Cacophony of the Forrest

An old sedan had pulled up to the clearing in where the town’s cantankerous old-man, Arzul, had once lived. The house was barren by all accounts and that in itself, troubled Danik very deeply.

He unlocked the car door, but hesitated to open it all the way through. He just sat there paralyzed. Probably paralyzed by a former fear so traumatic; gazing unto the place where it all happened was as horrifying as staring at the very monster which Danik has come to associate both this place and his nightmares with.

“Ehem...” Ashton interrupted, trying to get his friend’s attention. “You drove us all the way here for what?”
“You talk like I’m crazy, but you’ll see…” he said as he threw the door open. “You’ll see…” he told him as defiance to the mocking bravados of his partner.

They soon got out and stepped into the glen. It had been late at night when they had taken off from their office on Kuro-og Street and had already arrived there at dusk. Ashton looked at his watch, an old bronze thing, as it read ‘1:32 AM’.
“A little late to go ghost hunting, eh Danik?” Ashton said as he fumbled his hands back into his coat to protect them from the raging wind.

Danik pulled out a butterfly knife, albeit, a rather dull and dingy one with the screw hinging in and out. “Quite you…”

Danik then treaded up a small bump and unto a road that lead to the alleged shack in Mr. James Montrose’s will. The dirty, wooden structure was of sturdy build. It had been situated on stone foundations and one can clearly tell that the outside was lacquered once had the inhabitants, in this case; old-man Arzul, had taken care of it better. Truly, should those conditions have been met, this place which inspired such eldritch fear into Danik, and presumably, James Montrose.

“Wait hold on.” Ashton held Danik back before he could take another step. “You’re not actually going in that thing?” he said.
“And so skeptic Ashton melts away…” Danik leered, feigning bravery. “Now do you feel the horror?”
“Absolutely not!” Ashton said, trying to keep on his façade of bravados. “But have you not read any of Poe’s poems or Lovecraft’s lore when we went to America?” Ashton asked him, trying to jam at least a trite bit of sense into his friend with the reference.
“What of these American writers?” Danik asked him, trying to seem stoic and straight faced.
“The mysterious shack in the middle of nowhere!” Ashton screeched onto his face. “A trope so common; even illiterate toddlers could recognize it!” he told Danik.
“Nonetheless! If the wealth accumulated by the Montrose family turns out to be from illegal sources…” Danik built up. “The entire inheritance shall be void!”
“True, true…” Ashton agreed. “Should their source of income become void, it shall be given away or ceased by the government!” he continued. “But how did you know that?”
“I told you at the office…” Danik said. “I know this place…” Ashton is actually no from San Jorje, but from the nearby town of Bog’Can, they town next to the City Limit.
“Look, I’m not going to question your experiences, but what in particular did you see here?” Ashton asked.
At first he was hesitant. Danik was the quaint, dark type who thought mystery being just an absolute block was a likeable quality. It took some firm nudges from Ashton, who himself was a member of the intellectual elite and an outstandingly annoying debutante who excelled in his irksome attempts towards his best friend.
“Please…” Ashton squeaked for the seventh time.
“Well, since no one’s around to hear…” he relented. “I guess I’ll tell you…”
They took a seat on two odd shaped, but smooth, stones in the tall grass facing the side of the road. They began to confide in each other. The night had slowly begun to give way. The moon was getting ready to take her children, the stars, to bed.
“This place is called Canal Nag’id.” He introduced. “I grew up here…”

Ashton turned around and saw no houses or neighborhoods. Just miles upon miles of grass and obelisk-like stones that jotted out of the ground like spires that skewered the plains.

“I now, I know…” Danik said, noticing his friend’s well-meaning confusion. “But I swear there were houses here before, not anymore. For you see, I grew up here. My grandparents who live in the city told my parents that this was a dangerous place for a child to grow up in. I was far to young to know otherwise.

Every day, upon walking to and from school, I would wave at a man named Raymond Elmer St. Carol. Elmo or uncle ray, as the townsfolk called him. He was at his eighties and his nephews were Guiles, Anna and James Montrose, whose dad they lost when they were young and whose grandfather they had just recently lost to pneumonia…” Danik told.
“Hold on, the James Montrose?” Ashton asked. “Are you saying there is a connection to this meat business of his?” Ashton followed up.

“Indeed.” He responded. ‘I knew there was something familiar with that name. “He continued. “And the dates line perfectly: James Montrose was around his late twenties at the time his grandfather died. It was also around those times when his brother Guiles Montrose, was sent to Bilibid to die…”

“Okay, I’m getting lost…” Ashton commented. “Why was he sent to die?”

