Salt

Entry for the 2019 Writers of the Future Contest.

The first time you’d ever tasted salt, you’d been maybe seven.

You still remembered the feeling, the sensation of those snowy crystals dissolving on your tongue, your taste buds tingling with their sour aftertaste. You slowly recoiled, and a large, calloused hand smacked the back of your head.

You winced, rubbing the spot where he’d hit you. You could almost imagine what your mother would say when you would tell her what he did.

She was right, you supposed. Then again, everything around here was nothing if not a bit rough. These were the highlands; a small valley ringed with multiple massive mountains that were rumoured to be inhabited by ice dragons. The snow-capped peaks resided so high in the sky that they could almost be mistaken for clouds. Alas, the only clouds around these parts were a deep, angry grey, heavy with sleet and snow.

Massive, evergreen trees loomed in the distance. You were certain that if you came closer, they would tower leagues above you. Alas, nobody ever went near the woods. It was almost an unspoken rule of the community. It was a difficult rule to live by, especially since the forest surrounded your town almost completely, only parting to allow the small stream that the residents kindly called a ‘river’ through. Still, you made-do.

The harvest fields; where wheat and barley grew in the summer, so high that even adults could be lost among the tawny stalks; formed a semi-circle around the town. They were the natural barrier between your little civilization and the forest. A small hole in the centre of one of the fields, barely large enough for one grown man, was the entrance to the salt mines.

The town itself was a ramshackle affair; a mess of old, wooden slats standing only because they were frozen stiff; small, two-storey houses that leaned against one another; tiny pathways lined with icy mud; a church that towered over the rest of the town, a massive cross erected in the centre of the town square; and the salt mill.

The salt mill was right next to the river; a dull yet unimposing shack; and was where the miners deposited their salt at the end of each day; after sundown, but definitively before the aurora faded from behind the mountains in the distance. It wasn’t wise to be out after dark in these parts.

The salt they had collected would be tossed into the river, where it dissolved. When questioned, the adults claimed that the salt would be extracted from the water downstream by skilled merchants. And you supposed it was true, if the grain that was periodically delivered to the town by hooded men in rickety old carts was anything to go by.

It was just that, on some days, the white powder didn’t seem worth all the hassle. Your father always told you it was, that the salt trapped hundreds of feet below the surface was your lifeline. You were never inclined to agree. Perhaps it was the fact that you hadn’t spent your entire life down in the mines, where it was far too dark to see, navigating tiny tunnels, traversing underground lakes, almost impaling yourself on stalactites, constantly chipping away at the unstable walls in hopes of finding some more salt.

Or perhaps it was because you still remembered the time, many years ago, that a young child had decided to follow her father into the mines. You had remembered your mother visiting her home, consolidating the little girl’s mother, and paying her respects to the small memorial that had been erected nearby.

For of course, the second she entered the mines, she was presumed good as dead.

Still, the town had tried to be optimistic. Most of the mothers, along with their children, would wait on the edges of the fields; most standing on the small mound of turned-over dirt; to wait for the miners to return, in hopes that they would’ve found her.

The miners did find her, three days later. Or at least, whatever was left of her. You still remembered the look on your father’s face as he’d emerged from the mines that night, almost trembling from head to toe. In the fading daylight, you had been able to make out the slick, red blood on his forearms.

Of course, you had been quite young then. Young and stupid. And that stupidity had gotten you in trouble countless times. For instance, there was that day that, for some reason, you had decided to sneak out of the schoolhouse; a dilapidated old beast, that groaned and creaked so often that the other children made up stories about banshees hiding in the walls, begging to be let out, wailing as they stabbed the ancient wallpaper, leaving deep scratches.

For the walls were covered with scratches, far above the height any toddler could’ve reached. You just never thought to ask where they’d come from.

The slats that made up said walls were quite easily displaced, and you’d simply crawled out, into the biting air. You still remembered your hands, covered as they were in the lovingly hand-knitted gloves your mother had made you, stretching out in front of you as you stumbled away from the building. And being the idiot that you were, you had taken one look at the stormy sky, and then decided that it was the perfect day to take a walk in the forest.

