The Children of Arnborg: the Prophecy

by Rene Barry

Chapter 3

part 4 of 4

Stuart watched in terror as the room shook and rattled and the mirror turned midnight black. Something was forming in it, a face or sorts. He heard Rebecca’s chanting grow louder, frantically driven by the rising smoke of the incense and wormwood.

And then... a sudden hush. He listened. Something was approaching. A deathly chorus of howls and moans was swelling from beyond the doors. He could feel it in his limbs, almost sucking and pulling on his very essence.

What was coming was not flesh-bound, but a swarm of spirits of the departed drawn to the ritual by Emma’s call to Arnborg. He heard them crash against the doors, unable to enter, banging their ethereal fists against the oak panels, their hellish moans escalating into a barrage of shrieks and wails.

Emma pointed her athame to the door and with a solemn look commanded:

Oh Crone, Hecate!
Wither thou the bones who would encroach!
By your set judgment, send them your reproach!
But Arnborg, trouble not her risen soul.
Grant mercy. Send her spirit to this world!

The screams from outside the doors cut through Stuart’s paralyzed frame. The scent of burning flesh flooded the courtroom, and ash and pieces of charred skin rose and fluttered into the air from beneath the doors. Then... silence. Absolute silence from without.

Stuart’s eyes welled, his tears speaking the terror and confusion he could not verbalize. What just happened? he wondered. Were they humans? Did she just burn humans?

“No. Not human,” Emma answered his thoughts, coldly. “Just wretched spirits who got one last taste of mortal pain for their interference!”

“Now,” Joshua cleared his throat, “where were we?”

The image of Judge Grant had faded in the mirror, but Emma called it back. She stood over Woolsey now. “Sleep gently, my dear,” she whispered. “You are but a temple for one whom we once loved.” She raised the blade toward heaven again. “Arnborg, I conjure you! Have you come? Are you here?”

“I am here...” a voice whispered.

Stuart’s heart and internal organs all but melted and his bones quaked in his shaken frame.

Emma turned toward the mirror. “Thomas Grant, is that you? Are you here?”

“I am here...” Grant’s voice answered, but the man’s lips had not moved.

“Good,” she answered. The blade rose again.

Then Life for Life is what I here decree.
Each shall take the other’s place,
One trapped, and one set free.
So mote it be! So mote it be!
So mote it be!

The spirit of Thomas shrieked and dissolved into the mirror, his hands and body going limp on the floor. Arnborg’s, however, lingered, thickening the air as it drew nearer.

“Karen Woolsey!” Emma called as Joshua opened the jar. “This mirror is a gate for your spirit. I call to you! I invoke you!” She watched the mirror turn black. “Karen Woolsey, use this gate. Come to me!”

Woolsey’s image grew in the mirror. Emma drew it with the athame.

“I catch you, spirit of Karen Woolsey, and I trap you in this jar! You will remain in it for all eternity lest I release you! So mote it be! Joshua now!” Emma cried.

He lurched forward and closed the jar with preternatural speed.

“Arnborg!” Emma screamed. “Mother! Enter into this woman’s body and remain there! I command you! Obey me!” She screamed in a terrifying fervor.

Woolsey’s body writhed and her voice shrieked like a sound from the chasms of Hell. Her eyes fluttered as the sound died. She lay still. The room stood quiet.

“Know us,” Emma begged softly, drawing close to Woolsey’s body. “Know us... Are you Arnborg?”

The woman on the floor lay still. She looked in confusion at the two individuals standing over her, and then her eyes softened with familiarity. “I am Arnborg,” she answered finally.

Stuart near fainted. He watched Emma and Joshua bow to Arnborg, and Rebecca, also, follow their lead.

“You will need time in this body, Mother,” Emma spoke, ‘to seek out the mysteries of life and of this age, but we will protect you. Have no fear and, when the time is right, you will join us in the Realm of the Undead once more...”

She paused, and then spoke again. “I would that there were time to welcome you as I should, but there is a matter...” Emma’s voice trailed off and she nodded to Joshua. He nodded back and dressed himself again, motioning to Rebecca to do likewise.

“Come, Mother,” he said, taking her gently toward the door. “We must go. Come Rebecca. Rebecca is my companion, Mother. Now Albruga seeks hers.”

They were gone in an instant, and Stuart could see only what looked like charred, blackened skeletons lying outside the door. His stomach sank.

“Speak,” Emma said calmly. “What’s on your mind?”

He felt the hold on his body fall off like shackles. Emma wiped her fingers slowly across his tear-stained face.

