The Call ch.2

The moon had reached its peak in the sky when the procession began. From across the town, one could hear the shuffling of the mass’s feet, as they watched the shadows from their torchlight dance across the alleyway walls. Each and every unit within the macro-organism harmonized through a deep hum, the tone of which only shifted fractionally, and by the whim of the cleric at the head of the crowd, who conducted his orchestra with the slow, fluid flapping of his arms. Directly at his back were a half-dozen men, each with blackened bags over their heads, split into two rows, carrying the foul smelling rotten-wooded coffin that contained the tumbling corpse of a man who’d gouged his own eyes out just twenty-four hours ago. The cleric led the undertakers, whilst the undertakers led the dead, who, in turn, encouraged the whole of the crowd to continue their melodic shuffling. Their signal to stop came when the pure white light of the moon became intertwined with that of the hiding sun, coaxing in the astronomical twilight, and turning their path into a mess of silver and darkness. Through the haze of incense rising up in small smokestacks throughout the crowd, if one raised their head just high enough, or snuck their way to the verymost edge of the crowd, they would be able to catch the slightest glimpse of the rotten casket as it was ceremoniously placed within the center of the six men, and as the cleric sluggishly turned to face the organism, with his hands still outstretched. Before he spoke, he lowered his head an inch and halfway down, meeting the raised arms of the undertakers directly at his sides as they lifted their thuribles closer to his nose. Breathing deep of the incense and raising his head toward the sky, the closest onlookers might have just been able to see a thick, black ooze push its way out of his ear canal, and begin to pool within the ridges of his pinna. 

“My children,” the cleric boomed, breathing new life into the crowd. With wide eyes and baited breath, each and every cell had become entirely fixated on their priest’s next word. “My flock,” he added gently, paternally, and only after feeling the tension reach the backmost section of the crowd, “Our Lord, in all His mercy, has warned us of The Devil’s head rearing. This man, the man formerly known as Randolph Carter, is that warning.” As he finished speaking, he clenched his fists, and the undertakers turned the coffin on its side, letting the stiff corpse roll out onto the dirt. Then, they grabbed up the coffin again, and without pause, began marching it back in the direction of the town. Paying them no mind, the cleric brought his left fist in front of himself in a fluid arc, and opened his hand toward his nearest witness, beckoning her forward. It was a woman with roughly fifty years of age worked into the deep and naturally set sneer on her face, which softened to a look comparable to that of a nervous child as she got closer to her priest. The face of the corpse, meanwhile, was still twisted and broken, stuck between a permanent wail of pain and terror, and the subtle acceptance of bliss. His eyes, meanwhile, perhaps in spite of the dead man’s attempts to dig into them, or perhaps due to the space within that he managed to dig out, were new. Rather than two individual orbs occupying their sockets independently of one another, there seemed to be a stream of some kind linking the space in between now, almost giving the appearance of rushing water from a good distance away. Looking closer, the thought of water could only become more absurd, as one realized that the ‘streams’ in each eye were pushing in different directions, and as one looked on, that the directions were constantly changing. What appeared to be droplets of water at first now looked almost like grains of rice, stacked on top of one another in two adjacent piles, being shaken violently as to disturb their position. Only, the corpse did not shake, and the woman did not touch it, and the cleric had not moved, and the ground remained still. Urging her to bear witness with another wave of his hand, and assuring her in a whisper, “You know what must be done,” the cleric allowed the woman to truly *see*. Inside of the man's eyes were worms. Not maggots, from both the scent and their excitement it was obvious that they did not require rotten flesh to feed. They dug into the red meat inside of the dead man’s skull, ripping into his optic nerve in order to burrow into his brain, lapping at the inner workings of his skull so that they may feed on whatever lay deeper within his wealth, even chewing at one another in their desperate frenzy, leaving half-corpses strewn about to be eaten up and used for multiplication just as all the other viable meat would be. Without so much as a shout, the woman raised her leg high into the air, and smashed her boot down on the head of the corpse, causing it to explode into a mess of blood, bone fragments, and the liquifying remnants of tissue. Giving a bow as his next command, the woman sighed, her face gained back its age, and she followed after the undertakers. Then, the cleric called up the next man, who took the opportunity to stomp the dead man’s face, and along with that, twist his heel into the dirt and press the worms he caught into it. He could hear high pitched gasps emanate beneath him and the smile from his priest told him to move on. One after another, the townsfolk came, stomped, and went, until the man’s head could no longer be told from the dirt, until his body was loose and broken and malleable, until the worms and their feeding had most assuredly been put to an end. Then, and only after the fifty-fifth resident of the town delivered their stomp to the groin of the dead man and gone home to rest, did the undertakers return. Not minding the cleric as he too turned and left, the undertakers all began digging a hole in the dirt, only an inch taller than the man and two feet deep. Kicking the limp body in one foot at a time, one limb at a time, one undertaker at a time, they eventually got it laid back in the hole, sprawled out with its chest facing the sky. Bringing the final end to the ceremony, the undertakers all filled the hole once more, and after flattening it with the backs of their shovels, all walked in lines over the dirt. Three walking to the east as the other three walked to the west, then they’d reverse, then they’d switch to north and south, and reverse their places once more. After doing this for a total of thirty minutes, the undertakers departed as well, leaving the body alone.