Of course, you’d never made it all the way to the forest. An elderly, kind woman had found you in the fields, and had offered to take you back home in delicate, soothing tones. You hadn’t wanted to go, but she had been insistent. You still remembered clutching to her shoulders, tired as you were after your little excursion, and watching the wheat stalks wave you goodbye. You had waved back at them.

It had only been much, much later that you had remembered that there had been no wind.

When the woman had explained what you’d done to your mother, she had pulled you inside, shaking, almost in tears, and begged you, made you repeat after her, don’t go into the forest.

You hadn’t understood her at first. Hadn’t understood the rules everybody had; don’t go outside after dark, don’t go into the fields when the grass is waving, don’t go into the mines, stay away from the stream, don’t even think about entering the forest; you’d never realised why they were important.

The second time you tasted salt- you’d realised.

It had coated your cold, trembling fingers as you scattered the keen granules in a small semicircle around the entrance to the house, just beyond the threshold. Your mother was lining the inside of the windows, muttering furiously under her breath. Your father was still in the mines, but he would be back early today- far before sunset.

The reason for all this commotion was simple. Today morning, the inhabitants of the town had emerged from their warm, cosy homes, and had trudged through inches of snow to get to work. Unfortunately, they had been stopped by a sight in the town square; two dead bodies, leaned up against one another, propped up underneath the cross.

They were utterly frozen over; their still forms had massive blue-purple bruises, and their fingers, clawing at an invisible opponent, were frostbitten to the point of falling off. Their skin was a pale, almost ethereal white. The head priest at the church was called. After much deliberation with the other priests, he’d told the townspeople what they’d already known the second they’d laid eyes upon the bodies; upon those dead, glassy eyes, thrown wide open in pure horror, and those glinting fangs, exposed in a silent scream.

They hadn’t just died.

They’d been killed.

You didn’t hear anybody mention what they’d been killed of. You just knew that, after much hushed conversation, trepidation, and deliberation, the priest had simply told everybody to keep an eye on their young ones, and to stay indoors.

“There will be a blizzard tonight.” he announced to the crowd, raising his arms into the air. The unquenchable stench of fear hung heavy as he continued.

“You will hear things. Do not respond to them. Do not go outside. If you do, we will not save you.”

We will not save you.

The phrase had stuck with you for a long time. We will not save you. Not we will not be able to save you. No, the priest had specifically mentioned that if one was to leave their house, nobody would save them. As though, regardless of whether or not you survived, nobody would help you.

Like most things in your life, you only understood the significance of this sentence once it was far too late.

And of course, things soon got worse.

As the summers transformed into winter, when the snow sometimes piled so high that you couldn’t even walk through it, the things that lurked in the dark got more and more courageous. They would go from simply hovering on the streets outside, lurking at windows obscured by tattered cloth curtains, to pawing at the salt lines around their doors, desperate for a way to get in.

Those nights stuck with you. Being curled up in your small cot in your room, the window covered with a tattered cloth. You remembered trying to ignore the screeching, the shuffling, the quiet mumbling. You tried to imagine that you didn’t see the Lovecraftian shapes in those shifting shadows…

We will not save you.

Your eleventh birthday.

You don’t remember much about it- just that, as the sun began to set, most of the miners- including your father- hadn’t come back from the mines. Your mother, along with several other women, had volunteered to go down into the mines, to try and contact them. All the children were gathered, like sheep into a pen, at the church.

You remembered asking one of the priests who they worshipped. The young man had panicked, and quickly walked away. When you asked some of the older children, they claimed that the priests used to pray to a god long forgotten; but that he was dead now.

“Wait, gods don’t die!” you’d protested, like the indignant child you were.

“Some do.” they’d responded solemnly.

You would soon become very, very familiar with these musty, thick walls, glorious wood and gold insets adorning the walls and pews. You would come close to perfectly memorising the stained-glass window that seemed to depict the lord himself, bestowing light upon a newborn babe. You would remember the exact texture of the red carpet, worn thin by years of being stepped on. And, of course, you would forever remember the man that hung from the cross just above the altar.

You slept on a rug, curled up in a thin rag like most of the other children there. Outside, the wind howled through the trees, whose outstretched, empty branches silhouetted against the thin curtains made them look like horrifying, incredibly tall creatures.

