Blackfriars Bestiary 2.1 Read online

  The Other Side

  Excerpt from “Chapter I”

  by Jack Buxton

 

  Ayesha Swanson woke up as a stranger in a strange land. Her short-term memory gone and her vision blurred.

  “Ayesha, can you hear me?” a deep voice said, distracting her briefly from the pain that began to throb in the back of her head, she heard a voice from behind.

  Resting inactive on her back, she stared at a sky full of angry looking clouds blowing to the west.

  Lightning struck close by, zigzagging across her vision, but thunder didn’t follow.

  “Wake up!” The voice snapped with an impatience of urgency.

  She turned her head to the left and saw an endless forest of dark, dying trees; all which arched to one side like injured war veterans. Each branch hung with misery while thick, green moss covered every inch of their damp bark; scattered between them, laid disfigured rocks of varied sizes, their formation reminiscent of traditional graveyards.

  A sight that oddly felt pleasing to her.

  “You have to get up,” the anonymous voice pleaded.

  Ayesha felt unnerved by the presence of whispers from an unseen stranger, but sat up, and scanned her vicinity.

  “Where are you?” she finally answered back.

  Just then, she submerged her hands underneath the moist dirt as a painful knot tightened within her stomach.

  “Jesus. Where am I?” she grunted through gritted teeth.

  “Watch out!”

  Ayesha turned and noticed beyond a single rock by her foot, lifeless and uninteresting.

  But that wasn’t the problem. Beyond its dormant moonlit shadow; a faceless hunched creature with stony features groaned as it rose up to its full height.

  It appeared frail in stature, except the creature jerked and twisted like a demented lunatic having its joints electrocuted.

  After one initial high-pitched cry, which sounded like a bellowing baby, there was only the deep inaudible grumble of an old man suffering from acute bronchitis.

  Ayesha was a magician where she came from, but where she woke up now, she had trouble recalling a spell, any spell that she’d previously known by heart, and default to protect her.

  The creature now had grown beyond its original height and towered over seven feet tall.

  The sight alone paralysed her stiff and like a cloudless sky on an Indian summer, her mind was clear. She couldn’t recall any spells; she couldn’t feel anything within her.

  “Shit!” she moaned. “Where has the magic gone?”

  Her bones felt empty, starved of marrow and majesty, and the blood that had once flowed through her virile veins seemed thin and lethargic.

  Her heart was thumping ten to the dozen as panic began to settle. She thought waking up drunk on a park bench in Brixton was bad enough, at least then her attackers had been human.

  The creature threw out an arm, missing her by mere inches. If it had connected, Ayesha’s lifeless skull would have rolled like a skipping stone into a dark pit littered with bodies too mauled to recognise.

  The anonymous voice that first warned her when she awoke then manifested into somebody Ayesha recognised, Mister Mo, her occult bodyguard from London.

  He couldn’t just sit back and watch omnisciently as this creature decapitated her and appeared in a smoke form, spirit-like, taking their disfigured foe’s attention.

  “Run!” Mo yelled.

  Exploding through thickets and dodging hanging vines that twisted and curled like predatory snakes, Ayesha did as her bodyguard said.

  Avoiding the snapping bites and eventually tripping over her feet, she landed hard on the moss layered ground, squelching the unsavoury sensation between her fingers.

  Achingly raising her head, she stared unbelievably at an army of stone soldiers crawling over the filthy plains of this strange world.

  Desperately looking around, she saw a small cave in the not too far distance to her left. It had an old tree lying across its entrance blocking the way, like a homeless drunk sleeping in a shop’s doorway.

  Beneath that, a gap that looked just big enough for her petite frame to slip through and escape.

  I’d like to see one of those freaks follow me in here.