Yorus of the Terror

The tower of coffins swayed; wood creaked with every step, never falling, never toppling. The wind was heavy, but the burden more so.

Yorus carried the thousand coffins upon his shoulder, one gloved hand holding the rope binding them, though it would never fall. The pillar of deceased reached high. And one day... one day it would pierce the sky. But not today.

The thoroughfares between settlements had long since decayed and crumbled. Now, only sand led the way. Yorus’ footprints lived for seconds before the wind erased the past. His raven-black boots pressed onward until dryness turned to damp, and sand turned to rock and dirt. His feet squelched in puddles too dark for a reflection.

Rain had fallen the previous night. It always did before an incident. The weather wasn’t going to improve until it was over—until he had rid this place of the Terror.

He read the sign. The town of Nowhere.

The ashen buildings were as rickety as his pillar of deceased. Bending back and forth in the increasing gusts, threatening to crumble and fall with every snapping sound, they remained standing. They would not fall because that would result in death.

And that wasn’t how people died.

“You’re more intimidating than I pictured.” A short, portly man waddled up to him, dressed in luxury seldom seen among common folk. The mayor, Yorus deduced. Two watchmen stood either side, young and terrified.

Hundreds of eyes watched the street from shuttered windows, peering and hoping. They’d see only a man clad in various shades of grey cloth from head to toe, no skin showing. No facial features peered out under from under the hood, a scarf, and wide brimmed hat the same colour as the perpetually dreary, overcast sky.

The people knew him by many names: Yorus the Disgraced, Yorus of the Desert, Yorus the Coffin Carrier, Yorus the Butcher. Each name waned and grew on a repeating cycle. There were more. There were always more.

“My grandfather said you carried that thing everywhere,” the mayor continued, his eyes scanning the caskets. “I heard stories, but I could scarcely imagine...”

“Where?” Yorus asked, seeking nothing other than his duty. Talk was unnecessary when the threat lingered.

The mayor stumbled under the brevity and pointed a hesitant, wobbling finger to a small house squashed between two others twice its size.

“The sheriff?” Yorus asked.

“He’s dead.”

Of course he was. They always were the first to be devoured. But Yorus respected their dedication all the same.

The line of mismatching houses curved to the right. Every home was different, every roof a structure of what looked like imminent disaster. But one building Yorus recognised.

“Evacuate everyone from the house to the church,” he said.

“Truly, that far?” the mayor asked.

Yorus said nothing while keeping focused on the target house. The presence inside had started to show itself. The black mist seeped through the walls, climbed the chimney, a mist visible only to certain eyes.

After receiving no reply, the mayor ordered the two watchmen to evacuate the residents. Silence often earned results. Yorus marched toward the house, wasting no more time.

“Oh, there’s a bit of an issue,” the mayor said.

“I already see it.” Yorus stared at the boy blocking the door. The black mist seeped out in wisps along every crack in the building, stretching, failing to reach and claim the child.

“Please, save my mother,” the boy begged as Yorus stood over him. His big eyes were swollen, every tear shed and lost.

Every time, every incident, a loved one pleaded for an impossibility. Yorus didn’t have time to search for a heart.

“There is no saving her,” he replied. “The Terror leaves nothing.”

“No!” the boy screeched. “She’s there. She remembers me. I can prove it—”

The boy turned and opened the door.

Yorus grabbed and pulled. The sharp tendrils of smoke lashed out in a dark flash, scratching and grazing. The boy’s cheek bled. Yorus kept a firm hold of the child’s collar and kicked the door closed.

The mayor had retreated to a safer distance, his hands trembling and his mind debating to run.

Yorus lifted and dangled the crying boy. “Keep him away,” he ordered.

The mayor scurried over, sweating and wordless. He locked the child’s arm in his sweating palm nonetheless.

Yorus placed the tower of coffins on the ground. All except one—the very first one... Her...

He secured her coffin on his back, a comfort and reminder. The others could wait until he had finished, though he knew the curse would never let him part with them for long.

“Don’t touch these if you value your life,” Yorus instructed. He didn’t know if his words were true because no one had ever touched them.

Without hesitation, he marched to the house and opened the door. Nothing tried grabbing him; the Terror knew caution... Concerning.