Halfway into the night, one of the kids had decided to do something stupid. Delicately, he’d danced across the hardwood floors. The others had begged for him to stop, that he’d regret it, but he’d simply grinned, lifted the curtain aside, and taken a peek outside.

You would never forget what happened next.

His face had gone utterly pale, jaw dropping as his eyes widened into pure, undiluted terror. The hair on his arms stood up as he let the curtain fall.

As he’d stumbled back to where you were sleeping, you’d tried to get him to tell you what he had seen.

It hadn’t worked. The furthest he’d gotten was “icy, painfully blue crystals where there should’ve been eyes. they glowed. they glowed. and… and frozen hands and a frozen body… they were so tall, they were so tall…”

The other kids simply considered him delirious. And he could’ve been. When the priests came to check on them again, they’d determined that he had a fever.

He didn’t even make it to sunrise.

You still remembered the look on the adult’s faces when they returned. Not of shock, no. More of… resignation.

The town had lost five people that night. Four adults in the mines, one child.

Life had gone on. Except everything seemed… restricted, choking. The talk of monsters began to increase. The children spoke amongst themselves, of terrifying creatures in the night that preyed on young kids just like them. They usually gleamed this information from hushed conversations between their parents.

You never had to worry about hushed conversations. When your parents talked, they usually screamed; only stopping when they heard suspiciously loud footsteps from outside, whereupon they usually drew their makeshift curtains more thoroughly closed, and extinguished the candles.

The nights grew far, far darker. On some of them, it seemed as though the dawn would never come.

But of course, one day it finally stopped, and the inhabitants of the creaky lean-to’s emerged, blinking away the blinding glare of an ice blue sun.

Except you knew…

…that someday, it would be back.

…

The third time you tasted salt, you had grown older.

It had been a wonderfully icy evening. The threat of the approaching winter loomed, as it did this time each year, but there were still a few carefree weeks until the nights grew far, far longer than the days, and howling wraiths filled the skies.

That morning, your mother had woken you up delicately, with a piping hot bowl of stew. Apparently, this very day fifteen summers prior, you had been born.

You felt joy. That you had come this far.

Of course, it wasn’t going to last.

The rest of the day, you were almost giddy with the feeling; as though you were floating inches above the ground. For the first time in what felt like years, you conversed freely with your peers, and they told each other stories about the forest, and the things that came out to play at night. Ordinarily, this would be terrifying. But winter was just over the horizon; not directly in sight. For now, they were carefree.

For now, there was sun.

You remembered the conversation you’d had with one young man, who was sitting all by himself, off in one corneSr. You remembered what it had felt like, talking to him about how you felt…

You had bared your soul to him.

Unlike anything you’d ever done before.

You’d told him how you never felt comfortable in your own body, how you were always uncomfortable around other people…

And he’d claimed he understood. He’d said that he knew exactly what you were going through.

He was so warm…

Nearing the end of the day, he pulled you aside. At this point, you were so utterly hooked onto the feeling of… being accepted, truly, that you weren’t even an active participant in the things you were doing anymore. It was as though you were floating along a river; going wherever it took you, lazily drifting.

As he dragged you into a small broom closet…

You tasted the salt.

On his lips, on the sensitive skin of his throat…

Everywhere.

And before night had fallen, you had stumbled out of his house, almost unable to process what had just happened. Everything felt… different now.

The hazy, lazy feeling was still there. Just… now it was unpleasant. And you didn’t want it.

By the time you’d arrived home, you’d become feverish.

By the time your father had returned home, it was clear that it was serious.

And by the time the sun had risen, you knew that you were going to die.

It was almost calming.

The… certainty you felt, lying in the old cot, watching the condensation drip off the sodden rafters, a fire roaring next to you. It was an anchor to the world around you.

Your mother summoned one of the priests. What else could she do?

She arrived dressed in his resplendent garb; garish red colouring contrasted against gaudy gold frills that hung limp from the edges of her robes; a hat that drooped on her head; and horrid, yellow teeth. In the firelight, she looked terrifying.

She knew everything. The young man had told her.

She told your parents that you were possessed by a spirit from the forest, and that she would have to exorcise you on the town limits at sundown. It would be incredibly dangerous, she claimed. She would need some sort of payment.

