Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5170510-20190918022535

''Author's note: I like the idea of this story a lot but I feel that it's lacking for dialogue and not sure how the pacing works, if there's superfluous/insufficient material, etc. Let me know your thoughts below, I'll post this as its own story on the site later on, and I'd love any feedback as I get back into writing. Also for some reason I can't get rid of the bold text''

“Bloody hell, am I starvin’!”

'''Those dreary words echoed around the camp of desperate, bloodied souls. Some spoken aloud, others only passed in pained whispers, or simply purveying the entire atmosphere in the Valley Forge encampment. Morale was incredibly low, lower than the temperature. Even for it being December, the winter was not a particularly harsh one and the snow fell only lightly; meanwhile, the British Army was not an immediate danger as the enemy had hunkered down in Philadelphia, having only recently captured the capital. The redcoats were more than content to gloat over their assured victory in the symbolic heart of young America. The biggest danger to the Continental Army did not come from without, but from within. Cut off from proper supplies, the most important of all being food, there was not a man either enlisted, officer, nor volunteer that did not know hunger, and sadly many were simply used to it.'''

What Solomon, or “Sully” as his comrades called him, did not like was that the words came from his friend and comrade Arthur as they dragged a wrapped corpse of a perished fellow patriot through the surrounding forest. The look in his eyes as he eyed up the body draped in a sheet they were dragging across the frost-bitten earth gave Sully a strange feeling in his gut.

He could not fault Arthur that much, however. They wore ragged uniforms or at least whatever passed for a uniform in this outfit. They carried muskets over their shoulders which they had fired in anger at the English, both of them having killed men before. Yet, just like many of the boys in this so-called army, they could not call themselves true hardened soldiers and even those that remained were in the same boat as the rest. Officer or low-ranking, the hunger and the cold were truly equalizers.

'“What is it, Sully?”'

The boy tried to bite his tongue. Arthur was younger than him, although not by much, but acted even younger. He was impulsive and flighty, and Sully made sure to stick to his friend like honey to keep him out of trouble. But this time his frustration was aggravated by his shriveled belly.

“Must you always say that whenever you look at a corpse? God damn it, Arthur, these are people!” He dropped the feet of the body, causing his friend to stumble under the weight as Sully stood to his full, greater height. “I swear by Jesus Christ, if you so much as think of that sort of thing again-”

“I’m not!” Arthur protested, the look of hunger replaced with one of shame as he nervously rubbed his hands on his sleeves, trying to warm them as best he could. “It’s just… I’ve been hearin’ things in the camp. They’s keepin’ Washington’s horse under armed guard. Wonder what they’re gettin’ paid to keep their chops off that thing. I bet it’d feed a dozen men for a week.”

“Can’t enjoy meat when you’ve got a noose around your neck and a bullet in your liver. Didn’t your mother ever teach you what becomes of those who give in and eat human flesh?”

Arthur suddenly froze in place, turning only his eyes to lock onto those of his older friend. A pale look had entered the boy’s rosy, frosted cheeks. “Please spare me, Sully. Ya know I hate those kinds of stories.”

And so he did. Arthur was in many ways a fearless lad, never scared of his fellow man. He was a fierce fighter in battle for his smaller size, like a cat. However, Sully knew he was terrified of the old wives tales of what stalked in the dark. More than once growing up, Arthur had slept with a lantern lit or curled up by the fire after his father or his brothers teased him with stories of the Kelpies from their ancestral home in Scotland, water spirits that looked like horses to lure people into lakes or streams to their doom. The story of the Scottish banshee gave the boy a particular fright in his youth; so much as hearing a female yell in the distance could set him off.

Sully was not so cruel as Arthur’s family members and other friends, and so he kept those tales to himself. However, just because he did not speak them aloud did not mean he was lacking a few yarns of his own to spin on some nights around a fire with the men. Many of the scouts who had made contact with locals, such as the Iroquois and the Lenape, would deliver their own ghost stories of spirits and monsters tied to the very land itself. These were just tales, however, stories to scare children or fools like Arthur, but Sully was no fool and was certainly no longer a child. He knew damned well that man only had itself to fear.

After a moment, the two picked up their ends of the corpse again, having nearly forgotten about it, standing quiet and awkward in the cold as the snowfall became thicker around them. They did not speak now, Arthur ashamed of himself and Sully simply having no more to say. At least, having starved to death, this body was not very heavy.

There was no real burial place near the camp; dysentery and typhoid fever were already ravaging the army as it were and the last thing anyone wanted was to bury the dead too close by. A few soldiers who had simply passed away from hunger were elected to be buried in the woods in a small clearing Arthur had found on a patrol. By now, even in the now surprisingly-thick snowfall, the two knew their way by heart, and by now the corpse seemed to be growing heavier.

It had become easier to let down one’s guard in the banal, dismal conditions. In these close quarters, the only things more familiar were one’s fellow soldiers and their grumbling stomachs. The woods around the camp had long since been hunted to the bone and scouts made sure that no one, not even the stealthiest native could penetrate the defenses.

'That is why, when Sully looked past Arthur’s shoulder into the clearing, he stopped dead in his tracks.'

Just ahead in the pale gloom of the falling snow, was a small pile of frozen corpses that the two boys had been working much of the day preparing for burial. They had been wrapped in white linen which was rapidly blending with the forest floor as the snow began to dust the rotting leaves and dirt. This made it stand out even more.

