verdunkeln

Violin

Everyone had told him, over and over, never to enter the død landsbyen, but the music was too beautiful.

He’d heard it the moment he woke. Without disturbing his parents, he wandered out of the Veil, through the fields and misty wood, and into the dead land.

The song strengthened as he hopped piles of rock and wood. Despite the music, the air was thin, lacking. He hummed along.

Plants grew in shapes and shades he’d never seen. The song ceased as he approached one such creature, vines and flowers crawling along leg-like stalks. At the top, the largest flower watched.

A violin and bow rested upon a pair of extended stems. He took the instrument without hesitation, held it to his chin. The large flower shriveled.

The song came far easier than the boy expected.

Spider

Though she’d been wandering for what seemed ages, the cry had not relented. “It can’t be him,” she panted over and over again, “it can’t be!” But her hope was just as persistent as the cry.

Branches, stickers, and other things slashed her legs from beneath the rolling mist, but she did not feel them. The sobbing baby, her sobbing baby, swallowed her senses, led her down its tunnel, to the black mouth in the rock.

The cry sputtered, staccatoed, was no longer a cry. Her hope shriveled, as eight great moist arms reached out of the cave, eager for the mother’s embrace.

bat

A hiss, felt more than heard, erupted from the woods, and dark shapes flapped into the night sky.

“What’s that noise, Gramma?” asked Clover, watching shadows flutter across the moon.

The old woman rocked in her chair a while. “Once, there was a boy who got lost in the woods. We searched and searched but couldn’t find him.”

Clover rolled her eyes; Gramma was getting old, confused. She decided to let the woman ramble a bit. “Other things found the boy. Found him and raised him.”

“But what about the sound?”

Gramma took a breath. “Those other things were bats, darling. And that sound is the sound of him hunting.”

Grin

It follows me.

Oh, pride and stupidity are one in the same. I should never have gone into the misty wood!

The fog closes behind me. I think I can finally breathe, but no, still it floats toward me, hairless, grinning so profoundly I hear its lips stretch.

Finally, the edge of the forest. I clear it, needles wedging themselves between my ribs. The river. I cross it, turn—

It has not stopped. How? These sorts of things don’t leave the Verdunkeln—not in the daylight!

A farmer! A friend! “Help!” I call. “Your pitchfork!”

He stops, scrunches his brow, points the blades toward me. He must see it. “Slow down, now.”

“Slow down?” I yell, pointing behind me. “Kill it!”

The hairless head hovers before me, its face inches from my own. Impossibly, it grins wider, stares. I try to strike, but my arms don’t move.

“Oh, son,” says the farmer, his gaze all wrong. “Kill what?”

The Persistence waits.