A haunting supper

Alex limped anxiously along the soft sand of the beach, dragging his right foot heavily behind him. The sun had almost set and he still had several hundred metres to go. He stopped to rest for only a long as it took him to change feet, and then continued to mark his boundary around the small forest that was his home.

Just as the last rays of light sank beneath the distant ocean, Alex completed the circle that enclosed the island; a trench separating land from sea that he silently prayed would see him safely through the night. Both of his feet were torn and bloody from his efforts. In his panic to complete the ritual in had not occurred to him to use a stick to mark the sand, but Alex felt no pain as he stepped inside the circle and consecrated the barrier with the chant he had rehearsed so many times before. There was no room for error; the slightest variation of pitch or tone, a pause too long or too short and the spell could not work.

Alex did not believe that he could survive another night without the protection of the ritual. They would surely kill him if they got inside again tonight.

Once the chant was completed, Alex retreated into the forest, climbed the tree that housed his hidden lookout and waited.

Midnight.

Alex had counted down the seconds from sunset and reached zero with an expectant dread. They were coming.

As always, they came as one, three dark figures that rose from the water beneath the moonlight. They rose slowly from the depths without a sound, and walked like dark parodies of Christ across the stretch of water between the moon’s reflection and the shore. Their semi-transparent forms shimmered like the ocean as they stepped onto the sand. For a long time now Alex had been unable to determine where one form ended and another began, and they moved so much like a single creature that Alex had even dreamt of them as a three headed beast that stalked him in the night.

Walking past the long deflated life-raft that lay abandoned at the high tide-line, they approached the barrier and Alex turned to stone in anticipation. His breath slowed to a crawl while his heart raced to an irregular beat, creating in him a dizzying sensation that threatened to topple him from his perch. They stood at the edge of his shallow sandy trench, their gaze following its length along the shore. They made no effort to cross it, and for the briefest moment Alex dared to hope that it had worked, that he was safe. He relaxed slightly and let out a slow breath.

The heads of the three figures snapped as one to face him, his hiding place rendered useless as their unwavering gaze pierced leaf and branch like arrows to strike Alex’s face. For the first time in ages he could see their faces, the only remaining feature that still suggested that they may once have been three separate entities instead of the one nightmarish creature they had become.

He shuddered at the memory of his dead friends and cursed this creature for using their faces to taunt him. Feeling more secure inside his magical circle of protection he dared to stare back at them, meeting each set of eyes in turn as he looked deep into the faces of his tormentor. Tormentors?

Nothing. No life, no humanity, just cold, reptilian hunger reflected back at him from predatory eyes. Alex fought back the thought that there was hatred in their faces. There couldn’t be. Hatred was too human an emotion for these monsters. Alex’s courage grew and he slowly crept forward to see the creatures more clearly, risking exposure but acting with the confidence provided by safety..

As his head emerged from the canopy the creature slowly lifted its many arms in a wide circle that passed behind its body. It continued to make a sweeping gesture towards the gently lapping water, before bringing its hands arcing overhead and crashing down in front of it, only inches before Alex’s protective circle. The gesture was repeated several times in silence and Alex climbed further out of his hiding place to try and glimpse the meaning of this strange motion, but it was not until he has risen above the last branch obfuscating his body that he could see the growing waves that rose and fell to the rhythm of the creatures strange gestures.

Panic returned and froze Alex where he crouched among the branches as the purpose of this strange ritual quickly became apparent. This was new magic, more powerful than anything he had encountered before. The waves grew with each rise and fall of their gesturing arms until a breaker finally swept forward to fill and flatten a small section of the feeble barrier.

It was all they needed.

With feet that seemed to glide above the ground the figures sped through the gap and disappeared among the bushes, heading directly for Alex’s hideout. He stared in disbelief, his mind spinning and unable to process what he had just witnessed until one thought punched through his confusion. They were coming. Instinctive terror took over and he descended, half climbing, half falling, down the tree to the soft ground below and ran clumsily through the trees, away from the approaching nightmares that pursued him.

Alex was not fit. After an initial flurry of activity building shelters and securing the limited sources of food on the island, his weeks of isolation had been largely sedentary. Weeks spent sitting, eating, watching and waiting in the hope of spying some sign of life across the horizon that might offer the chance of rescue.

As he thrashed his way through the undergrowth his lungs burned with the effort of his gasping, terrified breaths. He did not stop to chastise his complacency, cursing instead the angry shadows that leered at him from every direction. Were they here already? Were they able to move freely through the trees like ghosts?

NO! Not ghosts. Monsters. Creatures. DEMONS! Creatures of evil. These things were NOT HIS FRIENDS!

Alex’s anger was drained just as quickly as it had risen as, looming in the shadows before him was the unmistakeable glint of human eyes in the moonlight. Alex’s feet stumbled over each other as he tried to stop in the loos soil and foliage. As he retreated, his ankle caught in a fallen vine and his buttocks slammed hard against a tree root as he lost his balance, pain shooting up his spine as his tail-bone impacted into the wood. His hands scrabbling backward for a purchase and eyes blurred by painful tears he stared at the faces that emerged purposefully from the darkness beneath the branches.

The three faces, distinctly human and undeniably familiar, looked down at the cowering figure with a unified expression of grief and anger, shaped by the gaunt and sunken eyed visage of death. Alex shuddered as he found himself bound to their faces, his hands lying motionless, squeezing earth and stone with a terrible vigour. He knew these faces. He had known them for years, these faces that now moved as one to curl their lips into a sneer, then bared teeth that were stained with mud and filth and…

Blood.

