horror

Episode 4. Man. I’m actually sticking to this haha. Glad I am. I’m learning a lot and having a good time. This one was a struggle, and I’m not completely happy with it, but we can’t love them all. I hope you get something out of it. See you next week.

Artwork by Eugene Korolev

Eugene’s ArtStation profile: https://www.artstation.com/evgen

Artwork: https://www.artstation.com/evgen

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what is done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time, and keep it as raw as possible. If I decide to publish later, all of these will go through formal editing.

The Story

The ground was cold and ripe with stones. Ivan had to watch his feet more than what lay ahead, each and every one vying to turn his ankle. Didn’t matter much, the view. Solid gray, not a tree or bush to remind him he was home, well, not home, but close. Too close for his liking.

“This a joke to you?” Ivan said, sick of the silence, the lies growing as large as the distance between him and Viktor, who expertly danced around every obstacle, shotgun at the ready, eyes trained on the expanse of nothing.

Viktor’s response was a flick of two fingers over his shoulder.

And, as if he held the supposed magic of crazy Svetro back home, the sky opened up. A painting, smears, smudges as he’d seen reflecting lantern light in the elder’s study, but with dimension far beyond what layered the canvas. Ivan’s hand reached out despite the knowledge that it was no painting. It was real, locked to the very earth he treaded.

Words were no use, and dangerous at that, now, if Viktor had told the truth. No point in arguing. Forward was all that was left.

Viktor stopped, and then lowered himself with ear to dirt.

Ivan remembered his father hunting that way, listening for the hoof beats thumping their way through the forest, leaving clues of mud and frond and rotten trunk in their wake.

But they weren’t hunting. What they sought couldn’t be hunted. Found, perhaps, bargained with, but nothing more.

Viktor turned, ear dripping soil, and opened his mouth, his eyes following suit to create a mask of fear.

The cottage became clear now, rendered in such impossible brightness amid the cold gray. The door was open, a cave to somewhere else.

Stones shot from the ground. Bullets, arrows, something more deadly. Ivan looked up to see them flock high enough to be black stars before they rained back down. Ivan fell to his knees with arms over his head.

The ground buckled, hurling him onto his back, and he rolled out of the way just in time to avoid a cluster of stones. Viktor wasn’t so lucky, looking back at him with blood trails running from hairline to chin, one eye closed from trauma.

Then, Viktor had a moment of clarity, a second wind, that allowed him to avoid the rest and regain his footing. The stubborn fool stumbled forward, not heeding what had to be a warning. Still, the doorway was vacant.

“Viktor! They spoke of such signs! We should go back, before–“

Again, the earth heaved, the horizon bulging, breaking, the cottage the first victim of its wrath. Viktor didn’t listen, moving on with the grace he had shown before he the storm of stones.

The cottage roof parted, and walls fell away. But not the roof. It remained suspended.

Mist swirled in the shadow of the roof, which looked to be supported by the trunk of one of the gnarled trees around it.

Viktor finally halted, huffing a mist of his own as he took in the sight.

The roof slipped away, or was let go, rather, as the “tree” moved hypnotically, serpentlike. Branches unfurled, bending on joints, tipped with … fingers?

Viktor was a good fifty feet away, leg-locked, shotgun barrel buried at his feet.

Ivan had to reach him, pull him away, carry him if he had to. It was over. The elder would have to send another, an army more like.

More arms grew from the center of the mass, all sizes, writhing in pain, birth, or both, reaching inside itself as much as for the clouds.

A flash ignited the gray. Viktor had somehow gathered his weapon. The blast fed this thing, birthing fingers, then hands, then arms. They went inside again, then out, straining. Muscles tight against skin, if one could call it that, until something brighter was born. Breaking through a membrane, a great head emerged, soulless eyes, jaw lined with teeth both blunt and sharp, smaller arms groping at that jaw as if to make it howl, larger arms coming down from the sky to press crown and cheek.

Ivan couldn’t help but interpret it as pain, this abomination awakened from a slumber of peace, perhaps, awakened to revist that pain. By them.

“I didn’t want this,” Ivan said. A thought that should have stayed inside. Deep and silent.

The creature pivoted on its many joints, arms waving, fingers stretching then contracting to fists. Pain indeed.

The mist coiled around the creature’s base and the wreckage of the cottage, and it reached for it, plucking it away to hold it overhead and bring it back down, releasing it to fly. Toward them.

One hit Viktor who had lost his grace. This mist had grown arms as well now, Ivan could see, and they thrashed at Viktor, every part of him.

Ivan then cocked his weapon and took aim, pressing the butt firmly to his shoulder. Everything was out of focus, the barrel heavy, moving everywhere but its target. But he pulled the trigger, knowing it useless. The shell ejected over his shoulder in a jet of smoke as he went to reload. Digging in his pocket, his fingers numbly searched for another shell.

Everything but the shell he found. The tatters of the seam, the soggy remnants of mottle weed that he wished was tucked between lip and teeth. Wait! There it was, cold, as hard as stone, the powder behind the buckshot ready to at leat buy him some time.

His fingers were an even tougher adversary, losing their hold, and the shell tumbled to get lost among the stones. He dropped and clawed for it.

The coal-black ground became darker then, the coldness harsher. Too quiet. Even Viktor was nowhere to be seen.

Ivan looked up in time to see teeth both blunt and sharp drop around him like a portcullis, great hands snatching him with ease, jamming him into a blackness that matched the cottage doorway.