"Wight. Chapter Four" by James ´Jimbo Fett ´ Inwood

Mr Hodge sat back on his plush satin armchair and inhaled the tobacco from his clay pipe. Partially obscured by the grey cloud he closed his beady little green eyes and withdrew the pipe, whilst he mopped his brow with the snow-white handkerchief held in his podgy little hand. Taking the necklace he had found at the barrow two days ago out of his pocket he shuddered at the recollection of it‘s discovery. Whatever that creature did to Hitchner, Hodge did not want to know.

Whatever fate awaits that poor man, he’s welcome to it. Better him than me. He thought.

He studied the necklace. It was a small rough-cut ruby with a simple leather strap drilled through it. He was mesmerised by the way the blood-red stone reflected the light from the nearby fireplace. The way it caught his reflection was beautiful, if not morbid. It was as if the stone was a portal to another reality, one in which he and the room were submerged in gore.

Sighing morosely he got up and placed the necklace on the mantelpiece overlooking the flickering fireplace. Looking around his luxurious smoking room he managed a week sickly smile, absent minded he began to walk around the room.

Everything was as it should be. His bookcases were kept clean and the contents ordered, dusted and segregated. His carpet which was a fur hide of a mountain tiger shot while he was on holiday last year, stared out at his feet with impassive, hollow, black eyes. Even his prized possession, a suit of well polished plate mail stood by the door. Next to it was his collection of swords, including the very same blunderbuss that he shot the mountain tiger with. All of his weapons were in place and fixed to the wall as they should be.

Sighing he looked up at the great oil painting hanging over the mantelpiece, it was another of his possessions, an oil painting of him sitting in the armchair in this very room.

This room, in actual fact was his most favourite room in the whole of his manor. It was comforting for Hodge to be surrounded by all his possessions gained through hard work or otherwise. Yet this room gave him little comfort tonight despite being near all his acquired objects.

Tonight Hodge was feeling something he had not felt for a very long time.

Guilt.

Scowling to himself he shook these feelings away. He was a man that had spent most of his life striving to attain power and wealth. Naturally he had very little time for other people and even less time for their feelings, to him people were counters or cards that he sacrificed in order for him to win the big prize. He had done it before countless times over the course of his life, so why was he feeling so guilty and so restless now?

The hours dragged on….

                                    ***************************

The early morning rays of the sun stroked the hooded wight as he strode along the path. Earlier today he had almost been completely burnt from the wholesome shine of the peeping sun, it was only through quickly donning the hooded cloaks from the bandits he had slain earlier, that had saved him from complete immolation.

For that matter his hands were gloved as well, which unfortunately prevented him from leeching the life from a nearby squirrel. Which he had needed to heal the scorch marks that had withered his pale flesh.

To the causal observer he looked like a filthy elderly vagabond with a slight lack of skin pigmentation.

He looked out of the woods that the path led out of. Before him was a lush, green field, and in the distance was what looked like a city along a coastline that led towards a mountainous horizon. It all looked familiar, yet somehow he felt that it had all changed, as if he was now an alien to this once familiar world. 

Steeping out onto the open pasture he suddenly felt a searing heat on the top of his head. He stopped and put his hand on it and yelled as the skin from his hand burned with an intense ferocity and began to wither, turning the colour of ancient paper.

He looked up into the sky and regretted it, as the instant he caught the spiteful glare of the sun it blinded him instantly. Stumbling and staggering backwards temporally blinded he pulled his hood up cursing his new enemy. One that I can’t kill or get rid of. He thought to himself.

Eventually his vision focused then changed from a fiery red to a….grey sky?

He felt a familiar prickling in the back of his skull.

The sky was the colour of worn-out iron but the landscape was the same yet its features had changed. It had no road and no forest behind him, just hills nearby decorated with corpses.  He also felt proud in a grim and triumphant sort of way, satisfied that he had somehow taken part in this carnage.

He was also wearing a suit of bloodied plate mail and his sword was on the ground. Bending down to retrieve it he noticed his necklace dangle in front of him. He longed to touch it but for some reason he didn’t, he simply picked up his sword and walked over to the nearest corpse.

