The windows rattled like rabid animals in a cage. Brief flashes of lightning lit up the pitch black sky. Gerard turned on his mat, his mind blurred with drowsiness. Only faint trickles of feeling seeped into his mind. Hungry. Cold. Sore. Wet. In the adjacent room, his mother and his younger brother Ralph slept peacefully. Their bare house creaked occasionally and rain drained through the cracks. The threadbare blanket did little to warm Gerard. Slowly, with the rain drumming monotonously on the roof, Gerard slowly drifted back to sleep.
The next morning, Gerard woke to his brother bouncing up and down on his mat. Groggily, he said, “Hey, Ralph, what time is it?”
Ralph, who was barely 6, said, “I don’t know,” as he swung his head back and forth and bit his lip.
“Ugh, go ask mom or something.”
“Mommy isn’t home.”
Gerard bolted out of bed and pulled on his simple, rough clothes. “What? Where is she?”
“I don’t know, she got up and went out in her pretty dress.”
Gerard knew such special attire meant it was a town meeting. “Uh, just get some water and some bread or something, and see if you can make me something too.”
“What should I make?”
“I don’t know, I have to go right now, just find something to eat.” With that, Gerard sprinted out the down and onto the street.
What he saw made him stop in his tracks. The entire street was torn apart, as if a monster had come through last night. The cobblestone was ripped apart, carts were overturned, and tufts of fur and feather littered the streets. However, the houses were fully intact and had barely suffered any damage. “Maybe it was a golem,” muttered Gerard. He quickly pushed that thought out of his head; golems were not plausible. Glancing both ways, Gerard took off towards the local church, Our Lady of Unending Love, and stopped just in front of the door. Breathing deeply, he smoothed out his hair, straightened his shirt, and pushed the door open.
Under the grand, arched ceiling were large, somber, oak pews arranged neatly in rows. In the center, seven marble steps led to a raised platform, where the adult villagers were gathered. Quietly joining the crowd, Gerard overheard the villagers discussing with the priest the recent attack on their village.
"...unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable," said the priest.
"Perhaps we should send a messenger to Lord Luxure," said James, the village blacksmith.
"For what? So we can wait for him to ignore us? So we can die, out here, unprotected? You know as well as I do that our 'Lord' Luxure, how I despise that name, has done nothing to help us, only the most horrible things to take from us what is rightfully ours!" spat Alvin. Alvin had been attacked by bandits, and dragged of into the desert, left for dead, until he had stumbled back into the village, only to find that Lord Luxure had taken his wife. When he protested, a host a guards appeared the next day to have a quiet chat, and Alvin wisely kept his mouth shut, fuming inside.
"Yes, yes," said the priest, "but this time, his castle is in danger as well; maybe he would take notice this time..."
"Well...I suppose it might be worth a try," said Alvin.
"Then it has been decided," said the priest, "you may return to your homes now, perhaps quickly pack a few things in case we must leave."
That night, Gerard sat with his mother, preparing a modest meal.
"Perhaps...I don't know...maybe we should pack our things," she said.
Gerard contemplated the villagers' situation. Lord Luxure was very unreliable; it would be extremely unlike that he would help the villagers.
"I'll start packing, if you don't need my help cooking."
"I know how to cook," said his mom, "you can go pack. And get Ralph to help you."
Gerard dropped the beans he was washing in the bowl and wiped his hands on his pants.
"Come here Ralph, help mummy and I pack!"
"But...why?"
"Ralph..."
"Fine," said Ralph, defiantly puffing up his chest as he stomped over to Gerard's room. Gerard rummaged through his room, looking for an appropriate bag. Finding nothing, Gerard folded up his bedsheets. Just as he was packing an old map he and Ralph had found when there was a knock on the door. Sometimes, strange blue marking glowed on the sheet when Gerard looked at it out of the corner of his eyes, but when he focused his eyes on it, the markings disappeared.
"Find a safe place to put this map," said Gerard, as he handed the map to Ralph and raised to answer the door. Whoever it was, he was impatient, as the pounding on the door increased in volume.
"Coming..." said Gerard as he half-ran, half-jumped to the door. "Helloooo" Can I help you?"
The man at the door looked nervously from side to side and said, "I must hurry, Lord Luxure has been killed, and all villagers are to evacuate immediately into the castle," and he ran down the street to the next door.
