The Haunts

Levy woke up cold and naked. Still groggy from the blow to the head, he grimaced at the thorny branches that had twisted around his wrists and bound his ankles together. He felt wet, and his head throbbed in pain. He guessed that he must have been hung upside down, like in crucifixion, a capital punishment from the 6th century BC until the 4th century AD. He imagined the wall cross of Jesus Christ that his grandma had hung above the kitchen entrance door. He was so thirsty, and he knew that he was underground in the Hag Goddesses’ lair. He looked down at his nakedness and at the years of wounds and scars he had gained during his life, defeating the foulest of evils. He noted the crudely lit torches along the walls and wearily eyed one particular shelf against the wall that had been piled high to the root-dangling ceiling with little child-sized skulls. It made his stomach churn. This monstrous fiend was preying on so many souls, and only he had the power to stop this heinous act.

“Gaze upon the sacrifices made in her name,” a familiar male voice said from the shadowed archway across from him.

Levy glared in the direction it came from. “How can you keep deluding yourself when the truth is displayed in plain sight? She’s a monster!”

In the darkness, he shuffled forth a rotten version of the man who had almost killed him. What was left of Mr. Fellman held a tattered leather flask up to Levy. “I never liked the heat in here. It makes my flesh shrink. Living people fair no better, so here—drink.” He commanded.

At first, Levy resisted, but after a bit of coaxing, he swallowed down as much tepid water as he could, while the rest spilled down to his neck, dripping down to his naked form. It tasted flat on his palate, but at least it wasn’t filthy water.

Levy coughed: “Why the sudden show of hospitality?”

He continued, pointing to a root curtain-covered cave in the side of the wall, “She wants you to be alive when she rises.” Fellman’s thin lips curled back in a cruel smile. “If it were me, though—” He gave a modest shrug. “We wouldn’t be talking.”

“Right,” Levy retorted, “All because you still believe that I butchered Sheryl. But I can assure you, I had nothing to do with her horrible death.”

“Liar!” Fellman cuffed Levy on the side of his face with a bony, rotten hand. “You do not get to say her name!”

“Why? She was my only best friend. Like you, I know how special she was.”

“She was not yours to take from me, you murderous bastard!”

“I didn’t do it! Why can’t you see that all these years Cailleach Bhéarach has been playing you for a fool? You know as well as I do that she—"

“Enough lies!” Fellman cuffed Levy hard enough across the face to draw blood.

“If that’s the way it must be, then fine.” Levy spat the blood from his mouth, saying, “You will suffer the same fate as she did.”

“What, kill me?” Fellman held Levy’s face still and looked him in the eye. “You’re impotent threats mean nothing to the dead.”

“Then, I promise to end your suffering.”

“Such posturing considering that you’re my prisoner! Let me tell you, I died the day I discovered my daughter’s body, and it was the Hag Goddess that saved me—gave me purpose. She showed me that I had to be worthy of revenge and that I had to prove my worth to her. So one night I went looking for you, and when I wasn’t satisfied by the results, I decided to burn down your grandma’s place, just to smoke you out of hiding. I remember hearing your mom crying out.”

“I knew it.” Levy almost whispered, “You’re as vile as Cailleach.” Levy tried to pull free from his bonds, but the vines constricted tighter, so his hands and feet went numb.

“No use in fighting fate, Levy.” Fellman turned away, loving every moment of it. “But you’re mine.”

“When I get free,” Levy sniffed with his head down. He didn’t want Fellman to know he was hurting. “I promise to destroy all traces of you.”

Fellman tapped at his chin, trying his best to remember the rest of the story he had been waiting so long to tell. “I thought that might be enough to get you to come out of hiding, and now that you have, I know now that you shall die by my hand both painfully and slowly. I would’ve done it earlier too if you hadn’t kicked me out of my own living room window. Because of that, I landed on my back and was paralyzed in the fall. I thought all was lost, and so I decided to end my life,” he said while tapping his bony index finger at the hole in his head. “Cailleach Bhéarach stole me from the grave, brought me here, and resurrected me. So, if you did by chance surface, I could finally seek my revenge on you.”

“You’re better than this, Fellman; you used to be an officer of the Law. How can you justify revenge?”

“Justify my revenge? I was returned from death’s door so that I may torture and torment you at leisure.” Fellman went up and took hold of Levy’s left leg. He then pushed his bony thumb into Levy’s calf muscle and broke through the skin as quickly as tearing through tissue paper. “I’ve had a long time to practice on others like your friend Corvus so that I don’t accidentally kill you. I can torture you for days, maybe even weeks before you die.”

Levy screamed out and tried to squirm out of the way, but his bindings were so tight, he bled.

