The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Something Borrowed
by Alyson Faye

The eclipse is coming, the whole village is talking of nothing else. Then there will be the Summoning, then the Choosing, then the Marrying, and then …. Agnes shuts out the thought of what comes after… instead she tilts her face up to the sun, letting it warm her skin, and bending, she strokes the spiky ears of corn.

She whispers her name to the wheat, which ripples in a sudden breeze. The air is heavy with heat, the field stretches away and Agnes thinks of her family waiting to prepare her for the Summoning.

She will be one of three possible Brides offered. She will wear a fine hand-stitched gown, a crown of daisies and cornflowers, her hair will be braided, her lips and cheeks tinted pink, her eyes rimmed with kohl, and she will wait at the edge of the field with the other two Brides, until the hour of the eclipse.

Agnes feels a tremor of fear; this is her fate but not one she has chosen. And even if she flees there is nothing for her out here.

The village is abuzz with folk preparing for the evening’s rituals – women sewing and baking, men smoking pipes, polishing boots and sharpening knives, children playing tag around the fire and the three Brides standing in the midst of the hurly burly being attended to.

Agnes feels several pairs of hands grab her, pulling her into the circle, brushing her long red hair, tugging at her plain tunic, washing her hands and feet all whilst tears prick her eyes and trickle down her cheeks.

‘Now, don’t ye be crying, lassie. That’s a child’s game,’ Nan Bullock, the village midwife, says. ‘Tis an honour to be so chosen.’

Agnes turns on the older woman. ‘Aye, is that so? If you had been pretty when a young lass, Nan Bullock, and not struck ugly at birth, then perhaps you would have been so ‘honoured’. Instead you have reached three score years, and enjoy a happy life. Likely that will not be my fate.’

The older woman’s drops her eyes, and stays silent. Her hands shaking as she sews the bridal gown.

As dusk creeps over the corn fields, and finds its way into the village, the children prance off to bed, the men drink ale, and the women chant and sing.

At ten of the hour the three Brides, accompanied by elders,  process to the corn field. Everyone departs, except for the guards, armed with daggers.

The sky darkens, the moon slides across the face of the sun, and the corn begins to grow restive, and rustle, the ground thrums, and the air fills with the stench of –

Manure mixed with iron … thinks Agnes.

The three Brides hold hands, eyes closed, neither staring up at the sun, nor watching what is approaching through the corn.

However all three feel its approach, its massive size, hear its hooves and the stink of its feral breath sickens them.

One Bride collapses, sobbing, lying prostrate on the ground. A second faints dead away. Only Agnes, seventeen summers old, stays upright. Anger fuels her, and this forces her eyes open.

The air vibrates around her, there’s a buzzing and a thrumming beneath her bare feet, and something gigantic blocks her vision.

I am Korndämonen. I choose you. You will be my mate.

Agnes senses these words, as the demon lowers himself to her, horns outlined against the ashy grey air, breath burning her cheeks, bristly hair scratching her fair skin.

Now, Agnes thinks, it has to be now. Before he carries me away.

The guards, she guesses, have fled already, for no one who faces the demon lived to tell the tale. She is alone. Except for the secret stitched inside her seams. A gift from Nan Bullock, who in her shame, gave her ‘something borrowed’ for her wedding.

Agnes tears at her bridal gown, whilst the demon sniffs her hair, licking her face, bare shoulder and chest. Drool drips down her body.  But her fingers find and grip Nan’s gift.

‘To break the cycle,’ the old woman whispered, ‘I used this on my own wedding night.’ Then she had winked.

Agnes thrusts the fine tempered steel blade into the demon’s scaly chest, straight into its heart, pushing hard, as if hammering a nail into wood.

‘Mirti demonas mirti,’* she whispers, in the tongue of her ancestors.

Dark blood drips onto her white gown, coating her, but worse yet are the creature’ s dying screeches as it thrashes and spasms.

Agnes huddles on the ground watching the eclipse lift, the moonlight revealing rows of silver-tipped corn, and, finally a charred mound – the grave of the demon.

* Die, demon die

Fiction © Copyright Alyson Faye

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Alyson Faye:

The Lost Girl & Spindleshanks

The Lost Girl
A nailed-up door. An inheritance which comes with a ghost. A missing girl. A fifty-year-old mystery. Parapsychologist Berkley Osgood is hired to investigate. What he uncovers reveals secrets the living want to hide and the dead will never forgive.

Spindleshanks
Adam is having nightmares about a skeletal shadow figure, who he calls Spindleshanks. Soon his whole class are sharing the same nightmare. Adam’s dad, Rob, knows that Spindleshanks can’t be real. But is he? One terrible night Rob has to face his son’s nightmare creature and fight for his son’s life. What would you sacrifice to have your child back safe?

