The Hermit

There was a sliver of sound near the hovel on the hill. It was the low, wet slithering of something being dragged over forest leaves. If you listened closely, you could hear him: ragged breaths hindered by bile constantly frothing up his throat; small, shuffling footsteps – like long strides were beyond him. And a constant, low muttering of incoherent words.

His crooked arms stretched behind him, fingers tightly curled around the pale flesh of an arm. A woman’s head lolled, her wet hair snagging on twigs and carrying leaves in its wake. Her eyes were open, ants swarming over the ice blue irises.

“Pot’s a brewing, monkeys spewing,” the words bubbled from the man’s cracked and bloodied lips, thinly disguising a leer. His voice was a hissing mess of gurgling sounds, strung together as though he had learnt to talk from something other than a human. “Supper be served tonight…”

When the man reached his hovel the first loud sound pierced the night. A baby’s scream rang through the forest and echoed to the village below. The man’s smile widened, lips cracking even with the small movement. He licked them to stop the blood from dribbling over his filthy chin and released the woman’s arm.

“Supper be ours tonight…”

The villagers sat in silence as the baby’s first cries split the stale twilight. A shudder ran through the small feasting hall and the smoke from a struggling fire in the middle of the room obscured many a wince. Only one man raised his head. Dark eyes darted from one lowered face to the next.

 “COWARDS!” the scream exploded from his shaking body as the first cry died.

Powerful fists gripped the nearest tankard. It exploded against the steps to a raised platform, mead slushing over the sandals of the row of elders sitting there. The wrinkles on each of the five faces twisted into a different expression. There was disgust on one as he shook the mead from his toes. The tiniest twist of sympathy rippled under another’s irritation. The third and fourth looked in different directions, each wishing to be somewhere else. It was only the fifth, the one in the middle, whose tight wrinkles churned into a thin grin. 

“Cowards! Thieves! Maggots!” Tiberius’s rage punched over the baby’s sounds.

But when the squeals stopped and another shudder ran through the hall. The congregation could almost hear the suckling sounds. The deep slurping. The smacking of tiny lips over dead skin. Tiberius closed his eyes, tears spilling into a frazzled black beard. His fists clenched and unclenched as the helplessness, the listless energy of the hopeless and the reckless coursed through his limbs.

“She was my wife... I have to... I need...” he muttered, fingers pulling at his hair. Another villager’s hand shook his shoulder.

“Peace, Tiberius,” the man whispered. “Peace, please. They won’t stand for another outburst.”

Wild eyes rounded on the man. He was slightly younger than Tiberius and recently married, as Tiberius had been nine months ago. The man’s terrified glances shot between the row on the platform and his friend’s crazed face.

“You can control your friend, Dracus?” the man in the middle asked. “A certain level of regret is expected, but he is disgracing himself.”

Tiberius surged forward but Dracus restrained him. Both men were powerful, and Dracus panted with the effort.

“Take pity on him, Adrastus,” Dracus pleaded. “They were newlywed when the creature...”

“This is why,” Adrastus’ voice barked over him, “we do not take brides in the hunting season. Any loss he experienced is born from his wasted crotch, not a broken heart. He knows the laws of our land – the nature of our village. If their feelings had been true they would have waited, lest our saviour –” his eyes flicked dangerously around the villagers, “choose her.”

“Bastard!” Tiberius’s voice broke and Dracus’s face turned red with effort. “We were in love. We waited years! She could wait no longer.”

Adrastus’ wrinkles deepened. “You flout our way of life and dare excuse it with love? Restrain him now, Dracus, before he defiles himself any further.”

The elder sat with groan, his fellows shook their heads, condemning stares fixing on the friends before them.

“Light behold you,” Dracus whispered to Tiberius. “Take your peace before they take it from you.”

Tiberius twisted with speed Dracus did not recognise. His shoulder pounded into Dracus’s gut and they catapulted onto the table as villagers scrambled out of their way.

Dracus’s fist connected with Tiberius’s cheek. Fingers dug into his throat and he was dragged down with Tiberius. They grappled, villagers swarming closer as Tiberius gained the upper hand. Fist after fist cracked into Dracus’s face. Blood burst with every impact until Tiberius was pulled off by the other men in the room.

“All of you!” he yelled, flailing wildly in the grip of his friends. “You sit with your heads bowed, your hands folded, thanking the gods he did not take that of yours!”

The sound of his voice filled the entire hall. It curled around the smoke and smothered it, filling every sense of every villager with a cruel taste of the emotions tormenting him.

“Andrea was mine!”

“Fool!” blood sprayed as Dracus spit the words. “We are all his, and his alone. He keeps us and we thank him. And if he wants your whore it is right that he should take her.”

Tiberius screamed as he burst free from the men’s hold. By the time they slung him off Dracus was all but dead. Tiberius scrambled for the door, the men checking swords as they readied for pursuit.

“Leave him!”

Adrastus banged a staff to the platform. “Let him seek the curse! His fate will be worse than any retribution we could muster. Worse even than his wife’s.”

Tiberius burst into the night as strangled cheers rose to match the baby’s renewed screams.

He was found three weeks later, at the base of the hill in an open grave. The boy who had found him thought him dead. He was immobile, slumped, half sinking into the muddy grave.

But as the elder had promised, who approaches the hovel suffers a fate worse than death. When the villagers dragged him out of the grave they recoiled. His lips had been cut off, bloodied teeth distorted in a never-ending smile. Two brown eyes forever stared in the absence of eyelids, the skin roughly hewn beneath his brow bone, eyeballs swimming in blood. His beard covered most of the boils, but some of them festered on his nose and forehead, quivering evilly.

One villager cracked. In a rage of fear he raised an axe and dropped it, blade screaming toward Tiberius’s neck. The surrounding villagers closed their eyes but there was no wet thwack of metal carving through flesh.

Instead an echoing crack rose from the blade as it splintered, and a cruel cackle rang through the valley. The villagers’ eyes cast around the surrounding hills but the creature was nowhere to be seen.

Yes, Tiberius’s fate was indeed worse than his wife’s. Cursed by his arrogance, he could neither be murdered nor take his own life, only live with the pain of his injuries until a ripe old age.