“You killed them,” he half-sobbed. He tore himself away from her suddenly. “Matt!” he screamed and rushed toward the immobilized counselor on the floor.

Emma sprang forward, grabbed Stuart by the neck and sank her fangs into his veins. She pulled the blood from him in deep draughts, caressing her naked body over him in a half-act of coitus. All his dreams, his visions, his hopes and fears flooded into her, and she laughed in delight as his life flowed through her. He lay on the brink of death, and she placed his mouth to her breast and forced his teeth to tear through her flesh, feeding him as she would a suckling baby.

Moments passed. His mind and the world around him spun. He saw the judge’s bench... empty. He saw the jury box... empty. Everything... empty. And he thought, What trial took place tonight? What judgment? Mine... mine... He drifted off.

Emma gathered him up in her arms and brought him to lean over Raines. She placed Stuart’s face to the counselor’s neck and drew back his lips, exposing the premature fangs already there. “Drink,” she whispered to his subconscious mind. “Drink. You are hungry. Drink till there is no more... my love.”

He felt the dream slowly fade from him and the hunger grow and grip him, and Matthew Raines seemed nothing more than a stranger, and he drank and drank and drank from the man... till there was no more.

* * *

Stuart’s eyes opened. Emma sat next to him playing with Raines’ hair.

“Did you enjoy him?” she asked dryly. “He didn’t seem much to me. I’m sure I’ve had better. I hope you understand why he had to be eliminated?”

Stuart’s inside coiled and recoiled on itself. His chest swelled. His lips trembled. His tears teetered on his eyelids, his voice hoarse and wheezing with words that would not come. Every nerve in his body shook. Finally, something came. “Oh God... oh God... Oh God!”

“Ah, the melodrama. Thomas is dead, and now you...” Emma lamented.

Stuart stood up. He could feel the change in his body. He noticed that Emma had already cleaned away the pentagram, Grant was gone, and nothing remained to betray what had taken place just moments ago. His jaw tightened, and his chest tightened with an unimaginable sorrow, such as he had never felt before. Moments passed. He sat down on the cold floor. Moments passed. Then he spoke. “Fire, is it?”

“What?” Emma asked.

“Fire?” he murmured quietly. “That’s how it ends. That’s how you make it end? Fire?” Emma drew close to him, but Stuart drew away. “You made me kill him,” he whispered. He looked dazed. “You made me kill him... You killed Tom. God knows what you did to Woolsey.” He looked around him. The jar was gone. “You made me kill him. You made me kill him!” he screamed. He knelt down at the side of Matthew’s body, sobbing. “Oh God!” he whimpered. Matthew looked back at him, cold, listless... dead.

“I love you, Stuart,” Emma whispered. “Don’t you understand? That’s where you came in. I loved Arnborg. I loved Frouuina. I’m not the monster you may think I am. All these years, these centuries, that’s the one thing that’s been missing from my life, both mine and Joshua’s. A companion; someone to love... forever. And now the deed is done. Arnborg is back... in Woolsey, yes. The threat has been eliminated, and now you and I can be together... to love each other...” She reached out for him. “Stuart?”

He flew on her, his hands around her neck, strangling her with preternatural strength almost on instinct, but he had no time to stop and wonder over it. “Love!” he screamed. “Love! There’s nothing loving about you, you bitch!” He almost choked on his tears.

Emma did not fight back. “Isn’t there?” she asked. “Yes, I killed Thomas. It was necessary. Yes, I killed Fridurih centuries ago, and a thousand others, maybe! But it was the hunger, nothing more!” Her eyes took on a strange intensity, “Just as you killed your friend! It was the hunger. Nothing more. Does that stop you from loving him even now, even after you just murdered him?” She panted, “I guess people do unexpected things when they’re desperate!” She eyed him wildly.

Stuart’s hand choked tighter. “How dare you!” he growled. His nails tore the skin of her neck, and he squeezed tighter as her blood ran. But then he fell back, weary and disillusioned. His body shook. “You didn’t ask me,” he sobbed, quietly. “You didn’t ask me if I wanted this... How could you?”

“In all the years I’ve known you,” she whispered, rubbing at the blood on her neck, “do you really think that your eyes never asked? True, maybe your lips didn’t. Your restraint was like none I’d ever seen.”

She sat close to him. “But you asked, Stuart. Every time The Coven came together, every time I walked in on you, every time you saw us, you marveled, and I saw it. I asked you to come with me tonight. You didn’t say no. It was the curiosity, wasn’t it?” She stroked his face. ‘Curiosity... yes,” she hissed seductively. “Curiosity. Trust me... you asked.”

* * *

To be continued...