“Guiles Montrose was just a teenager when he killed his sister, Anna Montrose and his uncle, Raymond Elmer St. Carol on July 30, 1924. I didn’t know it then, but I soon realized that Uncle Ray was nowhere to be seen. Guiles died on August 4, 1924 by hanging. The eeriest reports given by the warden and a few executioners were that in the entire process; Guiles was completely catatonic. He didn’t move, he wouldn’t blink nor would he talk to anyone. They said that the once expressive and extroverted Guiles Montrose, aged seventeen, had become a husk of sorts ever since the incident.

“A few weeks after his hanging, multiple murders would happen as bodies would keep on ending up on the very same shack that Uncle Ray once owned; the very shack that would later be abandoned and soon inhabited by old-man Arzul. The perpetrators of the crimes would always turn themselves in and beg for the death penalty. They would act the same as Guiles did when he was sent to die and after a few weeks, a new murderer with even higher death scores than that of the last one would surface and turn themselves in…

I don’t know, maybe the fanciful stories of Mr. James wasn’t so fanciful after all. Who knows that the creature he describe might be real, that ha..Hagnu…Hagnur…”

Before he could completely recall the name of this ghastly monster Mr. Montrose described in the will they read earlier, Ashton quickly put his hand over Daniks mouth and told him to hush up as he made hissing noises through his teeth.

“Idiot, do you now read horror?” Ashton scolded him so. “Never mention a malevolent entities name!” he warned. “You might summon it.” He foretold. “And god knows what a malevolent entity does to those who dare call for it.”

“But I do see where you’re getting at…” Ashton sympathized. “it does ring back to the legend of the Aranganal.’ He referenced.
“Go on…” Danik said.

“It’s an old myth that the spirits of murderers that were denied access to heaven coalesce and amalgamate into a an evil spirit that would feed off human deaths and even go as far to possess those weak of mind and use them as vessel, or ‘puppets’ as Mr. Montrose puts it, to hunt down and massacre hordes of people.” Ashton put it.

The air must have been electrically charge with accursed bile and terror. Ashton, whose voice cheery and intoxicated-sounding, went down an entire octave as he told the chilling tale. The terrors that take root early on will always have a place in the back of our minds.
“Well, no use listening to superstitions…” Danik squared up as his he seized his testicles and stretched his machismo to its very greatest. “We have a job to do!”

They both went up to the shack and as they neared it, closer inspection revealed a reddish-yellow light from beyond the gapped wood boards. Their palms shook and their sweat ran cold as they reached for the brass knob that stood between them and the evanescent horror that would be or would not to be behind that acacia door.

As they opened the door, it creaked with the teeth-grinding din of old metal hinges. Not over a thirty degrees open and the insides revealed stains on the walls. Red stains, stains that were indeed still wet and fresh with the scent that prove, without a doubt, that it was in fact blood. The door opened up more at fifty degrees. It showed the single swaying light bulb, dying and flickering from age. The door then suddenly creaked as it slammed wide open and there, on the floor board stood, Mr. James Montrose; as he lived and breathed.

He stood with an almost wax-figure like stiffness. His body was white and pale, yet he stood with the rigor of a young man. He had been dressed in his funeral clothes. Further into the city, word got out that a body had been snatched from the morgue and had been replaced with a banana tree stalk.

His face was laden with the most terrifying details. It looked as if for a while, he was resurrected from the dead in his coffin and pulled forcefully out. He was then killed, and frozen there on his face, his last scream; his final cry for help.

As the two gawked at Mr. James’ body, he began to bleed through the pristine white funeral suite he was clad in. It was a truly gut-wrenching and disgusting sight! A human melting like a candle, as it dissolved, his viscera fell out and assimilated into the reddish sanguine pool on the floor. The smell was foul and evil, enough o knock flies out of the air.

The pool then began to trickle down unto a back room that was dimmed beyond sight. The pool slowly flowed unto that spot and as the puddle had been slurped clean, red glowing eyes suddenly pierce through the dark part of that room.

The legends were true. The will was not just a story, but records of a truth that concealed an ocean of innocent and guilty blood.
None could tell how the night would transpire, except for and eldritch howl that would soon fill the air and cause the nesting birds to flee from the trees they perched on. This howl would resonate through and beyond the great narra woods on yonder. It was a sound of an ancient evil taking its first breaths after decades of solitude; it was a din that would etch its sound waves into the minds of those unfortunate enough to hear it: it was the cacophony of the forest…