"Acerbus Astrum" by Amy ´Insom´ Downum

                                              Acerbus Astrum

   The wan lamp light was but an insignificant glow outside my window. The accumulated filth of centuries past had made the cracked glass pane opaque, as if I were viewing the world outside through heavy grey fog.

   I was waiting. I had been for a year since that night upon which I had flung myself into an irreversible fissure of horror beyond all I had ever known.

   Silence invaded my ears, a deafening pitch of soundless torture. Every muscle in my corpse tensed, spasmed, tautened with the unbearable wait.

   And then it came… A throbbing clarion call sounded from the depths of Hell. Like a scream it tore my eardrums, high and deep at the same moment. My brain seemed to fizz, dissolving into nothingness. I felt a muscle flutter beneath my eye. As if in a trance I rose from my seat beside the filthy window, crossed the dank, cluttered room and slipped out the door.

   For an eternity I had lingered on the edge of Night and Day, of sanity and lunacy, of life and death. I was neither living nor dead, a soulless being of tortured fate doomed to wander the gap between two worlds, belonging to neither and yet to both.

   Down the cobbled streets I strode, determined to do that which was expected of me. I joined the masses heading through the back alleys. The world grew dark as one by one the oil lamps flickered and died.

   Like the beating of a sleeping heart the bell summoned those still unaware of its imperious, inevitable call. Reverberating echoes vibrated through my chest, rattling my ribs like the great bellow of an enormous monster.

   The streets were alive with those summoned. Hordes of them, all alike in one way. They were dead, as was I. A year to the day had it been since my fall into Darkness and Shadows so thick I could not see to find my way out.

   The bell ceased its horrid, ghostly call. My ears were filled with the murmurs of the crowd. Excitement passed from one glance to the next.

   Every year I had avoided this ghastly celebration. Every year I had taken refuge in the manor upon the hill, to wait out the Carnival De Morta until at last it was safe to return. But I was not so fortunate this night.

   I had reached the town square. Dazzling lights bombarded my eyes so used to the darkness of my own mind, screams and wails of tortured souls rang like trumpets in ears accustomed to silence.

   A riot of colour blossomed before me. Rotting flesh jostled past me, sunken eyes cast me askew glances over emaciated shoulders. Hundreds of bodies massed around me, suffocating me with a stench not unlike the odor of rotting garbage on a balmy summer’s noon.

   I took a step back away from an old woman, her shawl stained crimson with blood pumped unhindered in her last minutes of brittle life. My heel came against a rough wooden board.

   I turned and felt my stomach contract with disgust. Below me in a barrel of ebon-red blood bobbed disemboweled infant heads, each with an expression of piteous fright etched into the smooth lines of hour-old faces.

   A stooped man knelt before me, plunging his face into the barrel and fishing out a tiny head. With relish he ate it, tearing flesh and muscle from a white skull with gnarled, graying teeth.

   Though he urged me, I would not join in. I sought asylum in the mass of churning skeletal bodies and decaying flesh around me.

   Above in the vaulted black abyss dragons wheeled and dove, bursting into glittering flames of scarlet, gold, and jade. Music such as I had never heard before fluttered through the crowd, sometimes loud, sometimes as soft as a dove’s mourning whisper.

   Not for a moment did I forget the purpose of this festivity. It was not far from my mind, not far from haunting every crevasse of my agonized mind. I knew it was coming, and the innuendo of imminent torment chilled me beyond the flesh and bone.

   A great, bellowing tone sprang from beneath my feet. The cobbled streets writhed, parting before me, fleeing in terror. A single shriek ricocheted from within, a long, piercing wail of unearthly quality and pitch that raised the hairs from my neck and arms.

   From this wound ripped deep in the earth spilled memories of the past, each a ghostly reminder of wrongs, lies, and hatred. Like hounds they bayed, calling forth their fellows. More and still more came, inundating the tiny village of Mortanegra.

   Souls of good and evil mingled with those too weak to reside in Hell in the town square. I stood shoulder to shoulder with the image of a young woman, who, like me, had met her fate in the jaws of the sacrificial spike pit.

   The Carnival De Morta began.

   I watched in silent disgust as the crowd jostled to allow the main attraction passage to the center stage.

