Author's Note:
Dusted this off after a year or three and decided to revamp it and rediscover what flair I had. I like the results. Hope it's creepy. Enjoy.
The Whipping of the Demonchild
As the sun set, a bird in the canopy twittered to her lover. I looked up to find the bird but she is cleverly hidden and I see nothing but a blank face of green pines and firs. Sad and plaintive the bird cries. I want to call back and reassure her of her lover’s return, but in these backwoods I am usually kept quiet by the far-away cackle of a rifle. I turn my head down again and continue my steady walking pace.
I walk home along a thin dusty road, alone amongst its nest of stubbly firs and contagious undergrowth. The road shoots straight ahead until the base of a mountain where it slowly crawls in curves up the slope. Pebbles skitter off my boots into the brush to my left and to my right the sun as red as a hound’s bloodshot eye gives me a shadow for company. The hiking backpack on his shoulders seems infinitely lighter than mine.
A cry stops my walking and cocks my head and I pause, frozen. Again, a blood-stopping scream that makes my heart pound against my ribs. It was a girlish cry, that of a woman’s throat, but there was something alien about the outburst that halted my feet from bolting straightaway into the cavernous woods. But as I stood puzzled, another foul scream pierced the air and forced me into the shade.
I pushed past tree and bush, stumbling more than once. I became desperate with each ticking moment and my eyes scanned the umbra in haste. They were surreal, such screams, as they scorched the air, and I clapped my hands over my sound-bitten ears. I wondered as I went what could be causing the woman so much pain that her screams would be so unearthly. She tripped and broke her leg perhaps, or was climbing a tree and fell. The thought of a hulking mother bear mauling a woman’s body pumped my legs faster and my heart had nothing but my ribs to restrain it as I plunged on.
The cries were regular now and did not move further away or to one side. The woman was staying put. I followed what I heard as they grew louder and more painful to my ears and soon I was able to discern a whapping sound. It was sickening to hear and I recognized it at once out of the echoes of a painful childhood memory. It was the sound of leather striking flesh.
I ran deeper into the woods as the gloom grew darker. The phantasm accompanying me pumped his earthen legs as fast as mine and kept ahead of me, just as eager to discover what was wrong. To my disheartening surprise the cries faded and no longer could I hear the sound of a whip. Devolving from the godawful reports the fueled me, the cries became yelps, then moans. Soon it was nothing but a boy sobbing, and suddenly I found him.
The sunset tends to bleed colors and fool the eye into seeing a single tone, so his pale skin almost blended in with the green leaves and dark brown earth. He wore denim shorts and was bent double on his knees and his arms were outsretched to brace himself on two thin trees. My crunching steps reached his ears and he looked up at me, piercing deep into my eyes with icy orbs as pale as his flesh. Tears made trails in his dirt-covered face but I could see no sadness in his expression and my face twisted in surprise. He sniffled some more and sucked the snot on his lip back into his nose. As I approached my mouth went slightly ajar. He was not bracing himself against the two trees but short, stout cords bound his wrists to the tree trunks. And in the fading light I saw bloody gashes and welts strewn on his pitiful back.
After the moment of shock had passed, I put down my backpack and reached to untie his bonds when he hollered at me.
“What you doin’, stop it! I warn’t callin’ for help! Get back!” he snarled. His sobbing had turned to hate. He was feral and possessed. I halted in my tracks. His teeth were bared like a demon prince and I stayed silent. “If you untie me, I’ll tell him you did it and he’ll come after you.” He sneered. “Might even kill you.”
The pleasure in his voice was corrupted like tree roots with rot. My stomach roiled in disbelief. I examined again his slovenly figure and spied royal purple bruises scored on his ribs and stomach, stigmata hiding in the deepening night. At this point I wished to speak, but it was as if a parasite had dried my throat of moisture and I had to swallow several times. “Wh-who?” was all I could manage.
“My dad,” he said, cussing under his breath. “My
father.”
That’s sick, I thought and the world started spinning. Colors of the forest swam around me.
That’s really sick. But He spat on the ground as soon as I was near. Spat at me. My presence was offending him. He, prostrated and wounded like a medieval felon in irons, and I was doing him wrong by wanting to relieve him. He was waiting for a second beating. He wasn’t trying to avoid it or have me save him in the slightest; he was looking forward to being savagely flogged.
I remembered his savage screams.
“Why were you screaming?” I asked, bolder than I felt. He answered in my face.
“Cause it hurts SO
good.” And he laughed. His laughter rang out, noble and sinister, and in my mind the trees resounded with him and began rustling a chorus. I felt like I was witnessing the brink of doom, ready to spring about my world and bring my soul crashing down.
“Battle Hymn of the Republic” alighted in my inner ear and mocked me. Crashing down, down down.
“Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord…”
Disgust and hot fear resolved my disorder, so I turned and picked up my pack and ran. I ran back to the road just as quick as I had come when the screams had permeated the cold air. The fire in my legs seemed to excite a burning beast chasing me through the night. Sprinting seemed the key to washing away the reality of the boy’s screams and wounds. By the time I had gotten back to the dusty road I had convinced myself that all of what I’d seen was just a nightmare I had hallucinated.
As I walked home night fell. The darkness prompted me to fish my flashlight out of its pocket on my sack and hold it as the horrendous screams haunted the road. My shady companion came and went as the flashlight swung, and I quickened my steps, fervently wishing my journey to come to a peaceful close. With nothing real to comfort me, running seemed my only hope.
© Dan Murphy, 2006
