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There are some evils greater than others.
A few, very few, met in the Owl Hollow, in the rotting waters of Pennsylvania's dismal swamps. A small group whispered into the night. Hooded and slow in his movements, a new priest pushed through the crowd, a thin mist swirling around his legs.
"Falsehoods," the new man rasped. "False priest of a dead coven."
"Who the hell are you?" the coven priest snapped. Raising his robes, he stepped back, leaving a drugged woman making sucking noises and reaching for him.
"Sent by the Owl."
The coven was half drunk and giggling. They stared at the new man, whispering laughter. The coven priest balled his fists, sneering. The new man brought forth a small bundle of ancient skin. He untied it. Curious now, the coven pressed near. The skin fell away to reveal the
skean-dubh, the Dark-Spirit Knife.
"What the hell are you doing with that?" the coven priest snapped, reaching for it. "Fucking thief. It's been missing since the rednigger bitch killed Uncle Mikheil." He grabbed at it.
Backing away the new man was laughing. Slowly, he traced a line of dark fire through the air. The new man's shadowed face lit with a cold light. In the haft an eye flicked open, staring down at the man with cold and disbelieving eyes.
A muttered cough, nervous, half-angry, came from one in the crowd. The point reached out, just touching the man. Tearing itself from the new priest's hands, it thrust itself into the straining chest. The sacrifice shrieked, falling to the wet earth, the knife whispering as it fed on him.
"Chosen," the new man whispered. Pulling back the old priest's hooded cloak, stripping the dark, coarse robes away, the new priest revealed a pattern of red snaking over the body. He shouted it, "Chosen!
"Come, lord of the grave. Come forth, Hunter of the Dark. In the name of the dark god, I call forth the corpse of Mikheil Greylov from the depths of hell."
There was a faint noise, a rasp of earth and rock falling away. A beast arose from unmoving wisps of fog. It held an axe in decaying hands and muttered a crooning love song in a throat wracked by coughs and small, squirming vermin that feed on the dead.
The rusted axe rose over the staring eyes of the old priest. Fell. The head spun off in the night. The dead beast dropped to his knees and sucked on blood the spurted from the sacrifice with greedy mumbles. It washed down his face and ran to the ground. Tommy Drobnicki ripped back the hood of his cloak to howl at the moon.
"You're dead, injun. Benny Grey, you're freekin dead." He reached down to pat the cold, still shuddering chest of this coven's ex-priest. Two members of the coven whispered moans, sliding to the ground in dead faints. The stench of raw human wastes drifted through the already dank air. Floating in the trees overhead, Owl watched with amusement bordering contempt.
Grandfather Greylov was back from Hell's bitter depths, and Grandfather was hungry.
Fog blanketed him and the Uohali Sun. lost on a back road in North Carolina's dismal Swamps, Benny slowed, and slowed yet more. It was as bad as anything seen back home on the Freeland Mountain road.
A yellow 'T' sign loomed, then a rusted stop sign. Muttering a curse, Benny gently applied the brakes. A wet road wasn't a lot different than a greased one, when you're riding on tar and gravel.
'No crap, Grandson.'
"Shut it, you old goat."
He nudged the Sun into neutral and stared through the gloom at the dank swamp beyond the intersection. His road ended, the lane before him stretched off to the east and the west as far as the eye could see. Which was about twenty feet in this graveyard soup.
Another mutter in the back of his head, 'I don't like this.'
Neither did Benny. He spat at the stop sign. This was good a time as any to get rid of that coffee downed at supper. He shoved the Red Sun back on her stand and undid the buttons of his fly. Like the cowboys and warriors of old, he did not bother to dismount.
"And how do you spell relief?" he ask with a relieved groan. "P.I.S. . . . S." Laughter froze, unvoiced. The blue of his eye darkened, crystallized. On the back of his head short hairs raised and stirred. He searched through the gloom. Nothing. The fog was too thick to see movement. He rubbed the back of his neck. The hair crawled up again. Something was out there. Something watched him. Like, being a bug under a microscope, or stared at by some freekin scientist visiting the Manse.