   In single file they stooped before me, some no older than five winters. Their eyes shone with helpless pleading, their hands bound by cords of raw human sinew. It was their fate, their mortal fear of death that flickered like a dying flame in wide eyes. I pitied them, and yet I stood aside to let them pass.

   Up the steps to the stage they went, some struggling to break free, others already resigned to their gruesome destiny. I watched bitterly as one by one they became mere shadows of the living themselves.

   Such ways of torment I had never seen nor dreamed. Young girls not even half my age fought futilely against advances from lusting specters. Half-grown men struggled to put distance between themselves and the executioner’s blade. Those who resisted were tormented beyond recognition.

   Blood splattered those closest to the action. Agonized screeches pitched high over the thunderous shouts of approval from the crowd.

   I watched in subdued horror as my culture unfolded in the most inhumane ways possible. A part of me yearned to join in the jeering, but the human reasoning won over, and so I remained but a specter, a witness to heinous crimes.

   The executioner wheeled forth a massive pendulum suspended from a giant wooden frame. Tumultuous howls throbbed in my eardrums. The last victim staggered forward, pleading violently with the hooded man that held her, screaming her innocence to whatever crime she had committed to be sentenced here.

   With rough hands he thrust her down against the bottom of the pendulum’s frame, lashing her to it as the gathered horde of undead beings roared their support.

   Goblins wove their way through the crowd, dispensing bottles of beer and rum. I took the brown glass bottle proffered and allowed a satisfying sip to drench my lips.

   The executioner tilted the pendulum back and let it swing. In a graceful arc it fell, gleaming blade slicing the air, singing a death song to its squirming victim.

   She screamed, writhed, the crowd voiced its emotions in roars and hoots, cackles and out bursts of rancid song.

   Gradually did the blade fall, inching towards the woman in an ever-closing arc. All at once her whimpering pitched into an agony-drenched scream. Lower and lower still did the blade fall, slicing her deeper each time until her naked body was saturated with scarlet essence. A single twitch rendered her, as so many before and to come, a casualty of the Carnival.

   I pressed the neck of the bottle to my lips, downing the contents in a single gulp. A sensation like liquid ice spread through my body, cooling my fingers and nose. Another bottle after another did I consume, until my vision failed and my world altered…

   I woke to find myself sprawled on a plush couch, lacey red pillows cushioning my head. Objects and hues swam around me, performing a kaleidoscope ballet before my rapidly darting pupils.

   I rose, my temples pulsing, my heart beating a violent rhythm against my ribs, fighting to free itself from captivity.

   A stately manor wobbled into focus around me. Thick red carpet yielded beneath my feet, oak and maple cabinets and drawers reflected the glow of oil lamps.

   I stood slowly, cautiously. My mind was a whirl of panicked thought. Where was I? How had I gotten here?

   And suddenly it came to me, the recognition of this place I had been unable to put my finger on. I had visited this manor before on many occasions, though none when it had been so grand.

   Where there now stood impressive oak armoires and silver trimmed mirrors there had been shattered glass panes and rotted wood cabinets.

   I strode the length of the room and threw aside the fringed satin curtains. Below raged a familiar celebration of the dead. My heart thrummed fit to explode. My mind seemed to have ground to a halt. I forced myself to think rationally.

   Around the room my eyes sped until they found the gleaming glass dome of an intricate grandfather clock. The brass hands showed five before the hour of midnight.

   And so it was confirmed. By intoxication of drink or rabid dementia of mind I had entered the past, the time before the fall of the mansion I now stood in.

   Frantic panic was now speeding through my veins, adrenaline coursing like venom through my nerves. The wailing cry of wolves made me jump, bringing my racing mind back to reality. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a shadow, the glint of light off a wide eye.

   I spun around, grabbing a carven wooden bedpost for balance as I searched for the source of this shadowy being. My eyes came upon a mirror, showing my reflection as a shadowy, wide-eyed being of flesh and blood.

   I drew closer, captivated by what I saw. No longer did peeling skin and rotting flesh befoul brittle bones upon my body. I saw myself as I would have appeared a year before my life in Mortanegra, a young mortal not unlike those who had died upon the hands of my kind only moments before.

