Deliverance
Every step took James’s party deeper into air so thick it tasted metallic. Behind them, the trees knitted tighter until the path vanished, swallowed up by darkness and creeping fog. Their lanterns barely touched the heavy mist that clung to the space around them. When the preacher lifted his hand to test the air, his palm came back wet and cold, as though the mist itself were breathing.
“Keep close,” he said. His voice came out smaller than he’d intended, already swallowed up with anticipation. While he’d felt confident when they first walked into the dark forest, there was something uneasy about it. Perhaps it was the way birdsong kept breaking intermittently. Or the natural foreboding he’d felt when the First Gate appeared before their very eyes.
Now, they were approaching the Fourth Gate, and their trek had gone without incident so far. There really wasn’t a reason for his unease.
Beside him, Millie muttered something about damn fool errands and hitched her coat tighter. Isaac adjusted his spectacles a few steps behind them, grumbling about how the mist kept fogging them up. Ruth was silent. Earlier, she’d tried to hum a hymn but stopped when the sound fell flat, absorbed by the damp. Somewhere far off, a bell rang once. No echo, just a dull note that hung and died.
Then the woods began to move.
Leaves churned and rustled on unseen currents. Something heavy beat the air above them – one, two, three strokes of enormous wings – and was gone. Ruth gripped Isaac’s sleeve as he lifted his lantern, scanning the woods for a sign of whatever had caused the commotion.
“Bird?” Ruth whispered. Her husband didn’t answer. The space where the sound had been felt emptier than before, as if the night had taken something with it. A chill crept down her spine, and she shivered and adjusted her scarf.
Though shaken, they pressed on until the fog thinned enough to show another gate. Same black iron. Same winding vines and thickets of thorns.
“This is so disorienting,” Isaac said. “They all look exactly the same.
James lifted his lantern higher, narrowing his eyes as he examined the structure. “It’s a test. The Devil challenges the righteous.”
Millie laughed once, a sharp sound that made her husband jump. “Or maybe we’re just turned around. Is it not probable we got lost in the dark?”
She chuckled again, nervous this time. Her laughter set off a whispering in the trees, a rustle like dry pages turning. When she stopped, so did the sound. Her eyes widened as she scanned the surrounding forest.
The group stood in silence for a moment, the men raising their lanterns high. Finally, Isaac exhaled heavily.
“We’re going back. I don’t like this. I’m not risking Ruth’s safety.”
The preacher’s voice cut through the fog, steady this time. “No one leaves the flock.”
Isaac, ignoring him, wrapped his hand around the crook of his wife’s elbow and guided her back in the direction they’d come from. Their feet crunched over leaves that felt too soft and too wet, then eventually settled into a steady cadence when they were back on bare dirt.
They walked for what felt like ages before Ruth exhaled, letting the air slip through her lips slowly. “Thanks, babe. I wasn’t getting the best feeling back there.”
“Me neither,” he admitted. “I’m usually willing to give James the benefit of the doubt, but I guess I wouldn’t follow the man into Hell. Truthfully, maybe it’s time we distance ourselves from him and Millie.”
“Good,” Ruth said quietly, toying with her sleeves. “I don’t like her. But James drove us… How will we get home?”
“I’m sure that Harry chap can help us,” he said. “He seems kind. Plus, unlike us, he’s got a gun.”
Ruth chuckled and moved closer to him, savoring his warmth. They continued on in silence for a moment, but Isaac’s footfall suddenly halted.
He tilted his head, then raised a single finger to his lips as he met his wife’s eyes. She tilted her head, too, and realized she could hear a distant sound.
It was weeping. Small, high, childlike. Ahead, a faint glow pulsed between trunks.
“It’s a lantern,” Isaac said. He hurried toward it, heart hammering. The glow trembled on the surface of a pool of water no bigger than a washbasin, perfectly still despite the wind that started to pick up. His own lantern flame reflected in it, bobbing with the motion of each step… Until he spotted the color of the water.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. “Is that blood?“
Ruth screamed, shrill and high-pitched as she spotted the disemboweled body of Walter. As suddenly as she started, she halted when her husband’s hand clamped over her mouth. His eyes were wide as he whispered, “Ruth, baby, no. Hush. We need to get out of here.”
