to slow the hammering in his chest.