'No crap, boy.'
He closed his eye and cast a look around.
Nothing close, not even animals. Weird. Not even a mouse. A small grin played over his face. It wasn't looking a lot like Christmas.
The Wolf, as his mother laughingly referred to his stomach, rumbled in anger and bit at the scar of a duodenal ulcer. Benny winced. Hiccups ballooned against his diaphragm. He bit them off with a savage intensity. Grandfather Greylov said he got them when scared because he was a coward at heart, a craven little red-nigger. Not white enough to be a man.
Grampa Wya muttered something, then snapped, 'Cool it with the bull. Let's get out to here. Got me a life to live.'
"Chill out, Grampa. You been dead almost as long as I been alive."
He scowled and strained, left hand slowly rebuttoning the jeans, right hand resting lightly over the bulge of a knife honed to a razor edge.
A howl? Faint, but unmistakable, it echoed in eerie fright through the trees. No telling where it had come from. In a tree to his right an owl moaned with a sharp, hungry sound.
Man, but this was all too much. The howl . . . maybe shon:gili night-stalkers? Nut cases who had an ability to change to a canine shape. They loved nights like this, hunting anything that moved. Preferably, people.
Benny spat on the side of the road.
Old man Greylov's shon:gili Hunters wouldn't be looking this far south.
Then again, they tried twice while he lay helpless in that hospital bunk down in LeJeune. And killed old lady Myers husband in the process. Benny gave the gas tank an awkward pat. Old man Myers had been a real bro at a time friends were few and far between. Myers gave him the will to fight the paralysis and walk again. The old man died defending him from Tommy Drobnicki, a Hunter for the
Tal Asgina Nohi coven of Owl-Men. The Greylov coven.
And LeJeune was way farther south than he was, here, east of the Dismal Swamp in the northern part of the state. Grampa was from the Smoky Mountains. Even these days plenty of folks got axed for practicing black magic.
Man, but North Carolina was beautiful. Plenty of family, up towards Cherokee. Grampa Wya was remembered and respected there. They wanted Benny to stay forever, but he was there less than a day when he recognized a man dressed as a tourist. A fed agent, Andy Jackson Coulton, blinded in one eye from the time he captured a runaway Benny near Kills Deer, New York. A raven had taken the eye and, for a time, Benny escaped the Project and slavery.
"I hate you, Bobby Joe Ritchie," she screamed at the retreating taillights of a pickup. "I'll never marry you now, that's for God certain." With a stamp of her foot, she shivered, clutching the thin sweater around her shoulders and began to walk along the deserted stretch of country road.
In the distance an owl moaned, a dark, hungry sound. From the trees, something echoed.
It slipped along the road, trailed her, then walked parallel through the blinding fog. Skeletal feet dragged through cold water.
"Who's there?" she cried, and stopped. Lord, but maybe she had been just a little hasty, telling off Bobby Joe that way. He probably wouldn't call her for days.
The owl called, demanding, insistent.
"Please," she whispered, and began walking backwards, her eyes straining in terror. "Stop scaring me."
It could not see nor smell, but it knew she was there, a few feet away. It edged closer, closer. Axe dangling from one clawed hand, it stepped out onto the road. The only sound was that of raw bone clicking on the pavement, a faint slap of moldy grave cloth. It paused.
She stumbled into something on the road. It smelled of death and decay. The girl shrank away. It smiled at her.
"What give me?" It took her by the arm. She screamed and bolted up the road. It was on her in a flash.
Throwing her to the ground, it pressing lips rotted and squirming with cold, unclean things on her mouth. It shredded her clothing and took possession of what would have been Bobby Joe's the night of their wedding. She whimpered a protest.
"Now," it said, and withdrew from her bleeding flesh. "Good." The ravaged face stared into her eyes. Her mind slipping away, she stared back. Cheated of her terror it howled and slapped the girl's face. Floating to a dead snag that listed over the road, the owl hissed a warning.