   I touched my smooth, peach hued skin in amazement. A year to the day since my death and here I stood, flesh and blood and bone, a living being.

   From the dresser I grabbed a knife and ran the blade across my up-turned wrist. Blood leaked from the shallow wound, dripping upon the carpet at my feet. Elation took me and for a moment I nearly lost myself.

   A fit of laughter startled me into the mirror. The great mahogany frame flipped backwards and I stumbled away.

   I grabbed hold of the brass doorknob for balance, trying to slow my rapid breathing. Others were in the house…

   As soundless as Death Herself I crept from the room, slithering down the upstairs hallway on feet blessed with silence. The sweeping stair lay before me, draped with red carpet as if expecting the arrival of a queen. I sank to my knees behind the polished banister and peered into the kitchen below.

   A young man sat in the company of a woman at the massive dining table. Candlelight cast them in romantic shadows and wavering light. The woman’s twittering laugh reached my ears once more as her male companion voiced an apparently amusing opinion.

   The grandfather clock in the room behind me began to toll. Midnight came in a dozen outbursts of deep, ominous announcements.

   Still I crouched, wary of being seen, and unsure if I could be seen at all. The last of midnight’s flanking trumpets died upon my ears and all was silent.

   From my secreted perch at the foot of the stairs I saw it come, a shadow darker than the night upon which it stole. Below the talk continued, unwavering as more wine was poured, as the candle’s flame slipped lower into the wax.

   The phantom shadow need not announce his arrival, for the second he bled through the crack beneath the French doors it was more than apparent he had come.

   The candle was smothered in a hiss of dying protest. The oil lamps screamed and silenced. The crash of glass against wooden floor and the gasp of air quickly filling lungs was the only sound heard in the unfathomable darkness.

   The house began to quake as if in a furious gale. I felt the banister upon which I leaned splinter, torn from its base by an unseen force. The woman began to scream, her partner yelling curses as if he expected it to calm her. The wind grew violent. I was flung backwards into the wall, listening, as the man and woman were ripped apart, torn limb from limb. Their terrified shrieks rent the air, carrying over the gale like a banshee’s warning cry.

   A deep, resonating boom shook the manor’s foundation. I lay upon the floor, pleading silently with whatever evil had conjured this to make it stop. As I lay there, breathing the scent of carpet and my own terrified sweat, I felt the house settle, the gale wind down to a mere breeze.

   A thick, black glove settled over the house, pressing down on me. Barely an inch did I incline my head, freeing my ear form the muffling carpet. I strained my senses, trying desperately to see, to hear, to think.

   Not a sound reached my ears, not the tiniest hinting of movement reached me high on the second floor. But I knew the phantom had not gone.

   I was filled suddenly with the strongest panic I had ever felt before. My hands shook, my palms oozing sweat. I was sure he could hear the frantic scrambling of my heart, the pointless whirling of my brain as it fought to gain traction in this quagmire of death and unreal, unbidden ferocity.

   I moved without the notion of doing so ever crossing my mind. Backwards I scrambled until my back happened upon a cold tile wall. The steady drip of water from a tap told me I was in a bathroom. I curled into a fetal position, swathed in ebony shadows so thick I could feel their burden upon my shaking shoulders.

   Nary a floorboard groaned, nary a breath of wind hinted his presence mere feet from me in the hallway. I needed no warning, for I could feel his aura. Like an embodiment of doom he was, looming above me, around me, inside me, snatching away all hope from my breast and flinging it to ravenous wolves of despair.

    My pulse hastened to obey the throbbing of my heart. I held my breath, silently chanting, “He will come to pass… He of the Shadows, eternally tormented…He will come to pass…”

   The void of darkness lingered, hesitating, a menacing sensation naught but an inch from me. Tears of fright leaked form my eyes, coursing down my sweating face. I dared not move to wipe them away.

   Still he remained, standing as still as I in the doorway. What, in the name of the Fates, delayed his return to the bowels of Hell? Why did he linger, if not to leap upon me just as I became careless in my decision to remain hidden?

   At length he stirred, turning his great Eye from me as shadows bore him away. I held back a massive sigh, my breath ragged as I struggled to regain control over my trembling body.

   A single tear parted my cheek. I had not thought of this. Every aspect of silence I had been most vigilant in upholding. All but this.

