Where Wolves Run: A Novella of Horror by Jason Parent Page A

what those demonic creatures were doing? Taunting them?
    If so, the taunting stopped. A moment of silence gave life to hope. It shattered as easily as the door beneath some terrible force. Konrad peeked through the crack, but his view was limited. He heard a struggle above him. His mother spoke not a word; her screams said it all.
    What sounded like droplets of rain spattered upon the thin rock above him. Konrad envisioned ogres, demons, and other monsters of fables and lore come to life, come to rob him of his mother.
    His bladder let go.
    A great weight wobbled the lid as his mother’s agony grew louder. Konrad reached up and touched his fingertips against the cold rock, wanting to help his mother, knowing he could not. He was weak, just a boy. An incomprehensible power, one he could never hope to match, loomed over him.
    Or was he just too frightened to try?
    A thud hit the slab, then another, hammering it closer to Konrad as it chiseled into the dirt walls around him. Flakes of earth dusted his bushy hair and soiled his clothes. Claustrophobia sent his mind whirling. The walls of his grave spun with it. He would have battered that rock, pushed it up with all his might, but his arms had lost their range of motion. He was trapped, helpless, his mother’s dying screams echoing through his head.
    The rock lid cracked beneath its heavy load. His mother’s woolen tunic filled the creases. Her screaming ended abruptly, then silence. Her shirt ran with blood. It dripped like spilled wine into the storage area.
    For a moment, Mother was still. Her body began to shake. Demons he could not see, three maybe four of them, grunted and slurped. Through the sliver-thin opening, Konrad watched as his Mother lurched skyward, lifted as though she were light as the air itself. Something stepped over the crack. He thought it was a foot, maybe a paw, but no animal he knew had nails like that: sharp talons, hawk-like but as big as knives and jutting from toes covered with black hair.
    As quickly as it came, it was gone, and Mother crashed down onto the lid. Whatever it was had flipped her over. Her dead, unblinking eye stared through the crevice.
    Consciousness waned. The last sounds Konrad heard before blacking out were the ravenous gorging of the animals above and the tearing of human flesh.

 
    2.
     
    Konrad spent two days pinned beneath rock and his mother’s corpse before someone came. He had stopped scratching at the slate early on in his confinement, realizing its futility. Retched vapors wafted in from the exposed entrails rotting above. Madness seeped into his mind until it threatened to unravel.
    His consciousness fleeting, he could not be certain that the footsteps he heard outside were real. His fingertips had lost all sensation. His body, shivering so much his muscles ached, craved nourishment. His mouth had gone as dry as dead leaves. But he did not cry for help, wondering if he truly deserved it, not knowing if it was help that had come.
    Shoes stomped upon the dirt above. They were real, he felt certain, but to whom did they belong? Would their owner beget his salvation or ruination? Despising his own feebleness, Konrad accepted his fate.
    Fear rose once again in his throat as his mother’s decaying body was pulled from the rock. Had they returned for him?
    Blinding light stabbed at his eyes, first through the crack, then from the world as it opened up before him. The silhouette of a man, blurry but certainly human, hovered above.
    Konrad felt hands grasping his shirt. Someone called his name as he dragged Konrad from the filth—someone whose voice Konrad had once longed to hear, the person who had left him and his mother alone, defenseless, to die.
    His mind darkened, his thoughts as black as oblivion. Father .

 
    3.
     
    When Konrad woke , he found himself atop his bed, washed and clothed. His father sat beside him. Everything was warm, calm. A naïve hope that the last three days had been a nightmare was beaten into