His many bundles of thick and torn capes were a constant fluttering noise until he entered and closed the door. All sound left him behind, staying away from all within, rattling in an outside world now unreachable until duty was done. The house had a silent rumble of its own; it trembled without aid of weather.

Yorus patted the coffin on his back and took a breath. He flipped open one of the many folds in his clothing. The thin, elongated barrel slid out, his other hand finding the obsidian bullets. Pure dark, a blackness deep enough to penetrate. There was no other way; only obsidian and... something more.

The Terror had consumed the light, claiming every window and crack. Yorus’ eyes worked a little differently to everyone else’s. He had trained them to see what others could not; the darkness was just another shade of light.

He aimed, finger on the trigger, scanning for the creature. The Terror had a thousand forms, but there was always—always—the oozing, exfoliating mist clinging to everything with a vile taste of putrid ash working its way to suffocate. Yorus watched the blend of black that did not fit the rest. He took careful steps to the left wall as his target slithered on a multitude of limbs.

There were three stages to the Terror. Individually, they worked through each one, though all had their own variations to how those stages played out. That was, if they made it past the first.

Yorus had no intention of prolonging the fight, but being unprepared meant countless deaths and he had to think ahead as well as take caution. Terrors were like humans with how capricious their personalities could be.

He pulled the trigger. A piercing screech ruptured with the impact. One limb spun free, landing on the floor in a dead hump. Yorus kept his eyes forward, but the severed part crumbled to black ash.

The Terror continued its bloodcurdling cry as it scurried, tearing apart the table and chairs and ripping the counter in two, fragments flying. It scurried along the wall and with claws sharper than stone, it burrowed free into the adjacent house.

Stage one: retreat and preserve. Attempt to live. Whatever subject they had infested and consumed, they wanted it to grow, as was the essence of the Terror.

Yorus followed, fast but wary. He stepped through the gaping hole, a chasm in the wall, and let his eyes adjust to the brighter light.

The Terror left a path of carnage: torn and broken furniture, the floorboards ripped and splintered, the cavernous openings in the next several walls.

The screeching had stopped in the fleeing. Yorus pointed the tip of his rifle through the next hole. It was too small for him and her coffin to slip through together at once. Either this Terror was smart, or it was panicking.

Yorus untied her and slid her casket through the hole first. His fingers treated her delicately, even when encased in wood. He could still feel her softness. She deserved—

Something grabbed her. And pulled. She left his fingers. Gone. Gone again in an instant. Too fast. Yorus hurried through the hole, keeping his heart calm.

Her casket laid on the floor, tendrils of black consuming half the wood and trying to claim more still. The Terror crawled. It had the semblance of something human at the core. Doubtless, it was the boy’s mother.

“Yorus.” It wasn’t a monstrous voice. It had a sibilant rhythm, but it sounded human.

And it was her voice.

The second stage: psychological attacks—the squirming into the mind like an infected parasite.

“You dare use her voice with your tainted mouth?” Yorus knew not to cave in, but his feelings knotted at hearing her once again.

He withdrew them, turned himself to stone, and pulled the trigger.

Each obsidian shot made the Terror scatter and leap, its body fighting light and bullets both as it covered windows with spewing mist and tried desperately to live.

“But it’s me, Yorus,” the Terror tried again with a lilt of pleading.

“Death is not enough to do away your blight.” Yorus kept his heart down. He aimed for the creature’s core, trying for whatever kept that darkness moving.

“Why did you hurt me so?” the Terror whispered. If it weren’t for the accompanied hiss on the inflection, Yorus may well have caved in to that voice he cherished. “The pain is too much.”

He didn’t say anything. He kept shooting the scurrying beast, not letting up, tearing new holes in whoever’s home this was. But it was weakening.

“Why did you kill me?”

Yorus' heart thumped. Hard. Silent to all but his chest. He held his breath and pulled the trigger.

The creature growled. “Your past is going to come for you,” it said, more derisively than before, a poison on the tongue.

“It has already claimed me!” Yorus reloaded and fired. Whatever he hit made her– it scream.

It writhed in agony, but not enough for its transgressions and existence to cease. Nowhere near enough.

It zoomed and burst through the next wall leading to the church.

Yorus picked her up and tied her casket once more to his back. He wouldn’t let her go again.

The church was empty of all things; abandoned and left to decay into dust and rot. With the rise of Terror came the decrease in faith. And hope.

