"Mortanegra - Revised Edition" by Amy ´Insom´ Downum

                                  Mortanegra  by Amy Downum

   A bell sounded in the distance, the mists that so shrouded this tiny village lifting ever so slightly, as if anticipating something… At last it came, a murmur of the wind that foretold the events of that dark eve. Haunting did the laughter sound, deep within the bowels of the earth. Cold and sharp it came, until every hollow of every twisted tree was vibrating with the cold cackle.

   Lights that had been kept cold in eternal slumber now flickered slowly to life in the cobbled streets, bathing the eerie town in misty pale light. Silence settled upon the land, the laughter dying away.

   Then it came again, once more resounding through the stormy atmosphere. The ground trembled, spasming horribly as its surface was ripped open, revealing a fiery pit. From within this pit they came, spilling out like blood from a wound.

   They rose, the decayed bodies of people and creatures long dead. Stiffly they walked, but yet with every shuffled step they were renewed, until once more they walked the land as the undead. Once more they donned festive garments, masks and feathers. Some presented their own death, a man with a knife through the back, a child with a missing head. They danced, waving about in an odd and yet captivating ritual that had formed the history of this tiny town buried deep within the remotest mountains.

   Long ago had the ordinary folk laid to rest, long ago had the people of Mortanegra drifted to sleep, never to wake again…

   Now this surreal spectacle took over the cracked streets, the misty graveyards, the town square. From behind a headstone of polished marble stumbled a ghost, wrists bound by manacles rusted seven years over. Blood oozed from one undead to another, running together in the streets, dripping into the stagnant sewers.

   This night the undead of Mortanegra celebrated the most unusual and revered holiday in their history; Carnival de Morta. No carnival in time had ever been so horrible. No celebration sacrificed lives in the appalling ways as did Carnival de Morta, the celebration of the dead.

   To this night I know not why I came, nor why I dwell here still, though not easily could I have turned away. Nor does one leave, at least not alive… Those who venture too close are drawn in, horrified and yet captured by what they see. Resistance is futile once you are caught, helpless and alone. Cries for help go unnoticed…

It was on this night, as the undead danced and oozed through the street towards the Town Square, I awakened something that would send the undead scrambling back to their grave.

   I abandoned the parade of grotesque figures and dancing zombies and headed down the darkest back alley in sight, my head hooded and hands in my pockets. Hanging lamps I avoided, their eerie black light of no use anyhow. My footsteps echoed dully away from the celebration, my breath rising in mist in the cold air.

   A firecracker lit up the sky temporarily, a silvery purple dragon burst forth from the sparks and immediately rotted away. Still I strode on, stumbling on the uneven road.

    In these black hills, buried deep in the twisted, gnarled trees and werewolf-infested thickets, was a long forgotten house. This house had proved a valuable asset in surviving in this haunted world. It was my sanctuary when all the world was too morbid, too terrifying that it shrouded my brain.

   Creaking softly on its hinges, the rusted spire gate swung open to admit me into the tiny, single-family graveyard. Silent as a shadow I crept across the unkempt lawn, through the array of headstones, and to the porch. Dark eyes I laid upon the deteriorated structure, once a grand hall of an old and wealthy family, now a tattered reminder that the living do not live forever…

   With a last glance, I proceeded up the porch.  The first step I jumped, as well as the last one, and the door I opened, allowing myself into the dark confines of the ancient house.

   I lit a single black candle, allowing the flame to light my path to the kitchen. I passed many portraits of the deceased family, many of whom were buried in fore mentioned graveyard, though some were still here…

   A chill passed down my spine. A scream, more terrible than I had ever heard, reached me, safe in my dark house. It was unmistakably the scream of a petrified victim of the Carnival de Morta. The long, piercing shriek was cut short, and the jeers of the undead witnesses sent another unpleasant chill down my spine.

   The glowing flame flickered then died, and I was plunged into a ghostly darkness. I did not mind the dark, nor was I nervous and jumpy in its presence as were the normal folk. It bothered me not, rather embraced me, and kept me hidden when I did not want to be found.

   Cupboard doors creaked on rusted hinges, spiders fled from my searching hand. Upon finding what I sought, I settled myself down at the oversize oak dining table under the cobweb-covered chandelier.

   So great was my lack of coordination this eve that it took several tries with the knife to skewer my rations. The fourth try found the knife sinking deeply into the soft tissue, drawing the blood that pleased me so.

   As I ate, the cries of the tortured souls at the Carnival floated through the blackness to serenade me. Three years I had been here, and each year I retreated to this old house to elude that terrible celebration. Each year the festival was more horrible than the last, and it never failed to find me in bad spirits.

