Velli

Midnight embarks in the forest, and everything that lives suffers for it. It looks like the trees cry. One by one, leaves fall to the forest floor. The descent of each homeless leaf is quiet and slow, but the breaking… the snap of each leaf from its tree sounds like a tiny bone cracking, a pinky to be specific.

The leaves fall faster. Now, it’s an out-of-tune and joyless melody of breaking bone. Leaf knocks over leaf in a race to the ground, a race to escape what’s coming. The smiling sun has grown legs and run away. Moonlight peaks in. No canopy protects us from its embrace.

As I climb a tree to hide out, I can’t take my eyes off the new moon. It’s not a whitish or blue glow but a disgusting green. A mouse thought the moon was made of green cheese, or so the legend goes. It forces its moldy glow out onto the world, blanketing it in sickly lighting. I want the old moon back. This new moon is filled with too many holes, small, disgusting holes that go straight through it, like bullets in a body.

Something howls.

The howl brings my attention back to earth with a hair-raising clarity. Where’s it coming from? The cracking leaves are too loud and everywhere. Where is the howling? Is it a werewolf? Some legend I never heard of? Am defenseless against? I’m decked out in a knife-proof vest and have every blade left to my name on me. What if that isn’t enough? The snapping of twigs reaches an incredible apex of speed and sounds like a waterfall. My mind searches for every monster that could howl and all the ways it could want to kill me. The twigs’ symphony advances, roaring, ear damaging, the only thing my mind can focus on.

Then it stops. Pure silence.

A shrill scream sounds far to my left in the distance.

“Help, please, someone help!” the person cries.

Someone’s here. What kind of idiot stays overnight in the Fairy-Tale Forest? I wait for Fate to say something snarky, but he’s not back yet. I leap down one branch then another, trying to get closer to the voice. I might have time to save them before the Old Soul arrives. I leap to a second branch.

A stench attacks my nostrils and tongue. It’s so similar to Mogvaz’s kitchen. The scent causes my brain to swell with unpleasant memories that can’t form concretely. My face scrunches. Bone saw. Yes, it’s the stench of a bone sliced open, a sulfurous odor. The undertone of rotting meat whips my nose and tongue.

“Please,” the voice cries. “I have a motorcycle. We can get out of here before they come. Hurry!”

I know my legends. That’s not a person. That’s a skinwalker…

“In-ee-body!” the suspected skinwalker yells. Only echoes answer him.

I sit statue still inside the tree.

“Shame,” it says, its voice as flat as roadkill. “I would have made your death quicker than they will. He’s in one of the trees on the east quarter!”

The ground shakes. It’s a stampede from all across the forest. All toward me. Powerful wings and violent screams of vampires, mothmen, and winged things assault the air. Tiny clawed feet shred the ground, and the massive boots of the bloodthirsty bound toward me. Beneath the ground, something stirs. A conscious earthquake chases me as straight as a wolf to a rabbit.

Keening drowns out that noise, the keening of banshees. Comics and horror movies changed the myths of banshees for most people. However, this park seems to know what they really are. Banshees are not creatures that spray supersonic radio waves to win a fight. Banshees are warning systems. They scream when death is coming.

Seven of them have skin as white as the flesh under the outer layer and gowns in the same eerie white. The women float in front of me. They are like man-sized snowflakes that won’t fall. They cry, scream, and clap their hands to give us their warning. Their voices undulate through octaves in a beautiful rhythm that scares me. So sharp, so poignant, too perfect to ever be human. Nothing that was once human should be able to do that.

I should listen. They get more upset that I’m not listening. They tear off their gowns, revealing beaten, sexless flesh. Their hair, already unkempt, they pull out in tight bundles between claps. I know it hurts. It’s in their song.

“Torture us no more. Listen to us, my lord,” they sing.

I ignore their songs. They go higher in pitch and scratch at their scalps.

“Please, just leave. We do this for you. You won’t live until summer. We will mourn you in June.” All of them stare deep into my eyes, and their tears make me believe them. The guilt makes my eyes sting, but I am resolute. I will not leave.

Behind them, another figure of death stands in the center of the valley, as tall as an oak tree. The leshy, a humanoid being with bark skin and a green beard. It is said to cast no shadows and lead hunters to their deaths if they follow it. Tonight, it has no shadow. And in front of it stands the Old Soul.

Your death. The Old Soul.

Welcome back, Fate.

“Old Soul!” I cry loud enough for everything to hear me.

She rewards me with a glance up into my tree. The monsters surround its base.

“Old Soul!” I yell again and draw my sword in her direction. “I’m taking your life tonight. You’ll either be my slave or in the grave. You pick.”

