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Shuttering his eyes, the baron rested his forehead against the dirt and breathed through his nose, focusing on the raw and open gashes scattered across his back. In the silence of his mind, he felt a strange sense brush over his skin, and he opened his eyes to find two deep green orbs staring back at him. A boy, perhaps only slightly younger, crouched beside him, wearing a dirty nightshirt that hung over his grimy feet.
The baron lifted his head, only to get a clearer view of his cellmate, and realization struck him. Willem. He’d seen the boy before, wandering the village. The townsfolk had called him mute. Feral.
His mother had died years before, leaving him at the mercy of his father, whose closest companion was a tankard of ale. It only occurred to the baron in that moment that the last time he’d seen the boy scampering about the village, begging for scraps of food had been months ago.
The baron did not bother to strike conversation, as he neither had the inclination, nor energy, given the pain that scratched for his attention.
Instead, he lowered his head and closed his eyes again.
* * *
Through the dark void of dreamless sleep, a crackling noise reached the baron’s ears, and he opened his eyes to the dark cell. Movement in his periphery drew his attention to the walls, where shadows seemed to crawl toward the opposite corner of the room. The bricks of the wall darkened and cracked in their wake, as if unseen forces punched at them. A bone-penetrating chill washed over the baron, the air carrying something more than winter’s cold. Though the boy had never known the feeling of death, he was certain whatever moved through the room held no vitality.
A glance down at his hands showed the shadows crawling over him, turning his skin an inky black. He lifted his hands into the air, frowning as he examined the strangeness. An incessant hum beneath his skin sent a shiver down his spine. As the shadow crawled up his arm, past his elbow to his shoulder, panic seized his breath. His skin turned a scaly black wherever the darkness touched him.
Through panting breaths, he kicked himself back, as if he could escape it, and the moment his spine hit the brick wall behind him, he flinched at the burn where his wounds festered. Still, the shadow followed, undeterred, and the baron looked toward the door, where he knew the pentrosh was just on the other side of it.
He couldn’t call for help, though. If the pentrosh saw him that way, he’d alert the bishop. They would call him evil, and even if the strange event had never happened to him before, Jericho knew all too well what had taken over him. The same wicked beast which overtook his father. The same black, scaly flesh which he’d seen back at that cabin in the woods.
An ache flared at his forehead, and with shaking hands, the baron reached up to palpate two small bumps protruding through his skin.
He let out a gasp, and when he slapped his hand over his mouth, thinking the pentrosh might hear him, he noticed claws where recently trimmed nailbeds once were.
“No,” he whispered. “This cannot be so.”
A scream jolted his muscles, and he shot his attention toward the corner of the room, where Willem lay on his back twitching in a violent fit. Shaking his head, the baron scrambled on all fours toward him, and as he neared, he noticed something he had not before. Black curling smoke in the shape of an arm crammed down the boy’s throat, the rest of the attacker’s body concealed by the shadows.
The boy let out another gurgled scream, his limbs stretched out and trembling. Jericho reached out for the smoke, but when a palpable sensation smacked his palm, he drew back on a gasp. Red glowing eyes turned toward him, and in the next breath, the shadows lifted along with the chill. A paralyzing burn washed over his flesh, and when he looked down at himself, the black scaly flesh from before had disappeared, returning to his usual skin tone.
The boy stilled, before he opened his eyes and kicked back away from Jericho. “It’s you!”
Jericho did not know what struck him most–his accusation, or hearing the boy speak. “No, I saw you in distress. I came to help.”
“Y-y-you your eyes! They’re b-b-black as night!”
A quick glance back at the door, and the baron pressed his finger to his lips, urging the boy to remain quiet. “I mean you no harm.” He leaned in and spoke low, “Something attacked you.”
“Spirits. They come for me every night. Sometimes, only for a moment. Others, it seems to last hours.”
“What do they want from you?”
“My soul. I will not give it. So they torment me.”
“Your soul. They’re demons, then.”
“Yes. The longer I stay, the more they torture. I cannot tell between dreams and reality.” He pulled his knees tight to his chest, hugging them.
“Why does the bishop keep you?”
“I refuse to speak. To tell them of these nightly visits. The moment I do, my fate is sealed.”
“They will not let you leave this place if you speak of evil entities tormenting you.”
“And so, I am damned either way. This eve, I thought it best if I let the demon have my soul.” A look of shame claimed his face as he lowered his gaze. “Perhaps it would end this misery.”
“I do not think that is so.”
“Why do your eyes change color? They were red and now they are blue.”
