Sabbath

CW: Substance use, animal death, child death.

The cloaked hag in a young woman’s skin dragged a coffin made from black rotten wood across the road of dying deciduous trees.

There was a mellow grumble in the clouds and she sat by a little creek as raindrops fell through the barren canopy. She hummed a nursery rhyme as she caught a char with her bare hands, grabbed a knife from her human-leather belt skinned from a deacon, cut it open, and ate it raw. She then laid the still-living fish on the bank and watched the little minnows feed.

She sat on her knees, listening to the raindrops in the night, deep in thought. Footsteps and a clanging noise interrupted her meditation as a human shape came into the light: Leathery pale skin, an arm bent unnaturally, few strands of hair attached to the scalp. A chain dangled from the rusted shackle on its bruised wrist. Patches of little lice-like pests clung to the decayed skin.

She drew the knife again which reflected some light on the decomposing face.

'Please don't be frightened,' said the thing in a gravelly and frail voice.

She’s never heard one speak, let alone so courteously.

'You are the one who is hiding.'

'I was being cautious.'

'You've been following me, haven't you?'

'I was following the scent.'

'You wish to see what's in it, don't you?'

He nodded like a lost child.

'You must promise you'll keep it a secret.'

'My lips are sealed, or what's left of them.'

She squatted by the coffin, unlocked the padlock with a poke, and opened the lid.

The stench of ammonia overflowed from the coffin. Moonlight bathed the unconscious chain-bound, bare figure—her head shaven and pale and bone-thin from deprivation. She was buried in hefty rat bones and their blood stained the creature's lips and bruised fingertips and long fingernails. The scraped skin on her reddened knuckles had become infected oozing white gunk.

The corpse lurched forward to have a look at the shivering creature, not that much younger than her captor.

'You are a witch, are you not?'

'The fairest one.'

'I don’t suppose you could part ways with that creature.'

'She is my offering for the Sabbath.'

The witch placed the lid back on and secured the lock.

'Revenants are gathering at the deconsecrated ground for the banquet.'

'I'm familiar with the rite, from the books I've read.'

She was all the more curious and impressed.

'I could use some company.'

'I have been living off graveyards and sour plague-infested dumps long enough.'

***

The witch and the corpse traveled through the fog that concealed Leprous willows and aspens coated in lumps of fungi nourishing primitive sage lichens. A mantle of dead leaves covered worms buried in the soil, and bleached bones of hares, deer, and cicada molts.

The corpse hummed a melody while following behind until the witch stopped to rest under a tree with long branches. She nestled herself between the buttress roots, and the corpse took his place beside her, seated on a root afflicted by a cluster of apricot Illudens. He set his hands on his lap while watching the witch pull back her hood, and snooze with her wide-open mouth like a badger. Long white and tainted hair covered her eyes.

'Do you remember your name?' She said looking up at a nest on the bare branches.

'Simon. It's what said on my stone'

The corpse’s attention was drawn to a featherless, baby bird with a broken neck gasping for breath between the roots. Its wing twitched as an army of ants crawled on it and bit into the bare pink flesh.

He grabbed the cast-off thing, shook off the ants, put it in his mouth, and bit the head off, gently pulling it out of his teeth. He held the head aloft like an offering—strands of trachea dangled like cords from the base. A cobalt beetle emerged from his socket and gnawed at the hatchling’s head.

'Eat, friend.'

The witch watched the dermestid beetle eat the head before her own stomach grumbled. She produced a pouch of nutmegs from her sleeve and ate one while listening to the soothing buzzing lullaby.

'How peculiar.'

'When I awakened from my grave, she was already a cocoon within my socket.'

'Do you remember anything else?'

'Quite prying, aren't you?'

'Never met an undead one who could chat.'

The haggard corpse tittered—his head hung low.

'I was a scholar, sentenced to death for my methods of obtaining subjects. Or so the witch said. I had a died a master and awakened a servant.'

The corpse gulped down the headless bird after his confession.

'Her name was Oonagh. She was sent to the gallows. And I’ve been roaming ever since.'

The corpse then looked upon the witch whose stare was lost in the skies as if searching for a long-dead star.

'What will you wish for at the Sabbath?'

The hallucinogen was setting in, but she was still lucid. She removed the glove from her right hand, exposing wrinkled skin with defined veins and spots.

'Strange. Oonagh was an old hag, so innocent-looking, too.'

'Not all witches seek youth. Some don't seek anything at all and only attend for the bloodlust'

Battering noises came from within the coffin, followed by a pitched guttural scream.

'I must have underdosed her.'

She spat on the root where a dark mold was forming.

'I’d cut off her tongue, but she might die before reaching the deconsecrated grounds.'

'She might draw unwanted attention.'

She squatted by the coffin, opened the lid, and stared at the quivering creature's bare, bruised, skin—long denied the rays of sunlight. Her pupils dilated and wept like a toddler. The witch's eyes drifted toward the red dew that stained her thighs.

The witch drew a nutmeg and forced it into her mouth and made her chew, holding the knife to her chest, and watched her swallow the bits.

