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bb-bare-bones · 22 days

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Beating a Dead Crop: A Children of the Corn Retrospective

By Tabby Knight (instagram - tabby.knight6)

Artwork by Dy Dawson @xgardensinspace

If you’ve seen all of the Children of the Corn films in the franchise (dear God) I’m both somewhat impressed and also vaguely concerned for your mental wellbeing. I counted a total of 12 entries in the series, including the 2020 reboot and the 1983 short film Disciples of the Crow. Not bad, considering Stephen King’s original short story clocks in at approximately 10,000 words, and ends with a degree of finality that doesn’t exactly invite a sequel.

For those unfamiliar with the source material, Children of the Corn was originally published in Penthouse Magazine in 1977 and later reprinted in King’s short story anthology, Night Shift (1978) and follows a young married couple who accidentally hit a child with their car while driving through rural Nebraska. Burt and Vicky, who are road tripping to California in a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage, decide to put the boy (dead) in the back of their car and drive to the nearest town, Gatlin, for help. The shock of hitting the boy has been abated, somewhat, by the fact that he was likely already dead when they went over him — his throat's been slit from ear to ear. They are a little disturbed, however, to find a crucifix made of corn husks in the boy’s suitcase.

They arrive in Gatlin only to find it deserted, and the only building showing any sign of recent activity is the church, which is defaced, trashed, and decorated with corn. Inside, Burt also finds a record of births and deaths, and manages to piece together the town’s dark history: some twelve years ago, all the adults in town were massacred, and the children appear to have created a corn-worshipping cult in their absence. Since then, every registered death in town has occurred on the victim’s nineteenth birthday.

By the story’s conclusion (Spoilers) Vicky’s been mutilated and crucified on a cross of corn, and Burt finds himself trapped in Gatlin’s cornfields, pursued — and ultimately consumed — by a mysterious entity that lives amongst the rows. It ends with the children, who are informed by their nine-year-old cult leader, Isaac, that He Who Walks Behind the Rows is displeased with their inability to dispatch Burt, and has lowered ‘the age of favour’ from nineteen to eighteen as a punishment. As a result, the town’s eighteen-year-old residents march into the corn to sacrifice themselves to their god. One of those dispatched, Malachi, leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend, who fantasises about setting fire to the corn in retribution. We end with a line that still sticks with me years after I first read it: “Dusk deepened into night. Around Gatlin the corn rustled and whispered secretly. It was well pleased.”

And there you have it. It’s not King’s best short story by any means, but it’s far from his worst, and it has its own grim, mystical charm that appealed to me as a teenager and still appeals to me now. The cult operating in Gatlin works primarily because of its elusiveness, and its ambiguity. We don’t see the children overthrow the town, we see very little of the entity that lurks in the corn, and there’s no flashy final showdown. There’s a tragedy to the children that fails to translate to the films, a quiet sort of helplessness emphasised by their final march into the cornrows. The conclusion feels inevitable – this is the way things are in Gatlin, and it’s horrendous, but it’s unstoppable. It just is.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the film adaptations manage to capture this same sense of quiet horror, the idea that those who commit such atrocious evil are themselves victim to a larger, far more powerful force that cannot be overthrown or disobeyed.

It’s a shame, then, that the very first film adaptation – a 1984 venture starring Linda Hamilton – dispatches this sense of ambiguity and dread entirely. Instead we are left with a standard, far less eerie narrative structure, in which Burt rescues Vicky, teams up with a couple of the less murderous children, and manages to set fire to the cornrows, ostensibly killing (at least temporarily – 5 sequels and several reboots, remember) He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Instead of the quiet despair of the short story, emphasised by the pregnant Ruth’s secret desire to see the corn burn, we get a final jump scare and a happy ending as Burt, Vicky, and the two kids they appear to have adopted set out for Seattle on foot.

There are merits to the first film, at least. John Franklin makes an iconic and genuinely menacing (if a little campy) villain out of Isaac, who outshines the elusive creature behind the rows as the primary antagonist. Courtney Gains makes for a memorable Malachai - morally grey and surprisingly likeable, far more fleshed out than his literary counterpart. The supporting cast of Gatlin kids are suitably freaky, at least until Sarah and Job are established as good kids, which diminishes the effect somewhat, especially when the short story did so well as to establish the children as equal parts good and bad, victims of a larger system as well as perpetrators of violence.

