Latest / Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories / The Piper's Haunting Vow: A Melody of Malevolence

Transcript

The Piper's Haunting Vow: A Melody of Malevolence · Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories

• 0:29
  The boy should have known something was wrong the moment
• 0:31
  he glanced back over his shoulder, but he was too tired
• 0:35
  and weary and afraid to register the truth.
• 0:38
  He followed the sound of the keening pipe.
• 0:41
  It's unfamiliar melody, absurdly cheerful, charred him from the
• 0:45
  carnage. It filtered through the pores of
• 0:47
  his skin and infused him with the strength and warmth he
• 0:51
  needed to run through the icy clutches of winter.
• 0:55
  The forest muffled the sounds within and beyond it, as if the
• 0:58
  trees themselves swallowed noise all but the tune of the unseen
• 1:02
  Piper. Time stood still, cradled
• 1:05
  between the labyrinth of jutting roots and a cotton cloud sky
• 1:09
  that was falling apart. Tufts of snow floated down
• 1:13
  through naked branches, as if massive pillowcases had exploded
• 1:17
  during a massive pillow fight between massive gods who did not
• 1:21
  care that far below them the falling snow sizzled against
• 1:24
  flames that devoured a village. Run, his mother had rasped,
• 1:29
  pushing him through the back door of their home, the door
• 1:32
  that led to the chickens and pigs, and he'd run until he'd
• 1:36
  fallen, slipping in the snow and in the refuse of the squealing
• 1:40
  animals, his vision fractured by his tears.
• 1:43
  He turned back then, ashamed to have run, ashamed to have left
• 1:47
  her even though she no longer quite looked like his mother.
• 1:51
  Once she'd been beautiful, the belle of the village, people
• 1:55
  said. Then the red blotches appeared,
• 1:58
  lesions that began on her arms and spread across her chest and
• 2:02
  throat, an army of ants beneath her skin that disfigured her
• 2:06
  face and body. She did not cry out when she cut
• 2:09
  a finger or burn her hands. In the kitchen.
• 2:12
  Her once lush hair fell from her scalp like shorn wheat,
• 2:15
  littering the floor in clumps. Yet her eyes were always his
• 2:19
  mother's eyes, calm and blue and cool like a damp cloth against a
• 2:23
  fevered brow, radiating such love that he felt she embraced
• 2:27
  him even when she avoided touching him.
• 2:30
  She was all he had left, the only person who cared enough to
• 2:34
  weep and caress his face when lesions spread across his own
• 2:38
  back and grew thick like the pedicles of a second spine.
• 2:42
  When he crept back into the house, keeping to the shadows,
• 2:45
  the boy found nothing left of his mother but a dark stain on
• 2:49
  the floorboards that streaked from the kitchen to the bedroom.
• 2:53
  A man appeared in that doorway, his body and face sheathed in
• 2:57
  fabrics and spells that would not let the infection touch him.
• 3:01
  Gripping a sword that wept red tears from its edge, the boy hid
• 3:05
  until the man turned away and then sprinted back out into the
• 3:08
  night. He ran through the streets,
• 3:11
  dodging the hooves of horses and the torched firewood that the
• 3:14
  yelling soldiers threw his way. He fell only once when something
• 3:19
  sharp hit his head. It seemed he opened his eyes
• 3:22
  mere seconds later. Snow filled his nostrils until
• 3:26
  he raised his head. Once he did, the scent of smoke
• 3:30
  engulfed him. The crackle of the fires was
• 3:33
  nearly drowned by screams that would not end.
• 3:36
  He scrambled to his feet, the snow beneath him stained Crimson
• 3:39
  as if with wine, and stumbled away from the slaughter and
• 3:42
  toward the trees. And so now he ran, torn by
• 3:46
  despair and fear, amazed that his matchstick legs could outrun
• 3:51
  the sinewy limbs of the armored horses and the fiery wrath of
• 3:55
  their riders. Flamethrowers, he wished he
• 3:57
  could have found, could have lifted the axe that had been his
• 4:01
  father's, with its handle longer than his arm, and swung it into
• 4:05
  the chest of anyone who dared approach his mother.
• 4:08
  He wished he had not left her when she pushed him out of their
• 4:11
  home. He wished he had not seen her
• 4:14
  blood upon the floor. He wished someone would have
• 4:17
  come to their village to cure instead of to eradicate.
• 4:21
  The forest echoed with the shrieks of women who fought and
• 4:24
  pled and bled as gloved soldiers dragged them through the streets
• 4:28
  and pushed them into burning homes.
• 4:30
  Of men As their hands, along with the pitchforks or knives
• 4:33
  they held in them, were severed by swords wedded on the bones of
• 4:37
  prior villagers. Of children who collapsed when
• 4:40
  those who chased them flung torches at their backs.
• 4:43
  And above all this, the haunting croon of a pipe, promising all
• 4:47
  that a hurt little boy could desire.
• 4:49
  And so to that piping, this little boy fled.
• 4:52
  The more he ran, the stronger he felt.
• 4:55
  When he could no longer hear the screams and the flames, the boy
• 4:59
  realized what the song said, even though there were no words.
• 5:04
  It spoke of melted snows and rays of sun that embraced all
• 5:08
  whom they touched like warm knit sweaters.
• 5:11
  It spoke of a father who opened his eyes as color filled his
• 5:14
  cheeks and laughter spilled from his mouth.
• 5:17
  It spoke of a mother whose skin was smooth and soft and smelled
• 5:21
  of vanilla and needed bread. It spoke of brothers and sisters
• 5:25
  who danced and teased and loved and lived, who picked him up
• 5:29
  when he scarred his knees and told him stories when he could
• 5:32
  not sleep. It spoke of a world where bad
• 5:36
  things couldn't come, where he could be free to grow old and
• 5:39
  weathered and well loved like the most kindly of grandfathers.
• 5:43
  The boy ran faster, fast enough that it felt like he flew,
• 5:47
  anxious to get to the world the Psalm spoke of.
• 5:51
  He even began to catch glimpses of the piper through the trees.
• 5:55
  Though he scampered and danced as he played his pipe, he
• 5:59
  appeared sometimes before, sometimes behind, and sometimes
• 6:03
  beside the boy. He wore a black hooded cloak
• 6:06
  that hid his face beneath it. His clothes were pied, a
• 6:10
  patchwork of vibrant color impossible to miss whenever the
• 6:13
  wind whipped back the cloak. His pipe and fingers were white
• 6:17
  of bone and just like the boy, he left no footprints in the
• 6:21
  snow.