Jesse Bullington - The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

“Leave it!” Hegel’s voice boomed out over the valley. “Plague! It’s got the plague!”

Manfried stopped dead, then went rolling when Ennio crashed into his back. Getting up and delivering several kicks to Ennio, Manfried wiped the snow off and returned to his brother by the door of the crypt. The pig lay down in the snow beside the dead man, watching Manfried warily.

“Plague?” Manfried wiped sweat from his face, eyes darting to the body.

Hegel nodded solemnly. “Buboes big as my fists.”

“Explains him talkin nonsense.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah, makes you all touched in the head.”

“Where’d you hear-”

“He moves!” Ennio yelped, propped against a stone cross.

“Eh?” The Grossbarts looked, and indeed, the man arched his back and thrashed. His left shoulder swelled and turned black, and he foamed at the mouth. Gore leaked around the quarrels embedded in him, then began spurting out further than should be possible.

“That look right to you?” Hegel demanded but Manfried just gaped.

The curious pig snuffled closer, then screeched and ran off through the churchyard. The man’s armpit ballooned outward and he sprayed vomit all over himself. The stench of putrescence grew stronger, the man voiding himself from every orifice. Then he rolled on his side with his left arm twisted behind his head and the pulsing bubo burst, an oozing discharge hissing in the snow.

“Nah, ain’t look right to me,” Manfried admitted.

The flow of fluids from the armpit quickened and thickened, and then the pus, blood, and biles poured upward into the frosty air, swirling into a hovering humoural maelstrom above the corpse. The growing mass of liquid let off a meaty, musky, hot-rot stench that curled the nose hairs of all present, and before any could move something coalesced within the impossible floating whirlpool. The veil of humours parted even as clouds took the moon but the night illuminated what it should have hidden, as though darkness had become black sunshine. The three men stared, each one slipping down into a bottomless pit of his own mind.

A body the size and shape of a barrel jutted up into the air behind the thing’s skull-sized head, plates of shell bristling with long hairs. Six willowy, multi-segmented limbs protruded from its thorax, the two pairs in the rear arcing back and up before angling down to make heart-shaped imprints on the corpse with its oddly dainty cloven hooves. The front appendages functioned more as arms than as legs despite their similar four-part build and length, the pair stroking the clump of dagger-length antennae jutting out in place of a nose. They saw its hard, shiny face possessed the bulging eyes of a man, the horns and floppy ears of a goat, and small spines running in combs along its cheeks to join the protruding cluster of feelers. It hopped clumsily into the snow beside the corpse of its former host, its cylindrical, bulbous abdomen held aloft behind it to reveal a decidedly human erection of prodigious size, the organ straining up between the plates like a knight’s lance or a scorpion’s stinger.

Manfried prayed under his breath, Hegel turned to run, and Ennio retched. Wreathed in a thin yellow mist, it dribbled a viscous film as it turned its head to each of them in turn. Its antennae trembled and, proving that events can always worsen, it addressed them:

“Grossbarts, eh?”

Hegel slapped Manfried dead in the mouth, bringing him back to something resembling mental coherence. Manfried slung his arm around Hegel’s, the woozy Brothers supporting one another. Ennio wiped his mouth and fled with a shriek, and this seemed to decide the matter for the monster. It pounced after Ennio, its spindly legs somehow propelling its bloated form high into the air after the screaming wagon driver. The Grossbarts ran as one but immediately stopped when they saw Ennio and his pursuer were headed for the exit.

“What in fuck?” Manfried panted.

“Uhhh.” Hegel felt vomit creep up his throat but forced it down.

“This way,” said Manfried, dashing in the opposite direction from Ennio.

The churchyard that had struck them as massive now appeared small indeed. The church grounds sat on a shelf, the door in the wall that Ennio ran toward the only exit. The cliffs rising on one side and dropping on the other met at the end of the triangular plot, affording few hiding places. They could find no purchase to climb up to a higher road or possibly scramble over the abbey walls without disclosing their presence, and, of all the ill luck, the clouds thickened overhead, darkening the cemetery. Ennio’s screams drew closer, and they desperately went to the ledge. They saw a snowdrift shining below but could not gauge the drop.

“Rope,” Manfried instructed.

“In the bags,” Hegel groaned.

“So?” Then Manfried realized they had both left their bags on the steps of the tomb. “Go on back and get’em.”

“Nope.” Hegel vigorously shook his head. “Let’s try cuttin round while it’s after Ennio.”

“Sound.”

They were near the end of the churchyard where the cliffs on either side merged into one sheer curtain of stone. Staying close to the mounds they fled back toward the monastery wall. As they neared the back of the crypt, the hog-having burrowed into a snowdrift-appeared underfoot. It squealed and Manfried shouted.

The light-headed Ennio heard someone nearby but dared not look, the blinding cloud of stink alerting him that his hunter drew closer as well. He angled toward where he hoped the Grossbarts hid. Few men have experienced the terror that drove Ennio forward, few men save the Grossbarts.

Hegel saw Ennio and turned around, running to the ledge. Manfried, still stunned from stepping on the pig, dallied a moment more and so caught a glimpse of the fell thing leaping from atop a tombstone. Its legs shuddered and its heavy abdomen swayed as it landed beside Ennio, the man narrowly avoiding its groping arms.

Hegel lowered himself over the edge, the rock cutting into his chest, his fingers clawing the slick stone for purchase. His boot-tips found a crack, and then another cloud darkened the night, and he blindly scrambled down the cliff. The cloud passed moments before Manfried would have run off the edge.

Throwing himself backward, Manfried slid legs-first over the side. Fortunately Hegel had cleared a few handholds of snow, and Manfried grabbed these as he went over, banging himself against the cliff. Unfortunately for Hegel, his brother’s flailing legs kicked his fingers, but Hegel managed to snatch the straps of Manfried’s hose before falling. The added weight almost pulled them both down, only Manfried’s red fingers keeping them suspended on the cliff face.

No sooner had Hegel rediscovered his handholds and released his brother than Manfried caught sight of the exhausted Ennio lurching toward him. Arms shaking uncontrollably, Manfried scrambled down, pausing only whenever his feet found Hegel instead of the next foothold.

Ennio saw Manfried disappear over the ledge and used his last strength to charge ahead, the thing clumsily bounding behind him. Screaming a final prayer Ennio hurled himself off the cliff, spinning in midair to see if it pursued. It did not, craning over the edge and staring after him. Then his vision blurred as he plummeted, and everything shone white and black.

The Grossbarts heard Ennio tumble past them, babbling as he dropped. He suddenly went silent, and the Brothers did not breathe. The shadow of the cliff obscured the bottom, but judging by the moans that began rising up it could not be too far down. They would have kept climbing but Manfried glanced up and saw the thing just above him, and from his vantage point he clearly made out the circular, winking, hemmorhoidal anus of a mouth behind its central ring of antennae. He had the sense to kick away from the rock face as he let go but still crashed onto Hegel, and both plunged through the moonlight.