The Strange Case of Madame Web

The Strange Case of Madame Web -

The house on Cider Hill grew from the shadows like a tumorous lump on the landscape.  Its menace greeted new comers to the sleepy suburb; the once prominent family household sat on a hill overlooking the interstate exit leading into the town; for many it was the first thing they saw coming into town and the last thing they saw leaving.  For many winding down the interstate road the house itself piqued the curiosity and stirred images of the ghostly inhabitants in the mind’s eye.  Weary travelers might imagine some yellow eyed ghoul peering from behind the slats of one of its boarded up windows; a chill running down their spine.  It was the house the children always pumped their bike pedals a little faster as they rode by, fear triggered by a silent animal alarm within.   The elders of the town, who could still see farmland where municipal buildings now stood, would offer strange stories of a lone widow that used to live there, but even their fanciest yarns and wildest recollections would not do the true story any justice.  The being that denned inside the house on Cider Hill, the one the dead called “Madame Web” in whispers spoken into the midnight wind, was a night creature without comparison, the only kind on this continent and certainly this century.

The Scene of a Hanging

The scene of a hanging:

The guilty walked slowly as their heads were covered in white linen, they could only see their feet as they awkwardly stumble walked to their hanging fate.  Their motorization restricted by tightly bound ropes which twist in the dirt and rake the skin red on their bare legs, goose pimpled from their short but cold journey.  They are covered by dirt smudged sheets, like pretend ghosts; some rank drunk offering foul repentance for any approaching onlookers, others chillingly quiet and resolved as they make their death march.  

The warden leads them one by one into a cart, led by pike and sword to be dragged behind a horse’s ass and displayed to the carnival that waits.   More indignation before the end; the town is crossed, a half mile march to the gibbet.  They can smell the thunderous aroma of horse shit; hear the gaffs of the quant village folk further condemning them, mind split between the spectacle passing by in the street and their morning choirs.  A chaplain sings verses and offers final salvation expertly ignoring the bellow of the buzzing crowd assaulting the cart from all sides, natives now thirsty to see the final act of the bloody ritual.  As the fevered pitch of slurs peaks the chaplain hits an even higher octave, until at last all singing is done, and there are no more psalms to offer.     

The noose is placed, the cart is pulled, and all hang as one.  The friends and relatives of the damned pull at their feet to ease their way to death’s embrace.  After a few moments the sky dance ends, and it is over.

But the hangman’s job is never done, he strips the clothes from the bodies of a few, sells their final fur to relatives, and the rest of the mess goes to surgeons.  Teeth are pulled by pliers and placed in decorative baubles to be used later as dentures.  The truly damned are left to hang, covered in fat and tallow, bound by heavy chains; there they rot in public until they are reclaimed by dust. 

The Decapitator - chapter 1 part 6

Part 6

Loyal protectors and stalwart sentinels of the tomb, the grave dogs were the result of an ancient black magic that would enslave the victim, ensnaring their thoughts and bending their desires to one purpose; protect their sleeping undead masters.  These graveyard warriors would stand guard over their vampire lords, a waking nightmare of transmogrified flesh, protecting against any foreign invader.  Their skin a pale reflection of moon light, their eyes give a faint crimson glow from the necro-slime imbued in their being.  Grave dogs have given rise to legends of the un-killable serial killer backwoods slashers of the past. Patrolling sleepy campsites for human meat to mutilate, suffering grievous injury but never stopping, these monsters made flesh protected the hidden crypts and sarcophagi of their deterred masters as they wait out the long sleep.  While most vampires deliberately placed their resting places far from the sprawl of society there have still been occurrences over the ages where ignorant wanderers stumble on to grave dog territory and are promptly eviscerated for their trespass.

 

Grave Dogs have been mistaken for Bigfoot and Sasquatch in the remote and empty places of the world, almost every culture has some familiarity with them but few can guess at their true purpose; steadfast protection of the undead.  Their sense of identity and past life erased by the torturous and shocking means of transforming a mortal into a grave dog; it is said that grave dogs are typically fierce enemies of their eventual vampire master during life, forced to serve them for all eternity after death as a sadistic revenge.  During the dark ages hundreds of grave dogs were employed by vampire warlocks from all around the old country, most were ghoul hunters or town executioners who fell upon the vampire’s malice.   

