Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

And as he uttered the arcane words and the magick began to flow, the mansion started to shake-a slight tremor, barely noticeable at first-but growing in intensity and strength. Stearns stumbled as the floor beneath his feet bucked and heaved.

“You did this,” the sorcerer snarled, trying to keep his footing as he turned back to where Deacon still lay across the body of his son.

“Because I can,” Deacon echoed mockingly, trying with all his might to stay alive and to see the magickal manifestation of his power through.

The mansion began to creak and moan as its structure was challenged, and the shadows within became like a hungry thing, bottomless and black.

Drawing the house into its maw.

The Deacon estate, consumed by darkness.

The vessel had to be filled before he could return to his creator.

Zeroing in on the collective pulse of multiple life energies, the vessel strolled down the quiet city street until he came upon the nightclub. He moved toward the door, drawn to the hum of vitality within, but he was blocked by a large, bearded man whose own body vibrated with excess vim and vigor.

“Fifty-dollar cover,” the man announced.

The vessel stepped back to assess the situation. He appeared human, although was far from it, and had the strength to easily snap this man’s neck and simply walk into the bar brimming with life. But his creator had also given him far less destructive means of getting what he required. He reached into the back pocket of his trousers and removed a wallet filled with several types of currency.

“Fifty-dollar cover,” the vessel repeated as he held out a fifty-dollar bill.

The bouncer’s hand closed around the cash, snatching it from the vessel’s grasp. Their fingers touched briefly as the exchange was made, and the vessel sampled some of the large man’s energy. It was relatively healthy, clean of any terminal disease. The selection was accepted, and now the vessel was that much closer to being full.

The big man swayed ever so slightly, then seemed to shake it off as he pulled open the door for the club’s newest guest.

“Enjoy yourself,” he said, as the vessel passed by him on his way inside.

The vibrancy of life emanating from within nearly pulled the vessel down a red-lit corridor, electronic music growing louder, beating like a strong, healthy heart. The hallway ended at the top of a metal staircase and the vessel stopped for a moment to watch the activity on the dance floor below him-bodies overflowing with an abundance of vivacity, their exuberant gyrations beckoning him, calling him to walk among them.

To sample the vitality they radiated.

The vessel descended to the dance floor. With hands outstretched, he waded into the sea of bodies, and everyone he passed, everyone he casually brushed up against, filled him with their life.

The Shadow Lands

Sixty-seven Years Ago

It was dark in the Shadow Lands, but then again, when wasn’t it? That was probably one of the things Squire liked most about the place: It didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was.

The hobgoblin pulled his tattered cloak about his squat, muscular body as a freezing wind from another time and place found its way into the repository of shadows to caress him.

It was a realm of perpetual darkness, a place connected to all the shadows that ever existed-then, now, and even into the future. Traveling the Shadow Paths could take him just about anywhere, but for right now, the hobgoblin was content where he was.

Squire sat, reveling in the quiet. He couldn’t recall how long he had been here this time but knew that this was where he needed to be…where he belonged.

The long hairs on the back of his thick neck suddenly came to attention, and the hobgoblin was in motion, pulling the concealed machete from inside his cloak to meet the attack from one of the myriad life-forms that called this black realm its home. Shades of darkness writhed about him, and he narrowed his vision to see the beastie that used the shifting colors of black and gray for cover.

It was insectoid in its basic design, and he had run into one or two before. Squire also recalled that its meat was quite tasty, if one enjoyed the flavor of rotting meat soaked in Listerine, which he did.

The creature attacked high, and Squire went low, slicing the blade that he had sharpened that very morning across the exoskeletoned belly of the large bug. Its innards spilled out onto the ground, its life ended before it could even complete its leap.

Squire was used to such things, always waiting, always ready for that next attack. For as long as he could remember, somebody or something was trying to kill him.

The hobgoblin figured that it probably all started with his birth, when his kicking and screaming from his mother’s womb resulted in her death. That didn’t go over well with his father, to say the least. And from that day forward it seemed as though someone had pinned a sign on his back saying KILL ME, and that’s what everybody had been trying to do since.

Of course, it hadn’t helped that he’d gotten himself mixed up with a band of would-be heroes-monsters, ghosts, and magick users trying to save from various supernatural threats a version of the Earth that he had made his home. At first that had seemed like a really good idea, but in the end…

Not so much.

The hobgoblin hated for his thoughts to go there; he’d spent too long remembering what had happened to his friends and the world that they had been trying to save. Emphasis on trying.

But failing miserably.

He’d used the Shadow Paths to travel to other worlds just like the one he had lost. Though details varied, he found them all on the verge of heading down that same road his world had gone, or, worse, having already succumbed to the planet-devouring threat.

No, he would just stay here in the realm of darkness. It was simpler here, and the things that tried to kill him were only doing it because they loved the taste of hobgoblin meat.

Nothing more complicated than that.

Squire dug into the insect’s carcass with his knife, breaking the thick shell to get at the soft insides. Just like lobster, but different, he thought as he cut away the foul-smelling meat and shoved it into the lined leather bag that he always carried.

He felt the disturbance in the air behind him and readied himself for another attack, but as he turned, he realized that it came not from an imminent threat but something off in the distance. The sky in this place was like a black velvet curtain, and as he gazed across the plain of shadow, it looked as though something was moving behind that curtain, punching and pushing on it.

Stretching it.

He’d never seen anything quite like it, and got that nasty feeling in the pit of his belly that told him it couldn’t be anything good.

Leaving his kill, he trudged closer. The phenomena intensified, the sky writhing like the belly of a shadow snake after swallowing its prey alive. Squire suddenly knew that something was about to happen-he could feel it on his skin like pinpricks of electricity-and he raised his cloak to cover his face just as the explosion came.

The sound was deafening in the dark and quiet world. The force of the blast tossed him across the blackened landscape, tumbling like a pile of dry fall leaves, until he managed to sink his fingers into the solidified shadow that comprised the ground of this place, stopping his progress.

As the winds died down, he carefully climbed to his feet and could not believe what lay before him. Where there had once been only rolling plains of shadow, there now stood a house…a mansion, really.

It sat there, squatting in the perpetual gloom like some gigantic prehistoric toad.