The Hours of Creeping Night - a Collection of Dark Speculative Short Fiction Read Free Page A

instead it powers through the underbrush as though it were soft carpet, and splinters through thick trees as though pushing aside curtains. Its front legs flail as it lurches, gathering up broken wood and cramming it into its gnashing mouth. The furnace inside it roars with vigour.
    Darkness falls and Gretel stumbles blindly. Her dress is torn to shreds, and her flesh fares no better, long red gashes burn her limbs as she claws through the forest. Exhausted, she slows. This is the part of the nightmare when she realises there is no hope, and wakes up. Moments pass. A strange and absurd calm overcomes her as she realises that she will not awaken. The moment of her death is upon her, and her mind cannot accept her impending fate.
    A long metal leg wraps around her torso. It lifts her from the earth. The pinch of its hinge breaks her spine. Pain shoots, reality amplified in punishing retaliation against her disbelief. The spider swallows her whole, pushing the fleshy bundle into its mouth with its pincer-fangs.
    The rabbits in the nearby field twitch their noses. They can smell the reek of burning hair and melted fat. With it, the wind carries the human stench of the city, and the thrum of the factories. They lay their ears flat and dart into their warm comforting burrows, deep in the cradle of the earth.

 
    The Fallen Safat
     
    T he Safat live in the sky. Unlike other birds, they never set foot on land and never rest; they spend their lives soaring above the clouds, riding high thermals and feasting on stars. Every year, the females lay their eggs in flight. As the eggs plummet towards earth, they hatch and tiny birds dart into the air before the shells smash to pieces on the ground.
    One year, a little Safat did not break free from his shell and landed painfully against the crashing ocean. His shell shattered open and he was thrown into the waves, which twisted and broke his tiny wings as he shrieked for help. 
    For three days and nights, he was tossed upon the reckless waves before washing to shore, exhausted. His soft white feathers were tattered and salt-encrusted; his wings dragged limply by his side. Crawling beneath the shelter of a rock, he looked up at the sky and the distant shimmer of bright feathers reflecting the sun as the Safat glided into the heavens. He cried himself to sleep.
    The next morning, the little Safat awoke with an idea, as though it had been planted there in a dream: he would climb to the sky. The bird set off, limp wings dragging behind him, upwards and into the mountains. As he climbed, many animals with jaws of jagged teeth slinked past with curious eyes, but strangely nothing ever ventured close to the weak little creature. His stomach burned with hunger and longing, knowing that he could not reach the sky to gorge on burning stars. Nevertheless, he ventured on.
    Soon, the trees became dense and leafless, their branches like ink spilt against the sky. The little Safat found his forked feet sinking into numbing snow. He shivered, willing himself forward in the lifeless land. Ice froze between his feathers. Only his fast-beating heart was still warm, until a scream stopped him in his tracks.
    Turning fearfully, the Safat saw a huge dog devouring the bowels of a wriggling human. The human’s eyes rolled madly in their sockets, then went dull. Catching sight of the bird, the dog barked – deep as gravel - and galloped towards him, blood and saliva dripping from its fanged mouth.
    The Safat’s eyes bulged as he flapped broken wings in a desperate attempt to escape. Just as the beast was upon him, it seemed to melt, its matter dripping upwards as it shifted into a figure as tall as the barren trees. The Safat blinked in shock at the Wendigo, a giant monster of ice and mud.
    The Wendigo stopped short of the infant Safat and cocked the upper part of its mass, which could only be considered the head, tilting the dead branches entangled through its body like great antlers. Slowly, it gargled and