SPEARFINGER FINALE

Der Narr
Der Narr
Aug 9, 2017 · 9 min read

Tragedy, grief, disbelief.

Philly’s death was a big deal for this little lumber town. For a week, a copy of his military graduation photo (one of the few photographs he had ever let anyone take of him) featured in the local newspaper’s necrology section: a young, stalwart figure, tucked in between the countless wrinkled, eroded faces of recently deceased octennials. The funeral was arranged by the people most afflicted by his tragic demise: his friends from work. After all, Philly had been an only child to parents that were long gone themselves. None of his extended family showed up either…

Instead, it was the shop where Philly worked that had been gravely shaken by the loss of their finest delivery man. Many of Philly’s clients attended the ceremony as well, taking the time to walk up to the microphone one by one and testify to the young man’s flawless work ethic and decency. Philly’s work buddies, who were by far the ones who had been the most shocked and broken by the news, shared a handful of sentimental anecdotes revolving around Ol’ Philly’s quirks and, most of all, his particularly clever tongue-in-cheek sense of humour.

In fact, it was largely thanks to these young men that a criminal investigation was carried out by the local Sheriff’s department at all. Even then the incident was quickly ruled a hunting accident: the cadaver had been found alone in the forest with no signs pointing toward foul play. The setting was bizarre beyond belief with the pig and the gown and all, but there were no exit wounds, no bullet fragments, no traces of burnt powder. If there had been any clues, it was readily apparent that the forest had already swallowed it all up before the authorities could make any sense of it. There weren’t any witnesses to interrogate either nor were there suspects to investigate, which made sense to a lot of people given that Philly had been a loner all his life after all.

No, there was nothing special to see here. It was simply a case of an experienced hunter taking an outlandish experiment too far, prowling in the forest at night only to end up with his back sliced open at the hand of a malicious predator unlike anything else the town had ever seen before.

Then, as always, there were those who thought that the boy had simply gotten what was coming to him. It was well known that he was a thrill-seeker, with a penchant for dangerous activities like bear hunting and such. Thus they viewed the situation as a real-life cautionary tale, which the parents of young boys could now use to warn against the lethal dangers of venturing too deep in the woods. Such people had watched young Phil grow up into the reclusive wild man that he was and had never approved of the young man’s radical individuality: how he never went to church, how he drank, how he killed thy neighbour while participating in foreign interventions in heathen lands…

Finally it seemed, he who had lived by the sword had died by the sword, or as the Man in Black would have put it: “You can run on for a long time, but sooner or later God’s gonna cut you down.”

If only these townsfolk knew the true nature of the event. Then again did they really want to know? Did it ever cross their minds that Philly did not in fact die alone in that clearing, or that his demise wasn’t caused by his own folly?

As for the only witness, Sylvester: where then had he run on to?

He was nowhere to be found when the police stumbled upon Philly at the Beetlewood clearing, never mind the fact that the anonymous tip which brought them there had come from him. He avoided the Sheriff during the entirety of the investigation, even when the latter called on the townsfolk to come forward if they had any information surrounding the death. He wasn’t there at the funeral alongside Philly’s clients and friends from work, he never showed up to pay his respects.

No, he spent that entire time hiding in plain sight. This good man, with all his proper manners and profound decency, seemingly vanished at once. He never showed up to work at the lumber mill again, opting for applying for Social Security Income instead. Somehow he managed to qualify; from that point on Sylvester went off the grid. He only left the house to buy a meagre handful of groceries at the general store, otherwise it was as if he had faded out of existence.

The townsfolk were well aware of his absence. But they contented themselves with attributing the off behaviour to the loss of the young man’s better half. Either consciously or instinctively, they chose not to discuss the troubled soul any more than that, much less ask any further questions as to the exact cause of his apparent breakdown and downfall. Such was the ominous heaviness emanating from the dark cloud hanging over his ghostly home.

They couldn’t get their minds around how quickly Sylvester had gone from a cheerful hard worker to a broken shell who scraped by on disability checks. Whenever they exchanged glances with him at the general store, they shuddered at the lack of warmth and confidence and cringed at his dismaying appearance: unshaven, uncombed, with crinkled, dirty clothes dishevelled beyond repair. His bulging bloodshot eyes constantly darted to and fro, evading eye contact at all cost as if he expected someone to pop in out of nowhere and smite him on the spot. He never spoke, and rarely spent more than fifteen minutes outside of his house.

Clearly, beyond any shadow of a doubt, something was wrong with him. But the townsfolk wanted nothing to do with it, whatever it was. Philly’s death was terrible enough as it was, and Sylvester’s state of disarray was a bad omen in and of itself. Better that they leave him be and move on with their own lives, lest the disturbed young fellow’s gloom, and whatever it was that caused it, take possession of anyone else…


Years passed, decades even, until it came to the point where Sylvester was forgotten by the very town he grew up in.

He barely ate. A bottle of Beam was the only thing that could get him to fall asleep at night. He spent most of his days crumpled up on the rocking chair in his veranda, swaying back and forth with a wool blanket covering most of his pale skin. From underneath the blanket his spindly hands would stick out and cradle the obsidian splinter on his lap, which he stroked compulsively all the while warily scouring the ocean of trees in his backyard.

