Recently I had an idea to further the wickedness of my Horror In The Hundreds, but my brain decided to touch down on a bit of writing I admittedly am not good at but do enjoy. Flash fiction has been a fun thing for years now, completing a tale in under 2,000 words (often 1,000 or less). I don’t practice this much at all, so it was a great exercise to craft a horror story within a tight window, and I felt it best to share this here with my fellow Threaders and those who appreciate horror. This comes in at around 1,988 words, so I just made the cut. Feel free to let me know how I did, especially if flash fiction is your bag and you’re well versed in it.

Without further ado, may I present:

         FROM A MALIGNED MENTOR

                                           MAY 28, 1900

          Iron bulkhead doors creak rather like strangled cats, a dark thought to have while hunting the devil. I had given myself over to haste, chasing sunset, far away from the scent of Heroy coffee burning on the corner of King Street. No more trolley grind or clicking horse hooves. Wilmington’s soft skyline vanished as I looked down into the abyss. A standard set of welded steps, decorated in fine rust, leading from this side door behind a string of Shipley Street three stories drifted off into dank despair. 

          I, Enoch Verity, had determined to ruin the Thing in that darkness long ago, come what may. Steal its sacred blasphemy and use it against it. This is not justice or virtue, but survival.

          I struck a match to ignite some old rags wrapped around a random stick in my left hand, while the right held up an 1890 Single Action Army.

          Licking lips, I tasted the cellar’s age, as if Wilmington’s legacy stretched back to the dawn of Babylon. In some sense, deep down in its spirit, this rings true. Delaware is the threshold for elder temptations, unfathomable dreads. But if you read this later, you will know this all too well.

          My best efforts to remain silent failed. The steps were loose and its bolts loved to turn and offer shrill remarks. Each outcry stiffened forty-five year old knees and the revolver quivered ever so slightly. I felt a hot sweat. Tragic diffidence. 

          By God I walked away from Nancy Hinton for a waking Hell.

          Yet I trudged on, into the depths of the ungodly, yearning and anger swelling. It had to be done, for I was the sole believer, a lonesome acolyte in a religion of one. Everyone before me had torn out their hearts, been swallowed up by the Threats, or had the wisdom to place the barrel of an 1890 under their chin and put it to work.

          But Wilmington was free from what ailed the state. Until January of 1898. That’s when Harold Bixby, a broad-chested railroader roaming the tracks with a bottle of brew, vanished. The police found him three days later, legs and organs gone. Torso strung upside down on a clothesline. The arms were reddened and raw to the point where all the hairs were gone. 

          Plus, he had a distinct rot in the flesh.

          I was thumbing through an esoteric manuscript penned by Father DuBois from the Cathedral of Saint Peter when that first body came in. They called me, seeing the oddity of the murder as a situation fit for a veteran Army medic who leaned into theology and the occult. It surprised me, being a dark-skinned man who spent much of my time in Saint Joseph reclaiming the faith after years studying precarious beliefs in the world’s darkest corners. But the Law called, so I answered.

          However, the entire churning machine of this small city was too slow to act. By the time I began the work, Abigail Dresden, Peter Snelville, Arthur Washington Green, and twelve more would be brought onto slabs by the year’s end.

          Imagine keeping this quiet. We did. But every new corpse led me down a spiral of anger, of inferiority. All were uncannily wiped down with abrasives until the body hairs were eliminated. A cleansing ritual, perhaps, the law thought. 

          I withheld a shiver, and heartily disagreed. I instructed them I and the church would handle the matter. Two years of knocking on doors, consulting locals and lowlifes. Wandering the night, chasing my own humility. Fourteen more people became victims while I meandered, helpless.

          I reached the bottom of the cellar. Its sullied interior was larger than I envisioned, an oil-stained cement floor strode off into more darkness, the torch illuminated a series of aged wooden racks. Some held old sacks of straw, molded, some common hand tools. There was a cobwebbed desk to my right, a door far off left probably leading to one of the homes upstairs.

          Racing, heart swelled, I reached the desk, looking around feverish, to find a smattering of crinkled newspaper pages. Most were from different weeks, even years, nothing of note. I bent over, and sniffed them. My face curdled. The worst form of halitosis, if one might imagine, came up from those yellowed pages. Think this senseless? Wait. This is no mere pulp detective tale to delight you before falling asleep. Things more wonderful and depraved slither in the background of human enterprise. My fair city now suffered under but one. And it was one of evil’s most deranged servitors.

          Tom Redwhite is one name he, it, goes by. Often, it is only the surname. It is fitting, something so simple for a blight so tainted.

          Shoving the periodicals aside, I studied the box, and knew it well. Its black lacquered face, such as it was, graced the writings of DuBois, who heard of it from Whittaker and he from the rich texts of the Hessian, Sybille Drache, from whom so much of the Thirteen Threats is known. In the days of the Pilgrims and slavery, men and women of uncountable foulness dragged demons from the Old World across harpooned whale shores into the land called Delaware, and from here did darkness encircle the Americas. 

          I lifted the lid on the box, and met the Venetian, object of my desires, in person. Of all my studies, this enigma caused me to ruminate many a lonesome eve on the manufacture of such devices, price paid for their otherworldly qualities. How one might wear such attire and keep hold of a clear conscience. Never, it would seem, considering their makers who served the Threats. 

