Dead Things

[Published in Dead Things with John B Ford]

Dark, featureless faces, silent forms gliding through my nightmares -- Dead Things! The dead invade my mind; every night they invade my receptive mind. Clawing at my sanity with yellowed fingernails; polluting my brain with the stench of a hundred open graves, these creatures of vile intelligence torture me nightly.
"Catherine, do you hear the ghosts that walk beyond the window?"

A mournful wind carries through the cemetery. It howls, shrieks and sobs -- and all this place speaks of sadness. They might as well be dead -- those Dead Things! Speak well of the dead, aye, speak well of the dead, for you never know when that depraved intelligence may turn on you. They listen, listen to your every thought, and watch your every move. Some love and some hate, but like the ghosts of Cydonia they never forget.
"Oh, how I hope you have always spoken well of the dead!"
"Catherine, do you hear the tread of feet upon the stair?"

It all began so long ago, years ago -- the night I decided to walk out in the night with the dead! I'd been dreaming, oh, such strange dreams. And when I awoke the room was as cold as a tomb, like some Dead Thing had been standing beside our bed, observing me as I slept. Why, maybe it had breathed those peculiar dreams inside my head? Yes, I could almost taste its foulness on my very tongue. There was an atmosphere of Death within the room, a lingering presence of unparalleled evil -- and I was certain that black brain cells had been plotting. Then I screamed when I saw her place beside me was vacant. And that was when I decided to go out in the night, out in the night with the dead.
The window had been opened, lace curtains dancing as though tortured by sinister spirits of the wind. I peered out into the cold, hostile night, and in the moon's glow I saw her sleeping form being carried past the headstones by some black-shrouded figure. From further back in the cemetery came the sound of hysterical laughter which chilled my blood to ice. So I descended the staircase, and unlocking the door, stepped out into the dreadful night. And in so doing my ears became filled with endless triumphant howls from the evil spirits of Death.
But still I followed a moonlit path that led amongst the headstones, and the dark howls which then echoed through the night were like a hundred hungry wolves intent on my slaughter, but given all eternity I could never describe to you the evil in the sound of their snarls. Aye, those very spirits snarled! They snarled as though they wished to tear the living flesh from my body; as though they were angry and insulted by my presence in their malign abode.
Then there came a rumble of sound which seemed to come from beneath the ground, and following this, all the earth began to shake. Fissures opened up throughout the cemetery, and brown leathery hands began to protrude through graveyard sludge, ever searching for grips which could support the weight of rotting skeletal bodies; for all the putrefying figures of the dead were striving to walk the earth once more. A nearby pool of water suddenly rippled in a frenzied fashion, and emerging up through it a yellow skull grinned in the light of the watching moon. Blood-red eyes glowed through darkness with a glare of Satanic hatred for everything that lived, and all the air filled with corruption as that festering corpse rose up in a determined manner from beneath the ground.
Corpse-lips moved and a voice spoke from beyond death.
"Death is not the end. Leave her to us; leave her to us or you will be forced to accompany her!"
"No! I will never abandon my wife!" I replied.
"So be it."
And before me the earth was split asunder.

