The Last of the Monsters

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

A furious shrieking blizzard boiled 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 jumping map book creased open on the seat beside him.

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

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

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

Clunking 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 regretfully occupied.

The sleet-hoar was so thick, the whiteout so complete, that Fraction 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 heavy metal boxes toppling over and crashing onto the road. 

The noise of the collision was ear-splitting, 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 jammed upright under the bridge and stood creaking at an impossible angle.

Fraction was virtually knocked-out by the catastrophic jolt. Shaking his head, he tried to regain his senses. 

"The cargo!" He screamed.

He swivelled round just in time to see the massive padlock, violently rent in two by the crash, falling off the nearest cage, its door slightly ajar.

It was the cage that had been occupied,

"Oh my God!" He screamed.

"Oh my dear God!"

A piercing grating sound rang out and the driver's worst fears materialised as he realized it was the cage door opening.

"Oh, Jesus Christ!"

Fraction, wracked with indescribable fear, scrambled in desperation to open his cab door. He climbed down the airborne tyre clutching his dart rifle struggling for breath and fell the final few feet flat on his back straight into the vast black puddle which had formed beneath the bridge like a slick of thick 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 the abomination which was now free. 

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

A hideous wail erupted from beneath the tarp, a howl from a thing which the driver knew only too well would bathe the world in running blood now it was loose.

Fraction frantically scrabbled up a snowdrift. He stopped when he heard the unmistakable gnashing of his hateful freight.

"Oh, Christ in Heaven!"

Palpitating, he fumbled with his rifle and 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 from the frozen river, then the howling Barghest in its wolfish lair, both on this most terrible of winter nights.

Unlike the 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 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.

Hideously skeletal, her tall body was swaddled in a tattered, rotting wedding dress and head veil ripped from the pitiful corpse 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 Fraction, 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 portion but I need more, much much more!"

The river creature slithered silently over the damp snow desperately in search of food, crossing a sleeping 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, a meagre appetizer in the river-wraith's 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? Where are you girl?"

She descended further.

"Here kitty kitty, Mother's got 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 water-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 mother of cats!"

"Ah, scorned bride, I could hear you spluttering all the way here. I thank you for gobbling my would-be captor but 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, much more than a mother of moggies!"

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

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

"Ah. I somehow doubt that!"

From within the shadows of the stairwell a deep growl grew and grew.

Grinteeth poised, her claws taut.

Out of the dark stepped a snarling beast -

A huge and terrifying werewolf, it's massive mouth contorted with rage.

"Fraction was one thing, hag, but what about a Barghest?" The wolf-woman roared, her vast bulk darkening the hall as she crouched on all fours snarling, ready to pounce.

The river-crone 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, old piss-witch, than face me, the Countess Lupine, the Queen Mother 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 at the kitchen table, as the remnants of the 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 with reddened fingers pulled on a long bloodied rag.

"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 happily together and in the wolf-queen's overwhelming joy she let out a triumphant raucous howl which filled all the rooms and cavities of her lair at Full Moon House.