          The Venetian was one of these designs, made by my quarry, before his later acts of defilement after arrival to this nation. A porcelain face masque, but a slit open for a mouth painted bright red in pink, eye holes doused in purple-black and cheeks studded in opals, it was a treasure indeed. I reckoned its value at auction, felt it hum warm in my hands, contemplated playing God–

          The sordid shuffling of bare feet brought me out of my weaknesses as I dropped the mystical device for torch. Oh Lord, if one could even call those things feet!

          “Found you, Redwhite. Scaepa be damned. Your hunger ends this night!”

          I turned and fired the revolver, sweating, gritting teeth. Three bullets whizzed out and two struck their mark. They sunk into soft tissue and I…

          The torch blew out as I unleashed the final three shots and I cursed. All I saw ‘fore the darkness was the mockery of a human shape, naked, hobbling towards me. A perversion, you would be quick to think, and you would be right in part. But its truest abasement lay in its anatomy. 

          For Redwhite, during the Revolution, some wrote, ate disease. He even suckled on a gangrenous leg to please his faceless mistress. As grand prize for his sickening devotion to filth under that Threat called Scaepa, he devolved into a form befitting behavior. No longer skin and hair. It sacrificed humanity, normalcy, even a face.

          The Redwhite was, from top to bottom, all tongues. Lapping, drooling, slathering tongues of various shapes and undulations and where those glossae spread thin on occasion one might glimpse bloodied gums over thinned, tawny teeth. 

          I reached for the masque, desperate. “This won’t save you now,” but it was upon me, damp fingers ripping my starched collar off, wetting my neck and making me heave. I swung like mad, the gun striking into the cloying, writhing mass only to be clamped down on by one of its innumerable maws. I fought and fought, yet coud not free the weapon. It stood there, in front of me, licking, dripping, as I felt an ominous and obnoxious heat from this rotten figure.

          Why had I come alone, and so hurried?

          The damnable dog! I wandered the streets late afternoon with pleasant Nancy, figuring I might propose this very day. For once the pressure of the case had lifted from my shoulders and regular life resumed. The air held a flowery charm and perhaps a future could be seen on the horizon. 

          Then, we happened across a German Shepherd in a nearby field, devoid of internal organs, its rear legs gone. Blood loss fresh, warm. Redwhite had killed in broad daylight! It became crystal clear right then, that the monster remained intelligent, and kept the Venetian, which it made long ago before the degradation. That masque’s legend tells of its ability to make a man like the clouds in fleetness. It was coveted by the greatest thieves, and used by them, or so I have read, to great effect. 

          At some point the beast regained its handiwork, and this explained its elusiveness in my city. A questioning of workers around the corner, a kiss on Nanacy’s forehead, a half-hearted excuse to leave, a chase after blood droplets. To here.

          Now, it rested in my hand while this fiend, this distortion, bit off the barrel of my revolver as a dozen glossae curled around my gunhand, applying pressure as fetid exhalations from a plethora of mouths stained my soul. I groaned. Stomach rolled over. 

          Instinct planted the Venetian to my face. At once, befouled Redwhite’s hold lessened. I was free, uninhibited, nerves excited as if touched by some cosmic tuning fork. For a split second I felt as if I were bleeding out, but this passed. I moved behind the creature while striking it dumb, rocking the inhuman body about as I swelled with a vaunted power that forced me to frantic laughter.

          And then, nothing. I jabbed over and over, exhilarated. Yet every blow now passed through the seething monstrosity and my power ebbed into weakness. Emptiness. My roars of sudden success dimmed, lightened, until I no longer heard myself. No muscle tension. Redwhite’s warmth faded; the world went cold and seemed to grow out, up, away from me.

          My prey turned, faced me like dread Fate. It shook its head, slowly, as if judging. No. It felt, sorry for me, I think. It was as if Judgement arrived, and I was kept outside the Gates.

          Redwhite grew taller, and it took precious seconds to realize he had neither moved  nor expanded, but rather I was slipping away. The Venetian offered all that lore foretold, and unfortunately more. Its swiftness came to a man through intangibility, the loss of self into a Veil no human should ever become acquainted.

          I screamed at myself, at unfair life, to God above for salvation from my own unthinking hand. But I had no voice. Feathers offered more weight than I. So I would drift into the center of the rarefied Earth forever, unable to even remove this plague from my face. This, I might contend with, for it was my own doing. Nature often turns against the survivor as much as she might save. Foreboding became my sole sensation. But then…

          “Enoch? Are you down there?” Her voice faint into my ethereal ears. Nancy!

          I moved as a man lost at sea swimming for driftwood in a storm, yet to no avail. I could only sink, sink, closer to the Underworld, as dear, sweet, idealistic Nancy crept down those crying steps.

          Below, a hundred and more tongues pointed her way, and prepared to do wicked work for a profane god.

          Shuddering. I cannot dictate to you enough the shuddering I experienced as that cellar vanished from my reality and I fell for days or years. In my folly I trusted in the machinations of devils and was cast out. 

          Here you sleep, unknowing, as I, but a spectre from this blood drenched Veil, whispers dark history, endless regrets, and a vital lesson to you, slumbering inquirer of the Unknown.

          Walk away. Never look back. Or fall forever into a realm where blood tints vision and the death cries of unseen beasts thicken a barbwire sky.