The Town That Never Buried Anyone

I’m currently staying in the town in which the world ended twenty years ago. Figuratively, of course. Perhaps saying my whole world ended would be a better way of putting it. If I’m being completely honest, the world ended for me and me alone here. I grew up in this desolate god forsaken place. I grew up in a cult effectively. The first half of my life was shaped by a community of religious lunatics who worshipped some sort of vile entity that lives not far from my current location.

The entity is presumably made up of flesh and blood, although I am not sure. It seems to be an entirely physical being that looks eerily similar to a lion with a scorpion’s tail. I’ve seen it once, and I do not wish to encounter it ever again. That said, the head of the thing was not that of the king of the jungle. This god, simply known as “Our Lord” or “Our Master” around here, had the face of a primate of some kind.

The worst part about this thing was not its carnivorous appetite or even its penchant for eating human flesh. The scariest part about this abomination was its ability to speak. During my single encounter with it, the beast was repeating how hungry it was in many different voices.

I am getting ahead of myself. I was born here forty years ago, back when it was still a small self-sufficient community in the middle of nowhere. We never left town. Nobody did, nobody ever had to. Except for a select group of men, my father included. They’d leave town for three days every year in the middle of August. They always returned with body bags. As a kid whenever I asked what’s inside, I was told that they were effigies meant to be offerings to our god. I believed that for the longest time.

Our religion was incredibly simple, respect the god’s name, trust in his protection of the community, and offer him human sacrifices once a year – The more the better. Of course, I had no idea these were human sacrifices when I was a kid. Though I should’ve suspected something in my teens. Our town had no graveyards, and they ever buried anyone. Anyone who died just vanished – meaning they had been fed to that monster that my community worshiped. I should’ve suspected something was awry, but I didn’t.

There was a notion of a ceremony around the annual sacrifices. If the chosen men returned home after feeding the beast, the community was to throw a massive party in honor of the god. If they didn’t return, we had to mourn for three days, before throwing a party in honor of the god. I guess our lives didn’t matter much – it was all for the sake of feeding the creature.

Hindsight is always 20/20. The funny thing is that our lives were good, and that’s probably why we never noticed the madness of it all. My mother was an outsider, but she bought into this whole thing because of how serene life here might’ve seemed back then. A self-sufficient community of good-natured and good-willed people who lived in perfect harmony under the protection of a magnificent deity that roamed the earth. Mum never cared that dad was a murderer. She doesn’t even seem upset in the slightest over the fact that she was probably an intended sacrifice at first. Like I’ve said, nobody ever left town unless it was to get meat for the creature. Mum’s best guess is that dad was smitten with her the moment he met her. She loved him, and in a way, she still does.

In a way, because they divorced years ago when I was sixteen. The passion had died out, and mum got tired of being confined to the same so-called farm we had. Dad let her go. Never married again either. The family broke in half, Mum and Addie, my sister left and I stayed with my dad.

A year later, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. The news devastated me, and I tried urging him to get treatment. The stubborn old man refused, however. He was too devout to his old ways. In fact, he was happy to know he’d be able to offer himself to his beloved god. We had a big fight, and I didn’t speak to him until he was on his deathbed. That’s when the cracks started showing. The town wasn’t so perfect, and also probably when I realized that these body bags were filled with actual dead people. I came to accept the fact that my father wasn’t the monolith I had thought him to be. He was a fanatic worshiping a misanthropic deity.

Twenty years ago, my phone rang, and it was dad. I answered. We had a lengthy conversation during which I’ve apologized for my childish behavior, and he apologized for not listening to my advice. We spoke for hours, sharing stories with one another, and had some greatly needed father-son bonding time. For the last time.

That day, dad told me he was dying. He felt it. Dad said he felt his body failing him and asked me for a favor; he asked me to take him to the temple of his god. Dad wanted to serve as a sacrifice. I tried dissuading him from that, but he rebuffed my attempts by telling me that he’ll end up there either way. He wasn’t lying. This town never buried its residents, after all, they served those who died as meals to this so-called god. I remember sighing this drawn-out audible sigh before reluctantly agreeing.

I couldn’t sleep that night. The idea of aiding my father in what would be effectively a suicide was just too much to handle. I know he was suffering, but still. It’s something that I can’t quite put to words. It’s this crushing feeling of a concrete set of jaws closing in on your heart deliberately slowly, as if to prolong your imminent demise. A faint dull ache that’s always there. A constant reminder of how cruel life can be.

Meeting my father, the next morning was heartbreaking. I could barely look him in the eyes. Both out of shame for effectively neglecting him when he needed me most and because of the shape he was in. Once a grizzly of a man, he was just short of a skeleton with a skin suit tightly hung up upon its frame. He’d gone so thin and frail, his skin and eyes were sickeningly yellow and his once-mighty grip felt so pathetic when he shook my hand. I had to hold back the tears, seeing the pitiful shape my father had turned.

