Where the Devil Says Goodnight (Folk Lore 1)

The shadow she cast on the rock wall behind Emil’s head was tall and stood at an unnatural angle, with splayed fingers reaching for the offering with a greed that had Adam tasting blood on his tongue.

In a land so far beyond the Lord’s reach, Adam might have been restrained by rules he didn’t understand, and a single misstep might leave him unable to save Emil.

“Why is he tied down? Emil?” Adam asked, forcing words through his narrowing. He started unbuttoning his coat, unable to keep still any longer.

Emil didn’t flinch, but his chest worked constantly, like bellows to start a fire in Adam’s heart.

“It’s for his own protection. And he agreed to participate in the ritual. Tell him, Emil,” Mrs. Janina said but didn’t stop Adam when he covered Emil’s ice-cold flesh with his coat.

Even when Adam leaned over him, trying to capture his gaze in a silent question, Emil avoided the confrontation at all cost. But he spoke, in a raspy voice so full of resignation it made Adam’s chest thud with dull pain.

“It’s true. Chort left the valley inside your mother, but my grandma marked me as his new vessel. You just have to give him back to me, and you’ll be free. You will go home and forget all this.” Emil had spoken in monotone until his final words, when his voice cracked. A tear rolled down from his eye and down his temple, even though the tension in his features suggested he was doing everything to hide his despair.

Adam’s heart beat so fast he got lightheaded and had to rest his hands on the icy surface of the stone. Breathless, he glanced at Mrs. Janina, his teeth already clattering, but it had nothing to do with the autumnal cold. “You said nothing about giving Chort to someone else. We can’t do this!”

“This isn’t your concern anymore, Father,” she said.

Adam wanted to protest, no longer able to keep his cool, but an icy finger slid down his spine when he heard more footsteps approaching.

Mrs. Janina, the nagging housekeeper who always had fresh cake for him watched him from behind the mask, her posture not expressing a shade of doubt. “You will leave Chort with us and go back to Warsaw with a cleansed soul.”

This was too surreal to be true. It had to be a hallucination, brought upon by mold in the bread flour, mushrooms, accidentally swallowed pills, or something. This could not be reality.

“No. You need to untie him,” Adam said, retreating to the other side of the altar as Koterski entered the scene, his mask offering a wide, menacing grin.

“We’ve waited far too long already. This was supposed to happen years ago,” Mr. Nowak said, and yanked the jacket off Emil.

The black sky above leaned toward them, like a dome about to collapse. Adam’s head spun when the torches burned brighter, their flames reaching higher by the second without any fuel added. Their trembling light seeped between the densely-packed trees, creating shadows that ran around in jerks and starts, like figures animated with little attention to detail.

Adam gasped when Koterski appeared in front of him and squeezed his shoulders, the canines attached to the skull-mask a threat even though they could no longer bite. “Give him back to us. This is where he belongs.”

Adam’s gaze darted to Emil’s naked flesh. Saliva filled his mouth at an unnatural pace, and some of it dribbled down his chin as if he were Pavlov’s dog hearing the bell over and over.

Emil let out a raspy breath, and he closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t take the tension and cold anymore. The shudders running through his body affected his speech, so he kept his voice quiet, barely audible with the spinning shadows whispering in a language Adam couldn’t understand. “I will never be able to leave this place anyway. Do what you have to.”

But despite Emil’s words, the coercive nature of the whole situation had body hair bristling on Adam’s back. “I d-don’t have to do anything,” he said, pushing Koterski away with a single shove, but when his gaze passed over the uncovered abs swelling under Emil’s skin like an offering, hunger speared his body, consuming him from the inside in cramps so powerful he bent in half, struggling to keep himself upright as the trees around him spun like parts of a broken carousel.

A raspy laugh passed over the clearing, and when Adam looked up past the masked cult members, he saw a face looming high between the evergreen trees making up the walls of the grove. Shadows danced over its unnatural features, all the way along huge spiraling horns that should have entangled in the naked branches. But the elusive image disappeared with a flash of golden eyes.

Adam fell to his knees with nausea pushing at his throat, but he grabbed Emil’s clenched fist, his gaze focused on the rope, which had been fastened too tightly around his wrist, leaving fingers paler than they should be. He was about to come up with a way of loosening the binds when Emil whispered Adam’s name in the softest of voices.