The night stalker snarled and swung its axe in fury. The head and the dead, staring eyes flew into the swamp. Twin fountains of bright scarlet shot up, trickled away. For a brief space of time the woman's heels drummed on the road, a dull static of sound in the soft night. She quivered and slumped. The night stalker lowered its head, the moss-yellowed teeth sank into the pale tender flesh of a breast and it began to feed.
Far down the road a truck roared.
Bobby Joe was angry, but she was right. They could wait until the wedding. A man had to respect a woman's right to say no . . . But man, the waiting was agony.
The night stalker looked up from the corpse. He hissed, the axe in hand to defend itself.
Then Bobby Joe saw it. Jerking open his glove box he clawed for a gun. To any who bothered to ask, the outlawed weapon was for snakes and vermin. He mocked himself, it was a security blanket, something that helped him sleep better, those nights he spent in the cab of the pickup. It held off the nightmares of Rio de Janeiro and the close in-fighting. Bobby Joe never used this particular piece on a man. Tears blurred his vision at the thought of scarring his soul with another death. But that was her it had. It had be. He swept away the fears and leaned out the door of the truck. With short, vicious cracks, Bobby Joe emptied the pistol in its torso.
The truck swerved around the corpse and the thing. It leaped, the blade smashed a side mirror to a shattering of stars. A hundred yards down the road, the truck slide to a halt. She was dead. Bobby Joe kicked out the clip and rammed a new one in its place.
He spun the truck around, the tires screamed on wet pavement, smoked black and gray. He rammed the truck at the thing now crouched over the girl, the shrieking black rubber scarcely louder than the roar coming from his throat.
The truck slammed into the thing. It lifted, spun though the air and splashed into the swamp.
Bobby Joe skidded to a halt. Rotten meat smeared the windshield, a fine webbing of cracks radiated out from the point of impact.
He backed the pickup to the girl and moved to her side. Bobby Joe crouched next to her. One hand reached out to touch the raw flesh. Something burned him. He jerked his fingers back and stared in the bright truck lights at a squirming maggot.
In the trees a great horned owl whispered.
A hoarse whisper of sound drifted over the murky waters and the ghost-like wisps of misty fog. Rusty laughter came closer. Now only a few yards separated it from the Rider. And the Rider was too caught up in anger and resentment to notice. The unwary shall always be prey for the Hunter.
It moved with a stealth that even Benny's ancestors, both American Indian and Scythian would have admired, even while they fell to their knees and prayed for deliverance. The axe it held aloft swayed, the blood of two victims on the pitted blade congealing and gleaming.
Behhhneeeee. I'm coming for you, Benny.
His victim shivered and pulled the black leather jacket a little closer.
An eternity in Hell, because of this one. Now was time for vengeance. To live again in the world of men as a man. Another it had brought from the grave, only to see him die. Now the boy would feel the weight of death. Feel the decay of dammed flesh, the acid burn of maggots feeding on his brain. The Owl shall ride him. And Benny's father would live again, forever. Together, he and his son would rule. The
asgina-lords had promised.
He crept a little closer. The grasses were rich with dew and rain. The leaves were soggy under feet almost denuded of flesh, killing all sound. Benny loomed before the night stalker.
Grampa muttered, 'Gran'son, I got me a bad feeling about this.'
The axe raised.
Benny shook his head. He cut off the gas and pulled his bum leg over the saddle. He held onto the bars for a moment and cursed the splinters of bone that nibbled pain throughout his spine and made the leg weak.
The freekin thing would be the death of him yet. What the hell did that matter. Cindy and her elitist crowd of caviar eaters would never let him live like a man, free to run, free to love where he wanted. He'd be dammed if he would let her put that collar around his neck again.
Screw Cindy and the freekin horse she rode in on.
A twinge of pain started in the vicinity of the microchip.
A wry smile twisted Benny's lips. The dog must forever lick the master's hand. Fumbling with the saddlebags, he paused until it eased. The dammed chip was alive and well, even if he wasn't. Powered off the energy his body produced, it would live as long as he did. To remove it, the surgeons would have had to remove a big chunk of gray matter. He didn't have enough brains to keep out of trouble as it was. It was, like Cindy said, as ingenious as the original slave-warden, the devil himself.