By creating a binary in which children like Sarah and Job are “all good,” while those such as Isaac and Rachel (the crazed adolescent responsible for that final scare) are “all bad,” we lose that sense of dread. Worse still, we lose the last remaining shred of realism in a film that has Burt pursued through the corn by a tunnelling monster right out of Tremors. As I said, we essentially lose the very point the source material is trying to convey.

That’s not to say it’s a wholly unlikeable film, of course, or that it’s universally hated by horror fans. Lots of people, myself included, look at the film with a great deal of fondness. But that doesn’t change the fact that it falls into that famed category of questionable Stephen King adaptations. It also doesn’t change the fact that it didn’t warrant a sequel, let alone five, and a string of ill-fated reboots with sequels of their own.

Horror movies and sequels go hand in hand, obviously, but unlike the other sequel machines of the 1980’s, the Children of the Corn franchise lacks the same fanatical following. When quizzed on franchises and their sequels, diehard horror fans tend to have very specific preferences. They have a favourite Nightmare on Elm Street, (Mine’s 3) a preferred Jason Vorhees (8-bit video game Jason, though I suspect I’m an outlier) and strong opinions on the superior Child’s Play film (It’s Bride). But with Children of the Corn, that level of diehard devotion appears to be lacking. I’ve met a lot of horror fans, and I’ve never had any of them tell me that Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, for example, is the best of the lot.

I don’t want to generalise, of course, because I’m sure someone out there is getting ready to contact me and tell me of their undying devotion to Urban Harvest. I only mean that as a collective, horror fans are incredibly tolerant of sequels, and often can discuss the merits of part six over part ten. A cursory glance at cinema attendance for the new Halloween and Scream sequels alone indicates a market for the same formula over and over again. I would argue, however, that Children of the Corn doesn’t necessarily fit into that category. With the possible exception of 666, which promises the return of the first film’s Isaac, none of the sequels on Wikipedia’s handy-dandy list either catch my eye or spark my memory, and I can’t be the only one.

The question, then, is why keep churning them out? Let’s not forget that this isn’t just a case of a one-off direct-to-video sequel, or even a trilogy. We’re talking about five direct sequels to the 1984 film, plus three maybe sequels (Revelation, Genesis, and Runaway) and two reboots (2009 and 2020/23).* The obvious answer is of course, money, but you can’t seriously tell me all these direct-to-video sequels are churning out bucketloads of profits. They’re certainly not churning out rave reviews, either from critics or audience members.

My best guess is that, like me, people continue to be drawn to and affected by the original source material, and want to create a film in that same vein. But if that’s the case, why the continual failure to accurately adapt that same source material? Why create a narrative in which He Who Walks Behind the Rows is easily dispatched by outsiders, when the real terror of the story (at least in my opinion) stems from His unrelenting hold over the children, even in the face of their growing resentment?

The 2020 adaptation, much like those that have come before it, has received mostly negative reviews, with an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 22/100 on Metacritic, and a staggering 1.6/5-star rating on Letterboxd. While I haven’t seen it myself (yet – if I do, it’ll bring my total number of CotC films up to…3) what I can glean from Wikipedia, Bloody Disgusting, and Letterboxd is that once again, the film fails to either accurately adapt the source material or, at the very least, capture the same spirit of terror the original story managed to convey.

In a perfect world, such universally abysmal reviews would signal a long-overdue death for the franchise, and I’d like to say I’m optimistic enough to hope for its end. But this is horror we’re talking about, and we appear to be in an age of unrelenting sequels for all genres regardless. And worst of all, there’s a backlog of twelve films whose very existence leave me pessimistic and cynical.

Incidentally, if you’d like to catch a Children of the Corn film that kind of captures the spirit of the original, consider checking out the aforementioned 1983 short film Disciples of the Crow. It’s not a perfect adaptation (Burt and Vicky still manage to escape unscathed, god damnit) but it goes a long way towards establishing that eerie sense of mindless violence and inevitability I talked about. It’s campy as hell, of course, terribly acted and not exactly scary, but it is only 18 minutes and free to watch on YouTube, and not too bad for a student film. At the very least, Burt isn’t pursued by a tunnelling monster as he attempts to set fire to a cornfield.

*In light of the pandemic, the 2020 rendition of Children of the Corn didn’t receive either mass distribution or a theatrical release until 2023. Interestingly, it was apparently the first film since the 1984 adaptation to even receive a theatrical release. Go figure.

