Of blood and unicorns.
present~
There still were some brave, or dare one say stupid, souls left in the village by the Nottingham Castle, in the present. Like the archaeologists they had no interest for superstissions and folklore. Amongst them a family who'd just moved here from London to get away from the stressing suburban life. This tiny village with all the legends and the kind and gentle folk had soon made the family of four fall in love with the place. Magnolia Richards, the former law- secretary and her husband Martin had moved his dentist-practice to this place so that their two kids, Ellen and Rickie, five and seven years old, could grow up in safer surroundings than the roaring London. For half a year all had been peace and solitude for the little family. Martin's dentist-practice was blossoming and Magnolia had just gotten a job in a flower shop. Ellen and Rickie thrived in their new community after a rocky start. Now they had many new friends and seemed to have forgotten all about London. Then the nonsense started. Magnolia remembered with horror the night where the great storm came and almost tore their house apart. Thankfully the damages hadn't been to grave and Martin only had to exchange a broken window or two and some tiles on the ceiling. Many of their neighbors had been far worse off than them. But as if that wasn't enough, rumors started spreading through the village. On every corner of every street the whispers about an old and deadly evil was discussed. Silently, as if people were afraid someone or something would strike down from clear sky and kill them..
Magnolia tried to laugh it off and called it small city charm around the dinner table. Both her husband and kids came home with more ghost stories every day. Ellen and Rickie was scared easily enough, after all they were children, and their mother had a hard time convincing them every night there was no bogeyman out in the woods. She was starting to get agitated. Stories about children that had wandered off into the woods and never returned, an old lady who were found in her bed one morning, stone cold and with an expression of utter horror on her face.
"You're scaring your own children with these ridiculous stories, don't you see that?" She would tell her customers who stopped by to bring the latest gossip. What she failed to see was that the grown women and men stopping by the flower shop was just as scared as the village's children..
One morning a woman came screaming into the little village, just after break of dawn. Her clothes were shredded, blood were streaming down her face, and the fright in her eyes- indescribable. She ended up at the steps of the church, crying and screaming- the priest had a hard time calming her down. The story she told was enough to send cold shivers through any brave soul, and within lunchtime most of the villagers had fled. Evil was coming and you weren't safe within the walls of your own home any more. If you wanted to survive you had to run, now while you had the chance.
On the steps of their new home the Richards' silently watched as their neighbors packed a briefcase or two in unadulterated panic and headed out of the town on screaming tires.
"Stupid, superstitious folk!" Magnolia snorted as she went inside to start dinner: "Somebody makes a prank or two in the forest and they all starts screaming "Devil" and runs away like lemmings!" Martin and the children weren't as relaxed as Magnolia. They had been told some pretty convincing stories the past days and to think a whole town would leave their homes if they weren't convinced something dangerous was going on seemed.. well, more odd than the prospect of a bogeyman lurking in the forest. But Martin knew better than to try convincing his wife when she was acting like this. He'd better wait until tomorrow, then he could try convince her taking the kids to visit her mother. With the town practically deserted, minus a few drunks and a couple of fanatics who trusted God to protect them from any evil, Magnolia couldn't claim they had to stay behind to keep the dentist practice and the flower shop open for the townies' sake. He was pretty sure his plan would work.
The day and evening passed and no evil with red horns and a tail showed it self in the little village. Magnolia sat by the fire, knitting frantically while she was nagging about all the stupid, inbreed villagers that were spooked with children's ghost stories. Martin said nothing. He had secretly loaded the rifle he kept in his tool shed, just in case. The silence of the town scared him. To know they we're practically alone here made his skin crawl. None of them paid any attention to five year old Ellen who suddenly became very interested with looking out the window. A child has all the abilities a grown muggle lacks. Amongst them, fantasy, the ability to believe without claiming facts of evidence first. Now the child looked out the window from their house placed in the outskirts of the town and she saw.. a unicorn. Dazzling white and a beautiful sight for anyone both mortal and immortal. When she tilted her head a little to the left the unicorn did the same. She tilted her head to the right and the unicorn followed her movements.
She looked around to see if anyone else had heard the unicorn's whisper. But her mother knitted away just the same and her father tried to watch TV. She knew her father was just as afraid for the bogeyman as she and her brother, but she saw no evil in the magnificent white creature outside her window.
Tiny hands pressed against the window glass, she smiled against the gentle creature.
she thought as she realized the reason her parents couldn't hear the unicorn was because it was speaking with its mind. Outside the unicorn nodded and moved out of sight. Ellen climbed down from her stool and walked as calmly as she could out to her brother's room. Rickie was sitting on the floor playing with his Lego-bricks.
"Brother, brother! There's a unica...unaco.. you know, a horse with a horn on its head... in our backyard!!" she was so excited she didn't have the time to stop, just charged straight for the window.
"Yeah, right!" Rickie said as he got to his feet, just to see of course. Not that there would be anything there.. But as her sister had told him a few seconds ago there WAS a unicorn in their backyard. Rickie gaped as he looked out the window.
