Sin-Eater - Chapter 29: Voracity (Patreon)

As he opens his eyes, laying on top of the damp grass, Canta notices that he can’t feel his legs. He listens to the wet squelching sound coming from down below at his waist. His mind, still drunk, already assumes that it knows what’s going on as he lifts his head to tell Alleluia to settle down and let him sleep off the drink before she starts mimicking the rabbits that the two of them had seen while they were in the forest. The first thought that comes to him after that, is that they’re still outside in public too.

The silhouette that he sees hunched over his lower body isn’t Alleluia. Canta screams as he looks at the long, gangly shadow-entity that has dug its face into his knees, its long tongue scraping around the inside of his knee-caps, as it drinks from his bones. He tries to pull himself back, noticing that his body is largely numb from the waist down, as if he were paralyzed by some kind of poison. Seeing that he can’t get away, the tall, lanky creature, that looks like it’s wearing a brimmed hat, places a firm hand onto his chest, pushing him back down into the grass as it continues slurping away. He can feel its tongue digging around inside of his meat, tickling the inside of his knee-cap.

In panic, Canta looks around, seeing that the garden-courtyard is covered in bodies. Dozens, hundreds of people lay on the grass, as if they had all fallen over in their drunken stupors and now were all no longer able to move. There is not even a heaving of their chests to signal that they’re still able to breathe. No creatures hover over them. There only seems to be the one that is busy eating him.

Alleluia is nowhere to be seen.

However, there is something else amiss that Canta notices in his frantic struggle. The bodies of the people aren’t the only things not moving. Nothing else in the world is moving either. Not the swaying grass, not the wavy trees, not the fluffy clouds in the night-sky. It is as if everything in the entire world has been frozen in place, except for him and the thing that eats him. The thing that drinks his marrow, its long tongue wriggling around inside of the top of his femur, which it has poked a tiny hole into.

The man with the hat.

Screaming, he grabs the hand on his chest and bites into it as hard as he can, tearing out a chunk of fouled, blackened meat. As it tears out, the strands of moldy sinew which hold it together, pop noisily apart as his teeth rip through them. A thick, viscous goo that tastes like salted pus flows into his mouth.

The man with the hat disappears in an instant. Vanishing, as if he never was.

Canta crawls back with his arms over the grass. Panting, heaving as he leaks a trail of blood out of his knees. Looking up, he gazes around the courtyard. Time seems to have returned to itself again. The grass sways, the clouds flow, the trees shake in the midnight breeze. His heart thrashes in his chest, his mind already convinced that he was just having a nightmare. This illusion is instantly dispelled however, as he sees the red-glistening grass beneath him, as his legs slowly start to pull themselves back together.

“Alleluia!” calls Canta out into the quiet night, his voice echoing as it travels over the many bodies that lay on the grass all around him. Priests, soldiers, common people, everyone has simply dropped, as if they had died on the spot. “ALLELUIA!” he cries out again, feeling his knee crack as the dislocated cap is pushed back into place.

No response.

Still panting, his body covered in sweat and the smell of liquor, Canta rises to his feet.

As he stands, the grass stops moving, the clouds stop flowing, the bodies stop breathing. Canta’s eyes rise up towards the distance, there across the field from himself. The hair on his arms stands up straight, as he sees the black silhouette of the man with the hat.

His heart beats, his chest pushing itself outward from the strike of its force.

Canta is sure that he didn’t blink, he is sure that the man with the hat didn’t move. But as his heart strikes so violently in that midnight second, he is sure that the entity had moved across the field, coming several bounds closer. It didn’t walk. It didn’t run. It was simply there, there where it wasn’t before.

It doesn’t seem to care about any of the people laying there, frozen in time, it only seems to care about him.

Canta’s heart beats.

The man with the hat comes closer.

Canta runs, turning tail and stumbling on his freshly healed legs, catching himself with a hand on the grass as he sprints the other direction, towards the cathedral, the doors of which are still wide open.

Sin fills the air. The smell of it permeates the frozen night, staining the white stones of these consecrated grounds with its foul putrescence. His eyes dart around over the shadows, looking at everything around him. Nothing stirs. He himself and the man with the hat are the only things that move in the darkness. “Alleluia!” shouts Canta again, seeing a shadowy silhouette to his side, just behind a stone pillar. The man with the hat.