Nothing out of the ordinary would ever come out of the forest or emerge from the grossly overgrown grass on his back lawn: birds, squirrels, even the occasional faun or fox. Still he kept on watching, he kept on expecting. He kept on waiting for the fragment’s owner to come back…

He still didn’t have a name for the creature, but that didn’t stop him from obsessing over the liver snatcher day in and day out. It swirled in his mind while he was out buying groceries, it infiltrated every waking moment. It was the stuff of his nightmares, the singeing, singular object of his ever worsening night terrors.

It was almost as if the mere thought of it was eating away at his very body. The area which the fiend usually targeted became swollen and tender, as if the creature had come into his home at night to perform its incision while he was asleep. It was absurd to think of, but he came to believe that the fear was seeping through cracks in his skull into his blood, flowing through and corroding his innards like battery acid. His skin became smothered in red splotches of irritation, the incessant itching that came as a result driving him even further into madness. He became sick and nauseous, with the stuff coming out of his bowels taking on a vile, tar-like composition.

One day he looked at himself in the mirror and was profoundly disturbed by the morbid wretch he had become: thinning, greying hair jutting off in every direction, sunken cheeks and sullen eyes. Soulless, yellowed eyes…

It was at that moment that the ashes at the bottom of his heart suddenly flared up again, filling him with the remnants of his passion and drive of old. He decided that he had had enough of all this. Being resigned to his fate and pathetic: he was done with that.

No, he was going to find the liver thief, he was going to face his deepest fear and look it in the eye. And if he couldn’t enact revenge he would at least expose it, he would force it out of hiding. Even if the creature wasn’t sentient, if communication was totally impossible, he was still going to do it: he would demand that the liver thief give him his peace of mind back.

He would demand answers…

Why him? Why did it go after him? Why did it take everything away from him: his better half, his best friend and now his own life. Why? Why him?

Even though the hour was late, Sylvester wasted no more time looking in the mirror. He stumbled back downstairs and found his boots. Although his feet were grotesquely swollen and sore, he managed to force them into the dusty soles, which he hadn’t worn in years. With that he careened through the back door and staggered off into the woods.

It had been so long, but even then he clearly recalled the path to that fateful meeting place: Beetlewood. It was there that the liver thief had lured him, stalked him, hunted him. It would thus be there that he would summon the demon one last time, once and for all…

There was a lot of daylight left, but even then the forest felt dark and sinister. These woods were not pleased by his return; perhaps they resented him for failing to protect Marigold. Then again they had also seen the death of Philly unravel before them. They knew that it was Sylvester who dragged the huntsman into this fool’s errand. They were there when Sylvester packed up and left his childhood friend behind, too traumatized to call the police on the spot and wait for the latter to arrive at the scene. The trees had seen it all, they were well aware of Sylvester’s involvement in the insidious events that took place under the shade of their canopies…

It was for good reason then, that Sylvester did not feel welcome in these groves anymore. The trees cast their long shadows over him, as if they were pointing fingers at him, shaming him for what had happened in their midst. As he approached the clearing, the place where Philly’s blood had been spilt screamed for vindication. With each step, the evergreen sprouting out of the wrecked car became more and more agitated…

The pain in his abdomen was becoming too hard to bear. Weak and frail, Sylvester fell to his knees at the feet of the Beetlewood altar, where he had laid the pig offering all those years ago. As he gripped his stomach and gasped in agony, it suddenly occurred to him that it looked like he was now offering himself up to the liver thief.

But was it really him who was doing the offering? No, it seemed more like it was the forest that was using him as bait, to draw out the fiend from its hiding place and direct it towards him…

A strong wind passed through the clearing, inciting the trees to sway their branches angrily over him. The inanimate leaves rustled like a death rattle as the current coursed through them. Yet in his frenzied state of suffering, Sylvester thought he could make out what sounded like words nestled in the indiscernible noise.

Su sa sai! Su sa sai!” sang the evergreen.

All around it, the other trees joined in on the chorus.

Su sa sai! Su sa sai! Su sa sai!

The scent of lavender manifested itself in the clearing, even though the flowers that used to grow out from underneath the Beetle’s wheel caps were long gone. By now Sylvester knew what that meant: the fiend was here, it was drawing near…

He could feel that his end was nigh as the throbbing pain pulsating in his gut reached unbearable intensities. With eyes squeezed shut and his hands clawing desperately at his abdomen, Sylvester fell face down onto the forest floor as the trees kept on chanting around him. He had never heard such a language before; it was so ancient, so primal and visceral… But somehow his mind was able to translate it, as if this bizarre tree-speak had been infused into his innermost being during all the years he had spent wandering in the woods…

“Uwe la na tsiku,” crooned the voice of Marigold behind him.

Even if he had had the strength to turn around and face the shapeshifter creeping up behind him, Sylvester would not have bothered at this point. He was paralyzed and helpless. Resigned…

The fiend’s words echoed in his mind as it moved in for the kill.

“Uwe la na tsiku. Su sa sai, su sa sai…”

He felt the blade enter his body. Even as his liver was sucked clean out, leaving the rest of his body to shut down helplessly in its wake, Sylvester was fully aware of what the phrase meant.

“Liver, I eat it. Su sa sai, su sa sai…”

For years this witch had toyed with him…

Spearfinger had finally come to claim her prize.

Der Narr

Der Narr

“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’”

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