WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTEST WINNER: In the Deep and the Dark of Demented Delfist By S. Brooks

In the Deep and the Dark of Demented Delfist

By S. Brooks

           
In the silent depths of the Delfist forest lived the Beings. They were creatures of the trees, feeding on any animal that foolishly crossed their path. At each feed, the final screams of these victims would pierce the air. Then, stop abruptly, and one knew that the end had come. Not one more sound was ever heard—just the few, fatal screams of a living thing in its last seconds of life. Of course, these moments of certain death were rarely heard—let alone seen—due to the Beings’ strict preference of seclusion during feeds. If one was ever unlucky enough to be in the proximity of those screams, they would never be the same. The sharp slicing sound would forever echo in their mind for years and years to come. Once heard, never forgotten.
       
Crouching in the midst of this forest, I clutched my hunting gun and held my breath. The quiet animal stood behind a thick grouping of snow-spattered trees and brush, but that could not hide it from my skilled eyes. In the dim light of early morning, I fixed my gaze upon it and slowly—ever so slowly—raised my gun into position. Sensing my presence, my prey jerked its light brown head up, ears tilting back and forth to catch signs of danger. I froze. Brown eyes glared suspiciously towards where my hiding place amidst the bushes. Large, feather-tipped ears swiveled in my direction. I could sense the tension building in the wild animal’s legs as it prepared for flight. A permeating drop of disappointment touched my heart, and I held back a disappointed sigh. That would be the second animal I had hunted but not managed to kill. Where was my skill? Where was my quiet stealth? Where were my silently treading feet? Where were my hunting instincts? No sooner had I finished this sequence of questioning than the screams started. The first one slapped me full force, and I cringed and shut my eyes for a moment. When I opened them, the deer was gone. The next scream came shrill and sorrowful. It sounded close. The third one, even closer. For the first time while hunting in that forest, I felt alone, miserably alone, horribly alone, terrifyingly alone. Responding to instinct, I shifted so that my body was better hidden by the bushes. Then, I waited, making neither movement nor sound. My heart thudded in my chest with the deadly finality of a time bomb ticking its final seconds with a mocking menace. Another scream rang loud and clear through the forest, tones high-pitched and terrified. I flinched, bit back a gasp, and ducked lower into my hiding spot. They had found my deer. Something long and wispy rubbed my check like a ghost's finger. I stifled a shriek, and my eyes darted down. Only a blade of grass sticking up out of the snow.
            
But then there were footsteps. Quite unlike my own heavy feet plodding through the snow that morning, these were soft and light. Strange, I thought to myself and absentmindedly started inventing theories. Rabbits? No. Heavier hops. Deer? No. More of a clopping sound than a soft wisssp. Foxes? No. They do have a soft pad of the feet, but not as silent and smooth as these footsteps. Then what? I listened harder. They were coming closer to me! Fear and terror replaced my curiosity as the footsteps became louder and louder, closer and closer. I pressed myself hard against the hard packed snow. It was cold and damp against my bare arms and face. Doi-toff-doi-toff-doi-toff; the footsteps were only a few yards away. My heart's pounding had traveled to my head. Blood beat frantically through my body, and my hands were sweaty. My pulse hammered in my ears. Fear froze every muscle in my body. I started to turn my head to get some view of what was going on, but a desperate warning popped up in front of me with the sharp reprimanding warning of an octagonal red stop sign. One false move and it will be over for you! The footsteps had halted, and the hairs rose on the back of my neck. My stomach flipped sickeningly. I nearly fell to unconsciousness with fear and terror. I bit my lip to keep back a gasp.
           
There was a presence next to me. Bit by bit, I twisted my head to the side to see what it was and instantly wished I had not. Not even two feet from my own face, there were two skinny, wooden legs. My breath caught, and my heart beat against my rib cage in a wild, desperate frenzy. I stared—as of yet unnoticed—at the wooden sticks of legs. They were long, approximately the same thickness as a human finger, and literally wooden. Not far from those legs, I could have easily reached out and touched one to make sure that my imagination was not playing tricks on me in this deep, dark, demented, and dangerous Delfist forest, but fear staked me to the ground with surprising force.
       
 "Wisssssssssssp! Wissssssssssssp!" I stopped breathing altogether. What was that? Maybe it was my imagination, I offered weakly to myself.


