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Chapter 5 - Paulus

I

        Dew on the grass took Paulus’s feet. He fell hard, onto his wounded back. Agony escaped his lips. Sharp electric pain riddled his body. He sucked in air and bit down on his lip to prevent the tears that threatened to overwhelm his vision. Grunting with effort, he pushed back to his feet. After a few deep breaths, he regained some strength and looked to the mutilated man on the grass. Paulus had only met him a few times when the farmers gathered for religious events or other celebrations, and at harvest. The man’s name was Bantius and he was Paulus’s closest neighbour. Paulus had always liked Bantius, but a farmer’s life did not allow much time for interaction with others, due to distance and the work required day to day.
        Paulus hooked his arms under the mutilated man’s pits. He did not know how he had the strength to continue. His head was becoming light. Finding the path through the trees and the ground beyond, he managed to drag Bantius to the parked cart. Sweat ran down his body and his muscles throbbed with effort. Bantius moaned and shifted slightly in his grip, causing a stop as he lost his grip on his neighbour. He slumped against the cart, refusing to drop Bantius again. His arms wobbled and burned from the effort – made worse by the break. Again, he bit down on his lip and summoned energy from a reserve he did not know he had. After another grunt, he adjusted his hold and pulled away from the cart.
        “Aemilia!” Paulus yelled as loud as he could, given his hurts and exhaustion. He focused on each backwards step, one at a time, and refused to look over his shoulder to gauge the distance to the house. His legs began to wobble with every stride. Mind over matter, he thought.
        The porch’s steps took out his ankles far sooner than he expected. Falling back, he hardly felt the steps’ punch as they jabbed into his back when he landed. The blunt pain added to the overwhelming hurt his body had already undergone. Desperately, he tried to find the ability to move, but only found enough to roll to his stomach to ease the pressure on the puncture.
        “Aemilia...” he whimpered.
        With a clatter, the door slammed open.
        “Paulus!” Aemilia screamed out in abject horror.
        He reached up the stairs towards her and she took his hand in an instant. Her grip tightened around his and his eyes met hers. Relief filled him. Tears rolled down his face freely and the suppressed emotions held inside his guts spilled out in gasping sobs.
        “Aemilia,” He cried.
        “Paulus, your clothes...” She wept, “Wha-what is g-going on?”
        “Aemilia,” He repeated.
        Aemilia wrapped her arms around her husband, ignoring Bantius heaped at the stairs’ base. Paulus hissed as Aemilia’s hand grazed the hole in his back. She pulled away her hand and red covered her fingertips. Her mouth fell open.
        “Y-you-your hurt,” she stammered.
        “Aemilia... we need to get Bantius inside. He is hurt worse than me,” Paulus said.
        “B-but yo-”
        “Aemilia, please. I need your help.”
        “Al-alright.”
        He met her tear-stricken eyes and smiled weakly to reassure her, “I love you, Aemilia. I am okay.”
        “I love you too.”
        “Please, help me up.”
        Paulus pushed his weight down against his knees. He put some weight on Aemilia’s shoulder and groaned as her hands grazed his battered flesh to support him. With a pained hiss, he stood with his wife’s aid.
        “We’ll carry him between us, okay?” Paulus suggested.
        Aemilia wobbled her head in a reluctant nod. Carefully, Paulus eased down the stairs and took panted breaths from the effort. As the soreness from his injuries rolled through him, he felt his body begin to lock up. He prayed he had enough strength to lift Bantius. His neighbour was not a massive man, but nor was he small, and Paulus knew that Aemilia could not carry the wounded man by herself.
        “On three, we’ll each take an arm,” He said and crouched.
        Again, Aemilia’s head teetered up and down. Her eyes were stretched with shock and all blood had drained from her face as she took on Bantius’s condition.
        “What happened to him?” She asked.
        “Wolves?” Paulus guessed, “I am not sure.” “What can we do to help him?”
        “I am not sure, but we have to try.”
        Aemilia nodded more firmly, “Let’s get him inside.”
        “One... two... three!”
        Paulus pulled with all his remaining strength, and, with Aemilia taking most of Bantius’s weight, they made it up the stairs. He pushed the door open and assisted as best he could. A grunt escaped his lips as he forced Bantius’s upper half up and onto their table. Aemilia pulled with all her weight and strength. Bantius slid slowly, until he was fully off the ground. Thick crimson streaks stained the table’s wood in the wounded man’s wake. Blood dripped between the table’s planks and began to pool on the floor beneath.

