Ander - Part 4: Subchapter 22
22
Ssshhh...
Luke could see those eyes, black inside the black. He could feel them boring into his own like one of Dad's hand drills, going deeper and deeper.
Ssshhh...
He could still smell the smoke from the dead candle, mixing with the demon's foul breath, turning into the stench of death itself. He could actually taste it. He wanted to yell. He wanted to scream for help, he wanted to tell Tim to run away as fast as he could, but no words would come out. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Tim was long gone, swallowed up by the shadows. He was all alone with this... thing, this massive set of pure white fangs in the darkness, whispering that single, nonsensical word, understood the world over to mean: Be quiet. Be still.
Ssshhh...
He was being pulled in closer. The jaws were opening wider. He could see a blood red pit of flames down its throat, but the flames didn't give off any light. They were just a solid red mass of sharp twisting blades, like frozen slivers of blood. It was a tunnel straight to hell.
Luke tried to pull away, but it was useless. He was caught. It was going to swallow him whole and there wasn't anything he could do about it.
Ssshhh...
He didn't want to go to hell, but this thing was a devil! Was it really so evil to kill a devil? Did he really deserve this? He didn't know! He's just a kid and he didn't know!
Ssshhh...
No, please don't! You can eat me, just please don't hurt my family! Luke had finally found his voice, but it was much too late for that.
The pit grew wider and wider, and he could feel the devil's claws pulling him in, pitching him forward. All he could see was red, bordered by those infinite fangs, each one longer than his whole body.
No!! Nooooo!! he screamed.
The jaws slammed shut with a thunderous -
*
Luke jerked awake, gasping for breath, on the verge of screaming his lungs out, but only able to push out a feeble, shuddering moan against his tear-stained pillow.
Someone was knocking on his door.
"Luke? Are you still asleep in there? Daylight's a wastin', boy! Up up up!"
Get a hold of yourself. Act natural.
Luke tried to answer, but he was shaking so badly he couldn't even think of anything normal to say.
"Luke? You all right in there?"
Crap! Don't let him see you like this! He'll know something happened right away!
Luke yawned loudly, and hoping to sound sleepy rather than terrified, he asked: "'S it morning arready?"
"It's way past morning, boy! You better get up 'fore I come in there and pull you out by the tail, you hear?"
Luke checked the window, and sure enough, there was a flood of dazzlingly bright morning sunshine spilling into his room. "Okay, okay... I'm up."
"Good. Valery set you some porridge aside to simmer."
"Urgh... porridge..."
"What was that, young Fox?"
"I said yum! Porridge!"
"That's what I thought."
He listened to Dad's footsteps retreat down the landing, then go down the stairs. Only when they faded completely did he allow himself to blow out all the pent up stress in a whoosh of air. He flopped back on the bed, his arms spread wide, and looked up at the ceiling.
Ssshhh...
That was no dream. It was real. Horrifically, nightmare inducingly real.
"Oh gods," Luke groaned. He sat up, swivelled his legs over the side of the bed and just slumped there for a while with his head hanging down between his knees, trying to separate reality from his own fevered imaginings.
Banno had blown out the candle, whispered that half-word that should only ever be whispered by caring mothers to their drowsing babies, and just as Luke had thought he would either get bitten in half or die from a heart attack, it had simply... let him go.
He remembered staggering backwards, then bumping into Tim. The poor guy must have been suffering from delayed reaction or something, because that tiny little touch was all it took to send him reeling off into hysterics. If Luke hadn't been so keyed up himself, he never would have been able to grab him in the dark and clap a hand over his mouth as quickly as he did.
Shut up shut up shut up! he had whispered frantically, listening for any noise upstairs.
Mmmp! Mmmmp!!
Be quiet, Tim, for the love of all the gods be quiet!
They had stood there, frozen in the darkness, the smell of candlesmoke still fresh in the air. Luke's heart beat wildly in his chest and his lungs screamed for air, but he could only breathe in the tiniest sips. Anything more seemed so loud!
Things stayed quiet. No Dad rushing downstairs, shouting their names, no Valery screaming to know what was going on. And as for the thing in the bed...
It started to laugh, very softly, but barely held in check, so close it felt like it was right on top of them.
They had bolted for the door, completely blind, nearly tripping over each other's feet. They spilled out into the hallway like a pair of floundering vixens, the Wolf's soft laughter coming after them, riding the shadows, completely encircling them in pure, wicked mirth.
It had taken every ounce of willpower Luke had left not to slam the door, but to shut it gently. Even after the latch clicked home, he could still hear it laughing in there. It seeped out through the keyhole and along the cracks like a poisonous gas, filling the air, working its way into his ears, slowly driving him insane.
By the gods Luke what have we done oh gods oh gods it nearly got us what are we gonna do what are we -
Stop whimpering, you baby! Luke had hissed.
