Devourers

Amidst an old village that lay far off the beaten path, there lives a particular family. A large, far-reaching family who still practised their old and archaic ways, but through a clean looking-glass, one could tell that the ideology of their many patriarchs across the generations had warped the practices to seldom fit the ever-changing time at hand.

The village mostly consisted of farmers who worked the many sprawling fields in that secluded region. Electricity was a affluent luxury enjoyed only by a select few who could afford to have it installed. Yet, subtle comforts such as these were seen as trivial and fleeting in the eyes of its residents.

A young boy sat nervously outside his father’s treatment room. Wet coughs and laboured breathing rang out like the bells of encroaching death from the double-locked wood and iron door. He heard his father’s voice mumbling and chanting from the room in shifting tones.

He thought of his brother before him and of how long he had lasted, then about how many years had passed since they had last seen one another. His brother was an ample student and practitioner in their family. He had made their parents proud, and Josiah simply hoped he could do the same before passing the torch to his younger brother in turn.

One lock tumbled over, and the other slid sharply across the wooden frame. The boy’s hands clutched his knees as he exhaled deeply, trying to harden his nerves for what came next. The door creaked open, and his mother’s kind, meekly smiling face appeared in the opening. She was donned in a gown that held long flowing pale fabrics with the crest of their forefather’s hand-sewn on the chest.

Her hand reached out to him in invitation as she spoke. “Come, Josiah, it’s time.” The eleven-year-old hopped down from his chair and placed his hand in his mother’s trustingly. Her tender fingers curled around it as she led him into the previously forbidden room.

This space was an unknown void to him; before today, he only had his imagination to fill in the gaps of this room. The room itself, however, did not live up to the fantasy or fears he conjured. It was no different to his father’s study in a way; there were two bookshelves upon the back wall and a couple of worn chairs that pointed towards a simple desk to the front. What did surprise him, however, was the bed that was nailed crudely to the wall. It had iron muck-stained chains that dangled loosely about both ends.

The man who lay upon it was familiar, an elderly neighbour who had always been polite to the boy and his family. His tired, feeble eyes darted about the room as a thick rolling sweat poured from his brow. The laboured breathing made his wide chest rise and fall in great fluctuations.

The man’s eyes turned to the boy knowingly as he tried to feign a smile and croakily spoke. “O-oh, Is… is it young Josiah’s turn?” The boy’s father, who was donned in a similar gown to his mother, smiled with a glint of pride before responding, “Aye, Abraham, you’ll be his first.” The boy’s father rested his palm upon the old man’s shoulder as he coughed again and mumbled weakly. “B-blessed be He.”

Josiah’s father brought him to Abraham’s bedside. The smell was rancid, he noted. It smelled like their barn when one of the cows had given a stillbirth days before discovery.

The boy’s mother rang a loud bell; A sudden utter silence fell over the room upon its clang. She then began to place and light candles about Abraham’s body. One between his legs, one between each arm and hip, then finally, one above the headboard. After the lighting was complete, his mother wrapped a black silk cloth around Abraham’s eyes, then another around her own. “Let us not see, for we are not worthy.” She said, then softly began repeating a lulling chant in a foreign tone. Josiah’s father looked at him quietly, then tilted his head towards Abraham.

The boy swallowed nervously. He knew what to do, but he had never done it before. He wasn’t sure if he even could yet. Josiah leaned over the blindfolded man’s face. His raspy breathing ebbed and flowed warm but stale breath. Josiah leaned in close to the elderly man’s lips and repeated the verse he was taught by his parents.

“Our bodies will die, yet our souls are eternal. The weight of thine sins is now mine to carry, F-forfeit them unto me.”

Josiah deeply inhaled the man’s hesitant breath. The boy’s eyes widened as he felt it. The clawing darkness that spilled from the man’s throat into his, it felt like gulping down shards of broken glass as the boy sank his fingernails into the bedframe.

Tears began to fall from Josiah’s eyes as he saw them all play out before him in an instant. He was looking through Abraham eyes as his past self, He saw himself beating his wife Lucy relentlessly with an iron fire poker, Selling two chickens for the price of four to a foreigner, Pulling down a girls dress in his younger years, Eating thrice that his body needed upon one Sunday lunch, Burying a hatchet into the head of another man who broke into his barn.

Josiah collapsed hard against the floor and began retching and coughing manically. He felt the vestiges of the memories wriggle like worms as they burrowed into his stomach and mind.

Upon the bed, Abraham was gasping with an elated smile that bore his old crooked teeth. “Th-thank you… Thank you.. Oh mercy, thank you…” His smile tightened a little as his head rolled away from the family. Abraham’s breathing ceased, and the candle above his headboard dimmed, then fizzled out in a puff of rolling smoke. Amidst the thinning cloud, Josiah thought he saw something else, something pale and fickle dancing between the ashen mist.

Josiah vomited.