"WOOOOW!" he gasped.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Ellen said with a dreamy voice: "It invites us out to play with him! And I've decided to call him Mr. Ulrik"
"You know we're not allowed to go out after dark, Ellie. And there's a bogeyman in the forest, Pal and Myra saw it a couple of days ago. It's not safe!"
"He said he would protect us from the bogeyman!" Ellen said, a tad impatient and irritated: "We're safe as long as we're together with it."
"He tooold you did he?" Ricky said, with the mocking tone he knew his little sister hated more than anything else.
Ricky almost fell over in surprise when the voice appeared in his head.
"See?" Ellen said with a grown up voice to state her point: "He talks to us!"
Rickie wasn't as easily convinced as his two years younger sister and he knew better than to go out after curfew. The unicorn gazed at him, its silver eyes made him almost dizzy.
Rickie looked at his sister, saw the eagerness and the complete trust she savored for this creature and decided he would trust it too. Silently he opened the window, eased his sister out the crack and thereby followed himself. Hand in hand they followed the fairytale creature towards the forest, two children making a little evening stroll protected by a new friend.
Fifteen minutes later Martin discovered both his children were missing.
"They're gone!" he screamed, hand clutching his chest: "Ellie and Rick- they're gone!!!!" Magnolia looked up from her knitting, looking like she'd just been interrupted in an important business meeting.
"They know better than to go wandering off at night, Martin. They're probably up in the attic or something."
"No, you silly woman, they are gone!" Martin screamed at her while he entered the living room, rifle in hand: "I knew we should have left while we had the chance!" The sight of her husband, close to hysteria and with a loaded shotgun in his hands finally hit Magnolia's calmness and killed it in one sharp blow.
"Where?" she breathed as she followed her husbands hasty steps towards the door.
"The forest," Martin answered, gravely.
*-*
The two children followed their new companion with easy steps, unaware of the uproar their absence would cause in a couple of minutes back at their home. They felt completely safe with this magic creature, as it had reassured them they were completely safe as long as they were together with it. Small children legs moves slower than a grown man's, therefore the walk to the outskirts of the forest took them nearly ten minutes, double the time a man would use in a steady pace. Both children paid no attention to the dark sky and the shivering trees, they were blinded by the beauty of the unicorn who kept just as far ahead in front of them so they couldn't touch it.
"When are we going to play?" Ellen asked as her legs were starting to grow tired. They had reached the forest now. The unicorn stopped by a tree and threw its head so the silvery white mane was flying through the air like silver threads.
"Are they coming too?" A big smile grew on the little girls cheeks, that would mean they too knew about the unicorn and wouldn't mind Ellie playing with it.
"What about the treasure you promised to show us?" Rickie was growing impatient, and he was starting to wonder if it had been such a good idea to sneak out into the night after all.
The unicorn moved aside, and there just by the tree's side a treasure chest was standing. That's weird? It didn't stand there a minute ago? But Rickie soon forgot his worries and ran to see what the chest was hiding.
Behind them their parents was now running towards the forest. Martin moved with such assurance and haste Magnolia wondered how he could be so sure were the children would be. But she didn't dare question his instincts now, there might be no bogeyman in the forest, but that didn't mean it wasn't a shelter for lots of dangerous animals. She stumbled and twisted her foot, but her husband didn't even slow down to see if she was injured. He stormed further down the path leading towards the forest. Magnolia got to her feet with a silent moan as her ankle hurt a little, but it wasn't too bad. She could hear Martin's distant cries as he was running further and further away from her. Magnolia started running again, fear was really starting to get to her now. Suddenly she could hear Ellie wail in terror, and Martin's rifle went off, lighting the edge of the forest for a split second.
"Ellie!!" Magnolia screa
med as her maternal instincts screamed at her that her daughter was in mortal peril. She continued to scream until she finally saw her daughter, kneeling beside something sparkling white. It looked like a horse. She barely looked up when her mother came charging, screaming and crying all at once.
"Daddy killed Mr. Ulrik!" she sobbed when her mother snatched her and embraced her with her shaking arms. Magnolia couldn't believe her own eyes. By her feet lay what she had believed to be a horse. A great horn on its forehead proved otherwise, together with the silver like blood it bled from where the bullets from Martin's shotgun had hit its target.
"That's no horse!" Martin panted as he tried to keep Rickie from touching the dead creature: "We have to get away from here Magnolia, we have to leave NOW!" But Magnolia saw no threat in the dead beast, she felt pity for it.
"Why did you kill it Martin?" She looked at him accusingly. Martin stared back at her as if she'd just fallen down from the moon.
"It was standing besides our two kids! Did you SEE the horn on that thing?!??!?!" he screamed and waved the shotgun carelessly around: "It could have speared them just as easy as you spear little cubes of meat when you barbecue!"
"Martin, look at it! I don't believe for one second that this... horse would have killed Ellie or Rick!" She put the crying girl down on the ground and went over to the spot her husband was standing to pry the rifle out of his hands. Martin took a few steps back as she came at him and before anyone even realized what was going on he raised the shotgun at his wife and aimed at her.
