Edited as of 15/10/2010: further edits in progress
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It was common knowledge that a witch resided in Silverveil.
Neighbourhood legend swore she lived in the abysmal little house by the forest. The house itself crooked shack built of oak, the wood framing warped by the cruel stranglehold of many winters. A drunken fence straggled through bristling thickets and thistles, diving into the basins of stagnant water that been snared by the deep depressions in the land around the house. A grizzled beard of ivy clung to the wood, slowly pulling the little house to pieces as time went on.
Sometimes, dirty-faced children would congregate by the outskirts of town, gathering in the water mired gutters and whispering through sticky fingers. They watched the house, pushing and shouting and daring until one of the more valiant children would stumble from the group, approaching the house with a tentative step, ineptly picking open the garden gate with tremulous fingers.
It was also common knowledge that any trespassers of Silverveil’s witch shack did not get far.
Though Alec’s father had maintained that this was all smart talk, his brother Drest insisted that the village’s days were numbered. Drest’s fascination with the dark and the damned only caused Alec to become uncontrollably anxious, until he found himself avoiding his younger sibling’s company.
Drest’s spook stories washed in and out of his thoughts as they walked home. Alec could not hold back the shivers that crawled like cold rivulets of rain down the edge of his spine as he walked past the house. He felt comforted by the wet smack of their bare feet on the cobblestones, for if it weren’t for that sound the slanted streets of Silverveil would be eerily silent.
The sun had seemed to crash below the horizon unpredictably fast, shrouding the village in a thick, nebulous cloak of stars and emptiness. The scattered cottages and concrete shelters added to the feeling of exposure, as if anyone could be watching, waiting around the next corner. It had unnerved Alec to the point where he felt the urge to run until he reached home. The two brothers moved through the streets, Drest trailing leisurely behind while Alec darted in front like a capricious lap-dog on a choke chain.
As they passed the witch shack, clouds had seemed to roll in from nowhere and become livid with the rage of a brewing storm. A brutish wind was churning behind the trees of the surrounding forest, what was once a midnight breeze becoming a fully fledged gale within the matter of minutes. Alec looked skyward with the languid beginnings of panic, before dropping his head and pursuing the route home at twice the pace he was walking at before.
“It’s a dark night,” Drest said from behind him. “Can’t even see an arm’s length in front o’ me.” He held out his arms to demonstrate and Alec rolled his eyes.
“There’s light enough,” Alec said mildly, even though Drest happened to be right. Drest was barely visible through the thick blackness of the night, and the surrounding houses and fields were not discernible at all. He found himself slowing, seeking guidance his brother. The gale had blown in thick, nebulous clouds and now his eyes seemed useless; navigating had become impossible to do alone and he had only a vague idea of where he was.
“I would slow down, if I were you,” Drest said with a snort, the end of his sentence being sharply snapped up by the wind. Alec had whipped around in retort, but a fat droplet of warm rain had struck him straight in the eye as he did so. He rubbed at it furiously, smearing watery dirt across his cheek.
Then the rain came crashing down on the village. A solid sheet of rain sliced into Alec’s back and the rest of Drest’s words were cut away by the churning storm, almost tossing his lean frame to the ground.
Alec shuddered as the icy water drenched his skin, waiting for his brother to catch up again. Once he was within hearing distance he shouted at him over the roaring wind. “Why would I need t’ slow then?” He cast a sharp look over his shoulder, the movement so swift that his soaking, mousy hair slapped against his cheek and his neck cricked audibly.
“’Cause, you might run into somethin’ you wouldn’t like to go runnin’ into,” Drest said once he had caught up again. Alec frowned and decided it best not to press into the matter; frankly, he didn’t want to know what he could run in to on a dark night like this.
“I hear ‘em sometimes.” There was a smirk in his voice as Alec began to move swiftly forward again, refusing to look at him. “In the dead of the night, howlin’ fit to beat th’ damned-“
“Would you ever hush? Da says all that is crazy-folk talk,” Alec retorted. Drest was leaning casually against the slanted walls of a cottage, pushing rain-drenched strands of his copper hair from his eyes with a crooked grin. Alec felt the urge to shove him over and hit him, but he knew it would be pointless. Drest had won him over in many a wrestle, and it simply wasn’t worth it anymore.
As Alec turned away from him Drest insisted on his pursuit of the topic, catching Alec by the elbow before he could escape. “They say the witch turned ‘em into wolves,” Drest said.
A delicate shiver shook Alec by the bones, and he wasn’t sure whether it was due to the freezing sleet or the morbidity of Drest’s latest revelation. Ignoring the comment, he took off into the darkness hearing his brother’s laughter behind him, booming against the rage of the storm.