Before they could move, the sound of wings erupted overhead. They didn’t need further prompting. With that, the couple ran, desperately searching for the Third Gate and the trail back to the edge of the woods.
***
Millie and James had just barely passed the Fourth Gate when they started arguing. Stomping her foot as she halted, Millie had stated, “James. Isaac and Ruth left. This isn’t a two-person endeavor. We’re literally approaching a hellmouth here.”
“Then be gone with you,” James said dismissively. “I’ll do this myself if my own wife won’t stand beside me.”
Millie crossed her arms and pouted a lip. “I’ll stand beside you. But I don’t want to walk into Hell with you, James. This is a fool’s errand.”
Before she could say more, a shrill scream broke the still night. Her eyes widened, and she slowly turned to glance in the direction they’d just come from. “Ruth?”
“Nevermind that,” James said, grabbing her arm as he pointed with the hand clutching his lantern. “Do you see that?”
Before them, the distant fog glowed faintly red, as if a furnace burned in the distance. James narrowed his eyes as he tried to make out the source of the glow.
“Maybe it’s the old asylum,” Millie whispered. “Maybe it still burns.”
The smell reached them first: meat and iron. Then came the crunch of bone somewhere close behind. Millie spun again, scanning the darkness as she drew close to her husband.
He raised his lantern. The flame guttered sideways, then died, as though the air itself had been sucked away. For a moment, the darkness was absolute. Tight. Suffocating. James fumbled with his lighter and managed to light the wick. When the light flared back, something stood within its edge – too tall, too narrow, ribs gleaming wetly beneath skin so dark it drank in the firelight. Horns curled backward from its skull like polished wood. Its wings unfolded with a leathery hiss, each membrane slick with blood.
Millie gasped and stumbled back. “James!”
The thing moved before either could react. James heard his wife strike the ground. He heard the crunch, the wet rip of something tearing. When he swung the lantern down, it shone upon a body twitching in the leaves, her eyes wide and unseeing, mouth still forming a scream that no longer made sound. The creature crouched over her, feeding. Every bite was deliberate, ritual, its head lifting now and then as if listening to her bones break.
James stood in shock for a moment, examining the scene as he processed that it was, indeed, real. When two fire-red eyes met his, he staggered back, half-blind with tears and smoke.
“Lord, deliver me.”
The thing rose. Blood glimmered on its teeth. The expression stretched into a smile – a human expression worn wrong, twisted and cruel – before it spoke in a voice that rustled like wind through ash.
“He already did. He delivered all of you to me.”
It stretched its arms, unfurling the wings beneath them in long, leathery strips. Then it was gone, the trees shuddering as the wings beat once, twice, leaving only the echo of breath and the stench of sulfur.
James dropped to his knees beside what was left of his wife. He clutched her rosary, his fingers slick with her blood, and began to pray. The words came too fast, tangled and desperate, the syllables running together until they lost meaning.
From somewhere beyond the trees, the prayer came back to him – every word repeated perfectly, a half-second late, as if the forest itself were speaking in his voice.
“I have to close this damn hellmouth,” he whispered in realization. If this creature had escaped, there could be more. The world didn’t deserve to face such monstrosities.
He rose, clutching Millie’s rosary, and crept onward. Far off in the distance, the demon crouched, watching his retreat. It smiled, ready for the binds that held it in place to finally break. The Lord really had delivered him a treat that day.
***
The forest had grown impossibly black. Branches tangled like ribs overhead, and even the night creatures had gone silent. Only the sound of boots in mud and the faint rasp of breathing followed Clara, Harry, and Edward as they made their way toward the Third Gate.
“I wish we had a lantern,” Harry murmured. His revolver caught the weak gleam of the moon overhead, silver glint flashing off the barrel. “I can’t see two feet ahead.”
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Edward said under his breath. “I wonder if it’s worse to see the demon before it kills you.”
“Hush, Eddy,” Clara spat. She waved her pistol. “Nobody’s dying tonight.”
“Just Walter,” he grumbled.