Yorus watched the creature as he worked his way to the aisle. It had stopped running.

The final stage: fight. Attack with every limb, every conical tooth, every wisp of mist, every godforsaken power they had.

From the folds of his clothes, Yorus pulled a short blade of glinting black. One hand aimed the rifle, the other readied for close defence.

The Terror’s head—forever consumed in the mist, with eyes absorbed in darkness, with a mouth bent and twisted—snapped to Yorus. It started off slow, taking steady steps, crawling on multiple limbs formerly human and new ones formed from devoured town residents.

Yorus shot. The Terror dodged and leapt. He dug the blade into something sickeningly human and ripped. Guts flew and turned to ash on the forsaken ground.

“Where’s your voice now?” Yorus taunted as the Terror lined up another assault.

“Mum!”

Yorus hadn’t heard the door open, nor had he felt the cold wind cascade over the rising heat of his body. The boy rushed in, past the broken pews. The Terror didn’t recognise him.

It leapt with a scream. Yorus shoved the boy with his rifle hand as the other sent the blade as deep as it would go into felsh and smoke. But the Terror bit deep with its long teeth and ripped.

Yorus spun from the force and crashed into one of the rotten pews. The ceiling looked so far away, his eyes rolling into his head.

He didn’t have time to think of a heaven. He rose and tried readying his blade. Protruding from the Terror, it still carried out its duty. Yorus tried readying his rifle...

“Mister,” the boy cried. “Your arm!”

There was no rifle. No arm.

“It doesn’t matter,” Yorus admitted. Because it didn’t.

Clothes slid from his shoulders, his hat already lost. His sunken eyes unfurled, two amber dots in the abyss. His mouth spun, conical teeth biting the air. And Yorus smiled.

There was one name known to few, the one name he could never lose since the first coffin: Yorus of the Terror.

The mist birthed him a new arm and his fingers found the axe in the remnants of his clothing—his last resort weapon. The black obsidian shone under the light beams piercing the cracked roof. Only a weapon like this could kill the Terror. One of obsidian—and blood!

The boy had fallen back in silence and a pile of urine. Yorus knew how frightening he looked. He had seen it in her eyes.

The Terror bled from a wound it couldn’t heal. It stalked like an animal wanting to fight and rest. Yorus would give it no such peace. It had dared use her voice; it was going to suffer.

Yorus advanced. The Terror backed away. Waiting, waiting, and then leapt. Wisps of mist died in the air as Yorus slashed. He brought down his axe on recumbent prey and chopped. He chopped and chopped. Piece by piece!

The Terror screamed, but not for long. Yorus clasped his hand—from an arm that shouldn’t be his—across the thing’s mouth. And squeezed. He squeezed and squeezed. And he laughed. He laughed as he crushed what once a human mother’s skull into ash and dust and satisfaction.

You’re a monster.

Her words were daggers to the heart. And they were right. No matter how many clothes he wore, he would never escape this side of himself.

He regained himself. The Terror faded into dust. Black Light seeped out of the ashes, rising and forming, creating the new casket for him to burden.

Yorus took a moment to breath and catch himself. The fight hadn't gone how he had wanted, but he had done his duty. He had saved another soul from the Terror's clutches.

“What was her name?” he asked the stunned boy.

The boy didn’t answer. Yorus tired again, using the fear of his appearance and his monstrous inflection.

“Matilda,” the boy cried as he tried to back away. “I hate you!”

More words to burden. Yorus carved her name into the wood.

He gathered up what clothing he could, picked up his hat from beside one of the pews, and headed outside with the new coffin on his shoulder. He used the rope to pull it up to the top of the tower. He had already exceeded a thousand... but he had stopped counting since then.

The mayor waddled over—

“I told you to keep the child back,” Yours growled.

“Yes, well.” The mayor dabbed his perspiring head. “When the screeching and smashing started, I thought it best to check my own home and houses. J-just in case something had happened.”

A detestable creature, Yorus thought. Almost as detestable as the Terror... Almost.

He picked up the pillar of caskets, the weight always the same, but forever with her and her coffin—one he would never carve a name upon—and he marched to the exit of town. Nowhere would see him again in the coming decades, that much he always knew.

Another Terror would come. And the greater monster would always win.