(Narrated by Kevin Coffey)
In the spirit of Halloween, I have a new story to tell. My sons are super enthusiastic about this one and what might happen, so I hope it catches your attention as well. Special thanks to my better half for helping clean up my over-descriptive tendencies!
THEN:
Mr. Snatchum, the creature that all monsters fear, started out as an afterthought.
When Mr. Snatchum was a young spindly thing no bigger than a wooden spoon, the Old Ones kept him locked up in an ancient hanging cage, feeding him the scraps of the most vile rotten meat imaginable.
They would poke him and torture him. Then they abandoned him, slipping, slithering, and oozing away to other secretive dark places deep within their realm.
The legendary gobbler of fiends nearly passed with no name and no written memory.
But, as luck would have it, a curious young explorer came along one day.
The young boy slipped through the slightest of cracks that led inside a well-hidden cave. He adjusted the empty backpack he was wearing—now rid of schoolbooks—ready to fill it with rare fossils or semi-precious stones.
Little did he know there was something far more extraordinary waiting for him there to discover that would challenge his imagination.
The boy’s backpack straps were lined with glow sticks that produced a significant aura of light in the complete darkness. He held his breath basking in the weight of the grand cavern that expanded in all directions before him. It had the atmosphere of a sacred cathedral, suggesting this was indeed a secret place that neither he—nor any human—was ever meant to discover.
There were cryptic etchings carved all over the walls at various heights. Some were just off the ground, some so far up the boy had to squint to make them out. A number of the peculiar drawings had been drawn in chalk, but amongst them, were glowing lines that looked as if a nuclear pen had been used. Others were more or less mauled lines that looked as if the would-be artist had attacked the stone walls in a fit of insanity with long claws or nails.
When the boy ran his fingers admiringly over a glowing blob-like, multi-headed monster drawing, the grotesque substance wouldn’t let him remove his finger.
In a panic, the boy was finally able to pry his hand away and attempted to wipe the sticky gunk on the ground, only to discover it would not come off despite his best efforts.
In fact, it fixed over his fingertips and instantly dried. The strange smeared ooze provided extra light that shone forth from his fingers like mini-flashlights.
Extra light was a benefit as the merciless darkness consumed all light behind him the further he moved away from the hidden entrance.
The boy’s footsteps echoed as he struggled to crouch and descend some steep, impossibly wide stairs he had found. This stairwell was clearly meant for beings much larger than his tiny frame.
At the bottom of the intimidating stairs, a putrid air filled the sinister cavern. A humid, moaning gust blew against him, literally billowing out his clothes. The wretched wind swirled around him, carrying ancient whispers spoken in a guttural language so terrifying he nearly lost his footing.
The boy hurried forward and the din of terrible wind with its sickening language faded. As the boy stooped, placing his hands on his legs to catch his breath, he thought he heard something above him struggling to breathe.
He cocked his head, keeping still as he listened. He detected the slightest wheezing and gasping for air, then nothing.
The pathetic creature was hard to notice at first glance. A great gothic bird cage of twisted black metal hung off a crag jutting off the great stone side of a rocky side chamber.
Whatever was in the cage indeed looked dead as it was a scrawny thing, no bigger than the boy’s forearm. It resembled a silhouette of a walking stick that had frozen and expired. The boy could make out very little further detail from his position. It would have taken a clone of himself to stand on his shoulders to reach the bottom of the cage for a better look.
The thick dust, intense smell of mold, and ruin indicated this space had not been occupied in an age. Perhaps someone or some ominous thing might have once kept the caged creature as a pet, but it had long since been neglected and left for dead.
Then a crooked barbed arm that reminded him of a praying mantis flicked out in a last, desperate, dying reflex. The darkness in the cage dissolved enough for the boy to spot serpent slits belonging to swollen gray milky eyes peering down at him with languid movements. This thing, whatever it was, was suffering beyond imagination, but it was miraculously still alive.
The boy could not tolerate suffering. He decided he would free it and take it with him, or, if he needed to, try his hardest to put it out of its misery.
The thing gave a slow nod as if it read the boy’s intentions in his eyes. This was truly a strange place, but the boy felt like they understood one another.
It cocked its unusual misshapen head revealing a lopsided shadow resembling a rotting mushroom, and pressed itself against a particularly rusty bar.
A spiked, pointed pencil-thin tongue slowly uncurled, collecting the accumulated water from the cave ceiling as it ran down the dramatic curves of a pure black iron bar. The creature could only consume the drips by allowing them to roll back on his tongue and swallow in weak gulps.
“You survived on the water,” the boy whispered.
The creature closed its eyes once more in acknowledgment and continued to focus on drinking any runoff that used its cage as a mode of transportation.
The boy found a long stick and an arrow-shaped stone. Luckily, he had packed some string in his backpack and was able to quickly construct a crude hatchet he might be able to hurl at the cage.
The thing opened its eyes again and indicated the rusted bar and the boy understood.
“I’ll get you out,” he said.
The creature retreated back inside the shadows so that the boy could have a go without striking it in the process.
The boy wound up, swung, let go, and missed several times before snapping the bar with a strike that hit true.
The boy looked up at the breached gap in the bars expectantly. Nothing happened. “Where are you? It’s safe to come out.”
Just as he raised up on the tips of his toes for a closer look, a shape shot out and hit the rocky ground hard, spraying up pebbles.
The boy, finally expecting to get a good look at the sickly specimen, only caught a glimpse of its long, hairy barbed arm retreating inside the knapsack on his back. Cautious but excited, the boy secured the backpack over his shoulder. The mysterious creature was so diminished he couldn’t even feel its weight inside the backpack, but its determined presence, despite its pitiful condition, filled the entire cavern.
Not liking the growing feeling of constriction the foreboding place gave him, he went back up the way he came taking his newly liberated friend with him. His task was done.
If the monsters had nothing to fear before, they did now.
NEXT WEEK: Chapter 1
Marvelous! The style and pacing reminded me of the Japanese ghost tales by Lafcadio Hearn (specifically The Boy Who Drew Cats), while the description of Mr. Snatchum in his cage felt like it was right out of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Actually, all of the descriptions were perfect. "...glowing lines that looked as if a nuclear pen had been used" painted an immediate picture. I was listening to Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2 while reading, and wildest section started just as I read the line about the wind carrying "ancient whispers spoken in a gutteral language" - for me, it created a complete immersion of text and sound.
Overall, an incredibly well-crafted, spooky fairy tale. Glad to see the next part is already out so I can jump right in.