Your mother had nodded sadly.

You hadn’t understood what she’d had to do for a long time afterwards.

But when you finally realised…

It didn’t change much.

The entire town came out to watch you, feverish and trembling, hoisted on the shoulder of several clerics as they moved through the city centre, and then walked through the fields, only to deposit you unceremoniously at the edge of the forest.

This was the closest you had been since that time, several years ago.

And the forest was just as horrifying as it had been before. Harsh shadows permeated the trees, the ground coated with damp, slowly rotting leaves. The evergreens themselves seemed almost impossibly tall, and even from here, you could tell that they were hiding something.

You were barely even awake, sweating as you tossed and turned. Almost in disgust, the people carrying you tossed you onto the turned-over dirt that marked the edge of the harvest fields. The priest then came and stood next to you. At this point, your eyes were barely even open. She sprinkled some salt in a wide line around you, and then crossed herself.

You’d tried to speak.

“Don’t you dare open your mouth, you filthy excuse for a human!” she’d growled, lashing you to the ground, your arms spread out and your legs trussed together.

You had obeyed.

What other option was there?

You don’t remember much from the rest of the night.

Just being grasped by a deep, unquenchable feeling of utter disgust, of being almost unable to breathe in the freezing, chilling air.

You don’t even remember falling asleep. Or waking up.

You just have a hazy recollection of blue, piercing eyes that seemed as deep as oceans to you. The multitudes of infinity in those emeralds were almost comforting to you…

The next thing you remembered was being completely unable to breathe. You fling out your arms and opened your mouth to scream, but found it invaded by icy water.

You were suddenly pulled back, water still dripping from your face as you broke the surface. Your reflection stared back at you from the small basin of water your head had just been immersed in; and you found yourself almost physically repulsed by what you were seeing.

As your face grew numb, you realised you were back in the church.

And you wouldn’t be leaving for a long, long time.

Apparently, you had still been out there at sunrise; and the priest was gone.

The others had told your parents that you still had demons inside you, threatening to burst out at any moment. You remembered listening to them, unable to focus. You remembered the sunlight, dull and lustreless, streaming in through the massive windows.

Your father hadn’t made eye contact as he’d walked out.

Your mother had. But the deep sadness and regret you’d spotted in her eyes…

…it made you wish that she hadn’t.

You were thrown into the basement, underneath the church. It was partially flooded with melted snow, an indicator of the coming summer. The mouldy pillars felt fragile under your trembling fingers, as though they would collapse at any moment.

When the priests came down the stairs, you would plead with them. You would try to convince them, beg to them that you weren’t a monster, that you were just… different.

They never listened.

You remembered begging, pleading with them, your voice breaking as you bared yourself almost completely in front of them, as you had with the boy. You remembered trying to stop one of the priests from leaving.

He had hit you back into the deep, icy water.

And as your head disappeared under the surface, chest contracting as you forgot how to breathe, your mind was once more invaded by images of icy blue eyes, tiny strands expanding out from the pupil as though they were flowers in bloom.

The nights were freezing.

You remembered them vividly, digging your fingers into the damp, cold ground to try and ignore the hunger pangs that wracked your body from time to time.

You didn’t understand why they would do this to you.

…

Oh, isolation did odd things to the human mind…

The eyes kept coming back.

Growing brighter.

You didn’t know how long it went on for…

…it could’ve been an entire month. It wasn’t like you had any way of keeping track of time. And the only thing that kept you company were those frozen oceans, almost unimaginably deep; yet fragile, as though they could shatter at any moment.

You would lie still.

Unmoving. None of your limbs touching one another. You found that this way, there was less of a chance of you waking up with painful cramps all over your body.

…

Everything ached.

Deeply.

You could barely even keep your eyes open as you lay there, in anticipation of nothing.

It hurt so much.

You could almost feel your hands freezing over. The ice was shooting through your capillaries, tiny shards appearing just under the surface of the skin. Frost gathered around your mouth, and you could see tiny bits of ice on your eyelashes.

In the almost non-existent light, they looked like salt.

“Do you feel your hands becoming cold?” a loud, booming voice inquired.

You nodded, aware of how hazy the world around you looked.

“Fight it.”