The Decapitator - chapter 1 part 5

Part 5 –

Before the long sleep the vampire children of the world faced utter oblivion.  Fear had driven the cattle to retaliate under the guise of the holy cross; the sin of greed had corrupted the delicate balance between hunter and prey.  Certain vampires drank too deep, indulged too greatly, and had risen suspicion amongst the sheep, a great fear that lead to the trampling of the night tribes under a tidal wave of the man herd.  After centuries of safe co-existence the vampiric race found themselves questioning their very survival.  The modern world had too many eyes; the disease of human expansion had grown, bloated, wild and unkempt, like a garden in need of hedge clippers.  The safety of shadows was waning; only the dusty sanctuary of the grave and tombs offered some hope of reprieve, but not for all of night’s creatures.  Many vampires were impaled and desecrated while in deep rest, the long sleep; many bloodlines that have existed since the dawn of ape sentience wantonly severed in the name of the lamb god.

The long sleep, the return to darkness and dream, a cunning plan to out stride race memory, to outlive the terrible legends of their own design, and arise anew upon a world free of Christ-man and people-think; this was the plan concocted by the elite and purebloods.  To retreat below the ground with the dead and forgotten, find solace in the empire of rot as the extinction clock for mankind winds down to zero.  

 While interred in their punctuated rest the vampire finds itself precariously weak and vulnerable to grave robbery, bandits, and other ghoulish endeavors.  The slow imperceptible drift of sand and rock can imprison a vampire in his or her tomb for all eternity, the coffin land locked, like a dead seed, never to bloom.  Precautions were needed to ensure the vampire culture could persist well after the fingerprint of man was eroded from the land.  They would need the grave dogs.

The Decapitator chapter 1 part 4

Borrow animal hides hang from their skeletal frames, legs obscured, they float through the dead lands like furry apparitions.  Their language stripped of all unnecessary prompt and frill, grinded down to the essential components, animalistic grunts and monkey chitters.  Tools made of stone; bows of sinew and raw hide.  The arrival of the Krath signaled the end of the illusion of civilized man.  The dream is dead.     

   

The vampires, lycanthropes and shape shifters rose from their musty tombs and set forth with making the world as they remembered it during their golden age, before the long sleep.  Victorian style monoliths rose in a fort night, slave construction held under the warm glow of the crimson moon, labyrinths tunneled through mountain stone, refuge against the hot burn of daylight.  Thousands of subhuman slaves toil with rough hands and empty hearts to realize the nightmare dream of the awoken vampire legion.

All across the globe forgotten things arise from the empty spaces.  The dog headed tribe of the Amazon, the witches of Antarctica, the subterranean frog men of New York, the dragon hybrids of Eastern Asia and stone golems of the Middle East, all manner of strange creature that have not suffered under the burning light of day for centuries, cross the globe in plain sight, unashamed, naked.  The night tribes return; ancient politics re-forged, ancient feuds find new foothold.  The werewolf tribes declare a bloody civil war.  Tooth and claw, savagery rules the land.       

Art dump - 01/24/16

Poo...

The Decapitator - Chapter 1 part 3

Part 3

The deluge of gray highlighted the sky above, the floor below shit brown and trampled.  Mud and twigs intertwined in a dance above the dirt; the gentle breeze caressing the rotting waltz, flavoring the wind as it crosses the dead plains.  There is the metallic twang of blood in the air, the ghost of a million deaths.

In the distance mad fires and funeral pyres rage out of control.  Stacks of dead body kindle the inferno, monoliths of black plume.  A city of a million graves stretches its carcass across the bitter landscape.  Gravestones jut from the ground like broken teeth.  White washed stone above, white bones picked clean by vermin below.

Acid rain comes as relief; clouds spoiled by radiation overflow with poisonous intent; spilling its filth on the damned below.  All are doomed.  All are lost.  Only tribes of man exist now to fill their wanton need of sustenance and sweet reprieve.  They hang their heads low, closer now to the ground and soil and dirt of their sins.  Their shoulders carry great invisible baskets that slow down each step; every stride is deliberate, carefully calculated against the hinted dangers of their surroundings.