Leaning over the pile of bodies was a tall figure completely covered by a long, dark blue coat and black tri-corner hat atop their head. It seemed to be rummaging through one of the cadavers, having discarded its burial sheet off to the side. What immediately alarmed Sully was that this man was set to be buried without any clothing or possessions, for uniforms were preserved to be given to other recruits that needed them, so this meant the newcomer was, in fact, not interested in pickpocketing the dead. It was clear that this person was interested in something else this lost soul had to offer. This revelation sickened Sully to his stomach, and rage began to boil in his blood. Dropping his end of the burden, he swung his musket off his shoulder with the practiced grace of a hunter having spotted a deer, raised it to his shoulder, and leveled it in the stranger’s direction.

“Just what do you think you’re doing, friend?” His deep, harsh voice rang across the clearing with an unmistakable echo. The stranger stopped whatever it was doing, and frozen in place.

'“What’s your game, Sully?” Arthur, his back still to the scene, glared at Sully with confusion.'

With speed that neither of the boys had ever witnessed in a living creature, the figure whipped around to meet them. The barrel of Sully’s weapon began to shake when he noticed the figure had not turned, but rather its head and only its head had somehow twisted half a full rotation to look Sully in the face. However, this action did not sicken Sully nearly so much as the face of the figure.

Perhaps it had once been human, but that had clearly long been abandoned or stripped away. The shape of its head certainly matched a human skull, and the skull was almost the only thing that remained. Whatever flesh that remained hung in thin, dessicated, tattered strands, bits of it even hanging loose like drying lichen. The teeth were jagged, brown, with bits of flesh stuck between them, and the lower jaw was smeared with cold, congealed blood. The eye sockets looked like they had long been empty, the sightless eyes having perhaps been stolen by carrion birds, and in their place the sockets poured forth a thin trail of what looked like white smoke.

The two stood and stared at each other, if what the figure was doing could even be called staring, for what felt like hours. It did not so much as waver or shift position from where it silently considered these two intruders upon its gruesome meal. Even Arthur did not so much as budge, fixated on the absence of color in his friend’s face.

“Arthur…” Sully spoke quietly, not sure if he was trying not to be heard or to mask the quaver in his voice. “When I give the word, throw yourself to the ground.”

“W-what the hell is it, Sully? What the devil’s behind me?”

'“Damn it all, just do what you’re told… now!”'

Everything seemed to happen in slowly in Sully’s eyes. Arthur began to fall to his right. His finger started tightening on the trigger of his Brown Bess. A cloud like gunsmoke slowly curled from his lips as he let out a breath to steady his aim. Arthur’s foot lifted some of the rotting leaves into the air. He could see the hammer of the flintlock begin to plunge towards the priming pan. Sparks from the flint drifted into the air like leaves in a breeze. The priming powder slowly began to spark, then blaze brightly. Sully could swear he saw everything in that moment.

And yet, in the midst of all this movement, never once did he see the figure even twitch. It remained motionless as a stone.

The musket thundered and bucked backwards, filling the area with smoke and shattering the deathly silence like a hammer to crystal glass. Solomon had positioned himself well to handle the recoil but he did not even notice the weapon’s substantial kick. He stood with bated breath, Arthur having twisted to look behind him from where he lay on the forest floor. They stared into the cloud, neither of them sure what to expect.

It finally settled and cleared, revealing the figure to be sitting exactly where it had been before. Sully was at a loss for words, he was certain he had hit it full square, right beneath the left shoulder blade.. That is when Arthur raised a trembling finger towards the stranger, pointing to the back of its coat.

'“My god… Sully, look.”'

The hole from the musket ball was now apparent. Sully’s aim had been true, striking the stranger right where his heart should have been. But no blood was coming from the wound at all, an injury that should have been spraying that vital fluid across the forest floor or spreading in a crimson stain upon the coat. Instead, all the two could see was a black, seemingly bottomless hole, and the creature, for it was already clear this was not human, was entirely unperturbed.

'“By God… what are you?” was all Solomon could be brought to say.'

With the hushed utterance of these words, the thing leapt into action, moving like a mere blur, fast as a hummingbird. Sully’s gut instinct kicked in; dropping his now useless musket he threw himself on top of Arthur in a protective, brotherly action, draping his larger frame over that of the boy and bracing for the clasp of a cold, dead hand around his neck. Yet, it did not come. 

When Sully dared to crane his neck and see, the figure had instead moved to the corpse again, taking it by the ankles in both of its bony, emaciated, rotting hands. It was quickly dragging it out of the clearing, having already reached the tree line. The corpse had taken two men to carry easily, yet this monster moved with the strength of three men at once. In its haste to leave, Sully saw that it had caught on the corner of its blue greatcoat on a protruding root and become snagged. However, seemingly not noticing or just ignoring the inconvenience, it simply continued along and the coat was discarded on the ground. This gave Sully a full view of the horror he had just encountered before it disappeared with its grisly prize forever.

'''It had a human shape, walking on two legs with two arms, but it looked like little more than a bedraggled scarecrow. Almost all of its skin and muscle were absent, as if this were a corpse picked clean by vultures that had miraculously continued to walk afterwards. It was almost pitiful to look upon, like a stiff wind would blow it away. The few, shriveled tendons that seemed to barely hold the bones together, never mind give it the unearthly strength, speed, and grace with which it moved. There was no doubt that something incredibly dark and unholy drove this creature past the point of death, if it had ever even been human in the first place.'''

All '''the two boys could do was stare at each other in absolute awe of what they had just witnessed. They were not certain what exactly they saw. They were not certain of when the alerted patriot sentries had come running to the scene of the '''gunshot, demanding to know what had happened. They were not certain what they would say to their commanding''' officers back in the camp. But Arthur and Solomon were certain of one thing: their appetites and shriveled stomachs had been thoroughly vanquished from the forefront of their minds'''.  