You inhaled deeply. A jolt of pain ran up your spine, and you winced.

“Your hands aren’t frozen. They’re not made of frost.”

With great effort, you lifted your hands up to see that they were an icy blue, almost consumed by the frost.

“Fight it!”

Another jolt of pain, this one far more unbearable. You closed your eyes, and saw those deep, blue oceans staring back at you.

They hurt.

“Fight it!”

I am human.

I am human.

I am human.

You imagined your body as you remembered it before you entered this nightmare. You imagined moving your hands, imagined tracing the outlines of your sharp knuckles, your too-long fingernails…

A door slammed. Whoever had been in the stairwell had clearly given up, and retreated upstairs.

Another jolt, this time directly in the back of your brain. Freezing, as though somebody had stabbed you with an icicle.

You screamed.

…

You’d woken up a few hours later.

You were fine.

Your hands were human.

And the eyes had disappeared.

A small fire burned in the corner of the room, and next to it sat a small plate with some gruel on it. Tucked underneath the plate was a small card, on which was written, in sweeping, looping cursive…

Never underestimate the mind.

It had happened again.

Once the food was finished, and the fire had gone out, and you were tired…

Rising up from the depths of your despair.

Blue eyes.

And you felt your body changing; your hands became ice, your face was embalmed in frost, your mind began to slip…

But each time, you came back from it.

Spluttering, freezing, sometimes sobbing…

…but you were there.

It went on like that for an eternity.

Almost an endless moment.

Changes were coming.

You heard whispers of them every time one of the priests clambered down the narrow stairwell to monitor how you were doing, and continued chatting with another priest on the surface level.

Apparently, the merchants had stopped sending them goods. There were rumours of a massive war in the capitol, which could probably destroy everything. A scouting party had set out a few seasons back, but never returned. Either they had found greener pastures elsewhere, or they were dead.

One of the ministers had claimed that the forest was the cause of their woes, and had tried to burn it down. He had gathered resources, rallied the townspeople…

…he was found dead in his bed, lying in a similar fashion to the two bodies that had been found in the town centre many, many years back. Frozen over, despite the fire in his hearth. Literally scared stiff.

Change was coming.

Winter was coming.

And it was going to be the harshest one yet.

…

It was almost routine now.

Every night, the eyes would appear in your mind. You would feel your hands grow cold, your torso and face frost over… and you would try desperately to fight it. Each time sunlight finally streamed through tiny gaps in the ceiling, you would be utterly exhausted and spent, and would spend the rest of the day resting, preparing for dusk.

It got easier each time. Mind you, not much easier… but easier nonetheless.

And so, you waited.

…

That night had been the hardest so far.

It seemed as though all the progress you had made over the past few months had disappeared the instant the cold weather returned. The church shook for the entire night, and the wind howled. If you had to guess, you’d say that there was a massive blizzard outside.

About halfway through the night, your hands had just begun to freeze. You’d grown almost used to it. At least, until…

The screech.

A huge, echoing, shrill sound that no creature you knew of could have produced.

Silence. A lull in the storm.

Then a scream.

And you knew.

Even as you got to your feet, knees shaking, trying and failing to remind yourself that you weren’t freezing over, telling yourself that it was alright…

It didn’t work today.

You smashed your hands against the wooden door, screaming for help.

But none came.

So you curled up next to the door, in the roughly inch of standing water.

Begging.

The eyes were clear as day.

…

The sun had been up for about two hours when you finally heard voices in the stairwell.         

“…it’s down there!”

“Get it out here!”

A cloyingly sweet scent wafted down into the room, making your mind go hazy. Of course, they would want you asleep before they pulled you out.

Out…

And before you could even process what that meant, your eyes were closing…

…

Bitter almonds.

You could taste them on your lips as you slowly rose into consciousness.

And suddenly-

bwoosh

You spluttered as you coughed up sour, salty water.

Your eyes flew open as you cast your gaze about. It was almost too much information to process at once. The sky-

oh lord, you were outside!

-was a deep, existential grey with slight undulations of lighter shades. The branches that broke up the clouds were bare-

is it winter already?

-and below them lay the town; still old, still tired, but more lifeless.

You recognised where you were almost immediately; the salt mill. And standing in front of you-

what?

