Wanderers of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 2) Read online

  “Something is off here. Something lingers,” Wolf growled from behind him.

  “That was the idea,” Kechua replied softly. He turned to the daylight and found the familiar blots of black standing on each side of the open gate, their eyes blazing into him.

  “Still following,” he grumbled. “Or are these even the same ones?” He crept slowly towards one, the closest on the fence to the side of the house.

  “You should have your own answer by now,” the chuckling growl replied.

  Kechua squinted at the creature, as close as he dared, but could not see more than the vagueness of a bird, the blackness and size suggesting a crow. It was more in the way they moved, the swaying curiosity of their eyes on hidden heads that spoke of birdlike figures.

  He returned to the cellar, the cool air lapping at his feet, the smaller footprints leading away. The doors opened before him like jaws, the staircase resembling a jagged brown tongue. A lightbulb dangled from the ceiling, only illuminating from reflection, and gave the illusion of the tip of the creature’s throat.

  Behind him, the ominous sound of shuffling feathers closed in. More hunched figures joined the lonely bird he had examined, the embered gaze growing into a tiny flame. Six became twenty, and fifty or more rested neatly upon the fence. Their gazes locked straight onto him; all of them moving in perfect unison except for their eyes.

  “That’s different,” Kechua whispered. “Why are they so interested?” he pondered aloud.

  “Who can say?” Wolf grumbled. “They are waiting for something, or perhaps they stay here because of some memory.”

  Kechua held his hand to the ground, feeling the earth beneath him. He branched his consciousness beyond it, feeling the pulsing rhythm and focusing on the nearby fence. He felt the gripping claws of the dark beasts, not crows at all. He had seen crows, felt their wings and claws against the earth and trees.

  Some subtle difference drove them—an emptiness about the way they moved—and the synch of their movements when together betrayed a singular mind. He looked again, his eyes more knowing, and they distorted within the light. Their feet grew larger talons into barbed razors, their beaks curved and serrated; their shoulders hunched into a cruel, buzzard-like slump. Their eyes glowed with a bloodier, darker hue.

  Kechua banished the foreboding feeling and kept his hand upon the earth. He felt its rhythm again, felt it inside his heart until they reached a unified parity. He moved beyond the crows, towards the darkened hole, outside of his sight.

  The pattern of the house remained quieter in the rank earth of the cellar, and he probed the faintness of the recent memory; screaming, crashing of wood, the light footsteps leading towards him, alone but for a faint drumbeat beside.

  Something else came from the cellar; a third creature egressed. A chill rose as it slithered up his arms, frozen with an alien and inky fear. The screaming—all the footfalls singing underneath, and even the historic unpleasantries of the house—faded into nothing within the clinging dank. Goosebumps moved up his arms, into his shoulders, and flowed to his legs. It lapped against his cheeks with an icily forked tongue.

  He crept down the steps, clubs at the ready. The clinging cold felt familiar and clearer, without the interference of the school’s walls. Soil and mildew nipped at his nose, but he strode on, the frantic screaming clawing at his feet.

  He left the stairs and stepped towards the end of the square of defiant light, forced to squint against the inky dark around him. He knew where the walls were, and certainly he should have been able to see them, but they shuddered and peeled away from his sight, hiding from anything but his periphery.

  He stepped into the darkness, one foot in the chilly black, the other foot feeling quite warm in the light. Nothing happened—no terrible creature attacked him, the darkness didn’t produce any sort of devil for him to battle, nothing.

  He let himself slip into the trance of the earth’s pulse once again, feeling somewhat more confident in the solidity of the unseen ground; somewhat more tolerant of the indescribable chill.

  The feeling of the thing sweeping against the earth poured into him as he focused beyond the shrieks and footfalls, reminiscent of a soft breeze or chill whisper barely leaving a trace other than a slimy trail of cold.

  Kechua crept towards the far stairs, leaving the sanctuary of light. The coolness stuck in the air, and upon each of his steps, he felt an icy lick upon the back of his neck. It did not stop him in his tracks, but it was enough to seed increasing doubt and unease in his mind.