They were approaching the ridge where the path bent sharply down into a hollow. The trees grew thicker there, trunks warped as if they’d been twisted by something deep in the soil. Clara could feel a weight pressing low in her gut, a hum under the soles of her boots. The air carried a charge, the way it did before a storm, only colder, emptier.
She could tell they were getting closer to the heart of evil, whatever that meant. She was quiet as she pondered the weight she felt, the cold, icy grip of fear that she sensed lingering about the forest from the many deaths it had witnessed.
Then came the whisper of motion – something running, crashing through the brush.
Harry raised his gun as a lantern came into view.
“Don’t shoot!” a voice cried. A woman’s voice, breathless and desperate.
From the darkness burst Ruth and Isaac, their chests heaving as they came to stand before the trio. Their clothes were soaked with sweat, faces streaked with mud and tears. Ruth stumbled toward them, letting her hand slip away from Isaac’s arm. Clara’s eyes went to Isaac’s face. She couldn’t read his expression with his glasses reflecting the bright light of the lantern’s flame, but his jaw was set tight.
“Thank God,” Ruth rasped. “We need to get out of here!”
Harry lowered the revolver, but he didn’t drop the tension from his shoulders. “You two left James?”
Ruth nodded frantically. “Yes, yes, we… We left. Something happened in the woods. It killed… And we saw…” She trailed off, gasping as her speech broke into a string of heavy sobs.
Isaac pushed his glasses up, his hand shaking as he stepped closer to them. “We found Walter… What’s left of him. There’s something out there. It’s not human.”
The wind shuddered through the trees, carrying with it a low, dragging moan.
For a moment, no one breathed.
Edward’s voice was barely audible. “We know. We know all about this thing.”
Clara cleared her throat and stepped closer to the lantern’s ring of light. “I got through to some of the spirits from the asylum. It turns out that the Gates bind that thing here. If James succeeds in destroying them, the monster will escape from the forest.”
“How do you know that?” Isaac asked, lowering the lantern enough to allow her to see his narrowed eyes.
Clara hesitated, shooting a nervous glance back at Harry before she said, “The spirit told me. She gave her life to bind the Gates again, somehow. She was very insistent that we stop James, lest we… Well, lest we become like her. Like Walter.”
For a moment, the only sound was the faint hiss of rain starting to fall – not quite a downpour, just a drizzle that made the ground steam and the trees gleam. Clara suddenly felt something tug at her attention, a shimmer at the corner of her vision. She turned.
Between the trees, maybe thirty feet away, a woman stood.
White slip dress. Bare feet. Hair matted to her face, glimmering with the sheen of blood. Her head tilted slightly, as if curious.
Millie.
Clara’s breath caught. “Oh God.”
“Claire?” Harry whispered, following her gaze. “You see something?”
Clara stepped close to him, dropping her voice to a whisper only he could hear as he trembled. “Millie. It got Millie.”
Harry’s hand tightened around his gun. He let a slow exhale slip through his lips and declared, “We’d better go find James. We have to stop him. Ruth, Isaac – you coming?”
Ruth shivered, pulling her scarf close. She shot an anxious look at her husband before she nodded, curt and short. He sighed, trying to regain his composure.
“We’d better get moving.” He managed a weak half-smile. “I’m sure you three could use some light.”
He held up his lantern, flame wavering in the light rain. The glow carved pale circles across the undergrowth, catching the edges of trees slickened with moisture.
They started forward together, five of them now, boots squelching in mud, breath clouding in the damp. When they reached the Third Gate, they recognized the shape of blackened iron half-swallowed by vines and thorns.
Harry stopped and gestured his revolver toward it. “That’s the Third, right?”
Isaac adjusted his lantern, expression tight. “That’s the Third. We left James at the Fourth. He’s got to be at least at Five by now. We’ll have to move fast.”
Clara nodded, glancing over her shoulder at the trees. When she didn’t see any sign of Millie, she linked her arm with Harry’s.
As they passed the Gate, the wind rose behind them, carrying a threat none of them were ready to acknowledge.
James was too far ahead for them to catch, especially while they were being hunted. They were out of time.