"Stop, you silly bitch!" he roared. Magnolia stopped dead right in front of him staring at the muzzle of the rifle.
"Have you lost you mind?!?!?" she screamed, but her husband didn't nudge. Behind her Ellen suddenly started screaming, but not in horror or in fear. No, it was joy that filled her lungs this time.
"Mr. Ulrik! You're all right!" she screamed as the unicorn rose to its feet not bleeding any more. But before her small feet had brought her to her newly risen friend it changed somehow. It was still sparkly white, but its legs started to return into its body, in fact the whole body started to transform. Little Ellie Richards stood aghast as her former friend turned into something she'd only seen in her imagination.. the bogeyman. An indescribable laughter rose like a tidal wave and plummeted into Ellie's wildest fears.
"Turn around, Ellie- it's play time!" the voice of the bogeyman roared.
"Let her be!" Rickie screamed. His parents might have forgotten to protect his little sister, but he still knew and handled under his responsibilities as Ellie's big brother. He ran towards his petrified sister only to get a sharp whack over the head that sent him tumbling down onto the ground, unconscious.
"Patience, your time will come, boy!" the bogeyman said lazily while he forced the little girl to turn around to face her parents. They were still standing opposite each other, like nothing else mattered or went on in the world. Her father was still aiming the rifle towards her mother, and her mother looked at her father with disgust in her eyes.
"You're some man! Don't you dare battle your simple wife without the security of a firearm?!" the woman that once had been Ellie's mum spat sarcastically. The man that once had been Ellie's dad threw the shotgun away, an insane glare making him unrecognizable.
"Happy bitch?!" They stood like that for a while, eyeing each other before the attack came. The woman lunged forward at precisely the same time the man lunged towards her. Their bodies crashed together and screams, moans and snarling were heard from the fighting duo as one thing was carved into both their minds: kill! Ellen Richards, ten months from her sixth birthday had to watch the bodies of her parents collide and fight like they both were insane. They didn't react to her screams, they didn't react to her tears and when they both collapsed five minutes later, both dead, they hadn't had a single glimpse towards their daughter.
Rickie awoke to a headache beyond anything he'd ever felt in his seven years old life. He woke just in time to see his parents tear each other's necks open. And there, a few meters away from the horrible display his sister was standing, so incomprehensibly small towards the massive white wall standing behind her, clutching her neck in a death lock. It was almost looking as if the bogeyman fed on his sister's fears. Sounds assembling the sounds his father used to make while eating his mums famous pot roast chuckled out from what Rickie believed to be the monster's throat. His parents were beyond rescue. Mere seven years old, he knew that. But his sister was very much alive and screaming, and Rickie would rather die than to abandon her with that.. devil!
"Let her go!" he shouted and ran towards the thing, hatred exhilarating his steps.
"Stop right there boy! Or else I will snap her neck like a match!" the creature roared and lifted the weaver body into the air. She looked just as a porcelain doll, white in the skin and fragile. Tears of anger stained the boy's cheeks. He was no match to this monster, and he'd done.. something to his parents.. making them kill each other. What would the bogeyman do to him and his sister if he came to close?
Out of thin air a figure suddenly appeared with a light "popping" sound and a sharp flash of light.
"Release her Voltimore!" A strong voice that belonged to someone with great power, or believing to be in possession of it.. Rickie looked at the man as he stepped forward, eyes fixed on the beast in front of him. It was an old man, and Rickie would have believed it was Santa Claus if it weren't for the clothes the stranger were wearing. The bright colours and shining fabric, not to mention the swirling cloak made the boy think of circus-artists. The dreaded laughter the boy had heard for the first time just minutes ago filled the air again.
"Old fool, what makes you think you can stop me?!" the beast roared, still with Ellen Richards in a firm grip. Then all hell suddenly broke loose. Angry cries and shouts flew through the air and with a soft "thud" Ellie fell down to the ground, passed out by the looks of her.
"Take her! Get her away from here!" the old man screamed: "I can only keep him at bay for so long! Head for the church, you'll be safe there. Wait for me and do. not. go. anywhere!" Rickie nodded, confused and scared, mere seven years old he now was the man in the family and his sisters sole provider. The girl came to immediately as he touched her and the boy dragged her to her feet, knowing their survival would depend solely on old Santa's abilities to keep the bogeyman at bay and if Rickie managed to drag his sobbing sister all the way to the church in time.
Albus had seen young boys take on a man's responsibility before, but to see weaver Rickie Richards drag his crying sister away was nearly too much for his heart to cope with. This beast had lured them into the forest to feed on their fears, he'd even made their parents kill each other in front of their very eyes. The horrors that would hunt these sweet children's dreams in the years to come... He remembered another boy who'd been through something of the same at the age of nine. His whole life had been marked since that fateful night and Albus feared the same would happen to these children. With renewed strength he lunged himself at the beast, determined Voltimore wouldn't have the pleasure of devouring the pure souls he was aching for tonight.
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