The Shapeshifters

THE
SHAPESHIFTERS

a short story
by

A. L.
BROOKS

_____________________________

front cover by

BetiBup33
design

Coming soon -
novels by

A. L. B R O O
K S

CLOUDFYRE
FALLING

a dark fairy
tale

Something is
killing all living things on Cloudfyre.

Will Gargaron
the giant have enough time to uncover the mystery before his world
is lost?

____________________________________

And the
re-release of

STRANGEWORLD

THE
MORTIFERA

A Cornish
village. A mysterious doorway. A monster hell bent on killing all
it encounters.

Jake and
Emily find themselves at the heart of an ancient
mystery.

Can they find
a way to defeat the Charon and shut the doorway before it’s too
late?

If you love
monsters, magic and adventure then don’t miss these ripping
tales!

THE
SHAPESHIFTERS

1

I HAD no fear about
killing her. I’d planned her demise methodically over a number of
months and was confident I could pull it off. She was well guarded
of course. Her home being the Everard Manor, a colossal structure
built on land in the centre of Garkhorst Lake. No easy place to
reach. And no easy place to infiltrate. Though I managed it quite
well in the end. I swam the lake using the paste of a grounded
horned katydid, a secret method I’d picked up from my mother to
help one breathe beneath water. When I reached the island I leapt
lithely here and there to avoid being chomped in two by giant
crabs, and then scaled the tower. Again, to aid me, I used
concoctions of my mother’s devising; this time it were a draft
brewed from the rainbow fly to grant me spider-limbs and tiny
wings.

She were at her looking
glass when I climbed silently through her open window. And she were
still there brushing her hair when I stood up behind
her.

She shrieked when she saw
me. I grabbed her around the neck and clapped my hand over her
mouth. I dragged her back onto her bed and pushed my pig blade into
her throat.

We sat there, she on my
lap, as she gargled to death on her own blood. A wonderfully brutal
sight it was... watching her reflection in her looking glass,
watching her suffer. She watched it too. I made sure of that. I
could see her eyeballs watching her neck bleed out. But it was not
a quick death. I had slaughtered many a pig in my time. A skill I
had acquired from my dear father. Thus I knew how to get it right,
either to make it quick or to let it draw out.

In the case of the
Baroness I let it draw out quite a wee while.

I chatted to her as she
spluttered and gargled. Not to comfort her. I wanted to introduce
myself. ‘I doubt you’d remember who I am,’ I told her. ‘My name is
Arrabel Grean. Daughter of Lanson and Florence, sister of Marietta
and Selena.’ I felt a need to explain why I had done it. Why I had
snuck in, why I had crept up behind her, why I had held her before
her vanity glass and punctured her neck. Under other circumstances
I am certain she would have understood, perhaps even appreciated my
cause if she had not had all that hot gummy blood gushing down her
nightdress, sticking it to her breasts.

I sat there going over my
reasons. Not with any great sympathy. She had ordered the slaughter
of my family for “unpaid taxes”. I told her that in return, if that
is the way she wanted to play, then I was taxing her with her
life.

After I made certain she
was dead I finished her off by hacking my knife through her neck,
her bones grating against the steel of my father’s swine blade,
until her severed head lay nose down against the wooden floor and
her neck was squirting blood. Some would think this a tad
excessive. But I had to be certain. There are beings out there in
the bleak corners of the world that have unnatural ways of bringing
the dead back to life. The Crones of Gremlock for example. Though
the Crones would be unlikely to do business with the Barony for
both parties had been at each other’s throats for many a year by
then. But I remained wary. For fear that some other race or soul
may have learned the reanimation secrets of the Crones and thus
answer any potential call by the Barony to have the Baroness kissed
back to life.

Taking her head stuffed
unceremoniously in my satchel, I slipped out of her bed chamber by
the arched window. And dropped silently into Garkhorst Lake three
hundred feet below. I swam for shore and sat gathering my breath on
the sand, watching with fascination as the elephant crabs devoured
her ugly skull.

I was on the run for five
days when the Bonekeepers found me.

2

I managed to cover
several hundred miles in that time. Travelling east across the
desolate lands of Skärradness. The region of Hampton was a far cry
from the lonely parts I now found myself. Nonetheless, the Barony’s
reach stretches far and wide, and I knew I would not be safe until
I had crossed the Gundarven Marshes some thousand miles further on.
(No easy fete, crossing the Marshes, thanks to its hungry swamp
denizens. But it was my hope that those very same denizens would
deter any Royal Hampton Lancers or bounty hunters from tracking me
across that boggy expanse.) Besides I had friends in the hills
beyond Gundarven. I just had to reach them. And go into
hiding.

Yet as predicted, I was
being pursued.

By the time I
reached the Dread Forests on the barren seafronts of Green Scarr
the great Barony Hound almost snatched me up in its jaws. By then I
was almost beyond exhaustion. I had kept myself awake using the
dried Petten Beetles raided from my dear dead mother’s pantry. But
I had run dry of them that fifth morning. So, by evening, when I
reached the signpost reading
DREAD
FORESTS: ALL WHO STRAY WITHIN SHALL DIE!!
I could barely keep myself upright. But the squeals of the
hound are enough to keep anyone wide-eyed with terror and thus with
one last burst of energy I plunged headlong into the
woods.