Down, down, I fell through pitch-darkness; my screams echoing as though I were descending into a vast cavern. Then my body splashed through water, warm water; or was it something thicker? Blood! Momentarily I was stunned, almost losing consciousness. Then my vision cleared and I found myself amidst a circular lake of crimson. Around the edge was a rough causeway hewn out of granite. Occasional fire-torches were fixed to the rock walls; they burnt up the dark like hate-filled demonic eyes on the watch for anything holy. In their glow I saw the surface of the blood-lake periodically bubble, and with this I felt sure that the temperature was slowly increasing. So I swam through the crimson and hauled myself up onto the causeway.
For some time I stayed crouched, just gazing in awe at the bizarre spectacle of the lake, and soon there came a rapid increase in the bubbling of the surface. With this, I realised that the crimson contents were now beginning to boil. Suddenly something floated to the surface quite near to the causeway. I peered through the dimness and saw it was a body. The soaked, clinging clothes could not disguise the fact that the skin had begun to cook and crisp.
In the following seconds I was aghast to see at least three other bodies rise to the surface. And at this morbid revelation I shuddered deeply, for I realised that if I had lost consciousness upon hitting the blood-red pool, then I too would be one amongst the floating corpses. But as these thoughts ran through my head, I became suddenly startled by a curious sound pervading the darkness. The sound was slow and regular, a metallic squeak which conjured thoughts in my head of a rusty pulley slowly lowering some heavy weight.
So I looked up into the blackness, for it seemed to me that the sound had come from somewhere above. And sure enough, as I gazed upwards, I made out the vague outline of a thick ledge protruding from what appeared to be an opening in the wall. Suddenly a light flickered to life and seemed to hang in the very air, and with this I gasped in horror at the sight it afforded. For a large metal cage was being lowered from the ledge by way of chains. And within the cage stood one of the black-shrouded dead, lantern in hand.
Mystified, I watched in silence as that ghoulish figure unlatched a section of the floor, sliding it to one side to leave half the underside open. And truly, the vision now before me was akin to a scene from the darkest nightmare any man could ever experience, for that gruesome form then strode to the outer bars of the cage, holding out the lantern to afford more light to the lake -- while its fire-red eyes scanned the surface greedily. And it is my hope that you can imagine something of the fear I felt as I crouched there in the cold of that shadowed recess, with the only sound that of the descending cage, and in my eyes a vision more bizarre and unholy than any other man has ever gazed upon.
As I watched, the white fingers of the ghoul closed around a metal lever, and it came to me that this allowed movement of the pulley so as the position of the cage could be altered. Suddenly there came a wave of tremendous horror and disbelief in me, for as I watched the creature slowly steering the cage above the surface of the lake, my eyes fell upon the sight of a floating body which had been caught in the light of the lantern. The cage came to a halt directly over the body, and I saw the black-shrouded form within it pick a long hooked pole from the floor.
I felt sickened as the body was expertly directed by way of the pole, then lifted up through the opening in the floor of the cage. And maybe I should have turned my eyes from the gruesome sight which I then witnessed, for what I saw then was an affront to God and all that is holy. Human flesh was treated like that of an animal! With cleaver in hand, that unholy form within the cage began to separate flesh from bone, depositing the culled meat within a black trunk-like container.
I continued to view the ghastly proceedings in a mesmerised fashion, my confused mind swept by a tide of horror. I felt as though my sanity was being ravaged by these Dead Things, and my brain refused to believe what my eyes were seeing. As soon as the corpse had been completely stripped of all meat, I discerned the cage being furiously tugged aloft by unseen hands. It was difficult to see all that was going on, for the whole place was enveloped in an unwholesome gloom. I squinted, and then saw the cage reach the level of the ledge once more, and then -- oh, what horror! -- there appeared a savage brood of evil beings, similar in form to the ghoul within the cage. And they were like demented brutes, as they fought with each other over the rights to the contents of that trunk. Yes -- like wild beasts they were devouring the human meat that had been taken from the corpse!
Blindly I cringed within my hiding place, clinging to rock with grubby fingernails, a pounding beat thumping within my head. Many times I have suffered from nightmares, with awful creatures appearing in my subconscious to cause me torment. Strange manifestations of evil and sin have called me by name, and invited me into dark realms of terror. Yet I have always known, in the deepest section of my sleeping mind, that I would eventually awaken, and that those creatures of depravity would vanish once I observed the light of a new dawn. But these Dead Things -- they are not spawned from unreality. They do exist!
