The Curse of Affection
Part 1 of a dark fantasy tale
By Justin Wiley
Delling swept his waist-length raven hair back over his bare shoulders, mopping the sweat from his brow with a leathery hand. He carefully surveyed his work, ensuring that the amount of dirt he had excavated from the gravesite was appropriate. The blood seeping into his mouth from a split lip reminded him that it had to be perfect.
Uncle Mendre would accept no less.
After finding his work satisfactory and clambering out of the grave, Delling stared into it with a sigh. Pity the world it is not my own, he thought, as he rested his shovel across his broad shoulders. He turned in the direction of the tool shed and set off, facing a setting red sun.
As his boots crushed the earth before him, the faint sound of rustling in the grass tickled his ears. Delling turned to find an orange, Abyssinian cat making its way towards him. Amid a plethora of meows demanding his attention, it approached his leg and rubbed its velvet-furred head against his ankle.
Out of instinct, Delling smiled and reached down to stroke its head, but upon making contact with the soft fur, his hand instantly recoiled, and he swallowed with guilt, knowing what would come next, realizing what he had done.
The cat suddenly began growling and rolling about, working itself into a frenzy, using both its claws to tear at its long ears, biting itself repeatedly, its fangs tearing free both fur and flesh as its body shriveled and convulsed.
Delling grimaced and averted his eyes though he could still hear the sounds of bone popping and cracking, and the scent of blood, sulfur and ash permeated his nostrils, burning his sinuses and causing his eyes to tear up.
Delling turned again towards the setting sun, ambling once more towards the tool shed.
Pity the world it was not my own.
***
After returning the tools, Delling made his way across the small town graveyard towards his home. He crossed in front of the abandoned, boarded up church and carefully picked his way past headstones and mausoleums,taking care to step on none of the plots. He passed between the cold, iron entrance gates and crossed the street, to come to the worn Victorian house where he and his uncle resided. Their family had owned the house for generations as it had been passed down from father to son along with the job of being the caretaker of the small towns’ graveyard. Hoping to avoid his uncle Mendre, Delling entered through the kitchen door on the side of the house, wherein he found a stale loaf of bread and a dinged up mug of water
waiting for him on the worn kitchen table.
Great…Dinner… He mused, as he dropped himself into a creaking wooden chair that barely seemed able to hold his weight. As he began to tear at the almost stone-hardened loaf, a voice from behind caused him to freeze.
“The hell you doin? You finish the damn plot?”
Delling turned in his chair to regard his uncle. Though in his late forties, the man’s weathered face made him seem aged well over sixty. He lurched forward and a bone-worn left hand clenched Delling’s right shoulder in a death grip, the man’s graying brown hair tossing about as he shook his head.
“Well? You better’ve finished it, or you’re better dead, boy.”
Delling swallowed but clenched his jaw and responded through his teeth.“If it wasn’t finished, would I be back already?”
Suddenly his world exploded as Mendre’s knuckled fist flew into his right temple. “What the hell has gotten into you? You filthy upstart bastard! Don’t you ever give me that backtalk!”
Delling coughed and spat the blood from the now reopened cut in his lip. His eyes focused on the lines in the floor to distract himself from the pain. Mendre picked up the mug of water and smashed it against the wall, narrowly missing Delling’s head. “Know your place boy! You’re lucky your mother begged no real harm comes to you before you she died, else you’d be sleeping out there with the stiffs.”
Mendre paused to catch his breath, his face burning with rage. But then the wicked curve of a smile began to cut across his face, “Doesn’t matter though does it, boy? Way I see it that curse you got seems justice enough. No one’ll ever care a damn for you when they find out doing so means they die. Your mother was foolish to give a care for you to begin with and her death is on your hands. Now you’ve got me and that curse to make everyday hell for you.”
Delling murmured a faint reply. In response, Mendre grabbed him by the chin and made him look him in the eye.
“What the hell you just say? What did you dare say?”
“…wasn’t my fault…couldn’t help it…I can never help it…”
Mendre then clenched his hands like a vice about Delling’s chin and lifted
him up to look into his eyes, “Don’t you ever, ever say it wasn’t your fault!”
To illustrate his point further he threw Delling onto the floor, took the bread from the table and dropped it into the sink filled with filthy dishwater, then spat towards Delling and stormed out of the room.