Dad could barely even walk by that point. Cancer must’ve eaten away at most of his organs. He hardly spoke. In fact, he only greeted me and told me how to get to this so-called temple. It wasn’t really a temple, just a cave some thirty minutes away from our town. The whole time we drove there, dad sat in the passenger seat with his eyes closed, wincing in pain every few seconds. I can’t even begin to imagine just how much pain he was in. It was probably unbearably agonizing. I winced in discomfort every time I looked at my father’s dying form. He was very obviously a walking corpse about to drop dead, possibly in the next few hours.

When we got there, I was so emotionally drained I wasn’t even shocked that our so-called great deity lived inside a simple hole in the mountainside. I helped my dad out of the car and practically carried him into the cave. He tried smiling but was obviously in too much pain. He tried speaking, but that too seemed to be too painful so he ended up cutting his sentences awkwardly short. When we entered the cave, the beautiful vegetation covering its interior awed me. It was filled with lush green molds that covered everything in sight. Some even glowed in the dark. I heard dad sobbing when we got to a small stream that came from an underground spring. Passing the stream, dad told me I should leave him there. He said, and I’ll never forget his words, “Leave me, the Lord is very hungry and wouldn’t mind feasting on you too… It’s still too early…” but he was cut short by a painful cough. I reassured him I’ll run out as soon as I see as much as the shadow of this creature.

He was too weak to protest.

That was also when I first noticed a few bones lying on the ground and a boot. That’s when it all started feeling wrong, as it should have from the beginning of this trip. This wrongness was masked by the pain I’ve felt seeing my father wither away in front of me. I knew that we were getting close to my father’s god, but it was too late to turn back, no matter how wrong it all felt. A few minutes later, I heard the dreaded “Soooooh hunggkree” calls. The first one was deep and rough sounding, the second was soft and high pitched. Then came the third, the fourth, and a few more, each in a different voice. The calls made the hair on the back of my neck stand. I looked at my dad, whom I was practically carrying – he wasn’t there anymore. Tears began streaming down my cheeks. My dad was gone, he was no more. He wasn’t suffering anymore.

I wanted to put him down on the ground and leave, but something pushed us both, knocking me to the ground. By the time I rolled onto my back, that chimeric monstrosity had my father’s body impaled on its stinger. I was stuck for a moment when I saw its muscular feline body emerging from the darkness. It’s ugly ape-like face contorted in as its scream turned into something akin to a very low gorilla roar.

That roar turned off some switch in my mind, my heart went from zero to three hundred in about the span of a second and I was back on my feet. I was running as fast as I could from a thing that shouldn’t even exist. The beast was clearly after me. I could hear its massive feet crushing against the ground behind me, along with the snow of something leathery being slapped. I didn’t look back, I just ran, I couldn’t even think about anything but getting away from that abomination. At some point, I could no longer hear it behind me, but I didn’t stop running until I heard its awful roar again. The ungodly sound of that thing made me freeze again. The roar sounded distant like the creature was lagging behind, I turned back and saw it pacing back and forth around behind that measly stream of water. It couldn’t cross a pathetic little stream.

For a second I found the whole situation amusing, this beast – this thing, that somehow managed to put an entire town under its spell, to play a god and have people bring it food all the time. This beast of unimaginable power was afraid of water. I wanted to laugh, but then I saw the flaying body of my dad, still attached to the tail of this animal. My heart felt like its being crushed between the simian teeth of that thing. Reality came back knocking, punching me straight in the gut, and I started running again.

I had to get away as far as I could from that place. I drove all the way to my mum’s, whereupon arriving – I’ve had a mental breakdown.

I couldn’t speak for a month. I didn’t even want to get out of bed… Life just seemed so wrong at this point. I… I don’t know. I have no idea how to even explain this whole thing. I don’t know how that thing brainwashed so many people into becoming its benefactors. I don’t know why anyone would regard a chimera scared of water as a god. I don’t know… Just like that, Mum could never explain it either. All we can agree on is that there was some magic to that place. There was magic to that life. It was something else.

I have no idea why I’ve returned here, but I’m glad it’s a ghost town now. It doesn’t even matter if everyone woke up one day from their hypnosis and left or just died out – what matters is that this thing is most likely going to starve out.

At least that’s what I hope will happen. Who knows what could happen if this beast would escape its mountainous cage? Who is to tell that it didn’t escape and devour all the residents? Surely not me. I’m not going back to that cave. The moment I leave this town that never buried its dead residents, I’m not coming back either.