#barebones #bbqueue #horrormovies #horrorwriting #80shorror #childrenofthecorn #bare bones articles

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allnovellas · 10 months

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Exploring Different Story Genres: Horror

Can a writer truly scare a reader with just words? How can you, as a writer, utilize the elements of horror to create a story that not only instills fear but also captivates the reader? The Essence of Horror Horror as a genre has been chilling readers to their bones for centuries. The primary objective of horror is to evoke fear and discomfort, making readers confront the darker corners of…

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#GenreExploration #HorrorWriting #Writing tips

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aworryingdarkness · 10 months

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#horror #writing #horrorwriting #horror writing #thesea #the sea #the ocean #theocean #octopus #squid #kraken #cthuhlu #the deep ones #thedeepones #oceanhorror #ocean horror #tales of the sea #talesofthesea

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minyunacrescent · 8 months

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asher-gravesend · 10 months

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My first online story!!!

#horrorwriting #writing

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wolvesandwoodlands · 1 year

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“The beast could hardly be called a wolf. She had no fur, nor any of the redeeming physical qualities of the coyotes or bears that shared their woods.”

From Silver: An Unholy History of Wolfkind

#booklr #book quotes #bookblr #bookworm #lgbt books #new books #book blog #bookquote #readers #books quotes #booknerd #booklover #wolvesandwoodlands #books #quotes #horrorwriting

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daniel-profeta · 4 months

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The Knife

You are so fucking tired of the potholes. Lately it’s been raining more and more and now it’s pouring down from the heavens with a vengeance, filling the pesky holes in the road and making it impossible to navigate properly. You could kill someone right now with the amount of rage you feel, but you somehow manage to hold yourself together as you barrel down the street. You make a left turn and head into the woods just outside of what used to be your home.

The city is in shambles. The world is going to heal without you, but it has changed so drastically since the return of the demons. You drive haphazardly through the trees as the truck nearly spins out of control multiple times. The radio plays some poppy 80s songs as you wonder how any stations are still active. So much doesn’t make sense, but none of it matters anymore because you’ve lost the only thing you ever actually cared about. They ruined your life. This planet was already dying, you had known for a long time and had been preparing for years. You had always considered yourself to be more cultured and intelligent than the hicks that used to live out here, but you committed fully to your bunker and prep work. What you hadn’t counted on was the weirdness of it all. The impossibility of how events had actually played out. Now your family was dead, and it was entirely your fault. The trees sway in the wind and the leaves darken the sky above you as lighting flashes become your main source of illumination. Though it was supposed to be midday, you could never take vision for granted any longer. Not after how many illusions you have fallen victim to already. You change the station and park the car. Deep in the woods you contemplate your family’s terrible fate as you pull out a pack of cigarettes. Vaping has not really been an option since the beginning of the end. The radio is now playing some pretentious hipster shit. You roll down a window and let the engine run. Some rain gets in and eats away at the mat on the floor, but you couldn’t care less. Your fingers move to your lips as you take a long slow drag, letting the ashes fall to the floor of the truck. Your mind clears and you look around at the filthy vehicle. You’ve got a large pistol lying on the seat next to you and you reach out to cradle it in your filthy hands. This is what became of you. You built a good stable life for yourself, and you were anything but content with it! The gun fits snugly into your palm, as it had just hours before when you tried to defend yourself. The reason you came out here was to go down in a fight against them, but unfortunately you see nothing but blurry trees as it keeps raining. You could have sworn they retreated into the woods, but now you find you’re questioning your own memory. That’s been happening more and more lately. Lightning flashes again. You breathe in another lungful, wishing the smoke would just choke you and be done with it.

Some idiot on the radio starts to introduce the next song. It’s called Lightning in a Bottle. You are just about to change the station, but the irony of the title stops you. It starts playing, and of course it’s some gimmicky indie folk garbage, but it gets you thinking. Your whole life you’ve been trying to make things work. Trying to control the situation despite bad circumstances or being dealt a shitty hand. Many years ago, before you lost touch with the larger world around you, mom had said something that had stayed with you your whole life. She said you were destined for greatness. She could simply feel it and there was no question about it, you were going to do something incredibly special and important with your life. You were supposed to be someone worth being. But here it feels like you have lost the only people you ever helped. No one has ever benefited from your presence in any meaningful way, and it looks like no one ever would. A single tear falls onto the steering wheel as the song continues in the background. It is followed by a river rivalling the downpour outside. You’ve been holding back for an exceptionally long time, and since your loss you have been unable to grieve. You just had to take it in stride, the same way the uncaring universe has taken everything from you for as long as you can remember. Mom died only 6 years ago. Good thing she passed while she still had faith in her dreams for you. You had taken everything from her, you stole her youth, her financial stability, and you drove her apart from your father. Despite her claims to the contrary, you had always known the truth. You blink rapidly but it does nothing to stop your cries. Your body spasms. The song starts to shift and change.

