The Indie Collaboration Presents: Tales From Darker Places Read online

Freddy felt exhausted early, as if his energies magically turned to mist, floating away in the blackening sky. He felt a dimming shadow, creeping over his mind. Gooseflesh excited his trembling arms, and he felt little desire to stand. He lay on his bed, the dog-eared Holy Bible held aloft by his ever-weakening arms at midday, his eyes heavy and wanting sleep. It was a battle lost, sleep was claiming him, and he was worthless against its fortuitous embrace. He meant to stay awake, had thought he could for once see the moon. Drooping now, sleep inevitable, his eyes stole over one last line from Jeremiah, as the Bible sat lazily on his chest:

  “I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth…”

  In his dream, he stood in a glade. Disjointed images flitted by in a surreal abundance. Rings of smoke rose at the edge of a campfire, and he watched as figures, mostly shadows masked by the glowing embers that hurt his eyes, laughed gaily over words he did not comprehend. He felt his stomach rumble, and smelled the raw meat a bearded man struck over the flames on a forked stick. Within the dream state he was the alien, he did not sense so much as know it, and he wondered why it felt so natural.

  Then as he snuck towards the joyful group, a black cloud erased the dream, leaving nothing but an expansive abyss in its wake. Freddy slept like the dead, and it was hours before he woke to birds singing and rays of sun peeking through the shades. He felt angry then, sure it had been Terra. Positive she had slipped something into his breakfast. His head was cloudy. Sitting upright, he went to wipe away the sweat from his brow, noting he must need a bath, because he felt foul. His hand came away crimson. For the longest time he just stared at the red swatches, his stained arms, and the black grit under his nails…

  He was frightened, though he was not. Confused, but clearheaded, Freddy stood and walked throughout the house looking for any evidence he could find that would help him understand how he came to be filthy, nude, and bloodstained… Going outdoors, he found the hen he killed, and this offered his answer, which he readily accepted as it had happened once before. It had always been his job to harvest the chickens, he must have been dreaming about it and sleep walked. Terra had caught him doing the same thing before, leading him inside, and telling him the next day after inquiring over what he recalled.

  Freddy cleaned the chicken properly and brought it inside, glancing with solemnity at the place the cleansing bar once rested. Everything was still a mystery, a way unknown. Sighing, he exited the kitchen and drew a hot bath, placing the hen inside a pot to boil. Having already decided on soup, Freddy was half there. Despite all of his contemptuous feelings for Terra, he missed her. Her cooking had a flair his could never match. He scrubbed away the stains from his hands, never giving them a second thought. Wondering at length over Terra’s haggard appearance, the frayed wits she displayed before her departure vexed him.

  The bath was warm, and despite having slept the prior evening, Freddy fell asleep. Dreams did not find their way into the sheet of blackness he lay under for some time. Eventually his senses picked up the aroma of cooked chicken, and his eager stomach prompted his wakefulness. Cleansed, he stood up, stepped out, and began pat drying the cold water from his puffy, wrinkled skin with an over-sized towel.

  He went about deboning the chicken, a simple task, as the meat fell away from the bones easily. He added his noodles to the broth, and vegetables, carrots, peas, and celery. Sitting outside on the stoop, he watched the darkened clouds as they lolled against the azure sky like cloaked villains. Freddy had completely lost himself; he could not recall Terra’s instructions. He just sat staring at the sky, waiting. What he was waiting for, even he could not say. Certainly, it was not the soup. Something other than the clouds that crept like death over the sapphire sky the cumulous shape shifters put their stranglehold on lurked in the back of his brain. A darkness fell over the yard, deep, over the emeralds of Terra’s garden, and grey over the chicken coup, gave off a surreal impression. On this ordinary day, Freddy’s mind had fits. All seemed to be in its rightful place, but something was decidedly off…

  The pot made hissing sizzles, stirring him from his seated position, and like a robot, he rose, obeying the over boiling fluid beckoning him. Nearly catatonic with self-absorption, he mechanically shut off the burner and pulled the soup from the heat, sloshing some over the stovetop. Terra would have been livid had she seen this, though he did not notice the mess he had made. Walking away, he went to his room to lie down, forgetting entirely to eat.

  He did not feel right. Shutting his eyes against his swimming head and the nausea it held, he fought the waves, a growing headache… his vague concern.

  Night came rapidly. He watched its shadows like long fingers at first, tickling the surfaces of the family room, growing like morphing beasts in the pale afterglow of the sun…

  Mocking laughter followed her homeward. Blayock had been unreceptive, unwilling. The change had come. She had no way to ebb it. Why the old mage did not lie dead in a drying pool of cooling blood that very moment was beyond her comprehension. Blayock had his strengths, but wounded or not, she could have done away with him. In this form, few represented a threat.

  Feline and swift, Terra ran, darting across glades with the ease of a gazelle. Wildlife parted before her like the Red Sea did for Moses, dashing to hiding places she knew all too well. They need not fear her tonight. Her nose drove her, like a beacon she smelt the blood she must spill. It was too late for anything else. Even in this shape, Terra felt sorrow, knowing where her selfishness had driven her, where it drove her now.

  As if in league with the dark spirits who hold dominion over this realm, the clouds spit and thunder crackled as lightning forked the sky. She slatted her eyes against the sheeting torrents of precipitation, and pressed her limbs harder, energized by the damp. Deterring her seldom occurred. Nothing impeded her swiftness, or delayed her if she set her mind against it.

  Terra was going home; the gods would just have to play other games…