The Blood of the Forgotten

He was forced onto his knees, face pressed deeply into the dirt making it hard to breathe. Rocks and gravel cut into his skin as they pushed. He screamed out, his skull feeling like it was about to burst. They lifted their boot off his head and with a scoff kicked him in his side sending his full body into the earth. The boy, no more than fourteen years old, face bloody and bruised, spied his assailants. They were three in total, all donned head to toe in heavy cloaks and masks. Trying to force in some breaths of air despite the pain, the smell of rust and dirt flooded his senses. “I’ve got to get out of here.” He huffed. 

Slowly the boy rolls onto his knees in an attempt to ease the pressure off his ribs. The three moving around him, paid him no mind as they threw an assortment of dry herbs from a sack around the room. Another of the cloaked figures walked towards the front of the room and placed a heavy book on top of the table flipping through the pages, gesturing with one hand, sending the others scattering around the room to gather all they needed as he described in a strange tongue. 

“Where am I?” he whispered; his throat hoarse. The room reeked of copper and the ground, wet and sticky, covered in something thick and almost black in color. “When did this get here?”

 One of the cloaked figures comes back over to him with a small bowl, the figure looms over him before quickly grabbing a handful of hair and squeezing harshly and pulling causing multiple strands that rip from his head leaving a sprinkling of pain across his scalp. It smelled vile, rotten, almost as though they found the most expired form of dressings and mixed them all together. He tried to force his head away from the awful concoction, but the figure squeezed his head harder making him still in place; The pain was too much. 

Another figure approached as the third started reciting something from the pages before him. The second figure kneels next to him and grabs him by the chin and pushes his fingers into his cheeks, painfully squeezing the fat of his cheeks into his teeth. If he wasn’t careful, he could bite through his own flesh. Forcing his jaw open, little by little until his mouth is wide enough for the other to dump the concoction of sludge past his lips. The one who forced his jaw open quickly forced his mouth closed by pressing his jaw together with both their hands, the other sealing his mouth with their hands ensuring the liquid wouldn’t escape. The flavor that covered his tongue was disgusting plain and simple; it's worse than the smell could’ve prepared him for. He wanted it out, needed it out. His body started heaving, forcing the contents in his stomach to add to the sludge still held in his mouth.

The bile from his stomach combined with the strange fluid the taste made him want nothing more than to spit it all out. His nose and throat burned as his body kept heaving trying to get the liquids out. He couldn’t though, the figure locked his mouth shut. In a desperate attempt the boy breathed in, a mistake he regretted as soon as he did. The sludge followed the force of air down into his lungs then back up his throat to leak out his nose. It burned. Oh, how it burned as it blocked his airways. Forcing himself to swallow, the figures released his head allowing him to gasp desperately for breath, coughing and hacking, trying to expel the drink from his lungs. 

As his coughing eased, his body strung itself taut and started convulsing. He couldn’t control his limbs as they twitched and jerked around on the floor. His muscles burned and it felt like fire was ignited in his veins, all he could do was scream as his every nerve felt aflame. Lying with his face half in the dirt he clung to consciousness desperately in hopes of any chance to escape. 

A scoff left his lips. “Escape.” He quietly spat. “Yeah right.” He couldn’t move his body and all the energy he had was drained leaving him exhausted. Yet the boy refused to close his eyes in defeat. In a desperate attempt, he drags his arms up by his head and pushes against the ground. Slowly, achingly, he rises from the ground onto all four, panting as he holds himself up. 

He looks around the room once again as two of the figures were on the floor with him, on their knees carefully pouring something onto the ground in a circle around him. One was working on long lines like a circle around him as the other held a strange cup and ever so carefully laid out some form of scrawl along the lines the other made. The third was still at the table reading the book and measuring out more dried herbs. Unable to take it anymore the boy screamed out. “Why!?”

All the figures paused and looked at him. Despite not being able to see their eyes, he could feel their stares burning into him. “Why are you doing this!?” He spat. “Why me!?”

The figures looked to each other and the two on the ground continued their work. The third left their place at the table and walked towards the boy. Not a single sound followed them as they walked, none of the figures he realized made a physical sound. He heard the shifting of the fabric from the cloaks, he heard the light clicks from the metal and wooden bowls, he even heard the paper from the book as it was turned, but he couldn’t hear the two sifting their knees across the dirt or the drag of their fingers as they traced out each intricate line before filling it in. He couldn’t hear the one walking towards him, almost like these people were muted to the world as everything else played around them. 

The figure bent down towards him; the smell radiating from behind their mask could only be described as rot. Candles flickered around the room as the air grew colder and colder. The other two figures started mumbling and repeated phrases which only sounded as gibberish to the boy's ears.  The one being stood in front of him, still as a statue, staring. 

A long exhale of breath pushes out past the figure’s mask, ragged and wheezing. “Railroad spikes and graveyard dirt.” it speaks. Its voice is broken as though it just learned to speak.

“The shed of a snake of pure black derm.” It continued. The others placed down bowls as their leader recited. “Three devils’ pods and the day's first emiction.”

A pause as the others moved about the room. “Crushed hemlock mixed with white snakeroot.” The candle flames flared in brilliant intensity, but the room dropped farther in temperature. “The wing of a dove dipped in gold and the rain from a flood whose lives’ it stole.” 

It turns its head as its eyes never leave the boy’s. “The fangs from a spider and the claws from a cat’s paw.” 

The boy's eyes widen as fear grips his chest leaving him frozen in place as he realizes… 

“A broken heart crushed with vanity’s mane.” 

what he is looking at……  

The figure pulls out a knife as the others light the words below the boy in a brilliant golden flame. It moves behind him and moves the knife to his neck. “The blood of the forgotten to bind the body to the one who commands.” 

the boy was looking at death!

 With a flash, the knife sliced through the air. He doesn’t feel his skin split, but notices the warmth that floods down his front, slowly he looks down and sees he now wears his blood down to his knees. He raises his hands up to his neck and feels the line splitting his throat. With a gurgling breath he falls to the earth unable to move. The fire around him burns and swarms about his body. There is no heat though and the flames envelope him. Instead as his vision blurs and only shapes through the light, fill his sight. 

The dark blurred blobs of the figures move to be in front of him slowly dropping to their knees and bowing down. Pressing their heads to the bloodied floor. Their voices grow as they recite their prayer, over and over. Their voices muddle together eventually matching the roar of the fire. As the roar of voices continue, the merging of screams fill the air with the fire as if the gate of hell were opening.  These are the screams of agony as the tortured souls try to escape. Then at once, silence. Not a sound passed his ears.

He feels his body lift off the ground and suspend itself in the air. He feels the skin of his slit throat knit together as though an invisible zipper was tugged and sealed it shut. His head jerks up with a sickening wet crack and a pure guttural roar erupts out his throat. Ash falls from above as the small bit of his consciousness fades away. His body starts to move without his permission and a voice that isn’t his speaks through him as though he’s a puppet on a string.

“It has been so long…” The voice is heavy and dark with a kind of raw power that could render any mere mortal on the earth trembling in fear. “...since my ritual has been fulfilled.” 

“Our Lord.” One of the figures speaks. “We did our best to follow your directions to our capabilities.”

As the boy’s life departs, he hears. “And your call has been answered. I presume you wish to make a contract with me?”   

“Yes, our Lord. We wish to make a deal.”