3

If I had been
but one second slower I would have been caught and wrenched to
shreds. Of that there is no doubt. Yet, as I had wagered, as I
had
prayed
, the
Hound proved reluctant to pursue me into the accursed woods. As I
rolled down the leafy embankment through thick duff and pine
needles, I saw it behind me at the very edge of the woods, a
gargantuan ragged silhouette against the red sunset, howling madly
at the evening stars. I knew then it had given up its chase. For
that howl rang with rage, rage that all its efforts had gone
fruitless. But it also meant something else: a signal to the Barony
Lancers, a full day behind us, a signal that I had at last been
cornered.

Then in a rush, the Hound
swept away, an empty space bordered by the darkening trees left in
its place, and the sound of its hooves thundering away.

4

My momentum came to a
rude halt at the bottom of the ravine as I crunched against moss
strewn rocks. I sat there panting, catching my breath, taking in my
darkened surrounds. I wanted to lie down and sleep. I could feel
the pull of sweet slumber. Yet I had no luxury of time, no luxury
to wait there and seek rest. These were the Dread Forests after
all. The nightmare woods that claimed most who strayed within her.
And if by some miracle I sat there idle and went undetected and not
gobbled up by any number of the foul beasts of the woods then the
Lancers would claim me within a day. So there was an urgency to
keep moving; I planned to travel by treetop to avoid the ground
dwelling creatures. I would travel under invisibility, both from
sight and smell; I had bugs from the Crones that would render me as
such.

But first I needed water.
I had drained my gourd that morning. My thirst had turned me weak.
And by blind and pure luck, there before me a narrow brook gurgling
away yonder.

I dragged myself through
the thick musky leaf matter to reach it. Cupped my palms into the
chilled liquid and guzzled thirstily. Disease, bacteria, virus...
any present here would be dealt with by remedies I had swallowed a
week ago to see me safely across and back the poisoned Garkhorst
Lake. But slaking my thirst proved almost my demise. A snickering
sound from behind me. A reflection of a beast in the water before
my face. I feared the barony hound.

Yet as I spun
onto my back I found no hound but a giant spiralling snail-shell
looming over me, blocking the canopy of the woods almost completely
from my view. A
Greep
, this creature was. A twisted blackened humanoid form with
shell, hefting itself forward on barbed, elongated forearms. Its
goggling eyes watched me. And snagged inside its jaws, a bloodied,
dismembered foot, draped in a layer of torn woolskin
fabric.

With deft speed (from the
nifty and nimble tricks taught to me by my mother) I dragged my
final Fly Trap from my belt and as the jaws of closed toward my
face I jammed the Trap between the Greep’s stinking yellow
fangs.

I had four seconds to put
distance between myself and the monster.

I booted its face aside.
Dragged myself into the chilly waters of the brook. Pulled myself
fully beneath its frigid hold.

And heard a dull
concussion rip through the atmosphere above the water’s
surface.

I held my breath a moment
longer, making certain all were clear before I surfaced. Then
tentatively lifted my head and looked back. Chilled water dripped
down my face as I took in the carcass of the monster. It lay
smoking and obliterated, its shell turned on its side. Meat and
bone and brain were spattered about the shrubs and tree trunks.
When I first noticed the thick red swirls in the water drifting
passed my cheek I felt victorious. Greep blood!

Yet as I dragged myself
from the chilly stream onto the opposite bank I felt considerable
throbbing pain below my knee. I turned over and instantly my breath
vacated my lungs. My leg ended in bone, not a foot.

I had been dismembered:
the lower leg of my woolskin pants had been shredded and with it my
right foot had completely gone. Bitten off. Jagged bone poked free
of the muscle and the whole ragged wound gushed with
blood.

Sodden, I
hobbled onto dry earth, through soil and rock and bugs, trailing
thick pools of blood out behind me. Looking back at the shredded
Greep carcass I observed my stolen foot still clamped within what
remained of its jaws. I considered for a second retrieving it. For,
I carried materials that would preserve it, knew of souls who
wielded enough magic to reattach it. Yet it would now be rank with
Greep rot-poison. ‘
Have
it!
’ I told it.

I had short time to stem
the flow from my wound; the raw scent of blood would alert
Harbingers, Gingerbreads, Gookas. And of course blood loss would
kill me outright if I did not tend to it in quick time.

I sat and fiddled through
my satchel, clawing at salves and herbs and poultices. My mother’s
leather waist-belt was still secured around my linen dress. My
hugging woolskin pants and leather boots were all soaked through
with chilled briny brook water, causing my skin to flare with
gooseflesh. I took out a tight leather pouch and clawed it open; my
body were struck with violent shivers. I fingered out the last of
my mother’s Serin saplings from a small buttoned compartment. And
stuck it on my tongue...

Instantly it responded to
the moisture of my saliva, a hundred narrow stems sprouting from my
mouth like maddened vipers, suffocating my face, smothering my
entire head and as Gingerbreads and Gookas bumbled toward me from
the deep dark woods, a crisp bark hardened across my entire body
and entombed me completely.

5

I am still uncertain how
the Bonekeepers found me. All I know is on that by morning the
Serin Tree began to shed its bark and the squawk of the morning
birds and the cackle of the tree bound, bug-legged Bearlings came
echoing loudly in at me from the surrounding woods.

There was a moment of
panic as my eyes peeled open and the sunrise twinkled against my
face, seeing the long caravan and the beings all standing there
watching me. My fear was I had been caught. That these were bounty
hunters working for the Hampton Lancers. I struggled violently from
the casing of the tree and made to run, hobbling madly on my single
good foot.