“A decent two-for-one. Alyson Faye brings the engaging and eerie in equal measure.” CC Adams – horror / dark fiction author

Available on Amazon!

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Sky Demon
by Alyson Faye

Every night Alwain watched the skies, as had his father before him, and his father’s father. As a boy he’d been taught how to read the cloud patterns, the shifts in sun and shadow, the signals sent by the gods of the sky.

“Only the chosen can hear their voices,” Alwain’s father told him. “When the storms come, the rains will wash away our homes, the bolts of white light will strike down the unwary, blinding or smiting them dead. You, young Alwain, will be our last defence. You must do as the sky gods command.”

Alwain, all of ten years old, hung his head. “Even i -if they tell me to kill?”

His father frowned. “The gods are all knowing, and righteous in their might.”

The years passed, and Alwain grew tall and strong. He was now a hunter, a husband, a father, as well as the village’s Protector.

The village flourished, the crops fed all, and the animals grew fat. The river ran flush with fish and for years and years the skies were quiescent.

Until . . . the horn blared at dawn, a series of rapid frantic notes, dragging Alwain and others from their hammocks and out of their huts.

Though it was dawn the sky wore the colours of dusk, steely grey shadows swelled the clouds’ bellies, a sickly orange glow ringing them. The air stank of fire and copper.  A searing white light blazed through the clouds, and, streaking through the sky, seemed to be coming closer . . . ever closer . . .

“It’s heading towards the river!” Irian, the blacksmith, shouted.

Alwain cried, “Gather the women and children in the Great Hall! Barricade the doors.”

He gathered his hunting party, and the men headed north to the river. The closer they got the worse the stench of rotting meat, and burning wood. A herd of cows lay on their sides in the fields, charred and blackened. The trees smoked, their leaves scorched away and the river sizzled.

Alwain was the first to reach the shoreline. He gazed in amazement at what was resting in the water. Several pieces of shiny metal floated but smashed up, and in the midst of the debris, as if by magic, tiny fires burned. Most strange of all to his eyes was the creature who had burst from the wreckage. It was silver, glittering in the sun, and floating upon a raft the colour of egg yolk.

The hunters splashed into the shallows pulling at the raft, dragging it and the creature to shore.

Alwain scanned the skies, turning the eye of his mind and the tuning of his hearing inwards to hearken to the sky gods’ message.

He knelt, he prayed, he wept. And he heard – nothing.

Only the whisper of the river, the frightened breaths of his men, and the wheezing gasps from the creature. It was in pain, injured but it lifted a limb, pointing upwards, and uttered incomprehensible sounds. The men shrank away, turning terrified faces to Alwain.

He thought, Help me, sky gods, tell me what to do.

He was their Protector,  and he knew that what he did next would define the rest of his life, and also those of his children’s. If he failed the village, his bloodline would be exterminated. It was the Ruling.

Only weak men showed fear and indecision. His father had beaten that into him.

Alwain stood up. “The gods have spoken to me. We can all see their anger in the skies.” The men, terror-struck, nodded.

“This stranger is a threat. He must die.”

Alwain thrust his father’s dagger into the creature’s chest. Static burst from the silver suit’s buttons, the creature’s head dressing lit up, bleeping and it screeched in its own tongue.

But like any other villager when struck thus, it died.

“Now the ritual can begin. Harvest it, and we will feast well tonight,” Alwain walked away, knowing he was safe; the Protector inviolate.

***

Alwain sat by the fire, now sixty winters older, watching his many grandchildren play with sticks, clay toys, beads and ropes. His family.

He listened as they sang :-

“Lulla lulla, sleep thee well.

Lulla, demon, you’ll never dwell,

Not in our homes, nor in our hearts

For Alwain chopped you up in parts.

Lulla, lulla sleep thee well.”

Alwain smiled, licked his lips and drank deep from the skull cup, rocking back and forth to the singing. Around his leathery neck and wrist, the strings of teeth, torn from the sky demon’s mouth, clicked softly.

Fiction © Copyright Alyson Faye
Image © Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose

More from Alyson Faye:

The Lost Girl & Spindleshanks

The Lost Girl
A nailed-up door. An inheritance which comes with a ghost. A missing girl. A fifty-year-old mystery. Parapsychologist Berkley Osgood is hired to investigate. What he uncovers reveals secrets the living want to hide and the dead will never forgive.

Spindleshanks
Adam is having nightmares about a skeletal shadow figure, who he calls Spindleshanks. Soon his whole class are sharing the same nightmare. Adam’s dad, Rob, knows that Spindleshanks can’t be real. But is he? One terrible night Rob has to face his son’s nightmare creature and fight for his son’s life. What would you sacrifice to have your child back safe?

“A decent two-for-one. Alyson Faye brings the engaging and eerie in equal measure.” CC Adams – horror / dark fiction author

Available on Amazon!