   The soft kiss of saline fluid against tile echoed as if magnified by my own hysteria throughout the silent house.

   I had not even a thrice to act, to reprimand myself, to flee. He was upon me before my mind had time to register what had happened.

   It was pain like I had never known before or would ever know again. Limbs parted my body in an aerial ballet worthy of the Damned. I shrieked my agony to whatever deity would listen, tasting blood as is spewed from my mouth and nose in fountains of crimson.

   Blinded by pain I fell without the faintest inkling of where I was falling. Cold air stung my face, whipped my hair back. I could feel him behind me, giving chase as I plummeted, still screaming my plea into this void into which I now fell.

   The air burst from my lungs as I landed upon my back. I spluttered blood, coughing as my own life-essence seeped away. I struggled to gain my feet and found myself one more set upon by the phantom shadow.

   Strength radiated from him like waves of heat from a fire. His Eye pierced my thoughts, flaying my mind before his powerful, terrible gaze. I writhed, pain searing every nerve in my body as if I had been thrown bodily into the fiery stomach of Hell.

   Thundering laughter pounded in my head, ebbing and pitching like a thousand voices in a domed cathedral. My head felt as though to explode. Blood streamed down my face, pooling before me on the stone floor.

   I was on my knees, kneeling in the mighty grasp of this demon, my throat constricted by an unseen grip of fingers comprised of nothing but shadows.

   His voice sneered malicious insults in my head. It was agony to keep my eyes open, but I could not close them. His power held me there, restrained by nothing, by darkness and an Eye.

   “Clamo! Clamo donec tui pulmo eruptio! Ego cura haud nam tui letalis, tui metus vel sensus. Atrum voro… letalis defungo…”

   “Scream! Scream until your lungs burst! I care not for your mortality, your fears or emotions. Shadows consume… mortals die…”

   I saw his jaws part, his monstrous head leaning over me. I swung wildly, trying desperately to deflect him, but to no avail.

   I was hurtled forward into a pain so intense I could no more scream than see. Sheer agony blinded me, tore my skin from bones rattled with the speed at which I was careening through dimensions I never knew existed.

   I strayed from thought and time. Each second was as long as an age, each age as long as a second. I knew not where I fell, nor how long I had been falling, nor my own name or gender or age.

   I would have thought myself dead, a spirit spinning wildly into the void of Death. But I had already died once… though if this was truly happening, it mattered none for this was the past, and I had died in the present future…

   Ah, such blissful ponderings, musings to keep my mind from the situation I had gotten myself in. I willed myself to think of other things, of flowers and sunshine and all other manner of things forgotten in Mortanegra.

   How long this charade would have lasted I do not know. Just as it seemed I had been eaten alive by infinite darkness beyond all reckoning a light budded before my very eyes.

   So small it was, like a single star in the vast vault of space, but so bright! I threw up a hand to shield my eyes, but it did little good. As I sped towards it, the star grew, flooding my dark realm in the colorless hue of new-broken day, yet as dark as the shadows from which I was longing to escape.

   The light widened, swallowing me in a blinding pool of colourless colour. The shadow realm I left behind, embracing this new world with blood stained hands and willing eyes.

   The dark light began to vibrate. The air shook around me as I floated, suspended in the middle of the most peculiar light I had ever seen with my waking eyes.

   Such a pitch did the vibrating reach that I too felt its force, rocking and shaking in the middle of this appearance, this holy field of existence I now belonged too.

   A voice like the crashing of thunder roused my deadened mind. It came from the star its self, and from within my own mind.

   Such things it told me I will never repeat. Such foul curses it spoke to my mind haunt me even to this day. I writhed in mid air, pleading soundlessly with this being to relent, to leave. This only seemed to goad the voice into a terrible rage.

   Oaths of hatred it bellowed, blowing my mind into oblivion. I cried desperately, willing it to stop, but such things now poured into the white void that I could not block out. Horrible curses, gruesome admittances, deeds of trickery and massacre and rape.

   I do not remember how I escaped. The light of the dark star had grown so intense I could no longer see. My eyes burned away, my ears rang with insults and decrees of hatred so foul it pained me to hear.

   I fell…