The Last of the Monsters

It was a terrible night that night in November, as dark as quill ink in the God-forsaken peatlands of the Barrens. 

A furious blizzard swept over the landscape. The tiny hamlets scattered across the empty  acres were hunkered down as winter raged around them like a lost beast. 

On the Devils' road, the driver of the truck, Fraction, was having difficulty seeing anything through his smothered windscreen, the wipers clanking to and fro in a futile attempt to free it of snow. 

It was impossible too, in this tumult, for the truckdriver to read his map book creased open on the seat beside him.

Squinting, he roared at the inexplicable ferocity of the storm.

"God damn you Lord Cavity, where the hell is Full Moon House?"

Inevitably, he took a wrong turn and became, the fates conspiring against him, hopelessly lost.

Bumping along an icy country track his cargo rattled precariously on the flatbed, the taut straps securing two tarped structures straining like muscles, one of which was empty, one occupied.

The sleet and snow was so thick, the whiteout so complete, that the driver simply did not see the sign warning him of the upcoming danger of the railway bridge, a bridge far too low.

Suddenly, the span was ahead of him but by then it was too late and he could not break in time. 

The large covered cages at the rear smashed directly into the bridge's arch and with a tremendous crash the entire shipment was wrenched free of the truck, the straps snapping like tendons, the big metal boxes careening madly and crashing onto the road. 

The noise of the accident was ear-splitting but the snowstorm muffled it from all but the keenest of ears on that most devilish of nights.

The truck itself was catapulted forward and became jambed upright under the bridge, creaking at an impossible angle. The driver was knocked semi-conscious by the awful jolt.

Shaking his head, he tried to regain his senses. 

"The damn cargo!" He screamed and swivelled round just in time to see that the massive padlock, violently rent in two by the crash, falling off the nearest cage, its door now slightly ajar.

It was the cage that had been occupied,

"Oh my God!" He screamed.

"Oh my dear God!"

It was then that his blood froze. He could hear a loud grating sound and realized that the door was opening.

"Oh, Jesus Christ!"

The driver, wracked with indescribable fear, scrambled in desperation to open his cab door. He climbed down the airborne tyre struggling for breath and fell the final few feet into the huge filthy puddle which had formed beneath the bridge like a slick of black blood.

He was panic-stricken and had to get away from that cage as quickly as possible and maybe, if he was lucky, reach a house on the peatlands, which offered him sanctuary from what was now free. 

He'd only taken a few steps when he heard the steel doors being forcibly ripped off their hinges fully.

A hideous wail erupted from beneath the tarp, a howl from a thing which the driver knew only too well would create a bloodbath unlike anything seen before now it was loose. 

Fraction frantically scrabbled up the snow-laden bank of the lane. He stopped when he had the unmistakable squelching motion of his hateful freight.

"Oh, Christ in Heaven!"

Palpitating, he turned to face the most hideous, most heinous, most terrifying creature that he had ever encountered in his work and in that instant immediately regretted the day he had agreed to work for Lord Cavity collecting his 'monstrous specimens' ten years prior. This had been his last job. The collection was near completion. Two cages. Two creatures. First the drool-hag, then the howling Barghest, both this most terrible of nights.

Unlike a wolfen, the she-devil before him remained monstrous without pause. The thing grinned and stared balefully into Fraction's skittering eyes, smiling with a twisted smirk straight from the bowels of Hell. Her thousand sharp teeth were draped in green slime, which dribbled onto her bony chin. 

Her face was a deaths-head goat-skull wrapped in a tight shroud of wet toad-skin, glistening in the snow-light like a sickness. Her hair was a pulsating mass of sable algae and riverweed pouring down to her back, her sinewy jellied arms tipped with brown spidery hands and monstrous red nails. 

It was a sight to make the blood of men run cold in their veins and she was now free.

Hideously skeletal, her tall body was swaddled in a tattered, rotting wedding dress and head veil ripped from the pitiful body of her last victim, a young bride haplessly moonbathing in the River Drool with her now devoured groom.