Three more times I watched that same scene: the cage being steered above the steaming lake, the long pole lifting a lifeless body from out of that gleaming pool of blood, the inhuman act of slicing out the meat, and then the awfulness of those hell-creatures feasting on the remains that had been gathered. Such bloodthirst I had not before witnessed in my lifetime, and I did not wish to view such terrible visions ever again. But alas -- much to my horror, this was not to be, for a man's wishes do not always come true.
The Devil himself must have chosen me for some unspeakable reason, for further examples of atrocious and ghastly behaviour were destined to cause me even more distress that night. As the lake boiled in front of me, and I stared into the black gloom, the Dead Thing that was within the cage chose to demonstrate more of his wickedness. With the aid of the pole, he lifted what remained of the first corpse -- which, let me tell you, was not much -- and proceeded to steer the cage in the direction of the black-stoned wall of the cavern. He then chose to reach out and hang the disembowelled form onto the wall by way of another hook that extended from the rock. I could not see very well, but I was horribly aware that the corpse was devoid of all meat and had huge lumps of flesh dangling loosely from its eviscerated form. No features were evident upon that face, and for that I was truly thankful. It was a mere charred, blackened relic.
The shocks of the night were not complete. My stomach was already churning inside, which was quite understandable considering the devilish treatment of those bodies that I had perceived. An odd babbling sound emanated from beyond the ledge, and I guessed that those cannibalistic ghouls were hungry for more. They appeared to be consumed by a gibbering madness. And then, my consternation increased, for suddenly I noticed more torches of flame, as they flickered in various parts of the underground cavern. This proved to me that more of those ledges existed. More and more of those fiends appeared, each one holding a fire-torch, thus lighting up the entire enclosure. And it was then that the complete horror emerged -- for I then spotted a massive collection of rotten, bleeding corpses hanging from the walls around me, dozens of them. And each of them had been destroyed by that cleaver!
I then found that I was able to hear sounds, which at first I thought to be some kind of earth-murmur. But soon the realisation came to me that these noises were indeed plaintive cries of terror, and coming from the mouths of those poor wretches that hung from the walls, and this proved to me that even in death, their sufferings continue.
I cried out, unable to control my fear any longer, and this revealed me to those awful things. As the blood-lake steamed and hissed I heard an evil voice which seemed to come from everywhere at once, filling all the darkness and sounding like the voice of Death itself.
"Do you believe that the dead live on?"
But I made no reply, unable to find the words for any retort. I wanted only for this night to end -- I wanted to be taken back to my bedroom, and the peacefulness of sleep. This living nightmare was causing me to lose my mind. But then...
The original ghoul from the cage emerged from one of the caves, appearing like a strange shadow before the light of the flames which surrounded its outline. It looked at me with hatred, and I spotted a squirming figure in its dark arms. In the following seconds my blood seemed to freeze in my veins, for I saw the terrified form he held was Catherine!
An almighty scream of woe left my lips, and reverberated within those dark, stone walls. The intensity of that scream I fancy increased, for my brain seemed to be elsewhere, crushed to dust by a huge hand of evil, so that I was not aware of anything except the sight of my cherished wife in the hands of that death-creature. It lifted her into the air, and I continued my yelling as I realised he was about to toss her into the scorching lake of crimson.
"No!" I howled. "Please -- take me instead! Take me! I have always spoken well of the dead!"
Then those Dead Things -- they started to howl themselves, a deep, horrible sound that could only emerge from these soulless creatures that were shunned by God and everything holy.

My nights I now spend in anticipation of the Dead Things. They creep through the insanity that lurks in my brain, taunting me and laughing at my endless torment. The nightmares I suffer now are real -- they contain every type of evil imaginable to mankind. I still harbour sick memories of that deep cavern and that lake of boiling crimson. And I wish to weep with shame when I tell you -- I have slid my slick palms along that hooked pole, I have held that deadly cleaver in my grip -- and I have devoured the meat of humans. Yes, always I wish to weep, but I cannot...
And now, as my dark, featureless face gazes upon the sleeping form of my love, I touch her warm skin with yellowed fingernails.
"Catherine, do you hear the screaming in my brain?"