The Familiars

Reverend Fagmire looked out over the congregation, none of his sheep dared look into his wolfish eyes. If they had, they’d see them glowing red like dying embers, deep under the hood of his dark brow. He smiled…and the mourning dove in the middle stained-glass window dropped to the floor unnoticed by all but one.

“Holy tidings friends!” the reverend bellowed over the heads of his congregation…a congregation of grim faced, sickly-looking people “We have a newwwww---” His booming voice trailed away along with his jackal’s grin.

The people awoke as one. Lethargic eyes gained the sparkle of curiosity, comatose rag dolls came to life as heads swiveled around. The crowd murmured as they beheld the stranger sitting in the back near the door. Danny looked from his mother to the girl in the back, curious about the unease in the reverend’s demeaner. She was a pretty young maiden, perhaps sixteen, dark of hair and blue of eyes. She wore a cloak of dark green and was the only sole in the place with a smile on her face.

The light was snuffed out as black bellied storm clouds took over the sky. Fagmire turned and retrieved a candle from the altar behind him and placed it on the podium. His underlit face broke into an open-mouthed grin that nearly split his darkly weathered face in half. “Heh heh…well now, seems we are in for a storm.”

Danny cowered close to his mother and whispered, “He looks like the devil.”

“Hush child!”

“Please. Introduce yourself.” Fagmire’s teeth were white and long, wolf-like. All heads turned back to the dark man. Many faces were smiling a little now. The reverend’s brows furrowed low over the bridge of his long nose and the smiles quickly vanished like chimney smoke in a brisk gust of wind.

The young woman said, “I am Charlestine McGee and so elated to be here in this heavenly sanctuary with you all.” The way she said it was sarcastic and Fagmire’s eyes narrowed as the smile diminished to half-watt. Only the parishioners sitting in the front row heard the soft growl from deep in his throat, their somnolent eyes shifted uneasily. Perhaps the girl heard it too, she leaned forward in rapt attention.

***

Three months earlier…

In a cabin in the deepest darkest of clandestine woods, the young woman with the dark locks and deep blue eyes, knelt by her hearth as Nomi lay purring, fat and full of kittens. Charlestine sang softly like she did every evening, as she stroked the cat’s lustrous black fur. The song was an ancient one, sung in Daelic, which the cat understood. Her rumbly-throated purring fell and rose along with her master’s voice harmonically. Pale blue sparks danced along the cat’s satiny fur like static electricity. Charlestine said, “it is time. I’ve prepared some delectable chicken livers with kipper oil…m m m …the contractions will begin soon.”

Three miles to the west,

Reverend Fagmire’s voice boomed out over his flock, “We have eradicated evil here! We will do so again! And again, and again as long as it takes to free our town of the evil that the sinister sisters of darkness have ordained upon us.”

The reverend’s cloak was dusty with the witch’s ashes and as his voice rose, faint tendrils of pale smoke curly-cued up towards the ghastly skeletal figure of Jesus on the cross behind him and over him. The withered, grey people’s attention went from the reverend’s face---a face full of vitality and color---to the cluster of red embers in the courtyard outside the east facing windows. Half the stake was still standing though the ropes had burned away an hour before, releasing the charred remains into the dwindling fire.

A few weak cries of “here here” drifted upwards. The Reverand waved his arm over his podium, and it appeared to be in flames. The people were once again enraptured by his presence and thankful for the burning. The crops would surely heal now. The remaining cows would produce milk. And the terrible swamp sickness that had recently called the doctor out at any time of the night would be vanquished.

Charlestine attended the grim event in her own way. She sat on a rug in front of her fireplace; the grisly scene appeared as a vision in the flames. She was robed in black, not mourning, but in a clandestine pact with the night. Her dark hair curtained out from under her hood and obscured her face so only a single eye peered out. Her tears reflected the flames, her cheek glistened with streaks of orangey-yellow. She watched the silent figure go still and slump and sizzle then turn black. The ropes burned away, and the figure collapsed into the voracious flames, the blackened skull rolling out to the edge of the pit. The top of the stake’s weight brought it down, throwing up a geyser of fat bright sparks, and crushing the carbonized bones beneath it.

The reverend observed the collapse with a satisfied, demonic smile on his face. The spark-cloud of the embers delighted him. But then he frowned, confused, as the brilliant cloud of fire sparks swirled upwards in a spiral and whisked out and over the woods to the east. ‘Very odd.’

The next morning Charlestine found herself at the site of the burning. A boy of perhaps eleven or twelve (it was hard to tell because he was thin and greyish like all the folks of Fox Brewer) was raking the ashes into a shallow ditch he’d dug into the earth. Afterwards, he would cover it with dirt and tamp it flat. As she approached, the boy bent and retrieved something from the warm ashes.

“What have you there boy?”

He hadn’t heard her approach and started a bit. “I..I don’t rightly know miss. It looks like silver, maybe a medallion or ..Idon know…” He held up a tarnished circle and flecks of what had been a cord dissolved and sifted into the ashes at his feet. He held it out for her.