He wasn’t long catching up with him. The storm had reached almost its peak; already the wind was ripping the thatch of the nearest cottage, stripping the little house from its roofing as if the well-crafted thatching was composed of brittle toothpicks. The wind tossed the boys across the empty streets, causing their soaking clothes to whip and snap as the wind snarled and leapt to the obsidian clouds like a wild animal.
A battered cruck house loomed in the distance, wedged between the gutted remains of a barn and old, rotten plough that had been decaying there since Alec could remember. Rain was pouring off every slanted surface, falling down in a solid, sleeting sheet in front of the door. Another roar of thunder churned overhead, and Alec sprang towards the door without another thought.
With a relieved sigh he hit the wooden door of the family cottage with a splat, his hands splayed along the weather-beaten surface as his fingers sought the piece of rope nailed to the frame. With a grunt he hauled the door open, stumbling inside to the warmth of the firelight and collapsing onto the floor in a choking, rain-drenched heap of bones and limbs.
The door swung back on itself and a whoosh of water and wind announced Drest’s presence in the house. His brother gathered the material of his shirt in his fist, hauling him shakily to his feet with a grunt, brushing some of the dirt from his clothes.
“You’re soft, you are,” Drest muttered indistinctly, sauntering off into the smoky darkness of the room. The orange gloom of the firelight against the smoky air swallowed his form as he approached the flaming grate. With a gentle sigh Alec brushed away the dried specks of dirt and straw lining that had clung to his damp face and knees. His face felt scalded by the rain; it had stripped away the many protective layers of dirt he had gathered over his fourteen years of life. It was the cleanest he had ever been.
He stood shivering by the door for a few moments, straining his ears for the sound of his father. He was nowhere to be heard, thankfully, and was most likely asleep. He didn’t care to think of what punishment might await him if he found out they’d been gone from the fields all day. His bones ached at the very core at the thought of it.
He stepped hesitantly towards the fire, his brow furrowed in the effort to be as quiet as possible. Straw rustled gently under his bare feet as he crept towards the roaring grate, shuddering as the heat hit his body in a burning blast of hot air. Drest was sitting on the floor, his legs pulled up against his chest and his forearms resting lazily on his knees. Steam rose hazily off his soaked clothes as the fire chased away the damp, while the storm slammed its fists against the house’s walls.
Alec joined him silently on the floor, a few hand spans closer to the fire than Drest was. He knew he was sure to get chilblains the next day, but he was desperate to chase away the ghostly coldness that had seemed to settle deep in his chest. After a while Drest nudged him with his elbow, talking with a strangely absent expression.
“I’m not doin’ all this to scare you,” he said. Alec shrugged his sallow shoulders and looked towards him. The firelight danced with the shadows on his brother’s features, chasing then receding, never reaching the shadows that cast his face in darkness.
“I ain’t scared,” Alec muttered, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his chin there. The bone jutted into his lower jaw, and it grew uncomfortable after a few seconds. He stretched out his legs again, leaning back on his palms and looking back towards Drest again.
“Yeah, well. I’m not tryin’ to scare y’… but I’m not lyin’ either.” The silence grew thick and black between his first sentence and the next. “I did see them. The wolves.” Drest turned his head away from him again, and stared absently towards the earthy floor. “They’re strong. They answer to nobody. They never go hungry.”
Alec said nothing. Words seemed to fail him entirely. The sudden hunger in Drest’s voice chilled his soul; until he could find no reply for his brother.
After a while, Drest slipped away, and Alec could hear rustling as he settled onto his straw mattress on the floor. Alec waited a little while longer, feeling as if his joints had frozen stiff despite the heat of the fire. He waited until Drest’s breathing had deepened. Carefully, quietly, he slipped towards his own grim mattress without a word.
He lit a candle on the fire, setting it into the clouded glass of a lantern. The feeble flame flickered into being at the tip of the wick as he set it next to his bed, and curled up atop the lumpy bedding, his bones jutting at the joints.
The light gave him little comfort. Wolves had begun to howl a dreadful cacophony in the forest, their shuddersome lament rising into the dead of the night and quivering amongst the dying breaths of the storm. As the flame neared the bas e of the wick they grew louder, closer, more terrible, the noise curling from between jagged teeth and writhing tongues.
With an involuntary shiver night-time coiled its hooked fingernails into the folds of his mind, pulling him into the land of nightmares and monsters, where men became wolves and stalked the darkness with hungry, yellow eyes.