She closed the coffin, leaving the girl in the darkness as the drug distorted the world around her.

The witch returned to her spot, snoozed and cuddled between the roots, and watched the pale sky darken.

'She Better still be there when I wake,' she said.

'Should I be flattered by your trust?'

'Won't make a difference.'

The corpse heard himself chuckle as he hadn't in a long time.

'Does the creature have a name?'

'Annie.'

***

The witch woke up in fetal position from a dream where a woman found a thin weeping baby in a heap of goat skulls. Its sobs echoed across a crepuscular valley.

The corpse sat on the coffin. He pretended to sleep in reminiscence—faking snores even as sarcophaga flies alighted on his head. She swatted them away as the revenant grunted in a false wake.

'I Hope your dream was pleasant,' she said.

The offering had wet herself and the stench of urine, and sweat steamed out of the breathing holes—laughter coming from within like a deranged halfwit.

She dragged the coffin over arched stone bridges wrapped in red-leaved creepers and under which lay piles of fish bones and ancient shells fused into petrified stones, and logs of soft driftwood hosting patches of stringy moss. The northern breeze was pleasant on her skin.

She coughed up blood as she stepped on a mouse skull, sprouting a batch of little spiders.

'Would you mind If I dragged the coffin for a while?'

'It is my burden.'

'Let me share it. Your spine won't make it to the Sabbath.'

'Who is the prying one, now?' The witch looked over her shoulder. 'Go on.'

She handed him the chain and walked in front of him. The witch removed her boots and walked the road and spread her arms like a scarecrow, and eavesdropped on the whispers of the boreal woodland: A crow cawing, a cicada orchestra, a soothing river stream, flies gathered on a fox's carcass.

They came to a fork where a wagon with a torn bonnet lay upturned.

'Poor petty thing,' said Corpse in sight of the raided wagon where a legless red skeleton caked in mud bit into an arm, and swallowed the flesh that fell back on the mud.

'Better take a look. When a revenant’s flesh rots, it becomes that. Unable to indulge itself.'

'I suppose I shall find help myself while I can.'

Silence reigned in the shrouded forest. A fox poked out of its hole, holding a hare still thumping its leg, and retreated into its home as the witch and the revenant walked like sinful pilgrims, leaving behind a trail of footprints and coffin tracks, and the shrieks of the waking offering followed with them.

***

The witch halted when she tasted a pigsty scent in the air along with feral grunts. A creature close to 7 feet appeared out of the fog, dragging a club fashioned from a bear’s femur. Its skin was tombstone grey and scarred by pox. It was robust, slow-moving, and poor of sight. Claw and sword scars ran across its abdomen and wrists.

Its keen nose led it toward the coffin that carried the scent of waste. It grunted, exposing its infected black tongue, and came forward until the witch stepped between them.

She unsheathed the knife and slit her young hand.

The Ogre sniffed the air and blood scent around the witch as a buzzing spread among the trees.

It stamped the bone on the ground and limped toward the coffin. A pebble struck its eye, and the creature quivered, twitched its lip, and turned toward the corpse that held a batch of pebbles in his hand, frozen in place.

A swarm of horseflies sprouted from the rotted wood and fell upon the ogre like a whirlwind of pestilence. They bit through the skin, swarming into the mouth to gnaw at the tongue and fleshy throat walls. The Ogre swung the bone blindly and emitted deep shrieks.

Amidst the confusion, the witch hopped on its back, searched for the carotid, and slashed it. Blood sprayed on her and the swarm. The creature thrashed about, flailing its arms as life deserted it. It slowed down, walked about in circles disoriented, and fell on its back as the cloud of insects joined the swarm, like a reddened humanoid-shaped mass.

'A real shame, not many like it around anymore,' she said.

Her white hair was bloodstained, but the flies knew better than to bite their benefactor.

The Corpse unfroze and leaned forward as if trying to find a free spot to sink his teeth into.

'Don’t bother. I’ve already promised them the thing,' she said. 'Grief not. The Sabbath bears greater riches.'

***

They walked for miles more across the remote land, they walked like withering hermits, like acolytes leading a blasphemous procession. The sacrifice had quieted again, and the corpse's ankle crumbled as he dragged the coffin, and collapsed on the bed of litterfall.

The witch knelt beside him holding a sewing needle. She retrieved the foot and pinched herself to draw the blood. She sewed the flesh back together using black hair as thread and strengthened it with a hex.

The beetle poked out of his eye.

'Strange. I thought it might have stayed behind.'

'I told you, she’s my friend. Besides, she is not fond of flies.'

She helped him rise, and the hex took its toll, further withering her body.

'I'll take back the coffin, lest you want to crawl like that fellow back there.'

They reached a pond surrounded by dragonflies, and beneath an elm by the bank lay a fair lady's corpse like a pallid marionette who appeared to slumber with her head hung low, and her long silver hair intertwined in a bramble of thorns—White buds yet to blossom. She was free of decay and clothed in a white dress and silk woven gloves.