Charlestine said, “No. Keep it.” She knelt before the boy and said, “It is a powerful talisman, keep it close to your heart and it will protect you.”

“How do you know this?”

She held the boy’s face in her hand. “It was my mother’s.”

“Have you come to save us?”

It was an odd question, but she should have expected that only a child would grasp what was truly infecting the village. An imagination not yet sullied by the weight of adult life and oppressive failure…this boy’s eyes beheld the light of innocence.

“What’s your name?” she asked him as she lowered her hood and untied the thin leather thong that held her hair from her face.

“Daniel, miss, er Danny. What’s yours?”

“Charlestine. My friends call me Charlie.” She held out her hand and Danny wiped his own on his woolen coat before shaking it. She gave Daniel the leather cord. “Put the medallion on this, so it hangs close to your heart. And do me a favor?”

He tied the cord behind his neck, tucked the silver disc under his shirt and looked up into her eyes expectantly.

“After you’ve buried the remains say a little prayer for her.”

“But these are witches---!”

“Yes. They are. A very good and powerful woman who was here to save you all from the true evil---”

“Fagmire.” He whispered the name.

“See now. I knew you were a truthful lad. Come see me in three months from this day, can you do that?”

“Um. Sure. How…”

“Consult the medallion, it’ll lead the way.”

As the boy watched the young woman’s back as she headed east towards the woods, his luminous brown eyes shone with the light of hope and a faint rosy pink colored his pale cheeks.

The reverend peered out of the doorway of the whitewashed little church. Savagery waged war with madness in his eyes as they stalked the young woman, and as always before, her green cloak turned black as she entered the woods, gradually blending her with the darkness of the shadows of the deep. She had her tricks. ‘But so have I.’

A large altar of granite slabs stood behind the pulpit, under the skeletal and frightening Jesus. He lit the candles on it and knelt before it. He removed his grey flannel shirt, folded it, and set it aside. His back was a mass of cord-like welts and knots, some freshly scabbed over, some white with age. From under the pulpit, he retrieved his flogger---leather, with seven leather whips, their tips ended in silver tips like small arrowheads…stained with old life force. As he engaged the flogger, he chanted, “Cleanse my soul. Waste thy flock.”

The silver tips slapped and slashed, ‘Thwak! Thwak! Thwak!’ His blood flowed anew and dripped to the rust-stained pine floorboards. After seven minutes the squeaking arose from under the altar, softly at first, then exhilarated as they emerged from the fist-sized hollow in the shadow where light never reached. Rats. They scuttled excitedly to the blood pooling around Fagmire’s knees. They tumbled over each other as their numbers grew to a hundred, they clambered like acrobats performing circus feats and climbed his back, suckling the wounds. Then two hundred. Swarming, squeaking, chattering…feasting, their pale quivering whiskers adorned with bright red beads that they licked from each other. Three hundred, then four, then five…then seven.

When all were sated, they began to drop from his back and untangle themselves from each other like fat grey eels. Fagmire said to them with sorrowful regret, “I’m sorry my little friends. The discomfort won’t last long.”

The seven hundred fat little grey bodies began to shrivel. They were silent, then began to moan like babies breaking in new teeth. Their fur turned greasy and clumped over their sucked up little bodies. Pink tails turned dry and white, afflicted with eczema. Their teeth chattered and gobbets of curdled foam dropped from their grimacing jaws.

The mass looked to him as one. He raised his arms, palms out to them and they rose in reply to their shriveled hind legs. “Go little friends. Do my bidding and you shall feast for the rest of your lives.”

The furry little diseased minions retreated through the hole in the altar, no longer needing to squeeze through it. The tunnel just one of the dozens of tunnels in a labyrinth under Fox Brewer. Fagmire had been patient in his direction and now the time had come…for the beginning of the end.

Martha Whitney, old, grey, and stooped with a humped back, thwacked the silver pine floor with her broom. “Out! Out! You nasty little pissants!”

An old man in the bed behind her shifted and hoarsely whispered, “Language woman.” Then he coughed as though drowning in phlem.

“Oh hush. Them vermin…them…ahhhhhh!” she screamed as a bold one nipped her ankle.

“Momma!” Zelda Whitney went to the old woman and took her broom. She looked around at the shattered pottery on the floor but saw no rats. “Come. Sit. I’ve picked some fresh herbs that should help Papa and Will. She swept up the mess and tended the iron pot in the hearth.

When all was calm and the stew was done, she went into the bedroom. She cried out in mortal anguish when she beheld her dead husband. His mouth was wide in a silent scream, his eyes were closed but bulged from sunken, oozing sockets. He was wet as if fresh from a bath but white as snow reeking of what more and more townsfolk were declaring The Swamp Plague.