   I stuffed the last of the raw organ into my mouth and wiped the blood that dripped from my chin. A cloud of dust followed me to the ancient winding staircase, where it laid back to rest with its fellow particles. Miniature filth monsters arose as I ascended the stairs, each no doubt from the remains of a former landlord or lady of this forlorn estate. When at last I reached the desired floor, I had awoken an entire army of dusty soldiers, but one sweep of my hand and their charge was scattered, and they settled down again, eyes glowing.

   Lighting yet another black candle, I thrust aside the hangings of the four-poster bed and abolished the sleeping ghost from the moth eaten sheets. Ghostly candlelight flickered off an old mirror, cracked and dusty, that reflected a shriveled pale face of a woman whose mouth was taut in an unheard shriek.

   From outside the door I heard the stirrings of the dust monsters, and the telltale scratching downstairs of the phantoms who awoke at night. But this hindered me not, nor sleep did it impair. I only kept the candle close at hand, on the dresser beside the bed, and fell into a haunted sleep.

   Outside the festival raged on, fireworks blazed through the air. The forest, while certainly uninhabited by much, was home to a variety of creatures that howled, hooted, and screamed. But I did not stir. One could have marched the Carnival through the woods beneath my window and I would not have awoken, such was the deepness of which I slept.

   But I should have awoken. Every instinct in my brain was screaming for me to awake, screaming so loudly and forcibly that a banshee, screeching the same warning haunted my dreams, but I slept on. I should have awoken, for on the edges of the flickering candlelight were gathering an array of the foulest creatures ever to stalk the night.

   They circled me, inching close and leaping back as the candlelight seared their skin. Glowing eyes watched me hungrily. Demon and ghouls and creeping phantoms, rotted creatures of the forest, and old family dog long since dead, all waiting at the edge of my bed.  I tossed in the threadbare sheets.

   The human subconscious is a very strange thing, and as I was not a true human, mine was even stranger. Somewhere in my tortured mind I was aware of the threat that gathered about my bed, and that somewhere was able, at last, to alert the rest.

   I jolted awake, red eyes heavy with sleep. My heart skipped a beat.

   There I saw them; the creatures that meant to make short work of me. All about the bed they were, creeping closer as the candlelight faded, flickered closer to dying.

   Instinctively I grabbed the candle away from the advancing specters. I waved it like a torch, trying desperately to ward off these hungry creatures, but they only hissed, and showed their teeth. Their teeth, gleaming in the candlelight, spurred me to greater lengths, so that I reached my hand outside the ever-fading circle of light into the darkness for the matches.

   Realization of my stupidity registered its self in my brain a second to late. I felt the teeth hit, the weight of the ghost dog slamming into my wrist in a violent attack. I screamed. The dog held on, but I would not let go of the matches, my only hope. His teeth sank deeper and deeper, drawing warm red blood as he severed my veins. I screamed again and again, and then I screamed no more. The ghost dog bit right through my hand. I felt the bones crunch and the veins burst, and then I felt nothing but a searing pain where my hand used to be.

   The dog backed away, snarling between mouthfuls of blood, my severed hand clutched in his mouth. The matches that had been held so tightly in my hand were gone; my hope was fading faster than the dying candle.

   Now I clutched the candle close to my chest, along with my bleeding arm. Blood soaked my shirt, my hair, my sheets, but I was immune to the pain. All I saw were the beasts beyond the light; all I felt was the throbbing of the fear in my heart.

   Fear is also an odd thing. It made me brave, brave enough to do what no mere human could do. I sprang from the bed, shrieking like a wounded animal, and leapt clean over the mass of horrible things that stalked me.

   Shrieking with terror, I flew down the hallway, all the foul beasts in all of Mortanegra behind me. Then it happened. The event that I was silently praying to the undead to not happen happened; the candle died.

   For a moment I stood, still as stone, my eyes fixed upon the only thing that could have saved me, and was now worthless.

   I looked past the dead candle that was dripping hot wax upon my hand to the creatures that were advancing like wolves upon me. Their hungry, glowing eyes looked into mine, and then they sprang forward.

   The ghost dog took my throat, the dust fiends settled for ripping my skin from my chest and arms. I screamed, I shrieked, and I fought. Creature after terrible creature piled themselves upon me, blocking off my air, and my hope, but just when a common human would have given up I prevailed. I stood, the awful monsters hanging from every limb, teeth and claws ripping bloody gouges in what little skin I had left.

   From the kitchen counter I grabbed a frying pan and swung with one hand at the merciless beasts that plagued me. Screeching at the top of my lungs, I swung until the last ghoul was gone, then I turned and ran.

   Down the porch steps and across the graveyard I flew.  I sprawled head over heals over a broken headstone, and cried out in anguish as the nasty teeth of some horrible beast beset my leg. As I passed the ancient burial ground the spirits awoke, and joined in on the chase.

