The desperate piercing scream of horror echoed far above the sharpened tops of the trees wrapped in thin obsidian-transparent mist, and I startled jerkily, tripping again, and almost collapsed onto the cold moist ground. The dark-crimson luxurious cloth of my long flared dress was lingering around my legs as I was running and that was restricting my movements and delaying me...

But I needed to run...

Another agonizing squeal of the same voice tore apart the silence of the centuries-old hazily obscure stolid forest, and I fiercely bit into my lips, struggling to hurry even when the overwhelming metallic taste of my own blood filled my mouth, and the all-absorbing feeling of predestination crushed into my senses, rendering me hopeless.

The victim was doomed!

Somewhere far out of my sight, the screaming girl would soon relax into endless unbreakable tranquillity, pure and translucent like a tear of crystallized sorrow, and her torture would be over before the moment when her sacrificed blood would steep the black mournful land.

Before the outburst of the gory dawn...

And the pleading voice of the victim was so touching, so amazingly beautiful, as though she was not an earthly creature but something celestial and so innocent...

I clenched my teeth not to moan when a false step flung me onto the wet fragrant ground and my palm coloured up in heated crimson blood from the cutting caress of the pointed stone it hit against. The unknown grayish mystifying forest was benumbed into frost-covered cold, and the tremendous pines towering above the dark marshy soil resembled a gathering of severe mute brothers from a forbidden ancient order worshiping forgotten gods no one had ever heard of outside of the world of secret occult visions.

Ghostly whitish, the light transparent fumes rising from the dampness were haunting undisturbed the tearful place, and were filling the stagnant medieval atmosphere with the frigid heaviness of hostility. There were still no signs of sunrise approaching, and the night was in its darkest and most uncompromising shade, but the faint surrealistic radiance the vapour was shedding around was devouring a part of the utter blackness, softening it slightly and reinforcing its suffocating bleakness.

Darker and frail, blurred shades of insipid gray were merging and wandering in front of my eyes as I was still running forwards, already out of breath, in the direction from which the tormented cries were coming ceaselessly. An insight of intuition – or simply an unexplainable, illogical instinct – was sternly shoving me towards the place where the victim was soon going to quit their earthly path in – as though there was something vital, something absolutely crucial for me in the groans of the dying girl I didn’t even know.

Who was she? Why was she there? How was her inevitable and so disturbingly easily predictable death linked to my life at all?...

To those questions I had no answers – only a range of entangled chaotic hypotheses blurring my rationality and confusing me even more.

But I had to hurry!...

The large harsh branches fallen on the ground were repeatedly gripping on the edges of my dress as if they would forcefully prevent me from continuing my mystifying quest, the thick mire under the fragile meshwork of burnt discoloured russet spines was sinking under the pressure of my bare feet to tantalizingly slow me down, the coldness was strewing my deathly pale skin with vigorously freezing kisses in an attempt to daze me with its hypnotic charm, but I was senseless to all obstacles, as though I was not alive.

Anymore...

Despite all minor cuts and bruises the whole surface of my skin was being covered in, my unbending determination was adamantly leading me forwards – emotionally tense, but mentally totally unprepared for any particular threats... Thus I was entirely stupefied by the unexpected shocking sight which suddenly opened up for me when I finally managed to fight my way to the wide space between two large pines where I could previously see only ashy fog...

The dazzling blaze of brisk fire was burning furiously into the vague dimness, and the gray outlines of eleven human figures were standing out as blacker than the still grayness of the rigid night. The circle they were forming was not closed – it looked as though one man from it was missing and nobody had dared to ignore his right of a place and move aside to make the shape infinite. They were all alarmingly silent and solemn, their poses precisely identical in a strict, unnatural way, and each hand of theirs was holding a large burning torch above the level of their heads, so the space among them was brightly illuminated in crisp gory shades.

And there – just in the middle of the circle – was standing the silhouette of a man with his back towards the empty place in the curving line, as though he had just left it; nothing of him was visible, as he was dressed in the blackest black I had ever seen in my entire life – merciless, cruel black – one that could kill with a single touch of its powerful depth – an omen of suffering as much as of eternal perdition.

The mighty halo the flames were emitting was smoothly reflecting against the stunning ultimate white of the female figure just in front of the absolute-black one, both colours so strong and so extreme they looked too realistic to ever exist at all.

One more appalled scream rose among the silence and I gasped noiselessly, shaken to find out that the white silhouette belonged to the begging victim whose cries I had heard.

What was this cursed place?! What was happening there around me?...

And how, for all inexistent gods’ sake, had I found myself there – how and why?!

Petrified in my place, I was trying to suppress my respiration so as not to be heard, but the breath was dead-frozen on my lips, and my heart was beating so silently that I myself could believe it had melted away into the gently shimmering darkness. The cold flickering light of the strangely frigid, menacing fire was letting me clearly see the hands of the eleven gray men, and I managed to recognize the large black signs drawn on the backs of their palms: that doubtlessly were runes... This realization set a sinister outburst of gloomy intuitive superstitions to tenderly crawl up my skin and fondle me with their creepy ominous touch, and I feverishly shivered with subconscious and unrealized but real terror.

The glow of the indifferent torches was turning my crimson dress to lurid passionate scarlet, and that was only highlighting the contrast between my completely black hair and ghostly white skin, so pale that it seemed to emanate its own light – just like the garments of the girl damned to be sacrificed...

Because I could instinctively sense that the ritual I was already witnessing was connected to a kind of an evil offering – a quaint, ominously meaningless and ill-boding rite...

A rite that would bring death.

Too horrified to weep and too weak to struggle anymore, the unknown girl in the brightly white dress was sobbing convulsively in wild frenzied desperation, and I had to lean against the gigantic pine not to faint from the shock of what I had just noticed: there were dark stains of blood on the pure sparkling white of the gown...

The victimized girl was dying!...

The sinister authoritative black silhouette raised a long gracefully decorated knife – again, as its blade was already marked with the ardent kisses of blood – and he aimed towards the unprotected throat of the young woman in white. The flames reflected onto the surface of the blade as it flew forwards...

And I opened my eyes.

Chapter 2
:
IDENTICAL MEMORIES

BOOK: Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew)

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