 

II

        “H-how is he still alive?” Aemilia asked.
        Under the house’s candlelight, Bantius injuries became apparent. Entire chunks were torn from his body and what was left look gnawed upon by some wild animal. It was a miracle that his right leg was still attached below the knee. The limb was a grotesque bisected mass and looked as if dull fingernails had pulled it apart. His remaining skin was an unhealthily pale grey, and his frame was becoming thin, like a decomposed corpse.
        Bantius’s hair began to fall off in patches, until he was completely bald. The individual strands seemed to age years, in seconds; once rich brown, it a silver-white and crumbled to dust. Black veins throbbed with an urgency that seemed impossible, given his condition. His eye lids fluttered, and his irises widened until they became foggy and the colour resembled tainted milk. Each breath grew shallower and harder to come by.
        He convulsed.
        A black fluid geyser shot up from his mouth and rained down on his torn flesh. It filled the house with a rancid, necrotic smell that caused Aemilia to gag. With a final sigh, his breath ceased, and his body slumped as if deflated.
        Paulus slumped against a wall by the door. He left his own blood streak, as he slid to the floor. Without having to drag Bantius’s weight, he was feeling a bit better. Rest, he felt he just needed rest. Heat was building in the puncture in his lower back, but he did not have the mind to worry about it. He closed his heavy eyes and wanted nothing more than to rest.
        “Paulus...” Aemilia whispered as she checked on Bantius with her had gently pressed against his nose and mouth. “I think he’s dead...”
        Paulus opened his eyes and felt a chill run through his body. He shivered. With a pained grunt, he rose. His underside was damp and sticky and His head began to spin as he drew to his full height.
        “Aemilia...” He felt his knees tremble, “I-I don’t feel good.”
        In a blurred rush, the room faded and became nothing.

III

        Paulus sprang upwards and hissed at the sting that touched his nerves, from the sudden movement. The pain was hot and almost paralyzing. He gritted his teeth against the shock running through his body. 

        “Stay still, Paulus,” Aemilia said, with a mother’s tenderness. “Lay back down.”
        Her soft hand pushed his shoulder, and, after a wince, he relented. For a dazed moment, he did not know where he was. It took a few moments for him to collect his thoughts and surroundings. He felt a damp cloth dab his forehead. His eyes met Aemilia’s. The worry in them made his heart break.
        “I am okay,” He said, attempting to reassure. “How long was I asleep?”
        “Most of the night,” Aemilia replied and brushed away a single tear resting in her eye’s corner. “It’s almost morning.”
        “You watched over me all night?”
        “Of course, I did. You had me worried Paulus.”
        “I’m sorry...”
        As his senses returned and the grogginess dissipated, he felt the tight wrap around his midsection. His sight darted past Aemilia to the blood smeared tablecloth covering a man-shaped mound on their table. A cold remorse took his heart. He had tried so hard and defeat mixed with sorrow gripped him.
        A pale white hand dangled off the table beyond the tablecloth’s edge. Long blue and black veins were spread across the skin as if they were imitating fissures in cracked stone. For a moment, Paulus thought the fingers moved but decided that was an impossibility – a trick of the eye.
        He sat up again, this time with slow deliberate effort and with Aemilia supporting his back. Her gentle touch did not cause the scratches to sting as she applied pressure. He placed his arms around her and kissed her.
        “Thank you, my love,” He whispered into her ear. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
        The tablecloth sat up and his heart froze.
        “Someone has to look after you,” Aemilia said, unaware as to what was happening behind her.
        The cloth fell away to reveal something that was no longer Bantius. It had some resemblance, but its features were sharper and more angular. Its nose seemed to protrude from its sucken face and its nostrils flared wide with each breath, like Argento’s when he was put to hard labour in the fields. Long pointed ears stretched at an angle beyond its hairless crown. Its milk white eyes were slowly flooded by midnight black veins, as if a thousand miniature spiders crawled from the beneath the Bantius’s eyelids in a vast wave, until they devoured all. Its mouth opened impossibly wide, revealing two snake-like fangs in its upper and lower jaw.
        “Aemilia...” Paulus whispered, with urgency.
        Instinctually, he did not want to make noise or move. On an animalistic level, he knew there was no fighting whatever Bantius had become. It was a nightmarish thing that exuded a physical hunger into the air.
        “We need to go...” Paulus hissed quietly.
        Aemilia turned to the Bantius thing and gasped from its unnatural horror. More black veins crawled across the thing’s skin as it drew breath into its necrotic lungs for the first time. Its spine hunched and a long tentacle-like tongue lolled from its mouth to lick its lips and along its fangs. With an inevitable slowness its utterly black eyes traced the room; Paulus shivered as they locked and met his.
        He rolled onto his knees, into a crouch. Fresh adrenaline raged through his veins, erasing the pains in his back and sore muscles.
        The thing’s lips quivered, and long drool strands began to rain from its gapping mouth. What could be called a hiss rumbled in its throat. Its eyes narrowed and brow furrowed, deep in rage.
        The screech that followed made Paulus’s ears sting with pain. He winced and cried out against the wail but was unable to hear is own voice in the oppressive volume. Through watering eyes, he watched the thing stand on the table. It was thin, as if Bantius had starved for years before his transformation. Ribs stood out beneath the skin and seemed unstable in its frame as it took deep each deep breath. What little meat there was, not touching bone, hung loose and wrinkled in deflated flesh rolls.
        The thing’s leap was impossibly fast. The table crashed onto its side with the force from the thing’s take off. Paulus reacted by pushing Aemilia to the side and flopping on top of her. Miraculously, in the thing’s rage it overshot slightly and slammed into the wall with a sickening crunch. With a bloody face, it writhed in pain at his feet.
        “Go!” He cried as he rolled off Aemilia. With as much force as he could muster, he kicked. His foot connected with the thing’s jaw, compounding its hurt and causing it to thrash away onto its back with a wolf’s snarl.
        Aemilia pushed up to and on her feet. She raced with a pace born from survival. Paulus half crawled and half run after her. His imagination made it feel as if the thing’s breath was on his neck as he fled and it made his hair rise. They both slammed into the door as one and pushed in panic against the barrier, before realizing it needed to be pulled. He took the doors handle, just as the thing let out a leopard’s growl. He froze. Fear took him and he looked over his shoulder at it and moaned in fright.
        It prowled on all fours. He recognized it for what it was. An apex predator. He also realized they had been lucky. Whatever Bantius had become had now completely taken over, whereas a second ago its mind was savage and rabid; unthinking. It was still beyond wild but had learned a predator’s self-control after its initial assault. It loped on all fours, circling, more like a beast than a man. Nothing blocked its graceful stride and it almost slid over the potential obstacles in its path, such as the sparce furniture scattered across the room and upturned table it was birthed upon.
        Paulus took Aemilia’s wrist and tugged her gently, afraid to make any sudden moves. He pulled the door open a crack with his other hand. The things brow tightened, and its elongated fangs seemed to stretch further from its raw bloody gums. Its lips quivered and thin muscle strands bunched. It ceased its graceful crawl and dug its talons in for purchase.