Spiney Wharburton raised the shotgun to his shoulder, squinted, hunched in his overstuffed easy chair, and fired. A puff of dust poofed up as the wirey old lumberjack peered anxiously through it. It dissipated and he looked upon the large golden-haired form in his dogbed. Buddy. The aging retriever bravely fought the little bastards off and managed to eat one, grinning victoriously the entire time. Spiney had praised him for his loyal service…but now regretted his best friend’s last meal immensely. The sickness had taken the old dog quickly. Spiney sat vigil and as alert as if he chewed coffee beans for sustenance. The rats kept coming…for the dog’s flesh…and for his own.

Wee Gemina was tasked with a job she loathed but stuck with steadfastly. She was eight but so small and thin she appeared to be five. Her job was to whack the rats that came for her baby brother. She understood that he smelled of oatmeal and sour milk and that attracted the little beasts she had once thought of as cute. These were not cute. They were skinny and scraggly and had red eyes like drops of blood. They bared their tiny, needle-like teeth at her and were fearless and kept coming. She had a slingshot and a stockpot full of pea-sized pebbles by her side as she guarded her helpless brother. A rat scuttled over from the shadows by the bedroom. She shuddered, its muzzle was bloody.

In the bedroom behind her lay her cold parents.

***

The winds of March blustered through the empty streets of Fox Brewer.

Danny made a last charcoal mark on the bedroom wall next to his bed. Three months exactly.

Both his parents had died of The Swamp Plague. He’d taken to sleeping on the top of the sturdy curio cabinet where he could defend himself from the diseased vermin. Three months earlier he had gone to visit his friend Gemmy to make sure she was okay. She had not been. Her parents were dead and gnawed on all over. Her baby brother wouldn’t last long once bitten.

Now, three months later…

The entire town was a wasteland. The shops were closed. The tavern’s front window glowed with the only light in town in the dark grey afternoon. The church door would be open as well, ‘but I’d rather burn in hell…’ Danny finished filling in the small grave as Gemmy sat on the cold ground, her face lowered, her grimy hands in her lap. She’d been digging the grave and weeping when he’d come calling the hour before. He had taken the spade from her raw red hands and finished the chore. Danny took off his woolen coat and wrapped her shivering body with it. Her skin was the color of a fish belly washed up on the shore, and just as cold and clammy.

“Come,” he said softly to her. “I have an oath to fulfill and a hope in my heart.”

She took his hand, rose, and followed him through town and into the woods.

From the church doorway, Reverend Fagmire watched the children head towards the woods. ‘How many left now? Twenty? A dozen?’ He smiled fiendishly as he exited the church and followed them.

The edge of the woods featured oaks and ferns easily navigated for two hundred feet. Then the bushes and pines grew dense and tangly with fresh pre-spring growth…the shadows were dark and Gemmy whimpered in fear.

Fagmire kept his distance, the winds were howling but the woods were unearthly silent. The children were hesitating. ‘Go on! Show me the way and I’ll make it painless.’

Danny convulsed as a goose walked over his grave, but he refused to look behind him; to do so would surely turn his icy resolve into tepid tea water. He retrieved the medallion from under his shirt and held it tightly in the hand not holding Gemmy’s. It grew very warm. A half hour later, the woods before them parted just a little. Danny did not hesitate to follow where the trees indicated the way. A wolf howled close behind them but in anguish, not pleasure of the hunt.

Fagmire couldn’t believe his eyes. The children were there one moment. Then gone, just disappeared, into the blackness of the shadows…just as the witch’s daughter had done. He howled in rage.

Danny and Gemmy came upon the cabin within another hour. The windows were warmly lit, the front door was open a foot, and the scents of rosemary and venison stew wafted in the fresh spring air surrounding the place. Gemmy ran to the door as Charlie opened it wide and opened her arms. There was no hesitation, the little girl succumbed to her warmth…and goodness. Danny followed and was soon enveloped into Charlie’s sanctuary.

Danny said, “This is Gemmy.”

Charlie nodded, smiling, “Of course you are. I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Gemmy. I am sorry I could not help sooner.” She turned to Danny and touched his head. “You both have been through so much.” Tears leaked and ran down her cheeks. “I learned much from my mother but that…that thing disguised as a man is powerful and very very old.”

Danny nodded, understanding blanketing his face as if he were fifteen years older.

Charlie rose and prepared bowls of hearty stew ripe with carrots and turnips and thick gravy. As she served her young guests, a soft mewling came from the room behind her.

Gemmy perked up, her cheeks full of food. She swallowed, then said, “Kitties? You have kitties?”

Charlie laughed and said, “Not just any kitties my dear one.” Then she called to the room beyond, “Nomi my love, presto sancto delee navocome.”

Thirteen black kittens fell upon the little girl who seemed surprised by her own laughter, as if she'd never known such joy. Nomi jumped to Danny’s lap and purred---a proud momma with glowing green eyes.

“Yes, they are still kittens, but they are ready to kill. When the rats are gone, the man with wither and die.”