His chest heaving, he runs through the open doors of the cathedral. No light burns inside. The many colorful ribbons and decorations that had filled the air with such cheer before, now feel like grim spectacles in and of themselves; the red-banners streaking across the great hall like deep cuts into its body. None of them flow, as the night-wind has fallen silent. Here too, people line the floor on all sides. Their drinks and food scattered over the ground, as if everyone had fallen down all at the same time in the middle of the party. Canta runs towards the bishop, who hangs there from his piston. He doesn’t move, no matter how much Canta shakes him.

Canta feels his heart beat.

He turns around, looking to the great, open doors of the hall that he had run in through just a few seconds before. There stands the silhouette of the man with the hat, bathed in sickly moonlight.

Canta runs, breaking off into a hallway down to his left.

He doesn’t know why he’s afraid of the creature, more so than he was of the wendigo, or of the thing that Nina became. Perhaps, because it is night, perhaps, because this is supposed to be a safe place that has now been befouled, perhaps because he has gotten soft in only a single month of pampering, or perhaps because now he has someone who he is worried about and can’t find.

“Alleluia!” shouts Canta, his voice echoing down the hall together with his steps, as he rushes down it. He receives no response, save for the violent beating of his heart. Canta runs down the window-lined corridor. Images of forgotten saints and holy patrons of all manner stare down at him through their prisons of stained glass and behind each and every one, with every flick of his eyes, with every beat of his heart, he sees the silhouette of the man with the hat, watching him through the windows.

Canta closes his eyes, running as he tries to remember what had happened last night. There was the party, he got drunk, Alleluia had carried him off into the night and then… everything is a blur. She wouldn’t just leave him there by himself, as clingy as she is, he’s sure of it. Or maybe he’s the one being clingy, since he assumes to know that as a fact.

He feels his heart beat. The hallway reeks of sin. He’s hungry. But this isn’t something that even he wants to eat. It’s a rancid smell, like food gone bad. It turns his stomach to even be inside of its odor.

“Leave me alone!” shouts Canta, running down a familiar corridor. He sprints, turning to the right as he heads up the stairs, sparing a glance down through the banisters to see the man with the hat, standing down below, never having taken a single step to get there. Hurrying up the staircase, he runs down the hallway and into their room, slamming the door shut behind him. “Alleluia!” shouts Canta, seeing her here, frozen in time by the window, as she seems to be holding a rag and wiping her dress off.

Oh.

He remembers now. He ended up drinking too much, even for himself and he threw up on her dress. She had tossed him down to the grass, scolding him and sternly warning him to stay there until she got back from cleaning herself off. The fact that she stands by the window means something to him, it means that even up here, even while she was angry at him, she was watching him carefully down below, keeping an eye on him. The two of them really are clingy for each other.

He feels the hairs on his arms rise, the hairs on his neck stand on end. Canta doesn’t turn around, feeling his heart beating in his chest. He lifts his gaze, looking at the reflection of the man in the hat, who stands behind him, across the room.

“What do you want?!” yells Canta, not turning around to look at the man with the hat. His smell, his stench stains the room, it stains the walls and the window and their bedsheets, it stains him, it stains the person he cares about most after that.

Canta realizes that this is his own fault. He had made a critical mistake. He had given into his emotions again without thinking.

In his desperate search, he had led the creature right to his own most cherished place. In his frantic desire, he had unwittingly opened the door for it.

The man with the hat doesn’t want him. Canta feels his heart beat as he suddenly realizes he was only a tool, a thing for it to use to find what it was unable to detect. A fake person, the thing that it really wanted for reasons unknown. Canta spins around and lunges at the man with the hat, who is standing behind Alleluia, reaching for her.

The two of them fall to the ground as Canta bites into his throat, filling his mouth with fetid rot. A hat falls off into the air and flies to the stones next to them as they roll around over each other.

Canta feels his heart beat again, shaking through his teeth and into the body of the entity, as clamps down tighter, tearing off a piece of the man with the hat.