IV

        Paulus knew what was about to happen. There are a few moments in a man’s life where his character is judged. This was one.
        His heart punched in his chest, with his sudden action. He yanked Aemilia’s wrist and opened the door in one motion. Aemilia’s feet were taken from her as he shoved her outside. She slammed into the porch; to off balance catch herself in any dignified way, like a thrown potato sack.
        He glanced back into the house and saw the Bantius thing leap. There was no time to exit and Paulus stood as a shield in the open doorway, accepting his fate. The impact was beyond jarring. His vision went blank. He felt everything at a distance as if his senses decided to mute the experience. For a second, he fell through the air with the thing driving its full weight into his back. When he landed face first on rough earth. He realized the thing had sent him sprawling beyond the porch onto the ground below, with the force from its full-bodied tackle. A pained hiss seethed through his teeth, as the thing’s sharp talons punctured his skin in a wholly more savage way than the broken sapling had earlier. He felt the hot breath on his neck and quivered as it tickled and made his skin goose. Drool dripped around him, like the first few raindrops before a storm. Even Aemilia’s horrified scream from the porch felt distant as if the sound was at his hearing’s edge. He took one last breath and accepted his fate. He had done what he could to protect his wife – his love – and hoped should would get away from this nightmare.
        At first, the rays were feint as they sought passage through the trees. That did not last long. Summer was coming into full force. This was the sun’s time, and it spread its brilliance with an apocalyptic speed. The light cut past the leaves and rose above them. Paulus felt the light pierce his eyelids and enjoyed its warmth against his cold skin. The thing shrieked.
        The talons withdrew but were far from kind in their exit. Paulus’s blood spattered across the grass and the thing ignored its hunger to get away from the light. It had an inhuman speed and was little more than a pale white blur as it raced for sanctuary. Steam hissed in its trail and black spots decorated its skin. The barn’s doors smashed inwards. It blew through the wood as if it were the same density as water. Splinters rained in all direction and, a moment later, it moaned like a wounded animal.
        “Paulus!” Aemilia cried.
        He felt her at his side and slowly opened his eyes. The gods had blessed him, he decided; though their blessing was painful and had left more holes in his flesh.
        “I need to clean these,” Aemilia stammered as she collapsed over him.
        “Why’d it go?” He asked weakly.
        Aemilia shook her head. She helped him roll over and sit up. He felt warm blood smear his sides and back. However, this time he did not get lightheaded. He was calm. That was an unusual feeling considering what had just happened. He recognized that much but did not panic and looked at the sun, enjoying its golden light as the air quickly took on heat.
        “The sun,” He gave answer to his own question.
        “What?” Aemilia asked as she tour fabric from her dress and tied it tightly around the new wounds.
        He winced as feeling overcame the shock and said, “Whatever Bantius has... become... he did not like the sun.”
        “That is well and good, but I need to close these wounds,” Aemilia said as she tied the last makeshift bandage around his midsection.
        “We’ll have to leave,” He said, “We need to get away while the sun is out.”
        “We will,” Aemilia said diplomatically, “But I need to help you first. We won’t make it far if you are bleeding to death.”
        He nodded, “Help me stand?”
        Aemilia shouldered his weight, but he was able to will his legs into action and just use her for balance.
        The thing moaned its pain once more, like a dying cat. Its coal black eyes glistened beyond the light in the barn’s threshold. He met cold soulless orbs and shivered; he was unsure if it was from his injuries or the inhuman hunger that stared back from the shadows.

Let me know what you think of the story so far!

Thanks for reading,

Brett