-your father; deep lines of sorrow etched into his leathery skin, eyes bloodshot, face contorted into a mask of singular rage. Behind him, a few people retreated back into the church. Nobody would be helping you.

For a long second, the two of you simply stared each other down; him obviously in shock at seeing you, after so long; and you shocked that you were outside.

Then…

“…she’s dead.” he said simply.

And you knew who he was talking about.

Who else?

“…how?” you forced out, your voice hoarse, cracking like the last embers of a fire.

“…like the priest.”

You closed your eyes, a cold spike driving itself into your heat.

Not like that.

Your mother was a kindred spirit. She didn’t deserve to go like that… to go in fear.

“…why are you telling me this?”

Your father looked up, scowling. “Because we know who’s causing this.”

A lump in your throat; you forced your way past it. “Who?”

“A god. So old… we had forgotten existed. So old… we thought he was dead.”

He looked right at you, and before he even said it, you knew.

“It wants you.”

Of course.

“…you’re here to kill me, aren’t you?” you asked him.

He unsheathed a small knife. It glinted in the sparse sunlight.

“Of course, I am.”

And a deep, incredible rage began building up inside you.

You took a single step forward, bare feet digging into the cold dirt. You were feverish and weak, but you weren’t going down without a fight.

“…you’re all monsters.”

He grinned, revealing cracked, rotted teeth.

“My dear, it is only our circumstances that make us monsters.”

And before you could even process what happened, he darted towards you.

A dip in the light as your brain struggled to catch up with whatever was happening in front of you. Clumsily, you sidestepped, and a white-hot jolt of pain ran up your spine.

It had been a long time since you’d felt warm…

“What?” your father taunted. In the sparse light, you saw the glint of blood on his knife. “Can’t concentrate?”

The eyes were back.

They permeated your vision, turning your surroundings inside out. The sky burst open, only to reveal and endless, dark void.

Your father’s eyes hung almost out of their sockets, and his mouth was contorted into a gruesome smile. His rot hung off him like clothing on a line, swaying gently in the breeze.

Around them, the ground warped and changed, revealing teeth and bone and tears. His eyes fell to the ground, and burst into slimy gore.

A laugh worthy of the gods, he grabbed you, bringing you up to see his face more clearly. The man’s rotting teeth fell out of his mouth, and his tongue dissolved into so many wasps, and his hair became stringy worms that burrowed into his face and ate him inside out.

 “It’s only a matter of time.” he said, and slid the knife into your guts.

A gasp.

Those eyes…

They hurt-

The sound in your throat erupted into a full-blown scream, but try as you might, you couldn’t move away.

So, as your feet found the ground, you pushed off and moved towards him.

Like a tower toppling, he fell into the river; and you followed.

And as you sank towards the bottom, darkness permeating your vision, the sour water filling your lungs, his words came back to you…

It’s only a matter of time….

Those eyes-

…

You gasped and spluttered as you surfaced, breathing deeply. Lashing your hands out, you found the shore and clawed your way onto land. Then, immediately, you vomited.

The warm fluids steamed in the cold air, and as your head cleared, you realised what had happened. You had been poisoned, and swallowing the salty water had made you throw it up.

Good lord…

Everything still hurt, and you were cold, so very cold oh lord…

You needed to wash the taste of bile out of your mouth. Slowly, you walked over to the river, and took a gulp. Instead of drinking the water, which would make you even more sick, you simply washed your mouth out, and spat it back. It was dark; bloodied.

You were far downstream; much farther than you had ever been. The sun was close to setting, and you couldn’t even see the town- though chances were, even if you’d made it back, they wouldn’t have let you in.

We will not help you…

You were alone. Your father was probably dead.

Now what?

Suddenly, the waster caught your gaze.

And your mouth dropped open.

For reflected in it were a pair of utterly icy blue eyes.

You stared at it for a while, agape.

…

Of course.

The hands propping you up began to slowly frost over.

You let them.

And as the sun finally disappeared behind the massive peaks, and wraiths began shrieking in the darkening sky, your lips shattered as you exhaled your last warm breath.

Shakily stumbling to your feet, now frozen and fragile, the taste of salt still lingering in your mouth, you walked into the woods.