The Demon's Reprisal

Falling rain patters against the stone of a forgotten, overgrown cemetery. It’s not a place that’s received visitors in years. The creaking iron gate has been left open. Broken fences, covered in vines and vegetation, merge with the brush surrounding the remote area. Not even the lights of the city can penetrate the dense wall of oak trees secluding this once-consecrated location from the outside world.

A strong gust blows through the trees and sweeps over the cemetery. Metal upon metal rattles in the shadows.

“Careful,” Milton whispers, his deep voice abnormally quiet. Even in a cemetery, the other man manages to look polished. He stands out among the shadows. A white shirt tucked into his slacks and kept tight with a belt nicely finishes his cultured look, only to be thrown off at the sight of the man’s boots, covered in muck.

If Milton divested the sword sheathed on his back and the loaded shotgun in his hands, he could pass for a middle-aged librarian.

In the pitch black of the night, the cracked and fallen headstones dotting the graveyard make the walk to the mausoleum hazardous. Milton, on point, paves the way with careful steps and wary eyes. He points towards a shadowed structure not far. “Over there,” Milton’s whisper nearly lost behind the gust of another strong wind.

There’s another loud rattle in the dark, and the foliage atop the blackened trees sway in the distance. A curt nod to each other is all that’s needed to resume their trek.

Their boots crunch against the dead leaves and brown grass as they close the rest of the space to the mausoleum. They don’t go inside, leaning strategically on either side of the slightly ajar door — once beautifully carved flowers rise to entwine a gold epitaph that can’t be read, aged, and worn. Inside the crack of the doorway, only darkness is promised further within.

“Kane. Are you ready?” Milton asks, keeping his deep voice low. Back to the stone of the crypt, he begins inspecting his shotgun, making sure it’s battle-ready. He pushes his glasses further up his nose.

Kane unsheathes the sword on his back. The grooves of the hilt dig into his palm, and he lets the weight of the weapon, heavy in his hand, point lazily downward. “We have to kill it tonight.”

Milton acquiesces with a nod. He holds his shotgun upward and peeks through the ajar door. “It’s fed. It won’t be near the surface. It’ll have gone as far underground as it possibly can.”

Kane’s fingers tense on the hilt of the sword. He’d seen the bodies of its recent victims, a family, mutilated and torn apart. If he’d been able to perform a more effective tracking spell, they’d have stopped the monster’s reign before slaughtering so many. He’ll pay it back tonight.

“I’m ready,” Kane pledges. He fixes his grip on the hilt of the sword, palms sweaty.

Milton pushes the door slowly open. It screeches on unoiled hinges. Kane presses the flashlight attached to his jacket on, illuminating the area, and Milton enters first with the barrel of the shotgun as their guide.

Kane takes his time looking over the shadows and cobwebs covering the various golden boxes lining the walls. It’s a columbarium, and a dismal realisation settles heavy over it all, one that speaks of so many cremated remains being forgotten with time.

“And down they went, down into the darkness, down they went to be devoured,” Milton recites unnervingly, standing at the edge of a winding stairwell leading down. An iron gate that had once kept the way closed has been left cracked and twisted unnaturally on either side of the entrance.

Kane peers over the edge. His shifting boots unearth some stones, and debris falls loudly onto the stone steps. Wherever it leads, it is pitch black. His flashlight illuminates a few feet in front of them but does little to penetrate the absolute darkness that’s waiting for them. To devour them. It’s enough to make a sane person think twice before entering.

Kane goes first, taking one step at a time. Fuck Milton’s cryptic visions. Let the darkness come. He’s not a coward.

Milton’s close behind. He turns on the flashlight attached to his shotgun, presumably waiting due to the amount of light it would shed, and working with Kane’s jacket light, they break through the darkness, illuminating the end of the stairwell.

They step into a narrow hallway of mismatched stone, leading away and farther underground. They’re descending into the belly of the beast now — a beast that could smell them the moment they stepped foot in the columbarium.

They move silently past crumbling, dew-covered brick. The smell of death is heavy in the air. Milton overtakes him from his right, taking point once again, shotgun a beacon of light to cut through the darkness. Their careful footsteps intermingle with the far-off sound of dripping water; any noise is raucous in the stillness.

It’s not long until they reach the end of the corridor. Even narrower subsections lead farther into the darkness. A glance down the left wall shows the same gold plaques lining the walls.

Kane’s more interested in what lay between the branching paths, silently coming to stand beside Milton. They both gaze into a hole in the stonework — it’s large enough for a grown man to stand fully upright, rock jutting out unevenly from the ground and flung into piles of loose rubble. Kane’s eyes trail the distinct claw-marked groves in the earth, almost as if the creature had made a trail for them to follow into whatever hellion abyss awaits them deeper within.