Beneath me, chain saws roar as men in hockey masks rev them, scream, and attack the tree I stand in. The Old Soul stands there, self-satisfied, content, and happy. I am so tired of everyone being happy except me.

I raise my sword and smile at my reflection cast upon the blade in the moonlight. It is merely a sliver on the sword, and that’s all I need. I say the first words of my plan to summon an assistant, something bloodthirsty that wants to kill me but hopefully will kill everything else that would harm me as well.

“I see both your struggle and your crime.” I look at my reflection in the sword, but I speak to something buried deep in every mirror in the Fairy-Tale Forest. “I say you got what you deserve, and I curse you by every name—Mary Worth, the Black Madame, Mary Ruth, Mary Lou, Mary Johnson, Mary Whales, Elizabeth Báthory, Mary I. Come make a fan of my skin to keep you cool in hell if what I said was a problem. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary.”

Ten ghostly women leap from my sword, bunched together like a bouquet of roses. Disfigured and beautiful faces full of rage serve as the petals to my bouquet. One hand slashes across my neck. I leap down from the tree. They’re free of the sword and follow me down.

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Curses, commands, and demands that I die accelerate my descent. I tilt Excalibur to go straight down into the head of a chain saw–wielding man. Slowly and with much effort, he splits open like a well-done steak as my blade lowers. Before my feet hit the ground, I raise Excalibur to block another chain saw.

This masked man plants his feet and groans, commanding all his strength to go through the blade. My feet never stop moving. I shuffle out of his way. Two more come from my left and right. I sidestep a slice across my body, leap over a strike near my ankles, and duck a wicked swing at my head. I’m by all three of them, and they’re dead. The Marys ensure that. They’ll destroy everything in their quest to kill me, so all I have to do is dodge.

Sidestep, sidestep, sprint. Block, parry, run. Sprint, sprint, forward, forward. Closer to the Old Soul. She isn’t so smug anymore. Goblins and orcs surround her. An ever-expanding number of green bodies and gray leap from trees, shadows, and piles of leaves to bite her. They don’t know what she is. All they see is a meal. And she can’t teleport far enough away.

No, not smug. Look at that expression, Velli. She’s not sad either. That friend of mine, she’s rolling back the years. She’s not smug. She’s happy in the chaos. All you did was bring her home.

He’s right. The goblins and orcs that attack her are immeasurable. So are ants. That’s what she treats them like. The Old Soul never stops teleporting. She appears for only a second to sever a spine or split a skull.

A chain saw whirs across my face, almost touching the tip of my nose. Bundles of my hair fall across my shoulder. The chain saw man leaps forward. One of the Marys scratches my heel. I drop to the ground to roll away from them both.

The chain saw man’s scream is thick and deep as one of the Marys crushes him to get to me.

I’m close enough to the Old Soul that goblins and orcs trying to feast on her turn their attention to me. The goblins lunge forward, starting on two legs then dropping to four in gleeful, black-tongue-waggling laughs. The orcs bustle behind them, wobbly yet powerful, weighed down by steel armor and swords longer than Excalibur.

The Old Soul manages a laugh in her battle as she bounces an orc’s head on her cane.

“Old Soul! I’m coming for you!” I yell at her.

In that awful green moon’s glow, I can make out that she winks at me. I want to kill her.

I slice through the first goblin that leaps up with ease. Its face is eternally stuck in stupid ecstasy. Feet still moving, I dodge the next goblin’s leap. One of the Marys makes him yelp. The two goblins in the front switch sides as we charge each other. Then switch again when we’re only a foot away.

They’re coming at the same time. Which one first, which one first?

They leap. One going high, one going low.

My sword’s by my hip. I need to hit at least one of them. Two Marys breathe on my neck. I can’t slow down. None, I hit none. One lands directly on my face, the other on my leg.

I crash to the ground. Sharp pain slashes up my back. I raise my sword to defend my face. The goblin bites, laughs, and bites again. The lower goblin yanks at my vest, begging to get at my chest.

“I can hear the heartbeat!” it says. “I get to taste real heart!” He’s too stupid or desperate to figure out how to unlatch it. He switches from pulling to clawing and digs into the fabric. He shreds through the material too easily.

“Heart! Heart! Still-beating heart!” it says. “Heart first then other beating part for my dessert.”

He’s not talking about your brain, Velli.

Feet step on me—not goblin feet, orc feet. The orcs battle the Bloody Marys around me, keeping her at bay while the goblins get closer and closer to my flesh. He’s not there yet, but I’ll feel it once he is—the slow rip of skin, revealing layers upon layers of meat.

The goblin who wants to rip off my face laughs again at its latest attempt to chew me.

Everybody gets to be happy but you.