"Wissssssssssssp! Wisssssssssssp!" No, there it was again. Caution told me to pay attention and begin recalling all the survival skills I had ever possessed. Something moved off to my left, and—whether it was from frantic fear or towering terror—I yelped. Unfortunately, when I took a better look to my left, I saw that it was just a few brave blades of grass swaying to the music of the wind. But my mistake was already done. Something closed down on my exposed neck. Sharp, needle-like points dug into my sensitive skin, and I barely managed another strangled yelp. I could not breathe. Air was being forcefully squeezed out of my limp body. Life flashed in front of my eyes, and the world blacked out for a microsecond. I came to, gasping for air. Pain shot through my body. Blood trickled down my back and stained the snow beneath me. The grip tightened, and the points were shoved in farther. They sought purchase in the warm, plump flesh on my neck. I screamed. It lifted me up out of the bushes by my neck, still screaming. Blood was gushing forth from my neck. The uncomfortable warmth of blood was on my skin; in my mouth was the metallic taste. My shirt clung tightly to my torso. Eyes bore into me as that of the beady eyes of vicious vultures only too eager to sink their claws into the rotting dead. I did not want to be their putrefying meal. The want to live arose within me, clawing and pushing its way to the forefront of my frantic mind. I began to kick and wiggle violently, but the points only sunk in farther with each jerk of my weakening body. As I moaned sick and dizzy with pain, my last conscious thought was that of blood spurting out of my neck and the need to make it stop.

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When I regained consciousness, the first feeling that registered was that of horrendous pain. My neck throbbed excruciatingly, and my head ached. I tried to raise my hands to rub my neck, but they would not respond. I looked down and realized they were bound in coarse ropes of twine. After a moment of confusion, intensely sensory memories flooded my mind—the deer, the screams, the fear and terror, the sharp points in my skin digging and ripping my body apart…Fear squeezed my stomach. I blinked, trying to clear my vision. A jolt of panic shocked my body. They moved over the white forest floor like delicate, feather-light spirits, but as I peered tentatively up at their stiff faces, I knew with great certainty that their purpose resided not in good deeds. Two, blazing, red eyes glared from those fierce, wooden faces, warning of impending peril and inhumane brutality. I drew in a quick breath. Searching my mind for a hint of an escape plan, I attempted to calm my increasing hysterical mind. Their entire body was wood, alike that of the tan coloration and smooth texture of the beech tree, exuding the strength and power of the oak tree, and formed with the graceful slenderness of a young tree. Their body was akin to a skinny wooden pole and closely resembled electricity posts. Each one was several feet taller than I. Stick-like arms and legs extended from their pole of a body, and two, smooth, utterly flat feet dangled from the ends of their spindly legs like paddles on the ends of oars. Knobby fingers protruded from rough though nimble hands constantly in motion. I concluded that they embodied the incomprehensible concept of living sticks. Before I could develop even the beginnings of a plan to flee, one of them suddenly shoved another and pointed accusatorily towards me, accompanied by strange wisping sounds. The monstrous creature loomed over me, red eyes glowing with the dangerous intensity of hot, red coals in a fizzling fire. I became instantly aware that whatever it wanted to do to me, it could do. Why had I gone hunting in the first place? Why did I always seek that dangerous and forbidden thrill in these demented Delfist woods? Why had I not stayed home or hunted elsewhere on this tragic day? Misery pooled in the pit of my stomach.


It untied the twine on my hands and dragged me behind the other Beings, who had begun to tread softly behind one another. Worn, splintery fingers clutched my shoulders with increasing pressure, and the memory of the points pressing themselves into the tender skin of my neck again flooded my senses. I shuddered, but the fingers clutched harder. I bit my lip to keep from crying out. As the Beings made their way through the forest, they whispered among themselves in a language unknown to humankind. Something pricked the back of my neck, where my wounds were closing up. I yelped from the jarring pain. Panic rose in me and screamed in my mind so loud that I shrieked and hurled myself instinctively to the left. This attempt only merited me even more pain. My skin was pale and white where knobby fingers squeezed the life from my aching body. The point that had pricked my neck was still hovering menacingly near my open wounds, and I inched my head around to look at it, whimpering like an injured, beaten, abused dog. It was a branch. Relief. But not just any branch. Fear. It was connected to the Being gripping me. I screamed shrilly once again. My scream echoed into the eerie silence of that forest. Angrily, the pointed tips of the Being’s stick-like fingers drove themselves into my sore neck and began poking around in my pierced muscles and tender spinal cords. The Being had halted, turned to face me, and glared sinisterly at my terrified visage. Its face was less than a foot away from mine. I smelled pine and oak and the earthy scents of the forest. The red in its eyes seemed to draw me in and envelop my vision and my soul, and before I knew it, I was unconscious again.  