He couldn't disagree with that. He didn't dare.
A bird called, the soft, growling moan of a Great Horn owl. Benny froze. He stared at the straps of the saddlebag. A shiver rolled up his spine.
Nah, man. Couldn't be. Not this time of year. Maybe in the north, up in Pennsylvania. . . . Maybe there.
He laughed, but it came out awkward and uncertain.
Coffee. He had a big thermos of rich coffee, bitter and strong and black as his sins.
Tired was all. Just frickin worn out from being chased around the state, one step ahead of the Project, is all.
Yeah . . . Coffee would help. And about three days of uninterrupted sleep. And a warm and willing woman. Heat seeped through him at the thought of a woman.
Benny fumbled with the wet, tight strap. A grimace snarled across his face. His right hand wasn't what it used to be. But, man, not much about him was, starting with the rocks between his ears. The docs were really great, piecing together bones like some jigsaw puzzle. Still, nothing worked right, not the parts still made of bone.
Man, but what a trip that accident was. Benny grinned. Thirty car pile-up, all caused by one drunk and crazy 'skin.
"Me."
He laughed.
"Yo, flash-light, aw-right."
The light was a weak yellow glow in this dead-man's fog. The bright amber of the body was slick with rain and the sweat of his palm.
Benny never did know what it was that made him turn. Nerves? The faint stench of something long dead? Or maybe just having to live on the run, the hardest of all habits to break. So many years it was a life of bare survival in the reformatory, prison, and other forms of slavery at the hands of the State.
The dim yellow glow lighted a face ravaged by time and things that feed on the dead. The skull was almost denuded of flesh. What remained was enough to loosen bowels and make even the priests of the Owl-god puke.
It screeched. Having seen a lot worse in his life, Benny dived over the Uohali. The light shattered on the road and then it was on him.
Wheezing laughter gushed breath the odor of rotting blood over Benny's face.
Something hot and wet fell on Benny's lip. It scored a burn on his skin. Another fell. The mouth opened and a flood of squirming horrors that fed on its tongue and brain washed over its victim's flesh.
Benny gagged. With the strength of Owl, the night stalker held Benny in an iron embrace. It crooned into his mind, one fleshless hand caressed the long, shaggy hair.
Be still, my boy.
"Go to hell." The word was a weak gasp, a whisper. "You . . . You're dead. Mom kill you on the Witch Stone." A sharp whistle cut through Benny's mind. Grampa Wya began a war chant that started and flowed and grew in the name of Sun-Wolf. Old man Grey snarled.
But I live. Testimony to the powers greater than that of your mother's God. Just as my son will live again, when you die.
The axe moved a fraction of an inch. It caressed the cold, sweating forehead of the victim.
I love you, Benny. You were my favorite grandson. Did you know that? That was why you lived so long. Let me show you as I used to, how I love you.
The hand moved down, fumbled with the buttons and ripped open the jeans. A hand blackened and clawed by decay reached inside the jeans.
Like the Manse. The friggin Manse, with that half-assed pervert between his legs. The chill of the scalpel in Dr. Raleigh's soft hand, the shame and the pain as the blade made an incision in Benny's cringing scrotum.
Benny shrieked a strangled shout, "Leggo my balls, you bastard," and heaved it off him.
Screaming, "I'll kill you," Benny launched himself at the corpse only to be slammed onto his back. The fleshless hand returned to his hair. Benny was powerless, his hands twisted behind his back now, legs tangled with the thing's. Grave lengthened nails twisted in Benny's hair and jerked his head up. Then slammed it back on the road. Bright lights and stars exploded in his head.
Bad boy. Bad red-nigger Benny.
It crooned, chanting a litany in a voice that sounded like a mother's love.
My son was a fool to marry that red-nigger mother of yours. Do I have to punish you, Benny? Whip you until you faint. Remember, as I so often did when you were five?