“How did you like that?” Fellman held up Levy’s dagger. “Ever wonder what it would feel like to lose a body part—perhaps a thumb or maybe your small toe?”

“And to think all these years I felt sorry for you.” Levy’s voice raised a pitch as he gnashed his teeth at the living corpse. “When you’re obviously no better than the cursed one you serve,”

“What can I say? Evil resides in all of us—I just choose to say fuck it and embrace its greater glory.” Fellman shrugged and then prepared to get all stabby. He poised the dagger’s blade up to Levy’s cheek and then slid it slowly down to his chin. All the while smiling over the pain he inflicted.

Levy grimaced as the blade burned through his flesh and felt the numbing poison take over. He thought about the Hell Tree sap that coursed through his veins and wished that he could somehow tap into its power again. He sensed dark magic at work here, but not the kind he could tap into like he could in the Fantasmica Realm. “If only,” he wished, but quickly tucked it away.

Then his hand unexpectedly started to glow.

At first, it came on as a faint itch, and then quickly it started to glow brighter and brighter until Fellman, in his rotten corporeal shell, felt the blessing heat of the unnatural light and shielded his eyes. The supernatural light grew and started to envelop the room, so that even the vines that held him began to shrivel and then receded back into the wall. The brightness of the light had overcome and vanquished the shadows. Levy stumbled to his feet. He looked over to Fellman and started to walk towards the torturous monster. His eyes glowed like they had when he was in the Fantasmica realm.

“Impossible!” Fellman’s knees buckled under him. “You tricked me!” he said, trying to look for means to escape. Behind him lay the deep cavern that led to the tainted one, the Hag Goddess, Cailleach Bhéarach.

Before Fellman could shuffle off, Levy’s Holy hand slapped against the living corpse’s head. The light from it burned through the rotten flesh, radiated deep into the dead man’s bones, and bound the spirit to Levy’s will.

“I want you to see what I have seen.” Levy showed how the Hag Goddess had tricked Fellman into suspecting Levy as his daughter’s murderer. He showed the living corpse the same vision Sheryl had shared with Levy the night the Cailleach Bhéarach murdered her in cold blood.

“Lies!” Frellmen exclaimed, “This is a trick!”

“This is no trick!” Levy intoned, “Cailleach Bhéarach had been playing you for a fool.”

“How can I tell the difference between her promise and yours?” Fellman started to tear at his shirt, showing off his bony, raw flesh, which looked like taunt, shrivelled leather.

“The difference is that I can reunite you with your wife and your daughter again.”

“Yes.” The word came out like steam. “I can see them!” Fellman looked past Levy. He could see his beloved wife and child on the other side. He saw their arms outstretched, beckoning for him to join them eternally through the bright white light that Levy cast, guided by the power of good.

“I release you from this world!” Levy intoned.

Just as the illumination filled the cavern with the radiance of the white light but didn’t hurt his eyes, something dark and foul lashed out from the Hag’s cavern like a whip. Levy felt a jolt of pain and momentarily lost his connection to the other side. A dark shadow gripped Fellman’s body and moved through his vacating corporeal shell like an infection in an open wound.

“Never!” Fellman’s body became the vessel of Cailleach Bhéarach. She stabbed Levy’s blade in his side, but for some odd reason, she couldn’t puncture through the man’s flesh. “I-I shall destroy you!” the Hag Goddess spoke through Fellman. The corpse’s eyes leaked pus instead of tears. His flesh and any fat left on his gnarled body began to sizzle and melt away. His body smolderered in the intense and blinding holy illumination.

“I forgive, and I release you!” Levy brought both hands to Fellman’s head, as the scorching heat from the holy rays had reduced his animated corpse to ashes and vanquished the defiant Hag Goddesses’ hold on the body. The Hag’s shadowed form, which had momentarily possessed Fellman, dispersed, howling in utter rage.

After the light from within Levy died away, he bent to retrieve his dagger from the pile of what remained of his adversary on the dirt floor. Around him, the torch lights flickered and cast more shadows than light. He heard voices in the hallway and the scuffing of feet approaching. Without a thought (and to his amazement), his Hell Tree armour began to painfully push through his flesh and spread across his body, so by the time the others had stopped before the entrance, he was armoured for combat.

A familiar face appeared from down the hall.

“Well, look at you.” Gilbert appeared at the entrance dressed in 11th-century Japanese Yoroi armour with his prescription goggles on. “I told you to wait for me to finish my work. But no, you had to run off and go play hero on your own, didn’t you?”

Corvus junior came in from behind him and gave Levy a nod. “Good thing I located him when I did, or he’d be in a heap of trouble.”

Levy smiled but stumbled on his first step. The two ran to his side to offer support.

“Maybe not soon enough?” Corvus Junior perked an eyebrow as he looked at Gilbert.

