Andrea's Dream

Andrea was stretched out beside Mason, her light sheet thrown back, exposing her lovely nakedness. The room was hot and outside the rose light of dawn had begun to replace the blue vestiges of night. She turned lazily toward her lover, softly whispered in his ear.

“I had a dream last night, Mason.”

“Tell me,” he said, even though he suspected her dream would shortly be captured in her Black Diary, transfixed with the precision of an entomologist mounting some exotic specimen. It would be captured by her delicate hand in ink as green as prasiolite and inscribed on pages of the palest blue.

“It began with snow,” she said, “…and a terrible tolling bell…”


I saw a village, perhaps a hamlet, swathed in fresh snow.

There was a church in need of great repair and a spire rising like a ragged accusing finger, blackened by smoke from a recent fire. From that steeple a bell tolled and every peal sounded like Death.

The men in the village heard it. Some pushed away from tables filled with steaming food, some arose half-asleep from their beds, some stopped in the middle of the most passionate love making. Now the men reached for other things, heavy coats and boots, antique muskets or powerful hunting rifles; a few reached for blessed medals of the Saints or a Holy Crucifix or two. They embraced their wives and their children, for all were good men; and it was compassion burning in their hearts that made them answer the summons of that terrible pealing that rode the frigid night wind. Three times in three months they had answered its call; now, all gathered once again at that ruinous Church to learn of the latest horror that had befallen another luckless family living close to Forest.

A small child alone had escaped, running over the hard winter ground to the nearest neighbor; unnoticed the boy had slipped away as a beast maddened with bloodlust tore the soft flesh of its parents. The man the child ran to was a good man. He took his weapon and gathered up his family and together all fled to the Church to summon the help of others so the Hunt could begin again. He prayed this night might see the end of it all.

The men knew the thing they sought was one who lived among them. But this time the creature had no chance to skulk back to its home and feign revulsion and astonishment when told of the latest horror. This night the fresh snow would be a welcomed ally. Precious minutes passed and when they noticed one missing from their midst, one who had not answered the summons, dark suspicions began to be voiced aloud. For some had already suspected this man in the intentional fire that had almost destroyed the old Church.

Again, into the night they moved, one purpose uniting them. They made fast progress to that house, little more than a frail shack, and found there the still and motionless remnants of butchery. It was a ghastly scene now grown familiar to them. They did not delay long in that place that reeked of death, but, moving outside, found fresh prints in the crisp moon-swept snow. Not the prints of a man but the deformed prints of a beast of great size, perhaps a monstrous wolf. The abnormal tracks made even the most steady hunter shiver. Worse still, the tracks headed into the dark heart of the most feared part of Forest.

Beneath stars that glittered like blue ice, the hunters pursued their quarry. Relentlessly, over occasional clearings that nourished nothing wholesome even in the fragrant heart of summer; across a small frozen lake that seemed strangely vast in the moonlight; past wind-whipped trees twisted and so close together as to form a barrier that tore at the hunters with gnarled and wickedly sharp branches; all along the edges of treacherous icy ravines where lunar light did not penetrate and one misstep meant a plunging death; ever onward the pursuers followed the misshapen prints of the great beast. Until at last, in a small circular depression studded with oak and birch and ringed by obscene and grotesquely marked stones, now shrouded mercifully by snow, they found that they sought.

It was, of course, the one they had suspected, his wolfish form now gone, his body exhausted and naked, his skin torn and scraped in countless places. The snow had washed his flesh clean of the blood of Innocents. The man lay supine but the appearance of Death was deceiving. With effort, he raised on one elbow and looked up painfully, pitifully, at the men who had once been friends, neighbors, hunting companions; and, in a voice bereft of hope and filled with a terrible trembling, pleaded not for life but for forgiveness. He wished to explain before he met his much deserved death.

And as these hunters stood, surrounding their prey, they suspended their grim determination and listened in horror to the faltering tale the man told; the story of a centuries-old monster that hid behind a mask of Piety and Christian virtue to work only evil. The thing was a ravenous beast, insatiable, and had once destroyed an entire village out of a mad hatred for virtue that was real, for souls that belonged to God. This foul being was a powerful and vengeful witch known in her time as Goody Larkins; and it was Goody Larkins, two centuries ago, who had cursed his bloodline, making him now the abomination that stalked and killed on nights of the full moon. He was helpless in the face of such an ancient and spectral malice; and he longed for death and release. He prayed only for their forgiveness.

It was there, in the low clearing surrounded by obscene sentinels of stone, the miraculous thing happened. There deep in the heart of Forest something reached out and touched the cold hearts of these good and grimly resolute men with a mercy and compassion for the pathetic and half-crazed creature before them; for after hearing his words, the hunters as one lowered their guns. They wrapped heavy furs around the delirious victim of a malicious curse and helped him as he struggled weakly to his feet. And each man swore that they would not rest until the curse was lifted from their companion’s innocent soul.

And they carried him back to his dilapidated cabin where they gently placed him on the barren bed and covered him with blankets. And only then did every man return to his home.

There, families rushed to embrace them even as the men pushed them rudely aside. They had seen and heard much and their souls were troubled by all they had seen and heard. And they could not speak or even meet the eyes of their loved ones.

As night fell, their spirits darkened in sympathy with the suffering soul they had spared. All marveled at how their hearts had been touched with compassion by the spirit of Forest. And even later, even as they strangled their pleading women and slit the throats of the sleeping children, they wept bitterly at the thought of the suffering inflicted on an innocent soul by a vindictive fiend.


When Andrea finished she remained silent for several minutes. Gently reaching out and touching Mason’s arm, she realized he was asleep.

And smiling.



(An extract from a longer work.)