"Mum, we have to go. Now. Maybe just grab a little bit of what's already cooked...we have to go now, Lord Luxure is dead."
His mother stood up, and wiped her hands clean, and dropped the beans into the bowl. "I suppose we just have to go then. Have you finished packing?" she asked, surprisingly calm.
"Ralph, hurry, grab our bag, we have to leave."
"But, I can't fold it, I don't know...I can't...I...how to do it."
Gerard sighed and sprinted down the hall to his room. He quickly reached down and scrunched the four corners together, making a crude bag.
"Let's go, Ralph," said Gerard, reaching down to take Ralph's hand.
On the way to the door, Gerard ripped off a handful of bread, and stuffed it into his mouth, then decided to grab the entire loaf.
Most of the villagers were congregated outside the castle gates, and had already formed small camps. From near the gates, James waved to Gerard and his family, and they hurried over.
"You guys can use sum 'a my claim if you want, while we wait fer them to, uh, open that gate of theirs," said James, with a modest and slow drawl.
"Why, James, that's very nice of you," said Gerard's mother. James blushed. Gerard quietly slipped away with Ralph as James chatted with their mother. Taking out a blanket from the bag, Gerard spread it out on the ground and said to Ralph, "Remember, when you get on the blanket, take off your shoes first, so you don't get ti dirty."
"Hmmph," said Ralph, "maybe I won't.
"Maybe you will," said Gerard. Ralph ran off to find his friends without answering. Gerard rolled out some more blankets to serve as covers, and dug out a pan to fetch water from the pump.
That night, the men of the village sat around a central campfire, and Gerard helped set up a ring of easily accessible weapons around the campfire before going to bed.
Clik clak clik clak...
It was dark. Gerard could not see. "Who is it?" he said.
Clik clak clik clak...
Louder this time. Closer. Gerard swung around desperately, hoping for a glimpse of something, anything.
Jay-rard, there is nothing to worry about. Everything will be just fine. Just fine. Everything. Fine. Everything, just fine.
He swung at the noise and tried to focus on where it came from, but everything seemed to blur and whisk in and out of reality.
Just. Everything. Fine. Will fine be. Just. Everything.
The voice was cool, even, and unemotional.
Then, Clik clak clik clak...
"Watch out," said Gerard, "There's something else, out here, somewhere." Something about that voice made him trust it; he felt the owner of the voice was his friend.
Fine. Everything. Won't. Death. Now. They're all dead. Gone. Not here. Anymore. They left us. You. Left you. Gone. Forever.
Through the sentence, the voice changed from gentle, to harsh, cold, unsympathetic, and grave.
Clik clak clik clak...
The clicking was close now, almost next to him. Then, from his right, Gerard glimpsed a pair of narrow, red slits, and a pair of red curved slits, like the top halves of two circles, and two red circles. The shapes glowed, but the light did not spread very far. Gerard tried to run, to get away from those things, but froze. The shapes grew closer, and Gerard saw that they were eyes, eyes on masks. All three masks appeared to cover the entire face, and were oval in shape. The mask on the left was pure white, the curved slits like smiling eyes that accompanied the creepy, exaggerated grin. The mask in the middle was brown, with deep, angular, black cracks running through it at irregular intervals. The two red circles were its eyes, a crack running through the middle of the right eye. A block hung from an empty space were the mouth would be, if it had a mouth. The mask on the right was more like the first mask; pure white. The two slits were eyes and at the bottom of the mask where the mouth would be was a half-circle on two vertical lines, with more thin, vertical lines inside. It reminded Gerard of a large wooden door with grain.
"What...how..who...is this...no..." whispered Gerard, standing so still that his muscles ached.
Don't be afraid, Jay-rard. We won't hurt you. Won't hurt. We. Don't be. Hurt. Afraid.
The masks came closer and closer and stopped. Gerard could see that from the masks were human bodies. Dark, long cloaks were draped from their shoulders, excpet for the one in the middle. Gerard decided that it was a marionette with long, choppy limbs, although he could not see any puppet strings. The grinning mask moved forward until it was in Gerard's face. He wanted to scream inside, being so close to this...thing.
Jay-rard. Interesting. We shall see where our fate leads us, hmm? Don't worry, we won't kill you.
Gerard took no comfort from these empty words.
Yet.
And then they were gone.
Gender:
Points: 890
Reviews: 59