Time's Up

“Nnngh!”

Anna pulled with all her might, leaning back for what extra leverage that gravity could assist. Her block heels dug into the saturated soil, sliding forward momentarily until the two large cleat-like heels dug in deep enough that she rooted in place.

The pall continued to strain.

Beneath the waters Clayton could now feel two cold hands running up his lower leg, clasping him tightly below the knee. It squeezed with supernatural strength, making him cry out in a blend of pain and terror.

“Pull yourself up- it’s length!” Anna eeked out between clenched teeth.

Clayton risked letting go with one hand, holding himself from being pulled under by only the other. He stretched forward, taking tentative hold. The pall wasn’t like a rope though. It was thick, more difficult to grasp. Dense muscles honed from years as a seasonal farmhand flexed, slowly hauling himself up out of the muck.

The hands below his knee resisted, pulling him back, dagger like fingernails digging into his leather pants.

The pall shuddered, pulled taunt between two intense forces vying for life or death.

“Let go or it will break!”

“Don’t you dare!”

Out of nowhere the white Wisp made its return, like a dog might check on a stranger to see why they stopped following.

“A little help?!” Clayton cried, kicking his clasped leg while straining to reach forward for another hold on the pall.

The Wisp hovered in place a moment, then zipped off, disappearing back into the gray.

So much for that.

“Get off me!” Clayton demanded, shaking his clasped leg violently. The fingernails responded by digging in deeper, threatening to pierce the leather and dig into flesh.

The terrible tug-of-war persisted, neither side relenting or making progress.

“It’s slipping!” Anna yelled. She tried to grasp the soaked pall tighter but the wet fabric was slowly peeling away from her waterlogged, pruned fingers.

Unexpectedly the Wisp returned, accompanied at once by four more of its kind. The penta party darted about erratically, searching, like billiard balls bouncing around before diving one at a time straight into the tannic waters beside Clayton.

The water boiled with agitation as an unseen struggle ensued. Bright flashes of light could be seen. The hands around Clayton’s leg jerked one way, then the other, as if the body was being battered. Suddenly the grip on Clayton released, sending him surging outwards at Anna.

They collided.

Anna toppled backwards, landing flat on her back in the mire. Schlop!

Clayton continued forward with enough remaining momentum to parallel her body before gravity took over, dumping him directly atop her with an oof.

The young man flushed abruptly and fully with embarrassment as he scrambled to get quickly off her.

“S-s-sorry,” he apologized.

“No time!” Anna exclaimed, immediately sitting up.

Just feet away from them the waters of the stagnant quagmire began to boil with feverish activity as the Bog Dead stirred. Slowly they surfaced, one after another, ancient bodies covered in dark, leathery skin, their features pressed flat into mask-like shapes, distorted by the compression of the peat over the decades and centuries. Preserved by the acidic, anaerobic environment, remnants of old clothing still clung to their forms, while wet hair stuck to their peat-stained scalps.

Once waist high out of the water, the closest one reached out slowly, its body burdened by decay. It held a tool in one hand, the wooden handle well preserved but its iron head melted away into a rusty, unrecognizable blob.

It tried to breathe with a throat that had not drawn a breath in ages. Water gurgled from a violent knife slash across its neck.

“Time-to-go!” Clayton chimed in singsong, popping up to his feet.

“Go where?!”

The young man spun.

All around them the Bog Dead were rising from their places of slumber. Thirty? Fifty? It seemed as if the pair had stumbled right into the middle of an impromptu graveyard.

“Oh, I love the smell of undead in the morning.”

“Really gets your pulse going.”

“Any bright ideas, stick? Or more useless commentary.”

“You tell me, apprentice. I think now is a delightful time for you to try out your horde control.” It paused for further consideration as a mumble. “Though this is more like a mini-horde. So… a gaggle? A clash?”

“A shut up?”

Clayton searched for any immediate means to defend themselves. Thick branch? Big stone? Nothing. Other than towel-snapping at them with the soaked pall.

“There is no way we are going to fight our way out of this one!”

“Go on apprentice,” the stylus crooned. “Whip me out and go to town with that fabulous million word vocabulary of yours.”

“Run the way we came!” Anna pointed towards the path she could best remember. But with so few unique landmarks, it was impossible to tell if it was the right way or not.

Clayton launched in the indicated direction, taking only a few strides before breaking through a thin layer of peat, splashing face first into a shallow stagnant pool.

Clearly not the way.

“Tick tick tick, apprentice. What’s it going to be?”

Anna faced the closest wave of Bog Dead. They sloshed through the water towards her, hands raised to choke, tools raised to bludgeon.

No choice but to stand and fight. “Come and get me.” Anna flapped the soaked pall like a matador’s cape. In the relative silence of the bog, the sound traveled.

The Bog Dead took instant interest, sunken eye sockets turning towards the soaked sound of the enchanted velvet which, surprisingly, despite being dripping wet, was otherwise pristine.

Even the Wisps took notice, all five emerging from the pool to hover in a line abreast above the waters.

“They all want it?” Clayton asked, standing behind Anna, spitting water and dripping. “What for?”

“No, no, no! No cheating!”

An intense icy aura pulsed above as the lookalike apparition re-materialized. He hovered twenty feet above Anna, looking furious, arms folded under his chest, standing on tip toes in perfectly clean, cute mary janes.

His luminous periwinkle glow flashed intensely, drawing all attention away from the pall to him.

“Listen up deadies! You’re going to either obey me and eat her,” the apparition said, pointing down abruptly, “or you’re going to answer her commands.”

He tilted his head enough to look down past his body at the real Anna below. “No more delays. Time’s up, apprentice. Death or death magic. I’m done waiting.”