Scott G. Mariani - The Cross

Returning to the nest, the mother buzzard found her half-grown chicks still at work on the remains she’d scavenged from the castle battlements the previous day. There had been more than enough fresh meat for the taking up there, after she’d chased away the crows that had started the work of tearing it apart. She’d ripped away some large bloody chunks with her powerful beak, picked them up in her talons and carried them back to feed to the squawking fledglings.

Now a squabble was breaking out between two of the larger buzzard chicks, who were engaged in a tug-of-war over a choice hunk of meat. As they fought over it, a shiny object of very little importance to a buzzard fell with a dull thump to the bottom of the nest. The young raptors ignored it and went on squabbling until what was left of the severed human hand and wrist finally ripped in half and the argument was fairly settled.

The grimy, blood-spattered gold watch had landed on its face so that its engraved back-plate could be seen. And if a bird of prey could have read human language, the buzzards would have known the name of the man whose flesh was going to keep them sated for the next few days. The engraving read:

Jeremy P. Lonsdale

Chapter Five

As the sun eventually sank below the forest skyline and the lengthening shadows merged into the rising darkness, Joel emerged tentatively from the safety of his cave. He peered around him. It had been snowing heavily through the day, and the trail of his deep footprints leading to the mouth of the cave had been covered over. He felt the biting wind on his face but the rawness of the cold was something his senses registered only objectively. Like a machine. Like something that was alive but not alive. Something that was neither human nor animal.

The night sounds of the forest filled his ears and seemed to press in on him from all around as he scrambled down the rocky slope from the cave and set off through the trees. The fresh snow crunched bright and sharp under his feet. He could feel every microscopic ice particle through the soles of his boots, every rotted leaf, every fallen twig.

He trudged on, eyes front, jaw tight and fists clenched at his sides. Refusing to surrender to the tumult of thoughts that screamed in his head. Then, after a mile or so, he stopped. Sensing something. He turned slowly. From the darkness of the forest, glowing amber eyes were watching him. Another pair appeared, then another. Dark shapes gathering, alerted at his passage.

The wolf pack circled silently around him, cutting off the way ahead. His nostrils flared at their feral scent. He could hear the rasp of their hot breath and the low, rumbling growls from deep in their throats. Fifteen of them, maybe twenty. Their heads low, hackles raised, ears flat back. All watching, intent. Ready to attack, move in and rip their prey apart.

But something about this prey was different. As Joel stared back at the wolves, a ripple of unease seemed to pass through the pack. Growls turned to whimpers. The wolves backed off, then turned and melted away into the night.

Joel watched the predators retreat, and he was afraid. Not of the savage things that lurked in the dark. He was the dark. The night feared him . And that was more than he could bear.

He closed his mind and pressed grimly on. Leaping over fallen tree trunks, splashing through frozen streams and scrabbling up steep slopes, oblivious of the branches that slashed his face and the sharp rocks that gouged his hands.

An hour passed, then two, before his sharp sense of smell detected a new scent. A human scent. Woodsmoke.

From the top of a snow-covered rise he saw the speckle of lights through the trees in the distance. Even in darkness, he could make out the fine details of the little houses, and the old wooden church steeple that jutted above the forest.

He knew this place. It was the village he’d passed through on his way to Vâlcanul.

Joel hesitated for a long moment, unsure what to do. He could easily skirt around the edge of the village unnoticed – but he couldn’t travel far, not in the state he was in. He badly needed to clean himself up and get hold of some new clothes. Someone would surely help him out. He still had some money left in his pocket – maybe enough for a cheap vehicle of some kind, to help him get back home.

He made his decision. The forest thinned out as he approached the village outskirts and the first of the old wooden houses. Snowflakes spiralled gently down in the soft glow from their windows. Their white roofs glimmered in the moonlight. The sides of the main street were piled with gritty slush where a snow-plough had cleared the way through. Joel’s boots crunched over the icy ruts made by its tracks. He’d walked up this street before, only the day before – for him, a lifetime ago. The same hush of serenity hung over the place. It was just as he remembered it, like a forgotten throwback to a bygone era. Some things never changed.

While other things had changed forever.

Joel began to feel increasingly self-conscious as he made his way up the narrow, winding street. The feeling suddenly struck him that he did not belong here, any more than the wild wolves from the forest. His step faltered. He felt himself gripped by the overwhelming desire to turn and run, disappear back into the safety of the trees before anyone saw him.

It was in that moment of panicky indecision that Joel heard the sound from one of the nearby houses. The scrape of a latch, the creak of hinges. He turned to see a woman leaning out of a downstairs window and peering uncertainly through the darkness at him. She was in her fifties, with shoulder-length black hair showing strands of white, a patchwork shawl wrapped around her.

Joel realised he knew her. She was the teacher he’d met on his outward journey. The woman who’d tried so hard to dissuade him from travelling onwards to Vâlcanul, the place the villagers feared and hated so deeply that they wouldn’t speak its name or even willingly acknowledge its existence. ‘Then you will not come back,’ she’d said when he’d insisted on finding the place. She’d been more right than she knew, he thought.

The frown on the woman’s face melted into an expression of surprise and relief as she realised it was really him. ‘You,’ she called out in English. ‘You have come back.’

Joel forced his face into a weak grin. He crossed the narrow street and stepped into the light from the window. ‘It’s me, all right,’ he said without conviction.

The woman stared at his tattered, filthy clothes. On his outward journey, he’d been carrying a rucksack and a photographer’s equipment case. Now he was empty-handed. The woman said, ‘What happened to you?’

The wheels spun fast in Joel’s brain. ‘I never made it as far as Vâlcanul,’ he lied. ‘I got lost in the woods. Some hunters must have thought I was a deer or something.’ He poked a couple of fingers through the holes in his clothes and shrugged. ‘But I’m okay. They missed me.’

‘You have blood on your clothes.’

‘Oh, that? I know. It’s not mine. I . . . er . . . I slipped and fell on a deer the hunters had killed.’ He winced inwardly at how lame it sounded.

The woman clicked her tongue and shook her head. She shut the window and disappeared inside the house. Seconds later, the door opened and the woman waved at him to come inside. ‘I have clothes to give you,’ she said. ‘And you must be cold. You want eat, no? Come.’

Joel hesitated.

‘Come, come,’ she insisted.

The house was small and warm and cosy, and smelled of freshly-cut firewood and chicory coffee. The wooden walls gleamed with centuries of varnish, the stone floors were covered in heavily-worked rugs. The woman smiled. ‘We were not introduced before. My name is Cosmina.’