Buzzzing. A persistent and grating buzzing cuts through the sound of acid rain splattering and sizzling on the roof and hood. You attempt to compose yourself but find it impossible. They finally decided to show up. This is where they will kill you. This is where everything will fall apart for good. Their formless bodies will smother you and their mouths and hands will tear flesh from bone and atom from atom.

The world around you starts to spin, slowly at first but picking up speed. The stupid song on the radio seems to distort and the lyrics get weirdly specific. Then the wind outside calms and the spinning stops as you focus and inhale again. Toss the cigarette out the window. Watch its light go out. Feel the world slow down as you steel yourself for a fight. Hands tighten on your weapon, finger on the trigger. These are your hands. This is your last moment, your final stand. Most people aren’t given notice before they die. You’re one of the lucky few who can pinpoint the exact moment. Your perspective changes so much when you’re facing the unknown. The ultimate change. You realize they aren’t going to get you. You realize you always knew it. You realize you won’t let them have the satisfaction. You realize this is what you wanted anyway. You open the door and step out as the music fades into the background, turning robotic and alien. When will that damn song end? Was the world just an illusion? Why are you still stalling? What are you waiting for?

You look around as an incredible wave of peace washes over you. It’s difficult to believe just how calm you are as you squint at the tree line searching for signs of movement. You see nothing as you raise your hands. A flash of light blinds you and the song is finally gone, replaced by nothing. You fall to the ground, leaves and dirt scattering from your impact. Your ears are ringing. Your eyes open and you realize you are lying on your side. Blood is pouring like thoughts out from you. The gun you dropped is too far to reach now and wave after wave of pain starts to radiate from your head, buzzzing out throughout your entire body. You feel something sharp in the small of your back. Why are you still alive? What is this torture they devised for you? Why didn’t your weapon strike true, the way it had struck your only child when you thought she was one of them. Why did it now fail you and leave you unable to move or think as the world fades in and out with each halting breath you take? The pain in your back has gone numb. Not that it matters… Your bullet wound in your skull is enough to give you more screaming nerves than you had ever encountered in your life. You scream and try to get up, only to move a couple inches and fall to your back, looking up at the sky as the rain pours down. You scream again as the acid rain stabs your eyes and blinds you. Colors mix and change and distort like a watercolor painting as you try to scream again. But this time nothing comes out. You close your eyes. The rain eats through your eyelids and gets in anyway. Not even the tears are keeping the rain out. Your skin burns. This is how you will die, alone and unwanted, unable to even take your own life. Then you reach behind yourself and claw at the numbness in your back, pulling a small knife out. Where the hell did this come from? This blessed rusty knife with a red hilt is the kindest thing you have. You hold it above your heaving chest and plunge it downwards. You feel resistance give way and you feel a mild foreign presence enter your skin. But it doesn’t really hurt as all your pain is falling away. You almost feel like you’re watching yourself as you lift the knife out, slide it to a new point in your chest, and bring it up and down again. Again. Again. Now your hands move to your belly and you try again, but this time your arms are too weak. You have a sense of strange tunnel vision, and you see pale glowing eyes surround you. But you don’t care. You got to yourself before they did. A sudden burst of flame and light strikes down, burns away the eyes, and sets you free.

At least, that’s what you saw at the end. Who knows how real any of it was? You’re floating now. Watching it all play out. Alone. You used to fear dying alone, but now you realize you only ever feared the not knowing. This isn’t so bad. This isn’t so bad. This was never all that bad.

song i wrote based on this story. thx for reading!!

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abigailmthomasauthor · 1 month

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rhokisb · 1 year

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Writblr Intro (Updated 2024)

I guess I should have done this before just jumping headlong into my rambling ass posts, but I'm here now!

ABOUT ME

I'm Rhokis (pen-name) and you can call me R or Rhokis, I'm not picky.

She/Her/They pronouns. Whatever works best for you.

