| FELO-DE-SE |
| The wind swayed the trees as a light drizzle began to fall, then a little harder, but Amos took no notice of these things as he walked down the road in search of the last spirit. He knew his time was running short, and he could not afford to dawdle. After a short while, which seemed very long to him, the rain abated, although there was still a chill dampness in the air. A forbidding rumble could still be heard overhead when he noticed a fetid smell in the air. The atmosphere grew dank and acrid, and a horripilating sensation rose up his spine from the small of his back to the nape of his neck. On the dimly lit road, leading into town, Amos thought he saw a glimmer of moonlight on metal. Moving in closer, he saw what seemed to be a cage-like enclosure hanging from a wooden post. A flash of lightening, followed by a thunderclap, and then a ghastly figure appeared in what he now recognized as a gibbet. It took a moment for the boy to discern a man who had the back of his head blown out, like a fleshy blossom. He had black powder smudged on his gaunt white face, and around his mouth. His eyes were two magnifying lenses, through which focused an infernal light, that beamed from what was left of his spattered cranium. This grim figure smiled a toothy smile, and snickered through clenched teeth. Then, with another thunderclap, there was naught but a skeleton in the gibbet, with a shattered skull and shreds of what were once clothes. Amos felt his blood chill and his rain-moistened hair rise as he suddenly heard the same snicker come from behind him. He dared not turn around, but something put a hand on his shoulder and helped him do so anyway. That was when young master Amos found himself face-to-face with the murderous spirit of Sam Hill. The boy was dumb from fright. Quirk was sad, and a bit disturbing to look at, but this fellow was downright nasty. He exuded bad vibes all over the place, and his appearance was dreadfully horrific. As if that weren't enough, to add to the fiend's frightful mien and aura of evil, he gave off a stench, which was positively mephitic. What is the matter boy? Like you not the face of old Sam? Pray, allow me to change it for another." Here Sam passed a grisly hand over Amos's eyes and, when the boy could see again, he saw that the spirit's body looked whole, but the unwholesome odor remained. He tried to keep his composure, and breathed as little as he could manage so as not to inhale so much of the stink. "Now tell me," demanded the bogey, "what brings you hither, on this forsaken road, so late at night? You have the semblance of a spirit, but something about you is not right. Speak to me now, ere I get the notion to quoit you into the abyss, from whence comes the thunder of my Lord Belial!" Amos, frightened and confused, responded in a quaver, recounting, briefly, his tale up to that moment. The spirit burst out in a loud and wicked laugh, pulled the boy up by his shirt collar and, piercing his heart with a gaze both direct and purposeful, said in a strained and threatening voice, "If you wish to die, then die you shall; you will be baptized in the banks of Lethe within the hour, and I shall usher you thence." Affrighted, a spasm jerked its' way across the countenance of the boy, as he attempted to blow a tuft of red and black hair, which fell into his mouth as he protested his impending demise. He looked so pitiful that the offending spirit burst out in a derisory guffaw. "Why, you piteous jackanapes! Look at you, with your eyes painted like a bleeding doxy! Would that my old pipe still stood aright, for I would surely mount that girlish crupper of yours, and show you what sport is made of such fine and gentle fellows during revelry at my Master's house! So, you spoke to that old fart Quirk, eh? Did he tell you how I killed that strumpet? I'll wager he didn't tell you this, my dear Nancy-boy;" and here he leaned in closely to Amos, as if to share a confidence, "once I had that bitch's heart in my hand, and had squeezed its' sweet nectar onto my tongue, I took yet another thing that the wench had denied me in life, and for the favor I repaid her with some oysters in her basket." Amos, frightened to the point of nausea, began to tear again, for he really was not ready to die after all, at least not like this. Rather than cause pity in his tormentor, the lachrymal display only served to egg him on. As the boy pleaded, on his knees, for his life to be spared, the bogle seemed to start from his gloating and perked up his ears. "Hark! I hear the hum of the Wild Hunt rolling along the highway; the thunderous clap of the atmosphere, as their sulfer dust snaps when met with the spark of the dragging chains of the damned!" Amos quailed, as the wicked spirit leant down into his face and continued to harry him. "Can you not hear them? The heavy hooves of sooty steeds, the phantom snarls of headless hounds, the cries of the midnight hunt, and the wailing of the doomed! They all are come hither, my laddie, and they come for you!" |