'How did such a thing wound up here?' said the Corpse as he approached his porcelain doll-like kin. He poked her face and the vines grew to shield the lady. Some spread around his feet.

'A protection parting gift, must have been on the run with someone who didn't want her desecrated.'

A millipede crawled over the bramble and up the oak's bark.

'I could try burning the thorns.'

'No. best let her be.'

'Have you lost your hunger?'

'She's brought me a pleasant memory.'

***

'What was her name?'

'I'm sorry?'

'The one she reminded you of.'

'Adelynne'

The corpse raised his head as if beckoned. Old, mangled, and maimed revenants appeared on the road. Corpses in different stages of decomposition, drowned ones, burnt scorched ones, and living hives of hornet brood. A decapitated corpse carried his head in arms, siamese twins devoured a doe, and a dwarf marched onward on his tiny legs.

The witch and The corpse were out of the forest when moonless night fell and they reached the deconsacrated hill of dead grass. Atop this hill stood a thousand years-old hollow tree of an extinct order colonized by a primitive fungus—a spongy orange mass nursing midge flies within. Its broad crown of infested limbs produced a barbed, fetid wine-colored fruit.

By its twisted, bedrock-deep roots gathered the council of witches from all nations of the earth with their offerings of elders stripped and dragged from leashes, and blindfolded young ones. The offering's bare feet were blistered and swollen, and red. All were sustained only on water and seeds. An armless boy crawled like a pupa spewing foam.

Soon the witches numbered close to a hundred, of faces and ages many: childlike, alluring women, old, hunched, and toothless and chanting hymns in their hoarse voices.

A red-haired young witch in a juniper cloak rocked a sobbing toddler in her arms. And the Horde of undead surrounded the tree, none crossed the stone circle.

A witch clad in a long, tattered black leather robe and crowned in a buck head, The Anti-Mother, walked uphill among the revenants, dragging a strange, naked eunuch from a chain around his neck who walked hunched while holding a newborn joined to its umbilical cord. He attempted to soothe the infant, but his malformed face impaired his speech into gibberish. He bared his yellow, protruding teeth at the curious undead.

This witch held the eunuch close as she stood beneath the great tree.

'I’ll join you later,' our witch said as she removed the lid where the girl called Annie, pale from weeks of travel, and unable to speak.

Our witch had severed her tendons, so she carried her with the arm around her shoulder in a sisterly display. Revenant heads turned to her as she joined the mass. The Anti-Mother recited a speech in a tongue that predates holy scriptures and was forbidden to teach outside the coven. Her profanity echoed across the hill inciting a euphoric ovation among the mass.

The Anti-Mother took the fetal thing from the whimpering eunuch and placed it on a stone table where a stone club lay. She handed the club to the eunuch whose fish eyes popped and fingers quivered touching the stone club.

She gently guided him to the table where the pink creature lay. After a brief pause, he swung and missed by an inch.

The witches yelled, and some cackled. After more failed strikes he began to sweat, and raised his arms, shrieking like a baboon, and struck the blow, producing a crushing sound that silenced the fetal thing and chants alike. The eunuch raised the club, and shards of bone fell from the pink-red surface as the Anti-Mother spread her arms, and the eunuch fell to his knees.

A hundred and one bodies were hung from the limbs of the ancient tree: old, young, wicked, or just. Our Witch looked upon the child named Anna one last time as she pictured her in that little forest hunting for sunflowers, while the witches devoured the fruits and prayed for their wishes.

***

The witches departed back to their caves, castles, and orchards and thus the feast for the undead began.

The white-haired witch remained behind, standing alone to watch them feast. Chunks of fruit on her lip.

'You've stayed behind?'

'Could say the same thing. Not joining the feast?'

'I've chosen not to debase myself so low.'

The infested corpses made their advance, dragging down the bodies, wrestling for the still-warm offerings, one of whom survived the hanging. His screams echoed as the horde ripped him from the waist down. The dwarf disemboweled a headless male body on the ground. A crow pecked at a head and was caught by an agile revenant who tore off its wings and wrestled others for the dead bird. The snarls of the undead echoed across the hill like a primal symphony.

'Did you get your wish?'

She showed him her smooth and dexterous hand.

'I still have questions,' she said. 'You are free to follow me home.'

'Where is home?'

'A bogland to the south.'

'What should I call you from now on?'

'Orfelia.'

She presented him with an effigy made from black human hair.

'What is this?'

'A memento.'

***

Come dawn, the spot where they stood was empty. The tree stood abandoned as the midges swirled about, eating the patches of flesh on the bones left upon the dead grass. A snake slithered through a ribcage, shedding her old skin. The wind blew carrying away the scent miles away. The tree’s crown shade sheltered the clutter of sacrifices from the sunlight. And a bone-white belladonna bloomed out of the soil, through a vertebra canal.

Two silhouettes walked down the road.

***

The Cranberry-haired witch ran through the forest with the toddler in her arms after sneaking out during the rite's ecstasy.

She leaned against an oak to rest and the little one giggled as the first rays of sunlight warmed her face.