The corpse was that of a man dressed in a leather jerkin bedecked with what looked like fragments of scavenged metal. Next to his body was a well-used axe which was still held by an arm that had been severed from the main torso.

Looking around he noticed other bodies dressed in roughly the same way but with different variations to the style and type of metal used on their strange armor. Yet others were not; others were in plate mail with a sword and shield like he was. Looking upwards towards the horizon he saw a sight that removed the smile from his face, a thick plume of black smoke trailing lazily up into the heavens.

He woke with a start and noticed three things. It was no longer daylight; it was night. He was also lying face-flat on the forest floor and could hear something coming. It was a gentle pounding of horse’s feet on the soft earth accompanied with the rattle of a wooden coach.

He got up and dusted himself off as the coach grinded to a halt near him.

“You there!” The shadowy coachman shouted at him. “What is your business here at this time of night?” 

Again the Wight spoke back with more ease then before.

“Nuthin” he said.

“Oh for goodness sake coachman, he’s obviously a vagrant. Just give him some silver and be gone, we’re late enough as it is!” Demanded a shrill female voice from somewhere inside the coach.

The coachman threw a bundle of something that clinked as it hit the floor, and with that the coach sped off into the night leaving the Wight with the first smile he had felt for a long time.

                                *********************************

He walked a few miles into the night until the crescent moon was at its highest point grinning down on him, refusing to let him in on a joke that only it knew.

Eventually he came to a crossroad. In front of him lay the city he was heading towards, it was nestled within a wide bay but nearby hung a gruesome trophy. A body of someone caged within an iron gibbet, long dead and well within the first stages of decay.

He was about to leave the scene to travel towards the city but he noticed something on the corpse that intrigued him, it was something glinting in the moonlight from within the cage; he crept closer for a better look.

The corpse was that of a young woman which -despite her decay- still held on to her flowing red hair.

He felt a tugging in his brain telling him to move on but his curiosity spurred him towards the gibbet to get a closer look. He was only just below the cage when he sensed a change in the temperature, it descended from a chilly night to an artic chill that cut through his skin and into his bones. Stepping forwards with his hair on end he saw what was catching the light from the moon. It was a small pendant dangling around the neck of the woman.

Perhaps this is it…..He thought.

He was about to climb up the post when all of a sudden the rope holding the cage snapped and fell to the ground almost flattening him. Luckily he dodged it but he sensed something terribly wrong, as the light from the crescent moon was suddenly obscured by a thick cloud plunging the surrounding countryside into a frigid darkness.

Within seconds from after the cage had hit the floor a veil of fog suddenly sprung up from the ground making it impossible for him to see anything.

He heard the creaking sound of iron being bent. This time he wasn’t just feeling cold he was feeling terrified for the first (and maybe the last) time. Within what felt like an age he saw a thin skeletal figure lurch out of the fog, he wanted to move but his legs felt like they were rooted to the ground.

The figure moved closer until it was only an arms length away. The corpse of the woman glared at him with pure white eyes. Her face was screwed up in anger as one of her thin arms shot out and grasped him by the neck lifting him from the ground. Frantically he tried to squirm out of her vice-like grip as he struggled for breath.

Slowly she opened her decaying mouth, a sight and smell that would have made a lesser being faint.

“Th…hhh….thief!” She hissed burping corpse gas all over him.

“Bu…but!” He gasped as she released her grip on his neck a fraction.

“I…jus…want what is mine….ma…necklace is so important.”

“Su…sss…so…important…the…tha…that you would…steal…..another?” She rasped.

“Nuh…” He yelped as she tightened her grip once again.

“Retur….earn….return to death….with….me…..wuh…we shall…..discuss it further. Suddenly her mouth opened to grotesque proportions as his vision lost all colour and faded away.

                                    *******************************

Once again Hodge faced a restless night.

He got up and poured himself another drink and downed it straight away.

Somewhere outside his bedroom an owl hooted. Wild eyed he jumped, swore and realised what it was. He smashed his glass into the nearby fire and watched the flames roar slightly at the traces of alcohol.

The hours dragged on….