Salem Moon (7 page)

There had been a finite number of stones that were placed on the wooden board holding his body prone, but with each breath the weight of them seemed to grow. He felt his chest cavity begin to crush in on itself
. T
he horror of it was unspeakable!

Through a mélange of sweat, tangled hair and filth, Gabriel struggled to turn his head. He saw the moon disappearing fast as dawn broke over the forest.

Somehow, he had fallen asleep or lost consciousness, he was not sure which. He remembered having the strangest dream
. Surprisingly, it wasn
’
t
a nightmare and although he could not recall it fully, he did recollect the face of a young girl. She had very dark hair and piercing blue eyes.

She was speaking to him, her soft hands on each side of his face, gazing into his violet eyes as if in a trance. She said she loved him, had always loved him.
“
I
’
ve waited a long time for you to come to me. Come to me now, my love
.
”
Her
voice so sweet
, each word spoken sounded like a beautiful melody.
He was a good head taller than she and she tilted her head up until she gently brushed his lips with hers. And yet, he did not know her or anyone like her. Her clothes were unlike any he
’
d ever seen
.
The dream was beyond vivid, she
was so…
real
.
Whoever she was he felt his heart beating fast, his pulse quickening, his soul longing for her in a way that was both agonizing and comforting at the same time. Was this what being in love was like?

As he came fully back to his senses, now awake, the dream nagged at him, her face
and
her touch unforgettable. He tilt
ed his head downward as much as he could and there was Hunter, laying very still, as close to Gabriel as he could get.

“
Hunter
,
”
Gabriel
’
s
voice
was
an unrecognizable croak.

There was no movement. Try as he might, Gabriel could not lift his arm or hand to nudge the dog from his sleep.

“
Hunter…wake up… boy
…
”
Each
word was
becoming sheer torture.

Gabriel looked hard at Hunter. His chest was not moving up and down in the gentle rhythm of sleep. Underneath his head, on the side where the eye had been pummeled with the rock was a pool of congealed, deep crimson colored blood. Unknown to Gabriel, the dog had suffered a cracked skull, causing the brain to swell and the blood around it to bleed out. Hunter was dead.

“
Noooo!
”
Gabriel cried out in anguish. His eyes, dry and hot, stung with the tears of loss.

His sister was most likely gone, his father had been arrested. Gabriel knew it was unlikely he would see either of them again, at least not in this life and now, Hunter, his faithful friend. All of them
just…
gone
.
Now, h
e understood what it meant to be utterly and totally alone.

I
n the quiet solitude of the morning, he heard a rustling sound, coming from the edge of the woods, in a thicket close to where he lay.

He could barely make out, the faint glitter of eyes, peering directly at him. They belonged to a creature of perhaps Hunter
’
s height.
Maybe a wolf
, Gabriel thought
, although
, he
’
d personally never seen one.

When Gabriel caught a glimpse of its face, he noticed that the snout was much shorter than the common grey timber wolf. And gradually, as it showed the whole of itself, Gabriel was in such awe of the creature that
he
momentarily forgot his pain, his loneliness.

It was in fact a wolf, but not any ordinary wolf
. The beast was
quite large, huge really, but even that did not inspire awe. What was so fantastical about the creature was that it was entirely white, without a hint of gray, as pure as the first snow of winter
.

As it walked toward Gabriel, he
noted the subtle gentleness in its soft brown eyes.
  It held its head high, walking in a slow, steady gait, fearing nothing.

Surely, this must be his mind playing tricks on him
.
He
’
d been without food or water for over twelve hours now. Coupled with pain from the unrelenting weight of the stones
, he might be hallucinating. Or
perhaps he was dead and was seeing something supernatural, something not of this world
.
The wolf was truly majestic. Gabriel had never seen a creature so purely and unequivocally beautiful
.

Yet as it drew ever nearer, he knew that it was
real
. In fact, he remembered reading about this creature in a book, one of the countless books he
’
d read on nature. It was an Arctic wolf. It was not possible that it should have wandered this far south, but here it was
.

Gabriel was so fixated on the animal that he failed to notice the murmuring of people
who
’
d
once again gathered around him. The wolf, however did take notice of them and
its
demeanor changed at once. The soft brown eyes began to change, the pupils were still brown, but now aroun
d each of them was a thin blood
red
-
colored circle. The short snout crinkled as it silently bared its teeth.
They
were larger than an average wolf, so pointed that one did not need to touch them to know they were razor sharp.

It did not panic and run
.
I
nstead,
it fixed its eyes upon the many men, woman and children that stood stock still in mortal fear. That did not stop them from whispering amongst themselves
. They spoke in hushed tones of excitement and fear. The very
existence of this animal was proof that Gabriel was indeed a powerful sorcerer
.
The wolf openly scanned them, giving the impression that it was searching for someone in particular.