“It knows we’re here,” Milton says. He doesn’t look away from the tunnel, as if he believes the monster will stop cowering underground and come to meet them head-on. It won’t— it’s already shown its cowardice by eluding them until now.

“It doesn’t change anything.” Kane reaches forward with his free hand and pushes Milton’s wide-rimmed glasses to sit more comfortably on the man’s nose.

Milton gives him a nod of thanks, and Kane decides that after this shitshow is over, he’ll go out and buy the old geezer a pair of glasses that fully attach to his head. One would think that after years of battling the forces of evil, Milton would have found a fix for such an utter liability.

“It’s hiding. Not us. We’re hunting it. It knows we aren’t weak like its victims.” Kane glares down the shadowed tunnel. “It knows it’s going to die tonight.”

Milton stares at him with a familiar, faraway expression. “They’ll descend into the darkness. Hunted by the dark whisperer. Prey to the shadows.”

Kane’s heart thumps against his chest. Fucking creepy as hell. “Let’s go.” He waits for Milton to shake himself from his stupor and take point again, with Kane following close behind.

Their descent is loud, with boots unearthing and skidding on loose stones and debris. Kane’s sword is a comforting weight in his palm as they move wordlessly through an opening in the tunnel.

It’s a cavern in the earth, unnatural and impossibly giant. Kane’s heart beats in a rapid rhythm against his chest. He looks around wildly; the stalagmite-covered ceiling is improbably high. They’d expected to find a crudely dug hole, certainly not something this expansive.

“My god.” Milton shines the beam of light from his shotgun in a steady arc around the entire cavern. Stones, clumps of moss, and bones of different kinds scatter the uneven, earthy ground. Milton’s brown eyes are blowing wide, the shock on his face sending the first real spike of dread to claw at Kane’s resolve.

They aren’t equipped for this. Kane’s eyes sweep over the cavern walls, his flashlight illuminating the many holes of differing sizes leading farther underground to unseen, unlit subsections. How many are down here? They’d only been tracking one.

Kane’s eyes keep a constant vigil on every shadow, waiting for any sign of movement. “Give me five minutes. I’ll cast the tracking spell again, and we’ll be able to pinpoint where it’s hiding.”

“No.” Milton’s tone leaves no room for arguing. He treks farther into the cavern, slow and careful, bones crunching beneath his boots. “You must conserve your -”

The sudden, distinct sound of soft weeping has them doing their best imitation of statues.

Milton slowly shines the beam of his flashlight at a shadowed corner of the cavern. It shines on a crying girl, hugging her knees, long tacky blonde hair covering her face. She’s wearing a white dress, pristine in all the muck and dirt surrounding them.

“It’s desperate,” Kane says, watching the crying girl coldly. He readies himself as the girl, drawn by his voice, raises her head, and one red eye peers through her parted tendrils of dirty hair.

Kane spits on the ground. “Yeah, we see you. Disgusting fuck.” Its crying morphs into a guttural, open-mouth snarl of bloodied, jagged teeth. He takes a calculated step backward, the barrel of the shotgun in his peripheral vision.

The creature convulses, snarling with gnashing teeth and foaming with bloody saliva.

Milton’s shotgun firing echoes loudly in the cavern. The moment the monster is thrown back, Milton shoots again, hurling it backward.

It’s unnaturally fast, rising on four legs to sprint at them. No longer needing its human disguise, its spine snaps and grows outward. Protruding from its back is a disturbing arc of bone.

Milton fires again. It blasts the monster back a few feet, but its fingers, elongated into claws, dig thick grooves into the earthy floor, stopping itself from being flung any further.

It learned how to conquer their weaponry in that short amount of time.

Red eyes glowing in the dark and unnatural orbs promising nothing but death are trained solely on Kane.

“Kane!” Milton shouts as the creature makes for Kane. It’s not out of worry; it’s an order, a reminder. “The ribcage — it’s behind the ribcage!” Milton throws the shotgun in his haste to unsheathe his sword.

Kane widens his stance and braces for the monster charging him with snarling and jagged teeth. It’s inches from him when Kane moves his entire body to the left and brings his sword down in an arc, severing one of the monster’s bony arms. The grotesque limb flies into the shadows, scattering bones.

Milton’s suddenly beside him, bringing his sword down with practised ease, hacking away another of the creature’s elongated, boney limbs. The monster ceases its anguished withering, and even with only an arm and one misshapen leg, it charges them with a snarl.

The creature, having considered the threats on either side of it, decides Kane is the bigger mark. This closeness gives off the sickening, rancid, and putrid smell of decay. “You know you’re finished. So, come on, come and get me.” Kane laughs a maniacal sound that echoes on every wall in the cavern.

He catches movement to his right, his grin falling.

Milton’s not even looking at the fight in front of him, the idiot. “No. Not now. It’s not time yet,” he yells into the shadows like a lunatic.