Enough! The goblin chomps down again on my sword, but this time, I grab Excalibur by its blade. Blood spurts from my hand. With a better grip, I push the blade up and through the goblin’s mouth. The top of his head plops down. I push his body off and stab through his companion’s skull—the heart-hungry goblin. His body flops off me.

I’m up again. Every beast in front of me battles the Old Soul. They don’t even notice when I hack them down from behind.

The anticipation boils in me. My strikes lose fluidity and gain power. Technique vanishes. I don’t know what I replace it with. This is beyond relief… beyond justice…

Sprint. Sprint. Stab. Stab. Sprint. Sprint. Stab.

The joy of an opportunity to finally win, my turn to get everything, my turn to be happy.

She doesn’t even see me, and I’m only three steps away. Her back’s to me as she toys with a dying orc.

“Ooolllllddd Soooulll!” I sing her name. I want her to see me.

I raise my blade as high as I can as she turns. I don’t want her to see the moon, the sky, or anything else. Our eyes lock. She raises her cane. I bring Excalibur down. My skin ripples and whirls from the impact, like it wants to retreat from this fight, retreat from my bones. My jaw shakes, and my teeth chatter. And yet Excalibur doesn’t break. Anyone can be a king, right? My sword is equal to her cane. That’s what I wanted her to see. And she does. She gets it. I can tell. It’s in her eyes. They’re shaped like Os—big wide things full of shock. My sword pushes against her cane, and I guess I’m winning because her eyes go wider, and her body drops lower to the ground.

I hurt somewhere I’m not supposed to. Not my arms, not my legs, not even my chest. My cheeks—I can’t stop smiling. “Old Soul,” I sing again. “Swear by your name to serve me for all the days of your life, or die.”

She flashes a small smile. No, she doesn’t get to smile.

But she does.

Lightning quick, she stops resisting the power of my sword and lets her cane crash to the ground. She disappears with it.

This is the part where you die.

Not likely.

Without looking, I spin, swinging Excalibur in a wide arc. Of course, she appears behind me right then, and again, my sword and her cane meet. The power pushes us backward, and clouds of dirt form around our feet. She doesn’t rush to attack me again. Finally, she’s scared.

I mock her. “Every time, old hag. Every time, I can block you because you’re a coward. You’re scared to die. You’d never risk attacking me head-on.”

Two Bloody Marys scream and come behind the Old Soul.

She easily swats them to dust with her cane. “Do you wish to shame me because I fear, boy? Fear is a reason to live. Everything in nature fears, including you.”

The Old Soul swats and kills another Bloody Mary, this one adorned with a crown and jewelry. Maybe the rest know that she is the first real danger to them. So they go in wide arcs, avoiding the Old Soul and swooping toward me. The Old Soul disappears and reappears above two of them. Do ghosts know fear? I get the feeling they did. The surviving Marys realign and bunch together, away from myself and the Old Soul. The Old Soul raps her cane on the ground again. The Old Soul’s help with the Bloody Marys scares me. It tells me she’s confident. She wants to handle me herself.

The Marys are all afraid now. They stick together back to back, all five of them. They aren’t even looking at me anymore. They all scan for her. She appears behind the group. One Mary, disfigured and with a hanging eyeball and a melted face, sees her first and screams. With one big swipe, she decapitates them all.

“Wait for the adrenaline to leave, boy,” the Old Soul warns and disappears once more.

Left dumbfounded, I start to question the strength of my plan as I wait for her to appear.

She lands ten steps in front of me. The faces on her sweater frown. It looks like they pity me. The Old Soul meanders toward me, eyes locked on mine. Her cane mocks me, nearly touching the ground with every step. It works. I don’t dare challenge her. I hold my sword out like a shield, waiting for her to move because I can’t lead a charge against her.

“Wait,” she scolds. “When the adrenaline leaves, you’ll come back to fear. It’s the only god that matters in a world where God is dead. You’re too dumb to accept his embrace, though. You always fight against him. You believe God is the devil, and that’s why your life is hell.”

She swings her cane like a spry old man as she gets closer and closer.

“I sit at the feet of fear and do as he commands,” she preaches. “Fear is why we made fire. Fear is why only Homo sapiens are left in our species and why we became the top of the food chain. Fear is why empires rise and reign. I fear death, so I do everything to keep death’s hands off me, and now, death can’t find me.” She chuckles. “But you, boy, I have talked to that thing inside your head. You live as a slave—a slave to denial. How much more miserable will you make your life before you accept your lot?” She pokes out her lip. “How long until you learn that voice in your head is just you telling yourself the truth? How long until you realize that you’re merely one of evolution’s countless mistakes?”

I’ll never give her the satisfaction of seeing me scared. I force a laugh and a confident smile. “So, it’s someone who’s scared to die versus someone who’s alive out of spite. I like my odds.”