Gabriel was unafraid of it. He sensed something vaguely familiar about it
. W
hy
? H
e did not know.

It
seemed the creature had found its prey
. Its eyes fixated on this person, narrowed,
and in a flash, it crouched and leaped into the air. For a moment, Gabriel thought it appeared to be flying, but it was only that
the hind legs of
the beast
were
so powerful
. In
one incredible jump it managed to land within inches of Thomas Snow.
At once, the creature
’
s
lovely countenance changed
.
It snarled and growled mightily, its enormous teeth
dripped
with saliva as if it were hungry.

Thomas shook in fear and tried to back away from it, slowly so as not to anger the
animal
any further. With preternatural speed an enormous paw, which held claws the size of knives, swiped across his face, leaving deep gashes from the top left side of his forehead down to his chin. Immediately, blood seeped up from the wounds. He raised his hand
s
up
to his face and gasped. The look of shock and terror on his face sent shivers up Gabriel
’
s spine.
When Thomas
pulled
his hand away, he
saw the enormous amount of blood on it. The last thing he
’
d seen before his world went black were the eyes of the beast. The redness swirled and churned until they created two blazing balls of fire
. 
Not only did they burn with the light of fire,
even Gabriel and certainly, the crowd could feel the heat emanating from them.

When the fire filled the entire eyes of the wolf, flames shot out from them, engulfing Thomas
’
s whole body in a matter of seconds. His screams were high pitched
and agonizing
.
To be burnt alive
like that
, the horror of it was unimaginable
,
thought Gabriel, watching, speechless as Thomas
’
s
arms flailed every which way, as he twisted and turned,
before
finally falling in a flaming heap. His screams were no more. Those who
’
d stood near him backed away, while others fled in mortal terror, not daring to look back upon the gruesome sight.

The wolf stood unaffected by the agony he
’
d inflicted upon Thomas
. I
t watched peacefully, its demeanor
becoming
soft and welcoming
again
.
Monstrous!
Even Gabriel, whose own death sentence was harsh and severe, thought that burning to death was a far worse way to die.

At least he
’
d died quickly
. T
he shock of the unendurable pain had killed him. In contrast, Gabriel could have gone on for days under the killing weight, just as he suspected others had suffered this fate
, p
erhaps in faraway lands where it was not considered an
un
acceptable form of punishment.

Thomas
’
s
body disintegrated before the eyes of all still present, leaving only a pile of ashes and bits of bone fragments. The air was pungent with the smell of smoke and cooked flesh.

All at once
,
Gabriel knew why this creature was vaguely familiar
.
It was the entity, the voice in his head, now incarnate, showing itself for the first time, displaying what it was truly capable of.

No mercy was given to Thomas. After all, he had not shown any mercy to Abigail. Thomas had been paid back tenfold for the injustice he
’
d perpetrated upon his family and he had the entity to thank for it. Gabriel did feel a pang of sorrow, that it had come to this, but he found it hard to find compassion in his heart for the fate of Thomas. Although
it
was very unlike Gabriel
’
s usual compassionate nature, it was of no concern to him at that very moment, where
the entity
originated from. Whether it was good or evil, it made no difference to him.

T
he mid-July air suddenly changed
. It became
thick and hazy
,
appearing as if everything was covered by an opaque, shimmering veil. Gabriel was now alone with the white wolf. All others had fled in terror. Hysterical, they called upon God as they ran, to save them from the evil of such a powerful sorcerer as Gabriel and his
“
demon
”
wolf.

He knew he could not last much longer, that death was imminent. Hovering between life and death he witnessed the strangest thing he
’
d ever seen. Stranger even than the voices in his head, the deer
’
s death in the woods, the appearance of the wolf or the horrible death by fire of Thomas Snow.

An aura of sorts surrounded the wolf and as it did, it changed shape. A preternatural light so bright, it hurt Gabriel
’
s eyes to even look upon it exuded from the wolf and completely encompassed the entire area, even piercing through the edges of the dark woods. Little by little, the wolf was changing itself into something else. How this was possible, Gabriel did not know. He only knew that he was not afraid.

As the light dimmed, a figure of a man replaced the wolf. Not any man, but one
who
was extraordinarily beautiful. Gabriel stared in awe.

The man was tall, possessing the exquisite features of
the glorious
angel
s
,
depicted
in the paintings of master Italian renaissance painter
,
Sandro Botticelli. His nose was straight and narrow, the lips full, the jaw line exact in its perfection. His hair
was
a radiant golden blond and his eyes were the same soft brown as the wolf
’
s, only much larger. Over his eyes were lashes long enough to cast a slight shadow over exquisitely carved cheekbones.  His trim, lean body was clothed in the finest European style. A hint of delicate, white French lace was visible at his neck and wrists.