The Ailing Winds of Change, A Collection

Reunion

It has been two years since Sarah Williams has been back home, her schooling in the southern Ontario port city of Yarnak has kept her too busy to make the trip up north. Fortunately, her younger brother Todd paid for her to return this Thanksgiving, apparently his new job in Beetville has been a successful one. Todd even offered to pick her up at the Beetville bus station, saving her a two hour-long taxi drive. While she sits outside the station basking in the warmth of a clear sunny October day, a chill runs down her back as she remembers she hated having to come to this town. There were always reports of wild and domestic animal attacks, and in the 90’s symbols of a black goat head and a stag continued to pop up everywhere in graffiti; it all creeped her out. Her ruminations on her childhood are cut short when her brother pulls up in a white pick-up truck with the words 'Borealis Hyper Inc' painted across the doors. When she sees him that odd, familiar chill runs down her spine. He says something to her with that sweet smile of his but his words fade away to nothing while her vision clouds to darkness.

Sarah wakes disorientated just beyond the living room in the front foyer. A dark storm has brewed outside, pelting the door to the yard in front of her with rain and marble sized chunks of hail, echoing a steady tapping sound throughout the house. Her wrists itch and ache with the sensation of a coarse rope binding her hands behind her back but she manages to sit up onto her knees. She tries to move further but those same ropes are tied on the other end to a wooden spindle of the staircase behind her. She looks around at the decrepit house she has awoken in. The walls are smothered in black mold, there’s decaying food and dirty clothes littering the ground and the furniture looks to be crumbling, but it dawns on her that she is inside her family’s house. I’ve only been gone a couple years, what’s going on?

As she fully comes out of her groggy state-of-mind the tapping noise of the storm transitions into a sharp, guttural chittering that can be heard coming from all corners of the house. It repeats the same phrase over and over: Child of the All-Mother, Ascend! Bask in Her power! She searches for the origin of the ominous chanting but her gaze fixates in the living room where she finds her mother, restrained and gagged, is crying while kneeling inside a bloodied pentagram with unrecognizable symbols and runes. Standing outside the pentagram is Todd in a black hooded-robe with a clear crystal staff raised in his fist over his head as his other hand forms intricate gestures in the air; the robe has a goat's head painted in dark red on the front. Placed around the border of the pentagram are jugs of water that are dripping said water upwards, defying gravity and pooling above Sarah’s mother. In the far corner of the room she spots her father who is lying on the ground with his neck sliced open leaving a pool of blood around his corpse while several tiny, purple, winged lizard creatures are feasting upon his spilled innards.

Ascension

Sarah stares blankly at the carnage as her mind furiously races trying to comprehend the scene before her. Her eyes widen in horrific revelation and she looks around desperately for a hidden camera, for an escape, for a weapon, for a reasonable explanation all at once. She tugs madly at her restraints as panic begins to take over her mind. She tries to yell at her brother and mother but her mouth is stuffed with cloth and all she can do is mumble. Thi-what’s happening, it-it doesn't make sense! This isn't real, this is crazy, it's mad! I need out someone get me out now this isn't funny. Th𑁋 Her brother’s head jolts to face her direction, the corners of his mouth curling up into a grimace too large for a human head and revealing bloody, jagged teeth. She hears his distorted voice in her head, "Sister. Ever the fool. This is very real. Now pay attention, you’ll soon know what madness truly is.” As he says these words to her in her mind, unseen icy cold fingers grasp Sarah from the back of her head and over her face forcing her to gaze directly at the ritual, even keeping her eyelids apart so she can't close her eyes.

"The All-Mother demands total devotion, sacrifices must be made, all other loyalties be culled. With your deaths I will Ascend as Her God of Cold, the White Silence,” Todd rants like a lunatic in Sarah's mind though his focus is on their mom. “Darkness will spread over every inch of this planet soon like a wind of blessed change. I will be one of Her Generals in the coming invasion, readying this planet for the Old Ones’ returns. This is good, you can see that right? You will see that. Once you are a part of Her Void you will see the truth….” A misty cloud flashes above their mother engulfing the collected water and freezing it into one glass-thin sheet of ice 4-feet high. With a flick of Todd's gesturing hand the sheet of ice comes bearing down on their mom at incredible speed, sundering her from the top of her head down, embedding into the floor. Multiple tiny popping sounds can be heard as the two sides of their mothers body slowly peels and slips off the sheet of ice in a slump leaving blood, sinew and tendons sticking to the frozen water. The invisible fingers release Sarah and she falls forward limply while puking, held up by the rope, the vomit streaming out of her nose until there is enough built up pressure to push out the gag in her mouth. Skin pale, eyes streaming with tears and mucus Sarah looks up at the grisly sight with horrified shock. She tries to yell out to her mom while pulling frantically at her rope but she can only manage little gurgles and gagging sounds and she vomits again. While she stares in disbelief at the floor below her, her stomach forcefully purging itself, she realizes she is in a pentagram of her own and one thought echoes through her head: I need to escape.

