The Things Betwixt...

Devils in the Tall Grass

Daily Flash Fiction Challenge Entry
01-25-2025

In my years of delving the chasms of the macabre, I'd seen countless unsettling intricacies of transmundane torments. As time passed, I nurtured stout curiosities of the festering wounds of society's penetralia, wherein devils stalk the tall grass. I'd a strong constitution to the horrors of clandestine ritualism, but summons to examine a pox upon the English countryside tested my resolve.

A charred, disheveled house loomed atop the knoll afore hungering trees of a rotted grove that swallowed the cold light of a frail, pallid moon. History it had, for folks of yore feared witchcraft. This house and occupant were victims to those torch-bearing superstitions.

Therein that sickly room beyond the dark threshold lie a cadaver unlike any earthly thing I'd seen. 'Twas ghastly and pale; sunken and stretched taut as if the skin would tear away like ripping stitch from seam. Thin in breadth it was; twisted and gnarled as strangling tendrils 'round the decrepit branches of derelict woods.

It's face contorted with mouth agape. Ragged, decayed lips stretched and curled into a blackened, fathomless maw. Abyssal hollows stared at me. Eyes had long since rotted away, but therein remained something; a whispering. I couldn't place it, but it vexed me as it stared - lifeless, yet curiously alive.

Within, I felt a gnawing urge to read those pages it clutched. With trembling hand I disjoined tome from death's grip.

Therein vexing grimoire I read not passages of the unholy and occult, but scripture. Unblemished rosary lay like a weight against the gray skin of the corpse's chest. This was no witch, but a clergyman. Whereupon I'd surmised that those devils in the tall grass were the fearful and ignorant.

Whence one looks for evil in people long enough, eventually they find it - even if never there at the beginning.

Word Count - 300