Page 88 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle
A bellow rattled debris loose from the walls. A towering man entered from the passageway that would have led them to the drawbridge. The new arrival was a Silas and a half in height but slender to the point of skeletal. Perhaps a man once, but now he was more akin to something that had been dragged from the bottom of a swamp and then dunked in acid. He had eyes like giant dirty pearls and was caked in a grey-green slime which dripped from hands gnarled and crooked, arthritic as a hundred-year-old man. All his features seemed partly melted. The bottoms of his eyelids dragged down to his cheekbones, earlobes dangling beneath his chin, which in turn was far too long and large to exist on a true man. His hair was no more than duckweed, in desperate need of a trim, brushing at the backs of his knees. He was hideously naked, with a swinging set between his legs, ball sack elongated as though filled with lead. The cock’s tip was dark as a gangrenous toe.
‘Get behind me, Pitch.’ Silas elbowed him out of the way.
‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous. You need my help.’
A shriek that hammered at the eardrums came from the left passageway. Another similar creature stood there, though this one was plainly female, with breasts like vile pendulums and a tangle of duckweed between the legs that looked like it could snag a man whole.
‘You saw how it was with the Verderer. You cannot deal the death blow. Don’t waste your energies here.’ Silas’s command lit the air between them, firm and undeniable. And damn if it wasn’t rousing to see the gleam in the ankou’s eyes.
‘Fine!’ Pitch yelled over the racket of the approaching teratisms. ‘Still nothing from the bandalore?’
‘Nothing. I’ll have to do this without it.’
Silas spun about and ran, with no hint of distress, at the dripping menace that approached. The creature moved with far more grace than it seemed capable of, using its long, twisted arms upon the ground to speed its pace, rolling into a gait not unlike that of an ape.
Pitch edged back into an alcove that might have held an ornate sculpture at one point. He was infuriated at being set on the sideline but equally as mesmerised by Silas’s foolhardy yet stirring assault on the teratism. He was far too busy staring at the ankou to notice the ivy slip about his ankles and wind about his legs. It was halfway up his calves by the time he looked down in alarm and swore.
‘What the –’ Another strand of the greenery came from higher, slipping about his throat. ‘Fuck,’ he coughed.
Caught unawares, and with the wicked shrubbery moving with astonishing speed, he was forced back into the alcove.
Pitch’s hands tingled with the pressure of the flame, but the arrow was faster.
It slammed into his chest, the arrowhead piercing a hole right alongside his calamitous heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE DAEMON’Srage-laced cry reached Silas through the cacophony of the teratisms.
‘Pitch?’ he shouted.
A grunt and then, ‘Fine…fine.’
If it were a lie or the truth, Silas could not discern, for he dared not turn his attention away from the disgusting work of the Blight that was upon him. A teratism most foul, one that smelled of ditchwater and rotting fish, a viscous liquid spraying off it as it moved. The creature’s tune was higgledy-piggledy, a jumbled mess and just plain wrong. Or at least it reeked ofwrongness.The clarity was distorted. The melody of the teratisms he’d met before were ripe and clear with consuming grief, full of cracks where the Blight had seeped in and poisoned the soul. This though…this tune was distorted, as though the musician were playing by ear a tune they had once heard but could barely recall.
Not unlike that he’d heard with the Verderer, a teratism unnaturally conceived.
Silas wiped at his face, his hand coming away slime-coated and reeking of maritime decay. Jesus Christ, the Morrigan had grown more adept in manipulating the Blight and had chosen their souls with nefarious intent. He would bet a fortune that this once-mortal soul had met his demise in the water. Death by drowning. The sorcerers were keen to unravel not only the daemon but his ankou too.
And the bandalore was nowhere to be seen to put a swift end to the misery they had created.
Silas balled up his fist and levelled a punch straight into the strange, hanging flesh of the creature’s gut. An horrific caterwaul left the teratism. Silas’s knuckles sank into the spongy flesh, and the rest of his hand followed. He found himself buried to the wrist in the creature’s belly, his fingers encased in a substance that clung to them like hardening mortar.
‘Shit.’ Silas grunted, trying to wrestle himself free and at the same time fight off the teratism’s own wretched hands that clawed and nipped and sliced at him. Though they looked like the hands of a terribly old man, they were strong, and their shortened nails deceptively sharp. Silas danced about, trying to angle himself in such a way that the creature would not find the still-healing wounds upon his back. The other teratism stood not far away, swaying on its feet but showing no sign of attacking. Fear raised the goosebumps on Silas’s flesh another inch.
‘Pitch? Pitch, where are you?’ Silas sought to crane his head to get a glimpse of the courtyard, but the creature had turned him about and stood blocking his view.
‘Right here.’ A grunt, then a vile curse. Silas had never heard such a sweet sound. The daemon was in control of his faculties enough to reply.
Pitch might have shouted something else, but the teratisms managed to synchronise their horrendous cries this time. It was as though the entire world rocked on its axis, tilted by the unsettling sounds.
Silas pressed his lips tight and dragged his hand free of the teratism’s gut. His skin was coated in a thin film of residue, the colour of mould on cheese.
He kicked out at the creature’s legs, the violence of the blow sending the gangly limbs out from beneath it. It landed with a thump upon its back. Silas straddled the teratism and hammered his fists at the creature’s face, careful not to press too hard lest he found himself up to the elbows in god-awful sludge inside the skull. The blows were swift and punishing, as though his hands now held the strength of the bandalore. When the teratism’s eyes rolled back in its head, revealing a hideous veining of red, Silas lunged and wrapped his hands about the narrow neck.
The other teratism bellowed again, though in protest or attack, Silas couldn’t tell. He liked to imagine he heard Pitch’s hollering there too, but he couldn’t be certain.
Silas squeezed the teratism’s throat. Something cracked under his fingers, and the teratism writhed beneath him. Silas squeezed harder, and the creature’s tune changed to a higher, more desperate key, overpowering the bellows of the second creature.