Many of them fell to the ground, the bullets from the Union rifles finding marks in their torsos, appendages and skulls. But just as a dozen of the fiends dropped seemingly lifeless into the dirt, several more of the grey skinned horrors emerged from the back of the mansion causing the crowd to surge forward. As they besieged the Union soldiers Peyton thought he saw some of those that had just fallen to rifle fire inexplicably rise to their feet again and rejoin the violence. A gruesome symphony accompanied the slaughter. The snapping of bones and ripping of flesh combined with the screams of twelve men suffering agonizing deaths. The sergeant was overcome with despondent fear and without realizing it, his fingers slackened against the rifle.
Peyton feared his American blue blood had changed to that of gutless yellow. He did not want to be a coward, but a primitive fear, born eons ago in the caves of his ancestors grew deep in his stomach like an ancient wyrm feeding on bits of terror and nightmares until it was strong enough to take control of its host. With reality ripping away piece-by-piece, numbness set in, like in the quiet moments after a battle is lost. The revelation that the hosts of Hell walked the Earth was knowledge beyond what any one man should know. Faced with horror beyond any he’d seen on the battlefield, Peyton slowly descended into a deep mental abyss, reality abandoned for all encompassing darkness. With his senses drifting away, the rifle slipped from Peyton’s limp grasp, fell to the hard ground and fired into the crowd.
The weapon’s explosive blast wrenched Peyton’s mind back from its descent, but also alerted the cannibals to his existence. Their blood smeared, pallid faces turned toward him. The sergeant took a step backward as he realized the attackers were only human in that they stood on two legs. Their faces, inhuman faces that he could never have imagined in his most evil of nightmares, held the most hideous of features. Perfectly circular, cyclopean eyes stared at him out of red-rimmed eye sockets. Mouths of gargantuan proportions framed with thin bloody lips housed an upper and lower row of deadly carnassials—long and thin, dagger-like teeth. A disproportionate, misshapen head surmounted a cadaverous, but hardy body. The terror within Peyton was great, but he was too afraid to move. The mob slowly turned away from the half eaten soldiers, taking steps in the sergeant’s direction. Elongated, almost rubbery fingers reached out to him.
One creature stood out among the crowd. Peyton witnessed it rise from its crouched position to a height greater than the rest.
“Vosta es electarn uniz.” The behemoth spoke a language unknown to human ears in a discordant voice that raped Peyton’s senses. Its manner of speaking was slow and deliberate. “Vosta es pu’rn quai aggho.”
Peyton’s body shook with tremors, as the creature appeared to be addressing him.
“Nosta exis pecto vahabis!” On the final word, the behemoth outstretched his sinewy arms above his head and a pair of leathery wings unfurled from his backside like gigantic black sails against the sky.
Panic gripped the sergeant at the unexpected demonstration of the behemoth’s enormous wingspan. He turned and ran, retreating from the house toward the black gate. The front lawn stretched out before him like a vast wasteland, but Peyton ran as fast as his legs, heavy with desperation, could carry him. At his back he could hear the mob approaching as well as the great flapping wings of the behemoth. Peyton knew it was close as he could feel blasts of breath, tainted with the odor of Hell, heating his backside. He lowered himself as the predator plunged toward him, its talons just missing his shoulders.
The black gate remained open. Peyton could see his lone horse waiting beyond the accursed boundaries of Morvain’s property. Tears streamed from his eyes as the distance between himself and the gate closed. But then a thought occurred to him.
“Dear God, I destroyed the lock. What will keep these monsters from escaping the confines of the high wall? I will NOT be responsible for unleashing this horror into the rest of the--” Peyton’s thoughts were interrupted as a scorching pain pierced his shoulder.
“Aaaaaaaah.” The flailing soldier screamed as he rose several feet into the air. He turned his head and his cheek was against the skeletal thin, oily black leg of the winged beast. The behemoth had not missed on its second pass over him. Its piercing talons had ripped into him with an unforgiving fierceness. Peyton clutched at his captor’s leg and attempted to pull it free from his flesh. The creature was gliding toward the mob of cannibals. Peyton’s face went slack as he realized his fate. He removed his revolver from its holster as he plummeted downward. The impact to the hard ground jarred the breath out of him and Peyton fired his pistol into the crowd of horrific faces. The sergeant screamed as ghastly hands and hungry mouths were upon him. As he slipped out of consciousness the winged leader stood over Peyton and spoke to him again in the resonating eldritch voice.
“Chymer hon 'n chrau 'ch boblogi.”
The creatures savagely ripped at his body with their jagged teeth and amidst the red lightning bolts of pain that flashed in his brain Peyton could clearly understand his executioner. “Take our blood to your people.”
1 2 3