  “You’d best be quick.” Kechua almost jumped but managed to only freeze at the sound of Wolf’s voice. “The crows gather.”

  “Fine,” Kechua replied, finding the stairs, trying his best not to allow the nagging chill in the back of his mind any power over his actions.

  As he climbed, each step groaned with protest, doing so all the louder when Wolf followed his progress. With only half of the reluctant wood behind him, the sound of the earth below shuddered and the subtle whisper rose into a gaseous swooshing, the presence taking form.

  Kechua didn’t say anything, didn’t betray his knowledge of the difference in the darkness. He pushed to the top of the stairs, hinges gripping onto the last fragments of a once-standing door, threatening him like scared hedgehogs. He walked through a television room, cluttered with pieces of machinery to the point of uselessness. He treaded carefully and methodically over the objects, towards the slivers of light; the boarded-up window.

  The gaseous hiss grew and flowed up the stairs, which gave a gentle crick and cracking of thawing ice. A buzzing undertone rose within it, and when it filled his brain, the buzz dwindled. A thousand moth wings beat against the light in his head and fluttered vaguely near his eardrum, not quite perceptible, but bearing a clinging presence just out of reach.

  He stopped at the window and looked at it a moment, peering through the tiny cracks, and seeing nothing but pure and primal white light from the world outside. The creeping hiss grew closer, and he felt it upon his back. He saw the darkness take form and surround his head in a grisly halo. It was like a silhouette of random swimming shadow upon darkness, only perceptible because of its difference; its chaos.

  Kechua smiled, and for a moment, the thing—the sweeping, airy, nothing shadow—stood still.

  With the two clubs rising slowly beside him, he swung upwards with a simplistic but triumphant grunt. The boards covering the window splintered and tore with a brittle concession, and the light flooded in.

  Kechua spun in place, and for the first time, truly saw the shape of the darkness. It bore the vaguest familiar contours of a humanoid, though heavily hunched over, with shoulders both broad and asymmetrically lumpy. It stretched from the darkness as if an approximation of a man was pushing through a layer of cloth, though it reached towards Kechua with some kind of limbs. Even in the glaring light, it barely registered to his eyes as anything more than unsureness against pitch black.

  The form of the thing shivered and poured away, like oil suspended in trembling water. His brain tried to anchor it in some way, but it slithered away the moment he grasped onto a solid edge. The very sight of it amplified the numb sound—the muted moth wings beating against the inside of his skull; the roots of his teeth. Somehow, the sight of the thing deepened that chill. It invaded his mouth, leaving a medicinal taste that poured down his throat, like dried and moldering wood with alcohol.

  The thing danced and shivered, allowing a form. Its head was nothing but a remnant of shadow. It rimmed with teeth, rounded and inward spiraling, barbed to capture and encapsulate. Its body hung with limp shadow skin, useless and dragging, but barely sweeping over the floor it touched.

  The creature was darkness, the chill and uncertainty of the shadow. It was the fear one felt when daring to stare into a pit, the exhilarating dread of what unknown shapes waited beyond sight.

  He slipped his pack off, letting it sit propped on some of the sturdy machinery behind him, not daring to spare his gaz
e to ensure it stayed safe or upright.

  The thing hissed with slow and silent rage, the light nibbling at it, but not enough to kill it or push it back. It swirled there, buzzing and carved out of reality itself.

  Kechua raised a club and swept into it. The thing shifted around with the disinterest of mist. It swirled backwards, not towards the cellar once again, but away from the window, towards the folded shadow of the house.

  He gave chase, moving into another room, filled with chairs at a cluttered table. The light’s angles didn’t reach far, and the mist halted its retreat to welcome him. Kechua leapt to its side and tore into another boarded window. The light cut through it once again, and it moved away with a shambling urgency.

  Wolf followed with an almost bored pace, the thing wafting over his fur without so much as a shudder from the beast. “I’m sure you have some remarkable plan here,” he joked dryly.

  Kechua grinned at Wolf, pursuing the thing into the landing of the house. Kechua tore another window open, letting light pierce through the thing, and offered him a path to another window.