While Todd is preoccupied with chanting and syphoning his mothers blood through the air from her corpse into the base of the staff, gradually coloring the crystal a darkening red, Sarah takes advantage of her brother's distraction to start her escape. She turns around and with her bare feet kicks at the spindle her rope is attached to, breaking apart the rotten wood in a few hits, and pulls the rope off the splinters. Her foot is bleeding but she has no time to focus on that pain. With one final look at her murdered parents she rushes out the front door, her brother watching her leave with his demented smile. Once outside Sarah is battered with ice and snow from what has now become a raging blizzard, stinging her flesh through her light fall-time clothes. Even though it has only been a few minutes since she regained consciousness inside the house and saw rainfall, the temperature has dropped well below freezing. The ground is already covered in an inch of snow while thunder crashes above and lighting flashes through the white-out storm. With her visibility worsening by the minute from the storm ceaselessly intensifying, her range of sight already down to just thirty-feet, she runs towards the garage.

Descension

When she arrives at the garage she stops dead in her tracks. The garage is completely demolished, the walls and roof are ripped apart and scattered around the yard, the two vehicles inside are shredded and strewn across the debris. Even Todd's car is among the debris field as chunks. Dirt, grass and asphalt has been kicked up from beneath the snow by hoof prints the size of truck tires seemingly jumping all around the wreckage site, almost covered up by the continuous snowfall. Her body and thoughts are already slowing as the shivers worsen, though her naked feet have lost all sensation as frostbite is setting in. Her clothes stiff with frost, she continues on to the only other place she can think of: her closest neighbor further in the forest.

A few minutes pass while Sarah treks through the snow, already up to her ankles, and her visibility has been reduced to 10ft while the storm continues to worsen. In her head she can hear her brother's voice calling out to her “Fool, you know you’re on thin ice. Come back and I can reunite you with mother and father, they're waiting in Her Eternal Void.” Distraught, she searches around her but all she can see is the almost sheer wall of swirling snow surrounding her. As she quickens her pace a deafening shriek pierces through the tumultuous winds causing her ears to bleed while her head is filled with a horrific vision: countless planets floating in an infinite darkness, each planet covered in an endless sea of writhing body parts, human and non-human, which are being devoured and birthed by huge tree-like creatures made of flesh. Among the sea of flesh are her dead parents beckoning her to join the mass. Sarah comes back to reality and drops to the ground stunned with a broken mind, staring blankly upwards while a creature of nightmares, the source of the shriek, descends upon her.

A scaly reptilian-like bat larger than an elephant with a long curvy neck, an elongated head made of bone with sharp horns and an even sharper boney mandible, a large claw attached to each of its two wings and a pair of hoofed legs. It has many tentacles for tails, dozens of smaller tentacles for tongues, and is fluorescent purple in color. Sarah sees the monster but as she looks upon its visage her eyes bleed and she screams out as her mind shatters from unfathomable terror, unable to comprehend the Horror she is witnessing. In one fell swoop it glides down and snatches Sarah with its tentacles, soaring back up into the blizzard. Paralyzed with madness the tentacles bruise and tear at her limp body, ripping apart flesh and the ropes that bound her. The Horror abruptly releases her, sending Sarah plummeting towards the ground.

When she hits the ground it shatters beneath her, plunging her into the frigid waters of the family's pond. This sudden rush of freezing water wakes Sarah out of her stupor and she thrashes around wildly, but the adrenaline her body produced from the shock is not enough as the cold numbs and slows her body. With one last desperate breath of air she sinks to the bottom only 6ft down. The broken ice above her rapidly refreezes before her eyes, and on the other side her brother appears with the crystal staff that now glows a deep blood-red. As she hopelessly claws against the ice with what little energy she has left her brother mockingly scratches against the other side. Every head and body movement she makes her brother mimics it all while wearing that inhuman grin on his face all while laughing inside her head. The staff he wields pulses once with a red light and Sarah hears the crackling sound of ice beneath her. She looks down only to witness her legs covered in a thick ice that is spreading quickly up her body. With a fearful scream her lungs fill with water and her body completely freezes over, her final pose reaching out desperately for her brother. She discovers however, that she is not dead; just perpetually dying. The ice has deafened her to outside noises so that she can only hear her own continually drowning lungs. Her skin consistently rips and tears from the burning cold. The ice too keeps her eyelids open though she is blinded by so many fine layers of crystallized water she only sees a brilliant glare or reflection. All she can do is think and feel pain, until her life's end.