Lying on his stomach, Delling closed his eyes, reeling with the pain. His thoughts drifted to his mother. A pang of guilt tore through him when he considered the truth in his uncles’ words; thanks to him, she was gone.
Thanks to this curse.
He dreamed of her soft hands gingerly stroking his torn face.
At least, somehow, for a time, someone did love me.
As his thoughts centered on her, a surge of energy coursed through his body. He blinked and found a renewed strength flowing through him. His trembling lips formed into a weak, but driven smile.
Pity you, dear uncle.
***
The next day, Delling awoke to what felt like hammers pounding against his skull. He dragged himself from his tattered mattress and as he dressed, he caught a glimpse of himself in the shard of a mirror he had taped to his wall. He examined the side of his head gingerly, pulling back blood-matted hair to reveal a walnut-sized, purple lump. Afflicted by waves of dizziness, he forced himself to remain standing, focusing on the pain and the anger he had towards its creator. He tore his way out of the house, leaving the doors open as he headed across the street, back to the graveyard. Back to work.
***
Hidden in the shade of the afternoon sun, ancient eyes followed the boy as he worked. Their gaze never left him as he went about his task; tearing back the earth with the hoe, measuring the depth and width of the new grave-site, and violently thrusting the shovel into the earth. They saw the hatred that fueled
the boy’s movements, saw the fury with which he struck the dirt, each blow pounding harder than the last.
They also saw the danger he was in; their owner also felt the unseen forces pouring forth from the boy as he toiled, fueled by his spite. They saw the threat. They saw the danger he was to himself.
His love leads to death. What will his hate lead to?
***
Dusk began to set in as Delling finished digging out the grave. His fingers shook, his arms burned with exhaustion, and blood seeped from the re-opened wound on the side of his head. The agony that came with of each strike of the shovel increased his anger. His breath came in ragged gasps, and redness overcame his vision. He kept striking harder and harder, to the point where he was simply beating the dirt, which had become his uncles’ face.
***
The hidden watcher gasped as the boys’ anger continued to unleash power in his unstable state. All of a sudden, Delling began to spasm as waves of red energy manifested all over his body, crackling around him like lightning. The boy fell to his knees, the red lightning continuing to burn forth from him, emanating from his every pore, traveling down his body and shooting across the ground, bathing the area in a warm red glow, a light that fell across the surrounding gravestones, and seemed to be almost sucked into the earth before each one.
So…after all this time…it’s finally begun.
***
Delling collapsed, lying face-down in the grave he’d been digging. The strange lightning coming from his body finally ceased, and he found himself gasping for breath, awake with pain and feeling as though his entire body had been used for a lightning rod. As he lay there, a curious sound began to assail his ears. It came at first like a shuffling, low and deep in the earth all around him. Yet as it continued, it began to sound like a scraping and a tugging. All of a sudden, the entire graveyard erupted with popping, bursting noises. Though each movement caused his body to spasm with agony, Delling used the shovel as a crutch in order to pull himself to his feet and get out of the grave. He rubbed the blood out of his eyes and squinted, trying to discern what was happening. What he saw made him stiffen in disbelief…
The entire graveyard was alive with movement. Decrepit, emaciated forms pulled themselves from the earth before each gravestone. They shuffled to their feet, and began walking. While lurching slowly at first, they began to pick up speed as they moved forward.
Towards Delling.
Delling squinted, trying desperately to make out the details of each figure, trying to convince himself they couldn’t possibly be what he thought they were. Yet his eyes met the gazes of only hollow sockets, and though the forms appeared human, they were something less.
They were missing things, things like skin, flesh, and muscle.
Souls.
Delling couldn’t stop trembling. They kept coming, closer, enclosing him, sealing him in from all sides. Their stench made him retch in dry heaves. Gnarled hands of bare bone clawed towards him, reaching for him. Delling forced himself to stand up. He desperately swung his shovel at the decay-ravaged abominations, but their skeletal hands grabbed it with surprising strength, tearing it from his weakened grasp and snapping it into pieces. The unholy creatures continued to swarm towards him, reaching and grabbing at him with clawed fingers, each touch tearing into his skin and burning cold like frostbite. Delling’s breath was sucked from him, his throat aching as he tried to scream.
To be continued...check back soon for part 2!