The axe etched in a slow arch. The edge nicked Benny's forehead, smeared on his face the blood of the night stalker's last victims.
Bad Benny. Half-human red nigger boy. How many times did I use that mother of yours, Benny. Stupid redskin bitch, she never did conceive me a child. She needed a man, Benny. I knew that and helped her to forget after they brought your father home in a steel box. His body so torn, so destroyed. Unrecognizable as human, let alone a man of the Master Race. The drug lords did that. Filthy mongrels. I hate you all.
A hiss of rage came from the hole in its chest. Benny saw the broken stub of the butcher knife his mother used to kill the old man almost seven years ago.
"D-Dad loved Mom."
The head swung near, breath roared from its mouth.
Don't call my son that. He may have sired you, but that doesn't make you his son. My Ben would never mate with a redskin animal, but to enjoy his pleasure. She tricked him. She tricked my Ben.
Tears filled with minute, white, squirming life dribbled from the ruined eyes.
She used my last child. My Ben.
"You killed him on the 'Stone, you bastard." Benny spat in the face of his grandfather and tried to free himself from the bonds of flesh and hate that wove around them. "He tried to save me. He came back to life and you murdered him instead of me."
Grandfather Grey cackled and rose. Benny tried to move. It crooned a binding spell over him.
I raised him from the grave. You didn't see the thing they sent back from America del Sur, boy. It wasn't Ben . . . Not my son. The things they did to him . . . How he must have suffered. And that black bastard, Martinelli, was in the same camp. He came, claiming my Ben's last words were ones of love to that whore.
Shocked, Benny said, "Mom never knew. You never let her talk to him, did you?"
The axe snapped up. It gleamed in the watery light of a pale moon.
It wavered, hesitated.
I love you, Benny. I'm doing this for Anna, Benny. So she can have my Ben once more, raised from the grave. So they can have other children. Owl is hungry, always to hungry.
The voice was cut off in a sob.
The axe hissed, assumed a life of its own. The demonic presence within twisted in the old man's hands. Benny's eye widened, grew mesmerized as he followed it.
Good-bye, Benny.
The blade hacked down and Ben headed south.
Sparks snapped and glowed, then died. Chips of steel were small glints, lost in the fog.
Carl died because of you, Benny. You killed him.
Benny shook his head in fear and confusion. Where was old man? The voice came from one side, then the other. And now silence.
"C-Carl, man, he did what he had to do. My stepdad died like he lived, in a ball of fire. Like the eye of a hurricane, you old fart. Carl was a man." Benny spat on the ground and listened.
You murdered Carl.
Benny dodged, rolled. The axe smashed into the ground where he had been standing. His leg gave out and Benny tumbled to the road.
Then he was up, fists cocked, teeth bared.
Curses echoed through the mist. It was growing weak, so far from home, so far from the grave. Benny was snatched up and thrown to the ground.
"I love you, kid." The voice was Carl's, his Yona:ki ':Doda, Papa Bear and filled with terror and pain. "Please, Benny. Help me. I'm burning. I'm in hell and it hurts - hurts - hurts. Please, save me. Let him kill you and the devil said he'll let me go."
Benny shuddered.
"Liar. No, you son of a bitching liar. Carl wouldn't-"
Decaying lips closed on Benny's mouth. A hand reached into the open jeans. Raleigh, the scalpel, pain, the shame of almost losing his manhood before he was a man. Benny's fist cracked on the side of the rotted skull. Green and putrefied brains seeped from the wound. Benny wiped hair, the thing's hair from his fist and took the time for a long, luxuriant vomit.
A hiss whispered over him.
Benny ducked to hear the axe rush over his head.
The leg, the freekin leg chose this time to go numb and stiff. Benny fell onto the road and cracked his head, hard, on the pavement. A small trickle of blood seeped from the back of his head.
'Now. Now,' it shrieked. 'Nownownow.'
The axe scorched with black flames. Nearby hovered the Owl, watching, approving.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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