   Through the forest I ran, my lungs burning and my chest heaving, all the while screaming. The things that bore down on me from the trees I flung away with the frying pan still clutched in my hand.

  And then they were gone…

   I realized this only when I had stumbled again over a raised root, and though I flung my hand up to shield my face from a barrage of attacks, they did not come.

   Chest heaving, I peered through my blood soaked hand and past my bleeding stump into the dark forest, but not a single creature there stood. Still, I did not wait for them to come; I turned and stumbled through the forest till I came to rest in a misty clearing just outside of town. Here I could continue no longer.

   No hunting cries of the dreadful beasts drifted towards me, and from this I stole hope. But not for a minute had I stood to catch my breath when a whispering voice terrified me back to the present.

   “Tarry not…” whispered the voice, so close it raised the hairs on my neck. I whirled around, eyes wide and heart hammering away in my heaving chest. Not a tree stirred, nor a soul was seen.

   “Run….” Whispered the disembodied voice, so faint I could barely hear it over the frantic beating of my heart. I didn’t move, nor could I, for what I was seeing rooted me to the spot.

   Drifting through the trees towards me was a silvery apparition, but no such apparition had I seen before in Mortanegra. It came still nearer, floating above the ground like a phantom. A single, inaudible squeak issued from my bloody lips as the thing neared.

   It was a girl, a girl who was so terrifying I had to look away, but found I could not. She came upon me, clearer than before. The shining silver dress that floated at her ankles floated right through me as she came right up, face-to-face.

   Her nose almost touching mine, I looked into her empty eyes, and my body felt like ice. Only a mere inch away from my face, she opened her mouth wide, and for a moment not a sound came out, then, “RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!!!!!”

   So shocked was I that I fell over backwards, my heart beating so fast and hard it hurt. I scrambled to my feet and ran, the ghostly girl behind me still screeching in one high, unbroken note, “RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!!”

     Now, just as the lights of the celebrating town were so close, I saw why she desired me to run. From every corner of the forest, from every shadow, spawned the creatures that were hunting me. They came from the shadows themselves, multiplying from each other and from the air its self. Countless numbers sprang upon me, knocking me into a tree that hit me back, lashing its great bough across my already torn chest. I staggered, cried out to the silver ghost girl who now watched in silence, then ran again.

   Not even the greatest of divine forces knows how I managed to run with the weight of the ghouls and monsters on my back and arms, but run I did. I ran with the little creatures ripping skin from muscle, muscle from bone.

   I burst out of the forest, screaming in the same, unbroken note, as did the apparition. Down the muddy streets I raced, flinging ghouls off left and right. But the remaining few I could not shake, and they proceeded to tear me apart quicker than I could take a breath to scream.

   I stumbled again, and fell to my knees beside a pool of water in the town road. What I saw in the water spurred me to run again, the demons clinging to my back and eating me alive. The rest had refused to come into the light.

   I was nearly skinless, and every inch of my body scoured by the iron claws of these foul creatures. I had not noticed in my terror, but my left eye was slashed, and in several places my muscles torn so that the bone showed through the gaping wounds, and still I was alive.

   Now I was near the town square, where the celebration was still going on. I staggered through the same darkened alley I had wandered through only hours ago. Weak from loss of blood, my attackers swimming before my bleeding eyes, I lurched out of the alley and found myself thrust into the heart of the celebration.

   Not a single curious glance fell upon me. I fit right in amongst these horrible people who were not people. Stumbling and twirling I staggered through the crowd, too weak and terrified to ask for help.

   It was then I found myself, by some unholy dark twist of fate, standing at the edge of a giant pit, that at the bottom awaited spikes. The last three demons leapt from my back and surrounded the hideous, fleshless, bloody corpse that was all that was left of me. I leaned, exhausted and dying, against a lamppost, praying in my foggy mind that this light would keep them away.

   But, alas, it did not. The larger demon, its many pointed teeth bore in a cruel grimace, launched itself at me.

   Through crimson stained vision I watched, my mind to far gone to react. What little breath my torn lungs were able to hold was dispelled as the hard skull and pointed horns of the demon collided with my chest.

   One last cry did I give, a moan of agony so intense words cannot describe it. I stumbled back, my hand releasing the lamppost, leaving a bloody hand print. And then… I fell…

   Forty feet did I plummet until, with a terrible sound, I hit bottom. I did not feel the bone spires pierce my body, but I saw them, rising from my chest, my stomach, my shoulder, glistening red in the moonlight.

   No longer could I draw breath, and yet I found I no loner needed to. Sound was fading… light was dimming. I lay there, bathed in warm crimson blood, and there I will lie forever…

   So this is where the story ends, a bloody and gruesome finale to a bloody and gruesome story. But my story is just beginning. My time in Mortanegra is not spent as the living…but as the undead…