I've been writing my whole life, went to university for writing but alas the program was changed from Creative Writing to Technical Writing just as I entered so I'm not "formally" trained on the creative side like some are.

Currently working in green tech, for corporate overlords who've ruined my dream of being a part of the solution.

There's gonna be a lot of DnD-related content here as well as fiction writing. I promise to put more of my WIPs here eventually, but right now I'm enjoying the supportive environment of the DnD community here on Tumblr while I work on the campaign I've been running since the summer. Plus, that's still writing too and I'd appreciate having more people to chuckle at the hilarity of our group as we continue our campaigns.

ABOUT MY WRITING + GOAL

I enjoy writing horror, science fiction, speculative fiction, and a dash of fantasy here and there.

I've been featured on The NoSleep Podcast a couple of times, currently working on expanding my portfolio.

I hope to be published in an anthology within the next 5 years (baby-step goals for me).

My writing style is very geared towards voice. The main thing people point out in my stories is that, much like in real life, I have a strong voice which is both a good and bad thing. Working on taming that moving forward.

PROJECTS

"Black Widow" (WT, WIP) - Been working on this story since I was around 14. Started it during the exam season and worked on it throughout a summer. Originally over 150 pages handwritten that have been mushed into someTHING over the last decade and a bit. Thriller/drama. Forever WIP.

"WEYARD : The Novel" - a novelization of our groups current 2.5+ year campaign. Throughout 2024 I'll be posting snips in near chronological order for your enjoyment and for feedback. Fantasy, horror, comedy.

"There Are No Strings on Me" (WIP) - Horror SS

"Under the Bridge" (WIP) - Horror SS

"Dragonlance" (Current DnD campaign, original 1980's v. personally updating to 5e for my group, currently on DL2) - The thing you'll probably hear the most about from me.

I'm not going to lie, been fan-girling about my OC and my friend's Dragonlance campaign OC's lately, so there's a lot of THAT on my blog right now. I will work on putting out more of my original fiction moving forward.

I'm always open to new friends. The first step in writing is having a supportive community to scream into the void with. I appreciate all of you!

Like my DnD ramblings? Check tags #Weyard and #Dragonlance for more content

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culturecultpress · 1 year

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CultureCult Press invites fiction submissions for publication in its anthology of stories about rivers “THE RIVER IN US ALL” (Expected release: July 2023). The final date for submission is May 12, 2023 Link to submission guidelines: http://culturecult.co.in/anthology-submissions/ Feel free to use any of the following writing prompts or use one of your own! – Two things have kept her away from her hometown. Her abusive father, and the river she loved which had turned monstrous one stormy monsoon and claimed her best friend. After all these years, she decides to return. – A group of friends are lost on their way to the cabin in the woods. It’s night, and they camp out by a river, which holds a dark secret that is set to end all of their lives by dawn! – An interstellar scientist working on the mythical cure to ageing, stumbles upon a river in a distant planet, whose water seems to flow backwards. He begins to believe that the river is the key to his success. – In a magical world, a river flows through the center of the land, connecting different kingdoms and providing life-giving water to all. An evil sorcerer animates a mountain and compels it to block the river. Everyone is scared, but a young heroine decides to fight back. – A small town by a river is plagued by a series of strange disappearances. The curious church organist must navigate the murky waters of the river and the murkier secrets of the townspeople to solve the mystery. – The river was dying. The reasons were too many – natural, economic, political.. Even as his fishing business got decimated bit by bit, he began to discover the presence of a strange river full of fishes, inside his own body.. PLEASE NOTE that this is an anthology with a THEME. ONLY those fictions that feature a river in a prominent capacity, shall be considered for publication. Stories of all genres are invited. . . . . #CallforSubmissions #SubmissionCalls #anthologysubmissions #authorsupportingauthors #authorscommunity #authorssupportingauthors #writersofinstagram #writerscommunity #writersnetwork #writingcommunity #writingprompts #writinginspiration #writingtip #writenow #culturecult #horrorwriter #horrorstory #myster https://www.instagram.com/p/CrgSoDMJPHk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#callforsubmissions #submissioncalls #anthologysubmissions #authorsupportingauthors #authorscommunity #authorssupportingauthors #writersofinstagram #writerscommunity #writersnetwork #writingcommunity #writingprompts #writinginspiration #writingtip #writenow #culturecult #horrorwriter #horrorstory #myster

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inventingreality · 9 months

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#horrorwriter #amwriting #writingcommunity #indieauthor #indieauthors

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christabelq · 1 year

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No sooner had my excited squealing at having a story accepted for the HUSH, DON'T WAKE THE MONSTER anthology subsided, than I received this picture of the cover from the editor, which totally set me off again 😊😊😊. I realize I'm biased, but I think it looks amazing. Also amazing is the list of contributors... some truly outstanding female horror writers. I can't tell you what an honor it is to be joining them. This is the blurb...