Tim had made one final, pitiful mewl (eck...), but somehow managed to bring himself under some kind of control.
Luke had put his ear up against the door, knowing full well that the Wolf was in no condition to get out of that bed, but some morbid part of him insisted that it was doing exactly that, throwing back the blankets, lifting its monstrous body to come after them...
But all he could hear was that soft laughter, muffled by the door, but not enough for Luke to be able to trick himself into believing it was just his imagination. The Wolf was just sitting there, laughing in the dark.
Luke rubbed his tired, scratchy eyes. Even though he had evidently slept in late, it felt like he hadn't slept at all.
"What do I do... What do I do?" he asked of himself. Unfortunately, he didn't have the answer.
"Well of course not, if I had the answer I wouldn't be asking myself. Stupid... stupid..."
He got up, washed his face in the waterbowl beside his bed, and headed downstairs, walking like a zombie straight out of Herden's stories, his mind trying to think of a hundred different things at once, but not able to focus on any at all.
He paused in the downstairs hallway. The door to the Wolf's Den was slightly ajar, and he could hear their voices coming from inside, Dad and the Wolf, speaking calmly. It was enough to tie a knot in his stomach, and not just a regular knot, either, but one of those intricate bow knots Valery was so fond of, twisting around inside of him, making him want to throw up. Dad was in there right now, probably changing the Wolf's bandages. Luke wanted to burst in there and yell at him to stay away from that slobbering freak, but all he could do was stand out here in the hallway, debating the pros and cons of ripping his own hair out by the roots.
Just... just go have breakfast. Nobody can think on an empty stomach.
"Yeah, yeah..." Luke whispered to himself, turned around, and headed for the kitchen, dragging his feet behind him.
The porridge was cold, but that was okay. A few minutes on the woodstove was all it took to get it back to its previous porridgey goodness, which unfortunately wasn't a whole lot, considering it was, you know, porridge.
"Bet it's because that Wolf is eating us out of house and home," Luke grumbled as he sat down at the table. "Could probably eat a whole hog by himself. I bet he could out-eat Tim. I bet he could..."
There was one candle on the table. Just one.
Luke sat frozen, a heaping spoonful of porridge halfway to his mouth, completely forgotten.
How could he have been so stupid!?
He slowly turned his head towards the kitchen counter, the muscles in his neck creaking like old hinges. He knew exactly what he would see there, and he was right.
Next to the cutting board was their knife block. Every slot was filled neatly, except for one. That single, empty slit stared back at Luke like the eye of a snake, unblinking.
"Oh dear merciful gods..." Luke whispered, porridge dripping from his spoon and back into the bowl, unnoticed.
The knife was with Banno. That crazy giant was dangerous enough just lying there in that bed with naught but its teeth and claws, but now it had a weapon, hand-delivered by the one who was supposed to be trying to protect his family. And Dad...
"LUUUUKE!! TIM!!" Dad screamed.
Luke dropped the spoon into the porridge with a plop and stood up so fast he knocked his chair right over, images of blood and guts racing through his mind, and overlaying all of it was the laughter he had heard last night, a soft, gleeful chuckle, magically transported from the past and into the present like a piercing echo.
"Dad!" Luke yelled back, breaking out into a full sprint. If anything happened to his dad, he'd...
He'd never be able to forgive himself.
Luke smacked into the door head-on, throwing it wide. "Dad! Are you -"
No puddles of blood. No recently eviscerated father lying on the ground with his throat slit open. No Banno standing over any corpses, knife in hand, laughing maniacally like a fairy tale sorcerer. No gloom or doom of any kind.
Unless you counted the doom radiating from Dad's furious eyes.
Luke stepped back a little, suddenly terrified, not for his father's safety, but his own.
And that's when Tim blundered in, nearly smacking into Luke's back just as Luke had smacked into the door. "What!? What!? What is it!?" he stammered, nearly overcome with panic. He took one look around the room, also just as Luke had, and came to the exact same conclusion. "Oh..."
Yeah, that just about summed it up.
The Wolf was sitting up, much like it did last night when it had scared the Living Soul out of him, but that was where the similarities ended. It had lowered its ears against its head and folded its hands in its lap, and it was wearing the saddest, most pitiful look on its face, like it was a chore to draw breath. And it was looking at Luke with that lonely eye of his in such an odd manner he couldn't place it at first. It just seemed so out of place on a face like that, but it came to him eventually.
Disappointment. It was the same look a mother might give a child caught stealing money from the chapel coffers, brimming with tears.
And on the bedside table, neatly lined up, side by side, were the candle and knife.
Oh, you sneaky son of a bitch... Luke thought, understanding dawning on him almost as fast as Dad's fury. It was in the way his lips were twitching and his tail was sweeping around behind the chair like a restless snake. This was going to be bad. This was going to be very, _very_bad.
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