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When I regained consciousness for the second time, the pain was worse, and I felt awfully dizzy. It took a few minutes for my eyes to clear out of the suffocating darkness. While it cleared, I listened intently to the sounds of the Beings and...what was that? My stomach churned uncomfortably. My insides shook. The scraping of bones against bones. My vision cleared, and I wished it had not. I was once again bound. I glanced down. Twine. I continued to gaze down at my hands, bloody and beaten, and tried not to erase that image of the Beings. They were mechanically piling objects less than 20 feet away from me. Bodies. Of humans. I saw the little girl that had disappeared so many years before from our village, the butcher's wife, Mrs. Nasalie's son, the bachelor that had gone missing years before I was born (at least, I think it was him, but I was only drawing off old photos), and countless others too masticated and disfigured for me to identify them from their former lives. All of them were ripped and gauged corpses, and I could barely determine any distinct human features. One of them had eyes still shockingly open. I felt those dead, unseeing eyes staring at me. The Beings must have killed—and tortured, no doubt—these people for the corpses each emanated insane madness and desperation still screaming in their lifeless eyes. I shivered violently. This was not the best sight to behold when I was nearly sick from pain and nausea, but with no choice, I had to sit and witness this Piling of the Bodies. After a while, my mind could not bear the sight of the corpses, so, I twisted to where I could determine the source of all of the grotesque bodies. As I watched, the Beings knelt over a deep hole in the ground and drew each limp dead human out before adding them to the stack. I leaned forward to get a better view of what was inside. There were corpses like the ones being piled upon each other before me, but these were floating like dead fish in ripe, recent, red blood. Blood had soaked into their ravaged and ripped clothing, skin, insides, bones, and assorted other materials. The surface of the red blood pool rippled and sloshed mirroring waves crashing in on the shore. I leaned to the side and barfed up my breakfast. When I straightened up, the Beings were still taking the bodies out of the deep hole, shaking them and wringing them out impassively in order to dispose of some of the blood, then throwing them carelessly on the stack with the others. Red blood stained the ground around the pile and trickled outwards. I closed my eyes, but the image still taunted me in the cool darkness of my mind. The smell of dead and decaying corpses hung heavily in the morning air. With every splat of blood hitting the ground to every thud of bodies hitting bodies, my heart sunk lower and lower, beating out a depressing message. That might be you. That might be you. That might be you. When the thudding and splatting finally ceased, I opened my eyes a little. Yes, they had stopped throwing bodies on the stack. They had formed a tight circle around the pile, red eyes burning bright with hunger and greed. One of them stepped forward and made a high pitched wisping noise. The sound sung through my mind, and I winced. My head throbbed painfully. It must have been a permission signal, for all of the Beings lunged forward with the eagerness and quickness of jungle cats. They tore into the bodies, ripping and shredding, tearing flesh off the skeletons and breaking bones and muscles. I shuddered and shut my eyes tight in the hope to also shut out the nightmare. This made no difference. The tearing and shredding and breaking and ripping still echoed horribly in my ears, a sound never forgotten. When there were no more sounds, I threw my eyes open in alert fear. They had completely devoured everything. All of the bodies and corpses and skeletons were gone. Only puddles of blood and globs of chewed flesh and mutilated muscle remained to show any evidence of the strange event in this deep, dark, demented Delfist forest. They had all turned to me, blood and who-knows-what-else dripping from their wide open, gaping, tart-red mouths. I suddenly realized how sharp their blood-soaked teeth were. With their greedy, carnivorous, starving, evil faces pressing in on me, I knew that it was the end. The end of me and my life. The end of all happiness and love and good memories. I would die with these creatures pulling my body apart like I'm a rubber band until, like the rubber band, I would pop and break, my bones being separated and I being no more. I was already visualizing the overwhelming pain of my own certain demise, but just at that moment, the winter sun peeked over the high treetops and flooded the snowy clearing with light. The Beings' expressions were transformed into looks of helplessness, anger, frustration, and rage. I watched as each and every one of them expanded outward and upward and became rounder and taller right before my eyes. They grew and grew and grew and GREW, their expressions and limbs molding and eventually disappearing into their body until no features or distinct characteristics of these creatures could be distinguished at all. My mouth fell open in shock and relief. They were trees. Trees. T-R-E-E-S. I took one look around me. Yes, there was the blood. So, I had witnessed the horrific massacre of the bloody corpses. After one, terrified glance at the Beings turned trees, I fled from that clearing, out of the deep, dark parts of the forest, and out of the cursed Delfist Forest itself.
       
 The Beings still stood there, tall and resolute and haunting, their branches reaching forevermore toward the liberty symbolized in the open sky, cursed into endless days filled with demented deeds done in the dark Delfist.

Posted in: Contests,Weekly Short Story Contest