Blood poured from the three open mouths. Black, putrid blood that gushed over their chins and chests to splash upon the ground and pool at their feet. T ran over the ground, defying gravity, turning the ground and leaves a glossy black as it made it’s was towards Alex’s tangled feet. The spreading mess touched his heel and began to quicken, sliding up his foot, his ankle and quickly working its way under his ragged trouser leg.

As the heavy stench of blood hit his nose, Alex regained control of his body and frantically scrabbled to his feet. Tearing his eyes from the dead faces of his friends he turned to retrace the path of his flight form the hideout.

As his blood-shod foot hit the ground, pain lanced up his leg and brought him quickly to his knees. Looking down he saw bright red blood flowing from the veins above his ankle and felt pain with every small twitch and movement. Dark magic, he cursed again, designed to slow him down, weaken him, and run him to ground.

Suddenly Alex realised that the creatures had finished toying with him. Tonight they sought to break him, to kill him and to consume his last living energies. Despair threatened to claim him at the thought, but Alex’s survival instincts, stronger than any fear or hesitation or loyalty, were not yet beaten.

Defiantly he braced himself against the pain and pushed himself upwards to continue running. He allows himself a cautious glance over his shoulder and saw… nothing. Moonlight among the trees where his tormentors had stood. Trying not to think about where they… It, he reminded himself, IT… had gone, Alex limped through the forest trying not to look too deeply into the darkness that framed his path.

Back at his shelter – a clumsy lean to among a copse of short trees that sat on top of the islands only hill, Alex rummaged desperately through his few collected possessions. The taunting echoes of the creatures’ laughter still rang in his ears. They had followed him the entire way here, leaping fro shadows and spooking him at every turn. Laughing, wailing and s creaming from the darkness like predators fighting over their prey. His ankle burned from running and his face was white from the loss of blood that continued to flow freely.

They were outside somewhere; lurking, stalking, waiting for him, and Alex knew that he didn’t have much longer until they came for him to finish the job. His search became more frenzied as he hunted for the pistol that had laid forgotten all these weeks. When had he used it last? For hunting, but then where had he left it? Its case was empty and there weren’t that many places it could be in this ramshackle place.

The he remembered the first night that the creatures had come for him, the Night of Madness. Alex had been out of his mind with fear and even now, weeks later, memories of that night came back to him only in small patches. He did not explore those blank moments too closely as they often unveiled memories of a terror so great that he feared it would claim him again if he dared to open himself up to it. But now in his desperation a forgotten memory resurfaced, triggered by his search for the gun.

He had run to the shelter that night, pursued by those vengeful bastards who had tormented him along the way. He had grabbed the pistol and stood in the doorway firing into the laughing shadows.

Alex stumbled outside trying to position himself as he stood in his memory. From beneath the edge of the drop off several metres behind his shelter he could hear the low chuckle of his tormentors. They were closing in. Must focus.

Standing, firing wildly, he had been such a scared little coward, and when the gun clicked empty he had thrown it in the direction of their silent screams… there.

Alex bolted down the hillside, following his hazy memory, looking for the glint of metal that he prayed was not too far away. As if by divine order a breeze shuffled through the trees surrounding the clearing and a beam of light shone down to reveal the pistol laying still at the foot of that…

Foot.

The gun lay barely an inch from a pale, bloated foot that stepped deliberately over the pistol, followed by another and flanked on either side by pairs of similarly deathly feet that all moved as one with a united purpose. Alex’s head snapped up to look into the faces of the creature that now stood only a few paces form him. The rotten stench of decay assaulted his nose and fresh tears welled up in his eyes. He had never stood so close to it before and now its haunting visage was unmistakeable.

Charles.
Victor.
Andrew.

Their faces shone white in the moonlight, with unchanging looks of accusation driving into Alex’s mind and heart.

Despair finally overcame him.

Tear and blood flowing freely, Alex sank to his knees before the ghosts that now moved to encircle him, and as he let out a final, pitiful cry, they lowered their faces to his flesh and slowly began to feed.

***

Captain Tom Stuart stood over Alex’s body in the cool afternoon breeze. Behind him, a uniformed sailor came jogging up the hill.

“Any sign of the other three?” Stuart asked over his shoulder, his eyes searching the corpse’s surroundings in wonder.

“None, sir,” the sailor replied, “No significant signs of life at all, only birds and insects.”

“Hmm,” Stuart scratched his cheek, “there has to be something around here. This one doesn’t look like he’s been short of a meal these past months.”

“Can’t say, sir. There’s a few bulbs and plants but I don’t think they’d keep a man too well fed. Have you figured out how this one died?”

“Blood loss.” Stuart pointed to the dark stains among the grass, then to the large gash across the left ankle of the body. “He’s opened himself up somehow and run all about the place. The trail comes from down the hill, so we’ll have to make sure that’s followed as well. I don’t expect we’ll find anything, maybe a branch or rock that he’s run into. The wound’s too jagged to be much else.”

“Poor bastard.” The young sailor tried to avoid looking too closely at the expression of horror carved onto the face of the decomposing body. “He doesn’t look more than a couple of days dead, either.”

“No, it’s a shame we didn’t spot that life raft on our first trip through.” Stuart let out a long sigh and finally turned away from the body. “All right, let’s get this one bagged and finish the search. We need to start sweeping the nearby islands in case anyone else has been able to hold out this long.”

Stuart began to walk slowly down the hill towards the dinghy that sat on the sandy beach, his junior officers waiting nervously for their commander’s orders. It would be another three hours before one of them would find the fire pit at the bottom of the drop-off, with the three unmistakeably human skelletons that lay beside it, with chunks of half chewed meat hanging from scattered, blackened bones