“Mister Fellman punctured my leg calf with his damn bony thumb and then slashed me on the face with my own dagger. I can feel the poison going through me. I never felt so weak.”

Gilbert went to his side pouch and grabbed a salve. “I can heal the wound on your leg, but as for the poison, There is no known antidote to the dragon blade’s poison.”

“And there are very few that have ever been fully immune to the poison from my father’s blade,” Corvus Junior added in.

Gilbert eyed the boy sternly as he dabbed at Levy’s wounds.

“Well, it’s true!” The lad shrugged as he tried to keep Levy upright.

Without a word, Guilbert shuffled to Levy’s side and held him up.

Both were taking him to the exit.

“So how did you find me?” He murmured.

Corvus Junior looked up and smiled. “We had a little help.”

“Oh?” Levy limped along to the exit with each of his friends under his arm for support.

“Yup,” Junior grunted as they started for the stairs to leave. Boy, for a real skinny guy, you sure are heavy.”

“It’s the armour."

“Do you need it on now?” Junior panted for breath.

“I was stripped of my clothes when I came here, so...”

“Then, I say, leave the armour on,” Gilbert grunted. “We’ll get you home soon enough. There, maybe I can find you a cure.”

The cavern around them started to rumble.

“That’s not good.” Gilbert looked around as debris started falling from a ceiling covered in roots and clumps of dirt. “I say we should double time it before she brings this place down upon our heads.”

“No argument there.” Levy grimaced in pain.

As the trio made their way out of the cavern, they came to a small door about as high as Levy’s knee. It was an aged wooden door that had slats of wood vertically put together and held by horizontally curled black iron strips bolted together with small black iron nails. It was the kind of door that needed a thumb to press down to open.

“What the heck?” Levy looked down and said, "You have to be kidding. I couldn’t squeeze through that even if I didn’t have my armour on.”

“Well, I think I could in my bird form.” Corvus Junior quipped in, “Just barely.”

“Oh, you two fools have no idea where we are? We’re in an enchanted forest, and that, my dear fellows, is an enchanted door.”

Levy and Corvus Junior looked at each other like Gilbert had lost his mind.

“It’d have to be to take his girth,” Corvus Junior mused.

“I’m right here, Corvus, you bird brain,” Gilbert said, sounding a little hurt and somewhat annoyed.

“So how do we get through?”

Gilbert smiled. “Why did we just walk towards it like we did coming in?”

“Shouldn’t we worry about the other minion of hers?” Levy looked at both of his rescuers. “Last time I saw it, the one-eyed monster went hunting for the girl that brought me here.”

“No worries,” Gilbert gestured to his little assistant, “Corvus Junior here has already removed his head.”

“Did you really?” Levy noted that they were either crunching down in size as they walked towards the door or the doorway was starting to get big enough to open.

“He put up a good fight; I almost lost my tail feathers when I was changing back and forth, but I managed to take his head clean off with my pretty blades.” He winked and looked all happy about it.

“Pretty blades?” Levy looked to Gilbert for clarification.

Gilbert cleared his throat. “A few centuries ago, I travelled to Japan at the invitation of a naturopathic healer who needed help defeating a bothersome goblin. With the promise of receiving both pieces of armour, I now wear them along with three razor-sharp blades. One was a katana, which I have on me. But Corvus Junior here found and claimed both my shaku and my kodachi blade as his own. Imagine how happy I am,” He added, sarcastically giving Corvus Junior a big, wide grin.

“You say it like it’s a bad thing; I just borrowed them without any intention of returning them.”

“And what about the girl? Was she harmed?”

“Bah!” Corvus Junior scoffed, saying, “My siblings and yours truly here had rescued her. She’s now being wooed by my lecherous brothers.” He tsked, wishing that he was among them.

“Brothers?” Levy turned to Gilbert for confirmation, which he received with an affirmative nod. “How many brothers are we talking about?”

“There are half a dozen siblings in his family,” Gilbert confirmed, “four boys and two girls that practically look all alike. They even dress similar to what their father did when he was alive.”

“What the Hell was Corvus trying to do by creating a small army?”

“Many immortal changelings have appetites.” Gilbert smiled, gave a wink, and then tapped his nose. “I too have had my share of exotic pleasures... I dated a panda once.” He winked.

“Ewww!” Corvus Junior shivered. “I didn’t want to picture that.”

“What? I was in my natural form.” Gilbert reminisced fondly and sighed. “I must say that I did age well for an immortal being.”

Levy shook his head. “I never guessed once that I’d be talking life points with an immortal or have to defeat demons while trying to kill an old God.”

“Since you put it that way,” the young changeling nodded, “neither did I.”

All together, they stepped towards the tiny door, and the world around them began to waver and enlarge around them.