Haemodaemon

Somewhere in the forests of Poland, Marcin Dabrowski woke up to the popping sound of wood cracking under the heat of a fire. Hot smoke permeated his nostrils causing him to cough. He slowly opened his eyes; and as he did, his whole body began tensing up involuntarily for he did not expect to see by the sight of hooded figures flocked all around him. Marcin could not formulate coherent thoughts in his mind as panic had a firm grasp on his psyche in response to the ominous appearance of the people all around him.

Marcin tried getting up, but quickly found out he could not move because he was bound in place by ropes. He screamed, demanding to be released as he began thrashing in his place.

The hooded figures all stared at him in response, he quickly fell silent but the staring did not cease. Soon enough he was claustrophobic and outright terrified as the beating of his heart drowned out all other sounds around him. The staring made him feel as if he was being tortured but no matter what he did, he couldn’t evade it. Even when he shut his eyes tightly, he felt the piercing gaze of the hooded figures staring straight into his soul.

The feeling of claustrophobia had gotten so bad that he began crying in despair as tears streamed down passed his closed eyelids.

After moments of torture that felt like an eternity, he felt something cold touching his neck. His bloodshot eyes opened up wide when he heard a figure chanting something over him in a language that sounded a lot like Polish but different.

Prone over him stood a man dressed in a black and red Papal garb with a black face paint. The figure was holding a knife to his neck, making the tied man swallow his saliva hard.

The chanting grew louder with each passing moment as more and more hooded figures began chanting along with the man in papal garbs. Soon enough, the group chanting had produced a diabolical mass that took over Marcin‘s senses, causing him to thrash and spasm against his binds while he both curses and begs his captors to release him.

The moment the man in papal garbs finished his prayer with a loud growl that Marcin‘s panicked thrashing halted. All chanting ceased and with a swift motion of his hand, the face-painted man slit his victim’s throat.

As the blood of their victim splashed all over, the hooded figures raised the cross-shaped contraption he was tied to, making it look as if a twisted version of a crucifixion took place.

Marcin felt the sharp pain shooting across his neck, and he wanted to cry out but could not make any intelligible sound. He felt blood running down from his neck and out of his mouth. In a moment‘s notice, everything faded to black. As he was sure that he was going to die and his soul would depart this world and into the next, he felt the need to sharply inhale.

As what felt like Oxygen filled his lungs, Marcin opened his eyes only to find himself engulfed in complete darkness. He tried calling out, but no sound came. He tried running his arm across his head and neck — but he could not.

An agonizing stabbing sensation ran across his body.

Over and over and over and over.

The stabbing sensation it got worse with each passing moment, he tried to scream again and again but no sound came, he tried to move but nothing happened as if his body wasn’t his own. The stabbing sensation became more frequent as the time passed as if it had been linked to his heartbeat. His thoughts began to drift as the pain was becoming too much to bear. Just as he felt he was about to slip out and into an eternal slumber, he felt as if his legs were catching fire. This new form of pain jolted him back into full consciousness all over again. The burning sensation slowly almost deliberately made its way up the man‘s body. Covering every inch of in what felt like a swarm of homicidal bullet ants.

The man could no longer handle the agonizing torment he was suffering by the time the burning sensation had reached his chest.

For a brief moment, everything faded to black.

He opened his eyes to find himself still stuck in complete and utter darkness, unable to move. He tried to organize his thoughts, but anxiety suddenly washed all over him preventing him from thinking straight. Slowly, he was losing his ability to think; any thought he tried to form became twisted and broke apart inside his mind. The agonized man even tried remembering events from his life but whenever something remotely coherent came up at the back of his mental maze it burned away from him.

Eventually, he could no longer think at all. A whirlwind of nothingness took over his mind and the sharp stabbing feeling had returned. He welcomed it, however, seeing as how he could now think of something but that did not last long.

A sudden blood-curdling scream echoed in the distance, sending a cold pulse through Marcin‘s body. Fear gripped at him, fear of the purest kind; the feeling of tension grew stronger and stronger within him. Then a twisted, emaciated, shriveled up humanoid face appeared in front of his eyes, releasing another bone-cracking scream. This time it was so close and so powerful that he felt the scream tearing his insides apart.

Pain overcame him again; pain, unlike he had never felt before. He felt himself becoming nothing but a fleshy mass of agony as his body felt like it was being torn into shreds by bony claws from all directions while his mind slowly became nothing but darkness.

“Let… Me… In…“ a hoarse voice barely audible, echoed behind him, or at least what he thought was his behind.

Followed by a cold hand pressing against his back, the chilly sensation made the pain go away, all of it. Marcin managed to breathe properly for the first time in a while; enjoying the feeling of actual oxygen filling his chest cavity.

The hand receded into the nothingness and the pain returned, forcing the man to experience paralyzing bolts of lightning cruising throughout his body all over again, he cried out an inhuman wail.

The cold hand pressed itself against the man’s back again, bringing with it a sweet release from the ungodly torment that befell the man. Drool dripped from his mouth as the pleasant chills ran across his skin. He gasped for air as a man possessed.

“Let… Me… In…“ the voice called out again, this time closer to his ear; engulfing his everything thought, his every ounce of consciousness was occupied by that hoarse, dry voice.

In his state of pure ecstasy, the spiritually and mentally broken man gave into the demands of the voice, “Y… e… s…“

He managed to blurt out his consent, and a warm sensation began to build up in his chest. It kept growing warmer and warmer until it became a painful sensation of pressure. He began screaming out in pain once more, but he managed to scream just for a moment before a violent burst of light shot out of his insides tearing him apart and engulfing the darkness all over.

After crucifying their sacrificial lamb, the hooded figures stood around their mock-cross and began chanting once more while blood poured out of Marcin‘s body onto the ground below him. After a few moments, that blood began taking some sort of shape. The hooded figures started chanting louder and louder with each passing moment as the amalgamation of blood cells started forming into something remotely resembling a humanoid shape.

By the time the reddish mass took the shape of a humanoid thing, the chanting of the hooded figures had become a choir of violent screaming and shouting. That’s when the being made up of blood rose up, revealing itself to the hooded figures who's screaming slowly died down. As they observed the featureless anthropomorphic thing with large horns, two white holes for eyes and a jigsaw puzzle shaped maw rise, it at them and let out a roar that sounded like the simultaneous howling of ten humans in unimaginable agony. The screamed caused the fires all around the ritual site to turn black.

As the hooded crowds looked around them in awe, almost reveling in the success of their demonic ritual, black tendrils shot out the demonic spawn and tore straight through everyone around the beast.

No amount of begging and praying could stop this creature, it had a singular goal in mind; annihilation. The thing was driven by a singular goal; complete and utter destruction of everyone in sight.

No one escaped the onslaught of the horned abomination as its tendrils flew in all direction piercing through the bodies of all those who tried to escape the slaughter, and replacing the silence of the night with the shrieks of the dying.

None survived the massacre of the fiend.

When the screams of dying mortals finally stopped, the horned beast looked around, examining the destruction it left all around itself.

The sight of chestnut-colored semi-mummified remains of the people who had summoned the beast scattered as far as the eye could see made the thing chuckle in sick pleasure before it had vanished into the darkness of the night.