A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by and in tribute to, Stephen King.

Stephen King is a seminal writer of horror, whose influence transcends the literary sphere, having also taken the cinematic world by storm – and ultimately delivering nightmares to generations for almost five decades.

This fourth anthology of the Women in Horror series edited by Azzurra Nox brings together a diverse group of female writers who contribute their personal twist to the works of Stephen King.

Featured authors include: Andrea Teare, Rachel Bolton, Marnie Azzarelli, Lauri Christopher, Kay Hanifen, Hannah Brown, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, L. E. Daniels, Andrea Slye, 👉Christabel Simpson👈, Alisha Galvan, Rebecca Rowland, Cheryl Zaidan, Amy Grech, Jane Nightshade, Trish McKee, and Azzurra Nox.

💀

The book isn't due to be released until March 2023, but it's available for pre-order at Amazon now if anyone is interested. This is the link...

So excited!

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aworryingdarkness · 1 year

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1635.

The thing squirmed restlessly, as much as the packed, clotted and centuried earth above and around it would allow. With flesh in various stages of decomposition, the silver in the chains which bound it bit into what remained of muscle, a perennial fire in the blood just as mercury is to a man. But whereas that metal would lead a human into a swift and fevered demise as it pulsed round the circulatory system, no such respite was available to the creature. Oh, there was a casket of course - or rather a crate; heavy, coarse and nailed shut through coils of more silver chains - its captors hadn't been so naive as to bury the thing in open ground. And most tellingly, the box had been packed with native soil after its captive had been interred, safe in the malicious knowledge that this would keep the creature (un?)alive in perpetual, claustrophobic torment. Yes; the stake, the sword and the cleansing fire might have been a more permanent solution, but the executors of this plan had injected more spite than efficiency into their long-awaited ritual. How long ago had this incarceration begun? In all honesty it was difficult to tell. Time became meaningless when one couldn't tell the difference between waking and sleep, dream and memory, fantasy and regret. The thorough interment with seismic cries of howling justice rang in the thing's own ears for what seemed like years, long after the jailers had ceased making the noise itself. After that, a long sullen silence. An explosive reaction of rage and despair was what the band of villagers had truly wanted, so what point in letting them win any further? Plans of escape and revenge had long vied for attention in the thing's mind, although foremost among these was the assurance that even here in the earth the creature would outlive them all. For if time had taught it anything, it was that no situation lasts forever. Ah, time. And what long, glorious years they had been. The creature itself had no gender, strictly speaking, but instinct had gauged it most practical to inhabit a male host. The man had tastes and gluttonies of his own, of course, and the thing inside him had amplified these to levels which would have finished mere mortals. Uncounted years had passed, filled with wine, women and song. And blood. Always blood. For the blood was the life; and what was life for, if not living? That the creature and its host deprived others of this in the name of sustenance was... well, nature's way. Those who do not flourish are destined to perish, after all. There were those who would argue - and convincingly so - that there was little of 'nature' about the creature and its hemal symbiosis, but it was certainly in the nature of the creature. And that was enough. Besides, there were plenty of things still to be discovered by the humans in this world. Some of these because they lacked the tools, some because they just weren't yet ready for the knowledge. The thing in the ground was partly covered by these classifications; but more that, those who had deduced its methodology were not destined to live long enough to pass on that information. And so, as the decades passed, a secondary game began to be played. That of a nomadic survival. Oh, would-be-assassins arriving trembling at the threshold did not worry the man/beast-thing unduly, but carelessness could be fatal all the same. Through time, the blasphemous symbiosis fabricated differing identities at various locations. It did not do to live too long in the gaze of suspicious men, and this way the thing could be seen to grow ‘old’ in one place before disappearing, presumed dead. At this point of course, it would re-locate to another of its former palaces, a young and distant relative of the one who lived there previously, ready to take up the mantle of benign landowner or noble boyar. After the cycle of feeding and recrimination had run its course - usually within fifty years or so - it would be time to move to another carefully and secretly maintained ruin and begin again. The crimson legends that the creature left in its wake made sure that no one else would inhabit the castles. Well, rarely in any case. Unwelcome tenants could be