Maybe the deeper they’d walked into hell willingly, the more they’d finally both lost whatever sanity they’d been holding.

“Milton. Snap out of it,” Kane grits through his teeth, keeping his focus on the monster in front of him, with no time to stop his partner in arms from walking into the shadows, hypnotised.

The creature looks to the stalagmite ceiling, letting loose a bellow so loud it shakes the very ground beneath their feet.

Kane’s running on pure adrenaline, rushing forward with a shout, blade held high, crunching bone.

Kane agilely ducks a sweep of the monster’s grotesquely long arm. He’s read the books and listened to Milton’s lectures, and while wearing a deranged smile, he does the one thing he should avoid in any circumstance with this type of creature: face it in close-quarter combat.

He’s come to believe that he’s a good fighter, with a natural talent for it honed in every sweep of his blade. His footwork is always precise, and he knows where to place his body to dodge any incoming sweeps of the monster’s claws, but even with all Kane’s flashiness, he’s still only human.

It’s only a few long minutes of battle, and his trained motions are faltering, not of his own accord. The monster’s uncoordinated swipes quickly morph into aimed sweeps at his legs and precise jabs at his arm holding the sword. An otherworldly intelligence sits unnervingly behind its red gaze.

Kill it quickly. It was their plan before everything went to shit. Kane knows he’s wasting time dodging and slicing the air, with the creature copying and mimicking his every move while easily staying just out of reach of the sharp blade.

Milton’s mad raving has abated into silence.

Kane’s on his own. There’s only one way he’ll be triumphant tonight. He’ll have to be reckless. The realization shouldn’t give him the jolt of excitement it does.

Kane allows the rush settling deep in his stomach to fester and fire his blood; the careless adrenaline he usually defies takes over. He lets his tongue make a slow run over his chapped lips, tasting the pure and utter bloodlust sitting heavy in the air. No longer dodging, he has nothing on his mind except the yearning to hack this monster to pieces. He rushes forward with a snarling shout.

The creature takes a few uneven steps backward on its two remaining limbs, growling as Kane forgoes his fancy footwork to rush senselessly into the monster’s attacking range.

Kane doesn’t dodge the claw this time; his shoulder erupts in a blinding flash of hot pain as he’s yanked forward with the momentum of the creature pulling its grotesque hand from his pierced flesh in a bid to strike again.

The pure agony of his rendered flesh has bile burning his throat, threatening to rise and overtake him. He pushes forward by sheer will, his footsteps never faltering and his crazed resolve never wavering.

It’s by mere inches that he dodges a swipe of the creature’s claws, which certainly would have taken his head clean off. He falls to one knee, and through his jeans, a jagged bone digs painfully into his leg. He only has one chance and puts his entire strength into a precise jab of his blade upwards, under the protruding ribcage of the screeching monster. Its wound bleeds disgusting, putrid-smelling, green-hued blood.

The creature releases the loudest bellow yet, loud enough to cause rocks to fall from the ceiling, sending them crashing into the bone-strewn floor. It convulses and withers, trying to escape its impending demise.

Kane puts all his strength behind shoving the blade of his sword farther into the monster’s fleshy underside. It’s not enough. He can’t reach its heart.

He roars a shout of despairing rage and drags his blade out of the creature. Green-hued blood now gushes from the wound, covering him. Kane flings the sword from his hands.

Kane has mere seconds to do anything before the creature regains its faculties and rips him apart. He does the only thing anyone entirely sane would do in such a situation: Kane shoves his hand into the gaping hole in the monster’s chest cavity. He’s almost thrown off balance when the thing decides to whip back and forth, and he grabs one of the protruding ribs to keep his footing, sending bits of bone flying every which way.

Where the fuck is Milton?

Kane’s vision begins to blur, and he loses hope when his arm is halfway inside the wound and his questing fingers don’t find anything but warm mush. He shoves his hand towards the throat of the creature, and he’s sure he’s gone too far, but then, with a thrill, he grazes something solid, and it’s beating rapidly.

Kane’s fingers grasp a sure hold of the monster’s still-beating heart, and before he can yank it free of the cavity, gravity takes its course as the creature bucks.

He’s airborne, and then he hits the bone-strewn ground hard, and the momentum sends him rolling. He lets out a wail, feeling like a hundred needles are jabbing his entire body a hundred times over.

Kane ends up on his back, bones puncturing his legs, arms, and everywhere in between. He turns his head and blinks the blood from his eyes, watching the creature clawing at the earth, anguished and desperate, dying.

It’s a long time before it begins to slow its motions, and in the stillness that settles, he can hear the monster softly weeping, the same sound it mimicked as the girl, and then, like a candle being blown out, it goes perfectly still.

The still heart rolls from his palm and onto the earthy ground.