  “I thought this lesson had been taught.” Wolf gave a hoarse sigh. “You lack the understanding of it, and so any power—any strike upon it—is futile.” Kechua chased up the flight of carpeted stairs. “You aren’t even making it bleed. How dull.”

  The thing pooled outwards and dissipated upwards. His feet fell heavily upon the stairs. They creaked and groaned in protest of his wild intrusion.

  The thing repooled in front of him, waiting upon the landing. The mouth opened agape, teeth jutted forth, snapping at him with the bright pulsing of a migraine’s touch. Kechua didn’t slow down. He saw the opportunity, the opening behind it.

  Beams of light, desperately trying to pierce another shuttered window, cut through the thing, causing gaps in its being. He tore through with a leap meant to catch the shutters on the downswing.

  His clubs swung downwards, landing upon the window covering, and cut at it, but not without allowing the thing to cling to him. That cold sensation, that sound, that taste, flooded him from the skin inwards. Before had been a simple sip of a chilly drink, but he plunged deep below the wintery lake.

  It clung to him like soaked fabric, but it froze in place on his skin and dug down, into his muscle; into his bone. He squirmed there, the uncertain wavering chill gnawing at him, slipping onto his temples, ripping into his brain. He tried to force himself forward; tried to force the understanding that the chill was a mere illusion, a misunderstanding, of the mind attempting to grasp something not there, but its grip was undeniable.

  He fell, moving down in a helpless motion. A perverse version of the Black Forest welcomed him, of clinging and barbed leaves so thickly woven together as to hide things moving mere feet away. Only the feeling remained, of large shapes, little shapes, ugly things moving, unseen but heard. The unlit path of the unknown forest—of staring into the darkness of the empty season at night—enveloped him.

  There were . . .

  Kechua’s eyes opened as if gasping for breath, the light striking them. He slowly slipped out of the evaporating cloud’s embrace and fell onto the red rug on the landing, gasping.

  “Well, and so ends that mighty plan,” Wolf rumbled.

  “There were . . . ” Kechua’s voice caught in his throat. It was dry, as if he had screamed against some unyielding enemy; screamed until the voice became useless and the only obsession. “There were people inside of it. Just like Earth’s Cruelty.” Kechua’s voice caught in his throat again. “They were so . . . ” He trailed off, unsure, only feeling them in the sense of tasting a vague alcoholic ingredient within a complicated sauce. “I felt their heartbeats, I think.” He held his hands loosely in front of him, unable to feel the clubs within them, but seeing they were there.

  Kechua strained against the memory, his chase abandoned for the moment. Life, heartbeats, close but held beyond the feeling of the thin and blinding walls.

  “Night comes, boy. Soon there will be no light to push back with,” rumbled Wolf.

  “I think . . . ” Kechua squinted in his mind, trying to probe the memory further. “There was something different inside of it. There was a . . . ” There was a woman inside, a woman who wasn’t lingering in fear; one who wasn’t . . . ”She wasn’t afraid, not like the others. She was . . . ”

  He looked into the trembling light of the day as it faded, blackened spots fluttering by on their deliberate path towards the bejeweled towers.

  “I can do it. I will do it,” he snarled, gripping the clubs so firmly that the flesh of his palms pinched against the bone.

  CHAPTER 14:

  Fearless

  He sat under the glassless window on the landing, the carving tool flickering in the vague light with his deft etching. He had spared a moment to drag his pack back up, both to fill his stomach with some dried meat, but more importantly, to fetch the tools.

  Reluctantly, he forced his hands to etch the confrontation with the thieves, needing to still his rageful hands enough to complete the story with Rutger’s escape. He worked the elder pair in as well, his confrontation with the shadowy dogs and the little orb framing it.

  He continued the story on the clubs, though his arm lay motionless when it came time to carve the shadowed creature. He stuffed more berries into his mouth, giving a final toast behind him and out of the window, before draining the last few gulps of water out of his skin.

  “Juice for you, wherever you are.”