disposed of before the thing’s official ‘arrival’ as easily as prying villagers afterward, and it was not likely that these hermits would be missed in any case. But occasionally - rarely even, although not as rarely as the beast would have liked - a challenge arose. Whether it was one who heeded the local folklore as well as having the nouse to think around it, or just a particularly charismatic chancer who could whip up a mob large enough to present a logistical problem, life of this longevity did not come without... obstacles. It was one such obstacle which had rapped - iron on oak - one windswept night, in years of which the creature had now lost count. The thing had felt the stranger's approach, of course. An eager, brash inquisitiveness in the psychic aether; a soul seeking to prove itself to others rather than any solemn determination. There would be no point in ignoring the visitor, since vigorous flambeaux advertised the presence of life (of a sort) within the castle walls. With no mesnie in attendance - an indulgence long since spurned in the name of hitherto uninterrupted anonymity - it was left to the creature to see to its own domestic affairs. Roused out of a bored reverie, the host appeared at the door without the scuffing or signs of strain that the visitor expected. The castle's lone inhabitant towered over the fool in the stone doorway. As the figure stood, snapped out of his boisterous adventure, the creature sensed no prying eyes outside the walls and so leapt upon this... opportunity, with brutal efficiency. At once enveloping and flattening its prey, lightning-fast metamorphosis led to large membranous wings acting both as propellant and constrictor, while myriad pincers and fangs erupted at every point of contact with the now-shrieking idiot. Sounds the intruder made were lost to the outside world, cocooned as he now was in the fatal embrace of his attacker. Cries were soon lost as much to disbelief as to the leathery enclosure which gripped every fibre of his being. The visitor's body seemed - to the creature - to deflate in its grasp. Blood, fats, tears, bile and sweat were consumed with equal relish. The symbiote pair were almost lost in their ecstasy; although wasn't it always thus? No pleasures known to mere man could equate with the rapture of taking another in this way - so completely and utterly. The inexorable binding of hunter and prey at this moment was exquisite, far more than any mere spearman or archer could know. No matter how anticipated or unexpected the arrival of it, the outcome was always the same. And it was intoxicating. Exhausting. Overwhelming. The creature was still, now. Almost as still as the shrivelled hunk of meat it surrounded. The remnant would be disposed of easily enough, most likely with fire. The cursed flame was, after all, the greatest hider of misdeeds and absolver of sins. The thing was roused from its disposal planning by the silent gaze of others. Unfurling from its nest of butchery, it raised its head while surreptitiously forming pseudo-eyes about itself for panoramic night-vision. Surrounded now. Like a fool. A trap. An obvious trap. Which it had walked straight into. So eager had it been to feast upon blithe innocence, common sense had been cast to the wind. And what a foul stench now came to bear upon it. The crowd - mob - which surrounded the beast at a cautious distance were armed not only with swords, nets, spears and bows but also... buckets? The circle closed slowly but uniformly. Traditional implements of war seemed only for defensive measures, whereas... as one man gave the signal, the crafted wooden pails were thrust forward and in an instant the creature was soaked. But this was no witch-drowning. Not water, but fire. The oil of the knoblauch, every bit as harmful to the beast's physiology as belladonna and hemlock would be to any of these attackers. With bubbling skin seemingly aflame, the rest was a blur. Netted, bound in silver chains and speared in a casket, then buried un-alive. By the time the thing's biological defences had nullified the plant oil, all activity above ground had long since ceased... And yet it was the recollection of this turmoil which had distracted the thing in the ground from activity above it - here and now. Something - someone - was digging. Not by chance, not through idle exploration. No, there was agency - intent - behind the scurrying above. After all these years - centuries? - what was this now? Treasure hunters come for stories of silver, or myth-hunters come to finish an ancient task? Still unable to defend itself either way, the old dead thing in the ground was at least grateful for the external gloom; that sunlight didn't sear its grey flesh when the lid of the coffin was finally ripped away from its nails after what seemed like an eternity. Although the sight which greeted atrophied eyes was no less heart-stopping. A slobbering beast, much like the creature itself but at least twice the size, caked in mud and in obscenely strong health towered over the open casket, a rudely sharpened stake the size of a small tree trunk poised in its gnarled talons. But worst of all was the simple three-word greeting and eulogy which croaked wetly from its razor-lined jaws...

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