Hallowed Ground by David Niall Wilson, Steven & Wilson Savile Page B

  Benjamin heard it, heard the rhythms of it, the curl of the sounds through the howl of the wind, but he could not decipher it.   It was no mortal phrasing – at least none he had ever heard before that moment.
    The wind wailed and swirled, the rustling of the leaves constant now.   Everywhere around him the forest was alive, but it was a brutal life, one of unleashed fury.   The storm grew, its anger fermenting.   Weaker branches rotten through with woodworm and riddled with disease snapped and broke, snatched away by the powerful gusts.   The howling of the wind reached a crescendo in a clap of thunder so loud he was not merely deafened, but the impact of the sound drove the air from his lungs and he buckled, falling to his knees.   Benjamin closed his eyes and screamed, but that sound, like all of the others, was swallowed.
    And then – it was silent.   Not just quiet, silent; the entire world devoid of sound.
    Very slowly, Benjamin drew his hands away from his eyes.   Jeanne stood nearby, a look of absolute fascination splashed across her ethereal beauty.   Benjamin looked up and saw that they were no longer alone.   A man had joined them - at least, it seemed to be a man.   The silence surrounding them was so complete it felt as though they'd been sucked into some other world…some other place, and that it was they who had joined the man, not the other way around.
    The newcomer was tall and slender, uncomfortably so in both measures.   He dressed like an undertaker or a puritanical man of God: dark hair, dark waxed moustache, and a dark suit, precise, neatly tailored, the cut of the cloth following his form perfectly.   His shirt was starched so white it appeared to glow from beneath his jacket.   Benjamin’s gaze shifted to a silver watch fob that dangled on a short chain from the man’s the breast pocket, and then down to the rolled parchment he held in his bony hand.
    "Benjamin Jamieson," the man said.   "Greetings and well met on this, ah, shall we call it an auspicious night?   A night above all nights, I believe." He did not offer his hand, and the smile that split his too-handsome face, all sharp angles and shadows in the moonlight, held no hint of mirth or humor.   "I hear you are looking to strike a bargain, to make a deal, to seal a compact?"
    "I . . . I . . ." Benjamin stammered.   He looked to Jeanne for guidance and he was struck not only by how beautiful she was here, in her element, but by the obviously familial similarity between her and the man she had summoned.
    "Indeed, you…you.   That is how most people who come seeking my help think.   It is all about them.   So tell me again, Benjamin Jamieson, what do you want, and what are you prepared to give me to make it happen?   There must be consideration on both sides of a bargain, reward and risk, for it to be good and true."
    "Elizabeth," Benjamin said, barely managing the one word.
    The stranger inclined his head thoughtfully and ran a long bony finger along the ridge of his nose, intimating some sort of implicit understanding was passing between the two of them.   Benjamin did not understand what it meant – no that was a lie, the worst sort, one told to himself.   He couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what he had gotten himself into.   He had come with the witch to a deserted crossroads in the heart of the forest, two roads crossing in a wood, roads that went nowhere and everywhere because they were pathways of the living and pathways of the dead, not roads at all.   In this place where they crossed, where mortality was formed, she had summoned the man trapped beneath the cross.   He didn’t for a moment imagine that the creature that had caused the sudden freeze was divine or benevolent.   There were no wings, no halo, nothing remotely angelic.   Indeed, it was altogether too human to be anything other than the worst