"You locked me up puny human!"

"I was taking you somewhere safe!"

"Liar! You dare lie to Grinteeth! I was safe in my river you tiny curr!"

"I was, I was bringing you to Lord Cavity, who would have cared for you, fed you, loved you! You have to believe me!"

"Believe you? Believe a human? I eat humans! I'm starving and I will fill up with this Cavity, but first my sweet jailor, I will fill up with you!"

The dreadful Grinteeth picked up the screaming Fraction by his ankles and held him high over her terrible head.

"Noooooooooooooooooooo!"

Her huge purple mouth opened wide, her teeth poised like an iron trap, her green tongue quivering with glee.

Fraction was swallowed whole like a herring, his bones cracking loudly as he slid down the wraith's convulsing gullet shreiking.

Grinteeth licked her lips.

"An agreeable tidbit but I need more, much much more!"

The river creature slithered silently over the damp snow desperately in search of food, crossing a quilt of white fields and lanes in the dead hectares of the night.

Ravenous, the she-wretch, slid into a beck and crawled like a lobster towards a light in the dark.

A home!

Of humans!

She read it's name.

Full Moon House.

Her two loathsome hearts pounded against her fetid ribs like hermit crabs and Grinteeth, elongating like a viper, entered the building through the cat-flap.

The sleeping pet woke and hissed at the approaching beast, it's hairs pricked up, it's claws scratching warningly along the floor.

Schlupp!

It was gone. 

The cat, another appetizer in the river-wraiths insatiable hunger for blood and bone.

"Tabatha?"

The occupant of the house, a middle-aged well-fed spinster living the wholesome country life, tiptoed downstairs.

"Tabatha? We're are you girl?"

She descended further.

"Here kitty kitty, would you like some milk?"

"I don't think Tabatha will need any more milk, but I would like some, petty human!"

The woman, Skriker, hailing from the Romanian Steppe, stood on the stairs as a half-moon struggled to rise outside.

As the weak ray shone across the wedding-dressed river-wraith, Skriker saw her beloved tabby disappear whole down the Drool-hag's twitching throat.

"Mmmm! But I require something of proper substance now. Something like you, fat harlot!"

"Ah, scorned bride, I could hear you coming. Havn't you gobbled your man? I wouldn't recommend eating me though!"

"Why ever not? You look decidedly tasty to me, plump wench!"

"Well, for one thing, there's more of me than you can see, fish-wife!"

"Gibberish! I'll eat all of you!"

At that moment the moon became fat and full and bathed the hallway in bright cream light.

From within the shadows of the stairwell stepped out a growling beast, a powerful, huge and terrifying werewolf.

"Ah, a cat is one thing but what about a Barghest?" The wolf-woman grunted, her massive bulk darkening the hall as she crouched on all fours, snarling, ready to pounce.

The river-crone Grinteeth bared her myriad fangs, spread her dreadful talons and hissing and spitting, ran furiously at the gigantic she-wolf loping towards her.

"Skriker! You gypsy shuck, I'll eat you up and in my welcoming gut you can say hello to our would-be captor Fraction and your mangy cat!"

"Grinteeth! You drunken rag! Better that Cavity had walled you up, piss-witch, than face me, the Countess Lupine, the Queen of all the Wolves!"

With a howl and a hiss, a titanic battle ensued, in which bone and tissue were torn apart, hearts devoured and thick hot blood spilled across the floor in gouts on that night when the last of the monsters fought.

In the morning, as the last of the full moon gave way to the rule of the sun, a trembling hand reached up and felt something soft and wet lodged in her throat. 

"What's this I wonder?"

She gagged and a long bloodied thing was slowly pulled out.

"Look!" She said to the matted animal as it licked the crimson drape,

"Look, Tabatha, my darling, yes! it's that old wretch Grinteeth's wedding veil!"

Both creatures purred together and the wolf's joy became a triumphant raucous howl.