  He carved a shape for the shapeless, locking onto the humanoid nature, the pointed and hooked face, the spindle of teeth glinting with the absence of perception. He blew away the dust and found the cliffhanger unsatisfying, the figure of him going to meet the creature followed with a blank canvas beyond. Yet all of it felt incomplete; unsatisfying. He couldn’t even bring himself to memorialize his time at the school, not yet.

  Just in case. Just in case this was the end, perhaps someone would find the clubs spat out like bones; perhaps someone worthy, or someone like Rutger. Regardless, the tale recorded, he rose to his feet.

  He slid the jacket onto his back, a little lingering soot falling from its skin. The thing reeked of smoke, but the coming cold of the night penetrated his chest and back enough to ignore that. The touch of the creature left him feeling exposed, a skittish feeling he couldn’t quite squash. “I’m ready.” He nodded at Wolf, who lurked in one of the open doors of the hallway, the burning and narrowed eyes flickering over to him.

  The unknowing of humanity would surely have fled from sight just as readily as the cold, and knowing as much as Kechua knew of him, likely wouldn’t have slowed their flight.

  “For whatever it’s worth, I haven’t been alone with you,” he declared with deflating resolution, only to be met with a rumbling chuckle.

  “Fair enough,” Kechua concluded softly.

  He stood, the two clubs at his side, his fanged wings steady and ready. He basked in the warmth of the sun on his back a moment more, head lowered in contemplative silence.

  Then he ran.

  It was a silent run, forwards, with a berserk pace. He tore into the darkness, leaving the light behind. Unsurprisingly, Wolf remained lying beside his pack, his burning eyes drooping into nothing.

  Kechua hooked an arm around the bannister and propelled himself upwards, into the unknowable pit of the third floor. The stairs sang a creaking overture as his silent feet trampled upwards.

  Its breath began, a choir of voices behind either artful or obtuse muffling. It trickled almost playfully against his back, a tingling harp drifting down his spine. More windows cut pithy daggers into the black canvas, and his rolling drumbeat sifted into place in their crisscrossing light.

  The hissing choir beat against his face, the pointed teeth snapping and lapping out like water ticking through a clock. Its body shifted forward, swirling with a jittery chaos, enveloping the bannister’s pegs and spreading its cold as it went.

  The numb mothwings drummed inside his b
rain, somehow just as jarring as before, and the shivering shadows smeared against his sight. He stood, his arms stretched ready at his sides.

  The teeth flittered around him, like a light unsure of its power, and the cold breath clung and encircled his neck. He stared at it, directly into the nothingness, and smiled. The creature lapped at him like a cat given appreciation for a fine cream, pulling him in so very slowly, without realizing; without knowing.

  The chill fell upon his shoulders, and he reached out gently with his sight. The tinniest heartbeats created a writhing song within the blackness, their choir the same as before. The thing hesitated at this, perhaps gaining some feeling of his probing into it, or perhaps just reluctant from his eagerness. This hesitation flitted away with a blink, and the fluttering black slithered down upon him in a singular gulp.

  Nothing happened. The thing shivered and staggered as it moved beyond him. Kechua felt the physical chill once again, felt lingering fear of the unknown, and yet he was unafraid; he was unmoved. It left him with an understanding of its name, “Terror of Night,” for what lay in the dark more than fear? What nipped at the hearts of mortals but pain? He had known both in scores, faced them until they had become a mundane comforting rhythm.

  The thing slouched backwards, pooling into a shadow, and the fluttering moths moved in a sickening frenzy. The revulsion of the thing abated its presence and soothed the chill.

  Kechua strode towards it, careful but emboldened. He swatted at it with one of his clubs, a blow to test the result, more than anything else. The club passed through it harmlessly, as if striking against smoke-thin tissue.

  No, it wasn’t going to happen the easy way. Kechua sighed.

  The thing took that as weakness, a sign of the only possible opening it would get, and struck.

  Kechua smiled and leapt headfirst into the yawning dark. The world shifted with the snapping chill of the desert’s noontime to midnight. The air around him thickened into blackened sheets, closing in to constrict him. He clung to his clubs as he sank, overturned and headfirst into the cold unknown.